title,abstract,year,score
Interoperability of Biodiversity Databases: Biodiversity Information on Every Desktop,data about biodiversity are either scattered in many databases or reside on paper or other media not amenable to interactive searching the global biodiversity information facility gbif is a framework for facilitating the digitization of biodiversity data and for making interoperable an as yet unknown number of biodiversity databases that are distributed around the globe in concert with other existing efforts gbif will catalyze the completion of a catalog of the names of known organisms and will develop search engines to mine the vast quantities of biodiversity data it will be an outstanding tool for scientists natural resource managers and policy makers,2000,0.236
"Nauclea latifolia: A Medicinal, Economic and Pharmacological Review",objectives nauclealatifoliasmith family rubiaceae is a valuable medicinal plant that is widespread in the humid tropical rainforest or in savannah woodland zone of west and central africa different parts of the plant possess remarkable therapeutic actions that can support the traditional usage of this plant in the treatment of several ailments the plant was described with the origin distribution and its local uses this review was focused on its ethno medicinal and economic uses as well as its phytochemical and pharmacologic activities materials and methods the scientific resources including scopemed pubmed scopus hinari and google scholar were searched using key words such as nauclealatifolia ethno medicinal uses non medicinal uses economic value phytochemistry pharmacological activities results n latifoliaand its phytochemical constituents showed positive effects in prevention or curing many ailments through various mechanisms such as antioxidative anti inflammatory anti hypertensive antisecretory and antiulcerogenic effects conclusions this review has scientifically justified some traditional uses of n latifolia in the management of human diseases hence exploiting all the qualities of this plant may offer solutions to some prevailing clinical conditions since it is becoming obvious that the natural vegetation around us is enriched with solutions to most of our health challenges and the extent to which we discover it have great implications to dealing with these challenges,2000,0.019
COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Proud Globelet (Patera pennsylvanica) in Canada,this large terrestrial snail is found in the upper mid west of north america with canadaâ s single recorded occurrence in and near a wooded park in windsor ontario general snail surveys conducted throughout southern ontario over the last century have not detected this species anywhere else freshly dead shells were found in 1992 and 1996 but only dead weathered shells were found in extensive surveys in 2013 human intrusions and disturbances from recreational activities and ecosystem modifications from invasive plants and animals the surrounding urbanization pollution from local and regional sources and climate change may have contributed to the speciesâ demise it appears another native snail disappeared from the same area at the same time,2002,0.629
"Indifferent Philosophy versus Almighty Authority: On consistency, consensus and unitary taxonomy",the ability of the taxonomic community to heed charles godfray s wakeâ up call to create â unitaryâ taxonomic systems and make them available on the internet is hampered by real difficulties over achieving taxonomic consistency and a cultural reluctance amongst systematists to embrace consensus this paper explores these issues by examining the taxonomic history of an african milkweed butterfly amauris damocles sensu lato recent differences of opinion over the classification of this insect relate to fundamental differences in the theory and practice of systematics from creationism through authoritarianism to cladistics differences of a kind that will forever bedevil the distributed taxonomic system if practical unitary schemes are to emerge then the taxonomic community will need to adopt new ways of managing and recording taxonomic change and develop a more responsible attitude towards the needs of others who are dependent of the primary products of systematics names and the classification schemes they symbolize,2003,0.101
"Distribution, genetic diversity and potential spatiotemporal scale of alien gene flow in crop wild relatives of rice ( Oryza spp.) in Colombia",crop wild relatives cwrs of rice hold important traits that can contribute to enhancing the ability of cultivated rice oryza sativa and o glaberrima to produce higher yields cope with the effects of climate change and resist attacks of pests and diseases among others however the genetic resources of these species remain dramatically understudied putting at risk their future availability from in situ and ex situ sources here we assess the distribution of genetic diversity of the four rice cwrs known to occur in colombia o glumaepatula o alta o grandiglumis and o latifolia furthermore we estimated the degree of overlap between areas with suitable habitat for cultivated and wild rice both under current and predicted future climate conditions to assess the potential spatiotemporal scale of potential gene flow from gm rice to its cwrs our findings suggest that part of the observed genetic diversity and structure at least of the most exhaustively sampled species may be explained by their glacial and post glacial range dynamics furthermore in assessing the expected impact of climate change and the potential spatiotemporal scale of gene flow between populations of cwrs and gm rice we find significant overlap between present and future suitable areas for cultivated rice and its four cwrs climate change is expected to have relatively limited negative effects on the rice cwrs with three species showing opportunities to expand their distribution ranges in the future given i the sparse presence of cwr populations in protected areas ii the strong suitability overlap between cultivated rice and its four cwrs and iii the complexity of managing and regulating areas to prevent alien gene flow the first priority should be to establish representative ex situ collections for all cwr species which currently do not exist in the absence of studies under field conditions on the scale and extent of gene flow between cultivated rice and its colombian cwrs effective in situ conservation might best be achieved through tailor made management plans and exclusion of gm rice cultivation in areas holding the most genetically diverse cwr populations this may be combined with assisted migration of populations to suitable areas where rice is unlikely to be cultivated under current and future climate conditions,2003,0.746
"From the Vision to the Ground: A Guide to Implementing Ecoregion Conservation in Priority Areas (application/pdf, 2.93 MB)",this guide is based on emerging innovations in designing and implementing conservation across various landscapes it focuses on refined conservation planning following an ecoregion vision with a focus on biological prioritization and key elements of stakeholder engagement and negotiation,2004,0.326
In situ conservation of crop wild relatives: a methodology for identifying priority genetic reserve sites,the aegro project was initiated to fill some knowledge gaps and to provide a range of practical tools for in situ cwr conservation as a contribution to an integrated eu pgrfa conservation strategy this report presents a methodology for the development of a cwr in situ conservation strategy for target crop gene pools that can be applied both within europe and elsewhere in the world the methodology has been tested and applied in four crop case studies avena beta brassica and prunus by partners in the aegro project and this report presents an analysis of the application of the methodology to each case study with the aim of illustrating how such a generic methodology can be successfully applied across a range of different crop gene pools,2004,0.286
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility,biodiversity or biological diversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources including inter alia terrestrial marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part this includes diversity within species between species and of ecosystems convention on biological diversity art 2 para 1 the global biodiversity information facility gbif www gbif org mission is to make the world s biodiversity data freely and universally available via the internet gbif was established and is being maintained by an everâ growing consortium of forwardâ thinking countries economies and international organizations its charge is to carry out specific tasks that are essential to a worldwide infrastructure that can overcome current barriers to the universal availability of speciesâ level biodiversity information,2005,0.522
"Shell and hinge morphology of juvenile Limopsis (Bivalvia: Arcoida) – implications for limopsid evolution Published in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Institute of Marine Research, Norway, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, Universi",early ontogenetic shells of limopsis angusta l aurita l cristata l friedbergi and l minuta are described in detail and their morphogenetic traits discussed in a phylogenetic context prodissoconch length is found to range from 170î 370 mm discounting the so called prodissoconch 2 stage of authors reports of such a stage refer to the early postlarval â interdissoconchâ prodissoconch sizes are indicative of lecithotrophy but not of brooding limopsid like prodissoconchs are rather common among pteriomorphs and at present of little use for phylogenetic interpretations therefore the early postlarval hinge is characterized by two tooth generations an early one g1 representing the postlarval continuation of provincular teeth and a late one g2 representing the independent adult dentition this is a plesiomorphic trait for pteriomorphia the postlarval ligament is continuous with the larval resilium it is neither co functional with nor is it substituted by the typical duplivincular ligament as in other arcoids occasionally developed ridges gutters or multiplication of ligament sublayers remain restricted to the primordial resilifer it is concluded that the limopsid adult ligament represents a fusion of adult sublayer repetition within a retained larval resilium a phenomenon best described as a heterochronic process comparisons with homologous characters of other arcoids support the view that limopsidae evolved from parallelodontid arcoids and that they gave rise to philobryidae but not to glycymerididae,2005,0.364
"Herpetofaunal survey of Cerro Guanacaure, Montaña La Botija and Isla Del Tigre protected areas in southern Honduras",rapid ecological assessment inventory surveys of the herpetofauna at cerro guanacaure montaã a la botija and isla del tigre multiple use areas were conducted in january and june of 2006 as part of the the larger biodiversity inventory of honduran protected areas inititiated and supported by by usaid mira the inventory surveys resulted in a considerable increase in knowledge of the resident herpetofauna in these three areas and in the tropical dry forests of southern honduras at large forty two species of amphibians and reptiles were collected at the three areas combined many of which are poorly known to science or of conservation concern in addition the capacity for the use of biodiversity and natural resource data in conservation management was enhanced through the establishment of collaborative partnerships with honduran universities ngoâ s and local organizations current methods in field collection data procurement management and analyses the use of gps and gis long term specimen preparation and storage and a host of other techniques were shared among team u s and honduran members and all collected specimens were placed at the national museum of natural history unah tegucigalpa honduras,2006,0.718
Biodiversity Informatics: Challenges and Opportunities for Applying Biodiversity Information to Management and Conservation,researchers land managers and the public currently often are unable to obtain useful biodiversity information because the subject represents such a large component of biology and ecology and systems to compile and organize this information do not exist information on vascular plant taxonomy as addressed by the global biodiversity information facility and key partners serves as an example of current efforts to integrate information current areas of informatics research related to online systems are focused on improving searches and intelligent systems but are limited by available information i recommend 5 steps to improve access to biodiversity information for even a small portion of the world s information on biodiversity to become available online sites need to be able to integrate information from multiple sources and search capacity needs to be improved and focused in addition incentives or public policy need to promote the use of standards the long term maintenance of data sets the maintenance of institutions for maintaining and distributing information and more careful use of limited resources,2006,0.097
The legacy of past climate and landscape change on species ’ current experienced climate and elevation ranges across latitude : a multispecies study utilizing mammals in western North America,elevation and climate ranges across latitude experienced by 21 wide ranging mammal species in western north america were summarized to examine two ques tions 1 do populations in the northern and southern portions of a speciesâ range experience different climates or are environments selected to remain similar to climates at the core of ranges and 2 how do speciesâ elevational ranges experienced temperature seasonality and temperature ranges change across latitude given the larger effects of climate oscillations in the north vs the south a predicted outcome is for species to conserve climate niches across latitude and to show reduced climate and elevation ranges in the north an alternative outcome is latitudinal niche diver sification and increased climate variation in the north,2006,0.728
"Climate change and the origin of migratory pathways in the Swainson's thrush, Catharus ustulatus",aim to provide a spatially explicit model of how geographic distributions at the last glacial maximum lgm and post glacial colonization routes shaped current migratory pathways in the swainsonâ s thrush catharus ustulatus a long distance migratory bird location the swainsonâ s thrush breeds in boreal forest regions of the united states and canada as well as in riparian woodlands along the pacific coast of north america methods palaeodistribution modelling is combined with mtdna phylogeography to predict the breeding range of the swainsonâ s thrush at the lgm quantitative environmental analysis and bioclimatic modelling are used to reconstruct the most likely post glacial colonization pathways a maximum likelihood method for estimating growth rates is used to approximate the relative change in population size since the lgm main conclusions the palaeodistribution models are concordant with the swainsonâ s thrush mtdna phylogeography suggesting that the inland and coastal groups were geographically isolated in eastern inland and western coastal regions at the lgm estimates of change in population size based on genetic data are remarkably consistent with estimates of change in range size suggesting that the coastal group has undergone a 2 to 3 fold demographic and range expansion while the inland group has undergone a 6 to 12 fold demographic and range expansion since the lgm bioclimatic analyses strongly support the hypothesis that populations expanding out of the east into previously glaciated areas in the west were undergoing a natural extension of their range by tracking the changes in climatic conditions the combination of bioclimatic and molecular analyses is consistent with the idea that coastal and inland groups expanded from separate eastern and western regions after the lgm and that the current migratory pathway of the inland group retraces its post glacial colonization route,2006,0.186
"Revision of the Idaea inquinata (S COPOLI, 1763) species-group s. str. from the Middle East (Lepidoptera, Geometridae, Sterrhinae)",the idaea inquinata scopoli 1763 species group s str with four closely related species in the middle east is revised all type specimens of this group have been examined the status of adherbariata staudinger 1898 as subspecies of i inquinata is confirmed the taxon banghaasi prout 1934 is downgraded from species rank to subspecies of i inquinata stat n morphological diagnoses are given for the four species i inquinata i holliata homberg 1909 i affinitata bang haas 1907 and i saida wiltshire 1968 lectotypes are designated for the taxa subherbariata staudinger 1897 with replacement name adherbariata fimbriata bang haas 1907 with replacement name banghaasi holliata homberg 1909 and affinitata bang haas 1907 i saida is new for the fauna of israel,2006,0.866
Do flatland- and mountain-dwelling species show different structuring of their experienced environment over latitude? A western vs. central-eastern North America rodent multispecies comparison,species occurrence databases and climate databases were used to examine differ ences in patterns of species experienced climate across latitude for wide ranging rodents in the central eastern and western north america the accumulated data were used to address three questions 1 do rodent species in the central and eastern region of north america select habitat at range edges to remain closer to climate conditions at the range core 2 is there a trend toward species having greater ex perienced climate variation consistent with smaller effects of orbitally controlled climate oscillations in the south vs north 3 how do species experienced temperature precipitation and elevation means and variation in this region compare to rodent species in the adjacent but more heterogeneous western north america results showed that central eastern north american species occur in as wide a range of environmental conditions as available throughout their ranges these patterns are different from previous findings for rodents in the adjacent western usa and high light major differences in current structure of species experienced environmental means and variation over latitude for species in spatially heterogeneous mountainous areas vs those that occupy flatter lands the differences are likely important for determining differential response to climate changes,2006,0.973
Flora del pirineo aragonés. patrones espaciales de biodiversidad y su relevancia para la conservación,a preliminary analysis of the distribution of vascular plants in the central pyrenees is presented the study area comprises two biogeographical regions eurosiberian and mediterranean and 3000 meters of altitudinal range from 400 to 3400 a total of 2620 taxa have been recorded 103 endemics of the pyrenees 10 located exclusively in the study area from 150000 records of presen ce absence they represent a third of the iberian flora in just 3 of the spanish ibe rian territory of them 6 5 are rare and 7 are aliens grasslands in particular those above the timberline are the richest habitats in terms of number of species wetlands and tall herb fringe communities as well as cliffs and screes however stand out when taking into account the extension of habitats more than half of the plants can be found between 1000 1300 m a s l and only 17 in very well preser ved habitats these later ones shelter plants of highest interest from a taxonomic bio geographic and conservation point of view protected areas constitute 34 of the studied territory and contain more than 90 of the flora endemisms and rare plants as well as 80 of the localities of endangered species surprisingly however only 22 of â œrareâ plants are also catalogued as â œendangeredâ suggesting that the regional catalogue of endangered species should be reviewed,2007,0.23
"Towards a collaborative, global infrastructure for biodiversity assessment",biodiversity data are rapidly becoming available over the internet in common formats that promote sharing and exchange currently these data are somewhat problematic primarily with regard to geographic and taxonomic accuracy for use in ecological research natural resources management and conservation decision making however web based georeferencing tools that utilize best practices and gazetteer databases can be employed to improve geographic data taxonomic data quality can be improved through web enabled valid taxon names databases and services as well as more efficient mechanisms to return systematic research results and taxonomic misidentification rates back to the biodiversity community both of these are under construction a separate but related challenge will be developing web based visualization and analysis tools for tracking biodiversity change our aim was to discuss how such tools combined with data of enhanced quality will help transform today s portals to raw biodiversity data into nexuses of collaborative creation and sharing of biodiversity knowledge,2007,0.124
Infection by powdery mildew Erysiphe cruciferarum (Erysiphaceae) strongly affects growth and fitness of Alliaria petiolata (Brassicaceae),garlic mustard alliaria petiolata is an invasive biennial that negatively impacts plant and animal communities throughout north america and lacks significant herbivory in its invasive range throughout ohio many garlic mustard populations support the powdery mildew fungus erysiphe cruciferarum although disease incidence varies among populations and environments effects of infection on plant growth as well as both plant and fungal responses to drought and light conditions were examined on greenhouse grown first year garlic mustard plants also the effects of the fungus on plant growth and fitness were studied in a naturally growing population of second year plants in the field powdery mildew significantly reduced growth of first year plants in the greenhouse eventually causing complete mortality simulated drought slowed both plant growth and disease development independent of light conditions in the field plants with little incidence of disease after their first year grew taller during their second year producing significantly more siliques and twice as many seeds as heavily diseased plants did seed germination rates did not differ between plants with different levels of disease severity consistent reductions in survival growth and fitness caused by fungal infection may reduce populations of garlic mustard these effects may be more evident in moist sites that favor fungal development,2007,0.039
Integrative Environmental Queries Using Geospatial Web Services,the paper explores the use of geospatial web services for querying and analytical functions on distributed heterogeneous biological databases a case study and web service implementation was tested on biological collections in australia open geospatial specifications for web services were adequate for the test implementation although some performance issues on xml encoded data were identified more significantly we highlighted the need for domain specific formats to improve their precision and content to support queries that need to determine value based identity we also developed analytical functions well suited to geoprocessing web services that utilised statistical summaries and localised searches versus traditional algorithms that require access to the full dataset,2007,0.102
A walk on the wild side,the primary goal of the wireless investor columns is to help readers achieve financial independence by the time they retire the core strategy is very simple 1 save 10 or more of income 2 save automatically via payroll deduction 3 use opportunities to eliminate taxes e g roth iras or to defer taxes e g regular iras 401 k plans and 403 b plans 4 accept market return and 5 minimize investment expenses,2007,0.354
Creative Use of Mountain Biodiversity Databases: The Kazbegi Research Agenda of GMBA-DIVERSITAS,geo referenced archive databases on mountain organisms are very promising tools for achieving a better understanding of mountain biodiversity and predicting its changes the global mountain biodiversity assessment gmba of diversitas in cooperation with the global biodiversity information facility encourages a global effort to mine biodiversity databases on mountain organisms the wide range of climatic conditions and topographies across the worldâ s mountains offers an unparalleled opportunity for developing and testing biodiversity theory the power of openly accessible interconnected electronic databases for scientific biodiversity research which by far exceeds the original intent of archiving for mainly taxonomic purposes has been illustrated there is an urgent need to increase the amount and quality of geo referenced data on mountain biodiversity provided online in order to meet the challenges of global change in mountains,2007,0.23
Regional assessment of plant invasions across different habitat types,questions 1 which habitats have the highest degree of invasion 2 do native species rich communities have also a high degree of invasion 3 do the patterns of association between native and alien species richness vary between habitats location catalonia region ne spain methods we conducted a large regional analysis of 15 655 phytosociological relevã s to detect differences in the degree of invasion between european nature information system eunis habitats representative of temperate and mediterranean european areas results alien species were present in less than 17 of the relevã s and represented less than 2 of the total number of species per habitat the eunis habitats with the highest alien species richness were arable land and gardens followed by anthropogenic forb rich habitats riverine and lakeshore scrubs southern riparian galleries and thickets and trampled areas in contrast the following habitats had never any alien species surface running waters raised and blanket bogs valley mires poor fens and transition mires base rich fens alpine and sub alpine grasslands sub alpine moist or wet tall herb and fern habitats alpine and sub alpine scrub habitats and spiny mediterranean heaths there was a unimodal relationship between the mean native and mean alien species richness per eunis habitat with a high number of aliens in habitats with intermediate number of native species and a low number of aliens at both extremes of the native species gradient within eunis habitats the relationship was positive negative or non significant depending on the habitat type without any clear pattern related to the number of native species alien species richness was not related to plot size neither between habitats nor within habitats conclusions the analysis emphasised that the habitats with a higher degree of invasion were the most disturbed ones and that in general habitats rich in native species did not harbour less invaders than habitats poor in native species,2007,0.993
The Greater Cape Floristic Region,aim the cape floristic region cfr cape floristic kingdom is currently narrowly delimited to include only the relatively mesic cape fold mountains and adjacent intermontane valleys and coastal plains we evaluate the floristic support for expanding the delimitation to include the whole winter rainfall area arid and mesic climates into a greater cfr location southern africa particularly the south western tip methods the initial divisive hierarchical classification analysis twinspan used the presence absence of vascular plant genera to obtain major floristic groupings in southern africa for the more detailed analyses we scored the flora as present absent within a set of centres among which the floristic relationships were investigated agglomerative methods upgma and minimum spanning trees these analyses were conducted with species genera and families separately the centres were grouped into five regions the species richness and endemism was calculated for the centres regions and combination of regions the dominant floristic components of each region were sought by calculating the percentage contribution of each family to the flora results the divisive method showed that the winter rainfall areas are floristically distinct from the rest of southern africa the species and generic level analyses revealed five regions cfr karoo region hantam tanqua roggeveld region namaqualand region and namib desert region the cfr has the highest endemism and richness however the combination of the cfr the hantam tanqua roggeveld region and the namaqualand region results in a higher total endemism combined these three regions almost match the region delimited by the twinspan analysis and together constitute the greater cfr main conclusions the cfr constitutes a valid floristic region this is evident from the endemism and the distinctive composition of the flora however the total endemism is higher for the whole winter rainfall area and this supports the recognition of the larger unit if floristic regions are to be delimited only on endemism then the greater cfr is to be preferred if floristic regions are delimited on the composition of their floras at family level then the support for such a grouping is weaker â 2007 the authors,2007,0.367
BUILDING AN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR GLOBAL DATA SHARING: A STRATEGY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH (ILTER) NETWORK,the international long term ecological research ilter network is a global network of sites arrayed in many ecosystems and countries that aims to address international ecological and socio economic problems through collaborative research to facilitate ilter data discovery access and synthesis a strategy for adopting common information management standards throughout the ilter has been developed the strategy proposes that ilter use the ecological metadata language eml standard in the short term to establish a network wide metadata catalog while in the long term ilter should pursue the goal of an ontology based information management system this paper presents examples of the information management systems currently in use in the ilter that are eml based or based on a country specific standard and discusses possible mechanisms for accommodating the many different languages used throughout the ilter the advantages of ontology driven information management systems are illustrated with examples from the ilter and the approach ilter will take to realizing such a system for the whole network is discussed,2008,0.022
Quantitative Data Cleaning for Large Databases,data collection has become a ubiquitous function of large organizations not only for record keeping but to support a variety of data analysis tasks that are critical to the organizational mission data analysis typically drives decision making processes and eciency optimizations and in an increasing number of settings is the raison d etre of entire agencies or rms despite the importance of data collection and analysis data quality remains a pervasive and thorny problem in almost every large organization the presence of incorrect or inconsistent data can signi cantly distort the results of analyses often negating the potential bene ts of information driven approaches as a result there has been a variety of research over the last decades on various aspects of data cleaning computational procedures to automatically or semi automatically identify and when possible correct errors in large data sets,2008,0.194
CMKb: a web-based prototype for integrating Australian Aboriginal customary medicinal plant knowledge,background the customary medicinal plant knowledge possessed by the australian aboriginal people is a significant resource published information on it is scattered throughout the literature in heterogeneous data formats and is scattered among various aboriginal communities across australia due to a multiplicity of languages this ancient knowledge is at risk due to loss of biodiversity cultural impact and the demise of many of its custodians we have developed the customary medicinal knowledgebase cmkb an integrated multidisciplinary resource to document conserve and disseminate this knowledge description cmkb is an online relational database for collating disseminating visualising and analysing initially public domain data on customary medicinal plants the database stores information related to taxonomy phytochemistry biogeography biological activities of customary medicinal plant species as well as images of individual species the database can be accessed at http biolinfo org cmkb known bioactive molecules are characterized within the chemoinformatics module of cmkb with functions available for molecular editing and visualization conclusion cmkb has been developed as a prototype data resource for documenting integrating disseminating analysing multidisciplinary customary medicinal plant data from australia and to facilitate user defined complex querying each species in cmkb is linked to online resources such as the integrated taxonomic information system itis ncbi taxonomy australia s specieslinks integrated botanical information system ibis and google images the bioactive compounds are linked to the pubchem database overall cmkb serves as a single knowledgebase for holistic plant derived therapeutics and can be used as an information resource for biodiversity conservation to lead discovery and conservation of customary medicinal knowledge,2008,0.373
The influence of sampling intensity on the perception of the spatial distribution of tropical diversity and endemism: a case study of ferns from Bolivia,abstract the distribution of tropical plant and animal diversity is still poorly documented especially at spatial resolutions of practical use for conservation in the present study we evaluated the level to which geographical incomplete data availability of species occurrence affects the perception of biodiversity patterns species richness and endemism among pteridophytes in bolivia we used a data base of bolivian pteridophytes 27 501 records divided it into three time periods 1900â 70 up to 1990 and up to 2006 and created grid files at 15â resolution for species richness and endemism for each of these biodiversity properties we estimated the species richness chao 2 and the index of sampling completeness c index per grid and then all these variables at both species richness and endemism were correlated patterns of richness were fairly consistent along all periods the richest areas were placed along the humid montane forest even though they were strongly influenced by collecting intensity endemism had a lower degree of correlation with collecting intensity but varied much more strongly through time than species richness according to the c index which gives the ratio between estimated by chao 2 and recorded values of species richness and endemism both biodiversity properties tended to be undersampled in the richest grid cells inter temporal correlations showed sharper differences of correlations for endemism than species richness consequently already in 1970 botanists had a correct idea of the spatial distribution of pteridophyte richness in bolivia even though the magnitude was grossly underestimated in contrast patterns of endemism which are of high conservation importance may not even today be reliably known,2008,0.546
Autumn Migration Dynamics and Biometrical Differentiation of the Dunnock (Prunella modularis) Passing the Southern Baltic Coast,the aim of this study is to determine biometrical differentiation among dunnocks caught at the two ringing sites bukowo kopaå and mierzeja wiå lana located on the southern baltic coast the distance between those two stations covers 190 km the material was collected during autumn fieldwork of the operation baltic in 1961 2003 the material used for biometrical analysis comprises only immature birds from the period of the most intensive migration when the numbers of caught individuals allowed to compare the results for both stations the seasonal dynamics at both sites was pooled for 43 years of catching medians of autumn migration for the stations were significantly different a shift of the median for the eastern site mierzeja wiå lana by 6 days after the median for the western site bukowo kopaå suggested different origins of birds migrating through the stations the analysis of standard deviations for the studied biometrical parameters confirms an intra seasonal change in proportions of birds probably originating from different areas in europe,2008,0.485
Open access to information bridges science and development in Amazonia: lessons of the SIAMAZONIA service,access to and availability of accurate information has often been stated to play an important role in sustainable environmental management there is a growing trend of setting up internet based information services to support the availability of relevant information the current initiatives that aim to facilitate such information sharing through the web are still however often premature and unable to ensure constant flow of data from producers to users we examine these common challenges by using as an example a network based facility of biodiversity and environmental information about the peruvian amazon region called siamazonia launched in 2001 the service includes data provided by 13 different nodes the experiences of this initiative have been both encouraging and confusing a good professional level has been reached but participation by large information holders is impeded participation is obviously considered an additional task rather than an attractive option for enhanced performance at the individual or institutional levels this dilemma reflects a genuine problem in the modern scientific community which still lacks agreed ways to reward those who share their data and results through the web if these problems are solved internet based information sharing may become a vital resource for environmental management in amazonia and also elsewhere,2008,0.145
Fungal and animal associates of Toxicodendron spp. (Anacardiaceae) in North America,toxicodendron spp anacardiaceae the poison ivies oaks and sumacs are regarded by some as noxious tenacious weeds in forests grasslands and waste places across the united states despite playing numerous important ecological roles biological control of toxicodendron spp is a virtually unexplored option for ecosystem managers the purpose of this review is twofold 1 to synthesize and consider what is known about the biological relationships of toxicodendron spp from an ecological standpoint and subsequently 2 to consider these associations from a managerial standpoint fungal arthropodal mammalian and avian relationships are detailed and their potential utility as biological control agents for toxicodendron spp are evaluated based on effectiveness selectivity practicality and indirect or side effects fungi and to a lesser extent arthropods represent the most feasible agents for toxicodendron spp biological control,2008,0.2
The PhyLoTA Browser: Processing GenBank for Molecular Phylogenetics Research,as an archive of sequence data for over 165 000 species genbank is an indispensable resource for phylogenetic inference here we describe an informatics processing pipeline and online database the phylota browser http loco biosci arizona edu pb which offers a view of genbank tailored for molecular phylogenetics the first release of the browser is computed from 2 6 million sequences representing the taxonomically enriched subset of genbank sequences for eukaryotes excluding most genome survey sequences ests and other high throughput data in addition to summarizing sequence diversity and species diversity across nodes in the ncbi taxonomy it reports 87 000 potentially phylogenetically informative clusters of homologous sequences which can be viewed or downloaded along with provisional alignments and coarse phylogenetic trees at each node in the ncbi hierarchy the user can display a â œdata availability matrixâ of all available sequences for entries in a subtaxa by clusters matrix this matrix provides a guidepost for subsequent assembly of multigene data sets or supertrees the database allows for comparison of results from previous genbank releases highlighting recent additions of either sequences or taxa to genbank and letting investigators track progress on data availability worldwide although the reported alignments and trees are extremely approximate the database reports several statistics correlated with alignment quality to help users choose from alternative data sources,2008,0.787
Environmental gradients explaining the prevalence and intensity of infection with the amphibian chytrid fungus: the host's perspective,abstract chydridiomycosis is an infectious emerging disease in amphibians that has been directly linked to mass mortality drastic population decline and extinction the understanding of the factors limiting the distribution and the abundance of its biological agent the amphibian chytrid fungus batrachochytrium dendrobatidis bd is still limited it has been suggested that climate plays a key role a recent study conducted infection surveys at 31 lowland sites on the australian east coast and searched for climatic variables explaining bd prevalence and intensity in stony creek frogs litoria lesueuri complex a link between the prevalence of infections and latitude was advocated exclusively focusing on the pathogen beyond this the prevalence and intensity of bd infection may also depend on the climatic suitability of a given site for the amphibian host herein we extend the previous study using a set of long term bioclimatic variables and assess climatic suitability for stony creek frogs at the sites previously studied for bd we ran a climatic envelope model for our target amphibian based on those variables with the most explanatory power for prevalence and intensity thus representing the link between climatic suitability for both the pathogen and the host our findings allow the hypothesis that there exists a significant correlation between climatic suitability for stony creek frogs at the previously studied sites and latitude at the same time this was congruent with the latitudinal gradient of the number of zoospores per frog,2008,0.52
Need for a more integrative approach to scleractinian taxonomy,the history of scleractinian taxonomy is divided into six periods the original purely typological was based on scarce coralla material the second starting at the end of nineteenth century originated with visiting natural habitat and established variability the third commenced in the 1930s with detailed skeletal study the fourth began in the 1950s with scuba access to coral habitat the fifth began in the 1980s following fundamental discoveries in life history and molecular genetics and the sixth started in 1995 when data from molecular genetics opened a new avenue for scleractinian megataxonomy contradicting conventional gross morphology taxonomy but resulting congruent with skeletal histology and ornamentation currently there are four sources of scleractinian taxonomic information morphology paleobiology developmental biology and molecular genetics taxonomy is important for understanding scleractinian biodiversity and reef conservation however the taxonomy is fragmented and the nomenclature tangled the e dimension benefits have not yet been realized and the new taxonomy not yet arrived for scleractinians vision and teamwork are needed for a more integrative taxonomy the atlantic scleractinia initiative seeks to address the following points massive sampling study of the mesophotic habitat collection access analysis of phenotypic diversity life history geological history molecular genetics cyberinfrastructure and education of specialists,2008,0.261
"A new Argocoffeopsis (Coffeeae, Rubiaceae) from southern Cameroon: Argocoffeopsis spathulata",a new species of argocoffeopsis a spathulata is described as new to science a description line drawing distribution map and conservation assessment are provided,2008,0.44
Database records as a surrogate for sampling effort provide higher species richness estimations,the compilation of all the available taxonomic and distributional information on the species present in a territory frequently generates a biased picture of the distribution of biodiversity due to the uneven distribution of the sampling effort performed thus quality protocol assessments such as those proposed by hortal et al conservation biology 21 853â 863 2007 must be done before using this kind of information for basic and applied purposes the discrimination of localities that can be considered relatively well surveyed from those not surveyed enough is a key first step in this protocol and can be attained by the previous definition of a sampling effort surrogate and the calculation of survey completeness using different estimators recently it has been suggested that records from exhaustive databases can be used as a sampling effort surrogate to recognize probable well surveyed localities in this paper we use an iberian dung beetle database to identify the 50 ã 50 km utm cells that appear to be reliably inventoried using both data derived from standardized sampling protocols and database records as a surrogate for sampling effort observed and predicted species richness values in the shared cells defined as well surveyed by both methods suggest that the use of database records provides higher species richness values which are proportionally greater in the richest localities by the inclusion of rare species,2008,0.657
Predicting the spread of an invasive plant: combining experiments and ecological niche model,rapid evolutionary adjustments to novel environments may contribute to the successful spread of invasive species and can lead to niche shifts making range dynamics unpredictable these effects might be intensified by artificial selection in the course of breeding efforts since many successful plant invaders were deliberately introduced and cultivated as ornamentals we hypothesized that the invasion success of buddleja davidii the ornamental butterfly bush is facilitated by local adaptation to minimum temperatures and thus exhibits unpredictable range dynamics to assess the potential effects of adaptive evolution and artificial selection on the spread of b davidii we combined a common garden experiment investigating local adaptation to frost with ecological niche modelling of the speciesâ native and invasive ranges we expected that populations naturalized in sub continental climate are less susceptible to frost than populations from oceanic climate and that the invasive range does not match predictions based on climatic data from the native range indeed we revealed significant variation among invasive b davidii populations in frost resistance however frost hardiness was not related to geographic location or climatic variables of the populationsâ home site suggesting that invasive b davidii populations are not locally adapted to minimum temperatures this is in line with results of our ecological niche model that did not detect a niche shift between the speciesâ native range in china and its invasive range in europe and north america furthermore our niche model showed that the potential invasive range of b davidii is still not completely occupied together with the frost resistance data obtained in our experiment the results indicate that climatic conditions are currently not limiting the further spread of the species in europe and north america,2008,0.504
A reference business process for ecological niche modelling,ecological niche modelling combines species occurrence points with environmental raster layers in order to obtain models for describing the probabilistic distribution of species the process to generate an ecological niche model is complex it requires dealing with a large amount of data use of different software packages for data conversion for model generation and for different types of processing and analyses among other functionalities a software platform that integrates all requirements under a single and seamless interface would be very helpful for users furthermore since biodiversity modelling is constantly evolving new requirements are constantly being added in terms of functions algorithms and data formats this evolution must be accompanied by any software intended to be used in this area in this scenario a service oriented architecture soa is an appropriate choice for designing such systems according to soa best practices and methodologies the design of a reference business process must be performed prior to the architecture definition the purpose is to understand the complexities of the process business process in this context refers to the ecological niche modelling problem and to design an architecture able to offer a comprehensive solution called a reference architecture that can be further detailed when implementing specific systems this paper presents a reference business process for ecological niche modelling as part of a major work focused on the definition of a reference architecture based on soa concepts that will be used to evolve the openmodeller software package for species modelling the basic steps that are performed while developing a model are described highlighting important aspects based on the knowledge of modelling experts in order to illustrate the steps defined for the process an experiment was developed modelling the distribution of ouratea spectabilis mart engl ochnaceae using openmodeller as a consequence of the knowledge gained with this work many desirable improvements on the modelling software packages have been identified and are presented also a discussion on the potential for large scale experimentation in ecological niche modelling is provided highlighting opportunities for research the results obtained are very important for those involved in the development of modelling tools and systems for requirement analysis and to provide insight on new features and trends for this category of systems they can also be very helpful for beginners in modelling research who can use the process and the experiment example as a guide to this complex activity,2008,0.004
Towards a Data Quality Management Framework for Digital Soil Mapping with Limited Data,the re use of legacy soil data together with increasing numbers of environmental co variables becomes increasingly more interesting in digital soil mapping at intermediate scales in areas with limited data this poses important issues regarding the reliability of these data as well as of the final product of mapping it also requires that the data and the manner in which they are re used do not have a negative influence on the quality of the mapping product existing quality management approaches in soil mapping emphasise the producer perspective in addition rather than being preventive in nature they mainly rely on detection of defects in end product testing a shift is required from a focus on the quality of the end product of mapping to quality control of the mapping process itself the development of a framework for soil data quality management is proposed in this chapter,2008,0.26
The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment: an overview of the results,we present a summary of the results included in the different treatments in this volume the diversity and distribution of vertebrates insects crustaceans molluscs and a suite of minor phyla is compared and commented upon whereas the available data on vertebrates and some emblematic invertebrate groups such as odonata dragonflies and damselflies allow for a credible assessment data are deficient for many other groups this is owing to knowledge gaps both in geographical coverage of available data and or lack of taxonomic information these gaps need to be addressed urgently either by liberating date from inaccessible repositories or by fostering taxonomic research a similar effort is required to compile environmental and ecological information in order to enable cross linking and analysis of these complementary data sets only in this way will it be possible to analyse information on freshwater biodiversity for sustainable management and conservation of the worldâ s freshwater resources,2008,0.29
"Taxonomy Training and Cybertaxonomy Activities at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium",the policy of the royal museum for central africa rmca located at tervuren near brussels in belgium in taxonomy and in biodiversity informatics in general is presented in order to show how early taken choices concerning collaboration were and still are beneficial for its various stakeholders taxonomy training for african partners and students funded by the belgian government cooperation is an important aspect of this collaboration with developing countries secondly the international collaboration in taxonomy and participation in networks mostly at european union level of this institution is treated,2008,0.328
Reconstructing ecological niches and geographic distributions of caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) during the Last Glacial Maximum,a variety of approaches have been used to reconstruct glacial distributions of species identify their environmental characteristics and understand their influence on subsequent population expansions traditional methods however provide only rough estimates of past distributions and are often unable to identify the ecological and geographic processes that shaped them recently ecological niche modeling enm methodologies have been applied to these questions in an effort to overcome such limitations we apply enm to the european faunal record of the last glacial maximum lgm to reconstruct ecological niches and potential ranges for caribou rangifer tarandus and red deer cervus elaphus and evaluate whether their lgm distributions resulted from tracking the geographic footprint of their ecological niches niche conservatism or if ecological niche shifts between the lgm and present might be implicated results indicate that the lgm geographic ranges of both species represent distributions characterized by niche conservatism expressed through geographic contraction of the geographic footprints of their respective ecological niches,2008,0.531
Distributed Management for High Resolution Ocean Environmental Data,the volume of ocean environmental data is extremely massive which makes it inefficient to manage them in standard ways this paper promotes a new method to handle this problem it presents a non standard method that stresses on query oriented organization of the data then it describes in details of the distributed management of the data based on the new relation schema design the method has been implemented in a database cluster middleware named distributed ocean environmental data manager doedm experiments show that doedm gives a better support to the marine and atmosphere geographic information system magis because it requires less storage space and has better query performance,2008,0.05
Getting biodiversity intactness indices right: ensuring that ‘biodiversity’ reflects ‘diversity’,abstract the 2010 biodiversity target of a â significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity lossâ presents challenges for effective measurement of changes in global regional biodiversity a simple â biodiversity intactness indexâ bii is attractive in using available data and expert opinion but is seen to be only weakly linked to â biodiversityâ in its usual sense of â variationâ an example illustrates how an improved bii score could result even when there are large species losses a family of alternative biodiversity â representativeness indicesâ better reflect variation they use the same readily available information plus simple speciesâ area relationships sar and genetic diversity curves a new genetic diversity abundance fraction curve like sar is linear in logâ log space the new representativeness indices incorporate through range abundance curves the abundance fraction estimates normally used for bii land use or climate change impacts therefore can reflect partial rather than total biodiversity losses at localities estimates of biodiversity gains losses using these indices enable a novel regional planning based approach for addressing the 2010 target,2008,0.133
Special highlight: Korean biotech,abstract 10 1002 biot 200890050 abs government r d investment in biotechnology biotechnology in korea â r d policy and activities molecular nutrition in korea the bk21 project for functional foods and nutrigenomics at yonsei university korean biotech facts and figures institut pasteur korea korean company profiles korean biotech news,2008,0.069
The completeness of taxonomic inventories for describing the global diversity and distribution of marine fishes,taxonomic inventories or species censuses are the most elementary data in biogeography macroecology and conservation biology they play fundamental roles in the construction of species richness patterns delineation of species ranges quantification of extinction risk and prioritization of conservation efforts in hot spot areas given their importance any issue related to the completeness of taxonomic inventories can have far reaching consequences here we used the largest publicly available database of georeferenced marine fish records to determine its usefulness in depicting the diversity and distribution of this taxonomic group all records were grouped at multiple spatial resolutions to generate accumulation curves from which the expected number of species were extrapolated using a variety of nonlinear models comparison of the inventoried number of species with that expected from the models was used to calculate the completeness of the taxonomic inventory at each resolution in terms of the global number of fish species we found that approximately 21 of the species remain to be described in terms of spatial distribution we found that the completeness of taxonomic data was highly scale dependent with completeness being lower at finer spatial resolutions at a 3â approx 350 km2 spatial resolution less than 1 8 of the world s oceans have above 80 of their fish fauna currently described censuses of species were particularly incomplete in tropical areas and across the entire range of countries gross domestic product gdp although the few censuses nearing completion were all along the coasts of a few developed countries or territories our findings highlight that failure to quantify the completeness of taxonomic inventories can introduce substantial flaws in the description of diversity patterns and raise concerns over the effectiveness of conservation strategies based upon data that remain largely precarious,2008,0.933
Global biogeographical data bases on marine fishes: caveat emptor,abstract a review of georeferenced collection site records for caribbean shore fishes served by major online distributors of aggregated biodiversity data found large scale errors in over a third of the species and genera in nearly two thirds of the families to avoid compromising the value of their services to the global science community online providers must actively address the question of data quality,2008,0.124
Exploring plant biodiversity: the Physcomitrella genome and beyond,for decades plant molecular biology has focused on only a few angiosperm species recently the 500 mega base pairs mb of the haploid physcomitrella patens genome were sequenced and annotated mosses such as p patens occupy a key evolutionary position halfway between green algae and flowering plants this draft genome in comparison to existing genome data from other plants allows evolutionary insights into the conquest of land by plants and the molecular biodiversity that land plants exhibit as a model organism p patens provides a well developed molecular toolbox including efficient gene targeting in combination with the morphologically simple moss tissues we describe current as well as future tools for p patens research and the prospects they offer for plant research in general,2008,0.097
"Systematics must Embrace Comparative Biology and Evolution, not Speed and Automation",systematists have come under a barrage of criticism because of the alleged inadequacy of the â traditionalâ taxonomic paradigm to curb the â biodiversity crisisâ and expeditiously make available the products of systematic researchâ usually species namesâ to the professional biological â userâ community including ecologists physiologists population geneticists and conservationists the accusations leveled on systematists range from being â slowâ to â incapableâ of furnishing these products at a rate considered by users appropriate especially given that the professional systematic community is portrayed as being in stark decline while operating in a quickly deteriorating natural world some of the critics have proposed solutions to this â taxonomic impedimentâ in the form of a triumvirate adjoining a unitary taxonomic cyberstructure automated dna barcoding molecular phylogeny which we consider to be nothing but a threefold miopia one critic has even gone as far as to suggest that biologists who need systematists can circumvent this dependency by â doing systematics themselvesâ the application of a quick fix â automated pragmatistâ model is antithetical to a science endowed with a strong epistemological and theoretical foundation we view the current propaganda in favor of automation and pragmatism in systematics as a distraction from the real issues confronting systematists who must do more to impede the current trend that has â marginalizedâ organismal biology in general simply increasing the rate of species descriptions as suggested by critics will not ameliorate the â crisisâ â taxa that correspond to incorrect hypotheses of biological entities i e that are not monophyletic will compromise the reliability of systematic information systematists must therefore provide more than â binomialsâ â they must strive to produce vigorous hypotheses of comparative biology that are historical and theory rich in order to augment the general reference system that is so critical to research in other biological sciences and conservation,2008,0.229
Frugivorous birds dispersing braconid parasitoids via endozoochory,abstract adult braconid wasps bracon sp emerged from the droppings of frugivorous birds turdus blackbirds and thrushes collected in a rural environment in southern europe it was thus demonstrated for the first time that an insect parasitoid of a fruit infesting insect lepidopteran tortricid can survive bird ingestion and gut passage inside a seed privet ligustrum vulgare constituting a case of an evolutionary tetrad,2008,0.308
Cyprinids,in this chapter we review the history and current status of cyprinid genetic and genomic research cyprinids are arguably the most important group of freshwater teleosts the chapter starts with the history of cyprinid aquaculture followed by the overview of the evolution and manipulation of cyprinid genomes the third part describes the genetic and genomic resources available for cyprinid research while the fourth provides suggestions on cyprinid genome sequencing the last section recommends ways to improve the comparative analysis of cyprinid genomes throughout the whole chapter we focus on common carp and zebra fish the two most widely studied members of the family however we use every opportunity to introduce comparative aspects by including information about other cyprinids and teleosts that are important for research or aquaculture,2008,0.132
Advances in concepts and methods for the marine environment: implications for policy,science based indicators aimed at measuring the sustainability of human activities on the environment have become of prime importance in the policy arena at the international level the commission on sustainable development and the convention on biological diversity and other multilateral environmental agreements have recognised the need to develop a set of scientific indicators related to changes in biodiversity and other environmental issues able to direct policy decisions in the marine realm the study of the effects of both â top downâ extractive activities such as fishing is more and more dealt with in conjunction with â bottom upâ activities such as nutrient loading and the effects on biogeochemical cycles marine geochemistry and ecosystem structure and functioning of other pollutants and contaminants â conventionalâ approaches such as the identification of taxa model organisms and related methodologies will continue playing a key role for the monitoring of human induced changes in the marine environment on the other hand newly developed disciplines such as genomics proteomics and biodiversity informatics are increasingly looked at as a source of information and applications that can respond to questions and concerns by the policy community such as the need to adapt to global and climate change in the marine environment so as to mitigate its societal implications,2008,0.032
Nomenclatural changes in preparation for a World Rubiaceae Checklist,during the preparation of a world rubiaceae checklist numerous unplaced taxa were encountered including illegitimate and invalid names and species for which generic placement is uncertain in this contribution 35 new combinations and 20 new names are proposed and the names of three taxa are validated â 2008 the linnean society of london botanical journal of the linnean society 2008 157 115â 124,2008,0.463
"Virtual Globes: An Overview of Their History, Uses, and Future Challenges",abstract the fusion of the world wide web and spatial technologies has led to the emergence of a new and evolving geospatial web multiple virtual globes or geobrowsers such as google earth and national aeronautics and space administration s world wind have emerged and are positioned to proceed as the gateway to the geospatial web virtual globes are presently used in such areas as education scientific research and disaster response online discussions and conference presentations highlight the uses to which virtual globes may be put but the peer reviewed literature still contains relatively few examples of these applications technical advances data availability and end user expectations are driving the rapid development of virtual globes making this an ideal time to explore the uses to which virtual globes can be put ways to identify the challenges involved in their use and highlight potential pitfalls and opportunities,2008,0.091
Ação inibitória de extratos de plantas do cerrado sobre α-amilases com ênfase em Kielmeyera coriacea,î amylases are digestive enzymes widely distributed in microrganims plants and animals that catalyze hidrolysis of î 1 4 glicosidic bonds and act in carbohydrate metabolism the inhibition of î amylases can be applied on control of insect pests that depends on starch rich diet to energy production reducing the amount of nutrients to avoid its development this action allow the use of these inhibitors like bio insecticides the inhibition of carbohydrate uptake in human health could be an alternative therapeutic on glicemic control reducing post prandial glucose peaks in chronic diseases treatment such as diabetes obesity an hyperlipidaemia this project purposes the prospection of active molecules in this context plants are rich sources of compounds that could be studied then the biologic potential of cerrado biome plant extract bank of university of brasilia pharmacognosy laboratory was evaluated on acanthoscelides obtectus î amylases zabrotes subfasciatus î amylases and human saliva î amylase one hundred eighty five hexanic dichlorometanic ethanolic and hidro ethanolic extracts belonging to twenty four species from ten families the hidro ethanolic bark stem extract of kielmeyera coriacea was selected to chemical biological study because of its strong inhibitory profile with ic50 110 00 âµg ml 1 and 272 12 âµg ml 1 towards z subfasciatus and a obtectus î amylases respectively the extract presented 97 09 of inhibition of human isoform at 125 âµg ml 1 the liquid liquid partition yielded two phases with a great inhibitory potential phase 1 methanol hexan precipitated that inhibited 96 35 and phase 5 methanol water that presented 99 35 of inhibition at 125 âµg ml 1 the chemical frationation of fase 1 in open chromatographic sephadex lh 20 column alowed the separation of 11 groups among them the most active on human î amylase were group 10 95 24 and group 11 99 00 the content of total phenols and tannins was analysed to crude extract phases and active groups phase 1 demonstrated a high teor of phenolic compounds with 1 mg ml 1 including 53 56 of tannins and phase 5 showed 0 95 mg ml 1 of polyphenols content in wich 35 96 are tannins group 11 showed 81 03 of tannins content which inhibited 82 of human saliva î amylase at only 50 âµg ml 1 the evaluation of extracts and tannins on î amylases demonstrated a promising activity in carbohydrate uptake inhibition representing a alternative to control diabetes and obesity as well as a really interesting potential to insects î amylases inhibition,2008,0.307
An overview of general features of risk assessments of genetically modified crops,the intentional introduction into the environment or market of genetically modified organisms gmos is nearly always governed by a framework of science based risk assessment and risk management measures this is usually implemented through the integration of hazard identification and characterisation of all of the elements of risk associated with a new gm crop or derived product typical categories of hazards arising from the introduction of transgenic crops include possible unintended negative health effects in a susceptible subgroup of the consumer target population the evolution of resistance in the targeted pest pathogen populations when the transgene confers resistance to a pest or pathogen non target hazards associated directly or indirectly with the transgenic plant or transgene product outside the plant and those associated with the integration and subsequent expression of the transgene in a different organism or species following gene flow the consequences of likely exposure to these and other hazards are considered in this introduction to the main issues raised when evaluating the possible risks arising from the importation or cultivation of genetically modified crops,2008,0.464
Using species distribution models to effectively conserve biodiversity into the future,canadian biodiversity is especially high in temperate southern regions where human dominated land uses are both intensive and widespread as a result endangered species are also disproportionately concentrated in these areas climate change presents a new threat across most of canada including areas of intensive human land use which creates conditions for substantial shifts in species composition and potential losses of many rare species protected areas is one adaptation strategy but in canada parks suffer from severe limitations in their distribution size and because they have static boundaries land use changes around several protected areas in canada are leading increasingly to their effective isolation a trend we demonstrate using high resolution satellite data little published research has yet addressed this issue in the canadian context although some models now forecast ecological changes in the next century adaptation to global change impacts will necessitate refocusing conservation strategies beyond the boundaries of protected areas to include broader landscape perspectives necessary responses to these challenges include validated models predicting future biotic responses to global change expanded biodiversity monitoring across canada improvements to the patchwork of federal and provincial legislation protecting species and preemptive conservation strategies that recognize impending transitions to unprecedented environmental conditions,2008,0.43
Web Service for Cooperation in Biodiversity Modeling,researchers working with biodiversity try to understand organisms adaptation in their environmental niche and try to provide subsidies for conscious use of natural resources by scientific organizations and government institutions this work aims to support the cooperation among the researchers of a species distribution modeling network the cooperation is based on sharing modeling results which involves samples of species environmental data and modeling algorithms for this we propose a web service that allows the creation cataloguing and recovery of model instances a model instance includes the data and the context of modeling results,2008,0.261
Detecting the influence of climatic variables on species distributions: a test using GIS niche-based models along a steep longitudinal environmental gradient,abstract aim to investigate the influence of climate variables in shaping species distributions across a steep longitudinal environmental gradient location the state of oklahoma south central united states methods we used geographical information systems gis niche based models to predict the geographic distributions of six pairs of closely related amphibian and reptile species across a steep longitudinal environmental gradient we compared results from modelling with actual distributions to determine whether species distributions were primarily limited by environmental factors and to assess the potential roles of competition and historical factors in influencing distributions results for all species pairs gis models predicted an overlap zone in which both species should occur although in reality in some cases this area was occupied by only one of the species we found that environmental factors clearly influence the distributions of most species pairs we also found evidence suggesting that competition and evolutionary history play a role in determining the distributions of some species pairs main conclusions niche based gis modelling is a useful tool for investigating species distribution patterns and the factors affecting them our results showed that environmental factors strongly influenced species distributions and that competition and historical factors may also be involved in some cases furthermore results suggested additional lines of research such as ecological comparisons among populations occurring inside and outside predicted overlap zones which may provide more direct insight into the roles of competitive interactions and historical factors in shaping species distributions,2008,0.947
Not as good as they seem: the importance of concepts in species distribution modelling,abstract aim nowadays large amounts of species distribution data and software for implementing different species distribution modelling methods are freely available through the internet as a result methodological works that analyse the relative performance of modelling techniques as well as those that study which species characteristics affect their performance are necessary we discuss three important topics that must be kept in mind when modelling species distributions namely i the distinction between potential and realized distribution ii the effect of the relative occurrence area of the species on the results of the evaluation of model performance and iii the general inaccuracy of the predictions of the realized distribution provided by species distribution modelling methods location unspecific methods using some recent papers as a basis we illustrate the three issues mentioned above and discuss the negative implications of neglecting them results considering a potential realized distribution gradient different modelling methods may be arranged along this gradient according to their ability to model any concept complex techniques may be more suitable to model the realized distribution than simple ones which may be more appropriate to estimate the potential distribution comparisons among techniques must consider this scenario the relative occurrence area of the species conditions the results of the evaluation scores implying that models of rare species will unavoidably yield higher discrimination values moreover discrimination values that are usually reported in the literature may imply considerable over or underestimations of the distribution of the species main conclusions it is extremely important to establish a solid conceptual and methodological framework on which the emergent field of species distribution modelling can stand and develop,2008,0.682
The state of plant population modelling in light of environmental change,plant population modelling has been around since the 1970s providing a valuable approach to understanding plant ecology from a mechanistic standpoint it is surprising then that this area of research has not grown in prominence with respect to other approaches employed in modelling plant systems in this review we provide an analysis of the development and role of modelling in the field of plant population biology through an exploration of where it has been where it is now and in our opinion where it should be headed we focus in particular on the role plant population modelling could play in ecological forecasting an urgent need given current rates of regional and global environmental change we suggest that a critical element limiting the current application of plant population modelling in environmental research is the trade off between the necessary resolution and detail required to accurately characterize ecological dynamics pitted against the goal of generality particularly at broad spatial scales in addition to suggestions how to overcome the current shortcoming of data on the process level we discuss two emerging strategies that may offer a way to overcome the described limitation 1 application of a modern approach to spatial scaling from local processes to broader levels of interaction and 2 plant functional type modelling finally we outline what we believe to be needed in developing these approaches towards a science of forecasting,2008,0.066
Systematics Association Special Volume Series,this 226 page book titled the new taxonomy is the 76th volume of the series the systematics association focuses on the field on cybertaxonomy this book discusses the efforts of some international groups to catalog species diversity across the globe and make it accessible the book is divided into 10 individually authored and extensively referenced chapters the topics covered in this book include role of networks in e taxonomy planetary biodiversity taxonomic concepts in use for biodiversity research and taxonomy the global biodiversity information facility gbif dna sequences for taxonomic study and taxonomic shock this book will prove useful for academicians and researchers in the field of taxonomic studies,2008,0.458
Fact sheet of the MÉTA database 1.2,the survey results of the mã ta program are managed with centralised relational database management system ms sql 2000 developed and set up in a local area network besides the mã ta database server a publishing server an archiving server and a gis workstation were applied the core information entities of the mã ta database are information subproject mã ta quadrate mã ta hexagon semi natural habitat potential vegetation with numerous habitats landscape ecology and land use attributes and surveyor this information is coded in the nine main tables of the normalised database in the recent state there are almost 1 500 000 records in the main tables that are managed in 241 independent fields the published version of the mã ta database supports the query service and handles this information in 7 denormalised main tables this much more redundant version is 11 gb in size the 20 6 179 man month of the human resources in the mã ta program were devoted to the information tasks set up and preparation mã ta database and information system development replenishment and quality assessment mã ta query gis and printing services between 2002 and 2007 the basic structure of the mã ta database version 1 2 is finalised and the main functions regarding data processing have been developed the accomplishment is higher than 90 quality assessment is under way while scientific verification and data harmonisation are started the area of semi natural and degraded vegetation of hungary is estimated to 1 800 000 hectares 19 4 of the country of which the natural semi natural is about 1 200 000 hectares 12 9 of the country all of these are highly fragmented and unevenly distributed over the country it is shown by several basic figures professional content and quality measure facts of the database there is also a fact sheet of surveyors that shapes the important characters of their field experience profile too,2008,0.189
Feasibility Analysis for an Environment Outlook for Canada,the international institute for sustainable development contributes to sustainable development by advancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment economic policy climate change measurement and assessment and natural resources management through the internet we report on international negotiations and share knowledge gained through collaborative projects with global partners resulting in more rigorous research capacity building in developing countries and better dialogue between north and south,2008,0.284
The value of taxonomy to biodiversity and agriculture,globally agriculture faces biotic abiotic and legislative challenges impacting on all is the increasing number of species and strains of animals plants fungi and microorganisms that must be managed planning and implementing appropriate farm and country level actions requires accurate identification of organisms to access information although in developing countries many important species are neither named scientifically nor their local taxonomies and uses well documented improvement and adaptation of crops and livestock to changing environment and needs has long depended on genes from wild relatives implementing adequate biosecurity for agriculture at national and local levels may involve information on biota globally agricultural and neighbouring ecosystems provide poorly characterised reservoirs for pests natural enemies pollinators and other organisms detrimental beneficial or essential to productive and resilient agro ecosystems and the latter must be assessed and monitored for agricultural impacts under the ecosystem approach to support these actions taxonomy must deliver timely and appropriate information to those who can use it most effectively this is hindered by poor funding lack of clarity on resources required and responsibility for action and poor delivery systems the needs of agriculture are inadequately met policies developed globally to address this issue are not always simple to implement or to integrate with other agricultural and scientific policies solutions lie in greater integration of activities and better information flow between taxonomy agriculture research and policy and provision of appropriate infrastructure and human capacity,2008,0.242
Automated extraction of data from text using an XML parser: An earth science example using fossil descriptions,many valuable earth science data are not available in a digital format manual entry of such information into databases is time consuming unrewarding and prone to introducing errors taxonomic descriptions of fossils are a good example of valuable data that are overwhelming and available only in printed volumes and journals some of which are increasingly rare and inaccessible the highly structured nature of taxonomic procedures and nomenclature means that many previously published data remain equally valid to the present day and contain information that is currently not available on the world wide web these data would be of great use to a wide variety of scientists and other end users in government industry academia and the general public this paper describes an xml extensible markup language parsing technique that allows taxonomic descriptions to be fully digitized much more rapidly than would be possible by manual entry of the data into a database the technique exploits the high degree of structure in taxonomic descriptions which are written in a standardized format to automate the processing of tagging separate sections of the text once tagged using xml the data can be subjected to complex searches using queries written in any of the xml query standards the xml tagged data can potentially be imported into existing databases in effect removing the necessity to manually enter the information and hence overcoming the main bottleneck in generating digital data from printed material individual parsers can be tailored precisely to the nature of the text being analyzed and once the underlying concepts and procedures are understood those interested in acquiring and using digital data will be able to generate xml parsers dedicated to text with different styles of standardized formatting,2008,0.201
Global Strategy for the Ex Situ Conservation of Lentil (Lens Miller),the current status of lens ex situ genetic resources was assessed via a survey sent to the major lentil collections meetings bringing together researchers and curators of lens germplasm database searching and communications with relevant scientists and experts collection composition facility status regeneration needs safety duplication status information and documentation status and status of accessibility of germplasm is presented based upon the gat vhered information gaps in the world collection of lentil improved utilization of lens germplasm training partnerships and networks related to lentil are surveyed collection information is currently insufficient for many collections identified in the strategy and other collections potentially containing lentil germplasm remain to be verified from the available information key collections containing important lentil accessions and meeting international standards for conservation information and availability are highlighted collections holding priority germplasm and identified as in need of assistance to come to meet full international standards with respect to maintenance documentation and or distribution are also identified other collections holding unique germplasm of lens are also highlighted for further investigation these collections form the basis for a rational global conservation system for lentil and its wild relatives and the international community should consider supporting the holding institutions in order to ensure the long term conservation information availability and distribution of these globally important resources 3,2008,0.268
Replacement of Species Along Altitude Gradients: The Role of Branch Architecture,background and aims plant species typical of cold and warm habitats differ in a suite of morpho physio phenological traits although their evolutionary routes have been poorly explored here it is advocated that traits typical of different climate regimes can be largely driven by contrasting branch architectures this is explored within saxifraga first an investigation was carried out to determine whether series ceratophyllae lateral inflorescences is segregated to lowlands compared with pentadactylis terminal inflorescences then two altitudinal vicariants s trifurcata lowland with lateral inflorescences and s canaliculata highland with apical inflorescences were selected it was hypothesized that apical flowering of s canaliculata constrains its growth period bringing with it traits typical of short growth season plants and conversely for s trifurcata methods the hypothesis was tested by measuring plant compactness and organ pre formation in seven populations of these species along an altitude gradient key results most variables differed among species morphological variables at all scales support that the architecture of s canaliculata generates a more compact habit a higher number of primordia and earlier inflorescence pre formation in s canaliculata indicate that it begins organogenesis earlier data on organogenesis suggest that the different timing of inflorescence initiation may be the origin of the contrasting architectures within species shoot compactness increased and the length of lateral primordia decreased as altitude increased all other metrics were similar among locations of the same species at contrasting altitudes conclusions the hypotheses linking elevational segregation of species architecture and pheno morphological traits were validated at broad gen saxifraga and local altitudinal vicariants scales this supports the initial idea that shoot architecture may to a large extent condition high altitude adaptive syndrome,2008,0.72
Biology of Ticks,ticks are among the most significant blood sucking arthropods worldwide they transmit various pathogens that can cause disease and death in people domesticated animals and wildlife ticks have several morphologic features and physiologic mechanisms that facilitate host selection ingestion of vertebrate blood mating survival and reproduction although the natural history of ticks varies considerably among species these arthropods are well adapted to survive in tropical temperate and even subarctic habitats key factors including the reversion of agricultural lands to forests and a close association between people and ticks have greatly increased the risk of tick bite and human disease,2008,0.578
"Human-Mediated Emergence as a Weed and Invasive Radiation in the Wild of the CD Genome Allotetraploid Rice Species (Oryza, Poaceae) in the Neotropics",sec title background title p the genus italic oryza italic is being used as a model in plant genomic studies although there are several issues still to be resolved regarding the spatio temporal evolution of this ancient genus particularly contentious is whether undated transoceanic natural dispersal or recent human interference has been the principal agent determining its present distribution and differentiation in this context we studied the origin and distribution history of the allotetraploid cd rice genome it is endemic to the neotropics but the genus is thought to have originated in the paleotropics and there is relatively little genetic divergence between some orthologous sequences of the c genome component and their old world counterparts p sec sec title methodology principal findings title p because of its allotetraploidy there are several potential pitfalls in trying to date the formation of the cd genome using molecular data and this could lead to erroneous estimates therefore we rather chose to rely on historical evidence to determine whether or not the cd genome was present in the neotropics before the arrival of columbus we searched early collections of herbarium specimens and studied the reports of explorers of the tropical americas for references to rice in spite of numerous collectors traveling inland and collecting italic oryza italic plants determined as cd genome species were not observed away from cultivated rice fields until 1869 various arguments suggest that they only consisted of weedy forms until that time p sec sec title conclusions significance title p the spatio temporal distribution of herbarium collections fits a simple biogeographical scenario for the emergence in cultivated rice fields followed by radiation in the wild of the cd genome in the neotropics during the last four centuries this probably occurred from species introduced to the americas by humans and we found no evidence that the cd genome pre existed in the old world we therefore propose a new evolutionary hypothesis for such a recent origin of the cd genome moreover we exemplify how an historical approach can provide potentially important information and help to disentangle the timing of evolutionary events in the history of the italic oryza italic genomes p sec,2008,0.39
Predicting the potential distribution of the alien invasive American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) in Brazil,the non native invasive anuran lithobates catesbeianus is presently distributed in brazil especially in the atlantic rainforest biodiversity hotspot here we use a maximum entropy ecological niche modeling algorithm i to model the north american native geographic distribution of this species and ii to project that model onto the whole of brazil after applying a threshold value that balances commission and omission errors the projection results suggested high probabilities of occurrence mostly in southern and southeastern brazil we also present the first report on the species known distribution in brazil showing good agreement with model predictions if the predictive map is interpreted as depicting invasiveness potential of l catesbeianus strategies to prevent further invasion in brazil should be focused especially in the atlantic rainforest biodiversity hotspot,2008,0.686
Studies on Eschatogonia ( Ramalinaceae) in Peru,four species of eschatogonia are recognized in peru e angustiloba timdal sp nov e dissecta timdal amp r sant sp nov e minuta timdal amp r sant sp nov and e prolifera mont r sant african and south american material of e prolifera are shown to belong in two different chemical strains eschatogonia prolifera is new to guinea peru and suriname a key to all six known species of the genus is given,2008,0.682
Historical bias in biodiversity inventories affects the observed environmental niche of the species,it is well known that biodiversity data from historical inventories presents important geographic and taxonomic biases due to this current knowledge on the distribution of most species could be incomplete and biased we assess how the biases in historical biodiversity data might affect the description of the environmental niche of the species using exhaustive data on the distribution of dung beetles in madrid as a case study we describe the historical process of survey and compare such historical data with the results of an exhaustive survey identifying the environmental biases in the historical surveys during different periods and assessing the completeness of the environmental niche of the species provided by historical data through time events like the spanish civil war affect the tempo and spread of surveys but the exhaustive work since 1970 provides a good though incomplete coverage of the region by 1998 in spite of this the biases in historical data result in a limited knowledge about the niche of an important number of species although nearly a half of the species had the 100 of their niche covered by data in 1998 roughly a third had less than 75 nearly a fourth less than 50 and 18 species had to be excluded from the analyses due to the lack of data our results point out that data from non standardized inventories often provide an incomplete description of the environmental responses of most species due to this we highlight that currently predictive models of species distributions present some limitations since the results of models based in partial information about the environmental niche of the species will be compromised therefore the biases in the available data must be evaluated before constructing predictive maps of species distributions and taken into account when drawing conclusions or conservation strategies from these maps,2008,0.958
Bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus invasion in Uruguay,this is the first report of north american bullfrogs lithobates catesbeianus rana catesbeiana invasion in uruguay this anura was introduced for farming proposes in 1987 but at present most of the farms are closed at one of these closed farms located at rincã n de pando canelones we report the occurrence of a feral population of l catesbeianus this invasion point is at an early stage and restricted to one or two ponds we also report the effects of l catesbeianus invasion in the community structure this includes species composition and species size structure in this system bullfrog tadpoles constitute a very important proportion of the present biomass bullfrog tadpoles appear to be displacing native amphibians and having some type of positive interaction with fishes at the invaded system we found more fish species and larger sizes of the shared fish species we analyze the involved risks of this invasion the ecological impact by predation the competition and habitat modification and the potential of bullfrog to act as pathogens vector we also recommend taking measures in order to avoid the expansion of this population there is also the need of studies to search for new invasion points in uruguay especially where bullfrog farms were located,2008,0.703
Myxomycete diversity and distribution from the fossil record to the present,the myxomycetes plasmodial slime molds or myxogastrids are a group of eukaryotic microorganisms usually present and sometimes abundant in terrestrial ecosystems evidence from molecular studies suggests that the myxomycetes have a significant evolutionary history however due to the fragile nature of the fruiting body fossil records of the group are exceedingly rare although most myxomycetes are thought to have very large distributional ranges and many species appear to be cosmopolitan or nearly so results from recent studies have provided evidence that spatial distribution patterns of these organisms can be successfully related to 1 differences in climate and or vegetation on a global scale and 2 the ecological differences that exist for particular habitats on a local scale a detailed examination of the global distribution of four examples barbeyella minutissima ceratiomyxa morchella leocarpus fragilis and protophysarum phloiogenum demonstrates that these species have recognizable distribution patterns in spite of the theoretical ability of their spores to bridge continents,2008,0.475
Internet,shaping internet technologies for ecology in the next century is an important focus in ecological informatics the internet and in particular the world wide web makes data sharing and collaboration among ecologists far easier than ever before but significant challenges remain the author provides brief histories and explanations of core internet and web concepts including protocols and languages and relevant database and digital library concepts examples are drawn from the ecological community where possible particularly active areas of current research seek to increase the scale of ecological studies both in terms of the amount and geographic and temporal scale of data and in the number of people involved and reached the semantic web aims to facilitate discovery and intelligent integration of distributed data grid computing enables large computational analyses across widely distributed computers social computing technologies allow distant members of communities to interact and collaborate these range from traditional electronic mail applications and citizen science websites to more modern technology such as wikis and weblogs the internet is changing the way ecologists and other scientists conduct and disseminate their work finally ecological concepts are being applied to the study of the internet which in turn provides ideas for the study of ecology,2008,0.138
"The future control of food : a guide to international negotiations and rules on intellectual property, biodiversity and food security",quaker international affairs programme this practical book highlights the key issues of intellectual property and ownership genetics biodiversity and food security additionally it covers negotiations in the world trade organization convention on biological diversity un food and agriculture organization and various other international bodies food farming and global rules geoff tansey turning plant varieties into intellectual property the upov convention graham dutfield bringing minimum intellectual property standards into agriculture the agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips pedro roffe promoting and extending the reach of intellectual property the world intellectual property organisation wipo maria julia oliva safeguarding biodiversity the convention on biological diversity cbd susan bragdon kathryn garforth and john e haapala jr giving priority to the commons the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture itpgrfa michael halewood and kent nnadozie the negotiations web complex connections tasmin rajotte responding to change heike baumuìˆller and geoff tansey postcards from international negotiations peter drahos and geoff tansey global rules local needs geoff tansey,2008,0.307
Collection and morphological characterization of Lagenaria siceraria germplasm from the Mediterranean region of Turkey,the landraces of lagenaria siceraria in turkey show great diversity for morphologic traits particularly in fruit size and shape even though turkey is not centre of genetic diversity for l siceraria in turkey l siceraria is used as food musical instruments and containers according to the type and shape of their fruits its diversity has been gradually declining over the last 25 years with the aim of assessing variations in plant fruit and seed morphology among the l siceraria landraces 15 field trips for collection of germplasm to southern parts of turkey mediterranean region were carried out in the period of 2003â 2004 the study also aimed at developing a representative core collection of the material to guide future studies and uses concerning its existing genetic diversity in turkey a total of 182 accessions fruits and or seeds were collected the seeds from all the sample material were sown in green house conditions at the experimental station of the faculty of agriculture of the mustafa kemal university in hatay antakya 36â 18â 22â â n 36â 13â 33â â e 82 m in the spring of 2004 162 out of the 182 sown seeds germinated and developed into viable seedlings these were further transplanted in the field in 10 replicates the morpho agronomic characterization was carried out following the international standards for crop descriptors set by bioversity international the data were subject to both descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis by principle component analysis the descriptive statistics revealed that the whole collection exhibits a great deal of morphological diversity and that the subset core collection represents most of the variability the first three principle components calculated by using six quantitative traits explained 26 21 and 17 a total of 64 of the total variation among the studied accessions no apparently distinct patterns such as geographical origin were detected this may suggest that the accessions have been introduced to turkey from multiple locations and or their diversity had been distributed almost evenly across the mediterranean region of this country based on our results from the morphological characterization 30 genotypes were selected to develop a subgroup core collection in order to represent most of the genetic diversity of all accessions the work presented here is the first report about morphological characterization of turkish l siceraria germplasm,2008,0.238
Using Museum Collections to Estimate Diversity Patterns along Geographical Gradients,quantifying species richness patterns along geographical gradients typically latitude and elevation has a long history in ecology and can be based on more or less complete censuses from a specified area plot sampling selective collection within a specified area e g museum collections or general information about species distributions e g observations of extremes along the gradient distribution maps all these approaches require complete sampling to give the true richness in an area but the richness pattern i e the relative changes in richness along the gradient may be estimated without complete sampling although equal sampling between areas is necessary this is relatively easy to do for fine scale plot sampling but rarely easy for other types of data for data extracted from museum collections a correct perception of the species richness pattern therefore depends on post sampling treatment of data two commonly applied techniques for quantifying species richness patterns with these types of data are discussed namely interpolation of species ranges and rarefaction such treatment may correct for unequal sampling in some instances but may in other cases introduce artificial patterns with incomplete sampling interpolation introduces an artificial humped pattern and rarefaction requires similar species abundance distributions to make unbiased comparisons among samples one must therefore be cautious when applying these methods for estimating species richness patterns along geographical gradients,2008,0.901
Linking Traits to Energetics and Population Dynamics to Predict Lizard Ranges in Changing Environments,abstract i present a dynamic bioenergetic model that couples individual energetics and population dynamics to predict current lizard ranges and those following climate warming the model predictions are uniquely based on first principles of morphology life history and thermal physiology i apply the model to five populations of a widespread north american lizard sceloporus undulatus to examine how geographic variation in traits and life histories influences ranges this geographic variation reflects the potential for species to adapt to environmental change i then consider the range dynamics of the closely related sceloporus graciosus comparing predicted ranges and actual current ranges reveals how dispersal limitations species interactions and habitat requirements influence the occupied portions of thermally suitable ranges the dynamic model predicts individualistic responses to a uniform 3â c warming but a northward shift in the northern range boundary for all populations and species in contrast to standard correlative climate envelope models the extent of the predicted northward shift depends on organism traits and life histories the results highlight the limitations of correlative models and the need for more dynamic models of speciesâ ranges,2008,0.231
Conservation of taxonomic and biological trait diversity of European stream macroinvertebrate communities: a case for a collective public database,the use of databases for the conservation of biodiversity is increasing during the last decade such a database has been created for european stream macroinvertebrates today it includes 527 sites that are the least human impacted representatives of many stream types across many european regions it includes data on the abundance of 312 invertebrate genera several environmental site characteristics collection methods bibliographic data sources and 11 biological traits of the genera e g size life cycle food and feeding habits described in 61 categories the database will be useful in addressing many topics that are potentially relevant to biodiversity conservation to illustrate this potential we provide examples of how the data could be exploited first we describe the frequency of some taxonomic and biological characteristics e g richness and diversity of genera and traits of the macroinvertebrate communities and assess how these characteristics are related e g how trait richness increases with genus richness second we describe the frequency of some characteristics of the genera and traits e g occurrence frequency abundance dispersion index and again assess how these characteristics are related e g how occurrence increases with abundance finally we suggest how the database could be developed into a collective publicly accessible database that covers stream types and regions of europe more comprehensively,2008,0.297
Managing Insular Tropical Environment through Data and Knowledge Bases by using Web Services: a case study on Corals and Herbarium of La Réunion Island,decision makers who want to manage insular tropical environment more effi ciently need to narrow the gap between the production of scientific knowledge in universi ties or other labs and its pragmatic use by the general public one key environmental prob lem is to preserve biodiversity of ecosystems that are under human pressure as we only protect what we know a solution is to share expert knowledge about habitats and species on the web for educating the public about their richness and beauty data and knowledge bases are part of a biodiversity information system that we have built to deal with this re search enhancement problem through the etic program they were conceived using web services in order that each module communicates its functionalities and information one another and with external systems,2008,0.314
Can AI Techniques be Applied to Forest Science Data Integration Problems?,a workshop meeting was held december 17 18 2006 at the center for tropical forest science to discuss database technology and forest science approximately twenty botanists participated in the meeting representing twelve research organizations that collect data from seven plots or surveys from around the world at the meeting we discussed technical issues such as how to share existing schemas how to integrate and share data and how to represent botanical taxonomies,2008,0.289
Aondê: An ontology Web service for interoperability across biodiversity applications,biodiversity research requires associating data about living beings and their habitats constructing sophisticated models and correlating all kinds of information data handled are inherently heterogeneous being provided by distinct and distributed research groups which collect these data using different vocabularies assumptions methodologies and goals and under varying spatio temporal frames ontologies are being adopted as one of the means to alleviate these heterogeneity problems thus helping cooperation among researchers while ontology toolkits offer a wide range of operations they are self contained and cannot be accessed by external applications thus the many proposals for adopting ontologies to enhance interoperability in application development are either based on the use of ontology servers or of ontology frameworks the latter support many functions but impose application recoding whenever ontologies change whereas the first supports ontology evolution but for a limited set of functions this paper presents aond㪠a web service geared towards the biodiversity domain that combines the advantages of frameworks and servers supporting ontology sharing and management on the web by clearly separating storage concerns from semantic issues the service provides independence between ontology evolution and the applications that need them the service provides a wide range of basic operations to create store manage analyze and integrate multiple ontologies these operations can be repeatedly invoked by client applications to construct more complex manipulations aond㪠has been validated for real biodiversity case studies,2008,0.06
Assessing Sensitiveness to Transport,wp3 mapping of transport sensitive areas task 3 1 review on spatial approaches mapping examples and available data sets at eu level,2008,0.226
The Neogene Marine Biota of Tropical America (“NMITA”) Database: Integrating Data from the Dominican Republic Project,the nmita database http nmita geology uiowa edu serves as a central data repository for the dominican republic project and members of the team have been actively contributing data as the project progresses nmita was originally designed as a taxonomic database the main purpose of which is to document the taxa that have been identified in paleontological collections from the neogene of tropical america as well as the taxonomic concepts and morphologic features that have been used in making identifications nmita thereby provides the taxonomic foundation for spatial and temporal analyses of biodiversity nmita is similar to a taxonomic monograph in that it contains high quality images and information about taxa i e authorship synonyms type specimens as well as morphologic characters used in their identification and stratigraphic and geographic occurrence data the taxa in nmita currently consist of 225 scleractinian coral species zooxanthellate amp azooxanthellate 330 bryozoan species cheilostome amp cyclostome 300 bivalve genera subgenera 50 gastropod species columbellid muricid marginellid 100 benthic foraminifera species 100 ostracode species and 230 teleost and elasmobranch fish species information has been contributed by specialists on the systematics of these groups who are based at many different academic and museum institutions in the americas and europe see http nmita geology uiowa edu nmtstaff htm for complete listing in addition to the dr project the database also serves the panama paleontology project led by j b c jackson and a g coates of the smithsonian tropical research institute as well as other team based paleontological collection projects that use rigorous sampling and geologic age dating protocols,2008,0.848
CWRML: representing crop wild relative conservation and use data in XML,background crop wild relatives are wild species that are closely related to crops they are valuable as potential gene donors for crop improvement and may help to ensure food security for the future however they are becoming increasingly threatened in the wild and are inadequately conserved both in situ and ex situ information about the conservation status and utilisation potential of crop wild relatives is diverse and dispersed and no single agreed standard exists for representing such information yet this information is vital to ensure these species are effectively conserved and utilised the european community funded project european crop wild relative diversity assessment and conservation forum determined the minimum information requirements for the conservation and utilisation of crop wild relatives and created the crop wild relative information system incorporating an extensible markup language xml schema to aid data sharing and exchange results crop wild relative markup language cwrml was developed to represent the data necessary for crop wild relative conservation and ensure that they can be effectively utilised for crop improvement the schema partitions data into taxon site and population specific elements to allow for integration with other more general conservation biology schemata which may emerge as accepted standards in the future these elements are composed of sub elements which are structured in order to facilitate the use of the schema in a variety of crop wild relative conservation and use contexts pre existing standards for data representation in conservation biology were reviewed and incorporated into the schema as restrictions on element data contents where appropriate conclusion cwrml provides a flexible data communication format for representing in situ and ex situ conservation status of individual taxa as well as their utilisation potential the development of the schema highlights a number of instances where additional standards development may be valuable particularly with regard to the representation of population specific data and utilisation potential as crop wild relatives are intrinsically no different to other wild plant species there is potential for the inclusion of cwrml data elements in the emerging standards for representation of biodiversity data,2008,0.997
Alpha e-taxonomy: responses from the systematics community to the biodiversity crisis,the crisis facing the conservation of biodiversity is reflected in a parallel crisis in alpha taxonomy on one hand there is an acute need from government and non government organisations for large scale and relatively stable species inventories on which to build major biodiversity information systems on the other molecular information will have an increasingly important impact on the evidential basis for delimiting species and is likely to result in greater scientific debate and controversy on their circumscription this paper argues that alpha taxonomy built on the internet alpha e taxonomy can provide a key component of the solution two main themes are considered 1 the potential of e taxonomic revisions for engaging both the specialist taxonomic community and a wider public in gathering taxonomic knowledge and deepening understanding of it and 2 why alpha species will continue to play an essential role in the conventional definition of species and what kinds of methodological development this implies for descriptive species taxonomy the challenges and requirements for sustaining e taxonomic revisions in the long term are discussed with particular reference to models being developed by five initiatives with botanical exemplar websites cate creating a taxonomic e science solanaceae source grassbase and edit european distributed institute of taxonomy exemplar groups and scratchpads these projects give a clear indication of the crucially important role of the national and regional taxonomic organisations and their networks in providing both leadership and a fruitful and beneficial human and technical environment for taxonomists both amateur and professional to contribute their expertise towards a collective global enterprise,2008,0.575
An Information Systems Strategy for the Environmental Conservation Community,as the cause of environmental conservation emerges as a global priority the need for a practical information systems strategy shared among conservation organizations becomes imperative historically researchers and practitioners in conservation have met their own information management and analysis needs with inevitable variation in methodology semantics data formats and quality consequently conservation organizations have been unable to systematically assess conditions and set informed priorities at various scales measure performance of their projects and improve practices through adaptive management moreover the demands on conservation are changing such that the bottom up approach to information systems will become an increasing constraint to effective environmental problem solving where we have historically focused on the protection of â œimportantâ places and species and more recently â œbiodiversity â conservation is moving to a systems view specifically ecosystem based management where relationships and process are as important as the individual elements in parallel awareness of the human dependency on functioning natural systems is on the rise and with it the need to explicitly value ecosystem services and inform tradeoffs climate change requires conservation to develop dynamic adaptation scenarios at multiple spatial and temporal scales credible assessments and effective conservation action increasingly rely on collaboration from multiple organizations and disciplines finally the business of conservation is under increased pressure to account for its spending and objectively measure outcomes of its strategies all of these changes translate to growing not shrinking demands on information and information systems,2008,0.018
Breeding habitat preferences of 15 bird species on south-western Finnish archipelago coast: Applicability of digital spatial data archives to habitat assessment,knowledge about the importance of physical habitat characteristics to the breeding site selection of birds is a prerequisite for understanding their breeding habitat ecology and distribution as well as managing their habitats geographical information systems gis and existing digital data archives provide new possibilities for the quantitative and cost effective assessment of coastal breeding habitats of birds we tested the applicability of gis and digital data archives for the analysis of coastal bird habitats by conducting a multivariate analysis on the relationship between physical island characteristics and the breeding site selection of 15 species of ducks waders larids and alcids in 2001 2005 in the fragmented archipelago coast of south western finland we used gis and environmental databases containing shoreline bathymetry and elevation data to calculate five physical parameters for 71 small islands and their vicinity island area was generally the most important factor determining the presence of the species but also water depth shore openness and island elevation were important for some species the differences and similarities in habitat preferences within and between species groups seem to reflect the breeding habitat ecology of the species gis and spatial data archives are becoming increasingly valuable for research and development as well as administrative tasks our results indicate that physical island characteristics affect the breeding site selection and the distribution of our target species and that gis and digital data archives provide applicable information on the breeding habitats of coastal birds and thus function as a tool for conservation and management,2008,0.583
Morphological and allozyme variation in a collection of Cucumeropsis mannii Naudin (Cucurbitaceae) from Côte d'Ivoire,to set up a rational collecting strategy for germplasm of the edible seeded cucurbit cucumeropsis mannii a study was conducted using 24 morphological and seven putative enzyme markers to determine the intra specific variability from 16 and 22 accessions representing three cultivars respectively the analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the three cultivars principal component analysis pointed out a variation among individuals mainly on the basis of flower fruit and seed size dendrogram with upgma method allowed clustering of the cultivars genetic diversity indices estimated equalled 9 96 for the proportion of polymorphic loci p 1 10 for the number of alleles a and 0 023 for observed heterozygosity ho the level of the within accessions genetic diversity hs 0 078 was higher than among accessions dst 0 042 nei s genetic distances between the three cultivars were also low 0 079 0 147 indicating a high degree of similarity of the analysed cultivars,2008,0.19
Patterns of woody plant species richness in the Iberian Peninsula: environmental range and spatial scale,abstract aim climate based models often explain most of the variation in species richness along broad scale geographical gradients we aim to 1 test predictions of woody plant species richness on a regional spatial extent deduced from macro scale models based on waterâ energy dynamics 2 test if the length of the climate gradients will determine whether the relationship with woody species richness is monotonic or unimodal and 3 evaluate the explanatory power of a previously proposed â waterâ energyâ model and regional models at two grain sizes location the iberian peninsula methods we estimated woody plant species richness on grid maps with c 2500 and 22 500 km2 cell size using geocoded data for the individual species generalized additive models were used to explore the relationships between richness and climatic topographical and substrate variables ordinary least squares regression was used to compare regional and more general waterâ energy models in relation to grain size variation partitioning by partial regression was applied to find how much of the variation in richness was related to spatial variables explanatory variables and the overlap between these two results waterâ energy dynamics generate important underlying gradients that determine the woody species richness even over a short spatial extent the relationships between richness and the energy variables were linear to curvilinear whereas those with precipitation were nonlinear and non monotonic only a small fraction of the spatially structured variation in woody species richness cannot be accounted for by the fitted variables related to climate substrate and topography the regional models accounted for higher variation in species richness than the waterâ energy models although the waterâ energy model including topography performed well at the larger grain size elevation range was the most important predictor at all scales probably because it corrects for â climatic errorâ due to the unrealistic assumption that mean climate values are evenly distributed in the large grid cells minimum monthly potential evapotranspiration was the best climatic predictor at the larger grain size but actual evapotranspiration was best at the smaller grain size energy variables were more important than precipitation individually precipitation was not a significant variable at the larger grain size when examined on its own but was highly significant when an interaction term between itself and substrate was included in the model main conclusions the significance of range in elevation is probably because it corresponds to several aspects that may influence species diversity such as climatic variability within grid cells enhanced surface area and location for refugia the relative explanatory power of energy and water variables was high and was influenced by the length of the climate gradient substrate and grain size of the analysis energy appeared to have more influence than precipitation but water availability is also determined by energy substrate and topographic relief,2008,0.587
Schema driven assignment and implementation of life science identifiers (LSIDs),life science identifier lsid is a global unique identifier standard intended to help rationalize the unique archival requirements of biological data we describe lsid implementation architecture such that data managed by a relational database management system may be integrated with the lsid protocol as an add on layer the approach requires a database administrator dba to specify an export schema detailing the content and structure of the archived data and a mapping of the existing database to that schema this specification can be expressed using sql view syntax in effect we define a sql like language for implementing lsids we describe the mapping of the view definition to an implementation as a set of databases triggers and a fixed runtime library thus a compiler for a domain specific language could be written that would reduce the implementation of lsids to the task of writing sql view like definitions,2008,0.196
Briger Persson from Umgransele in Vasterbotten and his beetle collection,birger persson collected beetles in the inner parts of norrland and his beetle collection was his life s interest the collection is very valuable first of all because birger persson is one of the few who has gathered beetles in the inland of northern part of sweden secondly because he collected small species which often are difficult to determine he was also very accurate in making notes on locality collection circumstances etc i am working on a project consisting of two main tasks partly to guarantee the collections of beetles partly to documend the collection and make it available both for the swedish species gateway and the gbif darwin core project,2008,0.787
Geo-referenced Biological Databases: A new mountain biodiversity tool,geo referenced archive databases on mountain organisms are very promising tools for achieving a better understanding of mountain biodiversity and predicting its changes the global mountain biodiversity assessment gmba of diversitas in cooperation with the global biodiversity information facility gbif encourages a global effort to explore biodiversity databases on mountain organisms,2008,0.354
The value of georeferenced collection records for predicting patterns of mosquito species richness and endemism in the Neotropics,abstract 1 determining large scale distribution patterns for mosquitoes could advance knowledge of global mosquito biogeography and inform decisions about where mosquito inventory needs are greatest 2 over 43 000 georeferenced records are presented of identified and vouchered mosquitoes from collections undertaken between 1899 and 1982 from 1853 locations in 42 countries throughout the neotropics of 492 species in the data set 23 were only recorded from one location and anopheles albimanus wiedemann is the most common species 3 a linear logâ log speciesâ area relationship was found for mosquito species number and country area chile had the lowest relative density of species and trinidad tobago the highest followed by panama and french guiana 4 the potential distribution of species was predicted using an ecological niche modelling enm approach anopheles species had the largest predicted species ranges whereas species of deinocerites and wyeomyia had the smallest 5 species richness was estimated for 1â grids and by summing predicted presence of species from enm these methods both showed areas of high species richness in french guiana panama trinidad tobago and colombia potential hotspots in endemicity included unsampled areas in panama french guiana colombia belize venezuela and brazil 6 argentina the bahamas bermuda bolivia cuba and peru were the most under represented countries in the database compared with known country species occurrence data analysis of species accumulation curves suggested patchiness in the distribution of data points which may affect estimates of species richness 7 the data set is a first step towards the development of a global scale repository of georeferenced mosquito collection records,2008,0.989
"LSID Tester, a tool for testing Life Science Identifier resolution services",background life science identifiers lsids are persistent globally unique identifiers for biological objects the decentralised nature of lsids makes them attractive for identifying distributed resources data of interest to biodiversity researchers including specimen records images taxonomic names and dna sequences are distributed over many different providers and this community has adopted lsids as the identifier of choice results lsid tester is a web application written in php given a lsid the application performs seven tests reporting the results at each step if all tests are successful the metadata associated with the lsid is displayed and can be viewed in a range of formats conclusion the software provides a tool for testing a lsid resolution service,2008,0.344
"Product data quality in the vaccine industry, a Model-Driven Architecture for interoperability between information systems",we present in this paper the benefits of a model driven architecture mda to ensure the interconnection of different business contextsâ specifications by providing a linked structure of models this enables to generate bridges that connect implementations in different platforms in this way the systems interoperability is satisfied in fact the concepts of interoperability are useful to enable the interconnection between different enterprise services and divisions at four levels business level process level service application level and data level when the enterprise modeling concepts structure some models to enable the connection between business and process levels the software engineering concepts structure the models between applications and manipulated data the mda approach is widely considered as a methodology to software generation from models with a focus on enterprise and business models deploying an mda approach in vaccine industry allows us to deal with business product complexity and regulatory constraints it helps their translation to some business rules and recommendations when we try to communicate data models from heterogeneous information systems this will finally ensure product data quality in different information systems throughout the product lifecycle,2008,0.013
Making way for molecular biology: institutionalizing and managing reform of biological science in a UK university during the 1980s and 1990s,historians agree that the second half of the twentieth century saw widespread changes in the structure of biological science in universities this shift was and continues to be characterized by the de differentiation of nineteenth and early twentieth century disciplines with increasing emphasis on the methods and authority of molecular fields yet we currently lack appreciation of the dynamics that underpinned these changes and of their tangible effects on the working practices of those involved in this article we examine the wholesale reform of biological science at the university of manchester england that occurred in two successive steps in 1986 and 1993 we examine how reform was enabled by economic and political factors as staff seized upon national pressures in so doing we emphasize how this reform was shaped by a generational view of the biological sciences as a one field unified by molecular techniques we assess how the success of these reforms was tied to new management policies that rewarded research activity in molecular fields and refigured teaching as a punishment for research inactivity we close by showing how our analysis fits amongst and can contribute to big picture debates in the history and sociology of knowledge,2008,0.103
Biodiversity informatics: the challenge of linking data and the role of shared identifiers,a major challenge facing biodiversity informatics is integrating data stored in widely distributed databases initial efforts have relied on taxonomic names as the shared identifier linking records in different databases however taxonomic names have limitations as identifiers being neither stable nor globally unique and the pace of molecular taxonomic and phylogenetic research means that a lot of information in public sequence databases is not linked to formal taxonomic names this review explores the use of other identifiers such as specimen codes and genbank accession numbers to link otherwise disconnected facts in different databases the structure of these links can also be exploited using the pagerank algorithm to rank the results of searches on biodiversity databases the key to rich integration is a commitment to deploy and reuse globally unique shared identifiers such as digital object identifiers dois and life science identifiers lsids and the implementation of services that link those identifiers,2008,0.208
Systematics and taxonomy of Australian birds,systematics and taxonomy of australian birds presents an up to date classification of australian birds building on the authorsâ 1994 book the taxonomy and species of birds of australia and its territories it incorporates the extensive volume of relevant systematic work since then the findings of these studies are summarised and evaluated in the explanations for the taxonomic treatments adopted and with the extensive citations the book serves as a comprehensive introduction to the recent systematic literature of australian birds all species of birds that have been recorded from the australian mainland tasmania island territories and surrounding waters are treated and listed along with extant native species all accepted vagrants recently extinct since 1800 native species and established introduced species are included,2008,0.842
The NIFSTD and BIRNLex Vocabularies: Building Comprehensive Ontologies for Neuroscience,a critical component of the neuroscience information framework nif project is a consistent flexible terminology for describing and retrieving neuroscience relevant resources although the original nif specification called for a loosely structured controlled vocabulary for describing neuroscience resources as the nif system evolved the requirement for a formally structured ontology for neuroscience with sufficient granularity to describe and access a diverse collection of information became obvious this requirement led to the nif standardized nifstd ontology a comprehensive collection of common neuroscience domain terminologies woven into an ontologically consistent unified representation of the biomedical domains typically used to describe neuroscience data e g anatomy cell types techniques as well as digital resources tools databases being created throughout the neuroscience community nifstd builds upon a structure established by the birnlex a lexicon of concepts covering clinical neuroimaging research developed by the biomedical informatics research network birn project each distinct domain module is represented using the web ontology language owl as much as has been practical nifstd reuses existing community ontologies that cover the required biomedical domains building the more specific concepts required to annotate nif resources by following this principle an extensive vocabulary was assembled in a relatively short period of time for nif information annotation organization and retrieval in a form that promotes easy extension and modification we report here on the structure of the nifstd and its predecessor birnlex the principles followed in its construction and provide examples of its use within nif,2008,0.144
The GEO Biodiversity Observation Network: Concept Document,the group on earth observations geo www earthobservations org is a partnership of over 70 member countries and more than 50 participating organisations working to improve the coordination of existing earth observation data sets implement new observations and promote the generation of earth observation products geo oversees a global earth observation system of systems geoss as the mechanism to achieve these goals biodiversity is one of nine societal benefit areas that geo is mandated to address a biodiversity observation network or geo bon is one of the first systems geo proposes for the emerging geoss this concept document presents the case for geo bon describes the overall vision and suggests a framework for its implementation stakeholders reviewed earlier drafts of this document at a meeting in potsdam germany in april 2008 and provided final comments in october 2008,2008,0.052
An Integrated Korean Biodiversity and Genetic Information Retrieval System,background on line biodiversity information databases are growing quickly and being integrated into general bioinformatics systems due to the advances of fast gene sequencing technologies and the internet these can reduce the cost and effort of performing biodiversity surveys and genetic searches which allows scientists to spend more time researching and less time collecting and maintaining data this will cause an increased rate of knowledge build up and improve conservations the biodiversity databases in korea have been scattered among several institutes and local natural history museums with incompatible data types therefore a comprehensive database and a nation wide web portal for biodiversity information is necessary in order to integrate diverse information resources including molecular and genomic databases results the korean natural history research information system naris was built and serviced as the central biodiversity information system to collect and integrate the biodiversity data of various institutes and natural history museums in korea this database aims to be an integrated resource that contains additional biological information such as genome sequences and molecular level diversity currently twelve institutes and museums in korea are integrated by the digir distributed generic information retrieval protocol with darwin core2 0 format as its metadata standard for data exchange data quality control and statistical analysis functions have been implemented in particular integrating molecular and genetic information from the national center for biotechnology information ncbi databases with naris was recently accomplished naris can also be extended to accommodate other institutes abroad and the whole system can be exported to establish local biodiversity management servers conclusion a korean data portal naris has been developed to efficiently manage and utilize biodiversity data which includes genetic resources naris aims to be integral in maximizing bio resource utilization for conservation management research education industrial applications and integration with other bioinformation data resources it can be found at http www naris go kr,2008,0.055
"A digital library environment for integrating, disseminating and exploring ecological data",managing environmental changes has become a very important issue for effective environmental management and ecosystem balance for a decade brazil has been running peld1 a long term ecological research program that has collected a huge volume of data from a network of dispersed and unstructured ecological sites most of these sites however have no specialized system to store the data and no support for specialized analyses or data sharing this article presents a digital library based environment that has been developed to support the integration dissemination and exploration of ecological data collected by these sites this environment is centered on a georeferenced digital library named bdig peld that integrates this network of ecological sites using oai pmh open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting and the odl open digital library framework the bdig peld architecture incorporates simple yet effective decentralized input interfaces for handling heterogeneous data from these unstructured sources with bdig peld researchers fill in mandatory and controlled fields in textual spreadsheets that are processed by a local input interface and transformed into eml ecological metadata language metadata repositories which are then made available for being harvested and integrated into the central bdig peld repository bdig peld provides exploratory searching and browsing services combined with georeferencing facilities supported by a spatial locator system besides addressing these architectural issues we also describe an experimental evaluation of the proposed solution in terms of usability data and quality aspects that has been conducted with real users this evaluation comprises two parts the first involves the input data process and the second considers the user services results show that the spreadsheet based input interface provided by bdig peld offers an effective way for inputting sampling data and that its user services provide adequate facilities for data exploration and discovery thus this evaluation demonstrate that bdig peld is a practical effective and economical solution for integrating disseminating and exploring data within the brazilian long term ecological research program and that might be adopted by similar programs worldwide,2008,0.019
Niche shift versus niche conservatism? Climatic characteristics of the native and invasive ranges of the Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus),abstract aim the use of ecological niche models enms to predict potential distributions of species is steadily increasing a necessary assumption is that climatic niches are conservative but recent findings of niche shifts during biological invasion indicate that this assumption is not always valid selection of predictor variables may be one reason for the observed shifts in this paper we assess differences in climatic niches in the native and invaded ranges of the mediterranean house gecko hemidactylus turcicus in terms of commonly applied climate variables in enms we analyse which variables are more conserved versus relaxed i e subject to niche shift furthermore we study the predictive power of different sets of climate variables location the mediterranean region and north america methods we developed models using maxent and various subsets of variables out of 19 bioclimatic layers including 1 two subsets comprising almost all variables excluding only highly collinear ones 2 two subsets with minimalistic variable sets of water availability and energy measures 3 two subsets focused on temperature related parameters 4 two subsets with precipitation related parameters and 5 one subset comprising variables combining temperature and precipitation characteristics occurrence data from the native mediterranean range were used to predict the potential introduced range in north america and vice versa degrees of niche similarity and conservatism were assessed using both schoener s index and hellinger distances the significance of the results was tested using null models results the degree of niche similarity and conservatism varied greatly among the predictors and variable sets applied shifts observed in some variables could be attributed to active habitat selection while others apparently reflected background effects main conclusions the study was based on comprehensive occurrence data from all regions where hemidactylus turcicus is present in europe and north america providing a robust foundation our results clearly indicate that the degree of conservatism of niches in h turcicus largely varies among predictors and variable sets applied therefore the extent of niche conservatism of variables applied should always be tested in enms this has an important impact on studies of biological invasion impacts of climate change and niche evolution,2009,0.037
"Invasive species information networks: collaboration at multiple scales for prevention, early detection, and rapid response to invasive alien species",accurate analysis of present distributions and effective modeling of future distributions of invasive alien species ias are both highly dependent on the availability and accessibility of occurrence data and natural history information about the species invasive alien species monitoring and detection networks such as the invasive plant atlas of new england and the invasive plant atlas of the midsouth generate occurrence data at local and regional levels within the united states which are shared through the us national institute of invasive species science the inter american biodiversity information network s invasives information network i3n facilitates cooperation on sharing invasive species occurrence data throughout the western hemisphere the i3n and other national and regional networks expose their data globally via the global invasive species information network gisin international and interdisciplinary cooperation on data sharing strengthens cooperation on strategies and responses to invasions however limitations to effective collaboration among invasive species networks leading to successful early detection and rapid response to invasive species include lack of interoperability data accessibility funding and technical expertise this paper proposes various solutions to these obstacles at different geographic levels and briefly describes success stories from the invasive species information networks mentioned above using biological informatics to facilitate global information sharing is especially critical in invasive species science as research has shown that one of the best indicators of the invasiveness of a species is whether it has been invasive elsewhere data must also be shared across disciplines because natural history information e g diet predators habitat requirements etc about a species in its native range is vital for effective prevention detection and rapid response to an invasion finally it has been our experience that sharing information including invasive species dispersal mechanisms and rates impacts and prevention and control strategies enables resource managers and decision makers to mount a more effective response to biological invasions,2009,0.898
E-taxonomy: an affordable tool to fill the biodiversity knowledge gap,as part of a recent north south collaboration a plant diversity inventory of angola was compiled virtually exclusively using web based resources here we report on the feasibility and cost of conducting this work and test the hypothesis that existing and new internet resources enable and simplify taxonomic work and support filling gaps in biodiversity knowledge,2009,0.281
Achieving Target 2 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: building a preliminary assessment of vascular plant species using data from herbarium specimens,the global strategy for plant conservation calls for a preliminary assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species by the year 2010 to date insufficient progress has been made on meeting this target new efforts to develop a preliminary list beyond using the full iucn criteria in plant assessments are needed here we present an algorithm that provides a preliminary assessment of the conservation status of plant species using data from herbarium specimens we use hawaiian specimen data from the united states national herbarium to calibrate the parameters of the algorithm and then use specimen data from the arecaceae commelinaceae gesneriaceae and heliconiaceae as examples of the application of the algorithm the algorithm was calibrated to insure 95 accuracy in placing the hawaiian plant species into previously and independently determined threatened categories our results indicate that 28 of the hawaiian taxa 27 of the species of arecaceae 45 of the species of commelinaceae 32 of the species of gesneriaceae and 35 of the species of heliconiaceae are not threatened and will not need any further evaluation for the preliminary assessment species identified here as potentially extinct and potentially threatened can be further assessed by additional herbarium material and or conservation specialists for final evaluation using other assessment strategies e g regional and national lists taxonomic expert assessment etc,2009,0.927
A Quantitative Climate-Match Score for Risk-Assessment Screening of Reptile and Amphibian Introductions,assessing climatic suitability provides a good preliminary estimate of the invasive potential of a species to inform risk assessment we examined two approaches for bioclimatic modeling for 67 reptile and amphibian species introduced to california and florida first we modeled the worldwide distribution of the biomes found in the introduced range to highlight similar areas worldwide from which invaders might arise second we modeled potentially suitable environments for species based on climatic factors in their native ranges using three sources of distribution data performance of the three datasets and both approaches were compared for each species climate match was positively correlated with species establishment success maximum predicted suitability in the introduced range was more strongly correlated with establishment success than mean suitability data assembled from the global amphibian assessment through natureserve provided the most accurate models for amphibians while ecoregion data compiled by the world wide fund for nature yielded models which described reptile climatic suitability better than available point locality data we present three methods of assigning a climate match score for use in risk assessment using both the mean and maximum climatic suitabilities managers may choose to use different methods depending on the stringency of the assessment and the available data facilitating higher resolution and accuracy for herpetofaunal risk assessment climate matching has inherent limitations and other factors pertaining to ecological interactions and life history traits must also be considered for thorough risk assessment,2009,0.876
A key to diatom nomenclature,common nomenclatural problems in diatom research are presented based on our insights described here is what is new in the most recent international code on botanical nomenclature the vienna code since rossâ papers on nomenclature for diatomists the terms epitype and original material second step lectotypification treatment of fossil diatoms and diatom indexing center a validity check for new names and new combinations is offered in the format of a key in addition nomenclature taxonomy and identification are differentiated and discussed,2009,0.226
Can differences in autonomous selfing ability explain differences in range size among sister-taxa pairs of Collinsia (Plantaginaceae)? An extension of Baker's Law,summary â species with greater selfing ability are predicted to be better adapted for colonizing new habitats baker s law here we tested an expansion of this hypothesis that species proficient at autonomous selfing have larger range sizes than their less proficient sister taxa we also tested competing hypotheses regarding seed production and niche breadth on range size â floral traits affecting the proficiency of autonomous selfing were measured and seed production was calculated for six sister taxa pairs in the clade collinsia we tested for the hypothesized effects of these variables on elevational distribution and range size â we found that species most proficient at selfing had significantly larger range sizes than their sister taxa that were less proficient at selfing species proficient at autonomous selfing occupied a higher mean elevation than their sister taxa but they did not differ in their total elevational range species with greater seed production did not have larger range sizes â our results extend baker s law suggesting that species proficient at autonomous selfing are better adapted to establish new populations and thus can more readily expand their range autonomous selfing ability may play a vital role in explaining variance in range size among other species,2009,0.909
Late quaternary diatom stratigraphy and paleoceanology of the Deryugin Basin (Sea of Okhotsk) during the Last Glacial Maximum,diatoms were studied in the komex lv28 34 2 sediment core from the northwestern sea of okhotsk the interval from the penultimate glacial to the holocene was subdivided into stratigraphic units based on the distribution of biogeographic groups and individual index species the analysis of the diatom assemblages indicated that during the last glacial maximum of the deryugin basin was regularly covered with extensive seasonal ice of at least 70 concentration for a minimum of 6â 7 months per year cold subarctic water from the adjacent open pacific could have reached as far as the northwestern sea area,2009,0.435
The New Locality of Chenopodium Pumilio R. Br. in Poland,the clammy goosefoot chenopodium pumilio r br is a rare anthropophyte in the polish flora hitherto this species was recorded in gdaå sk and rybnik the present study describes the newly discovered locality in strykã w near å ã dåº central poland the occurrence of this species in poland and the general geographical distribution in the world,2009,0.571
Life history influences rates of climatic niche evolution in flowering plants,across angiosperms variable rates of molecular substitution are linked with life history attributes associated with woody and herbaceous growth forms as the number of generations per unit time is correlated with molecular substitution rates it is expected that rates of phenotypic evolution would also be influenced by differences in generation times here we make the first broad scale comparison of growth form dependent rates of niche evolution we examined the climatic niches of species on large time calibrated phylogenies of five angiosperm clades and found that woody lineages have accumulated fewer changes per million years in climatic niche space than related herbaceous lineages also climate space explored by woody lineages is consistently smaller than sister lineages composed mainly of herbaceous taxa this pattern is probably linked to differences in the rate of climatic niche evolution these results have implications for niche conservatism in particular the role of niche conservatism in the distribution of plant biodiversity the consistent differences in the rate of climatic niche evolution also emphasize the need to incorporate models of phenotypic evolution that allow for rate heterogeneity when examining large datasets,2009,0.324
"Past and future range shifts and loss of diversity in dwarf willow (Salix herbacea L.) inferred from genetics, fossils and modelling",abstract aim climate change may cause loss of genetic diversity here we explore how a multidisciplinary approach can be used to infer effects of past climate change on species distribution and genetic diversity and also to predict loss of diversity due to future climate change we use the arctic alpine plant salix herbacea l as a model location europe greenland and eastern north america methods we analysed 399 samples from 41 populations for amplified fragment length polymorphism aflp to identify current patterns of genetic structure and diversity and likely historical dispersal routes macrofossil records were compiled to infer past distribution and species distribution models were used to predict the last glacial maximum lgm and future distribution of climatically suitable areas results we found strong genetic differentiation between the populations from europe east greenland and those from canada west greenland indicating a split probably predating the lgm much less differentiation was observed among the four genetic groups identified in europe and diversity was high in the scandinavian as well as in southern alpine populations continuous distribution in central europe during the last glaciation was inferred based on the fossil records and distribution modelling a 46â 57 reduction in suitable areas was predicted in 2080 compared to present however mainly southern alpine populations may go extinct causing a loss of about 5 of the genetic diversity in the species main conclusions from a continuous range in central europe during the last glaciation northward colonization probably occurred as a broad front maintaining diversity as the climate warmed this explains why potential extinction of southern populations by 2080 will cause a comparatively low loss of the genetic diversity in s herbacea for other species with different glacial histories however the expected climate change induced regional extinction may cause a more severe loss of genetic diversity we conclude that our multidisciplinary approach may be a useful tool for assessing impact of climate change on loss of genetic diversity,2009,0.748
"Nuevos registros de quirópteros para la provincia de Entre Ríos, Argentina",new records of bats from entre rios province argentina we studied 66 specimens deposited at the museo de ciencias naturales y antropolã gicas prof antonio serrano of paranã entre rã os and from other collections with the objective to update the distribution of the bats species in entre rios province we studied 66 specimens deposit at the museum of natural history and anthropology prof antonio serrano of paranã entre rios and from other collections with the objective to update the distribution of the bats species in entre rios province we cited 11 species for the province of which noctilio leporinus and eptesicus diminutus constitute first records we cited 11 species for the province of which noctilio leporinus and eptesicus diminutus establishi first records in addition we incorporated 10 new localities included the city of paranã in addition we incorporated 10 new localities included the city of paranã the absence of information on this group in the province due to the lack of systematic samplings does not permit to interpret distribution and systematic aspects of the species the absence of information on this group in the province due to the lack of systematic samplings not does permit to interpret distribution and systematic aspects of the species we consider of importance to survey in different environments besides analyzing collections of museums to clear the distribution of bats to regional and provincial level we consider of importance to survey in different environments ademã s analyzing collections of museums to clear the distribution of bats to regional and provincial level,2009,0.841
Building the Biodiversity Data Commmons - The Global Biodiversity Information Facility,the global biodiversity information facility gbif is an inter governmental organization mandated to construct a biodiversity informatics research infrastructure toenable free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide the biodiversity datacommons since its inception in 2001 gbif has developed the most comprehensive portalto primary biodiversity data in the world currently enabling access to 177m biodiversityrecords and 1m species names served by 291 publishers in 35 countries the gbifinfrastructure provides tools for data owners to publish internet accessible copies of theirdata in an internationally agreed standardized format to ensure interoperability amongdatasets through training access to international experts and mentoring programmes gbif builds the capacity of national and regional institutions to become active fullyfunctional biodiversity information facilities as part of the coordinated globally distributedgbif network numerous studies demonstrate the utility of primary species level pointoccurrence data in improving our understanding of the main drivers of changes and losses ofglobal biodiversity the example of invasive alien species is described to demonstrate howgbif enabled data are contributing to this research domain however progress to date inmobilizing data and integrating online biodiversity datasets remains inadequate for manypriority applications owing to thematic gaps in content such as coverage of someecosystem types taxonomic groups regions and time periods gbif enabled data arebiased taxonomically towards better studied groups especially birds and over two thirds ofgbif enabled georeferenced records come from just three countries usa sweden uk dataset publication in africa asia and oceania is particularly underrepresented theoverriding bottleneck hampering progress in filling gaps is not informatics tools which arereasonably well developed instead the principal barriers are capture of biodiversity datacurrently in non digital formats insufficient institutionalization of incentives for publishingdata and inadequate enforcement of existing relevant policies operationalizing a proposedgbif enabled data publishing framework in combination with needed changes in policyand legal frameworks will address many of the obstacles to biodiversity dataset publication discovery and use,2009,0.592
Spridningsmönster och potentiella spridningsytor hos invasionsarten stor bockrot (Pimpinella major) i Tullgarns naturvårdsområde – ett framtida problem för områdets diversitet?,an organism that is transferred from one place to another causing major problems to the native species is termed invasive its natural dispersal across barriers may have been prevented but as man has turned able to rapidly travel all over the world organisms are brought to sites where they were never before observed adding the increasing global warming organisms may find it necessary to move around even further this might cause major disturbance to the biological diversity and hybridization and homogenization is one of many scenarios that could disturb the native diversity in sweden more that 2 3 of all alien plant species have been introduced to disturbed areas and the major introduction mechanism is gardening the object of study in this presentation pimpinella major apiaceae was introduced in sweden alongside garden grasses during the 19th century but has so far spread only marginally from the areas of introduction the aim of the study was to quantify the appearance of pimpinella major in different types of vegetation apart from road verges where it has been noted systematically for over a decade the investigation area covers most of the tullgarn nature reserve the result shows an astonishing tendency of p major to remain growing only along the roads in the area the very few findings besides next to roads are from deciduous and coniferous forests and fields it seems that pimpinella major almost without exception prefers heavily disturbed areas and access to large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer from exhaust fumes,2009,0.225
Digital libraries for biodiversity and natural history collections,abstract this panel aims to discuss the importance of creating digital libraries for biodiversity and natural history collections the state of the art in terms of standards best practices and the challenges that natural history museums and herbaria face when trying to digitize their collections and the creation and management of personal digital libraries for botanical learning,2009,0.119
eBird: A citizen-based bird observation network in the biological sciences,new technologies are rapidly changing the way we collect archive analyze and share scientific data for example over the next several years it is estimated that more than one billion autonomous sensors will be deployed over large spatial and temporal scales and will gather vast quantities of data networks of human observers play a major role in gathering scientific data and whether in astronomy meteorology or observations of nature they continue to contribute significantly in this paper we present an innovative use of the internet and information technologies that better enhances the opportunity for citizens to contribute their observations to science and the conservation of bird populations ebird is building a web enabled community of bird watchers who collect manage and store their observations in a globally accessible unified database through its development as a tool that addresses the needs of the birding community ebird sustains and grows participation birders scientists and conservationists are using ebird data worldwide to better understand avian biological patterns and the environmental and anthropogenic factors that influence them developing and shaping this network over time ebird has created a near real time avian data resource producing millions of observations per year,2009,0.222
Designing an Information System for the Preservation of the Insular Tropical Environment of Reunion Island,decision makers who wish to manage insular tropical environments more efficiently need to narrow the gap between the production of scientific knowledge in universities or other labs and its pragmatic use by the general public and administrations today one of the main challenges concerning the environment is the preservation of the biodiversity of ecosystems that suffer from urban and agricultural pressure as we can only protect what we know it is all the more important to share expert knowledge about habitats and species by using internet in order to educate the public about their wealth and beauty based on reunion island and taking into consideration an expected population growth of over 30 in the next twenty years we are working to predict the human impact on this closed territory to help tackle these two questions about biodiversity and land consumption we have designed an information system is in the framework of the etic program our aim is to enhance insular tropical environment research in order to help the reunion national park to manage its protected territory on the one hand biodiversity research is handled statically using knowledge bases and databases to enhance systematics and ecological university research on the other hand spatial planning concerns are treated dynamically using multi agent systems to simulate population densification movements these software technologies have been implemented and integrated through a common architectural system in the etic program they were conceived using web services that allow each module to communicate its functionalities and information with one another as well as with external systems,2009,0.184
Gossypium Bioinformatics Resources,the primary goal of this chapter is to provide practical information for utilizing the array of gossypium bioinformatics resources that are presently available to establish the setting the chapter begins with the description of a survey of gossypium bioinformatics resources that was undertaken by the author in early 2007 resources are categorized by life science area s available data types and available modes of data access navigating resources and searching for gossypium data is then described through a broad collection of search examples that cover data categories ranging from maps markers and genomic sequence through pedigree phenotype and agroecology related possibilities for automated access to and utilization of resource data through web services and workflows are described along with examples finally the potential impacts of whole genome sequencing are noted especially those affecting the range of data types and interface tools offered and the utilization of data exchange standards and ontologies,2009,0.347
Different climatic envelopes among invasive populations may lead to underestimations of current and future biological invasions,abstract aim we explore the impact of calibrating ecological niche models enms using 1 native range nr data versus 2 entire range er data native and invasive on projections of current and future distributions of three hieracium species locationh aurantiacum h murorum and h pilosella are native to europe and invasive in australia new zealand and north america methods differences among the native and invasive realized climatic niches of each species were quantified eight enms in biomod were calibrated with 1 nr and 2 er data current european north american and australian distributions were projected future australian distributions were modelled using four climate change scenarios for 2030 results the invasive climatic niche of h murorum is primarily a subset of that expressed in its native range invasive populations of h aurantiacum and h pilosella occupy different climatic niches to those realized in their native ranges furthermore geographically separate invasive populations of these two species have distinct climatic niches enms calibrated on the realized niche of native regions projected smaller distributions than models incorporating data from speciesâ entire ranges and failed to correctly predict many known invasive populations under future climate scenarios projected distributions decreased by similar percentages regardless of the data used to calibrate enms however the overall sizes of projected distributions varied substantially main conclusions this study provides quantitative evidence that invasive populations of hieracium species can occur in areas with different climatic conditions than experienced in their native ranges for these and similar species calibration of enms based on nr data only will misrepresent their potential invasive distribution these errors will propagate when estimating climate change impacts thus incorporating data from speciesâ entire distributions may result in a more thorough assessment of current and future ranges and provides a closer approximation of the elusive fundamental niche,2009,0.71
Modelling the impact of Hieracium spp. on protected areas in Australia under future climates,anthropogenically induced climate change is one of the most important global threats to biodiversity understanding its impact on the distribution of exotic plant species is critical for developing effective adaptation and management strategies however there is insufficient information currently available on the biodiversity at risk from 1 exotic plant invasions 2 climate change and 3 the interaction between these two major threats to develop such strategies we use ecological niche models as a first step to identify zones inside and outside australian protected areas that may be most at risk from invasions of three species of hieracium hawkweeds under current and future 2030 and 2070 climate scenarios should current control and eradication methods fail these perennial herbs are native to europe and invasive to new zealand and north america naturalised in australia hawkweeds threaten native tussock grasslands and the grazing industry and have been placed on the national alert list using eight ecological niche models currently available in the software package biomod we found that these species have yet to realize the extent of their climatic distribution under present day climate in australia as climate change accelerates the climatic range of hawkweeds was projected to contract overall however much of the australian alps which contain large contiguous tracts of reserves and many endemic species will continue to retain climatically suitable areas for hawkweeds through to 2070 these results emphasise the need for ongoing monitoring as well as focused control to minimize the likelihood of hawkweeds realizing their invasive potential in protected areas and beyond,2009,0.715
"Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life",background natural history science is characterised by a single immense goal to document describe and synthesise all facets pertaining to the diversity of life that can only be addressed through a seemingly infinite series of smaller studies the discipline s failure to meaningfully connect these small studies with natural history s goal has made it hard to demonstrate the value of natural history to a wider scientific community digital technologies provide the means to bridge this gap results we describe the system architecture and template design of scratchpads a data publishing framework for groups of people to create their own social networks supporting natural history science scratchpads cater to the particular needs of individual research communities through a common database and system architecture this is flexible and scalable enough to support multiple networks each with its own choice of features visual design and constituent data our data model supports web services on standardised data elements that might be used by related initiatives such as gbif and the encyclopedia of life a scratchpad allows users to organise data around user defined or imported ontologies including biological classifications automated semantic annotation and indexing is applied to all content allowing users to navigate intuitively and curate diverse biological data including content drawn from third party resources a system of archiving citable pages allows stable referencing with unique identifiers and provides credit to contributors through normal citation processes conclusion our framework http scratchpads eu currently serves more than 1 100 registered users across 100 sites spanning academic amateur and citizen science audiences these users have generated more than 130 000 nodes of content in the first two years of use the template of our architecture may serve as a model to other research communities developing data publishing frameworks outside biodiversity research,2009,0.029
Drivers of euphausiid species abundance and numerical abundance in the Atlantic Ocean,mid ocean ridges are common features of the worldâ s oceans but there is a lack of understanding as to how their presence affects overlying pelagic biota the mid atlantic ridge mar is a dominant feature of the atlantic ocean here we examined data on euphausiid distribution and abundance arising from several international research programmes and from the continuous plankton recorder we used a generalized additive model gam framework to explore spatial patterns of variability in euphausiid distribution on and at either side of the mar from 60â n to 55â s in conjunction with variability in a suite of biological physical and environmental parameters euphausiid species abundance peaked in mid latitudes and was significantly higher on the ridge than in adjacent waters but the ridge did not influence numerical abundance significantly sea surface temperature sst was the most important single factor influencing both euphausiid numerical abundance and species abundance increases in sea surface height variance a proxy for mixing increased the numerical abundance of euphausiids gam predictions of variability in species abundance as a function of sst and depth of the mixed layer were consistent with present theories which suggest that pelagic niche availability is related to the thermal structure of the near surface water more deeply mixed water contained higher euphausiid biodiversity in addition to exposing present distributional patterns the gam framework enables responses to potential future and past environmental variability including temperature change to be explored,2009,0.469
A tribute to Dr Gaden S. Robinson (1949–2009),taxonomist who worked with species 2000 itis catalogue of life http www sp2000 org to provide updates,2009,0.407
Will future anthropogenic climate change increase the potential distribution of the alien invasive Cuban treefrog (Anura: Hylidae)?,the invasive alien cuban treefrog osteopilus sepentrionalis is native to cuba the bahamas and some adjacent islands it was accidentally introduced to florida puerto rico and some hawaiian islands where it has become a predator and competes with native wildlife we have used a maximum entropy ecological niche modelling approach to model its potential spread derived from current climate conditions as present in its native geographic distribution and we project that model into future climate change scenarios in order to detect new areas that are potentially threatened our model applying current climatic conditions suggested high probabilities of occurrence in countries around the gulf of mexico projections of potential distribution under future anthropogenic global warming scenarios suggest an overall extension of the potential distribution if the predictive maps are interpreted as depicting the invasive potential of o septentrionalis strategies to prevent further invasion should focus on biosafety measures within the areas highlighted,2009,0.138
"The coastal-disjunct mesic flora in the inland Pacific Northwest of USA and Canada: refugia, dispersal and disequilibrium",abstract aim understanding the history of the mesic adapted plant species of eastern british columbia and northern idaho disjunct from their main coastal distribution may suggest how biotas reorganize in the face of climate change and dispersal barriers for different species current evidence supports establishment of the disjunction via an inland glacial refugium via recent dispersal from the coast or via a combination of both in this study the modern distributions of the coastal disjunct vascular plants are analysed with respect to modern climate to examine how refugia and or dispersal limitation control regional patterns in species richness location north west north america methods the distributions of nine tree and 58 understorey species with a coastal disjunct pattern were compiled on a 50 km grid the relationship between species richness and an estimate of available moisture was calculated separately for formerly glaciated and unglaciated portions of the coastal and inland regions growth habit and dispersal mode were assessed as possible explanatory variables for species distributions results species richness shows a strong relationship to climate in coastal unglaciated areas but no relationship to climate in inland glaciated areas in inland glaciated areas richness is c 70 lower than that expected from climate species with animal dispersed seeds occupy a larger portion of coastal and inland regions than species with less dispersal potential main conclusions modern patterns of diversity are consistent with both refugia and dispersal processes in establishing the coastal disjunct pattern the inland glacial refugium is marked by locally high diversity and several co distributed endemics in the inland glaciated area dispersal limitation has constrained diversity despite the nearby refugia onset of mesic climate within only the last 3000 years and the low dispersal capacity of many species in the refugium may explain this pattern this study suggests that vascular plant species will face significant challenges responding to climate change on fragmented landscapes,2009,0.883
"Distribution and ecology of the assemblages of myxomycetes associated with major vegetation types in Big Bend National Park, USA",the distribution and ecology of the assemblages of myxomycetes associated with four different microhabitats were studied in big bend national park in texas during mar 2005 twelve plots 30 ã 30 m were established along an elevational gradient that extended from 564 to 1807 m samples of aerial bark from dead and living trees aerial litter dead but still attached plant parts ground litter fallen dead plant parts and ground bark fragments of fallen bark were collected from these plots which encompassed all of the major vegetation types found in the park four hundred forty seven moist chambers were prepared and 95 8 428 produced some evidence either fruit bodies or plasmodia of myxomycetes a total of 71 species were recorded with ground litter yielding most 45 species aerial litter aerial bark and ground bark yielded 44 39 and 37 species respectively species abundance distribution measures diversity dominance and similarities varied among the four microhabitats as well as among the major vegetation types canonical correspondence analysis cca showed that species distribution patterns were closely related to 1 the major environmental complex gradients associated with differences in elevation temperature moisture conditions that occur from one locality to another and 2 the different types of microhabitat,2009,0.947
The role of spatial and genetic modeling to biogeography,one of the most persistent challenges in biology is explaining the distribution of animal taxa quantitative explanations for the distribution of organisms are challenged by the complexity of factors that potentially limit a species range including topography ecology climate and biology because of limits on data and approaches early biogeographers were hampered in their ability to explain patterns here i benefit from two primary developments in biogeography my research draws from the accumulation of data across several scientific disciplines and advances in spatial and statistical approaches to examine the distribution of animal taxa within an integrative biogeography framework i combine ecological climatic and genetic data and analyses to address these primary issues with biogeographical distributions 1 reconstructing the colonization history of taxa 2 distinguishing between pleistocene source and pleistocene refugial populations 3 understanding how distribution constraints influence population connectivity and the evolutionary potential of species populations and 4 modeling the ecological and genetic parameters that most influence the extirpation of local populations,2009,0.686
"Web-oriented GIS system for monitoring, conservation and law enforcement of the Brazilian Amazon",a web gis wgis system for the brazilian amazon named imazongeo and based on open source and public domain data is presented imazongeo was built following three principles first the system is based on spatial data infrastructure architecture and web interface built using free software and public domain data second we went beyond visualization of maps and spatial queries by providing information obtained with spatial analysis models to do that we designed a database that stores the results of previously defined spatial analyses and developed customized reports and query tools to facilitate fast access of information by end users finally the system is application oriented in the areas of forest monitoring conservation and forest law enforcement meaning that it aims to contribute to support the protection of brazilian amazon forests we illustrate these principles by presenting imazongeoâ s technology architecture content and tools moreover we present two successful cases to demonstrate how the system is being used we conclude the paper discussing the challenges and potential solutions to turning our wgis sdi system into an internet hub of geo information about the brazilian amazon,2009,0.068
Use of extensive habitat inventories in biodiversity studies,large monitoring programs exist in many countries and are necessary to assess present and past biodiversity status and to evaluate the consequences of habitat degradation or destruction using such an extensive data set of the floristic richness in the paris ile de france region france we compared different sampling efforts and protocols in different habitat units to highlight the best methods for assessing the actual plant biodiversity our results indicate that existing data can be used for a general understanding of site differences but analysts should be aware of the limitations of the data due to non random selection of sites inconsistent observer knowledge and inconsistent sampling period the average species diversity recorded in a specific habitat does not necessarily reflect its actual diversity unless the monitoring effort was very strong overall increasing the sampling effort in a given region allows improvement of the 1 number of habitats visited 2 the total sampled area for a given habitat type 3 the number of seasons investigated our results indicate that the sampling effort should be planned with respect to these functional spatial and temporal heterogeneities and to the question examined while the effort should be applied to as many habitats as possible for the purpose of capturing a large proportion of regional diversity or comparing different regions inventories should be conducted in different seasons for the purpose of comparing species richness in different habitats,2009,0.452
Geoweb Services for Sharing Modelling Results in Biodiversity Networks,abstract biodiversity researchers in different institutions deal with predictive models for species distribution these models are useful for biodiversity conservation policies species distribution modelling tools need large datasets from different sources and use many algorithms to improve biodiversity science scientists need to share models data and results and should be able to reproduce experiments from others this article presents a geoweb service architecture that supports sharing of modelling results and enables researchers to perform new modelling experiments we show the feasibility of the proposed architecture by developing a set of prototype services called web biodiversity collaborative modelling services â wbcms they provide a set of geospatial web services that support the sharing of species distribution models the article includes an example of a model instance that explains the wbcms prototype we believe that wbcms shows how to set up a cooperative research network on biodiversity research,2009,0.025
Competition at the range boundary in the slimy salamander: using reciprocal transplants for studies on the role of biotic interactions in spatial distributions,summary 1determining the factors that influence the distribution of species has been a longstanding goal in the field of ecology new techniques such as ecological niche modelling have the potential to aid in addressing many broad questions in ecology evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology 2this study combines broad scale ecological niche models with fine scaled studies of biotic interactions to examine how abiotic and biotic interactions affect the spatial distribution of the terrestrial salamander species plethodon glutinosus northern slimy salamander in a potential contact zone shared with plethodon mississippi mississippi slimy salamander 3the core habitat in the interior portion of the range of p glutinosus and the contact zone are distributed in unique environmental niche space 4the form of competition inter or intraspecific significantly affected mass loss of adult salamanders salamanders lost more mass when interacting with a heterospecific 5abiotic conditions strongly influenced the impact of competition on salamanders under stressful environmental conditions at the field site located in the contact zone salamanders lost more mass than at the field site located in the interior of the range 6furthermore adult salamanders from range edge populations and core populations from the interior of the range differed in their respective abilities to compete under the abiotic conditions in the contact zone,2009,0.666
Large-scale Research Infrastructures to assist in understanding and managing our Planet’s Biodiversity,understanding the biodiversity system requires a â œsystems biologyâ approach in addition to the reductionist method with experiments on small components of the system this methodological approach requires the availability of large scale databases based on intensive observations and measurements together with advanced analytical and modelling software in a high performance computing environment the european strategy forum on research infrastructures selected the â lifewatch e science and technology infrastructure for biodiversity researchâ as a promising development to construct facilities for this new approach it will allow collaborative networks the integrated use of public resources such as data repositories sensors and computational capacity through a service oriented architecture likewise the biodiversity policy domain will benefit from new dedicated decision support services,2009,0.082
"A checklist to the wasps of Peru (Hymenoptera, Aculeata)",the first checklist to the 225 genera and 1169 reported species group taxa of aculeate wasps of peru is presented the list is based on a literature survey and examination of peruvian entomological collections and include locality references for each taxon bibliographic references for the identification of fami lies genera and species are provided when available the occurrence data are published in addition as downloadable files doi 10 3897 zookeys 15 196 app 2 ds doi 10 3897 zookeys 15 196 app 3 ds and doi 10 3897 zookeys 15 196 app 4 ds and were uploaded onto gbif infrastructure simultaneously with the publication process the following new combinations are proposed ancistroceroides cirrifer comb n zavattari 1912 ancistrocerus epicus comb n zavattari 1912 and stenodynerus corallineipes comb n zavattari 1912,2009,0.52
Insect Biodiversity in the Afrotropical Region,summary 10 1002 9781444308211 ch5 abs this chapter contains sections titled what do we know about afrotropical insects an information management program the role of insects in ecosystem processes and as indicators of environmental quality dung beetles as a case study africa wide pests and training appropriate taxonomists fruit flies as a case study sentinel groups conclusions references,2009,0.293
"Barcoding Antarctic Biodiversity: current status and the CAML initiative, a case study of marine invertebrates",the census of antarctic marine life caml aims to collate dna barcode data for antarctic marine species dna barcoding is a technique that uses a short gene sequence from a standardised region of the genome as a diagnostic â biomarkerâ for species this study aimed to quantify genetic data currently available in genbank in order to establish whether a representative cross section of antarctic marine taxa and bio geographic areas has been sequenced and to propose priorities for barcoding with a particular emphasis on marine invertebrate species it was found that amongst marine invertebrate fauna sequence information covers a limited range of taxa and areasâ mainly crustacea annelida and mollusca from the weddell sea and the antarctic peninsula only 15 of genes sequenced in antarctic marine invertebrates were the standard barcode gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 co1 the majority were other nuclear and mitochondrial genes there is an urgent need for more in depth genetic barcoding and species identification studies in antarctic science from a range of taxa and areas given the rate of climate driven habitat changes that might lead to extinctions in the region caml hopes to redress the balance by collecting and sequencing over the circum antarctic area using material from voyages that occurred during 2008 and 2009 within the framework of the international polar year ipy,2009,0.712
Standardization and optimization of arthropod inventories—the case of Iberian spiders,conservation of species requires accurate knowledge on their distribution for most groups this can only be achieved through targeted biodiversity assessment programs that must explicitly incorporate comparability and efficiency in their definition these require the standardization and optimization of sampling protocols especially for mega diverse arthropod taxa this study had two objectives 1 propose guidelines and statistical methods to improve the standardization and optimization of arthropod inventories and 2 to propose a standardized and optimized protocol for iberian spiders based on such guidelines and methods definition of the protocol has the following four steps firstly the evaluation of the source data to ensure that the protocol is based on close to complete sampling of a number of sites secondly optimizing the effort per collecting method using an iterative algorithm that optimizes the combination of methods and samples per method tested in the different sites thirdly defining the overall effort stop rules considering not only desired sampling completeness levels but also practical strategies during field work finally standardizing the protocol by finding common results between the optimal options for the different sites the steps listed were successfully followed in the determination of a sampling protocol for iberian spiders a protocol with three sub protocols of varying degrees of effort 24 96 and 320 h of sampling is proposed i also present recommendations on how to apply the same principles to other regions and taxa,2009,0.226
New data on the distribution of dwarf ephemeral wetland vascular plant species and communities in western and north-western Poland,new phytosociological data are provided on eleocharito caricetum bohemicae occurring on the easternmost range border in central europe the distribution maps of selected character species of eleocharito caricetum in central europe are presented,2009,0.471
"Spatial prediction of species' distributions from occurrence-only records: combining point pattern analysis, ENFA and regression-kriging",a computational framework to map species distributions realized density using occurrence only data and environmental predictors is presented and illustrated using a textbook example and two case studies distribution of root vole microtes oeconomus in the netherlands and distribution of white tailed eagle nests haliaeetus albicilla in croatia the framework combines strengths of point pattern analysis kernel smoothing ecological niche factor analysis enfa and geostatistics logistic regression kriging as implemented in the spatstat adehabitat and gstat packages of the r environment for statistical computing a procedure to generate pseudo absences is proposed it uses habitat suitability index hsi derived through enfa and distance from observations as weight maps to allocate pseudo absence points this design ensures that the simulated pseudo absences fall further away from the occurrence points in both feature and geographical spaces the simulated pseudo absences can then be combined with occurrence locations and used to build regression kriging prediction models the output of prediction are either probabilitiesy of species occurrence or density measures addition of the pseudo absence locations has proven effective the adjusted r square increased from 0 71 to 0 80 for root vole 562 records and from 0 69 to 0 83 for white tailed eagle 135 records respectively pseudo absences improve spreading of the points in feature space and ensure consistent mapping over the whole area of interest results of cross validation leave one out method for these two species showed that the model explains 98 of the total variability in the density values for the root vole and 94 of the total variability for the white tailed eagle the framework could be further extended to generalized multivariate linear geostatistical models and spatial prediction of multiple species a copy of the r script and step by step instructions to run such analysis are available via contact author s website,2009,0.342
Network-based exploration and visualisation of ecological data,networks structured graphs consisting of sets of nodes connected by edges provide a rich framework for data visualisation and exploratory analyses although rarely used for the visualisation of ecological data networks are well suited to this purpose including data that one might not normally think of as a network we present a simple method for transforming a data matrix into network format and show how this can be used as the basis for interactive exploratory analyses of ecological data the method is demonstrated using a database of marine zooplankton samples acquired in the southern ocean the network analyses revealed zooplankton community structures that are in good agreement with previously published results variations in community structure were observed to be related to the temporal and spatial pattern of sampling as well as to physical environmental factors such as sea ice cover the analyses also revealed a number of errors in the data including taxon identification errors and instrument failures the method allows the analyst to generate networks from different combinations of variables in the data set and to examine the effects of varying parameters such as the scales of spatial temporal and taxonomic aggregation this flexibility allows the analyst to rapidly gain a number of perspectives on the data and provides a powerful mechanism for exploration,2009,0.087
Data Management System and Application Performance Evaluation of animal genetic resources,data management system has been developed to efficiently search for data about the characterization of animal genetic resources characterization data by using a method of managing meta data definitions for each survey item which reduces the burden of additional maintenance fixes and easy survey and data input screen for the program could make the survey manual and electronic file generation characteristics the information providing method for selecting the histogram comparison can send information to effectively studied using aic we were able to show its effectiveness in addition data provenance the breed name strain name the program was created to build the database for data input and output can be systematically registered in three categories and individual names to expose the history data for the web search system this search system is expected to be the use of animal genetic resources in research and education,2009,0.065
"Sobre Murdannia spirata (L.) Brückn. (Commelinaceae), nueva especie alóctona en la flora europea",the presence of murdannia spirata commelinaceae as an exotic subspontaneous taxa for the european flora is first time quoted here this species has been found inside the municipal nurseries in el saler natural park of la albufera de valencia spain the coin cidence with other recent appointments of new invader taxa in plant nurseries i e ludwigia hyssopifolia for the iberian peninsula induces us to suspect that the coconut fiber used as complement ary substrata for plant culture can be the main entry vector for these introductions taxonomy,2009,0.533
ZooBank and the next edition of the Code – challenges and new developments in the 250 th year of zoological nomenclature,with electronic communication rapidly changing the scientific working environment the international commission on zoological nomenclature works on three major initiatives to adapt the current code while at the same time safeguarding the stability of nomenclature an amendment to the code has been proposed to allow electronic only publications as available outlets for nomenclatural information such names would need to be registered in zoobank the proposed official registry of zoological nomenclature for names and nomenclatural acts published through traditional paper based works registration would be voluntary but encouraged a new more user friendly edition of the zoological code is in preparation for the development of zoobank and the new edition of the code the commission encourages broad involvement of the taxonomic community,2009,0.182
"Location, location, location: utilizing pipelines and services to more effectively georeference the world's biodiversity data",background increasing the quantity and quality of data is a key goal of biodiversity informatics leading to increased fitness for use in scientific research and beyond this goal is impeded by a legacy of geographic locality descriptions associated with biodiversity records that are often heterogeneous and not in a map ready format the biodiversity informatics community has developed best practices and tools that provide the means to do retrospective georeferencing e g the biogeomancer toolkit a process that converts heterogeneous descriptions into geographic coordinates and a measurement of spatial uncertainty even with these methods and tools data publishers are faced with the immensely time consuming task of vetting georeferenced localities furthermore it is likely that overlap in georeferencing effort is occurring across data publishers solutions are needed that help publishers more effectively georeference their records verify their quality and eliminate the duplication of effort across publishers results we have developed a tool called biogeobif which incorporates the high throughput and standardized georeferencing methods of biogeomancer into a beginning to end workflow custodians who publish their data to the global biodiversity information facility gbif can use this system to improve the quantity and quality of their georeferences biogeobif harvests records directly from the publishers access points georeferences the records using the biogeomancer web service and makes results available to data managers for inclusion at the source using a web based password protected group management system for each data publisher we leave data ownership management and vetting responsibilities with the managers and collaborators of each data set we also minimize the georeferencing task by combining and storing unique textual localities from all registered data access points and dynamically linking that information to the password protected record information for each publisher conclusion we have developed one of the first examples of services that can help create higher quality data for publishers mediated through the global biodiversity information facility and its data portal this service is one step towards solving many problems of data quality in the growing field of biodiversity informatics we envision future improvements to our service that include faster results returns and inclusion of more georeferencing engines,2009,0.044
The Ocean Tracking Network – Adding Marine Animal Movements to the Global Ocean Observing System,researchers in the ocean tracking network otn are pressing for standards and protocols to allow universal storage and sharing of a broad spectrum of biological and physical oceanographic information society needs information to manage marine resources and once it invests in some standardized approaches industry will also invest knowing that the new products they develop will be compatible with a global system we summarize the planned otn and some recurring themes from recent tracking and telemetry workshops around the world we include the ways that industry believes it can deliver a picture of the complex interactions of biology and physic that are the world s oceans where animals go what conditions they experience how they interact and how individual s behaviours change on time scales relevant to climate change is information that scientists and managers need in order to protect and restore ocean productivity,2009,0.381
High dispersal potential has maintained long-term population stability in the North Atlantic copepod Calanus finmarchicus,the cool water copepod calanus finmarchicus is a key species in north atlantic marine ecosystems since it represents an important food resource for the developmental stages of several fish of major economic value over the last 40 years however data from the continuous plankton recorder survey have highlighted a 70 per cent reduction in c finmarchicus biomass coupled with a gradual northward shift in the species s distribution which have both been linked with climate change to determine the potential for c finmarchicus to track changes in habitat availability and maintain stable effective population sizes we have assessed levels of gene flow and dispersal in current populations as well as using a coalescent approach together with palaeodistribution modelling to elucidate the historical population demography of the species over previous changes in earth s climate our findings indicate high levels of dispersal and a constant effective population size over the period 359 000â 566 000 bp and suggest that c finmarchicus possesses the capacity to track changes in available habitat a feature that may be of crucial importance to the species s ability to cope with the current period of global climate change,2009,0.61
Semantic Technologies to Support Teaching and Learning with Cases: Challenges and Opportunities,visions of a â semantic webâ and the technologies standards and services associated with it have the potential to support and enhance teaching and learning as yet this potential has not been practically demonstrated in ways that are accessible to teachers and students â ensemble semantic technologies to support the teaching and learning of case based learningâ is currently exploring the potential of semantic technologies to support and enhance teaching and learning in fields in higher education where knowledge is complex changing or contested and where as a result case based learning is the pedagogy of choice this paper describes how the wide range of case based learning approaches has informed the selection development and deployment of semantic technologies and identifies a number of key challenges and areas for development which would enable more widespread adoption of semantic technologies by teachers and students,2009,0.098
Pathway analysis: aquatic plants imported in 10 EPPO countries,pathway analyses are regarded by national plant protection organizations as a very efficient way to address the risks posed by invasive alien species data on import of aquatic plants was obtained from 10 eppo countries austria czech republic estonia france germany hungary the netherlands latvia switzerland and turkey and aggregated in order to consider whether invasive or potentially invasive alien plants could be introduced in the eppo region through this pathway this study highlights that this pathway mainly consists of the import of tropical plants for use in aquaria and which do not represent a risk due to their climatic requirements however a few species require thorough attention owing to the threats they cause of the 247 species recorded as imported only 10 are currently considered to be a threat representing 4 of the total number of plants imported these 10 invasive or potentially invasive species continue to be traded in huge quantities in spite of the fact that crassula helmsii and eichhornia crassipes are recommended for regulation by eppo azolla filiculoides egeria densa elodea nuttalli lagarosiphon major ludwigia grandiflora and myriophyllum aquaticum should have their entry and spread prevented by countries and hydrilla verticillata and pistia stratiotes are recorded on the eppo alert list six additional species have been identified as representing a moderate to high potential risk alternanthera sessilis adiantum raddianum gymnocoronis spilanthoides hygrophila polysperma limnophila sessiliflora and syngonium podophyllum these species could be subject to further investigation possibly a pest risk analysis to evaluate the risk they may represent,2009,0.613
Cheminformatics based selection and cytotoxic effects of herbal extracts,bioinformatics and traditional medicine can be used in discovery and design of novel candidate drugs to efficient cancer chemotherapy in this study similarity search tools employed to screen and introduce novel herbs with antitumor property several novel herbs have been selected by using logical computational algorithms and assayed on six cancerous cell lines complementary assays involved hemolytic and antifungal mic tests have been performed to determine selectivity and their biocompatibility with rbc of herbal extracts final findings may point at selective activity of herbal extracts rheum ribes ficus bengalensis morus alba musa sapientum arnebia decumbens citrus limon fraxinus excelsior rumex acetosella arnebia echioides in inducing cytotoxicity on cancerous cell lines in the present research in vitro results confirmed predicted findings from our in silico work complementary assays including antifungal mic and hemolytic tests were carried out also to determine selectivity of herbal extracts findings resulted from hemolytic test showed that candidate herbal extracts did not induce hemolysis similar to negative control also antifungal test results indicated that six herbal extracts had antifungal activity in concentration of 250 mu g ml,2009,0.235
Data Mining for Global Trends in Mountain Biodiversity,thanks to advances in electronic archiving of biodiversity data and the digitization of climate and other geophysical data a new era in biogeography functional ecology and evolutionary ecology has begun in data mining for global trends in mountain biodiversity christian korner eva m spehn and a team of experts from the global mountain biodiversity assessment of diversitas explore two of the hottest subjects in science and technology biodiversity and data mining,2009,0.237
"Molecular phylogenetic interrelationships of the south Asian cyprinid genera Danio, Devario and Microrasbora (Teleostei, Cyprinidae, Danioninae)",molecular analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences from 159 species of the family cyprinidae supports the subfamily danioninae of which rasborinae is shown to be a junior synonym analysis of combined cytochrome b and a fragment of the nuclear rhodopsin gene from 68 species including 43 species representing the subfamily danioninae supports phylogenetic distinctness of danio and devario in the combined molecular analysis microrasbora rubescens chela laubuca devario and inlecypris form a clade with m gatesi m nana and m kubotai being in sister group position to the rest the sister group of this devario clade is danio inlecypris is synonymized with devario microdevario new genus is proposed for m gatesi m nana and m kubotai supported by morphological characters in the cytochrome b analysis m rubescens falls outside devario and there is no morphological support for including m rubescens in devario in the cytochrome b analysis esomus danionella is the sister group of danio and devario clades whereas in individual rhodopsin and combined analyses esomus is the sister group of danio and of danio and the devario clade respectively sundadanio presents at least one strong morphological synapomorphy with danio but is positioned in molecular trees either as a member of the cyprininae or as sister group of the remaining danioninae in the morphological analysis small sized species grouped together based on shared reductions that are not necessarily synapomorphies in the molecular analysis small sized species such as danionella and sundadanio possess long branches and their position varies but they did not group together this suggests morphological homoplasy but phylogenetic positions are not well supported in the molecular analyses,2009,0.822
The Science of Insect Taxonomy: Prospects and Needs,summary 10 1002 9781444308211 ch14 abs this chapter contains sections titled the what and why of taxonomy insect taxonomy missions insect taxonomy s grand challenge questions insect taxonomy needs and priorities integrative insect taxonomy accelerating descriptive taxonomy beware sirens of expediency conclusions references,2009,0.301
A botanical renaissance: state-of-the-art DNA bar coding facilitates an Automated Identification Technology system for plants,traditional taxonomic practices are insufficient on their own to cope with the growing need for accurate identifications the recent development of dna barcoding has been applied to plants the next step is the development of a high throughput automated identification technology ait system our research indicates that the efficacy of an ait system equates with savings in time and funding given the potential interconnectivity of web based applications we suggest an ait system for plants that uses several existing systems and suggest several applications where ait could serve as a tool for biologists and for society at large,2009,0.036
"Diversity and phytogeography of vascular epiphytes in a tropical-subtropical transition island, Taiwan",we present the first checklist of vascular epiphytes in taiwan based on herbarium specimens literature records and field observations epiphyte phytogeography was analyzed using takhtajan s modified division in floristic regions we ascertain the presence of 336 species of vascular epiphytes 24 families 105 genera in taiwan pteridophytes contribute most species 171 species followed by orchids 120 species epiphytes contribute 8 to taiwanese floristic diversity and epiphyte endemism is near 21 3 the extensive mountain system is probably the most effective driver for epiphyte diversification and endemicity in taiwan phytogeographically taiwanese epiphytes exhibit equal affinity to the malesian region southern china and indo china and eastern asiatic regions however some species have a disjunctive distribution between taiwan and sw china and or e himalaya presumably related to low habitat similarity with adjacent china and or the legacy of late quaternary climate change vascular epiphyte distribution patterns corroborate the phytogeographical separation of the island of lanyu from the main island of taiwan along kanto s neo wallace line,2009,0.774
"New insights into the phylogeny of Pleopeltis and related Neotropical genera (Polypodiaceae, Polypodiopsida)",the fern family polypodiaceae plays an important role in neotropical epiphyte diversity most of its american representatives are assembled in a monophyletic clade that apart from the grammitids nearly exclusively comprises species restricted to the new world the phylogenetic relationships of these ferns are still insufficiently understood and many taxonomic problems such as natural circumscriptions of the genera polypodium and pleopeltis were unresolved here we address one of the two main lineages within new world polypodiaceae including pecluma phlebodium pleopeltis and polypodium our study is based on dna sequence data from four plastid regions that were generated for 72 species representing all putative major taxonomic groups within this lineage the analyses reveal three major clades 1 polypodium plus pleurosoriopsis 2 pecluma plus phlebodium and some species of polypodium and 3 pleopeltis and related genera the last clade contains species of pleopeltis and polypodium as well as microphlebodium neurodium dicranoglossum and pseudocolysis all species included in the clade display conspicuous persistent peltate laminar scales that are not found in other species of this lineage our results suggest a reconsideration of the generic concept of pleopeltis with peltate laminar scales being the genus key character,2009,0.866
Assessing the accuracy of species distribution models to predict amphibian species richness patterns.,1 evaluating the distribution of species richness where biodiversity is high but has been insufficiently sampled is not an easy task species distribution modelling has become a useful approach for predicting their ranges based on the relationships between species records and environmental variables overlapping predictions of individual distributions could be a useful strategy for obtaining estimates of species richness and composition in a region but these estimates should be evaluated using a proper validation process which compares the predicted richness values and composition with accurate data from independent sources 2 in this study we propose a simple approach to estimate model performance for several distributional predictions generated simultaneously this approach is particularly suitable when species distribution modelling techniques that require only presence data are used 3 the individual distributions for the 370 known amphibian species of mexico were predicted using maxent to model data on their known presence 66 113 presence only records distributions were subsequently overlapped to obtain a prediction of species richness accuracy was assessed by comparing the overall species richness values predicted for the region with observed and predicted values from 118 well surveyed sites each with an area of c 100 km 2 which were identified using species accumulation curves and nonparametric estimators 4 the derived models revealed a remarkable heterogeneity of species richness across the country provided information about species composition per site and allowed us to obtain a measure of the spatial distribution of prediction errors examining the magnitude and location of model inaccuracies as well as separately assessing errors of both commission and omission highlights the inaccuracy of the predictions of species distribution models and the need to provide measures of uncertainty along with the model results 5 the combination of a species distribution modelling method like maxent and species richness estimators offers a useful tool for identifying when the overall pattern provided by all model predictions might be representing the geographical patterns of species richness and composition regardless of the particular quality or accuracy of the predictions for each individual species,2009,0.99
Assessing concurrent patterns of environmental niche and morphological evolution among species of horned lizards (Phrynosoma),abstract the prediction that variation in species morphology is related to environmental features has long been of interest to ecologists and evolutionary biologists many studies have demonstrated strong associations between morphological traits and local habitat characteristics but few have considered the extent to which morphological traits may be associated with environmental features across broad geographic areas here we use morphological environmental and phylogenetic data compiled from phrynosoma species to examine morphological and climatic variation across the geographic ranges of these species in an evolutionary context we find significant phylogenetic signal in speciesâ environmental niches but not in morphological traits furthermore we demonstrate a significant correlation between speciesâ environmental niches and morphological traits when phylogenetic history is accounted for in the analysis our results suggest the importance of climatic variables in influencing morphological variation among species and have implications for understanding how species distributions are constrained by environmental variation,2009,0.575
Prediction of the potential distribution of Ceratitis anonae in China based on ecological niche modeling (基于生态位模型的番荔枝实蝇潜在适生性分布预测(英文)),ceratitis anonae graham is an important quarantine invasive pest in china and its larvae are continually intercepted from fruits carried by incoming passengers at guangdong ports there are rare research reports about its potential distribution in china but the geographic distribution of this species is of considerable concern in terms of biosecurity in this study three different ecological modeling methods enfa mahalanobis typicality and maxent were used to predict its potential distribution the results show that maxent has the best prediction performance followed by mahalanobis typicality and enfa has the poorest performance and besides the difference of prediction capabilities between maxent and mahalanobis typicality is not significant based on prediction outcome of maxent suitable areas of c anonae in china are limited in guangxi guangdong hainan and a few areas of yunnan and hence the probability of c anonae permanently establishing in southern china exists but low jackknife analysis indicates that six variables have notable influence on the distribution pattern of c anonae i e ground frost frequency annual mean precipitation precipitation of october precipitation of april annual minimum temperature and vapor pressure,2009,0.398
Multi-level discrepancies with sharing data on protected areas: What we have and what we need for the global village,protected areas present a global heritage assessing conservation achievements in protected areas is of crucial importance with respect to the on time delivery of international biodiversity conservation targets however monitoring data from publicly accessible databases for comparative studies of conservation achievements in the protected areas of the world are very scarce if not non existent at first glance this is surprising because with regards to protected areas at least according to well established protected area management guidelines and widely accepted public mandates a great deal of monitoring work and data gathering is to be conducted this would imply that data on changes of biodiversity in protected areas could be expected to exist and the constant progress in information technologies and web tools engenders hope that some of it might even be available online for the global public this review article presents the results of an extensive online search and review of existing monitoring data from freely accessible online databases for its use in an assessment of conservation achievements in a larger sample of protected areas results show two contrary sides to the status quo of accessible data from the world wide web for conservation science data overkill and data scarcity with poor metadata provision while ever more research is in fact based on open access online data such as extrapolations of species ranges used in conservation management and planning it remains almost impossible to obtain a basic set of information for an assessment of conservation achievements within a larger number of protected areas this awareness has triggered a detailed discussion about the discrepancies in sharing data at the level of protected areas mismatching relationships between expected activities in protected areas and the capacity for delivering these requirements are certainly among the main challenges in addition the fear of data misuse potentially resulting in harm for nature careers and competencies still seems to be a critical barrier strictly controlling the willingness to share data various initiatives aimed at tackling technical and cultural obstacles are introduced and discussed to reach the goal of a modern resource management based on adaptive management using digital opportunities of the new millennium for a sustainable global village,2009,0.042
Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World,in australia and around the world biodiversity is under huge and growing pressure the pressures are pervasive and chronic in many places â invasive species habitat loss and climate change in particular but thereâ s also good news every day we are making exciting new discoveries about the breadth and depth of australiaâ s biodiversity since the first edition of the numbers of living species in australia and the world was produced in 2006 weâ ve discovered 48 reptiles about 200 new fish species and 1 184 flowering plants understanding of the global significance of australiaâ s biodiversity is also on the increase this comprehensive review of the endemism of australiaâ s plants and animals shows that a greater percentage of our plants and animals are found nowhere else in the world reptile endemism has jumped from 89 to 93 per cent mammals from 83 to 87 and frogs from 93 to 94 and close to 92 per cent of our vascular plants up from 90 per cent are unique to australia it is vital that we forge new and innovative ways of conserving and protecting this unique biodiversity at a landscape level harnessing core science and knowledge bases like this report will be key to creating new ways of meeting australiaâ s biodiversity challenges importantly they provide a benchmark for assessing and monitoring the future effects of climate change on australiaâ s biodiversity as we move into the international year of biodiversity in 2010 australia has the opportunity to show global leadership in biodiversity conservation this report the only one of its kind in the world is a positive start,2009,0.388
National BioResource Project Information Center,the information center is the hub and glue of the national bioresource project nbrp the center provides the nbrp portal site and has also contributed to the development of databases for diverse types of bioresources the program covers information on experimental living organisms as the core of nbrp and on specimens of biodiversity related to the activities of the japan node of the global biodiversity information facility gbif the framework of the former and the information facility of the latter are introduced,2009,0.29
Insect Biodiversity Informatics,this chapter contains sections titled primary specimen occurrence data taxonomic names literature characters encyclopedia of life tree of life conclusions and prospects acknowledgments references,2009,0.298
"Comia and Rhachiphyllum from the early Permian of Sumatra, Indonesia",recent expeditions to the early permian formations of jambi sumatra have produced material of a new species of peltasperm affinity comia variformis nov sp with a remarkably broad morphological range that touches on several other permian taxonomic groups it is found in association with material attributable to the callipterid genus rhachiphyllum in addition to supaia like material and an autunia fructification corroborating a peltasperm affinity palaeogeographic relationships of the morphologies found in c variformis and the other material show strong relationships with north china and even the angaran region suggesting a migration zone running from the north china block to the west sumatra west myamar terrane,2009,0.524
Distribution and potential impact of climate change on the sunflower prague Chlosyne lacinia (Lepidoptera:Nymphalidae),the existence of global climate change caused by anthropogenic impacts and the importance of predicting its biological effects have revived the interest in understanding abundance and distribution determining factors several methods that allow the creation of climate based ecological niche models can be used to predict species potential distribution and the effects that climate change can have over distributional areas building such models can help the understanding on how climate can determine species distributions as well as indicating pest infestation risk areas chlosyne lacinia caterpillars are a major sunflower helianthus annuus pest on brazil and its attacks at 50 and 70 days old plants can reduce the productivity up to 80 this work aimed at areas with suitable climate for the current and future potential occurrence of c lacinia and its subspecies at the american continent and for sunflower culture in brazil the models were created using mahalanobis distance and maximum entropy maxent methods for c lacinia and the subspecies c l adjutrix c l crocale c l lacinia and c l saundersii according to auc area under the sensibility versus specificity curve values model performance were great which explains the similarity of results from both methods the results showed that it is possible that the whole species distribution may not be altered by climate changes but the intra specific variation will be largely affected c l saundersii distribution is expected to shrink and be isolated and c l adjutrix can loose all suitable areas however these results can be affected by the gene flow between subspecies the areas with suitable climates for sunflower culture in brazil are expected descrease although it is possible that genetic improvement efforts can surpass climatic limitations allowing the occupancy of areas not predicted by the modeling and avoiding the effect of the pest even though distribution modeling methods are seldom used for pest distribution predictions its usage proved to be an interesting method for obtaining information about the species and the intra specific variation,2009,0.512
Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach,background a large part of our knowledge on the world s species is recorded in the corpus of biodiversity literature with well over hundred million pages and is represented in natural history collections estimated at 2 3 billion specimens but this body of knowledge is almost entirely in paper print form and is not directly accessible through the internet for the digitization of this literature new territories have to be chartered in the fields of technical legal and social issues that presently impede its advance the taxonomic literature seems especially destined for such a transformation discussion plazi was founded as an association with the primary goal of transforming both the printed and more recently born digital taxonomic literature into semantically enabled enhanced documents this includes the creation of a test body of literature an xml schema modeling its logic content taxonx the development of a mark up editor goldengate allowing also the enhancement of documents with links to external resources via life science identifiers lsid a repository for publications and issuance of bibliographic identifiers a dedicated server to serve the marked up content the plazi search and retrieval server srs and semantic tools to mine information plazi s workflow is designed to respect copyright protection and achieves extraction by observing exceptions and limitations existent in international copyright law conclusion the information found in plazi s databases taxonomic treatments as well as the metadata of the publications are in the public domain and can therefore be used for further scientific research without any restriction whether or not contained in copyrighted publications,2009,0.262
"Ecological niche modelling of montane mammals in the Great Basin, North America: examining past and present connectivity of species across basins and ranges",abstract aim the goal of this study was to determine the extent of suitable habitats across the basins and ranges of the great basin for 13 montane mammals in the present and during the last glacial maximum lgm for all these mammal species we test whether 1 more suitable habitat was available in basin areas during the lgm 2 suitable habitat shifted upwards in elevation between the lgm and the present 3 more ranges have suitable habitat than are currently occupied and 4 these species are currently restricted to suitable habitats at higher elevation range areas we also examine whether and how much distributional response varies among these montane mammal species location the great basin of western north america methods we re examine the past and present distributions of 13 great basin montane mammals using ecological niche modelling techniques that utilize now widely available species occurrence data and new fine scale past climatological gis layers in the present and at the lgm these methods provide an objective repeatable means for visual comparison of past and present modelled distributions for species examined in previous biogeographical studies results our results indicate greater areal and lower elevational suitable habitat in the lgm than at present for nearly all montane mammals and that there is more suitable habitat at present than is currently occupied our results also show that lowland areas provide suitable dispersal routes between ranges for most of the montane mammals both at the lgm and at present however three of the 13 species have little to no predicted suitable habitat in the lgm near currently occupied ranges in contrast to the pattern for the other 10 for these species the model results support more recent long distance colonization main conclusions our finding of suitable lowland dispersal routes in the present for most species supports and greatly extends similar findings from single species studies our results also provide a visually striking confirmation that changes in species distribution and colonization histories of great basin montane mammals vary in a fashion related to the tolerances and requirements of each of these species this has previously been hypothesized but not rigorously tested for multiple montane mammals in the region,2009,0.868
"Effectively searching specimen and observation data with TOQE, the thesaurus optimized query expander",todayâ s specimen and observation data portals lack a flexible mechanism able to link up thesaurus enabled data sources such as taxonomic checklist databases and expand user queries to related terms significantly enhancing result sets the toqe system thesaurus optimized query expander is a rest like xml web service implemented in python and designed for this purpose acting as an interface between portals and thesauri toqe allows the implementation of specialized portal systems with a set of thesauri supporting its specific focus it is both easy to use for portal programmers and easy to configure for thesaurus database holders who want to expose their system as a service for query expansions currently toqe is used in four specimen and observation data portals the documentation is available from http search biocase org toqe,2009,0.107
Historic marine invertebrate species inventory: case study of a science baseline towards establishing a marine conservation area,abstract 10 1002 aqc 1019 abs 1 assessing species diversity is a basic requirement for conservation and protecting biodiversity is a major goal of marine area conservation 2 a case study is presented on the development of a literature based 1870s to 2000 museum collection based georeferenced inventory of marine invertebrate species of the haida gwaii queen charlotte islands region canada 3 database structure and quality assurance are described along with including indigenous people s words for species towards using traditional knowledge within cooperative marine conservation area management 4 the utility of this type of inventory is proposed as a starting point for gathering regional biodiversity knowledge and facilitating addition of other knowledge types towards marine area conservation copyright â 2009 john wiley sons ltd,2009,0.281
"Evolutionary history, biogeography and eco-climatological differentiation of the genus Anthemis L. (Compositae, Anthemideae) in the circum-Mediterranean area",abstract aim to reconstruct the temporal geographical and eco climatological differentiation of the genus anthemis compositae anthemideae in the circum mediterranean region in order to evaluate the relative importance of geographical vs climatological differentiation processes in influencing the actual distribution patterns in this plant group location the circum mediterranean region including the iberian peninsula northern africa the italian and balkan peninsulas the aegean region and anatolia the caucasus the arabian peninsula and western asia methods the phylogeny of the genus anthemis was obtained from a maximum likelihood analysis based on nuclear ribosomal dna nrdna internal transcribed spacer its sequence data and the chronology of diversification was derived using a penalized likelihood approach the reconstruction of the spatial diversification of the genus was based on a dispersal vicariance diva analysis eco climatological niche differentiation was inferred by optimizing 19 bioclimatic variables onto the phylogeny a multi dimensional hypervolume proposed as a representation of the eco climatological niche and defined by the combination of ranges for all bioclimatic variables was calculated for each taxon and each internal node to identify â eco climatological vicarianceâ events in the phylogeny the pairwise overlap among hypervolumes of sister groups was calculated finally the temporal and clade wise relative importance of geographical vs eco climatological vicariance events was estimated results the temporal reconstruction shows a constant increase of lineages through the last 12 myr the geographical reconstruction suggests that anthemis diverged from the rest of the compositaeâ anthemideae in the eastern mediterranean region and from there radiated into the whole circum mediterranean region through successive dispersal and vicariance events the reconstruction of the eco climatological niches suggests a progressive adaptation from a montane humid climate towards arid environments and the typical mediterranean climate main conclusions the results presented here involved phylogenetic geographical and eco climatological reconstructions joint analyses of all of these aspects have assessed the relative importance of geological vs climatic forces that have affected the distributional history of the genus anthemis large scale differentiation patterns triggered by geological forces appear to have influenced the evolutionary history of the genus in a rather constant manner over the last 12 myr whereas climatic forces seem to have played an important role in two phases of the radiation process at around 9 ma when the area experienced the onset of a trend towards aridification and during the last 3 5 myr with the establishment of the typical mediterranean climate and the influence of pleistocene climate oscillations,2009,0.034
The value of species distribution models as a tool for conservation and ecology in Egypt and Britain,knowledge about the distribution of species is limited with extensive gaps in our knowledge particularly in tropical areas and in arid environments species distribution models offer a potentially very powerful tool for filling these gaps in our knowledge they relate a set of recorded occurrences of a species to environmental variables thought to be important in determining the distributions of species in order to predict where species will be found throughout an area of interest in this thesis i explore the development potential applications and possible limitations of distribution models using species from various taxonomic groups in two regions of the world butterflies mammals reptiles and amphibians in egypt and butterflies hoverflies and birds in great britain specifically i test 1 which modelling methods produce the best models 2 which variables correlate best with the distributions of species and in particular whether interactions among species can explain observed distributions 3 whether the distributions of some species correlate better with environmental variables than others and whether this variation can be explained by ecological characteristics of the species 4 whether the same environmental variables that explain speciesâ occurrence can also explain species richness and whether distribution models can be combined to produce an accurate model of species richness 5 whether the apparent accuracy of distribution models is supported by ground truthing and 6 whether the models can predict the impact of climate change on the distribution of species overall the use of distribution models is supported my models for species in both egypt and britain explained observed occurrence very well my results shed some light on factors that may be important in determining the distributions of species particularly on the importance of interactions among species as they currently stand distribution models appear unable to predict accurately the impacts of climate change,2009,0.995
Predicting the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America: anything goes with ecological niche modelling,abstract the availability of user friendly software and publicly available biodiversity databases has led to a rapid increase in the use of ecological niche modelling to predict species distributions a potential source of error in publicly available data that may affect the accuracy of ecological niche models enms and one that is difficult to correct for is incorrect or incomplete taxonomy here we remind researchers of the need for careful evaluation of database records prior to use in modelling especially when the presence of cryptic species is suspected or many records are based on indirect evidence to draw attention to this potential problem we construct enms for the north american sasquatch i e bigfoot specifically we use a large database of georeferenced putative sightings and footprints for sasquatch in western north america demonstrating how convincing environmentally predicted distributions of a taxonâ s potential range can be generated from questionable site occurrence data we compare the distribution of bigfoot with an enm for the black bear ursus americanus and suggest that many sightings of this cryptozoid may be cases of mistaken identity,2009,0.437
Establishment success of invasive ring-necked and monk parakeets in Europe,aim invasive alien species are a growing threat to biodiversity and identifying the mechanisms that enable these species to establish viable populations in their new environment is paramount for management of the problems they pose using an unusually large number of both failed and successful documented introductions of parakeets aves psittacidae in europe we test two of the major hypotheses on the establishment success of invading species namely the climate matching and the human activity hypothesis location european human population centres where ring necked parakeet psittacula krameri and or monk parakeet myiopsitta monachus introductions have occurred methods data on ring necked and monk parakeet introductions in europe were gathered from various sources including published books and articles but also from unpublished reports and local grey literature information was verified with experts from the region under consideration in order to test the climate matching hypothesis we verified whether the climatic factors that determine the parakeetsâ native ranges also explain establishment success in europe parakeet occurrence data from the native ranges were analysed using the presence only modelling method maxent and correlations between parakeet establishment and climatic and anthropogenic variables in europe were assessed using both stepwise logistic regression and the information theoretic model selection approach results the establishment success of ring necked and monk parakeets was found to be positively associated with human population density and both in the native and in the introduced regions parakeet occurrence was negatively correlated with the number of frost days thus parakeets are more likely to establish in warmer and human dominated areas main conclusions the large number of independent parakeet introductions in europe allows us to test the often used climate matching and human activity hypotheses at the species level we show that both hypotheses offer insight into the invasion process of monk and ring necked parakeets our results suggest that in the future parakeet establishment probability may increase even further because global warming is likely to cause a decrease in the number of frost days and because urbanization and human populations are still increasing,2009,0.523
Report of the IODE Group of Experts on Biological and Chemical Data Management and Exchange Practices (GE-BICH),this document provides information on the interâ sessional activities of the group of experts on biological and chemical data management and exchange practices during the period november 2006 to january 2009 the committee is invited to note the information on the activities of geâ bich and consider the proposal to revise geâ bich terms of reference and its proposed work plan for 2009â 2011,2009,0.225
"Lessons from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): Global infrastructure, data and tools to inform climate and biodiversity policy",this article was submitted without an abstract please refer to the full text pdf file,2009,0.083
Extinction risks of Amazonian plant species,estimates of the number and preferably the identity of species that will be threatened by land use change and habitat loss are an invaluable tool for setting conservation priorities here we use collections data and ecoregion maps to generate spatially explicit distributions for more than 40 000 vascular plant species from the amazon basin representing more than 80 of the estimated amazonian plant diversity using the distribution maps we then estimate the rates of habitat loss and associated extinction probabilities due to land use changes as modeled under 2 disturbance scenarios we predict that by 2050 human land use practices will have reduced the habitat available to amazonian plant species by â ˆ12â 24 resulting in 5â 9 of species becoming â œcommitted to extinction â significantly fewer than other recent estimates contrary to previous studies we find that the primary determinant of habitat loss and extinction risk is not the size of a species range but rather its location the resulting extinction risk estimates are a valuable conservation tool because they indicate not only the total percentage of amazonian plant species threatened with extinction but also the degree to which individual species and habitats will be affected by current and future land use changes,2009,0.911
Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy,citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data about species occurrence and distribution around the world most citizen science projects also strive to help participants learn about the organisms they are observing and to experience the process by which scientific investigations are conducted developing and implementing public data collection projects that yield both scientific and educational outcomes requires significant effort this article describes the model for building and operating citizen science projects that has evolved at the cornell lab of ornithology over the past two decades we hope that our model will inform the fields of biodiversity monitoring biological research and science education while providing a window into the culture of citizen science abstract from author copyright of bioscience is the property of american institute of biological sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder s express written permission however users may print download or email articles for individual use this abstract may be abridged no warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract copyright applies to all abstracts,2009,0.005
"A preliminary phylogeny of Prosopistomatidae (Ephemeroptera) based on morphological characters of the larvae, and an assessment of their distribution",until recently only four species of the monogeneric family prosopistomatidae were described from the afrotropical realm one from madagascar and three from sub saharan africa recent studies have revealed the family to be more diverse with a further five species from madagascar one from the comores archipelago and seven from sub saharan africa which are currently in the process of being formally described this brings the total number of known species globally to 34 phylogenetic analysis of morphological features of the larvae reveals that the type species prosopistoma variegatum latreille 1883 a madagascan species along with two other madagascan species belongs to a clade which is different to the majority of other afrotropical species it is more closely related to the european species the species from the middle east and several of the species from the oriental and australasian regions one possible explanation is diversification of this â p variegatumâ clade after madagascar and india separated from africa the precursors of this clade may have been carried northwards on the indian plate and subsequently dispersed to europe and to australia via the indo pacific islands a concurrent dispersal of the now predominantly mainland african clade may have occurred and in madagascar and the oriental realm members of this group occur sympatrically with or in close geographic proximity to members of the â p variegatumâ clade,2009,0.993
The DiSCmap Project: Overview and First Results,traditionally digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage material for use by the scholarly community has been led by supply rather than demand the discmap project commissioned by jisc in 2008 aimed to study what re focussing of digitisation efforts will suit best the users of digitised materials especially in the context of the research and teaching in the higher education institutions in the uk the paper presents some of its initial outcomes based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of 945 special collections nominated for digitisation by intermediary users librarians archivist and museum curators as well as end usersâ study involving a combination of online survey focus groups and in depth interviews the criteria for prioritising digitisation advanced by intermediaries and end users were analysed and cross mapped to a range of existing digitisation frameworks a user driven prioritisation framework which synthesises the findings of the project is presented,2009,0.098
"Phylogenetic relationships between spiny, slipper and coral lobsters (Crustacea, Decapoda, Achelata)",molecular data can aid in the resolution of conflicting hypotheses generated through difficulties in the interpretation of morphological data and or an incomplete fossil record moreover the reconstruction of phylogenetic relationships using molecular data may help to trace back the origin of morphological innovations which had a major impact on the radiation of a taxonomical group in this work different nuclear 18s 28s and h3 and mitochondrial 16s and coi gene regions were sequenced in a total of 35 achelatan species to test conflicting hypotheses of evolutionary relationships within the achelata infraorder and solve the taxonomic disagreements in the group the combined molecular dataset strongly supports the hypothesis that achelata is a monophyletic group composed of two main families palinuridae and scyllaridae synaxidae is found to be a polyphyletic group which should be included within palinuridae consequently our results indicate that the origin of the stridulating organ occurred only once during achelata evolution finally the two main clades found within the scyllaridae are in agreement with previous inferences based on adult morphological data the dating of divergence of achelata obtained with a relaxed clock model is compatible with previous hypotheses of a triassic origin of the achelata,2009,0.501
The future role of bio-ontologies for developing a general data standard in biology: chance and challenge for zoo-morphology,due to lack of common data standards the communicability and comparability of biological data across various levels of organization and taxonomic groups is continuously decreasing however the interdependence between molecular and higher levels of organization is of growing interest and calls for co operations between biologists from different methodological and theoretical backgrounds a general data standard in biology would greatly facilitate such co operations this article examines the role that defined and formalized vocabularies i e ontologies could have in developing such a data standard i suggest basic criteria for developing data standards on grounds of distinguishing content concept nomenclatural and format standards and discuss the role of data bases and their use of bio ontologies in current activities for data standardization in biology general principles of ontology development are introduced including foundational ontology properties e g classâ subclass parthood and how concepts are defined after addressing problems that are specific to morphological data the notion of a general structure concept for morphology is introduced and why it is required for developing a morphological ontology the necessity for a general morphological ontology to be taxon independent and free of homology assumptions is discussed and how it can solve the problems of morphology the article concludes with an outlook on how the use of ontologies will likely establish some sort of general data standard in biology and why the development of a set of commonly used foundational ontology properties and the use of globally unique identifiers for all classes defined in ontologies is crucial for its success,2009,0.024
Multiple origins promote the ecological amplitude of allopolyploid Aegilops (Poaceae),polyploidy has been ubiquitous in plant evolution and is thought to be an important engine of biodiversity that facilitates speciation adaptation and range expansion polyploid species can exhibit higher ecological tolerance than their progenitor species for allotetraploid species this higher tolerance is often attributed to the existence of heterosis resulting from entire genome duplication however multiple origins of allopolyploid species may further promote their ecological success by providing genetic variability in ecological traits underlying local adaptation and range expansion here we show in a group of allopolyploid species in the genus aegilops that range size and abundance are correlated with the number of inferred origins we found that allopolyploid aegilops spp contain multiple chloroplast haplotypes each identical to haplotypes of the diploid progenitor species indicating multiple origins as the major source of variation the number of inferred origins in each allopolyploid species was correlated to the total area occupied by the allopolyploid and the tendency for the species to be common additionally we found differences in ecological tolerance among independent origins in aegilops triuncialis these results strongly support the hypothesis that the introduction of genetic variability by multiple origins can increase the ecological amplitude and evolutionary success of allopolyploid species,2009,0.97
Modelling with knowledge: A review of emerging semantic approaches to environmental modelling,models and to a lesser extent datasets embody sophisticated statements of environmental knowledge yet the knowledge they incorporate is rarely self contained enough for them to be understood and used by humans or machines without the modeller s mediation this severely limits the options in reusing environmental models and connecting them to datasets or other models the notion of declarative modelling has been suggested as a remedy to help design communicate share and integrate models yet not all these objectives have been achieved by declarative modelling in its current implementations semantically aware environmental modelling is a way of designing implementing and deploying environmental datasets and models based on the independent standardized formalization of the underlying environmental science it can be seen as the result of merging the rationale of declarative modelling with modern knowledge representation theory through the mediation of the integrative vision of a semantic web in this paper we review the present and preview the future of semantic modelling in environmental science from the mediation approach where formal knowledge is the key to automatic integration of datasets models and analytical pipelines to the knowledge driven approach where the knowledge is the key not only to integration but also to overcoming scale and paradigm differences and to novel potentials for model design and automated knowledge discovery,2009,0.052
Accelerating global access to plant diversity information,botanic gardens play key roles in the development and dissemination of plant information resources drivers for change have included progress in information technology growing public expectations of electronic access and international conservation policy great advances have been made in the quantity quality and accessibility of plant information in digital form and the extent to which information from multiple providers can be accessed through a single portal however significant challenges remain to be addressed in making botanic gardens resources maximally accessible and impactful not least the overwhelming volume of material which still awaits digitisation the year 2010 represents an opportunity for botanic gardens to showcase their collaborative achievements in delivery of electronic plant information and reinforce their relevance to pressing environmental issues,2009,0.298
Biodiversity and climate change use scenarios framework for the GEOSS interoperability pilot process,climate change threatens to commit 15 37 of species to extinction by 2050 there is a clear need to support policy makers analyzing and assessing the impact of climate change along with land use changes this requires a megascience infrastructure that is capable of discovering and integrating enormous volumes of multi disciplinary data i e data from biodiversity earth observation and climatic archives metadata and services interoperability is necessary the global earth observation system of systems geoss works to realize such an interoperability infrastructure based on systems architecture standardization in this paper we describe the results of linking the infrastructures of climate change research and biodiversity research together using the approach envisioned by geoss in fact we present and discuss a service oriented framework which was applied to implement and demonstrate the climate change and biodiversity use scenario of the geoss interoperability process pilot project ip3 this interoperability is done for the purpose of enabling scientists to do large scale ecological analysis we describe a generic use scenario and related modelling workbench that implement an environment for studying the impacts of climate change on biodiversity the service oriented architecture framework which realizes this environment is described its standard based components and services according to geoss requirements are discussed this framework was successfully demonstrated at the geo iv ministerial meeting in cape town south africa november 2007,2009,0.068
Deep-sea environment and biodiversity of the West African Equatorial margin,the long term biozaire multidisciplinary deep sea environmental program on the west equatorial african margin organized in partnership between ifremer and total aimed at characterizing the benthic community structure in relation with physical and chemical processes in a region of oil and gas interest the morphology of the deep congo submarine channel and the sedimentological structures of the deep sea fan were established during the geological zaiango project and helped to select study sites ranging from 350 to 4800 m water depth inside or near the channel and away from its influence ifremer conducted eight deep sea cruises on board research vessels between 2000 and 2005 standardized methods of sampling together with new technologies such as the rov victor 6000 and its associated instrumentation were used to investigate this poorly known continental margin in addition to the study of sedimentary environments more or less influenced by turbidity events the discovery of one of the largest cold seeps near the congo channel and deep coral reefs extends our knowledge of the different habitats of this margin this paper presents the background objectives and major results of the biozaire program it highlights the work achieved in the 16 papers in this special issue this synthesis paper describes the knowledge acquired at a regional and local scale of the equatorial east atlantic margin and tackles new interdisciplinary questions to be answered in the various domains of physics chemistry taxonomy and ecology to better understand the deep sea environment in the gulf of guinea,2009,0.062
Taxonomist survey biases and the unveiling of biodiversity patterns,basic and applied studies based on biodiversity data need accurate information on the distribution of species however several studies clearly show that this information is frequently biased mainly as a consequence of aggregated survey patterns in which taxonomists repeatedly select localities with specific characteristics in this study we have constructed three different but simple virtual species richness scenarios to simulate the capacity of random aggregated or regular survey designs to reveal the true biodiversity pattern we are specifically interested in the effect of taxonomist insistence on surveying those localities that guarantee success in the collection of as many species as possible species richness bias and on the coordinated or uncoordinated character of the efforts carried out by the whole community of taxonomists in all simulated species richness scenarios a survey directed towards those localities that were previously recognized as having a higher species richness value is not recommended if the aim is to recover the true geographical pattern of species richness in a given territory this aggregated process of allocating survey localities is probably caused by the primary aim of taxonomists which is to acquire specimens of rare species and or as many species as possible however an increase in taxonomist curiosity towards non surveyed localities near those previously identified as the richest allows one to obtain better results provided that the species richness pattern is not too patchy and the effort for discovering the true map is not too difficult our results suggest that planned survey designs are necessary when most of the data comes from studies not specifically designed to reveal the distribution of biodiversity the capacity of this data to represent the real geographical pattern of biodiversity may depend on the capacity of the taxonomist community to be self motivated,2009,0.974
Ecological niche modelling as a technique for assessing threats and setting conservation priorities for Asian slow lorises (Primates: Nycticebus),abstract aim data on geographical ranges are essential when defining the conservation status of a species and in evaluating levels of human disturbance where locality data are deficient presence only ecological niche modelling enm can provide insights into a speciesâ potential distribution and can aid in conservation planning presence only enm is especially important for rare cryptic and nocturnal species where absence is difficult to define here we applied enm to carry out an anthropogenic risk assessment and set conservation priorities for three threatened species of asian slow loris primates nycticebus location borneo java and sumatra southeast asia methods distribution models were built using maximum entropy maxent enm we input 20 environmental variables comprising temperature precipitation and altitude along with species locality data we clipped predicted distributions to forest cover and altitudinal data to generate remnant distributions these were then applied to protected area pa and human land use data using specific criteria to define low medium or high risk areas these data were analysed to pinpoint priority study sites suitable reintroduction zones and protected area extensions results a jackknife validation method indicated highly significant models for all three species with small sample sizes n 10 to 23 occurrences the distribution models represented high habitat suitability within each speciesâ geographical range high risk areas were most prevalent for the javan slow loris nycticebus javanicus on java with the highest proportion of low risk areas for the bornean slow loris n menagensis on borneo eighteen pa extensions and 23 priority survey sites were identified across the study region main conclusions discriminating areas of high habitat suitability lays the foundations for planning field studies and conservation initiatives this study highlights potential reintroduction zones that will minimize anthropogenic threats to animals that are released these data reiterate the conclusion of previous research showing maxent is a viable technique for modelling species distributions with small sample sizes,2009,0.713
The Korean Bird Information System (KBIS) through open and public participation,background the importance of biodiversity conservation has been increasing steadily due to its benefits to human beings recently producing and managing biodiversity databases have become much easier because of the information technology it advancement this made the general public s participation in biodiversity conservation much more practical than ever for example an openfree web service can be devised for a wider spectrum of people to collaborate with each other for sharing biodiversity information bird migration is one such area of the collaboration korean migratory birds are usually traceable in the important routes of the east asian australia flyway eaaf and they play a key role as an environmental change indicator of the earth therefore the preservation of migratory birds requires an information system which involves a broader range of voluntary and interactive knowledge network to process bird information production circulation and dissemination results the korean bird information system kbis aims to construct a cooperative partnership domestically and internationally through the acquisition management and sharing of korean bird information involving both expert and non expert groups kbis has six goals data standard system linkage data diversity utilization bird knowledge network and statistics the key features of kbis are to provide a simple search gallery photographs and community to lead the participation of numerous non experts especially amateur bird watchers the function of real time observation data submission through the internet has been accomplished it also provides bird banding database statistics and taxon network for experts especially the statistics part provides the user with easy understanding of ecological trends of species based on the time and region conclusion kbis is a tool for the conservation and management of bird diversity and ecosystem that encourages users to participate by providing the openfree data access and real time data input web interface it will enhance bird knowledge networking activities locally nationally and internationally in addition it provides opportunities to enhance the public awareness for the preservation of bird diversity and species information in relevant localities through the database construction and networking activities it can be found at http korbird naris go kr,2009,0.114
Publication and dissemination of datasets in taxonomy: ZooKeys working example,normal 0 a concept for data publication and semantic enhancements proposed by zookeys and applied in the milestone paper of miller et al 2009 is described for the first time in systematic zoology an unique combination of data publication and semantic enhancements is applied within the mainstream process of journal publishing to demonstrate how 1 all primary biodiversity data underlying a taxonomic monograph are published as a dataset under a separate doi within the paper 2 the occurrence dataset is discoverable and accessible through gbif data portal data gbif org simultaneously with the publication 3 occurrence dataset is published as a kml file under a distinct doi to provide an interactive experience in google earth 4 all new taxa 42 are registered at zoobank during the publication process mandatory for zookeys 5 all new taxa 42 are provided to encyclopedia of life through xml mark up on the day of publication mandatory for zookeys it is proposed to clearly distinguish between static and dynamic datasets in the way they are published preserved and cited,2009,0.096
"bioGUID: resolving, discovering, and minting identifiers for biodiversity informatics",background linking together the data of interest to biodiversity researchers including specimen records images taxonomic names and dna sequences requires services that can mint resolve and discover globally unique identifiers including but not limited to dois http uris and lsids results bioguid implements a range of services the core ones being an openurl resolver for bibliographic resources and a lsid resolver the lsid resolver supports linked data friendly resolution using http 303 redirects and content negotiation additional services include journal issn look up author name matching and a tool to monitor the status of biodiversity data providers conclusion bioguid is available at http bioguid info source code is available from http code google com p bioguid,2009,0.327
"Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Third Edition",available in print or as an online subscription this third edition of the encyclopedia of library and information sciences reflects the growing convergence among the several disciplines that concern themselves with information and the cultural record covered are archives museum studies informatics information systems knowledge management records management document and genre theory bibliography and social studies of information in addition to library and information science it addresses these related disciplines in a way that demonstrates the unities across the fields while also recognizing their uniquely distinguishing characteristics composed of the contributions of major researchers and practitioners and exploring the cultural institutions of more than 30 countries this major reference presents hundreds of entries extensively reviewed for accuracy containing more than 70 percent new material this edition also includes classic articles of historical or theoretical importance from prior editions,2009,0.186
"Exploring the utility of an indel-rich, mitochondrial intergenic region as a molecular barcode for bamboo corals (Octocorallia: Isididae)",the dna barcoding initiative has advocated the use of the 5 end 658 bp of mitochondrial mt cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 cox1 to genetically distinguish species however this has proven difficult within the subclass octocorallia due to extraordinarily low substitution rates within mt protein coding genes intergenic regions igrs which have been little examined among octocorals may be subject to high mutation rates and have proven useful target regions at both the interspecific and population levels of metazoans herein we examine a mt igr igr4 between the cytochrome b cob and nadh dehydrogenase subunit 6 nad6 genes among species of the bamboo coral subfamily keratoisidinae to evaluate its utility for barcoding and phylogenetic studies among 77 keratoisidin specimens we found igr4 to vary in length between either 42 bp acanella gray 1870 and orstomisis bayer 1990 or 302 605 bp isidella gray 1857 lepidisis verrill 1883 keratoisis wright 1869 and two undescribed genera we interpreted the short igr4 sequence of acanella eburnea pourtalã s 1868 as potentially indicative of additional mt genome related novelties and thus sequenced its entire mt genome gene content and gene order were the same as in a previously sequenced bamboo coral mt genome alignment of the longer igr4 sequences included 108 parsimony informative characters as well as numerous indels ranging from 2 262 bp in length uncorrected pairwise p distances indicated sequence variation of 0 27 2 as compared to 0 4 8 among the same specimens for the muts homolog msh1 currently the most widely sequenced octocorallian mt gene and 0 4 for cox1 for a subset of the taxa despite the greater levels of variation fewer unique haplotypes were observed at igr4 compared to msh1 however in combination the two gene regions revealed increased mt haplotype diversity relative to either gene region on their own,2009,0.82
"Leaf photosynthetic and solar-tracking responses of mallow, Malva parviflora, to photon flux density",malva parviflora l mallow is a species that occupies high light habitats as a weedy invader in orchards and vineyards species of the malvaceae are known to solar track and anecdotal evidence suggests this species may also how m parviflora responds physiologically to light in comparison with other species within the malvaceae remains unknown tracking and photosynthetic responses to photon flux density pfd were evaluated on plants grown in greenhouse conditions tracking ability was assessed in the growth conditions and by exposing leaves to specific light intensities and measuring changes in the angle of the leaf plane light responses were also determined by photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence leaves followed a heliotropic response which was highly pfd dependent with tracking rates increasing in a curvilinear pattern maximum tracking rates were up to 20â h 1 and saturated for light above 1300 mu mol photons m 2 s 1 this high light saturation both for tracking much higher than the other species and for photosynthesis confirmed mallow as a high light demanding species further because there was no photoinhibition the leaves could capture the potential of an increased carbon gain in higher irradiance by resorting to solar tracking modelling suggested the tracking response could increase the annual carbon gain by as much as 25 compared with leaves that do not track the sun the various leaf attributes associated with solar tracking therefore help to account for the success of this species as a weed in many locations worldwide,2009,0.718
"Potential Geographical Distributions of the Fruit Flies <I>Ceratitis capitata</I>, <I>Ceratitis cosyra</I>, and <I>Ceratitis rosa</I> in China",there have been relatively few attempts to model the distributions of the fruit flies ceratitis capitata wiedemann ceratitis cosyra walker and ceratitis rosa karsch in china but the geographic distributions of these species are of considerable concern in terms of biosecurity in this study two different modeling methods genetic algorithm for rule set prediction garp and maximum entropy species distribution modeling maxent were used to predict the potential distributions of these three fly species in china by using distribution records and a set of environmental predictor variables the results showed that maxent performed well compared with modeling by garp at each test threshold for all three species the results predicted by maxent agreed with the observed distributions in africa and in other parts of the world in china c capitata seems to have the highest number of favorable habitat areas relative to c cosyra and c rosa i e yunnan guizhou guangxi guangdong hainan fujian sichuan and chongqing whereas c cosyra has the smallest range of suitable areas i e yunnan some parts of hainan and sichuan the suitable areas for c rosa are mainly restricted to yunnan hainan southern guangdong and a few areas of sichuan the indications are that on the whole southwest and south china are the areas with the highest risk for establishment from these three fly species jackknife tests reveal that environmental variables associated with temperature have the strongest influence on the potential distributions of all three species relative to other variables â 2009 entomological society of america,2009,0.8
GIS for Conservation: Mapping and Analyzing Distributions of Wild Potato Species for Reserve Design,summary 10 1002 9781444319576 ch23 abs this chapter contains sections titled objective procedures expected products discussion making it happen further resources,2009,0.354
SFMN GeoSearch: An interactive approach to the visualization and exchange of point-based ecological data,recent advances in computer networks and information technologies have created exciting new possibilities for sharing and analyzing scientific research data although individual datasets can be studied efficiently many scientists are still largely limited to considering data collected by themselves their students or closely affiliated research groups increasingly widespread high speed network connections and the existence of large coordinated research programs suggest the potential for scientists to access and learn from data from outside their immediate research circle we are developing a web based application that facilitates the sharing of scientific data within a research network using the now common virtual globe in combination with advanced visualization methods designed for geographically distributed scientific data two major components of the system enable the rapid assessment of geographically distributed scientific data a database built from information submitted by network members and a module featuring novel and sophisticated geographic data visualization techniques by enabling scientists to share results with each other and view their shared data through a common virtual globe interface the system provides a new platform for important meta analyses and the analysis of broad scale patterns here we present the design and capabilities of the sfmn geosearch platform for the sustainable forest management network a pan canadian network of forest researchers who have accumulated data for more than a decade through the development and dissemination of this new tool we hope to help scientists students and the general public to understand the depth and breadth of scientific data across potentially large areas,2009,0.091
"The campaign to DNA barcode all fishes, FISH-BOL",fish bol the fish barcode of life campaign is an international research collaboration that is assembling a standardized reference dna sequence library for all fishes analysis is targeting a 648 base pair region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase i coi gene more than 5000 species have already been dna barcoded with an average of five specimens per species typically vouchers with authoritative identifications the barcode sequence from any fish fillet fin egg or larva can be matched against these reference sequences using bold the barcode of life data system http www barcodinglife org the benefits of barcoding fishes include facilitating species identification highlighting cases of range expansion for known species flagging previously overlooked species and enabling identifications where traditional methods cannot be applied results thus far indicate that barcodes separate c 98 and 93 of already described marine and freshwater fish species respectively several specimens with divergent barcode sequences have been confirmed by integrative taxonomic analysis as new species past concerns in relation to the use of fish barcoding for species discrimination are discussed these include hybridization recent radiations regional differentiation in barcode sequences and nuclear copies of the barcode region however current results indicate these issues are of little concern for the great majority of specimens,2009,0.949
Towards a data publishing framework for primary biodiversity data: challenges and potentials for the biodiversity informatics community,background currently primary scientific data especially that dealing with biodiversity is neither easily discoverable nor accessible amongst several impediments one is a lack of professional recognition of scientific data publishing efforts a possible solution is establishment of a data publishing framework which would encourage and recognise investments and efforts by institutions and individuals towards management and publishing of primary scientific data potentially on a par with recognitions received for scholarly publications discussion this paper reviews the state of the art of primary biodiversity data publishing and conceptualises a data publishing framework that would help incentivise efforts and investments by institutions and individuals in facilitating free and open access to biodiversity data it further postulates the institutionalisation of a data usage index dui that would attribute due recognition to multiple players in the data collection creation management and publishing cycle conclusion we believe that institutionalisation of such a data publishing framework that offers socio cultural legal technical economic and policy environment conducive for data publishing will facilitate expedited discovery and mobilisation of an exponential increase in quantity of fit for use primary biodiversity data much of which is currently invisible,2009,0.201
Palaeontology - quo vadis?- The status and future of palaeontological research.,a view on current projects shows the wide mostly transdisciplinary range of german palaeontological research modularisation of science does not only affect palaeontology but all science disciplines this poses challenges and opportunities notably the better integration of palaeontological and geobiologal research in socially relevant environmental issues such as loss of biodiversity global climate change and nitrogen cyle related problems in land and sea use at the same time the palaeo taxonomic expertise and competence must be maintained but should also be methodically enlarged and opened as a scientific service to others quantitative research should deserve much greater attention as such statistical analyses of large databases as well as application of molecular and isotope methodology should be further developed national and international networking of researchers and research resources is far less advanced than in actuo biodiversity research this is particulary true of networking of palaeontological collections and related databases the memory of life is increasingly filled by biological digitised data in particular in the framework of the global gbif program this must be complemented with data from earth history in addition a stronger open source type opening of palaeontological collections emphasing their role as freely accessible scientific research infrastructure should be achieved strategic alliances with commercial fossil collectors are regarded as critical whereas direct cooperation with dedicated science interested nonprofessional palaeontologists is highly welcome authentification of palaeontological research results should be continued as a best practice example despositing fossils as research vouchers in collections should be consistently implemented also digital research data bases should not only be based on literature data but should rather use primary data related to true physical objects palaeontological outreach and communication should be strictly based on the principle of authenticity in exhibitions original fossil objects are preferable to hypothetical full body reconstructions storytelling must be clearly differentiated from fact based verifiable interpretations the great attention which palaeontological research enjoys in the public should not be put at risk by overinterpretation and unsubstantiated yet striking media releases rather the large public interest should also be used to explain complex scientific issues in an adequate and well elaborated way perhaps the most important unique selling point of palaeontological research is its capability of analysing time dependent dynamic processes therefore it appears even more questionable that some geoscientists position themselves as strict climate skeptics by referring to long term processes of earth history this reflects a misunderstanding of very variable time scaling of dynamic processes hence even more efforts should be made to further increase and quantify the time resolution of palaeontological and stratigraphical analysis with better quantification of spatial and temporal scales palaeontologists and geobiologists can enter into promising partnerships with researchers studying present environmental change,2009,0.033
Improved data retrieval from TreeBASE via taxonomic and linguistic data enrichment,background treebase the only data repository for phylogenetic studies is not being used effectively since it does not meet the taxonomic data retrieval requirements of the systematics community we show through an examination of the queries performed on treebase that data retrieval using taxon names is unsatisfactory results we report on a new wrapper supporting taxon queries on treebase by utilising a taxonomy and classification database tcl db we created tcl db holds merged and consolidated taxonomic names from multiple data sources and can be used to translate hierarchical vernacular and synonym queries into specific query terms in treebase the query expansion supported by tcl db shows very significant information retrieval quality improvement the wrapper can be accessed at the url http spira zoology gla ac uk app tbasewrapper phpthe methodology we developed is scalable and can be applied to new data as those become available in the future conclusion significantly improved data retrieval quality is shown for all queries and additional flexibility is achieved via user driven taxonomy selection,2009,0.268
Environmental Health Indicators of Climate Change for the United States: Findings from the State Environmental Health Indicator Collaborative,to develop public health adaptation strategies and to project the impacts of climate change on human health indicators of vulnerability and preparedness along with accurate surveillance data on climate sensitive health outcomes are needed we researched and developed environmental health indicators for inputs into human health vulnerability assessments for climate change and to propose public health preventative actions data sources we conducted a review of the scientific literature to identify outcomes and actions that were related to climate change data sources included governmental and nongovernmental agencies and the published literature data extraction sources were identified and assessed for completeness usability and accuracy priority was then given to identifying longitudinal data sets that were applicable at the state and community level data synthesis we present a list of surveillance indicators for practitioners and policy makers that include climate sensitive health outcomes and environmental and vulnerability indicators as well as mitigation adaptation and policy indicators of climate change conclusions a review of environmental health indicators for climate change shows that data exist for many of these measures but more evaluation of their sensitivity and usefulness is needed further attention is necessary to increase data quality and availability and to develop new surveillance databases especially for climate sensitive morbidity,2009,0.057
"An unusually large specimen of neon flying squid, Ommastrephes bartramii (Cephalopoda: Ommastrephidae) caught in the Eastern Tropical Pacific",the neon flying squid ommastrephes bartramii lesueur 1821 is distributed worldwide in subtropical and temperate oceanic waters it has supported major jig and surface driftnet fisheries in the north pacific since about 1974 and its life history in this area is well known it occurs in the south pacific where sst ranges from 12⺠to 26⺠c and is rarely caught in cooler waters adjacent to the continental slope of western south america o bartramii is replaced in waters warmer than 15⺠c by the jumbo squid dosidicus gigas the subtropical convergence sc is the southern boundary of its distribution in the south pacific generally at about 40 50⺠s however the sc zone is highly variable from year to year and shows significant seasonal latitudinal shifts occurring as far south as 52⺠s although this species was identified as a potential fishery resource in the late 1970s there is still no commercial exploitation in the southern hemisphere,2009,0.475
Contemporary Challenges in Ambient Data Integration for Biodiversity Informatics,biodiversity informatics bdi information is both highly localized and highly distributed the temporal and spatial contexts of data collection events are generally of primary importance in bdi studies and most studies are focused around specific localities at the same time data are collected by many groups working independently but often at the same sites leading to a distribution of data bdi data are also distributed over time due to protracted longitudinal studies and the continuously evolving meanings of taxonomic names ambient data integration provides new opportunities for collecting sharing and analyzing bdi data and the nature of bdi data poses interesting challenges for applications of adi this paper surveys recent work on utilization of bdi data in the context of adi topics covered include applying adi to species identification data security annotation and provenance sharing and coping with multiple competing classification ontologies we conclude with a summary of requirements for applying adi to biodiversity informatics,2009,0.193
The Invasive Buddleja davidii (Butterfly Bush),buddleja davidii franchet synonym buddleia davidii common name butterfly bush is a perennial semi deciduous multi stemmed shrub that is resident in gardens and disturbed areas since its introduction to the united kingdom from china in the late 1800s b davidii has become an important component in horticulture and human culture despite its popularity as a landscape plant b davidii is considered problematic because of its ability to naturalize outside of gardens and rapidly invade and dominate disturbed natural areas across a wide range of physical conditions the primary goal of this paper is to synthesize what is known about b davidii in order to understand the impacts caused by the continued presence of b davidii in gardens and natural landscapes we also address management of b davidii and discuss the repercussions of management strategies and policies currently implemented to protect or remove b davidii from natural ecosystems,2009,0.194
Complete genome sequence of Saccharomonospora viridis type strain (P101T),normal 0 false false false microsoftinternetexplorer4 saccharomonospora viridis schuurmans et al 1956 nonomurea and ohara 1971 is the type species of the genus saccharomonospora which belongs to the family pseudonocardiaceae s viridis is of interest because it is a gram negative organism classified among the usually gram positive actinomycetes members of the species are frequently found in hot compost and hay and its spores can cause farmerâ s lung disease bagassosis and humidifier fever strains of the species s viridis have been found to metabolize the xenobiotic pentachlorophenol pcp the strain described in this study has been isolated from peat bog in ireland here we describe the features of this organism together with the complete genome sequence and annotation this is the first complete genome sequence of the family pseudonocardiaceae and the 4 308 349 bp long single replicon genome with its 3906 protein coding and 64 rna genes is part of the g enomic e ncyclopedia of b acteria and a rchaea project doi 10 4056 sigs 20263,2009,0.791
Biodiversity informatics: automated approaches for documenting global biodiversity patterns and processes,motivation data about biodiversity have been scattered in different formats in natural history collections survey reports and the literature a central challenge for the biodiversity informatics community is to provide the means to share and rapidly synthesize these data and the knowledge they provide us to build an easily accessible unified global map of biodiversity such a map would provide raw and summary data and information on biodiversity and its change across the world at multiple scales results we discuss a series of steps required to create a unified global map of biodiversity these steps include building biodiversity repositories creating scalable species distribution maps creating flexible user programmable pipelines which enable biodiversity assessment and integrating phylogenetic approaches into biodiversity assessment we show two case studies that combine phyloinformatic and biodiversity informatic approaches to document large scale biodiversity patterns the first case study uses data available from the barcode of life initiative in order to make species conservation assessment of north american birds taking into account evolutionary uniqueness the second case study uses full genomes of influenza a available from genbank to provide an auto updating documentation of the evolution and geographic spread of these viruses availability both the website for tracking evolution and spread of influenza a and the website for applying phyloinformatics analysis to barcode of life data are available as outcomes of case studies http biodiversity colorado edu contact robert guralnick colorado edu,2009,0.283
"Translating natural history into geographic space: a macroecological perspective on the North American Slider, Trachemys scripta (Reptilia, Cryptodira, Emydidae)",species with temperature dependent sex determination such as the slider trachemys scripta from north america may be particularly dependent on certain climatic conditions we hypothesize that climatic conditions that allow successful egg incubation and balanced sex ratios in t scripta are the major driver for the species geographic distribution we tested whether the observed variation in monthly mean temperatures from 377 records throughout the native distribution of t scripta can be used as a predictor for its geographic range our study showed that climatic requirements during egg incubation are apparently the major driver for the species geographic distribution freezing events during winter may limit the species distribution regionally only adaptive strategies such as nest site choice by females plasticity in nesting phenology or regional variation in embryonic temperature sensitivity exist however they may account for only partial compensation of negative effects caused by regional differences in temperature related parameters or a changing climate,2009,0.571
The historical frequency of head-colour morphs in the Gouldian Finch (Erythrura gouldiae),the endangered gouldian finch erythura gouldiae possesses a genetic colour polymorphism in the form of three genetically determined head colours yellow black and red that coexist in the same population the spatial and temporal pattern of morph ratios within this species provides insight into the selective pressures acting on and maintaining the different forms to investigate spatial and temporal patterns in the relative historical abundance of the different gouldian finch morphs we surveyed museum collections around the world identifying 614 wild caught skins and obtaining accurate data on the morphs of 552 of these the yellow morph was found at very low numbers only 15 skins consistent with its rarity in contemporary populations red and black morph individuals were found at relatively constant ratios across the geographical range over which they were sampled and across the 140 year period during which these skins were collected although this differed slightly for males and females males 62 6 black 37 4 red females 79 1 black 20 9 red spatial and temporal stability in the frequency of alternative morphs is extremely rare these results suggest that the genetic architecture underlying the trait and selective pressures acting on the separate morphs of the gouldian finch differ between the sexes but are fairly constant across highly variable environmental conditions,2009,0.773
Pectinoidea (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from Iceland,the icelandic pectinoid fauna is reviewed based on material from the benthic survey programme bioice and 17 species are recorded similipecten oskarssoni is proposed as a replacement name for pecten groenlandicus var minor locard 1898 propeamussiidae which is considered a valid species lectotypes are designated for pecten groenlandicus var minor and pecten frigidus jensen 1904 pectinidae cyclopecten ambiannulatus schein 1989 parvamussium propinquum smith 1885 catillopecten eucymatus dall 1898 and aequipecten opercularis linnaeus 1758 were previously not known from the icelandic fauna all species are figured and described and distinguishing characters are discussed the distribution in scandinavian and north atlantic waters is revised based on the collections in smnh the low frequency of juvenile specimens of a opercularis mimachlamys varia and pecten maximus may indicate that scandinavian populations are the result of very occasional recruitment,2009,0.678
‘Sleepless in Hawaii’ – does anthropogenic climate change enhance ecological and socioeconomic impacts of the alien invasive Eleutherodactylus coqui Thomas 1966 (Anura: Eleutherodactylidae)?,the alien invasive anuran eleutherodactylus coqui is presently distributed in many caribbean islands and hawaiian islands where it causes major ecological and socioeconomic problems especially evident in the later here i use a maximum entropy ecological niche modeling approach to model the native geographic distribution of this species and to project that model into other potentially threatened areas the projection results under current climatic conditions suggested high probabilities of occurrence in tropical regions including the caribbean florida major parts of the amazon basin and adjacent andes the pantepui region the congo basin and most asian islands projections of potential distributions under future anthropogenic global warming scenarios within the hawaiian islands suggest an overall stable potential distribution but fine scale patterns suggest a possible range allocation towards higher elevations which may affect natural reserves if the predictive maps are interpreted as depicting invasiveness potential of e coqui strategies to prevent further invasion should focus on biosafety measurements within the areas highlighted,2009,0.19
"Distribution and host specificity of Erysiphe cruciferarum (powdery mildew) attacking Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard), in southwestern Ohio",garlic mustard is an invasive eurasian biennial that has rapidly spread throughout the united states in southwestern ohio many garlic mustard populations are infected with the powdery mildew erysiphe cruciferarum that can reduce the growth and fitness of garlic mustard e cruciferarum was assessed using a decision tree in regards to its potential use as a biological control agent i determined the distribution of e cruciferarum on garlic mustard and i determined the potential risk of e cruciferarum to native brassicaceous species and selected crops i surveyed 19 parks in southwestern ohio and recorded the number of diseased garlic mustard and aspect at every population and then made a distribution map of disease incidence of e cruciferarum on garlic mustard using gis esri arcmap software my distribution survey showed a random distribution of e cruciferarum infection on garlic mustard with disease incidence decreasing away from dayton ohio aspects with higher disease incidences were level and facing southeast and were significantly different than northwest facing aspects five native spring ephemeral species were surveyed in the field and then obtained from local wooded areas in may 2008,2009,0.577
"A new, disjunct species of Speleonectes (Remipedia, Crustacea) from the Canary Islands",we describe speleonectes atlantida n sp as the third species of remipedia that was found outside the main distribution area of this group in the caribbean region s atlantida was collected by cave divers equipped with closed circuit rebreathers from the far interior of the tãºnel de la atlã ntida an anchialine volcanic lava tube on the canarian island of lanzarote the new species occurs in sympatry with s ondinae to which it is morphologically closely related s atlantida can be distinguished from s ondinae by a more slender habitus and smaller pleurotergites in the posterior trunk the valid status of s atlantida as a new species of remipedia could be corroborated by intra and interspecific comparisons of 16s rdna and co1 sequence data,2009,0.85
Biodiversity informatics and the plant conservation baseline,primary baseline data on taxonomy and species distribution and its integration with environmental variables has a valuable role to play in achieving internationally recognised targets for plant diversity conservation such as the global strategy for plant conservation the importance of primary baseline data and the role of biodiversity informatics in linking these data to other environmental variables are discussed the need to maintain digital resources and make them widely accessible is an additional requirement of institutions who already collect and maintain this baseline data the lack of resources in many species rich areas to gather these data and make them widely accessible needs to be addressed if the full benefit of biodiversity informatics on plant conservation is to be realised,2009,0.564
Completed Genomes,summary 10 1002 9780470451496 ch13 abs this chapter contains sections titled introduction genome sequencing projects overview genome analysis projects dna sequencing technologies the process of genome sequencing genome annotation features of genomic dna perspective pitfalls discussion questions problems computer lab self test quiz suggested reading references,2009,0.331
Responses Of Switchgrass (PANICUM Virgatum L.) To Precipitation Amount And Temperature,anthropogenic climate change is likely to alter the function and composition of ecosystems worldwide through increased precipitation variability and temperatures to predict ecosystem responses a greater understanding of the physiological and growth responses of plants is required dominant species drive ecosystem responses and it is essential to understand how they respond to understand potential ecosystem changes dominant species such as switchgrass panicum virgatum l posses large genotypic and phenotypic variability which will impact the degree of responses to projected climate changes i studied the physiological and growth responses of switchgrass a common perennial warm season c4 grass that is native to the tallgrass prairie to alterations in precipitation amount and temperature the first experiment i conducted focused on the responses of three ecotypes of p virgatum to three precipitation regimes average 25 below 25 above i concluded that the physiological responses of photosynthesis stomatal conductance transpiration dark adapted fluorescence and mid day water potential in p virgatum were explained by ecotypic differences robust responses to altered precipitation were seen in the water use efficiency mid day water potential and aboveground biomass ecotypic differences were also seen in several aboveground biomass variables and most strikingly in flowering times and rates there were few interactions between ecotype and precipitation suggesting precipitation is a strong driver of biomass production whereas adaption of ecotypes to their local environment affects physiological processes a second experiment studied the response of local populations of p virgatum to nocturnal warming results showed significant differences in daytime e daytime gs and flowering phenology between treatments differences in aboveground biomass were between topographic positions i concluded that water availability based on topographic position is a strong driver of p virgatum aboveground biomass production but nocturnal warming has the potential to impact flowering phenology physiological responses and exacerbate plant water stress i also reviewed the literature on the ecological effects of implementing switchgrass cultivation for biofuel from the literature review i concluded that large scale switchgrass cultivation will have widespread ecological impacts if landscape heterogeneity is maintained through harvest rotations no till farming and mixed species composition ecosystem services can be maintained while providing economic value,2009,0.124
Beyond data management: how ecoinformatics can benefit environmental monitoring programs,we review ways in which the new discipline of ecoinformatics is changing how environmental monitoring data are managed synthesized and analyzed rapid improvements in information technology and strong interest in biodiversity and sustainable ecosystems are driving a vigorous phase of development in ecological databases emerging data standards and protocols enable these data to be shared in ways that have previously been difficult we use the u s environmental protection agencyâ s national coastal assessment nca as an example the nca has collected biological chemical and physical data from thousands of stations around the u s coasts since 1990 nca data that were collected primarily to assess the ecological condition of the u s coasts can be used in innovative ways such as biogeographical studies to analyze species invasions nca application of ecoinformatics tools leads to new possibilities for integrating the hundreds of thousands of nca species records with other databases to address broad scale and long term questions such as environmental impacts global climate change and species invasions,2009,0.697
The Hawaiian Algal Database: a laboratory LIMS and online resource for biodiversity data.,organization and presentation of biodiversity data is greatly facilitated by databases that are specially designed to allow easy data entry and organized data display such databases also have the capacity to serve as laboratory information management systems lims the hawaiian algal database was designed to showcase specimens collected from the hawaiian archipelago enabling users around the world to compare their specimens with our photographs and dna sequence data and to provide lab personnel with an organizational tool for storing various biodiversity data types,2009,0.322
"Molecular insights into the phylogeny and subgeneric classification of Frullania Raddi (Frullaniaceae, Porellales)",with an estimated 300 375 species frullania is the largest genus of porellales and forms a major clade of leafy liverworts the cosmopolitan genus includes mostly epiphytes and represents an important component of the cryptogamic vegetation in various especially tropical habitats there have been abundant changes and modifications to the infrageneric classification of frullania with up to fifteen subgenera and numerous sections solely based on morphology here we present the first molecular phylogeny of frullania using four markers rbcl psba trnl trnf region of cp dna nr5 8s its 2 region and 171 accessions from throughout the range the molecular data provide evidence for the monophyly of several subgenera and support intercontinental ranges of these clades previous subgeneric assignment for a suite of taxa based on morphological evidence is not supported by the molecular data representatives of the genera amphijubula neohattoria and schusterella are nested in robust subclades of frullania basal relationships within frullania are largely unsupported based on the outcome of the phylogenetic analyses we present a revised supraspecific classification and provide evidence for the monophyly of some morphological species disjunct distributional patterns within frullania cannot be explained by gondwanan vicariance,2009,0.294
"Evolution, phylogeography and taxonomy of allopolyploid Dactylorhiza (Orchidaceae) and its implications for conservation",this review is based on recent molecular studies of dactylorhiza orchidaceae most of the studies have focused on the allotetraploid members of the genus in general and on d majalis ssp lapponica in particular it was concluded that most of the allotetraploid taxa have derived from hybridizations between the parental lineages d maculata s l and d incarnata s l with d maculata s l serving as the seed parent evidence of multiple origins was found both among northern european allotetraploids as well as among greek allotetraploids introgression from both parental lineages and hybridizations between independently derived polyploid lineages was also detected the three morphologically similar taxa d majalis ssp traunsteineri ssp lapponica and ssp russowii should be treated as one and most of the greek allotetraploids should be regarded as regional variants of the southeastern european d majalis ssp cordigera the balkans and the alps most probably served as refugia for the genus during the last glaciations and at least two waves of immigration reached scandinavia finally we suggest that the conservation of allotetraploid dactylorhiza should emphasize important geographic areas and habitats and that the allopolyploids should have the same conservation status as the diploids,2009,0.31
The marine splash midge Telmatogon japonicus (Diptera; Chironomidae)—extreme and alien?,we found all developmental stages of the midge telmatogeton japonicus chironomidae on offshore windmills near the major swedish seaport kalmar in the southern baltic sea this might be the first record of an insect species really inhabiting the offshore areas of the baltic sea a thorough analysis of previous findings of the species its history in europe and its ecology indicates that t japonicus quite likely is an alien species in europe introduced from the pacific ocean shipping is probably the vector as all records in the baltic sea and several from the eastern atlantic sea are near major seaports our analysis further suggests that t japonicus might be both advantageous and disadvantageous to native species in the baltic sea t japonicus should be kept under observation within monitoring programmes as it might expand its distribution as a result of the construction of new windmills in the baltic sea and elsewhere in european marine and brackish water habitats,2009,0.757
"Climate change sensitivity of the African ivory nut palm, Hyphaene petersiana Klotzsch ex Mart. (Arecaceae) – a keystone species in SE Africa",africa is the most vulnerable continent to future climate change profound changes are projected for southwestern africa with increased drying notably with delayed onset of the rainy season in september november and temperature increases in all seasons the projected climate changes combined with land use changes are thought to constitute the main threats to biodiversity in the 21st century to be able to predict the potential impact on biodiversity it is crucial to achieve a better insight into the controls of contemporary species ranges using species distribution modeling we assessed the climate sensitivity of the key stone palm species hyphaene petersiana african ivory nut palm in southern africa we tested the relative roles of climate vs non climatic range controls and found that climate had a clear effect on the range of h petersiana and that especially water related variables annual precipitation and precipitation driest quarter were of high importance nevertheless latitude was the overall most dominant variable reflecting spatial constraints on the continental scale distribution of the remaining non climatic factors soil type and human influence were as important as the climatic factors a future decrease in annual precipitation below 400 mm and hydrological changes towards drier conditions could cause a dramatic decline in h petersiana populations while the influence of temperature changes is less clear the ongoing unsustainable utilization pressures on this palm species by humans and livestock are likely to exacerbate the negative effect of future climate changes on its populations especially given the expected human population increase in africa,2009,0.705
Alien Invasive Slider Turtle in Unpredicted Habitat: A Matter of Niche Shift or of Predictors Studied?,sec title background title p species distribution models sdms aim on the characterization of a species ecological niche and project it into geographic space the result is a map of the species potential distribution which is for instance helpful to predict the capability of alien invasive species with regard to alien invasive species recently several authors observed a mismatch between potential distributions of native and invasive ranges derived from sdms and as an explanation ecological niche shift during biological invasion has been suggested we studied the physiologically well known slider turtle from north america which today is widely distributed over the globe and address the issue of ecological niche shift versus choice of ecological predictors used for model building i e by deriving sdms using multiple sets of climatic predictor p sec sec title principal findings title p in one sdm predictors were used aiming to mirror the physiological limits of the slider turtle it was compared to numerous other models based on various sets of ecological predictors or predictors aiming at comprehensiveness the sdm focusing on the study species physiological limits depicts the target species worldwide potential distribution better than any of the other approaches p sec sec title conclusion title p these results suggest that a natural history driven understanding is crucial in developing statistical models of ecological niches as sdms while â œcomprehensiveâ or â œstandardâ sets of ecological predictors may be of limited use p sec,2009,0.854
"Human Footprint, facilitated jump dispersal, and the potential distribution of the invasive Eleutherodactylus johnstonei Barbour 1914 (Anura Eleutherodactylidae)",eleutherodactylus johnstonei barbour 1914 native to the north ern lesser antilles has established numerous invasive populations at caribbean islands and the adjacent central and south american main land the species is a highly successful colonizer but only able to invade anthropogenic disturbed habitats here i use a maximum entropy cli mate envelope modelling approach to model the geographic distribution of this species and to project that model into other potentially threatened areas results obtained from the model are compared with a measure of anthropogenic habitat disturbance human footprint my results sug gest a high probability of occurrence in large parts of southern central america at the northern and north eastern coast of south america and in the andes of colombia ecuador and venezuela the andean region harbouring a diverse amphibian fauna which is highly threatened due to anthropogenic habitat alteration appears to be at highest risk for further spread if the predictive maps are interpreted as depicting invasiveness potential of e johnstonei strategies to prevent further invasion should focus on biosafety measurements within the areas highlighted,2009,0.425
How Representative is the Protected Areas System of Nepal?,a protected areas system pas is effective only when it adequately includes a representative sample of important geophysical and biological features including critically endangered biota of a region however protected areas in nepal as in many parts of the world have been established on an ad hoc basis and thus one or more important features have been overlooked we conducted a gap analysis and developed a comparison index to assess the representativeness of geophysical features physiography altitude and ecoregions species diversity and endangered species listed in international union for nature conservation iucn and convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora cites by using a geographical information system gis framework the analysis indicated that more than two thirds 67 84 of the total area of 2 protected areas pas is in high mountains although this region accounts for only 23 92 of the countryâ s total area the hills comprise the highest proportion 29 17 of the countryâ s area but currently have the smallest proportion 1 33 of pas the altitudinal zones between 200â 400mare well represented with pas however the region between 400â 2700 m is poorly represented and representation by pas is comparatively higher in the area above 2800 m the ecoregions that have high conservation priority at global scale are poorly represented in protected areas of nepal existing pas include 39 62 of flowering plants 84 53 of mammals 95 73 of birds and 70 59 of herpetofauna of the country threatened animal species are well protected whereas a large number of threatened plant species are not represented by the current pa system,2010,0.665
"PERSPECTIVE: Underutilized resources for studying the evolution of invasive species during their introduction, establishment, and lag phases",abstract the early phases of biological invasions are poorly understood in particular during the introduction establishment and possible lag phases it is unclear to what extent evolution must take place for an introduced species to transition from established to expanding in this study we highlight three disparate data sources that can provide insights into evolutionary processes associated with invasion success biological control organisms horticultural introductions and natural history collections all three data sources potentially provide introduction dates information about source populations and genetic and morphological samples at different time points along the invasion trajectory that can be used to investigate preadaptation and evolution during the invasion process including immediately after introduction and before invasive expansion for all three data sources we explore where the data are held their quality and their accessibility we argue that these sources could find widespread use with a few additional pieces of data such as voucher specimens collected at certain critical time points during biocontrol agent quarantine rearing and release and also for horticultural imports neither of which are currently done consistently in addition public access to collected information must become available on centralized databases to increase its utility in ecological and evolutionary research,2010,0.332
"Description and molecular phylogeny of Tethya leysae sp. nov. (Porifera, Demospongiae, Hadromerida) from the Canadian Northeast Pacific with remarks on the use of microtomography in sponge taxonomy",the sponge tethya leysae sp nov porifera demospongiae hadromerida tethyidae is a new species from the canadian northeast pacific its type locality is the infralittoral around ohiat islet barkely sound vancouver island in canada tethya leysae sp nov is a medium sized spherical sponge with a verrucose surface orange yellow to light red alive and white with a greyish core in ethanol the highly variable oxyspherasters 25 115 âµm in size r c 0 34 0 69 are densely scattered almost throughout the entire cortex the micrasters comprise acanthoxyspherasters acanthostrongylasters acanthotylasters and small oxyspherasters which are present at low densities throughout the sponge and form a dense layer associated with the exopinacoderm the megascleres and the auxiliary megascleres comprise oxeas and strongyloxeas the new species is clearly distinguishable from the closely related t californiana by the absence of spherules among the micrasters the lack of an alveolar cortex and the extremely high density of megasters in the cortex in addition the r c values of the megasters differ between the two species and the oxyspherasters of t leysae sp nov rarely display bent rays the morphological differences between the species are confirmed by nucleotide and amino acid substitutions within the cytochrome oxidase subunit i coi mtdna gene phylogenetic analyses group t leysae sp nov with t californiana t actinia and t minuta which together form a sister group to a mediterranean north atlantic species cluster morphological analyses of the skeleton included x ray microtomography âµct and virtual 3d reconstruction which was used for the first time in conjunction with the description of a new sponge species microtomography permitted the visualization and analysis of spicules within the skeletal context or isolated in silico the method represents a valuable extension to the sponge taxonomistâ s toolbox since it allows morphometric measurements in 3d âµct will thus supplement classical morphological methods such as light and scanning electron microscopy,2010,0.934
MediaWiki interoperability framework for multimedia digital resources,the success of the collaborative web based mediawiki platform widely used in several projects to exchange knowledge created a new idea to use this system as a low tech interoperability and repository layer for data providers end users developers and project partners facilitating the acquisition of knowledge for multimedia digital resources is a task that usually requires special purpose interfaces with which users are not familiar the method effectively enables data providers to publish their metadata about multimedia content in the field of biodiversity in a push operation to a metadata repository through a familiar interface like mediawiki templates the workflow then involves a procedure for automatic metadata harvesting into fedora commons repository combined with the automatic creation of repository reports written to wiki pages in order to ensure a feedback to the data providers and end users models techniques standards and protocols used in the keytonature project make mediawiki a layered candidate in achieving interoperability at the syntactic and semantic level with a low technological entry barrier,2010,0.191
"Potential distribution of threatened Leptopelis spp. (Anura, Arthroleptidae) in Ethiopia derived from climate and land-cover data",ethiopia harbours 9 species of threatened amphibians all of which inhabit the high lands over the last decades there has been a rapid increase in deforestation and habitat degrada tion in ethiopia with the result that the last undisturbed refuges for forest dwelling anurans in the mountain areas have shrunk noticeably especially outside of protected areas in the present study we used a maximum entropy ecological niche modelling approach to model the potential distribution of 2 poorly known leptopelis species the models were derived from climate and land cover data at known occurrences of the species i e data from a number of natural history museums these mod els can be used to select the priority areas most critical for future protection and may guide further field surveys to accelerate the discovery of unknown populations,2010,0.641
"Combining historical biogeography with niche modeling in the Caprifolium clade of Lonicera (Caprifoliaceae, Dipsacales).",the lonicera clade caprifolium contains approximately 25 species distributed around the northern hemisphere including in the mediterranean climates of california and europe we sequenced the second intron of lfy to help resolve relationships within the clade where the internal transcribed spacer and chloroplast markers had previously failed to do so divergence time estimation and biogeographic analyses over the posterior distribution of dated trees suggest that a widespread ancestor was distributed across the northern hemisphere some 7 17 million years ago asian species form a sister group to a clade in which the european species are sister to the north american species we use climatic niche modeling and divergence time estimates to explore the evolution of climate variables in the group principal component analyses help to identify instances of convergence especially between distantly related species in the mediterranean basin and in the chaparral of california we document several cases of significant divergence between sister species in eastern north america and western north america climatic models were projected from one continent into the others e g north american species projected into asia and europe to examine whether species living in these areas occupy similar climates this study demonstrates the utility of combining niche modeling with historical biogeographic analyses and documents significant climatic niche evolution within a group of species distributed throughout the northern hemisphere these results suggest a possible model for the origin of the madrean tethyan disjunction pattern,2010,0.97
"Distribution and status of medicinal leeches (genus Hirudo) in the Western Palaearctic: anthropogenic, ecological, or historical effects?",abstract 10 1002 aqc 1071 abs 1 distribution and status of medicinal leeches were re considered in the light of the new taxonomy recognizing four western palaearctic species hirudo medicinalis hirudo verbana hirudo orientalis and hirudo troctina 2 recent records and new data obtained on expeditions to ukraine russia azerbaijan kazakhstan uzbekistan and the western balkans were mapped to obtain an up to date overview of the distribution 3 three hypotheses explaining the current ranges of all hirudo species were tested the ecological hypothesis suggesting a strong impact of large scale environmental factors received the highest support while anthropogenic influence was minimal and no historical patterns of refugia and colonization were detected 4 mapped localities of all hirudo species show extensive belt shaped ranges extending from east to west h medicinalis is distributed from britain and southern norway to the southern urals and probably as far as the altai mountains occupying the deciduous arboreal zone h verbana has been recorded from switzerland and italy to turkey and uzbekistan which largely corresponds to the mediterranean and sub boreal steppe zone h orientalis is associated with mountainous areas in the sub boreal eremial zone and occurs in transcaucasian countries iran and central asia h troctina has been found in north western africa and spain in the mediterranean zone 5 based on the data gathered and considering real and potential threats global iucn category near threatened is proposed for h medicinalis h verbana and h orientalis while h troctina can only be assigned to category data deficient copyright â 2010 john wiley sons ltd,2010,0.387
The Catalogue of Life: towards an integrative taxonomic backbone for biodiversity,the catalogue of life programme is addresseing the need for a comprehensive catalogue of the worldâ s presently known animals plants fungi and micro organisms the need is for an electronic catalogue that can be used as a taxonomic back bone in a wide variety of programmes covering species and documenting many types of biotic materials and records the first phase of the programme has used an architecture based on an array of global species databases to reach coverage of about two thirds of known species in the second phase of the programme there will be a new architecture a new array of services and a ring of partnerships with global programmes,2010,0.659
"Worlwide spread of the tropical fire ant, Solenopsis geminata (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",the tropical fire ant solenopsis geminata fabricius 1804 is a well known pest in many parts of the world where it is notorious for its potent sting to evaluate the worldwide spread of s geminata i compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records from 2100 sites i documented the earliest known s geminata records for 122 geo graphic areas countries island groups major caribbean islands us states and canadian provinces including several areas for which i found no previously published records e g anguilla barbuda curaã ao madagascar montserrat nebraska nevis st martin and vanuatu several new world solenopsis species were once considered junior synonyms of s geminata e g s gayi spinola 1851 s saevissima smith 1855 s virulens smith 1858 and s xyloni mccook 1880 therefore i did not map unconfirmed new world s geminata records published before creighton s 1930 re vision of solenopsis from areas where these species occur because some of these early records were likely to be based on misidentifications solenopsis geminata records are common through much of the new world tropics as well as parts of subtropical north america whereas s geminata is certainly native to south and central america it may well be exotic to the southeastern us and the west indies introduced several hundred years ago by 1900 s geminata had also spread through many parts of the old world notably tropical asia and oceania in the mid 20th century another invader from the neotropics the unvanquished fire ant solenopsis invicta buren 1974 began to spread around the world solenopsis invicta has displaced s geminata in open and disturbed habitats in many parts of the southern us leaving only remnant s geminata populations primarily in forested areas that s invicta does not invade although s geminata still has a much broader worldwide range i expect s invicta will continue to spread and displace s geminata in open habitats through many other parts of the tropics and subtropics,2010,0.578
The linguistic problem of morphology: structure versus homology and the standardization of morphological data,the present article discusses the need for standardization in morphology in order to increase comparability and communicability of morphological data we analyse why only morphological descriptions and not character matrices represent morphological data and why morphological terminology must be free of homology assumptions we discuss why images only support and substantiate data but are not data themselves by comparing morphological traits and dna sequence data we reveal fundamental conceptual shortcomings of the former that result from their high average degree of individuality we argue that the delimitation of morphological units of datum units and of evidence units must be distinguished each of which involves its own specific problems we conclude that morphology suffers from the linguistic problem of morphology that results from the lack of i a commonly accepted standardized morphological terminology ii a commonly accepted standardized and formalized method of description and iii a rationale for the delimitation of morphological traits although this is not problematic for standardizing metadata it hinders standardizing morphological data we provide the foundation for a solution to the linguistic problem of morphology which is based on a morphological structure concept we argue that this structure concept can be represented with knowledge representation languages such as the resource description framework rdf and that it can be applied for morphological descriptions we conclude with a discussion of how online databases can improve morphological data documentation and how a controlled and formalized morphological vocabulary i e a morphological rdf ontology if it is based on a structure concept can provide a possible solution to the linguistic problem of morphology â the willi hennig society 2009,2010,0.054
"Two new species of Paspalum (Paniceae: Panicoideae: Poaceae), a preliminary checklist of the genus in Mexico, and the identity of P. crinitum",two new species of paspalum from mexico are described and illustrated and the identity of p crinitum of the group livida is discussed the new species paspalum chiapense from chiapas and p yecorae from sonora belong to subgenera harpostachys and paspalum group paniculata respectively a preliminary account of the 88 species including the new ones of the genus for mexico is presented,2010,0.682
"A review of the biology and ecology of the Robber Crab, Birgus latro (Linnaeus, 1767) (Anomura: Coenobitidae)",birgus latro l is the largest terrestrial hermit crab in the world the species is widely distributed on remote indo pacific islands of the tropics but it is rapidly declining and is currently classified as data deficient on the iucn red list this review provides a synopsis of both published and unpublished data on the biology and ecology of b latro it highlights the lack of robust biological information on the species basic biology particularly in the juvenile and reproductive phases while behavioural ecology studies are few and report conflicting data between populations population studies indicate that b latro may have limited recruitment events throughout its range emphasising the need for more systematic research to clearly identify factors that influence successful recruitment events the review highlights the paucity of substantiated peer reviewed studies on this species and emphasises the need for further systematic research,2010,0.485
"Abordagem Biogeográfica: Potencial De Distribuição EExtensão Geográfica Da Mosca-Da-Carambola, Bactrocera Carambolae (DREW & Hancock, 1994), No Brasil",approach biogeography from potential geographic distribution eextensã o da da carambola fruit fly bactrocera carambolae drew hancock 1994 in brazil the carambola fruit fly bactrocera carambolae endemic to southeast asia arrived in brazil in 1996 at county of oiapoque amapã state where is restricted and officially controlled despite the name can attack about 100 species of fruit tree and not this feature draws attention to the potential threat to production of agribusiness particularly the fruit that besides contributing to the growth of brazilian economy is still a matter of national security several examples of invasions of species belong to bactrocera dorsalis complex in several countries has shown how expensive is the eradication of these pests once they are introduced and established thus the study highlights the importance of developing measures to provide input to decision making and public policies aimed at preventing the spread of b carambolae the ecological niche modeling is an alternative that can be used in order to identify new areas that are favorable to the survival of populations of a species producing a map of potential distribution for this thus through the ecological niche modeling has identified the potential geographical distribution and extent of this pest in brazil using the software openmodeller version 1 1 0 were produced thematic maps showing the areas most favorable to the establishment of the pest in the country according to the conditions in the native region of their occurrence by 15 points seven environmental variables bioclimatic and the algorithm garp the results suggest that much of the territory of the country has medium to high probability of occurrence allowing discussion about the risks of their occurrence in the most significant places producing fruits such as the sub medium sã o francisco valley and yet allow the trend to the adoption of preventive measures so that they are eliminated the threat that this pest may represent the economic sectors social and environmental of the country,2010,0.668
"Biological collections and ecological/environmental research: a review, some observations and a look to the future",housed worldwide mostly in museums and herbaria is a vast collection of biological specimens developed over centuries these biological collections and associated taxonomic and systematic research have received considerable long term public support the work remaining in systematics has been expanding as the estimated total number of species of organisms on earth has risen over recent decades as have estimated numbers of undescribed species despite this increasing task support for taxonomic and systematic research and biological collections upon which such research is based has declined over the last 30 40 years while other areas of biological research have grown considerably especially those that focus on environmental issues reflecting increases in research that deals with ecological questions e g what determines species distribution and abundance or environmental issues e g toxic pollution the level of research attempting to use biological collections in museums or herbaria in an ecological environmental context has risen dramatically during about the last 20 years the perceived relevance of biological collections and hence the support they receive should be enhanced if this trend continues and they are used prominently regarding such environmental issues as anthropogenic loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem function global climate change and decay of the epidemiological environment it is unclear however how best to use biological collections in the context of such ecological environmental issues or how best to manage collections to facilitate such use we demonstrate considerable and increasingly realized potential for research based on biological collections to contribute to ecological environmental understanding however because biological collections were not originally intended for use regarding such issues and have inherent biases and limitations they are proving more useful in some contexts than in others biological collections have for example been particularly useful as sources of information regarding variation in attributes of individuals e g morphology chemical composition in relation to environmental variables and provided important information in relation to species distributions but less useful in the contexts of habitat associations and population sizes changes to policies strategies and procedures associated with biological collections could mitigate these biases and limitations and hence make such collections more useful in the context of ecological environmental issues haphazard and opportunistic collecting could be replaced with strategies for adding to existing collections that prioritize projects that use biological collections and include besides taxonomy and systematics a focus on significant environmental ecological issues other potential changes include increased recording of the nature and extent of collecting effort and information associated with each specimen such as nearby habitat and other individuals observed but not collected such changes have begun to occur within some institutions institutions that house biological collections should we think pursue a mission of â understanding the life of the planet to inform its stewardshipâ krishtalka humphrey 2000 as such a mission would facilitate increased use of biological collections in an ecological environmental context and hence lead to increased appreciation encouragement and support from the public for these collections their associated research and the institutions that house them,2010,0.052
Molecular Characters of Zygomycetous Fungi,the traditional zygomycota has recently been considered polyphyletic as evidenced by a lot of molecular phylogenetic analyses as a result it has been distributed into a new phylum and four pending subphyla before the taxonomic status for these four subphyla could be determined the term zygomycetous fungi is used for those members traditionally included in the classical phylum zygomycota most current molecular characters of zygomycetous fungi have revealed that there is an obvious conflict between the traditional morphology based classification scheme and recent dna based phylogenies except for the notable adjustments at the phylum and subphylum level major changes at the order level can be observed for amoebidiales basidiobolales eccrinales entomophthorales geosiphonales and mortierellales with respect to families studies on the order mucorales have suggested an unnatural feature for its traditional family level classification scheme some genera such as absidia cunninghamella and rhizopus have also been intensively investigated by molecular methods genes encoding glucoamylases polygalacturonases fumaric acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids have been intensively studied for industrial purposes another important area is the study of the clinical relevance of zygomycetous fungi as pathogens the poor sensitivity of histological practices the difficult pure cultivation and the inaccurate susceptibility and serological tests have led to the development of highly sensitive and specific molecular techniques such as microsatellite oligonucleotide probes microarrays of gene markers and their expression fluorescent capillary electrophoresis real time pcr polymerase chain reaction pcr rflp pcr restriction fragment length polymorphism rapd randomly amplified polymorphic dna pfge pulsed field gel electrophoresis and direct sequencing of pcr products but these methods are not widely available and are reserved primarily for research purposes new techniques in the molecular identification of zygomycetous fungi need to be further developed and validated so far there are only five genome projects relevant to zygomycetous fungi including mortierella verticillata mucor circinelloides phycomyces blakesleeanus rhizopus arrhizus and smittium culisetae more genome projects about industrially agriculturally medically and environmentally important zygomycetous fungi are hopeful to provide a better understanding of their natural status in the whole organismic system in the world and their potential to benefit the human being,2010,0.137
The genus Stachybotrys (anamorphic fungi) in the semi-arid region of Brazil,the genus stachybotrys anamorphic fungi in the semi arid region of brazil stachybotrys is characterized by macronematous mononematous unbranched or branched conidiophores with discrete terminal and phialidic conidiogenous cells and aseptate reniform ellipsoidal to spherical smooth or verrucose conidia which are produced in a slimy mass eight species have been reported from brazil occurring in the soil air and leaf litter during investigation of conidial fungi on decaying leaf litter in semi arid areas of brazil nine species were found s bisbyi sriniv g l barron s chartarum ehrenb s hughes s globosa p c misra s k srivast s kampalensis hansf s longispora matsush s nephrospora hansf s nilagirica subram stachybotrys parvispora s hughes and s verrucispora matsush stachybotrys nilagirica is a new record from brazil descriptions comments geographic distribution and illustrations are presented for above mentioned species a key for all species recorded in semi arid region of brazil is presented,2010,0.931
NBRP databases: databases of biological resources in Japan,the national bioresource project nbrp is a japanese project that aims to establish a system for collecting preserving and providing bioresources for use as experimental materials for life science research it is promoted by 27 core resource facilities each concerned with a particular group of organisms and by one information center the nbrp database is a product of this project thirty databases and an integrated database retrieval system bioresource world brw have been created and made available through the nbrp home page http www nbrp jp the 30 independent databases have individual features which directly reflect the data maintained by each resource facility the brw is designed for users who need to search across several resources without moving from one database to another brw provides access to a collection of 4 5 million records on bioresources including wild species inbred lines mutants genetically engineered lines dna clones and so on brw supports summary browsing keyword searching and searching by dna sequences or gene ontology the results of searches provide links to online requests for distribution of research materials a circulation system allows users to submit details of papers published on research conducted using nbrp resources,2010,0.222
"A Census of Marine Biodiversity Knowledge, Resources, and Future Challenges",a review and evaluation of the project census of marine life the paper provides an overview of information currently available on marine biodiversity and the tools that can be used for collecting and accessing data,2010,0.18
The big questions for biodiversity informatics,science is a sequence of generating new ideas detailed explorations incorporation of the results into a toolbox for understanding data and turning them into useful knowledge one recent development has been large scale computer aided management of biodiversity information this emerging field of biodiversity informatics has been growing quickly but without overarching scientific questions to guide its development the result has been developments that have no connection to genuine insight and forward progress we outline what biodiversity informatics should be a link between diverse dimensions of organismal biology â genomics phylogenetics taxonomy distributional biology ecology interactions and conservation status â and describe the science progress that would result these steps will enable a transition from â gee whizâ to fundamental science infrastructure,2010,0.297
Credibility-enhanced curated database: Improving the value of curated databases,in curated databases annotations may contain opinions different from those in sources moreover annotations may contradict each other and have uncertainty such situations result in a natural question ã â which opinion is most likely to be correct ã â in this paper we define a credibility enhanced curated database and propose an efficient method to accurately evaluate the correctness of sources and annotations in curated databases,2010,0.203
Systematic Conservation Planning: an Updated Protocol,integrative habitat management requires adaptive management of landscapes and seascapes for productivity including farming and mining nature protection and human habitation and recreation systematic conservation planning scp is a framework that has been developed during the last decade for a structured approached to prioritizing and managing habitats deemed important for the protection of natural values drawing on protocols developed by several groups during the last decade this paper presents an updated protocol for scp the new protocol emphasizes the interactions between components and revision and reiteration of planning stages due to feedback between the components it also explicitly notes the cultural values and normative assumptions that are built into this framework and emphasizes that adequate planning processes must address the ethical issues that are raised the paper concludes by noting some of the lacunae of this protocol and difficulties that will be encountered in future extensions to satisfy all goals of integrative habitat management,2010,0.146
Baseline information for a future Conservation Plan (Action A.2 final report),amibioâ s baseline for a conservation plan is an additional not contractual product of action a 2 and meant to prepare the ground for the implementation of the automated remote monitoring scheme at hymettus the report summarizes the work and achievements of the biological inventories determines the micro sites for the monitoring stations and identifies the conservation needs of the study area future conservation plans have to address relevant international and national laws conventions and initiatives and of course the severe threats hymettus is facing a wide variety of stakeholders is involved with hymettus conservation in one or the other way including detrimental activities only 43 of the hymettus is owned by the municipalities of athens whereas 31 are controlled by the military 5 are privately owned and not les than 21 of the area is under dispute researcher network of environmental management 2004 that is without the participation of all stakeholders the implementation of conservation plans is not feasible here we present our ideas and suggestions mainly from a scientific perspective and take into account the methodology and species groups relevant for the amibio project mainly acoustically communicating animals but also aspects such as noise pollution or more efficient monitoring of human activities such as hunting or motor biking furthermore spay took the initiative in assembling additional information on the bioclimatic geological and ecological setting of the study area as well as preliminary ideas on the management of the area following the general formats required by the greek legislation translated excerpts are attached as appendices to this work we thus hope the present document might serve as a baseline for the future development of an official with stakeholder participation developed conservation plan given that 2010 is the international year of biodiversity iyb and in light of the ambitious ec target to halt biodiversity loss our final aim is to promote and integrate amibio methodology and results into the sebi process streamlining european 2010 biodiversity indicators sebi 2010 eea 2007 2009,2010,0.354
A Gap Analysis Methodology for Collecting Crop Genepools: A Case Study with Phaseolus Beans,the wild relatives of crops represent a major source of valuable traits for crop improvement these resources are threatened by habitat destruction land use changes and other factors requiring their urgent collection and long term availability for research and breeding from ex situ collections we propose a method to identify gaps in ex situ collections i e gap analysis of crop wild relatives as a means to guide efficient and effective collecting activities methodology principal findings the methodology prioritizes among taxa based on a combination of sampling geographic and environmental gaps we apply the gap analysis methodology to wild taxa of the phaseolus genepool of 85 taxa 48 56 5 are assigned high priority for collecting due to lack of or under representation in genebanks 17 taxa are given medium priority for collecting 15 low priority and 5 species are assessed as adequately represented in ex situ collections gap â œhotspotsâ representing priority target areas for collecting are concentrated in central mexico although the narrow endemic nature of a suite of priority species adds a number of specific additional regions to spatial collecting priorities conclusions significance results of the gap analysis method mostly align very well with expert opinion of gaps in ex situ collections with only a few exceptions a more detailed prioritization of taxa and geographic areas for collection can be achieved by including in the analysis predictive threat factors such as climate change or habitat destruction or by adding additional prioritization filters such as the degree of relatedness to cultivated species i e ease of use in crop breeding furthermore results for multiple crop genepools may be overlaid which would allow a global analysis of gaps in ex situ collections of the world s plant genetic resources,2010,0.501
Towards demand driven publishing: approaches to the prioritisation of digitisation of natural history collections data,natural history collections represent a vast repository of biodiversity data of international significance there is an imperative to capture the data through digitisation projects in order to expose the data to new and established users of biodiversity data on the basis of review of current state of digitization of natural history collections a demand driven approach is advocated through the use of metadata to promote and increase access to natural history collection data,2010,0.229
What’s “cool” on eriophyoid mites?,fundamental knowledge on the morphology biology ecology and economic importance of eriophyoidea has been exhaustively compiled by lindquist et al eriophyoid mitesâ their biology natural enemies and control elsevier 1996 since that time the number of recognized species and the economic importance of the taxon have increased substantially the aim of this paper is to analyze and briefly review new findings from eriophyoid mitesâ literature after lindquist et al book stressing persistent gaps and needs much recent attention has been given to sampling and detection taxonomy and systematics faunistic surveys internal morphology rearing techniques biological and ecological aspects biomolecular studies and virus vectoring recommendations are made for integrating research and promoting broader dissemination of data among specialists and non specialists,2010,0.279
"Asplenium platyneuron, a new pteridophyte for Europe",eleven plants of asplenium platyneuron ebony spleenwort were found in disturbed serpentine woodland in south central slovakia central europe this find represents a newaddition to the fern flora of europe it is probably the result of long distance spore dispersal the nearest known sites for this species are those in eastern north america about 6500km away the important determina tion characters of a platyneuron are described the slovakian locality characterized and an over view of the ecology and a map of the worldwide distribution of this species provided,2010,0.586
Estimated dates of recent extinctions for North American and Hawaiian birds,series of sighting records the years in which a species has been recorded can be used to infer whether species have gone extinct and when extinctions occurred we compiled sighting records for 52 rare bird species subspecies and distinct island populations from north america and hawaii 38 of which proved adequate for such analyses using a data set that combines non controversial sight records with those for which physical evidence exists no populations were judged likely to be extant including those that have not been declared extinct the alala was the only species with a 95 confidence interval around the extinction date that extended beyond 2009 suggesting that this population is the least unlikely to be extinct although all are probably extinct populations were ranked according to their likelihood of persistence so that any future searches can be prioritized to minimize the risk that resources are spent on extinct species estimated extinction dates spanned the period from the 1840s 2000s with evidence for a peak in the early 1900s on average only about 4 years passed between a species last sighting and its estimated extinction date and the 95 confidence intervals around extinction dates extended 9 26 years after the last sighting long gaps between sightings were very rare mean and median gap sizes between consecutive sightings within sighting records were 2 5 and 0 years respectively gaps between the last and penultimate sightings were smaller than average gap sizes earlier in sighting records finally a non parametric method that can be calculated with more limited data proved a weak substitute for using more complete sighting records,2010,0.923
Distorted views of biodiversity: spatial and temporal bias in species occurrence data,boakes et al compile and analyze a historical dataset of 170 000 bird sightings over two centuries and show how changing trends in data gathering may confound a true picture of biodiversity change,2010,0.351
"Critical Situation Analysis (CSA) of Invasive Alien Species (IAS) Status and Management, Saint Lucia, 2010",this critical situation analysis csa provides an overview of occurrence trends in distribution of most problematic invasive alien species ias in saint lucia including an assessment of pathways and on going management approaches it assesses gaps in existing institutional legislative and policy frameworks building on earlier studies and should be read together with several cited reports prepared in parallel as inputs into the national invasive species strategy niss early sections describe saint luciaâ s environmental profile including protected areas marine reserves and other sites of high conservation value both biodiversity baselines assessments and ias inventories are discussed regarding their merits and limitations generally terrestrial ecosystems are better understood than aquatic ones where baseline studies are scarce poorly documented where they exist and the origin of species is often unknown,2010,0.682
"Noteworthy records of aquatic birds in the state of Queretaro, Mexico",a systematic sampling of aquatic birds was conducted over a period of two years in the state of querã taro mexico twenty nine species have been added to the official list of species for the state nine of which have few records in the interior of the country dendrocygna autumnalis d bicolor lophodytes cucullatus gavia immer pluvialis squatarola charadrius semipalmatus numenius phaeopus limosa haemastica and thalasseus maximus,2010,0.576
Analysis of Museum Records Highlights Unprotected Land Snail Diversity in Alabama,in order to address the conservation status and needs of alabamaâ s land snail species we examined their diversity and distribution using 11 816 museum records representing 226 land snail species the chao 1 statistic identifi ed seven areas of high species richness the areas with the highest richness contain an estimated 200 species of land snail these seven areas are not currently well protected by state or federal lands while taxonomic misidentifi cation and geo referencing quality may be infl ating our results we suggest that studies like ours provide valuable baseline diversity estimates and launching points for continued studies,2010,0.79
"DOPA, a Digital Observatory for Protected Areas including Monitoring and Forecasting Services",the digital observatory for protected areas dopa is a biodiversity information system currently developed as an interoperable web service at the joint research centre of the european commission in collaboration with other international organizations including gbif unep wcmc birdlife international and rspb dopa is designed to assess the state and pressure of protected areas pas and to prioritize them accordingly in order to support decision making and fund allocation processes to become an operational web service allowing the automatic monitoring of protected areas dopa needs to be able to capture the dynamics of spatio temporal changes in habitats and anthropogenic pressure on pas as well as the changes in the species distributions because some of the most valuable natural ecosystems and species on the planet cover large areas making field monitoring methods very difficult for a large scale assessment the automatic collection and processing of remote sensing data are processes at the heart of the problem to further be able to forecast changes due to climate change dopa has to rely on an architecture that enables it to communicate with the appropriate modeling web services the purpose of this presentation is to present the architecture of the dopa with special attention to e habitat its web processing service designed for assessing the irreplaceability of habitats as well as for the modeling of habitats under different climate change scenarios the use of open standards for spatial data and of open source programming languages for the development of the core functionalities of the system are expected to encourage the participation of the scientific community beyond the current partnerships and to favour the sharing of such an observatory which could be installed at any other location acknowledgement part of this work is funded under the 7th framework programme by the eurogeoss www eurogeoss eu project of the european commission the views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the european commission references dubois g hartley a nelson a mayaux p and j m grã goire 2009 towards an interoperable web service for the monitoring of african protected areas in proceedings of the 33rd international symposium on remote sensing of environment isrse may 4 8 2009 stresa italy hartley a a nelson p mayaux and j m grã goire the assessment of african protected areas scientific and technical reports office for official publications of the european communities luxembourg eur 22780 en 70 pp 2007,2010,0.337
Data Integration Systems for Scientific Applications,the integration of data stemming from heterogeneous sources is an issue that has challenged computer science research for years â not to say decades therefore many methods frameworks and tools were and are still being developed that all promise to solve the integration of data this work describes those which we think are most promising by relating them to each other since our focus is on scientific applications we consider important properties within this domain such as data provenance however aspects like the extensibility of an approach are also considered,2010,0.129
How Spatial Information Contributes to the Conservation and Management of Biodiversity,reliable ecological information is a necessary component of sustainable management practices walters 1986 land managers need to understand the spatial distribution and population status of species and habitats in regional landscapes the millennium assessment a global assessment of human well being identified biodiversity as a crucial ecosystem service that increases the capacity of ecosystems to adapt to environmental change and maintain productivity http www millenniumassessment org en index aspx biodiversity is widely defined as the variety of compositional structural and functional biological components available across multiple scales including landscapes ecosystems species and genetics noss 2001 as biodiversity occurs at a multitude of scales species conservation and sustainable management requires that planning also occur at these scales planning for biodiversity conservation is critical because regional landscapes are increasingly compromised by global anthropogenic influences vitousek et al 1997 more than 75 of habitable ice free land is already altered by human residence and land use ellis and ramankutty 2008 usher et al 2005 vitousek et al 1997,2010,0.533
Applied Conservation Genetics and the Need for Quality Control and Reporting of Genetic Data Used in Fisheries and Wildlife Management,genetic data are often critical for defining populations for management purposes e g identifying geographic boundaries or diagnostic characters for genetically discrete subunits but can be called into question by both scientific and legal review this can result in reversed or delayed implementation of management actions we discuss methods for data quality control and quality analysis and describe examples of steps applied to 2 of the most common types of genetic data mitochondrial dna sequences and microsatellite genotypes these steps can serve both as guides to conservation geneticists and as an initial protocol for managers to determine whether genetic data will hold up against legal and scientific challenges in addition we suggest types of data and quality measures that should be reported as supplementary materials to published reports these supplementary data serve to reduce the occurrence of legal and conservation controversies and improve reproducibility over time in population genetics studies where genetic monitoring is likely to play an increasing role,2010,0.238
Biodiversity of the Deep-Sea Continental Margin Bordering the Gulf of Maine (NW Atlantic): Relationships among Sub-Regions and to Shelf Systems,background in contrast to the well studied continental shelf region of the gulf of maine fundamental questions regarding the diversity distribution and abundance of species living in deep sea habitats along the adjacent continental margin remain unanswered lack of such knowledge precludes a greater understanding of the gulf of maine ecosystem and limits development of alternatives for conservation and management methodology principal findings we use data from the published literature unpublished studies museum records and online sources to 1 assess the current state of knowledge of species diversity in the deep sea habitats adjacent to the gulf of maine 39â 43â n 63â 71â w 150â 3000 m depth 2 compare patterns of taxonomic diversity and distribution of megafaunal and macrofaunal species among six distinct sub regions and to the continental shelf and 3 estimate the amount of unknown diversity in the region known diversity for the deep sea region is 1 671 species most are narrowly distributed and known to occur within only one sub region the number of species varies by sub region and is directly related to sampling effort occurring within each fishes corals decapod crustaceans molluscs and echinoderms are relatively well known while most other taxonomic groups are poorly known taxonomic diversity decreases with increasing distance from the continental shelf and with changes in benthic topography low similarity in faunal composition suggests the deep sea region harbours faunal communities distinct from those of the continental shelf non parametric estimators of species richness suggest a minimum of 50 of the deep sea species inventory remains to be discovered conclusions significance the current state of knowledge of biodiversity in this deep sea region is rudimentary our ability to answer questions is hampered by a lack of sufficient data for many taxonomic groups which is constrained by sampling biases life history characteristics of target species and the lack of trained taxonomists,2010,0.917
Genetic and physiological bases for phenological responses to current and predicted climates,we are now reaching the stage at which specific genetic factors with known physiological effects can be tied directly and quantitatively to variation in phenology with such a mechanistic understanding scientists can better predict phenological responses to novel seasonal climates using the widespread model species arabidopsis thaliana we explore how variation in different genetic pathways can be linked to phenology and life history variation across geographical regions and seasons we show that the expression of phenological traits including flowering depends critically on the growth season and we outline an integrated life history approach to phenology in which the timing of later life history events can be contingent on the environmental cues regulating earlier life stages as flowering time in many plants is determined by the integration of multiple environmentally sensitive gene pathways the novel combinations of important seasonal cues in projected future climates will alter how phenology responds to variation in the flowering time gene network with important consequences for plant life history we discuss how phenology models in other systemsâ both natural and agriculturalâ could employ a similar framework to explore the potential contribution of genetic variation to the physiological integration of cues determining phenology,2010,0.237
A Capability Maturity Model for Scientific Data Management,in this paper we propose a capability maturity model cmm for scientific data management sdm practices with the goal of supporting assessment and improvement of these practices the cmm describes key process areas and practices necessary for effective sdm the cmm further characterizes organizations by the level of maturity of these processes meaning the organizational capability to reliably perform the processes we suggest that this framework will be useful to organizations in evaluating and planning improvements to their sdm practices,2010,0.128
Macrogeographic population structuring in the cosmopolitan agricultural pest Bactrocera cucurbitae (Diptera: Tephritidae),abstract the macrogeographic population structure of the agricultural pest bactrocera cucurbitae diptera tephritidae was investigated in order to identify the geographic origin of the species and reconstruct its range expansion individuals of b cucurbitae were collected from 25 worldwide distributed localities n 570 and genotyped at 13 microsatellite loci the bayesian clustering reveals that b cucurbitae can be subdivided into five main groups corresponding to populations from i the african continent ii la rã union iii central asia iv east asia and v hawaii the proportions of inter regional assignments and the higher values of genetic diversity in populations from pakistan india and bangladesh suggest that b cucurbitae originated in central asia and expanded its range to east asia and hawaii on one hand and to africa and the islands of the indian ocean on the other a number of outliers 10â 19 specimens according to different clustering algorithms show high levels of admixture q 0 70 with populations from different regions and reveal complex patterns of inter regional gene flow anthropogenic transport is the most plausible promoter of this large scale dispersal the introduction of individuals from geographically distant sources did not have a relevant role in the most recent african invasions which originated from the expansion of local populations these results could provide a useful background to better evaluate invasion risks and establish priorities for the management of this cosmopolitan agricultural pest,2010,0.462
Ecological patterns of Costa Rican myxomycetes,ecological patterns of tropical myxomycetes have been subjected to study only during the last decade an exhaustive analysis of an extensive dataset for a single tropical country is lacking for this reason the present study was designed with the primary objective of examining the ecological distribution patterns of myxomycetes in costa rica a database that includes historical records was compiled and factors such as forest type and substratum preference were analyzed in an effort to understand these patterns at both the macro and microenvironmental levels microenvironmental parameters that may drive abiotic preferences were analyzed the ecological distribution of species showed a complex pattern however elevation seemed to be a key factor in determining the distribution of the group of species analyzed in the same way nonwoody substrata seemed to represent the most important factor explaining the niches occupied by myxomycetes in lowland regions of the country,2010,0.449
First Information on Danube Dyskomitsety Biosphere Reserve (Спорові рослини та гриби),translated with google translate danube delta is one of the largest estuaries of the world characterized by high species riznomanitnis cially living organisms its wetlands uni radical by the value for the resettlement of rare russian plants and animals so in 1973 created the danube from here dividing the black sea state reserve academy ssr area of 14 851 hectares after 8 years were held to slidzhennya designed by the global environmental foundation conservation of biodiversity of the danube delta which showed that lack the reserve and on carried therein modes of not fully ensure hearing conservation and ecosystem restoration marsh so th it was decided to create a co dunays first bio sfernoho reserve ukraine area of 46 402 9 hectares reserves included in the world network of biosphere re zervativ and part of the international criminal raina romanian s who biosphere reserve danube delta,2010,0.518
State-of-the-Network 2010: Discovery and Publishing of the Primary Biodiversity Data through the GBIF Network,the global biodiversity information facility gbif has a mandate to facilitate free and open access to primary biodiversity data worldwide gbif currently october 2010 facilitates access to over 216 million primary biodiversity data1 records this report is an effort to present a comprehensive overview of a the data discovery and publishing potential b the status of data publishing and c a content assessment of accessible data in order to assess the preparedness of the gbif network to meet its ambitious targets the following are the salient observations outcomes of this exercise,2010,0.359
Fading of the last giants: an assessment of habitat availability of the Sunda gharial Tomistoma schlegelii and coverage with protected areas,abstract 1 the sunda gharial tomistoma schlegelii is with 2500â 3000 remaining specimens one of the least studied and at the same time most endangered crocodile species inhabiting peat swamps in southeast asia threats affecting the species are mainly associated with habitat loss and illegal hunting 2 the effectiveness of the existing reserve network in southeast asia for the protection of the sunda garial was assessed by combining spatially explicit habitat analyses derived from land cover information with species distribution modelling subsequently possible improvements of the existing reserve network are derived from the habitat availability analyses 3 the results of the spatially explicit analyses indicate that suitable habitats for the sunda gharial in southeast asia i e peat swamps and riverine forests are highly fragmented spatial coverage of remaining habitats with protected areas fulfilling iucn standards generally varies among regions and is best in indonesia however large currently unprotected suitable areas remain in sumatra establishment of 10 additional already proposed reserves may improve the protection of major parts of the remaining suitable habitats of the sunda gharial 4 according to the results of this study the reserve network protecting this species could be significantly improved by expanding it to include seven national reserves not currently listed by the iucn and an additional 10 reserves that have recently been proposed improvements and extensions of the existing reserve networks in southeast asia are pivotal to guarantee the long term survival of the sunda gharial copyright â 2010 john wiley sons ltd,2010,0.281
Phylogenetic analyses reveal the shady history of C4 grasses,grasslands cover more than 20 of the earth s terrestrial surface and their rise to dominance is one of the most dramatic events of biome evolution in earth history grasses possess two main photosynthetic pathways the c3 pathway that is typical of most plants and a specialized c4 pathway that minimizes photorespiration and thus increases photosynthetic performance in high temperature and or low co2 environments c4 grasses dominate tropical and subtropical grasslands and savannas and c3 grasses dominate the world s cooler temperate grassland regions this striking pattern has been attributed to c4 physiology with the implication that the evolution of the pathway enabled c4 grasses to persist in warmer climates than their c3 relatives we combined geospatial and molecular sequence data from two public archives to produce a 1 230 taxon phylogeny of the grasses with accompanying climate data for all species extracted from more than 1 1 million herbarium specimens here we show that grasses are ancestrally a warm adapted clade and that c4 evolution was not correlated with shifts between temperate and tropical biomes instead 18 of 20 inferred c4 origins were correlated with marked reductions in mean annual precipitation these changes are consistent with a shift out of tropical forest environments and into tropical woodland savanna systems we conclude that c4 evolution in grasses coincided largely with migration out of the understory and into open canopy environments furthermore we argue that the evolution of cold tolerance in certain c3 lineages is an overlooked innovation that has profoundly influenced the patterning of grassland communities across the globe,2010,0.181
Wildlife tracking data management: a new vision,to date the processing of wildlife location data has relied on a diversity of software and file formats data management and the following spatial and statistical analyses were undertaken in multiple steps involving many time consuming importing exporting phases recent technological advancements in tracking systems have made large continuous high frequency datasets of wildlife behavioural data available such as those derived from the global positioning system gps and other animal attached sensor devices these data can be further complemented by a wide range of other information about the animals environment management of these large and diverse datasets for modelling animal behaviour and ecology can prove challenging slowing down analysis and increasing the probability of mistakes in data handling we address these issues by critically evaluating the requirements for good management of gps data for wildlife biology we highlight that dedicated data management tools and expertise are needed we explore current research in wildlife data management we suggest a general direction of development based on a modular software architecture with a spatial database at its core where interoperability data model design and integration with remote sensing data sources play an important role in successful gps data handling,2010,0.21
Complete genome sequence of Streptosporangium roseum type strain (NI 9100T),strain ni 9100t dsm 43021 atcc 12428 jcm 3005 is the type strain of the species streptosporangium roseum which is the type species of the genus streptosporangium the type genus of the actinobacterial suborder streptosporanineae 1 4 s roseum ni 9100t was isolated from vegetable garden soil and first described by couch in 1955 2 4 the name derives from â streptoâ from greek meaning â coiledâ combined with â sporangiumâ latin for â spore caseâ to mean â streptomyces likeâ but with sporangia 2 4 the species epithet â roseumâ derives from the pinkish color on potato dextrose agar 2 here we present a summary classification and a set of features for s roseum ni 9100t together with the description of the complete genomic sequencing and annotation,2010,0.635
Unite research with what citizens do for fun: “recreational monitoring” of marine biodiversity,institutes often lack funds and manpower to perform large scale biodiversity monitoring citizens can be involved contributing to the collection of data thus decreasing costs underwater research requires specialist skills and scuba certification and it can be difficult to involve volunteers the aim of this study was to involve large numbers of recreational divers in marine biodiversity monitoring for increasing the environmental education of the public and collecting data on the status of marine biodiversity here we show that thousands of recreational divers can be enrolled in a short time using specially formulated questionnaires nonspecialist volunteers reported the presence of 61 marine taxa encountered during recreational dives performed as regular sport dives validation trials were carried out to assess the accuracy and consistency of volunteer recorded data and these were compared to reference data collected by an experienced researcher in the majority of trials 76 volunteers performed with an accuracy and consistency of 50â 80 comparable to the performance of conservation volunteer divers on precise transects in other projects the recruitment of recreational divers involved the main diving and tour operators in italy a popular scientific magazine and mass media during the four year study 3825 divers completed 18 757 questionnaires corresponding to 13 539 diving hours the volunteer sightings based index showed that in the monitored area the biodiversity status did not change significantly within the project time scale but there was a significant negative correlation with latitude suggesting improved quality in the southernmost areas this trend could be related to the presence of stressors in the northern areas and has been supported by investigations performed by the italian ministry of the environment the greatest limitation with using volunteers to collect data was the uneven spatial distribution of samples the benefits were the considerable amounts of data collected over short time periods and at low costs the successful development of citizen based monitoring programs requires open mindedness in the academic community advantages of citizen involvement in research are not only adding large data sets to the ecological knowledge base but also aiding in the environmental education of the public,2010,0.444
Assessing the reliability of biodiversity databases: identifying evenly inventoried island parasitoid faunas (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonoidea) worldwide,1 taxonomic and geographic biases are common in biodiversity inventories especially in hyperdiverse taxa such as the ichneumonoidea despite these problems biodiversity databases could be a valuable source of information if their reliability is carefully assessed 2 one major problem of using these data for large scale analyses is the unevenness of data quality from different areas which makes them difficult to compare one way of surpassing such problem would be to identify sets of areas that are evenly inventoried 3 here we propose a scoring protocol for the identification of sets of evenly inventoried areas from taxonomic databases based on three criteria i completeness at high taxonomic levels ii congruence with well established ecological relationships such as speciesâ area relationship and iii publication effort received we apply this protocol to the selection of a set of evenly inventoried islands worldwide for two ichneumonoidea families braconidae and ichneumonidae from the data gathered in taxapad database 4 from the 118 islands included in taxapad 53 and 70 can be considered sufficiently inventoried for braconidae and ichneumonidae respectively the publication effort criterion was more restrictive than the other two criteria the indomalayan nearctic and palearctic regions had more than half of their islands identified as evenly inventoried for both families 5 we discuss the generality of the biases and incompleteness of most biodiversity data and also how the basic principles of the protocol proposed here can be applied to taxonomic databases devoted to other taxa also the islands identified here can serve as the basis for large scale analyses of the poorly known biogeography of the ichneumonoidea,2010,0.16
"Pollination Syndromes in Mediterranean Orchids—Implications for Speciation, Taxonomy and Conservation",the mediterranean flora is spectacularly rich in orchid species that have evolved remarkable adaptations to their environment orchids have complex and delicate interactions with their pollinators which makes them particularly prone to local extinction conservation actions should be encouraged for a range of endangered mediterranean orchid species but the current taxonomic confusion in several genera and the apparent disagreement among orchid taxonomists make the situation particularly confusing from a conservation perspective in this review we document how the different pollination syndromes of mediterranean orchids nectar reward shelter offering food deception and sexual deception can have a profound impact on the type of reproductive barriers among species on floral phenotypic variation as we perceive it on potentially related processes of species sorting and extinction and consequently should have a strong influence on the related conservation management programs we also highlight that the majority of mediterranean orchids are pollinated by specialised bees often occupying otherwise narrow ecological niches e g pollen specialisation brood cell parasites specific nesting site this condition makes the orchid pollinator interactions very fragile and several orchid species prone to local extinction we illustrate this phenomenon by a selection of case studies that show how the adequate integration of the ecological requirements traits of the orchids and their associated pollinators into conservation actions could help protect endangered species and ensure the sustainability of the often complex local pollination web,2010,0.869
Functional explanations for variation in bark thickness in tropical rain forest trees,summary 1 the complex structure of tree bark reflects its many functions which include structural support as well as defence against fire pests and pathogens thick bark however might limit respiration by the living tissues of the trunk nevertheless little research has addressed community level variation in bark thickness and to the best of our knowledge no one has tested multiple hypotheses to explain variation in bark thickness 2 we conducted an extensive survey of bark thickness within and among species of trees in the tropical rain forests of french guiana trunk bark thickness increased by 1â 2 mm per 10 cm increase in stem diameter and varied widely at all taxonomic levels mean trunk bark thickness was 4â 5 mm range 0â 5â 29 mm which was less that found in two amazonian rain forests in previous studies this survey of bark thickness should be of use for forest management since tree survival through fire is strongly predicted by bark thickness 3 we combined the survey data with multiple datasets to test several functional hypotheses proposed to explain variation in bark thickness we found bark to provide an average of 10 of the flexural rigidity of tree stems which was substantially less than that found in the only other study of bark stiffness bark thickness was uncorrelated with speciesâ association with fire prone habitats suggesting that the influence of fire on bark thickness does not extend into moist forests there was also little evidence that bark thickness is affected by its function as a defence against herbivory nor was there evidence that thick bark limits trunk respiration 4 a re analysis of previously collected anatomical data indicated that variation in rhytidome non conducting outer bark thickness explains much of the variation in overall bark thickness as rhytidome is primarily involved in protecting the living tissues of the trunk we suggest that bark thickness is driven mostly by its defensive function 5 functional explanations for the variation in bark thickness were not clear cut nevertheless this study provides a foundation for further investigation of the functional bases of bark in tropical trees,2010,0.047
Development of a Biological Control Program for Common Tansy: Final Report 2006 - 2009,common tansy tanacetum vulgare is an aromatic perennial european plant that was introduced into north america as a cultivated herb but has now become an abundant invasive plant across canada and the northern usa we have initiated a project supported by a consortium of funding agencies and programs in canada and the usa to investigate the potential of european insects as biological control agents against common tansy in north america field survey sites in northern germany russia and ukraine were selected based on climatic matching to maximize the chances that insects introduced as a result of this study will be preadapted to canadian and northern us climates based on a literature review and previous field surveys we identified several insects as potential biological control agents including a stem mining weevil microplontus millefolii a leaf feeding beetle cassida stigmatica a flower feeding moth isophrictis striatella a stem mining beetle phytoecia nigricornis and a leaf and flower galling midge rhopalomyia tanaceticola in field surveys in russia we also found a root feeding beetle longitarsus noricus that had not been previously reported from common tansy all of these insects have been collected at field sites and progress is being made in determining their life histories and in developing rearing methods a test plant list including 56 species related to common tansy or with chemical similarities to it was developed for use in host specificity testing of the insects the list has been approved by the review panels in canada and the usa and almost all plant species required have been obtained host specificity testing of c stigmatica and l noricus is under way a ph d project has been started to study the chemical diversity of common tansy and its effects on the host preferences of insects feeding on common tansy we have also collaborated with researchers using molecular methods to study the systematics and genetic diversity of common tansy and related species this project has resulted in the development of an effective consortium of stakeholders and researchers that is well placed to continue with the detailed studies on agent biology and host specificity required to gain approval for the release of biological control agents in canada and the usa,2010,0.806
Analysis of the New Trend of Patent Law on the Protection of the Biotechnology,with the rise of the knowledge economy intellectual property rights have replaced the traditional assets and become the focus of attention in order to strengthen industrial development the international community encourages research and innovation to enhance overall national competitiveness all to strengthen the legal system about intellectual property rights which patent law particularly improves industrial competitiveness promotes social progress of the source however more attentions in the industrial development in the use of biotechnology on research and development of products and promote the rapid development of biotechnology industry is closely related to human daily life these commercial products for the economic benefits are bound to be protected by law therefore in response to the international harmonization of patent trends patent protection for biotechnology is also slowly relaxed in various countries changed the attitude to encourage research and development the draft amendment in taiwanâ â s patent law to promote the development of the domestic biotechnology industry the full liberalization of animal and plant patents can be described as a big change in the protection of biotechnology industry but the impact after the modify of patent law should be based on legislative policy considerations together with drawing up relevant supporting measures intended to avoid confusion in application of the law and given rise to opposition of the doubt for the emerging field of biotechnology when related to patent protection it should possess utility and in particular the most important are on medical pharmaceutical and new varieties the development of biotechnology in taiwan the need for patent protection has been necessary the main items are the cultivation of microorganisms the protection of genetic the use of biotechnology produced by the medical methods such as stem cell therapy or gene therapy and in accordance with biotechnology techniques gets the issue of pharmaceutical protection is indeed worth exploring the area which was taiwan s current patent law does not cover the part in the past not to be patentable on biotechnology is appropriate the new technology combined with biotechnology and other industries whether the protection what direction should the protection be these are all the future will need to solve the questions consequently this article that taiwan should follow the international trend of legislation a comprehensive review of the existing patent law on the protection of biotechnology in order to facilitate with international standards benefit the health of all citizens and enhance national competitiveness,2010,0.058
The Atlas of Living Australia's Spatial Portal,the atlas of living australia is an aus 65m australian government initiative to â œto develop an authoritative freely accessible distributed and federated biodiversity data management systemâ the atlas led by csiro partners with over 18 national state and territory agencies to deliver online a wide range of biological and environmental information the atlas also supports nodes of or links to the global biodiversity information facility catalogue of life encyclopedia of life biodiversity heritage library bhl map of life barcode of life data systems bold ocean biogeographic information system morphbank the taxonomic database working group and other projects two years into the three year project the atlas delivers over 114 000 species and 22 million occurrence records 200 environmental layers a range of spatial and annotation tools and citizen science support the atlas spatial portal the focus of this paper is a tool designed to support environmental research and management the focus of the portal is species areas environmental layers spatial analysis and data import export,2010,0.196
The Azorean Biodiversity Portal: An internet database for regional biodiversity outreach,there is a growing interest in academia to provide biodiversity data to both the scientific community and the public we present an internet database of the terrestrial lichens bryophytes vascular plants molluscs arthropods vertebrates and coastal invertebrates of the azores archipelago portugal north atlantic the azorean biodiversity portal abp http www azoresbioportal angra uac pt this is a unique resource for fundamental research in systematics biodiversity education and conservation management the abp was based on a regional species database atlantis comprised of grid based spatial incidence information for c 5000 species most of the data rely on a comprehensive literature survey dating back to the 19th century as well as unpublished records from recent field surveys in the azores the abp disseminates the atlantis database to the public allowing universal unrestricted access to much of its data complementarily the abp includes additional information of interest to the general public e g literature on macaronesian biodiversity together with images from collections and or live specimens for many species in this contribution we explain the implementation of a regional biodiversity database its architecture achievements and outcomes strengths and limitations we further include a number of suggestions in order to implement similar initiatives,2010,0.387
Climate change and spring-fruiting fungi,most macrofungi produce ephemeral fruit bodies during autumn but some have adapted to spring fruiting in this study temporal changes in the time of spring fruiting in norway and the uk during 1960â 2007 have been investigated by statistical analyses of about 6000 herbarium and field records covering 34 species nearly 30 per cent of the temporal variation in fruiting could be ascribed to spatial and species specific effects correcting for these effects linear trends towards progressively earlier fruiting were detected during the entire period in both norway and the uk with a change in average fruiting day of 18 days over the study period early fruiting was correlated with high winter temperatures in both countries indicating that the observed phenological changes are likely due to earlier onset of spring there were also significant correlations between climatic conditions in one year and timing of fruiting the following year indicating that below ground mycelia are influenced by climatic conditions over a longer time period before fruiting fruiting dates were however not strictly related to changes in vernal accumulated thermal time our results indicate that global warming has lead to progressively earlier fruiting of spring fungi in northwest europe during the last half century,2010,0.262
Chemical constituents of the wood from zanthoxylum quinduense tul.(Rutaceae),phytochemical investigation of the wood from zanthoxylum quinduense tul allowed the isolation and identification of norchelerythrine decarine 6 acetonyldihydrochelerythrine syringaresinol evofilin c p hydroxybenzaldehyde vanillic acid a mixture of b sitosterol stigmasterol and campesterol and a mixture of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids and their esters derivatives the structures of the isolated compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic techniques and comparison with literature data and the mixture of sterols and fatty acids were identified by gc ms the antifungal activity of the ethanolic extract fractions and pure compounds against fusarium oxysporum f sp lycopersici was determined by bioautography evofilin c and nochelerytrine were the only substances that present antifungal activity,2010,0.513
Biogeographical Analyses and Applications: The Study of Plant Distribution Patterns in West Africa,within the 9 years of the biota africa project databases containing geo referenced records of vascular plants and other organisms have been established these can be con sidered as the most comprehensive databases currently available for the region they provide the source of information required to carry out biogeographical analysis for example to estimate species richness and endemism patterns evaluate species richness congruence calculate the influence of species distribution under climate change among others the final purpose of these analyzes is to guide conservation strategies and resource management in the first part of this thesis databases of vascular plants in ivory coast burkina faso and benin were used the information in the final joint database has been filtered to select all records with a minimal spatial resolution of 10 km2,2010,0.421
On the relationship between a resource based measure of geodiversity and broad scale biodiversity patterns,geodiversity diversity of the geosphere incorporates many of the environmental patterns and processes that are considered drivers of biodiversity components of geodiversity climate topography geology and hydrology can be considered in terms of their resource giving potential where resources are taken as energy water space and nutrients the total amount of these resources along with their spatial and temporal variation is herein proposed as a compound index of geodiversity that has the potential to model broad scale biodiversity patterns this paper outlines potential datasets that could be used to represent geodiversity and then reviews the theoretical links between each element of the proposed compound index of geodiversity overall resource availability temporal variation and spatial variation in those resources and broad scale patterns of biodiversity support for the influence of each of the elements of geodiversity on overall biodiversity patterns was found in the literature although the majority of relevant research focuses on resource availability particularly available energy the links between temporal and spatial variation in resources and biodiversity have been less thoroughly investigated in the literature for the most part it was reported that overall resource availability temporal variation and spatial variation in those resources do not act in isolation in terms of controlling biodiversity overall there are sufficient datasets to calculate the proposed compound index of geodiversity and evidence in the literature for links between the geographical distribution of biodiversity and each of the elements of the compound index defined since data for measuring geodiversity is more spatially consistent and widely available thanks to satellite remote sensing geodiversity has potential as a conservation planning tool especially where biological data are not available or sparsely distributed,2010,0.116
"Helgoland Roads, North Sea: 45 Years of Change",the helgoland roads time series is one of the richest temporal marine data sets available running since 1962 it documents changes for phytoplankton salinity secchi disc depths and macronutrients uniquely the data have been carefully quality controlled and linked to relevant meta data and the pelagic time series is further augmented by zooplankton intertidal macroalgae macro zoobenthos and bacterioplankton data data analyses have shown changes in hydrography and biota around helgoland in the late 1970s water inflows from the south west to the german bight increased with a corresponding increase in flushing rates salinity and annual mean temperature have also increased since 1962 and the latter by an average of 1 67â c this has influenced seasonal phytoplankton growth causing significant shifts in diatom densities and the numbers of large diatoms e g coscinodiscus wailesii changes in zooplankton diversity have included the appearance of the ctenophore mnemiopsis leidyi the macroalgal community also showed an increase in green algal and a decrease in brown algal species after 1959 over 30 benthic macrofaunal species have been newly recorded at helgoland over the last 20â years with a distinct shift towards southern species these detailed data provide the basis for long term analyses of changes on many trophic levels at helgoland roads,2010,0.508
Xper2: introducing e-taxonomy,motivation computer aided identification systems provide users with the resources to relate morpho anatomic observations with taxa names and to subsequently access other knowledge about the organisms they have the ability to manage descriptive data and make identifications through interactive keys they are essential for both authors and users of biodiversity information xper2 version 2 0 is one of the most user friendly tools in its category and provides a complete environment dedicated to taxonomic management availability xper2 software can be freely downloaded at http lis upmc snv jussieu fr lis q en resources softwares xper2contact visotheary riviere ung snv jussieu fr,2010,0.199
"Southward Pleistocene migration of Douglas-fir into Mexico: phylogeography, ecological niche modeling, and conservation of ‘rear edge’ populations",summary â poleward pleistocene plant migration has been an important process structuring modern temperate and boreal plant communities but the contribution of equatorward migration remains poorly understood paleobotanical evidence suggests miocene or pleistocene origin for temperate â sky islandâ plant taxa in mexico these â rear edgeâ populations situated in a biodiversity hotspot may be an important reserve of genetic diversity in changing climates â we used mtdna sequences cpdna sequences and chloroplast microsatellites to test hypotheses of miocene vs pleistocene colonization of temperate douglas fir in mexico explore geographic patterns of molecular variation in relation to pleistocene climate history using ecological niche models and assess the taxonomic and conservation implications â we found strong evidence for pleistocene divergence of douglas fir in mexico 958 thousand yr before present ka with the 90 highest posterior density interval ranging from 1 6 million yr before present ma to 491 ka consistent with the southward pleistocene migration hypothesis genetic diversity was high and strongly partitioned among populations spatial patterns of molecular variation and ecological niche models suggest a complex late pleistocene history involving periods of isolation and expansion along mountain corridors â these results highlight the importance of southward pleistocene migration in establishing modern high diversity plant communities and provide critical insights into proposals to conserve the unique biodiversity of mexican douglas fir and associated taxa,2010,0.705
The Rationale behind the Biodiversity Information System for North Portugal: The Path for a Strategic and Collaborative Biodiversity Information System,biodiversity now is considered a highly valuable asset providing services of high importance for the well being of humankind since 2003 with the creation of the intergovernmental group on earth observations geo and in 2004 with the commitment for the implementation of the global earth observation system of systems geoss in the third earth observation summit governments have identified the need for the implementation of earth observation systems and a combined effort to identify characterize and evaluate global change at the european level initiatives such as the global monitoring for environment and security gmes the inspire directive and the european biodiversity observation network ebone are defining the way to accumulate and communicate environmental information within geographic administrative and institutional environments and determining their role in spatial data infrastructures sdi development following these initiatives it became imperative that at the regional and national scales monitoring schemes are developed to ensure the necessary flow of data to support a global assessment in this context the biodiversity information and monitoring system for northern portugal simbion as a regional initiative aims to 1 harmonize processes 2 standardize data collection systematization and flows 3 create a collaborative structure that bring together the administration and scientific experts and that promotes capacity building and a normative support and 4 promote organizational dynamics that allow an adequate information spread and ensure the fulfillment of the institutional political and reporting commitments in simbion system requirements are related to 1 dealing with multiple users and objectives 2 data collection and methodological harmonization 3 data management and access schemes 4 horizontal and vertical interoperability and 5 compliance with political commitments and international reporting these requirements point out the need and opportunity to establish knowledge networks that allow the implementation of a collaboration framework in which scientists and the responsible authorities can combine efforts to provide a strategic biodiversity monitoring system it is proposed to develop an open source collaborative webgis platform as a communication promoter between the in situ monitoring and the subsequent data analysis and modeling to support adaptive territorial management and nature conservation,2010,0.026
"Die Sammlung, Archivierung und Digitalisierung von Botanischen Belegen als Wertschöpfungskette",the research project digital herbarium at the university of applied sciences and arts studied the reduction in cost of digitization of herbarium specimens one approach was aimed at improving the business processes the study analyzed botanical activities of collection identification digitization storage and retrieval of documents in eight german herbaria thus results of of the combination of resources equipment and personal information in the various activities demonstrated that the reference modeling of business processes can be applied here results of the exploratory approach can be used in representative studies analyzing in more depth,2010,0.138
"Evolutionary biology in biodiversity science, conservation, and policy: a call to action",evolutionary biologists have long endeavored to document how many species exist on earth to understand the processes by which biodiversity waxes and wanes to document and interpret spatial patterns of biodiversity and to infer evolutionary relationships despite the great potential of this knowledge to improve biodiversity science conservation and policy evolutionary biologists have generally devoted limited attention to these broader implications likewise many workers in biodiversity science have underappreciated the fundamental relevance of evolutionary biology the aim of this article is to summarize and illustrate some ways in which evolutionary biology is directly relevant we do so in the context of four broad areas 1 discovering and documenting biodiversity 2 understanding the causes of diversification 3 evaluating evolutionary responses to human disturbances and 4 implications for ecological communities ecosystems and humans we also introduce biogenesis a new project within diversitas launched to explore the potential practical contributions of evolutionary biology in addition to fostering the integration of evolutionary thinking into biodiversity science biogenesis provides practical recommendations to policy makers for incorporating evolutionary perspectives into biodiversity agendas and conservation we solicit your involvement in developing innovative ways of using evolutionary biology to better comprehend and stem the loss of biodiversity,2010,0.187
Vegetation strategy of Vellozia crinita (Velloziaceae),plant communities in which the herb layer is dominated by vellozia crinita were surveyed in seven mountain ranges with a complex comprising open herbaceous or savanna like montane vegetation overlying quartzite and sand locally known as campos rupestres in the state of minas gerais southeastern brazil by means of 92 vegetation relevã s totaling approx 4629 m2 vellozia crinita displayed a growth strategy which is rare among the velloziaceae south of the espinhaã o mountain chain while most species of vellozia are phanerophytes with erect caudices and grow exclusively on or among rock outcrops v crinita is a caespitose chamaephyte with a profusely branched repent caudex which grows under the ground or very slightly exposed it forms cushions which stabilize convex mounds of colluvial sand thus occupying a distinct niche in the campos rupestres one association two subassociations and two variants of the white sand vegetation component are described as new,2010,0.486
Checklist Of Benthic Algae From The Asturias Coast (North Of Spain),an annotated checklist of the marine benthic flora of asturias coast north of spain based on literature records herbarium sheets and original data is presented ac cording to our data the known list of algae totals 437 taxa 42 cyanophyta 239 rhodophyta 101 ochrophyta and 55 chlorophyta the number of specific and intraspe cific taxa is 459 42 cyanophyta 247 rhodophyta 111 ochrophyta and 59 chlorophyta phormidium autumnale drachiella spectabilis and peyssonnelia harveyana are new records for asturias in addition 18 taxa are considered as taxa excludenda while 34 taxa were recorded as dubious and their presence in the coasts of asturias must be con firmed and thoroughly studied in the future remarks on the most noteworthy features of the flora of the studied area are included also we present lists of cold temperate warm temperate lusitanic province endemics and alien species growing in asturias finally we compared the floristic character of asturias coast flora with respect to the neighbour ing regions britain ireland basque coast galicia portugal southern iberian peninsu la canary islands and atlantic coast of morocco applying feldmannâ s rhodophyta phaeophyta or r p and cheneyâ s ratios rhodophyta chlorophyta phaeophyta or r c p the resulting low values 2 36 and 2 91 respectively are explained by the abundance of numerous cold temperate species like large fucoids and kelps,2010,0.599
"Global Biodiversity and Geographical Distribution of Diapausing Aquatic Invertebrates: The Case of the Cosmopolitan Brine Shrimp, Artemia (Branchiopoda, Anostraca)",the genus artemia comprises passively dispersed anostracan species with a distribution all around the world except in antarctica we used both published and personal data to assess and update existing knowledge on the diversity and distribution of artemia in particular compiling also genetic and geographic information our results indicate there are three artemia complexes a franciscana a tibetiana and a salina suggesting at least three undescribed and one unidentified to date highly isolated lineages to be re evaluated taxonomically additionally at a global scale our data set shows two large poorly explored geographic regions in central east asia which in future studies could provide interesting information on geographic speciation the origin of parthenogenesis and range expansion in this group we also discuss the implications for conservation as derived from knowledge on the biodiversity native and invasive species and geographic distribution i e identification of species lineages and regions occupied which have major relevance for conservation management at the level of wetland ecosystems,2010,0.552
Identifications in BioPortal,bioportals are a â google likeâ webportal solution tailored for national or thematic biological diversity information needs this solution allows for an efficient route to retrieve information from heterogeneous biological information sources after identification with integrated identification systems bioportals can be used in combination with mobile devices and provide options to share biological observation data after identification in the field,2010,0.231
Strong genetic cohesiveness between Italy and North Africa in four butterfly species,the sea acts as an effective dispersal barrier for most terrestrial animal species narrow sea straits therefore often represent areas where species are able to disperse from one land mass to another in the mediterranean sea the narrowest connecting points between north africa and europe are the strait of gibraltar and the strait of sicily in the past climatic oscillations caused changing sea levels and thus influenced the permeability of these sea straits we analysed the genetic structure of four butterfly species that all occur on both sides of the strait of sicily in all four species we observed a lack of genetic differentiation between the populations of north africa and those of italy species distribution models support the strong cohesiveness in that they show a largely continuous glacial distribution over italy and north africa the data obtained reveal that there was a large exchange of individuals between italy and the eastern maghreb during the last ice age this might not only be the case for the species under investigation in the present study but also might represent a more general pattern for mobile thermophilic western palearctic species â 2010 the linnean society of london biological journal of the linnean society 2010 99 818â 830,2010,0.913
The ecosystem-service chain and the biological diversity crisis,the losses that are being incurred of the earth s biological diversity at all levels are now staggering the trend lines for future loss are steeply upward as new adverse drivers of change come into play the political processes for matching this crisis are now inadequate and the science needs to address this issue are huge and slow to fulfil even though strong advances have been made a more integrated approach to evaluating biodiversity in terms that are meaningful to the larger community is needed that can provide understandable metrics of the consequences to society of the losses that are occurring greater attention is also needed in forecasting likely diversity loss scenarios in the near term and strategies for alleviating detrimental consequences at the international level the convention on biological diversity must be revisited to make it more powerful to meet the needs that originally motivated its creation similarly at local and regional levels an ecosystem service approach to conservation can bring new understanding to the value and hence the need for protection of the existing natural capital,2010,0.183
Biodiversity Mapping: The ‘John Gould’ Component of Tropical Biology,one can take a pessimistic or optimistic view of the future of tropical biodiversity and still find a strong rational for detailed â biodiversity mappingâ the maps should be detailed descriptions of species and their geographic ranges based on real specimens in research collections and all linked to extensive electronic resources support is needed for the makers of the biodiversity map who are at the nexus of systematics and ecology biodiversity mapping should be accompanied by taxon specific short courses that introduce students to specimen preparation and basic identification skills fostering strong interactions among ecologists and systematists,2010,0.346
Scientific data repositories on the Web: An initial survey,abstract science data repositories sdrs have been recognized as both critical to science and undergoing a fundamental change a websample study was conducted of 100 sdrs information on the websites and from administrators of the sdrs was reviewed to determine salient characteristics of the sdrs which were used to classify sdrs into groups using a combination of cluster analysis and logistic regression characteristics of the sdrs were explored for their role in determining groupings and for their relationship to the success of sdrs four of these characteristics were identified as important for further investigation whether the sdr was supported with grants and contracts whether support comes from multiple sponsors what the holding size of the sdr is and whether a preservation policy exists for the sdr an inferential framework for understanding sdr composition guided by observations characteristic collection and refinement and subsequent analysis on elements of group membership is discussed the development of sdrs is further examined from a business standpoint and in comparison to its most similar form institutional repositories because this work identifies important characteristics of sdrs and which characteristics potentially impact the sustainability and success of sdrs it is expected to be helpful to sdrs,2010,0.146
Climate change scenarios and models yield conflicting predictions about the future risk of an invasive species in North America,1the pea leafminer liriomyza huidobrensis blanchard diptera agromyzidae is an invasive species in north america and a serious economic pest on a wide variety of crops we developed a bioclimatic envelope model bem for this species and examined the envelope s potential location in north america under various future climates 2we compared the future bioclimatic envelopes for l huidobrensis using either simple scenarios comprising uniform changes in temperature precipitation or climate projections from general circulation models gcms our simple scenarios were i an increase of 0 1â c per degree in latitude with a 20 increase in summer precipitation and a 20 decrease in winter precipitation and ii an overall increase of 3â c everywhere also with the same changes in precipitation for gcm modelled climate change we used the canadian centre for climate modelling and analysis gcm cgcm2 and the hadley centre climate model hadcm3 each in combination with two scenarios from the special report on emissions scenarios a2 and b2 3the bem results using the simple scenarios were more similar to each other than to the results obtained using gcm projections the results were also qualitatively different i e spatially different and divergent depending on which gcm scenario combination was used 4this modelling exercise illustrates that i results using first approximation simple climate change scenarios can give predictions very different from those that use gcm modelled climate projections comprising a result that has worrying implications for empirical impact research and that ii different gcm models using the same scenario can give very different results implying strong model dependency in projected biological impacts,2010,0.327
Marine Biodiversity in Japanese Waters,to understand marine biodiversity in japanese waters we have compiled information on the marine biota in japanese waters including the number of described species species richness the history of marine biology research in japan the state of knowledge the number of endemic species the number of identified but undescribed species the number of known introduced species and the number of taxonomic experts and identification guides with consideration of the general ocean environmental background such as the physical and geological settings a total of 33 629 species have been reported to occur in japanese waters the state of knowledge was extremely variable with taxa containing many inconspicuous smaller species tending to be less well known the total number of identified but undescribed species was at least 121 913 the total number of described species combined with the number of identified but undescribed species reached 155 542 this is the best estimate of the total number of species in japanese waters and indicates that more than 70 of japan s marine biodiversity remains un described the number of species reported as introduced into japanese waters was 39 this is the first attempt to estimate species richness for all marine species in japanese waters although its marine biota can be considered relatively well known at least within the asian pacific region considering the vast number of different marine environments such as coral reefs ocean trenches ice bound waters methane seeps and hydrothermal vents much work remains to be done we expect global change to have a tremendous impact on marine biodiversity and ecosystems japan is in a particularly suitable geographic situation and has a lot of facilities for conducting marine science research japan has an important responsibility to contribute to our understanding of life in the oceans,2010,0.994
Evaluation of different aspects of maximum entropy for niche-based modeling,biodiversity conservation is a world challenge that needs attention and efficient strategies for its success modeling of geographic distributions of species is used in assorted applications related to biodiversity conservation maximum entropy maxent is a technique recently applied to modeling of geographic distributions of species and is being largely used by biologists the aim is to evaluate different viewpoints of this technique the first evaluation is concerned with the performance of the algorithm a parallel version of the maxent based algorithm available in openmodeller is presented openmodeller is a set of tools provided for researchers interested in modeling of geographic distributions of species the second evaluation is focused on tuning the regularization parameter since it can severely affect the performance of the algorithm and can take a long time to be adjusted in addition the algorithm was evaluated without the use of a regularization parameter and with an adaptive maximum entropy approach this approach was evaluated as a replacement of the regularization parameter the validation of the assessments was based on a dataset with 20 species the results show an improvement in the algorithm performance using parallelism considering only the running time the regularization parameter does not depend on the number of samples or on the number of iterations in training species with the same number of samples fit better with different values of the regularization parameter different magnitude order the adaptive approach cannot replace the regularization parameter,2010,0.697
Prospective sampling based on model ensembles improves the detection of rare species,identifying the geographic distribution of populations is a basic yet crucial step in many fundamental and applied ecological projects as it provides key information on which many subsequent analyses depend however this task is often costly and time consuming especially where rare species are concerned and where most sampling designs generally prove inefficient at the same time rare species are those for which distribution data are most needed for their conservation to be effective to enhance fieldwork sampling model based sampling mbs uses predictions from species distribution models when looking for the species in areas of high habitat suitability chances should be higher to find them we thoroughly tested the efficiency of mbs by conducting an important survey in the swiss alps assessing the detection rate of three rare and five common plant species for each species habitat suitability maps were produced following an ensemble modeling framework combining two spatial resolutions and two modeling techniques we tested the efficiency of mbs and the accuracy of our models by sampling 240 sites in the field 30 sitesã 8 species across all species the mbs approach proved to be effective in particular the mbs design strictly led to the discovery of six sites of presence of one rare plant increasing chances to find this species from 0 to 50 for common species mbs doubled the new population discovery rates as compared to random sampling habitat suitability maps coming from the combination of four individual modeling methods predicted well the species distribution and more accurately than the individual models as a conclusion using mbs for fieldwork could efficiently help in increasing our knowledge of rare species distribution more generally we recommend using habitat suitability models to support conservation plans,2010,0.979
The Mangrove Reference Database and Herbarium,background in the light of loss of mangrove forests and related biodiversity world wide the overall objective of the online mangrove reference database and herbarium is to give a current and historic overview of the global regional and particularly the local distribution of true mangrove species databasing and website construction all data are based on records containing species location information of all mangrove species approximately 75 all the mangrove zones around the world are recorded in this database and a species list is available for the sites that have been studied or sampled in addition the database provides written and visual information on plant physiognomy ecological adaptations to the intertidal mangrove habitat and nomenclature images of herbarium specimens are included as vouchers objectives the website http www vliz be vmdcdata mangroves wants 1 to offer a relational database for all true mangrove plant species using an expandable taxonomic tree 2 to display a fact sheet for each mangrove plant species 3 to present a searchable online distribution map for each species based on point locations submitted by researchers world wide in order to display historic as well as current distribution maps using a gis interface 4 to preserve a herbarium reference specimen for each true mangrove species and 5 to provide an automated determination key to identify mangroves world wide results the result is a functional database that can be rapidly updated and that provides information for research management and conservation projects on the world s mangroves biogeographical forest management or ecological restoration in the light of species present,2010,0.897
Metadata Activities in Biology,the national biological information infrastructure nbii has ad vanced the ability of biological sciences to standardize share in tegrate and synthesize data by making the metadata program a core of its activities a series of crosswalks for the main biological metadata specifications enable data providers and international clearinghouses to aggregate and disseminate tens of thousands of metadata records describing petabytes of data records and allow for interoperability these efforts were accomplished by forming strategic partnerships with key research organizations in the bio logical and ecological sciences this paper provides an overview of metadata initiatives undertaken by nbii and the long term eco logical research network new efforts to provide better metadata creation and curation tools based on content management systems with semantic mediation for data discovery are presented,2010,0.074
Hidden patterns of phylogenetic non-stationarity overwhelm comparative analyses of niche conservatism and divergence,abstract aim despite the importance of the niche concept in ecological and evolutionary theory there are still many discussions about its definition and operational evaluation especially when dealing with niche divergence and conservatism in an explicit phylogenetic context here we evaluate patterns of niche evolution in 67 new world carnivora species measured using hellinger distances based on maxent models of species distribution we show how inferences on niche conservatism or divergence depend on the way phylogenetic patterns are analysed using matrix comparison techniques innovation initially we used the simplest approach of mantel tests to compare hellinger distances n derived from maxent and phylogenetic distances p among species then we extended the mantel test to generate a multivariate correlogram in which phylogenetic patterns are analysed at multiple levels in the phylogeny and can reveal nonlinearity in the relationship between divergence and time finally we proposed a new approach to generate â localâ or â specificâ leverages of components for mantel correlation evaluating the non stationarity in the relationship between n and p for each species this new approach was used to show if some lineages are more prone to niche shift or conservatism than others main conclusions standard mantel tests indicated a poor correspondence between n and p matrices discarding the idea of niche conservatism for carnivora but the correlogram supports that closely related species tend to be more similar than expected by chance moreover the variance among hellinger distances between pairs of closely phylogenetically related species is much larger than for the entire clade phylogenetic non stationarity analysis shows that in some carnivora families the niche tends to divergence mustelidae and canidae whereas in others it tends to conservatism procyonidae and mustelidae at short phylogenetic distances our analyses clearly show that misleading results may appear if niche divergence is analysed only by simple matrix correlations not taking into account complex patterns of phylogenetic nonlinearity and non stationarity,2010,0.653
Medicinal plant knowledge among lay people in five eastern Tibet villages,tibetans in five villages in the mount khawa karpo area of the menri meili xueshan in chinese range northwest yunnan peopleâ s republic of china were interviewed about their knowledge of a number of medicinal plants and their uses there was large variation in peopleâ s knowledge with significant differences among the villages and between men and women most of the reported knowledge focused on a small number of commercial plants and their uses in comparison with tibetan doctors villagers generally knew fewer applications and focused on general health remedies many people collected medicinal plants for their own use as well as for sale but also obtained medicinal plant remedies from markets and tibetan doctors and often used traditional tibetan healthcare in conjunction with biomedical treatment,2010,0.132
Arctic cephalopod distributions and their associated predators,cephalopods are key species of the eastern arctic marine food web both as prey and predator their presence in the diets of arctic fish birds and mammals illustrates their trophic importance there has been considerable research on cephalopods primarily gonatus fabricii from the north atlantic and the west side of greenland where they are considered a potential fishery and are taken as a by catch by contrast data on the biogeography of arctic cephalopods are still incomplete this study integrates most known locations of arctic cephalopods in an attempt to locate potential areas of interest for cephalopods and the predators that feed on them international and national databases museum collections government reports published articles and personal communications were used to develop distribution maps species common to the canadian arctic include g fabricii rossia moelleri r palpebrosa and bathypolypus arcticus cirroteuthis muelleri is abundant in the waters off alaska davis strait and baffin bay although distribution data are still incomplete groupings of cephalopods were found in some areas that may be correlated with oceanographic variables understanding species distributions and their interactions within the ecosystem is important to the study of a warming arctic ocean and the selection of marine protected areas,2010,0.696
Beyond scarcity: citizen science programmes as useful tools for conservation biogeography,abstract aim we assess whether and how datasets collected by the general public so called citizen science programmes can improve biogeographical studies and contribute to large scale conservation target setting location worldwide methods we first set a general framework highlighting the prerequisites of a relevant dataset for conservation biogeography we then illustrate how many different citizen science programmes currently running in different countries can be placed within this framework results we highlight that citizen science is particularly useful to address issues spanning large temporal and spatial extents we then show how datasets based on citizen science can be used to investigate major aspects of global change impacts on biodiversity we further highlight why these programmes are also particularly valuable in developing the preventative and educational component of conservation biogeography main conclusions conservation biogeography requires considerable amounts of data collected over large spatial and or temporal extents beyond increasing technical advances to collect and analyse these data citizen science seems to be a highly valuable tool in many aspects however while citizen science programmes are now popular and increasingly used in several countries they are lacking in many others we argue that the development of citizen science programmes should be encouraged as they can both be highly valuable for conservation biogeography and promote the reconnection between people and nature and more generally between people and science,2010,0.059
Meeting Report from the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) Workshop 9,this report summarizes the proceedings of the 9th workshop of the genomic standards consortium gsc held at the j craig venter institute rockville md usa it was the first gsc workshop to have open registration and attracted over 90 participants this workshop featured sessions that provided overviews of the full range of ongoing gsc projects it included sessions on standards in genomic sciences the open access journal of the gsc building standards for genome annotation the m5 platform for next generation collaborative computational infrastructures building ties with the biodiversity research community and two discussion panels with government and industry participants progress was made on all fronts and major outcomes included the completion of the miens specification for publication and the formation of the biodiversity working group,2010,0.18
Emergence of zoonotic arboviruses by animal trade and migration,arboviruses are transmitted in nature exclusively or to a major extend by arthropods they belong to the most important viruses invading new areas in the world and their occurrence is strongly influenced by climatic changes due to the life cycle of the transmitting vectors several arboviruses have emerged in new regions of the world during the last years like west nile virus wnv in the americas usutu virus usuv in central europe or rift valley fever virus rvfv in the arabian peninsula in most instances the ways of introduction of arboviruses into new regions are not known infections acquired during stays in the tropics and subtropics are diagnosed with increasing frequency in travellers returning from tropical countries but interestingly no attention is paid on accompanying pet animals or the hematophagous ectoparasites that may still be attached to them here we outline the known ecology of the mosquito borne equine encephalitis viruses weev eeev and veev wnv usuv rvfv and japanese encephalitis virus as well as tick borne encephalitis virus and its north american counterpart powassan virus and will discuss the most likely mode that these viruses could expand their respective geographical range all these viruses have a different epidemiology as different vector species reservoir hosts and virus types have adapted to promiscuous and robust or rather very fine balanced transmission cycles consequently these viruses will behave differently with regard to the requirements needed to establish new endemic foci outside their original geographical ranges hence emphasis is given on animal trade and suitable ecologic conditions including competent vectors and vertebrate hosts,2010,0.911
Technical Summary of the Detailed Implementation Plan,this summary of the geo bon 2010 detailed implementation plan draws in addition on material in the geo bon concept document and the implementation overview both dated 2008 the latter two foundation documents were drafted through a broad consultative process involving increasing numbers of stakeholders as geo bon progressed from an idea to a reality the detailed implementation plan was drafted in the first quarter of 2010 by over a hundred experts organised into eight working groups this technical summary reflects the key ideas and proposed actions in the three underlying documents in a brief and integrated form its purpose is to provide an overview of the geo bon implementation plan in sufficient detail so that readers with a working knowledge of the fields of biodiversity and earth observation can easily understand the objectives and plans of the network for further details the full implementation plan can be consulted geo bon is an evolving concept responsive to user needs and changing technologies the implementation plan will adapt accordingly and should thus be considered as a living document,2010,0.231
"Biogeography meets conservation: the genetic structure of the endangered lycaenid butterfly Lycaena helle (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775)",cold adapted species are thought to have had their largest distribution ranges in central europe during the glacial periods postglacial warming caused severe range shifts of such taxa into higher latitudes and altitudes we selected the boreomontane butterfly lycaena helle denis schiffermã ller 1775 as an example to demonstrate the genetic effects of range changes and to document the recent status of highly fragmented remnant populations we analysed five polymorphic microsatellite loci in 1059 individuals sampled at 50 different localities scattered over the european distribution area of the species genetic differentiation was strong among the mountain ranges of western europe but we did not detect similarly distinct genetic groups following a geographical pattern in the more eastern areas the fennoscandian populations form a separate genetic group and provide evidence for a colonization from southern finland via northern scandinavia to south central sweden species distribution modelling suggests a large extension of the spatial distribution during the last glacial maximum but highlights strong retractions to a few mountain areas under current conditions these findings combined with our genetic data suggest a more or less continuous distribution of l helle throughout central europe at the end of the last ice age as a consequence of postglacial warming the species retreated northwards to fennoscandia and escaped increasing temperatures through altitudinal shifts therefore the species is today restricted to population remnants located at the mountain tops of western europe genetically isolated from each other and evolved into genetically unique entities rising temperatures and advancing habitat destruction threaten this wealth of biodiversity â 2010 the linnean society of london biological journal of the linnean society 2010 101 155â 168,2010,0.878
Factors Affecting Leaf Litter Decomposition by Micropterna sequax (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae),abstract feeding behaviour and consumption rates of the caddisfly micropterna sequax trichoptera limnephilidae larvae were investigated under laboratory conditions the consumption rates of m sequax were measured at four temperatures 5 5 9 5 13 and 19 â c and its feeding preferences among four leaf species european beech oak chestnut and oriental plane were studied furthermore fresh and senescent conditioned or not beech leaves were offered to micropterna larvae to assess the impact of the leaf age and conditioning on the larvae feeding rates temperature exerted a pronounced effect on the consumption rates of the larvae the optimum temperature for feeding being 13 â c in all the experiments larvae showed a sound preference for chestnut leaves over the other leaves tested with consumption rates of up to 0 55 mg leaf mgâ 1 animal dâ 1 senescent beech leaves were clearly preferred against fresh ones while no significant differences were recorded between the consumption rates of conditioned and non conditioned plant material the role of physical and chemical characteristics of the leaves possibly involved in the larvae selectivity is also discussed â 2010 wiley vch verlag gmbh co kgaa weinheim,2010,0.464
Institutional Digital Repositories for Science and Technology: A View from the Laboratory,institutions across the united states are actively cre ating institutional repositories irs and an array of field specific online collections especially in the biological sciences the 20 earth and biological scientists interviewed for this article embrace online resources for use in their research teaching and creative activi ties and although previously unaware of the functions of an ir unanimously support the development of one at the university of oklahoma the ability to share scholarly information across cam pus and to securely archive data are seen as valuable attributes of an ir despite their endorsement participants have little interest in spending time and effort in creating an ir beyond voluntarily submitting their published works,2010,0.123
Individual records and the associated data: information standards and protocols,the structure of databases with taxonomic content is very important to ensure a compatibility with other database systems for the exchange of taxonomic information it is necessary to have standards and protocols to permit the presentation e g on a web system like gbif of species data from different database sources for atbi m projects a guideline for recording species has been developed with the minimal requirements for a high data quality standard also standards are used errors may occur along the information management chain from data recording up to data presentation error sources can be within the geo referenced domain as well as in the taxonomic domain therefore software for automated geo referencing and recording of date and time in standardized formats for mobile phones with gps up to water resistant pdas have to be developed the gain of using those field tools is improving data quality and simplifying the data recording for a cost effective process to obtain high quality taxonomic information,2010,0.325
Biodiversity inventory and informatics in Southeast Asia,rapidly changing land use in southeast asia threatens plant diversity and reduces the time we have left to document it despite over 200 years of scientific plant exploration many plant species have yet to be discovered moreover we still have a very poor understanding of the distribution of known taxa in this biogeographically complex region we review the current state of biodiversity exploration using plants in indonesia as an example traditional methods of collecting and describing species have provided a solid foundation for our understanding of plant biodiversity but are insufficient for the pragmatic task of rapidly discovering and documenting todayâ s biodiversity before it is gone because general collecting expeditions tend to be infrequent and documentation of most new species must await taxonomic revisions many years in the future solutions to this exploration and documentation crisis i could use the abundant resource of enthusiastic networked national biology students ii should employ biodiversity informatics tools to efficiently engage both specialists and parataxonomists and iii might require adoption of new types of î taxonomy utilizing increasingly low cost molecular methods and high resolution photographs we describe emerging technologies that will facilitate this taxonomic development we believe that a new golden age of biodiversity exploration may be dawning just as biodiversity itself is most threatened and are hopeful that increasing knowledge of biodiversity will be a positive force to slow its loss,2010,0.459
FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour,background flower colour is of great importance in various fields relating to floral biology and pollinator behaviour however subjective human judgements of flower colour may be inaccurate and are irrelevant to the ecology and vision of the flower s pollinators for precise detailed information about the colours of flowers a full reflectance spectrum for the flower of interest should be used rather than relying on such human assessments methodology principal findings the floral reflectance database fred has been developed to make an extensive collection of such data available to researchers it is freely available at ext link xmlns xlink http www w3 org 1999 xlink ext link type uri xlink href http www reflectance co uk xlink type simple http www reflectance co uk ext link the database allows users to download spectral reflectance data for flower species collected from all over the world these could for example be used in modelling interactions between pollinator vision and plant signals or analyses of flower colours in various habitats the database contains functions for calculating flower colour loci according to widely used models of bee colour space reflectance graphs of the spectra and an option to search for flowers with similar colours in bee colour space conclusions significance the floral reflectance database is a valuable new tool for researchers interested in the colours of flowers and their association with pollinator colour vision containing raw spectral reflectance data for a large number of flower species,2010,0.593
Predicting the distributions of marine organisms at the global scale,we present and evaluate aquamaps a presence only species distribution modelling system that allows the incorporation of expert knowledge about habitat usage and was designed for maximum output of standardized species range maps at the global scale in the marine environment there is a significant challenge to the production of range maps due to large biases in the amount and location of occurrence data for most species aquamaps is compared with traditional presence only species distribution modelling methods to determine the quality of outputs under equivalently automated conditions the effect of the inclusion of expert knowledge to aquamaps is also investigated model outputs were tested internally through data partitioning and externally against independent survey data to determine the ability of models to predict presence versus absence models were also tested externally by assessing correlation with independent survey estimates of relative species abundance aquamaps outputs compare well to the existing methods tested and inclusion of expert knowledge results in a general improvement in model outputs the transparency speed and adaptability of the aquamaps system as well as the existing online framework which allows expert review to compensate for sampling biases and thus improve model predictions are proposed as additional benefits for public and research use alike,2010,0.375
Ant Ecology,from scorching barren deserts to humid tropical forests from deep in the soil to high in the tree canopies ants are everywhere their near ubiquitous occurrence on every continent except antarctica combined with their enormous abundance and high diversity make ants deserved of special attention ants are one of the few insect groups that can be reliably identified to family by just about anyone regardless of age or background they are the wise and hard working creatures of biblical and fable lore the endearing underdogs of hollywood animation to some and exaggerated villains of b grade films to others the unwitting victims of children with magnifying glasses and the unwanted guests of picnics politicians economists and traffic planners are among the non biologists who have mined ant society structure for potential application to human behaviour understanding of ant behaviour and collective intelligence has contributed to advances in robot development computer science telecommunication networks and the stock market to myrmecologists â those who study ants â ants are the â premier soil turners channelers of energy and dominatrices of the insect faunaâ hã lldobler and wilson 1990 indeed it would be difficult to overstate the importance of ants in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems estimated to number between 25 000 and 30 000 species currently just more than 12 500 ant species are described accounting for less than 1 of all described insect species bolton et al 2006 may 1988 despite their relatively small contribution to overall global biodiversity they are omnipresent in virtually every terrestrial habitat the estimated 10 000 trillion individual ants alive at any one time weigh about as much as all human beings combined hã lldobler and wilson 1994 sustaining and sheltering their sheer numbers dictates that ants engage in a variety of ecological roles competitors predators prey scavengers mutualists gardeners and soil engineers in their need for food and shelter they are like any other organism on the planet but as eusocial organisms ants have evolved to partition reproduction and resource acquisition among different individuals this division of labour has dramatic consequences for the ecology of ants with the exception of colony founding events queens stay in protected nest enclaves with the sole purpose of producing eggs the workers are responsible for foraging maintaining and defending the colony and only very rarely reproduce since a single worker is only one of many that undertakes these tasks and does not represent a reproductive unit its survival is not integral to the longevity of the colony these observations were once thought â fatal toâ the theory of natural selection darwin 1859 how could worker ants evolve if they are incapable of reproducing recasting ants as â superorganismsâ and framing their social organization within the context of kin selection where natural selection acts on the colony and workers maximize colony efficiency in the absence of â interindividual conflict for reproductive privilegeâ resolves this natural selection conundrum and goes a long way towards explaining why eusocial insects have been so successful organized groups outcompete individuals and larger groups outcompete smaller ones of the same species hã lldobler and wilson 2008 thus in ecology the importance of ants is reflected by their ubiquity and the great number of interactions in which they are capable of participating within an ecological community as such the study of ants has led to significant advances in our understanding of insect evolution global diversity patterns competitive interactions mutualisms ecosystem responses to change and biological invasions but ants are also important to study and,2010,0.66
"The Biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: Estimates, Patterns, and Threats",the mediterranean sea is a marine biodiversity hot spot here we combined an extensive literature analysis with expert opinions to update publicly available estimates of major taxa in this marine ecosystem and to revise and update several species lists we also assessed overall spatial and temporal patterns of species diversity and identified major changes and threats our results listed approximately 17 000 marine species occurring in the mediterranean sea however our estimates of marine diversity are still incomplete as yetâ undescribed species will be added in the future diversity for microbes is substantially underestimated and the deep sea areas and portions of the southern and eastern region are still poorly known in addition the invasion of alien species is a crucial factor that will continue to change the biodiversity of the mediterranean mainly in its eastern basin that can spread rapidly northwards and westwards due to the warming of the mediterranean sea spatial patterns showed a general decrease in biodiversity from northwestern to southeastern regions following a gradient of production with some exceptions and caution due to gaps in our knowledge of the biota along the southern and eastern rims biodiversity was also generally higher in coastal areas and continental shelves and decreases with depth temporal trends indicated that overexploitation and habitat loss have been the main human drivers of historical changes in biodiversity at present habitat loss and degradation followed by fishing impacts pollution climate change eutrophication and the establishment of alien species are the most important threats and affect the greatest number of taxonomic groups all these impacts are expected to grow in importance in the future especially climate change and habitat degradation the spatial identification of hot spots highlighted the ecological importance of most of the western mediterranean shelves and in particular the strait of gibraltar and the adjacent alboran sea western african coast the adriatic and the aegean sea which show high concentrations of endangered threatened or vulnerable species the levantine basin severely impacted by the invasion of species is endangered as well this abstract has been translated to other languages file s1,2010,0.724
New Caledonian biogeography: a reply to Murienne,abstract this note replies to criticisms raised by murienne journal of biogeography 2010 doi 10 1111 j 1365 2699 2010 02321 x herein it is argued that assuming distributions in new caledonia are caused by current environmental factors overlooks the possible importance of regional tectonic history for the biogeography,2010,0.14
New Technologies for Long-Term Biodiversity Monitoring,information on biodiversity and ecosystems is essential for governments and for the scientific and educational communities furthering access to this information is of vital importance in the face of the rapid decline of biological diversity the object of this chapter to describe the solution developed to facilitate the process of data collection and the use of long term monitoring information by the natural processes monitoring team equipo de seguimiento de procesos naturales espn of the doã ana natural park the basic design enabled the use of personal digital assistants in a network with all databases migrating to a single server new technologies have the potential to revolutionise the process of data gathering one of the most revolutionary of these new technologies is the free software cybertracker this program as an ideal tool for the normalisation and harmonisation of data acquisition protocols that guarantees the quality and quasi real time availability of data for the final user,2010,0.212
Metal Hyperaccumulation in Plants,during the history of life on earth tectonic and climatic change repeatedly generated large territories that were virtually devoid of life and exhibited harsh environmental conditions the ability of a few specialist pioneer plants to colonize such hostile environments was thus of paramount ecological importance for the continuous maintenance of primary production over time yet we know very little about how extreme traits evolve and function in plants recent breakthroughs have given first insights into the molecular basis underlying the complex extreme model trait of metal hyperaccumulation and associated metal hypertolerance this review gives an introduction into the hyperaccumulator research field and its history provides an overview of hyperaccumulator germplasm describes the state of the art of our understanding of the physiological molecular and genetic basis underlying metal hyperaccumulation and its evolution and highlights future research needs and opportunities,2010,0.033
Data Integration: The Ocean Biogeographic Information System,summary this chapter contains sections titled introduction list of acronyms the data sharing challenge development of obis using obis future of obis acknowledgments references,2010,0.338
Towards best-effort merge of taxonomically organized data,we consider the task of merging datasets that have been organized using different but aligned taxonomies we assume such a merge is intended to create a single dataset that unambiguously describes the information in the source datasets using the alignment we also assume that the merged result should reflect the observations of the datasets as specifically as possible typically there will be no single merge result that is both unambiguous and maximally specific in this case a user may be provided with a set of possible merged datasets if the user requires a single dataset that dataset loses specificity here we examine whether the data exchange setting can provide a way to derive a ã â best effortã â merge we find that the data exchange setting might be a good candidate for providing the merge but further research is needed,2010,0.159
Projected Loss of a Salamander Diversity Hotspot as a Consequence of Projected Global Climate Change,sec title background title p significant shifts in climate are considered a threat to plants and animals with significant physiological limitations and limited dispersal abilities the southern appalachian mountains are a global hotspot for plethodontid salamander diversity plethodontids are lungless ectotherms so their ecology is strongly governed by temperature and precipitation many plethodontid species in southern appalachia exist in high elevation habitats that may be at or near their thermal maxima and may also have limited dispersal abilities across warmer valley bottoms p sec sec title methodology principal findings title p we used a maximum entropy approach program maxent to model the suitable climatic habitat of 41 plethodontid salamander species inhabiting the appalachian highlands region 33 individual species and eight species included within two species complexes we evaluated the relative change in suitable climatic habitat for these species in the appalachian highlands from the current climate to the years 2020 2050 and 2080 using both the hadcm3 and the cgcm3 models each under low and high co sub 2 sub scenarios and using two model thresholds levels relative suitability thresholds for determining suitable unsuitable range for a total of 8 scenarios per species p sec sec title conclusion significance title p while models differed slightly every scenario projected significant declines in suitable habitat within the appalachian highlands as early as 2020 species with more southern ranges and with smaller ranges had larger projected habitat loss despite significant differences in projected precipitation changes to the region projections did not differ significantly between global circulation models co sub 2 sub emissions scenario and model threshold had small effects on projected habitat loss by 2020 but did not affect longer term projections results of this study indicate that choice of model threshold and co sub 2 sub emissions scenario affect short term projected shifts in climatic distributions of species however these factors and choice of global circulation model have relatively small affects on what is significant projected loss of habitat for many salamander species that currently occupy the appalachian highlands p sec,2010,0.917
Evidence for climatic niche and biome shifts between native and novel ranges in plant species introduced to Australia,summary 1 the potential invasive success of exotic plant species is thought to be associated with similarity in climate and biome between the original and novel range we tested this assumption by quantifying the match between the realized climatic niches and biomes occupied in the exotic and native range of 26 plant species introduced to australia we then explored correlations between the propensity to shift climatic niche with residence time invasion status geographic range size and species traits 2 occurrence data from the native and exotic range of 26 species introduced to australia were obtained and the overlap between native and exotic climate niches was calculated using between class analysis shifts into novel biomes were assessed using a geographic information system gis correlations between introduction distribution and species traits and the degree of climate matching were examined using nonparametric statistical tests 3 exotic species frequently occurred in climatic conditions outside those occupied in their native range 20 of 26 species nineteen species inhabited biomes in australia not occupied in the native range and in some instances this shift represented the establishment of populations in novel biomes not present in the native range no single species trait introduction or distributional characteristic was significantly associated with the degree of climatic niche shift 4 synthesis exotic species are able to occupy climate niches in the new range that differ substantially from those of the native range and generally do not show biome conservatism between their native and introduced ranges this implies that novel climatic conditions are not a major obstacle for exotic species establishing populations outside their native range these results have important implications for the use and interpretation of ecological niche models used to predict the distribution of species in novel climates in time or space the results also highlight the importance of alternate mechanisms such as enemy release phenotypic plasticity or rapid evolution in the establishment of naturalized and invasive populations,2010,0.985
Potential loss of genetic variability despite well established network of reserves: the case of the Iberian endemic lizard Lacerta schreiberi,although future anthropogenic climate change is recognized as one of the major threats to european species its implementation during reserve planning has only been started recently we here describe climate change impacts on the iberian endemic lizard lacerta schreiberi expecting serious declines and range reductions due to a loss of suitable climate space in the next future we apply species distribution models to assess possible future changes in the lizardâ s range identify areas with high extinction risk meriting conservation efforts and analyze whether the natura 2000 network in its current stage will offer a sufficient protection for the genetically most valuable lineages despite a very good coverage and connectivity of the most valuable populations of l schreiberi with the existing protected sites network our results predict a strong loss of genetic variability by 2080 also two main patterns become evident while the genetically less diverse north western populations may be less affected by climate change the climate change effects on the southern isolates and the genetically most diverse populations within the central system may be devastating to improve a successful prospective conservation of l schreiberi the management of protected sites needs to consider the processes that threaten this species furthermore our study highlights the urgent need to consider climate change effects on evolutionary significant units within the natura 2000 framework,2010,0.68
Phylogenetic estimation of the core Bromelioids with an emphasis on the genus Aechmea (Bromeliaceae),we developed a phylogeny of the core bromelioideae including aechmea and related genera with the specific goals of investigating the monophyly of aechmea and its allied genera redefining monophyletic lineages for taxonomic revision and investigating the biogeographic history of the group chloroplast nuclear ribosomal and low copy nuclear dna sequences from 150 species within the bromelioideae were used to develop the phylogeny phylogenies constructed with the combined four gene dataset provided sufficient resolution for investigating evolutionary relationships among species many genera are nested within aechmea or are rendered para or polyphyletic by inclusion of aechmea species several genera and subgenera of aechmea with species in disjunct geographic locations are found to be polyphyletic divided into separate clades that reflect geographic distribution rather than morphological similarity this suggests that certain morphological characteristics thought to be indicative of common ancestry have instead evolved multiple times in parallel i e ecological conservatism possibly indicative of local adaptations to an epiphytic habit across the range of the bromelioideae these apparently homoplastic morphological characters used to assign species to genera or subgenera may be useful taxonomically when geography is also taken into account,2010,0.869
A framework for assessing threats and benefits to species responding to climate change,summary 1 current national and international frameworks for assessing threats to species have not been developed in the context of climate change and are not framed in a way that recognises new opportunities that arise from climate change 2 the framework presented here separates the threats and benefits of climate change for individual species threat is assessed by the level of climate related decline within a speciesâ recently occupied e g pre 1970s historical distribution based on observed e g repeat census and or projected changes e g modelled bioclimate space benefits are assessed in terms of observed and or projected increases outside the recently occupied historical range 3 exacerbating factors e g small population size low dispersal capacity that might increase levels of threat or limit expansion in response to climate change are taken into consideration within the framework protocols are also used to identify levels of confidence and hence research and or monitoring needs in each speciesâ assessment 4 observed and projected changes are combined into single measures of expected decline and increase together with associated measures of confidence we weight risk classifications towards information that is most certain each species is then placed in one of six categories high risk medium risk limited impact equivalent risks benefits medium benefit high benefit reflecting whether climate change is expected or has been observed to cause net declines or increases in the region considered based on the balance of benefits and threats 5 we illustrate the feasibility of using the framework by applying it to i all british butterflies n 58 species and ii an additional sample of british species 18 species of plants bats birds and beetles 6 synthesis our framework assesses net declines and increases associated with climate change for individual species it could be applied at any scale regional continental or global distributions of species and complements existing conservation assessment protocols such as red listing using observed and projected population and or range data it is feasible to carry out systematic conservation status assessments that inform the development of monitoring adaptation measures and conservation management planning for species that are responding to climate change,2010,0.741
"Records of a new alien polychaete worm species, Marphysa sanguinea (Montagu,1815) (Eunicidae) in the Eastern Scheldt, the Netherlands",recently four observations of marphysa sanguinea montagu 1815 were made in the eastern scheldt in the southwestern part of the netherlands this is remarkable as this alien species has been found only once in the netherlands in 1990 at the north sea coast it seems that this large polychaete species that previously was noted to have a northern distribution limit in the southern north sea english southern coast and the french west coast has established a population in a semi enclosed dutch tidal bay the species may have reached the region via shellfish transport associated with the numerous aquaculture sites in the region consequences of the settlement of this large at least partially predatory polychaete species for the macrozoobenthic communities in this region are unclear species of the genus marphysa are found to be successful in a variety of environments all over the world so far no other species of the genus marphysa has been recorded as present in the netherlands,2010,0.932
"Species of Cotoneaster (Rosaceae, Maloideae) indigenous to, naturalising or commonly cultivated in Central Europe",several alien species of the eurasian genus cotoneaster are naturalising in central europe apparently increasingly so and some on a massive scale they presumably originate from large scale cultivation for ground cover hedges or as ornamental shrubs the present paper keys and synopses the cotoneaster species indigenous to naturalis ing or commonly cultivated in central europe on the basis of relatively limited both living wild adventive and cultivated and herbarium material an attempt is made to understand the nature of variation from the genusâ centre of diversification the mountains of china and the himalayas which are likewise the origin of most cultivated and naturalising cotoneaster species taxonomic and nomenclatural problems putatively relating to the presence of apomixis and hybridization in the genus are discussed many of the more than 500 published binomials including a substantial proportion of those based on cultivated material seem to be poorly defined both morphologically and chorologically of an estimated total of only 50â 70 cotoneaster species worldwide about 20 mainly chinese spe cies have been found escaping from cultivation in central europe presently about ten species must be considered fully naturalised and locally at least invasive,2010,0.787
Biogeography of the Baetic ranges (SE Spain): A historical approach using cluster and parsimony analyses of endemic dolomitophytes,the baetic ranges are one of the major hot spots of biodiversity in the mediterranean basin the prominent baetic plant richness is based mostly on the variety of ecological gradients including the geological substrates such as dolomites dolomitic outcrops are not uncommon in the area and they produce genuine edaphic islands inducing a peculiar flora and vegetation with high endemicity levels indeed the habitats from these outcrops have been included in the habitats directive by the eu this paper deals with the biogeographical relations between the dolomitophilous flora of the baetic ranges the presence absence of those species was recorded in each of the baetic ranges and the most interesting relations were revealed by means of two complementary strategies cluster analysis and pae using the current biogeographical classification of rivas martã nez to describe the results the ranges of the rondean sector appear separated from the rest of the baetic chorological province since they comprise the most distinct flora this division could be explained by the fact that this sector was separated from the iberian peninsula during the messinian age 7 2â 5 3 ma and simultaneously connected to africa the rest of the ranges belong to one of the following two groups 1 the malacitan almijarensean sector and the western sub baetic territories 2 the eastern territories of the sub baetic sector the ranges of the guadician bacensean and alpujarrean gadorensean sectors behave as â œsatelliteâ ranges of the two above mentioned groups,2010,0.258
"Interoperability, Data Discovery and Access: The e-Infrastructures for Earth Sciences Resources",the ever increasing need to integrate knowledge from the diverse disciplines of the earth system sciences requires to switch from data centric systems towards service oriented enabling infrastructures important international initiatives and programmes are defining a standard baseline for interoperability of geospatial information models and technologies in particular for data discovery and access we describe the design of an e infrastructure for earth sciences from the point of view of the data services and distribution model this design is implemented in the siberian earth system science cluster sib ess c an e infrastructure supporting the generation and distribution of products and information about central siberia along with advanced analysis tools for earth sciences,2010,0.052
"Sustainable development in developing countries: the African, Caribbean and Pacific observatory",freshwater aquaculture fisheries biodiversity forests and agricultural land have high economic and social value throughout the africa caribbean and pacific acp region but they can also be over exploited with damaging consequences for local economies long term stability and for the earth system as a whole â especially the climate system te acpâ s fast growing population puts growing pressure on the environment to provide food water and fibre on the regionsâ urban centres and transport networks and on energy sources information on the location condition and evolution of resources is an important step towards sustainability but unfortunately such information can be hard to get earth observing satellite technology combined with geographical information management can help fill the information gap in this objective and because of its unique position to support the implementation of advanced interoperable geospatial technologies the joint research centre jrc of the european commission ec is setting up of an â œobservatory for sustainable developmentâ as single portal to support decision making for development in the fields of natural resource and food security te african union and european union recognise the importance of this service and are beginning to develop this capacity as part of the au eu joint strategic partner ship tis paper describes the needs and presents the first steps taken by the jrc and by the joint partnership in harnessing space technologies to help meet millennium development goals in particular eradication of poverty and environmental sustainability,2010,0.068
Land-use and climate change effects on population size and extinction risk of Andean plants,abstract andean plant species are predicted to shift their distributions or â migrate â upslope in response to future warming the impacts of these shifts on species population sizes and their abilities to persist in the face of climate change will depend on many factors including the distribution of individuals within species ranges the ability of species to migrate and remain at equilibrium with climate and patterns of human land use human land use may be especially important in the andes where anthropogenic activities above tree line may create a hard barrier to upward migrations imperiling high elevation andean biodiversity in order to better understand how climate change may impact the andean biodiversity hotspot we predict the distributional responses of hundreds of plant species to changes in temperature incorporating population density distributions migration rates and patterns of human land use we show that plant species from high andean forests may increase their population sizes if able to migrate onto the expansive land areas above current tree line however if the pace of climate change exceeds species abilities to migrate all species will experience large population losses and consequently may face high risk of extinction using intermediate migration rates consistent with those observed for the region most species are still predicted to experience population declines under a business as usual land use scenario we find that all species will experience large population losses regardless of migration rate the effect of human land use is most pronounced for high elevation species that switch from predicted increases in population sizes to predicted decreases the overriding influence of land use on the predicted responses of andean species to climate change can be viewed as encouraging since there is still time to initiate conservation programs that limit disturbances and or facilitate the upward migration and persistence of andean plant species,2010,0.981
Interface de consultas analíticas para bases de dados de biodiversidade,this work presents an interface for the integration of analysis and storage in a biodiversity information system the system in question which is called taxonomybrowser and was developed to help organizing data collected by biologists is described as well as existing biodiversity systems and their characteristics afterwards we describe the main concepts of data analysis in databases the r environment used by the biologists for data analysis and the main methods that can be used for the integration finally we detail the interface implementation along with its advantages and disadvantages,2010,0.226
Refugial persistence and postglacial recolonization of North America by the cold-tolerant herbaceous plant Orthilia secunda,abstract previous phylogeographical and palaeontological studies on the biota of northern north america have revealed a complex scenario of glacial survival in multiple refugia and differing patterns of postglacial recolonization many putative refugial regions have been proposed both north and south of the ice sheets for species during the last glacial maximum but the locations of many of these refugia remain a topic of great debate in this study we used a phylogeographical approach to elucidate the refugial and recolonization history of the herbaceous plant species orthilia secunda in north america which is found in disjunct areas in the west and east of the continent most of which were either glaciated or lay close to the limits of the ice sheets analysis of 596 bp of the chloroplast trns trng intergenic spacer and five microsatellite loci in 84 populations spanning the speciesâ range in north america suggests that o secunda persisted through the last glacial maximum lgm in western refugia even though palaeodistribution modelling indicated a suitable climate envelope across the entire south of the continent the present distribution of the species has resulted from recolonization from refugia north and south of the ice sheets most likely in beringia or coastal regions of alaska and british columbia the washington oregon region in the northwest usa and possibly from the region associated with the putative â ice free corridorâ between the laurentide and cordilleran ice sheets our findings also highlight the importance of the pacific northwest as an important centre of intraspecific genetic diversity owing to a combination of refugial persistence in the area and recolonization from other refugia,2010,0.555
Approaches to estimating the universe of natural history collections data,this contribution explores the problem of recognizing and measuring the universe of specimen level data existing in natural history collections around the world and in absence of a complete world wide census or register estimates of size seem necessary to plan for resource allocation for digitization or data capture and may help to represent how many vouchered primary biodiversity data in terms of collections specimens or curatorial units might remain to be mobilized it further helps to set priorities and assess certainties three general approaches are proposed for further development and initial estimates are given probabilistic models involve crossing data from a set of biodiversity datasets finding commonalities and estimating the likelihood of totally obscure data from the fraction of known data missing from specific datasets in the set distribution models aim to find the underlying distribution of collectionsâ compositions estimating the hidden sector of the distributions finally case studies seek to compare digitized data from collections known to the world to the amount of data known to exist in the collection but not generally available or not digitized preliminary estimates of size range from 1 2 to 2 1 gigaunits 109 of which a mere 3 at most is currently web accessible through gbifâ s mobilization efforts however further data and analyses along with other approaches relying more heavily on surveys might change the picture and possibly help to narrow the estimate further in particular unknown collections not having emerged through literature are the major source of uncertainty,2010,0.152
Angiosperm wood structure: Global patterns in vessel anatomy and their relation to wood density and potential conductivity,woody stems comprise a large biological carbon fraction and determine water transport between roots and leaves their structure and function can influence both carbon and hydrological cycles while angiosperm wood anatomy and density determine hydraulic conductivity and mechanical strength little is known about interrelations across many species we compiled a global data set comprising two anatomical traits for 3005 woody angiosperms mean vessel lumen area ä and number per unit area n from these we calculated vessel lumen fraction f ä n and size to number ratio s ä n a new vessel composition index we examined the extent to which f and s influenced potential sapwood specific stem conductivity k s and wood density d dry mass fresh volume f and s varied essentially independently across angiosperms variation in k s was driven primarily by s and variation in d was virtually unrelated to f and s tissue density outside vessel lumens d n must predominantly influence d high s should confer faster k s but incur greater freeze thaw embolism risk f should also affect k s and both f and d n should influence mechanical strength capacitance and construction costs improved theory and quantification are needed to better understand ecological costs and benefits of these three distinct dimensions,2010,0.215
Automated Pre-processing Strategies for Species Occurrence Data Used in Biodiversity Modelling,to construct biodiversity richness maps from environmental niche models enmâ s of thousands of species is time consuming a separate species occurrence data pre processing phase enables the experimenter to control test auc score variance due to species dataset size besides removing duplicate occurrences and points with missing environmental data we discuss the need for coordinate precision wide dispersion temporal and synonymity filters after species data filtering the final task of a pre processing phase should be the automatic generation of species occurrence datasets which can then be directly â plugged inâ to the enm a software application capable of carrying out all these tasks will be a valuable time saver particularly for large scale biodiversity studies,2010,0.712
"Nueva colección de líquenes y hongos liquenícolas (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina-Chile) en el Herbario MAF",noteworthy collection of lichenicolous fungi,2010,0.354
Current progress and future implication of information disclosure by insect taxonomists,this article reviews web based entomological databases and resources mainly in japan and discusses how taxonomists can contribute to activities related to the cdb the convention on biological diversity taxonomic information is one of the essential resources to evaluate the biodiversity change and to implement the cbd post 2010 vision and targets thus taxonomic databases should be a core component of the biodiversity data network though there are many available entomological databases the lack of standardization in each system prevents data sharing and integration among these databases to improve the current situation the japan national node of the global biodiversity information facility gbif is building databases and a data sharing framework in japan in collaboration with the geo bon ap bon j bon and esabii that are projects associated with cbd on the other hand only limited amount of taxonomic data is available via the internet supports of related societies and the capacity building of the biodiversity informatics are necessary to promote publishing and sharing of taxonomic data in japan,2010,0.099
"""Early Bird Data"", a digitizing project of first ornithological data centralized by Aves",since 1966 the centrale ornithologique ayes is collecting loose observation data sent by amateur ornithologists in belgium before 1990 the data were stored on hand written record cards that were filled in by experienced volunteers from monthly record forms sent by hundreds of field birdwatchers in collaboration with the gbif organization global biodiversity information facility a project consisting in digitizing the whole dataset was initiated together with the current observation database pre 1990 digitised bird observation data will allow for study of change in bird phenology distribution and abundance during a 50 year period the data quality will be of the highest standard possible thanks to careful record validation operated back when they were collected and the original web assisted procedure of the digitisation process that is currently developed by ayes,2010,0.433
QBOL: a new EU project focusing on DNA barcoding of Quarantine organisms,in 2009 a new three year eu funded project qbol started on dna barcoding of important plant pests an international consortium of 20 partners universities research institutes and phytosanitary organizations from around the world coordinated by plant research international wageningen the netherlands will collect dna barcodes from many plant pathogenic quarantine organisms store these sequences in a database accessible over the internet develop a dna bank and train end users all these activities should help national plant protection services in the correct identification and detection of plant pathogenic quarantine organisms,2010,0.25
Population demography influences climatic niche evolution: evidence from diploid American Hordeum species (Poaceae),abstract in this study we explore the interplay of population demography with the evolution of ecological niches during or after speciation in hordeum while large populations maintain a high level of standing genetic diversity gene flow and recombination buffers against fast alterations in ecological adaptation small populations harbour lower allele diversity but can more easily shift to new niches if they initially survive under changed conditions thus large populations should be more conservative regarding niche changes in comparison to small populations we used environmental niche modelling together with phylogenetic phylogeographic and population genetic analyses to infer the correlation of population demography with changes in ecological niche dimensions in 12 diploid hordeum species from the new world forming four monophyletic groups our analyses found both shifts and conservatism in distinct niche dimensions within and among clades speciation due to vicariance resulted in three species with no pronounced climate niche differences while species originating due to long distance dispersals or otherwise encountering genetic bottlenecks mostly revealed climate niche shifts niche convergence among clades indicates a niche filling pattern during the last 2 million years in south american hordeum we provide evidence that species which did not encounter population reductions mainly showed ecoclimatic niche conservatism while major niche shifts occurred in species which have undergone population bottlenecks our data allow the conclusion that population demography influences adaptation and niche shifts or conservatism in south american hordeum species,2010,0.897
A Phylogenetic Approach to Conserving Amazonian Biodiversity,amazonia is a highly threatened rainforest that encompasses a major proportion of earthâ s biological diversity our main goal was to establish conservation priorities for amazoniaâ s areas of endemism on the basis of measures of evolutionary distinctiveness we considered two previously identified sets of areas of endemism the first set consisted of eight large areas used traditionally in biogeographical studies belâ tapajâ em os xingu guiana rondë onia imeri inambari and napo the second set consisted of 16 smaller areas that were subdivisions of the larger areas we assembled a data set of 50 phylogenies that represented 16 orders and 1715 distributional records we identified priority conservation areas for the areas of endemism according to node based metrics of evolutionary distinctiveness we contrasted these results with priority areas identified on the basis of raw species richness and species endemicity for the larger areas we identified guiana and inambari as the first and second most important areas for conservation the remaining areas in this first group scored half e g napo or less than guiana and inambari on all indices for the smaller areas a subdivision of guiana i e guyana and the brazilian states of roraima and amazonas was at the top of the ranking and was followed by a subdivision of inambari i e northwestern portion of amazonas and then another subdivision of guiana i e suriname french guiana and the brazilian state of amapâ a the distinctiveness based rankings of the priority of areas correlated directly with those derived from species richness and species endemicity current conservation strategies in amazonia although they rely on many other criteria apart from phylogeny are focusing on the most important areas for conservation we identified here,2010,0.604
A Bibliography of North Carolina Local Floras,vascular plant checklists floras supply key information for biodiversity studies by providing a comprehensive picture of the floristic composition of a specific study area a bibliography of floras conducted within the state of north carolina was compiled eighty six floras were completed within north carolina between the years 1834 and 2009 floras conducted in north carolina cover areas of varying size from small islands and state parks to entire counties these studies include journal articles government publications technical reports and masterâ s theses more than half of the flora citations were not published in scientific journals and were often difficult to discover or obtain,2010,0.343
Species Distribution Modeling,abstract the use of species distribution models sdm to map and monitor animal and plant distributions has become increasingly important in the context of awareness of environmental change and its ecological consequences from their original inception as resource inventory and conservation mapping tools sdm have evolved along with the increasing variety and availability of statistical methods digital biological and environmental data with which they are built in a geographic information system beyond predicting species distributions these models have become an important and widely used decision making tool for a variety of biogeographical applications such as studying the effects of climate change identifying potential protected areas determining locations potentially susceptible to invasion and mapping vector borne disease spread and risk this article outlines the steps involved in formulating an sdm and focuses on the conceptual and theoretical foundations on which it is based and identifies issues that have merited recent and will merit future research attention,2010,0.061
"Arctos: a relational database relating specimens, specimen-based science, and archival documentation",data are preserved when they are perpetually discoverable but even in the information age discovery of legacy data appropriate to particular investigations is uncertain secure internet storage is necessary but insufficient data can be discovered only when they are adequately described and visibility increases markedly if the data are related to other data that are receiving usage such relationships can be built within 1 the framework of a relational database or 1 they can be built among separate resources within the framework of the internet evolving primarily around biological collections arctos is a database that does both of these tasks it includes data structures for a diversity of specimen attributes essentially all collection management tasks plus literature citations project descriptions etc as a centralized collaboration of several university museums arctos is an ideal environment for capitalizing on the many relationships that often exist between items in separate collections arctos is related to nihâ s dna sequence repository genbank with record to record reciprocal linkages and it serves data to several discipline specific web portals including the global biodiversity information network gbif the university of alaska museumâ s paleontological collection is arctosâ s recent extension beyond the constraints of neontology with about 1 3 million cataloged items additional collections are being added each year,2010,0.406
Data integration for European marine biodiversity research: creating a database on benthos and plankton to study large-scale patterns and long-term changes,the general aim of setting up a central database on benthos and plankton was to integrate long medium and short term datasets on marine biodiversity such a database makes it possible to analyse species assemblages and their changes on spatial and temporal scales across europe data collation lasted from early 2007 until august 2008 during which 67 datasets were collected covering three divergent habitats rocky shores soft bottoms and the pelagic environment the database contains a total of 4 525 distinct taxa 17 117 unique sampling locations and over 45 500 collected samples representing almost 542 000 distribution records the database geographically covers the north sea 221 452 distribution records the north east atlantic 98 796 distribution records and furthermore the baltic sea the arctic and the mediterranean data from 1858 to 2008 are presented in the database with the longest time series from the baltic sea soft bottom benthos each delivered dataset was subjected to certain quality control procedures especially on the level of taxonomy the standardisation procedure enables pan european analyses without the hazard of taxonomic artefacts resulting from different determination skills a case study on rocky shore and pelagic data in different geographical regions shows a general overestimation of biodiversity when making use of data before quality control compared to the same estimations after quality control these results prove that the contribution of a misspelled name or the use of an obsolete synonym is comparable to the introduction of a rare species having adverse effects on further diversity calculations the quality checked data source is now ready to test geographical and temporal hypotheses on a large scale,2010,0.667
"The flower fly genus Eosphaerophoria Frey (Diptera, Syrphidae)",the flower fly genus eosphaerophoria is revised eight new species are described adornata sp n mengual bifi da sp n mengual brunettii sp n ghorpadã hermosa sp n mengual luteofasciata sp n mengual ni grovittata sp n mengual symmetrica sp n mengual and vietnamensis sp n mengual and an identifi ca tion key is provided redescriptions illustrations synonymies diagnoses and distributional data are given for all 11 known species of eosphaerophoria th e new described species increase the genusâ distribution now recorded from nepal and sri lanka east to new guinea all information data images and drawings as well as additional images and relevant information are available online via the internet as an example of the utility of international standards for biodiversity informatics,2010,0.863
In situ observations of Stygiomedusa gigantea in the Gulf of Mexico with a review of its global distribution and habitat,four individuals of the large scyphozoan jellyfish stygiomedusa gigantea were observed in the northern gulf of mexico over 20052009 representing 118 individual specimens of this species from around the world the resulting dataset confirms that this species is cosmopolitan occurring with records from all oceans except the arctic while the depth range of the four gulf of mexico specimens was bathypelagic there appears to be a pattern of s gigantea occurring in mesopelagic and epipelagic depth zones at high latitudes particularly in the southern ocean and mesopelagic and bathypelagic depths at mid and low latitudes this pattern may be related to the meridional vertical distribution of temperature or perhaps avoidance of light levels that could degrade porphyrin pigments there was no evidence that this species migrates vertically two of the individuals in the gulf of mexico appeared to be actively clinging to subsea structures and we speculate that this is a consequence of its normal mode of feeding which may entail using its large oral lobes to hold on to and trap prey,2010,0.711
"System architecture for data acquisition, extraction and analysis for experiments with weblabs",the concern about understanding the effects of climate change on the environment such as the decline of pollinators found in nature the need to support researchers to run experiments efficiently and to share those results makes it necessary to study and develop virtual laboratories through the web in order to gain greater insight on the behavior of bees which is the main pollinator of plants the hardware structure and software architecture for the implementation of virtual labs also known as weblabs are presented in addition to the information technology involved sensor networks were used for data acquisition and tools for extraction and analysis of data collected transforming them into information that can be easily used by researchers,2010,0.231
Integrating geo-referenced multiscale and multidisciplinary data for the management of biodiversity in livestock genetic resources,in livestock genetic resource conservation decision making about conservation priorities is based on the simultaneous analysis of several different criteria that may contribute to long term sustainable breeding conditions such as genetic and demographic characteristics environmental conditions and role of the breed in the local or regional economy here we address methods to integrate different data sets and highlight problems related to interdisciplinary comparisons data integration is based on the use of geographic coordinates and geographic information systems gis in addition to technical problems related to projection systems gis have to face the challenging issue of the non homogeneous scale of their data sets we give examples of the successful use of gis for data integration and examine the risk of obtaining biased results when integrating datasets that have been captured at different scales,2010,0.084
Phylogenetic relationships of species of Crenicichla (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from southern South America based on the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene,abstract phylogenetic analysis using bayesian inference likelihood and parsimony methods was conducted on 60 complete mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences from 21 species of crenicichla including all species known from uruguay crenicichla celidochilus crenicichla lepidota crenicichla minuano crenicichla missioneira crenicichla punctata crenicichla scottii crenicichla vittata crenicichla compressiceps crenicichla empheres crenicichla geayi crenicichla iguassuensis crenicichla macrophthalma crenicichla menezesi crenicichla notophthalmus crenicichla regani crenicichla cf regani crenicichla semifasciata crenicichla sveni crenicichla tendybaguassu two unidentified species and also two species of teleocichla bayesian analysis resulted in a trichotomy with three major groups 1 the c missioneira species group c celidochilus c empheres c minuano c missioneira c tendybaguassu and an undescribed species analyzed 2 a group of southern species c iguassuensis c punctata c scottii c vittata and 3 a rather heterogeneous group comprising the type species c macrophthalma members of the crenicichla reticulata species group c geayi c semifasciata members of the crenicichla wallacii species group c compressiceps c notophthalmus c regani c cf regani members of the crenicichla saxatilis species group c lepidota c menezesi c sveni c sp and two species of teleocichla parsimony jackknifing resulted in a quadritomy with 1 c macrophthalma 2 teleocichla 3 the saxatilis wallacii group species and 4 the rest which include c geayi and c semifasciata as sister group to a dichotomy with the c missioneira group and the remaining southern species the sequence variation within the c missioneira group is remarkably minor despite considerable morphological differences supporting the conclusion that it forms an endemic species flock in the uruguay river basin previously proposed species groups within the speciose genus crenicichla more than 90 species known are partly corroborated however c celidochilus was not previously associated with the c missioneira species group and c vittata has not previously been associated with c scottii c iguassuensis or c punctata crenicichla lepidota c sveni c menezesi and c sp represent the c saxatilis group species of small size representing the c wallacii species group and teleocichla are characterized by very long branches and the position of teleocichla differed considerably between the bayesian and parsimony trees this finding does not invalidate teleocichla but rather suggests that the several monophyletic major clades within crenicichla may need nominal recognition a putative hybrid specimen with a morphology combining components from c vittata and c scottii but with a cytochrome b sequence from c scottii was found in a sample from the rio quaraã cuareim another putative hybrid specimen with a unique morphology but a cytochrome b sequence agreeing with c scottii was found in a sample from maldonado but no other crenicichla species than c scottii is known from that locality zusammenfassung eine phylogenetische analyse mit hilfe von bayesianischer inferenz likelihood und parsimonie methoden wurde an hand von 60 kompletten mitochondrialen cytochrome b sequenzen von 21 arten von crenicichla durchgefã hrt die alle arten aus uruguay c celidochilus c lepidota c minuano c missioneira c punctata c scottii c vittata auãÿerdem c compressiceps c empheres c geayi c iguassuensis c macrophthalma c menezesi c notophthalmus c regani c cf regani c semifasciata c sveni c tendybaguassu sowie zwei nicht identifizierte arten und zwei arten der gattung teleocichla umfassen die bayesianische analyse ergab eine trichotomie mit drei gruppen 1 die c missioneira artengruppe c celidochilus c empheres c minuano c missioneira c tendybaguassu und eine noch unbeschriebene art 2 eine gruppe von im sã den verbreiteten arten c iguassuensis c punctata c scottii c vittata und 3 eine recht heterogene gruppe die die typusart c macrophthalma mitglieder der c reticulata artengruppe c geayi c semifasciata mitglieder der c wallacii artengruppe c compressiceps c notophthalmus c regani c cf regani mitglieder der c saxatilis artengruppe c lepidota c menezesi c sveni c sp sowie die zwei teleocichla arten beinhaltete die parsimonie analyse mit anwendung von jackknifing erbrachte eine quadritomie mit 1 c macrophthalma 2 teleocichla 3 den arten der saxatilis wallacii artengruppen und 4 dem rest der c geayi and c semifasciata enthielt die als schwestergruppe zur c missioneira artengruppe plus den ã brigen im sã den verbreiteten arten errechnet wurde die variation in der dna sequenz innerhalb der c missioneira artengruppe ist erstaunlich niedrig trotz doch recht betrã chtlicher morphologischer unterschiede was die hypothese unterstã tzt dass es sich um einen endemischen artenschwarm des uruguay flusses handelt crenicichla celidochilus war bisher nicht mit der c missioneira artengruppe in verbindung gebracht worden ebenso war man bisher nicht von einer nã heren verwandtschaft von crenicichla vittata zu den arten c scottii c iguassuensis oder c punctata ausgegangen bisher vorgeschlagene artengruppen innerhalb der artenreichen gattung crenicichla mit mehr als 90 arten wurden teilweise bestã tigt crenicichla lepidota c sveni c menezesi und c sp gehã ren zur c saxatilis artengruppe die kleinwã chsigen arten die die c wallacii artengruppe reprã sentieren sowie auch teleocichla waren durch lange ã ste gekennzeichnet wobei sich die stellung von teleocichla in den beiden stammbã umen die durch bayesianische oder parsimonie analysen erzielt wurden stark unterschied dies heiãÿt nicht dass teleocichla keine gã ltige gattung darstellt sondern dass mehrere monophyletische gruppen innerhalb von crenicichla einen wissenschaftlichen namen bekommen sollten cytochrom b besitzt offenbar nicht das nã tige auflã sungspotential um die verwandtschaftsverhã ltnisse zwischen den grã ãÿeren gruppen zu klã ren ein mã gliches hybridexemplar mit einer mischung von morphologischen merkmalen von c vittata wie auch c scottii jedoch mit der cytochrom b sequenz von c scottii befand sich unter den exemplaren die im rio quaraã cuareim gesammelt worden waren ein weiteres mã gliches hybridtier mit einzigartigen morphologischen merkmalen aber einer cytochrom b sequenz die mit der von c scottiiã bereinstimmte befand sich unter den exemplaren von maldonado obwohl von dort bis auf c scottii keine weitere crenicichla art bekannt ist,2010,1
An Event-Centric Provenance Model for Digital Libraries,provenance is intended as the description of the origin and or of the descendant line of data in the last decade keeping track of provenance has become crucial for the correct exploitation of data in a wide variety of application domains the rapid evolution of digital libraries which have become today advanced systems for the integration and management of cross domain digital objects recently called for models capturing the aspects of data provenance in this application field however there is no common definition of digital library provenance and existing solutions address the problem only from the perspective of specific application scenarios in this paper we propose a provenance model for digital libraries inspired by approaches and experiences in the e science and cultural heritage worlds and based on the notion of event occurred to an object the model aims at capturing the specificities of provenance for digital libraries objects in order to provide practitioners and researchers in the field with common dl specific provenance description languages,2010,0.084
Biogeographical affinities of the New Caledonian biota: a puzzle with 24 pieces,abstract aim the distributions of many new caledonian taxa were reviewed in order to ascertain the main biogeographical connections with other areas location global methods panbiogeographical analysis results twenty four areas of endemism tracks involving new caledonia and different areas of gondwana tethys and the central pacific were retrieved most are supported by taxa of lower and higher plants and lower and higher animals main conclusions although parts of new caledonia were attached to gondwana for some time in the mid cretaceous most of the new caledonian terranes formed as oceanic island arcs and sections of sea floor bearing seamounts the flora and fauna have evolved and survived for tens of millions of years as metapopulations on ephemeral islands later the biotas were juxtaposed and fused during terrane accretion this process together with the rifting of gondwana explains the biogeographical affinities of new caledonia with parts of gondwana tethys and the pacific,2010,0.128
Bolete diversity in two relict forests of the Mexican beech (Fagus grandifolia var. mexicana; Fagaceae),the current distribution of the endangered mexican beech fagus grandifolia var mexicana martinez little is restricted to relict isolated populations in small remnants of montane cloud forest in northeastern mexico and little is known about its associated biota we sampled bolete diversity in two of these monospecific forests in the state of hidalgo mexico we compared alpha diversity including species richness and ensemble structure and analyzed beta diversity dissimilarity in species composition between forests we found 26 bolete species five of which are probably new species diversity and evenness were similar between forests beta diversity was low and the similarities of bolete samples from within and between forests were not significantly different these results support the idea that the two forests share a single bolete ensemble with a common history in contrast cumulative species richness differed between the forests implying that factors other than the mere presence of the host species have contributed to shaping the biodiversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi in relict mexican beech forests,2010,0.958
"Integrative taxonomy uncovers hidden species diversity in woodlouse hunter spiders (Araneae, Dysderidae) endemic to the Macaronesian archipelagos",the development of molecular techniques as a taxonomic tool and their integration with information provided by other disciplines has enhanced species discovery facilitated species delimitation and produced invaluable data for inferring species phylogenies here we provide an example of how dna sequence data together with morphometric distributional and ecological information assist in identifying and diagnosing previously overlooked lineages the nocturnal ground dwelling spider genus dysdera has colonized all the macaronesian archipelagos and has undergone a major diversification in the canary islands a recent molecular phylogenetic analysis of dysdera species from the eastern canary islands revealed deep genetic divergences among some populations suggesting the existence of cryptic taxa here we combine data from mitochondrial and nuclear loci with morphological and ecological evidence to delimit and formally describe three previously overlooked species d aneris sp nov endemic to the salvage islands d mahan sp nov distributed along coastal habitats of lanzarote north of fuerteventura and adjacent islets and d simbeque sp nov restricted to two valleys in northern lanzarote molecular markers provide key information that allows apparent morphological polymorphisms to be used as diagnostic features of evolutionarily independent lineages dysdera mahan sp nov is unique among the canarian dysdera in that it is found in the intertidal zone on pebbled beaches low levels of genetic variability and genital differentiation associated with relatively high somatic divergence suggest that speciation in d mahan sp nov was driven by a selection of phenotypic traits that are adaptive to this rare environment separate analyses and statistical tests revealed phylogenetic incongruence between mitochondrial and nuclear genes probably as a result of incomplete lineage sorting the temporal framework for the origin and diversification of the new species inferred from the molecular data corroborates former hypotheses on the late pliocene origin of the present day biota of the salvage islands,2010,0.954
MosquitoMap and the Mal-area calculator: new web tools to relate mosquito species distribution with vector borne disease,background mosquitoes are important vectors of diseases but in spite of various mosquito faunistic surveys globally there is a need for a spatial online database of mosquito collection data and distribution summaries such a resource could provide entomologists with the results of previous mosquito surveys and vector disease control workers preventative medicine practitioners and health planners with information relating mosquito distribution to vector borne disease risk results a web application called mosquitomap was constructed comprising mosquito collection point data stored in an arcgis 9 3 server sql geodatabase that includes administrative area and vector species x country lookup tables in addition to the layer containing mosquito collection points other map layers were made available including environmental and vector and pathogen disease distribution layers an application within mosquitomap called the mal area calculator mac was constructed to quantify the area of overlap for any area of interest of vector human and disease distribution models data standards for mosquito records were developed for mosquitomap conclusion mosquitomap is a public domain web resource that maps and compares georeferenced mosquito collection points to other spatial information in a geographical information system setting the mac quantifies the mal area i e the area where it is theoretically possible for vector borne disease transmission to occur thus providing a useful decision tool where other disease information is limited the mal area approach emphasizes the independent but cumulative contribution to disease risk of the vector species predicted present mosquitomap adds value to and makes accessible the results of past collecting efforts as well as providing a template for other arthropod spatial databases,2010,0.341
Reasons and Processes Leading to the Erosion of Crop Genetic Diversity in Mountainous Regions of Georgia,agriculture has a long history in georgia it has led to a great variety of ancient crops however this diversity is under threat for many reasons first introduced crops have caused a loss of traditional cultivars because the introduced crops are preferred due to their higher yield moreover agricultural machines such as forage and grain combine harvesters imported to georgia are constructed for widely distributed imported crops and cannot be used to harvest local cultivars until recently genetic erosion of ancient crop varieties was not a problem in the mountain areas of georgia which until the 1990s constituted a depository of local crop varieties of wheat barley rye oat common millet traditional legumes vegetables herbs and spice plants with specific varieties adapted to mountain conditions these mountain areas worked as a depository because local mountain communities preserved their traditional ways of life and socioeconomic structures their traditional agricultural equipment used on a large scale until the 1990s still allows them to maintain areas under cultivation with grain or other crops on steep slopes and at high elevations where modern tractors cannot be used moreover some old landraces of wheat and barley are still being used to prepare bread and beer for religious rituals currently many endemic and native representatives of crop plants are in danger of extinction international nature conservation institutions and georgian scientific and nongovernmental organizations have developed plans to preserve the genetic resources of local cultivars,2010,0.113
Pest Risk Maps for Invasive Alien Species: A Roadmap for Improvement,pest risk maps are powerful visual communication tools to describe where invasive alien species might arrive establish spread or cause harmful impacts these maps inform strategic and tactical pest management decisions such as potential restrictions on international trade or the design of pest surveys and domestic quarantines diverse methods are available to create pest risk maps and can potentially yield different depictions of risk for the same species inherent uncertainties about the biology of the invader future climate conditions and species interactions further complicate map interpretation if multiple maps are available risk managers must choose how to incorporate the various representations of risk into their decision making process and may make significant errors if they misunderstand what each map portrays this article describes the need for pest risk maps compares pest risk mapping methods and recommends future research to improve such important decision support tools abstract from author copyright of bioscience is the property of american institute of biological sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder s express written permission however users may print download or email articles for individual use this abstract may be abridged no warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract copyright applies to all abstracts,2010,0.009
Benzophenones from the roots of the Popoluca Amerindian medicinal plant Securidaca diversifolia (L.) S.F. Blake,three novel benzophenones 1 3 were obtained from the roots of securidaca diversifolia l s f blake along with two known benzylbenzoates and isovanilline compound 2 2 4 dihydroxy 3 3 dimethoxy benzophenone showed moderate inhibitory activity on herpes simplex virus type 1 proliferation in vitro the structures of compounds 1 3 were established by the interpretation of their spectroscopic and spectrometric data,2010,0.373
The primate collection at the Natural Science Museum of Barcelona (Spain),the primate collection at the natural science museum of barcelona spain â the natural science museum of barcelona mcnb houses a total of 309 specimens of nonâ human primates the collection comprises 102 stuffed animals 33 skins 73 skeletons 24 postcranial skeletons eight mounted skeletons 54 skulls three whole animals in alcohol and 31 other samples bones and other over the last two years the collection has been completely reviewed and reorganized the collection contains 39 genera and includes a wide range of extant nonâ human primates it houses specimens frojydfv m africa asia and south and central america with 10 26 of samples being strepsirrhines 26 92 new world monkeys and 62 18 old world monkeys the museum houses some endangered or rare species in this work we present the contents of the recent review with new and updated taxonomic attributions together with a complete list of samples that includes information on age class and preservation status for each specimen,2010,0.837
Shifting fungal endophyte communities colonize Bouteloua gracilis: effect of host tissue and geographical distribution,communities of root associated fungi raf commonly have been studied under the auspices of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi amf or ectomycorrhizal fungi however many studies now indicate that other groups of endophytic raf including dark septate endophytes dse are more abundant in some plants and environments the common forage grass bouteloua gracilis was used as a model to examine whether raf also colonize different organs within the same plant and to compare raf communities from sites across north america spanning the latitudinal range of b gracilis from canada to mexico we compared the raf communities of different organs within individual plants at one site and within plant roots among six sites with the possible exception of one group related to the genus paraphaeosphaeria there was little evidence that raf colonized vertically beyond the crowns furthermore although there was some variation in the constitution of rare members of the raf communities several taxonomically related groups dominated the raf community at all sites these dominant taxa included members in the pleosporales related to the dse paraphaeosphaeria spp agaricales related to moniliophthora spp or campanella spp and hypocreales related to fusarium spp amf were notable by their near absence similar phylotypes from the dominant groups clustered around adjacent sites so that similarity of the raf communities was negatively correlated to site inter distance and the raf communities appeared to group based on country these results increase the possibility that at least some of these common and widely distributed core members of the raf community form important intimate and long lasting relationships with grasses,2010,0.155
Molecular Barcoding of Microscopic Fungi with Emphasis on the Mucoralean Genera Mucor and Rhizopus,a broad range of fungi were isolated from different geographic regions and substrates and identified according to traditional and modern methods a total of 120 different isolates were assigned to the phyla basidiomycota with 8 isolates ascomycota with 75 isolates and zygomycota with 37 isolates although morphological characters were able to differentiate the isolates to their phyla and in most cases to the correct genera a combination of several methods is always recommended because characterization and identification of unknown fungal isolates is highly error prone if relying on single methods sequence based identification turned out to be reliable for most ascomycetes and zygomycetes but with the ongoing questionable trend to rely on sequences as first source information for species separation the most serious problems are the annotation problems in public reference databases the inconsistency of described taxa and the available reference data,2010,0.811
"Using learning networks to understand complex systems: a case study of biological, geophysical and social research in the Amazon",developing high quality scientific research will be most effective if research communities with diverse skills and interests are able to share information and knowledge are aware of the major challenges across disciplines and can exploit economies of scale to provide robust answers and better inform policy we evaluate opportunities and challenges facing the development of a more interactive research environment by developing an interdisciplinary synthesis of research on a single geographic region we focus on the amazon as it is of enormous regional and global environmental importance and faces a highly uncertain future to take stock of existing knowledge and provide a framework for analysis we present a set of mini reviews from fourteen different areas of research encompassing taxonomy biodiversity biogeography vegetation dynamics landscape ecology earth atmosphere interactions ecosystem processes fire deforestation dynamics hydrology hunting conservation planning livelihoods and payments for ecosystem services each review highlights the current state of knowledge and identifies research priorities including major challenges and opportunities we show that while substantial progress is being made across many areas of scientific research our understanding of specific issues is often dependent on knowledge from other disciplines accelerating the acquisition of reliable and contextualized knowledge about the fate of complex pristine and modified ecosystems is partly dependent on our ability to exploit economies of scale in shared resources and technical expertise recognise and make explicit interconnections and feedbacks among sub disciplines increase the temporal and spatial scale of existing studies and improve the dissemination of scientific findings to policy makers and society at large enhancing interaction among research efforts is vital if we are to make the most of limited funds and overcome the challenges posed by addressing large scale interdisciplinary questions bringing together a diverse scientific community with a single geographic focus can help increase awareness of research questions both within and among disciplines and reveal the opportunities that may exist for advancing acquisition of reliable knowledge this approach could be useful for a variety of globally important scientific questions,2010,0.005
Explanative power of variables used in species distribution modelling: an issue of general model transferability or niche shift in the invasive Greenhouse frog (Eleutherodactylus planirostris),the use of species distribution models sdms to predict potential distributions of species is steadily increasing a necessary assumption when projecting models throughout space or time is that climatic niches are conservative but recent findings of niche shifts during biological invasion of particular plant and animal species have indicated that this assumption is not categorically valid one reason for observed shifts may relate to variable selection for modelling in this study we assess differences in climatic niches in the native and invasive ranges of the greenhouse frog eleutherodactylus planirostris we analyze which variables are more â conservedâ in comparison to more â relaxedâ variables i e subject to niche shift and how they influence transferability of sdms developed with maxent on the basis of ten bioclimatic layers best describing the climatic requirements of the target species we focus on degrees of niche similarity and conservatism using schoener s index and hellinger distance significance of results are tested with null models results indicate that the degrees of niche similarity and conservatism vary greatly among the predictive variables some shifts can be attributed to active habitat selection whereas others apparently reflect variation in the availability of climate conditions or biotic interactions between the frogs native and invasive ranges patterns suggesting active habitat selection also vary among variables our findings evoke considerable implications on the transferability of sdms over space and time which is strongly affected by the choice and number of predictors the incorporation of â relaxedâ predictors not or only indirectly correlated with biologically meaningful predictors may lead to erroneous predictions when projecting sdms we recommend thorough assessments of invasive species ecology for the identification biologically meaningful predictors facilitating transferability,2010,0.807
The Hawaiian Rhodophyta Biodiversity Survey (2006-2010): a summary of principal findings,background the hawaiian red algal flora is diverse isolated and well studied from a morphological and anatomical perspective making it an excellent candidate for assessment using a combination of traditional taxonomic and molecular approaches acquiring and making these biodiversity data freely available in a timely manner ensures that other researchers can incorporate these baseline findings into phylogeographic studies of hawaiian red algae or red algae found in other locations results a total of 1 946 accessions are represented in the collections from 305 different geographical locations in the hawaiian archipelago these accessions represent 24 orders 49 families 152 genera and 252 species subspecific taxa of red algae one order of red algae the rhodachlyales was recognized in hawaii for the first time and 196 new island distributional records were determined from the survey collections one family and four genera are reported for the first time from hawaii and multiple species descriptions are in progress for newly discovered taxa a total of 2 418 sequences were generated for hawaiian red algae in the course of this study 915 for the nuclear lsu marker 864 for the plastidial upa marker and 639 for the mitochondrial coi marker these baseline molecular data are presented as neighbor joining trees to illustrate degrees of divergence within and among taxa the lsu marker was typically most conserved followed by upa and coi phylogenetic analysis of a set of concatenated lsu upa and coi sequences recovered a tree that broadly resembled the current understanding of florideophyte red algal relationships but bootstrap support was largely absent above the ordinal level phylogeographic trends are reported here for some common taxa within the hawaiian islands and include examples of those with as well as without intraspecific variation conclusions the upa and coi markers were determined to be the most useful of the three and are recommended for inclusion in future algal biodiversity surveys molecular data for the survey provide the most extensive assessment of hawaiian red algal diversity and in combination with the morphological anatomical and distributional data collected as part of the project provide a solid baseline data set for future studies of the flora the data are freely available via the hawaiian algal database hadb which was designed and constructed to accommodate the results of the project we present the first dna sequence reference collection for a tropical pacific seaweed flora whose value extends beyond hawaii since many hawaiian taxa are shared with other tropical areas,2010,0.533
Spatial patterns of bee captures in North American bowl trapping surveys,abstract 1 bowl and pan traps are now commonly used to capture bees hymenoptera apiformes for research and surveys 2 studies of how arrangement and spacing of bowl traps affect captures of bees are needed to increase the efficiency of this capture technique 3 we present results from seven studies of bowl traps placed in trapping webs grids and transects in four north american ecoregions mid atlantic coastal california chihuahuan desert and columbia plateau 4 over 6000 specimens from 31 bee genera were captured and analysed across the studies 5 based on the results from trapping webs and distance tests the per bowl capture rate of bees does not plateau until bowls are spaced 3â 5 m apart 6 minor clumping of bee captures within transects was detected with 26 of 56 transects having index of dispersion values that conform to a clumped distribution and 39 transects having positive greenâ s index values 13 with zero and only four negative however degree of clumping was slight with an average value of only 0 06 the index ranges from ∠1 to 1 with only five values 0 15 similarly runs tests were significant for only 5 9 of the transects 7 results indicate that i capture rates are unaffected by short distances between bowls within transects and ii that bowls and transects should be dispersed throughout a study site,2010,0.128
Evolution of the Catalogue of Life Architecture,the species 2000 and itis catalogue of life aims to create and deliver a catalogue of all known species using a distributed set of data sources the current species 2000 software has developed over a number of years and the system requirements have evolved substantially over the same period in this paper we discuss the current catalogue of life software the way the requirements are evolving and major elements of a planned new architectural design being developed as part of the 4d4life eu e infrastructure project of particular importance in the new design is to be able to maintain the catalogue dealing with potential overlaps between supplier databases to keep it up to date and manage revisions that arise out of changes of scientific opinion to be able to map between different taxonomies within and outside the catalogue to be able to provide a wider range of services to other electronic systems which need the catalogue as their â œtaxonomic backboneâ and to support third party applications by means of an open platform architecture,2010,0.132
PhyloGeoViz: a web-based program that visualizes genetic data on maps,abstract the first step of many population genetic studies is the simple visualization of allele frequencies on a landscape this basic data exploration can be challenging without proprietary software and the manual plotting of data is cumbersome and unfeasible at large sample sizes i present an open source web based program that plots any kind of frequency or count data as pie charts in google maps google inc mountain view ca pie polygons are then exportable to google earth google inc a free geographic information systems platform import of genetic data into google earth allows phylogeographers access to a wealth of spatial information layers integral to forming hypotheses and understanding patterns in the data,2010,0.098
A multilingual metadata catalog for the ILTER: Issues and approaches,the international long term ecological research ilter network s strategic plan calls for widespread data exchange among member networks to support broad scale synthetic studies of ecological systems however natural language differences are common among ilter country networks and seriously inhibit the exchange interpretation and proper use of ecological data as a first step toward building a multilingual metadata catalog the ilter has adopted ecological metadata language eml as its standard and ilter members are asked to share discovery level metadata in english presently the burden of translation is on the data providers who frequently have few resources for information management tools to assist with metadata capture and translation such as localized metadata editors and a multilingual environmental thesaurus are needed and will be developed in the near future in the longer term ilter will cooperate with other communities to develop ontologies that may be used to automate the process of translation and will produce the most linguistically and semantically accurate metadata translations,2010,0.07
Biogeography of the Amazon molly: ecological niche and range limits of an asexual hybrid species,abstract aim to understand the relative contributions of environmental factors dispersal limitations and the presence of sperm donors in determining the distribution of the amazon molly poecilia formosa a sperm dependent unisexual fish species of hybrid origin to explore niche similarities and or differences between the hybrid and parental species to evaluate whether large scale abiotic factors can explain a successful introduction of both p formosa and poecilia latipinna location south east united states mexico and central america methods we used abiotic variables in ecological niche modelling enm to identify regions with suitable conditions for the presence of the amazon molly and its two parental species p latipinna and poecilia mexicana we also used a recently developed metric to calculate the degree of niche overlap between the hybrid and its parental species results enm produced highly significant models all area under the curve auc 0 99 for the three species annual mean temperature and minimum temperature of the coldest month were the variables that best explained the distribution of the amazon molly with the exception of south florida few areas beyond the known distribution of the species were predicted to have suitable environmental conditions the hybrid species niche overlaps partially with the parental species however given the available data it is neither more similar nor more different than expected by chance main conclusions two different processes are acting to limit the distribution of p formosa at the northern limit although a sperm donor species is present further north suitable environmental conditions are absent from nearby locations at the southern limit a sperm donor species is present and areas with good environmental conditions are present at nearby locations suggesting that dispersal ability is the limiting factor we found that the hybrid species overlaps in a similar way with both parental species while still having its own niche identity this result may be explained by the fact that hybrid species inherit characteristics of two ecologically divergent species which can result in intermediate or even transgressive phenotypes these results support recent work on the role of hybridization in diversification,2010,0.963
"Avifauna de sitios asociados a la selva tropical en la depresión Central de Chiapas, México",this paper describes the birdsâ structure and composition of associated sites to tropical forest in the central depression of chiapas mexico through 2003 to 2004 i recorded 364 species considering scientific literature museum collections and field work families with highest species richness were tyrannidae parulidae icteridae and trochilidae resident birds represented 68 of the total and the 32 remaining were migratory thirty four percent of bird species were rare 11 common and 3 abundant highest species richness was found for the tropical deciduous forest 226 followed by the secondary forest 163 and the tropical semideciduous forest 122 from all birds 136 were additional records in the region and 56 were for the sumidero canyon national park the species richness recorded included 45 of the avifauna of chiapas indicating the relevance of this region and the urgent need to establish conservation and protection management strategies the magnitude of species increment and lack of information in this region suggest that regional and local inventories are necessaries to improve the knowledge about species distribution,2010,0.906
What would NASA do? Mission-critical infrastructure for species exploration,three house of lords reports and many essays and articles have lamented the loss of prestige and support for taxonomy in the uk europe and the united states but little has been done to stop the haemorrhaging of expertise continued neglect of natural history collections and erosion of fundamental descriptive taxonomic scholarship we have tolerated ignorance of earth s species so long that science policy makers seem to have forgotten that this need not be so advances in theory technology and practices have positioned taxonomy for a renaissance in species exploration what is needed is to look at the role and significance of taxonomy through fresh eyes and see its true potential without the assumptions and biases of the past the â big questionsâ of taxonomy have changed little in more than two centuries but our ability to answer them has dramatically improved looking at taxonomy as if it were a nasa mission to some other habitable planet points to both the importance of taxonomy and the folly of current neglect for its unique needs,2010,0.431
Namdeb ORM LOM EIA: Invertebrate Assessment,a survey on the invertebrate fauna at sendelingsdrift was conducted from 25 may to 29 september 2010 as well as a desktop study to compliment fieldwork forty pitfall traps at ten sites in and on the periphery of the mining area together with hand collecting and uv light collecting were used to collect about 16 000 specimens of invertebrates a minimum of 323 terrestrial invertebrate taxa occur in the study area of these 155 taxa were actually encountered on the ground an additional 121 taxa have been recorded in other sources and 47 more taxa were not encountered but are expected to occur anyway on grounds of habitat suitability some taxa are undifferentiated larger grouping or morphospecies so the actual number of species will be much higher although several of the insects are endemic to the lower orange river area with restricted distribution ranges it is unlikely that any specific specie is confined exclusively to the proposed mining area no significant difference seems to exist in the diversity or abundance of invertebrates in different habitats within the mining area and surrounding areas the riverine woodland on the banks of the orange river was not included in this survey it is therefore important that the areas surrounding the mining area remains undisturbed in order to protect insect populations from where the mining area can be re colonised during the rehabilitation phases the main impact of the mining operation on the invertebrate fauna is habitat destruction and it is therefore important that the landforms and soil structure should be recreated during and after the mining operations as far as possible assisted colonisation of the vegetation component will also accelerate the re colonisation of invertebrate communities during the rehabilitation phase invertebrates can be reasonably economically and quantifiably used for monitoring of rehabilitation success with comparable pitfall trap surveys the occurrence or reappearance of some easily identifiable species discussed below can also indicate the reestablishment of a healthy ecosystem final draft greyling irish october 2010 1,2010,0.654
Reasoning about Taxonomies,taxonomically organized data pervade science business and everyday life unfortu nately taxonomies are often under specified or even inconsistent limiting their utility in contexts such as data integration information navigation and autonomous agent commu nication this work formalizes taxonomies and articulations relationships between taxa in taxonomies as first order formulas this formalization concretizes notions such as consis tency and inconsistency of taxonomies and articulations between them enables the deriva tion of new articulations based on a given set of taxonomies and articulations and provides a framework for testing assumptions about under specified taxonomies given the typical intractability of reasoning with taxonomies and articulations this research also investigates many optimizations from those that reduce the search space to those that leverage parallel processing to those investigating logics more tractable than first order logic e g monadic first order logic propositional logic description logics and subsets of the rcc 5 spatial algebra finally in addition to reasoning with taxonomies and articulations this research investigates how to merge taxonomies given articulations and how to merge data sets that have been annotated to aligned taxonomies critical to this research is the development of a framework for testing logics and supporting the development of taxonomies and articulations this framework cleantax has been im plemented and has been used to study articulations between several large scale biological taxonomies,2010,0.162
Towards a Generic Infrastructure for Sustainable Management of Quality Controlled Primary Data,collecting primary data in scientific research is currently being performed in numerous repositories frequently these repositories have not been designed to support long term evolution of data processes and tools furthermore in many cases repositories have been set up for the specific needs of some research project and are not maintained any longer when the project is terminated finally quality control and data provenance issues are not addressed to a sufficient extent based on the experiences gained in a joint project with biologists in the domain of biodiversity informatics we propose a generic infrastructure for sustainable management of quality controlled primary data the infrastructure encompasses both project and institutional repositories and provides a process for migrating project data into institutional repositories evolution and adaptability are supported through a generic approach with respect to underlying data schemas processes and tools specific emphasis is placed on quality assurance and data provenance,2010,0.144
Colonization and/or mitochondrial selective sweeps across the North Atlantic intertidal assemblage revealed by multi-taxa approximate Bayesian computation.,intertidal and subtidal communities of the western and eastern coasts of the north atlantic ocean were greatly affected by pleistocene glaciations with some taxa persisting on both coasts and others recolonizing after being extirpated on one coast during the last glacial maximum in the original spirit of comparative phylogeography we conducted a comparative analysis using mtdna sequence data and a hierarchical approximate bayesian computation abc approach for testing these two scenarios across 12 intertidal and subtidal coastal invertebrates spanning the north atlantic to determine the temporal dynamics of species membership of these two ephemeral communities conditioning on a low gene flow model our results suggested that a colonization or mitochondrial selective sweep history was predominant across all taxa with only the bivalve mollusc mytilus edulis showing a history of trans atlantic persistence conditioning on a high gene flow model weakened the support for this assemblage level demographic history the predominance of a colonization type history also highlights concerns about analyses based on single locus data where genetic hitchhiking may be incorrectly inferred as colonization in conclusion driving factors in shifting species range distributions and membership of ephemeral coastal communities could be species specific environmental tolerances species interactions and or stochastic demographic extinction through a re examination of a long standing question of north atlantic phylogeography we highlight the flexibility and statistical honesty of using a model based abc approach,2010,0.416
Ex Situ and In Situ Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity : Major Advances and Research Needs,the effective conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity is vital for creating and maintaining sustainable increases in the productivity of healthy food for mankind as well as contributing to the increased resilience of agricultural systems major advances in the two main complementary strategies for agricultural biodiversity conservation namely ex situ and in situ over the last decade are presented to reflect on their current global status and trends te fao second state of the world report on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture reports that the total number of accessions conserved in ex situ collections is about 7 4 million in over 1750 genebanks around the world tere has also been increasing awareness of the importance and value of conserving crop wild relatives cwr in situ and a greater understanding of the scientific issues surrounding on farm management of genetic diversity recent research outputs produced by bioversity international to ensure the effective and efficient conservation and use of genetic diversity are cited tese have involved development of best practices for genebank management and the development of enhanced technologies and methodologies for conserving and promoting the use of the genetic diversity bioversity international has led the development of methodologies for on farm conservation and promoted the draå ting of policies and strategies for the in situ conservation of crop wild relatives and their management inside and outside protected areas also an outlook of the research priorities and needs for conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity is described,2010,0.188
Double-stranded RNA viral infection of Trichomonas vaginalis and correlation with genetic polymorphism of isolates,trichomonas vaginalis can be infected with double stranded rna dsrna viruses known as t vaginalis virus tvv this viral infection may have important implications for trichomonal virulence and disease pathogenesis the objective of this study was to determine the possible correlation between the t vaginalis genetic polymorphism and the isolate infection with tvv the random amplified polymorphic dna rapd technique was used to determine genetic differences among 37 isolates of t vaginalis using a panel of 30 random primers and these genetic data were correlated with the infection of isolates with tvv the trees drawn based on rapd data showed significantly association with the presence of tvv p 0 028 demonstrating the existence of concordance between the genetic relatedness and the presence of tvv in t vaginalis isolates this result could point to a predisposition of t vaginalis for the viral enters and or survival,2010,0.856
Potential distribution and management of the invasive weed Solanum carolinense in Central Europe,follak s strauss g 2010 potential distribution and management of the invasive weed solanum carolinense in central europe weed research 50 544â 552 summary solanum carolinense is a serious weed from north america that has recently invaded crop fields in austria and italy in this study a climate suitability analysis using the climex model was carried out to assess the potential distribution of s carolinense in central europe to identify areas at risk of an invasion and to derive an efficient management strategy in north america the plant currently occupies almost its full range of suitable climates in contrast s carolinense occurs only rarely as a ruderal plant and weed in several countries of central europe the projections of climatic suitability under current climate reveal considerable scope for further invasion the land area climatically suitable for s carolinense is highest in hungary 100 of the total land area poland 83 6 followed by slovenia 70 5 slovakia 64 5 germany 41 5 czech republic 37 0 austria 34 9 and switzerland 16 6 solanum carolinense has a high capacity for spatial dispersal by natural means and different human mediated pathways thus it is likely that the plant will expand its range and infest cultivated land particularly around existing naturalised populations a management strategy is warranted including early detection and eradication of nascent foci of s carolinense to contain the plant to its current restricted distribution and to limit the chances for further spread of this invasive weed to other agricultural areas the widespread occurrence of this species would have serious consequences for agriculture,2010,0.424
The UK urban tree survey,public communication of science shares various educational aspects with more formal learning experiences but differences in both the aims and the target audiences make for subtly different approaches the uk urban tree survey is an example of the requirements and possibilities of a public orientated project relying on the use of identification tools,2010,0.347
New approaches for establishing conservation priorities for socio-economically important plant species,the establishment of priorities among species is a crucial step in any conservation strategy since financial resources are generally limited traditionally priorities for conservation of plant species have been focused on endemicity rarity and particularly on their threatened status crop wild relatives cwr and wild harvested plants whp are important elements of biodiversity with actual or potential socio economic value in this study eight prioritisation criteria were used along with different prioritisation systems and applied to the portuguese cwr and whp the top 50 species obtained by each of these methods were identified the final top cwr were those that occurred as a priority in most methods twenty cwr were identified as the highest priorities for conservation in portugal and they include wild relatives of the crop genera allium daucus dianthus epilobium festuca herniaria narcissus quercus plantago trifolium and vicia eighteen whp were recognised as priorities for conservation and include several narcissus and thymus species among others the advantages limitations and level of subjectivity of each of the methods used in this exercise are discussed,2010,0.851
A Consensus Method for Checklist Integration,a project was initiated in 2006 to compile a draft global checklist of the compositae plant family by integrating existing electronic checklists a checklist integrator tool c int was developed c int provides an editorial interface alongside managed and automated workflows for the importation and integration of multiple checklists a number of technical issues were encoun tered and addressed during the project including the requirement to maintain provided data values difficulties integrating data updates issues with integrat ing relational data and computational efficiency,2010,0.28
Modern methods and technology for doing classical taxonomy,significant advances in disseminating taxonomic knowledge are pressing the boundaries of traditional techniques and challenging researchers to upgrade their methodology detailed herein are three major developments first field emission low temperature scanning electron microscopy fe ltsem is a contemporary tool for imaging mites that retains body turgor setal position and captures a snap shot of the animal in vivo examples are given to illustrate the superiority of this method over conventional sem in mite taxonomy second digital illustration techniques designed to speed up the species description process are discussed line drawings are created by drawing on top of a montaged photograph on a touch sensitive tablet necessary equipment software and a workflow are provided with the intention of proposing new standards for creating line drawings in acarology third trends in cybertaxonomy which are raising publication standards for all taxonomists are discussed with the hope that future acarological work will incorporate such trends and increase the accessibility of information both to taxonomists and non taxonomists worldwide cybertaxonomic topics suggested here include embedding hyperlinks and e references such as images deposited on morphbank and sequences on genbank one can also contribute elements to the encyclopedia of life eol register new species with zoobank and share collection data with the global biodiversity inventory facility gbif particularly useful are kml files for viewing distribution records interactively with google earth finally it is recommended that web presence should be expanded by contributing taxon pages to the tree of life web project and creating independent webpages on the taxon of interest that can act as the central hub of information for that group,2010,0.495
Castelnau’s Collection of Singapore fishes described by Pieter Bleeker,recently discovered watercolour paintings of singapore fi shes by the french naturalist f l castelnau in the zoological museum of the university of liã ge belgium include illustrations of seven hitherto unrecognized species of apogonid fi shes and a gobiid fi sh that formed the basis of new species descriptions by pieter bleeker in 1860 based on examination of the paintings we assign bleekerâ s species as follows apogonichthys taeniopterus bleeker 1860 is a junior synonym of jaydia truncata bleeker 1854 cheilodipterus polystigma bleeker 1860 is a junior synonym of pseudamia amblyuroptera bleeker 1856 cheilodipterus singapurensis bleeker 1860 is a valid species apogonichthys macrophthalmus bleeker 1860 is a valid species but because it has not been used in the literature is unavailable and apogon compressus smith radcliffe in radcliff 1911 nomen protectum is retained for this species and gobius melanopus bleeker 1860 is shown to be the senior synonym of cryptocentrus leptocephalus bleeker 1876 the identities of the remaining species are uncertain apogon melanurus bleeker 1860 may represent a species of cheilodipterus possibly c macrodon lacã pã de 1802 apogon singapurensis bleeker 1860 nomen oblitum is identifi ed as a synonym of apogon endekatania bleeker 1852 based on dried skins the painting may represent a member of the apogon hartzfeldii complex possibly apogon cavitensis jordan seale 1907 nomen protectum and apogon arenatus bleeker 1860 may represent a species of zoramia possibly z leptacantha bleeker 1856â 57,2010,0.958
Combining local- and large-scale models to predict the distributions of invasive plant species,habitat distribution models are increasingly used to predict the potential distributions of invasive species and to inform monitoring however these models assume that species are in equilibrium with the environment which is clearly not true for most invasive species although this assumption is frequently acknowledged solutions have not been adequately addressed there are several potential methods for improving habitat distribution models models that require only presence data may be more effective for invasive species but this assumption has rarely been tested in addition combining modeling types to form â â ensembleâ â models may improve the accuracy of predictions however even with these improvements models developed for recently invaded areas are greatly influenced by the current distributions of species and thus reflect near rather than long term potential for invasion larger scale models from speciesâ native and invaded ranges may better reflect long term invasion potential but they lack finer scale resolution we compared logistic regression which uses presence absence data and two presence only methods for modeling the potential distributions of three invasive plant species on the olympic peninsula in washington usa we then combined the three methods to create ensemble models we also developed climate envelope models for the same species based on larger scale distributions and combined models from multiple scales to create an index of near and long term invasion risk to inform monitoring in olympic national park onp neither presence only nor ensemble models were more accurate than logistic regression for any of the species larger scale models predicted much greater areas at risk of invasion our index of near and long term invasion risk indicates that 4 of onp is at high near term risk of invasion while 67â 99 of the park is at moderate or high long term risk of invasion we demonstrate how modeling results can be used to guide the design of monitoring protocols and monitoring results can in turn be used to refine models we propose that by using models from multiple scales to predict invasion risk and by explicitly linking model development to monitoring it may be possible to overcome some of the limitations of habitat distribution models,2010,0.942
The integrative future of taxonomy,background taxonomy is the biological discipline that identifies describes classifies and names extant and extinct species and other taxa nowadays species taxonomy is confronted with the challenge to fully incorporate new theory methods and data from disciplines that study the origin limits and evolution of species results integrative taxonomy has been proposed as a framework to bring together these conceptual and methodological developments here we review perspectives for an integrative taxonomy that directly bear on what species are how they can be discovered and how much diversity is on earth conclusions we conclude that taxonomy needs to be pluralistic to improve species discovery and description and to develop novel protocols to produce the much needed inventory of life in a reasonable time to cope with the large number of candidate species revealed by molecular studies of eukaryotes we propose a classification scheme for those units that will facilitate the subsequent assembly of data sets for the formal description of new species under the linnaean system and will ultimately integrate the activities of taxonomists and molecular biologists,2010,0.522
"Psilolechia clavulifera , a Lichen Species New to Canada",psilolechia clavulifera is reported as new to canada where it was been found growing under a shaded rock overhang near temagami ontario this is the first record of the species for canada this occurrence represents only the fourth documented record of the species for north america since it was first discovered in 1939 by j lowe this specimen was found growing with other rarely collected cryptic species found in unique microhabitats psilolechia lucida protothelenella corrosa and microcalicium arenarium,2010,0.861
Early vessel evolution and the diverisification of wood function: Insights from Malagasy Canellales,xylem vessels have long been proposed as a key innovation for the ecological diversification of angiosperms by providing a breakthrough in hydraulic efficiency to support high rates of photosynthesis and growth however recent studies demonstrated that angiosperm woods with structurally primitive vessels did not have greater whole stem hydraulic capacities as compared to vesselless angiosperms as an alternative to the hydraulic superiority hypothesis the heteroxylly hypothesis proposes that subtle hydraulic efficiencies of primitive vessels over tracheids enabled new directions of functional specialization in the wood however the functional properties of early heteroxyllous wood remain unknown we selected the two species of canellales from madagascar to test the heteroxylly hypothesis because canellaceae represented by cinnamosma madagascariensis produces wood with vessels of an ancestral form while winteraceae the sister clade represented by takhtajania perrieri is vesselless we found that heteroxylly correlated with increased wood functional diversity related predominantly to biomechanical specialization however vessels were not associated with greater stem hydraulic efficiency or increased shoot hydraulic capacity our results support the heteroxylly hypothesis and highlight the importance integrating a broader ecological context to understand the evolution of vessels,2010,0.039
Spatio-Temporal Gap Analysis of OBIS-SEAMAP Project Data: Assessment and Way Forward,the obis seamap project has acquired and served high quality marine mammal seabird and sea turtle data to the public since its inception in 2002 as data accumulated spatial and temporal biases resulted and a comprehensive gap analysis was needed in order to assess coverage to direct data acquisition for the obis seamap project and for taxa researchers should true gaps in knowledge exist all datasets published on obis seamap up to february 2009 were summarized spatially and temporally seabirds comprised the greatest number of records compared to the other two taxa and most records were from shipboard surveys compared to the other three platforms many of the point observations and polyline tracklines were located in northern and central atlantic and the northeastern and central eastern pacific the southern hemisphere generally had the lowest representation of data with the least number of records in the southern atlantic and western pacific regions temporally records of observations for all taxa were the lowest in fall although the number of animals sighted was lowest in the winter oceanographic coverage of observations varied by platform for each taxa which showed that using two or more platforms represented habitat ranges better than using only one alone accessible and published datasets not already incorporated do exist within spatial and temporal gaps identified other related open source data portals also contain data that fill gaps emphasizing the importance of dedicated data exchange temporal and spatial gaps were mostly a result of data acquisition effort development of regional partnerships and collaborations and ease of field data collection future directions should include fostering partnerships with researchers in the southern hemisphere while targeting datasets containing species with limited representation these results can facilitate prioritizing datasets needed to be represented and for planning research for true gaps in space and time,2010,0.588
Report of the Biological Data Products Workshop of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet),from 25 till 26 of february 2010 the flanders marine institute vliz organized a workshop on biological data products in oostende belgium this workshop was organized within the framework of the upcoming european marine observation and data network emodnet launched by the maritime policy of the european commission 57 participants from 42 excellent institutes involved in marine biological data collection marine research and marine policy across europe attended the workshop the workshop had three main objectives 1 to discuss the marine biological data availability and gaps in europe 2 to demonstrate the prototype of the emodnet biological data portal to different user groups and 3 to define a set of derived biological data products relevant for private bodies public authorities and researchers a huge amount of reliable european marine biological data and information was presented to the public these data are available and despite some temporal spatial and taxonomic limitations data are already very useful for analyses there was a consensus amongst workshop participants that the look and feel and functionalities of the emodnet biological prototype portal visualizing both data observations and data products were meeting the requirements although the user groups were very diverse being people from the scientific community people involved in the european marine policy and coastal and marine practitioners a number of striking similarities amongst data products were found in the different user discussion groups four different sets of marine biological data products were identified as priority biological data products being 1 species distribution maps and trends 2 species sensitivity and vulnerability maps 3 species attributes functional groups habâ s invasive species red list or protected species and 4 biodiversity indices within the biological emodnet preparatory action a few data analysis workshops will be organized in the near future 2011 to produce some of the data products identified during this workshop the same community and other relevant stakeholders identified during the meeting will be involved in this process,2010,0.504
"Variations in alder pollen pore numbers—a possible new correlation tool for the Neogene Kenai lowland, Alaska",alnus betulaceae pollen grains are common in coal beds of the miocene beluga and the pliocene sterling formations exposed in the kenai lowland alaska all alder pollen grains of the beluga formation and the lower part of the overlying sterling formation are dominated by 4 pored grains 42â 67 of total alder with no exceptions there is a striking transition to a 5 pored dominance 32â 67 with an accompanying increase in 6 7 and even 8 pored grains in outcrops of the sterling formation along the cook inlet shore north of clam gulch and at the head of kachemak bay in upper swift creek canyon and in two canyon tributaries to fox creek the general zone of this transition includes a previously correlated volcanic ash and gives credence to the rock strata being synchronous in these widely separated outcrops it should thus be possible to correlate these strata across the kenai lowland by the alder pore numbers combined with the volcanic ash the cause of the transition to a î 5 pored alnus dominance in the pliocene of the kenai lowland can only be suggested using pore numbers to determine alder species is not an accurate method because pollen of different alder species may have similar percentages of pore numbers nevertheless when taking into account percentages of 5 6 and 7 pored grains combined with the presence or absence of polar arci it can be suggested that a shift occurred from the 4 pore dominated subgenus alnus represented by alnus incana to the 5 pore dominated coldâ adapted subgenus alnobetula through dispersion and hybridization of asian species such as alnus maximowiczii alnus firma and possibly alnus sieboldiana the pollen of these three species contain between 2â 40 circular polar arci which are also present in high pore numbered grains above the transition in this study,2010,0.753
"Is Gammarus tigrinus (Crustacea, Amphipoda) becoming cosmopolitan through shipping? Predicting its potential invasive range using ecological niche modeling",while the intensity of global shipping has increased dramatically over the last decades species exchange between continents has likewise intensified ballast water of ships is recognized playing a major role in this process many of the larger sea ports have become bridgeheads for invasions ecological niche modeling is used to investigate the potential invasive range and high invasive risk ports of the north american amphipod gammarus tigrinus sixty two occurrences of g tigrinus in its native range north america and 34 environmental data sets were compiled data on dispersal distances were used via ecological niche modeling to analyze the invasive potential of g tigrinus the invasive risk of large ports was analyzed according to modeling result as well as their salinity in the main oceanic routes of the world g tigrinus had a rapid range extension on the british isles and in the rest of western europe now it is invading the countries surrounding the baltic sea worldwide it has a vast potential invasive range it has a high invasive risk for many large ports along the main oceanic routes among which the ports of shanghai buenos aires and montevideo have the highest invasive risk g tigrinus may become cosmopolitan through shipping and this possibility is increasing particular emphasis should be placed on preventing human mediated dispersal ports may be the first places g tigrinus invades this study can identify high invasive risk ports especially those at risk of introduced north america species more importantly the water of large ports should be monitored regularly for exotic aquatic organisms that may survive temporarily or permanently,2010,0.509
"Intraspecific genome size variation and morphological differentiation of Ranunculus parnassifolius (Ranunculaceae), an Alpine–Pyrenean–Cantabrian polyploid group",the aim of this study was to assess genome size variation and multivariate morphometric analyses to ascertain cytotype distribution patterns and the morphological differentiation within the ranunculus parnassifolius group in the pyrenees and the alps although divergences in nuclear dna content among different species within a genus are widely acknowledged intraspecific variation is still a somewhat controversial issue holoploid and monoploid genome sizes c and cx values were determined using propidium iodide flow cytometry in 125 plants of r parnassifolius s l distributed across four european countries three different dna ploidy levels were revealed in the study area diploid 2n ∠2x 57 14 triploid 2n ∠3x 1 19 and tetraploid 2n ∠4x 41 67 the mean population 2c values ranged from 8 15 pg in diploids to 14 80 pg in tetraploids representing a ratio of 1 1 8 marked intraspecific interpopulation differences in nuclear dna content were found diploid populations prevail in the pyrenees although tetraploid cytotypes were reported throughout the distribution area in general mixed cytotype populations were not found the spearman correlation coefficient did not reveal significant correlations between genome size and altitude longitude or latitude morphometric analyses and cluster analyses based on genome size variation revealed the presence of three major groups which exhibited a particular biogeographical pattern a new cytotype dna triploid was found for the first time tetraploid populations showed constant nuclear dna levels whereas diploid populations from the pyrenees in which introgressive hybridization is suggested as a presumable trigger for genome size variation did not scenarios for the evolution of geographical parthenogenesis in r parnassifolius s l are discussed finally the different levels of effectiveness between plant and animal reference standards are analysed â 2010 the linnean society of london biological journal of the linnean society 2010 101 251â 271,2010,0.673
VertNet: a new model for biodiversity data sharing,responding to the urgent need to make biodiversity records broadly accessible the natural history community turned to â œthe cloud â,2010,0.354
Ecology Driving Genetic Variation: A Comparative Phylogeography of Jungle Cat (Felis chaus) and Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) in India,background comparative phylogeography links historical population processes to current ecological processes through congruent incongruent patterns of genetic variation among species lineages despite high biodiversity india lacks a phylogeographic paradigm due to limited comparative studies we compared the phylogenetic patterns of indian populations of jungle cat felis chaus and leopard cat prionailurus bengalensis given similarities in their distribution within india evolutionary histories body size and habits congruent patterns of genetic variation were expected methodology principal findings we collected scats from various biogeographic zones in india and analyzed mtdna from 55 jungle cats 460 bp nadh5 141 bp cytochrome b and 40 leopard cats 362 bp nadh5 202 bp cytochrome b jungle cats revealed high genetic variation relatively low population structure and demographic expansion around the mid pleistocene in contrast leopard cats revealed lower genetic variation and high population structure with a fst of 0 86 between north and south indian populations niche model analyses using two approaches bioclim and maxent support absence of leopard cats from central india indicating a climate associated barrier we hypothesize that high summer temperatures limit leopard cat distribution and that a rise in temperature in the peninsular region of india during the lgm caused the split in leopard cat population in india conclusions significance our results indicate that ecological variables describing a species range can predict genetic patterns our study has also resolved the confusion over the distribution of the leopard cat in india the reciprocally monophyletic island population in the south mandates conservation attention,2010,0.714
Names are key to the big new biology.,those who seek answers to big broad questions about biology especially questions emphasizing the organism taxonomy evolution and ecology will soon benefit from an emerging names based infrastructure it will draw on the almost universal association of organism names with biological information to index and interconnect information distributed across the internet the result will be a virtual data commons expanding as further data are shared allowing biology to become more of a big science informatics devices will exploit this big new biology revitalizing comparative biology with a broad perspective to reveal previously inaccessible trends and discontinuities so helping us to reveal unfamiliar biological truths here we review the first components of this freely available participatory and semantic global names architecture,2010,0.234
Northern glacial refugia for the pygmy shrew Sorex minutus in Europe revealed by phylogeographic analyses and species distribution modelling,the southern european peninsulas iberian italian and balkan are traditionally recognized as glacial refugia from where many species colonized central and northern europe after the last glacial maximum lgm however evidence that some species had more northerly refugia is accumulating from phylogeographic palaeontological and palynological studies and more recently from species distribution modelling sdm but further studies are needed to test the idea of northern refugia in europe here we take a rarely implemented multidisciplinary approach to assess if the pygmy shrew sorex minutus a widespread eurasian mammal species had northern refugia during the lgm and if these influenced its postglacial geographic distribution first we evaluated the phylogeographic and population expansion patterns using mtdna sequence data from 123 pygmy shrews then we used sdm to predict present and past lgm potential distributions using two different training data sets two different algorithms maxent and garp and climate reconstructions for the lgm with two different general circulation models an lgm distribution in the southern peninsulas was predicted by the sdm approaches in line with the occurrence of lineages of s minutus in these areas the phylogeographic analyses also indicated a widespread and strictly northern central european lineage not derived from southern peninsulas and with a postglacial population expansion signature this was consistent with the sdm predictions of suitable lgm conditions for s minutus occurring across central and eastern europe from unglaciated parts of the british isles to much of the eastern european plain hence s minutus likely persisted in parts of central and eastern europe during the lgm from where it colonized other northern areas during the late glacial and postglacial periods our results provide new insights into the glacial and postglacial colonization history of the european mammal fauna notably supporting glacial refugia further north than traditionally recognized,2010,0.721
Marshalling existing biodiversity data to evaluate biodiversity status and trends in planning exercises,a thorough understanding of biodiversity sta tus and trends through time is necessary for decision making at regional national and subnational levels information readily available in databases allows for development of scenarios of species distribution in relation to habitat changes existing species occurrence data are biased towards some taxonomic groups espe cially vertebrates and are more complete for europe and north america than for the rest of the world we outline a procedure for development of such biodiversity scenarios using available data on species distribution derived from primary biodiversity data and habitat conditions and analytical software which allows esti mation of speciesâ distributions and forecasting of likely effects of various agents of change on the distribution and status of the same species such approaches can translate into improved knowledge for countries regarding the 2010 biodiversity target of reducing sig nificantly the rate of biodiversity lossâ indeed using methodologies such as those illustrated herein many countries should be capable of analyzing trends of change for at least part of their biodiversity sources of errors that are present in primary biodiversity data and that can affect projections are discussed,2010,0.652
Thoughts on implementation of the recommendations of the GBIF Task Group on a Global Strategy and Action Plan for Mobilisation of Natural History Collections Data,a task group to envision a global strategy and action plan for the mobilization of natural history collections data established by the global biodiversity information facility gbif has formulated three basic recommendations in order to increase the rate of mobilization of natural history collections data and improve the usage of this information resource i gbif must facilitate access to information about non digitized collection resources by publicizing the research potential of collections through metadata and assessing the number of non digitized specimens ii gbif must work with collections to continue to increase the efficiency of specimen data capture and to enhance data quality by means of technical measures by means of ensuring attribution and professional credit and influencing institutional priorities and by engaging with funding agencies iii gbif must continue to improve and promote the global infrastructure used to mobilize digitized collection data through technical measures outreach activities and political measures,2010,0.134
The Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Bullous Myringitis Myth,letter to the editor,2010,0.354
A global approach to crop wild relative conservation: Securing the gene pool for food and agriculture,in light of the growing concern over the potentially devastating impacts on biodiversity and food security of climate change and the massively growing world population taking action to conserve crop wild relatives cwr is no longer an option â it is a priority crop wild relatives are species closely related to crops including their progenitors many of which have the potential to contribute beneficial traits to crops such as pest or disease resistance yield improvement or stability they are a critical component of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture pgrfa have already made major contributions to crop production and are vital for future food security their systematic conservation in ways that ensure their continuing availability for use is therefore imperative this is a complex interdisciplinary global issue that has been addressed by various national and international initiatives drawing on the lessons learnt from these initiatives we can now propose a global approach to cwr conservation the key elements of which are 1 estimating global cwr numbers 2 assessment of the global importance of cwr diversity 3 current conservation status 4 threats to cwr diversity 5 systematic approaches to cwr conservation 6 cwr informatics and 7 enhancing the use of cwr diversity,2010,0.668
Can campo rupestre vegetation be floristically delimited based on vascular plant genera?,a number of floristic and vegetation studies apply the terms campo rupestre campo de altitude or brazilian pã ramo and tepui to neotropical azonal outcrop and montane vegetation all of these are known to harbor considerable numbers of endemic plant species and to share several genera in order to determine whether currently known combinations of vascular plant genera could help circumscribe and distinguish these vegetation types we selected 25 floras which did not exclude herbs and compiled them into a single database we then compared the sã rensen similarities of the genusâ assemblages using the numbers of native species in the resulting 1945 genera by multivariate analysis we found that the circumscription of campo rupestre and other neotropical outcrop vegetation types may not rely exclusively on a combination of genera,2010,0.564
Molecular systematics of the neotropical genus Psiguria (Cucurbitaceae): Implications for phylogeny and species identification.,varying morphological features in many groups of tropical vines confound identification requiring molecular tools for distinguishing species confusion is amplified in psiguria a small genus found in central and south america and the caribbean because male and female flowers of these monoecious plants are widely separated by time and position on a branch we present the first phylogeny of psiguria utilizing a combination of eight chloroplast intergenic spacers the internal transcribed spacer its regions of the nuclear ribosomal dna repeat and the intron of the low copy nuclear gene serine threonine phosphatase for a total aligned length of 9456 base pairs analyses include multiple accessions of all species in the genus the data support the monophyly of psiguria and elucidate several species boundaries also presented are psiguria specific dna barcodes which include the chloroplast regions ndhc trnv rps16 trnq rpob trnc ndhf rpl32 and psbz trnm for the first time systematists ecologists and evolutionary biologists will have the tools to confidently identify species of psiguria with dna barcodes that may be useful in other genera of cucurbitaceae,2010,0.692
Perspectives on the use of landscape genetics to detect genetic adaptive variation in the field,abstract understanding the genetic basis of species adaptation in the context of global change poses one of the greatest challenges of this century although we have begun to understand the molecular basis of adaptation in those species for which whole genome sequences are available the molecular basis of adaptation is still poorly understood for most non model species in this paper we outline major challenges and future research directions for correlating environmental factors with molecular markers to identify adaptive genetic variation and point to research gaps in the application of landscape genetics to real world problems arising from global change such as the ability of organisms to adapt over rapid time scales high throughput sequencing generates vast quantities of molecular data to address the challenge of studying adaptive genetic variation in non model species here we suggest that improvements in the sampling design should consider spatial dependence among sampled individuals then we describe available statistical approaches for integrating spatial dependence into landscape analyses of adaptive genetic variation,2010,0.091
Semantic tagging of and semantic enhancements to systematics papers: ZooKeys working examples,the concept of semantic tagging and its potential for semantic enhancements to taxonomic papers is outlined and illustrated by four exemplar papers published in the present issue of zookeys the four papers were created in different ways i written in microsoft word and submitted as non tagged manuscript doi 10 3897 zookeys 50 504 ii generated from scratchpads and submitted as xml tagged manuscripts doi 10 3897 zookeys 50 505 and doi 10 3897 zookeys 50 506 iii generated from an authorâ s database doi 10 3897 zookeys 50 485 and submitted as xml tagged manuscript xml tagging and semantic enhancements were implemented during the editorial process of zookeys using the pensoft mark up tool pmt specially designed for this purpose the xml schema used was taxpub an extension to the document type definitions dtd of the us national library of medicine journal archiving and interchange tag suite nlm the following innovative methods of tagging layout publishing and disseminating the content were tested and implemented within the zookeys editorial workflow 1 highly automated fine grained xml tagging based on taxpub 2 final xml output of the paper validated against the nlm dtd for archiving in pubmedcentral 3 bibliographic metadata embedded in the pdf through xmp extensible metadata platform 4 pdf uploaded after publication to the biodiversitry heritage library bhl 5 taxon treatments supplied through xml to plazi 6 semantically enhanced html version of the paper encompassing numerous internal and external links and linkouts such as i vizualisation of main tag elements within the text e g taxon names taxon treatments localities etc ii internal cross linking between paper sections citations references tables and figures iii mapping of localities listed in the whole paper or within separate taxon treatments v taxon names autotagged dynamically mapped and linked through the pensoft taxon profile ptp to large international database services and indexers such as global biodiversity information facility gbif national center for biotechnology information ncbi barcode of life encyclopedia of life eol zoobank wikipedia wkispecies wikimedia and others vi genbank accession numbers autotagged and linked to ncbi vii external links of taxon names to references in pubmed google scholar biodiversity heritage library and other sources with the launching of the working example zookeys becomes the first taxonomic journal to provide a complete xml based editorial publication and dissemination workflow implemented as a routine and cost efficient practice it is anticipated that xml based workflow will also soon be implemented in botany through phytokeys a forthcoming partner journal of zookeys the semantic markup and enhancements are expected to greatly extend and accelerate the way taxonomic information is published disseminated and used,2010,0.03
Modelling the responses of Andean and Amazonian plant species to climate change: the effects of georeferencing errors and the importance of data filtering,abstract aim species distribution models are a potentially powerful tool for predicting the effects of global change on species distributions and the resulting extinction risks distribution models rely on relationships between species occurrences and climate and may thus be highly sensitive to georeferencing errors in collection records most errors will not be caught using standard data filters here we assess the impacts of georeferencing errors and the importance of improved data filtering for estimates of the elevational distributions habitat areas and predicted relative extinction risks due to climate change of nearly 1000 neotropical plant species location the amazon basin and tropical andes south america methods we model the elevational distributions or â envelopesâ of 932 amazonian and andean plant species from 35 families after performing standard data filtering and again using only data that have passed through an additional layer of data filtering we test for agreement in the elevations recorded with the collection and the elevation inferred from a digital elevation model dem at the collection coordinates from each dataset we estimate species range areas and extinction risks due to the changes in habitat area caused by a 4 5 â c increase in temperature results amazonian and andean plant species have a median elevational range of 717 m using only standard data filters inflates range limits by a median of 433 m 55 this is equivalent to overestimating the temperature tolerances of species by over 3 â c â only slightly less than the entire regional temperature change predicted over the next 50â 100 years georeferencing errors tend to cause overestimates in the amount of climatically suitable habitat available to species and underestimates in species extinction risks due to global warming georeferencing error artefacts are sometimes so great that accurately predicting whether species habitat areas will decrease or increase under global warming is impossible the drawback of additional data filtering is large decreases in the number of species modelled with andean species being disproportionately eliminated main conclusions even with rigorous data filters distribution models will mischaracterize the climatic conditions under which species occur due to errors in the collection data these errors affect predictions of the effects of climate change on species ranges and biodiversity and are particularly problematic in mountainous areas additional data filtering reduces georeferencing errors but eliminates many species due to a lack of sufficient â cleanâ data thereby limiting our ability to predict the effects of climate change in many ecologically important and sensitive regions such as the andes biodiversity hotspot,2010,0.961
Description of two new species and a new genus of bopyrid isopod parasites (Bopyridae: Pseudioninae) of hermit crabs from China,this is the first record from china of the bopyrid isopod genus asymmetrione of which the new species asymmetrione globifera a parasite of the hermit crab dardanus hessii miers in beibu gulf and south china sea is described the female a globifera differs from asymmetrione nossibensis bourdon in the shape of its barbula and ornamentation of the first oostegite a tabulation of the occurrence of all currently known species of asymmetrione is included new genus parasymmetrione is described the type species parasymmetrione tuberculineata sp nov a parasite of clibanarius corallinus h milne edwards xisha is similar in appearance to asymmetrione spp but differs in the female in not having the propodi of its pereopods produced into sockets and having uniramous uropoda the male of p tuberculineata sp nov differs from species of asymmetrione in having the dactyli of only its first pair of pereopods markedly longer than those of the following pereopods,2010,0.897
"Análise das restrições de acesso a dados de espécies ameaçadas, previstas em políticas de coleções biológicas científicas brasileiras, à luz do direito ambiental e da ciência da informação",the objective of this article is to examine whether the policies for access to data stored in biological collections and produced by the research program in biodiversity ppbio ministry of science and technology mct are in accordance to the relevant brazilian legislation it was evaluated whether the restrictions on access to data of threatened species present in the policies of the three research institutes of mct studied are provided by law or sustained by the information science the conclusion is that according the brazilian law there is no support which provides for or encourages restrictions to accessing data of biological species because it is included in the list of threatenced species brazilian policies are not in accordance to the legislation or prevailing mentality in the scientiï c community the suggestion is that based on a broad discussion about the subject these policies should be reviewed this is a complex subject which concerns the whole society,2010,0.38
Phylogeography of Douglas-fir: Testing hypotheses from the fossil record,paleobotanical records and molecular data from modern forests can provide a synergistic understanding of the ecological and evolutionary history of an organism i used the fossil record to generate hypotheses that i tested with statistical phylogeographic methods for douglas fir pseudotsuga menziesii in chapter 1 i describe alternative scenarios of glacial refugia and postglacial migration based on compiled fossil pollen and macrofossil evidence from the late quaternary in chapter 2 i test those hypotheses using coalescent analyses of mitochondrial and chloroplast dna sequence data i also test the paleobotanical hypothesis that douglas firâ s two varieties diverged coincident with the cascade orogeny in the late pliocene finally in chapter 3 i test whether mexican douglas fir diverged from u s populations in the miocene or pleistocene consistent with alternative interpretations of limited fossil evidence in the region the present patterns of molecular variation in douglas fir are well described by pliocene or early pleistocene divergence of its varieties mid pleistocene colonization of mexico and restriction to multiple glacial refugia in the late quaternary holocene expansion into canada resulted in recontact among varieties and hybridization driven entirely by pollen dispersal but not seed dispersal douglas fir populations have responded individualistically to past climatic and geologic change such that some underwent expansions while others contracted to higher elevation and some diverged while others coalesced these findings highlight the complementary insights that fossil and molecular data provide and can be used to inform the conservation and taxonomy of douglas fir,2010,0.357
Conservation and Access to Sugarbeet Germplasm,conservation of the genetic resources of sugar beet has been considered a task of genebanks which collect reproduce and preserve seed samples under cold storage conditions ex situ arguments are provided why the ex situ conservation of beet germplasm may not be fully sufficient to maintain the genetic diversity of beet genetic resources on the long run conservation techniques complementing the ex situ approach are outlined conservation and use of genetic resources of any crop is to be based on knowledge of the taxonomy the distribution of species the genetic relationship between species and the intraspecific diversity the geographic structure of genetic diversity within the sugar beet genepool is determined by the reproductive system of a species as well as the environmental factors acting as selective forces upon the species within its natural distribution area an update of the current knowledge on the taxonomy distribution habitat species relationships and intraspecific diversity is given how users can access germplasm held in genebanks and the descriptive data linked with the accessions is described finally deficits in germplasm conservation and information management are addressed and suggestions for the improvement of the sugar beet genetic resources management are made,2010,0.773
On microrefugia and cryptic refugia,abstract the existence of microrefugia and or cryptic refugia has been proposed to explain the colonization patterns of temperate continents after the last glacial maximum as well as to gain an understanding of the present genetic structure of species and their populations the concepts â microrefugiaâ and â cryptic refugiaâ largely overlap but do not fully coincide which may lead to terminological duplication and eventual semantic misconceptions here after a terminological and conceptual analysis it is proposed that most situations currently characterized as cryptic refugia can be accommodated within the definition of microrefugia with one single exception for which some alternative terms are suggested moreover the concept and definition of cryptic refugia are considered to be more imprecise perishable and subjective than those of microrefugia which is the preferred term in the current context,2010,0.188
National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII),the united states national biological information infrastructure nbii is a collaborative program with the mission of improving online access to the countryâ s information about its biological resources coordinated by the biological informatics program office of the u s geological survey usgs the nbii provides a distributed infrastructure for scientific information provided by national state and local governments universities museums private organizations and international collaborations concentrating on the fields of biodiversity and ecology the nbiiâ s main audience is considered u s land managers scientists and policy makers but specific programs also support educators as well as private citizens the nbii catalogs and links to data and information resources provides searches of web sites develops tools for the integration and display of data and synthesizes the latest information on select subjects it also supports the development and use of standards and technological tools the nbii is the only organization within the united states with the mandate and experience to organize and deliver the depth and breadth of biological information to the people,2010,0.286
Species distribution models for the alien invasive Asian Harlequin ladybird (Harmonia axyridis),abstract the asian harlequin ladybird harmonia axyridis is a globally invasive alien species we developed species distribution models sdms aiming at an explanation of the observed native and invasive distributions and the prediction of the speciesâ potential distribution sdms were built based on bioclim parameters with maxent i on known native occurrence only sdmnat ii on known european invasive occurrence only sdminv and iii by combining both previous approaches sdmall results indicate that sdminv match the observed european invasive range better than sdmnat or sdmall the origin of asian founders in europe remains unknown sdminv highlighted a restricted area in china which may represent the region of origin of the european harlequin ladybird leaving the possibility of within species climate niche variation as a result when targeting the worldwide potential of invasiveness of h axyridis sdmall may reveal maximum results uncovering the speciesâ potential distribution these results have to be seen in the framework of conceptual problems and pitfalls when generating sdms including niche definition niche shift sampling bias biological importance of predictors and model transferability uncertainties,2010,0.295
Genetic diversity is overlooked in international conservation policy implementation,the importance of genetic variation for maintaining biological diversity and evolutionary processes has been recognized by researchers for decades this realization has prompted agreements by world leaders to conserve genetic diversity and this is an explicit goal of the convention on biological diversity cbd nevertheless very limited action has been taken to protect genetic diversity on a global scale international conservation efforts to halt biodiversity loss focus on habitats and species whereas little or no attention is paid to gene level variation by this year 2010 world leaders have agreed that a significant reduction of the rate of biodiversity loss should have been achieved however gene level diversity is still not monitored indicators that can help identify threats to genetic variation are missing and there is no strategy for how genetic aspects can be included in biodiversity targets beyond 2010 important findings and conclusions from decades of conservation genetic research are not translated into concrete conservation action in the arena of international policy development there is an urgent need for conservation geneticists worldwide to become involved in policy and practical conservation work beyond the universities and research institutions,2010,0.219
Changes in species interactions across a 2.5 km elevation gradient: effects on plant migration in response to climate change,abstract predicted climate change in the andes will require plant species to migrate upslope to avoid extinction central to predictions of species responses to climate change is an understanding of species distributions along environmental gradients environmental gradients are frequently modelled as abiotic but biotic interactions can play important roles in setting species distributions abundances and life history traits biotic interactions also have the potential to influence species responses to climate change yet they remain mostly unquantified an important interaction long studied in tropical forests is postdispersal seed predation which has been shown to affect the population dynamics community structure and diversity of plant species in time and space this paper presents a comparative seed predation study of 24 species of tropical trees across a 2 5 km elevation gradient in the peruvian andes and quantifies seed predation variation across the elevational gradient we then use demographic modelling to assess effects of the observed variation in seed predation on population growth rates in response to observed increasing temperatures in the area we found marked variation among species in total seed predation depending on the major seed predator of the species and consistent changes in seed predation across the gradient there was a significant increase in seed survival with increasing elevation a trend that appears to be driven by regulation of seed predators via topâ down forces in the lowlands giving way to bottomâ up productivity regulation at mid to high elevations resulting in a ninefold increase in effective fecundity for trees at high elevations this potential increase in seed crop size strongly affects modelled plant population growth and seed dispersal distances increasing population migration potential in the face of climate change these results also indicate that species interactions can have effects on par with climate in species responses to global change,2010,0.832
"Ecological niche modeling and geographical distribution of pollinator and plants: A case study of Peponapis fervens (Smith, 1879) (Eucerini: Apidae) and Cucurbita species (Cucurbitaceae)",the bees of the peponapis genus eucerini apidae have a neotropical distribution with the center of species diversity located in mexico and are specialized in cucurbita plants which have many species of economic importance such as squashes and pumpkins peponapis fervens is the only species of the genus known from southern south america the cucurbita species occurring in the same area as p fervens include four domesticated species c ficifolia c maxima maxima c moschata and c pepo and one non domesticated species cucurbita maxima andreana it was suggested that c m andreana was the original pollen source to p fervens and this bee expanded its geographical range due to the domestication of cucurbita the potential geographical areas of these species were determined and compared using ecological niche modeling that was performed with the computational system openmodeller and garp with best subsets algorithm the climatic variables obtained through modeling were compared using cluster analysis results show that the potential areas of domesticated species practically spread all over south america the potential area of p fervens includes the areas of c m andreana but reaches a larger area where the domesticated species of cucurbita also occur the cluster analysis shows a high climatic similarity between p fervens and c m andreana nevertheless p fervens presents the ability to occupy areas with wider ranges of climatic variables and to exploit resources provided by domesticated species 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved,2010,0.965
Biotic attrition from tropical forests correcting for truncated temperature niches,abstract species migration in response to warming temperatures is expected to lead to â biotic attrition â or loss of local diversity in areas where the number of species emigrating or going locally extinct exceeds the number immigrating biotic attrition is predicted be especially severe in the low lying hot tropics since elevated temperatures may surpass the observed tolerances of most extant species it is possible however that the estimated temperature niches of many species are inaccurate and truncated with respect to their true tolerances due to the absence of hotter areas under current global climate if so these species will be capable of persisting in some areas where future temperatures exceed current temperatures reducing rates of biotic attrition here we use natural history collections data to estimate the realized thermal niches of 2000 plant species from the tropical forests of south america in accord with the truncation hypothesis we find that the thermal niches of species from hot lowland areas are several degrees narrower than the thermal niches of species from cooler areas we estimate rates of biotic attrition for south american tropical forests due to temperature increases ranging from 1 to 5 â c and under two niche assumptions the first is that the observed thermal niches truly reflect the plant s tolerances and that the reduction in niche breadth is due to increased specialization the second is that lowland species have the same mean thermal niche breadth as nonlowland and nonequatorial species the differences between these two models are dramatic for example using observed thermal niches we predict an almost complete loss of plant diversity in most south american tropical forests due to a 5 â c temperature increase but correcting for possible niche truncation we estimate that most forests will retain 50â 70 of their current species richness the different predictions highlight the importance of using fundamental vs realized niches in predicting the responses of species to global climate change,2010,0.985
Marine Biodiversity in the Australian Region,the entire australian marine jurisdictional area including offshore and sub antarctic islands is considered in this paper most records however come from the exclusive economic zone eez around the continent of australia itself the counts of species have been obtained from four primary databases the australian faunal directory codes for australian aquatic biota online zoological collections of australian museums and the australian node of the ocean biogeographic information system but even these are an underestimate of described species in addition some partially completed databases for particular taxonomic groups and specialized databases for introduced and threatened species have been used experts also provided estimates of the number of known species not yet in the major databases for only some groups could we obtain an expert opinion estimate of undiscovered species the databases provide patchy information about endemism levels of threat and introductions we conclude that there are about 33 000 marine species mainly animals in the major databases of which 130 are introduced 58 listed as threatened and an unknown percentage endemic an estimated 17 000 more named species are either known from the australian eez but not in the present databases or potentially occur there it is crudely estimated that there may be as many as 250 000 species known and yet to be discovered in the australian eez for 17 higher taxa there is sufficient detail for subdivision by large marine domains for comparison with other national and regional implementation committees of the census of marine life taxonomic expertise in australia is unevenly distributed across taxa and declining comments are given briefly on biodiversity management measures in australia including but not limited to marine protected areas,2010,0.929
"Determinants of palm species distributions across Africa: the relative roles of climate, non-climatic environmental factors, and spatial constraints",most of the earth s biodiversity resides in the tropics however a comprehensive understanding of which factors control range limits of tropical species is still lacking climate is often thought to be the predominant range determining mechanism at large spatial scales alternatively speciesâ ranges may be controlled by soil or other environmental factors or by non environmental factors such as biotic interactions dispersal barriers intrinsic population dynamics or time limited expansion from place of origin or past refugia how species ranges are controlled is of key importance for predicting their responses to future global change here we use a novel implementation of species distribution modelling sdm to assess the degree to which african continental scale species distributions in a keystone tropical group the palms arecaceae are controlled by climate non climatic environmental factors or non environmental spatial constraints a comprehensive data set on african palm species occurrences was assembled and analysed using the sdm algorithm maxent in combination with climatic and non climatic environmental predictors habitat human impact as well as spatial eigenvector mapping spatial filters the best performing models always included spatial filters suggesting that palm species distributions are always to some extent limited by non environmental constraints models which included climate provided significantly better predictions than models that included only non climatic environmental predictors the latter having no discernible effect beyond the climatic control hence at the continental scale climate constitutes the only strong environmental control of palm species distributions in africa with regard to the most important climatic predictors of african palm distributions water related factors were most important for 25 of the 29 species analysed the strong response of palm distributions to climate in combination with the importance of non environmental spatial constraints suggests that african palms will be sensitive to future climate changes but that their ability to track suitable climatic conditions will be spatially constrained,2010,0.896
Rockroses and Boletus edulis ectomycorrhizal association: realized niche and climatic suitability in Spain,the ectomycorrhizal association between cistus ladanifer and boletus edulis is a productive relationship due to the economic value of the fungus and the role of the plant in the protection and restoration of areas heavily affected by fires this study aims to define the realized niche of b edulis and to predict its distribution in peninsular spain using species distribution models based on climatic variables and corrected under lithological criteria parameters have been obtained from various sources including models for climatic estimation and 19 sites where b edulis sporocarps are sure to fruit in pure c ladanifer scrublands the climatic niche is mesothermal mediterranean and humid soils are strongly acid with loam texture low in organic matter and in an oligotrophic mull form according to the presence expected curve 16 3 of the potential area is considered to be optimal and most of the suitable territory is within the castilla y leã n region fungal spatial distribution models are reliable tools for managing these scrublands in western spain,2010,0.479
Biodiversity's Big Wet Secret: The Global Distribution of Marine Biological Records Reveals Chronic Under-Exploration of the Deep Pelagic Ocean,background understanding the distribution of marine biodiversity is a crucial first step towards the effective and sustainable management of marine ecosystems recent efforts to collate location records from marine surveys enable us to assemble a global picture of recorded marine biodiversity they also effectively highlight gaps in our knowledge of particular marine regions in particular the deep pelagic ocean â the largest biome on earth â is chronically under represented in global databases of marine biodiversity methodology principal findings we use data from the ocean biogeographic information system to plot the position in the water column of 7 million records of marine species occurrences records from relatively shallow waters dominate this global picture of recorded marine biodiversity in addition standardising the number of records from regions of the ocean differing in depth reveals that regardless of ocean depth most records come either from surface waters or the sea bed midwater biodiversity is drastically under represented conclusions significance the deep pelagic ocean is the largest habitat by volume on earth yet it remains biodiversity s big wet secret as it is hugely under represented in global databases of marine biological records given both its value in the provision of a range of ecosystem services and its vulnerability to threats including overfishing and climate change there is a pressing need to increase our knowledge of earth s largest ecosystem,2010,0.226
The rare liverwort Scapania nimbosa – new knowledge about distribution and ecology in Norway,the globally disjunct liverwort scapania nimbosa is only known from eastern himalaya and northwestern europe scapania nimbosa has since 1907 only been known from one locality in norway after reinvestigation of the local ity in 1998 it was suspected to be extinct due to mining activity in the area however new investigations in 2003 revealed a new locality and further investigations up to present have resulted in 26 populations including 144 patches being found all known populations are lying within an area of about 12 ã 20 km 5â 20 km from the outer coast line 200â 550 m a s l in north facing mountains slopes in frã na eide and gjemnes municipalities mã re and romsdal county the climate is euoceanic with mild winters january mean temperature near 0â c heavy precipitation yearly 2000 mm and 220â 250 days per year with 0 1 mm precipitation fog formation around the mountains is common and is believed to be important scapania nimbosa was found at less than 50 of the seemingly suitable localities and we suggest that the extent of occurrence is restricted by dispersal scapania nimbosa is red listed both in norway and europe and possible threats are discussed,2010,0.628
Towards a pan-Arctic inventory of the species diversity of the macro- and megabenthic fauna of the Arctic shelf seas,although knowledge of arctic seas has increased tremendously in the past decade benthic diversity was investigated at regional scales only and no attempt had been made to examine it across the entire arctic we present a first pan arctic account of the species diversity of the macro and megabenthic fauna of the arctic marginal shelf seas it is based on an analysis of 25 published and unpublished species level data sets together encompassing 14 of the 19 marine arctic shelf ecoregions and comprising a total of 2 636 species including 847 arthropoda 668 annelida 392 mollusca 228 echinodermata and 501 species of other phyla for the four major phyla we also analyze the differences in faunal composition and diversity among the ecoregions furthermore we compute gross estimates of the expected species numbers of these phyla on a regional scale extrapolated to the entire fauna and study area we arrive at the conservative estimate that 3 900â 4 700 macro and megabenthic species can be expected to occur on the arctic shelves these numbers are smaller than analogous estimates for the antarctic shelf but the difference is on the order of about two and thus less pronounced than previously assumed on a global scale the arctic shelves are characterized by intermediate macro and megabenthic species numbers our preliminary pan arctic inventory provides an urgently needed assessment of current diversity patterns that can be used by future investigations for evaluating the effects of climate change and anthropogenic activities in the arctic,2010,0.85
Widespread homologous recombination within and between Streptomyces species,horizontal gene transfer hgt is widespread in the microbial world but its impact on the origin and persistence of microbial species remains poorly defined hgt can result in either acquisition of new genetic material or homologous replacement of existing genes the evolutionary significance of homologous recombination in a population can be quantified by examining the relative rates at which polymorphisms are introduced from recombination ï and mutation î w we used multilocus sequence analysis mlsa to quantify both intraspecies and interspecies homologous recombination among streptomycetes multicellular gram positive bacteria ubiquitous in soil which are an important source of antibiotics and bioactive compounds intraspecies recombination was examined using strains of streptomyces flavogriseus isolated from soils at five locations spanning 1000 km the strains had 99 8 nucleotide identity across the loci examined we found remarkable levels of gene exchange within s flavogriseus ï î w 27 9 and found that the population was in linkage equilibrium standardized index of association 0 0018 providing evidence for a freely recombining sexual population structure we also examined interspecies homologous recombination among different streptomyces species in an mlsa data set and found that 40 of the species had housekeeping genes acquired through hgt the recombination rate between these named species ï î w 0 21 exceeds that observed within many species of bacteria despite widespread gene exchange in the genus the intraspecies recombination rate exceeded the interspecies rate by two orders of magnitude suggesting that patterns of gene exchange and recombination may shape the evolution of streptomycetes,2010,0.97
Streamlining taxonomic publication: a working example with Scratchpads and ZooKeys,we describe a method to publish nomenclatural acts described in taxonomic websites scratchpads that are formally registered through publication in a printed journal zookeys this method is fully compliant with the zoological nomenclatural code our approach supports manuscript creation via a scratchpad electronic act registration via zoobank online and print publication in the journal zookeys and simultaneous dissemination zookeys and scratchpads for nomenclatorial acts including new species descriptions the workflow supports the generation of manuscripts directly from a database and is illustrated by two sample papers published in the present issue,2010,0.163
The current and future potential geographical distribution of Hyparrhenia hirta,the current and future potential geographical distribution of hyparrhenia hirta weed research50 174â 184 summary hyparrhenia hirta is a pasture grass that has become highly invasive in several parts of the world including australia where it has become a serious environmental weed in recent decades knowledge of the likely potential distribution and relative abundance of this invasive species under current and future climate scenarios will help biosecurity and weed control authorities to plan better strategies to manage the invasion the climex modelling package was used to investigate the impacts of climate change on the potential global distribution of h hirta based on eco physiological data the worldwide potential distribution of h hirta under current climatic conditions is vast and far greater than the current distribution with suitable climate conditions extending over much of the tropics and subtropics under future climate scenarios the range of h hirta is likely to expand into areas currently too cold for its survival and contract from areas that are projected to become hotter and drier under climate change the effects of likely climatic scenarios on the global potential distribution of h hirta are sufficiently great that they should be considered routinely in strategic control plans for biotic invasions changes in the potential range of an invasive species such as h hirta under global warming scenarios will mean that it could invade new jurisdictions knowledge of this emerging threat could help to formulate effective prevention surveillance and response measures in these presently marginally unsuitable regions,2010,0.281
Prediction of potential suitable distribution area of Flaveria bidentis in China based on niche models,based on the distribution records of flaveria bidentis in china and by using five ecological niche models garp maxent enfa bioclim and domain 32 ecogeographical variables were chosen to simulate the potential suitable distribution area of f bidentis in the country and the simulation precision of the models was assessed by the method of receiver operating characteristic roc curve analysis among the models adopted maxent model had the best simulation precision its prediction showed that the potential suitable distribution area of f bidenti in this country accounted for 75 of the total with the central and southern hebei beijing tianjin henan shandong anhui and jiangsu having high potential invasion risk,2010,0.167
Current distribution and predicted geographic expansion of the Rufous-backed Robin in Mexico: a fading endemism?,the rufous backed robin turdus rufopalliatus is a bird endemic to the paciï c slope of mexico the species recently established populations in several localities in the mexican central highlands based on available data we modelled the range expansion of the rufous backed robin in mexico to understand the pattern mechanisms and ecological and biogeographic implications of its expansion,2010,0.383
Serpentine soil has little influence on the root-associated microbial community composition of the serpentine tolerant grass species Avenula sulcata,soil chemistry is a known influence on plant species distribution serpentine soils provide a striking example of this due to their discrete nature and long studied influence on plant communities characterized by high levels of heavy metals and low levels of nutrients they present a challenge for most plant species and allow only a relatively restricted set of species to grow we do not yet fully understand the suite of adaptations present in serpentine endemics allowing them thrive where other plant species perform poorly or not at all in this paper we explore the possibility that serpentine plants interact with a unique set of microbial endophytes which allow them to make a living on this challenging substrate to examine broad scale patterns of microbial community composition we used phospholipid fatty acid analysis to focus more narrowly on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi community composition we used 18s rdna markers specific to these fungi we found only very weak evidence for a relationship with distinct microbial communities using either technique and no evidence to show increased reliance on amf by serpentine plants our results indicate that adaptation of plants to serpentine soil does not involve adaptation to a unique community of soil mutualists,2010,0.236
Quantifying Antarctic marine biodiversity: The SCAR-MarBIN data portal,the documentation and analysis of broad scale biological diversity requires modern databases here we describe the scar marine biodiversity information network scar marbin and demonstrate its value with a preliminary analysis of geographic patterns in species richness for a variety of marine taxa scar marbin is a web portal www scarmarbin be that compiles and manages existing and new information on antarctic marine biodiversity it currently links over 140 datasets comprising over one million records the portal is home to the registry of antarctic marine species rams an authoritative taxonomic list of marine species occurring in antarctica rams is a key resource for the census of antarctic marine life caml a major five year project that aims at assessing the nature distribution and abundance of southern ocean biological diversity scar marbin provides a means of quantifying not only the diversity and distribution of antarctic marine life but also a record of how when and where these have been studied it allows for the examination of geographic and bathymetric ranges the documentation of gaps within and limits to the data together with the identification of areas of particularly high diversity hotspots and also under sampled regions or taxa a preliminary analysis indicates that the pattern of sampling hotspots is driven principally by the pelagic data mainly bird and mammal observations whereas benthic species drive the overall pattern in species richness analyses of the complete data set reveal important biases in the data most samples have been taken in shallow water 700 m and are either concentrated around shore based research stations or in the open ocean close to regular ship transit routes these data provide a useful benchmark for the future enabling ventures such as caml to assess their impact on knowledge of biological diversity it also highlights key areas for further investigation such as the deep sea and the amundsen sea,2010,0.722
Dicranostigma leptopodum (maxim) fedde induced apoptosis in SMMC-7721 human hepatoma cells and inhibited tumor growth in mice.,dicranostigma leptopodum maxim fedde dl f which had been previously documented to suppress oxidative hemolysis of erythrocytes and enhance immune functions of murine peri toneal macrophages was investigated for its effect on anti tumor activity of alkaloids ex tracted from dlf five have been identified with employment of chromatographic analysis an antiproliferative role of these alkaloids was de termined on smmc 7721 human hepatoma ce lls in an apoptosis inducing manner through mtt assaying trypan blue exclusion assaying and cytometric analysis of cell cycle distribu tion to further examine their inhibitory effects on tumor progression murine h22 cells were inoculated into kunming mice to determine the role of these alkaloids of dlf in inhibiting tumor growth in the tumor implanted mice it was found that these alkaloids of dlf enhanced the tumor shrinkage effectively wherein its tumor inhibitory rate and immunohistochemistry stain ing of the tumor were determined and profiled respectively,2010,0.269
"Assessing the completeness of bryophytes inventories: an oceanic island as a case study (Terceira, Azorean archipelago)",how useful complete or unbiased are comprehensive databases in order to provide reliable estimations of diversity using compiled data from bryophytes in terceira island azores we specifically aim 1 to describe the register of species over time 2 to assess the inventory completeness i e the ratio between the observed and the maximum expected species and 3 to locate the most promising areas for further surveys first each new recorded species was plotted against its collecting year using the number of database records as a surrogate of survey effort to get the accumulation curves these curves were then extrapolated to obtain the theoretical number of existing species according to clench and exponential models spatial and habitat characteristics of the recorded taxa were also explored our results show an increasing trend in the rate of recorded species c five species per year as well as a maximum of around a third of the theoretically real number of expected species that could yet remain unknown nevertheless predictions of species richness were highly variable depending on the fitting curve used survey effort was similar between liverworts and mosses as were inventory completeness values but the rate of new recorded species was higher for mosses although bryologists visited preferably native habitats we show that new species citations may also be found in modified habitats e g exotic forests and semi natural grasslands we conclude that the analysis of extensive databases is a useful tool in revealing the recording and taxonomic gaps further showing that bryophyte inventories could still be incomplete in terceira island a strategy on how to improve speciesâ collections in remote areas is suggested hoping to contribute to all inclusive biodiversity studies in the azores and elsewhere,2010,0.965
"Real Identity of Witheringia sellowiana (Solanaceae), Typification, and Chromosome Number",the identity of witheringia sellowiana a narrow endemic species from sã o paulo brazil is reconsidered after analysis of the protologue and the morphological characters of the type material and recent flowering collections a new combination is proposed aureliana sellowiana sendtn barboza stehmann a lectotype and epitype are designated here a detailed description and illustration an analysis of the karyotype of a sellowiana and a discussion of its closest relatives are provided a key to differentiate the species of aureliana is also given,2010,0.642
"Modelling the distribution of the moss species Hypopterygium tamarisci (Hypopterygiaceae, Bryophyta) in Central and South America",the pleurocarpous moss hypopterygium tamarisci is widely distributed in africa s and se asia australasia oceania as well as south and central america where it extends into mexico and the caribbean it is a species of mainly mountainous tropical and warm temperate areas the present study focuses on the actual and the potential distributions of h tamarisci in the new world south of the tropic of cancer it aims to find ecological conditions for this area that determine the distribution of this species by making use of species distribution modelling techniques we use a data set from verified herbarium specimens and a set of collection in cords downloaded from the gbif global biodiversity inform awn facility database the potential distribution models of h tamarisci wet e developed with maxent phillips et al 2006 based on the collection datasets and a set of uncorrelated bioclimatic and edaphic variables the predicted distribution of the species matches the actual collecting localities very well a maximum temperature below 29 degrees c in the warmest month is the most important ecological variable that determines the presence of h tamarisci second most important variable is the precipitation in the warmest quarter for which h tamarisci shows an increasing probability of presence under wetter conditions the models predict the potential occurrence of the species in the guiana highlands where the species does not occur several explanations for this mismatch are being discussed but a satisfactory explanation is wanting,2010,0.795
High Resolution Niche Models of Malaria Vectors in Northern Tanzania: A New Capacity to Predict Malaria Risk?,sec title background title p malaria transmission rates in africa can vary dramatically over the space of a few kilometres this spatial heterogeneity reflects variation in vector mosquito habitat and presents an important obstacle to the efficient allocation of malaria control resources malaria control is further complicated by combinations of vector species that respond differently to control interventions recent modelling innovations make it possible to predict vector distributions and extrapolate malaria risk continentally but these risk mapping efforts have not yet bridged the spatial gap to guide on the ground control efforts p sec sec title methodology principal findings title p we used maximum entropy with purpose built high resolution land cover data and other environmental factors to model the spatial distributions of the three dominant malaria vector species in a 94 000 km sup 2 sup region of east africa remotely sensed land cover was necessary in each vector s niche model seasonality of precipitation and maximum annual temperature also contributed to niche models for italic anopheles arabiensis italic and italic an funestus italic s l auc 0 989 and 0 991 respectively but cold season precipitation and elevation were important for italic an gambiae italic s s auc 0 997 although these niche models appear highly accurate the critical test is whether they improve predictions of malaria prevalence in human populations vector habitat within 1 5 km of community based malaria prevalence measurements interacts with elevation to substantially improve predictions of italic plasmodium falciparum italic prevalence in children the inclusion of the mechanistic link between malaria prevalence and vector habitat greatly improves the precision and accuracy of prevalence predictions r sup 2 sup 0 83 including vector habitat or r sup 2 sup 0 50 without vector habitat predictions including vector habitat are unbiased observations vs model predictions of prevalence slope 1 02 using this model we generate a high resolution map of predicted malaria prevalence throughout the study region p sec sec title conclusions significance title p the interaction between mosquito niche space and microclimate along elevational gradients indicates worrisome potential for climate and land use changes to exacerbate malaria resurgence in the east african highlands nevertheless it is possible to direct interventions precisely to ameliorate potential impacts p sec,2010,0.615
"Diversity, extinction risk and conservation of Malaysian fishes.",a total of 1951 species of freshwater and marine fishes belonging to 704 genera and 186 families are recorded in malaysia almost half 48 are currently threatened to some degree while nearly one third 27 mostly from the marine and coral habitats require urgent scientific studies to evaluate their status freshwater habitats encompass the highest percentage of threatened fish species 87 followed by estuarine habitats 66 of the 32 species of highly threatened ht species 16 are freshwater and 16 are largely marine euryhaline species fish extinctions in malaysia are confined to two freshwater species but both freshwater and marine species are being increasingly threatened by largely habitat loss or modification 76 overfishing 27 and by catch 23 the most important threat to freshwater fishes is habitat modification and overfishing while 35 species are threatened due to their endemism brackish water euryhaline and marine fishes are threatened mainly by overfishing by catch and habitat modification sedimentation pollution additionally threatens coral reef fishes the study provides recommendations to governments fish managers scientists and stakeholders to address the increasing and unabated extinction risks faced by the malaysian fish fauna,2010,0.956
Devising the EDIT platform for cybertaxonomy,this contribution describes the original ideas and preparatory work that led to the implementation of the edit platform for cybertaxonomy a computing environment supporting the entire taxonomic workflow it also briefly describes the current state of development of the project which will end its eu funded period in february 2011,2010,0.34
"Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Cultures of Extinction",humankind is currently confronted with what some biologists call the sixth mass extinction of species in the history of life on earth and the first one triggered by humans this essay places the narrative that usually accompanies scientific accounts of biodiversity loss in relation to the long tradition of environmentalist stories about the decline of nature it demonstrates how elegiac and tragic story templates turn accounts of the decline of a particular species into tools for a broader critique of modernization processes and explores an alternative come dic narrative template that approaches extinction in the context of evo lution contingency and experiment,2010,0.548
Proceedings of the TDWG (2010),many talks and presentations by gbif staff and about the gbif data portal,2010,0.351
Spatial Information Management in Wildlife Ecology: Adding Spatially Explicit Behaviour Data to the Equation?,the implementation of spatial data to wildlife management is not really new as such although it has not been explicitly demanded and practiced braun 2005 by adding spatial information to the discipline resounding success has already been achieved elsewhere improving specific science goals e g kadmon et al 2004 hirzel et al 2006,2010,0.372
"Genetic diversity in a narrowly endemic, recently described dusky salamander, Desmognathus folkertsi, from the southern Appalachian Mountains",to understand patterns of biodiversity and whether populations and species are in decline the detection and description of cryptic biodiversity are essential salamanders are of particular conservation interest because they potentially harbor many undescribed species due to morphological conservatism the dusky salamanders genus desmognathus are a species rich group in which morphologically cryptic species are especially common using a portion of the mitochondrial genome and amplified fragment length polymorphism aflp we investigated the genetic diversity of the highly endemic stream dwelling salamander desmognathus folkertsi across its known range in the appalachian mountains mitochondrial data revealed three well supported lineages one of which consisted of only one specimen however aflp data were not congruent with the mitochondrial data there was 1 11 uncorrected sequence divergence between the two well sampled lineages desmognathus folkertsi exhibited 4 29 sequence divergence from the closely related d quadramaculatus isolation by distance was found for both the aflp and mitochondrial data when stream distance rather than when straight line i e geographic distance was used although genetic diversity is often partitioned by river drainages in freshwater taxa we did not observe such a pattern in d folkertsi we propose that human mediated dispersal by bait bucket release may augment natural gene flow via aquatic dispersal across streams because this species was only recently discovered the full extent of the geographic range is unknown therefore an ecological niche model using climate variables and the maxent algorithm was used to determine whether additional regions may be suitable for the species the model predicted a small range limited to extreme southwestern north carolina and extreme northeastern georgia we suggest future surveys be focused in these regions,2010,0.911
Managing biodiversity data within the context of climate change: towards best practice,decision makers planners and researchers have identified the need to assess the effects of climate change on biodiversity resulting in extensive research across a number of fields the availability of comprehensive accurate and relevant data is central to undertaking effective research however the quality and availability of biodiversity information is substantially determined by current and historical data collection strategies if researchers and planners are to make effective use of existing and future investments in biodiversity information a strategic approach should be taken in identifying and implementing best practice information management this paper discusses ways to improve institutional support for information management and increase the availability of quality information the paper reviews the most common areas of climate change and biodiversity research and identifies best practices in information management focusing on data used within biodiversity and climate change analyses,2010,0.027
"Potential distribution of the alien invasive brown tree snake, Boiga irregularis (Reptilia: Colubridae)",the brown tree snake boiga irregularis is native to southeast asia and australia and has been introduced to guam there it causes major ecologi cal and socioeconomic problems and is considered to belong to the 100 worst alien invasive species worldwide we used a maximum entropy based climate envelope model to identify worldwide areas outside the speciesâ known range that are potentially suitable under current climatic conditions projections re vealed that this invasive alien species potentially occurs in tropical and some subtropical regions in the closer vicinity of the snakeâ s known distribution highest suitability was found for the northern mariana islands hawaiian islands madagascar new caledonia and fiji islands if predictions are inter preted as depicting invasiveness potential of b irregularis strategies to prevent invasion should focus on these regions an analysis of potential distributions under different future anthropogenic climate change scenarios showed that the fiji islands hawaiian islands and northern mariana islands will remain overall most suitable habitat for the brown tree snake in addition we noted an increase of suitability in new zealand,2010,0.415
"New species and new records of Mydidae from the Afrotropical and Oriental regions (Insecta, Diptera, Asiloidea)",new mydidae species are described from the afrotropical and oriental regions including the first records of this family from several countries in eastern africa kenya tanzania and uganda and mauritania in western africa as well as nepal and thailand in asia the new species are leptomydinae leptomydas notos sp n south western india leptomydas rapti sp n south central nepal leptomydas tigris sp n north central thailand syllegomydinae mydaselpidini mydaselpis ngurumani sp n south eastern kenya north eastern tanzania vespiodes phaios sp n south eastern kenya syllegomydinae syllegomydini syllegomydas notobates astrictus sp n kenya syllegomydas notobates heothinos sp n kenya and uganda syllegomydas syllegomydas elachys sp n northern zimbabwe syllegomydas syllegomydas proximus sã guy 1928 is recorded from western mauritania and re described syllegomydas notobates dispar loew 1852 which was previously listed as incertae sedis in the afrotropical diptera catalogue is re described and illustrated based on examination of the type specimens and several additional specimens from mozambique cephalocera annulata brunetti 1912 and syllegomydas bucciferus sã guy 1928 described from north eastern india and previously unplaced in the oriental diptera catalogue are newly combined with leptomydas gerstaecker 1868 and together with leptomydas indianus brunetti 1912 also from north eastern india placed in leptomydinae comments on the possible synonymy of the genera of mydaselpidini are made illustrations and photographs are provided to support the descriptions and future identification a provisional dichotomous key to mydidae genera occurring in eastern africa kenya malawi mozambique somalia tanzania uganda and the oriental region is provided distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas and seasonal incidence are discussed for all species,2010,0.854
The range implications of lizard traits in changing environments,abstract aim most predictions of species ranges are based on correlating current species localities to environmental conditions these correlative models do not explicitly include a species biology in contrast some mechanistic models link traits to energetics and population dynamics to predict species distributions these models enable one to ask whether considering a species biology is important for predicting its range i implement mechanistic models to investigate how a species morphology physiology and life history influence its range location north america methods i compare the mechanistic model predictions with those of correlative models for eight species of north american lizards in both current environments and following a uniform 3 â c temperature warming i then examine the implications of superimposing habitat and elevation requirements on constraints associated with environmental tolerances results in the mechanistic model species with a narrower thermal range for activity are both predicted and observed to have more restricted distributions incorporating constraints on habitat and elevation further restricts species distributions beyond areas that are thermally suitable while correlative models generally outperform mechanistic models at predicting current distributions the performance of mechanistic models improves when incorporating additional factors in response to a 3 â c temperature warming the northward range shifts predicted by the mechanistic model vary between species according to trait differences and are of a greater extent than those predicted by correlative models main conclusions these findings highlight the importance of species traits for understanding the dynamics of species ranges in changing environments the analysis demonstrates that mechanistic models may provide an important complement to correlative models for predicting range dynamics which may underpredict climate induced range shifts,2010,0.887
(Agro)Biodiversity in Mountains,editorial that mentions the mountain biodiversity portal,2010,0.354
New Technologies Challenge the Future of Taxonomy in Orthoptera,a global imperative for the conservation of biodiversity brings into focus the need for taxonomic research however this biodiversity crisis is reflected in a parallel taxonomic crisis whereas molecular information is increasingly the evidential basis for delimiting species revisionary taxonomy is frequently dismissed as merely â descriptiveâ and lacking a hypothesis driven nature phylogenetic classifications are optimal for storing and predicting information but phylogeny divorced from taxonomy is unrealizable taxonomy systematics and phylogeny are interwoven hypothesis driven sciences with a shared theoretical base taxonomic knowledge remains essential to biological research and knowledge acquisition is made urgent by the biodiversity crisis taxonomy needs to prepare to take advantage of new information technology capabilities rapid advances in bioinformatics have provided unprecedented opportunities to conduct taxonomic research more efficiently cybertaxonomy is emerging as an exciting new branch here we argue the great potential for using the orthoptera species file online http orthoptera speciesfile org as a tool for monograph and revisionary studies of orthoptera and we also draw attention to a method of integrating many cybertaxonomic tools with species descriptions this to engage both the specialist taxonomic community and a wider public in the gathering and deepening understanding of taxonomic knowledge,2010,0.508
Invasion pattern of Eupatorium adenophorum Spreng in southern China,this study provides a detailed analysis of the invasion by eupatorium adenophorum spreng crofton weed from burma and vietnam into southern china since the 1940s currently e adenophorumâ s main colonisation area is located in the yunnanâ guizhou plateau of china where it has caused prominent economic and ecological problems sixty three years ago crofton weed appeared in menghai county yunnan province from where it dispersed northwards and eastwards at an average speed of 20 km year∠1 the invasion of e adenophorum nonetheless showed pronounced variations in both time and space spread was relatively slow in the initial invasion period between 1940 and 1950 while the most rapid range expansions occurred in the 1980s environmental conditions at native and invaded sites were significantly different reflecting a great adaptability of the species during colonization these changes were greater than habitat differences between colonized and many adjacent un colonized sites in southern china therefore immediate measures are required to stop a further northward and eastward expansion of crofton weed,2010,0.428
"Description of two new Homoeocera Felder from Guatemala and Mexico (Lepidoptera, Arctiidae, Arctiinae, Euchromiini)",two new species of homoeocera felder from central america are described from high altitude humid localities in mexico and guatemala homoeocera georginas sp n and h papalo sp n both are compared to the closely related homoeocera gigantea druce illustrations of adults and male genitalia of the three species are provided the generic placement within the genus homoeocera is discussed,2010,0.712
Biogeographical Patterns of Marine Benthic Macroinvertebrates Along the Atlantic Coast of the Northeastern USA,the biogeography of marine benthic macroinvertebrates of us atlantic estuaries and inshore coastal areas from delaware bay north to passamaquoddy bay was studied to compare recent data with historical biogeographic studies define physicalâ chemical factors affecting speciesâ distributions and provide information for calibrating benthic indices of environmental condition five years 2000â 2004 of data from 614 non polluted soft bottom stations from the national coastal assessment were analyzed multi dimensional scaling done on bray curtis similarity matrices of speciesâ relative abundance 547 species suggested seven subregions two based on salinity oligohaline mesohaline and five based on latitude speciesâ distribution patterns for stations with salinities â 18 n 558 were strongly influenced by latitude cape cod was a clear faunal transition zone r 0 92 p 0 001 conversely for stations with salinities 18 n 56 salinity was the more important factor an ordination of abiotic variables temperature salinity sediment percent silt clay depth correlated well with the ordination of speciesâ relative abundance data r 0 77 p 0 001 the first split of a multivariate regression tree was by a summer bottom temperature of 20â c at cape cod salinity and percent silt clay led to further splits these results support the existence of virginian and transhatteran biogeographic provinces they constitute a baseline for addressing broad scale and long term issues such as global climate change species invasions and conservation planning,2010,0.292
"On new species of Microdiores (Araneae, Zodariidae) from Central and East Africa",the distribution of the genus microdiores jocque 1987 so far only known from east africa is extended to central africa with the description of the new species microdiores rwegura sp n â and m violaceus sp n â â both from the kibira national park in burundi a third new species m aurantioviolaceus â from northern tanzania is described the status of the genus is confirmed and a key to the males of the species is provided,2010,0.814
Nature and biodiversity: opportunities for EU-Russia collaboration,project biostrat â eu experience on cooperation in scientific policy on strategy of biodiversity research and conservation,2010,0.321
"Applications and limitations of museum data for conservation and ecology, with particular attention to species distribution models",to conserve biodiversity it is necessary to understand how species are distributed and which aspects of the environment determine distributions in large parts of the world and for the majority of species data describing distributions are very scarce museums private collections and the historical literature offer a vast source of information on distributions records of the occurrence of species from these sources are increasingly being captured in electronic databases and made available over the internet these records may be very valuable in conservation efforts however there are a number of limitations with museum data these limitations are dealt with in the first part of this review even if the limitations of museum data can be overcome these data present a far from complete picture of the distributions of species species distribution models offer a means to extrapolate limited information in order to estimate the distributions of species over large areas the second part of this paper reviews the challenges of developing species distribution models for use with museum data and describes some of the questions that species distribution models have been used to address given the rapidly increasing number of museum records of species occurrence available over the internet a review of their usefulness in conservation and ecology is timely,2010,0.867
Fungal biodiversity: separating good from evil,we are currently celebrating the international year of biodiversity as designated by the united nations as community we were invited to safeguard the variety of life on earth biodiversity recent results from large scale dna sequencing projects have shown that most biodiversity on earth is actually very small represented in insects and microbes fungi represent a relatively unexplored group of organisms of which only the most common examples are known at species level a conservative estimate based on the number of unique fungi per plant species suggest that at least 1 5 m species of fungi should occur on plants of which around 7 have been described to date many habitats ecosystems and host plants have however never been investigated and thus their microbial inhabitants remain unexplored unknown and underutilised over the past 10 years mycologists have on average described 1250 species per year meaning that it will take 1120 years to simply describe the number of taxa we now consider to be a vast underestimate furthermore based on dna data the majority of fungal morphogenera are shown to be poly or paraphyletic and most morphological species appear to represent assemblages of different phylo genetic taxa many of which turn out to be geographically separated although the linnaean system was based on the phenotype i argue that inconspicuous differences may in some cases be more relevant for trade and quarantine and hence a more accurate naming system based on dna data is called for this is an achievable goal if scientists embrace the virtual laboratory of the future and deposit related data in interactive linked databases such as genbank treebase and bold with metadata in mycobank and links to other user communities such as gbif and eol this process which could also be circumscribed as accountability in science should be strongly enforced as part of the editorial policy of all reputable journals techniques to detect minute quantities of dna and compare partial or whole genomes are continually evolving although we need to improve our understanding of population dynamics and gene flow we should also acknowledge the importance of new emerging diseases caused by novel organisms or formerly less relevant pathogens that have gained new importance due to climate change molecular techniques new sequencing platforms and the acces sibility of these data will play a central role in the future taxonomic system adapted for fungi,2010,0.281
Bioinformatics education in India,an account of bioinformatics education in india is presented along with future prospects establishment of btis network by department of biotechnology dbt government of india in the 1980s had been a systematic effort in the development of bioinformatics infrastructure in india to provide services to scientific community advances in the field of bioinformatics underpinned the need for well trained professionals with skills in information technology and biotechnology as a result programmes for capacity building in terms of human resource development were initiated educational programmes gradually evolved from the organisation of short term workshops to the institution of formal diploma degree programmes a case study of the masterâ s degree course offered at the bioinformatics centre university of pune is discussed currently many universities and institutes are offering bioinformatics courses at different levels with variations in the course contents and degree of detailing bioinformatics national certification binc examination initiated in 2005 by dbt provides a common yardstick to assess the knowledge and skill sets of students passing out of various institutions the potential for broadening the scope of bioinformatics to transform it into a data intensive discovery discipline is discussed this necessitates introduction of amendments in the existing curricula to accommodate the upcoming developments,2010,0.237
Habitat specificity of patches in modern agricultural landscapes,habitat specificity analysis provides a tool for partitioning landscape species diversity on landscape elements by separating patches with many rare specialist species from patches with the same number of species all of which are common generalists and thus provide information of relevance to conservation goals at regional and national levels our analyses were based upon species data from 2201 patch elements in se norwegian modern agricultural landscapes the context used for measuring habitat specificity strongly influences the results in general the gamma diversity contribution and core habitat specificity calculated from the patch data set were correlated high values for both measures were observed for woodland pastures and road verges whereas midfield islets and boundary transitional types were ranked low as opposed to findings in traditional extensively managed agricultural landscapes this is due to our study area representing intensively used agricultural landscape elements holding a more trivial species composition in addition to ruderals being favoured by fertility and disturbance a finding also being supported by the semi natural affiliation index results obtained by use of checklist data from the same study area diverged from patch data caution is needed in interpretation of habitat specificity results obtained from checklist data because modern agricultural landscapes contain several land types which are seldom surveyed by botanists thus being under represented in the data set we propose the use of core habitat specificity and gamma diversity contribution in parallel to obtain a value neutral diversity assessment that addresses patch uniqueness and other properties of conservation interests,2010,0.413
"Spread of alien invasive Impatiens balfourii in Europe and its temperature, light and soil moisture demands",impatiens balfourii was introduced in the beginning of the 20th century from the himalayas to southern europe where it was able to establish in recent years an increasing number of more northern situated occurrences were recorded an overview about the current distribution of impatiens balfourii in europe is given and new records for germany are presented to explore the range of potential habitat conditions vegetation relevã s and autecological experiments were conducted gas exchange measurements showed an optimum of net photosynthesis at 24 32 â c and light saturation above 700 mu mol m 1 s 1 ppfd without any signs of photoinhibition a moisture gradient experiment showed that impatiens balfourii prefers fresh soils of moderate dampness in contrast to the native i noli tangere and to the alien species i glandulifera and i capensis which prefer moister or even wet habitats impatiens balfourii resembles in its soil moisture demands the alien impatiens parviflora which originates also in central asia and which is invasive in europe but in contrast to i parviflora and to all other established impatiens species in europe i balfourii is able to colonize even open habitats with high light intensities against this background a further expansion of impatiens balfourii in europe appears to be likely,2010,0.41
Biogeography and conservation in Southeast Asia: how 2.7 million years of repeated environmental fluctuations affect today’s patterns and the future of the remaining refugial-phase biodiversity,understanding the historical biogeography of this global biodiversity hotspot is as important to long term conservation goals as ecology and evolution are to understanding current patterns and processes todayâ s geography is however misleading and typical of only 2 of the last million years gt 90 of that time the regionâ s land area was 1 5â 2 0 times larger as mean sea levels were 62 m below todayâ s climates were cooler and extensive forests and savanna covered the emerged sunda plains the regionâ s land area varied two fold as sea levels fluctuated up to â 50 m with each of 50 pleistocene glacial cycles and forests expanded and contracted with oscillations in land area and seasonality this dynamic geographic history is relevant to the development of biogeographic regionalism and shows that it is todayâ s forests that are refugial not those of the last glacial maximum this history affects how species will adapt or shift their ranges in response to global warming and further decreases in land area submergence of low lying coastal areas during the 21st century the alternative is mass species extinction the biota is also threatened by the continued destruction of forest destruction of mekong river flood pulse based ecosystems and continued human population growth human biogeography will become more important in conservation planning as tens of millions of people who depend on protected area forests riverine ecosystems and coastal habitats become environmental refugees conservation scientists need to become more involved in regional ecological education environmental stewardship and ecosystem based adaptation to sustain as much as possible of this rich biota and the ecological services it provides,2010,0.34
Molecules match morphology: mitochondrial DNA supports Bayer’s Lytreia–Bebryce–Heterogorgia (Alcyonacea: Octocorallia) clade hypothesis,several studies attempting to clarify the taxonomy and systematics of octocorallia have highlighted the important role of molecular characters in corroborating or rejecting previous hypotheses based on morphological variation one such hypothesis is that of a close phylogenetic relationship between the genera lytreia bebryce and heterogorgia proposed by bayer based on morphological studies of the genera herein we tested bayerâ s hypothesis using the mitochondrial marker mshi we deduced a molecular phylogeny including members of the families gorgoniidae and â paramuriceidaeâ that corroborated the existence of bayerâ s lytreiaâ bebryceâ heterogorgia clade in addition we provide a morphological assessment of the three genera as well as diagnoses for each of them we also discuss based on the phylogenetic results obtained the evolution of sclerite morphology within bayerâ s lytreiaâ bebyceâ heterogorgia clade finally we propose a tethyan origin for the lytreiaâ bebryceâ heterogorgia clade,2010,0.234
Genetic barcoding of marine leeches (Ozobranchus spp.) from Florida sea turtles and their divergence in host specificity,abstract ozobranchus margoi and ozobranchus branchiatus are the only two species of marine turtle leeches ozobranchus spp known to inhabit the atlantic coast of the united states and the gulf of mexico in early reports of fibropapillomatosis fp in green turtles chelonia mydas o branchiatus was implicated as a vector in the transmission of fibropapilloma associated turtle herpesvirus fpthv it is imperative that the leech species be identified to elucidate the role ozobranchus spp may play in disease transmission in this study ozobranchus branchiatus has been identified for the first time on a loggerhead caretta caretta turtle and the molecular data for this species is now available for the first time in genbank both species of leeches were also found infecting a single c mydas using morphological taxonomy combined with distance and character based genetic sequence analyses this study has established a dna barcode for both species of ozobranchus spp leech and has shown it can be applied successfully to the identification of leeches at earlier stages of development when morphological taxonomy cannot be employed the results suggest a different haplotype may exist for o branchiatus leeches found on c caretta versus c mydas leech cocoon residue collected from a c mydas was identified using the new method,2010,0.695
Managing invasive weeds under climate change: considering the current and potential future distribution of Buddleja davidii,kriticos dj watt ms potter kjb manning lk alexander ns tallent halsell n 2010 managing invasive weeds under climate change considering the current and potential future distribution of buddleja davidii weed research summary buddleja davidii is both a prized garden ornamental and an invasive shrub that rapidly colonises disturbed ground originally from china b davidii has been widely distributed by horticulturalists and has subsequently invaded much of europe and new zealand and to a lesser degree the americas and australia the present and future climate suitability for b davidii was assessed using a process oriented climate suitability model there appears to be a considerable scope for further invasion with the most suitable areas occurring adjacent to existing naturalised populations in the north eastern united states north eastern europe south eastern australia and south eastern new zealand under future climates the potential distribution and climate suitability for b davidii increases most noticeably in the northern united states and southern canada northern and eastern europe and to a lesser extent in the south western part of the south island of new zealand elsewhere there are projected poleward range shifts south america or range contractions out of subtropical areas africa and australia climate based potential distribution models can help adapt weed management programmes to expected climate changes by i classifying areas for the different types of weed management ii supporting strategic control initiatives to prevent the spread of a weed iii informing the reallocation of resources away from controlling a weed where climate suitability is expected to diminish in the future and iv identifying opportunities for relatively inexpensive preventative management to be applied to minimise future weed impacts,2010,0.245
"Review: Data Mining for Global Trends in Mountain Biodiversity Edited by. Eva M. Spehn , Christian Körner . Data Mining for Global Trends in Mountain Biodiversity. Boca Raton, FL:. CRC Press. 2010. 200 pp. US$ 109.95. ISBN: 978-1-4200-8369-9.",review of book,2010,0.261
Open geospatial technology standards and their potential in plant pest risk management-GPS-enabled mobile phones utilising open geospatial technology standards Web Feature Service Transactions support the fighting of fire blight in Norway,the threat posed by invasive alien species to global crop production and biodiversity is recognized as one of the major drivers of global change today here we report on a successful implementation and operational use of new technology to support risk and crisis management in the case of fighting an invasive plant disease the open geospatial standards web feature service transaction wfs t was implemented in software for gps enabled mobile phones communicating with a geoserver backend in order to track down and eradicate disease outbreaks and susceptible host plants this new technology offering georeferenced events online from field provides new possibilities for real time action in risk and crisis management â 2010 elsevier b v,2010,0.306
Biodiversidad y biología organísmica,mention of gbif name in a list of online sources for biodiversity data,2010,0.351
Enhanced display of scientific articles using extended metadata,although the web has transformed science publishing scientific papers themselves are still essentially black boxes with much of their content intended for human readers only typically computer readable metadata associated with an article is limited to bibliographic details by expanding article metadata to include taxonomic names identifiers for cited material e g publications sequences specimens and other data and geographical coordinates publishers could greatly increase the scientific value of their digital content at the same time this will provide novel ways for users to discover and navigate through this content beyond the relatively limited linkage provided by bibliographic citation as a proof of concept my entry in the elsevier grand challenge extracted extended metadata from a set of articles from the journal molecular phylogeny and evolution and used it to populate an entity attribute value database a simple web interface to this database enables an enhanced display of the content of an article including a map of localities mentioned either explicitly or implicitly through links to geotagged data taxonomic coverage and both data and citation links metadata extraction was limited to information listed in tables in the articles such as genbank sequences and specimen codes the body of the article was not used a restriction that was deliberate to demonstrate that making extended metadata available does not require a journal s publisher to make the full text freely available although this is desirable for other reasons,2010,0.043
MARSPEC: A Global Database of High-Resolution Oceanographic Data for Applications in Marine Spatial Ecology,one of the most important goals of marine biogeography and ecology is to link the spatial patterns of species distributions to the ecological processes responsible for shaping them although marine species discovery has boomed since the 19th century we are far from describing the entirety of species in our oceans especially when intra specific diversity is considered furthermore in biodiversity hotspots where species discovery and the identification of rare endemics are still actively occurring taxa are disappearing almost faster than they can be described due to climate and anthropogenic stressors therefore in anticipation of even greater habitat degradation and global climate change that is forecasted for the next century it is important that the field of biogeography move beyond its current state as a mostly descriptive science aimed at identifying broad scale biodiversity patterns to a more predictive one capable of teasing apart the finer scale ecological factors that underlie the broader trends to this end terrestrial biogeographers have made use of statistical models that employ ecological information taken from known species occurrence points in order to create predictions of where else suitable habitat for the species in question should be found these models known as ecological niche models enms have been applied in a wide variety of terrestrial studies ranging from predicting the spread of invasive species to identifying pleistocene glacial refugia and forecasting species range shifts in response to future climate change in part the explosion of enms in recent years has occurred as a result of the publication of high resolution climatological databases for terrestrial ecosystems e g worldclim while similar climate databases exist for the oceans e g noaaâ s world ocean atlas they are approximately 100 times coarser than terrestrial databases making them largely inappropriate for fine scale biogeographic questions furthermore there are few marine biogeographers who possess the expertise to work with high resolution satellite data or to manipulate climate layers in a gis framework as such there have been few marine enms to date and those few have relied upon either extremely coarse data restricting their studies to broad scale questions or on simulated data that have neither been validated by observations nor shared with the scientific community at large here i present a marine spatial ecology database marspec of high resolution climate layers for global sea surfaces and demonstrate a few potential applications for the field of marine biogeography global climatologies are derived from satellite and in situ data observations taken over the last decade and presented in a 2km grid which greatly improves upon the spatial resolution of previous databases marspec will be made publicly available upon publication and when used in conjunction with species information from biogeographic information servers like obis and gbif should greatly contribute to advancing the field of marine spatial ecology,2010,0.935
"The importance of collection data for ecological niche modeling: experiences with data from Pytilia melba (L., 1758)",specimen based data is available for ecological niche modelling in large numbers via online databases but can be applied only facing some handicaps we tested various modelling approaches using occurrence data of the green winged pytilia derived from the global biodiversity information facility gbif in different combinations versus random points spread within the known distribution range of the species we describe model predictions derived from the different data sets assess their accuracy as well as reliability and biological relevance according to several criteria these criteria comprise exclusion of unsuitable habitats and congruence with small and large scale expert maps of nine models tested none could be identified with certainty as the optimal model by maxent statistics alone we choose the specimen based model odm 5 on the basis of all statistical categories including values relying on model reliability and plausibility,2010,0.166
Pre-Copulatory Behavior of the Wheel Bug Arilus gallus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae),we describe the pre copulatory behavior of a pair of arilus gallus stã l heteroptera reduviidae observed in a tropical dry forest in sector santa rosa of area de conservaciã n guanacaste northwestern costa rica 10âº40 n 85⺠30 w to our knowledge this is the first description of mating behavior in the genus arilus other than several notes on the time of year a cristatus linnã mates in the usa barber 1920 moul 1945 hagerty and mcpherson 2000 species in the genus arilus hahn subfamily harpactorinae are commonly known as â œwheel bugsâ due to their characteristic semicircular crest on the pronotum arilus species inhabit the americas and are generalist predators of insects readio 1927 hagerty and mcpherson 2000 we concluded that the wheel bugs we observed were a gallus based on the following criteria in championâ s key 1897 1901 1 the â wheelâ crest of the pronotum was elevated unlike a depressicollis stã l 2 the sides of the pronotum were distinctly dilated behind the postero lateral angles and had only short spines at the base unlike a cristatus 3 the abdomen margins connexivae were not very sinuate unlike a cristatus and 4 parts of the legs antennae and head were rust colored unlike a cristatus pictures of the a gallus holotype held at the swedish museum of natural history are available online for comparison www2 nrm se en het nrm g arilus gallus html in championâ s species description 1897 1901 a gallus pronotal crests have 9 11 tubercles whereas the insects we observed had 8 tubercles we are confident our identification is accurate despite the tubercle number discrepancy based on the aforementioned criteria and species range match arilus gallus inhabits the pacific slope of southern central america and parts of northern south america champion 1897 1901 maldonado capriles 1990 although a gallus specimens collected from the pacific slope of costa rica are held in the instituto nacional de biodiversidad of costa rica accessed through gbif data portal www gbif net 2009 06 08 ours appears to be the first published record of this species in costa rica we observed the pair of a gallus on february 19 2008 in the middle of the six month dry season that is characterized in this region by desiccation stress and low abundance of insect prey janzen 1987 we saw the male at 11 30 h on a,2010,0.88
"Free Database Availability, Metadata and the Internet: An Example of Two High Latitude Components of the Census of Marine Life",our understanding of science is based on data for hundreds of years natural scientists have collected observations and compiled measurements historically the data have been recorded and archived in notebooks typed reports and more recently in electronic format most projects had a small and somewhat opportunistic scope and lacked a wider international coordination and strategy this is specifically the case for databases and their dissemination only in the last decades has the culture of data sharing and open access databases developed and the focus changed to international collaborations and questions of global relevance esanu and uhlir 2004 huettmann 2005 see graham et al 2004 for natural history collections in times of globalization such an approach is urgently required in the field of biodiversity the need for open access databases has grown tremendously in the last decades because of the growth of humankind to the extent where man directly explores resources within and beyond their sustainability and directly and indirectly affects biota to extinction wilson 1999 inventories represent the essence for sustainable management for assessing and understanding changes and to inform educated decision making braun 2005,2010,0.308
Developing Global Maps of the Dominant Anopheles Vectors of Human Malaria,simon hay and colleagues describe how the malaria atlas project has collated anopheline occurrence data to map the geographic distributions of the dominant mosquito vectors of human malaria,2010,0.351
Corrected Values for Boiling Points and Enthalpies of Vaporization of Elements in Handbooks,the scientific community relies upon the veracity of the scientific data in handbooks and databases in a previous work the authors developed a systematic intelligent and potentially automatic method to detect errors in such resources based on artificial neural networks anns this method revealed variations from 10 to 900 in tables of property data for elements in the periodic table and pointed out the ones that are most probably correct in this paper we focus on the details of employing this method for analyzing the data of boiling points and enthalpies of vaporization recorded in different handbooks the method points out the values that are likely to be correct to verify the method employed a detailed discussion of the data with reference to the original literature sources is given as well as factors that may affect the accuracy of the prediction,2011,0.059
Low mountain ranges: summit traps for montane freshwater species under climate change,global climate change gcc is expected to lead to massive loss of global biodiversity in the alpine regions of mountain ranges studies on the potential effects of gcc on low mountain areas remain sparse however despite the high conservation value of these areas as biodiversity refugia we chose a species distribution modeling approach to assess potential gcc impacts on the future distributions of montane freshwater invertebrates under two different greenhouse gas scenarios and three averaged general circulation models for this ensemble models consisting of six algorithms generalized linear model glm generalized boosted model gbm generalized additive model gam classification tree analysis cta artificial neural networks ann and multivariate adaptive regression splines mars were applied to project areas of 23 cold stenothermic aquatic insects from montane regions of central europe we found an average loss of 70â 80 of the potential distribution for the study species until 2080 depending on the underlying intergovernmental panel on climate change scenario species distribution ranges below 1000 m above sea level were found to decrease by up to 96 according to the severest greenhouse gas emission scenario while the alps remain the single main refugium under the a2a greenhouse gas emission scenario the more moderate climate scenario b2a shows fragmented potential persistence of montane insects in some low mountain ranges the results show that montane freshwater assemblages in low mountain ranges are particularly threatened by ongoing gcc as vertical dispersal is limited by elevational restriction low mountain ranges may act as summit traps under gcc we thus propose that gcc will lead to the extinction of several species and unique genetic lineages of postglacial relict species resulting in a significant decline in central european fauna,2011,0.6
The Potential Geographic Distribution of the Invasive Weed Eupatorium adenophorum Spreng in China,eupatorium adenophorum is a multi stemmed erect perennial that has become highly invasive in more than 30 countries around the world including china where it has been declared a weed of national significance currently the presence of e adenophorum is limited to the chongqing yunnan sichuan guizhou tibet guangxi and taiwan provinces predicting the future distribution of this weed under current climate scenarios will enable policy makers and land managers to prepare appropriate control strategies and to estimate the ecological consequence such as drastic decrease or loss of biodiversity in the present study climex was used to model the extent and geographical distribution of the possible future invasion of e adenophorum so as to gain insights into the climatic factors affecting its range of expansion using the mean value of the meteorological parameters from 1950 2009 of 758 locations we tested the predictability of e adenophorum distribution by climex model our results indicate that many areas such as central region southeastern coastlands hainan island hongkong and macao are under threat of imminent break out of e adenophorum these results indicate that the potential distribution of e adenophorum in china promoted by current climatic conditions is vast and far greater than its current distribution these results can assist in developing and implementing early detection measures to minimize the ecological impacts of e adenophorum invasion in china,2011,0.187
Innovative electronic publication in plant systematics: PhytoKeys and the changes to the “Botanical Code” accepted at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne,phytokeys was established less than a year ago in response to four main publication challenges of our time 1 the appearance of electronic publications as amendments or even alternatives to paper publications 2 open access oa as a new publishing model 3 the linkage of electronic registers indices and aggregators which summarize information on biological species through taxonomic names or their persistent identifiers and 4 web 2 0 technologies which permit the semantic markup of and semantic enhancements to published biological texts the appearance of the journal was concomitant with lively discussions on the validity of nomenclatural acts published electronically knapp and wright 2010 knapp et al 2010 penev et al 2010 chapman et al 2010 at the xviii international botanical congress in melbourne in july 2011 ibc 2011 these discussions culminated in the decision to amend the international code of botanical nomenclature to allow electronic only publishing of new taxa even before the end of the congress and formal acceptance of the changes phytokeys was able to publish a report on the main outcomes of the nomenclature section on electronic publishing miller et al 2011,2011,0.271
"The initiation of a biological control programme against pompom weed, Campuloclinium macrocephalum (Less.) DC. (Asteraceae), in South Africa",pompomweed campuloclinium macrocephalum less dc asteraceae is a south american invasive plant that was first recorded in south africa in the early 1960s in the 1980s c macrocephalum started slowly extending its range and in the 1990s and 2000s it entered a dramatic expansion phase it invades grasslands savannas and wetlands where it has a significant impact on biological diversity control of c macrocephalum has so far been based on herbicides as mechanical approaches were found to exacerbate infestations through disturbance however due to the extent of the invasion the financial and environmental costs of treating all c macrocephalum infestations with herbicides would be prohibitive as a result a biological control programme was initiated against the weed in 2003 surveys conductedonc macrocephalum in its native range indicated that northernargentina has the highest diversity of natural enemies associated with the plant three insect species zeale adesmus nigromaculatus klug coleoptera cerambycidae liothrips tractabilis mound pereyra thysanoptera thripidae and cochylis campuloclinium brown lepidoptera tortricidae and one pathogen puccinia eupatorii dietel pucciniales pucciniaceae were rated based on damage range and abundance as having the most potential as biological control agents for c macrocephalum this paper is a review of the biology host range and potential impacts of these agents as well as the prospects for the control of c macrocephalum in south africa,2011,0.287
Invasive species can handle higher leaf temperature under water stress than Mediterranean natives,thermal tolerance of photosystem ii psii highly influences plant distribution worldwide because it allows for photosynthesis during periods of high temperatures and water stress which are common in most terrestrial ecosystems and particularly in dry and semi arid ones however there is a lack of infor mation about how this tolerance influences invasiveness of exotic species in ecosystems with seasonal drought to address this question for mediterranean type ecosystems mte of the iberian peninsula we carried out an experiment with fifteen phylogenetically related species 8 invasive and 7 native pinus pinaster ait pinus radiata d don schinus molle linn elaeagnus angustifolia l eucalyptus globulus labill acacia melanoxylon r br gleditsia triacanthos l pistacia terebinthus l rhamnus alaternus l anagyris foetida l colutea arborescens l oenothera biennis l epilobium hirsutum l achillea filipendulina lam and achillea millefolium l seedlings were grown and maximal photochemical efficiency of psii fv fm was measured at two water availabilities well watered and with water stress psii thermal tolerance mea surements were related to specific leaf area sla which varied significantly across the study species and to the mean potential evapotranspiration pet of the month with the lowest precipitation in the native areas of both groups and in the invaded area of the iberian peninsula additionally psii thermal tolerance measurements under water stress were phylogenetically explored invasive and native species neither differed in sla nor in their thermal tolerance under well watered conditions for well watered plants sla was significantly and positively related to psii thermal tolerance when all species were explored together regardless of their invasive nature however this relationship did not persist under water stress and invasive species had higher plastic responses than mediterranean natives resulting in higher leaf temperatures higher psii thermal tolerance could explain invasiveness because it allows for longer peri ods of carbon acquisition under water stress in fact psii thermal tolerance was positively related to the pet of the invaded and native areas of the iberian peninsula psii thermal tolerance was not related to pet at the native range of the invasive species suggesting that successful invasive species were plastic enough to cope with novel dry conditions of the iberian peninsula moreover our phylogenetic results indicate that future scenarios of increased aridity in mte associated to climate change will filter invasion success by taxonomic identity this study reveals the importance of studying ecophysiological traits to understand and better predict future biological invasions,2011,0.875
European Journal of Taxonomy: A Public Collaborative Project in Open Access scholarly communication,a vast majority of natural history institutions in europe have been scientific publishers since they were founded and have a long scholarly publishing tradition nowadays they are confronted with rapid technological changes and face complex strategic and technical questions related to visibility access format and the financial structure of their titles these specific issues require a common vision and an international strategy to ensure that the community acts in a consistent and coordinated way a consortium of natural history institutions is thus launching the european journal of taxonomy applying an alternative public open â â access business model where neither authors nor readers have to pay fees for subscriptions or publication in this paper we will focus on the benefits of open â â access publishing and how ejt will play an important role in moving the field to open â â access publishing and archiving by enabling the institutions to take a greater control over their communication process,2011,0.172
Towards Data Quality into the Data Warehouse Development,commonly dw development methodologies paying little attention to the problem of data quality and completeness one of the common mistakes made during the planning of a data warehousing project is to assume that data quality will be addressed during testing in addition to the data warehouse development methodologies we will introduce in this paper a new approach to data warehouse development this proposal will be based on integration data quality into the whole data warehouse development phase denoted by integrated requirement analysis for designing data warehouse iradah this paper shows that data quality is not only an integrated part of data warehouse project but will remain a sustained and ongoing activity,2011,0.112
Increasing potential risk of a global aquatic invader in Europe in contrast to other continents under future climate change.,anthropogenically induced climate change can alter the current climatic habitat of non native species and can have complex effects on potentially invasive species predictions of the potential distributions of invasive species under climate change will provide critical information for future conservation and management strategies aquatic ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to invasive species and climate change but the effect of climate change on invasive species distributions has been rather neglected especially for notorious global invaders,2011,0.766
Environmental Niche Modeling Reveals Climatic Differences among Breeding Ranges of Orchard Oriole Subspecies,environmental niche parameters of breeding ranges for two subspecies in the orchard oriole complex icterus spurius spurius and i s fuertesi were characterized via ecological niche modeling niche models formulated from museum specimen collections largely agree with published breeding ranges of both taxa furthermore our findings identify likely suitable habitat of migratory double breeding in i s spurius models successfully identify suitable habitat as illustrated by threshold dependent and independent statistical tests and overlap very little in geographic space principal component analysis pca identifies two axes explaining 99 0 of variation in the climate data and reveals that each breeding range exhibits unique ecological characteristics as they occur in nonoverlapping pca space multivariate analysis of variance manova identifies significant differences along both axes pc1 p 0 0001 pc2 p 0 0001 a newly formulated metric for niche similarity i agrees with pca and enm results and further indicates that environmental niche differences are more likely a result of differences in habitat availability than habitat preference our results may indicate rapid change in environmental niche within the orchard oriole group as these taxa have been diverging for approximately 200 000 y the orchard oriole group provides an example of niche lability that contrasts with evidence of niche conservatism between many other mexican species pairs,2011,0.434
Phylogeographic analysis of North American populations of the parasitic herbaceous plant Monotropa hypopitys L. reveals a complex history of range expansion from multiple late glacial refugia,aim we carried out a phylogeographic study across the range of the herbaceous plant species monotropa hypopitys l in north america to determine whether its current disjunct distribution is due to recolonization from separate eastern and western refugia after the last glacial maximum lgm location north america pacific northwest and north eastern usa south eastern canada methods palaeodistribution modelling was carried out to determine suitable climatic regions for m hypopitys at the lgm we analysed between 155 and 176 individuals from 39 locations spanning the speciesâ entire range in north america sequence data were obtained for the chloroplast rps2 gene n 168 and for the nuclear its region n 158 individuals were also genotyped for eight microsatellite loci n 176 interpolation of diversity values was used to visualize the range wide distribution of genetic diversity for each of the three marker classes minimum spanning networks were constructed showing the relationships between the rps2 and its haplotypes and the geographical distributions of these haplotypes were plotted the numbers of genetic clusters based on the microsatellite data were estimated using bayesian clustering approaches results the palaeodistribution modelling indicated suitable climate envelopes for m hypopitys at the lgm in both the pacific northwest and south eastern usa high levels of genetic diversity and endemic haplotypes were found in oregon the alexander archipelago wisconsin and in the south eastern part of the speciesâ distribution range main conclusions our results suggest a complex recolonization history for m hypopitys in north america involving persistence in separate eastern and western refugia a generally high degree of congruence between the different marker classes analysed indicated the presence of multiple refugia with at least two refugia in each area in the west putative refugia were identified in oregon and the alexander archipelago whereas eastern refugia may have been located in the southern part of the speciesâ current distribution as well as in the â driftless areaâ these findings are in contrast to a previous study on the related species orthilia secunda which has a similar disjunct distribution to m hypopitys but which appears to have recolonized solely from western refugia,2011,0.75
Global diversity hotspots and conservation priorities for sharks,sharks are one of the most threatened groups of marine animals as high exploitation rates coupled with low resilience to fishing pressure have resulted in population declines worldwide designing conservation strategies for this group depends on basic knowledge of the geographic distribution and diversity of known species so far this information has been fragmented and incomplete here we have synthesized the first global shark diversity pattern from a new database of published sources including all 507 species described at present and have identified hotspots of shark species richness functional diversity and endemicity from these data we have evaluated the congruence of these diversity measures and demonstrate their potential use in setting priority areas for shark conservation our results show that shark diversity across all species peaks on the continental shelves and at mid latitudes 30 40 degrees n and s global hotspots of species richness functional diversity and endemicity were found off japan taiwan the east and west coasts of australia southeast africa southeast brazil and southeast usa moreover some areas with low to moderate species richness such as southern australia angola north chile and western continental europe stood out as places of high functional diversity finally species affected by shark finning showed different patterns of diversity with peaks closer to the equator and a more oceanic distribution overall our results show that the global pattern of shark diversity is uniquely different from land and other well studied marine taxa and may provide guidance for spatial approaches to shark conservation however similar to terrestrial ecosystems protected areas based on hotspots of diversity and endemism alone would provide insufficient means for safeguarding the diverse functional roles that sharks play in marine ecosystems,2011,0.763
Projecting the potential invasion of the Pink Spotted Hawkmoth (Agrius cingulata) across Africa,agrius cingulata lepidoptera sphingidae is widespread in the americas but has recently begun to spread into africa in parts of its native range the species is a pest of sweet potato which is an important crop plant in africa we used two types of ecological niche models based on native distribution records and climate and vegetation structure data to estimate which regions of africa are potentially suitable for the species to become established the results show that under the simplifying assumption that the species will occupy the same ecological niche in africa as in its native range a cingulata may find a suitable habitat across wide stretches of sub saharan africa we conclude that early monitoring programmes of the spread and actual status of the species in africa may be worthwhile implementing,2011,0.762
The Movebank data model for animal tracking,studies of animal movement are rapidly increasing as tracking technologies make it possible to collect more data of a larger variety of species comparisons of animal movement across sites times or species are key to asking questions about animal adaptation responses to climate and land use change thus great gains can be made by sharing and exchanging animal tracking data here we present an animal movement data model that we use within the movebank web application to describe tracked animals the model facilitates data comparisons across a broad range of taxa study designs and technologies and is based on the scientific questions that could be addressed with the data,2011,0.554
Arquitetura orientada a serviços para aquisição de dados de experimentos em weblab de abelhas,environmental experiments are fundamental to understand the effects of climate change such as the decline of pollinators in nature these experiments should be shared with an integrated methodology develop and apply tools of information technology in different areas of research is essential for improving process control and data analysis without requiring that researchers from other fields have advanced knowledge in computing technologies for this it is important to use an open infrastructure of hardware and software made available to researchers through web portals known as weblab for acquisition and sharing of data obtained by sensors this paper presents a model of information systems architecture for the implementation of a weblab based on the concepts of soa to solve the problem of heterogeneity and interoperability of environments since the data is collected by different network technologies of sensors in its databases it was necessary for the modeling of central database capable of storing data from different systems accessible through the consumption of the service provided by the weblab,2011,0.057
Can we model the probability of presence of species without absence data?,in ecological studies it is useful to estimate the probability that a species occurs at given locations the probability of presence can be modeled by traditional statistical methods if both presence and absence data are available however the challenge is that most species records contain only presence data without reliable absence data previous presence only methods can estimate a relative index of habitat suitability but cannot estimate the actual probability of presence in this study we develop a presence and background learning algorithm pbl that is successful in modeling the conditional probability of presence of a simulated species the model is trained by two completely separate sets observed presence and background data assuming that the probability of presence is one for â prototypical presenceâ locations where the habitats are maximally suitable for a species we can estimate a constant that can calibrate the trained model into the actual probability of presence experimental results show that the pbl method performs similarly to a presence absence method and significantly better than the widely used maximum entropy method the new algorithm enables us to model the probability that a species occurs conditional on environmental covariates without absence data hence it has potential to improve modeling of the geographical distributions of species,2011,0.887
Avaliação da atividade genotóxica de extratos e do alcaloide indol-monoterpênico obtidos das raízes de Galianthe thalictroides (Rubiaceae),evaluation of genotã xico activity of extracts and indole monoterpene alkaloid obtained from the roots galianthe thalictroides rubiaceae in family rubiaceae species are found with food economic importance and pharmacological several species of this family are considered by traditional medicine as therapeutic to treat various diseases galianthe thalictroides belongs to the subgenus galianthe that is unique in south america in brazil were described 38 species of which 28 are endemic found in regions of savannah and grassland g thalictroides roots have been used in traditional medicine to treat and prevent cancer and how there is no data in the literature about the effects of cytotoxic and genotoxic the present study aims to evaluate these activities using in vitro assays mtt and comet and in vivo smart the genotoxic activity of aqueous extracts prepared in the temperature 100â c cgq and 4â c cgf fraction ethanolic beter fraction chloroform bgtrc 6 and indole monoterpene alkaloid rc6 2 have been assessed by testing for the detection of somatic mutation and recombination â smart the mtt assay and comet were performed only with indole monoterpene alkaloid rc6 2 the results obtained in the smart assay indicate that the aqueous extracts cgq and cgf in different concentrations not produced statistically significant increases in frequency spots mutants when compared with the negative control not showing genotoxic activity because of this result the aqueous extract cgq was associated with doxorubicin dxr for evaluation of antigenotoxic the results indicated that this extract did not reduce the events mutacionais caused dxr not showing activity antigenotoxic however the fraction ethanolic beter once presented genotoxic potential metabolised dose response the fraction chloroform bgtrc 6 in the concentrations of 0 4 and 0 8mg ml caused mutagenic events expressed by simple stains increase small statistically significant when compared to the negative control and cytotoxic concentration was 1 6mg ml the indole monoterpene alkaloid rc6 1 obtained from the fraction chloroform bgtrc 6 presented significant events mutacionais but did not exhibit cytotoxic concentrations evaluated in smart however in testing of mtt the alkaloid rc6 2 presented in the concentrations of cytotoxicity 10 50 and 100î g ml however no assay comet caused dna tape breaks not showing genotoxic activity the results obtained with the smart assay added to those found in the comet assay suggest that the alkaloid rc6 2 is a spindle inhibitor causing aneugenic potent cytotoxic activity presented against tumor cells lineage of human hepatoma hepg2 and has not caused mitotic recombination and mutagenic activity in somatic cells of drosophila melanogaster,2011,0.559
Predicting the potential distribution of the invasive Common Waxbill Estrilda astrild (Passeriformes: Estrildidae),human transport and commerce have led to an increased spread of non indigenous species alien invasive species can have major impacts on many aspects of ecological systems therefore the ability to predict regions potentially suitable for alien species which are hence at high risk has become a core task for successful management the common waxbill estrilda astrild is a widespread african species which has been successfully introduced to many parts of the world herein we used maxent software a machine learning algorithm to assess its current potential distribution based on species records compiled from various sources models were trained separately with records from the speciesâ native range and from both invaded and native ranges subsequently the models were projected onto different future climate change scenarios they successfully identified the species known range as well as some regions that seem climatically well suited where the common waxbill is not yet recorded assuming future conditions the models suggest poleward range shifts however its potential distribution pattern within its tropical native and invasive ranges appears to be more complex although the results of both separate analyses showed general similarities many differences have become obvious niche overlap analysis shows that the invasive range includes only a small fraction of the ecological space that can be found in the native range thus we tentatively prefer the model based on native locations only but in particular we highlight the importance of the selection process of species records for modelling invasive species,2011,0.864
Integrating statistical genetic and geospatial methods brings new power to phylogeography,the field of phylogeography continues to grow in terms of power and accessibility initially uniting population genetics and phylogenetics it now spans disciplines as diverse as geology statistics climatology ecology physiology and bioinformatics to name a few one major and recent integration driving the field forward is between statistical phylogeography and geographic information systems gis knowles 2009 merging genetic and geospatial data and their associated methodological toolkits is helping to bring explicit hypothesis testing to the field of phylogeography hypotheses derived from one approach can be reciprocally tested with data derived from the other field and the synthesis of these data can help place demographic events in an historical and spatial context guide genetic sampling and point to areas for further investigation here we present three practical examples of empirical analysis that integrate statistical genetic and gis tools to construct and test phylogeographic hypotheses insights into the evolutionary mechanisms underlying recent divergences can benefit from simultaneously considering diverse types of information to iteratively test and reformulate hypotheses our goal is to provide the reader with an introduction to the variety of available tools and their potential application to typical questions in phylogeography with the hope that integrative methods will be more broadly and commonly applied to other biological systems and data sets,2011,0.066
Potential distribution and environmental threat of Pueraria lobata,pueraria lobata kudzu is an invasive weed originating from east asia local infestations have been recently observed in switzerland and northern italy however the potential for p lobata to spread and to become abundant and damaging in the alpine countries is not known the aim of this study was to project the potential distribution of p lobata under current climate in switzerland austria and slovenia and parts of northern italy using the ecoclimatic model climex in addition areas at risk were identified where p lobata may occur as a strong and aggressive competitor this was derived from the plantsâ distribution and climatic requirements in the south eastern united states where the heaviest infestations occur projections show that 60 84 of the total land area of northern italy followed by 47 08 of slovenia 21 01 of austria and only 1 97 of switzerland are climatically suitable p lobata may become a troublesome weed due to very favourable climatic conditions only in some parts of northern italy and slovenia in climatically suitable areas any occurrence of the plant should be carefully observed in infested and highly climatically suitable areas there is a need for strategic management to prevent further spread of p lobata,2011,0.255
Science 2.0 : Bridging Science and the Public,â œscience 2 0â is still evolving basically it is an ongoing â œnaturalâ experiment about a potentially novel way of participating in knowledge construction processes based on internet applications the topic of this article is scientific culture and organisation that interact with communities of interests outside of institutions based on analyses of systematic biology and the mapping of biodiversity the focus will be on the convergence of professionals and so called amateurs involved in the production of new knowledge,2011,0.15
Phytogeographic implications of fossil endocarps of Menispermaceae from the Paleocene of Colombia.,â premise of the study fossil leaves of menispermaceae were previously described from the paleocene of colombia because of strong homoplasy of leaf characters the fossils could not be placed more specifically within recognized clades and additional data were needed to specify intrafamilial and paleogeographic relationships during the paleocene â methods fossil endocarps of menispermaceae were collected from the cerrejã n formation the recently discovered bogotã flora and wyoming ∠60 ma we surveyed the endocarp morphology of almost all extant genera conducted character optimization a molecular scaffold analysis and critically reviewed the related fossil genera â key results parallel syndromes of fruit characters have appeared in unrelated clades of the family according to current phylogenetic reconstructions however mapping selected endocarp characters across those clades that contain horseshoe shaped endocarps facilitates identification and phylogenetic assessment of the fossils three fossil species are recognized one of them belongs to the extant genus stephania which today grows only in africa and australasia palaeoluna gen nov is placed within the pantropical clade composed of extant stephania cissampelos and cyclea this morphogenus is also recognized from the paleocene of wyoming menispina gen nov shows similarity with several unrelated clades â conclusions the new fossils from colombia reveal a complex paleobiogeographic history of the recognized clades within menispermaceae suggesting a more active exchange among neotropical paleotropical north american and european paleoforests than previously recognized in addition the new fossils indicate that neotropical forests were an important biome for the radiation and dispersal of derived lineages in menispermaceae after the cretaceous paleogene boundary,2011,0.519
Botanical Literature Goes Global: The Biodiversity Heritage Library,scholars in the natural sciences rely on historic literature more than any other branch of science yet much of this material has limited global distribution and much of it is available in only a few select libraries this wealth of knowledge is available only to those few who can gain direct access to significant library collections a situation that is considered one of the chief impediments to the efficiency of research in the field community support and new technologies led to the formation of the biodiversity heritage library the bhl is an international collaboration of natural history libraries working together to make biodiversity literature available for use by the widest possible audience through open access and sustainable management,2011,0.257
Modelling horses for novel climate courses: insights from projecting potential distributions of native and alien Australian acacias with correlative and mechanistic models,aim investigate the relative abilities of different bioclimatic models and data sets to project species ranges in novel environments utilizing the natural experiment in biogeography provided by australian acacia species location australia south africa methods we built bioclimatic models for acacia cyclops and acacia pycnantha using two discriminatory correlative models maxent and boosted regression trees and a mechanistic niche model climex we fitted models using two training data sets native range data only â restrictedâ and all available global data excluding south africa â fullâ we compared the ability of these techniques to project suitable climate for independent records of the species in south africa in addition we assessed the global potential distributions of the species to projected climate change results all model projections assessed against their training data the south african data and globally were statistically significant in south africa and globally the additional information contained in the full data set generally improved model sensitivity but at the expense of increased modelled prevalence particularly in extrapolation areas for the correlative models all models projected some climatically suitable areas in south africa not currently occupied by the species at the global scale widespread and biologically unrealistic projections by the correlative models were explained by open ended response curves a problem which was not always addressed by broader background climate space or by the extra information in the full data set in contrast the global projections for climex were more conservative projections into 2070 indicated a polewards shift in climate suitability and a decrease in model interpolation area main conclusions our results highlight the importance of carefully interpreting model projections in novel climates particularly for correlative models much work is required to ensure bioclimatic models performed in a robust and ecologically plausible manner in novel climates we explore reasons for variations between models and suggest methods and techniques for future improvements,2011,0.215
"A Study on the Growth and Management Status of Mansongjung forest in Hahoe, Andong",a village forest is a place for intentional purposes with natural and ecological grounds including history culture and faith the study investigates and analyzes land use soil status flora vegetation disease and insects uses and management of mansongjeong pine tree forest in hahoe andong designated as natural monument for the purpose of preserving the village forest this diagnoses current vegetation of the forest and secures basic information to propose sustainable management the land use analysis showed that wetlands and streams around the forest accounted for 44 2 peripheral environment with high humidity and the soil analysis stated that the ph was proper but organic materials total nitrogen and effective phosphorous reached below the average or overfeeding the flora consists of 119 kinds including 37 families 13 varieties 1 species and 1 frost aster aster pilosus wild and there are 22 naturalized species the vegetation stated that there were 859 pine trees pinus densiflora 6 zelkovas zelkava serrata 1 nut tree castanea crenata and 1 plum tree prunus mume showing that the pine trees dominated in the upper part of the forest there shall be consideration for new or existing forest with tree planting by excluding factors which may affect traditional tree planting pattern in region with old trees and forming natural generation congress in the future pest research discovered that there were 9 kinds including rhyaciania duplana hubner aphids mites tamicus piniperda linne and zelkova silverfish usage and management results showed that the number of visitors was small but sharply increased during the festival season of hahoe village and there were 14 facilities in 2 kinds a project on protecting the forest was designated and performed once in 2006 systemic and pest managements considering ecological features of shade intolerant trees like pine trees through proper light penetration and adjusting crowd rates and regulating number of visitors are required to sustain the mansongjeong forest,2011,0.348
Evidence for radiations of cheilanthoid ferns in the Greater Cape Floristic Region,the greater cape floristic region gcfr of southern africa is characterised by large endemic radiations of flowering plants the so called cape clades but it is unknown whether such radiations are also found in non angiosperms we hypothesise that gcfr endemic lineages exist in the xeric adapted cheilanthoid ferns to test this hypothesis with special emphasis on the alternative hypothesis of frequent colonization the phylogenetic relations divergence times and ancestral areas of the cheilanthoid ferns of the gcfr and adjacent regions are investigated the dataset includes 22 cheilanthoid fern species occurring in the gcfr with two exceptions all gcfr endemics are part of two clades that diversified in the afro madagascan region the gcfr endemics are further concentrated in three high endemism subclades that did not originate simultaneously but within the timeframe of angiosperm cape clades diversification according to ancestral area reconstructions the ancestors of the two larger afro madagascan clades were likely gcfr endemic and a substantial part of the diversification history of these clades took place in the gcfr the high diversity of cheilanthoids in the gcfr appears to stem primarily from in situ diversification not from immigration this pattern resembles the numerous radiations of angiosperm clades in the gcfr and may be caused by the same factors we did not find evidence for rapid synchronised radiations as documented for some albeit not all angiosperm cape clades high diversification within and dispersal out of the gcfr has likely enriched cheilanthoid diversity in the afro madagascan region,2011,0.481
TRY - a global database of plant traits,plant traits â the morphological anatomical physiological biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs â determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors affect other trophic levels influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology community and functional ecology to biogeography here we present the global database initiative named try which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy in of trait data so far 93 trait databases have been contributed the data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world s 300 000 plant species with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle including growth dispersal establishment and persistence a first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log normally distributed with widely differing ranges of variation across traits most trait variation is between species interspecific but significant intraspecific variation is also documented up to 40 of the overall variation plant functional types pfts as commonly used in vegetation models capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation â but for several traits most variation occurs within pfts up to 75 of the overall variation in the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values the improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait based ecology offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in earth system models,2011,0.077
Increasing ocean temperature reduces the metabolic performance and swimming ability of coral reef damselfishes,tropical coral reef teleosts are exclusively ectotherms and their capacity for physical and physiological performance is therefore directly influenced by ambient temperature this study examined the effect of increased water temperature to 3 1c above ambient on the swimming and metabolic performance of 10 species of damselfishes pomacentridae representing evolutionary lineages from two subfamilies and four genera five distinct performance measures were tested a maximum swimming speed ucrit b gait transition speed the speed at which they change from strictly pectoral to pectoral and caudal swimming upî c c maximum aerobic metabolic rate mo2î max d resting metabolic rate mo2î rest and e aerobic scope ratio ofmo2î max tomo2î rest asc relative to the control 29 1c increased temperature 32 1c had a significant negative effect across all performance measures examined with the magnitude of the effect varying greatly among closely related species and genera specifically five species spanning three genera dascyllus neopomacentrus and pomacentrus showed severe reductions in swimming performance with ucrit reduced in these species by 21 3â 27 9 and upc by 32 6â 51 3 furthermore five species spanning all four genera showed significant reductions in metabolic performance with aerobic scope reduced by 24 3â 64 9 comparisons of remaining performance capacities with field conditions indicate that 32 1c water temperatures will leave multiple species with less swimming capacity than required to overcome the water flows commonly found in their respective coral reef habitats consequently unless adaptation is possible significant loss of species may occur if ocean warming of 3 1c arises,2011,0.935
Searching the New Grail: Inter-Disciplinary Interoperability,the implementation of the inspire directive in europe and similar efforts around the globe to develop spatial data infrastructures and global systems of systems have been focusing largely on the adoption of agreed technologies standards and specifications to meet the systems interoperability challenge addressing the key scientific challenges of humanity in the 21st century requires however a much increased multi disciplinary effort which in turn makes more complex demands on the type of systems and arrangements needed to support it this paper analyses the challenges for interdisciplinary interoperability using the experience of the eurogeoss research project it argues that interdisciplinary requires mutual understanding of requirements methods theoretical underpinning and tacit knowledge and this in turn demands for a flexible approach to interoperability based on mediation and brokering the paper demonstrates the implications of adopting this approach and charts the trajectory for the evolution of current spatial data infrastructures,2011,0.019
Species Distribution Models: Ecological Applications for Management of Biodiversity,species distribution models are a group of methods often used to estimate consequences of global change to assess ecological status and for other ecological applications the main idea behind species distribution models is that the geographical distributions of species can to a large part be explained by environmental factors and that species distributions therefore can be predicted in time or space for robust and reliable applications models need to be based on sound ecological principles predictions need to be as accurate as possible and model uncertainties need to be understood two approaches are available for modelling entire species communities 1 each species can be modelled individually and independently of other species or 2 community information can be incorporated into the models the first study in this thesis compares these two modelling approaches for predicting phytoplankton assemblages in lakes the results showed that predictive accuracy was higher when species were modelled individually the results also showed that phytoplankton can be used for model based assessment of ecological status this finding is important because phytoplankton is required for assessing the ecological status of european water bodies according to the european water framework directive dispersal barriers in the landscape or limited dispersal ability of species might be a reason for species being absent from suitable habitats and these factors might therefore affect model accuracy the second study in this thesis examines the influence of dispersal and the spatial configuration of ecosystems on prediction accuracy of benthic invertebrate and phytoplankton distribution and assemblage composition the results showed only a minor influence of spatial configuration and no effect of flight ability of invertebrates on model accuracy however the models used may partly account for dispersal constraints since dispersal related factors such as lake surface area are included as predictor variables the result also showed that composition of littoral invertebrate assemblages was easier to predict at sites located in well connected lake systems possibly because the relatively unstable littoral zone necessitates a need for species to re colonize disturbed habitats from source populations,2011,0.885
Evolution of natural history information in the 21st century - developing an integrated framework for biological and geographical data,threats to marine and estuarine species operate over many spatial scales from nutrient enrichment at the watershed estuarine scale to invasive species and climate change at regional and global scales to help address research questions across these scales we provide here a standardized framework for a biogeographical information system containing queriable biological data that allows extraction of information on multiple species across a variety of spatial scales based on species distributions natural history attributes and habitat requirements as scientists shift from research on localized impacts on individual species to regional and global scale threats macroecological approaches of studying multiple species over broad geographical areas are becoming increasingly important the standardized framework described here for capturing and integrating biological and geographical data is a critical first step towards addressing these macroecological questions and we urge organizations capturing biogeoinformatics data to consider adopting this framework,2011,0.727
Visibility and Access Through the Aquatic Commons,faoâ s fisheries and aquaculture library fbl has started a project for the iamslic aquatic commons document repository ac in collaboration with aquatic sciences and fisheries abstracts asfa and financed by the asfa trust fund in 2007 an initiative to support the digitization of grey literature for inclusion in ac was approved by the asfa board and fbl put forward a project proposal in 2009 to retrospectively scan grey literature from institutions in developing countries that is available in their collection this collaborative project also aims to preserve and repatriate the publications in digital format to the originating institutions the main output of the project is the inclusion of metadata and electronic copies of the documents in ac in the asfa bibliographic database links to these full text online versions will be added to existing records or new records will be created including links to the items in the repository this paper evaluates progress made so far regarding use of the uploaded literature in ac concentrating on the grey literature that fbl has previously uploaded and focusing on two aspects of the objectives preservation and repatriation an analysis of earlier contributions uploaded in collaboration with fison and stream is included statistics show the positive impact that ac has on the visibility of and the access to grey literature and also demonstrates how ac is helping disseminate information and research both nationally and internationally it is playing a very important role in the preservation and repatriation of documents research carried out in a country can be discovered by other researchers within that country through ac,2011,0.174
Climate change and the African baobab (Adansonia digitata L.): the need for better conservation strategies,the baobab tree with more than 300 uses and commercial value in eu and united states has been identified as one of the most important trees to be conserved and domesticated in africa a decline in baobab populations because of changes in climate could have a negative effect on african livelihoods therefore it is important to study the potential future distribution of this species and determine strategies for conservation we used maxent 480 geo referenced records present and future climatic and soil layers different general circulation models and scenarios were selected models were simulated for i all records ii east africa and iii west africa species records for each combination the proportion of the present habitat that might remain suitable in the future was determined these habitat proportions were compared with the protected areas in africa although potential future distributions were different depending on model scenario and records used in all cases only a percentage of the present distribution was predicted to remain suitable in the future some countries were found to have no suitable habitat in the future recommendations for different conservation strategies include in situ conservation in protected areas ex situ conservation in seed banks and conservation through â sustainable utilizationâ,2011,0.633
Time to change how we describe biodiversity,taxonomists are arguably the most active annotators of the natural world collecting and publishing millions of phenotype data annually through descriptions of new taxa by formalizing these data preferably as they are collected taxonomists stand to contribute a data set with research potential that rivals or even surpasses genomics over a decade of electronic innovation and debate has initiated a revolution in the way that the biodiversity is described here we opine that a new generation of semantically based digital scaffolding presently in various stages of completeness and a commitment by taxonomists and their colleagues to undertake this transformation are required to complete the taxonomic revolution and critically broaden the relevance of its products,2011,0.215
Understanding Earth-Related Phenomena ThroughMaps,maps on paper or digital maps alike can make the invisible visible and thus reveal new insights about the world map making or mapping is one of the techniques to interpret and represent the world and fundamental for representing space and loca tion dorling and fairbairn 1997 mapping is only possible if sufficient detailed accurate and up to date geo information is available although availability is an essential prerequisite it is not enough to be of any value geo information has to be processed and interpreted by knowledgeable and skilled professionals using the right tools including geographical information systems gis tomlinson 2007 today gis remote sensing rs and global navigation satellite systems gnss offer a plethora of opportunities for monitoring and managing many facets of our world which is increasingly considered as vulnerable and affected by human activi ties geo information technology provides enormous potential for tackling the broad pallet of problems that tend to be branded by pessimists with the tag â unsolvableâ induced by increased human population intensification in agricultural land use and industrialisation deforestation soil erosion degradation in wildlife habitat loss of biodiversity and pandemics such as hiv aids seem to be a never ending story this chapter demonstrates by two historical examples â medical mapping and geologi cal mapping â how insight can be gained about earth related phenomena through analysing maps next the general steps involved for deriving geo information from geo data are considered using a gis,2011,0.164
"Occurrence of Lophogaster spinosus Ortmann, 1906 (Crustacea, Lophogastrida) in the Gulf of Cadiz (NE Atlantic)",occurrence of lophogaster spinosus ortmann 1906 crustacea lophogastrida in the gulf of cadiz ne atlantic â the occurrence of the lophogastrid crustacean lophogaster spinosus is reported for the gulf of cadiz waters in the northâ east atlantic this is the first report of the species for the iberian atlantic region samples were collected by demersal trawling during a fisheries research survey performed in march 2008 a total of four specimens were collected at three sampling sites depths of occurrence ranged between 363 and 548 m,2011,0.708
Fungal conservation needs help from botanists,it is in the interest of botanists concerned with plant conservation to make sure that fungi are also conserved fungal conservation has not flourished and does not flourish in the shadow of botany some strategies by which botanists can help to promote fungal conservation are outlined and discussed,2011,0.354
"Production of high quality cane juice and improved Jaggery products in Rangwe district, Kenya",sugarcane sachurum genus is a tall perennial grass native to the warm and temperate climate of asia it is however to be found in other regions of the world including brazil india thailand united states of america mexico pakistan columbia australia sudan among other african countries brazil is the worldâ s largest producer followed by india sugarcane grows as grass which has stout jointed fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar and measure two to six meters six to nineteen feet tall all sugar cane species interbreed and the major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids the crop is grown in commercial farms for production of sugar and other sweetening compounds due to its high content of sucrose in kenya sugarcane grows in the western kenya region where more than 90 of the production occurs and also in parts of the coast province it forms the major part of commercial farming activities in the region where farming of other products is limited or nonexistent hence the importance of the crop and its development to the region sugarcane is usually processed into sugar in various sugar factories in the region these factories contract farmers to produce the cane and sell to the factories but due to bureaucracy and inefficiency the process of harvesting and delivery to the factories is not appropriate hence leads to big losses to the farmers the losses occur in the form of wastage in the farms due to harvest delays in the farms hence loss of quality and crop wastage when delivering to factories due to poor transport systems and delays before processing the net result is that the factories are not able to take the crop in time hence the need to look for alternative processors to avoid the losses incurred jaggeries have come up to try and alleviate the problem by milling the excess cane and produce crude sugar otherwise known as jaggery which can be used as a sweetener in the food industry and beyond however the range of products and quality of these products are limited hence the need of this study to come up with a range of products e g cane juice which can improve the profitability and relevance of the jaggery industry in the development of cane and cane products in the western kenya region value addition of jaggery products can result in more market oriented products which can attract better prices and wide appeal cane juice from the jaggery can be processed and packaged and offered in the market presently cane juice is extracted and sold on the spot as fresh juice hence the need to look into various value addition approaches to make it reach a wider consumption and market these would result in a range of products including flavoured cane juices wines and juice blends and shakes with other liquid food products improvement of the processing procedures in the jaggeries will result in quality products which will appeal to a wider market this will have a resultant effect on the farmers in the region by reducing losses improve incomes hence the economic well being of the region as a whole,2011,0.092
Studying the effects of virtual biodiversity research infrastructures,the research environment of scholars is increasingly web based this makes it urgent to study the effects of moving to the web on research practices scholarly output and innovation we propose a theoretical framework and a methodology to study these effects in a pilot study we apply theory and method on an online community in biodiversity research to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach we also indicate the practical relevance of this kind of analysis for improving the quality of virtual research environments in the last section directions for further research are suggested,2011,0.072
Museum collections in ornithology: today's record of avian biodiversity for tomorrow's world,museum collections have always played a fundamental role in the study of avian biology they underpin all classifications of birds and understanding of changes in bird populations on recent olsen et al 1993 or historical time scales donnellan et al 2009 the widely scattered collections of birds pertinent to emuâ s southern hemisphere scope and readership are no exception mearns and mearns 1998 craig and nuttall 2010 here my aim is to highlight the scientific importance of current bird collections highlight issues that relate to their expansion and anticipate their ever increasing diversity of scope and applica tions this complements gillâ s 2006 inventory and analysis of 10 australian and four new zealand bird collections which together comprise some 500 000 specimens i address the vul nerability of collections at a time of variable and increasingly uncertain institutional support and touch on the scientific need for voucher specimens especially in molecular genetics studies bates et al 2004 peterson et al 2007 and the need for carefully and ethically conducted scientific collecting of birds remsen 1995 if,2011,0.345
Landscape genetics of a recent population extirpation in a burnet moth species,the intensification of agricultural land use over wide parts of europe has led to the decline of semi natural habitats such as extensively used meadows with those that remain often being small and isolated these rapid changes in land use during recent decades have strongly affected populations inhabiting these ecosystems increasing habitat deterioration and declining permeability of the surrounding landscape matrix disrupt the gene flow within metapopulations the burnet moth species zygaena loti has suffered strongly from recent habitat fragmentation as reflected by its declining abundance we have studied its population genetic structure and found a high level of genetic diversity in some of the populations analysed while others display low genetic diversity and a lack of heterozygosity zygaena loti was formerly highly abundant in meadows and along the skirts of forests however the species is currently restricted to isolated habitat remnants which is reflected by the high genetic divergence among populations f st 0 136 species distribution modelling as well as the spatial examination of panmictic clusters within the study area strongly support a scattered population structure for this species we suggest that populations with a high level of genetic diversity still represent the former genetic structure of interconnected populations while populations with low numbers of alleles high f is values and a lack of heterozygosity display the negative effects of reduced interconnectivity a continuous exchange of individuals is necessary to maintain high genetic variability based on these results we draw the general conclusion that more common taxa with originally large population networks and high genetic diversity suffer stronger from sudden habitat fragmentation than highly specialised species with lower genetic diversity which have persisted in isolated patches for long periods of time,2011,0.975
"Predictions of 27 Arctic pelagic seabird distributions using public environmental variables, assessed with colony data: a first digital IPY and GBIF open access synthesis platform",we present a first compilation quantification and summary of 27 seabird species presence data for north of the arctic circle 66 degrees latitude north and the ice free period summer for species names we use several taxonomically valid online databases integrated taxonomic information system itis avibase 4 letter species codes of the american ornithological union aou the british list 2000 taxonomic serial numbers tsns world register of marine species worms and aphia id allowing for a compatible taxonomic species cross walk and subsequent applications e g phylogenies based on the data mining and machine learning randomforest algorithm and 26 environmental publicly available geographic information systems gis layers we built 27 predictive seabird models based on public open access data archives such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif north pacific pelagic seabird database nppsd and pirop database in obis seamap model prediction scenarios using pseudo absence and expert derived absence were run aspatial and spatial model assessment metrics were applied further we used an additional species model performance metric based on the best publicly available arctic seabird colony location datasets compiled by the authors using digital and literature sources the obtained models perform reasonably from poor only a few coastal species with low samples to very high many pelagic species in compliance with data policies of the international polar year ipy and similar initiatives data and models are documented with fgdc nbii metadata and publicly available online for further improvement sustainability applications synergy and intellectual explorations in times of a global biodiversity ocean and arctic crisis,2011,0.774
The seven impediments in invertebrate conservation and how to overcome them,despite their high diversity and importance for humankind invertebrates are often neglected in biodiversity conservation policies we identify seven impediments to their effective protection 1 invertebrates and their ecological services are mostly unknown to the general public the public dilemma 2 policymakers and stakeholders are mostly unaware of invertebrate conservation problems the political dilemma 3 basic science on invertebrates is scarce and underfunded the scientific dilemma 4 most species are undescribed the linnean shortfall 5 the distribution of described species is mostly unknown the wallacean shortfall 6 the abundance of species and their changes in space and time are unknown the prestonian shortfall 7 species ways of life and sensitivities to habitat change are largely unknown the hutchinsonian shortfall numerous recent developments in taxonomy inventorying monitoring data compilation statistical analysis and science communication facilitate overcoming these impediments in both policy and practice we suggest as possible solutions for the public dilemma better public information and marketing for the political dilemma red listing legal priority listing and inclusion in environmental impact assessment studies for the scientific dilemma parataxonomy citizen science programs and biodiversity informatics for the linnean shortfall biodiversity surrogacy increased support for taxonomy and advances in taxonomic publications for the wallacean shortfall funding of inventories compilation of data in public repositories and species distribution modeling for the prestonian shortfall standardized protocols for inventorying and monitoring widespread use of analogous protocols and increased support for natural history collections for the hutchinsonian shortfall identifying good indicator taxa and studying extinction rates by indirect evidence,2011,0.702
The significance of shore height in intertidal macrobenthic seagrass ecology and conservation,benthic faunal assemblages of an intertidal seagrass bed were sampled at three shore heights lwn mlw lws at the mouth mid point and head of the steenbok channel in south africa s premier seagrass site the warm temperate knysna estuarine bay garden route national park faunal abundance species richness species diversity and proportion of rare species were relatively uniform along the channel as were faunal abundance species diversity and proportion of rare species down the shore overall species richness per station however was significantly lower at lwn than at either mlw or lws although the distribution of species richness over the shore did not depart from random at one of the three sites overall faunal abundance and those of individual component species were dispersed patchily through the bed the nature of the faunal assemblages present however varied significantly throughout the bed both along the channel at each shore height horizon and down the shore at each site lwn assemblages formed a unit distinct from those at mlw and lws overall the shore height axis accounted for 47 and the along shore axis 28 of total assemblage variation faunal assemblages were randomly structured at each nodal intersection point of the down shore and along shore axes but were significantly non randomly assembled down the shore at each site and along the channel at each shore height horizon except at the lwn level components of total assemblage variance were largest at the smallest scale investigated 1 m higher seagrass horizons are not just progressively more impoverished versions of lower ones and although macrofaunal assemblage composition is heavily influenced by shore height much of the ecological structure of faunal assemblages seems little affected by tidal horizon these findings are discussed in relation to conservation of the vulnerable seagrass nanozostera capensis at knysna a system affected by subsistence exploitation of its intertidal benthic invertebrates,2011,0.951
Species distribution modeling with R Introduction,this document provides an introduction to species distribution modeling with r species distribution modeling sdm is also known under other names including climate envelope modeling habitat modeling and environmental or ecological niche modeling the assumption of sdm is that you can predict the entire or potential spatial distribution of a phenomenon by relating sites of known occurence and perhaps non occurrence with predictor variables known for these sites and for all other sites the common application of this method is to predict species ranges with climate data as predictors,2011,0.612
Quality indicators for passport data in ex situ genebanks,given the increasing importance of data quality for the ex situ conservation and utilization of plant genetic resources pgr an indicator was created that quantifies the level of complete ness of passport data this passport data completeness index pdci uses the presence or absence of data points in the documentation of a genebank accession taking into account the presence or value of other data points for example a wild accession should have a well defined collection site but no variety name any type of accession wild landrace breed ing material or modern variety can attain a maximal score of ten for this index the applica bility of this index was tested on the complete contents of eurisco the european catalogue of ex situ maintained pgr containing over one million records analysis of the pdci of the material in eurisco provided valuable insight in the data quality of european collections the pdci can be used to identify datasets that might need additional attention and improve ment or datasets that need more careful interpretation than others,2011,0.511
The Plecoptera Collection At The Natural History Museum In Oslo,the natural history museum university of oslo nhm houses a very large ethanol collection of norwegian stoneflies about half of this material is sorted and labelled the other half consists of unsorted and largely unidentified samples in addition there are some 5000 high quality microscope slides of nymphal and adult body parts most samples were collected by the late albert lillehammer 1930 1992 in 2010 the collection built by lillehammer has been digitized and georeferenced 4305 specimen based records have been made accessible online through the data portals of artskart a web service of the norwegian biodiversity information centre artsdatabanken and the global biodiversity information facility gbif in order to facilitate access and future use the plecoptera collection at the nhm is described with comments on the less common norwegian species the slide mounted epiprocts of the males of the arctic species nemoura arctica esben petersen 1910 n sahlbergi morton 1896 and n viki lillehammer 1972 are depicted the paper concludes with suggestions for future applications of the nhmâ s stonefly collection,2011,0.648
Fungi and the Anthropocene: Biodiversity discovery in an epoch of loss,â œlet me tell you how little we know of this planet on which we live fungi including rusts molds lichen symbionts microscopic fungiâ estimated number of species known to science 60 000 number of species estimated by experts to actually exist 1 500 000 to students here gathered who are thinking about a career in biologyâ i recommend mycology think of becoming a mycologist if you went into that field you would be dealing with organisms absolutely fundamental to the maintenance of ecosystems â at the end of the day whether we pay attention to the rest of life the unknown and endangered parts of it is going to be an ethical decisionâ as the late john sawhill said â a society is defined not just by what it builds but by what it refuses to destroy â e o wilson transcribed and redacted from his john m prather lecture in biology â œbiodiversity and the future of biologyâ given april 5 2010 at harvard university www hmnh harvard edu lectures classes events 2010 prather lecture series html,2011,0.572
New frogs (Anura: Microhylidae) from the mountains of western Papua New Guinea,i describe two new species of microhylid frogs from the mountains of the central cordillera of western papua new guinea one of these is in the arboreal genus oreophryne the other is in the fossorial genus xenorhina the oreophryne is one of the largest members of the genus and is characterized by a ligamentous connection of the procoracoid to the scapula webbing between the toes fifth toe equal in length to the third and a relatively short leg wide head long and narrow snout and small finger discs the xenorhina species is among the smallest species of the genus and is distinguished by having a single odontoid spike discs with circum marginal grooves on all toes but the first inflated lores and a relatively long leg short and broad head and snout and features of color pattern the oreophryne is known from two localities approximately 30 km apart and the xenorhina is known only from its type locality both occur in the high mountains of western province papua new guinea,2011,0.682
Predicting potential distribution of the jaguar (Panthera onca) in Mexico: identification of priority areas for conservation,aim the jaguar panthera onca is a species of global conservation concern in mexico the northernmost part of its distribution range its conservation status is particularly critical while its potential and actual distribution is poorly known we propose an ensemble model em of the potential distribution for the jaguar in mexico and identify the priority areas for conservation location mexico methods we generated our em based on three presence only methods ecological niche factor analysis mahalanobis distance maxent and considering environmental biological and anthropogenic factors we used this model to evaluate the efficacy of the existing mexican protected areas pas to evaluate the adequacy of the jaguar conservation units jcus and to propose new areas that should be considered for conservation and management of the species in mexico results our results outline that 16 of mexico c 312 000 km2 can be considered as suitable for the presence of the jaguar furthermore 13 of the suitable areas are included in existing pas and 14 are included in jcus sanderson et al 2002 main conclusions clearly much more should be carried out to establish a proactive conservation strategy based on our results we propose here new jaguar conservation and management areas that are important for a nationwide conservation blueprint,2011,0.416
Red-listed plants in semi-natural landscapes,forest regrowth in rural districts of norway is currently leading to extensive landscape changes we aim to quantify and understand the future impact of outfield forest regrowth following land use abandonment on red listed vascular plant species which are supposedly threatened by regrowth in norway i e species classified to habitats within the semi natural landscape vascular plant species were defined by the norwegian red list and presence data was downloaded from the norwegian gbif node artskart a newly developed spatially explicit model of deforested semi natural heaths and meadows in norway was used to evaluate the vulnerability of red listed plants to future forest regrowth the results show that some red listed species may be greatly affected since they have most of their known populations within the modelled areas of future forest regrowth the study also revealed that there are many methodological challenges in using museum databases for hypothesis testing however the use of such databases was clearly hypothesis generating giving us many ideas for future studies,2011,0.573
Communication gaps in knowledge of freshwater fish biodiversity: implications for the management and conservation of Mexican biosphere reserves,to detect differences in the information available on freshwater fish species found in mexican biosphere reserves the number of species considered in three sources of information management programmes global biodiversity information facility gbif and the scientific literature were compared additionally management actions for the reserves were evaluated more than 55 of freshwater fish species registered for the reserves were found only in one of the three sources of information while just 12 was shared among all the three fifteen threatened species were registered in gbif and the scientific literature that were not found in management programmes although all the management programmes described conservation actions none of them gave details about how they would be implemented lack of communication among the sources studied unawareness of the existence of threatened species and the absence of detailed management actions hinder the development of adequate conservation strategies,2011,0.884
Investigating diversity dependence of tropical forest litter decomposition: experiments and observations from Central Africa,questions mixed litter may decompose at different rates to single species litter leading to differences in ecosystem functioning and decomposition studies of the effects of different litter species and combinations are rare in tropical forests and absent from african forests therefore we investigated 1 are there differences in litter decomposition in two forest types differing in tree diversity and 2 is litter decomposition diversity dependent location old growth moist evergreen tropical forest dja faunal reserve southeast cameroon methods we calculate decomposition rates leaf litter fall leaf litter standing crop along a tree diversity gradient in two forest types naturally occurring low diversity monodominant and adjacent higher diversity mixed forest both forests experience the same climate on the same soil type the former is dominated by a single species gilbertiodendron dewevrei de wild j lã onard probably due to lack of a long term disturbance and has similar edaphic factors decomposition experiments were conducted in both forest types using single and mixed species litter bags of standard high quality bay leaves laurus nobilis l and low quality g dewevrei litter over 9 months results the estimated decomposition rate in mixed forest was four times faster than in monodominant forest and not significantly correlated with local quadrat scale tree species diversity the litter bag experiment showed that decomposition of high quality leaves was faster than low quality leaves k values 2 0 yr∠1 vs 0 6 yr∠1 decay rates for each single species litter type were not significantly different in both forest types however g dewevrei litter in mixed bags decomposed faster than in single species bags in mixed forest suggesting an impact of litter mixing on decomposition in addition bay litter in mixed bags decomposed faster in mixed than in monodominant forests across the three study sites conclusion the observed difference in litter decomposition rate between low diversity monodominant and adjacent high diversity forest is more likely due to dominance of low quality g dewevrei litter rather than low diversity of the litter itself,2011,0.871
Distribución geográfica y patrones de movimiento de la monterita canela (Poospiza ornata) y el yal carbonero (Phrygilus carbonarius) en Argentina,to estab lish the geographic distribution of a species it is necessary to ascertain the places where the species is likely to occur however it requires verifying whether its populations are sedentary migratory transient or casual in this study we analyze the geographic distribution of two endemic emberizids in argentina the cinnamon warbling finch poospiza ornata and the carbonated sierra finch phrygilus carbona rius to study the residence status of the populations and movement patterns of these species we com bine geographic information about the occurrence of the species with local information about abundance and mark recapture studies in the central monte desert analysis at biogeographic scale showed that both species mainly occur in arid and semi arid environments of argentina the cinnamon warbling finch shows movements that correspond to short distance migration in contrast movement patterns of the carbonated sierra finch are not so clear because the species is always present in its central distri butional range at local scale in the central monte desert seasonal changes in abundance were consis tent with the observed patterns in the geographic distribution and movement of both species banding of birds also showed that these species are highly mobile at least in this region local results are consis tent with the hypotheses that the cinnamon warbling finch is a nomadic species in its breeding range while the carbonated sierra finch exhibits temporal changes in the boundary of its southern breeding range the combined analysis at different spatial scales allowed us to describe the movement patterns of cinnamon warbling finch and carbonated sierra finch also it highlights the importance of having an accurate description of the seasonal geographic distribution of birds,2011,0.982
"Understanding the Visitation Aspect of Black-headed Gull (Larus ridibundus) in the Long Period at Nakdong Estuary, Busan, Republic of Korea",this study analyzes data in the first half of 1990 may 1989 april 1993 and mid 2000 may 2002 april 2006 to understand long term status of black headed gulls larus ridibundus in the estuary of the nakdong river under rapid changes during the period may 1989 april 1993 and may 2002 april 2003 for a total of 8 years a total of 201 519 individuals of laridae were discovered at the estuary and the number of the black headed gulls larus ridibundus was 32 538 16 15 monthly average of the black headed gulls showed that there were just a small number of individuals arrived in july and august but the number increased from september reached the highest in april for the first term 1989 1993 the second term showed that some individuals were discovered in summer june august then the number increased from october and reached the peak in april monthly average in the latter period marked 5 7 times higher than that of the former in the aspect of individuals there is a significant difference between the two period p 0 05 and it is discovered that the number of individuals in 2000s mean 6923 50 was higher than that of 1990s mean 1211 00 comparing individuals of gulls herring gulls larus argentatus and black headed gulls for 8 years it was found out that the herring gulls larus argentatus showed the largest number average 5313 13 followed by the black headed gulls average 4067 25 and gulls average 1207 63 the fluctuation on individuals of black headed gulls in the mid 2000s may 2005 april 2006 recorded the average number of 472 75 then 113 50 in dmd 244 00 in jj and sjd 635 25 in sj and dy 727 50 in lud and 643 50 in usd showing significant differences among regions p 0 05,2011,0.34
The DNA Bank Network: The Start from a German Initiative,the explicit aim of the dna bank network is to close the divide between biological specimen collections and molecular sequence databases it provides a technically optimized dna and tissue collection service facility in the interest of all biological research with access to well documented dna containing samples and voucher specimens as well as to correspondingmolecular data stored in public sequence databases the network enables scientists to i query and order dna samples of organisms collected from natural habitats via a shared web portal ii store dna samples for reference under optimal conditions after project completion or data publi cation iii obtain dna material to conduct new studies or to extend and complement previous investigations and iv support good scientific practice as the deposition of dna samples and related specimens facilitates the verification of published results introduction for scientific purposes covering the full div,2011,0.57
Conhecendo o HTLV e suas implicações no atendimento odontológico,getting to know htlv and their implications during dental care the human t lymphotropic viruses represent a group of retroviruses that possess tropism for t lymphocytes and are transmitted parenterally vertically and sexually four types have been identified 1 2 3 and 4 type 1 has been most frequently associated with disease in infected individuals it is estimated that 15 to 20 million people are affected by human t lymphotropic virus type 1 in brazil the virus is endemic presenting the greatest absolute number of cases in the world and included in blood bank screening tests the main diseases associated with human t lymphotropic virus type 1 are adult t cell leukemia lymphoma and tropical spastic paraparesis the only oral manifestation associated with human t lymphotropic virus is adult t cell lymphoma some authors believe it is possible for some patients with tropical spastic paraparesis to also present virus related sjã grenâ s syndrome since human t lymphotropic virus is contagious and potentially oncogenic it demands attention from the dental surgeon not only for dental management but also for diagnosing associated diseases,2011,0.868
Interlinking journal and wiki publications through joint citation: Working examples from ZooKeys and Plazi on Species-ID.,scholarly publishing and citation practices have developed largely in the absence of versioned documents the digital age requires new practices to combine the old and the new we describe how the original published source and a versioned wiki page based on it can be reconciled and combined into a single citation reference we illustrate the citation mechanism by way of practical examples focusing on journal and wiki publishing of taxon treatments specifically we discuss mechanisms for permanent cross linking between the static original publication and the dynamic versioned wiki as well as for automated export of journal content to the wiki to reduce the workload on authors for combining the journal and the wiki citation and for integrating it with the attribution of wiki contributors,2011,0.165
Biology Needs a Modern Assessment System for Professional Productivity,stimulated in large part by the advent of the internet research productivity in many academic disciplines has changed dramatically over the last two decades however the assessment system that governs professional success has not kept pace creating a mismatch between modes of scholarly productivity and academic assessment criteria in this article we describe the problem and present ideas for solutions we argue that adjusting â assessment criteria to correspond to modern scholarly productivity is essential for the success of individual scientists and of our discipline as a whole the authors and endorsers of this article commit to a number of actions that constitute steps toward ensuring that all forms of scholarly productivity are credited the emphasis here is on systematic biology but we are not alone in experiencing this mismatch between productivity and assessment an additional goal in this article is to begin a conversation about the problem with colleagues in other subdisciplines of biology,2011,0.062
Bycatch governance and best practice mitigation technology in global tuna fisheries,overexploitation of bycatch and target species in marine capture fisheries is the most widespread and direct driver of change and loss of global marine biodiversity bycatch in purse seine and pelagic longline tuna fisheries the two primary gear types for catching tunas is a primary mortality source of some populations of seabirds sea turtles marine mammals and sharks bycatch of juvenile tunas and unmarketable species and sizes of other fish in purse seine fisheries and juvenile swordfish in longline fisheries contributes to the overexploitation of some stocks and is an allocation issue there has been substantial progress in identifying gear technology solutions to seabird and sea turtle bycatch on longlines and to direct dolphin mortality in purse seines given sufficient investment gear technology solutions are probably feasible for the remaining bycatch problems more comprehensive consideration across species groups is needed to identify conflicts as well as mutual benefits from mitigation methods fishery specific bycatch assessments are necessary to determine the efficacy economic viability practicality and safety of alternative mitigation methods while support for gear technology research and development has generally been strong political will to achieve broad uptake of best practices has been lacking the five regional fisheries management organizations have achieved mixed progress mitigating bycatch large gaps remain in both knowledge of ecological risks and governance of bycatch most binding conservation and management measures fall short of gear technology best practice a lack of performance standards in combination with an inadequate observer coverage for all but large pacific purse seiners and incomplete data collection hinders assessing measures efficacy compliance is probably low due to inadequate surveillance and enforcement illegal unreported and unregulated tuna fishing hampers governance efforts replacing consensus based decision making and eliminating opt out provisions would help instituting rights based management measures could elicit improved bycatch mitigation practices while gradual improvements in an international governance of bycatch can be expected market based mechanisms including retailers and their suppliers working with fisheries to gradually improve practices and governance promise to be expeditious and effective,2011,0.243
The Governmentality of Biodiversity in the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy,in recent years the global loss of biodiversity has been an increasing con cern for many governments around the planet solving this problem requires working together and reforming existing policy frameworks this paper explores how biodiver sity is governed under the euâ s common fisheries policy drawing upon foucaultâ s governmentality concept the paper advances its own concept â œgovernmentality of biodi versityâ the author identifies three overall arguments for preserving biodiversity that take their basis in self centered values de centered values or intrinsic values the author analyzes and determines how the governmentality of biodiversity on the basis of the knowledge and rationality embedded in de centered and intrinsic values promotes new goals for governing the common fisheries policy it is concluded that in the differ ent mechanisms of power the governmentality of biodiversity yields to the rationality of power exercised by member states in the eu,2011,0.092
“Unknown Unknowns” and the Retrieval Problem in Language Documentation and Archiving,â œ t here are known knowns there are things we know we know we also know there are known unknowns that is to say we know there are some things we do not know but there are also unknown unknownsâ the ones we donâ t know we donâ t know â â donald rumsfeld feb 12 2002 â œhe who knows not and knows that he knows not can be taught teach him â â anonymous quoted in maurus 1987 one of the major motivations driving the field of documentary linguistics is the need to create a lasting record of language that can be re used by both speakers and linguists however the mere act of language documentation does not guarantee that the products of documentation are accessible this retrieval problem can result in a false belief that a language has been adequately documentedâ what i refer to as an unknown unknown this paper illustrates unknown unknowns with examples drawn from the field of place names documentation touching briefly on unknown unknowns in other areas of language documentation the paper concludes with some suggestions as to how to mitigate against the retrieval problem,2011,0.097
Plant sciences and the Italian National Biodiversity Network,several national and global initiatives aim to increase access to biodiversity information worldwide the italian national biodiversity network started in the framework of the project â â sistema ambiente 2010â â will organise and manage biodiversity data hosted by museums universities and research centres in italy in order to make them widely available on the web,2011,0.314
Utilización didáctica del patrimonio histórico del Instituto-Escuela de Madrid,the heritage of historical secondary schools recovered after a laborious process of sorting cataloging and preservation is a great source of documentation for the history of education the heritage artifacts tell about a certain way of teaching and learning and are of great interest to researchers and to schools themselves they are used for research by teachers and students so that nowadays teachers can refl ect on their teaching practice in the classroom compared to what was done in the past and students may start out in research work this is how we have interpreted it in the isabel la catã lica secondary school when considering a didactic use of the heritage of the instituto escuela secciã n retiro preserved in our school,2011,0.323
Beta,beet is classified taxonomically as dicotyledoneae caryophyllidae centrospermae amarantheaceae formerly chenopodiaceae beta vulgaris l linneaus recognized one wild and two cultivated types table and foliage which have been domesticated since the earliest beginnings of agriculture ford lloyd and williams 1975 the genus beta comprises four sections and 12 well defined species beta formerly vulgares corollinae procumbentes formerly patellares and nanae represented by a single species endemic to greece with the exception of section beta species of other sections have a more limited geographic distribution and are found on european islands of the atlantic ocean and coastal and inland locations from greece to iran ford lloyd and williams 1975 de bock 1986 the wild taxa within the genus beta are an important genetic resource for disease resistance breeding of cultivated beet in particular b vulgaris subsp maritima the closest wild relative this subspecies is common along the mediterranean coastline and the central and northern atlantic coasts of europe and to a lesser extent inland dissemination of its seed may often be by ocean currents because the fruit is buoyant and most extant wild populations are found within 10 m of mean sea level doney et al 1990 fievet et al 2007,2011,0.948
Naturtypekartlegging i vereområder på Saltfjellet 2010,biofokus rapport 2011 8,2011,0.354
Bishop Gunnerus as naturalist: his impact on biodiversity research today,bishop gunnerus started his work as naturalist as soon as he arrived in trondheim in a pastoral letter to his clergymen he instructed them to collect specimens and information on natural history in their parishes gunnerus was a pioneer in natural history among his contemporaries his description of species especially of animals either they were new to science or not held a high scientific standard and contained detailed information on anatomy and morphological characteristics in addition his publications were furnished with high quality illustrations the publications have shown to be important as reference works and primary sources our publication enumerates for the first time that the original material from gunnerusâ collection contains botanical and zoological type specimens in addition the collection contains specimens that are potential types or at least are topotypic specimens,2011,0.606
Towards mainstreaming of biodiversity data publishing: recommendations of the GBIF Data Publishing Framework Task Group,background data are the evidentiary basis for scientific hypotheses analyses and publication for policy formation and for decision making they are essential to the evaluation and testing of results by peer scientists both present and future there is broad consensus in the scientific and conservation communities that data should be freely openly available in a sustained persistent and secure way and thus standards for â freeâ and â openâ access to data have become well developed in recent years the question of effective access to data remains highly problematic discussion specifically with respect to scientific publishing the ability to critically evaluate a published scientific hypothesis or scientific report is contingent on the examination analysis evaluation and if feasible on the re generation of data on which conclusions are based it is not coincidental that in the recent â climategateâ controversies the quality and integrity of data and their analytical treatment were central to the debate there is recent evidence that even when scientific data are requested for evaluation they may not be available the history of dissemination of scientific results has been marked by paradigm shifts driven by the emergence of new technologies in recent decades the advance of computer based technology linked to global communications networks has created the potential for broader and more consistent dissemination of scientific information and data yet in this digital era scientists and conservationists organizations and institutions have often been slow to make data available community studies suggest that the withholding of data can be attributed to a lack of awareness to a lack of technical capacity to concerns that data should be withheld for reasons of perceived personal or organizational self interest or to lack of adequate mechanisms for attribution conclusions there is a clear need for institutionalization of a â data publishing frameworkâ that can address sociocultural technical infrastructural policy political and legal constraints as well as addressing issues of sustainability and financial support to address these aspects of a data publishing framework a systematic standard approach to the formal definition and public disclosure of data in the context of biodiversity data the global biodiversity information facility gbif the single inter governmental body most clearly mandated to undertake such an effort convened a data publishing framework task group we conceive this data publishing framework as an environment conducive to ensure free and open access to worldâ s biodiversity data here we present the recommendations of that task group which are intended to encourage free and open access to the worldsâ biodiversity data,2011,0.022
Modelling range shifts and assessing genetic diversity distribution of the montane aquatic mayfly Ameletus inopinatus in Europe under climate change scenarios,genetic diversity is one of the most important criteria to identify unique populations for conservation purposes in this study we analyze the genetic population structure of the endangered montane mayfly ameletus inopinatus in its european range the species is restricted to unpolluted cold water streams and exhibits an insular distribution across highlands of central europe and a more continuous distribution across fennoscandia and northern euro siberia we genotyped 389 individuals from 31 populations for eight highly polymorphic microsatellite loci to investigate genetic diversity and population structure within and among european mountain ranges genetic diversity of a inopinatus decreases along an eastâ west gradient in central europe and along a northâ south gradient in fennoscandia respectively centres of exceptionally high genetic diversity are located in the eastern alps andertal moor austria the high tatra the beskides the sudety mountains and the eastern german highlands species distribution modelling for 2080 projects major regional habitat loss particularly in central europe mountain ranges by relating these range shifts to our population genetic results we identify conservation units primarily in eastern europe that if preserved would maintain high levels of the present day genetic diversity and continue to provide long term suitable habitat under future climate warming scenarios,2011,0.689
"A new Janulus species (Gastropoda, Pulmonata, Gastrodontidae) from the Zanclean (early Pliocene) of Tuscany (central Italy)",janulus spadinii n sp gastropoda pulmonata gastrodontidae is described herein from the zanclean early pliocene of balze di caspreno tuscany it belongs to a macaronesian genus occasionally reported from the tertiary of europe the new species is very similar to the recent madeiran janulus stephanophorus by virtue of its shape dorsal sculpture and radial rows of palatal teeth it is also apparently similar to some fossil european species however due to insufficient information regarding the latter no well supported distinction may be proposed at present a brief survey of all the nominal taxa of the species group assigned to janulus is also provided,2011,0.712
Beyond 2010 : Strategies for understanding and responding to long- term trends in UK biodiversity,report of the conference beyond 2010 strategies for understanding and responding to long term trends in uk biodiversity london 16 17 november 2010 includes summaries of the presentations and workshop discussion sessions and an overview of key points arising from the conference,2011,0.354
"Top-bioclimate conditions associated with the natural occurrence of two Amazonian tree species for sustainable reforestation in the State of Para, Brazil",the plantsâ answer to the top bioclimate conditions is important for mapping occurrences and indications of preferential areas for the development of the forest species this study aimed to georeference the natural occurrence of taxibranco sclerolobium paniculatum vogel and parica schizolobium parahyba var amazonicum huber ex ducke barneby integrated with top bioclimate information to indicate plantations for rehabilitation of degraded landscape the data regarding natural occurrence of species was investigated in the literature the herbaria of embrapa eastern amazon and the paraense emilio goeldi museum and demonstrative units in the eastern amazon normal climates from thirty year series with spatial resolution 3 km x 3 km were specialized in arcgis 9 3 and exported to terraview 3 2 to create the cellular space for integration of variables in terrame and to generate top climate maps and speciesâ natural occurrence as the taxi branco occurs in upland and lowland it was observed that the species prefers areas of predominantly top bioclimate with water deficit between 150 to 250 mm and elevations below 200 m altitude next to the river and the parica in about 300 m altitude and water deficit below 180 mm the knowledge of these zones should enhance the degree of confidence on the areas,2011,0.51
Assessing conservation values: biodiversity and endemicity in tropical land use systems.,despite an increasing amount of data on the effects of tropical land use on continental forest fauna and flora it is debatable whether the choice of the indicator variables allows for a proper evaluation of the role of modified habitats in mitigating the global biodiversity crisis while many single taxon studies have highlighted that species with narrow geographic ranges especially suffer from habitat modification there is no multi taxa study available which consistently focuses on geographic range composition of the studied indicator groups we compiled geographic range data for 180 bird 119 butterfly 204 tree and 219 understorey plant species sampled along a gradient of habitat modification ranging from near primary forest through young secondary forest and agroforestry systems to annual crops in the southwestern lowlands of cameroon we found very similar patterns of declining species richness with increasing habitat modification between taxon specific groups of similar geographic range categories at the 8 km 2 spatial level estimated richness of endemic species declined in all groups by 21 birds to 91 trees from forests to annual crops while estimated richness of widespread species increased by 101 trees to 275 understorey plants or remained stable 2 butterflies even traditional agroforestry systems lost estimated endemic species richness by 18 birds to 90 understorey plants endemic species richness of one taxon explained between 37 and 57 of others positive correlations and taxon specific richness in widespread species explained up to 76 of variation in richness of endemic species negative correlations the key implication of this study is that the range size aspect is fundamental in assessments of conservation value via species inventory data from modified habitats the study also suggests that even ecologically friendly agricultural matrices may be of much lower value for tropical conservation than indicated by mere biodiversity value,2011,0.949
Rethinking the links between systematic studies and ex situ living collections as a contribution to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation,the musã um national dâ histoire naturelle mnhn in paris holds ca 70 million specimens the collections were in need of a strategy to ensure their long term conservation we discuss how the department of botanical and zoological gardens djbz tropical living collections and the department of systematics and evolution dse herbarium contribute to achieving gspcâ s target 1 â a widely accessible working list of known plant species as a step towards a complete world floraâ the djbz started encouraging better management of the collections evolving towards focused reference collections where all specimens have well documented collection data the objective is to link all collections to a scientific referee this has already been achieved for a number of taxa the herbarium of the dse acronym p is among the worldâ s largest 11 million specimens including 400 000 types the collectionâ s heterogeneity impedes access to its data since p is a mix of recent well documented collections and historical collections at various curational levels p is currently under renovation which started by mounting all ca 2 million unmounted specimens the project also includes databasing and imaging of every specimen the database now holds around 1 000 000 records for taxonomic studies living collections are crucial especially for plants that are not easily preserved as herbarium specimens living collections also enable studies impossible to forecast at the time of collecting herbaria and living collections should therefore be conceived as interoperable entities requiring common scientific curation through a combination of its assets and the expertise of its researchers the mnhn is well prepared to tackle the new objectives of the gspc beyond 2010,2011,0.366
Absence of mammals and the evolution of New Zealand grasses,anthropogenic alteration of biotic distributions and disturbance regimes has dramatically changed the evolutionary context for the differentiation of species traits some of the most striking examples in recent centuries have been on islands where flightless birds which evolved in the absence of mammalian carnivores have been decimated following the widespread introduction of exotic predators until now no equivalent case has been reported for plants here we make use of robust analytical tools and an exceptionally well sampled molecular phylogeny to show that a majority of new zealand danthonioid grasses poaceae may have adapted to the relaxed vertebrate herbivore pressure during the late cenozoic through the development of a distinctive and unusual habit abscission of old leaves this feature occurs in only about 3 per cent of the world s roughly 11 000 grass species and has been empirically shown to increase plant productivity but to reduce protection against mammal grazing this result suggests that release from a selective pressure can lead to species radiations this seemingly anachronistic adaptation may represent an overlooked factor contributing to the severe decline in the geographical extent and species diversity of new zealand s indigenous grasslands following the introduction of herbivorous terrestrial mammals in the 19th century,2011,0.555
"Evolution of the climatic niche in scaly tree ferns (Cyatheaceae, Polypodiopsida)",although climatic niche conservatism has been assumed by a large number of studies focused on climatic niche evolution there are examples of climatic niche diversiï cation and adaptation to changing climates in this article we reconstruct a climatic niche of scaly tree ferns cyatheaceae using a rigorous analytical procedure which combines climatic niche modelling with reconstruction of continuous characters given a phylogenetic hypothesis to estimate the limits to climatic niches of species we used climate envelope modelling and ordination ancestral climatic niches of species were reconstructed by maximum likelihood and least squares analyses we observed a trend towards niche conservatism with occasional events of niche transformations in scaly tree ferns we discuss the implications of our study with respect to the potential and limitations for applications of niche modelling to evolutionary studies we suggest that future studies of evolution of climatic niches could be considerably improved by employing approaches enabling reconstruction of continuous response to climatic gradients further progress may also be achieved by exploring models of character evolution other than the brownian motion model,2011,0.299
Identifying and Relating Biological Concepts in the Catalogue of Life,abstract background in this paper we describe our experience of adding globally unique identifiers to the species 2000 and itis catalogue of life an on line index of organisms which is intended ultimately to cover all the world s known species the scientific species names held in the catalogue are names that already play an extensive role as terms in the organisation of information about living organisms in bioinformatics and other domains but the effectiveness of their use is hindered by variation in individuals opinions and understanding of these terms indeed in some cases more than one name will have been used to refer to the same organism this means that it is desirable to be able to give unique labels to each of these differing concepts within the catalogue and to be able to determine which concepts are being used in other systems in order that they can be associated with the concepts in the catalogue not only is this needed but it is also necessary to know the relationships between alternative concepts that scientists might have employed as these determine what can be inferred when data associated with related concepts is being processed a further complication is that the catalogue itself is evolving as scientific opinion changes due to an increasing understanding of life results we describe how we are using life science identifiers lsids as globally unique identifiers in the catalogue of life explaining how the mapping to species concepts is performed how concepts are associated with specific editions of the catalogue and how the taxon concept schema has been adopted in order to express information about concepts and their relationships we explore the implications of using globally unique identifiers in order to refer to abstract concepts such as species which incorporate at least a measure of subjectivity in their definition in contrast with the more traditional use of such identifiers to refer to more tangible entities events documents observations etc conclusions a major reason for adopting identifiers such as lsids is to facilitate data integration we have demonstrated the incorporation of lsids into the catalogue of life in a manner consistent with the biodiversity informatics community s conventions for lsid use the catalogue of life is therefore available as a taxonomy of organisms for use within various disciplines including biomedical research by software written with an awareness of these conventions,2011,0.055
Long-term population declines of Palearctic passerine migrant birds : a signal from the Sahel ?,during the last decade a database on the african distributions of western palearctic migrants has been collated which currently contains just over 250 000 point locality records mostly of passerine migrants http macroecology ku dk resources data resources african migrants research using this database has led to an improved understanding of the migrantsâ distributions especially of threatened species such as the corncrake crex crex the aquatic warbler acrocephalus paludicola the basra reed warbler acrocephalus griseldis the cinereous bunting emberiza cineracea and the ortolan bunting emberiza hortulana as well as the identification of habitat use macroecology and conservation priority areas in this study we used the available point locality records to map the sub saharan distribution of 65 species of passerine migrants using a combination of presence only and presence absence distribution modelling techniques walther et al 2010 combining these distributions with data on the conservation status and population declines of 64 of these 65 species published by birdlife international we found that species which declined during the period 1970â 2000 were concentrated in the sahelian region while species with more stable populations were overwintering all across africa this clear geographical signal then led to a comprehensive literature review of recent climatological biological and ecological changes in the sahelian and more southerly sudanian zone the main conclusions are 1 the 1968â 1997 drought was exceptionally severe 2 year to year climatic variability was very high in the sahel and higher than in the rest of sub saharan africa 3 these climate extremes had unusually strong repercussions on soil erosion above and below ground water levels and natural vegetation especially perennial woody vegetation with some negative effects still apparent to this day despite the recent re greening of the sahel 4 driven by one of the highest human population growth rates in the world agricultural expansion and loss of natural non forest vegetation was higher in the sahelian and sudanian zones than in any other sub saharan region 5 the effects of cattle grazing and wood exploitation may also have been more severe in this region than in other sub saharan regions the implications for migrant birds are that even before the drought beginning in the late 1960s there was a long term trend of humans appropriating more and more natural resources recently accelerated through exponential population growth and more intensive agricultural methods therefore fewer and fewer natural resources are being left for animal populations including migrant birds the recent re greening of the sahel and the parallel improvements in agricultural techniques during the last decade have improved the welfare of human populations but have had no or very little positiveeffect on natural resources utilized by wild animal populations this widespread ecological transformation which was apparently more severe in the sahelian region than in any other sub saharan region may therefore be one of the main long term drivers of the population declines of those migrants which mainly overwinter in these regions and possibly even for bird species which use these regions only for refuelling discussing the results from this and other recent studies we finish by making a few recommendations for future research and conservation work,2011,0.958
"Scratchpads 2.0: a Virtual Research Environment supporting scholarly collaboration, communication and data publication in biodiversity science",the scratchpad virtual research environment http scratchpads eu is a flexible system for people to create their own research networks supporting natural history science here we describe version 2 of the system characterised by the move to drupal 7 as the scratchpad core development framework and timed to coincide with the fifth year of the projectâ s operation in late january 2012 the development of scratchpad 2 reflects a combination of technical enhancements that make the project more sustainable combined with new features intended to make the system more functional and easier to use a roadmap outlining strategic plans for development of the scratchpad project over the next two years concludes this article,2011,0.056
"Cumanensic acid, a new chromene isolated from Piper cf. cumanense Kunth. (Piperaceae)",a new chromene cumanensic acid 1 together with eight known compounds have been isolated from the aerial part of piper cf cumanense kunth piperaceae chromene structure was identified on the basis of spectroscopic analysis and comparison with literature data the compound showed antifungal activity against fusarium oxysporum f sp dianthi and botrytis cinerea,2011,0.462
"Chalimus stages of Caligus latigenitalis (Copepoda:Caligidae) parasitic on blackhead seabream from Japanese waters, with discussion of terminology used for developmental stages of caligids.",the first and third chalimus stages and chalimus adult previously known as young adult of caligus latigenitalis are described based on new material collected from the body surface of a heavily infected wild blackhead seabream acanthopagrus schlegelii schlegelii from hiroshima bay japan the second and fourth chalimus stages of the same species are redescribed adults of c latigenitalis are characterized by possessing 2 stout marginally indented processes at the base of 2 terminal spines at distal exopodal segment of leg 4 the chalimi were identified to stage based on the structure of the frontal filament and the discrete ranges in body length sexual dimorphism is first observed at the third chalimus stage in the shape of the distal segment of the antenna the total number of postnaupliar stages of c latigenitalis is 6 including 4 semaphoronts i e 1 copepodid stage consisting of 1 infective copepodid and the chalimus copepodid 4 chalimus stages and 1 adult stage with 1 chalimus adult and 1 mobile adult new terminology for the developmental stages of caligid copepods is proposed herein by amending the definition of chalimus as the postnaupliar stages as well as semaphoronts having a frontal filament for host attachment,2011,0.898
"As Clusiaceae Lindl. (Guttiferae Juss) s.s., Calophyllaceae J. Agardh e Hypericaceae Juss. no Parque Nacional do Viruá (Roraima) e Biologia Reprodutiva de Clusia sp. (Clusia nitida Bittrich, ined).",the viruã national park pnv is expected to possess a high biodiversity it contains a mosaic of vegetation types and various taxonomic and ecological studies are exploring the previously almost unknown flora this study is a floristic survey of the species of the families clusiaceae s s calophyllaceae and hypericaceae in the pnv and an investigation of the floral biology and visitors and potential pollinators of clusia nitida bittrich ined clusiaceae s s the field work was conducted between november 2009 and january 2011 collections of fertile individuals were made in different vegetation types and collections of clusia nitida were made so that we could establish the flowering phenology and make visual observations and experiments to determine the breeding system and floral visitors of c nitida in the pnv clusiaceae s l is represented by 7 genera and 17 species calophyllum 1 caraipa 2 clusia 6 platonia 1 symphonia 1 tovomita 2 and vismia 4 occurring in all environments of the park six new records are made for roraima and there is the possibility of a new species of vismia which requires more complete fertile material before confirmation we present identification keys taxonomic descriptions photographic illustrations and document the occurrence of species in the pnv and elsewhere thus contributing to the information about the family in amazonia the flowering season of the species is from september to february and the fruit formation is from november to july the sex ratio between staminate and pistillate and staminate individuals is 2 1 respectively the anthesis and floral resin secretion occur first in the staminate flowers and coincides with the beginning of the activities of the floral visitors clusia nitida is a non apomictic species the reproductive success was greater in the hand pollination treatment showing the importance of a vector to carry the pollen from the staminate to the pistillate flower clusia nitida was visited by eight species of bees and the main pollinators were trigona spp taxonomic studies like this and studies of floral biology are very important so that we can reduce the scarcity of basic reliable data in the amazon,2011,0.911
Engaging the broader community in biodiversity research: the concept of the COMBER pilot project for divers in ViBRANT,this paper discusses the design and implementation of a citizen science pilot project comber citizensâ network for the observation of marine biodiversity http www comber hcmr gr which has been initiated under the vibrant eu e infrastructure it is designed and implemented for divers and snorkelers who are interested in participating in marine biodiversity citizen science projects it shows the necessity of engaging the broader community in the marine biodiversity monitoring and research projects networks and initiatives it analyses the stakeholders the industry and the relevant markets involved in diving activities and their potential to sustain these activities the principles including data policy and rewards for the participating divers through their own data upon which this project is based are thoroughly discussed the results of the users analysis and lessons learned so far are presented future plans include promotion links with citizen science web developments data publishing tools and development of new scientific hypotheses to be tested by the data collected so far,2011,0.121
"Bush Blitz aids description of three new species and a new genus of Australian beeflies (Diptera, Bombyliidae, Exoprosopini)",bush blitz is a three year multimillion dollar program to document the plants and animals in hundreds of properties across australiaâ s national reserve system te core focus is on nature discovery â identifying and describing new species of plants and animals te bush blitz program has enabled the collection and description of beeflies diptera bombyliidae from surveys in western australia and queensland tree new species of australian beeflies belonging to the exoprosopini are described palirika mackenziei lambkin sp n palirika culgoafloodplainensis lambkin sp n and larrpana bushblitz lambkin sp n phylogenetic analysis of 40 australian exoprosopine species belonging to the balaana generic group lambkin yeates 2003 supports the placement of the three new species into existing genera and the erection and description of the new genus ngalki lambkin gen n for ngalki trigonium lambkin yeates 2003 comb n revised keys are provided for the genera of the australian balaana genus group and the species of palirika lambkin yeates 2003 and larrpana lambkin yeates 2003 with the description of the three new species and the transferral of munjua trigona lambkin yeates 2003 into the new genus ngalki lambkin gen n three genera are rediagnosed munjua lambkin yeates 2003 palirika and larrpana,2011,0.926
Exploring the determinants of publication of scientific data in open data initiative,this research provides a preliminary analysis of determinants of the likelihood of researchers to publish their research datasets online the data is derived from a preliminary survey conducted as part of the dataone project an international federated data repository of ecological data the survey of 1 329 researchers was conducted by the usability and assessment working group of dataone from october 2009 to july 2010 the analysis of the data is threefold namely visualization of a 2 mode network descriptive statistics and ordered logistic regression the visualization of the affiliated network shows a disconnected access pattern with the majority of researchers accessing one database and only a few connecting or accessing more than one database the results of the survey using descriptive and inferential statistics pointed at two key determinants of publishing research datasets online namely data management and attribution to the datasets owner the importance of data management manifests on two ways the significant of data management skills and organizational support for data management,2011,0.208
Risk assessment for New Zealand mud snail (Potamopyrgus antipodarum) in Canada,non indigenous species continue to be dispersed to new environments the new zealand mud snail potamopyrgus antipodarum was identified in the great lakes in 1991 and more recently identified on the west coast of canada in 2006 this snail possesses many traits making it well suited for invasions including a high reproductive rate and a broad range of environmental tolerances its life history characteristics enhance long distance natural dispersal while further dispersal via a number of human mediated vectors is probable in some systems this small snail reaches extremely high densities and can alter ecosystem services and trophic relationships by grazing primary producers outcompeting native invertebrates and negatively influencing higher trophic levels based on impacts of new zealand mud snail elsewhere and owing to their extensive invasion history in europe and the western united states there is considerable concern about the potential ecological impacts if new zealand mud snail spreads in canada especially to inland freshwater or other coastal ecosystems fisheries and oceans canada conducted a national risk assessment including a peer review workshop during march 2010 to determine the potential risk posed by this non indigenous gastropod to canadian coastal and inland waters this assessment evaluated the probability of arrival survival reproduction and spread and associated potential consequences impacts to determine risk these components were assessed using an expert survey and an expert workshop using the best available information on the biology potential vectors of introduction and impacts in both native and introduced ranges this assessment also incorporated measures of environmental suitability from an ecological niche model and bedrock geology to identify locations with calcium deposits required for shell building the risk assessment based on a widespread invasion concluded that the new zealand mud snail generally posed low risks to most canadian aquatic ecosystems with a moderate risk posed to freshwater biodiversity in most canadian freshwater drainages however at smaller spatial scales the risk posed by this species could be much higher further considerable uncertainty identified for some stages of the invasion cycle highlights the need for additional research especially about potential impacts of this gastropod in canadian ecosystems as this information is critical for potential management,2011,0.211
Predicting suitable environments and potential occurrences for coelacanths (Latimeria spp.),extant coelacanths latimeria chalumnae were first discovered in the western indian ocean in 1938 in 1998 a second species of coelacanth latimeria menadoensis was discovered off the north coast of sulawesi indonesia expanding the known distri bution of the genus across the indian ocean basin this study uses ecological niche modeling techniques to estimate dimensions of realized niches of coelacanths and generate hypotheses for additional sites where they might be found coelacanth occurrence infor mation was integrated with environmental and oceanographic data using the genetic algorithm for rule set production garp and a maximum entropy algorithm maxent resulting models were visualized as maps of relative suitability of sites for coelacanths throughout the indian ocean as well as scatterplots of ecological variables our findings suggest that the range of coelacanths could extend beyond their presently known distri bution and suggests alternative mechanisms for currently observed distributions further investigation into these hypotheses could aid in forming a more complete picture of the distributions and populations of members of genus latimeria which in turn could aid in developing conservation strategies particularly in the case of l menadoensis,2011,0.421
openModeller: a generic approach to species’ potential distribution modelling,speciesâ potential distribution modelling is the process of building a represen tation of the fundamental ecological requirements for a species and extrapolating these requirements into a geographical region the importance of being able to predict the distribution of species is currently highlighted by issues like global climate change public health problems caused by disease vectors anthropogenic impacts that can lead to massive species extinction among other challenges there are several computational approaches that can be used to generate potential distribution models each achieving optimal results under different conditions however the existing software packages available for this purpose typically implement a single algorithm and each software package presents a new learning curve to the user whenever new software is developed for speciesâ potential distribution modelling significant duplication of effort results because many feature requirements are shared between the different packages additionally data preparation and comparison between algorithms becomes difficult when using separate software applica tions since each application has different data input and output capabilities this paper describes a generic approach for building a single computing framework capable of handling different data formats and multiple algorithms that can be used in potential distribution modelling the ideas described in this paper have been implemented in a free and open source software package called openmodeller the main concepts of speciesâ potential distribution modelling are also explained and an example use case illustrates potential distribution maps generated by the framework,2011,0.329
Indicators for the Data Usage Index (DUI): an incentive for publishing primary biodiversity data through global information infrastructure,background a professional recognition mechanism is required to encourage expedited publishing of an adequate volume of â fit for useâ biodiversity data as a component of such a recognition mechanism we propose the development of the data usage index dui to demonstrate to data publishers that their efforts of creating biodiversity datasets have impact by being accessed and used by a wide spectrum of user communities discussion we propose and give examples of a range of 14 absolute and normalized biodiversity dataset usage indicators for the development of a dui based on search events and dataset download instances the dui is proposed to include relative as well as species profile weighted comparative indicators conclusions we believe that in addition to the recognition to the data publisher and all players involved in the data life cycle a dui will also provide much needed yet novel insight into how users use primary biodiversity data a dui consisting of a range of usage indicators obtained from the gbif network and other relevant access points is within reach the usage of biodiversity datasets leads to the development of a family of indicators in line with well known citation based measurements of recognition,2011,0.088
Phytochemicals and reproductive function in wild female Phayre's leaf monkeys (Trachypithecus phayrei crepusculus),female reproduction is known to be influenced by food availability and its impact on energetic status however emerging evidence suggests that the phytochemical content of food may also be an important factor here we investigated this hypothesis presenting 20 months of data on fecal progestin fp patterns in wild female phayre s leaf monkeys trachypithecus phayrei crepusculus we examined whether a the availability of vitex a plant known to contain phytochemicals might be linked to seasonal fp levels b fp levels were associated with female reproductive performance and c reproductive performance might also be linked with energetic status as measured by physical condition we collected fecal samples n 2077 from 10 adult females to analyze estrogen fe and progestin fp metabolites behavioral data from 7 cycling females to determine receptivity and monthly data on vitex availability and female physical condition seasonally elevated fp levels were found in all females with higher levels when vitex leaves and fruits were abundant during the period of high progestins females had longer cycle lengths and follicular phases while receptive periods did not change nevertheless when ovulations occurred females were more likely to conceive on the other hand conceptions were also more likely when physical condition was improving suggesting that the effects of phytochemicals and energetic status on reproduction may be difficult to separate although our results support the predicted effects of vitex on endocrine and reproductive function future studies with detailed feeding data and chemical analyses of plants are needed to confirm this finding,2011,0.4
Complex adaptive systems theory applied to virtual scientific collaborations: The case of DataONE,this study is the exploration of the emergence of dataone a multidisciplinary multinational and multi institutional virtual scientific collaboration to develop a cyberinfrastructure for earth sciences data from the complex adaptive systems perspective data is generated through conducting 15 semi structured interviews observing three 3 day meetings and 51 online surveys the main contribution of this study is the development of a complexity framework and its application to a project such as dataone the findings reveal that dataone behaves like a complex adaptive system various individuals and institutions interacting adapting and coevolving to achieve their own and common goals during the process new structures relationships and products emerge that harmonize with dataoneâ s goals dataone is quite resilient to threats and adaptive to its environment which are important strengths the strength comes from its diversified structure and balanced management style that allows for frequent interaction among members the study also offers insights to pi s managers and funding institutions on how to treat complex systems additional results regarding multidisiplinarity library and information sciences and communication studies are presented as well,2011,0.13
A primer in Phylogenetic Biogeography using the Spatial Analysis of Vicariance,my principal aim in this manual is to present in a compact but i hope complete way the logic and methodology of the spatial analysis of vicariance aje11 but incidentally i want to stress out that biogeography must require a quantified approach so even if the reader does not want to use the spatial analysis of vicariance i hope he she acknowledge at the end the importance of providing an explicit methodogy on how the biogeographic analysis was done,2011,0.337
On the utility of identification schemes for digital earth science data: an assessment and recommendations,in recent years a number of data identification technologies have been developed which purport to permanently identify digital objects in this paper nine technologies and systems for assigning persistent identifiers are assessed for their applicability to earth science data arks dois xris handles lsids oids purls uris urns urls and uuids the evaluation used four use cases that focused on the suitability of each scheme to provide unique identifiers for earth science data objects to provide unique locators for the objects to serve as citable locators and to uniquely identify the scientific contents of data objects if the data were reformatted of all the identifier schemes assessed the one that most closely meets all of the requirements for an unique identifier is the uuid scheme any of the url uri iri based identifier schemes assessed could be used for unique locators since there are currently no strong market leaders to help make the choice among them the decision must be based on secondary criteria while most publications now allow the use of urls in citations so that all of the url uri iri based identification schemes discussed in this paper could potentially be used as a citable locator dois are the identification scheme currently adopted by most commercial publishers none of the identifier schemes assessed here even minimally address identification of scientifically identical numerical data sets under reformatting,2011,0.018
Limits to range expansion in the native annual legume Chamaecrista fasciculata,species range limits are determined by historical e g range expansion ecological e g biotic interactions and genetic e g gene flow processes but comprehensively understanding the relative role of these processes in limiting any single speciesâ ÿ range has been elusive this research is timely for understanding speciesâ ÿ responses to climate change the goal of this research was to examine the processes that limit the range of the native annual legume chamaecrista fasciculata by integrating ecological genetic field studies and population genetic laboratory studies in chapter 1 i investigate the extent to which c fasciculata is in demographic range edge equilibrium at its western and northern range edges and the effect of biotic interactions at these range edges i find that c fasciculata fitness is reduced to zero when planted beyond the western and northern range limits indicating it is in equilibrium with its range neighbors increase early season survival but decrease seedpod production the goal of chapter 2 was to examine if the mutualism between c fasciculata and its associated rhizobia was disrupted beyond the range edge potentially limiting range expansion the results demonstrate that compatible rhizobia are nearly absent beyond both range edges which may limit range expansion in chapter 3 i ask how the habitat where c fasciculata establishes may change with range shifts i conclude that habitat type influences c fasciculata fitness but the outcome depends on both the substrate and competitive environments finally in chapter 4 i use population genetic methods to gain insight into the history of range expansion population structure and gene flow population genetics indicate that the edge populations have reduced genetic diversity compared to the southernmost interior population and are highly differentiated from each other however there is little evidence for contemporary gene flow between populations at the scale investigated overall this work suggests that ecological genetic or metapopulation dynamics are likely to be involved in setting the northern and western range limits further it highlights the value of integrated approaches to studying speciesâ ÿ range limits,2011,0.453
"A Survey of the Yale Peabody Museum Collection of Egyptian Mammals Collected during Construction of the Aswan High Dam, with an Emphasis on Material from the 1962–1965 Yale University Prehistoric Expedition to Nubia",zoological collections housing egyptian specimens that pre date the construction of the aswan high dam are of unique historical importance before the construction of the high aswan dam yale university organized three archeological salvage expeditions between 1962 and 1965 to the nile river valley south of aswan as part of an international unesco organized salvage mission although the focus of these expeditions was the recovery of archeological artifacts team leaders also included collection of zoological specimens in their operations these efforts resulted in the collection of 448 species spanning 16 families of egyptian mammals that were subsequently deposited in the yale peabody museum of natural history our re survey of these collections revealed that almost two thirds had been misidentified or only identified to â œorderâ level taxonomic ranks many of the specimens collected were from sites now submerged beneath lake nasser and so provide a unique temporal snapshot of a region whose biodiversity was significantly restructured by human engineering our inventory identified several specimens now threatened with extinction or already extinct in egypt and also significantly expands the contemporary range of larger rat tailed bats rhinopoma microphyllum,2011,0.48
"Monophyllidin, a new alkaloid L-proline derivative from Zanthoxylum monophyllum",a new l proline derivative monophyllidin 1 together with four known compounds thalifoline 2 berberine 3 jathrorrhizine 4 and 3î glucositosterol 5 has been isolated from the bark of zanthoxylum monophyllum the structure of compound 1 was elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic data analysis characterization of compounds 2 5 was based on spectral analysis and comparison with reported data compound 3 showed antibacterial activity against the five bacterial strains used while 1 4 and 5 presented only antibacterial activity against enterococcus faecalis compounds 2 and 4 showed antifungal activity with 100 î g against fusarium oxysporum f sp lycopersici â 2010 phytochemical society of europe,2011,0.383
Forgotten forests - issues and prospects in biome mapping using Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests as a case study,background south america is one of the most species diverse continents in the world within south america diversity is not distributed evenly at both local and continental scales and this has led to the recognition of various areas with unique species assemblages several schemes currently exist which divide the continental level diversity into large species assemblages referred to as biomes here we review five currently available biome maps for south america including the wwf ecoregions the americas basemap the land cover map of south america morroneâ s biogeographic regions of latin america and the ecological systems map the comparison is performed through a case study on the seasonally dry tropical forest sdtf biome using herbarium data of habitat specialist species results current biome maps of south america perform poorly in depicting sdtf distribution the poor performance of the maps can be attributed to two main factors 1 poor spatial resolution and 2 poor biome delimitation poor spatial resolution strongly limits the use of some of the maps in gis applications especially for areas with heterogeneous landscape such as the andes whilst the land cover map did not suffer from poor spatial resolution it showed poor delimitation of biomes the results highlight that delimiting structurally heterogeneous vegetation is difficult based on remote sensed data alone a new refined working map of south american sdtf biome is proposed derived using the biome distribution modelling bdm approach where georeferenced herbarium data is used in conjunction with bioclimatic data conclusions georeferenced specimen data play potentially an important role in biome mapping our study shows that herbarium data could be used as a way of ground truthing biome maps in silico the results also illustrate that herbarium data can be used to model vegetation maps through predictive modelling the bdm approach is a promising new method in biome mapping and could be particularly useful for mapping poorly known fragmented or degraded vegetation we wish to highlight that biome delimitation is not an exact science and that transparency is needed on how biomes are used as study units in macroevolutionary and ecological research,2011,0.164
Insights from Population Genetics: Are all Crustaceans Created Equal?,reanalysis of aligned sequence data from the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase i gene region across crustacea has generated a number of new insights into how we can interpret genetic variation in these species some insights such as the relationship between genetic diversity and the latitudinal biodiversity gradient have been predicted in earlier studies other patterns â such as the bias toward more â rareâ allelic variants than expected under null models â across the 255 data sets analyzed here suggest that a more nuanced understanding of molecular evolution is necessary for interpreting the phylogeography and population biology of species in this group,2011,0.609
Modelos de distribución de especies: Una revisión sintética,species distributions models a synthetic revision in the last years a new tool has become widely used in ecological studies species distribution models these models analyze the spatial patterns of presence of organisms objectively by means of statistical and cartographic procedures based on real data they infer the presence of potentially suitable areas according to their environmental characteristics data stored in natural history collections can be used for this purpose which gives new opportunities to use to these types of data the models have evolved from the analysis of single species to the study of hundreds or thousands of taxa which are combined for the assessment of biodiversity and species richness in this paper we review the variety of methods used their potential and weaknesses and the limiting factors that influence the interpretation of species distribution models,2011,0.744
Supporting Red List threat assessments with GeoCAT: geospatial conservation assessment tool,geocat is an open source browser based tool that performs rapid geospatial analysis to ease the process of red listing taxa developed to utilise spatially referenced primary occurrence data the analysis focuses on two aspects of the geographic range of a taxon the extent of occurrence eoo and the area of occupancy aoo these metrics form part of the iucn red list categories and criteria and have often proved challenging to obtain in an accurate consistent and repeatable way within a familiar google maps environment geocat users can quickly and easily combine data from multiple sources such as gbif flickr and scratchpads as well as user generated occurrence data analysis is done with the click of a button and is visualised instantly providing an indication of the red list threat rating subject to meeting the full requirements of the criteria outputs including the results data and parameters used for analysis are stored in a geocat file that can be easily reloaded or shared with collaborators geocat is a first step toward automating the data handling process of red list assessing and provides a valuable hub from which further developments and enhancements can be spawned,2011,0.274
Federated or cached searches: Providing expected performance from multiple invasive species databases,invasive species are a universal global problem but the information to identify them manage them and prevent invasions is stored around the globe in a variety of formats the global invasive species information network is a consortium of organizations working toward providing seamless access to these disparate databases via the internet a distributed network of databases can be created using the internet and a standard web service protocol there are two options to provide this integration first federated searches are being proposed to allow users to search deep web documents such as databases for invasive species a second method is to create a cache of data from the databases for searching we compare these two methods and show that federated searches will not provide the performance and flexibility required from users and a central cache of the datum are required to improve performance,2011,0.321
Geospatial tools address emerging issues in spatial ecology: a review and commentary on the Special Issue,spatial ecology focuses on the role of space and time in ecological processes and events from a local to a global scale and is particularly relevant in developing environmental policy and mandated monitoring goals in other words spatial ecology is where geography and ecology intersect and high quality geospatial data and analysis tools are required to address emerging issues in spatial ecology in this commentary and review for the international journal of gis special issue on spatial ecology we highlight selected current research priorities in spatial ecology and describe geospatial data and methods for addressing these tasks geoinformation research themes are identified in population ecology community and landscape ecology and ecosystem ecology and these themes are further linked to the assessment of ecosystem services methods in spatial ecology benefit from explicit consideration of spatial autocorrelation and applications discussed in this review include species distribution modeling remote sensing of community and ecosystem properties and models of climate change the linkages of the special issue papers to these emerging issues are described,2011,0.047
The Biology of Canadian Weeds. 149. Rumex acetosella L.,rumex acetosella l sheep sorrel is a perennial herb originating from europe and southwestern asia now found in at least 70 countries worldwide a common weed it appears in grasslands pastures rangelands waste areas and along roadsides across north america it frequently occurs as a weed in lowbush blueberry fields in atlantic canada particularly in nova scotia rumex acetosella thrives on poor acidic and disturbed soils across a broad range of climatic conditions a persistent seed bank and vegetative reproduction from creeping roots contribute to the ability of r acetosella to tolerate various methods of control including certain herbicides fire and tillage tart tasting leaves rich in vitamin c have led to the use of r acetosella in european and north american cultures as both a source of food and a component of herbal medicines excessive consumption of the leaves which contain oxalic acid can be poisonous to horses and sheep in addition r acetosella is a possible host of the tomato spotted wilt virus which is detrimental to a variety of vegetable crops,2011,0.395
"Bird Diversity, Biogeographic Patterns, and Endemism of the Eastern Himalayas and Southeastern Sub-Himalayan Mountains",species distribution and species diversity pattern have vexed ornithologists in southeast asia and the himalayas the species diversity debate continues because the baseline data for such analysis are still very incomplete especially in some parts of asia we conclude from currently available data sets such as museum specimens that the ornithological affinities of northern kachin state are rather with the eastern sub himalayas and western yunnan and we cannot yet confirm a spatially narrow turnover zone between south and southeast asia nevertheless the local endemism of bird species i e sub himalayan slopes of northern kachin state is high and there is a strongly marked elevational turnover from south to north recent surveys in assam arunachal pradesh northeast india yunnan southwest china and kachin state northern myanmar have revealed taxa not previously known including three from arunachal pradesh and kachin state since 1997 the descriptions are based on museum work in combination with genetic analysis and extensive field studies e g jabouilleia naungmungensis and tesia olivea chiangmaiensis additionally several taxa have been revised on the basis of new insights from surveys of the region e g cyornis banyumasâ c magnirostris or phylogenetic analysis e g phylloscopus we present data on these new species and discuss distributional areas in the context of species richness gradients,2011,0.895
Ecological niche modeling of customary medicinal plant species used by Australian Aborigines to identify species-rich and culturally valuable areas for conservation,customary medicinal plant species used by australian aborigines are disappearing rapidly with its associated knowledge due to the loss of habitats conservation and protection of these species is important as they represent sources of novel therapeutic phytochemical compounds and are culturally valuable information on the spatial distribution and use of customary medicinal plants is often inadequate and fragmented posing limitations on the identification and conservation of species rich areas and culturally valuable habitats in this study the habitat suitability modeling program maxent was used to predict the potential ecological niches of 431 customary medicinal plant species based on bioclimatic variables specimen locality records were obtained from the global biodiversity information facility gbif data portal and from australia s virtual herbarium avh ecological niche models of 414 predicted species which had 30 or more occurrence points were used to produce maps indicating areas that were ecologically suitable for multiple species concordance of high predicted ecological suitability and having cultural values for the concordance map individual species niche models were thresholded and summed to derive a map of culturally valuable areas customary medicinal uses from customary medicinal knowledgebase cmkb www biolinfo org cmkb were used to weight individual species models resulting in a value within each grid cell reflecting its cultural worth even though the available information is scarce and fragmented our approach provides an opportunity to infer areas predicted to be suitable for multiple species i e concordance hotspots and to estimate the cultural value of a particular geographical area our results also indicate that to conserve bio cultural diversity comprehensive information and active participation of aboriginal communities is indispensable,2011,0.915
"Potential ecological impacts of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) biofuel cultivation in the Central Great Plains, USA",switchgrass panicum virgatum l is a broadly adapted warm season grass species native to most of the central and eastern united states switchgrass has been identified as a potential biofuel species because it is a native species that requires minimal management and has a large potential to sequester carbon underground since the 1990 s switchgrass has been bred to produce cultivars with increased biomass and feedstock quality this review addresses potential ecological consequences of widespread switchgrass cultivation for biofuel production in the central united states specifically this review address the ecological implications of changing use of marginal and crp land impacts on wildlife potentials for disease and invasions and changes in soil quality through reductions in erosion decomposition rates and carbon sequestrations a central theme of the review is the utility of maintaining landscape heterogeneity during switchgrass biofuel production this includes implementing harvest rotations no till farming and mixed species composition if negative ecological consequences of switchgrass cultivation are minimized biofuel production using this species has economical and environmental benefits 2011 elsevier ltd,2011,0.49
Biodiversity information platforms: From standards to interoperability,one of the most serious bottlenecks in the scientific workflows of biodiversity sciences is the need to integrate data from different sources software applications and services for analysis visualisation and publication for more than a quarter of a century the tdwg biodiversity information standards organisation has a central role in defining and promoting data standards and protocols supporting interoperability between disparate and locally distributed systems although often not sufficiently recognized tdwg standards are the foundation of many popular biodiversity informatics applications and infrastructures ranging from small desktop software solutions to large scale international data networks however individual scientists and groups of collaborating scientist have difficulties in fully exploiting the potential of standards that are often notoriously complex lack non technical documentations and use different representations and underlying technologies in the last few years a series of initiatives such as scratchpads the edit platform for cybertaxonomy and biowikifarm have started to implement and set up virtual work platforms for biodiversity sciences which shield their users from the complexity of the underlying standards apart from being practical work horses for numerous working processes related to biodiversity sciences they can be seen as information brokers mediating information between multiple data standards and protocols the vibrant project will further strengthen the flexibility and power of virtual biodiversity working platforms by building software interfaces between them thus facilitating essential information flows needed for comprehensive data exchange data indexing web publication and versioning this work will make an important contribution to the shaping of an international interoperable and user oriented biodiversity information infrastructure,2011,0.186
Species distribution modelling—Effect of design and sample size of pseudo-absence observations,we explored the effect of varying pseudo absence data in species distribution modelling using empirical data for four real species and simulated data for two imaginary species in all analyses we used a fixed study area a fixed set of environmental predictors and a fixed set of presence observations next we added pseudo absence data generated by different sampling designs and in different numbers to assess their relative importance for the output from the species distribution model the sampling design strongly influenced the predictive performance of the models while the number of pseudo absences had minimal effect on the predictive performance we attribute much of these results to the relationship between the environmental range of the pseudo absences i e the extent of the environmental space being considered and the environmental range of the presence observations i e under which environmental conditions the species occurs the number of generated pseudo absences had a direct effect on the predicted probability which translated to different distribution areas pseudo absence observations that fell within grid cells with presence observations were purposely included in our analyses we discourage the practice of excluding certain pseudo absence data because it involves arbitrary assumptions about what are un suitable environments for the species being modelled,2011,0.794
Lizards as conservation targets in Argentinean Patagonia,patagonia is considered a region of high conservation priority due to its outstanding and representative habitats and high endemism the purpose of this study is to assess the degree of representation of patagonian lizards in the existing protected area network and to identify conservation priority areas that may help expand the current system we obtained locality data for all patagonian species from different sources and used them together with environmental variables to model their potential distribution we then used a reserve selection algorithm to assess the performance of the existing protected area network in representing all lizard species and to identify new priority areas our results indicate that the existing protected areas fail to protect 10 of the 60 species modeled to protect at least 5 of the geographic distribution of all species the existing reserve network would need an additional 3 7 of the study area whereas to protect at least 10 of the distribution of species an extra 9 9 would be needed we found eleven main priority areas needed to protect at least 5 or 10 of the distribution of all species of lizards in conclusion the current reserve network is not very effective at protecting the lizards of patagonia particularly those species with range restricted distributions we hope that this contribution will help direct conservation efforts in the region by maximising the protection of biodiversity,2011,0.891
La diversidad florística vascular española,vascular plants in spain a description of the spanish vascular flora and its current state of knowledge are provided these pages show an overview of the origins of the iberian balearic and canarian floristic elements in the light of recent published works updated figures of vascular plant richness and endemism are given and their geographical diversity patterns are discussed in relation to underlying processes finally the conservation status of the spanish flora is summarized and the effectiveness of the management measures taken to prevent its extinction is revised,2011,0.272
"Using species distribution models in paleobiogeography: A matter of data, predictors and concepts",the increasing interest in the effects of climate changes on species distributions has been followed by the development of species distribution models sdms although these techniques are starting to be used to study the location and dynamics of past species distributions a sound theoretical framework for their use in paleoecology is still lacking in this paper we are reviewing the main challenges for constructing paleo species distribution models to describe and project the past distribution of species namely data limitations selection of predictors and choice of a biologically relevant modeling procedure we also review and discuss the current state of the art in paleo sdms providing a series of recommendations for their use and proposing future research lines to improve the use of these techniques in paleobiogeography,2011,0.479
"Combining citizen science, bioclimatic envelope models and observed habitat preferences to determine the distribution of an inconspicuous, recently detected introduced bee (Halictus smaragdulus Vachal Hymenoptera: Halictidae) in Australia",introduced bees may compete with native fauna spread parasites or pathogens to commercial bee hives or increase the fecundity of introduced weeds therefore the recent detection of halictus smaragdulus native to the western palaearctic in the hunter valley region of new south wales nsw australia is cause for concern however it is currently difficult to justify control measures as there is little known on its ecology impacts and distribution determining the current distribution is fundamental to managing introduced species yet this is difficult with inconspicuous species such as h smaragdulus especially as recent introductions are often found in low densities we demonstrated how a combination of approaches could be used to improve the identification of occupied locations in nsw including bioclimatic envelope models proximity to known populations and observed habitat preferences members of the public were also trained to collect specimens and improve overall survey efficiency bees were collected using pan traps and sweep netting h smaragdulus was detected at 44 new locations extending the known distribution from 1 250 to 46 800 km2 while bioclimatic envelope models helped guide survey locations species detectability was higher when observed habitat preferences and proximity to known populations were also considered we also demonstrated that with training via the internet and appropriate procedures for returning specimens in the mail members of the public could successfully collect this small and inconspicuous invertebrate with potential applications for other similar species,2011,0.866
"The Austrian Botanic Gardens Work Group, an Example of Active Networking to Promote Small Botanic Gardens",the continuously increasing demands on botanic gardens during the last few decades have led to a huge in increase administration and an urgent need for additional specialized personnel especially botanists teachers database specialists and administrative staff instead of meeting these requirements many botanic gardens are faceing a severe decrease in funding and personnel larger gardens provide the opportunity to distribute several tasks to different employees whereas small gardens are short staffed and often run by a single curator who has to fulfill all functions in order to meet actual demands more easily the austrian botanic gardens are linked nationally via an active workgroup this network not only allows the distribution of information but also facilitates the sharing of duties a listserver speeds up the communication and correspondence within the workgroup collection priorities and projects e g gspc are coordinated seedbanking becomes decentralized printed matters are shared and distributed etc small gardens with only few employees can participate in projects by taking on small ideally using with their special resources in order not to fall behind in addition there is also an urgent need for international networking by means of plant and seed exchange index seminum bgci membership discussion groups personal contacts and projects mission statements special marketing strategies for public relations integrating projects of other workgroup members and adapted public awareness programs are important to focus attention to small gardens and to help them keep alive,2011,0.227
thymeleaf speedwell Veronica serpyllifolia L . ssp . serpyllifolia,species record from alaska natural heritage program,2011,0.463
"A reappraisal of Phyllolepidum (Brassicaceae), a neglected genus of the European flora, and its relationships in tribe Alysseae",new light is shed on the evolutionary affinities and generic diversity in alysseae brassicaceae by means of nuclear dna sequences internal transcribed spacer analysis was used to assess the relationships and the monophyletic status of aurinia and ptilotrichum when defined to include three poorly known taxa from southeast europe the alpine ptilotrichum rupestre from central appennines and its balkan and anatolian relative ptilotrichum cyclocarpum clustered together as sister to bornmuellera and leptoplax while their evident lack of affinity with the asian type species of ptilotrichum arabideae leads to the definitive exclusion of the latter from the european flora to accommodate the two species mentioned above the so far neglected genus phyllolepidum is accepted the rare pontic endemic aurinia uechtritziana resulted closely related to berteroa and galitzkya and is treated here as the sole member of lepidotrichum comparative scanning electron micrograph analyses of trichome morphology are consistent with the phylogenetic evidence the new combinations phyllolepidum cyclocarpum and p cyclocarpum subsp pindicum are proposed and a key for the identification of all european genera of the alysseae is presented,2011,0.706
Habitat loss and avian range dynamics through space and time,d when few neighbouring sites were previously occupied by the species site occupancy was also less likely when little suitable habitat was present consistent with expectations that larger habitats are easier targets for colonists habitat area was more important for more isolated sites accounting for the effect of metapopulation dynamics v on site occupancy predicted change in richness better than land cover change and increased the strength of the regional richnessâ natural area relationship to levels observed for continental richnessâ environment relationships suggesting that these metapopulation processes â œscale upâ to modify regional species richness patterns making them more difficult to predict it is the existence of absences in otherwise suitable habitat within speciesâ ranges that appears to weaken regional richnessâ environment relationships vi,2011,0.624
The SinBiota 2.0 Biodiversity Information System,for the last 10 years sin biota the information system of the biota fapesp program has served the community storing and displaying data in maps and providing a common base for researchers in different areas to communicate and exchange biodiversity data state administration has also used the system to support new laws and regulations now it is time to rethink the system which has grown in an ad hoc unstructured way aiming at the support that will be needed for the next 10 years in a project jointly funded by microsoft research and fapesp we aim at the creation of a specification for the new sin biota 2 0 system including cutting edge services and technologies on information technology in order to achieve a number of goals namely guarantee the use and expansion of the system for the next ten years support the availability of a larger volume of higher quality environmental data oriented also to the educational and public administration sectors provide more efficient sharing of data among biota researchers inter operate with international initiatives provide effective tools to assist researchers in finding relevant information amongst a large amount of environment data the expected results at the end of this project are the composition of a specification reference document of the sin biota 2 0 system and the implementation of a prototype that will gradually replace the current system we propose in this work the system architecture and our vision of the main features that would allow sin biota 2 0 to meet the expectations of the biodiversity research community and other stakeholders we also describe a prototype application that implements most of the features present in the current sin biota 1 0 system as well as some of the new features envisaged for the new version,2011,0.012
Accounting for uncertainty when mapping species distributions: The need for maps of ignorance,accurate mapping of species distributions is a fundamental goal of modern biogeography both for basic and applied purposes this is commonly done by plotting known species occurrences expert drawn range maps or geographical estimations derived from species distribution models however all three kinds of maps are implicitly subject to uncertainty due to the quality and bias of raw distributional data the process of map building and the dynamic nature of species distributions themselves here we review the main sources of uncertainty suggesting a code of good practices in order to minimize their effects,2011,0.565
Functional consequences of climate change-induced plant species loss in a tallgrass prairie,future climate change is likely to reduce the floristic diversity of grasslands yet the potential consequences of climate induced plant species losses for the functioning of these ecosystems are poorly understood we investigated how climate change might alter the functional composition of grasslands for konza prairie a diverse tallgrass prairie in central north america with species specific climate envelopes we show that a reduction in mean annual precipitation would preferentially remove species that are more abundant in the more productive lowland positions at konza as such decreases in precipitation could reduce productivity not only by reducing water availability but by also removing species that inhabit the most productive areas and respond the most to climate variability in support of this prediction data on species abundance at konza over 16 years show that species that are more abundant in lowlands than uplands are preferentially reduced in years with low precipitation climate change is likely to also preferentially remove species from particular functional groups and clades for example warming is forecast to preferentially remove perennials over annuals as well as cyperaceae species despite these predictions climate change is unlikely to unilaterally alter the functional composition of the tallgrass prairie flora as many functional traits such as physiological drought tolerance and maximum photosynthetic rates showed little relationship with climate envelope parameters in all although climatic drying would indirectly alter grassland productivity through species loss patterns the insurance afforded by biodiversity to ecosystem function is likely to be sustained in the face of climate change,2011,0.622
Recovery Plan for the Endangered Taxonomy Profession,the worldwide decline in taxonomists has a broad impact on biology and society learning from general historical patterns of science and understanding social changes caused by growing economies we propose changes in priorities for training taxonomists to reverse these losses academically trained professionals parataxonomists local assistants trained by professional biologists youths educated with an emphasis on natural history and self supported expert amateurs are the major sources of taxonomists recruiting effort from each category is best determined by public attitudes toward education as well as the availability of discretionary funds and leisure time instead of concentrating on descriptions of species and narrow studies of morphology and dna the duties of the few professional taxonomists of the future also will be to use cyberspace and a wide range of skills to recruit train and provide direction for expert amateurs young students parataxonomists the general public and governments,2011,0.376
Addressing data property rights concerns and providing incentives for collaborative data pooling: the West African Vegetation Database approach,question how can quantitative data from vegetation surveys best be assembled in a large regional vegetation database what effects have intellectual property rights concerns of individual and institutional data holders on data contribution and how can incentives to contribute data be generated location west africa with discussion of a possible approach to dealing with property rights concerns being of wider interest methods the management of data property rights in the west african vegetation database was developed based on consultations with institutions and scientists in five west african countries over 2 years it was agreed in two successive memoranda of understanding results the west african vegetation database addresses property rights concerns by leaving the control over data access with the data owners and provides incentives to build a distributed research community by fostering data sharing conclusion we present a potential solution to the problem of intellectual property rights issues being an impediment to data sharing and the compilation of large regional vegetation databases the data property rights management approach implemented in the west african vegetation database provided incentives for the contribution of recently acquired and unpublished data numerous phytosociological and dendrometric vegetation surveys have been made available by institutions and individual researchers for regional scale analyses the structures developed may serve as a model for regional scale vegetation databases in collaborative settings involving multiple data owners,2011,0.151
An observational biodiversity database for the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History,natural history collections play an important role in the accumulation of biodiversity knowledge through the collection and conservation of specimens but other sources of biodiversity data are also important to preserve curate and make widely available to data consumers observational databases are one such source that has great potential value the amount of information generated from these observational biodiversity data can be many times greater than what is represented by specimens in natural history collections thus organizing and digitizing observational data into formats interoperable with other species occurrence datasets will enhance accessibility and provide users of this data with a cost effective method of querying and analyzing the largest amount of biodiversity information because data management and curation are an essential part of collections management practices museum scientists are well poised to tackle the challenge of managing observational databases in addition to the specimen databases already being curated my thesis work involves the development of a database for the university of colorado museum of natural history comprised of occurrence records related to observational biodiversity data based on darwin core standards in addition this database will be robust enough to include the kinds of detailed ecological data often collected by field biologists as well as digital information such as photographs video audio or document files the flexibility of the database to incorporate multiple data types was tested using six case study datasets provided by four collaborators additionally the amount of effort needed to prepare and import each dataset into the database was evaluated in order to determine the feasibility of having museum staff curate the database due to the heterogeneity in data among the six datasets eighteen hours were spent in data manipulation for all of the datasets in preparation for import into the database which is more efficient than manually entering the data the database efficiently captured the majority of data from five out of the six datasets ultimately sharing the database through the global biodiversity information facility gbif or similar database federations is the future objective of this database,2011,0.247
Asia Federation Report on International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC) 2011,this report provides an overview of e science developments in the asia pacific region based on country reports made at the international symposium on grids and clouds 2011 isgc 2011 1 held on 21 25 march at academia sinica taipei the document includes a brief overview of 12 asian countries presented at isgc 2011 they are australia india indonesia japan malaysia pakistan philippines singapore south korea taiwan thailand and vietnam,2011,0.322
Comparison of Bird community in Urban and Non-Urban area at Young-San river,this study was carried out for the period from june 2003 until march 2005 aimed at comparing the characteristics of birds communities between non urban district and urban district in the yeongsan river basin grasping the influence on the birds in the urban district basin and ultimately exploring the method of preserving and managing the birds in a proper manner the number of birds observed in this study recorded 83 species 19 322 individuals in total where the number of species were 73 in non urban district while 71 in urban district for the number of individuals showing larger number in urban district 7 409 were in non urban district while 11 913 were in urban district for the species diversity urban district was 2 62 while non urban district was 3 01 showing high degree in non urban district for the number of individuals by bird group herons and ducks were higher in the site 6 urban site 7 urban while raptors were higher in the site 3 non urban and site 8 urban and shorebirds were higher in the site 3 non urban forest birds were found the highest in the site 1 non urban while others higher in the site 1 non urban site 6 urban and site 8 urban with regard to species composition by districts those in non urban district consisted of forest birds 46 1 ducks 43 4 herons 5 3 shorebirds 2 6 others 2 2 and raptors 0 4 in order of high to low composition while urban district consisted of ducks 75 5 forest birds 16 1 herons 5 3 others 2 2 shorebirds 0 7 and raptors 0 2 in the afore mentioned order in result a great difference was shown between non urban district and urban district in the yeongsan river basin accordingly when implementing environmental improvement in urban district it is deemed necessary to do it taking the inhabiting environment of non urban district into account in order for a stable maintenance preservation and management of the birds communities,2011,0.62
"Fungos liquenizados da Mata Atlântica , no sul do Brasil Introdução Material e métodos Resultados e discussão",lichenized fungi in the atlantic rainforest biome in southern brazil t e results of a survey based on data of lichenized fungi collections from some localities in the atlantic rainforest of south brazil are presented a total of 88 taxa distributed in 18 families and 36 genera were identifi ed from these two are new records for brazil and one is a new occurrence for the state of rio grande do sul,2011,0.514
Chapter 15/16: Mapping the ecogeographic distribution of biodiversity and GIS tools for plant germplasm collectors,ecogeographic studies provide critical information on plant genetic resources pgr to assess their current conservation status and prioritize areas for conservation they have also proven useful for effective genebank management such as the definition of core collections and identification of collection gaps geographic information systems gis are useful tools for mapping ecogeographic distributions of biodiversity gis allow complex analyses to be performed as well as clearly visualizing results in maps which facilitates decision making and implementation of conservation policies by authorities,2011,0.183
Cortinarius species diversity in British Columbia and molecular phylogenetic comparison with European specimen sequences,throughout the world the diversity of fungi remains poorly characterized and cortinarius is a classical example of a difficult species rich and under researched mushroom genus here we sequenced and analyzed ribosomal internal transcribed spacer its sequence barcodes from herbarium specimens to improve understanding of cortinarius species diversity in british columbia b c canada starting with 962 specimen sequences 617 from b c herbaria we present a maximum likelihood tree showing 179 putative cortinarius species in british columbia as a working definition we considered a â œspeciesâ to be a monophyletic clade that included a reliably identified reference sequence with a maximum of 3 its sequence variation if no reference sequence was available â œspeciesâ were groups sharing 97 or more sequence identity by these criteria 110 putative b c species matched european species and 12 b c species matched species exclusively found in the americas of the 56 b c species that did not match an identified reference sequence some may be new to science while others likely represent described species without available sequences by depositing sequences from b c specimens into genbank and bold and by providing our alignment to treebase we have supplied the resources necessary to improve accuracy in identifications of cortinarius in future systematic and ecological studies,2011,0.967
How do butterflies define ecosystems? A comparison of ecological regionalization schemes,ecological regionalizations such as ecoregions or environmental clusters are often used as coarse filters for conservation to be effective biodiversity surrogates regionalizations should contain distinct species assemblages this condition is not frequently evaluated and regionalizations are rarely assessed comparatively we used a national dataset of canadian butterfly collections to evaluate four regionalizations ecoregions land cover and productivity regime classifications and a spatial grid at two thematic resolutions using analysis of similarity anosim and species indicator values overall the spatially constrained schemes ecoregions and grids best captured patterns of butterfly community composition and species affinities indicating that butterfly communities are strongly structured by space at the continent scale in contrast when comparing regions only within spatial or environmental neighbourhoods i e comparing between regions that are adjacent along geographic or environmental gradients all regionalizations performed similarly adjacency in environmental space is thus as important as physical adjacency at determining community dissimilarity productivity regimes and land cover will be useful biodiversity surrogates when considered in conjunction with space or within a spatially constrained area this finding was confirmed with two ecoregional case studies of the algonquin lake nipissing and thompsonâ okanagan plateau ecoregions which also revealed that the relative performance of regionalizations depends upon the context of the study area we conclude that including species data can improve the efficiency of environmental surrogates for systematic conservation planning,2011,0.408
Avena,oat is one of the most important cereal crops in the world the genus avena l includes cultivated species with different ploidy levels and a number of wild species reflecting a wide range of botanical and eco logical diversity a majority of these forms came from the centers of origin which by definition shows great diversity of avena species with this in view oat species became the subject of investigations to specify the complex organization of the avena genus and indicate aspects of its evolution and phylogenetic links between the species further search for agrono mical traits and utilization of new oat breeding sources is very important for breeding purposes,2011,0.921
Building Environmental Semantic Web Applications with Drupal,efforts required for publishing information as linked data often appears too high compared to obvious and immediate benefits consequently only a tiny fraction of the web can be easily used as a semantic â databaseâ today drupal 7 changes the rules of the game by integrating the functionality required for structuring and semantically annotating arbitrary content types in the drupal â œcoreâ as well as en couraging the module authors to use this functionality in their dru pal extensions this paper presents the authors recent experiences with strengths and shortcomings of the drupal 6 and drupal 7 semantic web extensions and discusses feasibility of the future semantic web environ mental applications based on a drupal platform the intention of the paper is 1 to analyse the state of the art in semantic web support as well as the potentials for further development in drupal today 2 to prove the feasibility of drupal based semantic web applications for envi ronmental usage area and 3 to introduce the idea of drupal as a rapid prototyping development environment,2011,0.058
Designing a survey protocol to overcome the Wallacean shortfall: a working guide using bryophyte distribution data on Terceira Island (Azores),the increasing availability of open access data on species occurrences is leading researchers to generate more hypotheses about patterns of species distributions however when all of this information is mapped onto a particular geographical scale gaps usually appear due to lack of knowledge and sampling spatial bias the so called wallacean shortfall to overcome these problems as efficiently as possible field surveys should be designed after distinguishing well surveyed places from those with incomplete inventories in order to carry out the extra survey effort in those areas not represented environmentally and spatially by the well surveyed places this procedure requires 1 gathering cleaning and standardizing data 2 selecting environmental variables that are important for the group considered according to field experience and the literature and 3 making statistical decisions about the number and location of areas that should be surveyed according to the available resources here we summarize most concepts and procedures devoted to the evaluation of biodiversity data offering some general recommendations on how to use them for optimizing new survey designs as a practical guide for potential users we provide an example describing its application to a comprehensive database on bryophyte distribution on terceira island azores portugal more than 8 000 bryophyte records were gathered but i less than half of the island area has been surveyed at least once and ii less than 1 of these have reliable inventories placed on the few remnants of laurel forests that have been traditionally better surveyed nevertheless surveying just 15 additional localities evenly distributed across the major environmental regions and habitats on terceira island seems to represent the existing environmental diversity we believe that the survey protocol presented here for bryophytes of terceira island could be flexibly applied to other taxa or areas,2011,0.313
The CLIMSAVE Project: Ch. 11 Development and validation of the pest meta-models,report describing the development and validation of the sectoral meta models for integration into the ia platform,2011,0.34
Natural Products from the Lithistida: A Review of the Literature since 2000,lithistid sponges are known to produce a diverse array of compounds ranging from polyketides cyclic and linear peptides alkaloids pigments lipids and sterols a majority of these structurally complex compounds have very potent and interesting biological activities it has been a decade since a thorough review has been published that summarizes the literature on the natural products reported from this amazing sponge order this review provides an update on the current taxonomic classification of the lithistida describes structures and biological activities of 131 new natural products and discusses highlights from the total syntheses of 16 compounds from marine sponges of the order lithistida providing a compilation of the literature since the last review published in 2002,2011,0.093
Variability of microsatellite loci of Greenland cod Gadus ogac Richardson 1836: Comparison with other species of Gadus genus (Gadidae),comparative analysis of variability of seven microsatellite lociâ gmo3 gmog12 gmoî g18 gmo19 gmo34 gmo35 and pgmo32â was performed for the greenland cod gadus ogac pacific cod g macrocephalus atlantic cod g morhua and white sea cod g morhua marisalbi high genetic identity was observed between the greenland cod and pacific cod i 0 9520 pair analysis of genetic differentiation was performed on the studied microsatellite loci according to î analogue of fst the greenland cod differed significantly from the pacific atlantic and the white sea cod however the differentiation level varied the lowest value was observed for the pair greenland codâ pacific cod 0 123 and the highest levels were registered for the pairs greenland codâ atlantic cod 0 605 and greenland codâ white sea cod 0 535,2011,0.284
Study on Floral Structure and Diaspores of Dicentra spectabilis Lem. and Related Ants which Disperse Seeds,the study performed researches on floral structures fruits diaspores cafeteria experiments and their related ants on the dicentra spectabilis lem internal petals which cover pistils and stamens of the dicentra spectabilis lem did not open until fruits grew and came outside and stigma placed lower than anthers on outgoing floral showing that it is a cleistogamous flow with self pollination in a narrow space the average length of capsules of dicentra spectabilis lem and width were 36 75 and 7 15 mm respectively and the number of diaspores for each capsule was 11 3 mm the dicentra spectabilis lem has black colored spherical seed surface with white large elaiosome the average weights of dicentra spectabilis lem seeds and elaiosome and the ratio of elaiosome were 7 19 5 33 and 1 89 mg and 26 26 respectively it was observed that many ants took diaspores of dicentra spectabilis lem and 6 kinds of ants including formica japonica lacius alienus forster tetramorium caespitum myrmica kotofui forel lasius niger linne and temhothorax spinosior and formica japonica and myrmica kotofui with relatively large bodies took dicentra spectabilis lem the more frequently the dicentra spectabilis lem has a weakness in securing genetic diversity and adaptability from inbreeding depression as a perfect cleiscogamous flower but the issue may be overcome by utilizing advantages like elaiosome and using ants to disperse seeds there may be more investigations on flora ants cafeteria experiment and others to understand the mutualism of plants with elaiosome and ant species in korea,2011,0.316
Avifauna of the Gaoligong Shan Mountains of Western China: A Hotspot of Avian Species Diversity,abstract â the gaoligong shan mountains glgs of southwestern yunnan china which form the southeastern extent of the himalaya mountains are a narrow range running northâ south rising over 4 000 m in the north and receding into the lowlands in the south the range is defined by the irrawaddy lowlands to the west and by the nujiang also known as the salween river to the east we summarize results of five recent ornithological expeditions that surveyed altitudinal transects in the southern and northern glgs the glgs are a designated unesco world heritage site and are considered a â œhotspotâ by multiple conservation organizations we used bird distributions to examine the hotspot status of the glgs and we discuss the value of the local species diversity for conservation we found that the glgs have tremendous avian diversity for a temperate region with at least 486 documented avian taxa in the region however there is relatively little endemism in the glgs per se and 50 of glgs breeding bird species are near the edge of their range our data do not suggest that the glgs are a major evolutionary center for birds however the larger eastern himalaya region of which the glgs are a part does appear to be a center of endemism and evolution the glgs may have beenâ and are likely to remainâ an important and precious refuge for the preservation of asian montane forest birds,2011,0.279
Unique genetic variation at a species's rear edge is under threat from global climate change.,global climate change is having a significant effect on the distributions of a wide variety of species causing both range shifts and population extinctions to date however no consensus has emerged on how these processes will affect the range wide genetic diversity of impacted species it has been suggested that species that recolonized from low latitude refugia might harbour high levels of genetic variation in rear edge populations and that loss of these populations could cause a disproportionately large reduction in overall genetic diversity in such taxa in the present study we have examined the distribution of genetic diversity across the range of the seaweed chondrus crispus a species that has exhibited a northward shift in its southern limit in europe over the last 40 years analysis of 19 populations from both sides of the north atlantic using mitochondrial single nucleotide polymorphisms snps sequence data from two single copy nuclear regions and allelic variation at eight microsatellite loci revealed unique genetic variation for all marker classes in the rear edge populations in iberia but not in the rear edge populations in north america palaeodistribution modelling and statistical testing of alternative phylogeographic scenarios indicate that the unique genetic diversity in iberian populations is a result not only of persistence in the region during the last glacial maximum but also because this refugium did not contribute substantially to the recolonization of europe after the retreat of the ice consequently loss of these rear edge populations as a result of ongoing climate change will have a major effect on the overall genetic diversity of the species particularly in europe and this could compromise the adaptive potential of the species as a whole in the face of future global warming,2011,0.986
"Distribution, status and conservation of a Critically Endangered, extremely narrow endemic: Lamyropsis microcephala (Asteraceae) in Sardinia",the aims of this work were to verify the distribution and population size of lamyropsis microcephala asteraceae characterize its habitat assess its conservation status and initiate conservation measures for this critically endangered species distribution was determined by field surveys and mapping to estimate population size and density 81 permanent monitoring plots were randomly established ex situ conservation measures were activated by harvesting and appropriate storage of seed we confirmed the presence of l microcephala at two previously known sites and found it in two previously unknown localities the areas in which the species occur vary from 200 to 240 000 m2 at altitudes of 1 450â 1 820 m on slopes of 15â 45â with aspects from north to west the estimated number of ramets per population varied from c 2 000 to c 2 000 000 with a mean density of 8 29 â sd 14 3 to 10 33 â sd 10 05 ramets m 2 our findings confirmed the critically endangered status of this species although with different criteria this study is an example of an integrated approach for the conservation of an extremely narrow endemic plant species and may be useful for other little known threatened species for which urgent conservation measures are needed,2011,0.91
Global habitat suitability models of terrestrial mammals,detailed large scale information on mammal distribution has often been lacking hindering conservation efforts we used the information from the 2009 iucn red list of threatened species as a baseline for developing habitat suitability models for 5027 out of 5330 known terrestrial mammal species based on their habitat relationships we focused on the following environmental variables land cover elevation and hydrological features models were developed at 300 m resolution and limited to within species known geographical ranges a subset of the models was validated using points of known species occurrence we conducted a global fine scale analysis of patterns of species richness the richness of mammal species estimated by the overlap of their suitable habitat is on average one third less than that estimated by the overlap of their geographical ranges the highest absolute difference is found in tropical and subtropical regions in south america africa and southeast asia that are not covered by dense forest the proportion of suitable habitat within mammal geographical ranges correlates with the iucn red list category to which they have been assigned decreasing monotonically from least concern to endangered these results demonstrate the importance of fine resolution distribution data for the development of global conservation strategies for mammals,2011,0.86
Chemical Composition and Machinability of Selected Wood Species from Mozambique,the objectives of the current work were to carry out a survey on timber sector in mozambique and to determine chemical calorific and machinability features of selected species mozambican timber sector was described as dominated by selective harvesting practices on a few hardwood species out of 118 species growing in the forest with potential for industrial timber selective logging is believed to be due to the demand in both domestic and international markets of traditionally used and lack of technical data on lesser used species in order to avert the negative effect of selective logging this work argued the need to widen the resource base by studying lesser used species taking into account stock volumes recorded in the last forest inventory the lesser used species acacia nigrescens oliv icuria dunensis wieringa pseudolachnostylis maprounaefolia pax and sterculia appendiculata k schum were selected to assess their chemical calorific and machinability features lesser used species were compared with traditionally used species namely afzelia quanzensis welwn milletia stuhlmannii taub pericopsis angolensis meeweven and pterocarpus angolensis dc regarding chemical and calorific features aiming to get a thorough chemical characterization along radial direction samples for chemical analyses were taken from the sapwood and outer and inner heartwood chemical and ultimate analyses were performed according to standard methods the contents of carbohydrates extractive ash volatiles and high heating values were in ranges considered normal for tropical species contents of lignin and minerals were unexpectedly high in pseudolachnostylis reaching 37 51 and 2 2 wt extractive free on a dry weight basis respectively based on the determined chemical features it was concluded that acacia and pseudolachnostylis were similar to well known whereas icuria and sterculia differed from the known species in ranking of all studied species using fuel wood value index fvi acacia was best ranked whereas sterculia was worst ranked acacia pericopsis pseudolachnostylis and sterculia considered as lesser used in the study were subjected to experiments for cutting forces and tool wearing measurements density measurements on samples for cutting forces and tool wearing experiments were performed with the aid of a ct scanner two different cutting tools 20ëš and 30ëš rake angle were used before cutting the edge radius of the tools was measured main cutting force in 90ëš 90ëš and 90ëš 0ëš cutting directions were measured by piezoelectric gauge tool wearing experiments were performed on a shaper using cemented carbide tools for woodworking and fixed cutting conditions edge recession and tool wear radius were measured for monitoring tool wearing ranking the species using cutting forces only or tool wearing only for machinability recorded different earnings and for measuring the net effect of machining output variables this work suggested the digraph and matrix method as an expeditious and integrated method to evaluate the machinability of lesser used species based on the calculated indexes the easiest species to be machined was sterculia whereas the most difficult species to be machined was acacia cutting forces earned by acacia seemed to have been affected by anatomical features not measured in the current work,2011,0.995
The future of terrestrial mammals in the Mediterranean basin under climate change,the mediterranean basin is considered a hotspot of biological diversity with a long history of modification of natural ecosystems by human activities and is one of the regions that will face extensive changes in climate for 181 terrestrial mammals 68 of all mediterranean mammals we used an ensemble forecasting approach to model the future approx 2100 potential distribution under climate change considering five climate change model outputs for two climate scenarios overall a substantial number of mediterranean mammals will be severely threatened by future climate change particularly endemic species moreover we found important changes in potential species richness owing to climate change with some areas e g montane region in central italy gaining species while most of the region will be losing species mainly spain and north africa existing protected areas pas will probably be strongly influenced by climate change with most pas in africa the middle east and spain losing a substantial number of species and those pas gaining species e g central italy and southern france will experience a substantial shift in species composition,2011,0.887
"Erongo Power Station ESEIA: Specialist baseline report, biophysical",nampower proposes to build a coal fired power station in the erongo region and three proposed sites east of arandis west of arandis east of walvis bay are being considered the current baseline study considers relevant biophysical aspects of these three sites in order to inform the scoping process it expands and builds on concepts briefly introduced in the previous site selection report irish 2011,2011,0.326
Multiscale Analyses of Mammal Species Composition – Environment Relationship in the Contiguous USA,relationships between species composition and its environmental determinants are a basic objective of ecology such relationships are scale dependent and predictors of species composition typically include variables such as climate topographic historical legacies land uses human population levels and random processes our objective was to quantify the effect of environmental determinants on u s mammal composition at various spatial scales we found that climate was the predominant factor affecting species composition and its relative impact increased in correlation with the increase of the spatial scale another factor affecting species composition is land useâ land cover our findings showed that its impact decreased as the spatial scale increased we provide quantitative indication of highly significant effect of climate and land useâ land cover variables on mammal composition at multiple scales,2011,0.612
"Distribution, regeneration and conservation status of Nuxia congesta R. Br. ex Fresen. (Buddlejaceae) in Côte d’Ivoire",in cã te dâ ivoire nuxia congesta buddlejaceae was known only on some highest peaks of the country mounts tonkpi and boho until 2006 recent studies conducted from january to june 2007 and in 2008 identified two new locations in the region of marahouã department of bouaflã relatively far from the previously known ones and confirmed the disappearance of the species in mounts tonkpi and boho the distribution of this species was mapped and some ecological characteristics observed in those different locations were specified the conservation status of the species was also assessed and discussed on the basis of the threats that its habitats were liable to using the criteria of the iucn red list the species can be characterized as rare in cã te dâ ivoire,2011,0.703
Taxonomy alive and kicking: or how taxonomy can help debunking creationist thinking,the present work aims at illustrating how taxonomy can provide an essential contribution to debunk creationist anti evolutionary arguments it does so by scrutinizing the taxonomic basis of the â œatlas of creationâ the major opus of the turkish creationist consortium operating under the pen name harun yahya the basic aim of the atlas of creation is to prove that evolution does not occur by showing that fossil and recent organisms are identical i e have not changed since their divine creation however the taxonomic foundation onto which this argument is built is completely fl awed up to the point of being hilarious as such the atlas of creation has not the slightest biological credibility let alone that it would represent a serious challenge for evolutionary theory so taxonomy can indeed eî ectively contribute to countering creationist theories resumo,2011,0.232
MartiTracks: a geometrical approach for identifying geographical patterns of distribution.,panbiogeography represents an evolutionary approach to biogeography using rational cost efficient methods to reduce initial complexity to locality data and depict general distribution patterns however few quantitative and automated panbiogeographic methods exist in this study we propose a new algorithm within a quantitative geometrical framework to perform panbiogeographical analyses as an alternative to more traditional methods the algorithm first calculates a minimum spanning tree an individual track for each species in a panbiogeographic context then the spatial congruence among segments of the minimum spanning trees is calculated using five congruence parameters producing a general distribution pattern in addition the algorithm removes the ambiguity and subjectivity often present in a manual panbiogeographic analysis results from two empirical examples using 61 species of the genus bomarea 2340 records and 1031 genera of both plants and animals 100118 records distributed across the northern andes demonstrated that a geometrical approach to panbiogeography is a feasible quantitative method to determine general distribution patterns for taxa reducing complexity and the time needed for managing large data sets,2011,0.405
Sampling procedures and species estimation: testing the effectiveness of herbarium data against vegetation sampling in an oceanic island,questions what is the relationship between species assemblages in herbarium collections and species abundances in the field and how trustworthy are herbarium data in vegetation science location guadalupe island baja california mexico methods we compared species abundance distribution and evenness in 110 vegetation plots in guadalupe island against data from four herbaria we tested whether the relative frequencies derived from herbarium specimens differed significantly from species frequencies in the field we compared the rarefaction curves for both field and herbarium data sets and tested whether taxonomic collectors accumulated new species at a higher rate than that observed in ecological plot sampling results at any given sampling effort the total number of observed species was higher in herbarium data the relative abundance of common species in the field was higher and the evenness of the distribution was lower than in herbarium data there was no significant correlation between species abundances in the field and in the herbaria by selectively targeting rare species collectors accumulate previously unseen species much faster than through ecological sampling conclusions because collectors aim for the rarer species and avoid the more common ones the relative abundance of species in herbarium collections cannot be interpreted as a predictor of their true abundance in the field any statistical procedure that requires the sample to be representative of the true abundance distribution is likely to show errors when applied to herbarium data however because collectors actively search for rare species their rate of species accumulation is higher and their floristic lists are more complete than those obtained through ecological field sampling,2011,0.996
Progress in molecular and morphological taxon discovery in Fungi and options for formal classification of environmental sequences,fungal taxonomy seeks to discover describe and classify all species of fungi and provide tools for their identification about 100 000 fungal species have been described so far but it has been estimated that there may be from 1 5 to 5 1 million extant fungal species over the last decade about 1200 new species of fungi have been described in each year at that rate it may take up to 4000 y to describe all species of fungi using current specimen based approaches at the same time the number of molecular operational taxonomic units motus discovered in ecological surveys has been increasing dramatically we analyzed ribosomal rna internal transcribed spacer its sequences in the genbank nucleotide database and classified them as â œenvironmentalâ or â œspecimen basedâ we obtained 91 225 sequences of which 30 217 33 were of environmental origin clustering at an average 93 identity in extracted its1 and its2 sequences yielded 16 969 clusters including 6230 37 clusters with only environmental sequences and 2223 13 clusters with both environmental and specimen based sequences in 2008 and 2009 the number of purely environmental clusters deposited in genbank exceeded the number of species described based on specimens and this does not include the huge number of unnamed motus discovered in pyrosequencing studies to enable communication about fungal diversity there is a pressing need to develop classification systems based on environmental sequences assigning latin binomials to motus would promote their integration with specimen based taxonomic databases whereas the use of numerical codes for motus would perpetuate a disconnect with the taxonomic literature motus could be formally named under the existing international code of botanical nomenclature if the concept of a nomenclatural type was expanded to include environmental samples or illustrations of sequence chromatograms or alignments alternatively a â œcandidate speciesâ category could be created for fungi based on the candidatus taxon status employed by microbiologists,2011,0.87
The distribution of Elatine hexandra (Lapierre) DC. (Elatinacea),general distribution map of elatine hexandra lapierre dc was made based on literature and web based data confronted and possible reasons of the formation of taxon s distribution range and history are discussed,2011,0.29
Developmental Regulatory Genes in Parasitic Flatworms,evolutionary development is concerned with the molecular mechanisms by which a single cell develops and differentiates into a complex multicellular organism a key suite of developmental regulatory genes defined by their conserved properties and behaviours have been implicated in the molecular programs responsible for directing development across the entire animal kingdom most available information is based on traditional model organisms and among flatworms phylum platyhelminthes only planarian development has been studied in detail whereas the parasitic groups have been largely overlooked however parasitic flatworms exhibit an extraordinary range of lifestyles strategies developmental plasticity and highly derived morphologies which offer unique opportunities to address long standing questions relating to metazoan development here developmental genes relating to axial patterning or the germline are studied in two of the major parasitic groups monogeneans and cestodes hox genes play a central role in directing segment identity and patterning of the antero posterior axis of the developing metazoan embryo here the frog monogenean protopolystoma xenopodi was used to screen for novel homeobox containing genes using degenerate primers and attempts to produce full length transcripts of hox genes via rapid amplification of cdna ends race were made in addition the model tapeworm hymenolepis microstoma was used to screen for homologs of germline markers vasa and piwi â gene families implicated in germline soma segregation â and to investigate their expression patterns via in situ hybridisation no new novel homeobox sequences were amplified in p xenopodis and race was largely unsuccessful however two homologs of both vasa and piwi were identified in the transcriptome of h microstoma and while no expression of either piwi homologue was observed spatially restricted expression of vasa was observed in the ovaries of immature and mature proglottids this suggests a role for vasa in oogenesis and represents the first data for germline gene expression from the parasitic flatworms,2011,0.056
Predicting worldwide invasiveness for four major problematic decapods: an evaluation of using different calibration sets,recently there has been much debate whether niche based models nbm can predict biological invasions into new areas these studies have chiefly focused on the type of occurrence data to use for model calibration additionally pseudo absences are also known to cause uncertainty in nbm but are rarely tested for predicting invasiveness here we test the implications of using different calibration sets for building worldwide invasiveness models for four major problematic decapods cherax destructor eriocheir sinensis pacifastacus leniusculus and procambarus clarkii using artificial neural networks models we compared predictions containing either native range occurrences nro native and invasive occurrences nio and invasive only iro coupled with three types of pseudo absences â based on sampling only 1 the native range nra 2 native and invasive ranges nia and 3 worldwide random wra we further analysed the potential gains in accuracy obtained through averaging across multiple models our results showed that nro and iro provided the best predictions for native and invaded ranges respectively still nio provided the best balance in predicting both ranges pseudo absences had a large influence on the predictive performance of the models and were more important for predictiveness than types of occurrences specifically wra performed the best and nra and nia performed poorly we also found little benefit in combining predictions since best performing single models showed consistently higher accuracies we conclude that nbm can provide useful information in forecasting invasiveness but are largely dependent on the type of initial information used and more efforts should be placed on recognizing its implications our results also show extensive areas which are highly suitable for the studied species worldwide in total these areas reach from three to nine times the species current ranges and large portions of them are contiguous with currently invasive populations,2011,0.445
"Databases, Scaling Practices and the Globalization of Biodiversity",since the convention on biological diversity in 1992 biodiversity has become an important topic for scientific research much of this research is focused on measuring and mapping the current state of biodiversity in terms of which species are present at which places and in which abundance and making extrapolations and future projections that is determining the trends biodiversity databases are crucial components of these activities because they store information about biodiversity and make it digitally available useful biodiversity databases require data that are reliable standardized and fit for up scaling this paper uses material from the ebone project european biodiversity observation network to illustrate how biodiversity databases are constructed how data are negotiated and scaled and how biodiversity is globalized the findings show a continuous interplay between scientific ideals related to objectivity and pragmatic considerations related to feasibility and data availability statistics was a crucial feature of the discussions it also proved to be the main device in up scaling the data the material presented shows that biodiversity is approached in an abstract quantitative and technical way disconnected from the species and habitats that make up biodiversity and the people involved in collecting the data globalizing biodiversity involves decontextualization and standardization this paper argues that while this is important if the results of projects like ebone are to be usable in different contexts there is a risk involved as it may lead to the alienation from the organizations and volunteers who collect the data upon which these projects rely,2011,0.065
Applying Aspects of Data Governance from the Private Sector to Public Higher Education,the purpose of this annotated bibliography is to identify ways to better manage enterprise wide data assets within institutions of higher education through data quality actions and data governance options the goal is to present selected data governance practices within the private business sector for consideration by individuals in public higher education who promote and support data quality initiatives topics include data quality barriers data quality models data quality management practices and data quality drivers,2011,0.288
Developing open access in conservation research,conservation research can be broadly defined as the applied research on conservation of ecosystems which ranges from biological conservation and water resources protection to climate change mitigation in recent decades relevant disciplinary fields including conservation biology landscape ecology soil science and water resources engineering have developed to address complex conservation issues with additions from interdisciplinary and or transdisciplinary research reyers et al 2010 furthermore multiagency conservation research programs have been established in recent years to build the bridge between conservation research and decision making such as the natural capital project jointly developed by stanford university the nature conservancy and world wildlife fund tallis et al 2010 the market based instrument mbi program in australia grafton 2005 the conservation effect assessment project ceap in the united states duriancik et al 2008 and the watershed evaluation of beneficial management practices webs project in canada yang et al 2007 in the process communication and collaboration have played a significant role in facilitating conservation research development however the flow of information within and between conservation research projects groups and agencies may be still not as free as it should be data sharing is still restricted to certain extent due to institutional and other barriers nelsonâ,2011,0.119
Application of species distribution models and conservation planning software to the design of a reserve network for the riverine fishes of northeastern Mesoamerica,1 protected area networks for river ecosystems must account for the highly connected nature of river habitats and the fact that conditions in distant locations can influence downstream habitats and biota we used marxan conservation planning software to address the unique constraints of reserve design in river ecosystems and structure a reserve network to overcome key challenges to freshwater conservation 2 the range limits of 63 fish species in mesoamerica were predicted and used in marxan to design a network of conservation focal areas that encompasses 15 of the range of each species in areas with low risk of environmental degradation upstream risk intensity was estimated by propagating landscape based sources of stress downstream along the direction of flow in gis we constrained marxan solutions to account for basin divides and we defined critical management zones to include important habitats that contribute to species persistence and mitigate threats 3 the proposed reserve network encompassed 11 of the study area half of which was contained within existing protected areas our exercise also identified important gaps in protection because terrestrial based environmental risks were propagated through the river network and considered in the solution focal areas were constrained to catchments with low levels of upstream human activity addition of critical management zones â riparian buffers and fish migration corridors â expanded the network area by one fifth 4 our application of marxan allowed longitudinal connectivity and topographic barriers to species movement to be considered adding critical management zones expanded the size of the reserve network but is crucial to the networkâ s conservation efficacy we call for an evaluation of the added management capacity needed to conserve critical management zones and suggest ways to further improve the reserve design process,2011,0.349
"Open minded and open access: introducing NeoBiota, a new peer-reviewed journal of biological invasions",te editorial presents the focus scope policies and the inaugural issue of neobiota a new open access peer reviewed journal of biological invasions te new journal neobiota is a continuation of the former neobiota publication series te journal will deal with all aspects of invasion biology and impose no restrictions on manuscript size neither on use of color neobiota implies an xml based editorial work flow and several cutting edge innovations in publishing and dissemination such as semantic markup of and enhancements to published texts data publication and extensive cross linking within the journal and to external sources,2011,0.279
Veg-X - an exchange standard for plot-based vegetation data,question collaborative research efforts and synthetic vegetation analyses are often limited by difficulties in sharing or combining datasets can we facilitate these activities by means of an exchange standard for plot based vegetation data methods in 2003 the ecoinformatics working group and the council of the international association for vegetation science endorsed the development of a standard exchange schema for vegetation plot data in 2007 a first workshop was held to formulate a common set of goals concepts and terminology for plot based vegetation data at a second workshop in 2008 this ontology was developed into an xml extensible markup language schema representation designed to be maximally compatible with existing standards and databases results the exchange standard for plot based vegetation data veg x allows for observations of vegetation at both individual plant and aggregated observation levels it ensures that observations are fixed to physical sample plots at specific points in space and time and makes a distinction between the entity of interest e g an individual tree and the observational act i e a measurement the standard supports repeated measurements of both individual organisms and plots allows observations of entities to be grouped following predefined or user defined criteria and ensures that the connection between the entity observed and taxonomic concept associated with that observation are maintained conclusions establishment of exchange standards followed by development of ecoinformatics tools built around those standards should allow scientists to efficiently combine plot data over extensive spatial and temporal gradients in order to perform analyses and make predictions of vegetation change and dynamics at local and global scales,2011,0.102
"Gerris Lacustris Linaeus 1758 And Gerris Costae Herrich-Schäffer 1853: Species – Habitat Relations On Mountainous Tributaries Of ViÅŸeu River (MaramureÅŸ, Romania)",semi aquatic heteroptera species from some mountainous tributaries of viåÿeu river were collected and their relations with habitat variables were investigated only two species g lacustris and g costae were found alone or together in almost half of the checked sampling stations correlation analysis between species and habitat conditions showed that g lacustris prefers small deep ponds or river banks with steep slopes and it is easily adaptable to habitat changes while g costae is mostly found in large marshes with low stagnant water and high amount of vegetation both species are relatively tolerant to human impact in their habitat with an advantage to g lacustris the two species are negatively correlated to each other as an expression to the competition between them pca resulted in two dominant factors explaining almost 60 of the habitat variation and their graphical representation proved the previous correlations,2011,0.9
Making United States Integrated Ocean Observing System (U.S. IOOS) inclusive of marine biological resources,an important data management and communication dmac goal is to enable a multi disciplinary view of the ocean environment by facilitating discovery and integration of data from various sources projects and scientific domains united states integrated ocean observing system u s ioos dmac functional requirements are based upon guidelines for standardized data access services data formats metadata controlled vocabularies and other conventions so far the data integration effort has focused on geophysical u s ioos core variables such as temperature salinity ocean currents etc the ioos biological observations project is addressing the dmac requirements that pertain to biological observations standards and interoperability applicable to u s ioos and to various observing systems biological observations are highly heterogeneous and the variety of formats logical structures and sampling methods create significant challenges here we describe an informatics framework for biological observing data e g species presence absence and abundance data that will expand information content and reconcile standards for the representation and integration of these biological observations for users to maximize the value of these observing data we further propose that the approach described can be applied to other datasets generated in scientific observing surveys and will provide a vehicle for wider dissemination of biological observing data we propose to employ data definition conventions that are well understood in u s ioos and to combine these with ratified terminologies policies and guidelines,2011,0.174
Human-mediated introductions of Australian acacias - a global experiment in biogeography,aim australian acacias 1012 recognized species native to australia which were previously grouped in acacia subgenus phyllodineae have been moved extensively around the world by humans over the past 250 years this has created the opportunity to explore how evolutionary ecological historical and sociological factors interact to affect the distribution usage invasiveness and perceptions of a globally important group of plants this editorial provides the background for the 20 papers in this special issue of diversity and distributions that focusses on the global cross disciplinary experiment of introduced australian acacias location australia and global methods the papers of the special issue are discussed in the context of a unified framework for biological invasions distributions of species were mapped across australia their representation in bioclimatic zones examined and the potential global distribution of the group modelled by collating a variety of different lists we determined which australian acacias have reached different stages in the introduction naturalization invasion continuum in different parts of the world paradigms and key research questions relating to barriers to invasion stages of invasion and management perceptions are sketched results according to our global database of australian acacia records 386 species have been moved outside australia by human agency 71 species are naturalized or weedy and 23 are unequivocally invasive climatic models suggest that about a third of the worldâ s land surface is climatically suitable for australian acacias many species are commercially important crops or are useful for other purposes and have been extensively planted and many different human perceptions of australian acacias exist in different parts of the world the papers in the special issue cover all the barriers stages and processes that define biological invasions and touch on many aspects history and the human dimension aspects of the species pool species traits biotic interactions climate and niche and management main conclusions australian acacias are an excellent model group for examining interactions between evolutionary ecological and socio economic drivers of species introductions new insights have emerged on the biological ecological and evolutionary correlates of naturalization and invasion but human usage factors permeate all explanatory models understanding and managing introduced australian acacias requires a fundamental and integrative appreciation of both intrinsic e g species traits and extrinsic e g human usage and perceptions aspects ⪠2011 blackwell publishing ltd doi 10 1111 j,2011,0.862
Lichens of the Köprülü Canyon National Park in Turkey,this is the first comprehensive survey on lichens of the kã prã lã canyon national park totally 1266 lichen samples were collected during the field studies between june 2006 and august 2008 in kã prã lã canyon national park 217 lichen taxa which belong to 8 orders 28 families and 76 genera were determined from the research area of the determined lichens 203 taxa were recorded for the first time in the national park in addition 67 taxa are new records for antalya and 7 taxa for turkey,2011,0.766
Public Garden Management,architecture landscape the complete and ready reference for establishing managing and running a successful and sustainable profitable public garden as unique museums with living collections of plants public gardens offer visitors aesthetically beautiful landscapes combined with educational programming and scientific research that promote the value and understanding of plants in the twenty first century public gardens are in the forefront of organizations and institutions committed to promoting the conservation of plants and their habitats developing sustainable practices that support the environment and providing green spaces where our increasingly stressed and urbanized citizens can reconnect with the natural world it is critically important that such institutions have trained knowledgeable staff members because of its comprehensive examination of public gardens public garden management is the ideal guide for staff members at public gardens anyone considering a career in public gardens groups starting a botanical garden or arboretum and students discovering how these complex institutions work public garden management is an all in one professional reference and textbook that clearly shows how to develop establish manage and maintain a sustainable both economically and environmentally public garden offering practical coverage of relevant topics along with useful tools for reinforcing study this insightful and forward thinking guide is copublished by the american public gardens association written by a panel of leading experts in the field filled with dozens of case studies that are real world illustrations of the principles explored in the text illustrated throughout with line drawings figures and photographs that assist in conveying critical information students and professionals will benefit greatly from the management principles outlined in this book helping them establish and maintain new and existing public gardens that engage inspire and connect with their communities,2011,0.045
Myriapodological resources in the Manchester museum,the manchester museum houses eleven significant myriapodological resources 1 holotype paratype and syntype material of extant and fossil species 2 the whole spirit collection of j gordon blower and his students including a reference collection of british diplopoda 3 part of the collection of k w verhoeff 4 probably the whole spirit collection of h k and s g brade birks 5 the myriapodological library derived mainly from the personal collections of blower and brade birksâ but with some modern additions 6 a collection of ten theses on myriapodological topics in the john rylands university library of manchester 7 fossil material in the department of geology of the museum 8 a dried collection probably attributable to h k and s g brade birks 9 the harry britten slide collection of myriapoda 10 a miscellaneous dried and spirit collection 11 an archive of unpublished material mainly from the offices of j gordon blower the blower spirit collection has been fully examined re curated and catalogued while the verhoeff and brade birksâ collections remain to be dealt with in detail the blower collection contains 4560 tubes in 181 boxes a reference collection of british species has been extracted from the main collection it contains 51 of the 61 british native and introduced species the library contains 40 books and about 2000 reprints,2011,0.773
Online Spatial Database of US Army Public Health Command Region - West Mosquito Surveillance Records: 1947-2009,mosquito surveillance records from the us army public health command region west aphcr w were georeferenced and made available online via the database mapping application mosquitomap www mosquitomap org this article briefly reviews the history of the aphcr w surveillance program and some characteristics of the resulting dataset which numbers over 100 000 records mainly from us department of defense dod facilities in the western united states from 1947 to 2009 the value of past and future dod mosquito surveillance efforts can be increased by reporting the location of collection data in online spatial databases such as mosquitomap,2011,0.232
"Revision of the Afrotropical Arge mirabilipes Group, with Description of Two New Species and Annotations to Other Arge Species of this Region ( Hymenoptera : Symphyta : Argidae : Arginae )",the arge mirabilipes group of the afrotropical region is revised the previously known species arge mirabilipes pasteels 1955 a tibialis pasteels 1963 and a intermedia pasteels 1963 from south africa are redescribed two additional species from namibia and kenya are described arge kungveldensis sp n and a taitaensis sp n the species of this group are characterized by the medially slightly widened hind tibia a very short hind basitarsomere and the sawsheath is broadly and obtusely pincer shaped apically according to these characters arge tibialis a bisignata konow 1907 and a intermedia are removed from this group a tibialis is synonymised under a bisignata a key to the three valid species is provided the genitalia of all species are illustrated and geographic distribution and taxonomic relationships are discussed,2011,0.882
Conservation and the botanist effect,over the last few decades resources for descriptive taxonomy and biodiversity inventories have substantially declined and they are also globally unequally distributed this could result in an overall decline in the quality of biodiversity data as well as geographic biases reducing the utility and reliability of inventories we tested this hypothesis with tropical tree records n 24 024 collected from the eastern arc mountains tanzania between 1980 and 2007 by 13 botanists whose collections represent 80 of the total plant records for this region our results show that botanists with practical training in tropical plant identification record both more species and more species of conservation concern 20 more species two more endemic and one more threatened species per 250 specimens than untrained botanists training and the number of person days in the field explained 96 of the variation in the numbers of species found and training was the most important predictor for explaining recorded numbers of threatened and endemic species data quality was related to available facilities with good herbarium access significantly reducing the proportions of misidentifications and misspellings our analysis suggests that it may be necessary to account for recorder training when comparing diversity across sites particularly when assessing numbers of rare and endemic species and for global data portals to provide such information we also suggest that greater investment in the training of botanists and in the provisioning of good facilities would substantially increase recording efficiency and data reliability thereby improving conservation planning and implementation on the ground,2011,0.959
Spatial and temporal trends in yellow stingray abundance: evidence from diver surveys,recent concerns about changing elasmobranch populations have prompted the need to understand their patterns of distribution and abundance through non destructive sampling methods since scientific divers represent a small portion of the total number of divers worldwide the use of non scientific divers could drastically increase the number of observations needed to monitor broad scale long term trends here we use 83 940 surveys collected by trained volunteer divers to examine spatial and temporal trends of the most frequently sighted elasmobranch species in the greater caribbean the yellow stingray urobatis jamaicensis despite being relatively common and listed as least concern on the iucn red list little is known about the status of this species in total yellow stingrays were observed on 5 658 surveys 6 7 sighting frequency with the highest occurrence in the regions surrounding cuba overall sighting frequency declined from 20 5 in 1994 to 4 7 in 2007â a standardized decline rate of ∠0 11 however these trends were not consistent in all regions the strongest decline occurred in the florida keys the most sampled region where trends were similar among all areas habitats and depths in contrast sighting frequency significantly increased in jamaica where large fishes are severely depleted we discuss possible explanations for these changes including habitat degradation exploitation and changes in trophic interactions our results suggest large scale changes in yellow stingray abundance that have been unnoticed by the scientific community thus our study highlights the value of non scientific divers for collecting data that can be used to understand population trends of otherwise poorly studied species,2011,0.728
"Inferring Extinction of Mammals from Sighting Records, Threats, and Biological Traits.",for species with five or more sightings quantitative techniques exist to test whether a species is extinct on the basis of distribution of sightings however 70 of purportedly extinct mammals are known from fewer than five sightings and such models do not include some important indicators of the likelihood of extinction such as threats biological traits search effort and demography previously we developed a quantitative method that we based on species traits in which we used cox proportional hazards regression to calculate the probability of rediscovery of species regarded as extinct here we used two versions of the cox regression model to determine the probability of extinction in purportedly extinct mammals and compared the results of these two models with those of stationary poisson nonparametric and weibull sighting distribution models for mammals with five or more sightings the stationary poisson model categorized all but two critically endangered flagged as possibly extinct species in our data set as extinct and results with this model were consistent with current categories of the international union for the conservation of nature the scores of probability of rediscovery for individual species in one version of our cox regression model were correlated with scores assigned by the stationary poisson model thus we used this cox regression model to determine the probability of extinction of mammals with sparse records on the basis of the cox regression model the most likely mammals to be rediscovered were the montane monkey faced bat pteralopex pulchra armenian myotis myotis hajastanicus alcorn s pocket gopher pappogeomys alcorni and wimmer s shrew crocidura wimmeri the cox model categorized two species that have recently disappeared as extinct the baiji lipotes vexillifer and the christmas island pipistrelle pipistrellus murrayi our new method can be used to test whether species with few records or recent last sighting dates are likely to be extinct,2011,0.547
Attribute Correction - Data Cleaning Using Association Rule and Clustering Methods,data cleaning also called data cleansing or scrubbing deals with detecting and removing errors and inconsistencies from data in order to improve the quality of data data quality problems are present in single data collections such as files and databases when multiple data sources need to be integrated e g in data warehouses federated database systems or global web based information systems the need for data cleaning increases significantly data cleaning is the necessary condition of knowledge discovery and data warehouse building in this paper two algorithms are designed using data mining technique to correct the attribute without external reference one is context dependent attribute correction and another is context independent attribute correction,2011,0.056
Bird Species-Richness Pattern in the Greater Himalayan Mountains—A General Introduction,any analysis of species distributions in southeast asia must confront several difficulties including weak baseline data a coarse sampling grid and confused taxonomy a critical portion of this region namely the southeastern himalayas and associated sub himalayan areas are high in species richness and yet are poorly sampled or understood from an ornithogeographic and conservation perspective recent surveys in assam arunachal pradesh northeast india yunnan southwest china and kachin state northern myanmar have revealed new taxa confirming the hypothesis that the mountain range is of global conservation importance in this monograph we summarize current knowledge historical and recent collection activities and taxonomic systematic and biogeographic revisions and consider the need for additional work and where in the region that work should be focused,2011,0.516
Scientific contributions of extensive biodiversity monitoring,to develop a complete and informative biodiversity observation system it is necessary to compare the strengths and limits of various monitoring schemes in this article we examine the various advantages of extensively monitoring fine grained spatial variations of biodiversity where the prominent traits of many species within a community abundance phenology etc are regularly recorded at numerous sites over a large territory usually via human observation networks linking these variations with environmental factors sheds lights on the major mechanisms leading to changes in biodiversity thus increasing our knowledge of macroecology and community ecology this extensive monitoring allows us to assess diffuse effects contributing to the sound use of the precautionary principle combined with site focused monitoring information gathered from extensive monitoring provides the raw material necessary to build biodiversity scenarios,2011,0.093
A Novel Framework and Model for Data Warehouse Cleansing,data cleansing is a process that deals with identification of corrupt and duplicate data inherent in the data sets of a data warehouse to enhance the quality of data this paper aims to facilitate the data cleaning process by addressing the problem of duplicate records detection pertaining to the â žnameâ ÿ attributes of the data sets it provides a sequence of algorithms through a novel framework for identifying duplicity in the â žnameâ ÿ attribute of the data sets of an already existing data warehouse the key features of the research includes its proposal of a novel framework through a well defined sequence of algorithms and refining the application of alliance rules 1 by incorporating the use of previously existing and well defined similarity computation measures the results depicted show the feasibility and validity of the suggested method,2011,0.138
The Global Spread of the Chinese Mitten Crab Eriocheir sinensis,chinese mitten crabs are one of the worldâ s most notorious aquatic invasive species their catadromous life history in which they spend most of their lives growing to maturity in freshwater and their extreme euryhalinity has made it relatively easy for the species to gain a foothold in the worldâ s river systems ballast water introductions are thought to have brought them to continental europe in the early twentieth century these will have probably been as larvae which will then have settled in the estuaries subsequently moving upstream as juveniles the capacity of these crabs to move upstream and over land is staggering and indi viduals in their native range in the far east have been found more than 1 000 km from the sea where they must return to breed a number of successful separate introductions of mitten crabs have taken place in europe including the uk and america europe northern germany saw initial introductions in 1912 followed by others into both the north sea coasts and english channel coasts of france the extensive network of northern european waterways facilitated the spread in river systems after a lag phase which is typical of many invasive species following introduction numbers of mitten crabs increased dramatically such that by 1936 attempts at removing the animals from rivers in germany were abandoned some 220 metric tonnes were removed from the river weser alone in that year introductions into the uk river thames followed in the mid 1930s but initial introductions appear not to have founded a population it was not until 1970s that mitten crabs numbers increased and the thames population became established and it has subsequently increased and spread the crab had spread rapidly both around uk coasts and up river systems by the end of the twentieth century and into the 1st decade of the 21st evidence suggests that there have been several separate introductions in france the first in northern france and then subsequently into western france,2011,0.619
Climate Change and American Bullfrog Invasion: What Could We Expect in South America?,background biological invasion and climate change pose challenges to biodiversity conservation in the 21st century invasive species modify ecosystem structure and functioning and climatic changes are likely to produce invasive species range shifts pushing some populations into protected areas the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus is one of the hundred worst invasive species in the world native from the southeast of usa it has colonized more than 75 of south america where it has been reported as a highly effective predator competitor and vector of amphibian diseases methodology principal findings we modeled the potential distribution of the bullfrog in its native range based on different climate models and green house gases emission scenarios and projected the results onto south america for the years of 2050 and 2080 we also overlaid projected models onto the south american network of protected areas our results indicate a slight decrease in potential suitable area for bullfrog invasion although protected areas will become more climatically suitable therefore invasion of these sites is forecasted conclusion significance we provide new evidence supporting the vulnerability of the atlantic forest biodiversity hotspot to bullfrog invasion and call attention to optimal future climatic conditions of the andean patagonian forest eastern paraguay and northwestern bolivia where invasive populations have not been found yet we recommend several management and policy strategies to control bullfrog invasion and argue that these would be possible if based on appropriate articulation among government agencies ngos research institutions and civil society,2011,0.369
"Development of a Mobile Application, ""Wild Flowers of Bukhansan National Park (version 1.0)"", for Identification of Plants in Bukhansan National Park",we developed the educational purpose mobile application named wild flowers of bukhansan national park version 1 0 aiming for easy identification of wild flowers for students and visitors in the park when visitors find a flower or part of plant in the park visitors can search for its name utilizing the pictures and characters provided in their own smartphone mobile devices or tablet pcs the application provides pictures of wild flowers in the park and character based searching system based on 12 diagnostic features e g growth form leaf arrangement flower symmetry petal color petal number sepal number etc we adopted the complete floristic survey of chung and lee 1962 and added species that we confirmed their distribution in the park during the development of this application in summary number of vascular plants in this park was estimated to be 428 taxa including 100 families 280 genera 327 species 1 subspecies 50 varieties and 5 formas we provided a total of 588 pictures representing 358 taxa and each taxon includes multiple pictures in many cases included identification quizzes can be an efficient educational tool as well as fun activity for students and visitors who are learning plant species in korea our next step will include gps function in the application for indicating visitor s location and for providing previously reported sites of the species that we interested in the map of the park the future application which includes gps function will be a valuable tool for the monitoring of rare plants plant researches related to the climate changes etc we currently provide korean iphone version only and english version and both of android versions will be serviced soon,2011,0.522
Organized Oral Session 14 Ecology Education in 2020: Integrating New Technologies with Mother Nature,technology is often on the minds of ecologists they covet new instruments to advance their measurements or new software tools to accelerate data analysis the geeks among us have rapidly adopted new technologies such as i clickers and facebook but how do the spectrum of new approaches and tools of the digital revolution impact teaching see national academy reports of the last decade and most recently the u s department of education office of educational technology 2010 and how can they enhance ecological education for the upcoming generation of digital natives palfrey and gasser 2008 can we expect incremental steps or are there revolutions on the horizon our oral session in pittsburgh was planned to address these questions and to prime membersâ interest in the environmental education summit â http www esa org eesummit homeâ º sponsored by esa and nea that was to be held 14â 15 october,2011,0.219
Species response curves of oak species along climatic gradients in Turkey.,the genus quercus is one of the most important tree species in turkey however little is known on the ecological preferences of turkish oak species regarding climate we analyzed species response curves using a hof model approach to describe the general pattern of oak distributions along climatic gradients and to identify the driving climatic factors for eight oak species in turkey while climate data were extracted from the free available worldclim dataset occurrence data on oak species were assembled from the literature into a vegetation database n 1 104 from the analyzed species response curves only fa ew 16 showed unimodal responses while most were linear 31 or exhibited a threshold response 31 the driving factors were seasonality of temperature and seasonality of precipitation indicating that turkish oak species can be characterized best by the preference of climatic stability these findings have important implications for conservation and climate change research which usually focuses on trends of the mean values of temperature or precipitation but less often on the seasonality in this study we further tested whether niche optima derived from raw mean values of occurrences could replace missing model optima due to non responsiveness of hof models of type i however we did not find this to be a satisfactory solution finally we discuss the need for the construction of a national database based on phytosociological relevã s for turkey,2011,0.813
Recent developments in the taxonomic affiliation and phylogenetic positioning of fungi: impact in applied microbiology and environmental biotechnology.,the goal of modern taxonomy is to understand the relationships of living organisms in terms of evolutionary descent thereby the relationships between living organisms are understood in terms of nested clades every time a speciation event takes place two new clades are produced life comprises three domains of living organisms these are the bacteria the archaea and the eukaryota within the eukaryotic domain the fungi form a monophyletic group of the eukaryotic crown group and are thus high up in the evolutionary hierarchy of life fungus like organisms possess certain morphological features of fungi such as the hyphal organization of the oomycota or the spores and reproductive structures inside a fructification of plasmodiophorids plasmodiophoromycota and slime moulds mycetozoa the first group are algae which secondarily lost their plastids during evolution and contain cellulose in their cell walls both osmotrophic phyla the oomycota and the plasmidiophoromycota belong to the chromista and rhizaria respectively whereas the last group the cellular and plasmodial slime moulds mycetozoa are phagotrophic amoeboid protists belonging to the amoebozoa these fungus like organisms are not considered further in this review the fungi sensu stricto comprise a heterogenous often inconspicuous group of microorganisms which 1 are primarily heterotrophic with an 2 osmotrophic style of nutrition containing 3 chitin and its derivatives in the cell wall this review discusses species concepts and current strategies in fungal taxonomy phylogenetic affiliations of miscellaneous fungus like groups like the microsporidia perspectives of fungal nomenclature and their impact on natural product research,2011,0.153
What more can plant scientists do to help save the green stuff?,the global strategy for plant conservation gspc was the first such effort under the convention on biological diversity cbd and had gone through a 3 year process to reach the level of maturity that enabled it to be approved by consensus by all governments present at the key session in the hague in april 2002 it provided a model for subsequent cbd workplans with targets and undoubtedly contributed to the 2010 target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss in the event few of the targets were achieved because of numerous constraints at both policy and implementation levels even so the gspc stands as an important milestone in the global effort to conserve biodiversity however few plant scientists can be satisfied that the essential steps are being taken to ensure the conservation of plants although of course plant scientists are only one part of the complex effort that will be required this paper offers some suggestions that might be worth consideration building on the basic principle in politics that a strong constituency is necessary to victory in other words although plant scientists play a crucial role plant conservation is too important to leave in their hands alone far broader support is required including from the private sector agriculture forestry trade economics tourism and even the military although botanical science provides a solid foundation other branches of science are also important ranging from anthropology to zoology the legal profession also has important contributions to make as well as the ability to hamper progress â for example through using issues such as access and benefit sharing to limit the exchange of genetic materials for even noncommercial use 2010 was the united nations year of biodiversity and the gspc targets reached their due date it therefore seems timely to add some additional perspectives to the effort to update the gspc this paper suggests ways to reach a far broader constituency provides tools to those who are expected to achieve the targets and suggests ways to build a strong international constituency to conserve the world s botanical wealth,2011,0.057
XML schemas and mark-up practices of taxonomic literature,we review the three most widely used xml schemas used to mark up taxonomic texts taxonx taxpub and taxmlit tese are described from the viewpoint of their development history current status im plementation and use cases te concept of â œtaxon treatmentâ from the viewpoint of taxonomy mark up into xml is discussed taxonx and taxmlit are primarily designed for legacy literature the former being more lightweight and with a focus on recovery of taxon treatments the latter providing a much more de tailed set of tags to facilitate data extraction and analysis taxpub is an extension of the national library of medicine document type definition nlm dtd for taxonomy focussed on layout and recovery and as such is best suited for mark up of new publications and their archiving in pubmedcentral all three schemas have their advantages and shortcomings and can be used for different purposes,2011,0.199
From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet,this paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the fp7 future internet ppp program within the digital agenda for europe large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the future internet these communitiesâ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources indeed this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere sensor web to an observation web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors environmental simulations and citizens the paper also describes the research challenges to realize the observation web and the associated environmental enablers for the future internet such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device a web service application or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the future internet applications to consume produce and use environmental observations in cross domain applications the term â envirofiedâ future internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the environmental usage area within the future internet ppp program relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors anywhere the provision and generation of information by citizens and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations the paper addresses the technical challenges in the environmental usage area and the need for designing multi style service oriented architecture key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation and the related propagation of information uncertainty approaches to security standardization and harmonization all essential for sustainable solutions are summarized from the perspective of the environmental usage area the paper concludes with an overview of emerging high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems biodiversity air quality atmospheric conditions and water ecosystems marine asset management,2011,0.003
Ecology in India: Retrospect and Prospects,it is a privilege for me to deliver the professor r misra birth centenary lecture 2010 professor ram deo misra 1908â 1998 was among the few who are able to establish an entire subject across a country he has been rightly called â father of ecology in indiaâ today ecology in india owes its presence in all indian universities to the foresight and untiring efforts of r misra who contributed to its development and growth at a time when as a subject ecology was much maligned and absent or ignored in teaching curriculae in the country he trained numerous young researchers by organizing training courses and influenced many more through his lectures thus he fostered ecology to become a major discipline for teaching and research in traditional university departments i had the opportunity of being associated with him for many years in fact he shaped my career and that of numerous others there are no words to describe his dedication and commitment to ecology and his benevolence in this address i will briefly deal with how the discipline of ecology took roots in india and will recount some of the major researches which have helped us in understanding the nature of indian ecosystems and the ecological processes i am certain that this account will remain incomplete and i apologise in advance for omissions i shall also endeavour to place before you the possible and desirable future course of development in the subject for further information following sources may be referred to singh 1991 singh and singh 1995 and mohan ram 2010,2011,0.231
Testing climate-based species distribution models with recent field surveys of pond-breeding amphibians in eastern Missouri,species distribution models sdms have become an important tool for ecologists by providing the ability to predict the distributions of organisms based on species niche parameters and available habitat across broad geographic areas however investigation of the appropriate extent of environmental data needed to make accurate predictions has received limited attention we investigate whether sdms developed with regional climate and species locality data i e within missouri usa produce more accurate predictions of species occurrences than models developed with data from across an entire species range to test the accuracy of the model predictions field surveys were performed in 2007 and 2008 at 103 study ponds for eight amphibian study species models developed using data from across the entire species range did not accurately predict the occurrences of any study species however models developed using data only from missouri produced accurate predictions for four study species all of which are near the edge of their geographic ranges within the study area these results suggest that species distribution modeling with regionally focused data may be preferable for local ecological and conservation purposes and that climate factors may be more important for determining species distributions at the edge of their geographic ranges,2011,0.974
Potential distribution of Mexican primates: modeling the ecological niche with the maximum entropy algorithm.,we developed a potential distribution model for the tropical rain forest species of primates of southern mexico the black howler monkey alouatta pigra the mantled howler monkey alouatta palliata and the spider monkey ateles geoffroyi to do so we applied the maximum entropy algorithm from the ecological niche modeling program maxent for each species we used occurrence records from scientific collections and published and unpublished sources and we also used the 19 environmental coverage variables related to precipitation and temperature from worldclim to develop the models the predicted distribution of a pigra was strongly associated with the mean temperature of the warmest quarter 23 6 whereas the potential distributions of a palliata and a geoffroyi were strongly associated with precipitation during the coldest quarter 52 2 and 34 3 respectively the potential distribution of a geoffroyi is broader than that of the alouatta spp the areas with the greatest probability of presence of a pigra and a palliata are strongly associated with riparian vegetation whereas the presence of a geoffroyi is more strongly associated with the presence of rain forest our most significant contribution is the identification of areas with a high probability of the presence of these primate species which is information that can be applied to planning future studies and then establishing criteria for the creation of areas to primate conservation in mexico,2011,0.892
An integrated database on ticks and tick-borne zoonoses in the tropics and subtropics with special reference to developing and emerging countries.,tick borne zoonoses tbz are emerging diseases worldwide a large amount of information e g case reports results of epidemiological surveillance etc is dispersed through various reference sources isi and non isi journals conference proceedings technical reports etc an integrated database derived from the icttd 3 project http www icttd nl was developed in order to gather tbz records in the sub tropics collected both by the authors and collaborators worldwide a dedicated website http www tickbornezoonoses org was created to promote collaboration and circulate information data collected are made freely available to researchers for analysis by spatial methods integrating mapped ecological factors for predicting tbz risk the authors present the assembly process of the tbz database the compilation of an updated list of tbz relevant for sub tropics the database design and its structure the method of bibliographic search the assessment of spatial precision of geo referenced records at the time of writing 725 records extracted from 337 publications related to 59 countries in the sub tropics have been entered in the database tbz distribution maps were also produced imported cases have been also accounted for the most important datasets with geo referenced records were those on spotted fever group rickettsiosis in latin america and crimean congo haemorrhagic fever in africa the authors stress the need for international collaboration in data collection to update and improve the database supervision of data entered remains always necessary means to foster collaboration are discussed the paper is also intended to describe the challenges encountered to assemble spatial data from various sources and to help develop similar data collections,2011,0.173
The puzzle of DNA sequences of Phytoseiidae (AcarMesostigmata) in the public GenBank database,the public database genbank is an increasingly important source of sequence data for diagnostic and phylogenetic research however not all deposited sequences are necessarily correctly ascribed to a source species we considered the example of the mite family phytoseiidae to determine how the corresponding sequences could be accurately exploited phytoseiidae mites are well known worldwide for their ability to control certain mite and insect pests the number of molecular approaches especially for diagnostic purposes has increased over the past decade leading to an increase in the number of sequences registered in the genbank database the aim of the present paper was to evaluate the validity of the dna sequences presently assigned to phytoseiidae species in this database three hundred and fifty one sequences corresponding to the four most frequently registered dna fragments its coi cytb and 12s rrna were considered dna extraction amplification and sequencing were performed for the fragments 12s rrna and its for amblyseius andersoni a swirskii iphiseius degenerans euseius ovalis e stipulatus neoseiulus cucumeris and typhlodromus pyri as some identifications were questionable numerous problems were evident based on genetic distance analyses of these sequences first nomenclatural problems were encountered preventing the correct identification of the taxa sequenced in one case suspected misidentifications were frequent stressing the importance of voucher specimen availability for the 12s rrna fragment sequences assigned to three phytoseiidae species were those of their prey astigmata underlining the care that must be taken when manipulating the dna of such predators sterile conditions and specific pcr primers finally sequences of two regions of the coi mtdna were encountered leading to alignment problems between sequences of a same gene and same species these results are discussed in relation to responsibilities of authors in terms of taxon identification and the great utility of open access dna sequence databases such as genbank for improving taxonomic identifications and advancing scientific research,2011,0.624
Merging Metadata – Building on Existing Standards to Create a Field Book Registry,the field book project is a cross disciplinary project to develop an online registry for field books and other primary source materials related to biodiversity research led by rusty russell and anne van camp this project is a joint initiative of the smithsonian institution archives and the national museum of natural history this paper presents the metadata structure established for building the field book registry the project team is committed to involving members of the library archives museum and biodiversity communities in the development of the field book registry we invite your comments and discussion regarding the work presented here,2011,0.177
"Comparative phylogeography of two related plant species with overlapping ranges in Europe, and the potential effects of climate change on their intraspecific genetic diversity",the aim of the present study was to use a combined phylogeographic and species distribution modelling approach to compare the glacial histories of two plant species with overlapping distributions orthilia secunda one sided wintergreen and monotropa hypopitys yellow bird s nest phylogeographic analysis was carried out to determine the distribution of genetic variation across the range of each species and to test whether both correspond to the classic model of high diversity in the south with decreasing diversity at higher latitudes or whether the cold adapted o secunda might retain more genetic variation in northern populations in addition projected species distributions based on a future climate scenario were modelled to assess how changes in the species ranges might impact on total intraspecific diversity in both cases,2011,0.814
"Serving the Global Village through Public Data Sharing as a Mandatory Paradigm for Seabird Biologists and Managers : Why , What , How , and a Call for an Efficient Action Plan",the ocean and most of its ecosystem components are in a crisis for instance 16 out of 18 albatross species are of serious conservation concern and many polar species share a similar status public data sharing has yet to be established among seabird biologists towards the creation of an efficient management scheme here i outline in relevant detail the overall context of global data sharing and the issues specifically focusing on seabird data and metadata for the first time the goals detailed database and online technicalities and required formats for sharing seabird data are outlined with pros and cons finally an action plan is discussed on how to move towards a new ocean and seabird culture which has global data sharing and sustainability as its prime goals,2011,0.461
Assessing the environmental requirements of invaders using ensembles of distribution models,understanding the environmental factors determining the establishment of invasive populations is a crucial issue in the study of biological invasions by taking into account the uncertainty of predictions ensembles of niche based models can provide useful information therefore we explored the use of consensus techniques to generate a quantitative description of the environmental conditions favouring the establishment of four problematic invasive decapods cherax destructor eriocheir sinensis pacifastacus leniusculus and procambarus clarkii,2011,0.244
Biodiversity information goes public: GBIF at your service,to the benefit of taxonomists systematists ecologists conservationists and the interested general public community gbif the global biodiversity information facility now offers more than 280 million records from biological and geological collections and observation data bases worldwide taxonomic revisions phylogenetic analyses large scale ecological modelling and decisionmaking in conservation and planning issues are simplified and may be based on better background knowledge than ever before using the central gbif portal at http www gbif org or regional portals hosted by the different gbif nodes,2011,0.233
How can actinomycete taxonomy and natural product research work together ? The Sanofi-Aventis approach,the role of taxonomy in natural product research can be estimated in different ways as the biological active secondary metabolite is in the focus different companies have developed their own philosophy as sanofi aventis has done surveying the patent literature and journals for the description of natural products for example the journal of antibiotics it is found that most actinomycetes reported to produce biological active compounds are described only to the genus level1 or with an invalid taxonomic name many of them belong to novel species as shown in our studies of members of the genus actinoplanes during a research program for new lantibiotics2 which resulted in the validation of actinoplanes liguriensis and a teichnomyceticus3 which have been invalidly published by parenti and co workers4 5 the characterisation and description of the antibiotic producing actinomycetes at sanofi aventis or its predecessors has a long history going back to the publication of three novel species of the genus streptomyces that produce moenomycin6 an antibiotic compound which is still in fermentative production today,2011,0.32
A definition of mountains and their bioclimatic belts for global comparisons of biodiversity data,this is the first quantitative attempt at a global areal definition of â alpineâ and â montaneâ terrain by combining geographical information systems for topography with bioclimatic criteria temperature subdividing the life zones along elevational gradients the mountain definition adopted here refrains from any truncation by low elevation thresholds and defines the worldâ s mountains by a common ruggedness threshold 200 m difference in elevation within a 2 5â cell 0 5â resolution arriving at 16 5 mio km2 or 12 3 of all terrestrial land area outside antartica being mountains the model employed accounts for criteria of â œmountainous terrainâ for biological analysis and thus arrives at a smaller land area fraction than hydrologically oriented approaches and by its 2 5â resolution it includes less unstructured terrain such as large plateaus very wide valleys or basins than earlier approaches the thermal delineation of the alpine and nival biogeographic region by the climatic tree limit the lower boundary of the alpine belt arrives at 2 6 or 3 55 mio km2 of the global land area outside antarctica 21 5 of all mountain terrain seven climate defined life zones in mountains facilitate large scale global comparisons of biodiversity information as used in the new electronic â mountain biodiversity portalâ of the global mountain biodiversity assessment gmba,2011,0.199
"Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott (Araceae), an expanding invasive species of aquatic ecosystems in the Iberian Peninsula: new records and risk assessment",colocasia esculenta l schott araceae is becoming an invasive plant in spain iberian peninsula four newly invaded localities are presented in this study and its population status habitat and climatic features in spain are presented the species has colonised some localities in south portugal to characterise the speciesâ climatic tolerance its world distribution was reviewed and the climate types of other invaded areas worldwide were identified global data show that the species has the potential to colonise aquatic ecosystems under a wide variety of climate types finally based on two different procedures risk assessments were conducted for the iberian peninsula and for continental europe both suggested a high ecological risk associated with this species caution is called for in terms of its use outside of its native distribution range it is proposed that this species should be considered as invasive and risky to european and iberian water bodies and should be legally banned in europe,2011,0.731
Temporal limits to simulating the future spread pattern of invasive species: Buddleja davidii in Europe and New Zealand,the spread of invasive species is a major ecological and economic problem dynamic spread modelling is a potentially valuable tool to assist regional and central government authorities to monitor and control invasive species to date a lack of suitable data has meant that most broad scale dispersal models have not been validated with independent datasets and so their predictive ability and reliability has remained unscrutinised a dynamic stochastic dispersal model of the widely invasive plant buddleja davidii was calibrated on european spread data and then used to project the temporal progression of b davidii s distribution in new zealand starting from several different historical distributions to assess the model s performance we constructed an occupancy map based on the average number of simulation realisations that have a population present the application of receiver operating characteristic roc curves to occupancy maps is introduced but with specificity substituted by the proportion of available area used in a realisation a derivative measure the partial area under these curves when assessed through time pauc is introduced and used to assess overall performance of the spread model the model was able to attain a high level of model sensitivity encompassing all of the known locations within the occupancy envelope however attempting to simulate the spread of this invasive species beyond a decade had very low model specificity this is due to several factors including the exponential process of spread the further a population spreads the more sites exist from which it can spread stochastically and the markovian chain property of the stochastic system whereby differences between realisations compound through time these features are seen in many reports of spread models without being explicitly acknowledged our measure of pauc through time allows a model s temporal performance and its specificity to be simultaneously assessed while the rapid deterioration in model performance limits the utility of this type of modelling for forecasting long term broad scale strategic management of biological invasions it does not necessarily limit its attractiveness for informing smaller scale and shorter term invasion management activities such as surveillance containment and local eradication,2011,0.017
"Rhamphicarpa fistulosa, a parasitic weed threatening rain-fed lowland rice production in sub-Saharan Africa - A case study from Benin",expansion of the facultative parasitic plant rhamphicarpa fistulosa as a weed of rain fed lowland rice was studied in 2007 on a national level benin by repeating a survey from 1998 wider species distribution was investigated in 2008 current and potential impact and management strategies were investigated through farmer surveys and pot experiments out of 36 cultivated inland valleys visited across benin eight were found to be infested with rhamphicarpa out of nine inland valleys inspected in 1998 rhamphicarpa was found in five in 2007 compared with only three in 1998 farmers estimated rhamphicarpa inflicted yield losses could exceed 60 and indicated that heavily infested fields are abandoned in a pot experiment with a wide infestation range the popular cultivar gambiaka combining resistance with sensitivity showed a mean relative yield loss ryl of 63 parasitic rhamphicarpa biomass prb the difference between the above ground biomass produced with and without a host was suggested as indicator for infection level of this facultative parasite and hence as a practical measure for host resistance genetic variation in resistance and tolerance levels was observed among rice cultivars but fertilizer applications significantly reduced parasite numbers biomass and effects cancelling out such genotypic differences depending on the tolerance level of the cultivars the prb only accounted for 3 7 38 8 of the average parasite inflicted host biomass reductions indicating phytotoxic effects of rhamphicarpa infection r fistulosa is an apparently increasing constraint to rain fed lowland rice in benin threatening rice production in the wider region the use of resistant and tolerant cultivars combined with fertilizer applications could reduce rhamphicarpa infections and mitigate negative effects on rice yields 2011 elsevier ltd,2011,0.581
"Invasive forbs differ functionally from native graminoids, but are similar to native forbs",exotic plant invasions can alter ecosystem processes particularly if the invasive species are functionally different from native species we investigated whether such alterations can be explained by differences in functional traits between native and invasive plants of the same functional group or by differences in functional group affiliation â we compared six invasive forbs in europe with six native forbs and six native graminoids in leaf and whole plant traits plasticity in response to nutrient supply and interspecific competition litter decomposition rate effects on soil nutrient availability and allelopathy all traits were measured in a series of pot experiments and leaf traits additionally in the field â invasive forbs differed from native forbs for only a few traits they had less leaf chlorophyll and lower phosphorus p uptake from soil but they tended to have a stronger allelopathic effect the invasive forbs differed in many traits from the native graminoids their leaves had lower tissue densities and a shorter life span their litter decomposed faster and they had a lower nitrogen use efficiency â our results suggest that invasive forbs have the potential to alter ecosystem properties when invading graminoid dominated and displacing native graminoids but not when displacing native forbs,2011,0.069
Long-term population dynamics of Dactylorhiza incarnata (L.) Soó after abandonment and re-introduction of mowing,the orchid dactylorhiza incarnata l soã is a highly polymorphic species listed as endangered in many regional red lists of central europe and scandinavia the dramatic decline of its populations during recent decades has been caused by the loss and degradation of their natural and semi natural habitats fens and wetmeadows respectively as a result of secondary succession following intensification or abandonment of traditional land use in this study weanalysed the effects of abandonment and re introduction of mowing on the long term 28 years population dynamics of dactylorhiza incarnata at lake barsbek in northern germany in this area to preserve a remaining population of d incarnata an annual mowing regime was re established in 1981 on sitem 1of the investigated plots after a period of abandonment annualmowingwasintroduced on a second site m 2 in 1987 two to three year mowing was introduced on a third site m 3 site a abandonedsince 1970 wasused as a reference oneach of these sites flowering individualswerecounted once a year population structure and accompanying vegetation were recorded simultaneously in 2006 light measurements were carried out in the mowed areas the d incarnata population at m 1 increased exponentially during the first 10 years after re introduction of mowing pronounced decreases in the number of flowering individuals were recorded in 1997 and 2003 population dynamics at m 2 generally resembled the temporal development at m 1 d incarnata disappeared on site a during the investigation period while vegetation height and litter layer increased by 60 and 100 respectively d incarnata was able to withstand reduced light availability to a certain extent by increasing its vertical growth shade avoidance it is concluded that the maintenance of d incarnata populations in central europe requires continuation or re establishment of wet meadow management on previously abandoned sites an initially higher mowing frequency is recommended management intensity can be reduced after phytomass production of the vegetation has declined,2011,0.566
Assessing the geographic range of Black-fronted Ground-Tyrants (Muscisaxicola frontalis) using extralimital and winter range occurrence records and ecological niche modeling,estimating the geographic range of a species can be complicated by insufficient occurrence data and a lack of information about range limit determinants accurate estimates of species distributions are needed to assess the impacts of anthropogenic actions and for exploring evolutionary and ecological processes that maintain biological diversity after documenting several extralimital locations for black fronted ground tyrants muscisaxicola frontalis tyrannidae we questioned the accuracy of the current winter range estimate we provide specimen and observation records from central and southern peru that represent new information about the winter distribution of black fronted ground tyrants we used ecological niche models generated from new extralimital records and records from the winter range to assess the current range estimate we also tested winter and extralimital niche models for model equivalency using a resampling technique available through maxent and enm tools niche models developed with locations from the winter range predicted with high probability 90 the area of the extralimital records reciprocally niche models developed with the extralimital locations predicted the majority of the winter range locations although the probability was lower for some locations and the most southerly points were not included in the prediction the test for model equivalency did not distinguish the two models suggesting the possibility that the extralimital records were from poorly sampled areas of the true winter range smaller scale habitat associations of black fronted ground tyrants such as a preference for sparsely vegetated slopes were documented that were more specific than published accounts finally we present the first case of frugivory in muscisaxicola with the identification of cumulopuntia boliviana ignescens cactaceae seeds and pericarp in all five stomach samples of black fronted ground tyrants collected in southern peru,2011,0.555
Modelling the potential winter distribution of the endangered Black-capped Vireo (Vireo atricapilla),we applied the ecological niche habitat modelling approach to predict the potential winter distribution of the endangered black capped vireo vireo atricapilla we used historical and current field records along with climatic and topographic variables to generate three different models biomapper maxent and garp using field data on species occurrence a model was selected based on the accuracy of assessment results a final model was obtained by eliminating those areas mapped as known unsuitable habitat using high resolution land use land cover data the garp model obtained the best accuracy values it showed the winter distribution of the black capped vireo to cover an area in western mexico of about 141 000 km2 that runs along the pacific coast from southern sonora rã o yaqui alvaro obregã n dam to the southern state of oaxaca salina cruz on the pacific coast and matias romero and inland one third of the proposed modelâ s area was located at elevations of 0â 500 m while 83 occurred at elevations 1 250 m however a significant area 17 consists of sites 1 250 m in elevation for the most part the distribution model proposed closely followed the tropical dry forest boundaries and clearly avoided temperate areas at higher elevations this situation seems to be critical for the species since the dry forest is one of most endangered neotropical ecosystems both nationally and internationally furthermore the array of areas under protection regimes included only about 7 1 of the predicted wintering area however this figure could be misleading when it is considered that some protected areas are just â œpaper reservesâ without significant conservation programmes developed in situ,2011,0.373
Predicting potential distributions of geographic events using one-class data: concepts and methods,one common problem with geographic data is that for a specific geographic event only occurrence information is available information about the absence of the event is not available we refer to these specific types of geospatial data as geographic one class data gocd predicting the potential spatial distributions that a particular geographic event may occur from gocd is difficult because traditional binary classification meth ods that require availability of both positive and negative training samples cannot be used the objective of this research is to define gocd and propose novel approaches for modelling potential spatial distributions of geographic events using gocd we investigate the effectiveness of one class support vector machine ocsvm maximum entropy maxent and the newly proposed positive and unlabelled learning pul algorithm for solving gocd problems using a case study species distribution mod elling from synthetic data our experimental results indicate that generally ocsvm maxent and pul are effective in modelling the gocd each method has advantages and disadvantages but pul seems to be the most promising method,2011,0.209
Asian Begonia: out of Africa via the Himalayas?,the large genus begonia began to diverge in africa during the oligocene the current hotspot of diversity for the genus in china and southeast asia must therefore be the result of an eastward dispersal or migration across the asian continent to investigate the role of the himalayas as a mesic corridor facilitating this migration we constructed a time calibrated molecular phylogeny using its sequence data himalayan species of begonia were found to fall into two groups the first is an unresolved grade of tuberous deciduous species of unknown geographic origin with evidence of endemic radiations in the himalayan region beginning c 7 4 ma coinciding with the onset of the asian monsoon the second is a group of evergreen rhizomatous species with a probable origin in china which immigrated to the himalayan region c 5 1 ma coinciding with an intensification of the monsoon the hypothesis of the himalayas being a mesic migration route during the colonisation of asia is not refuted but further data is needed,2011,0.726
"Worldwide Spread of the Yellow-Footed Ant, Nylanderia flavipes (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",nylanderia flavipes formerly paratrechina flavipes an asian species was first found outside its native range in a philadelphia park in 1939 to evaluate the geographic spread of n flavipes i compiled specimen records from 250 sites documenting its earliest known records for 27 geographic areas countries and u s states including 7 u s states for which i found no previously published reports california connecticut delaware maryland new jersey rhode island and virginia almost all records of n flavipes from its native range in east asia come from sites 30 0â nâ 44 0â n with a few records from lower latitudes in the eastern u s n flavipes records come from a somewhat narrower latitudinal range 32 5â nâ 42 4â n south carolina to massachusetts in areas of the u s where it invades n flavipes seems to blend into the community like a native species the only noted impact appears to be the disappearance of nylanderia faisonensis an ecologically similar species with similar nesting sites colony size and appearance in the eastern u s north of washington dc n flavipes appears to have largely replaced n faisonensis further south n faisonensis continues to dominate,2011,0.769
Type Catalogue of the Ichthyological Collection of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München . Part II : Fish types inventoried after 25 April 1944,part i of the ichthyological type catalogue of the zsm neumann 2006 reviewed the historic â œold collectionâ of which types were apparently lost in the second world war part ii refers to type material physically available in zsm including historic types saved and re inventoried rebuilding the ichthyological collection after the war otto schindler received with the so called â œkã hsbauer donationsâ historic fish specimens from the naturhistorisches museum wien nmw among them are types from the natterer and thayer expeditions to brazil from the hase man expeditions to south america and from steindachnerâ s late brazil expedition in 1903 as far as possible exchanged specimens were critically reviewed traced to original lots and compared with nmw acquisition entries for unambiguous identification additional historic type material was recovered from the â œzoologi sche prã paratesammlung der ludwig maximilians universitã t mã nchenâ zplmu i e the illustrated syntype of loricaria rostrata from the spix collection and syntypes from the sagami bay collected by haberer and doflein i e ditrema temmincki var jordani and leptocephalus lacrymatus the use of the two museum abbreviations â œzsm lipiâ and â œzsm cmkâ for type material established during the curatorship of m kottelat at zsm is clarified material published with either abbreviation was neither intended for final deposition nor is available in zsm the whereabouts of material published as â œzsmâ by kottelat are discussed presently the zsm ichthyological collection contains 1735 type specimens 53 holotypes 28 syntypes 4 neotypes 2 lectotypes 24 paralectotypes and 1624 paratypes of 166 nominal species representing 12 families a total of 541 type specimens 36 holo types and 505 syntypes representing 51 families was lost during world war ii since 1993 24 holotypes 5 neotypes and 11 paratypes are missing from the collec tion the fate of the zsm types of chromidotilatpia bosumtwensis paulo 1979 needs further research,2011,0.679
Opinion: why museum collections and herbariums databases need to be widely available over the internet,in the era of information the necessity to biological data to be widely available over the internet is almost imperative with this end in view many worldwide databases was created like global biodiversity information facility ocean biogeographic information system herpnet etc but unfortunately none of romanian museums or universities have any contribution to it i take this opportunity to suggest that all curators of museum and herbarium collections should provide open data of their collections over the internet in my opinion if this process is applied it will increase the rate of international collaborations of romanian authors and the animals and plants from these collections will be more studied than in the present,2011,0.276
Quantitative metrics of overlaps in Grinnellian niches: advances and possible drawbacks,aim studies of environmental niche shift niche conservatism that are based on species distribution modelling require a quantification of niche purity and potential overlap although various metrics have been proposed for this task no comparisons of their performance are available yet that express the linearity of range shifts and error proneness herein we assess the performance of six niche overlap metrics using three sister pairs of plethodontid salamanders as well as artificial species to test for linearity of overlap curves impacts of varying potential distribution sizes and study area sizes location north america artificial environments methods species distribution models for the salamanders were performed with maxent and artificial species were created in the r environment potential distributions of species with varying range sizes and extents of the study area were compared using the brayâ curtis distance bc schoener s d two different modifications of the hellinger distance imod icor pianka s o and horn s r niche overlaps in ecological space were compared using linear discriminant analyses based on principal components results simulations of niche overlaps revealed strong variations in the performance of the niche overlap metrics in artificial species bc and d performed best followed by o r and icor but the modified hellinger distance imod showed a nonlinear slope and a truncated range furthermore the simulations suggest that in proportionally small potential distributions on large grids an inclusion of a high proportion of grid cells with low occurrence probabilities representing background noise may bias assessments of niche overlaps main conclusions both the salamander examples and simulations suggest that schoener s d and the brayâ curtis distance bc are best suited to compute niche overlaps from potential distributions derived from species distribution models however like all analysed metrics both d and bc are seriously affected by the inclusion of high numbers of grid cells where the species are probably absent i e with low occurrence probabilities therefore pre processing to eliminate background noise in the potential distribution grids is highly recommended,2011,0.853
Two New Species of Urochloa (Paniceae; Panicoideae; Poaceae) from Western Mexico and the Updated Checklist with a Key to Species of the Genus in Mexico,two new species from western mexico urochloa olivacea and u pauciflora paniceae panicoideae poaceae are described and illustrated here an updated checklist and a key for the 21 species of urochloa occurring in mexico are presented,2011,0.587
Further records of non-cryptic New Zealand earthworms,current descriptions add natives aporodrilus aotea sp n a ponga sp n and notoscolex repanga sp n plus new exotic records to the numbers of megadrile earthworms known from new zealand which are now raised from 193 to 222 species in five families viz acanthodrilidae octochaetidae and megas colecidae plus lumbricidae and glossoscolecidae for exotics overlooked spermathecal diverticula have been located for notoscolex equestris benham 1942 and for megascolex animae lee 1959 and non tubular prostrates were misconstrued as tubular in megascolides tasmani lee 1959 of these latter three species a lectotype is designated for n equestris and holotypes of the other two are briefly redescribed whereas m tasmani now belongs in notoscolex fletcher 1887 and m animae belongs in anisochaeta beddard 1890 further lack of dorsal pores in n equestris as with notoscolex esculentus benham 1904 and n mortenseni michaelsen 1924 newly qualifies all three as additional combs novae in primarily tasmanian genus aporodrilus blakemore 2000,2011,0.676
Can Species Richness Patterns Be Interpolated From a Limited Number of Well-Known Areas? Mapping Diversity Using GLM and Kriging,the limitations of biodiversity data are commonly overcome by modelling the geographic distribution of species and community characteristics here we evaluate two assemblage level modelling alm techniques general linear models glm and kriging assessing their ability to predict scarab dung beetle richness in the iberian peninsula using two different strategies calibration errors ability to interpolate values within the conditions where the model was built were assessed by means of a leave one out jackknife validation errors ability to provide partial extrapolations to different environmental conditions within the same geographic domain were calculated by comparing model projections with an independent dataset although the forecasts within the calibration dataset were very good for glm and extremely good for kriging both techniques provided surprisingly poor extrapolations we discuss why such poor performance may be related to non stationarity in the factors driving diversity patterns and how alm may be improved to account for it,2011,0.067
Biological Synopsis of Garra rufa,to understand the ecology of a species it is necessary to develop a biological synopsis for the species this document summarizes information on garra rufa a small member of the carp and minnow family cyprinidae native to the middle east this synopsis includes g rufaâ s description distribution biology and natural history and use by humans there is limited knowledge available on the life history and ecological requirements of g rufa but it is found most often in lotic environments feeding on periphyton and appears to be able to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and less than pristine water quality conditions additionally it spawns from late spring to summer by broadcasting over gravel type substrates and no parental care is provided to its young to date no individuals have been recorded outside their native range,2011,0.498
GLOMYRIS and TYMUNAC: Myriapoda and Acari databases of the GBIF-D node invertebrates II,the section arthropoda varia at zsm houses large collections of myriapoda and acari of high taxonomic importance including those of k w verhoeff graf h vitzthum l kneissl c willmann and w hirschmann within the framework of the node invertebrates ii of the german biodiversity information facility gbif d internet accessible databases are established providing information on type mate rial synonymy taxonomic position references type locality and various media files in this article we review our past and current activities give examples for data queries and types of biodiversity information included moreover we give a brief summary of the activities of the node invertebrates ii and the way these activities are embedded in the emerging field of cybertaxonomy it is our medium term aim to establish comprehensive electronic type catalogues including detailed pictorial information and our long term aim is to contribute to global information systems for myriapoda and acari,2011,0.063
"A collaborative, integrated and electronic future for taxonomy",the platygastroidea planetary biodiversity inventory is a large scale multinational effort to significantly advance the taxonomy and systematics of one group of parasitoid wasps based on this effort there are some clear steps that shouldbetaken to increase the efficiencyandthroughput of thetaxonomicprocess increased collaborationamongtaxonomic specialists can significantly shorten the timeline and add increased rigor to the development of hypotheses of characters and taxa species delimitations should make use of multiple data sources thus providing more nearly independent tests of these hypotheses taxonomy should fully embrace electronic media and informatics tools particularly this step requires the development and widespread implementation of community data standards the barriers to progress in these areas are not technological but are primarily social the community needs to see clear evidence of the value added through these changes in procedures and insist upon their use as standard practice,2011,0.352
Joining Inventory by Parataxonomists with DNA Barcoding of a Large Complex Tropical Conserved Wildland in Northwestern Costa Rica,background the many components of conservation through biodiversity development of a large complex tropical wildland area de conservacion guanacaste acg thrive on knowing what is its biodiversity and natural history for 32 years a growing team of costa rican parataxonomists has conducted biodiversity inventory of acg caterpillars their food plants and their parasitoids in 2003 dna barcoding was added to the inventory process methodology principal findings we describe some of the salient consequences for the parataxonomists of barcoding becoming part of a field biodiversity inventory process that has centuries of tradition from the barcoding results the parataxonomists as well as other downstream users gain a more fine scale and greater understanding of the specimens they find rear photograph database and deliver the parataxonomists also need to adjust to collecting more specimens of what appear to be the â œsame speciesâ â cryptic species that cannot be distinguished by eye or even food plant alone â while having to work with the name changes and taxonomic uncertainty that comes with discovering that what looked like one species may be many conclusions significance these career parataxonomists despite their lack of formal higher education have proven very capable of absorbing and working around the additional complexity and requirements for accuracy and detail that are generated by adding barcoding to the field base of the acg inventory in the process they have also gained a greater understanding of the fine details of phylogeny relatedness evolution and species packing in their own tropical complex ecosytems there is no reason to view dna barcoding as incompatible in any way with tropical biodiversity inventory as conducted by parataxonomists their year round on site inventory effort lends itself well to the sampling patterns and sample sizes needed to build a thorough barcode library furthermore the biological understanding that comes with barcoding increases the scientific penetrance of biodiversity information dna understanding evolution and ecology into the communities in which the parataxonomists and their families are resident,2011,0.338
Threats to cassava production: Known and potential geographic distribution of four key biotic constraints,insect pests and plant diseases reduce cassava yields substantially posing a threat to food security throughout the developing world while agricultural scien tists have recognized these threats few assessments of the geographic distribution of cassava pests and diseases have been made at the global scale the goal of this study is to make such an evaluation for four key biotic constraints to cassava production in developing countries whiteflies cassava green mites cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak disease occurrence records were obtained from laboratory and biodiversity databases and from the scientific literature these records were then used in ecological niche models to predict the potential distribution of cassava pests and diseases the distribution maps were cross validated by holding back 20 of the occurrence records potential distribution maps were developed by combining the results of the best ecological niche models hotspots for potential cassava pest and disease outbreaks include the mato grosso in brazil northern south america the african rift valley the southern tip of india and much of southeast asia where all four biotic constraints show high potential suitability our work highlights how potential geographical shifts in infestation hotspots for several cassava biotic constraints will require intensified monitor ing evaluation and research to prevent yield losses and ensure food security electronic,2011,0.4
Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries: A Global Perspective,inspired by the work of the renowned fisheries scientist daniel pauly this book provides a detailed overview of ecosystem based management of fisheries it explores the complex and interdisciplinary nature of the subject by bringing together contributions from some of the world s leading fisheries scientists managers and conservationists combining both research reviews and opinion pieces and reflecting the breadth of pauly s influence within the field the book illustrates the range of issues associated with the implementation of the ecosystem approach and the challenge of long term sustainability topics covered include global biodiversity the impact of human actions on marine life the implications for economic and social systems and the role of science in communicating and shaping ocean policy to preserve resources for the future this book provides a complete and essential overview for advanced researchers and those just entering the field,2011,0.121
Reduced current distribution of Psittacidae on the Mexican Pacific coast: potential impacts of habitat loss and capture for trade,ecological niche models provide useful predictions of species distributions but may fail to detect reductions in distribution due to factors other than habitat loss such as hunting or trade from 2001 to 2009 we conducted field surveys along the mexican pacific coast to obtain presenceâ absence data for nine psittacidae species we applied genetic algorithm for rule set prediction garp ecological niche modeling using field survey presence data to determine the potential current distribution of each species and incorporated absence data to delineate extirpation areas all parrot species showed a reduced current distribution ranging from 9 6 to 79 reduction of estimated original distribution the threatened and endemic species of amazona oratrix amazona finschi and forpus cyanopygius suffered the greatest distribution reduction higher than previously estimated by habitat based models suggesting that capture for trade may have caused extirpation of these species the greatest extent of current distribution was occupied by aratinga canicularis amazona albifrons and ara militaris which continue to occur throughout most of their original distribution amazona auropalliata aratinga strenua and brotogeris jugularis also occur throughout their restricted distribution in coastal chiapas and show a relatively small distribution reduction but had the highest proportion of modified lands within their current distributions our results highlighted the regions of coastal guerrero northern nayarit and southern sinaloa where parrot species have been extirpated even though garp models predicted suitable habitat available ideally distribution models should be verified in the field to determine conservation priorities and efforts should be directed to maintain populations of species with greatest distribution reductions,2011,0.977
The Nature Index: a general framework for synthesizing knowledge on the state of biodiversity.,the magnitude and urgency of the biodiversity crisis is widely recognized within scientific and political organizations however a lack of integrated measures for biodiversity has greatly constrained the national and international response to the biodiversity crisis thus integrated biodiversity indexes will greatly facilitate information transfer from science toward other areas of human society the nature index framework samples scientific information on biodiversity from a variety of sources synthesizes this information and then transmits it in a simplified form to environmental managers policymakers and the public the nature index optimizes information use by incorporating expert judgment monitoring based estimates and model based estimates the index relies on a network of scientific experts each of whom is responsible for one or more biodiversity indicators the resulting set of indicators is supposed to represent the best available knowledge on the state of biodiversity and ecosystems in any given area the value of each indicator is scaled relative to a reference state i e a predicted value assessed by each expert for a hypothetical undisturbed or sustainably managed ecosystem scaled indicator values can be aggregated or disaggregated over different axes representing spatiotemporal dimensions or thematic groups a range of scaling models can be applied to allow for different ways of interpreting the reference states e g optimal situations or minimum sustainable levels statistical testing for differences in space or time can be implemented using monte carlo simulations this study presents the nature index framework and details its implementation in norway the results suggest that the framework is a functional efficient and pragmatic approach for gathering and synthesizing scientific knowledge on the state of biodiversity in any marine or terrestrial ecosystem and has general applicability worldwide,2011,0.099
Evolution of Plant-Pollinator Relationships,what are the evolutionary mechanisms and ecological implications behind a pollinator choosing its favourite flower sixty five million years of evolution has created the complex and integrated system which we see today and understanding the interactions involved is key to environmental sustainability examining pollination relationships from an evolutionary perspective this book covers both botanical and zoological aspects it addresses the puzzling question of co speciation and co evolution and the complexity of the relationships between plant and pollinator the development of which is examined through the fossil record additional chapters are dedicated to the evolution of floral displays and signalling as well as their role in pollination syndromes and the building of pollination networks wide ranging in its coverage it outlines current knowledge and complex emerging topics demonstrating how advances in research methods are applied to pollination biology,2011,0.39
Impediments to taxonomy and users of taxonomy: accessibility and impact evaluation,there has been much discussion of the â œtaxonomic impedimentâ this phrase confuses two kinds of impediment an impediment to end users imposed by lack of reliable information and impediments to taxonomy itself which vary from insufficient funding to low citation rates of taxonomic monographs in order to resolve both these types of impediment taxonomy needs to be revitalized through funding and training taxonomists as well as investing in taxonomic revisions and monographs rather than technological surrogates such as dna barcoding,2011,0.354
What spatial data do we need to develop global mammal conservation strategies?,spatial data on species distributions are available in two main forms point locations and distri bution maps polygon ranges and grids the first are often temporally and spatially biased and too discontinuous to be useful untransformed in spatial analyses a variety of modelling approaches are used to transform point locations into maps we discuss the attributes that point location data and distribution maps must satisfy in order to be useful in conservation planning we recommend that before point location data are used to produce and or evaluate distribution models the dataset should be assessed under a set of criteria including sample size age of data environmental geographical coverage independence accuracy time relevance and often forgotten representation of areas of permanent and natural presence of the species distribution maps must satisfy additional attributes if used for conservation analyses and strategies including minimizing commission and omission errors credibility of the source assessors and availability for public screening we review currently available databases for mammals globally and show that they are highly variable in complying with these attributes the heterogeneity and weakness of spatial data seriously constrain their utility to global and also sub global scale conservation analyses,2011,0.258
Literature based species occurrence data of birds of northeast India,the northeast region of india is one of the worldâ s most significant biodiversity hotspots one of the richest bird areas in india it is an important route for migratory birds and home to many endemic bird species this paper describes a literature based dataset of species occurrences of birds of northeast india the occurrence records documented in the dataset are distributed across eleven provinces of india viz arunachal pradesh assam bihar manipur meghalaya mizoram nagaland sikkim tripura uttar pradesh and west bengal the geospatial scope of the dataset represents 24 to 29 degree north latitude and 78 to 94 degree east longitude and it comprises over 2400 occurrence records these records have been collated from scholarly literature published between1915 and 2008 especially from the journal of the bombay natural history society jbnhs the temporal scale of the dataset represents bird observations recorded between 1909 and 2007 the dataset has been developed by employing ms excel the key elements in the database are scientific name taxonomic classification temporal and geospatial details including geo coordinate precision data collector basis of record and primary source of the data record the temporal and geospatial quality of more than 50 of the data records has been enhanced retrospectively where possible data records are annotated with geospatial coordinate precision to the nearest minute this dataset is being constantly updated with the addition of new data records and quality enhancement of documented occurrences the dataset can be used in species distribution and niche modeling studies it is planned to expand the scope of the dataset to collate bird species occurrences across the indian peninsula,2011,0.69
Prospects for biological control of Ambrosia artemisiifolia in Europe: learning from the past,the recent invasion by ambrosia artemisiifolia common ragweed has like no other plant raised the awareness of invasive plants in europe the main concerns regarding this plant are that it produces a large amount of highly allergenic pollen that causes high rates of sensitisation among humans but also a artemisiifolia is increasingly becoming a major weed in agriculture recently chemical and mechanical control methods have been developed and partially implemented in europe but sustainable control strategies to mitigate its spread into areas not yet invaded and to reduce its abundance in badly infested areas are lacking one management tool not yet implemented in europe but successfully applied in australia is biological control almost all natural enemies that have colonised a artemisiifolia in europe are polyphagous and cause little damage rendering them unsuitable for a system management approach two fungal pathogens have been reported to adversely impact a artemisiifolia in the introduced range but their biology makes them unsuitable for mass production and application as a mycoherbicide in the native range of a artemisiifolia on the other hand a number of herbivores and pathogens associated with this plant have a very narrow host range and reduce pollen and seed production the stage most sensitive for long term population management of this winter annual we discuss and propose a prioritisation of these biological control candidates for a classical or inundative biological control approach against a artemisiifolia in europe capitalising on past experiences from north america asia and australia,2011,0.219
Current progress in DNA barcoding and future implications for entomology,dna barcoding is a technique for identifying organisms based on a short standardized fragment of genomic dna the standardized sequence region is called a dna barcode because it is like a barcode tag for each taxon since the proposition of this concept and the launch of a large project named the barcode of life this simple technique has attracted attention from taxonomists ecologists conservation biologists agriculturists plant quarantine officers and others and the number of studies using the dna barcode has rapidly increased the extreme diversity of insects and their economical epidemiological and agricultural importance have made this group a major target of dna barcoding however there is some controversy about the utility of dna barcoding in this review we present an overview of dna barcoding and its application to entomology we also introduce current advances and future implications of this promising technique,2011,0.209
2010: A new beginning for biodiversity?,proclaimed international year of biodiversity will 2010 hold all its promises reminder initiated by the convention on biological diversity ratified after the global summit in rio de janeiro delegations from more than one hundred countries gathered in johannesburg in 2002 and committed themselves to slowing the erosion of biodiversity by 2010 the european union was more ambitious or reckless and even spoke about halting this erosion european environment agency progress towards the european 2010 biodiversity target 2009 well that date has come and the overall appraisal that has been made formally in nagoya in october this year was not so brilliant see leadley et al 2010 but the same slogan has been launched for 2020 the aim here is not to repeat that appraisal but after considering the broad outlines to evoke some of the issues and challenges that inevitably result from the great question of the protection and management of global biodiversity,2011,0.301
Climate Change and Biosphere Response: Unlocking the Collections Vault,natural history collections nhcs are an important source of the long term data needed to understand how biota respond to ongoing anthropogenic climate change these include taxon occurrence data for ecological modeling as well as information that can be used to reconstruct mechanisms through which biota respond to changing climates the full potential of nhcs for climate change research cannot be fully realized until high quality data sets are conveniently accessible for research but this requires that higher priority be placed on digitizing the holdings most useful for climate change research e g whole biota studies time series records of intensively sampled common taxa natural history collections must not neglect the proliferation of new information from efforts to understand how present day ecosystems are responding to environmental change these new directions require a strategic realignment for many nhc holders to complement their existing focus on taxonomy and systematics to set these new priorities we need strong partnerships between nhc holders and global change biologists,2011,0.117
How many species in the Southern Ocean? Towards a dynamic inventory of the Antarctic marine species,the ipy sister projects caml and scar marbin provided a timely opportunity a strong collaborative framework and an appropriate momentum to attempt assessing the known unknown and unknowable of antarctic marine biodiversity to allow assessing the known biodiversity scar marbin register of antarctic marine species rams was compiled and published by a panel of 64 taxonomic experts thanks to this outstanding expertise mobilized for the first time an accurate list of more than 8100 valid species was compiled and an up to date systematic classification comprising more than 16 800 taxon names was established this taxonomic information is progressively and systematically completed by species occurrence data provided by literature taxonomic and biogeographic databases new data from caml and other cruises and museum collections rams primary role was to establish a benchmark of the present taxonomic knowledge of the southern ocean biodiversity particularly important in the context of the growing realization of potential impacts of the global change on antarctic ecosystems this in turn allowed detecting gaps in knowledge taxonomic treatment and coverage and estimating the importance of the taxonomic impediment as well as the needs for more complete and efficient taxonomic tools a second but not less important role of rams was to contribute to the taxonomic backbone of the scar marbin obis and gbif networks to establish a dynamic information system on antarctic marine biodiversity for the future the unknown part of the southern ocean biodiversity was approached by pointing out what remains to be explored and described in terms of geographical locations and bathymetric zones habitats or size classes of organisms the growing importance of cryptic species is stressed as they are more and more often detected by molecular studies in several taxa relying on rams results and on some case studies of particular model groups the question of the potential number of species that remains to be discovered in the southern ocean is discussed in terms of taxonomic inputs to the census of southern ocean biodiversity the current rate of progress in inventorying the antarctic marine species as well as the state of taxonomic resources and capacity were assessed different ways of improving the taxonomic inputs are suggested,2011,0.709
Global climate niche estimates for bioenergy crops and invasive species of agronomic origin: Potential problems and opportunities,the global push towards a more biomass based energy sector is ramping up efforts to adopt regionally appropriate high yielding crops as potential bioenergy crops are being moved around the world an assessment of the climatic suitability would be a prudent first step in identifying suitable areas of productivity and risk additionally this assessment also provides a necessary step in evaluating the invasive potential of bioenergy crops which present a possible negative externality to the bioeconomy therefore we provide the first global climate niche assessment for the major graminaceous 9 herbaceous 3 and woody 4 bioenergy crops additionally we contrast these with climate niche assessments for north american invasive species that were originally introduced for agronomic purposes as examples of well intentioned introductions gone awry with few exceptions e g saccharum officinarum pennisetum purpureum the bioenergy crops exhibit broad climatic tolerance which allows tremendous flexibility in choosing crops especially in areas with high summer rainfall and long growing seasons e g southeastern us amazon basin eastern australia unsurprisingly the invasive species of agronomic origin have very similar global climate niche profiles as the proposed bioenergy crops also demonstrating broad climatic tolerance the ecoregional evaluation of bioenergy crops and known invasive species demonstrates tremendous overlap at both high eiâ 30 and moderate eiâ 20 climate suitability the southern and western us ecoregions support the greatest number of invasive species of agronomic origin especially the southeastern usa plains mixed woods plains and mediterranean california many regions of the world have a suitable climate for several bioenergy crops allowing selection of agro ecoregionally appropriate crops this model knowingly ignores the complex biotic interactions and edaphic conditions but provides a robust assessment of the climate niche which is valuable for agronomists crop developers and regulators seeking to choose agro ecoregionally appropriate crops while minimizing the risk of invasive species,2011,0.741
Population distribution models: Species distributions are better modeled using biologically relevant data partitions,background predicting the geographic distribution of widespread species through modeling is problematic for several reasons including high rates of omission errors one potential source of error for modeling widespread species is that subspecies and or races of species are frequently pooled for analyses which may mask biologically relevant spatial variation within the distribution of a single widespread species we contrast a presence only maximum entropy model for the widely distributed oldfield mouse peromyscus polionotus that includes all available presence locations for this species with two composite maximum entropy models the composite models either subdivided the total species distribution into four geographic quadrants or by fifteen subspecies to capture spatially relevant variation in p polionotus distributions results despite high area under the roc curve auc values for all models the composite species distribution model of p polionotus generated from individual subspecies models represented the known distribution of the species much better than did the models produced by partitioning data into geographic quadrants or modeling the whole species as a single unit conclusions because the auc values failed to describe the differences in the predictability of the three modeling strategies we suggest using omission curves in addition to auc values to assess model performance dividing the data of a widespread species into biologically relevant partitions greatly increased the performance of our distribution model therefore this approach may prove to be quite practical and informative for a wide range of modeling applications,2011,0.905
Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World : How to Manage and Use Information ?,driven by the increasing necessity to define the biological diversity frame of widespread endemic and threatened species as well as by the stimulating chance to describe new species the study of the evolutive and spatial dynamics is in constant execution systematic overviews biogeographic and phylogenic backgrounds species composition and distribution in restricted areas are focal topics of the 15 interesting independent chapters collected in this book chosen to offer to the reader an overall view of the present condition in which our planet is,2011,0.788
First report of Coniella granati causing pomegranate fruit rot in Israel,pomegranate fruit rot caused by coniella granati is reported for the first time in israel in 2010 following an interception of contaminated grafting material imported in 2006,2011,0.344
Cytotaxonomical study of Draba incanaL. From Iceland,draba incana l brassicaceae is an arctic alpine species which is both common and widely distributed in iceland all specimens of draba and erophila in the icel and amnh herbaria a total of about 1 200 specimens were examined and no major changes in taxonomic identification were made living plants were collected in this study nine from northeastern iceland and one from southern iceland the plants were maintained indoors in winter and outdoors in summer a new morphological feature was discovered in this study a creeping growth habit not reported in any major floras examined this habit was observed in plants on hrãºtey island in lake mã vatn the creeping habit was confirmed in the transplanted samples grown indoors both groups of plants i e thos having a normal growth form with inflorescences and plant showing a creeping growth habit were used in the cytotaxonomical investigation reported here chromosomes were prepared from shoot tips and whole seedlings combined using the protoplast dropping method originally developped for birch betula spp the protocol was successfully modified for use with the tiny rosette forming plants of draba incana bothe plant groups the normal growth form and the creepimg habit showed the same tetraploid chromosome number 2n 4x 32 the chromosomes were found to be 2 5 um in size and were morphologically similar the study not only confirms that d incana in iceland is a tetraploid species but also confirms a stable chromosome number in morphologically variable material cytotaxonomical aspects of draba are discussed,2011,0.204
"Registro del tecolote afilador (Aegolius acadicus) en las montañas y valles del occidente de Oaxaca, México",report of the northern saw whet owl aegolius acadicus in the mountains and valleys of western oaxaca mexico abstract we mist netted an adult of the northern saw whet owl aegolius acadicus in san pedro totomachapam municipality of zimatlã n de ã lvarez oaxaca in december 2010 a photograph documents the first record in the physiographic subprovince mountains and valleys of western oaxaca which expands the speciesâ know range by 60 km to the south the continuous pine oak forests in this region known to be the main vegetation type of the habitat of the northern saw whet owl suggests that this rare species may maintain populations farther south of the known distribution maps available in the literature,2011,0.295
Georeferencing Incidents from Locality Descriptions and its Applications: a Case Study from Yosemite National Park Search and Rescue,the search and rescue sar of individuals who become lost injured or stranded in wilderness presents a unique and worthwhile spatiotemporal challenge to inves tigate once incidents are georeferenced they can be spatially queried and ana lyzed however one major challenge for evaluating sar in a spatial context is the lack of explicitly spatial data addresses or coordinates for historic incidents they must be georeferenced from textual descriptions this study implemented two established approaches for georeferencing incidents the â point radiusâ and â shapeâ methods incorporating uncertainty measurements into a spatial database allows for more appropriate analyses of spatial dependence and the spatial distri bution of incidents from 2005â 2010 1 271 of 1 356 yosemite search and rescue yosar incidents 93 7 could be georeferenced using the point radius method with a mean uncertainty radius 560 î 51 m and mean uncertainty area of 3 60 î 0 840 km2 however when the shape method was applied to six case studies by considering the reference object shape the uncertainty areas were reduced considerably by up to 99 5 of the uncertain area generated by the point radius method this is the first spatially explicit study of sar incidents and yields valuable insights into the role of georeferenced data in emergency preparedness,2011,0.121
Presence-only versus presence-absence data in species composition determinant analyses,aim studying relationships between species and their physical environment requires species distribution data ideally based on presenceâ absence pâ a data derived from surveys such data are limited in their spatial extent presence only p o data are considered inappropriate for such analyses our aim was to evaluate whether such data may be used when considering a multitude of species over a large spatial extent in order to analyse the relationships between environmental factors and species composition location the study was conducted in virtual space however geographic origin of the data used is the contiguous usa methods we created distribution maps for 50 virtual species based on actual environmental conditions in the study sampling locations were based on true observations from the global biodiversity information facility we produced pâ a data by selecting ∠1000 random locations and recorded the presence absence of all species we produced two p o data sets full p o set was produced by sampling the species in locations of true occurrences of species partial p o was a subset of full p o data set matching the size of the pâ a data set for each data set we recorded the environmental variables at the same locations we used cca to evaluate the amount of variance in species composition explained by each variable we evaluated the bias in the data set by calculating the deviation of average values of the environmental variables in sampled locations compared to the entire area results pâ a and p o data sets were similar in terms of the amount of variance explained by the different environmental variables we found sizable environmental and spatial bias in the p o data set compared to the entire study area main conclusions our results suggest that although p o data from collections contain bias the multitude of species and thus the relatively large amount of information in the data allow the use of p o data for analysing environmental determinants of species composition,2011,0.956
Analysis on Types and Contents of Photos Relating to Geodiversity Suggested in Science Textbooks for Middle School,this study is aimed at analyzing in comparison with the visual representations suggested in science textbook for middle school students as a result of analysis it showed the highest prevalence in photo among visual representations especially the prevalence of photo in unit i was found remarkably higher than that in unit ii this is thought to relate to the learning content photos relating to geodiversity were found to prevail in all the textbooks but remarkably a large number of photos related with overseas geodiversity were being used this rather provides the photos not accustomed to the students which may cause difficulty for the students in their organizing and recognizing new information in a meaningful manner in addition it may appear in a negative way from the aspect of building up science literacy and learning creative experiences in order to supplement such problems it would be helpful to have the students understand a natural phenomenon and form a science concept by providing the photos relating to the geodiversity of korea accustomed to the students when developing science textbooks in future,2011,0.438
Head lice prevalence among households in Norway: importance of spatial variables and individual and household characteristics.,head lice prevalence varies greatly between and within countries and more knowledge is needed to approach causes of this variation in the present study we investigated head lice prevalence among elementary school students and their households in relation to individual and household characteristics as well as spatial variables the investigation included households from 5 geographically separated municipalities present infestations among household members as well as previous infestations in the household were reported in a questionnaire in elementary school students prevalence was low 1â 63 but more than one third of the households 36â 43 had previously experienced pediculosis prevalence was higher in elementary school students than in other household members and highest in third grade children prevalence was also influenced by the school attended which suggested that interactions between children in the same school are important for head lice transmission previous occurrence of head lice in homes also increased the risk of present infestation prevalence of previous infestations was higher in households with more children and in more densely populated municipalities indicating that the density of hosts or groups of hosts influences transmission rates these results demonstrate that information of hosts spatial distribution as well as household and individual characteristics is needed to better understand head lice population dynamics,2011,0.831
The importance of metagenomic surveys to microbial ecology: or why Darwin would have been a metagenomic scientist,scientific discovery is incremental the merriam webster definition of â scientific methodâ is â œprinciples and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem the collection of data through observation and experiment and the formulation and testing of hypothesesâ scientists are taught to be excellent observers as observations create questions which in turn generate hypotheses after centuries of science we tend to assume that we have enough observations to drive science and enable the small steps and giant leaps which lead to theories and subsequent testable hypotheses one excellent example of this is charles darwinâ s voyage of the beagle which was essentially an opportunistic survey of biodiversity today obtaining funding for even small scale surveys of life on earth is difficult but few argue the importance of the theory that was generated by darwin from his observations made during this epic journey however these observations even combined with the parallel work of alfred russell wallace at around the same time have still not generated an indisputable â law of biologyâ the fact that evolution remains a â theoryâ at least to the general public suggests that surveys for new data need to be taken to a new level,2011,0.243
Que des réseaux! Compte rendu de Caroline Wagner. The New invisible college. Science for development.,caroline wagner has worked for many years of collaboration international scientific research she has contributed to several studies of bibliometrics and accompanied the reflecction on the structuring of the scientific questions long time this is probably one reason for interest in this book but there are other much stronger it offers here a network theory international scientific network based social as well as a series of recommendations on how to connect networks scientific and research policy particularly in the case of small countries with scarce resources,2011,0.218
Drivers of variability in Euphausiid species abundance throughout the Pacific Ocean,using a generalized additive model we assessed the influence of a suite of physical chemical and biological variables upon euphausiid species abundance throughout the pacific we found that the main drivers of species abundance in order of decreasing importance were sea surface temperature explaining 29 53 of species variability salinity 20 29 longitude 215 01 species abundance decreased from west to east distance to coast 10 99 and dissolved silicate con centration 9 03 we discuss the influence of these variables within the context of the known ecology and biology of euphausiids with reference to a previously published model in the atlantic we compare the practical differences in the atlantic and pacific ocean using projected environmental change from the ipcc a1b climate scenario we make predictions of future species abundance changes in the pacific and atlantic our model suggests that species abundance in both oceans between latitudes 308 and 608 both n and s will increase due to the temperature rise predicted over the next 200 years whereas at low latitudes responses are likely to differ between the oceans with little change predicted for the atlantic but species depletion predicted for the pacific,2011,0.789
How will climate change affect the potential distribution of Eurasian tree sparrows Passer montanus in North America?,habitat suitability models have been used to predict the present and future potential distribution of a variety of spe cies eurasian tree sparrows passer montanus native to eurasia have established populations in other parts of the world in north america their current distribution is limited to a relatively small region around its original introduction to st louis missouri we combined data from the global biodiversity information facility with current and future climate data to create habitat suitability models using maxent for this species under projected climate change scenarios our models show that the distribution and range of the eurasian tree sparrow could increase as far as the pacific northwest and newfoundland this is potentially important in formation for prioritizing the management and control of this non native species,2011,0.637
外来湿地植物再力花适生性分析 (Risk Assessment and Spread Potential of Alien Wetland Plant Species Thalia dealbatain China),é šè ä æ è çš æ å åˆ äºšæ è è ä ç ç ÿ australia weed risk assessment system æ å åœ é æ åž max ent ä å šè šå å žéªœå å æ æ åœ æ ç å åš èš thalia dealbata çš é ç ÿæ è è œäº åˆ æž ã æ å åˆ äºšè ä ç ç ÿçš è åˆ ä º18åˆ è œè è ç ç ÿæœ èº é ˆå 6åˆ ã maxentåˆ å ƒåœºé æµ ç æžœè æ ž å åš èš å ä åœ åœ äº â éƒ å žâ è å â æˆ éƒ â ä æ ÿä çº ä ä œç ÿé æ ÿæµ ä å ä å šå å çœ ä œå éƒ å å é å ˆå åš èš çš ç ÿé ã å å å žéªœè æ ž ç è 2ä ªæœˆ0â ƒä žæ å ç çš å åš èš è ç åœ ç ÿç é å šå èš æ é ä šä žä žæ å ç æ é è ƒçÿ çš æ æ ªå åœ æ è å å ä æ å ä ç å ä å œæˆ æ ä ªç ÿæ å ã ç æžœè æ ž å åš èš åœ ä å å éƒ åˆ åœºåÿÿéƒ å ä ç ÿé å èƒ å æœ å ä µé žé ã,2011,0.307
A Decision Tree-based Missing Value Imputation Technique for Data,data pre processing plays a vital role in data mining for ensuring good quality of data in general data pre processing tasks include imputation of missing values identification of outliers smoothening out of noisy data and correction of inconsistent data in this paper we present an efficient missing value imputation technique called dmi which makes use of a decision tree and expectation maximization em algorithm we argue that the correlations among attributes within a horizontal partition of a data set can be higher than the correlations over the whole data set for some existing algorithms such as em based imputation emi accuracy of imputation is expected to be better for a data set having higher correlations than a data set having lower correlations therefore our technique dmi applies emi on various horizontal segments of a data set where correlations among attributes are high we evaluate dmi on two publicly available natural data sets by comparing its performance with the performance of emi we use various patterns of missing values each having different missing ratios up to 10 several evaluation criteria such as coefficient of determination î î index of agreement î î and root mean squared error rmse are used our initial experimental results indicate that dmi performs significantly better than emi,2011,0.08
Identifying Priority Areas for Conservation: A Global Assessment for Forest-Dependent Birds,limited resources are available to address the world s growing environmental problems requiring conservationists to identify priority sites for action using new distribution maps for all of the world s forest dependent birds 60 6 of all bird species we quantify the contribution of remaining forest to conserving global avian biodiversity for each of the world s partly or wholly forested 5 km cells we estimated an impact score of its contribution to the distribution of all the forest bird species estimated to occur within it and so is proportional to the impact on the conservation status of the world s forest dependent birds were the forest it contains lost the distribution of scores was highly skewed a very small proportion of cells having scores several orders of magnitude above the global mean ecoregions containing the highest values of this score included relatively species poor islands such as hawaii and palau the relatively species rich islands of indonesia and the philippines and the megadiverse atlantic forests and northern andes of south america ecoregions with high impact scores and high deforestation rates 2000â 2005 included montane forests in cameroon and the eastern arc of tanzania although deforestation data were not available for all ecoregions ecoregions with high impact scores high rates of recent deforestation and low coverage by the protected area network included indonesia s seram rain forests and the moist forests of trinidad and tobago key sites in these ecoregions represent some of the most urgent priorities for expansion of the global protected areas network to meet convention on biological diversity targets to increase the proportion of land formally protected to 17 by 2020 areas with high impact scores rapid deforestation low protection and high carbon storage values may represent significant opportunities for both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation for example through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd initiatives,2011,0.74
"Gollum suluensis sp. nov. (Carcharhiniformes: Pseudotriakidae), a new gollumshark from the southern Philippines",a second nominal species of the pseudotriakid genus gollum otherwise known as false catsharks or gollumsharks is de scribed on the basis of seven specimens collected from the sulu sea gollum suluensis sp nov was discovered at the puer to princesa fish market in palawan during a project initiated by the world wildlife fund during the 1990s to investigate elasmobranch biodiversity in the philippines the genus gollum is presently represented by a single nominal species g attenuatus garrick known from the outer continental shelf and upper slope adjacent new zealand gollum suluensis differs from its congener in having a darker plainer and less contrasted coloration softer body shorter and broader snout smaller spiracle larger pectoral fin wider head as well as larger proportions of the nostril mouth and interorbital space based on their narrow and widely separated distributions these sharks are probably relict species,2011,0.786
Corchorus,the genus corchorus belonging to the family malva ceae formerly under tiliaceae is distributed through out the tropical and subtropical regions of the world kundu 1951 purseglove 1968 chang andmiau 1989 although 215 species subspecies varieties and forms have been reported under the genus corchorus global biodiversity information facility 2008 http www gbif org precise number of good species is approxi mately 100 saunders 2006 out of 100 good species corchorus capsularis and corchorus olitorius were selected and domesticated in the wake of civilization and are the commercially important cultivated species of corchorus the others were found wild in nature but most of them are now extinct or in endemic condi tion however being an extremely variable genus its natural distribution genetic and evolutionary relation ships as well as center of origin are poorly documen ted virtually controversial and yet to be resolved wild corchorus taxa are mostly distributed in the tropical subtropical regions of africa america inclu ding brazil mexico bolivia venezuela and west indies australia china taiwan india myanmar bangladesh nepal sri lanka japan indonesia thailand malaysia and philippines fig 2 1 kundu 1951 brands 1989â 2007,2011,0.93
"Morphology and pathology of the ectoparasitic copepod, Nicothoë astaci ('lobster louse') in the European lobster, Homarus gammarus",summaryectoparasitic copepods have been reported in a wide range of aquatic animals including crustacean shellfish however with the exception of the salmon louse lepeophtheirus salmonis our knowledge of such parasites in commercial species is rudimentary the current study examines the morphology and pathology of the parasitic copepod nicothoã astaci the lobster louse in its host the european lobster homarus gammarus lobsters were sampled from waters surrounding lundy island bristol channel uk and all individuals collected were found to harbour female adult n astaci in their gills with a mean of 47â 3 parasites lobster the majority of n astaci were found in the basal region of pleurobranch gills the parasite was found to attach to gill filaments via its oral sucker maxillae and maxillipeds and to feed on host haemolymph blood through a funnel like feeding channel it caused varying degrees of damage to the host gill including occlusion of gill filaments and disruption to the vascular system in the central axis although there was evidence of extensive host response haemocytic infiltration to the parasite it was displaced from the parasite attachment site and thus was observed in the central gill axis below the region of gill filament immediately underlying the parasite feeding channel was devoid of such activity suggesting that the parasite interferes with the cellular defence and haemostatic mechanisms of the lobster in order to maintain invasion of the host,2011,0.972
Some like it hot: The influence and implications of climate change on coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) and coffee production in East Africa,the negative effects of climate change are already evident for many of the 25 million coffee farmers across the tropics and the 90 billion dollar us coffee industry the coffee berry borer hypothenemus hampei the most important pest of coffee worldwide has already benefited from the temperature rise in east africa increased damage to coffee crops and expansion in its distribution range have been reported in order to anticipate threats and prioritize management actions for h hampei we present here maps on future distributions of h hampei in coffee producing areas of east africa using the climex model we relate present day insect distributions to current climate and then project the fitted climatic envelopes under future scenarios a2a and b2b for hadcm3 model in both scenarios the situation with h hampei is forecasted to worsen in the current coffea arabica producing areas of ethiopia the ugandan part of the lake victoria and mt elgon regions mt kenya and the kenyan side of mt elgon and most of rwanda and burundi the calculated hypothetical number of generations per year of h hampei is predicted to increase in all c arabica producing areas from five to ten these outcomes will have serious implications for c arabica production and livelihoods in east africa we suggest that the best way to adapt to a rise of temperatures in coffee plantations could be via the introduction of shade trees in sun grown plantations the aims of this study are to fill knowledge gaps existing in the coffee industry and to draft an outline for the development of an adaptation strategy package for climate change on coffee production an abstract in spanish is provided as abstract s1,2011,0.017
"Insect Fauna of Mt. Jang-san, Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon-do, Korea",an entomofauna study of jangsan mountain 1 408 8 m in yeongwol gun gangwon do was carried out from april to september 2010 the distribution of 384 species 91 families and 12 orders was confirmed from the study area,2011,0.451
"Toward an open-access global database for mapping, control, and surveillance of neglected tropical diseases",after many years of general neglect interest has grown and efforts came under way for the mapping control surveillance and eventual elimination of neglected tropical diseases ntds disease risk estimates are a key feature to target control interventions and serve as a benchmark for monitoring and evaluation what is currently missing is a georeferenced global database for ntds providing open access to the available survey data that is constantly updated and can be utilized by researchers and disease control managers to support other relevant stakeholders we describe the steps taken toward the development of such a database that can be employed for spatial disease risk modeling and control of ntds,2011,0.292
Predicting the subspecific identity of invasive species using distribution models: Acacia saligna as an example,aim to explore whether the subspecific genetic entities of acacia saligna occupy different bioclimatic niches in their native and introduced ranges and whether these niches are predictable using species distribution models sdms location australia south africa and the mediterranean basin methods species distribution models were developed in maxent using six climatic variables to calculate the climatic suitability of the ranges of a saligna we assessed 1 the subspecific niche differences identified by sdms using measures of niche overlap and model performance 2 the ability of sdms to predict the most likely subspecific genetic entities present in south africa based on comparisons to genetic data and 3 the ability of sdms to predict the most likely subspecific genetic entities present in the mediterranean basin all model projections were assessed for sensitivity and modelled prevalence as indicators of model fit and predictability results the sdms identified different subspecific bioclimatic niches in the native range sensitivity and modelled prevalence show that none of the models correctly predicted the full range of a saligna in south africa or the mediterranean basin models also show that the south african niche is different to that in the native range main conclusions subspecies of a saligna occupy quantifiably distinct bioclimatic niches in their native ranges implying that they should occupy distinct niches in their invasive ranges however projections to the introduced range did not correspond with known occurrences our sdms are unable to predict the full introduced niche of a saligna at a species or subspecies level in either south africa or the mediterranean basin range limits in the native and introduced ranges may be determined by additional factors not used in the sdms developed in this study,2011,0.342
Biodiversity and leptospirosis risk: A case of pathogen regulation?,well balanced ecosystems have an essential role in disease regulation and consequently their correct functioning is increasingly recognised as imperative for maintaining human health disruptions to ecosystems have been found to increase the risk of several diseases including hantavirus lyme disease ross river virus malaria and ciguatera fish poisoning leptospirosis is a globally important emerging zoonosis caused by spirochaete bacteria borne by many mammalian hosts and also transmitted environmentally we propose that leptospirosis incidence in humans is also linked to ecosystem disruption and that reduced biodiversity the diversity of species within an ecological community may be associated with increased leptospirosis incidence to investigate this hypothesis the relationship between biodiversity levels of island nations and their annual leptospirosis incidence rates adjusted for gdp per capita was examined by linear correlation and regression supportive statistically significant negative associations were obtained between leptospirosis incidence and a total number of species r 2 0 69 p 0 001 and b number of mammal species r 2 0 80 p 0 001 in univariate analysis in multivariable analysis only the number of mammal species remained significantly associated r 2 0 81 p 0 007 an association between biodiversity and reduced leptospirosis risk if supported by further research would emphasise the importance of managing the emergence of leptospirosis and other infectious diseases at a broader ecosystem level,2011,0.82
Global distribution and molecular diversity of Didymium difforme,fifty six collections of didymium difforme from three different geographically distant regions of the world were examined for intraspecific variation using dna sequences an approximately 400 base pair region of the mitochondrial small subunit was sequenced for each collection the analysis of the sequences did not resolve the collections from each geographic region into separate groups instead all but one of the six major groups included sequences from collections originating in at least two different regions the one group with sequences from one region kenya to the exclusion of the other two regions was made up of sequences from collections made at different localities within the region other sequences from the same localities were however found in the other major groups most closely related to sequences from the other two regions,2011,0.754
"A Proposal of New Category, Scotophile Visitors, within Trogloxenes in Korean Limestone Caves",based on the habitats investigation of cave organisms in korean limestone caves from 1996 to 2005 cave environments can be divided into four zones such as entrance zone twilight zone and dark zone including unstable dark zone with varying temperature dzvt and stable dark zone with constant temperature dzct cave dwelling organisms can be conventionally divided into a troglobite a troglophile and a trogloxene depending upon the degree of adaptation to dark cave environments and each life tends to live in its favorable habitat detailed investigation of their habitat adaptation patterns for five years in the limestone caves in korea revealed that troglobites including stygobites mostly spend their lifetime in dzct however they sometimes migrate to dzvt but rarely to twilight zone throughout the year meanwhile troglophiles including stygophiles spend most of their lifetimes in dzvt and they tend to migrate to twilight zone or dzct throughout the year among trogloxenes regular visitors have their own favorable ecological niches to stay in cave there is also another category of cave organisms that live in twilight zone where organic matter is rich in sediments brought in from the outside these organisms also tend to migrate to the surface and or even to dzvt throughout the year this category of cave organisms tends to be easily found outside and does not seem to be satisfied with stable conditions such as constant temperature and humidity therefore new category may be needed to enlist the habitat patterns of these organisms which were conventionally classified as a trogloxene therefore it is proposed here that new scotophile visitors within the category of trogloxenes should be considered in addition to normal trogloxenes such as bats,2011,0.296
"A late Miocene leaf assemblage from Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand, and its climatic implications",a late miocene 6â 6 5 ma kapitean and latest tongaporutuan stages fossil leaf locality is situated at mataora in the southern coromandel peninsula of the north island new zealand latitude 37â s it includes well preserved remains of a new genus and species of conifer mataoraphyllum miocenicus considered to be a phyllodinous taxaceae other conifers include a new species of phyllocladus p palmerii and a small scale leafed podocarpaceae there are five angiosperms including a small leafed epacridaceae species myrsine waihiensis sp nov mysinaceae pseudopanax araliaceae and two of unknown affinity the relatively small leaf size low biodiversity and taxonomic content suggest low open vegetation under a relatively cool but wet climate current subalpine to upper forest limit vegetation is a close analogy the fossil assemblage indicates that mean annual temperatures may have been cooler at 37â s than today for the late miocene,2011,0.696
Modelos de distribución de especies y su aplicación para la gestión de territorio,modeling was performed for the species triatoma dimidiata chagas disease vector through the application of four ecological modeling techniques logistic regression domain bioclim and maxent which were evaluated using the statistical test that determined auc ecological model that best fits the bioclimatic skills areas where the species is distributed as the logistic regression showed higher specificity 0 8 it was used to make a distribution of ranks in order to assign categorical values determining the area with greater suitability for the presence of the species we also performed an application of this model for the management of land as a tool of medical entomology using the geographical area with very high suitability as a limit within which are the rural villages where you should make compaã as prevention to avoid massive infection of this disease,2011,0.63
Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions,this book provides a first synthetic view of an emerging area of ecology and biogeography linking individual and population level processes to geographic distributions and biodiversity patterns problems in evolutionary ecology macroecology and biogeography are illuminated by this integrative view the book focuses on correlative approaches known as ecological niche modeling species distribution modeling or habitat suitability modeling which use associations between known occurrences of species and environmental variables to identify environmental conditions under which populations can be maintained the spatial distribution of environments suitable for the species can then be estimated a potential distribution for the species this approach has broad applicability to ecology evolution biogeography and conservation biology as well as to understanding the geographic potential of invasive species and infectious diseases and the biological implications of climate change the authors lay out conceptual foundations and general principles for understanding and interpreting species distributions with respect to geography and environment focus is on development of niche models while serving as a guide for students and researchers the book also provides a theoretical framework to support future progress in the field,2011,0.855
Challenges and opportunities of open data in ecology,ecology is a synthetic discipline benefiting from open access to data from the earth life and social sciences technological challenges exist however due to the dispersed and heterogeneous nature of these data standardization of methods and development of robust metadata can increase data access but are not sufficient reproducibility of analyses is also important and executable workflows are addressing this issue by capturing data provenance sociological challenges including inadequate rewards for sharing data must also be resolved the establishment of well curated federated data repositories will provide a means to preserve data while promoting attribution and acknowledgement of its use,2011,0.233
"An account of the taxonomy and distribution of Syllidae (Annelida, Polychaetes) in the eastern Mediterranean, with notes on the genus Prosphaerosyllis San Martín, 1984 in the Mediterranean",the syllid fauna of three locations in crete and israel eastern mediterranean sea was studied yielding 82 syllid species many of which were found for the first time in the respective areas seventeen species were recorded for the first time on the israeli coasts and 20 in greek waters perkinsyllis augeneri hartmann schrã der 1979 and prosphaerosyllis chauseyensis olivier et al 2011 are new records for the mediterranean sea detailed information is given on the morphology ecology and distribution of the species recorded for the first time in the studied areas in addition an update on the distribution of the genus prosphaerosyllis san martã n 1984 in the mediterranean is given and an identification key to the mediterranean species is provided,2011,0.796
Forty-five Years and Counting: Reflections from the Palomarin Field Station on the Contribution of Long-Term Monitoring and Recommendations for the Future,long term monitoring is essential to understand the effect of environmental change on bird populations ornithological field stations that have recorded detailed demographic data on bird populations over decades are well positioned to make important contributions to emerging research questions on the basis of our experience at prbo conservation science s palomarin field station and a review of the literature we assess the ability of field stations to use their long term data to address current and future issues in conservation and management we identify barriers to the application of data from field stations as well as some of the unique contributions made by these stations and we present recommendations regarding the development maintenance and enhanced application of long term data,2011,0.217
A fine-grained spatial prediction model for the red-listed vascular plant Scorzonera humilis,we explored the applied use of distribution modelling as a tool for making spatial predictions of occurrences of the red listed vascular plant species scorzonera humilis in a study area in southeast norway scorzonera is typical of extensively managed semi natural grasslands a maxent model was trained on all known records of the species accurately georeferenced and gridded to fine resolution grid cells of 25 25 m model performance was assessed on the training data by data splitting by which some records were set off for evaluation and on independent evaluation data collected in the field of the eight predictor variables used in the modelling distance to roads and to arable land were most important followed by land cover class and altitude judged from the area under curve auc the model was good to excellent and a significant positive relationship was found between relative probabilities of occurrence predicted by the model and true probability of presence provided by the independently collected evaluation data the model was used together with the evaluation data to estimate presence of scorzonera humilis in 0 7 of the grid cells in the study area the grid cells in which the model predicted highest probability for scorzonera to be present had a true probability of presence of ca 12 i e 17 higher than in an average cell the present study demonstrates that even when only simple predictor variables are available spatial prediction modelling contributes important knowledge about rare species such as prevalence estimates spatial prediction maps and insights into the speciesâ autecology spatial prediction modelling also makes cost efficient monitoring of rare species possible however it is pointed out that these benefits require evaluation of the model on independently sampled evaluation data,2011,0.636
Large-scale determinants of intestinal schistosomiasis and intermediate host snail distribution across Africa: Does climate matter?,the geographical ranges of most species including many infectious disease agents and their vectors and intermediate hosts are assumed to be constrained by climatic tolerances mainly temperature it has been suggested that global warming will cause an expansion of the areas potentially suitable for infectious disease transmission however the transmission of infectious diseases is governed by a myriad of ecological economic evolutionary and social factors hence a deeper understanding of the total disease system pathogens vectors and hosts and its drivers is important for predicting responses to climate change here we combine a growing degree day model for schistosoma mansoni with species distribution models for the intermediate host snail biomphalaria spp to investigate large scale environmental determinants of the distribution of the african s mansoni biomphalaria system and potential impacts of climatic changes snail species distribution models included several combinations of climatic and habitat related predictors the latter divided into â œnaturalâ and â œhuman impactedâ habitat variables to measure anthropogenic influence the predictive performance of the combined snailâ parasite model was evaluated against a comprehensive compilation of historical s mansoni parasitological survey records and then examined for two climate change scenarios of increasing severity for 2080 future projections indicate that while the potential s mansoni transmission area expands the snail ranges are more likely to contract and or move into cooler areas in the south and east importantly we also note that even though climate per se matters the impact of humans on habitat play a crucial role in determining the distribution of the intermediate host snails in africa thus a future contraction in the geographical range size of the intermediate host snails caused by climatic changes does not necessarily translate into a decrease or zero sum change in human schistosomiasis prevalence,2011,0.691
Jean-Noël LABAT (1959–2011),born on december 23 2959 in herrã landes jean noã l labat after completing his high school studies in science with an interest in mathematics focused his attention on natural sciences while at the university of toulouse he discovered an interest in the mexican fl ora thanks to profes sor henri puig whom jean noã l followed to paris vi university in 1982 when he was named director of the tropical botany laboratory under his direction jean noã l undertook a thesis pro ject on the vegetation of northwest michoacã n in mexico conducting fi eld research there from 1983 to 1988,2011,0.326
Adaptação Da Norma Nbr 7190 Para Avaliação De Espécies De Salix (VIME) Visando A Utilização Em Artesanato,the valley of the rio canoas in the highlands of santa catarina is the largest brazilian producer of wicker for craft and is the origin of some salix species in this same area is the experimental station lages which belongs to epagri empresa catarinense de pesquisa e extensã o agropecuã ria which since 1996 has been conducting researches to improve and expand these species aiming to promote local crafts and consequently improve the life quality of such families which base their subsistence in cultivation processing and manufacturing of wicker this study aimed to create a standard of procedures in order to determinate the physical and mechanical properties of salix viminalis salix sp without identification salix x rubens and salix purpurea adapting the nbr7190 1997 to the dimensional requirements of wicker the intention was to apply a methodology of methods specific to salix since no technical standard about this theme was found the following procedure was adopted adapt the brazilian standard for hardwood conventional tests aiming at survey of physical and mechanical properties of the selected species after the relevant normative considerations a survey of variables in accordance with the procedures proposed was performed in order to verify the possibility of identifying the species as well as the collection sites the spectra was collected using infrared spectroscopy close nirs calibration models were developed with the software unscrambler and subsequently validated to determinate levels of correlation data with the physical mechanics the results show that there are differences in the physical and mechanical levels among the species evaluated salix viminalis and salix purpurea exhibit similarity in terms of density 12 moisture and elasticity for both pulling the tape and bending of sticks salix x rubens and salix sp are not significantly different in density 12 moisture and tensile modulus for tension and strength the nir calibration models were able to identify with good correlation both species and sites demonstrating that the technique is compatible with its purposes,2011,0.564
Ecoinformatics and global change - an overdue liaison,the field of ecoinformatics provides concepts methods and standards to guide management and analysis of ecological data with particular emphasis on exploration of co occurrences of organisms and their linkage to environmental conditions and taxon attributes in this editorial introducing the special feature â ecoinformatics and global changeâ we reflect on the development of ecoinformatics and explore its importance for future global change research with special focus on vegetation plot data we show how papers in this special feature illustrate important directions and approaches in this emerging field we suggest that ecoinformatics has the potential to make profound contribu tions to pure and applied sciences and that the analyses databases meta databases data exchange formats and analytical tools presented in this special feature advance this approach to vegetation science and illustrate and address important open questions we conclude by describing important future direc tions for the development of the field including incentives for data sharing creation of tools for more robust statistical analysis utilities for integration of data that conform to divergent taxonomic standards and databases that provide detailed plot specific data so as to allow users to find and access data appropriate to their research needs,2011,0.167
The future of the past in the present: biodiversity informatics and geological time,te biological and palaeontological communities have approached the problem of informatics separately creating a divide between communities that is both technological and sociological in nature in this paper we describe one new advance towards solving this problem expanding the scratchpads platform to deal with geological time in creating this system we have attempted to make our work open to existing com munities by providing a webservice of geological time data via the gbif vocabularies site we have also ensured that our system can adapt to changes in the definition of geological time intervals and is capable of querying datasets independently of the format of geological age data used,2011,0.181
"BioloMICS Software: Biological Data Management, Identification , Classification and Statistics",the biolomics software is briefly described in this application note biolomics is a tool allowing specialized and scientific biological databases to be created to fit the specific needs of researchers working on any organisms from viruses bacteria fungi plants insects to animals by abroad base of users such as taxonomists ecologists human animal or plant pathologists molecular biologists pharmacists industrial researchers etc they can all use the system in completely different ways and with different goals in mind one can create own custom databases without any prior knowledge of either databasing or programming the system is completely dynamic and can evolve with the needs of the users a number of tools for data retrieval and analysis are also included in the system the system also allows linking with many other databases biolomics is proposed as a suite of tools capable of archiving analyzing and publishing data on local computers and internet servers,2011,0.194
Global invasion by Anthidium manicatum (Linnaeus) (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae): assessing potential distribution in North America and beyond,the wool carder bee anthidium manica tum is the most widely distributed unmanaged bee in the world it was unintentionally introduced to north america in the late 1960s from europe and subse quently into south america new zealand and the canary islands we provide information on the local distribution seasonal abundance and sex ratio of a manicatum from samples collected in an intensive two year survey across utah usa anthidium man icatum was detected in 10 of the 29 utah counties largely in urban and suburban settings combining presence only and maxent background data from literature museum databases and new records from utah we constructed three species distribution mod els to examine the potential distribution of a manic atum in its native eurasian range as well as invaded ranges of north and south america the a manic atum model based on locality and background data from the speciesâ native range predicted 50 of the invasive records associated with high habitat suit ability hs c 0 90 the invasive north american model predicted a much broader distribution of a manicatum 214 increase whereas the south american model predicted a narrower distribution 88 decrease the poor predictive power of the latter model in estimating suitable habitats in the invasive south american range of a manicatum suggests that the bee may still be limited by the bioclimatic constraints associated with a novel environment estimates of niche similarity d between the native and invasive models find that the north america bioclimatic niche is more similar to the bioclimatic niche of the native model d 0 78 whereas the bioclimatic niche of the south america invasion is relatively dissimilar d 0 69 we discuss the naturalization of a manicatum in north america possibly through punctuated dispersal the probability of suitable habitats across the globe and the synanthropy exhibited by this invasive species,2011,0.32
Biodiversity informatics,for millennia information about biological diversity has been collected as a way to understand the living world the information record has evolved from early papyrus to modern electronic collections but challenges to information access persist despite and partly due to a variety of digital techniques and applications information exchange is hampered by lack of access to previous work inconsistent naming changes over time and insufficient resources to create comprehensive databases supporting federated search with darwin core metadata with progress in biodiversity informatics we will see greater use of dna barcoding and metagenomic techniques to describe species remote sensing tools and geographic information systems to detect and describe species locations and movements and to identify habitats and environmental conditions biodiversity informatics provides essential scientific knowledge to better understand global ecosystems and to inform land use and policy decisions,2011,0.391
Mapping fungi from below ground: online genetic resources and ectomycorrhizal geographic distributions,we used dna sequences of 20 ectomycorrhizal fungal species obtained from roots in britain and germany to find location data within europe for these fungi in the public dna databases these data were used to plot species presence on maps environmental layers were laid over these maps and information from those sites was extrapolated using geographic information systems through randomization tests the significant factors for each species from available data were tested similar methodology was used for fungal samples identified using morphology from the global biodiversity information facility to compare data quality and quantity this analysis exposed the need for uniform methodology and greater distribution of sampling in order to create viable species distribu tion models for ectomycorrhizas,2011,0.808
"Phylogeny of kangaroo apples (Solanum subg. Archaesolanum, Solanaceae).",kangaroo apples subgenus archaesolanum are a unique and still poorly known group within the genus solanum here we aimed to reveal phylogeny historical biogeography and age of diversification of archaesolanum we sampled all recognized species of the group and sequenced three chloroplast regions the trnt trnl spacer trnl intron and trnl trnf spacer to calibrate a molecular clock to estimate the age of the group distributional data were combined with the results of phylogenetic analysis to track the historical processes responsible for the current range of the group our analysis supported the monophyly of the kangaroo apples and the biogeographical disjunction between the two subclades within the group based on the divergence time estimates the most recent common ancestor of kangaroo apples is from the late miocene age 9 mya based on the age estimate the common ancestors of the kangaroo apples are presumed to have arrived in australia by long distance dispersal the two distinct lineages within the group have separated during the aridification of the continent and further speciated in the brief resurgence of rainforests during the pliocene,2011,0.38
Diversidade e distribuição de anfíbios no Cerrado: o papel dos fatores históricos e dos gradientes ambientais,diversity and distribution of anurans in brazilian cerrado the role of historical factors and environmental gradients integrating local contemporary factors and biogeographic processes allows a promising and broad view on species diversity and distribution patterns building on the development of new tools for spatial analysis i integrate historical and contemporary factors that may explain species distribution and beta diversity patterns of anuran amphibians in brazilian cerrado especifically i update information about species composition and distribution of anurans in the cerrado based on an extensive search in zoological collections and fieldwork i analyze distribution and beta diversity in a historical framework focusing on the relationship of the cerrado with its adjoining domains and its environmental conditions i found 204 anuran species occurring within the cerrado from which 50 are endemics species occurring in the cerrado and one more domain present a highly structured spatial pattern in which amazonian species are restricted to the northwestern part of the cerrado and atlantic species are restricted to the southeastern part i found cerrado endemics in most of the localities in all regions whereas narrow endemics are restricted to mountain ranges in central southeastern and southwestern cerrado cerrado anuran genera originated in atlantic forest and amazon are distributed in a checkerboard pattern and co occur less than it would be expected by chance this spatial structure within the cerrado is influenced by the interplay of environmental conditions and historical constrains atlantic genera are mostly distributed in mountainous and upland areas with low precipitation and closer to the boundaries of atlantic forest whereas amazonian genera are distributed in valleys closer to the boundaries of the amazon similarly patterns of beta diversity in the brazilian cerrado appear to be strongly influenced by the environmental gradients since half of the dissimilarity in species composition was explained by these predictors endemic species responded to regional environmental conditions stronger than all species endemics may be responding to environment based on how similar they are to the conditions of adjoining phytogeographical domains since their sister species are mostly distributed in these regions my results reinforce the importance of taking biogeographical history into account when analyzing spatial patterns of species diversity at a regional scale i also show that the heterogeneity in anuran distribution in the cerrado may have a historical basis which interacts with present day constraints such as climate habitat availability and ecological interactions to shape local and regional assemblages,2011,0.982
Designing criteria suites to identify discrete and networked sites of high value across manifestations of biodiversity,suites of criteria specifying ecological biological social economic and governance properties enable the systematic identification of sites and networks of high biodiversity value and can support balancing ecological and socioeconomic objectives of biodiversity conservation in terrestrial and marine spatial planning we describe designs of suites of ecological governance and socioeconomic criteria to comprehensively cover manifestations of biodiversity from genotypes to biomes compensate for taxonomic and spatial gaps in available datasets balance biases resulting from conventionally employed narrow criteria suites focusing on rare endemic and threatened species plan for climate change effects on biodiversity and optimize the ecological and administrative networking of sites representativeness replication ecological connectivity size and refugia are identified as minimum ecological properties of site networks through inclusion of a criterion for phylogenetic distinctiveness criteria suites identify sites important for maintaining evolutionary processes criteria for focal species are needed to overcome data gaps and address limitations in knowledge of factors responsible for maintaining ecosystem integrity,2011,0.213
Using Species Distribution Models for Conservation Planning and Ecological Forecasting,conservation practitioners and resource managers must often work with limited data to answer critical time sensitive questions in many regions of the world even the most basic information about the distribution of species is lacking knowing the geographic extent of a given species or ecological system is the first step in planning for its management or conservation the sustainable management of fish stocks timber waterfowl populations and biodiversity in general requires high quality spatial data on species distributions selecting preserves or easements to protect plants and wildlife for instance requires detailed knowledge of where different species are on the landscape such information is the foundation of science based management and is necessary for assessing the risks of land use actions management scenarios or other human activities to plant and wildlife populations huettmann et al 2005 species distribution models provide one tool for addressing the lack of species distribution data boyce and mcdonald 1999 these models can be used to fill gaps in our knowledge by projecting habitat suitability in areas with few or no occurrence records these models can also be used to forecast the effects of changes in environmental conditions on species distributions given the immense threat that climate change land use change and invasive species pose to ecosystem services and to rare species in particular wilcove et al 1998 sala et al 2000 having the ability to forecast potential future impacts allows practitioners to assess alternative policies and actions and to plan for change huettmann et al 2005 nielsen et al 2008 thus forecasting will likely play an even more important role in conservation as forecasting tools become more accurate and more accessible many different types of models have been applied to these problems these have included highly mechanistic models that simulate population dynamics species interactions and dispersal bugmann 1996 schumaker et al 2004 battin et al 2007 empirical models that rely on correlative relationships between known distributions and environmental conditions guisan and zimmermann 2000 and models that combine mechanistic and empirical approaches iverson et al 2004 here we explore how species distribution models can be applied to two types of conservation applications conservation planning and ecological forecasting we begin with a brief description of these conservation applications concentrating on some of the specific questions that species distribution models have been used to help answer we then discuss the types of models that are available for these applications and whether and how those models have been validated we conclude with two case studies in which we describe specific applications of species distribution modeling to reserve selection and to forecasting climate impacts,2011,0.962
"Assessing historical fish community composition using surveys, historical collection data, and species distribution models.",accurate establishment of baseline conditions is critical to successful management and habitat restoration we demonstrate the ability to robustly estimate historical fish community composition and assess the current status of the urbanized barton creek watershed in central texas u s a fish species were surveyed in 2008 and the resulting data compared to three sources of fish occurrence information i historical records from a museum specimen database and literature searches ii a nearly identical survey conducted 15 years earlier and iii a modeled historical community constructed with species distribution models sdms this holistic approach and especially the application of sdms allowed us to discover that the fish community in barton creek was more diverse than the historical data and survey methods alone indicated sixteen native species with high modeled probability of occurrence within the watershed were not found in the 2008 survey seven of these were not found in either survey or in any of the historical collection records our approach allowed us to more rigorously establish the true baseline for the pre development fish fauna and then to more accurately assess trends and develop hypotheses regarding factors driving current fish community composition to better inform management decisions and future restoration efforts smaller urbanized freshwater systems like barton creek typically have a relatively poor historical biodiversity inventory coupled with long histories of alteration and thus there is a propensity for land managers and researchers to apply inaccurate baseline standards our methods provide a way around that limitation by using sdms derived from larger and richer biodiversity databases of a broader geographic scope broadly applied we propose that this technique has potential to overcome limitations of popular bioassessment metrics e g ibi to become a versatile and robust management tool for determining status of freshwater biotic communities,2011,0.445
Worldwide Spread of Pheidole teneriffana (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),pheidole teneriffana is an old world ant species that has spread to other parts of the world through human commerce to evaluate its known distribution i compiled and mapped p teneriffana records from 200 sites i documented the earliest known p teneriffana records for 43 geographic areas countries island groups major islands and us states including 11 west indian islands for which i found no previously published records antigua barbados barbuda curaã ao dominica dominican republic hispaã ola guadeloupe jamaica mar tinique montserrat and st lucia pheidole teneriffana is known from sites scattered across the greater mediterranean region north africa southern europe the middle east and neighboring islands though it is unclear which parts of this area constitute its native range pheidole teneriffana is known from only a few old world sites distant from the med iterranean region i e ascension china england st helena and south africa in the new world where this species is certainly exotic there are published p teneriffana records only from california cuba and peru the first records from 11 west indian islands presented here all from 2003 or later suggest that p teneriffana is actively spreading through this re gion almost all west indian records of p teneriffana come from beaches or urban areas it seems doubtful that p teneriffana will develop into a major pest species like its congener the infamous pheidole megacephala,2011,0.695
"Diversification in the Andes: Age and origins of South American Heliotropium lineages (Heliotropiaceae, Boraginales)",the uplift of the andes was a major factor for plant diversification in south america and had significant effects on the climatic patterns at the continental scale it was crucial for the formation of the arid environments in south eastern and western south america however both the timing of the major stages of the andean uplift and the onset of aridity in western south america remain controversial in this paper we examine the hypothesis that the andean south american groups of heliotropium originated and diversified in response to andean orogeny during the late miocene and a the subsequent development of aridity to this end we estimate divergence times and likely biogeographical origins of the major clades in the phylogeny of heliotropium using both bayesian and likelihood methods divergence times of all andean clades in heliotropium are estimated to be of late miocene or pliocene ages at least three independent andean diversification events can be recognized within heliotropium timing of the diversification in the andean lineages heliotropium sects heliothamnus cochranea heliotrophytum hypsogenia plagiomeris platygyne clearly correspond to a rapid late miocene uplift of the andes and a pliocene development of arid environments in south america,2011,0.11
Brassica,brassica species belong to the brassicaceae â cruci ferae family and some of them are widely used in human diet mainly as an important source of vegeta bles condiments and edible oils the use of the related crops is cited in some ancient civilized regions such as in the mediterranean and in asia brassica taxonomic studies started since 1700 by tournefort and were continued by linnaeus 1753 de candolle 1821 hooker 1862 baillon 1871 prantl 1891 schulz 1919 1936 and beilstein et al 2006 t,2011,0.435
"Taxonomic Revision, Habitats And Biogeography Of The Land Snail Family Discidae (Gastropoda : Pulmonata) In The Canary Islands",the endemic macaronesian canaridiscus provisionally placed in the discidae genus atlantica are closely linked to the peculiar laurel forest habitat of these islands knowledge of atlantica canaridiscus is increased here with the description for the first time of the genital system of three more of its species the epiphallus is apparently lacking and the penis is much longer than that known from any of the discidae of europe and north america generally it is too large to be more than partly accommodated in the distal female genital tract keraea has been regarded as an endemic macaronesian genus of discidae known only from a few shells but its madeiran species has been identified as a trochulus hygromiidae and its type species from tenerife also matches hygromiidae not discidae the origin and relationships of the macaronesian discidae are discussed the simplest explanatory model is apparently that they represent the last living relicts of a more diverse fauna of discidae that lived in europe during the tertiary atlantica canaridiscus was probably isolated early on from the remaining discidae recent literature reports multiple patterns of colonisation of madeira and the canaries that have varied between different groups of plants and animals hence it is argued that it is unwarranted to expect to find only the single pattern of colonisation among the land snails of each of these archipelagos that was advocated by waldã n 1984,2011,0.788
Ecological niche modelling of an invasive alien plant and its potential biological control agents,invasive alien plants are of concern in south africa pompom weed campuloclinium macrocephalum is currently invading the grassland and savannah biomes of south africa and is likely to continue spreading in the southern african sub region two possible biological control agents liothrips tractabilis and cochylis campuloclinium have been identified for control of pompom weed we used ecological niche modelling to predict which areas in southern africa are likely to be suitable for pompom weed and the two potential biological control agents the overlap between areas predicted to be highly suitable for pompom weed and areas suitable for the biological control agents was assessed methods of reducing sampling bias in a data set used for calibrating models were also compared finally the performance of models calibrated using only native range data only invaded range data and both were also compared models indicate that pompom weed is likely to spread across a greater region of southern africa than it currently occupies with the savannah and grassland biomes being at greatest risk of invasion poor overlap was found between the areas predicted to be highly suitable for pompom weed and those areas predicted to be suitable for the biological control agents however models of the potential distribution of the biological control agents are interpreted with caution due to the very small sample size of the data set used to calibrate the models models calibrated using both native range and invaded range data were found to perform best whilst models calibrated using only native range data performed the worst there was little difference found between models that were calibrated using spatially reduced selecting only one record per 30 min grid cell and randomly reduced randomly selecting 50 of available records biased data sets,2011,0.26
Licofitas (Equisetopsida : Lycopodiidae) de las Sierras Centrales de Argentina : un enfoque panbiogeográfico,lycophytes equisetopsida lycopodiidae from the central hills of argentina a panbiogeographic approach lycophytes are the most ancient lineage of vascular plants and include lycopodiaceae isoã taceae and selaginellaceae they are a monophyletic group separated from ferns and seed plants and are especially useful for establishing biogeographic patterns due to their lack of coevolutionary relationships with biotic vectors their monophyly and their remarkable morphological conservatism the individual tracks of the seven taxa of lycophytes from central argentina were drawn and the generalized track obtained shows that the central hills of argentina are the austral extreme of the distribution of a neotropical biotic component with closer relationships with the subandean hills and the bolivian and peruvian andes than to the chaco where they are included bordering the south american transition zone the latter is characterized by arid environments and is a successful barrier for lycophytes separating the austral region of argentina and chile from the other parts of south america,2011,0.193
Climate niche shift in invasive species: the case of the brown anole,anolis sagrei a cuba and bahama native lizard is a successful invader in florida and adjacent areas herein we focus on conservatism in its climate niche axes and possible congruencies with its natural history properties the not mutually exclusive hypotheses of the present study explaining its northern range limit are 1 climatic conditions within species native and invasive ranges are identical 2 the species is pre adapted to novel conditions as a result of historical climate variations and 3 only some niche axes limit the species invasive distribution and the observed pattern is explained by an interplay between the potential niche within its native range and life history species distribution models for native and invasive distributions were built on ten bioclimatic variables using schoener s niche overlap index the degree of niche conservatism among variables was identified significances of hypothesis 1 were tested using null model approaches possible climatic pre adaptations were evaluated by comparing its actual tolerance within its invasive range with that of the last glacial maximum lgm within its native range hypothesis 2 results of 1 and 2 are discussed in relation to natural history approaching hypothesis 3 we detect varying overlaps in niche axes indicating that natural history properties are associated with conservative niche axes climatic comparisons with lgm of native and current conditions of invasive range suggest that pre adaptations are unlikely possible shifts in the fundamental niche of the species may have been facilitated by enhanced genetic diversity in northern invasive populations,2011,0.437
"A conceptual framework for managing very diverse data for complex, interdisciplinary science",much attention has been given to the challenges of handling massive data volumes in modern data intensive science this paper exam ines an equally daunting challenge â the diversity of interdisciplinary data notably research data and the need to interrelate these data to understand complex systemic problems such as environmental change and its impact we use the experience of the international polar year 2007â 8 ipy as a case study to examine data management approaches seeking to address issues around complex interdisci plinary science we find that while technology is a critical factor in addressing the interdisciplinary dimension of the data intensive sci ence the technologies developing for exa scale data volumes differ from those that are needed for extremely distributed and heterogeneous data research data will continue to be highly heterogeneous and distributed and will require technologies to be much simpler and more flexible more importantly there is a need for both technical and cultural adaptation we describe a vision of disco verable open linked useful and safe collections of data organized and curated using the best principles and practices of information and library science this vision provides a framework for our discussion and leads us to suggest several short and long term strategies to facilitate a socio technical evolution in the overall science data ecosystem,2011,0.106
The Biodiversity Informatics Potential Index,background biodiversity informatics is a relatively new discipline extending computer science in the context of biodiversity data and its development to date has not been uniform throughout the world digitizing effort and capacity building are costly and ways should be found to prioritize them rationally the proposed â biodiversity informatics potential bip indexâ seeks to fulfill such a prioritization role we propose that the potential for biodiversity informatics be assessed through three concepts a the intrinsic biodiversity potential the biological richness or ecological diversity of a country b the capacity of the country to generate biodiversity data records and c the availability of technical infrastructure in a country for managing and publishing such records methods broadly the techniques used to construct the bip index were rank correlation multiple regression analysis principal components analysis and optimization by linear programming we built the bip index by finding a parsimonious set of country level human economic and environmental variables that best predicted the availability of primary biodiversity data accessible through the global biodiversity information facility gbif network and constructing an optimized model with these variables the model was then applied to all countries for which sufficient data existed to obtain a score for each country countries were ranked according to that score results many of the current gbif participants ranked highly in the bip index although some of them seemed not to have realized their biodiversity informatics potential the bip index attributed low ranking to most non participant countries however a few of them scored highly suggesting that these would be high return new participants if encouraged to contribute towards the gbif mission of free and open access to biodiversity data conclusions the bip index could potentially help in a identifying countries most likely to contribute to filling gaps in digitized biodiversity data b assisting countries potentially in need for example mega diverse to mobilize resources and collect data that could be used in decision making and c allowing identification of which biodiversity informatics resourced countries could afford to assist countries lacking in biodiversity informatics capacity and which data rich countries should benefit most from such help,2011,0.059
Review: Effects of Climate Change on Birds,book review effects of climate change on birds â anders pape mã ller wolfgang fieldler and peter berthold editors 2010 oxford university press new york 321 pp 9 color plates isbn 978 0 19 956975 5 117 00 hard cover,2011,0.208
Linking Fish Species Data,the traditional world wide web www is built upon a set of documents which are interconnected through the use of hypertext links those documents are written in html a language used to layout information for human consumption however web browsers and other software tools are not aware of the data contained in html documents which reduces the possibility to processing that data linked data is a relatively new set of principles to share information on the www where not only are documents published and interconnected but also the data they contain creating new possibilities for the processing integration and discovery of information by both humans and applications with the use of linked data the link that joins two entities is typed providing information about the relationship between those two elements fishdelish is a linked data project that exposes a large portion of fishbase one of the most popular and comprehensive fish species databases available on the web as linked data the main purpose of this dissertation is the generation of rdf links to connect fish species data contained in the fishdelish dataset to other resources available in the linked data cloud and expose some of the benefits of those links with the development of an application trying to find practical and effective solutions to the challenges that represent this integration 5,2011,0.183
Coordination and management of multisite complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies: experience from a multisite reflexology intervention trial.,multisite randomized clinical trials allow for increased research collaboration among investigators and expedite data collection efforts as a result government funding agencies typically look favorably upon this approach as the field of complementary and alternative medicine cam continues to evolve so do increased calls for the use of more rigorous study design and trial methodologies which can present challenges for investigators,2011,0.24
Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees.,bumble bees bombus are vitally important pollinators of wild plants and agricultural crops worldwide fragmentary observations however have suggested population declines in several north american species despite rising concern over these observations in the united states highlighted in a recent national academy of sciences report a national assessment of the geographic scope and possible causal factors of bumble bee decline is lacking here we report results of a 3 y interdisciplinary study of changing distributions population genetic structure and levels of pathogen infection in bumble bee populations across the united states we compare current and historical distributions of eight species compiling a database of 73 000 museum records for comparison with data from intensive nationwide surveys of 16 000 specimens we show that the relative abundances of four species have declined by up to 96 and that their surveyed geographic ranges have contracted by 23 87 some within the last 20 y we also show that declining populations have significantly higher infection levels of the microsporidian pathogen nosema bombi and lower genetic diversity compared with co occurring populations of the stable nondeclining species higher pathogen prevalence and reduced genetic diversity are thus realistic predictors of these alarming patterns of decline in north america although cause and effect remain uncertain,2011,0.969
Climate Change and Cyperaceae,cyperaceae sedges are a monocotyledenous angiosperm plant family with over 5300 species despite their global importance few if any climate change studies have been carried out on or with cyperaceae however they may be a model family on which to base such work th ey are of economic ethnobotan ical conservation and environmental importance and a wide range of resources for cyperaceae is available examples are given of where cyperaceae may win or lose in the climate change stakes taxa with c 4 photosynthetic pathways such as cyperus rotundus â the worldâ s worst weed â c longus and members of cyperus sect arenarii are potential winners that could considerably extend their distri butions niche modelling results are presented showing the predicted areas of climatic suitability for c rotundus globally and c longus british isles in 2050 furthermore historical distribution data are presented that show the northward range expansion of c longus in britain during the last 100 years th e chapter highlights the threat of climate change to endemic taxa with restricted distribu tions such as carex spp isolepis spp khaosokia caricoides and mapania spp th ese appear particularly vulnerable although as yet there is no direct evidence of climate change threatening or eliminating taxa,2011,0.417
Natural Selection: Finding Specimens in a Natural History Collection,the natural history domain is rich in information for hundreds of years biodiversity researchers have collected specimens and samples and meticulously recorded the how what and where of these objects of research to retrace this information however deep knowledge of the collection and patience is necessary whereas traditional access methods e g analysing paper logs of specimen finds can be used for smaller collections the sheer size of most current natural history collections prohibits this at the same time information technology has advanced to the point where it is able to capture the intricacies of biodiversity collection information and provide the first steps towards full digital access,2011,0.297
Assembly of nonnative floras along elevational gradients explained by directional ecological filtering,nonnative species richness typically declines along environmental gradients such as elevation it is usually assumed that this is because few invaders possess the necessary adaptations to succeed under extreme environmental conditions here we show that nonnative plants reaching high elevations around the world are not highly specialized stress tolerators but species with broad climatic tolerances capable of growing across a wide elevational range these results contrast with patterns for native species and they can be explained by the unidirectional expansion of nonnative species from anthropogenic sources at low elevations and the progressive dropping out of species with narrow elevational amplitudesâ a process that we call directional ecological filtering independent data confirm that climatic generalists have succeeded in colonizing the more extreme environments at higher elevations these results suggest that invasion resistance is not conferred by extreme conditions at a particular site but determined by pathways of introduction of nonnative species in the future increased direct introduction of nonnative species with specialized ecophysiological adaptations to mountain environments could increase the risk of invasion as well as providing a general explanation for gradients of nonnative species richness and the importance of traits such as phenotypic plasticity for many invasive species the concept of directional ecological filtering is useful for understanding the initial assembly of some native floras at high elevations and latitudes,2011,0.928
Upslope migration of Andean trees,abstract aim climate change causes shifts in species distributions or â migrationsâ despite the centrality of species distributions to biodiversity conservation the demonstrated large migration of tropical plant species in response to climate change in the past and the expected sensitivity of species distributions to modern climate change no study has tested for modern species migrations in tropical plants here we conduct a first test of the hypothesis that increasing temperatures are causing tropical trees to migrate to cooler areas location tropical andes biodiversity hotspot south eastern peru south america methods we use data from repeated 2003 04â 2007 08 censuses of 14 1 ha forest inventory plots spanning an elevational gradient from 950 to 3400 m in manu national park in south eastern peru to characterize changes in the elevational distributions of 38 andean tree genera we also analyse changes in the genus level composition of the inventory plots through time results we show that most tropical andean tree genera shifted their mean distributions upslope over the study period and that the mean rate of migration is approximately 2 5â 3 5 vertical metres upslope per year consistent with upward migrations we also find increasing abundances of tree genera previously distributed at lower elevations in the majority of study plots main conclusions these findings are in accord with the a priori hypothesis of upward shifts in species ranges due to elevated temperatures and are potentially the first documented evidence of present day climate driven migrations in a tropical plant community the observed mean rate of change is less than predicted from the temperature increases for the region possibly due to the influence of changes in moisture or non climatic factors such as substrate species interactions lags in tree community response and or dispersal limitations whatever the cause s continued slower than expected migration of tropical andean trees would indicate a limited ability to respond to increased temperatures which may lead to increased extinction risks with further climate change,2011,0.661
OBIS-USA: A data-sharing legacy of the census of marine life,te united states geological surveyâ s biological informatics program hosts obis usa the us node of the ocean biogeographic information system obis obis usa gathers coordinates applies standard formats to and makes widely available data on biological collections in marine waters of the united states and other areas where us investigators have collected data and in some instances specimens obis usa delivers its data to obis international which then delivers its data to the global biodiversity information facility gbif and other web portals for marine biodiversity data obis usa currently has 145 data sets from 36 participants representing over 6 5 million occurrence records of over 83 000 taxa from more than 888 000 locations obis usa a legacy of the decade long 2001â 2010 international collaborative census of marine life enterprise continues to add data including those from ongoing census projects among the many challenges in creating obis including obis usa were developing a community of trust and shared value among data providers and demonstrating to providers the value of making their data accessible to others challenges also posed by the diversity of data sets relevant to marine biodiversity stored on thousands of computers in a variety of formats not all widely accessible have been met in obis usa by implementing a uniform standard and publishing platform that is easily accessible to a broad range of users,2011,0.872
From Competition to Collaboration: Challenges for New Zealand Science,science has long been based on a model of individual and institutional competition the reforms of the sector in the 1990s led to the formation of the crown research institutes cris which had responsibilities for specific economic or environmental sectors independence and separate governance the bulk of funding came via the foundation for research science and technology with often intense competition for resources this was exacerbated by the openness of the investment processes to universities research associations and other research providers over the past decade there were various attempts to encourage nzinterdisciplinary and collaborative programmes manage overbidding and establish alternative models such as outcome based investments but there were still significant transaction costs in the competitive bidding processes doubts remained as to whether the nation was maximising benefits,2011,0.15
Diversification within the Mexican Vole (Microtus mexicanus) and the Role of Post-Pleistocene Climate Change,to examine the partitioning of genetic variation within the mexican vole microtus mexicanus we analyzed variation within the cytochrome b cytb ca 953 bp from 44 samples of the mexican vole from the mountains of the southwestern united states and mexico phylogeographic analyses demonstrated strong support for a western clade and an eastern clade corresponding to the sierra madre occidental and mountains of the southwestern united states western clade and the sierra madre oriental and the sierra madre del sur eastern clade levels of genetic distinctiveness among vole populations in mexico and the southwestern united states support recognition of the mogollon vole microtus mogollonensis estimates of lineage divergence suggested an older divergence for populations in mexico and a more recent divergence for the presumptive m mogollonensis ecological analyses demonstrated a distinct climate niche between vole lineages in the southwest and mexico which indicated the possible role of environmental variation in diversification of the mexican vole a similar pattern of climatic separation was also demonstrated between clades of the codistributed taxa sigmodon hispidus neotoma mexicana and peromyscus truei suggesting a broader role for climatic variation in the origin and maintenance of the region s biodiversity,2011,0.429
"Mass Extinction, Gradual Cooling, or Rapid Radiation? Reconstructing the Spatiotemporal Evolution of the Ancient Angiosperm Genus Hedyosmum (Chloranthaceae) Using Empirical and Simulated Approaches",chloranthaceae is a small family of flowering plants 65 species with an extensive fossil record extending back to the early cretaceous within chloranthaceae hedyosmum is remarkable because of its disjunct distributionâ 1 species in the paleotropics and 44 confined to the neotropicsâ and a long â œtemporal gapâ between its stem age early cretaceous and the beginning of the extant radiation late cenozoic is this gap real reflecting low diversification and a recent radiation or the signature of extinction here we use paleontological data relaxed clock molecular dating diversification analyses and parametric ancestral area reconstruction to investigate the timing tempo and mode of diversification in hedyosmum our results based on analyses of plastid and nuclear sequences for 40 species suggest that the ancestor of chloranthaceae and the hedyosmum stem lineages were widespread in the holarctic in the late cretaceous high extinction rates possi bly associated with cenozoic climatic fluctuations may have been responsible for the low extant diversity of the family crown group hedyosmum originated c 36â 43 ma and colonized south america from the north during the earlyâ middle miocene c 20 ma this coincided with an increase in diversification rates probably triggered by the uplift of the northern andes from the mid miocene onward this study illustrates the advantages of combining paleontological phylogenetic and biogeographic data to reconstruct the spatiotemporal evolution of an ancient lineage for which the extant diversity is only a remnant of past radiations it also shows the difficulties of inferring patterns of lineage diversification when incom plete taxon sampling is combined with high extinction rates,2011,0.593
Keep collecting: accurate species distribution modelling requires more collections than previously thought,aim species distribution models sdms use the locations of collection records to map the distributions of species making them a powerful tool in conservation biology ecology and biogeography however the accuracy of range predictions may be reduced by temporally autocorrelated biases in the data we assess the accuracy of sdms in predicting the ranges of tropical plant species on the basis of different sample sizes while incorporating real world collection patterns and biases location tropical south american moist forests methods we use dated herbarium records to model the distributions of 65 amazonian and andean plant species for each species we use the first 25 50 100 125 and 150 records collected and available for each species to analyse changes in spatial aggregation and climatic representativeness through time we compare the accuracy of sdm range estimates produced using the time ordered data subsets to the accuracy of range estimates generated using the same number of collections but randomly subsampled from all available records results we find that collections become increasingly aggregated through time but that additional collecting sites are added resulting in progressively better representations of the speciesâ full climatic niches the range predictions produced using time ordered data subsets are less accurate than predictions from random subsets of equal sample sizes range predictions produced using time ordered data subsets consistently underestimate the extent of ranges while no such tendency exists for range predictions produced using random data subsets main conclusions these results suggest that larger sample sizes are required to accurately map species ranges additional attention should be given to increasing the number of records available per species through continued collecting better distributed collecting and or increasing access to existing collections the fact that sdms generally under predict the extent of species ranges means that extinction risks of species because of future habitat loss may be lower than previously estimated,2011,0.978
Using Expert Knowledge to Satisfy Data Needs: Mapping Invasive Plant Distributions in the Western United States,abstract â lack of knowledge about the distributions of plant and animal species can severely hamper management efforts for invasive plants distribution and abundance data can inform early detection and rapid response edrr programs aimed at treating initial infestations these data can be used to create invasion risk models at landscape and regional scales further regional maps of invasive plant abundance are useful for communicating the scope of the invasive species problem to the public and policymakers here we present a set of regional distribution maps for 10 problematic invasive plants in the western united states created from the expert knowledge of weed managers in over 300 counties invasive plant experts identified infestations on paper and the results were digitized into a regional gis over 40 of requests were returned resulting in maps with good spatial coverage and distribution data suitable for assessing invasive plant abundance across the western united states cheatgrass bromus tectorum and canada thistle cirsium arvense were the most abundant and widespread of the surveyed species however the high concentrations and broad spatial extents of other invasive plants such as hounds tongue cynoglossum officinale white top lepidium draba and dalmatian toadflax linaria dalmatica highlight the ongoing problems invasive species pose for western ecosystems rangelands and croplands these results reinforce the critical role that regional mapping efforts can play in assessing and communicating invasion risk this study suggests that knowledge about plant invasions exists locally and that experts are willing to participate in regional efforts to compile that information,2011,0.101
Organizing our knowledge of biodiversity,though natural history collections are long established and numerous data on biodiversity is sparse poorly developed inconsistent and rarely digitally preserved and their providers are often inaccessible the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the taxonomic databases working group tdwg for biodiversity information standards are leading efforts to overcome such barriers the gbif has collected over 200 million records formally describing natural history specimens from hundreds of sources while also serving the rapidly growing online community of amateur field observers the two organizations face challenges arising from ambiguity of taxonomic names and the need to make voluminous and critical historical collections available and to develop standard metadata vocabularies that can be understood and used by all the combination of science informatics tools including a robust vocabulary and linked data conventions with a networked active user community will enable effective biodiversity data management over the long term,2011,0.257
The Future of Large-Scale Solar Energy in California,the development of large scale solar energy lsse in the california desert is of vital importance to the stateâ s renewable energy objectives lsse development can help california meet its 33 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2020 recently shifts in state and federal policies and in economics have stimulated a boom in solar utility development the cdca is the most attractive location for solar development due to high solar insolation however the impacts of such development on desert ecosystems are largely unknown we created six potential future lsse development scenarios to quantify the range of possible resource impacts and calculated how much energy each scenario would contribute to californiaâ s electricity supply by 2020 next we incorporated three different lsse technology portfolios into each development scenario to show how resource impacts vary with technology selection these scenarios and portfolios help estimate the likely cumulative land and water resource requirements of future lsse developments in the cdca through spatial analysis we eliminated land in the cdca unavailable for solar development and then ranked the suitability of the remaining land as high medium or low for solar development the ranking is based on proximity to infrastructure sensitive species habitat and water availability this spatial analysis indicates the most suitable land for solar development and provides a visual representation of the land required by the likely solar scenarios finally this study provides recommendations for our client regarding the future of lsse in california and locations where solar development would be most suitable iii,2011,0.254
"Aplicación de modelos de distribución geográfica para la conservación y reintroducción en el hábitat natural de ""Lychnophora ericoides"" : Especie amenzada de extinción en los cerrados (sabanas brasileñas)",master s thesis directed by carlos montes del olmo in recent years the techniques applied to the generation of species distribution models evolve much thanks to the wide range of programming languages the wide dissemination of geospatial information and the development of gis techniques in this context modeling species distribution emerges as an important tool in creating subsidies for conservation policies and improved management strategies amenazadas actualmente species there are several mathematical algorithms that can be used to generate maps potential distribution of species in this paper we use the desktop garp and maxent algorithms with best subsets to process the records of occurrence of ericoid lychnophora obtaining a comparative basis so that appropriate areas are identified by minimizing opportunities for error this species has restricted distribution in the cerrado ecoregion and was selected because it is registered in the list of brazilian endangered species and for being a kind of great economic importance and medicinal,2011,0.675
An overview of recent remote sensing and GIS based research in ecological informatics,this article provides an overview of some of the recent research in ecological informatics involving remote sensing and gis attention focuses on a selected range of issues including topics such as the nature of remote sensing data sets issues of accuracy and uncertainty data visualization and sharing activities as well as developments in aspects of ecological modelling research it is shown that considerable advances have been made over recent years and foundations for future research established,2011,0.105
Validation of biological collections as a source of phenological data for use in climate change studies: a case study with the orchid Ophrys sphegodes,1 the scarcity of reliable long term phenological data has severely hindered the study of the responses of species to climate change biological collections in herbaria andmuseums are potential sources of long term data for such study but their use for this purpose needs independent valida tion here we report a rigorous test of the validity of using herbarium specimens for phenological studies by comparing relationships between climate and time of peak flowering derived from her bariumrecords and fromdirect field based observations for the terrestrial orchidophrys sphegodes 2 we examined herbarium specimens of o sphegodes collected between 1848 and 1958 and recorded peak flowering time directly in one population of o sphegodes between 1975 and 2006 the response of flowering time to variation in mean spring temperature marchâ may was virtually identical in both sets of data even though they covered different periods of time which differ in extent of anthropogenic temperature change in both cases flowering was advanced by c 6 days per crise in average spring temperature 3 the proportion of variation in flowering time explained by spring temperature was lower in the herbarium record than in direct field observations it is likely that some of the additional variation was due to geographical variation in collection site as flowering was significantly earlier at more westerly sites which have hadwarmer springs over their range of 3 44 of longitude 4 predictions of peak flowering time based on the herbarium data corresponded closely with observed peak flowering times in the field indicating that flowering response to temperature had not altered between the two separate periods over which the herbarium and field data were collected 5 synthesis these results provide the first direct validation of the use of herbarium collections to examine the relationships between phenology and climate when field based observational data are not available,2011,0.555
Proper Data Management as a Scientific Foundation for Reliable Species Distribution Modeling,data management storage curation and dissemination are mainstays of computer modeling indeed a traditional view of computer modeling has perpetuated the notion of â œgarbage in garbage outâ gigo which serves as a constant reminder that no matter how sophisticated the analysis computers will â œunquestioningly processâ whatever type of data are provided regardless of its quality or suitability pearson 2007 in ecology the datasets used in computer modeling are inherently complex and often characterized by missing values dynamic environmental variables and other factors leading to numerous data anomalies michener et al 1997 michener and brunt 2000 ecologists have long recognized however that although data quality is undoubtedly important using different types of data even messy ones can still prove informative and facilitates new questions methods and synergies in science and society,2011,0.176
"Conservation status and protection measures for Draba hispanica Boiss. subsp. lebrunii P. Monts., endemic to the Altocarrionés subsector (Castile and Leon, Spain)",draba hispanica subsp lebrunii is an endemic plant restricted to a small area of the south western part of the nature park and sci called â œfuentes carrionas and fuente cobre montaã a palentinaâ in the castile and leon region of spain included in several regional and national protection catalogues this paper provides a demographic study of the currently known populations with the aim of reviewing the conservation status of the taxon in accordance with iucn criteria as well as detecting risk factors and providing appropriate management measures to guarantee survival of the taxon furthermore the creation of a micro reserve for flora is proposed as a specially protected area in the zone where the most abundant and best preserved population is located precise locations for all the previously known sites and others are provided through labelling by means of gps technology the current situation of the populations and changes in them are also analysed,2011,0.408
Approaches to Open Data for Science in Spain,as observational data has attained new legal status allowing their integration into open internet systems and experimental data continues to be assembled in common and free platforms state of the art easy to access data repositories have been designed in spain these repositories have removed many obstacles to re utilization of gis and other data european legislation has also made advances in opening biodiversity data including a european space in the latin american grid infrastructure open access biomedical repositories attract commercial attention while astronomical meteorological and oncological institutions promote data quality and access this paper describes recent approaches to open access data for science in spain,2011,0.188
The data paper: a mechanism to incentivize data publishing in biodiversity science.,free and open access to primary biodiversity data is essential for informed decision making to achieve conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development however primary biodiversity data are neither easily accessible nor discoverable among several impediments one is a lack of incentives to data publishers for publishing of their data resources one such mechanism currently lacking is recognition through conventional scholarly publication of enriched metadata which should ensure rapid discovery of fit for use biodiversity data resources,2011,0.258
"Application of bioclimatic models coupled with network analysis for risk assessment of the killer shrimp, Dikerogammarus villosus, in Great Britain",in this study we use a combination of techniques to assess the general risk of invasion by the aquatic invader dikerogammarus villosus in great britain at multiple scales first bioclimatic models support vector machine algorithm were used to identify regions showing the highest climatic match with the european range of the species and that might be at highest risk of initial colonization if provided with propagules the model showed that nearly 60 of great britain shows the minimum bioclimatic suitability for the species particularly southern and eastern england afterwards a network analysis was used to model the natural spatio temporal spread of the killer shrimp in the great ouse river catchment se england the first region invaded by this species this model suggested that the northern part of the catchment including two relevant ramsar sites ouse washes and wicken fen are at serious risk of being invaded in the short term 5 years taking into account the rapid spread of the killer shrimp in other european countries its broad environmental tolerance the high climate suitability of broad areas of great britain to the species the current spread of other ponto caspian species and the high natural and artificial connectivity of the hydrological network we conclude that d villosus is very likely to continue its spread in great britain dramatically affecting the native biodiversity the multi scale approach proposed in this study combines large scale bioclimatic models with local scale dispersal models providing managers with a powerful spatial and temporal basis for informed decision making,2011,0.532
Genetic monitoring detects an overlooked cryptic species and reveals the diversity and distribution of three invasive Rattus congeners in South Africa.,south africa s long and extensive trade activity has ensured ample opportunities for exotic species introduction whereas the rich biodiversity of endemic southern african fauna has been the focus of many studies invasive vertebrates are generally overlooked despite potential impacts on biodiversity health and agriculture genetic monitoring of commensal rodents in south africa which uncovered the presence of rattus tanezumi a south east asian endemic not previously known to occur in africa provided the impetus for expanded studies on all invasive rattus species present,2011,0.729
Insights from Zootaxa on potential trends in zoological taxonomic activity,an opinion currently shared by taxonomists and non taxonomists alike is that the work of inventorying biodiversity is unbalanced firstly in favour of countries in which taxonomy has been studied for a long time and secondly in favour of vertebrates in the current context of threats of species extinction access for taxonomists to biological material and information becomes crucial if the scientific community really aims at a better knowledge of biological diversity before it is severely and irreversibly impoverished we performed an analysis of 748 papers published in zootaxa in 2006 and 2007 as well as 434 questionnaires sent to their authors to test these opinions a generalization of these results to zoological taxonomy as a whole is discussed,2011,0.401
Seward Peninsula - Nulato Hills - Kotzebue Lowlands Rapid Ecoregional Assessment Final Memorandum I-2-C,rapid ecoregional assessments reas are the first step in the bureauâ s landscape approach reas are intended to synthesize existing knowledge and information applicable to all lands and waters within the ecoregion this synthesis aims to inform subsequent decision making implementation and monitoring by blm and partners within the ecoregion and should interact with ongoing scientific research as a foundation for science based land management reas are organized into a series of phases and component tasks phase 1 includes tasks that clarify the scope expected data and analysis approaches to be used and culminating in a detailed workplan for the assessment phase 2 completes the preparation of data conducts agreed upon analyses and documents assessment results this memorandum summarizes the work decisions and remaining issues to be resolved for task 2 phase 1 for the seward peninsulaâ nulato hillsâ kotzebue sound lowlands snk ecoregion here we conduct the assessment of data availability and quality representing the candidate conservation elements and change agents needed to answer the management questions this memorandum is the final version i 2 c which has been revised and finalized by incorporating comments provided at amt workshop 2 or submitted separately to blm,2011,0.192
Using Remote Sensing to Map the Risk of Human Monkeypox Virus in the Congo Basin,although the incidence of human monkeypox has greatly increased in central africa over the last decade resources for surveillance remain extremely limited we conducted a geospatial analysis using existing data to better inform future surveillance efforts using active surveillance data collected between 2005 and 2007 we identified locations in sankuru district democratic republic of congo drc where there have been one or more cases of human monkeypox to assess what taxa constitute the main reservoirs of monkeypox we tested whether human cases were associated with i rope squirrels funisciurus sp which were implicated in monkeypox outbreaks elsewhere in the drc in the 1980s or ii terrestrial rodents in the genera cricetomys and graphiurus which are believed to be monkeypox reservoirs in west africa results suggest that the best predictors of human monkeypox cases are proximity to dense forests and associated habitat preferred by rope squirrels the risk of contracting monkeypox is significantly greater near sites predicted to be habitable for squirrels or 1 32 95 ci 1 08 1 63 we recommend that semi deciduous rainforests with oil palm the rope squirrel s main food source be prioritized for monitoring,2011,0.447
Revealing the decline and expansion of orchids of NW European Russia,a new approach to reveal the dynamics of taxa on incompletely investigated territories was developed the decline expansion rate of orchids in the north western part of european russia leningrad novgorod and pskov regions an area approx 195 000 km2 was estimat ed using this method the method is based on comparison of numbers of grid cells where a certain species was recorded in various time intervals using specially designed software more than 9000 records were used however the territory remained insufficiently and uneven ly studied both spatially and over time the study revealed a statistically significant p 0 01 decrease for coeloglossum viride corallorhiza trifida cypripedium calceolus gymnadenia conopsea herminium monorchis malaxis monophyllos neotinea ustulata and orchis militaris and a significant increase for dactylorhiza baltica d fuchsii and platanthera chlorantha in several taxa the trend was changed over the time of them gymnadenia conopsea displayed significant decline only since the middle of xx century and orchis militaris and epipactis atrorubens decreased significantly only in the end of xix and the beginning of xx century the reasons for these patterns of dynamics were discussed parallels between the dynamics of orchids and land use in different periods of time in russia are provided,2011,0.14
Análisis panbiogeográfico de Vexillata (Nematoda: Ornithostrongylidae) y sus huéspedes (Mammalia: Rodentia),panbiogeographic analysis of vexillata nematoda ornithostrongylidae and its hosts mammalia rodentia a panbiogeographic analysis was carried out based on a parsimony analysis of ende micity pae to analyze the species of helminth intestinal parasites of the genus vexillata nematoda ornithostrongylidae and their host species mammals of the families geomyidae and heteromyidae two analyses were undertaken the first using only those species of vexillata with more than two locali ties and the second analyzing all localities of this genus as a single track three generalized tracks were obtained by the first pae northern coast of venezuela central america and nearctic only one track was identified by a parasite and its host v tejerai and heteromys anomalus it proposes the existence of two biogeographical nodes the first is located between the northern coast of venezuela and central america on the boundaries of northeast colombia and panama colombia node and the other in central mexico those track and nodes overlap with some proposed by other authors in general it appears that these systems can be explained as three biotic components in the case of the south american component might correspond with the isolation of species v scorzai as well as by species that had expanded their geographical distribution v tejerai it could be related to mobilism stages of their host heteromys,2011,0.904
"First confirmed record of Ochlerotatus mariae (Sergent & Sergent, 1903) in the Balearic Islands (Spain) and its significance in local mosquito control programmes",the first confirmed presence of ochlerotatus mariae in majorca balearic islands spain is presented given that this species can frequently cause biting nuisance in rocky coastal mediterranean areas it is essential to understand its distribution in this tourist area in order to conduct efficient mosquito control,2011,0.474
Qualitative variation of anti-diabetic compounds in different tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus L.) cytotypes,ethanolic extracts of diploid artemisia dracunculus l wild tarragon from populations in the u s and polyploid tarragon from a variety of sources were screened for the anti diabetic compounds davidigenin sakuranetin 2 4 dihydroxy 4 methoxydihydrochalcone 4 5 di o caffeoylquinic acid 5 o caffeoylquinic acid and 6 demethoxycapillarisin using lc ms only decaploid plants contained all six target compounds and were the only plants that contained davidigenin and 2 4 dihydroxy 4 methoxydihydrochalcone these results exhibit the importance of germplasm selection and provenance when studying plants for medicinal activity relying only on the right species for consistent medicinal activities may not be sufficient as intraspecific variation may be highly significant,2011,0.241
How robust is the Australian Weed Risk Assessment protocol? A test using pine invasions in the Northern and Southern hemispheres,the australian weed risk assessment protocol wra is often considered the standard approach for pre border screening of new plant introductions here we assess its robustness against three key criteria ability to discriminate success or failure of species at three stages of the invasion process introduction naturalisation and spread sensitivity to taxonomic range and target region and dependence on knowledge of invasive behaviour elsewhere we address these issues by retrospectively testing the wra using pine pinus introductions to new zealand and great britain for both regions we calculated wra scores for 115 species and classified all species according to whether they had been introduced which of these had naturalised and the extent of their naturalised distribution spread using regression models we assessed whether wra scores could predict success at each stage we repeated this procedure using wra scores calculated without information on species naturalisation behaviour else where in both regions the wra could discriminate among species in the same genus at the introduction and naturalisation stages but not at the spread stage the outcome at the naturalisation stage depended on prior knowledge of naturalisation behaviour else where without this information the wra may be unable to distinguish among closely related species and should be used cautiously where data on invasive behaviour elsewhere is lacking human selection played a strong role in the invasion process both through introducing pine species likely to naturalise in new zealand and great britain in the first instance and subsequent use of many of these species for forestry in the target regions,2011,0.89
Quantifying Species' Range Shifts in Relation to Climate Change: A Case Study of Abies spp. in China,predicting species range shifts in response to climatic change is a central aspect of global change studies an ever growing number of species have been modeled using a variety of species distribution models sdms however quantitative studies of the characteristics of range shifts are rare predictions of range changes are hard to interpret analyze and summarize and comparisons between the various models are difficult to make when the number of species modeled is large maxent was used to model the distribution of 12 abies spp in china under current and possible future climate conditions two fuzzy set defined indices range increment index i and range overlapping index o were used to quantify range shifts of the chosen species correlation analyses were used to test the relationships between these indices and species distribution characteristics our results show that abies spp range increments i were highly correlated with longitude latitude and mean roughness of their current distributions species overlapping o was moderately or not correlated with these parameters neither range increments nor overlapping showed any correlation with species prevalence these fuzzy sets defined indices provide ideal measures of species range shifts because they are stable and threshold free they are reliable indices that allow large numbers of species to be described modeled and compared on a variety of taxonomic levels,2011,0.969
"The Fauna of Ground Beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in Mt. Gariwang and Comparison with Neighboring Taebaek Mountains, Gangwon-do, Korea",the study was performed to compare a list of ground beetles at mt gariwang in pyeongchang gangwon do and their previous distribution in nearby places as well as provide fundamental information on community structure and diversity of ground beetles a total of 15 species belonging to 8 genera of 4 subfamilies were identified from 244 collected ground beetles in mt gariwang nine species of pterostichinae and 4 carabinae species were collected the most and the abundance of pterostichus and synuchus genus were 89 and 83 respectively the dominant species were synuchus sp 64 individuals 26 2 and eucarabus cartereti cartereti 40 individuals 16 4 the korean endemic species were 98 individuals of 6 species the ground beetles at mountainous areas in pyeongchang inje wonju and taebaek from the taebaek mountains including mt odae mt chiak mt gyebang mt jeombong mt taebaek mt balwang and mt bangtae are identified in 140 species belonging to 51 genera of 15 subfamilies the study is expected to provide important information on distribution of ground beetles in monitoring long term changes in biofaces around the taebaek mountains,2011,0.966
"Les inventaires du Patrimoine Scientifique, Technique et Naturel",for this section the observatory team offers a first overview of the main french and international inventories in the field of heritage science technology and nature this presentation is not exhaustive and inducing regular updates available online 1 aims to provide reference points in a landscape lush and diverse inventory more or less known and sometimes large perimeters and stackable it is supplemented by the posting of a bibliography on the heritage scientific technical and natural available on www ocim fr section observatory,2011,0.293
"Development of spatial density maps based on geoprocessing web services: application to tuberculosis incidence in Barcelona, Spain.",background health professionals and authorities strive to cope with heterogeneous data services and statistical models to support decision making on public health sophisticated analysis and distributed processing capabilities over geocoded epidemiological data are seen as driving factors to speed up control and decision making in these health risk situations in this context recent web technologies and standards based web services deployed on geospatial information infrastructures have rapidly become an efficient way to access share process and visualize geocoded health related information methods data used on this study is based on tuberculosis tb cases registered in barcelona city during 2009 residential addresses are geocoded and loaded into a spatial database that acts as a backend database the web based application architecture and geoprocessing web services are designed according to the representational state transfer rest principles these web processing services produce spatial density maps against the backend database results the results are focused on the use of the proposed web based application to the analysis of tb cases in barcelona the application produces spatial density maps to ease the monitoring and decision making process by health professionals we also include a discussion of how spatial density maps may be useful for health practitioners in such contexts conclusions in this paper we developed web based client application and a set of geoprocessing web services to support specific health spatial requirements spatial density maps of tb incidence were generated to help health professionals in analysis and decision making tasks the combined use of geographic information tools map viewers and geoprocessing services leads to interesting possibilities in handling health data in a spatial manner in particular the use of spatial density maps has been effective to identify the most affected areas and its spatial impact this study is an attempt to demonstrate how web processing services together with web based mapping capabilities suit the needs of health practitioners in epidemiological analysis scenarios,2011,0.015
Spore-Bearing Vascular Plants: Identification Keys For Use In The Intermountain Region Of Western North America,this treatment is a derivative work i have prepared it for use in teaching plant taxonomy at the logan campus of utah state university it makes available a treatment of the spore bearing plants of the intermountain region that reflects current taxonomic opinion and direct users to works that provide detailed descriptions and illustrations of the species geographic scope for the purposes of this treatment the intermountain region is interpreted to include the region treated by cronquist et al 1973 plus the southern tip of nevada decisions as to which species to include are based on three primary sources volume 1 of the intermountain flora cronquist et al 1972 volume 2 of the flora of north america north of mexico flora of north america editorial committee 1993 and edition 4 of a utah flora welsh et al 2008 in addition i have included several species that are grown in the greenhouse of the logan campus of utah state university so as to make it more useful in teaching plant taxonomy,2011,0.411
The Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD): a new resource for vegetation science,question how many vegetation plot observations relevã s are available in electronic databases how are they geographically distributed what are their properties and how might they be discovered and located for research and application location global methods we compiled the global index of vegetation plot databases givd http www givd info an internet resource aimed at registering metadata on existing vegetation databases for inclusion databases need to i contain temporally and spatially explicit species co occurrence data and ii be accessible to the scientific public this paper summarizes structure and data quality of databases registered in givd as of 30 december 2010 results on the given date 132 databases containing more than 2 4 million non overlapping plots had been registered in givd the majority of these data were in european databases 83 databases 1 6 million plots whereas other continents were represented by substantially less north america 15 asia 13 africa nine south america seven australasia two multi continental three the oldest plot observation was 1864 but most plots were recorded after 1970 most plots reported vegetation on areas of 1 to 1000 m2 some also stored time series and nested plot data apart from geographic reference required for inclusion most frequent information was on altitude 71 slope aspect and inclination 58 and land use 38 but rarely soil properties 7 conclusions the vegetation plot data in givd constitute a major resource for biodiversity research both through the large number of species occurrence records and storage of species co occurrence information at a small scale combined with structural and plot based environmental data we identify shortcomings in available data that need to be addressed through sampling under represented geographic regions providing better incentives for data collection and sharing developing user friendly database exchange standards as well as tools to analyse and remove confounding effects of sampling biases the increased availability of data sets conferred by registration in givd offers significant opportunities for large scale studies in community ecology macroecology and global change research,2011,0.04
Population viability analysis with species occurrence data from museum collections,the most comprehensive data on many species come from scientific collections thus we developed a method of population viability analysis pva in which this type of occurrence data can be used in contrast to classical pva our approach accounts for the inherent observation error in occurrence data and allows the estimation of the population parameters needed for viability analysis we tested the sensitivity of the approach to spatial resolution of the data length of the time series sampling effort and detection probability with simulated data and conducted pvas for common rare and threatened species we compared the results of these pvas with results of standard method pvas in which observation error is ignored our method provided realistic estimates of population growth terms and quasi extinction risk in cases in which the standard method without observation error could not for low values of any of the sampling variables we tested precision decreased and in some cases biased estimates resulted the results of our pvas with the example species were consistent with information in the literature on these species our approach may facilitate pva for a wide range of species of conservation concern for which demographic data are lacking but occurrence data are readily available,2011,0.533
"Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change",mean annual temperature reported by the intergovernmental panel on climate change increases at least 1 1â c to 6 4â c over the next 90 years in context a change in climate of 6â c is approximately the difference between the mean annual temperature of the last glacial maximum lgm and our current warm interglacial species have been responding to changing climate throughout earth s history and their previous biological responses can inform our expectations for future climate change here we synthesize geological evidence in the form of stable oxygen isotopes general circulation paleoclimate models species evolutionary relatedness and species geographic distributions we use the stable oxygen isotope record to develop a series of temporally high resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning the middle pleistocene to recent which we use to map ancestral climatic envelope reconstructions for north american rattlesnakes a simple linear interpolation between current climate and a general circulation paleoclimate model of the lgm using stable oxygen isotope ratios provides good estimates of paleoclimate at other time periods we use geologically informed rates of change derived from these reconstructions to predict magnitudes and rates of change in species suitable habitat over the next century our approach to modeling the past suitable habitat of species is general and can be adopted by others we use multiple lines of evidence of past climate isotopes and climate models phylogenetic topology to correct the models for long term changes in the suitable habitat of a species and the fossil record however sparse to cross check the models our models indicate the annual rate of displacement in a clade of rattlesnakes over the next century will be 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater 430 2 420 m yr than it has been on average for the past 320 ky 2 3 m yr,2011,0.748
Biodiversity and World Food Security:Nourishing the Planet and Its People,the crawford fundâ s sixteenth annual parliamen tary conference in 2010 focussed on the relationship between biological diversity and food security these proceedings are a record of pres entations and discussions over three days at the premier event in australia marking the un inter national year of biodiversity and presaging the un 2011â 2020 decade of biodiversity,2011,0.354
On Analyzing and Developing Data Contracts in Cloud-based Data Marketplaces,currently rich and diverse data types have been increasingly provided using the data as a service daas model a form of cloud computing services however data offered by daas are constrained by several data concerns that if not automatically being reasoned properly will lead to a wrong way of using them in this paper we support the assumption that data concerns should be explicitly modeled and specified in data contracts to support concern aware data selection and utilization instead of relying on a specific definition of data contracts we analyze contemporary data contracts and we present an abstract model for data contracts based on the abstract model we propose several techniques for evaluating data contracts that can be integrated into data service selection and composition frameworks we also illustrate our approach with some real world scenarios i,2011,0.007
"El herbario JBAG-Laínz (Jardín Botánico Atlántico, Gijón). Ámbito, contenido, recolectores, ejemplares tipo, conservación e informatización",in order to prove its usefulness as a source of floristic taxonomic and historical details the from which the specimens from the herbarium jbag lainz not only from a geographical and chronological but also seeking to reconstruct the relationships of the creators of the collection ã leroy and m lainz with other botanists and scientific institutions considerations also are made to order and herbarium hardware available in both original and which has resulted in the removal restoration and cataloging information,2011,0.354
"Species richness, endemism, and conservation of American tree ferns (Cyatheales)",analyses of richness and endemism of cyatheales tree ferns in tropical america were performed and evidence of a diversity gradient is presented for this the occurrence ranges of 239 species were plotted into a 5î ƒ 9 5î ƒ grid cell map and then analyzed using species richness and endemism indices here we show that species richness and endemism are not distributed randomly over the landscape but do aggregate into defined regions of high diversity in tropical america the northern andes lower central america upper central america and mexico the guyana highlands southeastern brazil and the antilles these distributional patterns are congruent with the geographical distri bution of cloud forest which in turn is determined by topography high humidity and persistent cloud immersion the mountain regions of tropical america especially the cloud forests harbour most of the species of american cyatheales and have high levels of habitat loss and climatic fragility conservation policies for cyatheales are centred on the local use and trade of many tree fern species but none such policies focus on cloud forest habitat loss this makes tree ferns a critically endangered group of plants in the face of the current environmental crisis and global climate change the presence of cyatheales in these regions sounds the alarm on their conservation priorities,2011,0.855
The Role of Natural History Institutions and Bioinformatics in Conservation Biology,natural history institutions museums herbaria zoos aquaria etc whether privately owned or existing in conjunction with universities and the collections they house play a large role in documenting species diver sity historically these collections were a rich source of data that ultimately fueled developments in biogeogra phy and systematics and provided the intellectual frame work for conservation biology macarthur wilson 1967 mayr diamond 2001 collections have also been influential in the application and development of bioinformatic resources such as integrated digital col lection databases chakrabarty 2010 pyke ehrlich 2010,2011,0.446
Characteristics of Bird Community by Types of Habitat in Deogyusan National Park,this study was to analyse on the bird communities of deogyusan national park conducted from july 2008 to june 2009 and from april to july 2010 during the research period a total of 2 689 individuals were observed specifically 12 orders 34 families and 96 species the most dominant species was passer montanus 404 individuals 15 02 followed by paradoxornis webbianus 156 individuals 5 80 emberiza elegans 153 individuals 5 69 corvus frugilegus 145 individuals 5 39 hypsipetes amaurotis 110 individuals 4 09 streptopelia orientalis 106 individuals 3 94 aegithalos caudatus 97 individuals 3 61 cettia diphone 94 individuals 3 50 and turdus pallidus 89 individuals 3 31 the largest number of species were observed in may and june breeding season and in winter the number was low the largest number of individuals were also observed in may and june and the number was also low in fall and early spring species diversity was the highest in baekryunsa area forest area species richness was the highest in seolcheon area lowland snow area both species diversity and species richness were the lowest in hyangjeokbong area mountain ridge the coefficient of similarity of research areas shows that species composition is dependent on environment areas were groups into hyangjeokbong area highland ridge b,2011,0.958
Data hosting infrastructure for primary biodiversity data,background today an unprecedented volume of primary biodiversity data are being generated worldwide yet significant amounts of these data have been and will continue to be lost after the conclusion of the projects tasked with collecting them to get the most value out of these data it is imperative to seek a solution whereby these data are rescued archived and made available to the biodiversity community to this end the biodiversity informatics community requires investment in processes and infrastructure to mitigate data loss and provide solutions for long term hosting and sharing of biodiversity data discussion we review the current state of biodiversity data hosting and investigate the technological and sociological barriers to proper data management we further explore the rescuing and re hosting of legacy data the state of existing toolsets and propose a future direction for the development of new discovery tools we also explore the role of data standards and licensing in the context of data hosting and preservation we provide five recommendations for the biodiversity community that will foster better data preservation and access 1 encourage the communityâ s use of data standards 2 promote the public domain licensing of data 3 establish a community of those involved in data hosting and archival 4 establish hosting centers for biodiversity data and 5 develop tools for data discovery conclusion the communityâ s adoption of standards and development of tools to enable data discovery is essential to sustainable data preservation furthermore the increased adoption of open content licensing the establishment of data hosting infrastructure and the creation of a data hosting and archiving community are all necessary steps towards the community ensuring that data archival policies become standardized,2011,0.091
Biodiversity and Development of the Hydropower Sector: Lessons from the Vietnamese Experience,volume 2 â strategic environmental assessment as a tool to integrate biodiversity with hydropower planning,2011,0.354
Local and regional palm (Arecaceae) species richness patterns and their cross-scale determinants in the western Amazon,1 local and regional patterns of plant species richness in tropical rain forests as well as their possi ble drivers remain largely unexplored the main hypotheses for local species richness alpha diver sity are i local environmental determinism with species saturated communities and ii regional control in which the immigration of species fromthe regional species pool gamma diversity deter mines how many species coexist locally the species pool hypothesis suggests a combined influence of local and regional drivers on alpha diversity differences in gamma diversity may arise from divergent environmental conditions or biogeographic histories 2 weinvestigated the cross scale determinants of palm alpha and gamma diversity across the wes tern amazon using a large field based data set a census of all palm individuals in 312 transects totalling 98 species we used regression based variation partitioning to understand how habitat topography and region influence alpha diversity and correlations to assess the importance of the present environment climate soil regional topography and history long term habitat stability for average regional alpha diversity and gamma diversity including the link between these two diversitymeasures species pool effect 3 variation in alpha diversity was primarily explained by region 36 and habitat 18 whereas the effect of topography was negligible 1 within habitats region was even more important up to 69 explained variation within regions habitat and topography covaried and had a variable but an important influence the pure effect of topography remained of minor impor tance up to 13 4 average regional alpha diversity was related to gamma diversity precipitation seasonality and possibly long term habitat stability gamma diversity was related to long term habitat stability and possibly current climate 5 synthesis gamma diversity strongly influenced alpha diversity although a clear influence of local environment was also evident notably habitat type with a minor more geographically vari able effect of small scale topography apart fromgamma diversity the factormost strongly related to regional alpha diversity was precipitation seasonality while gamma diversity itself was strongly linked to long term habitat stability these results imply that plant species richness is contingent on both contemporary and historical factors with a strong link between local species richness and the regional species pool,2011,0.964
Applications and future challenges in marine species distribution modeling,1 anthropogenic climate change affects both phenology and distribution patterns of the world s biota including marine species during the last decade species distribution models have been more frequently used to assess the potential distributions of species and possible effects of climate change however unlike for terrestrial species there have been few investigations assessing climate change effects on distribution patterns of marine organisms 2 an overview of marine species distribution modelling is given possibilities of how to characterize and project the environmental niches of species onto climatic change scenarios are highlighted and novel techniques for addressing specific needs in a 3 d context are proposed a detailed introduction into different modelling tools and databases for environmental parameters given provides a starting point for the application of these models 3 application of a species distribution model and its projections onto a glacial and future scenario on a global scale are presented for the great white shark carcharodon carcharias for illustrative purposes an approach for addressing marine migratory species with seasonal distribution patterns is presented copyright â 2010 john wiley sons ltd,2011,0.904
Analysis of possible indicators to measure impacts of REDD + on biodiversity and on indigenous and local communities,reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd is a key approach for addressing the threat of global climate change under the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc redd aims to reduce greenhouse gases by conserving carbon pools and sequestration through financial incentives and other benefits to developing countries for carbon storage and reduced emissions from forest lands via different eligible activities in december 2008 a â plusâ was added redd to indicate agreement on efforts to produce additional benefits beyond reducing deforestation and sequestering carbon in particular to contribute to conservation and sustainable forest management with a focus on sustainable management of forests conservation and enhancement of carbon stocks while redd offers powerful synergies for achieving the cbd goals it and other climate change mitigation measures also present potential challenges that could undermine cbd goals this paper explores a path for harmonizing the goals of cbd and unfccc though the application of illustrative indicators that could be adapted to fit the cbd and unfccc monitoring and reporting systems,2011,0.099
"(2017) Proposal to conserve the name Vesicularia (Müll. Hal.) Müll. Hal. (Bryophyta : Hypnaceae) against Vesicularia P. Micheli ex Targ. Tozz. (Algae incertae sedis), with a new name for Vesicularia Vologdin (fossil Cyanophyceae) (2018)",vesicularia is the name of a well known moss it is also the name of a previously published algal genus of uncertain identity vesicularia p micheli ex targ tozz no species was cited in the protologue of the name that giovanni targioni tozetti ascribed to micheli and no one has attempted to determine its application so that its listing as a nomen rejiciendum would have no effect on botanical nomenclature except to legitimize the use of the moss name,2011,0.454
The decline and conservation status of North American bumble bees,several reports of north american bumble bee bombus latreille decline have been documented across the continent but no study has fully assessed the geographic scope of decline in this study i discuss the importance of natural history collections nhc in estimating historic bumble bee distributions and abundances as well as in informing current surveys to estimate changes in distribution and relative abundance i compare historic data assembled from a 73 000 specimen database with a contemporary 3 year survey of north american bumble bees across 382 locations in the contiguous u s a based on my results four historically abundant bumble bees b affinis b occidentalis b pensylvanicus and b terricola have declined by 72 96 relative abundance across their native distribution while b bifarius b bimaculatus b impatiens and b vosnesenskii appear to be relatively stable finally i provide some notes on the distribution abundance and frequency of nosema bombi infections in alaskan b occidentalis 133,2011,0.216
Impact of a data warehouse model for improved decision - making,the health system is one sector dealing with a deluge of complex data many healthcare organisations struggle to utilise these volumes of health data effectively and efficiently also there are many healthcare organisations which still have stand alone systems not integrated for management of information and decision making this shows there is a need for an effective system to capture collate and distribute this health data therefore implementing the data warehouse concept in healthcare is potentially one of the solutions to integrate health data data warehousing has been used to support business intelligence and decision making in many other sectors such as the engineering defence and retail sectors,2011,0.123
American bullfrog invasion in Argentina: where should we take urgent measures?,argentina is the country with the most geographically extended biological invasion of the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus in south america after brazil here we used a maximum entropy ecological niche modeling algorithm using records of the native range of american bullfrog to project the model onto the whole of argentina we determined the most suitable habitats for this invasive alien species and where we consider urgent measures should be taken our projections showed good agreement with known feral populations of american bullfrog in argentina by implementing the â â multivariate environmental similarity surfaceâ â analysis we be able to determine that factors such as low precipitations or highest altitudes could be limiting the speciesâ ability to invade the west and south of the country we suggest that strategies should focus on detecting established feral populations of the american bullfrog and preventing further introductions or range expansion of feral populations in the northeast portion of the country lastly we report a new feral population of bullfrogs in argentina,2011,0.643
Allelic variation at high-molecular-weight glutenin subunit loci in Aegilops biuncialis Vis.,alleles at the high molecular weight glutenin subunit loci gluu1 and glumb1 were analyzed in the tetraploid species aegilops biuncialis uumbmb the material for the investigation included the collection of 39 accessions of ae biuncialis from ukraine the crimea one hellenic accession one accession of unknown origin f2 seeds from different crosses as well as samples from natural populations from the crimea ae umbellulata and ae comosa accessions were used to allocate components of the hmw glutenin subunit patterns of ae biuncialis to u or mb genomes eight alleles were identified at the gluu1 locus and ten alleles were revealed at the glumb1 locus among alleles at the glumb1 locus of ae biuncialis there were two alleles controlling the ytype subunit only and one allele encoding the xsubunit only,2011,0.573
From Africa to Europe and back: refugia and range shifts cause high genetic differentiation in the Marbled White butterfly Melanargia galathea,background the glacial interglacial oscillations caused severe range modifications of biota thermophilic species became extinct in the north and survived in southern retreats e g the mediterranean basin these repeated extinction and re colonisation events led to long term isolation and intermixing of populations and thus resulted in strong genetic imprints in many european species therefore being composed of several genetic lineages to better understand these cycles of repeated expansion and retraction we selected the marbled white butterfly melanargia galathea fourty one populations scattered over europe and the maghreb and one population of the sibling taxon m lachesis were analysed using allozyme electrophoresis results we obtained seven distinct lineages applying neighbour joining and structure analyses i morocco ii tunisia iii sicily iv italy and southern france v eastern balkans extending to central europe vi western balkans with western carpathian basin as well as vii south western alps the hierarchy of these splits is well matching the chronology of glacial and interglacial cycles since the gunz ice age starting with an initial split between the galathea group in north africa and the lachesis group in iberia these genetic structures were compared with past distribution patterns during the last glacial stage calculated with distribution models conclusions both methods suggest climatically suitable areas in the maghreb and the southern european peninsulas with distinct refugia during the last glacial period and underpin strong range expansions to the north during the postglacial however the allozyme patterns reveal biogeographical structures not detected by distribution modelling as two distinct refugia in the maghreb two or more distinct refugia at the balkans and a close link between the eastern maghreb and sicily furthermore the genetically highly diverse western maghreb might have acted as source or speciation centre of this taxon while the eastern genetically impoverished maghreb population might result from a relatively recent recolonisation from europe via sicily,2011,0.7
Modelación de la distribución de especies y ecosistemas en el tiempo y en el espacio: una revisión de las nuevas herramientas y enfoques disponibles,this article aims to present the conceptual and methodological framework in which models techniques for species and ecosystems distribution are developed an historical review of concepts behind these techniques is made as well as the presentation of the major methodological steps involved in these tests a discussion on how these approaches are useful for the development of new questions in the fi eld of biogeography and biological conservation is generated finally an application of distribution modeling techniques using the specie beilschmiedia miersii belloto del norte as a study case is presented this conceptual and methodological review as well as the example applied seeks to clarify the usefulness and potential of distribution models techniques with the objective to go forward in biogeography research and thus farther progress in understanding spatial and temporal patterns of organismâ s distribution,2011,0.119
Do species’ traits predict recent shifts at expanding range edges?,ecology letters 2011 14 677 689 abstract although some organisms have moved to higher elevations and latitudes in response to recent climate change there is little consensus regarding the capacity of different species to track rapid climate change via range shifts understanding species abilities to shift ranges has important implications for assessing extinction risk and predicting future community structure at an expanding front colonization rates are determined jointly by rates of reproduction and dispersal in addition establishment of viable populations requires that individuals find suitable resources in novel habitats thus species with greater dispersal ability reproductive rate and ecological generalization should be more likely to expand into new regions under climate change here we assess current evidence for the relationship between leading edge range shifts and species traits we found expected relationships for several datasets including diet breadth in north american passeriformes and egg laying habitat in british odonata however models generally had low explanatory power thus even statistically and biologically meaningful relationships are unlikely to be of predictive utility for conservation and management trait based range shift forecasts face several challenges including quantifying relevant natural history variation across large numbers of species and coupling these data with extrinsic factors such as habitat fragmentation and availability,2011,0.5
"Winter status of the Dark–eyed Junco in the state of Jalisco, Mexico",during the winter 2007 2008 we captured three individuals of the dark eyed junco junco hyemalis the birds were captured 600 kilometres south of their winter distribution in a fir forest abies religiosa of the nevado de colima jalisco in the same site in 1959 w j schaldach collected a j hyemalis specimen however this record went unnoticed until now by bird checklists of jalisco we describe the vegetation structure of the study site the features of the captured birds and we discuss other potential zones of mexico where the dark eyed junco might spend the winter season,2011,0.441
"A History of SCAR, 2004-2010",this history was originally drafted as a chapter of the scar 50th anniversary book walton and clarkson 2011 for which a much condensed text was required to facilitate future studies of scar history it was felt that it would be beneficial to make the full version of the text available to the scar community hence the decision to make it a scar occasional publication the review covers the period january 1 2004 to april 2010 so does not include activities involved in the scar presentations to the antarctic treaty consultative meeting of 3 14 may 2010 punta del este uruguay or in the biennial xxxi scar meeting of july 30 august 11 2010 buenos aires argentina,2011,0.209
"Refining logistic regression models for wildlife habitat suitability modeling—A case study with muntjak and goral in the Central Himalayas, India",high quality habitat suitability maps are indispensable for the management and planning of wildlife reserves this is particularly important for megadiverse developing countries where shortages in skilled manpower and funding may preclude the use of mathematically complex modeling techniques and resource intensive field surveys in this study we propose a simulation based k fold partitioning and re substitution approach to refine and update logistic regression models that are widely used for habitat suitability assessment and modeling we test the modeling strategy using data from a rapid field survey conducted for habitat suitability assessment for muntjak muntiacus muntjak and goral naemorrhaedus goral in the central himalayas india results obtained from simulations match expectations in terms of model behavior and in terms of published habitat associations of the investigated species qualita tive comparisons with predictions from the garp maxent and bioclimatic envelopes modeling systems also show broad agreement with predictions obtained from the proposed technique the proposed tech nique is suggested as a rapid assessment precursor to detailed habitat studies such as patch occupancy modeling in situations where funds or trained manpower are not available,2011,0.228
Distance-based methods for the analysis of maps produced by species distribution models,1 species distribution models sdms are now widely applied to determine the potential distributions of species in relation to environmental covariates many modelling tools are available and large sets of maps may be produced easily 2 a wide range of methods have been developed for the comparison or analysis of raster images and sdm output maps including pairwise two sample tests and overall measures of similarity such as correlation coefficients and distance measures 3 i present an analytical framework applying a distance based approach to the ordination and analysis of maps produced by species distribution modelling tools the method combines aspects of image analysis with distance based statistical tests and allows ecologists to apply familiar forms of ordination and analysis to sdm output maps a novel method of recombining elements of information extracted from distance based map analysis is also presented,2011,0.43
Diversity of physic nut (Jatropha curcasi) in Malaysia: Application of DIVA-geographic information system and cluster analysis,a sum of 59 accessions of physic nut jatropha curas were collected from different locations of selangor kelantan and terengganu states of malaysia to assess genetic diversity using multivariate analysis and diva geographic information system gis six quantitative characters seed length seed width fruit length fruit width 100 seed weight and oil content were recorded based on 6 quantitative characters 59 accessions were grouped into three clusters at a coefficient level of 3 7 highly positive correlations were found between fruit length and fruit width fruit length and seed length fruit width and seed length fruit length and seed width fruit width and seed width and seed length and seed width diva gis showed the highest diversity index for 100 seed weight in the j curcas accessions which were collected from the central parts of selangor state on the other hand the highest diversity index for oil content was observed in the accessions of northern parts and costal region of terengganu state followed by the central parts of selangor state in malaysia,2011,0.517
The Open Knowledge Foundation: Open Data Means Better Science,data provides the evidence for the published body of scientific knowledge which is the foundation for all scientific progress the more data is made openly available in a useful manner the greater the level of transparency and reproducibility and hence the more efficient the scientific process becomes to the benefit of society this viewpoint is becoming mainstream among many funders publishers scientists and other stakeholders in research but barriers to achieving widespread publication of open data remain the open data in science working group at the open knowledge foundation is a community that works to develop tools applications datasets and guidelines to promote the open sharing of scientific data this article focuses on the open knowledge definition and the panton principles for open data in science we also discuss some of the tools the group has developed to facilitate the generation and use of open data and the potential uses that we hope will encourage further movement towards an open scientific knowledge commons,2011,0.069
The data void in modeling current and future distributions of tropical species,conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change requires a predictive ecology of species distributions nowhere is this need more acute than in the tropics which harbor the majority of earthâ s species and face rapid and large climate and land use changes however the study of species distributions and their responses to climate change in high diversity tropical regions is potentially crippled by a lack of basic data we analyzed a database representing more than 800 000 unique geo referenced natural history collections to determine what fraction of tropical plant species has sufficient numbers of available collections for use in the habitat or niche models commonly used to predict species responses to climate change we found that more than nine out of 10 species from the three principle tropical realms are so poorly collected no20 records that they are essentially invisible to modern modeling and conservation tools in order to predict the impact of climate change on tropical species efforts must be made to increase the amount of data available from tropical countries through a combination of collecting new specimens and digitizing existing,2011,0.959
Naturtypekartlegging i Ringsaker kommune 2011,biofokus foundation was commissioned by ringsaker municipality conducted a quality assurance and new mapping of habitat sites in parts of ringsaker municipality roger strand ole bakke has been our contact person responsible with the contractor torbjorn hã itomt has been project manager at biofokus lie siri olsen jenny marie gulbrandsen and ole jorgen lã nnve all biofokus asle bruserud local botanist and ola wergeland krog leased from wergeland krog nature map has been the project workers terje blindheim biofokus the project manager this report aims to summarize the current status of the habitat type mapping in ringsaker municipality describe the tasks that are done and point to survey the status of each major habitat types,2011,0.319
BioSystematics Berlin 2011,program and abstracts from the 7th international congress of systematic and evolutionary biology icseb vii 12th annual meeting of the society of biological systematics gesellschaft fã r biologische systematik gfbs and 20th international symposium â œbiodiversity and evolutionary biologyâ of the german botanical society dbg,2011,0.345
Distribución y representatividad de las especies del género Crotalus en las áreas naturales protegidas de México (Distribution and representation of Crotalus species within the natural protected areas of Mexico),we performed a systematic analysis of the distribution of the crotalus species in mexico to depict the places of high species concentration and to evaluate its representation within the federal natural protected areas npas scheme based on geo referenced records we built distribution models for species with enough records using the garp and maxent algorithms we then deduced areas of high species concentration and estimated its presence in the npas the regions with the highest species richness are the sierra madre occidental the northwestern mexican highlands the northern portion of the sierra madre oriental and the western most portion of the transmexican volcanic belt we estimated that 84 4 of the npas include at least 1 species and 88 2 of the species distributed in mexico occur in at least 1 npa in this context of high representation the idea of incorporating additional npas for the protection and conservation of crotalines is difficult thus alternative strategies should be considered such as environmental awareness habitat conservation through the sustainable use of resources and captive management and breeding of endangered species research and population monitoring should also be promoted,2011,0.949
Oceanic islands are not sinks of biodiversity in spore-producing plants,islands have traditionally been considered as migratory and evolutionary dead ends for two main reasons island colonizers are typically assumed to lose their dispersal power and continental back colonization has been regarded as unlikely because of niche preemption the hypothesis that islands might actually represent dynamic refugia and migratory stepping stones for species that are effective dispersers and in particular for spore producing plants is formally tested here using the archipelagos of the azores canary islands and madeira as a model population genetic analyses based on nuclear microsatellite variation indicate that dispersal ability of the moss platyhypnidium riparioides does not decrease in the island setting the analyses further show that unlike island populations mainland southwestern europe and north africa populations underwent a severe bottleneck during the last glacial maximum lgm our results thus refute the traditional view of islands as the end of the colonization road and point to a different perception of north atlantic archipelagos as major sources of biodiversity for the postglacial recolonization of europe by spore producing plants,2011,0.113
Diversification of Ceanothus (Rhamnaceae) in the California Floristic Province,high diversity and endemism in the california floristic province cfp are an alleged response to the late cenozoic advent of mediterranean type climate in this region ceanothus comprises two divergent subgenera with centers of diversity in the cfp we reconstruct the evolution of ceanothus by using dna sequence data from the nuclear gene nitrate reductase we find that the timing of diversification events is related to geological and climatic history in both subgenera diversification is characterized by recent divergence of extant taxa and geographically structured phylogenetic relationships a strong north south divergence of subgenus cerastes across the transverse ranges indicates that phylogenetic relationships may be structured by climatically divergent regions of the cfp divergence time estimation suggests that the age of extant diversification in both subgenera is ∠6 ma this agrees with the fossil record but predates the hypothesized quaternary 2 ma origin of mediterranean type climate in the region,2011,0.38
Ornithology of Northern Myanmar,myanmar is a large biodiverse country located between india and china in the west and east and south of tibet kachin state situated in far northern myanmar is expected to be especially biodiverse because of its habitat and climatic diversity ranging from lowland riparian areas to the high elevation himalayan mountains these areas of northern myanmar are especially poorly known biologically largely because of their difficult terrain rugged mountains and enormous rivers we summarize the ornithological history of northern myanmar and document the names dates and geographic areas along with a bilingual gazetteer of names of major ornithological expeditions because foreign naturalists made most of the bird collections the resulting material is scattered around the world we have compiled and organized information about past research and collections and we suggest areas for future research investment to date few local areas within northern myanmar have been surveyed including the far northern region of kachin state up to the last village of tahawndam the southeastern part of kachin state around laukkaung hpimaw the southern part of kachin around the town of myitkyina the northwestern area of putao district the northeastern part of kachin around taron and thala wang and the central part of kachin around the â œtriangle â which is the area between the may hka river and mali hka river our analysis identifies several significant geographic areas where additional collection and documentation are needed biodiversity is high and local endemism is likely these areas include the upper area of chimili pass the northeast portion of kachin the kumon range the central portion of kachin and the hponkan razi wildlife sanctuary,2011,0.409
Evaluating citizen-based presence data for bird monitoring,species monitoring is one key approach to assess human impact on nature four main approaches have been applied in bird monitoring comparing distribution atlases from different times repeated monitoring programmes checklist programmes and species specific surveys we evaluate the potential of another type of data for monitoring presence only data on species sightings reported voluntarily by the public to open access internet platforms here the species gateway sg in sweden we regressed data on the 242 bird species observed 2001â 2009 in the swedish bird survey sbs against the corre sponding sg data we also investigated the relationship for groups of species utilizing different habitats and displaying a significant inter annual variation a coefficient of variation 0 3 according to the sbs we found support for a positive relationship in inter annual variation in population level between the two datasets however the species subsets displayed variation from positive to negative correlations restricting the analysis to species with high inter annual variation increased the positive correlation between the data sets the reason for the mismatch between the two datasets may be explained by tem poral changes in the willingness to report certain common species to the sg another reason may be an imbalance in the coverage of common versus uncommon species among the two datasets the use of vol untary citizen based data requires great care and good knowledge of the limitation of the data if these requirements are fulfilled we suggest that they may be a complement to standardised programmes especially for assessing uncommon species of conservation concern,2011,0.987
Macroecology meets invasion ecology: linking the native distributions of Australian acacias to invasiveness,aim speciesâ native ranges reflect the net outcome of interactions between life history strategies and biotic and abiotic influences over evolutionary time scales differences in native ranges might be indicative both of relative historical performance and adaptability to new conditions consequently the native ranges of successful invaders might have distinctive biogeographical characteristics we test this hypothesis by 1 quantifying macroecological patterns of the entire assemblage of native taxa in acacia subgenus phyllodineae in australia 2 testing whether highly invasive taxa represent random samples from the patterns observed for the assemblage as a whole and 3 exploring the link between native geographical range and the position of species along the introduction naturalization invasion continuum location australia and worldwide methods three distributional metrics representing particular biogeographical characteristics of speciesâ native ranges â the logarithms of range size percolation intercept and percolation exponent â were calculated by fitting a revised alpha hull to records from australiaâ s virtual herbarium randomization and cascaded tests were used to compare these metrics for species at different stages of invasion results the macroecological patterns of the three distributional metrics displayed lognormal like frequency distributions most invasive species had significantly lower percolation exponents and larger native ranges than expected from random draws from the entire assemblage of australian acacias but percolation intercepts were not significantly different this can be explained by a selection bias at the early stages of invasion main conclusions the outcome of the natural experiment of transplanting many australian acacias into novel environments is not random while invasive species have a particular macroecological pattern this can be explained by the observation that species with large native ranges and low percolation exponents i e high population increase rate are most likely to have been introduced and naturalized whether this pattern is an artefact of human selection or reflects a human bias towards selecting invasive species remains to be seen,2011,0.847
Developing Integrated Biodiversity Impact Assessment (IBIA): Data limitations on GIS support,the effectiveness of an integrated biodiversity impact assessment ibia methodology largely depends on the availability and accessibility of relevant information exhaustive biodiversity data are commonly collated by specialists at the local level yet geographic coverage of such surveys is limited and the findings are rarely shared among practitioners in contrast available national studies tend to focus on wider biodiversity considerations such as the boundaries and general characteristics of designated sites or green infrastructure corridors which lack the detail needed for undertaking local or project level ibia data limitations become more significant when applying gis to ibia as assessment detail is further constrained by the scale and completeness of available spatial datasets moreover the general lack of quality assurance and metadata for readily accessible datasets poses additional constraints on scientific information flow although gis have the potential to support and enhance ibia by providing spatially specific and replicable methods as well as evidence based findings successful gis application and reliability of assessment are strongly linked to the quality of datasets used this paper provides an overview of spatial datasets judged critical for ibia it identifies common gaps in spatial data infrastructures associated with landscape biodiversity flora and fauna at eu level it also evaluates the applicability of available datasets by examining correlations and inconsistencies with regards to metadata frequency compatibility accuracy scale and completeness of datasets among other technical considerations using ireland as a case study the paper concludes with recommendations to assist in resolving current biodiversity spatial data limitations,2011,0.061
مدل‌سازی الگوی پراکندگی خزه‌گیان با استفاده از پارامترهای محیطی ایران در سامانه‌ داده‌های جغرافیایی (GIS): جنس‌های مورد بررسی Tortula، Grimmia و Bryum,in the present study a modelling approach based on geographical information systems gis analysis is presented with the aim of identifying the influence of environmental parameters on three genera namely tortula grimmia and bryum as representatives of iranian bryoflora by using arcgis desktop we produced a model for environmental variables include altitude precipitation temperature and humidity to test the model we surveyed the effect of selected geographical and environmental variables including altitude latitude annual mean precipitation maximum minimum and mean temperatures and humidity on distribution pathern of these three genera within 108 localities 52 samples of bryum 48 33 samples of grimmia 30 and 24 samples of tortula 22 were recorded,2012,0.228
The grass may not always be greener: projected reductions in climatic suitability for exotic grasses under future climates in Australia,climate change presents a new challenge for the management of invasive exotic species that threaten both biodiversity and agricultural productivity the invasion of exotic perennial grasses throughout the globe is particularly problematic given their impacts on a broad range of native plant communities and livelihoods as the climate continues to change pre emptive long term management strategies for exotic grasses will become increasingly important using species distribution modelling we investigated potential changes to the location of climatically suitable habitat for some exotic perennial grass species currently in australia under a range of future climate scenarios for the decade centred around 2050 we focus on eleven species shortlisted or declared as the weeds of national significance or alert list species in australia which have also become successful invaders in other parts of the world our results indicate that the extent of climatically suitable habitat available for all of the exotic grasses modelled is projected to decrease under climate scenarios for 2050 this reduction is most severe for the three species of needle grass genus nassella that currently have infestations in the south east of the continent combined with information on other aspects of establishment risk e g demographic rates human use propagule pressure predictions of reduced climatic suitability provide justification for re assessing which weeds are prioritised for intensive management as the climate changes,2012,0.86
"Scaligeria alziarii (Apiaceae), a new sibling species of S. napiformis from Cyprus",recent research has identified a new species of the genus scaligeria the rhizomatous perennial s alziarii endemic to cyprus prior to the discovery of this species the biennial s napiformis was the only identified taxon of the genus in cyprus molecular studies corroborate the placement of the new taxon in scaligeria and its rank as a separate species,2012,0.686
Near-present and future distribution of Anopheles albimanus in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean Basin modeled with climate and topographic data.,background anopheles albimanus is among the most important vectors of human malaria in mesoamerica and the caribbean basin m c here we use topographic data and 1950â 2000 climate near present and future climate 2080 layers obtained from general circulation models gcms to project the probability of the speciesâ presence p s using the species distribution model maxent results the projected near present distribution parameterized with 314 presence points related well to the known geographic distribution in the study region different model experiments suggest that the range of an albimanus based on near present climate surfaces covered at least 1 27 million km2 in the m c although 2080 range was projected to decrease to 1 19 million km2 modeled p s was generally highest in mesoamerica where many of the original specimens were collected maxent projected near present maximum elevation at 1 937 m whereas 2080 maximum elevation was projected at 2 118 m 2080 climate scenarios generally showed increased p s in mesoamerica although results varied for northern south america and no major range expansion into the mid latitudes was projected by 2080 conclusions maxent experiments with near present and future climate data suggest that an albimanus is likely to invade high altitude 2 000 m areas by 2080 and therefore place many more people at risk of malaria in the m c region even though latitudinal range expansion may be limited,2012,0.288
Do species distribution models predict species richness in urban and natural green spaces? A case study using amphibians,urban green spaces are potentially important to biodiversity conservation because they could provide patches of high quality habitat or connectivity to nearby habitat presence only species distribution mod els sdms represent a potential tool for assessing the biodiversity value of urban green space however there is limited research to validate sdm results with field surveys to see if the predictions accurately represent observed species richness we generated a range of sdms using multiple suitability thresh olds for 23 species of amphibians that occur in southwest ohio usa the distributions were overlaid to enumerate species richness we surveyed 20 sites for amphibian species to evaluate model predictions our models over predicted species richness relative to survey data for example we observed a mean pairwise difference of 14 species between models of species richness and observed values our results suggest either sdms built with landscape variables we selected did not represent accurately amphibian richness or the amphibian surveys did not detect all species present analyzing sites that had more than three sampling events suggests the explanation of inadequate sampling effort is only partially correct differences such as that between predicted and observed values of species richness is a challenge for land managers and conservation biologists that need a tool for modeling biodiversity species distribu tion models did project relative species richness well in urban and non urban green space which suggests this technique offers a spatially explicit way to identify more species rich areas and may help managers and conservation biologists manage systems with greater efficiency published,2012,0.992
Global Diversity of Sponges (Porifera),with the completion of a single unified classification the systema porifera sp and subsequent development of an online species database the world porifera database wpd we are now equipped to provide a first comprehensive picture of the global biodiversity of the porifera an introductory overview of the four classes of the porifera is followed by a description of the structure of our main source of data for this paper the wpd from this we extracted numbers of all â knownâ sponges to date the number of valid recent sponges is established at 8 553 with the vast majority 83 belonging to the class demospongiae we also mapped for the first time the species richness of a comprehensive set of marine ecoregions of the world data also extracted from the wpd perhaps not surprisingly these distributions appear to show a strong bias towards collection and taxonomy efforts only when species richness is accumulated into large marine realms does a pattern emerge that is also recognized in many other marine animal groups high numbers in tropical regions lesser numbers in the colder parts of the world oceans preliminary similarity analysis of a matrix of species and marine ecoregions extracted from the wpd failed to yield a consistent hierarchical pattern of ecoregions into marine provinces global sponge diversity information is mostly generated in regional projects and resources results obtained demonstrate that regional approaches to analytical biogeography are at present more likely to achieve insights into the biogeographic history of sponges than a global perspective which appears currently too ambitious we also review informa tion on invasive sponges that might well have some influence on distribution patterns of the future,2012,0.495
Species Distribution Modeling and Prediction: A Class Imbalance Problem,predicting the distributions of species is central to a variety of applications in ecology and conservation biology with increasing interest in using electronic occurrence records many modeling techniques have been developed to utilize this data and compute the potential distribution of species as a proxy for actual observations as the actual observations are typically overwhelmed by non occurrences we approach the modeling of speciesâ distributions with a focus on the problem of class imbalance our analysis includes the evaluation of sev eral machine learning methods that have been shown to address the problems of class imbalance but which have rarely or never been applied to the domain of species distribution modeling evaluation of these methods includes the use of the area under the precision recall curve aupr which can supplement other metrics to provide a more informative assessment of model utility under conditions of class imbalance our analysis concludes that emphasizing techniques that specifically address the problem of class imbalance can provide auroc and aupr results competitive with traditional species distribution models i introduction forming knowledge of the factors tha,2012,0.47
Genetic consequences of climate change for northern plants.,climate change will lead to loss of range for many species and thus to loss of genetic diversity crucial for their long term persistence we analysed range wide genetic diversity amplified fragment length polymorphisms in 9581 samples from 1200 populations of 27 northern plant species to assess genetic consequences of range reduction and potential association with species traits we used species distribution modelling sdm eight techniques two global circulation models and two emission scenarios to predict loss of range and genetic diversity by 2080 loss of genetic diversity varied considerably among species and this variation could be explained by dispersal adaptation up to 57 and by genetic differentiation among populations f st up to 61 herbs lacking adaptations for long distance dispersal were estimated to lose genetic diversity at higher rate than dwarf shrubs adapted to long distance dispersal the expected range reduction in these 27 northern species was larger than reported for temperate plants and all were predicted to lose genetic diversity according to at least one scenario sdm combined with f st estimates and or with species trait information thus allows the prediction of species vulnerability to climate change aiding rational prioritization of conservation efforts,2012,0.969
"Phylogeography of Dasia Gray, 1830 (Reptilia: Scincidae), with the description of a new species from southern India",a new tree skink species of the genus dasia gray 1830 closely allied to dasia haliana is described from southern west ern ghats of india the new species named dasia johnsinghi sp nov can be distinguished from all other congeners by morphological and molecular data a related species dasia subcaeruleum is re described based on new material from a new locality in the western ghats mitochondrial rdna based phylogenetic analysis of the genus dasia reveals the affin ities of the south indian and the sri lankan species with southeast asian ones the biogeographic processes that might have led to the disjunct distribution of the entities in the genus are discussed an updated key to the identification of species of the genus dasia is provided,2012,0.902
"Post-glacial dispersal, rather than in situ glacial survival, best explains the disjunct distribution of the Lusitanian plant species Daboecia cantabrica (Ericaceae)",aim the distribution of the lusitanian flora and fauna species which are found only in southern and western ireland and in northern spain and portugal but which are absent from intervening countries represents one of the classic conundrums of biogeography the aim of the present study was to determine whether the distribution of the lusitanian plant species daboecia cantabrica was due to persistence in separate irish and iberian refugia or has resulted from post glacial recolonization followed by subsequent extinction of intervening populations location northern spain and co galway western ireland methods palaeodistribution modelling using maxent was employed to iden tify putative refugial areas for d cantabrica at the last glacial maximum lgm phylogeographical analysis of samples from 64 locations in ireland and spain were carried out using a chloroplast marker atpbâ rbcl the nuclear its region and an anonymous nuclear single copy locus results the palaeodistribution model indicated areas with a high probability of survival for d cantabrica at the lgm off the western coast of galicia in spain and in the bay of biscay spanish populations exhibited substantially higher genetic diversity than irish populations at all three loci as well as geo graphical structuring of haplotypes within spain consistent with divergence in separate refugia spanish populations also exhibited far more endemic haplo types divergence time between irish and spanish populations associated with the putative biscay refugium was estimated as 3 333â 32 ka main conclusions our data indicate persistence by d cantabrica throughout the lgm in two separate southern refugia one in western galicia and one in the area off the coast of western france which now lies in the bay of biscay spain was recolonized from both refugia whilst ireland was most likely recol onized from the biscay refugium on the balance of evidence across the three marker types and the palaeodistribution modelling our findings do not sup port the idea of in situ survival of d cantabrica in ireland contrary to earlier suggestions the fact that we cannot conclusively rule out the existence of a small more northerly refugium however highlights the need for further analy sis of lusitanian plant species,2012,0.894
Why Do Species Co-Occur? A Test of Alternative Hypotheses Describing Abiotic Differences in Sympatry versus Allopatry Using Spadefoot Toads,areas of co occurrence between two species sympatry are often thought to arise in regions where abiotic conditions are conducive to both species and are therefore intermediate between regions where either species occurs alone allopatry depending on historical factors or interactions between species however sympatry might not differ from allopatry or alternatively sympatry might actually be more extreme in abiotic conditions relative to allopatry here we evaluate these three hypothesized patterns for how sympatry compares to allopatry in abiotic conditions we use two species of congeneric spadefoot toads spea multiplicata and s bombifrons as our study system to test these hypotheses we created ecological niche models specifically using maxent for both species to create a map of the joint probability of occurrence of both species using the results of these models we identified three types of locations two where either species was predicted to occur alone i e allopatry for s multiplicata and allopatry for s bombifrons and one where both species were predicted to co occur i e sympatry we then compared the abiotic environment between these three location types and found that sympatry was significantly hotter and drier than the allopatric regions thus sympatry was not intermediate between the alternative allopatric sites instead sympatry occurred at one extreme of the conditions occupied by both species we hypothesize that biotic interactions in these extreme environments facilitate co occurrence specifically hybridization between s bombifrons females and s multiplicata males may facilitate co occurrence by decreasing development time of tadpoles additionally the presence of alternative food resources in more extreme conditions may preclude competitive exclusion of one species by the other this work has implications for predicting how interacting species will respond to climate change because species interactions may facilitate survival in extreme habitats,2012,0.988
Past climate change and plant evolution in Western North America: a case study in Rosaceae.,species in the ivesioid clade of potentilla rosaceae are endemic to western north america an area that underwent widespread aridification during the global temperature decrease following the mid miocene climatic optimum several morphological features interpreted as adaptations to drought are found in the clade and many species occupy extremely dry habitats recent phylogenetic analyses have shown that the sister group of this clade is potentilla section rivales a group with distinct moist habitat preferences this has led to the hypothesis that the ivesioids genera ivesia horkelia and horkeliella diversified in response to the late tertiary aridification of western north america we used phyloclimatic modeling and a fossil calibrated dated phylogeny of the family rosaceae to investigate the evolution of the ivesioid clade we have combined occurrence and climate data from extant species and used ancestral state reconstruction to model past climate preferences these models have been projected into paleo climatic scenarios in order to identify areas where the ivesioids may have occurred our analysis suggests a split between the ivesioids and potentilla sect rivales around late oligocene early miocene ∠23 million years ago ma and that the ivesioids then diversified at a time when summer drought started to appear in the region the clade is inferred to have originated on the western slopes of the rocky mountains from where a westward range expansion to the sierra nevada and the coast of california took place between ∠12 2 ma our results support the idea that climatic changes in southwestern north america have played an important role in the evolution of the local flora by means of in situ adaptation followed by diversification,2012,0.602
"Quantitative visualization of biological data in Google Earth using R2G2, an R CRAN package",we briefly introduce r2g2 an r cran package to visualize spatially explicit biological data within the google earth interface our package combines a collection of basic graph editing features including automated placement of dots segments polygons images including graphs produced with r along with several complex three dimen sional 3d representations such as phylogenies histograms and pie charts we briefly present some example data sets and show the immediate benefits in communication gained from using the google earth interface to visually explore biological results the package is distributed with detailed help pages providing examples and annotated source scripts with the hope that users will have an easy time using and further developing this package r2g2 is distributed on http cran r project org web packages,2012,0.349
Automatic Extraction of Leaf Characters from Herbarium Specimens,herbarium specimens are a vital resource in botanical taxonomy many herbaria are undertaking large scale digitization projects to improve access and to preserve delicate specimens and in doing so are creating large sets of images leaf characters are important for describing taxa and distinguishing between them and they can be measured from herbarium specimens here we demonstrate that herbarium images can be analysed using suitable software and that leaf characters can be extracted automatically we describe a low cost digitization process that we use to create a set of 1895 images of tilia l specimens and novel botanical image processing software the output of the software is a set of leaf characters as a demonstration of this approach we extract the length and width of a large number of leaves automatically from images of whole herbarium specimens we show that the lengths and widths that we extract are very strongly correlated with values in a published account of cultivated species but are also consistently smaller we discuss some particular features of herbarium specimens that may affect the results of this form of analysis and consider further applications to extract characters such as leaf shape and margin characters,2012,0.189
Evolution of leaf form correlates with tropical-temperate transitions in Viburnum (Adoxaceae).,strong latitudinal patterns in leaf form are well documented in floristic comparisons and palaeobotanical studies however there is little agreement about their functional significance in fact it is still unknown to what degree these patterns were generated by repeated evolutionary adaptation we analysed leaf form in the woody angiosperm clade viburnum adoxaceae and document evolutionarily correlated shifts in leafing habit leaf margin morphology leaf shape and climate multiple independent shifts between tropical and temperate forest habitats have repeatedly been accompanied by a change between evergreen elliptical leaves with entire margins and deciduous more rounded leaves with toothed or lobed margins these consistent shifts in viburnum support repeated evolutionary adaptation as a major determinant of the global correlation between leaf form and mean annual temperature our results provide a new theoretical grounding for the inference of past climates using fossil leaf assemblages,2012,0.153
The quality of name-based species records in databases,response to huang andqiao,2012,0.344
Accounting for the effects of lipids in stable isotope (δ13C and δ15N values) analysis of skin and blubber of balaenopterid whales.,stable isotope values î 13 c and î 15 n of darted skin and blubber biopsies can shed light on habitat use and diet of cetaceans which are otherwise difficult to study non dietary factors affect isotopic variability chiefly the depletion of 13 c due to the presence of 12 c rich lipids the efficacy of post hoc lipid correction models normalization must be tested,2012,0.392
"Near-tropical Early Eocene terrestrial temperatures at the Australo-Antarctic margin, western Tasmania",a worldwide greenhouse warm climate prevailed in the early eocene and nowhere was warming more dramatic than at high latitudes sea surface temperatures of 34 â c have been estimated for a site at paleolatitude 65â s on the east tasman plateau of the southwest pacifi c ocean but these estimates require independent validation including from terrestrial proxies here we determine a near tropical terrestrial mean annual temperature estimate of 24 â c at sea level for an early eocene site in tasmania australia using three proxies based on welldated estuarine plant fossils this estimate is lower than the nearby sea estimates to the east but similarly suggests that as in the southwest pacifi c early eocene climates in the eastern australo antarctic region were warmer than inferred elsewhere at high latitudes including on the antarctic peninsula such data are essential for improving our understanding of climatic and biotic evolution in the southern hemisphere,2012,0.284
50 Years of Mapping the British and Irish Flora 1962-2012,this booklet has been prepared for delegates to the september 2012 conference â a great leap forward â biological recording since the 1962 atlas of the british floraâ but we hope it is of interest to a much wider audience of biologists conservation practitioners policy makers and amateurs who either collect or utilise biological recording data,2012,0.351
Range size and climatic niche correlate with the vulnerability of epiphytes to human land use in the tropics,aim range restricted species account for a large proportion of global biodiversity and many such species are highly threatened by deforestation and intensifying land use in the tropics the effects of land use on the diversity of range restricted species have rarely been studied and remain unknown for vascular epiphytes â diverse and important elements of tropical forests this study analyses the vulnerability of range restricted epiphyte species to human land use compared to that of widespread species location western ecuador chocã ecoregion lowland rain forest bilsa 0â 21â n 79â 44â w 450â 650 m a s l and andean cloud forest otonga 0â 25â s 79â 01â w 1650â 2250 m a s l methods the epiphytic vegetation of 220 study plots was surveyed distribution data based on herbarium specimens were compiled for all identified species in order to estimate their geographical and elevational ranges as well as the climatic conditions within the species ranges these range characteristics were compared for species found in contiguous primary forests primary forest fragments secondary forests and for isolated remnant trees in pastures results of the 587 identified epiphyte species 252 were endemic to the chocã ecoregion 42 9 chocã endemics were not more strongly affected by human land use than non endemics however small geographical ranges and narrow climatic niches were associated with higher vulnerability to habitat changes caused by land use epiphyte assemblages in young secondary forests had the lowest proportions of range restricted species and were dominated by species with broad elevational ranges species in secondary forests occupied the broadest ranges of mean annual temperature and precipitation species on isolated remnant trees at the lowland site inhabited on average warmer and drier geographical ranges than species in the primary forest main conclusions epiphyte species with restricted geographical distributions and narrow climatic tolerances are particularly vulnerable to human induced habitat changes but endemism to national or biogeographical entities alone is a poor indicator of vulnerability instead narrower ecological niches correlate with lower plasticity towards changes in microclimatic habitat conditions besides a higher extinction risk due to their small range sizes many range restricted species might be threatened by their lower tolerance to the impacts of human land use,2012,0.998
Revision of the North American Species of Grindelia (Asteraceae),a revision of north american species of the genus grindelia willd asteraceae was carried out forty one species 10 varieties and two forms are recognized and a key is given the following new combinations are made g fastigiata greene var revoluta steyerm adr bartoli tortosa g revoluta steyerm g hirtella b l rob greenm adr bartoli tortosa g squarrosa pursh dunal var hirtella b l rob greenm g humilis hook arn var platyphylla greene adr bartoli tortosa g robusta nutt var platyphylla greene g lanceolata nutt var subincisa greene adr bartoli tortosa g subincisa greene g leptocarpa de jong beaman adr bartoli tortosa olivaea leptocarpa de jong beaman g squarrosa f pseudopinnatifida d loâ ve j p bernard adr bartoli tortosa g perennis a nelson f pseudopinnatifida d loâ ve j p bernard g squarrosa var eligulata steyerm adr bartoli tortosa g oxylepis greene var eligulata steyerm and g tricuspis sch bip adr bartoli tortosa o tricuspis sch bip aster glutinosus cav is proposed as lectotype for the genus demetria lag and a neotype is designated for d spathulata lag the following names are lectotypified g inuloides willd g lanceolata g nana nutt g nana var integrifolia nutt g platylepis greene g subincisa g lanceolata var subincisa and g texana scheele g lanceolata var texana scheele shinners seventeen taxa are illustrated for the first time,2012,0.52
Advances on molecular studies of the interaction soybean - Asian rust,effective management practices are essential for controlling rust outbreaks the main control method used is the application of fungicides which increases substantially the cost of production and is harmful to the environment prevention is still the best way to avoid more significant losses in soybean yields alternatives such as planting resistant varieties to the fungus are also important the use of resistant or tolerant varieties is the most promising method for controlling asian soybean rust recently five dominant genes resistant to soybean rust were described rpp1 rpp2 rpp3 rpp4 and rpp5 however little is known about the molecular interaction among soybean plant and soybean rust and on the molecular pathway triggered by pathogen recognition understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in defense responses is of primary importance for planning strategies to control stress and consequently to increase plant adaptation to limiting conditions,2012,0.106
Constructing Ecological Networks: A Tool to Infer Risk of Transmission and Dispersal of Leishmaniasis,we extend a recently developed method for constructing ecological networks to infer potential biotic interactions between species and to also include environmental factors in particular land cover thus permitting a simultaneous analysis of the interaction between environment and species distribution as well as inter species interactions we apply the method to the transmission and dispersal of leishmaniasis in mexico we find that the most important potential vectors and reservoirs can be classified into assemblages associated with different types of habitat this in turn can be used to understand and map potential transmission risk as well as to construct risk scenarios for the dispersal of disease from one geographical region to another,2012,0.496
ILTER and JaLTER: Their Missions and Linkage to Database Development in the Asia-Pacific Region,a long term ecological research lter program was originally established in 1980 by the national science foundation to support research on long term ecology in the united states the lter network was founded with the recognition that long term and broad scale research is necessary to understand various environmental phe nomena this necessity has become increasingly pressing with the increased human effects on populations communities ecosystems and the biosphere us long term,2012,0.174
The Endemic Plants of Micronesia: A Geographical Checklist and Commentary,the micronesia polynesia bioregion is recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot however until now estimates regarding the number of endemic plant species for the region were not supported by any compre hensive published work for the region the results of this study indicate that micronesia has the worldâ s highest percentage of plant endemism per square kilometer out of all globally recognized insular biodiversity hot spots a checklist of all endemic plant species for micronesia is presented here with their corresponding geographical limits within the region a summary of previous work and estimates is also provided noting the degree of taxonomic progress in the past several decades a total of 364 vascular plant species are considered endemic to micronesia most of them being restricted to the caroline islands with a large percentage restricted to palau the checklist includes seven new combinations one new name and two unverified names that require additional study to verify endemic status overviews of each respective botanical family represented in the list are given including additional information on the micronesian taxa recommendations for future work and potential projects are alluded to throughout the text highlighting major data gaps and very poorly known taxa the following new combinations and names are made cyclosorus carolinensis hosokawa lorence comb nov cyclosorus gretheri w h wagner lorence comb nov cyclosorus guamensis holttum lor ence comb nov cyclosorus palauensis hosokawa lorence comb nov cyclosorus rupiinsularis fosberg lorence comb nov dalbergia hosokawae costion nom nov syzygium trukensis hosokawa costion e lucas comb nov,2012,0.707
"Applied Landscape Ecology, Future Socioeconomics and Policy-Making in the Neotropics",the colloquial basis of ecology and reality is that â œall things interact â in one way magnitude or another all living and non living entities intertwine constantly over time in amazing forms and complex systems these entities are linked by higher flows of matter and energy to form what we commonly refer to as nature species are a fundamental part of the multifaceted ecological world and act as basic entities in ecosystem building and evolution guisan et al 2006 hey et al 2003 as they constantly change the dynamics of ecological patterns and processes,2012,0.364
"Appearance of Carrion Beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae) by Altitudes in Deogyusan National Park, Jeollabuk-do, Korea",appearance of carrion beetles by altitudes for 3 months from july to september 2011 was investigated in dongyeopryeong course of deogyusan national park jeollabuk do the vegetation of the survey sites consist of four types deciduous forest mixed forest of deciduous and sasa types and bushes a total of 1 084 individuals in 6 species of carrion beetles by using bait traps were investigated and among them nicrophorus quadripunctatus was the most dominant species with 947 87 36 as a result of this survey nicrophorus quadripunctatus was appeared in all the altitudes but an alpine species silpha perforata was not appeared under 1 300 m altitude unlike silpha perforata no or few calosilpha brunneicollis nicrophorus maculifrons nicrophorus concolor and ptomascopus morio were appeared over 1 000 m the analysis of vegetation preference by altitudes of survey areas shows no relevance between carrion beetles and vegetation except silpha perforate which was appeared only in the bushes over 1 300m but the more detail researches are required for preference of vegetation type,2012,0.742
Mimulus peregrinus (Phrymaceae): A new British allopolyploid species,polyploidization plays an important role in species formation as chromosome doubling results in strong reproductive isolation between derivative and parental taxa in this note i describe a new species mimulus peregrinus phrymaceae which represents the first recorded instance of a new british polyploid species of mimulus 2n 6x 92 that has arisen since the introduction of this genus into the united kingdom in the 1800â s m peregrinus presents floral and vegetative characteristics intermediate between m guttatus and m luteus but can be distinguished from all naturalized british mimulus species and hybrids based on a com bination of reproductive and vegetative traits m peregrinus displays high pollen and seed fertility as well as traits usually associated with genome doubling such as increased pollen and stomata size te intermediate characteristics of m peregrinus between m guttatus 2n 2x 28 and m luteus 2n 4x 60 62 and its close affinity with the highly sterile triploid 2n 3x 44 45 hybrid taxon m ã robertsii m guttatus ã m luteus suggests that m peregrinus may constitute an example of recent allopolyploid speciation,2012,0.78
The Functions of Biological Diversity in an Age of Extinction,ecosystems worldwide are rapidly losing taxonomic phylogenetic genetic and functional diversity as a result of human appropriation of natural resources modification of habitats and climate and the spread of pathogenic exotic and domestic plants and animals twenty years of intense theoretical and empirical research have shown that such biotic impoverishment can markedly alter the biogeochemical and dynamic properties of ecosystems but frontiers remain in linking this research to the complexity of wild nature and in applying it to pressing environmental issues such as food water energy and biosecurity the question before us is whether these advances can take us beyond merely invoking the precautionary principle of conserving biodiversity to a predictive science that informs practical and specific solutions to mitigate and adapt to its loss,2012,0.18
"Nuclear and chloroplast DNA phylogeography reveals vicariance among European populations of the model species for the study of metal tolerance, Arabidopsis halleri (Brassicaceae).",arabidopsis halleri is a pseudometallophyte involved in numerous molecular studies of the adaptation to anthropogenic metal stress in order to test the representativeness of genetic accessions commonly used in these studies we investigated the a halleri population genetic structure in europe microsatellite and nucleotide polymorphisms from the nuclear and chloroplast genomes respectively were used to genotype 65 populations scattered over europe the large scale population structure was characterized by a significant phylogeographic signal between two major genetic units the localization of the phylogeographic break was assumed to result from vicariance between large populations isolated in southern and central europe on either side of ice sheets covering the alps during the quaternary ice ages genetic isolation was shown to be maintained in western europe by the high summits of the alps whereas admixture was detected in the carpathians considering the phylogeographic literature our results suggest a distinct phylogeographic pattern for european species occurring in both mountain and lowland habitats considering the evolution of metal adaptation in a halleri it appears that recent adaptations to anthropogenic metal stress that have occurred within either phylogeographic unit should be regarded as independent events that potentially have involved the evolution of a variety of genetic mechanisms,2012,0.723
Analyzing floristic inventories with multiple maps,spatial observations of plant occurrences contain a wealth of information on relations among species and on the relation between species and environmental conditions typically inventory data of this kind are large co occurrence matrices and hence direct ecological interpretations based on expert knowledge are often very difficult hitherto ordination approaches have been used to construct a virtual ordination space repre sented as one or multiple scatter plots in which species that often co occur are situated close together whereas species that hardly co occur are found far apart in this study we investigate a recently proposed or dination approach multiple maps t sne that constructs multiple independent ordination spaces in order to reveal and visualize complementary structure in the data we compare multiple maps t sne to several con ventional ordination approaches exploring a large inventory of vascular plant occurrences florkart our results reveal that multiple maps t sne is well suited for the analysis of floristic inventories in particular multiple maps t sne uncovers the major dependencies of species co occurrences on climate and soil biogeo chemical preconditions,2012,0.773
Developing a Georeferenced Database of Selected Threatened Forest Tree Species in the Philippines,georeferenced species occurrence is a prerequisite in species distribution modeling and species ecosystem correlation analysis and also aids in tracking plant species and prioritizing scarce resources for conservation the global biodiversity information facility legacy literature of biodiversity contemporary literature technical reports and biodiversity surveys are important sources of species occurrence data waiting to be georeferenced in this paper we discussed a method used to georeference occurrences of threatened forest tree species from the above sources locality descriptions were initially narrowed down in geographic information system using administrative maps and further confined using two criteria 1 elevation and 2 surface cover information from remotely sensed images the result was a georeferenced database of 2 067 occurrence records of 47 threatened forest species on a national scale each record had a unique point feature per species and enough metadata directing the database user to the source of occurrence data the database can be used as a tool in determining priority species for specimen or germplasm collection for taxonomic identification and historical mapping it also serves as an integral component in spatially modeling the distribution of tree species and forest formations in the past and in a possible future scenario,2012,0.939
taxonstand: An r package for species names standardisation in vegetation databases,1 compilation of vegetation databases has contributed significantly to the advancement of vegetation science all over the world yet methodological problems result from the use of plant names particularly in data that originate from numerous and heterogeneous sources one of the main problems is the inordinate number of synonyms that can be found in vegetation lists 2 we present taxonstand an r package to automatically standardise plant names using the plant list http www theplantlist org the scripts included in this package allow connection to the online search engine of the plant list and retrieve information from each species about its current taxonomic status in those cases where the species name is a synonym it is replaced by the current accepted name in addition this package can help correcting orthographic errors in specific epithets 3 this tool greatly facilitates the preparation of large vegetation databases prior to their analyses particularly when they cover broad geographical areas supranational or even continental scale or contain data from regions with rich floras where taxonomic problems have not been resolved for many of their taxa automated workflows such as the one provided by the taxonstand package can ease considerably this task using a widely accessible working nomenclatural authority list for plant species names such as the plant list,2012,0.675
"Antarctic Starfish (Echinodermata, Asteroidea) from the ANDEEP3 expedition.",this dataset includes information on sea stars collected during the andeep3 expedition which took place in 2005 the expedition focused on deep sea stations in the powell basin and weddell sea sea stars were collected using an agassiz trawl 3m mesh size 500âµm deployed in 16 stations during the antxxii 3 andeep3 ps72 expedition of the rv polarstern sampling depth ranged from 1047 to 4931m trawling distance ranged from 731 to 3841m the sampling area ranges from 41â s to 71â s latitude and from 0 to 65â w longitude a complete list of stations is available from the pangaea data system http www pangaea de php cruisereports php b polarstern including a cruise report http epic reports awi de 3694 1 pe 72 pdf the dataset includes 50 records with individual counts ranging from 1 10 reaching a total of 132 specimens the andeep3 asteroidea is a unique dataset as it covers an under explored region of the southern ocean and that very little information was available regarding antarctic deep sea starfish before this study most of the information available focused on starfish from shallower depths than 1000m this dataset allowed to make unique observations such as the fact that some species were only present at very high depths hymenaster crucifer hymenaster pellucidus hymenaster praecoquis psilaster charcoti freyella attenuata freyastera tuberculata styrachaster chuni and vemaster sudatlanticus were all found below 3770m while others displayed remarkable eurybathy with very high depths amplitudes bathybiaster loripes 4842m lysasterias adeliae 4832m lophaster stellans 4752m cheiraster planeta 4708m eremicaster crassus 4626m lophaster gaini 4560m and ctenodiscus australis 4489m even if the number of records is relatively small the data bring many new insights on the taxonomic bathymetric and geographic distributions of southern starfish covering a very large sampling zone the dataset also brings to light six species newly reported in the southern ocean the quality of the data was controlled very thoroughly by means of on board polarstern gps systems checking of identification by a renowned specialist prof michel jangoux universitã libre de bruxelles and matching to the register of antarctic marine species rams and world register of marine species worms the data is therefore fit for completing checklists for inclusion in biodiversity patterns analysis or niche modeling it also nicely fills an information gap regarding deep sea starfish from the southern ocean for which data is very scarce at this time the authors may be contacted if any additional information is needed before carrying out detailed biodiversity or biogeographic studies,2012,0.891
"Spiders in Bangtaesan Mountain in Gangwon-do, Korea",in order to qualitatively examine the spider fauna of bangtaesan mt of inje gun gangwon do 4 collection sessions were conducted between may and october of 2010 a total of 479 spiders were collected in bangtaesan mt at 128 species of 86 genera in 27 families and coniferous forest zone or mixed tree forest zone characterized by the dominance of conifers displayed higher number of species than decideous forest zone in terms of family linyphiidae included the highest number of species 18 species 14 1 followed by theridiidae 16 species 12 5 araneidae 14 species 11 0 salticidae 13 species 10 2 and tetragnathidae 9 species 7 0 four species nesticella mogera of family nesticidae clubiona lena of clubionidae phrurolithus sinicus of corinnidae and synagelides zhilcovae of salticidae were discovered for the first time in korean mountains zoogeographically spiders in bangtaesan mt displayed 1 cosmopolitan species with holarctic region and palearctic region species making up 14 1 and endemic species making up 7 8 of the species observed during the study this shows that spider fauna of bangtaesan mt experience northern influence the result of this study provides an inventory of mountain spiders and information regarding the region s biodiversity and the results will not only become useful for the effective management and long term use of national biological resources but will also become a highly important data for the preservation of biodiversity based on changes in distribution time and space,2012,0.995
Biome specificity of distinct genetic lineages within the four-striped mouse Rhabdomys pumilio (Rodentia: Muridae) from southern Africa with implications for taxonomy.,within southern africa a link between past climatic changes and faunal diversification has been hypothesized for a diversity of taxa to test the hypothesis that evolutionary divergences may be correlated to vegetation changes induced by changes in climate we selected the widely distributed four striped mouse rhabdomys as a model two species are currently recognized the mesic adapted r dilectus and arid adapted r pumilio however the morphology based taxonomy and the distribution boundaries of previously described subspecies remain poorly defined the current study which spans seven biomes focuses on the spatial genetic structure of the arid adapted r pumilio 521 specimens from 31 localities but also includes limited sampling of the mesic adapted r dilectus 33 specimens from 10 localities to act as a reference for interspecific variation within the genus the mitochondrial coi gene and four nuclear introns eef1a1 mgf sptbn1 bfib7 were used for the construction of gene trees mitochondrial dna analyses indicate that rhabdomys consists of four reciprocally monophyletic geographically structured clades with three distinct lineages present within the arid adapted r pumilio these monophyletic lineages differ by at least 7 9 â 0 3 and these results are partly confirmed by a multilocus network of the combined nuclear intron dataset ecological niche modeling in maxent supports a strong correlation between regional biomes and the distribution of distinct evolutionary lineages of rhabdomys a bayesian relaxed molecular clock suggests that the geographic clades diverged between 3 09 and 4 30ma supporting the hypothesis that the radiation within the genus coincides with paleoclimatic changes and the establishment of the biomes characterizing the miocene pliocene boundary marked genetic divergence at the mitochondrial dna level coupled with strong nuclear and mtdna signals of non monophyly of r pumilio support the notion that a taxonomic revision of the genus is needed,2012,0.283
Long Database Report BERGWALD – the vegetation database of mountain forests in the Bavarian Alps,the database bergwald givd id eu de 002 an electronic repository for vegetation plot data from forests and re lated vegetation in the bavarian alps germany is presented created in 1995 the database has been intensively used for the classifi cation and mapping of vegetation and site types for calibrating and evaluating plant indicator values and for analysing patterns of plant species richness hosted at the university of applied sciences in freising bavaria the data are available for collaborative re search,2012,0.413
Sources of Resistance to Stem Rust (Ug99) in Bread Wheat and Durum Wheat Identified Using Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy,the focused identifi cation of germplasm strategy figs has been validated using predictive computer models in simulation studies to predict a priori known trait scores this study was designed as a â œblindâ study where the person calculating the computer model did not know the actual trait scores this study design provides a more realistic test of the predictive capacity of the figs approach compared to previous studies furthermore this study also explored the suitability of figs for the identifi cation of resistance in bread wheat triticum aestivum l subsp aestivum and durum wheat triticum turgidum l subsp durum desf husn to ug99â a strain of stem rust puccinia graminis pers f sp tritici eriks henn and typifi ed to race ttksk the predictions were validated against a dataset with the screening of wheat accessions conducted in yemen in 2008 only a small training set representing 20 of the trait screening results was disclosed to the person conducting the data analysis for the calibration of the prediction model the hit rate for identifi cation of ug99 resistant accessions was more than two times higher when using the figs approach compared to a random selection of accessions these results suggested that figs was well suited for the identifi cation of samples with resistance to fungal pathogens it is therefore recommended that figs approach be used as a complement to expert knowledge and experience when selecting accessions for plant breeding and crop research activities,2012,0.124
Geographic and ecological analysis of the Bearded Wood Partridge Dendrortyx barbatus: some insights on its conservation status,delimiting the distribution of a species is a complex task because many determining factors are difficult to assess in the field this is important because distribution is a key factor in the decision making process for conservation one example is the bearded wood partridge dendrortyx barbatus a species endemic to the temperate forests of the sierra madre oriental smo mountain range in mexico lack of knowledge of its distribution has generated confusion over the assignment of the correct risk category with the aim of predicting the distribution area of the bearded wood partridge and contributing to strategies for its conservation we updated and extended the knowledge of its distribution by modelling its ecological niche using garp and maxent algorithms we also analysed its environmental distribution using principal components analysis and contrasted the two most important environmental variables with the speciesâ s distribution based on vegetation type we found that the area potentially occupied by this species covers 17 956 km2 according to garp and 12 974 km2 according to maxent we suggest that there is a biogeographic barrier which limits the distribution of this species in the southern part of its range the abiotic variables that best explain its distribution are average annual precipitation and elevation both of which coincide well with the distribution of cloud forest a redefinition of the current range as recognised by iucn is proposed along with the need to change its national risk category,2012,0.758
Exploring the determinants of scientific data sharing: Understanding the motivation to publish research data,the research community is working to create new capabilities to share data and to deal with issues of data quality standards and protection and ethical and responsible use of shared data these issues have been found to influence the willingness of researchers to publish data created during the course of their research we use the results of a survey conducted by the working groups of the dataone project to present a new understanding of challenges to the development of global data collections and preservation by systematically examining the determinants of the researchers likelihood to openly publish research data this study found two key determinants affecting researchers willingness to publish their data first is data management in terms of data management skills and organization support second is the acknowledgement of the data set s originator in terms of appreciation and legal and policy requirements this study also found that the impact of the significant determinants is contingent on the amount of data to be published finally this study calls for further investigation to ascertain the relationship of data management and data quality and systematic investigation on the roles and responsibility of government within these global data preservations,2012,0.136
"Improving representativeness of genebank collections through species distribution models, gap analysis and ecogeographical maps",an efficient germplasm collecting method was evaluated using six lupinus species and the spanish lupinus collection as a study case this method includes the application of geographic information systems ecogeographical land characterization maps species distribution models and gap analysis to identify prioritized collecting sites to evaluate the efficiency of this collecting method field collecting expeditions were carried out focusing on prioritized sites and the results of these collections were analyzed prioritized sites were identified using spatial and ecogeographical gaps and potential species richness maps the spatial gaps corresponded to populations non included in the collection but recorded by other information sources while ecogeographical gaps corre sponded to spatial gaps that were located in ecogeographical categories obtained from the ecogeographical map that were scarcely represented in the collection a potential lupinus species richness map was obtained by adding the information of single maps of lupinus species distribution models subsequently prioritized sites were obtained in ecogeo graphical gaps with high potential species richness values collecting expeditions were made in spain in 2006 2007 and 2008 results showed that using the efficient germplasm collecting methodology was highly positive not only from a quantitative viewpoint between 7 8 and 11 increase but also in qualitative terms focusing collection efforts in ecogeographical categories with low or null representation in the spanish lupinus collection 41 of the new accessions phenotypic differences related to adaptation to environment were observed in the field between the populations that grow in low or null represented categories and those that grow in highly represented categories,2012,0.777
Using avatar species to model the potential distribution of emerging invaders,aim anticipating the potential distributions of emerging invasive species is complicated by the tendency for species distribution models to perform better when both native and invasive range data are available for model development if invasive range data are lacking species models are liable to under estimate distributions for emerging invaders particularly for species that are not at equilibrium with their native range environment due to historical factors dispersal limitation and or ecological interactions we demonstrate the potential to use well quantified niche shifts from established â avatarâ i e the remote or virtual manifestation of an entity invaders to develop plausible distributions for data poor emerging invaders con tingent on niche shifts of similar magnitude or character location global methods using the globally invasive crayfishes pacifastacus leniusculus and pro cambarus clarkii as our avatar invaders we quantify how niche position size and structure differs between native and total ranges using mahalanobis distance a measure of multivariate similarity and the climate predictors of annual minimum and maximum air temperature we then generalize patterns of niche shift from these species to the emerging crayfish invader cherax quadricarinatus results some patterns of niche shifts were similar for pacifastacus leniusculus and procambarus clarkii but niche shifts were of considerably greater magnitude for p clarkii when a native range model for c quadricarinatus was modified with generalized niche shifts similar to pacifastacus leniusculus and procambarus clarkii the potential global distribution for this species increased considerably including many areas not identified by the native range model main conclusions we illustrate the potential to use avatar invaders to provide cautionary niche shift assuming species distribution models for emerging invad ers many theoretical and applied implications of the avatar species concept require additional investigation including the development of frameworks to select appro priate avatar species and evaluate the performance of avatar derived models for emerging invaders despite these research needs we believe this concept will have considerable utility for predicting vulnerability to invasion by data poor species this is a critical management need because shifting pathways of introduction and climate change will produce many novel emerging invasive species in the future,2012,0.905
Nature Conservation – a new dimension in Open Access publishing bridging science and application,tis editorial presents the focus scope and policies of the inaugural issue of nature conservation a new open access peer reviewed journal bridging natural sciences social sciences and hands on applica tions in conservation management te journal covers all aspects of nature conservation and aims par ticularly at facilitating better interaction between scientists and practitioners te journal will impose no restrictions on manuscript size or the use of colour we will use an xml based editorial workflow and several cutting edge innovations in publishing and information dissemination tese include se mantic mark up of and enhancements to published text data and extensive cross linking within the journal and to external sources we believe the journal will make an important contribution to better linking science and practice offers rapid peer reviewed and flexible publication for authors and unre stricted access to content,2012,0.244
"Future pest status of an insect pest in museums, Attagenus smirnovi: Distribution and food consumption in relation to climate change",the brown carpet beetle attagenus smirnovi zhantiev 1973 coleoptera dermestidae is an important pest of objects of organic origin in museums of cultural and natural history in europe future climate changes are expected to lead to increasing temperatures which will affect the pest status of this species in the present study a laboratory investigation was conducted to elucidate the effect of temperature and humidity on the amounts of organic material consumed by larvae of a smirnovi in the case of new and old skin consumption was approximately twice as high at 28 â c compared to 20 â c wool was consumed in the greatest amounts 169 mg of wool was consumed in three months by 30 a smirnovi larvae the expected future climate changes in scandinavia are assumed to lead to higher temperatures in museums and stores where climate is not regulated updated data on the present distribution of a smirnovi in europe show that it is widespread and common also in regions with a climate that does not support its survival out of doors thus dispersal of this pest probably only rarely occurs by flight but usually with human activity due to the widespread distribution of a smirnovi it is likely that damages in museums and collections in scandinavia due to this pest will increase as climate changes come into effect,2012,0.496
The Friendly Islands – A Checklist Of Hornworts And Liverworts Of Tonga,the fi rst checklist of hornworts and liverworts is provided for tonga geographic coverage includes the islands haâ apai niua tongatapu vavaâ u and surrounding smaller islands it is apparent that there remain many localities in tonga including entire islands which have never or scarcely been collected for this group of plants we report three hornwort and 47 liverwort taxa two additional liverwort taxa previously reported from tonga are noted as doubtful records the list is based on over 35 literature references from over 5000 papers that the elpt project has processed so far including monographs and regional studies new records will undoubtedly be reported based on regionally widespread species that have been recorded elsewhere especially nearby fiji and samoa it is clear tonga has received negligible attention and almost no publications exist that have focused solely on this group of islands the current checklist is part of a broader study producing checklists for islands across the south pacifi c which we hope will foster and encourage research of liverworts and hornworts in this globally important biodiversity hotspot,2012,0.389
"Distribución potencial del jaguar Panthera onca (Carnivora: Felidae) en Guerrero, México: persistencia de zonas para su conservación",studies about the permanence of natural protected areas are important because they contribute to the promotion of the conservation target and to optimize economical and human resources of specific areas although there are no natural protected areas in guerrero it has suitable habitat for the jaguar a common species used for planning and management of conservation areas since there is actual evidence that environmental and anthropogenic variables may modify vertebrate species distribution with time in this study we predicted the potential distribution of panthera onca using maxent for this southeastern region in addition we made a projection considering the effect of a moderate climate change scenario to evaluate the stability of the conservation area for a period of 24 years furthermore we applied three threat scenarios for the actual prediction to define conservation priorities areas in our results we have found that 18 361km2 29 of this state has a permanent suitable habitat for jaguar conservation in the sierra madre del sur and pacific coast with a possible loss of 2 000km2 in 24 years this habitat is characterized by a 56 of temperate forest mainly conifers and hardwoods 34 and 35 of tropical deciduous forest with the projections the southeastern region resulted with the higher anthropogenic impacts while at the same time an area of 7 900km2 in the central western state was determined as a priority for conservation to assure jaguar conservation we propose the inclusion of this new conservation area which is located in the sierra madre del sur with which we may potentially preserve other 250 species of threatened vertebrates this way the suggested habitat conservation may represent a local effort in guerrero and will strengthen the biological corridor network for p onca protection in latin america,2012,0.698
Enumeration of Remarkable Japanese Discomycetes (6): Notes on Two Inoperculate Discomycetes new to Japan and One Operculate Discomycete,three remarkable discomycetes two inoperculate and one operculate are described and illustrated hymenoscyphus immutabilis helotiaceae helotiales lachnum rachidicola lachnaceae helotiales and sphaerosporella brunnea pyronemataceae pezizales the first two species are documented for the first time in japan detailed microscopic description is provided for sphaerosporella brunnea for the first time for japanese material,2012,0.452
"Lacewings (Neuroptera) and Alderflies (Megaloptera) from Finnmark, northern Norway",records of 22 species of neuroptera and four species of megaloptera from finnmark northern norway are presented based partly on material collected in 2010 partly on material housed in the entomological collections at the natural history museums in norway of these 13 species have previously not been recorded from finnmark i e coniopteryx tineiformis curtis 1834 hemerobius atrifrons mclachlan 1868 h fenestratus tjeder 1932 h humulinus linnaeus 1758 h marginatus stephens 1836 h nitidulus fabricius 1777 h pini stephens 1836 micromus angulatus stephens 1836 sympherobius fuscescens wallengren 1863 wesmaelius concinnus stephens 1836 w mortoni mclachlan 1899 w quadrifasciatus reuter 1894 and chrysoperla carnea stephens 1836 the total number of neuroptera known to occur in finnmark is now 23 of which four belong in the family coniopterygidae 17 in hemerobidae and one in each of the families chrysopidae and sisyridae all four species of megaloptera reported in this paper belong to the genus sialis latreille 1802 the sole genus of the order occurring in norway one of these sialis sibirica mclachlan 1872 is recorded as data deficient dd in the 2010 norwegian red list for species in addition to the four species reported here a fifth species sialis lutaria linnaeus 1758 is known to occur in finnmark,2012,0.924
"DNA barcoding and evolutionary relationships in Accipiter Brisson, 1760 (Aves, Falconiformes: Accipitridae) with a focus on African and Eurasian representatives",we obtained full 647 bp or mini 291 bp dna barcodes of 140 mostly african and european specimens of 25 accipiter aves accipitridae species kimura two parameter k2p distances were calculated between barcodes to determine the thresholds of intra and interspecific species boundaries thresholds were comparable to or higher than those in previous studies and ranged from 2 8 to 3 0 best compromise threshold based on cumulative intra and interspecific k2p distances and from 3 9 to 5 3 ten times the average intraspecific k2p distance identification success was determined using the best match and best close match criteria and ranged between 84 mini barcodes and 90 full barcodes incorrectly or ambiguously identified specimens belonged to two species that were represented by single sequences in the database a madagascariensis and a trivirgatus and three species pairs that shared at least one haplotype viz a nisus and a rufiventris a gularis and a virgatus and a cooperii and a gundlachi the other 19 species were unambiguously identified using the full dna barcodes the studied species belong to eight traditional superspecies of which three gentilis cooperii and tachiro were well supported in one superspecies badius species pairs were supported but not the superspecies,2012,0.92
OpenUp! Creating a cross-domain pipeline for natural history data,multimedia data held by natural history museums and universities are presently not readily accessible even within the natural history community itself te eu project openup is an effort to mobilise scien tific biological multimedia resources and open them to a wider audience using the europeana data standards and portal te connection between natural history and europeana is accomplished using well established biocase and gbif technologies tis is complemented with a system for data quality control data transformation and semantic enrichment with this approach openup will provide at least 1 1 million multimedia objects to europeana by 2014 its lean infrastructure is sustainable within the natural history community and will remain functional and effective in the post project phase,2012,0.12
Systematics agenda 2020: the mission evolves,in the early 1990s a comprehensive set of missions and goals for the discipline was articulated by a global community of systematists these were presented as systematics agenda 2000 1994 abbreviated here as sa2k this agenda spurred awareness of the field and initiated discussions about the role of systematics within biology e g blackmore and cutler 1996 cracraft 2002 halanych and goertzen 2009 in education e g krishtalka and humphrey 2000 thanukos 2010 and public policy e g prance 1995 after nearly 20 years of achievement and growth in systematic biology a series of four us national science foundation sponsored workshops on â œfuture directions in biodiversity and systematics researchâ was held during 2009â 2010 to evaluate progress in the field and identify new directions and opportunities,2012,0.283
ModeleR: An enviromental model repository as knowledge base for experts,in this paper we present the development of modeler a repository of models accessible from the web which enables the user to design document manage and execute environmental models the technique and features offered can be applied to any scientific context based on the development of its ontology a metadata system has been established to document the modeling process the set of models managed from modeler reflects the knowledge base of the experts of the system allowing other experts to reuse replicate and delve deeper into the existing models in the repository different levels of integration have been included from the conceptual description of the model to the process needed to execute a model from a remote server acting as an execution engine through the use of workflow managers in this paper we present the problems encountered as well as the solutions reached on developing a prototype of mod eler set up for ecosystem research and an environmental monitoring lab,2012,0.02
"Toxicity of Some Environmental Pollutants to Marine Crustaceans Artemia Sinica,(Anostraca: Artemiidae) and Exopalaemon Carinicauda,(Decapoda: Palaemonidae)",to safeguard the marine environment there is an urgent need to establish standardized methods to analyze the acute toxicity of pollutants to aquatic organisms as a first step to establish a simple inexpensive and reliable short term routine bioassay to test the toxicity of some environmental pollutants in this dissertation i investigated the usefulness of the brine shrimp artemia sinica as a test species to study the acute toxicity of several phenolic compounds and heavy metals a sinica was chosen as the test species due to its incessant availability in the form of dry cysts which can be hatched with little effort and its flexibility to varied nutrient resources as it is a non selective filter feeder i also tested the antioxidant enzyme activities of ridgetail white prawn exopalaemon carinicauda in response to naphthalene this species has strong tolerance to the change of environmental factors hence it is easy to culture them in laboratory it has a high reproduction capacity with a short reproduction cycle only two months and maintains reproductive capacity all year round thus it is available for experiments at any time the evaluation of the acute toxicity of the pollutants was based on the median lethal concentration lc50s,2012,0.577
A GIS framework for the refinement of species geographic ranges,the archives of species range polygons developed under comprehensive assessments of the conservation status of species such as the iucn s global assessments are a significant resource in the analysis of biodiversity for conservation planning species range polygons obtained from these studies are known to exhibit omissions because of knowledge gaps and imprecision in their boundaries in this work we present a method to refine those species range polygons in order to create more realistic representations of species geographic ranges using range polygons of four species of mammals in south america and environmental variables at a 1 km resolution combined with a set of gis algorithms a procedure was developed to map the confidence that sub polygon elements belong to a logical species range the confidence map is then used as a weight for a mahalanobis typicality empirical modelling procedure to generate a map of species weighted typicalities that is then thresholded to generate the refined species range map methods for variable selection and quality assessment of the refined range are also included in the procedure analysis using independent validation data shows the power of this methodology to redefine species ranges in a more biophysically reasonable way the quality of the final range map depends on the habitat suitability threshold used to define the species range the report of quality assessment produced is useful for identifying not only the threshold that produces the highest match to the original expert range but also for flagging those ranges with higher discrepancies facilitating the identification of ranges that need further revision,2012,0.981
"Functional genomics resources for the North Atlantic copepod, Calanus finmarchicus: EST database and physiological microarray.",the copepod calanus finmarchicus is a keystone species for the north atlantic because of recent changes in the geographic distribution of this species there are questions as to how this organism responds physiologically to environmental cues molecular techniques allow for examination and new understanding of these physiological changes here we describe the development of a microarray for high throughput studies of the physiological ecology of c finmarchicus an est database was generated for this species using a normalized cdna library derived from adult and sub adult individuals sequence data were clustered into contigs and annotated using blastx target transcripts were selected and unique 50 base pair oligomer probes were generated for 995 genes blast2go processing provided detailed information on gene function the selected targets included broad representation of biological processes cellular components and molecular functions the microarray was tested in two sets of comparisons adult females maintained at different food concentrations and field caught sub adults showing differences in lipid storage up regulated and down regulated transcripts were identified for both comparisons only a small subset of the genes up regulated in low food individuals were also up regulated in lipid poor animals no overlap was seen between the genes down regulated in the two comparisons,2012,0.841
Colonization of vegetation-rich moraines and inference of multiple sources of colonization in the High Arctic for Salix arctica,vegetation rich patches in the high arctic may serve as a significant source for vegetation reconstruction in the climate changes diversity and colonization however of such potential source populations in the high arctic has rarely been studied we examined chloroplast sequence variation in salix arctica a key species in the canadian high arctic from four adjacent glacial moraines of differing ages on ellesmere island canada as well as two other populations located at the center and southern end of the speciesâ range the estimated ages of the moraines varied from 35 000 to 250 years old the older moraine populations showed higher within population genetic variation compared with the other moraine populations which is generally attributed to differences in establishment age associated with plant densities among moraines the moraines with smaller plant density had lower genetic diversity and had no private haplotypes indicating the local population size and genetic diversity may not be recovered within a few thousand years this suggests seed dispersal at a local scale may be limited even in species with high velocity of seed dispersal and that high arctic vegetation rich patches may serve as significant source populations for sustaining local genetic diversity in addition the three regions we observed comprised an evolutionarily distinct lineage and significant population differentiation this implies multiple sources for the colonization during the most recent deglaciation resulting in the current wide distribution local as well as range wide processes of colonization would be essential to understand vegetation responses in high arctic to the environmental changes,2012,0.918
Invasion hotspots for non-native plants in Australia under current and future climates,we apply the concept of biodiversity hotspot analysis the identification of biogeographical regions of high species diversity to identify invasion hotspots â areas of potentially suitable climate for multiple non native plant species â in australia under current and future climates we used the species distribution model maxent to model climate suitability surfaces for 72 taxa recognized as â weeds of national significanceâ wons in australia under current and projected climate for 2020 and 2050 current climate suitability layers were summed across all 72 species and we observed two regions of high climatic suitability corresponding to the top 25th percentile of combined climatic suitability values across australia we defined these as potential invasion hotspots areas of climatic suitability equivalent to the hotspot regions were identified in the composite maps for 2020 and 2050 to track spatial changes in the hotspots over the two time steps two potential invasion hotspot regions were identified under current and projected climates the south west corner of western australia sw and south eastern australia se herbarium data confirmed the presence of 73 and 99 of those species predicted to be in each hotspot respectively suggesting that the se has greater invasion potential the area of both hotspots was predicted to retract southward and towards the coast under future climate scenarios reducing in size by 81 sw and 71 se by 2050 this reduction was driven by the dominance of southern temperate invasive plant species in the wons list 47 of the 72 of which 44 were predicted to experience reductions in their bioclimatic range by 2050 while climate is likely to become less suitable for the majority of wons in the future potential invasion hotspots based on climate suitability are likely to remain in the far south of eastern australia and in the far south west of western australia by 2050,2012,0.812
Geographic Spread of Gnamptogenys triangularis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ectatomminae),gnamptogenys triangularis mayr native to the forests of south and central america is a predatory ant that feeds on millipedes in its native range this species is known from buenos aires argentina 38 1â s in the south to costa rica 10 4â n in the north with records from eight countries in south america all except chile french guiana and paraguay and the two southernmost countries of central america panama and costa rica the first records of g triangularis outside its native range came from florida beginning in 1985 six sites 25 5â â 30 4â n and alabama in 1996 one site 30 4â n here we present the first records of g triangularis from mississippi dating from 2002â 2010 five sites 30 5â â 31 2â n based on its south american range it appears that g triangularis has the potential to spread to forests throughout much of the southeastern usa there are no documented impacts of g triangularis and it seems unlikely that this species will ever become a major pest,2012,0.605
"First record of the onion psyllid Bactericera tremblayi (Wagner, 1961) in France (Insecta: Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Psylloidea), new symptoms on leek crops and reassessment of the B. nigricornis -group distribution",the triozid bactericera tremblayi or onion psyllid is recorded for the first time from france and is associated for the first time with important damage on leek crops in several regions of the country we compare the morphology of this species with the two other spe cies of the b nigricornis group in order to avoid misidentifications and illustrate the dif ferent stages of b tremblayi the published distribution of the three species is summarised and updated based on collection data and the presence of b tremblayi and b trigonica in jordan and spain canary islands respectively is also recorded for the first time,2012,0.602
Semantic web technologies for education – time for a ‘turn to practice’?,in this synoptic paper the authors describe how the transformative potential of semantic web and linked web of data technologies for educational systems has been identified but highlight the fact that there are few accounts of the pedagogical applications of these same technologies the papers in this special issue provide accounts of these technologies in use in teaching learning and curriculum development in higher education several of the papers suggest that these new web technologies have important roles to play in changing pedagogical practices in higher education settings in which teachers and students are seen as designers of their own learning technologies and as producers of new knowledge the authors argue that the theorisation development and adoption of semantic web and linked data technologies would be well served by a â turn to practiceâ and a focus not on learning technologies in higher education but on the meaning making practices discourses and controversies around technologies in higher education,2012,0.099
Modelling geographic patterns of population density of the white-tailed deer in central Mexico by implementing ecological niche theory,conservation and management of species require basic knowledge on their geographic distribution and abundance here we propose a novel approach based on the theory of the ecological niche to model the spatial patterns of the white tailed deer odocoileus virginianus population density in two regions of central mexico balsas basin and tehuacã n cuicatlã n valley we used an ecological niche model to generate binary geographic distribution maps of the white tailed deer in each region based on occurrence data and a set of environmental variables ten the centroid of the distributions was calculated in ecological space niche centroid and the multidimensional euclidian ecological distance of each pixel to the niche centroid was estimated finally for each region the distance to the niche centroid dnc was regressed against 14 independent occurrence points in each site containing white tailed deer density information to determine the function describing the dnc density relationship which was used to generate maps describing the distribution of white tailed deer density our results indicated an inverse dnc density relationship in both regions balsas basin r2 î µ 0 90 and tehuacã n cuicatlã n r2 î µ 0 76 that was validated via bootstrapping resulting in a predicting capacity of near 62 for balsas basin and 65 for tehuacã n cuicatlã n valley our results suggest that the distance to the niche centroid method is a robust science based correlative approach that resulted useful to predict the population density of the white tailed deer in a spa tially explicit fashion te proposed approach is suitable for predicting the distribution of density for white tailed deer for which occurrence data with accompanying density information exists but relative abundance can also be estimated when no abundance data are available,2012,0.165
Data contracts for cloud-based data marketplaces,currently rich and diverse data types have been increasingly provided using the dataas a service daas model a form of cloud computing services and the core element of data marketplaces this facilitates the on the fly data composition and utilisation for several data intensive applications in e science and business domains however data offered by daas are constrained by several data concerns that if not automatically being reasoned properly will lead to a wrong way of using them in this paper we support the view that data concerns should be explicitly modelled and specified in data contracts to support concern aware data selection and utilisation we perform a detailed analysis of current techniques for data contracts in the cloud instead of relying on a specific representation of data contracts we introduce an abstract model for data contracts that can be used to build different types of data contracts for specific types of data based on the abstract model we propose several techniques for evaluating data contracts that can be integrated into data service selection and composition frameworks we also illustrate our approach with some real world scenarios and show how data contracts can be integrated into data agreement exchange services in the cloud,2012,0.005
Genetic characterization of three Cuban Trichomonas vaginalis virus. Phylogeny of Totiviridae family.,trichomonas vaginalis can be infected with double stranded rna dsrna viruses known as t vaginalis virus tvv this viral infection may have important implications for trichomonal virulence and disease pathogenesis in this study we identified and genetic characterized three strains of tvvs isolated from t vaginalis in cuba the three new predicted sequences of capsid protein and rna dependent rna polymerase amounted to the previously determined 20 tvv sequences and other 21 viruses of totiviridae family were used for a phylogenetic analysis four distinct monophyletic clades are shown in a phylogenetic tree one corresponds with tvvs other with victorivirus leishmaniavirus and eimeria brunetti virus and other with viruses of the genus totivirus and the last with giardiavirus the e brunetti virus is identified in the phylogenetic tree as independent taxon between leishmaniavirus and victorivirus isolates most closely related to victorivirus tvv constitute a monophyletic cluster distinguishable from all other viruses in totiviridae family this result suggested that tvv may be grouped in a separated genus and not inside of giardiavirus tvvs appear to be more closely related to protozoan viruses in the genus leishmaniavirus and to fungal viruses in the genus victorivirus than to other protozoan and fungal viruses in giardiavirus and totivirus among tvvs four main groups can be recognized within trichomonasvirus cluster which correspond with the previous species classification proposed further studies with more tvv strains especially tvv3 and 4 strains are needed in order to determine the phylogenetic relationship among trichomonasvirus genus and specifically if tvv2 and 3 each also constitute a well delimited group,2012,0.958
"Diversification in North American arid lands: niche conservatism, divergence and expansion of habitat explain speciation in the genus Ephedra.",a lineage of 12 arid land shrubby species in the gymnosperm genus ephedra gnetales from north america is used to evaluate the influence of climate on speciation with a long evolutionary history and a well documented fossil record this lineage is an ideal model for understanding the process of speciation under a niche conservatism scenario using seven dna molecular markers bayesian inference is carried out to uncover sister species and to estimate time of divergence of the lineages ecological niche models are generated for four parapatric and sympatric sister species and two analyses of niche evolution are performed one based on ecological niche models and another using raw data and multivariate analysis as previous analyses suggest the diversification of north america ephedra species may be the result of a recent secondary radiation both parapatric and sympatric species diverged mostly in a scenario of climatic niche conservatism however we also found strong evidence for niche divergence for one of the sister species pairs e californica e trifurca moreover the multivariate analysis found environmental differences for some variables between sister species the estimated divergence time of three pairs of sister species distributed in southwestern north america e cutleri e aspera e californica e trifurca and e torreyana e viridis is inferred to have occurred in the late miocene to pliocene and for the sister species pair e antisyphilitica e coryi distributed in the southern united states and northeastern mexico it was inferred from the pliocene to pleistocene the orogenetic and climatic changes documented for these regions related to expansion of arid lands may have contributed to the diversification in north american ephedra rather than adaptations to new climatic conditions,2012,0.962
New taxonomy and old collections: integrating DNA barcoding into the collection curation process,because they house large biodiversity collections and are also research centres with sequencing facilities natural history museums are well placed to develop dna barcoding best practices the main difficulty is generally the vouchering system it must ensure that all data produced remain attached to the corresponding specimen from the field to publication in articles and online databases the museum national d histoire naturelle in paris is one of the leading laboratories in the marine barcode of life marbol project which was used as a pilot programme to include barcode collections for marine molluscs and crustaceans the system is based on two relational databases the first one classically records the data locality and identification attached to the specimens in the second one tissue clippings dna extractions both preserved in 2d barcode tubes and pcr data including primers are linked to the corresponding specimen all the steps of the process sampling event specimen identification molecular processing data submission to barcode of life database bold and genbank are thus linked together furthermore we have developed several web based tools to automatically upload data into the system control the quality of the sequences produced and facilitate the submission to online databases this work is the result of a joint effort from several teams in the museum national d histoire naturelle mnhn but also from a collaborative network of taxonomists and molecular systematists outside the museum resulting in the vouchering so far of ∠41 000 sequences and the production of ∠11 000 coi sequences,2012,0.148
"Selection and inertia in the evolution of holocentric chromosomes in sedges (Carex, Cyperaceae)",â changes in chromosome number as a result of fission and fusion in holocentrics have direct and immediate effects on the recombination rate we investigate the support for the classic hypothesis that environmental stability selects for increased recombination rates â we employed a phylogenetic and cytogenetic data set from one of the most diverse angiosperm genera in the world which has the largest nonpolyploid chromosome radiation carex cyperaceae 2n 12 124 2100 spp we evaluated alternative ornstein uhlenbeck models of chromosome number adaptation to the environment in an information theoretic framework â we found moderate support for a positive influence of lateral inflorescence unit size on chromosome number which may be selected in a stable environment in which resources for reproductive investment are larger we found weak support for a positive influence on chromosome number of water saturated soils and among month temperature constancy which would be expected to be negatively select for pioneering species chromosome number showed a strong phylogenetic signal â we argue that our finding of small but significant effects of life history and ecology is compatible with our original hypothesis regarding selection of optima in recombination rates low recombination rate is optimal when inmediate fitness is required by contrast high recombination rate is optimal when stable environments allow for evolutionary innovation,2012,0.248
Evolutionary informatics: unifying knowledge about the diversity of life.,the accelerating growth of data and knowledge in evolutionary biology is indisputable despite this rapid progress information remains scattered poorly documented and in formats that impede discovery and integration a grand challenge is the creation of a linked system of all evolutionary data information and knowledge organized around darwin s ever growing tree of life such a system accommodating topological disagreement where necessary would consolidate taxon names phenotypic and geographical distributional data across clades and serve as an integrated community resource the field of evolutionary informatics reviewed here for the first time has matured into a robust discipline that is developing the conceptual infrastructure and community frameworks for meeting this grand challenge,2012,0.229
Distribution of the threatened lace hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus reichenbachii) under various climate change scenarios,climate change predictions for the great plains region of north america include increased temperatures and changes to annual precipitation patterns we used ecological niche modeling maxent to assess how three climate change scenarios published by the intergovernmental panel on climate change might affect the distribution of the threatened lace hedgehog cactus echinocereus reichenbachii by the 2050s and the 2080s under all scenarios investigated the total land area of suitable habitat for the species increased relative to the current land area predicted as highly suitable by the model however under all scenarios the center of the most suitable area for this species shifted by 160â 604 km from the current location in northwest texas changing at a rate 20â 75 km per decade while the rate of dispersal in this species is not known echinocereus spp seeds are typically spread by small mammals and it seems unlikely that this species will be able to disperse rapidly consequently the range may initially contract during the coming century especially in southern texas where it is most imperiled and where the climate is predicted to become increasingly unsuitable the current patchiness of distribution of the species suggests that microhabitat characteristics and limitations to dispersal might reduce its actual realized niche relative to the fundamental niche indicated by the models in addition land use for agriculture grazing and urbanization might further reduce the success of this species in a changing climate,2012,0.848
A review of the Ephemeroptera of Finnmark – DNA barcodes identify Holarctic relations,the knowledge of the diversity and distribution of mayflies in finnmark county the northernmost part of mainland norway is reviewed eighty five dna barcodes representing 23 species in the region are released and used in association of life stages as well as evaluation of morphological characters commonly used in identification of scandinavian ephemeroptera comparisons of dna barcodes from north american species indicate close relations between norwegian and north american populations of acentrella lapponica bengtsson 1912 heptagenia dalecarlica bengtsson 1912 metretopus borealis bengtsson 1909 ephemerella aurvillii bengtsson 1908 and parameletus chelifer bengtsson 1908 the dna barcode from siphlonurus alternatus say 1824 cluster closely with specimens of the same species from finland but are more than 7 8 different from north american populations indicating that the fennoscandian specimens might constitute a separate species two species new to finnmark and ten new province records are reported,2012,0.931
Connecting dynamic vegetation models to data - an inverse perspective,dynamic vegetation models provide process based explanations of the dynamics and the distribution of plant ecosystems they offer significant advantages over static correlative modelling approaches particularly for ecosystems that are outside their equilibrium due to global change or climate change a persistent problem however is their parameterization parameters and processes of dynamic vegetation models dvms are traditionally determined independently of the model while model outputs are compared to empirical data for validation and informal model comparison only but field data for such independent estimates of parameters and processes are often difficult to obtain and the desire to include better descriptions of processes such as biotic interactions dispersal phenotypic plasticity and evolution in future vegetation models aggravates limitations related to the current parameterization paradigm in this paper we discuss the use of bayesian methods to bridge this gap we explain how bayesian methods allow direct estimates of parameters and processes encoded in prior distributions to be combined with inverse estimates encoded in likelihood functions the combination of direct and inverse estimation of parameters and processes allows a much wider range of vegetation data to be used simultaneously including vegetation inventories species traits species distributions remote sensing eddy flux measurements and palaeorecords the possible reduction of uncertainty regarding structure parameters and predictions of dvms may not only foster scientific progress but will also increase the relevance of these models for policy advice,2012,0.132
"Natural Resources, Sustainability and Humanity",biodiversity has been fundamental to sustain the human population which is currently estimated at nearly 7 billion people however less than one fifth of the extant species are known to science and among those only a minuscule pro portion was described in any biological detail this huge gap in our knowledge of biodiversity is in deep contrast with the extraordinary level of scientific and techno logical development that modern society has reached how can we take advantage of the technology currently available to detect the putative high rates of biodiversity loss how can we efficiently manage our ecosystems and biological communities if we do not even have a comprehensive inventory of biodiversity to start with the barcode of life initiative boli aims to contribute to resolve these ques tions by building a new system for species identification using dna sequences from standardized regions of the genomeâ dna barcodes once fully implemented this novel system will greatly facilitate the access to taxonomic knowledge globally and revolutionize our ability to rapidly and rigorously identify life forms in a multitude of scenarios we anticipate major contributions of dna barcodes for biodiversity research when integrated with other ongoing technological organizational and conceptual developments this can be illustrated by the growing capacity to monitor biodiver sity which has lead to the recognition of cryptic species their prevalence and distri bution patterns the coupling of dna barcoding with next generation sequencing will enable to capture the structure and dynamics of complex communities with unprecedented degree of detail this can catalyze the rate of species discovery glob ally and contribute to improve the way in which we conserve biodiversity,2012,0.435
Challenges in developing medicinal plant databases for sharing ethnopharmacological knowledge,major research contributions in ethnopharmacology have generated vast amount of data associated with medicinal plants computerized databases facilitate data management and analysis making coherent information available to researchers planners and other users web based databases also facilitate knowledge transmission and feed the circle of information exchange between the ethnopharmacological studies and public audience however despite the development of many medicinal plant databases a lack of uniformity is still discernible therefore it calls for defining a common standard to achieve the common objectives of ethnopharmacology,2012,0.192
Interpretation models for non-standard compass directions,our work aims to transform locality descriptions to geographic information we focus on directional phrases like â eastern mato grossoâ and â central northern paranã â these capture the cognition of direction by humans in the past when tools and technology for positioning were limited locations names were recorded in situ in natural language our research corpus is the two volumes of the ornithological gazetteer of brazil paynter and traylor 1991 the gazetteer consist of 8000 entries we digitized these and corrected for possible ocr errors the main components of the entries are locality name state name geocode and description of all 8000 entries 12 do not have a geocode and 47 are â œsee entriesâ that only refer to full description entries the choice for this gazetteer comes with a reason in the past we found that only 18 of the brazilian data held in the global biodiversity information facility gbif on avian taxa is geocoded brazil contributes significantly to the gbif since it is globally the country holding the largest biodiversity by a variety of measures the paynter and traylor gazetteer series are considered a seminal work in the domain of ornithology 2002 and is the single most important resource for brazil hence it becomes a natural choice to try geocode entries by this gazetteer eventually improving gbif all entries describe natural history collection sites of historical expeditions and exhibit a variety of spatial relations of which directional containment is of interest in this paper in figure 1 â œsouth central paranã â is one such directional containment example here the location of colã nia segrãšdo is unknown there are however hints in the description that may help in determining position of that locality,2012,0.388
Name-based Approach to Build a Hub for Biodiversity LOD,because of a huge variety of biological studies focused on different targets i e from molecules to ecosystem data produced and used in each field is also managed independently so that it is difficult to know the relationship among them we aim to build a data hub with lod to connect data in different biological fields to enhance search and use of data across the fields we build a prototype data hub on taxonomic information on species which is a key to retrieve data and link to data bases in different fields the core of this hub is the dataset for species and taxa we adopted the database called â œbuilding dictionary for life science bdls â that contains relationship between scientific names and common japanese names based on this dataset we integrate various datasets such as domain specific taxonomies and specimen databases,2012,0.52
Thermal tolerance and the global redistribution of animals,the redistribution of life on earth has emerged as one of the most significant biological responses to anthropogenic climate warming1â 3 despite being one of the most long standing puzzles in ecology4 we still have little understanding of how temperature sets geographic range boundaries5 herewe show that marine and terrestrial ectotherms differ in the degree to which they fill their potential latitudinal ranges as predicted from their thermal tolerance limits marine ectotherms more fully occupy the extent of latitudes tolerable within their thermal tolerance limits and are consequently predicted to expand at their polewardrange boundaries and contract at their equatorward boundaries with climate warming in contrast terrestrial ectotherms are excluded from the warmest regions of their latitudinal range thus the equatorward or â trailingâ range boundaries may not shift consistently towards the poles with climate warming using global observations of climate induced range shifts we test this prediction and show that in the ocean shifts at both range boundaries have been equally responsive whereas on land equatorward range boundaries have lagged in response to climate warming these results indicate that marine speciesâ ranges conform more closely to their limits of thermal tolerance and thus range shifts will be more predictable and coherent however on land warmer range boundaries are not at equilibrium with heat tolerance understanding the relative contribution of factors other than temperature in controlling equatorward range limits is critical for predicting distribution changes with implications for population and community viability,2012,0.442
VoSeq: A Voucher and DNA Sequence Web Application,there is an ever growing number of molecular phylogenetic studies published due to in part the advent of new techniques that allow cheap and quick dna sequencing hence the demand for relational databases with which to manage and annotate the amassing dna sequences genes voucher specimens and associated biological data is increasing in addition a user friendly interface is necessary for easy integration and management of the data stored in the database back end available databases allow management of a wide variety of biological data however most database systems are not specifically constructed with the aim of being an organizational tool for researchers working in phylogenetic inference we here report a new software facilitating easy management of voucher and sequence data consisting of a relational database as back end for a graphic user interface accessed via a web browser the application voseq includes tools for creating molecular datasets of dna or amino acid sequences ready to be used in commonly used phylogenetic software such as raxml tnt mrbayes and paup as well as for creating tables ready for publishing it also has inbuilt blast capabilities against all dna sequences stored in voseq as well as sequences in ncbi genbank by using mash ups and calls to web services voseq allows easy integration with public services such as yahoo maps flickr encyclopedia of life eol and gbif by generating data dumps that can be processed with gbif s integrated publishing toolkit,2012,0.417
Overview of principles and implementations to deal with spatial issues in monitoring environmental effects of genetically modified organisms,the approval of genetically modified organisms gmo for deliberate release and placing on the market requires gmo environmental risk assessment era and gmo environmental monitoring em both gmo era and gmo em are still under discussion the goal of this article is firstly to analyse principles of gmo em as published in the association of german engineers vdi guideline 4330 part 1 focusing on the characterisation of the receiving environment affected by gmo cultivation and the representativeness of gmo em to assess large scale implications of gmo cultivation secondly the article introduces measures to meet these issues by the use of map data and statistics within a geographical information system gis finally three case studies exemplify the application of data and methods to deal with spatial issues of gmo em as outlined in the vdi guideline 4330 part 1 a gis based approach is presented it relies on both spatial data collected from several sources which were derived from sample point data and geostatistical and multivariate statistical methods within a gis environment data used for describing the receiving environment and for planning and evaluating monitoring schemes comprise information about land use climate phenology soil coverage species distribution and ecoregions the case studies deal with 1 ecological land classification for characterisation of gmo receiving environments and representative em 2 selection of representative sites for modelling gmo dispersal and 3 delineation and mapping of segregation distances even a systematic and stepwise structured risk assessment cannot cover all risk relevant questions especially large scale long term and combinatory effects which may not occur before the conventional application of the respective gmo hence gmo em is crucial to deal with unanticipated and undesirable effects the article gives an overview of a gis implementation and relevant geodata promoting gmo em,2012,0.042
An appraisal of megascience platforms for biodiversity information,te megascience platforms biodiversity heritage library bhl catalogue of life col encyclopedia of life eol global biodiversity information facility gbif international barcode of life ibol international nucleotide sequence database collaboration insdc and jstor plant science all be long to a group of global players that harvest process repurpose and provide biodiversity data on all kinds of organisms each of these platforms primarily focus on one data domain for instance taxonomy and classification occurrence morphology ecology and molecular data te present contribution describes aspects of processing and provision of biological research data on these platforms focusing on the technical implementation of data exchange copyright issues and data sharing policies as well as their implications for data custodians owners providers and publishers with the exception of jstor plant science most international initiatives seek long term business models and funding mechanisms to provide online data openly and free of charge for example currently gbif depends on governmental commitments for its funding and col is financed by eu or national grants as well as being based on species 2000 a british non for profit company and itis tese business models are compared with that of jstor plant science the commercial portal of the global plant initiative gpi all initiatives currently meet challenges of sustainability with regard to data curation as well as software development for maintaining the complexity of their services all platforms discussed here also harvest and provide mycological and lichenological research data,2012,0.119
Testing Pairwise Association between Spatially Autocorrelated Variables: A New Approach Using Surrogate Lattice Data.,independence between observations is a standard prerequisite of traditional statistical tests of association this condition is however violated when autocorrelation is present within the data in the case of variables that are regularly sampled in space i e lattice data or images such as those provided by remote sensing or geographical databases this problem is particularly acute because analytic derivation of the null probability distribution of the test statistic e g pearson s r is not always possible when autocorrelation is present we propose instead the use of a monte carlo simulation with surrogate data,2012,0.324
Temperate forage and pulse legume genetic gap analysis,wild legume species and genetic diversity of the mediterranean basin provide an invaluable source of traits for the improvement of cultivated temperate forage and pulse legume crops the research illustrates how the existing geo referenced passport data associated with acces sions of cicer lathyrus lens medicago pisum and vicia species can be used to identify gaps in current ex situ conservation and develop a more systematic in situ conservation strat egy for both the genera individually and for all six genera combined taxonomic ecological geographic and conservation information for the six genera were collated from icarda and gbif datasets as well as datasets collected by the authors over the last 25 years the com bined database contained 200 281 unique geo referenced records cicer 452 lathyrus 61 081 lens 672 medicago 42 248 pisum 728 and vicia 95 100 collected between 1884 and 2008 patterns of specific richness based on the germplasm accession and herbar ium specimen data were analysed and in situ hotspots identified using complementarity analysis the ex situ conservation status of each genus was assessed and used to provide a priority ranking for future collection priorities in the mediterranean basin specifically tar get iucn recognised protected areas are identified as potential sites to establish genetic reserves however the premier temperate forage and pulse legume hotspot on the syrian lebanese border is not coincident with any existing internationally recognised pro tected areas and here there is a need to establish a novel protected area,2012,0.642
Ecological niche structure and rangewide abundance patterns of species,spatial abundance patterns across speciesâ ranges have attracted intense attention in macroecology and biogeography one key hypothesis has been that abundance declines with geographical distance from the range centre but tests of this idea have shown that the effect may occur indeed only in a minority of cases we explore an alternative hypothesis that speciesâ abundances decline with distance from the centroid of the speciesâ habitable conditions in environmental space the ecological niche we demonstrate consistent negative abundanceâ ecological distance relation ships across all 11 species analysed turtles to wolves and that relationships in environmental space are consistently stronger than relationships in geographical space,2012,0.401
Biological collections in an ever changing world: Herbaria as tools for biogeographical and environmental studies,plant specimens stored in herbaria are being used as never before to document the impacts of global change on humans and nature however published statistics on the use of biological collections are rare and ecologists lack quantitative data demonstrating the relevance to science of herbarium specimens i found 382 studies with original data that used herbarium specimens to document biogeographical patterns or environmental changes most studies are less than 10 years old and only 1 4 of the herbarium specimens worldwide have been used to answer biogeographical or environmental questions the vast majority 82 of papers dealt with vascular plants but some studies also used bryophytes lichens seaweeds and fungi the herbarium specimens were collected from all continents but most of the studies used specimens from north america 40 of studies or europe 28 many types of researches conservation plant disease plant invasion pollution etc can be conducted using herbarium specimens climate change and especially phenological reconstructions are clearly emerging research topics by group small herbaria 100 000 specimens are consulted as often as very large herbaria 1 000 000 specimens for biogeographical and environmental research but in most cases only large facilities provide specimens collected worldwide the median number of specimens per study in papers using computerized collections 15 295 was much higher than for papers that did not include electronic data 226 the use of molecular analyses to investigate herbarium specimens is still relatively unexplored at least from biogeographical and environmental points of view combined with recently developed procedures to correct biases herbarium specimens might provide in the near future exciting additional spatio temporal insights that are currently unimaginable,2012,0.356
Continuous and long-term monoxenic culture of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Gigaspora decipiens in root organ culture,establishment of arbuscular mycorrhizal am germplasm collections is complex because of the obligate biotrophic nature of am fungi only a few am species are routinely maintained in monoxenic culture with ri t dna transformed roots as host incorporation of new am species into this culture system is important for molecular physiological and taxonomical studies here we report for the first time the successful monoxenic culture of gigaspora decipiens ja2 strain with transformed carrot daucus carota roots in vitro cultures were established from field collected spores sub culture of newly in vitro formed spores was established over five successive generations for a period of 6 y although initial culture of field collected spores was difficult successive sub cultures appeared to be adapted to the in vitro growing conditions the ja2 strain of g decipiens completed its life cycle while maintaining its morphological characteristics stability and propagule viability under the monoxenic conditions over several generations this stable and homogeneous monoxenic material obtained for g decipiens is part of the banco de glomeromycota in vitro bgiv http www bgiv com ar and could facilitate morphological physiological and molecular analysis of this am species,2012,0.747
The West African Vegetation Database,the west african vegetation database http www westafricanvegetation org givd id af 00 001 is an online database that has been designed to securely store edit and manage phytosociological and dendrometrical relevã s from west africa to provide data for research projects dealing with but not limited to plant communities biogeography population structure and vegetation dy namics an integrated access management system allows data owners to keep data private to grant selected users access or to make data sets available to the general public data entry is possible online or in a local offline database that can be synchronized with the online database the database allows the calculation of biodiversity indices and has several export options,2012,0.258
Landscape Level Biodiversity Databases in India: Status and the Scope,conservation of biodiversity requires management higher than the species level of organization particularly at the landscape scale it is however difficult to manage each threatened species individually alternatively management can focus on the ecosystems that contain these species and on the landscapes containing the ecosystems the relatively new discipline of landscape ecology provides insight into both landscape diversity and the species diversity and suggests a theoretical and practical basis for conservation planning the information on the biodiversity characteristics such as species richness and their spatial distribution economic and the ethno botanical importance is of great significance to any nation the department of biotechnology and department of space government of india funded a nationwide project between 1998 and 2010 to characterize and map the flowering plants richness in the natural forests grasslands scrub etc and man made forest plantations vegetation formations at landscape level the spatial database on vegetation types generated using wet and dry season satellite imagery and ancillary data such as topographic maps and the species richness through field inventory were used to generate the spatially explicit species distribution maps and statistics a customized software package splam spatial landscape modeling was developed for landscape analysis and spatial data integration this first of its kind unique study spanning over 12 years has resulted in a large baseline spatial database on vegetation types porosity patchiness interspersion juxtaposition fragmentation disturbance regimes ecosystem uniqueness terrain complexity and the species richness the field inventory involved 16 581 geo referenced 0 04 ha plots across india and 7 761 plant species the geospatially tagged species database created in the project provides information on the endemic rare endangered threatened and medicinally economically important species the database disseminated to large number of organizations including state forest departments has found extensive applications in policy planning operational management biodiversity conservation bio prospecting and the climate change studies,2012,0.969
The Real Task of Selecting Records for Ecological Niche Modelling,biological collections evoke contrasting feelings for being such a vast source of biodiversity data which is prone to all sorts of errors and uncertainties the situation is not different for brazilian herbaria currently sharing more than two million easily accessible records on the web properly dealing with this reality is a crucial task when using this kind of data for ecological niche modelling enm so that errors and uncertainties do not generate misleading results in conservation here we investigate some of the issues that can be found in herbarium specimen data describing a set of automatic procedures that can be used for a prior selection of records for enm in total 11531 records for 135 species of passifloraceae that natively occur in brazil were analyzed considering different spatial resolutions ranging from 30 arc seconds to 10 arc minutes after applying the procedures the proportion of spatially unique records was 9 3 for the highest resolution considering all species with an average number of 8 records selected per species these numbers increased to 17 and 16 respectively for all other resolutions this scenario highlights the importance of using data quality filters and further developing enm presence only methods that can work with a low number of records per species automatic procedures still cannot discard expert review but they can greatly facilitate it by drawing attention to a much smaller number of records potentially useful for enm most of the data quality procedures described here can also be applied to other taxonomic groups regions and specimen data sources,2012,0.833
Protected areas in the Spanish Pyrenees: A meaningful way to preserve biodivesity?,the establishment of protected areas is one of the main tools used for biodiversity conservation one of the components of environmental management although the theoretical framework for protected areas has been long known and discussed there are few data about their practical effectiveness as a means to preserve biodiversity through the analysis of information from the global biodiversity information facility gbif we have looked for any relationship between the protection status and the general species richness i e number of all living species taken as a surrogate for biodiversity in the spanish pyrenees we found that higher protection levels were associated to higher richness of non endangered species however additional reliability tests have shown that for endangered species the amount of currently available data may still be insufficient for effective management to avoid this lack of reliability enhancing public access to biodiversity data or improving sampling effort is mandatory,2012,0.735
On the brink of extinction? How climate change may affect global chelonian species richness and distribution,anthropogenic global climate change has already led to alterations in biodiversity patterns by directly and indirectly affecting species distributions it has been suggested that poikilothermic animals including reptiles will be particularly affected by global change and large scale reptile declines have already been observed currently half of the world s freshwater turtles and tortoises are considered threatened with extinction and climate change may exacerbate these declines in this study we assess how global chelonian species richness will change in the near future we use species distribution models developed under current climate conditions for 78 of all extant species and project them onto different intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc scenarios for 2080 we detect a strong dependence of temperature shaping most species ranges which coincide with their general temperature related physiological traits i e temperature dependent sex determination furthermore the extent and distribution of the current bioclimatic niches of most chelonians may change remarkably in the near future likely leading to a substantial decrease of local species abundance and ultimately a reduction in species richness future climatic changes may cause the ranges of 86 of the species to contract and of these ranges nearly 12 are predicted to be situated completely outside their currently realized niches hence the interplay of increasing habitat fragmentation and loss due to climatic stress may result in a serious threat for several chelonian species,2012,0.948
"Five new species of Rhodamnia (Myrtaceae, Myrteae) from New Guinea",five new species of rhodamnia are proposed for new guinea including r asekiensis r daymanensis r maku mak r taratot and r waigeoensis rhodamnia sharpeana known previously only in australia is reported for the first time for papua new guinea detailed species descriptions and associated taxonomic data are provided for all species a key is provided for species of rhodamnia with stellate trichomes given the overall paucity of col lections all species are tentatively assigned as data deficient following iucn conservation recommendations,2012,0.84
"Morphological and chemical studies on Platismatia erosa (Parmeliaceae) from Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan",the occurrence of platismatia erosa in tibet and adjacent regions is reported the shape of hitherto rarely found apothecia and pycnospores the latter observed for the first time are illustrated and compared with those of european material of p glauca tlc analyses of p erosa samples revealed two substances hitherto unknown in platismatia namely pannaric acid and jackinic acid the latter also found in fruiting material of platismatia glauca from europe two chemotypes of p erosa are recognized chemotype i with caperatic acid as main fatty acid and chemotype ii found only once with jackinic acid as main aliphatic substance,2012,0.479
Thermal Variability Increases the Impact of Autumnal Warming and Drives Metabolic Depression in an Overwintering Butterfly,increases in thermal variability elevate metabolic rate due to jensen s inequality and increased metabolic rate decreases the fitness of dormant ectotherms by increasing consumption of stored energy reserves theory predicts that ectotherms should respond to increased thermal variability by lowering the thermal sensitivity of metabolism which will reduce the impact of the warm portion of thermal variability we examined the thermal sensitivity of metabolic rate of overwintering erynnis propertius lepidoptera hesperiidae larvae from a stable or variable environment reared in the laboratory in a reciprocal common garden design and used these data to model energy use during the winters of 1973â 2010 using meteorological data to predict the energetic outcomes of metabolic compensation and phenological shifts larvae that experienced variable temperatures had decreased thermal sensitivity of metabolic rate and were larger than those reared at stable temperatures which could partially compensate for the increased energetic demands even with depressed thermal sensitivity the variable environment was more energy demanding than the stable with the majority of this demand occurring in autumn autumn phenology changes thus had disproportionate influence on energy consumption in variable environments and variable reared larvae were most susceptible to overwinter energy drain therefore the energetic impacts of the timing of entry into winter dormancy will strongly influence ectotherm fitness in northern temperate environments we conclude that thermal variability drives the expression of metabolic suppression in this species that phenological shifts will have a greater impact on ectotherms in variable thermal environments and that e propertius will be more sensitive to shifts in phenology in autumn than in spring this suggests that increases in overwinter thermal variability and or extended warm autumns will negatively impact all non feeding dormant ectotherms which lack the ability to suppress their overwinter metabolic thermal sensitivity,2012,0.45
Boosting the Performance of Web-based GVE systems: Lessons and a New System Design on Biodiversity Explorations,â we consider query driven visual exploration qdve techniques as performance amplifiers of advanced geospatial visualization agv and geospatial visual analytics gva by examining the three web based geospatial visual exploration gve systems that we have designed and implemented for different application domains and geospatial data types we recommend performance boosting techniques for web based gve systems we further present a new system design to visually explore the complex relationships among geographical environmental and taxonomic components of global biodiversity data with higher level of performance in addition to leveraging existing performance boosting techniques the new deign utilizes data parallel computing power of gpus that are already available on commodity personal computers for indexing and query processing,2012,0.071
CODATA Task Group on Digital Data Citation - Best Practices: Research & Analysis Results,as part of this yearâ s activities of the codata digital data citation task group we conducted an inventory of existing literature as well as data citations and attribution activities the idea behind this effort was to collect sources of information related to how data repositories cite and provide attributions to their data sets this document is the result of the collection of bibliographic sources subsequent research and corresponding analysis,2012,0.184
Predicting the environmental niche of the genus Phymaturus: Are palluma and patagonicus groups ecologically differentiated?,the genus phymaturus reptilia liolaemidae is distributed in the mountains and rocky plateaux of argentina and chile and comprises two groups of species palluma and patagonicus the two lineages have diverged early in the evolution of the genus and up to today there is very little geographical overlap between them we worked with records of localities from the literature herpetological collections and field data to evaluate habitat suitability of the genus phymaturus we used 11 environmental variables to develop environmental niche models enms for each group within the genus using the maxent software and to determine those variables that best explain the distribution of each group we also estimated measures of niche similarity using enmtools to determine whether niche differentiation is real or apparent the geographical overlap between the groups was very low considering the large geographical range of the genus some variables such as mean annual temperature soil type and bare soil cover have a high contribution to the models for both groups the current niche overlap between phymaturus groups indicates that the environmental niches of the palluma and patagonicus groups are not equivalent based on background analysis we cannot reject the hypothesis that similarity or divergence between groups of phymaturus is no more than expected based on the availability of habitat the results of this study are a first approximation to the knowledge of the environmental variables associated with the palluma and patagonicus groups and reveal that the ecological differences found between these groups are more likely due to habitat availability in their respective regions than to differences in habitat preferences,2012,0.355
Participatory design of DataONE—Enabling cyberinfrastructure for the biological and environmental sciences,the scope and nature of biological and environmental research are evolving in response to environmental challenges such as global climate change invasive species and emergent diseases in particular scientific studies are increasingly focusing on long term broad scale and complex questions that require massive amounts of diverse data collected by remote sensing platforms and embedded environmental sensor networks collaborative interdisciplinary science teams and new approaches for managing preserving analyzing and sharing data here we describe the design of dataone data observation network for earth â a cyberinfrastructure platform developed to support rapid data discovery and access across diverse data centers distributed worldwide and designed to provide scientists with an integrated set of familiar tools that support all elements of the data life cycle e g from planning and acquisition through data integration analysis and visualization ongoing evolution of the dataone architecture is based on participatory user centered design processes including 1 identification and prioritization of stakeholder communities 2 developing an understanding of their perceptions attitudes and user requirements 3 usability analysis and assessment and 4 engaging science teams in grand challenge exemplars such as understanding the broad scale dynamics of bird migration in combination the four approaches engage the broad community in providing guidance on infrastructure design and implementation,2012,0.093
"Plant DNA Barcodes, Taxonomic Management, and Species Discovery in Tropical Forests",dna barcodes have great potential for species identifi cation and taxonomic discovery in tropical forests this use of dna barcodes requires a reference dna library of known taxa with which to match dna from unidentifi ed specimens at an even more basic level it presupposes that the species in the regional species pool have latin binomials this is not the case in species rich tropical forests in which many species are new to science or members of poorly circumscribed species complexes this chapter describes a work fl ow geared toward taxonomic discovery which includes the discovery of new species distribution records and hybrid forms and to management of taxonomic entities in forest inventory plots it outlines the roles of laboratory technicians fi eld workers and herbarium based taxonomists and concludes with a discussion of potential multilocus nuclear dna approaches for identifying species in recently evolved clades,2012,0.939
Capacity Building and Awareness for Pollinators,this chapter discusses the capacity building for conservation and management of pollination services and covers a wide range from formal education at all levels to the informal building ofcapacity amongst farmers land managers policy makers and other target groups including the public as a whole a particular emphasis has been laid on building capacity in taxonomy and pollinator identifica tion since this is one of the major impediments to pollinator conservation,2012,0.321
A new era for specimen databases and biodiversity information management in South Africa,we present observations and a commentary on the inherited legacy and current state of biodiversity information management in south african natural history museums and make recommendations for the future we emphasize the importance of using a recognized database application and training and capacity development to improve the quality and integration of biodiversity information for research,2012,0.244
Does adding multi-scale climatic variability improve our capacity to explain niche transferability in invasive species?,our understanding of how species will respond to global change is still limited reasons hindering our ability to forecast species range shifts and expansions are the mismatch between realized climate niches in speciesâ native and invasive ranges and the lack of available climatic datasets offering multiple scales of climatic variability e g monthly and inter annual climatic variability here we present a multi taxon analysis of invasive species niche transferability that considers multi scale climatic variability using ten noxious terrestrial invasive species we compare native versus invasive ranges in geographic space as estimated using the species distribution modeling sdm algorithm maxent and the comparative index hellinger s i with three possible climatic layer configurations representing natural climatic variability 1 inter annual 2 monthly and 3 a combination of inter annual and monthly climatic variability we assess model performance using the area under the receiver characteristic curve auc results show that combined scales of climatic variability improved performance of the models for 60 of the species in the native range and 70 of the species in the invaded range contrasting native and invaded range sdm performance showed that the same climate layer configuration produced the best models only in 70 of the species for 90 of the species the most similar niches were obtained based on monthly climatic variability the divergence in our findings between higher performing sdms and the most transferable sdms suggest some species range limits might be constrained by one scale of climatic variability in the native range and a different one in the invaded range where sufficient occurrence data in the invaded range is available the inclusion of an additional scale of climatic variability can enhance ecological understanding of the invasion events however when invaded range occurrence data is not available the most conservative approach would use only monthly climatic variability if these finding are extrapolated to niche transferability in time we suggest that historical collection records should be analyzed to understand speciesâ response to multiple scales of climate variability in the past thereby informing the selection of appropriate scales of climate variability in the future,2012,0.921
Building a global observing system for biodiversity,the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon has been in formal existence for three years following several years of design and discussion it is the realisation of the biodiversity societal benefit area envisaged in the geo system of systems geoss geo bon links together existing networks each covering particular aspects of biodiversity or parts of the world and takes steps to help fill important gaps in the system geo bon focusses on coordination and harmonisation of the existing and emerging systems advocacy and action to sustain the observing systems and to fill the identified gaps and understanding and servicing user needs for biodiversity observations particularly in the policy making domain,2012,0.085
"Climate Change and the Potential Distribution of an Invasive Shrub, Lantana camara L",the threat posed by invasive species in particular weeds to biodiversity may be exacerbated by climate change lantana camara l lantana is a woody shrub that is highly invasive in many countries of the world it has a profound economic and environmental impact worldwide including australia knowledge of the likely potential distribution of this invasive species under current and future climate will be useful in planning better strategies to manage the invasion a process oriented niche model of l camara was developed using climex to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios the model was calibrated using data from several knowledge domains including phenological observations and geographic distribution records the potential distribution of lantana under historical climate exceeded the current distribution in some areas of the world notably africa and asia under future scenarios the climatically suitable areas for l camara globally were projected to contract however some areas were identified in north africa europe and australia that may become climatically suitable under future climates in south africa and china its potential distribution could expand further inland these results can inform strategic planning by biosecurity agencies identifying areas to target for eradication or containment distribution maps of risk of potential invasion can be useful tools in public awareness campaigns especially in countries that have been identified as becoming climatically suitable for l camara under the future climate scenarios,2012,0.452
A biodiversity jigsaw: A review of current New Zealand legislation and initiatives,purpose the purpose of this paper is to review the current legislation and initiatives surrounding biodiversity management protection and sustainable use related to the new zealand local government sector design methodology approach this paper takes the form of an archival review of the academic databases legislation and biodiversity related websites to ascertain the current legislation and initiatives in place in new zealand surrounding biodiversity findings the paper found biodiversity to be managed through a combination of legislation national policies strategies trusts and contestable funds the majority of biodiversity protection on private land is the responsibility of the 78 local authorities that comprise the local government sector through their administration of the resource management act 1991 despite the legislative requirement to protect and manage biodiversity the paper confirmed that no statutory framework currently exists to guide biodiversity reporting research limitations implications this study is limited to new zealand biodiversity related legislation and initiatives as such it may not necessarily be applicable to any other jurisdictions practical implications this review illustrates the difficulty that exists in navigating the disjointed legislation and other initiatives relating to biodiversity this currently hinders the development of framework for reporting on biodiversity by local government however the development of such a framework is crucial to the conservation and sustainable use of new zealandâ s unique biodiversity for the benefit of current and future generations originality value this paper adds to the limited literature in the field of biodiversity reporting and extends it to the local government sector in new zealand,2012,0.008
Modelling commercial fish distributions: Prediction and assessment using different approaches,species distribution models are important tools to explore the effects of future global change on biodiver sity specifically aquamaps maxent and the sea around us project algorithm are three approaches that have been applied to predict distributions of marine fishes and invertebrates they were designed to cope with issues of data quality and quantity common in species distribution modelling and especially per tinent to the marine environment however the characteristics of model projections for marine species from these different approaches have rarely been compared such comparisons provide information about the robustness and uncertainty of the projections and are thus important for spatial planning and developing management and conservation strategies here we apply the three commonly used species distribution modelling methods for commercial fish in the north sea and north atlantic with the aim of drawing comparisons between the approaches the effect of different assumptions within each approach on the predicted current relative habitat suitability was assessed predicted current distributions were tested following data partitioning and selection of pseudoabsences from within a specified distance of occurrence data as indicated by the test statistics each modelling method produced plausible predic tions of relative habitat suitability for each species with subsequent incorporation of expert knowledge generally improving predictions however because of the differences between modelling algorithms methodologies and patterns of relative suitability comparing models using test statistics and selecting a â bestâ model are not recommended we propose that a multi model approach should be preferred and a suite of possible predictions considered if biases due to uncertainty in data and model formulation are to be minimised â,2012,0.305
An Approach to Duplicate Record Detection Using Similarity Metrics and Anfis,data quality problems arise with the constantly increasing quantity of data stored in real world databases that are assured by the vital data cleaning process the fundamental element of data cleaning is usually termed as duplicate record identification that is the process of identifying the record pairs signifying the same entity duplicate records in this paper we have developed a domain independent approach to detect duplicate records presented in large databases the approach adopts anfis and similarity functions to improve duplicate detection in the training phase the record level similarity is specified by the feature vector which is fed to anfis as input for training the main aim of using anfis is to reduce the time taken for making decisions in detecting the duplicates to minimize the number of record comparisons an appropriate clustering method known as k means clustering is used in the duplicate detection phase the experimentation is performed on the real life datasets and the performance is evaluated with the evaluation metrics the experimental evaluation showed that our proposed approach detects duplicates efficiently and accurately,2012,0.078
A tropical grass resource for pasture improvement and landscape management: Themeda triandra Forssk,themeda triandra forssk is one of the most widespread grasses in the dry to mesic prairie ecosystems of africa asia and australia it is of particular interest due to its high value as a forage species for wildlife and livestock and its potential use in landscaping practices in this review we have collated information from the many studies that have been devoted to this species since the 1960s to provide information about the species distribution taxonomy morphology ploidy and reproduction and to describe its vegetation and germination and their relationship with the most important ecological aspects of its preferred habitats agronomic aspects are considered in detail with particular focus on the role of t triandra as a forage species and the relative importance of grazing fire and rainfall regimes for its management we also explore how this species can help with the rehabilitation of degraded areas soil and water conservation countering exotic species invasion and landscaping in general we conclude with a brief discussion of the as yet unresolved taxonomic relationship between the african species t triandra and the australian species themeda australis,2012,0.927
Present Spatial Diversity Patterns of Theobroma cacao L. in the Neotropics Reflect Genetic Differentiation in Pleistocene Refugia Followed by Human-Influenced Dispersal,cacao theobroma cacao l is indigenous to the amazon basin but is generally believed to have been domesticated in mesoamerica for the production of chocolate beverage however cacao s distribution of genetic diversity in south america is also likely to reflect pre columbian human influences that were superimposed on natural processes of genetic differentiation here we present the results of a spatial analysis of the intra specific diversity of cacao in latin america drawing on a dataset of 939 cacao trees genotypically characterized by means of 96 ssr markers to assess continental diversity patterns we performed grid based calculations of allelic richness shannon diversity and nei gene diversity and distinguished different spatially coherent genetic groups by means of cluster analysis the highest levels of genetic diversity were observed in the upper amazon areas from southern peru to the ecuadorian amazon and the border areas between colombia peru and brazil on the assumption that the last glaciation 22 000 13 000 bp had the greatest pre human impact on the current distribution and diversity of cacao we modeled the species pleistocene niche suitability and overlaid this with present day diversity maps the results suggest that cacao was already widely distributed in the western amazon before the onset of glaciation during glaciations cacao populations were likely to have been restricted to several refugia where they probably underwent genetic differentiation resulting in a number of genetic clusters which are representative for or closest related to the original wild cacao populations the analyses also suggested that genetic differentiation and geographical distribution of a number of other clusters seem to have been significantly affected by processes of human management and accompanying genetic bottlenecks we discuss the implications of these results for future germplasm collection and in situ on farm and ex situ conservation of cacao,2012,0.733
Climate downscaling effects on predictive ecological models: a case study for threatened and endangered vertebrates in the southeastern United States,high resolution downscaled projections of future climate conditions are critical inputs to a wide variety of ecological and socioeconomic models and are created using numerous different approaches here we conduct a sensitivity analysis of spatial predictions from climate envelope models for threatened and endangered vertebrates in the southeastern united states to determine whether two different downscaling approaches with and without the use of a regional climate model affect climate envelope model predictions when all other sources of variation are held constant we found that prediction maps differed spatially between downscaling approaches and that the variation attributable to downscaling technique was comparable to variation between maps generated using different general circulation models gcms precipitation variables tended to show greater discrepancies between downscaling techniques than temperature variables and for one gcm there was evidence that more poorly resolved precipitation variables contributed relatively more to model uncertainty than more well resolved variables our work suggests that ecological modelers requiring high resolution climate projections should carefully consider the type of downscaling applied to the climate projections prior to their use in predictive ecological modeling the uncer tainty associated with alternative downscaling methods may rival that of other more widely appreciated sources of variation such as the general circulation model or emis sions scenario with which future climate projections are created,2012,0.154
Modelling distribution in European stream macroinvertebrates under future climates,climate change is predicted to have profound effects on freshwater organisms due to rising temperatures and altered precipitation regimes using an ensemble of bioclimatic envelope models bems we modelled the climatic suitability of 191 stream macroinvertebrate species from 12 orders across europe under two climate change scenarios for 2080 on a spatial resolution of 5 arc minutes analyses included assessments of relative changes in speciesâ climatically suitable areas as well as their potential shifts in latitude and longitude with respect to speciesâ thermal preferences climate change effects were also analysed regarding speciesâ ecological and biological groupings namely 1 endemicity and 2 rarity within european ecoregions 3 life cycle 4 stream zonation preference and 5 current preference the bems projected that suitable climate conditions would persist in europe in the year 2080 for nearly 99 of the modelled species regardless of the climate scenario nevertheless a decrease in the amount of climatically suitable areas was projected for 57 59 of the species depending on the scenario losses could be of 38 44 on average the suitable areas for species were projected to shift on average 4 7 6 6â north and 3 9 5 4â east cold adapted species were projected to lose climatically suitable areas while gains were expected for warm adapted species when projections were analysed for different species groupings only endemics stood out as a particular group that is endemics were projected to lose significantly larger amounts of suitable climatic areas than non endemic species despite the uncertainties involved in modelling exercises such as this the extent of projected distributional changes reveals further the vulnerability of freshwater organisms to climate change and implies a need to understand the consequences for ecological function and biodiversity conservation,2012,0.78
Efficient rescue of threatened biodiversity data using reBiND workflows,biodiversity data generated in the context of research projects often lack a strategy for long term preservation and availability and are therefore at risk of becoming outdated and finally lost the rebind project aims to develop an efficient and well documented workflow for rescuing such data sets the workflow consists of phases for data transformation into contemporary standards data validation storage in a native xml database and data publishing in international biodiversity networks it has been developed and tested using the example of collection and observational data but is flexible enough to be transferred to other data types and domains,2012,0.245
Introduction pathway and climate trump ecology and life history as predictors of establishment success in alien frogs and toads.,a major goal for ecology and evolution is to understand how abiotic and biotic factors shape patterns of biological diversity here we show that variation in establishment success of nonnative frogs and toads is primarily explained by variation in introduction pathways and climatic similarity between the native range and introduction locality with minor contributions from phylogeny species ecology and life history this finding contrasts with recent evidence that particular species characteristics promote evolutionary range expansion and reduce the probability of extinction in native populations of amphibians emphasizing how different mechanisms may shape species distributions on different temporal and spatial scales we suggest that contemporary changes in the distribution of amphibians will be primarily determined by human mediated extinctions and movement of species within climatic envelopes and less by species typical traits,2012,0.782
"MANAGING MIMOSA DIPLOTRICHA BY USING PREDICTION MODEL OF DISTRIBUTION, INVASION AND USING BIOMAS OF MIMOSA DILOTRICHA FOR GROWING MUSHROOMS",currently the alien species are growing strongly they are becoming dangerous invasive species they harm native species as well as they damage the local biodiversity mimosa diplotricha is rated as one of the harmful alien species they compete food water air they prevent the growth of other species live in the same environment they alter habitat mimosa diplotricha is realized as a dangerous species so it is necessary to take measures to manage this plant so this project is made the aims is creating a model to predict the distribution of mimosa diplotricha by using maxent software it makes easier for the management of this species mimosa diplotricha has large biomass if it is utilized effectively it will be an abundant raw materials source for production therefore i have studied to grow oyster mushrooms on mimisa diplotricha to take advantage of this alien species and make economic benefits achievement of the project is a map about the forecasts for distribution of mimosa diplotricha in southeast asia and the economic benefits can be achieved through growing mushrooms from mimosa diplotricha these results can use completely in reality,2012,0.916
The effect of species geographical distribution estimation methods on richness and phylogenetic diversity estimates,diversity assessments are widely used in various fields of knowledge and rely on good estimates of species distribution there are severalmethods available to estimate species distribution and the effect of using them is not clearly understood in this research we assess the effect of species distributions derived from four geographical distribu tion estimation methods on derived species richness and phylogenetic diversity pd we used the following four most common approaches to determine species geograph ical distributions 1 range wide occurrences are records of presence from databases and museum collections 2 marginal occurrences are generally expert drawn distri butional maps 3 species distribution modeling sdm combines geographic records and environmental data to predict species occurrence and 4 a combined approach that constrains the statistical modeling predictions by themarginal occurrence distributions using these approaches we estimated richness and pd and their correspondent geo graphic hotspots for three different analysis resolutions using non overlapping square windows of 2â 4â and 6â across australia we also assessed the differences of the resultant geographical distributions for three different spatial resolutions we found markedly different hotspots when using range wide occurrences and statistical model ing approaches range wide occurrences resulted in low values of species richness and pd and statistical modeling resulted in high values the combined and marginal occur rences approaches both had intermediate values with the combined approach showing a finer level of detail than the marginal occurrences there is a tendency for species range sizes between methods to converge with decreasing spatial resolution even for a relatively well sampled group such as the australian marsupials the range wide occur rences approach is likely to underestimate the presence of species conversely because sdms usually do not account for dispersal abilities or biotic interactions it is likely that species geographical distributions using this approach are overestimated depending on the method used the resultant estimates of diversity may be completely different caution is needed when choosing the method to estimate species distribution,2012,0.968
Alien plants and their invasion of the forested landscape of the southeastern United States,in this thesis i have assessed and modelled invasion of alien plant species in the forest of the southeastern united states there are over 380 recognized invasive plants in southeastern forests and grasslands with 53 ranked as high to medium risk to natural communities i have focused on ten of these chinese lespedeza tall fescue japanese honeysuckle chinese privet autumn olive princesstree silktree chinaberry tree of heaven tallowtree assessing them at differing scales locally chapter 2 and 3 eco regionally chapter 4 and 5 and regionally chapters 6 and 7 using field based measurements integrated with remotely sensed and digital datasets and applying both parametric and non parametric modelling approaches data from field based measurements as well as digitally available sources was evaluated bringing together freely available data with time consuming intensively collected data once models were developed application to assessing long term impacts was done by integrating potential climate change scenarios at the local level chinese lespedeza and japanese honeysuckle were the most prevalent with models at the local level dominated by remotely sensed variables at an eco regional level japanese honeysuckle was the most prevalent with models primarily dominated by environmental variables at a regional level where only trees were assessed potential distributions of the invasive species ranged from 12 to 33 percent of the southeastern forests under current conditions with this dramatically increasing for chinaberry and tallowtree under most climate change scenarios up as high as 66 percent of southeastern forest sites in this thesis information on anthropogenic factors added some value to the models however it was rarely dominant roads and land use proportion of forest or distance to forest were the most useful anthropogenic variables in all models evaluated only six times did any one anthropogenic variable represent more than 25 percent of the models four of these were at the local scale at the regional and eco regional level roads had a greater than 25 percent contribution to the silktree models at a local level distance to forest and distance roads contributed more than 25 percent to three of the species evaluated sawtooth oak japanese honeysuckle and privet human activities have the most influence on invasion progression through dispersal movement and introduction rate and disturbance of the landscape increased resource availability anthropogenic variables such as roads are likely to be a mechanism of spread thus the more a model is driven by anthropogenic variables the more likely the invasive plant is to be in the early stages of invasion process thus our results suggest that many of these species have moved through the first stages of invasion environmental characteristics play an important role in determining a siteâ s vulnerability to invasion at an eco region and regional scale environmental characteristics dominated 50 all but one model silktree at the regional scale at the eco region level elevation was the dominant variable and at a regional level minimum temperature was the dominant variable these have some correlation with higher elevation often relating to lower temperatures particularly at a smaller scale this confirms the validity of matching the climate ranges of native species with the range of potential invasion and the approach of integrating elevation latitude and longitude to estimate potential distribution it also suggests that climate change will influence the distribution and that variation in climate should be integrated into models two different modelling approaches logistic regression and maximum entropy were used throughout my thesis and applied to the same data agreement between different modelling types adds strength to conclusions while disagreement can assist in asking further questions the inclusion in the models of similar variables with the same direction of relationships gives confidence to any inference about the importance of these variables the geographical agreement between models adds confidence to the probability of occurrence in the area alternatively using the same model but different datasets can give you similar information overall for all models created by both logistic regression and maxent the logistic regression had slightly better omission rates and the maxent model had better aucâ s logistic regression models also often predicted larger geographical areas of occurrences when the threshold of maximum sensitivity plus specificity was used thus the lower omission rates is related to the less stringent model that predicts a larger area the selection of appropriate data to answer the question was shown to be fundamental in chapter 7 when data were used outside of the area of interest it generalized the models and increased the potential for invasion significantly there was more value in the intensive surveyed data but this was less dramatic than in using the defined areas of interest to select the data for models,2012,0.018
Evidence of a climatic niche shift following North American introductions of two crane flies (Diptera; genus Tipula),ecological niche models assume a species niche should be conserved over space and time increasingly studies have determined that niche shifts may occur during biological invasion events the aim of this study is to examine niche conservation for two invasive crane flies tipula oleracea linnaeus and tipula paludosa meigen after introductions into north america these species have broadly sympatric invasive distributions but differ in time since introduction and dispersal abilities as these factors may impact the area accessible to dispersal i examined the impact of background area delineation on conclusions of niche conservation results indicated that alternative delineations of accessible area i e background area had no affect on measures of niche equivalence neither tipula species was found to be occupying invasive niche space equivalent to that of their native ranges niche dissimilarity was found for both species with results strongly impacted by the choice of background area t paludosa introductions displayed a niche shift across both invasive introductions when the model area drew climatic information from an area that buffered occurrences by 40 km the eastern t oleracea introduction displayed a niche shift when background information was drawn from within a 400 km buffered area this study suggests that invasive populations may be displaying a niche shift when evaluated against one scale of background but conserved when evaluated against another scale dispersal limitations for t oleracea in its eastern introduction and anthropogenic habitat associations for t paludosa across both invasive introductions are indicated as causes for the observed niche shifts the results of this study highlight the importance of carefully delineating the area accessible to invasive species in studies of niche conservation furthermore it indicates that examining several spatial extents of background areas can be beneficial when examining niche conservation for species in non equilibrium states,2012,0.725
Assessing the Congruence of Thermal Niche Estimations Derived from Distribution and Physiological Data. A Test Using Diving Beetles,a basic aim of ecology is to understand the determinants of organismal distribution the niche concept and species distribution models providing key frameworks to approach the problem as temperature is one of the most important factors affecting species distribution the estimation of thermal limits is crucially important for inferring range constraints it is expectable that thermal physiology data derived from laboratory experiments and speciesâ occurrences may express different aspects of the speciesâ niche however there is no study systematically testing this prediction in a given taxonomic group while controlling by potential phylogenetic inertia we estimate the thermal niches of twelve palaearctic diving beetles species using physiological data derived from experimental analyses in order to examine the extent to which these coincided with those estimated from distribution models based on observed occurrences we found that thermal niche estimates derived from both approaches lack general congruence and these results were similar before and after controlling by phylogeny the congruence between potential distributions obtained from the two different procedures was also explored and we found again that the percentage of agreement were not very high 60 we confirm that both thermal niche estimates derived from geographical and physiological data are likely to misrepresent the true range of climatic variation that these diving beetles are able to tolerate and so these procedures could be considered as incomplete but complementary estimations of an inaccessible reality,2012,0.634
"Three new species allied to the ‘Mirbelia viminalis group’ (Fabaceae: Mirbelieae), from Western Australia",three new species allied to the â mirbelia viminalis groupâ fabaceae mirbelieae from western australia nuytsia 22 2 75â 92 2012 mirbelia balsiformis r butcher m corallina r butcher and m ferricola r butcher are described herein as new species allied to the â m viminalis groupâ of the newly described species m balsiformis is widely distributed between kalbarri and shark bay and is not conservation listed while m corallina and m ferricola are listed as priority three conservation taxa in western australia mirbelia corallina is restricted to sandplains in the kalbarri area with most collections from kalbarri national park mirbelia ferricola is restricted to banded iron formation ranges between the koolanooka hills east of morawa and the bremer range west of norseman although this species has a wide area of occupancy the biodiverse ranges on which it occurs are small disjunct islands in an otherwise subdued landscape and are highly prospective for mining the putative taxon m sp carnarvon j s beard 6008 previously poorly defined appears to be a recognisable variant within the variable m ramulosa benth c a gardner the name is retained on western australiaâ s plant census however until its status can be clarified by a comprehensive study of variation in m ramulosa across its range this paper describes illustrates and provides distribution maps for m balsiformis m corallina and m ferricola and distinguishes them from similar scale leaved mirbelia sm species in western australia a key to species of the â m viminalis groupâ is also provided introduction,2012,0.883
Glucose inhibits the shoot bud formation in the moss Bryum billarderi,plant development is controlled by certain factors such as nutrient availability environmental cues and the presence of signalling molecules it has been proposed that phytohormones interact with sugars to modulate important processes in vascular plants cytokinins are key hormones because they regulate a large number of metabolic events and sugars act as regulatory signals at several points in the life cycle bryum bilarderi schwã gr is a moss that was isolated by our group in the central highlands of mexico and has demonstrated the ability to tolerate abiotic stresses to study the effect of cytokinins and their interaction with glucose in bud induction different concentrations of cytokinins with glucose were tested one micromolar n 6 benzylaminopurine provided the best results for bud induction but when 100 mm glucose was added bud formation was inhibited this glucose concentration also favoured the spread of the protonemal colony these data demonstrate that n 6 benzylaminopurine is more effective than kinetin in inducing buds and that glucose plays an important role as an inhibitory signalling molecule for the bud induction process that is mediated by cytokinins in the moss b billarderi,2012,0.236
"RAM analysis of mining process: a case study of a Copper Smelting Process in the field of mining, Chile",the performance of mining machines depends on the reliability availability and maintainability of the equipment used the operating environment the maintenance efficiency the operation process the technical expertise etc as the size and complexity of mining equipment continues to increase the implications of equipment failure become ever more critical therefore ram analysis is required to identify the bottlenecks in the system it is important to select a suitable method for data collection as well as for ram analysis in this specific field this paper presents a case study describing reliability availability and maintainability analysis of a copper smelting process in chile in this study the process is divided into four main subsystems drying concentrate fusion conversion and refining the parameters of some probability distributions such as weibull exponential normal and lognormal distributions have been estimated by using the matlab application the results of the analysis show which subsystems and equipment are critical from a reliability and availability standpoint relevant data was collected by the maintenance unit and stored in a spreadsheet database this data supports the specific modeling for failure and repair processes of the equipment the data used has been collected over a period of 16 months of the process by using the sap pm report,2012,0.139
Potential geographic distribution of brown marmorated stink bug invasion (Halyomorpha halys),background the brown marmorated stink bug bmsb halyomorpha halys stã l hemiptera pentatomidae native to asia is becoming an invasive species with a rapidly expanding range in north america and europe in the us it is a household pest and also caused unprecedented damage to agriculture crops exploring its climatic limits and estimating its potential geographic distribution can provide critical information for management strategies methodology principals we used direct climate comparisons to explore the climatic niche occupied by native and invasive populations of bmsb ecological niche modelings based on the native range were used to anticipate the potential distribution of bmsb worldwide conversely niche models based on the introduced range were used to locate the original invasive propagates in asia areas with high invasion potential were identified by two niche modeling algorithms i e maxent and garp n nconclusions significance reduced dimensionality of environmental space improves native model transferability in the invade area projecting models from invasive population back to native distributional areas offers valuable information on the potential source regions of the invasive populations our models anticipated successfully the current disjunct distribution of bmsb in the us the original propagates are hypothesized to have come from northern japan or western korea high climate suitable areas at risk of invasion include latitudes between 30â 50â including northern europe northeastern north america southern australia and the north island of new zealand angola in africa and uruguay in south america also showed high climate suitability,2012,0.415
Environmental Suitability of the Red Spider Mite Tetranchus cinnabarinus (Acari: Tetranychidae) among Cassava in China,the red spider mite tetranchus cinnabarinus boisduval is one of the main pests in the world and the risk of invasion posed by this mite is becoming more and more serious with regard to increasing areas of planting cassava in china it is urgent to analyze the potential geography distribution of t cinnabarinus among cassava in china the environmental suitability of t cinnabarinus in china was studied in this paper using maxent and arcgis based on the biological data and known distribution of t cinnabarinus the results showed that there were 4 levels of suitability assessment of t cinnabarinus in china the prediction showed t cinnabarinus mainly distributed in south china especially in hainan guangdong and guangxi provinces the potential geographic distribution of t cinnabarinus in china defined in this paper constructed the theory basis and technical support for scientifically forming of control measures for t cinnabarinus in china,2012,0.11
Analysis and Synthesis of Metadata Goals,the proliferation of discipline specific metadata schemes contributes to artificial barriers that can impede interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research the authors considered this problem by examining the domains objectives and architectures of nine metadata schemes used to document scientific data in the physical life and social sciences they used a mixed methods content analysis and greenberg s metadata objectives principles domains and architectural layout modal framework and derived 22 metadata related goals from textual content describing each metadata scheme relationships are identified between the domains e g scientific discipline and type of data and the categories of scheme objectives for each strong correlation 0 6 a fisher s exact test for nonparametric data was used to determine significance p 05 significant relationships were found between the domains and objectives of the schemes schemes describing observational data are more likely to have â œscheme harmonizationâ compatibility and interoperability with related schemes as an objective schemes with the objective â œabstractionâ a conceptual model exists separate from the technical implementation also have the objective â œsufficiencyâ the scheme defines a minimal amount of information to meet the needs of the community and schemes with the objective â œdata publicationâ do not have the objective â œelement refinement â the analysis indicates that many metadata driven goals expressed by communities are independent of scientific discipline or the type of data although they are constrained by historical community practices and workflows as well as the technological environment at the time of scheme creation the analysis reveals 11 fundamental metadata goals for metadata documenting scientific data in support of sharing research data across disciplines and domains the authors report these results and highlight the need for more metadata related research particularly in the context of recent funding agency policy changes,2012,0.161
"SpeciesMap: a web-based application for visualizing the overlap of distributions and pollution events, with a list of fishes put at risk by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill",the 2010 gulf of mexico oil spill was the largest in history outside of warfare and because the spill occurred in the deep sea its impact on the biota will be difficult to assess to help address this problem we have created speciesmap http speciesmap org a web based application web app that allows a user to synthesize data on the oil spill with distributional records and other information on marine species we have combined satellite image data collected over the course of the oil spill with locality data from historical collection records of fish species in a geographic information system in doing so we have created maps to assess which species were potentially in the region of the spill and to what degree their range was exposed to pollution to evaluate the impact of the spill we examined and categorized various levels of overlap between the observed surface range of the 2010 spill with collections records for 124 fish species including all 77 endemic to the gulf of mexico more than half of all species examined including more than half of all endemics were found to have population records in the region of the spill speciesmap contains interaction maps for all the species examined and these data can be used to target post spill collections to evaluate changes in habitat and to discover extirpations or extinctions in response to environmental disturbances,2012,0.964
"Distribution of Lunaria telekiana (Brassicaceae), a poorly known species of European concern",lunaria telekiana jã vorka is usually treated as a narrow n e albanian endemic distributed only in prokletije mts bjeshkã t e nemuna s e dinaric alps as a european endemic and restricted to a single european country l telekiana is treated as a â œtarget speciesâ or â œspecies of european concernâ as a very rare and endangered species it is defined as iucn cr b2a in europe although of great international significance the distribution of l telekiana is only poorly known without any georeferenced records on gbif except for the locus classicus â œå kelsen ad pagum tropojaâ as well as localities â œbajram curriâ and â œmaja e hekuraveâ in albania all other published and unpublished data on the distribution of this species are largely unknown based on several years of field studies analyses of herbarium and literature data the authors managed to record the occurrence of l telekiana in albania montenegro and serbia and to outline its distribution range more precisely te size of plant populations at the studied localities and new threatened status according to criteria and categories of iucn have been established individually for europe albania montenegro and serbia,2012,0.638
"Species typing of Cuban Trichomonas vaginalis virus by RT-PCR, and association of TVV-2 with high parasite adhesion levels and high pathogenicity in patients.",the viral infection of the parasite with t vaginalis virus tvv may have important implications for trichomonal virulence in this study we identified the tvv species isolated from cuban t vaginalis using specie specific reverse transcriptase pcr of the 37 clinical isolates studied 21 were infected with tvv 6 contained tvv 1 12 tvv 2 and 3 were co infected with tvv 1 and 2 the strains infected with tvv showing highest adhesion level in comparison to not infected strains with high statistical significance the strains infected only with tvv 2 showing highest adhesion level in comparison to strains infected with tvv 1 with high statistical significance the parasites classified as mild symptomatic are infected only with tvv 1 however the severe only with tvv 2 according to our results it seems that only two tvv species are infecting the cuban isolates further studies using higher number of strains should be conducted in order to corroborate these results,2012,0.906
Subandean and adjacent lowland palm communities in Bolivia,palm community diversity and abundance was studied in the subandean zone and adjacent lowlands in 65 transects 5 x 500 m covering 16 25 ha distributed over an area of 700 x 125 km in north central bolivia a total of 38 palm species were found the most diverse palm community was in lowland evergreen terra firme forest 28 palm species 4080 palm ind ha and seven growth forms followed by the lower montane forest below 800 m elevation 19 palm species 2873 ind ha and four growth forms and lowland evergreen floodplain forests 17 palm species 3400 palms ind ha and five growth forms the montane evergreen forests above 800 meters elevation 16 palm species 2583 palms ind ha and three growth forms and lowland seasonal evergreen and semideciduous forests seven palm species 1207 palm ind ha and five different growth forms were the least diverse communities small palms were the most common growth form being represented by 18 47 species of the 38 palm species altogether 21 55 were solitary 15 40 were cespitose and two 5 were colonial the abundant and dominant palm species both in the canopy and in the understory are the same as in other amazonian forests and shared among several forest types in this study the high species richness of the lowland evergreen terra firme forest is mostly due to a number of rare species that are lacking in other palm communities the most abundant palm species were in general species with wide distributions shared among several palm communities suggesting that they are ecological generalists the montane forests have their own set of palm species such as dictyocaryum lamarckianum euterpe precatoria var longevaginata and geonoma undata that separate them from other forest types,2012,0.992
Identifying Content and Levels of Representation in Scientific Data,heterogeneous digital data that has been produced by different communitieswith varying practices and assumptions and that is organized according to different representation schemes encodings and file formats presents substantial obstacles to efficient integration analysis and preservation this is a particular impediment to data reuse and interdisci plinary science an underlying problem is that we have no shared formal conceptual model of information representation that is both accurate and sufficiently detailed to accommodate the management and analysis of real world digital data in varying formats developing such a model involves confronting extremely challenging foundational problems in information science we present two complementary con ceptual models for data representation the basic represen tationmodel and the systematic assertionmodel we show how these models work together to provide an analytical ac count of digitally encoded scientific data thesemodelswill provide a better foundation for understanding and supporting a wide range of data curation activities including format migration data integration data reuse digital preservation strategies and assessment of identity and scientific equiva lence,2012,0.132
"Data discovery and information dissemination service of the Environmental Information System (ENVIS) Centre on Avian Ecology at BNHS, India",realizing the importance of a data collection and dissemination network the environmental information division of the ministry of environment and forests moef government of india in december 1982 established the environmental information system envis as a plan programme since its inception the focus of envis has been on providing environmental information to decision makers policy planners researchers etc across the country as the environment is a broad ranging multi disciplinary subject a comprehensive information system would necessarily involve effective participation of concerned institutions organizations in the country that are actively engaged in work relating to different subject areas of the environment envis has therefore developed by forming a network of such participating institutions organizations to make the programme meaningful the focal point of the present 66 envis centres in india is at the ministry of environment and forests new delhi the envis centre at the bnhs has been assigned the responsibility for information on avian ecology through this document we would like to share our experience of data discovery and information dissemination services provided by envis centres having experience of more than 15 years we feel that a lot can be done to improve such systems,2012,0.173
The user's view on biodiversity data sharing — Investigating facts of acceptance and requirements to realize a sustainable use of research data —,data sharing has become an important issue in modern biodiversity research to address large scale questions despite the steadily growing scientific demand data are not easily accessed why is this the case this study explores the reasons for the reluctance to share data on the one hand and the motivations for sharing on the other by summarising results from 60 interviews and 700 survey participants within the biodiversity science community as result there is a clear commitment to share biodiversity data but also a reluctance to actually do so due to a mixture of social and technical impediments such as loss of control over data and lack of professional reward for sharing this exploratory study summarises the formal and technical requirements for data sharing and reuse stated by voluntarily participating scientists worldwide to ensure sustainable data use user friendly data infrastructure have to be expanded or newly designed data management plans for all scientific investigations have to be promoted training for the users has to be provided and motivational aspects at all stages of data submission and re use have to be considered,2012,0.253
Climate suitability and human influences combined explain the range expansion of an invasive horticultural plant,ecological niche models are commonly used to identify regions at risk of species invasions relying on climate alone may limit a modelâ s success when additional variables contribute to invasion while a climate based model may predict the future spread of an invasive plant we hypothesized that a model that combined climate with human influences would most successfully explain its present distribution we used the ecological niche model maxent to test our hypothesis with japanese honeysuckle lonicera japonica a common invasive horticultural plant in the united states we first predicted the future range expansion of the species in the united states using a model that was trained on the climate conditions in its native range we then tested the ability of a climate based model which was trained on climate conditions in the invaded range to predict the current distribution in the united states finally we tested whether including a measure of human influence would improve this model our results indicate that despite l japonicaâ s 200 year invasion history it is expected to spread beyond its current us range climate and human influence combined explain the current distribution modeling the spread of invasive horticultural plants using climate alone risks under predicting areas with poor climates and high human influence therefore planting invasive horticultural species should be discouraged as even suboptimal climates may result in further range expansion,2012,0.085
Millipede Taxonomy after 250 Years: Classification and Taxonomic Practices in a Mega-Diverse yet Understudied Arthropod Group,background the arthropod class diplopoda is a mega diverse group comprising 12 000 described millipede species the history of taxonomic research within the group is tumultuous and consequently has yielded a questionable higher level classification few higher taxa are defined using synapomorphies and the practice of single taxon descriptions lacking a revisionary framework has produced many monotypic taxa additionally taxonomic and geographic biases render global species diversity estimations unreliable we test whether the ordinal taxa of the diplopoda are consistent with regards to underlying taxonomic diversity attempt to provide estimates for global species diversity and examine millipede taxonomic effort at a global geographic scale methodology principal findings a taxonomic distinctness metric was employed to assess uniformity of millipede ordinal taxa we found that ordinal level taxa are not uniform and are likely overinflated with higher taxa when compared to related groups several methods of estimating global species richness were employed bayesian variation in taxonomic productivity extrapolation from nearly fully described taxa two of the three methods provided estimates ranging from 13 413â 16 760 species variations in geographic diversity show biases to north america and europe and a paucity of works on tropical taxa conclusions significance before taxa can be used in an extensible way they must be definable with respect to the diversity they contain and the diagnostic characters used to delineate them the higher classification for millipedes is shown to be problematic from a number of perspectives namely the ordinal taxa are not uniform in their underlying diversity and millipedes appear to have a disproportionate number of higher taxa species diversity estimates are unreliable due to inconsistent taxonomic effort at temporal geographic and phylogenetic scales lack of knowledge concerning many millipede groups compounds these issues diplopods are likely not unique in this regard as these issues may persist in many other diverse yet poorly studied groups,2012,0.773
Beta-diversity gradients of butterflies along productivity axes,aim several lines of evidence suggest that beta diversity or dissimilarity in species composition should increase with productivity 1 the latitudinal species richness gradient is most closely related to productivity and associated latitudinal beta diversity relationships have been described and 2 the scale dependence of the productivityâ diversity relationship implies that there should be a positive productivityâ beta diversity relationship however such a pattern has not yet been demonstrated at broad scales we test if there is a gradient of increasing beta diversity with productivity location canada methods canada was clustered into regions of similar productivity regimes along three remotely sensed productivity axes minimum and integrated annual productivity seasonality of productivity and elevation the overall î j turnover î sim and nestedness î nes components of beta diversity within each productivity regime were estimated with pairwise dissimilarity metrics and related to cluster productivity with partial linear regression and with spatial autoregression tests were performed for all species productivity breadth based subsets e g species occurring in many and a moderate number of productivity regimes and pre and post 1970 butterfly records beta diversity between adjacent clusters along the productivity gradients was also evaluated results within cluster î j and î sim increased with productivity and decreased with seasonality the converse was true for î nes all species subsets responded similarly however productivityâ beta diversity relationships were weaker for the post 1970 temporal subset and strongest for species of moderate breadth between cluster beta diversity î j and nestedness î nes declined with productivity main conclusions as predicted beta diversity of communities within productivity regimes was observed to increase with productivity this pattern was driven largely by a gradient of species turnover therefore beta diversity may make an important contribution to the broad scale gradient of species richness with productivity however this species richness gradient dominates regional beta diversity between productivity regimes resulting in decreasing between productivity dissimilarity with productivity driven by a concurrent decline in nestedness,2012,0.967
Gerrit Smith Miller: his influence on the enduring legacy of natural history collections,a century after the publication of â œcatalogue of the land mammals of western europeâ 1912 gerrit smith millerâ s contributions to european mammalogy endure his work was a landmark treatment of the european fauna and laid the groundwork for subsequent mammalogists millerâ s impressive body of specimen based research underscores the fundamental role natural history collections have played in building our understanding of the natural world their relevance to basic discovery endures as collections have evolved since millerâ s time to include new materials e g tissues cell suspensions linked host parasites and as new tools e g genomic sequencing stable isotopes niche envelopes for extracting information have developed exponentially while still utilized for systematic and taxonomic questions museums and associated web based databases gbif genbank googleearth are now critical to our ability to rigorously address questions related to environmental change e g climate change habitat conversion emerging pathogens pollutants and toxicants biodiversity loss introduction of exotics specimens are the primary resource that objectively documents diversity and vouchers historic conditions by representing a particular site and time georeferenced specimens establish critical baseline conditions against which temporal change can be investigated as in millerâ s day museums remain centers for research and training as future generations of scientists are introduced to biodiversity studies,2012,0.119
"Quality-aware Service-Oriented Data Integration: Requirements, State of the Art and Open Challenges",with a multitude of data sources available online data consumers might find it hard to select the best combina tion of sources for their needs aspects such as price licensing service and data quality play a major role in selecting data sources we therefore advocate quality aware data services as a natural data source model for complex data integration tasks and mash ups this pa per focuses on requirements state of the art and the main research challenges on the way to the realization of such services,2012,0.224
Invasive species distribution models - how violating the equilibrium assumption can create new insights,aim two core assumptions of species distribution models sdms do not hold when modelling invasive species invasives are not in equilibrium with their envi ronment and niche quantification and transferability in space and time are limited here we test whether combining global and regional scale data in a novel frame work can overcome these limitations beyond simply improving regional niche modelling of non native species the framework also makes use of the violation of regional equilibrium assumptions and aims at estimating the stage of invasion range filling and risk of spread in the near future for 27 invasive species in the french alps innovation for each invader we built three sets of sdms using a committee averaging method one global model and two regional models a conventional model and one using the global model output to weight pseudo absences model performances were compared using the area under the receiver operating charac teristic curve the true skill statistic sensitivity and specificity scores then we extracted the predictions for observed presences and compared them to global and regional models this comparison made it possible to identify whether invasive species were observed within or outside of their regional and global niches main conclusions this study provides a novel methodological framework for improving the regional modelling of invasive species where the use of a global model output to weight pseudo absences in a regional model significantly improved the predictive performance of regional sdms additionally the compari son of the global and regional model outputs revealed distinct patterns of niche estimates and range filling among the species these differences allowed us to draw conclusions about the stage of invasion and the risk of spread in the near future which both correspond to expertsâ expectations this framework can be easily applied to a large number of species and is therefore useful for control of biological invasions and eradication planning,2012,0.552
Pollen morphology of the three subgenera of Alnus,the three subgenera of alder alnusroman clethropsis and alnobetula are taxonomically distinctive but how does their pollen match up with their gross morphology this study links pollen characters with the taxonomic divisions of the genus alder based on nrdna its sequence data the value of the study is in the breadth of the taxonomic coverage of the three subgenera as the samples per species only range from 1 to 6 from 29 alnus species the authors studied pollen from 59 modern reference collections prepared by acetolysis and recorded the number and type of apertures pores thickness of the arci pollen size and polar arci tallies of the number of pores on the pollen grains in a reference collection typically have a range of â 1 or 2 exceptions are presumed hybrid collections in alnus rugosa with a range of â 5 which have malformed pollen cells suggesting infertility the presumed hybrids show a greater range of both pore number and size of pollen grains the dominant pore number is a key feature that separates the subgenus alnobetula alnaster from the other two subgenera by consistently having predominantly 5 6 or 7 pored pollen grains while all other alnus taxa sampled have pollen with predominantly 4 or 5 pored pollen the dominant pore number is a consistent feature within the subgenus alnobetula 10 species but is inconsistent in 3 out of 16 species of the subgenus alnus and within the subgenus clethropsis 3 species thickenings of the pore lip aspidate protruding and vestibulate pores are important features of alnus pollen on a species level alnus like pollen morphology occurs occasionally in certain other betulaceous genera betula and carpinus differences in character or thickness of arci band like thickenings on the pollen wall between pores tend to be somewhat consistent within a species and vary within subgenera two alnobetula species in the alnus viridis complex alnus crispa and alnus sinuata have arci that are weakly developed or appear as simple folds walls are fragile and pores are typically less aspidate pollen sizes in different species overlap greatly may be partly influenced by processing methods and do not seem to be generally helpful in characterizing species circular doughnut shaped arci thickenings on the polar area of pollen grains are a common feature 16â 40 in two closely related east asian taxa of subgenus alnobetula with large pollen â clade aâ alnus firma and alnus sieboldii these â clade aâ features have been reported from miocene collections of alnus pollen from alaska and support megafossil evidence in determining the biogeography of this group along the pacific rim in the neogene the miocene appearance of subgenus alnobetula megafossils in both alaska and japan can only have occurred via a bering land bridge this relation is now confirmed by reinink smith s miocene â clade a typeâ pollen data of alaska these taxa had pacific rim distributions similar fruiting carposamaras and now correspond to a dna its subgroup within alnobetula depending on the geographic location with limited number of local alder species certain holocene identifications are possible based on pore structure and arci thickness e g the alnus crispa type in eastern canada and the alnus sinuata type in the pacific northwest,2012,0.987
The premises and promises of trolls in Norwegian biodiversity preservation: on the boundaries between bureaucracy and science.,this paper examines the perception and implementation of scientific knowledge among norwegian environmental bureaucrats in the process of preserving biodiversity based on interviews with environmental officials and scientists and document studies the data reveal a mismatch between the ideal administrative world presented by environmental managers and the empirical reality of biodiversity vulnerability and preservation the environmental officials depict a process where their mandate is merely instrumental where science provides objective descriptions of biodiversity value and where the spheres of science policy and administration are strictly separated instead of a transparent strategy for handling scientific ambiguities inherent in biodiversity value assessments such as complexity and uncertainty and administrative judgments the paper argues that these boundary objects and areas are perceived as trolls that are ignored and hidden by environmental officials this strategy appears intuitive and guided by a linear decision making paradigm where boundary objects are considered illegitimate as a solution to possible obstacles stemming from this institutional vacuum the article finally discusses the potential of adapting or assimilating the trolls to better meet the challenges of biodiversity preservation a viable first step might be cross disciplinary characterisation of complexities and uncertainties of biodiversity assessments this might help to articulate the binary ontology of value assessments and to better address the critical administrative political and scientific intersections these boundary areas must be re institutionalised by environmental agencies and cognizant strategies must be devised and implemented for making professional judgment and discretion finally it may amount to a more honest stance on conservation where the inherent complexities to biodiversity preservation may be managed as complexities and not as trolls,2012,0.079
"Capacity building for Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Progress report 2011: Indo- Norwegian pilot project on capacity building in biodiversity informatics for enhanced decision making, improved nature con- serva",the main objective of the pilot project is to build capacity to enable free sharing access and dissemination of biodiversity and ecosystem data in india to be used in policy and knowledge based decision making this also includes a mapping of relevant biodiversity data originating from india and held in the norwegian natural museum s collections the project is led coordinated and partially executed by nina and the norwegian biodiversity information centre nbic nina will provide its expertise in managing camera trap projects and together with nbic and the norwegian gbif node provide the expertise acquired from building the norwegian biodiversity infrastructure the indian counterpart wii will be responsi ble for the implementation and progress of the project nationally within india the gbif secre tariat in copenhagen will provide guidance about international data standards training and ca pacity building on biodiversity informatics,2012,0.193
"Worldwide spread of the African big-headed ant, Pheidole megacephala (Hymeno-ptera: Formicidae)",originally from africa pheidole megacephala fabricius 1793 has become a widespread household and agricultural pest in many tropical and subtropical areas to evaluate the worldwide spread of p megacephala i compiled published and unpublished specimen records from 1600 sites i documented the earliest known p megacephala records for 141 geographic areas countries island groups major islands and us states including many locales for which i found no previously published records anguilla antigua aruba barbados barbuda british virgin islands california central african republic curaã ao dominica galapagos islands gambia guyana mali maryland montserrat nevis nica ragua pakistan peru rwanda st kitts st lucia trinidad and the turks caicos islands many old published records of p megacephala from the mediterranean region are misidentifications of a local native species pheidole pallidula nylander 1849 all higher latitude records from europe are probably either indoor records or misidentifications of p pallidula invasive ant species with powerful stings such as solenopsis invicta buren 1974 have received much media attention because pheidole megacephala does not injure humans this species is often not recognized as a substantial threat in fact in areas where it occurs at high density few native invertebrates persist and p megacephala may be responsible for driving many terrestrial invertebrate species extinct,2012,0.819
Report on Best Practices for Citability of Data and on Evolving Roles in Scholarly Communication,with the ever increasing availability of data the best way to ensure its sharing and re use is becoming a prominent issue finding data and understanding data are the first steps in such a process and good data citation is an important prerequisite to enable this new roles are evolving to support researchers in this process with support in managing archiving discovering interpreting and citing data this report sets out the current thinking on data citation best practice and presents the results of a survey of librarians asking how new support roles could and should be developed the findings presented here build on the extensive desk research carried out for the report â œintegration of data and publicationâ reilly schallier schrimpf smit wilkinson sept 2011 which identified that data citation was an area of opportunity for both researchers and libraries that report also recounted the findings of a workshop held at the liber 2011 conference in barcelona the workshop based on preliminary findings on the integration of data and publications revealed that although libraries saw the emerging research data landscape as an opportunity there was a real need to define future directions and the scope of the role of libraries in data exchange the issue of data citation was also identified as a fundamental exploring the way forward this previous work is issue to be addressed when supported here with further information gathered through extensive desk research structured interviews and an online survey of liber members to explore best practice in data citation and evolving support roles for libraries the following is a summary of the common findings for best practice in data citation and the role of the library in data exchange,2012,0.043
Species richness measures fail in resolving diversity patterns of speciose forest moth assemblages,we used data from a light trapping study at 28 sites on floodplain forest moths in eastern austria to assess the performance of a variety of species richness and species diversity measures at each site the data 32 181 individuals from 448 species contain a large fraction of species represented only as singletons sampling effort was evenly spread across sites but sampling success varied greatly influx of moths from the landscape matrix surrounding floodplain forest patches lead to substantial proportions of stray individuals from the regional species pool under these conditions observed species numbers as well as eight extrapolation estimators of species totals failed to reflect differences between three study regions or between flooded and non flooded forest habitats rarefied species numbers and fisherâ s î of the log series distribution captured differences in moth diversity between regions but failed to mirror flooding impact only shannonâ s diversity captured all expected diversity differences at high significance levels application of chao and shenâ s bias correction increased figures of shannonâ s diversity but did not affect the outcome of statistical comparisons we conclude that for species rich incompletely sampled communities of highly mobile insects the evaluation of the complete species abundance information using shannonâ s diversity is the most promising mode to compare local species diversity with a high degree of ecological resolution species richness measures apart from those obtained through rarefaction cannot be recommended as they are sensitive to sources of bias that pertain to many empirical sets of field data,2012,0.989
Karyotype of the Gansu Mole (Scapanulus oweni): Further Evidence for Karyotypic Stability in Talpid,little is known about the ecology and evolution of the gansu mole scapanulus oweni the morphology of this monotypic genus talpidae eulipotyphla mammalia indicates that it should fall into the tribe scalopini although all the other scalopines are distributed in north america s oweni is endemic to central and southwest china previous studies have indicated that the chromosomes of talpid moles exhibit remarkable stability however the karyotype of s oweni has not been determined in this study we report the karyotypes including g banding and c banding patterns of s oweni the diploid and fundamental autosomal numbers are 34 and 64 respectively identical with six other talpid species and thus providing another line of evidence for chromosomal uniformity in this family the models of karyotype stability are discussed none of which adequately explains the chromosomal conservatism we suggest that comprehensive approaches are needed to test in which degree that the chromosomal rearrangement phylogeny phylogeography and ecological adaptation have shaped the chromosomal evolution in this family,2012,0.453
"A Common View of the Opportunities, Challenges, and Research Actions for Pongamia in Australia",interest in biofuels is increasing in australia due to volatile and rising oil prices the need to reduce ghg emissions and the recent introduction of a price on carbon the seeds of pongamia millettia pinnata contain oils rich in c18 1 fatty acid making it useful for the manufacture of biodiesel and other liquid fuels preliminary assessments of growth and seed yield in australia have been promising however there is a pressing need to synthesise practical experience and existing fragmented research and to use this to underpin a well founded and co ordinated research strategy to support industry development including better management of the risks associated with investment this comprehensive review identifies opportunities for pongamia in australia and provides a snapshot of what is already known and the risks uncertainties and challenges based on published research expert knowledge and industry experience we conclude that whilst there are major gaps in fundamental understanding of the limitations to growth of pongamia in australia there is sufficient evidence indicating the potential of pongamia as a feedstock for production of biofuel to warrant investment into a structured research and development program over the next decade we identify ten critical research elements and propose a comprehensive research approach that links molecular level genetic research paddock scale agronomic studies landscape scale investigations and new production systems and value chains into a range of aspects of sustainability,2012,0.027
The potential global distribution of the invasive weed Nassella neesiana under current and future climates,nassella neesiana trin and rupr chilean needle grass native to south america has naturalised sporadically in the uk france italy and spain and more widely in australia and new zealand where it has become a serious grassland weed as a first step towards a global risk analysis we project a climex model of n neesiana distribution globally under current climate and six future climate scenarios under current climate areas not yet invaded but climatically suitable are eastern and south western africa the north west coast and south eastern usa in north america high elevation areas in central america south eastern china northern africa along the mediterranean sea parts of nepal india and pakistan and europe under the future climate scenarios a mean global reduction of 32 in the area of suitable climate is projected with marked reductions in the native range 34 and also in africa 67 asia 30 north america 36 and australia 42 these range contractions are primarily attributable to projected increases in temperatures leading to lethal heat stress excluding the plant from areas currently designated as sub tropical and tropical humid by contrast projected expansions eastward in europe and westward in new zealand result in increases in suitable area of 70 and 60 respectively based on these results which were consistent across the climate change scenarios the countries most at risk from n neesiana are located in western and eastern europe a prudent biosecurity strategy would be to prevent the species spreading from the nascent foci already established there such a containment strategy would require controls to limit human assisted dispersal of the speciesâ fruit and to ban the species from propagation and distribution throughout europe,2012,0.456
Potential Distribution of the American Bullfrog (Lithobates Catesbeianus) in Ecuador,the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus is a native species from eastern north america that was introduced to ecuador in 1985 we built two models in maxent 1 one model with native records and 2 one model with native and invasive records to provide an approximate map of the potential geographical distribution for this species in ecuador both models showed significant differences in the prediction of suitable areas model 2 being the most consistent in relation to occurrence records here we present the invasive potential of the american bullfrog to occupy a wide variety of environments such as amazonia if human activities lead to an accidental or induced introduction furthermore this study is the first survey about the distribution of the american bullfrog in ecuador thus identifying some susceptible areas where conservation efforts should be focused to prevent new settlements and uncontrolled breeding of this species,2012,0.391
Advancing Global Marine Biogeography Research with Open-source GIS Software and Cloud Computing,across many scientific domains the ability to aggregate disparate datasets enables more meaningful global analyses within marine biology the census of marine life served as the catalyst for such a global data aggregation effort under the census framework the ocean biogeographic information system was established to coordinate an unprecedented aggregation of global marine biogeography data the obis data system now contains 31 3 million observations freely accessible through a geospatial portal the challenges of storing querying disseminating and mapping a global data collection of this complexity and magnitude are significant in the face of declining performance and expanding feature requests a redevelopment of the obis data system was undertaken following an open source philosophy the obis technology stack was rebuilt using postgresql postgis geoserver and openlayers this approach has markedly improved the performance and online user experience while maintaining a standards compliant and interoperable framework due to the distributed nature of the project and increasing needs for storage scalability and deployment flexibility the entire hardware and software stack was built on a cloud computing environment the flexibility of the platform combined with the power of the application stack enabled rapid re development of the obis infrastructure and ensured complete standards compliance,2012,0.152
Failure to achieve 2010 biodiversity’s target in developing countries: How can conservation help?,conservation and wise management of biodiversity is critical for better live lihoods especially in developing countries given the failure to achieve the global target set under convention on biological diversity cbd and millennium development goals mdgs to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 developing countries more than ever need better technologies to conserve and manage biodiversity despite billions of poor people depending on biodiversity as their main source of health care needs and food the lack of effective strategy or coherent policy instrument for biodiversity conservation remains a key issue the importance of biodiversity conservation for the benefit of developing countries is inextricably linked to developments in biotechnology particularly genetically modified organisms gmos the rio 20 meeting in june 2012 and cbd conference of the parties 11 in october 2012 are the next real opportunities to strengthen existing frameworks and prioritize types of technological innovation to enhance biodi versity conservation and development,2012,0.201
"The need for and the requirements of EuroSL, an electronic taxonomic reference list of all European plants",biodiversity informatics has experienced tremendous developments in the last 15 years there are now comprehensive online checklists for plant taxa as well as many large plant taxon related databases including the vegetation plot databases registered in the global index of vegetation plot databases givd http www givd info however efficient maintenance analysis and inte gration of these databases are still much impeded by the failure of presently available electronic taxonomic reference lists of plants to fully meet the requirements of such applications here we outline the principal specifications of an electronic taxonomic reference list for europe â œeuroslâ european standard list of plant taxa and identify features not met in current practice eurosl should cover all macroscopic taxa of vascular plants bryophytes lichens and algae that occur in european vegetation in a uniform database irrespec tive of their floristic status e g native archaeophyte neophyte casual the adoption of informal aggregates is essential to cover de viating species concepts and to capture legacy data eurosl should not only assign names but also match taxonomic concepts this task cannot be fully automated as the same correctly applied taxon name can have different meanings depending on the taxonomic concept applied in order to be a useful tool eurosl would need to be better documented than most existing electronic checklists and be released in fixed versions every subsequent version should contain an unambiguous connection linking each taxon to the corre sponding unit in the previous version we identify possible components of eurosl of which euro med plantbase the recent euro pean checklists of bryophytes and the taxonomic crosswalks between various national turboveg checklists collected for synbiosys europe are the major ones concepts developed for germansl might be adopted for eurosl but implemented in a software frame work that is yet to be developed from existing tools such a framework would allow documented editing of the content by specialists distributed across europe to become successful eurosl would require intensive collaboration between taxonomists ecologists and biodiversity informaticians as well as appropriate funding establishing eurosl would dramatically enhance the usability and reliabil ity of plant taxon related databases in europe for the purposes of pure and applied research and conservation legislation its develop ment should therefore be of highest priority,2012,0.231
The African wintering distribution and ecology of the Corncrake Crex crex,the corncrake crex crex breeds in the palearctic but overwinters in central and southern africa while some information had previously been gathered about the corncrakeâ s african wintering distribution we here analyse a much more comprehensive database of 1 284 records based on a five year desk study completed in january 2011 and use those records selected for spatiotemporal accuracy to build a continental distribution model our model was based mostly on climatic variables and predicts a high suitability for most eastern africa countries south of the equator but none of the western african countries with the exception of angola and namibia both the actual number of records as well as the distribution model thus indicates that the vast majority of corncrakes migrate through and overwinter in the eastern parts of africa because large parts of angola mozambique north eastern namibia and tanzania are predicted as suitable but have yielded very few actual records so far they should be targeted for future field work a very small number of corncrakes may oversummer in africa but such individuals are possibly unable to migrate due to sickness or injury or may be first year birds that are not ready to breed an analysis of habitat and population density data indicates that within the continental distribution corncrakes are mostly concentrated within grass dominated habitats mirroring their habitat preferences in the breeding areas corncrakes reach their wintering distribution mostly through an eastern migration route but some individuals or subpopulations from the western breeding population also use a western migration route we also document the food choices weights and causes of injury and death within africa because habitat conversion is accelerating all across africa we recommend constant monitoring of habitat availability and population densities within the corncrakeâ s wintering distribution,2012,0.255
An update on the myxomycete biota (Amoebozoa: Myxogastria) of Colombia,twelve new records of myxomycetes are reported for colombia these additions increase the number of myxomycetes known from this country to 108 species since the colombian territory is part of a biodiversity rich region in the heart of the neotropics the present effort may be considered as a minor contribution however due to scarcity of myxomycete research in this country and the importance of inventories involving microorganisms for such purposes as restoration ecology and ecosystem functioning projects the data presented herein represent a necessary contribution to an understudied aspect of tropical ecology,2012,0.419
Biodiversity Knowledge Organization System: Proposed Architecture,this document provides a proposed architecture for the new knowledge organization system kos for biodiversity information resources to be hosted by gbif the proposed kos architecture includes the following key components â œvocabulary of termsâ 1 â œterm browserâ 2 â œextensions and code lists for the darwin core archivesâ 3 domain ontologies 4 and a â œresources repositoryâ 5 this document presents the overall architecture and how these conceptual building blocks are linked together some of the possible software tools that can be used to implement each of these components are also mentioned this document contributes to the development of a new knowledge organization system kos for management of terms and concepts used for the description of biodiversity information resources,2012,0.224
An assessment of zoological research collections in South Africa,natural science collections are accepted globally as critical research assets a total of 71 zoological collections in south africa consisting of over 15 million specimens housed at 22 institutions were assessed to determine their current status and to make recommendations for their future security the two greatest challenges to the sustainability of the collections are 1 that natural science museums report to departments with an arts and culture rather than a science mandate and 2 staffing the total staff complement within these 22 institutions is 115 with many collections understaffed or not staffed and the loss of a single staff member often leaves a collection neglected and unused consolidation of collections so that there is a critical mass of staff is essential to address understaffing and would also allow for the establishment of a more dynamic research and curation environment consolidation under an appropriate department would also enable concentration of resources rather than dilution across all institutions which would improve the storage environment currently 28 of collections have reliable temperature control and only 8 five collections have humidity control and increase the efficiency of the use of available funds the curation budget was r1 08 million in 2009 2010 for all 71 collections consolidation could also ensure the improvement of data storage management and dissemination thereby increasing accessibility to the collections and the use of the collections for research,2012,0.12
Applying cluster analysis and Google Maps in the study of large-scale species occurrence data,the primary species occurrence data include the data on animal and plant specimens in museums and herbaria as well as species observations taibif taiwan biodiversity information facility data portal has integrated 26 datasets so far resulting in more than 1 5 million species occurrence data 85 of them are geo referenced this study utilizes more than 8 800 cyprinidae occurrence data from 11 datasets and uses three different types of clustering algorithmsâ grid based partition based and density basedâ to produce different spatial visualization results it aims to resolve the problems of efficacy and poor visualization when large scales of species occurrence data are presented in google maps the study also explores the compara tive differences between the results obtained from the three clustering algorithms and the expert opinion range maps of cyprinidae it hopes to identify a quick and efficient way to present species distribution data in turn help researchers to extract knowledge from large amount of data so that the knowledge can be tapped as important reference for ecological conservation efforts,2012,0.696
Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments,quantitative palaeolimnology has made great advances in the last 20 years the subject is not static however and as more and more demanding questions are asked of palaeolimnology in the future there will be more and more future numerical challenges to be addressed and subjects to be explored these include the problems of model selection trait analysis data mining time warp analysis quantile regression additive modelling new techniques for temporal series analysis and increasing use of bayesian inference the practical problems of computing and of available software are also discussed and it is clear that future developments in quantitative palaeolimnology will depend on researchers becoming proficient in the use of r and its innumerable packages relevant to palaeolimnological data analysis,2012,0.294
Spatial data quality of herbarium datasets and implications for decision-making on biodiversity conservation in Brazil,the present level of biodiversity depletion and loss makes quality datasets important for biodiversity conservation however poor data quality is still critical and limits the usefulness of these datasets thereby data quality assessments are important to ensure a responsible use of those datasets the brazilian national centre for flora conservation was created with the objective of assessing the extinction risk of plant species enabling conservation action planning in this context a dataset was created after the compilation of occurrence records of threatened species the present study aims to assess quality of the dataset and records and to test quality improvement after data cleaning efforts we have used the five component scheme for assessing dataset quality significance of the differences between expected and observed proportions were tested using the degree of confidence between them the mann whitney test was used to compare errors between the original dataset and the cleaned out one results indicate poor quality not only for dataset p 0 10 but also for records p 0 10 only 54 306 records 22 30 were considered of good quality logical inconsistencies in the dataset were present in 8 237 records 3 37,2012,0.447
"Spatial patterns and diversity of bryozoan communities from the Southern Ocean: South Shetland Islands, Bouvet Island and Eastern Weddell Sea",in this study we report new data on the biodiversity and the geographic and bathymetric distribution of bryozoans collected during the ant xxi 2 cruise november 2003 to january 2004 in the eastern weddell sea and bouvet island and during the spanish antarctic expedition ecoquim january 2006 in the south shetland islands our data on distribution were analysed together with previous studies carried out in the same regions a total of 54 species of antarctic bryozoans 206 samples including a new species of the genus reteporella were found two species were reported for the first time from bouvet island one from the weddell sea and one from spiess seamount fifty five per cent of all species identified were endemic to antarctica in the weddell sea the regions of austasen and kapp norvegia exhibit the highest relative species richness followed by the vestkapp region multivariate and cluster analyses revealed small scale spatial variability in the community structure along depth and between localities,2012,0.919
Systematics and Phylogeography of the Genus Tilia in North America,phylogeography is the study of genetic lineages evolving through time and across space avise 1987 and represents a merging and extension of the fields of population genetics systematics and biogeography population genetics focuses on patterns of gene flow within and among populations of a species wright 1931 while systematics seeks to discover the historical relationships among species phylogeography examines the historical and contemporary processes that generate variation within and among species by explicitly considering the role geography plays in the formation and distribution of variation avise 1998 phylogeographic methods range from visual description to stochastic modeling visual overlay of a haplotype network on a distribution map e g mclachlan et al 2005 population genetic analysis of variation subdivided by geographic area e g dorken and barrett 2004 correlation of genetic and geographic distances between individuals or populations e g dumolin lapã gue et al 1997 nested clade analysis e g brunsfeld and sullivan 2005 or coalescent modeling of a priori geographic hypotheses e g knowles and carstens 2007b,2012,0.828
Advances in global change research require open science by individual researchers,understanding how species and ecosystems respond to climate change requires spatially and temporally rich data for a diverse set of species and habitats combined with models that test and predict responses yet current work is hampered by the long known problems of inadequate management of data and insufficient description of analytical procedures especially in the field of ecology despite recent institutional incentives to share data and new data archiving infrastructure many ecologists do not archive and publish their data and code given current rapid rates of global change the consequences of this are extreme because an ecological dataset collected at a certain place and time represents an irreproducible set of observations ecologists doing local independent research possess in their file cabinets and spreadsheets a wealth of information about the natural world and how it is changing although large scale initiatives will increasingly enable and reward open science we believe that change demands action and personal commitment by individualsâ from students and pis here we outline the major benefits of sharing data and analytical procedures in the context of global change ecology and provide guidelines for overcoming common obstacles and concerns if individual scientists and labs can embrace a culture of archiving and sharing we can accelerate the pace of the scientific method and redefine how local science can most robustly scale up to globally relevant questions,2012,0.303
Inventory of related wild species of priority crops in Venezuela,a prerequisite in any conservation programme of plant genetic resources is estimation of diversity the inventory of wild and naturalized relatives of priority crops in venezuela cwr is based on the main catalogues of flora in the country selecting taxa closely related to crops according to the concepts of gene pool and taxonomic group we included 47 genera 217 species and 228 taxa belonging to 28 plant families among them those with higher richness are fabaceae solanaceae araceae lauraceae dioscoreaceae poaceae rosaceae and myrtaceae genera with a higher number of species are xanthosoma persea dioscorea prunus psidium phaseolus solanum vigna capsicum manihot theobroma ipomoea and oryza a total of 26 endemic species are found which belong to genera xanthosoma persea dioscorea prunus and manihot the primary gene pool of crops include native species from genera such as manihot solanum section petota lycopersicon ananas capsicum dioscorea xanthosoma phaseolus theobroma ipomoea gossypium arracacia and psidium genera with native species weakly related to crops are saccharum persea ipomoea prunus vigna solanum section melongena and daucus crop genera without native species in venezuela are allium musa brassica spinacia helianthus pisum lactuca citrus elaeis beta glycine and triticum only a few taxa have already been evaluated according to the iucn criteria and venezuelan accessions of crop wild relatives in national and international genebanks are very scarce,2012,0.968
Thinking spatially: The importance of geospatial techniques for carnivore conservation,today 27 of the known mammalian carnivore species are either extinct or threatened undermining the health of many ecosystems which provide resources and services that are crucial for human development carnivore research and management have been limited by the predominantly cryptic nature of carnivores sometimes also by their large scale habitat requirements and their remote distributions as a consequence many carnivore species currently remain under studied the increased availability and facilitated interpretation of remote sensing imagery combined with recent developments in landscape ecology and geographic information systems have provided a wealth of analytical tools to overcome many of these traditional setbacks these can be coupled with advances in multivariate statistics and species distribution models to formalise the link between spatial patterns in environmental variables and species occurrence such methods allow a greater understanding of the processes shaping habitat use the effects of poaching and land cover change and assist in the design and monitoring of more targeted actions towards carnivores long term conservation,2012,0.41
Which environmental variables should I use in my biodiversity model?,appropriate selection of environmental variables is critical to the performance of biodiversity models but has received less attention than the choice of modelling method online aggregators of biological and environmental data such as the global biodiversity information facility and the atlas of living australia necessitate a rational approach to variable selection we outline a set of general principles for systematically identifying compiling evaluating and selecting environmental variables for a biodiversity model our approach aims to maximise the information obtained from the analysis of biological records linked to a potentially large suite of spatial environmental variables we demonstrate the utility of this structured framework through case studies with australian vascular plants regional modelling of a species distribution continent wide modelling of species compositional turnover and environmental classification the approach is informed by three components of a biodiversity model 1 an ecological framework or conceptual model 2 a data model concerning availability resolution and variable selection and 3 a method for analysing data we expand the data model in structuring the problem of choosing environmental variables the case studies demonstrate a structured approach for the 1 cost effective compilation of variables in the context of an explicit ecological framework for the study attribute accuracy and resolution 2 evaluation of non linear relationships between variables using knowledge of their derivation scatter plots and dissimilarity matrices 3 selection and grouping of variables based on hypotheses of relative ecological importance and perceived predictor effectiveness 4 systematic testing of variables as predictors through the process of model building and refinement and 5 model critique inference and synthesis using direct gradient analysis to evaluate the shape of response curves in the context of ecological theory by presenting predictions in both geographic and environmental space,2012,0.011
Spatial distribution and ecological variation of re-discovered German truffle habitats,several truffle species tuber spp are highly prized by chefs and gourmets with some commanding prices of up to â 9 000 kg∠1 on international markets their ecological drivers and geographical patterns however often remain a puzzle truffle species in germany are classified as very rare or even extinct on the national red lists while historical literature described their sporadic existence here we present evidence of seven tuber species t aestivum t brumale t excavatum t fulgens t macrosporum t mesentericum t rufum discovered at 121 sites in southwest germany the valuable burgundy truffle t aestivum occurred at 116 sites an unexpected abundance of tuber spp associated with 13 potential host plants along wide ecological gradients in a region far outside the traditional mediterranean truffle foci in france italy and spain is likely indicative of possible responses to climate change and also suggests ample truffle cultivation potential north of the alpine arc,2012,0.613
DataONE: Facilitating eScience through Collaboration,objective to introduce dataone a multi institutional multinational and interdisciplinary collaboration that is developing the cyberinfra structure and organizational structure to support the full information lifecycle of biological ecologi cal and environmental data and tools to be used by researchers educators and the public at large setting the dynamic world of data intensive science at the point it interacts with the grand challenges facing environmental sciences methods briefly discuss scienceâ s â œfourth para digm â then introduce how dataone is being de veloped to answer the challenges presented by this new environment sociocultural perspectivesare the primary focus of the discussion results dataone is highly collaborative this is a result of its cyberinfrastructure architecture its interdisciplinary nature and its organizational diversity the organizational structure of an agile management team diverse leadership team and productive working groups provides for a suc cessful collaborative environment where substan tial contributions to the dataone mission have been made by a large number of people conclusions librarians and information science researchers are key partners in the development of dataone these roles are likely to grow as more scientists engage data at all points of the data lifecycle,2012,0.151
Determining the ecological value of landscapes beyond protected areas,whilst there are a number of mapping methods available for determining important areas for conservation within protected areas there are few tools available for assessing the ecological value of landscapes that are â beyond the reservesâ a systematic tool for determining the ecological value of landscapes out side of protected areas could be relevant to any development that results in a parcel of land being trans formed from its â naturalâ state to an alternative state e g industrial agricultural specifically what is needed is a method to determine which landscapes beyond protected areas are important for the ecolog ical processes that they support and the threatened and vulnerable species that they contain this paper presents the results of a project to develop a method for mapping ecologically important landscapes beyond protected areas a local ecological footprinting tool left the method uses existing globally available web based databases and models to provide an ecological score based on five key ecological fea tures biodiversity vulnerability fragmentation connectivity and resilience for every 300m parcel within a given region the end product is a map indicating ecological value across the landscape we demonstrate the potential of this method through its application to three study regions in canada algeria and the russian federation the primary audience of this tool are those practitioners involved in planning the location of any landscape scale industrial business or urban e g new town facility outside of pro tected areas it provides a pre planning tool for use before undertaking a more costly field based envi ronmental impact assessment and quickly highlights areas of high ecological value to avoid in the location of facilities î,2012,0.055
Potential changes in benthic macrofaunal distributions from the English Channel simulated under climate change scenarios,climate induced changes in the distribution of species are likely to affect the functioning and diversity of marine ecosystems therefore in economic and ecological important areas such as the english channel projections of the future distributions of key species under changing environmental conditions are urgently needed ecological niche models enms have been applied successfully to determine potential distributions of species based on the information of the environmental niche of a species sensu hutchinson in this study the niches of two commercially exploited benthic species pecten maximus and glycymeris glycymeris and two ecologically important species abra alba and ophelia borealis were derived using four contemporary hydrographic variables i e sea surface temperature sea surface salinity water depth and sediment type consequently using these ecological envelopes the non parametric probalistic ecological niche model nppen was applied to calculate contemporary probabilities of occurrence for each species in the north east atlantic and to predict potential re distributions under the climate change scenario a2 for two time periods 2050e2059 and 2090e2099 results show general northern displacements of the four benthic species from the english channel into the north sea and southern norwegian coast the projections mostly indicate a reduction of suitable habitat for benthic species with a notable disappearance of their distributions in the english channel except for a alba however interpretations should be treated with caution since many uncertainties and assumptions are attached to ecological niche models in general furthermore opening up potential habitats for benthic species does not necessarily imply that the species will actually occupy these sites in the future the displacement and colonisation success of species are a function of many other nonclimatic factors such as species life histories dispersal abilities adaptability and community interactions,2012,0.982
Pleistocene Speciation in the Genus Populus (Salicaceae),the macro evolutionary consequences of recent climate change remain controversial and there is little paleobotanical or morphological evidence that pleistocene 1 8 0 12 ma glacial cycles acted as drivers of speciation especially among lineages with long generation times such as trees we combined genetic and ecogeographic data from two closely related north american tree species populus balsamifera and p trichocarpa salicacaeae to determine if their divergence coincided with and was possibly caused by pleistocene climatic events we analyzed 32 nuclear loci from individuals of p balsamifera and p trichocarpa to produce coalescent based estimates of the divergence time between the two species we coupled the coalescent analyses with paleodistribution models to assess the influence of climate change on species range further measures of niche overlap were used to investigate patterns of ecological differentiation between species we estimated the divergence date of p balsamifera and p trichocarpa at approximately 75 ka which corresponds closely with the onset of marine isotope stage 4 ∠76 ka and a rapid increase in global ice volume significance tests of niche overlap in conjunction with genetic estimates of migration suggested that speciation occurred in allopatry possibly resulting from the environmental effects of pleistocene glacial cycles our results indicate the divergence of keystone tree species that have shaped community diversity in northern north american ecosystems was recent and may have been a consequence of pleistocene era glaciation and climate change,2012,0.715
Comparative analyses reveal potential uses of Brachypodium distachyon as a model for cold stress responses in temperate grasses.,background little is known about the potential of brachypodium distachyon as a model for low temperature stress responses in pooideae the ice recrystallization inhibition proteins irip genes fructosyltransferase fst genes and many c repeat binding factor cbf genes are pooideae specific and important in low temperature responses here we use comparative analyses to study conservation and evolution of these gene families in b distachyon to better understand b distachyon s potential as a model species for agriculturally important temperate grasses results brachypodium distachyon contains cold responsive irip genes which have evolved through brachypodium specific gene family expansions a large cold responsive cbf3 subfamily was identified in b distachyon while cbf4 homologs are absent from the genome no b distachyon fst gene homologs encode typical core pooideae fst motifs and low temperature induced fructan accumulation was dramatically different in b distachyon compared to core pooideae species conclusions we conclude that b distachyon can serve as an interesting model for specific molecular mechanisms involved in low temperature responses in core pooideae species however the evolutionary history of key genes involved in low temperature responses has been different in brachypodium and core pooideae species these differences limit the use of b distachyon as a model for holistic studies relevant for agricultural core pooideae species,2012,0.398
Potential spread of recently naturalised plants in New Zealand under climate change,climate change and biological invasions are major causes of biodiversity loss andmay also have synergistic effects such as range shifts of invaders due to changing climate bioclimatic models provide an important tool to assess how the threat of invasive species may change with altered temperature and precipitation regimes in this study potential distributions of three recently naturalised plant species in new zealand are modelled archontophoenix cunning hamiana psidium guajava and schefflera actinophylla using four different general circulation models cccma cgcm3 csiro mk3 0 gfdl cm2 0 and ukmo hadcm3 with two emission scenarios a2 and b1 each based on a maximum entropy approach models were trained on global data using a small set of uncorrelated predictors themodels were projected to the country of interest using climate models that had been statistically downscaled to new zealand in order to obtain high resolution predictions this study provides evidence of the potential range expansion of these species with potentially suitable habitat increasing by asmuch as 169 a cunninghamiana with up to 115 805 km2 of suitable habitat 133 p guajava 164 450 km2 and 208 s actinophylla 31 257km2 by the end of the century compared to the currently suitable habitat the results show that while predictions vary depending on the chosen climate scenario there is remarkable consistency amongst most climate models within the same emission scenario with overlaps in areas of predicted presence ranging between 81 and 99 5 excluding csiro mk3 0 by having a better understanding of how climate change will affect distribution of invasive plants appropriate management measures can be taken,2012,0.454
Genetically modified crops and aquatic ecosystems: Considerations for environmental risk assessment and non-target organism testing,environmental risk assessments era support regulatory decisions for the commercial cultivation of genetically modified gm crops the era for terrestrial agroecosystems is well developed whereas guidance for era of gm crops in aquatic ecosystems is not as well defined the purpose of this document is to demonstrate how comprehensive problem formulation can be used to develop a conceptual model and to identify potential exposure pathways using bacillus thuringiensis bt maize as a case study within problem formulation the insecticidal trait the crop the receiving environment and protection goals were characterized and a conceptual model was developed to identify routes through which aquatic organisms may be exposed to insecticidal proteins in maize tissue following a tiered approach for exposure assessment worst case exposures were estimated using standardized models and factors mitigating exposure were described based on exposure estimates shredders were identified as the functional group most likely to be exposed to insecticidal proteins however even using worst case assumptions the exposure of shredders to bt maize was low and studies supporting the current risk assessments were deemed adequate determining if early tier toxicity studies are necessary to inform the risk assessment for a specific gm crop should be done on a case by case basis and should be guided by thorough problem formulation and exposure assessment the processes used to develop the bt maize case study are intended to serve as a model for performing risk assessments on future traits and crops,2012,0.076
Species distributions: virtual or real - the case of Arbaciella elegans (Echinoidea: Arbaciidae),the distribution of species is expressed by their occurrence in local faunal lists often compiled by non taxonomists in the case of rare or cryptic species this can pose a severe limitation on the validity and thus the application of the resulting biodiversity data here we show an example of a shallow water echinoid to illustrate problematic distribution data based on misidentification this species arbaciella elegans was established on the basis of central african material and later reported from various places in the mediterranean and the northern atlantic morphological comparison with the type material casts considerable doubt on the validity of these records genetical characterization of material from the azores clearly shows that the dark arbaciella phenotype reported to the mediterranean and north east atlantic in fact represents juveniles of another species namely arbacia lixula,2012,0.733
Prediction of potential survival areas of Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) in China,smooth cordgrass spartina alterniflora is one of the harmful quarantine weeds in china since its first introduction in china in 1979 this alien species has spread rapidly and damaged local ecological environments research to predict a suitable new area is an important step for management of the species and to prevent a further spread in this study spartina alternifloraâ s ecological niche was modeled using the application maxent analysis was based on speciesâ current distribution the investigations of this study were two fold first a large scale global investigation outside china was conducted to predict suitable areas in china by comparing global and chinese records of the species in the second set the combined records were used to predict suitable areas in the jiangsu province the modelâ s accuracy was evaluated by receiver operator characteristic roc curve the areas under the roc curve auc value were all over 0 95 which indicated high predictive ability of this model in the large scale prediction shanghai zhejiang fujian guangzhou guangxi and southern part of wuhan jiangsu and anhui were all potentially endangered by s alterniflora invasion on the smaller scale the prone to invasion areas were mostly concentrated on southern part and some coastal areas of jiangsu province where the precipitation and temperature were appropriate for this grass because of s alterniflora has high dispersal ability and human induced history the potential distribution areas in china are considerable and it may invade more areas in result spreading faster in the future to prevent further invasion and spread an early eradication program should be adopted in the newly invaded areas meanwhile the monitoring programs should also need to be applied in potential survival areas especially in coastal harbors airports and tourism areas which are highly vulnerable to s alterniflora invasion,2012,0.443
Temporal Analysis of mtDNA Variation Reveals Decreased Genetic Diversity in Least Terns,the least tern sternula antillarum has undergone large population declines over the last century as a result of direct and indirect anthropogenic factors the genetic implications of these declines are unknown we used historical museum specimens pre 1960 and contemporary 2001â 2005 samples to examine range wide phylogeographic patterns and investigate potential loss in the species genetic variation we obtained sequences 522 bp of the mitochondrial gene for nadh dehydrogenase subunit 6 nd6 from 268 individuals from across the species range phylogeographic analysis revealed no association with geography or traditional subspecies designations however we detected potential reductions in genetic diversity in contemporary samples from california and the atlantic coast least tern from that in historical samples suggesting that current genetic diversity in least tern populations is lower than in their pre 1960 counterparts our results offer unique insights into changes in the least tern s genetic diversity over the past century and highlight the importance and utility of museum specimens in studies of conservation genetics,2012,0.779
VegetWeb – the national online-repository of vegetation plots from Germany,vegetweb givd id eu de 013 is an online archive for vegetation plot data from germany and can be accessed at the floraweb website of the federal agency for nature conservation http www floraweb de the data model of vegetweb allows up load storage and interactive search of plot data with different original formats and taxonomic reference due to financial constraints only a small proportion of germany s legacy of plot data has been captured so far vegetweb co operates with the journal tuexenia for which it provides an interactive online archive of relevã tables by capturing and distributing all newly published data,2012,0.243
Pyganodon (Bivalvia: Unionoida: Unionidae) phylogenetics: a male- and female-transmitted mitochondrial DNA perspective,species boundaries evolutionary relationships and geographic distributions of many unionoid bivalve species like those in the genus pyganodon remain unresolved in eastern north america because unionoid bivalves are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in the world understanding the genetic variation within and among populations as well as among species is crucial for effective conservation planning conservation of unionoid species is indispensable from a freshwater habitat perspective but also because they possess a unique mitochondrial inheritance system where distinct gender associated mitochondrial dna lineages coexist a female transmitted f mt genome and a male transmitted m mt genome that are involved in the maintenance of separate sexes dioecy in this study 42 populations of pyganodon sp were sampled across a large geographical range and fragments of two mitochondrial genes cox1 and cox2 were sequenced from both the m and f transmitted mtdna genomes our results support the recency of the divergence between p cataracta and p fragilis we also found two relatively divergent f and m lineages within p grandis surprisingly the relationships among the p grandis specimens in the f and m sequence trees are not congruent we found that a single haplotype in p lacustris has recently swept throughout the m genotype space leading to an unexpectedly low diversity in the m lineage in that species our survey put forward some challenging results that force us to rethink hybridization and species boundaries in the genus pyganodon as the m and f genomes do not always display the same phylogeographic story in each species we also discuss the importance of being careful in the interpretation of molecular data based solely on maternal transmitted mtdna genomes the involvement of f and m genomes in unionoid bivalve sex determination likely played a role in the genesis of the unorthodox phylogeographic patterns reported herein,2012,0.94
Ecogeographical land characterization maps as a tool for assessing plant adaptation and their implications in agrobiodiversity studies,information on plant adaptation can be very useful in agrobiodiversity studies ecogeographical land characterization elc maps constitute a new tool in this direction with great potential to assess the usefulness of this approach an elc map of spain was created through multivariate methods its performance to characterize plant habitat preferences was compared with existing ecological regions and land cover maps collecting sites and seed weight from eight plant species were used to test the elc map categories from each map were assigned to accessions using collecting sites chi square tests were applied to test if category frequency distributions for each species followed a distribution proportional to the relative frequency of categories in each map the tests found significant differences in the eight species studied thus bonferroni confidence intervals bci classified categories from maps in preferred neutral or avoided habitats seed weight was used as a proxy for plant adaptation comparison between observed and expected ranking of bci and quartile classes in terms of seed weight means and glm and post hoc tests carried out to test the effect of these classes upon seed weight showed consistently better results for the elc map species results and applications of ecogeographic maps in plant genetic resources conservation are discussed,2012,0.684
Understanding Diversity for harmonious and sustainable development,diversity is as crucial for the survival of humanity as the air we breathe and the water we drink understanding diversity is a prerequisite for the promotion of the sustainable utilisation of crop diversity the raw material for improving and adapting crops to meet future challenges essential to respond to the unprecedented demands on agriculture posed by increasingly unpredictable and changing climate as well as the increasing pressure of constantly evolving pests and diseases by providing extra source of material and knowledge in spite of the many challenges ahead impacting in agricultural production like the threat of genetic erosion deforestation changes in key climatic features i e temperature increase and food insecurity there are a number of elements that play a crucial role in contributing to attaining the goals of harmonious and sustainable development such as the genetic diversity in germplasm collections maintained at local national regional and global level that need to be harnessed by means of understanding the diversity for the benefit and improved well being ensuring food and nutrition security and healthy life for present and future generations of humankind,2012,0.273
Knowledge Discovery for Biodiversity: from Data Mining to Sign Management,knowledge discovery from data in environmental sciences is becoming more and more important nowadays because of the deluge of information found in databases of digital ecosystems coming altogether from institutions and amateurs for example in biodiversity science all these data need to be validated by specialists with the help of intelligent environmental decision support systems iedsss then enhanced and certified into qualitative knowledge before reaching their audience data mining through classification or clustering is the dedicated inductive process of grouping descriptions based on similarity measures then building classes and naming them later the formed concepts can be reused for identification purpose with new observations the problem is that when using such knowledge based systems we tend to forget the fundamental role of subjects end users in the definition observation and description of objects in order to get good identification results a consensus must be found between these experts and amateurs for interpreting correctly the observed objects thus a new method of knowledge discovery is necessary by switching from data mining to sign management the method focuses on the process of building knowledge by sharing signs and significations semiotic web more than on knowledge transmission with intelligent object representations semantic web sign management is the shift of paradigm for biodiversity informatics that we have investigated in such domains as enhancing natural heritage with ict in this paper we will present sign management and illustrate this concept with two knowledge bases built in la reunion island for coralsâ classification with ikbs iterative knowledge base system and plants identification with xper2 software platform,2012,0.033
Noisy data elimination using mutual k-nearest neighbor for classification mining,k nearest neighbor knn is an effective and powerful lazy learning algorithm notwithstanding its easy to implement however its performance heavily relies on the quality of training data due to many complex real applications noises coming from various possible sources are often prevalent in large scale databases how to eliminate anomalies and improve the quality of data is still a challenge to alleviate this problem in this paper we propose a new anomaly removal and learning algorithm under the framework of knn the primary characteristic of our method is that the evidence of removing anomalies and predicting class labels of unseen instances is mutual nearest neighbors rather than k nearest neighbors the advantage is that pseudo nearest neighbors can be identified and will not be taken into account during the prediction process consequently the final learning result is more creditable an extensive comparative experimental analysis carried out on uci datasets provided empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the proposed method for enhancing the performance of the k nn rule,2012,0.049
Late Pleistocene species distribution modelling of North Atlantic intertidal invertebrates,aim in this study we test molecular based biogeographical hypotheses of pleistocene persistence and recolonization in a north atlantic rocky intertidal invertebrate assemblage using species distribution modelling location north atlantic coastlines methods we develop a novel application of species distribution models for intertidal taxa by using both oceanographic and terrestrial environmental variables recently made available at biologically relevant pixel resolutions we use these model based distribution estimates to test alternative hypotheses of late pleistocene history across six amphi atlantic taxa whose hypothesized pleistocene distributions are constructed from previous population genetic inferences results species distribution models correctly estimate all six current amphi atlantic distributions on both sides of the atlantic models hindcasted to the last glacial maximum estimate trans atlantic distributional persistence in three of six taxa and conversely indicate no suitable habitat on the north american coastline in the other three taxa these results are consistent with the histories inferred from population genetic data for five of six of the taxa the exception being nucella lapillus whose hindcasted trans atlantic persistence at the last glacial maximum contrasts with the mitochondrial dna based estimates of post glacial expansion from europe to north america main conclusions marine and terrestrial distribution models are broadly concordant with known contemporary distributions and fail to reject five of six historical distributional hypotheses based on population genetic inferences this demonstrated utility suggests that this technique could be expanded to examine how pleistocene and contemporary climate change might play a role in intertidal species distributions across the entire community future application and development of these marine and terrestrial distribution models will strengthen inferences regarding the processes generating intertidal community assembly and population divergence and may assist in conservation planning and the design of marine reserves,2012,0.521
The Visitation Aspect and Habitat Preference of Plover (Pluvialis spp.) in the Nakdong Estuary,the study is performed in the nakdong estuary located in the city of busan the study focuses on understanding the visitation aspect of plover pluvialis spp and their habitat preference through long term monitoring in the nakdong estuary where nearby environment rapidly changes based on comparison and analysis of data from early 1990s and mid 2000s among the total of 6 672 individuals in 3 genus and 10 species during the survey the number of pluvialis spp was 910 13 64 for 2 species including 57 pacific golden plover pluvialis dominica and 853 grey plover pluvialis squatarola among 295 of 910 individuals 2 genuses of pluvialis discovered in the first half of 1990s the number of pacific golden plover pluvialis dominica and grey plover pluvialis squatarola is 41 and 254 respectively 615 individuals discovered in mid 2000s consist of 16 pacific golden plover pluvialis dominica and 599 grey plover pluvialis squantarola the number of individuals recorded per month for the 2 periods show no significant difference p 0 522 and the number of individuals in the mid 2000s mean 102 50 is larger than that of early 1990s mean 73 75 visitation aspect per month states that the number of individuals in august was the highest of 369 followed by 168 in april 120 in may 63 in september and 55 in october respectively the average number of individuals for the 5 regions visitation number showed 26 74 including 69 33 in dmd 18 50 in jj and sjd 9 17 in sj and dy and 6 88 in lud showing significant differences among regions p 0 027 dmd showed the highest number of individuals mean 69 33 and lud recorded the lowest mean 6 60 and there was no individual in usd regional visitation number showed that the total of 615 individuals have been discovered for 6 years and 416 111 55 and 33 individuals in dmd jj and sjd sj and dy and lud respectively monthly recorded individuals stated that dmd had 218 individuals in august 105 in april and 45 in may of 416 in dmd and 42 in august and 22 in september of 111 in jj and sjd the results showed that the number of plovers here was not fluctuated much in the early 1990s and mid 2000s despite many environmental changes in the nakdong estuary and there was regional difference among jj sd sj and dyd showing preference difference future researches will be required whether these results show that the places are still good for habitat of migrant birds or they have no other choices,2012,0.533
Online cetacean habitat modeling system for the US east coast and Gulf of Mexico,we describe the development of a comprehensive set of marine mammal habitat models for the us east coast and gulf of mexico and their delivery through an online mapping portal drawing from datasets in the online obis seamap geo database we integrated surveys conducted by ship n 36 and aircraft n 16 weighting a generalized additive model gam by minutes surveyed within space∠time grid cells to harmonize effort between the 2 survey plat forms for each of 16 cetacean species guilds we predicted the probability of occurrence from sta tic environmental variables water depth distance to shore distance to continental shelf break and time varying conditions monthly sea surface temperature to generate maps of presence versus absence receiver operator characteristic roc curves were used to define the optimal threshold that minimizes false positive and false negative error rates we integrated model out puts including tables species in guilds input surveys and plots fit of environmental variables roc curve into an online spatial decision support system sdss allowing for easy navigation of models by taxon region season and data provider users can define regions of interest and extract statistical summaries of the model for that region the sdss also displays density models from other providers and regions e g pacific ocean this versatile easy to use online system enables the application of these habitat models to real world conservation and management issues finally we discuss the ecological relevance of these model outputs and identify key data gaps across species regions and seasons,2012,0.218
The Magnitude of Global Marine Species Diversity,background the question of how many marine species exist is important because it provides a metric for how much we do and do not know about life in the oceans we have compiled the first register of the marine species of the world and used this baseline to estimate how many more species partitioned among all major eukaryotic groups may be discovered results there are ∠226 000 eukaryotic marine species described more species were described in the past decade ∠20 000 than in any previous one the number of authors describing new species has been increasing at a faster rate than the number of new species described in the past six decades we report that there are ∠170 000 synonyms that 58 000 72 000 species are collected but not yet described and that 482 000 741 000 more species have yet to be sampled molecular methods may add tens of thousands of cryptic species thus there may be 0 7 1 0 million marine species past rates of description of new species indicate there may be 0 5 â 0 2 million marine species on average 37 median 31 of species in over 100 recent field studies around the world might be new to science conclusions currently between one third and two thirds of marine species may be undescribed and previous estimates of there being well over one million marine species appear highly unlikely more species than ever before are being described annually by an increasing number of authors if the current trend continues most species will be discovered this century,2012,0.999
"Completeness, Coverage & Equivalence in Scientific Data Records",previously we asked when is a record data and when is it a fish wickett et al 2012 in this work we ask when and in what contexts are a record and a fish equivalent we describe and compare a collection of potentially equivalent records describing a mola mola or ocean sunfish specimen we calculate the metadata coverage index mci of each record and explore the use the systematic assertion model dubin 2010 to support investigation of the assertions contained in these data records,2012,0.251
Assessing biodiversity funding during the sixth extinction,funding for understanding biodiversity on this planet has had a checkered and unsatisfactory history there have been some true successes in developing models for assessing biodiversity but satisfactory governmental and international support has been piecemeal and unsatisfactory a true solution to the biodiversity crisis will require greater attention from governmental and international funding agencies,2012,0.298
Biomass properties in association with plant species and assortments I: A synthesis based on literature data of energy properties,a study was carried out based on ash composition data relative proportion of sio2 k2o cao mgo na2o p2o5 al2o3 fe2o3 and so2 in ash in a large number of biomass species and assortments the data were collected from 109 peer reviewed publications and consisted of 367 objects for ash composition analysis principal component analysis pca was used to analyze the data the analyses were performed at five levels of plant classifications respectively level 1â 3 for life forms species groups level 4 for assortments and level 5 for species woody species data points tended to differ from herbaceous ones in terms of pca for level 1 analysis the loading plot of the two first components pc1 and pc2 indicated that the woody species tended to be associated with caâ mgâ pâ kâ s while the herbaceous ones were closer to si ca and si had the largest contributions in forming the pattern the woody group had a larger variation than the herbaceous group in terms of ash composition but this could be explained only by differentiation in assortments as illustrated with the level 4 analysis the pca analyses at levels 2 and 3 did not generate significant patterns as the variations within the groups were larger than between the groups the variation of the herbaceous data however could be explained by all level 2â 5 analyses and attributed to differences between herbaceous dicots and graminoids between c3 and c4 plants and between assortments such as husk fruit residues and bagasse the robust analysis had in general the same results these results could be further interpreted by the trend that si decreased but ca increased gradually in the following order c3 graminoids â c4 graminoids â herbaceous dicots â woody groups it was also found that k p mg and s were higher in herbaceous dicots than in graminoids,2012,0.521
"Selecting pseudo-absences for species distribution models: how, where and how many?",summary 1 species distribution models are increasingly used to address questions in conservation biology ecology and evolution the most effective species distribution models require data on both species presence and the available environmental conditions known as background or pseudo absence data in the area however there is still no consensus on how and where to sample these pseudo absences and how many 2 in this study we conducted a comprehensive comparative analysis based on simple simulated species distributions to propose guidelines on how where and how many pseudo absences should be generated to build reliable species distribution models depending on the quantity and quality of the initial presence data unbiased vs climatically or spatially biased we assessed the relative effect of the method for selecting pseudo absences random vs environmentally or spatially stratified and their number on the predictive accuracy of seven common modelling techniques regression classification and machine learning techniques 3 when using regression techniques the method used to select pseudo absences had the greatest impact on the modelâ s predictive accuracy randomly selected pseudo absences yielded the most reliable distribution models models fitted with a large number of pseudo absences but equally weighted to the presences i e the weighted sum of presence equals the weighted sum of pseudo absence produced the most accurate predicted distributions for classification and machine learning techniques the number of pseudo absences had the greatest impact on model accuracy and averaging several runs with fewer pseudo absences than for regression techniques yielded the most predictive models 4 overall we recommend the use of a large number e g 10 000 of pseudo absences with equal weighting for presences and absences when using regression techniques e g generalised linear model and generalised additive model averaging several runs e g 10 with fewer pseudo absences e g 100 with equal weighting for presences and absences with multiple adaptive regression splines and discriminant analyses and using the same number of pseudo absences as available presences averaging several runs if few pseudo absences for classification techniques such as boosted regression trees classification trees and random forest in addition we recommend the random selection of pseudo absences when using regression techniques and the random selection of geographically and environmentally stratified pseudo absences when using classification and machine learning techniques,2012,0.428
Development and Future of Insect Conservation in South Africa,when considering the history of insect conservation activities in south africa it is important to consider its biodiversity value in a global context the country has been rated as the third most biologically diverse in the world after indonesia and brazil it also has within its borders three of the worldâ s 34 biodiversity hotspots mittermeier et al 2004 in discussions of south africaâ s biodiversity it is mostly the countryâ s fl ora that is recognised as being of enormous conserva tion value followed by the variety of large mammals and rich bird fauna that form the basis of a large ecotourism industry the contribution of the insect fauna to the countryâ s biodiversity in terms of both richness and functioning is less well known among the public decision makers and even some conservation sci entists insect conservation can be considered a relatively new and possibly also a neglected discipline in south africa but there has certainly been some progress through various activities at both landscape and species levels the future of insect conservation in south africa faces both challenges and opportunities most of which are shared with other parts of the world with high and irreplace able biodiversity,2012,0.366
"Geographic distribution, colour variation and molecular diversity of miniature frogs of the Eleutherodactylus limbatus group from Cuba",the endemic cuban eleutherodactylus limbatus group contains five species of miniature species of frogs e cubanus e iberia e jaumei e limbatus e orientalis and one larger and more generalized species e etheridgei several of the miniature species have contrasting colour patterns with bright yellow or white stripes on a dark dorsum and two of these species are known to sequester skin alkaloids based on a review of literature museum data and numerous own unpublished field records we provide an updated list of georeferenced locality records of all species of the group that confirms their strict allopatric distribution pattern despite the close geographic proximity of some species a phylogenetic tree based on newly analysed partial dna sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene 566 bp placed the dull coloured species e etheridgei and e cubanus in a basal position followed by a well differentiated e orientalis and a highly supported but poorly differentiated clade containing e iberia e jaumei and e limbatus in addition to these three forms this clade also included various subclades with a similar degree of differentiation which rendered paraphyletic the formally described species indicating the need for a taxonomic revision the evolution of contrasting dorsal colour patterns dorsolateral stripes on a dark brown light brown or yellow dorsum apparently was characterized by homoplasy the highest diversity of this group is concentrated in small areas in the eastern mountains and the population of e limbatus sampled from western cuba was genetically similar to an eastern cuban population suggesting that only one relatively shallow evolutionary lineage might have succeeded in expanding its range into the west of the island,2012,0.954
Molecular phylogenetics and historical biogeography of the Meiogyne-Fitzalania clade (Annonaceae): Generic paraphyly and late Miocene-Pliocene diversification in Australasia and the Pacific,meiogyne annonaceae comprises 15 species of trees and shrubs distributed in india indomalaya and australasia pacific previous molecular phylogenetic analyses based on limited taxon sampling have indicated that the small genus fitzalania 2 spp is nested within meiogyne the centre of diversity of the meiogyne fitzalania group lies in australia 6 spp and new caledonia 4 spp this is unique in annonaceae some of whose australian and new caledonian lineages have been hypothesised to have originated in situ from gondwanan ancestors phylogenetic reconstructions based on chloroplast dna sequence data of 19 accessions representing 14 of the 17 species in the meiogyne fitzalania group ca 8 6 kb as well as 67 representatives of all major clades of annonaceae ca 5 1 kb were performed to clarify the phylogenetic relationships of meiogyne and fitzalania the results show that fitzalania is deeply nested within an australasian pacific clade of meiogyne species the inclusion of species assigned to hieniodendron and oncodostigma in eiogyne as proposed in the most recent revision of meiogyne is also corroborated fossil calibrated molecular divergence estimates under an uncorrelated rates relaxed molecular clock model were used to investigate the timing of the crown group diversification the meiogyne crown group was inferred to have originated in the late oligocene or miocene and initially diversified in continental southeast asia western malesia and the philippines all australasian pacific taxa formed a single derived clade and most diversification within this clade occurred in the late miocene and pliocene a complex combination of factors such as fragmentation of once wider distribution areas due to climate fluctuations and subsequent vicariance range expansion by dispersal to pacific islands and subsequent differentiation and ecological adaptation to local climatic and edaphic habitat conditions is hypothesised to underlie the diversification of meiogyne in australasia and the pacific,2012,0.619
Meeting Report: Hackathon-Workshop on Darwin Core and MIxS Standards Alignment,the global biodiversity information facility and the genomic standards consortium convened a joint workshop at the university of oxford 27 29 february 2012 with a small group of experts from europe usa china and japan to continue the alignment of the darwin core with the mixs and related genomics standards several reference mappings were produced as well as test expressions of mixs in rdf the use and management of controlled vocabulary terms was considered in relation to both gbif and the gsc and tools for working with terms were reviewed extensions for publishing genomic biodiversity data to the gbif network via a darwin core archive were prototyped and work begun on preparing translations of the darwin core to japanese and chinese five genomic repositories were identified for engagement to begin the process of testing the publishing of genomic data to the gbif network commencing with the silva rrna database,2012,0.338
How biotic interactions may alter future predictions of species distributions: future threats to the persistence of the arctic fox in Fennoscandia,aim with climate change reliable predictions of future species geographic distributions are becoming increasingly important for the design of appropriate conservation measures species distribution models sdms are widely used to predict geographic range shifts in response to climate change however because species communities are likely to change with the climate accounting for biotic interactions is imperative a shortcoming of introducing biotic interactions in sdms is the assumption that biotic interactions remain the same under changing climatic factors which is disputable we explore the performance of sdms while including biotic interactions location fennoscandia europe methods we investigate the appropriateness of the inclusion of biotic factors predator pressure and prey availability in assessing the future distribution of the arctic fox alopex lagopus in fennoscandia by means of sdm using the algorithm maxent results our results show that the inclusion of biotic interactions enhanced the accuracy of sdms to predict the current arctic fox distribution and we argue that the accuracy of future predictions might also be enhanced while the range of the arctic fox is predicted to have decreased by 43 in 2080 because of temperature related variables projected increases in predator pressure and reduced prey availability are predicted to constrain the potential future geographic range of the arctic fox in fennoscandia 13 more main conclusions the results indicate that provided one has a good knowledge of past changes and a clear understanding of interactions in the community involved the inclusion of biotic interactions in modelling future geographic ranges of species increases the predictive power of such models this likely has far reaching impacts upon the design and implementation of possible conservation and management plans control of competing predators and supplementary feeding are suggested as necessary management actions to preserve the fennoscandian arctic fox population in the face of climate change,2012,0.589
Obstacles to data access for research related to climate and water: Implications for science and EU policy-making,this paper reports on the conclusions of a workshop dedicated to science and data gaps in eu funded projects relevant to water resources and water management where over 25 eu projects were represented institutional and financial obstacles to data access for use in modeling exercises were identified and gaps in scientific knowledge that contribute to uncertainty were highlighted the paper identifies a number of sectors where these gaps often represent crucial barriers to successful research outcomes and suggests ways and means of alleviating some of these difficulties one approach could be through the imple mentation of policies aimed at ensuring free and unrestricted access to data especially those generated by the numerous research projects that focus on issues of water availability quality and management another complementary initiative could be the setting up of a centralized â â clearinghouseâ â for data exchange between scientists end users and policy makers it is hoped that if implemented some of the recommendations formulated in the present paper may help pave the way for a more rapid and efficient production of research results that are of importance for policy guidance at the local national and supra national eu levels,2012,0.028
Diversity analysis of streptomycetes and associated phosphotranspherase genes in soil.,an attempt was made to verify the observation that streptomyces griseus was prevalent in soil based on isolation work a genus specific pcr was developed for streptomyces based on the housekeeping gene atpd and used to investigate species diversity within selected soils the presence of s griseus was investigated to determine coexistence of resistance only streptomycin phosphotransferase stra in the same soil as streptomycin producers two additional pcr based assays were developed one specific for stra in association with production the other for more diverse stra and other related phosphotranferases both the s griseus atpd and stra genes were below the pcr detection limit in all soils examined a number of more diverse phosphotransferase genes were amplified a minority of which may be associated with streptomycin production we conclude that neither streptomycin producers nor s griseus are prevalent in the fresh or chitin and starch amended soils examined less than 0 1 of soil actinobacteria one of the soil sites had received plantomycin active ingredient streptomycin and diversity studies suggested that this altered the streptomycete populations present in the soil,2012,0.7
"The distribution of the species of Eurysternus Dalman, 1824 (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) i America: potential distributions and the locations of areas to be surveyed",using the distributional information from approximately 22 000 georeferenced records of the 53 currently recognized species of the genus eurysternus dalman 1824 we explore the main macroclimatic determinants capable of explaining the distribution of these species we also estimate the potential distribution of these species using a previously established protocol our results show that annual mean temperature and annual precipitation are the variables with the greatest explanatory capacity our results also show that species with wide climatic niches would primarily inhabit the rainiest and coldest american locations the potential species richness map derived from the overlap of individual potential distributions has allowed us to identify suitable areas that are not yet adequately surveyed future investigations must be conducted in these areas to improve the biogeographical and taxonomic knowledge of this genus,2012,0.833
Revisiting the “Ralum Project”: Molluscs collected by Friedrich Dahl in 1896-1897 for the Museum of Natural History Berlin,while the scientific significance of museum collections has gained increasing attention in recent years their historical contextualisation has often been neglected even historical collections of major significance have remained largely unexplored even for the material collected by eminent scientific voyageurs such as e g charles darwin alfred russel wallace or alexander von humboldt a complete overview is missing let alone an inventory of the still existing material here we present an account on friedrich dahl s research expedition to ralum german new guinea in the years 1896 to 1897 from which originate many important specimens in the natural history museum in berlin dahl collected several hundreds of specimens of molluscs birds and reptiles and thus greatly extended the representation of the tropical fauna within the museum collection however in contrast to other departments dahl s contribution to the malacological collection has only been inventorized fragmentarily we here identify those molluscs from ralum that have been neglected so far and thus determine the complete amount of dahl s malacological alcohol collection moreover we outline the circumstances of this expedition and the further utilization of his specimens in subsequent museum s research we thus integrate the ralum project into its historical context that reveals not only its relevance for scientists and science in the past but also its significance for the present day museum in berlin,2012,0.42
"Automated Data Integration, Cleaning and Analysis Using Data Mining and SPSS Tool For Technical School in Malaysia",studentsâ performance plays major role in determining the quality of our education system sijil pelajaran malaysia spm is a public examination compulsory to be taken by form 5 students in malaysia the performance gap is not only a school and classroom issue but also a national issue that must be addressed properly this study aims to integrate clean and analysis through automated data mining techniques using data mining techniques is one of the processes of transferring raw data from current educational system to meaningful information that can be used to help the school community to make a right decision to achieve much better results this proved dm provides means to assist both educators and students and improve the quality of education the result and findings in the study show that automated system will give the same result compare with manual system of integration and analysis and also could be used by the management to make faster and more efficient decision in order to map or plan efficient teaching approach for students in the future,2012,0.063
Fungivory and host associations of Coleoptera: a bibliography and review of research approaches,fungi and coleoptera are among the most evolutionarily successful and diverse heterotrophic organisms in the world due to their unique adaptive capacities fungi and beetles co occur and interact in various terrestrial habitats in addition to commensal and mutualistic fungusâ beetle relations combative interactions involve aggressors from both sides such as entomopathogenic fungi and fungivorous beetles fungivory most commonly in combination with saprophagy and xylophagy is characteristic of many families of coleoptera the resource exploiting fungal mycelia are most frequently consumed by beetles together with the woody substrata the focus of the present review is on coleoptera with larvae or adults feeding on a primarily fungal diet fruit bodies and spores,2012,0.314
Funding Opportunities,announcement of the gbif young researcher award,2012,0.354
The Seedbank database of the Hortus Botanicus Panormitanus,a database for the management of the seedbank of the palermoâ s botanical garden has been set up its structure and functioning are illustratemvvgj bd since november 2010 about 2000 records relating to 460 taxa have been inputted and are accesible via web links with other seedbank databases and with the database of the herbarium mediterraneum panormitanum and of the palermoâ s botanical garden are explained,2012,0.316
Evidence for a freezing tolerance-growth rate trade-off in the live oaks (Quercus series Virentes) across the tropical-temperate divide,it has long been hypothesized that species are limited to the north by minimum temperature and to the south by competition resulting in a trade off between freezing tolerance and growth rate we investigated the extent to which the climatic origins of populations from four live oak species quercus series virentes were associated with freezing tolerance and growth rate and whether species fitted a model of locally adapted populations each with narrow climatic tolerances or of broadly adapted populations with wide climatic tolerances acorns from populations of four species across a tropical temperate gradient were grown under common tropical and temperate conditions growth rate seed mass and leaf and stem freezing traits were compared with source minimum temperatures maximum growth rates under tropical conditions were negatively correlated with freezing tolerance under temperate conditions the minimum source temperature predicted the freezing tolerance of populations under temperate conditions the tropical species q oleoides was differentiated from the three temperate species and variation among species was greater than among populations the trade off between freezing tolerance and growth rate supports the range limit hypothesis limited variation within species indicates that the distributions of species may be driven more strongly by broad climatic factors than by highly local conditions,2012,0.952
"A trait-based approach to comparative functional plant ecology: concepts, methods and applications for agroecology. A review",comparative functional ecology seeks to understand why and how ecological systems and their components operate differently across environments although traditionally used in semi natural situations its concepts and methods could certainly apply to address key issues in the large variety of agricultural systems encountered across the world in this review we present major advances in comparative plant functional ecology that were made possible over the last two decades by the rapid development of a trait based approach to plant functioning and prospects to apply it in agricultural situations the strength of this approach is that it enables us to assess the interactions between organisms and their environment simultaneously on a large number of species a prerequisite to address questions relative to species distribution community assembly and ecosystem functioning the trait concept will be first defined before presenting a conceptual framework to understand the effects of environmental factors on plant community structure and ecosystem properties via plant traits we will then argue that leading dimensions of variation among species can be captured by some selected traits and show that a combination of three easily measured traitsâ specific leaf area the ratio of leaf area to leaf dry mass plant height and seed massâ enables us to assess how different species use their resources interact with neighbours and disperse in time and space the use of traits to address central questions in community ecology will be reviewed next it will be shown that traits allow us to 1 understand how plant species are sorted according to the nature of environmental gradients 2 evaluate the relative importance of habitat filtering and limiting similarity in the process of community assembly and 3 quantify two main components of community functional structure namely community weighted means of traits and community functional divergence the relative impacts of these two components on ecosystem properties will then be discussed in the case of several components of primary productivity litter decomposition soil water content and carbon sequestration there is strong support for the biomass ratio hypothesis which states that the extent to which the traits of a species affect those ecosystem properties depends on the abundance of this species in the community assessing the role of functional divergence among species on ecosystem properties will require major methodological breakthroughs both in terms of metrics and statistical procedures to be used in agricultural situations we show that trait based approaches have been successfully developed to assess the impacts of management practices on 1 the agronomic value of grasslands and 2 the functional composition and structure of crop weed communities and how these could affect the functioning of the crop applications in forestry are still poorly developed especially in temperate regions where the number of species in managed forest remains relatively low the last decades of research have led to the constitution of large data sets of plant traits which remain poorly compatible and accessible recent advances in the field of ecoinformatics suggest that major progress could be achieved in this area by using improved metadata standards and advancing trait domain ontologies finally concluding remarks unanswered questions and directions for research using the functional approach to biodiversity made possible by the use of traits will be discussed in the contexts of ecological and agronomical systems the latter indeed cover a wide range of environmental conditions and biological diversity and the prospect for reducing environmental impacts in highly productive low diversity systems will certainly imply improving our skills for the management of more diverse systems prone to a trait based approach as reviewed here,2012,0
Complex patterns of host switching in New World arenaviruses,we empirically tested the long standing hypothesis of codivergence of new world arenaviruses nwa with their hosts we constructed phylogenies for nwa and all known hosts and used them in reconciliation analyses we also constructed a phylogenetic tree of all sigmodontinae and neotominae rodents and tested whether viral host associations were phylogenetically clustered we determined host geographical overlap to determine to what extent opportunity to switch hosts was limited by host relatedness or physical proximity with the exception of viruses from north america no phylogenetically codivergent pattern between nwa and their hosts was found we found that different virus clades were clustered differently and that clade b with members pathogenic to humans was randomly distributed across the rodent phylogeny furthermore viral relatedness within clade b was significantly explained by the geographic overlap of their hosts ranges rather than host relatedness indicating that they are capable of host switching opportunistically this has important bearings on their potential to become panzootic together these analyses suggest that nwa have not codiverged with their hosts and instead have evolved predominantly via host switching,2012,0.699
DNA barcoding of the leaf-mining moth subgenus Ectoedemia s. str. (Lepidoptera : Nepticulidae) with COI and EF1-α: two are better than one in recognising cryptic species,we sequenced 665bp of the cytochrome c oxidase i coi barcoding marker for 257 specimens and 482bp of elongation factor 1 î ef1 î for 237 specimens belonging to the leaf mining subgenus ectoedemia ectoedemia in the basal lepi dopteran family nepticulidae the dataset includes 45 out of 48 west palearctic ectoedemia s str species and several species from africa north america and asia both coi and ef1 î proved reliable as an alternative to conventional species identi fication for the majority of species and the combination of both markers can aid in species validation a clear barcode gap is not present and in some species large k2p intraspecific pairwise differences are found up to 6 85 in coi and 2 9 in ef1 î in the ectoedemia rubivora species complex the species e ru bivora e arcuatella and e atricollis share coi barcodes and could only be distinguished by ef1 î diagnostic base posi tions usually third codon positions are in this and other cases a useful addition to species delimitation in addition to distance methods ectoedemia albifasciella coi barcodes fall into two distinct clusters not related to other characters whereas these clusters are absent in ef1 î possibly caused by mtdna anom alies or hybridisation in the ectoedemia subbimaculella com plex both sequences fail to unequivocally distinguish the spe cies e heringi e liechtensteini e phyllotomella and one population of e subbimaculella dna barcodes confirm that north american ectoedemia argyropeza are derived from a european introduction we strongly advocate the use of a nu clear marker in addition to the universal coi barcode marker for better identifying species including cryptic ones,2012,0.986
Hybridization and systematics of dioecious North American Nymphoides (N. aquatica and N. cordata; Menyanthaceae),outcrossing in the aquatic genus nymphoides about 50 species is promoted by various sexual condi tions including dimorphic heterostyly most species and dioecy four species in eastern north america nymphoides aquatica and nymphoides cordata are dioecious sister species that differ only slightly by their leaf pigmentation and texture adventitious root form and overall size although these features dis tinguish most individuals the occurrence of morphologically intermediate specimens within broadly overlapping geographic ranges often confounds their identification hybridization of these taxa has not been documented previously yet the potential exists for gene flow between n aquatica and n cordata because of their similar floral morphology reliance on outcrossing and partial sympatry we studied indi viduals collected across the ranges of n aquatica and n cordata using morphological data and nuclear its and chloroplast matk trnk molecular sequence data to better ascertain their distinctness and to investigate further the possibility of hybridization quantitative morphological data supported the exis tence of two species that are broadly diagnosable across several measurements although approximately seven percent of specimens analyzed remained undiagnosed under our criteria molecular phylogenetic results indicated that most individuals of n aquatica and n cordata were readily identifiable to one or the other species and these corresponded to reciprocally monophyletic groups however molecular cloning revealed that some individuals collected within the sympatric range of n aquatica and n cordata were interspecific hybrids and these individuals on average were morphologically intermediate between the two parental species these data are consistent with a taxonomic concept that accepts two fundamentally distinct nymphoides species nevertheless with some individuals being morphologically intermediate at least partly as a result of natural interspecific hybridization â,2012,0.981
Glacial History of a Modern Invader: Phylogeography and Species Distribution Modelling of the Asian Tiger Mosquito Aedes albopictus,background the tiger mosquito aedes albopictus is one of the 100 most invasive species in the world and a vector of human diseases in the last 30 years it has spread from its native range in east asia to africa europe and the americas although this modern invasion has been the focus of many studies the history of the speciesâ native populations remains poorly understood here we aimed to assess the role of pleistocene climatic changes in shaping the current distribution of the species in its native range methodology principal findings we investigated the phylogeography historical demography and species distribution of ae albopictus native populations at the last glacial maximum lgm individuals from 16 localities from east asia were analyzed for sequence variation at two mitochondrial genes no phylogeographic structure was observed across the study area demographic analyses showed a signature of population expansion that started roughly 70 000 years bp the occurrence of a continuous and climatically suitable area comprising southeast china indochinese peninsula and sundaland during lgm was indicated by species distribution modelling conclusions significance our results suggest an evolutionary scenario in which during the last glacial phase ae albopictus did not experience a fragmentation phase but rather persisted in interconnected populations and experienced demographic growth the wide ecological flexibility of the species probably played a crucial role in its response to glacial induced environmental changes currently there is little information on the impact of pleistocene climatic changes on animal species in east asia most of the studies focused on forest associated species and suggested cycles of glacial fragmentation and post glacial expansion the case of ae albopictus which exhibits a pattern not previously observed in the study area adds an important piece to our understanding of the pleistocene history of east asian biota,2012,0.915
"Reciprocal gender effects of a keystone alpine plant species on other plants, pollinators, and arthropods",the term facilitation generally describes positive interactions between plants and a common approach in these studies is to identify a dominant plant to structure sampling unfortunately whilst this field has rapidly expanded commun ity ecology it rarely includes other trophic levels such as insects and pollinators here we combine facilitation pollination and reciprocity measures to explore the general hypothesis that sexual dimorphism in a benefactor plant species mediates its impact the following three predictions were tested and supported using the gynodioecious alpine cushion plant silene acaulis l jacq i that the trait set of a gynodioecious benefactor plant varies between genders ii that dimorphism changes the facilitation of other plants arthropods and pollinators and iii that insect selectivity particularly pollinators reciprocally impacts the reproductive output of the two genders female s acaulis cushion plants produced significantly more flowers but they were smaller than those of hermaphrodites hermaphrodite cushions facilitated other plant species and pollinators more effectively than females whilst females strongly facilitated more arthropods finally female plants have significantly higher reproductive output as estimated by fruit and seed production and this was directly related to visi tation rate by pollinators hence this study clearly establishes the value of combining some of the common themes of polli nation biology such as sexual dimorphism floral morphology and measuring reproduction with the study of positive plantâ plant interactions,2012,0.194
Florabank1: a grid-based database on vascular plant distribution in the northern part of Belgium (Flanders and the Brussels Capital region).,florabank1 is a database that contains distributional data on the wild flora indigenous species archeophytes and naturalised aliens of flanders and the brussels capital region it holds about 3 million records of vascular plants dating from 1800 till present furthermore it includes ecological data on vascular plant species redlist category information ellenberg values legal status global distribution seed bank etc the database is an initiative of flo wer www plantenwerkgroep be the research institute for nature and forest inbo www inbo be and the national botanic garden of belgium www br fgov be florabank aims at centralizing botanical distribution data gathered by both professional and amateur botanists and to make these data available to the benefit of nature conservation policy and scientific research the occurrence data contained in florabank1 are extracted from checklists literature and herbarium specimen information of survey lists the locality name verbatimlocality species name observation date and ifbl square code the grid system used for plant mapping in belgium van rompaey 1943 is recorded for records dating from the period 1972 2004 all pertinent botanical journals dealing with belgian flora were systematically screened analysis of herbarium specimens in the collection of the national botanic garden of belgium the university of ghent and the university of liã ge provided interesting distribution knowledge concerning rare species this information is also included in florabank1 the data recorded before 1972 is available through the belgian gbif node http data gbif org datasets resource 10969 not through florabank1 to avoid duplication of information a dedicated portal providing access to all published belgian ifbl records at this moment is available at http projects biodiversity be ifblall data in florabank1 is georeferenced every record holds the decimal centroid coordinates of the ifbl square containing the observation the uncertainty radius is the smallest circle possible covering the whole ifbl square which can measure 1 kmâ or 4 kmâ florabank is a work in progress and new occurrences are added as they become available the dataset will be updated through gbif on a regularly base,2012,0.641
Leaf level emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from some Amazonian and Mediterranean plants,as volatile organic compounds vocs significantly affect atmospheric chemistry oxidative capacity and physics secondary organic aerosol formation and effects emission inventories defining regional and global biogenic voc emission strengths are important the 5 aim of this work was to achieve a description of voc emissions from poorly described tropical vegetation to be compared with the quite well investigated and highly heterogeneous emissions from mediterranean vegetation for this task common plant species of both ecosystems were investigated sixteen plant species from the mediterranean area which is known for its special diversity in voc emitting 10 plant species were chosen in contrast little information is currently available regarding emissions of vocs from tropical tree species at the leaf level twelve plant species from different environments of the amazon basin i e terra firme vâ arzea and igapâ o were screened for emission of vocs at leaf level with a branch enclosure system analysis of the volatile organics was performed online by a proton transfer reaction 15 mass spectrometer ptr ms and offline by collection on adsorbent tubes and subsequent gas chromatographic analysis isoprene was quantitatively the most dominant compound emitted followed by monoterpenes methanol and acetone most of the mediterranean species emitted a variety of monoterpenes whereas only five tropical species were monoterpene emitters exhibiting a quite conservative emission pattern 20 pinene limonene sabinene pinene mediterranean plants showed additional emissions of sesquiterpenes whereas in the case of plants from the amazon region no sesquiterpenes were detected probably due to a lack of sensitivity in the measuring systems on the other hand methanol emissions an indicator of growth were common in most of the tropical and mediterranean species a few species from both ecosys25 tems showed acetone emissions the observed heterogeneous emissions including reactive voc species which are not easily detected by flux measurements give reason to perform more screening at leaf level and whenever possible within the forests under ambient conditions,2012,0.864
Pharmacological investigation of Asystasia calyciana for its antibacterial and antifungal properties,the phytochemical investigation of asystasia calyciana whole plant extracts revealed the presence of saponins tannins steroids glycosides flavonoids and anthraquinones the hexane ethylacetate and methanol extracts of asystasia calyciana were evaluated invitro to determine inhibition of human pathogenic microorganisms made up of six bacteria and six fungi the plant metabolites inhibited the growth of twelve test organisms at different concentrations between 12 5 and 200mg ml using agar diffusion plate method the hexane extract exhibited higher antibacterial properties than both ethylacetate and methanol extracts of the plant the hexane and ethylacetate extracts revealed higher antifungal properties than the methanol extract of a calyciana with activity of hexane and ethylacetate extracts comparable to that of the reference drug tioconazole against candida albicans rhizopus stolon pneumonae notatum tricophyton rubrum and epidermophyton floccosum and candida albicans and epidermophyton floccosum respectively,2012,0.112
Data Discovery Mechanisms for Biodiversity Resources in the Asia-Pacific Region,as the importance of biodiversity has been recognized researchers governmental of fi cers and people attracted by biodiversity have collected enormous amounts of biodiversity data for many uses e g research studies to inform the conservation of a speci fi c area management decision making leisure these data are also valuable for formulating biodiversity indicators assessing predictive distribution areas using models and documenting the current status of endangered species see chap 20 however data sets of biodiversity are widely dispersed and most are unavailable to people who are not directly involved in speci fi c projects for which such data were collected because of the lack of a global data sharing framework one of the moti vations for construction of the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon architecture is to change this situation by creating a global network of data collecting activities supported by a data sharing framework accom panied by an information system scholes et al 2008,2012,0.472
Polar and Alpine Microbial Collection (PAMC): a culture collection dedicated to polar and alpine microorganisms,microorganisms in polar areas may have important ecological roles in biogeochemical cycles and the food chain they are adapted to polar environments by means of special physiological adaptation mechanisms that include cold adapted enzymes and cryoprotectants such as exopolysaccharides culture collections for polar microorganisms can provide research resources for ecological and physiological studies the polar and alpine microbial collection pamc is a specialized culture collection for maintenance and distribution of polar and alpine microorganisms a database system was developed to share important data fields with darwincore2 and ocean biogeographic information system database schemas approximately 1 500 out of 5 500 strains maintained in pamc have been identified and belonged primarily to the phyla actinobacteria bacteroidetes firmicutes and proteobacteria many of the microbial strains can grow at low temperature and produce proteases lipases and or exopolysaccharides pamc provides search tools based on keywords such as taxonomy geographical origin habitat and physiological characteristics biological materials and information provided by pamc will be important resources for ecological and physiological studies on polar and alpine microorganisms,2012,0.078
Impacts of climate change and land-use on the potential distribution of an invasive weed: a case study of Lantana camara in Australia,lantana camara lantana is an extremely invasive species in many countries including australia biosecurity agencies will benefit from prior knowledge of the potential distribution of l camara under current and future climate scenarios a process based niche model for this species was developed using the climex modelling package the potential distribution generated from this model was refined by incorporating existing land use data in a geographical information system gis the potential distribution of l camara under current climate indicated that l camara occupies almost the full extent of climatically suitable habitat available to it in australia under future climate scenarios l camara range expands into new areas in victoria south australia and tasmania while the northern parts of the continent become climatically unsuitable this trend continued with the inclusion of land use data although with a more restricted distri bution as locations with suitable climate but unsuitable land use were excluded weed control authorities in the new areas at risk of invasion under climate change need to be alerted to this emerging threat so that effective response measures can be taken,2012,0.268
Addressing target two of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation by rapidly identifying plants at risk,target two of the 2002 global strategy for plant conservation gspc â â a preliminary assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species at national regional and international levelsâ â was not accomplished by its original 2010 target date and has therefore been included as a revised 2020 target â â an assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species as far as possible to guide conservation action â â the most widely used system to estimate risk of extinction the international union for the conservation of nature red list provides conservation assessments for fewer than 15 000 plant species progress achieving target two has been hampered by the large number of plant species and the difficulty assembling the data needed for red list assessments two streamlined methods for identifying those plant species considered at risk under the gspc target two are compared and contrasted both methods use readily available locality data from herbarium specimens to efficiently identify at risk species and approximate the list of species that would be identified as threatened by red list analyses a comprehensive analysis of the native plant species of puerto rico using both streamlined methods identifies 570 of the 2 025 species at some risk of extinction more efficient systems for assessing threat allow a more timely response to target two allow conser vation efforts to be directed to the species that need attention and the list of threatened plants can be used to identify priority areas for plant conservation,2012,0.949
Hosts and pathogens of Ixodes ricinus in Norway,ticks are vectors for a number of infectious diseases and an understanding of their ecology is valuable for minimising the risk of human and livestock infections the aim of this study was to identify the previous hosts of questing ticks and to investigate the pathogen prevalence of ticks in the south east of norway a new method of analysing tick bloodmeals for the study of vector host ecology has been developed based on a reamplified real time qpcr protocol targeting the cytochrome b region of the mitochondrial genome of vertebrates the use of this method allowed for the identification of the previous bloodmeal hosts of 49 of 91 nymphal and adult ixodes ricinus collected from vegetation and from hosts between 2010 and 2012 this is the first analysis of bloodmeals for questing ticks to have results confirmed by sequencing borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato infection was not detected in ticks collected from vegetation at tomb ã stfold norway and a 2 borrelia afzelii prevalence was found in ticks from nesodden akershus norway ticks collected at tomb and nesodden as well as ticks from some other sources were also tested for presence of babesia spp infections infections of babesia microti 0 9 and a babesia venatorum capreoli divergens cluster 5 were detected the reamplified real time qpcr bloodmeal analysis method described in this thesis allows for an accurate estimation of host importance the further use and development of this method will allow for the identification of additional tick hosts which will give increasing insights into the ecology of this disease vector understanding the epidemiology of tick borne diseases can contribute to the development of disease control measures making the study of vector host ecology an important tool in the prevention of infectious diseases,2012,0.922
"Using diverse data sources to detect elevational range changes of birds on Mount Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo",few empirical studies have measured the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity and this paucity has contributed to uncertainty in predicting the severity of climate change on tropical organisms with regards to elevational changes most studies have either re sampled historical systematic survey sites or analyzed time series of occurrence data at long term study sites such data sources are unavailable for most tropical mountains so other methods of detecting elevational changes must be sought here we combine data from published checklists recent fi eld work peer reviewed literature unpublished reports birdwatchersâ trip reports databases of birdwatchersâ observations audio recordings and photographs to compare historical pre 1998 and current post 2006 bird distributions on mt kinabalu in sabah malaysian borneo records were carefully checked by experts on bornean birds more species are now known from mt kinabalu but historical data provided elevational range estimates for more species than current data because of extensive mountain wide collections and surveys most elevational comparisons for this study had to be limited to the 1450â 1900 m elevational band where most of the recent work has been done information was compiled into an annotated list of 342 species from 200â 4095 m we present this list to encourage refi nement of the dataset and future work on elevational distributions on the mountain of 58 species with suffi cient data from 1450 m to the summit 38 appear to have shifted their ranges 24 species upslope and 14 downslope a total of 22 resident species have recently been observed above their published maximum elevation for borneo some species that have shifted upwards such as chalcophaps indica and pellorneum pyrrogenys are now common or breeding at elevations above their published maximum fifteen species appear to have declined on the mountain probably as a result of habitat loss outside the protected area several of the upslope shifts are probably attributable to climate change but many downslope shifts may be artifacts of incomplete recent sampling the upward shifts agree with the few other tropical range comparisons that have been published our approach demonstrates the viability of combining diverse data sources of varying accuracy and bias to detect distributional shifts from climate change,2012,0.927
"Review of Namibimydas Hesse, 1972 and Nothomydas Hesse, 1969 (Diptera: Mydidae: Syllegomydinae: Halterorchini) with the description of new species",the mydidae genera namibimydas hesse 1972 and nothomydas hesse 1969 are reviewed both ge nera were known from two species each occurring in southern namibia and western south africa and are here redescribed four new species all from namibia are described herein namibimydas psamminos sp n namibimydas stuckenbergi sp n nothomydas aquilonius sp n and nothomydas picketti sp n a di chotomous key to all species is presented and illustrations and photographs are provided to support the descriptions and future identification distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots sensu conservation international and seasonal incidence are discussed for all species information of all four genera of syllegomydinae halterorchini is summarised and photographs of all genera provided a novel structure of the male terminalia termed supra hypandrial sclerite is described and illustrated,2012,0.852
Facilitating description of fuzzy control algorithms to ordinate plant species by linking online models,fuzzy control algorithms are used to give structure to the spatial categorisation of plant species by integrating digital elevation model data at increased resolution with data of selected climatic variables i e mean precipitation temperature ground frost frequency and elevation in previous studies the climatic variables are obtained by minimizing them to those essential for expression of the water energy dynamic i e the way in which water and energy are distributed in relation to diversity in order to model life history strategies of plant species implications of this paper include modelling of plant life forms and metabolic patterning,2012,0.265
Semantic Array Programming for Environmental Modelling: Application of the Mastrave Library,environmental datasets grow in size and specialization while models designed for local scale are often unsuitable at regional continental scale at regional scale data are usually available as georeferenced collections of spatially distributed despite semantically atomic information complex data intrinsically impose modellers to manipulate nontrivial information structures for example multi dimensional arrays of time series may be composed by slices of raster spatial matrices for each time step whilst heterogeneous collections of uneven arrays are common when dealing with data analogous to precipitation events and these structures may ask for integration at several spatial scales projections and temporal extents interestingly it might be far more difficult to practically implement such a complexity rather than conceptually describe it a subset of modelling generalizations may deal more with abstraction rather than with the explosion of lines of code many environmental modelling algorithms are composed by chains of data transformations or trees of domain specific sub algorithms concisely expressing them without the need for paying attention to the enormous set of spatio temporal details is a highly recommendable practice in both mathematical formulation and implementation the semantic array programming paradigm is here exemplified as a powerful conceptual and practical with the free software library mastrave tool for easing scalability and semantic integration in environmental modelling array programming ap is widely used for its computational effectiveness but often underexploited in reducing the gap between mathematical notation and algorithm implementations i e by promoting arrays vectors matrices tensors as atomic quantities with extremely compact manipulating operators coherent array based mathematical description of models can simplify complex algorithm prototyping while moving mathematical reasoning directly into the source code â because of its substantial size reduction â where the mathematical description is actually expressed in a completely formalized and reproducible way the proposed paradigm suggests complementing the characteristic ap weak typing with semantics both by composing generalized modular sub models and via array oriented â thus concise â constraints the mastrave library use is exemplified with a regional scale benchmark application to local average invariant lai downscaling of climate raster data unnecessary errors frequently introduced by non lai upsampling are shown to be easily detected and removed when the scientific modelling practice is terse enough to let mathematical reasoning and model coding merge together,2012,0.176
No specimen left behind: industrial scale digitization of natural history collections,traditional approaches for digitizing natural history collections which include both imaging and metadata capture are both labour and time intensive mass digitization can only be completed if the resource intensive steps such as specimen selection and databasing of associated information are minimized digitization of larger collections should employ an industrial approach using the principles of automation and crowd sourcing with minimal initial metadata collection including a mandatory persistent identifier a new workflow for the mass digitization of natural history museum collections based on these principles and using satscanâ tray scanning system is described,2012,0.247
Geographic distribution and diversity of fruit trees species in Albania,the geographic distribution and diversity of fruit tree species using collection data and a database of 592 geo referenced observations including all 32 species from 12 districts of albania was carried out a grid of 25 x 25 km cells was used to assesâ distribution diversity and richness of species to include all species at least once 34 grid cells were selected geographic spatial analysis shows that high species richness occurs in elbasan tirana diber and korã a districts where it was observed the highest number of species respectively 16 13 13 10 species for all grid cells selected the summarized results on diversity were richness s 21 margalef index 3 133 menhinick 0 863 shannon 2 621 simpson 0 902 and brillouin 2 546 combination of species occurrence data with climatic data delimitates the potential distribution of each species and allows the modeling of potential richness at the district level precipitation of driest month and precipitation seasonality seems to be the most limiting factors for the north eastern part of albania and maximum temperature of warmest month for central albania and precipitation of driest month for south western part of albania based on these modeled richness maps elbasan and berat appears to be the districts with the highest potential fruit trees diversity and with the most potential priority areas for in situ conservation of fruit tree species analysis shows 8 new alleles were contributed by additional cells as berat 3 alleles dibra 3 alleles and fieri 2 alleles,2012,0.969
Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) as an invader and threat to biodiversity in arid environments: A review,popular pastoral species buffel grass cenchrus ciliaris is receiving long overdue attention as an invasive weed that poses serious threats to biodiversity conservation worldwide most research focuses on the species as forage plant and is largely published in agricultural and grey literature meanwhile there is a dearth of information about the species ecology in natural landscapes despite strong evidence from field workers and managers that the species is an aggressive invader and threat to biodiversity in many environments we present a comprehensive review of the ecology distribution and biodiversity impacts of buffel grass when behaving as an invasive species foundations are laid for research into localised habitat requirements of the species that will aid in the management of buffel grass invasions now and into the future,2012,0.801
The use of extended depth of field for taxonomic data mobilisation via internet – Verhoeff’s gonopod preparations as a pilot study,in the framework of the project â œcentres of excellence of innovative data mobili sationâ of gbif d the global biodiversity information facility â germany bmbf grant 01li01001 b the node invertebrates ii uses several digitalisation units to produce extended depth of field photos of micropreparations at high resolution and combines them with online databases available from the gbif portal to estab lish complete taxonomic information systems e g glomyris exemplified by carl wilhelm verhoeffâ s gonopod preparations of diplopoda we give a survey of the technical procedures the results and their significance for taxonomic revisions and data exchange among myriapodologists,2012,0.193
Growth And Survival During Drought: The Link Between Hydraulic Architecture And Drought Tolerance In Grasses,mize the pressure gradient across the mesophyll that would otherwise occur as a result of increasing gs the resistance to water movement through the mesophyll represented 80 â â 90 of leaf resistance in six genotypes of sorghum bicolor l moench this resistance was most important in controlling gs and a when water was readily available but as soil â â moisture decreased it was the efficient transport of water through the xylem that was most important in maintaining plant function i also investigated the relationship between hydraulic architecture and stomatal responses of grasses to increasing vapor pressure deficit d grasses with a larger proportion of their hydraulic resistance within the xylem were less sensitive to increasing d and plants with high root conductance maintained higher rates of gas exchange d increased finally i investigated the tolerance of grasses to extreme drought events to test if there was a trade â â off between drought tolerance and growth in grasses plants with drought tolerant leaf traits typically sacrificed the ability to move water efficiently through their leaves having drought tolerant leaves did not limit the plants ability to have high rates of gas exchange and in fact the most drought tolerant plants had the high rates of gs when expressed on a mass basis leaf â â level drought tolerance did contribute to speciesâ occurrence as the drought intolerant species i studied are not commonly found in low precipitation systems the results presented here highlight the importance of studying the hydraulic architecture of plants to provide a better understanding of what controls plant function across a range of environmental conditions,2012,0.01
Stable citations for herbarium specimens on the internet: an illustration from a taxonomic revision of Duboscia (Malvaceae),a taxonomic revision of duboscia malvaceae with two species d macrocarpa and d viridiflora is presented and used to demonstrate a mechanism for linking from revisions to specimens held in herbaria using http uris the implementation of this mechanism at the royal botanic garden edinburgh e is used as an example advantages of this approach include near universal support amongst web connected devices hindrances to widespread adoption of such an approach are also discussed,2012,0.219
"A troglomorphic spider from Java (Araneae, Ctenidae, Amauropelma)",a new troglomorphic spider from caves in central java indonesia is described and placed in the ctenid genus amauropelma raven stumkat gray until now containing only species from queensland australia only juveniles and mature females of the new species are known we give our reasons for placing the new species in amauropelma discuss conflicting characters and make predictions about the morphol ogy of the as yet undiscovered male that will test our taxonomic hypothesis te description includes dna barcode sequence data,2012,0.687
The performance of range maps and species distribution models representing the geographic variation of species richness at different resolutions,aim the method used to generate hypotheses about species distributions in addition to spatial scale may affect the biodiversity patterns that are then observed we compared the performance of range maps and maxent species distribution models at different spatial resolutions by examining the degree of similarity between predicted species richness and composition against observed values from well surveyed cells wscs location mexico methods we estimated amphibian richness distributions at five spatial resolu tions from 0 083â to 2â by overlaying 370 individual range maps or maxent predictions comparing the similarity of the spatial patterns and correlating pre dicted values with the observed values forwscs additionally we looked at species composition and assessed commission and omission errors associated with each method results maxent predictions reveal greater geographic differences in richness between species rich and species poor regions than the range maps did at the five resolutions assessed correlations between species richness values estimated by either of the two procedures and the observed values fromthewscs increasedwith decreasing resolution the slopes of the regressions between the predicted and observed values indicate that maxent overpredicts observed species richness at all of the resolutions used while range maps underpredict them except at the finest resolution prediction errors did not vary significantly between methods at any resolution and tended to decrease with decreasing resolution the accuracy of both procedures was clearly different when commission and omission errors were exam ined separately main conclusions despite the congruent increase in the geographic richness patterns obtained from both procedures as resolution decreases the maps created with these methods cannot be used interchangeably because of notable differences in the species compositions they report,2012,0.724
Advances in tools for bird population eBird and avifaunal monitoring by the Ornithological Society of New Zealand,since the ornithological society of new zealand osnz was founded in 1939 its primary objective has been the collection and dissemination of information on new zealandâ s birds for 70 years the society has maintained databases on all aspects of the behaviour population sizes and movements of new zealandâ s avifauna this paper summarises what information members of the osnz collect and curate and discusses an internet initiative ebird the society has recently put in place to allow members to record observations and give researchers easy access to these data,2012,0.274
"Non-ecological speciation, niche conservatism and thermal adaptation: how are they connected?",during the last decade the ecological theory of adaptive radiation and its corollary â œecological speciationâ has been a major research theme in evolutionary biology briefly this theory states that speciation is mainly or largely the result of divergent selection arising from niche differences between populations or incipient species reproductive isolation evolves either as a result of direct selection on mate preferences e g reinforcement or as a correlated response to divergent selection â œby product speciationâ although there are now many tentative examples of ecological speciation i argue that ecologyâ s role in speciation might have been overemphasised and that non ecological and non adaptive alternatives should be considered more seriously specifically populations and species of many organisms often show strong evidence of niche conservatism yet are often highly reproductively isolated from each other this challenges niche based ecological speciation and reveals partial decoupling between ecology and reproductive isolation furthermore reproductive isolation might often evolve in allopatry before ecological differentiation between taxa or possibly through learning and antagonistic sexual interactions either in allopatry or sympatry here i discuss recent theoretical and empirical work in this area with some emphasis on odonates dragonflies and damselflies and suggest some future avenues of research a main message from this paper is that the ecology of species differences is not the same as ecological speciation just like the genetics of species differences does not equate to the genetics of speciation,2012,0.771
Marasmius Corbariensis (Roum.) Singer (Family Marasmiaceae Roze Ex Kuhner) - A New Fungal Species for Malta,a population of marasmius corbariensis roum singer was found in an olive grove at ix xewkija gozo being a new agaric for the maltese islands details on this population and habitat is given in this communication,2012,0.436
Drawbacks to palaeodistribution modelling: the case of South American seasonally dry forests,aim species distribution modelling sdm has increasingly been used to predict palaeodistributions at regional and global scales in order to understand the response of vegetation to climate change and to estimate palaeodistributions for the testing of biogeographical hypotheses however there are many sources of uncertainty in sdm that may restrict the ability of models to hindcast palaeo distributions and provide a basis for hypothesis testing in molecular phylogenetics and phylogeographical studies location seasonally dry forests sdfs in south america methods we addressed the problem of using palaeodistribution modelling for sdfs based on the projection of their current distribution into past environments 21 ka using 11 methods for sdms and five coupled atmosphereâ ocean global circulation models aogcms for 16 species results we observed considerable uncertainty in the hindcasts with the most important effects for aogcm median 12 2 species median 15 6 and their interaction median 13 6 the effects of aogcms were stronger in the amazon region whereas the species effect occurred primarily in the dry areas of central brazil the log linear model detected significant effects of the three sources of variation and their interaction on the classification of each map in supporting alternative hypotheses an expansion scenario combining the pleistocene arc and amazonian expansion and pennington s amazonian expansion alone were the most frequently supported palaeodistribution scenarios main conclusions as a basis for evaluating a given hypothesis hindcast distributions must be used in direct association with other evidence such as molecular variation and the fossil record we propose an alternative framework concerning hypothesis testing that couples sdm and phylogeographical work in which palaeoclimatic distributions and other sources of information such as the pollen fossil record and coalescence modelling must be weighted equally,2012,0.456
Species distribution modelling of stream macroinvertebrates under climate change scenarios,there is increasing evidence that climate change will have a severe impact on speciesâ distributions by altering the climatic conditions within their present ranges especially species inhabiting stream ecosystems are expected to be strongly affected due to warm ing temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns the aim of this thesis was to investigate how distributions of aquatic insects i e benthic stream macroinvertebrates would be impacted by warming climates the methods comprised of an ensemble fore casting technique based on species distribution models sdms and climate change sce narios of the intergovernmental panel on climate change of the year 2080 future model projections were generated for a wide variety of species from a number of taxo nomic orders for two spatial scales a stream network within the lower mountain ranges of germany and the entire territory across europe in addition the effect of the model ling technique on habitat suitability projections was investigated by modifying the choice of study area continuous area vs stream network and the choice of predictors standard vs corrected set projections of future habitat suitability showed that potential climate change impacts would be dependent on speciesâ thermal preferences and with a similar pattern for both spatial scales future habitat suitability was projected to remain for most or all of the modelled species and species were projected to track their climatically suitable condi tions by shifting uphill along the river continuum within the lower mountain ranges and into a north easterly direction across europe cold adapted headwater and high latitude species were projected to lose suitable habitats whereas gains would be expected for warm adapted river and low latitude species along the river continuum and across eu rope respectively additionally habitat specialist species in terms of endemics of the iberian peninsula were identified as potential climate change losers highlighting their restricted habitat availability and therefore vulnerability to warming climates the main findings of this thesis underline the high susceptibility of stream macroinver tebrates to ongoing climate change and give insights into patterns of possible conse quences due to changes in speciesâ habitat suitability concerning the methodology a clear recommendation can be given for future modelling approaches of stream macroin vertebrates by building models within a stream network and with a careful choice of environmental predictors to reduce uncertainties and thus to improve model projec tions,2012,0.764
"A semantically integrated, user-friendly data model for species observation data",recent decades have seen an increasing importance of large scale ecological research driven by increased awareness of the global influence of human activities on the biosphere such research requires species observation data covering many years large areas and a broad range of taxonomic groups as such data sets often cover small areas and have been collected using varying methods they can only be combined in a single analysis if they are made available at the same location and translated into a single format over the past decade catalysed by the growth of the internet various technologies for data dissemination and data integration have been developed and applied in projects such as the global biodiversity information facility the knowledge network for biocomplexity biocase and the british national biodiversity network nbn in the netherlands data are now made available from the national database of flora and fauna ndff which currently contains approximately 40 million observation records covering a broad variety of species the ndff uses a standardised semantically integrated data model to combine effectively species observation data of various kinds in this paper we evaluate this approach and the ndff data model by comparison with darwin core access to biological collections data abcd and the recorder 2000 model used by the nbn we conclude that the high degree of standardisation in the ndff data model has led to somewhat increased cost in data conversion but also to improved semantic integration and ease of use of species observation data together with the relative simplicity completeness and flexibility of the model this enables effective reuse of species observations in a user friendly manner,2012,0.286
Sampling Methods for Assessing Syrphid Biodiversity (Diptera: Syrphidae ) in Tropical Forests,when assessing the species richness of a taxonomic group in a speciãžc area the choice of sampling method is critical in this study the effectiveness of three methods for sampling syrphids diptera syrphidae in tropical forests is compared malaise trapping collecting adults with an entomological net and collecting and rearing immatures surveys were made from 2008 to 2011 in six tropical forest sites in costa rica the results revealed signiãžcant differences in the composition and richness of syrphid faunas obtained by each method collecting immatures was the most successful method based on numbers of species and individuals whereas malaise trapping was the least effective this pattern of sampling effectiveness was independent of syrphid trophic or functional group and annual season an advantage of collecting immatures over collecting adults is the quality and quantity of associated biological data obtained by the former method however complementarity between results of collecting adults and collecting immatures showed that a combined sampling regime obtained the most complete inventory differences between these results and similar studies in more openmediterraneanhabitats suggest that for effective inventory it is important to consider the effects of environmental characteristics on the catchability of syrphids as much as the costs and beneãžts of different sampling techniques key words costa rica entomol,2012,0.083
"Empria formosana sp. n. from Taiwan with notes on E. wui species group (Hymenoptera, Tenthredinidae)",empria formosana prous heidemaa sp n is described from the mountains of taiwan the record is the first of this genus from taiwan and one of the southernmost occurrences of the empria species in the palaearctic the new species appears to be close to e wui wei nie 1998 and some other species from china and japan with incomplete vein 2a 3a in forewing unique among empria remarkably e formosana shows considerable intraspecific variation for this character the mitochondrial coi and nuclear its1 and its2 sequences of three undescribed species morphologically closest to e formosana and e wui indicate that most likely they all form a monophyletic group within empria defined here as e wui species group,2012,0.885
"Cryptic diversity of South African trapdoor spiders: Three new species of Stasimopus Simon, 1892",tree new species of stasimopus simon 1892 are described from the gauteng and north west provinces of south africa tey are readily distinguished from all other known stasimopus species by the presence of spinules in the tarsal scopulae on the first two pairs of legs of adult males te only described species recorded in the vicinity stasimopus robertsi hewitt 1910 which appears to be endemic to northern gauteng province is redescribed te four species are comprehensively illustrated a key to identify the adult males from those of other new spe cies in the region is provided and their conservation status discussed available evidence sug gests that many stasimopus species remain to be discovered and described but significant effort will be required to obtain adult males considered important for accurate species delimitation in the genus,2012,0.966
What's on the horizon for macroecology?,over the last two decades macroecology â the analysis of large scale multi species ecological patterns and processes â has established itself as a major line of biological research analyses of statistical links between environmental variables and biotic responses have long and successfully been employed as a main approach but new developments are due to be uti lized scanning the horizon of macroecology we identified four challenges that will probably play a major role in the future we support our claims by examples and bibliographic analyses 1 integrating the past into macroecological analyses e g by using paleontological or phylogenetic information or by applying methods from historical biogeography will sharpen our understanding of the underlying reasons for contemporary patterns 2 explicit consideration of the local processes that lead to the observed larger scale patterns is necessary to understand the fine grain variability found in nature and will enable better prediction of future patterns e g under environmental change conditions 3 macroecology is dependent on large scale high quality data from a broad spectrum of taxa and regions more available data sources need to be tapped and new small grain large extent data need to be collected 4 although macroecology already lead to mainstreaming cutting edge statistical analysis techniques we find that more sophisticated methods are needed to account for the biases inherent to sampling at large scale bayesian methods may be particularly suitable to address these challenges to continue the vigor ous development of the macroecological research agenda it is time to address these challenges and to avoid becoming too complacent with current achievements,2012,0.149
A high-performance web-based information system for publishing large-scale species range maps in support of biodiversity studies,functionality performance and scalability are critical to web based information systems for publishing and disseminating large scale species distribution data existing systems do not support dynamic spatial window queries on large scale species range maps that are important to compute alpha and beta diversities for biodiversity analysis and modeling in this study we have developed a main memory based novel quadtree data structure to represent large scale species range maps and support dynamic spatial window queries to retrieve a list of species and their area sizes within a query window efficiently using the natureserve s 4000 bird species range maps experiment results have shown that the memory footprint of the proposed quadtree data structure representing the range maps of all the species is about 1 6 of the quadtree derived by combining individual quadtrees each representing a species range map the experiment results have also demonstrated that the query response times of our main memory spatial database are well below a fraction of a second for query windows as large as 10ã 10â which are 2â 3 orders better than using a typical disk resident spatial database system â,2012,0.509
Molecular markers provide insights into contemporary and historic gene flow for a non-migratory species,hairy woodpeckers picoides villosus are a common year round resident with distinct plumage and morphological variation across north america we genotyped 335 individuals at six variable microsatellite loci and analyzed 322 mtdna control region sequences in order to examine the role of contemporary and historical barriers to gene flow in addition we combined genetic analyses with ecological niche modelling to test if hairy woodpeckers were isolated in northern refugia alaska newfoundland and the queen charlotte islands during the last glacial maximum genetic analyses revealed that gene flow among north american hairy woodpecker populations is restricted but not to the extent predicted for a sedentary species populations clustered into two main genetic groups east and west of the great plains in the south and the rocky mountains in the north contact zones between the two main genetic groups exist in central british columbia and washington but are narrow within each group we found additional population structure with genetic breaks between subgroups in the geographic west corresponding to breaks in forested habitat and physical barriers like open expanses of water population genetic patterns for hairy woodpeckers have resulted from isolation in multiple southern refugia with the current distribution of genetic groups resulting from post glacial expansion and subsequent reduction in gene flow while populations in alaska newfoundland and the queen charlotte islands are genetically distinct from other populations we found no evidence of these areas acting as refugia throughout the pleistocene atlantic canada populations contained unique haplotypes raising the possibility of a separate colonization from the rest of eastern canada the endemic subspecies on the island of newfoundland is not genetically distinct from their closest mainland population unlike the queen charlotte island subspecies,2012,0.939
A leap further: the Brazilian Amphibian Conservation Action Plan,brazil has a fundamental role in amphibian conservation harboring the highest amphibian species richness in the world and a large number of endemics here we present an overview of the brazilian amphibian conservation action plan bacap which is still being developed by brazilian herpetologists basic research â particularly species inventories taxonomic revisions and the collection of field data â are urgently needed to guide amphibian conservation in the country documentation and monitoring of amphibian richness has improved at least at regional scales lists of threatened species are regularly updated efforts to standardize field work protocols are being attempted and captive breeding is being considered as a research and educational tool we also present a short history of the bacap identify some of the challenges tied to its implementation and review a few but important recent achievements,2012,0.566
"Five new recrds of bats for Guatemala, with comments on the checklist of the country",field inventories of small mammals have resulted in the collection of five bat species previously unreported for guatemala trinycteris nicefori sanborn 1949 thyroptera tricolor spix 1823 eptesicus brasiliensis desmarest 1819 myotis thysanodes miller allen 1928 and eumops glaucinus wagner 1843 the range of m thysanodes is extended 334 km from chiapas southeastward to central america the five new records to guatemala increase the documented total bat species to 104,2012,0.571
Malus Diversity in wild and agricultural ecosystems,abandoned farmstead orchards throughout the southwestern u s indicates plasticity in adapting to local environmental conditions dendrochronology reveals these trees tend to persist where they have access to supplemental water either as shallow groundwater or irrigation while domestic apples are cultivated under a range of growing conditions wild relatives of agricultural crops may further expand the cultivable range of the species crop wild relatives are species closely related to agricultural species including progenitors that may contribute beneficial traits to crops sampling the genetic variation in crop wild relatives may benefit from ecological genetics and gis theory to reveal genetic structure the pacific crabapple is an example of a wild apple relative that may contain genetic variation useful in apple breeding species distribution modeling of the pacific crabapple identifies a 9 narrow climatic window of suitable habitat along the northern pacific coast and genetic fingerprinting reveals a highly admixed genetic structure with little evidence of natural or cultural selection while the moist coastal pacific northwest is not necessarily characteristic of many apple â â growing regions the species may have useful adaptations transferable to domestic apples genetic resources offer a promising source of raw material for adapting crops to future agricultural environments their characterization conservation and use may offer important contributions to adaptation and use of perennial crops in agro â â ecosystems,2012,0.971
Edible sporocarp production by age class in a Scots pine stand in Northern Spain,with the aim of increasing knowledge of community structure dynamics and production of ectomycorrhizal fungi edible sporocarp yields were monitored between 1995 and 2004 in a pinus sylvestris stand in the northeast zone of the iberian peninsula a random sampling design was performed by stand age class according to the forest management plan 0 15 16 30 31 50 51 70 and over 71 years old eighteen 150 m plots were established and sampled weekly every year from september to december one hundred and nineteen taxa belonging to 51 genera were collected 40 of which were edible and represented 74 of the total biomass boletus edulis lactarius deliciosus cantharellus cibarius and tricholoma portentosum sporocarps which are considered to be of high commercial value represented 34 of the total production b edulis and l deliciosus were the most remarkable and abundant species and both were collected in more than 60 of the samplings b edulis fructified every year of the experiment its mean production was 40 kg ha and year and its maximum productivity was more than 94 kg ha in 1998 the age class with the largest production of this taxa was the fourth 51 70 years with 70 kg ha l deliciosus only failed to fructify one autumn 2000 its mean production was almost 10 kg ha and its maximum productivity close to 30 kg ha in 1997 the maximum productivity of this species was found in the second 16 30 years and fifth 71 90 years stand age classes with 18 and 16 kg ha respectively advances in this field can certainly offer new insights into factors affecting sporocarp production,2012,0.703
Investigating the evolution of Lantaneae (Verbenaceae) using multiple loci,lantaneae are an example of a taxonomically problematic widespread and recently radiated neotropical lineage taxonomy in lantaneae is difficult because of complex overlapping patterns of shifts in morphological traits among members monophyly of the traditional genera cannot be assumed without additional information from molecular data we took a multi locus approach to infer phylogenetic relationships in lantaneae resolving major clades among a broad representative sample that covers the morphological taxonomic and geographical diversity of this group data from multiple independent loci reveal individual gene trees that are incongruent with one another with varying degrees of support without reliable applicable methods to determine the sources of such incongru ence and to resolve it we present the consensus between well supported topologies among our data sets as the best estimate of lantaneae phylogeny to date according to this consensus tree fleshy fruits in lantaneae have been derived from dry fruits at least five times taxonomic schemes separating genera based on fruit characteristics are artificial lantaneae have shifted into the neotropics from the southern temperate subtropics and have colonized africa in at least two separate long distance dispersal events this study provides a first pass at a broad lantaneae phylogeny but two important areas remain unresolved the position of acantholippia relative to aloysia and species level relationships in the lantanaâ lippia clade,2012,0.28
"Avian Diversity in and around Bamanwada Lake of Rajura, District- Chandrapur (Maharashtra)",the bamanwada lake is located at the outskirt of rajura it is a perennial lake rich in aquatic vegetation and harbors several kinds of birds in all the seasons grassland area rice field herb shrub and tree located in the vicinity of lake that also provide food and shelter to these birds total number of 58 birdsâ species belonging 9 orders and 29 families were recorded passeriformes is the dominating order of birds but the future of this avian fauna is in danger due to industrial progress of the city,2012,0.407
SandflyMap: leveraging spatial data on sand fly vector distribution for disease risk assessments,we feature sandflymap www sandflymap org a new map service within vectormap www vectormap org that allows free public online access to global sand fly tick and mosquito collection records and habitat suitability models given the short home range of sand flies combining remote sensing and collection point data give a powerful insight into the environmental determinants of sand fly distribution sandflymap is aimed at medical entomologists vector disease control workers public health officials and health planners data are checked for geographical and taxonomic errors and are comprised of vouchered specimen information and both published and unpublished observation data sandflymap uses microsoft silverlight and esri s arcgis server 10 software platform to present disease vector data and relevant remote sensing layers in an online geographical information system format users can view the locations of past vector collections and the results of models that predict the geographic extent of individual species collection records are searchable and downloadable and excel collection forms with drop down lists and excel charts to country are available for data contributors to map and quality control their data sandflymap makes accessible and adds value to the results of past sand fly collecting efforts we detail the workflow for entering occurrence data from the literature to sandflymap using an example for sand flies from south america we discuss the utility of sandflymap as a focal point to increase collaboration and to explore the nexus between geography and vector borne disease transmission,2012,0.308
Surprising spectra of root-associated fungi in submerged aquatic plants,similarly to plants from terrestrial ecosystems aquatic species harbour wide spectra of root associated fungi raf however comparably less is known about fungal diversity in submerged roots we assessed the incidence and diversity of raf in submerged aquatic plants using microscopy culture dependent and culture independent techniques we studied raf of five submerged isoetid species collected in four oligotrophic freshwater lakes in norway levels of dark septate endophytes dse colonization differed among the lakes and were positively related to the organic matter content and negatively related to ph in total we identified 41 fungal otus using culture dependent and culture independent techniques belonging to mucoromycotina chytridiomycota glomeromycota ascomycota as well as basidiomycota sequences corresponding to aquatic hyphomycetes e g nectria lugdunensis tetracladium furcatum and varicosporium elodeae were obtained eight arbuscular mycorrhizal taxa belonging to the orders archaeosporales diversisporales and glomerales were also detected however the vast majority of the fungal species detected e g ceratobasidium sp cryptosporiopsis rhizophila leptodontidium orchidicola and tuber sp have previously been known only from roots of terrestrial plants the abundance and phylogenetic distribution of mycorrhizal as well as nonmycorrhizal fungi in the roots of submerged plants have reshaped our views on the fungal diversity in aquatic environment,2012,0.576
Monitoring fungal biodiversity – towards an integrated approach,biodiversity information databases and platforms have seen considerable progress in recent years they have a high poten tial in conservation science in general but may be even more revolutionary in relation to poorly known species groups such as fungi whose practical conservation work has been jeopardised by scattered and poorly controlled information we review the tradition of collecting information on species occurrences in mycology and discuss the characteristics of the present fungal biodiversity information databases with a special focus on population trend monitoring of fruit body producing macro fungi we emphasise several unrealised opportunities of these databases and point out some relevant future directions for them asespecially important wesee themoreeffective uti lisation of citizen science effort and combining the traditional database information with the one derived with modern molecular methods also we emphasise the importance of information on collection effort including the use of gps based tracking data along with the observations,2012,0.434
"Mapping the biosphere: exploring species to understand the origin, organization and sustainability of biodiversity",the time is ripe for a comprehensive mission to explore and document earth s species this calls for a campaign to educate and inspire the next generation of professional and citizen species explorers investments in cyber infrastructure and collections to meet the unique needs of the producers and consumers of taxonomic information and the formation and coordination of a multi institutional international transdisciplinary community of researchers scholars and engineers with the shared objective of creating a comprehensive inventory of species and detailed map of the biosphere we conclude that an ambitious goal to describe 10 million species in less than 50 years is attainable based on the strength of 250 years of progress worldwide collections existing experts technological innovation and collaborative teamwork existing digitization projects are overcoming obstacles of the past facilitating collaboration and mobilizing literature data images and specimens through cyber technologies charting the biosphere is enormously complex yet necessary expertise can be found through partnerships with engineers information scientists sociologists ecologists climate scientists conservation biologists industrial project managers and taxon specialists from agrostologists to zoophytologists benefits to society of the proposed mission would be profound immediate and enduring from detection of early responses of flora and fauna to climate change to opening access to evolutionary designs for solutions to countless practical problems the impacts on the biodiversity environmental and evolutionary sciences would be transformative from ecosystem models calibrated in detail to comprehensive understanding of the origin and evolution of life over its 3 8 billion year history the resultant cyber enabled taxonomy or cybertaxonomy would open access to biodiversity data to developing nations assure access to reliable data about species and change how scientists and citizens alike access use and think about biological diversity information,2012,0.722
What we know and don’t know about Earth's missing biodiversity,estimates of non microbial diversity on earth range from 2 million to over 50 million species with great uncertainties in numbers of insects fungi nematodes and deep sea organisms we summarize estimates for major taxa the methods used to obtain them and prospects for further discoveries major challenges include frequent synonymy the difficulty of discriminating certain species by morphology alone and the fact that many undiscovered species are small difficult to find or have small geographic ranges cryptic species could be numerous in some taxa novel techniques such as dna barcoding new databases and crowd sourcing could greatly accelerate the rate of species discovery such advances are timely most missing species probably live in biodiversity hotspots where habitat destruction is rife and so current estimates of extinction rates from known species are too low,2012,0.941
"Population structure of the melon fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae, in Reunion Island",the melon fly bactrocera cucurbitae coquillett diptera tephritidae is an agricultural pest of major significance worldwide that primarily attacks cucurbit crops in reunion island it represents the main tephritid pest on cucurbits in this paper we provide a genetic characterization of populations of b cucurbitae from reunion island and investigate their geographical origin using ten microsatellite loci at two mitochondrial gene fragments microsatellites reveal the occurrence of three different genetic clusters of b cucurbitae in reunion island all clearly distinguishable from their african and asian relatives these three clusters are sympatric and show no signs of recent bottlenecks levels of gene flow among clusters are relatively high yet gene flow also occurs with populations from the african continent and to a lesser extent from asia the b cucurbitae clusters show distinct distributions across eastern and western locations in reunion island but not at different altitudes or between wild and cultivated host plants or between sampling periods and their abundance is also correlated with the average amount of rainfall microsatellite and sequence analyses suggest africa as the most probable source area for populations of b cucurbitae in reunion island,2012,0.422
Modeling the Distribution of Rare or Cryptic Bird Species of Taiwan,for the study of the macroecology and conservation of taiwanâ s birds there was an urgent need to develop distribution models of bird species whose distribution had never before been modeled therefore we here model the distributions of 27 mostly rare and cryptic breeding bird species using a statistical approach which has been shown to be especially reliable for modeling species with a low sample size of presence localities namely the maximum entropy maxent modeling technique for this purpose we began with a dedicated attempt to collate as much high quality distributional data as possible assembling databases from several scientific reports contacting individual data recorders and searching publicly accessible database the internet and the available literature this effort resulted in 2022 grid cells of 1 ã 1 km size being associated with a presence record for one of the 27 species these records and 10 pre selected environmental variables were then used to model each speciesâ probability distribution which we show here with all grid cells below the lowest presence threshold being converted to zeros we then in detail discuss the interpretation and applicability of these distributions whereby we pay close attention to habitat requirements the intactness and fragmentation of their habitat the general detectability of the species and data reliability this study is another one in an ongoing series of studies which highlight the usefulness of using large electronic databases and modern analytical methods to help with the monitoring and assessment of taiwanâ s bird species,2012,0.889
Heathlands confronting global change: drivers of biodiversity loss from past to future scenarios,background heathlands are dynamic plant communities characterized by a high cover of sclerophyllous ericoid shrubs that develop over nutrient poor soils interest in the preservation of these habitats in europe has increased over the last decades but over this time there has been a general decline in habitat quality affecting community structure ecosystem functions and biodiversity negative drivers that trigger these changes include land use changes i e habitat destruction and fragmentation pollution climate change natural succession and human management as well as the presence of invasive exotic species scope based on recent scientific literature the effect of each of these potential drivers on a wide set of factors including physiological traits species richness and diversity community structure ecosystem functions and soil conditions is reviewed the effects of these drivers are generally understood but the direction and magnitude of factor interactions whenever studied have shown high variability conclusions habitat loss and fragmentation affect sensitive species and ecosystem functions the nature of the surrounding area will condition the quality of the heathland remnants by for example propagule pressure from invasive species the dominant ericoid shrubs can be out competed by vigorous perennial grasses with increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition although interactions with climate and management practices may either counteract or enhance this process grazing or periodic burning promotes heath loss but site specific combined treatments maintain species diversity and community structure climate change alone moderately affects plant diversity community structure and ecosystem functions combined with other factors climatic changes will condition heath development mainly with regard to key aspects such as seed set and seedling establishment rare species occurrence and nutrient cycling in the soil it is essential to address the effects of not only individual factors but their interactions together with land use history on heathland development and conservation in order to predict habitat response to future scenarios,2012,0.496
The future of environmental DNA in ecology,the contributions of environmental dna to ecology are reviewed focusing on diet trophic interactions species distributions and biodiversity assessment environmental dna has the potential to dramatically improve quantitative studies in these fields achieving this however will require large investments of time and money into developing the relevant databases models and software,2012,0.368
"A hymenopterists’ guide to the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology: utility, clarification, and future directions",hymenoptera exhibit an incredible diversity of phenotypes the result of 240 million years of evolution and the primary subject of more than 250 years of research here we describe the history development and utility of the hymenoptera anatomy ontology hao and its associated applications tese resourc es are designed to facilitate accessible and extensible research on hymenopteran phenotypes outreach with the hymenopterist community is of utmost importance to the hao project and this paper is a direct response to questions that arose from project workshops in a concerted attempt to surmount barriers of understanding especially regarding the format utility and development of the hao we discuss the roles of homology â œpreferred termsâ and â œstructural equivalencyâ we also outline the use of universal resource identifiers uris and posit that they are a key element necessary for increasing the objectivity and repeatability of science that references hymenopteran anatomy pragmatically we detail a mechanism the â œuri tableâ by which authors can use uris to link their published text to the hao and we describe an associated tool the â œanalyzerâ to derive these tables tese tools and others are available through the hao portal website http portal hymao org we conclude by discussing the future of the hao with respect to digital publication cross taxon ontology alignment the advent of semantic phenotypes and community based curation,2012,0.095
Global Diversity of Brittle Stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea),abstract this review presents a comprehensive over view of the current status regarding the global diversity of the echinoderm class ophiuroidea focussing on taxono my and distribution patterns with brief introduction to their anatomy biology phylogeny and palaeontological history a glossary of terms is provided species names and taxonomic decisions have been extracted from the literature and compiled in the world ophiuroidea database part of the world register of marine species worms ophiuroidea with 2064 known species are the largest class of echinodermata a table presents 16 families with numbers of genera and species the largest are amphiuridae 467 ophiuridae 344 species and ophiacanthidae 319 species a biogeographic analysis for all world oceans and all accepted species was performed based on published distribution records approximately similar numbers of species were recorded from the shelf n 1313 and bathyal depth strata 1297 the indo pacific region had the highest species richness overall 825 species and at all depths adjacent regions were also relatively species rich including the north pacific 398 south pacific 355 and indian 316 due to the presence of many indo pacific species that partially extended into these regions a secondary region of enhanced species richness was found in the west atlantic 335 regions of relatively low species richness include the arctic 73 species east atlantic 118 south america 124 and antarctic 126,2012,0.991
Mitochondrial phylogeography of the Holarctic Parnassius phoebus complex supports a recent refugial model for alpine butterflies,the holarctic distribution of the p phoebus complex a global species distribution model sdm was calculated by the maximum entropy maxent approach allowing assignment of samples into geographically consistent â operationalâ units phylogenetic and coalescent methods were applied to describe the global mitogenetic structure and estimate population genetics parameters geological and palaeoecological evidence was used for internal calibration and validation of a coi substitution rate results eurasian including alaskan and north american populations form two distinct mitochondrial clades the mitochondrial time to most recent common ancestor tmrca of the north american clade was estimated at less than 125 ka and the tmrca of the eurasianâ alaskan clade at less than 80 ka except for a single divergent sequence from mongolia pairwise divergence times between all geographical units within each continent date well within the last 100 ka and most likely the last 50â 10 ka main conclusions in contrast with its currently scattered distribution within each of eurasia and north america the mitogenetic structure of the p phoebus complex in both continents is shallow and weak and shows no evidence of geographical structure dating back earlier than the last glacial cycle we argue that mtdna data are consistent with recent range expansion across each of the two continents and with persistent glacial long range gene flow which ceased during the holocene we propose that p phoebus may represent a model for holarctic alpine invertebrates with moderate dispersal abilities in that its genetic structure at a continental scale reflects extensive connectivity during the most recent glacial phases,2012,0.323
"Abundance and dispersion of the invasive Mediterranean annual, Centaurea melitensis in its native and non-native ranges",in general invasive plants are assumed to behave more aggressively in their invasive ranges than in their native range and studies of the mechanisms of invasion often assume these differences however comparisons of abundances between native and invasive ranges are rarely carried out we compared density and dispersion of the invasive plant centaurea melitensis asteraceae in its native range and two invasive ranges of similar mediterranean climate type the objective was to quantify the differences in its abundance among three distant regions we surveyed six sites in the native range spain and in each of two invaded ranges california and central chile for population density relative dominance and spatial distribution of centaurea centaurea occurred at higher densities in invasive sites than in native ones with a median of 100 plants per m2 and 70 plants per m2 in california and chile respectively compared to only 4 plants per m2 in spain centaurea was more dominant in both invasive ranges than in the native range centaurea density and relative dominance were highly variable within regions plants in spain were randomly dispersed while those in both invasive ranges were more aggregated annual precipitation and mean annual temperature were the best predictors of centaurea density in california sites density was negatively correlated with soil nutrients the presence of at least one high density population with near total dominance in spain suggests that there might be ecological mechanisms for invasiveness in centuarea that are not unique to invaded ranges,2012,0.1
"Species richness, taxonomy and peculiarities of the neotropical rust fungi: are they more diverse in the Neotropics?",the species richness of rust fungi pucciniales or uredinales in the neotropics is reviewed species numbers are presented for all neotropical countries and rust plant ratios calculated it is discussed whether the ratio for a given region can be explained by the species richness of vascular plants alone or whether it is caused by additional factors in the first case ratios should apply globally and vary only slightly in the second case more diverging ratios are expected observed ratios ranged between 1 16 and 1 124 in the neotropics the large differences are certainly influenced by unequal levels of investiga tion rendering interpretation difficult differences seem also to be influenced by the tax onomic composition of floras regarding the percentage of host families or genera bearing different numbers of rust species this indicates that rust species richness is not driven solely by plant species richness ratios calculated for switzerland austria and japan are distinctly higher than for the neotropics indicating that certain temperate regions are proportionally richer in rust fungi than the neotropics uredinial states and short cycled rust species prevail in the neotropics the preponderance of uredinial states may be due to the heterogeneous spatial composition of certain vegetation types in the wet tropics short cycled rusts may be adapted to a pronounced seasonality that can be encountered in many drier neotropical biomes future research needs to fill our knowledge gaps on the taxonomy and ecology of neotropical rust fungi are discussed,2012,0.86
"Cameronia (lichenized Ascomycetes), a remarkable new alpine genus from Tasmania",the new genus cameronia kantvilas is described and illustrated it is characterized by a crustose thallus a chlorococcalean photobiont deeply immersed perithecioid ascomata four spored asci with an intensely hemiamyloid outer wall and non amyloid well developed tholus and hyaline muriform ascospores the taxonomic position of the new genus is uncertain although a relationship with the ostropomycetidae is likely two species both endemic to the highlands of tasmania are described c pertusarioides kantvilas which is one of the most common lichens on dolerite in alpine tasmania and c tecta kantvilas which is confined to metamorphosed sediments,2012,0.482
Climatic niche divergence or conservatism? Environmental niches and range limits in ecologically similar damselflies,the factors that determine species range limits are of central interest to biologists one particularly interesting group are odonates dragonflies and damselflies which show large differences in secondary sexual traits and respond quickly to climatic factors but often have minor interspecific niche differences challenging models of niche based species co existence we quantified the environmental niches at two geographic scales to understand the ecological causes of northern range limits and the co existence of two congeneric damselflies calopteryx splendens and c virgo using environmental niche modelling we quantified niche divergence first across the whole geographic range in fennoscandia and second only in the sympatric part of this range we found evidence for interspecific divergence along the environmental axes of temperature and precipitation across the northern range in fennoscandia suggesting that adaptation to colder and wetter climate might have allowed c virgo to expand further northwards than c splendens however in the sympatric zone in southern fennoscandia we found only negligible and non significant niche differences minor niche differences in sympatry lead to frequent encounters and intense interspecific sexual interactions at the local scale of populations nevertheless niche differences across fennoscandia suggest that species differences in physiological tolerances limit range expansions northwards and that current and future climate could have large effects on the distributional ranges of these and ecological similar insects,2012,0.662
How does climate change cause extinction?,anthropogenic climate change is predicted to be a major cause of species extinctions in the next 100 years but what will actually cause these extinctions for example will it be limited physiological tolerance to high temperatures changing biotic interactions or other factors here we systematically review the proximate causes of climate change related extinctions and their empirical support we find 136 case studies of climatic impacts that are potentially relevant to this topic however only seven identified proximate causes of demonstrated local extinctions due to anthropogenic climate change among these seven studies the proximate causes vary widely surprisingly none show a straightforward relationship between local extinction and limited tolerances to high temperature instead many studies implicate species interactions as an important proximate cause especially decreases in food availability we find very similar patterns in studies showing decreases in abundance associated with climate change and in those studies showing impacts of climatic oscillations collectively these results highlight our disturbingly limited knowledge of this crucial issue but also support the idea that changing species interactions are an important cause of documented population declines and extinctions related to climate change finally we briefly outline general research strategies for identifying these proximate causes in future studies,2012,0.385
Potential Distribution of the Australian Native Chloris truncata Based on Modelling Both the Successful and Failed Global Introductions,our aim was to model the current and future potential global distribution of chloris truncata windmill grass based on the plant s biology soil requirements and colonisation success the growth response of c truncata to constant temperatures and soil moisture levels were measured and estimated respectively to develop parameters for a climex bioclimatic model of potential distribution the native distribution in eastern australia and naturalised distribution in western australia was also used to inform the model associations with soil types were assessed within the suitable bioclimatic region in australia the global projection of the model was tested against the distribution of soil types and the known successful and failed global introductions the verified model was then projected to future conditions due to climate change optimal temperature for plant development was 28â c and the plant required 970 degree days above a threshold of 10â c early collection records indicate that the species is native to queensland new south wales and victoria the plant has been introduced elsewhere in australia and throughout the world as a wool contaminant and as a potential pasture species but some of the recorded establishments have failed to persist the climex model projected to the world reflected effectively both the successful and failed distributions the inclusion of soil associations improved the explanation of the observed distribution in australia but did not improve the ability to determine the potential distribution elsewhere due to lack of similarity of soil types between continents the addition of a climate change projection showed decreased suitability for this species in australia but increased suitability for other parts of the world including regions where the plant previously failed to establish,2012,0.078
Creating a General (Family) Practice Epidemiological Database in Ireland - Data Quality Issue Management,in ireland while detailed information is available regarding hospital attendance little is known regard ing general family practice attendance however it is conservatively estimated that there are almost nine times as many general practice encounters than there are hospital encounters each year in ireland this rep resents a very significant gap in health information indeed general practice has been shown in other coun tries to be an important and rich source of information about the health of the population their behaviors and their utilization of health services funded by the health information and quality authority hiqa the irish college of general practitioners icgp undertook a feasibility study of diagnostic coding of rou tinely entered patient data and the creation of a national general practice morbidity and epidemiological database gpmed project this article outlines the process of data quality issue management undertaken the studyâ s findings suggest that the quality of data collection and reporting structures available in general practice throughout ireland at the outset of this project were not adequate to permit the creation of a database of sufficient quality for service planning and policy or epidemiological research challenges include the dearth of a minimum standard of data recorded in consultations by gps and the absence of the digital data recording and exporting infrastructure within irish patient management software systems in addition there is at present a lack of recognition regarding the value of such data for patient management and service planningâ including importantly data collectors who do not fully accept the merit of maintaining data which has a direct consequence for data quality the work of this project has substantial implications for the data available to the health sector in ireland and contributes to the knowledge base internationally regarding general practice morbidity data,2012,0.045
"Distributional migrations, expansions, and contractions of tropical plant species as revealed in dated herbarium records",species are predicted to respond to global warming through â œcold wardâ shifts in their geographic distributions due to encroachment into newly suitable habitats and or dieback in areas that become climatically unsuitable i conduct one of the first ever tests of this hypothesis for tropical plant species i test for changes in the thermal distributions of 239 south american tropical plant species using dated herbarium records for specimens collected between 1970 and 2009 supporting a priori predictions many species 59 exhibit some evidence of significant cold ward range shifts even after correcting for collection biases over 1 3 of species 35 show significant cold ward movement in their hot thermal limits mean rate of change 0 022â c yr∠1 most of these species 85 30 of all study species show no corresponding shift in their cold thermal limits these unbalanced changes in the speciesâ thermal range limits may indicate species that are experiencing dieback due to their intolerance of rising temperatures coupled with an inability to expand into newly climatically suitable habitats on the other hand 25 of species show significant cold ward shifts in their cold thermal range limits mean rate of change 0 003â c yr∠1 but 80 of these species 20 of all study species show no corresponding shift in their hot thermal range limits in these cases the unbalanced shifts may indicate species that are able to â œbenefitâ under global warming at least temporally by both tolerating rising temperatures and expanding into new suitable habitat an important ancillary result of this study is that the number of species exhibiting significant range shifts was greatly influenced by shifting collector biases this highlights the need to account for biases when analyzing natural history records or other long term records,2012,0.997
Hydroclimatic and hydrochemical controls on Plecoptera diversity and distribution in northern freshwater ecosystems,freshwater ecosystems in the mid to upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change as slight changes in air temperature can alter the form timing and magnitude of precipitation and consequent influence of snowmelt on streamflow dynamics here we examine the effects of hydro climate flow regime and hydrochemistry on plecoptera stonefly alpha î diversity and distribution in northern freshwater ecosystems we characterized the hydroclimatic regime of seven catchments spanning a climatic gradient across the northern temperate region and compared them with estimates of plecoptera genera richness by a space for time substitution we assessed how warmer temperatures and altered flow regimes may influence plecoptera alpha diversity and composition at the genus level our results show wide hydroclimatic variability among sites including differences in temporal streamflow dynamics and temperature response principal component analysis showed that plecoptera genera richness was positively correlated with catchment relief m mean and median annual air temperature â c and streamflow these results provide a preliminary insight into how hydroclimatic change particularly in terms of increased air temperature and altered streamflow regimes may create future conditions more favorable to some plecopteras in northern catchments,2012,0.117
A biogeographical assessment of anthropogenic threats to areas where different frog breeding groups occur in South Africa: implications for anuran conservation,aim to determine the spatial relationship between areas where different frog breeding groups occur and elevated anthropogenic activities and the conservation implications thereof location south africa methods data on frog distribution ranges for the southern african sub region were used to identify biogeographical areas within south africa a random draw technique was used to determine whether areas where different frog breeding groups occur were characterized by higher levels of anthropogenic threats than expected by chance four measures human population density percentage land transformation percentage protected area and invasive alien plants richness expected to reflect threats were analysed results terrestrial breeders were more often spatially associated with areas of threat than expected by chance in three of the seven biogeographical regions examined with land transformation and invasive alien plant richness being most significant the south central was the only region where terrestrial breeders were spatially congruent with protected areas areas where stream breeders occur were spatially congruent with anthropogenic threats with alien plants being most consistent in five of the seven regions examined while protected areas were well represented in four of the seven regions non significant results were found for permanent and temporary aquatic breeders at both the national and the biogeographical scale main conclusions by analysing data at the sub continental scale we were able to identify regional threats to amphibians traditionally classified at species specific scales our study recognized land transformation and alien invasive plants as significant threats to areas important for the long term breeding success of stream and terrestrial amphibians in south africa areas where different breeding groups occur in the south western cape showed the greatest spatial congruence with the threats examined areas where terrestrial breeding frogs occur are not well represented in the current conservation network this has important implications in addressing the current status of threats on amphibians in a biogeographical context,2012,0.328
A simple temperature-based model predicts the upper latitudinal limit of the temperate coral Astrangia poculata,a few hardy ahermatypic scleractinian corals occur in shallow waters well outside of the tropics but little is known concerning their distribution limits at high latitudes using field data on the growth of astrangia poculata over an annual period near its northern range limit in rhode island usa we tested the hypothesis that the distribution of this coral is limited by low temperature a simple model based on satellite sea surface temperature and field growth data at monthly temporal resolution was used to estimate annual net coral growth north and south of the known range limit of a poculata annual net coral growth was the result of new polyp budding above 10 â c minus polyp loss below 10 â c which is caused by a state of torpor that leads to overgrowth by encroaching and settling organisms the model accurately predicted a poculataâ s range limit around cape cod massachusetts predicting no net growth northward as a result of coralsâ inability to counteract polyp loss during winter with sufficient polyp budding during summer the model also indicated that the range limit of a poculata coincides with a decline in the benefit of associating with symbiotic dinoflagellates symbiodinium b2 s psygmophilum suggesting that symbiosis may become a liability under colder temperatures while we cannot exclude the potential role of other coral life history traits or environmental factors in setting a poculataâ s northern range limit our analysis suggests that low temperature constrains the growth and persistence of adult corals and would preclude coral growth northward of cape cod,2012,0.093
Spatial and temporal patterns of genetic variation in the widespread antitropical deep-sea coral Paragorgia arborea.,numerous deep sea species have apparent widespread and discontinuous distributions many of these are important foundation species structuring hard bottom benthic ecosystems theoretically differences in the genetic composition of their populations vary geographically and with depth previous studies have examined the genetic diversity of some of these taxa in a regional context suggesting that genetic differentiation does not occur at scales of discrete features such as seamounts or canyons but at larger scales e g ocean basins however to date few studies have evaluated such diversity throughout the known distribution of a putative deep sea species we utilized sequences from seven mitochondrial gene regions and nuclear genetic variants of the deep sea coral paragorgia arborea in a phylogeographic context to examine the global patterns of genetic variation and their possible correlation with the spatial variables of geographic position and depth we also examined the compatibility of this morphospecies with the genealogical phylospecies concept by examining specimens collected worldwide we show that the morphospecies p arborea can be defined as a genealogical phylospecies in contrast to the hypothesis that p arborea represents a cryptic species complex genetic variation is correlated with geographic location at the basin scale level but not with depth additionally we present a phylogeographic hypothesis in which p arborea originates from the north pacific followed by colonization of the southern hemisphere prior to migration to the north atlantic this hypothesis is consistent with the latest ocean circulation model for the miocene,2012,0.877
Present and potential future distribution of common Vampire bats in the Americas and the associated risk to cattle,success of the cattle industry in latin america is impeded by the common vampire bat desmodus rotundus through decreases in milk production and mass gain and increased risk of secondary infection and rabies we used ecological niche modeling to predict the current potential distribution of d rotundus and the future distribution of the species for the years 2030 2050 and 2080 based on the a2 a1b and b1 climate scenarios from the intergovernmental panel on climate change we then combined the present day potential distribution with cattle density estimates to identify areas where cattle are at higher risk for the negative impacts due to d rotundus we evaluated our risk prediction by plotting 17 documented outbreaks of cattle rabies our results indicated highly suitable habitat for d rotundus occurs throughout most of mexico and central america as well as portions of venezuela guyana the brazilian highlands western ecuador northern argentina and east of the andes in peru bolivia and paraguay with future climate projections suitable habitat for d rotundus is predicted in these same areas and additional areas in french guyana suriname venezuela and columbia however d rotundus are not likely to expand into the u s because of inadequate temperature seasonality areas with large portions of cattle at risk include mexico central america paraguay and brazil twelve of 17 documented cattle rabies outbreaks were represented in regions predicted at risk our present day and future predictions can help authorities focus rabies prevention efforts and inform cattle ranchers which areas are at an increased risk of cattle rabies because it has suitable habitat for d rotundus,2012,0.639
"An assessment of biomass for bioelectricity and biofuel, and for greenhouse gas emission reduction in Australia",we provide a quantitative assessment of the prospects for current and future biomass feedstocks for bioenergy in australia and associated estimates of the greenhouse gas ghg mitigation resulting from their use for production of biofuels or bioelectricity national statistics were used to estimate current annual production from agricultural and forest production systems crop residues were estimated from grain production and harvest index wood production statistics and spatial modelling of forest growth were used to estimate quantities of pulpwood in forest residues and wood processing residues possible new production systems for oil from algae and the oil seed tree pongamia pinnata and of lignocellulosic biomass production from short rotation coppiced eucalypt crops were also examined the following constraints were applied to biomass production and use avoiding clearing of native vegetation minimizing impacts on domestic food security retaining a portion of agricultural and forest residues to protect soil and minimizing the impact on local processing industries by diverting only the export fraction of grains or pulpwood to bioenergy we estimated that it would be physically possible to produce 9 6 gl yr∠1 of first generation ethanol from current production systems replacing 6 5 gl yr∠1 of gasoline or 34 of current gasoline usage current production systems for waste oil tallow and canola seed could produce 0 9 gl yr∠1 of biodiesel or 4 of current diesel usage cellulosic biomass from current agricultural and forestry production systems including biomass from hardwood plantations maturing by 2030 could produce 9 5 gl yr∠1 of ethanol replacing 6 4 gl yr∠1 of gasoline or ca 34 of current consumption the same lignocellulosic sources could instead provide 35 twh yr∠1 or ca 15 of current electricity production new production systems using algae and p pinnata could produce ca 3 96 and 0 9 gl biodiesel yr∠1 respectively in combination they could replace 4 2 gl yr∠1 of fossil diesel or 23 of current usage short rotation coppiced eucalypt crops could provide 4 3 gl yr∠1 of ethanol 2 9 gl yr∠1 replacement or 15 of current gasoline use or 20 2 twh yr∠1 of electricity 9 of current generation in total first and second generation fuels from current and new production systems could mitigate 26 mt co2 e which is 38 of road transport emissions and 5 of the national emissions second generation fuels from current and new production systems could mitigate 13 mt co2 e which is 19 of road transport emissions and 2 4 of the national emissions lignocellulose from current and new production systems could mitigate 48 mt co2 e which is 28 of electricity emissions and 9 of the national emissions there are challenging sustainability issues to consider in the production of large amounts of feedstock for bioenergy in australia bioenergy production can have either positive or negative impacts although only the export fraction of grains and sugar was used to estimate first generation biofuels so that domestic food security was not affected it would have an impact on food supply elsewhere environmental impacts on soil water and biodiversity can be significant because of the large land base involved and the likely use of intensive harvest regimes these require careful management social impacts could be significant if there were to be large scale change in land use or management in addition although the economic considerations of feedstock production were not covered in this article they will be the ultimate drivers of industry development they are uncertain and are highly dependent on government policies e g the price on carbon ghg mitigation and renewable energy targets mandates for renewable fuels the price of fossil oil and the scale of the industry,2012,0
Mitteilungen aus der Presse,press releases red list 2020 preparation under way botanical garden in berlin and the federal agency for nature conservation,2012,0.354
Oviposition preference and larval development of the invasive moth Cydalima perspectalis on five European box-tree varieties,the box tree pyralid cydalima perspectalis walker 1859 lepidoptera pyralidae native to eastern asia is a newly introduced species causing severe damage to box trees buxus sp in private and public gardens as well as in semi natural box tree forests in central europe it is so far not known whether different box tree subspecies or varieties are similarly affected by this invasive moth in a choice experiment offering branches of five different box tree varieties as oviposition sites we found a preference of female moths for laying their egg clusters on the variety â rotundifoliaâ while other varieties were less frequently considered the preference for â rotundifoliaâ the variety with the largest leaves in the tests remained when intervariety differences in foliar area mean leaf size ã number of leaves were taken into account feeding larvae on leaves of either of the five box tree varieties revealed a significant effect of the seasonal generation of c perspectalis on the growth rate of individuals but no influence of the box tree variety larvae from the spring generation show the highest growth rate those from the summer generation a moderate and those from the autumn generation the lowest growth rate the moths used in the experiments may belong to the 10th to 12th generation present in europe the time elapsed since their introduction may be too short for an optimal adaptation to the partly novel diet encountered by the invasive moth,2012,0.052
The ABCD of primary biodiversity data access,within the context of the global biodiversity information facility gbif the biological collections access service biocase has been set up to foment data provision by natural history content providers products include the biocase protocol and the pywrapper software a web service allowing to access rich natural history data using complex schemas like abcd access to biological collection data new developments include the possibility to produce darwincore archive files using pywrapper in order to facilitate the indexing of large datasets by aggregators such as gbif however biocase continues to be committed to distributed data access and continues to provide the possibility to directly query the web service for up to date data directly from the providerâ s database abcd provides comprehensive coverage of natural history data and has been extended to cover dna collections abcd dna and geosciences abcd efg the extension for geosciences biocase also developed web portal software that allows to access and display rich data provided by special interest networks we posit that the xml based networking approach using a highly standardised data definition such as abcd continues to be a valuable approach towards mobilising natural history information some suggestions are made regarding further improvements of abcd,2012,0.119
A coupled phylogeographical and species distribution modelling approach recovers the demographical history of a Neotropical seasonally dry forest tree species.,we investigated here the demographical history of tabebuia impetiginosa bignoniaceae to understand the dynamics of the disjunct geographical distribution of south american seasonally dry forests sdfs based on coupling an ensemble approach encompassing hindcasting species distribution modelling and statistical phylogeographical analysis we sampled 17 populations 280 individuals in central brazil and analysed the polymorphisms at chloroplast trns trng psba trnh and ycf6 trnc intergenic spacers and nuclear its nrdna genomes phylogenetic analyses based on median joining network showed no haplotype sharing among population but strong evidence of incomplete lineage sorting coalescent analyses showed historical constant populations size negligible gene flow among populations and an ancient time to most recent common ancestor dated from 4 7 â 1 1 myr bp most divergences dated from the lower pleistocene and no signal of important population size reduction was found in coalescent tree and tests of demographical expansion demographical scenarios were built based on past geographical range dynamic models using two a priori biogeographical hypotheses pleistocene arc and amazonian sdf expansion and on two additional hypotheses suggested by the palaeodistribution modelling built with several algorithms for distribution modelling and palaeoclimatic data the simulation of these demographical scenarios showed that the pattern of diversity found so far for t impetiginosa is in consonance with a palaeodistribution expansion during the last glacial maximum lgm 21 kyr bp strongly suggesting that the current disjunct distribution of t impetiginosa in sdfs may represent a climatic relict of a once more wide distribution,2012,0.625
Diversity and Genetic Erosion of Ancient Crops and Wild Relatives of Agricultural Cultivars for Food: Implications for Nature Conservation in Georgia (Caucasus),the interpretation of a healthy diet is one of the dilemmas for our modern civilization advances in agriculture are mainly directed at increasing food production to solve problems of a growing human population however food security remains a problem to ensure healthy food and to prevent human disease these two tendencies often do not coincide at present the selective breeding programs of crops are mainly oriented toward the production of high yielding varieties of genetically enhanced cultivars of cereals that have increased growth rates increasing the percentage of usable plant parts and resistance against crop diseases this initiative is linked to what began in the 1960s and was named by william gaud of usaid a green revolution davies 2003 it was a product of globalization as evidenced in the creation of international agricultural research centres to introduce new crop varieties around the world this process caused a significant increase in total cereal production and daily calorie supply in developing countries between the 1960s and 1990s davies 2003 however this process has caused the gradual replacement of traditional crop varieties and as a result has had a dramatic effect on agrobiodiversity in many countries particularly impacted have been the traditional landraces used by local peoples for thousands of years and this has affected the health of these communities georgia located in the south caucasus owns one of the oldest agricultural traditions the name of the country is sakartvelo in the georgian language but its common name georgia is semantically linked to greek î îµï ï î î î transliterated geå rgã a and latin georgicus roots meaning agriculture javakhishvili 1987 many georgian endemic species and local varieties of wheat barley legumes grapevine and fruits are known ketskhoveli 1957 the traditional use of local cultivars is considered to be a reason for human longevity in the caucasus region fox 2004 over five percent of the male georgian centenarians were reputed to have been over age 120 in 1959 garson 1991 the percentage of males over age 70 was 0 9 in 1959 and 1 07 of women were over 70 however these values had diminished by 1970 to 0 66 and 0 86 respectively at present no exact data are available but longevity has obviously diminished fox 2004,2012,0.196
"Report of the 13th Genomic Standards Consortium Meeting, Shenzhen, China , March 4 – 7, 2012",this report details the outcome of the 13th meeting of the genomic standards consortium the three day conference was held at the kingkey palace hotel shenzhen china on march 5â 7 2012 and was hosted by the beijing genomics institute the meeting titled from genomes to interactions to communities to models highlighted the role of data standards associated with genomic metagenomic and amplicon sequence data and the contextual information associated with the sample to this end the meeting focused on genomic projects for animals plants fungi and viruses metagenomic studies in host microbe interactions and the dynamics of microbial communities in addition the meeting hosted a genomic observatories network session a genomic standards consortium biodiversity working group session and a microbiology of the built environment session sponsored by the alfred p sloan foundation,2012,0.423
Inferring Species Richness and Turnover by Statistical Multiresolution Texture Analysis of Satellite Imagery,the quantification of species richness and species turnover is essential to effective monitoring of ecosystems wetland ecosystems are particularly in need of such monitoring due to their sensitivity to rainfall water management and other external factors that affect hydrology soil and species patterns a key challenge for environmental scientists is determining the linkage between natural and human stressors and the effect of that linkage at the species level in space and time we propose pixel intensity based shannon entropy for estimating species richness and introduce a method based on statistical wavelet multiresolution texture analysis to quantitatively assess interseasonal and interannual species turnover we model satellite images of regions of interest as textures we define a texture in an image as a spatial domain where the variations in pixel intensity across the image are both stochastic and multiscale to compare two textures quantitatively we first obtain a multiresolution wavelet decomposition of each either an appropriate probability density function pdf model for the coefficients at each subband is selected and its parameters estimated or a non parametric approach using histograms is adopted we choose the former where the wavelet coefficients of the multiresolution decomposition at each subband are modeled as samples from the generalized gaussian pdf we then obtain the joint pdf for the coefficients for all subbands assuming independence across subbands an approximation that simplifies the computational burden significantly without sacrificing the ability to statistically distinguish textures we measure the difference between two texturesâ representative pdfâ s via the kullback leibler divergence kl species turnover or b diversity is estimated using both this kl divergence and the difference in shannon entropy additionally we predict species richness or a diversity based on the shannon entropy of pixel intensity to test our approach we specifically use the green band of landsat images for a water conservation area in the florida everglades we validate our predictions against data of species occurrences for a twenty eight years long period for both wet and dry seasons our method correctly predicts 73 of species richness for species turnover the newly proposed kl divergence prediction performance is near 100 accurate this represents a significant improvement over the more conventional shannon entropy difference which provides 85 accuracy furthermore we find that changes in soil and water patterns as measured by fluctuations of the shannon entropy for the red and blue bands respectively are positively correlated with changes in vegetation the fluctuations are smaller in the wet season when compared to the dry season texture based statistical multiresolution image analysis is a promising method for quantifying interseasonal differences and consequently the degree to which vegetation soil and water patterns vary the proposed automated method for quantifying species richness and turnover can also provide analysis at higher spatial and temporal resolution than is currently obtainable from expensive monitoring campaigns thus enabling more prompt more cost effective inference and decision making support regarding anomalous variations in biodiversity additionally a matrix based visualization of the statistical multiresolution analysis is presented to facilitate both insight and quick recognition of anomalous data,2012,0.607
"A review of the life history, invasion process, and potential management of Clavelina lepadiformis Müller, 1776: a recent invasion of the northwest Atlantic",in contemporary scientific research standard making and standardization are key processes for the sharing and reuse of data the goals of this paper are twofold 1 to stress that collaboration is crucial to standard making and 2 to recommend recognition of metadata standardization as part of the scientific process to achieve these goals a participatory framework for developing and implementing scientific metadata standards is presented we highlight the need for ongoing open dialogue within and among research communities at multiple levels using the long term ecological research network adoption of the ecological metadata language as a case example in the natural sciences we illustrate how a participatory framework addresses the need for active coordination of the evolution of scientific metadata standards the participatory framework is contrasted with a hierarchical framework to underscore how the development of scientific standards is a dynamic and continuing process the roles played by â best practicesâ and â working standardsâ are identified in relation to the process of standardization,2012,0.1
Zanthoxylum Genus as Potential Source of Bioactive Compounds,natural products have been used for thousands of years for the benefit of mankind as important sources of food clothing cosmetics building materials tools medicines and crop protection agents they have made enormous contributions to human health through compounds such as quinine morphine aspirin a natural product analog digitoxin and many others researches in this field are becoming more numerous to the point of getting about half of pharmaceuticals and pesticides from natural sources newman cragg 2007 the main reasons because natural products are so important to undertake research are that they can be a source of new compounds because they produce many bioactive secondary metabolites that are used as a chemical defense against predators also in the past they have provided many new drugs some of which canâ t be obtained by other sources and because they can provide the necessary templates to design new products in the future colegate and molyneux 2008 kaufman et al 2006 cragg et al 2005,2012,0.13
From text to structured data: Converting a word-processed floristic checklist into Darwin Core Archive format,te paper describes a pilot project to convert a conventional floristic checklist written in a standard word processing program into structured data in the darwin core archive format after peer review and edi torial acceptance the final revised version of the checklist was converted into darwin core archive by means of regular expressions and published thereafter in both human readable form as traditional botanical publication and darwin core archive data files te data were published and indexed through the global biodiversity information facility gbif integrated publishing toolkit ipt and significant portions of the text of the paper were used to describe the metadata on ipt after publication the data will become available through the gbif infrastructure and can be re used on their own or collated with other data,2012,0.107
Predicting the impact of climate change on the invasive decapods of the Iberian inland waters: an assessment of reliability,in an effort to predict the impact of climate change on the distribution of existing invasive species niche based models nbms are being increasingly used to make forecasts here we investigate the reliability of these models in predicting future climatic suitability for 4 invasive decapods of the iberian peninsula cherax destructor eriocheir sinensis pacifastacus leniusculus and procambarus clarkii from an ensemble of forecasts generated by 5 distinct algorithms generalized linear models artificial neural networks support vector machines random forests and alternating decision trees we calculated consensus predictions for current conditions and 3 future time periods 2030 2050 and 2080 under low and high scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions three criteria were examined to infer the robustness of the forecasts ability to predict current distributions inter model variability and degree of environmental extrapolation our results indicate an overall decline in climatic suitability for the 4 invaders as time progresses however we also identified highly distinct levels of predictive uncertainty among species good indicators of reliability were found for procambarus clarkii and pacifastacus leniusculus whereas the predictions for c destructor showed low predictive performance low inter model agreement and wide areas of environmental extrapolation for e sinensis the models also showed high variability with respect to areas projected to lose climatic suitability overall our results highlight the need to consider and evaluate multiple sources of uncertainty when using nbm predictions for invaders under current and future conditions,2012,0.296
Identifiers in e-Science platforms for the ecological sciences,in the emerging web of data publishing stable and unique identifiers promises great potential in using the web as common platform to discover and enrich data in the ecologic sciences with our collaborative e science platform â œbefdataâ we generated and published unique identifiers for the data repository of the biodiversity â ecosystem functioning research unit of the german research foundation bef china dfg for 891 we linked part of the identifiers to two external data providers thus creating a virtual common platform including several ecological repositories we used the global biodiversity facility gbif as well the international plant name index ipni to enrich the data from our own field observations we conclude in discussing other potential providers for identifiers for the ecological research domain we demonstrate the ease of making use of existing decentralized and unsupervised identifiers for a data repository which opens new avenues to collaborative data discovery for learning teaching and research in ecology,2012,0.217
"A review of North American Recent Radiolucina (Bivalvia, Lucinidae) with the description of a new species.",north american members in the genus radiolucina are reviewed a lectotype for the type species radiolucina amianta is designated and descriptions and illustrations are provided a description of a new species radiolucina jessicae from the west coast of mexico is presented key diagnostic species characteristics are outlined and compared among members of the genus,2012,0.682
The Contribution of the Barcode of Life Initiative to the Discovery and Monitoring of Biodiversity,biodiversity has been fundamental to sustain the human population which is currently estimated at nearly 7 billion people however less than one fifth of the extant species are known to science and among those only a minuscule proportion was described in any biological detail this huge gap in our knowledge of biodiversity is in deep contrast with the extraordinary level of scientific and technological development that modern society has reached how can we take advantage of the technology currently available to detect the putative high rates of biodiversity loss how can we efficiently manage our ecosystems and biological communities if we do not even have a comprehensive inventory of biodiversity to start with the barcode of life initiative boli aims to contribute to resolve these questions by building a new system for species identification using dna sequences from standardized regions of the genomeâ dna barcodes once fully implemented this novel system will greatly facilitate the access to taxonomic knowledge globally and revolutionize our ability to rapidly and rigorously identify life forms in a multitude of scenarios we anticipate major contributions of dna barcodes for biodiversity research when integrated with other ongoing technological organizational and conceptual developments this can be illustrated by the growing capacity to monitor biodiversity which has lead to the recognition of cryptic species their prevalence and distribution patterns the coupling of dna barcoding with next generation sequencing will enable to capture the structure and dynamics of complex communities with unprecedented degree of detail this can catalyze the rate of species discovery globally and contribute to improve the way in which we conserve biodiversity,2012,0.435
Situación Del Zorro Vinagre (Speothos Venaticus) En El Extremo Sur De Su Distribución (Argentina),the fox vinegar speothos venaticus lund 1842 is a kind little known threatened and difficult to detect in the southern end of its range argentina inhabiting an environment also highly threatened atlantic forest interior between methods available to predict the distribution geographical species generalized linear models glm provides results tailored to the actual distribution although it requires reliable information on the locations where the species is absent to better understand the distribution of s venaticus were georeferenced all known localities and a series of new records in argentina and modeled potential and actual distribution of the species identifying variables that best explain their presence to examine their conservation status we analyzed the retraction of your area and its presence in protected areas in argentina were collected 182 georeferenced records 13 in argentina distribution predicted actual covers 10 5 ã 106km2 57 and 73 of areas previously reported the most significant variables were mean annual precipitation precipitation of warmest quarter and annual temperature range the dam with greater overlap in distribution was cuniculus bale after removal of speothos habitats unsuitable for the surface distribution is reduced to 7 8 ã 106km2 with two large patches probably connected in eastern bolivia in argentina environmentally friendly area have dropped to 23 025km2 80 of original with four locations with records profoundly modified although most protected areas could accommodate this species only four have data pn iguaz㺠pp urugua t pp cross knight wedge and rpum valley piru,2012,0.882
The race to publish in the age of ever-increasing productivity,when we walk watching our feet we feel as though we are moving faster however in so doing and even if we have a target in mind we may be taking the wrong route like broader society our scientific system has been walking faster and faster or so we imagine i posit the view that the time has come to look up and consider where our current path is leading us and to consider new routes as the need for long term thinking is more pres sing than ever in scientific researchweare witnessing an ever faster race to publish since the first publication metrics and the quantitative evaluation of researcher performances were invented some of the most obvious drifts of this race have been increasingly discussed since the 1990s e g gendron 2008 hochberg et al 2009 jacquã 2011 lawrence 2003 2007 mulligan 2004 statzner and resh 2010 tainer 1991 west 2010 and their causes generally attributed to mechanisms within our scientific systems e g competition reputation by contrast statzner and resh 2010 recently suggested that science is being affected by â œcomplex changes such as globalization and the increasing dominance of com mercial interestâ where quantity of publications as the ultimate performance measure for scientists is having serious consequences not only on the quality of papers but also on how the whole research process is being conducted see also gendron 2008 lawrence 2003 2007 indeed since our scientific system and we scien tists are part of a society and political governance where the paradigm of â œmore is betterâ prevails there is no rea son to think that science is not affected by the negative drifts of such a productivity race,2012,0.071
BISMaL: Biological Information System for Marine Life and Role for Biodiversity Research,the need of a global network for biodiversity information has been recognized as the supporting mechanism not only for the science community but also for the convention on biological diversity cbd and the agenda 21 that followed the earth summit in 1992 an international workshop coordinated by the international union of microbiology societies iums international union of biological sciences iubs world federation for culture collections wfcc and united nations environment program unep con fi rmed the philosophy of a biodiversity information network based on the following canhos et al 1992 the network for biodiversity must be on a global scale interdisciplinary and accessible worldwide without borders biodiversity is multidisciplinary and its information must cross conventional borders and be exchangeable between databases,2012,0.214
Aspects Of Global Distribution Of Six Marine Bivalve Mollusc Families,we compared the global distribution of six families of bivalves based on their economic importance in terms of fisheries and aquaculture production veneridae venus shells mactridae surf clams donacidae wedge shells myidae softshell clams pharidae and solenidae razor clams all distribution data were gathered from the openaccess databases gbif global biodiversity information facility and obis ocean biogeographic information system species nomenclature and synonyms were reconciled using worms world register of marine species geographic coordinates related to species records noted as fossils that lacked a geogographic precision and where precision was 100 km were excluded from the analysis comparison with worms indicated that about half of the known species and 64 of genera had data in gbif and obis combined all distribution records were from shallow coastal areas and a sampling bias in europe was evident there were no records of any of the families in antarctica and only the mactridae and veneridae occurred in new zealand the gbif and obis data tended to indicate wider distribution ranges than found in a survey of the literature however in several cases this reflected species introduced outside their native range a significant amount of species distribution data was easily accessible from gbif and obis for about half the described species of these bivalve families however the metadata that describes the datasets in gbif and obis merited improvement and considerable cleaning of the data was necessary before use studies on biogeography need to consider the effect of species introductions outside their native range on their analyses despite these limitations the analysis found distinct biogeographic patterns at a family level that merit further research into the evolutionary origins and dispersal patterns of the six families,2012,0.925
A comparative evaluation of technical solutions for long-term data repositories in integrative biodiversity research,the current study investigates existing infrastructure its technical solutions and implemented standards for data repositories related to integrative biodiversity research the storage and reuse of complex biodiversity data in central databases are becoming increasingly important particularly in attempts to cope with the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystems from the data side the main challenge of biodiversity repositories is to deal with the highly interdisciplinary and heterogeneous character of standardized and unstandardized data and metadata covering information from genes to ecosystems furthermore the technical improvements in data acquisition techniques produces ever larger data volumes which represents a challenge for database structure and proper data exchange the current study is based on comprehensive in depth interviews and an online survey addressing it specialists involved in database development and operation the results show that metadata are already well established but that non meta data still is largely unstandardized across various scientific communities for example only a third of all repositories in our investigation use internationally unified semantic standard checklists for taxonomy the study also showed that database developers are mostly occupied with the implementation of state of the art technology and solving operational problems leaving no time to implement user s requirements one of the main reasons for this dissatisfying situation is the undersized and unreliable funding situation of most repositories as reflected by the marginally small number of permanent it staff members we conclude that a sustainable data management system that fosters the future use and reuse of these valuable data resources requires the development of fewer but more permanent data repositories using commonly accepted standards for their long term data this can only be accomplished through the consolidation of hitherto widely scattered small and non permanent repositories,2012,0.198
Exploratory analysis of the interrelations between co-located boolean spatial features using network graphs,visual data mining of spatial data is a challenging task as exploratory analysis is fun damental it is beneficial to explore the data using different potential visualisations in this article we propose and analyse network graphs as a useful visualisation tool to mine spatial data due to their ability to represent complex systems of relationships in a visually insightful and intuitive way network graphs offer a rich structure that has been recognised in many fields as a powerful visual representation however they have not been sufficiently exploited in spatial datamining where they have principally been used on data that come with an explicit pre specified network graph structure this research presents a methodology with which to infer relationship network graphs for large col lections of boolean spatial features the methodology consists of four principal stages 1 define a co location model 2 select the type of co association of interest 3 com pute statistical diagnostics for these co associations and 4 construct and visualise a network graph of the statistic from step 3 we illustrate the potential usefulness of the methodology using an example taken from an ecological setting specifically we use network graphs to understand and analyse the potential interactions between poten tial vector and reservoir species that enable the propagation of leishmaniasis a disease transmitted by the bite of sandflies,2012,0.102
A Change In Funding Directions: Implications For Biological Recording,developing government approaches to wildlife conservation clearly show how funding priorities are changing such changes are not unfamiliar as a similar situation occurred in the 1990s following the dismembering of the nature conservancy council ncc the period from 1991 to around 1998 involved a substantial reduction in the numbers of staff employed in english nature and resulted in significant changes in the ways in which entomological recording and statutory nature conservation bodies interacted some of this has undoubtedly influenced the development of voluntary recording effort in the following 20 years,2012,0.383
Sampling bias in geographic and environmental space and its effect on the predictive power of species distribution models,despite ever growing popularity of species distribution models sdm their performance under conditions of spatially biased data has rarely been studied in detail here we explore the effect of a known spatial bias on the predictive ability of maxent models using five species of the genus asplenium with variable reproductive modes the models were trained and tested on western and central european presence only distributional data first with random background and then with target group background then we tested the models on an independent ukrainian dataset of the same species using the area under the curve auc value as test statistic we carried out a principal components analysis pca on the collection localities of the individual species to explore the properties of their ecological niches in all but one species spatial bias in the distributional data resulted in poor performance of themaxent models trained on the european dataset and tested on the ukrainian dataset in all species correction for sampling bias resulted in significantly wider predicted climatic niches based on the results of the pca spatial bias resulted in environmental bias of variable degree we argue that species reproductive biology should be taken into account when distributional data are analysed in terms of their suitability for species distribution modelling the reported results will inform biodiversity conservation assessments particularly those using data from natural history collections,2012,0.796
"Case-Based Learning, Pedagogical Innovation, and Semantic Web Technologies",this paper explores the potential of semantic web technologies to support teaching and learning in a variety of higher education settings in which some form of case based learning is the pedagogy of choice it draws on the empirical work of a major three year research and development project in the united kingdom â œensemble semantic technologies for the enhancement of case based learningâ which has been oriented toward developing a better understanding of the nature of case based learning in different settings but also exploring the potential for semantic web technologies to support enhance and transform existing practice the experience of working in diverse educational settings has highlighted semantic web technologies that may be particularly valuable as well as some of the enablers and barriers to wider adoption and areas for further research and development,2012,0.078
Towards a vertebrate demographic data bank,the development of computers appropriate statistical methodology and specialized software has induced an explosion in empirical research on vertebrate population dynamics many long term programs have led to impressive datasets and to the publication of hundreds of estimates of vital rates critical to many areas of ecology evolution of life history strategies conservation biology behavioral ecology population management etc such estimates are still usually available through regular scientific articles and their use for comparative purposes suffers from several shortcomings duplication of technical work lack of evaluation of methodological bias and difficulties in linking vital rates estimates with other basic traits such as body size it thus seems it is time to propose a demographic databank to collect the information on vertebrate demography published and being published and make it widely available the resulting database should become the equivalent for vertebrate demography to what â œgenbankâ is for dna sequences bird demography has a critical mass of knowledge adequate for a first step this paper reviews based on a prototype database the outline of such a project of demographic database type of data and estimates stored assessment of methodology and data quality data documentation taxonomical and phylogenetical information link with other existing biodiversity databases procedures for depositing information links with scientific journals etc the contours of a collaborative group to launch such a project are also discussed,2012,0.258
Bauhinia forficata Link authenticity using flavonoids profile: Relation with their biological properties,hplc dad esi msn was used to ascertain the authenticity of two certified and two commercial bauhinia forficata link samples different flavonoids profiles were obtained involving 39 compounds just kaempferol 3 o 2 rhamnosyl rutinoside was found in all analysed samples five compounds were common to the certified samples of b forficata link and b forficata link subsp pruinosa vogel fortunato wunderlin being kaempferol derivatives the most representative ones the phenolic composition of b forficata link subsp pruinosa vogel fortunato wunderlin is described herein for the first time accounting for eight compounds while 10 new compounds were identified in b forficata link commercial b forficata link showed higher contents of quercetin derivatives in addition to the presence of myricetin derivatives and flavonoids galloyl glycosides for which the ms fragmentation pattern is reported for the first time b forficata link and the two commercial samples were able to inhibit î glucosidase with ec 50 values lower than that found for acarbose mild effects on cholinesterases were observed with the certified samples while commercial ones were more effective the same behaviour was observed concerning the scavenging of dpph nitric oxide and superoxide radicals the presence of high contents of quercetin derivatives in commercial samples seems to directly influence their biological properties the differences between phenolic profiles and their relation with the authenticity of commercial samples are discussed â 2012 elsevier ltd all rights reserved,2012,0.569
Leaf evolution in Southern Hemisphere conifers tracks the angiosperm ecological radiation.,the angiosperm radiation has been linked to sharp declines in gymnosperm diversity and the virtual elimination of conifers from the tropics the conifer family podocarpaceae stands as an exception with highest species diversity in wet equatorial forests it has been hypothesized that efficient light harvesting by the highly flattened leaves of several podocarp genera facilitates persistence with canopy forming angiosperms and the angiosperm ecological radiation may have preferentially favoured the diversification of these lineages to test these ideas we develop a molecular phylogeny for podocarpaceae using bayesian relaxed clock methods incorporating fossil time constraints we find several independent origins of flattened foliage types and that these lineages have diversified predominantly through the cenozoic and therefore among canopy forming angiosperms the onset of sustained foliage flattening podocarp diversification is coincident with a declining diversification rate of scale needle leaved lineages and also with ecological and climatic transformations linked to angiosperm foliar evolution we demonstrate that climatic range evolution is contingent on the underlying state for leaf morphology taken together our findings imply that as angiosperms came to dominate most terrestrial ecosystems competitive interactions at the foliar level have profoundly shaped podocarp geography and as a consequence rates of lineage diversification,2012,0.37
Synopsis of Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae) of continental Ecuador,a critical review of the ecuadorian species of acalypha l euphorbiaceae is presented 20 of the 38 previ ously recognized species are accepted 9 are considered synonyms and 9 are based on misidentifications comprehensive nomenclatural information is supplied and 13 lectotypes are designated an identification key is also provided,2012,0.436
"News from the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD): the metadata platform, available data, and their properties",in 2010 we launched the global index of vegetation plot databases givd http www givd info an internet based re source offering metadata of existing electronic vegetation databases on 11 may 2012 182 databases containing more than 2 8 million non overlapping vegetation plots had been registered in givd the majority of these plots were from european databases 123 data bases 1 87 million plots the oldest plot record dated from 1864 but the vast majority of the plots had been collected since 1970 most of the plots had areas between 1 and 1 000 mâ a total of 68 databases also stored time series and or nested plot data the vegeta tion plot data registered in givd constitute a major resource for biodiversity research not only through the large number of species occurrence records but especially due to the storage of species co occurrence information complemented with site specific structural data and plot based environmental data the increased ease of discovering and accessing such datasets owing to their registration in givd offers significant opportunities for large scale studies in areas such as community ecology macroecology and global change research the results from such studies could be very important for nature conservation practice and policy,2012,0.467
Current situation and challenges of specialized microbial resource centres in Russia,establishment of national biological resource centres brcs is of special concern and requires harmonization of regulations on microorganismsâ handling improvement of legal control pertaining to intelî lectual property right access to genetic resources and fair benefit sharing arising from their biotechnology application as exemplified by the regional specialized collection of alkanotrophic microorganisms acroî nym iegm world federation for culture collections 768 www iegm ru iegmcol hosted at the institute of ecology and genetics of microorganisms the role of specialized microbial collections is emphasized as the governing factors of innovative development of biotechnology and bioindustry the publication aims at drawing attention to the regional brc being formed in the perm krai which provides the appropriate inforî mation on the holdings and is responsible for screening study and maintenance of valuable microbial gene pool to meet the needs of ecology industry and biotechnology and for developing novel methodological approaches to studying extremotolerant microorganisms this centre also contributes to the development and application of advanced achievements in enzymatic transformation of carbon compounds production of fodder using nonî traditional raw material oilî and gasî prospecting activities monitoring and bioremediaî tion of contaminated sites,2012,0.236
Biological Flora of the British Isles: Rosa spinosissima L.,1 this account presents information on all aspects of the biology of rosa spinosissima l r pimpinellifolia l that are relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behav iour the main topics are presented within the standard framework of the biological flora of the british isles distribution habitat communities responses to biotic factors responses to environ ment structure and physiology phenology floral and seed characters herbivores and disease his tory and conservation 2 rosa spinosissima is a small deciduous shrub forming clonal patches fromroot suckers in brit ain it is common on stabilized coastal dunes more or less base rich heaths and on open dry habi tats on chalk or limestone inland it is naturally distributed across temperate europe and western and central asia 3 the small leaves and leaflets in combination with many straight or slightly curved bristles and prickles and the black hips make r spinosissima easily recognizable in britain it normally does not exceed 10â 40 cmbut cultivars often growtaller 4 the seeds are dispersed by birds and other animals particularly as the hips are a favoured diet of birds because of the high vitamin and anthocyanin content vegetative spread is frequent through the root suckers 5 cultivars are commonly planted for amenity and in gardens the origin of the cultivars is not known but genetic exchange of these with natural british populations may lead to introgression with genotypes which are not locally adapted the invasive rosa rugosa may be a threat in some coastal habitats as this species is displacing r spinosissimaon the germannorth sea coast,2012,0.715
Mapping Genetic Diversity of Cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.): Application of Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources,there is a growing call for inventories that evaluate geographic patterns in diversity of plant genetic resources maintained on farm and in speciesâ natural populations in order to enhance their use and conservation such evaluations are relevant for useful tropical and subtropical tree species as many of these species are still undomesticated or in incipient stages of domestication and local populations can offer yet unknown traits of high value to further domestication for many outcrossing species such as most trees inbreeding depression can be an issue and genetic diversity is important to sustain local production diversity is also crucial for species to adapt to environmental changes this paper explores the possibilities of incorporating molecular marker data into geographic information systems gis to allow visualization and better understanding of spatial patterns of genetic diversity as a key input to optimize conservation and use of plant genetic resources based on a case study of cherimoya annona cherimola mill a neotropical fruit tree species we present spatial analyses to 1 improve the understanding of spatial distribution of genetic diversity of cherimoya natural stands and cultivated trees in ecuador bolivia and peru based on microsatellite molecular markers ssrs and 2 formulate optimal conservation strategies by revealing priority areas for in situ conservation and identifying existing diversity gaps in ex situ collections we found high levels of allelic richness locally common alleles and expected heterozygosity in cherimoyaâ s putative centre of origin southern ecuador and northern peru whereas levels of diversity in southern peru and especially in bolivia were significantly lower the application of gis on a large microsatellite dataset allows a more detailed prioritization of areas for in situ conservation and targeted collection across the andean distribution range of cherimoya than previous studies could do i e at province and department level in ecuador and peru respectively,2012,0.637
"The Iberian and Macaronesian Vegetation Information System (SIVIM, www.sivim.info), five years of online vegetation’s data publishing",the sivim website was born six years ago after a first stage of fast growing the number of queries to its database has currently surpassed 100 000 per year sivim offers its users the opportunity to access to large datasets facilitating phytosociological reviews plant conservation management and taxonomic chorological studies amongst others therefore the number of scientific papers and books as well as other websites that cite our website is enlarged everyday new data have been constantly brought into the project which means that more than 130 000 phytosociological relevã s are currently accessible storing more than two million specific floristic observations according to the global index of vegetation plot databases givd and taking into account the number of computerized relevã s sivim is the fourth largest database in the world new analysis tools have been developed during this year among them the on line calculation of species and syntaxaâ s fidelity values and a new re markable tool to model the potential distribution of taxa and syntaxa based on the maximum entropy algorithm and their future trends in response to climate change projections for the years 2020 2050 and 2080 we should also emphasize zamiadroid the latest integration within the project which allows querying sivim by mobile devices smartphones and tablets with respect to programming we implemented a new system so that users can report errors directly to sivim administrators concerning future actions we aim to develop an online expert system in order to survey and classify vegetation communities and to open sivim to participative projects especially those related to photography of plants and vegetation types the sivim project has been funded by two research projects cgl2006 13421 c04 2007 2009 and cgl2009 13317 c03 2010 2012 consecutively,2012,0.142
BIDDSAT: visualizing the content of biodiversity data publishers in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility network.,in any data quality workflow data publishers must become aware of issues in their data so these can be corrected user feedback mechanisms provide one avenue while global assessments of datasets provide another to date there is no publicly available tool to allow both biodiversity data institutions sharing their data through the global biodiversity information facility network and its potential users to assess datasets as a whole contributing to bridge this gap both for publishers and users we introduce biodiversity datasets assessment tool an online tool that enables selected diagnostic visualizations on the content of data publishers and or their individual collections availability and implementation the online application is accessible at http www unav es unzyec mzna biddsat and is supported by all major browsers the source code is licensed under the gnu gplv3 license http www gnu org licenses gpl 3 0 txt and is available at https github com jotegui biddsat,2012,0.15
Iberian Baetic endemic flora and the implications for a conservation policy,the baetic ranges in the iberian peninsula are extremely rich and outstanding in biological terms based on the existing literature herbarium sheets and our own field research we provide a checklist of the endemic flora growing in the baetic chorologi cal province the checklist includes 418 taxa belonging to 43 families with the spe cies pool concentrated within large families the highest number of endemic species is recorded in the altitudinal range of 1300â 1500 m a s l hemicryptophytes represent the most frequent life form 45 5 conservation priorities should concentrate on non woody life forms particularly on hemicryptophytes and on high mountain areas most of the taxa can be ascribed to serial shrublands 36 87 or rock or scree dwelling formations 26 25 with climactic forest formations playing a minor role 3 24 this successional position has important implications for conservation programmes therefore a clear distinction should be made between serial or plagiocli mactic formations e g dolomite thyme scrub communities and degraded communi ties of little interest for the preservation of biodiversity e g synanthropic vegetation astragalus nevadensis subsp andresmolinae dã ez garretas asensi mota f j pã rez garcã a is proposed as a new combination,2012,0.342
Predicted range shifts in North American boreal forest birds and the effect of climate change on genetic diversity in blackpoll warblers (Setophaga striata),as north american speciesâ ranges shift northward in response to climate change populations isolated in high elevation habitat â œislandsâ at the southern edge of distributions are predicted to decrease in size or be extirpated levels of genetic structure and gene flow and the number of private alleles held within these peripheral populations can be used as a measure of the potential loss of genetic diversity due to climate change we use gis based climate niche models to project geographic distributions of 15 boreal forest bird species for the year 2080 under two carbon emissions scenarios to predict the extent to which ranges will shift leading to the extirpation of isolated populations at the southern periphery of the boreal forest breeding distributions of nearly all boreal bird species are predicted to expand as they shift northward but will dramatically decrease or be completely lost from mountain populations in new york vermont and new hampshire by 2080 to examine the effect of these shifts on gene pools of migratory bird species we genotyped 178 blackpoll warblers setophaga striata at nine microsatellite loci sampling four imperiled high elevation populations and four northern populations in s striata 10 4 of microsatellite alleles were confined to populations expected to be lost due to climate change however these accounted for a nonsignificant percent of the genetic structure and loss of these alleles would not significantly erode species heterozygosity or allelic richness our results indicate that isolated southern populations of s striata and possibly other migratory species with high gene flow do not represent genetically isolated independently evolving units efforts to mitigate the effect of climate change on boreal forest birds should focus on species in which peripheral populations harbor significant genetic diversity,2012,0.989
Genomics Data Resources: Frameworks and Standards,the emergence of genomics tools for the evolutionary and comparative biology community led to a rapid explosion in the number of online resources targeted at this specialized community including web based comparative genomics software such as the artemis comparison tool webact databases such as paleodb global biodiversity information facility and treebase and knowledge frameworks such as the evolution ontology unfortunately these providers are largely independent of one another and therefore the individual resources do not share any centralized plan for how the data or tools would or should be provided as a result there are a myriad of often incompatible technologies and frameworks being used by this community of providers in this chapter we explore approaches to online resource publication both those already in use by the community as well as new and emergent frameworks and standards exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach together with a brief exploration of the philosophy or informatics theory behind the varying approaches will hopefully help readers as they navigate this data space the discussion is constructed such that it lays the groundwork for exploration of a new global standard for data and knowledge representationâ â œthe semanticwebâ â that holds promise of providing solutions to many of the complexities users face in their attempts to discover and integrate biodiversity data and examples are provided,2012,0.259
Influence of environmental heterogeneity on genetic diversity and structure in an endemic southern Californian oak,understanding how specific environmental factors shape gene flow while disentangling their importance relative to the effects of geographical isolation is a major question in evolutionary biology and a specific goal of landscape genetics here we combine information from nuclear microsatellite markers and ecological niche modelling to study the association between climate and spatial genetic structure and variability in engelmann oak quercus engelmannii a wind pollinated species with high potential for gene flow we first test whether genetic diversity is associated with climatic niche suitability and stability since the last glacial maximum lgm second we use causal modelling to analyse the potential influence of climatic factors current and lgm niche suitability and altitude in the observed patterns of genetic structure we found that genetic diversity is negatively associated with local climatic stability since the lgm which may be due to higher immigration rates in unstable patches during favourable climatic periods and or temporally varying selection analyses of spatial genetic structure revealed the presence of three main genetic clusters a pattern that is mainly driven by two highly differentiated populations located in the northern edge of the species distribution range after controlling for geographic distance causal modelling analyses showed that genetic relatedness decreases with the environmental divergence among sampling sites estimated as altitude and current and lgm niche suitability natural selection against nonlocal genotypes and or asynchrony in reproductive phenology may explain this pattern overall this study suggests that local environmental conditions can shape patterns of genetic structure and variability even in species with high potential for gene flow and relatively small distribution ranges,2012,0.725
Sensitivity Analysis of CLIMEX Parameters in Modelling Potential Distribution of Lantana camara L.,a process based niche model of l camara l lantana a highly invasive shrub species was developed to estimate its potential distribution using climex model development was carried out using its native and invasive distribution and validation was carried out with the extensive australian distribution a good fit was observed with 86 7 of herbarium specimens collected in australia occurring within the suitable and highly suitable categories a sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify the model parameters that had the most influence on lantana distribution the changes in suitability were assessed by mapping the regions where the distribution changed with each parameter alteration this allowed an assessment of where within australia the modification of each parameter was having the most impact particularly in terms of the suitable and highly suitable locations the sensitivity of various parameters was also evaluated by calculating the changes in area within the suitable and highly suitable categories the limiting low temperature dv0 limiting high temperature dv3 and limiting low soil moisture sm0 showed highest sensitivity to change the other model parameters were relatively insensitive to change highly sensitive parameters require extensive research and data collection to be fitted accurately in species distribution models the results from this study can inform more cost effective development of species distribution models for lantana such models form an integral part of the management of invasive species and the results can be used to streamline data collection requirements for potential distribution modelling,2012,0.346
"Yet Another, But This Time Realistic, Polar Synthesis, Meta-Analysis, and Outlook: Protecting Ice, Snow, People, Species, Habitats, and Global Temperatures for Good?",a celebrated keynote speaker who researches subarctic watershed management and climate change issues referred in his invited keynote speech at the esteemed society of conservation biology scb conference held in july 2010 in alberta canada to politicians as â œspineless bastards â a big â œawhhâ went through the international audience how did it come to such disrespect lack of trust and openly stated disagreement is our public and federated governance system the social contract broken for good before we address these important questions let us first try to get at it from another angle and focus briefly on the day to day conservation practitioner if the reader allows let me start by providing a wider context a short reasoning and excursion about why many of the contributors of this book and beyond do what they do and what drives this book and numerous scientific efforts,2012,0.255
Primary Biodiversity Data Records in the Pyrenees,we characterize the primary biodiversity data records that have been made public for retrieval for the pyrenean region such data spanning more than a hundred years have been collected by many institutions and individual researchers and digitized in databases some of which have been shared through the global biodiversity information facility platform by using a standard format darwin core the datasets are not homogeneous in extent coverage taxonomy or accuracy differences arising from taxonomic depth or group georeferencing precision age of collection and other features result in biases and gaps that may influence the fitness for use of such data knowledge of patterns found in the data may help researchers and managers operating in the pyrenees to estimate the reliability of available information and to assess what uses for the data are acceptable,2012,0.496
Genetic Signals of Demographic Expansion in Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) after the Last North American Glacial Maximum.,the glacial cycles of the pleistocene have been recognized as important large scale historical processes that strongly influenced the demographic patterns and genetic structure of many species here we present evidence of a postglacial expansion for the downy woodpecker picoides pubescens a common member of the forest bird communities in north america with a continental distribution dna sequences from the mitochondrial trna lys and atpase 6 and 8 genes and microsatellite data from seven variable loci were combined with a species distribution model sdm to infer possible historical scenarios for this species after the last glacial maximum analyses of downy woodpeckers from 23 geographic areas suggested little differentiation shallow genealogical relationships and limited population structure across the species range microsatellites which have higher resolution and are able to detect recent differences revealed two geographic groups where populations along the eastern edge of the rocky mountains montana utah colorado and southern alberta were genetically isolated from the rest of the sampled populations mitochondrial dna an important marker to detect historical patterns recovered only one group however populations in idaho and southeast bc contained high haplotype diversity and in general were characterized by the absence of the most common mtdna haplotype the sdm suggested several areas in the southern us as containing suitable downy woodpecker habitat during the lgm the lack of considerable geographic structure and the starburst haplotype network combined with several population genetic tests suggest a scenario of demographic expansion during the last part of pleistocene and early holocene,2012,0.94
"Identifying insects with incomplete DNA barcode libraries, african fruit flies (Diptera: tephritidae) as a test case.",we propose a general working strategy to deal with incomplete reference libraries in the dna barcoding identification of species considering that 1 queries with a large genetic distance with their best dna barcode match are more likely to be misidentified and 2 imposing a distance threshold profitably reduces identification errors we modelled relationships between identification performances and distance thresholds in four dna barcode libraries of diptera n 4270 lepidoptera n 7577 hymenoptera n 2067 and tephritidae n 602 dna barcodes in all cases more restrictive distance thresholds produced a gradual increase in the proportion of true negatives a gradual decrease of false positives and more abrupt variations in the proportions of true positives and false negatives more restrictive distance thresholds improved precision yet negatively affected accuracy due to the higher proportions of queries discarded viz having a distance query best match above the threshold using a simple linear regression we calculated an ad hoc distance threshold for the tephritid library producing an estimated relative identification error 0 05 according to the expectations when we used this threshold for the identification of 188 independently collected tephritids less than 5 of queries with a distance query best match below the threshold were misidentified ad hoc thresholds can be calculated for each particular reference library of dna barcodes and should be used as cut off mark defining whether we can proceed identifying the query with a known estimated error probability e g 5 or whether we should discard the query and consider alternative complementary identification methods,2012,0.407
"Identification of the invasive weeds, camel melon, prickly paddy melon and colocynth in Australia — a morphological and molecular approach",camel melon citrullus lanatus thunb matsum nakai var lanatus colocynth citrullus colocynthis l schrad and prickly paddy melon cucumis myriocarpus l are summer growing invasive weeds found throughout australia they infest both natural and agricultural ecosystems and are noxious weeds in some areas of australia camel melon and prickly paddy melon are annuals while colocynth is a perennial camel melon and prickly melon belong to different genera but as they share similar morphology and life history they are often misidentified at the vegetative stage in this study a molecular and morphological approach was used to facilitate identification of these melon species for molecular taxonomic identification two chloroplast genes matk and ycf6â psbm intergenic spacer and a nuclear gene g3pdh were used to identify these invasives the sequences of g3pdh and ycf6â psbm identified camel melon as c lanatus var citroides and the colocynth as c colocynthis in direct contrast to the current widely published nomenclature as above australian prickly paddy melon sequences at matk re vealed it to be cucumis myriocarpus for morphologi cal characterisation populations of each species from selected australian states were grown in a glass house over a 4 month period in 2011 each species exhibited distinct leaf lobation branching of tendrils floral fruit and seed attributes all of which are presented as use ful identifying features this study found that camel melon colocynth and prickly paddy melon possessed unique morphological characteristics in addition each weed was identified to species level using multi locus dna sequence analysis demonstrating the utility of this approach for resolving nomenclatural errors and taxonomic mis identifications,2012,0.856
GIDL: a rule based expert system for GenBank Intelligent Data Loading into the Molecular Biodiversity Database.,in the scientific biodiversity community it is increasingly perceived the need to build a bridge between molecular and traditional biodiversity studies we believe that the information technology could have a preeminent role in integrating the information generated by these studies with the large amount of molecular data we can find in bioinformatics public databases this work is primarily aimed at building a bioinformatic infrastructure for the integration of public and private biodiversity data through the development of gidl an intelligent data loader coupled with the molecular biodiversity database the system presented here organizes in an ontological way and locally stores the sequence and annotation data contained in the genbank primary database,2012,0.193
Freshwater biodiversity in the rivers of the Mediterranean Basin,we review the diversity of freshwater organisms in the mediterranean basin hereafter med particularly from streams and rivers we present available information on the richness endemicity and distribution of each freshwater organism group within the med and make a comparison with palearctic diversity approximately 35 of known palearctic freshwater species and more than 6 of the worldâ s freshwater species are present in the med a high degree of endemicity is found in the med freshwater biota these data together with the degree to which many freshwater species are threatened support the inclusion of the med among world biodiversity hotspots nevertheless knowledge of med biodiversity is still incomplete particularly for some taxa regarding to the spatial distribution of species within the med the richest area is the north although patterns differ among groups a comparison of the ecological and biological traits of endemic and non endemic species of three riverine groups ephemeroptera plecoptera and trichoptera revealed that endemic species have several strategies and mechanisms to face typical mediterranean climate conditions such as drought when compared to non endemic species we briefly analyse the conservation status of the regionâ s biodiversity finally we present some future challenges regarding the knowledge and protection of med freshwater biodiversity,2012,0.862
An intriguing Cape orchid - the distinctive forms of Disa tenuis Lindl,plant systematics is a fluid science that continually moves forward it is fuelled by the various botanists involved therein and is dependent upon their specific talents observational abilities and the techniques available to them it can perhaps be considered as a long conversation with researchers adding their own words to it over the passage of time we now find ourselves in an era when we can all more easily inspect these words and the materials on which they are based thanks to the exponential growth of the world wide web information can now be accessed on such platforms as the following biodiversitylibrary org for the rarest literature of long ago plants jstor org which offers a range of material including correspondence biographies and species descriptions data gbif org which presents a useful database and many scanned herbarium specimens from herbaria such as paris kew hamburg stockholm the linnean society and the natural history museum london are freely available online,2012,0.258
Range shifts under climate change and the role of protected areas for armadillos and anteaters,the planning of protected areas take into consideration the current distributions of target species disre garding possible future range shifts under climate change this study tested potential shifts in the distri bution of three xenarthran species the giant anteater myrmecophaga tridactyla the giant armadillo priodontes maximus and the three banded armadillo tolypeutes tricinctus due to the effects of climate change under different dispersal scenarios in addition we tested the adequacy of the current brazilian protected areas in preserving these species under future climate changes future distribution for the year 2050 under full and null dispersal scenarios the final occurrence maps were then confronted with two brazilian reserve systems for the year 2010 one consisting of reserves for integral protection only ipcu and one that included also reserves for sustainable use and indigenous reserves sucu in the ipcu sys tem none of the species have or will havep10 of their distributions protected under neither dispersal scenario including sucu however m tridactyla and p maximus already are and will still be adequately protected in the future t tricinctus which is endemic to the brazilian semi arid will not reach the 10 goal under neither dispersal scenario even under the sucu system we stress the need for management actions in the northeastern and central parts of brazil opportunities for the creation of more reserves are highlighted considering the potential range shifts and the natural habitats still present in these regions,2012,0.674
Species distribution modelling as a macroecological tool: a case study using New World amphibians,although species distribution modelling sdm is widely accepted among the scientific community and is increasingly used in ecology conservation biology and biogeography methodological limitations generate potential problems for its application in macroecology using amphibian species richness in north and south america we compare species richness patterns derived from sdm maps and â expertâ maps to evaluate if 1 richness patterns derived from sdm are biased toward climate based explanations for diversity when compared to expert maps since sdm methods are typically based on climatic variables and 2 sdm is a reliable tool for generating richness maps in hyperrich regions where point occurrence data are limited for many species we found that although three widely used sdm methods overestimated amphibian species richness in grid cells when compared to expert richness maps in both north and south america due to systematic overestimation of range sizes diversity gradients were reasonably robust at broad scales further climatic variables statistically explained patterns of richness at similar levels among the different richness sources although climatic relationships were stronger in the much better known north america than in south america we conclude that in the face of the high deforestation rates coupled with incomplete data on species distributions especially in the tropics sdm represents a useful macroecological tool for investigating broad scale richness patterns and the dynamics between species richness and climate,2012,0.911
High connectivity among habitats precludes the relationship between dispersal and range size in tropical reef fishes,the hypothesis that pelagic larval duration pld influences range size in marine species with a benthic adult stage and a pelagic larval period is intuitively attractive yet studies conducted to date have failed to support it a possibility for the lack of a relationship between pld and range size may stem from the failure of past studies to account for the eff ect of species evolutionary ages which may add to the dispersal capabilities of species however if dispersal over ecological i e pld and across evolutionary i e species evolutionary age time scales continues to show no eff ect on range size then an outstanding question is why here we collected data on pld evolutionary ages and range sizes of seven tropical fish families five families were reef associated and two have dwell demersal habitats to explore the independent and interactive effects of pld and evolutionary age on range size separate analyses on each family showed that even after controlling for evolutionary age pld has an insignificant or a very small effect on range size to shed light on why dispersal has such a limited effect on range size we developed a global ocean circulation model to quantify the connectivity among tropical reefs relative to the potential dispersal conferred by pld we found that although there are several areas of great isolation in the tropical oceans most reef habitats are within the reach of most species given their plds these results suggest that the lack of habitat isolation can potentially render the constraining effect of dispersal on range size insignificant and explain why dispersal does not relate to range size in reef fishes,2012,0.902
Towards the development of a management relevant index for invasive alien species: a pilot study,alien species are a major threat to biodiversity and biological invasions are halted where possible both at the international and at the national level and attempts are made to pre vent new invasions international agreements state that by 2020 invasive alien species and pathways are identified and prioritized priority species are controlled or eradicated and measures are in place to manage pathways to prevent their introduction and establish ment already before 2010 attempts have been made to develop indicators of invasion to assess progress against the targets in norway the nature index was developed as a framework for gathering and synthesizing scientific knowledge on the state of biodiversity in a particular ecosystem in a given area by using a set of indicators e g species in this pilot study we exploited the possibility to develop a similar framework on the state of invasive alien species in a particular ecosys tem in a given area by developing the invasive alien species ias index the test case used in this pilot study showed the feasibility of using the same framework as that of the nature index while adjusting the mathematical background applicable to ias weighting and scaling of the indicators here a subset of ias representative for dominating and or changing the natural biodiversity were adjusted to reflect the impact of ias on native bio diversity weighting and scaling of each indicator is based on the principal of ecological effect i e the weight or importance a species has in the index combined with its invasion potential i e scaling for its ecological risk on natural biodiversity when expanding and in creasing in population distribution resp size based on the systematic risk assessment published by the norwegian biodiversity information centre while the nature index rang es between 0 and 1 with 1 referring to intact ecosystems and 0 to degraded ecosystems a higher ias index actually refers to a potential higher risk to natural biodiversity a lower ias index shows that invasions are halted for instance through eradication programmes the proposed ias index is a framework for gathering and synthesizing the knowledge and monitoring data on the state of invasive alien species in a particular ecosystem in a given area the proposed ias index allows for simple illustration on the state of invasive alien species both through graphical maps and easy readable figures changes in the state of invasive alien species can be presented,2012,0.944
"Systematic, large-scale national biodiversity surveys: NeoMaps as a model for tropical regions",aim to test a method for rapidly and reliably collecting species distribution and abundance data over large tropical areas known as neotropical biodiversity mapping initiative neomaps explicitly seeking to improve cost and time efficiencies over existing methods i e museum collections literature while strengthening local capacity for data collection location venezuela methods we placed a grid over venezuela 0 5 ã 0 5 degree cells and applied a stratified sampling design to select a minimum set of 25 cells spanning environmental and biogeographical variation we implemented standardized field sampling protocols for birds butterflies and dung beetles along transects on environmental gradients â gradsectsâ we compared species richness estimates from our field surveys at national bioregional and cell scales to those calculated from data compiled from museum collections and the literature we estimated the variance in richness composition relative abundance and diversity between gradsects that could be explained by environmental and biogeographical variables we also estimated total survey effort and cost results in one field season we covered 8 of the country and recorded 66 of all known venezuelan dung beetles 52 of pierid butterflies and 37 of birds environmental variables explained 27â 60 of variation in richness for all groups and 13â 43 of variation in abundance and diversity in dung beetles and birds bioregional and environmental variables explained 43â 58 of the variation in the dissimilarity matrix between transects for all groups main conclusions neomaps provides reliable estimates of richness composition and relative abundance required for rigorous monitoring and spatial prediction neomaps requires a substantial investment but is highly efficient achieving survey goals for each group with 1 month fieldwork and about us 1â 8 per km2 future work should focus on other advantages of this type of survey including the ability to monitor the changes in relative abundance and turnover in species composition and thus overall diversity patterns,2012,0.232
In search of the perfect aphrodisiac: parallel use of bitter tonics in West Africa and the Caribbean.,enslaved africans in the americas had to reinvent their medicinal flora in an unknown environment by adhering to plants that came with them learning from amerindians and europeans using their old world knowledge and trial and error to find substitutes for their homeland herbs this process has left few written records and little research has been done on transatlantic plant use we used the composition of aphrodisiac mixtures across the black atlantic to discuss the adaptation of herbal medicine by african diaspora in the new world since africans are considered relatively recent migrants in america their healing flora is often said to consist largely of pantropical and cultivated species with few native trees therefore we expected caribbean recipes to be dominated by taxa that occur in both continents poor in forest species and rich in weeds and domesticated exotics,2012,0.437
Temporal and spatial origin of Gesneriaceae in the New World inferred from plastid DNA sequences,gesneriaceae are represented in the new world nw by a major clade c 1000 species currently recognized as subfamily gesnerioideae radiation of this group occurred in all biomes of tropical america and was accompanied by extensive phenotypic and ecological diversification here we performed phylogenetic analyses using dna sequences from three plastid loci to reconstruct the evolutionary history of gesnerioideae and to investigate its relationship with other lineages of gesneriaceae and lamiales our molecular data confirm the inclusion of the south pacific coronanthereae and the old world ow monotypic genus titanotrichum in gesnerioideae and the sister group relationship of this subfamily to the rest of the ow gesneriaceae calceolariaceae and the nw genera peltanthera and sanango appeared successively sister to gesneriaceae whereas cubitanthus which has been previously assigned to gesneriaceae is shown to be related to linderniaceae based on molecular dating and biogeographical reconstruction analyses we suggest that ancestors of gesneriaceae originated in south america during the late cretaceous distribution of gesneriaceae in the palaeotropics and australasia was inferred as resulting from two independent long distance dispersals during the eocene and oligocene respectively in a short time span starting at 34 mya ancestors of gesnerioideae colonized several neotropical regions including the tropical andes brazilian atlantic forest cerrado central america and the west indies subsequent diversification within these areas occurred largely in situ and was particularly extensive in the mountainous systems of the andes central america and the brazilian atlantic forest only two radiations account for 90 of the diversity of gesneriaceae in the brazilian atlantic forest whereas half of the species richness in the northern andes and central america originated during the last 10 myr from a single radiation â,2012,0.517
"Checklist of vascular plants of the Department of Ñeembucú, Paraguay",te department of ã eembuc㺠is one of the least well documented areas of eastern paraguay and the flora is composed of a mixture of forest and chaco elements regions like ã eembuc㺠are often considered of lower diversity and interest that more forested regions this results from both actual species richness figures and from under collecting due to perception as uninteresting we present here a checklist of the vascular plants of ã eembuc㺠which includes 676 taxa including infraspecific taxa and collections identified only to genus in 100 families and 374 genera four hundred and thirty nine 439 of these are new records for ã eembuc㺠and of these 4 are new published records for paraguay synonyms distribution details within paraguay and a voucher specimen or literature record are provided for each taxon and a brief analysis of the diversity and importance of the flora is presented,2012,0.375
"RCN4GSC Workshop Report: Managing Data at the Interface of Biodiversity and (Meta)Genomics, March 2011",building on the planning efforts of the rcn4gsc project a workshop was convened in san diego to bring together experts from genomics and metagenomics biodiversity ecology and bioinformatics with the charge to identify potential for positive interactions and progress especially building on successes at establishing data standards by the gsc and by the biodiversity and ecological communities until recently the contribution of microbial life to the biomass and biodiversity of the biosphere was largely overlooked because it was resistant to systematic study now emerging genomic and metagenomic tools are making investigation possible initial research findings suggest that major advances are in the offing although different research communities share some overlapping concepts and traditions they differ significantly in sampling approaches vocabularies and workflows likewise their definitions of â fitness for useâ for data differ significantly as this concept stems from the specific research questions of most importance in the different fields nevertheless there is little doubt that there is much to be gained from greater coordination and integration as a first step toward interoperability of the information systems used by the different communities participants agreed to conduct a case study on two of the leading data standards from the two formerly disparate fields a gscâ s standard checklists for genomics and metagenomics and b tdwgâ s darwin core standard used primarily in taxonomy and systematic biology,2012,0.093
Mining the Himalayan Uplands Plant Database for a Conservation Baseline Using the Public GMBA Webportal*,this chapter shows how a synthesis of heterogeneous biological field observation data robust taxonomic methods and data mining leads to up to date scientific information that is important for sustainability and conservation management the core of this type of research is a database with field observations here we use the himalayan uplands plant database hup which consists of extensive collections of botanic survey information collected by the senior author in the himalayas and in renowned public herbaria over more than 25 years the hup database is primarily based on preserved herbarium specimens and presently holds more than 164 000 occurrence records of vascular plants it contains the records of more than 2 000 collectors and observers who had either directly or indirectly contributed or records that were derived from herbarium label information consistent taxonomic information and the sound use of taxonomy is the key to success of any exercise with large amounts of heterogeneous biological collection data taxonomy especially on the scales of developing consistent cross border registries still comprises one of the most obvious bottlenecks to our understanding of biodiversity in the absence of consistent backbone taxonomies physical documentation collecting preserving and curating of good and representative herbarium specimens or other vouchers and quality control must be stressed as necessary preconditions to vegetation and ecology related studies although inherent synonymy rates are obviously quite variable among different taxonomic groups there is no logical automated or permanent procedure that could identify or constrain synonyms a wide range of floras monographs taxonomic treatments original publications and databases has been consulted in hup to identify and verify specimens and to develop at least internally consistent taxonomies other challenges of using such a large collection are the long time span covered and the diversity and inconsistency of spatial and altitudinal information thus large parts of the data are currently not covered by current georeferencing databases such as biogeomancer or by international taxonomic databases such as itis integrated taxonomic information system the history of modern biodiversity exploration is briefâ in the himalayas a mere 200 yearsâ whereas dramatic ecological change and disturbance including deforestation land degradation melting glaciers and increasing severity of natural hazards occurred during the periods of collection historic data are thus precious not only on account of the â œpriority principleâ in biological taxonomy to ensure the highest level of usage of such precious data we regard the availability of the data for similar and potentially even larger exercises as critically important here we show that a new culture needs to develop and mature for sharing exploiting and improving primary biodiversity data and for taxonomic work in progress the example of hup is used to give a step by step best practice guidance to make biological data digitally available online using existing and rapidly developing data sharing infrastructures the information of the database columns was transferred into the darwin core 2 format and uploaded to the publicly accessible global biodiversity information facility gbif www gbif org through gbif it is also available using the mountain biodiversity portal mbp www mountain biodiversity org which allows to query filter and download gbif data specific for mountain areas with a horizontal region and vertical elevation climate dimension and includes many options in addition a first version xml metadata information was created and uploaded to the national biological information infrastructure nbii metadata clearinghouse national biological information infrastructure 2010 http metadata nbii gov clearinghouse thus the hup data are made accessible worldwide either by searching for metadata in the nbii clearinghouse database and through the authors by searching for original biological data at gbif or by searching for mountain specific information at the global mountain biodiversity assessment gmba mountain biodiversity portal,2012,0.158
Data Quality in Agriculture Applications,data quality is a common concern in a wide range of domains since agriculture plays an important role in the brazilian economy it is crucial that the data be useful and with a proper level of quality for the decision making process planning activities among others nevertheless this requirement is not often taken into account when different systems and databases are modeled this work presents a review about data quality issues covering some efforts in agriculture and geospatial science to tackle these issues the goal is to help researchers and practitioners to design better applications in particular we focus on the different dimensions of quality and the approaches that are used to measure them,2012,0.062
"The types of Lygistorrhinidae and Mycetophilidae (Diptera: Bibionomorpha) in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa",an annotated list of the type specimens of lygistorrhinidae and mycetophilidae diptera bibionomorpha at the kwazulu natal museum pietermaritzburg south africa is provided information on 54 type specimens three lygistorrhinids and 51 mycetophilids with details of labels and actual preservation of the specimens is furnished locality data are georeferenced and habitus images of type specimens are provided,2012,0.363
Evolutionary islands in the Andes: persistence and isolation explain high endemism in Andean dry tropical forests,aim the tropical andes are a world biodiversity hotspot with diverse biomes and dramatic geologically recent mountain uplift they offer a system to study the relative contributions of geological and biome history to species richness there are preliminary indications that historical species assembly in the andes has been influenced by physiographical heterogeneity and that distinct biomes have evolved in relative isolation despite physical proximity here we test this â andean biotic separation hypothesisâ by focusing on the low elevation seasonally dry tropical forest sdtf biome to determine whether patterns of plant diversification within the sdtf differ from those in mid and high elevation biomes location tropical andes south america methods densely sampled time calibrated phylogenies for five legume genera amicia coursetia cyathostegia mimosa and poissonia containing species endemic to the andean sdtf biome were used to investigate divergence times and levels of geographical structure geographical structure was measured using isolation by distance methods meta analysis of time calibrated phylogenies of andean plant groups was used to compare the pattern and tempo of endemic species diversification between the major andean biomes results long term persistence of sdtf in the andes is suggested by old stem ages 5â 27 ma of endemic genera clades within genera and deep divergences coupled with strong geographical structure among and within species comparison of species diversification patterns among different biomes shows that the relatively old geographically confined pattern of species diversification in sdtf contrasts with the high elevation grasslands that show rapid and recent radiations driven by ecological opportunities main conclusions the sdtf biome has a long history in the andes we suggest that the diverse sdtf flora has been assembled gradually over the past c 19 ma from lineages exhibiting strong phylogenetic niche conservatism these patterns suggest that andean sdtfs have formed stable and strongly isolated â islandsâ despite the upheavals of andean uplift indeed the andean sdtfs may represent some of the most isolated and evolutionarily persistent continental plant communities similar in many respects to floras of remote oceanic islands,2012,0.962
Marine bioactivity in Irish waters,in 2009 the marine biodiscovery laboratory was set up at the marine institute with funds from the marine institute and the beaufort marine biodiscovery research programme the marine biodiscovery laboratory has already processed over 130 marine specimens from coastal zones and from the deep sea â 3 000 m within the marine irish exclusive economic zone beaufort biodiscovery funded taxonomists are involved in species identification and elucidation of evolutionary relationships the project approach links sampling systematics extraction microbial metagenomics and biomaterials the laboratory consists of approximately 56 m2 including an extraction and a bioassay suite the laboratory samples and assesses marine biological diversity geared towards developing natural products for drug discovery advanced material applications and bio medical devices samples are tracked from sample log into right through to extraction and bioassay using a customised marine biodiscovery database the extraction procedure is described along with the anti bacterial bioassay selected for routine use the marine biodiscovery database manages the data generated and links the data collected by the projectâ s stakeholders to existing biodiversity genetic and chemical resources the system uses in house developed software tools to merge biodiscovery data collected with other mi resources and external databases and for the data mining and visualisation of biogeographical genetic and chemical information aimed at the identification of potential biodiversity and bioactivity â œhotspotsâ,2012,0.344
Photosynthetic pathway and ecological adaptation explain stomatal trait diversity amongst grasses,the evolution of c 4 photosynthesis in plants has allowed the maintenance of high co 2 assimilation rates despite lower stomatal conductances this underpins the greater water use efficiency in c 4 species and their tendency to occupy drier more seasonal environments than their c 3 relatives the basis of interspecific variation in maximum stomatal conductance to water g max as defined by stomatal density and size was investigated in a common environment screening experiment stomatal traits were measured in 28 species from seven grass lineages and comparative methods were used to test for predicted effects of c 3 and c 4 photosynthesis annual precipitation and habitat wetness on g max novel results were as follows significant phylogenetic patterns exist in g max and its determinants stomatal size and stomatal density c 4 species consistently have lower g max than their c 3 relatives associated with a shift towards smaller stomata at a given density a direct relationship between g max and precipitation was not supported however we confirmed associations between c 4 photosynthesis and lower precipitation and showed steeper stomatal size density relationships and higher g max in wetter habitats the observed relationships between stomatal patterning photosynthetic pathway and habitat provide a clear example of the interplay between anatomical traits physiological innovation and ecological adaptation in plants,2012,0.395
"The relative importance of deforestation, precipitation change, and temperature sensitivity in determining the future distributions and diversity of Amazonian plant species",tropical forests are threatened by many human disturbances two of the most important of which are deforestation and climate change in order to mitigate the impacts of these disturbances it is important to understand their potential effects on the distributions of species in the tropics such understanding has been hindered by poor knowledge of the current distributions and range limits of most species here we use herbarium collection records to model the current and future distributions of ca 3000 amazonian plant species we project these distributions into the future under a range of different scenarios related to the magnitude and extent of disturbance as well as the response of species to changes in temperature precipitation and atmospheric concentrations of co2 we find that the future of amazonian diversity will be dependant primarily on the ability of species to tolerate or adapt to rising temperatures if the thermal niches of tropical plants are fixed and incapable of expanding under rapid warming then the negative effects of climate change will overshadow the effects of deforestation greatly reducing the area of suitable habitat available to most species and potentially leading to massive losses of biodiversity throughout the amazon if tropical species are generally capable of tolerating warmer temperatures rates of habitat loss will be greatly reduced but many parts of amazonia may still experience rapid losses of diversity with the effects of enhanced seasonal water stress being similar in magnitude to the effects of deforestation,2012,0.484
"Cryptic extinction of a common Pacific lizard Emoia impar (Squamata, Scincidae) from the Hawaiian Islands",most documented declines of tropical reptiles are of dramatic or enigmatic species declines of widespread species tend to be cryptic the early 1900s decline and extinction of the common pacific skink emoia impar from the hawaiian islands is documented here through an assessment of literature museum vouchers and recent fieldwork this decline appears contemporaneous with the documented declines of invertebrates and birds across the hawaiian islands a review of the plausible causal factors indicates that the spread of the introduced big headed ant pheidole megacephala is the most likely factor in this lizard decline the introduction and spread of a similar skink lampropholis delicata across the islands appears to temporally follow the decline of e impar although there is no evidence of competition between these species it appears that l delicata is spreading to occupy the niche vacated by the extirpated e impar further confusion exists because the skink e cyanura which is very similar in appearance to e impar appears to have been introduced to one site within a hotel on kauaâ i and persisted as a population at that site for approximately 2 decades 1970sâ 1990s but is now also extirpated this study highlights the cryptic nature of this early species extinction as evidence that current biogeographical patterns of non charismatic or enigmatic reptiles across the pacific may be the historical result of early widespread invasion by ants conservation and restoration activities for reptiles in the tropical pacific should consider this possibility and evaluate all evidence prior to any implementation,2012,0.623
Willing or unwilling to share primary biodiversity data: results and implications of an international survey,biodiversity science and conservation increasingly depend on the sharing and integration of large amounts of data but many researchers resist sharing their primary biodiversity data we recently conducted an international survey to ascertain the attitudes experiences and expectations regarding biodiversity data sharing and archiving of researchers the results show that whereas most respondents are willing to share paper related biodiversity data more than sixty percent of respondents are unwilling to share primary data before publishing results indicate an underdeveloped culture of data sharing and several major technological and operational barriers a major concern for researchers is appropriate benefits from data sharing most respondents would accept data archiving policies of journals researchers also express concerns about how to easily and efficiently deal with data and data quality in public databases expectations for biodiversity databases include standardization of data format user friendly data submission tools formats for different types of data and coordination among databases the survey results provide suggestions for improving data sharing and archiving by individual scientists organizations journals and databases,2012,0.153
"A new geographical record of Polycera hedgpethi Er. Marcus, 1964 (Nudibranchia: Polyceridae) and evidence of its established presence in the Mediterranean Sea, with a review of its geographical distribution",this article reports the first record of the nudibranch polycera hedgpethi in the lagoon of venice italy as well as its established presence in the mediterranean sea after its first record in 1986 in lake fusaro naples in less than 50 years p hedgpethi has spread throughout the worldâ s temperate and subtropical waters preferring protected coastal environments and other semi enclosed coastal water bodies such as ports harbours and lagoons shipping is the most likely vector the species distribution shows a temperate subtropical range at about 7458 of latitude both north and south polycera hedgpethi was collected during a survey in 2009 and its presence confirmed for the following two years all individuals collected were found attached to the bryozoan bugula neritina to which it is linked trophically suggesting a determined pattern of distribution the present finding is the northernmost record for the species,2012,0.809
Analysis of threats to South American flora and its implications for conservation,south america houses a significant proportion of the worldâ s plant diversity and therefore merits con servation attention however ongoing habitat fragmentation degradation and destruction of natural habitats threaten biodiversity a set of seven threats to natural ecosystems derived from a previous study jarvis et al 2010 combined with a dataset of occurrences from 16 339 species and also with the world database of protected areas were used to analyse the patterns of threats to flora in south america and its conservation species richness per ∠50 km side cell ranged from 1 to 2149 taxa but with most of the areas presenting between 1 and 58 taxa population accessibility expansion of agriculture and grazing pressure were found to be the key drivers of immediate extinction risk a considerable 78 4 number of species presented at least one population under high threat due to the expansion and intensification of these anthropogenic activities in addition some 13 8 of the analysed species presented up to 80 of their populations at risk of extinction high threat index on the conservation side 82 3 of the analysed taxa have at least one population occurring within a protected site however it is important to note that for a protected area system to be effective and efficient the conservation of within taxon genetic diver sity is required the expansion monitoring and strengthening of 24 existing protected areas holding up to 70 of south american plant diversity is suggested as is the revision of seven additional sites where up to 200 species not currently conserved are present critical areas to monitor expand and strengthen are mainly located in the ecuadorian and colombian andes southern paraguay the guyana shield southern brazil and bolivia â,2012,0.85
The maturation of biodiversity as a global social-ecological issue and implications for future biodiversity science and policy,achieving the future targets for 2020 under the convention on biological diversity including that to halve the rate of habitat loss will require rapid transformation to more effective governance we present a global analysis of the transformative pathway of biodiversity using the social maturation framework of issue progression through six phases observation theorization popularization challenge governance and normalization biodiversity is currently caught at a critical juncture between the challenge and governance phases movement from the popularization to challenge phase around 1990 occurred with intensified public discourse about biodiversity the ongoing decline in biodiversity could be expected to trigger public concern and movement into the governance phase but this has not yet occurred we hypothesize that benefits from expansion of the human ecological footprint acting in the opposite direction to biodiversity decline dampen system response this dampening limits resolution of key debates and societal consensus about incorporating biodiversity into legislative and market systems high quality independent science that connects with public discourse is needed to mobilize decision makers at multiple scales ensuring the new intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes connects to non government actors who catalyze issue based social discord about biodiversity risks would help ensure future governance and normative responses,2012,0.131
"Late Quaternary environmental and landscape dynamics revealed by a pingo sequence on the northern Seward Peninsula , Alaska",a terrestrial sediment sequence exposed in an eroding pingo provides insights into the late quaternary environmental history of the northern seward peninsula alaska we have obtained the first radiocarbon dated evidence for a mid wisconsin thermokarst lake demonstrating that complex landscape dynamics involving cyclic permafrost aggradation and thermokarst lake formation occurred over stadialâ interstadial as well as glacialâ interglacial time periods high values of picea pollen and the presence of larix pollen in sediments dated to 50â 40 ka bp strongly suggest the presence of forest or woodland early in mis 3 the trees grew within a vegetation matrix dominated by grass and sedge and there is indirect evidence of grazing animals thus the interstadial ecosystem was different in structure and composition from the holocene or from the preceding last interglacial period an early holocene warm period is indicated by renewed thermokarst lake formation and a range of fossil taxa multiple extralimital plant taxa suggest mean july temperatures above modern values the local presence of spruce during the early holocene warm interval is evident from a radiocarbon dated spruce macrofossil remain and indicates significant range extension far beyond the modern tree line the first direct evidence of spruce in northwest alaska during the early holocene has implications for the presence of forest refugia in central beringia and previously assumed routes and timing of post glacial forest expansion in alaska,2012,0.691
Modelling the geographical range of a species with variable life-history,we show how a climatic niche model can be used to describe the potential geographic distribution of a pest species with variable life history and illustrate how to estimate biogeographic pest threats that vary across space the models were used to explore factors that affect pest risk irrigation and presences of host plant a combination of current distribution records and published experimental data were used to construct separate models for the asexual and sexual lineages of rhopalosiphum padi linnaeus hemiptera aphididae the two models were combined with knowledge of host plant presence to classify the global pest risk posed by r padi whilst r padi has a relatively limited area in which sexual lineages can persist year round a much larger area is suitable for transient sexual and asexual lineages to exist the greatest risk of establishment of persistent sexual and asexual populations is in areas with warm temperate climates at the global scale the models show very little difference in risk patterns between natural rainfall and irrigation scenarios but in australia the amount of land suitable for persistent asexual and transient sexual populations decreases by 20 if drought stress is no longer alleviated by irrigation this approach proved useful for modelling the potential distribution of a species that has a variable life history we were able to use the model outputs to examine factors such as irrigation practices and host plant presence that altered the nature transient or permanent and extent of pest risk the composite niche maps indicate pest risk in terms that are useful to both biosecurity agencies and pest managers,2012,0.665
A dataset from bottom trawl survey around Taiwan,bottom trawl fishery is one of the most important coastal fisheries in taiwan both in production and economic values however its annual production started to decline due to overfishing since the 1980s its bycatch problem also damages the fishery resource seriously tus the government banned the bottom fishery within 3 nautical miles along the shoreline in 1989 to evaluate the effectiveness of this policy a four year survey was conducted from 2000â 2003 in the waters around taiwan and penghu pescadore islands one region each year respectively all fish specimens collected from trawling were brought back to lab for identification individual number count and body weight measurement tese raw data have been integrated and established in taiwan fish database http fishdb sinica edu tw tey have also been published through taibif http taibif tw fishbase and gbif website see below tis dataset contains 631 fish species and 3 529 records making it the most complete demersal fish fauna and their temporal and spatial distributional data on the soft marine habitat in taiwan,2012,0.566
Managing environmental risks and contributing to scientific advancement through external partnerships: Models for industry,abstract biodiversity and science partnerships come in a variety of different models and can provide environmental business and reputational benefits for industry using original analysis based on experiences from the field this paper describes how oil and gas exploration and production activities present valuable opportunities to develop biodiversity and science partnerships with scientists in universities and associated with environmental ngos leveraged appropriately these partnerships can contribute to advancing basic science and promote environmental stewardship in the areas where we operate and beyond such partnerships can come in a variety of different models while others have described specific successful partnerships at spe this paper focuses on partnership models and identifies benefits beyond those traditionally understood or valued by our industry the paper includes examples of chevron partnerships regarding marine habitat mapping in australia marine mammal acoustical monitoring in angola meteorological monitoring in the gulf of mexico and deep ocean biodiversity surveys at several locations worldwide the these partnerships have leveraged technical expertise enhanced the credibility of data collected by the oil and gas industry deepened scientific understanding improved industry governmental and other stakeholdersâ decision making and contributed to industry and stakeholdersâ environmental stewardship goals the models presented in this paper can be leveraged more widely in the oil and gas industry as well as by governmental agencies conservation scientists and researchers for the mutual benefit of the oil and gas industry and our external partners,2012,0.015
How plant inventories improve future monitoring,plant inventories are at the heart of conservation efforts despite their obvious conservation values properties of these datasets are poorly understood we use plant databases from three different well established inventories rare plants in california ca spanish threatened plants sp and the proteaceae in south africa sa to explore the behavior of large data sets in facilitating the link between current field surveys and future standardized monitoring methods we analyze area frequency curves of the species area size for each data set and for a series of extracted databases from each inventory our results show that all field surveys produced left skewed frequency distributions a lognormal distribution is better fitted by sa followed by ca and finally by sp which is least suited to a lognormal fit using the most threatened portion of the three floras these general patterns still apply secondly a minimum sample analysis indicates that precision increases according to sample size proportionally ca data require less sampling effort than the spanish pool and the latter require less than do sa in order to get a clear monitoring trend larger skewness values are related to inventories with wider scope sa proteas display the most skewed distribution skewness in california may be explained not only by the nature and scope of the inventory but also by the scale used for mapping the spanish database is also affected by surveyor bias towards the most endangered portion of the data set monitoring should take into account the original nature of each inventory particular inventory methods and scope may produce different outputs constraining future monitoring programs key aspects are skewness and variation and both combined could identify inventories in need of better data collection practices for more precise estimates of changes in biodiversity,2012,0.12
The Alpine Cushion Plant Silene acaulis as Foundation Species: A Bug’s-Eye View to Facilitation and Microclimate,alpine ecosystems are important globally with high levels of endemic and rare species given that they will be highly impacted by climate change understanding biotic factors that maintain diversity is critical silene acaulis is a common alpine nurse plant shown to positively influence the diversity and abundance of organismsâ predominantly other plant species the hypothesis that cushion or nurse plants in general are important to multiple trophic levels has been proposed but rarely tested alpine arthropod diversity is also largely understudied worldwide and the plant arthropod interactions reported are mostly negative that is herbivory plant and arthropod diversity and abundance were sampled on s acaulis and at paired adjacent microsites with other non cushion forming vegetation present on whistler mountain b c canada to examine the relative trophic effects of cushion plants plant species richness and abundance but not simpsonâ s diversity index was higher on cushion microsites relative to other vegetation arthropod richness abundance and diversity were all higher on cushion microsites relative to other vegetated sites on a microclimatic scale s acaulis ameliorated stressful conditions for plants and invertebrates living inside it but the highest levels of arthropod diversity were observed on cushions with tall plant growth hence alpine cushion plants can be foundation species not only for other plant species but other trophic levels and these impacts are expressed through both direct and indirect effects associated with altered environmental conditions and localized productivity whilst this case study tests a limited subset of the membership of alpine animal communities it clearly demonstrates that cushion forming plant species are an important consideration in understanding resilience to global changes for many organisms in addition to other plants,2012,0.307
"Interbasin Water Transfer, Riverine Connectivity, and Spatial Controls on Fish Biodiversity",background large scale inter basin water transfer ibwt projects are commonly proposed as solutions to water distribution and supply problems these problems are likely to intensify under future population growth and climate change scenarios scarce data on the distribution of freshwater fishes frequently limits the ability to assess the potential implications of an ibwt project on freshwater fish communities because connectivity in habitat networks is expected to be critical to species biogeography consideration of changes in the relative isolation of riverine networks may provide a strategy for controlling impacts of ibwts on freshwater fish communities methods principal findings using empirical data on the current patterns of freshwater fish biodiversity for rivers of peninsular india we show here how the spatial changes alone under an archetypal ibwt project will 1 reduce freshwater fish biodiversity system wide 2 alter patterns of local species richness 3 expand distributions of widespread species throughout peninsular rivers and 4 decrease community richness by increasing inter basin similarity a mechanism for the observed decrease in biodiversity given the complexity of the ibwt many paths to partial or full completion of the project are possible we evaluate two strategies for step wise implementation of the 11 canals based on economic or ecological considerations we find that for each step in the project the impacts on freshwater fish communities are sensitive to which canal is added to the network conclusions significance importantly ecological impacts can be reduced by associating the sequence in which canals are added to characteristics of the links except for the case when all 11 canals are implemented simultaneously at which point the sequence of canal addition is inconsequential by identifying the fundamental relationship between the geometry of riverine networks and freshwater fish biodiversity our results will aid in assessing impacts of ibwt projects and balancing ecosystem and societal demands for freshwater even in cases where biodiversity data are limited,2012,0.182
Biogeographical patterns of variation in Western European populations of the great green bush-cricket (Tettigonia viridissima; Orthoptera Tettigoniidae),the great green bush cricket tettigonia viri dissima is at the northern limits of its geographic distri bution in the uk and has suffered a significant reduction in population abundance and range over the last 50 years now being largely confined to the southern uk this study uses five characters to investigate differences between uk and mainland western european populations questioning the possibility that uk populations might represent a dis tinct species or sub species and thus deserve special con servation status males of t viridissima from uk france and spain were compared using morphometry flight male calling song and analysis of mitochondrial dna sequen ces results suggest morphological differences between uk population samples and continental europe with the uk samples showing shorter wing length relative to body length than populations in continental europe morpho logical differences between french and spanish popula tions followed a size cline related to latitude with more southerly populations showing larger features analysis of male flight distances and calling song showed significant differences with increased flight distance and minimum stridulation following a southerly latitude which correlates with wing length results no differences consistent with geographical distributions were found in mitochondrial dna coi sequence alignments morphological differences could be due to developmental differences linked to dif fering temperature clines or a non adaptive difference caused by the colonisation history of the species the consequences of morphometric variation on flight function and stridulation in bush crickets are discussed,2012,0.881
A niche for biology in species distribution models,why species are found where they are is a central question in biogeography the most widely used tool for understanding the controls on distribution is species distribution modelling species distribution modelling is now a well established method in both the theoretical and applied ecological literature in this special issue we examine the current state of the art in species distribution modelling and explore avenues for including more biological processes in such models in particular we focus on physiological demographic dispersal com petitive and ecological modulation processes this overview highlights opportu nities for new species distribution model concepts and developments as well as a statistical agenda for implementing such models,2012,0.741
Sinimbu – Multimodal Queries to Support Biodiversity Studies,typical biodiversity information systems can only solve a small part of user concerns available query mechanisms are based on traditional textual database manipulations combmining them with spa tial correlations however experts need more complex computations â e g using non textual data sources this involves a considerable amount of manual tasks to obtain the needed information this paper presents the specification and implementation of sinimbu â a framework to pro cess multimodal queries that support both text and images as search parameters for biodiversity studies thus providing support for subse quent complex simulations sinimbu was validated with real data from our universityâ s zoology museum which houses one of the largest zoo logical museum collections in brazil not only can users interact with the system in several modes but query possibilities and answers vary according to the userâ s profile query processing in sinimbu combines work in database management image processing and ontology construction and management,2012,0.083
Effects of georeferencing effort on mapping monkeypox case distributions and transmission risk,abstract background maps of disease occurrences and gis based models of disease transmission risk are increasingly common and both rely on georeferenced diseases data automated methods for georeferencing disease data have been widely studied for developed countries with rich sources of geographic referenced data however the transferability of these methods to countries without comparable geographic reference data particularly when working with historical disease data has not been as widely studied historically precise geographic information about where individual cases occur has been collected and stored verbally identifying specific locations using place names georeferencing historic data is challenging however because it is difficult to find appropriate geographic reference data to match the place names to here we assess the degree of care and research invested in converting textual descriptions of disease occurrence locations to numerical grid coordinates latitude and longitude specifically we develop three datasets from the same original monkeypox disease occurrence data with varying levels of care and effort the first based on an automated web service the second improving on the first by reference to additional maps and digital gazetteers and the third improving still more based on extensive consultation of legacy surveillance records that provided considerable additional information about each case to illustrate the implications of these seemingly subtle improvements in data quality we develop ecological niche models and predictive maps of monkeypox transmission risk based on each of the three occurrence data sets results we found macrogeographic variations in ecological niche models depending on the type of georeferencing method used less careful georeferencing identified much smaller areas as having potential for monkeypox transmission in the sahel region as well as around the rim of the congo basin these results have implications for mapping efforts as each higher level of georeferencing precision required considerably greater time investment conclusions the importance of careful georeferencing cannot be overlooked despite it being a time and labor intensive process investment in archival storage of primary disease occurrence data is merited and improved digital gazetteers are needed to support public health mapping activities particularly in developing countries where maps and geographic information may be sparse,2012,0.028
Global patterns of leaf defenses in oak species,plant defensive traits drive patterns of herbivory and herbivore diversity among plant species over the past 30 years several prominent hypotheses have predicted the association of plant defenses with particular abiotic environments or geographic regions we used a strongly supported phylogeny of oaks to test whether defensive traits of 56 oak species are associated with particular components of their climatic niche climate predicted both the chemical leaf defenses and the physical leaf defenses of oaks whether analyzed separately or in combination oak leaf defenses were higher at lower latitudes and this latitudinal gradient could be explained entirely by climate using phylogenetic regression methods we found that plant defenses tended to be greater in oak species that occur in regions with low temperature seasonality mild winters and low minimum precipitation and that plant defenses may track the abiotic environment slowly over macroevolutionary time the pattern of association we observed between oak leaf traits and abiotic environments was consistent with a combination of a seasonality gradient which may relate to different herbivore pressures and the resource availability hypothesis which posits that herbivores exert greater selection on plants in resource limited abiotic environments,2012,0.63
"Implementation of TaxPub, an NLM DTD extension for domain-specific markup in taxonomy, from the experience of a biodiversity publisher",taxpub was created as an xml extension to the general jats to provide domain specific markup for prospective publishing in the area of biological systematics the core idea of the schema is to delimit descriptions of taxa or treatments within an article and also several sub elements within a treatment and to use these individual portions of information for various purposes taxpub was developed in a close cooperation between the author terence catapano a community interested in such markup plazi the nlm jats group and a journal publisher pensoft since july 2009 taxpub has been routinely implemented in the everyday publishing practice of pensoft to provide 1 semantically enhanced domain specific xml versions of articles for archiving in pubmedcentral pmc 2 visualization of taxon treatments on pmc 3 export of taxon treatments to various aggregators such as encyclopedia of life plazi treatment repository and the wiki species id net,2012,0.181
Developing cost-effective early detection networks for regional invasions,early detection and rapid response edrr seek to control or eradicate new invasions to prevent their spread but effective edrr remains elusive due to financial and managerial constraints as part of the great lakes early detection network we asked stakeholders to indicate their needs for an effective edrr communication tool our results led to the development of a website with five primary features 1 the ability for casual observers to report a sighting 2 a network of professionals to verify new sightings 3 email alerts of new sightings including data from all data providers across the region 4 maps of species distributions across data providers and 5 easy communication channels among stakeholders using results from our stakeholder discussions we provide a cost effective framework for online edrr networks that integrate data and develop social capital through a virtual community this framework seeks to provide real time data on current species distributions and improve across jurisdictional collaboration with limited oversight,2012,0.136
The distibution of Elatine hydropiper L. (Elatinaceae),a distribution map of elatine hydropiper l elatinaceae which belongs to the euro siberian phytogeographic element has been prepared based on literature and web based data te distribution range of the taxon comparison to previous maps and reliability of the results are discussed,2012,0.297
Quantifying temporal change in biodiversity: challenges and opportunities,growing concern about biodiversity loss underscores the need to quantify and understand temporal change here we review the opportunities presented by biodiversity time series and address three related issues i recognizing the characteristics of temporal data ii selecting appropriate statistical procedures for analysing temporal data and iii inferring and forecasting biodiversity change with regard to the first issue we draw attention to defining characteristics of biodiversity time series lack of physical boundaries uni dimensionality autocorrelation and directionality that inform the choice of analytic methods second we explore methods of quantifying change in biodiversity at different timescales noting that autocorrelation can be viewed as a feature that sheds light on the underlying structure of temporal change finally we address the transition from inferring to forecasting biodiversity change highlighting potential pitfalls associated with phase shifts and novel conditions,2012,0.137
Effects of Late-Cenozoic Glaciation on Habitat Availability in Antarctic Benthic Shrimps (Crustacea: Decapoda: Caridea).,marine invertebrates inhabiting the high antarctic continental shelves are challenged by disturbance of the seafloor by grounded ice low but stable water temperatures and variable food availability in response to seasonal sea ice cover though a high diversity of life has successfully adapted to such conditions it is generally agreed that during the last glacial maximum lgm the large scale cover of the southern ocean by multi annual sea ice and the advance of the continental ice sheets across the shelf faced life with conditions exceeding those seen today by an order of magnitude conditions prevailing at the lgm may have therefore acted as a bottleneck event to both the ecology as well as genetic diversity of today s fauna here we use for the first time specific species distribution models sdms for marine arthropods of the southern ocean to assess effects of habitat contraction during the lgm on the three most common benthic caridean shrimp species that exhibit a strong depth zonation on the antarctic continental shelf while the shallow water species chorismus antarcticus and notocrangon antarcticus were limited to a drastically reduced habitat during the lgm the deep water shrimp nematocarcinus lanceopes found refuge in the southern ocean deep sea the modeling results are in accordance with genetic diversity patterns available for c antarcticus and n lanceopes and support the hypothesis that habitat contraction at the lgm resulted in a loss of genetic diversity in shallow water benthos,2012,0.443
The usefulness of elevation as a predictor variable in species distribution modelling,species distribution models sdms are increasingly used to forecast impacts of climate change on species geographic distributions but the reliability of predictions is scrutinized the main limitation of sdms lies in their assumption that speciesâ ranges are determined mostly by climate which is arguable for instance biotic interactions habitat and elevation may affect species ranges the inclusion of habitat related variables as predictors in sdms is generally accepted but there is no consensus regarding the inclusion of elevation a review of randomly chosen literature revealed that elevation is used as a predictor variable by just over half of the papers studied with no apparent trends as to why except that papers predicting mammal species distributions for large regions included elevation more often than not and that papers that predicted mammal ranges for small regions tended to exclude elevation in addition we compared the performance of sdms with and without elevation as a predictor variable for the distribution of north european mammals and plants and found that the difference between their performances is statistically significant for mammals slightly favouring exclusion of elevation no differences were found for plants,2012,0.556
Guide to GIVD's Fact Sheets,this article explains the fields that are used to provide an overview of the metadata for each database in the global index of vegetation plot databases givd the fact sheets published in the long and short database reports of this volume try to answer the readers questions on availability scope format status completeness amount of data applied methods and several more in a con densed compilation,2012,0.194
Molecular phylogenetics and historical biogeography of the west-palearctic common toads (Bufo bufo species complex),in most pan eurasiatic species complexes two phenomena have been traditionally considered key processes of their cladogenesis and biogeography first it is hypothesized that the origin and development of the central asian deserts generated a biogeographic barrier that fragmented past continuous distributions in eastern and western domains second pleistocene glaciations have been proposed as the main process driving the regional diversification within each of these domains the european common toad and its closest relatives provide an interesting opportunity to examine the relative contributions of these paleogeographic and paleoclimatic events to the phylogeny and biogeography of a widespread eurasiatic group we investigate this issue by applying a multiproxy approach combining information from molecular phylogenies a multiple correspondence analysis of allozyme data and species distribution models our study includes 304 specimens from 164 populations covering most of the distributional range of the bufo bufo species complex in the western palearctic the phylogenies ml and bayesian analyses were based on a total of 1988 bp of mitochondrial dna encompassing three genes trnaval 16s and nd1 a dataset with 173 species of the family bufonidae was assembled to estimate the separation of the two pan eurasiatic species complexes of bufo and to date the main biogeographic events within the bufo bufo species complex the allozyme study included sixteen protein systems corresponding to 21 presumptive loci finally the distribution models were based on maximum entropy our distribution models show that eastern and western species complexes are greatly isolated by the central asian deserts and our dating estimates place this divergence during the middle miocene a moment in which different sources of evidence document a major upturn of the aridification rate of central asia this climate driven process likely separated the eastern and western species at the level of the western palearctic our dating estimates place most of the deepest phylogenetic structure before the pleistocene indicating that pleistocene glaciations did not have a major role in splitting the major lineages at a shallow level the glacial dynamics contributed unevenly to the genetic structuring of populations with a strong influence in the european caucasian populations and a more relaxed effect in the iberian populations,2012,0.9
"Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services: Technical Input to the 2013 National Climate Assessment.",cooperative report to the 2013 national climate assessment,2012,0.354
Clinical Trials Improving Data Quality in the Clinical Trial System,poor quality data can negatively influence how a company is perceived in the marketplace therefore it is critical to ensure data quality is given the highest priority improving data quality in a clinical trial system involves many processes and factors this article discusses how to improve data quality by implementing general standards the discussion includes how to develop business governance data design keeping the enterprise vision in mind setting a strategy for data collection processing and reporting and implementing standards to develop a data validation process using a well designed data validation tool will improve data quality and ease communications,2012,0.044
Genetic Variation and Distribution of Pacific Crabapple,pacific crabapple malus fusca raf c k schneid is found in mesic coastal habitats in pacific northwestern north america it is one of four apple species native to north america m fusca is culturally important to first nations of the region who value and use the fruit of this species as food bark and leaves for medicine and wood for making tools and in construction however little is known about either distribution or genetic diversity of this species to correct this deficiency we used habitat suitability modeling to map m fusca habitat types with species occurrence records the species apparently occupies at least two distinct climate regions a colder drier northern region and a warmer wetter southern region total area of modeled habitat encompasses â ˆ356 780 km2 of low lying areas along the pacific coast a total of 239 m fusca individuals sampled from across its native range were genetically compared using six microsatellite markers to assess for possible geographic structuring of genotypes the primers amplified 50 alleles significant isolation by distance was identified across the â ˆ2600 km straight line where samples were distributed these results may help establish priorities for in situ and ex situ m fusca conservation,2012,0.918
"From a textual checklist to an information system: The case study of ITALIC, the Information System on Italian Lichens",checklists are fundamental for accessing information about organisms known to occur in a given area it is possible to convert textual paper printed checklists into structured digital formats this process can eventually lead to the development of digital information systems for which the output can be far more complex than a list of taxa digital information systems can be continuously updated by a constant flow of information and their content can be exported in many other different formats hence not only mobilising but also making biodiversity data reusable on different platforms the conversion of the checklist of italian lichens into an information system is discussed in order to provide some general guidelines of such a process,2012,0.076
Semi-automated assignment of vegetation survey plots within an a priori classification of vegetation types,1 assignment of large numbers of vegetation plots to a priori vegetation classifications is increasingly being required to support natural resource management monitoring and conservation at regional scales several auto mated systems have been developed that use quantitative synoptic tables and algorithm based plot to type assignment however where synoptic tables do not exist and qualitative species lists characterise vegetation type classifications existing systems may not apply in these situations vegetation experts may resort to manual assignment processes that can be slow subjective and fraughtwith difficulties 2 this study combines repeatable and objective quantitative analyses with new software to deliver a semi automated plot to type assignment process appropriate for apriori classifications based on qualitative species lists the flexible semi automated assignment program saap calculates a quantitative goodness of fit score between plots and types based on the species that characterise each apriori vegetation type and the species that characterise groups of plots derived from quantitative analyses 3 weapplied the saap to a case study of 630 native vascular plant species from 930 plots and an apriori clas sification of 99 vegetation types we varied vegetation data set transforms cover per cent 0â 100 cover score 0â 6 and presenceâ absence 1 0 and analysis settings and tested the degree to which the saap provided plot to type assignment concordant withmanual expert assignment 4 results provided clear evidence supporting the choice of particular data set transformations and analysis set tings tomaximise concordance the saap allocated up to 50 of plots to the same expert assigned vegetation type and more than70 of plots to an expert assignedvegetationtyperankedinthe topfive by thesaap 5 when coupled with repeatable and objective quantitative analyses the saap provides vegetation experts with a new semi automated and quantitative decision support tool to assist with the assignment of vegetation plotswithin apriori vegetation classifications defined by characteristic species lists,2012,0.437
"Diversity of bivalve molluscs in the St Lucia Estuary, with an annotated and illustrated checklist",bivalves play a vital role in estuarine ecosystems but are vulnerable to rapid or prolonged changes in the physico chemical environment the st lucia estuarine lake exhibits sub decadal changes from wet to dry periods resulting in fluctuating physico chemical conditions this paper represents a census of the diversity of bivalve molluscs in this estuary emphasising changes associated with climate induced hydrological states twenty four bivalve species were recorded within st lucia between 1925 and 2011 twelve that had not been reported previously from st lucia in the literature were encountered during the present study these are anadara natalensis anomia achaeus arcuatula capensis chambardia wahlbergi corbicula fluminalis dendostrea sandvichensis fulvia fragilis mactra cuneata martesia striata meretrix meretrix saccostrea forskahlii and tellina s l bertini single shells of another two previously unrecorded species anodontia eden tula and timoclea lavrani were also found although these may have been introduced dead from the ocean through tidal exchange meretrix meretrix an unexpected yet abundant species represents a new record for south african waters but the timing and mode of its introduction into the estuary remain unresolved extremely large numbers 100 ind m 2 of dead specimens of barnea manilensis were observed in 2011 along the western shoreline of the estuarine lake which indicates that the species was a major role player in the settling of suspended silt within the system currently this function appears to be fulfilled only by solen cylindraceus apart from this species brachidontes virgiliae dosinia hepatica macomopsis moluccensis salmacoma litoralis and an undescribed tellina sp reported here as t cf rousi are the only bivalves that were found alive in st lucia during the latest survey in march 2011,2012,0.662
Building the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN): a novel approach for the exploration of distributed alien species data,the european alien species information network easin http easin jrc ec europa eu aims to facilitate the exploration of existing alien species information from distributed sources through a network of interoperable web services and to assist the implementation of european policies on biological invasions the network allows extraction of alien species information from online information systems for all species included in the easin catalogue this catalogue was based on an inventory of reported alien species in europe that was produced by reviewing and standardizing information from 43 online databases it includes information on taxonomy synonyms common names pathways of introduction native range in europe and impact easin catalogue entails the basic information needed to efficiently link to existing online databases and retrieve spatial information for alien species distribution in europe using search functionality powered by a widget framework it is possible to make a tailored selection of a subgroup of species based on various criteria e g environment taxonomy pathways distribution maps of the selected species can be produced dynamically and downloaded by the user the easin web tools and services follow internationally recognized standards and protocols and can be utilized freely and independently by any website while ownership of the data remains with its source which is properly cited and linked,2012,0.913
Disparate relatives: Life histories vary more in genera occupying intermediate environments,species within clades are commonly assumed to share similar life history traits but within a given region some clades show much greater variability in traits than others are variable clades older allowing more time for trait diversification or do they occupy particular environments providing a wider range of abiotic or biotic opportunities for the establishment and maintenance of diverse trait attributes does environmental opportunity increase trait variability across all species or is it specific to species belonging to the same clade increasing only within clade trait variability we studied the variability of six life history traits initiation of flowering duration of flowering plant life span seed mass stress tolerance type of reproduction within 383 angiosperm genera from central europe distributed along six abiotic gradients we compared patterns of within genus variability to those present in the entire dataset independent of genus membership we found that trait variability differed strongly between genera but did not depend on their age trait variability was higher within genera occupying intermediate positions along regional abiotic environmental gradients compared with patterns across the entire dataset and unbiased by geographical sampling family membership or species richness increasing trait variability within genera reflected increasing independence of traits from the abiotic environment we conclude that intermediate abiotic environments play an important role in maintaining and possibly generating the striking diversity of life history traits present within certain clades they may do so by relaxing the abiotic constraints on the evolution and maintenance of species traits within clades,2012,0.857
"Worldwide Spread of the Moorish sneaking Ant, Cardiocondyla mauritanica (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",cardiocondyla spp are small inconspicuous ants native to the old world until recently cardiocondyla mauritanica forel 1890 was a little known species recorded almost exclusively from the semi arid subtropics of north africa the middle east and neighboring islands in contrast cardiocondyla nuda mayr 1866 was considered a cosmopolitan tramp species spread broadly around the world through human commerce a recent taxonomic reanalysis by b seifert however found genuine c nuda restricted to australia new guinea and western oceania and that published records of â c nudaâ from outside this region were based on misidentifications of other species notably c mauritanica in addition cardiocondyla ectopia known from north america was found to be a junior synonym of c mauritanica here i examine the worldwide spread of c mauritanica i compiled published and unpublished c mauritanica specimen records from 250 sites documenting the earliest known records for 47 geographic areas countries island groups major islands and us states including sev eral for which i found no previously published records barbados bonaire curaã ao grenada saba and saudi arabia cardiocondyla mauritanica is found primarily in semi arid and urban environments cardiocondyla mauritanica shows an apparently continuous distribution and geographic variation in morphology from northwest africa to india suggesting that c mauritanica is native throughout this subtropical expanse old world records of c mauritanica far from this range come from ascension zimbabwe and several indo pacific islands te sole temperate record of c mauritanica comes from ukraine cardiocondyla mauritanica was first found in the new world in 1967 and has spread through the southwestern us northern mexico florida and the west indies part of the success of c mauritanica in exotic locales may relate to its ability to co exist with dominant invasive ants such as the argentine ant linepithema humile mayr 1868,2012,0.746
Ecological Niche Modeling Meets Phylogeography to Unravel Hidden Past History of Key Forest Genera in Plant Geography: Podocarpus and Nothofagus,phylogeographical methods and ecological niche modeling of cold tolerant taxa podocarpus parlatorei a montane tropical conifer and nothofagus pumilio inhabiting temperate areas of the southern andes were used as case studies to test if present populations are the result of local survival during cooling samples collected along their ranges were analyzed by nuclear isozymes and uniparentally inherited chloroplast dna sequences modern and past last glacial maximum lgm ecological niche modeling enm was developed using current climate data based on 19 bioclimatic variables and topography populations of the subtropical of p parlatorei shared most haplotypes southern populations were genetically distinct and enm yielded range expansion during the lgm latitudinally extreme populations of the temperate n pumilio shared isozyme variants which was consistent with enm showing suitable northern and southern areas in contrast cpdna yielded an ancient phylogeographic structure cold hardy trees locally persisted along their ranges through ice periods without major range shifts in tropical and temperate regions,2012,0.771
The importance of defining the geographic distribution of species for conservation: The case of the Bearded Wood-Partridge,delimitation of the distribution areas of species has fundamental implications for the understanding of biodiversity and for decision making in conservation this is illustrated by the case of the bearded wood partridge dendrortyx barbatus which is endemic to mexico and was classified as threatened by the iucn recently the discovery of this species in new locations caused an increase in the known distribution area whereupon it was reclassified in a lower risk category in our study delimitation and comparison of the bearded wood partridge distribution area is carried out utilising five different methods minimum convex polygon areographic cartographic ecological niche modeling and â œfree handâ a number of locality records are also used to demonstrate the chronological order of appearance the results show that the size and shape of the distribution area of this species vary depending on the number of records and on their spatial and environmental location as well as on the particular delimitation method used however ecological niche modeling provides the best results in terms of spatial and numerical sensitivity as well as lower values of omission and a moderate extent of predicted areas we suggest that decisions related to species conservation categories of risk areas of endemism etc particularly those species of high geographical restriction should be contingent on the formalised delimitation of distribution areas based on ecological niche modeling methods,2012,0.745
Effects of re-oligotrophication and climate warming on plankton richness and community stability in a deep mesotrophic lake,we studied the effects of re oligotrophication and climate warming on plankton richness and community stability over a period of 30 years in the deep mesotrophic lake zurich switzerland we assembled monthly time series of phytoplankton and zooplankton taxonomic richness phytoplankton functional groups species with similar functional traits and physico chemical environmental descriptors temperature conductivity ph p po43∠n no3∠light absorption we used multiple linear regression to test 1 the effect of environmental variability over time and depth on the accrual of plankton richness and 2 the relative effect of richness and environmental variability on the stability of plankton environmental change was characterised by increase in temperature decrease in phosphorus levels reduced temporal variability of both and higher heterogeneity of phosphorus over depth spatial heterogeneity these conditions occurred concurrently with accrual in plankton taxonomic and functional richness increase in temperature and spatial heterogeneity were the best predictors of phytoplankton richness while phytoplankton richness and spatial heterogeneity had the strongest effects on zooplankton richness temporal stability in phytoplankton biovolume was mainly affected by variability in phosphorus and temperature while zooplankton abundance levels were more strongly linked to fluctuations in nitrogen temperature and phytoplankton biovolumes our analysis highlights that climate warming and re oligotrophication may favour an increase in spatial depth heterogeneity in the water column of deep lakes enhancing the potential for phytoplankton species co existence and an increase in plankton richness our analysis also suggests that the intensity of fluctuations in key environmental variables can be a better predictor of plankton community stability then average richness,2012,0.087
Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard,biodiversity data derive from myriad sources stored in various formats on many distinct hardware and software platforms an essential step towards understanding global patterns of biodiversity is to provide a standardized view of these heterogeneous data sources to improve interoperability fundamental to this advance are definitions of common terms this paper describes the evolution and development of darwin core a data standard for publishing and integrating biodiversity information we focus on the categories of terms that define the standard differences between simple and relational darwin core how the standard has been implemented and the community processes that are essential for maintenance and growth of the standard we present case study extensions of the darwin core into new research communities including metagenomics and genetic resources we close by showing how darwin core records are integrated to create new knowledge products documenting species distributions and changes due to environmental perturbations,2012,0.123
"Phylogeny and biogeography in Solanaceae, Verbenaceae and Bignoniaceae: a comparison of continental and intercontinental diversification patterns",recent molecular phylogenetic studies of solanales and lamiales show that solanaceae verbenaceae and bignoniaceae all diversified in south america estimated dates for the stem lineages of all three families imply origins in the late cretaceous at which time south america had separated from the united gondwanan continent a comparison of clades in each family shows 1 success in most clades at dispersing to and diversifying in north america and or the caribbean 2 a mix of adaptation to novel ecological zones and niche conservation 3 limited dispersal to continents outside of the western hemisphere and where this has occurred 4 no association between long distance dispersal and fleshy animal dispersed fruits shared patterns among the three families contribute to a better understanding of the in situ diversification of the south american flora â,2012,0.382
Distance to nature—A new biodiversity relevant environmental indicator set at the landscape level,the ongoing worldwide biodiversity crisis comes along with a growing demand for feasible environmen tal indicators to measure evaluate and communicate anthropogenic influence on biodiversity those indicators can be useful tools for national and regional management and support decision making pro cesses we propose degree of naturalness nd distance to natural habitat dn and the composite index distance to nature d2n as a highly comprehensible environmental indicator set that can be used as surro gate for land use related anthropogenic influence on biodiversity a high resolution naturalness map for austria based on the best nationwide available land use data was produced and used to test and demon strate the applicability of the indicator set spatially inclusive and comprehensive indicator maps were calculated for the entire country 83 872 km2 exemplary indicator values for all 2359 municipalities and six altitudinal zones were calculated and evaluated indicator maps of austria clearly delimitate regions with elevated anthropogenic pressure on biodiversity due to land use characteristics a sensitivity anal ysis conducted to evaluate the effect of land use data with different spatial and thematic resolution on the indicators showed that dn reacts sensitive to spatially more detailed information about natural and near natural habitats by contrast nd and d2n were robust regarding the spatial and thematic resolution of input data the proposed indicators do not measure biodiversity or a part of it directly but the degree of habitat changes caused by anthropogenic land use therefore they can be used for analysis over wide geographic ranges including different bio geographic or climatic zones and different spatial scales,2012,0.15
"The relative influence of temperature, moisture and their interaction on range limits of mammals over the past century",aims i determine the relative importance of temperature and moisture acting alone and in tandem for range contractions and expansions of mammalian species over c 70 years location the contiguous united states west of the eastern border of the rocky mountains 103 77â w methods museum records of 67 mammalian species from two time periods 1900â 39 and 1970â 2009 mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation are used to model historic and modern distributions for each era the region outside each speciesâ range in the opposing era is assigned to zones of range limitation temperature alone is prohibitive moisture alone is prohibitive both preclude the species or both have values that alone are within the speciesâ tolerance range but in combination are outside its climatic niche â interactionâ limitation the relative importance of each type of limitation is estimated by their intersection with regions of range contraction and expansion results averaged across species 82 â 3 â se of the areas of contraction are now occupied by interaction limitation and 74 â 5 of areas expanded into were historically occupied by similar zones in comparison areas of range shift in which just temperature or moisture acting alone would have excluded the species comprise between only 9 and 17 and areas in which both factors are limiting are negligible expansions into and contractions from regions of interaction limitation occurred more often than expected by chance given the distribution of this type of limitation in the wider study region main conclusions particular combinations of temperature and moisture can interact directly or indirectly to limit species ranges even when these factors alone do not exceed species tolerances change in the correlation between of range limiting factors can have as much effect on species ranges as absolute change in those factors by themselves,2012,0.916
A call for an international network of genomic observatories (GOs),we are entering a new era in genomicsâ that of large scale place based highly contextualized genomic research here we review this emerging paradigm shift and suggest that sites of utmost scientific importance be expanded into â genomic observatoriesâ gos investment in gos should focus on the digital characterization of whole ecosystems from all taxa biotic inventories to time series â omics studies the foundational layer of biodiversityâ genetic variationâ would thus be mainstreamed into earth observation systems enabling predictive modelling of biodiversity dynamics and resultant impacts on ecosystem services,2012,0.139
Modelling invasive alien species distributions from digital biodiversity atlases. Model upscaling as a means of reconciling data at different scales,aim there is a wealth of information on species occurrences in biodiversity data banks albeit presence only biased and scarce at fine resolutions moreover fine resolution species maps are required in biodiversity conservation new techniques for dealing with this kind of data have been reported to perform well these fine resolution maps would be more robust if they could explain data at coarser resolutions at which species distributions are well represented we present a new methodology for testing this hypothesis and apply it to invasive alien species ias location catalonia spain methods we used species presence records from the biodiversity data bank of catalonia to model the distribution of ten ias which according to some recent studies achieve their maximum distribution in the study area to overcome problems inherent with the data we prepared different correction treatments three for dealing with bias and five for autocorrelation we used the maxent algorithm to generate models at 1 km resolution for each species and treatment acceptable models were upscaled to 10 km and validated against independent 10 km occurrence data results of a total of 150 models 20 gave acceptable results at 1 km resolution and 12 passed the cross scale validation test no apparent pattern emerged which could serve as a guide on modelling only four species gave models that also explained the distribution at the coarser scale main conclusions although some techniques may apparently deliver good distribution maps for species with scarce and biased data they need to be taken with caution when good independent data at a coarser scale are available cross scale validation can help to produce more reliable and robust maps when no independent data are available for validation however new data gathering field surveys may be the only option if reliable fine scale resolution maps are needed,2012,0.821
The Iberian endemic species Ranunculus cabrerensis Rothm.: an intricate history in the Ranunculus parnassiifolius L. polyploid complex,the orophilous plant ranunculus parnassiifolius l is a polyploid complex that is widespread throughout the southern european mountains where at least five taxa have traditionally been recognized the aim of this study was to test whether r parnassiifolius subsp cabrerensis should be treated as an independent species of the r parnassiifolius polyploid complex and constitutes therefore an evolutionary line in itself to disentangle its evolutionary history and taxonomy we used genome size estimation based on flow cytometric measurements fcm multivariate morphometric analyses polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphisms pcrâ rflps and subsequent sequencing of cpdna regions trns trnr atpa atph atpi this study provides molecular and morphological evidence for the recognition of r cabrerensis at the species level rather than as an intraspecific taxon of r parnassiifolius furthermore it is concluded that those plants previously known as r parnassiifolius subsp muniellensis should be systematized at the subspecies level as r cabrerensis subsp muniellensis this contribution highlights the benefit of combining diverse approaches to obtain knowledge about relict populations and for the implementation of suitable conservation measures,2012,0.464
"RCN4GSC Meeting Report: Initiating a Testbed for Managing Data at the Interface of Biodiversity and Genomics/Metagenomics, May 2011",following up on efforts from two earlier workshops a meeting was convened in san diego to a establish working connections between experts in the use of the darwin core and the gsc mixs standards b conduct mutual briefings to promote knowledge exchange and to increase the understanding of the two communitiesâ approaches constraints community goals subtleties etc c perform an element by element comparison of the two standards assessing the compatibility and complementarity of the two approaches d propose and consider possible use cases and test beds in which a joint annotation approach might be tried to useful scientific effect and e propose additional action items necessary to continue the development of this joint effort several focused working teams were identified to continue the work after the meeting ended,2012,0.315
Continental-scale variability in browser diversity is a major driver of diversity patterns in acacias across Africa,1 it has been proposed that across broad spatial scales climatic factors are the main drivers of ecological patterns while biotic factors are mainly important at local spatial scales however few tests of the effect of biotic interactions on broad scale patterns have been conducted conclusions about the scale dependence of the importance of biotic interactions thus seem premature 2 we developed an extensive database of locality records of one of africaâ s most conspicuous groups the acacias the genera senegalia and vachellia and used species distribution models sdms to estimate the distribution of all african acacias 3 african acacias are particularly well adapted against mammalian herbivory therefore we hypothesized that browser diversity could be an important driver of acacia richness species richness maps for the two genera were created from sdm generated maps ordinary least square ols regressions and to consider spatial autocorrelation simultaneous autoregressive sar analyses were used to model richness of the two genera in relation to mammalian browser richness current environment including climate and climate history since the last glacial maximum lgm we used variation partitioning to determine what percentage of variation could be explained by these three groups of factors 4 both genera showed centres of richness in east africa and the limpopo basin of southern africa browser richness was the best explanatory variable for richness of both genera environmental factors explained negligible variation in the richness of senegalia but some variation in vachellia for both genera the residuals of the species richness model of one genus also explained much variation in the richness of the other genus indicating that common factors not considered in the richness analyses here may additionally be driving the richness of both genera 5 mechanisms that could generate a correlation between browser and acacia richness are proposed and differences in the determinants of richness patterns of senegalia and vachellia discussed in the light of the two generaâ s history of colonization of africa 6 synthesis this is the first study that demonstrates that consumer diversity can influence richness patterns at continental scales and demonstrates that biotic factors can drive richness even at broad spatial scales,2012,0.321
Last Chance to See? What is the Role of SDI’s in the Race to Halt Biodiversity Loss?,attempts to stem the rate of biodiversity loss worldwide have so far failed to produce the desired outcomes a new impetus to address this problem has been given at the culmination of the international year of biodiversity in 2010 with the convention on biodiversity cbd summit in nagoya outcomes of the summit include a strategic plan for biodiversity 2011 2020 and the aichi biodiversity targets global initiatives such as these generate many challenges for data gathering sharing analysis and presentation and highlight the need for concerted action including in the domain of spatial information are existing sdiâ s providing the necessary data and technological platforms for the biodiversity community the biopama biodiversity and protected areas management project jointly run by the european commissionâ s joint research centre and the international union for nature conservation iucn is addressing this question as it seeks to establish regional observatories for biodiversity information in the africa caribbean pacific acp region biopama will be a pioneer opportunity to implement tools such as the digital observatory of protected areas dopa which have been the outcome of recent jrc research projects much like the subject matter they deal with the it environments of initiatives such as biopama and dopa are extremely diverse â œecosystemsâ with components that are highly interdependent on one another whilst the classic sdi paradigm does much to facilitate information exchange and for which there are many operational examples there is an ongoing need to rapidly develop high performance sophisticated architectures for distributed modeling and geo processing which is pushing the boundaries of sdi and biodiversity informatics research we will illustrate this through examples of our work on biodiversity monitoring across the globe,2012,0.157
"Frequency of local, regional, and long-distance dispersal of diploid and tetraploid Saxifraga oppositifolia (Saxifragaceae) to Arctic glacier forelands",â premise of the study climate change forces many species to migrate empirical small scale data on migration and colonization in the arctic are scarce retreating glaciers provide new territory for cold adapted plant species but the genetic consequences depend on dispersal distances and frequencies we estimated local regional and long distance dispersal frequencies as well as their effect on levels of genetic diversity in diploid and tetraploid individuals of saxifraga oppositifolia â methods samples were collected in four aged moraines in each of three glacier forelands in surrounding areas and reference populations in the arctic archipelago svalbard these samples were analyzed for neutral amplified fragment length polymorphisms aflps n 707 and ploidy levels n 30 â key results genetic clustering and ploidy analyses revealed two distinct genetic groups representing diploids and tetraploids with few intermediate triploids the groups were intermixed in most sampled populations no differences in genetic diversity were found between tetraploids and diploids or between established and glacier foreland populations seeds were dispersed over local regional and long distances with the highest proportions of seeds originating from close sources a minimum of 4 15 founding individuals from several source populations had initially established in each glacier foreland â conclusions our data suggest that s oppositifolia can rapidly colonize new deglaciated areas without losing genetic diversity thus glacier forelands can be alternative habitats for cold adapted vascular plants tracking their climatic niche our data show no difference in colonization success between diploid and tetraploid individuals,2012,0.801
Chilled but not frosty: understanding the role of climate in the hybridization between the Mediterranean Fraxinus angustifolia Vahl and the temperate Fraxinus excelsior L. (Oleaceae) ash trees,aim to examine mechanisms related to the formation of hybrid zones between the mediterranean narrow leaved ash tree fraxinus angustifolia vahl and the common ash fraxinus excelsior l a mostly temperate tree species at the continental scale location temperate and mediterranean europe and the western part of the black sea basin methods we used species distribution models to determine the potential zones of sympatry between the two species which remain largely unknown in addition we analysed 58 populations and 456 samples of ash tree that spanned most of the distribution of the two species across europe and included both parental species and selected hybrid populations levels of hybridization in the 58 populations were estimated using 19 nuclear microsatellite loci including six anonymous nuclear single sequence repeat ssr markers and 13 recently developed single sequence repeats from expressed rna sequence tags est ssrs results bayesian assignment supported the notion of two separate gene pools regardless of the type of marker used which suggest an ancient population structure populations located within the predicted overlap zones had intermediate levels of admixture with a tendency for hybrid populations to occur towards temperate areas selection analyses indicated that six of the est ssrs had been subjected to stabilizing selection whereas two others had been subjected to directional selection results of spatial filtering on the allele frequencies of the loci under directional selection suggest that the number of days of frost and summer temperatures are both ecological factors that can limit the extent of the hybrid zone moreover areas associated with known or predicted hybrid zones showed abrupt changes in allele frequencies compared with the periphery of the distributions main conclusions our analyses suggest that the hybrid structure in these closely related ash species is ancient and asymmetric and that climate driven selection in particular cold weather can potentially limit the extent of hybrid populations,2012,0.975
Potential distribution of American black bears in northwest Mexico and implications for their conservation,defining areas of potential distribution for large carnivores is a critical step for generating conservation strategies ecological niche modelling is an important tool for identifying potential areas for conservation of carnivores such as american black bears ursus americanus in the sierra madre occidental smocc and the sky islands si region of northwest mexico our objective was to define areas and environmental factors that influence bear distribution and understand the causes of their absence we used garp genetic algorithm for rule set prediction to define the potential area of distribution using historical and current records of black bear n 5 582 and 23 bioclimatic and physical variables we obtained a consensus model with a high probability of occurrence and power prediction representing 80 of the smocc 221 078 km2 including the si region sonora and chihuahua deserts the ecological dimensions of the model include temperate dry and mixed forest low rainfall low temperatures and elevation above 1 500 m with considerable slope variation information provided by residents of aguascalientes chihuahua durango and zacatecas indicate that the species was extirpated in central and southwest durango and zacatecas about 50 years ago coinciding with the use of 1080 poison sodium fluoroacetate to eradicate livestock predators combined with habitat loss fragmentation and excessive hunting in the region these factors precipitated the regional extirpation of the species areas such as those we have identified may be important sites for the reintroduction of black bears,2012,0.516
Relative embryo length as an adaptation to habitat and life cycle in Apiaceae,â the factors driving the evolution of the relative embryo length in apiaceae were examined we tested the hypothesis that seeds with large relative embryo length because of more rapid germination are beneficial in dry and open habitats and for short lived species we also analyzed to what extent delayed germination as a result of embryo growth can be considered a dormancy mechanism â hypotheses were tested by correlating the relative embryo length with other plant traits habitat and climatic variables the adaptive nature of the relative embryo length was determined by comparing the performance of a pure drift brownian motion bm model of trait evolution with that of a selection inertia ornstein uhlenbeck ou model â a positive correlation of the relative embryo length with germination speed and negative correlations with the amount of habitat shade longevity and precipitation were found an ou model in which the evolution of longer embryos corresponded to a transition to habitats of high light or to a short life cycle outperformed significantly a bm model â the results indicated that the relative embryo length may have evolved as an adaptation to habitat and life cycle whereas dormancy was mainly related to temperature at the sampling sites,2012,0.222
Humans introduce viable seeds to the Arctic on footwear,expanding visitation to polar regions combined with climate warming increases the potential for alien species introduction and establishment we quantified vascular plant propagule pressure associated with different groups of travelers to the high arctic archipelago of svalbard and evaluated the potential of introduced seeds to germinate under the most favorable average svalbard soil temperature 10â c we sampled the footwear of 259 travelers arriving by air to svalbard during the summer of 2008 recording 1 019 seeds a mean of 3 9 â 0 8 seeds per traveler assuming the seed influx is representative for the whole year we estimate a yearly seed load of around 270 000 by this vector alone seeds of 53 species were identified from 17 families with poaceae having both highest diversity and number of seeds eight of the families identified are among those most invasive worldwide while the majority of the species identified were non native to svalbard the number of seeds was highest on footwear that had been used in forested and alpine areas in the 3 months prior to traveling to svalbard and increased with the amount of soil affixed to footwear in total 26 of the collected seeds germinated under simulated svalbard conditions our results demonstrate high propagule transport through aviation to highly visited cold climate regions and isolated islands is occurring alien species establishment is expected to increase with climate change particularly in high latitude regions making the need for regional management considerations a priority,2012,0.862
A holomorph approach to xiphosuran evolution-a case study on the ontogeny of Euproops.,specimens of euproops sp xiphosura chelicerata from the carboniferous piesberg quarry near osnabrã ck germany represent a relatively complete growth series of 10 stages based on this growth sequence morphological changes throughout the ontogeny can be identified the major change affects the shape of the epimera of the opisthosoma in earlier stages they appear very spine like whereas in later stages the bases of these spine like structures become broader the broadened bases are then successively drawn out distally in the most mature stage known the epimera are of trapezoidal shape and approach each other closely to form a complete flange around the thoracetron fused tergites of the opisthosoma these ontogenetic changes question the taxonomic status of different species of euproops as the latter appear to correspond to different stages of the ontogenetic series reconstructed from the piesberg specimens this means that supposed separate species could in fact represent different growth stages of a single species it could alternatively indicate that heterochrony evolutionary change of developmental timing plays an important role in the evolution of xiphosura we propose a holomorph approach i e reconstructing ontogenetic sequences for fossil and extant species as a sound basis for a taxonomic phylogenetic and evolutionary discussion of xiphosura,2012,0.715
"Detailed Food Web Networks of Three Greater Antillean Coral Reef Systems: The Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica",food webs represent one of the most complex aspects of community biotic interactions complex food webs are represented as networks of interspecific interactions where nodes represent species or groups of species and links are predator prey interactions this paper presents reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three greater antillean regions of the caribbean the cayman islands cuba and jamaica though not taxonomically comprehensive each food web nevertheless comprises producers and consumers single celled and multicellular organisms and species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds species are grouped into trophic guilds if their prey and predator links are indistinguishable the data list guilds taxonomic composition prey guilds species and predators primary producer and invertebrate richness are regionally uniform but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of more detailed occurrence data each region comprises 169 primary producers 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species and 159 178 and 170 vertebrate species in the cayman islands cuba and jamaica respectively caribbean coral reefs are among the world s most endangered by anthropogenic activities the datasets presented here will facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation the assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion and the application of food webs to ecosystem analyses,2012,0.911
Identifying Tree Populations for Conservation Action through Geospatial Analyses,rapid development of information and communication technologies has made it possible to easily collect georeferenced information on species and their environment and to use it for analyzing biological diversity its distribution and threats to it such analyses can importantly inform development of conservation strategies and priorities especially across countries or species distribution ranges guarino et al 2002 data for spatial analyses on species or genetic diversity and its distribution are collected in specifically designed studies obtained from existing records of species occurrence or both observations may be complemented by species distribution modelling where the potential occurrence of a species is predicted based on its documented geographic distribution and climate in those areas results on the distribution of diversity documented or modelled can then be compared for example with existing protected areas rates of forest degradation threats of environmental changes or socio economic indicators to identify priority tree populations and tailor strategies for their conservation and sustainable use pautasso 2009 in this paper recent case studies on spatial biodiversity analyses across the tropics are presented demonstrating how such analyses can help to identify most unique or most threatened populations of a tree species for conservation actions insights on initiating collaborative research on diversity and distributions of important asian tree species are also discussed,2012,0.962
"The roles of climate, phylogenetic relatedness, introduction effort, and reproductive traits in the establishment of non-native reptiles and amphibians.",we developed a method to predict the potential of non native reptiles and amphibians herpetofauna to establish populations this method may inform efforts to prevent the introduction of invasive non native species we used boosted regression trees to determine whether nine variables influence establishment success of introduced herpetofauna in california and florida we used an independent data set to assess model performance propagule pressure was the variable most strongly associated with establishment success species with short juvenile periods and species with phylogenetically more distant relatives in regional biotas were more likely to establish than species that start breeding later and those that have close relatives average climate match the similarity of climate between native and non native range and life form were also important frogs and lizards were the taxonomic groups most likely to establish whereas a much lower proportion of snakes and turtles established we used results from our best model to compile a spreadsheet based model for easy use and interpretation probability scores obtained from the spreadsheet model were strongly correlated with establishment success as were probabilities predicted for independent data by the boosted regression tree model however the error rate for predictions made with independent data was much higher than with cross validation using training data this difference in predictive power does not preclude use of the model to assess the probability of establishment of herpetofauna because 1 the independent data had no information for two variables meaning the full predictive capacity of the model could not be realized and 2 the model structure is consistent with the recent literature on the primary determinants of establishment success for herpetofauna it may still be difficult to predict the establishment probability of poorly studied taxa but it is clear that non native species especially lizards and frogs that mature early and come from environments similar to that of the introduction region have the highest probability of establishment,2012,0.28
Can species distribution modelling provide estimates of population densities? A case study with jaguars in the Neotropics,aim to test the prediction that environmental suitability derived from species distribution modelling sdm could be a surrogate for jaguar local population density estimates location americas methods we used 1409 occurrence records of jaguars to model the distribution of the species using 11 sdm methods we tested whether modelsâ suitability is linearly correlated with jaguar population densities estimated from 37 different locations we evaluated whether the relationship between density and suitability forms a constraint envelope in which higher densities are found mainly in regions with high suitability whereas low densities can occur in regions with variable suitability we tested this using heteroscedasticity test and quantile regressions results a positive linear relationship between suitability and jaguar density was found only for four methods bioclimatic envelope bioclim genetic algorithm for rule set production garp maximum entropy maxent and generalized boosting models gbm but with weak explanatory power bioclim showed the strongest relationship variance of suitability for lower densities values was larger than for higher values for many of the sdm models used but the quantile regression was significantly positive only for bioclim and random forests rf rf and gbm provided the most accurate models when measured with the standard sdm evaluation metrics but possess poor relationship with local density estimates main conclusions results indicate that the relationship between density and suitability could be better described as a triangular constraint envelope than by a straight positive relationship and some of the sdm methods tested here were able to discriminate regions with high or low local population densities low jaguar densities can occur in areas with low or high suitability whereas high values are restricted to areas where the suitability is greater in high suitability areas but with low jaguar density estimates we discuss how extrinsic factors driving abundance could act at local scales and then prevent higher densities that would be expected by the favourable regional environmental conditions,2012,0.486
An overview of biodiversity informatics with special reference to plant genetic resources,the ever increasing significance of biodiversity conservation and advancements in computer technology for digitization and management of data have catapulted biodiversity informatics into limelight biodiversity informatics enhances the efficiency of biodiversity management by researchers policy makers and funding agencies plant genetic resources pgr are a key component of biodiversity as they have a direct bearing on food and nutritional security as a result pgr informatics that specifically deals with agro biodiversity needs greater patronage this overview describes the state of biodiversity informatics with special reference to pgr informatics the aim of this review is to generate awareness about the existing biodiversity information systems and to stimulate initiatives from all the concerned to frame a comprehensive action plan for developing biodiversity informatics in gene rich countries with a special reference to india 2012,2012,0.195
In search of critically endangered species: the current situation of two tiny salamander species in the neotropical mountains of Mexico.,worldwide one in every three species of amphibian is endangered 39 species have gone extinct in the last 500 years and another 130 species are suspected to have gone extinct in recent decades of the amphibians salamanders have the highest portion of their species in one of the risk categories even higher than the frogs to date there have been few studies that have used recent field data to examine the status of populations of endangered salamanders in this study we evaluate the current situation of two tiny salamanders parvimolge townsendi and thorius pennatulus both of which are distributed at intermediate elevations in the mountains of the northern neotropics and are considered to be critically endangered the first has been proposed as possibly extinct by carrying out exhaustive surveys in both historical and potentially suitable sites for these two species we evaluated their abundance and the characteristics of their habitats and we estimated their potential geographic distribution we visited 22 sites investing 672 person hours of sampling effort in the surveys and found 201 p townsendi salamanders in 11 sites and only 13 t pennatulus salamanders in 5 sites both species were preferentially found in cloud forest fragments that were well conserved or only moderately transformed and some of the salamanders were found in shade coffee plantations the potential distribution area of both species is markedly fragmented and we estimate that it has decreased by more than 48 the results of this study highlight the importance of carrying out exhaustive systematic field surveys to obtain accurate information about the current situation of critically endangered species and help us better understand the crisis that amphibians are facing worldwide,2012,0.969
India’s plant diversity database at landscape level on geospatial platform: prospects and utility in today’s changing climate,characterization quantification and monitoring of biodiversity have been among the major challenges in biodiversity conservation until recently spatial eco logical database in india was almost non existent there is need of a robust and quality database of the biological diversity at species community ecosystem and landscape levels for identification of vulnerable ecosystems and risk species in order to have a national level database on the spatial distribution of biological diversity a nationwide project on the biodi versity characterization at landscape level was imple mented and studies were carried out between 1998 and 2010 to characterize and map the flowering plants richness in the forested landscapes the spatial data base on vegetation types generated from temporal irs liss iii satellite imagery road rail network and set tlements from topomaps and high resolution satellite images and species richness from field sampling were used to generate the spatially explicit species distribution maps and statistics to model the spatial distribu tion of biological richness a customized software package splam has been developed for landscape analysis and spatial data integration this study has resulted in the creation of a large baseline spatial database on vegetation types porosity patchiness interspersion juxtaposition fragmentation disturbance regimes ecosystem uniqueness terrain complexity and species richness the field inventory involving 16 518 geo referenced 0 04 ha plots across india has recorded a total of 7596 plant species the geospatially tagged species database created in the project pro vides information on the endemic rare endangered threatened and economically medicinally important species the database has been shared with organizations including state forest departments and has found extensive applications in policy planning opera tional management biodiversity bio prospecting and climate change studies conservation bio prospecting and climate change studies,2012,0.841
"Worldwide spread of Emery's sneaking ant, Cardiocondyla emeryi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",cardiocondyla emeryi forel 1881 has long been recognized as a cosmopolitan ant species spread around the world by human commerce to evaluate its worldwide distribution i compiled published and unpublished c emeryi specimen records from 1000 sites i documented the earliest known records for 109 geographic areas countries island groups major islands and us states including several for which i found no previously published records antigua aruba barbuda bonaire comoro islands congo republic curaã ao dominica gambia honduras ãžles ã parses martinique montserrat nevis st lucia st martin trinidad turks caicos islands and vanuatu originally from africa cardiocondyla emeryi is now one of the most widespread ants in tropical and subtropical areas although c emeryi is usually very inconspicuous an exceptional aspect of its ecology is that it is one of the few ant species that actually appears to be more common in areas dominated by african big headed ant pheidole megacephala fabricius 1793 in areas where p megacephala occurs at high density few native invertebrates persist yet at sites with high densities of p megacephala on islands of the pacific atlantic and the west indies i usually also found c emeryi it may be that p megacephala benefits c emeryi indirectly through elimination of competing ant species,2012,0.74
Strategies to Observe and Assess Changes of Terrestrial Biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific Regions,biodiversity loss is one of the most critical threats to global environments that has already transgressed planetary boundaries rockstrã m et al 2009 indeed nonlin ear often abrupt changes can drive unacceptable and irreversible deterioration rockstrã m et al 2009 claimed that earthâ s system cannot sustain the current rate of biodiversity loss without signi fi cant erosion of resilience to halt this biodiversity loss global efforts to achieve â œby 2010 a signi fi cant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global regional and national level â called the 2010 biodi versity targets have been made since the agreement by the worldâ s governments in 2002 however the latest data on the status and trends of biodiversity summarized in the third edition of global biodiversity outlook gbo 3 show that the target had not been met secretariat of the convention on biological diversity 2010,2012,0.262
"Distribution and richness of aquatic plants across Europe and Mediterranean countries: patterns, environmental driving factors and comparison with total plant richness",questions what are the geographic patterns of î diversity of aquatic plants and what are the main driving factors are richness trends for aquatic plants similar to total plant richness is the mediterranean area a hot spot for aquatic plants location europe and the mediterranean basin material we listed vascular aquatic plant presence or absence for 44 countries we also compiled total plant species richness and geographic and environmental variables for each country methods we first analysed country ordination based on their aquatic flora constrained by environmental variables dbrda and selected the environmental variables best explaining species patterns best analysis total species richness patterns were studied using maps and latitudinal gradients we used generalized additive models gam to detect the main environmental factors driving species richness both for aquatic plants and total plants results the best analysis identified a single variable that best explains aquatic plant species distribution evapotranspiration however richness of aquatic plants vs latitude varies and no clear trend was observed no relation was found between total plant and aquatic plant richness aquatic and total plant richness peak between 40â and 50â n and values were intermediate at low latitudes gam related aquatic plant richness with water resources and rainfall while total plant richness is mainly driven by evapotranspiration and temperature hydrophytes were relatively more abundant at higher latitudes than helophytes and the ratio correlated with evapotranspiration conclusion southern and western europe hold the highest aquatic plant diversity although no clear latitudinal species richness patterns were found aquatic plant richness is mainly driven by water related variables total plant richness exhibits a latitudinal pattern influenced by the sahara desert which depresses richness at low latitudes best predictors of total plant richness patterns are waterâ energy variables,2012,0.54
Modeling alpine plant distributions at the landscape scale: Do biotic interactions matter?,species distribution models sdms generally ignore biotic processes however it has been shown that biotic interactions from lowland flora contribute to shape the â œrear edgeâ of alpine plant distributions in this study we explored the potential effect of accounting for interactions from dominant lowland congeners representative for the lowland flora for predicting landscape scale distribution 1 km grain of two alpine plant species viola biflora and veronica alpina in a first classical approach we include the lowland species probabilities of occurrence as covariates in the alpine species landscape scale models covariate models in a second novel approach we first used sdms to predict the distribution of the two alpine plants at the landscape scale we then searched for interactive effects with the lowland species and used this information to re predict the landscape parts where alpine and lowland species were previously predicted to co occur abiotic biotic models our â abiotic bioticâ model improved model precision for both alpine species but statistically signif icantly for viola biflora only in contrast the classical covariate approach did not affect the prediction accuracy of viola biflora and decreased the prediction accuracy for veronica alpina this seemed to be caused by collinearity between abiotic and biotic predictors highlighting potential problems with the conventional method used to account for biotic interactions in sdm including potential effects of biotic interactions can improve predictions of alpine speciesâ ranges at the landscape scale ignoring biotic interactions in sdm may lead to biased predictions that are likely to overestimate realized climatic niches and so species distributions the abiotic biotic approach can constitute a robust method to account for biotic interactions in sdm,2012,0.461
Angiosperm Responses to a Low-CO2 World: CAM and C4 Photosynthesis as Parallel Evolutionary Trajectories,crassulacean acid metabolism cam and c4 photosynthetic syndromes have much in common they employ a shared biochemical pathway that enables the concentration of co2 inside plant cells they are both considered to be adaptations to stressful environments and they are both arguably among the most convergent of complex traits having each evolved multiple times in various plant lineages they are also both signature elements of stress adapted floras the world over and play fundamental roles in the ecological success of flowering plants in spite of these similarities the obvious phenotypic and ecological differences between certain groups of fully optimized c4 and cam plants have led us to generally view these syndromes as very distinct ecological adaptations a broad look at the distribution of cam and c4 plants across a very large phylogeny of angiosperms highlights that while cam photosynthesis seems to have evolved more often both cam and c4 origins show tight and overlapping clustering in many regions of the tree suggesting that certain plant lineages are prone to evolve either pathway additionally recent phylogenetic analyses revealed that the origins and diversification of many cam and c4 lineages were recent and contemporaneous in time we postulate that the evolutionary â œstarting pointsâ for cam and c4 pathways could be much more similar than typically acknowledged using species with c3 c4 and cam like intermediate phenotypes as models of cam and c4 evolution has been productive but the distinct advantages that each affords may have promoted rapid ecological divergence that subsequently masked any shared ancestral characteristics between the two pathways focusing on newly discovered phylogenetic â œhotbedsâ of cam and c4 evolution will allow for inclusion of relevant c3 taxa and a finer evaluation of the possible environmental and organismal traits that would strongly favor the evolution of one syndrome over the other,2012,0.216
Removing Fully and Partially Duplicated Records through K-Means Clustering,records duplication is one of research problems in data warehouse this problem arises when various databases are integrated this focuses the the prominent on identification of fully as well as partially duplicated records in this paper we propose a de duplicator algorithm which is based on numeric conversion of entire data for efficiency data mining technique k mean clustering is applied on the numeric value that reduces the number of comparisons among records to identify and remove the duplicated records divide and conquer technique is used to match records within a cluster which further improves the efficiency of the algorithm,2012,0.185
Predicting present and future intra-specific genetic structure through niche hindcasting across 24 millennia.,paleoclimatic reconstructions coupled with species distribution models and identification of extant spatial genetic structure have the potential to provide insights into the demographic events that shape the distribution of intra specific genetic variation across time using the globeflower trollius europaeus as a case study we combined 1 amplified fragment length polymorphisms 2 suites of 1000 years stepwise hindcasted species distributions and 3 a model of diffusion through time over the last 24 000 years to trace the spatial dynamics that most likely fits the species current genetic structure we show that the globeflower comprises four gene pools in europe which from the dry period preceding the last glacial maximum dispersed while tracking the conditions fitting its climatic niche among these four gene pools two are predicted to experience drastic range retraction in the near future our interdisciplinary approach applicable to virtually any taxon is an advance in inferring how climate change impacts species genetic structures,2012,0.606
"Potential ecological distribution of Cytauxzoon felis in domestic cats in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas",the ecological distribution of cytauxzoon felis an often fatal tick borne apicomplexan that infects domestic cats has not been evaluated or identified despite its continued emergence infection of c felis is characterized by lethargy icterus fever anorexia anemia and death the natural vertebrate reservoir of c felis is the bobcat lynx rufus to determine the possible distribution of c felis in three states where infection is common oklahoma missouri and arkansas two separate approaches to ecological niche modeling were implemented first a model relating several different climatic layers to geographic locations where cases of c felis infection were confirmed in domestic cats was developed to predict the possible distribution of the parasite the second model incorporated occurrences of bobcats with environmental layers and land cover suitable for tick vectors to identify areas of overlap where c felis transmission was likely results of both models indicated a high probability of c felis from central oklahoma to south central missouri however other predicted areas of c felis occurrence varied between the two modeling approaches modeling the vertebrate reservoir and the tick vector predicted a broader possible distribution compared to modeling cases of c felis infection in domestic cats our results suggest that c felis is likely to extend beyond areas predicted by case modeling due to the presence of both the vector and reservoir,2012,0.763
ThesauForm—Traits: A web based collaborative tool to develop a thesaurus for plant functional diversity research,research on the various components of biodiversity has and will produce large quantities of heterogeneous and distributed data that need to be integrated and characterized in a unified way to reveal their full potential over the last thirty years the trait based functional approach to biodiversity has undergone an extraordinary expansion and has been key to advances in many fields of natural science to represent exploit and share the tremendous amount of data the biodiversity community has to acquire data standards which should reflect the perception of this community a first step towards this goal is to define the set of concepts that form the basis of this particular domain of knowledge thereby developing a thesaurus for plant functional diversity research such concepts can be represented by a controlled list of preferred terms that are identified by the thesaurus developers such a thesaurus will serve as a stable reference of standards for integration purposes specifically when published in rdf language a semantic web standard and in addition available as linked data on the web here we present thesauform traits a web based tool dedicated to the collaborative construction of a thesaurus by experts in the field of plant functional diversity research thesauform â traits fully exploits the key principle of the semantic web to facilitate both the thesaurus construction with skos and the interaction with dublin core and foaf it has been successfully used by a group of 15 experts to annotate and validate a set of definitions for more than 150 plant traits thesaufom â traits will be made available as an open source product and will allow scientific communities of all fields to develop thesauri for their specific domain,2012,0.015
Do bioclimate variables improve performance of climate envelope models?,climate envelope models are widely used to forecast potential effects of climate change on species distributions a key issue in climate envelope modeling is the selection of predictor variables that most directly influence species to determine whether model performance and spatial predictions were related to the selection of predictor variables we compared models using bioclimate variables with models constructed from monthly climate data for twelve terrestrial vertebrate species in the southeastern usa using two different algorithms random forests or generalized linear models and two model selection techniques using uncorrelated predictors or a subset of user defined biologically relevant predictor variables there were no differences in performance between models created with bioclimate or monthly variables but one metric of model performance was significantly greater using the random forest algorithm compared with generalized linear models spatial predictions between maps using bioclimate and monthly variables were very consistent using the random forest algorithm with uncorrelated predictors whereas we observed greater variability in predictions using generalized linear models,2012,0.426
"The WISER metadatabase: the key to more than 100 ecological datasets from European rivers, lakes and coastal waters",in ecological sciences the role of metadata i e key information about a dataset to make existing datasets visible and discoverable has become increasingly important within the eu funded wiser project water bodies in europe integrative systems to assess ecological status and recovery we designed a metadatabase to allow scientists to find the optimal data for their analyses an online questionnaire helped to collect metadata from the data providers and an online query tool http www wiser eu results meta database facilitated data evaluation the wiser metadatabase currently holds information on 114 datasets 22 river 71 lake 1 general freshwater and 20 coastal transitional datasets which also can be accessed by external scientists we evaluate if generally used metadata standards e g darwin core iso 19115 csdgm eml are suitable for such specific purposes as wiser and suggest at least the linkage with standard metadata fields furthermore we discuss whether the simple metadata documentation is enough for others to reuse a dataset and why there is still reluctance to publish both metadata and primary research data i e time and financial constraints misuse of data abandoning intellectual property rights we emphasise that metadata publication has major advantages as it makes datasets detectable by other scientists and generally makes a scientistâ s work more visible,2012,0.221
Shrinking forests under warming: evidence of Podocarpus parlatorei (pino del cerro) from the subtropical Andes.,phylogeography in combination with ecological niche modeling enm is a robust tool to analyze hypotheses on range shifts under changing climates particularly of taxa and areas with scant fossil records we combined phylogeographic analysis and enm techniques to study the effects of alternate cold and warm i e glacial and interglacial periods on the subtropical montane cold tolerant conifer podocarpus parlatorei from yungas forests of the central andes twenty one populations comprising 208 individuals were analyzed by sequences of the trnl trnf cpdna region and 78 sites were included in the enm eight haplotypes were detected most of which were widespread while 3 of them were exclusive of latitudinally marginal areas haplotype diversity was mostly even throughout the latitudinal range two distribution models based on 8 bioclimatic variables indicate a rather continuous distribution during cooling while under warming remained within stable yet increasingly fragmented areas although no major range shifts are expected with warming long lasting persistence of cold hardy taxa inhabiting subtropical mountains may include in situ and ex situ conservation actions particularly toward southern colder areas,2012,0.409
"Improving access to biodiversity data for, and from, EIAs – a data publishing framework built to global standards",biodiversity information obtained during environmental impact assessments eias is rarely accessible for other uses following the completion of the eia such data need to be made readily accessible adding them to publicly accessible national datasets is important if biodiversity science conservation and future decisions based on environmental assessment are to benefit from new biodiversity data and improved biodiversity data coverage an â eia biodiversity data publishing frameworkâ based on the global biodiversity information facility gbif global standards is thus proposed to meet this need this paper outlines the gbif catalysed initiative to establish such an operational framework for uptake by the eia community as well as options that are available for data publishing in the absence of such a framework it reviews the current state of accessibility and management of the primary biodiversity data associated with eia studies and highlights the urgent need for uptake of a range of data publishing tools and best practices for making eia biodiversity data exchangeable using globally accepted standards lessons learnt from pilot projects in india and south africa underline the call for the rapid uptake of a national to global scale eia biodiversity data publishing framework,2012,0.184
"Anuran Species Composition and Distribution Patterns in Brazilian Cerrado, a Neotropical Hotspot",species distribution patterns result from the combination of multiple factors acting over different spatial and temporal scales we analyze the distribution patterns of anuran amphibians within the cerrado domain of south america in a historical framework first we provide an updated list of species based on extensive research in zoological collections and fieldwork we then explore patterns of endemism and the distribution of species occurring both in cerrado and each of the adjoining domains providing directions for future hypotheses tests we found 209 anuran species occurring in localities within cerrado among them 150 are primarily associated with cerrado and 59 are typical of one of the cerrado adjoining domains widespread species account for only 14 of the cerrado typical species species occurring in cerrado and one adjoining domain present a highly structured spatial pattern in which amazonian species are restricted to the northwestern cerrado atlantic species to the southeastern cerrado caatinga species to the northeastern cerrado and chaco species to the southwestern cerrado cerrado endemics occur in most localities and in all regions whereas narrow endemics 60 000 km2 are restricted to mountain ranges in central southeastern and southwestern cerrado the limited distribution of species shared with one of the four adjoining domains highlights the influence of independent species pools more associated with other domains,2012,0.994
"A Battle Lost? Report on Two Centuries of Invasion and Management of Lantana camara L. in Australia, India and South Africa",recent discussion on invasive species has invigorated the debate on strategies to manage these species lantana camara l a shrub native to the american tropics has become one of the worst weeds in recorded history in australia india and south africa lantana has become very widespread occupying millions of hectares of land here we examine historical records to reconstruct invasion and management of lantana over two centuries and ask can we fight the spread of invasive species or do we need to develop strategies for their adaptive management we carried out extensive research of historical records constituting over 75 of records on invasion and management of this species in the three countries the records indicate that governments in australia india and south africa have taken aggressive measures to eradicate lantana over the last two centuries but these efforts have been largely unsuccessful we found that despite control measures the invasion trajectory of lantana has continued upwards and that post war land use change might have been a possible trigger for this spread a large majority of studies on invasive species address timescales of less than one year and even fewer address timescales of 10 years an understanding of species invasions over long time scales is of paramount importance while archival records may give only a partial picture of the spread and management of invasive species in the absence of any other long term dataset on the ecology of lantana our study provides an important insight into its invasion spread and management over two centuries and across three continents while the established paradigm is to expend available resources on attempting to eradicate invasive species our findings suggest that in the future conservationists will need to develop strategies for their adaptive management rather than fighting a losing battle,2012,0.951
The development of a digitising service centre for natural history collections,digitarium is a joint initiative of the finnish museum of natural history and the university of eastern finland it was established in 2010 as a dedicated shop for the large scale digitisation of natural history collections digitarium offers service packages based on the digitisation process including tagging imag ing data entry georeferencing filtering and validation during the process all specimens are imaged and distance workers take care of the data entry from the images te customer receives the data in darwin core archive format as well as images of the specimens and their labels digitarium also offers the option of publishing images through morphbank sharing data through gbif and archiving data for long term storage service packages can also be designed on demand to respond to the specific needs of the customer te paper also discusses logistics costs and intellectual property rights ipr issues related to the work that digitarium undertakes,2012,0.152
Future climate change will favour non-specialist mammals in the (sub)arctics,arctic and subarctic i e sub arctic ecosystems are predicted to be particularly susceptible to climate change the area of tundra is expected to decrease and temperate climates will extend further north affecting species inhabiting northern environments consequently species at high latitudes should be especially susceptible to climate change likely experiencing significant range contractions contrary to these expectations our modelling of species distributions suggests that predicted climate change up to 2080 will favour most mammals presently inhabiting sub arctic europe assuming full dispersal ability most species will benefit from climate change except for a few cold climate specialists however most resident species will contract their ranges if they are not able to track their climatic niches but no species is predicted to go extinct if climate would change far beyond current predictions however species might disappear the reason for the relative stability of mammalian presence might be that arctic regions have experienced large climatic shifts in the past filtering out sensitive and range restricted taxa we also provide evidence that for most sub arctic mammals it is not climate change per se that will threaten them but possible constraints on their dispersal ability and changes in community composition such impacts of future changes in species communities should receive more attention in literature,2012,0.908
Phylogeography of Quercus variabilis Based on Chloroplast DNA Sequence in East Asia: Multiple Glacial Refugia and Mainland-Migrated Island Populations.,the biogeographical relationships between far separated populations in particular those in the mainland and islands remain unclear for widespread species in eastern asia where the current distribution of plants was greatly influenced by the quaternary climate deciduous oriental oak quercus variabilis is one of the most widely distributed species in eastern asia in this study leaf material of 528 q variabilis trees from 50 populations across the whole distribution mainland china korea peninsular as well as japan zhoushan and taiwan islands was collected and three cpdna intergenic spacer fragments were sequenced using universal primers a total of 26 haplotypes were detected and it showed a weak phylogeographical structure in eastern asia populations at species level however in the central eastern region of mainland china the populations had more haplotypes than those in other regions with a significant phylogeographical structure n st 0 751 g st 0 690 p 0 05 q variabilis displayed high interpopulation and low intrapopulation genetic diversity across the distribution range both unimodal mismatch distribution and significant negative fu s f s indicated a demographic expansion of q variabilis populations in east asia a fossil calibrated phylogenetic tree showed a rapid speciation during pleistocene with a population augment occurred in middle pleistocene both diversity patterns and ecological niche modelling indicated there could be multiple glacial refugia and possible bottleneck or founder effects occurred in the southern japan we dated major spatial expansion of q variabilis population in eastern asia to the last glacial cycle s a period with sea level fluctuations and land bridges in east china sea as possible dispersal corridors this study showed that geographical heterogeneity combined with climate and sea level changes have shaped the genetic structure of this wide ranging tree species in east asia,2012,0.955
"Latitude, elevational climatic zonation and speciation in New World vertebrates",many biodiversity hotspots are located in montane regions especially in the tropics a possible explanation for this pattern is that the narrow thermal tolerances of tropical species and greater climatic stratification of tropical mountains create more opportunities for climate associated parapatric or allopatric speciation in the tropics relative to the temperate zone however it is unclear whether a general relationship exists among latitude climatic zonation and the ecology of speciation recent taxon specific studies obtained different results regarding the role of climate in speciation in tropical versus temperate areas here we quantify overlap in the climatic distributions of 93 pairs of sister species of mammals birds amphibians and reptiles restricted to either the new world tropics or to the northern temperate zone we show that elevational ranges of tropical and temperate zone species do not differ from one another yet the temperature range experienced by species in the temperate zone is greater than for those in the tropics moreover tropical sister species tend to exhibit greater similarity in their climatic distributions than temperate sister species this pattern suggests that evolutionary conservatism in the thermal niches of tropical taxa coupled with the greater thermal zonation of tropical mountains may result in increased opportunities for allopatric isolation speciation and the accumulation of species in tropical montane regions our study exemplifies the power of combining phylogenetic and spatial datasets of global climatic variation to explore evolutionary rather than purely ecological explanations for the high biodiversity of tropical montane regions,2012,0.942
The post-Pleistocene population genetic structure of a western North American passerine: the chestnut-backed chickadee Poecile rufescens,the population genetic structure of many high latitude species in north america was affected by the last glaciation and current structure refl ects isolation in refugia and colonisation patterns large ice free areas both south of the ice sheets and in the north west supported numerous fl ora and fauna throughout this period fossil evidence suggests additional western glacial refugia existed both on haida gwaii the queen charlotte islands and in northern idaho the chestnut backed chickadee poecile rufescens is a songbird found along the western edge of canada and the united states with a linear distribution along the coast and an isolated interior population mitochondrial dna sequence data control region and atpase 6 8 from 10 populations n 122 were used to test for population genetic structure the data supported a general north south separation haida gwaii was found to be genetically distinct from the rest of the populations and the two northern british columbia populations separated from all but alaska the interior population showed evidence of both historical isolation and secondary colonisation by birds from coastal populations neutrality tests suggested a past population expansion in all populations from previously glaciated areas and a stable population in areas believed to be unglaciated t is pattern supports the use of multiple glacial refugia by the chestnut backed chickadee we could not reject the use of haida gwaii or the interior i e clearwater basin as glacial refugia,2012,0.951
Worldwide spread of Cerapachys biroi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Cerapachyinae),cerapachys biroi forel 1907 is a small inconspicuous ant that has spread around the world through human commerce to examine the worldwide distribution of c biroi we compiled and mapped specimen records from 100 sites we do cumented the earliest known c biroi records for 24 geographic areas countries and island groups including several for which we found no previously published records comoro islands guadeloupe ãžles ã parses indonesia madagascar the seychelles turks caicos islands and the us virgin islands all continental records of cerapachys biroi come from asia where populations show notable geographic variation in morphology suggesting that the species is native to this region conversely the lack of obvious morphological variation among c biroi specimens from outside mainland asia suggests that c biroi is exotic to these regions outside asia all records of c biroi come from islands possibly due to reduced competition with dominant ants in island habitats perhaps the many dominant native and exotic ant species in continental regions have prevented widespread establishment of c biroi,2012,0.674
"Reproduction and Morphohlogy of the Travancore Tortoise (Indotestudo travancorica) Boulenger, 1907",the most threatened chelonians occur in asia where virtually all species are heavily harvested for food and traditional medicinal trades van dijk et al 2000 this includes the two endemic chelonians indotestudo travancorica and the sympatric vijayachelys silvatica in the region of the western ghats south india indotestudo travincorica is listed as vulnerable under the iucn red list and comes under schedule iv of the indian wildlife protection act,2012,0.48
First record of the deep-water whalefish Cetichthys indagator (Actinopterygii: Cetomimidae) in the North Atlantic Ocean,the whalefish cetichthys indagator is reported for the first time in the north atlantic ocean this record increases to five the number of specimens ever caught and represents the northernmost occurrence of this species in the northern hemisphere,2012,0.463
New trends in biodiversity informatics,plant biosystems dedicated a special issue to present and discuss new trends in biodiversity and informatics the definition and theoretical framework of this challenging and stimulating research field are delineated together with several examples that illustrate data collection organisation dissemination analysis and application,2012,0.275
Inverted patterns of genetic diversity in continental and island populations of the heather Erica scoparia s.l.,aim using the heather erica scoparia s l as a model this paper aims to test theoretical predictions that island populations are genetically less diverse than continental ones and to determine the extent to which island and continental populations are connected by pollen and seed mediated gene flow location macaronesia mediterranean atlantic fringe of europe methods patterns of genetic diversity are described based on variation at two chloroplast dna cpdna loci and one nuclear dna ndna locus for 109 accessions across the entire distribution range of the species global patterns of genetic differentiation were investigated using principal coordinates analysis genetic differentiation between island and continental areas estimations of pollen and seed mediated gene flow and the presence of phylogeographical signal were assessed by means of fst nst continental scale and fij nij local scale extant and past distribution ranges of the species were inferred from niche modelling using layers describing present and last glacial maximum lgm macroclimatic conditions results the azores exhibited a significantly higher genetic diversity than the continent the lowest levels of genetic differentiation were observed between the azores and the western mediterranean and the diversity observed in the azores resulted from at least two colonization waves within the azores kinship coefficients showed a significant and much steeper decrease with geographical distance in the cpdna than in the ndna the distribution predicted by lgm models was markedly different from the current potential distribution particularly in western europe where no suitable areas were predicted by lgm models and along the atlantic coast of the african continent where lgm models predicted highly suitable climatic conditions main conclusions the higher diversity observed in azorean than in continental populations is inconsistent with macarthur and wilsonâ s equilibrium model and derived theoretical population genetic expectations this inverted pattern may be the result of extinction on the continent coupled with multiple island colonization events and subsequent allopatric diversification and lineage hybridization in the azores the results highlight the role of allopatric diversification in explaining diversification on islands and suggest that this process has played a much more significant role in shaping azorean biodiversity than previously thought,2012,0.201
Climate Change Impacts on the Future Distribution of Date Palms: A Modeling Exercise Using CLIMEX,climate is changing and as a consequence some areas that are climatically suitable for date palm phoenix dactylifera l cultivation at the present time will become unsuitable in the future in contrast some areas that are unsuitable under the current climate will become suitable in the future consequently countries that are dependent on date fruit export will experience economic decline while other countries economies could improve knowledge of the likely potential distribution of this economically important crop under current and future climate scenarios will be useful in planning better strategies to manage such issues this study used climex to estimate potential date palm distribution under current and future climate models by using one emission scenario a2 with two different global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr the results indicate that in north africa many areas with a suitable climate for this species are projected to become climatically unsuitable by 2100 in north and south america locations such as south eastern bolivia and northern venezuela will become climatically more suitable by 2070 saudi arabia iraq and western iran are projected to have a reduction in climate suitability the results indicate that cold and dry stresses will play an important role in date palm distribution in the future these results can inform strategic planning by government and agricultural organizations by identifying new areas in which to cultivate this economically important crop in the future and those areas that will need greater attention due to becoming marginal regions for continued date palm cultivation,2012,0.33
VegMV – the vegetation database of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,we review vegmv the phytosociological database of mecklenburg vorpommern ne germany with electronically stored vegetation relevã s givd id eu de 001 the database was established in 1994 and is now hosted by the institute of botany and landscape ecology university of greifswald germany http www botanik uni greifswald de vegmv on 27 october 2011 the database contained 53 842 relevã s mostly from the federal state of mecklenburg vorpommern collected by approximately 320 au thors between 1928 and 2010 some 28 of the relevã s were taken from published papers or monographs 42 from theses and 30 from various unpublished reports and â œfield booksâ a wide variety of habitats occurring in mecklenburg vorpommern are repre sented but territorial coverage by relevã s is uneven with lower coverage of less attractive and poorly accessible areas the largest numbers of relevã s are from managed grasslands molinio arrhenatheretea arable land stellarietea mediae and eutrophic reed communities phragmito magno caricetea we quantify and discuss possible bias in the data such as preferential selection of sam pling sites habitat and small scale preferences taxonomic inconsistencies spatial agglomeration and missing values for some data elements we present a brief introduction to the consistent phytosociological vegetation classification developed using the vegmv data further applications of the data and the conditions for their use are reported,2012,0.2
Geographic spread of Pyramica hexamera,pyramica hexamera is a tiny predatory ant that feeds on minute soil arthropods originally from east asia p hexamera has been recently introduced to north america apparently through human commerce here we document the known range of p hexamera in asia and the new world we compiled and mapped 73 site records of p hexamera all from east asia and the southeastern us in asia p hexamera records range from 21 9â n to 36 4â n earliest date and number of sites in parentheses in japan 1949 25 south korea 1982 2 and taiwan 1992 6 in the us p hexamera records range from 28 6â n to 34 3â n in florida 1987 2 louisiana 1987 5 mississippi 2003 32 and alabama 2007 1 pyramica hexamera is reported for the first time from alabama,2012,0.355
International Long-Term Ecological Research Network Activities in the East Asia-Pacific Region and Biodiversity Monitoring,in october 2010 the tenth meeting of the conference of parties of the united nations convention on biological diversity cbd cop 10 was held in nagoya japan it was almost two decades since the un convention on biological diversity cbd came into being in december 1993 as we all know the needs for the eco nomic utilization of natural resources are ever increasing at local regional and global levels the reasons for the increase of the needs include a diverse array of socioeconomic factors ranging from individual societal industrial governmental to international levels in these processes of economic activities living organisms plants animals microorganisms are killed and utilized the habitats for the organ isms are destroyed the ecosystems that are the integral entities for ensuring their functionality are degraded or destroyed and the landscapes that comprise a com plex of ecosystems are fragmented or destroyed ultimately biological diversities of genes species ecosystems and landscapes are degraded or lost at local regional and global levels,2012,0.598
Integrating biodiversity distribution knowledge: toward a global map of life,global knowledge about the spatial distribution of species is orders of magnitude coarser in resolution than other geographically structured environmental datasets such as topography or land cover yet such knowledge is crucial in deciphering ecological and evolutionary processes and in managing global change in this review we propose a conceptual and cyber infrastructure framework for refining species distributional knowledge that is novel in its ability to mobilize and integrate diverse types of data such that their collective strengths overcome individual weaknesses the ultimate aim is a public online quality vetted map of life that for every species integrates and visualizes available distributional knowledge while also facilitating user feedback and dynamic biodiversity analyses first milestones toward such an infrastructure have now been implemented,2012,0.486
Distribution of 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum' and its vector Cacopsylla pruni in European fruit-growing areas: A review,european stone fruit yellows esfy is an eu listed i aii disease affecting prunus spp caused by â candidatus phytoplasma prunorumâ this paper reports the results from a systematic literature review approach that sought to determine the geographic distribution of â ca phytoplasma prunorumâ in european fruit growing areas evidence for the presence of the phytoplasma was found for 15 of the 27 eu countries it is prevalent in the most important stone fruit production areas of central and southern europe where it causes substantial impact in apricots prunus armeniaca japanese plums p salicina and peaches p persica in northern european areas where these hosts are not produced it is occasion ally found on tolerant species p domestica however because surveys of the disease sta tus of tolerant hosts are not performed it remains unclear whether the pathogen is absent in northern europe or survives in tolerant cultivated or wild hosts no reports of esfy were found from the southernmost part of europe portugal spain andalucia castileâ la man cha italy sicily puglia greece crete cyprus and malta this may be explained by the absence of the favoured wild hosts of the vector moreover it remains unclear if the vector finds suitable conditions for aestivation and overwintering in these regions introduction european stone fruit yellows efsy is an important disease affecting prunus spp which is caused by â candida tus phytoplasma prunorumâ this pathogen is currently reg ulated in annex i aii of the ec directive 2000 29 as â apricot chlorotic leafroll mycoplasmaâ and requirements for the movement of prunus plants are set out in annex iv esfy symptoms were first observed in france on apri â pe cot p armeniaca and described as â de â rissement de lâ abricotier par apoplexieâ chabrolin 1924 then â plum leptonecrosisâ pln was described on japanese plum p salicina in italy goida nich 1934 in 1965 morvan and castelain named the disease â enroulement chlorotique de lâ abricotierâ eca â apricot chlorotic leafrollâ aclr symptoms of â peach yellowingâ were also associated with severe declines on p persica poggi pollini et al 1993 finally all these symptoms on prunus have been associ ated with genetically very similar phytoplasma and the name â european stone fruit yellowsâ was proposed for the disease lorenz et al 1994 phylogenetic analyses revealed that the esfy agent is closely related to the pear decline and apple proliferation pathogens constitut ing the 16srx group and the name â candidatus phytopl asma prunorumâ was proposed seemu 2004 â ller schneider symptoms of esfy are obvious only in p armeniaca p salicina and p persica whereas other important stone fruit species are either tolerant usually not showi,2012,0.625
Overview of the GIVD-registered databases,the contribution lists all 182 vegetation plot databases registered in the global index of vegetation plot databases givd as of 12 july 2012 for each database the givd id the proper name and where applicable a descriptive subtitle as well as the num ber of non overlapping plots are given the databases are arranged by their givd id and grouped according to continents for each database it is indicated whether it is presented with a long database report a short database report or not at all in this volume and the web link where up to date metadata are available,2012,0.354
New Records Of Four Reef-Associated Fishes From East Coast Of India,first records of viper moray enchelynassa canina quoy et gaimard 1824 vermiculated blenny entomacrodus vermiculatus valenciennes 1836 cardinalfish apogon fleurieu lacepã de 1802 and orange lined cardinalfish archamia fucata cantor 1849 in the waters along the east coast of india are herewith docu mented this record increases the knowledge on the richness of the indian marine reef associated fauna and may suggest a range extension of the geographical distribution of the mentioned species from the western indian waters to east coast of india,2012,0.435
"First record of the warty oreo, Allocyttus verrucosus (Gilchrist, 1906), in Greenland waters",fishes of the zeiform family oreosomatidae containing 10 valid species in four genera chiefly occur in the deeper 500â 1000 m temperate slope waters of the southern hemisphere while most oreosomatid fish are only rarely observed north of the equator tokranov et al 2004 ditty 2006 allocyttus folletti myers 1960 is only reported to occur in the north pacific karrer 1990 mecklenburg et al 2002 for the north atlantic occurrences of oreosomatid fish are chiefly reported for temperate to subtropical waters karrer et al 1986 ditty 2006 but sporadic occurrences further north have also been reported for allocyttus verrucosus gilchrist 1906 west of scotland du buit and quero 1993 quero et al 1997 and pseudocyttus maculatus gilchrist 1906 in icelandic waters post and jonsson 1996 the recent issue of â iâ slenskir fiskarâ joâ nsson and paâ lsson 2006 lists a verrucosus p maculatus and neocyttus helgae holt and byrne 1908 for icelandic waters thus indicating that oreosomatid fish may occur more regularly in northern north atlantic waters than previously anticipated this paper describes the first record of a verrucosus in greenland waters and compares its measurements and meristics with other specimens of a verrucosus and a folletti allowing for absolutely certain identification a detailed comparison of the new specimen with specimens of a folletti was necessary since a verrucosus and a folletti are difficult to distinguish in the north pacific this was probably the reason for reports of a verrucosus from that area by e g abe and hotta 1962 and kobayashi et al 1968 later karrer 1990 gillespie 1993 and mecklenburg 2002 noted that records of a verrucosus from the north pacific all belong to a folletti,2012,0.302
First record of the blue sea slug (Glaucus atlanticus) from Andhra Pradesh – India,the blue sea slug glaucus atlanticus forster 1777 gastropoda glaucidae is a nudibranch that occurs in temperate and tropical oceans throughout the world it is characterized by a silvery white dorsal surface and dark blue ventral surface,2012,0.325
How many species of algae are there?,algae have been estimated to include anything from 30 000 to more than 1 million species an attempt is made here to arrive at a more accurate estimate using species numbers in phyla and classes included in the on line taxonomic database algaebase http www algaebase org despite uncertainties regarding what organisms should be included as algae and what a species is in the context of the various algal phyla and classes a conservative approach results in an estimate of 72 500 algal species names for 44 000 of which have probably been published and 33 248 names have been processed by algaebase to date june 2012 some published estimates of diatom numbers are of over 200 000 species which would result in four to five diatom species for every other algal species concern is expressed at the decline and potential extinction of taxonomists worldwide capable of improving and completing the necessary systematic studies,2012,0.904
"Diversification, Biogeographic Pattern, and Demographic History of Taiwanese Scutellaria Species Inferred from Nuclear and Chloroplast DNA",the ragged topography created by orogenesis generates diversified habitats for plants in taiwan in addition to colonization from nearby mainland china high species diversity and endemism of plants is also present in taiwan five of the seven scutellaria species lamiaceae in taiwan for example are endemic to the island hypotheses of multiple sources or in situ radiation have arisen to explain the high endemism of taiwanese species in this study phylogenetic analyses using both nuclear and chloroplast markers revealed the multiple sources of taiwanese scutellaria species and confirmed the rapid and recent speciation of endemic species especially those of the â â indica groupâ â composed of s indica s austrotaiwanensis s tashiroi and s playfairii the common ancestors of the indica group colonized first in northern taiwan and dispersed regionally southward and eastward climate changes during glacial interglacial cycles led to gradual colonization and variance events in the ancestors of these species resulting in the present distribution and genetic differentiation of extant populations population decline was also detected in s indica which might reflect a bottleneck effect from the glacials in contrast the recently speciated endemic members of the indica group have not had enough time to accumulate much genetic variation and are thus genetically insensitive to demographic fluctuations but the extant lineages were spatially expanded in the coalescent process this study integrated phylogenetic and population genetic analyses to illustrate the evolutionary history of taiwanese scutellaria of high endemism and may be indicative of the diversification mechanism of plants on continental islands,2012,0.799
Comparison of Marine Spatial Planning Methods in Madagascar Demonstrates Value of Alternative Approaches,the government of madagascar plans to increase marine protected area coverage by over one million hectares to assist this process we compare four methods for marine spatial planning of madagascar s west coast input data for each method was drawn from the same variables fishing pressure exposure to climate change and biodiversity habitats species distributions biological richness and biodiversity value the first method compares visual color classifications of primary variables the second uses binary combinations of these variables to produce a categorical classification of management actions the third is a target based optimization using marxan and the fourth is conservation ranking with zonation we present results from each method and compare the latter three approaches for spatial coverage biodiversity representation fishing cost and persistence probability all results included large areas in the north central and southern parts of western madagascar achieving 30 representation targets with marxan required twice the fish catch loss than the categorical method the categorical classification and zonation do not consider targets for conservation features however when we reduced marxan targets to 16 3 matching the representation level of the â œstrict protectionâ class of the categorical result the methods show similar catch losses the management category portfolio has complete coverage and presents several management recommendations including strict protection zonation produces rapid conservation rankings across large diverse datasets marxan is useful for identifying strict protected areas that meet representation targets and minimize exposure probabilities for conservation features at low economic cost we show that methods based on zonation and a simple combination of variables can produce results comparable to marxan for species representation and catch losses demonstrating the value of comparing alternative approaches during initial stages of the planning process choosing an appropriate approach ultimately depends on scientific and political factors including representation targets likelihood of adoption and persistence goals,2012,0.072
Unravelling the evolutionary history of the polyploid complex Ranunculus parnassiifolius (Ranunculaceae),ranunculus l represents the largest genus within ranunculaceae comprising more than 600 species with a worldwide distribution however there are still many gaps in our knowledge of the infrageneric taxonomy and evolution of ranunculus in this regard intraspecific variation of the polyploid complex ranunculus parnassiifolius remains under discussion to reconstruct the biogeographical history of the polyploid complex r parnassiifolius 20 populations distributed throughout the cantabrian mountains pyrenees and alps were investigated phylogenetic studies were based on nuclear internal transcribed spacers its and plastid rpl32 trnl rps16 trnq sequence data analysed using bayesian approaches as well as the evolution of morphological characters additionally biogeographical patterns were conducted using statistical dispersalâ vicariance analysis the analyses presented here support the recognition of two evolutionary independent units r cabrerensis sensu lato s l and r parnassiifolius s l furthermore gradual speciation depending on the biogeographical territory is proposed and optimal reconstructions have probably favoured the ancestor of ranunculus parnassiifolius as originating in the iberian peninsula,2012,0.448
Not-so-splendid isolation: modeling climate-mediated range collapse of a montane mammal Ochotona princeps across numerous ecoregions,we modeled current and future distribution of suitable habitat for the talus obligate montane mammal ochotona princeps american pika across the western usa under increases in temperature associated with contemporary cli mate change to a compare forecasts using only climate variables vs using those plus habitat considerations b identify possible patterns of range collapse center vs margins and large vs small sized patches and c compare conservation and management implications of changes at two taxonomic resolutions and using binned vs binary probability maps we used maxent to analyze relationships between occurrence records and climatic variables to develop a bioclimatic envelope model which we refi ned by masking with a deductive appropriate habitat fi lter based on suitable land cover types we used this fi nal species distribution model to predict distribution of suitable habitat under range wide temperature increases from 1 to 7 â c in 1 â c increments we also compared these results to distri bution under ipcc forecasted climates for 2050 and 2080 t ough all currently recognized lineages and traditionally defi ned subspecies were predicted to lose increasing amounts of habitat as temperatures rose the most dramatic range losses were predicted to occur among traditional subspecies nineteen of the 31 traditional us pika subspecies were predicted to lose î 98 of their suitable habitat under a 7 â c increase in the mean temperature of the warmest quar ter of the year and lineages were predicted to lose 88â 95 of suitable habitat under a 4 â c increase traditional subspecies averaged a predicted 73 range î ƒ 44â 99 reduction t e appropriate habitat fi lter removed 40 â 6 of the predicted climatically suitable pixels in a stepped and monotonically decreasing fashion as predicted temperatures rose predicted range collapse proceeded until only populations in island biogeographic â mainlands â remained which were not in the geographic range center we used this model system to illustrate possible distributional shifts under stepped changes in biologically relevant aspects of climate importance of land cover and taxonomic level in species distribution forecasts and impact of using a single threshold vs multiple categories of persistence probability in predicted range maps we encourage additional research to further investigate the generality of these patterns,2012,0.277
"Frullania knightbridgei, a new liverwort (Frullaniaceae, Marchantiophyta) species from the deep south of Aotearoa-New Zealand based on an integrated evidence-based approach.",frullania is a large and taxonomically complex genus a new liverwort species frullania knightbridgeisp nov from southern new zealand is described and illustrated the new species and its placement in frullania subg microfrullania is based on an integrated evidence based approach derived from morphology ecology experimental growth studies of plasticity as well as sequence data diagnostic characters associated with the leaf and lobule cell wall anatomy oil bodies and spore ultra structure distinguish it from all other new zealand species of frullania a critical comparison is also made between frullania knightbridgei and morphologically allied species of botanical regions outside the new zealand region and an artificial key is provided the new species is similar to some forms of the widespread australasian species frullania rostrata but has unique characters associated with the lobule and oil bodies frullania knightbridgei is remarkably interesting in comparison with the majority of frullania species and indeed liverworts in general in that it is at least partially halotolerant maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses of nuclear ribosomal its2 and plastidic trnl trnf sequences from purported related speciesconfirms its independent taxonomic status and corroborates its placement within frullania subg microfrullania,2012,0.902
Predicting the fate of biodiversity using species' distribution models: enhancing model comparability and repeatability.,species distribution modeling sdm is an increasingly important tool to predict the geographic distribution of species even though many problems associated with this method have been highlighted and solutions have been proposed little has been done to increase comparability among studies we reviewed recent publications applying sdms and found that seventy nine percent failed to report methods that ensure comparability among studies such as disclosing the maximum probability range produced by the models and reporting on the number of species occurrences used we modeled six species of falco from northern europe and demonstrate that model results are altered by 1 spatial bias in species occurrence data 2 differences in the geographic extent of the environmental data and 3 the effects of transformation of model output to presence absence data when applying thresholds depending on the modeling decisions forecasts of the future geographic distribution of falco ranged from range contraction in 80 of the species to no net loss in any species with the best model predicting no net loss of habitat in northern europe the fact that predictions of range changes in response to climate change in published studies may be influenced by decisions in the modeling process seriously hampers the possibility of making sound management recommendations thus each of the decisions made in generating sdms should be reported and evaluated to ensure conclusions and policies are based on the biology and ecology of the species being modeled,2012,0.822
Development of a Threatened Species Portal in the Asia-Pacific Region,biodiversity ecological climatological and environmental data as well as valid models e g ecological niche modeling are required to develop indicators that are more effective in assessing the drivers and states of biodiversity geo bon 2010 in particular biodiversity data provide indispensible information for conservation plans however a critical problem is that most existing data are inaccessible or unavailable because they are either scattered among many databases or are unpub lished meier and dikow 2004 guralnick et al 2007 the promotion of open access to biodiversity data and making these data reusable for conservation strate gies is one of the main goals of geo bon,2012,0.202
"The IUCN global assessments: partnerships, collaboration and data sharing for biodiversity science and policy",the development of standards data sharing and initiatives like the global biodiversity information facility and others have advanced research in many fields including in conservation of biodiversity global assessments of extinction risk to species have been completed by iucn for multiple taxa the iucn global assessments have had a major impact on conservation science and practice as well as biodiversity funding mechanisms though the global environment facility the world bank and the critical ecosystem partnership fund cepf a signature of the assessments is a process of sustained interaction between conservation organizations and the research and academic community effectively integrating science and policy on global scale the model relies on several critical components openness of the conservation community to scientific input and debate engagement of the scientific community conservation organization mediated data collation and data sharing with ease of access this model can be applied to other challenges to conserve biodiversity and assess how biodiversity loss affects the well being of societies across the world the recognition of the importance of biodiversity in meeting the millennium development goals and the recognition of the failure to meet the 2010 biodiversity target illustrate the gap between what needs to be achieved and our current trajectory,2012,0.127
"Parmelina yalungana resurrected and reported from Alaska, China and Russia",parmelina quercina is a well studied foliose macro lichen found on rocks and trees in the northern hemisphere recent studies support multiple species within p quercina based on material from europe north america and western asia the identities of parmelina quercina s lat reported from eastern asia and alaska remain unknown we compared dna sequences secondary chemistry and morphological traits of parmelina from alaska russia and china these data support the resurrection of parmelina yalungana to accommodate eastern asian and alaskan material parmelina yalungana differs from congeners in ascospore dimensions geographic range and molecular data from three gene loci we place p yalungana in the phylogenetic context of the p quercina group using dna from alaskan and russian material,2012,0.329
The Taxonomic Significance of Species That Have Only Been Observed Once: The Genus Gymnodinium (Dinoflagellata) as an Example,taxonomists have been tasked with cataloguing and quantifying the earthâ s biodiversity their progress is measured in code compliant species descriptions that include text images type material and molecular sequences it is from this material that other researchers are to identify individuals of the same species in future observations it has been estimated that 13 to 22 depending on taxonomic group of described species have only ever been observed once species that have only been observed at the time and place of their original description are referred to as oncers oncers are important to our current understanding of biodiversity they may be validly described species that are members of a rare biosphere or they may indicate endemism or that these species are limited to very constrained niches alternatively they may reflect that taxonomic practices are too poor to allow the organism to be re identified or that the descriptions are unknown to other researchers if the latter are true our current tally of species will not be an accurate indication of what we know in order to investigate this phenomenon and its potential causes we examined the microbial eukaryote genus gymnodinium this genus contains 268 extant species 103 38 of which have not been observed since their original description we report traits of the original descriptions and interpret them in respect to the status of the species we conclude that the majority of oncers were poorly described and their identity is ambiguous as a result we argue that the genus gymnodinium contains only 234 identifiable species species that have been observed multiple times tend to have longer descriptions written in english the styles of individual authors have a major effect with a few authors describing a disproportionate number of oncers the information about the taxonomy of gymnodinium that is available via the internet is incomplete and reliance on it will not give access to all necessary knowledge six new names are presented â gymnodinium campbelli for the homonymous name gymnodinium translucens campbell 1973 gymnodinium antarcticum for the homonymous name gymnodinium frigidum balech 1965 gymnodinium manchuriensis for the homonymous name gymnodinium autumnale skvortzov 1968 gymnodinium christenum for the homonymous name gymnodinium irregulare christen 1959 gymnodinium conkufferi for the homonymous name gymnodinium irregulare conrad kufferath 1954 and gymnodinium chinensis for the homonymous name gymnodinium frigidum skvortzov 1968 citation thessen ae patterson dj murray sa 2012 the taxonomic significance,2012,0.991
March of the Green Iguana: Non-native Distribution and Predicted Geographic Range of Iguana iguana in the Greater Caribbean Region,green iguanas iguana iguana l 1758 have been introduced outside their native range largely through the pet trade in many places exotic populations have invaded and many have become established of special concern is the greater caribbean basin where several exotic populations of green iguanas have had a negative impact and may threaten the conservation of several native species including possible native and distinct forms of i iguana in the lesser antilles and the endangered lesser antilles iguana i delicatissima laurenti 1768 we assessed the risk of spread and invasion by green iguanas in the greater caribbean basin using the maximum entropy niche modeling algorithm maxent to predict the potential distribution of this reptile we used a total of 187 location points that represented occurrences from both the native and the invasive range coupled with environmental data as predictor variables our model had average training and test auc values of 0 90 and 0 87 respectively indicating a high predictive ability the model predicts suitable conditions for i iguana in south and central florida mainly along the coast and in regions of all the islands in the caribbean given the known negative impact of green iguanas and their dispersal capabilities governments in the greater caribbean basin should manage non native populations to prevent further spread and revise and enact laws that allow management agencies to respond quickly in the case of new green iguana incursions,2012,0.322
Modelling geographic distribution and detecting conservation gaps in Italy for the threatened beetle Rosalia alpina,presence only models can aid conservation and management of threatened elusive species we developed a maxent model for the rare cerambycid beetle rosalia longicorn rosalia alpina l in italy and neighbouring regions and identified the variables best explaining the speciesâ occurrence on a large scale once successfully validated we used the model to a evaluate the current degree of fragmentation of r alpina range in italy and b quantify the amount of the italian territory with the highest probability of beetle presence within the existing national conservation areas natura 2000 network parks and reserves low 0 5 probability scores of r alpina presence corresponded to 89 of the total area considered whereas high scores 0 9 covered only 2 5 r alpina was predicted to occur mostly in broadleaved deciduous forest at 1000â 1700 m a s l with warm maximum spring temperatures and may and november precipitation 80 mm we found a high degree of fragmentation gaps were mainly covered with farmland or other unsuitable habitat over 52 of potential habitat is unprotected while the natura 2000 network protects 42 of potential habitat parks and reserve covers less than 29 to preserve r alpina we urge to create or restore forest corridors to bridge the otherwise impermeable gaps our model detected and grant protection to the still largely unprotected area of the italian territory e g by including it in further natura 2000 sites models such as ours may also help focus field surveys in selected areas to save resources and increase survey success,2012,0.481
The Practical Issues at Adaptation of Morphological Information on a Biomimetic Design,in this research we discuss the design methodology that can support biomimetic design in engineering design process the bio mimicking approaches have made progress in supporting solutions for complex engineering design problems practically by applying bio models â which were self optimized under their environment â in design problems engineers can reveal the design solutions and be possible to expect surmounting preexistence limits basically the biomimetic design approach of this paper focused on morphologically developing a low aerodynamic drag train model,2012,0.02
The Darwin Core extension for genebanks opens up new opportunities for sharing germplasm data sets,darwin core dwc defines a standard set of terms to describe the primary biodiversity data primary biodiversity data are data records derived from direct observation of species occurrences in nature or describing specimens in biological collections the darwin core terms can be seen as an extension to the standard dublin core metadata terms the new darwin core extension for genebanks declares the additional terms required for describing genebank data sets and is based on established standards from the plant genetic resources community the global biodiversity information facility gbif provides an information infrastructure for biodiversity data including a suite of software tools for data publishing distributed data access and the capture of biodiversity data the darwin core extension for genebanks is a key component that provides access for the genebanks and the plant genetic resources community to the gbif informatics infrastructure including the new toolkits for data exchange this paper provides one of the first examples and guidelines for how to create extensions to the darwin core standard,2012,0.152
"GBIF data network – infrastructure for biodiversity research
Open access to occurrence data of steppe species",the global biodiversity information facility gbif is an international initiative providing free abstract and open access to biodiversity data via the internet currently more than 400 million records of all organism groups are available for scientific research conservation and education gbif mobilised primary biodiversity data include records based on specimens from natural history collections and field observations as well as multimedia resources mobilisation and digitisation of herbarium data is one of the core activities of the botanical projects of gbif germany www gbif de the range of datasets is continuously extended by the inclusion of additional data from herbaria from living collections botanical gardens ex situ conservation and from field observation projects e g from floristic surveys and vegetation databases gbif germany supports the scientific community by documentation and quality control of primary biodiversity data as well as hosting of data sources technologies developed in the context of biocase biological collection access services are used to publish annotations to digitised herbarium vouchers and to network data providers e g within the dna bank network gbif germany will provide the image server technology for a joint german virtual herbarium and other services for the joint publication of multimedia data as well as metadata biodiversity data linked to accepted names and synonyms are used in taxonomic information systems which are increasingly based on the internet platform for cybertaxonomy software developed by the european distributed institute of taxonomy edit gbif provides an infrastructure supporting biodiversity research and conservation efforts by mobilisation access and analysis of information about the occurrence of various organisms over time and across the planet gbif germany invites data holders from the steppe research community to share their data within the global gbif data network,2013,0.023
"Linking Life-History Traits, Ecology, and Niche Breadth Evolution in North American Eriogonoids (Polygonaceae)",macroevolutionary and microevolutionary studies pro vide complementary explanations of the processes shaping the evo lution of niche breadth macroevolutionary approaches scrutinize factors such as the temporal and spatial environmental heteroge neities that drive differentiation among species microevolutionary studies in contrast focus on the processes that affect intraspecific variability we combine these perspectives by using macroevolution ary models in a comparative study of intraspecific variability we address potential differences in rates of evolution of niche breadth and position in annual and perennial plants of the eriogonoideae subfamily of the polygonaceae we anticipated higher rates of evo lution in annuals than in perennials owing to differences in gener ation time that are paralleled by rates of molecular evolution instead we found that perennial eriogonoid species present greater environ mental tolerance wider climate niche than annual species niche breadth of perennial species has evolved two to four times faster than in annuals while niche optimum has diversified more rapidly among annual species than among perennials niche breadth and average elevation of species are correlated moreover niche breadth increases more rapidly with mean species elevation in perennials than in annuals our results suggest that both environmental gradients and life history strategy influence rates and patterns of niche breadth evolution,2013,0.911
"Distribution and Status of the Extant Xenarthrans (Mammalia: Xenarthra) in Distribution and status of the extant xenarthrans (Mammalia: Xenarthra) in the Southern Cone Mesopotamian savanna, Argentina",the southern cone mesopotamian savanna ms located in northeastern argentina is one of the least protected ecoregions 0 11 of the country five of the seven historically present species of xenarthrans in this region are of conservation concern at the national level this work reviews updates and analyzes the current distribution and conservation status of the xenarthrans using a georeferenced database including records from four complementary methods field surveys interviews with local stakeholders participatory monitoring and bibliography review results were then compared with existing distribution maps in total 304 occurrence records were documented in 127 localities considering their relative presence number of localities where the species is present divided by the total number of localities the species with most records were dasypus novemcinctus 71 7 and dasypus hybridus 63 euphractus sexcinctus and tamandua tetradactyla were detected in a lower proportion 48 8 and 35 4 respectively cabassous tatouay and myrmecophaga tridactyla are rare species in the ecoregion the extant xenarthrans that inhabit the ms are reviewed and information gaps for certain species are identified we emphasize the importance of contributions from the local community who provided 80 of the collected information for this study,2013,0.885
GRASP Genomic Resource Access for Stoichioproteomics: comparative explorations of the atomic content of 12 Drosophila proteomes,background stoichioproteomics relates the elemental composition of proteins and proteomes to variation in the physiological and ecological environment to help harness and explore the wealth of hypotheses made possible under this framework we introduce grasp www graspdb net a public bioinformatic knowledgebase containing information on the frequencies of 20 amino acids and atomic composition of their side chains grasp integrates comparative protein composition data with annotation data from multiple public databases currently grasp includes information on proteins of 12 sequenced drosophila fruit fly proteomes which will be expanded to include increasingly diverse organisms over time in this paper we illustrate the potential of grasp for testing stoichioproteomic hypotheses by conducting an exploratory investigation into the composition of 12 drosophila proteomes testing the prediction that protein atomic content is associated with species ecology and with protein expression levels results elements varied predictably along multivariate axes species were broadly similar with the d willistoni proteome a clear outlier as expected individual protein atomic content within proteomes was influenced by protein function and amino acid biochemistry evolution in elemental composition across the phylogeny followed less predictable patterns but was associated with broad ecological variation in diet using expression data available for d melanogaster we found evidence consistent with selection for efficient usage of elements within the proteome as expected nitrogen content was reduced in highly expressed proteins in most tissues most strongly in the gut where nutrients are assimilated and least strongly in the germline conclusions the patterns identified here using grasp provide a foundation on which to base future research into the evolution of atomic composition in drosophila and other taxa,2013,0.174
"Recent phylogeographic structure in a widespread ‘weedy’ Neotropical tree species, Cordia alliodora (Boraginaceae)",aim although hundreds of tree species have broad geographic ranges in the neotropics little is known about how such widespread species attained disjunct distributions around mountain ocean and xeric barriers here we examine the phylogeographic structure of a widespread and economically important tree cordia alliodora to 1 test the roles of vicariance and dispersal in establishing major range disjunctions 2 determine which geographic regions and or habitats contain the highest levels of genetic diversity and 3 infer the geographic origin of the species location twenty five countries in central and south america and the west indies methods chloroplast simple sequence repeats cpssr eight loci were assayed in 67 populations 240 individuals sampled from the full geographic range of c alliodora chloroplast trnhâ psba and nuclear internal transcribed spacer its dna sequences were sampled from a geographically representative subset genetic structure was determined with samova structure and haplotype networks analysis of molecular variance amova and rarefaction analyses were used to compare regional haplotype diversity and differentiation results although the its region was polymorphic it revealed limited phylogeographic structure and trnhâ psba was monomorphic however structure analysis of cpssr variation recovered three broad demes spanning central america deme 1 the greater antilles and the chocã deme 2 and the lesser antilles and cis andean south america deme 3 samova showed two predominant demes deme 1 2 and deme 3 the greatest haplotype diversity was detected east of the andes while significantly more genetic variation was partitioned among trans andean populations populations experiencing high precipitation seasonality dry ecotype had greater levels of genetic variation main conclusions cordia alliodora displayed weak cis and trans andean phylogeographic structure based on dna sequence data indicative of historical dispersal around this barrier and genetic exchange across its broad range the cpssr data revealed phylogeographic structure corresponding to three biogeographic zones patterns of genetic diversity are indicative of an origin in the seasonally dry habitats of south america therefore c alliodora fits the disperser hypothesis for widespread neotropical species dispersal is evident in the west indies and the northern andean cordilleras the dry ecotype harbours genetic variation that is likely to represent the source for the establishment of populations under future warmer and drier climatic scenarios,2013,0.926
The Use of Climatic Niches in Screening Procedures for Introduced Species to Evaluate Risk of Spread: A Case with the American Eastern Grey Squirrel,species introduction represents one of the most serious threats for biodiversity the realized climatic niche of an invasive species can be used to predict its potential distribution in new areas providing a basis for screening procedures in the compilation of black and white lists to prevent new introductions we tested this assertion by modeling the realized climatic niche of the eastern grey squirrel sciurus carolinensis maxent was used to develop three models one considering only records from the native range nrm a second including records from native and invasive range nirm a third calibrated with invasive occurrences and projected in the native range rcm niche conservatism was tested considering both a niche equivalency and a niche similarity test nrm failed to predict suitable parts of the currently invaded range in europe while rcm underestimated the suitability in the native range nirm accurately predicted both the native and invasive range the niche equivalency hypothesis was rejected due to a significant difference between the grey squirrelâ s niche in native and invasive ranges the niche similarity test yielded no significant results our analyses support the hypothesis of a shift in the speciesâ climatic niche in the area of introductions species distribution models sdms appear to be a useful tool in the compilation of black lists allowing identifying areas vulnerable to invasions we advise caution in the use of sdms based only on the native range of a species for the compilation of white lists for other geographic areas due to the significant risk of underestimating its potential invasive range,2013,0.691
The utility of distribution data in predicting phenology,1 the phenology of many species has been shown to shift under climate change however because species respond at different rates ecological communities may be disrupted leading to species extinctions and loss of ecosystem services hence there is a need to monitor and understand phenological change 2 population data gathered by standardised monitoring schemes can be used to this end however such schemes require significant organisation and financial resources distribution data georeferenced biological records with dates are easier and cheaper to collect and may be an unexploited resource for phenology analyses this would allow analysis of more taxa from more regions of the world however distribution data are potentially biased due to the unstandardized behaviour of biological recorders 3 here the ability of distribution data record dates to accurately predict phenology is investigated by using the british butterfly fauna as a model system we used the total number of distribution records per unit time across great britain as a proxy for butterfly abundance phenology metrics of mean flight date and flight period length were then calculated from the resulting abundance time relationships for each year in a 15 year time series these estimates were validated against those generated from a standardised effort population monitoring scheme 4 we analysed 1 078 328 records from 30 british butterflies and found that distribution data accurately predicted the mean flight date for 22 out of the 30 species tested flight period length was only predicted accurately for seven out of thirty species 5 we found a non linear but consistent positive relationship between the accuracy of mean flight date estimates and sample size number of records at both inter and intraspecific scales our results suggest that a threshold sample size of approximately 6 500 distribution records 430 per year is a pragmatic compromise between accuracy and recording effort leading to little loss of accuracy in phenology predictions an average decrease in accuracy of 2 9 days was observed 6 the results suggest that distribution data are a potentially useful resource for phenology research this may allow practitioners to monitor particular regions and previously unstudied species relatively cheaply using existing mapping schemes,2013,0.498
A Novel Method to Handle the Effect of Uneven Sampling Effort in Biodiversity Databases,how reliable are results on spatial distribution of biodiversity based on databases many studies have evidenced the uncertainty related to this kind of analysis due to sampling effort bias and the need for its quantification despite that a number of methods are available for that little is known about their statistical limitations and discrimination capability which could seriously constrain their use we assess for the first time the discrimination capacity of two widely used methods and a proposed new one fidegam all based on species accumulation curves under different scenarios of sampling exhaustiveness using receiver operating characteristic roc analyses additionally we examine to what extent the output of each method represents the sampling completeness in a simulated scenario where the true species richness is known finally we apply fidegam to a real situation and explore the spatial patterns of plant diversity in a national park fidegam showed an excellent discrimination capability to distinguish between well and poorly sampled areas regardless of sampling exhaustiveness whereas the other methods failed accordingly fidegam values were strongly correlated with the true percentage of species detected in a simulated scenario whereas sampling completeness estimated with other methods showed no relationship due to null discrimination capability quantifying sampling effort is necessary to account for the uncertainty in biodiversity analyses however not all proposed methods are equally reliable our comparative analysis demonstrated that fidegam was the most accurate discriminator method in all scenarios of sampling exhaustiveness and therefore it can be efficiently applied to most databases in order to enhance the reliability of biodiversity analyses,2013,0.621
Type specimens of mammals in the collection of the Museum of Natural History Stuttgart,the present catalogue documents all the type specimens found in the mammalogical collections of the museum of natural history stuttgart we registered 78 primary types holo lecto neo syntypes and 158 paratypes or paralectotypes approximately half of the type specimens are vouchers for species described by theodor von heuglin who thereby laid the foundation for a valuable scientific collection in stuttgart,2013,0.498
Host range and potential distribution of Aceria thalgi (Acari: Eriophyidae): A biological control agent for Sonchus species,abstract key words sowthistles sonchus arvensis s asper and s oleraceus asteraceae are serious weeds that impact on crop production in many regions of the world a recently described eriophyid mite aceria thalgi from sonchus species found in southern australia was assessed for its potential as a biological control agent for these weeds glasshouse host range testing and field observations of 11 species from seven genera from the lactuceae tribe of asteraceae showed that a thalgi survived only on plants within the sonchinae subtribe s asper s oleraceus and s hydrophilus and not on the closely related actites megalocarpus reichardia tingitana or other test plants under glasshouse conditions and varying plant ages a thalgi infestation caused significant growth reduction of the exotic species s oleraceus up to 97 and to a lesser extent the australian native s hydrophilus up to 33 six temperatures from 9 1 to 33 7â c were used to determine population growth parameters for a thalgi the range of temperatures suitable for population growth was used to modify a climex model based on its host s oleraceus the projected world distribution of the climex model indicates that the mite could establish in some areas of north america making it a possibility for an augmentative approach to biological control of sonchus spp in that region the model confirms the potential for a widespread distribution of a thalgi in southern australia where it could be considered for a conservative approach to biological control of sonchus spp in cropping systems,2013,0.06
Host preference of herbivorous arthropods feeding on Ficus (Moraceae) grown ex situ in Ukraine,different plant taxa are known to be selectively preferred by particular herbivorous arthropod species the goal of our study was to determine to what extent ficus feeding herbivores may display host preference with respect to plant infrageneric taxa under greenhouse conditions of a botanical garden using conventional methods for arthropod sampling in greenhouses it was shown that the abundance and species richness of sucking herbivores on ficus greatly depended on the taxonomic position of both herbivores and their host plants herbivores of all found taxa tended to choose plants of subgenus urostigma for feeding while those of the subgenera synoecia and sycidium were mostly ignored by them ficus plants in general seemed to be most preferred by herbivores of the families pseudococcidae and tetranychidae among all the species found this finding may potentially be useful in prediction of herbivore assemblage structure and feeding behaviour in ficus containing plant communities key,2013,0.452
Regional Specific Pollen and Fungal Spore Allergens in South Africa,the selection of skin prick and immunocap radioallergosorbent test rast testing panels for tree grass weed and fungal spore aeroallergens is an easier task when pollen and fungal spore levels for the particular geographic area are accessible to the allergologist in south africa long term pollen and fungal spore level information exists for the western cape where several areas in the greater cape town metropole have been monitored in gauteng sporadic pollen sampling studies have been carried out in the vicinity of johannesburg and pretoria in kwazulu natal short term studies have sampled airspora in durban and richards bay and a 3 year pollen and fungal spore assessment has been conducted in secunda mpumalanga these findings are examined in relation to the choice of allergen testing panels there are vast unsampled areas of south africa containing major cities where the major pollen allergens and their levels in the atmosphere are not known and in addition there is great variation in climate across these areas climate dictates the vegetation biome as well as the flowering times of allergenic plants guidelines for the selection of allergen testing panels in clinical settings where no pollen monitoring exists are discussed,2013,0.273
"Morphological and Molecular Characterization of a New Nearctic Species of Calligrapha Chevrolat, 1836 (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae, Chrysomelinae) from Central Mexico",in this study we use a combination of morphological molecular mtdna cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 gene geographic and ecological field observations and cpdna sequences from ingested plant tissue data to describe and diagnose a new southern nearctic leaf beetle species of calligrapha chevrolat 1836 chrysomelidae chrysomelinae calligrapha thermalis gã mez zurita sp nov associated to perymenium mendezii de candolle asteraceae this new species restricted to the sierra madre occidental is closely related to the texan endemic calligrapha wickhami bowditch 1911 associated to viguiera stenoloba blake asteraceae in the northern foothills of the sierra madre oriental ecoregion the evolutionary scenarios explaining this recent taxonomic split dated in the pleistocene are laid out and discussed,2013,0.714
Herbarium of Vascular Plants Collection of the University of Extremadura (Spain),te herbarium of university of extremadura unex herbarium is formed by 36451 specimens of vas cular plants whose main origin is the autonomous region of extremadura spain and portugal although it also contains a smaller number of specimens from different places including the rest of peninsular spain the baleares islands the macaronesian region canary islands madeira and azores northwest of africa morocco and brazil 98 of the total records are georeferenced it is an active collection in continuous growth its data can be accessed through the gbif data por tal at http data gbif org datasets resource 255 and http www eweb unex es eweb botanica herbario tis paper describes the specimen associated data set of the unex herbarium with an objective to dis seminate the data contained in a data set with potential users and promote the multiple uses of the data,2013,0.145
"Monitoring records of plant species in the Hakone region of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, Japan, 2001–2010",the monitoring of species occurrences is a crucial aspect of biodiversity conservation and regional volunteerism can serve as a powerful tool in such endeavors the fuji hakone izu national park in the hakone region of kanagawa prefecture japan boasts a volunteer association of approximately 100 members these volunteers have monitored plant species occurrences from 2001 to the present along several hiking trails in the region in this paper i present the annual observation records of plant occurrences in hakone from 2001 to 2010 this data set includes 1 071 species of plants from 151 families scientific names follow the y list and this data set includes several threatened plant species data files are formatted based on the darwin core and darwin core archives which are defined by the biodiversity information standards bis or biodiversity information standards taxonomic databases working group tdwg data files filled on required and some additional item on darwin core the data set can download from the authorâ s personal web site as of july 2012 these data will soon be published for the global biodiversity information facility gbif through gbif japan all users can then access the data from the gbif portal site,2013,0.491
Biodiversity into your hands - A call for a virtual global natural history 'metacollection',background many scientific disciplines rely on correct taxon delineations and identifications so does a great part of the general public as well as decision makers researchers students and enthusiastic amateurs often feel frustrated because information about species remains scattered difficult to access or difficult to decipher together this affects almost anyone who wishes to identify species or verify identifications many remedies have been proposed but we argue that the role of natural history collections remains insufficiently appreciated we suggest using state of the art mass imaging technology and to join forces to create a global natural history metacollection on the internet providing access to the morphology of tens of millions of specimens and making them available for automated digital image analysis discussion robotic high resolution imaging technology and fast high performance computer based image stitching make it now feasible to digitize entire collection drawers typically used for arthropod collections or trays or containers used for other objects resolutions of 500 megapixels and much higher are already utilized to capture the contents of 40x50 cm collection drawers providing amazing detail of specimens flanked by metadata entry this helps to create access to tens of thousands of specimens in days by setting priorities and combining the holdings of the most comprehensive collections for certain taxa drawer digitizing offers the unique opportunity to create a global virtual metacollection the taxonomic and geographic coverage of such a collection could never be achieved by a single institution or individual we argue that by joining forces many new impulses will emerge for systematic biology related fields and understanding of biodiversity in general digitizing drawers containing unidentified little curated specimens is a contribution towards the beginning of a new era of online curation it also will help taxonomists and curators to discover and process the millions of gems of undescribed species hidden in museum accessions summary our proposal suggests creating virtual high resolution image resources that will for the first time in history provide access for expert scientists as well as students and the general public to the enormous wealth of the world s natural history collections we foresee that this will contribute to a better understanding appreciation and increased use of biodiversity resources and the natural history collections serving this cause,2013,0.408
Integrating multiple scales in rarity assessments of invertebrate taxa,aim to provide a procedure for measuring the rarity of both invertebrate species and assemblages of species from multiple scales without the need for fine resolution datasets over broad areas location the western palearctic wp and western france methods on the basis of different datasets from different geographical extents we applied a multiscale rarity weight to species occurrence from multiple scales multiscale rarity weights were then averaged at an assemblage level in a multiscale index of relative rarity irr these rarity weights were calculated using a flexible scale dependent method that ensures equitable contributions of each scale to the final index we provided a simple two scale example of the application on spiders of western france for which we obtained occurrence information from a regional extent dataset regional scale and a western palearctic extent dataset wp scale thus we showed the necessity of a two scale approach by successively analysing species occurrence multiscale rarity weights of species and multiscale indices of species assemblage finally we presented a case study within a nature reserve results species occurrences are not predictable from one scale to another and rarity indices of assemblages are poorly congruent among scales which supports the necessity of a two scale approach multiscale rarity weights accurately showed information on species rarity from both scales multiscale indices of assemblages were congruent but with additional information over each one scale index main conclusions the novelty of the multiscale method developed here is to accurately combine different datasets of varying extents and resolutions to provide multiscale rarity weights for species and indices for assemblages given the increasing availability of datasets for invertebrate taxa this method represents a significant improvement for rarity and conservation studies on invertebrates,2013,0.557
"Phylogeography of the Robsonius Ground-Warblers (Passeriformes: Locustellidae) Reveals an Undescribed Species from Northeastern Luzon, Philippines",the robsonius ground warblers are forest birds endemic to the luzon island complex in the philippine archipelago their systematic relationships have long remained ambiguous until recently they were included in the timaliid genus napothera two robsonius species are currently recognized on the basis of plumage differences r rabori from northern luzon in the cordillera central and the northern sierra madre and r sorsogonensis from southern luzon and catanduanes island recent specimen collections including the first adult specimen from the cordillera central establish plumage differences between populations of r rabori in the cordillera central and sierra madre and reveal a third diagnosable population within luzon these differences have gone unnoticed because r rabori sensu stricto had been known only from the juvenile holotype molecular phylogenetic data further support the hypothesis that three highly divergent taxa occur across the luzon island complex robsonius rabori is known only from the northern cordillera central in ilocos norte an undescribed taxon formerly included in r rabori occurs in the northern sierra madre in cagayan isabela aurora and nueva vizcaya provinces and r sorsogonensis occurs in southern luzon bulacan and laguna provinces the bicol peninsula and on catanduanes island the existence of three putatively allopatric species within the luzon island complex highlights the role of in situ diversification in island systems and brings attention to the need for forest conservation to protect geographically restricted populations throughout the luzon island complex,2013,0.708
Predicting the distribution of a novel bark beetle and its pine hosts under future climate conditions,1 understanding the distribution of key biotic elements of forest ecosystems is essential in contemporary forest management and in planning to meet future management needs habitat distribution niche models based on known occurrences provide geographical structure for such management as the environmental factors change 2 bark beetles play critical roles in coniferous forest dynamics in western north america among these insects dendroctonus rhizophagus thomas and bright which occurs in the sierra madre occidental in mexico is unique in that it attacks only immature trees pinus spp and therefore represents a threat to forest regeneration we developed current habitat distribution models for d rhizophagus and its pinus hosts and projected these to future climate scenarios 3 predicted suitable habitat of d rhizophagus currently covers approximately 119 000 km2 of which approximately 11 is occupied and overlap with suitable habitat for all pinus hosts exceeds 99 5 some suitable habitat occurs isolated from known d rhizophagus occurrences in mexico and the south western u s a 4 habitat distribution models were projected to four potential climate scenarios for the period 2040â 2060 and this predicted the gains and losses of suitable d rhizophagus habitat throughout the region areas of north western mexico maintain large areas of suitable d rhizophagus and pinus host habitat in all scenarios dispersal to isolated areas of d rhizophagus habitat appears unlikely 5 the results of the present study can be used to target d rhizophagus monitoring and management activities and may serve as a model for the management of other invasive species,2013,0.459
Human and natural drivers of changing macrophyte community dynamics over 12 years in a Neotropical riverine floodplain system,the rio paranã is the world s tenth largest river discharge in the upper river studied here during major flood events exceeds 12 700 m3 s 1 together with its associated floodplain water bodies this neotropical river system supports a freshwater biodiversity of worldwide conservation significance but one increasingly affected by human pressures particularly the effects of river impoundment multivariate analysis of data from repeated 2000â 2002 and 2011 macrophyteâ environment surveys of a set of stations within a 230 km stretch of functioning riverine floodplain downstream of the most recently completed dam on the upper paranã the porto primavera dam together with published data from 1999 and 2005â 2007 was used to test the hypothesis that human influences might outweigh the importance of natural factors in driving the aquatic vegetation dynamics macrophyte community composition alpha diversity and abundance of this system during the period 1999â 2011 the macrophyte communities present showed differences of species composition and abundance that could be strongly related to the scale and duration of the immediately preceding annual flood pulse as well as local variations in physico chemical conditions for rare neotropical endemic species which are a good marker of the conservation status of the system there was a reasonable degree of stability between the 2000â 2002 and 2011 survey periods with eight of 16 such species being present in both surveys three present in 2000â 2002 only but an additional five such species found only in 2011 the conclusion is that vegetation changes in the system can be referred both to direct human impacts river regulation and to indirect human or natural impacts floods alien species invasion by hydrilla verticillata and local environmental factors overall there was evidence that major floods associated with el niã o southern oscillation enso climatic events had a much greater impact than other drivers whether natural or anthropogenic,2013,0.52
Mechanistic models for the spatial spread of species under climate change,global climate change is a major threat to biodiversity the most common methods for predicting the response of biodiversity to changing climate do not explicitly incorporate fundamental evolutionary and ecological processes that determine species responses to changing climate such as reproduction dispersal and adaptation we provide an overview of an emerging mechanistic spatial theory of species range shifts under climate change this theoretical framework explicitly defines the ecological processes that contribute to species range shifts via biologically meaningful dispersal reproductive and climate envelope parameters we present methods for estimating the parameters of the model with widely available species occurrence and abundance data and apply these methods to empirical data for 12 north american butterfly species to illustrate the potential use of the theory for global change biology the model predicts species persistence in light of current climate change and habitat loss on average we estimate the climate envelopes of our study species are shifting north at a rate of 3 25 km yr â 1 36 km yr and that our study species produce 3 46 viable offspring per individual per year â 1 39 based on our parameter estimates we are able to predict the relative risk of our 12 study species lagging behind changing climate this theoretical framework improves predictions of global change outcomes by facilitating the development and testing of hypotheses providing mechanistic predictions of current and future range dynamics and encouraging the adaptive integration of theory and data the theory is ripe for future developments such as the incorporation of biotic interactions and evolution of adaptations to novel climatic conditions and has the potential to be a catalyst for the development of more effective conservation strategies to mitigate losses of biodiversity from global climate change read more http www esajournals org doi abs 10 1890 12 1407 1,2013,0.608
Functional Enrichment of Utopian Distribution of Plant Life-Forms,adaptive fuzzy neural inference systems are used to illustrate the primary nodal number of plant life forms categorization of two candidate areas is carried out using the water energy dynamic for ecuador south america and macedonia southern europe within which the life form spectra are distributed genetic optimization methods are used to expand the primary nodal number to the complete number of life form categories the distribution of the elements exhibits a stochastic binomial distribution and the utopia line and curve are summarized which enhance accuracy of the climatic data and of the consequent numbers of plant species occurrences expansion of the distribution of each life form category is approximated within the z utopia hyperplane with use of the functional approximation algorithm this process gives additional structure and informative value to the z plane enhancing our ability to make informed policy decisions concerning species and ecosystem conservation,2013,0.246
"Hagfish phylogeny and taxonomy, with description of the new genus Rubicundus (Craniata, Myxinidae)",a recent phylogenetic analysis of the myxinidae based on the 16s rrna gene resulted in synonymization of paramyxine with eptatretus this created homonymy of paramyxine fernholmi with eptatretus fernholmi and paramyxine wisneri with eptatretus wisneri in order to resolve this nomenclatural dilemma we made a more extensive phylogenetic assessment of the myxinidae and examined the nomenclature of the family we used 75 sequences 37 of which new for this study of a 561 bp fragment of the 16s rrna gene representing 33 species and 72 sequences 37 of which new for this study of a 687 bp fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit i coi gene representing 23 species to reconstruct the phylogeny of myxinidae the monophyly of the subfamily myxininae traditionally characterized by having a single pair of external gill openings was rejected 0 50 bayesian posterior probability by the 16s analysis but supported by the coi and combined coi 16s analyses 0 99 and 0 81 bpp respectively the mono phyly of the subfamily eptatretinae characterized by having several pairs of external gill openings was not supported by the 16s analysis and rejected by the coi and combined coi 16s analysis due to the placement of eptatretus lopheliae as the earliest branch of myxinidae 0 71 and 0 57 bpp respectively eptatretus lopheliae and eptatretus rubicundus formed a monophyletic group and were allocated to a new genus rubicundus character ized by the presence of an elongated tubular nostril and reddish coloration a new monotypic subfamily rubicundinae was proposed for rubicundus the synonymy of the genera paramyxine and quadratus with eptatretus was confirmed e fernholmi is renamed eptatretus luzonicus eptatretus wis neri was renamed eptatretus bobwisneri petromyzon cirrhatus forster 1801 homea banksii fleming 1822 and bdellostoma forsteri mâ uller 1836 are synonyms but no type specimens are known to exist petromyzon cirrhatus was designated as type species of eptatretus conserving present usage gastrobranchus dombeyi shaw 1804 has priority over other names for chilean myxinids bdellostoma stoutii was designated as type species of polistotrema gill the validity of the western atlantic myxine limosa as distinct from the eastern atlantic myxine glutinosa was confirme,2013,0.899
"African Golden Cats, Citizen Science, and Serendipity: Tapping the Camera Trap Revolution",the use of camera traps for wildlife research and monitoring is increasing and this is yielding significant observations at an accelerating pace yet many potentially valuable observations are overlooked misinterpreted or withheld using our first ever images of a wild african golden cat caracal aurata catching prey we consider practical challenges and opportunities for more effective image management systems in particular we highlight the benefits of online image archives and assessments,2013,0.306
Ecogeographic survey and gap analysis of Lathyrus L. species,the genetic diversity of the genus lathyrus is of significant importance particularly for its role in sustaining the livelihoods of local communities living under very harsh conditions and its potential to adapt to climate change grasspea l sativus is the most widely used species and to a lesser extent l cicera and l ochrus each is used for animal feed in many parts of the world and food in poorer regions but human over consumption of the seeds can lead to lathyrism a disease caused by neurotoxins this study has added substantial information and accuracy to the existing global lathyrus database by combining diverse datasets and by adding information of major herbaria from europe this global lathyrus database available at icarda was used to conduct gap analysis to guide future collecting missions and in situ conservation efforts for highest priority species originating from the mediterranean basin and caucasus central and west asia region the results showed the highest concentration of lathyrus priority species are found in the fertile crescent countries france italy and greece the area either side of the lebanese syrian border near tel kalakh syria was identified as the hotspot and the overall priority location for establishing the first in situ genetic reserve the gap analysis for ex situ conservation shows that only six species representing 16 6 of the 36 priority species are adequately sampled only l cicera has already been well sampled among the closely related species to cultivated species l sativus indicating further collecting of l amphicarpos l belinensis l chrysanthus l hirticarpus l hirsutus and l marmoratus is required in addition six secondary priority lathyrus species have no ex situ collections l lentiformis l lycicus l phaselitanus l trachycarpus l tremolsianus and l undulatus and also require targeted collecting,2013,0.954
Is there a need for a more explicit accounting of invasive alien species under the Water Framework Directive?,through ratification of the water framework directive wfd eu member states committed themselves to a pressure based assessment of the ecological status of their water bodies invasive alien species ias constitute a major pressure in many aquatic ecosystems yet are not explicitly accounted for by the majority of wfd assessment methods most member states argue that no explicit assessment of ias is required assuming that significant ias pressures will affect the wfd biological quality elements bqes and be detected by generic wfd status assessments we tested this assumption for a selection of country by surface water category combinations covering nearly 40 000 water bodies for each of the combinations the pressure by high impact ias is higher in water bodies with ecological status varying from bad to moderate than in water bodies in good or high ecological status most high impact ias show strong associations with low status class categories of the 17 most frequently occurring high impact ias only mustela vison schreber 1777 and potamopyrgus antipodarum gray 1853 are disproportionately frequent in high status water bodies the sensitivity of wfd methods varies across bqes with macrophyte based methods showing a consistently high sensitivity to ias pressures however significant pressures are observed in a number of high status water bodies this points to a need for further optimization of existing methods so that they address the full range of pressures exerted by ias,2013,0.387
Trioza chenopodii Reuter (Hemiptera: Psylloidea: Triozidae): New Western North American Records of a Eurasian Immigrant,trioza chenopodii reuter a wide spread eurasian psylloid klimaszewski 1973 hodkinson 1986 ossiannilsson 1992 burckhardt 2011 ouvrard 2012 specializes on amaranthaceae mainly species of atriplex and chenopodium development on cultivated amaranths â œchenopodsâ such as beet beta vulgaris l and spinach spinacia oleracea l has been obtained under laboratory conditions but has not been observed in the field lauterer 1982 baloch and ghaffar 1984,2013,0.396
Vulnerability of artisanal fisheries to climate change in the Venice Lagoon,within the context of global warming the western coast of the northern adriatic sea can be regarded as an extremely vulnerable area owing to the local geographic features this area has been described as the venetian lacuna where mediterranean sea climatic conditions are replaced by atlantic ocean ones supporting the presence of glacial relicts such as sprat sprattus sprattus flounder platichthys flesus and brown shrimp crangon crangon nektonic assemblage therefore represents a good candidate in terms of an early proxy for thermal regime alterations it represents a dynamic component of the lagoon ecosystem changing in space and time actively moving through the entire system and dynamically exchanging with the open sea here the first signals of the change have been already detected such as the presence of alien thermophilic species within this context since the beginning of the century sampling of the nektonic assemblage has been carried out integrating them with landings data from the fish market vulnerabilities to thermal regime changes have been tested by 1 categorizing species according to the mean distribution area in terms of latitudinal range over 45â 30â 45â and below 30â and 2 analysing both spatial and temporal variations within fishing grounds results indicated a high potential vulnerability of the artisanal fishery to climate change as the commercial catch is entirely composed of species from cold 45â n and temperate between 45â and 30â n latitudes at present no alien thermophilic species have been recorded within the lagoon which is possibly a sign of good resilience of the assemblage finally abundance of species from cold latitudes has decreased during the past decade all of this has been discussed in the context of the mean annual temperature trend,2013,0.665
Risk of invasion by frequently traded freshwater turtles,risk assessment allows the identification of non native species most likely to become invasive and cause harm and helps to set up preventive measures such as trade regulations freshwater turtles are among the most traded pets an increasing number of species are easily available and frequently released by owners in natural wetlands this study identified a pool of freshwater turtles frequently traded at cheap prices and performed risk assessment at multiple steps of the invasion process establishment risk was assessed through species distribution models maxent and boosted regression trees based on global presence records and bioclimatic variables we also analyzed ecological and life history traits favouring release establishment and population growth besides the already invasive trachemys scripta at least 14 species are easily found in the pet market for most of them species distribution models identified areas with suitable climate outside the native range validation with independent data confirmed the reliability of the modelling approach pelodiscus sinensis and pelomedusa subrufa had the broadest areas of suitable climate outside the native range for all the species possibility of coexistence with humans and reproductive traits suggest high risk of invasion if introduced in areas with suitable climate the availability of spatially explicit maps of risk allows to identify areas where preventive measures are urgently needed in europe an expansion of trade regulations is needed to avoid that multiple freshwater turtles become invasive,2013,0.843
"Phylogeny of Polycnemoideae (Amaranthaceae): Implications for biogeography, character evolution and taxonomy",polycnemoideae is a poorly studied subfamily of the amaranthaceae chenopodiaceae alliance which contains ca 13 rare species in three disjunctly distributed genera we present the results of a dated molecular phylogeny and a survey of morphology micromorphology and stem anatomy revealing the phylogenetic relationships and historical biogeography of the subfamily as well as its morphological evolution the results are converted into a new classification of the group the diver gence of polycnemoideae from amaranthaceae s str dates back to the eocene and the oldest split in the subfamily separated a northern hemisphere lineage polycnemum and a predominantly southern hemisphere lineage nitrophila hemichroa surreya gen nov around the eocene oligocene boundary there is some evidence for a southern connection via antarctica in the ancestor of the nitrophila hemichroa surreya clade the amphitropical genus nitrophila likely originated in south america and reached north america via long distance dispersal genera of polycnemoideae diversified during the miocene and pliocene they are species poor and appear relictual the morphological and micromorphological survey revealed a number of useful diagnostic characters which permit a clear definition of all four genera and 13 species recognized here hemichroa in its traditional circumscription lacks diagnostic characters hemichroa pentandra is much more similar to nitrophila and shares a number of symplesiomorphies with it while h diandra and h mesembryanthema which form a highly supported clade show several clear synapomorphic characters therefore the latter two species are here described within a new genus,2013,0.775
Reassessment of the invasion history of two species of Cakile (Brassicaceae) in Australia.,in this paper we revisit the invasion history of two species of cakile in australia cakile edentula subsp edentula arrived in the mid 19th century and spread into coastal strandline habitat from the southeast towards the west and to the north cakile maritima arrived in the late 19th century and has replaced cakile edentula over much of the range while cakile edentula is morphologically quite uniform the great variation within cakile maritima has confused field ecologists using herbarium records we update previous accounts of the spread of the species and report on field surveys that determined their current geographic overlap in tasmania and in northern new south wales southern queensland we examine regional morphological variation within cakile maritima using the national herbaria collections and variation within new population samples we support previous interpretations that cakile maritima has been introduced on more than one occasion from morphologically distinct races resulting in regional variation within australia and high variability within populations in the south east western australian populations appear distinct and probably did not initiate those in the east we consider that eastern populations are likely to be a mix of cakile maritima subsp maritima from the mediterranean and cakile maritima subsp integrifolia from atlantic europe although introgression from cakile edentula into cakile maritima cannot be discounted from our results it is not required to explain the levels of variation in the latter species observed in australia cakile maritima continues to spread southwards in tasmania and northwards in nsw in queenland a recent occurrence has proliferated in moreton bay spreading slowly to the north but not appreciably southwards,2013,0.683
Autecological traits determined two evolutionary strategies in Mediterranean plants during the Quaternary: low differentiation and range expansion versus geographical speciation in Linaria.,the evolutionary patterns of the mediterranean flora during the quaternary have been relatively well documented based on phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses but few studies have addressed the evolutionary traits that determined diversification and range expansion success during this period we analysed previously published and newly generated sequences of three plastid noncoding regions rpl32 trnl uag trns trng and trnl trnf the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer its and a low copy nuclear gene intron agt1 of linaria sect supinae a group of angiosperms that diversified in the quaternary the origin and recent colonization dynamics of closely related lineages were inferred by biogeographic reconstruction and phylogeographic analyses while breeding system experiments coupled with ecological and morphological data were used to test association with range expansion and diversification a combination of traits including selfing short lifespan and the ability to tolerate a wide variety of substrates were key factors underlying range expansion after long distance dispersal throughout the mediterranean basin by contrast self incompatibility may have promoted higher diversification rates in narrow ranges of the iberian peninsula we argue that a few traits contributed to the adoption of two contrasting strategies that may have been predominant in the evolution of mediterranean angiosperms,2013,0.346
"Comparing multiple species distribution proxies and different quantifications of the human footprint map, implications for conservation",anthropogenic threats drive species to extinction and are the focus of extinction risk analyses and con servation planning threats are often quantified through higher level proxies such as the human foot print hf we tested the effects that multiple methods of representing speciesâ distribution and different quantifications of a hf map have on threat measurement and how these influence conservation decisions we quantified the magnitude of hf for 901 southeast asian mammals according to several methods we ranked the species according to the measured hf value and produced priority lists of top impacted species the different representations of speciesâ distribution caused significant disagree ment in hf calculations hf values were on average lower when calculated in speciesâ suitable habitat or occurrence points in comparison to the whole geographic range biases were non linear and dependent on distal factors such as the proportion of suitable habitat within speciesâ range and speciesâ habitat spe cialism using different hf quantifications also yielded disagreement with 2â 56 difference observed in species membership among priority lists threatened species were best predicted and significantly placed in the top ranking when measuring their proportion of range exposed to high levels of hf we thus show that the hf extent not only its average value determines species extinction risk a well framed global conservation strategy must address the quantification of human impact on biodiversity the selection of quantification methods has implications for how such impact is evaluated improving techniques to quantify biodiversity threats will enhance the effectiveness of extinction risk analyses and conservation decisions,2013,0.821
"Effects of climate change, invasive species, and disease on the distribution of native European crayfishes.",climate change will require species to adapt to new conditions or follow preferred climates to higher latitudes or elevations but many dispersal limited freshwater species may be unable to move due to barriers imposed by watershed boundaries in addition invasive nonnative species may expand into new regions under future climate conditions and contribute to the decline of native species we evaluated future distributions for the threatened european crayfish fauna in response to climate change watershed boundaries and the spread of invasive crayfishes which transmit the crayfish plague a lethal disease for native european crayfishes we used climate projections from general circulation models and statistical models based on mahalanobis distance to predict climate suitable regions for native and invasive crayfishes in the middle and at the end of the 21st century we identified these suitable regions as accessible or inaccessible on the basis of major watershed boundaries and present occurrences and evaluated potential future overlap with 3 invasive north american crayfishes climate suitable areas decreased for native crayfishes by 19 to 72 and the majority of future suitable areas for most of these species were inaccessible relative to native and current distributions overlap with invasive crayfish plague transmitting species was predicted to increase some native crayfish species e g noble crayfish astacus astacus had no future refugia that were unsuitable for the modeled nonnative species our results emphasize the importance of preventing additional introductions and spread of invasive crayfishes in europe to minimize interactions between the multiple stressors of climate change and invasive species while suggesting candidate regions for the debatable management option of assisted colonization,2013,0.928
"Sesleria serbica (Poaceae), a neglected species of the Balkan Peninsula",sesleria serbica is a neglected taxon traditionally wrongly synonymised with s rigida our multifaceted study confirmed its specific status herewith we comprehensively describe its morpho anatomical and ecological features it is an obligate serpentinophyte and a protected species in serbia regarding its distribution s serbica is a balkan endemic species local endemic of the eastern part of the illyrian province nomenclatural and taxonomical notes are also provided as well as the national conservation status of this species,2013,0.719
Molecular and morphological support for a Florida origin of the Cuban oak,aim the origins of the cuban biota are of long standing interest in biogeography and the source of a small live oak quercus series virentes population on cuba remains unresolved based on morphological evidence previous authors have hypothesized a florida origin from either q geminata or q virginiana or both a mexican origin from q oleoides or a hybrid origin from both sources we use molecular data and taxonomically informative leaf morphology to identify the source species and timing of colonization location cuba central america mexico and the south eastern united states methods we collected representative samples of cuban oaks and each putative source species and genotyped each sample at 12 nuclear microsatellites and two chloroplast dna sequences we estimated population structure using a bayesian clustering analysis and f statistics pairwise migration rates among taxa and divergence time using an isolation with migration model we measured seven leaf traits and conducted an analysis of similarity anosim to determine which putative source species was most similar to cuban oaks results cuban oak contains one chloroplast dna haplotype which is common in southern florida bayesian clustering analysis of microsatellites revealed that the cuban oak forms a distinct and pure population cluster and f statistics showed that cuban oaks are differentiated least from q virginiana and most from q geminata migration rates were highest out of cuba to q oleoides molecular diversity the ratio of allelic richness to allele size range and effective population size of the cuban oak were relatively low suggesting a founder effect divergence time estimates fell entirely within the pleistocene 628â 6 ka considering a range of mutation rates and generation times cuban oaks were morphologically most similar to q virginiana and least similar to q geminata main conclusions molecular and morphological data support a pleistocene dispersal of q virginiana from florida to cuba followed by isolation and divergence then limited dispersal and introgression from cuba to q oleoides in central america birds could have dispersed acorns to cuba during a glacial period when sea levels were low these results highlight the varied origin of the cuban biota and the possible role of pleistocene glaciations in the establishment of temperate taxa in the tropics,2013,0.665
Phylogeography and niche modelling of the relict plant Amborella trichopoda (Amborellaceae) reveal multiple Pleistocene refugia in New Caledonia,amborella trichopoda baill amborellaceae amborellales the sole living member of the sister group to all other extant angiosperms is endemic to new caledonia we addressed the intraspecific phylogeography of amborella by investigating whether its present population genetic structure could be related to its current and past habitats we found moderate range wide genetic diversity based on nuclear microsatellite data and detected four well differentiated geographically distinct genetic groups using bayesian clustering analyses we modelled the ecological niche of amborella based on the current climatic and environmental conditions the predictive ability of the model was very good throughout the central east mainland zone but amborella was predicted in the northern part of the island where this plant has not been reported furthermore no significant barrier was detected based on habitat suitability that could explain the genetic differentiation across the area conversely we found that the main genetic clusters could be related to the distribution of the suitable habitat at the last glacial maximum lgm c 21 000 years bp when amborella experienced a dramatic 96 5 reduction in suitable area at least two lineages survived in distinct putative refugia located in the massif des lã vres and in the vicinity of mount aoupiniã our findings finally confirmed the importance of lgm rainforest refugia in shaping the current intra and interspecific diversity in new caledonian plants and revealed the possibility of an as yet unreported refugium the combination of niche modelling and population genetics thereby offered novel insight into the biogeographical history of an emblematic taxon,2013,0.265
Earth Science Infrastructures Interoperability: The Brokering Approach,for disciplinary and domain applications systems interoperability largely deals with the adoption of agreed technologies standards specifications and interfaces with a disciplinary domain service bus or means of information exchange if available however multi disciplinary efforts make more complex demands on the type of systems and arrangements needed to support cross domain activities thus interoperability among diverse disciplinary and domain systems must be pursued adopting more flexible and sustainable approaches this paper discusses the challenges for multi disciplinary interoperability the recent brokering approach is introduced this solution aims at interconnecting the heterogeneous disciplinary and domain service buses avoiding the imposition of any federated or common specification it can deliver a range of services such as discovery and access through a broker framework the brokering approach has been successfully introduced by the eurogeoss research project and recently adopted by the geoss common infrastructure gci us nsf earthcube initiative also has recognized the importance of brokering for its reference architecture the gi technology empowering the eurogeoss and the gci brokering frameworks is presented and discussed,2013,0.04
Distribution extension of Proboscis bat Rhynchonycteris naso record for southwestern Ecuador,we report the first confirmed record of rhynchonycteris naso in southwestern ecuador we observed a colony of about 10 individuals roosting under a bridge of a water reservoir that was surrounded by sugar cane crops and located in naranjito in the province of guayas this is a heavily disturbed area with small remnants of humid evergreen forest in the lowlands of the ecuadorian coast this record constitutes a new locality of rhychonycteris naso for the guayas province in a different type of vegetation and habitat from previous records for this species in ecuador and it represents the southwesternmost record for ecuador and south america rhynchonycteris,2013,0.464
Evaluating the Significance of Paleophylogeographic Species Distribution Models in Reconstructing Quaternary Range-Shifts of Nearctic Chelonians,the climatic cycles of the quaternary during which global mean annual temperatures have regularly changed by 5 10â c provide a special opportunity for studying the rate magnitude and effects of geographic responses to changing climates during the quaternary high and mid latitude species were extirpated from regions that were covered by ice or otherwise became unsuitable persisting in refugial retreats where the environment was compatible with their tolerances in this study we combine modern geographic range data phylogeny pleistocene paleoclimatic models and isotopic records of changes in global mean annual temperature to produce a temporally continuous model of geographic changes in potential habitat for 59 species of north american turtles over the past 320 ka three full glacial interglacial cycles these paleophylogeographic models indicate the areas where past climates were compatible with the modern ranges of the species and serve as hypotheses for how their geographic ranges would have changed in response to quaternary climate cycles we test these hypotheses against physiological genetic taxonomic and fossil evidence and we then use them to measure the effects of quaternary climate cycles on species distributions patterns of range expansion contraction and fragmentation in the models are strongly congruent with i phylogeographic differentiation ii morphological variation iii physiological tolerances and iv intraspecific genetic variability modern species with significant interspecific differentiation have geographic ranges that strongly fluctuated and repeatedly fragmented throughout the quaternary modern species with low genetic diversity have geographic distributions that were highly variable and at times exceedingly small in the past our results reveal the potential for paleophylogeographic models to i reconstruct past geographic range modifications ii identify geographic processes that result in genetic bottlenecks and iii predict threats due to anthropogenic climate change in the future,2013,0.666
Conservation of endangered animals: From biotechnologies to digital preservation,characterization and correct breeding schemes in addition molecular genetic studies allow to identify and monitor the genetic diversity within and across breeds and to reconstruct their evolution history the conservation of livestock variability is also a crucial element in order to preserve and valorise specific nutritional and nutraceutical properties of animal products efficient ex situ and in situ conservation strategies as well as the creation of bio banks and specific biotechnological and bioinformatics tools for genetic analyses and digital preservation are obligatory requirements in order to implement an appropriate action for the conservation of animal biodiversity the main issues concerning different species are summarised with particu lar reference to the livestock biodiversity still existing some examples of ex situ conservation strategies which mainly refer to cryoconservation of semen ova embryos or tissues developed in italy are presented and the different actions in defense of animal genetic resources angr munity are illustrated interestingly the same strategies for biological and digital analyses and preservation of livestock biodiversity can be exported to wild endangered animals in order to plan a correct conservation and repopulation of the species furthermore the european union has set up the guidelines to safeguard the biodiversity and to combat the extinction of animal species and has made the protection of biodi versity and ecosystems one of the main objec tives of the sixth environment action programme,2013,0.712
The absence of fire can cause a lag phase: The invasion dynamics of Banksia ericifolia (Proteaceae),the transition from a species introduction to an invasion often spans many decades a lag phase however few studies have determined the mechanisms underlying lag phases such a mechanistic understanding is vital if the potential ecosystem level impacts are to be predicted and the invasion risks to be managed proactively here we examine banksia ericifolia introduced for floriculture to south africa as a case study we found 18 sites where the species has been planted with self sustaining naturalized populations at four sites and an invasive population at one site the invasion originated from around 100 individuals planted 35 years ago after several fires this population has grown to approximately 10 000 plants covering about 127 ha the current invasion of b ericifolia already has ecosystem level impacts for example the nectar available to bird pollinators has more than doubled potentially disrupting native pollination networks if fires occurred at the other naturalized sites we anticipate populations would rapidly spread and densify with invaded areas ultimately become banksia dominated woodlands indeed the only site other than the invasive site where fire has occurred regularly is already showing signs of rapid population growth and spread however recruitment is mainly immediately post fire and no seed bank accumulates in the soil mechanical control of adult plants is cheap and effective and immature plants are easily detected this study is a first in illustrating the importance of fire in driving lag phases and provides a valuable example for why it is essential to determine the mechanisms that mediate lag phases in introduced plant species serotinous species that have been introduced to areas where fire is suppressed could easily be misinterpreted as low risk species whilst they remain in a lag phase but they can represent a major invasion risk,2013,0.664
Spatial variation in the phylogenetic structure of flea assemblages across geographic ranges of small mammalian hosts in the Palearctic.,we investigated spatial variation in the phylogenetic structure measured as a degree of phylogenetic clustering of flea assemblages across the geographic ranges of 11 palearctic species of small mammalian hosts and asked whether the phylogenetic structure of the flea assemblage of a host in a locality is affected by i distance of this locality from the centre of the host s geographic range ii geographic position of the locality distance to the equator and iii phylogenetic structure of the entire flea assemblage of the locality our results demonstrated that the key factor underlying spatial variation of the phylogenetic structure of the flea assemblage of a host was the distance from the centre of the host s geographic range however the pattern of this spatial variation differed between host species and might be explained by their species specific immunogenetic and or distributional patterns local flea assemblages may also to some extent be shaped by environmental filtering coupled with historical events in addition the phylogenetic structure of a local within host flea assemblage may mirror the phylogenetic structure of the entire across host flea assemblage in that locality and thus be affected by the availability of certain phylogenetic lineages,2013,0.788
Supporting monitoring effects of genetically modified organisms by GIS-technologies and geodata – an overview,the approval of genetically modified organisms for deliberate release and placing on the market requires environmental risk assessment and environmental monitoring methodological approaches and imple mentation of both tasks are still controversially discussed this article analyses principles of environ mental monitoring of genetically modified organisms as published in the guideline 4330 part 1 of the association of german engineers thereby the article concentrates on the characterisation of the receiv ing environment affected by cultivation of genetically modified organisms and the representativeness of monitoring systems to assess large scale implications of the cultivation of genetically modified organisms based on this the article introduces statistical and geoinformatic measures as well as relevant geodata to deal with these issues,2013,0.043
Delimiting the coastal geographic background to predict potential distribution of Spartina alterniflora,ecological niche modeling is an important tool in studying biological invasion however the geographic background on niche model transferability received scant attention the salt marsh grass spartina alterniflora natively distributed along the eastern coasts of the americas is considered a global invasive species in this study we first compared the climate space among geographically separated populations the classic niche model approaches involving the calibration of native range climate envelop of s alterniflora and transferring worldwide were then used to predict potential invasion niche models based on two geographic backgrounds were compared namely a large squared area delimited by a bounding box containing all known occurrences which is usually used in former studies and a small coastal area defined as the geographic space available to the species both area based models showed good performance in native range predictions however when models were transferred niche model calibrated on the coastal area showed higher predictability in capturing the introduced occurrences given the potential substantial effect of geographic background on niche model transferability caution is warranted when interpreting low niche model transferability with niche differentiation and when predicting other coastal speciesâ invasion,2013,0.198
Disentangling environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in a Mediterranean hotspot,we determined the environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in the baetic rifan region a plant biodiversity hotspot in the western mediterranean a catalog of the whole flora of andalusia and northern morocco the region that includes most of the baetic rifan complex was compiled using recent comprehensive floristic catalogs hierarchical cluster analysis hca and detrended correspondence analysis dca of the different ecoregions of andalusia and northern morocco were conducted to determine their floristic affinities diversity patterns were studied further by focusing on regional endemic taxa endemic and nonendemic alpha diversities were regressed to several environmental variables finally semi partial regressions on distance matrices were conducted to extract the respective contributions of climatic altitudinal lithological and geographical distance matrices to beta diversity in endemic and nonendemic taxa we found that west rifan plant assemblages had more similarities with andalusian ecoregions than with other nearby northern morocco ecoregions the endemic alpha diversity was explained relatively well by the environmental variables related to summer drought and extreme temperature values of all the variables geographical distance contributed by far the most to spatial turnover in species diversity in the baetic rifan hotspot in the baetic range elevation was the most significant driver of nonendemic species beta diversity while lithology and elevation were the main drivers of endemic beta diversity despite the fact that andalusia and northern morocco are presently separated by the atlantic ocean and the mediterranean sea the baetic and rifan mountain ranges have many floristic similarities especially in their western ranges due to past migration of species across the strait of gibraltar climatic variables could be shaping the spatial distribution of endemic species richness throughout the baetic rifan hotspot determinants of spatial turnover in biodiversity in the baetic rifan hotspot vary in importance between endemic and nonendemic species,2013,0.912
How does selection of climate variables affect predictions of species distributions? A case study of three new weeds in New Zealand,species distribution models are an important tool to predict potential spread of weeds while recent progress has improved model performance there is still concern about the validity of such models especially when applied to novel geographical regions or climates this study investigates how different sets of variables influence predicted distributions considering several measures of model performance and how extrapolation to novel geographical regions may affect results potential distributions of three new weeds in new zealand archontophoenix cunninghamiana psidium guajava and schefflera actinophylla are modelled by training a model based on global data from native and introduced ranges and projecting it to new zealand using maxent for each species four models were calibrated first with a full set of 19 bioclimatic variables then with a customised set with selection based on analysis of response curves and finally with two reduced sets of uncorrelated variables although auc across all models was very high auc â 0 9 correlations between models ranged between 0 27 and 0 98 inclusion of all variables predicted larger areas to be suitable in the projected region with highly unlikely predictions in some areas especially where bioclimatic variables showed values outside the range of the training data new environments conversely minimal extrapolation and more realistic predictions of weed distributions were obtained from models including a customised set of variables and even more so from models including only a reduced set of variables this study shows that careful selection of variables and investigation into extrapolation are vital in generating more realistic predictions of weed distributions,2013,0.142
What is the Risk for Exposure to Vector-Borne Pathogens in United States National Parks?,united states national parks attract î 275 million visitors annually and collectively present risk of exposure for staff and visitors to a wide range of arthropod vector species most notably ãÿeas mosquitoes and ticks and their associated bacterial protozoan or viral pathogens weassessed thecurrent state ofknowledgefor risk ofexposureto vector bornepathogensin national parksthrough a review of relevant literature including internal national park service documents and organismal databases we conclude that because of lack of systematic surveillance for vector borne pathogens in national parks the risk of pathogen exposure for staff and visitors is unclear existing data for vectors within national parks were not based on systematic collections and rarely include evaluation for pathogen infection extrapolation of human based surveillance data from neighboring communities likely provides inaccurate estimates for national parks because landscape differences impact trans mission of vector borne pathogens and human vector contact rates likely differ inside versus outside the parks because of differences in activities or behaviors vector based pathogen surveillance holds promise to deãžne when and where within national parks the risk of exposure to infected vectors is elevated a pilot effort including 5ã 10 strategic national parks would greatly improve our under standing of the scope and magnitude of vector borne pathogen transmission in these high use public settings such efforts also will support messaging to promote personal protection measures and inform park visitors and staff of their responsibility for personal protection which the national park service preservation mission dictates as the core strategy to reduce exposure to vector borne pathogens in national parks,2013,0.408
"Floristic Assessment of the Upper Palumeu River, the Grensgebergte, and the Kasikasima Areas",palumeu river we collected 188 plant specimens at the grensgebergte site 2 we collected 69 plant specimens and 75 at the makrutu camp site 3 we also collected 11 plant specimens at the palumeu village and 27 specimens at the rapids of the palumeu river we found 15 new plant species records for suriname and two new genera two of these belong to lianas four to shrubs and herbs and ten to trees the grensgebergte and the kasikasima mountains contain several vegetation types which are dominant and floristi cally distinct for the central and southern parts of suriname these vegetation types include tall dryland tropical forest on laterite granite hills short savannah moss forest and open rock vegetation including rocky outcrops around rapids and tall seasonally flooded forest within these vegetation types we recorded nearly all of the 15 new plant species records and the two new genus records for suriname we also recorded several rare species with only a few known occurrences in suriname and or in the guianas the note worthy species include several rare orchids that are listed on appendices i and ii of cites some carnivorous plants and three tree species that are listed on the iucn red list including one tree species listed as critically endangered plot surveys 0 1 ha also indicated that the forests of south suriname are floristically distinct from those of north suri name but do not significantly differ in tree alpha diversity the forests on the guiana shield basement complex are not uniform as stated by some our findings indicate the pristine status of the forests and vegetation types in southeastern part of suriname and the fact that these forests are still poorly explored,2013,0.968
"Transformer-4 version 2.0.1, a free multi-platform software to quickly reformat genotype matrices of any marker type, and archive them in the Demiurge information system",transformer 4 version 2 0 1 t4 is a multi platform freeware programmed in java that can transform a genotype matrix in excel or xml format into the input formats of one or several of the most commonly used population genetic software for any possible combination of the populations that the matrix contains t4 also allows the users to i draw allozyme gel interpretations for any number of diploid individuals and then generate a genotype matrix ready to be used by t4 and ii produce basic reports about the data in the matrices furthermore t4 is the only way to optionally submit genetic diversity digests for publication in the demiurge online information system http www demiurge project org each such digest undergoes peer review and it consists of a geo referenced data matrix in the tfm4 format plus any ancillary document or hyperlink that the digest authors see fit to include the complementarity between t4 and demiurge facilitates a free safe permanent and standardized data archival and analysis system for researchers and may also be a convenient resource for scientific journals public administrations or higher educators t4 and its converters are freely available at respectively http www demiurge project org download t4 and http www demiurge project org converterstore upon registration in the demiurge information system http demiurge project org register users have to click on the link provided on an account validation email and accept demiurge s terms of use see http www demiurge project org termsofuse a thorough user s guide is available within t4 a 3 min promotional video about t4 and demiurge can be seen at http vimeo com 29828406,2013,0.128
The safety assessment of Pythium irregulare as a producer of biomass and eicosapentaenoic acid for use in dietary supplements and food ingredients,polyunsaturated fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid dha 22 6 n 3 eicosapentaenoic acid epa 20 5 n 3 and arachidonic acid ara 20 4 n 6 have multiple beneficial effects on human health and can be used as an important ingredient in dietary supplements food feed and pharmaceuticals a variety of microorganisms has been used for commercial production of these fatty acids the microorganisms in the pythium family particularly pythium irregulare are potential epa producers the aim of this work is to provide a safety assessment of p irregulare so that the epa derived from this species can be potentially used in various commercial applications the genus pythium has been widely recognized as a plant pathogen by infecting roots and colonizing the vascular tissues of various plants such as soybeans corn and various vegetables however the majority of the pythium species including p irregulare have not been reported to infect mammals including humans the only species among the pythium family that infects mammals is p insidiosum there also have been no reports showing p irregulare to contain mycotoxins or cause potentially allergenic responses in humans based on the safety assessment we conclude that p irregulare can be considered a safe source of biomass and epa containing oil for use as ingredients in dietary supplements food feed and pharmaceuticals,2013,0.441
"Database of Vascular Plants of Canada (VASCAN): a community contributed taxonomic checklist of all vascular plants of Canada, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Greenland",the database of vascular plants of canada or vascan http data canadensys net vascan is a comprehensive and curated checklist of all vascular plants reported in canada greenland denmark and saint pierre and miquelon france vascan was developed at the universitã de montrã al biodiversity centre and is maintained by a group of editors and contributors for every core taxon in the checklist species subspecies or variety vascan provides the accepted scientific name the accepted french and english vernacular names and their synonyms alternatives in canada as well as the distribution status native introduced ephemeral excluded extirpated doubtful or absent of the plant for each province or territory and the habit tree shrub herb and or vine of the plant in canada for reported hybrids nothotaxa or hybrid formulas vascan also provides the hybrid parents except if the parents of the hybrid do not occur in canada all taxa are linked to a classification vascan refers to a source for all name classification and distribution information,2013,0.337
"Catalog of the spider types deposited in the National Collection of Arachnida of the Agricultural Research Council, Pretoria (Arthropoda: Arachnida: Araneae)",as signatories to the convention on biodiversity south africa is obliged to develop a strategic plan for the conservation and sustainable utilization of our diverse and species rich fauna and flora the south african national survey of arachnida sansa was initiated in 1997 with the main aim to discover describe and make an inventory of the south african arachnid fauna as a result studies on spider diversity in south africa have gone through an intense growth phase over the past 15 years all the material sampled is deposited into the national collection of arachnida non acari nca which was established in 1976 at the agricultural research council plant protection research institutes arc ppri in pretoria south africa natural history collections are not only responsible for the curation preservation and management of specimens in collections but to look after the type collection according to recommendation 72f article 72 of the international code of zoological nomenclature lists of name bearing types in a collection such as nca need to be published this electronic catalog of the araneae spider type specimens deposited in the nca represented all type specimen records upto the end of 2012 annual updates will be made as new types are deposited presently the nca have 1548 types of 33 spider families 97 genera and 205 species,2013,0.372
Toward Target 2 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: An Expert Analysis of the Puerto Rican Flora to Validate New Streamlined Methods for Assessing Conservation Status,target 2 of the 2020 global strategy for plant conservation gspc calls for a comprehensive list of the world s threatened plant species the lack of such a list is one of the greatest impediments to protecting the full complement of the world s plant species and work to achieve this has been slow an efficient system for identifying those species that are at risk of extinction could help to achieve this goal in a timeframe sensitive to today s conservation needs two systems that efficiently use available data to assess conservation status were tested against a provisional international union for conservation of nature and natural resources iucn red list analysis to evaluate the native seed plant species of puerto rico it was demonstrated that both systems efficiently identify species at risk which is a step toward both the gspc target 2 and a more comprehensive iucn red list for plants both systems were effective at identifying plant species at risk with the new york analysis identifying 98 and the smithsonian analysis 85 of the plant species considered threatened in the iucn red list both analyses to some extent overestimated those plants at risk but the species identified are all range restricted and thus of some conservation interest,2013,0.661
Applying distribution model projections for an uncertain future: the case of the Pacific oyster in UK waters,1 the inherent complexity of the environment is such that attempts to model it must operate under simplifications and assumptions considering predictions from alternative models with a range of assumptions and data requirements therefore provides a more robust approach 2 the intractability and uncertainty resulting from a suite of predictions may hinder the application of science in policy where a single prediction with little ambiguity or uncertainty would bemost desirable few studies modelling speciesâ distributions attempt to present multi model outputs in a format most useful to the non modelling community and none of these have done so for the marine environment 3 the problem of uncertainty is particularly prevalent in predicting the distribution of invasive alien species under climate change as invasive alien species are one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and may incur significant economic costs the benefit of applying predictions to highlight areas of possible establishment and inform policy and management may be large 4 an ensemble prediction is used to assess the distribution of suitable habitat for the pacific oyster crassostrea gigas in uk waters both currently and in the future the ensemble incorporates predictions from three species distribution models using data from two global climate models a method is developed highlighting the agreement of the ensemble further applying threshold values to retain information from constituent predictions in the final map of agreement 5 ensemble predictions made here suggest that pacific oyster will experience an opening of suitable habitat in northern uk waters reaching the faroe islands and the eastern norwegian sea by 2050 habitat suitability will increase with warming temperatures in the english channel and central north sea for this species the approaches applied here can be incorporated into risk assessment frameworks for invasive species as stipulated in the convention on biological diversity,2013,0.668
"Worldwide spread of the little fire ant, Wasmannia auropunctata (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",native to the neotropics wasmannia auropunctata has spread to numerous other tropical and subtropical areas where it is can reach extremely high densities and threaten the local biota to evaluate the worldwide spread of w auropunctata i compiled published and unpublished specimen records from 1700 sites i documented the earliest known w auropunctata records for 53 geographic areas countries island groups major west indian islands and us states including many with no previously published records anguilla antigua barbuda caicos islands el salvador guam montserrat nevis st kitts st martin and texas in the new world w auropunctata has a seemingly continuous distribution from central argentina to southernmost texas suggesting that it may be native throughout this expanse wasmannia auropunctata has also spread throughout the west indies and to peninsular florida though it is unclear which west indian islands may constitute part of its native range the earliest old world reports of w auropunctata in the 1890â s came from west africa sierra leone and gabon although no additional records have come from sierra leone w auropunctata has spread broadly across gabon and into neighboring countries where it is a serious pest in oceania the earliest records of w auropunctata date to 1972 from new caledonia and 1974 from the solomon islands pacific populations of w auropunctata are actively spread ing within these islands and to many other island groups in the past decade first records of w auropunc tata have been reported from several old world areas including the central african republic papua new guinea australia guam italy and israel wasmannia auropunctata appears to still have much potential for future spread in the old world,2013,0.408
"First record of a gecko species to the fauna of Qatar: Hemidactylus persicus Anderson, 1872 (Gekkonidae)",we report the discovery of a gecko species the persian leaf toed gecko hemidactylus persicus anderson 1872 gekkonidae in qatar found on halul island according to the qatar national biodiversity surveys and the available international literature h persicus was not previously recorded in qatar its known range covers the north east of the arabian peninsula bahrain the united arab emirates and south western asia our findings bridge the current geographic gap in the known distribution of the species from saudi arabia to asia we believe that the species could also be present in the qatar peninsula a thorough field survey is needed in order to map the range of this species in the state of qatar,2013,0.793
Modeling sensitive elasmobranch habitats,basic information on the distribution and habitat preferences of ecologically important species is essential for their management and protection in the mediterranean sea there is increasing concern over elasmobranch species because their biological ecological characteristics makes them highly vulnerable to fishing pressure their removal could affect the structure and function of marine ecosystems inducing changes in trophic interactions at the community level due to the selective elimination of predators or prey species competitors and species replacement in this study bayesian hierarchical spatial models are used to map the sensitive habitats of the three most caught elasmobranch species galeus melastomus scyliorhinus canicula etmopterus spinax in the western mediterranean sea based on fishery dependent bottom trawl data results show that habitats associated with hard substrata and sandy beds mainly in deep waters and with a high seabed gradient have a greater probability registering the presence of the studied species than those associated with muddy shallow waters temperature and chlorophyll a concentration show a negative relationship with scyliorhinus canicula occurrence our results identify some of the sensitive habitats for elasmobranchs in the western mediterranean sea gsa06 south providing essential and easy to use interpretation tools such as predictive distribution maps with the final aim of improving management and conservation of these vulnerable species,2013,0.871
EXIF Custom: Automatic image metadata extraction for Scratchpads and Drupal,many institutions and individuals use embedded metadata to aid in the management of their image collections many deskop image management solutions such as adobe bridge and online tools such as flickr also make use of embedded metadata to describe categorise and license images until now scratchpads a data management system and virtual research environment for biodiversity have not made use of these metadata and users have had to manually re enter this information if they have wanted to display it on their scratchpad site the drupal described here allows users to map metadata embedded in their images to the associated field in the scratchpads image form using one or more customised mappings the module works seamlessly with the bulk image uploader used on scratchpads and it is therefore possible to upload hundreds of images easily with automatic metadata exif xmp and iptc extraction and mapping,2013,0.274
IKey+: a new single-access key generation web service.,single access keys are a major tool for biologists who need to identify specimens the construction process of these keys is particularly complex especially if the input data set is large so having an automatic single access key generation tool is essential as part of the european project vibrant our aim was to develop such a tool as a web service thus allowing end users to integrate it directly into their workflow ikey generates single access keys on demand for single users or research institutions it receives user input data using the standard sdd format accepts several key generation parameters affecting the key topology and representation and supports several output formats ikey is freely available sources and binary packages at www identificationkey fr furthermore it is deployed on our server and can be queried for testing purposes through a simple web client also available at www identificationkey fr last accessed 13 august 2012 finally a client plugin will be integrated to the scratchpads biodiversity networking tool scratchpads eu,2013,0.081
Modeling Species Distributions from Heterogeneous Data for the Biogeographic Regionalization of the European Bryophyte Flora,the definition of biogeographic regions provides a fundamental framework for a range of basic and applied questions in biogeography evolutionary biology systematics and conservation previous research suggested that environmental forcing results in highly congruent regionalization patterns across taxa but that the size and number of regions depends on the dispersal ability of the taxa considered we produced a biogeographic regionalization of european bryophytes and hypothesized that 1 regions defined for bryophytes would differ from those defined for other taxa due to the highly specific eco physiology of the group and 2 their high dispersal ability would result in the resolution of few large regions species distributions were recorded using 10 000 km 2 mgrs pixels because of the lack of data across large portions of the area species distribution models employing macroclimatic variables as predictors were used to determine the potential composition of empty pixels k means clustering analyses of the pixels based on their potential species composition were employed to define biogeographic regions the optimal number of regions was determined by v fold cross validation and moran s i statistic the spatial congruence of the regions identified from their potential bryophyte assemblages with large scale vegetation patterns is at odds with our primary hypothesis this reinforces the notion that post glacial migration patterns might have been much more similar in bryophytes and vascular plants than previously thought the substantially lower optimal number of clusters and the absence of nested patterns within the main biogeographic regions as compared to identical analyses in vascular plants support our second hypothesis the modelling approach implemented here is however based on many assumptions that are discussed but can only be tested when additional data on species distributions become available highlighting the substantial importance of developing integrated mapping projects for all taxa in key biogeographically areas of europe and the mediterranean peninsulas in particular,2013,0.338
"A Tenebrionid beetle’s dataset (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) from Peninsula Valdés (Chubut, Argentina)",the natural protected area peninsula valdã s located in northeastern patagonia is one of the largest con servation units of arid lands in argentina although this area has been in the unesco world heritage list since 1999 it has been continually exposed to sheep grazing and cattle farming for more than a cen tury which have had a negative impact on the local environment our aim is to describe the first dataset of tenebrionid beetle species living in peninsula valdã s and their relationship to sheep grazing the dataset contains 118 records on 11 species and 198 adult individuals collected beetles were collected using pitfall traps in the two major environmental units of peninsula valdã s taking into account grazing intensities over a three year time frame from 2005â 2007 the data quality was enhanced following the best practices suggested in the literature during the digitalization and geo referencing processes moreover identifica tion of specimens and current accurate spelling of scientific names were reviewed finally post validation processes using darwintest software were applied specimens have been deposited at entomological col lection of the centro nacional patagã nico cenpat conicet the dataset is part of the database of this collection and has been published on the internet through gbif integrated publishing toolkit ipt http data gbif org datasets resource 14669 furthermore it is the first dataset for tenebrionid beetles of arid patagonia available in gbif database and it is the first one based on a previously designed and standardized sampling to assess the interaction between these beetles and grazing in the area the main purposes of this dataset are to ensure accessibility to data associated with tenebrionidae specimens from peninsula valdã s chubut argentina also to contribute to gbif with primary data about patagonian tenebrionids and finally to promote the entomological collection of centro nacional patagã nico cen pat conicet and its associated biodiversity data for these reasons we believe that this information will certainly be useful for future faunistic ecological conservational and biogeographical studies,2013,0.788
"Allium formosum Sennikov & Lazkov (Amaryllidaceae), a new species from Kyrgyzstan",allium formosum sennikov lazkov sp nov is described as new to science and illustrated tis species is the second member of a sect spathulata f o khass r m fritsch being different from a spathulatum f o khass r m fritsch in larger broader obtuse and more intensely purple coloured tepals and in a more robust habit it is a local endemic of babash ata mt range situated east of fergana valley in kyrgyzstan recommended for legal protection as endangered because of the very small population size in its only locality,2013,0.543
Predicting shifts in parasite distribution with climate change: a multitrophic level approach,climate change likely will lead to increasingly favourable environmental conditions for many parasites however predictions regarding parasitism s impacts often fail to account for the likely variability in host distribution and how this may alter parasite occurrence here we investigate potential distributional shifts in the meningeal worm parelaphostrongylosis tenuis a protostrongylid nematode commonly found in white tailed deer in north america whose life cycle also involves a free living stage and a gastropod intermediate host we modelled the distribution of the hosts and free living larva as a complete assemblage to assess whether a complex trophic system will lead to an overall increase in parasite distribution with climate change or whether divergent environmental niches may promote an ecological mismatch using an ensemble approach to climate modelling under two different carbon emission scenarios we show that whereas the overall trend is for an increase in niche breadth for each species mismatches arise in habitat suitability of the free living larva vs the definitive and intermediate hosts by incorporating these projected mismatches into a combined model we project a shift in parasite distribution accounting for all steps in the transmission cycle and identify that overall habitat suitability of the parasite will decline in the great plains and southeastern usa but will increase in the boreal forest ecoregion particularly in alberta these results have important implications for wildlife conservation and management due to the known pathogenicity of parelaphostrongylosis to alternate hosts including moose caribou and elk our results suggest that disease risk forecasts which fail to consider biotic interactions may be overly simplistic and that accounting for each of the parasite s life stages is key to refining predicted responses to climate change,2013,0.886
State of knowledge of earthworm communities in German soils as a basis for biological soil quality assessment,within a project aiming to improve the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soils in germany the database bo info was established in which soil biological data from permanent soil monitoring sites of several german states as well as from the literature was compiled soil biological data on the occurrence and abundance of earthworms were analysed with respect to their distribution and relation to site habitat type land use and soil properties ph texture organic matter reliable data for earthworms were available from 294 sites in total 32 species all species known to occur in germany were present in the database 10 of which were very common ecological preferences regarding land use ph soil organic matter som and texture were derived for these 10 species the occurrence of earthworms at the species and ecological group level is determined by land use and soil ph value and less by soil texture a clear distinction between epigeic species on the one hand and endogeic and anecic species on the other hand was found regarding som earthworm communities of habitat types representing the four major land use types grassland crop sites deciduous and coniferous forests clearly differed using three examples from different land use forms typical species could be identified at the next sub division level of habitat types provided a sufficient number of data was available as a result qualitative expectation reference values species richness and composition are proposed for the most important habitat types e g different types of crop sites grassland and coniferous forests due to their ecological relevance the use of earthworms for soil biological site classification and assessment is recommended keywords,2013,0.728
Next-Generation Invaders? Hotspots for Naturalised Sleeper Weeds in Australia under Future Climates,naturalised but not yet invasive plants pose a nascent threat to biodiversity as climate regimes continue to change it is likely that a new suite of invaders will emerge from the established pool of naturalised plants pre emptive management of locations that may be most suitable for a large number of potentially invasive plants will help to target monitoring and is vital for effective control we used species distribution models sdm and invasion hotspot analysis to determine where in australia suitable habitat may occur for 292 naturalised plants sdms were built in maxent using both climate and soil variables for current baseline conditions modelled relationships were projected onto two representative concentration pathways for future climates rcp 4 5 and 8 5 based on seven global climate models for two time periods 2035 2065 model outputs for each of the 292 species were then aggregated into single â hotspotâ maps at two scales continental and for each of australiaâ s 37 ecoregions across australia areas in the south east and south west corners of the continent were identified as potential hotspots for naturalised plants under current and future climates these regions provided suitable habitat for 288 and 239 species respectively under baseline climates the areal extent of the continental hotspot was projected to decrease by 8 8 under climates for 2035 and by a further 5 2 by 2065 a similar pattern of hotspot contraction under future climates was seen for the majority of ecoregions examined however two ecoregions tasmanian temperate forests and australian alps montane grasslands showed increases in the areal extent of hotspots of 45 under climate scenarios for 2065 the alpine ecoregion also had an increase in the number of naturalised plant species with abiotically suitable habitat under future climate scenarios indicating that this area may be particularly vulnerable to future incursions by naturalised plants,2013,0.121
Germinating seeds or bulbils in 87 of 113 tested Arctic species indicate potential for ex situ seed bank storage,arctic plant species are expected to lose range due to climate change one approach to preserve the genetic and species diversity for the future is to store propagules in seed vaults however germinability of seeds is assumed to be low for arctic species we evaluated ex situ storage potential of 113 of the 161 native angiosperms of svalbard by studying seed ripening and germination seeds or bulbils were collected and germinability was tested after one winter of storage in the svalbard global seed vault twenty six of the species did not produce ripe propagules 8 produced bulbils and 79 produced seeds bulbils sprouted to high percentages seeds of 10 species did not germinate 22 had low germination 20 34 had germination of 21â 70 and 13 had high germination percentages 70 more than 70 of the species belonging to asteraceae brassicaceae caryophyllaceae juncaceae rosaceae and saxifragaceae germinated cold tolerant common species had higher germination percentages than relatively thermophilous rare species germination percentages were six times higher than observed in 1969 n 51 and 0 7 times that observed in 2008 n 22 indicating that recent climate warming improves germination in the arctic while in situ conservation is of vital importance ex situ conservation in seed banks is a potential complementary conservation strategy for the majority of arctic vascular plant species for species that did not germinate other methods for ex situ conservation should be sought for example growing in botanical gardens,2013,0.98
Reinvestigation of West African Surirellaceae (Bacillariophyta) described by Woodhead and Tweed from Sierra Leone,microscope slides containing material from sierra leone used by woodhead and tweed to describe eight new surirellaceae taxa in the mid twentieth century were reinvestigated only two taxa were found on the original slides surirella approximatawoodhead tweed and s engleri var constricta f minor woodhead tweed the valve variability of s engleri o mã ller includes valves of s engleri var constricta f minor which is now regarded as a synonym as no holotypes were indicated by the authors types are given here comments on s rudis var sierra leonensis woodhead tweed s rudis var sierra leonensis f constricta woodhead tweed and s esamangensis foged are also given valves resembling stenopterobia recta woodhead tweed surirella asperrima f rokuprensis woodhead tweed s engleri f sierra leonensiswoodhead tweed and s rokuprensiswoodhead tweed could not be found on the woodhead and tweed original slides,2013,0.359
"Chinese species of egg-parasitoids of the genera Oxyscelio Kieffer, Heptascelio Kieffer and Platyscelio Kieffer (Hymenoptera: Platygastridae s.l., Scelioninae)",to date the known chinese fauna of egg parasitoids of the genus oxyscelio kieffer encompasses two species from the mainland â o doumao burks and o nubbin burks here we record eighteen species of oxyscelio from collections in mainland china o arvi burks o ceylonensis dodd o convergens burks o cordis burks o crebritas burks o cuculli burks o dermatoglyphes burks o doumao burks o florus kononova o granorum burks o intermedietas burks o jugi burks o kramatos burks o longiventris burks o naraws kozlov l㪠o perpensus kononova o planocarinae burks and o striarum burks oxyscelio is primarily found in the tropics and most of these species are shared with taiwan and southeast asia three species previously known only from japan o arvi o florus o perpensus are shared the chinese species are recorded from guangdong guangxi hainan hebei hunan shaanxi sichuan yunnan and zhejiang as well as additional material from taiwan heptascelio hamatus masner johnson and platyscelio pulchricornis kieffer are both recorded from hainan and guangdong as well as records of p pulchricornis from sarawak and thailand,2013,0.855
"Iberian Odonata distribution: data of the BOS Arthropod Collection (University of Oviedo, Spain)",odonata are represented from the iberian peninsula by 79 species however there exists a significant gap in accessible knowledge about these species especially regarding their distribution tis data paper describes the specimen based odonata data of the arthropod collection of the department of biologã a de organismos y sistemas bos university of oviedo spain te specimens were mainly collected from the iberian peninsula 98 63 of the data records especially the northern region te earliest specimen deposited in the collection dates back to 1950 while the 1980â s and 2000â s are the best represented time periods between 1950 and 2009 16 604 odonata specimens were deposited and are documented in the dataset approximately 20 of the specimens belong to the families coenagrionidae and calopterygi dae specimens include the holotype and paratypes of the iberian subspecies calopteryx haemorrhoidalis asturica ocharan 1983 and sympetrum vulgatum ibericum ocharan 1985 te complete dataset is also provided in darwin core archive format,2013,0.514
"The Genus Spilanthes Ethnopharmacology, Phytochemistry, and Pharmacological Properties: A Review",spilanthes spp are popular over the counter remedies they are sold over the internet under various names and are widely used in traditionalmedicine in various cultures this review will summarize the important reports on the ethnopharmacology botany phytochemistry and pharmacological properties as described in the literature fromrecent years 1920 to 2013 spilanthes spp are used for more than 60 types of disorders they are reported to contain a number of biologically active phytochemicals although a large number of ethnopharmacological uses have been documented only a few of these species have been investigated for their chemical and biological activities the studies are carried out mainly on spilanthes extracts and a few metabolites substantiate the uses of these plants in traditional medicine well conducted pharmacological studies are still needed for several traditional indications and the mechanisms of action by which the plant extracts and the active compounds exert their pharmacological effects remain to be studied they are predominantly used as extracts in personal care products traditional medicines and the pharmaceutical and culinary areas suggestions are made regarding some of the possible mechanisms of action as to how the known compounds may exert their biological activity 1,2013,0.048
An End-user Tailorable Generic Framework for Privacy-preserving Location-based Mobile Applications,in this paper we discuss the emerging need for supporting end user tailorability and privacy with respect to collaborative location based applications in mobile environments we present a generic privacy preserving framework for supporting such end user tailorability on both user interface and server side ends the requirements were compiled from various use cases of collaborative location based scenarios from various projects and related literature the outcome results of this work demonstrates the feasibility of our proposed framework by means of an ios based prototype applied to previous iangle and ifishwatcher research projects the significance of this prototype that it allows different communities to define their own points of interest in a genericmanner additionally the distributed architecture can be tailored according to user privacy requirements,2013,0.139
Orchids And Emonocot – Assembling Research Resources And Facilitating Collaborative Taxonomy Online,the orchidaceae is one of the eight families targeted for in depth treatment in the groundbreaking emonocot project a consortium formed by rbg kew the natural history museum london and oxford university and funded by nerc emonocot is an e taxonomy initiative that will provide the first web based treatment for the worldâ s monocot plants constituting approximately 20 of all higher plants some 70 000 species and including numerous groups of the highest conservation ecological and economic importance emonocot will revolutionize the way taxonomic data are organized and accessed by both the practitioners and users of taxonomy targeted at biodiversity and environmental scientists but also available to other users including volunteer biologists horticulturists schools and the general public available information will include nomenclature taxonomic descriptions images identification guides as well as geographical ecological dna sequence and conservation data structured around a taxonomy derived from the world checklist of monocotyledons as part of the emonocot project identification guides and taxon pages to all orchidaceae genera will be produced alongside an interactive key and taxon pages for all cypripedioideae slipper orchid species and infra specific taxa researchers may upload content such as images and species descriptions to the taxon pages edit the classification as taxa are described and revised and access original publications for names and much more,2013,0.34
The Biology of Invasive Alien Plants in Canada. 12. Pueraria montana var. lobata (Willd.) Sanjappa & Predeep,kudzu pueraria montana var lobata is a perennial climbing vine known for its rapid and competitive growth introduced to north america and promoted at various times as a crop an ornamental and an erosion prevention tool its negative impacts have been varied and severe in the united states dense populations overtop and smother crops and native vegetation alter nitrogen cycles and have the potential to affect air quality kudzu is winter deciduous in north america with stems re growing each season in canada growth occurs from may until september long enough for production of viable seed although widely believed to be intolerant of winter temperatures typical in eastern canada underground structures may be able to withstand temperatures as low as î ƒ308c and northward range expansion is predicted by climate change models dispersal in north america is primarily through intentional planting by humans with clonal propagation and limited seed production and germination contributing to local population expansion only one population is known in canada near leamington ontario once established kudzu is difficult to eliminate or control without repeated actions efforts to prevent the movement and sale of kudzu in canada along with early detection and rapid response monitoring and education offer potential strategies for control depending on the age size and location of the population herbicides burning mowing and grazing can be effective control measures,2013,0.38
Typification of Cocconeis lineata and Cocconeis euglypta (Bacillariophyta),the nominate varieties of the monoraphid diatoms cocconeis lineata ehrenberg and c euglypta ehrenberg are typified lectotypes of both taxa are preserved at the ehrenberg collection museum fã r naturkunde berlin germany the lectotype of c lineata is a poorly detailed drawing showing an ovoid valve or frustule with two to three apical lines on each hemivalve the lectotype of c euglypta contained in a mica shows a unique broadly elliptical sternum valve with up to five apical striae on each hemivalve displaying a zigzag pattern this is roughly consistent with the current concept of c lineata and c euglypta and with their usage over the last 160 years to ensure stabilization of the names and current concepts for these two taxa culture based epitypes of c lineata and c euglypta are designated light and electron microscopy observations as well as morphometric data from clones for both taxa are presented and an amended description for each taxon is provided,2013,0.323
"Social spiders of the genus Anelosimus occur in wetter, more productive environments than non-social species.",latitude rainfall and productivity have been shown to influence social organisation and level of sociality in arthropods on large geographic scales social spiders form permanent group living societies where they cooperate in brood care web maintenance and foraging sociality has evolved independently in a number of unrelated spider genera and may reflect convergent evolutionary responses to common environmental drivers the genus anelosimus contains a third of approximately 25 described permanently social spider species eight to nine species that all occur in the americas to test for environmental correlates of sociality in anelosimus across the americas we used logistic regression to detect effects of annual rainfall productivity and precipitation seasonality on the relative likelihood of occurrence of social and non social anelosimus spiders our analyses show that social species tend to occur at higher annual rainfall and productivity than non social species supporting the hypothesised effects of these environmental variables on the geographical distribution of social species we did not find support for the hypothesis that permanently social species occur in areas with low precipitation seasonality high annual precipitation and to less extent high productivity favour the occurrence of permanently group living anelosimus spiders relative to subsocial and solitary species these results are partially consistent with previous findings for the old world spider genus stegodyphus where a link between high habitat productivity and sociality was also found unlike anelosimus however stegodyphus typically occur in dry habitats negating a general importance of high precipitation for sociality sociality in spiders thus seems to be strongly linked to productivity probably reflecting the need for relatively high availability of large prey to sustain social colonies,2013,0.869
Rust fungi and global change,rust fungi are important components of ecological communities and in ecosystem function their unique life strategies as biotrophic pathogens with complicated life cycles couldmakethem vulnerable to global environmental change while there are gaps in our knowledge especially in natural plantâ rust systems this review of the exposure of rust fungi to global change parameters revealed thatsomehostâ rust relationshipswoulddecline under predicted environmentalchange scenarios whereas others would either remain unchanged or become more prevalent notably some graminicolous rusts are negatively affected by higher temperatures and increased concentrations of atmospheric co2 an increase of atmospheric o3 appears to favour rust diseases on trees but not those on grasses combined effects of co2 ando3 are intermediary the most important global drivers for the geographical and host plant range expansion and prevalence of rusts however are global plant trade host plant genetic homogenization and the regular occurrence of conducive environmental conditions especially the availability of moisture however while rusts thrive in high humidity environments they can also survive in desert habitats and as a group their environmental tolerance is large with no conclusive change in their overall prevalence predictable to date introduction,2013,0.169
"A qualitative ecological risk assessment of the invasive Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus in a sub-tropical African river system (Limpopo River, South Africa)",this study outlines the development of a qualitative risk assessment method and its application as a screening tool for determining the risk of establishment and spread of the invasive nile tilapia oreochromis niloticus linnaeus 1758 within the central sub catchment of the limpopo river basin in northern south africa the assessment used known physiological tolerance limits of o niloticus in relation to minimum water temperature presence or absence of dams seasonality of river flows and the presence of indigenous fish species of concern to identify river systems that would be suitable for o niloticus establishment river sections along the limpopo main river channel and the immediate reaches of its associated tributaries east of the limpopo lephalala river confluence along the botswanaâ south africaâ zimbabwe border were identified as being highly vulnerable to o niloticus invasion rivers in the upper bushveld catchment upper limpopo mogalakwena lephalala mokolo matlabas and crocodile rivers were categorized as of medium ecological risk while headwater streams were considered to be of low ecological risk the decrease in vulnerability between lowveld and highveld river sections was mainly a function of low water temperatures 8â 12â c associated with increasing altitude oreochromis niloticus is already established in the lower catchment of the limpopo river basin where indigenous congenerics are at an extinction risk through hybridization and competition exclusion oreochromis niloticus therefore poses an ecologically unacceptable risk to river systems in the upper catchment where it is yet to establish the current risk assessment model provides a useful preliminary framework for the identification of river systems that are vulnerable to an o niloticus invasion where conservation measures should be directed and implemented to prevent its introduction and spread within the limpopo river system copyright â 2012 john wiley sons ltd,2013,0.076
Effects of late quaternary climate change on Palearctic shrews,the late quaternary was a time of rapid climatic oscillations and drastic environmental changes in general species can respond to such changes by behavioral accommodation distributional shifts ecophenotypic modifications nongenetic evolution genetic or ultimately face local extinction how those responses manifested in the past is essential for properly predicting future ones especially as the current warm phase is further intensified by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide here we use ancient dna adna and morphological features in combination with ecological niche modeling enm to investigate genetic and nongenetic responses of central european palearctic shrews to past climatic change we show that a giant form of shrew previously described as an extinct pleistocene sorex species represents a large ecomorph of the common shrew sorex araneus which was replaced by populations from a different gene pool and with different morphology after the pleistocene holocene transition we also report the presence of the cold adapted tundra shrew s tundrensis in central europe this species is currently restricted to siberia and was hitherto unknown as an element of the pleistocene fauna of europe finally we show that there is no clear correlation between climatic oscillations within the last 50 000 years and body size in shrews and conclude that a special nonanalogous situation with regard to biodiversity and food supply in the late glacial may have caused the observed large body size,2013,0.783
Myxomycete records from Eagle Hill in Maine,specimens of myxomycetes collected during the course of a week long seminar held at approximately the same time during four different years 2004 2006 2008 and 2012 provide a baseline of data on the assemblage of species associated with the forests of one small area of maine seventy three species belonging to 29 genera were recorded during the four years and 17 of these were collected in at least three different years sixty one of the 73 species were represented by specimens that had fruited in the field under natural conditions but these were supplemented by a number of specimens obtained from moist chamber cultures,2013,0.787
Current practice in biodiversity impact assessment and prospects for developing an integrated process,irish guidance for integrated biodiversity impact assessment provides a methodological approach for integrating impact assessment requirements with regard to biodiversity under eu and irish legislation preparation of the guidance was supported by extensive consultation including international and national surveys these offered insights into the issues affecting the treatment of biodiversity in impact assessment practice as well as expert opinion on factors affecting and supporting the development of a more integrated and adaptive approach this paper contrasts the international literature with the consultation feedback among other aspects the results highlight the requirement for an improved application of evidence based assessment techniques continuity in monitoring enhanced information exchange between scientists assessors and proponents as well as increased awareness amongst stakeholders for inclusion of appropriate biodiversity protection objectives and mitigation in final planning decisions comparative analysis of results indicates that current practice is characterized by limited information exchange and the use of in house databases in assessments a central spatial data repository is identified as key for quantitatively assessing cumulative effects through geographic information systems and thus supporting evidence informed decision making towards biodiversity conservation,2013,0.086
Current Status And Future Perspectives Of Bioinformatics In Tanzania,the main bottleneck in advancing genomics in present times is the lack of expertise in using bioinformatics tools and approaches for data mining in raw dna sequences generated by modern high throughput technologies such as next generation sequencing although bioinformatics has been making major progress and contributing to the development in the rest of the world it has still not yet fully integrated the tertiary education and research sector in tanzania this review aims to introduce a summary of recent achievements trends and success stories of application of bioinformatics in biotechnology the applications of bioinformatics in the fields such as molecular biology biotechnology medicine and agriculture the global trend of bioinformatics accessibility bioinformatics products in tanzania bioinformatics training initiatives in tanzania the future prospects of bioinformatics use in biotechnology globally and tanzania in particular are reviewed the paper is of interest and importance to rouse public awareness of the new opportunities that could be brought about by bioinformatics to address many research problems relevant to tanzania and sub sahara africa,2013,0.064
Allergy in Botswana,introduction unlike south africa and zimbabwe allergen sensitisation patterns are unknown for botswana skin prick test spt results for gaborone are reviewed methods spts from an allergy practice included trees grasses weeds moulds cat dog dust mites and cockroach food spts were conducted when clinically indicated results in 126 patients median age was 7 8 years interquartile range iqr 3 4 16 3 years with male predominance 56 68 were atopic â 72 were sensitised to aeroallergens 15 foods and 13 both top aeroallergen sensitisations were bermuda grass 41 timothy grass 33 maize pollen 32 alternaria 28 english plantain 25 and acacia tree 21 less common were dust mite 14 pets 14 and cockroach 10 peanut and egg allergy were common food allergies 10 novel food allergies included mopane worm and mogwagwa frequent clinical presentations were rhinitis 70 asthma 42 and eczema 30 rhinitis patients were significantly grass allergic bermuda p 0 01 timothy p 0 04 maize pollen p 0 01 asthmatics were more likely to be cockroach p 0 02 or aspergillus p 0 01 allergic conjunctivitis was significantly linked to bermuda grass p 0 001 maize p 0 01 and acacia tree pollen p 0 02 allergy conclusion bermuda grass allergy is common in botswana but dust mite sensitisation is infrequent peanut and egg were the most common food allergies novel food allergens were identified,2013,0.271
Epiphyte metapopulation persistence after drastic habitat decline and low tree regeneration: time-lags and effects of conservation actions,1 old trees have declined in europe due to agricultural intensification and forestry for shade intolerant epiphytic species occurring on old trees in semi open landscapes host tree numbers have further decreased because of shading by developing secondary woodland moreover in this habitat regeneration that could replace the extant old trees is low this suggests that epiphytic species associated with old trees are declining however for species with low extinction rates the decline may be slow and hard to elucidate 2 we investigated the persistence of five old oak associated epiphytic lichens with different traits by simulating metapopulation dynamics using bayesian incidence function models for dynamic landscapes with an oak rich landscape as a reference we investigated effects of i drastic habitat decline ii conservation actions such as clearing around trees or increased regeneration rate iii low tree regeneration and iv clearing and increased regeneration after 100 years of low regeneration 3 after drastic habitat decline the number of occupied trees continued to decrease display ing long time lags before reaching new metapopulation equilibriums lichen extinction risks increased with decreasing habitat and were highest for species that only colonise very old trees or have large dispersal propagules in landscapes with low tree densities conservation actions had only minor effects on lichen extinction risks 4 low tree regeneration rates increased lichen extinction risks but species declines were slow conservation actions that increased regeneration after 100 years of low regeneration decreased the extinction risks to very low levels 5 synthesis and applications due to low rates of local extinction epiphytes display long time lags to reach new equilibriums after habitat loss thus we should expect ongoing declines in epiphyte metapopulations in landscapes where old trees have recently declined slow extinction gives an opportunity to improve persistence by conservation actions but the success depends on species traits and the current density of old trees in landscapes with many old but few young trees epiphytes may persist if conservation actions quickly address the need to increase tree regeneration rates the best conservation approach for long term persistence of epiphytic lichens is to ensure regular tree regeneration in landscapes with a cur rent high density of old trees,2013,0.409
A specialist’s audit of aggregated occurrence records: An ‘aggregator’s’ perspective,a recent zookeysâ paper mesibov 2013 http www pensoft net journal home page php journal id 1 page article sesid df7bcb35b02603283dcb83ee0e0af0c9 type show article id 5111 has high lighted data quality issues in aggregated data sets but did not provide a realistic way to address these issues tis paper provides an aggregatorâ s perspective including ways that the whole community can help to address data quality issues te establishment of gbif and national nodes national aggregators such as the atlas of living australia ala have integrated and exposed a huge diversity of biological observa tions along with many associated issues much of the admirable work by mesibov 2013 was enabled by having the data exposed data quality one of the highest priorities for gbif the national nodes and other aggregators de pends on both automatic methods and community experts to detect and correct data issues not all issues can however be automatically detected or corrected so community assistance is needed to help improve the quality of exposed biological data we do need to improve the infrastructure and associated processes to more easily identify data issues and document all changes to ensure a full record is permanently and publicly available,2013,0.01
Amundsen Sea Mollusca from the BIOPEARL II expedition,information regarding the molluscs in this dataset is based on the epibenthic sledge ebs samples collected during the cruise biopearl ii jr179 rrs james clark ross in the austral summer 2008 a total of 35 epibenthic sledge deployments have been performed at five locations in the amundsen sea at pine island bay pib and the amundsen sea embayment ase at depths ranging from 476 to 3501m tis presents a unique and important collection for the antarctic benthic biodiversity assessment as the amundsen sea remains one of the least known regions in antarctica indeed the work presented in this dataset is based on the first benthic samples collected with an ebs in the amundsen sea however we assume that the data represented are an underestimation of the real fauna present in the amundsen sea in total 9261 specimens belonging to 6 classes 55 families and 97 morphospecies were collected te species richness per station var ied between 6 and 43 gastropoda were most species rich 50 species followed by bivalvia 37 aplacophora 5 scaphopoda 3 and one from each of polyplacophora and monoplacophora,2013,0.949
"You're so vein: bundle sheath physiology, phylogeny and evolution in C3 and C4 plants",bundle sheath bs anatomy is found in most c4 lineages associated with low inter veinal distances ivd and high bs mesophyll ratio bs mc the origins function and selective advantages of the bs in c3 lineages are relevant for understanding the environmental molecular and phylogenetic determinants of c4 evolution suggested functions for bs have included structural support hydraulic isolation storage for water ions and carbohydrates and photorespiratory carbon metabolism we propose a central role for cavitation repair consistent with the bs as a control centre on regulating stem and leaf hydraulic continuity an analysis of bs traits in the phylogenetic lineages giving rise to c4 grasses the pacmad clade shows an initial enhancement in bs mc ratio in c3 lineages although ivd is similar to the pooideae sister group using a global database a well developed bs in the c3 pacmad lineages was associated with higher precipitation and temperatures in the habitat of origin on an annual basis with the c3 to c4 progression defined by the aridity index ai maintaining leaf hydraulic conductance and cavitation repair are consistent with increased evaporative demand and more seasonal precipitation as drivers first for the c3 bs and then c4 diversification under declining co 2 concentrations in the palaeogene and neogene,2013,0.258
Potential effects of climate change on the distribution of an endangered species : Melanophryniscus montevidensis (Anura: Bufonidae),species distributions are linked with climate among the effects predicted by the intergovernmental panel on climate change are changes in precipitation patterns and increases in mean temperaturesâ factors potentially having a major impact on threatened rare and endemic species using models to forecast possible changes in the distributions of different species under different climate change scenarios we can identify probable impacts on species and build effective conservation strategies we modeled the effects of two climate change scenarios on the geographical distribution of the regionally endemic bufonid melanophryniscus montevidensis categorized as vulnerable by the iucn and as endangered by the uruguayan red list of amphibians ecological niche models were generated to describe the present and possible future distributions of this species in 2050 and 2080 given severe a2 and moderate b2 climatic changes legacy data for m montevidensis were obtained from uruguayan biocollections and climate data were acquired from the worldclim database at present m montevidensis could occur along the atlantic uruguayan coast and a small section of the southern brazilian coast however changes in climate may lead to a loss of suitable environmental conditions for this toad thus this endangered species is vulnerable and in urgent need of protection keywords,2013,0.773
A new spin on a compositionalist predictive modelling framework for conservation planning: A tropical case study in Ecuador,knowledge about spatial biodiversity patterns is a basic criterion for reserve network design although herbariumcollections hold large quantities of information the data are often scattered and cannot supply complete spatial coverage alternatively herbarium data can be used to fit species distribution models and their predictions can be used to provide complete spatial coverage and derive species richness maps here we build on previous effort to propose an improved compositionalist framework for using species distribution models to better inform conservation management we illustrate the approach with models fitted with six different methods and combined using an ensemble approach for 408 plant species in a tropical and megadiverse country ecuador as a complementary view to the traditional richness hot spots methodology consisting of a simple stacking of species distribution maps the compositionalist modelling approach used here combines separate predictions for different pools of species to identify areas of alternative suitability for conservation our results show that the compositionalist approach bet ter captures the established protected areas than the traditional richness hotspots strategies and allows the identification of areas in ecuador that would optimally complement the current protection network further studies should aim at refining the approach with more groups and additional species information,2013,0.813
Afrotemperate Amphibians in southern and eastern Africa: a critical review,the term â afrotemperateâ is taken to cover the area and fauna of the southern cape eastern highlands of south africa and intertropical highlands a feature of afrotemperate distribution is that it conforms to climatic zones rather than to latitudinal zonation two main patterns of afrotemperate distribution are perceived one is shown by species or genera concentrated in temperate south africa or present both in the non tropical south and disjunctly in the cartographic tropics in highland areas of non tropical climate to the north another pattern is a concentration of species or genera on highlands of east africa a concentration of cool preferring species in the south has led to the concept of this being a centre of endemism with a radiation undergoing progressive attenuation northwards on highlands within the cartographic tropics this concept is questioned in the case of several species and a reverse direction of attenuation from east african highlands southwards is evident in others special attention is given to the widespread and problematic genus strongylopus whose biogeography is largely unresolved at present the conventional application of the term â afrotropical regionâ to the whole of subsaharan africa is criticised since a large proportion of the subsaharan amphibian fauna avoids areas of tropical climate including areas within the cartographic tropics undiscerning blanket application of the term â afrotropicalâ tends to divert attention away from the rich cool preferring afrotemperate faunas and floras if a faunal and floral unity in subsaharan africa needs to be recognised by a corporate name the name subsaharan region seems preferable to â afrotropical regionâ,2013,0.813
"Distribution extension for Anolis salvini Boulenger, 1885 (Reptilia: Squamata: Dactyloidae), in western Panama",we report new localities for the lizard anolis salvini boulenger 1885 along the pacific slopes of the cordillera central in chiriquã province and the comarca ngã be buglã of western panama these records extend the known geographic distribution of this species about 70 km eastwards they also extend the known vertical distribution approximately 70 m uphill additionally we provide the first record for the caribbean slopes an updated distribution map photos of specimens from different localities an analysis of a distress call and comments on the morphology of this species,2013,0.532
"Taxonomy, biogeography and DNA barcodes of Geodia species (Porifera, Demospongiae, Tetractinellida) in the Atlantic boreo-arctic region",geodia species north of 60â n in the atlantic appeared in the literature for the first time when bowerbank described geodia barretti and g macandrewii in 1858 from western norway since then a number of species have been based on material from various parts of the region g simplex isops phlegraei i pallida i sphaeroides synops pyriformis g parva g normani g atlantica sidonops mesotriaena now called g hentscheli and g simplicissima in addition to these 12 nominal species four species described from elsewhere are claimed to have been identified in material from the northeast atlantic namely g nodastrella and g cydonium and its synonyms cydonium muelleri and geodia gigas in this paper we revise the boreo arctic geodia species using morphological molecular and biogeographical data we notably compare northwest and northeast atlantic specimens biological data reproduction biochemistry microbiology epibionts for each species are also reviewed our results show that there are six valid species of boreo arctic atlantic geodia while other names are synonyms or mis identifications geodia barretti g atlantica g macandrewii and g hentscheli are well established and widely distributed the same goes for geodia phlegraei but this species shows a striking geographical and bathymetric variation which led us to recognize two species g phlegraei and g parva here resurrected some geodia are arctic species g hentscheli g parva while others are typically boreal g atlantica g barretti g phlegraei g macandrewii no morphological differences were found between specimens from the northeast and northwest atlantic except for g parva the folmer cytochrome oxidase subunit i coi fragment is unique for every species and invariable over their whole distribution range except for g barretti which had two haplotypes 18s is unique for four species but cannot discriminate g phlegraei and g parva two keys to the boreo arctic geodia are included one based on external morphology the other based on spicule morphology,2013,0.983
Phylogeography and postglacial expansion of the endangered semi-aquatic mammal Galemys pyrenaicus,species with strict ecological requirements may provide new insights into the forces that shaped the geographic variation of genetic diversity the pyrenean desman galemys pyrenaicus is a small semi aquatic mammal that inhabits clean streams of the northern half of the iberian peninsula and is endangered in most of its geographic range but its genetic structure is currently unknown while the stringent ecological demands derived from its aquatic habitat might have caused a partition of the genetic diversity among river basins pleistocene glaciations would have generated a genetic pattern related to glacial refugia results to study the relative importance of historical and ecological factors in the genetic structure of g pyrenaicus we used mitochondrial and intronic sequences of specimens covering most of the species range we show first that the pyrenean desman has very low levels of genetic diversity compared to other mammals in addition phylogenetic and dating analyses of the mitochondrial sequences reveal a strong phylogeographic structure of a middle pleistocene origin suggesting that the main lineages arose during periods of glacial isolation furthermore both the spatial distribution of nuclear and mitochondrial diversity and the results of species distribution modeling suggest the existence of a major glacial refugium in the northwestern part of the iberian peninsula finally the main mitochondrial lineages show a striking parapatric distribution without any apparent exchange of mitochondrial haplotypes between the lineages that came into secondary contact although with certain permeability to nuclear genes indicating incomplete mixing after the post glacial recolonization on the other hand when we analyzed the partition of the genetic diversity among river basins the pyrenean desman showed a lower than expected genetic differentiation among main rivers conclusions the analysis of mitochondrial and intronic markers in g pyrenaicus showed the predominant effects of pleistocene glaciations on the genetic structure of this species while the distribution of the genetic diversity was not greatly influenced by the main river systems these results and particularly the discovery of a marked phylogeographic structure may have important implications for the conservation of the pyrenean desman,2013,0.64
Global Coordination and Standardisation in Marine Biodiversity through the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and Related Databases,the world register of marine species is an over 90 complete open access inventory of all marine species names here we illustrate the scale of the problems with species names synonyms and their classification and describe how worms publishes online quality assured information on marine species within worms over 100 global 12 regional and 4 thematic species databases are integrated with a common taxonomy over 240 editors from 133 institutions and 31 countries manage the content to avoid duplication of effort content is exchanged with 10 external databases at present worms contains 460 000 taxonomic names from kingdom to subspecies 368 000 species level combinations of which 215 000 are currently accepted marine species names and 26 000 related but non marine species associated information includes 150 000 literature sources 20 000 images and locations of 44 000 specimens usage has grown linearly since its launch in 2007 with about 600 000 unique visitors to the website in 2011 and at least 90 organisations from 12 countries using worms for their data management by providing easy access to expert validated content worms improves quality control in the use of species names with consequent benefits to taxonomy ecology conservation and marine biodiversity research and management the service manages information on species names that would otherwise be overly costly for individuals and thus minimises errors in the application of nomenclature standards worms content is expanding to include host parasite relationships additional literature sources locations of specimens images distribution range ecological and biological data species are being categorised as introduced alien invasive of conservation importance and on other attributes these developments have a multiplier effect on its potential as a resource for biodiversity research and management as a consequence of worms we are witnessing improved communication within the scientific community and anticipate increased taxonomic efficiency and quality control in marine biodiversity research and management,2013,0.982
Metabolic scope and interspecific competition in sculpins of greenland are influenced by increased temperatures due to climate change.,ongoing climate change has led to an increase in sea surface temperatures of 2 4â c on the west coast of greenland since fish are ectothermic metabolic rate increases with ambient temperature this makes these animals particularly sensitive to changes in temperature subsequently any change may influence their metabolic scope i e the physiological capacity to undertake aerobically challenging activities any temperature increase may thus disrupt species specific temperature adaptations at both the molecular level as well as in behavior and concomitant species differences in the temperature sensitivity may shift the competitive balance among coexisting species we investigated the influence of temperature on metabolic scope and competitive ability in three species of marine sculpin that coexist in greenland coastal waters since these species have different distribution ranges we hypothesized that there should be a difference in their physiological response to temperature hence we compared their metabolic scope at three temperatures 4 9 and 14â c their competitive ability at the ambient temperature of 9â c was also tested in an attempt to link physiological capacity with behaviour the arctic staghorn sculpin the species with the northernmost distribution range had a lower metabolic scope in the higher temperature range compared to the other two species which had similar metabolic scope at the three temperatures the arctic staghorn sculpin also had reduced competitive ability at 9â c and may thus already be negatively affected by the current ocean warming our results suggest that climate change can have effects on fish physiology and interspecific competition which may alter the species composition of the arctic fish fauna,2013,0.92
Tracking citations and altmetrics for research data: Challenges and opportunities,methods for determining research quality have long been debated but with little lasting agreement on standards leading to the emergence of alternative metrics altmetrics are a useful supplement to traditional citation metrics reflecting a variety of measurement points that give different perspectives on how a dataset is used and by whom a positive development is the integration of a number of research datasets into the isi data citation index making datasets searchable and linking them to published articles yet access to data resources and tracking the resulting altmetrics depend on specific qualities of the datasets and the systems where they are archived though research on altmetrics use is growing the lack of standardization across datasets and system architecture undermines its generalizability without some standards stakeholdersâ adoption of altmetrics will be limited keywords,2013,0.092
Threats to an ecosystem service: pressures on pollinators,insect pollinators of crops and wild plants are under threat globally and their decline or loss could have profound economic and environmental consequences here we argue that multiple anthropogenic pressures â including land use intensification climate change and the spread of alien species and diseases â are primarily responsible for insect pollinator declines we show that a complex interplay between pressures eg lack of food sources dis eases and pesticides and biological processes eg species dispersal and interactions at a range of scales from genes to ecosystems underpins the general decline in insect pollinator populations interdisciplinary research on the nature and impacts of these interactions will be needed if human food security and ecosystem function are to be preserved we highlight key areas that require research focus and outline some practical steps to alleviate the pressures on pollinators and the pollination services they deliver to wild and crop plants,2013,0.444
An operational model for forecasting ragweed pollen release and dispersion in Europe,the paper considers the possibilities of modelling the release and dispersion of the pollen of common ragweed ambrosia artemisiifolia l a highly allergenic invasive weed which is spreading through southern and central europe in order to provide timely warnings for the allergy sufferers a model was developed for forecasting ragweed pollen concentrations in the air the development was based on the system for integrated modelling of atmospheric composition silam and concentrated on spatio temporal modelling of ragweed flowering season and pollen release which constitutes the emission term evaluation of the new model against multi annual ragweed pollen observations demonstrated that the model reproduces well the main ragweed pollen season in the areas with major plant presence such as the pannonian plain the lyon area in france the milan region in italy ukraine and southern russia the predicted start of the season is mostly within 3 days of the observed for the majority of stations in these areas the temporal correlation between modelled and observed concentrations exceeds 0 6 for the bulk of the stations model application to the seasons of 2005 2011 indicated the regions with high ragweed pollen concentrations in particular the areas where allergenic thresholds are exceeded it is demonstrated that due to long range transport of pollen high concentration areas are substantially more extensive than the heavily infested territories â 2013 the authors,2013,0.073
Expanding the understanding of local community assembly in adaptive radiations,communities are thought to be assembled by two types of filters by the environment relating to the fundamental niche and by biotic interactions relating to the realized niche both filters include parameters related to functional traits and their variation along environmental gradients here we infer the general importance of environmental filtering of a functional trait determining local community assembly within insular adaptive radiations on the example of caribbean anolis lizards we constructed maps for the probability of presence of anolis ecomorphs ecology morphology behavior specialists on the greater antilles and overlaid these to estimate ecomorph community completeness ecc over the landscape we then tested for differences in environmental parameter spaces among islands for real and cross fitted ecc values to see whether the underlying assembly filters are deterministic i e similar among islands we then compared information theoretic models of climatic and landscape parameters among greater antillean islands and inferred whether body mass as functional trait determines ecc we found areas with high ecc to be strongly correlated with environmental filters partly related to elevation the environmental parameters influencing high ecc differed among islands with the exception of the jamaican twig ecomorph which we suspect to be misclassified smaller ecomorphs were more restricted to higher elevations than larger ones which might reflect filtering on the basis of differential physiological restrictions of ecomorphs our results in anolis show that local community assembly within adaptive island radiations of animals can be determined by environmental filtering of functional traits independently from species composition and realized environmental niche space,2013,0.212
Biological Diversity in the Patent System,biological diversity in the patent system is an enduring focus of controversy but empirical analysis of the presence of biodiversity in the patent system has been limited to address this problem we text mined 11 million patent documents for 6 million latin species names from the global names index gni established by the global biodiversity information facility gbif and encyclopedia of life eol we identified 76 274 full latin species names from 23 882 genera in 767 955 patent documents 25 595 species appeared in the claims section of 136 880 patent documents this reveals that human innovative activity involving biodiversity in the patent system focuses on approximately 4 of taxonomically described species and between 0 8â 1 of predicted global species in this article we identify the major features of the patent landscape for biological diversity by focusing on key areas including pharmaceuticals neglected diseases traditional medicines genetic engineering foods biocides marine genetic resources and antarctica we conclude that the narrow focus of human innovative activity and ownership of genetic resources is unlikely to be in the long term interest of humanity we argue that a broader spectrum of biodiversity needs to be opened up to research and development based on the principles of equitable benefit sharing respect for the objectives of the convention on biological diversity human rights and ethics finally we argue that alternative models of innovation such as open source and commons models are required to open up biodiversity for research that addresses actual and neglected areas of human need the research aims to inform the implementation of the 2010 nagoya protocol on access to genetic resources and the equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilization and international debates directed to the governance of genetic resources our research also aims to inform debates under the intergovernmental committee on intellectual property and genetic resources traditional knowledge and folklore at the world intellectual property organization,2013,0.365
Spatial distribution and environmental preferences of 10 economically important forest palms in western South America,sustainable management strategies for tropical forest ecosystems require a detailed understanding of the distribution of tropical forest species limitations on distribution as well as occurrence patterns in the absence of limitations in the americas many tropical palms arecaceae are locally abundant keystone species that provide a number of non timber forest products here we focus on 10 such species aphandra natalia attalea phalerata euterpe oleracea iriartea deltoidea mauritia flexousa oenocarpus bataua phytele phas aequatorialis phytelephas macrocarpa and phytelephas seemannii found in western south america this study aimed to determine i what variables control potential species distribution ii whether their distribution is spatially constrained and if so iii how their potential ranges compare to their actual ranges we built species distribution models using maxent software with three groups of predictor vari ables c climatic n non climatic environmental s spatial and combinations thereof c cn and cns the cns predictor variable combination gave superior predictive ability based on median area under the curve auc values and was consistent with available range maps in contrast individual c and cn pre dictor variables gave inferior auc values and showed less similarity to range maps we concluded that the cns model that combined climatic non climatic and spatial variables best represented the actual distribution of the 10 palm species whereas c and cn models approached their potential distribution precipitation during the driest quarter and annual precipitation were the most important predictors of the potential distribution whereas temperature of the coldest month soil and the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi were less important we found that the actual distributions of palm species were spatially constrained and that the spatial variables largely coincided with the dispersal barriers of the andean cordillera and past climatic fluctuations the estimated potential range varied from nearly equal to the actual range to up to 0 55 106 km2 55 1 106 ha larger than the actual range depending on model threshold settings and species wethus concluded that current palm resources in the forests of western south america have major potential for ecological expansion these results are relevant to cur rent palm management and resource conservation planning as well as future strategies that will have to address climate change and increasing human disturbance,2013,0.832
Bridging biodiversity data gaps: recommendations to meet users’ data needs,freely available high quality data on species occurrence and associated variables are needed in order to track changes in biodiversity one of the main issues surrounding the provision of such data is that sources vary in quality scope and accuracy publishers of such data must face the challenge of maximizing quality utility and breadth of data coverage in order to make such data useful to users with the global biodiversity information facility gbif we recently conducted a content needs assessment survey to consolidate and synthesize major user needs regarding biodiversity data we find a broad range of recommendations from the survey respondents principally concerning issues such as data quality bias and coverage and ease of access we recommend a candidate set of actions for the gbif that fall into three classes 1 addressing data gaps data volume and data quality 2 aggregating data types that are relatively new to gbif to support emerging new applications and 3 promoting ease of use and providing incentives for wider use addressing the challenge of providing high quality primary biodiversity data potentially can serve the needs of national and international biodiversity initiatives these include the â œflexible frameworkâ for addressing the new 2020 biodiversity targets of the convention on biological diversity the global biodiversity observation network geo bon and the new intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes each of these presents opportunities for countries to define appropriate actions and corresponding data needs with links from local to global scales,2013,0.213
A note on four historical names recorded in Aloe L. (Asphodelaceae: Alooideae),we show that of four previously un recorded but recently unearthed names in aloe l asphodelaceae alooideae none has an impact on the species rank nomenclature of the genus as currently accepted although nomenclatural sta bility is not here impacted we argue that such long hidden names that are now visible as part of the nomenclature applicable to aloe have the po tential to unnecessarily or inappropriately disrupt the status quo the same will apply to other taxa for which the existence of historical names has been recorded a formal mechanism must be in troduced through the code to lessen or ideally entirely prevent such names displacing ones long in use,2013,0.371
"Vertebrate dissimilarity due to turnover and richness differences in a highly Beta-diverse region: the role of spatial grain size, dispersal ability and distance.",we explore the influence of spatial grain size dispersal ability and geographic distance on the patterns of species dissimilarity of terrestrial vertebrates separating the dissimilarity explained by species replacement turnover from that resulting from richness differences with data for 905 species of terrestrial vertebrates distributed in the isthmus of tehuantepec classified into five groups according to their taxonomy and dispersal ability we calculated total dissimilarity and its additive partitioning as two components dissimilarity derived from turnover and dissimilarity derived from richness differences these indices were compared using fine 10 x 10 km intermediate 20 x 20 km and coarse 40 x 40 km grain grids and were tested for any correlations with geographic distance the results showed that total dissimilarity is high for the terrestrial vertebrates in this region total dissimilarity and dissimilarity due to turnover are correlated with geographic distance and the patterns are clearer when the grain is fine which is consistent with the distance decay pattern of similarity for all terrestrial vertebrates tested on the isthmus of tehuantepec both the dissimilarity derived from turnover and the dissimilarity resulting from richness differences make important contributions to total dissimilarity and dispersal ability does not seem to influence the dissimilarity patterns these findings support the idea that conservation efforts in this region require a system of interconnected protected areas that embrace the environmental climatic and biogeographic heterogeneity of the area,2013,0.426
The World Bacterial Biogeography and Biodiversity through Databases: A Case Study of NCBI Nucleotide Database and GBIF Database,databases are an essential tool and resource within the field of bioinformatics the primary aim of this study was to generate an overview of global bacterial biodiversity and biogeography using available data fromthe two largest public online databases ncbi nucleotide and gbif the secondary aim was to highlight the contribution each geographic area has to each database the basis for data analysis of this study was the metadata provided by both databases mainly the taxonomy and the geographical area origin of isolation of the microorganism record these were directly obtained fromgbif through the online interface while e utilities and python were used in combination with a programmatic web service access to obtain data fromthencbinucleotidedatabase results indicate that the american continent and more specifically the usa is the top contributor while africa and antarctica are less well represented this highlights the imbalance of exploration within these areas rather than any reduction in biodiversity this study describes a novel approach to generating global scale patterns of bacterial biodiversity and biogeography and indicates that the proteobacteria are the most abundant and widely distributed phylumwithin both databases,2013,0.417
Diversity and distribution of genus Jatropha in Mexico,in mexico and all over the world the number of studies on the species of the jatropha genus has increased because of the use of its seed oil to produce biodiesel however the knowledge of the taxonomy distribution and ethnobotany of these and related species is incomplete this article presents the distribution of the genus in mexico according to its internationally accepted taxonomic identity the distribution is linked to environmental variables such as elevation climate type soil and soil moisture patterns in addition to showing the current taxonomical knowledge in mexico this article discusses its biogeography its traditional uses and the research lines to follow in further study of the genus the distribution results show that some species are broadly adapted as a consequence they are present in many different environments species such as j dioica j curcas j cordata j cinerea and j gaumeri are distributed in areas with well defined environmental conditions however the distribution of species such as j riojae has not yet been ascertained three areas with high species richness were identified and they are very important for the study and conservation of the genus mexico is a global center of diversity for this genus food and medicinal uses have been reported for some species this article concludes with recommendations for further study to improve the knowledge of this genus in mexico,2013,0.372
Stability structures tropical woody plant diversity more than seasonality: Insights into the ecology of high legume-succulent-plant biodiversity,phylogenies of legume taxa are ecologically structured along a tropical seasonality gradient which suggests phylogenetic niche conservatism this seasonality gradient spans neotropical wet forests savannas and highly seasonal drought prone woody vegetation known as the succulent biome ecological phylogenetic structure was investigated using a community phylogenetic approach we further analyzed bioclimatic and other independent variables that potentially explained phylogenetic beta diversity among 466 floristic sites that spanned the savanna and succulent biomes in eastern south america explanatory variables were selected using variance inflation factors information criteria and the ability to explain both species and phylogenetic beta diversity a model involving annual precipitation suggests that a threshold of 1200 mm explains community phylogenetic structure along the savannaâ succulent biome transition variables involving temperatures or measures of seasonality were notably lacking from top ranked models the abundance and diversity of legumes across the tropical seasonality gradient suggest that a high nitrogen metabolism confers an advantage in one of two ways both of which are related to rapid growth rates legumes adapted to the succulent biome may be responding to regular post dry season leaf flush opportunities legumes adapted to the savanna biome may be responding to intermittent post disturbance growing opportunities a seasonal predominance of leaf flushing by woody plants implicates the role of ecological stability in the succulent biome because of the need to recover the cost of regenerating short lived leaves ecological stability may be the fundamental cause of ecological phylogenetic structure across the tropical seasonality gradient and required for maintaining high levels of both leaf flushing legume and succulent plant biodiversity,2013,0.251
National inventory and prioritization of crop wild relatives: Case study for Benin,species prioritization is a crucial step in any development of conservation strategy especially for crop wild relatives cwr since financial resources are generally limited this study aimed at assessing the biodiversity of crop wild relatives in benin and identifying priority species for active conservation data were collected through literature review to establish an exhaustive list of cwr in benin eight prioritization criteria and different prioritization systems were used the top 50 species obtained by each of these methods were identified and twenty final top cwr were shortlisted as those occurring as priority across methods a total of 266 plant species belonging to 65 genera and 36 families were identified the most represented are cyperaceae 12 50 leguminosae papilionoideae 11 87 convolvulaceae 11 25 poaceae 10 31 asteraceae 7 81 solanaceae 6 87 and dioscoreaceae 5 31 among the 20 species of highest priority for conservation manihot glaziovii mã ll arg and piper guineense schumach et thonn appeared as the most represented species on top of the list,2013,0.882
Understanding the ecological niche to elucidate spatial strategies of the southernmost Tupinambis lizards,understanding factors that shape ranges of species is central in evolutionary biology species distribution models have become important tools to test biogeographical ecological and evolutionary hypotheses moreover from an ecological and evolutionary perspective these models help to elucidate the spatial strategies of species at a regional scale we modelled species distributions of two phylogenetically geographically and ecologically close tupinambis species teiidae that occupy the southernmost area of the genus distribution in south america we hypothesized that similarities between these species might have induced spatial strategies at the species level such as niche differentiation and divergence of distribution patterns at a regional scale using logistic regression and maxent we obtained species distribution models that revealed interspecific differences in habitat requirements such as environmental temperature precipitation and altitude moreover the models obtained suggest that although the ecological niches of tupinambis merianae and t rufescens are different these species might co occur in a large contact zone we propose that niche plasticity could be the mechanism enabling their co occurrence therefore the approach used here allowed us to understand the spatial strategies of two tupinambis lizards at a regional scale,2013,0.905
Predicting species distributions for conservation decisions,species distribution models sdms are increasingly proposed to support conservation decision making however evidence of sdms supporting solutions for on ground conservation problems is still scarce in the scientific literature here we show that successful examples exist but are still largely hidden in the grey literature and thus less accessible for analysis and learning furthermore the decision framework within which sdms are used is rarely made explicit using case studies from biological invasions identification of critical habitats reserve selection and translocation of endangered species we propose that sdms may be tailored to suit a range of decision making contexts when used within a structured and transparent decision making process to construct appropriate sdms to more effectively guide conservation actions modellers need to better understand the decision process and decision makers need to provide feedback to modellers regarding the actual use of sdms to support conservation decisions this could be facilitated by individuals or institutions playing the role of translators between modellers and decision makers we encourage species distribution modellers to get involved in real decision making processes that will benefit from their technical input this strategy has the potential to better bridge theory and practice and contribute to improve both scientific knowledge and conservation outcomes,2013,0.276
A Forest Butterfly in Sahara Desert Oases: Isolation Does Not Matter,numerous studies addressing the impact of habitat fragmentation on genetic diversity have been performed in this study we analyze the effects of a seemingly nonpermeable matrix on the population structure of the forest dwelling butterfly pararge aegeria in geographically isolated oases at the northern margin of the sahara desert using microsatellites morphological characters and species distribution modeling results from all analyses are mostly congruent and reveal 1 a split between european and north african populations 2 rather low divergence between populations from the eastern and western part of north africa morocco vs tunisia 3 a lack of differentiation between the oasis and atlas mountain populations 4 as well as among the oasis populations and 5 no reduction of genetic variability in oasis populations however one exception to this general trend resulted from the analyses of wing shape wings of butterflies from oases are more elongated compared with those from the other habitats this pattern of phenotypic divergence may suggest a recent colonization of the oasis habitats by individuals which might be accompanied by a rather dispersive behavior species distribution modeling suggests a fairly recent reexpansion of the species climatic niche starting in the holocene at about 6000 before present the combined results indicate a rather recent colonization of the oases by highly mobile individuals from genetically diverse founder populations the colonization was likely followed by the expansion and persistence of these founder populations under relatively stable environmental conditions this together with low rates of gene flow likely prevented differentiation of populations via drift and led to the maintenance of high genetic diversity,2013,0.953
Use of Anecdotal Occurrence Data in Species Distribution Models: An Example Based on the White-Nosed Coati (Nasua narica) in the American Southwest,species distributions are usually inferred from occurrence records however these records are prone to errors in spatial precision and reliability although influence of spatial errors has been fairly well studied there is little information on impacts of poor reliability reliability of an occurrence record can be influenced by characteristics of the species conditions during the observation and observerâ s knowledge some studies have advocated use of anecdotal data while others have advocated more stringent evidentiary standards such as only accepting records verified by physical evidence at least for rare or elusive species our goal was to evaluate the influence of occurrence records with different reliability on species distribution models sdms of a unique mammal the white nosed coati nasua narica in the american southwest we compared sdms developed using maximum entropy analysis of combined bioclimatic and biophysical variables and based on seven subsets of occurrence records that varied in reliability and spatial precision we found that the predicted distribution of the coati based on datasets that included anecdotal occurrence records were similar to those based on datasets that only included physical evidence coati distribution in the american southwest was predicted to occur in southwestern new mexico and southeastern arizona and was defined primarily by evenness of climate and madrean woodland and chaparral land cover types coati distribution patterns in this region suggest a good model for understanding the biogeographic structure of range margins we concluded that occurrence datasets that include anecdotal records can be used to infer species distributions providing such data are used only for easily identifiable species and based on robust modeling methods such as maximum entropy use of a reliability rating system is critical for using anecdotal data,2013,0.72
Process-based and correlative modeling of desert mistletoe distribution: a multiscalar approach,because factors affecting distributional areas of species change as scale extent and grain changes different environmental and biological factors must be integrated across geographic ranges at different resolutions to understand fully the patterns and processes underlying species ranges we expected climate factors to be more important at coarse resolutions and biotic factors at finer resolutions we used data on occurrence of a parasitic plant phoradendron californicum restricted to parts of the sonoran and mojave deserts to analyze how climate and mobility factors explain its distributional area we developed analyses at five spatial resolutions 1 5 10 20 50 km within the distributional area of the disperser species and compared ecological niche models from three commonly used correlative methods with a process based model that estimates colonization and extinction rates in a metapopulation framework correlative models improved when layers associated with hosts and disperser were used as predictors in comparison with models based on climate only however they tended to overfit to data as more layers were added dispersal related parameters were more relevant at finer resolutions 1â 5 km but importance of extinction related parameters did not change with scale we observed greater coincidence between correlative and process based models when based only on dimensions of the abiotic niche i e climate but a clearer and more comprehensive mechanistic understanding was derived from the process based algorithm,2013,0.298
"Biodiversity data should be published, cited, and peer reviewed",concerns over data quality impede the use of public biodiversity databases and subsequent benefits to society data publication could follow the well established publication process with automated quality checks peer review and editorial decisions this would improve data accuracy reduce the need for users to clean the data and might increase data use authors and editors would get due credit for a peer reviewed data publication through use and citation metrics adopting standards related to data citation accessibility metadata and quality control would facilitate integration of data across data sets here we propose a staged publication process involving editorial and technical quality controls of which the final and optional stage includes peer review the most meritorious publication standard in science,2013,0.101
Using environmental niche models to test the 'everything is everywhere' hypothesis for Badhamia,it is often discussed whether the biogeography of free living protists is better explained by the everything is everywhere eie hypothesis which postulates that only ecology drives their distribution or by the alternative hypothesis of moderate endemicity in which geographic barriers can limit their dispersal to formally test this it would be necessary not only to find organisms restricted to a geographical area but also to check for their presence in any other place with a similar ecology we propose the use of environmental niche models to generate and test null eie distributions here we have analysed the distribution of 18s rdna variants ribotypes of the myxomycete badhamia melanospora belonging to the protozoan phylum amoebozoa using 125 specimens from 91 localities two geographically structured groups of ribotypes congruent with slight morphological differences in the spores can be distinguished one group comprises all populations from argentina and chile and the other is formed by populations from north america together with human introduced populations from other parts of the world environmental climatic niche models constructed separately for the two groups have significant differences but show several overlapping areas however only specimens from one group were found in an intensively surveyed area in south america where both niche models overlap it can be concluded that everything is not everywhere for b melanospora this taxon constitutes a complex formed by at least two cryptic species that probably diverged allopatrically in north and south america,2013,0.752
The status and future of scale insect (Coccoidea) systematics,two basic properties of scale insect biology make scale insect groups ideal systems for studies of evolutionary biology and ecology i they are essentially sedentary and ii they are fixed at the nexus of multiple interspecific interactions with host plants natural enemies microbial mutualists and insect mutualists gullan kosztarab 1997 nevertheless scale insects are seldom used as model systems in evolution see ross et al 2012 2013 for exceptions a major impediment to the more extensive use of scale insects in this context is an incomplete systematic framework in comparison to some other insect herbivore groups e g butterflies papilionoidea and fig wasps agaonidae the species diversity and phylogenetic history of scale insects are poorly understood here i assess the status of scale insect systematics note recent accomplishments point out current challenges and look to the future,2013,0.042
BirdWatch — Supporting Citizen Scientists for Better Linked Data Quality for Biodiversity Management,observational data about species of public interest such as birds and butterflies is often created and collected by volunteered citi zen scientists and used by professionals for managing biodiversity the education and skills of the citizens participating in the work varies a lot and the process of making observations is typically not systematic but rather ad hoc as a result the quality of the observational data in repos itories such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif data portal is often not good hampering its utilization severely this pa per presents an approach for enhancing data quality in a citizen science setting and presents a mobile tool birdwatch for citizen observers miti gating difficulties in producing high quality linked data for biodiversity management,2013,0.469
"Chemical characterisation of museum-curated ethnographic resins from Australia and New Guinea used as adhesives, medicines and narcotics",background six ethnographic museum resins with documented adhesive medicinal and narcotic uses have been analysed by gas chromatographyâ mass spectrometry gc ms as a step towards understanding the role of specific resins in 20th century australia and new guinea curated in the pitt rivers museum for over a hundred years these specimens are examples of resin used for three different purposes some accompanied by ethnographic accounts from the collectors themselves results the six ethnographic resins have been chemically characterised and identified to species where possible an adhesive resin from new south wales is identified as xanthorrhoea resinosa pers adhesives from new guinea are tentatively identified as canarium luzonicum miq and beeswax mixed with canarium spp a narcotic resin from new guinea is identified as canarium salomonense b l burtt and the characterisation of spinifex resin from west australian â medicine shellsâ hypothesised to be triodia irritans r br is presented conclusions this study concludes that molecular differentiation between resins from different species is still possible after a hundred years of aging in a museum environment and demonstrates the potential of resin analysis on such aged museum items these data alongside re visited ethnographic accounts can confirm correct or provide new information to museum records furthermore they can shed new light on the study of the role of these particular resins and mixtures that were used in indigenous sahul and contribute towards a framework of analysis and understanding of archaeological resins from this region,2013,0.365
"Neolovenula alluaudi (Guerne and Richard, 1890) (Calanoida: Diaptomidae: Paradiaptominae): first record in Italy and review of geographical distribution",as part of recent limnological campaigns in puglia region south eastern italy 217 temporary and permanent ponds were studied the diaptomid calanoid copepod neolovenula alluaudi guerne and richard 1890 was collected in eight of these ponds these findings represent the first record of the species in italy morphological features are provided with original drawings which are compared with currently available descriptions environmental variables were recorded in order to provide information on the ecological preferenda of the species in its italian occurrence sites in addition the co occurring crustacean fauna was identified and reported for each pond a review of the available literature allowed us to determine more accurately the chorology of the species and to propose a biogeo graphical hypothesis concerning its distribution an updated map of the speciesâ distribution including the new italian sites is presented and we provide evidence to support the idea that the current chorotype of n alluaudi is the result of an association of the saharan and turanic european mediterranean chorotypes,2013,0.554
"Interdisciplinary approaches to understanding disease emergence: the past, present, and future drivers of Nipah virus emergence.",emerging infectious diseases eids pose a significant threat to human health economic stability and biodiversity despite this the mechanisms underlying disease emergence are still not fully understood and control measures rely heavily on mitigating the impact of eids after they have emerged here we highlight the emergence of a zoonotic henipavirus nipah virus to demonstrate the interdisciplinary and macroecological approaches necessary to understand eid emergence previous work suggests that nipah virus emerged due to the interaction of the wildlife reservoir pteropus spp fruit bats with intensively managed livestock the emergence of this and other henipaviruses involves interactions among a suite of anthropogenic environmental changes socioeconomic factors and changes in demography that overlay and interact with the distribution of these pathogens in their wildlife reservoirs here we demonstrate how ecological niche modeling may be used to investigate the potential role of a changing climate on the future risk for henipavirus emergence we show that the distribution of henipavirus reservoirs and therefore henipaviruses will likely change under climate change scenarios a fundamental precondition for disease emergence in humans we assess the variation among climate models to estimate where henipavirus host distribution is most likely to expand contract or remain stable presenting new risks for human health we conclude that there is substantial potential to use this modeling framework to explore the distribution of wildlife hosts under a changing climate these approaches may directly inform current and future management and surveillance strategies aiming to improve pathogen detection and ultimately reduce emergence risk,2013,0.381
Geological and ecological factors drive cryptic speciation of yews in a biodiversity hotspot.,the interplay of orographic uplift and climatic changes in the himalaya hengduan mountains region hhm have had a key role in speciation and population demography to gain further insight into these processes we investigated their effects on taxus wallichiana by combining molecular phylogeography and species distribution modeling molecular data were obtained from 43 populations of t wallichiana nineteen climatic variables were analyzed alongside genetic discontinuities species distribution modeling was carried out to predict potential past distribution ranges two distinct lineages were identified which diverged c 4 2 2 0 6 5 million years ago ma a timescale that corresponds well with the recent uplift of the qinghai tibet plateau and subsequent climatic changes of the region correlations with climatic variables also suggest that ecological factors may have further reinforced the separation of the two lineages both lineages experienced population expansion during the last glaciation the high genetic divergence long term isolation and ecological differentiation suggest a scenario of cryptic speciation in t wallichiana associated with geological and climatic changes in the hhm our findings also challenge the notion of general population contraction during the last glaciation in the hhm,2013,0.701
"New and little known ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Norway",leptothorax gredleri mayr 1855 is reported from norway for the first time the first colony of myrmicina graminicola latreille 1802 and the second records of myrmica karavajevi arnoldi 1930 and lasius meridionalis bondroit 1820 are reported in addition to some records of rarely collected species,2013,0.599
Discovery and publishing of primary biodiversity data associated with multimedia resources: the audubon core strategies and approaches,the audubon core multimedia resource metadata schema simply â œaudubon coreâ or â œacâ is a representation free vocabulary for the description of biodiversity multimedia resources and collections now in the final stages as a proposed standard under tdwg biodiversity information standards by defining only five terms as mandatory it seeks to lighten the burden for providing or using multimedia useful for biodiversity science at the same time it offers rich optional metadata terms that can help curators of multimedia collections provide authoritative media that document species occurrence ecosystems identification tools ontologies and many other kinds of biodiversity documents or data about half of the vocabulary is re used from other relevant controlled vocabularies that are often already in use for multimedia metadata thereby reducing the mapping burden on existing repositories a central design goal is to allow consuming applications to have a high likelihood of discovering suitable resources reducing the human examination effort that might be required to decide if the resource is fit for the purpose of the application,2013,0.218
Evaluating the combined threat of climate change and biological invasions on endangered species,climate change and invasive species are two major biodiversity threats expected to provoke extinctions of many species in the future this study evaluates the joint threat posed by climate change and two invasive species the zebra mussel dreissena polymorpha and the signal crayfish pacifastacus leniusculus on the distribution of two endangered freshwater species the depressed river mussel pseudanodonta complanata and the white clawed crayfish austropotamobius pallipes at the scale of europe we expected the native species to experience a gradual contraction over time in their geographic range size while the invasive species would maintain or increase their spread therefore their overlap would increase further threatening the conservation of the native species to test these three hypotheses ensemble species distribution models sdms were calibrated with current distributions and projected onto present and 2050 future climatic scenarios in agreement with our expectations the 2050 scenarios suggested d polymorpha may strongly benefit from climate changes increase of 15â 20 in range size while the depressed river mussel would experience a considerable loss 14â 36 the overlap between both mussels increasing up to 24 although both crayfishes were predicted to be negatively affected by climate changes the contraction was more severe for the invasive p leniusculus up to 32 decrease in range size moreover the overlap between both crayfishes decreased by 13â 16 which may reduce the pressure upon the native a pallipes this study illustrates how sdms can assist in management of endangered species over large spatial and temporal scales by identifying current and future areas of shared bioclimatic suitability and potential refugia,2013,0.941
On The Dates Of The GBIF Mobilised Primary Biodiversity Data Records,there are more than 390 million primary biodiversity data records published by hundreds of data publishers through the gbif network thus the gbif network is the single most comprehensive index for this kind of data ensuring or at least assessing data quality is of capital importance for the reliability and usability of this data while conducting a time data gap analysis on this mass of data we have detected some issues with the way date information is processed and shared dates can be obscured or altered under certain circumstances when a specific combination of publisherâ s error or date handling features and faulty or inadequate date parsing and processing routines gets chained together the extent of the date unreliability either at the source or through gbif portal is relatively low and problems are concentrated in a few data publishers the types of errors and misprocessing in dates through the sources and the published records are analysed impact on the overall data quality of the published index was assessed and corrective measures are suggested keywords,2013,0.276
Beware of Primate Life History Data: A Plea for Data Standards and a Repository,life history variables such as the age at first reproduction and the interval between consecutive births are measures of investment in growth and reproduction in a particular population or species as such they allow for meaningful comparisons of the speed of growth and reproduction between species and between larger taxa especially in primates such life history research has far reaching implications and has led for instance to the â œgrandmother hypothesisâ other links have been proposed with respect to dietary adaptations because protein is essential for growth and one of the primary sources of protein leaves occurs much less seasonally than fruits it has been predicted that folivorous primates should grow faster compared to frugivorous ones however when comparing folivorous asian colobines with frugivorous asian macaques we recently documented a longer instead of a shorter gestation length in folivores while age at first reproduction and interbirth interval did not differ this supports earlier findings for malagasy lemurs in which all life history variables tested were significantly longer in folivores compared to frugivores wondering why these trends were not apparent sooner we tried to reconstruct our results for asian primates with data from four popular life history compilations however this attempt failed even the basic allometric relationship with adult female body mass that is typical for life history variables could not be recovered this negative result hints at severe problems with data quality here we show that data quality can be improved significantly by standardizing the variables and by controlling for factors such as nutritional conditions or infant mortality ideally in the future revised primate life history data should be collated in a central database accessible to everybody in the long run such an initiative should be expanded to include all mammalian species,2013,0.714
i4Life: Standardising the World’s Biodiversity Catalogue,i4life provides linkages between the catalogue of life an expert based knowledge portal for living species on earth and global partners iucn gbif ena at ebi bold eol and life watch providing data portals for distribution genetic diversity and conservation information this novel e infrastructure offers the only single global consensus list of living species on earth and their associated data this structure uses custom services to cross map transfer and make available subsets of this global list to interested users it facilitates both global and local understanding of biodiversity itâ s distribution variation and threats keywords,2013,0.536
The Potential Global Distribution of Tall Buttercup ( <i>Ranunculus acris</i> ssp. <i>acris</i> ): Opposing Effects of Irrigation and Climate Change,tall buttercup a native of central and northern europe has become naturalized in the united states and canada and in south africa tasmania and new zealand in canada and new zealand it has become an economically significant weed in cattle grazed pastures in this study we develop a climex model for tall buttercup and use it to project the weedâ s potential distribution under current and future climates and in the presence and absence of irrigation there was close concordance between the modelâ s projection of suitable climate and recorded observations of the species the projection was highly sensitive to irrigation the area of potentially suitable land globally increasing by 30 from 34 to 45 million km2 under current climate when a â â top upâ â irrigation regime rainfall topped up 4 mm d21 on irrigable land was included in the model most of the area that becomes suitable under irrigation is located in central asia and central north america by contrast climate change is projected to have the opposite effect the potential global distribution diminishing by 18 from 34 to 28 million km2 this range contraction was the net result of a northward expansion in the northern limit for the species in canada and the russian federation and a relatively larger increase in the land area becoming unsuitable mainly in central asia and south eastern united states,2013,0.536
Antarctic macrobenthic communities: A compilation of circumpolar information,comprehensive information on antarctic macrobenthic community structure is publicly available since the 1960s it stems from trawl dredge grab and corer samples as well as from direct and camera ob servations table 1â 2 te quality of this information varies considerably it consists of pure descrip tions figures for presence absence and abundance of some key taxa or proxies for such parameters e g sea floor cover some data sets even cover a defined and complete proportion of the macrobenthos with further analyses on diversity and zoogeography as a consequence the acquisition of data from ap proximately 90 different campaigns assembled here was not standardised nevertheless it was possible to classify this broad variety of known macrobenthic assemblages to the best of expert knowledge gutt 2007 fig 1 tis overview does not replace statistically sound community and diversity analyses however it shows from where which kind of information is available and it acts as an example of the feasibility and power of such data collections te data set provides unique georeferenced biological basic information for the planning of future coordinated research activities e g under the umbrella of the biology program â œantarctic tresholds ecosystem resilience and adaptationâ ant era of the scientific committee on antarctic research scar and especially for actual conservation issues e g the planning of marine protected areas mpas by the commission for the conservation of antarctic marine living resources ccamlr,2013,0.251
Do low-head riverine structures hinder the spread of invasive crayfish? Case study of signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) movements at a flow gauging weir,increasing legislative drivers demand the removal or modification of riverine barriers to enhance habitat connectivity for fish however there is also concern that greater connectivity will hasten the spread of aquatic invaders such as the signal crayfish pacifastacus leniusculus passive integrated transponder pit telemetry was used to assess passage of signal crayfish n 392 over a typical low head riverine structure a flow gauging weir during a 17 month period sixty percent of tagged crayfish were detected with greatest crayfish activity associated with high water temperatures and long day lengths the study weir reduced upstream crayfish movements with 45 less passages than in the control stretch with no weir but there was no difference in the downstream direction we found sex and size related differences in crayfish movement patterns with male crayfish more likely to successfully ascend the weir and larger crayfish to descend the weir although increased fluvial connectivity will benefit migratory fish species we suggest that the removal or modification of even quite minor low head structures such as the one investigated could hasten the upstream spread of signal crayfish,2013,0.549
Cereal landraces genetic resources in worldwide GeneBanks. A review,since the dawn of agriculture cereal landraces have been the staples for food production worldwide but their use dramatically declined in the 2nd half of the last century replaced by modern cultivars in most parts of the world landraces are one of the most threatened components of agrobiodiversity facing the risk of genetic erosion and extinction since landraces have a tremendous potential in the development of new cultivars adapted to changing environmental conditions genebanks holding their genetic resources potentially play an important role in supporting sustainable agriculture this work reviews the current knowledge on cereal landraces maintained in genebanks and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of existing information about their taxonomy origin structure threats sampling methodologies and conservation and genebanksâ documentation and management an overview of major collections of cereal landraces is presented using the information available in global metadatabase systems this review on winter cereal landrace conservation focuses on 1 traditional role of genebanks is evolving beyond their original purpose to conserve plant materials for breeding programmes todayâ s genebank users are interested in landracesâ history agro ecology and traditional knowledge associated with their use in addition to germplasm traits 2 genebanks therefore need to actively share their germplasm collectionsâ information using different channels to promote unlimited and effective use of these materials for the further development of sustainable agriculture 3 access to information on the 7 4 million accessions conserved in genebanks worldwide of which cereal accessions account for nearly 45 particularly information on cereal landraces 24 of wheat 23 of barley 14 of oats and 29 of rye accessions is often not easily available to potential users mainly due to the lack of consistent or compatible documentation systems their structure and registration 4 enhancing the sustainable use of landraces maintained in germplasm collections through the effective application of recent advances in landrace knowledge origin structure and traits and documentation using the internet tools and data providing networks including the use of molecular and biotechnological tools for the material screening and detection of agronomic traits 5 cereal landraces cannot be exclusively conserved as seed samples maintained under ex situ conditions in genebanks the enormous contribution of farmers in maintaining the crop and landraces diversity is recognised sharing of benefits and raising awareness of the value of cereal landraces are the most effective ways to promote their conservation and to ensure their continued availability and sustainable use 6 evaluation of costs and economic benefits attributed to sustainable use of cereal landraces conserved in the genebanks requires comprehensive studies conducted on a case by case basis that take into consideration species crop resources conservation conditions and quality and genebank location and functions,2013,0.023
Creating an Online World Flora by 2020: a perspective from South Africa,at the 10th conference of the parties of the convention on biodiversity cbd which was held in nagoya japan in october 2010 an updated global strategy for plant conservation gspc was adopted as part of the plan of work of the cbd target 1 of the gspc aims to produce an online flora for all the plants of the world by 2020 governments that have ratified the cbd will have to report over the next several years on progress towards achieving this challenging target floras are still widely regarded as a means of providing descriptive information and identification tools for the plants that occur in a specified region historically floras have included identification keys scientific names with authorship for all taxa known to occur in the area synonymy descriptions distributions within the region in question specimen citations habitat literature refer ences and illustrations of these nomenclature descriptions identification tools illus trations and distributions are critical components the approach being taken by south africa a biodiversity rich country in working towards achieving target 1 of the gspc by 2020 is presented and discussed outlining a methodology that may be of practical use to other countries we hope this will urge other countries to consider how they might meet this challenging conservation target,2013,0.138
Conservation status of the narrow endemic gypsophile Ononis tridentata subsp. crassifolia in southern Spain: effects of habitat disturbance,ononis tridentata l subsp crassifolia leguminosae is a narrow endemic plant restricted to gypsum outcrops in south east spain its habitat and populations are currently threatened by anthropogenic disturbance because of the paucity of information concerning its distribution abundance and response to disturbance we assessed its status and evaluated the impacts of quarrying ploughing grazing and afforestation distribution and population size were estimated by field surveys censuses and mapping we measured cover plant volume fruit and seed production seed predation and seedling recruitment to asses any effects of disturbance the speciesâ area of occupancy is 1 6 km2 and its extent of occurrence 337km2 in 29 habitat patches and 16 populations between 705 and 1 125maltitude and its population sizewas estimated to be 531 605 quarrying ploughing overgrazing and afforestation negatively affected the species in this order we recommend this subspecies be categorized as vulnerable on the iucn red list a species recovery plan is required and the ecological restoration of altered areas would mitigate negative effects on the species and improve the overall conservation of gypsum habitats,2013,0.551
Confronting expert-based and modelled distributions for species with uncertain conservation status: A case study from the corncrake (Crex crex),the red list classification of iucn has become one of the most important evaluations of threats that affect biodiversity at the species level however many estimations of species range one essential factor in the red list classification are derived from expert based assessments that sometimes lack empirical evidence our study focused on the corncrake crex crex a grassland palaearctic bird whose conservation status has been revised recently following some new assessments of range and population size however the amount of data that form the basis of this reclassification appears weak compared to the large area involved we used a method of species distribution modelling maxent to predict the corncrake range and confronted it to the expert based map we resolved the huge geographic bias in the distribution of presence points by using a relevant method of sampling bias correction we found a rather similar dis tribution with the iucn estimated range although less widespread we also highlighted a relationship between habitat suitability computed by the model and population estimates per country when the effect of agriculture intensity is taken into account this result supports the current expert based estimates of corncrake distribution and emphasizes that a relevant modelling strategy should be able to predict the distribution of a species even from a biased dataset iucn estimates of speciesâ ranges would certainly benefit from a model based approach in addition to expert and field controls,2013,0.438
Mycology should be recognized as a field in biology at eye level with other major disciplines – a memorandum,fungi are key players in terrestrial ecosystem functions they are not only indispensable symbionts of most of the terrestrial plants but can also interact with almost all organisms and are the major decomposers of organic matter indeed they are involved in most ecosystem services so much that life on earth would not have evolved without them competition among fungi and with other organism groups has driven evolution of offensive and defensive mechanisms including the production of second ary metabolites which continue to be widely unexplored in addition fungal plant parasites threaten the global agricul tural production and are therefore of highest relevance for human health and survival given the ecological and eco nomical relevance of fungi advancement of other biological and physical sciences are impeded because mycologyâ the science devoted to the study of fungiâ is insufficiently recognized as a major field of life science and supported in basic and applied research and economic contexts,2013,0.169
Biogeographic regions of North American mammals based on endemism,since the 19th century two regions have been recognized for north american mammals which overlap in mexico the nearctic region corresponds to the northern areas and the neotropical region corresponds to the southern ones there are no recent regionalizations for these regions under the criterion of endemism in the present study we integrate two methods to regionalize north america using species distribution models of mammals endemicity analysis ea and parsimony analysis of endemicity pae ea was used to obtain areas of endemism and pae was used to hierarchize them we found 76 consensus areas from 329 sets classified in 146 cladograms and the strict consensus cladogram shows a basal polytomy with 14 areas and 16 clades the final regionalization recognizes two regions nearctic and neotropical and a transition zone mexican transition zone six subregions canadian alleghanian californian rocky mountain pacific central america mexican gulf central america and central america two dominions californian and rocky mountain and 23 provinces our analysis show that north america is probably more complex than previously assumed,2013,0.468
"A bryophilous member of the Leotiomycetes from New Zealand, Bryoclaviculus campylopi gen. et sp. nov.",bryoclaviculus campylopi a tiny beautiful inoperculate discomycete fungus found only in association with the moss campylopus acuminatus is described as a new genus and species from new zealand phylogenetically it has a sister relationship with the northern hemisphere moss associated species bryoglossum gracile it is distinguished macroscopically from bryoglossum by its cup shaped fruit body and microscopically by features of the asci and paraphyses,2013,0.61
"Pterocymbium tinctorium (Merrill, 1901) (Magnoliophyta: Malvales: Sterculiaceae: Sterculioideae): New record from mainland India and extension of geographic distribution",we present a new record of the winged boot tree pterocymbium tinctorium discovered in the khasi hills of meghalaya on the indian mainland with this record the known geographical distribution of p tinctorium is now extended up to the foothills of the eastern himalayas in southeast asia the species was recorded from the tropical moist deciduous forests of meghalaya the habitat of p tinctorium was characterized by the presence of surface lime stone with karst topography future investigations should aim at identifying the factors responsible for the restricted distribution of this species so that appropriate conservation measures can be taken,2013,0.692
"Biogeography and ecology of Rhizodomus tagatzi, a presumptive invasive tintinnid ciliate",following the recent redescription of rhizodomus tagatzi we carried out a comprehensive study of the biogeography and ecology of this tintinnid ciliate based both on original data and a critical review of the literature the data indicated that r tagatzi is a neritic tintinnid ciliate which has been reported to date only from the northern hemisphere at tropical to warm temperate latitudes it has most often been detected in estuaries or lagoons characterized by a high trophic level and stable water column and typically in the seasonal periods of highest abundance of small sized phytoplankton the biogeographic pattern emerging from this study along with the prevalence of this species in ports and in transition environments exploited for bivalve culture confirms the former assumption of an invasive behaviour of r tagatzi and suggests aquaculture transplants as a possible means of dispersion for ciliated protozoa,2013,0.425
Botanical information in the Italian Biodiversity Network: One year of data aggregation and future perspectives,since its formal institution in may 2012 the italian biodiversity network is aggregating data from several research centres for a total of ca 1 5 million records botanical data made ca 50 of the total and range from primary biodiversity data to ecological morpho anatomical and taxonomical information however this is only a small portion of the total amount of botanical data which could be aggregated and exposed to the scientific community professionals and citizens in this paper we present the current status of data aggregation of the network and its impact on digitalisation of biodiversity data research conservation and environmental management and education in italy,2013,0.194
"Disjunct Occurrence of Harpanthus drummondii (Taylor) Grolle (Geocalycaceae, Jungermanniopsida) in the Boreal Forest of West-Central Canada",the liverwort harpanthus drummondii taylor grolle geocalycaceae jungermanniopsida is known mostly from temperate regions of eastern north america where it is restricted to dead wood in forests recently the species was discovered in the boreal forest of west central canada demonstrating a substantial disjunction from the next closest known occurrence a distribution map is provided along with features that distinguish it from the closely related h scutatus f weber d mohr spruce,2013,0.58
Disentangling the Origins of Cultivated Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.),sweet potato ipomoea batatas l lam convolvulaceae counts among the most widely cultivated staple crops worldwide yet the origins of its domestication remain unclear this hexaploid species could have had either an autopolyploid origin from the diploid i trifida or an allopolyploid origin involving genomes of i trifida and i triloba we generated molecular genetic data for a broad sample of cultivated sweet potatoes and its diploid and polyploid wild relatives for noncoding chloroplast and nuclear its sequences and nuclear ssrs our data did not support an allopolyploid origin for i batatas nor any contribution of i triloba in the genome of domesticated sweet potato i trifida and i batatas are closely related although they do not share haplotypes our data support an autopolyploid origin of sweet potato from the ancestor it shares with i trifida which might be similar to currently observed tetraploid wild ipomoea accessions two i batatas chloroplast lineages were identified they show more divergence with each other than either does with i trifida we thus propose that cultivated i batatas have multiple origins and evolved from at least two distinct autopolyploidization events in polymorphic wild populations of a single progenitor species secondary contact between sweet potatoes domesticated in central america and in south america from differentiated wild i batatas populations would have led to the introgression of chloroplast haplotypes of each lineage into nuclear backgrounds of the other and to a reduced divergence between nuclear gene pools as compared with chloroplast haplotypes,2013,0.936
A comparative study of ancient environmental DNA to pollen and macrofossils from lake sediments reveals taxonomic overlap and additional plant taxa,we use 2nd generation sequencing technology on sedimentary ancient dna sedadna from a lake in south greenland to reconstruct the local floristic history around a low arctic lake and compare the results with those previously obtained from pollen and macrofossils in the same lake thirty eight of thirty nine samples from the core yielded putative dna sequences using a multiple assignment strategy on the trnl gâ h dna barcode consisting of two different phylogenetic and one sequence similarity assignment approaches thirteen families of plants were identified of which two scrophulariaceae and asparagaceae are absent from the pollen and macrofossil records an age model for the sediment based on twelve radiocarbon dates establishes a chronology and shows that the lake record dates back to 10 650 cal yr bp our results suggest that sedadna analysis from lake sediments although taxonomically less detailed than pollen and macrofossil analyses can be a complementary tool for establishing the composition of both terrestrial and aquatic local plant communities and a method for identifying additional taxa,2013,0.132
What determines biogeographical ranges? Historical wanderings and ecological constraints in the danthonioid grasses,aim we sought to understand the variables that limit the distribution range of a clade here the danthonioid grasses we tested time area of origin habitat suitability disjunction width and nature and wind direction as possible range determinants location global but predominantly the southern hemisphere methods we mapped the range of the subfamily danthonioideae and used 39 000 locality records and an ensemble modelling approach to define areas with suitable danthonioid habitat we used a well sampled dated phylogeny to estimate the number and direction of historical dispersal events based on parsimony optimization we tested for the impact of wind direction on dispersal rate using a likelihood approach and for the effects of barrier width with a regression approach results we found 17 geographically isolated areas with suitable habitats for danthonioids all currently suitable southern hemisphere areas have been occupied but three apparently suitable areas in the northern hemisphere have not we infer that southern africa was first occupied in the oligocene and that dispersal to the other areas was initiated in the middle miocene inferred dispersal rate was correlated with the width of the disjunctions up to a distance of 5000 km there was no support for wind direction having influenced differences in dispersal rate main conclusions the current range of the danthonioideae can be predicted ecologically areas with suitable habitat and historically the width of the disjunctions separating the areas with suitable habitat and the area of origin the direction of dispersal is dictated by the area of origin and by serendipity there is no evidence for general patterns of dispersal for example for dispersal occurring more frequently over land than over sea or in an easterly versus a westerly direction around the southern hemisphere thus the range and range filling of danthonioideae can be accounted for by surprisingly few variables habitat suitability distance between suitable areas and area of origin,2013,0.241
Range–diversity plots for conservation assessments: Using richness and rarity in priority setting,current claims of biodiversity crisis call for immediate conservation actions these require the identifica tion of priority sites for conservation based on an assessment of biodiversity patterns patterns of species richness are crucial in such endeavor also rarity measured by the size of speciesâ geographical ranges is often used as a single or complementary criterion for instance hotspots for conservation have been defined using either one or the other criterion we apply a novel tool rangeâ diversity plots which simul taneously analyze species richness and range size from a presenceâ absence matrix to identify sites and species with potential conservation value we applied this tool to the mexican avifauna and show how it can be readily used to conduct broad scale conservation assessments mexican birds showed congruent patterns between richness and rarity richer sites harbor small ranged species also we identified mex ican ecoregions harboring richnessâ rarity sites and compared our assessment with an exhaustive prior itization procedure a rangeâ diversity approach can be useful when fine scale information is lacking such as in poorly studied regions we demonstrate that spatial congruence between richness and rarity can be easily identified and interpreted using rangeâ diversity plots based solely on a presenceâ absence matrix providing a transparent robust and explicit application for conservation assessments,2013,0.663
Tree squirrels: A key to understand the historic biogeography of Mesoamerica?,a multi taxon historical biogeography approach brooks parsimony analysis was used to estimate rela tionships among the mesoamerican lowland and highland areas and the particular biogeographic history of mesoamerican squirrels sciurus microsciurus and syntheosciurus species a total of 15 lowland areas and 12 highland areas plus 41 clades comprising 240 species 45 135 records were employed to obtain taxon area cladograms and area cladograms a single most parsimonious general area cladogram indi cated a strong vicariant relationship between southern mexico and the remainder of mesoamerica and identified several vicariant nodes modern chiapanencan volcanic arc hondurasâ great central depres sion and nicaraguan depression as well as historically independent highland areas a secondary bpa in relation with sciurus species showed several instances of post speciation dispersal or range expansion lack of response to vicariant events and possibly lineage duplication the results obtained suggest that mesoamerican biotas have been subjected to several major vicariant events but the reticulated nature of some of its areas also indicates that dispersal post speciation dispersal and range expansion had been important in the diversification of the mesoamerican biota this trend was also observed in the particular biogeographic history of mesoamerican tree squirrels,2013,0.644
Phylogenetic and Ecologic Perspectives of a Monkeypox,identification of human monkeypox cases during 2005 in southern sudan now south sudan raised several ques tions about the natural history of monkeypox virus mpxv in africa the outbreak area characterized by seasonally dry riverine grasslands is not identified as environmentally suitable for mpxv transmission we examined possible ori gins of this outbreak by performing phylogenetic analysis of genome sequences of mpxv isolates from the outbreak in sudan and from differing localities we also compared the environmental suitability of study localities for monkeypox transmission phylogenetically the viruses isolated from sudan outbreak specimens belong to a clade identified in the congo basin this finding added to the political instabil ity of the area during the time of the outbreak supports the hypothesis of importation by infected animals or humans entering sudan from the congo basin and person to per son transmission of virus rather than transmission of indig enous virus from infected animals to humans,2013,0.984
Lacunas: a web interface to identify plant knowledge gaps to support informed decision-making,scientists from megadiverse countries such as brazil face huge challenges in gathering and analyzing information about species richness and abundance in brazil specieslink is an e infrastructure that offers free and open access to data from more than 300 biological and data collections specieslinkâ s thematic network inct virtual her barium of plants and fungi and the list of species of the brazilian flora are used as primary data sources to develop lacunas an information system with a public web interface that generates detailed reports of the status of plant species occurrence data lacunas also integrates information about endemism conservation status and collecting efforts over time here we describe the motivation and the functionality of this system showing how it can be useful in detecting under sampled plant species and geographic areas we show examples of how knowledge can be extracted from biodiversity primary data using lacunas for instance lacunas report revealed that 111 angiosperm species 10 3 currently considered data deficient dd in the official list of threatened brazilian flora have their distribution well characterized in addition the situation of attalea funifera a native palm classified as dd was analyzed in detail together with other use cases information presented in lacunas reports can thus be used by scientists and policy makers to help evaluate the status of species occurrence data and prioritize digiti zation and collecting efforts as well as some features concerning its conservation status as lacunas offers a public online interface it may also become a valuable tool for helping decision making processes to become more dynamic and transparent d,2013,0.82
"Hydraena (Hydraenopsis) ateneo, new species (Coleoptera, Hydraenidae) and other aquatic Polyphaga from a small habitat patch in a highly urbanized landscape of Metro Manila, Philippines",seven species of hydraenidae hydrophilidae and elmidae are recorded from temporary freshwater habitats at the ateneo de manila university campus in the metropolitan area of manila philippines they were identified as enochrus lumetus fragiloides dâ orchymont helochares hydrobaticus lepidus dâ orchymont helochares helochares pallens macleay hydraena hydraenopsis scabra dâ orchymont hydraena hydraenopsis palawanensis freitag jã ch new record for luzon island stenelmis sp a fur ther hydraenid species was unknown to science and is newly described hydraena hydraenopsis ateneo freitag sp n aedeagus gonocoxite spermatheca and female tergite x are illustrated by computer based line drawings habitus images of all three hydraena kugelann species recorded and a checklist of the philippine hydraena are provided the presence of these seven species in the ateneo campus is briefly dis cussed in regard to the areaâ s history measures to maintain and extend semi natural islands of biodiversity in urban areas are suggested keywords,2013,0.804
"Worldwide spread of the difficult white-footed ant, Technomyrmex difficilis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",technomyrmex difficilis forel 1892 is apparently native to madagascar but began spreading through southeast asia and oceania more than 60 years ago in 1986 t difficilis was first found in the new world but until 2007 it was mis identified as technomyrmex albipes smith 1861 here i examine the worldwide spread of t difficilis i compiled technomyrmex difficilis specimen records from 200 sites documenting the earliest known t difficilis records for 33 geographic areas countries island groups major islands and us states including several for which i found no previously published records the bahamas honduras jamaica the mascarene islands missouri oklahoma south africa and washington dc almost all outdoor records of technomyrmex difficilis are from tropical areas extending into the subtropics only in madagascar south africa the southeastern us and the bahamas in addition there are several indoor records of t dif ficilis from greenhouses at zoos and botanical gardens in temperate parts of the us over the past few years t difficilis has become a dominant arboreal ant at numerous sites in florida and the west indies unfortunately t difficilis ap pears to be able to invade intact forest habitats where it can more readily impact native species it is likely that in the coming years t difficilis will become increasingly more important as a pest in florida and the west indies,2013,0.532
Congruence and Diversity of Butterfly-Host Plant Associations at Higher Taxonomic Levels,we aggregated data on butterfly host plant associations from existing sources in order to address the following questions 1 is there a general correlation between host diversity and butterfly species richness 2 has the evolution of host plant use followed consistent patterns across butterfly lineages 3 what is the common ancestral host plant for all butterfly lineages the compilation included 44 148 records from 5 152 butterfly species 28 6 of worldwide species of papilionoidea and 1 193 genera 66 3 the overwhelming majority of butterflies use angiosperms as host plants fabales is used by most species 1 007 spp from all seven butterfly families and most subfamilies poales is the second most frequently used order but is mostly restricted to two species rich subfamilies hesperiinae 56 5 of all hesperiidae and satyrinae 42 6 of all nymphalidae we found a significant and strong correlation between host plant diversity and butterfly species richness a global test for congruence parafit test was sensitive to uncertainty in the butterfly cladogram and suggests a mixed system with congruent associations between papilionidae and magnoliids hesperiidae and monocots and the remaining subfamilies with the eudicots fabids and malvids but also numerous random associations the congruent associations are also recovered as the most probable ancestral states in each node using maximum likelihood methods the shift from basal groups to eudicots appears to be more likely than the other way around with the only exception being a satyrine clade within the nymphalidae that feed on monocots our analysis contributes to the visualization of the complex pattern of interactions at superfamily level and provides a context to discuss the timing of changes in host plant utilization that might have promoted diversification in some butterfly lineages,2013,0.89
"Glacial expansion and diversification of an East Asian montane bird, the green-backed tit (Parus monticolus)",aim we combined genetic sequence data and ecological niche modelling to resolve the impacts of past climatic fluctuations on the distribution genetic diversification and demographic dynamics of an east asian montane bird the green backed tit parus monticolus location east asia methods phylogenetic analyses were carried out using four mitochondrial fragments and seven nuclear loci from 161 birds sampled from 29 localities spanning the entire geographical range of the green backed tit we used beast to estimate the species tree and calculate divergence times extended bayesian skyline plots were used to infer potential historical shifts in population size we used maxent to predict potential distributions during three periods the present day the last glacial maximum and the last interglacial results the mitochondrial dna mtdna gene tree showed strong support for three reciprocally monophyletic groups a south western clade a central clade and a taiwanese clade taiwanese and vietnamese samples had fixed differences at several nuclear loci but the south western and central samples shared haplotypes at all nuclear loci the mtdna gene tree topology differed from the species tree topology the species tree suggested sister relationships between taiwanese and vietnamese operational taxonomic units otus and between south western and central otus diversification within the green backed tit was relatively recent probably within the last 0 9 million years extended bayesian skyline plots suggested rapid population expansion in the south western and central phylogroups after the last interglacial and this result was consistent with ecological niche models main conclusions our results suggest that genetic diversification within the green backed tit was affected by the later pleistocene climate fluctuations ecological niche models indicated that the present day vegetation distribution was in many ways more similar to that of the last glacial maximum than it was to that of the last interglacial continental populations of the green backed tit experienced unusual demographic and range expansion that is likely to have occurred during the cooling transition between the last interglacial and the last glacial maximum we found incongruence between the mtdna gene tree and the species tree which underscores the importance of using both mitochondrial and nuclear markers when estimating the evolutionary history of populations,2013,0.88
Association of environmental traits with the geographic ranges of ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) of medical and veterinary importance in the western Palearctic. A digital data set.,we compiled information on the distribution of ticks in the western palearctic 11â w 45â e 29â n 71â n published during 1970 2010 the literature search was filtered by the tick s species name and an unambiguous reference to the point of capture records from some curated collections were included we focused on tick species of importance to human and animal health in particular ixodes ricinus dermacentor marginatus d reticulatus haemaphysalis punctata h sulcata hyalomma marginatum hy lusitanicum rhipicephalus annulatus r bursa and the r sanguineus group a few records of other species i canisuga i hexagonus hy impeltatum hy anatolicum hy excavatum hy scupense were also included a total of 10 280 records was included in the data set almost 42 of published references are not adequately referenced and not included in the data set host is reported for only 61 of records and a reference to time of collection is missed for 84 of published records ixodes ricinus accounted for 44 3 of total records with h marginatum and d marginatus accounting for 7 1 and 8 1 of records respectively the lack of homogeneity of the references and potential pitfalls in the compilation were addressed to create a digital data set of the records of the ticks we attached to every record a coherent set of quantitative descriptors for the site of reporting namely gridded interpolated monthly climate and remotely sensed data on vegetation ndvi we also attached categorical descriptors of the habitat a standard classification of land biomes and an ad hoc classification of the target territory from remotely sensed temperature and ndvi data a descriptive analysis of the data revealed that a principal components reduction of the environmental temperature and ndvi variables described the distribution of the species in the target territory however categorical descriptors of the habitat were less effective we stressed the importance of building reliable collections of ticks with specific references as to collection point host and date of capture the data set is freely downloadable,2013,0.65
Ancient DNA reveals that bowhead whale lineages survived Late Pleistocene climate change and habitat shifts,the climatic changes of the glacial cycles are thought to have been a major driver of population declines and species extinctions however studies to date have focused on terrestrial fauna and there is little understanding of how marine species responded to past climate change here we show that a true arctic species the bowhead whale balaena mysticetus shifted its range and tracked its core suitable habitat northwards during the rapid climate change of the pleistoceneâ holocene transition late pleistocene lineages survived into the holocene and effective female population size increased rapidly concurrent with a threefold increase in core suitable habitat this study highlights that responses to climate change are likely to be species specific and difficult to predict we estimate that the core suitable habitat of bowhead whales will be almost halved by the end of this century potentially influencing future population dynamics,2013,0.697
A decadal view of biodiversity informatics: challenges and priorities,biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community s efforts to address scientific conservation and sustainability issues great strides have been made in the past decade establishing a framework for sharing data where taxonomy and systematics has been perceived as the most prominent discipline involved to some extent this is inevitable given the use of species names as the pivot around which information is organised to address the urgent questions around conservation land use environmental change sustainability food security and ecosystem services that are facing governments worldwide we need to understand how the ecosystem works so we need a systems approach to understanding biodiversity that moves significantly beyond taxonomy and species observations such an approach needs to look at the whole system to address species interactions both with their environment and with other species it is clear that some barriers to progress are sociological basically persuading people to use the technological solutions that are already available this is best addressed by developing more effective systems that deliver immediate benefit to the user hiding the majority of the technology behind simple user interfaces an infrastructure should be a space in which activities take place and as such should be effectively invisible this community consultation paper positions the role of biodiversity informatics for the next decade presenting the actions needed to link the various biodiversity infrastructures invisibly and to facilitate understanding that can support both business and policy makers the community considers the goal in biodiversity informatics to be full integration of the biodiversity research community including citizensâ science through a commonly shared sustainable e infrastructure across all sub disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike,2013,0.146
Joint analysis of stressors and ecosystem services to enhance restoration effectiveness.,with increasing pressure placed on natural systems by growing human populations both scientists and resource managers need a better understanding of the relationships between cumulative stress from human activities and valued ecosystem services societies often seek to mitigate threats to these services through large scale costly restoration projects such as the over one billion dollar great lakes restoration initiative currently underway to help inform these efforts we merged high resolution spatial analyses of environmental stressors with mapping of ecosystem services for all five great lakes cumulative ecosystem stress is highest in near shore habitats but also extends offshore in lakes erie ontario and michigan variation in cumulative stress is driven largely by spatial concordance among multiple stressors indicating the importance of considering all stressors when planning restoration activities in addition highly stressed areas reflect numerous different combinations of stressors rather than a single suite of problems suggesting that a detailed understanding of the stressors needing alleviation could improve restoration planning we also find that many important areas for fisheries and recreation are subject to high stress indicating that ecosystem degradation could be threatening key services current restoration efforts have targeted high stress sites almost exclusively but generally without knowledge of the full range of stressors affecting these locations or differences among sites in service provisioning our results demonstrate that joint spatial analysis of stressors and ecosystem services can provide a critical foundation for maximizing social and ecological benefits from restoration investments,2013,0.118
Evaluating Ireland's IBIA as an approach to improving the quality and effectiveness of biodiversity impact assessment.,the assessment of potential impacts of plans programmes and projects on biodiversity is required under various legislative remits including the european union s habitats strategic environmental assessment and environmental impact assessment directives the objective of such assessments is to ensure that potential negative impacts on both protected nature conservation sites and species and wider biodiversity are efficiently identified in a timely manner quantified and subsequently avoided or mitigated while enhancing positive effects the procedural requirements of these legal obligations vary and as a result differing methodological steps data gathering and analysis methods and impact assessment techniques are commonly applied under each individual process often leading to uncoordinated assessment efforts and results in terms for example of scope scale and assessment detail in order to address these issues and improve current practice an integrated biodiversity impact assessment ibia methodology has been developed in ireland with the overall aim of providing a holistic and systematic approach to biodiversity impact assessment the ibia framework seeks to ensure that relevant procedures are effectively integrated time and resource efficiencies are optimised and unnecessary duplication avoided particular emphasis is given to compliance with legal requirements integration and communication of scientific knowledge spatial assessment and biodiversity data considerations and integration of biodiversity aspects with a variety of other concerns during the plan making process this paper presents the ibia methodology and critically examines current key issues in biodiversity impact assessment that can be potentially addressed through ibia as well as remaining challenges in addition and in order to support the examination of the anticipated benefits of using this new methodological framework such as biodiversity inclusive planning through improved communication and coordinated assessment two contrasting case studies are used one pre dating the development of ibia and a second where elements of ibia have been implemented,2013,0.05
A Computational- and Storage-Cloud for Integration of Biodiversity Collections,a core mission of the integrated digitized biocollections idigbio project is the building and deployment of a cloud computing environment customized to support the digitization workflow and integration of data from all u s non federal biocollections idigbio chose to use cloud computing technologies to deliver a cyberinfrastructure that is flexible agile resilient and scalable to meet the needs of the biodiversity community in this context this paper describes the integration of open source cloud middleware applications and third party services using standard formats protocols and services in addition this paper demonstrates the value of the digitized information from collections in a broader scenario involving multiple disciplines,2013,0.1
Comparative analysis between EURISCO and WIEWS and ECCDBs,within the ongoing challenges posed by climate change on crop adaptation worldwide the long term conservation of plant genetic resources in genebanks plays a crucial role for the sustainable use of agro biodiversity for present and future generations fao 2010 fao 2008 genebanks maintain collections of living material of genetic resources of crop plants and their wild relatives with the aim of collecting preserving evaluating and documenting this material for utilization by users such as breeders or researchers wright 1997 hence plant varieties stored in genebanks allow the agricultural communities access to genetic diversity to develop the most suitable and cost effective crop variety for their specific needs i e more reliable yields resistance to pests and diseases tolerance to abiotic stresses in order to address climate change challenges and issues about food security and quality fao 2010 toledo and burlingame 2006 esquinas alcazar 2005 therefore accessibility to comprehensive crop collections is increasingly important haussmann 2004 wright 1997 and efforts have been made to disseminate information by creating web based portals as easy links between users and most genebanks and thus make plant genetic resources pgr available worldwide dulloo et al 2010,2013,0.22
"New distribution records and variation of the two common lowland salamanders Bolitoglossa colonnea (Dunn, 1924) and B. lignicolor (Peters, 1873) in Panama (Amphibia: Caudata: Plethodontidae)",we revise the geographic distribution of two common lowland salamanders in western panama we close the widest gap in the known distribution of bolitoglossa colonnea with a first record for the province of veraguas and extend its known vertical distribution to a third life zone for b lignicolor we present additional localities in the province of chiriquã and the first record from comarca ngã be buglã that close the gap between extreme western panama and the azuero peninsula we present morphological molecular and coloration data for both species,2013,0.473
Mapping Monkeypox Transmission Risk through Time and Space in the Congo Basin.,monkeypox is a major public health concern in the congo basin area with changing patterns of human case occurrences reported in recent years whether this trend results from better surveillance and detection methods reduced proportions of vaccinated vs non vaccinated human populations or changing environmental conditions remains unclear our objective is to examine potential correlations between environment and transmission of monkeypox events in the congo basin we created ecological niche models based on human cases reported in the congo basin by the world health organization at the end of the smallpox eradication campaign in relation to remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index datasets from the same time period these models predicted independent spatial subsets of monkeypox occurrences with high confidence models were then projected onto parallel environmental datasets for the 2000s to create present day monkeypox suitability maps recent trends in human monkeypox infection are associated with broad environmental changes across the congo basin our results demonstrate that ecological niche models provide useful tools for identification of areas suitable for transmission even for poorly known diseases like monkeypox,2013,0.331
How to assess the prediction accuracy of species presence-absence models without absence data?,used domain generalized linear modeling glm and maximum entropy maxent to produce different species it is very common that only presence data are available in ecological niche modeling however most existing methods for evaluating the accuracy of presenceâ absence binary predictions of species require presenceâ absence data te aim of this study is to present a new method for accuracy assessment that does not rely on absence data two new statistics fpb and fcpb were derived based on presenceâ background data with generated six virtual species we presenceâ absence predictions to investigate the effectiveness of the new statistics in accuracy assessment we used fpb fcpb the traditional f measure f kappa coefficient true skill statistic tss area under the receiver operating characteristic curve auc and the contrast validation index cvi to evaluate the accuracy of predictions and the behaviors of these accuracy measures were compared te effectiveness of fpb for threshold selection and estimation of species prevalence was also investigated experimental results show that fcpb is an estimate of f te pearsonâ s correlation coefficient cor between fcpb and f is 0 9882 with a root mean square error rmse of 0 0171 in general fpb fcpb f kappa coefficient tss and cvi can sort models by the accuracy of binary prediction but auc is not appropriate to evaluate the accuracy of binary prediction for domain glm and maxent finding the threshold by maximizing fpb and by maximizing f result in similar accuracies in addition the estimation of species prevalence based on binary output with maximizing fpb as the thresh olding method is significantly more accurate than simply averaging the original continuous output te best estimate of prevalence is provided by the binary output of maxent with an rmse of 0 0116 finally we conclude that the new method is promising in accuracy assessment threshold selection and estimation of species prevalence all of which are important but challenging problems with presence only data because it does not require absence data the new method will have important applications in ecological niche modeling,2013,0.809
"Implementing the European policies for alien species – networking, science, and partnership in a complex environment",the european commission has recognized the need for more stringent action to manage biological invasions and has committed to develop a dedicated legislative instrument under this upcoming legislation european countries and their relevant institutions will have additional obligations and commitments in respect to invasive alien species in september 2012 the european commissionâ s joint research centre jrc launched the european alien species information network easin to facilitate the exploration of existing alien species information from distributed sources and to assist the implementation of european policies on biological invasions subsequent to the launching of easin there was an evident need to define its niche within a complex environment of global european regional and national information systems herein we propose an organizational chart clearly defining the role of each actor in this framework and we emphasize the need for collaboration in order to effectively support eu policies,2013,0.491
"Mitochondrial phylogeny reveals cryptic genetic diversity in the genus Niviventer (Rodentia, Muroidea)",abstract niviventer is a muroid genus with 17 species widely distributed in east and southeast asia these animals are important components of both extant and fossil small mammal communities and they are among the most common infectious agents in humans in this study we employed partitioned bayesian and relaxed clock divergence dating analyses and included the niviventer mitochondrial cytochrome b genes of from genbank n 223 although the intra generic relationships were not fully resolved we recognized four major clades subclades that could support further division of the genus paraphyletic and polyphyletic species were discovered and 21 putative species were recognized through species delimitation analysis which indicated an imperfect taxonomy and the existent of cryptic species molecular dating supported niviventer origination in the late miocene and relatively higher diversification rates were observed in the late pliocene and the pleistocene which might correlate with climate fluctuations,2013,0.686
New Records of Thremma anomalum (Trichoptera: Uenoidae) from Southeastern Europe with Notes on its Ecology,distribution of thremma anomalum was well documented by the late 1980s however macrozoobenthos research within serbian watercourses between 1989 and 2010 reveal a shift of the western boundary of the distribution recent research in western serbia and northern montenegro has shown no trace of this species in spite of its previous presence in bosnia and herzegovina the species was found in only one of ten former localities implying that the species might entirely vanish from zoographic region 5 in the near future on the other hand the species was found at 17 localities in eastern southeastern and southern serbia sections of the area where the species was not recorded earlier this research has shown that t anomalum is not restricted to cold waters and builds specific biocenoses characterized by dominance of trichoptera and gammaridae,2013,0.858
Conservation genetics of Dichoropetalum schottii (Apiaceae): is the legal protection of edge populations consistent with the genetic data?,dichoropetalum schottii is a species that lives at low to medium altitudes in the southern european mountain ranges from the balkans n greece to the pyrenees its legal protection status is not homogeneous along its distribution range as only some of its edge populations in the pyrenees are protected here by means of allozyme electrophoresis we examine the genetic variability of populations representing four different regions within its distribution area pyrenees maritime alps karst plateau in the sw sloveniaâ ne italy border region and pindus mountains in greece the species as a whole exhibits relatively high levels of genetic diversity partly due to the occurrence of several duplications among the loci surveyed genetic differentiation among populations and regions was low which could be interpreted as the result of recent allopatric fragmentation we conclude that the species as a whole is not threatened and that the currently protected populations are paradoxically the least valuable from the genetic point of view,2013,0.873
Modeling environmental niche of Himalayan birch and remote sensing based vicarious validation,the objective of the study was to model the environmental niche of a dominant treeline species himalayan birch or betula utilis in alpine region of indian himalaya and validate the findings using ground truth supported satellite remote sensing technique it deals with the generation of bioclimatic indices from temperature and precipitation data followed by fundamental environmental niche modeling based on the presence only records of the alpine treeline ecotone ate boundary species the predicted fundamental environmental niche was validated in uttarakhand india using the alpine treeline ecotone boundary a surrogate to realized niche which was generated using irs p6 liss iii satellite data for year 2006 the result demonstrates the ability of the niche models in assessing the probable extent of himalayan birch distribution and its presence in treeline ecotone of uttarakhand and the technique could be further used for modeling future scenario of the alpine treeline in indian himalaya,2013,0.4
Phenotypic plasticity and differentiation in fitness-related traits in invasive populations of the Mediterranean forb Centaurea melitensis (Asteraceae),â premise of the study biological invasions threaten global biodiversity resulting in severe ecological and economic costs phenotypic plasticity and differentiation in fitness related traits after introduction can contribute to increased performance in invasive populations of plants we determined whether postintroduction evolution in trait means or in their plasticity or inherent species wide phenotypic plasticity has promoted invasiveness in a european annual forb â methods in a common greenhouse we compared several fitness related traits and the phenotypic plasticity of those traits under four levels of nutrients among native and invasive populations of centaurea melitensis we tested 18 populations from three regions of similar mediterranean climate type the native range southern spain and two invaded ranges california and central chile â key results centaurea melitensis possesses overall phenotypic plasticity which is a trait that promotes invasiveness invasive populations were differentiated from native plants for several trait means and their levels of phenotypic plasticity in directions that enhance competitive ability and success invasive plants flowered earlier and grew faster in the early stages of growth phases important features for invasiveness â conclusions phenotypic plasticity its evolution postinvasion and the evolution of fitness related trait means in invasive populations have potentially contributed to the invasion of c melitensis in california and chile along with an overall wide range of tolerance to growing conditions c meltiensis populations that have colonized habitats in california and chile have undergone rapid evolution in several life history traits and the plasticities of those traits in directions that would promote invasiveness in mediterranean ecosystems,2013,0.492
Clarifying Concepts and Terms in Biodiversity Informatics,two workshops hereafter described as â œworkshopsâ were held in 2012 which brought together domain experts from genomic and biodiversity informatics information modeling and biology to clarify concepts and terms at the intersection of these domains these workshops grew out of efforts sponsored by the nsf funded resource coordination network rcn project for gsc 1 rcn4gsc hosted at ucsd with john wooley as pi to reconcile terms from the darwin core dwc 2 vocabulary and with those in the mixs family of checklists minimum information about any type of sequence 3 the original rcn4gsc meetings were able to align many terms between dwc and mixs finding both common and complementary terms however deciding exactly what constitutes the concept of a sample a specimen and an occurrence 4 to satisfy the needs of all use cases proved difficult especially given the wide variety of sampling strategies employed within and between communities further participants in the initial rcn4gsc workshops needed additional guidance on how to relate these entities to processes that act upon them and the environments in which organisms live these issues provided the motivation for the workshops described below,2013,0.179
"Are Namibian ""fairy circles"" the consequence of self-organizing spatial vegetation patterning?",causes of over dispersed barren fairy circles that are often surrounded by ca 0 5 m tall peripheral grasses in a matrix of shorter ca 0 2 m tall grasses in namibian grasslands remain mysterious it was hypothesized that the fairy circles are the consequence of self organizing spatial vegetation patterning arising from resource competition and facilitation we examined the edaphic properties of fairy circles and variation in fairy circle size density and landscape occupancy land surface with edaphic properties and water availability at a local scale 50 km and with climate and vegetation characteristics at a regional scale soil moisture in the barren fairy circles declines from the center towards the periphery and is inversely correlated with soil organic carbon possibly indicating that the peripheral grass roots access soil moisture that persists into the dry season within fairy circles fairy circle landscape occupancy is negatively correlated with precipitation and soil n consistent with fairy circles being the product of resource competition regional fairy circle presence absence is highly predictable using an empirical model that includes narrow ranges of vegetation biomass precipitation and temperature seasonality as predictor variables indicating that fairy circles are likely a climate dependent emergent phenomenon this dependence of fairy circle occurrence on climate explains why fairy circles in some locations may appear and disappear over time fairy circles are only over dispersed at high landscape occupancies indicating that inter circle competition may determine their spacing we conclude that fairy circles are likely to be an emergent arid grassland phenomenon that forms as a consequence of peripheral grass resource competition and that the consequent barren circle may provide a resource reservoir essential for the survival of the larger peripheral grasses and provides a habitat for fossicking fauna,2013,0.103
"Climatic niche of Dacryodes edulis (G. Don) H. J. Lam (Burseraceae), a semi-domesticated fruit tree native to Central Africa",dacryodes edulis is a fruit tree growing naturally in the rainforests of central africa to provide data to scientists and forest managers for the habitat of d edulis in the wild the study of ecological niche and environmental adaptation was carried out the geographical coordinates of 168 collections of wild individuals and 19 climatic parameters were treated under geographical information system potential spatial richness favourable climatic parameters and elevation of the species were described the favourable climatic conditions for natural growth of d edulis were mainly revealed in the forests of gabon and equatorial guinea in cameroon these conditions were well marked in the regions of kribi and bipindi south in the forest of yingui and yabassi littoral in the dja forest east and south west towards the border with nigeria the mean of favourable annual precipitation is 2205 26 â 505 5 mm per year the optimal annual mean temperatures stretch from 23 5 to 25 5â c the favourable elevations stretch from 0 to 800 m these values are smaller than ones for domesticated individuals which represent fundamental climatic niche prospect in forest areas with the best favourable climatic conditions and elevation for natural growth of d edulis should be encouraged to ensure in situ conservation of wild populations for maintaining genetic diversity,2013,0.532
The 100th of the world’s worst invasive alien species,biological invasions are among the greatest threats to global biodiversity but in contrast to most other global threats they suffer from specific communication issues our paper presents the first new addition to the widely cited iucn list of â â 100 of the worldâ s worst invasive speciesâ â a list created a decade ago in response to these communication issues we briefly present this list the recent removal of one species from that list and the rationale to include a novel 100th species to replace it the new species of this list giant salvinia salvinia molesta was chosen by the community of invasion biologists over 650 experts from over 60 countries this new addition to the list will draw public attention to the damage caused by invasive alien species and it will help stimulate the necessary discussion of this critical issue in science and policy circles g,2013,0.561
Invasion of Old World Phragmites australis in the New World: precipitation and temperature patterns combined with human influences redesign the invasive niche.,after its introduction into north america euro asian phragmites australis became an aggressive invasive wetland grass along the atlantic coast of north america its distribution range has since expanded to the middle south and southwest of north america where invasive p australis has replaced millions of hectares of native plants in inland and tidal wetlands another p australis invasion from the mediterranean region is simultaneously occurring in the gulf region of the united states and some countries in south america here we analysed the occurrence records of the two old world invasive lineages of p australis haplotype m and med in both their native and introduced ranges using environmental niche models enms to assess i whether a niche shift accompanied the invasions in the new world ii the role of biologically relevant climatic variables and human influence in the process of invasion and iii the current potential distribution of these two lineages we detected local niche shifts along the east coast of north america and the gulf coast of the united states for haplotype m and around the mississippi delta and florida of the united states for med the new niche of the introduced haplotype m accounts for temperature fluctuations and increased precipitation the introduced med lineage has enlarged its original subtropical niche to the tropics subtropics invading regions with a high annual mean temperature ca 10 â c and high precipitation in the driest period human influence is an important factor for both niches we suggest that an increase in precipitation in the 20th century global warming and human made habitats have shaped the invasive niches of the two lineages in the new world however as the invasions are ongoing and human and natural disturbances occur concomitantly the future distribution ranges of the two lineages may diverge from the potential distribution ranges detected in this study,2013,0.278
"Content assessment of the primary biodiversity data Published through gbif network: status, challenges and potentials",with the establishment of the global biodiversity information facility gbif in 2001 as an inter governmental coordinating body concerted efforts have been made during the past decade to establish a global research infrastructure to facilitate the publishing discovery and access to primary biodiversity data the participants in gbif have enabled the access to over 377 million records of such data as of august 2012 this is a remarkable achievement involving efforts at national regional and global levels in multiple areas such as data digitization standardization and exchange protocols however concerns about the quality and â fitness for useâ of the data mobilized in particular for the scientific communities have grown over the years and must now be carefully considered in future developments this paper is the first comprehensive assessment of the content mobilised so far through gbif as well as a reflexion on possible strategies to improve its â fitness for useâ the methodology builds on complementary approaches adopted by the gbif secretariat and the university of navarra for the development of comprehensive content assessment methodologies the outcome of this collaborative research demonstrates the immense value of the gbif mobilized data and its potential for the scientific communities recommendations are provided to the gbif community to improve the quality of the data published as well as priorities for future data mobilization,2013,0.082
Molecular evidence of the taxonomic status of western Mexican populations of Phaethornis longirostris (Aves: Trochilidae),species diversity is largely underestimated by current taxonomy precluding a precise understanding of evolutionary processes genetic data have increased our understanding of that cryptic diversity and multilocus studies are now desirable in this study we used mitochondrial and nuclear dna sequences to evaluate the taxonomic status of the western mexicoâ s populations of phaethornis longirostris we found differences of 4 2 in mtdna and different alleles for one ndna locus between western and eastern mexican populations molecular and morphological evidence support the separation of these populations p l mexicanus and p l griseoventer as the species phaethornis mexicanus hartert 1897 phaethornis mexicanus is endemic to western mexico and sister to the remaining populations of p longirostris the speciation of p mexicanus probably occurred around 880 000 years ago by a vicariant event involving climatic vegetational changes,2013,0.839
Pathogen-Host Associations and Predicted Range Shifts of Human Monkeypox in Response to Climate Change in Central Africa,climate change is predicted to result in changes in the geographic ranges and local prevalence of infectious diseases either through direct effects on the pathogen or indirectly through range shifts in vector and reservoir species to better understand the occurrence of monkeypox virus mpxv an emerging orthopoxvirus in humans under contemporary and future climate conditions we used ecological niche modeling techniques in conjunction with climate and remote sensing variables we first created spatially explicit probability distributions of its candidate reservoir species in africa s congo basin reservoir species distributions were subsequently used to model current and projected future distributions of human monkeypox mpx results indicate that forest clearing and climate are significant driving factors of the transmission of mpx from wildlife to humans under current climate conditions models under contemporary climate conditions performed well as indicated by high values for the area under the receiver operator curve auc and tests on spatially randomly and non randomly omitted test data future projections were made on ipcc 4th assessment climate change scenarios for 2050 and 2080 ranging from more conservative to more aggressive and representing the potential variation within which range shifts can be expected to occur future projections showed range shifts into regions where mpx has not been recorded previously increased suitability for mpx was predicted in eastern democratic republic of congo models developed here are useful for identifying areas where environmental conditions may become more suitable for human mpx targeting candidate reservoir species for future screening efforts and prioritizing regions for future mpx surveillance efforts,2013,0.753
Nowhere to Invade: Rumex crispus and Typha latifolia Projected to Disappear under Future Climate Scenarios,future climate change has been predicted to affect the potential distribution of plant species however only few studies have addressed how invasive species may respond to future climate change despite the known effects of plant species invasion on nutrient cycles ecosystem functions and agricultural yields in this study we predicted the potential distributions of two invasive species rumex crispus and typha latifolia under current and future 2050 climatic conditions future climate scenarios considered in our study include a1b a2 a2a b1 and b2a we found that these two species will lose their habitat under the a1b a2 a2a and b1 scenarios their distributions will be maintained under future climatic conditions related to b2a scenarios but the total area will be less than 10 of that under the current climatic condition we also investigated variations of the most influential climatic variables that are likely to cause habitat loss of the two species our results demonstrate that rising mean annual temperature variations of the coldest quarter and precipitation of the coldest quarter are the main factors contributing to habitat loss of r crispus for t latifolia the main factors are rising mean annual temperature variations in temperature of the coldest quarter mean annual precipitation and precipitation of the coldest quarter these results demonstrate that the warmer and wetter climatic conditions of the coldest season or month will be mainly responsible for habitat loss of r crispus and t latifolia in the future we also discuss uncertainties related to our study and similar studies and suggest that particular attention should be directed toward the manner in which invasive species cope with rapid climate changes because evolutionary change can be rapid for species that invade new areas,2013,0.904
"Influence of late Quaternary climate change on present patterns of genetic variation in valley oak, Quercus lobata Née.",phylogeography and ecological niche models enms suggest that late quaternary glacial cycles have played a prominent role in shaping present population genetic structure and diversity but have not applied quantitative methods to dissect the relative contribution of past and present climate vs other forces we integrate multilocus phylogeography climate based enms and multivariate statistical approaches to infer the effects of late quaternary climate change on contemporary genetic variation of valley oak quercus lobata nã e enms indicated that valley oak maintained a stable distribution with local migration from the last interglacial period 120 ka to the last glacial maximum 21 ka lgm to the present compared with large scale range shifts for an eastern north american white oak quercus alba l coast range and sierra nevada foothill populations diverged in the late pleistocene before the lgm 104 ka 28 1622 and have occupied somewhat distinct climate niches according to enms and coalescent analyses of divergence time in accordance with neutral expectations for stable populations nuclear microsatellite diversity positively correlated with niche stability from the lgm to present most strikingly nuclear and chloroplast microsatellite variation significantly correlated with lgm climate even after controlling for associations with geographic location and present climate using partial redundancy analyses variance partitioning showed that lgm climate uniquely explains a similar proportion of genetic variance as present climate 16 vs 11 18 and together past and present climate explains more than geography 19 climate can influence local expansion contraction dynamics flowering phenology and thus gene flow and or impose selective pressures these results highlight the lingering effect of past climate on genetic variation in species with stable distributions,2013,0.489
Quantifying the benefit of early climate change mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss,climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels including species level reductions in range size and abundance especially amongst endemic species1â 6 however little is known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could re duce biodiversity impacts particularly amongst common and widespread species our global analysis of future climatic range change of common and widespread species shows that without mitigation 57â 6 of plants and 34â 7 of animals are likely to lose â 50 of their present climatic range by the 2080s with mitigation however losses are reduced by 60 if emissions peak in 2016 or 40 if emissions peak in 2030 thus our analyses indicate that without mitigation large range contractions can be expected even amongst common and widespread species amounting to a substantial global reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services by the end of this century prompt and stringent mitigation on the other hand could substantially reduce range losses and buy up to four decades for climate change adaptation,2013,0.714
Potential and limitations of Burgundy truffle cultivation,burgundy truffles tuber aestivum syn tuber uncinatum are the highly prized fruit bodies of subterranean fungi always occurring in ectomycorrhizal symbiosis with host plants successful cultivation can be achieved through artificial mycorrhization and outplanting of mostly oaks and hazel on suitable terrain here we review ecological requirements the influence of environmental factors and the importance of molecular techniques for a successful cultivation of t aestivum across europe the historical background and current knowledge of t aestivum cultivation are discussed in light of its socioeconomic relevance,2013,0.181
An Inventory of Crop Wild Relatives of the United States,the use of crop wild relatives cwrs in breeding is likely to continue to intensify as utilization techniques improve and crop adaptation to climate change becomes more pressing significant gaps remain in the conservation of these genetic resources as a first step toward a national strategy for the conservation of cwrs we present an inventory of taxa occurring in the united states with suggested prioritization of species based on potential value in crop improvement we listed 4600 taxa from 985 genera and 194 plant families including cwrs of potential value via breeding as well as wild species of direct use for food forage medicine herb ornamental and or environmental restoration purposes united states cwrs are related to a broad range of important food forage and feed medicinal ornamental and industrial crops some potentially valuable species are threatened in the wild including relatives of sunflower helianthus annuus l walnut juglans regia l pepo squash cucurbita pepo l wild rice zizania l raspberry rubus idaeus l and plum prunus salicina lindl and few accessions of such taxa are currently conserved ex situ we prioritize 821 taxa from 69 genera primarily related to major food crops particularly the approximately 285 native taxa from 30 genera that are most closely related to such crops both the urgent collection for ex situ conservation and the management of such taxa in protected areas are warranted necessitating partnerships between concerned organizations aligned with regional and global initiatives to conserve and provide access to cwr diversity,2013,0.882
Evolutionary lag times and recent origin of the biota of an ancient desert (Atacama-Sechura),the assembly of regional biotas and organismal responses to anthropogenic climate change both depend on the capacity of organisms to adapt to novel ecological conditions here we demonstrate the concept of evolutionary lag time the time between when a climatic regime or habitat develops in a region and when it is colonized by a given clade we analyzed the time of colonization of four clades three plant genera and one lizard genus into the atacama sechura desert of south america one of earth s driest and oldest deserts we reconstructed time calibrated phylogenies for each clade and analyzed the timing of shifts in climatic distributions and biogeography and compared these estimates to independent geological estimates of the time of origin of these deserts chaetanthera and malesherbia plants and liolaemus animal invaded arid regions of the atacama sechura desert in the last 10 million years some 20 million years after the initial onset of aridity in the region there are also major lag times between when these clades colonized the region and when they invaded arid habitats within the region typically 4 14 million years similarly hyperarid climates developed ∠8 million years ago but the most diverse plant clade in these habitats nolana only colonized them ∠2 million years ago similar evolutionary lag times may occur in other organisms and habitats but these results are important in suggesting that many lineages may require very long time scales to adapt to modern desertification and climatic change,2013,0.21
"Spread dynamics and agricultural impact of Sorghum halepense, an emerging invasive species in Central Europe",sorghum halepense is a serious weed and reservoir for pathogens of crops worldwide that has recently spread in austria on the basis of an exhaustive distribution data set 302 records we analysed the spread dynamics and agricultural impact the first record of s halepense was recorded in 1871 but the species remained rare until 1970 after a moderate increase in records until 1990 it has recently expanded strongly 70 of all records have been collected since 1990 in particular in the lowlands of eastern and southern austria invasion into fields was first documented in the 1970s but again since 1990 s halepense has spread strongly and fields now account for 32 of all records in southern austria we found that s halepense invasion already puts approximately 41 of grain maize fields and 40 of oil pumpkin fields at risk of yield losses in cooler regions within austria s halepense is still rarely recorded in fields sorghum halepense serves as a reservoir for the maize dwarf mosaic virus as it was found in 38 of 21 samples collected in southern austria invasion of s halepense in fields was most likely assisted by frequent secondary dispersal and intensive maize and oil pumpkin cultivation given the fast and on going spread in fields which is likely to continue under climate warming our results provide evidence that s halepense will cause serious impacts for agriculture in austria and probably in other countries of central europe,2013,0.787
"Risk analysis of the Australian swamp stonecrop Crassula helmsii (Kirk) Cockayne. - Risk analysis report of non-native organisms in Belgium from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences for the Federal Public Service Health, Food chain safety and E",pathway analyses are regarded by national plant protection organizations as a very efficient way to address the risks posed by invasive alien species data on import of aquatic plants was obtained from 10 eppo countries austria czech republic estonia france germany hungary the netherlands latvia switzerland and turkey and aggregated in order to consider whether invasive or potentially invasive alien plants could be introduced in the eppo region through this pathway this study highlights that this pathway mainly consists of the import of tropical plants for use in aquaria and which do not represent a risk due to their climatic requirements however a few species require thorough attention owing to the threats they cause of the 247 species recorded as imported only 10 are currently considered to be a threat representing 4 of the total number of plants imported these 10 invasive or potentially invasive species continue to be traded in huge quantities in spite of the fact that crassula helmsii and eichhornia crassipes are recommended for regulation by eppo azolla filiculoides egeria densa elodea nuttalli lagarosiphon major ludwigia grandiflora and myriophyllum aquaticum should have their entry and spread prevented by countries and hydrilla verticillata and pistia stratiotes are recorded on the eppo alert list six additional species have been identified as representing a moderate to high potential risk alternanthera sessilis adiantum raddianum gymnocoronis spilanthoides hygrophila polysperma limnophila sessiliflora and syngonium podophyllum these species could be subject to further investigation possibly a pest risk analysis to evaluate the risk they may represent,2013,0.613
Three keys to the radiation of angiosperms into freezing environments,early flowering plants are thought to have been woody species restricted to warm habitats this lineage has since radiated into almost every climate with manifold growth forms as angiosperms spread and climate changed they evolved mechanisms to cope with episodic freezing to explore the evolution of traits underpinning the ability to persist in freezing conditions we assembled a large species level database of growth habit woody or herbaceous 49 064 species as well as leaf phenology evergreen or deciduous diameter of hydraulic conduits that is xylem vessels and tracheids and climate occupancies exposure to freezing to model the evolution of species traits and climate occupancies we combined these data with an unparalleled dated molecular phylogeny 32 223 species for land plants here we show that woody clades successfully moved into freezing prone environments by either possessing transport networks of small safe conduits and or shutting down hydraulic function by dropping leaves during freezing herbaceous species largely avoided freezing periods by senescing cheaply constructed aboveground tissue growth habit has long been considered labile but we find that growth habit was less labile than climate occupancy additionally freezing environments were largely filled by lineages that had already become herbs or when remaining woody already had small conduits that is the trait evolved before the climate occupancy by contrast most deciduous woody lineages had an evolutionary shift to seasonally shedding their leaves only after exposure to freezing that is the climate occupancy evolved before the trait for angiosperms to inhabit novel cold environments they had to gain new structural and functional trait solutions our results suggest that many of these solutions were probably acquired before their foray into the cold,2013,0.169
Potential Geographic Distribution of Hantavirus Reservoirs in Brazil,hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome is an emerging zoonosis in brazil human infections occur via inhalation of aerosolized viral particles from excreta of infected wild rodents necromys lasiurus and oligoryzomys nigripes appear to be the main reservoirs of hantavirus in the atlantic forest and cerrado biomes we estimated and compared ecological niches of the two rodent species and analyzed environmental factors influencing their occurrence to understand the geography of hantavirus transmission n lasiurus showed a wide potential distribution in brazil in the cerrado caatinga and atlantic forest biomes highest climate suitability for o nigripes was observed along the brazilian atlantic coast maximum temperature in the warmest months and annual precipitation were the variables that most influence the distributions of n lasiurus and o nigripes respectively models based on occurrences of infected rodents estimated a broader area of risk for hantavirus transmission in southeastern and southern brazil coinciding with the distribution of human cases of hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome we found no demonstrable environmental differences among occurrence sites for the rodents and for human cases of hantavirus however areas of northern and northeastern brazil are also apparently suitable for the two species without broad coincidence with human cases modeling of niches and distributions of rodent reservoirs indicates potential for transmission of hantavirus across virtually all of brazil outside the amazon basin,2013,0.893
The Flora of Chad: a checklist and brief analysis,a checklist of the flora of chad has been compiled by the authors based on literature on line data bases herbarium collections and land surveys 1998 2011 it counts 2 460 records i e 2 288 species including 128 autonyms 83 subspecies 81 varieties 8 forms while all the previous available information reported 1 600 species tey belong to 151 families with 48 7 of the taxa belonging to the 6 largest families i e poaceae 14 6 fabaceae 13 6 cyperaceae 7 0 asteraceae 6 2 malvaceae 3 9 and rubiaceae 3 4 a total number or 2 173 species 88 3 are native to chad including 55 2 2 endemic species while 274 11 0 are alien to chad and 13 0 5 are considered cryptogenic i e of uncertain status it represents a considerable update on previous knowledge on the alien flora of chad that counted for 131 taxa 5 3 tere are 657 therophytes 26 7 546 phanerophytes 22 2 378 hemicryptophytes 15 4 256 chamaephytes 10 4 160 geophytes 6 5 107 helophytes 4 3 104 hydrophytes 4 2 a total of 252 taxa 10 2 may have different life forms e g terophytes or chamaephytes,2013,0.723
The environment ontology: contextualising biological and biomedical entities,as biological and biomedical research increasingly reference the environmental context of the biological entities under study the need for formalisation and standardisation of environment descriptors is growing the environment ontology envo www environmentontology org is a community led open project which seeks to provide an ontology for specifying a wide range of environments relevant to multiple life science disciplines and through an open participation model to accommodate the terminological requirements of all those needing to annotate data using ontology classes this paper summarises envoâ s motivation content structure adoption and governance approach the ontology is available from http purl obolibrary org obo envo owl an obo format version is also available by switching the file suffix to â œoboâ,2013,0.12
Genetic structure of the mesic forest-adapted herbs Trillium cuneatum and Trillium stamineum (Melanthiaceae) in the South-Central United States,trillium melanthiaceae is a highly diverse genus in the southeast and includes many local endemics previous studies on trillium in eastern north america identified significant genetic structure associated with limited seed dispersal and historical landscape barriers in this study genetic structure was examined in trillium cuneatum and t stamineum across mississippi and western alabama to look for further evidence that landscape features influence genetic structure at local scales dna sequence variation in the trnl intron and trnl trnf intergenic region was examined across 12 populations of t cuneatum and six populations of t stamineum samples of trillium ludovicianum and trillium foetidissimum were included for comparison five and four haplotypes were discovered in t cuneatum and t stamineum respectively but most populations were fixed for a single haplotype haplotypes from t cuneatum in southwestern mississippi were also present in congeneric species significant geographic structure was found in both species and divergent haplotypes found on either side of the tombigbee and black warrior rivers suggest barriers to gene flow in the study area strong population differentiation suggests that seed dispersal is limited in both species given the strong degree of genetic structure detected in both species and their preference of mesic forests it is expected that both species will continue to diverge at local scales,2013,0.981
Pest occurrence model in current climate – validation study for European domain,the present study yields detail validation of the pest occurrence models under current climate in wide european domain study organisms involve cydia pomonella lobesia botrana ostrinia nubilalis leptinotarsa decemlineata oulema melanopus rhopalosiphum padi and sitobion avenae method used in this study belongs to the category climate matching climex model allowing the estimation of areas climatically favourable for species persistence based on the climatic parameters characterising the species development in the process of model validation parameters were iteratively tested and altered to truly describe the pest presence the modelled pests presence was verifi ed by comparison of the observed pests occurrence with the number of generations in given modelled area the notable component of the model parameterization was the sensitivity analyses testing the reaction of species development on changing meteorological items parameterization of the factors causing distribution patterns of study species was successful and modelled potential distributions of species correspond well to known core distribution areas for all of these species this validation study is intended as an initial for forthcoming studies focused on the estimation of geographical shiî s of selected pests in the conditions of climate change within the europe,2013,0.704
The deep-sea fish Kali macrodon: a new record for the tropical eastern Atlantic off Cape Verde,a new deep sea fish is reported for the tropical eastern atlantic the rare chiasmodontid kali macrodon was caught for the first time in cape verdean waters during an oceanographic survey in september 2009 this record provides the fifth occur rence for the species in the north eastern atlantic and represents the third specimen ever caught in tropical waters,2013,0.463
"First Fossil Record of Alphonsea Hk. f. & T. (Annonaceae) from the Late Oligocene Sediments of Assam, India and Comments on Its Phytogeography",a new fossil leaf impression of alphonsea hk f t of the family annonaceae is described from the late oligocene sediments of makum coalfield assam india this is the first authentic record of the fossil of alphonsea from the tertiary rocks of south asia the late oligocene was the time of the last significant globally warm climate and the fossil locality was at 10â 15â n palaeolatitude the known palaeoflora and sedimentological studies indicate a fluvio marine deltaic environment with a mosaic of mangrove fluvial mire and lacustrine depositional environments during the depositional period the suturing between the indian and eurasian plates was not complete to facilitate the plant migration the suturing was over by the end of the late oligocene beginning of early miocene resulting in the migration of the genus to southeast asia where it is growing profusely at present the present study is in congruence with the earlier published palaeofloral and molecular phylogenetic data the study also suggests that the indian plate was not only a biotic ferry during its northward voyage from gondwana to asia but also a place for the origin of several plant taxa,2013,0.344
Understanding primate communities: Recent developments and future directions,in 1999 the edited volume primate communities presented several studies that examined broad scale patterns of primate diversity 1 similar studies were being conducted on nonprimate taxa advances in data availability and statistical approaches were allowing scientists to investigate a variety of new questions and to reexamine classical questions in novel ways while such studies on nonprimate taxa have continued at a steady pace they have only crept forward for primate species fig in the intervening time the field of macroecology box 1 rapidly developed and has resulted in several books and the establishment of new research institutes we suggest that examining primate communities especially in a macroecological context is an important line of research for our field to embrace and an area where biological anthropologists can provide major contributions we review the current state of research describe new datasets and research tools and suggest future research directions,2013,0.233
Ex Situ Conservation of Biodiversity with Particular Emphasis to Ethiopia,biodiversity encompasses variety andvariability of all formsof lifeonearththatplay a great role inhuman existence its conservation embraces maintenance sustainable utilization and restoration of the lost and degraded biodiversity through two basic and complementary strategies called in situ and ex situ ex situ conservation is the technique of conservation of all levels of biological diversity outside their natural habitats through different techniques like zoo captive breeding aquarium botanical garden and gene bank it plays key roles in communicating the issues raising awareness and gaining widespread public and political support for conservation actions and for breeding endangered species in captivity for reintroduction limitations of ex situ conservation include maintenance of organisms in artificial habitats deterioration of genetic diversity inbreeding depression adaptations to captivity and accumulation of deleterious alleles it has many constraints in terms of personnel costs and reliance on electric power sources ethiopia is considered to be one of the richest centers of genetic resources in the world currently a number of stakeholders actors are actively working on biodiversity conservation through ex situ conservation strategies by establishing gene banks botanical garden and zoo,2013,0.337
Nephroma helveticum and N. tangeriense new to Norway,neproma helveticum is reported as new to norway and n tangeriense as new to the nordic countries their identity has been verified by tlc and morphological comparison with herbarium material in o notes on their ecology and distribution are given together with descriptions of the norwegian sites,2013,0.344
Evidence for recent evolution of cold tolerance in grasses suggests current distribution is not limited by (low) temperature.,â temperature is considered an important determinant of biodiversity distribution patterns grasses poaceae occupy among the warmest and coldest environments on earth but the role of cold tolerance evolution in generating this distribution is understudied we studied cold tolerance of danthonioideae c 280 species a major constituent of the austral temperate grass flora â we determined differences in cold tolerance among species from different continents grown in a common winter garden and assessed the relationship between measured cold tolerance and that predicted by species ranges we then used temperatures in current ranges and a phylogeny of 81 of the species to study the timing and mode of cold tolerance evolution across the subfamily â species ranges generally underestimate cold tolerance but are still a meaningful representation of differences in cold tolerance among species we infer cold tolerance evolution to have commenced at the onset of danthonioid diversification subsequently increasing in both pace and extent in certain lineages interspecific variation in cold tolerance is better accounted for by spatial than phylogenetic distance â contrary to expectations temperature low temperature in particular appears not to limit the distribution of this temperate clade competition time or dispersal limitation could explain its relative absence from northern temperate regions,2013,0.834
Activity Response to Climate Seasonality in Species with Fossorial Habits: A Niche Modeling Approach Using the Lowland Burrowing Treefrog (Smilisca fodiens),the importance of climatic conditions in shaping the geographic distribution of amphibian species is mainly associated to their high sensitivity to environmental conditions how they cope with climate gradients through behavioral adaptations throughout their distribution is an important issue due to the ecological and evolutionary implications for population viability given their low dispersal abilities the response to seasonal climate changes may not be migration but behavioral and physiological adaptations here we tested whether shifts in climatic seasonality can predict the temporal variation of surface activity of the fossorial lowland burrowing treefrog smilisca fodiens across its geographical distribution we employed ecological niche modeling enm to perform a monthly analysis of spatial variation of suitable climatic conditions defined by the july conditions the month of greatest activity and then evaluated the geographical correspondence of monthly projections with the occurrence data per month we found that the species activity based on the speciesâ occurrence data corresponds with the latitudinal variation of suitable climatic conditions due to the behavioral response of this fossorial frog to seasonal climate variation we suggest that precipitation and temperature have played a major role in the definition of geographical and temporal distribution patterns as well as in shaping behavioral adaptations to local climatic conditions this highlights the influence of macroclimate on shaping activity patterns and the important role of fossorials habits to meet the environmental requirements necessary for survival,2013,0.219
From Working List to Online Flora of All Known Plants—Looking Forward with Hindsight,the aim of this paper is to identify factors that might assist implementation of target 1 for the global strategy for plant conservation gspc for 2020 â œan online flora of all known plants â this is done by considering progress in large regional floras to date and production of the plant list online in conjunction with lessons learned from the first 10 years of gspc implementation if the online flora is to support gspc implementation then it has to be able to support conservation and sustainable use projects at national and local levels in addition to linking to information concerning global plant diversity this will require strong partnerships and collaborations across the botanical community measurement of progress will help identify gaps and direct efforts and indicators for measuring progress are suggested,2013,0.13
"Different Traits Determine Introduction, Naturalization and Invasion Success In Woody Plants: Proteaceae as a Test Case",a major aim of invasion ecology is to identify characteristics of successful invaders however most plant groups studied in detail e g pines and acacias have a high percentage of invasive taxa here we examine the global introduction history and invasion ecology of proteaceaeâ a large plant family with many taxa that have been widely disseminated by humans but with few known invaders to do this we compiled a global list of species and used boosted regression tree models to assess which factors are important in determining the status of a species not introduced introduced naturalized or invasive at least 402 of 1674 known species 24 have been moved by humans out of their native ranges 58 species 14 have become naturalized but not invasive and 8 species 2 are invasive the probability of naturalization was greatest for species with large native ranges low susceptibility to phytophthora root rot fungus large mammal dispersed seeds and with the capacity to resprout the probability of naturalized species becoming invasive was greatest for species with large native ranges those used as barrier plants tall species species with small seeds and serotinous species the traits driving invasiveness of proteaceae were similar to those for acacias and pines however while some traits showed a consistent influence at introduction naturalization and invasion others appear to be influential at one stage only and some have contrasting effects at different stages trait based analyses therefore need to consider different invasion stages separately on their own these observations provide little predictive power for risk assessment but when the causative mechanisms are understood e g phytophthora susceptibility they provide valuable insights as such there is considerable value in seeking the correlates and mechanisms underlying invasions for particular taxonomic or functional groups cit,2013,0.886
Montpellier broom (Genista monspessulana) and Spanish broom (Spartium junceum) in South Africa: An assessment of invasiveness and options for management,the legumes fabaceae genistamonspessulana and spartium junceumaremajor invaders in several other parts of theworld but not yet so in south africa wedetermine their current distributions in south africa at different spatial scales assess population structure soil seed banks and size at reproduction evaluate current manage ment activities and provide recommendations for control including assessing the feasibility of nation wide eradication g monspessulana occurs at nine localities in three quarter degree cells covering a total of 22 7 ha s junceum is much more widespread occurring in 33 quarter degree cells and is frequently cultivated in private gardens all naturalised or invasive populations are in disturbed areas mostly along roadsides once established g monspessulana and s junceum accumulate large persistent soil stored seed banks ranging in size between 909 and 22 727 median 1970 seeds m2 and 0 and 21 364 median 455 seeds m2 for the two species respectively both species resprout vigorously after cutting and stump herbicide application 60 of g monspessulana and 43 of s junceum plants resprouted which necessitates regular follow ups we estimate that over 10 years at a cost of about zar 81 000 1 zar 0 114 us as on 6 october 2012 g monspessulana could be extirpated from south africa s junceum is far more widespread and coupled with low effectiveness of control abundance of seeds and seed longevity eradication is unfeasible we recommend that control methods used for s junceum be improved to prevent resprouting and that areas are managed to limit the movement of seeds and avoid further spread and establishment further studies are required to understand why these two species have failed to replicate the invasiveness shown in other parts of the world â,2013,0.654
"Managing and sharing the escalating number of sponge ""unknowns"": the SpongeMaps project",contemporary collections of sponges in the indo west pacific have escalated substantially due to pharmaceutical discovery national bioregional planning and compliance with international conventions on the seabed and its marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdictions these partially processed operational taxonomic unit otu collections now vastly outweigh the expertise available to make them better known via complete taxonomy yet for many bioregions they represent the most significant body of currently available knowledge increasing numbers of cryptic species previously undetected morphologically are now being discovered by molecular and chemical analyses the uncoordinated and fragmented nature of many previous collections however means that knowledge and expertise gained from a particular project are often lost to future projects without a biodiversity informatics legacy integrating these diverse data gis otus images molecular chemical and other datasets required a two way iterative process so far unavailable for sponges with existing biodiversity informatics tools spongemaps arose from the initial need for online collaboration to integrate morphometric data with molecular barcodes including the porifera tree of life portol project it provides interrogation of existing data to better process new collections capacity to create new otus publication of online pages for individual species so as to interpret gis and other data for online biodiversity databases and services and automatic links to external datasets for taxonomic hierarchy specimen gis and mapping dna sequence data chemical structures and images,2013,0.479
"Assessment of User Needs of Primary Biodiversity Data: Analysis, Concerns and Challenges",a content needs assessment cna survey has been conducted in order to determine what gbif mediated data users may be using what they would be using if available and what they need in terms of primary biodiversity data records the survey was launched in 2009 in six languages and collected more than 700 individual responses analysis of the responses showed some lack of awareness about the availability of accessible primary data and pointed out some types of data in high demand for linking to distribution and taxonomic data now derived from the gbif cache a notable example was linkages to molecular data also the cna survey uncovered some biases in the design of user needs surveys by showing demographic and linguistic effects that may have influenced the distribution of responses received in analogous surveys conducted at the global scale,2013,0.277
Asian origin and upslope migration of Hawaiian Artemisia (Compositae-Anthemideae),aim major habitat shifts are well documented for the hawaiian flora but examples of shifts to the highest hawaiian habitats by plant lineages of lowland tropical ancestry have been lacking we sought to determine whether hawaiian artemisia compositaeâ anthemideae which includes lowland and subalpine species represents such an example by investigating the origin and relationships of the hawaiian taxa location hawaiian islands and continental settings world wide except antarctica and australia methods molecular phylogenetic analyses of hawaiian artemisia in the context of world wide diversity were conducted using nuclear and chloroplast dna spacers the timing of divergence events associated with inferred dispersals was estimated with calibration from fossil pollen records historical biogeographical analyses based on molecular trees and ecological modelling of the distributions of extant taxa were used to aid the interpretation of geographical and habitat shifts associated with diversification and long distance dispersal results our findings indicate that the hawaiian endemic species a australis a kauaiensis and a mauiensis constitute a clade sister to southeast asian a chinensis which like the hawaiian endemics has ribbed fruit walls and unlike other members of artemisia except a kauaiensis has a distinct pappus which is often associated with dispersal ability in compositae the clade encompassing a chinensis and hawaiian artemisia was resolved to be most likely of asian origin the natural occurrence of a chinensis in littoral habitats of taiwan okinawa and the ryukyu and bonin islands and of a australis in similar settings in the hawaiian islands is likely to reflect the ancestral ecology of the hawaiian clade with subsequent colonization of inland higher elevation habitats including subalpine shrubland where a mauiensis is endemic main conclusions an ecological shift in hawaiian artemisia from tropical coastal habitats to drier and colder subalpine slopes is consistent with evidence from recent studies for repeated colonization of the arctic by diverse lineages of artemisia artemisia appears to be prone to such anticlimatic ecological shifts which may explain this exceptional example of an ancestrally lowland tropical lineage in the hawaiian high montane flora,2013,0.417
Casuarina: biogeography and ecology of an important tree genus in a changing world,important insights on the invasion ecology of woody plants are emerging from the study of model groups but it is important to test how widely such results can be generalised we examined whether drivers of introduction and invasion in the genus casuarina are similar to those identified for other groups we reviewed the literature mapped current global distributions and modelled the potential global distribution of the genus we assessed the rationale behind introductions impacts of invasions and the evolution of management approaches casuarinas have been introduced to about 150 countries ten of the 14 species in the genus have been introduced outside their native ranges but only three species are recorded as naturalized or invasive c equisetifolia c cunninghamiana and c glauca species with large native ranges are more likely to be introduced and the three invasive species have the largest native ranges and the most records of introduction there were no clear relationships between life history traits e g seed mass plant height or resprouting ability and the extent of invasion about 8 of the earthâ s land surface is potentially suitable for casuarinas and large scale plantings in some climatically suitable areas have not yet resulted in large scale invasions there is a substantial global casuarina invasion debt experiences in florida and the mascarene islands highlight that casuarinas have the potential to transform ecosystems with significant control costs the challenge is to develop management approaches that minimise the impacts of invasions while preserving economic environmental and cultural values of species in their introduced ranges,2013,0.596
Niche conservatism and disjunct populations: A case study with Painted Buntings (Passerina ciris),painted buntings passerina ciris breed in a variety of habitats across the southern united states however a 500 km gap divides the species into eastern and western populations with dramatically different molting schedules by contrast the closely related indigo bunting p cyanea is syntopic with painted buntings but its range includes the 500 km gap to date no well supported hypothesis explains the gap in the range of painted buntings we used maxent to describe ecological niches of both species and performed comparative analyses of model results to evaluate niche similarity between the two painted bunting breeding populations and the range gap all present day niche models for both species predicted a single contiguous breeding range which suggests that the gap in the painted bunting range is not bioclimatic in origin comparative analyses of the three different environments suggest little bioclimatic divergence distribution models during the last glacial maximum suggest that painted buntings likely bred as far north as 28â n latitude with two disjunct populations in what are now florida and northern mexico although alternatives exist the most parsimonious explanation is that the gulf of mexico serves as a migratory divide and there are fitness costs to birds attempting to fly around or over the gulf to reach their molting or wintering grounds this was a primary factor contributing to the origin of the current allopatric breeding distribution historical distribution models imply that the species may not have filled the 500 km gap as their breeding range expanded northward divergent molting schedules may reinforce the existing range disjunction,2013,0.88
Utility of QR codes in biological collections,the popularity of qr codes for encoding information such as uris has increased exponentially in step with the technological advances and availability of smartphones digital tablets and other electronic de vices we propose using qr codes on specimens in biological collections to facilitate linking vouchersâ electronic information with their associated collections qr codes can efficiently provide such links for connecting collections photographs maps ecosystem notes citations and even genbank sequences qr codes have numerous advantages over barcodes including their small size superior security mechanisms increased complexity and quantity of information and low implementation cost the scope of this paper is to initiate an academic discussion about using qr codes on specimens in biological collections,2013,0.173
Compositional shifts in Costa Rican forests due to climate-driven species migrations,species are predicted to shift their distributions upslope or poleward in response to global warming this prediction is supported by a growing number of studies documenting species migrations in temperate systems but remains poorly tested for tropical species and especially for tropical plant species we analyzed changes in tree species composition in a network of 10 annually censused 1 ha plots spanning an altitudinal gradient of 70 2800 m elevation in costa rica specifically we combined plot data with herbarium records accessed through gbif to test if the plots community temperature scores cts average thermal mean of constituent species weighted by basal area have increased over the past decade as is predicted by climate driven species migrations in addition we quantified the contributions of stem growth recruitment and mortality to the observed patterns supporting our a priori hypothesis of upward species migrations we found that there have been consistent directional shifts in the composition of the plots such that the relative abundance of lowland species and hence cts increased in 90 of plots the rate of the observed compositional shifts corresponds to a mean thermal migration rate tmr of 0 0065 â c yr 1 95 ci 0 0005 0 0132 â c yr 1 while the overall tmr is slower than predicted based on concurrent regional warming of 0 0167 â c yr 1 migrations were on pace with warming in 4 of the 10 plots the observed shifts in composition were driven primarily by mortality events i e the disproportionate death of highland vs lowland species suggesting that individuals of many tropical tree species will not be able to tolerate future warming and thus their persistence in the face of climate change will depend on successful migrations unfortunately in costa rica and elsewhere land area inevitably decreases at higher elevations hence even species that are able to migrate successfully will face heightened risks of extinction,2013,0.985
"Use of CLIMEX, Land use and Topography to Refine Areas Suitable for Date Palm Cultivation in Spain under Climate Change Scenarios",in this study climex modeling software was used to develop a model of the potential distribution of p dactylifera under current and various future climate scenarios for spain climex parameters were adjusted depending on satisfactory agreement between the potential and known distribution of p dactylifera in northern african countries iraq saudi arabia oman and iran the potential date palm distribution was modeled under current and future climate scenarios using one emission scenario a2 with two different global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr the climex outputs were then refined by land use types and areas less than 10ìš slope since sloping areas impose problems in hydraulic conductivity and root development the refined results indicated that large areas in spain are projected to become climatically more suitable for date palm growth by 2100 however the results from the cs and mr gcms show some disagreements the refined mr gcm projected that approximately 22 86 million hectares in spain may become suitable for date palm growth while the cs gcm showed approximately 18 72 million hectares by 2100 the refined results showed that only about 65 of climex results are suitable for date palm cultivations while the rest of the areas are unsuitable due to the unsuitability of land uses and slope our results indicated that cold and wet stresses will play a significant role in date palm distribution in some central and northern regions of spain by 2100,2013,0.213
"Tailoring Global Data to Guide Corporate Investments in Biodiversity, Environmental Assessments and Sustainability",companies make significant investments in environmental impacts assessments biodiversity action plans life cycle assessments and environmental management systems but guidance on where and when these tools can be best used and how they may scale up to inform corporation wide planning is sorely lacking a major barrier to informed environmental decision making within companies especially in data poor regions of the world is the difficulty accessing analyzing and interpreting biodiversity information to address this shortcoming we analyzed nine publicly available environmental datasets and created five globally relevant metrics associated with biodiversity habitat intactness habitat protection species richness globally and biome normalized and threatened species we demonstrate how packaging these metrics within an open source web based mapping tool can facilitate corporations in biodiversity prioritization of their sites or their supply chains ultimately guiding potential investments in the environment,2013,0.39
Potential Distribution and Risk Assessment of an Invasive Plant Species: A Case Study of Hymenachne amplexicaulis in Australia,given the limited resources available for weed management a strategic approach is required to give the â œbest bang for your buck â the current study incorporates 1 a model ensemble approach to identify areas of uncertainty and commonal ity regarding a species invasive potential 2 current distribution of the invaded species and 3 connectivity of systems to identify target regions and focus efforts for more effective management uncertainty in the prediction of suitable habi tat for h amplexicaulis study species in australia was addressed in an ensemble forecasting approach to compare distributional scenarios from four models cli match climex boosted regression trees brt maximum entropy maxent models were built using subsets of occurrence and environmental data catchment risk was determined through incorporating habitat suitability the current abun dance and distribution of h amplexicaulis and catchment connectivity our results indicate geographic differences between predictions of different approaches de spite these differences a number of catchments in northern central and southern australia were identified as high risk of invasion or further spread by all models suggesting they should be given priority for the management of h amplexicaulis the study also highlighted the utility of ensemble approaches in indentifying areas of uncertainty and commonality regarding the speciesâ invasive potential,2013,0.342
The effects of the Late Quaternary glacial-interglacial cycles on Anatolian ground squirrels: range expansion during the glacial periods?,the present study aimed to understand how anatolian ground squirrels spermophilus xanthoprymnus bennett 1835 have responded to global climate changes through the late quaternary glacialâ interglacial cycles accord ingly ecological niche modelling was used together with molecular phylogeography using species occurrence data compiled from field observations and relevant sources and the maximum entropy machine learning algorithm in maxent an ecological niche model was developed to predict the potential geographical distribution of s xanthoprymnus under reconstructed past the last interglacial approximately 130 000â 116 000 years ago and the last glacial maximum 21 000 years ago and present 1950â 2000 bioclimatic conditions in addition using cytochrome b mitochondrial dna sequences deposited in genbank and the bayesian skyline plot in beast demographic events population fluctuations were further assessed over the history of anatolian ground squirrels combined ecological niche modelling and molecular phylogeography revealed that s xanthoprymnus itself also a temperate mid latitude species has responded to global climate changes through the late quaternary glacialâ interglacial cycles in a fashion converse to that of most temperate mid latitude species its range expanded rather than contracted during the glacial periods and contracted rather than expanded during the interglacial periods in other words anatolian ground squirrels have been in refugia during the interglacial periods suggesting that the classical paradigm of glacial range contraction and interglacial range expansion for temperate species may not be as general as previously assumed,2013,0.471
"When east meets west: population structure of a high-latitude resident species, the boreal chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus)",the population genetic structure of northern boreal species has been strongly influenced both by the quaternary glaciations and the presence of contemporary barriers such as mountain ranges and rivers we used a combination of mitochondrial dna mtdna nuclear microsatellites and spatial distribution modelling to study the population genetic structure of the boreal chickadee poecile hudsonicus a resident passerine and to investigate whether historical or contemporary barriers have influenced this northern species mtdna data showed evidence of eastern and western groups with secondary admixture occurring in central canada this suggests that the boreal chickadee probably persisted in multiple glacial refugia one in beringia and at least one in the east palaeo distribution modelling identified suitable habitat in beringia alaska atlantic canada and the southern united states and correspond to divergence dates of 60 96 kya pairwise fst values for both mtdna and microsatellites were significant for all comparisons involving newfoundland though mtdna data suggest a more recent separation furthermore unlike mtdna data nuclear data support population connectivity among the continental populations possibly due to male biased dispersal although both are significant the isolation by distance signal is much stronger for mtdna r 2 0 51 than for microsatellites r 2 0 05 supporting the hypothesis of male biased dispersal the population structure of the boreal chickadee was influenced by isolation in multiple refugia and contemporary barriers in addition to geographical distance physical barriers such as the strait of belle isle and northern mountains in alaska are restricting gene flow whereas the rocky mountains in the west are a porous barrier,2013,0.818
Priority setting for invasive species management: risk assessment of Ponto-Caspian invasive species into Great Britain,invasive species drive important ecological and economic losses across wide geographies with some regions supporting especially large numbers of nonnative species and consequently suffering relatively high impacts for this reason integrated risk assessments able to screen a suite of multiple invaders over large geographic areas are needed for prioritizing the allocation of limited resources a total of 16 ponto caspian aquatic species 10 gammarids one isopod two mysids and three fishes have been short listed as recent or potential future invaders of british waters whose introduction and spread is of high concern in this study we use multiple modeling techniques to assess their risk of establishment and spread into great britain climate suitability maps for these 16 species differed depending on the eastern and western distribution of species in continental europe which was related to their respective migration corridor southern danubeâ rhine rivers and northern don and volga rivers and baltic lakes species whose suitability was high across large parts of great britain included four gammarids cheliorophium robustum dikerogammarus bispinosus d villosus and echinogammarus trichiatus and a mysid hemimysis anomala a climatic â œheat mapâ combining the results of all 16 species together pointed to the southeast of england as the area most vulnerable to multiple invasions particularly the thames anglian severn and humber river basin districts regression models further suggested that alkalinity concentration 120 mg l in southeast england may favor the establishment of ponto caspian invaders the production of integrated risk maps for future invaders provides a means for the scientifically informed prioritization of resources toward particular species and geographic regions such tools have great utility in helping environmental managers focus efforts on the most effective prevention management and monitoring programs,2013,0.933
Global Climate Change Adaptation Priorities for Biodiversity and Food Security,international policy is placing increasing emphasis on adaptation to climate change including the allocation of new funds to assist adaptation efforts climate change adaptation funding may be most effective where it meets integrated goals but global geographic priorities based on multiple development and ecological criteria are not well characterized here we show that human and natural adaptation needs related to maintaining agricultural productivity and ecosystem integrity intersect in ten major areas globally providing a coherent set of international priorities for adaptation funding an additional seven regional areas are identified as worthy of additional study the priority areas are locations where changes in crop suitability affecting impoverished farmers intersect with changes in ranges of restricted range species agreement among multiple climate models and emissions scenarios suggests that these priorities are robust adaptation funding directed to these areas could simultaneously address multiple international policy goals including poverty reduction protecting agricultural production and safeguarding ecosystem services,2013,0.261
eBird: A Human/Computer Learning Network to Improve Biodiversity Conservation and Research,ebird is a citizen science project that takes advantage of the human observational capacity to identify birds to species and uses these observations to accurately represent patterns of bird occurrences across broad spatial and temporal extents ebird employs arti cial intelligence techniques such as machine learning to improve data quality by taking advantage of the synergies between human computation and mechanical computation we call this a human computer learning network whose core is an active learning feedback loop between humans and machines that dramatically improves the quality of both and thereby continually improves the effectiveness of the network as a whole in this article we explore how human computer learning networks can leverage the contributions of human observers and process their contributed data with arti cial intelligence algorithms leading to a computational power that far exceeds the sum of the individual parts,2013,0.151
Rates of projected climate change dramatically exceed past rates of climatic niche evolution among vertebrate species,a key question in predicting responses to anthropogenic climate change is how quickly can species adapt to different climatic conditions here we take a phylogenetic approach to this question we use 17 time calibrated phylogenies representing the major tetrapod clades amphibians birds crocodilians mammals squamates turtles and climatic data from distributions of 500 extant species we estimate rates of change based on differences in climatic variables between sister species and estimated times of their splitting we compare these rates to predicted rates of climate change from 2000 to 2100 our results are striking matching projected changes for 2100 would require rates of niche evolution that are 10 000 times faster than rates typically observed among species for most variables and clades despite many caveats our results suggest that adaptation to projected changes in the next 100 years would require rates that are largely unprecedented based on observed rates among vertebrate species,2013,0.742
Discovering Ecologically Relevant Knowledge from Published Studies through Geosemantic Searching,it is easier to search the globe for research on the genes of a local plant than it is to find local research on that plantâ s ecology as a result ecologists are often unaware of published local research and unlikely to find relevant studies from similar environments worldwide location information in ecological studies can be harnessed to enable geographic knowledge searches and could be standardized to make searches more fruitful to demonstrate this potential we developed the journalmap web site www journalmap org easy access to geographic distributions of knowledge opens new possibilities for using ecological research to detect and interpret ecological patterns evaluate current ecological knowledge and facilitate knowledge creation we call on journals and publishers to support standard reporting of study locations in publications and metadata and we advocate georeferencing past studies,2013,0.192
Rare Species Support Vulnerable Functions in High- Diversity Ecosystems,around the world the human induced collapses of populations and species have triggered a sixth mass extinction crisis with rare species often being the first to disappear although the role of species diversity in the maintenance of ecosystem processes has been widely investigated the role of rare species remains controversial a critical issue is whether common species insure against the loss of functions supported by rare species this issue is even more critical in species rich ecosystems where high functional redundancy among species is likely and where it is thus often assumed that ecosystem functioning is buffered against species loss here using extensive datasets of species occurrences and functional traits from three highly diverse ecosystems 846 coral reef fishes 2 979 alpine plants and 662 tropical trees we demonstrate that the most distinct combinations of traits are supported predominantly by rare species both in terms of local abundance and regional occupancy moreover species that have low functional redundancy and are likely to support the most vulnerable functions with no other species carrying similar combinations of traits are rarer than expected by chance in all three ecosystems for instance 63 and 98 of fish species that are likely to support highly vulnerable functions in coral reef ecosystems are locally and regionally rare respectively for alpine plants 32 and 89 of such species are locally and regionally rare respectively remarkably 47 of fish species and 55 of tropical tree species that are likely to support highly vulnerable functions have only one individual per sample on average our results emphasize the importance of rare species conservation even in highly diverse ecosystems which are thought to exhibit high functional redundancy rare species offer more than aesthetic cultural or taxonomic diversity value they disproportionately increase the potential breadth of functions provided by ecosystems across spatial scales as such they are likely to insure against future uncertainty arising from climate change and the ever increasing anthropogenic pressures on ecosystems our results call for a more detailed understanding of the role of rarity and functional vulnerability in ecosystem functioning,2013,0.976
A vision towards Scientific Communication Infrastructures,the two pillars of the modern scientific com munication are data centers and research digital libraries rdls whose technologies and admin staff support researchers at storing curating sharing and discovering the data and the publications they produce being realized to maintain and give access to the results of complementary phases of the scientific research process such systems are poorly integrated with one another and generally do not rely on the strengths of the other today such a gap hampers achieving the objectives of the modern scientific commu nication that is publishing interlinking and discovery of all outcomes of the research process from the experimental and observational datasets to the final paper in this work we envision that instrumental to bridge the gap is the con struction of â œscientificcommunication infrastructuresâ the maingoal of these infrastructures is to facilitate interoperabil ity between data centers and rdls and to provide services that simplify the implementation of the large variety of mod ern scientific communication patterns keywords,2013,0.047
"The eStation, an Earth Observation processing service in support to ecological monitoring",the estation is a collecting and processing system designed to automatically deal with the reception processing analysis and dissemination of key environmental parameters derived from remotely sensed data developed mainly at the joint research centre of the european commission the estation has been distributed to 47 sub saharan countries in the frame of the amesd african monitoring of environment for sustainable development project to provide local institutions with the capacity to easily access a large range of remote sensing products on vegetation precipitation fires and oceans these products derived from the processing of images coming from various instruments including spot vegetation msg seviri and modis are developed to allow end users to make local and regional assessments of the state of marine and terrestrial ecosystems the products dispatched to the users through the eumetsat data broadcasting system eumetcast or provided by other earth observation eo data agencies e g nasa are further processed by the estation to allow end users to generate their own environmental whether terrestrial or marine assessments and reports initially designed as a stand alone system using an open source development framework the estation has recently been further developed as a web processing service to allow a broader range of end users to access the data and services over the internet it is the purpose of this paper to introduce the readers to the estation and its products to share the lessons learnt in deploying these services as well as to discuss its more recent use in chained environmental web based modeling services,2013,0.087
FORMIDABEL: The Belgian Ants Database,formidabel is a database of belgian ants containing more than 27 000 occurrence records tese re cords originate from collections field sampling and literature te database gives information on 76 native and 9 introduced ant species found in belgium te collection records originated mainly from the ants col lection in royal belgian institute of natural sciences rbins the â gasparâ ants collection in gembloux and the zoological collection of the university of liã ge ulg te oldest occurrences date back from may 1866 the most recent refer to august 2012 formidabel is a work in progress and the database is up dated twice a year te latest version of the dataset is publicly and freely accessible through this url http ipt biodiver sity be resource do r formidabel te dataset is also retrievable via the gbif data portal through this link http data gbif org datasets resource 14697,2013,0.502
Control of Conyza spp. with glyphosate - A review of the situation in Europe,in europe glyphosate resistant populations have developed in some weed species in perennial crops includ ing three species of the genus conyza documented by the international survey of herbicide resistant weeds conyza spp biology is reviewed in this paper and related to population dynamics and the development of resist ant populations suboptimal growth stage at application improper agricultural practices such as overreliance on glyphosate and long term use of sublethal doses are identified as the most important factors of resistance development current control methods in perennial crops including mixtures of glyphosate with other active ingredients are discussed and effective weed management strategies are described to manage the development and spread of glyphosate resistant conyza spp in europe,2013,0.464
Predicting the Impact of Climate Change on Threatened Species in UK Waters,global climate change is affecting the distribution of marine species and is thought to represent a threat to biodiversity previous studies project expansion of species range for some species and local extinction elsewhere under climate change such range shifts raise concern for species whose long term persistence is already threatened by other human disturbances such as fishing however few studies have attempted to assess the effects of future climate change on threatened vertebrate marine species using a multi model approach there has also been a recent surge of interest in climate change impacts on protected areas this study applies three species distribution models and two sets of climate model projections to explore the potential impacts of climate change on marine species by 2050 a set of species in the north sea including seven threatened and ten major commercial species were used as a case study changes in habitat suitability in selected candidate protected areas around the uk under future climatic scenarios were assessed for these species moreover change in the degree of overlap between commercial and threatened species ranges was calculated as a proxy of the potential threat posed by overfishing through bycatch the ensemble projections suggest northward shifts in species at an average rate of 27 km per decade resulting in small average changes in range overlap between threatened and commercially exploited species furthermore the adverse consequences of climate change on the habitat suitability of protected areas were projected to be small although the models show large variation in the predicted consequences of climate change the multi model approach helps identify the potential risk of increased exposure to human stressors of critically endangered species such as common skate dipturus batis and angelshark squatina squatina,2013,0.977
An horizon scan of biogeography,the opportunity to reflect broadly on the accomplishments prospects and reach of a field may present itself relatively infrequently each biennial meeting of the international biogeography society showcases ideas solicited and developed largely during the preceding year by individuals or teams from across the breadth of the discipline here we highlight challenges developments and opportunities in biogeography from that biennial synthesis we note the realized and potential impact of rapid data accumulation in several fields a renaissance for inter disciplinary research the importance of recognizing the evolution ecology continuum across spatial and temporal scales and at different taxonomic phylogenetic and functional levels and re exploration of classical assumptions and hypotheses using new tools however advances are taxonomically and geographically biased key theoretical frameworks await tools to handle or strategies to simplify the biological complexity seen in empirical systems current threats to biodiversity require unprecedented integration of knowledge and development of predictive capacity that may enable biogeography to unite its descriptive and hypothetico deductive branches and establish a greater role within and outside academia,2013,0.117
Niche conservatism constrains Australian honeyeater assemblages in stressful environments,the hypothesis of phylogenetic niche conservatism proposes that most extant members of a clade remain in ancestral environments because expansion into new ecological space imposes a selectional load on a population a prediction that follows is that local assemblages contain increasingly phylogenetically clustered subsets of species with increasing difference from the ancestral environment of a clade we test this in australian meliphagidae a continental radiation of birds that originated in wet subtropical environments but subsequently spread to drier environments as australia became more arid during the late cenozoic we find local assemblages are increasingly phylogenetically clustered along a gradient of decreasing precipitation the pattern is less clear along a temperature gradient we develop a novel phyloclimatespace to visualise the expansion of some lineages into drier habitats although few species extend into arid regions those that do occupy larger ranges and thus local species richness does not decline predictably with precipitation,2013,0.69
Invasion ratcheting in the zebra mussel ( Dreissena polymorpha ) and the ability of native and invaded ranges to predict its global distribution,aim in this study we investigate changes in the environmental niche of an important pest species the zebra mussel dreissena polymorpha across its world wide distribution the ability of models based on the native ponto caspian and invaded western european and north american ranges to accurately model the potential distribution of zebra mussel elsewhere was also investigated location europe and north america methods a comprehensive cross continental occurrence database of the zebra mussel was used to explore the species native and invaded ranges using univariate and multivariate analyses in addition ecological niche models enms employing maxent were used to investigate the ability of the native and invaded ranges to describe the species distribution elsewhere results we found the zebra mussel to occupy different but partly overlapping environmental niches in the native ponto caspian region and invaded european and north american regions accordingly the enms calibrated with the native range accurately predicted regions of early colonization in europe and north america but not the subsequent expansion enms calibrated with data from the european range failed to describe the invaded range in north america and vice versa climate suitability curves further confirmed a progressive spatio temporal stretching of the climatic tolerance of the zebra mussel main conclusions this study provides novel evidence of multiple episodes of niche expansion in a notorious invasive species and supports the use of partial ranges to better understand the species spatio temporal history of invasion separately the native and invaded ranges provided important information regarding the species environmental tolerance and the regions that are most suitable for first colonization as well as identifying regions at risk in the case of a possible reintroduction collectively the differences between the three ecological niche projections of the zebra mussel demonstrate that niche expansion of an invasive species within a new geographical region promotes the organism s further invasion in space and time a process known as invasion ratcheting,2013,0.804
"Invasion dynamics of three allergenic invasive Asteraceae (Ambrosia trifida, Artemisia annua , Iva xanthiifolia) in central and eastern Europe",we analyzed the history of the invasion spread dynamics and habitat affiliation of three allergenic wind pollinated species ambrosia trifida artemisia annua iva xanthiifolia tribe heliantheae asteraceae in central and eastern europe cee using distribution data from a wide range of sources in addition we used niche based ensemble modelling techniques to assess current invasion risk of the region studied we collated 1804 records of a annua 1063 of i xanthiifolia and 324 of a trifida all species were first recorded in the 19th century remained rare until the middle of the 20th century but have spread rapidly in recent decades iva xanthiifolia spread the fastest followed by a annua the latter species is nowabundant in northern italy along the elbe river in germany and the danubian lowland in slovakia and hungary while i xanthiifolia occurs most frequently in the warm and continental parts of cee ambrosia trifida spread slowly and its current distribution con sists of relatively few and mostly isolated localities in cee ambrosia trifida and i xanthiifolia occur primarily in ruderal habitats whereas i xanthiifolia has also increasingly invaded fields ini tially confined to ruderal habitats a annua has expanded its habitat niche during the invasion and has invaded riverine vegetation and semi natural habitats ensemble species distribution models showthat the current distribution of a trifida and a annua in cee is closely related to temperature and precipitation whereas land use is only important for i xanthiifolia under the current climate substantial fractions of the study area provide suitable habitat for these species a trifida 16 of cee a annua 28 and i xanthiifolia 26 because of their significant potential impact on public health future spread of these species should be monitored and management strategies e g raising awareness early control should urgently be implemented,2013,0.868
Climate-Induced Range Shifts and Possible Hybridisation Consequences in Insects,many ectotherms have altered their geographic ranges in response to rising global temperatures current range shifts will likely increase the sympatry and hybridisation between recently diverged species here we predict future sympatric distributions and risk of hybridisation in seven mediterranean ischnurid damselfly species i elegans i fountaineae i genei i graellsii i pumilio i saharensis and i senegalensis we used a maximum entropy modelling technique to predict future potential distribution under four different global circulation models and a realistic emissions scenario of climate change we carried out a comprehensive data compilation of reproductive isolation habitat temporal sexual mechanical and gametic between the seven studied species combining the potential distribution and data of reproductive isolation at different instances habitat temporal sexual mechanical and gametic we infer the risk of hybridisation in these insects our findings showed that all but i graellsii will decrease in distributional extent and all species except i senegalensis are predicted to have northern range shifts models of potential distribution predicted an increase of the likely overlapping ranges for 12 species combinations out of a total of 42 combinations 10 of which currently overlap moreover the lack of complete reproductive isolation and the patterns of hybridisation detected between closely related ischnurids could lead to local extinctions of native species if the hybrids or the introgressed colonising species become more successful,2013,0.963
Papilionoidea of the World: Evaluation and validation of EOL and BHL data for Hesperiidae Checklist and phylogeny,we evaluate the representativeness of two open sources of data for the butterfly family hesperiidae that represent almost 20 of the known species of butterflies papilionoidea first we built a taxonomic checklist from available information and ordered the species lists according to a preliminary phylogeny checklists are based on the most updated and com plete synonimic list and catalogues available in public sources and phylogenies are based on approximated phylogenies for several clades within the family for each species we retrieved all available text data objects from the encyclopedia of life eol and all pages from the biodiversity heritage library bhl we then analyse the distribution of data objects pages and records per species and the representativeness of each data source accross the phylogeny and compare them with the results obtained for other families hesperiidae are poorly represented in both sources available content was generally lower and less rich than for papilionidae and pieridae and not much better than for riodinidae differences between hesperid subfamilies were evident but not extrem with eudaminae coeliadinae and trapetizinae slightly better represented in eol the main contributors are associated with phylogenetic and molecular data providers and fewer data objects about their biology and ecology in bhl many species names have matches pages but biological information is more difficult to locate due to high rates of false positives targeted manual search and validation of eol data objects provided an important set of complementary hostplant records including records for 64 additional hesperid species and 141 additional host plant species which represent an increase between 6 and 8 in the compilation of hostplant associations for the family,2013,0.897
Great ape skeletal collections: Making the most of scarce and irreplaceable resources in the digital age,information about primate genomes has re emphasized the importance of the great apes pan gorilla and pongo as for most purposes the appropriate comparators when generating hypotheses about the most recent common ancestor of the hominins and panins or the most recent common ancestor of the hominin clade great ape skeletal collections are thus an important and irreplaceable resource for researchers conducting these types of comparative analyses yet the integrity of these collections is threatened by unnecessary use and their availability is threatened by financial pressures on the institutions in which the collections reside we discuss the general history of great ape skeletal collections and in order to get a better sense of the utility and potential of these important sources of data we assemble the equivalent of a biography of the powell cotton collection we explore the history of how this collection of chimpanzee and gorilla skeletons was accumulated how it came to be recognized as a potentially important source of comparative information who has made use of it and what types of data have been collected we present a protocol for collecting information about each individual animal e g which bones are preserved their condition etc and have made that information about the powell cotton collection freely available in an online relational database human origins database www humanoriginsdatabase org as an illustration of the practical application of these data we developed a tabular summary of ontogenetic information about each individual see appendices a and b collections like the powell cotton are irreplaceable sources of material regarding the hard tissue evidence and recent history of the closest living relatives of modern humans we end this contribution by suggesting ways that curators and the researchers who use and rely on these reference collections could work together to help preserve and protect them so that future generations can use and benefit from these priceless resources,2013,0.438
"Molecular Markers Reveal Limited Population Genetic Structure in a North American Corvid, Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)",the genetic impact of barriers and pleistocene glaciations on high latitude resident species has not been widely investigated the clarkâ s nutcracker is an endemic north american corvid closely associated with pinus dominated forests the nutcrackerâ s encompasses known barriers to dispersal for other species and glaciated and unglaciated areas clarkâ s nutcrackers also irruptively disperse long distances in search of pine seed crops creating the potential for gene flow among populations using the highly variable mitochondrial dna control region seven microsatellite loci and species distribution modeling we examined the effects of glaciations and dispersal barriers on population genetic patterns and population structure of nutcrackers we sequenced 900 bp of mitochondrial control region for 169 individuals from 15 populations and analysed seven polymorphic microsatellite loci for 13 populations across the clarkâ s nutcracker range we used species distribution modeling and a range of phylogeographic analyses to examine evolutionary history clarkâ s nutcracker populations are not highly differentiated throughout their range suggesting high levels of gene flow among populations though we did find some evidence of isolation by distance and peripheral isolation our analyses suggested expansion from a single refugium after the last glacial maximum but patterns of genetic diversity and paleodistribution modeling of suitable habitat were inconclusive as to the location of this refugium potential barriers to dispersal e g mountain ranges do not appear to restrict gene flow in clarkâ s nutcracker and postglacial expansion likely occurred quickly from a single refugium located south of the ice sheets c,2013,0.978
From card catalogs to computers: databases in vertebrate paleontology,â data whether images measurements counts occurrences or character codings are a cornerstone of verte brate paleontology every published paper masterâ s thesis and doctoral dissertation relies on these data to document patterns and processes in evolution ecology taphonomy geography geologic time and functionalmorphology to name just a few in turn the vertebrate paleontology community relies on published data in order to reproduce and verify othersâ work as well as to expand upon published analyses in new ways without having to reconstitute data sets that have been used by earlier authors and to accurately preserve data for future generations of researchers here we review several databases that are of interest to vertebrate paleontologists and strongly advocate for more deposition of basic research data in publicly accessible databases by vertebrate paleontologists,2013,0.144
Distribution of some rare or endemic chasmophytic and rupestral species growing along the coastal cliffs of the Maltese Islands,this paper gives a detailed account of the distribution of endemic or rare species that comprise part of the chasmophytic and rupestral vegetative community lining the maltese coastal cliffs the species discussed in this paper are the following palaeocyanus crassifolius bertoloni dostã l cremnophyton lanfrancoi brullo and pavone helichrysum melitense pignatti brullo lanfranco pavone and ronsisvalle linaria pseudolaxiflora lojacono asparagus horridus l and allium sphaerocephalon subsp arvense guss arcang the first four are species found in article 17 of the maltese habitats and species listed in the annexes of the habitats directive by the european commission asparagus horridus and allium sphaerocephalon subsp arvense are recent additions to the flora of malta and their distribution is given in this account discussion on the distribution and observations on the preferred habitat are given for each species supplemented by recommendations for the red data book,2013,0.596
Will climate change promote future invasions?,biological invasion is increasingly recognized as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity using ensemble forecasts from species distribution models to project future suitable areas of the 100 of the world s worst invasive species defined by the international union for the conservation of nature we show that both climate and land use changes will likely cause drastic species range shifts looking at potential spatial aggregation of invasive species we identify three future hotspots of invasion in europe northeastern north america and oceania we also emphasize that some regions could lose a significant number of invasive alien species creating opportunities for ecosystem restoration from the list of 100 scenarios of potential range distributions show a consistent shrinking for invasive amphibians and birds while for aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates distributions are projected to substantially increase in most cases given the harmful impacts these invasive species currently have on ecosystems these species will likely dramatically influence the future of biodiversity,2013,0.927
Automated pollen identification system for forensic geo-historical location applications,the use of pollen grain analysis for forensic geo historical location has been explored for several decades yet it is not widely adopted in the united states we confirmed significant improvement in geographic precision i e from 2 5x107 to 1 2x105 km2 by simultaneously applying flowering plant data from four different taxa at the genus and species levels moreover when we calculated precision using collected pollen data we found that co occurring pairwise genus level distinctions based on expert provided indicator taxa resulted in average precision values of 4o and 4 5o in latitude and longitude respectively â corresponding to roughly 1 8x105 km2 we also applied computer vision techniques to identify morphologically similar pollen grains which resulted in grain identification error rates of 2 18 and 6 24 at the genus and species levels respectively surpassing previously published records collectively our results demonstrate that algorithmic identification of species specific pollen morphology founded on established computer vision techniques when combined with species level pollen distribution has the potential to revolutionize the scope accuracy and precision of forensic geographic attribution keywords,2013,0.766
The Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Data Portal,the global genome biodiversity network ggbn was formed in 2011 with the principal aim of making high quality well documented and vouchered collections that store dna or tissue samples of biodiversity discoverable for research through a networked community of biodiversity repositories this is achieved through the ggbn data portal http data ggbn org which links globally distributed databases and bridges the gap between biodiversity repositories sequence databases and research results advances in dna extraction techniques combined with next generation sequencing technologies provide new tools for genome sequencing many ambitious genome sequencing projects with the potential to revolutionize biodiversity research consider access to adequate samples to be a major bottleneck in their workflow this is linked not only to accelerating biodiversity loss and demands to improve conservation efforts but also to a lack of standardized methods for providing access to genomic samples biodiversity biobank holding institutions urgently need to set a standard of collaboration towards excellence in collections stewardship information access and sharing and responsible and ethical use of such collections ggbn meets these needs by enabling and supporting accessibility and the efficient coordinated expansion of biodiversity biobanks worldwide,2013,0.115
How Far Could the Alien Boatman Trichocorixa verticalis verticalis Spread? Worldwide Estimation of Its Current and Future Potential Distribution,invasions of alien species are considered among the least reversible human impacts with diversified effects on aquatic ecosystems since prevention is the most cost effective way to avoid biodiversity loss and ecosystem problems one challenge in ecological research is to understand the limits of the fundamental niche of the species in order to estimate how far invasive species could spread trichocorixa verticalis verticalis tvv is a corixid hemiptera originally distributed in north america but cited as an alien species in three continents its impact on native communities is under study but it is already the dominant species in several saline wetlands and represents a rare example of an aquatic alien insect this study aims i to estimate areas with suitable environmental conditions for tvv at a global scale thus identifying potential new zones of invasion and ii to test possible changes in this global potential distribution under a climate change scenario potential distributions were estimated by applying a multidimensional envelope procedure based on both climatic data obtained from observed occurrences and thermal physiological data our results suggest tvv may expand well beyond its current range and find inhabitable conditions in temperate areas along a wide range of latitudes with an emphasis on coastal areas of europe northern africa argentina uruguay australia new zealand myanmar india the western boundary between usa and canada and areas of the arabian peninsula when considering a future climatic scenario the suitability area of tvv showed only limited changes compared with the current potential distribution these results allow detection of potential contact zones among currently colonized areas and potential areas of invasion we also identified zones with a high level of suitability that overlap with areas recognized as global hotspots of biodiversity finally we present hypotheses about possible means of spread focusing on different geographical scales,2013,0.547
"New records of Saprolegniaceae isolated from rainbow trout, from their eggs, and water in a fish farm from the State of México",ten species of the family saprolegniaceae were isolated from the fish farm â œel zarcoâ state of mã xico obtained from samples of influent and effluent water of the farm and from infected eggs and individual fish of rainbow trout two species belong to the genus achlya and 8 to saprolegnia saprolegnia ferax is recorded for the first time for the state of mã xico achlya ambisexualis a heterosexualis s australis s diclinous s glomerata s parasitica s terrestris s uliginosa and s unispora are cited for the first time from mexico key,2013,0.75
Conservation Priorities for Prunus africana Defined with the Aid of Spatial Analysis of Genetic Data and Climatic Variables,conservation priorities for prunus africana a tree species found across afromontane regions which is of great commercial interest internationally and of local value for rural communities were defined with the aid of spatial analyses applied to a set of georeferenced molecular marker data chloroplast and nuclear microsatellites from 32 populations in 9 african countries two approaches for the selection of priority populations for conservation were used differing in the way they optimize representation of intra specific diversity of p africana across a minimum number of populations the first method s1 was aimed at maximizing genetic diversity of the conservation units and their distinctiveness with regard to climatic conditions the second method s2 at optimizing representativeness of the genetic diversity found throughout the speciesâ range populations in east african countries especially kenya and tanzania were found to be of great conservation value as suggested by previous findings these populations are complemented by those in madagascar and cameroon the combination of the two methods for prioritization led to the identification of a set of 6 priority populations the potential distribution of p africana was then modeled based on a dataset of 1 500 georeferenced observations this enabled an assessment of whether the priority populations identified are exposed to threats from agricultural expansion and climate change and whether they are located within the boundaries of protected areas the range of the species has been affected by past climate change and the modeled distribution of p africana indicates that the species is likely to be negatively affected in future with an expected decrease in distribution by 2050 based on these insights further research at the regional and national scale is recommended in order to strengthen p africana conservation efforts,2013,0.696
"Description of Nicrophorus efferens, new species, from Bougainville Island (Coleoptera, Silphidae, Nicrophorinae)",a new species of nicrophorus in the nepalensis species group nicrophorus efferens sikes and mousseau is described from bougainville island in the solomon islands archipelago it is distinguished from the known species of the genus nicrophorus and its likely closest relative nicrophorus reticulatus sikes and madge based on external morphology a comparison among the four nicrophorus species known from the solomon island archipelago and papua new guinea is presented,2013,0.749
A survey of the fern gametophyte flora of Japan: Frequent independent occurrences of noncordiform gametophytes,premise of the study ferns and lycophytes are the only extant land plants with two free living generations sporophytes and gametophytes hence a single species may have two different distributions the distribution of the gametophytes of most fern species which are much smaller in size than sporophytes are almost unknown due to the diffi culty of identifying gametophytes using morphological characters â methods twelve quadrats 1 m 2 or 0 25 m 2 each subdivided into a grid of 100 10 ã 10 or 25 5 ã 5 squares were used to survey gametophytes in the japanese archipelago where distribution data of sporophytes and â œdna barcodesâ for identifi cation of gametophytes have fully been established in previous studies collected gametophytes were identifi ed using the plastid rbcl a region â key results in total gametophytes of 38 species in two broad morphological categories 28 cordiform and 10 noncordiform species were identifi ed among 407 collections the cordiform gametophytes discovered are without exception accompa nied by their conspecifi c sporophytes at the periphery of the quadrats on the other hand the sporophytic counterparts of the noncordiform gametophytes are often not found or are rare around the sites â conclusions this study demonstrates with a regional fl ora that fern gametophytes do not always co occur with sporophytes of the same species in particular noncordiform gametophytes tended to occur independently of conspecifi c sporophytes this pattern may be due to the capability for indeterminate growth and vegetative reproduction by gemmae in noncordiform gametophytes,2013,0.813
MidMedPol: Polychaetes from midlittoral rocky shores in Greece and Italy (Mediterranean Sea),this paper describes a dataset of polychaetes annelida from 14 midlittoral rocky shore sampling sites in greece and italy mediterranean sea the dataset combines the outcome of four different projects studying the hard substrate midlittoral zone in the mediterranean between 1984 and 2009 samples were collected by scraping and collecting the organisms from a framed area the maximal sampling depth was 1 5 m in total 123 polychaete species were recorded five of which are new records for the respective biogeographic sectors of the mediterranean the dataset contains 788 occurrence records fully annotated with all required metadata these data contribute to the knowledge of a previously very understudied regional habitat since at present comprehensive lists of the midlittoral communities in the mediterranean are provided through only a few paper based studies this dataset is one of the first electronic data compilations of the mediterranean midlittoral zone communities and certainly the most comprehensive of its kind contributing to the ongoing efforts of the ocean biogeographic information system obis which aims at filling the gaps in our current knowledge of the world s oceans it is accessible at http ipt vliz be resource do r mediterraneanpolychaetaintertidal,2013,0.292
Empirical approaches for assessing impacts of climate change on agriculture: The EcoCrop model and a case study with grain sorghum,climate has been changing in the last three decades and will continue changing regardless of any mitigation strategy agriculture is a climate dependent activity and hence is highly sensitive to climatic changes and climate variability nevertheless there is a knowledge gap when agricultural researchers intend to assess the production of minor crops for which data or models are not available therefore we integrated the current expert knowledge reported in the fao ecocrop database with the basic mechanistic model also named ecocrop originally developed by hijmans et al 2001 we further developed the model providing calibration and evaluation procedures to that aim we used sorghum sorghum bicolor moench as a case study and both calibrated ecocrop for the sorghum crop and analyzed the impacts of the sres a1b 2030s climate on sorghum climatic suitability the model performed well with a high true positive rate tpr and a low false negative rate fnr under present conditions when assessed against national and subnational agricultural statistics min tpr 0 967 max fnr 0 026 the model predicted high sorghum climatic suitability in areas where it grows optimally and matched the sorghum geographic distribution fairly well negative impacts were predicted by 2030s vulnerabilities in countries where sorghum cultivation is already marginal are likely with a high degree of certainty the western sahel region southern africa northern india and the western coast of india are particularly vulnerable we highlight the considerable opportunity of using ecocrop to assess global food security issues broad climatic constraints and regional crop suitability shifts in the context of climate change and the possibility of coupling it with other large area approaches â 2011 elsevier b v,2013,0.073
"Local representation of global diversity in a cosmopolitan lichen-forming fungal species complex (Rhizoplaca, Ascomycota)",aim the relative importance of long distance dispersal versus vicariance in determining the distribution of lichen forming fungi remains unresolved here we examined diversity and distributions in a cosmopolitan lichen forming fungal species complex rhizoplaca melanophthalma sensu lato ascomycota across a broad intercontinental geographical distribution we sought to determine the temporal context of diversification and the impacts of past climatic fluctuations on demographic dynamics within this group location antarctica asia europe north america and south america methods we obtained molecular sequence data from a total of 240 specimens of r melanophthalma s l collected across five continents we assessed the monophyly of candidate species using individual gene trees and a tree from a seven locus concatenated data set divergence times and relationships among candidate species were evaluated using a multilocus coalescent based species tree approach speciation probabilities were estimated using the coalescent based species delimitation program bpp we also calculated statistics on molecular diversity and population demographics for independent lineages main conclusions our analyses of r melanophthalma s l collected from five continents supported the presence of six species level lineages within this complex based on current sampling two of these lineages were found to have broad intercontinental distributions while the other four were limited to western north america of the six lineages five were found on a single mountain in the western usa and the sixth occurred no more than 200 km away from this mountain our estimates of divergence times suggest that pleistocene glacial cycles played an important role in species diversification within this group at least three lineages show evidence of recent or ongoing population expansion,2013,0.965
Geographical variability in propagule pressure and climatic suitability explain the European distribution of two highly invasive crayfish,aim we assess the relative contribution of human biological and climatic factors in explaining the colonization success of two highly invasive freshwater decapods the signal crayfish pacifastacus leniusculus and the red swamp crayfish procambarus clarkii location europe methods we used boosted regression trees to evaluate the relative influence of and relationship between the invader s current pattern of distribution and a set of spatially explicit variables considered important to their colonization success these variables are related to four well known invasion hypotheses namely the role of propagule pressure climate matching biotic resistance from known competitors and human disturbance results model predictions attained a high accuracy for the two invaders mean auc â 0 91 propagule pressure and climatic suitability were identified as the primary drivers of colonization but the former had a much higher relative influence on the red swamp crayfish climate matching was shown to have limited predictive value and climatic suitability models based on occurrences from other invaded areas had consistently higher relative explanatory power than models based on native range data biotic resistance and human disturbance were also shown to be weak predictors of the distribution of the two invaders main conclusions these results contribute to our general understanding of the factors that enable certain species to become notable invaders being primarily driven by propagule pressure and climatic suitability we expect that given their continued dispersal the future distribution of these problematic decapods in europe will increasingly represent their fundamental climatic niche,2013,0.245
The Hill of Six Lakes revisited: new data and re-evaluation of a key Pleistocene Amazon site,the new analyses of a sedimentary record of lake pata in the hill of six lakes in nw amazon and its correlation with other quaternary proxy records in the region provide new insights regarding the vegetation and climate of the lowland forest during the last glacial despite what has been reported previously in the literature the sedimentary and pollen records are not continuous the hill remained forested however clear signals of structural change are seen in the record which indicate that the area experienced a significantly drier climate during the last glacial maximum lgm the herbs and taxa that are known to be more dominant in seasonally dry forests were all more abundant during the glacial part of the record and the cool adapted elements were mixed with warm lowland elements which indicates a temperature depression a comparison of the palaeoecological data with other regional geoenvironmental records of the upper negro river basin and other areas of the amazon provides additional support for a cooler and more seasonal environment during the middle pleniglacial which then became drier during the lgm a â œwetâ lgm is strongly refuted therefore the palaeoclimatic and ecological models that used the previous proxy data from six lakes to sustain â œwetâ conditions and a â œcontinuous forest recordâ during the lgm to reconstruct the palaeoenvironmental conditions in the amazon should be reviewed,2013,0.179
Macroecology meets invasion ecology: performance of Australian acacias and eucalypts around the world revealed by features of their native ranges,native geographical range extent has frequently emerged as a correlate of invasiveness especially for plant species we tested whether dimensions of the native range measured by the area of occupancy and its scaling patterns of 720 australian eucalypts genera angophora eucalyptus and corymbia could explain introduction and invasion success we also compared our results with a previous study on 979 australian acacias previously grouped in acacia subgenus phyllodineae to investigate whether features of their native ranges explained the much higher invasion success in this group compared to eucalypts from nine databases we found records that 373 eucalypts have been introduced to areas outside their native ranges 82 of these have become naturalised and eight are invasive a similar proportion of australian acacias have been introduced but almost three times as many are invasive 384 species introduced 71 of which are naturalized and 23 invasive eucalypts with large native ranges are more likely to have been introduced and subsequently naturalise as is the case with acacias unlike acacias however the native range size of invasive eucalypts was not significantly greater than naturalised but not invasive species intriguingly the human preference for introducing species with larger ranges was much greater for acacias than for eucalypts as the geometric mean range sizes of introduced naturalised and invasive acacias are 2 04 1 88 and 3 59 times those of eucalypts at the same stage moreover the percolation exponent i e the slope of occupancy scaling becomes more extreme towards the end of the introductionâ naturalizationâ invasion continuum decreasing for acacias but increasing for eucalypts with acacias except for non introduced species having a lower exponent than eucalypts the selection preference of acacias during introduction is thus for species that can rapidly expand their range in contrast slow spreading eucalypts have been selected for dissemination in other words humans appear to have selected for highly invasive acacias but against introducing highly invasive eucalypts,2013,0.915
Epilobium brachycarpum: a fast-spreading neophyte in Germany,only a small proportion of introduced plant species become invasive and may eventually create eco logical or economic problems in many species it is still not clear which traits cause biological inva sions as a case study we focussed on the fast spreading epilobium brachycarpum in central europe to investigate the potential of this species to become a transformer or agricultural weed we 1 docu mented the spread of the species in central europe 2 modelled its range and 3 seed dispersal 4 described its phytosociological alignment 5 analysed the traits of invaded vegetation types 6 de scribed seed production population densities and life cycle 7 did competition and germination tests and 8 drafted a risk assessment relevant traits and characteristics of e brachycarpum are i for mation of dense stands under ruderal conditions ii high seed production iii effective seed dispersal iv high competitiveness on bare soils against other ruderal plants and v ecological niche shift com pared to its native range we expect e brachycarpum to settle in the mediterranean sub mediterranean and many parts of temperate europe within the next decades in habitats strongly altered by human activities especially open stands of the alliance sisymbrion we predict that e brachycarpum will become a noxious weed in vineyards and that it will also colonise vegetation of the alliances bidention and carici epilobion,2013,0.501
Final Report: Data provision and projected impact of climate change on fish biodiversity within the Desert LCC,the four primary objectives of this project were to 1 compile a dataset of fish occurrence records for the entirety of the rio grande drainage in the us and mexico 2 improve that dataset by reformatting dates synonymizing species names to a modern taxonomy georeferencing localities and flagging geographic outliers 3 for those species with sufficient data for modeling create species distribution models sdms 4 use the environmental conditions determined via those models to project the species distributions into the future under two climate scenarios to accomplish those objectives we compiled 495 101 fish occurrence records mined from 122 original sources into a single database we then on the basis of text string searches of the original sourcesâ verbatim locality fields extracted 145 426 records that we judged to have a reasonable likelihood of being from the rio grande drainage for those records we edited taxonomy reformatted dates and finally georeferenced 59 156 41 records which proved sufficient for constructing sdmâ s for 36 species that met a priori quality assurance criteria we provide basic interpretation of these models and discuss projections of them into several different future climate forecasts products include raw model outputs and symbolized maps helpful in interpretation and comparison as well as raw data sets and recommendations regarding how all of these product might be used in future management and research efforts,2013,0.602
Effect of geographic background and equilibrium state on niche model transferability: predicting areas of invasion of Leptoglossus occidentalis,niche conservatism providing support for using ecological niche modeling in biological invasions has been widely noticed however the equilibrium state and geographic background effect on niche model transferability has received scant attention the western conifer seed bug leptoglossus occidentalis native to western north america has expanded its range eastward and has become an invasive pest in europe and asia niche models calibrated on the ranges of a small native population and two large expanding populations were compared we found that the climate niche of l occidentalis is conserved during its steady expansion in north america and rapid spread in europe models based on the small western native range successfully captured the eastern expanding and introduced european populations whereas the large area based models varied with the presumed state of equilibrium the equilibrium state based model succeeded but the non equilibrium based model failed to predict the range in europe our study estimates global invasion risk zones for l occidentalis and suggests that based on niche conservatism modeling based on a reasonable geographic distribution at a climatic equilibrium of a species could guarantee the transferability of niche model prediction caution is warranted in interpreting low niche model transferability with niche differentiation and forwarding message for management strategy,2013,0.134
Novel Three-Step Pseudo-Absence Selection Technique for Improved Species Distribution Modelling,pseudo absence selection for spatial distribution models sdms is the subject of ongoing investigation numerous techniques continue to be developed and reports of their effectiveness vary because the quality of presence and absence data is key for acceptable accuracy of correlative sdm predictions determining an appropriate method to characterise pseudo absences for sdmâ s is vital the main methods that are currently used to generate pseudo absence points are 1 randomly generated pseudo absence locations from background data 2 pseudo absence locations generated within a delimited geographical distance from recorded presence points and 3 pseudo absence locations selected in areas that are environmentally dissimilar from presence points there is a need for a method that considers both geographical extent and environmental requirements to produce pseudo absence points that are spatially and ecologically balanced we use a novel three step approach that satisfies both spatial and ecological reasons why the target species is likely to find a particular geo location unsuitable step 1 comprises establishing a geographical extent around species presence points from which pseudo absence points are selected based on analyses of environmental variable importance at different distances this step gives an ecologically meaningful explanation to the spatial range of background data as opposed to using an arbitrary radius step 2 determines locations that are environmentally dissimilar to the presence points within the distance specified in step one step 3 performs k means clustering to reduce the number of potential pseudo absences to the desired set by taking the centroids of clusters in the most environmentally dissimilar class identified in step 2 by considering spatial ecological and environmental aspects the three step method identifies appropriate pseudo absence points for correlative sdms we illustrate this method by predicting the new zealand potential distribution of the asian tiger mosquito aedes albopictus and the western corn rootworm diabrotica virgifera virgifera,2013,0.286
Beyond dead trees: integrating the scientific process in the Biodiversity Data Journal,driven by changes to policies of governments and funding agencies open access to content and data is quickly becoming the prevailing model in academic publishing open access benefits scientists with greater dissemination and citation of their work and provides society as a whole with access to the latest research open access is however only one facet of scholarly communication core scientific statements or assertions are intertwined and hidden in the scholarly narratives and the data underlying these statements are often obscured to the point that replication of results is impossible nature editorial 2012 this is in part a result of the way scientific papers are written as narratives rather than sources of data,2013,0.262
EASIN-Lit: a geo-database of published alien species records,easin lit is an initiative of the joint research centre of the european commission aiming to facilitate access to spatial data published in the literature through the easin european alien species information network portal currently information from 227 publications has been included covering geo referenced records for 236 species 1655 single records and country level occurrences for 3105 species systematic and harmonized access to such kind of data otherwise dispersed in scientific libraries and archives can be crucial for alien species distribution modeling and the implementation of early warning systems,2013,0.626
"Velvet Ants, Past and Present: A County-Wide Checklist of the Distribution and Diversity of Mutillidae (Insecta: Hymenoptera) in Oklahoma Including Two New State Records, and New Behavioral Observations for Dasymutilla foxi (Cockerell)",oklahoma has some of the highest recorded diversity of velvet ants insecta hymenoptera mutillidae in north america as well as having a correspondingly high diversity of ecosystems and potential velvet ant habitats velvet ants are relatively large conspicuous parasitic wasps that are potential indicators for studies of habitat quality and change over time however little is known about in which habitats these insects live within the state other than their sole presence in oklahoma herein we provide a county checklist and maps of known distributions of mutillidae species in oklahoma to provide a baseline for future studies comparing habitats and distributions two species collected in the summer of 2013 in cimarron co dasymutilla foxi cockerell and d snoworum cockerell were found to be new state records data were compiled using direct specimen information confirmed observations literature records and specimens collected in the summer of 2013 by the author s efficacy of past oklahoma insect and mutillidae surveys across the state before and after 1950 are investigated future county wide survey work of oklahoma mutillidae using citizen science surveys is also discussed,2013,0.771
Can We Name Earth's Species Before They Go Extinct?,some people despair that most species will go extinct before they are discovered however such worries result from overestimates of how many species may exist beliefs that the expertise to describe species is decreasing and alarmist estimates of extinction rates we argue that the number of species on earth today is 5 t 3 million of which 1 5 million are named new databases show that there are more taxonomists describing species than ever before and their number is increasing faster than the rate of species description conservation efforts and species survival in secondary habitats are at least delaying extinctions extinction rates are however poorly quantified ranging from 0 01 to 1 at most 5 per decade we propose practical actions to improve taxonomic productivity and associated understanding and conservation of biodiversity,2013,0.938
"Data paper : Land snails and slugs at the Natural Park of the Serralada Litoral (Barcelona, Spain)",land snails and slugs at the natural park of the serralada litoral barcelona spain â the population of molluscs at the natural park of the serralada litoral barcelona spain ne iberian peninsula was assessed contributing to the conservation plan a wildlife inventory was conducted based on fieldwork,2013,0.292
Towards Standardization: A Participatory Framework for Scientific Standard-Making,in contemporary scientific research standard making and standardization are key processes for the sharing and reuse of data the goals of this paper are twofold 1 to stress that collaboration is crucial to standard making and 2 to recommend recognition of metadata standardization as part of the scientific process to achieve these goals a participatory framework for developing and implementing scientific metadata standards is presented we highlight the need for ongoing open dialogue within and among research communities at multiple levels using the long term ecological research network adoption of the ecological metadata language as a case example in the natural sciences we illustrate how a participatory framework addresses the need for active coordination of the evolution of scientific metadata standards the participatory framework is contrasted with a hierarchical framework to underscore how the development of scientific standards is a dynamic and continuing process the roles played by â best practicesâ and â working standardsâ are identified in relation to the process of standardization,2013,0.1
Elevating Natural History Museums’ Cultural Collections to the Linked Data Cloud,an impressive abundance of high quality scientific content about natural history and biodiversity is produced in a distributed open fashion by natural history museums nhms using their own established standards and best practices managing publication of such richness and variety of content on the web and also supporting distributed interoperable content creation pro cesses poses challenges that traditional publication approaches are not adequate to meet the natural europe project offers a coordinated solution to those chal lenges at european level that aims to improve the availability discoverability and relevance of environmental cultural content for education and life long learning use in a multilingual and multicultural context cultural heritage con tent is collected from six natural history museums around europe into a feder ation of european natural history digital libraries that is directly connected with europeana in this paper we present the architecture of the semantic infra structure developed for the transition of the natural europe federation of nhmsâ cultural repositories to the semantic web as well as the methodology followed for ingesting and converting the nhmsâ cultural heritage metadata in to linked data,2013,0.188
"A new species of Megachile Latreille subgenus Megachiloides (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae)",a new species of leafcutter bee megachile megachiloides chomskyi is described from texas united states megachile chomskyi is one of the four known species of the oenotherae species group of megachiloides all members sharing the long tongue and is most similar to megachile megachiloides amica cresson like other members of the oenotherae species group this species probably shows oligolecty with onagraceae evening primrose family a diagnosis full description of both sexes and a key to the species of the oenotherae species group are provided,2013,0.93
"Paleoclimatic modeling and phylogeography of least killifish, Heterandria formosa: insights into Pleistocene expansion-contraction dynamics and evolutionary history of North American Coastal Plain freshwater biota",background climatic and sea level fluctuations throughout the last pleistocene glacial cycle 130 0 ka profoundly influenced present day distributions and genetic diversity of northern hemisphere biotas by forcing range contractions in many species during the glacial advance and allowing expansion following glacial retreat expansion contraction model evidence for such range dynamics and refugia in the unglaciated gulf atlantic coastal plain stems largely from terrestrial species and aquatic species pleistocene responses remain relatively uninvestigated heterandria formosa a wide ranging regional endemic presents an ideal system to test the expansion contraction model within this biota by integrating ecological niche modeling and phylogeography we infer the pleistocene history of this livebearing fish poeciliidae and test for several predicted distributional and genetic effects of the last glaciation results paleoclimatic models predicted range contraction to a single southwest florida peninsula refugium during the last glacial maximum followed by northward expansion we inferred spatial population subdivision into four groups that reflect genetic barriers outside this refuge several other features of the genetic data were consistent with predictions derived from an expansion contraction model limited intraspecific divergence e g mean mtdna p distance 0 66 a pattern of mtdna diversity mean hd 0 934 mean pi 0 007 consistent with rapid recent population expansion a lack of mtdna isolation by distance and clinal variation in allozyme diversity with higher diversity at lower latitudes near the predicted refugium statistical tests of mismatch distributions and coalescent simulations of the gene tree lent greater support to a scenario of post glacial expansion and diversification from a single refugium than to any other model examined e g multiple refugia scenarios conclusions congruent results from diverse data indicate h formosa fits the classic pleistocene expansion contraction model even as the genetic data suggest additional ecological influences on population structure while evidence for plio pleistocene gulf coast vicariance is well described for many freshwater species presently codistributed with h formosa this species demography and diversification departs notably from this pattern species specific expansion contraction dynamics may therefore have figured more prominently in shaping coastal plain evolutionary history than previously thought our findings bolster growing appreciation for the complexity of phylogeographical structuring within north america s southern refugia including responses of coastal plain freshwater biota to pleistocene climatic fluctuations,2013,0.729
A Revision of Blindia (Seligeriaceae) from Southern South America,blindia bruch schimp is represented in southern south america by eight species of these b buckii b k andreas b rigida b k andreas and b serrata b k andreas from the cape horn archipelago are newly described and illustrated herein sporophyte descriptions and the sexuality of b inundata and b torrentium are reported for the first time species descriptions and a key to species from southern south america are presented,2013,0.707
Re-characterization of the Red-lip Megalobulimus (Gastropoda: Strophocheilidae) from Peru with description of a new species,megalobulimus k miller 1878 is a genus of land snails that includes the largest living snails in the neotropics the main goal of this paper was to review all species of megalobulimus that have a red lip and which are distributed in peru we carried out a detailed description of their shells and soft parts and conducted a multivariate analysis on their shells and geographic distribution there are two species reported from peru megalobulimus capillaceus pfeiffer 1855 and megalobulimus separabilis fulton 1903 megalobulimus capillaceus is known to occur in three regions â san martã n huã nuco and cusco â but the cusco population is undoubtedly different from all remaining populations and is recog nized herein as a new species megalobulimus florezi sp nov this species has a more elongated shell penis club shaped epiphallus longer and free oviduct longer than m capillaceus by contrast the male genitalia of m separabilis is filiform and does not present an external diverticulum in the free oviduct,2013,0.713
Integrating Open Access Geospatial Data to Map the Habitat Suitability of the Declining Corn Bunting (Miliaria calandra),the efficacy of integrating open access geospatial data to produce habitat suitability maps for the corn bunting miliaria calandra was investigated landsat enhanced thematic mapper plus etm shuttle radar topography mission srtm and corine coordination of information on the environment land cover data for the year 2000 clc2000 were processed to extract explanatory variables and divided into three sets satellite etm srtm clc2000 and combined clc2000 satellite presence absence data for m calandra collected during structured surveys for the catalan breeding bird atlas were provided by the catalan ornithological institute the dataset was partitioned into an equal number of presence and absence points by dividing it into five groups each composed of 88 randomly selected presence points to match the number of absences a logistic regression model was then built for each group models were evaluated using area under the curve auc of the receiver operating characteristic roc results of the five groups were averaged to produce mean satellite clc2000 and combined models the mean auc values were 0 69 0 81 and 0 90 for the clc2000 satellite and the combined model respectively the probability of m calandra presence had the strongest positive correlation with land surface temperature modified soil adjusted vegetation index coefficient of variation for etm band 5 and the fraction of non irrigated arable land,2013,0.317
"What can multiple phylogenies say about the latitudinal diversity gradient? A new look at the tropical conservatism, out of the tropics, and diversification rate hypotheses.",we reviewed published phylogenies and selected 111 phylogenetic studies representing mammals birds insects and flowering plants we then mapped the latitudinal range of all taxa to test the relative importance of the tropical conservatism out of the tropics and diversification rate hypotheses in generating latitudinal diversity gradients most clades originated in the tropics with diversity peaking in the zone of origin transitions of lineages between latitudinal zones occurred at 16 22 of the tree nodes the most common type of transition was range expansions of tropical lineages to encompass also temperate latitudes thus adaptation to new climatic conditions may not represent a major obstacle for many clades these results contradict predictions of the tropical conservatism hypothesis i e few clades colonizing extratropical latitudes but support the out of the tropics model i e tropical originations and subsequent latitudinal range expansions our results suggest no difference in diversification between tropical and temperate sister lineages thus diversity of tropical clades was not explained by higher diversification rates in this zone moreover lineages with latitudinal stasis diversified more compared to sister lineages entering a new latitudinal zone this preserved preexisting diversity differences between latitudinal zones and can be considered a new mechanism for why diversity tends to peak in the zone of origin,2013,0.112
Phylogeography and Post-Glacial Recolonization in Wolverines (Gulo gulo) from across Their Circumpolar Distribution,interglacial glacial cycles of the quaternary are widely recognized in shaping phylogeographic structure patterns from cold adapted species can be especially informative in particular uncovering additional glacial refugia identifying likely recolonization patterns and increasing our understanding of speciesâ responses to climate change we investigated phylogenetic structure of the wolverine a wide ranging cold adapted carnivore using a 318 bp of the mitochondrial dna control region for 983 wolverines n 209 this study n 774 from genbank from across their full holarctic distribution bayesian phylogenetic tree reconstruction and the distribution of observed pairwise haplotype differences mismatch distribution provided evidence of a single rapid population expansion across the wolverineâ s holarctic range even though molecular evidence corroborated a single refugium significant subdivisions of population genetic structure 0 01 î st 0 99 p 0 05 were detected pairwise î st estimates separated scandinavia from russia and mongolia and identified five main divisions within north america the central arctic a western region an eastern region consisting of ontario and quebec labrador manitoba and california these data are in contrast to the nearly panmictic structure observed in northwestern north america using nuclear microsatellites but largely support the nuclear dna separation of contemporary manitoba and ontario wolverines from northern populations historic samples c 1900 from the functionally extirpated eastern population of quebec labrador displayed genetic similarities to contemporary ontario wolverines to understand these divergence patterns four hypotheses were tested using approximate bayesian computation abc the most supported hypothesis was a single beringia incursion during the last glacial maximum that established the northwestern population followed by a west to east colonization during the holocene this pattern is suggestive of colonization occurring in accordance with glacial retreat and supports expansion from a single refugium these data are significant relative to current discussions on the conservation status of this species across its range,2013,0.826
Herbarium of the University of Malaga (Spain): Vascular Plants Collection,the herbarium of university of mã laga mgc herbarium is formed by four biological collections the vascular plants collection mgc cormof is the main collection of the herbarium mgc cormof dataset aims to digitize and publish data associated with over 76 000 specimens deposited in the collection of which 97 2 of the specimens are identified at species level since 2011 the university of malagaâ s central research service scai has been responsible for maintaining the herbariums and the dataset the collection is growing continuously with an annual intake of about 1 500 specimens nearly 96 of the collection is digitized by herbar v3 7 1 software f pando et al 1996â 2011 making over 73 000 specimens accessible through the gbif network http data gbif org datasets resource 8105 at present 247 families and 8 110 taxa distributed in angiosperms 93 97 ferns and fern allies 4 89 and gymnosperms 1 14 constitute the mgc cormof collection the families and genera best represented in the collection are compositae leguminosae gramineae labiatae caryophyllaceae teucrium silene asplenium linaria and quercus most of the specimens are from the western mediterranean region fundamentally southern spain andalusia 82 of specimens and northern morocco 2 17 approximately 63 of the specimens are georeferenced the identification of the specimens in the collection has been carried out by the plant biology department at the university of malaga and plus 40 of the specimens has been reviewed by experts the mgc cormof dataset has been revised by darwintest v3 2 tool ortega maqueda and pando 2008 before being published in gbif the data included in this database are important for conservation works taxonomy flora cartography phenology palynology among others,2013,0.291
"Potential distribution of an invasive species under climate change scenarios using CLIMEX and soil drainage: a case study of Lantana camara L. in Queensland, Australia",invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity which may be intensified by the effects of climate change particularly if favourable climate conditions allow invasives to spread to new areas this research explores the combined effects of climate change and soil drainage on the potential future distribution of lantana camara l lantana in queensland australia lantana is an invasive woody shrub species that has a profound economic and environmental impact worldwide climex was used to develop a process based niche model of lantana to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate two global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 and miroc h were used to explore the impacts of climate change these models were run with the a1b and a2 scenarios for 2030 2070 and 2100 further refinements of the potential distributions were carried out through the integration of fine scale soil drainage data in a geographic information system gis the results from both gcms show a progressive reduction in climatic suitability for lantana in queensland the miroc h projects a larger area as remaining at risk of lantana invasion in 2100 compared to csiro mk3 0 inclusion of soil drainage data results in a more refined distribution overall results show a dramatic reduction in potential distribution of lantana in queensland in the long term 2100 however in the short term 2030 areas such as south east queensland and the wet tropics both regions of significant ecological importance remain at risk of invasion consistently under both gcms and with both the climate only and climate and soil drainage models management of lantana in these regions will need to be prioritized to protect environmental assets of ecological significance,2013,0.166
A new method for calculating Risk Tolerance in the assessment of threatened flora,this paper reports on a proposed method for evaluating threat categories for regional flora based mainly on phytogeographical data the method involves the creation of current distribution maps analysis of threat factors and use of the ramas red list software to facilitate rapid and objective classification of taxa in accordance with 2001 iucn criteria in order to ensure a more objective approach by the assessor and reduce the range of uncertainty an index was created for calculating risk tolerance rt that enabled adjustment of the results obtained and thus supplemented the software used for trial purposes the proposed model was applied to spanish gypsophilous flora currently protected under spanish regional legislation when classified using the new model the taxa in question were placed in very different categories ranging from least concern lc to endangered en indicating the need to redefine both their current legal status and recommended management measures use of this method will enable scientists to optimise available information on the geographical distribution of endangered taxa and help governments both to optimise their financial investment in conservation and to define their priorities the authors endorse the use of iucn categories in legal protection texts and advocate as essential a greater degree of coordination between scientists and governments,2013,0.105
Exotic spread of Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) beyond North America,the south america fire ant solenopsis invicta buren arrived in mobile alabama by ship sometime before 1945 since then s invicta has spread in north america across the southern us and northeastern mexico more recently s invicta has invaded the west indies and parts of the old world here i examine this more recent exotic spread of s invicta beyond north america reporting new west indian records and questioning some asian records in 1981 s invicta was first found in the west indies on puerto rico with my new records from vieques aruba and jamaica s invicta is now known from 28 west indian islands in 2001 the first old world populations of s invicta were dis covered in new zealand and australia nascent populations of s invicta in new zealand have been exterminated and australia populations have been kept in check through intensive control efforts populations of s invicta in taiwan and china first found in 2003 2004 however have spread broadly published reports of s invicta from ma laysia and singapore were based on misidentifications presumably of the more wide spread neotropical fire ant solenopsis geminata fabricius reports of s invicta from india and the philippines seem questionable and need confirmation where s invicta has invaded it has displaced s geminata in open habitats leaving remnant s geminata populations primarily in forested areas in working to limit the spread and impacts of fire ants it will be important to differentiate among the species and recognize their similarities and their differences,2013,0.81
"Island Biogeography, the effects of taxonomic effort and the importance of island niche diversity to single island endemic species",island biogeography theory is fundamentally reliant on measuring the number of species per island and hence has taxonomy at its foundation yet as a metric used in tests of the theory island species richness s has varied with time according to the level of taxonomic effort a function of the rate of finding and describing species studies using a derivative of s single island endemic species richness sie s may be even more prone to change in taxonomic effort decreases or increases in species numbers resulting from taxonomic revision or increased sampling are likely to have a large effect on values of sie s as they tend to be smaller than total s for the same island using simple biogeography models we analysed estimates of sie s in plants land snails beetles and fungi from comprehensive datasets for eight island groups produced species accumulation curves and applied bayesian regression over five time periods explanatory power differed across taxa but area and island age were not always the best explanatory variables and niche diversity appeared to be important changing levels of sie s over time had different effects on models with different taxa and between island archipelagos the results indicated that the taxonomic effort that determines sie s is important however as this cannot often be quantified we suggest bayesian approaches should be more useful than frequentist methods in evaluating sie s in island biogeography theory fundamentally the paper highlights the importance of taxonomy to theoretical biogeography,2013,0.407
"Harvestmen of the BOS Arthropod Collection of the University of Oviedo (Spain) (Arachnida, Opiliones)",there are significant gaps in accessible knowledge about the distribution and phenology of iberian harvestmen arachnida opiliones harvestmen accessible datasets in iberian peninsula are unknown an only two other datasets available in gbif are composed exclusively of harvestmen records moreover only a few harvestmen data from iberian peninsula are available in gbif network or in any network that allows public retrieval or use these data this paper describes the data associated with the opiliones kept in the bos arthropod collection of the university of oviedo spain hosted in the department of biologã a de organismos y sistemas filling some of those gaps the specimens were mainly collected from the northern third of the iberian peninsula the earliest specimen deposited in the collection dating back to the early 20th century belongs to the p franganillo collection the dataset documents the collection of 16 455 specimens preserved in 3 772 vials approximately 38 of the specimens belong to the family sclerosomatidae and 26 to phalangidae six other families with fewer specimens are also included data quality control was incorporated at several steps of digitisation process to facilitate reuse and improve accuracy the complete dataset is also provided in darwin core archive format allowing public retrieval use and combination with other biological biodiversity of geographical variables datasets,2013,0.191
Reconstructing Hybrid Speciation Events in the Pteris cretica Group (Pteridaceae) in Japan and Adjacent Regions,polyploidy hybridization and agamospory have been considered important mechanisms in fern speciation by integrating the methods of cytology molecular phylogeny and morphology we examined the origins of polyploid species in the pteris cretica group which comprises five agamosporous taxa and six sexual species phylogenetic analysis was conducted using both cpdna rbcl and trnv trnm and a low copy nuclear gene gapcp the combined results of cytology and the phylogenetic trees suggested that the sexual diploid p kidoi had played a central role in the diversification of polyploid species in the p cretica group some triploid clones of agamosporous p cretica var cretica originated through hybridization between the diploid cytotype of p cretica var cretica and the sexual diploid p kidoi the sexual polyploid species p henryi p multifida p ryukyuensis and p yamatensis and the hexaploid race of p deltodon have arisen through allopolyploidization between their respective ancestral parent species and p kidoi additionally the agamosporous triploid p nipponica and p cretica var albolineata might have originated through hybridization between p cretica var cretica and an unknown ancestral diploid parent of p ryukyuensis agamosporous p cretica var cretica harbored considerable genetic variation within both the diploid and triploid cytotypes because we could not find clear genetic differences between the diploid and triploid p cretica both cytotypes might be autopolyploids or alternatively have originated through hybridization among the same members of ancestral sexual species,2013,0.927
A simple model for predicting the global distribution of the N2 fixing host genus Alnus Mill.: impact of climate change on the global distribution in 2100,the importance of n2 fixing plants has increased in last decades alnus alder is an important plant group because of its nitrogen fixation ability alders are generally dis tributed in humid locations of boreal temperate and tropical climate zones where the nitrogen fixation is an important nitrogen source for other plants to model the nitrogen fixation by alder data about the global distribution of alder is absolutely required in this study a new method and model to predict the distribution of n2 fixing genus on global scale is presented three linear functions were defined for the determination of climate area of alder locations the distribution model was improved with the aid of the soil units from fao unesco soil database and vegetation types from schmithã senâ s bio geographical atlas the model alnus distribution model adm was also developed to predict the impact of climate change on alder distribution by using climate data of five relevant climate models pcm echam4 hadcm3 csiro2 and cgcm2 and four ipcc climate scenarios i e a1fi a2 b1 and b2 in 2100 the model covered basic approaches to understand the climate change effect on plant migration in the future 1,2013,0.02
Age class influence on the yield of edible fungi in a managed Mediterranean forest,lack of information and difficulty in predicting wild edible sporocarp yields is blocking its integration in forest management in the mediterranean area this nontimber forest product has increased its market value consumption demand and interest over the last decade in this work sampling year and stand age effects are analyzed in order to advance knowledge of edible fungi community structure dynamics and production weekly autumnal sporocarp monitoring was performed from 1997 to 2011 in a pinus pinaster managed forest in central spain after applying a random stand age stratified survey 21 plots of 150 m 2 have been set with three per stand age class the forest age classes have been defined as follows 0 10 years mixture of parent and regenerated trees 11 20 21 40 41 60 61 90 and over 90 years a total of 153 species belonging to 56 genera were recorded 55 of which are edible the production of edible sporocarps was 19 8 kg ha 1 representing 31 of total production sporocarp production presents a sharp interannual variability with autumns 62 times more productive than others the most abundant edible species in terms of fresh weight per hectare has been lactarius deliciosus with 7 0 kg ha 1 edible fungi yields registered a significant decline in 10 years following regenerative cutting the presence of parent trees significantly increases production with regard to the first class the highest production of edible species occurs in the middle age 41 60 years and in the following classes a decrease is produced l deliciosus production registered differences with age manifesting in a high yield in young stands 11 20 years and significant recovery in woodlands near to the cutting,2013,0.583
Tropical rain forest conservation and the twin challenges of diversity and rarity.,data from a global network of large permanent plots in lowland tropical forests demonstrate 1 that the phenomenon of tropical tree rarity is real and 2 that almost all the species diversity in such forests is due to rare species theoretical and empirically based reasoning suggests that many of these rare species are not as geographically widespread as previously thought these findings suggest that successful strategies for conserving global tree diversity in lowland tropical forests must pay much more attention to the biogeography of rarity as well as to the impact of climate change on the distribution and abundance of rare species because the biogeography of many tropical tree species is poorly known a high priority should be given to documenting the distribution and abundance of rare tropical tree species particularly in amazonia the largest remaining tropical forested region in the world,2013,0.88
"Genetic, phenotypic and ecological divergence with gene flow at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: the case of the azure-crowned hummingbird (Amazilia cyanocephala)",aim we test whether populations of the mesoamerican azure crowned hum mingbird amazilia cyanocephala trochilidae located east and west of the isthmus of tehuantepec are genetically morphologically and environmentally differentiated and examine the relative role of drift and selection in driving diversification location mexico methods we sequenced the mitochondrial atpase 6 and atpase 8 genes and the control region of 130 individuals collected throughout the range of the spe cies in mexico population genetic methods and coalescent tests were used to reconstruct the phylogeography of the species morphological and niche varia tion between genetic groups of a cyanocephala were assessed results the data revealed two genetic groups separated by the isthmus of tehuantepec in the late pleistocene 49 300â 75 800 years ago with the split occurring in the presence of gene flow deviations from demographic equilibrium were detected for the two genetic groups indicating more recent population expansions amazilia cyanocephala individuals from populations on either side of the isthmus of tehuantepec differed in mor phology and were distributed in unique environmental space a coalescent based test indicated that selection is driving the observed morphological differentiation main conclusions our findings implicate the isthmus of tehuantepec as a permeable barrier driving recent diversification of a cyanocephala in the pres ence of gene flow the two a cyanocephala mitochondrial dna mtdna groups corresponding with morphological and environmental niche differences in concert with the results of a coalescent based test suggest that selection has been strong enough to counteract the effects of gene flow,2013,0.628
"A New Species Of Mudskipper, Boleophthalmus Poti (Teleostei: Gobiidae: Oxudercinae) From The Gulf Of Papua, Papua New Guinea, And A Key To The Genus",boleophthalmus poti new species is described from the gulf of papua papua new guinea it is distinguished from its congeners by a combination of characters including un notched fl attened and horizontally disposed dentary teeth pelvic disc length 10 of sl d1 base length 15 of sl d2 base length 40 of sl 5 interdorsal scale rows 110 lateral scale rows and the shape and colour pattern of the fi rst and second dorsal fi ns,2013,0.4
Predicting the current distribution and potential spread of the exotic grass Eragrostis plana Nees in South America and identifying a bioclimatic niche shift during invasion,eragrostis plana poaceae is a perennial grass introduced from south africa to the state of rio grande do sul in southern brazil currently it is considered an invasive grass in several regions of the world including south america where it has caused negative ecological and socio economic impacts ecological niche models using bioclimatic variables are often used to predict the potential distribution of invasive species in this study we prepared two bioclimatic models for e plana using the genetic algorithm for rule set production the first based on data from its native region south africa and the second on data from both the native and invaded south america regions we then projected each model onto south america to identify regions vulnerable to invasion by the species and compared our results with available records of the species in south america finally we explored the modelâ s predictions for the existence of a bioclimatic niche shift during the invasion process of e plana in south america using multivariate statistical analysis the model created with native distribution data was only able to predict with highly suitable habitat the region of introduction of e plana in south america however the current distribution as well as the region of introduction of the species was reliably predicted by the model created with data from both native and invaded regions our multivariate analysis supports a hypothesis of bioclimatic niche shift during the invasion process of e plana in south america,2013,0.577
The integration of multiple independent data reveals an unusual response to Pleistocene climatic changes in the hard tick Ixodes ricinus,in the last few years improved analytical tools and the integration of genetic data with multiple sources of information have shown that temperate species exhibited more complex responses to ice ages than previously thought in this study we investigated how pleistocene climatic changes affected the current distribution and genetic diversity of european populations of the tick ixodes ricinus an ectoparasite with high ecological plasticity we first used mitochondrial and nuclear genetic markers to investigate the phylogeographic structure of the species and its pleistocene history using coalescent based methods then we used species distribution modelling to infer the climatic niche of the species at last glacial maximum finally we reviewed the literature on the i ricinus hosts to identify the locations of their glacial refugia our results support the scenario that during the last glacial phase i ricinus never experienced a prolonged allopatric divergence in separate glacial refugia but persisted with interconnected populations across southern and central europe the generalist behaviour in host choice of i ricinus would have played a major role in maintaining connections between its populations although most of the hosts persisted in separate refugia from the point of view of i ricinus they represented a continuity of bridges among populations our study highlights the importance of species specific ecology in affecting responses to pleistocene glacial interglacial cycles together with other cases in europe and elsewhere it contributes to setting new hypotheses on how species with wide ecological plasticity coped with pleistocene climatic changes,2013,0.948
A systematic approach towards the identification and protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems,the united nations general assembly in 2006 and 2009 adopted resolutions that call for the identification and protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems vmes from significant adverse impacts of bottom fishing while general criteria have been produced there are no guidelines or protocols that elaborate on the process from initial identification through to the protection of vmes here based upon an expert review of existing practices a 10 step framework is proposed 1 comparatively assess potential vme indicator taxa and habitats in a region 2 determine vme thresholds 3 consider areas already known for their ecological importance 4 compile information on the distributions of likely vme taxa and habitats as well as related environmental data 5 develop predictive distribution models for vme indicator taxa and habitats 6 compile known or likely fishing impacts 7 produce a predicted vme naturalness distribution areas of low cumulative impacts 8 identify areas of higher value to user groups 9 conduct management strategy evaluations to produce trade off scenarios 10 review and re iterate until spatial management scenarios are developed that fulfil international obligations and regional conservation and management objectives to date regional progress has been piecemeal and incremental the proposed 10 step framework combines these various experiences into a systematic approach,2013,0.059
Checklist of beetles (Coleoptera) of Canada and Alaska. Second edition,all 8237 species group taxa of coleoptera known to occur in canada and alaska are recorded by province territory or state along with their author s and year of publication in a classification framework only presence of taxa in each canadian province or territory and alaska is noted labrador is considered a distinct geographical entity adventive and holarctic species group taxa are indicated references to pertinent identification keys are given under the corresponding supraspecific taxa in the data archive,2013,0.648
"The Future of Botanical Monography: Report from an international workshop, 12 – 16 March 2012, Smolenice, Slovak Republic",monographs are fundamental for progress in systematic botany they are the vehicles for circumscribing and naming taxa determining distributions and ecology assessing relationships for formal classification and interpreting long term and short term dimensions of the evolutionary process despite their importance fewer monographs are now being prepared by the newer generation of systematic botanists who are understandably involved principally with dna data and analysis especially for answering phylogenetic biogeographic and population genetic questions as monographs provide hypotheses regarding species boundaries and plant relationships new insights in many plant groups are urgently needed increasing pressures on biodiversity especially in tropical and developing regions of the world emphasize this point the results from a workshop with 21 participants reaffirm the central role that monographs play in systematic botany but rather than advocating abbreviated models for monographic products we recommend a full presentation of relevant information electronic publication offers numerous means of illustration of taxa habitats characters and statistical and phylogenetic analyses which previously would have been prohibitively costly open access and semantically enhanced linked electronic publications provide instant access to content from anywhere in the world and at the same time link this content to all underlying data and digital resources used in the work resources in support of monography especially databases and widely and easily accessible digital literature and specimens are now more powerful than ever before but interfacing and interoperability of databases are much needed priorities for new resources to be developed include an index of type collections and an online global chromosome database funding for sabbaticals for monographers to work uninterrupted on major projects is strongly encouraged we recommend that doctoral students be assigned smaller genera or natural portions of larger ones subgenera sections etc to gain the necessary expertise for producing a monograph including training in a broad array of data collection e g morphology anatomy palynology cytogenetics dna techniques ecology biogeography data analysis e g statistics phylogenetics models and nomenclature training programs supported by institutes associations and agencies provide means for passing on procedures and perspectives of challenging botanical monography to the next generation of young systematists,2013,0.07
A new benzoic acid derivative isolated from Piper cf. cumanense Kunth (Piperaceae),new benzoic acid derivative 1 together with five known compounds has been isolated from the inflorescences of piper cf cumanense kunth piperaceae the structure was identified on basis of spectroscopic analysis and comparison with literature data the compound 1 showed antifungal activity against fusarium oxysporum f sp dianthi and botrytis cinerea,2013,0.462
"Circumpolar dataset of sequenced specimens of Promachocrinus kerguelensis (Echinodermata, Crinoidea)",this circumpolar dataset of the comatulid echinodermata crinoidea promachocrinus kerguelensis carpenter 1888 from the southern ocean documents biodiversity associated with the specimens sequenced in hemery et al 2012 the aim of hemery et al 2012 paper was to use phylogeographic and phylogenetic tools to assess the genetic diversity demographic history and evolutionary relationships of this very common and abundant comatulid in the context of the glacial history of the antarctic and sub antarctic shelves thatje et al 2005 2008 over one thousand three hundred specimens 1307 used in this study were collected during seventeen cruises from 1996 to 2010 in eight regions of the southern ocean kerguelen plateau davis sea dumont dâ urville sea ross sea amundsen sea west antarctic peninsula east weddell sea and scotia arc including the tip of the antarctic peninsula and the bransfield strait we give here the metadata of this dataset which lists sampling sources cruise id ship name sampling date sampling gear sampling sites station geographic coordinates depth and genetic data phylogroup haplotype sequence id for each of the 1307 specimens the identification of the specimens was controlled by an expert taxonomist specialist of crinoids marc elã aume musã um national dâ histoire naturelle paris and all the coi sequences were matched against those available on the barcode of life data system bold http www boldsystems org index php ids openidengine this dataset can be used by studies dealing with among other interests antarctic and or crinoid diversity species richness distribution patterns biogeography or habitat ecological niche modeling this dataset is accessible through the gbif network at http ipt biodiversity aq resource do r proke,2013,0.434
Evaluation of online information sources on alien species in Europe: the need of harmonization and integration.,europe is severely affected by alien invasions which impact biodiversity ecosystem services economy and human health a large number of national regional and global online databases provide information on the distribution pathways of introduction and impacts of alien species the sufficiency and efficiency of the current online information systems to assist the european policy on alien species was investigated by a comparative analysis of occurrence data across 43 online databases large differences among databases were found which are partially explained by variations in their taxonomical environmental and geographical scopes but also by the variable efforts for continuous updates and by inconsistencies on the definition of alien or invasive species no single database covered all european environments countries and taxonomic groups in many european countries national databases do not exist which greatly affects the quality of reported information to be operational and useful to scientists managers and policy makers online information systems need to be regularly updated through continuous monitoring on a country or regional level we propose the creation of a network of online interoperable web services through which information in distributed resources can be accessed aggregated and then used for reporting and further analysis at different geographical and political scales as an efficient approach to increase the accessibility of information harmonization standardization conformity on international standards for nomenclature and agreement on common definitions of alien and invasive species are among the necessary prerequisites,2013,0.492
Arbor: comparative analysis workflows for the tree of life.,we describe our efforts to develop a software package arbor that will enable scientific research in all aspects of comparative biology this software will enable developmental biologists geneticists ecologists geographers paleobiologists educators and students to analyze diverse types of comparative data at multiple phylogenetic and spatiotemporal scales using an intuitive visual interface arbor s user defined workflows will be exported and shared so that entire analyses can be quickly replicated with new or updated data arbor will also be designed to easily and seamlessly expand to include novel analytical tools as they are developed here we describe the core components of arbor as well as provide details of one proposed test case to illustrate the software s key functionality,2013,0.256
Rediscovering the old from new: two curious species of Coenosia Meigen (Diptera: Muscidae) from South Africa,coenosia macrotriseta sp n is described from the western cape south africa with c globuliseta pont being redescribed and new illustrations provided as judged by external morphological characters par ticularly the presence of globular setae the two species are very closely related they are however very wide ly separated geographically and differ clearly as regards genital structure,2013,0.645
ENSO signature in botanical proxy time series extends terrestrial El Niño record into the (sub)tropics,1 the el niã o â southern oscillation enso exerts significant control over the amount of florida winter precipitation we use a local near annual resolved palaeobotanical proxy record from southern florida to test for historic enso variability over the past 125 years palaeobotanical proxies from a florida wetland pollen counts and a new drought stress proxy based on leaf epidermal cell densities are used as indicators of moisture availability during the winter growing season spectral analysis and band pass filtering of the proxy records reveals significant variability within the 2 to 7 year bandwidth characteristic of enso as well as decadal signatures a maximum likelihood palaeoprecipitation reconstruction of the pollen record based on modern vegetation distributions shows values and variability comparable to instrumental records the approach shows the dominant control of enso on florida vegetation and provides a powerful means to detect discrete enso variability in older intervals,2013,0.284
Antarctic Crabs: Invasion or Endurance?,recent scientific interest following the â œdiscoveryâ of lithodid crabs around antarctica has centred on a hypothesis that these crabs might be poised to invade the antarctic shelf if the recent warming trend continues potentially decimating its native fauna this â œinvasion hypothesisâ suggests that decapod crabs were driven out of antarctica 40â 15 million years ago and are only now returning as â œwarmâ enough habitats become available the hypothesis is based on a geographically and spatially poor fossil record of a different group of crabs brachyura and examination of relatively few recent lithodid samples from the antarctic slope in this paper we examine the existing lithodid fossil record and present the distribution and biogeographic patterns derived from over 16 000 records of recent southern hemisphere crabs and lobsters globally the lithodid fossil record consists of only two known specimens neither of which comes from the antarctic recent records show that 22 species of crabs and lobsters have been reported from the southern ocean with 12 species found south of 60â s all are restricted to waters warmer than 0â c with their antarctic distribution limited to the areas of seafloor dominated by circumpolar deep water cdw currently cdw extends further and shallower onto the west antarctic shelf than the known distribution ranges of most lithodid species examined geological evidence suggests that west antarctic shelf could have been available for colonisation during the last 9 000 years distribution patterns species richness and levels of endemism all suggest that rather than becoming extinct and recently re invading from outside antarctica the lithodid crabs have likely persisted and even radiated on or near to antarctic slope we conclude there is no evidence for a modern day â œcrab invasionâ we recommend a repeated targeted lithodid sampling program along the west antarctic shelf to fully test the validity of the â œinvasion hypothesisâ,2013,0.803
A greener Greenland? Climatic potential and long-term constraints on future expansions of trees and shrubs,warming induced expansion of trees and shrubs into tundra vegetation will strongly impact arctic ecosystems today a small subset of the boreal woody flora found during certain plio pleistocene warm periods inhabits greenland whether the twenty first century warming will induce a re colonization of a rich woody flora depends on the roles of climate and migration limitations in shaping species ranges using potential treeline and climatic niche modelling we project shifts in areas climatically suitable for tree growth and 56 greenlandic north american and european tree and shrub species from the last glacial maximum through the present and into the future in combination with observed tree plantings our modelling highlights that a majority of the non native species find climatically suitable conditions in certain parts of greenland today even in areas harbouring no native trees analyses of analogous climates indicate that these conditions are widespread outside greenland thus increasing the likelihood of woody invasions nonetheless we find a substantial migration lag for greenland s current and future woody flora in conclusion the projected climatic scope for future expansions is strongly limited by dispersal soil development and other disequilibrium dynamics with plantings and unintentional seed dispersal by humans having potentially large impacts on spread rates,2013,0.515
Interspecific variations of inner ear structure in the deep-sea fish family melamphaidae,inner ear structures are compared among three major genera of the deep sea fish family melamphaidae bigscales and ridgeheads substantial interspecific variation is found in the saccular otoliths including the presence of a unique otolithic spur in the genera melamphaes and poromitra the variation in the saccular otolith is correlated with an increase in the number of hair bundle orientation groups on the sensory epithelia from the genera scopelogadus to poromitra to melamphaes the diverse structural variations found in the saccule may reflect the evolutionary history of these species the sensory hair cell bundles in this family have the most variable shapes yet encountered in fish ears in the saccule most of the hair bundles are 15 20 î m high an exceptional height for fish otolithic end organs these bundles have large numbers of stereovilli including some that reach the length of the kinocilium in the utricle the striolar region separates into two unusually shaped areas that have not been described in any other vertebrates the brains in all species have a relatively small olfactory bulb and optic tectum as well as an enlarged posterior cerebellar region that is likely to be involved in inner ear and lateral line octavolateral functions data from melamphaids support the hypothesis that specialized anatomical structures are found in the ears of some if not most deep sea fishes presumably enhancing their hearing sensitivity,2013,0.612
Regeneration dynamics of non-native northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) populations as influenced by environmental factors: A case study in managed hardwood forests of southwestern Germany,quercus rubra l northern red oak a tree species having moderate shade tolerance is failing to regenerate across its native range in north america largely due to its inability to compete with shade tolerant species throughout central europe where it was introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries q rubra exhibits prolific regeneration even when growing with shade tolerant trees under closed canopy conditions a better understanding of factors that allow the proliferation of q rubra in its adventive range may provide insights into the conditions necessary to promote q rubra in north america our study investigated the regeneration dynamics of q rubra in six hardwood stands near freiburg germany in relation to site conditions and the relative abundance and growth of indigenous tree species in forest understoreys despite high 94â 98 canopy closure at all stands the density of q rubra regeneration 2 m in height was greater than that of all other tree species combined averaging 24 stems m∠1 density of q rubra seedlings reached 125 stems m∠2 directly below seed trees however the lack of seedlings beyond 15 m from a seed tree suggested limited seed dispersal seedlings were less abundant at relatively fertile sites with lowest densities corresponding most closely to elevated soil calcium the abundance of q rubra was most highly variable in the midstorey trees and shrubs 2 0 m in height and 10 cm diameter at breast height with densities ranging from 200 to 1500 stems ha∠1 periodic selective harvesting at all stands appears to maintain a disturbed state of mid succession that allows q rubra seedlings to persist and recruit into the midstorey as canopy gaps become available clearly stands of this non indigenous species are successfully regenerating and the dominance of q rubra appears to be sustainable despite its benign performance in north america q rubra can be an effective competitor under suitable conditions our findings deemphasize the importance of canopy closure on q rubra regeneration and suggest that in north america preliminary cuts performed prior to shelterwood harvests should focus on midstorey removal of competitor species especially following oak mast years,2013,0.778
"PROGRESS TOWARDS THE AICHI BIODIVERSITY TARGETS: AN ASSESSMENT OF BIODIVERSITY TRENDS, POLICY SCENARIOS AND KEY ACTIONS Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO-4)Technical Report",for the executive summary please refer to the gbo main report global biodiversity outlook 4 â a mid term assessment of progress toward the implementation of the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011 â 2020 scbd 2014 the summary is available in the six united nations languages and can be accessed on the cbd website www cbd int gbo4,2013,0.354
A prioritized crop wild relative inventory to help underpin global food security,the potentially devastating impacts of climate change on biodiversity and food security together with the growing world population means taking action to conserve crop wild relative cwr diversity is no longer an option it is an urgent priority cwr are species closely related to crops including their progenitors which have potential to contribute traits for crop improvement however their utilisation is hampered by a lack of systematic conservation which in turn is due to a lack of clarity over their identity we used gene pool and taxon group concepts to estimate cwr relatedness for 173 priority crops to create the harlan and de wet inventory of globally important cwr taxa further taxa more remotely related to crops were added if they have historically been found to have useful traits for crop improvement the inventory contains 1667 taxa divided between 37 families 108 genera 1392 species and 299 sub specific taxa the region with the highest number of priority cwr is western asia with 262 taxa followed by china with 222 and southeastern europe with 181 within the primary gene pool 242 taxa were found to be under represented in ex situ collections and the countries identified as the highest priority for further germplasm collection are china mexico and brazil the inventory database is web enabled http www cwrdiversity org checklist and can be used to facilitate in situ and ex situ conservation planning at global regional and national levels â 2013 elsevier ltd,2013,0.832
"Fossil echinoid (Echinoidea, Echinodermata) diversity of the Early Cretaceous (Hauterivian) in the Paris Basin (France)",this dataset inventories occurrence records of fossil echinoid specimens collected in the calcaires ã spa tangues formation csf that crops out in the southeast of the paris basin france and is dated from the acanthodiscus radiatus chronozone ca 132 ma early hauterivian early cretaceous fossil richness and abundance of the csf has attracted the attention of palaeontologists since the middle of the nineteenth century this dataset compiles occurrence data referenced by locality names and geographic coordinates with decimal numbers of fossil echinoids both collated from the literature published over a century and a half and completed by data from collection specimens the dataset also gives information on taxonomy from species to order and higher taxonomic levels which has been checked for reliability and consist ency it compiles a total of 628 georeferenced occurrence data of 26 echinoid species represented by 22 genera 14 families and 9 orders,2013,0.579
"Invasion biology in non-free-living species: interactions between abiotic (climatic) and biotic (host availability) factors in geographical space in crayfish commensals (Ostracoda, Entocytheridae)",in invasion processes both abiotic and biotic factors are considered essential but the latter are usually disregarded when modeling the potential spread of exo tic species in the framework of set theory interactions between biotic b abi otic a and movement related m factors in the geographical space can be hypothesized with bam diagrams and tested using ecological niche models enms to estimate a and b areas the main aim of our survey was to evaluate the interactions between abiotic climatic and biotic host availability factors in geographical space for exotic symbionts i e non free living species using enm techniques combined with a bam framework and using exotic entocythe ridae ostracoda found in europe as model organisms we carried out an extensive survey to evaluate the distribution of entocytherids hosted by crayfish in europe by checking 94 european localities and 12 crayfish species both exotic entocytherid species found ankylocythere sinuosa and uncinocythere occidentalis were widely distributed in w europe living on the exotic crayfish species pro cambarus clarkii and pacifastacus leniusculus respectively no entocytherids were observed in the remaining crayfish species the suitable area for a sinuosa was mainly restricted by its own limitations to minimum temperatures in w and n europe and precipitation seasonality in circum mediterranean areas uncinocy there occidentalis was mostly restricted by host availability in circum mediterra nean regions due to limitations of p leniusculus to higher precipitation seasonality and maximum temperatures the combination of enms with set the ory allows studying the invasive biology of symbionts and provides clues about biogeographic barriers due to abiotic or biotic factors limiting the expansion of the symbiont in different regions of the invasive range the relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors on geographical space can then be assessed and applied in conservation plans this approach can also be implemented in other systems where the target species is closely interacting with other taxa,2013,0.847
A Model Web approach to modelling climate change in biomes of Important Bird Areas,protected areas pa are designated to conserve species and habitats and protect against anthropogenic pressures park boundaries however offer no protection against climatic change and where boundaries are actual constructions they may also act as physical barriers to species movements to new suitable habitats the means for assessing the consequences of climate change on ecosystems and for identifying gaps in pa connectivity are therefore a conservation priority the complexity of the scientific questions raised requires a multi disciplinary approach given the variety of the information required this includes species observations and their theoretical distributions as well as ecosystem assessments and climate change models such complex questions can be more easily dealt with if there is appropriate access to data and models a strategy endorsed by geo bon the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network in this paper we show how data and models recently made available on the world wide web can be coupled through interoperable services and used for climate change forecasting in the context of important bird areas ibas and how for any bird species described in the databases areas can be identified where the species may find a more suitable environment in the future as presented this is an example of the model web,2013,0.643
"A redescription of the post-larval physonect siphonophore stage known as Mica micula Margulis 1982, from Antarctica, with notes on its distribution and identity",the samples obtained during the 2008 collaborative east antarctic marine census ceamarc campaign in the southern ocean on the tr v umitaka maru contained many specimens of the physonect post larval stage known as mica micula in varying stages of development allowing us to complement the existing descriptions m micula appears to be endemic to the southern ocean and its possible position in the family pyrostephidae in particular the species pyrostephos vanhoeffeni is discussed for the first time the definitive nectophores were observed but they were still too underdeveloped to be assigned conclusively to any known physonect species,2013,0.661
Biodiversity sampling using a global acoustic approach: contrasting sites with microendemics in new caledonia.,new caledonia is a pacific island with a unique biodiversity showing an extreme microendemism many species distributions observed on this island are extremely restricted localized to mountains or rivers making biodiversity evaluation and conservation a difficult task a rapid biodiversity assessment method based on acoustics was recently proposed this method could help to document the unique spatial structure observed in new caledonia here this method was applied in an attempt to reveal differences among three mountain sites mandjã lia koghis and aoupiniã with similar ecological features and species richness level but with high beta diversity according to different microendemic assemblages in each site several local acoustic communities were sampled with audio recorders an automatic acoustic sampling was run on these three sites for a period of 82 successive days acoustic properties of animal communities were analysed without any species identification a frequency spectral complexity index np was used as an estimate of the level of acoustic activity and a frequency spectral dissimilarity index df assessed acoustic differences between pairs of recordings as expected the index np did not reveal significant differences in the acoustic activity level between the three sites however the acoustic variability estimated by the index df could first be explained by changes in the acoustic communities along the 24 hour cycle and second by acoustic dissimilarities between the three sites the results support the hypothesis that global acoustic analyses can detect acoustic differences between sites with similar species richness and similar ecological context but with different species assemblages this study also demonstrates that global acoustic methods applied at broad spatial and temporal scales could help to assess local biodiversity in the challenging context of microendemism the method could be deployed over large areas and could help to compare different sites and determine conservation priorities,2013,0.145
Online solutions and the ‘Wallacean shortfall’: what does GBIF contribute to our knowledge of species' ranges?,aim to investigate the contribution to range filling range extent and climatic niche space of species of information contained in the largest databank of digitized biodiversity data the global biodiversity information facility gbif we compared such information with a compilation of independent distributional data from natural history collections and other sources location europe methods we used data for the hawkmoths lepidoptera family sphingidae to assess three aspects of range information 1 observed range filling in 100 km ã 100 km grid cell squares 2 observed european range extent and 3 observed climatic niche range extents were calculated as products of latitudinal and longitudinal extents areas derived from minimum convex polygons drawn onto a 2 dimensional niche space representing the two main axes of a principal component analysis pca were used to calculate climatic niche space additionally record based permutation tests for niche differences were carried out results we found that gbif provided many more distribution records than independent compilation efforts but contributed less information on range filling range extent and climatic niches of species main conclusions although gbif contributed relevant additional information it is not yet an effective alternative to manual compilation and databasing of distributional records from collections and literature sources at least in lesser known taxa such as invertebrates we discuss possible reasons for our findings which may help shape gbif strategies for providing more informative data,2013,0.394
Biodiversity ensures plant-pollinator phenological synchrony against climate change,climate change has the potential to alter the phenological synchrony between interacting mutualists such as plants and their pollinators however high levels of biodiversity might buffer the negative effects of species specific phenological shifts and maintain synchrony at the community level as predicted by the biodiversity insurance hypothesis here we explore how biodiversity might enhance and stabilise phenological synchrony between a valuable crop apple and its native pollinators we combine 46 years of data on apple flowering phenology with historical records of bee pollinators over the same period when the key apple pollinators are considered altogether we found extensive synchrony between bee activity and apple peak bloom due to complementarity among bee species activity periods and also a stable trend over time due to differential responses to warming climate among bee species a simulation model confirms that high biodiversity levels can ensure plant pollinator phenological synchrony and thus pollination function,2013,0.319
Spatial data for fungal specimens: retrospective georeferencing and practical recommendations for mycologists,the number of studies based on herbarium data for analyzing biogeographical patterns and environmental questions is increasing as herbaria are making their collections available online however the quality of a specimenâ s spatial data still varies dramatically among records most historical specimen records either lack geographic information or have only vague textual descriptions about the locality while contemporary records may exhibit unwarranted variation in spatial data quality requiring increased awareness among mycologists about the importance of high quality primary spatial data for specimens georeferencing is the process of assigning geographic coordinates to a record linking it to a geographic location on earth and it can be processed retrospectively for records without geographical coordinates based on locality descriptions or directly collected in the field using gps handheld units here we provide an overview of methods for georeferencing historical data retrospectively discuss practical recommendations for collecting high quality spatial data for fungal specimens and suggest decimal degrees as a standard form for citing geographic coordinates,2013,0.322
The Effects of Sampling Bias and Model Complexity on the Predictive Performance of MaxEnt Species Distribution Models,species distribution models sdms trained on presence only data are frequently used in ecological research and conservation planning however users of sdm software are faced with a variety of options and it is not always obvious how selecting one option over another will affect model performance working with maxent software and with tree fern presence data from new zealand we assessed whether a choosing to correct for geographical sampling bias and b using complex environmental response curves have strong effects on goodness of fit sdms were trained on tree fern data obtained from an online biodiversity data portal with two sources that differed in size and geographical sampling bias a small widely distributed set of herbarium specimens and a large spatially clustered set of ecological survey records we attempted to correct for geographical sampling bias by incorporating sampling bias grids in the sdms created from all georeferenced vascular plants in the datasets and explored model complexity issues by fitting a wide variety of environmental response curves known as â â feature typesâ â in maxent in each case goodness of fit was assessed by comparing predicted range maps with tree fern presences and absences using an independent national dataset to validate the sdms we found that correcting for geographical sampling bias led to major improvements in goodness of fit but did not entirely resolve the problem predictions made with clustered ecological data were inferior to those made with the herbarium dataset even after sampling bias correction we also found that the choice of feature type had negligible effects on predictive performance indicating that simple feature types may be sufficient once sampling bias is accounted for our study emphasizes the importance of reducing geographical sampling bias where possible in datasets used to train sdms and the effectiveness and essentialness of sampling bias correction within maxent,2013,0.075
Globalising Biodiversity: Scientific Practices of Scaling and Databasing,since the convention on biological diversity in 1992 biodiversity has become an important topic for scientific research much of this research focuses on measuring and mapping the current state of biodiversity in terms of which species are present where and how abundantly and making extrapolations and future projectionsâ that is determining the trends needed for forest and nature governance biodiversity databases are crucial components of these activities because they store information about biodiversity and make it digitally available for biodiversity databases to be useful the data they contain must be reliable standardised and fit for upscaling this chapter uses material from the ebone project european biodiversity observation network to illustrate how biodiversity databases are constructed how data are negotiated and scaled and how biodiversity is globalised the findings show there is continuous interplay between scientific ideals related to objectivity and pragmatic considerations related to feasibility and data availability a crucial feature of the discussions was statistics it also proved to be the main device in upscaling the data the material presented shows that biodiversity is approached in an abstract quantitative and technical way by a group of scientists mostly ecologists in a highly contextual setting disconnected from the species and habitats that make up biodiversity and the people involved in collecting the data globalising biodiversity involves decontextualisation and standardisation this chapter argues that while this is important if the results of projects like ebone are to be usable in different contexts there is a risk involved as these processes may lead to the alienation of the organisations and volunteers who collect the data upon which these projects rely if these abstract representations of biodiversity become normalised this may result in a detached understanding of biodiversity itself and our relationships with it,2013,0.039
"Wool carder bees of the genus Anthidium in the Western Hemisphere (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae): diversity, host plant associations, phylogeny, and biogeography",bees are among the most important pollinators of flowering plants in most ecosystems recent concerns about population decline worldwide have highlighted the urgent societal need for species level systematic work that facilitates assessments of the status of pollinators and pollination services this is a comprehensive broadly comparative study on the diversity biology biogeography and evolution of anthidium fabricius 1804 one of the most diverse megachilid genera containing more than 160 species worldwide herein the western hemisphere species are revised all 92 recognized species including the two adventive species anthidium oblongatum illiger 1806 and anthidium manicatum linnaeus 1758 are described and illustrated a neotype for anthidium emarginatum say 1824 and lectotypes for 16 names are designated five names are relegated to synonymy three names are revalidated previously unknown males of three species are described and 21 new species are proposed identification keys as well as information on the distribution seasonality nesting biology and host plants are provided the relationships of the anthidium subgenera and all western hemisphere species are explored using a cladistic analysis based on adult external morphological characters the subgenus callanthidium cockerell 1925 renders anthidium s s paraphylectic in the analysis and is here synonymized the resulting phylogenetic hypothesis is used to examine possible biogeographical patterns origins of the western hemisphere fauna and the evolution of morphological traits associated with foraging for pollen from nototribic flowers and exudates from glandular trichomes to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to non specialists some digital outputs and web based products including a geo referenced specimen database consisting of more than 20 000 records species pages and interactive digital keys were also developed during this study,2013,0.939
"Atlas of pollen, spores and further non-pollen palynomorphs recorded in the glacial-interglacial late Quaternary sediments of Lake Suigetsu, central Japan",the record of well preserved palynomorphs from sediment samples of lake suigetsu mirrors temporal changes in the flora around the lake and spatial changes in the vegetation cover of central japan during the late quaternary this study presents photographic images of 169 identifiable types of moss lycophyte and fern spores and pollen of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants from the sg06 core sediment obtained at a standard magnification of ca 750ã additionally non pollen palynomorphs npps which appeared in the pollen slides are documented including remains of fungi rhizopods arthropods rotifers flatworms as well as green algae and plant tissue fragments all documented taxa are presented in taxonomical order on 66 plates including 55 plates for pollen and spores of higher plants and 11 plates for npps this study renders an overview on quality of preservation and on the range of palynomorphs found in the last glacial interglacial sediments of lake suigetsu and furthermore may serve as a handy and thorough guide for palynological investigations aiming at the reconstruction of past vegetation environmental and climatic dynamics,2013,0.313
Assessing the Primary Data Hosted by the Spanish Node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF),in order to effectively understand and cope with the current â biodiversity crisisâ having large enough sets of qualified data is necessary information facilitators such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif are ensuring increasing availability of primary biodiversity records by linking data collections spread over several institutions that have agreed to publish their data in a common access schema we have assessed the primary records that one such publisher the spanish node of gbif gbif es hosts on behalf of a number of institutions considered to be a highly representative sample of the total mass of available data for a country in order to know the quantity and quality of the information made available our results may provide an indication of the overall fitness for use in these data we have found a number of patterns in the availability and accrual of data that seem to arise naturally from the digitization processes knowing these patterns and features may help deciding when and how these data can be used broadly the error level seems low the available data may be of capital importance for the development of biodiversity research both locally and globally however wide swaths of records lack data elements such as georeferencing or taxonomical levels although the remaining information is ample and fit for many uses improving the completeness of the records would likely increase the usability span for these data,2013,0.165
"The ecology, biogeography, history and future of two globally important weeds: Cardiospermum halicacabum Linn. and C. grandiflorum Sw.",members of the balloon vine genus cardiospermum have been extensively moved around the globe as medicinal and horticultural species two of which are now widespread invasive species c grandiflorum and c halicacabum a third species c corindum may also have significant invasion potential however in some regions the native status of these species is not clear hampering management for example in south africa it is unknown whether c halicacabum and c corindum are native and this is a major constraint to on going biological control programmes against invasive c grandiflorum we review the geography biology and ecology of selected members of the genus with an emphasis on the two most widespread invaders c halicacabum and c grandiflorum specifically we use molecular data to reconstruct a phylogeny of the group in order to shed light on the native ranges of c halicacabum and c corindum in southern africa phylogenetic analyses indicate that southern african accessions of these species are closely related to south american taxa indicating human mediated introduction and or natural long distance dispersal then on a global scale we use species distribution modelling to predict potential suitable climate regions where these species are currently absent native range data were used to test the accuracy with which bioclimatic modelling can identify the known invasive ranges of these species results show that cardiospermum species have potential to spread further in already invaded or introduced regions in australia africa and asia underlining the importance of resolving taxonomic uncertainties for future management efforts bioclimatic modelling predicts australia to have highly favourable environmental conditions for c corindum and therefore vigilance against this species should be high species distribution modelling showed that native range data over fit predicted suitable ranges and that factors other than climate influence establishment potential this review opens the door to better understand the global biogeography of the genus cardiospermum with direct implications for management while also highlighting gaps in current research,2013,0.962
Continental shelf as potential retreat areas for Austral-Asian estrildid finches (Passeriformes: Estrildidae) during the Pleistocene,studies dealing with changes of biodiversity in time and space constitute an important part of biogeography ecology and conservation biology areas of long term climate stability are particularly interesting as they might have facilitated the survival of species over historical times and thus are crucial for understanding contemporary diversity patterns in this study we assessed the potential distribution of 23 estrildid finch species in order to analyse stability in recent and past diversity patterns and diversity centres in the austral asiatic region we used maxent to predict recent distributions of each species and to project them onto the climatic conditions of the last glacial maximum lgm 21 000 yr bp using two different scenarios ccsm miroc te resulting diversity patterns were tested on presence and possible shifts of distribution centres diversity patterns of forest and savannah living species were considered combined and separately during the lgm potential diversity patterns of forest living species corroborated well with postulated rainforest refuges situated on the eastern coast of cape york peninsula our results indicate a remarkably high stability of existing diversity centres although projections into the past show some differences in detail in the extent and exact position of the diversity centres they reveal largely congruent large scale patterns in both time slices however the models suggest a northward shift towards exposed continental shelf areas that where dry during the lgm clearly centres of diversity were situated on this land bridge between australia and new guinea highlighting their importance as areas of retreat for estrildid finches and maybe other savannah species in times of changing climatic conditions and associated sea level fluctuations,2013,0.777
Habitat-specific larval dispersal and marine connectivity: implications for spatial conservation planning,connectivity via larval dispersal is an important ingredient in setting effective marine reserve networks simple guidance for establishing spacing between individual protected sites can provide reliable rules of thumb to help ensure connectivity spacing rules for protected network design are relatively new to marine spatial planning though so far they have been generically and indiscriminately applied to all types of habitats based on a single range of distance values here we address the extent to which such rules capture subtleties associated with dispersal distances varying among species in different regions and habitats we applied a 50â 100 km global spacing rule srglob also recently applied in the california marine life protection act mlpa process and based on available global larval dispersal data to a previously assessed network in the gulf of california using larval dispersal data for species within this region srreg we associated each species with eight unique habitats srhab and we evaluated connectivity by means of different spacing rules srglob srreg and srhab using graph theory the existing spacing rule employed by the mlpa process srglob was found to be robust and conservative when applied to the gulf of california or to its different habitats i e the lower limit for dispersal distance includes the distance for all species in the gulf we found that species in different habitats exhibit statistically distinct dispersal profiles therefore some habitats could be evaluated with more relaxed spacing rules i e larger distances than those proposed by the rules of thumb our work identifies a conservation planning trade off when implementing spacing rules already proposed rules are robust but at the cost of efficiency habitat specific spacing rules should be considered for more efficient marine conservation planning solutions,2013,0.544
"Ancyronyx Erichson, 1847 (Coleoptera, Elmidae) from Mindoro, Philippines, with description of the larvae and two new species using DNA sequences for the assignment of the developmental stages",ancyronyx buhid sp n and a tamaraw sp n are described based on adults and larvae matched using their cox1 or cob dna sequence data additional records of a schillhammeri jã ch 1994 and a minerva freitag jã ch 2007 from mindoro are listed the previously unknown larva of a schillhammeri is also described here aided by cox1 data the new species and larval stages are described in detail and illustrated by sem and stacked microscopic images keys to the adult and larval ancyronyx species of mindoro and an upâ dated checklist of philippine ancyronyx species are provided the usefulness as bioindicators the phylogenetic relationships and biogeographic aspects affecting the distribution patterns are briefly discussed,2013,0.816
Data Management Research at the Technical University of Crete,the technical university of crete tuc www tuc gr founded in 1977 in chania crete is the youngest of the two technical universities in greece the other being the national technical university of athens the pur pose of this state institution is to provide high quality undergraduate as well as graduate studies in modern en gineering fields demanded by the greek and interna tional job market to conduct research in cutting edge technologies as well as to develop links with the greek and european industry today the technical university of crete comprises five engineering schools electronic and computer engineering production engineering and management mineral resources engineering environ mental engineering and architecture the,2013,0.244
Assessment of the olive territory thrung bio-morphological and geographical analysis,autochthonous germoplasm of the olive with 156 accessions o europaea l ssp sativa hoffm ssp o oleaster hoffm and ssp sylvestris has been analyzed with biological valences of the species catminate code and d gis bioclim domain to identify diversity and suitability of the territory for olive cultivation cartography with spatial analysis detects areas of different height diversity levels a lot of estimators and variability in the explored space 20 37 of the territory resulted excellent for olive cultivation in the analysis of spatial density the area of albania has two major hearths the ionian and adriatic hearth in general 21 genotypes resulted synonyms of 7 standard cv whereas 21 genotypes resulted homonymous pca between correlation matrices of all variables classified 16 unrelated variables explaining 95 of total variance pcoa indexes eigevectors positioned genotypes and their characters according to their degree of variability in negative or positive space axes x y and z,2013,0.444
Notes on the Chilean geographic distribution of several vascular plant species,new collections extend the chilean geographic distributions of five native and one endemic vascular plant species coriaria ruscifolia l coriariaceae fascicularia bicolor ruiz and pav mez subsp canaliculata e c nelson and zizka bromeliaceae drapetes muscosus lam thymelaeaceae phyllachne uliginosa j r forst and g forst stylidiaceae saxifragella bicuspidata hook f engl and saxifragodes albowiana kurtz ex albov d m moore both saxifragaceae species descriptions distribution maps and figures are presented distribution patterns are discussed in light of biogeographic implications,2013,0.595
Latitudinal diversity of sea anemones (cnidaria: actiniaria).,we sought to determine if the global distribution of sea anemones cnidarian order actiniaria conforms to the classic pattern of biogeography taxon richness at the equator with attenuation toward the poles a pattern that is derived almost entirely from data on terrestrial plants and animals we plotted the empirical distribution of species occurrences in 10â bands of latitude based on published information then using the chao2 statistic inferred the completeness of that inventory we found the greatest species richness of sea anemones at 30 40â n and s with lower numbers at tropical latitudes and the fewest species in polar areas the chao2 statistic allowed us to infer that the richness pattern we found is not due to particularly poor knowledge of tropical sea anemones no 10â band of latitude has less than 60 of the theoretical number of species known but for only about half of them could we reject the null hypothesis p 0 05 that information is complete anemone diversity is best documented at high latitudes we infer that the 1089 valid species currently known constitute about 70 of the theoretical total of about 1500 species of actiniaria the distribution pattern of sea anemone species resembles that of planktonic foraminiferans and benthic marine algae although planktonic bacteria marine bivalves and shallow and deep scleractinian corals show the terrestrial pattern of equatorial richness attenuating with latitude sea anemone species richness is complementary to that of scleractinian corals at many scales our findings affirm it at the global scale,2013,0.963
Ascomycota Macrofungi New to Romania,the paper gives a new contribution to the knowledge of ascomycota macrofungi from romania the paper presents three ascomycota species peziza phyllogena cooke scutellinia superba velen le gal and peroneutypa scoparia schwein carmarã n a i romero reported for the first time in romania the species were uncovered and identified during a larger research regarding the diversity and distribution of macrofungi in the areas near bucharest romania macro and micro morphological descriptions comments and illustrations of the species are presented key,2013,0.426
The ‘dirty dozen’: socio-economic factors amplify the invasion potential of 12 high-risk aquatic invasive species in Great Britain and Ireland,1 aquatic invasive species are a growing concern to environmental managers because of their diverse impacts on aquatic biodiversity and high eradication costs necessitating effective management policies in this study we evaluate the ability of environmental and socio economic factors to predict the risk of invasion in great britain and ireland of 12 potential aquatic invaders covering all major aquatic groups despite their potential to inform risk assessments this is the first time socio economic factors related to propagule pressure have been specifically integrated in distribution modelling 2 species distribution models sdm maxent algorithm were calibrated with a set of envi ronmental factors e g bioclimatic geographical and geological and integrated with socio economic e g human influence index population density closeness to ports predictors 3 the inclusion of socio economic factors in sdm did not affect accuracy scores auc already 0î 90 but their effects were more pronounced in spatial predictions resulting in up to a sixfold amplification of the area predicted suitable for each species despite the inclusion of potential surrogates of water chemistry e g geology and propagule pressure e g popula tion density temperature related variables were most important predictors of aquatic speciesâ distributions 4 according to sdm the environmental suitability for a suite of invaders belonging to dif ferent taxonomic groups and regions of origin is greatest in east and south east england and decreases towards the north and west multiple invasions in this region are of special concern as species are known to modify their habitat facilitating subsequent invasions thereby poten tially exacerbating their impacts 5 major management regions to be prioritized in monitoring programmes include the humber thames and anglian river basin districts species of special concern include a mysid hemimysis anomala a gammarid dikerogammarus villosus a plant ludwigia grandiflora and two crayfishes procambarus clarkii and p fallax 6 synthesis and applications the inclusion of socio economic factors in species distribution models has the potential to improve predictions of areas under a highest risk of multiple inva sions and to help disentangle the complex interplay between biological invasions and global environmental and socio economic processes such understanding is pivotal to prioritize limited resources for the optimum prevention and control of biological invasions,2013,0.514
Phylogeography of the California Gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica) using multilocus DNA sequences and ecological niche modeling,â an important step in conservation is to identify whether threatened populations are evolutionarily discrete and significant to the species a prior mitochondrial dna mtdna phylogeographic study of the california gnatcatcher polioptila californica revealed no geographic structure and thus did not support the subspecies validity of the threatened coastal california gnatcatcher p c californica the u s fish and wildlife service concluded that mtdna data alone were insufficient to test subspecies taxonomy we sequenced eight nuclear loci to search for historically discrete groupings that might have been missed by the mtdna study which we confirmed with new nd2 sequences phylogenetic analyses of the nuclear loci revealed no historically significant groupings and a low level of divergence gst 0 013 sequence data suggested an older population increase in southern populations consistent with niche modeling that suggested a northward range expansion following the last glacial maximum lgm the signal of population increase was most evident in the mtdna data revealing the importance of including loci with short coalescence times the threatened subspecies inhabits the distinctive coastal sage scrub ecosystem which might indicate ecological differentiation but a test of niche divergence was insignificant the best available genetic morphological and ecological data indicate a southward population displacement during the lgm followed by northward range expansion without the occurrence of significant isolating barriers having led to the existence of evolutionarily discrete subspecies or distinct population segments that would qualify as listable units under the endangered species act,2013,0.79
"Niche modelling for twelve plant species (six timber species and six palm trees) in the Amazon region, using collection and field survey data",knowledge of the distribution of plant species is essential for planning management and conservation actions especially for economically important species available data on plant species in the amazon usually do not represent their whole area of occurrence the most widely used approach to infer predictions on species occurrence is niche modelling which consists of correlating records of species with environmental conditions in their occurrence areas generating maps with the potential distribution based on a combination of environmental features suitable for each species the main objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of modelling to improve knowledge on the distribution of six timber species and six palm trees in the amazon and whether these models can benefit from using data from field surveys added to those of biological collections models were generated using the maxent algorithm all models generated showed a low extrinsic omission rate toe and auc above 0 75 areas predicted for timber species were more consistent with empirical knowledge than those predicted for palm trees probably due to the greater amount of occurrence sites available for timber species especially after adding data from field surveys the extent of the predicted area and the jaccard index were used to compare the maps after insertion of field survey data there was a large difference in extent just for two species one timber and one palm and a reduction in the predicted area for one species swietenia macrophylla the application of the jaccard index resulted in values between 0 41 and 0 65 for timber species reinforcing that the inclusion of field survey data changed predicted areas for palms the similar extent of predicted areas and jaccard values above 0 80 indicated a subtle difference between maps generated before and after the inclusion of field survey records probably due to the addition of fewer records the exception was astrocaryum murumuru for which the new records increased the extent of the predicted area the niche models associated with field studies can contribute enormously to increase knowledge concerning the current distribution of species but new field surveys should be carefully designed to cover wide and undersampled areas however it is necessary to consider that this strategy can only be adopted for species with clearly distinctive features for which field identifications are reliable,2013,0.988
"Worldwide spread of Alluaud's little yellow ant, Plagiolepis alluaudi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",abstract plagiolepis alluaudi emery 1894 is a tiny old world ant that has spread to many parts of the world through human commerce to examine the worldwide distribution of p alluaudi i compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records from 450 sites i documented the earliest known p alluaudi records for 46 geographic areas coun tries island groups and us states including several areas for which i found no previously published records anguilla barbados comoros islands grenada guadeloupe ãžles eparses martinique nevis st kitts st lucia and st martin plagiolepis alluaudi is a primarily tropical species apparently native to madagascar and neighboring islands it has be come a pest on pacific islands and in european greenhouses before the present study the only published reports of p alluaudi in the new world were several records from bermuda and one record from california recent surveys in ber muda and california have produced no additional reports of p alluaudi my new records of p alluaudi from nine tropical islands in the west indies indicate a substantial new world invasion it may be that the tropical climate of the west indies is more suitable for p alluaudi than the subtropical climates of bermuda and california where it may have died out,2013,0.395
"Phylogeography of a rare orchid, Vexillabium yakushimense: comparison of populations in central Honshu and the Nansei Island chain, Japan",vexillabium yakushimense is a rare terrestrial orchid which occurs in east and southeast asia in spite of its inconspicuous appearance several new populations were discovered in central honshu japan because these populations are geographically isolated at its northern range limit of distribution they were suspected to have distinctive genetic characteristics given this hypothesis we quantified the genetic variation of v yakushimense for populations of central honshu and the nansei island chain which represent the most southern locality in japan leaves were collected from nine populations in central honshu n 48 and two populations from the nansei island chain n 29 we examined genetic variation using cpdna 1 205 bp and its 511 bp markers based on the cpdna variation a total of seven haplotypes were recovered populations in central honshu were clearly differentiated from those in the nansei island chain relatively high allelic richness and haplotype diversity were found in the pooled population of central honshu these populations likely maintained an adequate population size for a long period despite a markedly different ecological niche compared to that in the nansei island chain in contrast to cpdna little variation was detected in its further studies on geographic occurrences reproductive biology and mycorrhizal association are encouraged for its conservation,2013,0.964
Projecting global mangrove species and community distributions under climate change,given the multitude of ecosystem services provided by mangroves it is important to understand their potential responses to global climate change extensive reviews of the literature and manipulative experiments suggest that mangroves will be impacted by climate change but few studies have tested these predictions over large scales using statistical models we provide the first example of applying species and community distribution models sdms and cdms respectively to coastal mangroves worldwide species distributions were modeled as ensemble forecasts using biomod distributions of mangrove communities with high species richness were modeled in threeways as the sum of the separate sdm outputs as binary hotspots with 3 species using a generalized linear model and continuously using a general boosted model individual sdms were projected for 12 species with sufficient data and cdms were projected for 30 species into 2080 using global climate model outputs and a range of sea level rise projections species projected to shift their ranges polewards by at least 2 degrees of latitude consistently experience a decrease in the amount of suitable coastal area available to them central america and the caribbean are forecast to lose more mangrove species than other parts of the world we found that the extent and grain size at which continuous cdmoutputs are examined independent of the grain size at which the models operate can dramatically influence the number of pseudo absences needed for optimal parameterization the sdms and cdms presented here provide a first approximation of how mangroves will respond to climate change given simple correlative relationships between occurrence records and environmental data additional precise georeferenced data on mangrove localities and concerted efforts to collect data on ecological processes across large scale climatic gradients will enable future research to improve upon these correlative models,2013,0.699
The distribution of groundwater habitats in Europe,globalization and planetary environmental changes have stimulated the inventory of groundwater resources and biodiversity at continental and global scales but there has been no concurrent attempt to map the distribution of groundwater habitats even at continental scale a vector version of the areal information contained in the international hydrogeological map of europe ihme was produced and thematic indicators for assessing its accuracy were established then groundwater flow type permeability and pore size were extracted from the vector ihme to define and map the distribution of 13 habitat types the habitat map was used to test for latitudinal variations in habitat diversity hd and whether these variations might in part account for the latitudinal gradient of regional species richness the hd of river catchments decreased significantly with increasing latitude after correcting for the effect of catchment area hd decreased by half the amount of deviance attributed to latitude in a regression model of regional species richness although the explanatory power of hd was probably limited by the coarse resolution of biogeographical regions the groundwater habitat map of europe represents a major step for the understanding assessment and conservation of groundwater biodiversity and for incorporating ecological perspectives in groundwater management policy,2013,0.434
The naturalization status of African Spotted Orchid (Oeceoclades maculata) in Neotropics,naturalization status of the african orchid species introduced in the neotropics oeceoclades maculata was studied ecological niche modeling was applied to estimate the present distribution of the suitable habitats for the african spotted orchid the similarity of the niches occupied by natural and invasive populations of the studied species was calculated moreover future distribution of its suitable habitats was estimated on the basis of three different climatic change scenarios and the potential further expansion scale was calculated based on range overlap test while currently o maculata seems to have reached its potential limits of invasion in south america and as for now it should not spread to the new habitats the species still has a potential of invasiveness in north america the future climate changes will probably result in shifts in the distribution of african spotted orchid suitable niches thereby causing its expansion to the new areas,2013,0.662
A new protocol for the collection and cataloguing of reference material for the study of fossil Cyperaceae fruits: The Modern Carpological Collection,fossil fruits of the species rich family cyperaceae poales are frequently found in cenozoic sediments of europe and their taxonomical analysis is particularly difficult and poorly practised because each fossil has to be compared with several tens of modern samples in order to pinpoint its nearest living relatives this is only possible by using collections specifically prepared for archaeo or palaeobotanical studies we illustrate here the current status and organisation of one of these collections developed in the frame of a more general â œmodern carpological collectionâ mcc of the turin university recent efforts in sampling identifying and characterising cyperaceous fruits in northern italy permitted the gathering of 411 samples covering 80 of the ca 200 species spontaneously growing in this territory due to the still dynamic taxonomy the large number of species and to the broad intraspecific variability of fruit morphology we kept a very detailed trace of the sample s origin by indicating whether and how they were related to the herbarium material modern samples from soils and sediments have also been collected being affected by taphonomic processes that make modern fruits more similar and readily comparable to palaeobotanical samples in order to test the usefulness of the collection for the identification of fossils we selected some fossil samples of cyperaceae fruits extracted from pleistocene and holocene sediments and we compared them with all the mcc samples containing similar material the result of this trial demonstrates the advantage in using specimen rich collections such as the mcc for the identification of fossils against using only the literature and or specimen poor reference collections we suggest that the procedures adopted for the mcc could become a standard protocol in collecting and cataloguing reference material for the study of fossil cyperaceae fruits besides the possible future development of this relatively small and local collection an even more promising perspective is seen in the networking activity amongst carpological collections pointing to the compilation of a large worldwide list of comparative material available for archaeo and palaeobotanical studies such an easy access to an abundant reference material would certainly favour the progress of fruit morphological studies moreover the integration with molecular analyses would presumably yield a better definition of the phylogenetic history of the cyperaceae within a time context,2013,0.863
"Transparency in conservation: rare species, secret files, and democracy",in many areas of environmental policy there are clashing trends and con flicting views concerning the accessibility of information and its appropriate use some countries restrict access to environmental information if access compromises the protection of species but this contrasts with environmen talist claims for transparency the right to know and the creation of the â green public sphereâ can access to biodiversity information ever be justifiably denied the paradoxical trends in environmental policy can be explained in terms of the dual role of information as much as it contributes to environmental causes it simultaneously enables people to utilise or destroy the objects of preservation while recognising the problematic nature of restricting transparency epistemic asymmetries â the kind of case in which public authorities have access to such information to which the public is denied access â can sometimes be justified in terms of security,2013,0.388
"Feeding ecology of the mangrove oyster, Crassostrea gasar (Dautzenberg, 1891) in traditional farming at the coastal zone of Benin, West Africa",wild collection management and farming of the mangrove oyster crassostrea gasar occurring widely at the benin west africa coastal zone require knowledge on the feeding ecology to explore energy sources and nutritional needs six hundred thirty 630 individuals of c gasar have been sampled in the rearing site at the benin coastal lagoon to investigate on the trophic ecology of this cultivated bivalve the diet analysis revealed that c gasar is a filter feeder foraging mainly on phytoplankton 72 70 and substrate particles 22 95 this trophic specialization results from anatomical structure mainly the presence of gills which facilitate the filtering of number of plankton taxa,2013,0.535
Microscopical evaluation and HPTLC fingerprintng of Anamirta Cocculus (Linn.) fruits,anamirta cocculus linn fruit has been used traditionally for its benefits as anti inflammatory anti ulcer and vermifuge and in management of skin diseases bronchitis and asthma the current study was therefore carried out to provide requisite pharmacognostic details about the fruit of anamirta cocculus linn it included examination of microscopical characters and hptlc fingerprint the powder microscopy showed the presence of fibers parenchyma cells sclereids vessel elements simple starch grains the ræ values detected at 254nm by qualitative densitometric hptlc fingerprint the present study will provide the information with respect to identification and authentication of crude drug,2013,0.331
Ross Sea Mollusca from the Latitudinal Gradient Program: R/V Italica 2004 Rauschert dredge samples,information regarding the molluscs in this dataset is based on the rauschert dredge samples collected during the latitudinal gradient program lgp on board the r v â œitalicaâ in the ross sea antarctica in the austral summer 2004 a total of 18 epibenthic dredge deployments samplings have been performed at four different locations at depths ranging from 84 to 515m by using a rauschert dredge with a mesh size of 500âµm in total 8 359 specimens have been collected belonging to a total of 161 species considering this dataset in terms of occurrences it corresponds to 505 discrete distributional records incidence data of these in order of abundance 5 965 specimens were gastropoda accounting for 113 species 1 323 were bivalvia accounting for 36 species 949 were aplacophora accounting for 7 species 74 specimens were scaphopoda 3 species 38 were monoplacophora 1 species and finally 10 specimens were polyplacophora 1 species this data set represents the first large scale survey of benthic micro molluscs for the area and provides important information about the distribution of several species which have been seldom or never recorded before in the ross sea all vouchers are permanently stored at the italian national antarctic museum mna section of genoa enabling future comparison and crosschecking this material is also currently under study from a molecular point of view by the barcoding project â œbambiâ pnra 2010 a1 10,2013,0.984
Biology and Host Specificity of Anthonomus tenebrosus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): A Herbivore of Tropical Soda Apple,tropical soda apple solanum viarum dunal is a major exotic weed in pastures and conservation areas in subtropical regions anthonomus tenebrosus boheman coleoptera curculion idae was found feeding on the ãÿowers of tropical soda apple in southern brazil and was considered a potential biological control agent the objectives of this study were to examine the life history and host speciãžcity of a tenebrosus the development from egg to adult was measured at eight constant temperatures in growth chambers the presence of reproductive diapause was measured by using a two way factorial design with three temperatures 20 22 5 and 25 c and two photoperiods 14 10 and10 14 l d h temperatureinãÿuencedthedevelopmentaltimefromeggto adult of a tenebrosus which ranged from 49 6 d at 16 cto13 6dat28 c the longevity of males ranged from 64 to 190 d whereas females lived from 44 to 204 d when exposed to 10 14 l d h and 20 c 35 of females entered reproductive diapause the fundamental host range of a tenebrosusã based on several life history aspects including adult longevity oogenesis andovipositionã andimmaturedevelopment of a tenebrosus were studied under no choice conditions 80 of adults survived for 30 d on several solanum melongena l varieties solanum capsicoides s viarum and solanum carolinense l a ten ebrosus completed development from egg to adult on a number of s melongena varieties the native plant s carolinense and the exotic plants s capsicoides all s viarum and solanum tampicense dunal under paired choice conditions adult feeding occurred on all species whereas oviposition occurred only on s viarum s capsicoides and s carolinense because of the nontarget attack to s melongena and a native plant a tenebrosus should not be considered for release as a biological control agent of tropical soda apple in the united states,2013,0.685
Knowledge of Colombian biodiversity: published and indexed,documenting patterns of published studies on the biodiversity of megadiverse countries can offer valuable insights on global biodiversity knowledge here i present results from a bibliometric analysis of 5 264 indexed publications on biodiversity in colombia published during the period 1990â 2011 and gathered by searching the web of knowledge database i classified studies into six overlapping subjects taxa lists new taxa new records conservation genetic diversity and other publications were also classified by geographic location and the taxonomic group studied i found variation in the number of studies per year which presented a long term trend of increasing volume the 31 continental departments of colombia and both the atlantic and the pacific oceans were represented in the studies which included 98 taxonomic classes from 47 phyla however there were strong biases in taxonomic geographic and subject coverage for instance 75 of studies focused on animals and the atlantic ocean showed the highest number of studies followed by antioquia and valle del cauca departments genetic diversity and conservation were the least studied subjects i also found that colombian researchers and colombian institutions have played an important role in documenting the countryâ s outstanding biodiversity however colombian biologists still prefer to publish in domestic or latin american journals which are mainly regional and have low inter national visibility the patterns i present here can have important implications for opti mizing and guiding research on colombian biodiversity and the paper concludes with some recommendations,2013,0.474
EU-Brazil Open Data and Cloud Computing e-Infrastructure for Biodiversity,â eubrazilopenbio is a collaborative initiative ad dressing strategic barriers in biodiversity research by integrating open access data and user friendly tools widely available in brazil and europe the project deploys the eu brazil cloud based e infrastructure that allows the sharing of hardware software and data on demand this e infrastructure provides access to several integrated services and resources to seamlessly aggregate taxonomic biodiversity and climate data used by processing services implementing checklist cross mapping and ecological niche modelling the concept of virtual research environments is used to provide the users with a single entry point to processing and data resources this article describes the architecture demonstration use cases and initial experimental results,2013,0.194
Niche conservatism and the potential for the crayfish Procambarus clarkii to invade South America,1 invasive species are one of the most severe threats to biodiversity and an ability to predict the extent of potential invasions can help conservation strategies species distribution models sdms have been widely used to project the potential range of invasive species these models assume that species retain their niche properties during invasion niche conservatism although this assumption is seldom verified 2 we gathered occurrence records for the crayfish procambarus clarkii from the u s a and mexico native invasive ranges and from the iberian peninsula invasive to test for niche conservatism across continents using niche overlap metrics schoenerâ s d to test for differences in the climate space occupied by the species on the different continents we performed two principal component analyses pcas on the environmental data extracted from occurrence records first separately for each occurrence data set i e each continent and secondly using the pooled data subsequently we projected the model to south america where this species has the potential to become invasive 3 schoenerâ s d showed high overlap 0 68 between the two regions the americas and iberia and there was no difference between the regions in both pcas the crayfish has conserved its niche across continents and therefore our model projection to south america may accurately demonstrate where invasion is most likely to occur 4 large parts of south america are apparently suitable mainly argentina chile paraguay uruguay and southern brazil this result is of great concern since this invasive species can spread quickly in suitable areas stronger laws and regulations should be made to protect native biodiversity and agri cultural land our approach could be replicated for the study of invasions by other species where extensive data on the potentially invaded areas are available,2013,0.848
Divergent and narrower climatic niches characterize polyploid species of European primroses in Primula sect. Aleuritia,aim it is hypothesized that the ecological niches of polyploids should be both distinct and broader than those of diploids â characteristics that might have allowed the successful colonization of open habitats by polyploids during the pleistocene glacial cycles here we test these hypotheses by quantifying and comparing the ecological niches and niche breadths of a group of european primroses location europe methods we gathered georeferenced data of four related species in primula sect aleuritia at different ploidy levels diploid tetraploid hexaploid and octoploid and used seven bioclimatic variables to quantify niche overlap between species by applying a series of univariate and multivariate analyses combined with modelling techniques we also employed permutation based tests to evaluate niche similarity between the four species niche breadth for each species was evaluated both in the multivariate environmental space and in geographical space results the four species differed significantly from each other in mono dimensional comparisons of climatological variables and occupied distinct habitats in the multi dimensional environmental space the majority of the permutation based tests either indicated that the four species differed significantly in their habitat preferences and ecological niches or did not support significant niche similarity furthermore our results revealed narrower niche breadths and geographical ranges in species of p sect aleuritia at higher ploidy levels main conclusions the detected ecological differentiation between the four species of p sect aleuritia at different ploidy levels is consistent with the hypothesis that polyploids occupy distinct ecological niches that differ from those of their diploid relative contrary to expectations we find that polyploid species of p sect aleuritia occupy narrower environmental and geographical spaces than their diploid relative these results on the ecological niches of closely related polyploid and diploid species highlight factors that potentially contribute to the evolution and distribution of polyploid species,2013,0.986
ELSEWeb Meets SADI: Supporting Data-to-Model Integration for Biodiversity Forecasting,in this paper we describe the approach of the earth life and semantic web elseweb project that facili tates the discovery and transformation of earth observa tion data sources for the creation of species distribution models data to model transformations elseweb au tomates the discovery and processing of voluminous heterogeneous satellite imagery and other geospatial data available at the earth data analysis center to be included in lifemapper species distribution mod els by using ai knowledge representation and reason ing techniques developed by the semantic web com munity the realization of the elseweb semantic in frastructure provides the possibility of combinatoric ex plosions of scientific results automatically generated by orchestrations of data mash ups and service composi tion we report on the key elements that contributed to the elseweb project and the role of automated rea soning in streamlining the species distribution model generation and execution 1,2013,0.279
An introduction to the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the DOPA Explorer (Beta),the digital observatory for protected areas dopa has been developed in collaboration with the unep world conservation monitoring centre unep wcmc the international union for conservation of nature iucn the global biodiversity information facility gbif and birdlife international to support the european unionâ s efforts â œto substantially strengthen the effectiveness of international governance for biodiversity and ecosystem services ec com 2006 0216 final â and more generally for â œstrengthening the capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data information and forecasts so that they are readily accessible to policymakers managers experts and other usersâ unep cbd cop 10 27 dopa is conceived as a set of distributed critical biodiversity informatics infrastructures databases web modelling services broadcasting services combined with interoperable web services to provide a large variety of end users including park managers decision makers and researchers with means to assess monitor and possibly forecast the state and pressure of protected areas at local regional and global scale,2013,0.185
"Northern Range Extension to Georges Bank for Hollardia hollardi (Reticulate Spikefish) (Triacanthodidae, Tetraodontiformes)",hollardia hollardi reticulate spikefish is reported from two specimens caught in lobster traps along the southern edge of georges bank far north of its previously known northern distribution from southern florida the bahamas and bermuda,2013,0.378
The Product and System Specificities of Measuring Curation Impact,using three datasets archived at the national center for atmospheric research ncar we describe the creation of a â data usage indexâ for curation specific impact assessments our work is focused on quantitatively evaluating climate and weather data used in earth and space science research but we also discuss the application of this approach to other research data contexts we conclude with some proposed future directions for metric based work in data curation,2013,0.216
Cryptic speciation patterns in Iranian rock lizards uncovered by integrative taxonomy,while traditionally species recognition has been based solely on morphological differences either typological or quantitative several newly developed methods can be used for a more objective and integrative approach on species delimitation this may be especially relevant when dealing with cryptic species or species complexes where high overall resemblance between species is coupled with comparatively high morphological variation within populations rock lizards genus darevskia are such an example as many of its members offer few diagnostic morphological features herein we use a combination of genetic morphological and ecological criteria to delimit cryptic species within two species complexes d chlorogaster and d defilippii both distributed in northern iran our analyses are based on molecular information from two nuclear and two mitochondrial genes morphological data 15 morphometric 16 meristic and four categorical characters and eleven newly calculated spatial environmental predictors the phylogeny inferred for darevskia confirmed monophyly of each species complex with each of them comprising several highly divergent clades especially when compared to other congeners we identified seven candidate species within each complex of which three and four species were supported by bayesian species delimitation within d chlorogaster and d defilippii respectively trained with genetically determined clades ecological niche modeling provided additional support for these cryptic species especially those within the d defilippii complex exhibit well differentiated niches due to overall morphological resemblance in a first approach pca with mixed variables only showed the separation between the two complexes however mancova and subsequent discriminant analysis performed separately for both complexes allowed for distinction of the species when sample size was large enough namely within the d chlorogaster complex in conclusion the results support four new species which are described herein,2013,0.996
"The first Cordyla Meigen species (Diptera, Mycetophilidae) from continental Australia and Tasmania",a new species of mycetophilidae cordyla australica sp n is described from continental australia and tasmania representing the first cordyla record in the region a detailed description of its morphology with illustrations of male and female terminalia and a map of the collecting localities are provided ac cording to the structure of male terminalia c australica sp n belongs to the c murina species group that has 13 species worldwide within the group c australica sp n resembles c murina but has a unique outline of the hypoproct and medial branch of the gonostylus the observed distributional pattern is restricted to the rainforest of eastern australia and tasmania,2013,0.767
The need for data standards in zoomorphology,escience is a new approach to research that focuses on data mining and exploration rather than data generation or simulation this new approach is arguably a driving force for scientific progress and requires data to be openly available easily accessible via the internet and compatible with each other escience relies on modern standards for the reporting and documentation of data and metadata here we suggest necessary components i e content concept nomenclature format of such standards in the context of zoomorphology we document the need for using data repositories to prevent data loss and how publication practice is currently changing with the emergence of dynamic publications and the publication of digital datasets subsequently we demonstrate that in zoomorphology the scientific record is still limited to published literature and that zoomorphological data are usually not accessible through data repositories the underlying problem is that zoomorphology lacks the standards for data and metadata as a consequence zoomorphology cannot participate in escience we argue that the standardization of morphological data requires i a standardized framework for terminologies for anatomy and ii a formalized method of description that allows computer parsable morphological data to be communicable compatible and comparable the role of controlled vocabularies e g ontologies for developing respective terminologies and methods of description is discussed especially in the context of data annotation and semantic enhancement of publications finally we introduce the international consortium for zoomorphology standards a working group that is open to everyone and whose aim is to stimulate and synthesize dialog about standards it is the consortium s ultimate goal to assist the zoomorphology community in developing modern data and metadata standards including anatomy ontologies thereby facilitating the participation of zoomorphology in escience j morphol 2013 â 2013 wiley periodicals inc,2013,0.072
The diverse habitats of Hygrocybe – peeking into an enigmatic lifestyle,the genus hygrocybe fr p kumm is globally distributed certain taxa occur on different continents even in the northern and the southern hemisphere in europe grassland is the preferred habitat the trophic ecology is still unclear in this review studies and internet sources of about 65 locations distributed from high to low latitudes across all continents in which 16 hygrocybe species typically found in europe occur have been analysed with regard to habitat types vegetation and soil properties the analysis shows that several of the selected hygrocybe species can cope with a very wide range of habitats they appear to prefer soils with low fertility grassland over forests and temperate boreal climates most significantly waxcaps are found in forest habitats in the absence of grasses and in grasslands where woody hosts are absent mosses are not obligately associated their host associations are extremely flexible a biotrophic lifestyle should be considered,2013,0.429
Third world list of cetrarioid lichens: A databased tool for documentation of nomenclatural data-lessons learned,the third version of the world list of cetrarioid lichens contains 572 names representing 149 accepted species it is presented in a new electronical form based on a filemaker powered database allowing users to view data in different sets and to perform searches type information is added for most of the names and new information regarding the phylogenetic status of accepted taxa is introduced five global taxonomic databases catalogue of life encyclopedia of life index fungorum lias mycobank are compared by scanning the availability of mainly nomenclatural data of 30 selected cetrarioid names 10 accepted names 10 homotypic and 10 heterotypic synonyms the significance of digital web resources is discussed,2013,0.429
"On the presence and distribution of the Gulf sand gecko, Pseudoceramodactylus khobarensis Haas, 1957 (Reptilia: Squamata: Gekkonidae) in Qatar",the gulf sand gecko pseudoceramodactylus khobarensis haas 1957 is a nocturnal gecko endemic to the arabian gulf countries in this study we report the presence of this species in qatar for the first time our findings bridge one of the current geographic gaps in the known distribution range of this species in qatar the species has been found on the mainland and on two islands occupying coastal salty habitats with shrubs the islands are the smallest where this species is known to occur we believe that this gecko species is more widely distributed in qatar than we report here and that an extensive inventory is required to map the full range of the species in qatar and also in other countries of the arabian gulf,2013,0.923
"Radically different phylogeographies and patterns of genetic variation in two European brown frogs, genus Rana",we reconstruct range wide phylogeographies of two widespread and largely co occurring western palearctic frogs rana temporaria and r dalmatina based on tissue or saliva samples of over 1000 individuals we compare a variety of genetic marker systems including mitochondrial dna single copy protein coding nuclear genes microsatellite loci and single nucleotide polymorphisms snps of transcriptomes of both species the two focal species differ radically in their phylogeographic structure with r temporaria being strongly variable among and within populations and r dalmatina homogeneous across europe with a single strongly differentiated population in southern italy these differences were observed across the various markers studied including microsatellites and snp density but especially in protein coding nuclear genes where r dalmatina had extremely low heterozygosity values across its range including potential refugial areas on the contrary r temporaria had comparably high range wide values including many areas of probable postglacial colonization a phylogeny of r temporaria based on various concatenated mtdna genes revealed that two haplotype clades endemic to iberia form a paraphyletic group at the base of the cladogram and all other haplotypes form a monophyletic group in agreement with an iberian origin of the species demographic analysis suggests that r temporaria and r dalmatina have genealogies of roughly the same time to coalescence tmrca 3 5 mya for both species but r temporaria might have been characterized by larger ancestral and current effective population sizes than r dalmatina the high genetic variation in r temporaria can therefore be explained by its early range expansion out of iberia with subsequent cycles of differentiation in cryptic glacial refugial areas followed by admixture while the range expansion of r dalmatina into central europe is a probably more recent event,2013,0.738
Annotating biodiversity data via the Internet,biological specimens in research collections provide the most important baseline information for systematic research traditionally they are annotated by experts in written form which remains directly associated with the specimens these annotations defined as data added at a later stage to the original data provide an important quality control mechanism they improve the value of herbarium specimens and are identification trails documenting the development of taxonomic concepts over time with specimen data increasingly becoming accessible via the internet a general online annotation system that ensures that the traditional data sharing and documentation of specimen data is continued after the information is mobilised through digitisation is currently missing we lay out the prerequisites for such an annotation system including data standards a data repository system access and user roles we also introduce an exemplar solution developed in the dfg funded anno sys project annosys is being implemented using the example of collection and observation data in the botanical domain as provided by the gbif biocase networks it provides a user friendly interface to allow researchers to produce and discover annotations if a record has been annotated both the annotation and the original record will be stored in a repository linked via a persistent identifier and will be accessible through the annosys interfaces collection holders and scientists specifically interested in a subset of data will be informed about annotations in which they have expressed interest we discuss annosys in relation to the filteredpush project which pursues the same goal in facilitating and communicating online annotations but which takes a different approach,2013,0.028
"Patterns of Freshwater Bivalve Global Diversity and the State of Phylogenetic Studies on the Unionoida , Sphaeriidae , and Cyrenidae Patterns of freshwater bivalve global diversity and the state of phylogenetic studies on the Unionoida , Sphaeriidae , and",the objective of this paper is to review the current state of our knowledge of freshwater bivalve diversity and evolution in order to identify some of the â œgreat unanswered questionsâ in the fi eld twenty one bivalve families have been attributed to fresh waters but only 16 actually live and reproduce in inland waterways of 1209 species of freshwater bivalves 1178 97 belong to eight primary freshwater families unionidae margaritiferidae hyriidae mycetopodidae iridinidae and etheriidae all unionoida sphaeriidae and cyrenidae both veneroida the remaining 31 species represent secondary freshwater lineages of predominantly brackish marine bivalve families the global geographical patterns of freshwater bivalve richness are discussed and an appendix detailing the families genera and species of freshwater bivalves is provided although the primary freshwater bivalve families represent at least three independent radiations from marine into inland aquatic habitats these lineages have converged on similar adaptations to life in a fl owing hypoosmotic medium for example all have abandoned broadcast spawning and planktonic veligers phylogenetic studies of the unionoida sphaeriidae and cyrenidae have also converged on a suite of common challenges outgroup issues biased ingroup taxon and character sampling and atypical modes of genetic inheritance that uncouple gene trees from species trees the recent phylogenetic literature on the three primary radiations is reviewed emphasizing areas in need of research ample opportunities exist in freshwater bivalve research but progress is hindered by the limited numbers of researchers and students in the field,2013,0.477
ModestR: a software tool for managing and analyzing species distribution map databases,the modestr package consists of three applications mapmaker datamanager and mrfinder mapmaker facilitates making range maps by drawing the areas by importing existing data or using the global biodiversity information facility portal it can discriminate between diff erent habitats thereby making data cleaning tasks easier datamanager allows the management of taxonomically structured databases for range maps mrfinder supports querying modestr databases to fi nd the species present in specifi c areas possible applications include the compilation and management of species distribu tion databases cleaning data and computing aggregated data to perform subsequent analyses in other packages thanks to emphasized interoperability,2013,0.456
Suitable regions for date palm cultivation in Iran are predicted to increase substantially under future climate change scenarios,the objective of the present paper is to use climex software to project how climate change might impact the futuredistribution of date palm phoenix dactylifera l in iran although the outputs of this softwareare only based on the response of a species to climate the climex results were refined in the present study using two non climatic parameters a the location of soils containing suitable physicochemical properties and b the spatial distribution of soil types having suitable soil taxonomy for dates as unsuitable soil types impose problems in air permeability hydraulic conductivity and root development here two different global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 cs andmiroc h mr wereemployedwiththea2 emissionscenariotomodelthepotentialdate palm distribution under current and future climates in iran for the years 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 the results showed that only c 0â 30 of the area identified as suitable by climex will actually be suitable for date palm cultivation the restof the areacomprises soil typesthatarenot favourable for datepalm cultivation moreover the refined outputs indicate that the total area suitable for date palm cultivation will increase to 31â 3 million ha by 2100 compared with 4â 8 million ha for current date palm cultivation the present results also indicate that only heatstresswill haveanimpacton datepalmdistribution iniranby 2100 with theareascurrentlyimpactedby cold stress diminishing by 2100,2013,0.178
Implementing an Architecture for Semantic Search Systems for Retrieving Information in Biodiversity Repositories,biological diversity is of essential value to life sustainability on earth and motivates many efforts to collect data about species giving rise to a large amount of information biodiversity data in most cases is stored in relational databases researchers use this data to extract knowledge and share their new discoveries about living things however nowadays the traditional search approach based on keywords is not appropriate to be used in large amounts of heterogeneous biodiversity data in addition the search by keyword has low precision and recall in this kind of data in this paper we present a novel architecture for ontology based semantic search systems and test results of a prototype system implemented using state of the art free semantic web tools using a set of representative data about biodiversity from inpa consisting of specimens of fish and insects this test results show that the prototype had better recall and precision than keyword based methods for the same dataset in the semantic web ontologies allow knowledge to be organised into conceptual spaces in accordance to its meaning for that reason for semantic search to work a key point is to create mappings between the data stored in relational databases and the ontologies describing this data this work also developed such a mapping,2013,0.125
"On the date and organ of publication for the endemic Galápagos scorpion Centruroides exsul (Scorpiones: Buthidae) by Wilhelm Meise, with a revision of its distribution and type material",there are conflicting statements in the literature about the date and organ of publication for the endemic gala â pagos scorpion centruroides exsul scorpiones buthidae by wilhelm meise in contrast to what the current authoritative taxonomic references suggest this species was not described in 1934 but rather in 1933 before the article containing the description finally was included in volume 74 of the norwegian journal nyt magazin for naturvidenskaberne in 1934 it was distributed as a preprint in the form of volume 39 of the separately issued series meddelelser fra det zoologiske museum oslo in 1933 the latter publication in full agreement with article 21 8 of the international code of zoological nomenclature has priority over the former and consequently has to be referred to when citing the original taxonomic reference the present contribution furthermore reviews the distribution of this species and due to loss and mislabeling revises its type material,2013,0.299
Climate change impact on seaweed meadow distribution in the North Atlantic rocky intertidal,the north atlantic has warmed faster than all other ocean basins and climate change scenarios predict sea surface temperature isotherms to shift up to 600 km northwards by the end of the 21st century the pole ward shift has already begun for many temperate seaweed species that are important intertidal foundation species we asked the question where will climate change have the greatest impact on three foundational macroalgal species that occur along north atlantic shores fucus serratus fucus vesiculosus and ascophyllum nodosum to predict distributional changes of these key species under three ipcc intergovernmental panel on climate change climate change scenarios a2 a1b and b1 over the coming two centuries we generated ecological niche models with the program maxent model predictions suggest that these three species will shift northwards as an assemblage or unit and that phytogeographic changes will be most pronounced in the southern arctic and the southern temperate provinces our models predict that arctic shores in canada greenland and spitsbergen will become suitable for all three species by 2100 shores south of 45â north will become unsuitable for at least two of the three focal species on both the northwest and northeast atlantic coasts by 2200 if these foundational species are unable to adapt to the rising temperatures they will lose their centers of genetic diversity and their loss will trigger an unpredictable shift in the north atlantic intertidal ecosystem,2013,0.937
"From southern refugia to the northern range margin: genetic population structure of the common wall lizard, Podarcis muralis",aim thermophilic species persisted in southern refugia during the cold phases of the pleistocene and expanded northwards during warming these processes caused genetic imprints such as a differentiation of genetic lineages and a loss of genetic diversity in the wake of re colonization we used molecular markers and species distribution models sdms to study the impact of range dynamics on the common wall lizard podarcis muralis from southern refugia to the northern range margin location parts of the western palaearctic methods we genotyped 10 polymorphic microsatellites in 282 individuals of p muralis and sequenced the mitochondrial dna mtdna cytochrome b gene to study the genetic structure divergence times and ancestral distribu tions furthermore we generated sdms for climate scenarios for 6 and 21 ka derived from two different global circulation models results we detected two major mtdna lineages â a western france clade pyrenees to brittany and an eastern france clade southern france to germany belgium and luxembourg this split was dated to c 1 23 ma the latter clade was divided into two subclades which diverged c 0 38 ma genetic diversity of microsatellites within each clade was nested and showed a significant loss of genetic diversity from south to north a strong pattern of allele surfing across nearly all loci and an increase in genetic differentiation towards the northern range margin results from sdms suggest that southward range retraction during the late glacial period split the distribution into geographically distinct refugia main conclusions the strong genetic differentiation mirrors the effects of long term isolation of p muralis in multiple refugia post glacial recolonization of northern europe has taken place from two distinct refugia most probably along river systems rh one rhine moselle and along the atlantic coastline with subsequent nested elimination of genetic diversity and increasing genetic differentiation at the northern range margin,2013,0.478
Areas of Endemism: Methodological and Applied Biogeographic Contributions from South America,the geographic distribution of organisms is the subject of biogeography a field of biology that naturalists have carried out for over two centuries 1 6 from the observation of animal and plant distribution diverse questions emerge the description of diversity gradients delimitation of areas of endemism identification of ancestral areas and search of relationships among areas among others have become major issues to be analyzed worked out and solved in this way biogeography has turned into a multi layered discipline with both theoretical and analytical frameworks and far reaching objectives,2013,0.297
Plant Collections Online: Using Digital Herbaria in Biology Teaching,herbaria are collections of preserved plants specimens some of which date back to the 16th century they are essential to botanical research especially in systematics they can also be important historical documents the collections of lewis and clark carolus linnaeus and charles darwin to name a few are primary sources for the study of these individualsâ work now many of these herbarium specimens are being scanned and the images are freely available on the web this article deals with how these online collections may be used in teaching about biology and its history it will highlight the jstor plant science project which is making available electronically about two million plant specimens many historically significant as well as the entire runs of important plant journals in addition it will discuss other valuable online resources including how links to social media can bring the history of botany to 21st century students,2013,0.103
"Synthetodontium kunlunense (Mielichhoferiaceae, Musci), a New Moss Species from the Kunlun Mountain Range, China",a new moss species of the family mielichhoferiaceae synthetodontium kunlunense j c zhao y y liu is described and illustrated it was collected from soil substrates in an oasis in the kunlun mountains in xinjiang uyghur autonomous region in china the peristome structure of this species is similar to that of s pringlei cardot but s kunlunense has longer leaves 0 5â 1 3 mm vs ca 0 5 mm shorter median leaf cells 8 6â 21 7 î m vs 40 6â 72 6 î m decurrent leaf bases vs not decurrent a nodding capsule vs erect and reddish proximal leaf cells vs green synthetodontium cardot seems to be a disjunct genus distributed between east asia and north america because the new species is known from a single locality in china and another closely related species in the genus is known from four localities in mexico,2013,0.872
A treasure trove of plant biodiversity from the 20th century: the Werner Rauh Heritage Project at Heidelberg Botanical Garden and Herbarium,prof werner rauh 1913â 2000 was the director at heidelberg botanical garden and herbarium for several decades and until his retirement in 1994 he undertook more than 36 expeditions mainly to south and central america as well as to southern africa and in par ticular to madagascar from these journeys he brought back innumerable plants to the botanical garden heidel berg especially succulents bromeliads and orchids which are a valuable part of todayâ s living collection and of the herbarium during his expeditions he wrote more than 90 booklets with detailed information not only about the plants collected but also about the vegetation and geology of the regions he visited the heart of the presented werner rauh heritage project is a relational database to store the heterogeneous information found in these field books as well as to link the information to actual taxonomy and to the gardenâ s existing database the living collection and numerous plant type material a number of powerful tools are being developed to enable researchers to search the database for cross linked information including rauhâ s original field numbers and the place of collection the central part of the werner rauh heritage project database is a look up table with the geo referenced itineraries of werner rauhâ s journeys and another table with all taxa entries listed in any field book tables with synonyms basionyms and protologue data are included as well as numerous images and links to other taxonomic databases such as ipni and tropicos department of biodiversity and plan,2013,0.329
Range Expansion of Ambrosia artemisiifolia in Europe Is Promoted by Climate Change,ambrosia artemisiifolia l native to north america is a problematic invasive species because of its highly allergenic pollen te species is expected to expand its range due to climate change by means of ecological niche modelling enm we predict habitat suitability for a artemisiifolia in europe under current and future climatic conditions overall we compared the performance and results of 16 algorithms commonly applied in enm as occurrence records of invasive species may be dominated by sampling bias wealsouseddatafromthe native range to assess thequality of themodelling approaches we assembledanewmap of current occurrences of a artemisiifolia in europe our results show that enm yields a good estimation of the potential range of a artemisiifolia in europe only when using thenorth american data a strong sampling bias in the european global biodiversity information facility gbif data for a artemisiifolia causes unrealistic results using thenorthamerican data reflects the realized european distribution very well all models predict an enlargement and a northwards shiå t of potential range in central and northern europe during the next decades climate warming will lead to an increase and northwards shiå t of a artemisiifolia in europe,2013,0.605
Ecology and Geography of Transmission of Two Bat-Borne Rabies Lineages in Chile,rabies was known to humans as a disease thousands of years ago in america insectivorous bats are natural reservoirs of rabies virus the bat species tadarida brasiliensis and lasiurus cinereus with their respective host specific rabies virus variants agv4 and agv6 are the principal rabies reservoirs in chile however little is known about the roles of bat species in the ecology and geographic distribution of the virus this contribution aims to address a series of questions regarding the ecology of rabies transmission in chile analyzing records from 1985â 2011 at the instituto de salud pu â blica de chile isp and using ecological niche modeling we address these questions to help in understanding rabies bat ecological dynamics in south america we found ecological niche identity between both hosts and both viral variants indicating that niches of all actors in the system are undifferentiated although the viruses do not necessarily occupy the full geographic distributions of their hosts bat species and rabies viruses share similar niches and our models had significant predictive power even across unsampled regions results thus suggest that outbreaks may occur under consistent stable and predictable circumstances citation,2013,0.898
"Four barriers to the global understanding of biodiversity conservation: wealth, language, geographical location and security.",global biodiversity conservation is seriously challenged by gaps and heterogeneity in the geographical coverage of existing information nevertheless the key barriers to the collection and compilation of biodiversity information at a global scale have yet to be identified we show that wealth language geographical location and security each play an important role in explaining spatial variations in data availability in four different types of biodiversity databases the number of records per square kilometre is high in countries with high per capita gross domestic product gdp high proportion of english speakers and high security levels and those located close to the country hosting the database but these are not necessarily countries with high biodiversity these factors are considered to affect data availability by impeding either the activities of scientific research or active international communications our results demonstrate that efforts to solve environmental problems at a global scale will gain significantly by focusing scientific education communication research and collaboration in low gdp countries with fewer english speakers and located far from western countries that host the global databases countries that have experienced conflict may also benefit findings of this study may be broadly applicable to other fields that require the compilation of scientific knowledge at a global level,2013,0.187
A knowledge base for Exploited Marine Ecosystems,in 2008 ird started to work on setting up a knowledge base named ecoscope about ecosystem approach to fisheriesdomain eaf in the context of a marine ecology laboratory studying exploited marine ecosystems in different regions of the world this application was meant to fit the needs of researchers by improving knowledge and related information resources management 14 12 among other goals researchers expected an information systemenabling to provide an inven tory of available data sources ecological observations satellites images pictures articles reports and facilitating data rescue data access data processes indicators as well as the ability to summarizerelated knowl edge through fact sheets about domain entities ecosystems species connected with hyperlinks based on ecosystem relationships beyond metadata data management and related interoperability issues ogc tdwg this project was then a real opportunity to set up an ontology for eaf domain in order to link existing informationresources with real world entities eaf domain concepts to achieve these goals semantic web standards and reference rdf schemas have been taken into account skos dublin core foaf oboe darwin core and afirst version of rdf schemafor eaf domain has been set up these ontologies have been instantiated to describe our information resources and some knowledge about entities that researchers are studying afirst website has been set up on top of this knowledge base related web pages consist mainly in fact sheets about domain entities ecosys tems top predators and related preys species fishing vessels persons where users can find related information resources spatial layers arti cles pictures indicators knowledge can as well be summarized through networks of entities like food webs with dedicated visualizations tools this is made possible by querying the knowledge base where linked metadata and data in underlying databases are tagged with related species uris proof has been done that semantic web languagescan be used to fit the needs of our colleagues moreover in the context of ima rine fp7 project we started to deal with partners having similar projects flod from fao worms forth we then set up a sparql end point and opensearch access to share the content our knowledge bases with other applications search engines text mining applications we will present our current application and related technical choices as well as futur plans to connect additional data sources to enrich this knowledge base and make it available for our partners in particular we will describe some use cases related to biodiversity management issues,2013,0.132
Assessing species habitat using google street view: a case study of cliff-nesting vultures.,the assessment of a species habitat is a crucial issue in ecology and conservation while the collection of habitat data has been boosted by the availability of remote sensing technologies certain habitat types have yet to be collected through costly on ground surveys limiting study over large areas cliffs are ecosystems that provide habitat for a rich biodiversity especially raptors because of their principally vertical structure however cliffs are not easy to study by remote sensing technologies posing a challenge for many researches and managers working with cliff related biodiversity we explore the feasibility of google street view a freely available on line tool to remotely identify and assess the nesting habitat of two cliff nesting vultures the griffon vulture and the globally endangered egyptian vulture in northwestern spain two main usefulness of google street view to ecologists and conservation biologists were evaluated i remotely identifying a species potential habitat and ii extracting fine scale habitat information google street view imagery covered 49 1 907 km of the roads of our study area 7 000 km 2 the potential visibility covered by on ground surveys was significantly greater mean 97 4 than that of google street view 48 1 however incorporating google street view to the vulture s habitat survey would save on average 36 in time and 49 5 in funds with respect to the on ground survey only the ability of google street view to identify cliffs overall accuracy 100 outperformed the classification maps derived from digital elevation models dems 62 95 nonetheless high performance dem maps may be useful to compensate google street view coverage limitations through google street view we could examine 66 of the vultures nesting cliffs existing in the study area n 148 64 from griffon vultures and 65 from egyptian vultures it also allowed us the extraction of fine scale features of cliffs this world wide web based methodology may be a useful complementary tool to remotely map and assess the potential habitat of cliff dependent biodiversity over large geographic areas saving survey related costs,2013,0.392
i4Life Darwin Core Archive Profile,it is desirable to have a common format for the exchange of checklists among partners in i4life and in the wider biodiversity informatics community it has been agreed to use gbifâ s darwin core archive dwca format for this purpose but the gbif and tdwg documentation permits or does not precisely define a wide variety of options this might make life easier for checklist producers but it makes the task of importing a checklist more difficult in particular implementing an import facility requires precision about which features are required and how these required features will be specified and used which features are desirable or optional which features may be ignored by some importers and which will cause failure of the import process according to the tdwg â œsimple darwin coreâ pages 1 â œit is up to applications to enforce further restrictions on the use of the dwca format if appropriate and it is up to the stakeholders of those applications to decide what the restrictions will be for the purpose the application is trying to serve â thus further clarification of this format is required to permit its use as a reliable common format for producing and receiving checklists in the i4life project which will allow not only col data but checklists from other partners to be represented without data loss and with reasonable ease of use,2013,0.184
The impact of modelling choices in the predictive performance of richness maps derived from species-distribution models: guidelines to build better diversity models,1 the stacking of species distribution models s sdms is receiving attention by conservation researchers because this approach is capable of simultaneously predicting species richness and composition however the steps required to build s sdms implies at least two choices that influence its predictive performancewhich have not been extensively assessed the selection of themodelling algorithm and the application of a threshold to trans form the species distributionmodels into binarymaps to be added together to build thefinals sdm our goal was to provide guidelines concerning the best combinations ofmodelling algorithms and thresholds with which to build more accurate s sdms 2 wegenerated 380 s sdms of 1224 tree species in mesoamerica by combining 19 distribution modellingmeth odswith 20 different thresholds using presence only data from the global biodiversity information facility we compared the predicted richness and composition with inventory data obtained from thebiotree netforest plot database we designed two indicators of predictive performance that were based on the diversity factors used to measure species turnover a shared species between the observed and predicted compositions b and c the exclusive species of the predicted and observed compositions respectively and compared them with the sorensen andbeta simpson turnovermeasures 3 our proposed indexes and the sorensen index proved suitable as indicators of predictive performance for s sdms whereas thebeta simpson turnovermeasure presented issues that would prevent its application to evalu ate s sdms 4 some modellingmethods â especially machine learning and ensemble model forecasting methods performed significantly better than others in minimizing the error in predicted richness and composition our results also points out that restrictive thresholds with high omission errors lead to more accurate s sdms in terms of spe cies richness and composition here we demonstrate that particular combinations of modelling methods and thresholds provide results with higher predictive performance 5 these results provide clear modelling guidelines that will helps sdmmodellers to select the appropriate com bination of modellingmethods and thresholds to buildmore accurate s sdms and thereforewill have a positive impact on the quality of the diversitymodels used to assist conservation planning,2013,0.676
Risk levels of invasive Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. in areas suitable for date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) cultivation under various climate change projections,global climate model outputs involve uncertainties in prediction which could be reduced by identifying agreements between the output results of different models covering all assumptions included in each fusarium oxysporum f sp is an invasive pathogen that poses risk to date palm cultivation among other crops therefore in this study the future distribution of invasive fusarium oxysporum f sp confirmed by csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr gcms was modeled and combined with the future distribution of date palm predicted by the same gcms to identify areas suitable for date palm cultivation with different risk levels of invasive fusarium oxysporum f sp for 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 results showed that 40 37 33 and 28 areas projected to become highly conducive to date palm are under high risk of its lethal fungus compared with 37 39 43 and 42 under low risk for the chosen years respectively our study also indicates that areas with marginal risk will be limited to 231 212 186 and 172 million hectares by 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 the study further demonstrates that climex outputs refined by a combination of different gcms results of different species that have symbiosis or parasite relationship ensure that the predictions become robust rather than producing hypothetical findings limited purely to publication,2013,0.577
"Bioclimatic, ecological, and phenotypic intermediacy and high genetic admixture in a natural hybrid of octoploid strawberries",â premise of the study hybrid zones provide natural laboratories for understanding the processes of selection reinforcement and speciation we sought to gain insight into the degree of introgression and the extent of ecological phenotypic intermediacy in the natural hybrid strawberry fragaria ã ananassa subsp cuneifolia â methods we used whole plastome sequencing to identify parental species specific fragaria chiloensis and f virginiana chloroplast single nucleotide polymorphisms and combined the use of these with nuclear microsatellite markers to genetically characterize the hybrid zone we assessed the potential role of selection in the observed geographic patterns by bioclimatically characterizing the niche of the hybrid populations and phenotypically characterizing hybrid individuals of known genomic constitution â key results significant admixture and little overall maternal bias in chloroplast or nuclear genomes suggest a high degree of interfertility among the parental and hybrid species and point to a long history of backcrossing and genetic mixing in the hybrid zone even though hybrids were phenotypically intermediate to the parental species there was a discernible fingerprint of the parental genotype within hybrid individuals thus although the pattern of introgression observed suggests geographic limitations to gene flow it may be reinforced by selection for specific parental traits in the bioclimatically intermediate habitat occupied by the hybrid â conclusions this work uncovered the genetic complexity underlying the hybrid zone of the wild relatives of the cultivated strawberry it lays the foundation for experimental dissection of the causes of genomic introgression and nuclear cytoplasmic disassociation and for understanding other parts of fragaria evolutionary history,2013,0.649
WHAT ON EARTH? THE THREAT TO THE SCIENCE UNDERPINNING CONSERVATION: THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE AND THE COMMITTEE’S COMMENTARY,at the request of the house of lords hol science and technology committee the royal society submitted comments on the government s response to the committee s report on systematic biology and biodiversity entitled what on earth the threat to the science underpinning conservation,2014,0.344
Assessment Status Notes: Hygrophorus marzuolus,in gbif 2019 north american collections are treated as one species this is probably not true because of the different ecology of american soecies it has been recorded from june to august at altitudes 2000 to 4000 m further taxonomic research based on the comparison of dna sequences is needed,2014,0.39
FOODIE: Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe,the agriculture sector is a unique sector due to its strategic importance for both european citizens consumers and european economy regional and global which ideally should make the whole sector a network of interacting organizations rural areas are of particular importance with respect to the agro food sector and should be specifically addressed within this scope the different groups of stakeholders involved in the agricultural activities have to manage many different and heterogeneous sources of information that need to be combined in order to make economically and environmentally sound decisions which include among others the definition of policies subsidies standardisation and regulation national strategies for rural development climate change valuation of ecological performances development of sustainable agriculture crop recollection timing and pricing plagues detection etc such processes are very labour intensive because most parts have to be executed manually and the necessary information is not always available or easily accessible in this context future agriculture knowledge management systems have to support not only direct profitability of agriculture or environment protection but also activities of individuals and groups allowing effective collaboration among groups in agri food industry consumers public administrations and wider stakeholders communities especially in rural domain to that end foodie project aims at building an open and interoperable agricultural specialized platform hub on the cloud for the management of spatial and non spatial data relevant for farming production for discovery of spatial and non spatial agriculture related data from heterogeneous sources integration of existing and valuable european open datasets related to agriculture data publication and data linking of external agriculture data sources contributed by different public and private stakeholders allowing to provide specific and high value applications and services for the support in the planning and decision making processes of different stakeholders groups related to the agricultural and environmental domains,2014,0.046
Beyond a Climate-Centric View of Plant Distribution: Edaphic Variables Add Value to Distribution Models,both climatic and edaphic conditions determine plant distribution however many species distribution models do not include edaphic variables especially over large geographical extent using an exceptional database of vegetation plots n 4839 covering an extent of 55000 km2 we tested whether the inclusion of fine scale edaphic variables would improve model predictions of plant distribution compared to models using only climate predictors we also tested how well these edaphic variables could predict distribution on their own to evaluate the assumption that at large extents distribution is governed largely by climate we also hypothesized that the relative contribution of edaphic and climatic data would vary among species depending on their growth forms and biogeographical attributes within the study area we modelled 128 native plant species from diverse taxa using four statistical model types and three sets of abiotic predictors climate edaphic and edaphic climate model predictive accuracy and variable importance were compared among these models and for speciesâ characteristics describing growth form range boundaries within the study area and prevalence for many species both the climate only and edaphic only models performed well however the edaphic climate models generally performed best the three sets of predictors differed in the spatial information provided about habitat suitability with climate models able to distinguish range edges but edaphic models able to better distinguish within range variation model predictive accuracy was generally lower for species without a range boundary within the study area and for common species but these effects were buffered by including both edaphic and climatic predictors the relative importance of edaphic and climatic variables varied with growth forms with trees being more related to climate whereas lower growth forms were more related to edaphic conditions our study identifies the potential for non climate aspects of the environment to pose a constraint to range expansion under climate change,2014,0.391
Ecological and evolutionary significance of genomic GC content diversity in monocots,genomic dna base composition gc content is predicted to significantly affect genome functioning and species ecology although several hypotheses have been put forward to address the biological impact of gc content variation in microbial and vertebrate organisms the biological significance of gc content diversity in plants remains unclear because of a lack of sufficiently robust genomic data using flow cytometry we report genomic gc contents for 239 species representing 70 of 78 monocot families and compare them with genomic characters a suite of life history traits and climatic niche data using phylogeny based statistics gc content of monocots varied between 33 6 and 48 9 with several groups exceeding the gc content known for any other vascular plant group highlighting their unusual genome architecture and organization gc content showed a quadratic relationship with genome size with the decreases in gc content in larger genomes possibly being a consequence of the higher biochemical costs of gc base synthesis dramatic decreases in gc content were observed in species with holocentric chromosomes whereas increased gc content was documented in species able to grow in seasonally cold and or dry climates possibly indicating an advantage of gc rich dna during cell freezing and desiccation we also show that genomic adaptations associated with changing gc content might have played a significant role in the evolution of the earth s contemporary biota such as the rise of grass dominated biomes during the mid tertiary one of the major selective advantages of gc rich dna is hypothesized to be facilitating more complex gene regulation,2014,0.562
An open-source spatio-dynamic wetland model of plant community responses to hydrological pressures,semiarid mediterranean saline wetlands are semi terrestrial ecosystems which yearly undergo dry periods of several months and shelter a rich endemic and sensitive biota in the last decades the expansion of agricultural irrigated areas in semiarid mediterranean catchments has led to altered inputs of water and nutrients to lowland wetlands hydrological alterations have affected characteristic plant communities resulting in the replacement of valuable halophilic salt marsh and salt steppe plant communities by more generalist and opportunistic taxa such as phragmites australis reed beds a spatio dynamic model and library were developed that aimed to explain the spatial distribution of three characteristic wetland plant communities in a semiarid mediterranean wetland site in response to hydrological pressures from the catchment wetland plant communities and watershed irrigated agricultural areas were mapped by means of remote sensing at several dates between 1984 and 2008 and were partly used as forcing inputs and validation data a dynamic model was initially developed using stella software and then converted into r language by means of the stellar software spatial dimension was added including neighbourhood and spatial flow algorithms representing the dispersion of plant communities the conversion between plant communities was caused by the increase in water inflows from the watershed mediated by spatial parameters such as the distance to ephemeral rivers and the flow accumulation map within the wetland site results of the model were in agreement with remote sensing data showing that in 2008 salt steppe had lost a half of its original area whereas salt marsh and reed beds expanded extensively the model developed in this study is available online as an r library including all necessary input data sets and maps and documentation to run it the model library offers a flexible tool that suits the needs of both advanced modellers and neophytes free and open source software and online code sharing repositories are proposed as modelling tools for future research,2014,0.049
Invasion trajectory of alien trees: the role of introduction pathway and planting history,global change is driving a massive rearrangement of the world s biota trajectories of distributional shifts are shaped by species traits the recipient environment and driving forces with many of the driving forces directly due to human activities the relative importance of each in determining the distributions of introduced species is poorly understood we consider 11 australian acacia species introduced to south africa for different reasons commercial forestry dune stabilization and ornamentation to determine how features of the introduction pathway have shaped their invasion history projections from species distribution models sdms were developed to assess how the reason for introduction influences the similarity between climatic envelopes in native and alien ranges a lattice model for an idealized invasion was developed to assess the relative contribution of intrinsic traits and introduction dynamics on the abundance and extent over the course of simulated invasions sdms show that alien populations of ornamental species in south africa occupy substantially different climate space from their native ranges whereas species introduced for forestry occupy a similar climate space in native and introduced ranges this may partly explain the slow spread rates observed for some alien ornamental plants such mismatches are likely to become less pronounced with the current drive towards eco gardens resulting in more introductions of ornamental species with a close climate match between native and newly introduced regions the results from the lattice model showed that the conditions associated with the introduction pathway especially introduction pressure dominate early invasion dynamics the placement of introduction foci in urban areas limited the extent and abundance of invasive populations features of introduction events appear to initially mask the influence of intrinsic species traits on invasions and help to explain the relative success of species introduced for different purposes introduction dynamics therefore can have long lasting influences on the outcomes of species redistributions and must be explicitly considered in management plans,2014,0.964
Thermal niche evolution and geographical range expansion in a species complex of western Mediterranean diving beetles,background species thermal requirements are one of the principal determinants of their ecology and biogeography although our understanding of the interplay between these factors is limited by the paucity of integrative empirical studies here we use empirically collected thermal tolerance data in combination with molecular phylogenetics phylogeography and ecological niche modelling to study the evolution of a clade of three western mediterranean diving beetles the agabus brunneus complex results the preferred mitochondrial dna topology recovered a ramblae north africa east iberia and balearic islands as paraphyletic with a brunneus widespread in the southwestern mediterranean and a rufulus corsica and sardinia nested within it with an estimated origin between 0 60 0 25 ma all three species were however recovered as monophyletic using nuclear dna markers a bayesian skyline plot suggested demographic expansion in the clade at the onset of the last glacial cycle the species thermal tolerances differ significantly with a brunneus able to tolerate lower temperatures than the other taxa the climatic niche of the three species also differs with a ramblae occupying more arid and seasonal areas with a higher minimum temperature in the coldest month the estimated potential distribution for both a brunneus and a ramblae was most restricted in the last interglacial becoming increasingly wider through the last glacial and the holocene conclusions the a brunneus complex diversified in the late pleistocene most likely in south iberia after colonization from morocco insular forms did not differentiate substantially in morphology or ecology but a brunneus evolved a wider tolerance to cold which appeared to have facilitated its geographic expansion both a brunneus and a ramblae expanded their ranges during the last glacial although they have not occupied areas beyond their lgm potential distribution except for isolated populations of a brunneus in france and england on the islands and possibly tunisia secondary contact between a brunneus and a ramblae or a rufulus has resulted in introgression our work highlights the complex dynamics of speciation and range expansions within southern areas during the last glacial cycle and points to the often neglected role of north africa as a source of european biodiversity,2014,0.923
A federated database of taxon pages in the Italian Biodiversity Network,primary biodiversity data are often organised in federated databases in the framework of big international projects and initiatives other data are normally organised into isolated resources ecological morphological and morpho anatomic databases checklists archives of digital identification tools etc these data which do not refer specifically to one specimen or observation but to a taxon can be addressed to as â œtaxon related dataâ in the framework of the italian biodiversity network taxon related data have been aggregated by using a federated approach with the creation of a network of data providers which required the development of a communication protocol the species related data srd protocol and of a simple data format the srd format the srd federated database aggregates currently ca 70 000 taxon pages for several groups of organisms vascular plants lichens mosses algae freshwater fishes and butterflies all these resources can be queried by using one simple interface in the we,2014,0.364
Climate-driven range shifts and demographic events over the history of Kruper's Nuthatch Sitta krueperi,capsule this study is the first ever documented evidence of an interglacial refugium during the last interglacial for birds in anatolia and suggests the need of a re examination of the effects of the last interglacial on the geographic distribution and genetic structure of species aims we tested whether in accordance with the â refugia within refugiaâ model multiple refugia existed for kruper s nuthatch sitta krueperi during the last glacial maximum or the species survived along the coastal belt of anatolia through the late quaternary glacialâ interglacial cycles methods an ecological niche model was developed to predict the geographic distribution of kruper s nuthatch under reconstructed past the last interglacial and the last glacial maximum present and projected future bioclimatic conditions also robust coalescent based analyses were used to assess demographic events over the history of kruper s nuthatch results kruper s nuthatch survived the last glacial maximum almost along the coastal belt of,2014,0.293
Correspondence in forest species composition between the Vegetation Map of Africa and higher resolution maps for seven African countries,abstract question how well does the forest classification system of the 1 5 000 000 vegetation map of africa developed by frank white correspond with classification systems and more extensive information on species assemblages of higher resolution maps developed for ethiopia kenya malawi rwanda tanzania uganda and zambia methods we reviewed various national and sub national vegetation maps for their potential in increasing the resolution of the african map associated documentation was consulted to compile species assemblages and to identify indicator species for national forest vegetation types indicator species were identified for each regional forest type by selecting those species that among all the species listed for the same phytochorion regional centre of endemism were listed only for that forest type for each of the national forest types we counted the number of indicator species of the anticipated regional type floristic relationships expressed by four different ecological distance measures among national forest types were investigated based on distance based redundancy analysis permutational multivariate analysis of variance permanova using distance matrices and hierarchical clustering results for most of the national forests the analysis of indicator species and floristic relationships confirmed the regional classification system for the majority of national forest types including the allocation to different phytochoria permutation tests confirmed allocation of national forest types to regional typologies although the number of possible permutations limited inferences for the zambezian and lake victoria phytochoria two forest types from ethiopia and kenya did not correspond to regional forest types 4 conclusions our analysis provides support that as the classification systems are compatible the resolution and information content of the vegetation map of africa can be directly improved by adding information from national maps probably leading to improved liability of its application domains we found statistical evidence for a distinct afromontane phytochorion we suggest expanding the regional forest classification system with â afromontane moist transitional forestâ among the various application domains of the higher resolution maps these maps allow for an enhanced phytochoristic analysis of eastern africa,2014,0.375
Opportunities for improved distribution modelling practice via a strict maximum likelihood interpretation of MaxEnt,maximum entropy maxent modelling as implemented in the maxent software has rapidly become one of the most popular methods for distribution modelling originally maxent was described as a machine learning method more recently it has been explained from principles of bayesian estimation maxent offers numerous options variants of the method and settings tuning of parameters to the users a widespread practice of accepting the maxent softwareâ s default options and settings has been established most likely because of ecologistsâ lack of familiarity with machine learning and bayesian statistical concepts and the ease by which the default models are obtained in maxent however these defaults have been shown in many cases to be suboptimal and exploration of alternatives has repeatedly been called for in this paper we derive maxent from strict maximum likelihood principles and point out parallels between maxent and standard modelling tools like generalised linear models glm furthermore we describe several new options opened by this new derivation of maxent which may improve maxent practice the most important of these is the option for selecting variables by subset selection methods instead of the â 1 regularisation method which currently is the maxent software default other new options include incorporation of new transformations of explanatory variables and user control of the transformation process improved variable contribution measures and options for variation partitioning and improved output prediction formats the new options are exemplified for a data set for the plant species scorzonera humilis in se norway which was analysed by the standard maxent procedure in a previously published paper we recommend that thorough comparisons between the proposed alternative options and default procedures and variants thereof be carried out distribution,2014,0.049
Forgotten treasures: the fate of data in animal behaviour studies,the majority of publications across many disciplines in biology do not make their data available in repositories on the other hand there are several advantages associated with archiving data in open access repositories and technological resources are available to do so to date no study has estimated the frequency of data from animal behaviour publications made available in digital repositories or supple mentary materials to evaluate how much data from those studies are available we surveyed publications from two well known journals in the field since journal policy is an important factor influencing the availability of data from publications we list the data policy of each journal that publishes animal behaviour research we found that only a small proportion of the articles published in 2013 made even part of their data available and that journals do not require data to be archived prior to or after publi cation if not deposited in repositories data supporting those findingswillmost likely be lost from lack of usage inability to access obsolete storage devices or even the death of the authors although it is difficult to appreciate the relevance of data for future studies at the time of a research article s publication such data may inspire fruitful opportunities that we cannot afford to lose we discuss the benefits of making data available review resources for data archiving and provide practical guidelines we hope that raising awareness about this problem will help foster a data sharing culture among animal behaviourists,2014,0.077
The power of poison: pesticide poisoning of Africa's wildlife,poisons have long been used to kill wildlife throughout the world an evolution has occurred from the use of plant and animal based toxins to synthetic pesticides to kill wildlife a method that is silent cheap easy and effective the use of pesticides to poison wildlife began in southern africa and predator populations were widely targeted and eliminated a steep increase has recently been observed in the intensity of wildlife poisonings with corresponding population declines however the majority of poisonings go unreported under national laws it is illegal to hunt wildlife using poisons in 83 of african countries pesticide regulations are inadequate and enforcement of existing legislation is poor few countries have forensic field protocols and most lack storage and testing facilities methods used to poison wildlife include baiting carcasses soaking grains in pesticide solution mixing pesticides to form salt licks and tainting waterholes carbofuran is the most widely abused pesticide in africa common reasons for poisoning are control of damage causing animals harvesting fish and bushmeat harvesting animals for traditional medicine poaching for wildlife products and killing wildlife sentinels e g vultures because their aerial circling alerts authorities to poachers activities populations of scavengers particularly vultures have been decimated by poisoning recommendations include banning pesticides improving pesticide regulations and controlling distribution better enforcement and stiffer penalties for offenders increasing international support and awareness and developing regional pesticide centers,2014,0.714
Biodiversity and parasites of wildlife: Helminths of Australasian marsupials.,despite current attempts to document the extent of biodiversity on earth significant problems exist in fully documenting the helminth parasites of wildlife using the australasian marsupials as an example we examine some of these difficulties including challenges in collecting uncommon host species the ongoing description of new species of marsupials the presence of cryptic species and the decline in taxonomic expertise in australia although optimistic global predictions have been made concerning the rate of discovery and description of new species of animals these predictions may not apply in the case of specific groups of animals such as the australasian marsupials,2014,0.955
Mitochondrial phylogeography of the European wild boar: the effect of climate on genetic diversity and spatial lineage sorting across Europe,aim climate changes in the past had a deep impact on the evolutionary history of many species and left genetic signatures that are often still detectable today we investigated the geographical pattern of mitochondrial dna divesity in the european wild boar sus scrofa our final aims were to clarify the influence of present and past climatic conditions infer the geographical posi tion of glacial refugia and suggest post glacial spatial dynamics location europe methods d loop sequences were obtained for 763 individuals from portugal to western russia phylogenetic multivariate and interpolation methods were used to describe the genetic and geographical patterns climatic suitability during the last glacial maximum lgm was predicted using maxent the effect of present and past suitability on the observed patterns of diversity was evaluated by multiple linear regression results we confirmed the existence of a ubiquitous mitochondrial clade in europe e1 an endemic clade in italy e2 and a few east asian haplotypes a presumably introgressed from domestic pigs no near eastern haplotypes were detected genetic divergence was not simply related to geographical distance a clear southâ north decreasing gradient of diversity was observed with maximum levels in putative glacial refugia latitudinal variation in climatic conditions during the lgm was shown to be a good predictor of current genetic diversity moreover an unexpected similarity between iberia and east ern europe was observed while central european populations showed a higher affinity to the italian gene pool main conclusions the current distribution of mitochondrial genetic diversity was highly influenced by past climatic events especially those related to the lgm and is consistent with a major contribution of the italian peninsula and the balkans to the post glacial recolonization of northern areas more recent processes such as restocking and extensive hunting probably acted at rather local scales without great impact on the global pattern of mitochondrial diversity,2014,0.579
"Morphometric and Cytogenetic Studies in Mimosa diversipila (Mimosoideae, Leguminosae) and Their Taxonomic and Evolutionary Inferences",here we describe the morphological variability chromosome number and chromosome size in mimosa diversipila this species comprises two varieties which are distinguished by the indumentum however this character is insufficient for circumscription of these infraspecific taxa using multivariate techniques we found that quantitative characters were useful for identification of the varieties which also have a different geographic distribution cytogenetic studies revealed that these taxa form a polyploid complex and that the polyploidy may contribute to the morphological variability observed,2014,0.498
Wanted! Dead or alive: the tale of the Brown’s Grayling (Pseudochazara amymone),the brownâ s grayling pseudochazara amymone is one of the most enigmatic and sought after species among european butterflies hiding its exact distribution for almost 40 years with the idea of protecting it resulted in an increasing collectorâ s interest with market prices reaching up to 1 000 euro for a single female after its discovery in albania aiming to demystify this butterfly and enable entomologists and conservationists to see the species in its natural environment we provide detailed information on its distribution in south eastern albania in addition we modelled the potential species distribution to facilitate further surveys within its potential range the modelled range of p amymone is highly fragmented stretching from the central part of eastern albania to northern greece and is strongly bound to ophiolite geological strata the species was re assessed as endangered according to the iucn criteria with a predicted population decline due to construction of hydroelectric power plants in one of the locations we argue that hiding valuable information regarding threatened insect species may have negative effects and we advocate publishing available distribution data so that conservation measures may be undertaken where and when necessary,2014,0.634
"Species conservation under future climate change: the case of Bombus bellicosus, a potentially threatened South American bumblebee species",bees ensure 35 of global food production but this service is endangered due to several threats declines in bumblebee populations genus bombus have been reported worldwide bombus bellicosus is one of the rare cases of reported threatened bumblebees in south america it was once widespread in southern brazilâ s grasslands until the 1960s during that time that area underwent increasing land use which led to a decrease in bee abundance and richness and to local disappearance of b bellicosus climate change is also believed to cause declines in the abundance of b bellicosus here we used species distribution models to assess potential effects of climate changes on the distribution of b bellicosus in southern brazil considering both current and future climate scenarios our results show that the suitable climatic conditions for b bellicosus will retreat southwards a wax cover inside its nests is usually related to bombus species inhabiting cooler climates this cover enables the maintenance of higher temperatures inside the nest and may be deleterious for the species under future warmer climates continuously growing land use is the second major threat to this pollinator the results presented here may eventually provide theoretical grounds and enable practical conservation actions for b bellicosus protection in south america especially given the potential adverse effects of climate changes for this species,2014,0.617
Putting models to a good use: a rapid assessment of Arctic seabird biodiversity indicates potential conflicts with shipping lanes and human activity,aims to use open access models of predicted seabird distribution data in the arctic to create rapid assessment biodiversity maps for management purposes and for prioritization of conservation location high arctic north of 60â latitude methods the predicted distributions of 27 species of arctic seabirds were combined to create a seabird biodiversity map the gis layers created were based on peer reviewed model outputs which were calculated using the random forest algorithm and supplemented with iso standardized metadata for quality assurance we have overlain the species diversity and occurrence maps with known shipping lanes and areas of human activities in the arctic to highlight areas of potential human conflict with pelagic seabirds results entry points to the arctic basin for example baffin bay davis strait chukchi sea greenland sea and norwegian sea are specific conflict zones with mean number of species occurring within 20 km of shipping zones ranging from 17 to 19 63â 70 of modelled species we also show that these are areas of the highest intensity of human activities in the arctic fishing ship traffic and accident rates main conclusion these arctic seabird biodiversity maps can be used to make decisions which take into account ecology and socio economy e g marxan analysis and marine protected areas mpas and for ecological economic studies which can help to create a pro active management scheme this is particularly important due to the future increase in human impacts in the arctic i e fishing tourism and especially shipping by improving upon these models and further examination into the interactions between seabirds and humans in the arctic we can guide important policy decisions to protect arctic biodiversity,2014,0.694
A simple modeling approach to elucidate the main transport processes and predict invasive spread: River-mediated invasion of A geratina adenophora in China,a constantly increasing number of alien species invade novel environments and cause enormous damage to both biodiversity and economics worldwide this global problem is calling for better understanding of the different mechanisms driving invasive spread hence quantification of a range of dispersal vectors yet methods for elucidating the mechanisms underlying large scale invasive spread from empirical patterns have not yet been developed here we propose a new computationally efficient method to quantify the contribution of different dispersal vectors to the spread rate of invasive plants using data collected over 30 years regarding the invasive species ageratina adenophora since its detection at the sichuan province we explored its spread by wind and animals rivers and roads into 153 subcounties in the sichuan chongqingshi and hubei provinces of china we found that rivers are the most plausible vector for the rapid invasion of this species in the study area model explorations revealed robustness to changes in key assumptions and configuration future predictions of this ongoing invasion process project that the species will quickly spread along the yangtze river and colonize large areas within a few years further model developments would provide a much needed tool to mechanistically and realistically describe large scale invasive spread providing insights into the underlying mechanisms and an ability to predict future spatial invasive dynamics,2014,0.325
Bamboo-dominated forests and pre-Columbian earthwork formations in south-western Amazonia,aim to determine whether the c 160 000 km2 patch of bamboo dominated forests guadua spp in amazonia is associated with pre columbian earthwork geoglyph formation location south western amazonia methods we modelled the distribution of guadua dominated forests and geoglyphs with maxent which uses occurrence points and a suite of environmental parameters we compared the modelled distribution of guadua with mapped distributions derived from remote sensing data and with the modelled distribution of geoglyphs results the modelled guadua distribution closely fitted previously mapped estimates based on our analyses the best predictors for the distribution of guadua dominated forests are temperature seasonality and close proximity to hilly terrain distance to bamboo forest and precipitation of the driest quarter were the most significant predictors of geoglyph distributions main conclusions this study suggests that the most parsimonious explanation for the association of geoglyphs and bamboo forests in south western amazonia is that pre columbian people constructed geoglyphs near the edges of the semelparous guadua forests after die off events the large fuel load of dead vegetation would burn easily providing a much easier mechanism of forest clearing than was possible in closed canopy forests these results highlight the interplay of ancient human activity with observed biogeographical patterns and suggest that pre columbian settlement patterns may reflect the heterogeneity of forest types found within amazonian rain forests,2014,0.295
Taxonomic Provenance: Two Influential Primate Classifications Logically Aligned,human c lassific ations and phylogenies of perceived natural entities are subject to change in light of n ew evidence t axonomic changes translated into code compliant names and nomenclatural relationships frequently lead to name meaning dissociations across succeeding treatments classification standards such as the mammal species of the world m s w aim to unify name usages at th e global scale but may nevertheless experience significant levels of taxonomic change from one edition to the next this circumstance challenges the biodiversity and phylogenetic data communities to develop more granular identifiers to t rack taxonomic congruence and i n congr uence in ways that both humans and machines can process i e to logically represent taxonomic provenance across multiple classification hierarchies her e we show that reasoning over taxonomic provenance is feasible for two classifications of prima tes cor responding to the second and third msw editions our approach entails three main components 1 individuation of name usages as taxonomic concepts 2 articulation of concepts via human asserted region connection calculus rcc 5 relationships and 3 t he use of an answer set programming toolkit to infer and visualize logically consistent alignment s of these taxonomic input constraints our use case entails the primates sec groves 1993 msw2 â 317 taxonomic concepts 233 at the species level and prima tes sec groves 2005 msw3 â 483 taxonomic concepts 376 at the species level using 402 concept to conce pt input articulations the reasoning process yields a single c onsistent alignment and infers 153 111 maximally informative relations that constitu te a comprehensive provenance resolution map for every concept pair in the primates sec msw2 msw3 the entire alignm ent and various partitions facilitate quantitative analyses of n ame meaning dissociation reveal ing that approximate ly one in three paired name usages across treatments is not reliable â in the sense of the same name identifying congruent taxonomic meaning s we assess the feasibility of the rcc 5 reasoning approach and conclude with a n optimistic outlook for wider application of logic based p rovenance tools in next generation biodiversity and phylogeny data platforms,2014,0.286
"A nomenclator of extant and fossil taxa of the Valvatidae (Gastropoda, Ectobranchia)",a compilation of all supra and infra specific taxa of extant and fossil valvatidae a group of freshwater operculate snails is provided including taxa initially described in this family and subsequently classified in other families as well as names containing errors or misspellings the extensive reference list is directly linked to the available electronic source digital view or pdf download of the respective papers,2014,0.354
"First record of Pinctada imbricata Röding, 1798 (Bivalvia: Pteroidea) attached to a rafting item: a potentially invasive species on the Uruguayan coast",here we describe a record of the occurrence of juveniles of the bivalve pinctada imbricata rã ding 1798 attached to a floating rope on the urugyuayan coast this new record rather a simple new southernmost occurrence represents the first example of early stage invasive species stage i which could eventually be allowed to settle in a southernmost region marine biodiversity marine biodiversity look inside senckenberg senckenberg within this article introduction material and methods results references references other actions export citation register for journal updates about this journal reprints and permissions add to papers share share this content on facebook share this content on twitter share this content on linkedin,2014,0.315
Recovering species demographic history from multi-model inference: the case of a Neotropical savanna tree species,background glaciations were recurrent throughout the quaternary and potentially shaped species genetic structure worldwide by affecting population dynamics here we implemented a multi model inference approach to recover the distribution dynamics and demographic history of a neotropical savanna tree tabebuia aurea bignoniaceae exploring different algorithms and paleoclimatic simulations we used ecological niche modelling to generate alternative hypotheses of potential demographic changes through the last glacial cycle and estimated genetic parameters using coalescent modelling results comparing predictions from demographic hypotheses with genetic parameters of modern populations our findings revealed a likely scenario of population decline with spatial displacement towards northeast brazil from the last glacial maximum to the mid holocene subsequently populations expanded in response to the return of the climatically suitable conditions in central west brazil nevertheless a wide historical refugium across central brazil likely maintained large populations connected throughout time the expected genetic signatures from such predicted distribution dynamics are also corroborated by spatial genetic structure observed in modern populations conclusion by exploring uncertainties inherent in multiple working hypotheses we have shown that multi model inference is a fruitful and efficient approach to recover the nature timing and geographical context of the tabebuia aurea population dynamic in response to the quaternary climate changes,2014,0.605
The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts,biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction exploitation pollution and introduction of alien species existing global databases of species threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species the collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project and avert future declines we describe and assess a new database of more than 1 6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28 000 species collated from existing spatial comparisons of local scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures from terrestrial sites around the world the database contains measurements taken in 208 of 814 ecoregions 13 of 14 biomes 25 of 35 biodiversity hotspots and 16 of 17 megadiverse countries the database contains more than 1 of the total number of all species described and more than 1 of the described species within many taxonomic groups including flowering plants gymnosperms birds mammals reptiles amphibians beetles lepidopterans and hymenopterans the dataset which is still being added to is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses the database is being assembled as part of the predicts project projecting responses of ecological diversity in changing terrestrial systems http www predicts org uk we make site level summary data available alongside this article the full database will be publicly available in 2015,2014,0.621
Latitudinal gradients in climatic-niche evolution accelerate trait evolution at high latitudes,despite the importance of divergent selection to the speed of evolution it remains poorly understood if divergent selection is more prevalent in the tropics where species richness is highest or at high latitudes where paleoclimate change has been most intense we tested whether the rate of climatic niche evolution one proxy for divergent selection varies with latitude for 111 pairs of bird species using brownian motion and ornsetin ulhenbeck models we show that evolutionary rates along two important axes of the climatic niche temperature and seasonality have been faster at higher latitudes we then tested whether divergence of the climatic niche was associated with evolution in traits important in ecological differentiation body mass and reproductive isolation song and found that climatic divergence is associated with faster rates in both measures these results highlight the importance of climate mediated divergent selection pressures in driving evolutionary divergence and reproductive isolation at high latitudes,2014,0.703
Systems of systems engineering thesaurus approach: from concept to realisation,the developing discipline of systems of systems engineering sose is gaining attention in an increasingly broad range of domains however each domain comes with its own set of terms and concepts so that there may be confusion between different domains ostensibly engaged in similar challenges sose is faced with concept multiplicity one term more than one concept and term multiplicity one concept more than one term it is unrealistic to expect long established domains to simply change ontology to match with other domains but a means of recognising related concepts and terms across domains and across industrial sectors will enable more rapid progress to be made in the development of sose the approach taken to generating a thesaurus through which such relationships can be documented is presented the approach is essentially consultative among sose experts and the current version of the thesaurus is available online a combination of problem statement definition and logical decomposition has been used the method is described and application is illustrated using well known terms,2014,0.079
The LifeWatch approach to the exploration of distributed species information.,this paper introduces a new method of automatically extracting integrating and presenting information regarding species from the most relevant online taxonomic resources first the information is extracted and joined using data wrappers and integration solutions then an analytical tool is used to provide a visual representation of the data the information is then integrated into a user friendly content management system the proposal has been implemented using data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the catalogue of life col the world register of marine species worms the integrated taxonomic information system itis and the global names index gni the approach improves data quality avoiding taxonomic and nomenclature errors whilst increasing the availability and accessibility of the information,2014,0.228
Notes on the Brazilian Plants Collected by Georg Wilhelm Freyreiss and Published by Carl Peter Thunberg in Plantarum brasiliensium,in three dissertations entitled plantarum brasiliensium and presided by carl peter thunberg ten new species were treated in each of three parts by johan immanuel billberg carl gustav ahlberg and carl otto holm respectively from collections made by georg wilhelm freyreiss in his travel to minas gerais in 1814â 1815 eight of these species are currently accepted but several have been over looked by authors or remained unresolved until the present here we present the taxonomic status for all these names based on the anal yses of the original specimens collected by freyreiss currently housed at ups and elsewhere pertinent literature available and other herbarium collections as a result six new synonyms one lectotypification and one new combination are proposed,2014,0.664
Taxonomic Needs Assessments Support Pack,one hundred and ninety three nations around the world are party to the convention on biological diversity all have made commitments on conservation sustainable use and fair and equitable access to the genetic benefits of biological diversity â the three aims of the convention in order to meet these commitments and manage their biodiversity they need to be able to identify what that biodiversity is made up of this process needs taxonomy â the identification naming and classification of organisms,2014,0.325
Spatial Extent Models for Natural Language Phrases Involving Directional Containment,we study the problem of assigning a spatial extent to a text phrase such as â central northern californiaâ with the objective of allowing spatial interpretations of natural language and consistency testing of complex utterances that involve multiple phrases from which spatial extent can be derived the work pre sented addresses alternative spatial extent assignations and the evaluation of those alternatives to decide on the best performing ones three important classes of these phrases are identified and we call them full direction phrases half direction phrases and extreme direction phrases respectively examples of these are â north western californiaâ â central northern californiaâ and â extreme south eastern californiaâ such descriptions vaguely delineate a spatial extent and we attempt to derive a region representation for them our approach is to identify a number of extent assignation parameters which are used to derive a variety of spatial extent models each of which we evaluate against a large gazetteer corpus three example assig nation parameters used are choice of center choice of shape of central sector and choice of shape of outer sectors the corpus used for the evaluation is the two volume ornithological gazetteer of brazil paynter and traylor 1991a b it allows us to compare the spatial extent assignations and derive recom mendations for such assignations for future use,2014,0.361
Sensitivity Analysis of CLIMEX Parameters in Modeling Potential Distribution of Phoenix dactylifera L.,using climex and the taguchi method a process based niche model was developed to estimate potential distributions of phoenix dactylifera l date palm an economically important crop in many counties development of the model was based on both its native and invasive distribution and validation was carried out in terms of its extensive distribution in iran to identify model parameters having greatest influence on distribution of date palm a sensitivity analysis was carried out changes in suitability were established by mapping of regions where the estimated distribution changed with parameter alterations this facilitated the assessment of certain areas in iran where parameter modifications impacted the most particularly in relation to suitable and highly suitable locations parameter sensitivities were also evaluated by the calculation of area changes within the suitable and highly suitable categories the low temperature limit dv2 high temperature limit dv3 upper optimal temperature sm2 and high soil moisture limit sm3 had the greatest impact on sensitivity while other parameters showed relatively less sensitivity or were insensitive to change for an accurate fit in species distribution models highly sensitive parameters require more extensive research and data collection methods results of this study demonstrate a more cost effective method for developing date palm distribution models an integral element in species management and may prove useful for streamlining requirements for data collection in potential distribution modeling for other species as well,2014,0.166
A georeferenced checklist of the butterflies of Bhutan,the development of georeferenced freely accessible biodiversity datasets is becoming an inescapable necessity to speed our ability to understand analyse and manage the dramatic changes going on ecosystems due to both global climate change and the human impact on the biosphere mega projects attempting to manage big biodiversity data such as geoss gbif obis etc represent significant ongoing answers to this necessity however they are still largely incomplete and unfortunately basically heterogeneous in their geo location accuracy therefore regional spatially and temporally explicit datasets are needed to study species habitat relationships investigate the possible occurrence of shifts in specie ranges altitudinal distribution and phenology and to develop spatially explicit species distribution models sdms butterflies are rigorously dependent upon both biotic and abiotic landscape features even at very tiny scales since their ecology and evolution have been shaped upon their â œcoarse grainedâ sensitivity to the environmental heterogeneity butterflies have short life cycles and thus react quickly to environmental changes their limited dispersal ability larval foodplant specialisation and close reliance on the weather and climate make many butterfly species sensitive to fine scale changes these features make butterflies a valuable indicator of biodiversity and provide an early warning system for biodiversity loss and other kinds of ecosystem changes as a result they are now the best monitored group of insects in the world in this framework butterflies inhabiting himalayan countries represent a remarkably interesting model to investigate the possible occurrence of shifts in specie ranges altitudinal distribution and phenology we present the first attempt to build up a georeferenced dataset of the butterflies of bhutan butterfly fauna of bhutan probably amounts to around 800 species the huge range of habitats in bhutan from subtropical in the south to alpine in the north presents a wide assemblage of habitat niches for butterflies similarly to nepal sikkim and other himalayan countries both palaearctic and indo malayan species occur in bhutan however the most interesting zoogeographical feature is represented by a very large array of sino himalayan taxa so far we have digitalised data collected by three of us gcb kw and vs during recent trips from 2008 to 2013 as well as data obtained from a few recently published papers where recording localities were presented with an acceptable degree of accuracy at this time the dataset includes more than 450 species and around 1800 records with a fairy good geographical coverage of the country from tropical dooars up to the alpine zone at 5000 m,2014,0.691
"Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Island Bathynellacea (Crustacea, Syncarida) database",this is the first published database of bathynellacea it includes all data of bathynellids crustacea bathynellacea collected in the last 64 years 1949 to 2013 on the iberian peninsula and balearic is land the samples come from groundwater caves springs wells and hyporrheic habitat associated rivers from both sampling campaigns and occasional sampling conducted throughout the iberian peninsula and balearic islands the dataset lists occurrence data of bathynellids distribution sampling sites with localities county and geographic coordinates taxonomic information from family to species level and sampling sources collector and sampling dates for all records the descriptions of new species and spe cies identifications have been carried out by an expert taxonomist aic with 25 years experience in the bathynellids studies see references many of the sampling sites are type localities of endemic species from iberian peninsula the dataset includes 409 samples record corresponding to two families 12 genera and 58 species 42 of them formally described plus 16 taxa unpublished and 47 samples in study all species known from the study area are included which nearly sum up a quarter of species of bathynellacea known in the world 250 species,2014,0.971
"Lizard fauna (Squamata, Sauria) from Serra do Ouro Branco, southern Espinhaço Range, Minas Gerais, Brazil",the present study evaluated the lizard fauna in serra do ouro branco minas gerais brazil a transition area between the atlantic forest and cerrado data was collected using pitfall traps active and occasional encounters and through information from zoological collections and the literature field sampling was performed in two stages over a period of 36 months from december 2006 to december 2008 and from january to december 2010 the study area is home to 15 species belonging to eight families anguidae gekkonidae gymnophthalmidae leiosauridae polychrotidae mabuyidae teiidae and tropiduridae lizard species evaluated in this study represent a relevant asset for this zoological group inhabiting the transitional areas between the atlantic forest and cerrado they include strictly forest species and endemic atlantic forest species such as ecpleopus gaudichaudii enyalius perditus and heterodactylus imbricatus in addition to typical cerrado taxa common to both biomes,2014,0.843
Plant-parasitic nematodes in Germany – an annotated checklist,a total of 268 phytonematode species indigenous in germany or more recently introduced and established outdoors are listed their current taxonomic status and classification is given which is not always in agreement with that applied in fauna europaea or recent publications recently used synonyms are included and comments on the species status are sometimes added species originally described from germany are particularly marked presence of types and other voucher specimens in the german nematode collection terrestrial nematodes dnst is indicated likewise potential occurrence or absence of species in field soil and similar cultivated land is noted species known from indoor plants and only occasionally observed outdoors are listed separately synonymies and species considered as species inquirendae are listed in case records refer to germany records and identifications considered as doubtful are also listed in a separate section notes on a number of genera and species are added taxonomic problems are indicated and data on morphology distribution and habitat of some recently discovered species and of still unidentified or undescribed species or populations are given longidorus macroteromucronatus is synonymised with l poessneckensis paratrophurus striatus is transferred as t casigo nom nov comb nov to the genus tylenchorhynchus neotypes of merlinius bavaricus and bursaphelenchus fraudulentus are designated,2014,0.989
A Multi-Scale Distribution Model for Non-Equilibrium Populations Suggests Resource Limitation in an Endangered Rodent,species distributions are known to be limited by biotic and abiotic factors at multiple temporal and spatial scales species distribution models however frequently assume a population at equilibrium in both time and space studies of habitat selection have repeatedly shown the difficulty of estimating resource selection if the scale or extent of analysis is incorrect here we present a multi step approach to estimate the realized and potential distribution of the endangered giant kangaroo rat first we estimate the potential distribution by modeling suitability at a range wide scale using static bioclimatic variables we then examine annual changes in extent at a population level we define available habitat based on the total suitable potential distribution at the range wide scale then within the available habitat model changes in population extent driven by multiple measures of resource availability by modeling distributions for a population with robust estimates of population extent through time and ecologically relevant predictor variables we improved the predictive ability of sdms as well as revealed an unanticipated relationship between population extent and precipitation at multiple scales at a range wide scale the best model indicated the giant kangaroo rat was limited to areas that received little to no precipitation in the summer months in contrast the best model for shorter time scales showed a positive relation with resource abundance driven by precipitation in the current and previous year these results suggest that the distribution of the giant kangaroo rat was limited to the wettest parts of the drier areas within the study region this multi step approach reinforces the differing relationship species may have with environmental variables at different scales provides a novel method for defining available habitat in habitat selection studies and suggests a way to create distribution models at spatial and temporal scales relevant to theoretical and applied ecologists,2014,0.314
Discovering and Developing Primary Biodiversity Data from Social Networking Sites: A Novel Approach,detailed authoritative digital accessible knowledge dak about biodiversity is crucial to any biodiversity informatics or conservation project in most developing nations significant dak gaps exist both geographically and taxonomically this paper explores a novel source of photo vouchered biodiversity occurrence data in the form of records associated with photos posted on social networking sites snss snss like flickr facebook and picasaweb allow naturalists to share images and associated metadata with other users i explore the idea of discovering and organizing massive numbers of biodiversity occurrence records now available on snss i present a proof of concept with flickr as the sns and the snowy owl bubo scandiacus and the monarch butterfly danaus plexippus as target species but methods presented here can easily be used for any other sns region or species group particularly for developing mega diverse countries where the need for biodiversity dak is particularly acute these approaches are broadly applicable to animal and plant groups that are photographed and that can be identified from photographs with some degree of confidence e g birds butterflies cetaceans orchids dragonflies amphibians plants and thus offer a rich new source of biodiversity data,2014,0.368
"North-East, North-Central, Mid-Atlantic United States and Southern Canada: Japanese Hedgeparsley ( Torilis japonica )—A New Invasive Species in the United States?",japanese hedgeparsley is an annual or sometimes biennial forb introduced from eurasia and found throughout much of the eastern united states and parts of extreme southern canada in north america japanese hedgeparsley is commonly found in ruderal habitats such as roadsides railroad rights of way forest edges and urban waste spaces this species has not yet been listed as a noxious invasive but its expanding populations have caused concern in several midwestern states the primary threat from japanese hedgeparsley is its vigorous growth habit which creates dense patches and its dispersal ability facilitated by its clinging burr like fruits some confusion on identification exists within the torilis genus with similar species particularly t arvensis frequently misidentified in herbaria and the literature here we review aspects of the etymology taxonomy biology distribution and management of japanese hedgeparsley with the objective of increasing awareness of the potential threat posed by this species and its closely related congeners,2014,0.731
The invasion status of Myriophyllum spicatum L. in southern Africa,the submerged aquatic macrophyte myriophyllum spicatum l haloragaceae has been recorded in southern africa since 1829 it was first considered problematic in 2005 on the vaal river which has highlighted the need for an assessment of the invasion status and an appropriate management strategy to be identified we used a unified invasion framework to categorise m spicatum in southern africa and define appropriate management strategies historical records and field surveys were used to assess the invasion status populations were considered established if collection records from a particular catchment or river system spanned at least 10 years and in some cases several localities of the 21 river systems where it has been recorded it was evaluated as established in 13 and in the d1 e category of invasion the disjunct populations suggest that it was point source introductions and thus the major barrier that prevents m spicatum from proceeding along the invasion framework is its inability to naturally disperse the greater distances between catchments appropriate management strategies need to be catchment or river system based depending on the stage or state and category of invasion where m spicatum is in the d1 e stage â established and potentially spreading the appropriate management strategies include containment and where possible mitigation,2014,0.306
"Species delimitation using morphology, morphometrics, and molecules: definition of the Ophion scutellaris Thomson species group, with descriptions of six new species (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae)",the diverse genus ophion is almost entirely undescribed in the nearctic region in this paper we define the ophion scutellaris species group this species group is well supported by analysis of dna its2 coi and 28s d2 d3 and morphology it includes the palearctic species o scutellaris and the nearctic species o idoneus an integrative analysis of dna geometric wing morphometrics classical morphometrics and qualitative morphology indicates that this species group contains a minimum of seven species in north america although the full diversity of the group has likely not been sampled o clave schwarzfeld sp n o aureus schwarzfeld sp n o brevipunctatus schwarzfeld sp n o dombroskii schwarzfeld sp n o keala schwarzfeld sp n and o importunus schwarzfeld sp n are described and a key to the known nearctic species of the o scutellaris group is provided,2014,0.951
A Qualitative Study of Information challenges in the Cloud,this paper explores the modified information management and information governance challenges faced by organizations when shifting from traditional on site model to the cloud the specific cloud information management and governance challenges ofte n ignored by businesses due to their experience in traditional information governance and outsourcing have the potential to threaten the sustainability of a business that is new to the cloud as cloud solutions from powerful vendors are being thrust at un suspecting customers it is imperative that organizations understand information related changes required in the cloud to ensure regulatory compliance a series of qualitative interviews involving expert practitioners has helped investigate the information challenges and the barriers and drivers of cloud adoption in the current market wi th some unexpected observations,2014,0.135
1914–2014: A revised worldwide catalogue of cushion plants 100 years after Hauri and Schröter,cushion plants have long fascinated botanists for their ability to cope with extreme environments in most mountains and arctic regions of the world one century ago a first worldwide catalogue of species forming cushions was published by hauri and schrã ter bot jahrb syst pflanzengesch pflanzengeogr 50 618â 656 1914 here we defined a simplified typology of cushion plants and updated the worldwide catalogue of cushion species along with information on their geographic distribution this compilation was based on available information in floras and catalogues but also in efloras and virtual encyclopedias which were screened using automated database queries we established a list of 1 309 cushion forming species distributed in 272 genera and 63 families of angiosperms compact cushions are represented by 678 species among which 587 species exhibit a hemispherical shape and 91 species exhibit a flat to mat shape we found 398 species forming non compact hemispherical cushions the list of cushion species has significantly increased since hauri and shrã ter due to the description of new species updated regional inventories and improved access to electronic databases uncertainties in the delineation of the cushion life form are discussed notably for non compact growth forms a website has been launched to display the catalogue and enable a collaborative improvement of the database http www cushionplants eu the distribution of the species is presented on the basis of the world geographical scheme for recording plant distributions and global biodiversity information facility data this catalogue will serve as a reference database for further analyses on the biogeography and evolutionary history of cushion plants and arctico alpine biotas,2014,0.908
"Genetic, Ecological and Morphological Divergence between Populations of the Endangered Mexican Sheartail Hummingbird (Doricha eliza)",the mexican sheartail doricha eliza an endangered hummingbird is endemic to mexico where two populations have a disjunct distribution one population is distributed along the northern tip of the yucatan peninsula whereas the other is mostly restricted to central veracruz despite their disjunct distribution previous work has failed to detect morphological or behavioral differences between these populations here we use variation in morphology mtdna and nudna sequences to determine the degree of morphological and molecular divergence between populations their divergence time and historical demography we use species distribution modeling and niche divergence tests to infer the relative roles of vicariance and dispersal in driving divergence in the genus our bayesian and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses revealed that doricha eliza populations form a monophyletic clade and support their sister relationship with d enicura we found marked genetic differentiation with reciprocal monophyly of haplotypes and highly restricted gene flow supporting a history of isolation over the last 120 000 years genetic divergence between populations is consistent with the lack of overlap in environmental space and slight morphological differences between males our findings indicate that the divergence of the veracruz and yucatan populations is best explained by a combination of a short period of isolation exacerbated by subsequent divergence in climate conditions and that rather than vicariance the two isolated ranges of d eliza are the product of recent colonization and divergence in isolation,2014,0.921
Data e-­Infrastructure Initiative for Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resource,the imarine data e â â infrastructure is a living system whose development is mainly driven by requirements and feedback produced by the imarine cop this deliverable is the third of the series of reports on the activities performed while operating such a system the del iverable describes the stat e of the data e â â infrastructure in terms of nodes available software deployed quality of the service and usage as of september 2014,2014,0.183
Carnivorans at the Great American Biotic Interchange: new discoveries from the northern neotropics,we report two fossil procyonids cyonasua sp and chapalmalania sp from the late pliocene of venezuela vergel member san gregorio formation and colombia ware formation respectively the occurrence of these pre holocene procyonids outside argentina and in the north of south america provides further information about the great american biotic interchange gabi the new specimens are recognized in the same monophyletic group as procyonids found in the southern part of the continent the cyonasua group formed by species of cyonasua and chapalmalania the phylogenetic analysis that includes the two new findings support the view that procyonids dispersed from north america in two separate events initially previous to the first major migration wave gabi 1 and then within the last major migration wave gabi 4 this involved reciprocal lineage migrations from north to south america and included the evolution of south american endemic forms,2014,0.554
Projecting future distribution of the seagrass Zostera noltii under global warming and sea level rise,in future decades coastal ecosystems are expected to be exposed to increased risk of experiencing adverse consequences related to climate change exacerbated by human induced pressures the seagrass zostera noltii forms meadows mainly within the intertidal zone leading it to be particularly vulnerable to seawater temperature increase and sea level rise slr considering the presently declining situation and the predicted scenarios of increasing seawater temperature and slr by the end of the 21st century we assessed the response of z noltii to climate change i accounting for changes in seawater temperature at its entire biogeographical range level and ii under slr scenarios at estuary level oka estuary basque country south eastern bay of biscay objectives were addressed coupling habitat suitability models with climate change simulations by the end of the 21st century seawater temperature increase will trigger a northward distributional shift of 888 km in the suitable habitat of the species and a retreat of southernmost populations the loss of southernmost populations due to climate change may imply future conservation problems in contrast slr and derived changes in current velocities are expected to induce the landward migration of the species in the oka estuary increasing the available suitable intertidal areas 14â 18 to limits imposed by anthropogenic barriers this modelling approach could lead to an advanced understanding of the speciesâ response to climate change effects moreover the information generated might support conservation actions towards the sites where the habitat would remain suitable for the species under climate change,2014,0.239
"Boletus edulis and Cistus ladanifer : characterization of its ectomycorrhizae, in vitro synthesis, and realised niche",the boletus edulis species complex includes four species boletus aereus boletus edulis boletus pinophilus and boletus reticulatus that hav e the great economic importance all around the world for their edibility cistaceae are plants belonging to primary succession stages of tree stands that are ecologically important species because they may act as a reservoir of e cto mycorrhizal fungi inoculum after a forest disturbance boletus edulis sporocarps are regularly observed in certain regions of central spain which have recurrent fires and are dominated exclusively by cistus ladanifer in many of these areas they appear not to be harvested and constitute an underappreciated and underexplo ited resource its productive association opens a new way of sustainable ru ral development to d escrib e its structures to check the viability of the association under laboratory conditions and also its realized niche and climatic suitability are previou s steps that will allow us to arise a new way to exploiding it t o provide a detailed description based on standard morphological and anatomical characters of the ectomycorrhizae of boletus edulis on cistus ladanifer field ectomycorrhizae were sampled t his mycorrhizae has traits typical of boletales the identification of the fungal symbiont was confirmed by its rdna sequence comparison between mycorrhiza e and sporocarps the fact that th is fungus is able to fruit when associated to unusual host plants may be seen as a dispersion strat egy to assure genetic variation favouring the maintenance of soil inoculum reservoria for later successional stages t o test the ability of the boletus edulis species complex to form ectomycorrhiza e wi th cistus sp under controlled conditions as well as provide detailed anatomical descriptions of the formed ectomycorrhizae ectomycorrhizas of boletus aereus boletus edulis and boletus reticulatus were synthesized in vitro with cistus albidus and cistus ladanifer the formed ectomycorrhizae were very similar with typical traits of boletales similar t o those formed by the same fungal species with other hosts and in the wild t o define the realized niche of the ectomycorrhizal association where boletus edulis produces sporocarps associated with cistus ladanifer in peninsular spain species distribution models based on climatic variables and corrected under lithological criteria were developed the climatic niche is mesothermal mediterranean and humid soils are strongly acid with loam texture low in organic matter and in an oligotrophic mull form the optimal of this association o ccupies 1 785 km 2 16 3 of the potential area controlled mycorrhization and outplanting of inoculated seedlings might be a feasible and promising way to exploit this symbiosis providing economic benefits to accomplish this further research is needed to determine the appropriate inoculation methods with compatible strains the persistence of ectomycorrhizae on outplanted inoculated seedlings and the factors triggering sporocarps production,2014,0.638
Combining genetic analyses of archived specimens with distribution modelling to explain the anomalous distribution of the rare lichen Staurolemma omphalarioides : long-distance dispersal or vicariance?,aim the rare lichen species staurolemma omphalarioides is known mainly from the lowlands and coastal areas of the mediterranean region but has also been found in coastal parts of central norway despite extensive search efforts by experts for more than half a century the species has been found nowhere in the gap our aim is to identify the most plausible explanation for this anomalous distribution by combining genetic analysis of archived specimens with distribution modelling location europe western middle east and north africa but mainly the mediterranean and atlantic floristic regions methods we used multi locus dna sequencing of archived specimens and phylogenetic and network analyses to reveal potential genetic lineages within s omphalarioides we used georeferenced specimens and bioclimatic variables to model the distributions of the species and two genetic lineages and to find the main environmental correlates of the distributions results our phylogeographical results show that s omphalarioides contains genetic variation that correlates with geographical distance although with a few shared haplotypes across disjunct ranges distributions of the species as well as the two genetic lineages are non random distribution models predict occurrences of the species as well as one of its genetic lineages outside the current range of the species main conclusions our results indicate that neither the species nor its component genetic lineages have reached their potential distributions shared haplotypes across disjunct distributions and absence from regions with suitable refugial habitats along the atlantic coast of western europe support long distance dispersal rather than vicariance as the primary cause for the current distribution of the species,2014,0.926
"The relationship among biodiversity, governance, wealth, and scientific capacity at a country level: Disaggregation and prioritization.",at a global level the relationship between biodiversity importance and capacity to manage it is often assumed to be negative without much differentiation among the more than 200 countries and territories of the world we examine this relationship using a database including terrestrial biodiversity wealth and governance indicators for most countries from these principal components analysis was used to construct aggregated indicators at global and regional scales wealth governance and scientific capacity represent different skills and abilities in relation to biodiversity importance our results show that the relationship between biodiversity and the different factors is not simple in most regions wealth and capacity varies positively with biodiversity while governance vary negatively with biodiversity however these trends to a certain extent are concentrated in certain groups of nations and outlier countries we discuss our results in the context of collaboration and joint efforts among biodiversity rich countries and foreign agencies,2014,0.277
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WOODY LEGUMES IN NEOTROPICAL DRY FORESTS: THE PLEISTOCENE ARC THEORY 20 YEARS ON,the pleistocene arc theory pat suggests that present day disjunct fragments of dry forests in central tropical south america give evidence of a previously more continuous distribution during the pleistocene that has been disrupted by dry cold vs humid warm climatic cycles this arc extends from ne brazil to ne argentina and eastern paraguay through the chiquitanã a to nw argentina and sw bolivia and into the dry inter andean valleys in peru and ecuador with intrusions into the great chaco seasonally dry tropical forests sdtfs are floristically and physiognomically dominated by woody legumes mostly deciduous in the dry season in the last two decades field collection and research on legume taxa has greatly increased with a significant number of taxonomic revisions and molecular phylogenetic studies together with some paleoclimatic modelling studies the evidence accumulated in the last 23 years has confirmed the integrity of the chaco and caatingas phytogeographical provinces with an impressive and increasing level of botanical endemism discovered the pat pattern has also been supported specifically through the mapping of five selected woody leguminosae species anadenanthera colubrina enterolobium contortisiliquum pterogyne nitens amburana cearensis and piptadenia viridiflora the pre existing nuclei of south american sdtf caatingas misiones and piedmont are now increased to four with the postulation of the chiquitanã a nucleus in south eastern bolivia and bordering paraguay some new endemisms are compiled from recent literature and mapped for the misiones and chiquitanã a nuclei the need for more botanical collections and further taxonomic phylogenetic and demographic studies of south american legumes is emphasised,2014,0.417
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 64. Nomenclatural notes in Balantiopsidaceae,during the preparation of the forthcoming world checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in press it was noted that a few taxa need to be validated or combined the subfamily name balantiopsidoideae has been used as if it has been an autonym of the family balantiopsidaceae h buch 1955 23 e g grolle 1972 engel smith merrill 1997 however as autonyms do not exist on any other taxonomic level than genus or species icn 22 3 26 3 mcneill et al 2012 all subfamilies need to be accompanied by a valid description or diagnoses or a reference to an effectively published description or diagnoses icn art 39 1,2014,0.435
The biodiversity data knowledge gap: Assessing information loss in the management of Biosphere Reserves,the knowledge of biodiversity within an area is vital if we want to develop adequate conservation strat egies biosphere reserves are purposefully established for the sustainable use of their resources and therefore their biodiversity should be well known we compared and evaluated information available for mexican biosphere reserves on threatened and non threatened vertebrate species records from three different sources â the corresponding biosphere reserves management plans mps the global biodiver sity information facility index gbif and scientific literature in order to find potential knowledge gaps our results suggest that there were varying gaps in information among sources according to vertebrate group for each group of vertebrate species management plans held the largest subsets of information but were not complete ranging from 89 6 of the combined known species of birds to 70 for amphib ians and freshwater fishes however both gbif and literature included data absent from mps and gbif included data not otherwise available proving it as important as literature or other data sources e g field data used for crafting such plans moreover we found references to threatened species that were not listed in the mps reaching to as many as 50 of the total known species of fish species information shared by all three sources ranged from 28 for amphibians to 72 5 for birds conservation efforts should therefore take into account that possibly less charismatic taxa such as amphibians reptiles and freshwater fish lack more information than birds or mammals the disparity observed in the vertebrate species information constitutes an information gap that could or should be solved by scientists and managers alike,2014,0.96
Applying Extinction Risk Modelling to Develop Global Conservation Priorities for Bulbous Monocots,species extinctions are occurring at unprecedented rates threatening the long term stability of ecosystems and the services they provide understanding the species level determinants of extinction risk and the resulting spatial patterns of risk are two challenges for effective conservation prioritisation prioritising research actions is especially important for understudied taxa such as plants in this thesis i predict extinction risk and prioritise research actions for bulbous monocots an ecologically and economically important plant group i predict extinction risk using machine learning models trained with both extrinsic and intrinsic variables i found 35 of unassessed species to be at risk of extinction the main predictors being human impacts and range size geospatial analysis confirmed some known hotspots of threat but also revealed new hotspots which have previously been neglected by conservation efforts predicted risk levels can be used to strategically target the most vulnerable regions for further research i prioritise regions based on cost effectiveness taking into account predicted extinction risk likelihood of conservation success and cost of field based assessments i recommend california cape provinces and turkey as priority regions for research on bulbous monocots results are conditional on the best information available to date hence improvements in data availability and quality will provide opportunities for further model development and research my results have direct implications for plant conservation and provide a new approach to achieving ambitious plant conservation targets based on limited information and financial investment,2014,0.119
Towards a better understanding of potential impacts of climate change on marine species distribution: a multiscale modelling approach,aim in this paper we applied the concept of â hierarchical filtersâ in community ecology to model marine species distribution at nested spatial scales location global mediterranean sea and the gulf of gabes tunisia methods we combined the predictions of bioclimatic envelope models bems and habitat models to assess the current distribution of 20 exploited marine species in the gulf of gabes bems were first built at a global extent to account for the full range of climatic conditions encountered by a given species habitat models were then built using fine grained habitat variables at the scale of the gulf of gabes we also used this hierarchical filtering approach to project the future distribution of these species under both climate change the a2 scenario implemented with the mediterranean climatic model nemomed8 and habitat loss the loss of posidonia oceanica meadows scenarios results the hierarchical filtering approach predicted current species geographical ranges to be on average 56 smaller than those predicted using the bems alone this pattern was also observed under the climate change scenario combining the habitat loss and climate change scenarios indicated that the magnitude of range shifts due to climate change was larger than from the loss of p oceanica meadows main conclusions our findings emphasize that bems may overestimate current and future ranges of marine species if speciesâ habitat relationships are not also considered a hierarchical filtering approach that accounts for fine grained habitat variables limits the uncertainty associated with model based recommendations thus ensuring their outputs remain applicable within the context of marine resource management,2014,0.445
LIAS light – Towards the ten thousand species milestone,over the past 12 years the lichen trait database lias light as a component of the lias information system has grown to a considerable pool of descriptive data based on 71 different qualitative quantita tive and text characters for nearly 10 000 lichen taxa being phylogenetically arranged according to the myconet classification it includes information on morphological ecological and chemical traits multi linguality or internationalization options have become a central challenge of the project at present 18 language versions of the database and web interface exist lias light data are accessible in delta format and to be used locally and web browser based via navikey applet,2014,0.227
Diversity and disparity through time in the adaptive radiation of Antarctic notothenioid fishes.,according to theory adaptive radiation is triggered by ecological opportunity that can arise through the colonization of new habitats the extinction of antagonists or the origin of key innovations in the course of an adaptive radiation diversification and morphological evolution are expected to slow down after an initial phase of rapid adaptation to vacant ecological niches followed by speciation such early bursts of diversification are thought to occur because niche space becomes increasingly filled over time the diversification of antarctic notothenioid fishes into over 120 species has become one of the prime examples of adaptive radiation in the marine realm and has likely been triggered by an evolutionary key innovation in the form of the emergence of antifreeze glycoproteins here we test using a novel time calibrated phylogeny of 49 species and five traits that characterize notothenioid body size and shape as well as buoyancy adaptations and habitat preferences whether the notothenioid adaptive radiation is compatible with an early burst scenario extensive bayesian model comparison shows that phylogenetic age estimates are highly dependent on model choice and that models with unlinked gene trees are generally better supported and result in younger age estimates we find strong evidence for elevated diversification rates in antarctic notothenioids compared to outgroups yet no sign of rate heterogeneity in the course of the radiation except that the notothenioid family artedidraconidae appears to show secondarily elevated diversification rates we further observe an early burst in trophic morphology suggesting that the notothenioid radiation proceeds in stages similar to other prominent examples of adaptive radiation this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.271
Experiments on the life cycle and factors affecting reproduction of Sphaerosporella brunnea provide evidence for rapid asexual propagation by conidiospores and for homothallism in an ectomycorrhizal competitor of cultivated truffle species,sphaerosporella brunnea is a pioneer and opportunist ectomycorrhizal species and the most common fungal competitor in nurseries producing plants mycorrhized with tuber species our objective was to learn more about its life cycle as the first step to manage its presence in greenhouses conidiation and formation of resting spore like structures were found to be triggered by aeration and to be highest on cma medium in pot experiments s brunnea was able to form ectomycorrhizas and ascocarps rapidly in 2 and 3 months respectively if substratum moisture was high both mycelia and conidiospores were effective sources of inoculum for mycorrhization this species seems to be homothallic as apothecia have been obtained after inoculations with single monospore isolates propagation by mitospores and homothallism are poorly documented in ecm fungi therefore these results may be of fundamental interest beyond the question of greenhouse management â 2014,2014,0.651
Sitka Bioblitz Discovery Produces First Notonecta (Hemiptera: Notonectidae) Recorded in Alaska,notonectidae are small to medium sized predatory water bugs commonly referred to as backswimmers due to their unusual style of upside down locomotion they can be found in the still or slow moving water of lakes ponds and streams where they feed on other aquatic inverte brates and occasionally small vertebrates somewhat similar in appearance to mem bers of t he widespread family corixidae they are usually larger bodied and lack scoop like front legs merritt et al 2008,2014,0.386
Microscopical investigation of the leaf architecture in greenhouse-cultivated Ficus (Moraceae),a high diversity of leaf structural traits in the genus ficus is often argued with regard to its taxonomic implications greenhouse cultivated plants of ficus are in special need of identification based on the vegetative organs since they rarely produce flowers we studied the leaf anatomy in 33 ficus species of six subgenera and 12 sections grown under greenhouse conditions using light microscopy and sem a great between species variation of the leaf traits was revealed as opposed to their stability within each species qualitative leaf traits were found useful for distinguishing species and some higher taxa of ficus namely the features of epidermis mesophyll and vein anatomy were characteristic at the level of sections and subsections quantitative parameters of stomata and glandular trichomes as well as the thickness of lamina and its inner layers separated well the species and subgenera of ficus the classification of the species based on the quantitative leaf parameters revealed several groups of related species which are placed close in the existing system of the genus new data on ficus leaf architecture were obtained including the presence of branched tric homes the features of vein anatomy and the diagnostic value of laminar hydathodes the study shows that many characters of ficus leaf architecture are of taxonomic value and provide support to the existing classification of the genus the leaf anatomical and surface features analyzed may facilitate a proper identification of the species and higher taxa of ficus if considered together in a complex,2014,0.762
"Biotechnological approaches to enhance salidroside, rosin and its derivatives production in selected Rhodiola spp. in vitro cultures",rhodiola crassulaceae an arctic alpine plant is extensively used in traditional folk medicine in asian and european countries a number of investigations have demonstrated that rhodiola prep arations exhibit adaptogenic neuroprotective anti tumour cardioprotective and anti depressant effects the main compounds responsible for these activities are believed to be salidroside rosin and its derivatives which became the target of biotechnological investi gations this review summarizes the results of the diverse biotechnological approaches undertaken to enhance the production of salidroside rosin and its derivatives in callus cell suspension and organ in vitro cultures of selected rhodiola species,2014,0.311
Ecological niche differentiation of polyploidization is not supported by environmental differences among species in a cosmopolitan grass genus,premise of the study polyploidization frequently results in the creation of new plant species the establishment of which is thought to often be facilitated by ecological niche differentiation from the diploid species we tested this hypothesis using the cosmopolitan grass genus phalaris poaceae consisting of 19 species that range from diploid to tetraploid to hexaploid specifically we tested whether 1 polyploids occupy more extreme environments and or 2 have broader niche breadths and or 3 whether the polyploid species distributions indicate a niche shift from diploid species methods we employed a bootstrapping approach using distribution data for each species and eight environmental variables to investigate differences between species in the means extremes and breadths of each environmental variable we used a kernel smoothing technique to quantify niche overlap between species key results although we found some support for the three hypotheses for a few diploid polyploid pairs and for specific environmental variables none of these hypotheses were generally supported conclusions our results suggest that these commonly held hypotheses about the effects of polyploidization on ecological distributions are not universally applicable correlative biogeographic studies like ours provide a necessary first step for suggesting specific hypotheses that require experimental verification a combination of genetic physiological and ecological studies will be required to achieve a better understanding of the role of polyploidization in niche evolution,2014,0.887
Data Reuse in Museum Contexts: Experiences of Archaeologists and Botanists,in recent years data reuse has become a prominent goal in a number of disciplines in recognition of the potential of new combinations and analyses of data to address new research questions while data sharing infrastructure supporting research communities has grown so too has a body of literature addressing the barriers to data reuse one institution largely omitted from examinations of data reuse however is the museum museums have long been sites of data reuse they hold a vast array of objects related to natural and human history which along with the information known about them function as important sources of evidence in the work of many researchers decisions made by museum staff about methods of data selection validation and representation have important implications for future research use however little is known about the ways that researchers find evaluate and interpret data in museums in response to this gap i developed two research questions first what is the relationship between museum objects their representations and research use second what factors influence the practices of staff members as they describe and manage museum data these questions specify the individuals whose activities form the core of this study researchers as they analyze museum data to address specific goals and museum staff as they create representations of museum data to facilitate use i addressed these research questions by conducting a comparative case study of the data practices of staff and researchers using two museum collections an archaeology museum and a herbarium i conducted a total of 45 semi structured interviews with 14 staff members and 31 researchers between the two sites i supplemented this primary data with non participant observation of the data management and reuse practices of six of these individuals and with archival research into the historical factors influencing the representation and use of data at the two museums the main contribution of this work is an understanding of how researchers select and use museum data as evidence in two domains researchers used complex accumulations of museum objects and their representations including metadata to address different types of research goals applying the evidential norms of their research communities to their approach to data i characterized their use of research data as primarily type based involving comparative analysis of objects or provenance based in which documentation of an objectâ s source was the most vital information the study also contributes a nuanced understanding of the work of collection managers and curators to increase the value and accessibility of museum data through the application of their own expertise in information systems and content,2014,0.019
First records of American Wolffia columbiana in Europe – Clandestine replacement of native Wolffia arrhiza ?,wolffia columbiana is a member of the family lemnaceae and native to the americas in 2013 the first two occurrences of wolffia columbiana in europe were found in germany and the netherlands differentiation between w columbiana and the rare native w arrhiza is difficult and a scanning electron microscope sem was used to confirm plant identification a brief description of both populations of w columbiana and some identifying characteristics are given due to their small size wolffia species are easily overlooked in the field and or misidentified and thus it seems likely that even more unknown occurrences of alien wolffia species might occur in europe the remaining known occurrences of putative w arrhiza should be inspected to check their identity we hypothesize that alien w columbiana might be sometimes overlooked or misidentified as the native w arrhiza and thus it may have a more widespread distribution within europe than thought,2014,0.674
How drought and deciduousness shape xylem plasticity in three Costa Rican woody plant species,this paper explores the phenotypic plasticity of xylem in tropical trees in order to test the hypothesis that different leaf phenological patterns influence levels of xylem plasticity wood anatomy was studied in the wet deciduous species cordia alliodora ruiz amp pav oken the dry deciduous species tabebuia rosea bertol dc and the evergreen species ocotea veraguensis meisn mez collected from seasonally dry forest and tropical cloud forest in costa rica xylem plasticity and trait conservatism were examined by analysing the coefficient of variation cv and the relative distance plasticity index rdpi of xylem anatomical traits the two deciduous species exhibited wider vessels lower wood density and higher huber values than the evergreen species furthermore intervessel connectivity was highest for the two deciduous species in seasonally dry forest compared to cloud forest whereas the opposite was found for the evergreen species overall highest trait variability was found for all plants at the seasonally dry site the evergreen species o veraguensis had the highest plasticity values compared to the deciduous species highest plasticity was found for vessel composition index vessel area vessel number whilestrongest trait conservatism was found for vessel diameter in conclusion our data indicate that evergreen o veraguensis does not show less xylem plasticity than the two deciduous tree species studied,2014,0.988
The Role of Natural and Human-Mediated Pathways for Invasive Agricultural Pests: A Historical Analysis of Cases from Brazil,information about the geographic distribution of agricultural pests is the basis for all pest related agricultural and environmental protection policies however often the pestâ s records are incomplete and uncertain even with limitations the pest records are needed for any country to organize a system for agriculture protection and to mobilize surveillance efforts the first point is to identify the imminence of biological invasions which can be accomplished through the collection of data on pest distribution the basic information to evaluate the predictability of an invasion is geographic distribution and the identification of pathway types associated with the potential invader thus the level of the risk of introduction is assessed more objectively in this article cases of introduction of pests were analyzed from published reports in brazil in terms of their geographic distribution at the time of their introduction taking into consideration the countryâ s extensive terrestrial borders this study attempts to elucidate the role played by different pathways in each bioinvasion this analysis recognized the limitations of the historical method and underlying uncertainties of each invasion event human mediated pathways were the main source of agricultural pest invasions in brazil and the country was more a disperser than a receptor of exotic agricultural pests and diseases in south america a new geographical hotspot northern south america and caribbean region for possible invasions was identified,2014,0.109
Improving the surrogacy effectiveness of charismatic megafauna with well-surveyed taxonomic groups and habitat types,1 conservation planning often relies on the use of surrogates for representing many aspects of biodiversity previous tests on the effectiveness of charismatic mammals as biodiversity surrogates have suffered from the lack of fine resolution data and produced varied and contrasting results 2 in this study we used unique high resolution data for more than 600 biodiversity features from the maputaland pondoland albany global biodiversity hotspot to assess how the surrogacy effectiveness of the â big fiveâ charismatic mammal species could be improved 3 we found that combining the â big fiveâ charismatic mammal species with well known and surveyed taxonomic groups such as birds amphibians and reptiles and habitat types which can be mapped quickly and inexpensively increases the representation of poorly surveyed taxonomic groups such as endemic and threatened invertebrate and plant species as well as other mammal species in particular habitat types were found to be an integral component of a successful surrogate strategy nevertheless a broad cross taxon surrogate group composed of the â big fiveâ birds amphibians and reptiles was found to be a more effective surrogate than habitat types on their own meanwhile other taxonomic groups and habitat types were not effective surrogates for the â big fiveâ charismatic species 4 as charismatic mammals have an important marketing value they can be promoted to generate funding which can then facilitate the implementation of conservation action and cover management costs thereby indirectly benefiting other threatened biodiversity 5 synthesis and applications while some geographic areas and taxa have been extensively studied detailed information about the distributions of species is missing for much of the world this study provides important information that can have operational relevance to prioritize areas for conservation action in areas of the world with poor data on biodiversity we found that other taxa are not good surrogates for charismatic mammal species we also found that habitat types are a necessary component of surrogacy strategies that cover plants and insects overall a combination of habitat types and charismatic mammals complemented with other well known taxa birds amphibians and reptiles provided the highest surrogacy effects,2014,0.817
Design of optimal ecosystem monitoring networks: hotspot detection and biodiversity patterns,effective monitoring of ecosystems is crucial for assessing and possibly anticipating shifts quantifying ecosystem services and optimal decision making based on shifts and services the selection of monitoring sites is typically suboptimal following local stakeholder or research interests that do not allow to capture ecosystem patterns and dynamics as a whole the design of optimal monitoring network is crucial for the accurate determination of biodiversity patterns of ecosystems a novel model for the design of optimal monitoring networks for biodiversity based on the concept of the value of information voi is proposed the voi is assigned to species richness that is the economically and ecologically valuable metric as a case study the trinational frontier ecosystem among brazil peru and bolivia is considered for the model a multiresolution texture based model estimates species richness and turnover on satellite imagery calibrated on different sets of information coming from forest plot data organized in network topologies the optimal monitoring network is the network that minimizes the integrated voi defined as the variation of the voi in the 28 years considered this is equivalent to minimize the sum of the species turnover of the ecosystem the small world network is identified as the optimal and most resilient monitoring network whose nodes are the hotspots of species richness the hotspots are identified as the sites whose voi is the highest for the whole period considered hence the hotspots are the most valuable communities for inferring biodiversity patterns and the most ecologically economically valuable according to the richnessâ resilience hypothesis most hotspots are honored by the small world network that can be thought as the â backboneâ ecological network of the ecosystem the small world monitoring network has an accuracy 50 higher than other network topologies in predicting biodiversity patterns this network has the highest voi at any time step and scale considered thus it guarantees to track changes of ecosystems in space and time the network that results from the optimal trade off between data value with their uncertainty and relevance has deep implications for understanding ecosystem function and for management decisions the model allows to include preferences for ecosystem communities by using differential weights on the voi of these communities and economic constraints that limit the extension of the network because of the optimal integration of environmental social and economical factors the model allows a sustainable monitoring and planning of biodiversity for the future,2014,0.117
"Decoupled evolution of foliar freezing resistance, temperature niche and morphological leaf traits in Chilean Myrceugenia",1 phylogenetic conservatism of tolerance to freezing temperatures has been cited to explain the tendency of plant lineages to grow in similar climates however there is little information about whether or not freezing resistance is conserved across phylogenies and whether conservatism of physiological traits could explain conservatism of realized climatic niches here we compared the phylogenetical lability of realized climatic niche foliar freezing resistance and four morphological leaf traits that are generally considered to be adaptations to frost resistance in the chilean species of myrceugenia which grows in a wide range of habitats 2 we estimated the predicted niche occupancy profiles with respect to minimum temperature mint of all species we measured foliar freezing resistance using chlorophyll fluorescence leaf size leaf mass per area lma stomatal and trichome densities of 10 individuals per species finally we estimated phylogenetic signal and we performed independent contrast analyses among all variables 3 we found that both foliar freezing resistance and mint were subject to a significant phylogenetic signal but the former had a stronger signal we also detected a significant but weak correlation between them r 0 49 pone tail 0 04 morphological traits evolved independent of any phylogenetic effect 4 synthesis our results show that freezing resistance evolved in association with temperature niche but with some delay that could result from phylogenetic inertia our results also show that morphological leaf traits are more labile than realized climatic niche and frost tolerance and that the formers probably evolved in association with microhabitat preferences,2014,0.684
Niche shift in four non-native estrildid finches and implications for species distribution models,non native species can have severe impacts on ecosystems therefore predictions of potentially suitable areas that are at risk of the establishment of non native populations are desirable in recent years species distribution models sdms have been widely applied for this purpose however the appropriate selection of species records whether from the native area alone or also from the introduced range is still a matter of debate we combined analyses of native and non native realized climate niches to understand differences between models based on all locations as well as on locations from the native range only our approach was applied to four estrildid finch species that have been introduced to many regions around the world our results showed that sdms based on location data from native areas alone may underestimate the potential distribution of a given species the climatic niches of species in their native ranges differed from those of their non native ranges niche comparisons resulted in low overlap values indicating considerable niche shifts at least in the realized niches of these species all four species have high potential to spread over many tropical and subtropical areas however trans ferring these results to temperate areas has a high degree of uncertainty and we urge caution when assessing the potential spread of tropical species that have been introduced to higher latitudes keywords,2014,0.959
Interspecific relationships and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in pygmy sunfishes (Centrarchidae: Elassoma),the genus elassoma represents a small but unique component of the aquatic biodiversity hotspot in southeastern north america we present the first phylogeny of the seven described species corroborated by sequence data from mitochondrial and nuclear protein coding genes this analysis reveals a coastal plain clade sister to the geographically isolated and federally protected elassoma alabamae the coastal plain clade contains the widespread e zonatum which is sister to a clade primarily restricted to lowland neogene subprovinces we analyzed morphometric data in a phylogenetic context to illustrate the evolution of sexual shape dimorphism within the genus sixteen univariate and three multivariate traits were tested for significant sexual dimorphism for each species and relative transformation rates were inferred from the time tree a simple index of interspecific sexual dimorphism revealed greater disparity among sympatric species comparisons than among allopatric comparisons results implicate geology as a primary factor influencing ecological diversification and sexual selection as a mechanism reinforcing reproductive isolation in areas of secondary contact we discuss putative roles of geological history and sexual selection in the generation and maintenance of the aquatic biodiversity gradient in southeastern north america,2014,0.505
Quantifying the ecological niche overlap between two interacting invasive species: the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) and the quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis),1 the zebra mussel dreissena polymorpha and quagga mussel dreissena rostriformis bugensis are two closely related invasive species they usually occupy different habitats e g shallow versus deep water at a local scale while occurring in the same broad regions at a large scale the present study assesses the extent to which the habitat partitioning observed at local scales extends to niche partitioning at the global scale 2 species distribution models sdms using maxent were used to model the potential distributions of both species based on a set of environmental and dispersal related predictors 3 according to environmental sdms calibrated with bioclimatic geographic and geological factors only 75 of the predicted quagga mussel distribution overlaps with the distribution of zebra mussel demonstrating that the niches of the two species are moderately different at a global scale 4 quagga mussels were found to occur at higher average temperature and lower average precipitation leading to the prediction that their niche includes mediterranean and arid regions such as california and southern spain two areas currently unaffected by zebra mussel 5 a second set of sdms illustrated a notable influence of dispersal related factors e g human population density closeness to commercial ports and reservoirs on quagga mussel distribution these models suggest that the distribution of quagga mussel is more constrained by dispersal related factors than is the distribution of zebra mussel 6 evidence suggests that economic and environmental impacts can differ between the two species joint accurate predictions may therefore prove important for targeting precautionary management plans at the right species,2014,0.761
Characterization of the Selaginella arizonica xeremophila (Selaginellaceae) Hybrid Zone in Southern Arizona,botanists have long recognized the dynamic nature of plant genomes hybrid and polyploid taxa have been described from artificial crosses morphological traits cytology isozymes and more recently the incongruence between nuclear and plastid gene trees however the contribution of hybridization and polyploidization aka whole genome duplication to plant diversity has long been debated the spectrum of opinions ranges from an ephemeral evolutionary dead end wagner 1970 to an omnipotent evolutionary process involved in adaptation to new environments lewontin birch 1966 at its core this debate reflects the tension between gradual versus punctuated evolutionary change at the university of arizona in the barker lab we investigate the evolutionary genetic processes of hybridization and polyploidization through comparative genomic methods we are currently generating a model system with natural populations of hybrid and polyploid desert adapted lycophytes in the genus selaginella selaginellaceae these plants commonly form large mats in association with rock outcrops and they possess a complex integrated phenotype that allows them to resurrect from metabolic dormancy for short intervals following rainfall events,2014,0.198
Meeting report: advancing practical applications of biodiversity ontologies,we describe the outcomes of three recent workshops aimed at advancing development of the biological collections ontology bco the population and community ontology pco and tools to annotate data using those and other ontologies the first workshop gathered use cases to help grow the pco agreed upon a format for modeling challenging concepts such as ecological niche and developed ontology design patterns for defining collections of organisms and population level phenotypes the second focused on mapping datasets to ontology terms and converting them to resource description framework rdf using the bco to follow up a bco hackathon was held concurrently with the 16th genomics standards consortium meeting during which we converted additional datasets to rdf developed a material sample core for the global biodiversity information framework created a web ontology language owl file for importing darwin core classes and properties into bco and developed a workflow for converting biodiversity data among formats,2014,0.089
"AnthWest, occurrence records for wool carder bees of the genus Anthidium (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae, Anthidiini) in the Western Hemisphere",this paper describes anthwest a large dataset that represents one of the outcomes of a comprehensive broadly comparative study on the diversity biology biogeography and evolution of anthidium fabricius in the western hemisphere in this dataset a total of 22 648 adult occurrence records comprising 9657 unique events are documented for 92 species of anthidium including the invasive range of two intro duced species from eurasia a oblongatum illiger and a manicatum linnaeus the geospatial coverage of the dataset extends from northern canada and alaska to southern argentina and from below sea level in death valley california usa to 4700 m a s l in tucumã n argentina the majority of records in the dataset correspond to information recorded from individual specimens examined by the authors during this project and deposited in 60 biodiversity collections located in africa europe north and south amer ica a fraction 4 8 of the occurrence records were taken from the literature largely california records from a taxonomic treatment with some additional records for the two introduced species the temporal scale of the dataset represents collection events recorded between 1886 and 2012 the dataset was devel oped employing sql server 2008 r2 for each specimen the following information is generally provided scientific name including identification qualifier when species status is uncertain e g â œquestionable de terminationâ for 0 4 of the specimens sex temporal and geospatial details coordinates data collector host plants associated organisms name of identifier historic identification historic identifier taxonomic value i e type specimen voucher etc and repository for a small portion of the database records bees associated with threatened or endangered plants 0 08 of total records as well as specimens collected as part of unpublished biological inventories 17 georeferencing is presented only to nearest degree and the information on floral host locality elevation month and day has been withheld this database can potentially be used in species distribution and niche modeling studies as well as in assessments of pollinator status and pollination services for native pollinators this large dataset of occurrence records is the first to be simultaneously developed during a species level systematic study,2014,0.89
Diversification and the evolution of dispersal ability in the tribe Brassiceae (Brassicaceae).,background and aims dispersal and establishment ability can influence evolutionary processes such as geographic isolation adaptive divergence and extinction probability through these population level dynamics dispersal ability may also influence macro evolutionary processes such as species distributions and diversification this study examined patterns of evolution of dispersal related fruit traits and how the evolution of these traits is correlated with shifts in geographic range size habitat and diversification rates in the tribe brassiceae brassicaceae methods the phylogenetic analysis included 72 taxa sampled from across the brassiceae and included both nuclear and chloroplast markers dispersal related fruit characters were scored and climate information for each taxon was retrieved from a database correlations between fruit traits seed characters habitat range and climate were determined together with trait dependent diversification rates key results it was found that the evolution of traits associated with limited dispersal evolved only in association with compensatory traits that increase dispersal ability the evolution of increased dispersal ability occurred in multiple ways through the correlated evolution of different combinations of fruit traits the evolution of traits that increase dispersal ability was in turn associated with larger seed size increased geographic range size and higher diversification rates conclusions this study provides evidence that the evolution of increased dispersal ability and larger seed size which may increase establishment ability can also influence macro evolutionary processes possibly by increasing the propensity for long distance dispersal in particular it may increase speciation and consequent diversification rates by increasing the likelihood of geographic and thereby reproductive isolation,2014,0.355
Valuing access to biological collections with contingent valuation and cost–benefit analysis,biological collections may be underutilised because of transaction costs incurred in their use one way to reduce transaction costs and foster greater utilisation of biological collections that could benefit society is through the creation of a virtual central database of biological collections available online the objective of this paper is to estimate the benefits of this policy change using a dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of the primary users of biological collections marginal willingness to pay wtp for access to a new central database linking collections around australia was investigated through an annual user fee payment vehicle the mean wtp of direct users of the proposed program was australian dollar a 149 per annum 95 confidence interval of 102â 348 we conducted a costâ benefit analysis of the proposal showing that the aggregate benefits are likely to outweigh the total costs of setting up and maintaining the database in the longer term these findings are useful for,2014,0.211
"Combined use of systematic conservation planning, species distribution modelling, and connectivity analysis reveals severe conservation gaps in a megadiverse country (peru).",conservation planning is crucial for megadiverse countries where biodiversity is coupled with incomplete reserve systems and limited resources to invest in conservation using peru as an example of a megadiverse country we asked whether the national system of protected areas satisfies biodiversity conservation needs further to complement the existing reserve system we identified and prioritized potential conservation areas using a combination of species distribution modeling conservation planning and connectivity analysis based on a set of 2 869 species including mammals birds amphibians reptiles butterflies and plants we used species distribution models to represent species geographic ranges to reduce the effect of biased sampling and partial knowledge about species distributions a site selection algorithm then searched for efficient and complementary proposals based on the above distributions for a more representative system of protection finally we incorporated connectivity among areas in an innovative post hoc analysis to prioritize those areas maximizing connectivity within the system our results highlight severe conservation gaps in the coastal and andean regions and we propose several areas which are not currently covered by the existing network of protected areas our approach helps to find areas that contribute to creating a more representative connected and efficient network,2014,0.402
The GEOSS solution for enabling data interoperability and integrative research,global sustainability research requires an integrative research effort underpinned by digital infrastructures systems able to harness data and heterogeneous information across disciplines digital data and information sharing across systems and applications is achieved by implementing interoperability a property of a product or system to work with other products or systems present or future there are at least three main interoperability challenges a digital infrastructure must address technological semantic and organizational in recent years important international programs and initiatives are focusing on such an ambitious objective this manuscript presents and combines the studies and the experiences carried out by three relevant projects focusing on the heavy metal domain global mercury observation system global earth observation system of systems geoss and inspire this research work recognized a valuable interoperability service bus i e a set of standards models interfaces and good practices proposed to characterize the integrative research cyber infrastructure of the heavy metal research community in the paper the geoss common infrastructure is discussed implementing a multidisciplinary and participatory research infrastructure introducing a possible roadmap for the heavy metal pollution research community to join geoss as a new group on earth observation community of practice and develop a research infrastructure for carrying out integrative research in its specific domain,2014,0.006
"paleobioDB: an R package for downloading, visualizing and processing data from the Paleobiology Database",the fossil record acts as a time machine providing data on the morphology ecology and biogeography of ancient species therefore ideally fossil data should be included in evolutionary macroecological and biogeographical studies however paleontological data are often not used in biological research in part because of the difficulty of extracting occurrence records from the primary literature the goal of the paleobiology database is to make these records generally accessible but unlike databases such as genbank and gbif a ready made interface to the r computing environment has not been available we have developed paleobiodb an r package designed to perform easy and flexible queries of the paleobiology database including visualization downloading and processing of selected data this package facilitates access to paleontological data in a way that should allow further analysis using other packages and libraries available in r the paleobiodb package should facilitate the integration of paleontological and neontological datasets so that data from the deep past can be used to help inform our understanding of living biota and vice versa,2014,0.412
Macroclimate determines the global range limit of Aedes aegypti,aedes aegypti is the main vector of dengue and a number of other diseases worldwide because of the domestic nature of this mosquito the relative importance of macroclimate in shaping its distribution has been a controversial issue we have captured here the worldwide macroclimatic conditions occupied by a aegypti in the last century we assessed the ability of this information to predict the species observed distribution using supra continental spatially uncorrelated data we further projected the distribution of the colonized climates in the near future 2010 2039 under two climate change scenarios our results indicate that the macroclimate is largely responsible for setting the maximum range limit of a aegypti worldwide and that in the near future relatively wide areas beyond this limit will receive macroclimates previously occupied by the species by comparing our projections with those from a previous model based strictly on species climate relationships i e excluding human influence we also found support for the hypothesis that much of the species range in temperate and subtropical regions is being sustained by artificial environments altogether these findings suggest that if the domestic environments commonly exploited by this species are available in the newly suitable areas its distribution may expand considerably in the near future,2014,0.543
Linking multiple biodiversity informatics platforms with Darwin Core Archives,we describe an implementation of the darwin core archive dwc a standard that allows for the exchange of biodiversity information contained within the scratchpads virtual research environment with external collaborators using this single archive file scratchpad users can expose taxonomies specimen records species descriptions and a range of other data to a variety of third party aggregators and tools currently encyclopedia of life emonocot portal cartodb and the common data model for secondary use this paper describes our technical approach to dynamically building and validating darwin core archives for the 600 scratchpad user communities which can be used to serve the diverse data needs of all of our content partners,2014,0.246
Wentiomyces sp. from plant litter on poor fen in northeastern Poland,during research carried on peatlands in northeastern poland small leaf litter ascomycete identified as wentiomyces sp was found on decaying litter of sphagnum sp and vaccinium oxycoccos the taxonomy of this genus remains obscure and there are still few and incidental published records in the mycological literature this taxon is therefore described in the present paper in more detail and a short overview on the current knowledge regarding ecology and systematics of wentiomyces spp is provided,2014,0.316
Best practice for biodiversity data management and publication,there is increasing pressure from the scientific community including funding agencies journals and peers for authors to publish the biodiversity data used in published articles and other scientific literature this enables reproducibility of research and creates new opportunities for integrating data between research projects and analysing data in additional ways the long term availability of data is especially important in conservation science because field data can be costly to collect in addition historic data especially on threatened species and their associated biota become more valuable over time this paper summarises current standards and best practices for the management and publication of biodiversity data it includes recommendations for citing sources of species determination and standards for formatting species distribution data whenever possible data should be published for inclusion in data access platforms that integrate datasets e g gbif genbank and so enable new analyses and broader impact data centres e g pangaea provide added value in quality checks on data a minimum standard recommended is that data should be permanently archived in an online open access repository with sufficient metadata for potential users to understand how and why they were collected,2014,0.476
Ecology Needs a Convention of Nomenclature,many areas of science have adopted nomenclature rules that facilitate research and communication in contrast ecological terminology is constantly redefined across disciplines plagued with synonymy and polysemy and foundational terms and the theories and hypotheses behind them are overlooked we contend that this situation handicaps the progress of ecology we review the causes and consequences of terminological uncertainty and propose a convention of ecological nomenclature cen as an indispensable requirement of ecological synthesis the core components of a cen are its endorsement by a transnational institution a policy framework managed by an advisory committee and a centralized peer reviewed revision of terminology whereby ecologists are proponents and users of a unique open access repository of terms definitions and ontologies a cen should become the basis of a cross disciplinary platform of communication among ecologists journals and the public and aligns with the ongoing initiative toward data globalization in ecology and other disciplines,2014,0.14
"Native mice in a novel ecosystem: Morphology, behavior, and sociology predict the role of prairie deer mice in agriculture",this dissertation examines ecological weed control by the prairie deer mouse peromyscus maniculatus bairdii it is designed to understand the history contemporary challenges and future prospects for the control of weeds with the aid of small mammal seed predation,2014,0.328
Molecular phylogeny of saprophytic wild edible mushroom species from Tanzania based on ITS and nLSU rDNA sequences,tanzania is endowed with diversified topographical features rich in indigenous forests which harbor many different saprophytic wild edible mu shrooms swem few studies have been carried out on characterizing these mushrooms and those have used conventional methods whereby taxa were characterized using micro and macromorphological features which are subtle and sometime fail to delimit closely related taxa in this study eight swem taxa were characterized using two molecular markers â the internal transcribed spacer its and the nuclear large subunit nlsu the studied sequences were analyzed together with an additional of 19 genbank sequences of related taxa in the genera lentinus polyporus panus macrolepiota and auricularia with maximum likelihood and aspergillus niger as an outgroup the blast search results on the ncbi database showed that the studied swem have â 92 identity for its and â 97 identity for lsu the phylogenetic tree constructed using the its data set revealed two major distinct clades with bootstrap support of 77 and 90 and five sub clades supporting the five genera the bootstrap support wer e 94 for lentinus 100 for polyporus 98 for panus 98 for macrolepiota and 90 for auricularia while the nlsu data set revealed the same two major distinct clades but with higher bootstrap support of 91 and 100 the five subclades again supporting the five genera were 100 for lentinus 100 for pluteus 100 for panus 99 for macrolepiota and 100 for auricularia from these results it is clear that both its and lsu delineated the swem taxa to the six genera however the obtained support values showed that its sequences have the highest possibility of successful delineating the studied swem to species level than lsu moreover the result also showed the genus panus forming a monopyletic clade with lentinus and polyporus thus contributing toward s a better understanding of its problematic taxonomic ambiguities,2014,0.346
"Piptochaetium fuscum (Nees ex Steud.) Barkworth, Ciald., & Gandhi, a new combination replacing Piptochaetium setosum (Trin.) Arechav.",a new name piptochaetium fuscum is provided for a taxon hitherto known as piptochaetium setosum trin arechav morphological anatomical and molecular studies that argue against including piptochae tium in stipa and hence use of s purpurata phil columbus j p sm are cited,2014,0.354
An integrated parasitology: revealing the elephant through tradition and invention.,the field of parasitology contributes to the elucidation of patterns and processes in evolution ecology and biogeography that are of fundamental importance across the biosphere leading to a thorough understanding of biodiversity and varied responses to global change foundations from taxonomic and systematic information drive biodiversity discovery and foster considerable infrastructure and integration of research programs morphological physiological behavioral life history and molecular data can be synthesized to discover and describe global parasite diversity in a timely manner in fully incorporating parasitology in policies for adaptation to global change parasites and their hosts should be archived and studied within a newly emergent conceptual universe the stockholm paradigm embracing the inherent complexity of host parasite systems and improved explanatory power to understand biodiversity past present and future,2014,0.291
Assessing Effects of Variation in Global Climate Data Sets on Spatial Predictions from Climate Envelope Models,climate change poses new challenges for natural resource managers predictive modeling of species environment relationships can enhance our understanding of climate change effects on biodiversity assist in assessment of invasion risk by exotic organisms and inform life history understanding of individual species while increasing interest has focused on the role of uncertainty in future conditions on model predictions models also may be sensitive to the initial conditions on which they are trained although forecast models must be trained using data on contemporary climate we lack systematic comparisons of model performance and predictions across alternative climate datasets available for model training here we seek to fill that gap by comparing variability in predictions between two contemporary climate datasets to variability in spatial predictions among three alternative projections of future climate overall correlations between monthly temperature and precipitation variables were very high for both contemporary and future data model performance varied across algorithms but not between two alternative contemporary climate datasets spatial predictions varied more among alternative general circulation models describing future climate conditions than between contemporary climate datasets however we did find that models with low kappa scores made more discrepant spatial predictions between climate datasets for the contemporary period than models with high kappa scores we suggest conservation planners evaluate multiple performance metrics and be aware of the importance of differences in initial conditions for spatial predictions from climate envelope models,2014,0.116
Living on the edge: the role of geography and environment in structuring genetic variation in the southernmost populations of a tropical oak,understanding the factors determining genetic diversity and structure in peripheral populations is a long standing goal of evolutionary biogeography yet little empirical information is available for tropical species in this study we combine information from nuclear microsatellite markers and niche modelling to analyse the factors structuring genetic variation across the southernmost populations of the tropical oak quercus segoviensis first we tested the hypothesis that genetic variability decreases with population isolation and increases with local habitat suitability and stability since the last glacial maximum lgm second we employed a recently developed multiple matrix regression with randomisation mmrr approach to study the factors associated with genetic divergence among the studied populations and test the relative contribution of environmental and geographic isolation to contemporary patterns of genetic differentiation we found that genetic diversity was negatively correlated with average genetic differentiation with other populations indicating that isolation and limited gene flow have contributed to erode genetic variability in some populations considering the relatively small size of the study area 120 km analyses of genetic structure indicate a remarkable inter population genetic differentiation environmental dissimilarity and differences in current and past climate niche suitability and their additive effects were not associated with genetic differentiation after controlling for geographic distance indicating that local climate does not contribute to explain spatial patterns of genetic structure overall our data indicate that geographic isolation but not current or past climate is the main factor determining contemporary patterns of genetic diversity and structure within the southernmost peripheral populations of this tropical oak this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.827
"Invasion of Asian tiger shrimp, Penaeus monodon Fabricius, 1798, in the western north Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico",after going unreported in the northwestern atlantic ocean for 18 years 1988 to 2006 the asian tiger shrimp penaeus monodon has recently reappeared in the south atlantic bight and for the first time ever in the gulf of mexico potential vectors and sources of this recent invader include 1 discharged ballast water from its native range in asia or other areas where it has become established 2 transport of larvae from established non native populations in the caribbean or south america via ocean currents or 3 escape and subsequent migration from active aquaculture facilities in the western atlantic this paper documents recent collections of p monodon from the south atlantic bight and the gulf of mexico reporting demographic and preliminary phylogenetic information for specimens collected between north carolina and texas from 2006 through 2012 the increased number of reports in 2011 and 2012 ranging from 102 mm to 298 mm total length indicates that an adult population is present in densities sufficient for breeding which is indicative of incipient establishment based on these reports of p monodon its successful invasion elsewhere and its life history we believe that this species will become common in the south atlantic bight and gulf of mexico in less than 10 years penaeus monodon is an aggressive predator in its native range and if established may prey on native shrimps crabs and bivalves the impacts of an established p monodon population are potentially widespread e g alterations in local commercial fisheries direct and indirect pressures on native shrimp crab and bivalve populations and subsequent impacts on the populations of other predators of those organisms and should be considered by resource managers the impacts of p monodon on native fauna and the source s or vector s of the invasion however remain unknown at this time,2014,0.877
"Water relations traits of C4 grasses depend on phylogenetic lineage, photosynthetic pathway, and habitat water availability.",the repeated evolution of c4 photosynthesis in independent lineages has resulted in distinct biogeographical distributions in different phylogenetic lineages and the variants of c4 photosynthesis however most previous studies have only considered c3 c4 differences without considering phylogeny c4 subtype or habitat characteristics we hypothesized that independent lineages of c4 grasses have structural and physiological traits that adapt them to environments with differing water availability we measured 40 traits of 33 species from two major c4 grass lineages in a common glasshouse environment chloridoideae species were shorter with narrower and longer leaves smaller but denser stomata and faster curling leaves than panicoideae species but overall differences in leaf hydraulic and gas exchange traits between the two lineages were weak chloridoideae species had two different ways to reach higher drought resistance potential than panicoideae nad me species used water saving whereas pck species used osmotic adjustment these patterns could be explained by the interactions of lineageã c4 subtype and lineageã habitat water availability in affected traits specifically phylogeny tended to have a stronger influence on structural traits and c4 subtype had more important effects on physiological traits although hydraulic traits did not differ consistently between lineages they showed strong covariation and relationships with leaf structure thus phylogenetic lineage photosynthetic pathway and adaptation to habitat water availability act together to influence the leaf water relations traits of c4 grasses this work expands our understanding of ecophysiology in major c4 grass lineages with implications for explaining their regional and global distributions in relation to climate,2014,0.832
A framework to identify enabling and urgent actions for the 2020 Aichi Targets,in 2010 the parties of the convention on biological diversity cbd adopted the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011â 2020 with the mission of halting biodiversity loss and enhance the benefits it provides to people the 20 aichi biodiversity targets aichi targets which are included in the strategic plan are organized under five strategic goals and provide coherent guidance on how to achieve it halfway through the strategic plan it is time to prioritize actions in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for the aichi targets in 2020 actions to achieve one target may influence other targets downstream interactions in turn a target may be influenced by actions taken to attain other targets upstream interactions we explore the interactions among targets and the time lags between implemented measures and desired outcomes to develop a framework that can reduce the overall burden associated with the implementation of the strategic plan we identified the targets addressing the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss and the targets aimed at enhancing the implementation of the strategic plan as having the highest level of downstream interactions targets aimed at improving the status of biodiversity and safeguarding ecosystems followed by targets aimed at reducing the direct pressures on biodiversity and enhancing the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services were identified as having the highest levels of upstream interactions perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of the strategic plan is the need to balance actions for its long term sustainability with the need for urgent actions to halt biodiversity loss,2014,0.09
Implementing REDD+ in Papua New Guinea: Can biodiversity indicators be effectively integrated in PNG's National Forest Inventory?,unfccc s â œcancun safeguardsâ cop 16 2010 provide a strong call for comprehensive steps to prevent harm to biodiversity from redd activities and to support its conservation however as non binding â principlesâ and due to their general wording they are not operational in the present form additionally the scientific literature on biodiversity monitoring for redd is still very limited particularly when it comes to redd in tropical forests and at the national scale whereas some authors suggest that biodiversity integration can be achieved by means of standardised protocols and techniques others consider an effective monitoring of biodiversity in tropical forests at the national scale may be an impossible task to achieve in a cost effective way however recent research offers some functional approaches to tackle the many challenges involved this paper explores the perspectives and limits of developing and effectively incorporating appropriate biodiversity objectives and indicators in papua new guinea s multipurpose national forest inventory png s nfi the png nfi is currently being designed under the un redd programme as a key component of the national forest monitoring system that png is required to establish in order to participate in a future redd mechanism we conclude that the challenge cannot be effectively tackled only at the design stage of the nfi as it needs to address a number of issues related to different stages of the redd preparedness process â if biodiversity integration is carried out directly at the nfi stage it will need to rely on proxies derived from indicators designed to monitor carbon stock change â at the planning stage a carbon biodiversity overlay map analysis would allow for a preliminary selection of areas of high biodiversity that could be threatened by redd activities either directly or indirectly through â œleakageâ â during the implementation stage the selection could be refined by identifying a sub sample of sites where forests are undergoing the greatest changes â a comprehensive biodiversity monitoring programme involving field measurements of key species could only be designed once the priority areas have been clearly defined and limited in both number and size,2014,0.013
Asynchrony of Seasons: Genetic Differentiation Associated with Geographic Variation in Climatic Seasonality and Reproductive Phenology,many organisms exhibit distinct breeding seasons tracking food availability if conspecific populations inhabit areas that experience different temporal cycles in food availability spurred by variation in precipitation regimes then they should display asyn chronous breeding seasons thus such populations might exhibit a temporal barrier to gene flow which may potentially promote genetic differentiation we test a central prediction of this hypothesis namely that individuals living in areas with more asynchronous precipitation regimes should be more genetically differentiated than individuals living in areas with more similar precipitation regimes using mi tochondrial dna sequences climatic data and geographical ecolog ical distances between individuals of 57 new world bird species mostly from the tropics we examined the effect of asynchronous precipitation a proxy for asynchronous resource availability on ge netic differentiation we found evidence for a positive and significant cross species effect of precipitation asynchrony on genetic distance after accounting for geographical ecological distances suggesting that current climatic conditions may play a role in population differen tiation spatial asynchrony in climate may thus drive evolutionary divergence in the absence of overt geographic barriers to gene flow this mechanism contrasts with those invoked by most models of biotic diversification emphasizing physical or ecological changes to the landscape as drivers of divergence,2014,0.727
Thermal physiology and species distribution models reveal climate vulnerability of temperate amphibians,aim high latitude ectotherms are predicted to be less physiologically vulnerable to climate warming than tropical species based on their larger thermal safety margins the distance between ambient temperatures and species thermal optima we sought to test the prediction that high latitude amphibians are buffered against the impacts of climate warming location british columbia canada methods we estimated the risk from climate change for three high latitude amphibian species spea intermontana rana aurora and pseudacris regilla by combining thermal performance experiments with species distribution models and predicted changes in maximum summer temperatures through the 2080s in order to demonstrate temporal and geographical trends in vulnerability to climate warming among and within species results we found that species have thermal safety margins of 3 2â 3 8 â c based on current maximum summer temperatures however by the 2080s emissions scenario a1b we estimate that 45â 82 of our focal species current distributions will experience maximum summer temperatures above their thermal optima we also found that by using long term average temperatures as some studies have done there were almost no scenarios in which populations of any species were experiencing temperatures greater than their thermal optima main conclusions combining spatially explicit species distribution models with performance physiology allows us to predict where limiting temperatures will occur in the coming decades and can guide climate mitigation and conservation efforts before populations decline despite moderate thermal safety margins high latitude ectotherms can be highly vulnerable to climate warming when spatio temporal variation is incorporated into estimates of risk as a result of climate change,2014,0.974
Changes in a West Indian bird community since the late Pleistocene,aim to establish a chronology for late quaternary avian extinction extirpation and persistence in the bahamas thereby testing the relative roles of climate change and human impact as causes of extinction location great abaco island abaco bahamas west indies methods we analysed the resident bird community as sampled by pleistocene 11 7 ka and holocene 11 7 ka fossils each species was classified as extinct lost globally extirpated gone from abaco but persists elsewhere or extant still resident on abaco we compared patterns of extinction extirpa tion and persistence to independent estimates of climate and sea level for glacial late pleistocene and interglacial holocene times results of 45 bird species identified in pleistocene fossils 25 56 no longer occur on abaco 21 extirpated 4 extinct of 37 species recorded in holocene deposits 15 14 extirpated 1 extinct total 41 no longer exist on abaco of the 30 extant species 12 were recovered as both pleistocene and holocene fossils as were 9 of the 30 extirpated or extinct species most of the extinct or extirpated species that were only recorded from pleistocene contexts are characteristic of open habitats pine woodlands or grasslands several of the extirpated species are currently found only where winters are cooler than in the modern or pleistocene bahamas in contrast most of the extinct or extirpated species recorded from holocene contexts are habitat generalists main conclusions the fossil evidence suggests two main times of late quaternary avian extirpation and extinction in the bahamas the first was during the pleistoceneâ holocene transition pht 15â 9 ka and was fuelled by climate change and associated changes in sea level and island area the second took place during the late holocene 4 ka perhaps primarily 1 ka and can be attributed to human impact although some species lost during the pht are currently found where climates are cooler and drier than in the bahamas today a taxonomically and ecologically diverse set of species persisted through that major climate change but did not survive the past millennium of human presence,2014,0.98
Tempo and mode of the multiple origins of salinity tolerance in a water beetle lineage,salinity is one of the most important drivers of the distribution abundance and diversity of organisms previous studies on the evolution of saline tolerance have been mainly centred on marine and terrestrial organisms while lineages inhabiting inland waters remain largely unexplored this is despite the fact that these systems include a much broader range of salinities going from freshwater to more than six times the salinity of the sea i e 200 gl 1 here we study the pattern and timing of the evolution of the tolerance to salinity in an inland aquatic lineage of water beetles enochrus species of the subgenus lumetus family hydrophilidae with the general aim of understanding the mechanisms by which it was achieved using a time calibrated phylogeny built from five mitochondrial and two nuclear genes and information about the salinity tolerance and geographical distribution of the species we found that salinity tolerance appeared multiple times associated with periods of global aridification we found evidence of some accelerated transitions from freshwater directly to high salinities as reconstructed with extant lineages this together with the strong positive correlation found between salinity tolerance and aridity of the habitats in which species are found suggest that tolerance to salinity may be based on a co opted mechanism developed originally for drought resistance this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.395
Variability in potential to exploit different soil organic phosphorus compounds among tropical montane tree species,we hypothesized that tropical plant species with different mycorrhizal associations reduce competition for soil phosphorus p by specializing to exploit different soil organic p compounds we assayed the activity of root mycorrhizal phosphatase enzymes of four tree species with contrasting root symbiotic relationshipsâ arbuscular mycorrhizal angiosperm and conifer ectomycorrhizal and non mycorrhizalâ collected from one of three soil sites within a montane tropical forest we also measured growth and foliar p of these seedlings in an experiment with p provided exclusively as inorganic orthophosphate a simple phosphomonoester glucose phosphate a phosphodiester rna phytate the sodium salt of myo inositol hexakisphosphate or a no p control the ectomycorrhizal tree species expressed twice the phosphomonoesterase activity as the arbuscular mycorrhizal tree species but had similar phosphodiesterase activity the non mycorrhizal proteaceae tree had markedly greater activity of both enzymes than the mycorrhizal tree species with root clusters expressing greater phosphomonoesterase activity than fine roots both the mycorrhizal and non mycorrhizal tree species contained significantly greater foliar p than in no p controls when limited to inorganic phosphate glucose phosphate and rna the ectomycorrhizal species did not perform better than the arbuscular mycorrhizal tree species when limited to organic p in any form in contrast the non mycorrhizal proteaceae tree was the only species capable of exploiting phytate with nearly three times the leaf area and more than twice the foliar p of the no p control our results suggest that arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal tree species exploit similar forms of p despite differences in phosphomonoesterase activity in contrast the mycorrhizal tree species and non mycorrhizal proteaceae appear to differ in their ability to exploit phytate we conclude that resource partitioning of soil p plays a coarse but potentially ecologically important role in fostering the coexistence of tree species in tropical montane forests,2014,0.994
A Study of the Genus Persicaria Miller (Polygonaceae) in the Maltese Islands,a detailed study on the taxonomy distribution and populations of persicaria spp occurring on the maltese islands is carried out based on field surveys between 2008 and 2011 four taxa are recognised in this study two forms of persicaria senegalensis p lanigera and p salicifolia of which only the latter is native a taxonomical overview of these species and a detailed account of the distribution and size of the populations of each species including new records is given habitat preference of the species and their significance in maltese wetland ecosystems are discussed,2014,0.765
Accounting for spatially biased sampling effort in presence-only species distribution modelling,aim presence only datasets represent an important source of information on species distributions collections of presence only data however are often spatially biased particularly along roads and near urban populations these biases can lead to inaccurate inferences and predicted distributions we demonstrate a new approach of accounting for effort bias in presence only data by explicitly incorporating sample biases in species distribution modelling location alberta canada methods first we used logistic regression to model sampling effort of recorded rare vascular plants bryophytes and butterflies in alberta second we simulated presence absence data for nine â virtualâ species based on three relative occurrence thresholds â common rare and very rare â for each taxonomic group we sampled these virtual species using our bias model to represent typical sampling effort characteristic of presence only datasets we then modelled the distributions of these virtual species using logistic regression and attempted to recover their original simulated distributions using a sample weighting term prior weight estimated as the inverse of probability of sampling bias adjusted model estimates were compared to those obtained from random samples and biased samples without adjustment we also compared prior weight adjustment to bias file and target group background approaches in maxent results sample weighting recovered regression coefficients and mapped predictions estimated from unbiased presence only data and improved model predictive accuracy as evaluated by regression and correlation coefficients sensitivity and specificity similar model improvements were achieved using the maxent bias file method but results were inconsistent for the target group background approach main conclusions these results suggest that sample weighting can be used to account for spatially biased presence only datasets in species distribution modelling the framework presented is potentially widely applicable due to availability of online biodiversity databases and the flexibility of the approach,2014,0.863
Geographic distribution of Strumigenys louisianae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),strumigenys spp are tiny predatory ants that feed on soil arthropods strumigenys louisianae has the broadest geographic distribution of any new world strumigenys here i compiled gt 700 site records of s louisianae to document its biogeography the known range of strumigenys louisianae is largely continuous from argentina to north carolina and possibly virginia and illinois and on most major west indian islands the occurrence of s louisianae throughout this region in a wide diversity of habitats makes it difficult to distinguish where it is native and where it has been introduced the possibility remains that s louisianae has a very broad native range but no introduced populations alternatively some isolated s louisianae populations may be exotic such as those on the galapagos islands cocos island many west indian islands and in arizona genetic analyses are needed to determine where s louisianae is native and where it is exotic,2014,0.527
The distribution of the crested and marbled newt species (Amphibia: Salamandridae: Triturus) – an addition to the New Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles of Europe,in the recently published new atlas of amphibians and reptiles of europe sillero et al 2014a the distribution of the newt genus triturus was not resolved at the level of the species the main reason for this was the lack of high quality distribution data from in and around the parapatric contact zones between species where interspecific hybridization occurs we are working extensively on triturus and the particularly genetic data we have accumulated allow us to map the individual triturus species at the appropriate scale we here provide a database composed of distribution data for the individual species at generally high resolution particularly from in and around contact zones based on this database we produce maps at the 50 160 ã 50 160 km utm grid resolution as used in the new atlas and highlight those grid cells in which more than one triturus species occurs,2014,0.628
"Baseline data for automated acoustic monitoring of Orthoptera in a Mediterranean landscape, the Hymettos, Greece",acoustic emissions of animals serve communicative purposes and most often contain species specific and individual information exploitable to listeners rendering bioacoustics a valuable tool for biodiversity monitoring recording bioacoustic signals allows reproducible species identification there is a great need for increased use and further development of automated animal sound recording and identification to improve monitoring efficiency and accuracy for the benefit of conservation greece with its high number of endemic species represents a hotspot for european biodiversity including orthopteran insects songs of many orthoptera might be employed for the inventorying and monitoring of individual species and communities we assessed the regional spatio temporal composition of orthoptera species at the hymettos near athens which is a natura 2000 site under constant threat due to the surrounding megacity within the framework of the eu life plus funded amibio project we documented the orthopteran speciesâ habitat characteristics their co occurrence and phenology we found in total 20 species with seven to ten orthoptera at locations characterised by diverse vegetation patterns of perennial herbs and bushes for the purposes of implementation of an automated remote monitoring scheme we identified sampling sites with high orthopteran diversity allowing the monitoring of all singing orthoptera within single localities by analysing sound depositories and adding recordings from new sample individuals we established a song library as prerequisites for future automatic song detection based on our results acoustic recording units have been placed at remote sites at the hymettos we discuss recommendations for further studies to fully employ the potential of automated acoustic monitoring of orthoptera a reliable assessment of singing orthoptera needs recording units covering ultrasound due to high attenuation and absorbance by the vegetation particularly of the high frequencies characterising orthopteran songs positioning of microphones at sites is critical the microphone sensor network has to be an order of magnitude denser than for monitoring birds,2014,0.883
"Tamarix hohenackeri bunge, a new record for the flora of Mexico",tamarix hohenackeri bunge is reported here for the first time for the flora of mexico it also represents the first record for the american continent this species native from asia was collected along riversides of the river san salvador ensenada baja california a detailed morphological description of the newly reported taxon is provided and the taxonomic treatment of t hohenackeri is also discussed as a result of this study the presence of six species of the genus tamarix is confirmed for mexico and a dichotomous key for the tamarix species in mexico is presented,2014,0.814
Connectivity dynamics since the Last Glacial Maximum in the northern Andes; a pollen-driven framework to assess potential migration,we provide an innovative pollen driven connectivity framework of the dynamic altitudinal distribution of north andean biomes since the last glacial maximum lgm altitudinally changing biome distributions reconstructed from a pollen record from lake la cocha 2780 m are assessed in terms of their changing surface and connectivity within the study area the upper forest line ufl ecotone lodged during much of the time around 2000 m lgm 2400 m ca 14â 8 ka 2800 m ca 8â 3 ka and 3550â 3600 m modern time this resulted in a four fold increase of the area covered by mountain forest andean and sub andean a decrease of 96 of pã ramo and a disappearance of permanent snow upslope migration of the ufl of 20 vertical m yrâ 1 and more as inferred from the pollen record was spatially assessed reduced surface area dispersal limitation reduced connectivity and extirpation of the subpã ramo biome during a few centuries is shown the study area includes abundant higher mid range altitudes 2600â 3400 m with a steep reduction of available surface area and increased dispersal distance in the high and low altitudes in this range each 100 m altitudinal rise of the ufl results in 20 â 60 reduction of the surface area available for pã ramo and connectivity the critical elevations where large biome surfaces start to disconnect depend on the elevation of lowest thresholds in the landscape and the elevation of summits the 2500â 3600 m elevation range is most dynamic in terms of geography and ecological species sorting the 1000â 1500 m interval is relatively stable and is permanently covered by andean forest making this interval less sensitive for monitoring climate change when forests migrate to higher elevations distribution nuclei of species are compressed resulting temporarily in a higher species diversity the species dissimilarity coefficient reflects rate of ecological change more adequately than the rate of palynological turnover because the latter is much influenced by the lengths of the time steps between the pollen samples spatial analysis of site specific dynamics provides exciting new insights into past vegetation dynamics with potential for better understanding species area distributions distribution patterns of biodiversity and conservation of mountain ecosystems,2014,0.35
Hybridization rate and climate change: are endangered species at risk?,many species are altering their geographic range due to climate change creating new sympatric populations of otherwise allopatric populations we investigated whether climate change will affect the distribution and thus the pattern of hybridization between two pairs of closely related damselfly species ischnura damula and i demorsa and i denticollis and i gemina this an endan gered species thus we estimated the strength of pre and postmating reproductive barriers between both pairs of species and we predicted future potential distribution under four different global circulation models and a realistic emissions scenario of climate change by using maximum entropy modelling technique our results showed that reproductive isolation ri is complete in i damula 9 i demorsa individuals f1 first generation hybrids are produced but do not reach sexual maturation however ri in i denticollis 9 i gemina hybrids is high but incomplete and unidirectional only i gemina females produced f1 hybrids which mate with males and females of i denticollis and between them producing bc1 back crosses and f2 second generation viable hybrids maximum entropy models revealed a northern and westward shift and a general reduction of the potential geographic ranges based on the pattern of hybridization for i damula and i demorsa there is a current threat as well as a rapid displacement and or extinction of i gemina by i denticollis however the current pattern of extinction may not continue due to the contraction in ranges of the four species,2014,0.789
Functional distinctiveness of major plant lineages,1 plant traits vary widely across species and underpin differences in ecological strategy despite centuries of interest the contributions of different evolutionary lineages to modern day functional diversity remain poorly quantified 2 expanding data bases of plant traits plus rapidly improving phylogenies enable for the first time a data driven global picture of plant functional diversity across the major clades of higher plants we mapped five key traits relevant to metabolism resource competition and reproductive strategy onto a phylogeny across 48324 vascular plant species world wide along with climate and biogeo graphic data using a novel metric we test whether major plant lineages are functionally distinctive we then highlight the traitâ lineage combinations that are most functionally distinctive within the present day spread of ecological strategies 3 for some traitâ clade combinations knowing the clade of a species conveys little information to neo and palaeo ecologists in other traitâ clade combinations the clade identity can be highly reveal ing especially informative cladeâ trait combinations include proteaceae which is highly distinctive representing the global slow extreme of the leaf economic spectrum magnoliidae and rosidae con tribute large leaf sizes and seed masses and have distinctively warm wet climatic distributions 4 synthesis this analysis provides a shortlist of the most distinctive traitâ lineage combinations along with their geographic and climatic context a global view of extant functional diversity across the tips of the vascular plant phylogeny,2014,0.122
Potential distribution of Avena sterilis L. in Europe under climate change,avena sterilis sterile oat is one of the most extended and harmful weeds in mediterranean cereal crops a process based niche model for this species was developed using climex the model was validated and used to assess the potentialdistributionof a sterilis ineuropeunderthecurrentclimateandunder two climate change scenarios both scenarios represent contrasting temporal patterns of economic development and co 2 emissions the projections under current climate conditions indicated that a sterilis does not occupy the full extent of the climatically suitable habitat available to it in europe under future climate scenarios the model projection showed a gradual advance of sterile oat towards northeastern europe and a contraction in southern europe the infested potential area increases from the current 45 2 to 51 3 in the low emission co 2 scenario and to 59 5 under the most extreme scenario these results provide the necessary knowledge for identifying and highlighting the potential invasion risk areas and for establishing the grounds on which to base the planning and management measures required the main actions should be focused on controlling the large scale seed scattering preventing seed dispersal into potentially suitable areas,2014,0.139
Estimating badger social-group abundance in the Republic of Ireland using cross-validated species distribution modelling,the badger meles meles is an important wildlife host for bovine tuberculosis btb and is a reservoir of infection to cattle reliable indicators of badger abundance at large spatial scales are important for informing epidemiological investigation thus we aimed to estimate badger social group abundance from a large scale dataset to provide useful information for the management of btb in the republic of ireland roi robust estimates of species abundance require planned systematic surveying this is often unfeasible at large spatial scales resulting in inadequate biased data collection we employed species distributional modelling sdm using 7724 badger main sett burrow locations across the roi at a 1 ha scale this dataset was potentially biased as surveying was directed towards areas with cattle btb breakdowns in order to manage sampling bias we developed a model where the environment was sampled using pseudoabsences geographically constrained to the potential survey area only constrained model in addition to a model where all of the roi was sampled non constrained model models predic tive performance was assessed using internal splitting the national scale dataset and external validation on independent datasets the latter included 278 main setts from a local scale unbiased intensive survey 755 km2 finally the relationship between predicted probability and observed abundance at local scale was used to infer number of social groups at the national level the geographically constrained model showed moderate discriminatory power but good calibration in both the internal and external valida tions the non constrained model resulted in higher discrimination but poorer calibration in the internal validation indicating a limitation for national scale predictions interestingly there was a strong cubic relationship between predicted probability classes and observed sett density in the local area r2 0 85 and 0 96 for the non constrained and the constrained models respectively at the national scale the preferred model predicted a total of 19 200 95 confidence interval 12 200â 27 900 social groups our analyses demonstrated that under a critical perspective large scale potentially biased datasets can be used to estimate variations in species abundance the abundance predictions are in keeping with recent independent estimations of the badger population and will be a valuable index of species abun dance for epidemiology e g risk mapping species management e g informing vaccine strategies and conservation planning e g assessing population viability,2014,0.134
Effects of Ocean Acidification on the Brown Alga Padina pavonica: Decalcification Due to Acute and Chronic Events,since the industrial revolution anthropogenic co2 emissions have caused ocean acidification which particularly affects calcified organisms given the fan like calcified fronds of the brown alga padina pavonica we evaluated the acute short term effects of a sudden ph drop due to a submarine volcanic eruption october 2011 early march 2012 affecting offshore waters around el hierro island canary islands spain we further studied the chronic long term effects of the continuous decrease in ph in the last decades around the canarian waters in both the observational and retrospective studies using herbarium collections of p pavonica thalli from the overall canarian archipelago the percent of surface calcium carbonate coverage of p pavonica thalli were contrasted with oceanographic data collected either in situ volcanic eruption event or from the estoc marine observatory data series herbarium study results showed that this calcified alga is sensitive to acute and chronic environmental ph changes in both cases ph changes predicted surface thallus calcification including a progressive decalcification over the last three decades this result concurs with previous studies where calcareous organisms decalcify under more acidic conditions hence padina pavonica can be implemented as a bio indicator of ocean acidification at short and long time scales for monitoring purposes over wide geographic ranges as this macroalga is affected and thrives unlike strict calcifiers under more acidic conditions,2014,0.136
"Geographic distribution of Gnamptogenys hartmani (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), an agro-predator that attacks fungus-growing ants",gnamptogenys hartmani is a specialist predator that attacks colonies of fungus growing ants to examine the biogeography of g hartmani i compiled specimen records of g hartmani from 36 sites and records of gnamptogenys bruchi a possible junior synonym from seven sites records of gnamptogenys hartmani ranged from lucky louisiana 32 2â n in the north to villa nouguã s argentina 26 9â s in the south if g bruchi proves to be a synonym of g hartmani this would extend the known range as far south as alta gracia argentina 31 7â s in the us g hartmani populations are known only from texas and louisiana yet there is much apparently suitable habitat along the gulf coast of alabama mississippi and florida given the remarkable scarcity of g hartmani records throughout its known range it remains possible that g hartmani populations occur all along the gulf coast of the us but have been overlooked,2014,0.491
Nitrogen deposition alters plant-fungal relationships: linking belowground dynamics to aboveground vegetation change.,nitrogen n deposition rates are increasing globally due to anthropogenic activities plant community responses to n are often attributed to altered competitive interactions between plants but may also be a result of microbial responses to n particularly root associated fungi raf which are known to affect plant fitness in response to n deschampsia cespitosa a codominant plant in the alpine tundra at niwot ridge co increases in abundance while geum rossii its principal competitor declines importantly g rossii declines with n even in the absence of its competitor we examined whether contrasting host responses to n are associated with altered plant fungal symbioses and whether the effects of n are distinct from effects of altered plant competition on raf using 454 pyrosequencing host raf communities were distinct only 9 4 of otus overlapped n increased raf diversity in g rossii but decreased it in d cespitosa d cespitosa raf communities were more responsive to n than g rossii raf communities perhaps indicating a flexible microbial community aids host adaptation to nutrient enrichment effects of removing d cespitosa were distinct from effects of n on g rossii raf and d cespitosa presence reversed raf diversity response to n the most dominant g rossii raf order helotiales was the most affected by n declining from 83 to 60 of sequences perhaps indicating a loss of mutualists under n enrichment these results highlight the potential importance of belowground microbial dynamics in plant responses to n deposition,2014,0.23
"Impacts of river water consumption on aquatic biodiversity in life cycle assessment-a proposed method, and a case study for Europe",in the context of climate change and food provisioning for a growing global population the impacts of water consumption on aquatic biodiversity e g river water consumption for irrigation should be considered in life cycle impact assessment lcia a previous lcia method quantifying the potential impacts of river water consumption on fish biodiversity using a species discharge relationship sdr constituted an essential first step this method is however limited in terms of regionalization and taxa considered and predicts the potential risk of local species loss only here we address these shortcomings by developing region specific sdrs for europe at various scales continent country and eco region and including macro invertebrate biodiversity sdr exponents vary from 0 06 to 0 45 between regions underlining the importance of such regionalization furthermore we provide a new regionalized method which considers the location of water consumption within a river basin by integrating the concept of longitudinal river zonation this involves the use of a novel measure of potential loss of species richness standardizing local species loss to an equivalent of global extinction and reflecting species vulnerability the new method is applied in a swiss case study the consideration of the location of water consumption within a basin was found to be of high importance in the assessment potential species loss varied between 4 22 ã 10 3 and 3 95 ã 10 1 species 2 orders of magnitude depending on location this work thus provides enhancements in the assessment of potential impacts of river water consumption on aquatic biodiversity and contributes to the ecological relevance of the method,2014,0.663
Traditional Chinese herbs as chemical resource library for drug discovery of anti-infective and anti-inflammatory.,ethnopharmacological relevance infection is a major group of diseases which caused significant mortality and morbidity worldwide traditional chinese herbs have been used to treat infective diseases for thousands years the numerous clinical practices in disease therapy make it a large chemical resource library for drug discovery materials and methods in this study we collected 1156 kinds of herbs and 22 172 traditional chinese medicinal compounds tcmcs the chemical informatics and network pharmacology were employed to analyze the anti infective effects of herbs and tcmcs in order to evaluate the drug likeness of tcmcs the molecular descriptors of tcmcs and fda approved drugs were calculated and the chemical space was constructed on the basis of principal component analysis in the eight descriptors on purpose to estimate the effects of tcmcs to the targets of fda approved anti infective or anti inflammatory drugs the molecular docking was employed after that docking score weighted predictive models were used to predict the anti infective or anti inflammatory efficacy of herbs results the distribution of herbs in the phylogenetic tree showed that most herbs were distributed in family of asteraceae fabaceae and lamiaceae tcmcs were well coincide with drugs in chemical space which indicated that most tcmcs had good drug likeness the predictive models obtained good specificity and sensitivity with the auc values above 0 8 at last 389 kinds of herbs were obtained which were distributed in 100 families by using the optimal cutoff values in roc curves these 389 herbs were widely used in china for treatment of infection and inflammation conclusion traditional chinese herbs have a considerable number of drug like natural products and predicted activities to the targets of approved drugs which would give us an opportunity to use these herbs as a chemical resource library for drug discovery of anti infective and anti inflammatory,2014,0.209
"Documenting, storing, and executing models in Ecology: A conceptual framework and real implementation in a global change monitoring program",many of the best practices concerning the development of ecological models or analytic techniques published in the scientific literature are not fully available to modelers but rather are stored in scientists digital or biological memories we propose that it is time to address the problem of storing documenting and executing ecological models and analytical procedures in this paper we propose a conceptual framework to design and implement a web application that will help to meet this challenge this tool will foster cooperation among scientists enhancing the creation of relevant knowledge that could be transferred to environmental managers we have implemented this conceptual framework in a tool called modeler this is being used to document share and execute more than 200 models and analytical processes associated with a global change monitoring program that is being undertaken in the sierra nevada mountains south spain modeler uses the concept of scientific workflow to connect and execute different types of models and analytical processes finally we have envisioned the creation of a federation of model repositories where models documented within a local repository could be linked and even executed by other researchers,2014,0.154
PATTERNS OF SPECIES DIVERSITY IN ECUADOR: VARIATION OF BIRD COMMUNITIES AT DIFFERENT SCALES,recognizing relevant factors that driv e species diversity patterns at different scales of analysis has been a major issue in ecological research i explored factors driving patterns of avian diversity at both a landscape and a macro scale in ecuador in chapter 2 i explored how composition and configuration of landscapes in the northwest of ecuador affect patterns of avian diversity landscape structure explained more of the variation in abundance than richness r ichness variables did not show clear relationship s in most models abundance showed a strong negative relationship with percentage of forest cover whereas richness and abundance of bird that are highly sensitive to disturbance showed the opposite pattern whereas percentage of forest cover was the main factor that influenced models of richness and abundance vegetation structure was the most important factor for species composition in chapter 3 i explored the relationships among avian beta diversity and environmental and geographic factors at a national scale th e resulting map showed that the greatest rates of species turnover occur along the andean slopes whereas turnover rate was relatively constant and lower across eastern lowlands t emperature and elevation were the most important factors explaining variation in avian beta diversity in the highlands precipitation of the driest quarter explained more of the differences in species composition between western and eastern lowlands similarly precipitation of the wettest quarter explained more of the species turn over within western lowlands these results may provide guidelines for management and decision making in ecuador,2014,0.602
Wireless Remote Animal Monitoring (WRAM) - A new international database e-infrastructure for management and sharing of telemetry sensor data from fish and wildlife,new tracking technologies have become available to ecologists allowing remote real time data capture from an increasing number of taxa species and animals to realize the potential of the data researchers must be able to share data and collaborate with the global research community the wireless remote animal monitoring wram database system started in 2003 contains 96 5 million positions and other sensor data and is used to date by 32 user groups from 8 countries tracking 16 species and 2 179 individual animals the infrastructure represents the swedish national data node and data sharing portal for real time telemetry sensor data from fish and wildlife wram will be part of swedish lifewatch and is cooperating with several other international database initiatives the infrastructure consists of 2 main parts 1 the wram data warehouse wdw is a high performance data warehouse for real time â big dataâ as position acceleration or heartbeat data from fish and wildlife hosted by the high performance computing center north hpc2n in umeã sweden 2 the wram data broker wdb is the single sign on web interface federating the wdw with other similar database systems around the world as movebank eurodeer or canmove to enable seamless querying across systems and easy data sharing between data owners while honoring local authentication and authorization settings query results are also accessible through odbc in a temporary database enabling users to use local analysis tools for further analyses here we give an overview over the different parts of the e infrastructure including automated data capture tools database models data sharing approaches and web based visualization tools,2014,0.551
E-typing for nematodes: an assessment of type specimen use by nematode taxonomists with a summary of types deposited in the Smithsonian Nematode Collection,we assessed 301 taxonomic papers published in nine journals between 1999 2011 to determine the use of type specimens and to evaluate the habitat focus and the number of new species described per year a total of ca 100 new nematode species were described every year primarily from terrestrial habitats two thirds were terrestrial 16 were aquatic and the remaining 9 were animal parasitic nematodes only 2 5 of the taxonomic literature reported a comparative study of type material for making a decision on the identity of the target taxon the overwhelming majority i e 97 5 relied only on literature comparisons our closer scrutiny of the 61 papers revealed a number of shared problems a third stated that inadequacy of original descriptions or unavailability inaccessibility of type specimens had hindered them from unequivocally determining the identity of their species fourteen percent reported a discrepancy between the text descriptions and the illustrations and a tenth revealed the absence of designated types for taxa relevant to their work a similar number indicated deterioration of types to be a reason for either making wrong conclusions in previous descriptions or for rendering their descriptions incomplete we argue for e typing of nematodes as a solution to enhance the future accessibility of type specimens we stress the need for a concerted effort between museum curators nematological journals and nematological societies to address the problem and thereby to forge a brighter future for the science,2014,0.726
Genetic diversity and ecological niche modelling of the restricted Recordia reitzii (Verbenaceae) from southern Brazilian Atlantic forest,genetic diversity analyses coupled with ecological niche modelling enm of species with a restricted distribution may provide valuable information for understanding diversification patterns in endangered areas we analyzed the genetic diversity of recordia reitzii a tree restricted to the threatened and highly fragmented brazilian atlantic forest using three intergenic cpdna spacers and ten microsatellite ssr loci to assess the historical processes that may have influenced the distribution of extant r reitzii populations the current potential distributions of r reitzii and recordia boliviana a closely related species were modelled and projected onto the last glacial maximum lgm and last interglacial lig periods niche divergence was quantified between these two the cpdna and ssr data showed a northâ south pattern of the diversity distribution and structured populations suggesting that gene flow is probably limited according to our data r reitzii exhibits low genetic diversity which may be a result of a founder or distribution reduction effect narrow distribution or small population size the ecological niche models showed a wider palaeodistribution during the lig and a retraction during the lgm for both species tests of niche divergence and conservatism indicated that bioclimatic factors might have influenced the diversification of these recordia species,2014,0.871
Host specificity and experimental assessment of the early establishment of the mistletoe Phoradendron crassifolium (Pohl ex DC.) Eichler (Santalaceae) in a fragment of Atlantic Forest in southeast Brazil,mistletoe establishment relies heavily on a seed reaching a proper host plant small frugivorous birds usually disperse large numbers of mistletoe seeds however in the field mistletoes are absent from some potential available hosts we investigated whether the mistletoe phoradendron crassifolium has some preferences for specific host trees in a fragment of atlantic forest in southeast brazil we surveyed 397 tree individuals of 50 species within 25 families seven of those species 14 bore p crassifolium infections although prevalence at the individual level was low 11 6 there were marked deviations in infection levels among species and families most 87 of the infections 40 of 46 occurred in species belonging to the families anacardiaceae lithraea molleoides and tapirira guianensis and siparunaceae siparuna guianensis which nevertheless accounted for only 26 of the potential individual hosts 103 of 397 we also performed an experiment simulating bird behavior we inoculated 480 mistletoe seeds to the bark of four potential hosts in field following the fate of the seeds for five months no differences in host preference were observed the low specificity detected at the local level was confirmed by a survey of exsiccata collected over the geographical distribution of the mistletoe suggesting that p crassifolium prevalence is more dependent on dispersal limitation than on mistletoe host compatibility,2014,0.974
CLIMBER: Climatic niche characteristics of the butterflies in Europe,detailed information on speciesâ ecological niche characteristics that can be related to declines and extinc tions is indispensable for a better understanding of the relationship between the occurrence and perfor mance of wild species and their environment and moreover for an improved assessment of the impacts of global change knowledge on species characteristics such as habitat requirements is already available in the ecological literature for butterflies but information about their climatic requirements is still lacking here we present a unique dataset on the climatic niche characteristics of 397 european butterflies representing 91 of the european species see appendix these characteristics were obtained by combining detailed information on butterfly distributions in europe which also led to the â distribution atlas of butterflies in europeâ and the corresponding climatic conditions the presented dataset comprises information for the position and breadth of the following climatic niche characteristics mean annual temperature range in annual temperature growing degree days annual precipitation sum range in annual precipitation and soil water content the climatic niche position is indicated by the median and mean value for each climate variable across a speciesâ range accompanied by the 95 confidence interval for the mean and the number of grid cells used for calculations climatic niche breadth is indicated by the standard deviation and the minimum and maximum values for each climatic variable across a speciesâ range database compilation was based on high quality standards and the data are ready to use for a broad range of applications it is already evident that the information provided in this dataset is of great relevance for basic and ap plied ecology based on the species temperature index sti i e the mean temperature value per species the community temperature index cti i e the average sti value across the species in a community was recently adopted as an indicator of climate change impact on biodiversity by the pan european framework supporting the convention on biological diversity streamlining european biodiversity indicators 2010 and has already been used in several scientific publications the application potential of this database ranges from theoretical aspects such as assessments of past niche evolution or analyses of trait interde pendencies to the very applied aspects of measuring monitoring and projecting historical ongoing and potential future responses to climate change using butterflies as an indicator,2014,0.853
Moths and Butterflies of the Prairies Ecozone in Canada,the prairies ecozone of southern manitoba saskatchewan and alberta supports a diverse fauna with 2 232 species of butterflies and moths order lepidoptera recorded to date in 61 families by far the best known lepidoptera are the butterflies with 177 species known to occur in the ecozone the species known to occur in the prairies ecozone are listed by province the lepidoptera fauna of this ecozone is reviewed in terms of diversity state of knowledge of the major groups postglacial and relict patterns recent changes in distribution and endangered and threatened species,2014,0.738
Data exchange gaps in knowledge of biodiversity: implications for the management and conservation of Biosphere Reserves,the knowledge of species occurrence within an area is crucial to develop proper conservation strategies to protect species diversity biosphere reserves brs established to preserve biodiversity and sustainably use their resources should therefore have precise information of its biodiversity we compared and evaluated information on threatened and non threatened vertebrate species available for spanish brs from three sources management documents mds the global biodiversity information facility index gbif and atlases and red books our results suggest that information fromany one source was rather partial to a degree that depended on which vertebrate group was con sidered management documents did list a high percentage of threatened species found in brs reaching up to the total number of species of birds and mammals species lists overlap between all three sources ranged from 59 for fish to 84 for mammals in addition there is an inconsistency between national and international threatened species categories and it should thus call for revisions even though the information of non threatened and threatened species occurrence in mds of spanish brs is good it is nec essary to pay attention to amphibian and fish species which are less recorded,2014,0.972
drug discovery from medicinal plants beyond their traditional use: a critical review,in silico approaches have been widely recognised to be useful for drug discovery here we consider the significance of available databases of medicinal plants and chemo and bioinformatics tools for in silico drug discovery beyond the traditional use of folk medicines this review contains a practical example of the application of combined chemo and bioinformatics methods to study pleiotropic therapeutic effects known and novel of 50 medicinal plants from traditional indian medicine,2014,0.095
"Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus, the causal agent of European ash dieback",the ascomycete hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus anamorph chalara fraxinea causes a lethal disease known as ash dieback on fraxinus excelsior and fraxinus angustifolia in europe the pathogen was probably introduced from east asia and the disease emerged in poland in the early 1990s the subsequent epidemic is spreading to the entire native distribution range of the host trees this pathogen profile represents a comprehensive review of the state of research from the discovery of the pathogen and points out knowledge gaps and research needs taxonomy members of the genus hymenoscyphus helotiales leotiomycetidae leotiomycetes ascomycota are small discomycetes which form their ascomata on dead plant material a phylogeny based on the internal transcribed spacers itss of the rdna indicated the avirulent hymenoscyphus albidus a species native to europe as the closest relative of h pseudoalbidus symptoms hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus causes necrotic lesions on leaves twigs and stems eventually leading to wilting and dieback of girdled shoots bark lesions are characterized by a typical dark to cinnamon brown discoloration life cycle hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus is heterothallic and reproduces sexually on ash petioles in the litter once a year ascospores are wind dispersed and infect ash leaves during the summer the asexual spores only serve as spermatia tools and techniques the most important techniques for fungal handling such as detection isolation culturing storage crossing and ascocarp production are briefly described management once the disease is established management is hardly possible the occurrence of a small fraction of partially tolerant trees constitutes hope for resistance breeding in the future healthy looking trees should be preserved,2014,0.462
The Most Northerly Black Witch (Ascalapha odorata): A Tropical Moth in the Canadian Arctic,a specimen of the black witch ascalapha odorata was collected in august 2006 near churchill manitoba at 58 7652â n this represents the most northerly record for this species dna barcode comparison of 93 specimens of a odorata in the barcode of life data systems revealed low genetic divergence even though these specimens were collected from a large geographical area the haplotype of the churchill specimen was shared by only one other individual collected in the yucatã n peninsula of mexico in the barcode of life data systems a definite assignment of the geographic origin of the churchill specimen is not possible with current data but more extensive analysis of central american populations with additional genetic markers might resolve this uncertainty,2014,0.716
"Distribution of Genus Codatractus Lindsey, 1921 (Hesperiidae: Eudaminae)",the genus codatractus lindsey 1921 hesperiidae eudaminae includes 17 taxa three are endemic to mã xico c yucatanus c cyledis and c uvydixa the genus is distributed in the neotropical and southern neartic region from southern arizona new mexico and texas across mexico and central america to relatively dry regions of ecuador venezuela brazil paraguay and argentina we analyzed the geographical distribution of the genus as correlated with climatic and physiographic factors based on records from collections literature web sites and field research results showed that the greatest number of species occur between 15 and 21â below the tropic of cancer between 0â 1800 m and are associated with dry forest the greatest concentration of species occurs in the balsas depression and mexican pacific coast the distribution diversity and degree of endemism indicate the genus diversified in mexico,2014,0.613
Threatened plants of arid ecosystems in the Mediterranean Basin: a case study of the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula,networks of protected areas are one of the main strategies used to address the biodiversity crisis these should encompass as many species and ecosystems as possible particularly in territories with high biological diversity such as the spanish arid zones we produce a priority ranking of the arid zones of south east spain according to the rarity and richness of their characteristic flora and the level of endangerment the resulting hierarchy shows that optimal zones for the preservation of the flora are located outside the network of protected areas in particular it is important to extend the network and encourage the creation of microreserves in the depression of the river guadiana menor granada where there is least protection this river valley is a particularly important arid site because of its unique flora and fauna and palaeontological and archaeological findings,2014,0.319
Relatedness defies biogeography: the tale of two island endemics (Acacia heterophylla and A. koa),despite the normally strong link between geographic proximity and relatedness of recently diverged taxa truly puzzling biogeographic anomalies to this expectation exist in nature using a dated phylogeny population genetic structure and estimates of ecological niche overlap we tested the hypothesis that two geographically very disjunct but morphologically very similar island endemics acacia heterophylla from rã union island and a koa from the hawaiian archipelago are the result of dispersal between these two island groups rather than independent colonization events from australia followed by convergent evolution our genetic results indicated that a heterophylla renders a koa paraphyletic and that the former colonized the mascarene archipelago directly from the hawaiian islands â 1 4 million yr ago this colonization sequence was corroborated by similar ecological niches between the two island taxa but not between a melanoxylon from australia a sister and presumed ancestral taxon to a koa and a heterophylla and hawaiian a koa it is widely accepted that the long distance dispersal of plants occurs more frequently than previously thought here however we document one of the most exceptional examples of such dispersal despite c 18 000 km separating a heterophylla and a koa these two island endemics from two different oceans probably represent a single taxon as a result of recent extreme long distance dispersal,2014,0.293
Networking nature: Building cybercabinets of digital curiosities,abstract in the age of the internet engaging the public online is critical to building audiences and broadening support for natural history while collections managers have been providing online access to collections through sophisticated database search interfaces less progress has been made to present these resources in a user friendly framework some museums are thinking in terms of networked online knowledge and radically shifting the way they broker their digital content this research examines ways natural history can be effectively presented online to the public by reviewing relevant literature analyzing six model sites with a heuristic evaluation tool and a user survey and exploring three case studies through project personnel interviews findings summarize important strategies for cultivating creative online access to natural history digital resources and culminate in offering guidelines for building these â œcybercabinetsâ of digital natural history specimens,2014,0.07
"North American Artemisia species from the subgenus Tridentatae (Sagebrush): a phytochemical, botanical and pharmacological review",the genus artemisia consists of between 350 and 500 species with most of the north american endemic artemisia species contained within the subgenus tridentatae sagebrush the reported uses of these species by native american and first nations peoples include analgesic antiinflammatory antiseptic immunostimulation activity as well as the treatment of afflictions from spiritual origins taxonomic revision for north american sagebrush has created a number of synonyms that confuse the literature the phytochemical diversity of the tridentatae includes at least 220 distinct and important specialized metabolites this manuscript reviews the current phytochemical botanical and pharmacological understanding for the subgenus tridentatae and provides a foundation for future studies of the metabolomes of the tridentatae modern approaches to phytochemical analysis and drug discovery are likely to provide interesting lead compounds in the near future,2014,0.617
NoSQL Data Model for Semi-automatic Integration of Ethnomedicinal Plant Data from Multiple Sources,introduction sharing traditional knowledge with the scientific community could refine scientific approaches to phytochemical investigation and conservation of ethnomedicinal plants as such integration of traditional knowledge with scientific data using a single platform for sharing is greatly needed however ethnomedicinal data are available in heterogeneous formats which depend on cultural aspects survey methodology and focus of the study phytochemical and bioassay data are also available from many open sources in various standards and customised formats objective to design a flexible data model that could integrate both primary and curated ethnomedicinal plant data from multiple sources materials and methods the current model is based on mongodb one of the not only structured query language nosql databases although it does not contain schema modifications were made so that the model could incorporate both standard and customised ethnomedicinal plant data format from different sources results the model presented can integrate both primary and secondary data related to ethnomedicinal plants accommodation of disparate data was accomplished by a feature of this database that supported a different set of fields for each document it also allowed storage of similar data having different properties conclusion the model presented is scalable to a highly complex level with continuing maturation of the database and is applicable for storing retrieving and sharing ethnomedicinal plant data it can also serve as a flexible alternative to a relational and normalised database copyright â 2014 john wiley sons ltd,2014,0.009
New approach for evaluating habitat stability using scarce records for both historical and contemporary specimens: a case study using Carabidae specimen records,natural history collections such as specimen records are crucial resources for conservation and habitat management however these data are usually scarce compared to physical environmental data e g digital terrain maps that we often have little species data and a lot of physical environmental data with which to evaluate habitats in this paper we propose a method for evaluating habitat stability using scarce natural history records and abundant physical environmental data we used both historical and contemporary specimen records of carabid beetles areas in which records of the same species were recorded during both periods and evaluated the attributes of these areas using terrain characteristics we found two common terrain characteristics among the occupied areas large total river length and low variation in elevation these terrain characteristics suggest that habitats of carabid species have been conserved in disturbed and wet environments for a long time these results are consistent with the ecological characteristics of carabid beetles our study shows that scarce natural history collections combined with ingenuity can be useful for evaluating habitats,2014,0.517
A global model of the response of tropical and sub-tropical forest biodiversity to anthropogenic pressures,habitat loss and degradation driven largely by agricultural expansion and intensification present thegreatestimmediate threat tobiodiversity tropical for ests harbouramongthehighest levels of terrestrial species diversityandare likely to experience rapid land use change inthe coming decades synthetic analyses of observed responses of species areuseful for quantifyinghowland use affects biodiversity and for predicting outcomes under land use scenarios previous applications of this approach have typically focused on individual taxonomic groups analysing the average response of thewhole community to changes in land use here we incorporate quantitative remotely sensed data about habitats in to our knowledge the first worldwide synthetic analysis of how individual species in four major taxonomic groupsâ invertebrates â herptilesâ reptiles and amphibians mammals and birdsâ respond to multiple human pressures in tropical and sub tropical forests we show significant independent impacts of land use human vegetation offtake forest cover and human population density on both occurrence and abundance of species highlighting the value of analysing multiple explanatory variables simultaneously responses differ among the four groups considered andâ within birds and mammalsâ between habitat specialists and habitat generalists and between narrow ranged and wide ranged species,2014,0.773
Correcting the disconnect between phylogenetics and biodiversity informatics,rich collections of biodiversity data are now synthesized in publically available databases and phylogenetic knowledge now provides a sound understanding of the origin of organisms and their place in the tree of life however these knowl edge bases are poorly linked leading to underutilization or worse an incorrect understanding of biodiversity because there is poor evolutionary context we address this problem by integrating biodiversity information aggregated from many sources onto phylogenetic trees phylojive connects biodiversity and phylogeny knowledge bases by providing an inte grated evolutionary view of biodiversity data which in turn can improve biodiversity research and the conservation deci sion making process biodiversity science must assert the centrality of evolution to provide effective data to counteract global change and biodiversity loss,2014,0.075
As old as the mountains: the radiations of the Ericaceae.,mountains are often more species rich than lowlands this could be the result of migration from lowlands to mountains of a greater survival rate in mountains or of a higher diversification rate in mountains we investigated this question in the globally distributed family ericaceae which includes c 4426 species ranging from sea level to 5000 m we predict that the interaction of low specific leaf area sla and montane habitats is correlated with increased diversification rates a molecular phylogeny of ericaceae based on rbcl and matk sequence data was built and dated with 18 fossil calibrations and divergence time estimates we identified radiations using bamm and correlates of diversification rate changes using binary state speciation and extinction bisse and multiple state speciation and extinction musse analyses analyses revealed six largely montane radiations lineages in mountains diversified faster than nonmountain lineages higher speciation rate but no difference in extinction rate and lineages with low sla diversified faster than high sla lineages further habitat and trait had a positive interactive effect on diversification our results suggest that the species richness in mountains is the result of increased speciation rather than reduced extinction or increased immigration increased speciation in ericaceae was facilitated by low sla,2014,0.74
"Using ModestR to download, import and clean species distribution records",1 data quality is one of the highest priorities for species distribution data warehouses as well as one of the main concerns of data users there is the need however for computational procedures with the facility to automatically or semi automatically identify and correct errors and to seamlessly integrate expert knowledge and automated processes 2 new version modestr 2 0 http www ipez es modestr makes it easy to download occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif to import shape files with species range maps such as those available at the website of the international union for conservation of nature iucn to import kml files to import csv files with records of the users to import esri ascii grid probability files generated by distribution modelling software and show the resulting records on a map 3 modestr supports five different methods for cleaning the data 1 data filtering when downloading records from gbif 2 habitat data filtering 3 taxonomic disambiguation filtering 4 automatic spatial dispersion and environmental layer filters and 5 custom data filtering this,2014,0.546
Scale-dependent adaptive evolution and morphological convergence to climatic niche in Californian eriogonoids (Polygonaceae),aim macroevolutionary patterns and processes change substantially depending on levels of taxonomic and ecological organization and the resolution of environmental and spatial variability in comparative methods the resolution of environmental and spatial variability often defines the number of selective regimes used to test whether phenotypic characteristics are adaptively correlated with the environment here we examine how investigator choice of the number of selective regimes determined by varying the resolution of among species variability in the species climatic niche hereafter called â ecological scaleâ influences trait morphological diversification among eriogonoideae species we assess whether adaptive or neutral processes drive the evolution of several morphological traits in these species location south western north america methods we applied a phylogenetic framework of three evolutionary models to four morphological traits and the climatic niches of eriogonoideae in the buckwheat family polygonaceae we tested whether morphological traits evolve in relation to climate by adaptive or neutral process and whether the resulting patterns of morphological variability are conserved or convergent across the clade we inspected adaptive models of evolution under different levels of resolution of among species variability of the climatic niche results we show that morphological traits and climate niches of eriogonoideae species are not phylogenetically conserved further adaptive evolution of phenotypic traits is specific to climatic niche occupancy across this clade finally the likely evolutionary process and the level of detectable niche conservatism change depending on the resolution of environmental variability of the climatic niche main conclusions our study demonstrates the need to consider both the resolution of environmental variability and alternative evolutionary models to understand the morphological diversification that accompanies divergent adaptive evolution of lineages to climatic conditions,2014,0.737
The Trouble with Triplets in Biodiversity Informatics: A Data-Driven Case against Current Identifier Practices.,the biodiversity informatics community has discussed aspirations and approaches for assigning globally unique identifiers guids to biocollections for nearly a decade during that time and despite misgivings the de facto standard identifier has become the darwin core triplet which is a concatenation of values for institution code collection code and catalog number associated with biocollections material our aim is not to rehash the challenging discussions regarding which guid system in theory best supports the biodiversity informatics use case of discovering and linking digital data across the internet but how well we can link those data together at this moment utilizing the current identifier schemes that have already been deployed we gathered darwin core triplets from a subset of vertnet records along with vertebrate records from genbank and the barcode of life data system in order to determine how darwin core triplets are deployed in the wild we asked if those triplets follow the recommended structure and whether they provide an easy and unambiguous means to track from specimen records to genetic sequence records we show that darwin core triplets are often riddled with semantic and syntactic errors when deployed and curated in practice despite specifications about how to construct them our results strongly suggest that darwin core triplets that have not been carefully curated are not currently serving a useful role for relinking data we briefly consider needed next steps to overcome current limitations,2014,0.211
Tropical islands quick data gap analysis guided by coral reef geomorphological maps.,a gap analysis is the initial step towards the identification of areas where data are needed however often data coverage cannot be assessed against a reference that objectively guides the identification of both gaps and priority areas for data acquisition here we describe a quick effective and reproducible spatial data gap analysis approach based on the relationship between location of available metadata and coral reef geomorphological richness in solomon islands we identified gaps defined by high richness and low biological data coverage we collected metadata only to avoid dealing with data ownership availability and formats and to be able to identify gaps in less than two months this fast method does not replace quantitative and comprehensive gap analysis but provides effective identification of areas of high natural value and limited knowledge the method is widely applicable and particularly invaluable for large and complex domains such as the coral triangle,2014,0.127
An evaluation of the robustness of global amphibian range maps,aim maps of species ranges are among the most frequently used distribution data in biodiversity studies as with any biological data range maps have some level of measurement error but this error is rarely quantified we assessed the error associated with amphibian range maps by comparing them with point locality data location global methods the maps published by the global amphibian assessment were assessed against two data sets of species point localities the global biodiversity information facility gbif and a refined data set including recently published high quality presence data from both gbif and other sources range fit was measured as the proportion of presence records falling within the range polygon s for each species results using the high quality point data provided better fit measures than using the raw gbif data range fit was highly variable among continents being highest for north american and european species a fit of 84â 94 and lowest for asian and south american species a fit of 57â 64 at the global scale 95 of amphibian point records were inside the ranges published in maps or within 31 km of the range edge however differences among continents were striking and more points were found far from range edges for south american and asian species main conclusions the global amphibian assessment range maps represent the known distribution of most amphibians well this study provides measures of accuracy that can be useful for future research using amphibian maps as baseline data nevertheless there is a need for greater investment in the continuous updating and improvement of maps particularly in the megadiverse areas of tropical asia and south america,2014,0.738
Integrating multiple lines of evidence into historical biogeography hypothesis testing: a Bison bison case study.,one of the grand goals of historical biogeography is to understand how and why species population sizes and distributions change over time multiple types of data drawn from disparate fields combined into a single modelling framework are necessary to document changes in a species s demography and distribution and to determine the drivers responsible for change yet truly integrated approaches are challenging and rarely performed here we discuss a modelling framework that integrates spatio temporal fossil data ancient dna palaeoclimatological reconstructions bioclimatic envelope modelling and coalescence models in order to statistically test alternative hypotheses of demographic and potential distributional changes for the iconic american bison bison bison using different assumptions about the evolution of the bioclimatic niche we generate hypothetical distributional and demographic histories of the species we then test these demographic models by comparing the genetic signature predicted by serial coalescence against sequence data derived from subfossils and modern populations our results supported demographic models that include both climate and human associated drivers of population declines this synthetic approach integrating palaeoclimatology bioclimatic envelopes serial coalescence spatio temporal fossil data and heterochronous dna sequences improves understanding of species historical biogeography by allowing consideration of both abiotic and biotic interactions at the population level,2014,0.821
Spatial climate dynamics in the Iberian Peninsula since 15 000 Yr BP,the evolution of the climate in the iberian peninsula since the last glacial maximum is associated with distributional shifts of multiple species we rely on this dynamic relationship between past climate and biodiversity patterns to quantify climate change 5 using fossil pollen records widespread throughout the iberian peninsula and modern spatial distribution of plant taxa and climate we have reconstructed spatial layers 1 ka interval of january minimum temperature july maximum temperature and minimum annual precipitation using a method based on probability density functions and cover ing the time period between 15 and 3ka a functional principal component analysis was 10 used in order to summarise the spatial evolution of climate using a clustering method we have identified areas that share similar climate evolutions during the studied time period the spatial reconstructions show a highly dynamic pattern in accordance with the main climatic trends the four cluster areas we found exhibit different climate evolution over the studied period the clustering scheme and patterns of change between 15 millenia are coherent with the existence of multiple refugial areas in the iberian peninsula,2014,0.151
"Three new country records from the genus Limnephilus Leach, 1815 (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae) from the Republic of Kosovo.",new faunistic data on trichoptera from kosovo based on sampling carried out during the autumn of 2013 and first half of 2014 are presented limnephilusbipunctatus was found in a small stream in kaqandoll village located in northern kosovo and in shtuticã village located in central kosovo two male specimens of limnephilusdecipiens were found at gurrat e hasan agã s springs and bistrica e lloqanit river an alpine area in the lloqan mountains which belong to the bjeshkã t e nemuna mountains a single male specimen of limnephilusstigma was found in klinã located in central kosovo all three species are rare in kosovo a preliminary checklist of eight species of limnephilus from kosovo is provided along with biogeographical and ecological notes this paper is a further contribution to the faunistic list of trichoptera of kosovo one of the least explored countries in europe,2014,0.531
Red List assessments of East African chameleons: a case study of why we need experts,the iucn red list of threatened species uses geographical distribution as a key criterion in assessing the conservation status of species accurate knowledge of a speciesâ distribution is therefore essential to ensure the correct categorization is applied here we compare the geographical distribution of 35 species of chameleons endemic to east africa using data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and data compiled by a taxonomic expert data screening showed 99 9 of gbif records used outdated taxonomy and 20 had no locality coordinates conversely the expert dataset used 100 up to date taxonomy and only seven records 3 had no coordinates both datasets were used to generate range maps for each species which were then used in preliminary red list categorization there was disparity in the categories of 10 species with eight being assigned a lower threat category based on gbif data compared with expert data and the other two assigned a higher category our results suggest that before conducting desktop assessments of the threatened status of species aggregated museum locality data should be vetted against current taxonomy and localities should be verified we conclude that available online databases are not an adequate substitute for taxonomic experts in assessing the threatened status of species and that red list assessments may be compromised unless this extra step of verification is carried out,2014,0.923
Novel spatial analysis methods reveal scale-dependent spread and infer limiting factors of invasion by Sahara mustard,multiple scale dependent ecological processes infl uence species distributions uncovering these drivers of dynamic range boundaries can provide fundamental ecological insights and vital knowledge for species management we develop a trans ferable methodology that uses widely available data and tools to determine critical scales in range expansion and to infer dominating scale dependent forces that infl uence spread we divide a focal geographic region into diff erent sized square cells representing diff erent spatial scales we then used herbarium records to determine the species â occupancy of cells at each spatial scale we calculated the growth in cell occupancy across scales to infer the scale dependent expansion rate th is is the fi rst time such a â box counting â method is used to study range expansion we coupled this multi scale analysis with species distribution models to determine the range and spatial scales where suitable climate allows the species to spread and where other factors may be infl uencing the expansion we demonstrate our methodology by assessing the spread of invasive sahara mustard in north america we detect critical scales where its spread is limited 100 â 500 km or unconstrained 5 â 50 km by climatic variables using climate based models to assess the similarity of climate envelopes in its native and invaded range we fi nd that the climate in the invaded range generally predicts the native distribution suggesting that either there has been little local adaptation to climate occurring since introduction or the biological interaction experienced in the invaded range has not driven the species to occupy climatic conditions much diff erent from its native range our novel method can be broadly utilized in other studies to generate critical insights into the scale dependency of diff erent ecological drivers that infl uence the spread and distribution limits as well as to help parameterizing predictions of future spread and thus inform management decisions species,2014,0.517
"A semi-automated workflow for biodiversity data retrieval, cleaning, and quality control",the compilation and cleaning of data needed for analyses and prediction of species distributions is a time consuming process requiring a solid understanding of data formats and service apis provided by biodiversity informatics infrastructures we designed and implemented a taverna based data refinement workflow which integrates taxonomic data retrieval data cleaning and data selection into a consistent standards based and effective system hiding the complexity of underlying service infrastructures the workflow can be freely used both locally and through a web portal which does not require additional software installations by users,2014,0.254
Biological monitoring by citizens using Web-based photographic databases of fishes,the internet has changed the way biologists communicate this includes the collection of information on fish biology this technological change may allow the possibility for biological monitoring by general citizens via the internet the japanese internet atlas of fishes web sakana zukan has been in operation since 2002 it provides an opportunity to communicate and accumulate information on fish biology by amateur users who consist mainly of sports fishing fans this website has functioned not only as an entertainment and educational tool for users with an environmental and ichthyological interest to date more than 35 000 photographs of fishes have been registered on the website by more than 1 000 unique users and more than 37 500 photographs of fishes have been posted in its bulletin board system linking approximately 28 000 photographs to the website by more than 2 000 unique users as these photographs almost always include time and locality data it is possible to provide distribution data by publishing the information as scientific papers or registering them as collections at the kanagawa prefectural museum of natural history the image database of fishes kpm nr contributing to the global biodiversity information facility if the communication method is developed andimproved various scientists will be able to collect much more biodiversity data from general citizens via the internet,2014,0.203
Exploring Diversity among Norwegian Borrelia Strains Originating from Ixodes ricinus Ticks,characterisation of borrelia strains from ixodes ricinus ticks is important in the epidemiological surveillance of vector borne pathogens multilocus sequences analysis mlsa is a molecular genotyping tool with high discriminatory power that has been applied in evolutionary studies and for the characterisation of borrelia genospecies mlsa wasusedtostudy geneticvariationsin borrelia strains isolated from i ricinus ticks collected from the woodlands in skodje the results demonstrate that the 50 borrelia strains were separated into 36 sequence types sts that were not previously represented in themlst database a distancematrix neighbour joining tree bootstrapped 500 iterations showed four deeply branched clusters and each deeply branched cluster represented one borrelia genospecies the mean pairwise genetic differences confirmthe genospecies clustering the combination of alleles separates the borrelia strains from northwest norway from the strains in themlst database thus identifying new sts although a highly divergent b afzelii population could be expected the heterogeneity among the b garinii strains ismore unusual the present study indicates that the circulation of strains between migrating birds and stationary birds in this coastal region may play a role in the evolution of b garinii strains,2014,0.669
"The systematics of the worldwide endoparasite family Apodanthaceae (Cucurbitales), with a key, a map, and color photos of most species",using morphological nuclear and mitochondrial data we here revise the taxonomy of apodanthaceae and allocate the 36 names published in the family to ten biological species in two genera apodanthes and pilostyles all species are endo parasites that live permanently inside trees or shrubs of the families salicaceae or fabaceae and that only emerge to flower because of this life history apodanthaceae are among the least known families of flowering plants nevertheless the worldâ s herbaria as of 2013 hold at least 785 collections that in combination with dna phylogenies permit well founded species circum scriptions and geographic range maps we also provide a key to all species discuss the newly accepted or synonymized names and make available color photos of six of the ten species,2014,0.787
The efficient management of Park resources: Natural and cultural data in the Alpi Marittime Park area,natural and cultural resource management has been widely promoted in recent years as an approach for pursuing biological conservation cultural development and socioeconomic objectives parks are natural providers of such resources due to the activities of periodical observations of species in their territory and of inventories of cultural heritage within its boundaries however the management and the exploitation of natural and cultural resources is often critical due to the difficulty of collecting data in a standard and interoperable form and integrating it with other available information this paper presents an approach to address the issue of natural and cultural data management to solve the problems of data heterogeneity standard consistency and lack of a common data repository in this paper we firstly define a model to represent natural and cultural data according to specific international standards and then we show how the resources of the alpi marittime natural park can be mapped onto it through the model finally we report how we implemented and used the model in a real application in order to demonstrate the potential of our approach,2014,0.067
"Updated distribution map of Acratosaura mentalis (Squamata, Gymnophthalmidae) with a note on feeding ecology of the treefrog Bokermannohyla alvarengai (Anura, Hylidae)",the family gymnophthalmidae is represented by about 240 species occurring across south and central america uetz and hoå ek 2014 acratosaura mentalis amaral 1933 fig 1a a small species reaching up to 59 mm snout vent length svl rodrigues et al 2009 was originally described as colobosaura mentalis from vila nova today known as senhor do bonfim bahia state ba north eastern brazil amaral 1933 molecular analyses revealed that the species belonged to a distinct lineage and the genus acratosaura was raised to accommodate it rodrigues et al 2007 two years later another species was added to acratosaura a spinosa rodrigues cassimiro freitas and silva 2009 which was discovered in serra do sincorã chapada diamantina ba rodrigues et al 2009 although described in the early 20 th century acratosaura mentalis is still rare in scientific collections and its natural history remains poorly known apart from sporadic comments on its occurrence rodrigues 2003 delfim and freire 2007 de carvalho et al 2010 leading originally to the conclusion that it had a relictual distribution rodrigues 2003 recently obtained specimens now provide evidence of a widespread distribution throughout north eastern brazil to the south of the espinhaã o mountain range rodrigues et al 2009 de carvalho et al 2010 brito et al 2012 herein we present an updated map of its distribution with new records and report on a predation event of this lizard by the treefrog bokermannohyla alvarengai bokermann 1956 fig 1b,2014,0.634
Scanning technique and virtual availability of the type material from the amphibians collection “Célio F. B. Haddad” (CFBH),biological collections are repositories of the natural world the main idea behind starting and maintaining a biological collection is to ensure that future generations will have granted access to the information on the past biodiversity in the last decades the use of digital images of specimens deposited in collections has proliferated and several times the examination of images is enough to solve many research demands herein we propose a method to easily produce good quality imagery with low costs low technical knowledge on photography and low risk of desiccation we exemplify our method by using the amphibian collection â œcã lio f b haddadâ cfbh deposited in the departamento de zoologia instituto de biociãªncias universidade estadual paulista rio claro sp brazil the technique requires a 30 x 20 cm aquarium and a digital scanner figure 1a we used a hpâ scanjet 5590 scanner specimens are placed one by one into the aquarium filled with water or 70 ethanol on the scanner to capture the images we identified and filed the images by species name along with data on their snout vent length svl as scale recent accidents like the fire that destroyed scientific collections in instituto butantan sã o paulo sp brazil franco 2012 and in museu de ciãªncias naturais puc de minas gerais belo horizonte mg brazil are a harsh reminder of the fragility and risk inherent to the scientific collections with specimens conserved in flammable materials like ethanol surely the specimens correctly fixed deposited and with all the maintenance cares are irreplaceable but considering the potential accidents that result in losses digitalized images have their importance,2014,0.246
Mapping present and future potential distribution patterns for a meso-grazer guild in the Baltic Sea,pute the extent and intensity of change in speciesâ potential distributions indi vidual ecological niche models were generated under present conditions and then projected into a future climate change scenario 2050 for a food web consisting of a guild of meso grazers idotea spp their host algae fucus vesi culosus and fucus radicans and their fish predator gasterosteus aculeatus we used occurrence data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif literature and museum collections together with five environmental layers at a resolution of 5 and 30 arc minutes results habitat suitability for idotea balthica and idotea chelipes in the baltic sea seems to be mostly determined by temperature and ice cover rather than by salinity 2050 predictions for all modelled species show a northern north eastern shift in the baltic sea the distribution ranges for idotea granulosa and g aculeatus are predicted to become patchier in the baltic than in the rest of northern europe where the species will gain more suitable habitats main conclusions for the baltic sea climate induced changes resulted in a gain of suitable habitats for f vesiculosus i chelipes and i balthica whereas lower habitat suitability was predicted for i granulosa f radicans and g aculeatus the predicted north eastern shift of i balthica and i chelipes into the dis tribution area of f radicans in the baltic sea may result in increased grazing pressure such additional threats to isolated baltic populations can lead to a higher extinction risk for the species especially as climate changes are likely to be very rapid,2014,0.713
"Horses as Sources of Proprietary Information: Commercialization, Conservation, and Compensation Pursuant to the Convention on Biological Diversity",horses indigenous to east and southeast e se asia including native landrace feral and wild populations embody valuable genetic diversity conservation efforts for animals have largely been driven by humane altruism with little consideration for the information value of genomes yet if horses are viewed as archives of information as well as objects of affection their conservation shifts to a market based paradigm horse genetic resources gr likely contain significant value to the lucrative global horse industry including veterinary applications such as diagnostics therapeutics genetic markers gene therapies and cloning technologies as biotechnology becomes increasingly sophisticated mining of horse gr will accelerate thus facilitating identification inventorying bioprospecting and commercialization of genetic information yet establishing a value chain that balances equitable compensation for commercial applications while promoting conservation of horse populations remains a challenge recommendations presented here include establishing regional and national human resource and institutional capacity competent national authorities that catalog eco geographical inventories of horse gr monitor manage market and direct equitable value chains from horse to genetic information to commercial products and ensure revenue flow back to support conservation this system will foster market incentives to build capacity for sustainable conservation of the diverse horse populations of e se asia,2014,0.521
Elevation patterns in rodent diversity in the dry Andes: disentangling the role of environmental factors,biodiversity patterns are the result of the interaction of numerous contemporary factors and historical opportunities for allopatric speciation several hypotheses regarding climatic features and topographic characteristics have been reported as determinants of species richness along elevation gradients however how these factors interact to shape small mammal species richness along the dry andes ecosystem is not well understood the objectives of this paper were to analyze patterns of species diversity along the central dry andes and to evaluate how climatic and topographic factors explain diversity patterns our results showed a positive and monotonic relationship between small mammal species richness and altitude whereas abundance patterns showed a midelevation peak climate and topography were the most important predictor variables explaining small mammal species richness and abundance patterns in the andes this study underlines the role of the andes in promoting and sustaining biodiversity as well as the need to encourage conservation planning in mountain ecosystems,2014,0.775
Agriculture and Natural Resource Scientists' Biodiversity Information Needs: Barriers and Facilitators to Use and Access in the U.S. Southeast,in a study funded by the united states geological survey a leading provider of biodiversity information the university of tennessee center for information and communication studies assessed the biodiversity information needs of southeastern us agricullture natural resource management and other life scientists results reveal that 30 of agriculture and resource management scientists describe finding the bioddiversity information they need as difficult in addition while agriculture and resource management scientists are better than other life scientists ar searching for finding and knowing where to find the biodiversity information they need to do their work they experience significantly greater difficulty accessing that information they also value different information source attibutes and use information sources differently than do other life scientists by understanding these and other aspects of agriculture and natural resource scietists work with biodiversity information information specialists librarians and information and professional organizations can help them maximize their research and practive efforts towards improved environmental outcomes,2014,0.153
"Projecting date palm distribution in Iran under climate change using topography, physicochemical soil properties, soil taxonomy, land use, and climate data",this study set out to model potential date palm distribution under current and future climate scenarios using an emission scenario in conjunction with two different global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr and to refine results based on suitability under four nonclimatic parameters areas containing suitable physicochemical soil properties and suitable soil taxonomy together with land slopes of less than 10â and suitable land uses for date palm phoenix dactylifera were selected as appropriate refining tools to ensure the climex results were accurate and robust results showed that large regions of iran are projected as likely to become climatically suitable for date palm cultivation based on the projected scenarios for the years 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 the study also showed climex outputs merit refinement by nonclimatic parameters and that the incremental introduction of each additional parameter decreased the disagreement between gcms furthermore the study indicated that the least amount of disagreement in terms of areas conducive to date palm cultivation resulted from cs and mr gcms when the locations of suitable physicochemical soil properties and soil taxonomy were used as refinement tools,2014,0.058
Range shift and introgression of the rear and leading populations in two ecologically distinct Rubus species,background the margins of a speciesâ range might be located at the margins of a speciesâ niche and in such cases can be highly vulnerable to climate changes they however may also undergo significant evolutionary change due to drastic population dynamics e g changes in population size and distribution which may increase the chance of contact among species such species interactions induced by climate changes could then regulate or facilitate further responses to climatic changes we hypothesized that climate change induced species contacts and subsequent genetic exchanges due to differences in population dynamics take place at the species boundaries we sampled two closely related rubus species one temperate rubus palmatus and the other subtropical r grayanus near their joint species boundaries in southern japan coalescent analysis based on molecular data and ecological niche modelling during the last glacial maximum lgm were used to infer past population dynamics at the contact zones on yakushima yaku island where the two species are parapatrically distributed we tested hybridization along altitudinal gradients resultscoalescent analysis suggested that the southernmost populations of r palmatus predated the lgm 20 000 ya conversely populations at the current northern limit of r grayanus diverged relatively recently and likely represent young outposts of a northbound range shift these population dynamics were partly supported by the ensemble forecasting of six different species distribution models both past and ongoing hybridizations were detected near and on yakushima backcrosses and advanced generation hybrids likely generated the clinal hybrid zones along altitudinal gradients on the island where the two species are currently parapatrically distributed conclusionsclimate oscillations during the quaternary period and the response of a species in range shifts likely led to repeated contacts with the gene pools of ecologically distinct relatives such species interactions induced by climate changes may bring new genetic material to the marginal populations where species tend to experience more extreme climatic conditions at the margins of the species distribution,2014,0.997
"Potential, realised, future distribution and environmental suitability for Pterocarpus angolensis DC in southern Africa",the deciduous tree species pterocarpus angolensis occurs in the dry woodlands of southern africa and grows under a broad range of environmental conditions it is threatened by overharvesting due to its valuable timber blood wood kiaat and by land use changes information on the most suitable environmental conditions for the species is often old and anecdotal while available data on its occurrence refer to range extent and not to distribution species distribution models sdm could provide more accurate information on distribution and environmental requirements and thereby assist sustainable management of this tree species maxent models were developed to estimate the potential realised and future distribution of p angolensis and to identify detailed environmental requirements occurrences data of the species were sourced from herbaria and other published sources environmental data from global gis databases relevant environmental predictors were selected through a jack knife test of the first model runs the addition of information on competing species fires and deforestation was tested to determine realised distribution model quality was evaluated with an independent presence absence dataset the model was projected with two different climate change scenarios to study their effect on the distribution by 2080 results show that a potential distribution map can be obtained with good discrimination of the presence of the species auc 0 83 and fairly good calibration correlation coefficient 0 61 range extent and environmental requirements are more detailed than those described in literature the distribution of the species is mainly influenced by the amount of summer rainfall by the minimum temperature in winter and by temperature seasonality potential and realised distributions are very similar with madagascar as major exception where the species can grow but does not occur adding the fire history of the last 13 years or the distribution maps of potentially competing species as predictor variables did not improve the distribution model it did illustrate that p angolensis is mainly found in areas with annual fire frequency below 45 and that only a few of the tested species show signs of competition using a forest cover map improved the realised distribution slightly kappa coefficient 0 64 climate change can decrease the species range considerably especially in the west threatening species existence in namibia and botswana on the other hand the speciesâ occurrence is predicted to increase in zambia,2014,0.961
Extinctions of vascular plants in Spain,th e catalogue of extinct plants in spain comprising 27 taxa is updated included are four species not previously classifi ed as extinct in spain cyclamen purpurascens grammitis quaerenda stratiotes aloides and vallisneria spiralis we analyze the causes of extinction and explore the possible infl uence of botanical collections in species loss th e obtained data suggest that habitat loss has been the main cause of extinction and the impact of collecting is demonstrated to be irrelevant we list the 21 species that have been designated as extinct in previous catalogues but which no longer have that status 14 of them having been recovered thanks to botanical exploration and collection works,2014,0.663
"An occurence records database of French Guiana harvestmen (Arachnida, Opiliones).",this dataset provides information on specimens of harvestmen arthropoda arachnida opiliones collected in french guiana field collections have been initiated in 2012 within the framework of the center for the study of biodiversity in amazonia ceba www labex ceba fr en this dataset is a work in progress occurrences are recorded in an online database stored at the edb laboratory after each collecting trip and the dataset is updated on a monthly basis voucher specimens and associated dna are also stored at the edb laboratory until deposition in natural history museums the latest version of the dataset is publicly and freely accessible through our integrated publication toolkit at http 130 120 204 55 8080 ipt resource do r harvestmen of french guiana or through the global biodiversity information facility data portal at http www gbif org dataset 3c9e2297 bf20 4827 928e 7c7eefd9432c,2014,0.465
URJC GB dataset: Community-based seed bank of Mediterranean high-mountain and semi-arid plant species at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain),the germplasm bank of universidad rey juan carlos was created in 2008 and currently holds 235 ac cessions and 96 species this bank focuses on the conservation of wild plant communities and aims to conserve ex situ a representative sample of the plant biodiversity present in a habitat emphasizing priority ecosystems identified by the habitats directive it is also used to store plant material for research and teaching purposes the collection consists of three subcollections two representative of typical habitats in the center of the iberian peninsula high mountain pastures psicroxerophylous pastures and semi arid habitats gypsophylic steppes and a third representative of the genus lupinus the high mountain sub collection currently holds 153 accessions 63 species the semi arid subcollection has 76 accessions 29 species and the lupinus subcollection has 6 accessions 4 species all accessions are stored in a freezer at 18 â c in kilner jars with silica gel the germplasm bank of universidad rey juan carlos follows a quality control protocol which describes the workflow performed with seeds from seed collection to storage all collectors are members of research groups with great experience in species identification herbarium specimens associated with seed accessions are preserved and 63 of the records have been georreferenced with gps and radio points the dataset provides unique information concerning the location of popula tions of plant species that form part of the psicroxerophylous pastures and gypsophylic steppes of central spain as well as populations of genus lupinus in the iberian peninsula it also provides relevant informa tion concerning mean seed weight and seed germination values under specific incubation conditions this dataset has already been used by researchers of the area of biodiversity and conservation of urjc as a source of information for the design and implementation of experimental designs in these plant com munities since they are all active subcollections in continuous growth data is updated regularly every six months and the latest version can be accessed through the gbif data portal at http www gbif es 8080 ipt resource do r germoplasma urjc this paper describes the urjc germplasm bank and its associated dataset with the aim of disseminating the dataset and explaining how it was derived,2014,0.785
Non-twining milkweed vines of Oklahoma: an overview of Matelea biflora and Matelea cynanchoides,matelea apocynaceae asclepiadoideae is a genus of approximately 225 species in milkweed subtribe gonolobinae this new world genus is predominantly found in tropical to subtropical regions and is represented in oklahoma by four species two of these m biflora and m cynanchoides are closely related non twining perennial herbs that have long confused amateur and professional botanists alike due to similar morphological features this paper includes a brief review of their taxonomic history and describes the morphology ecology and distribution of these species in oklahoma and neighboring states photographs a distribution map and a key to the species of matelea in oklahoma are included,2014,0.682
"A simple, rapid methodology for developing invasive species watch lists",biosecurity schemes aim to prevent the introduction of species with a high invasion potential without unduly restricting personal freedom and commercial activities but invasive species risk assessments are time consuming data intensive and expensive consequently resource poor nations cannot imple ment these schemes here we develop a method for creating watch lists using the consistent predictors of invasion successâ history of invasion environmental suitability and propagule pressure measured respectively using the global invasive species database gisd environmental modelling and tourism and trade data we tested the approach for south africa at a national level for various taxa and at a pro vincial level for plants of 884 alien species listed in the gisd 400 were potential invaders with most occurring in high risk regions when alien species in south africa were evaluated there were many false negatives sensitivity of 32 for terrestrial and 40 for marine species because the gisd is not comprehensive but few false positives specificity of 91 for terrestrial and 89 for marine species the methodology was easy to apply at different political levels but we found substantial overlaps between the national and provincial watch lists of plants this simple technique is rapid easily repeat able flexible transparent works across taxa and does not require substantial financial or scientific input it can be used in any region of the world and at various political levels as an initial assessment of key threats as such it may be an important step in developing biosecurity schemes for resource poor regions,2014,0.739
Systematic global assessment of reef fish communities by the Reef Life Survey program,the assessment of patterns in macroecology including those most relevant to global biodiversity conservation has been hampered by a lack of quantitative data collected in a consistent manner over the global scale global analyses of speciesâ abundance data typically rely on records aggregated from multiple studies where different sampling methods and varying levels of taxonomic and spatial resolution have been applied here we describe the reef life survey rls reef fish dataset which contains 134 759 abundance records of 2 367 fish taxa from 1 879 sites in coral and rocky reefs distributed worldwide data were systematically collected using standardized methods offering new opportunities to assess broad scale spatial patterns in community structure the development of such a large dataset was made possible through contributions of investigators associated with science and conservation agencies worldwide and the assistance of a team of over 100 recreational scuba divers who undertook training in scientific techniques for underwater surveys and voluntarily contributed skills expertise and their time to data collection,2014,0.44
"Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 63. Validation of the family Phyllothalliaceae (Pallaviciniales, Jungermanniopsida, Marchantiophyta)",when hodgson 1964 proposed the new family phyllothalliaceae together with the initially monotypic genus phyllothallia hodgson 1964 247 based on phyllothallia nivicola hodgson 1964 247 she mentioned â œthis new family is not a splinter entity from any already recognized family but is originated to contain a genus which in vegetative characters at least is completely different from any known genus the characters of the family are those of the genusâ the first sentence specifies the features in which phyllothalliaceae is different from the other families but not how these features differ and so it does not satisfy the requirement of art 38 1 a for a description diagnosis see art 38 2 ex 4 although grolle 1972 216 discussed the validity of the family and considered the second sentence fulfil the requirements for the valid publication icn mcneill et al 2012 allows a single description diagnosis for monotypic genus and species only hence the family phyllothalliaceae lacked a description diagnosis which was needed when proposed and it has never been validly published until now in order to be able to use the name in the forthcoming world checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in prep the family is validated here note that a latin description is no longer needed under the current icn mcneill et al 2012,2014,0.391
Accessing biodiversity databases: a domain specific query language and a unifying data model,species data are scattered among several databases and information systems during the last years considerable progresses have been made in developing on line species databases however there is no single database that can claim to host and make available in a seamless way all the species data needed by the communities willing to have access to such typology of data in this report we present a domain specific query language and a unifying data model for species data that characterise a mediator service specifically conceived to act as a single access point to the plethora of existing species databases,2014,0.701
Where is positional uncertainty a problem for species distribution modelling?,species data held in museum and herbaria survey data and opportunistically observed data are a substantial information resource a key challenge in using these data is the uncertainty about where an observation is located this is important when the data are used for species distribution modelling sdm because the coordinates are used to extract the environmental variables and thus positional error may lead to inaccurate estimation of the speciesâ environment relationship the magnitude of this effect is related to the level of spatial autocorrelation in the environmental variables using local spatial association can be relevant because it can lead to the identification of the specific occurrence records that cause the largest drop in sdm accuracy therefore in this study we tested whether the sdm predictions are more affected by positional uncertainty originating from locations that have lower local spatial association in their predictors we performed this experiment for spain and the netherlands using simulated datasets derived from well known species distribution models sdms we used the k statistic to quantify the local spatial association in the predictors at each species occurrence location a probabilistic approach using monte carlo simulations was employed to introduce the error in the species locations the results revealed that positional uncertainty in species occurrence data at locations with low local spatial association in predictors reduced the prediction accuracy of the sdms we propose that local spatial association is a way to identify the species occurrence records that require treatment for positional uncertainty we also developed and present a tool in the r environment to target observations that are likely to create error in the output from sdms as a result of positional uncertainty,2014,0.889
"Population signatures of large-scale, long-term disjunction and small-scale, short-term habitat fragmentation in an Afromontane forest bird",the eastern afromontane cloud forests occur as geographically distinct mountain exclaves the conditions of these forests range from large to small and from fairly intact to strongly degraded for this study we sampled individuals of the forest bird species the montane white eye zosterops poliogaster from 16 sites and four mountain archipelagos we analysed 12 polymorphic microsatellites and three phenotypic traits and calculated species distribution models sdms to project past distributions and predict potential future range shifts under a scenario of climate warming we found well supported genetic and morphologic clusters corresponding to the mountain ranges where populations were sampled with 43 of all alleles being restricted to single mountains our data suggest that large scale and long term geographic isolation on mountain islands caused genetically and morphologically distinct population clusters in z poliogaster however major genetic and biometric splits were not correlated to the geographic distances among populations this heterogeneous pattern can be explained by past climatic shifts as highlighted by our sdm projections anthropogenically fragmented populations showed lower genetic diversity and a lower mean body mass possibly in response to suboptimal habitat conditions on the basis of these findings and the results from our sdm analysis we predict further loss of genotypic and phenotypic uniqueness in the wake of climate change due to the contraction of the species climatic niche and subsequent decline in population size,2014,0.772
Phylogeography of Liquidambar styraciflua (Altingiaceae) in Mesoamerica: survivors of a Neogene widespread temperate forest (or cloud forest) in North America?,we investigate the genetic variation between populations of the american sweetgum liquidambar styraciflua a tree species with a disjunct distribution between northeastern texas and mexico by analyzing sequences of two chloroplast dna plastid regions in mesoamerica our results revealed phylogeographical structure with private haplotypes distributed in unique environmental space at either side of the trans mexican volcanic belt and a split in the absence of gene flow dating back ca 4 2 1 4 million years ago mya species distribution modeling results fit a model of refugia along the gulf and atlantic coasts but the present ranges of us and mesoamerican populations persisted disjunct during glacial interglacial cycles divergence between the us and mesoamerican ca 8 4 2 8 mya populations of l styraciflua and asymmetrical gene flow patterns support the hypothesis of a long distance dispersal during the pliocene with fragmentation since the most recent glacial advance 120 000 years bp according to coalescent simulations and high effective migration rates from mesoamerica to the usa and close to zero in the opposite direction our findings implicate the trans mexican volcanic belt as a porous barrier driving genetic divergence of l styraciflua corresponding with environmental niche differences during the pliocene to quaternary volcanic arc episode 3 6 mya and a mesoamerican origin of populations in the usa,2014,0.821
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 55. New taxa and synonyms in Adelanthaceae (Marchantiophyta),recent molecular and morphological studies have solved many taxonomical questions in adelanthaceae but several taxa have not been studied recently based on studies of type material and additional specimens we synonymize i syzygiella riclefii with syzygiella campanulata syzygiella grollei with syzygiella concreta syzygiella virescens and syzygiella integerrima with syzygiella contigua ii syzygiella subundulata and syzygiella colombiana with syzygiella manca iii syzygiella inouei with syzygiella setulosa iv syzygiella kerguelensis with syzygiella tasmanica and v syzygiella liberata with syzygiella trigonifolia new lectotypes are designated for syzygiella manca syzygiella plagiochiloides and neotypes for syzygiella contigua and syzygiella virescens the subfamily adelanthoideae is validated,2014,0.316
Alkaloids as drug leads – A predictive structural and biodiversity-based analysis,the process of drug discovery and development particularly that of natural products has evolved markedly over the last 30 years into increasingly formulaic approaches as a major class of natural products initially discovered and used as early as 4000 years ago alkaloids and the species they are derived from have been used worldwide as a source of remedies to treat a wide variety of illnesses yet a tremendously wide discrepancy between their historical significance and their occurrence in modern drug development exists are alkaloids underrepresented in modern medicine the physicochemical features of 27 683 alkaloids from the dictionary of natural products were cross referenced to pharmacologically significant and other metrics from various databases including the european bioinformatics instituteâ s chembl and global biodiversity information facilityâ s gbif for the first time we show that market developmental performance of a class of compounds is linked to its biodiversity distributions as defined by the gbif dataset the potential of such a large scale data analysis is analyzed against both prevalent rules used to guide drug discovery processes and the larger context of natural product development,2014,0.279
"Moving towards the equator: reverse range shifts in two subtropical reef fish species, Chromis nitida (Pomacentridae) and Pseudolabrus guentheri (Labridae)",two reef fish species pseudolabrus guentheri and chromis nitida traditionally restricted to the central and southern great barrier reef gbr were observed in the northern gbr this range extension is unusual as it runs contrary to the general expectations of poleward range shifts associated with climate change,2014,0.476
Ensemble distribution models in conservation prioritization: from consensus predictions to consensus reserve networks.,aim conservation planning exercises increasingly rely on species distributions predicted either from one particular statistical model or more recently from an ensemble of models i e ensemble forecasting however it has not yet been explored how different ways of summarizing ensemble predictions affect conservation planning outcomes we evaluate these effects and compare commonplace consensus methods applied before the conservation prioritization phase to a novel method that applies consensus after reserve selection location europe methods we used an ensemble of predicted distributions of 146 western palaearctic bird species in alternative ways four different consensus methods as well as distributions discounted with variability were used to produce inputs for spatial conservation prioritization in addition we developed and tested a novel method in which we built 100 datasets by sampling the ensemble of predicted distributions ran a conservation prioritization analysis on each of them and averaged the resulting priority ranks we evaluated the conservation outcome against three controls i a null control based on random ranking of cells 2 the reference solution based on an expert refined dataset and 3 the independent solution based on an independent dataset results networks based on predicted distributions were more representative of rare species than randomly selected networks alternative methods to summarize ensemble predictions differed in representativeness of resulting reserve networks our novel method resulted in better representation of rare species than pre selection consensus methods main conclusions retaining information about the variation in the predicted distributions throughout the conservation prioritization seems to provide better results than summarizing the predictions before conservation prioritization our results highlight the need to understand and consider model based uncertainty when using predicted distribution data in conservation prioritization,2014,0.1
Using scenarios to project the changing profitability of fisheries under climate change,over exploitation and economic underperformance are widespread in the worldâ s fisheries global climate change is further affecting the distribution of marine spe cies raising concern for the persistence of biodiversity and presenting additional challenges to fisheries management however few studies have attempted to extend bioclimatic projections to assess the socio economic impacts of climate induced range shifts this study investigates the potential implications of changes in relative environmental suitability and fisheries catch potential on uk fisheries by linking species distribution modelling with cost benefit analyses we develop sce narios and apply a multimodel approach to explore the economic sensitivity of uk fisheries and key sources of uncertainty in the modelling procedure we projected changes in maximum potential catch of key species and the resulting responses in terms of net present value npv over a 45 year period under scenarios of change in fuel price discount rate and government subsidies results suggest that total maximum potential catch will decrease within the uk eez by 2050 resulting in a median decrease in npv of 10 this value decreases further when trends of fuel price change are extrapolated into the future becoming negative when capacity enhancing subsidies are removed despite the variation in predictions from alterna tive models and data input the direction of change in npv is robust this study highlights key factors influencing future profitability of uk fisheries and the impor tance of enhancing adaptive capacity in uk fisheries,2014,0.302
Melaleuca parvistaminea Byrnes (Myrtaceae) in South Africa: Invasion risk and feasibility of eradication,we document and assess management options for the first reported invasion of melaleuca parvistaminea byrnes initially identified as m ericifolia in the world in the context of a southafrican wetland ecosystem delimitation surveys indicate that the entire invasion is restricted to three sites between tulbagh and wolseley and that populations are only associated with areas currently or previously covered by pine plantations primarily pinus radiata to estimate abundance we surveyed 42 of the three identified areas and found 26 000 plants over 1800 ha condensed canopy area of 1 15 ha at least 63 of recorded plants were seedlings or juveniles mostly 4 yrs old and most occurred in seasonally inundated but not waterlogged habitats m parvistaminea creates monospecific stands that overtop the native shrubland vegetation breede shale renosterveld and is thus considered a potential transformer species species distribution modelling also revealed large areas of climatically suitable habitat in thewestern cape pointing to substantial invasion debt for the species in south africa felling triggers seed release fromserotinous capsules resulting in prolific seedling recruitment after winter rains up to 18 000 seedlings m2 no evidence of a soil stored seed bank was found and when plants are cut at ground level or treated with herbicide after cutting plants do not resprout the invasive populations of this water dispersed species are close to major rivers the berg and breede but the intervening countryside is largely transformed and is unfavourable for establishment much of the area downstream from the invaded area is open vegetation that is unsuitable formajor recruitment but easy to survey and detect small plants consequent ly although the extent of invasion is large potentially 9185 ha the invasion can be delimited with some confidence and eradication is considered achievable since seeds only survive for about a year seedlings achieve maturity after 4 years and because the species is an obligate reseeder given the threats posed eradication is desirable and m parvistaminea should be listed as a category 1a invader requiring compulsory control under the proposed invasive species regulations under south africa s national environmental management biodiversity act 10 2004 we estimate that search and destroy operations could eradicate the species by 2021 at a cost of zar 3 475 000 us 355 400,2014,0.78
Predicting environmental gradients with fern species composition in Brazilian Amazonia,aim a major problem for conservation in amazonia is that species distribution maps are inaccurate consequently conservation planning needs to be based on other information sources such as vegetation and soil maps which are also inaccurate we propose and test the use of biotic data on a common and relatively easily inventoried group of plants to infer environmental conditions that can be used to improve maps of floristic patterns for plants in general location brazilian amazonia methods we sampled 326 plots of 250 m 9 2 m separated by distances of 1 â 1800 km terrestrial fern individuals were identified and counted edaphic data were obtained from soil samples and analysed for cation concentration and texture climatic data were obtained from worldclim we used a multivariate regression tree to evaluate the hierarchical importance of soils and climate for fern communities and identified significant indicator species for the resultant classification we then tested how well the edaphic properties of the plots could be predicted on the basis of their floristic composition using two calibration methods weighted averaging and k nearest neighbour estimation results soil cation concentration emerged as the most important variable in the regressiontree whereas soiltextural and climatic variationplayed secondary roles almost all the plot classes had several fern species with high indicator val ues for that class soil cation concentration was also the variable most accurately predicted on the basis of fern community composition r 2 0 65 â 0 75 for log transformed data predictive accuracy varied little among the calibration methods and was not improved by the use of abundance data instead of presence â absence data conclusions fern species composition can be used as an indicator of soil cation concentration which can be expected to be relevant also for other components of rain forests presence â absence data are adequate for this purpose which makes the collecting of additional data potentially very rapid comparison with earlier studies suggests that edaphic preferences of fern species have good trans ferability across geographical regions within lowland amazonia therefore species and environmental data sets already available in the amazon region represent a good starting point for generating better environmental and floristic maps for conservation planning,2014,0.544
Birds of Antioquia: Georeferenced database of specimens from the Colección de Ciencias Naturales del Museo Universitario de la Universidad de Antioquia (MUA),the department of antioquia colombia lies in the northwestern corner of south america and provides a biogeographical link among divergent faunas including caribbean andean pacific and amazonian infor mation about the distribution of biodiversity in this area is of relevance for academic practical and social purposes this data paper describes the dataset containing all bird specimens deposited in the colecciã n de ciencias naturales del museo universitario de la universidad de antioquia mua we curated all the in formation associated with the bird specimens including the georeferences and taxonomy and published the database through the global biodiversity information facility network during this process we checked the species identification and existing georeferences and completed the information when possible the collec tion holds 663 bird specimens collected between 1940 and 2011 even though most specimens are from an tioquia 70 the collection includes material from several other departments and one specimen from the united states the collection holds specimens from three endemic and endangered species coeligena orina diglossa gloriossisima and hypopirrhus pyrohipogaster and includes localities poorly represented in other col lections the information contained in the collection has been used for biodiversity modeling conservation planning and management and we expect to further facilitate these activities by making it publicly available,2014,0.416
Does starfish predation determine spawning seasonality in the whelk Buccinum undatum in the Gulf of St Lawrence?,the common whelk buccinum undatum is an abundant predatory and scavenging gastropod that is widely distributed on both sides of the north atlantic from canada to new jersey in north america and from svalbard to france in europe the species range extends to 708n along the western shores of greenland and fossil shells late pliocene formation of kap kã benhavn have been found as far north as 828300n global biodiversity information facility 2013 it occurs on various substrates in coastal areas from low tide level to 200mand sometimes deeper but shows a preference for waters of about 20â 30 m depth weetman et al 2006 w heude berthelin et al 2011 the biology of this important commercial species has been relatively well studied throughout its range and includes studies of the seasonality of reproduction,2014,0.584
"Shallow-Water Northern Hemisphere Jaera (Crustacea, Isopoda, Janiridae) Found on Whale Bones in the Southern Ocean Deep Sea: Ecology and Description of Jaera tyleri sp. nov.",the skeleton of a natural whale fall discovered in the southern ocean at 1 445 m was densely covered by one small janirid isopod jaera tyleri sp nov is the first of its genus found in the southern hemisphere and in the deep sea and is described herein morphological and molecular investigations revealed the systematic position of this species new to science phylogenetic analysis of the 18s locus confirms that this species falls in a strongly supported monophyletic clade of jaera species the whale bone habitat of j tyleri sp nov is quite different from those of other species of the genus jaera the analysis of bathymetric and distribution patterns of the janiridae in general and jaera specifically confirm the unusualness of the habitat for this isopod species the abundance of j tyleri sp nov on the whale bones and its absence from other nearby habitats suggests it to be a whale fall specialist the analysis of the size frequency distributions of j tyleri sp nov suggests multimodal population structure with continuous breeding activity throughout the year the fecundity of the species is low but in line with reduced fecundity observed in polar and small sized isopods,2014,0.973
New record of Malthopsis gnoma (Lophiiformes: Ogcocephalidae) in the southern Gulf of Mexico,a specimen of malthopsis gnoma was collected at 154 m on the continental slope of the gulf of mexico in 2003 this constitutes the second record of this species for mexican waters and the first for the southern gulf of mexico,2014,0.599
A maximum entropy model for predicting wild boar distribution in Spain,wild boar sus scrofa populations in many areas of the palearctic including the iberian peninsula have grown continuously over the last century this increase has led to numerous different types of conflicts due to the damage these mammals can cause to agriculture the problems they create in the conservation of natural areas and the threat they pose to animal health in the context of both wildlife management and the design of health programs for disease control it is essential to know how wild boar are distributed on a large spatial scale given that the quantifying of the distribution of wild species using census techniques is virtually impossible in the case of large scale studies modeling techniques have thus to be used instead to estimate animalsâ distributions densities and abundances in this study the potential distribution of wild boar in spain was predicted by integrating data of presence and environmental variables into a maxent approach we built and tested models using 100 bootstrapped replicates for each replicate or simulation presence data was divided into two subsets that were used for model fitting 60 of the data and cross validation 40 of the data the final model was found to be accurate with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve auc value of 0 79 six explanatory variables for predicting wild boar distribution were identified on the basis of the percentage of their contribution to the model the model exhibited a high degree of predictive accuracy which has been confirmed by its agreement with satellite images and field surveys,2014,0.713
Predictive characterization of crop wild relatives and landraces,predictive characterization methods use ecogeographical and climatic data derived from the specific location of a collecting or observation site to predict characteristics of accessions and populations that can inform conservation and use options the predictive characterization methods presented in these technical guidelines for crop wild relatives cwr and landraces lr aim to enhance the use of cwr and lr through identification of sets of accessions or occurrences that have a higher likelihood of harbouring genetic diversity for specific adaptive traits than a set selected at random the methods presented are the ecogeographical filtering and the calibration method these are two of the various methods that implement the focused identification of germplasm strategy figs the guidelines were developed within the framework of the eu funded project pgr secure â novel characterization of crop wild relative and landrace resources as a basis for improved crop breedingâ,2014,0.522
Uncovering cryptic diversity and refugial persistence among small mammal lineages across the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot.,the eastern afromontane region of africa is characterized by striking levels of endemism and species richness accompanied by significant conservation threat a pattern typical across biodiversity hotspots using multi locus molecular data under a coalescent species tree framework we identify major cryptic biogeographic patterns within and between two endemic montane small mammal species complexes hylomyscus mice and sylvisorex shrews co distributed across the albertine rift and kenya highlands of the eastern afromontane biodiversity hotspot eabh hypotheses put forward to account for the high diversity of the region include retention of older palaeo endemic lineages across major regions in climatically stable refugia as well as the accumulation of lineages associated with more recent differentiation between allopatric populations separated by unsuitable habitat during periods of pleistocene aridification sympatric pairs of sister lineages were found to have significantly older divergence times than allopatric pairs genetic analyses and historical distribution modeling suggest that regional meta populations have persisted since the pliocene to mid pleistocene across a climatic gradient from the albertine rift in the west to the kenya highlands in the east for both focal taxa differing patterns of regional sub division and demographic expansion were detected and are consistent with differing life histories as well as shared responses to regional variation in stability of suitable habitat there is also strong support in both mice and shrew species for late miocene divergence with subsequent range expansion into sympatry in previously unidentified cryptic species pairs these results highlight the broad temporal scale at which climatic and geological changes may have facilitated rare dispersal events between montane habitats as well as the long term persistence of populations in both the albertine rift and the kenyan highlands that together contributed to the high species diversity and endemism in the eabh,2014,0.947
"Bioclim: the first species distribution modelling package, its early applications and relevance to most current MaxEnt studies",aim interest in species distribution models sdms and related niche studies has increased dramatically in recent years with several books and reviews being prepared since 2000 the earliest sdm studies are dealt with only briefly even in the books consequently many researchers are unaware of when the first sdm software package bioclim was developed and how a broad range of applications using the package was explored within the first 8 years following its release the purpose of this study is to clarify these early developments and initial applications as well as to highlight bioclim s continuing relevance to current studies location mainly australia and new zealand but also some global applications methods we outline the development of the bioclim package early applications 1984â 1991 and its current relevance results bioclim was the first sdm package to be widely used early applications explored many of the possible uses of sdms in conservation biogeography such as quantifying the environmental niche of species identifying areas where a species might be invasive assisting conservation planning and assessing the likely impacts of climate change on species distributions main conclusions understanding this pioneering work is worthwhile as bioclim was for many years one of the leading sdm packages and remains widely used climate interpolation methods developed for bioclim were used to create the worldclim database the most common source of climate data for sdm studies and bioclim variables are used in about 76 of recent published maxent analyses of terrestrial ecosystems also some of the bioclim studies from the late 1980s such as measuring niche both realized and fundamental and assessing possible impacts of climate change are still highly relevant to key conservation biogeography issues,2014,0.288
Systematics of the Octopleura Clade of Miconia (Melastomataceae: Miconieae) in Tropical America,the octopleura clade of miconia is a natural group of neotropical subshrubs and small trees comprising some thirty three species these had previously been described in ossaea and clidemia two traditionally recognized genera of miconieae but this natural group is nested within the megadiverse genus miconia this study represents the first comprehensive monograph of the clade across its entire range based on a study of over 2100 collections from seven herbaria thirteen new combinations are made miconia aguilarii m aurantiaca m biolleyana m boekei m chocoensis m evanescens m incerta m laxivenula m palenquensis m quinquenervia m radicans m reitziana and m rufibarbis thirteen new names are provided for epithets preempted in miconia m albertobrenesii m alboglandulosa m approximata m atropurpurea m bensparrei m bractiflora m erikasplundii m magnifolia m neocoronata m quadridomius m sessilis m spiciformis and m variabilis six new species are proposed m alatissima m anchicayensis m formicaria m latidecurrens m renatoi and m veraguensis a taxonomic key detailed descriptions distribution maps and phenological and ecological information are presented for all species along with sem images of seed morphology for selected species a preliminary geospatial conservation assessment is made for each species diagnostic illustrations are included for all new taxa and other selected species a molecular phylogenetic analysis based on four genic loci is presented along with a reconstruction of ancestral character states molecular and morphological data are used to develop a better understanding of the constituent species of the clade and their evolutionary relationships three subclades approximata quinquenervia and variabilis are evident within the octopleura clade and supported by morphological synapomorphies,2014,0.927
Evidence for reciprocal origins in Polypodium hesperium (Polypodiaceae): A fern model system for investigating how multiple origins shape allopolyploid genomes,premise of the study many polyploid species are composed of distinct lineages originating from multiple independent polyploidization events in the case of allopolyploids reciprocal crosses between the same progenitor species can yield lineages with different uniparentally inherited plastid genomes while likely common there are few well documented examples of such reciprocal origins here we examine a case of reciprocal allopolyploid origins in the fern polypodium hesperium and present it as a natural model system for investigating the evolutionary potential of duplicated genomes â methods using a combination of uniparentally inherited plastid and biparentally inherited nuclear sequence data we investigated the distributions and relative ages of reciprocally formed lineages in polypodium hesperium an allotetraploid fern that is broadly distributed in western north america â key results the reciprocally derived plastid haplotypes of polypodium hesperium are allopatric with populations north and south of 42â n latitude having different plastid genomes incorporating biogeographic information and previously estimated ages for the diversification of its diploid progenitors we estimate middle to late pleistocene origins of p hesperium â conclusions several features of polypodium hesperium make it a particularly promising system for investigating the evolutionary consequences of allopolyploidy these include reciprocally derived lineages with disjunct geographic distributions recent time of origin and extant diploid progenitors,2014,0.41
Modeling and Implementation of a Geospatial Database for Environmental Niches and Potential Geographic Distributions,the ecological niche of a species is defined by an array of biotic and abiotic requirements that allow organisms to live and reproduce in a geographic region abiotic data from the ecological niche in combination with occurrence data can be used to predict the potential geographic distribution of a species in different regions potential geographic distributions are useful in predicting the extent of invasive species predict distributions as preparation for climate change and find appropriate regions for endangered species among others geographic entities and environmental variables can be represented with a high level abstraction in diagrams using formalism dedicated to model geospatial databases the schemas produced by these formalisms can later be transformed into implementation code using software design approaches such as the model driven architecture mda this work describes the stages of mda to generate geospatial databases for ecological niches and potential geographic distributions data the paper also presents a study case estimating the potential distribution of the tree myracrodruon urundeuva to show how professionals and researches can use the proposed schema to implement a repository for ecological niche and potential distributions data keywords,2014,0.428
Lamina shape variability in species of the genus Ficus L. in different ecological conditions,the morphological variability of the leaf apparatus in response to different levels of light is deter mined not only by the available solar irradiance but also by a complex of preadaptations to some other envi ronmental factors data on the influences of climatic characteristics for natural ranges on manifested differ ences in leaves of light and shadow allocations remain insufficient this paper investigates the differences in lamina shapes among fifteen species of the genus ficus l relationships between the determined plasticity and climatic conditions of the native habitats of species have been ascertained positive dependences on the annual cycle amplitude and amount of precipitation as well as temperature seasonality have been revealed,2014,0.408
Identification of Three Elicitins and a Galactan-Based Complex Polysaccharide from a Concentrated Culture Filtrate of Phytophthora infestans Efficient against Pectobacterium atrosepticum.,the induction of plant immunity by pathogen associated molecular patterns pamps constitutes a powerful strategy for crop protection pamps indeed induce general defense responses in plants and thus increase plant resistance to pathogens phytophthora infestans culture filtrates ccfs are known to induce defense responses and decrease the severity of soft rot due to pectobacterium atrosepticum in potato tubers the aim of this study was to identify and characterize the active compounds from p infestans filtrate the filtrate was fractionated by gel filtration and the protection effects against p atrosepticum and the ability to induce pal activity were tested for each fraction the fraction active in protection f1 also induced pal activity as did the whole filtrate three elicitins inf1 inf4 and inf5 were identified in f1b subfraction of f1 by maldi tof ms and ms ms analyses however deproteinized f1b still showed biological activity against the bacterium revealing the presence of an additional active compound gc ms analyses of the deproteinized fraction highlighted the presence of a galactan based complex polysaccharide these experiments demonstrate that the biological activity of the ccf against p atrosepticum results from a combined action of three elicitins and a complex polysaccharide probably through the activation of general defense responses,2014,0.208
Mobilizing digitized museum specimen records to highlight important animal pollinators in East Africa,abstract there is an increasing global demand for existing natural history information for use in education conservation and policy formulation museum specimen collection records being voluminous are particularly significant in addressing such demands this is even more critical in developing countries where daily human life is intimately linked to the environment we demonstrate how existing museum specimen collection records were mobilized to highlight important animal pollinators in three east african countries the bulk of the records were obtained from a specify database of existing zoological collections held at the national museums of kenya and the rest were from such alternative sources as published material discussions with pollination experts and online taxonomic portals and other tools identified to genus or species level pollinator ranking criteria encompassed region wide distribution number of plants pollinated importance index of plants pollinated and plant dependency on pollina,2014,0.095
"Millipedes and centipedes in German greenhouses (Myriapoda: Diplopoda, Chilopoda)",a review is given of all the literature records of millipedes and centipedes that have been found in german greenhouses together with additional records for 29 such sites species lists are given for 46 greenhouses investigated throughout germany thirty five diplopod and 18 chilopod species were found to occur in greenhouses of which 15 3 chilopoda 12 diplopoda are restricted to this type of habitat first records for germany include anadenobolusmonilicornis porat 1876 epinannolenecf trinidadensis chamberlin 1918 epinannolene sp mesoiulusgridellii strasser 1934 leptogoniulussorornus butler 1876 rhinotuspurpureus pocock 1894 cryptopsdoriae pocock 1891 lamyctescoeculus brã lemann 1889 and tygarrupjavanicus attems 1907 the millipedes oxidusgracilis c l koch 1847 and amphitomeusattemsi schubart 1934 and the centipedes lithobiusforficatus linnaeus 1758 and cryptopshortensis donovan 1810 are the species most frequently found in greenhouses,2014,0.708
Using species distribution models for IUCN Red Lists of threatened species,red lists have been used for years globally and regionally in many countries to highlight species that need special attention because of the rarity or rapid decline of their populations to ensure homogenized classification at the global and regional level the international union for conservation of nature iucn defined categories of threat and criteria to attribute the taxa to these categories nevertheless the strict application of the criteria is not always straightforward especially for invertebrates because of the difficulties associated with precise estimates of the size and viability of their populations this paper presents a method for the estimation of extent of occurrence eoo and area of occupancy aoo based on species distribution models using multivariate adaptive regression splines to achieve this presence data have been modeled against topographical and climatic explanatory variables predictions from the statistical distribution models have then been cut using the minimal convex hull around eoo or the watersheds in which aoo the species have really been observed in recent years this allows us to delimit the eoo and aoo according to the iucn criteria and better take into account the ecological requirements of the species furthermore the method allows for the use of historical data e g from museumâ s collections and the direct comparison of historical and recent distributions of species the method has been tested on six species of butterflies the results show the possibility of using species distribution models to define the red lists status according to the iucn guidelines and shows that the results are consistent with previous red lists assessments,2014,0.843
What's in a (biological) name? The wrath of Lord Rutherford,names in taxonomy have seven different and important properties some due to their existence in the context of classifications names confer or facilitate individuation information storage and retrieval and set theories of relationships explanatory power testable predictions conceptual power and language no other way of naming in science is so powerful and this is possible because taxonomic naming is done with full consideration of the theoretical specification of empirical data characters and their correspondence among taxa via homology statements since darwin and hennig sets of homologous characters distributed among taxa allow precise hypotheses of a genealogical relationship and this relationship is reflected in the way naming results in a classification,2014,0.15
"Swedish LifeWatch ─ A Biodiversity Infrastructure Integrating and Reusing Data from Citizen Science, Monitoring and Research",with continued pressure on biodiversity and ever growing conflicts with human development qualified systems for scenario modelling impact assessment and decision support are urgently needed such systems must be able to integrate complex models and information from many sources and do so in a flexible and transparent way to that end as well as for other complicated and data intensive biodiversity research purposes the concept of lifewatch has emerged the idea of lifewatch is to construct e infrastructure and virtual laboratories by integrating large data sources computational capacities and tools for analysis and modelling in an open serviceoriented architecture to be efficient and accurate a continuous inflow of large quantities of data is essential however even with new techniques government funded monitoring data and research data will not feed the system with up to date species information of sufficient scale and resolution to fill this void skilled amateur observers citizen scientists can contribute to a very valuable extent after a preparatory phase a swedish lifewatch slw consortium was initiated in 2011 swedish lifewatch developed an infrastructure where all components are accessible through open web services at the slw analysis portal different formats of species and environmental data can be accessed instantly and integrated analysed visualized and downloaded at selected temporal spatial or taxonomic scales swedish lifewatch currently provides 46 million species observations from eight different databases all harmonized according to standardized formats and the dyntaxa taxonomic backbone database almost 40 million of these observations were provided by citizens through the online reporting system named the species observation system sos or artportalen this paper describes this system as well as the incentives that make it so successful the citizen science data in the sos are accessible together with data from research and monitoring in the slw infrastructure making the latter a powerful instrument for large scale data extraction visualization and analysis,2014,0.129
"Finding Them Before They Find Us: Informatics, Parasites, and Environments in Accelerating Climate Change",parasites are agents of disease in humans livestock crops and wildlife and are powerful representations of the ecological and historical context of the diseases they cause recognizing a nexus of professional opportunities and global public need we gathered at the cedar point biological station of the university of nebraska in september 2012 to formulate a cooperative and broad platform for providing essential information about the evolution ecology and epidemiology of parasites across host groups parasite groups geographical regions and ecosystem types a general protocol documentationâ assessmentâ monitoringâ action dama suggests an integrated proposal to build a proactive capacity to understand anticipate and respond to the outcomes of accelerating environmental change we seek to catalyze discussion and mobilize action within the parasitological community and more widely among zoologists and disease ecologists at a time of expanding environmental perturbation,2014,0.484
Does prescribed burning result in biotic homogenization of coastal heathlands?,biotic homogenization due to replacement of native biodiversity by widespread generalist species has been demonstrated in a number of ecosystems and taxonomic groups worldwide causing growing conservation concern human disturbance is a key driver of biotic homogenization suggesting potential conservation challenges in seminatural ecosystems where anthropogenic disturbances such as grazing and burning are necessary for maintaining ecological dynamics and functioning we test whether prescribed burning results in biotic homogenization in the coastal heathlands of north western europe a seminatural landscape where extensive grazing and burning has constituted the traditional land use practice over the past 6000 years we compare the beta diversity before and after fire at three ecological scales within local vegetation patches between wet and dry heathland patches within landscapes and along a 470 km bioclimatic gradient within local patches we found no evidence of homogenization after fire species richness increased and the species that entered the burnt calluna stands were not widespread specialists but native grasses and herbs characteristic of the heathland system at the landscapes scale we saw a weak homogenization as wet and dry heathland patches become more compositionally similar after fire this was because of a decrease in habitat specific species unique to either wet or dry habitats and postfire colonization by a set of heathland specialists that established in both habitat types along the bioclimatic gradient species that increased after fire generally had more specific environmental requirements and narrower geographical distributions than the prefire flora resulting in a biotic heterogenisation after fire our study demonstrates that human disturbance does not necessarily cause biotic homogenization but that continuation of traditional land use practices can instead be crucial for the maintenance of the diversity and ecological function of a seminatural ecosystem the species that established after prescribed burning were heathland specialists with relatively narrow geographical ranges,2014,0.633
"Historical and ecological divergence among populations of Monttea chilensis (Plantaginaceae), an endemic endangered shrub bordering the Atacama Desert, Chile",the coastal deserts of northern chile show an important latitudinal gradient of aridity with more arid areas to the north of the atacama desert than to the south several plant species have disjunct distributions that correspond with the extremes of this latitudinal gradient in this study using genetic chloroplast and nuclear dna morphological vegetative and floral traits of various kinds and climatic and topographic information we explored ecological and historical events that have putatively shaped patterns of variation among monttea chilensis populationsâ a species that shows this disjunct distribution through phylogeographic and phylogenetic analyses two divergent lineages were identified located at the latitudinal extremes the lineage located northern lineage ng of the atacama desert showed more genetic diversity and better resolved phylogeographic structure than the southern lineage sg considerable morphological variation across the geographical range corresponds with these genetic groups we observed contrasting relationships between floral and vegetative traits populations from the most arid region ng possessed larger flowers but smaller vegetative values and vice versa niche modelling and multivariate analyses including environmental data revealed different environmental requirements for each lineage ng plants occur in regions with warmer and drier climatic conditions and at higher altitudes while sg populations inhabit colder and more humid environments and lower altitudes the evolutionary history of m chilensis exhibits a phylogeographical footprint consistent with past fragmentation and allopatric differentiation where the hyper arid zone formed by the atacama desert clearly acted as an important gene flow barrier this barrier has led to considerable differentiation in morphology and ecology resulting in two ecotypes or geographical races suggesting incipient speciation promoted by local adaptation and geographical isolation,2014,0.623
Species diversity and distribution of Salvia (Lamiaceae),to understand patterns of species diversity distribution and speciation mechanisms for salvia lamiaceae plants we queried species names and specimen collection information from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the plant list chinese virtual herbarium cvh specimen resources sharing platform for education specimen resources sharing platform of chinese nature reserves as well as collection information for salvia spp specimens preserved in 32 chinese herbaria based on these collection data we analyzed the distributional patterns and plotted distribution maps at the country and geographic regional level e g the hengduan mountains qinling mountains wuling mountains nanling mountains dabie mountains and tianmu huangshan mountains respectively additionally the records from yunnan and sichuan provinces of china were obtained at the county level in total our sample consisted of 57 674 global distributional records including 11 596 chinese salvia records and 952 accepted names of salvia were confirmed globally central and south america 510 species support the largest number of species followed by west asia 270 species europe 117 species east asia 97 species and north america 74 species at the national level mexico supported the largest number of species 322 followed by russia 109 turkey 88 the united states 85 and china 82 within china yunnan and sichuan provinces supported a substantially larger number of species than other provinces accounting for 63 of the total number of salvia species in china the three counties within yunnan and sichuan provinces that contain the largest number of species are yulong 23 shangri la 20 dali 13 and muli 17 baoxing 13 mabian 13 respectively the hengduan mountains with 52 8 of all salvia species in china contain more salvia species than any other region in china 24 species are endemic to this area with narrow distributions native chinese salvia were divided into four abundance ranks based on the number of county level records s plebeia ranked the highest 395 distribution counties followed by s japonica 199 counties s miltiorrhiza 192 counties s cavaleriei 173 counties s chinensis 153 counties and s roborowskii 100 counties our results indicated that salvia is mainly distributed in temperate and subtropical high altitude countries of the northern hemisphere china is the center of diversity in east asia containing representative and narrow range endemic species within china the hengduan mountains have the highest species diversity and percentage of endemic species,2014,0.997
Bromus tectorum invasion in South America: Patagonia under threat?,bromus tectorum cheatgrass is an aggressive invasive species posing threats to native ecosystems including increase in fire frequency alteration of water and nutrient cycles and exclusion of native species as such it is important to monitor this species worldwide however outside the united states it has been poorly studied we studied this species at two scales i at a local scale evaluating the species presence and its determinants along the ecotonal area between the steppe and the forest within north western patagonia to reveal whether b tectorum is actually invading natural ecosystems in areas comparable with those invaded in usa and ii at a regional scale through a search of literature and herbaria databases on b tectorum in south america to determine the current known distribution of the species in this subcontinent results indicate that it is already invading north western patagonia in argentina mainly in the semi arid part of the region and that precipitation influences the invasion process we found that for south america b tectorum has been only documented in southern argentina and chile given the similarities to other invaded regions the possibility of invasion for patagonia has been predicted but not prevented it is important to study changes in the invasion level where it is already established and to encourage managers with prevention and control strategies combining this information with lessons from places with extensive periods of invasion could help to initiate management of the species in areas where the invasion process is beginning and before the species spreads widely,2014,0.955
"The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection",recent studies clarify where the most vulnerable species live where and how humanity changes the planet and how this drives extinctions we assess key statistics about species their distribution and their status most are undescribed those we know best have large geographical ranges and are often common within them most known species have small ranges the numbers of small ranged species are increasing quickly even in well known taxa they are geographically concentrated and are disproportionately likely to be threatened or already extinct current rates of extinction are about 1000 times the likely background rate of extinction future rates depend on many factors and are poised to increase although there has been rapid progress in developing protected areas such efforts are not ecologically representative nor do they optimally protect biodiversity,2014,0.73
Predicting the potential distribution of invasive silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix in South Africa,predicting the potential geographical distribution and spread of non native species is of major concern to ecologists silver carp hypophthalmichthys molitrix ranked as one of the worldâ s 100 worst invasive species were introduced into south africa in 1975 but the potential spread of this invader has not yet been addressed despite recent studies indicating its potential ecological impacts in south africa the potential range of silver carp in south africa was identified based on ecological niche modelling enm using the maximum entropy method models were constructed using occurrence records and a defined background and calibrated using a k fold method the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve auc was used to evaluate model performance both the native and introduced range model accurately predicted species occurrences auc 0 98 and 0 94 respectively most of the north eastern part of south africa including the limpopo river basin where the presence of silver carp has been recorded was correctly predicted as climatically suitable for silver carp other areas with suitable climatic conditions for silver carp but with no known introductions were also identified the model demonstrated the potential use of enm to predict the potential range of silver carp in south africa,2014,0.285
"Rediscovery of the pocket gopher Orthogeomys lanius (Rodentia: Geomyidae) in Veracruz, Mexico",the pocket gopher orthogeomys lanius elliot 1905 unknown to science since the first 2 specimens were captured in 1904 is rediscovered in the mountains south and east of pico de orizaba in veracruz mexico mitochondrial dna extracted from the skin of the 109 year old paratype specimen is nearly identical 0 3 cytochrome b divergence to that extracted from 2 newly captured specimens phylogenetic analyses of the complete cytochrome b gene and 2 nuclear genes show o lanius to be sister to the geographically widespread species o hispidus o lanius has a diploid number of 44 and a fundamental number of 84 and the species is easily distinguished from o hispidus by its larger size and dense woolly pelage our observations suggest that o lanius is reasonably abundant in a roughly 1 000 km2 region of central veracruz where it persists in forested refugia often too steep and rugged for cultivation by humans,2014,0.559
How can knowledge of the climate niche inform the weed risk assessment process? A case study of Chrysanthemoides monilifera in Australia,aim climate change and the ability of alien populations to realize different climatic niches compared to native populations pose challenges for pre empting invasion risk these issues are not addressed in weed risk assessments wras which have been developed to identify potentially invasive species and prevent their importation chrysanthemoides monilifera native to southern africa has two subspecies invasive in australia which has led to an importation ban on all six subspecies we assess whether the two invasive subspecies occupy different realized climatic niches compared with native populations and the climatic suitability of australia for all subspecies under current and future climate scenarios location southern africa and australia methods realized climatic niches of native and alien populations of two invasive subspecies bitou bush and boneseed were compared using niche identity tests the distribution of climatically suitable habitat within australia for all subspecies was modelled using maxent under current and future climate scenarios for invasive subspecies models were calibrated using 1 native or 2 alien range data results realized climatic niches of native and alien populations are not identical with some alien populations of boneseed occupying climatic niches absent from southern africa as such maxent models for boneseed based on native range data failed to classify one third of australian populations as inhabiting suitable climate main conclusions we validate the australian decision to ban all subspecies by showing that climatically suitable habitat in australia for non introduced subspecies exceeds that of introduced subspecies under current and future climates niche shifts and climate change alter estimates of invasion risks and this may reduce efficacy of current wras we call for greater dialogue to identify and standardize a comprehensive system for incorporating these challenging issues into wra systems to ensure that they remain effective in reducing the weed risk into the future,2014,0.578
Replication data for: Developing a Georeferenced Database of Selected Threatened Forest Tree Species in the Philippines,georeferenced species occurrence is a prerequisite in species distribution modeling and species ecosystem correlation analysis and also aids in tracking plant species and prioritizing scarce resources for conservation the global biodiversity information facility legacy literature of biodiversity contemporary literature technical reports and biodiversity surveys are important sources of species occurrence data waiting to be georeferenced in this paper we discussed a method used to georeference occurrences of threatened forest tree species from the above sources locality descriptions were initially narrowed down in geographic information system using administrative maps and further confined using two criteria 1 elevation and 2 surface cover information from remotely sensed images the result was a georeferenced database of 2 067 occurrence records of 47 threatened forest species on a national scale each record had a unique point feature per species and enough metadata directing the database user to the source of occurrence data the database can be used as a tool in determining priority species for specimen or germplasm collection for taxonomic identification and historical mapping it also serves as an integral component in spatially modeling the distribution of tree species and forest formations in the past and in a possible future scenario,2014,0.939
"A new southern record for a sand crab, Lepidopa websteri Benedict, 1903 (Decapoda, Albuneidae)",albuneid sand crabs are small anomuran crustaceans that are highly specialized for digging in sand faulkes paul 1997a b gingras et al 2008 little is known about the basic biology of sand crabs because they leave no visible traces of their presence on the surface of sand and because their density is low murph faulkes 2013 lepidopa websteri benedict 1903 is one of two members of the sand crab genus lepidopa that lives in the gulf of mexico the other is l benedicti schmitt 1935 cf boyko 2002 both species are also found on the atlantic coastline despite being found in sympatry they are not sister species boyko harvey 2009 lepidopa websteri is seldom collected hay shore 1918 wrote â œa vast amount of digging close to the shore has failed to produce any living specimen nor has dredging at distances from the shore varying from 200 yards to 20 milesâ boyko 2002 noted â œthis species is an excellent example of the relative scarcity of albuneidsâ because l websteri is rarely collected new records are important in establishing the distribution of the species the known distribution of l websteri contains large gaps for example there are no records of l websteri between nuences county tx u s a the current most southern record and jefferson parish la u s a a straight line distance of 699 km boyko 2002 here i describe a new southern record for l websteri on south padre island tx u s a,2014,0.904
On the present and potential distribution of Ageratina adenophora (Asteraceae) in South Africa,invasive alien plants pose a threat to biodiversity worldwide and the costs of control are ever escalating early detection and prediction of areas potentially at risk is crucial to minimise ecological and socio economic costs maxent was used to predict the area within which ageratina adenophora can potentially naturalise and spread in south africa the model was set up with 1020 occurrence records 10 replicates 70 of records for calibration 30 for validation and four climatic predictor variables background data were selected using kã ppenâ geiger vegetation based climate classification zones all model replicates performed better than random in both binomial tests of omission and roc analysis the model was statistically significant and its mean auc was 94 the modeled prevalence was 0 21 and the sensitivity was 0 99 the eastern cape kwazulu natal mpumalanga and gauteng provinces have climatic conditions indicative of a high potential for invasion by a adenophora followed by parts of the western cape north west and limpopo provinces the model predicted areas beyond the current distribution suggesting that a adenophora has potential for further spread and that searches for it need to be made beyond its currently known distribution on the other hand it appears not tohave spread into someclimatically suitable areas near its current occupancy sites such as through out the kwazulu natal mist belt suggesting that unknown biotic including human or abiotic factors are also limiting,2014,0.085
Updated distribution and biogeography of amphibians and reptiles of Europe,a precise knowledge of the spatial distribution of taxa is essential for decision making processes in land management and biodiversity conservation both for present and under future global change scenarios this is a key base for several scientific disciplines e g macro ecology biogeography evolutionary biology spatial planning or environmental impact assessment that rely on species distribution maps an atlas summarizing the distribution of european amphibians and reptiles with 50 amp 160 ã 50 amp 160 km resolution maps based on ca 85 000 grid records was published by the societas europaea herpetologica seh in 1997 since then more detailed species distribution maps covering large parts of europe became available while taxonomic progress has led to a plethora of taxonomic changes including new species descriptions to account for these progresses we compiled information from different data sources published in books and websites ongoing national atlases personal data kindly provided to the seh the 1997 european atlas and the global biodiversity information facility gbif databases were homogenised deleting all information except species names and coordinates projected to the same coordinate system wgs84 and transformed into a 50 amp 160 ã 50 amp 160 km grid the newly compiled database comprises more than 384 000 grid and locality records distributed across 40 countries we calculated species richness maps as well as maps of corrected weighted endemism and defined species distribution types i e groups of species with similar distribution patterns by hierarchical cluster analysis using jaccardâ s index as association measure our analysis serves as a preliminary step towards an interactive dynamic and online distributed database system na2re system of the current spatial distribution of european amphibians and reptiles the na2re system will serve as well to monitor potential temporal changes in their distributions grid maps of all species are made available along with this paper as a tool for decision making and conservation related studies and actions we also identify taxonomic and geographic gaps of knowledge that need to be filled and we highlight the need to add temporal and altitudinal data for all records to allow tracking potential species distribution changes as well as detailed modelling of the impacts of land use and climate change on european amphibians and reptiles,2014,0.843
Brazilian Microbiome Project: revealing the unexplored microbial diversity--challenges and prospects.,the brazilian microbiome project bmp aims to assemble a brazilian metagenomic consortium database at present many metagenomic projects underway in brazil are widely known our goal in this initiative is to co ordinate and standardize these together with new projects to come it is estimated that brazil hosts approximately 20 of the entire world s macroorganism biological diversity it is 1 of the 17 countries that share nearly 70 of the world s catalogued animal and plant species and is recognized as one of the most megadiverse countries at the end of 2012 brazil has joined gbif global biodiversity information facility as associated member to improve the access to the brazilian biodiversity data in a free and open way this was an important step toward increasing international collaboration and clearly shows the commitment of the brazilian government in directing national policies toward sustainable development despite its importance the brazilian microbial diversity is still considered to be largely unknown and it is clear that to maintain ecosystem dynamics and to sustainably manage land use it is crucial to understand the biological and functional diversity of the system this is the first attempt to collect and collate information about brazilian microbial genetic and functional diversity in a systematic and holistic manner the success of the bmp depends on a massive collaborative effort of both the brazilian and international scientific communities and therefore we invite all colleagues to participate in this project,2014,0.209
Information retrieval for ecological syntheses,research syntheses are increasingly being conducted within the fields of ecology and environmental management information retrieval is crucial in any synthesis in identifying data for inclusion whilst potentially reducing biases in the dataset gathered yet the nature of ecological information provides several challenges when compared with medicine that should be considered when planning and undertaking searches we present ten recommendations for anyone considering undertaking information retrieval for ecological research syntheses that highlight the main differences with medicine and if adopted may help reduce biases in the dataset retrieved increase search efficiency and improve reporting standards they are as follows 1 plan for information retrieval at an early stage 2 identify and use sources of help 3 clearly define the question to be addressed 4 ensure that provisions for managing recording and reporting the search are in place 5 select an appropriate search type 6 identify sources to be used 7 identify limitations of the sources 8 ensure that the search vocabulary is appropriate 9 identify limits and filters that can help direct the search and 10 test the strategy to ensure that it is realistic and manageable these recommendations may be of value for other disciplines where search infrastructures are not yet sufficiently well developed,2014,0.164
"First European record of the giant ramshorn snail Marisa cornuarietis (Linnaeus, 1758) (Gastropoda: Ampullariidae) from northern Spain",the south american giant ramshorn snailmarisa cornuarietis is reported for the first time in europe inhabiting a freshwater natural ecosystem in northern spain we present a diagnosis of the species in order to facilitate the recognition of this new european alien species and its differentiation from other native freshwater snails we also include brief notes on its biology and ecology at its new locality finally we discuss its invasive potential and the possible impacts that it may cause in the native ecosystems if it becomes invasive,2014,0.578
Open Access in Botany,changes in communication processes in science as a result of the advent of electronic publishing and the internet are described open access to information is a key factor for the advance of science but the existing copyright legislation and the monopolist position of commercial publishers influence the possible use of existing research results the history of the open access movement and the â œgreenâ â œgoldâ and hybrid ways of achieving open access are briefly described important resurces for botany e journals e books digitized collections and databases available in open access are recommended,2014,0.295
Potential impacts of climate change on distribution range of Nabis pseudoferus and N. palifer (Hemiptera: Nabidae) in Iran,nabis pseudoferus remane and n palifer seidenstucker are predators that feed on a wide range of insect pests to reveal their current potential habitats the effects of climate change and their future distribution in various areas of iran we used maximum entropy modeling maxent to produce the models samples were collected from 218 areas of iran resulting in discovering 271 points where the nabids were found the accuracy and performance of distribution models were also evaluated by the area under receiver operating characteristic curve and jack knife analysis in the maxent model the climatic elevation and land cover layers were the major bases for the current models in modeling future distribution the land cover layer was excluded the distribution of n pseudoferus was independent of the type of vegetation while the distribu tion of n palifer varied according to differences in type of vegetation using jack knife analysis the land cover and precipitation were the most effective predictors driving the two nabis species range expansion from 2013 to 2050 the impacts of climate change on n pseudoferus distribution was predicted to have a negative impact but have a positive effect on n palifer range expansion results could be used in prepa ration of predatorsâ conservation translocation and reintroduction programs and application in pest management strategies,2014,0.3
Modeling invasion risk for coastal marine species utilizing environmental and transport vector data,nvasive species can cause ecological and economic damage and can be transported by several vectors many of which are connected to socioeconomic activities this research presents a model that combines introduction likelihood and environmental suitability to characterize global patterns of invasion risk in coastal marine areas by identifying where a species is both likely to arrive and able to survive the model projects environmental suitability using maxent and considers commercial port locations as a proxy for commercial shipping to map patterns of relative invasion risk on a near global scale a case study of five coastal marine crab species is presented these models identify several regions that are at risk of new invasion where modeled environmental suitability and introduction likelihood overlap the distribution of large commercial ports is near global but not evenly distributed northern hemisphere temperate locations have a higher density of ports and tend to have more opportunities for invasion according to these models this approach can be adapted to other marine and non marine species and to current and future environmental and socioeconomic conditions but it works best when occurrence data are representative of the complete range of conditions under which a species can survive,2014,0.541
Spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) of the Canadian Prairies,spiders are the seventh most diverse order of arthropods globally and are prominent predators in all prairie habitats in this chapter a checklist for the spiders of the prairie provinces 767 recorded species and 44 possible species is presented along with an overview of all 26 families that occur in the region eighteen of the species from the region are adventive linyphiidae is by far the dominant family representing 39 of all species in the three provinces gnaphosidae and lycosidae each represent 8 and three other families salticidae dictynidae and theridiidae each account for 7 a summary of biodiversity studies conducted in the prairies ecozone and from transition ecoregions is also provided the mixed grassland ecoregion has the most distinctive assemblage schizocosa mccooki and zelotes lasalanus are common only in this ecoregion other ecoregions appear to harbour less distinctive assemblages but most have been poorly studied lack of professional opportunities for spider systematists in canada remains a major barrier to the advancement of the taxonomy and ecology of spiders,2014,0.762
The flora of Mount Kalnik in the work Flora Croatica,th e paper describes the flora croatica ∠the unique work of schlosser and vuko tinoviä unfortunately the fl ora of croatia remains unsurpassed to this day although their flora was published exactly 144 years ago and several listings of croatian fl ora were published meanwhile such as the excursion fl ora by r domac or the analytic fl ora of yugoslavia with keys for determining plants and the online listing of croatian fl ora flora croatica database there is no real fl ora in croatia yet it is this which remains a task for modern generations of botanists th e data on the fl ora of mount kalnik were taken and discussed from the book flora croatica and they were compared with the modern valid nomenclature,2014,0.188
Geoglossum simile of North America and Europe: distribution of a widespread earth tongue species and designation of an epitype,geoglossum simile is a distinctive species of the earth tongue class geoglossomycetes first described in 1873 the taxonomic standing of this species has long been disputed resulting in nearly 70 years of potential misdiagnoses although g simile was originally described from north america it has subsequently been reported from several european countries as well as asia australasia and india in this study we report the first records of g simile from slovakia and the czech republic examine the morphological and molecular diversity of northern hemisphere collections discuss the taxonomic history and current status of the species and designate a recent north american collection as the epitype of this widely distributed and conservationally significant species,2014,0.777
Hotspots and gaps in the world collection of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.),subterranean clover trifolium subterraneum l is the most important annual pasture legume in the winter dominant rainfall areas of southern australia systematic germplasm collections of subterranean clover from its centre of origin have been made since the 1950s particularly by australian scientists in order to broaden the genetic base of the species the present study reports on a meta analysis of the distribution of the world collection of subterranean clovers and their relationships to eco geographic variables of the collection sites in their native habitat diversity hotspots areas rich in number of accessions and containing a high diversity of sub species and also gaps areas with particular traits un or under represented in collections were identified this was achieved using a stratified data system to evaluate eco geographical and agro morphological data which incorporated three tiers of information for the subterranean clover collection 1 information from each collection site including ecological data 2 information on the phenotypic diversity within each collection site and 3 plant agro morphological data from each sample grown under controlled conditions correlations were found between some eco geographic conditions and agronomic performance these included correlations between latitude and flowering time mean temperature in winter and winter productivity and precipitation in summer and seed dormancy the present study concluded that subterranean clover versatility is greater than suggested in the past the results of the current analysis provide a guide for future collecting missions to specific regions towards areas of maximum diversity hotspots and unknown diversity gaps,2014,0.365
Climate-induced shifts in the niche similarity of two related spadefoot toads (genus Pelobates),of the four species encompassing the genus pelobates only two overlap along a narrow contact zone i e pelobates fuscus and pelobates syriacus our study investigated the shifts in niche similarity of these two closely related species from the last interglacial towards the end of the twenty first century we computed climatic suitability models using maxent and projected them onto future and past climates we used fossil occurrences to test the predictive accuracy of past projections niche similarity was assessed between the studied species using schoenerâ s d index and a background similarity test finally we evaluated niche differentiation by contrasting the species occurrences using a logistic regression analysis the ecological niches are slightly extended outside the present geographical ranges in the caucasus and the balkans south for p fuscus and north and west for p syriacus suggesting that their present distribution is not at equilibrium with the climate the last interglacial distribution of p fuscus included british isles and broad areas in western central and northern europe while p syriacus extended northwards in the balkans the validation with fossil records revealed good predictive performance omission error 4 1 for p fuscus and 16 6 for p syriacus during the last glacial maximum climatic suitability persisted in refugia in southern europe pannonian basin and caucasus for p fuscus and israel southern balkans and caucasus for p syriacus present potential distributions revealed a low similarity of speciesâ ecological niches comparable with last interglacial but projections towards 2080 revealed a sharp increase,2014,0.666
Contextual cross-referencing of species names for fiddler crabs (genus uca): an experiment in cyber-taxonomy.,cyber taxonomy of name usage has focused primarily on producing authoritative lists of names or cross linking names and data across disparate databases a feature missing from much of this work is the recording and analysis of the context in which a name was used context which can be critical for understanding not only what name an author used but to which currently recognized species they actually refer an experiment on recording contextual information associated with name usage was conducted for the fiddler crabs genus uca data from approximately one quarter of all publications that mention fiddler crabs including 95 of those published prior to 1924 and 67 of those published prior to 1976 have currently been recorded in a database approaches and difficulties in recording and analyzing the context of name use are discussed these results are not meant to be a full solution rather to highlight problems which have not been previously investigated and may act as a springboard for broader approaches and discussion some data on the accessibility of the literature including in particular electronic forms of publication are also presented the resulting data has been integrated for general browsing into the website http www fiddlercrab info the raw data and code used to construct the website is available at https github com msrosenberg fiddlercrab info,2014,0.323
The Status of Quercus pubescens Willd. in Europe,taxonomic and nomenclatural disagreements are still encountered in the study of quercus pubescens willd in europe and are discussed here this includes two current antithetical viewpoints on this taxon i e the acceptance of the huge phenotypic variability among and within its populations within a single species vs the ranking of these phenotypes as distinct species within the subgenus quercus the european white oaks sensu schwarz up to now many names have been attributed to the european white oaks especially to the complex included into section dascia kotschy sensu schwarz the â œdowny oaksâ revealing contrasting opinions among taxonomists since the very first subdivision of the genus while some schools in southern europe still emphasize the distinctness and the species status of many taxa described during the earliest botanical surveys the current trend is toward rejecting many names and considering them as synonyms our review examines the extremely divergent opinions of specialists on these variations and supports the robustness of the current taxonomical status of quercus pubescens willd as an inclusive taxon,2014,0.653
"Genetic differentiation, niche divergence, and the origin and maintenance of the disjunct distribution in the Blossomcrown Anthocephala floriceps (Trochilidae).",studies of the origin and maintenance of disjunct distributions are of special interest in biogeography disjunct distributions can arise following extinction of intermediate populations of a formerly continuous range and later maintained by climatic specialization we tested hypotheses about how the currently disjunct distribution of the blossomcrown anthocephala floriceps a hummingbird species endemic to colombia arose and how is it maintained by combining molecular data and models of potential historical distributions we evaluated 1 the timing of separation between the two populations of the species 2 whether the disjunct distribution could have arisen as a result of fragmentation of a formerly widespread range due to climatic changes and 3 if the disjunct distribution might be currently maintained by specialization of each population to different climatic conditions we found that the two populations are reciprocally monophyletic for mitochondrial and nuclear loci and that their divergence occurred ca 1 4 million years before present 95 credibility interval 0 7 2 1 mybp distribution models based on environmental data show that climate has likely not been suitable for a fully continuous range over the past 130 000 years but the potential distribution 6 000 ybp was considerably larger than at present tests of climatic divergence suggest that significant niche divergence between populations is a likely explanation for the maintenance of their disjunct ranges however based on climate the current range of a floriceps could potentially be much larger than it currently is suggesting other ecological or historical factors have influenced it our results showing that the distribution of a floriceps has been discontinous for a long period of time and that populations exhibit different climatic niches have taxonomic and conservation implications,2014,0.83
"First records of the warm water shipworm Teredo bartschi Clapp, 1923 (Bivalvia, Teredinidae) in Mersin, southern Turkey and in Olhão, Portugal",bivalves of the family teredinidae are among the most destructive wood boring species in the sea we report the first occurrences of the warm water shipworm teredo bartschi in mersin turkey and olhã o portugal the colonisation of the site in mersin is likely to have occurred by rafting adults originating from the red sea which passed through the suez canal lessepsian migrants t bartschi might have been introduced in olhã o harbour portugal either by rafting adults with larvae transported by currents or by larvae transported by ships in ballast water these seem to be the first published records of established t bartschi populations in the mediterranean and in northeast atlantic,2014,0.679
"Information retrieved from specimens at Natural History Collections can improve the quality of field-based ecological networks - Community Ecology - Volume 15, Number 2/December 2014 - Akadémiai Kiadó",numerous studies analyze the interactions between plants and their pollinators in ecological communities using a network approach however field studies rarely record all the interactions occurring in the field in this sense natural history collections nhcs can provide information on interactions that may have been missed by field sampling in this study we compare a network based on field sampling with a network based on data retrieved from specimens at nhcs and we assess the degree to which these two sources of data are complementary for this we used data available from a bee biodiversity study conducted in southern argentina for the south american bee genus corynura halictidae augochlorini data on the floral associations of the specimens at nhcs were retrieved from the specimensâ labels as the name of the plant species on which a given bee was captured is often recorded for many specimens at nhcs although field sampling recorded an unusually high number of insect plant interactions it misses some unique interactions present in the nhcs networks some structural properties of these networks are briefly analyzed and usefulness and limitations of using nhcs data are discussed we conclude that the information about insect plant interactions extracted from nhcs could complement field based data especially in poorly sampled communities,2014,0.132
"Biomonitoring of traffic-related nitrogen pollution using Letharia vulpina (L.) Hue in the Sierra Nevada, California",to assess the impact of vehicular emissions on a mixed conifer forest we measured the contents of the trace elements n c and their respective natural isotopes î 15n and î 13c in the epiphytic lichen l vulpina the samples were collected along transects perpendicular to interstate 80 i 80 and along a more remote secondary forest road r07 distance to the road verge trunk cover and stand basal area were also recorded percent n ranged from 1 10 to 2 00 near i 80 and from 0 78 to 1 13 along r07 concentrations of n 15n na as pb and zn were enhanced in lichen samples near i 80 and were negatively correlated with distance from the road trunk cover values differed between roads p 0 001 and were negatively correlated with n r2 0 74 p 0 001 the results indicate that vehicular n emissions are significant enough to alter the surrounding ecosystem modifying the presence of a sensitive component such as l vulpina and suggest that a clean site threshold of 1 0 n may be too high as an indicator of critical n load exceedance the study also underscored the potential role of wolf lichen in a large scale assessment of n deposition and source identification,2014,0.469
Deep-sea benthic megafaunal habitat suitability modelling: A global-scale maximum entropy model for xenophyophores,xenophyophores are a group of exclusively deep sea agglutinating rhizarian protozoans at least some of which are foraminifera they are an important constituent of the deep sea megafauna that are sometimes found in sufficient abundance to act as a significant source of habitat structure for meiofaunal and macrofaunal organisms this study utilised maximum entropy modelling maxent and a high resolution environmental database to explore the environmental factors controlling the presence of xenophyophorea and two frequently sampled xenophyophore species that are taxonomically stable syringammina fragilissima and stannophyllum zonarium these factors were also used to predict the global distribution of each taxon areas of high habitat suitability for xenophyophores were highlighted throughout the world s oceans including in a large number of areas yet to be suitably sampled but the northeast and southeast atlantic ocean gulf of mexico and caribbean sea the red sea and deep water regions of the malay archipelago represented particular hotspots the two species investigated showed more specific habitat requirements when compared to the model encompassing all xenophyophore records perhaps in part due to the smaller number and relatively more clustered nature of the presence records available for modelling at present the environmental variables depth oxygen parameters nitrate concentration carbon chemistry parameters and temperature were of greatest importance in determining xenophyophore distributions but somewhat surprisingly hydrodynamic parameters were consistently shown to have low importance possibly due to the paucity of well resolved global hydrodynamic datasets the results of this study and others of a similar type have the potential to guide further sample collection environmental policy and spatial planning of marine protected areas and industrial activities that impact the seafloor particularly those that overlap with aggregations of these conspicuously large single celled eukaryotes,2014,0.585
Scalable and Efficient Spatial Data Management on Multi - Core CPU and GPU Clusters: A Preliminary Implementation based on Impala,f ast incr easing volumes of spatial data has made it imperative to develop both scalable and efficient spatial data management techniques by leveraging modern parallel hardware and distributed systems by integrating a leading open source big data system called impa la and our previous work on data parallel designs for spatial indexing and query processing we have developed isp mc and isp gpu for large scale spatial data management on computer clusters equipped with multi core cpus and graphics processing units gpu s respectively both isp mc and isp gpu have shown high efficiency and good scalability on a 10 node amazon ec2 cluster equipped with multi core cpus and gpus comparison with a baseline implementation using traditional techniques on a single cpu core h ave demonstrated orders of magnitude of speedups on a real world dataset with hundreds of millions of point locations,2014,0.108
Character shift and habitat colonization in widespread island taxa,ecological studies have shown that island taxa often display novel phenotypic ranges relative to mainland congeners i e character shift but most examples come from behavioural and morphological traits in animals in this study i hypothesize that high levels of habitat diversity on oceanic islands would also provide opportunities for character shift in plant taxa with strong colonization ability habitat differentiation and phenotypic variation in two resource use traits leaf size and specific leaf area were analysed in taxa showing widespread distributions in the canary islands and across mainland mediterranean areas lavandula olea periploca and cistus preliminary analysis of bioclimatic data indicated that islands show subtropical conditions that are not found among the mainland habitats occupied by these taxa which could have favoured phenotypic differentiation between these two regions strong evidence of character shift however was only found in two cases phenotypic data in lavandula suggested that evolution of growth form in the island setting was associated with the expression of novel leaf traits evidence of character shift was also related to ecological release most notably in periploca when island populations occupy a range of ecological zones distant from typical mainland conditions e g zones influenced by the humid north east trade winds this study shows that widespread island taxa display convergent phenotypic responses to habitat shift which strongly suggest an adaptive pattern and stress the deterministic nature of phenotypic variation i further discuss how the identification of these patterns provides a promising framework for the testing of hypotheses on the evolutionary mechanisms involved in phenotypic adaptation,2014,0.253
Current and future latitudinal gradients in stream macroinvertebrate richness across North America,abstractfreshwater ecosystems are highly vulnerable to warming climates however macroecological studies of climate change effects on aquatic biodiversity are rare because of a lack of standardized large scale surveys e g along large latitudinal gradients our goal was to assess the overall richness pattern and projected differences in present and future patterns of the stream insect orders ephemeroptera e plecoptera p trichoptera t and combined ept along an extensive latitudinal gradient across north america 30 to 70â n we applied bioclimatic envelope models bems to project present day and future climatically suitable areas for epts on a spatial resolution of 10 arc min 20 km ã 20 km across north america to overcome issues related to spatially biased sampling we assessed climatically suitable areas csas for each genus and modeled potential generic richness grid cell rather than assessing observed generic richness patterns directly projected present day generic richness was greate,2014,0.188
Galictis cuja (Mammalia): an update of current knowledge and geographic distribution,the lesser grison galictis cuja is one of the least known mustelids in the neotropics despite its broad range across south america this study aimed to explore current knowledge of the distribution of the species to identify gaps in knowledge and anticipate its full geographic distribution eighty nine articles have mentioned g cuja since 1969 but only 13 focused on the species we generated a detailed model of the speciesâ potential distribution that validated previous maps but with improved detail supporting previous southernmost records and providing a means of identifying priority sites for conservation and management of the species,2014,0.531
Asian common toads in Madagascar: an urgent effort to inform surveys and eradication efforts,kolby et al 2014 reported the very recent arrival of asian common toads duttaphrynus melanostictus in madagascar most likely arriving inside shipping containers from asia the species relative the cane toad rhinella marina has caused widespread ecological destruction in australia and there is now concern that an invasion in madagascar will have disastrous impacts on the island s unique fauna over 90 of madagascar s terrestrial animals are endemic to the island raising the prospect of substantial loss of biodiversity through poisoning from toxins released by the toads predation competition for resources and spread of disease though fortunately there are no known infections to date of the lethal chytrid fungal disease among asian common toads see http www bd maps net potential impacts on agriculture contamination of drinking water and parasite transmission also raise concerns for human health and livelihoods kolby 2014 this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.604
Enumeration of Remarkable Japanese Discomycetes (8): Notes on Two Hymenoscyphus Species New to Japan,two hymenoscyphus species new to japan are described and illustrated hymenoscy phus menthae and h ginkgonis helotiaceae helotiales the latter with characteristic spore pig mentation and substratal stroma,2014,0.463
ENMeval: An R package for conducting spatially independent evaluations and estimating optimal model complexity for <scp>Maxent</scp> ecological niche models,recent studies have demonstrated a need for increased rigor in building and evaluating ecological niche models enms based on presence only occurrence data two major goals are to balance goodness of fit with model complexity e g by â œtuningâ model settings and to evaluate models with spatially independent data these issues are especially critical for datasets suffering from sampling bias and for studies that require transferring models across space or time e g responses to climate change or spread of invasive species efficient implementation of procedures to accomplish these goals however requires automation we developed enmeval an r package that 1 creates datasets for k fold cross validation using one of several methods for partitioning occurrence data including options for spatially independent partitions 2 builds a series of candidate models using maxent with a variety of user defined settings and 3 provides multiple evaluation metrics to aid in selecting optimal model settings the six methods for partitioning data are n 1 jackknife random k folds bins user specified folds and three methods of masked geographically structured folds enmeval quantifies six evaluation metrics the area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic plot for test localities auctest the difference between training and testing auc aucdiff two different threshold based omission rates for test localities and the akaike information criterion corrected for small sample sizes aicc we demonstrate enmeval by tuning model settings for eight tree species of the genus coccoloba in puerto rico based on aicc evaluation metrics varied substantially across model settings and models selected with aicc differed from default ones in summary enmeval facilitates the production of better enms and should promote future methodological research on many outstanding issues,2014,0.154
"Assessment of genetic structure, habitat suitability and effectiveness of reserves for future conservation planning of the Euphrates soft-shelled turtle Rafetus euphraticus (Daudin, 1802)",1 the endangered euphrates soft shelled turtle rafetus euphraticus is endemic to the mesopotamian river basin in the middle east within recent decades populations of this aquatic species have been heavily depleted and severely fragmented owing to habitat alteration and destruction by drainage and hydroelectricity dam constructions continuing habitat loss and fragmentation are considered the main drivers for the population decline of r euphraticus 2 intraspecific genetic variability was investigated using two mitochondrial gene fragments for 31 specimens covering most of the distributional range of the species habitat suitability models were computed using a combination of bioclimatic and remote sensing variables as environmental predictors to assess habitat suitability habitat fragmentation and coverage by designated protected areas across the range of r euphraticus 3 beyond single substitutions in two sequences no significant genetic variation could be detected in r euphraticus models show habitat suitability to be high throughout the range of the species although only a fraction is currently covered by reserves habitat suitability and coverage of reserves is highly variable among countries south western iran appears to be ofmajor importance for future conservation strategies suitabilitymodels are in concordance with the habitat selection patterns of r euphraticus 4 the existing reserve system is considered insufficient and has to be significantly improved in order to sustain viable populations of r euphraticus to counter continuing fragmentation and alteration by dam construction future conservation measures should focus on highlighted priority areas,2014,0.842
The ecological and geographic context of morphological and genetic divergence in an understorey-dwelling bird,advances in understanding the process of species formation require an integrated perspective that includes the evaluation of spatial ecological and genetic components one approach is to focus on multiple stages of divergence within the same species species that comprise phenotypically different populations segregated in apparently distinct habitats in which range is presently continuous but was putatively geographically isolated provide an interesting system to study the mechanisms of population divergence here we attempt to elucidate the role of ecology and geography in explaining observed morphological and genetic variation in an understorey dwelling bird endemic to southeastern africa where two subspecies are recognized according to phenotype and habitat affinity we carried out a range wide analysis of climatic requirements morphological and genetic variation across southeast africa to test the hypothesis that the extent of gene flow among populations of the brown scrub robin are influenced by their distinct climatic niches we recovered two distinct trends depending on whether our analyses were hierarchically structured at the subspecies or at the within subspecies level between subspecies we found pronounced morphological differentiation associated with strong reproductive isolation no gene flow between populations occupying divergent climatic niches characterized by changes in the temperature of the warmest and wettest month in contrast within subspecies we recovered continuous morphological variation with extensive gene flow among populations inhabiting the temperate and sub tropical forests of southern africa despite divergence along the climate axis that is mainly determined by minimum temperature and precipitation of the coldest months our results highlight the role of niche divergence as a diversifying force that can promote reproductive isolation in vertebrates,2014,0.919
Fragaria: A genus with deep historical roots and ripe for evolutionary and ecological insights,the cultivated strawberry fragaria ã ananassa is one of the youngest domesticated plants its 18th century origin via hybridization in europe between the north american f virginiana and the south american f chiloensis was documented by the botanist antoine nicolas duchesne his 1766 â œnatural history of strawberriesâ is an extraordinary work that integrates fundamental discoveries on the biology ecology and phylogeny of fragaria with applied information on cultivation and ethnobotanical uses serving as an inspiration for current research in the genus fragaria species exhibit the full range of sexual systems in the gynodioecy pathway from hermaphroditism to dioecy and back again as well as variation in self compatibility and evidence of sex chromosomes with female heterogamety the genus is also characterized by interspecific hybridization and polyploidy with a natural range of ploidy levels from diploids to decaploids this biological diversity combined with the availability of genomic resources and the ease of growing and experimenting with the plants makes fragaria a very attractive system for ecological and evolutionary genomics the goal of this review is to introduce fragaria as a model genus and to provide a roadmap for future integrative research these research directions will deepen our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary context that shaped the ancestors of the cultivated strawberry not only providing information that can be applied to efforts to shape the future of this important fruit crop but also our understanding of key transitions in plant evolution,2014,0.038
Darwin Core Terms: A complete historical record,this document is a consolidated historically complete and updated representation of all elements element refinements encoding schemes and vocabulary terms in darwin core namespaces in all of their historical versions both current and superseded while this document may be useful for tracking changes in the status and attributes of terms over time most users will need just the latest information which is held in the document darwin core terms a quick reference guide at http rs tdwg org dwc terms,2014,0.228
Mapping the Global Potential Geographical Distribution of Black Locust (Robinia Pseudoacacia L.) Using Herbarium Data and a Maximum Entropy Model,black locust robinia pseudoacacia l is a tree species of high economic and ecological value but is also considered to be highly invasive understanding the global potential distribution and ecological characteristics of this species is a prerequisite for its practical exploitation as a resource here a maximum entropy modeling maxent was used to simulate the potential distribution of this species around the world and the dominant climatic factors affecting its distribution were selected by using a jackknife test and the regularized gain change during each iteration of the training algorithm the results show that the maxent model performs better than random with an average test auc value of 0 9165 â 0 0088 the coldness index annual mean temperature and warmth index were the most important climatic factors affecting the species distribution explaining 65 79 of the variability in the geographical distribution species response curves showed unimodal relationships with the annual mean temperature and warmth index whereas there was a linear relationship with the coldness index the dominant climatic conditions in the core of the black locust distribution are a coldness index of ∠9 8 â câ 0 â c an annual mean temperature of 5 8 â câ 14 5 â c a warmth index of 66 â câ 168 â c and an annual precipitation of 508â 1867 mm the potential distribution of black locust is located mainly in the united states the united kingdom germany france the netherlands belgium italy switzerland australia new zealand china japan south korea south africa chile and argentina the predictive map of black locust climatic thresholds and species response curves can provide globally applicable guidelines and valuable information for policymakers and planners involved in the introduction planting and invasion control of this species around the world,2014,0.846
Species distributions shift downward across western North America,using an extensive network of occurrence records for 296 plant species collected over the past 40 years across a climatically diverse geographic section of western north america we find that 63 of distributions are shifting downward i e towards lower elevations â despite consistent warming across the study area downward distribution shifts were consistent across plant lifeforms and occur in all regions across the study area the proportion of species shifting downward however differed between regions to understand why species distributional means are shifting downward we explored the relationship between the direction of change in distribution limits and the nature of recent climate change we found that the interaction between local summer temperatures and seasonal precipitation determined the direction of distribution limit shifts specifically species shifted downwards at their upper elevational limit when maximum temperatures increased and snowfall declined at faster rates by contrast species shifted downwards at low their lower elevation limit when precipitation increased this is consistent with downward distribution shifts being mediated by moisture stress with declining snow at upper distribution limits increasing moisture stress leading to a range contraction downward while increasing precipitation decreases moisture stress at lower distribution limits leading to a distribution expansion downward although we believe direct physiological impacts of altered water availability primarily drive downward distribution shifts altered competitive interactions due to climate change may also be responsible â this is an area that requires more research our results suggest that future speciesâ elevational distribution shifts will be complex depending on the interaction between seasonal temperature and precipitation change,2014,0.703
Evaluating the risk of pesticide exposure for amphibian species listed in Annex II of the European Union Habitats Directive,environmental contaminants like pesticides concern amphibian conservationists for many european amphibian species special areas of conservation were created as they are listed in annex ii of the eu habitats directive agriculture is not prohibited within these conservation areas in the present study a risk evaluation at the european level was conducted to identify proportions of land use with regular pesticide applications within the conservation areas and the specific risk of pesticide exposure depending on the speciesâ biology and ecology the proportion of agricultural land use and the risk of habitat and individual contamination differ among species but also at national scale nearly all species with high risk of habitat pesticide exposure are not threatened within their entire territories and europe conversely most globally threatened and european priority species are at a lower exposure risk in their habitats â with the exceptions rana latastei pelobates fuscus insubricus triturus dobrogicus and discoglossus jeanneae in the conservation areas for these species habitat directive management plans need to consider monitoring of habitat contamination with pesticides such a monitoring should also be conducted in conservation areas for amphibians that seem to be not threatened yet but are at high exposure risk e g bombina bombina monitoring and conservation action should also take place site specifically to avoid national or regional loss of amphibian biodiversity overall intensive use of agrochemicals and recent land use changes have the potential to be a serious threat for amphibian species which can be found within cultivated areas â regardless of their current iucn status,2014,0.848
Effects of a fire response trait on diversification in replicated radiations,fire has been proposed as a factor explaining the exceptional plant species richness found in mediterranean regions a fire response trait that allows plants to cope with frequent fire by either reseeding or resprouting could differentially affect rates of species diversification however little is known about the generality of the effects of differing fire response on species evolution we study this question in the restionaceae a family that radiated in southern africa and australia these radiations occurred independently and represent evolutionary replicates we apply bayesian approaches to estimate trait specific diversification rates and patterns of climatic niche evolution we also compare the climatic heterogeneity of south africa and australia reseeders diversify faster than resprouters in south africa but not in australia we show that climatic preferences evolve more rapidly in reseeder lineages than in resprouters and that the optima of these climatic preferences differ between the two strategies we find that south africa is more climatically heterogeneous than australia independent of the spatial scale we consider we propose that rapid shifts between states of the fire response trait promote speciation by separating species ecologically but this only happens when the landscape is sufficiently heterogeneous,2014,0.663
A tree well travelled: global genetic structure of the invasive tree Acacia saligna,aim invasiveness of an introduced species in one region is often used to predict risk and inform management of the same species elsewhere this assumes that entities in both regions are equivalent in their ecology and response to management however intraspecific genetic variation can result in differences in performance between regions we conducted population genetic and phylogeographic analyses of the widely introduced and intraspecifically diverse australian tree species acacia saligna in order to improve our understanding of its worldwide invasion history location the native range of a saligna in western australia and introduced ranges in eastern australia israel italy new zealand portugal south africa spain and the usa methods we analysed microsatellite genotype data obtained from 447 individuals of a saligna including reference populations of known subspecies lineages using bayesian assignment analysis we also reconstructed parsimony networks and a phylogeny using data from the nuclear external transcribed spacer ets gene region for a subset of 120 individuals results there was no consistent genetic pattern in introduced populations in different parts of the world all three subspecies lineages of a saligna have been moved around the world showing high levels of admixture in some introduced populations a previously identified novel and cultivated south african lineage was also identified in portugal and italy main conclusions with different subspecies lineages present in different regions globally it is unclear exactly how effective management approaches of invasions in one region will be in other regions for example the successful biological control agents against cultivated lineages of a saligna in south africa will probably be effective against similar genotypes in portugal but not against dissimilar lineages present elsewhere further work is needed to conclusively link the relative extent of invasions to genetic differences and to determine whether genetic novelty can explain the widespread invasions of a saligna observed in south africa and portugal,2014,0.719
"Modeling potential invasion range of alien invasive species, Hyptis suaveolens (L.) Poit. in India: Comparison of MaxEnt and GARP",bushmint hyptis suaveolens l poit is one among the world s most noxious weeds bushmint is rapidly invading tropical ecosystems across the world including india and is major threat to native biodiversity ecosystems and livelihoods knowledge about the likely areas under bushmint invasion has immense importance for taking rapid response and mitigation measures in the present study we model the potential invasion range of bushmint in india and investigate prediction capabilities of two popular species distribution models sdm viz maxent maximum entropy and garp genetic algorithm for rule set production we compiled spatial layers on 22 climatic and non climatic soil type and land use land cover environmental variables at india level and selected least correlated 14 predictor variables 530 locations of bushmint along with 14 predictor variables were used to predict bushmint distribution using maxent and garp we demonstrate the relative contribution of predictor variables and species environmental linkages in modeling bushmint distribution a receiver operating characteristic roc curve was used to assess each model s performance and robustness garp had a relatively lower area under curve auc score auc 0 75 suggesting its lower ability in discriminating the suitable unsuitable sites relative to garp maxent performed better with an auc value of 0 86 overall the outputs of maxent and garp matched in terms of geographic regions predicted as suitable unsuitable for bushmint in india however predictions were closer in the spatial extent in central india and western himalayan foothills compared to north east india chottanagpur and vidhayans and deccan plateau in india,2014,0.217
"Pholiotina cyanopus, a rare fungus producing psychoactive tryptamines",pholiotina cyanopus was collected from wood chips and other woody remnants of undetermined tree species its basidiomata were found in june within the area of closed sawmill in the central part of å ywiec city sw poland description and illustration of ph cyanopus based on polish specimens are provided and its ecology general distribution and comparison with similar taxa â pholiotina smithii pholiotina sulcatipes and others are discussed as well the identity of the active compounds of ph cyanopus was additionally determined liquid chromatographyâ mass spectrometry lc ms data sets were obtained to support the occurrence of psilocybin and its analogues â psilocin baeocystin norbaeocystin and aeruginascin in air dried basidiomata of the species the content of psilocybin was found to be high 0 90â 0 08 of dry weight besides analysed samples contained lower concentrations of psilocin 0 17â 0 01 and baeocystin 0 16â 0 01 additionally the chemical analysis revealed small amounts of norbaeocystin 0 053â 0 004 and aeruginascin 0 011â 0 0007 for the first time in the species,2014,0.744
Statistics for citizen science: extracting signals of change from noisy ecological data,1 policy makers increasingly demand robust measures of biodiversity change over short time periods long term monitoring schemes provide high quality data often on an annual basis but are taxonomically and geographically restricted by contrast opportunistic biological records are relatively unstructured but vast in quantity recently these data have been applied to increasingly elaborate science and policy questions using a range of methods at present we lack a firm understanding of which methods if any are capable of delivering unbiased trend estimates on policy relevant timescales 2 we identified a set of candidate methods that employ data filtering criteria and or correction factors to deal with variation in recorder activity we designed a computer simulation to compare the statistical properties of these methods under a suite of realistic data collection scenarios we measured the type i error rates of each method scenario combination as well as the power to detect genuine trends 3 we found that simple methods produce biased trend estimates and or had low power most methods are robust to variation in sampling effort but biases in spatial coverage sampling effort per visit and detectability as well as turnover in community composition all induced some methods to fail no method was wholly unaffected by all forms of variation in recorder activity although some performed well enough to be useful 4 we warn against the use of simple methods sophisticated methods that model the data collection process offer the greatest potential to estimate timely trends notably frescalo and occupancy detection models 5 the potential of these methods and the value of opportunistic data would be further enhanced by assessing the validity of model assumptions and by capturing small amounts of information about sampling intensity at the point of data collection,2014,0.04
"Eugen Karl Kempf, the man behind the Kempf Database Ostracoda",itis worms eol ibol gbif antabif obis flybase fishbase fosfarbase fauna europaea world modern foraminifera database edna fossil insect database european diatom database the reptile database mammalian species of the world todayâ s biologists are blessed with databases and there is no doubt about their relevance for scientific work palaeo biologists put a lot of time and efforts into establishing andmaintaining amultitude of databases not to mention their endeavours to raise funds for this work many databases are produced and edited by a multitude of authors and editors providing a great amount of data being supplied to the project within a short period of time â all too often at the expense of quality the recent success of databases is intrinsically tied to the increasing access to and use of the world wide web and it comes as no surprise that only few such biological databases have been initiated prior to the late 1990s a rare example of an evidentially long standing relational database authored and managed by an individual expert of a crustacean class is the kempf database ostracoda prof eugen karl kempf now celebrating his eightieth anniversary started data compilation in the 1960s as a card index and innovatively switched to a machine punch card system in the 1970s ever since the first publication from his taxonomic bibliographic database in 1980 ostracod researchers worldwide benefitted from an ineffably high amount of currently more than 285 000 datasets of highest integrity it is time to honour the person behind the kempf database ostracoda,2014,0.406
Organization of marine phenology data in support of planning and conservation in ocean and coastal ecosystems,among the many effects of climate change is its influence on the phenology of biota in marine and coastal ecosystems phenological shifts have been documented for multiple life forms however biological data related to marine species phenology remain difficult to access and is under used we conducted an assessment of potential sources of biological data for marine species and their availability for use in phenological analyses and assessments our evaluations showed that data potentially related to understandingmarine species phenology are available through online resources of governmental academic and non governmental organizations but appropriate datasets are often difficult to discover and access presenting opportunities for scientificinfrastruc ture improvement the developing federal marine data architecture when fully implemented will improve data flowand standardization for marine datawithin major federal repositories and provide an archival reposi tory for collaborating academic and public data contributors another opportunity largely untapped is the en gagement of citizen scientists in standardized collection of marine phenology data and contribution of these data to established data flows use of metadatawith marine phenology related keywords could improve discovery and access to appropriate datasets when data originators choose to self publish publication of research datasets with a digital object identifier linked to metadata will also improve subsequent discovery and access phenological changes in the marine environment will affect human economics food systems and recreation no one source of datawill be sufficient to understand these changes the collective attention of marine data col lectors is neededâ whether with an agency an educational institution or a citizen scientist groupâ toward adopting the data management processes and standards needed to ensure availability of sufficient and useable marine data to understand marine phenology,2014,0.114
Description and phylogenetic position of the first abyssal solitary kamptozoan species from the Kuril-Kamchatka trench area: Loxosomella profundorum sp. nov. (Kamptozoa: Loxosomatidae),one of two orders of a small phylum kamptozoa solitaria consisting of one family loxosomatidae of about 140 species has never been recorded deeper than 700m all known for the north western pacific loxosomatids about 17 species occur in shallow waters the first abyssal solitary kamptozoan loxosomella profundorum sp nov is described herein it was collected during the germanâ russian deep sea expedition kurambio aboard rv sonne in the summer of 2012 in the abyssal plain adjacent to the kuril kamchatka trench it is the deepest finding of kamptozoa to date the new species was found living on the anthozoan polyp corallimorpharia l profundorum sp nov is a largest solitary kamptozoan species up to 4mm in length with a stalk of up to 3 5 mm with 10â 12 tentacles with two conspicuous lateral papillae and a row of glandular cells in its stalk a preliminary molecular phylogenetic analysis based on partial 18s rdna indicated that l profundorum sp nov is a sister clade to the clade which includes other loxosomella and two species of loxomitra,2014,0.949
The establishment of Central American migratory corridors and the biogeographic origins of seasonally dry tropical forests in Mexico,biogeography and community ecology can mutually illuminate the formation of a regional species pool or biome we apply phylogenetic methods to a large and diverse plant clade malpighiaceae to characterize the formation of its species pool in mexico and its occupancy of the seasonally dry tropical forest sdtf biome that occurs there we find that the 162 species of mexican malpighiaceae represent 33 dispersals from south america beginning in the eocene and continuing until the pliocene 46 4 â 3 8 myr furthermore dispersal rates between south america and mexico show a significant six fold increase during the mid miocene 23 9 myr we hypothesize that this increase marked the availability of central america as an important corridor for neotropical plant migration we additionally demonstrate that this high rate of dispersal contributed substantially more to the phylogenetic diversity of malpighiaceae in mexico than in situ diversification finally we show that most lineages arrived in mexico pre adapted with regard to one key sdtf trait total annual precipitation in contrast these lineages adapted to a second key trait precipitation seasonality in situ as mountain building in the region gave rise to the abiotic parameters of extant sdtf the timing of this in situ adaptation to seasonal precipitation suggests that sdtf likely originated its modern characteristics by the late oligocene but was geographically more restricted until its expansion in the mid miocene these results highlight the complex interplay of dispersal adaptation and in situ diversification in the formation of tropical biomes our results additionally demonstrate that these processes are not static and their relevance can change markedly over evolutionary time this has important implications for understanding the origin of sdtf in mexico but also for understanding the temporal and spatial origin of biomes and regional species pools more broadly,2014,0.772
Pharmacognostical studies on the root bark and stem bark of Catunaregam spinosa (Thunb.) Tiruv. (Madanaphala) – an Ayurvedic drug,aim the aim of the study was to carry out pharmacognostical investigation and hptlc profile of the root bark and stem bark of c spinosa methods root bark and stem bark were collected from kalakkad a few pieces were preserved in 70 alcohol for pharmacognostical evaluation the materials were powdered for phytochemical analysis and hptlc was carried out on alcohol and aqueous extracts results the barks are identified by the presence of concentric layers of stone cells in secondary cortex and secondary phloem regions rhomboidal type of calcium oxalate crystals in the stone cells in root bark fibres and presence of tanniniferous cell content in the secondary cortex and cork regions and uni to mutiseriate medullary rays phytochemical analysis revealed carbohydrates glycosides phytosterols phenolic compounds tannins and saponins in alcohol extract aqueous extract contained carbohydrates and glycosides phenolic compounds tannins saponins gums and mucilage petroleum ether extract contained phytosterols fixed oils and fats acetone extract contained phytosterols phenolic compounds and tannins hptlc confirmed the presence of oleanolic acid glycoside in root bark conclusion the pharmacognostical investigations help in the identification of the root bark and stem bark of c spinosa,2014,0.669
The Encyclopedia of Life v2: Providing Global Access to Knowledge About Life on Earth,the encyclopedia of life eol http eol org aims to provide unprecedented global access to a broad range of information about life on earth it currently contains 3 5 million distinct pages for taxa and provides content for 1 3 million of those pages the content is primarily contributed by eol content partners providers that have a more limited geographic taxonomic or topical scope eol aggregates these data and automatically integrates them based on associated scientific names and other classification information eol also provides interfaces for curation and direct content addition all materials in eol are either in the public domain or licensed under a creative commons license in addition to the web interface eol is also accessible through an application programming interface in this paper we review recent developments added for version 2 of the web site and subsequent releases through version 2 2 which have made eol more engaging personal accessible and internationalizable we outline the core features and technical architecture of the system we summarize milestones achieved so far by eol to present results of the current system implementation and establish benchmarks upon which to judge future improvements we have shown that it is possible to successfully integrate large amounts of descriptive biodiversity data from diverse sources into a robust standards based dynamic and scalable infrastructure increasing global participation and the emergence of eol powered applications demonstrate that eol is becoming a significant resource for anyone interested in biological diversity,2014,0.045
Brazilian Semi-Arid Ascomycetes I : New and interesting records of hysteriaceous ascomycetes,during an investigation of ascomycetes carried out in one area of caatinga and three enclaves of the atlantic forest in the semi arid region of brazil we found ten interesting species of hysteriaceous ascomycetes psiloglonium clavisporum and rhytidhysteron opuntiae are new records for south america and anteaglonium abbreviatum hysterium angustatum and hysterobrevium smilacis are new records for brazil all species are described illustrated and discussed,2014,0.72
"Taxamatch, an Algorithm for Near ('Fuzzy') Matching of Scientific Names in Taxonomic Databases.",misspellings of organism scientific names create barriers to optimal storage and organization of biological data reconciliation of data stored under different spelling variants of the same name and appropriate responses from user queries to taxonomic data systems this study presents an analysis of the nature of the problem from first principles reviews some available algorithmic approaches and describes taxamatch an improved name matching solution for this information domain taxamatch employs a custom modified damerau levenshtein distance algorithm in tandem with a phonetic algorithm together with a rule based approach incorporating a suite of heuristic filters to produce improved levels of recall precision and execution time over the existing dynamic programming algorithms n grams as bigrams and trigrams and standard edit distance although entirely phonetic methods are faster than taxamatch they are inferior in the area of recall since many real world errors are non phonetic in nature excellent performance of taxamatch as recall precision and execution time is demonstrated against a reference database of over 465 000 genus names and 1 6 million species names as well as against a range of error types as present at both genus and species levels in three sets of sample data for species and four for genera alone an ancillary authority matching component is included which can be used both for misspelled names and for otherwise matching names where the associated cited authorities are not identical,2014,0.362
Predicting species distributions in new areas or time periods with alpha-shapes,statistical models relating species distributions to environmental data are now commonly applied to predict where invasive species may become established or howrange limits may shift under climate change as species absences can originate fromfactors other than anunsuitable environment e g dispersal constraints themodels that discriminate between occupied and unoccupied environments are likely to underestimate potential ranges however the techniques that â œenvelopeâ the occupied environments i e profile techniques usually rely on simple convex estimators e g elliptical or rectangular shapes which tend to overestimate these ranges here we describe alpha shapes a profile type technique that relaxes the assumption of convexity by using native range data for the invasive african clawed frog we demonstrate howthis technique can be used tomodel climatic envelopes of variable complexity in particular we compared predictions from an envelopemaximizing discrimi nation between presences and absences an envelope tightly enclosing all occupied climatic combinations i e the minimum bounding envelope and an â œexpert basedâ generalization of the previous in addition we also use this technique to identify climatic combinations that are outside the climatic space of the study area i e non analog climates the envelope accounting for the absences of theafrican clawed frog achieveda high discrimination ability true skill statistics 0 71 but failed to predict many of the areas in which the species occurs predictions based on theminimumbounding envelope encompassed all species occurrenceswhile still providing a sharp delineation of its distribution range the generalized version of the previous envelope also captured all occurrences but predicted awider extent of suitable areas wealso found thatmost parts of theworld present climatic conditions that are non analog to those of our study area although conceptually more suitable for predicting species distributions across space and time than presenceâ absencemodels profile techniques are frequently overlooked because of their inability to fit flexible envelopes here we demonstrate that alpha shapes are a transparent and intuitive profile type technique that has this flexibility,2014,0.85
Phylogeography and demographic history of two widespread Indo-Pacific mudskippers (Gobiidae: Periophthalmus),this study provides a first description of the phylogeographic patterns and evolutionary history of two species of the mudskipper genus periophthalmus these amphibious gobies are distributed throughout the whole indo pacific region and atlantic coast of africa in peritidal habitats of soft bottom coastal ecosystems three sequence datasets of two widely distributed species periophthalmus argentilineatus and p kalolo were obtained by amplifying and sequencing two mtdna markers d loop and 16s rdna and the ndna rag1 region the three datasets were then used to perform phylogeographic demographic and population genetic analyses our results indicate that tectonic events and past climatic oscillations strongly contributed to shape present genetic differentiation phylogeographic and demographic patterns we found support for the monophyly of p kalolo and only shallow genetic differentiation between east african and indo malayan populations of this species however our collections of the morphospecies p argentilineatus include three molecularly distinct lineages one of them more closely related to p kalolo the presence of miocenic timings for the most recent common ancestors of some of these morphologically similar clades suggests the presence of strong stabilising selection in mudskippers habitats at population level demographic analyses and palaeoecological records of mangrove ecosystems suggest that pleistocene bottlenecks and expansion plus secondary contact events of the studied species were associated with recurrent sea transgressions during interglacials and sea regressions or stable regimes during glacials respectively,2014,0.911
Regulation of open access to research data - A study about open access to research data and the role of the Dutch government,accessibility to research data is an upcoming issue in science and society the possibility to have acc ess to research data is part of the â openâ movement of current society open access to research data is the right to access and re use digital research data without any additional costs for the user the general opinion is that research data need to be ac cessible for the public people want to have access to data because people feel they have the right to access the data it is about â democratisation of dataâ â open by defaultâ is the central aim of open access to research by taking into accoun t sensitiv e and commercial data and the interests of businesses and industry open access to research data creates opportunities easier access to research data can contribute to poor efficiency of research data by re using data and increases the quality of resear ch open access facilitates validation verification and evaluation of research results however open access to research data does have down sides issues related to privacy confidentiality or security could form a barrier for open access furthermore there is a lack of awareness for the benefit that open research data could bring to the science system also the infrastructure of data systems and ot her technical aspects of data depositing storage and security are not always well known for researchers costs of publishing and maintaining data can also hinder open access to research data in general there is agreement on the necessity of interventi on and a regulatory framework on open access to research data the focus of the framework should be â as open as possible closed if neededâ a regulatory framework should at least be flexible discipline dependent and approach ed on a case by case basis a data management plan is recommended and should at least entail information about discoverability protection of data data storage and data authenticity the framework should create an environment of awareness trust and recognition and support for resea rchers the feasibility of such a regulatory framework depends on the willingness and commitment of all stakeholders therefore a continuous open dialogue between the government and all stakeholders should be set up the g overnment should take up a coordin ating role by initiating meetings and training for all stakeholders additionally the government should stay inform ed and should inform stakeholders facilitation is also proposed by giving fi nancial support to researchers the government should also take up a role as legislator by creating soft law incentives could also be implemented like encouraging institutional recognition of publishing data for researchers in general g overnmental inte rvention should only be d one if necessary regulation can also be done at other levels by institutions publishers and funders in addition regulation should be done at several different levels and in parallel hybrid regulation and c ooperation in open access to research data is necessary in order to boost research and innovation,2014,0.008
An infrastructure-oriented approach for supporting biodiversity research,during the last years considerable progresses have beenmade in developing on line species occurrence data bases these are crucial in environmental and agricultural challenges e g they are a basic element in the gener ation of species distribution models unfortunately their exploitation is still difficult and time consuming for many scientists no database currently exists that can claim to host and make available in a seamless way all the species occurrence data needed by the ecology scientific community occurrence data are scattered among several databases and information systems it is not easy to retrieve records from them because of differences in the adopted protocols formats and granularity once collected datasets have to be selected homogenised and pre processed before being ready to use in scientific analysis and modelling this paper introduces a set of facilities offered by the d4science data infrastructure to support these phases of the scientific process it also ex emplifies howthey contribute to reduce the time spent in data quality assessment and curation thus improving the overall performance of the scientific investigation,2014,0.454
Post-glacial northward expansion and genetic differentiation between migratory and sedentary populations of the broad-tailed hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus),unlike other migratory hummingbirds in north america the broad tailed hummingbird selasphorus platycercus exhibits both long distance migratory behaviour in the usa and sedentary behaviour in mexico and guatemala we examined the evolution of migration linked to its northward expansion using a multi perspective approach we analysed variation in morphology mitochondrial and nuclear dna estimated migration rates between migratory and sedentary populations compared divergence times with the occurrence of quaternary climate events and constructed species distribution models to predict where migratory and sedentary populations resided during the last glacial maximum lgm and last interglacial lig events our results are consistent with a recent northward population expansion driven by migration from southern sedentary populations phylogeographical analyses and population genetics methods revealed that migratory populations in the usa and sedentary populations in mexico of the platycercus subspecies form one admixed population and that sedentary populations from southern mexico and guatemala guatemalae undertook independent evolutionary trajectories species distribution modelling revealed that the species is a niche tracker and that the climate conditions associated with modern obligate migrants in the usa were not present during the lig which provides indirect evidence for recent migratory behaviour in broad tailed hummingbirds on the temporal scale of glacial cycles the finding that platycercus hummingbirds form one genetic population and that suitable habitat for migratory populations was observed in eastern mexico during the lig also suggests that the conservation of overwintering sites is crucial for obligate migratory populations currently facing climate change effects this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.974
Innovative approaches to the preservation of forest trees,abstract the recent acceleration of actions to conserve plant species using ex situ and in situ strategies has revealed the need to understand how these two approaches might be better developed and integrated in their application to tree species here we review some of the recent successes relating mainly to tree seed biol ogy that have resulted in the development and application of innovative actions across five areas 1 the expansion of living collections to conserve threatened tree species in sufficient numbers to ensure a broad genetic diversity in their progeny 2 the generation of viability constants to enable estimates to be made of storage longevity of tree seeds in the dry state 3 improvement in the diagnosis of tree seed storage behaviour through the development of predictive models reliable prognoses of desiccation tolerance and use of botanical information systems such as gis to correlate information on species dis tribution and their physiological characteristics 4 advances in storage preservation biotechnology to enhance the future application of cryopreservation procedures to recalcitrant species in biodiversity hot spots where many are under threat of extinction 5 integration of ex situ and in situ conservation approaches to ensure that best practice in horticultural and forestry are combined to maintain or enhance genetic diversity especially in high value species and those with small and vulnerable populations these actions can lead to greater impact if supported by greater efforts to create seed banks and to collate dat abases world wide so that data knowledge and collections are more available to the scientific forestry and ngo communities throughout this review we have used examples from the mega biodiversity countries of brazil and china as a way of illustrating wider principles that can be applied in many coun tries future development of current research approaches the adherence to conservation policy and the expanding needs for education are also considered briefly,2014,0.266
"On the Afrotropical genus Holmelgonia (Araneae, Linyphiidae), with the description of three new species from the Albertine Rift",three new species of holmelgonia were found in the mountain forest of kibira national park in burundi h afromontana sp nov â â h bosnasutus sp nov â â and h disconveniens sp nov â a key to the males in the genus now containing 17 species is provided,2014,0.781
Northern Hemisphere origins of the amphi-Pacific tropical plant family Symplocaceae,aim we sought to reconstruct the historical biogeography of the amphi pacific tropical disjunct plant family symplocaceae in the context of competing northern hemisphere boreotropical versus southern hemisphere west gondwanan hypotheses for its origin and spread location americas western pacific rim fossil localities in europe methods we derived a dated phylogeny using a relaxed clock on a data set of 114 terminals four genic regions three plastid regions and the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region and six fossil calibrations we inferred ancestral geographical ranges with maximum likelihood under a dispersalâ extinctionâ cladogenesis model with the probability of dispersal constrained by areal distance and palaeogeography results we inferred a eurasian origin for crown node symplocaceae at c 52 ma followed by dispersal to north america including mesoamerica at c 52â 38 ma most of the highest likelihood intra american dispersals recovered in the analysis trended from north to south with none from south to north six intra american dispersals were inferred to have originated in north america with lineages either terminating in the antilles or migrating to south america at various times one additional north american lineage emigrated back to eurasia in the late miocene main conclusions the predominantly southwards american migrations inferred here for the symplocaceae conform to the boreotropics hypothesis apparently driven by cooling and drying climates in the later cenozoic the inferred eurasian origin for the family corroborates a more specific european origin as suggested independently by its fossil fruit record of the lineages ultimately arriving in south america from north america two are inferred to have migrated through the antilles by island hopping and three through mesoamerica the timing of one of the mesoamerican events inferred to be between 8 9 and 7 5 ma implies over water dispersal under the prevailing model of isthmus of panama formation but also accords with overland migration under a model of earlier formation,2014,0.154
"Radiocarbon dating and stable isotopes analyses of Caiman latirostris (Daudin, 1801) (Crocodylia, Alligatoridae) from the late Pleistocene of Northeastern Brazil, with comments on spatial distribution of the species",caiman latirostris is a crocodilian reptile widely distributed in south america the fossil records for this species are limited in the continent and radiocarbon dating plus isotope analysis has not been per formed to the existing records which prevent accurate paleoecological reconstructions thus the present study aimed to record the occurrence of a fossil of c latirostris in sergipe state northeastern brazil providing the first data of radiocarbon dating and stable isotopes d13c and d18o for this species as well as maps of the potential distribution for the present time and for the last glacial maximum 21 ka our results indicate that the analyzed specimen occurred in sergipe brazil between 11 068e11 211 cal bp 9680 â 30 bp and fed on mixed feeder animals d13c â 3 00â possibly insects shrimp snail fish and birds it appears that its body temperature was 26 c similar to the extant crocodilian species crocodylus niloticus indicating that the species lived in the nearby rivers or in tanks ancient lagoons a map displays the current distribution while the map for 21 ka indicates a restricted distribution for this species in south america perhaps caused by the dry and cold climate in the last glacial maximum which affected the distribution of water sources for this organism,2014,0.914
Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services: Demand and supply of pollination in the European Union,biotic pollination is an important ecosystem service for the production of many food crops the supply of pollination is mostly studied at the landscape scale while recent studies on the demand for pollination services provide a global scale picture based on aggregate national level data this paper quantifies both demand and supply of pollination in the european union eu at a relatively high spatial resolution allowing an analysis of the match between demand and supply finally we evaluate how policies interact with the spatial differences between demand and supply of this ecosystem service we mapped the crop area requiring pollination for optimal production demand and both bee habitat and related visitation probability supply using detailed agricultural and landscape data we compared the maps of demand and supply by visual comparison descriptive statics and a trend surface generalized additive model to analyze the relation between visitation probability and the presence or absence of pollinator dependent crops a sensitivity analysis was done to test the robustness of the pollination supply model finally the impact of eu biodiversity strategy and biofuel directive were evaluated by identifying areas where these policies would influence the demand or supply of pollination in the eu 12 of the total cropland area was dependent on pollinators for optimal agricultural production pollinator habitat is especially abundant in mosaic landscapes as found in hilly and mountainous areas although covering less than 0 5 of the agricultural area the presence of green linear elements increased the visitation probability by 5 20 while being the sole providers of pollinators in 12 of the croplands in half of the area with a high pollination demand the supply of pollination is also high irrespective of the different parameterizations total habitat areas and visitation probability were highest in croplands without pollinator dependent crops and lowest in hotspots of pollination demand the analysis of the match between pollination supply and demand for this service indicates that for improving or ensuring pollination one must consider both the demand and supply of the process of crop pollination for optimal results 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved,2014,0.114
Modelling the biogeography of Antarctic phytoplankton,marine pelagic diatoms are coined to be strong drivers of the southern ocean silicate pump their growth and sinking dynamics substantially affect silicate supply in lower latitude surface water masses of the world ocean we have explored the use of species distribution modeling sdm to investigate the potential responses of a few key diatom species to climate change these models describe the response of a species to its environment by combining occurrence and environmental data using statistical or machine learning approaches subsequently the speciesâ potential distribution is mapped by projecting the model on gridded environmental layers also for future scenarios this methodology became a standard approach in biogeography as well as conservation and climate change science though with a strong bias towards terrestrial organisms marine organisms are clearly underrepresented and there is little experience with the applicability of sdms for planktonic organisms taxon occurrence records were harvested from public resources like the gbif network and extended by additional samples from the literature and from the hustedt collection a large diatom herbarium located at the awi environmental parameters included nutrient concentrations and oceanographic variables like sea surface temperature and salinity results of this study will be presented focusing on the current availability of taxon observation records and environmental parameters model evaluation and projection on expected environmental conditions predicted for future climate scenarios in summary the resulting current potential distribution maps of the models agree well with species distributions expected based on background knowledge although the nature of a distribution boundary in the pelagial poses some challenges for interpretation projections on ipcc scenarios suggest that the distribution range of the main silica carrier of the southern ocean might shift polewards and substantially shrink during the upcoming decades,2014,0.505
"Unravelling biodiversity, evolution and threats to conservation in the Sahara-Sahel",deserts and arid regions are generally perceived as bare and rather homogeneous areas of low diversity the sahara is the largest warm desert in the world and together with the arid sahel displays high topographical and climatic heterogeneity and has experienced recent and strong climatic oscillations that have greatly shifted biodiversity distribution and community composition the large size remoteness and long term political instability of the sahara sahel have limited knowledge on its biodiversity however over the last decade there have been an increasing number of published scientific studies based on modern geomatic and molecular tools and broad sampling of taxa of these regions this review tracks trends in knowledge about biodiversity patterns processes and threats across the sahara sahel and anticipates needs for biodiversity research and conservation recent studies are changing completely the perception of regional biodiversity patterns instead of relatively low species diversity with distribution covering most of the region studies now suggest a high rate of endemism and larger number of species with much narrower and fragmented ranges frequently limited to micro hotspots of biodiversity molecular based studies are also unravelling cryptic diversity associated with mountains which together with recent distribution atlases allows identifying integrative biogeographic patterns in biodiversity distribution mapping of multivariate environmental variation at 1 km ã 1 km resolution of the region illustrates main biogeographical features of the sahara sahel and supports recently hypothesised dispersal corridors and refugia micro scale water features present mostly in mountains have been associated with local biodiversity hotspots however the distribution of available data on vertebrates highlights current knowledge gaps that still apply to a large proportion of the sahara sahel current research is providing insights into key evolutionary and ecological processes including causes and timing of radiation and divergence for multiple taxa and associating the onset of the sahara with diversification processes for low mobility vertebrates examples of phylogeographic patterns are showing the importance of allopatric speciation in the sahara sahel and this review presents a synthetic overview of the most commonly hypothesised diversification mechanisms studies are also stressing that biodiversity is threatened by increasing human activities in the region including overhunting and natural resources prospection and in the future by predicted global warming a representation of areas of conflict landmines and natural resources extraction illustrates how human activities and regional insecurity are hampering biodiversity research and conservation although there are still numerous knowledge gaps for the optimised conservation of biodiversity in the region a set of research priorities is provided to identify the framework data needed to support regional conservation planning,2014,0.061
Land Use Compounds Habitat Losses under Projected Climate Change in a Threatened California Ecosystem,given the rapidly growing human population in mediterranean climate systems land use may pose a more immediate threat to biodiversity than climate change this century yet few studies address the relative future impacts of both drivers we assess spatial and temporal patterns of projected 21 st century land use and climate change on california sage scrub css a plant association of considerable diversity and threatened status in the mediterranean climate california floristic province using a species distribution modeling approach combined with spatially explicit land use projections we model habitat loss for 20 dominant shrub species under unlimited and no dispersal scenarios at two time intervals early and late century in two ecoregions in california central coast and south coast overall projected climate change impacts were highly variable across css species and heavily dependent on dispersal assumptions projected anthropogenic land use drove greater relative habitat losses compared to projected climate change in many species this pattern was only significant under assumptions of unlimited dispersal however where considerable climate driven habitat gains offset some concurrent climate driven habitat losses additionally some of the habitat gained with projected climate change overlapped with projected land use most species showed potential northern habitat expansion and southern habitat contraction due to projected climate change resulting in sharply contrasting patterns of impact between central and south coast ecoregions in the central coast dispersal could play an important role moderating losses from both climate change and land use in contrast high geographic overlap in habitat losses driven by projected climate change and projected land use in the south coast underscores the potential for compounding negative impacts of both drivers limiting habitat conversion may be a broadly beneficial strategy under climate change we emphasize the importance of addressing both drivers in conservation and resource management planning,2014,0.717
"Present, past and future of the European rock fern Asplenium fontanum: combining distribution modelling and population genetics to study the effect of climate change on geographic range and genetic diversity",background and aims climate change is expected to alter the geographic range of many plant species dramatically predicting this response will be critical to managing the conservation of plant resources and the effects of invasive species the aim of this study was to predict the response of temperate homosporous ferns to climate change methods genetic diversity and changes in distribution range were inferred for the diploid rock fern asplenium fontanum along a south north transect extending from its putative last glacial maximum lgm refugia in southern france towards southern germany and eastern central france this study reconciles observations from distribution models and phylogeographic analyses derived from plastid and nuclear diversity key results genetic diversity distribution and niche modelling propose that genetic diversity accumulates in the lgm climate refugium in southern france with the formation of a diversity gradient reflecting a slow post lgm range expansion towards the current distribution range evidence supports the fern s preference for outcrossing contradicting the expectation that homosporous ferns would populate new sites by single spore colonization prediction of climate and distribution range change suggests that a dramatic loss of range and genetic diversity in this fern is possible the observed migration is best described by the phalanx expansion model conclusions the results suggest that homosporous ferns reproducing preferentially by outcrossing accumulate genetic diversity primarily in lgm climate refugia and may be threatened if these areas disappear due to global climate change,2014,0.335
"A new record of naturalized Selaginella uncinata (Desv.) Spring (Selaginellaceae) from Java, Indonesia",during extensive field research on the diversity and distribution of selaginella in java between 2007 and 2014 an alien species have been found in nature i e selaginella uncinata this species is a trailing herb with small wiry creeping main stem fan shaped branches rooting at the nodes to c a 100 cm long or more leaves are dimorphic 4 ranked and characterized by conspicuous blue iridescent strobili are tetragonal up to c a 2 cm long s uncinata found growing wild in the highlands with high rainfall namely cibodas botanical garden cianjur west java and tawangsari in the city district of wonosobo central java indonesia transplant experiments indicate that this plant is able to grow and reproduce well in the lowlands depok 107 m asl and the highlands wonosobo 768 m asl in the experimental garden it can compete with native species of java selaginellas for space sunlight and nutrients therefore the invasion ability of this species needs to be concerned,2014,0.818
Biogeography of the social wasp genus Brachygastra (Hymenoptera: Vespidade: Polistinae),aim the aim of this study was to understand the biogeography of brachygastra as the spatial component of evolution is of fundamental importance to understanding the processes shaping the evolution of taxa the known geological history of the neotropical region was used together with the current phylogeny and distribution of species to investigate questions concerning the biogeography of brachygastra the ancestral ranges of brachygastra species their areal relationships and their congruence with previously published hypotheses the possible associated vicariance events and the influence of land bridges between north and south america and the split between the amazon and atlantic forests location neotropical region from mexico to central argentina and southern usa methods statistical dispersalâ vicariance analysis s diva was used to recon struct the possible ancestral ranges of brachygastra species based on their phylogeny divided into three groups lecheguana scuttelaris and smithii a brooks parsimony analysis bpa and component analysis were performed to recon struct the areal relationships of these species within the neotropics results s diva suggested a widespread south american ancestral region for brachygastra the ancestral b azteca probably reached the nearctic before a posterior vicariance event separated it from the species groups lecheguana scutellaris smithii that stayed in the atlantic forest the ancestral scutel laris smithii groups possibly reached the amazon by dispersal and the sub sequent vicariance event splitting the atlantic forest and amazon separated the groups into scutellaris in the atlantic forest and smithii in the amazon bpa and component analyses suggested that the nearctic was a sister area to other regions the andes and mesoamerica was a sister area to the neotropical regions and the amazon was closely related to the atlantic forest main conclusions the phylogeny and distribution of brachygastra suggest the influence of a land bridge between the northern and southern hemispheres affecting the cladogenesis of b azteca and the importance of the formation of the two blocks of forests in south america to the cladogenesis of the main groups of brachygastra future comparisons between the distribution patterns of other taxa should enable a more precise identification of the possible events and outcomes adding robustness to the hypothesized areal relationships,2014,0.859
Large - Scale Spatial Join Query Processing in Cloud,the r apidly increasing amount of location data available in many applications has made it desirable to process their large scale spatial quer ies in cloud for performance and scalability we report our designs and implementations of two prototype systems that are ready for cloud deployments spatialspark based on apache spark and isp mc based on cloudera imp ala both systems support indexed spatial join s based on point in polygon test and p oint to polyline distance computation experiments on the pickup locations of 170 million taxi trips in n ew york city and 10 million global species occurrences records have demonstrated both efficiency and scalability using amazon ec2 cluster s,2014,0.117
Invasive plants have broader physiological niches,invasive species cost the global economy billions of dollars each year but ecologists have struggled to predict the risk of an introduced species naturalizing and invading although carefully designed experiments are needed to fully elucidate what makes some species invasive much can be learned from unintentional experiments involving the introduction of species beyond their native ranges here we assess invasion risk by linking a physiologically based species distribution model with data on the invasive success of 749 australian acacia and eucalypt tree species that have over more than a century been introduced around the world the model correctly predicts 92 of occurrences observed outside of australia from an independent dataset we found that invasiveness is positively associated with the projection of physiological niche volume in geographic space thereby illustrating that species tolerant of a broader range of environmental conditions are more likely to be invasive species achieve this broader tolerance in different ways meaning that the traits that define invasive success are context specific hence our study reconciles studies that have failed to identify the traits that define invasive success with the urgent and pragmatic need to predict invasive success,2014,0.864
Investment into the future of microbial resources: culture collection funding models and BRC business plans for biological resource centres,through their long history of public service diverse microbial biological resource centres mbrcs have made myriad contributions to society and science they have enabled the maintenance of specimens isolated before antibiotics made available strains showing the development and change of pathogenicity toward animals humans and plants and have maintained and provided reference strains to ensure quality and reproducibility of science however this has not been achieved without considerable financial commitment different collections have unique histories and their support is often tied to their origins however many collections have grown to serve large constituencies and need to develop novel funding mechanisms moreover several international initiatives have described mbrcs as a factor in economic development and have led to the increased professionalism among mbrcs,2014,0.295
The Edaphobase project of GBIF-Germany—A new online soil-zoological data warehouse,edaphobase is a non commercial data warehouse on soil organisms up to now including chilopoda collembola diplopoda enchytraeidae gamasina lumbricidae nematoda oribatida integrated in the global biodiversity information facility gbif network edaphobase combines data on taxonomy zoogeography and ecology of these organisms in a comprehensive manner data are derived from publications unpublished results of field studies theses reports and collection data from german museums and research institutions data types entities comprise up to date taxonomic thesauri geographical references ecological indices soil composition vegetation meteorological data sampling and extraction methods quantity of collected organisms identification methods preparation techniques and behavioural data at present the focus is on germany and neighbouring countries but data from other european countries can be incorporated in the future edaphobase offers a wide range of tools for data inclusion data input client gis tool semi automatic literature analysis and data exploration simple queries are possible as well as more sophisticated analyses of different data groups specific examples of exploration of multi source datasets are presented to illustrate the potential of the system for detailed analyses i e for the elucidation of species specific habitat preferences distribution patterns or environmental influences on population densities with different soil invertebrate groups i e diplopoda nematoda and collembola,2014,0.494
An Updated Account Of The Name Changes Of The Dicotyledonous Plant Species Included In The Vol: I (1934- 36) & Vol: II (1938) Of “ Flora Of Assam ”,changes in botanical names of flowering plants are an issue which comes up from time to time while there are valid scientific reasons for such changes it also creates some difficulties to the floristic workers in the preparation of a new flora further all the important monumental floras of the world have most of the plants included in their old names which are now regarded as synonyms in north east india â œflora of assamâ is an important flora as it includes result of pioneering floristic work on angiosperms gymnosperms in the region but in the study of this flora the same problems of name changes appear before the new researchers therefore an attempt is made here to prepare an updated account of the new names against their old counterpts of the plants included in the first two volumes of the flora on the basis of recent standard taxonomic literatures in this the unresolved controversial names are not touched only the confirmed ones are taken into account in the process new names of 470 four hundred seventy dicotyledonous plant species included in the concerned flora are found out,2014,0.185
Seabed mining: International Seabed Authority environmental management plan for the Clarion–Clipperton Zone. A partnership approach,abstract in 2012 the international seabed authority approved an environmental management plan emp for the clarionâ clipperton fracture zone ccz in the eastern central pacific the emp is a proactive spatial management strategy that anticipates mining of polymetallic nodules and that includes the designation of areas of particular environmental interest apeis the implementation of the emp and the sound application of marine spatial planning require sufficient high quality data to inform decision makers and draw credible boundaries of protected areas this paper outlines the development of the emp in the context of the authority s responsibilities with respect to the protection of the marine environment the paper further highlights needs for research and data collection and introduces a related eu research project aiming to inform the development of mining guidelines the authors suggest that the sustainable development of deep sea resources in the ccz could be considered as a model for blue growth,2014,0.021
"First record of the pale-faced bat Phylloderma stenops Peters 1865 (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) in the province of Guayas, Southwest Ecuador",we report the first record of phylloderma stenops in the province of guayas ecuador the specimen was captured in a heavily disturbed area surrounded by small remnants of semi deciduous lowland forests we also present a predictive distribution map constructed with the new and existing information for p stenops in ecuador and other countries in south america showing that this species may occur in other areas where it has not yet been observed,2014,0.464
"Grass carp in the Great Lakes region: establishment potential, expert perceptions, and re-evaluation of experimental evidence of ecological impact",intentional introductions of nonindigenous fishes are increasing globally while benefits of these introductions are easily quantified assessments to understand the negative impacts to ecosystems are often difficult incomplete or absent grass carp ctenopharyngodon idella was originally introduced to the united states as a biocontrol agent and recent observations of wild diploid individuals in the great lakes basin have spurred interest in re evaluating its ecological risk here we evaluate the ecological impact of grass carp using expert opinion and a suite of the most up to date analytical tools and data ploidy assessment edna surveillance species distribution models sdm and meta analysis the perceived ecological impact of grass carp by fisheries experts was variable ranging from unknown to very high wild caught triploid and diploid individuals occurred in multiple great lakes waterways and edna surveillance suggests that grass carp are abundant in a major tributary of lake michigan sdms predicted suitable grass carp climate occurs in all great lakes meta analysis showed that grass carp introductions impact both water quality and biota novel findings based on updated ecological impact assessment tools indicate that iterative risk assessment of introduced fishes may be warranted,2014,0.712
Spatial Prioritization for Biodiversity Restoration: A Simple Framework Referencing Past Species Distributions,the spatial prioritization of biodiversity restoration sites on a national scale lags behind that of protected areas we present a simple framework for spatial restoration prioritization using complementarity analysis based on the differences between past and present species distributions and restoration feasibility in the framework sites that were not only diverse or unique in the past high restoration potential but also have high restoration feasibility e g low anthropogenic pressures are ranked higher we applied the framework to endangered bird species that breed in japan for which distribution data were available from nationwide distribution censuses conducted in 1978 and 1998 the data were compiled in a 20 km grid resolution across japan we incorporated the degree of urbanization and number of farmers as a cost to optimize the sets of cells with regard to restoration feasibility we successfully identified candidate sets of restoration cells in which at most six can be allocated for each species under the constraint that the total area selected does not exceed 15 of the degraded cells at most 11 cells were allocated for each species under the constraint that restoration cells were within 15 of all ecosystem types comparison with the distribution of existing nature restoration sites revealed that only 9 3 or 9 7 depended on the constraint of high priority cells overlapped cells including existing restoration sites our framework provides an objective efficient method to obtain a testable plan for biodiversity restoration which might contribute to the attainment of the 2020 target set by the convention on biological diversity,2014,0.59
Application of consensus theory to formalize expert evaluations of plant species distribution models,aim application of environmental envelope modelling eem for conservation planning requires careful validation opinions of experts who have worked with species of interest in the field can be a valuable and independent information source to validate eem because of their first hand experience with species occurrence and absence however their use in model validation is limited because of the subjectivity of their feedback in this study we present a method on the basis of cultural consensus theory to formalize expert model evaluations methods we developed for five tree species distribution models with nine different variable combinations and maxent eem software species specialists validated the generated distribution maps through an online google earth interface with the scores from invalid to excellent experts were also asked about the commission and omission errors of the distribution models they evaluated we weighted expert scores according to consensus theory these values were used to obtain a final average expert score for each of the produced distribution models the consensus weighted expert scores were compared with un weighted scores and correlated to four conventional model performance parameters after cross validation with test data area under curve auc maximum kappa commission error and omission error results the median consensus weighted expert score of all speciesâ variable combinations was close to fair in general experts that reached more consensus with peers were more positive about the eem outcomes compared to those that had more opposite judgements both consensus weighted and un weighted scores were significantly correlated to corresponding auc maximum kappa and commission error values but not to omission errors more than half of the experts indicated that the distribution model they considered best included areas where the species is known to be absent one third also indicated areas of species presence that were omitted by the model conclusions our results indicate that experts are fairly positive about eem outcomes this is encouraging but eem application for conservation actions remains limited according to them methods to formalize expert knowledge allow a wider use of this information in model validation and improvement and they complement conventional validation methods of presence only modelling online gis and survey applications facilitate the consultation of experts,2014,0.426
Climatically stable landscapes predict patterns of genetic structure and admixture in the Californian canyon live oak,aim we studied which factors shape contemporary patterns of genetic struc ture diversity and admixture in the canyon live oak quercus chrysolepis spe cifically we tested two alternative hypotheses 1 that areas with high habitat suitability and stability since the last glacial maximum lgm sustain higher effective population sizes resulting in increased levels of genetic diversity and 2 that populations from areas with lower habitat stability show higher levels of genetic admixture due to their recurrent colonization by individuals origi nating from genetically differentiated populations furthermore we analysed the relative importance of past and current habitat suitability and their additive effects on contemporary patterns of genetic structure location california usa methods we sampled 160 individuals from 33 localities across the distribu tion range of the canyon live oak in california and then combined information from 13 nuclear microsatellite dna markers and climate niche modelling to study patterns of genetic variation in this species we used bayesian clustering analyses to analyse geographical patterns of genetic structure and admixture and circuit theory to generate isolation by resistance ibr distance matrices results we found that the degree of genetic admixture was higher in localities with lower inferred population stability but that genetic diversity was not asso ciated with habitat suitability or stability landscape genetic analyses identified habitat stability as the primary driver of population genetic differentiation main conclusions this study shows that habitat stability can be a major fac tor shaping genetic variation in wind pollinated trees and supports the idea that stable regions contribute to genetic connectivity across different climatic periods to our knowledge this study is the first to report an association between patterns of genetic admixture and stability of local habitat,2014,0.62
Identifying minimal sets of survey techniques for multi-species monitoring across landscapes: an approach utilising species distribution models,monitoring for species occupancy is often carried out at local scales reflecting specific targets available logistics and funding problematically conservation planning and management operate at broader scales and use information inventories with good scale coverage translating information between local and landscape scales is commonly treated in an ad hoc manner but conservation decision making can benefit from quantifying spatial knowledge relationships fauna occupancy monitoring in particular suffers from this issue of scale as there are many different survey methods employed for different purposes rather than ignoring how informative these methods are when predicting regional distributions we describe a statistical approach that identifies survey combinations that provide the greatest additive value in mammal detection across different scales we identified minimal sets of survey methods for 53 terrestrial mammal species across a large area in australia new south wales nsw 800 000 km2 and for each of the 18 bioregions it encompasses utility of survey methods varied considerably at a landscape scale unplanned opportunistic sightings were the single largest source of species information 35 the utility of other survey methods varied spatially some were retained in minimal sets for many bioregions while others were spatially restricted or unimportant predator scats elliot and pitfall trapping spotlighting and diurnal herpetofauna surveys were the most frequently included survey methods at a landscape scale use of our approach can guide identi fication of efficient combinations of survey methods maximising detection and returns for monitoring findings and methodologies are easily transferable and are globally applicable across any taxa they provide guidelines for managing scarce resources for regional monitoring programs and improving regional strategic conservation planning keywords,2014,0.367
"Diaspore and shoot size as drivers of local, regional and global bryophyte distributions",aim ecological theory provides divergent views about how patterns of bryophyte occurrence are related from local to global scales here i test the hypotheses that based on the high dispersal capacity of bryophytes patterns of occurrence are similar fromlocal to global scales and independent of variation in diaspore and size traits or alternatively that the patterns are dissimilar and depend on traits that are important for dispersal and competition location global methods the occurrence patterns of 28 bryophyte species and their relationship to diaspore and shoot size were analysed for three study systems 1 a local metacommunity on erratic calcareous boulders 2 a regional study system in the biogeographical provinces of the nordic countries and 3 based on data available from the global biodiversity information facility gbif results contrary to expectations bryophyte occurrence was not similar among local or global study systems but regional occurrences matched both local and global occurrences contrary to neutral theoretical assumptions the occurrences depended on traits in the local metacommunity there was a tendency towards a negative relationship between occurrence and diaspore size small and large species tended to be rare whereas species of intermediate size tended to be widespread in the regional study system species with large diaspores tended to be widespread with frequency of occurrence positively correlated with shoot length main conclusions in contrast to patterns detected for micro organisms local and global frequencies of occurrence for bryophytes are not necessarily similar however occurrences at the regional scale may be useful for predicting both local and global occurrences links between species traits important for dispersal and competition on the one hand and occurrences on the other supports the utility of these traits for the analysis of distributions and questions the adequacy of assump tions of functional equivalence,2014,0.329
The relevance of Italian museum collections for research and conservation: the case of mammals,the twentieth century saw the decline of interest toward museum collections and an increased support to â experimentalâ and â evolutionaryâ biology implicitly recognising the opposite nature of the â oldâ museum based taxonomy with few exceptions such as those of florence and verona italian museums after world war ii were pushed at the border of scientific activity by the academic world and had to fight for their survival examples from the usa and elsewhere show the increased relevance of modern mammal collections to several fields of research despite an increased and welcomed attention to the value of historical collections there is still scarce awareness of the need and relevance of maintaining and implementing mammal collections in museums as a valuable long term source of data in the field of conservation biology faunistic taxonomy molecular biology and health monitoring in the present paper we suggest to create a network between mammalogists and a number of mammal collections with one museum serving as focal point for a national mammal collection,2014,0.194
Formulating conservation targets for a gap analysis of endemic lizards in a biodiversity hotspot,species gap analyses that adopt conservation targets based on individual species attributes recognize that some biodiversity features need more protection than others and should lead to better outcomes than uniform conservation targets in the brazilian cerrado hotspot 4 of the 30 endemic lizard species are included in the iucn or brazilian red lists of threatened species for 18 species with more than 5 occur rence records we produced distribution models using maxent and for 12 species with less than 5 occur rence records we used a 5 km radius around the records to indicate distributions for all species we estimated habitat loss after discounting cleared areas from indicated distributions non modeled species were considered as truly restricted range endemics and had conservation targets set a priori as 100 we formulated conservation targets for 18 modeled species based on three characteristics natural rarity vulnerability and life history we estimated vulnerability from a model of future habitat loss across the cerrado derived with maxent we then performed a gap analysis considering strictly protected con servation areas we applied percentage targets between 12 and 23 to estimated species distributions prior to habitat loss and evaluated the targets against the presence of the species within strictly protected conservation areas disturbingly only one species is adequately protected by the current system of pro tected areas we also found that one species is a minor conservation gap whereas the remaining 28 spe cies are either major 13 or total 5 conservation gaps habitat loss has erased a significant fraction of the original distribution of cerrado endemic lizards and the existent network of protected areas is wholly inadequate to ensure their conservation the use of conservation targets based on natural rarity vulner ability and life story will support more defensible conservation guidelines than commonly used uniform targets for this threatened neotropical savanna biome,2014,0.988
Data Curation: A Study of Researcher Practices and Needs,colorado state university librarians conducted five focus groups with thirty one faculty research scientists and research associates the groups explored 1 the nature of data sets that these researchers create or maintain 2 how participants manage their data 3 needs for support that the participants identify in relation to sharing curating and preserving their data and 4 the feasibility of adapting the purdue university librariesâ data curation profiles toolkit1 interview protocol for use in focus groups with researchers the authors report their review of related literature themes that emerged from analysis of the focus groups and implications for related library services,2014,0.12
Reol: R interface to the Encyclopedia of Life,abstract the encyclopedia of life is a website that hosts information about life on earth its mission is to increase awareness and understanding of living nature through a freely accessible digital source information is publicly available through graphical webpages browser interface or through an application pro gramming interface api we developed reol an open source package for the r environment which downloads data from the eol api searches for and extracts specific information and builds tables with quantitative data and or hierarchical classifications we provide a detailed description how reol can be used as a bridge between the r environment and the eol api to extract quan titative or hierarchical content it will be particularly useful for researchers who want information about taxonomic groups of interest for example how much information is known about flatworm species what are the taxonomic syn onyms for bird species or construct a taxonomic tree reol is a tool for researchers who wish to download and gather data from eol or its provider pages we provide numerous functions within r for downloading gathering data in different forms creating taxonomic trees and plotting data which work with functions already available through various packages it joins a growing body of r packages that interact with web based apis to streamline data acqui sition thereby easing the analysis of large publicly available datasets,2014,0.182
Conservation paleobiology needs phylogenetic methods,we address several central concerns of conservation paleobiology namely the inference of geographic ranges of ancestral and ancient species the changes in geographic range under climate change and the associated question of inferring the environmental preferences of ancestral lineages and how they have evolved over geological time we will show why these questions might be crucial for making better projections of geographic range under future climate change scenarios and for assessing such scenarios as well as assessing comparisons between predicted and observed geographic ranges of ancient taxa we review two major bodies of literature and modelling techniques namely phylogenetic biogeography â the historical biogeography of lineage presence and absence in large discrete regions inferred on phylogenetic trees â and phylogenetic ancestral niche estimation which utilizes phylogenetic comparative methods to understand temporal changes in species environmental niches and the resulting change in their geographic distributions due to niche evolution geologic changes and climatic changes we suggest that many of the limitations in each of the currently available methods could be ame liorated by combining them such that coarse scale biogeographic history evolution of environmental niche preferences on a phylogenetic tree the evolutionary model for these changes and modern species â environmental niche models are all co estimated in formal joint inference framework we acknowledge that this goal is extremely ambitious but it is likely to have large payoff s not just for conservation paleobiology but even for purely neobiological niche modelling studies that typically leave out information about phylogenetic relationship and historical biogeography and thus may often confl ate several non environmental factors with the estimation of species â environmental niches,2014,0.585
Hybridization at an ecotone: ecological and genetic barriers between three Iberian vipers,the formation of stable genetic boundaries between emerging species is often diagnosed by reduced hybrid fitness relative to parental taxa this reduced fitness can arise from endogenous and or exogenous barriers to gene flow although detecting exogenous barriers in nature is difficult we can estimate the role of ecological divergence in driving species boundaries by integrating molecular and ecological niche modelling tools here we focus on a three way secondary contact zone between three viper species vipera aspis v latastei and v seoanei to test for the contribution of ecological divergence to the development of reproductive barriers at several species traits morphology nuclear dna and mitochondrial dna both the nuclear and mitochondrial data show that all taxa are genetically distinct and that the sister species v aspis and v latastei hybridize frequently and backcross over several generations we find that the three taxa have diverged ecologically and meet at a hybrid zone coincident with a steep ecotone between the atlantic and mediterranean biogeographical provinces integrating landscape and genetic approaches we show that hybridization is spatially restricted to habitats that are suboptimal for parental taxa together these results suggest that niche separation and adaptation to an ecological gradient confer an important barrier to gene flow among taxa that have not achieved complete reproductive isolation,2014,0.856
Symbiota – A virtual platform for creating voucher-based biodiversity information communities,we review the symbiota software platform for creating voucher based biodiversity information portals and communities symbiota was originally conceived to promote small to medium sized regionally and or taxonomically themed collaborations of natural history collections over the past eight years the taxonomically diverse portals have grown into an important resource in north america and beyond for mobilizing integrating and using specimen and observation based occurrence records and derivative biodiversity information products designed to mirror the conceptual structure of traditional floras and faunas symbiota is exclusively web based and employs a novel data model information linking and algorithms to provide highly dynamic customization the themed portals enable meaningful access to biodiversity data for anyone from specialist to high school student symbiota emulates functionality of modern content management systems providing highly sophisticated yet intuitive user interfaces for data entry batch processes and editing each kind of content provision may be selectively accessed by authenticated information providers occupying a fairly specific niche in the biodiversity informatics arena symbiota provides extensive data exchange facilities and collaborates with other development projects to incorporate and not duplicate functionality as appropriate,2014,0.066
Using limited data to detect changes in species distributions: Insights from Amazon parrots in Venezuela,documenting changes in distribution is necessary for understanding speciesâ response to environmental changes but data on species distributions are heterogeneous in accuracy and resolution combining dif ferent data sources and methodological approaches can fill gaps in knowledge about the dynamic pro cesses driving changes in species rich but data poor regions we combined recent bird survey data from the neotropical biodiversity mapping initiative neomaps with historical distribution records to estimate potential changes in the distribution of eight species of amazon parrots in venezuela using environmental covariates and presence only data from museum collections and the literature we first used maximum likelihood to fit a species distribution model sdm estimating a historical maximum probability of occurrence for each species we then used recent neomaps survey data to build single season occupancy models om with the same environmental covariates as well as with time and effort dependent detectability resulting in estimates of the current probability of occurrence we finally calculated the disagreement between predictions as a matrix of probability of change in the state of occurrence our results suggested negative changes for the only restricted threatened species amazona barbadensis which has been independently confirmed with field studies two of the three remaining widespread species that were detected amazona amazonica amazona ochrocephala also had a high prob ability of negative changes in northern venezuela but results were not conclusive for amazona farinosa the four remaining species were undetected in recent field surveys three of these were most probably absent from the survey locations amazona autumnalis amazona mercenaria and amazona festiva while a fourth amazona dufresniana requires more intensive targeted sampling to estimate its current status our approach is unique in taking full advantage of available but limited data and in detecting a high probability of change even for rare and patchily distributed species however it is presently limited to species meeting the strong assumptions required for maximum likelihood estimation with presence only data including very high detectability and representative sampling of its historical distribution,2014,0.97
Environmental adaptation in stomatal size independent of the effects of genome size.,cell sizes are linked across multiple tissues including stomata and this variation is closely correlated with genome size these associations raise the question of whether generic changes in cell size cause suboptimal changes in stomata requiring subsequent evolution under selection for stomatal size we tested the relationships among guard cell length genome size and vegetation type using phylogenetically independent analyses on 67 species of the ecologically and structurally diverse family proteaceae we also compared how genome and stomatal sizes varied at ancient among genera and more recent within genus levels the observed 60 fold range in genome size in proteaceae largely reflected the mean chromosome size compared with variation among genera genome size varied much less within genera 6 of total variance than stomatal size implying evolution in stomatal size subsequent to changes in genome size open vegetation and closed forest had significantly different relationships between stomatal and genome sizes ancient changes in genome size clearly influenced stomatal size in proteaceae but adaptation to habitat strongly modified the genome stomatal size relationship direct adaptation to the environment in stomatal size argues that new proxies for past concentrations of atmospheric co2 that incorporate stomatal size are superior to older models based solely on stomatal frequency,2014,0.505
Establishing a baseline for early detection of non-indigenous species in ports of the Canadian Arctic,the combination of global warming resource exploitation and the resulting increase in arctic shipping activity are expected to increase the risk of exotic species introductions to arctic waters in the near future here we provide for the first time a benthic invertebrate survey for non indigenous species nis from the canadian arctic coasts incorporating historical information to identify new records the top three ports at highest risk for introduction of nis of the canadian arctic were surveyed churchill manitoba deception bay quebec and iqaluit nunavut a total of 236 genera and species were identified based on cross referencing comparisons of contemporary and historical information on species composition and distributions 14 4 of the taxa identified can be considered new records within the port regions surveyed and 7 2 within the more extended adjacent surrounding regions increased survey effort is the most likely explanation for the majority of new occurrences however a small number of records n 7 were new mentions for canada and were categorized as cryptogenic since we could not confidently describe them as being either native or introduced further research is required to better understand the status of these new taxa this study provides a benchmark for early detection for benthic invertebrates in the region significant costs and intensive labor are involved in monitoring and in early detection surveys but they provide a great opportunity for identifying native and introduced biodiversity crucial to analyzing the changes taking place along one of the longest coastlines in the world the canadian arctic coast,2014,0.55
Range expansion and the breakdown of Bergmann's Rule in Red-Bellied Woodpeckers ( Melanerpes carolinus ),previous studies of northward expansion of breeding ranges of north american bird species have focused on correlated changes in climate and land use but very few studies have examined patterns of morphological change within the context of range expansion we used data from museum specimens to examine geographic and temporal variation in body size of the red bellied woodpecker melanerpes carolinus a species undergoing dramatic range expansion we plotted georeferenced occurrence data from christmas bird counts winter distributions going back to the year 1900 usgs breeding bird surveys summer distributions since 1966 and the holdings of twenty six natural history museums year round distributions since 1867 to document the historic range of m carolinus in decade increments christmas bird counts but not museum specimens indicate a trend of slow northward expansion beginning as early as the 1910s and all data sets show rapid expansion to the north and west since the 1950s average of 0 85u n latitude per decade and 1 06u w longitude per decade geographic variation in body size of specimens collected prior to the period of rapid expansion follows bergmannâ s rule with larger birds occurring in northern latitudes this pattern breaks down in the sample of birds collected after the onset of rapid expansion suggesting that warming temperatures since the 1950s have enabled northward range expansion in a species previously limited by cold birds collected at the northern boundary of their range before 1940 were larger than birds collected in recent decades from the same latitudes further supporting the hypothesis that red bellied woodpeckers have been released from a former ecological or physiological constraint in the face of climate warming,2014,0.947
Assembly of Plant Communities,communities are located within a larger species pool of potential colonists the study of community assembly considers the mechanisms by which local communities are formed from the species pool â dispersal from the species pool abiotic tolerance of colonists and biotic interactions can all influence membership in local communities â phenotypic similarities and differences of co occurring species can be used within limits to make inferences about the role of alternative processes contributing to community assembly in many plant groups close relatives tend to share similar phenotypic traits therefore patterns of phylogenetic relatedness within a community can also be used to make inferences about community assembly mechanisms â as the community and the species pool can be defined at a number of different spatial and temporal scales community assembly patterns often show strong scale dependence in some cases a single process can produce contrasting phenotypic patterns at different scales of analysis while in other cases different processes may have stronger influences on community assem bly at different scales â species pools are shaped by dispersal of lineages among biogeographic regions in situ speciation within regions and extinction the characteristics of the species pool often persist in local community patterns â community assembly studies are often limited in the extent to which specific mechanisms can be inferred from community pattern future work should focus on improved models of competition and coexistence dynamics in community assembly as well as methods for considering multitrophic interactions,2014,0.727
Comparative population genomics in animals uncovers the determinants of genetic diversity,genetic diversity is the amount of variation observed between dna sequences from distinct individuals of a given species this pivotal concept of population genetics has implications for species health domest ication management and conservation levels of genetic diversity seem to vary greatly in natural populations and species but the determinants of this variation and particularly the relative influences of species biology and ecology versus population history are still largely mysterious 1 2 here we show that the diversity of a species is predictable and is determined in the first place by its ecological strategy we investigated the genome wide diversity of 76 non model animal species by sequencing the transcriptome of two to ten individuals in each species the distribution of genetic diversity between species revealed nodetectable influence of geographic range or invasive status but was accurately predicted by key species traits related to parental investment long lived or low fecundity species with brooding ability were genetically less diverse than short lived or highly fecund ones our analysis demonstrates the influence of long term life history strategies on species response to short term environmental perturbations a result with immediate implications for conservation policies,2014,0.99
A “Sense of Place” in Public Participation in Scientific Research,public participation in scientific research ppsr within the natural sciences has been demonstrated as an effective strategy to expand cognitive knowledge and un derstanding of ecology with implications regarding individual perspectives attitudes and behaviors about the environment and feelings about the personal relevance of science yet the development of ppsr outcomes the processes through which they form and the set tings where they are shaped are still not fully understood because most ppsr takes place and is grounded in specific sites and socioecological contexts the relationships among ppsr participants and the places in which they explore collect and gather information are central to the ppsr experience nonetheless a dearth of empirical research on the interac tions between people and places in ppsr highlights a promising area of future scholarship drawing from theoretical traditions within geography and environmental psychology this article contends that ppsr experiences and outcomes both influence and are influenced by a â œsense of place â highlighting the significance of peopleâ place relationships in ppsr via a place based window this article calls for efforts that bridge multiple academic com munities to open innovative avenues for understanding natural science ppsr experiences the cognitive conative and affective outcomes of such encounters and the dynamics of c humanâ environment interactions,2014,0.052
"A preliminary geographic distribution map of Elachistocleis muiraquitan Nunes de Almeida & Toledo, 2012 (Amphibia: Anura: Microhylidae)",elachistocleis muiraquitan was recently described from fifteen specimens found at two sites in acre state northwestern brazil prior to the description of e muiraquitan individuals fitting the description of this species found in southeastern peru and northwestern bolivia were identified as elachistocleis bicolor a species associated with markedly different habitat and environmental conditions here we re identified these specimens and also propose the first map of e muiraquitanâ s potential distribution based on known localities along with climatic and environmental parameters,2014,0.63
Software as a Service for Supporting Biodiversity Conservation Decision Making,this paper presents e clouds as a tool to support biodiversity decision making offering a software as a service saas paradigm to execute computing and technic intensive applications such as species distribution models but mere access to these tools is not enough if usability and economy are not aligned with users interests this article presents a friendly interface hiding all the complexities of using a public cloud infrastructure containing an application supported by expert researchers and an architecture behind the scenes that minimizes the cost of using such a computational and technical infrastructure what results in a very attractive option for researchers and other stakeholders to get the most out of public clouds for their tasks,2014,0.163
The Use of Ecological Niche Modeling to Infer Potential Risk Areas of Snakebite in the Mexican State of Veracruz,background many authors have claimed that snakebite risk is associated with human population density human activities and snake behavior here we analyzed whether environmental suitability of vipers can be used as an indicator of snakebite risk we tested several hypotheses to explain snakebite incidence through the construction of models incorporating both environmental suitability and socioeconomic variables in veracruz mexico methodology principal findings ecological niche modeling enm was used to estimate potential geographic and ecological distributions of nine viper species in veracruz we calculated the distance to the species niche centroid dnc this distance may be associated with a prediction of abundance we found significant inverse relationships between snakebites and dncs of common vipers crotalus simus and bothrops asper explaining respectively 15 and almost 35 of variation in snakebite incidence additionally dncs for these two vipers in combination with marginalization of human populations accounted for 76 of variation in incidence conclusions significance our results suggest that niche modeling and niche centroid distance approaches can be used to mapping distributions of environmental suitability for venomous snakes combining this ecological information with socioeconomic factors may help with inferring potential risk areas for snakebites since hospital data are often biased especially when incidences are low,2014,0.398
CONSERVATION OF MEDI TERRANEAN LANDSCAPES (Editorial),mediterranean landscapes and ecosystems in the old world are characterized by long and strong human impacts and a high natural socio economic an d political diversity myers et al 2000 farina 2006 they harbor h igh levels of biodiversity and are often depending on human management naveh 2010 the variable and diverse mediterranean landscapes are an important global heritage and often understudied due to the political heterogeneity in the european asian and a frican countries bordering the mediterranean sea common efforts in conservation research and implementation are urgently needed olsvig whittaker et al 2012 regional differences similarities and synergies should be evaluated within this context an ad hoc committee for mediterranean conservation was established during 2012 under the umbrella of the european section of the society for conservation biology scb es this committee organized the symposium â œchanging mediterranean landscapesâ at the in ternational association of landscape ecology iale european congress â œchanging european landscapes landscape ecology local to global 8 12th september 2013 manchester uk and participants of the symposium provided research articles for this special issue,2014,0.188
The potential distribution of yellow bristle grass ( Setaria pumila ) in New Zealand,yellow bristle grass setaria pumila an invasive annual grass weed in north america africa australia and new zealand has become a problem on dairy farms in the upper north island to define its potential distribution in new zealand an eco climatic model was constructed using climex the model was parameterised using the known distribution of the species in its native range in eurasia and validated against its invaded range in north america the model predicted all known occurrences in new zealand and revealed extensive tracts of land in both the north and south islands that are currently climatically suitable yet according to current records unoccupied by the weed under climate change this potential distribution increases substantially these results imply that yellow bristle grass could become a much wider problem on dairy farms throughout new zealand and that management to limit its spread is justified,2014,0.29
Harnessing the power of a global network of citizen herpetologists by improving citizen science databases,citizen science has become a valuable addition to the tools of many fields of scientific research in recent years widespread availability of digital tools including inexpensive high resolution digital cameras precise gps locators in many phones cameras and as stand alone units and widespread access to the internat away from homes and offices has created unprecendented access to reference material for identificationm as well as allowed for submission of obeservations to online databases that compile knowledge gained by thousands of amateurs around the world every day these citizen scientists are for example helping astronomers identify disant celestial bodies helping biologists transk changes in plant and animal phenology at spatial and time scales never before possible and helping ornithologists monitor bird populations by sunmitting 92 000 field observations of birds every day herpetology as a field stands likewise to benefit greatly from contributions by citizen scientists indeed at least 66 citizen science projects are already collecting amphibian or reptile data table 1 and 43 of these are specific to amphibians and or reptiles these databases have contributed significantly to our understanding of amphibian and reptile distribution and biology however the majority of these databases are lacking critical components that would maximize the utility of their data to herpetologiits we argue that important advances in our understanding of reptile and amphibian distributionm abundance and community ecology could be achieved by improving tje collection of citizen science data through the use of a centralized database that uses a checklist based format to imply non detections allows the recording of effort informationm and encourages a maximal number of submission,2014,0.338
"The enigmatic Black Tinamou: Do distribution, climate, and vocalizations reveal more than one species?",the black tinamou tinamus osgoodi is a rare species with 2 recognized subspecies distributed locally this is one of the most poorly known tinamous few sound recordings exist and few behavioral or sighting records are found in the literature or in ornithological databases we compiled all the information on its geographic distribution and climate to provide a greater understanding of its current distribution we also compiled all available sound recordings of the species in order to perform bioacoustic analyses to evaluate differences between subspecies the 2 subspecies seem to be isolated by an ample distance and each inhabits an area with a distinct climate we also found some differences between their vocalizations future work should consider reevaluating the taxonomic status of the 2 subspecies conservation status of the resulting taxa must be reassessed although more information on their ecology and natural history is needed,2014,0.658
"Identifying plant traits associated with topographic contrasts in a rugged and diverse region (Klamath-Siskiyou Mts, OR, USA)",rugged topography aff ects species distributions and community composition by creating contrasting mesic cool moist and xeric warm dry microclimates on adjacent slopes th is microclimatic heterogeneity is thought to have contributed to species survival during past climate fl uctuations within a rugged and botanically rich region we asked what functional distributional and or biogeographic traits distinguished the species signifi cantly associated with xeric or mesic microclimates for each of 236 species in 4773 plots in the klamath siskiyou mountains we tested for signifi cant associations with mesic or xeric topographic microclimates inferred from high resolution topographic variables for the subset of species showing signifi cant associations we then compared their functional traits biogeographic origins and macroclimatic attributes to those of other species we also tested the dependence of topographic associations on elevation canopy cover and soil type many species in the region 40 showed signifi cant tendencies to be found only in either mesic or xeric topography â mesic â species tended to be of northern biogeographic origin and to have geographic ranges with higher mean precipitation â xeric â species had the opposite attributes species occurred more often in mesic microclimates when they occurred on low nutrient serpentine soils and were more often found in xeric microclimates at high elevations functional traits such as specifi c leaf area were not signifi cant predictors of species association with topographic microclimate biogeographic origins and the mean precipitation rather than temperature of species geographic ranges are the best indicators of species that are found in cool moist northerly or hot dry southerly microclimates,2014,0.987
Gap analysis and priorities for filling identified gaps in data coverage and quality,this report aims to assess the relevant data sources on biodiversity on a european and global scale the assessment particularly evaluates the gaps of available biodiversity information sources and after outlining the most important gaps to identify priorities for improving the data availability and to give recommendations of how the gaps can be closed the gap analysis has a focus on biodiversity i nformation on a european scale and is based on an assessment of current marine terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity data sources the gaps are evaluated against the needs of the different stakeholders this includes the demands from european policy li ke the eu biodiversity strategy to 2020 international relevant processes like the convention on biodiversity and the aichi biodiversity targets and the scientific community there are various requirements for biodiversity data and the gap analysis ai ms to check how far these requirements are met in present available data on the one hand t he underlying information needs to meet specific criteria so that it could be used for scientific analysis and on the other hand the data should fulfill the needs fo r policy makers on a european scale thus within the process of the gap analysis a set of categories were developed to define under which aspects the available biodiversity sources should be evaluated to assess the quality and coverage of the datasets t he results of the gap analysis will give some needed background information on the usability of data sources and datasets for other work packages of eu bon particularly for partners that will analyze the data for patterns processes and trends the resul ts of the gap analysis of data sources will not only focus on outlining main gaps in terms of data quality and coverage but also on drafting recommendations for improving data availability and data access on a european scale this will help to develop gui delines for european biodiversity information management as well as for data mobilization efforts and citizen science approaches in the project,2014,0.107
"Effects of recent and past climatic shifts on the genetic structure of the high mountain Yellow-spotted ringlet butterfly Erebia manto (Lepidoptera, Satyrinae): a conservation problem",mountain species have evolved important genetic differentiation due to past climatic fluctuations the genetic uniqueness of many of these lineages is now at risk due to global warming here we analyse allozyme polymorphisms of 1306 individuals 36 populations of the mountain butterfly erebia manto and perform species distribution models sdms as a consensus of analyses we obtained six most likely genetic clusters i pyrenees with massif central ii vosges iii v alps including the slovakian carpathians vi southern carpathians the vosges population showed the strongest genetic split from all other populations being almost as strong as the split between e manto and its sister species erebia eriphyle the distinctiveness of the pyrenees massif central group and of the southern carpathians group from all other groups is also quite high all three groups are assumed to have survived more than one full glacial interglacial cycle close to their current distributions with up hill and down slope shifts conforming climatic conditions in contrast with these well differentiated groups the three groups present in the alps and the slovakian carpathians show a much shallower genetic structure and thus also should be of a more recent origin as predicted by our sdm projections rising temperatures will strongly impact the distribution of e manto while the populations in the alps are predicted to shrink the survival of the three lineages present here should not be at risk the situation of the three other lineages is quite different all models predict the extinction of the vosges lineage in the wake of global warming and also the southern carpathians and pyrenees massif central lineages might be at high risk to disappear thus albeit global warming will therefore be unlikely to threaten e manto as a species an important proportion of the species intraspecific differentiation and thus uniqueness might be lost,2014,0.928
Progress in the 21st century: a Roadmap for the Ecological Society of Japan,the primary goal of the 60th anniversary symposium of the ecological society of japan esj was to re examine the role of the society the first of five lectures â œdevelopment of long term ecological research in japan â discussed the increasingly important role of long term and networked research studies ecological research in asia faces many challenges because asia features natural and anthropogenic landscapes with highly diverse ecosystems â œdeveloping strategies of the ecological society of japan for worldwide societies of ecology with special reference to strategies for asiaâ emphasized the role of esj in promoting ecological research and outreach in asia ecosystem sustainability is a key issue in both the theory and practice of ecosystem management a framework concept of an environmental and biodiversity cycle was proposed in the session â œlinking community and ecosystem dynamicsâ for understanding the mechanisms driving the sustainability of ecosystems ecosystem services are essential aspects of land use and conservation planning and management â œintegrating models of ecosystem services and land use changesâ reviewed recently developed models that simulate patterns of land use change and analyze its effects on ecosystem services and also recommended future directions for collaboration among researchers â œdisaster resilience and coastal ecologyâ highlighted the contributions of ecologists to evaluating the resilience of damaged coastal ecosystems and provided sound proposals to local communities and governments for rehabilitation plans the past achievements and future directions of esj were discussed by the panelists and the audience in â œpast and future of the ecological society of japan â,2014,0.1
Definition of the Mediterranean eco-regions and maps of potential pressures in these eco-regions,in recent decades it has been found useful to partition the ocean using the concept of ecoregionalisation where within each region it is assumed that environmental conditions and species associations are distinguishable and unique indeed all partitions of the ocean that has been proposed aimed to delineate the main oceanographical ecological patterns and discontinuities in order to provide a geographical framework for ecological studies and management purposes the aim of the present work is to integrate and process existing environmental data and biological observations from phytoplankton to top predators in order to define and characterize the mediterranean seaâ ecosystems the first step was to gather a comprehensive database informed on environmental conditions 22 parameters biological observations more than 1500 species from plankton to whales and human pressure halpern et al 2008 from online database cruises and published articles based on a novel multi clustering methodology and on environmental niche modelling a two levels partition of the mediterranean sea the biogeochemical regions biotopes and the ecoregions associated biocenoses are proposed this work allows us to characterize the main environmental divisions of the basin as well as the biodiversity and mean organisms size gradient at each trophic level finally an ecological characterization of each ecoregion is proposed along with a perturbation index based on 13 human pressures,2014,0.236
Note on some antlions from Mozambique (Neuroptera: Myrmeleontidae),faunal data concerning 4 poorly known species from southern mozambique are reported myrmeleon lanceolatus rambur 1842 is reported for the first time from mozambique,2014,0.474
"The collection and database of Birds of Angola hosted at IICT (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical), Lisboa, Portugal",the bird collection of the instituto de investigaã ã o cientã tica tropical lisbon portugal holds 5598 preserved specimens skins mainly from angola mozambique guinea bissau sã o tomã and principe and cape verde the subset collection from angola includes 1560 specimens which were taxonomically revised and georeferenced for the publication of this data paper the collection contains a total of 522 taxa including 161 species and 361 subspecies two species are classified by the iucn red list as endangered the wattled crane grus carunculata and the gabela bush shrike laniarius amboimensis and two are classified as vulnerable african penguin spheniscus demersus and the white headed vulture trigonoceps occipitalis the temporal span of the database ranges between 1943 and 1979 but 32 are from years 1958â 1959 and 25 from years 1968â 1969 the spatial coverage of the collection is uneven with 2 3 of the records representing only four of the eighteen provinces of the country namely huã la moxico namibe and cuanza sul it adds however valuable information for the huã la area of the angolan scarp which is probably a biodiversity hotspot of global conservation priority furthermore this georeferenced database adds invaluable bird information to the gbif network for one of the countries with highest but less known biodiversity in africa,2014,0.45
The Phylogeographic History and Contemporary Evolution of the Invasive Species Avena barbata Pott ex Link in California,understanding the factors that precipitate a successful colonization of a new geographic region is a major goal in both ecology and evolution in my doctoral thesis i examined evolutionary patterns ch 2 ecological patterns ch 3 and eco evolutionary processes ch 4 5 associated with the invasion of a highly selfing annual grass avena barbata pott ex link into california from the mediterranean basin because colonizing populations may experience severe genetic bottlenecks multiple introductions of different genetic variants may be an important source of variation facilitating adaptation to the novel habitat in the second chapter of my thesis i show that there have been at least three introductions of a barbata into california and that substantial spatial mixing has occurred between haplotypes within populations in california there was also evidence of population structure due to a north south cline although niche overlap between the endemic and novel habitat may facilitate biological invasions niche shifts may also occur during invasion in the third chapter a species distribution model sdm was employed to characterize and compare the niches in the iberian peninsula home range of a barbata to niches in california invaded range niche separation was observed between the two geographic regions suggesting that a barbata occupies a different environment in california and may be evolving traits with a known genetic basis may prove useful in tracking contemporary evolutionary change and provide insights on adaptive versus neutral processes in the fourth chapter i compared the contemporary frequency of two binary heritable characters lemma color and leaf sheath pubescence to that reported in past studies from the 1970s due to natural selection i found that light lemma color and leaf sheath pubescence had increased in frequency although intuition suggests that large plants should be at a selective advantage within populations recent discussion in the literature suggests the opposite the idea that small plants with lower total fecundity may be selectively favoured contradicts basic fisherian principles in the fifth chapter using a simulation and field data from a barbata recombinant inbred lines rils i show that individuals with large body size are always favored,2014,0.677
"The location, strength, and mechanisms behind marine biogeographic boundaries of the east coast of North America",classic biogeographic studies emphasized diff erences in species composition between regions to defi ne biogeographic prov inces and delimit biogeographic boundaries here we analyze the permeability of biogeographic boundaries to diff erent species to gain mechanistic insight into the processes that maintain species boundaries in the coastal ocean we identify sites with high frequencies of range boundaries using almost 1800 benthic marine invertebrates along the northwestern atlantic coast and address whether their magnitude and location vary as a function of species â taxonomy pelagic larval duration and depth distribution we observed clusters of species boundaries at cape hatteras cape cod and the bay of fundy that are largely independent of taxonomic group however the boundaries were permeable and asymmetric with a higher percentage of species shared across boundaries in the equatorward direction 82 than in the reverse direction 59 th is pattern was particularly strong for shallow species median occurrence depth 20 m pelagic larval duration was more important to explain distributions of boundaries for deep species median occurrence depth 20 m where species with long larval dispersal had signifi cantly higher occurrence of boundaries than species with short larval dispersal when they do exist species boundaries seem to be set by the interaction of currents depth distribution and pelagic larval duration importantly species boundaries tend to be pinned to regions of reduced water transport which might explain why species boundaries are concentrated in narrow geographical areas,2014,0.99
"A review of the Entocytheridae (Ostracoda) of the world: updated bibliographic and species checklists and global georeferenced database, with insights into host specificity and latitudinal patterns of species richness",the creation of biodiversity datasets freely available for the scientific community is a valuable task to stimulate global research on biodiversity among others the global biodiversity information facility gbif is a remarkable resource providing free online access to biodiversity data on many diverse taxonomic groups including ostracoda from both terrestrial and marine ecosystems more specific databases for ostracoda georeferenced data have been built e g nacode and omega some with freely available data however the entocytheridae a family of ostracods living commensal on other crustaceans with 220 living species representing the third non marine ostracod family in number of species has been remarkably under represented in the currently available biodiversity databases to cover this gap we present here a free access world database of entocytheridae published in gbif and review the current knowledge of the group by updating a bibliographic and species checklists of the entocytheridae we also analyse the host specificity of the group and the latitudinal species richness pattern in north and central america including 186 spp the current database includes 3509 georeferenced records from 220 species in contrast to just 44 entocytherid georeferenced records previously published in gbif in addition the updated species list accounts for 43 species and 2 genera that were not included in the previous compendium on entocytheridae published byhart hart in 1974 so as 40 species not included in the 2013 checklist provided by the catalogue of life we show that the specialisation in one unique host species is not the rule in entocytheridae and evidence an unusual latitudinal pattern of species richness in north and central american entocytherids most probably related to the biogeographic history of their hosts,2014,0.973
Cheilostome bryozoan diversity from the southwest Atlantic region: Is Antarctica really isolated?,during the cenozoic the break up of gondwana was accompanied by a gradual separation of its components and the subsequent establishment of the antarctic circumpolar current leading to a relative thermal and biogeographic isolation of the antarctic fauna however the zoogeographical affinities of several taxa from south america and antarctica have been subject to debate bringing into question the extent of antarctic isolation here we present new data on bryozoan species and their spatial distribution in the argentine patagonian ap region as well as an analysis of the bryozoological similarities between deep ranges from argentina and neighbouring regions a total of 108 species of cheilostome bryozoans 378 samples belonging to 59 genera was found five new genera and 36 new species were found in the ap region while 71 species were reported for the first time from argentina the bathymetric ranges of 94 species 87 were expanded and a high proportion of the identified species 44 4 also had an antarctic distribution the bryozoological affinities found in the current study between the nearest geographical neighbours are in agreement with the hypothesis of the sequential separation of gondwana during the cenozoic moreover a high number of shared species mainly from the slope were found in this study between the ap region and antarctica thus supporting the idea that the southern ocean may have been less isolated over geological time than once thought,2014,0.971
Mapping Species Distributions with MAXENT Using a Geographically Biased Sample of Presence Data: A Performance Assessment of Methods for Correcting Sampling Bias,maxent is now a common species distribution modeling sdm tool used by conservation practitioners for predicting the distribution of a species from a set of records and environmental predictors however datasets of species occurrence used to train the model are often biased in the geographical space because of unequal sampling effort across the study area this bias may be a source of strong inaccuracy in the resulting model and could lead to incorrect predictions although a number of sampling bias correction methods have been proposed there is no consensual guideline to account for it we compared here the performance of five methods of bias correction on three datasets of species occurrence one virtual derived from a land cover map and two actual datasets for a turtle chrysemys picta and a salamander plethodon cylindraceus we subjected these datasets to four types of sampling biases corresponding to potential types of empirical biases we applied five correction methods to the biased samples and compared the outputs of distribution models to unbiased datasets to assess the overall correction performance of each method the results revealed that the ability of methods to correct the initial sampling bias varied greatly depending on bias type bias intensity and species however the simple systematic sampling of records consistently ranked among the best performing across the range of conditions tested whereas other methods performed more poorly in most cases the strong effect of initial conditions on correction performance highlights the need for further research to develop a step by step guideline to account for sampling bias however this method seems to be the most efficient in correcting sampling bias and should be advised in most cases,2014,0.372
Sinfonevada: Dataset of Floristic diversity in Sierra Nevada forests (SE Spain),the sinfonevada database is a forest inventory that contains information on the forest ecosystem in the sierra nevada mountains se spain the sinfonevada dataset contains more than 7 500 occurrence records belonging to 270 taxa 24 of these threatened from floristic inventories of the sinfonevada forest inventory expert field workers collected the information the whole dataset underwent a quality control by botanists with broad expertise in sierra nevada flora this floristic inventory was created to gather useful information for the proper management of pinus plantations in sierra nevada this is the only dataset that shows a comprehensive view of the forest flora in sierra nevada this is the reason why it is being used to assess the biodiversity in the very dense pine plantations on this massif with this dataset managers have improved their ability to decide where to apply forest treatments in order to avoid biodiversity loss the dataset forms part of the sierra nevada global change observatory obsnev a long term research project designed to compile socio ecological information on the major ecosystem types in order to identify the impacts of global change in this area,2014,0.344
"Alaskan Heteroptera (Hemiptera): new records, associated data, and deletions",twenty seven species of heteroptera are recorded new to alaska specimen data for ten additional species reported from alaska without previously published data are also provided additionally four species previously reported from the state are removed from the alaska list of heteroptera,2014,0.678
Potential distribution of invasive alien species in the upper Ili river basin: determination and mechanism of bioclimatic variables under climate change,controlling alien species invasion requires a full understanding of the potential distribution of alien species and the functions of key environmental factors that influence such distribution in this study potential distributions of 28 invasive alien species under current and future bioclimatic conditions at the upper ili river basin the chinese part of the basin were predicted and the important bioclimatic variables that determine the distributions were examined under the current conditions the number of alien species ranged from 0 to 10 and the eastern part of the basin may not be influenced by invaded species under future conditions 0â 22 alien species may find these areas suitable for invasion the potential distributions of invasive plant species were determined mainly by precipitation related bioclimatic variables whereas temperature related variables were relatively more relevant for animal species bioclimatic conditions during the coldest and or driest month or quarter which is a period of 3 months may significantly affect potential distributions for both plant and animal species quantified analysis demonstrated that the number of species is likely to increase considerably with the increase in precipitation during the driest month particularly with a variation of 3 mm in the precipitation during the driest month more alien species may invade regions where the precipitation during the driest quarter under future conditions is 10 mm higher than the current conditions the effect of precipitation during the coldest quarter on species invasion is similar to that of precipitation during the driest quarter the higher the precipitation during the driest quarter under future conditions more than 9 mm than that under current conditions the higher will be the rate of alien species invasion in the study area,2014,0.977
"Range-wide ecological niche comparisons of parasite, hosts and dispersers in a vector-borne plant parasite system",aim to test whether the distribution of the mistletoe phoradendron californicum is mediated by host distributions host niche hypothesis hnh or by fac tors such as the mistletoeâ s autecology parasite niche hypothesis pnh or that of its vectors vector niche hypothesis vnh our null hypothesis is that the ecological niche of the mistletoe will not be distinct from that of its hosts or vectors alternatively mistletoe infections might appear in hosts only in regions where host distributions overlap suitable conditions for the parasite location sonoran and mojave deserts western north america methods we used ecological niche modelling approaches to summarize suitable environmental conditions for hosts infected and uninfected with mistletoes as well as for avian dispersers during winter and throughout the year we compared ecological niches among pairs of species using background similarity tests in relation to the climatic conditions available and accessible to each species results niche comparisons supported all pnh expectations but none of the predictions of hnh or vnh main conclusions hosts and dispersers of mistletoes generally have distinct ecological niches mistletoe infections occur in non random environmental subsets of host and disperser ecological niches mistletoe infections in different hosts however occur under similar climatic conditions hence in this system the parasite has a rather strictly circumscribed ecological niche and host species become infected with mistletoe only where they overlap its suitable areas,2014,0.797
"Visualizing Patterns of Genetic Landscapes and Species Distribution of Taxus wallichiana (Taxaceae), Based on GIS and Ecological Niche Models",the chinese yew china is now on the edge of extinction in order to understand the evolutionary processes that control the current taxus which is widely distributed in the himalayas and in southern diversity within this species at the genetic and ecological levels its genetic patterns and range dynamics must first wallichiana be identified and mapped this knowledge can then be applied in the development of an effective conservation strategy based on molecular data obtained from 48 populations of t we used gis based interpolation approach for the explicit visualization of patterns of genetic divergence and diversity and a number of potential evolutionary hotspots have been specifically identified within the genetic landscape maps within the maps of wallichiana genetic divergence and diversity five areas of high inter population genetic divergence and six areas of high intra population genetic diversity have been highlighted in a number of separate mountain regions and these evolutionary hotspots should have the priority to be protected furthermore four geographical barriers have been identified the eastern himalayas the yunnan plateau the hengduan mountains and the taiwan strait according to ecological niche modeling enm the populations of t within the sino himalayan forest floristic subkingdom experienced westward expansion from the periods of last inter glacial to last glacial maximum lgm following the lgm the distribution range overall became reduced and fragmented these findings challenge the wallichiana classic mode of contraction expansion in response to the last glaciation in conclusion our findings suggest that the changes in geographical landscapes and climate that occurred during the quaternary resulted in current genetic landscape patterns,2014,0.453
Conservation and use of genetic resources of underutilized crops in the Americas-A continental analysis,latin america is home to dramatically diverse agroecological regions which harbor a high concentration of underutilized plant species whose genetic resources hold the potential to address challenges such as sustainable agricultural development food security and sovereignty and climate change this paper examines the status of an expert informed list of underutilized crops in latin america and analyses how the most common features of underuse apply to these the analysis pays special attention to if and how existing international policy and legal frameworks on biodiversity and plant genetic resources effectively support or not the conservation and sustainable use of underutilized crops results show that not all minor crops are affected by the same degree of neglect and that the aspects under which any crop is underutilized vary greatly calling for specific analyses and interventions we also show that current international policy and legal instruments have so far provided limited stimulus and funding for the conservation and sustainable use of the genetic resources of these crops finally the paper proposes an analytical framework for identifying and evaluating a cropâ s underutilization in order to define the most appropriate type and levels of intervention international national local for improving its status,2014,0.196
"Niche and range size patterns suggest that speciation begins in small, ecologically diverged populations in North American monkeyflowers (Mimulus spp.)",closely related species e g sister taxa often occupy very different ecological niches and can exhibit large differences in geographic distributions despite their shared evolutionary history budding speciation is one process that may partially explain how differences in niche and distribution characteristics may rapidly evolve budding speciation is the process through which new species form as initially small colonizing populations that acquire reproductive isolation this mode of species formation predicts that at the time of speciation sister species should have highly asymmetrical distributions we tested this hypothesis in north american monkeyflowers a diverse clade with a robust phylogeny using data on geographical ranges climate and plant community attributes we found that recently diverged sister pairs have highly asymmetrical ranges and niche breadths relative to older sister pairs additionally we found that sister species occupy distinct environmental niche positions and that 80 of sister species have completely or partially overlapping distributions i e are broadly sympatric together these results suggest that budding speciation has occurred frequently in mimulus that it has likely taken place both inside the range and on the range periphery and that observed divergences in habitat and resource use could be associated with speciation in small populations,2014,0.966
Conservation status and lectotypfication of Alangium ridleyi (Cornaceae) in Singapore | Lahiru Wijedasa - Academia.edu,alangium ridleyi king is lectotypified and the conservation status updated from nationally extinct to endangered in singapore and endangered in peninsula malaysia,2014,0.354
Relict Endemism of Extant Rhineuridae (Amphisbaenia): Testing for Phylogenetic Niche Conservatism in the Fossil Record,rhineurid amphisbaenians are represented by a rich cenozoic fossil record in north america but today conisist of a single living species restricted to the florida peninsula such relict endemism may be the result of phylogenetic niche conservatism pnc the retention of ancestral traits preventing expansion into new environments most tests of pnc derive ancestral niche preferences from species extant ecologies while ignoring valuable paleontological information to test if pnc contributes to the restricted distribution of modern rhineura floridana we compare the species current environmental preferences temperature precipitation and soil to paleoenvironmental data from the rhineurid fossil record we find no evidence of pnc in modern r floridana as it also occurred in florida during drier glacial periods ancient rhineurids also exhibit tolerance to changing climates having undergone a shift from subtropical humid to semi arid savanna conditions during the eocene oligocene transition however rhineurids nearly disappear from north america after the middle miocene potentially due to the onset of prolonged freezing temperatures following the mid miocene climatic optimum this physiological limit of environmental tolerances could be interpreted as pnc for the entire family but also characterizes much of amphisbaenia emphasizing the relevance of the temporal as well as phylogenetic scale at which pnc is investigated anat rec 2014 â 2014 wiley periodicals inc,2014,0.629
Maternal Plasma and Amniotic Fluid Chemokines Screening in Fetal Down Syndrome,objective chemokines exert different inflammatory responses which can potentially be related to certain fetal chromosomal abnormalities the aim of the study was to determine the concentration of selected chemokines in plasma and amniotic fluid of women with fetal down syndrome method out of 171 amniocentesis we had 7 patients with confirmed fetal down syndrome 15thâ 18th weeks of gestation for the purpose of our control we chose 14 women without confirmed chromosomal aberration to assess the concentration of chemokines in the blood plasma and amniotic fluid we used a protein macroarray which allows the simultaneous determination of 40 chemokines per sample results we showed significant decrease in the concentration of 4 chemokines hcc 4 il 28a il 31 and mcp 2 and increase in the concentration of cxcl7 nap 2 in plasma of women with fetal down syndrome furthermore we showed decrease in concentration of 3 chemokines itac mcp 3 mif and increase in concentration of 4 chemokines ip 10 mpif 1 cxcl7 and 6ckine in amniotic fluid of women with fetal down syndrome conclusion on the basis of our findings our hypothesis is that the chemokines may play role in the pathogenesis of down syndrome defining their potential as biochemical markers of down syndrome requires further investigation on larger group of patients,2014,0.07
Dew-worms in white nights: High-latitude light constrains earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris) behaviour at the soil surface,soil is an effective barrier to light penetration that limits the direct influence of light on belowground organisms variation in aboveground light conditions however is important to soil dwelling animals that are periodically active on the soil surface a prime example is the earthworm lumbricus terrestris l the dew worm an ecosystem engineer that emerges nocturnally on the soil surface in the summer the northernmost populations of l terrestris are exposed to a time interval with no daily dark period during a two week period preceding the summer solstice we studied the constraints that boreal night illumination imposes on l terrestris surface activity by comparing their behaviour under ambient light with artificially induced darkness looking for evidence of geographical divergence in light response we compared the behaviour of native l terrestris jokioinen sâ w finland 60â 48â n with two markedly more southern populations from preston lancashire uk 53â 47â n and coshocton ohio usa 40â 22â n where the nights have a period of darkness throughout the year total latitudinal range ca 2300 km under ambient light conditions l terrestris emergence on the soil surface was diminished by half compared with the darkened treatment and it peaked at the darkest period of the night also mating rate decreased considerably under ambient light the native dew worms were generally the most active under ambient light they emerged earlier in the evening and ceased their activity later in the morning than dew worms from the two more southerly populations the differences in behaviour were however significant mainly between native and uk dew worms in the darkened treatment the behaviour of the three earthworm origins did not differ under the experimental conditions light condition was the dominant environmental factor controlling surface activity but elevated night time air temperature and humidity also encouraged dew worm emergence without discernible differences among geographical origins our results show that in boreal summer the high level of night illumination strongly limits soil surface activity of dew worms considering the important regulatory role of l terrestris in many ecosystem processes this can have significant corollaries in dew worm impacts on the environment although evidence for geographical differentiation in behaviour was obtained the results point to phenotypic flexibility in l terrestris light response,2014,0.325
Wild food in Europe: A synthesis of knowledge and data of terrestrial wild food as an ecosystem service,wild food is an iconic ecosystemservice that receives little attention in quantifying valuating and mapping studies due to the perceived low importance or due to lack of data here we synthesize available data on the importance of wild food as ecosystem service its spatial distribution and relations between supply demand and benefits in the european union eu covering all terrestrial wild food groups a wide variety of game 38 species mushrooms 27 species and vascular plants 81 species is collected and consumed throughout the eu income age gender possibilities for collecting and cultural factors explain the importance of wild food while the economic and nutritional values of wild food comprise a few thousands of the gdp or total consumption over 100 million eu citizens consume wild food collecting wild food is an appreciated recreational activity collecting and consuming wild food provide important cultural ecosystem services including recreation and sense of place because of these benefits wild food should be included in eu ecosystem service assessments better estimates could be made if better data on wild food abundance and production are available and by systematic inventories of participation in wild food collecting,2014,0.996
"Review of the genus Namadytes Hesse, 1969 (Insecta: Diptera: Mydidae: Syllegomydinae)",the mydidae genus namadytes hesse 1969 is reviewed it is known from five species primarily occurring in namibia the study of newly available material from both namibia and south africa deposited in several natural history collections results in the recognition of three species and new synonymy of two i e namadytespallidus hesse 1972 is a new junior synonym of namadytesmaculiventris hesse 1969 and namadytesprozeskyi hesse 1969 282 is a new junior synonym of namadytesvansoni hesse 1969 280 all three species are re described and comments on sexual dimorphism and intraspecific variation are made a dichotomous key for their identification is presented and illustrations and photographs are provided to support the descriptions and facilitate future identification distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots sensu conservation international and seasonal incidence with associated weather and climatic data are discussed for all species a morphological structure ventral to the halter and posterior to the metathoracic spiracle the infra halter sclerite is here newly termed,2014,0.742
Multiple cryptic refugia of forest grass Bromus benekenii in Europe as revealed by ISSR fingerprinting and species distribution modelling,despite not having been fully recognized the cryptic northern refugia of temperate forest vegetation in central and western europe are one of the most important in the holocene history of the vegetation on the subconti nent we have studied a forest grass bromus benekenii in 39 populations in central western and southern europe with the use of pcr issr fingerprinting the indices of genetic population diversity multivariate and bayesian analyses supplemented with species distribution modelling have enabled at least three putative cryptic northern refu gial areas to be recognized in western europeâ the cen tral and rhenish massifs in central europeâ the bohemiaâ moravia region and in the eastern western carpathians central poland is the regional genetic melt ing pot where several migratory routes might have met southern poland had a different postglacial history and was under the influence of an eastern western carpathian cryptic refugium more forest species should be checked in a westâ east gradient in europe to corroborate the hypoth esis on the western european glacial refugia electronic,2014,0.689
Classification of weevils as a data-driven science: leaving opinion behind,data and explicit taxonomic ranking criteria which minimize taxonomic change provide a scientific approach to modern taxonomy and classification however traditional practices of opinion based taxonomy i e mid 20th century evolutionary systematics which lack explicit ranking and naming criteria are still in practice despite phylogenetic evidence this paper discusses a recent proposed reclassification of weevils that elevates bark and ambrosia beetles scolytinae and platypodinae to the ranks of family we demonstrate that the proposed reclassification 1 is not supported by an evolutionary systematic justification because the apparently unique morphology of bark and ambrosia beetles is shared with other unrelated wood boring weevil taxa 2 introduces obvious paraphyly in weevil classification and hence violates good practices on maintaining an economy of taxonomic change 3 is not supported by other taxonomic naming criteria such as time banding we recommend the abandonment of traditional practices of an opinion based taxonomy especially in light of available data and resulting phylogenies,2014,0.11
Using fossil leaves as evidence for open vegetation,the ability to discriminate between open vegetation and closed forest in the fossil record is constrained by a paucity of suitable proxies taxonomy based proxies especially the floristic composition of fossil pollen assemblages provide the main tool for inferring vegetation type but this approach can be confounded by evolutionary changes in ecology especially for ancient fossil assemblages this paper considers a range of indicators of open vegetation that can be observed on fossil leaves we show that the presence of amphistomatic leaves i e leaves with stomata on both upper and lower surfaces is unambiguously associated with open vegetation in the ecologically diverse family proteaceae this linkage shows very high levels of evolutionary convergence and the relationship is not explained by climate similar relationships are also present in a wide range of other plant groups the combination of these empirical correlations and physiological theory suggests that there is a strong functional link between amphistomatic leaves and open vegetation theory says that amphistomy increases the efficiency of water transport and gas exchange by allowing two layers of high performance photosynthetic tissue to be proximal to sources of both carbon dioxide stomata and water veins however these benefits come at the cost of requiring thick leaves which are inefficient in shaded environments other leaf characteristics observable on fossils especially very thick cuticles the presence of thick lignified hypodermal layers and the presence of deeply encrypted stomata may also indicate the presence of open vegetation although the functional links between these traits and vegetation type are more indirect we propose that amphistomatic fossil leaves of dicotyledonous angiosperms provide a strong proxy for open vegetation but any inference will be enhanced by evidence from alternative proxies we also provide an example of the application of this proxy,2014,0.063
Host specificity testing and examination for plant pathogens reveals that the gall-inducing psyllid Calophya latiforceps is safe to release for biological control of Brazilian peppertree,brazilian peppertree schinus terebinthifolia raddi anacardiaceae is one of the worst upland exotic weeds in florida usa foreign exploration for natural enemies led to the discovery of a pit galling psyllid calophya latiforceps burckhardt hemiptera calophyidae in the state of bahia brazil in 2010 crawlers of c latiforceps stimulate the formation of galls on the leaves of s terebinthifolia resulting in leaf discoloration and in some cases leaf abscission to determine whether c latiforceps is a safe candidate for biological control of s terebinthifolia host specificity and the presence of selected plant pathogens were examined adult oviposition gall formation and adult survival of c latiforceps were examined on 89 plant species under no choice and choice conditions we found that c latiforceps laid eggs on plants in seven families however crawlers stimulated gall formation and completed development to adult only on s terebinthifolia all crawlers on non target plants died likely due to starvation caused either by the absence of a feeding stimulus or by a hypersensitive plant response under no choice conditions 10 of adults lived for 19 days on the target weed but adult survival was reduced to 3 days on non target plants choice testing revealed that females preferred to oviposit on s terebinthifolia compared to non target plants molecular methods and indicator host inoculations did not detect the presence of â candidatus liberibacter solanacearumâ â ca l asiaticusâ â ca l americanusâ â ca l africanusâ or plant viruses in adult c latiforceps we conclude that releasing c latiforceps in the usa will have extremely low risk to non target plants and provides another tool for the management of s terebinthifolia,2014,0.872
Landscape scale species distribution modeling across the Guiana Shield to inform conservation decision making in Guyana,species distribution modeling using museum and herbarium collections has been greatly facilitated by analytical algorithms such as maxent the ability to use herbarium and museum collections to inform conservation decision making can greatly enhance conservation efforts in biodiversity rich countries when human capacity and in country data are limited guyana is used as a case study for landscape scale biodiversity assessment under such constraints i compiled specimen records for seven taxon groups invertebrates amphibians reptiles birds mammals ferns and non seed plants and seed plants across the guiana shield south america to assess landscape scale biodiversity richness collector and taxonomic bias were addressed a priori in maxent by generating a bias surface layer to down weight areas of high collection intensity by smoothing the sampling distribution i summed modeled output for each taxon group to generate taxon group specific floral faunal and all taxa biodiversity density surfaces these surfaces were used to 1 identify areas of relative high biodiversity density 2 assess possible conservation areas and 3 compare modeled areas of conservation interest with those proposed by the government of guyana in addition i compared proposed conservation sites with the location of indigenous amerindian and non indigenous settlements and lands used for natural resource extraction i present three conservation scenarios based on the all taxa biodiversity surface i biodiversity only ii biodiversityand available lands and iii collaboration with indigenous peoples the conservation assessment used here provides an objective basis for selecting conservation sites model output can also be used to focus biodiversity assessments on poorly modeled and sampled locations,2014,0.135
Trends in Digital Cultural Heritage Management and Applications,we present some recent trends in the field of digital cultural heritage management and applications including digital cultural data curation interope r ability open linked data publishing crowd sourcing visualization platforms for digital cult ural heritage and applications we present some examples from research and development projects of music tuc in those areas,2014,0.193
New biological model to manage the impact of climate warming on maize corn borers,climate change can modify the development of insect pests and their impact on crops the study of future impacts on maize remains relatively unexplored here we modeled the distribution and development of the maize borer sesamia nonagrioides lef in europe using a 25 ã 25 km grid we studied the pest potential winter survival distribution and phenological development at three time horizons 2000 2030 and 2050 using the a1b scenario of the international panel on climate change ipcc a new model based on the lethal dose exposure concept was developed to simulate winter survival two approaches for the simulation of winter survival were compared the first using air temperature only as weather input named airms the second taking into account the fraction of larvae overwintering in the soil therefore considering also soil temperature named soilairms the survival model was linked to a phenological model to simulate the potential development results show that soil temperature is an essential input for correctly simulating s nonagrioides distribution the soilairms approach showed the best agreement 537 grid cells compared to the airms approach ∠2 039 grid cells nevertheless the airms approach allowed identifying areas where the agronomic practice suggested for controlling s nonagrioides should be considered ineffective this practice consists in uprooting and exposing the stubble on the soils surface for exposing larvae to winter cold the projections to 2030 and 2050 suggested an overall slight increase of more suitable conditions for the s nonagrioides in almost all the areas where it develops under the baseline in these areas s nonagrioides could become a new insect pest with a potential strong impact on maize this is the first attempt to provide extensive estimates on the effects of climate change on s nonagrioides distribution development and on possible management changes,2014,0.082
Global priorities for marine biodiversity conservation,in recent decades many marine populations have experienced major declines in abundance but we still know little about where management interventions may help protect the highest levels of marine biodiversity we used modeled spatial distribution data for nearly 12 500 species to quantify global patterns of species richness and two measures of endemism by combining these data with spatial information on cumulative human impacts we identified priority areas where marine biodiversity is most and least impacted by human activities both within exclusive economic zones eezs and areas beyond national jurisdiction abnj our analyses highlighted places that are both accepted priorities for marine conservation like the coral triangle as well as less well known locations in the southwest indian ocean western pacific ocean arctic and antarctic oceans and within semi enclosed seas like the mediterranean and baltic seas within highly impacted priority areas climate and fishing were the biggest stressors although new priorities may arise as we continue to improve marine species range datasets results from this work are an essential first step in guiding limited resources to regions where investment could best sustain marine biodiversity,2014,0.57
"Metadata management, interoperability and Linked Data publishing support for Natural History Museums",natural history museums nhms form a rich source of knowledge about earthâ s biodiversity and natural history however an impressive abundance of high quality scientific content available in nhms around europe remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers such as the lack of interconnection and interoperability between the management systems used by museums the lack of centralized access through a european point of reference such as europeana and the inadequacy of the current metadata and content organization the natural europe project offers a coordinated solution ateuropean level that aims to overcome those barriers in this article we present the architecture deployment and evaluation of the natural europe infrastruc ture allowing the curators to publish semantically describe and manage the museumsâ cultural heritage objects as well as disseminate them to europeana eu and biocase gbif additionally we discuss the methodology followed for the transition of the infrastructure to the semanticweb and the publishing of nhmsâ cultural heritage metadata as linked data supporting the europeana data model,2014,0.116
Towards Semantic Recommendation of Biodiversity Datasets based on Linked Open Data Categories and Subject Descriptors,conventional content based filtering methods recommend documents based on extracted keywords they calculate the similarity between keywords and user interests and return a list of matching documents in the long run this approach often leads to overspecialization and fewer new entries with respect to a userâ s preferences here we propose a seman tic recommender system using linked open data for the user profile and adding semantic annotations to the index linked open data allows recommendations beyond the con tent domain and supports the detection of new information one research area with a strong need for the discovery of new information is biodiversity due to their heterogeneity the exploration of biodiversity data requires interdisciplinary collaboration personalization in particular in recommender systems can help to link the individual disciplines in bio diversity research and to discover relevant documents and datasets from various sources we developed a first prototype for our semantic recommender system in this field where a multitude of existing vocabularies facilitate our approach,2014,0.108
Okoubaka Aubrevillei (Pelleg & Norman): A Synthesis of Existing Knowledge for Research and Conservation in West and Central Africa,okoubaka aubrevillei is the largest parasitic plant known to man it is a tropical tree species distributed within west and central africa concerns were drawn to the tree because of its rarity disjunct distribution in all its native range paucity of published scientific information and its hemi parasitic potentials this article gathered and synthesized all existing scientific information on the tree to provide a solid foundation for further research on the tree this article provided detailed information on its name etymology taxonomic history and geographical distribution including new locations for the tree ecological significance and behaviour within its range supported with an updated map illustrating its distribution within west and central africa the possible causes of its rarity in its range were identified and its hemi parasitic behaviour was hypothesized in addition ethnobotanical uses of the tree symbolism and dendrolatry and its significance in modern medicine were extensively discussed the paper concluded with highlights on prospects for immediate conservation management and research focus areas for the tree species,2014,0.145
A review of marine biodiversity information resources,although biodiversity of marine remains high it increasingly suffers from human interference and destruction the worldâ s largest open online georeferenced database is the ocean biogeographic information system obis it has information on a total of 120 000 species with 37 million records the world register of marine species worms has collected taxonomic information on 220 000 global marine species besides these two large databases three single taxa databases were established for marine organismsâ fishbase algaebase and hexacorallians of the world many databases on organisms are cross taxa and include both terrestrial and marine species such as encyclopedia of life eol col species 2000 integrated taxonomic information system itis wikispecies eti bioinformatics barcode of life bol genbank biodiversity heritage library bhl sealifebase marine species identification portal and fao fisheries and aquaculture fact sheets above databases were mainly established to focus on taxonomy and species descriptions the global biodiversity information facility gbif discover life aquamaps etc can provide integrated ecological distribution data user customized maps and data for download by changing the values of environmental factors such as water temperature and salinity in an established distribution model the distribution of a species can be predicted with different parameters websites of other organizations such as google earth ocean national geographic and ngos such as reefbase aim to raise public awareness on ocean conservation with rich and diversified content google images and google scholar are very useful in cooperating with keywords provided by marine biodiversity websites to complement the lack of images or references most of the above websites are linked to each other and thus users can access and query data conveniently to be useful for conservation biodiversity databases need both to promote public usage in addition to the integration and sharing of data in this article we build on a speech by rainer froese in paris to demonstrate how to use marine biodiversity data to conduct research on the impact of climate change on fish distribution finally we also briefly introduce the status of marine biodiversity databases in mainland china and taiwan including the cross strait collaboration as well as recommendations for how to link to global databases,2014,0.858
Completeness of digital accessible knowledge of the plants of Brazil and priorities for survey and inventory,aim biodiversity information is the focus of major initiatives aimed at assembling large scale primary data documentation â digital accessible knowledgeâ of the distribution of life on earth recent efforts within brazil have assembled a massive amount of such documentation for brazilian plants which we analyse in this study our aim is to identify areas representing gaps in current knowledge these gaps can guide future botanical exploration and discovery in brazil location brazil methods we assessed angiosperm inventories across brazil at diverse spatial scales using statistics that summarize inventory completeness in particular we assess the completeness of geographical knowledge of brazilian floras as measured in terms of geographical distance and climatic difference from well documented sites results spatial knowledge of brazilian angiosperms is very unevenly distributed well known sites are concentrated in eastern and southern regions whereas the remainder of the country remains poorly documented worse still in many regions areas lacking detailed botanical documentation coincide with areas of intense habitat destruction such that many such sites will never be documented scientifically main conclusions this study illustrates how biodiversity survey and inventory efforts can be guided by existing knowledge that is to the extent that existing biodiversity knowledge is made digital and openly available and to the extent that information is sufficiently comprehensive and informative spatial summaries of completeness such as that presented here offer clear and strategic directions for maximizing the yield of new knowledge from any de novo field efforts,2014,0.173
The anArchive taxonomic Checklist for Italian botanical data banking and vegetation analysis: Theoretical basis and advantages,in recent years research in botany was increasingly related with the use of large data sets and data banks in order to address emerging issues such as the severe risk of species habitats and biodiversity loss in this frame the anarchive taxonomic checklist an online synonymized list of botanical species names developed to support the botanical data banking and vegetation analysis is presented and discussed here the benefits deriving from such a supervised and referenced tool are emphasized they include the possibility to keep track of old and new species names pointing out the latest reviewed accepted scientific name and its synonyms and harmonizing different taxonomic points of view furthermore the list is open access and expert qualified customers can collaborate to its improvement the basic unit of the taxonomic checklist is an object including the taxon name at specific or when present infraspecific level the taxonomic frame stops at the level of family and ranks higher than genus ar,2014,0.472
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 61. New synonyms and new combinations in Cephaloziaceae and Cephaloziellaceae (Marchantiophyta),vã åˆa et al 2013 published some new combinations and synonyms of cephaloziaceae and cephaloziellaceae in the present note some additional synonyms and combinations based on newly studied material are presented,2014,0.316
A framework for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change: a case study of the Australian elapid snakes,frameworks that provide a system for assessing species according to their vulnerability to climate change can offer considerable guidance to conservation managers who need to allocate limited resources among a large number of taxa to date climate change vulnerability assessments have largely been based on projected changes in range size derived from the output of species distribution models sdms a criticism of risk assessments based solely on these models is that information on species ecological and life history traits is lacking accordingly we developed a points based framework for assessing species vulnerability to climate change that considered species traits together with the projections of sdms applying this method to the australian elapid snakes family elapidae we determined which species may be particularly susceptible in the future and assessed broad scale biogeographic patterns in species vulnerability by offering a more comprehensive and rigorous method for assessing vulnerability than those based solely on sdms this framework provides greater justification for resource allocation and can help guide decisions regarding the most appropriate adaptation strategies,2014,0.632
"New record of Aedes vittatus and Culiseta subochrea (Diptera: Culicidae) and their distribution from Shadegan Wetland, South Western Iran",this study was conducted in shadegan international wetland area south western iran mosquito larvae were collected from an urban site in the east of the wetland using dipping method in december 2011 mosquito larvae were identified using the morphology based keys the water quality parameters were measured during mosquito larvae collection using hq40d portable multi parameter meter titration method and turbidity meter from the late octo ber to late december 2011 a total of 1071 larvae were collected four species belonging to four genera including aedes vittatus bigot culex pipiens linnaeus culiseta subochrea edwards and ochlerotatus aedes caspius pallas sensu lato were identi fied and their distribution and some other aspects were reviewed and discussed recorded parameters in the pr esent study indicated that the water quality of the studied area was in a poor condition according to environmental protection agency and world hea lth organization water quality standards p 0 05 as per the authorsâ knowledge this was a new record for the studied area and khuzistan province regard ing the occurrence of ae vittatus and cs subochrea,2014,0.75
Georeferencing Animal Specimen Datasets,for biodiversity research the field of study that is concerned with the richness of species of our planet it is of the utmost importance that the location of an animal specimen find is known with high precision due to specimens often having been collected over the course of many years their accompanying geographical data is often ambiguous or may be very imprecise in this article we detail an approach that utilizes reasoning and external sources to improve the geographical information of animal finds our main contribution is to show that adding external domain knowledge improves the ability to georeference locations over traditional methods that focus solely on analyzing geographical information additionally our system is able to output the confidence it has in its decisions through a confidence measure based on the difficulty of the instance and the steps undertaken to disambiguate it our results show that adding domain knowledge to the georeferencing process increases the accuracy 5km from 38 9 to 61 7 and from 47 0 to 74 5 25km furthermore we reduce the mean distance by more than half from 251 1km to 114 5km and decrease the number of records for which no reference can be found from 26 2 to 7 4,2014,0.139
TraitBank: Practical semantics for organism attribute data,encyclopedia of life eol has developed a new web accessible repository traitbank http eol org traitbank to better serve scientific discovery eol s traitbank aggregates and manages attribute trait data across the tree of life including morphological descriptors life history characteristics habitat preferences and interactions with other organisms this paper describes how traitbank uses darwin core and other standards to ingest and subsequently manage trait data in a virtuoso triple store in a way that leverages eolâ s extensive existing infrastructure we add to and improve the semantics of both data and metadata in order to improve interoperability across the domains of morphology ecology and genomics the system takes a semantic approach and also emphasizes practicality and ease of use for experts and non experts in addition to aggre gating trait data in existing literature or databases traitbank contributes to community based ontologies and sets the stage for a rapid rise in annotations about attributes on specimens and citizen science observations,2014,0.091
Semantics in Support of Biodiversity Knowledge Discovery: An Introduction to the Biological Collections Ontology and Related Ontologies,the study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances genetic sequences trait measurements and ecological niches complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols a review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the darwin core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way existing ontologies such as the gene ontology and others in the open biological and biomedical ontologies obo foundry library provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions in this paper we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new biological collections ontology the environment ontology and the population and community ontology these ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes for example collection extraction and preservation techniques as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling together they encompass studies of 1 individual organisms including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens 2 bulk or environmental samples e g gut contents soil water that include dna other molecules and potentially many organisms especially microbes and 3 survey based ecological observations we discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic organismal and ecosystem levels of organization we argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery integration and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers,2014,0.247
Climate change hastens the urgency of conservation for range-restricted plant species in the central-northern Mediterranean region,with the consensus that human activities are leading to dangerous interference in earthâ s climate there has been growing policy pressure for clear quantification and attribution of the resulting biological impacts despite the exceptional diversity in the mediterranean biome largely due to the number of rare and endemic plant species the effect of future climate change on present mediterranean plant species has only been examined in a few studies in this study we presented an analysis of the potential effects of climate change on 22 plant species whose range is restricted to central northern mediterranean region we used species distribution modelling to test whether projected climate change may affect the current suitability of speciesâ habitat to evaluate possible future threats due to climate change and to test any relationship between extinction risk and ecological and life history predictors the studied species were predicted to lose some 50 of their current range by 2020 similarly the probability of occurrence in known localities was predicted to drop drastically by 2020 our results support a relationship between biological characteristics and range contractions although the mediterranean species were projected to lose a lower amount of habitat than alpine ones species with restricted geographic range seem to be more prone to climate change effects than widespread ones our results emphasize the need for imme diate monitoring and conservation actions and suggest that rare species might be useful for monitoring the conservation status of habitat in relationship to the effects of global warming in the mediterranean region,2014,0.849
Anticipating potential biodiversity conflicts for future biofuel crops in South Africa: incorporating spatial filters with species distribution models,liquid biofuel production will likely have its greatest impact through the large scale changes in land use that will be required to meet the production of this energy source in this study we develop a framework which integrates species distribution models land cover land capability and various biodiversity conservation data to identify natural areas with i a potentially high risk of transformation for biofuel production and ii potential impact to biodiversity conservation areas the framework was tested in the eastern cape of south africa a region which has been earmarked for the cultivation of biofuels we expressly highlight the importance of biodiversity conservation data that enhance the protected area network to limit potential losses by comparing the overlap of areas likely to become cultivated with i protected areas ii biodiversity hot spots not currently protected and iii â ecological corridorsâ areas deemed important for the migration of species and linkages between important biodiversity areas results indicate that the introduction of spatial filters reduced available land from 54 to 45 including all biodiversity scenarios reduced available land to 15 of the eastern cape should avoiding conflict with biodiversity conservation areas be prioritized the assumption that agriculturally marginal land offers a unique opportunity to be converted to biofuel crops does not consider the biodiversity value attached to these areas we highlight that decisions relating to large scale transformation and changes in land cover need to take account of broader ecological processes determining the spatial extent of threats to biodiversity facilitates the analysis of spatial conflict this article demonstrates a proactive approach for anticipating likely habitat transformation and provides an objective means of mitigating potential conflict with existing land use and biodiversity,2014,0.28
Ecological factors driving plant species diversity in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc and other central Aegean islands,background the south aegean volcanic arc sava one of the most notable geological structures of the mediterranean sea is floristically well known nevertheless the factors that contribute to shaping the plant species richness of the sava remain unclear aims to investigate the factors that affect plant species richness and identify plant diversity hotspots in the sava and other central aegean islands methods we used stepwise multiple regression to test the relationship between a number of environmental factors and plant species richness in the sava as well as the residuals from the speciesâ area linear regressions of native greek and cycladian endemic taxa as indicators of relative species richness results the area was confirmed to be the most powerful single explanatory variable of island species richness while geodiversity maximum elevation and mean annual precipitation explained a large proportion of variance for almost all the species richness measures anafi amorgos and folegandros were found to be endemic plant diversity hotspots conclusions we have demonstrated that geodiversity is an important factor in shaping plant species diversity in the cyclades while mean annual precipitation human population density and maximum elevation were significant predictors of the greek endemics present in the cyclades finally anafi was found to be a plant diversity hotspot in the south aegean sea,2014,0.921
BowerBird: A home for Australian citizen science,museum victoria entomologist ken walker explains the burgeoning options for citizen science with the launch of australia s first socially interactive website for citizen science,2014,0.354
Field validation supports novel niche modeling strategies in a cryptic endangered amphibian,many studies employ ecological niche models enms to predict speciesâ occurrences in undersampled regions generally without field confirmation here we use field surveys to test the relative utility of four potential refinements to the standard enm approach 1 altering model complexity based on aicc 2 selecting background points from a biologically informed region 3 using target group background to account for sampling bias in existing localities and 4 using many rangewide localities global model versus fewer proximal localities local model to construct geographically restricted range predictions we used maxent to predict new localities for the california tiger salamander ambystoma californiense an endangered species that often goes undocumented due to its cryptic lifestyle we followed this with a field survey of 260 previously unsampled potential breeding sites in solano county ca and used the resulting presence absence data to compare all factorial combinations of the four model refinements using a new application of the kruskalâ wallis test for enm outputs our field surveys led to the discovery of 81 previously undocumented breeding localities for the california tiger salamander and demonstrated that enms could be significantly improved by utilizing target group background to account for spatial sampling bias and local models to focus model output on the subregion of the range being surveyed our results clearly demonstrate the potential for local models to outperform global models and we recommend supplementing traditional maxent global models that utilize all known localities with local models particularly when species occupy geographically structured heterogeneous habitat types we also recommend using target group background since the improvement we observed when including it in our models was significant and very similar to that documented by previous studies most importantly we emphasize the importance of field verification to enable rigorous statistical comparisons among models,2014,0.17
Alien Roadside Species More Easily Invade Alpine than Lowland Plant Communities in a Subarctic Mountain Ecosystem,effects of roads on plant communities are not well known in cold climate mountain ecosystems where road building and development are expected to increase in future decades knowledge of the sensitivity of mountain plant communities to disturbance by roads is however important for future conservation purposes we investigate the effects of roads on species richness and composition including the plant strategies that are most affected along three elevational gradients in a subarctic mountain ecosystem we also examine whether mountain roads promote the introduction and invasion of alien plant species from the lowlands to the alpine zone observations of plant community composition were made together with abiotic biotic and anthropogenic factors in 60 t shaped transects alpine plant communities reacted differently to road disturbances than their lowland counterparts on high elevations the roadside species composition was more similar to that of the local natural communities less competitive and ruderal species were present at high compared with lower elevation roadsides while the effects of roads thus seem to be mitigated in the alpine environment for plant species in general mountain plant communities are more invasible than lowland communities more precisely relatively more alien species present in the roadside were found to invade into the surrounding natural community at high compared to low elevations we conclude that effects of roads and introduction of alien species in lowlands cannot simply be extrapolated to the alpine and subarctic environment,2014,0.854
Time is an affliction: Why ecology cannot be as predictive as physics and why it needs time series,ecological systems depend on both constraints and historical contingencies both of which shape their present observable system state in contrast to ahistorical systems which are governed solely by constraints i e laws historical systems and their dynamics can be understood only if properly described in the course of time describing these dynamics and understanding long term variability can be seen as the mission of long time series measuring not only simple abiotic features but also complex biological variables such as species diversity and abundances allowing deep insights in the functioning of food webs and ecosystems in general long time series are irreplaceable for understanding change and cruicially inherent system variability and thus envisaging future scenarios this nonewithstanding current policies in funding and evaluating scientific research discourage the maintenance of long termseries despite a clear need for long term strategies to cope with climate change timeseries are cruicial for a pursuit of the much invoked ecosystem approach and to the passage from simple monitoring programmes large scale and long term earth observatories â thus promoting a better understanding of the causes and effects of change in ecosystems the few ongoing long timeseries in european waters must be integrated and networked so as to facilitate the formation of nodes of a series of observatories which together should allow the long term management of the features and characteristics of european waters human capacity building in this region of expertise and a stronger societal involvement are also urgently needed since the expertise in recognizing and describing species and therefore recording them reliably in the context of timeseries is rapidly vanishing from the european scientific community,2014,0.121
Impact of plant invasions on local arthropod communities: a meta-analysis,summary invasive plants can have a major impact on local plant and animal communities however effects of plant invasions on arthropod communities and the potential drivers have rarely been studied we present a meta analysis of 56 studies on the impact of plant invasions on abundance and richness of local arthropod communities moreover we study the role of five invader and habitat attributes to assess their influence on the direction and magnitude of effect on arthropod communities the time since introduction woody versus herbaceous invaders presence of native congeners canopy cover of the invader and single versus multiple invaders we found that overall invaded habitats had a 29 percent lower arthropod abundance and a 17 percent lower taxonomic richness compared to non invaded habitats woody invaders had a stronger negative impact on arthropod communities than herbaceous invaders reducing abundance and richness by as much as 47 and 19 percent respectively synthesis our study demonstrates that arthropod communities are negatively affected by plant invasions which may have substantial effects on other ecosystem features such as pollination food web dynamics decomposition as well as habitat heterogeneity loss of arthropod diversity is generally directly associated with loss of plant species richness therefore the reduction we see could be causally connected to the effect of the invader on the habitat the physical dominance of woody invaders compared to herbaceous invaders could be a main driver for this effect,2014,0.23
Introduced and invasive cactus species-a global review.,understanding which species are introduced and become invasive and why are central questions in invasion science comparative studies on model taxa have provided important insights but much more needs to be done to unravel the context dependencies of these findings the cactus family cactaceae one of the most popular horticultural plant groups is an interesting case study hundreds of cactus species have been introduced outside their native ranges a few of them are among the most damaging invasive plant species in the world we reviewed the drivers of introductions and invasions in the family and seek insights that can be used to minimise future risks we compiled a list of species in the family and determined which have been recorded as invasive we also mapped current global distributions and modelled the potential global distributions based on bioclimatic data of known invasive taxa finally we identified whether invasiveness is phylogenetically clustered for cacti and whether particular traits are correlated with invasiveness only 57 of the 1922 cactus species recognised in this treatment have been recorded as invasive there are three invasion hotspots south africa 35 invasive species recorded australia 26 species and spain 24 species however there are large areas of the world with climates suitable for cacti that are at risk of future invasion in particular parts of china eastern asia and central africa the invasive taxa represent an interesting subset of the total species pool there is a significant phylogenetic signal invasive species occur in two of the three major phylogenetic clades and in 13 of the 130 genera this phylogenetic signal is not driven by human preference i e horticultural trade moreover all invasive species are from five of the 12 cactus growth forms finally invasive species tend to have significantly larger native ranges than non invasive species and none of the invasive species are of conservation concern in their native range these results suggest fairly robust correlates of invasiveness that can be used for proactive management and risk assessments,2014,0.992
"Stratigraphic paleoecology of the Valle di Manche section (Crotone Basin, Italy): A candidate GSSP of the Middle Pleistocene",macro benthic assemblages fromthe lower tomiddle pleistocene of thevalle dimanche vdm section crotone basin southern italy were used to assess the value of merging paleoecological quantitative patterns into a sequence stratigraphic framework two way cluster and detrended correspondence dca analyses were applied to the macrofossil data matrix comprising 22 samples 157 species and 5761 specimens specifically two way cluster analysis allowed for the characterization of five shelf related biofacies and four sub biofacies along section biofacies change along the vdmgenerally supported previous sequence stratigraphic interpreta tions and suggests that faunal turnover is the result of habitat tracking dca stratigraphic curves dc1 sample scores calibrated to the depth preferences of extant species provided quantitative estimates of bathymetry and the assessment of related parameters e g grain size sedimentation turbidity when plotted stratigraphically calibrated dc1 scores highlight themagnitude of relative sea level fluctuations at the scale of the section aswell as individual sequences and systems tracts additionally dca derived paleobathymetric trends track the oscillations of the î 18o record indicative of global sea level change based on this comparison it is held that macro benthic assemblages once supported by a robust statistical interpretation can be employed successfully as a proxy for î 18o depicting the variability in local water depths the potential of this approach is especially high for studies in shallow water depositional settings where dependable î 18o data are typically difficult to obtain,2014,0.415
Publishing and Sharing Sensitive Data,this guide outlines best practice for the publication and sharing of sensitive research data in the australian context the guide follows the sequence of steps that are necessary for publishing and sharing sensitive data as outlined in the â publishing and sharing sensitive data decision treeâ figure 1 next page it provides the detail and context to the steps in this decision tree references for further reading are provided for those that are interested,2014,0.233
The Digital Atlas of Ordovician Life: digitizing and mobilizing data for paleontologists and the public,a new online resource ã the digital atlas of ordovician life exploring the fauna of the cincinnati regionã www ordovicianatlas org provides a tool for exploring the diversity systematics biogeography and stratigraphy of late ordovician fossils of the cincinnati ohio region this atlas ha s been developed using georeferen ced specimen based data that have been newly digitized as part of a collaborative project to mobilize species occurrence data for public use the goals of t his project are to digitize specimens of late or dovician katian fossils from the type ci ncinnatian series that crop out in the cincinnati ohio usa region develop a comprehensive online atla s of the fossils and develop outreach materials for k 16 grad e school through college education and avocational paleontologists,2014,0.431
Status and prospects of DNA barcoding in medically important parasites and vectors,for over 10 years dna barcoding has been used to identify specimens and discern species its potential benefits in parasitology were recognized early but its utility and uptake remain unclear here we review studies using dna barcoding in parasites and vectors affecting humans and find that the technique is accurate accords with author identifications based on morphology or other markers in 94â 95 of cases although aspects of dna barcoding vouchering marker implicated have often been misunderstood in a newly compiled checklist of parasites vectors and hazards barcodes are available for 43 of all 1403 species and for more than half of 429 species of greater medical importance this is encouraging coverage that would improve with an active campaign targeting parasites and vectors,2014,0.615
Springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) of the Prairie Grasslands of Canada,collembola also known as â œspringtailsâ are common components of many soil systems including grasslands the published studies from canadian grasslands that explore soil microarthropod communities suggest that both the diversity and densities of collembola are low compared with those in other habitats e g forest systems and other fauna groups e g acari very few studies however document and describe canadian grassland collembola at the species level and all major grassland areas of canada are undersampled for collembola for grasslands outside the prairies ecozone no record of sampling was found for collembola in southern ontario tallgrass systems nor has there been a concerted effort of collection in bunchgrass sagebrush habitats of british columbia despite the paucity of direct information from canada studies from the midcentral united states and elsewhere provide the basis for a potential species level checklist in particular species from the following families are expected to dominate species diversity in canadian grasslands isotomidae entomobryidae hypogastruridae and sminthuridae the dearth of species level knowledge is due to the lack of taxonomic expertise for the collembola in canada,2014,0.528
Natural History Collections as Emerging Resources for Innovative Education,there is an emerging consensus that undergraduate biology education in the united states is at a crucial juncture especially as we acknowledge the need to train a new generation of scientists to meet looming environmental and health crises digital resources for biology now available online provide an opportunity to transform biology curricula to include more authentic and inquiry driven educational experiences digitized natural history collections have become tremendous assets for research in environmental and health sciences but to date these data remain largely untapped by educators natural history collections have the potential to help transform undergraduate science education from passive learning into an active exploration of the natural world including the exploration of the complex relationships among environmental conditions biodiversity and human well being by incorporating natural history specimens and their associated data into undergraduate curricula educators can promote participatory learning and foster an understanding of essential interactions between organisms and their environments,2014,0.138
Seeking the flowers for the bees: Integrating biotic interactions into niche models to assess the distribution of the exotic bee species Lithurgus huberi in South America,the wood boring bee lithurgus huberi ducke apidae megachilinae lithurgini is arguably an exotic species to south america this solitary bee is the only representative in the western hemisphere of the old world genus lithurgus and likely a conspecific with the indo australian species lithurgus atratus l huberi appears to have reached the continent at least 100 years ago when it was discovered and described because this species seems to be oligolectic on pollen of convolvulaceae flowers in south america we attempted to integrate this biotic interaction plantâ bee relationships to our species distribution model sdm procedures to predict its potential distribution in south america the modeled distribution of seven l huberi s host plant species did not improve the algorithmsâ ability to predict its distribution but it produced constrained ranges these results suggest that our biotic variables are not independent of the abiotic variables used mostly related to climate we employed five modeling algorithms envelope score garp mahalanobis distance support vector machines and maxent but only the former two showed a good performance when predicting the occurrence of both the host plant species and l huberi our results indicate that this exotic pollinator is mainly distributed in eastern northeastern central and southwestern south america with few suitable areas in the amazon region we also highlight suitable areas for future surveys and present new occurrence records,2014,0.771
The Northernmost Populations of Tetraspora Gelatinosa (Chlorophyta) from Spitsbergen,this article describes the morphological characteristics of the populations of green alga tetraspora gelatinosa growing in the stressful arctic conditions 77â 00â 22â n 015â 32â 54 33â e we present the first detailed morphological characteristics of this spe cies from such a high latitude populations from both stagnant and flowing waters were studied depending on the type of habitat their mucilaginous colonies thalli have differ ent shapes but the structure size and the placement of the vegetative cells akinetes and ameboid forms as well as the pseudocilia morphology of both populations were very simi lar literature data on the distribution of t gelatinosa indicate that it is a cosmopolitan spe cies our data are compared with some characteristic features of this species growing in dif ferent geographical and climatic zones no significant differences were found in the morphology of the colonies compared nor in the location and the inner structure of cells how ever there were slight differences in cell size between the populations from warm and cold zones,2014,0.559
The Republic of Open Science: The institution’s historical origins and prospects for continued vitality | UNU-MERIT,in most modern economies scientific and technological research activities are conducted in two distinct organizational modes commercially oriented r d based upon proprietary information and noncommercial open science when taken together and kept in proper balance these form a complementary pair of institutionally differentiated sub systems each can work to amplify and augment the productivity of the other thereby spurring long term economic growth and improvements of social welfare in knowledge driven societies this paper considers the difference between historical origins of open science and its modern critically important role in the allocation of research resources the institutional structure of the republic of open scienceâ generally is less well understood and has less robust self sustaining foundations than the familiar non cooperative market mechanisms associated with proprietary r d although they are better suited for the conduct of exploratory science they also remain more vulnerable to damages from collateral effects of shifts in government policies particularly those that impact their fiscal support and regulatory environments after reviewing the several challenges that such policy actions during the 20th century s closing decades had posed for continued effective collective explorations at the frontiers of scientific knowledge the discussion examines the responses that those developments elicited from academic research communities those reactions to the threatened curtailment of timely access to data and technical information about new research methods and findings took the form of technical and organizational innovations designed to expand and enhance infrastructural protections for sustained open access in scientific and scholarly communications they were practical bottom up initiatives to provide concrete domain relevant tools and organizational routines whose adoption subsequently could be and in the event were reinforced by top down policy guidelines and regulatory steps by public funding agencies and international bodies the non politicized nature of that process as well as its largely effective outcomes should be read cautiously as positive portents of the future vitality of the republic of open science and of those societies that recognize protect and adequately support this remarkable social innovation,2014,0.01
Distribution patterns in the native vascular flora of iceland,the aim of our study was to reveal biogeographical patterns in the native vascular flora of iceland and to define ecological factors responsible for these patterns we analysed dataset of more than 500 000 records containing information on the occurrence of vascular plants analysis of ecological factors included climatic derived from worldclim data topographic calculated from digital elevation model and geological bedrock characteristics variables spherical k means clustering and principal component analysis were used to detect biogeographical patterns and to study the factors responsible for them we defined 10 biotic elements exhibiting different biogeographical patterns we showed that climatic temperature related and topographic variables were the most important factors contributing to the spatial patterns within the icelandic vascular flora and that these patterns are almost completely independent of edaphic factors bedrock type our study is the first one to analyse the biogeographical differentiation of the native vascular flora of iceland,2014,0.185
Invading the Mediterranean Sea: biodiversity patterns shaped by human activities,human activities such as shipping aquaculture and the opening of the suez canal have led to the introduction of nearly 1 000 alien species into the mediterranean sea we investigated how human activities by providing pathways for the introduction of alien species may shape the biodiversity patterns in the mediterranean sea richness of red sea species introduced through the suez canal lessepsian species is very high along the eastern mediterranean coastline reaching a maximum of 129 species per 100 km2 and declines towards the north and west the distribution of species introduced by shipping is strikingly different with several hotspot areas occurring throughout the mediterranean basin two main hotspots for aquaculture introduced species are observed the thau and venice lagoons certain taxonomic groups were mostly introduced through specific pathways â fish through the suez canal macrophytes by aquaculture and invertebrates through the suez canal and by shipping hence the local taxonomic identity of the alien species was greatly dependent on the dominant maritime activities interventions and the related pathways of introduction the composition of alien species differs among mediterranean ecoregions such differences are greater for lessepsian and aquaculture introduced species the spatial pattern of native species biodiversity differs from that of alien species the overall richness of native species declines from the north western to the south eastern regions while the opposite trend is observed for alien species the biodiversity of the mediterranean sea is changing and further research is needed to better understand how the new biodiversity patterns shaped by human activities will affect the mediterranean food webs ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services,2014,0.988
"Scientific names of organisms: attribution, rights, and licensing",background as biological disciplines extend into the big data world they will need a names based infrastructure to index and interconnect distributed data the infrastructure must have access to all names of all organisms if it is to manage all information those who compile lists of species hold different views as to the intellectual property rights that apply to the lists this creates uncertainty that impedes the development of a much needed infrastructure for sharing biological data in the digital world findings the laws in the united states of america and european union are consistent with the position that scientific names of organisms and their compilation in checklists classifications or taxonomic revisions are not subject to copyright compilations of names such as classifications or checklists are not creative in the sense of copyright law many content providers desire credit for their efforts conclusions a blue list identifies elements of checklists classifications and monographs to which intellectual property rights do not apply to promote sharing authors of taxonomic content compilers intermediaries and aggregators should receive citable recognition for their contributions with the greatest recognition being given to the originating authors mechanisms for achieving this are discussed,2014,0.244
"Congener diversity, topographic heterogeneity and human-assisted dispersal predict spread rates of alien herpetofauna at a global scale",understanding the factors that determine rates of range expansion is not only crucial for developing risk assessment schemes and management strategies for invasive species but also provides important insight into the ability of species to disperse in response to climate change however there is little knowledge on why some invasions spread faster than others at large spatiotemporal scales here we examine the effects of human activities species traits and characteristics of the invaded range on spread rates using a global sample of alien reptile and amphibian introductions we show that spread rates vary remarkably among invaded locations within a species and differ across biogeographical realms spread rates are positively related to the richness of native congeneric species and human assisted dispersal in the invaded range but are negatively correlated with topographic heterogeneity our findings highlight the importance of environmental characteristics and human assisted dispersal in developing robust frameworks for predicting species range shifts,2014,0.814
Where are the wild things? Why we need better data on species distribution,aim the effects of ongoing global change are causing increasing concern about the ability of species or biomes to shift or adapt tremendous efforts have been made to develop ever more sophisticated species distribution models to provide forecasts for the future of biodiversity all these models rely on species occurrence data either for calibration or validation here we evaluate i whether distribution data diverge among widely used sources for supposedly well known taxa and ii to what extent these divergences affect species distribution models location europe as an example methods we compared the distribution maps of 21 of the most common european trees according to four large scale putatively reliable sources of distribution data for each species we compared the outputs of correlative species distribution models built using occurrence data from each of these sources of data we also investigated how discrepancies in large scale occurrence data affected the validation scores of two process based tree distribution models results maps of tree occurrence diverged in 8â 74 of the forested area depending on species these discrepancies affected projections of niche models for example 22â 75 of the area projected as suitable by at least one model generated using one source of data was not projected as such by all other models for most species this proportion increased under scenarios of climate change whatever the model used to a lesser extent uncertainties on current species distributions also affect the validation score of process based distribution models main conclusions reliable widely used sources of occurrence data strongly diverge even for well known taxa â the most common european trees scientists and stakeholders should acknowledge this gap in knowledge since accurate data are a prerequisite to providing stakeholders with robust forecasts on biodiversity participatory science programmes and remote sensing techniques are promising tools for rapidly gathering such data,2014,0.778
"Registry of non-native species in the Two Seas region countries (Great Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands)",this dataset represents a registry of species that are not native but recorded to live in the wild of at least one of the four countries that comprise the two seas area i e great britain france belgium and the netherlands for each of the 6 661 species subspecies and hybrids listed we provide detailed information on its status in each country taxonomic affiliation and environment inhabited the data were collected by review of 36 web and print based sources over an eight month period further systematic scanning of three of the most relevant scientific journals i e neobiota aquatic invasions and bioinvasions records recovered 19 additional relevant publications from which information was included in the registry as a result the registry will serve as a basis for developing effective cross boundary strategies to manage and control non native species which can have severe ecological and economic impacts the registry can further be used as a general reference for both scientists and practitioners as well as a tool to assess reliability and comprehensiveness of other well known databases such as the daisie portal,2014,0.651
Entomofaune associée à la culture de cucurbites oléagineuses africaines ( <i>Lagenaria siceraria</i> Molina (Standl. 1930) et <i>Citrullus lanatus</i> Thumb (Matsum &amp; Nakai 1916)) et impact des ravageurs sur la production,the fruit production of african oleaginous cucurbit plants is severely limited by insect pests here we conducted an inventory of the entomofauna associated with lagenaria siceraria molina standl and citrullus lanatus thumb matsum nakai two african cucurbites in parallel to assessing the damage that insect pests cause to these plants and their impact on fruit yield we subsequently conducted randomized experiments on treated and control plots of 49m2 of area plots were treated with cypercal 50 ec 50 g l of cypermetrin and furadan 5g 50 g kg of carbofuran insects collected from plots were identified and counted we also assessed the attack rate on plants and fruit yield number and weight of fruit and seedlings seventy one species belonging to 41 families from 10 insect orders were identified coleoptera hymenoptera diptera lepidoptera orthoptera homoptera heteroptera dictyoptera odonata and dermaptera the main pests on cucurbit plants were chrysomelidae lamprocopa occidentalis aulacophora foveicolis aulacophora africana asbecesta cyanipennis ootheca mutabilis and lilioceris livida coccinellidae henosepilachna elaterii and henosepilachna reticulata and meloidae mylabris holosericea fifty percent of plants were healthy on treated plots versus 0â 33 on control the number of fruits on treated plots 37 16 â 2 99 for l siceraria and 42 33 â 2 58 for c lanatus were significantly p 0 001 higher compared to control 29 33 â 4 67 for l siceraria and 31 33 â 3 5 for c lanatus the yield on treated plots 222 39 â 15 78 kg ha for l siceraria and 127 4 â 8 16 kg ha for c lanatus were significantly p 0 001 higher compared to control 144 4 â 14 52 kg ha for l siceraria and 88 18 â 8 09 kg ha for c lanatus in conclusion this study demonstrated that by reducing pest populations and damages insecticide treatments improved cucurbit production more than 40,2014,0.162
Using species distributions models for designing conservation strategies of Tropical Andean biodiversity under climate change,biodiversity in the tropical andes is under continuous threat from anthropogenic activities projected changes in climate will likely exacerbate this situation using species distribution models we assess possible future changes in the diversity and climatic niche size of an unprecedented number of species for the region we modeled a broad range of taxa 11 012 species of birds and vascular plants including both endemic and widespread species and provide a comprehensive estimation of climate change impacts on the andes we find that if no dispersal is assumed by 2050s more than 50 of the species studied are projected to undergo reductions of at least 45 in their climatic niche whilst 10 of species could be extinct even assuming unlimited dispersal most of the andean endemics comprising ∠5 of our dataset would become severely threatened 50 climatic niche loss while some areas appear to be climatically stable e g pichincha and imbabura in ecuador and nariã o cauca valle del cauca and putumayo in colombia and hence depict little diversity loss and or potential species gains major negative impacts were also observed tropical high andean grasslands pã ramos and punas and evergreen montane forests two key ecosystems for the provision of environmental services in the region are projected to experience negative changes in species richness and high rates of species turnover adapting to these impacts would require a landscape network based approach to conservation including protected areas their buffer zones and corridors a central aspect of such network is the implementation of an integrated landscape management approach based on sustainable management and restoration practices covering wider areas than currently contemplated,2014,0.898
Distributional records of Ross Sea (Antarctica) Tanaidacea from museum samples stored in the collections of the Italian National Antarctic Museum (MNA) and the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).,here we present distributional records for tanaidacea specimens collected during several antarctic expeditions to the ross sea the italian pnra expeditions v 1989 1990 xi 1995 1996 xiv 1998 1999 xix 2003 2004 xxv 2009 2010 and the new zealand historical new zealand oceanographic institute nzoi 1958 1961 and recent tan0402 bioross voyage 2004 and tan0802 ipy caml oceans survey 20 20 voyage 2008 expeditions tanaidaceans were obtained from bottom samples collected at depths ranging from 16 to 3543 m by using a variety of sampling gears on the whole this contribution reports distributional data for a total of 2953 individuals belonging to 33 genera and 50 species all vouchers are permanently stored in the italian national antarctic museum collection mna section of genoa italy and at the national institute of water and atmospheric research niwa invertebrate collection wellington new zealand,2014,0.808
An Overview of Salicornia Genus: The Phytochemical and Pharmacological Profile,salicornia l chenopodiaceae is a genus of annual apparently leafless halophytic herb that have articulated and succulent stems the salicornia species comprise the most salt tolerant land plant and frequently occur in saline areas the use of glasswort as food is referred by the forensic palynology as a reality at least from 550 years ago nowadays it is much appreciated as a gourmet product in europe but particularly in asian countries where is used in fresh salads and pickles some of the salicornia species display applications on folk medicine for treatment of bronchitis hepatitis and diarrhea and showed important biological properties such as antioxidant anti inflammatory hypoglycemic and cytotoxic activities the phythochemical studies on this genus reported the presence of fatty acids sterols saponins chlorogenic acid derivatives alkaloids flavonoids and other kind of phenolic compounds the purpose of this review is to highlight the advances in salicornia genus knowledge by presenting its biological and medicinal applications phytochemical studies and the relationship between the isolated compounds with the described biological and or medicinal properties,2014,0.159
Spatial bias in the GBIF database and its effect on modeling species' geographic distributions,species distribution modelling in combination with databases of specimen distribution records is advocated as a solution to the problem of distributional data limitation in biogeography and ecology the global biodiversity information facility gbif a portal that collates digitized collection and survey data is the largest online provider of distribution records however all distributional databases are spatially biased due to uneven effort of sampling data storage and mobilization such bias is particularly pronounced in gbif where nation wide differences in funding and data sharing lead to huge differences in contribution to gbif we use a common eurasian butterfly aglais urticae as an exemplar taxon to provide evidence that range model quality is decreasing due to the spatial clustering of distributional records in gbif furthermore we show that such loss of model quality would go unnoticed with standard methods of model quality evaluation using evaluations of model predictions of the swiss distribution of the species we compare distribution models of full data with data where a subsampling procedure removes spatial bias at the cost of record numbers but not of spatial extent of records we show that data with less spatial bias produce better predictive models even though they are based on less input data our subsampling routine may therefore be a suitable method to reduce the impact of spatial bias to species distribution models our results warn of automatized applications of species distribution models to distributional databases as has been advocated and implemented as internal model evaluation did not show the decline of model quality with increased spatial bias but rather the opposite while expert evaluation clearly did,2014,0.153
"Bioclimatic evaluation of geographical range in Fragaria (Rosaceae): Consequences of variation in breeding system, ploidy and species age",the evaluation of the intrinsic and extrinsic forces that determine geographical range sizes and niche breadth is key to the understanding of species distributions and for informing the conservation of biodiversity fragaria rosaceae contains the economically important cultivated strawberry fragaria ã ananassa subsp ananassa and numerous wild species using georeferenced species records and global bioclimatic data we describe the bioclimatic niches for 21 fragaria spp and investigate the relationship between their niches and geographical range size breeding system ploidy and time since divergence we found no evidence of phylogenetic signal for bioclimatic niches there was also no relationship between ploidy and geographical or bioclimatic range area but geographical range area was significantly greater for species that were capable of self fertilization in addition we found a significant decelerating relationship between species age and geographical range area overall our results suggest that fragaria spp although similar in morphology and life history show high levels of divergence in bioclimatic niches and significant over dispersion along some bioclimatic gradients suggesting evolutionary lability in physiology and climate tolerance as a consequence wild species will remain a valuable resource for cultivated strawberry sustainability especially under changing future climate,2014,0.956
Assessing the exposure of lion tamarins (Leontopithecus spp.) to future climate change,understanding how biodiversity will respond to climate change is a major challenge in conservation science climatic changes are likely to impose serious threats to many organisms especially those with narrow distribution ranges small populations and low dispersal capacity lion tamarins leontopithecus spp are endangered primates endemic to brazilian atlantic forest baf and all four living species are typical examples of these aggravating conditions here we integrate ecological niche modeling and gis based information about baf remnants and protected areas to estimate the exposure i e the extent of climate change predicted to be experienced by a species of current suitable habitats to climate change for 2050 and 2080 and to evaluate the efficacy of existing reserves to protect climatically suitable areas niche models were built using maxent and then projected onto seven global circulation models derived from the a1b climatic scenario according to our projections the occurrence area of l caissara will be little exposed to climate change western populations of l chrysomelas could be potentially exposed while climatically suitable habitats will be maintained only in part of the eastern region protected areas that presently harbor large populations of l chrysopygus and l rosalia will not retain climatic suitability by 2080 monitoring trends of exposed populations and protecting areas predicted to hold suitable conditions should be prioritized given the potential exposure of key lion tamarin populations we stress the importance of conducting additional studies to assess other aspects of their vulnerability i e sensitivity to climate and adaptive capacity and therefore to provide a more solid framework for future management decisions in the context of climate change,2014,0.672
Approaches to Development of Common Information Resource on Species Biodiversity,the analysis of international and russian experience of biodiversity database developing allowed us to reveal that international gbif standard is expedient to use for development of unified russian biodiversity database gbif is an universal system which aggregates and unifies information from many data sources unified species registers and data darwin core format is used in gbif to develop russian segment of the gbif darwin core is needed to improve to add information about an accuracy of geographical position of species finding and a type of species habitat species registers in existing databases must be unified for this,2014,0.603
A Century of Change in Kenya's Mammal Communities: Increased Richness and Decreased Uniqueness in Six Protected Areas,the potential for large scale biodiversity losses as a result of climate change and human impact presents major challenges for ecology and conservation science governments around the world have established national parks and wildlife reserves to help protect biodiversity but there are few studies on the long term consequences of this strategy we use kenya as a case study to investigate species richness and other attributes of mammal communities in 6 protected areas over the past century museum records from african expeditions that comprehensively sampled mammals from these same areas in the early 1900 s provide a baseline for evaluating changes in species richness and community structure over time we compare species lists assembled from archived specimens 1896 1950 to those of corresponding modern protected areas 1950 2013 species richness in kenya was stable or increased at 5 out of 6 sites from historical to modern times beta diversity in contrast decreased across all sites potential biases such as variable historical vs modern collection effort and detection of small bodied rare and low visibility species do not account for the observed results we attribute the pattern of decreased beta diversity primarily to increased site occupancy by common species across all body size classes despite a decrease in land area available to wildlife our data do not show the extinctions predicted by species area relationships moreover the results indicate that species area curves based solely on protected areas could underestimate diversity because they do not account for mammal species whose ranges extend beyond protected area boundaries we conclude that the 6 protected areas have been effective in preserving species richness in spite of continuing conversion of wild grasslands to cropland but the overall decrease in beta diversity indicates a decline in the uniqueness of mammal communities that historically characterized kenya s varied landscape,2014,0.941
AN UPDATED ACCOUNT OF THE NAME CHANGES OF THE DICOTYLEDONOUS PLANT SPECIES INCLUDED IN THE VOL: III (1939) & VOL: IV (1940) OF “FLORA OF ASSAM”,all the major monumental floras of the world have most of the plants included in their old names which are now regarded as synonyms in north east india â œflora of assamâ is an important flora as it includes result of pioneering floristic work on angiosperms gymnosperms in the region but in this flora the same problems of name changes appear before the new researchers therefore an attempt is made here to prepare an updated account of the new names against their old counterparts of the plants included in the 3 rd 4 th volumes of the flora on the basis of recent standard taxonomic literatures earlier the name changes of the plants included in the 1 st 2 nd volumes are already published this is the second part of the work in this the unresolved names are not touched only the confirmed ones are taken into account in the process new names of 531 dicotyledonous plant species included in the concerned flora are compiled out,2014,0.179
"Integrating Fossils, Phylogenies, and Niche Models into Biogeography to reveal ancient evolutionary history: the Case of Hypericum (Hypericaceae).",in disciplines such as macroevolution that are not amenable to experimentation scientists usually rely on current observations to test hypotheses about historical events assuming that the present is the key to the past biogeographers for example used this assumption to reconstruct ancestral ranges from the present distribution of extant species yet under scenarios of high extinction rates the biodiversity we observe today might not be representative of the historical diversity and this could result in incorrect biogeographic reconstructions here we introduce a new approach to incorporate into biogeographic inference the temporal spatial and environmental information provided by the fossil record as a direct evidence of the extinct biodiversity fraction first inferences of ancestral ranges for those nodes in the phylogeny calibrated with the fossil record are constrained to include the geographic distribution of the fossil second we use fossil distribution and past climate data to reconstruct the climatic preferences and potential distribution of ancestral lineages over time and use this information to build a biogeographic model that takes into account ecological connectivity through time to show the power of this approach we reconstruct the biogeographic history of the large angiosperm genus hypericum which has a fossil record extending back to the early cenozoic unlike previous reconstructions based on extant species distributions our results reveal that hypericum stem lineages were already distributed in the holarctic before diversification of its crown group and that the geographic distribution of the genus has been relatively stable throughout the climatic oscillations of the cenozoic geographical movement was mediated by the existence of climatic corridors like beringia while the equatorial tropical belt acted as a climatic barrier preventing hypericum lineages to reach the southern temperate regions our study shows that an integrative approach to historical biogeography that combines sources of evidence as diverse as paleontology ecology and phylogenetics could help us obtain more accurate reconstructions of ancient evolutionary history it also reveals the confounding effect different rates of extinction across regions have in biogeography sometimes leading to ancestral areas being erroneously inferred as recent colonization events,2014,0.297
"Interspecific competition affects evolutionary links between cavity nesting, migration and clutch size in Old World flycatchers (Muscicapdae)",the ecology of cavity nesting in passerine birds has been studied extensively yet there are no phylogenetic comparative studies that quantify differences in life history traits between cavity and open nesting birds within a passerine family we test existing hypotheses regarding the evolutionary significance of cavity nesting in the old world flycatchers muscicapidae we used a multi locus phylogeny of 252 species to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cavity nesting and to quantify correlations between nest types and life history traits within a phylogenetic generalized linear model framework we found that cavity nesting species are larger than open nesting species and that maximum clutch sizes are larger in cavity nesting lineages in addition to differences in life history traits between nest types species that breed at higher latitudes have larger average and maximum clutch sizes and begin to breed later in the year gains and losses of migratory behaviour have occurred far more often in cavity nesting lineages than in open nesting taxa suggesting that cavity nesting may have played a crucial role in the evolution of migratory behaviour these findings identify important macro evolutionary links between the evolution of cavity nesting clutch size interspecific competition and migratory behaviour in a large clade of old world songbirds,2014,0.756
"Contribution To the Flora of the South Aegean Volcanic Arc: Kimolos Island (Kiklades, Greece)",the island of kimolos located in the western kiklades in greece constitutes together with milos polyaegos anafi and the santorini island group the central part of the south aegean volcanic arc the flora of kimolos consists of 443 taxa 70 of which are under a statute of protection 30 are greek endemics and 225 are reported here for the first time we show that kimolos has the highest percentage of greek endemics in the south aegean volcanic arc the known distribution of the endemics sedum eriocarpum subsp eriocarpum and anthemis rigida subsp liguliflora is expanded being reported for the first time for the phytogeographical region of the kiklades the floristic cross correlation between kimolos and other parts of the south aegean volcanic arc by means of sã rensenâ s index revealed that its phytogeographical affinities are somewhat stronger to anafi than to neighbouring milos,2014,0.357
Areas of endemism and threatened flora in a Mediterranean hotspot: Southern Spain,a new methodology combining the concepts of endemicity and threat in order to provide an objective and highly accurate selection of protected areas is defined this is a new method to recognize areas of endemism which combines the results yielded by ndm program based on the optimality criterion and those obtained using marxan software designed to ensure the representation of species in the management of biodiversity the method has been tested using the endemic and threatened vascular flora of the south of the iberian peninsula andalusia eleven areas of endemism have been identified in this territory sierra nevada sierra bermeja and sierra tejeda y almijara stand out primarily although most of the areas dealt with in our study are already efficiently protected the intermountain depression known as the hoya de baza an arid area and sierra de gã dor are exceptions this new methodology provided a useful tool in the fine tuning of the selection of areas of endemism a more precise and flexible selection of scale dependent endemicity areas was accomplished in this manner the combination of both criteria endemicity and threat not only provides a reliable representation of areas of endemism but also optimum efficiency in terms of endemicity and presence threatened of species this approach offers a more objective and flexible strategy which can be implemented on different scales a lot of alternatives can be generated so the same conservation objective can be achieved by different combinations of solutions this is a great advantage for the prioritization of territories meriting conservation,2014,0.346
Reaching Consensus in Crowdsourced Transcription of Biocollections Information,crowdsourcing can be a cost effective method for tackling the problem of digitizing historical bio collections data and a number of crowd sourcing platforms have been developed to facilitate interaction with the public and to design simple human intelligence tasks however the problem of reaching consensus on the response of the crowd is still challenging for tasks for which a simple majority vote is inadequate this paper a describes the challenges faced when trying to reach consensus on data transcribed by different workers b offers consensus algorithms for textual data and a consensus based controller to assign a dynamic number of workers per task and c proposes further enhancements of future crowd sourcing tasks in order to minimize the need for complex consensus algorithms experiments using the proposed algorithms show up to a 45 fold increase in ability to reach consensus when compared to majority voting using exact string matching in addition the controller is able to decrease the crowd sourcing cost by 55 when compared to a strategy that uses a fixed number of workers,2014,0.052
Using biodiversity databases to verify and improve descriptions of tree species climatic requirements,understanding tree species climatic adaptability as well as climatic conditions within their natural distributions is crucial for managing forests for both commercial and conservation objectives under climate change multi million dollar investments in biodiversity databases are providing forestry professionals with freely accessible tools to carry out these kinds of analyses for many tree species the climatic requirements of hundreds of tree species have been described in the commercially available forestry compendium developed by cab international but these descriptions have often relied on expert opinion where information is lacking it is desirable that descriptions of tree species climatic requirements should as far as possible be explicit quantitative and based on specific observations this paper describes how the atlas of living australia ala and the global biodiversity information facility gbif can provide specific observations to assist verifying and where necessary improving descriptions of tree species climatic requirements it focuses mainly on australian species as the ala is one of the most sophisticated biodiversity databases currently available for a single country however the ala also has international relevance as australian eucalypts and acacias are important plantation species in many countries data in the gbif complement the ala data by providing very useful information on where australian tree species are growing outside australia analyses of a commercially important species eucalyptus nitens and a lesser known species e botryoides demonstrate how descriptions of climatic requirements can be verified and if necessary improved however the general methods described have the potential to be applied to many tree species some of the advantages and disadvantages of these systems are discussed and possible improvements are suggested,2014,0.95
Description of the AQEM/STAR invertebrate database,this database contains the macro invertebrate data that were collected during the aqem and star projects samples were taken in 14 european countries using the multi habitat sampling mhs method as well as the rivpacs methodology for selected sites taxa were identified to the most precise achievable level additionally the database contains information on hydromorphology and environmental parameters the latter include stressor gradients along which the samples were taken supplementary fish macrophyte and diatom data from the star project are separately available and can be linked to the invertebrate database the aqem and star projects were funded by the eu 5th framework programme fp5,2014,0.382
"Suitable, reachable but not colonised: seasonal niche duality in an endemic mountainous songbird",the realized distribution of animals is often delimited by climatic factors which define next to the specific habitat and food availability their species specific potential distribution we studied the environmental limitations affecting the realized breeding and wintering distributions of the citril finch carduelis citrinella one of the few endemic bird species of european mountain ranges to assess the environmental limits that shape the seasonal distribution we used species distribution models sdms derived from macroclimate in combination with land cover information our data suggest a high congruence between the potential modelled breeding distribution of the citril finch and the currently known breeding sites indicating a high level of niche filling the unusual absence in several suitable breeding habitats at the eastern and northern range limit eastern alps carpathians bavarian forest harz mountains fichtelgebirge krkonoå e mountains is likely linked to a combination of both missing resources and restricted physiological migration capacities from the available wintering grounds since the accomplished migratory distances hardly exceed more than 500 km it seems likely that the distance to the main wintering areas is too large for exceeding eastern and northern range limits we discuss the differences in sdm outcomes when including distal predictor variables instead of using proximal predictors alone and highlight the importance of considering a seasonal niche duality to gain more insights into complex range effects in species with seasonal ranges,2014,0.838
The need for an integrated biodiversity policy support process – Building the European contribution to a global Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON),biodiversity is threatened on a global scale and the losses are ongoing in order to stop further losses and maintain important ecosystem services programmes have been put into place to reduce and ideally halt these processes a whole suite of different approaches is needed to meet these goals one major scientific contribution is to collate integrate and analyse the large amounts of fragmented and diverse biodiversity data to determine the current status and trends of biodiversity in order to inform the relevant decision makers to contribute towards the achievement of these challenging tasks the project eu bon was developed the project is focusing mainly on the european continent but contributes at the same time to a much wider global initiative the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon which itself is a part of the group of earth observation system of systems geoss eu bon will build on existing infrastructures such as gbif lifewatch and national biodiversity data centres in europe and will integrate relevant biodiversity data from on ground observations to remote sensing information covering terrestrial freshwater and marine habitats a key feature of eu bon will be the delivery of relevant fully integrated data to multiple and different stakeholders and end users ranging from local to global levels through development and ap plication of new standards and protocols eu bon will enable greater interoperability of different data layers and systems provide access to improved analytical tools and services and will provide better har monised biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes from citizen science efforts to long term research programs to mainstream future data collecting furthermore eu bon will support biodiversity science policy interfaces facilitate political decisions for sound environmental management and help to conserve biodiversity for human well being at different levels ranging from communal park management to the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes additionally the project will strengthen european capacities and infrastructures for environmental information management and sustainable development the following paper outlines the framework and the approach that are pursued,2014,0.095
Niche conservatism among non-native vertebrates in Europe and North America,niche conservatism the hypothesis that niches remain constant through time and space is crucial for the study of biologi cal invasions as it underlies native range based predictions of invasion risk niche changes between native and non native populations are increasingly reported however it has been argued that these changes arise mainly because in their novel range species occupy only a subset of the environments they inhabit in their native range and not because they expand into environments entirely novel to them here using occurrences of 29 vertebrate species native to either europe or north america and introduced into the other continent we assess the prevalence of niche changes between native and non native populations and assess whether the changes detected are caused primarily by native niche unfi lling in the non native range rather than by expansion into novel environments we show that niche overlap between native and non native populations is generally low because of a large degree of niche unfi lling in the non native range th is most probably refl ects an ongoing colonization of the novel range as niche changes were smaller for species that were introduced longer ago and into a larger number of locations niche expansion was rare and for the few species exhibiting larger amounts of niche overlap an unfi lling of the niche in the native range e g through competition or dispersal limitations is the most probable explana tion th e fact that for most species the realized non native niche is a subset of the realized native niche allows native range based niche models to generate accurate predictions of invasion risk th ese results suggest that niche changes arising during biological invasions are strongly infl uenced by propagule pressure and colonization processes and we argue that introduc tion history should be taken into account when evaluating niche conservatism in the context of biological invasions,2014,0.933
Molecules and models indicate diverging evolutionary effects from parallel altitudinal range shifts in two mountain Ringlet butterflies,quaternary climatic oscillations caused severe range expansions and retractions of european biota during the cold phases most species shifted to lower latitudes and altitudes and expanded their distribution range northwards and to higher elevations during the warmer interglacial phases these range shifts produced contrasting distribution dynamics forming geographically restricted distribution patterns but also panmictic distributions strongly dependent on the ecologic demands of the species the two closely related butterfly species erebia ottomana herrich schã ffer 1847 and erebia cassioides reiner hohenwarth 1792 show subalpine and alpine distribution settings respectively erebia ottomana is found up to the treeline 1400â 2400 m a s l whereas e cassioides reaches much higher elevations from about 1800 m a s l in the retezat mountains in romania to 2800 m a s l thus both species cover diverging climatic niches and thus might also have been distributed differently during the cold glacial stages individuals of these two species were sampled over the mountain areas of the balkan peninsula and genetically analysed using allozyme electrophoresis additionally we performed species distribution models sdms to simulate the distribution patterns of both species in the past i e during the last glacial maximum and the atlanticum our genetic data show contrasting structures with comparatively low genetic differentiation but high genetic diversity found in e ottomana and with stronger genetic differentiation and a lower level of genetic diversity including many endemic alleles occurring restricted to single mountain massifs in e cassioides the sdms support a downhill shift during glacial periods especially for e ottomana with possible interconnection among mountain regions we conclude that during the cold glacial phases both species are assumed to shift downhill but persisted at different elevations with e ottomana reaching the foothills and spreading over major parts of the balkan peninsula in contrast e cassioides the truly alpine species survived in the foothills but did not reach and spread over lowland areas this more widespread distribution at the balkan peninsula of e ottomana compared with e cassioides is strongly supported by our distribution models as a consequence long term geographic restriction to distinct mountain massifs in e cassioides versus panmixia in e ottomana produced two contrasting evolutionary scenarios,2014,0.974
Predicting the spread of Aedes albopictus in Australia under current and future climates: Multiple approaches and datasets to incorporate potential evolutionary divergence,when predicting the potential and future invasive range of a species there is a growing appreciation that insights about factors limiting distributions can be provided by using multiple modelling approaches and by incorporating information from different parts of a species range here we apply this strategy to build on previous climex models to predict the invasion potential of aedes albopictus the asian tiger mosquito in mainland australia a combination of climex and maxent modelling indicated that the mosquito was expected to become widespread along the eastern seaboard and extend into northern tasmania but to remain restricted to the coastal fringe a pattern which is not expected to shift much under climate change however a recent expansion of a albopictus in north america points to evolutionary changes affecting the distribution of this species when the north american range is included in models a albopictus is predicted to become much more widespread and extend inland and into western australia these patterns highlight the potential impact of evolution on species distributions arising from multiple introductions or in situ evolution by considering future climate scenarios we demonstrate that there is likely to be a persistent public health threat associated with invasion by this species,2014,0.852
Rhodiola rosea,the genus rhodiola family crassulaceae is indigenous to northern canada europe and asia where its rhizomes and roots have been used for centuries for medicinal purposes recent interest in the species rhodiola rosea roseroot in the west arose from the use of the rhizome as an adaptogen for the treatment of stress but in the last few years chemical and pharmacological studies have confirmed other valuable medicinal properties written by well known researchers in this field of study rhodiola rosea examines important aspects of this increasingly important medicinal plant including cultivation taxonomy ethnobotany conservation phytopathology phytochemistry pharmacology biotechnology the book discusses in vitro culture of r rosea and examines pests and diseases affecting the plant in europe canada and alaska it also examines pharmacological bioassays and toxicology the contributors provide a meta analysis of clinical trials and describe experimentation with r rosea in clinical practice they explore its use in a range of areas including for depression and anxiety disorders to improve sexual and immune functions to augment cancer treatment and in aerospace medicine for afflictions such as mountain sickness and jet lag the final chapter uses a model to illustrate the cultivation of r rosea as an industrial crop from field to medicine to cabinet synthesizing the most important literature in recent years the book supplies a comprehensive peer reviewed survey of the wide spectrum of possibilities for its use as a modern phytomedicinal agent,2014,0.136
Realizing Lessons of the Last 20 Years: A Manifesto for Data Provisioning and Aggregation Services for the Digital Humanities (A Position Paper) System,the cidoc conceptual reference model cidoc crm is a semantically rich ontology that delivers data harmonisation based on empirically analysed contextual relationships rather than relying on a traditional fixed field value approach overly generalised relationships or an artificial set of core metadata it recognises that cultural data is a living growing resource and cannot be commoditised or squeezed into artificial pre conceived boxes rather it is diverse and variable containing perspectives that incorporate different institutional histories disciplines and objectives the cidoc crm retains these perspectives yet provides the opportunity for computational reasoning across large numbers of heterogeneous sources from different organisations and creates an environment for engaging and thought provoking exploration through its network of relationships the core ontology supports the whole cultural heritage community including museums libraries and archives and provides a growing set of specialist extensions the increased use of aggregation services and the growing use of the cidoc crm has necessitated a new initiative to develop a data provisioning reference model targeted at solving fundamental infrastructure problems ignored by data integration initiatives to date if data provisioning and aggregation are designed to support the reuse of data in research as well as general end user activities then any weaknesses in the model that aggregators implement will have profound effects on the future of data centred digital humanities work while the cidoc crm solves the problem of quality and delivering semantically rich data integration this achievement can still be undermined by a lack of properly managed processes and working relationships between data providers and aggregators these relationships hold the key to sustainability and longevity because done properly they encourage the provider to align their systems knowing that the effort will provide long lasting benefits and value equally end user projects will be encouraged to cease perpetuating the patchwork of short life digital resources that can never be aligned and which condemn the digital humanities to a pseudo and predominantly lower quality discipline,2014,0.027
Endemic wild potato (Solanum spp.) biodiversity status in Bolivia: Reasons for conservation concerns,crop wild relatives possess important traits therefore ex situ and in situ conservation efforts are essential to maintain sufficient options for crop improvement bolivia is a centre of wild relative diversity for several crops among them potato which is an important staple worldwide and the principal food crop in this country despite their relevance for plant breeding limited knowledge exists about their in situ conservation status we used geographic information systems gis and distribution modelling with the software maxent to better understand geographic patterns of endemic wild potato diversity in bolivia in combination with threat layers we assessed the conservation status of all endemic species 21 in total we prioritised areas for in situ conservation by using complementary reserve selection and excluded 25 of the most threatened collection sites because costs to implement conservation measures at those locations may be too high compared to other areas some 70 15 of 21 species has a preliminary vulnerable status or worse according to iucn red list distribution criteria our results show that four of these species would require special conservation attention because they were only observed in 15 locations and are highly threatened by human accessibility fires and livestock pressure although highest species richness occurs in south central bolivia in the departments santa cruz and chuquisaca the first priority area for in situ conservation according to our reserve selection exercise is central bolivia cochabamba this area is less threatened than the potato wild relatives hotspot in south central bolivia only seven of the 21 species were observed in protected areas to improve coverage of potato wild relatives distribution by protected areas we recommend starting inventories in parks and reserves with high modelled diversity finally to improve ex situ conservation we targeted areas for germplasm collection of species with 5 accessions conserved in genebanks â 2013 elsevier gmbh,2014,0.94
"Ichthyofauna of the Kubo, Tochikura, and Ichinono river systems (Kitakami River drainage, northern Japan), with a comparison of predicted and surveyed species richness.",the potential fish species pool of the kubo tochikura and ichinono river systems tributaries of the iwai river kitakami river drainage iwate prefecture northern japan was compared with the observed ichthyofauna by using historical records and new field surveys based on the literature survey the potential species pool comprised 24 species subspecies but only 20 including 7 non native taxa were recorded during the fieldwork the absence during the survey of 11 species subspecies from the potential species pool suggested either that sampling effort was insufficient or that accurate determination of the potential species pool was hindered by lack of biogeographic data and ecological data related to the habitat use of the species with respect to freshwater fish conservation in the area lethenteronreissneri carassiusauratusbuergeri pseudorasborapumila tachysurustokiensis oryziaslatipes and cottusnozawae are regarded as priority species and cyprinusrubrofuscus pseudorasboraparva and micropterussalmoides as targets for removal,2014,0.927
Prey preferences of sympatric fin (Balaenoptera physalus) and humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) whales revealed by stable isotope mixing models,over exploitation of top predators and fish stocks has altered ecosystems towards less productive systems with fewer trophic levels in the celtic sea cs discards and bycatch levels have prompted concern about some fisheries while fin and humpback whales are recovering from centuries of over exploitation a lack of empirical evi dence on the preferred diet of some predators such as whales in the cs has hindered the implementation of effective conservation measures using an ecosystem based approach to fisheries management using a bayesian framework siar stable car bon d13c and nitrogen d15n isotope mixing models were used to assign propor tionate diet solutions to fin and humpback whales skin biopsies and putative prey items herring clupea harengus sprat sprattus sprattus and krill meganyctiphanes norvegica and nyctiphanes couchii in the cs krill was the single most important prey item in the diet of fin whales but one of the least important for humpback whales albeit based on a small sample of humpback whale samples age 0 sprat and her ring comprised a large proportion of the diet of both species followed by older sprat age 1â 2 and older herring age 2â 4 an ecosystem based approach to fisheries management will be required in the cs if we seek effective conservation of both fin and humpback whales and sustainable fisheries,2014,0.168
Predicting the impacts of climate change on the potential distribution of major native non-food bioenergy plants in china.,we present some recent trends in the field of digital cultural heritage management and applications including digital cultural data curation interope r ability open linked data publishing crowd sourcing visualization platforms for digital cult ural heritage and applications we present some examples from research and development projects of music tuc in those areas,2014,0.193
Understanding the biological invasion risk posed by the global wildlife trade: propagule pressure drives the introduction and establishment of Nearctic turtles.,biological invasions are a key component of human induced global change the continuing increase in global wildlife trade has raised concerns about the parallel increase in the number of new invasive species however the factors that link the wildlife trade to the biological invasion process are still poorly understood moreover there are analytical challenges in researching the role of global wildlife trade in biological invasions particularly issues related to the under reporting of introduced and established populations in areas with reduced sampling effort in this work we use high quality data on the international trade in nearctic turtles 1999 2009 coupled with a statistical modelling framework which explicitly accounts for detection to investigate the factors that influence the introduction release or escape into the wild of globally traded nearctic turtles and the establishment success self sustaining exotic populations of slider turtles trachemys scripta the most frequently traded turtle species we found that the introduction of a species was influenced by the total number of turtles exported to a jurisdiction and the age at maturity of the species while the establishment success of slider turtles was best associated with the propagule number number of release events and the number of native turtles in the jurisdiction of introduction these results indicate both a direct and indirect association between the wildlife trade and the introduction of turtles and establishment success of slider turtles respectively our results highlight the existence of gaps in the number of globally recorded introduction events and established populations of slider turtles although the expected bias is low we emphasize the importance of researching independently the factors that affect the different stages of the invasion pathway critically we observe that the number of traded individuals might not always be an adequate proxy for propagule pressure and establishment success this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2014,0.889
Estimating the geographic distribution of human Tanapox and potential reservoirs using ecological niche modeling,background tanapox virus is a zoonotic infection that causes mild febrile illness and one to several nodular skin lesions the disease is endemic in parts of africa the principal reservoir for the virus that causes tanapox is unknown but has been hypothesized to be a non human primate this study employs ecological niche modeling enm to determine areas of tropical africa suitable for the occurrence of human tanapox and a list of hypothetical reservoirs the resultant niche model will be a useful tool to guide medical surveillance activities in the region methods this study uses the desktop garp software to predict regions where human tanapox might be expected to occur based on historical human case locations and environmental data additional modeling of primate species using occurrence data from museum records was performed to determine suitable disease reservoirs results the final enm predicts a potential distribution of tanapox over much of equatorial africa exceeding the borders of kenya and democratic republic of congo drc where it has been historically reported five genera of non human primates were found to be potential reservoir taxa conclusions validity testing suggests the model created here is robust p 0 04 several genera of primates were identified as having enms overlapping with that of tanapox and are suggested as potential reservoirs mainly members of the genus cercopithecus the enm modeling technique has several limitations and results should be interpreted with caution this study may increase knowledge and engage further research in this neglected disease,2014,0.523
"Range collapse in the Diana fritillary, Speyeria diana (Nymphalidae)",global warming can affect the distributions phenology and ultimately conservation status of species worldwide but most published studies on its biological effects have focused on higher latitude species we extended this work to the diana fritillary a butterfly which once ranged throughout the southeastern united states but now is severely restricted in range we searched for all scientific records of this species from publications catalogued and uncatalogued specimens in public and private collections in the united states and europe online databases contemporary field surveys by scientists and amateurs and our own field surveys we analysed these records for shifts in latitude longitude elevation and phenology we found that the diana fritillary has disappeared entirely from the atlantic coastal plain where it was first described and from interior lowland sites it now persists in two disjunct parts of its former range the southern appalachian mountains and the interior highlands of oklahoma and arkansas and is shifting to higher elevations at about 18 m per decade in addition females are being collected 4 3 days earlier per decade though males which emerge first have not shifted their phenology all these patterns are weakly dependent on latitude these shifts in distribution and phenology are consistent with the predicted effects of global warming but we review other large scale changes to the region which also might contribute singly or jointly to these patterns we also comment on the implications for the conservation of this species,2014,0.727
World Checklist of Opiliones species (Arachnida). Part 1: Laniatores - Travunioidea and Triaenonychoidea.,comprising more than 6500 species opiliones is the third most diverse order of arachnida after the megadiverse acari and araneae the database referred here is part 1 of 12 of a project containing an intended worldwide checklist of species and subspecies of opiliones as darwin core archives and it includes the superfamilies travunioidea and triaenonychoidea these two superfamilies are often treated together under the denomination of insidiatores in this part 1 a total of 571 species and subspecies are listed briggsidae and cladonychiidae are both downgraded to subfamilies of travuniidae peltonychia roewer 1935 is an available name and senior synonym of hadziana roewer 1935 and is herein revalidated seven genera of triaenonychidae described by lawrence between 1931 and 1933 originally failed to comply iczn rules for availability art 13 3 all of them only became available when starä ga 1992 designated a type species for each therefore the correct authorships of austromontia lawrence 1931 biacumontia lawrence 1931 graemontia lawrence 1931 larifugella lawrence 1933 mensamontia lawrence 1931 monomontia lawrence 1931 and rostromontia lawrence 1931 are all starä ga 1992 fumontana shear 1977 originally referred only to subfamily triaenonychinae as opposed to soerensenellinae then and not corresponding to present triaenonychinae not to any tribe which in turn correspond to modern subfamilies is herein included in the subfamily triaenonychinae picunchenops maury 1988 originally not included in any tribe of triaenonychidae is herein included in the subfamily triaenonychinae trojanella karaman 2005 originally ranked as travunioidea incertae sedis is herein included in the travuniidaetravuniinae nunciaovata roewer 1915 synonymized with triaenonyxcockayni hogg 1920 by forster 1954 but with inverted precedence is here combined as nunciacoriaceaovata roewer 1915 as correct senior synonym instead of nunciacoriaceacockayni hogg 1920 which is current in the literature neonunciaenderbei hogg 1909 is reaffirmed as the correct spelling for the species while the deliberate change to neonunciaenderbyi by forster 1954 is an incorrect subsequent spelling,2014,0.842
The role of climatic tolerances and seed traits in reduced extinction rates of temperate polygonaceae,the latitudinal diversity gradient ldg is one of the most striking and consistent biodiversity patterns across taxonomic groups we investigate the species richness gradient in the buckwheat family polygonaceae which exhibits a reverse ldg and is thus decoupled from dominant gradients of energy and environmental stability that increase toward the tropics and confound mechanistic interpretations we test competing age and evolutionary diversification hypotheses which may explain the diversification of this plant family over the past 70 million years our analyses show that the age hypothesis which posits that clade richness is positively correlated with the ecological and evolutionary time since clade origin fails to explain the richness gradient observed in polygonaceae however an evolutionary diversification hypothesis is highly supported with diversification rates being 3 5 times higher in temperate clades compared to tropical clades we demonstrate that differences in rates of speciation migration and molecular evolution insufficiently explain the observed patterns of differential diversification rates we suggest that reduced extinction rates in temperate clades may be associated with adaptive responses to selection through which seed morphology and climatic tolerances potentially act to minimize risk in temporally variable environments further study is needed to understand causal pathways among these traits and factors correlated with latitude,2014,0.385
"Climate, physiological tolerance and sex-biased dispersal shape genetic structure of Neotropical orchid bees",understanding the impact of past climatic events on the demographic history of extant species is critical for predicting species responses to future climate change palaeoclimatic instability is a major mechanism of lineage diversification in taxa with low dispersal and small geographical ranges in tropical ecosystems however the impact of these climatic events remains questionable for the diversification of species with high levels of gene flow and large geographical distributions in this study we investigate the impact of pleistocene climate change on three neotropical orchid bee species eulaema bombiformis e meriana and e cingulata with transcontinental distributions and different physiological tolerances we first generated ecological niche models to identify species specific climatically stable areas during pleistocene climatic oscillations using a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear markers we inferred calibrated phylogenies and estimated historical demographic parameters to reconstruct the phylogeographical history of each species our results indicate species with narrower physiological tolerance experienced less suitable habitat during glaciations and currently exhibit strong population structure in the mitochondrial genome however nuclear markers with low and high mutation rates show lack of association with geography these results combined with lower migration rate estimates from the mitochondrial than the nuclear genome suggest male biased dispersal we conclude that despite large effective population sizes and capacity for long distance dispersal climatic instability is an important mechanism of maternal lineage diversification in orchid bees thus these neotropical pollinators are susceptible to disruption of genetic connectivity in the event of large scale climatic changes,2014,0.808
Trends in access of plant biodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics,the amount of plant biodiversity data available via the web has exploded in the last decade but making these data available requires a considerable investment of time and work both vital considerations for organizations and institutions looking to validate the impact factors of these online works here we used google analytics ga to measure the value of this digital presence in this paper we examine usage trends using 15 different ga accounts spread across 451 institutions or botanical projects that comprise over five percent of the world s herbaria they were studied at both one year and total years user data from the sample reveal 1 over 17 million web sessions 2 on five primary operating systems 3 search and direct traffic dominates with minimal impact from social media 4 mobile and new device types have doubled each year for the past three years 5 and web browsers the tools we use to interact with the web are changing server side analytics differ from site to site making the comparison of their data sets difficult however use of google analytics erases the reporting heterogeneity of unique server side analytics as they can now be examined with a standard that provides a clarity for data driven decisions the knowledge gained here empowers any collection based environment regardless of size with metrics about usability design and possible directions for future development,2014,0.201
"Distribution Modeling of Vegetation Types in Venabygdsfjellet, Oppland",this study explores the effect of increasing sample units density with presence only data po data on the ability to predict the distribution of three common 2e dwarf shrub heath 4b bilberry birch forest and 9c fen and three rare 3b tall forb meadow 8d rich swamp forest and 9d mud bottom fens and bogs vegetation types the chosen study area was venabygdsfjellet in ringebu municipality oppland in 2001 the vegetation in the study area was mapped by norwegian institute for forest and landscape the vegetation map was used as material for the po data in the prediction modeling in beforehand this map was quality assessed to evaluate the quality of the map necessary fieldwork and statistical analysis was conducted as a result of this evaluation 84 of all observations correspond to the mapped distribution on the vegetation map the po data for distribution modeling were collected in a point grid with different densities 100 m for common and 25 m for rare vegetation types within the sample units 1500ã 600m size the sample unit was equivalent to a primary statistical unit psu of the ar18ã 18 survey system and given in a grid net with five densities 3ã 3 km 4 5ã 4 5 km 6ã 6 km 7 5ã 7 5 km and 9ã 9 km in addition to po data 12 environmental variables were used as explanatory predictors the digital elevation model basin curvatures flow accumulation flow direction groundwater slope satellite image the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi the topographic wetness index twi sediment and soil maps using the po data and these environmental variables each vegetation type was modeled in all five densities of the psu grid using a maximum entropy modeling method using a custom made software called maxent,2014,0.19
"Notes on Lythrum salicaria L. in Texas and on its distribution on Palo Duro Creek, Randall County, Texas",purple loosestrife lythrum salicaria l is an invasive exotic plant in north america we mapped the distribution of this plant on the terminal 5 7 km of palo duro creek randall county texas in 2009 we also searched for it along the margins of other creeks rivers associated with this section of palo duro creek including the first 10 5 km of the prairie dog town fork of the red river further we collated 16 records from texas collected specimens located in herbaria including a gray county record that has not been previously annotated purple loosestrife distribution along palo duro creek is still restricted to the area where it was initially documented in 1975,2014,0.474
Supporting biodiversity studies with the EUBrazilOpenBio Hybrid Data Infrastructure,eubrazilopenbio is a collaborative initiative addressing strategic barriers in biodiversity research by integrating open access data and user friendly tools widely available in brazil and europe the project deploys the eu brazil hybrid data infrastructure that allows the sharing of hardware software and data on demand this infrastructure provides access to several integrated services and resources to seamlessly aggregate taxonomic biodiversity and climate data used by processing services implementing checklist cross mapping and ecological niche modelling a virtual research environment was created to provide users with a single entry point to processing and data resources this article describes the architecture demonstration use cases and some experimental results and validation,2014,0.213
Analysis of coprolites from the extinct mountain goat Myotragus balearicus,humans colonized the balearic islands 5â 4 ka ago they arrived in a uniquely adapted ecosystem with the balearic mountain goat myotragus balearicus bovidae antilopinae caprini as the only large mammal this mammal went extinct rapidly after human arrival several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the extinction of m balearicus for the present study ancient dna analysis sanger sequencing roche 454 ion torrent and pollen and macrofossil analyses were performed on preserved coprolites from m balearicus providing information on its diet and paleo environment the information retrieved shows that m balearicus was heavily dependent on the balearic box species buxus balearica during at least part of the year and that it was most probably a browser hindcast ecological niche modelling of b balearica shows that local distribution of this plant species was affected by climate changes this suggests that the extinction of m balearicus can be related to the decline and regional extinction of a plant species that formed a major component of its diet the vegetation change is thought to be caused by increased aridity occurring throughout themediterranean previous hypotheses relating the extinction ofm balearicus directly to the arrival of humans on the islandsmust therefore be adjusted,2014,0.686
An open source framework to add spatial extent and geospatial visibility to Big Data,advancement in the field of computing and remote handheld devices has made the process of collecting geospatial data easy most of the time researchers and scientists have easy access to these data as well however the process of extracting and processing a large volume of data from several sources can be very time consuming and difficult in most cases scientists rely on expensive proprietary software 1 this paper discusses how computational scientists at oak ridge national laboratory are extracting normalizing and processing millions of geospatial data points from multiple data sources and integrating them into a common data format which helps user to find and access these data using a flexible visualization based user interface,2014,0.188
"Habitat suitability, coverage by protected areas and population connectivity for the Siamese crocodile Crocodylus siamensis Schneider, 1801",1 with estimates of fewer than 1000 mature individuals in the wild the critically endangered siamese crocodile crocodylus siamensis schneider 1801 is one of the least known and at the same time most threatened crocodilian species in the world populations have already been depleted to approximately 20 of their former size with habitat destruction alterations and loss being the main drivers of population declines 2 habitat suitability models were computed using a combination of bioclimatic and remote sensing variables as environmental predictors to evaluate habitat suitability and coverage by designated protected areas across the speciesâ distributional range in addition population connectivity as well as current and future habitat fragmentation through dam construction was assessed by performing population connectivity models 3 habitat suitability models show the spatial extent of suitable habitat to be high 46 although only a small proportion is covered by designated reserves 11 population connectivity models showed remnant populations to be highly fragmented considering habitat suitability coverage of reserves and population connectivity the lowermekong river basin stretching from the xe champhon and xe xangxoy rivers in lao pdr to the srepok and sekong rivers in eastern cambodia seem to be particularly important for future conservation prioritization for c siamensis 4 the presently established protected area network is unsatisfactory in terms of size and population connectivity and needs to be significantly improved to successfully sustain viable populations of the critically endangered siamese crocodile in the future,2014,0.774
When is a marine protected area network ecologically coherent? A case study from the North-east Atlantic,creating representative networks of marine protected areas mpas as part of an ecosystem based management approach is generally advocated to protect the full spectrum of marine ecosystems and vulnerable species core objectives for designing mpa networks incorporate issues of scale size and spacing ascertaining when such objectives have been met and thus when a network can be judged to be ecologically coherent presents an ongoing challenge this paper presents a broad scale approach to assess the degree of ecological coherence within one such network in 2013 an independent ecological coherence assessment was requested by ospar the regional seas convention for the north east atlantic of the ecological coherence of its regional mpa network as is often the case in the marine environment the data were not sufficiently comprehensive or spatially inclusive to allow for a thorough assessment for the entire region consequently two levels of testing were applied 1 basic tests applied to the whole ospar maritime area and 2 a more sophisticated second level of tests directed at specific ospar regions and subregions for which more complete datasets were available the former considered major gaps based on basic distribution thresholds and representativity both biogeographic and bathymetric the latter focused on broad scale habitat presence to determine replication adequacy and connectivity on the basis of these tests it was concluded that while the ospar mpa network as a whole is not ecologically coherent nonetheless significant progress towards global targets such as protection of 10 of marine and coastal environments under the convention on biological diversity cbd has been made gaps in the distribution of mpas were identified particularly under representation of certain biogeographic provinces and bathymetric zones of depths greater than 75 m including bathyal 200â 3000 m and abyssal 3000â 6000 m depths to address such gaps a cooperative region by region approach will be required by the ospar parties to identify where positioning new mpas can enhance ecological coherence a limitation of the 2013 assessment was that it did not consider which mpas are designated and managed for the protection of specific features rather it assumed that all features that fall within an mpa are protected with a redevelopment of the ospar mpa database underway it is hoped that reporting of such details by parties will improve allowing for more specificity in future analyses however as the first such assessment of its kind our two level approach serves as a case study of a pragmatic example of how assessments of ecologically coherent networks might be undertaken using gis to contribute to systematic conservation planning,2014,0.083
Nitrogen deposition in Spain: Modeled patterns and threatened habitats within the Natura 2000 network,the mediterranean basin presents an extraordinary biological richness but very little information is available on the threat that air pollution and in particular reactive nitrogen n can pose to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning this study represents the first approach to assess the risk of n enrichment effects on spanish ecosystems the suitability of emep and chimere air quality model systems as tools to identify those areas where effects of atmospheric n deposition could be occurring was tested for this analysis wet deposition of no3 and nh4 estimated with emep and chimere model systems were compared with measured data for the period 2005 2008 obtained from different monitoring networks in spain wet n deposition was acceptably predicted by both models showing better results for oxidized than for reduced nitrogen particularly when using chimere both models estimated higher wet deposition values in northern and northeastern spain and decreasing along a ne sw axis total wet dry nitrogen deposition in 2008 reached maxima values of 19 4 and 23 0kgnha 1 year 1 using emep and chimere models respectively total n deposition was used to estimate the exceedance of n empirical critical loads in the natura 2000 network grassland habitats proved to be the most threatened group particularly in the northern alpine area pointing out that biodiversity conservation in these protected areas could be endangered by n deposition other valuable mountain ecosystems can be also threatened indicating the need to extend atmospheric deposition monitoring networks to higher altitudes in spain,2014,0.084
The eBird enterprise: An integrated approach to development and application of citizen science,citizen science projects engage volunteers to gather or process data to address scientific questions but citizen science projects vary in their ability to contribute usefully for science conservation or public pol icy ebird has evolved from a basic citizen science project into a collective enterprise taking a novel approach to citizen science by developing cooperative partnerships among experts in a wide range of fields population and distributions conservation biologists quantitative ecologists statisticians com puter scientists gis and informatics specialists application developers and data administrators the goal is to increase data quantity through participant recruitment and engagement but also to quantify and control for data quality issues such as observer variability imperfect detection of species and both spatial and temporal bias in data collection advances at the interface among ecology statistics and computer science allow us to create new species distribution models that provide accurate estimates across broad spatial and temporal scales with extremely detailed resolution ebird data are openly available and used by a broad spectrum of students teachers scientists ngos government agencies land managers and policy makers feedback from this broad data use community helps identify development priorities as a result ebird has become a major source of biodiversity data increasing our knowledge of the dynamics of species distributions and having a direct impact on the conservation of birds and their habitats,2014,0.473
A NEW POPULATION OF THE HOODED ANTPITTA (GRALLARICULA CUCULLATA: GRALLARIDAE) FOR THE COLOMBIAN CENTRAL ANDES,we report a new population of the hooded anpitta grallariculla cucullata in the central andes of colombia a threatened bird species inhabiting montane cloud forests in colombian and venezuelan andes we present capture rate data which suggest the occurrence of a resident with the highest population size reported for this bird species,2014,0.635
Antarctic Porifera database from the Spanish benthic expeditions.,the information about the sponges in this dataset is derived from the samples collected during five spanish antarctic expeditions bentart 94 bentart 95 gebrap 96 ciemar 99 00 and bentart 2003 samples were collected in the antarctic peninsula and bellingshausen sea at depths ranging from 4 to 2044 m using various sampling gears the antarctic porifera database from the spanish benthic expeditions is unique as it provides information for an under explored region of the southern ocean bellingshausen sea it fills an information gap on antarctic deep sea sponges for which there were previously very few data this phylum is an important part of the antarctic biota and plays a key role in the structure of the antarctic marine benthic community due to its considerable diversity and predominance in different areas it is often a dominant component of southern ocean benthic communities the quality of the data was controlled very thoroughly with gps systems onboard the r v hesperides and by checking the data against the world porifera database which is part of the world register of marine species worms the data are therefore fit for completing checklists inclusion in biodiversity pattern analysis and niche modelling the authors can be contacted if any additional information is needed before carrying out detailed biodiversity or biogeographic studies the dataset currently contains 767 occurrence data items that have been checked for systematic reliability this database is not yet complete and the collection is growing specimens are stored in the author s collection at the spanish institute of oceanography ieo in the city of gijã n spain the data are available in gbif,2014,0.813
Uncertainties in ecosystem service maps: a comparison on the European scale.,safeguarding the benefits that ecosystems provide to society is increasingly included as a target in international policies to support such policies ecosystem service maps are made however there is little attention for the accuracy of these maps we made a systematic review and quantitative comparison of ecosystem service maps on the european scale to generate insights in the uncertainty of ecosystem service maps and discuss the possibilities for quantitative validation maps of climate regulation and recreation were reasonably similar while large uncertainties among maps of erosion protection and flood regulation were observed pollination maps had a moderate similarity differences among the maps were caused by differences in indicator definition level of process understanding mapping aim data sources and methodology absence of suitable observed data on ecosystem services provisioning hampers independent validation of the maps consequently there are so far no accurate measures for ecosystem service map quality policy makers and other users need to be cautious when applying ecosystem service maps for decision making the results illustrate the need for better process understanding and data acquisition to advance ecosystem service mapping modelling and validation,2014,0.113
Analgesic and Acute Anti-inflammatory Activities of Aqueous Root Extract of Salacia lehmbachii,aim salacia lehmbachii is used in south eastern nigeria folk medicine to treat abdominal pain inflammatory disorders and malaria symptom without scientific documentation the aim of this study was therefore to assess possible analgesic and anti inflammatory activities of aqueous root extract of salacia lehmbachii aresl in albino rats place and duration of study the study was done in world bank step b anti malaria laboratory department of pharmacology faculty of basic medical sciences university of calabar calabar nigeria between november 2013 and january 2014 methodology analgesic and anti inflammatory properties of aresl were assessed in wistar rats at doses of 200 and 400 mg kg to assess analgesic activity acetic acid induced writhing and formalin tests were used to assess anti inflammatory property carrageenan and dextran induced hind paw edema were used differences between group means were compared statistically by one way analysis of variance anova followed by tukey test as post hoc results in acetic acid induced writhing test the extract at a dose of 400 mg kg showed a maximum inhibition p 05 of 71 66 of writhing while the standard drug aspirin inhibited 81 05 of writhing compared to untreated control group in formalin test aresl showed a maximum inhibition p 05 of 71 77 at a dose of 400 mg kg while standard drug pethidine showed 76 11 for carrageenan induced paw edema test aresl at a dose of 400 mg kg showed maximum 85 90 inhibition p 05 of inflammatory activity while dextran induced showed 87 9 conclusion aresl possesses analgesic and anti inflammatory activities which corroborate the aqueous extract being used in folk medicine see more at http www sciencedomain org abstract php iid 640 id 14 aid 6227 sthash 3d39qdzx dpuf,2014,0.027
"Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 56. Validation of Asterella sect. Wallichianae (Aytoniaceae, Marchantiophyta)",long 2005 presented an infrageneric classification of the genus asterella palisot de beauvois 1805 257 where five subgenera and four sections were recognized two of the sections were placed under subgen wallichianae long 2001 43 sect californicae long 2005 257 and sect wallichianae long 2005 257 however since the latter section was not automatically defined as an autonym directly under the genus asterella it needed a latin description which was missing in order to be able to use the name in the forthcoming world checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in prep the section is validated here note that a latin description is no longer needed under the current icn mcneill et al 2012,2014,0.328
"Satellite remote sensing, biodiversity research and conservation of the future",assessing and predicting ecosystem responses to global environmental change and its impacts on human well being are high priority targets for the scientific community the potential for synergies between remote sensing science and ecology especially satellite remote sensing and conservation biology has been highlighted by many in the past yet the two research communities have only recently begun to coordinate their agendas such synchronization is the key to improving the potential for satellite data effectively to support future environmental management decision making processes with this themed issue we aim to illustrate how integrating remote sensing into ecological research promotes a better understanding of the mechanisms shaping current changes in biodiversity patterns and improves conservation efforts added benefits include fostering innovation generating new research directions in both disciplines and the development of new satellite remote sensing products,2014,0.135
"Diversity of common bean in Jammu and Kashmir, India: a DIVA-geographic information system and cluster analysis",a total of 80 diverse germplasm accessions of common bean phaseolus vulgaris l were collected from 31 different locations known for marginal and risk prone farming systems in remote and hilly areas of north western indian himalayan state of jammu and kashmir the variability was observed in seed color shape size and 100 seed weight thirteen colors of bean seeds were represented in these 80 accessions with high predominance of red colored seeds cuboid kidney and oval seed shapes observed were represented respectively in 61 25 25 and 13 75 of the accessions there were significant variations in seed length width and 100 seed weight being highly significant in the later case all the three seed size classes small medium and large according to ciat categoriza tion were represented in the collected accessions 22 5 accessions have 100 seed weight less than 25g 53 75 accessions have 100 seed weight between 25 40g while 100 seed weight of more than 40g was recorded in 23 75 of the accessions highly positive correlations were found between 100 seed weight and seed length and width and between seed length and seed width the 80 accessions were grouped in three clusters at a coefficient level of 0 3 with largest cluster of 59 accessions followed by a medium cluster with 20 accessions and the least with a single accession grid maps generated through diva gis software indicated that diverse accessions of common bean in terms of seed size and weight can be sourced from the areas falling in budgam shopian and kulgam districts of the state conservation of this remarkable genetic diversity is recommended for future propagation breeding and the investigation of the genetic relationships,2014,0.479
Predicting species' range limits from functional traits for the tree flora of North America,using functional traits to explain species range limits is a promising approach in functional biogeography it replaces the idiosyncrasy of species specific climate ranges with a generic trait based predictive framework in addition it has the potential to shed light on specific filter mechanisms creating large scale vegetation patterns however its application to a continental flora spanning large climate gradients has been hampered by a lack of trait data here we explore whether five key plant functional traits seed mass wood density specific leaf area sla maximum height and longevity of a tree indicative of life history mechanical and physiological adaptations explain the climate ranges of 250 north american tree species distributed from the boreal to the subtropics although the relationship between traits and the median climate across a species range is weak quantile regressions revealed strong effects on range limits wood density and seed mass were strongly related to the lower but not upper temperature range limits of species maximum height affects the species range limits in both dry and humid climates whereas sla and longevity do not show clear relationships these results allow the definition and delineation of climatic no go areas for north american tree species based on key traits as some of these key traits serve as important parameters in recent vegetation models the implementation of trait based climatic constraints has the potential to predict both range shifts and ecosystem consequences on a more functional basis moreover for future trait based vegetation models our results provide a benchmark for model evaluation,2014,0.19
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 60. Circumscription of Gymnomitriaceae (Marchantiophyta),gymnomitriaceae klinggrã ff 1858 16 was thoroughly treated by vã åˆa et al 2010 since the publication a series of papers have shown that the circumscription of the family and genera within the family must be revised herzogobryum grolle 1963 160 and nothogymnomitrion schuster 1996 43 was removed from the family by vã åˆa et al 2013 already de roo et al 2007 showed that apomarsupella revoluta nees 1836 419 schuster 1996 82 was nested in gymnomitrion corda 1829 651 and cailliau et al 2013 showed that apomarsupella rubida mitten 1861 90 schuster 1996 85 also belongs there thus the genus apomarsupella schuster 1996 79 should be synonymized and the necessary combinations made the necessary combinations are made elsewhere two invalidly published names in marsupella dumortier 1822 114 were used in vã åˆa et al 2010 the first of these marsupella emarginata ehrhart 1784 141 dumortier 1835 24 var tubulosa was assumed to have been established as an autonym under subsp tubulosa stephani 1897 99 kitagawa 1960 76 via the publication of var patens stephani 1901 162 kitagawa 1960 77 or of var apertifolia stephani 1901 162 kitagawa 1963 89 however autonyms are only established directly under genera and species cf icn art 22 1 26 1 mcneill et al 2012 and thus var tubulosa is invalid which vã åˆa et al 2010 overlooked the second name marsupella sparsifolia lindberg 1868 280 dumortier 1874 128 subsp childii schuster 1996 61 was invalidly published by schuster 1996 as he did not indicate the herbarium in which the type specimen was lodged as required under icn art 40 7 mcneill et al 2012 vã åˆa et al 2010 explicitly did not validate the subspecies as they had not located the type material however with the incorporation of schusterâ s herbarium in f the type material has now been found those two names are thus validated here,2014,0.422
"Ecology in the age of DNA barcoding: the resource, the promise and the challenges ahead.",ten years after dna barcoding was initially suggested as a tool to identify species millions of barcode sequences from more than 1100 species are available in public databases while several studies have reviewed the methods and potential applications of dna barcoding most have focused on species identification and discovery and relatively few have addressed applications of dna barcoding data to ecology these data and the associated information on the evolutionary histories of taxa that they can provide offer great opportunities for ecologists to investigate questions that were previously difficult or impossible to address we present an overview of potential uses of dna barcoding relevant in the age of ecoinformatics including applications in community ecology species invasion macroevolution trait evolution food webs and trophic interactions metacommunities and spatial ecology we also outline some of the challenges and potential advances in dna barcoding that lie ahead,2014,0.616
Phytogeographical implication of Bridelia Will. (Phyllanthaceae) fossil leaf from the late Oligocene of India.,background the family phyllanthaceae has a predominantly pantropical distribution of its several genera bridelia willd is of a special interest because it has disjunct equally distributed species in africa and tropical asia i e 18 20 species in africa madagascar all endemic and 18 species in tropical asia some shared with australia on the basis of molecular phylogenetic study on bridelia it has been suggested that the genus evolved in southeast asia around 33â 5 ma while speciation and migration to other parts of the world occurred at 10â 2 ma fossil records of bridelia are equally important to support the molecular phylogenetic studies and plate tectonic models results we describe a new fossil leaf of bridelia from the late oligocene chattian 28 4 23 ma sediments of assam india the detailed venation pattern of the fossil suggests its affinities with the extant b ovata b retusa and b stipularis based on the present fossil evidence and the known fossil records of bridelia from the tertiary sediments of nepal and india we infer that the genus evolved in india during the late oligocene chattian 28 4 23 ma and speciation occurred during the miocene the stem lineage of the genus migrated to africa via iranian route and again speciosed in africa madagascar during the late neogene resulting in the emergence of african endemic clades similarly the genus also migrated to southeast asia via myanmar after the complete suturing of indian and eurasian plates the emergence and speciation of the genus in asia and africa is the result of climate change during the cenozoic conclusions on the basis of present and known fossil records of bridelia we have concluded that the genus evolved during the late oligocene in northeast india during the neogene the genus diversified and migrated to southeast asia via myanmar and africa via iranian route,2014,0.644
"Dispatch from the field: ecology of ground-web-building spiders with description of a new species (Araneae, Symphytognathidae)",crassignathadanaugirangensis sp n araneae symphytognathidae was discovered during a tropical ecology field course held at the danau girang field centre in sabah malaysia a taxonomic description and accompanying ecological study were completed as course activities to assess the ecology of this species which belongs to the ground web building spider community three habitat types were surveyed riparian forest recently inundated riverine forest and oil palm plantation crassignathadanaugirangensis sp n is the most abundant ground web building spider species in riparian forest it is rare or absent from the recently inundated forest and was not found in a nearby oil palm plantation the availability of this taxonomic description may help facilitate the accumulation of data about this species and the role of inundated riverine forest in shaping invertebrate communities,2014,0.715
An opportunity for testing multiple paternity in a wild Jaguar (Panthera onca),we performed a paternity test for three cubs from one wild female jaguar panthera onca the opportunity for this study was generated by an accident involving a vehicle collision with a pregnant jaguar in the central amazon the cubs are polyzygotic triplets and were found to have been sired by the same male here we also provide an overview and discuss several aspects of jaguar reproduction,2014,0.432
The role of physiological optima in shaping the geographic distribution of Spanish moss,aim ecological niche modelling is being widely applied to help us understand the geographic distributions of species despite challenges regarding the estimation of fundamental niches that limit model transferability over time and space mechanistic models are an alternative but they can be difficult to implement owing to the detailed knowledge that they require about the organism for full parameterization in this paper we explore the geographic projection of physiological measurements of optimal temperature precipitation and relative humidity requirements as measured under controlled conditions using a climate dataset with high temporal resolution as a case study for spanish moss tillandsia usneoides and compare scaling effects with correlative niche models calibrated in maxent location the americas methods we used climate data with a high temporal resolution to understand how often and where populations of spanish moss occur under optimal and suboptimal conditions with respect to different environmental variables across their geographic range we used weather station data for the united states with higher spatial resolution to provide a finer grained view we also developed an ecological niche model to show how averaged climate data can present inaccurate views of physiological thresholds for the species results few populations of spanish moss are located at sites that present suboptimal conditions for more than two environmental parameters the northern distributional limit of spanish moss is set by minimum temperature requirements whereas maximum temperatures are less limiting however when the same occurrences are analysed with respect to averaged climate data 95 of populations appear to fall within the optimal physiological intervals main conclusions our analyses revealed that most populations of spanish moss do not experience optimal ecophysiological conditions for all environmental variables even over long time scales physiological data may be of limited utility in delimiting suitable areas for populations of species but they offer unique perspectives on the causes of range limitation,2014,0.234
"Fossil Vertebrate Database from Cova des Pas de Vallgornera (Llucmajor, Mallorca)",the data set presented in this paper includes the fossil fauna collected in the cave named cova des pas de vallgornera cpv located on the southern coast of mallorca balearic islands spain it holds 1481 catalogued items 97 5 identified at species level mammalia aves reptilia and amphibia are represented in the database the fauna collected in the cave includes the three endemic mammals present on mallorca during the early pleistocene myotragus aff kopperi hypnomys onicensis and nesiotites aff ponsi there are also represented two taxa of chiroptera rhinolophus aff mehelyi and pipistrellus sp 16 taxa of birds 6 of them identified at species level one reptilian taxon podarcis sp and one amphibian taxon discoglossus sp most of fossils were collected during a single excavation campaign of 3 days 28 30th may 2010 a few remains were obtained in two previous visits to the cave in 2006 and 2009 all the specimens are curated and documented at the vertebrate collection of the imedea institut mediterrani d estudis avanã ats csic uib the assemblage of cpv fossils is a part of the paleontological collection imedea paleovert included at the gbif portal,2014,0.783
"Future distributions of Fusarium oxysporum f. spp. in European, Middle Eastern and North African agricultural regions under climate change",the levels of inaccuracy in projections of global climate model outputs can be reduced by identification of the correlations between the output results of a number of models which include common assumptions some of the invasive pathogen of fusarium oxysporum f spp pose risks to a number of cash crops such as banana tomato palm and garlic while some have a symbiotic relation varying from pathogenic to commensal null effect up to beneficial effect limitation of occurrence records of many single species such as f oxysporum f sp cubense f oxysporum f sp albedinis f oxysporum f sp lycopersici and f oxysporum f sp vasinfectum necessitated this study to model the future distribution of f oxysporum f spp rather than individual species the future distribution of f oxysporum f spp was modeled by csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr gcms and the results were correlated to identify areas suitable for f oxysporum f spp growth for north africa middle eastern and european countries for the years 2050 and 2100 the projections established that a number of countries will become highly conducive to this fungus while others are projected to produce marginal levels of conduciveness by 2050 and 2100 we also demonstrate that refining climex outputs with a combination of a number of alternative gcms results ensures that modeled projections become more robust rather than producing purely hypothetical findings 2014 elsevier b v,2014,0.427
Maximum power entropy method for ecological data analysis,in ecology predictive models of the geographical distribution of certain species are widely used to capture the spatial diversity recently a method of maxent based on gibbs distri bution is frequently employed to have reasonable accuracy of a target distribution of species at a site using environmental features such as temperature precipitation elevation and so on it requires only presence data which is a big advantage to the case where absence data is not available or un reliable it also incorporates our limited knowledge into the model about the target distribution such that the expected values of environmental features are equal to the empirical average moreover the visualization of the inhabiting probability of species is easily done with the aid of geographical co ordination information from global biodiversity inventory facility gbif in a statistical software r however the maximum entropy distribution in maxent is derived from the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy which causes unstable estimation of the parameters in the model when some outliers in the data are observed to overcome the weak point and to have deep understandings of the relation among the total number of species the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy and simp son â s index we propose a maximum power entropy method based on beta divergence which is a special case of u divergence it includes the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy as a special case so it could have better performance of estimation of the target distribution by appropriately choos ing the value of the power index beta we demonstrate the performance of the proposed method by simulation studies as well as publicly available real data,2014,0.374
Evolution of rapid development in spadefoot toads is unrelated to arid environments,the extent to which species life histories evolve to match climatic conditions is a critical question in evolutionary biology and ecology and as human activities rapidly modify global climate gis based climatic data offer new opportunities to rigorously test this question superficially the spadefoot toads of north america scaphiopodidae seem to offer a classic example of adaptive life history evolution some species occur in extremely dry deserts and have evolved the shortest aquatic larval periods known among anurans however the relationships between the climatic conditions where spadefoots occur and the relevant life history traits have not been explicitly tested here we analyzed these relationships using gis based climatic data published life history data and a time calibrated phylogeny for pelobatoid frogs surprisingly we find no significant relationships between life history variables and precipitation or aridity levels where these species occur instead rapid development in pelobatoids is strongly related to their small genome sizes and to phylogeny,2014,0.439
Phylogeographical analysis of two cold-tolerant plants with disjunct Lusitanian distributions does not support in situ survival during the last glaciation,aim we used a combination of modelling and genetic approaches to investigate whether pinguicula grandiflora and saxifraga spathularis two species that exhibit disjunct lusitanian distributions may have persisted through the last glacial maximum lgm c 21 ka in separate northern and southern refugia location northern and eastern spain and south western ireland methods palaeodistribution modelling using maxent was used to identify putative refugial areas for both species at the lgm as well as to estimate their distributions during the last interglacial lig c 120 ka phylogeographical analysis of samples from across both species ranges was carried out using one chloroplast and three nuclear loci for each species results the palaeodistribution models identified very limited suitable habitat for either species during the lig followed by expansion during the lgm a single large refugium across northern spain and southern france was postulated for p grandiflora two suitable regions were identified for s spathularis one in northern spain corresponding to the eastern part of the species present day distribution in iberia and the other on the continental shelf off the west coast of brittany south of the limit of the britishâ irish ice sheet phylogeographical analyses indicated extremely reduced levels of genetic diversity in irish populations of p grandiflora relative to those in mainland europe but comparable levels of diversity between irish and mainland european populations of s spathularis including the occurrence of private hapotypes in both regions main conclusions modelling and phylogeographical analyses indicate that p grandiflora persisted through the lgm in a southern refugium and achieved its current irish distribution via northward dispersal after the retreat of the ice sheets although the results for s spathularis are more equivocal a similar recolonization scenario also seems the most likely explanation for the species current distribution,2014,0.963
The first German map of georeferenced ixodid tick locations,background georeferenced locations of ixodid ticks are required to depict the observed distribution of species further they are used as input data for species distribution models also known as niche models the latter were applied to describe current and future projected tick distributions beside model assumptions and selected climate parameters the number of georeferenced tick locations available as a digital dataset is of fundamental importance for the reliability of such models for germany however no comprehensive dataset of ixodid tick species exists the goal of this study was to put together all the available information on ixodid tick locations in germany to produce such a digital dataset and to visualize it in a map findings a total of 2 044 georeferenced locations of ixodid ticks in germany were compiled from two existing datasets altogether 993 locations and an extensive literature study 1051 locations the resulting digital dataset comprises the following tick species ixodes ricinus 1 855 locations ixodes apronophorus 1 ixodes frontalis 1 ixodes hexagonus 1 ixodes trianguliceps 4 dermacentor marginatus 77 dermacentor reticulatus 96 haemaphysalis concinna 8 and hyalomma marginatum 1 the data were used to draw a tick map for germany showing i ricinus occurring in the whole federal territory while d marginatus has been restricted to the climatically favoured region of the rhine valley clustered locations of d reticulatus were also documented in the rhine valley as well as in berlin and its vicinity conclusions the introduced map depicts for the first time the available geographical coordinates of ixodid tick locations in germany the digital dataset used to draw the map is provided to the scientific community as a basis for further investigations such as species distribution modelling,2014,0.869
Preservation and protection of traditional knowledge – diverse documentation initi a tives across the globe,traditional knowledge tk is the knowledge that an indigenous community accumulates over generat ions of living a part of this knowledge is r e corded in local languages and a major portion is still not recorded and remains confined to local communities in the light of the prevalent loss and threatened future of tk it is important to preserve it in a contemporary format that would be familiar to the future generation preservation also empo w ers the community country to protect its knowledge from misuse and utilize it for better d e velopment this study highlights some major documentation initiatives ac ross the globe at the community and country levels that aim at preser v ing and safeguarding tk,2014,0.168
Mapping the potential risk of mycetoma infection in Sudan and South Sudan using ecological niche modeling,in 2013 the world health organization who recognized mycetoma as one of the neglected tropical conditions due to the efforts of the mycetoma consortium this same consortium formulated knowledge gaps that require further research one of these gaps was that very few data are available on the epidemiology and transmission cycle of the causative agents previous work suggested a soil borne or acacia thorn prick mediated origin of mycetoma infections but no studies have investigated effects of soil type and acacia geographic distribution on mycetoma case distributions here we map risk of mycetoma infection across sudan and south sudan using ecological niche modeling enm for this study records of mycetoma cases were obtained from the scientific literature and gideon acacia records were obtained from the global biodiversity information facility we developed enms based on digital gis data layers summarizing soil characteristics land surface temperature and greenness indices to provide a rich picture of environmental variation across sudan and south sudan enms were calibrated in known endemic districts and transferred countrywide model results suggested that risk is greatest in an east west belt across central sudan visualizing enms in environmental dimensions mycetoma occurs under diverse environmental conditions we compared niches of mycetoma and acacia trees and could not reject the null hypothesis of niche similarity this study revealed contributions of different environmental factors to mycetoma infection risk identified suitable environments and regions for transmission signaled a potential mycetoma acacia association and provided steps towards a robust risk map for the disease,2014,0.205
New gall midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) from Papua New Guinea,two new species of gall midges that feed on trees in papua new guinea are described the larvae of schizomyia novoguineensis kolesik sp nov transform the flowers of macaranga aleuritoides euphorbiaceae into spherical galls preventing sexual reproduction of the host tree the larvae of rhopalomyia psychotriae kolesik sp nov induce pustulate leaf galls on psychotria ramuensis rubiaceae descriptions of adults and immature stages and dna sequences of the cytochrome oxidase unit i mitochondrial gene segment are given for each of the new species,2014,0.804
"Global Assessment of Seasonal Potential Distribution of Mediterranean Fruit Fly, Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae).",in ecology predictive models of the geographical distribution of certain species are widely used to capture the spatial diversity recently a method of maxent based on gibbs distri bution is frequently employed to have reasonable accuracy of a target distribution of species at a site using environmental features such as temperature precipitation elevation and so on it requires only presence data which is a big advantage to the case where absence data is not available or un reliable it also incorporates our limited knowledge into the model about the target distribution such that the expected values of environmental features are equal to the empirical average moreover the visualization of the inhabiting probability of species is easily done with the aid of geographical co ordination information from global biodiversity inventory facility gbif in a statistical software r however the maximum entropy distribution in maxent is derived from the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy which causes unstable estimation of the parameters in the model when some outliers in the data are observed to overcome the weak point and to have deep understandings of the relation among the total number of species the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy and simp son â s index we propose a maximum power entropy method based on beta divergence which is a special case of u divergence it includes the boltzmann gibbs shannon entropy as a special case so it could have better performance of estimation of the target distribution by appropriately choos ing the value of the power index beta we demonstrate the performance of the proposed method by simulation studies as well as publicly available real data,2014,0.374
Climate Change and Weed Impacts on Small Island Ecosystems: Lantana camara L. (Magnoliopsida: Verbenaceae) Distribution in Fiji,oceanic island ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to invasion by exotic species and this vulnerability may be intensified by the effects of climate change particularly if favorable climate conditions allow exotic invaders to spread to new areas effective management of such species requires knowledge of their potential distribution under current and future climate this research examines the value of species distribution modeling in invasive species management in small island ecosystems using the specific case of lantana camara l invasion in fiji a niche model of l camara was developed using climex species distribution modeling sdm software several sources of data were used to develop the model including phenological observations and geographic distribution records the model was used to estimate its potential distribution under historical climate the csiro mk3 0 global climate model gcm was used to explore impacts of climate change on its potential future distribution the model was run with the a1b and a2 scenarios for 2030 and 2070 large parts of both major islands of fiji viti levu and vanua levu were shown to have high climatic suitability for l camara however under future climate scenarios climatic suitability for l camara in fiji was projected to contract the results illustrate that sdms can play a useful role in formulation of cost effective invasive species management strategies and the resulting species distribution maps have broad applicability throughout the many islands of the south pacific region,2014,0.466
Characterising the phytophagous arthropod fauna of a single host plant species: assessing survey completeness at continental and local scales,quantifying survey completeness is a key step in designing and interpreting biodiversity assessments to date this has only been examined either at a local scale through repetitive sampling or across broader geographic areas through multiple survey sites in this paper we determine the completeness of sampling at both local and continental scales of the phytophagous arthropod assemblage on the neotropical shrub parkinsonia aculeata leguminosae we used survey gap analysis sga to determine whether existing surveys adequately sampled the diversity of environments and geographic space covered by the plant within defined geographic regions we determined survey completeness at a local scale with species accumulation curves sga identified the highest priority sites for future sampling in the sonoran desert and the pacific coast of south america the arthropods sampled on p aculeata differed significantly between seasons highlighting the importance of including surveys throughout the year at the local scale surveys in most regions were estimated to have sampled 50 of all species only the mexican gulf following 84 samples including 902 individuals had a reasonably complete sample of all species more than 50 as in other studies rare species will continue to be detected even after extensive surveying and it is likely that close to 100 samples or 1 000 individuals will be needed to attain 50 survey completeness in a region however if the objective is to document close â œhost associationsâ then effort may be better directed at surveying ecologically distinct new areas rather than exhaustive sampling in existing ones methods such as sga can direct such surveys and in conjunction with species richness estimates can be used to assess the adequacy of existing surveys,2014,0.856
Can the Iberian Floristic Diversity Withstand Near-Future Climate Change?,we assess how effectively the current network of protected areas pas across the iberian peninsula will conserve plant diversity under near future 2020 climate change we computed 3267 maxent environmental niche models enms at 1 km spatial resolution for known iberian plant species under two climate scenarios 1950 2000 baseline 2020 to predict near future species distributions across the network of iberian and balearics pas we combined projections of speciesâ enms with simulations of propagule dispersal by using six scenarios of annual dispersal rates no dispersal 0 1 km 0 5 km 1 km 2 km and unlimited mined pa grid cell values for each species were then analyzed we forecast 3 overall floristic diversity richness loss by 2020 the habitat of regionally extant species will contract on average by 13 14 niche movement exceeds 1 km per annum for 30 of extant species while the southerly range margin of northern plant species retracts northward at 8 9 km per decade overall niche movement is more easterly and westerly than northerly there is little expansion of the northern range margin of southern plant species even under unlimited dispersal regardless of propagule dispersal rate altitudinal niche movement of 25 m per decade is strongest for northern species pyrenees flora is most vulnerable to near future climate change with many northern plant species responding by shifting their range westerly and easterly rather than northerly northern humid habitats will be particularly vulnerable to near future climate change andalusian national parks will become important southern biodiversity refuges with limited human intervention particularly in the pyrenees we conclude that floristic diversity in iberian pas should withstand near future climate change,2014,0.97
Multiple sources of uncertainty affect metrics for ranking conservation risk under climate change,aim ecological niche modelling is one of the main tools that allows for the incorporation of climate change effects into conservation planning for example ecological niche model predictions can be used to rank species by degree of predicted future habitat loss while many studies have considered how different modelling decisions contribute to uncertainty in niche model outputs here we evaluate how metrics used to rank species by conservation risk respond to the choice of global climate models greenhouse gas emission scenarios suitable versus unsuitable threshold values and the degree of model complexity location california usa methods we built ecological niche models for 153 species of reptiles and amphibians reduced complexity models were compared to default complexity models using aicc to select climate variables and tune maxent s built in regularization parameter we predicted the distribution of climatically suitable habitat under future 2041â 2060 climate conditions according to 11 global climate models four representative concentration pathways and three threshold values two metrics to rank species by predicted future loss of climatically suitable habitat were calculated for each set of modelling decisions to determine the effects of modelling decisions on rankings we used mixed models results our results indicate that while individual modelling decisions had relatively small effects on species ranks alone in combination they lead to very different conservation assessments main conclusions we recommend that a wide range of modelling decisions be explored and that variation in ranks across runs be reported as a first step in identifying the uncertainty in rank metrics used for assessing conservation risk under changing but uncertain climate predictions,2014,0.463
Habitat availability for amphibians and extinction threat: a global analysis,aim habitat loss and degradation are the factors threatening the largest number of amphibian species however quantitative measures of habitat availability only exist for a small subset of them we evaluated the relationships between habitat availability extinction risk and drivers of threat for the world s amphibians we developed deductive habitat suitability models to estimate the extent of suitable habitat and the proportion of suitable habitat psh inside the geographic range of each species covering species and areas for which little or no high resolution distribution data are available location global methods we used information on habitat preferences to develop habitat suitability models at 300 m resolution by integrating range maps with land cover and elevation model performance was assessed by comparing model output with point localities where species were recorded we then used habitat availability as a surrogate of area of occupancy using the iucn criteria we identified species having narrow area of occupancy for which extinction risk is likely underestimated results we developed models for 5363 amphibians validation success of models was high 94 being better for forest specialists and generalists than for open habitat specialists generalists had proportionally more habitat than forest or open habitat specialists the psh was lower for species having small geographical ranges currently listed as threatened and for which habitat loss is recognized as a threat differences in habitat availability among biogeographical realms were strong we identified 61 forest species for which the extinction risk may be higher that currently assessed in the red list due to limited extent of suitable habitat main conclusions habitat models can accurately predict amphibian distribution at fine scale and allow describing biogeographical patterns of habitat availability the strong relationship between amount of suitable habitat and extinction threat may help the conservation assessment in species for which limited information is currently available,2014,0.78
Species distribution models of an endangered rodent offer conflicting measures of habitat quality at multiple scales,1 the high cost of directly measuring habitat quality has led ecologists to test alternate methods for estimating and predicting this critically important ecological variable in particular it is frequently assumed but rarely tested that models of habitat suitability â œspecies distribution modelsâ sdms may provide useful indices of habitat quality either from an individual animal or manager s perspective critically sdms are increasingly used to estimate speciesâ ranges with an implicit assumption that areas of high suitability will result in higher probability of persistence this assumption underlies efforts to use sdms to design protected areas assess the status of cryptic species or manage responses to climate change recent tests of this relationship have provided mixed results suggesting sdms may predict abundance but not other measures of high quality habitat e g survival persistence 2 in this study we created a suite of sdms for the endangered giant kangaroo rat dipodomys ingens at three distinct scales using the machine learning method maxent we compared these models with three measures of habitat quality survival abundance and body condition 3 sdms were not correlated with survival while models at all scales were positively correlated with abundance finer scale models were more closely correlated with abundance than the largest scale body condition was not correlated with habitat suitability at any scale the inability of models to predict survival may be due to a lack of information in environmental covariates unmeasured community processes or stochastic events or the inadequacy of using models that predict species presence to also predict demography 4 synthesis and applications species distributions models sdms especially fine scale ones may be useful for longer term management goals such as identifying high quality habitat for protection however short term management decisions should be based only on models that use covariates appropriate for the necessary temporal and spatial scales assumptions about the relationship between habitat suitability and habitat quality must be made explicit even then care should be taken in inferring multiple types of habitat quality from sdms,2014,0.332
Fish-AMAZBOL: a database on freshwater fishes of the Bolivian Amazon,the bolivian part of the amazon basin contains a mega diverse and well preserved fish fauna since the last decade this fish fauna has received an increasing attention from scientists and the national authorities as fishes represent one of the most important sources of proteins for local human communities however this fish fauna still remains poorly documented here we present a database for fishes from the bolivian amazon to build the database we conducted an extensive literature survey of native and non native exotic fishes inhabiting all major sub drainages of the bolivian amazon the database named fish amazbol contains species lists for 13 amazonian hydrological units covering 100 of the bolivian amazon and approximately 65 722 137 km2 of the all territory fish amazbol includes 802 valid species 12 of them being non native that have been checked for systematic reliability and consistency to put this number in perspective this represents around 14 of the all neotropical ichthyofauna and around 6 of all strictly freshwater fishes inhabiting the planet this database is currently the most comprehensive database of native and non native fish species richness available so far for the bolivian amazon,2014,0.654
How weeds emerge: a taxonomic and trait-based examination using United States data,weeds can cause great economic and ecological harm to ecosystems despite their importance comparisons of the taxonomy and traits of successful weeds often focus on a few specific comparisons for example introduced versus native weeds we used publicly available inventories of us plant species to make comprehensive comparisons of the factors that underlie weediness we quantitatively examined taxonomy to determine if certain genera are overrepresented by introduced weedy or herbicide resistant species and we compared phenotypic traits of weeds to those of nonweeds whether introduced or native we uncovered genera that have more weeds and introduced species than expected by chance and plant families that have more herbicide resistant species than expected by chance certain traits generally related to fast reproduction were more likely to be associated with weedy plants regardless of species origins we also found stress tolerance traits associated with either native or introduced weeds compared with native or introduced nonweeds weeds and introduced species have significantly smaller genomes than nonweeds and native species these results support trends for weedy plants reported from other floras suggest that native and introduced weeds have different stress adaptations and provide a comprehensive survey of trends across weeds within the usa,2014,0.901
Patterns and processes in the distribution of European centipedes (Chilopoda),aim to identify consistent biogeographical modules and examine species diversity and distribution patterns of centipede assemblages location europe including turkey and macaronesia methods a dataset was compiled detailing the occurrence of 585 species of centipedes in 56 countries cluster analysis using upgma unweighted pair group method with arithmetic averages was used to identify biogeographical modules to cope with potential issues resulting from the use of political geographical entities the robustness of the modules was tested using two different randomization approaches potential centres of diversity and dispersal for the taxa were hypothesized using two different approaches based on nestedness analysis using nodf and on investigation of species diversity gradients respectively results the mediterranean region was found to be the most species rich area cluster analysis identified four major biogeographical modules namely eastern mediterranean western mediterranean balkan peninsula with easternâ central europe and north western europe the robustness of these modules was supported by two randomization approaches both the analysis of nestedness and of species diversity gradients consistently identified the balkan peninsula as a potential centre of diversity for centipedes in europe main conclusions the arrangement of the centipede fauna into four biogeographical modules is consistent with european topography and environmental heterogeneity with high mountain ranges acting as dispersal barriers limiting the species overlap between modules common palaeogeographical history may explain the high degree of nestedness observed in the central and north western european modules whereas the high number of singletons and endemics is responsible for the low degree of nestedness in southern europe the identification of the balkan peninsula as a potential centre of diversity is in agreement with its high environmental heterogeneity and its known role as a pleistocene glacial refugium,2014,0.808
"A New Two-Pored Amphisbaena Linnaeus, 1758, from Western Amazonia, Brazil (Amphisbaenia: Reptilia)",recent efforts to improve sampling of brazilian biodiversity have yielded a number of undescribed species of amphisbaenids herein we describe a new species of small two pored amphisbaena from western brazilian amazonia the new species can be distinguished from all congeners by the combination of the following characters two precloacal pores arranged in a continuous series snout rounded in lateral and dorsal views tip of tail rounded 233â 250 body annuli 20â 24 caudal annuli autotomy sites on caudal annuli 6â 9 10 dorsal and 12â 14 ventral segments per annulus at midbody absence of postmalars suture between frontals slightly smaller than parietal and nasal sutures and tail short relative to body length tail length body length 0 10 the new species inhabits the rain forest and small patches of savanna vegetation within the amazon forest a bayesian analysis based on two mitochondrial 16s and nd2 and three nuclear cmos bndf and rag1 markers recovered the new species as sister to a clade formed by a hastata a cuiabana however support for this rela tionship is low genetic divergence between populations from both sides of the middle madeira river is low,2014,0.816
"The distribution of the vascular plants on the North Frisian Island, Amrum",amrum is a small barrier island on the north west coast of germany the distribution of vascular plants was examined by surveying their 1km 2 grid square occupancy across the whole island these data were used in a study on the recent vegetation change in the island these data include 3786 observations of 450 taxa collected in two surveys in 2007 and 2008,2014,0.452
Climate-driven diversification and Pleistocene refugia in Philippine birds: evidence from phylogeographic structure and paleoenvironmental niche modeling,avian diversification in oceanic archipelagos is largely attributed to isolation across marine barriers during glacial maxima lowered sea levels resulted in repeated land connections between islands joined by shallow seas consequently such islands are not expected to show endemism however if climate fluctuations simultaneously caused shifts in suitable environmental conditions limiting populations to refugia then occurrence on and dispersal across periodic land bridges are not tenable to assess the degree to which paleoclimate barriers rather than marine barriers drove avian diversification in the philippine archipelago we produced ecological niche models for current day glacial maxima and interglacial climate scenarios to infer potential pleistocene distributions and paleoclimate barriers we then tested marine and paleoclimate barriers for correspondence to geographic patterns of population divergence inferred from dna sequences from eight codistributed bird species in all species deep water channels corresponded to zones of genetic differentiation but six species exhibited deeper divergence associated with a periodic land bridge in the southern philippines ecological niche models for these species identified a common paleoclimate barrier that coincided with deep genetic structure among populations although dry land connections joined southern philippine islands during low sea level stands unfavorable environmental conditions limited populations within landmasses resulting in long term isolation and genetic differentiation these results highlight the complex nature of diversification in archipelagos marine barriers changes in connectivity due to sea level change and climate induced refugia acted in concert to produce great species diversity and endemism in the philippines,2014,0.89
Epitypification and neotypification: guidelines with appropriate and inappropriate examples,a review of phylogenetic studies carried out together with morphological ones shows that a major problem with most early studies is that they concentrated on techniques and used material or strains of fungi that in most cases were not carefully reference and in a worrying number of cases wrongly named most classical species particularly of microfungi are not represented by adequate type material or other authoritatively identified cultures or specimens that can serve as dna sources for phylogenetic study or for developing robust identification systems natural classifications of fungi therefore suffer from the lack of reference strains in resultant phylogenetic trees in some cases epitypification and neotypification can solve this problem and these tools are increasingly used to resolve taxonomic confusion and stabilize the understanding of species genera families or orders of fungi this manuscript discusses epitypification and neotypification describes how to epitypify or neotypify species and examines the importance of this process a set of guidelines for epitypification is presented examples where taxa have been epitypified are presented and the benefits and problems of epitypification are discussed as examples of epitypification or to provide reference specimens a new epitype is designated for paraphaeosphaeria michotii and reference specimens are provided for astrosphaeriella stellata a bakeriana phaeosphaeria elongata ophiobolus cirsii and o erythrosporus in this way we demonstrate how to epitypify taxa and its importance and also illustrate the value of proposing reference specimens if epitypification is not advisable although we provided guidelines for epitypification the decision to epitypify or not lies with the author who should have experience of the fungus concerned this responsibility is to be taken seriously as once a later typification is made it may not be possible to undo that particularly in the case of epitypes without using the lengthy and tedious formal conservation and rejection processes,2014,0.327
Present-day risk assessment would have predicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius),abstract the precipitous decline and extinction of the passenger pigeon one century ago helped galvanize imple mentation of national policies and international cooperation on wildlife management having a clear understanding of past conservation failures will aid in preventing future unanticipated extinctions simulations from a population model developed for this species indicate that while habitat loss contrib uted to decline the main cause of the extinction was an unregulated commercial harvest hindcast appli cation of the iucnâ s red listing criteria to modeled population trajectories show that the species would have been listed as threatened for decades prior to extinction had the data and risk assessment methods been available abundant populations can belie indicators of extinction risk such as a high rate of population decline listing species as threatened based solely on rates of decline remains controversial however this study demonstrates that this risk indicator may have been the sole means by which the risk to the passenger pigeon could have been detected early enough for effective conservation measures,2014,0.377
Realized niche shift during a global biological invasion,accurate forecasts of biological invasions are crucial for managing invasion risk but are hampered by niche shifts resulting from evolved environmental tolerances fundamental niche shifts or the presence of novel biotic and abiotic conditions in the invaded range realized niche shifts distinguishing between these kinds of niche shifts is impossible with traditional correlative approaches to invasion forecasts which exclusively consider the realized niche here we overcome this challenge by combining a physiologically mechanistic model of the fundamental niche with correlative models based on the realized niche to study the global invasion of the cane toad rhinella marina we find strong evidence that the success of r marina in australia reflects a shift in the species realized niche as opposed to evolutionary shifts in range limiting traits our results demonstrate that r marina does not fill its fundamental niche in its native south american range and that areas of niche unfilling coincide with the presence of a closely related species with which r marina hybridizes conversely in australia where coevolved taxa are absent r marina largely fills its fundamental niche in areas behind the invasion front the general approach taken here of contrasting fundamental and realized niche models provides key insights into the role of biotic interactions in shaping range limits and can inform effective management strategies not only for invasive species but also for assisted colonization under climate change,2014,0.612
Early Land Plants Today : Index of Liverworts & Hornworts 2011 – 2012,a widely accessible list of known plant species is a fundamental requirement for plant conservation and has vast applications an index of published names of liverworts and hornworts between 2011 and 2012 is provided as part of a continued effort in working toward producing a world checklist of this group the list includes 25 higher taxa 154 species 31 infraspecific taxa and 17 autonyms for 2011 and 2012 12 of them are fossils a few taxa not covered by the earlier indices for 2000â 2010 are also included 75 species and 15 infraspecific taxa are new to science,2014,0.632
Suggestions for Better Data Presentation in Papers: An Experience from a Comprehensive Study on National and Sub-national Trends of Overweight and Obesity.,background the importance of data quality whether in collection analysis or presenting stage is a tangible and undeniable scientific fact and the main objects of researches implementation objective this paper aims at explaining the main problems of the iranian scientific papers for providing better data in the field of national and subnational prevalence incidence estimates and trends of obesity and overweight methods to assess and evaluate papers we systematically followed an approved standard protocol retrieval of studies was performed through thomson reuters web of science pubmed and scopus as well as iranian databases including irandoc scientific information database sid and iranmedex using gbd global burden of diseases validated quality assessment forms to assess the quality and availability of data in papers we considered the following four main domains a quality of studies b quality report of the results c responsiveness of corresponding authors and d diversity in study settings results we retrieved 3 253 records of these 1 875 were from international and 1378 from national databases after refining steps 129 3 97 papers remained related to our study domain more than 51 of relevant papers were excluded because of poor quality of studies the number of reported total population and points of data were 22 972 and 29 for boys and 38 985 and 47 for girls respectively for all measures missing values and diversities in studies setting limited our ability to compare and analyze the results moreover we had some serious problems in contacting the corresponding authors for complementary information necessary receptiveness 17 9 conclusion as the present paper focused on the main problems of iranian scientific papers and proposed suggestions the results will have implications for better policy making,2014,0.135
Invasiveness and the Atlas of Living Australia,as of february 2014 the atlas of living australia ala http www ala org au had approximately 45 million records of over 111 thousand native and alien species 400 â environmental layersâ approximately 39 million pages of biological literature 40 thousand species images and other integrated biological data what the atlas doesnâ t have however is a systematic framework for dealing with invasive species,2014,0.691
"A set of multi-entry identification keys to African frugivorous flies (Diptera, Tephritidae)",tephritid fruit flies or true fruit flies diptera tephritidae include approximately 500 genera and 4800 valid species norrbom 2004 whose vast majority 95 is represented by phytophagous species reviewed in aluja and norrbom 1999 among them frugivorous flies represent approximately 25â 30 of all tephritid species oc cur in tropical and temperate regions of all continents except the antarctic and are predominantly distributed in five main genera anastrepha schiner rhagoletis loew ceratitis macleay dacus fabricius and bactrocera macquart frugivorous tephritids attack healthy fruit still on the tree the larvae develop inside the fruit feed on the plant tissues and complete their developmental cycle in the soil a relatively limited number approximately 100 of frugivorous species are phytophagous pests whose lar vae attack pulp and or seeds of cultivated fruits and crops of agricultural importance in africa damage on commercial fruits and crops is caused mainly by polyphagous species belonging to the genera ceratitis dacus and bactrocera de meyer et al 2008,2014,0.853
Global biotic interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets,an intricate network of interactions between organisms and their environment form the ecosystems that sustain life on earth with a detailed understanding of these interactions ecologists and biologists can make better informed predictions about the ways different environmental factors will impact ecosystems despite the abundance of research data on biotic and abiotic interactions no comprehensive and easily accessible data collection is available that spans taxonomic geospatial and temporal domains biotic interaction datasets are effectively siloed inhibiting cross dataset comparisons in order to pool resources and bring to light individual datasets specialized research tools are needed to aggregate normalize and integrate existing datasets with standard taxonomies ontologies vocabularies and structured data repositories global biotic interactions globi provides such tools by way of an open community driven infrastructure designed to lower the barrier for researchers to perform ecological systems analysis and modeling globi provides a tool that a ingests normalizes and aggregates datasets b integrates interoperable data with accepted ontologies e g obo relations ontology uberon and environment ontology vocabularies e g coastal and marine ecological classification standard and taxonomies e g integrated taxonomic information system and national center for biotechnology information taxonomy database c makes data accessible through anapplication programming interface api and various data archives darwin core turtle and neo4j and d houses a data collection of about 700 000 species interactions across about 50 000 taxa covering over 1 100 references from 19 data sources globi has taken an open source and open data approach in order to make integrated species interaction data maximally accessible and to encourage users to provide feedback contribute data and improve data access methods the globi collection ofdatasets is currently used in the encyclopedia of life eol and gulf of mexico species interactions gomexsi,2014,0.291
Strategies for the sustainability of online open-access biodiversity databases,scientists can ensure that high quality research information is readily available on the internet so society is not dependant on less authoritative sources many scientific projects and initiatives published information on species and biodiversity on the world wide web without users needing to pay for it however these resources often stagnated when project funding expired based on a large pool of experiences worldwide this article discusses what measures will help such data resources develop beyond the project lifetime biodiversity data just as data in many other disciplines are often not generated automatically by machines or sensors data on for example species are based on human observations and interpretation this requires continuous data curation to keep these up to date creators of online biodiversity databases should consider whether they have the resources to make their database of such value that other scientists and or institutions would continue to finance its existence to that end it may be prudent to engage such partners in the development of the resource from an early stage managers of existing biodiversity databases should reflect on the factors being important for sustainability these include the extent scope quality and uniqueness of database content track record of development support from scientists support from institutions and clarity of intellectual property rights science funders should give special attention to the development of scholarly databases with expert validated content the science community has to become aware of the efforts of scientists in contributing to open access databases including by citing these resources in the reference lists of publications that use them science culture must thus adapt its practices to support online databases as scholarly publications to sustain such databases we recommend they should a become integrated into larger collaborative databases or information systems with a consequently larger user community and pool of funding opportunities and b be owned and curated by a science organisation society or institution with a suitable mandate good governance and proactive communication with contributors is important to maintain the team enthusiasm that launched the resource experience shows that â bigger is betterâ in terms of database size because the resource will have more content more potential and known uses and users of its content more contributors be more prestigious to contribute to and have more funding options furthermore most successful biodiversity databases are managed by a partnership of individuals and organisations,2014,0.106
"Identificación de asentamientos irregulares y diagnóstico de sus necesidades de infraestructura en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México",since 2007 more than half of the world population lives in cities causing that one of the biggest challenges of this demographic transition which occurs mainly in developing countries since the 1970s is providing decent housing to a growing urban population this phenomenon coupled with the particularities of land markets triggers spontaneous settlements that occur in cities in an informal way and with major deficiencies in both the infrastructure and the quality of housing approximately one billion people worldwide live in deplorable housing conditions lack of basic urban services and infrastructure most of this population lives in irregular settlements with extreme poverty within the major developing countries the expansion of this type of settlement is considered as a visual manifestation of poverty itself in 2000 the un habitat organization of the united nations issued their â œmillennium declarationâ in which primary goals were adopted by major world leaders to improve the living conditions of the population living in informal settlements although irregular land occupation is a frequent occurrence in the cities currently there are no reliable estimation techniques to determine its extent and characteristics reliably and expeditiously it is from this issue that there is a need to develop a proposal for analysis to identify and delineate the irregular settlements to an urban scale and make a diagnosis of urban infrastructure needs this dissertation presents an alternative to identify in a timely reliable and effective manner irregular settlements so that different levels of government can provide quick response to regularization problems lack of infrastructure and urban services this research work involves the development of a model of analysis based on the integration of physical attributes socioeconomic attributes and the spatial organization of the urban environment using remote sensing techniques spatial analysis and census data these physical attributes include terrain conditions cooperative flood and risk zones socioeconomic attributes include income levels sewage and adaptable water coverage overcrowding level center periphery relationship and land value the attributes of spatial organization and type of building materials were collected from high resolution satellite imagery and landscape metrics these three groups of variables were integrated into a multi criteria model for irregular settlement identification at ciudad juarez chihuahua mexico with a 97 66 of accuracy the contribution of this research is to present a new reliable method to identify irregular settlements the achieved results can provide a great asset to help urban development officials in decision making,2014,0.016
Politicising plants: Dwelling and invasive alien species in domestic gardens in Norway,the article investigates how domestic gardeners in oppland county norway engage with plants and with â invasive alien speciesâ as defined by the national environmental authorities the spread of invasive alien plants from domestic gardens may represent a threat to native biodiversity and environmental authorities currently face a challenge in communicating this risk to domestic gardeners operating within their relatively autonomous garden spaces the authors demonstrate how biodiversity politics and humanâ plant relationships meet or fail to meet in domestic gardens empirically they draw on talking whilst walking interviews held with selected domestic gardeners and they were inspired by ingoldâ s notion of dwelling in combination with more than human geography which enabled them to analyse how through embodied practices domestic gardeners relate to plants as well as to the terms developed within natural science i e alienness nativeness and invasiveness the main finding is that gardeners in oppland are not concerned about the geographical origin of garden plants but rather focus on the plantsâ attributes such as invasiveness and adaptability to a harsh climate insights into how the terminology used by environmental authorities corresponds to domestic gardenersâ interaction with garden plants may provide input into the improvement of communication strategies directed towards domestic gardeners regarding invasive alien species issues keywords,2014,0.19
Effect of aqueous root extract of Fadogia andersonii on sperm count and motility in adult male Wistar rats,the effect of administration of aqueous root extrac t of fadogia andersonii fa was evaluated on sperm count motility and epididymal weight of the adult male wi star rats twenty rats were randomly divided into f our groups group a b c and d of 5 rats each group a serve d as the control and was administered 0 9 normal s aline group b c and d served as the treatment groups and received oral dose of 100 mg kg 200 mg kg and 400 mg kg of the extract respectively for 20 days sperm counts sperm motility and epididymal weight were evaluat ed results of the experiment revealed a dose dependent significan t increase p 0 05 in the sperm count and sperm motility thus the plant had a spermatotrophic action demons trated by the increase in sperm count and sperm mot ility,2014,0.359
Climate-induced range shifts of the American jackknife clam Ensis directus in Europe,mapping the future potential distribution of alien species has become an issue of great concern ecological niche models are increasingly used to forecast the spatial range of introduced species in the context of climate warming here we studied the potential spread of the american jackknife clam ensis directus into european waters e directus a marine bivalve native to the american coasts was observed in europe for the first time in the german bight at the end of the 1970s afterwards the clam quickly colonized the surrounding waters of the north sea although many studies focused on its biology ecology and colonization the extent to which e directus may invade european and nordic seas remained poorly known in this study we used two ecological niche models enms calibrated on the native area of the mollusk to evaluate the potential distributional range of the bivalve over european seas under current environmental conditions e directus should continue to progress towards the southern coasts of france and may also invade new areas in the adriatic sea projections for the end of the century suggest that the probability of occurrence of e directus increases from denmark to france with both enms the tunisian coasts may also become a new suitable area for the mollusk but the results of the two enms differ for this region therefore contrary to what is often observed a southward range expansion of e directus is probable especially as climate will get warmer,2014,0.382
Similar but not equivalent: ecological niche comparison across closely-related Mexican white pines,aim in the face of global environmental change identifying the factors that shape the ecological niches of species and understanding the mechanisms behind them can help to draft effective conservation plans the differences in the ecological factors that shape species distributions may then help to highlight differences between closely related taxa we investigate the applicability of ecological niche modelling and the comparison of species distributions in ecological niche space to detect areas with priority for biodiversity conservation and to analyse differ ences in the ecological niche spaces used by closely related taxa location united states of america mexico and central america methods we apply ordination and ecological niche modelling techniques to assess the main environmental drivers of the distribution of mexican white pines pinus pinaceae furthermore we assess the similarities and differences of the ecological niches occupied by closely related taxa we analyse whether mexican white pines occupy similar or equivalent ecological niches results all the studied taxa presented different responses to the environmental factors resulting in a unique combination of niche conditions our stacked habitat suitability maps highlighted regions in southern mexico and northern central america as highly suitable for most species and thus with high conser vation value by quantitatively assessing the niche overlap similarity and equiv alency of mexican white pines our results prove that the distribution of one species cannot be implied by the distribution of another even if these taxa are considered closely related main conclusions the fact that each mexican white pine is constrained by a unique set of environmental conditions and thus their non equivalence of ecological niches has direct implications for conservation as this highlights the inadequacy of one fits all type of conservation measure,2014,0.818
Origins and migratory patterns of bats killed by wind turbines in southern Alberta: evidence from stable isotopes,large numbers of migratory bats are killed every autumn at wind energy facilities in north america while this may be troubling from a population perspective these fatalities provide an opportunity to learn more about bat migration and the origins and summer distributions of migratory bats by using endogenous markers such markers include stable isotope values which have been used to answer questions about ecological systems such as trophic levels and food webs and the origins and migratory routes of animals to estimate the origins of migratory bats we determined nitrogen d15n carbon d13c and hydrogen d2h stable isotope values of fur d15nf d13cf d2hf respectively from hoary bats lasiurus cinereus and silver haired bats lasionycteris noctivagans killed at a wind energy facility in southern alberta canada we determined that mean isotope values varied among species year sex and age class d13cf and d2hf values indicated that silver haired bats likely originated in the boreal forest farther north and or at higher elevations than the aspen parkland like habitat suggested by the isotope values of hoary bats isomap analysis indicated that bat fatalities may have originated from a large catchment area potentially hundreds of kilometers away our data provide further evidence for a migration route along the eastern slopes of the rocky mountains that is used by bats from across alberta and beyond and suggest that fatalities at a single wind energy site have the potential to have far reaching ecological and population consequences,2014,0.392
"The genus Hormiops Fage, 1933 (Hormuridae, Scorpiones), a palaeoendemic of the South China Sea: Systematics and biogeography",the monotypic genus hormiops fage 1933 is so far only known from two groups of granitic islands off the coasts of peninsular malaysia and vietnam examination of newly collected material from both archipelagos and of the type series of hormiops davidovi fage 1933 reveals previously disregarded morphological differences sufficient to assign the malaysian specimens to a distinct species described here as hormiops infulcra sp nov an updated diagnosis of the genus as well as a dichotomic key enabling the determination of hormiops from its close relatives hormurus thorell 1876 and liocheles sundevall 1833 are also provided the phylogenetic position distribution pattern and ecology of these insular scorpions suggest that they are palaeoendemics remnants of a previously more widely distributed lineage a biogeographical model is proposed for the genus based on these observations and on a synthesis of palaeogeographical and palaeoenvironmental data currently available for sundaland,2014,0.443
Field validation shows bias-corrected pseudo-absence selection is the best method for predictive species-distribution modelling,aim to determine the performance of different pseudo absence selection strategies on the prediction of species distribution models after 30 years of regional climatic and land use changes location continental france and the iberian peninsula methods in this study we used a large database of coprophagous scarabaeidae beetle records collected between 1970 and 1980 in continental france and the iberian peninsula to assess the relative performance of different modelling methods in predicting species distributions using current climate and land use information we used maxent with standard settings and boosted regression trees with three different approaches to generate pseudo absences we used historical data to model species distribution and then projected the models into the present each method s performance was then assessed by specific field sampling conducted at 20 different sites results field validation demonstrated that model predictions were more accurate when pseudo absence data were selected from a sampling bias grid and that model evaluations based on test datasets can lead to false conclusions if not correctly calibrated the study also demonstrated that the method in which pseudo absences are dealt with has a major impact on ecological conclusions main conclusion correcting for spatial bias in collections datasets is of great importance for predicting future trends in species distributions uncorrected models showed a strong bias in their predicted species richness patterns,2014,0.358
The Generification of the Fossil Record,many modern paleobiological analyses are conducted at the generic level a practice predicated on the validity of genera as meaningful proxies for species uncritical application of genera in such analyses however has ledâ perhaps inadvertentlyâ to the unjustified reification of genera in an evolutionary context while the utility of genera as proxies for species in evolutionary studies should be evaluated as an empirical issue in practice it is increasingly assumed rather than demonstrated that genera are suitable proxies for species this is problematic on both ontological and epistemological grounds genera are arbitrarily circumscribed non equivalent often paraphyletic and sometimes polyphyletic collections of species they are useful tools for communication but have no theoretical or biological reality of their own and whether monophyletic or not cannot themselves operate in the evolutionary process attributes considered important for understanding macroevolutionâ e g geographic ranges niche breadths and taxon durationsâ are frequently variable among species within genera and will be inflated at the generic level especially in species rich genera consequently the meaning s of results attained at the generic level may not â â trickle downâ â in any obvious way that elucidates our understanding of evolution at the species level ideally then evolutionary studies that are actually about species should be pursued using species level data rather than proxy data tabulated using genera where genera are used greater critical attention should be focused on the degree to which attributes tabulated at the generic level reflect biological properties and processes at the species level,2014,0.815
Old health risks in new places? An ecological niche model for I. ricinus tick distribution in Europe under a changing climate.,climate change will likely have impacts on disease vector distribution posing a significant health threat in the 21st century risk of tick borne diseases may increase with higher annual mean temperatures and changes in precipitation we modeled the current and future potential distribution of the ixodes ricinus tick species in europe the genetic algorithm for rule set prediction garp was utilized to predict potential distributions of i ricinus based on current 1990 2010 averages and future 2040 2060 averages environmental variables a ten model best subset was created out of a possible 200 models based on omission and commission criteria our results show that under the a2 climate change scenario the potential habitat range for the i ricinus tick in europe will expand into higher elevations and latitudes e g scandinavia the baltics and belarus while contracting in other areas e g alps pyrenees interior italy and northwestern poland overall a potential habitat expansion of 3 8 in all of europe is possible our results may be used to inform climate change adaptation efforts in europe,2014,0.305
A Gazetteer for Biodiversity Data as a Linked Open Data Solution,biodiversity studies all life forms that we find in nature the maintenance of biological diversity is important because it is essential to life on earth the lack of accurate spatial geographic information in species occurrence data especially from diversity rich regions like the amazon forest leads to problems in many conservation activities such as systematic planning for the protection of endangered species in this paper we present a gazetteer a geographical directory that associate name places to geographic coordinates for biodiversity data that is available as an linked open data resource using a geosparql endpoint and show how it can be used to improve inaccurate geographic collection data we compared the efficiency of our gazetteer with three openly available resources geonames wikimapia and wikipedia and got a 10 better recall rate than these endpoints we also used the gazetteer to correct geographic data from a big record sample 327 000 occurrence records from species link and gbif two big open access repositories of biodiversity occurrence data in this data set we were able to add geographic coordinates to around 14 of records that did not have them before,2014,0.362
Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of the fern genus Pteris (Pteridaceae),background and aims pteris pteridaceae comprising over 250 species had been thought to be a monophyletic genus until the three monotypic genera neurocallis ochropteris and platyzoma were included however the relationships between the type species of the genus pteris p longifolia and other species are still unknown furthermore several infrageneric morphological classifications have been proposed but are debated to date no worldwide phylogenetic hypothesis has been proposed for the genus and no comprehensive biogeographical history of pteris crucial to understanding its cosmopolitan distribution has been presented methods a molecular phylogeny of pteris is presented for 135 species based on cpdna rbcl and matk and using maximum parsimony maximum likelihood and bayesian inference approaches the inferred phylogeny was used to assess the biogeographical history of pteris and to reconstruct the evolution of one ecological and four morphological characters commonly used for infrageneric classifications key results the monophyly of pteris remains uncertain especially regarding the relationship of pteris with actiniopteris onychium and platyzoma pteris comprises 11 clades supported by combinations of ecological and morphological character states but none of the characters used in previous classifications were found to be exclusive synapomorphies the results indicate that pteris diversified around 47 million years ago and when species colonized new geographical areas they generated new lineages which are associated with morphological character transitions conclusions this first phylogeny of pteris on a global scale and including more than half of the diversity of the genus should contribute to a new more reliable infrageneric classification of pteris based not only on a few morphological characters but also on ecological traits and geographical distribution the inferred biogeographical history highlights long distance dispersal as a major process shaping the worldwide distribution of the species colonization of different niches was followed by subsequent morphological diversification dispersal events followed by allopatric and parapatric speciation contribute to the species diversity of pteris,2014,0.827
"Synopsis of Plazia Ruiz & Pav. (Onoserideae, Asteraceae), including a new species from northern Peru",a synopsis of plazia ruiz pav onoserideae asteraceae is presented including the description of a new species plazia robinsonii m o dillon sagã st from a locality c 20 km west of huamachuco department of la libertad in northern peru it most closely resembles p conferta ruiz pav a narrow endemic from central peru some 450 km to the south however the latter species has larger leaves and smaller capitula plazia is a small genus of four species confined to the andean cordillera of peru bolivia chile and argentina a distribution map of the four species an illustration of the new species a photo graph of the holotype and a key to species are provided,2014,0.926
"Morphometric studies of the post embryonic developmental stages of Rice Grasshopper, Oxya japonica (Orthoptera: Acrididae)",morphometric analysis of the external body parts of each post embryonic development stage of rice grasshopper oxya japonica was carried out under laboratory conditions data collected included total body length head length antennal length pronotum length femur length length of abdomen prothoracic leg mesothoracic leg metathoracic leg antenna and abdominal width the result of the study showed that the size of the measured body parts increased progressively during the post embryonic development there was a strong positive relationship between the body length femur length antennal length and pronotum length the life cycle of the insect included 5 instar stages the study revealed that the total body length head length antennal length abdominal length hind femur length and length of metathoracic leg could be taken as indicators for the recognition of various instar stages,2014,0.327
The BiSciCol Triplifier: bringing biodiversity data to the Semantic Web,background recent years have brought great progress in efforts to digitize the world s biodiversity data but integrating data from many different providers and across research domains remains challenging semantic web technologies have been widely recognized by biodiversity scientists for their potential to help solve this problem yet these technologies have so far seen little use for biodiversity data such slow uptake has been due in part to the relative complexity of semantic web technologies along with a lack of domain specific software tools to help non experts publish their data to the semantic web results the biscicol triplifier is new software that greatly simplifies the process of converting biodiversity data in standard tabular formats such as darwin core archives into semantic web ready resource description framework rdf representations the triplifier uses a vocabulary based on the popular darwin core standard includes both web based and command line interfaces and is fully open source software conclusions unlike most other rdf conversion tools the triplifier does not require detailed familiarity with core semantic web technologies and it is tailored to a widely popular biodiversity data format and vocabulary standard as a result the triplifier can often fully automate the conversion of biodiversity data to rdf thereby making the semantic web much more accessible to biodiversity scientists who might otherwise have relatively little knowledge of semantic web technologies easy availability of biodiversity data as rdf will allow researchers to combine data from disparate sources and analyze them with powerful linked data querying tools however before software like the triplifier and semantic web technologies in general can reach their full potential for biodiversity science the biodiversity informatics community must address several critical challenges such as the widespread failure to use robust globally unique identifiers for biodiversity data,2014,0.148
"rAvis: An R-Package for Downloading Information Stored in Proyecto AVIS, a Citizen Science Bird Project.",citizen science projects store an enormous amount of information about species distribution diversity and characteristics researchers are now beginning to make use of this rich collection of data however access to these databases is not always straightforward apart from the largest and international projects citizen science repositories often lack specific application programming interfaces apis to connect them to the scientific environments thus it is necessary to develop simple routines to allow researchers to take advantage of the information collected by smaller citizen science projects for instance programming specific packages to connect them to popular scientific environments like r here we present ravis an r package to connect r users with proyecto avis http proyectoavis com a spanish citizen science project with more than 82 000 bird observation records we develop several functions to explore the database to plot the geographic distribution of the species occurrences and to generate personal queries to the database about species occurrences number of individuals distribution etc and birdwatcher observations number of species recorded by each collaborator utms visited etc this new r package will allow scientists to access this database and to exploit the information generated by spanish birdwatchers over the last 40 years,2014,0.823
PCR reveals high prevalence of non/low sporulating Nosema bombi (microsporidia) infections in bumble bees (Bombus) in Northern Arizona,about 20 of bumble bee species are in decline in north america and the microsporidian pathogen nosema bombi has been correlated with these declines we conducted a comprehensive survey of n bombi infections in the bumble bee communities throughout the flight season along an elevation gradient in northern arizona focusing on two species bombus pyrobombus huntii and bombus pyrobombus centralis we used a combination of pcr and microscopy to distinguish between sporulating and non low sporulating n bombi infections surprisingly high levels of pcr positive infections with no detectable spore loads were found in b huntii 31 63 and b centralis 56 5 66 5 while the prevalence of sporulating infections was low 3 0 11 8 and 0 12 9 respectively we determined the prevalence of sporulating n bombi infection in six other co occurring but rarer bumble bee species 0 62 5 but did not test them using pcr the prevalence of sporulating n bombi infections in b bombias nevadensis was significantly higher than in either b huntii or b centralis 29 the declining bumble bee bombus sensu strico occidentalis had the highest prevalence of sporulating n bombi infections 62 5 but we purposely captured very few b occidentalis because of its declining status pcr was a more sensitive measure of n bombi prevalence and revealed that wild bumble bees have a much higher prevalence of n bombi than has previously been recognized microscopy and pcr together provide complementary not redundant information that deepens our understanding of the dynamic interactions between n bombi and their bumble bee hosts,2014,0.984
Acta Scientiarum Predicting geographic distributions of Phacellodomus species (Aves: Furnariidae) in South America based on ecological niche modeling,phacellodomus reichenbach 1853 comprises nine species of furnariids that occur in south america in open and generally dry areas this study estimated the geographic distributions of phacellodomus species in south america by ecological niche modeling applying maximum entropy method models were produced for eight species based on six climatic variables and 949 occurrence records since highest climatic suitability for phacellodomus species has been estimated in open and dry areas the amazon rainforest areas are not very suitable for these species annual precipitation and minimum temperature of the coldest month are the variables that most influence the models phacellodomus species occurred in 35 ecoregions of south america chaco and uruguayan savannas were the ecoregions with the highest number of species despite the overall connection of phacellodomus species with dry areas species such as p ruber p rufifrons p ferrugineigula and p erythrophthalmus occurrekeywords,2014,0.958
The roles of history and ecology in chloroplast phylogeographic patterns of the bird-dispersed plant parasite Phoradendron californicum (Viscaceae) in the Sonoran Desert,premise of the study a recurrent explanation for phylogeographic discontinuities in the baja california peninsula and the sonoran desert region has been the association of vicariant events with pliocene and pleistocene seaway breaks nevertheless despite its relevance for plant dispersal other explanations such as ecological and paleoclimatic factors have received little attention here we analyzed the role of several of these factors to describe the phylogeographic patterns of the desert mistletoe phoradendron californicum methods using noncoding chloroplast regions we assess the marginal probability of 19 a priori hypotheses related to geological and ecological factors to predict the cpdna variation in p californicum using a bayesian coalescent framework complementarily we used the macrofossil record and niche model projections on last glacial maximum climatic conditions for hosts mistletoe and a bird specialist to interpret phylogeographic patterns key results genealogical reconstructions revealed five clades which suggest a combination of cryptic divergence long distance seed dispersal and isolating postdivergence events bayesian hypothesis test favored a series of pliocene and pleistocene geological events related to the formation of the baja california peninsula and seaways across the peninsula as the most supported explanation for this genealogical pattern however age estimates niche projections and fossil records show dynamic host mistletoe interactions and evidence of host races indicating that ecological and geological factors have been interacting during the formation and structuring of phylogeographic divergence conclusions variation in cpdna across the species range results from the interplay of vicariant events past climatic oscillations and more dynamic factors related to ecological processes at finer temporal and spatial scales,2014,0.291
"Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change",the late quaternary megafauna extinction was a severe global scale event two factors climate change and modern humans have received broad support as the primary drivers but their absolute and relative importance remains controversial to date focus has been on the extinction chronology of individual or small groups of species specific geographical regions or macroscale studies at very coarse geographical and taxonomic resolution limiting the possibility of adequately testing the proposed hypotheses we present to our knowledge the first global analysis of this extinction based on comprehensive country level data on the geographical distribution of all large mammal species more than or equal to 10 kg that have gone globally or continentally extinct between the beginning of the last interglacial at 132 000 years bp and the late holocene 1000 years bp testing the relative roles played by glacial interglacial climate change and humans we show that the severity of extinction is strongly tied to hominin palaeobiogeography with at most a weak eurasia specific link to climate change this first species level macroscale analysis at relatively high geographical resolution provides strong support for modern humans as the primary driver of the worldwide megafauna losses during the late quaternary,2014,0.478
Habitat assessment for the conservation of Osmia pilicornis Smith,concerns raised in recent years about the status of the fringe horned mason bee osmia pilicornis smith in britain prompted targeted searches by a number of entomologists unfortunately these yielded very few records and i t would appear that o pilicornis has undergone a rapid decline in population in the last decade t his study sought to investigate this trend further by looking at the specific habitat requirements of o pilicornis and assessing the suitability of a number of woodland sites for this species in the hi gh weald area of kent and sussex the findings show that a population of o pilicornis still persists at the royal society for the protec tion of birds rspb tudeley woods reserve in kent and they indi cate that there is further potentially suitable habitat for the species in surrounding woodland a habitat assessment sheet for o pilicornis was produced and will be circulated to rspb site staff and landowners in areas with previous records of the species recommendations for woodland manage ment practices that could benefit o pilicornis as well as other threatened coppice species such a s the pearl bordered fritillary butterfly boloria euphrosyne have been discussed with site staff and will be m ore widely disseminated in the future current and future threats to o pilicornis populations are considered and it is hoped that targeted conservation efforts in future years will help to overcome some of these so that the concerns about its status in britain will be no mor e,2014,0.843
"Does counting species count as taxonomy? On misrepresenting systematics, yet again",recent commentary by costello and collaborators on the current state of the global taxonomic enterprise attempts to demon strate that taxonomy is not in decline as feared by taxonomists but rather is increasing by virtue of the rate at which new species are formally named having supported their views with data that clearly indicate as much costello et al make recommendations to increase the rate of new species descriptions even more however their views appear to rely on the perception of species as static and numerically if not historically equivalent entities whose value lie in their roles as â œmetricsâ as such their one dimensional por trayal of the discipline as concerned solely with the creation of new species names fails to take into account both the conceptual and epistemological foundations of systematics we refute the end user view that taxonomy is on the rise simply because more new species are being described compared with earlier decades and that by implication taxonomic practice is a formality whose pace can be streamlined without considerable resources intellectual or otherwise rather we defend the opposite viewpoint that profes sional taxonomy is in decline relative to the immediacy of the extinction crisis and that this decline threatens not just the empirical science of phylogenetic systematics but also the foundations of comparative biology on which other fields rely the allocation of space in top ranked journals to propagate views such as those of costello et al lends superficial credence to the unsupportive mind set of many of those in charge of the institutional fate of taxonomy we emphasize that taxonomy and the description of new species are dependent upon and only make sense in light of empirically based classifications that reflect evolutionary history homology assessments are at the centre of these endeavours such that the biological sciences cannot afford to have professional taxonomists sacrifice the comparative and historical depth of their hypotheses in order to accelerate new species descriptions,2014,0.902
The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit: Facilitating the Efficient Publishing of Biodiversity Data on the Internet,the planet is experiencing an ongoing global biodiversity crisis measuring the magnitude and rate of change more effectively requires access to organized easily discoverable and digitally formatted biodiversity data both legacy and new from across the globe assembling this coherent digital representation of biodiversity requires the integration of data that have historically been analog dispersed and heterogeneous the integrated publishing toolkit ipt is a software package developed to support biodiversity dataset publication in a common format the iptâ s two primary functions are to 1 encode existing species occurrence datasets and checklists such as records from natural history collections or observations in the darwin core standard to enhance interoperability of data and 2 publish and archive data and metadata for broad use in a darwin core archive a set of files following a standard format here we discuss the key need for the ipt how it has developed in response to community input and how it continues to evolve to streamline and enhance the interoperability discoverability and mobilization of new data types beyond basic darwin core records we close with a discussion how ipt has impacted the biodiversity research community how it enhances data publishing in more traditional journal venues along with new features implemented in the latest version of the ipt and future plans for more enhancements,2014,0.293
The geography and ecology of plant speciation: range overlap and niche divergence in sister species,a goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the roles of geography and ecology in speciation the recent shared ancestry of sister species can leave a major imprint on their geographical and ecological attributes possibly revealing processes involved in speciation we examined how ecological similarity range overlap and range asymmetry are related to time since divergence of 71 sister species pairs in the california floristic province cfp we found that plants exhibit strikingly different age range correlation patterns from those found for animals the latter broadly support allopatric speciation as the primary mode of speciation by contrast plant sisters in the cfp were sympatric in 80 of cases and range sizes of sisters differed by a mean of 10 fold range overlap and range asymmetry were greatest in younger sisters these results suggest that speciation mechanisms broadly grouped under â buddingâ speciation in which a larger ranged progenitor gives rise to a smaller ranged derivative species are probably common the ecological and reproductive similarity of sisters was significantly greater than that of sisterâ non sister congeners for every trait assessed however shifts in at least one trait were present in 93 of the sister pairs habitat and soil shifts were especially common ecological divergence did not increase with range overlap contrary to expectations under character displacement in sympatry our results suggest that vicariant speciation is more ubiquitous in animals than plants perhaps owing to the sensitivity of plants to fine scale environmental heterogeneity despite high levels of range overlap ecological shifts in the process of budding speciation may result in low rates of fine scale spatial co occurrence these results have implications for ecological studies of trait evolution and community assembly despite high levels of sympatry sister taxa and potentially other close relatives may be missing from local communities,2014,0.491
A Qualitative Study Exploring Users Perception Of Information Management Challenges In The Cloud,the advent of the cloud and big data poses ne w opportunities and unexpected challenges for organizations in order to mitigate risk maintain the competitive edge and ensure agility in business decision making traditional information management models must be revisited and any deficiencies addressed as a matter of highest prio rity this paper summarizes the obse rvations made from a series of qualitative interviews held with information mana gement professionals to identify those complex information management situations in the cloud that are challenging to understand and difficult to act upon as well as the priority give n to information quality related matters in the cloud the research highlights the almost casual treatment of iq matter s while acknowledging that significant attention is given to issues like information security the research raises the question whether the media hype surrounding certain types of information failures and breaches causes other equally significant information management components to be ignored to some extent by organizations,2014,0.123
Hidalgo Fishes: Dataset on freshwater fishes of Hidalgo state (Mexico) in the MZNA fish collection of the University of Navarra (Spain),the state of hidalgo mexico is an important region from the point of view of biodiversity however there exists a significant gap in accessible knowledge about species diversity and distribution especially regarding to freshwater ecosystems this dataset comprises the sampling records of two projects developed in hidalgo between 2007 and 2009 about the freshwater fish communities of tecocomulco lake and rivers belonging to the metztitlã n canyon biosphere reserve it contains the taxonomic identity species level and basic biometric data total length and weight as well as date of collection and coordinates of more than 9000 specimens this dataset is the primary result of the first and unrepeated exhaustive freshwater fishâ s survey of metztitlã n canyon biosphere reserve and tecocomulco lake it incorporates seven more species to the regional fish fauna and new exclusive biometric data of ten species this dataset can be used by studies dealing with among other interests north american freshwater fish diversity species richness distribution patterns and biometric analyses useful for the management and conservation of these areas the complete dataset is also provided in darwin core archive format,2014,0.814
BacDive--the Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase.,bacdive the bacterial diversity metadatabase http bacdive dsmz de merges detailed strain linked information on the different aspects of bacterial and archaeal biodiversity currently release 9 2013 bacdive contains entries for 23 458 strains and provides information on their taxonomy morphology physiology sampling and concomitant environmental conditions as well as molecular biology where available links to access the respective biological resources are given the majority of the bacdive data is manually annotated and curated the bacdive portal offers an easy to use simple search and in addition powerful advanced search functionalities allowing to combine more than 30 search fields for text and numerical data the user can compile individual sets of strains to a download selection that can easily be imported into nearly all spreadsheet applications,2014,0.247
Ichneumonidae (Hymenoptera) of the Canadian Prairies Ecozone: A Review,the parasitoid family ichneumonidae is the largest family in the order hymenoptera this chapter provides a checklist of 1 160 ichneumonid species 299 genera known from the canadian prairies ecozone the list is primarily drawn from literature records and also includes 35 newly recorded species from the ecozone the number of species on the list is a vast underestimate of the number of ichneumonid species present as many genera lack revisions and few biodiversity surveys have been conducted most species recorded from this ecozone are only known from the nearctic region but are not restricted to the prairies ecozone little is known about the ecology habitat requirements or host associations of most ichneumonid species with 43 of the species on the checklist lacking any host records future research should include revisions of the many genera that have not been studied in the nearctic region as well as biodiversity surveys in prairie habitats rearing of potential host species and the creation of user friendly identification resources,2014,0.958
Low global sensitivity of metabolic rate to temperature in calcified marine invertebrates,metabolic rate is a key component of energy budgets that scales with body size and varies with large scale environmental geographical patterns here we conduct an analysis of standard metabolic rates smr of marine ectotherms across a 70â latitudinal gradient in both hemispheres that spanned collection temperatures of 0 30 â c to account for latitudinal differences in the size and skeletal composition between species smr was mass normalized to that of a standard sized 223 mg ash free dry mass individual smr was measured for 17 species of calcified invertebrates bivalves gastropods urchins and brachiopods using a single consistent methodology including 11 species whose smr was described for the first time smr of 15 out of 17 species had a mass scaling exponent between 2 3 and 1 with no greater support for a 3 4 rather than a 2 3 scaling exponent after accounting for taxonomy and variability in parameter estimates among species using variance weighted linear mixed effects modelling temperature sensitivity of smr had an activation energy ea of 0 16 for both northern and southern hemisphere species which was lower than predicted under the metabolic theory of ecology ea 0 2 1 2 ev northern hemisphere species however had a higher smr at each habitat temperature but a lower mass scaling exponent relative to smr evolutionary trade offs that may be driving differences in metabolic rate such as metabolic cold adaptation of northern hemisphere species will have important impacts on species abilities to respond to changing environments,2014,0.931
Mapping the zoonotic niche of Ebola virus disease in Africa,ebola virus disease evd is a complex zoonosis that is highly virulent in humans the largest recorded outbreak of evd is ongoing in west africa outside of its previously reported and predicted niche we assembled location data on all recorded zoonotic transmission to humans and ebola virus infection in bats and primates 1976â 2014 using species distribution models these occurrence data were paired with environmental covariates to predict a zoonotic transmission niche covering 22 countries across central and west africa vegetation elevation temperature evapotranspiration and suspected reservoir bat distributions define this relationship at risk areas are inhabited by 22 million people however the rarity of human outbreaks emphasises the very low probability of transmission to humans increasing population sizes and international connectivity by air since the first detection of evd in 1976 suggest that the dynamics of human to human secondary transmission in contemporary outbreaks will be very different to those of the past,2014,0.777
"Heterophrynus armiger Pocock, 1902 (Amblypygi: Phrynidae): First record from Colombia, with notes on its historic distribution records and natural history",the phrynid whip spider heterophrynus armiger is herein cited for the first time from a precise locality in colombia additional data on its natural history are provided this species has been found in disturbed and preserved forest areas of isla gorgona an island located at the northwest coast of colombia,2014,0.496
"Paridea angulicollis (Motschulsky, 1854) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae) is a new genus and species for Russia Paridea angulicollis (Motschulsky, 1854) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae)",the leaf beetle paridea angulicollis a pest of medical plant gynostemma pentaphyllum cucurbitaceae has been found in primorsky province it is the first record of the genus paridea in russia paridea angulicollis occurs in china japan taiwan and south korea the original map of the range is compiled 79 locations the photo and diagnosis are given,2014,0.383
A comprehensive view of epicotyl dormancy in Viburnum furcatum: combining field studies with laboratory studies using temperature sequences,seeds with epicotyl dormancy reside in soil up to 15 months or longer being exposed to a sequence of temperatures before seedlings completely emerge i e with both roots and shoots heretofore few studies have examined precise temperatures especially in sequences for promotion of radicle and cotyledon emergence and how they relate to environ mental cues in nature viburnum is the best known genus to exhibit epicotyl dormancy and as such we investigated the japanese v furcatum hypothesizing a similar kind and level of dormancy the under developed embryos in mature seeds in october were spatulate shaped unlike those in other viburnum species and they elongated from late june to august of the following year radicles emerged after embryo growth until mid october followed by cotyledons from mid april to mid may temperatures required for embryo growth radicle and cotyledon emergence in the laboratory approximated closely those in the field embryo elongation and radicle emergence occurred at warmtemperature regimes and gibberellic acid ga3 did not substitute for this warm temperature require ments following a 120 d cold stratification of seeds with an emerged radicle shoots emerged from seeds at 10 15 15 5 20 10 and 25 158c we identified that seeds of v furcatum have deep simple epicotyl morphophysiological dormancy like the majority of other viburnum species for propagation of the species from seeds the nearly 2 year period for seedling emergence could be shortened to 8 months start fresh seeds at 25 158c 60 d and then move them through a sequence of 15 58c 30 d 08c 120 d 20 108c 30 d,2014,0.774
TAXONOMIC AND ECOLOGICAL CHANGES ACROSS THE PLIO-PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION AND RECOVERY: DIFFERENT MECHANISMS IN THE CARIBBEAN AND NORTH AMERICA?,the plio pleistocene extinction occurred roughly at 2 0 ma and resulted in the extinction of nearly 70 of mollusks in the western atlantic however the recovery was asymmetric across a biogeographic boundary at cape hatteras north carolina at approximately 35â n modern diversity has rebounded south of this boundary but diversity north of this boundary has remained depauperate previous work has linked the extinction event to decreased productivity caused by new ocean circulation patterns in the atlantic after the closing of the isthmus of panama most of the work on this event has focused on sites in florida and the caribbean this study attempts to determine how taxonomic and ecological diversity changed in north america from new jersey to florida,2014,0.363
Vesper: Visualising species archives,vesper visual exploration of species referenced repositories is a tool that visualises darwin core archive dwc a datasets and is aimed at reducing the amount of time and effort expended by biologists to ascertain the quality of data they are generating or using currently dwc a quality checking is limited to table outputs of data â existenceâ and compliance with dwc a format guidelines via the online dwc a archive validator and reader whilst these tools thoroughly examine the presence of data and the correctness of data structure against the dwc a schema they do not give any insight into the underlying quality of the data itself built on top of the d3 javascript library vesper analyses and displays dwc a datasets in three fundamental dimensionsâ taxonomic geographic and temporalâ with a visualisation dedicated to each of these aspects of the data by viewing a dataset s composition in these dimensions a data consumer can judge whether it is suitable for the tasks or analyses they have in mind whilst a data provider can identify where a dataset they ve constructed may fall short in terms of data quality i e does it contain data that is obviously incorrect such as the classic longitude inversion that places north american specimens in china a further visualisation of the taxonomic dimension can reveal the subtaxa distribution of reference taxonomiesâ whilst a simple table reveals the presence or not of certain data types for each record to give an overall data â existenceâ profile for the dataset selections of parts of a dataset within one visualisation are linked to the other visualisation displays for that dataset permitting the discovery of whether data quality issues are restricted to identifiable sub portions of the dataset vesper can handle client side data sets of a million entities within a browser by judicious use of data filtering as many of the data types within individual records are not necessary to judge the geographic temporal or taxonomic distribution and extent of a dataset thus many of the more verbose fields in the file can simply be passed over during an initial data decompression stage furthermore it can provide limited name and structure matching of a dataset against dwc a packaged reference taxonomies to indicate data quality relative to sources outside the archive a selection of annotated example scenarios shows how vesper can reveal data quality issues in dwc a archives,2014,0.286
The Bugs Coleopteran Ecology Package (BugsCEP) database: 1000 sites and half a million fossils later,the bugs database project started in the late 1980s as what would now be considered a relatively simple system albeit advanced for its time linking fossil beetle species lists to modern habitat and distribution information since then bugs has grown into a complex database of fossils records habitat and distribution data dating and climate reference data wrapped into an advanced software analysis package at the time of writing the database contains raw data and metadata for 1124 sites and russell coope directly contributed to the analysis of over 154 14 of them some 98790 identifications published in 231 publications such quantifications are infeasible without databases and the analytical power of combining a database of modern and fossil insects with analysis tools is potentially immense for numerous areas of science ranging from conservation to quaternary geology bugscep the bugs coleopteran ecology package is the latest incarnation of the bugs database project released in 2007 the database is continually added too and is available for free download from http www bugscep com the software tools include quantitative habitat reconstruction and visualisation correlation matrices mcr climate reconstruction searching by habitat and retrieving among other things a list of taxa known from the selected habitat types it also provides a system for entering storing and managing palaeoentomological data as well as a number of expert system like reporting facilities work is underway to create an online version of bugscep implemented through the strategic environmental archaeology database sead project http www sead se the aim is to provide more direct access to the latest data a community orientated updating system and integration with other proxy data eventually the tools available in the offline bugscep will be duplicated and bugs will be entirely in the web this paper summarises aspects of the current scope capabilities and applications of the bugscep database and software with special reference to and quantifications of the contributions of russell coope to the field of palaeoentomology as represented in the database the paper also serves to illustrate the potential for the use of bugscep in biographical studies and discusses some of the issues relating to the use of large scale sources of quantitative data all datasets used in this article are available through the current version of bugscep available at http www bugscep com,2014,0.057
Global diversity patterns of freshwater fishes - potential victims of their own success,aim to examine the pattern and cumulative curve of descriptions of freshwater fishes world wide the geographical biases in the available information on that fauna the relationship between species richness and geographical rarity of such fishes as well as to assess the relative contributions of different environmental factors on these variables location global methods modestr was used to summarize the geographical distribution of freshwater fish species using information available from data based geographical records the first order jackknife richness estimator was used to estimate the completeness of such data in all terrestrial 1 degree cells world wide an a shape procedure was used to build range maps capable of providing relatively accurate species richness and geographical rarity values for each grid cell we also examined the explanatory capacity of a high number of environmental variables using multiple regressions and support vector machine results cumulative species description curves show that a high number of species of freshwater fishes remain to be discovered completeness values indicate that only 199 one degree grid cells mainly located in eastern north america and europe could be considered as having relatively accurate inventories range maps provide species richness values that are positively and significantly related to those resulting from the first order jackknife richness estimator the relationship between species richness and geographical rarity is triangular so that these species rich cells are those with a higher proportion of distributional ly rare species species richness is predicted by climatic and or productivity variables but geographical rarity is not main conclusions in general species rich tropical areas harbour a higher number of narrowly distributed species although comparatively species poor subtropical cells may also contain narrowly distributed species historical factors may help to explain the faunistic composition of these latter areas a sup position also supported by the low predictive capacity of climatic and productivity variables on geographical rarity values,2014,0.993
"Canary grasses (Phalaris, Poaceae): biogeography, molecular dating and the role of floret structure in dispersal",canary grasses phalaris poaceae include 21 species widely spread throughout the temperate and subtropical regions of the world with two centres of diversity the mediterranean basin and western north america the genus contains annual and perennial endemic cosmopolitan wild and invasive species with diploid tetraploid and hexaploid cytotypes as such phalaris presents an ideal platform to study diversification via historic hybridization and polyploidy events and geographical dispersal in grasses we present the first empirical phylogeographic study for phalaris testing current intuitive hypotheses on the centres of origin historic dispersal events and diversification within a geological timeframe bayesian methods beast version 1 6 2 were used to establish divergence dates and dispersal vicariance analyses rasp version 2 1b were implemented for ancestral node reconstructions our phylogeographic results indicate that the genus emerged during the miocene epoch 20 6 8 4 ma million years ago in the mediterranean basin followed by dispersal and vicariance events to africa asia and the americas we propose that a diploid ancestor of p arundinacea migrated to western north america via the bering strait where further diversification emerged in the new world it appears that polyploidy played a major role in the evolution of the genus in the old world while diversification in the new world followed a primarily diploid pathway dispersal to various parts of the americas followed different routes fertile florets with hairy protruding sterile lemmas showed significant correlation with wider geographical distribution,2014,0.66
Richness and endemism of the freshwater fishes of Mexico,a study of richness and endemism of the freshwater fishes of mexico was carried out in order to identify hotspots and inform conservation efforts this was done by mapping and overlaying individual species distributions by means of geographical information systems based on museum data the study was able to confirm several previously proposed centres of freshwater fish richness southeastern mexico the mesa central the bravo conchos river system and the panuco and tuxpan nautla rivers seven areas with high corrected weighted endemismâ index values were identified with the valley of cuatrociã negas recognized as a true centre an alarming result was the idetification of a ghost centre of endemism llanos el salado in southwestern nuevo leã n where six endemic cyprinodont species are all extinctâ or extinct in the wildâ forty nine single site endemics that are distributed all over mexico were identified the chichancanab lagoon in the border between yucatan and quintana roo where a flock composed of six endemic cyprinodonts is present needs special mention three hotspots of richness plus endemism were found in mexico the most important of which is the mesa central where impacts by human activities have had a detrimental effect on fish populations,2014,0.458
Documenting biogeographical patterns of African timber species using herbarium records: a conservation perspective based on native trees from Angola.,in many tropical regions the development of informed conservation strategies is hindered by a dearth of biodiversity information biological collections can help to overcome this problem by providing baseline information to guide research and conservation efforts this study focuses on the timber trees of angola combining herbarium 2670 records and bibliographic data to identify the main timber species document biogeographic patterns and identify conservation priorities the study recognized 18 key species most of which are threatened or near threatened globally or lack formal conservation assessments biogeographical analysis reveals three groups of species associated with the enclave of cabinda and northwest angola which occur primarily in guineo congolian rainforests and evergreen forests and woodlands the fourth group is widespread across the country and is mostly associated with dry forests there is little correspondence between the spatial pattern of species groups and the ecoregions adopted by wwf suggesting that these may not provide an adequate basis for conservation planning for angolan timber trees eight of the species evaluated should be given high conservation priority since they are of global conservation concern they have very restricted distributions in angola their historical collection localities are largely outside protected areas and they may be under increasing logging pressure high conservation priority was also attributed to another three species that have a large proportion of their global range concentrated in angola and that occur in dry forests where deforestation rates are high our results suggest that timber tree species in angola may be under increasing risk thus calling for efforts to promote their conservation and sustainable exploitation the study also highlights the importance of studying historic herbarium collections in poorly explored regions of the tropics though new field surveys remain a priority to update historical information,2014,0.887
"Range expansion of Agrilus convexicollis in European Russia expedited by the invasion of the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae)",the jewel beetle agrilus convexicollis redtenbacher 1849 buprestidae occurs in many european and north mediterranean countries and feeds mainly on dying shoots and branches of ash trees fraxinus excelsior f ornus and f oxyphylla a range map of a convexicollis with 479 exact localities from the literature and museum collections is compiled historically this species was not known to be present in the central region of european russia since 2007 however specimens of a convexicollis have been collected in seven central european russia localities effectively expanding the northern border of the previously known range by approximately 665 km all recently established localities of a convexicollis are within the region invaded by emerald ash borer a planipennis fairmaire an east asian pest of ashes that was first detected in european russia in 2003 in addition almost all a convexicollis specimens from central european russia both adults and larvae were collected from declining f pennsylvanica an introduced north american ash infested with a planipennis this is a new host record for a convexicollis we suspect that the recent range expansion of a convexicollis in central european russia has been facilitated by the a planipennis invasion which has caused widespread decline and mortality of ash trees in the region this work illustrates how the invasion of one species can facilitate the range expansion of another,2014,0.867
A systematic compilation of endemic flora in Nigeria for conservation management,endemic species with limited geographical ranges are more susceptible to extinction than widely ranging species and effective conservation management of endemic species requires detailed knowledge of their status and distribution this study was conducted to assemble a comprehensive list of flora endemic to nigeria while earlier reports listed as many as 205 endemic plant species only 91 species belonging to 44 families were found in this study with rubiaceae accounting for the highest number of species the list contains 23 trees 26 herbs 22 shrubs 14 epiphytic orchids and bryophytes three vines and three ferns the oban division of the cross river national park houses 41 endemic plants while other notable locations for endemic flora include eket naraguta degema idanre hills ukpon river forest reserve calabar and anara forest reserve only 15 of the endemic plants are listed in the iucn red list of threatened species version 2013 2 ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered,2014,0.976
"Filling in the gap: two new records and an updated distribution map for the Gulf Sand gecko Pseudoceramodactyluskhobarensis Haas, 1957.",the genus pseudoceramodactylus haas 1957 comprises a single species the gulf sand gecko p khobarensis described from eastern saudi arabia haas 1957 and is known to be distributed across parts of the arabian gulf including kuwait bahrain qatar and the united arab emirates u a e sindaco and jeremä enko 2008 valdeã n et al 2013 it has also been reported from qeshm island iran dakhteh et al 2007 sharifi et al 2012 and a few localities are known from coastal eastern oman fujita and papenfuss 2011 gardner 2013 metallinou et al 2012 pseudoceramodactylus khobarensis are nocturnal geckos found on moist salt impregnated to solid salt encrusted flats sabkhas fig 1a b c and are often the sole reptile dweller of such extreme environments arnold 1977 gardner 2013 their fingers are swollen with loose connective tissue and bear numerous elongated spiny scales on the underside arnold 1977 considered to be an adaptation to this particular substrate,2014,0.505
"The Roles of Phylogeny and Climate in Shaping Variation in Life-History Traits of the Newt Genus Triturus (Caudata, The roles of phylogeny and climate in shaping variation in life-history traits of the newt genus Triturus (Caudata, Salamandridae)",assessing the origin of trait variation during evolutionary history is an important first step in understanding evolutionary diversification here we tested the influence of shared ancestry and climate and the interplay of both on the variation of ten life history traits in triturus newts we showed that 1 climate alone has driven the evolution of variation in five life history traits 2 phylogenetic signal partly explains the variation in two traits vitellus diameter and snoutâ vent length of larvae at metamorphosis and 3 the interplay of shared ancestry and climate explains the variation in one trait snoutâ vent length of larvae at metamorphosis this study highlights the coarse grained influence of shared ancestry and climate on the structure of phenotypic trait variation in triturus and provides a handle for more detailed fine grained studies on the evolution of phenotypic trait variation,2014,0.477
Effects of variable selection on modelling habitat and potential distribution of the Andean bear in Bolivia,species distribution models are used in ecology and conservation biology to draw inferences about the drivers of speciesâ ranges however poor conceptual background environmental variable selection and algorithm selection can contribute to misleading model predictions we assessed the effects of environment variable selection and compared statistical performance and output maps of correlative resource and biotope based models for estimating the habitat and potential distribution of the andean bear tremarctos ornatus in boliviaâ s tropical andes the resource based approach estimated bear habitat using 7 resources associated with 3 ecological functions feeding shelter and access to water in contrast the biotope model described the habitat by applying 11 environmental predictors related to topography vegetation and human activities both models performed equally well overall and better than random with shelter as the most influential variable for the resource model and yunga forest for the biotope model however discrepancies in the extent and arrangement of predicted bear distribution between models differed and emphasized the effect of variable selection which could influence the delineation of conservation areas for this species we suggest using a resource based approach when modelling species distribution because of the more direct relationship to the species investigated and greater ease of interpreting results,2014,0.186
Potential effects of climate change on the distribution range of the main silicate sinker of the Southern Ocean,fragilariopsis kerguelensis a dominant diatom species throughout the antarctic circumpolar current is coined to be one of the main drivers of the biological silicate pump here we study the distribution of this important species and expected consequences of climate change upon it using correlative species dis tribution modeling and publicly available presence only data as experience with sdm is scarce for marine phytoplankton this also serves as a pilot study for this organism group we used the maximum entropy method to calculate distribution models for the diatom f kerguelensis based on yearly and monthly environmental data sea surface temperature salinity nitrate and silicate con centrations observation data were harvested from gbif and the global dia tom database and for further analyses also from the hustedt diatom collection brm the models were projected on current yearly and seasonal environmental data to study current distribution and its seasonality further more we projected the seasonal model on future environmental data obtained from climate models for the year 2100 projected on current yearly averaged environmental data all models showed similar distribution patterns for f kerg uelensis the monthly model showed seasonality for example a shift of the southern distribution boundary toward the north in the winter projections on future scenarios resulted in a moderately to negligibly shrinking distribution area and a change in seasonality we found a substantial bias in the pub licly available observation datasets which could be reduced by additional obser vation records we obtained from the hustedt diatom collection present day distribution patterns inferred from the models coincided well with back ground knowledge and previous reports about f kerguelensis distribution showing that maximum entropy based distribution models are suitable to map distribution patterns for oceanic planktonic organisms our scenario projec tions indicate moderate effects of climate change upon the biogeography of f kerguelensis,2014,0.436
Combining global climate and regional landscape models to improve prediction of invasion risk,aim it is widely acknowledged that species distributions result from a variety of biotic and abiotic factors operating at different spatial scales here we aimed to 1 determine the extent to which global climate niche models cnms can be improved by the addition of fine scale regional data 2 examine climatic and environmental factors influencing the range of 15 invasive aquatic plant species and 3 provide a case study for the use of such models in invasion management on an island location global with a case study of species invasions in ireland methods climate niche models of global extent including climate only and regional environmental niche models with additional factors such as human influence land use and soil characteristics were generated using maxent for 15 invasive aquatic plants the performance of these models within the invaded range of the study species in ireland was assessed and potential hotspots of invasion suitability were determined models were projected forward up to 2080 based on two climate scenarios results while climate variables are important in defining the global range of species factors related to land use and nutrient level were of greater importance in regional projections global climatic models were significantly improved at the island scale by the addition of fine scale environmental variables area under the curve values increased by 0 18 and true skill statistic values by 0 36 and projected ranges decreased from an average of 86 to 36 of the island main conclusions refining cnms with regional data on land use human influence and landscape may have a substantial impact on predictive capacity providing greater value for prioritization of conservation management at subregional or local scales,2014,0.269
Using Ecological Niche Models and Niche Analyses to Understand Speciation Patterns: The Case of Sister Neotropical Orchid Bees,the role of past connections between the two major south american forested biomes on current species distribution has been recognized a long time ago climatic oscillations that further separated these biomes have promoted parapatric speciation in which many species had their continuous distribution split giving rise to different but related species i e different potential distributions and realized niche features the distribution of many sister species of orchid bees follow this pattern here using ecological niche models and niche analyses we 1 tested the role of ecological niche differentiation on the divergence between sister orchid bees genera eulaema and eufriesea from the amazon and atlantic forests and 2 highlighted interesting areas for new surveys amazonian species occupied different realized niches than their atlantic sister species conversely species of sympatric but distantly related eulaema bees occupied similar realized niches amazonian species had a wide potential distribution in south america whereas atlantic forest species were more limited to the eastern coast of the continent additionally we identified several areas in need of future surveys our results show that the realized niche of atlantic amazonian sister species of orchid bees which have been previously treated as allopatric populations of three species had limited niche overlap and similarity these findings agree with their current taxonomy which treats each of those populations as distinct valid species,2014,0.995
Conceptual View Representation of the Brazilian Information System on Antarctic Environmental Research,data generated by environmental research in antarctica are essential in evaluating how its biodiversity and environment are affected by global scale changes triggered by ever increasing human activities in this work we describe brantis the brazilian information system on antarctic environmental research which enables the acquiring storing and querying of research data generated by the brazilian national institute for science and technology on antarctic environmental research brantis data model reflects data acquisition and analysis conducted by scientists and organized around field expeditions we describe future functionalities such as the use of linked data techniques and support for scientific workflows,2014,0.092
Integration of conflict into integrative taxonomy: fitting hybridization in species delimitation of Mesocarabus (Coleoptera: Carabidae),in species differentiation characters may not diverge synchronously and there are also processes that shuffle character states in lineages descendant from a common ancestor species are thus expected to show some degree of incongruence among characters therefore taxonomic delimitation can benefit from integrative approaches and objective strategies that account for character conflict we illustrate the potential of exploiting conflict for species delimitation in a study case of ground beetles of the subgenus carabus mesocarabus where traditional taxonomy does not accurately delimit species the molecular phylogenies of four mitochondrial and three nuclear genes cladistic analysis of the aedeagus ecological niche divergence and morphometry of pronotal shape in more than 500 specimens of mesocarabus show that these characters are not fully congruent for these data a three step operational strategy is proposed for species delimitation by i delineating candidate species based on the integration of incongruence among conclusive lines of evidence ii corroborating candidate species with inconclusive lines of evidence and iii refining a final species proposal based on an integrated characterization of candidate species based on the evolutionary analysis of incongruence this procedure provided a general understanding of the reticulate process of hybridization and introgression acting on mesocarabus and generated the hypothesis of seven mesocarabus species including two putative hybrid lineages our work emphasizes the importance of incorporating critical analyses of character and phylogenetic conflict to infer both the evolutionary history and species boundaries through an integrative taxonomic approach,2014,0.977
"Jaguar Panthera onca Habitat Modeling in Landscapes Facing High Land-use Transformation Pressure-Findings from Mato Grosso, Brazil",the modeling of top predators habitats and the understanding of their environmental requirements in landscapes facing high land use transformation pressure have long standing importance for the development of conservation strategies multi distance spatial cluster analysis and logistic regression with environmental weighting for pseudo absence designation were applied to understand spatial patterns of jaguar occurrence in mato grosso state central western brazil this location has been under intense deforestation pressure since the 1970s and is historically one of the most important jaguar habitats in the world by using a model of five independent variables we were able to achieve a 73 2 percent success rate of case non case classification and indicate not only a general loss of habitat suitability but also an increasing interruption of potential migration corridors in the state our analysis on a regional scale demonstrates the importance of forest and savannah woodland for jaguar habitat maintenance in the mato grosso state the jaguar species demonstrates a sensitivity to landscape fragmentation which can be parameterized for improved model building by metrics such as edge density and patch size comparisons with previous studies in south america show that parameter selection for jaguar habitat modeling is highly scale dependent and that habitat suitability in partially transformed landscapes could be maintained if fragmentation is minimized recent land use transformation however has significantly weakened the conservation status of the pantanal amazon corridor,2014,0.274
Watermelon origin solved with molecular phylogenetics including Linnaean material: another example of museomics.,type specimens are permanently preserved biological specimens that fix the usage of species names this method became widespread from 1935 onwards and is now obligatory we used dna sequencing of types and more recent collections of wild and cultivated melons to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the genus citrullus and the correct names for its species we discovered that the type specimen of the name citrullus lanatus prepared by a linnaean collector in south africa in 1773 is not the species now thought of as watermelon instead it is a representative of another species that is sister to c ecirrhosus a tendril less south african endemic the closest relative of the watermelon instead is a west african species our nuclear and plastid data furthermore reveal that there are seven species of citrullus not four as assumed our study implies that sweet watermelon originates from west not southern africa as previously believed and that the south african citron melon has been independently domesticated these findings affect and explain numerous studies on the origin of these two crops that led to contradictory results because of the erroneous merging of several distinct species,2014,0.959
Natural History's Place in Science and Society,the fundamental properties of organismsâ what they are how and where they live and the biotic and abiotic interactions that link them to communities and ecosystemsâ are the domain of natural history we provide examples illustrating the vital importance of natural history knowledge to many disciplines from human health and food security to conservation management and recreation we then present several lines of evidence showing that traditional approaches to and support for natural history in developed economies has declined significantly over the past 40 years finally we argue that a revitalization of the practice of natural historyâ one that is focused on new frontiers in a rapidly changing world and that incorporates new technologiesâ would provide significant benefits for both science and society,2014,0.114
"Genetic divergence of the Mesoamerican azure-crowned hummingbird ( Amazilia cyanocephala, Trochilidae) across the Motagua-Polochic-Jocotán fault system",the cloud forests of mesoamerica are highly endangered habitats and the existence of narrowly distributed cryptic endemics will increase the number of taxa at potential risk of extinction here we investigate genetic divergence between populations of the azure crowned hummingbird amazilia cyanocephala a species complex of endemic hummingbirds to the montane forests of mesoamerica by analysing dna sequences of four mitochondrial markers morphological data and ecological niche modelling our results revealed the presence of two mtdna lineages corresponding to subspecies a c cyanocephala distributed from tamaulipas to chiapas in mexico and amazilia c guatemalensis distributed from southern chiapas to guatemala the lineage split can be explained as a consequence of relative isolation of the populations in the different mountain ranges separated by the motagua polochic jocotã n fault system and corresponds to differences in morphology and to the lack of overlap in environmental space between subspecies the divergence time estimates do not support the proposed model of a highly constrained temporal window at the end of the pliocene as divergence at this barrier between cyanocephala and guatemalensis and splits of other bird taxa occurred during the pleistocene,2014,0.631
"First record of the larvae of 'Hippotion rosetta' (Swinhoe, 1892) (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) feeding on the foliage of nepenthes (Nepenthaceae) in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland",the larva of hippotion rosetta swinhoe 1892 is recorded for the first time feeding on the foliage of nepenthes mirabilis n tenax and n rowaniae nepenthaceae in northern cape york peninsula queensland,2014,0.354
Knowledge behind conservation status decisions: Data basis for “Data Deficient” Brazilian plant species,methods for evaluating risk of biodiversity loss are linked closely to decisions about speciesâ conservation status which in turn depend on data documenting speciesâ distributions population status and natural history in brazil the scientific community and government have differing points of view regarding which plant species have insufficient data to be accorded a formal threat category with the official list of threatened flora published by the brazilian ministry of environment listing many fewer species as data deficient than a broader list prepared by a large knowledgeable group of taxonomists this paper aims to evaluate using diverse analyses whether â â digital accessible knowledgeâ â is genuinely lacking or insufficient for basic characterization of distributions for 934 angiosperm species classified as data deficient on brazilâ s official list analyses were based on large scale databases of information associated with herbarium specimens as part of the specieslink network evaluating these species in terms of completeness of geographic range knowledge accumulated through time our results show that at least 40 9 of species listed as data deficient do not appear genuinely to be particularly lacking in data but rather may be knowledge deficient data exist that can provide rich information about the species but such data remain unanalyzed and dormant for conservation decision making such approaches may be useful in identifying cases in which data are genuinely lacking regarding conservation status of species as well as in moving species out of data deficient categories and into appropriate threat status classifications,2014,0.922
coniferyl alcohol derivative from the roots of Z anthoxylum chalybeum,objective to isolate and characterize chemical constituents of the roots of zanthoxylum chalybeum z chalybeum methods a number of phytochemical tests were applied to identify the class of compounds present in the ch2 cl2 ch3 oh 1 1 root extract column chromatographic separation technique was applied to separate the constituents of the ch2 cl2 ch3 oh 1 1 root extract and various spectroscopic techniques uv vis infrared radiation nuclear magnetic resonance nmr 1 h nmr 13 c nmr dept 135 cosy ghsqc and ghmbc were used to determine the structures of pure compounds results phytochemical screening of the ch2 cl2 ch3oh 1 1 root extract of z chalybeum revealed the presence of alkaloids flavonoids terpenoids tannins and anthraquinones column chromatographic separation of the extract yielded a new coniferyl alcohol derivative 2 3 epoxy 6 7 methylenedioxyconiferyl alcohol 1 together with the known alkaloid dihydrochelerythrine 2 conclusions the present work conducted on the ch2 cl2 ch3oh 1 1 root extract of z chalybeum identified various class of compounds present in the root extract complete characterization of two compounds were done using spectroscopic techniques of which a coniferyl alcohol derivative 1 was identified for the first time,2014,0.384
Climatic niche shifts between species' native and naturalized ranges raise concern for ecological forecasts during invasions and climate change,aim correlative models that forecast extinction risk from climate change and invasion risks following species introductions depend on the assumption that species current distributions reflect their climate tolerances â climatic equilibriumâ this assumption has rarely been tested with independent distribution data and studies that have done so have focused on species that are widespread or weedy in their native range we use independent data to test climatic equilibrium for a broadly representative group of species and ask whether there are any general indicators that can be used to identify when equilibrium occurs location europe and contiguous usa methods we contrasted the climate conditions occupied by 51 plant species in their native european and naturalized usa distributions by applying kernel smoothers to species occurrence densities we asked whether species had naturalized in climate conditions that differ from their native ranges suggesting climatic disequilibrium in the native range and whether characteristics of species native distributions correspond with climatic equilibrium results a large proportion of species naturalized distributions occurred outside the climatic conditions occupied in their native ranges for 22 species the majority of their naturalized ranges fell outside their native climate conditions our analyses revealed large areas in europe that species do not occupy but which match climatic conditions occupied in the usa suggesting a high degree of climatic disequilibrium in the native range disequilibrium was most severe for species with native ranges that are small and occupy a narrow range of climatic conditions main conclusions our results demonstrate that the direct effects of climate on species distributions have been widely overestimated and that previous large scale validations of the equilibrium assumption using species native and naturalized distributions are not generally applicable non climatic range limitations are likely to be the norm rather than the exception and pose added risks for species under climate change,2014,0.996
"Ecophysiological vulnerability to climate change: water stress responses in four tree species from the central mountain region of Veracruz, Mexico",ecophysiological vulnerability can be understood as the degree of susceptibility or inability of an organism to adapt their physiological functions to ecological and environmental changes changes in water availability and water stress are critical for species which may respond differentially to different precipitation events we analyzed the response of leaf water potential w and stomatal conductance gs to water stress to assess the ecophysiological vulnerability and evaluated the drought tolerance of four tree species from the central mountain region of veracruz mexico alnus acuminata quercus xalapensis liquidambar styraciflua and pinus ayacahuite drought stress was imposed for 15 days except for q xalapensis and then watered for 25 days in order to evaluate the species recovery under three watering treatments 16 67 33 33 and 50 field capacity individuals were screened throughout the experiment w and gs were measured daily showing significant decrement and differential recovery for each species l styraciflua and p ayacahuite needed more water and more days to recover whereas q xalapensis needed less water and resisted more days without water we found a acuminata as a drought tolerant avoider species after analyzing the precipitation and temperature trends for the region we found negative precipitation trends with an increase in consecutive dry days and we found positive temperature trends we also developed potential distribution maps for all the species in the region and after analyzing the precipitation and temperature changes the potential distribution maps the resistance to water stress the number of days before leaf drop the w and stomatal responses and the water amount and number of days required to recover we found l styraciflua as the most vulnerable species and q xalapensis as the least vulnerable,2014,0.954
Making species checklists understandable to machines - a shift from relational databases to ontologies,background the scientific names of plants and animals play a major role in life sciences as information is indexed integrated and searched using scientific names the main problem with names is their ambiguous nature because more than one name may point to the same taxon and multiple taxa may share the same name in addition scientific names change over time which makes them open to various interpretations applying machine understandable semantics to these names enables efficient processing of biological content in information systems the first step is to use unique persistent identifiers instead of name strings when referring to taxa the most commonly used identifiers are life science identifiers lsid which are traditionally used in relational databases and more recently http uris which are applied on the semantic web by linked data applications results we introduce two models for expressing taxonomic information in the form of species checklists first we show how species checklists are presented in a relational database system using lsids then in order to gain a more detailed representation of taxonomic information we introduce metaontology taxmeon to model the same content as semantic web ontologies where taxa are identified using http uris we also explore how changes in scientific names can be managed over time conclusions the use of http uris is preferable for presenting the taxonomic information of species checklists an http uri identifies a taxon and operates as a web address from which additional information about the taxon can be located unlike lsid this enables the integration of biological data from different sources on the web using linked data principles and prevents the formation of information silos the linked data approach allows a user to assemble information and evaluate the complexity of taxonomical data based on conflicting views of taxonomic classifications using http uris and semantic web technologies also facilitate the representation of the semantics of biological data and in this way the creation of more intelligent biological applications and services,2014,0.243
A generic method for climate change impact analysis of tree species planting domains,a trial application is described largely using freely available datasets for the preliminary assessment of climate change impacts on planting domains of key plantation species the example study examines how climate change may affect locations in parts of south east asia and southern china suitable for growing acacia mangium a auriculiformis and a crassicarpa simple descriptions of their climatic requirements are checked and where necessary refined climate data for current conditions as well as projected conditions in 2030 2050 and 2080 are then used to map areas at a 10 min about 18 km resolution that are likely to have suitable climatic conditions for growing the species assuming a â œbusiness as usualâ climate change scenario climate change impacts are expected to be low in 2030 but likely to become medium by 2050 and high by 2080 as existing plantation sites increasingly fall outside the range of conditions known to be climatically suitable assessing likely impacts can help to identify plantations that are potentially most at risk where performance should be carefully monitored to pick up early signs of any problems the vulnerability of acacia plantations of the three target species across the region is considered briefly in terms of the impacts of climate change and the ability of managers to adapt plantations to changing conditions,2014,0.338
"Volume 270: Databases and Information Systems VIII. Chapter: Linking Data and Knowledge in Enterprises, Research and Society",the linked data paradigm has emerged as a powerful enabler for data and knowledge interlinking and exchange using standardised web technologies in this article we discuss our vision how the linked data paradigm can be employed to evolve the intranets of large organisations â be it enterprises research organisations or governmental and public administrations â into networks of internal data and knowledge in particular for large enterprises data integration is still a key challenge the linked data paradigm seems a promising approach for integrating enterprise data like the web of data which now complements the original document centred web data intranets may help to enhance and flexibilise the intranets and service oriented architectures that exist in large organisations furthermore using linked data gives enterprises access to 50 billion facts from the growing linked open data lod cloud as a result a data intranet can help to bridge the gap between structured data management in erp crm or scm systems and semi structured or unstructured information in documents wikis or web portals and make all of these sources searchable in a coherent way,2014,0.13
Experiences from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: ecological findings and conservation initiatives,the brazilian atlantic forest hosts one of the worldâ s most diverse and threatened tropical forest biota in many ways its history of degradation describes the fate experienced by tropical forests around the world after five centuries of human expansion most atlantic forest landscapes are archipelagos of small forest fragments surrounded by open habitat matrices this â natural laboratoryâ has contributed to a better understanding of the evolutionary history and ecology of tropical forests and to determining the extent to which this irreplaceable biota is susceptible to majorhumandisturbances wesharesomeof the major findings with respect to the responses of tropical forests to human disturbances across multiple biological levels and spatial scales and discuss some of the conservation initiatives adopted in the past decade first weprovide a short description of the atlantic forest biota and its historical degradation secondly we offer conceptual models describing major shifts experienced by tree assemblages at local scales and discuss landscape ecological processes that can help to maintain this biota at larger scales we also examine potential plant responses to climate change finally wepropose a research agenda to improve the conservation value of human modified landscapes and safeguard the biological heritage of tropical forests,2014,0.208
"A call for the preservation of images, recordings, and other data in association with avian genetic samples, and the introduction of a solution: OMBIRDS",much current and historical research in ornithology employs catch and release methods resulting in a variety of data and materials from birds for which whole body specimens have not been collected often a genetic specimen e g blood or feathers is collected along with â â media specimensâ â such as images and or sound recordings providing a rich source of research material as well as an opportunity to use each type of specimen as a source of validation of the other despite the abundance of these datasets and their potential use in future research the preservation of such data and associated materials is currently a task that each researcher must confront individually which results in the loss of these research materials over time to promote the long term utility of information collected from the thousands of birds that are captured and released each year we present a protocol and database template ombirds the online museum of bird images recordings and dna samples for organizing and preserving images recordings and data associated with genetic samples this protocol can be used by individual researchers and institutions to organize their own collections and it also facilitates submission of records to international data repositories such as vertnet by contributing ombirds to the research community as a free database tool that can be downloaded and adapted by researchers and institutions we hope to encourage the collection of media along with genetic samples and to facilitate the archiving of these materials for their use in future research,2014,0.438
"Distribution, Range Extension, And Conservation Of The Endemic Black-Headed Bushmaster (Lachesis Melanocephala) In Costa Rica And Panama",the black headed bushmaster lachesis melanocephala viperidae crotalinae is an endemic pit viper from south eastern costa rica despite its importance with regard to medicine and conservation the ecology and distribution of this species are still poorly known mainly because it was only recently recognized as a full species and records are scarce across its range known only from the pacific slopes of the talamanca mountain range l melanocephala is considered uncommon restricted to undisturbed habitats and likely threatened with extinction here we summarize its distribution in terms of the extent of occurrence eoo and species distribution model sdm and present a new locality record for the las tablas protected zone at an elevation of 1 873 m in a mixed premontane and montane oak forest habitat with steep slopes the new record is located 14 km from the panama border so it is very likely that the species is also found in that country our results indicate that l melanocephala has a very small geographic range between 3 432 and 10 507 km2 depending on the method of assessment it is found mostly in undisturbed habitats including tropical premontane and montane humid very humid and pluvial forests due to its restricted geographic range and habitat specificity the severe and continued loss of lowland and mid elevation forests throughout its range pose serious threats to the persistence of the black headed bushmaster key,2014,0.705
Infusing considerations of trophic dependencies into species distribution modelling,community ecology involves studying the interdependence of species with each other and their environment to predict their geographical distribution and abundance modern species distribu tion analyses characterise species environment dependency well but offer only crude approxima tions of species interdependency typically the dependency between focal species and other species is characterised using other speciesâ point occurrences as spatial covariates to constrain the focal speciesâ predicted range this implicitly assumes that the strength of interdependency is homogeneous across space which is not generally supported by analyses of species interactions this discrepancy has an important bearing on the accuracy of inferences about habitat suitability for species we introduce a framework that integrates principles from consumerâ resource analyses resource selection theory and species distribution modelling to enhance quantitative prediction of species geographical distributions we show how to apply the framework using a case study of lynx and snowshoe hare interactions with each other and their environment the analysis shows how the framework offers a spatially refined understanding of species distribution that is sensitive to nuances in biophysical attributes of the environment that determine the location and strength of species interactions,2014,0.99
Incorporating Climate Change and Exotic Species into Forecasts of Riparian Forest Distribution,we examined the impact climate change cc will have on the availability of climatically suitable habitat for three native and one exotic riparian species due to its increasing prevalence in arid regions throughout the western us we predicted that an exotic species tamarix would have the greatest increase in suitable habitat relative to native counterparts under cc we used an ecological niche model to predict range shifts of populus fremontii salix gooddingii salix exigua and tamarix from present day to 2080s under five general circulation models and one climate change scenario a1b four major findings emerged 1 contrary to our original hypothesis p fremontii is projected to have the greatest increase in suitable habitat under cc followed closely by tamarix 2 of the native species s gooddingii and s exigua showed the greatest loss in predicted suitable habitat due to cc 3 nearly 80 percent of future p fremontii and salix habitat is predicted to be affected by either cc or tamarix by the 2080s 4 by the 2080s 20 percent of s gooddingii habitat is projected to be affected by both tamarix and cc concurrently followed by s exigua 19 percent and p fremontii 13 percent in summary while climate change alone will negatively impact both native willow species tamarix is likely to affect a larger portion of all three native species distributions we discuss these and other results in the context of prioritizing restoration and conservation efforts to optimize future productivity and biodiversity as we are accounting for only direct effects of cc and tamarix on native habitat we present a possible hierarchy of effects from the direct to the indirect and discuss the potential for the indirect to outweigh the direct effects our results highlight the need to account for simultaneous challenges in the face of cc,2014,0.806
Successful Biological Control of Tropical Soda Apple (Solanales: Solanaceae) in Florida: A Review of Key Program Components,tropical soda apple solanum viarum dunal solanaceae is a small shrub native to south america that is invasive in pastures and conservation areas across florida dense patches of tropical soda apple not only reduce cattle stocking rates and limit their movement but also serve as reservoirs for pests of solanaceous crops a classical biological control program was initiated in 1994 with exploration for natural enemies of tropical soda apple in argentina brazil and paraguay host specificity tests conducted under laboratory and field conditions demonstrated that the leaf feeding beetle gratiana boliviana dunal coleoptera chrysome lidae was a specialist herbivore that completes development only on the target weed after obtaining appropriate permits field releases of g boliviana were initiated in florida in may of 2003 larvae and adults of g boliviana feed on tropical soda apple leaves and may com pletely defoliate their host plants resulting in reduced growth and fruit production mass rearing facilities for the beetle were established in northern central and southern florida and adults were either hand carried or transported to release sites by overnight courier from 2003 to 2011 a total of 250 723 beetles were released and they became established throughout florida however their impact is more noticeable in regions below latitude 29 â n reductions of tropical soda apple densities caused by damage by the beetle were vis ible 2 3 yr after initial release or in some cases within a few months various methods of technology transfer were used to inform the public land owners funding agencies and scientists about the biological control program including articles in trade magazines exten sion publications websites videos field days and scientific publications the project was successful because of the coordinated efforts of personnel from federal state and county agencies key,2014,0.326
"Predicting the predatory impacts of the “demon shrimp” Dikerogammarus haemobaphes, on native and previously introduced species",biological invasions continue to exert pressure on ecosystems worldwide and we thus require methods that can help understand and predict the impacts of invasive species on both native species and previously established invaders comparing laboratory derived functional responses among invasive and native predators has emerged as one such method providing a robust proxy for field impacts we used this method to examine the likely impacts of the pontoâ caspian amphipod dikerogammarus haemobaphes known as the â œdemon shrimpâ a little investigated invader in european freshwaters that has recently established in the british isles we compared the functional responses on two prey species of d haemobaphes with two other amphipod species dikerogammarus villosus a congeneric invasive with well documented impacts on macro invertebrate communities and a native amphipod gammarus pulex prey species were native chironomus sp and the invasive chelicorophium curvispinum a tube building amphipod also originating from the pontoâ caspian region d villosus showed higher type ii functional responses towards both prey species than did d haemobaphes and g pulex with the latter two predators exhibiting similar impacts on the native prey however d haemobaphes had higher functional responses towards the invasive c curvispinum than did g pulex both when prey individuals were tubeless and resident in their protective mud tubes thus we demonstrate that functionally equivalent invasive congeners can show significantly different impacts on prey regardless of shared evolutionary history we also show that some predatory invaders can have impacts on native prey equivalent to native predator impacts but that they can also exert significant impacts on previously introduced prey we discuss the importance of invasion history and prey identity when attempting to understand and predict the impacts of new invaders,2014,0.29
In situ observation of chimaerid species in the Gorringe Bank: new distribution records for the north-east Atlantic Ocean,in the framework of the r v nautilus exploration programme remotely operated vehicle rov surveys were conducted at bathyal depths in the gorringe bank video transects revealed the presence of the chimaerids chimaera opalescens and hydrolagus affinis in the region an identification key for the north east atlantic species of the family chimaeridae is proposed,2014,0.523
Repeated monitoring as an effective early detection means: first records of naturalised Solidago gigantea Aiton (Asteraceae) in southern Africa,early detectionofemerginginvasive plants depends onmaximizingthe probability of detecting newpopulations repeated surveys along a gradient of environmental conditions or in areas exposed to high propagule pressure provide a potentially efficient strategy for early detection of alien species the long termmonitoring of such an area resulted in the documentation of the first naturalised solidago gigantea aiton asteraceae population for southern africa this population consisted of c 45 individuals growing in two locations on unmanaged grassland in the drakensberg mountains at an elevation of 1619 m a s l solidago gigantea readily invades unmanaged european grasslands altering biomass and transforming habitats moreover since goldenrods solidago spp are perennial species reproducing through a large number of wind dispersed seeds and belowground rootstocks these species appearwell pre adapted to the fire prone grassland biome of south africa we therefore suggest early stage eradication of s gigantea before it potentially becomes an unmanageable and costly invasive species in this region this study supports long termmonitoring programmes as an effectivemeans for early detection of new invasive species,2014,0.766
"Quantitative parameters and ecological implications of a specialized tritrophic interaction involving a seed-feeding tortricid, Pseudargyrotoza conwagana, a braconid parasitoid, Bracon otiosus, and the wild privet, Ligustrum vulgare",little is known about tritrophic interactions involving seed feeding insects parasitoid wasps and wild fleshy fruits here we examine relationships between pseudargyrotoza conwagana f lepidoptera tortricidae bracon oti osus marshall hymenoptera braconidae and the wild privet ligustrum vulgare l lamiales oleaceae after collecting fruits in a hedgerow habitat in northwest spain and rearing insects indoors no other insect species was detected in this trophic system each fruit contained one to four seeds each infested fruit contained only one seed feeding tortricid caterpillar and each parasitized caterpillar was affected by a single braconid individual i e b oti osus was a solitary parasitoid almost half of the wild privet shrubs were infested by p conwagana and infestation ranged from 2 to 32 of fruits per infested shrub the general effect of p conwagana on wild privet dispersal can be considered low as the overall rate of seed infestation was low 6 of seeds the infestation rate was higher in wild privet shrubs with a larger number of seeds per fruit and tortricid caterpillars that left the fruits successfully ate 80 of seeds in total the parasitism rate was moderate 25 of caterpillars but varied considerably 0â 75 among shrubs where p conwagana infestation was detected parasitism only occurred in shrubs showing high infes tation rates 19â 32 infested fruits i e with high host densities however the parasitism rate was density independent in these shrubs the wild privets benefited from the action of b otiosus in two ways the tortricid cater pillar population was partly eliminated and the caterpillars were prevented from eating more than one seed per fruit the b otiosus sex ratio was very balanced 1 male to 1 18 females winter diapause and protandry were prevalent in b otiosus keywords,2014,0.96
Beyond similarity: A network approach for identifying and delimiting biogeographical regions,biogeographical regions geographically distinct assemblages of species and communities constitute a cornerstone for ecology biogeography evolution and conservation biology species turnover measures are often used to quantify biodiversity patterns but algorithms based on similarity and clustering are highly sensitive to common biases and intricacies of species distribution data here we apply a community detection approach from network theory that incorporates complex higher order presence absence patterns we demonstrate the performance of the method by applying it to all amphibian species in the world c 6 100 species all vascular plant species of the usa c 17 600 and a hypothetical dataset containing a zone of biotic transition in comparison with current methods our approach tackles the challenges posed by transition zones and succeeds in identifying a larger number of commonly recognised biogeographical regions this method constitutes an important advance towards objective data derived identification and delimitation of the worldâ s biogeographical regions,2014,0.826
Is Great Britain heading for a Ponto-Caspian invasional meltdown?,1 the outcome of multiple invasions from a common origin may lead to facilitative interac tions because the invaders have co evolved under similar environmental conditions this out come is often referred to as invasional meltdown with a resultant increase in invasive species and a decline in native species richness and abundance 2 this study seeks to assess the full scope of the threat posed by a high risk group of 23 freshwater invaders originating from the pontoâ caspian region south east europe across great britain pontoâ caspian invaders constitute a group of special concern because they have recently caused a large scale invasion into western europe 3 according to a literature review 76 of reported interactions between pontoâ caspian invaders are positive mostly provision of food and commensalism or neutral habitat parti tioning negative interactions mostly predation were rare thus highlighting the ability of pontoâ caspian invaders to coexist 4 at least 14 out of the 23 pontoâ caspian organisms investigated are well established in the rhine estuary and dutch ports four of them hemimysis anomala dikerogammarus villosus d haemobaphes and hypania invalida have recently established in great britain regression models suggest the rest are under a critical risk of being transported with four species pre dicted to have arrived already to great britain echinogammarus ischnus jaera istri limnom ysis benedeni and d bispinosus 5 according to species distribution models the cumulative risk of invasion of multiple pon toâ caspian species thus invasional meltdown is highest in the south east of england and decreases to the north and west 6 great britain might be on the brink of invasional meltdown and as a consequence confront ing the problem of pontoâ caspian invasive species is a vital element for national biosecurity 7 synthesis and applications the predictive models and maps developed in this study pro vide a means for an evidence based prioritization of species and habitats for the management of existing and future invasions of pontoâ caspian species this integrated approach can be easily applied to risk assess other groups of species and habitats,2014,0.875
"Predicting potential global distributions of two Miscanthus grasses: Implications for horticulture, biofuel production, and biological invasions",in many regions large proportions of the naturalized and invasive non native floras were originally introduced deliberately by humans pest risk assessments are now used in many jurisdictions to regulate the importation of species and usually include an estimation of the potential distribution in the import area two species of asian grass miscanthus sacchariflorus and m sinensis that were originally introduced to north america as ornamental plants have since escaped cultivation these species and their hybrid offspring are now receiving attention for large scale production as biofuel crops in north america and elsewhere we evaluated their potential global climate suitability for cultivation and potential invasion using the niche model climex and evaluated the models sensitivity to the parameter values we then compared the sensitivity of projections of future climatically suitable area under two climate models and two emissions scenarios the models indicate that the species have been introduced to most of the potential global climatically suitable areas in the northern but not the southern hemisphere the more narrowly distributed species m sacchariflorus is more sensitive to changes in model parameters which could have implications for modelling species of conservation concern climate projections indicate likely contractions in potential range in the south but expansions in the north particularly in introduced areas where biomass production trials are under way climate sensitivity analysis shows that projections differ more between the selected climate change models than between the selected emissions scenarios local scale assessments are required to overlay suitable habitat with climate projections to estimate areas of cultivation potential and invasion risk,2014,0.711
"Europe’s top 10 invasive species: relative importance of climatic, habitat and socio-economic factors",using a representative set of 10 of the worst invasive species in europe this study investigates the relative importance of climatic habitat and socio economic factors in driving the occurrence of invasive species according to the regression models performed these factors can be interpreted as multi scale filters that deter mine the occurrence of invasive species with human degradation potentially affecting the performance of the other two environmental filters amongst climate factors minimum temperature of the coldest month was one of the most important drivers of the occurrence of europeâ s worst freshwater and terrestrial invaders like the red swamp crayfish procambarus clarkii bermuda buttercup oxalis pes caprae and sika deer cervus nippon water chemistry alkalinity ph nitrate determines the availability of habitat and resources for species at regional to local levels and was relevant to explain the occurrence of aquatic and semi aquatic invaders such as the brook trout salvalinus fontinallis and canada goose branta canadensis likewise nitrate and cholorophyll a concentration were important determinants of marine invaders like the bay barnacle balanus improvisus and green sea fingers codium fragile most relevant socio economic predictors included the density of roads coun try gross domestic product gdp distance to ports and the degree of human influ ence on ecosystems these variables were particularly relevant to explain the occurrence of the zebra mussel dreissena polymorpha and coypu myocastor coypu species usually associated to disturbed environments the japanese kelp undaria pinnatifida was generally distributed much closer to ports than the other two marine organisms although insufficient information on human impacts pre vented a correct assessment of the three marine species in conclusion this study shows how socio economic development is associated with the presence of the top 10 worst european invasive species at a continental scale and relates this fact to the provision and transport of propagules and the degradation of natural habitats that favour the establishment of invasive species,2014,0.977
Information Service Mashup for Industrial Knowledge Innovation Cluster under the Social Network Environment,information service mash up is essential to the industrial knowledge innovation cluster since it can integrate the distributed innovation resources and web services under the social network environments for advancing the collaboration and innovation resources sharing among the innovators in industrial knowledge innovation cluster the cross system information service mash up should choose appropriate mash up modes after illustrating the three typically used modes which are information mash up process mash up and website mash up this paper proposes a mixture mash up mode and explains the architecture when utilized in industrial knowledge innovation cluster the pipeline framework is also constructed to show how the resources extracted from enterprises scientific research institutions and universities intermediary service institutions and governments processed and integrated to provide functional widgets on customized portal for innovators in industrial knowledge innovation cluster,2014,0.091
Refugial Pattern of Bromus Erectus in Central Europe Based on ISSR Fingerprinting,we studied the thermophilous grass bromus erectus in central europe to determine its pattern of population genetic structure and genetic diversity using issr pcr fingerprinting to analyze 200 individuals from 37 popu lations we found three genetic groups with a clear geographic structure based on a bayesian approach the first group occurred west and south of the alps the second east and north of the alps and the third was formed by four genetically depauperated populations in germany the populations from germany formed a subset of the bohemian moravian populations with one private allele two differentiation centers one in the atlantic mediterranean and the second in the pannonian balkan area were recognized by species distribution modeling the geographic distribution of the genetic groups coincides with the syntaxonomic split of the festuco brometea class into the festucetalia valesiaceae and brometalia erecti orders we found a statistically significant decrease in mean issr bands per individual from south to north and to a lesser extent from the east to west the for mer was explained by holocene long distance migrations from southern refugia the latter by the difference in the gradient of anthropopression we hypothesize a cryptic northern shelter of the species in central europe in the putative moravian bohemian refugium key,2014,0.756
One or three species in Megadenia (Brassicaceae): insight from molecular studies,megadenia maxim is a small genus of the brassicaceae endemic to east asia with three disjunct areas of distribution the eastern edge of the qinghai tibetan plateau the eastern sayan mountains in southern siberia and chandalaz ridge in the southern sikhote alin mountains although distinct species m pygmaea maxim m bardunovii popov and m speluncarum vorob vorosch and gorovoj have been described from each area they have lately been reduced to synonymy with m pygmaea due to high morphological similarity here we present the first molecular study of megadenia using the sequences of 11 noncoding regions from the cytoplasmic chloroplast and mitochondrial and nuclear genomes we assessed divergence within the genus and explored the relationships between megadenia and biscutella l although m bardunovii m speluncarum and m pygmaea were found to be indiscernible with regard to the nuclear and mitochondrial markers studied our data on the plastid genome revealed their distinctness and a clear subdivision of the genus into three lineages matching the three described species all of the phylogenetic analyses of the chloroplast dna sequences provide strong support for the inclusion of megadenia and biscutella in the tribe biscutelleae a dating analysis shows that the genus megadenia is of miocene origin and diversification within the genus which has led to the three extant lineages most likely occurred during the early middle pleistocene in agreement with the vicariance pattern given the present day distribution differences in habitat preferences and in some anatomical traits and lack of a direct genealogical relationship m pygmaea m bardunovii and m speluncarum should be treated as distinct species or at least subspecies,2014,0.664
"As in other taxa, relatively fewer beetles are being described by an increasing number of authors: response to Löbl and Leschen",hundreds of taxonomists are sharing their knowledge through publishing online checklists of species names as part of the cat alogue of life col and world register of marine species worms boxshall et al 2013 costello et al 2013a roskov et al 2013a b like the print literature these species invento ries are never as complete and accurate as readers may wish but they can be more regularly improved than print publications and they are freely and easily available online furthermore because taxonomy is a rapidly progressing science these lists will constantly need updating as new species are described and newknowledge revises speciesâ classification and nomenclature costello et al 2013a it is unfair to criticise such databases as being incomplete and containing errors as if the print literature was immune to such problems rather experts could share their knowledge through open access databases to improve them instead of limiting their contributions to more conventional and sometimes expensive print publications costello et al 2013b for example the seven volumes of the â catalogue of palaearc tic coleopteraâ cited by lã bl leschen 2013 would cost over â 1000 we have used col and worms to estimate the rate of progress in discovering species â including the number of peo ple naming newspecies â and to predict howmany more species remain to be discovered costello wilson 2011 costello et al 2012 2013c here we respond to criticisms from lã bl leschen 2013 of these studies data,2014,0.849
Impacts of climate change on invasive Lantana camara L. distribution in South Africa,climate change and invasive species are now seen as two major contributors to global biodiversity change the combined effects of these two factors have serious implications for biodiversity and agriculture lantana camara l sensu lato lantana is a woody shrub that is highly invasive in many countries of the world including south africa where it has a profound impact on biodiversity water resources and agriculture strategies to manage and control this highly noxious weed will benefit from information on its likely potential distribution under current and future climate climex a species distribution modelling software was used to develop a process oriented niche model to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios model calibration was carried out with phenological observations and geographic distribution records of lantana the potential distribution of lantana under current climate showed a good match to its current distribution in south africa under future scenarios the climatically suitable areas for lantana were projected to contract in the northern provinces of limpopo and mpumalanga as well as coastal areas of western cape province however lantanaâ s potential distribution may expand further inland into new areas in kwazulu natal and eastern cape provinces the results suggest that lantana management initiatives in areas where climatic suitability is likely to decline should focus on controlling the density of invasion rather than curbing range expansion on the other hand areas where climatic suitability is projected to increase will require ongoing monitoring to prevent further range expansions,2014,0.35
Evaluation and improvement of the ecogeographical representativeness of a collection of the genus Trichloris in Argentina,in argentina species of the genus trichloris represent an important native forage resource adapted to drought and salinity the capture and identification of adaptive traits associated with such conditions require long term collection and characterization efforts ecogeographical land characterization elc maps constitute an easy and useful tool to evaluate ecogeographical representativeness in established collections allowing for the design of new collecting strategies in the present study an elc map was generated from ecogeographical variables closely associated with the adaptation of the target species for each elc map category the accessions preserved at the trichloris genebank of the facultad de ciencias agrarias universidad nacional del litoral were compared with external presence data after the identification of the ecogeographical gap a collecting expedition was designed collecting indices showed a significant improvement in the ecogeographical representativeness of the collection to the extent that accessions had a high probability of containing abiotic adaptation genes the results emphasize the usefulness of elc maps and the importance of planning collections through ecogeographical approaches,2014,0.55
Geographic selection bias of occurrence data influences transferability of invasive Hydrilla verticillata distribution models,due to socioeconomic differences the accuracy and extent of reporting on the occurrence of native species differs among countries which can impact the per formance of species distribution models we assessed the importance of geo graphical biases in occurrence data on model performance using hydrilla verticillata as a case study we used maxent to predict potential north ameri can distribution of the aquatic invasive macrophyte based upon training data from its native range we produced a model using all available native range occurrence data then explored the change in model performance produced by omitting subsets of training data based on political boundaries we also com pared those results with models trained on data from which a random sample of occurrence data was omitted from across the native range although most models accurately predicted the occurrence of h verticillata in north america auc 0 7600 data omissions influenced model predictions omitting data based on political boundaries resulted in larger shifts in model accuracy than omitting randomly selected occurrence data for well documented species like h verticillata missing records from single countries or ecoregions may mini mally influence model predictions but for species with fewer documented occurrences or poorly understood ranges geographic biases could misguide pre dictions regardless of focal species we recommend that future species distribu tion modeling efforts begin with a reflection on potential spatial biases of available occurrence data improved biodiversity surveillance and reporting will provide benefit not only in invaded ranges but also within under reported and unexplored native ranges,2014,0.335
Fauna Europaea - all European animal species on the web.,fauna europaea is europe s main zoological taxonomic index making the scientific names and distributions of all living currently known multicellular european land and freshwater animals species integrally available in one authoritative database fauna europaea covers about 260 000 taxon names including 145 000 accepted sub species assembled by a large network of 400 leading specialists using advanced electronic tools for data collations with data quality assured through sophisticated validation routines fauna europaea started in 2000 as an ec funded fp5 project and provides a unique taxonomic reference for many user groups such as scientists governments industries nature conservation communities and educational programs fauna europaea was formally accepted as an inspire standard for europe as part of the european taxonomic backbone established in pesi fauna europaea provides a public web portal at faunaeur org with links to other key biodiversity services is installed as a taxonomic backbone in wide range of biodiversity services and actively contributes to biodiversity informatics innovations in various initiatives and ec programs,2014,0.581
Climate variation effects on fungal fruiting,earth s climate is changing effects of climate change on fungal distribution and activity are hard to predict because they are mediated in many different ways including fungal physiology reproduction and survival host physiology spatial and temporal distribution of hosts resource availability and competition currently it is hard to monitor such effects on fungal mycelium in the field but fruit bodies provide a useful surrogate here we review the effects of climate change on phenological changes in fungal fruiting and fruit body yield and on fungal hosts and distribution particularly of saprotrophic and ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetes we report that fruiting phenology is changing in many european countries on average the fruiting season is extending though for some species it is contracting different species and ecological groups behave differently time of fruiting depends on geographical location some fungi now fruit early in the year as well as in autumn and spring fruiting is getting earlier some fungi appear to be changing hosts fruit body yields vary dramatically from year to year the amount duration and frequency of fruiting are influenced by numerous environmental factors we also consider difficulties in assessing phenological and distributional data and provide suggestions for future research directions at the interface of laboratory experiments and field observations including molecular approaches and monitoring systems,2014,0.179
A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets,in 2010 the international community under the auspices of the convention on biological diversity agreed on 20 biodiversity related â œaichi targetsâ to be achieved within a decade we provide a comprehensive mid term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets we projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series on current trajectories results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020 we highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the aichi targets and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress,2014,0.152
Bird and mammal species composition in distinct geographic regions and their relationships with environmental factors across multiple spatial scales,global patters of species distributions and their underlying mechanisms are a major question in ecology and the need for multi scale analyses has been recognized previous studies recognized climate topography habitat heterogeneity and disturbance as important variables affecting such patterns here we report on analyses of species composition environment relationships among different taxonomic groups in two continents and the components of such relationships in the contiguous usa and australia we used partial canonical correspondence analysis of occurrence records of mammals and breeding birds from the global biodiversity information facility to quantify relationships between species composition and environmental variables in remote geographic regions at multiple spatial scales with extents ranging from 10 5 to 10 7 km 2 and sampling grids from 10 to 10 000 km 2 we evaluated the concept that two elements contribute to the impact of environmental variables on composition the strength of species affinity to an environmental variable and the amount of variance in the variable to disentangle these two elements we analyzed correlations between resulting trends and the amount of variance contained in different environmental variables to isolate the mechanisms behind the observed relationships we found that climate and land use land cover are responsible for most explained variance in species composition regardless of scale taxonomic group and geographic region however the amount of variance in species composition attributed to land use land cover lulc was closely related to the amount of intrinsic variability in lulc in the usa but not in australia while the effect of climate on species composition was negatively correlated to the variability found in the climatic variables the low variance in climate compared to lulc suggests that species in both taxonomic groups have strong affinity to climate thus it has a strong effect on species distribution and community composition while the opposite is true for lulc,2014,0.986
How much of the world is woody?,1 the question posed by the title of this paper is a basic one and it is surprising that the answer is not known recently assembled trait datasets provide an opportunity to address this but scaling these datasets to the global scale is challenging because of sampling bias although we currently know the growth form of tens of thousands of species these data are not a random sample of global diversity some clades are exhaustively characterised while others we know littleâ toâ nothing about 2 starting with a database of woodiness for 39 313 species of vascular plants 12 of taxonomically resolved species 59 of which were woody we estimated the status of the remaining taxonomically resolved species by randomisation to compare the results of our method to conventional wisdom we informally surveyed a broad community of biologists no consensus answer to the question existed with estimates ranging from 1 to 90 mean 31 7 3 after accounting for sampling bias we estimated the proportion of woodiness among the world s vascular plants to be between 45 and 48 this was much lower than a simple mean of our dataset and much higher than the conventional wisdom 4 synthesis alongside an understanding of global taxonomic diversity i e number of species globally building a functional understanding of global diversity is an important emerging research direction this approach represents a novel way to account for sampling bias in functional trait datasets and to answer basic questions about functional diversity at a global scale,2014,0.113
"On the genus Pachygnatha (Araneae, Tetragnathidae) in the Albertine Rift of Burundi, with the description of three new species",three new species of pachygnatha p bispiralis sp nov p intermedia sp nov and p ventricosa sp nov are described from forest areas in western burundi the presence of p procincta bosmans bosselaers 1994 in burundi confi rms its very wide distribution spanning most of africa pachygnatha appears to be an important element of the afromontane spider fauna,2014,0.63
PhyloJIVE: Integrating biodiversity data with the Tree of Life,motivation rich collections of biodiversity information such as spatial distributions species descriptions and trait data are now synthesized in publically available online sources such as gbif also phylogenetic knowledge now provides a sound understanding of the origin of organisms and their place in the tree of life we demonstrate with phylojive that any phylogenetic tree can be linked to online biodiversity data in the browser this evolutionary view of biodiversity data is demonstrated in a case study that suggests that this approach may be useful to scientist and non experts users,2014,0.437
"The Ecological Niche Of Dacryodes Buettneri (Burseraceae), A Timber Tree In Central Africa",dacryodes buettneri is an important timber tree in central africa its wood commercially called ozigo is sold in domestic and international markets the species is only occasionally planted mostly in home gardens it is locally threatened to assist in management planning and sustainable in situ conservation a study of the geographic distribution and ecological niche of d buettneri was conducted data from 218 georeferenced collections were used to describe the geographic distribution assimilations based on 19 climatic parameters were used in order to describe the areas where it grew and to determine optimal values of climatic factors the results showed that there were more collections of d buettneri from gabon than from neighbouring countries with only a few collections in southern cameroon and southern congo the modelled optimal rainfall was between 1600 and 2000 mm year 1 and the modelled optimal mean annual temperature 23 8â 25 8 â c dacryodes buettneri grows at low altitudes from 0 to 750 m above sea level the results of this study will be used to optimise strategies for in situ conservation of populations of d buettneri,2014,0.505
Of carrots and sticks,journals and funders increasingly require public archiving of the data that support publications we argue that this mandate is necessary but not sufficient more incentives for data sharing are needed,2014,0.302
Food Preference Of Chrysolina Fastuosa Adults (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae),chrysolina fastuosa scopoli 1763 is a widely distributed chrysomelid beetle in europe according to the literature c fastuosa has been found in association with lamiaceae plants such as ballota nigra l galeopsis pubescens besser lamium album l and urtica dioica l urticaceae host plants have been referred often merely on plant genus level and many authors listed host plants for c fastuosa which taxonomically differed significantly from one another in spite of many references which mention consumption and or association of ch fastuosa on stinging nettle the author has almost never observed the beetle on urtica species this paper presents results of two laboratory experiments showing feeding prefer ence of c fastuosa adults concerning some lamiaceae b nigra lamium purpureum l and lamium amplexicaule l but not on u dioica b nigra seems to be one of the most preferable host plant species under natural and experimental conditions key,2014,0.205
"Phylogeography and ecological niche modelling, coupled with the fossil pollen record, unravel the demographic history of a Neotropical swamp palm through the Quaternary",aim the recovery of demographic history through phylogeographical analysis is critical for understanding microevolutionary processes and the spatial temporal context of lineage divergence palaeodistribution modelling and the fossil record might provide the spatial context for statistical phylogeographical analyses allowing the generation of independent palaeoscenarios of demographic history that can be tested using coalescent models in this study we generated independent demographic scenarios to examine geographical barriers to gene flow in a neotropical swamp palm mauritia flexuosa and assessed how climatic changes during the pleistocene influenced its geographical distribution and genetic diversity location neotropical wetlands methods we sampled 257 adult individuals of m flexuosa from 26 localities in the amazon araguaia tocantins paraguai paranã and sã o francisco basins the analyses were based on statistical phylogeography ecological niche modelling and the fossil pollen record the genetic data were based on polymorphisms in three chloroplast non coding regions results mauritia flexuosa presented low genetic diversity but significant genetic differentiation among populations from different river basins the ecological niche modelling and demographic simulations showed that the pattern of observed genetic diversity for m flexuosa probably reflects range retraction during the last glacial maximum leading to multiple refugia in support of this the fossil pollen record suggests that multiple refugia were present in brazilian savannas where m flexuosa often disappeared during cold and dry periods across the last glacial cycle returning during the wet phases the periodic dryness in this region was driven by the latitudinal displacement of the intertropical convergence zone itcz across glacial interglacial periods which possibly affected the distributional dynamics of m flexuosa during the pleistocene epoch main conclusions our results provide evidence that climate changes during the last glacial cycle were important determinants of the geographical distribution and demographic history of m flexuosa across the late quaternary period in addition to the geographical barriers imposed by river basins these factors have shaped genetic differentiation as currently observed among lineages,2014,0.041
Is Munida gregaria (Crustacea: Decapoda: Munididae) a truly transpacific species?,the â œeast pacific barrierâ has been recognized as the worldâ s largest marine biogeographic barrier munida gregaria is the only species of its family with transpacific populations however it still remains to be elucidated whether these two distantly located populations belong to the same species in this study we investigated the genetic cohesion of m gregaria across the east pacific barrier by analyzing mitochondrial markers cytochrome oxidase subunit i and nadh dehydrogenase subunit 1 genes were sequenced for individuals from different areas i e the southeast pacific the southern tip of south america the southwest atlantic and the southwest pacific a median joining network pairwise f sts genetic diversity statistics and neutrality tests were computed our results i e the absence of different haplogroups on both sides of the east pacific barrier and existence of shared haplotypes showed that populations on both sides of this barrier belong to the same species at a population genetic level our results suggest that individuals from both regions have been connected since although some differentiation was found between the southern tip of south america and the southwest pacific the southeast pacific and southwest atlantic showed no signs of differentiation from the southwest pacific in addition our results provided evidence of a population expansion in southern south america during the pleistocene the role of pleistocene glaciations and the antarctic circumpolar current in shaping the distribution of sub antarctic marine invertebrates is discussed,2014,0.871
Access and benefit sharing of Antarctica's Biological Material,searching and sampling of antarctic biological material abm is happening with no explicit regulation on access and benefit sharing requirements patents already exist on inventions stemming from antarctic living organisms the antarctic treaty system ats provides mechanisms to ensure that scientific knowledge and data generated from the collection and use of abm are shared although commercialization might be a threat to this free exchange of scientific knowledge some of the underlying problems regarding the access and benefit sharing of abm are that under the ats there are gaps concerning definitions access to specimens benefit sharing commercialization and reporting issues the antarctic treaty consultative parties atcps have decided that the antarctic treaty consultative meeting atcm is the competent body to discuss the matter and the ats is the appropriate framework for managing the collection of biological material in the antarctic treaty area and for considering its use nevertheless opinions diverge as to the need for more specific rules on access and benefit sharing other than that already resulting from the obligation to give prior notification and share scientific results,2014,0.21
Lichens From Iceland In The Collection Of Svanhildur Svane,survey was made of the lichens collected by svanhildur svane in different parts of iceland from 1949 to 1997 and deposited at the botanical museum of the university of copenhagen c as a result 11 species agonimia tristicula aspicilia mashiginensis fuscidea tenebrica gyalecta flotowii lecania baeomma lithographa tes serata pyrenopsis grumulifera rimularia fuscosora steinia geophana thelignya lignyota and umbilicaria nylanderiana were recorded as new to iceland and 6 species were new to certain regions in iceland as defined in the nordic lichen flora,2014,0.688
Challenges to barcoding an entire flora.,dna barcodes are species specific genetic markers that allow taxonomic identification of biological samples the promise of dna barcoding as a rapid molecular tool for conducting biodiversity inventories has catalysed renewed efforts to document and catalogue the diversity of life parallel to the large scale sampling conducted by victorian naturalists the unique contribution of dna barcode data is in its ability to identify biotic material that would be impossible to classify using traditional taxonomic keys however the utility of dna barcoding relies upon the construction of accurate barcode libraries that provide a reference database to match to unidentified samples whilst there has been much debate in the literature over the choice and efficacy of barcode markers there has been little consideration of the practicalities of generating comprehensive barcode reference libraries for species rich floras here we discuss several challenges to the generation of such libraries and present a case study from a regional biodiversity hotspot in southern quebec we suggest that the key challenges include i collection of specimens for rare or ephemeral species ii limited access to taxonomic expertise necessary for reliable identification of reference specimens and iii molecular challenges in amplifying and matching barcode data to be most effective we recommend that sampling must be both flexible and opportunistic and conducted across the entire growing season by expert taxonomists we emphasize that the success of the global barcoding initiative will depend upon the close collaboration of taxonomists plant collectors and molecular biologists,2014,0.39
"Ecological Niche Model used to examine the distribution of an invasive, non-indigenous coral",all organisms have a set of ecological conditions or niche which they depend on to survive and establish in a given habitat the ecological niche of a species limits its geographical distribution in the particular case of non indigenous species nis the ecological requirements of the species impose boundaries on the potential distribution of the organism in the new receptor regions this is a theoretical assumption implicit when ecological niche models enms are used to assess the potential distribution of nis this assumption has been questioned given that in some cases niche shift may occur during the process of invasion we used enms to investigate whether the model fit with data from the native range of the coral tubastraea coccinea lesson 1829 successfully predicts its invasion in the atlantic we also identified which factors best explain the distribution of this nis the broad native distributional range of t coccinea predicted the invaded sites well especially along the brazilian coast the caribbean sea and gulf of mexico the occurrence of t coccinea was positively related to calcite levels and negatively to eutrophy but was rather unaffected to other variables that often limit other marine organisms suggesting that this nis has wide ecological limits a trait typical of invasive species,2014,0.589
Balancing bioenergy and biosecurity policies: Estimating current and future climate suitability patterns for a bioenergy crop,in an apparent paradox bioenergy crops offer potential benefits to a world adjusting to the challenges of climate change and declining fossil fuel stocks as well as potential ecological and economic threats resulting from biological invasions in considering this paradox it is important to understand that benefits and threats may not always be apparent in equal measure throughout the potential range of each candidate biofuel species in some environments a species could potentially produce valuable biological materials without posing a significant invasion threat in this study we develop a bioclimatic niche model for a candidate biofuel crop millettia pinnata and apply the model to different climatic and irrigation scenarios to estimate the current and future patterns of climate suitability for its growth and naturalization we use australia as a case study for interpreting the niche model in terms that may be informative for both biofuels proponents and biosecurity regulators to plan management programmes that reflect the invasive potential in different areas the model suggests that suitable growing conditions for m pinnata in australia are naturally restricted to the moist and semimoist tropics irriga tion can extend the suitable growing conditions more widely throughout the tropics and into more arid regions under future climate scenarios suitable growing conditions for m pinnata under natural rainfall contract towards the east coast and extend southward into the subtropics with irrigation m pinnata appears to have the potential in the future to naturalize across much of australia the bioclimatic modelling method demon strated here is comparatively quick and easy and can produce a rich array of data products to inform the inter ests of both bioenergy proponents and biosecurity regulators we show how this modelling can support the development of spatially explicit biosecurity policies designed to manage invasion risks in a manner that balances bioenergy and biosecurity concerns,2014,0.028
Best practices for data sharing in phylogenetic research,as phylogenetic data becomes increasingly available along with associated data on species genomes traits and geographic distributions the need to ensure data availability and reuse become more and more acute in this paper we provide ten simple rules that we view as best practices for data sharing in phylogenetic research these rules will help lead towards a future phylogenetics where data can easily be archived shared reused and repurposed across a wide variety of projects,2014,0.265
Multi-symbiotic systems: functional implications of the coexistence of grass-endophyte and legume-rhizobia symbioses,the coexistence of symbionts with different functional roles in co occurring plants is highly probable in terrestrial ecosystems analyses of how plants and microbes interact above and belowground in multi symbiotic systems are key to understanding community structure and ecosystem functioning we performed an outdoor experiment in mesocosms to investigate the consequences of the interaction of a provider belowground symbiont of legumes nitrogen fixing bacteria and a protector aerial fungal symbiont of grasses epichlo ã endophyte on nitrogen dynamics and aboveground net primary productivity four plants of trifolium repens trifolium a perennial legume either inoculated or not with rhizobium legu minosarum grew surrounded by 16 plants of lolium multiflorum lolium an annual grass with either low or high levels of the endophyte neotyphodium occultans after five months we quantified the number of nodules in trifolium roots shoot biomass of both plant species and the contribution of atmospheric nitrogen fixation vs soil nitrogen uptake to above ground nitrogen in each plant species the endophyte increased grass biomass production 16 and nitrogen uptake from the soil â the main source for the grass further it reduced the nodulation of neighbour trifolium plants 50 notably due to a compensatory increase in nitrogen fixation per nodule this reduced neither its atmospheric nitrogen fixation â the main source of nitrogen for the legume â nor its biomass production both of which were doubled by rhizobial inoculation in consequence the total amount of nitrogen in aboveground biomass and aboveground productivity were greatest in mesocosms with both symbionts i e high rhizobia high endophyte these results show that in spite of the deleterious effect of the endophyte on the establishment of the rhizobia â legume symbiosis the coexistence of these symbionts leading to additive eff ects on nitrogen capture and aboveground productivity can generate complementarity on the functioning of multi symbiotic systems,2014,0.031
"The contrasting effects of genome size, chromosome number and ploidy level on plant invasiveness: a global analysis",understanding how species traits relate to their status e g invasiveness or rarity is important because it can help to efficiently focus conservation and management effort and infer mechanisms affecting plant status this is particularly important for invasiveness in which proactive action is needed to restrict the establishment of potentially invasive plants we tested the ability of genome size dna 1c values to explain invasiveness and compared it with cytogenetic traits chromosome number and ploidy level we considered 890 species from 62 genera from across the angiosperm phylogeny and distributed from tropical to boreal latitudes we show that invasiveness was negatively related to genome size and positively related to chromosome number and ploidy level yet there was a positive relationship between genome size and chromosome number that is our result was not caused by collinearity between the traits including both traits in explanatory models greatly increased the explanatory power of each this demonstrates the potential unifying role that genome size chromosome number and ploidy have as species traits despite the diverse impacts they have on plant physiology it provides support for the continued cataloguing of cytogenetic traits and genome size of the world s flora,2014,0.34
Decapod fauna of the Helgoland trench (Crustacea) a long-term study in a biodiversity hotspot,thirty seven species of decapod crustaceans were collected from thehelgoland trench during a long term study through the periods 1982 1992 and 2000 2013 this brings up the decapod species known from that area up to 41 3 uncertain ones most of the species have a boreal to temperate distribution pattern the diversity and specificity of the fauna are particularly high and amount to about a quarter of the total species numbers of the german bight the helgoland trench can thus be considered as a biodiversity hotspot in thegerman bight furthermore the species composition reacts quite sensibly to temperature changes induced by climate change and alien species remained notably absent,2014,0.931
"Experiment, monitoring, and gradient methods used to infer climate change effects on plant communities yield consistent patterns",significancemethodological constraints can limit our ability to quantify potential impacts of climate warming we assessed the consistency of three approaches in estimating warming effects on plant community composition manipulative warming experiments repeat sampling under ambient temperature change monitoring and space for time substitution the three approaches showed agreement in the direction of change an increase in the relative abundance of species with a warmer thermal niche but differed in the magnitude of change estimated experimental and monitoring approaches were similar in magnitude whereas space for time comparisons indicated a much stronger response these results suggest that all three approaches are valid but experimental warming and long term monitoring are best suited for forecasting impacts over the coming decades inference about future climate change impacts typically relies on one of three approaches manipulative experiments historical comparisons broadly defined to include monitoring the response to ambient climate fluctuations using repeat sampling of plots dendroecology and paleoecology techniques and space for time substitutions derived from sampling along environmental gradients potential limitations of all three approaches are recognized here we address the congruence among these three main approaches by comparing the degree to which tundra plant community composition changes i in response to in situ experimental warming ii with interannual variability in summer temperature within sites and iii over spatial gradients in summer temperature we analyzed changes in plant community composition from repeat sampling 85 plant communities in 28 regions and experimental warming studies 28 experiments in 14 regions throughout arctic and alpine north america and europe increases in the relative abundance of species with a warmer thermal niche were observed in response to warmer summer temperatures using all three methods however effect sizes were greater over broad scale spatial gradients relative to either temporal variability in summer temperature within a site or summer temperature increases induced by experimental warming the effect sizes for change over time within a site and with experimental warming were nearly identical these results support the view that inferences based on space for time substitution overestimate the magnitude of responses to contemporary climate warming because spatial gradients reflect long term processes in contrast in situ experimental warming and monitoring approaches yield consistent estimates of the magnitude of response of plant communities to climate warming,2014,0.215
Taxonomic Reference Libraries for Environmental Barcoding: A Best Practice Example from Diatom Research,dna barcoding uses a short fragment of a dna sequence to identify a taxon after obtaining the target sequence it is compared to reference sequences stored in a database to assign an organism name to it the quality of data in the reference database is the key to the success of the analysis in the here presented study multiple types of data have been combined and critically examined in order to create best practice guidelines for taxonomic reference libraries for environmental barcoding 70 unialgal diatom strains from berlin waters have been established and cultured to obtain morphological and molecular data the strains were sequenced for 18s v4 rdna the pre barcode for protists as well as rbcl data and identified by microscopy lm and for some strains also sem pictures were taken and physical vouchers deposited at the bgbm 37 freshwater taxa from 15 naviculoid diatom genera were identified four taxa from the genera amphora mayamaea planothidium and stauroneis are described here as new names molecular morphological and habitat data as well as additional images of living cells are also available electronically in the algaterra information system all reference sequences or reference barcodes presented here are linked to voucher specimens in order to provide a complete chain of evidence back to the formal taxonomic literature,2014,0.386
Different growth sensitivity to climate of the conifer Juniperus thurifera on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea,mediterranean plants cope with cold wet winters and dry hot summers with a drought gradient from northwest to southeast limiting climatic conditions have become more pronounced in the last decades due to the warming trend and rainfall decrease juniperus thurifera l a long lived conifer tree endemic to the western mediterranean region has a disjunct distribution in europe and africa making it a suitable species to study sensitivity to climate in both sides of the mediterranean basin tree ring width chronologies were built for three j thurifera stands at spain europe and three in morocco africa and correlated with monthly temperature and precipitation the temporal stability of climate growth relationships was assessed using moving correlations the drought effect on growth was calculated using the monthly standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index spei at different temporal scales in the wettest stands increasing spring temperature and summer precipitation enhanced growth while in the driest stands growth was enhanced by higher spring precipitation and lower summer temperature the climate growth correlations shifted during the twentieth century especially since the 1970s particularly noticeable is the recent negative correlation with previous autumn and winter precipitation in the wettest stands of j thurifera probably related with an effect of cloud cover or flooding on carbon storage depletion for next year growth the driest stands were affected by drought at long time scales while the wettest stands respond to drought at short time scales this reveals a different strategy to cope with drought conditions with populations from drier sites able to cope with short periods of water deficit,2014,0.059
Study on the seriousness of the mistletoe plant acacia trees and how to combat it. Al-mahaweet - Republic of Yemen,mistletoe are hemi parasite semi parasite plants angiosperms jamal r qasem 2009 floriated tow fold housing diecious the feminine plants give flowers and fruit results have one seed whereas the masculine plants give unapparent flowers small and give the pollen these plants are enable partially to create carbons sources because of they are autotrophic but unable to get water and the mineral elements and the mechanic help so they are going on hemi parasite behavior against the other plants which act as a direct host for the most part or on fungi which act as a helpful agent getting the nutrition from an other plant mistletoes true paper mistletoe are the most famous and dangerous on all of the biological regions in the study region among all of the parasite plants,2014,0.12
Cybertaxonomy to accomplish big things in aphid systematics,biodiversity sciences have progressed at such a pace that the taxonomic community has been unable to grow concomitantly to keep up with the influx of biological data this taxonomic impediment has led some to suggest that taxonomy is no longer pertinent and to the development of methodologies that circumvent the taxonomic process this article does not seek to argue for the importance of taxonomy but rather is a call to the aphid taxonomy community to rise to the challenge by dramatically increasing the volume and comprehensiveness of its output without sacrificing quality recent informatics technology allows us to mobilize the 2 most important aphid taxonomy resources experts and specimens both distributed globally cyberspecimens museum specimens digitally rendered at a resolution sufficient for remote identification and open cybertaxonomic tools will allow the international aphid taxonomic community to carry out large ambitious projects the global aphid cybertaxonomy proposed here will serve not only the ends of research aphidologists but also provide a model for other taxonomic communities to adapt and adopt as we confront both the taxonomic impediment and the taxonomic naysayers,2014,0.118
Endangered Species Taxonomy-The Crucial yet Misunderstood and Disregarded Tool for Studying Biodiversity,this article presents a detailed overview about one of the most important yet neglected fields of science the taxonomy its relevance and the various impediments faced by it in recent times since the period 2011 2020 has been declared the biodiversity decade the convention of biodiversity has laid major emphasis on the inventory and conservation of biodiversity however it is a fact that the ignorance about our faunal and floral wealth can be detrimental for our own survival with the decline in taxonomy and the disappearance of taxonomists worldwide we are slowly heading towards a state of uncertainty and chaos as most of our studies require an accurate identification of test organism which is not a job that anyone or everyone can do therefore this article highlights the stringent measures that are required to be taken by the taxonomists as well the various policy making agencies towards the revival and promotion of taxonomy,2014,0.118
"Conservation challenges in a threatened hotspot: Agriculture and plant biodiversity losses in Baja California, Mexico",modern agricultural practices pose serious threats to biodiversity worldwide species losses from habitat conversion are well documented but indirect impacts such as reduced water availability to adjacent ecosystems are less known san quintä â nis an important agricultural valley in the mediterranean climate region of baja california mexico the region is also a hotspot of plant species richness and endemism plant species in the region are here analyzed by comparison of the contemporary flora to historical botanical collections to identify extirpations historical collections indicate that habitat loss to agriculture has been a direct cause of species losses as importantly the unsus tainable extraction of groundwater has apparently led to salt water intrusion resulting in the loss of 22 native plant taxa including 13 rare plants seventy eight percent of all the vernal pool taxa have been lost from the flora including 85 of the rare taxa and 11 of plants of riparian and pond habitat including 25 of the rare taxa are no longer found in the region unsustainable agricultural practices continue to threaten fragile coastal eco systems and are a serious challenge to current and future conservation efforts ironically communicated these same practices frequently result in abandonment of cultivated areas owing to indirect impacts conservation of biodiversity and large scale agricultural operations are even less compatible on a regional scale than indicated by direct impacts it is vital that sustainable agricultural practices be adopted locally and globally to avoid further losses of biodiversity,2014,0.535
"An annotated Checklist of the Italian Butterflies and Skippers (Papilionoidea, Hesperiioidea)",we present here an updated checklist of the italian butterflies lepidoptera hesperioidea and papilionoidea organised in the following sections tables 1 introduction providing a broad outline of the paper 2 checklist proper summarised in a table listing in separate columns a indications of endemicity sub endemic italian endemic b the relevant annex in the habitats directive legally protected species c threat levels in europe for threatened species only d a serial number whose format is uniform across all italian animal groups this number runs throughout all the following tables see 3 4 e name author date of publication f schematic overall indication of each specieâ s italian range n orth s outh si icily sa rdinia 3 nomenclature containing basic nomenclatural details for all listed genera species and some of the generally or historically recognised subspecies and synonyms 4 notes where a variety of other information is provided on a name by name family subfamily genus species subspecies basis all remaining doubts as concerns each individual case are clearly stated the number of nominal species listed in the previous edition of this checklist published almost 20 years ago was 275 whereas it has raised to 290 in the current list the status of about a dozen of these remains controversial as discussed in the text the present checklist is meant to provide an update of the italian butterfly fauna taking into account all relevant publications and tries to explain all nomenclatural changes that had to be introduced in the appropriate section many detailed comments are offered when necessary or useful in the notes,2014,0.756
Potential reduction in terrestrial salamander ranges associated with Marcellus shale development,natural gas production from the marcellus shale is rapidly increasing in the northeastern united states most of the endemic terrestrial salamander species in the region are classified as â globally secureâ by the iucn primarily because much of their ranges include state and federally protected lands which have been presumed to be free from habitat loss however the proposed and ongoing development of the marcellus gas resources may result in significant range restrictions for these and other terrestrial forest salamanders to begin to address the gaps in our knowledge of the direct impacts of shale gas development we developed occurrence models for five species of terrestrial plethodontid salamanders found largely within the marcellus shale play we predicted future marcellus shale development under several scenarios under scenarios of 10 000 20 000 and 50 000 new gas wells we predict 4 8 and 20 forest loss respectively within the play predictions of habitat loss vary among species but in general plethodon electromorphus and plethodon wehrlei are predicted to lose the greatest proportion of forested habitat within their ranges if future marcellus development is based on characteristics of the shale play if development is based on current well locations plethodon richmondi is predicted to lose the greatest proportion of habitat models showed high uncertainty in speciesâ ranges and emphasize the need for distribution data collected by widespread and repeated randomized surveys,2014,0.659
"A biography of an invasive terrestrial slug: the spread, distribution and habitat of Deroceras invadens",the article reviews distribution records of deroceras invadens previously called d panormitanum and d caruanae adding significant unpublished records from the authorsâ own collecting museum samples and interceptions on goods arriving in the u s a by 1940 d invadens had already arrived in britain denmark california australia and probably new zealand it has turned up in many further places since including remote oceanic islands but scarcely around the eastern mediterranean egypt and crete are the exceptions nor in asia throughout much of the americas its presence seems to have been previously overlooked probably often being mistaken for d laeve new national records include mexico costa rica and ecuador with evidence from interceptions of its presence in panama peru and kenya the range appears limited by cold winters and dry summers this would explain why its intrusion into eastern europe and southern spain has been rather slow and incomplete at a finer geographic scale the occurrence of the congener d reticulatum provides a convenient comparison to control for sampling effort d invadens is often about half as frequently encountered and sometimes predominates deroceras invadens is most commonly found in synanthropic habitats particularly gardens and under rubbish but also in greenhouses and sometimes arable land and pasture it may spread into natural habitats as in britain south africa australia and tenerife many identifications have been checked in the light of recent taxonomic revision revealing that the sibling species d panormitanum s s has spread much less extensively a number of published or online records especially in australia have turned out to be misidentifications of d laeve,2014,0.538
Mammal species richness and biogeographic structure at the southern boundaries of the Nearctic region,we analyzed whether the spatial variation in mammal species richness reflects the southern bounda ries of the nearctic region as previously established by endemism patterns records from 710 mammal species were drawn on a map of north america from canada and alaska to panama gridded at 4 â latitude longitude we evaluated the probable existence of unknown spe cies through three richness estimators chao2 ice and jack1 modeled the potential distribution of species and mapped the predicted pattern of species richness through the number of coexisting potential distribu tions the poorest grid cells are in the northern areas whereas the richest ones are in the southern areas coinciding with the pattern of collecting points the average richness of 4 â grid cells comprising the nearc tic region was 18 species and the richest 4 â grid cells had 150 species coinciding with the 26 â latitude from the 406 mammal species of the nearctic region 104 are restricted to it and 305 species situated south of it are not distributed in the region the map of predicted rich ness shows the classical latitudinal diversity gradient with the number of species increasing to the tropics we conclude that the nearctic region has a low mam mal richness with a richness pattern corresponding with previously described patterns of endemism with a boundary situated at 26 â â 30 â latitude keywords,2014,0.974
Challenges of deep-sea biodiversity assessments in the Southern Ocean - 中国学术期刊网络出版总库,despite recent progress in deep sea biodiversity assessments in the southern ocean so there remain gaps in our knowledge that hamper efficient deep sea monitoring in times of rapid climate change these include geographical sampling bias depth and size dependent faunal gaps in biology ecology distribution and phylogeography and the evolution of so species the phenomena of species patchiness and rarity are still not well understood possibly because of our limited understanding of physiological adaptations and thresholds even though some shallow water species have been investigated physiologically community scale studies on the effects of multiple stressors related to ongoing environmental change including temperature rise ocean acidification and shifts in deposition of phytoplankton are completely unknown for deep sea organisms thus the establishment of long term and coordinated monitoring programs such as those rapidly growing under the umbrella of the southern ocean observing system soos or the deep ocean observing strategy doos may represent unique tools for measuring the status and trends of deep sea and so ecosystems,2014,0.577
The ecology of human linguistic groups,similarities between linguistic and biological diversity were identified long ago as research on both fields has advanced qualitative parallelisms have turned into quantitatively comparable patterns remarkable examples are the statistical properties of taxonomy the decline of diversity with latitude or the allometric relationship between population abundaces and range sizes though multiple factors may underlie these remarkable patterns the similarites uncovered between linguistic and biological diversity point to a relevant role of environment in shaping them eventually the study of a human macroecologymay lead to the discovery of genericmechanisms behind the evolution and interaction of populations,2014,0.269
Relationship of genetic diversity and niche centrality: a survey and analysis,the distribution of genetic diversity within and among populations in relation to species geographic ranges is important to understanding processes of evolution speciation and biogeography one hypothesis predicts that natural populations at geographic range margins will have lower genetic diversity relative to those located centrally in species distributions owing to a link between geographic and environmental marginality alternatively genetic variation may be unrelated with geographic marginality via decoupling of geographic and environmental marginality we investigate the predictivity of geographic patterns of genetic variation based on geographic and environmental marginality using published genetic diversity data for 40 species insects plants birds mammals worms only about half of species showed positive relationships between geographic and environmental marginality three analyses sign test multiple linear regression and meta analysis of correlation effect sizes showed a negative relationship between genetic diversity and distance to environmental niche centroid but no consistent relationship of genetic diversity with distance to geographic range center,2014,0.781
"Biodiversity and biogeography of the avifauna of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico",the sierra madre occidental smoc is located in the boundary between the nearctic and neotropical regions area which has been considered as a complex transition zone we analysed biogeographic patterns of its resident avifauna including species richness endemism and biotic regionalization by analysing presence absence matrices of 148 species of resident terrestrial birds we created the species richness maps by overlapping potential distribution maps obtained for each species via species distribution models sdms to depict biogeographic patterns we used strict consensus cladograms from parsimony analyses of endemicity pae and phenograms from an unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average clustering algorithm the pacific slope of the smoc contains the highest species richness decreasing towards the northeast and reflected in endemic and endangered species richness patterns the pae resulted in one area of endemism represented by the whole smoc outlining a divided area in its pacific slope the cluster analyses divided the area into two one group towards the pacific slope delimited by the mountain ridge and characterized by tropical vegetation types and mexican mesoamerican affinities the other group is located towards the east and northeast characterized by arid and temperate types of vegetation and nearctic affinities these results evidence a transition from a tropical to a temperate composition of bird species in this way the location for a boundary between the nearctic and the transition zone for birds in this part of mexico is restricted to these highest elevations,2014,0.955
Setting practical conservation priorities for birds in the Western andes of Colombia,we aspired to set conservation priorities in ways that lead to direct conservation actions very large scale strategic mapping leads to familiar conservation priorities exemplified by biodiversity hotspots in contrast tactical conservation actions unfold on much smaller geographical extents and they need to reflect the habitat loss and fragmentation that have sharply restricted where species now live our aspirations for direct practical actions were demanding first we identified the global strategic conservation priorities and then downscaled to practical local actions within the selected priorities in doing this we recognized the limitations of incomplete information we started such a process in colombia and used the results presented here to implement reforestation of degraded land to prevent the isolation of a large area of cloud forest we used existing range maps of 171 bird species to identify priority conservation areas that would conserve the greatest number of species at risk in colombia by at risk species we mean those that are endemic and have small ranges the western andes had the highest concentrations of such species 100 in total but the lowest densities of national parks we then adjusted the priorities for this region by refining these species ranges by selecting only areas of suitable elevation and remaining habitat the estimated ranges of these species shrank by 18 100 after accounting for habitat and suitable elevation setting conservation priorities on the basis of currently available range maps excluded priority areas in the western andes and by extension likely elsewhere and for other taxa by incorporating detailed maps of remaining natural habitats we made practical recommendations for conservation actions one recommendation was to restore forest connections to a patch of cloud forest about to become isolated from the main andes,2014,0.927
Trade-offs between constitutive and induced defences drive geographical and climatic clines in pine chemical defences,there is increasing evidence that geographic and climatic clines drive the patterns of plant defence allocation and defensive strategies we quantified early growth rate and both constitutive and inducible chemical defences of 18 pinaceae species in a common greenhouse environment and assessed their defensive allocation with respect to each species range across climatic gradients spanning 31o latitude and 2300 m elevation constitutive defences traded off with induced defences and these defensive strategies were associated with growth rate such that slow growing species invested more in constitutive defence whereas fast growing species invested more in inducible defence the position of each pine species along this trade off axis was in turn associated with geography moving poleward and to higher elevations growth rate and inducible defences decreased while constitutive defence increased these geographic patterns in plant defence were most strongly associated with variation in temperature climatic and geographical clines thus act as drivers of defence profiles by mediating the constraints imposed by trade offs and this dynamic underlays global patterns of defence allocation,2014,0.652
Some new and revised typifications in North Eurasian Cruciferae,nomenclature of some taxa of north eur asian cruciferae is updated lectotypes are designated for aethionema levandowskyi alyssum americanum a gymnopodum a inflatum arabis fruticulosa f major arabis fruticulosa f minor cheiranthus leucanthemus ch nitrarius erysimum macilentum eutrema edward sii lunaria suffruticosa sisymbrium album thlaspi praecox var macranthum and vella tenuissima in some cases refining or revising previous typifications place of validation and authorship of lepidium coronopifolium is corrected and a neotype for this name is designated combinations odontarrhena americana o borzaeana o gehamensis o gymnopoda o inflata o savranica o schirwanica and o subalpina are validated,2014,0.325
"Traditional Medicine and Childcare in Western Africa: Mothers’ Knowledge, Folk Illnesses, and Patterns of Healthcare-Seeking Behavior",background abstract in spite of the strong role of traditional medicine in childcare in the pluralistic healthcare system in western africa little information is known on mothersâ domestic plant knowledge identifying local perspectives and treatments of childrenâ s illnesses including folk illnesses is essential to having a comprehensive understanding of how mothers make healthcare treatment decisions we aimed to identify which infant illnesses beninese and gabonese mothers knew to treat methods with medicinal plants and for which illnesses they sought biomedical care or traditional healers we conducted 81 questionnaires with mothers in be â nin and gabon and made 800 botanical specimens of cited medicinal plants we calculated the number of species cited per illness and the proportion of participants knowledgeable on at least one herbal remedy per illness using qualitative data we described folk illnesses in each country and summarized responses on preferences for each of the three healthcare options results participants from both countries were most knowledgeable on plants to treat respiratory illnesses malaria diarrhea and intestinal ailments mothers also frequently mentioned the use of plants to encourage children to walk early monitor the closure of fontanels and apply herbal enemas major folk illnesses were atita and ka in be â nin and la rate and fesses rouges in gabon traditional healers were reported to have specialized knowledge of cultural bound illnesses malaria conclusion was frequently cited as an illness for which mothers would directly seek biomedical treatment mothers largely saw the three systems as complementary seamlessly switching between different healing options until a remedy was found folk illnesses were found to give insight into local treatments and may reveal important neglected diseases due to high reported levels of knowledge on treating top statistical causes of infant mortality and folk illnesses mothersâ medicinal plant knowledge should be included in the analysis of healthcare seeking behavior for childcare,2014,0.008
Understanding the formation of Mediterranean-African-Asian disjunctions: evidence for Miocene climate-driven vicariance and recent long-distance dispersal in the Tertiary relict Smilax aspera (Smilacaceae),tethyan plant disjunctions including mediterranean african asian disjunctions are thought to be vicariant but their temporal origin and underlying causes remain largely unknown to address this issue we reconstructed the evolutionary history of smilax aspera a hypothesized component of the european tertiary laurel forest flora thirty eight populations and herbarium specimens representing 57 locations across the species range were sequenced at seven plastid regions and the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer region time calibrated phylogenetic and phylogeographic inferences were used to trace ancestral areas and biogeographical events the deep intraspecific split between mediterranean and african asian lineages is attributable to range fragmentation of a southern tethyan ancestor as colder and more arid climates developed shortly after the mid miocene in the mediterranean climate induced vicariance has shaped regional population structure since the late miocene early pliocene at around the same time east african and south asian lineages split by vicariance with one shared haplotype reflecting long distance dispersal our results support the idea that geographic range formation and divergence of tertiary relict species are more or less gradual mostly vicariant processes over long time spans rather than point events in history they also highlight the importance of the mediterranean basin as a centre of intraspecific divergence for tertiary relict plants,2014,0.53
"The seasonality of two parasitoids (Spathius agrili and Tetrastichus planipennisi) of the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis, and a survey for native natural enemies of the Emerald Ash Borer in eastern Tennessee",the emerald ash borer eab agrilus planipennisi fairmaire coleoptera buprestidae is an invasive species of bark borer native to eastern asia whose primary habitat and food source s are trees in the genus fraxinus eab is a major pest of all north american fraxinus species and is responsible for mortality of millions of trees across its current north american range of 23 u s states and 2 canadian providences after the discovery of eab in tennessee in 2010 parasitoid releases were started under the national eab biological control program a research project was initiated in 2012 to 1 st udy the seasonality of the gregarious larval ectoparasitoid spathius agrili yang and the gregarious larval endoparasitoid tetrastichus planipennisi yang in the climate of eastern tennessee 2 determine the overwintering ability of the parasitoids in field releases and 3 survey for potential native natural enemies of eab in 2013 a single generation of s agrili developed from egg to pre pupa in ca 22 days before overwintering adult individuals of s agrili from the same generation were found to have su ccessfully overwintered in july 2014 no t planipennisi successfully parasitized or overwintered in 2013 s agrili were successfully recovered from two field sites for the first time in eastern tennessee after a single year of releases and successfully overwintering indicating the ability of this species to establish as in the previous study no t planipennisi were recovered three native parasitoids spathius floridanus ashmead an undetermined species of spathius and atanycolus cappaerti marsh strazanac all known to be associated with eab were recovered at field sites these recoveries represent the first documentation of these three native species associated with eab in the southern u s these findings will help demonstrate the utility of s agrili in the southern u s as a part of the national eab biological control program,2014,0.771
"Rapid Biodiversity Assessment (BIORAP) of the Vava'u Archipelago, Kingdom of Tonga | Publications",the biological rapid assessment programme biorap is a biological survey based on a concept developed by conservation international and designed to use scientific information to catalyse conservation action biorap methods are designed to rapidly assess the biodiversity of highly diverse areas and to train local scientists in biodiversity survey techniques the biorap can be considered a spatial and temporal snapshot of vava u s full range of biodiversity,2014,0.321
Using maps of continuous variation in species compositional turnover to supplement uniform polygon species range maps,species ranges are often represented using polygons with the attendant issues that they show uniform ranges with abrupt boundaries and can overestimate species ranges we demonstrate that such uniform species ranges can be supplemented by mapping the gradational variation in species turnover across a landscape directional variation in species turnover for 15 skink species reptilia scincidae and topographic and climatic turnover in south eastern australia were measured using directional moving window analyses rotated through 360â the resultant species turnover maps were compared with published polygon range maps for two species within the group liopholis whitii and l inornata we also assessed how the relationships between species and environmental turnover varied in areas of low or high species turnover continuous transitions between distinct areas of low and high species turnover were mapped low turnover comprised only 19 of the l whitii polygon species range within the study area extent these low turnover areas were more densely populated by l whitii 67 of observations whereas areas of medium to high turnover contained substantially fewer observations 25 regions with the highest species turnover contained only 6 of observations l inornata observations were also clustered in low species turnover areas averaged climatic and elevation values were higher in low turnover areas despite their close adjacency to high turnover zones the environmental turnover in low species turnover regions was also lower than in high turnover areas correlations between environmental turnover and low species turnover areas were positive whereas the opposite relationship applied in high species turnover areas we identified both abrupt and gradual distributional breaks between separate reptile assemblages an example of the latter is located in the hunter valley in the south eastern coastal region this break has been mapped using solid uniform lines in species ranges and thus implicitly as an abrupt break environmental conditions may be more favourable to skinks in low turnover areas since l whitii and other skink species have very large populations in low turnover areas other squamate species may also be more likely to occur in these areas this has potential implications for conservation prioritisation the turnover maps used here can supplement the information provided about reptile distributions by the equivalent polygon ranges this approach can be applied to point occurrence data for any taxonomic group or any similar georeferenced diversity data set,2014,1
Accuracy Assessment of Crowdsourced Data in Biological Specimen Transcription Manash Shah,biodiversity informatics is at a juncture where public engagement in the science is inevitable crowdsourcing has emerged as a solution with the possibilities of utilizing intellectual resources of the mass for scientific purposes in this study the possibility of conducting transcription of primary biodiversity data using crowdsourcing has been explored a crowdsourcing application for transcribing image labels from biological specimens was implemented and the accuracy of tran scription from citizen scientists was assessed the consensus among the usersâ inputs was computed using multiple sequence algorithms and then evaluated against the ground truth the results demonstrated a mixed level of accuracy for different input fields in tran scription it indicates that the level of accuracy in transcriptions depends on the level of interpretation required from the participants further it indicates that implementation of suggestive features in the application improves accuracy,2014,0.134
"Unusual Teratology for a Tenebrionid: Antennal Schistomelia in Probaticus granulatus (Allard, 1876) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)",teratology science studies causes mechanisms and patterns of abnormal development ujhã zy et al 2012 teratological individuals have been described in most animal groups e g arthropods clark and belo neto 2010 ashelby and lavesque 2011 nowak chmura 2012 amphibians fernã ndez ã lvarez et al 2011 reptiles de albuquerque et al 2010 fishes wagner et al 2013 humans gerard et al 2012 showing a current interdisciplinary interest in this topic indeed kalter 2003 con sidered teratology as one of the oldest and youngest human preoccupations,2014,0.263
"Distribution and Differentiation of Wild, Feral, and Cultivated Populations of Perennial Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean",perennial forms of gossypium hirsutum are classified under seven races five mesoamerican races would have been derived from the wild race yucatanense from northern yucatã n marie galante the main race in the caribbean would have developed from introgression with g barbadense the racial status of coastal populations from the caribbean has not been clearly defined we combined ecological niche modeling with an analysis of ssr marker diversity to elucidate the relationships among cultivated feral and wild populations of perennial cottons out of 954 records of occurrence in mesoamerica and the caribbean 630 were classified into four categories cultivated feral disturbed and secondary habitats wild feral protected habitats and truly wild cotton twc populations the widely distributed three first categories cannot be differentiated on ecological grounds indicating they mostly belong to the domesticated pool in contrast twc are restricted to the driest and hottest littoral habitats in northern yucatã n and in the caribbean from venezuela to florida as confirmed by their climatic envelope in the factorial analysis extrapolating this twc climatic model to south america and the pacific ocean points towards places where other wild representatives of tetraploid gossypium species have been encountered the genetic analysis sample comprised 42 twc accessions from 12 sites and 68 feral accessions from 18 sites at nine sites wild and feral accessions were collected in close vicinity principal coordinate analysis neighbor joining and structure consistently showed a primary divergence between twc and feral cottons and a secondary divergence separating marie galante from all other feral accessions this strong genetic structure contrasts strikingly with the absence of geographic differentiation our results show that twc populations of mesoamerica and the caribbean constitute a homogenous gene pool furthermore the relatively low genetic divergence between the mesoamerican and caribbean domesticated pools supports the hypothesis of domestication of g hirsutum in northern yucatã n,2014,0.98
Using a citizen science program to monitor coral reef biodiversity through space and time,coral reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystems of the ocean and they provide notable ecosystem services large scale monitoring is necessary to understand the effects of anthropogenic threats and environmental change on coral reef habitats and citizen science programs can support this effort seventy two marine taxa found in the red sea were surveyed by non specialist volunteers during their regular recreational dives using scuba tourism for the environment ste questionnaires over a period of 4 years 7 125 divers completed 17 905 questionnaires 14 487 diving hours validation trials were carried out to assess the data reliability cronbachâ s alpha 50 in 83 6 of validation trials showing that non specialists performed similarly to conservation volunteer divers on accurate transect the resulting sightings based index showed that the biodiversity status did not change significantly within the project time scale but revealed spatial trends across areas subjected to different protection strategies higher biodiversity values were found in sharm el sheikh within protected ras mohammed national park and tiran island than in the less regulated hurghada area citizen science programs like steproject represent novel reliable cost effective models for biodiversity monitoring which can be sustained and embedded within long term monitoring programmes and extended to include a wider geographical scale while increasing the environmental education of the public communicated,2014,0.153
"A new species of small-eared shrew (Mammalia, Eulipotyphla, Cryptotis ) from the Lacandona rain forest, Mexico",the diversity and distribution of mammals in the american tropics remain incompletely known we describe a new species of small eared shrew soricidae cryptotis from the lacandona rain forest chiapas southern mexico the new species is distinguished from other species of cryptotis on the basis of a unique combination of pelage coloration size dental cranial postcranial and external characters and genetic distances it appears most closely related to species in the cryptotis nigrescens species group which occurs from southern mexico to montane regions of colombia this discovery is particularly remarkable because the new species is from a low elevation habitat approximately 90 m whereas most shrews in the region are restricted to higher elevations typically 1 000 m the only known locality for the new shrew is in one of the last areas in southern mexico where relatively undisturbed tropical vegetation is still found the type locality is protected by the mexican government as part of the yaxchila â n archaeological site on the border between mexico and guatemala,2014,0.939
An assessment of the potential biodiversity impacts from biofuel production in South Africa,biofuels are being promoted as a global necessity to meet climate change targets through the replacement of fossil fuels many countries have identified biofuels as a potential mechanism to meet these challenges with policy directives driving biofuel production the south african government has proposed that biofuels form part of the countryâ s future renewable energy and has proposed a draft biofuel strategy this study aims to investigate appropriate approaches to determine potential biodiversity impacts from biofuel production since biofuels are not currently grown to any large extent in south africa impact was modelled using future scenarios of converting available land within the eastern cape province of south africa suitable species were identified using the species distribution modelling programme maxent some of the proposed biofuel crops were considered as invasive i e they spread from sites where they are cultivated or are very likely to be invasive in south africa this study also highlighted the considerable overlap between suitable growing areas and areas considered important for future biodiversity conservation the biodiversity intactness index bii a broad based biodiversity indicator was used to assess the biodiversity implications of transforming available land to biofuels the bii indicates losses of biodiversity between 17 6 and 42 1 for the land use scenarios identified an important finding was that excluding important biodiversity areas that occur outside of protected areas can reduce biodiversity losses by as much as 13 and maintain an overall intactness of 70 currently the bii does not account for fragmentation or landscape configuration this was addressed by developing a revised biodiversity intactness index r bii which included the effect of patch size and habitat fragmentation on biodiversity intactness this study found that although the original bii reported on the biodiversity trends of large scale shifts in land use across multiple scales it could not detect changes in landscape configuration which was reflected by the r bii land use change can impact on ecosystem processes that underpin the provisioning of ecosystem services by changing the combinations of species and the plant functional traits within communities the impacts of cultivating potential biofuel species acacia mearnsii sorghum halepense and eucalyptus species were investigated using a plant functional traits approach these species were shown to affect the leaf nitrogen content leaf phosphorous content and leaf dry matter content associated with important ecosystem functions within an ecosystem service hotspot in the eastern cape a decline in functional diversity was reported for all transformed land uses by as much as 40 these shifts may be used to identify potential changes to ecosystem services associated with natural vegetation the methods used in this thesis highlight the overall relevance of this work and its importance to minimising biodiversity resulting from biofuel production some of the key findings address resolving spatial conflict using biodiversity indicators assessing impacts of potential invasive species and planning for ecosystem services new drivers of change to land use such as biofuel production are a major challenge to conservation biologists and planners and the insights derived in from this study can be successfully applied to guide biofuel production,2014,0.554
Projecting Invasion Risk of Non-Native Watersnakes (Nerodia fasciata and Nerodia sipedon) in the Western United States,species distribution models sdms are increasingly used to project the potential distribution of introduced species outside their native range such studies rarely explicitly evaluate potential conflicts with native species should the range of introduced species expand two snake species native to eastern north america nerodia fasciata and nerodia sipedon have been introduced to california where they represent a new stressor to declining native amphibians fish and reptiles to project the potential distributions of these non native watersnakes in western north america we built ensemble sdms using maxent boosted regression trees and random forests and habitat and climatic variables we then compared the overlap between the projected distribution of invasive watersnakes and the distributions of imperiled native amphibians fish and reptiles that can serve as prey or competitors for the invaders to estimate the risk to native species posed by non native watersnakes large areas of western north america were projected to be climatically suitable for both species of nerodia according to our ensemble sdms including much of central california the potential distributions of both n fasciata and n sipedon overlap extensively with the federally threatened giant gartersnake thamnophis gigas which inhabits a similar ecological niche n fasciata also poses risk to the federally threatened california tiger salamander ambystoma californiense whereas n sipedon poses risk to some amphibians of conservation concern including the foothill yellow legged frog rana boylii we conclude that non native watersnakes in california can likely inhabit ranges of several native species of conservation concern that are expected to suffer as prey or competing species for these invaders action should be taken now to eradicate or control these invasions before detrimental impacts on native species are widespread our methods can be applied broadly to quantify the risk posed by incipient invasions to native biodiversity,2014,0.989
Crop Wild Relatives and Climate Change,two major challenges to continued global food security are the ever increasing demand for food products and the unprecedented abiotic stresses that crops face due to climate change wild relatives of domesticated crops serve as a reservoir of genetic material with the potential to be used to develop new improved varieties of crops crop wild relative and climate change integrates crop evolution breeding technologies and biotechnologies improved practices and sustainable approaches while exploring the role wild relatives could play in increasing agricultural output crop wild relative and climate change begins with overviews of the impacts of climate change on growing environments and the challenges that agricultural production face in coming years and decades chapters then explore crop evolution and the potential for crop wild relatives to contribute novel genetic resources to the breeding of more resilient and productive crops breeding technologies and biotechnological advances that are being used to incorporate key genetic traits of wild relatives into crop varieties are also covered there is also a valuable discussion on the importance of conserving genetic resources to ensure continued successful crop production a timely resource crop wild relative and climate change will be an invaluable resource for the crop science community for years to come,2014,0.901
"Multiple lines of evidence for the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, in Mexico.",the study of crop origins has traditionally involved identifying geographic areas of high morphological diversity sampling populations of wild progenitor species and the archaeological retrieval of macroremains recent investigations have added identification of plant microremains phytoliths pollen and starch grains biochemical and molecular genetic approaches and dating through 14 c accelerator mass spectrometry we investigate the origin of domesticated chili pepper capsicum annuum by combining two approaches species distribution modeling and paleobiolinguistics with microsatellite genetic data and archaeobotanical data the combination of these four lines of evidence yields consensus models indicating that domestication of c annuum could have occurred in one or both of two areas of mexico northeastern mexico and central east mexico genetic evidence shows more support for the more northern location but jointly all four lines of evidence support central east mexico where preceramic macroremains of chili pepper have been recovered in the valley of tehuacã n located just to the east of this valley is the center of phylogenetic diversity of proto otomanguean a language spoken in mid holocene times and the oldest protolanguage for which a word for chili pepper reconstructs based on historical linguistics for many crops especially those that do not have a strong archaeobotanical record or phylogeographic pattern it is difficult to precisely identify the time and place of their origin our results for chili pepper show that expressing all data in similar distance terms allows for combining contrasting lines of evidence and locating the region s where cultivation and domestication of a crop began,2014,0.703
The Miocene climate in New Zealand: Estimates from paleobotanical data,miocene new zealand was a small highly oceanic landmass which makes it ideal for recording terrestrial climate free of the complications of a continental setting fortunately it has a good miocene fossil record both marine and terrestrial this paper reviews past conclusions about miocene climate then attempts to derive some key climate indices for the period using a variety of plant fossil proxies the paper looks at three slices of miocene time â a broad early to earliest middle miocene time a restricted period in the middle miocene and broader middleâ late miocene the results suggest early to earliest middle miocene mean annual temperatures mats reached at least 17â 18â c thus about 6â 7â c warmer than today coastal areas of southern new zealand today have a mat of about 11â c at times miocene mat may have reached 19â 20â c these figures support the cooler estimates of new zealand miocene climate that have been made previously by using palebotanical proxies rather than those based on marine invertebrates based on plant fossils there is no evidence that new zealand ever reached truly â tropicalâ i e megathermal conditions 24â 25â c the climate in the middle miocene is confounded by signs of precipitation and temperature change and the rarity of leaf fossils however the data suggest both cooling and drying from the early miocene the presence of crocodiles yet the disappearance of palms suggests a mat that was at the lower end of existence for both of these groups perhaps about 14â c by the late miocene there is evidence for significant cooling both from leaf size and a drop in plant diversity which resulted in vegetation dominated in many places by nothofagus,2014,0.086
Fossil pollen records indicate that Patagonian desertification was not solely a consequence of Andean uplift,the patagonian steppe a massive rain shadow on the lee side of the southern andes is assumed to have evolved 15 12 myr as a consequence of the southern andean uplift however fossil evidence supporting this assumption is limited here we quantitatively estimate climatic conditions and plant richness for the interval 10 6 myr based on the study and bioclimatic analysis of terrestrially derived spore pollen assemblages preserved in well constrained patagonian marine deposits our analyses indicate a mesothermal climate with mean temperatures of the coldest quarter between 11 4 â c and 16 9 â c presently 3 5 â c and annual precipitation rarely below 661 mm presently 200 mm rarefied richness reveals a significantly more diverse flora during the late miocene than today at the same latitude but comparable with that approximately 2 000 km further northeast at mid latitudes on the brazilian coast we infer that the patagonian desertification was not solely a consequence of the andean uplift as previously insinuated,2014,0.297
"Distribution, Diversity and Conservation of Boreo-Montane Plant Species in the Central Part of the Balkan Peninsula and the Southern Part of the Pannonian Plain",boreo montane species have been neglected for a long time by south european botanists however the interest in this group is re emerging especially as regards relic species refugia and southern distribution limits this paper reviews the distribution and diversity centres of 63 boreo montane species in the central part of the balkan peninsula and the southern part of the pannonian plain an ordination analysis was used to differentiate geographic regions according to their floristic similarities with respect to the target species group a comparison of floristic richness and distribution of the boreo montane flora in relation to the geographic position altitude and geological substrate was made the alpine high nordic mountain groups of the dinaric alps durmitor and prokletije stand out as centres of diversity of this flora in the study area which indicates that mountain groups with a relatively high mean annual precipitation sum and without summer droughts provide optimal conditions for survival of boreo montane species in the central part of the balkan peninsula most boreo montane species were recorded on limestone and silicate in the altitudinal range of 1 250â 1 500 m the results of our vegetational analysis show that the vegetationclasses scheuchzerio caricetea fuscae querco fagetea and vaccinio piceetea are the richest in boreo montane species given the fact that the habitats of boreo montane species are recognized as very endangered an overview of the status of the speciesâ rarity vulnerability and protection in the central part of the balkan peninsula and the southern part of the pannonian plain is also presented,2014,0.906
"A Comparison of Aquatic Plants Composition in Poondi and Velliamkundram Ponds of Madurai District, South Tamilnadu, India",an extensive aquatic floristic investigation was conducted in two freshwater ponds viz poondi and velliamkundram ponds during the year 2014 january 2015 april these two ponds are located near to each other measuring within a range of 2km distance away from each other and are located in poondi and velliamkundram villages of madurai district tamil nadu india in the present study 99 plant species of 90 genera belong to 43 families were enumerated in poondi pond and 124 species of 101 genera belong to 46 families were occurred in velliamkundram pond the present study reveals aquatic vegetation of all the growth forms occurred during water availability in the experimental ponds and while drying the shift of the vegetation occurred continuous monitoring and conservation is important to safeguard the biological wealth of the study area,2015,0.59
"Input Paper from Bioversity International, CIAT, CIP and GBIF: Global Information System for In situ Conservation and On-farm Management of PGRFA",a case for developing collaboratively a global information system or systems for in situ conservation and on farm management1 of pgrfa as complementary to existing ex situ information systems is presented as a contribution to the implementation of article 17 of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture the key objectives of such an information system for in situ conservation and on farm management are to provide information about pgrfa located in situ and on farm to meet the needs of target users custodian farmers research organizations ngos national authorities international organizations global treaties and conventions and to monitor changes in this diversity both of which will help and support decision making processes by different target users the challenges functions principles and expected outcomes in establishing such an information system are discussed as well as the needs of target users given the complexity of in situ conservation and on farm management it is recognized that an information system will need to handle data from various sources and may have to be organized in a number of different databases to capture all the data identified by user groups the global information system should combine nomenclature and biophysical data ecogeographical information seed exchange systems socioeconomic data associated traditional knowledge policies seeds laws and regulations data analysis needs to be performed at various scales from gene to landscape and over time interoperability of the data is required combining the collective knowledge from farmers citizen scientists and researchers the system needs to support frequent interactions between communities stimulating exchange of knowledge between farmers and between farmers and scientists through a multifunctional information facility integrating technologies from citizen science and social network systems and providing appropriate datasets on demand this input paper also provides a brief overview of some existing initiatives which would be important collaborators and data contributors for a global information system for in situ conservation and on farm management,2015,0.003
Dismantling the treasured flagship lichen Sticta fuliginosa (Peltigerales) into four species in Western Europe,in the framework of a worldwide project on the phylogeny of the lichen genus sticta dedicated sampling was performed in four regions of western europe roughly along an eastâ west line between n 48â 02â e 07â 01â and n 52â 01â w 09â 30â ranging from france vosges to ireland kerry five clearly distinct its haplotypes were detected for isidia producing species where only two were expected subtle anatomical and morphological characters together with a strongly supported 4 loci molecular phylogeny permit distinguishing besides the easily recognized s canariensis and s limbata 1 the two well known s fuliginosa and s sylvatica whose type collections have been carefully reassessed the former is widespread in both hemispheres while the latter is correctly identified only from continental europe and the andes in colombia the barcode its of s fuliginosa differs by a single substitution from s limbata with a single exception and the 4 loci phylogenetic tree does not resolve them as distinct lineages most probably highlighting a very recent divergence and incomplete lineage sorting 2 three species that were formely included in s fuliginosa the resurrected s ciliata taylor belonging to a complex group yet to be disentangled and occurring in the neotropics africa macaronesia and western europe and two species described as new to science s fuliginoides found in continental europe the canary islands eastern north america and colombia and s atlantica only known from ireland and the azores archipelago molecular inferences demonstrate active divergence and dispersion within s ciliata that may require recognition of further species fresh material can be identified with a morphological and anatomical preliminary key provided here we propose that the taxonomy of all lichen species be urgently reviewed in the light of molecular data in an evolutionary context particularly those used as bioindicators of environmental change and woodland management,2015,0.915
"A first prototype for indexing, visualizing and mining heterogeneous data in Mediterranean ecology",although biodiversity has been extensively studied over the last centuries recent evidences suggest that links between collected data are still be missing in order to fill this knowledge gap and at the initiative of the cnrs institute of ecology and environment inee indexmed www indexmed eu a unique and multidisciplinary consortium consisting of ecologists sociologists economists mathematicians it specialists and astronomers was created through exploratory projects indexmed develops new methods for analyzing data on mediterranean biodiversity and implements solutions based on interoperability technologies already deployed in other disciplines in particular indexmed aims to build a prototype of such data graphs and data cubes this paper will first explore the ability of tools and methods by means of graphs to connect biodiversity objects with non centralized data it will then introduce the use of algorithms and graphs to analyze environmental and societal responses and presents a prototype under development,2015,0.271
Spatial Patterns of Haplotype Variation in the Epiphytic Bromeliad Catopsis nutans,identifying factors governing the origin distribution and maintenance of neotropical plant diversity is an enduring challenge to explore the complex and dynamic historical processes that shaped contemporary genetic patterns for a central american plant species we investigated the spatial distribution of chloroplast haplotypes of a geographically and environmentally widespread epiphytic bromeliad with wind dispersed seeds catopsis nutans in costa rica we hypothesized that genetic discontinuities occur between northwestern and southwestern pacific slope populations resembling patterns reported for other plant taxa in the region using non coding chloroplast dna from 469 individuals and 23 populations we assessed the influences of geographic and environmental distance as well as historical climatic variation on the genetic structure of populations spanning 1200 m in elevation catopsis nutans revealed seven haplotypes with low within population diversity mean haplotype richness 1 2 and moderate genetic structure fst 0 699 pairwise fst was significantly correlated with both geographic and environmental distance the frequency of dominant haplotypes was significantly correlated with elevation a cluster of nine pacific lowland populations exhibited a distinct haplotype profile and contained five of the seven haplotypes suggesting historical isolation and limited seed mediated gene flow with other populations paleodistribution models indicated lowland and upland habitats in this region were contiguous through past climatic oscillations based on our paleodistribution analysis and comparable prior phylogeographic studies the genetic signature of recent climatic oscillations are likely superimposed upon the distribution of anciently divergent lineages our study highlights the unique phylogeographic history of a neotropical plant species spanning an elevation gradient,2015,0.788
"Biogeography, macroecology and species' traits mediate competitive interactions in the order Lagomorpha",in addition to abiotic determinants biotic factors including competitive interspecific interactions limit species distributions environmental changes in human disturbance land use and climate are predicted to have widespread impacts on interactions between species especially in the order lagomorpha due to the higher latitudes and more extreme environmental conditions they occupy we reviewed the published literature on interspecific interactions in the order lagomorpha and compared the biogeography macroecology phylogeny and traits of species known to interact with those of species with no reported interactions to investigate how projected future environmental change may affect interactions and potentially alter species distributions thirty three lagomorph species have competitive interactions reported in the literature the majority involve hares lepus sp or the eastern cottontail rabbit sylvilagus floridanus key regions for interactions are located between 30â 50â n of the equator and include eastern asia southern russia on the border of mongolia and north america north western usa closely related large bodied similarly sized species occurring in regions of human modified typically agricultural landscapes or at high elevations are significantly more likely to have reported competitive interactions than other lagomorph species we identify species traits associated with competitive interactions and highlight some potential impacts that future environmental change may have on interspecific interactions our approach using bibliometric and biological data is widely applicable and with relatively straightforward methodologies can provide insights into interactions between species our results have implications for predicting species responses to global change and we advise that capturing parameterizing and incorporating interspecific interactions into analyses e g species distribution modelling may be more important than suggested by the literature,2015,0.995
A MONOGRAPHIC REVISION OF THE GENUS PODOCARPUS (PODOCARPACEAE): III. THE SPECIES OF THE CENTRAL AMERICA AND NORTHERN MEXICO BIOREGIONS,the species of podocarpus lâ hã r ex pers podocarpaceae occurring in the central america and northern mexico bioregions are revised four species podocarpus costaricensis de laub p guatemalensis standl p matudae lundell p oleifolius d don occur in these bioregions as well as three infraspecific taxa that are here all treated as subspecies podocarpus matudae subsp matudae p matudae subsp jaliscanus de laub silba silba p oleifolius subsp costaricensis j buchholz n e gray silba a fifth species podocarpus magnifolius j buchholz n e gray may also be present in panama but this requires verification a brief account is provided podocarpus monteverdeensis de laub is considered a synonym of p oleifolius subsp costaricensis the concept of which is amplified to include all central american material of p oleifolius several previously recognised infraspecific taxa within both podocarpus guatemalensis and p matudae are reduced to synonymy within podocarpus matudae p matudae subsp matudae is regarded as including subsp macrocarpus and subsp reichei but p matudae subsp jaliscanus is regarded as a distinct second subspecies disjunct in westernmost mexico podocarpus costaricensis p matudae both subspecies and p oleifolius subsp costaricensis are endemic to these bioregions a key is provided all definitely recorded species are illustrated and the distributions of all definitely recorded taxa are mapped the distributions are discussed in relation to the geology and geological history of the region as well as altitude and climate new iucn conservation assessments are proposed for podocarpus matudae subsp jaliscanus p matudae subsp matudae and p oleifolius subsp costaricensis while details of the current assessments for the remaining taxa including podocarpus matudae as a whole are given two appendices list all accepted names and synonyms and give a list of exsiccatae,2015,0.732
"Genetic differentiation in two widespread, open-forest bird species of Southeast Asia (Copsychus saularis and Megalaima haemacephala): Insights from ecological niche modeling",cological niche modeling has emerged as an useful tool in the investigation of the phylogeographic histories of species or communities in a region the high biodiversity oftentimes cryptic and complex geogra phy and geological history of southeast asia particularly call for multipronged approaches in phylogeographic inve stigations past studies have focused on taxa that are ass ociated with lowland rainforests which is the dominant natural vegetation type here we combine published phylogenetic data ecological ni che modeling and paleo climate models to reveal potential drivers of divergence in two ope n forest bird species the oriental magpi e robin copsychus saularis and coppersmith barbet megalaima haemacephala in spite of broad overlap in current distributions there are subtle differences in their climatic niches which result in different responses to past climatic changes for c saularis both last glacial maximum climate models indicated that the entire sundaland was climati cally suitable while phylogenetic analyses found divergent easte rn and western sundaland lineages we thus postulate that this genetic divergence was a result of past separations of coastal habitats into eastern and western portions due to the emergence of sunda shelf as s ea level fell the current separation of morphological subspecies in borneo is maintained by low climatic suitab ility high annual rainfall in certain regions the extirpation of m haemacephala from borneo and southern malay peninsula might have been driven by unsuitable conditions high temperature seasonality in central sundaland an d or the lack of open woodlands our study shows that ecological niche m odeling adds a powerful dimension to our attempt to understand l ineage evolution in space,2015,0.464
"speciesgeocodeR: An R package for linking species occurrences, user-defined regions and phylogenetic trees for biogeography, ecology and evolution",large scale species occurrence data from geo referenced observations and collected specimens are crucial for analyses in ecology evolution and biogeography despite the rapidly growing availability of such data their use in evolutionary analyses is often hampered by tedious manual classification of point occurrences into operational areas leading to a lack of reproducibility and concerns regarding data quality 2 here we present speciesgeocoder a user friendly r package for data cleaning data exploration and data visualization of species point occurrences using discrete operational areas and linking them to analyses invoking phylogenetic trees 3 the three core functions of the package are 1 automated and reproducible data cleaning 2 rapid and reproducible classification of point occurrences into discrete operational areas in an adequate format for subsequent biogeographic analyses and 3 a comprehensive summary and visualization of species distributions to explore large datasets and ensure data quality in addition speciesgeocoder facilitates the access and analysis of publicly available species occurrence data widely used operational areas and elevation ranges other functionalities include the implementation of minimum occurrence thresholds and the visualization of coexistence patterns and range sizes speciesgeocoder accompanies a richly illustrated and easy to follow tutorial and help functions,2015,0.724
Regime Shift in an Exploited Fish Community Related to Natural Climate Oscillations.,identifying the various drivers of marine ecosystem regime shifts and disentangling their respective influence are critical tasks for understanding biodiversity dynamics and properly managing exploited living resources such as marine fish communities unfortunately the mechanisms and forcing factors underlying regime shifts in marine fish communities are still largely unknown although climate forcing and anthropogenic pressures such as fishing have been suggested as key determinants based on a 24 year long time series of scientific surveys monitoring 55 fish and cephalopods species we report here a rapid and persistent structural change in the exploited fish community of the eastern english channel from strong to moderate dominance of small bodied forage fish species with low temperature preferendum that occurred in the mid 1990s this shift was related to a concomitant warming of the north atlantic ocean as attested by a switch of the atlantic multidecadal oscillation from a cold to a warm phase interestingly observed changes in the fish community structure were opposite to those classically induced by exploitation as larger fish species of higher trophic level increased in abundance despite not playing a direct role in the regime shift fishing still appeared as a forcing factor affecting community structure moreover although related to climate the regime shift may have been facilitated by strong historic exploitation that certainly primed the system by favoring the large dominance of small bodied fish species that are particularly sensitive to climatic variations these results emphasize that particular attention should be paid to multidecadal natural climate variability and its interactions with both fishing and climate warming when aiming at sustainable exploitation and ecosystem conservation,2015,0.58
"Changes in Biston robustum and Camellia japonica distributions, according to climate change predictions in South Korea",we investigated the current and potential spatial distributions and habitable areas of biston robustum and camellia japonica in south korea in order to provide useful data for the conservation of c japonica and minimize the damage caused by b robustum it was predicted that by 2070 although b robustum would be widely distributed throughout the korean peninsula except for the western and eastern coastal areas it would be narrowly distributed along the sokcho si and goseong gun coastlines in gangwon province c japonica is currently located along the southern coastline but its critical habitable area is predicted to gradually disappear by 2070 assessment of the potential distribution probabilities of b robustum and c japonica revealed that the area under the curve auc values were 0 995 and 0 991 respectively which indicate high precision and applicability of the model major factors influencing the potential distribution of b robustum included precipitation of wettest quarter and annual precipitation bio16 and bio12 whereas annual mean temperature and mean temperature of wettest quarter bio1 and bio8 were important variables for explaining c japonica distribution overlapping areas of b robustum and c japonica were and for the current 2050 predicted and 2070 predicted conditions respectively clearly showing a dramatic decrease in area although it is predicted that b robustum would cause continuous damage to c japonica in the southern part of the korean peninsula such impacts might diminish over time and become negligible in the future,2015,0.144
Population genetic analyses reveal distinct geographical blooms of the jellyfish Rhizostoma octopus (Scyphozoa),understanding the spatial integrity and connectivity of jellyfish blooms is important for ecologists and coastal stakeholders alike previous studies have shown that the distribution of jellyfish blooms can display a marked consistency in space and time suggesting that such patterns cannot be attributed to passive processes alone in the present study we used a combination of microsatellite markers and mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase i sequences to investigate genetic structuring of the scyphozoan jellyfish rhizostoma octopus in the irish and celtic seas the mitochondrial data indicated far higher levels of population differentiation than the microsatellites î st mt 0 300 vs î st nuc 0 013 simulation studies indicated that the low levels of nuclear differentiation were not the result of limited power because of low levels of polymorphism these findings supported by palaeodistribution modelling and mismatch distribution analysis are consistent with expansion of r octopus from a single limited refugium after the last glacial maximum followed by subsequent isolation and that the discrepancy between the mitochondrial and nuclear markers is a result of the nuclear loci taking longer to reach mutationâ drift equilibrium following the expansion as a result of their four fold larger effective population size the populations studied are probably not well connected via gene flow and thus genetically as well as geographically distinct although our findings also highlight the need to use a combination of organellar and nuclear markers to enable a more complete understanding of population demography and structure particularly for species with large effective population sizes,2015,0.545
"Synopsis of Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae) of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay",a critical review of the argentinian uruguayan and paraguayan species of acalypha l euphorbiaceae is presented as a result 18 species 22 taxa are accepted 16 from argentina 12 from paraguay and five from uruguay and 49 names are considered as synonyms typifications are provided for a brasiliensis mã ll arg a cordobensis mã ll arg a friesii pax k hoffm a gracilis spreng a nitschkeana pax k hoffm a multicaulis mã ll arg var glabrescens pax k hoffm a lagoensis mã ll arg var grandifolia chodat hassl and a striolata lingelsh identification keys are also provided as are original illustrations of three species and distribution maps of all the accepted taxa,2015,0.58
Ecological data sharing,data sharing is the practice of making data available for use by others ecologists are increasingly generating and sharing an immense volume of data such data may serve to augment existing data collections and can be used for synthesis efforts such as meta analysis for parameterizing models and for verifying research results i e study reproducibility large volumes of ecological data may be readily available through institutions or data repositories that are the most comprehensive available and can serve as the core of ecological analysis ecological data are also employed outside the research context and are used for decision making natural resource management education and other purposes data sharing has a long history in many domains such as oceanography and the biodiversity sciences e g taxonomic data and museum specimens but has emerged relatively recently in the ecological sciences a review of several of the large international and national ecological research programs that have emerged since the mid 1900s highlights the initial failures and more recent successes as well as the underlying causesâ from a near absence of effective policies to the emergence of community and data sharing policies coupled with the development and adoption of data and metadata standards and enabling tools sociocultural change and the move towards more open science have evolved more rapidly over the past two decades in response to new requirements set forth by governmental organizations publishers and professional societies as the scientific culture has changed so has the cyberinfrastructure landscape the introduction of community based data repositories data and metadata standards software tools persistent identifiers and federated search and discovery have all helped promulgate data sharing nevertheless there are many challenges and opportunities especially as we move towards more open science cyberinfrastructure challenges include a paucity of easy to use metadata management systems significant difficulties in assessing data quality and provenance and an absence of analytical and visualization approaches that facilitate data integration and harmonization challenges and opportunities abound in the sociocultural arena where funders researchers and publishers all have a stake in clarifying policies roles and responsibilities as well as in incentivizing data sharing a set of best practices and examples of software tools are presented that can enable research transparency reproducibility and new knowledge by facilitating idea generation research planning data management and the dissemination of data and results,2015,0.012
Impact-driven work: tearing down the firewalls between research and practice,this panel will showcase information research that aims to have strong impact on community at the local or national level and offer ideas for increasing the impact of information research on communities it will also engage audience members in an interactive discussion of ideas for increasing the real life impact of information research,2015,0.222
Assessing the vulnerability of Australian skinks to climate change,a framework for assessing species vulnerability to climate change was developed and applied to the largest family of reptiles in australia the scincid lizards skinks this framework integrated the projections of environmental niche models enms with an index of vulnerability based on the speciesâ ecological traits we found vulnerability to be highly variable among species suggesting that responses to climate change will be idiosyncratic and identified a number of species that by virtue of their ecological traits and model projections may be at risk of significant range contractions in the near future importantly we also found that extrinsic vulnerability as measured by the degree of range change and intrinsic vulnerability based on species traits were not correlated highlighting the importance of considering both types of information this framework provides a transparent and objective tool for assessing climate change vulnerability and can provide a basis upon which to develop conservation strategies,2015,0.669
Thermoregulation of two sympatric species of horned lizards in the Chihuahuan Desert and their local extinction risk,thermoregulatory studies of ectothermic organisms are an important tool for ecological physiology evolutionary ecology and behavior and recently have become central for evaluating and predicting global climate change impacts here we present a novel combination of field laboratory and modeling approaches to examine body temperature regulation habitat thermal quality and hours of thermal restriction on the activity of two sympatric aridlands horned lizards phrynosoma cornutum and phrynosoma modestum at three contrasting chihuahuan desert sites in mexico using these physiological data we estimate local extinction risk under predicted climate change within their current geographical distribution we followed the hertz et al 1993 am nat 142 796â 818 protocol for evaluating thermoregulation and the sinervo et al 2010 science 328 894â 899 eco physiological model of extinction under climatic warming thermoregulatory indices suggest that both species thermoregulate effectively despite living in habitats of low thermal quality although high environmental temperatures restrict the activity period of both species based on our measurements if air temperature rises as predicted by climate models the extinction model projects that p cornutum will become locally extinct at 6 of sites by 2050 and 18 by 2080 and p modestum will become extinct at 32 of sites by 2050 and 60 by 2080 the method we apply using widely available or readily acquired thermal data along with the modeling appeared to identify several unique ecological traits that seemingly exacerbate climate sensitivity of p modestum,2015,0.329
Climate change and the distribution and conservation of the world’s highest elevation woodlands in the South American Altiplano,climate change is becoming an increasing threat to biodiversity consequently methods for delineation establishment and management of protected areas must consider the speciesâ future distribution in response to future climate conditions biodiversity in high altitude semiarid regions may be particularly threatened by future climate change in this study we assess the main environmental variables that best explain present day presence of the worldâ s highest elevation woodlands in the south american altiplano and model how climate change may affect the future distribution of this unique ecosystem under different climate change scenarios these woodlands are dominated by polylepis tarapacana rosaceae a species that forms unique biological communities with important conservation value our results indicate that five environmental variables are responsible for 91 and 90 3 of the present and future p tarapacana distribution models respectively and suggest that at the end of the 21st century a significant reduction 56 in the potential habitat for this species due to more arid conditions since it is predicted that p tarapacanaâ s potential distribution will be severely reduced in the future we propose a new network of national protected areas across this species distribution range in order to insure the future conservation of this unique ecosystem based on an extensive literature review we identify research topics and recommendations for on ground conservation and management of p tarapacana woodlands,2015,0.338
"Pueraria stracheyi, a new synonym to Apios carnea (Fabaceae)",pueraria stracheyi has long been recognized as erroneously placed in the genus pueraria here we examined the history behind this collection past hypotheses concerning its taxonomic affinities and morphological and ecological comparisons with shuteria and apios carnea wherein we conclude that pueraria stracheyi represents a synonym of the latter,2015,0.434
Research and Development on Genetic Resources: Public Domain Approaches in Implementing the Nagoya Protocol,national implementation of the convention on biological diversity cbd provisions has yielded enough challenges for providers and users of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge alike the nagoya protocal brings novel ideas for resolving the challenges plaguing the access and benefit sharing abs process in general and non commercial research in particular this is one of the first books to address research cooperation and facilitated access for non commercial biodiversity research it uniquely offers concrete and practicable solutions based on experiences of researchers and administrative officials with abs and on the interpretation of the nagoya protocol on how free and lively taxonomic research can be ensured while at the same time observing obligations of obtaining prior informed consent and sharing of benefits this book will be useful to students of international environmental law international biodiversity law intellectual property law climate law and law of indigenous populations with foreword from executive secretary cbd braulio ferreira de souza dias,2015,0.204
The Natural History Production Line,in 2010 naturalis biodiversity center started one of the largest and most diverse programs for natural history collection digitization to date from a total collection of 37 million specimens and related objects 7 million relevant objects are to be digitized in a 5 year period this article provides an overview of the program and discusses the chosen industrial production line approach the applied method for prioritization of collections that are to be digitized and some preliminary results,2015,0.158
Drivers of Emerging Infectious Disease Events as a Framework for Digital Detection,the growing field of digital disease detection or epidemic intelligence attempts to improve timely detection and awareness of infectious disease id events early detection remains an important priority thus the next frontier for id surveillance is to improve the recognition and monitoring of drivers antecedent conditions of id emergence for signals that precede disease events these data could help alert public health officials to indicators of elevated id risk thereby triggering targeted active surveillance and interventions we believe that id emergence risks can be anticipated through surveillance of their drivers just as successful warning systems of climate based meteorologically sensitive diseases are supported by improved temperature and precipitation data we present approaches to driver surveillance gaps in the current literature and a scientific framework for the creation of a digital warning system fulfilling the promise of driver surveillance will require concerted action to expand the collection of appropriate digital driver data,2015,0.089
First Record of the Palearctic Root Weevil Otiorhynchus porcatus (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Entiminae) in The United States and Additional Records of Other Adventive Weevils Occurring on the Isles of Shoals (Maine and New Hampshire),the palearctic root weevil otiorhynchus porcatus herbst curculionidae entiminae is recorded for the first time in the united states on appledore island isles of shoals maine a summary of other published north american records of this immigrant species is given also included are distribution records for 16 other adventive weevils collected on five of the nine islands comprising the isles of shoals these 16 species are perapion curtirostre germar cosmobaris scolopacea germar ceutorhynchus erysimi fabricius ceutorhynchus obstrictus marsham ceutorhynchus pallidactylus marsham rhinoncus pericarpius linnaeus tychius meliloti stephens tychius stephensi schã nherr barypeithes pellucidus boheman otiorhynchus sulcatus fabricius trachyphloeus bifoveolatus beck donus zoilus scopoli hypera meles fabricius hypera rumicis linnaeus larinus planus fabricius and magdalis barbicornis latreille,2015,0.691
"“Collection Bias” and the Importance of Natural History Collections in Species Habitat Modeling: A Case Study Using Thoracophorus costalis Erichson (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Osoriinae), with a Critique of GBIF.org",when attempting to understand a species distribution knowing how many collections should be surveyed to achieve an adequate sample exhaustiveness is important a test for exhaustiveness using species distribution models created with diva gis was performed on county level locality information recorded from more than 4 900 specimens of thoracophorus costalis erichson staphylinidae osoriinae borrowed from 38 collections size and location of distribution models based on specimens from single collections varied greatly indicating â œcollection bias â at least 15 collections needed to be combined before the resultant model averaged 90 of the area of a reference model created from all available specimens by themselves alternative distribution data from literature bugguide net and gbif org performed poorly resulting in models with less than 15 the area of the reference model comments on the use of online data the importance of maintaining and growing regional collections and the future of natural history collections are included,2015,0.268
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database: over thirty years of tracking introduced aquatic species in the United States (and counting),the u s geological surveyâ s nonindigenous aquatic species nas databa se has tracked introductions of freshwater aquatic organ isms in the united states for the past four decades a website provides access to occurrence reports distribution maps and fact sheets fo r more than 1 000 species the site also includes an on line reporting system and an alert system for new occurrences we provide an historical o verview of the database a description of its current capabilities and functionality and a basic characterization of the data contained withi n the database,2015,0.365
Long-distance dispersal during the middle-late Pleistocene explains the bipolar disjunction of Carex maritima (Cyperaceae),aim we set out to explain the bipolar distribution of carex maritima clarifying the direction and timing of dispersal we also tested mountain hopping and direct long distance dispersal hypotheses as well as the relationship of c maritima with biotic and abiotic factors that could explain the bipolar distribution location arctic boreal latitudes of both hemispheres methods molecular and bioclimatic data were obtained for c maritima and related species from section foetidae we sequenced two rps16 and 5â trnk intron plastid dna regions cpdna and the external and internal transcribed spacers ets and its of the nuclear ribosomal gene region nrdna and inferred phylogenetic relationships divergence time estimates and biogeographical patterns using maximum likelihood statistical parsimony bayesian inference and ecological niche modelling results carex maritima populations from the southern hemisphere were genetically and ecologically differentiated from their northern counterparts and formed a monophyletic group nested within a paraphyletic c maritima divergence time analysis estimated a middleâ late pleistocene divergence of the southern lineage 0 23 ma 95 highest posterior density 0 03â 0 51 ma southern hemisphere populations are more stenotopic than the northern hemisphere ones which tolerate harsher conditions main conclusions our results point to a middleâ late pleistocene migration of c maritima by long distance dispersal either directly or via mountain hopping from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere,2015,0.476
Paleobiogeography and historical biogeography of the non-marine caenogastropod family melanopsidae,we investigate the distributions of representatives of the family melanopsidae gastropoda caenogastropoda cerithioidea from the late cretaceous to present day the present contribution discusses and partly revises former schemes of melanopsid dispersal during the cenozoic all of which were based on outdated stratigraphic and tectonic concepts as well as an incompletely considered fossil record conflating a comprehensive and stratigraphically well constrained fossil record modern paleogeographical reconstructions and contemporary climate data our goal is to present a thorough model of melanopsid distribution and its changes over the cenozoic as well as its paleogeographical and climatic constraints the family melanopsidae evolved about 90ma ago in the late turonian from brackish cerithioidean ancestors cretaceous and paleogene species occur in marginal marine to brackish environments along the shores of the tethys and paratethys seas the extant clades of melanopsis likely derive from the evolution of freshwater melanopsis on the balkan peninsula back in the late early miocene up to the pliocene freshwater species spread toward southwestern and southeastern europe and successively replaced brackish water representatives paralleling a general decline of latter systems during the late cenozoic the southwards expansion of melanopsis and its simultaneous retreat from northern latitudes resulted in the disjunct distribution pattern observed today the genus holandriana first appeared in northern italy in the late early miocene the genera microcolpia and esperiana both first occurred in the late miocene and likely derive from brackish water melanopsis species native to peri paratethyan lakes the present day biogeographic isolation of the three latter genera and melanopsis roots in the climatic deterioration and the disappearance of major lake systems in southeastern europe while thermophilous melanopsis retreated to the warm dry climates of the mediterranean and middle east holandriana microcolpia and esperiana adapted to the seasonal cold temperate climate of southeastern and eastern europe and some species became restricted to thermal springs,2015,0.582
New insights on postglacial colonization in western Europe: the phylogeography of the Leisler's bat (Nyctalus leisleri).,despite recent advances in the understanding of the interplay between a dynamic physical environment and phylogeography in europe the origins of contemporary irish biota remain uncertain current thinking is that ireland was colonized post glacially from southern european refugia following the end of the last glacial maximum lgm some 20 000 years bp the leisler s bat nyctalus leisleri one of the few native irish mammal species is widely distributed throughout europe but with the exception of ireland is generally rare and considered vulnerable we investigate the origins and phylogeographic relationships of irish populations in relation to those across europe including the closely related species n azoreum we use a combination of approaches including mitochondrial and nuclear dna markers in addition to approximate bayesian computation and palaeo climatic species distribution modelling molecular analyses revealed two distinct and diverse european mitochondrial dna lineages which probably diverged in separate glacial refugia a western lineage restricted to ireland britain and the azores comprises irish and british n leisleri and n azoreum specimens an eastern lineage is distributed throughout mainland europe palaeo climatic projections indicate suitable habitats during the lgm including known glacial refugia in addition to potential novel cryptic refugia along the western fringe of europe these results may be applicable to populations of many species,2015,0.876
The Importance of Late Quaternary Climate Change and Karst on Distributions of Caribbean Mormoopid Bats,the bat family mormoopidae includes three species with distributions in the caribbean these taxaâ mormoops blainvillei pteronotus parnellii and p quadridensâ roost predominantly in hot cave chambers where temperatures may reach 40â c and humidity is close to 100 we tested the hypothesis that mormoopid bat extirpations in this region were due to climatic changes and the loss of suitable cave environments due to flooding caused by sea level rise associated with the late pleistocene to holocene ca 10 ka climate change transition ecological niche models enms were developed to estimate the current mid holocene and last glacial maximum distributions of these three bat species and to assess whether suitable climatic habitat for these taxa had been stable across time in the caribbean additionally we examined the importance of karst formations where hot caves typically form as a predictor for the distributions of caribbean mormoopid bats our results show that mormoopid bat distributions in the caribbean have remained relatively stable over time with climate enms indicating up to a 19 expansion in the amount of suitable habitat from late pleistocene to the present presence of karst was a good predictor when used alone or when combined as karst climate enms fossil evidence shows that some populations of mormoopids became extirpated as recently as 3 6 ka these data taken together with our conclusion that suitable climate habitat for mormoopid bats existed in the caribbean beyond late pleistocene to holocene transition suggest that these bats may have survived this climate change event by roosting outside their characteristic hot cave environment,2015,0.718
Climate as a driver of tropical insular diversity: comparative phylogeography of two ecologically distinctive frogs in Puerto Rico,the effects of late quaternary climate on distributions and evolutionary dynamics of insular species are poorly understood in most tropical archipelagoes we used ecological niche models under past and current climate to derive hypotheses regarding how stable climatic conditions shaped genetic diversity in two ecologically distinctive frogs in puerto rico whereas the mountain coquã eleutherodactylus portoricensis is restricted to montane forest in the cayey and luquillo mountains the red eyed coquã e antillensis is a habitat generalist distributed across the entire puerto rican bank puerto rico and the virgin islands excluding st croix to test our hypotheses we conducted phylogeographic and population genetic analyses based on mitochondrial and nuclear loci of each species across their range in puerto rico patterns of population differentiation in e portoricensis but not in e antillensis supported our hypotheses for e portoricensis these patterns include individuals isolated by long term unsuitable climate in the rã o grande de loã za basin in eastern puerto rico belong to different genetic clusters past and current climate strongly predicted genetic differentiation and cayey and luquillo mountains populations split prior to the last interglacial for e antillensis these patterns include genetic clusters did not fully correspond to predicted long term unsuitable climate and past and current climate weakly predicted patterns of genetic differentiation genetic signatures in e antillensis are consistent with a recent range expansion into western puerto rico possibly resulting from climate change and anthropogenic influences as predicted regions with a large area of long term suitable climate were associated with higher genetic diversity in both species suggesting larger and more stable populations finally we discussed the implications of our findings for developing evidence based management decisions for e portoricensis a taxon of special concern our findings illustrate the role of persistent suitable climatic conditions in promoting the persistence and diversification of tropical island organisms,2015,0.691
Can Species Distribution Models Aid Bioassessment when Reference Sites are Lacking? Tests Based on Freshwater Fishes.,recent literature reviews of bioassessment methods raise questions about use of least impacted reference sites to characterize natural conditions that no longer exist within contemporary landscapes we explore an alternate approach for bioassessment that uses species site occupancy data from museum archives as input for species distribution models sdms stacked to predict species assemblages of freshwater fishes in texas when data for estimating reference conditions are lacking deviation between richness of contemporary versus modeled species assemblages could provide a means to infer relative biological integrity at appropriate spatial scales we constructed sdms for 100 freshwater fish species to compare predicted species assemblages to data on contemporary assemblages acquired by four independent surveys that sampled 269 sites we then compared site specific observed predicted ratios of the number of species at sites to scores from a multimetric index of biotic integrity ibi predicted numbers of species were moderately to strongly correlated with the numbers observed by the four surveys we found significant though weak relationships between observed predicted ratios and ibi scores sdm based assessments identified patterns of local assemblage change that were congruent with ibi inferences however modeling artifacts that likely contributed to over prediction of species presence may restrict the stand alone use of sdm derived patterns for bioassessment and therefore warrant examination our results suggest that when extensive standardized survey data that include reference sites are lacking as is commonly the case sdms derived from generally much more readily available species site occupancy data could be used to provide a complementary tool for bioassessment,2015,0.962
"Phylogeography, historical demography and habitat suitability modelling of freshwater fishes inhabiting seasonally fluctuating Mediterranean river systems: a case study using the Iberian cyprinid Squalius valentinus.",the mediterranean freshwater fish fauna has evolved under constraints imposed by the seasonal weather hydrological patterns that define the mediterranean climate these conditions have influenced the genetic and demographic structure of aquatic communities since their origins in the mid pliocene freshwater species in mediterranean type climates will likely constitute genetically well differentiated populations to varying extents depending on basin size as a consequence of fragmentation resulting from drought flood cycles we developed an integrative framework to study the spatial patterns in genetic diversity demographic trends habitat suitability modelling and landscape genetics to evaluate the evolutionary response of mediterranean type freshwater fish to seasonal fluctuations in weather to test this evolutionary response the model species used was squalius valentinus an endemic cyprinid of the spanish levantine area where seasonal weather fluctuations are extreme although our findings may be extrapolated to other mediterranean type species our results underscore the significant role of the mediterranean climate along with pleistocene glaciations in diversification of s valentinus we found higher nuclear diversity in larger drainage basins but higher mitochondrial diversity correlated to habitat suitability rather than basin size we also found strong correlation between genetic structure and climatic factors associated with mediterranean seasonality demographic and migration analyses suggested population expansion during glacial periods that also contributed to the current genetic structure of s valentinus populations the inferred models support the significant contribution of precipitation and temperature to s valentinus habitat suitability and allow recognizing areas of habitat stability we highlight the importance of stable habitat conditions fostered by typical karstic springs found on the mediterranean littoral coasts for the preservation of freshwater species inhabiting seasonally fluctuating river systems,2015,0.761
"Paradryomyza spinigera Ozerov, 1987 new to Norway, with records of some other little known Diptera from Finnmark (Diptera: Acartophthalmidae, Campichoetidae, Diastatidae, Dryomyzidae, and Micropezidae)",records of the following species collected in finnmark in 2010 are presented acartophthalmidae acartophthalmus nigrinus zetterstedt 1848 campichoetidae campichoeta griseola zetterstedt 1855 diastatidae diastata flavicosta chandler 1987 and diastata ornata meigen 1830 dryomyzidae dryomyza anilis fallã n 1820 dryope decrepita zetterstedt 1838 paradryomyza spinigera ozerov 1987 and pseudoneuroctena senilis zetterstedt 1846 and micropezidae calobata petronella linnaeus 1761 neria cibaria linnaeus 1761 and neria commutata czerny 1930 of these p spinigera has not previously been recorded from norway and a nigrinus c griseola d ornata d decrepita p senilis and n cibaria are new to finnmark comparison of dna barcodes with records in the bold database confirmed the holarctic distributions of a nigrinus c griseola and d decrepita whereas the barcodes of d anilis form two clearly delimited clusters â one nearctic and one palearctic,2015,0.587
Fishes of the Salish Sea: a compilation and distributional analysis,as part of a current effort to restore the salish sea a 16 925 km 2 inland waterway shared by washington state and british co lumbia a definitive up to date list of the fishes that inhabit this marine ecosystem has been badly needed the last such effort was published more than three decades ago in re sponse to this deficiency we com piled information from various sources and identified 253 fish spe cies observed in marine or brackish waters of the salish sea ecosystem an increase of nearly 14 since the last published checklist these 253 species encompassing 1 myxinid 2 petromyzontids 18 chondrichthyans 2 chondrosteans and 230 teleosts are contained within 78 families and 31 orders this comprehensive list of the salish sea ichthyofauna will serve as a foundation for deter mining the occurrence of new spe cies and perhaps the disappearance of others enabling the selection of species as indicators of ecosystem health and will provide a basis for identifying the mechanisms respon sible for marine animal declines,2015,0.439
BacDive - The Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase in 2016.,bacdive the bacterial diversity metadatabase http bacdive dsmz de provides strain linked information about bacterial and archaeal biodiversity the range of data encompasses taxonomy morphology physiology sampling and concomitant environmental conditions as well as molecular biology the majority of data is manually annotated and curated currently with release 9 2015 bacdive covers 53 978 strains newly implemented restful web services provide instant access to the content in machine readable xml and json format besides an overall increase of data content bacdive offers new data fields and features e g the search for gene names plasmids or 16s rrna in the advanced search as well as improved linkage of entries to external life science web resources,2015,0.224
"A failure of the Red Pierrot Talicada nyseus Guérin-Méneville, 1843 (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) butterfly to colonize Delhi area",the red pierrot talicada nyseus guã rin mã neville 1843 is a butterfly of the semi arid plains its historical distribution range includes sri lanka southern india northeastern india and myanmar it was recently reported from a few places in northern india far away from its known range boundaries in india dehradun kumaon himalaya delhi and kalatop are the places from where it has been reported in the recent past talicada nyseus nyseus appeared in the delhi area in 2008 survived and bred for more than a year and then suddenly disappeared in the summer of 2009 the appearance of t n nyseus in dehradun has been linked to the introduction of kalanchoe ornamental plants in the newly developed residential areas this paper examines the likely reasons for its disappearance from the delhi area,2015,0.198
"Geographic distribution and migration pathways of Pistacia - present, past and future",the global distribution of pistacia is correlated to its adaptability to environmental conditions and mechanisms that had driven the genus to the current unique narrow latitudinal belt in between 10â north and 45â north the current geostatisitcal distribution maps of the genus are shown and the derived probability maps over a period between 121 kyr before present and the year 2100 were calculated the tolerance of pistacia trees to harsh climate conditions was related to leaf phenology evergreeness vs deciduousness which has led to geographic classification of the genus in two correspond ing sections that corroborate recent molecular genetic studies the deciduous trees are more tolerant to extreme climate conditions â 26â c to 46â c than the evergreen species â 8â c to 41â c except pistacia lentiscus which occurs at a max temperature of 45â c the close spatial distribution of the later species and the deciduous ones may have been conducive in further evolution of the genus based on the long evolution of pistacia approx 84 ma we suggested that the genus may have originated in the boreal forest and its migration pathways might have been evoked in relation to climate change shifting the species distribution to evolving suitable environmental conditions the fact that most of the genera in the family of anacardiaceae and the whole genus pistacia are dioecious raised questions about plausible relationships between the geographic distribution environmental conditions and evolution of dioecy the genus pistacia was shown to be a good candidate for research about the relationships between environmental conditions adaptation traits and geographic distribution,2015,0.216
When do plant radiations influence community assembly? The importance of historical contingency in the race for niche space.,plant radiations are widespread but their influence on community assembly has rarely been investigated theory and some evidence suggest that radiations can allow lineages to monopolize niche space when founding species arrive early into new bioclimatic regions and exploit ecological opportunities these early radiations may subsequently reduce niche availability and dampen diversification of later arrivals we tested this hypothesis of time dependent lineage diversification and community dominance using the alpine flora of new zealand we estimated ages of 16 genera from published phylogenies and determined their relative occurrence across climatic and physical gradients in the alpine zone we used these data to reconstruct occupancy of environmental space through time integrating palaeoclimatic and palaeogeological changes our analysis suggested that earlier colonizing lineages encountered a greater availability of environmental space which promoted greater species diversity and occupancy of niche space genera that occupied broader niches were subsequently more dominant in local communities an earlier time of arrival also contributed to greater diversity independently of its influence in accessing niche space we suggest that plant radiations influence community assembly when they arise early in the occupancy of environmental space allowing them to exclude later arriving colonists from ecological communities by niche preemption,2015,0.522
The iterative process of plant species inventorying for obtaining reliable biodiversity patterns,we require representative data of species occurrence to explain plant diversity patterns but most of the available information is incomplete and biased to improve our knowledge we suggest that species inventorying should be an iterative process encompassing the following 1 the detection of taxonomic and geographical gaps 2 the planning of a survey design to reduce such gaps and 3 the evaluation of field sampling results here we focus on the latter phase for the bryophytes of terceira island azores for which we have previously estimated 1 of the area as well surveyed based on historical collections to examine the performance of our stratified survey based on two factors land use and environmental regions we used rarefaction curves anova tests and bootstrap sampling we recorded 40 of all the species known for the island and presented eight new citations the species assemblages remained similar between historical and current inventories most localities had completeness values 85 but we always exceeded the optimal sampling effort land uses and environmental regions affected species diversity but unexpectedly to a different degree our study illustrates the difficulties of planning field surveys to obtain reliable biodiversity patterns even when prior information and standardized sampling protocols are explicitly considered,2015,0.618
An Analysis of Citizen Science Based Research: Usage and Publication Patterns.,the use of citizen science for scientific discovery relies on the acceptance of this method by the scientific community using the web of science and scopus as the source of peer reviewed articles an analysis of all published articles on citizen science confirmed its growth and found that significant research on methodology and validation techniques preceded the rapid rise of the publications on research outcomes based on citizen science methods of considerable interest is the growing number of studies relying on the re use of collected datasets from past citizen science research projects which used data from either individual or multiple citizen science projects for new discoveries such as for climate change research the extent to which citizen science has been used in scientific discovery demonstrates its importance as a research approach this broad analysis of peer reviewed papers on citizen science that included not only citizen science projects but the theory and methods developed to underpin the research highlights the breadth and depth of the citizen science approach and encourages cross fertilization between the different disciplines,2015,0.141
"Giant fossil tortoise and freshwater chelid turtle remains from the middle Miocene, Quebrada Honda, Bolivia: Evidence for lower paleoelevations for the southern Altiplano",we describe the first miocene turtle remains from bolivia which were collected from the late middle miocene 13 18â 13 03 ma of quebrada honda southern bolivia this material includes a large scapula acromion and fragmentary shell elements conferred to the genus chelonoidis testudinidae and a left xiphiplastron from a pleurodire or side necked turtle conferred to acanthochelys chelidae the occurrence of a giant tortoise and a freshwater turtle suggests that the paleoelevation of the region when the fossils were deposited was lower than has been estimated by stable isotope proxies with a maximum elevation probably less than 1000 m at a greater elevation cool temperatures would have been beyond the tolerable physiological limits for these turtles and other giant ectotherm reptiles,2015,0.465
The global distribution of the arbovirus vectors Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus,dengue and chikungunya are increasing global public health concerns due to their rapid geographical spread and increasing disease burden knowledge of the contemporary distribution of their shared vectors aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus remains incomplete and is complicated by an ongoing range expansion fuelled by increased global trade and travel mapping the global distribution of these vectors and the geographical determinants of their ranges is essential for public health planning here we compile the largest contemporary database for both species and pair it with relevant environmental variables predicting their global distribution we show aedes distributions to be the widest ever recorded now extensive in all continents including north america and europe these maps will help define the spatial limits of current autochthonous transmission of dengue and chikungunya viruses it is only with this kind of rigorous entomological baseline that we can hope to project future health impacts of these viruses,2015,0.471
Modeling suitable climate for Eucalyptus grandis under future climates scenarios in Brazil/Modelagem da aptidão climática do Eucalyptus grandis frente aos cenários de mudanças climáticas no Brasil,this study aimed to map areas climatically favorable for eucalyptus grandis hill ex maiden in brazil for the current climate and predict possible changes in these sites in relation to future climate scenarios for doing this we used the species distribution modeling dem generating potential areas in australia and projecting them to brazil in the present and future climate scenarios using the concept of maximum entropy maxent 3 3 3k we considered 70 sites of natural occurrence of e grandis in australia and seven bioclimatic variables as follows mean annual temperature variation of annual temperature annual precipitation precipitation of wettest month precipitation of driest month variation of rainfall and altitude the modeling of the current climate considered the period from 1950 to 2000 the climatic projections were considered as the a1b scenario and the hadcm3 model for three periods 2010 2039 2040 2069 and 2070 2099 all models were significant p 0 001 showed high auc values 0 95 and low omission errors the favorable areas for e grandis at the present time was approximately 1 500 000 kmâ concentrating on southern southeastern and midwestern brazil when we simulated future climates the area decreased by 2 8 4 7 and 3 8 for the scenarios 2010 2039 2040 2069 and 2070 2099 respectively the major changes were the decrease in the southeastern region and increase in the northern region the modeling showed a decrease in the area when considering the future scenarios although new areas have been identified as suitable areas there was a decrease of already known as suitable areas the use of modeling can be useful in planning the breeding and expansion of genetic material to new areas and assist in identifying areas in which eucalypt culture becomes more vulnerable to climate disease and pests,2015,0.191
"Evaluation of the Anti-Diabetic Potential of the Methanol Extracts of Aloe camperi, Meriandra dianthera and a Polyherb",the objective of the study was to evaluate the anti diabetic activities of methanol extracts of aloe camperi ac meriandra dianthera md and a polyherbal drug ph in diabetes induced wistar albino rats a single dose of alloxan monohydrate 150 mg kg i p was used to induce diabetes mellitus dm diabetes was confirmed by the elevated blood glucose levels determined after 72 h of induction animals with mean fasting blood glucose fbg level more than 200 mg dl were recruited for the experiment the herbal extracts at doses of 200 and 400 mg kg and standard drugmetformin 5 mg kg were administered orally to the diabetic rats for 21 days and the fbg level was estimated on 0 7 14 and 21 days the herbal extracts showed dose dependent fall in fbg levels and the result exhibited very significant p he highest antihyperglycemic effect was observed by md extract at 400 mg kg and was comparable to the standard drug oral glucose tolerance test ogtt was also conducted on normal rats and thus glucose at 2 g kg per body weight was loaded via oral gavage to all groups 30 min after extract administration all the groups showed significant increase p p the hyperglycemia with glucose challenge was significantly brought down p herbal extracts at 60 and 120 min relative to the negative control moreover acute oral toxicity tests was conducted based on the protocols of oecd 425 and thus the ld50 of the herbal extracts was estimated to be greater than 2000 mg kg statistical analysis was performed using one way anova followed by dunnettâ s test for multiple comparisons and values of p,2015,0.295
Maternal plasma and amniotic fluid sphingolipids profiling in fetal Down syndrome.,introduction sphingolipids can be potentially involved in the formation of the central and peripheral nervous systems which are particularly connected with the pathogenesis of down syndrome the aim of the study was to determine the concentration of selected sphingolipids in the plasma and amniotic fluid of pregnant patients with fetal down syndrome material and methods out of 190 amniocentesis we had 10 patients with confirmed down syndrome for the purpose of our control we chose 14 women without confirmed chromosomal aberration to assess the concentration of 11 sphingolipids in the blood plasma and amniotic fluid we used an ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry uhplc ms ms results we showed a significant increase in the concentration of 2 ceramides c22 cer and c24 1 cer in the plasma of women with fetal down syndrome furthermore we showed a decrease in the concentration of 7 ceramides c16 cer c18 cer c18 1 cer c20 cer c22 cer c24 1 cer and c24 cer in the amniotic fluid of women with fetal down syndrome we created roc curves for all significant sphingolipids in maternal plasma which set the threshold values and allowed for predicting the likelihood of down syndrome in the fetus with specific sensitivity and specificity we demonstrated a significantly higher risk of down syndrome when the plasma concentration of c22 cer 12 66 ng 100 ul sens 0 9 sp 0 79 p value 0 0007 and c24 1 cer 33 19 ng 100 ul sens 0 6 sp 0 86 p value 0 0194 conclusion on the basis of our findings it seems that the sphingolipids may play a role in the pathogenesis of down syndrome defining their potential as biochemical markers of down syndrome requires further investigation on a larger group of patients,2015,0.074
Negative competitive effects of invasive plants change with time since invasion,competitive impacts of invasive species may vary across invaded ranges owing to spatio temporal gradients in adapted traits and abundance levels higher levels of interspecific competition in recently invaded areas may lead invaders to be more competitive here using meta analysis and home range estimation techniques we examine how negative competitive effects of invasive species vary across different spatio temporal invasion contexts we conducted a meta analysis of 26 studies that used greenhouse microcosm and common garden pairwise experiments to measure the growth response of native plants in the presence of terrestrial plant invaders totaling 36 species and compared this to the time since invasion at the collection site number of years between the estimated year of initial invasion by spread of the invader and the time of collection for the study we show that negative competitive effects decline across sites that had been invaded for longer periods of time with effects of invasive grasses,2015,0.429
Mapping species distributions: A comparison of skilled naturalist and lay citizen science recording.,to assess the ability of traditional biological recording schemes and lay citizen science approaches to gather data on species distributions and changes therein we examined bumblebee records from the uk s national repository national biodiversity network and from beewatch the two recording approaches revealed similar relative abundances of bumblebee species but different geographical distributions for the widespread common carder bombus pascuorum traditional recording scheme data were patchy both spatially and temporally reflecting active record centre rather than species distribution lay citizen science records displayed more extensive geographic coverage reflecting human population density thus offering better opportunities to account for recording effort for the rapidly spreading tree bumblebee bombus hypnorum both recording approaches revealed similar distributions due to a dedicated mapping project which overcame the patchy nature of naturalist records we recommend where possible complementing skilled naturalist recording with lay citizen science programmes to obtain a nation wide capability and stress the need for timely uploading of data to the national repository,2015,0.693
Identification of important marine areas around the Japanese Archipelago: Establishment of a protocol for evaluating a broad area using ecologically and biologically significant areas selection criteria,after the adoption of the aichi target data accumulation and evaluation regarding biodiversity have progressed rapidly the use of ecologically and biologically significant areas ebsas criteria to evaluate important areas enables the identification of effective and prioritized areas for ecosystem management this includes strategic environmental assessment and discussions aimed at establishing protected marine areas based on scientific data this paper reviews previous and current ideas as well as the methods used for the identification of ebsas in particular the following issues are addressed problems associated with different types of marine ecosystems in the japanese archipelago such as seagrass and seaweed beds coral reefs offshore pelagic plankton and deep sea benthic ecosystems and problems associated with the integration of multiple criteria that are not totally exclusive several candidate variables accounting for each of the 7 criteria used to identify ecologically important areas are presented data availability is the most important criterion that allowed for the comprehensive evaluation of different types of ecosystems in the same localities in particular for coastal ecosystems such as seagrass seaweed beds and coral reefs it is possible to carry out broad spatial comparisons using variables representing most of these 7 criteria regarding methods for the quantitative evaluation of each criterion and their integration application of these methods to kelp forest ecosystems in hokkaido northern japan is presented as a case study,2015,0.112
The Relative Impact of Climate Change on the Extinction Risk of Tree Species in the Montane Tropical Andes.,there are widespread concerns that anthropogenic climate change will become a major cause of global biodiversity loss however the potential impact of climate change on the extinction risk of species remains poorly understood particularly in comparison to other current threats the objective of this research was to examine the relative impact of climate change on extinction risk of upper montane tree species in the tropical andes an area of high biodiversity value that is particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts the extinction risk of 129 tree species endemic to the region was evaluated according to the iucn red list criteria both with and without the potential impacts of climate change evaluations were supported by development of species distribution models using three methods generalized additive models recursive partitioning and support vector machines all of which produced similarly high auc values when averaged across all species evaluated 0 82 0 86 and 0 88 respectively inclusion of climate change increased the risk of extinction of 18 20 of the tree species evaluated depending on the climate scenario the relative impact of climate change was further illustrated by calculating the red list index an indicator that shows changes in the overall extinction risk of sets of species over time a 15 decline in the red list index was obtained when climate change was included in this evaluation while these results suggest that climate change represents a significant threat to tree species in the tropical andes they contradict previous suggestions that climate change will become the most important cause of biodiversity loss in coming decades conservation strategies should therefore focus on addressing the multiple threatening processes currently affecting biodiversity rather than focusing primarily on potential climate change impacts,2015,0.917
Species identification of freshwater snail Planorbella trivolvis and analysis of its potential distribution,objective to identify the species classification of an ornamental planorbidae from a flower market in shanghai and analyze its potential distribution in china methods in august 2013 six freshwater snail specimens were collected from the wanshang flower market the species was identified by morphology and molecular biology an ecological niche model was constructed based on the native geographic presence occurrence data and projected onto the whole of china to predict the potential distribution results their shell external morphology suggested that the specimens belonged to planorbella trivolvis say 1817 of planorbidae which is native in north america the sequence data of a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit i coi confirmed its identification a total of 2 294 georeferenced occurrence points in north america were carried out from the global biodiversity information facility databases and 614 records with coordinates were used to produce a north american native niche model by a maximum entropy method maxent the projection on china results suggested high probabilities of occurrence mostly in henan province and its borderland with nearby provinces conclusions p trivolvis is similarly with biomphalaria species from shell morphology it is the first records of the species in china and the field dispersal is not clear,2015,0.586
Biodiversity research: data without theory - theory without data,meet two famous researchers from the early days of biodiversity research charles darwin and alexander von humboldt darwin developed a powerful theory using a limited amount of data by modern standards humboldt in contrast compiled a â œcosmosâ of data without developing a major theory although some of humboldt s observations on latitudinal biodiversity gradients von humboldt 1808 were later used to develop theory this tension between data and theory still persists today and is perhaps becoming more acute,2015,0.139
Factors Affecting Seed Germination and Seedling Emergence of Asia Minor Bluegrass ( Polypogon fugax ),abstract little published information is available related to seed germination and seedling establishment of asia minor bluegrass a problematic grass weed in some regions of china the objective of this study was to examine the effects of different environmental factors on asia minor bluegrass seed germination the optimum temperature for germination was around 10 to 20 c and more than 90 of seeds germinated under 20 10 and 25 15 c temperature regimes also light and ph did not appear to have any effect on seed germination asia minor bluegrass was sensitive to osmotic stress but tolerant of nacl no seedlings emerged when seeds were buried 4 cm deep the result suggested that asia minor bluegrass has the potential to spread into a large area in china to prevent its spreading measures such as soil cultivation can be used to limit seed germination from increased burial depth and or nonselective herbicides can be applied to kill early germinating weed seedlings in late summer nomenclature asia mino,2015,0.104
rBEFdata: documenting data exchange and analysis for a collaborative data management platform,we are witnessing a growing gap separating primary research data from derived data products presented as knowledge in publications although journals today more often require the underlying data products used to derive the results as a prerequisite for a publication the important link to the primary data is lost however documenting the postprocessing steps of data linking the primary data with derived data products has the potential to increase the accuracy and the reproducibility of scientific findings significantly here we introduce the rbefdata r package as companion to the collaborative data management platform befdata the r package provides programmatic access to features of the platform it allows to search for data and integrates the search with external thesauri to improve the data discovery it allows to download and import data and metadata into r for analysis a batched download is available as well which works along a paper proposal mechanism implemented by befdata this feature of befdata allows to group primary data and metadata and streamlines discussions and collaborations revolving around a certain research idea the upload functionality of the r package in combination with the paper proposal mechanism of the portal allows to attach derived data products and scripts directly from r thus addressing major aspects of documenting data postprocessing we present the core features of the rbefdata r package along an ecological analysis example and further discuss the potential of postprocessing documentation for data linking primary data with derived data products and knowledge,2015,0.035
Multiclass classification of agro-ecological zones for arabica coffee: An improved understanding of the impacts of climate change,cultivation of coffea arabica is highly sensitive to and has been shown to be negatively impacted by progressive climatic changes previous research contributed little to support forward looking adaptation agro ecological zoning is a common tool to identify homologous environments and prioritize research we demonstrate here a pragmatic approach to describe spatial changes in agro climatic zones suitable for coffee under current and future climates we defined agro ecological zones suitable to produce arabica coffee by clustering geo referenced coffee occurrence locations based on bio climatic variables we used random forest classification of climate data layers to model the spatial distribution of these agro ecological zones we used these zones to identify spatially explicit impact scenarios and to choose locations for the long term evaluation of adaptation measures as climate changes we found that in zones currently classified as hot and dry climate change will impact arabica more than those that are better suited to it research in these zones should therefore focus on expanding arabica s environmental limits zones that currently have climates better suited for arabica will migrate upwards by about 500m in elevation in these zones the up slope migration will be gradual but will likely have negative ecosystem impacts additionally we identified locations that with high probability will not change their climatic characteristics and are suitable to evaluate c arabica germplasm in the face of climate change these locations should be used to investigate long term adaptation strategies to production systems,2015,0.084
First Report on Bat Mortalities on Wind Farms in Chile,in latin america there is a lack of scienti fi c reports of bat mortality caused by wind farms operation we report for the fi rst time clear evidence of bat mortalities from wind farms in chile we generated an ecological niche model of the affected species tadarida brasiliensis to explore areas of potential species distribution overlapping with areas with distribution of wind farms in chile we found that t brasiliensis potential distribution overlaps with the current and future distribution of wind farms in chile rapid developments are currently being made within the wind energy industry in chile future research should quantify the impact patterns of wind farms on wildlife explore mitigation methods and determine the areas with high biodiversity vulnerability in chile,2015,0.52
"Revalidation of genus Chrysellampus Semenov, 1932, with description of two new species from China (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae)",the genus chrysellampus semenov 1932 is revalidated chinese species are revised and keyed for the first time five species are recorded two of them are new for science chrysellampus obtusidentibus rosa wei amp xu sp nov yunnan and c proximocellis rosa wei amp xu sp nov gansu and yunnan new synonymy for chrysellampus semenov 1932 parellampus semenov 1932 syn nov and new combination for c praeteritorum semenov 1932 comb nov are proposed,2015,0.644
Biological and ecological traits of marine species.,this paper reviews the utility and availability of biological and ecological traits for marine species so as to prioritise the development of a world database on marine species traits in addition the status of species for conservation that is whether they are introduced or invasive of fishery or aquaculture interest harmful or used as an ecological indicator were reviewed because these attributes are of particular interest to society whereas traits are an enduring characteristic of a species and or population a species status may vary geographically and over time criteria for selecting traits were that they could be applied to most taxa were easily available and their inclusion would result in new research and or management applications numerical traits were favoured over categorical habitat was excluded as it can be derived from a selection of these traits ten traits were prioritized for inclusion in the most comprehensive open access database on marine species world register of marine species namely taxonomic classification environment geography depth substratum mobility skeleton diet body size and reproduction these traits and statuses are being added to the database and new use cases may further subdivide and expand upon them,2015,0.857
Towards a national bio-environmental data facility: experiences from the Atlas of Living Australia,the atlas of living australia ala http www ala org au provides the largest free and open repository of integrated biological and environmental information in a consistent format for the australian region as of june 2015 the ala contained over 55 million records 10 of global biodiversity information facilityâ s gbifâ s total consisting of 150 000 native and alien species nearly 500 layers of gridded and polygonal bio environmental data 39 million pages of biological literature and 45 000 images of species and other integrated biological data the development of the research interface to the ala http spatial ala org au was the trigger to develop an architecture designed to tightly integrate environmental data for online use with biological data environmental layers are classed as environmental gridded with continuous values or contextual polygonal with discrete class values a suite of analysis and visualization tools have been developed to demonstrate the value of integrating the alaâ s biological and environmental data this paper outlines the purpose and process of establishing the ala and discusses the integration of environmental data relevant to biodiversity research in the australian region and the vision for continually improved services for research area management education and citizen science the alaâ s environmental infrastructure addresses current needs but increased data types volumes and resolution suggests new directions are needed to provide quality services into the future the experience of building the ala has relevance for other agencies setting up similar infrastructure which supports integrated access to and use of their national biological and environmental information,2015,0.183
The masked invader strikes again: the conquest of Italy by the Northern raccoon,the northern raccoon procyon lotor is a species native to north and central america but alien populations have established in europe several caribbean islands and japan being introduced for fur farming hunting or as pets attraction in animal parks in the introduced range raccoons may impact on breeding birds and amphibians exert crop damages and transmit pathologies to wild species and humans the species has been introduced also in italy where the only known reproductive population is observed since 2004 in lombardy along the adda river we reconstructed the current distribution range of the northern raccoon in italy collecting information from scientific papers articles in newspapers and books as well from experts and local reporters a total of 53 occurrence points were collected from 38 observation sites since 2008 records from lombardy increased and sporadic observations were reported from seven other regions a complete lack of records from the northernmost provinces of lombardy varese como and sondrio suggests that the only italian population does not derive from a range expansion from switzerland but it should be considered as an independent new introduction accidental observations of single individuals possibly escaped from captivity are often ignored and only some of them were removed from the wild an analysis of the potential distribution of the species was performed in a species distribution modeling framework maxent a global model was built up considering the occurrences of reproductive populations from the native range and introduced areas in europe and japan and then projected to italy the model suggested a very low suitability of the alpine region thus providing support to the hypothesis that the italian population did not derive from dispersal from switzerland if escapes or releases of raccoons will continue there is a risk that the species could adapt to other areas making its containment more difficult download the complete issue,2015,0.985
Computing in Research and Development in Africa,the biodiversity term refers to the totality of genes species and ecosystems of a region or the globe biodiversityâ s impact on the human health and the ecosystem is without a doubt very significative therefore the conservation of the biodiversity is becoming an international political and scientific issue since it may have a drawback on climate and the human health or survival for a sustainable development perspective several ongoing studies are conducted to analyze predict and face biodiversity changes such studies require a huge volume of data collected stored shared and exploited intensively by researchers through the world by using web technologies and information systems as geobon lifewacth gbif mosquitomap these systems handle an important amount of computing and database resources that must be optimized for avoiding maintaining useless resources while reducing considerably the energy usage actually the goal of such optimization that we propose in this chapter is to adapt increase or decrease the number of resources for dealing with data of biodiversity based on the current load or number of requests while ensuring good performances the benefits of doing so are manifold first it fits perfectly with the objectives of green computing or green it that suggest to define computing systems efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment second it is well suited for african developing countries that encounter frequently energy problems and that miss enough funds to maintain complex infrastructures,2015,0.136
Earthworm databases and ecological theory: Synthesis of current initiatives and main research directions,earthworms are a key group of detritivores and ecosystem engineers in many ecosystems worldwide yet we have a limited understanding of how their diversity varies globally synthesis of global data on earthworms would allow a range of important ecological evolutionary and applied questions to be addressed we conducted a survey on global earthworm data at the 10th international symposium on earthworm ecology isee10 and sent an electronic survey to additional earthworm researchers respondents were asked about existing databases research interests required data and research locations most researchers were aware of at least one database with earthworm data with a total of 19 current databases being identified most of the top questions listed by researchers related to distributions and diversity at global scales but traits evolution genetics taxonomy invasions ecosystem functioning impacts ecotoxicology and bioindicators were also key themes of interest correspondingly distributional environmental and trait data were the primary data types required global data coverage was poor with research being especially concentrated in europe and the united states encouragingly all researchers who currently had data indicated they would be willing to contribute it to a global database while there are a number of key challenges associated with synthesis of earthworm data on a global scale data limitations taxonomic inconsistencies logistical issues the wide range of questions involving global data listed by researchers and their willingness to contribute their own data suggests there is strong interest in developing a comprehensive global database on earthworms,2015,0.096
Differentially expressed genes match bill morphology and plumage despite largely undifferentiated genomes in a Holarctic songbird.,understanding the patterns and processes that contribute to phenotypic diversity and speciation is a central goal of evolutionary biology recently high throughput sequencing has provided unprecedented phylogenetic resolution in many lineages that have experienced rapid diversification the holarctic redpoll finches genus acanthis provide an intriguing example of a recent phenotypically diverse lineage traditional sequencing and genotyping methods have failed to detect any genetic differences between currently recognized species despite marked variation in plumage and morphology within the genus we examined variation among 20 712 anonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms snps distributed throughout the redpoll genome in combination with 215 825 snps within the redpoll transcriptome gene expression data and ecological niche modelling to evaluate genetic and ecological differentiation among currently recognized species expanding upon previous findings we present evidence of i largely undifferentiated genomes among currently recognized species ii substantial niche overlap across the north american acanthis range and iii a strong relationship between polygenic patterns of gene expression and continuous phenotypic variation within a sample of redpolls from north america the patterns we report may be caused by high levels of ongoing gene flow between polymorphic populations incomplete lineage sorting accompanying very recent or ongoing divergence variation in cis regulatory elements or phenotypic plasticity but do not support a scenario of prolonged isolation and subsequent secondary contact together these findings highlight ongoing theoretical and computational challenges presented by recent rapid bouts of phenotypic diversification and provide new insight into the evolutionary dynamics of an intriguing understudied non model system,2015,0.566
Metadata and Semantics Research,this paper presents a study about the use of metadata standards for the area of biodiversity informatics species distribution modeling tools generated models that offer information about species distribution and allow scientists researchers environmentalists companies and govern to make decisions to protect and preserve biodiversity studies reveal that this area require new technologies and this include the interoperability between models generated by species distribution tools to ensure interoperability we present a schema that use metadata standards to generate xml archives that contain all information necessary to reuse models of species distribution this paper is part of a major study that claims for the use of a metadata standards as a fundamental way to provide structured biodiversity information,2015,0.47
Evolutionary diversification of alpine ginger reflects the early uplift of the Himalayan–Tibetan Plateau and rapid extrusion of Indochina,the evolutionary diversifications of many taxonomic groups especially those with limited dispersal ability are often driven by key geological events such as tectonic drift continental collisions and uplifts of mountains here we use full range geographic sampling to create a dated molecular phylogeny for two genera of alpine gingers cautleya and roscoea in the pan himalaya and test the correlations between evolutionary diversification of this group and major geological events in the studied region our results revealed that the origination of their common ancestor and evolutionary split between the two genera occurred during the middle eocene and the late eocene to the early oligocene corresponding well to the proposed two early uplifts of the himalayanâ tibetan plateau roscoea species the highest elevation gingers known were then divided into distinct himalayan and indochinese clades simultaneous with the rapid extrusion of indochina and accompanied by the third himalayan uplift around the oligocene miocene boundary this study highlights the importance of evolutionary diversification of plants as an independent line of evidence to reflect tectonic events in the himalayanâ indochinese region,2015,0.303
Antioxidant and Anti-Thrombotic Properties of Selected Plant Extracts of Asia,emblica officinalis gaertn hibiscus sabdariffa l acacia concinna dc xanthium strumarium l swertia pulchella buch ham vitis repens wight arn prodr hizikia fusiforme and momordica charantia l are commonly used in food and traditional medicine of asia in order to establish the scientific basis of their medicinal properties and to use them as a functional food ingredient in the improvement of thrombosis their aqueous extracts were subjected to the analysis of anti oxidative and anti thrombotic properties superoxide and dpph radical scavenging activities anti thrombotic activities such as inhibition of thrombin collagen adp and ristocetin induced platelet aggregation and activated partial thromboplastin time aptt prothrombin time pt were measured in vitro the plant species were ranked based on each specific activity among the species e officinalis ranked high with strong antioxidant activity and high inhibition of platelet aggregation against three agonists whereas h fusiforme and h sabdariffa showed strong anti coagulant activity despite having low antioxidant and anti platelet activities in conclusion the plant species were significantly different in their antioxidant anticoagulant and anti platelet activities the results suggest that the antioxidant activities might not necessarily to be related to the anti thrombosis effect of the species which means the components responsible for anti oxidant and anti thrombosis might not necessary be the same e officinalis may compose the components responsible for both antioxidant and antithrombosis activities could be considered as a strong functional food ingredient for prevention and suppression of oxidative stress and thrombosis,2015,0.053
"Distribution and Conservation Status of the Mount Kilimanjaro Guereza (Colobus guereza caudatus) Thomas, 1885",the mount kilimanjaro guereza colobus guereza caudatus is considered to be endemic to northeast tanzania this paper presents the first records for c g caudatus in kenya describes the distribution of this subspecies and assesses its con servation status in september 2014 we found c g caudatus in southeast kenya in kitobo forest reserve 1 6 kmâ and loito kitok forest reserve 4 2 kmâ this subspecies has an altitudinal range of c 660â 3 050 m asl and an â extent of occurrenceâ of c 4 040 kmâ these findings are important as they 1 add one subspecies of primate to kenyaâ s primate list 2 remove one endemic subspecies of primate from tanzaniaâ s primate list 3 establish c g caudatus as the most threatened primate subspe cies in kenya 4 change the priorities for actions necessary to maintain kenyaâ s primate diversity and 5 indicate that detailed biodiversity surveys within kitobo forest and loitokitok forest are likely to yield new data crucial to the conservation of biodi versity in southeast kenya,2015,0.518
Eastward colonization of the Mediterranean Basin by two geographically structured clades: The case of Odontites Ludw. (Orobanchaceae),the biogeography of mediterranean groups is very heterogeneous because of the complex geologic and climatic history of the region our goal was to reconstruct the spatio temporal history of the genus odontites in particular we aimed to infer its area of origin and colonization routes investigate its timing of diversification and examine possible correlations with major environmental events based on sequencing of three chloroplast markers psbaâ trnh trnlâ trnf and trncâ ycf6 we reconstructed phylogenetic relationships among species we performed molecular dating analyses based on a large scale rbcl dataset ancestral areas reconstructions and interpreted the observed patterns in the light of the complex geologic and climatic histories of the region our results suggested that bartsiella and bornmuellerantha should be reintegrated into odontites s l the genus originated in the iberian peninsula ca 18 9ma and diverged into two main clades 16 2ma but species diversification was most intense 5â 6ma the two clades showed a clear geographic pattern one clade originated in the iberian peninsula and morocco and extended its range to eastern north africa and the central mediterranean basin the other clade originated in europe and western asia and mostly diversified within this ancestral area the eastward colonization of the mediterranean basin contrasts with many other plant groups nevertheless the burst of diversification in the plio pleistocene agrees with what has been reported for other groups and is concomitant with the end of the messinian salinity crisis onset of the mediterranean climate and quaternary glaciations the link between phylogeny and geography suggests limited dispersal and most dispersal events may have occurred overland rather than overseas,2015,0.378
mangal - making ecological network analysis simple,the study of ecological networks is severely limited by 1 the difficulty to access data 2 the lack of a standardized way to link meta data with interactions and 3 the disparity of formats in which ecological networks themselves are stored and represented to overcome these limitations we have designed a data specification for ecological networks we implemented a database respecting this standard and released an r package rmangal allowing users to programmatically access curate and deposit data on ecological interactions in this article we show how these tools in conjunction with other frameworks for the programmatic manipulation of open ecological data streamlines the analysis process and improves replicability and reproducibility of ecological network studies,2015,0.204
Predicting the potential distributions of Senecio vulgaris L. in China,predicting potential distribution for alien plants by species distribution model sdm or ecological niche model using occurrence data and habitat environmental variables plays an important role in management of the invasive risk by an alien plant common groundsels senecio vulgaris asteracea native in eurasia and north africa has been a cosmopolitan weed in temperature and also listed as one of invasive plants in china we predict the potential distribution of this species in the world and in china particularly in maxent maximum entropy models by using global occurrence records of s vulgaris and the associated climate variables the occurrence data were collected from the online databases global biodiversity information facility database gbif chinese virtual herbarium database cvh and also from field work in china the climate variables were download from worldclim http www worldclim org the occurrence records showed that s vulgaris is present in 16 provinces or regions in north â eastern south â western central and north china and almost not present in south â eastern north â western china the mapping of s vulgaris potential distribution is diagonally across china including the north â eastern south â western china and the cool area between the two regions analysis of the contribution and importance of climatic factors in the prediction model indicated that s vulgaris adapts to the climate in humid and cool area in china annual mean temperature ranges 2 4 17 5 â ƒ and annual precipitation ranges 550 1500 mm it is suggested that special attention should be paid to the plain in ne china and shandong peninsula yungui plateau the cool mountain area around sichuan basin in western hubei southern shaanxi shanxi and around beijing in order to manage the invasion risk by s vulgaris the better performance of the model built by using occurrence data in china than that by using the global data in relation the predict outcome in china imply that it is might be better to use regional data than the global data when predict potential distribution for an alien plant with long invasive history in study area,2015,0.176
Collections-based systematics: opportunities and outlook for 2050,systematic biology is a discipline rooted in collections these collections play important roles in research and conservation and are integral to our efforts to educate society about biodiversity and conservation collections provide an invaluable record of the distribution of organisms throughout the world and through recent and geological time and they are the only direct documentation of the biological physical and cultural diversity of the planet past present and future recent developments in bioinformatics and cyberinfrastructure are transforming systematics by opening up new opportunities and as a result major digitization efforts have increasingly made available large amounts of biodiversity data the collections based systematics community needs to train the next generation of systematists with integrative skills address grand questions about biodiversity at different scales develop a community wide cyberinfrastructure effectively disseminate systematic data to biologists and the public and proactively educate the public and policy makers on the importance of systematics and collections in the biodiversity crisis of the anthropocene specifically we call for a new global biodiversity cyberbank comparable to genbank for genetic data to be the repository of all biodiversity data as well as a world organization of systematic biology to lead major initiatives of the field we also outline a new workflow for taxonomic monographs which utilizes both the traditional strengths of synthesizing diverse collections based taxonomic data and the capacity of online resources and bioinformatics tools,2015,0.089
Breeding Biology of the Rufous-backed Robin ( Turdus rufopalliatus ) in an Urban Area Outside its Original Distribution Range,abstract the rufous backed robin turdus rufopalliatus is a bird endemic to the pacific slope of mexico and the balsas basin and is currently expanding its distribution range to the mexican central highlands occupying urban areas its breeding biology is poorly known in its original distribution range and unknown in the newly colonized areas we present a description of its breeding biology in one of the newly colonized areas including nest site selection nest composition clutch size eggs and incubation period hatching and nestling success and observations on behavior of adults and nestlings the study was conducted in 2013 in an urban area of central mexico specifically at the main campus of universidad autã noma del estado de hidalgo in pachuca hidalgo nests were built on trees at a mean height of 5 66 â 0 51 m the nest was generally a shallow cup made of vegetable material reinforced with mud mean clutch size was 2 75 â 0 16 eggs were light to medium blue with reddish brown markings inc,2015,0.178
Predicting the potential distribution of Lantana camara L. under RCP scenarios using ISI-MIP models,projections of anthropogenically induced global climate change and its impacts on potential distributions of invasive species are crucial for implementing effective conservation and management strategies lantana camara l a popular ornamental plant native to tropical america has become naturalized in some 50 countries and is considered one of the worldâ s worst weeds to increase our understanding of its potential extent of spread and examine the responses of global geographic distribution predictive models incorporating global distribution data of l camara were generated these models were used to identify areas of environmental suitability and project the effects of future climate change based on an ensemble of the four global climate models gcms within the inter sectoral impact model intercomparis on project isi mip each model was run under the four emission scenarios representative concentration pathways rcps using the maximum entropy maxent approach future model predictions through 2050 indicated an overall expansion of l camara despite future suitability varying considerably among continents under the four rcp scenarios the range of l camara expanded further inland in many regions e g africa australia especially under the rcp85 emission scenario the global distribution of l camara though restricted within geographical regions of similar latitude as at present 35â n 35â s was projected to expand equator ward in response to future climate conditions considerable discrepancy in predicted environmental suitability for l camara among gcms highlights the complexities of the likely effects of climate change on its potential distribution and the need to improve the reliability of predictions in novel climates,2015,0.071
Biodiversity and comparative phylogeography of western Mediterranean butterflies,1 introduction 1 1 the study system butterflies of the western mediterranean 1 2 biodiversity and biogeography 1 3 the new era of island biogeography 2 objectives 3 results chapter 1 biogeography of western mediterranean butterflies combining turnover and nestedness components of fauna dissimilarity chapter 2 cryptic matters overlooked species generate most butterfly beta diversity chapter 3 why do cryptic species tend not to co occyr a case study on two cryptic pairs of butterflies chapte 4 comparing population patterns for genetic and morphological markers with uneven sample sizes chapter 5 what makes island communities unique understanding and protecting butterfly diversity at the interface between africa and europe 4 general discussion 5 conclusions references,2015,0.481
"A benchmark survey of the common plants of South Northumberland and Durham, United Kingdom",background it is obvious to anyone studying plants in the landscape that man made environmental change is having profound effects on the abundance distribution and composition of plant communities nevertheless quantifying these changes and estimating the impact of the different drivers of change is extremely difficult botanical surveying can potentially provide insights to the changes that are occurring and inform decisions related to conservation agriculture and forestry policy however much of botanical surveying is conducted in such a way that it is not comparable between dates and places any comparison of historical and modern data has to account for biases in the recording of different taxonomic groups geographic biases and varying surveying effort in time in 2010 botanical recorders in the vice counties of durham and south northumberland in the united kingdom decided to conduct a four year survey specifically to benchmark the abundance and distribution of common plants in their counties it is intended that this survey will provide a relatively unbiased assessment with which to compare future and past surveys of the area and a means to study the drivers of biodiversity change in the north east of england new information this survey of durham and south northumberland has been designed with two goals firstly to provide information on common vascular plant species and secondly to provide a dataset that will be versatile with respect to the sorts of questions that can be answered with the data the survey is primarily an occupancy study of 1km2 grid squares however observers were also asked to provide a relative abundance estimate of the species in each grid square the collection of relative abundance estimate data was an experiment to assess the repeatablity and useablity of such estimates,2015,0.114
Emerging Technologies to Conserve Biodiversity,technologies to identify individual animals follow their movements identify and locate animal and plant species and assess the status of their habitats remotely have become better faster and cheaper as threats to the survival of species are increasing new technologies alone do not save species and new data create new problems for example improving technologies alone cannot prevent poaching solutions require providing appropriate tools to the right people habitat loss is another driver the challenge here is to connect existing sophisticated remote sensing with species occurrence data to predict where species remain other challenges include assembling a wider public to crowdsource data managing the massive quantities of data generated and developing solutions to rapidly emerging threats,2015,0.905
"Diversity, extinction, and threat status in Lagomorphs",a quarter of all lagomorphs pikas rabbits hares and jackrabbits are threatened with extinction including several genera that contain only one species the number of species in a genus correlates with extinction risk in lagomorphs but not in other mammal groups and this is concerning because the non random extinction of small clades disproportionately threatens genetic diversity and phylogenetic history here we use phylogenetic analyses to explore the properties of the lagomorph phylogeny and test if variation in evolution biogeography and ecology between taxa explains current patterns of diversity and extinction risk threat status was not related to body size and by inference its biological correlates and there was no phylogenetic signal in extinction risk we show that the lagomorph phylogeny has a similar clade size distribution to other mammals and found that genus size was unrelated to present climate topography or geographic range size extinction risk was greater in areas of higher human population density and negatively correlated with anthropogenically modified habitat consistent with this habitat generalists were less likely to be threatened our models did not predict threat status accurately for taxa that experience region specific threats we suggest that pressure from human populations is so severe and widespread that it overrides ecological biological and geographic variation in extant lagomorphs diversity extinction and threat status in lagomorphs pdf download available available from http www researchgate net publication 273158701 diversity extinction and threat status in lagomorphs accessed aug 31 2015,2015,0.555
Life history lability underlies rapid climate niche evolution in the angiosperm clade Montiaceae.,despite the recent focus on phylogenetic niche conservatism in macroevolutionary studies many clades have diversified widely along multiple niche dimensions the factors underlying lineage specific niche lability are still not well understood we examined morphological and climate niche evolution in montiaceae caryophyllales an ecologically variable plant lineage distributed primarily along the mountain chains of the western americas montiaceae inhabit a broader range of temperatures than their relatives with an increase in the evolutionary rate of temperature niche diversification at the node subtending this clade within montiaceae life history is highly labile and significantly correlated with temperature with perennials consistently occurring in cooler environments this elevated evolutionary lability facilitated repeated shifts between habitats as new environments were created by post eocene orogenic events and aridification in the western americas the shifts between annual and perennial forms are elaborations of an underlying rosette body plan in most cases and may involve simple alterations in biomass allocation montiaceae stand as another clear counterexample to phylogenetic niche conservatism and demonstrate a mechanism by which pronounced ecological shifts may occur frequently and rapidly among closely related species,2015,0.552
Towards Developing Ecological Niche Models for Pelagic Seabirds: Phase 1,global pelagic seabird popula ons are declining as a result of a mul tude of natural and anthropogenic factors ecological niche modelling enm can provide cri cal insights into a species niche even when only basic occurrence data are available historically however these methods have seen limited success for highly mobile species here i present the results of the first phase in developing func onal enms for these species through parameteriza on of three algorithms to assess their ability to predict seasonal environmental preferences for non breeding wandering albatrosses diomedea exulans linnaeus 1758 the complex behavioural biology and high mobility of pelagic seabirds make them an ideal study group for this project,2015,0.598
Population structure and connectivity in Indo-Pacific deep-sea mussels of the Bathymodiolus septemdierum complex,current pressures to mine polymetallic sulfide deposits pose threats to the animal communities found at deep sea hydrothermal vents management plans aimed at preserving these unusual communities require knowledge of historical and contemporary forces that shaped the distri butions and connectivity of associated species as most vent research has focused on the eastern pacific and mid atlantic ridge systems less is known about indo pacific vents where mineral extraction activities are imminent deep sea mus sels bivalvia mytilidae of the genus bathymodiolus include the morphotypic species b septemdierum b brev ior b marisindicus and b elongatus which are among the dominant vent taxa in western pacific back arc basins and the central indian ridge to assess their interpopulational relationships we examined multilocus genotypes based on dna sequences from four nuclear and four mitochondrial genes and allozyme variation encoded by eleven genes bayesian assignment methods grouped mussels from seven widespread western pacific localities into a single cluster whereas the indian ocean mussels were clearly divergent thus we designate two regional metapopulations notably contemporary migration rates among all sites appeared to be low despite limited population differentiation which high lights the necessity of obtaining realistic data on recovery times and fine scale population structure to develop and manage conservation units effectively future studies using population genomic methods to address these issues in a range of species will help to inform management plans aimed at mitigating potential impacts of deep sea mining in the indo pacific region,2015,0.487
Computational methods for studying G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs),the functioning of gpcrs is classically described by the ternary complex model as the interplay of three basic components a receptor an agonist and a g protein according to this model receptor activation results from an interaction with an agonist which translates into the activation of a particular g protein in the intracellular compartment that in turn is able to initiate particular signaling cascades extensive studies on gpcrs have led to new findings which open unexplored and exciting possibilities for drug design and safer and more effective treatments with gpcr targeting drugs these include discovery of novel signaling mechanisms such as ligand promiscuity resulting in multitarget ligands and signaling cross talks allosteric modulation biased agonism and formation of receptor homo and heterodimers and oligomers which can be efficiently studied with computational methods computer aided drug design techniques can reduce the cost of drug development by up to 50 in particular structure and ligand based virtual screening techniques are a valuable tool for identifying new leads and have been shown to be especially efficient for gpcrs in comparison to water soluble proteins modern computer aided approaches can be helpful for the discovery of compounds with designed affinity profiles furthermore homology modeling facilitated by a growing number of available templates as well as molecular docking supported by sophisticated techniques of molecular dynamics and quantitative structureâ activity relationship models are an excellent source of information about drugâ receptor interactions at the molecular level,2015,0.031
"Species richness, distribution, bioindication and ecology of lichens in oak forests of Kroumiria, North West of Tunisia",lichen communities were studied in deciduous oak forests across kroumiria region northern west of tunisia to find out the lichen species richness make an idea about their ecology relative distribution and actual statute all lichen species were collected of mainly all quercus canariensis wild and quercus suber l trunks from their base up to the highest canopy twigs identification of taxa is based on stereo microscopic examinations and usual chemical tests k c p i and kc results reveal important lichen diversity with 211 species belonging to 63 genera and 36 lichenological families distributed into 8 groups growth forms the most represented group is the crustose growth form about 42 whereas foliose and fruticose were represented by 64 and 22 species respectively within each group various taxa known for their high sensitivity to certain toxic air compounds essentially so2 and some nox have been inventoried mainly fruticose and foliose such taxa qualified as bioindicators reflect a buffer capacity of these forest ecosystems to physical changes of the environment and some stability of their functioning without concealing artificialisation and simplification of the forest environment in response to various activities carried out by rural people and their livestock,2015,0.808
Thriving in the Cold: Glacial Expansion and Post-Glacial Contraction of a Temperate Terrestrial Salamander (Plethodon serratus).,the dynamic geologic history of the southeastern united states has played a major role in shaping the geographic distributions of amphibians in the region in the phylogeographic literature the predominant pattern of distribution shifts through time of temperate species is one of contraction during glacial maxima and persistence in refugia however the diverse biology and ecology of amphibian species suggest that a one size fits all model may be inappropriate nearly 10 of amphibian species in the region have a current distribution comprised of multiple disjunct restricted areas that resemble the shape of pleistocene refugia identified for other temperate taxa in the literature here we apply genetics and spatially explicit climate analyses to test the hypothesis that the disjunct regions of these species ranges are climatic refugia for species that were more broadly distributed during glacial maxima we use the salamander plethodon serratus as a model as its range consists of four disjunct regions in the southeast phylogenetic results show that p serratus is comprised of multiple genetic lineages and the four regions are not reciprocally monophyletic the appalachian salamanders form a clade sister to all other p serratus niche and paleodistribution modeling results suggest that p serratus expanded from the appalachians during the cooler last glacial maximum and has since been restricted to its current disjunct distribution by a warming climate these data reject the universal applicability of the glacial contraction model to temperate taxa and reiterate the importance of considering the natural history of individual species,2015,0.745
"VAT: A System for Visualizing, Analyzing and Transforming Spatial Data in Science",the amount of available data changes the style of research in geo scientific domains and thus influences the requirements for spatial processing systems to support data driven research and exploratory workflows we propose the visualization analysis transformation system vat we first identify ten fundamental requirements which span from supporting spatial data types over low latency computations to visualization techniques based on these we evaluate state of the art systems from the domains of spatial frameworks gis workflow systems scientific databases and big data solutions the goal of the vat system is to overcome the identified limitations by a holistic approach to raster and vector data demand driven and tiled processing and the efficient usage of heterogeneous hardware architectures a first comparison with other systems shows the validity of our approach,2015,0.036
"Distriktskatalog over Danmarks bier (Hymenoptera, Apoidea)",a district catalogue is presented for the 286 known danish bee species we examined and recorded label data from 47 629 bee specimens collected in denmark during more than 200 years local occurrences were then recorded for each of the 11 faunistic districts of denmark records are separated into those from 1974 or earlier from 1975 or later or from both periods a total of 32 bee species have not been observed since 1918 faunistic and taxonomic comments are provided for a number of species in an appendix in particular providing new information since an earlier checklist of the danish bee fauna was published in addition a summary of adventive and introduced bee species in denmark is given,2015,0.885
Sucking herbivore assemblage composition on greenhouse Ficus correlates with host plant leaf architecture,understanding arthropod herbivore selectivity trends towards host plant attributes is essential for predicting plant associated herbivore assemblage structure little is known about such interactions between spontaneous herbivore species and cultivated plants under specific conditions of botanical garden greenhouses in this study the taxonomic and functional composition of sucking arthropod herbivore assemblages were correlated with leaf anatomical and surface features of 33 host species of ficus l moraceae across four distantly located greenhouse complexes of botanical gardens the analyses revealed that the species number and abundance of scale insects and their individual families sessile phloem feeders total phloem feeders and total herbivores were significantly positively correlated with the thickness of leaf lamina epidermis and mesophyll stomatal length and width and the presence of abaxial multiple epidermis and weak ferruginous non glandular trichomes significant negative correlations were revealed between the same herbivore parameters and the density of glandular trichomes heliomorphic leaves supported higher abundance and species richness of sessile phloem feeders compared to sciomorphic ones the parameters of some phloem and mesophyll feeder taxa also correlated with non glandular trichome length and density type of trichomes and epicuticular wax layer and the presence of calcium oxalate crystals in the epidermis results of the study suggest that the leaf architecture related herbivory trends under greenhouse conditions are similar to those occurring in natural ecosystems when considering the functional significance of particular leaf traits and remain relevant at the scale of particular plant taxa with disregard of spatial factor,2015,0.383
"Diversidad de Murciélagos en un Gradiente Altitudinal en el Estado de Nuevo León, México",the bats are the second group of mammals and its ecological funtions makes of them an important component of the ecosystem as hunters of insects pollinators and seed dispersers despite the ecological relevance in nuevo leon there are no studies that compare the species composition at different altitudinal ranges the aim of this study was to identify how the bat species are distributed at different altitudes and vegetation types the bats were monitored by three consecutive nights from january to agust 2014 at three different altitude ranges and vegetation types i 350 m with tamaulipan thorn scrub ii 1600 m pine oak forest iii 2000 m creosote bush scrub which are located in linares iturbide and galeana respectively to identifying bats species i used an acoustic detector and a sony brand recorder was used a total of 8 640 minutes of bat activity were recorded each record was analyzed by using the batsound pro the voices of the recorded species were identified by comparing the sonograms with a library of sounds generated by capturing bats in mist nets and sonograms of previous studies twenty two bat species belonging to four families six subfamilies and 15 genera were identified representing 16 of the quiropterofauna to mexico and 61 for nuevo leã n the bpe 1600 m counted with the highest species richness 16 a margalef diversity index of 15 82 and with a representation of 89 the best represented trophic guild was the insectivores 18 species seasons analysis showed no significant differences p 0 4691 however the stations with higher richness summer in iturbide and galeana in autumn 13 species while the analysis of rain seasonlaity showed a significant difference p 0 05 with higher species rincnesfinding greater bat species richenss during the rainy season with 19 species and seven unique records itstated that species richness is influenced by the altitudinal gradient which is responsible for landscape heterogeneity also i this study helped to generate the first acoustic data from insectivorous bats for the state of nuevo leã n,2015,0.992
Back to the future: using historical climate variation to project near-term shifts in habitat suitable for coast redwood.,studies that model the effect of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems often use climate projections from downscaled global climate models gcms these simulations are generally too coarse to capture patterns of fine scale climate variation such as the sharp coastal energy and moisture gradients associated with wind driven upwelling of cold water coastal upwelling may limit future increases in coastal temperatures compromising gcms ability to provide realistic scenarios of future climate in these coastal ecosystems taking advantage of naturally occurring variability in the high resolution historic climatic record we developed multiple fine scale scenarios of california climate that maintain coherent relationships between regional climate and coastal upwelling we compared these scenarios against coarse resolution gcm projections at a regional scale to evaluate their temporal equivalency we used these historically based scenarios to estimate potential suitable habitat for coast redwood sequoia sempervirens d don under normal combinations of temperature and precipitation and under anomalous combinations representative of potential future climates we found that a scenario of warmer temperature with historically normal precipitation is equivalent to climate projected by gcms for california by 2020 2030 and that under these conditions climatically suitable habitat for coast redwood significantly contracts at the southern end of its current range our results suggest that historical climate data provide a high resolution alternative to downscaled gcm outputs for near term ecological forecasts this method may be particularly useful in other regions where local climate is strongly influenced by ocean atmosphere dynamics that are not represented by coarse scale gcms this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.072
Geographic origin and spread of cosmopolitan ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),i have compiled a list of 42 cosmopolitan ant species i e ants with multiple well established populations in both the old world and new world spread through human commerce twenty of the 42 cosmopolitan ant species have established popula tions in all seven of the world s ant inhabit ed biogeographic regions i e all except the antarctic afrotropic palearctic indomalay australasia oceania nearctic and neotropic of the 42 cosmopolitan ant species 3 5 8 3 are old world natives and seven 1 7 are new world natives c osmopolitan ant species are most often originally native to the indomalay bioregion 1 7 species and are least often native to the nearctic bioregion only one species only twelve cosmopolitan ants have become major ecological agricultural and or household pest species anoplolepis gracilipes linepithema humile monomorium pharaonis nylanderia bourbonica paratrechina longicornis pheidole megacephala solenopsis geminata solenopsis invicta tapinoma melanocephalum technomyrmex difficilis trichomyrmex destructor and wasmannia auropunctata the other 30 species are at most minor pests documenting the exotic spread of ant species within their own native hemisphere will be more complicated because it is often dif ficult to evaluate what geographic area constitutes the native range and what area i f any constitutes the exotic range,2015,0.975
Sibling species delimitation and nomenclature of the Merodon avidus complex (Diptera: Syrphidae),a study of the relationships between 21 southern european moroccan and turkish populations of the merodon avidus species complex was carried out based on a parallel study of type material from several museums documented diagnostic morphological characters season of adult activity and geographical distribution we justify the use of the following names for three closely related taxa in this complex m avidus rossi 1790 m moenium wiedemann 1822 and m ibericus nom n vujiä new name for m bicolor gil collado 1930 preoccupied by m bicolor walker 1852 neotypes of merodon avidus m spinipes fabricius 1794 and m quadrilineatus lioy 1864 are designated lectotype of merodon moenium wiedemann in meigen 1822 is designated here a cluster analysis of dna barcoding sequences clearly separated m ibericus but not m avidus and m moenium even though the lack of shared haplotypes analysis of molecular variance amova pairwise î st values together with allozyme and ecological niche analyses revealed statistically significant percentage of variation among all three species in the merodon avidus complex analysis of 5 diagnostic enzyme loci revealed the presence of genetic differentiation among the m avidus moenium complex populations investigated fst 0 654 and species specific alleles were found at the aat locus the presence of two separate related taxa within the m avidus moenium complex was further supported by an upgma tree based on nei s 1978 genetic distances the value of nei s measure of genetic identity i 0 520 between two large meta populations of m avidus and m moenium suggest that these taxa are sibling species populations from djerdap serbia confirmed the presence of temporal divergence between these species at a locality where they occur sympatrically while spring and autumn populations from umag croatia provide an example of morphological plasticity within the species m avidus ecological niche analysis contributed to the species delimitation review of the available genetic and ecological data confirmed our hypothesis that the m avidus species complex in addition to m ibericus nom n vujiä from the iberian peninsula consists of two sibling species in the rest of europe and indicated their recent speciation,2015,0.996
Reconstructing the invasion history of Heracleum persicum (Apiaceae) into Europe.,sparse incomplete and inappropriate historical records of invasive species often hamper invasive species management interventions population genetic analyses of invaders might provide a suitable context for the identification of their source populations and possible introduction routes here we describe the population genetics of heracleum persicum desf ex fisch and trace its route of introduction into europe microsatellite markers revealed a significantly higher genetic diversity of h persicum in its native range and the loss of diversity in the introduced range may be attributed to a recent genetic bottleneck bayesian cluster analysis on regional levels identified three and two genetic clusters in the native and the introduced ranges respectively a global structure analysis revealed two worldwide distinct genetic groups one primarily in iran and denmark the other primarily in norway there were also varying degrees of admixture in england sweden finland and latvia approximate bayesian computation indicated two independent introductions of h persicum from iran to europe the first one in denmark and the second one in england finland was subsequently colonized by english populations in contrast to the contemporary hypothesis of english origin of norwegian populations we found finland to be a more likely source for norwegian populations a scenario supported by higher estimated historical migration from finland to norway genetic diversity per se is not a primary determinant of invasiveness in h persicum our results indicate that due to either pre adaptations or rapid local adaptations introduced populations may have acquired invasiveness after subsequent introductions once a suitable environment was encountered this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.723
Linking place-based citizen science with large-scale conservation research: A case study of bird-building collisions and the role of professional scientists,a primary benefit of incorporating public participation in scientific research is the increased ability to use data from multiple localities to address conservation research and management objectives that span national continental and even global scales although the importance of incorporating data from local citizen science programs into large scale research has been widely recognized there has been relatively little discussion of specific steps that will facilitate this bridging of scales we use the example of bird collisions with buildings in north americaâ an issue for which the majority of data have been collected by citizen science programs that each operate in a different cityâ to outline simple study design and data collection steps that will ensure that data can contribute to large scale research syntheses we also describe how taking a scientific approach to defining research questions and hypotheses at the beginning of a study will 1 result in a high level of rigor throughout the scientific cycle most notably at the critical stage when programs formulate study design and data collection protocols and 2 produce results that effectively inform local policy and management decisions while also contributing to large scale science given the funding and staffing limitations of citizen science programs we argue that the responsibility is with professional conservation scientists to reach out to programs and provide feedback that assists them in bridging local and large scales these collaborations will expand the collective contribution of citizens to conservation science and management,2015,0.029
PESI - a taxonomic backbone for Europe,background reliable taxonomy underpins communication in all of biology not least nature conservation and sustainable use of ecosystem resources the flexibility of taxonomic interpretations however presents a serious challenge for end users of taxonomic concepts users need standardised and continuously harmonised taxonomic reference systems as well as high quality and complete taxonomic data sets but these are generally lacking for non specialists the solution is in dynamic expertly curated web based taxonomic tools the pan european species directories infrastructure pesi worked to solve this key issue by providing a taxonomic e infrastructure for europe it strengthened the relevant social expertise and information standards data and technical capacities of five major community networks on taxonomic indexing in europe which is essential for proper biodiversity assessment and monitoring activities the key objectives of pesi were 1 standardisation in taxonomic reference systems 2 enhancement of the quality and completeness of taxonomic data sets and 3 creation of integrated access to taxonomic information new information this paper describes the results of pesi and its future prospects including the involvement in major european biodiversity informatics initiatives and programs,2015,0.07
Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents,for many species geographical ranges are expanding toward the poles in response to climate change while remaining stable along range edges nearest the equator using long term observations across europe and north america over 110 years we tested for climate change related range shifts in bumblebee species across the full extents of their latitudinal and thermal limits and movements along elevation gradients we found cross continentally consistent trends in failures to track warming through time at species northern range limits range losses from southern range limits and shifts to higher elevations among southern species these effects are independent of changing land uses or pesticide applications and underscore the need to test for climate impacts at both leading and trailing latitudinal and thermal limits for species,2015,0.719
Pest Risk Analysis for Coleosporium asterum,as a result of the l aunch of the uk plant health risk register 4 in 20 14 t he pest has been identified as an organism that continues to pose a potential risk to the uk forestry sector when published in january 2014 the uk plant health risk register entry which precede d the commissioning of this new pra state d under â ge neral commentsâ â dioecious rust of which the main host i e pinus is prohibited which provides some mitigation of the risk though additional hosts are not regulated cut flowers are considered to provide a greater risk of introduction â a uk p ra was produced in 2005 in response to interceptions of c asterum on cut flowers of solidago 2002 and s olidaster 2005 imported from zimbabwe jones 2005 5 although this pra only assessed the risk posed by imported infected cut flowers originating in c ountries outside of the eu where the pest was thought to occur the conclusion suggested that the risk posed by imported infected planting material was likely to be higher than that posed by imported infected cut flowers contrary to the recent 2014 uk pla nt health risk register entry as a result ec l isting and regulation of all host plants for planting was requested by the uk plant health service in 2007 ward 2007 this request remains outstanding and awaits consideration by the ec standing committ ee for plant health ec scph t o support the request the uk have suggested to the ec scph that efsa the european food safety authority could review listing of the pest r mcintosh defra uk personal communication february 2014 in 2014 t he 2005 uk pra was identified as requiring the following updates in order to produce this new pra ï a r eview of literature published sinc e the first uk pra was produced ï revision of the 2005 pra to incorporate any new information ï revision of the 2005 pra to includ e risk ratings in addit ion to imports of cut flowers other potential pathways of entry have been considered see 8 below the uk plant health risk register entry has now been updated in line with the conclusions of this pra,2015,0.067
Characteristics of the top-cited papers in species distribution predictive models,in this study we analyzed the characteristics of the most cited papers regarding species distribution predictive models sdpms we found 173 papers on sdpms that received at least 100 citations until 2013 according to the thomson reuters web of science database these papers were published between 1991 and 2012 with the majority published between 2002 and 2012 indicating the rapid development of this field of research the papers were published mainly in journals listed in the ecology category on the web of science almost half of the top cited papers were methodological introducing novel modeling methods and software applied papers on species conservation and biodiversity management climate change phylogeography and biosecurity also figured out among the top cited papers researchers from 174 institutions in 27 countries with 51 of the papers being internationally collaborative and 69 inter institutionally collaborative published the papers among all 173 papers seven papers stood out as having a great impact on the field receiving more than 1000 citations each finally the results found by analyzing the top cited sdpms papers support the view of a growing interest and rapid development of this research field over the past two decades the top cited papers primarily focused on the development and evaluation of novel methods to improve the performance of the models and thus to better predict the environmental suitability for species in applied studies,2015,0.467
Survey on Phytoplankton Biomass and Water Parameters in the Habitats of Invasive Tigers Shrimps (Penaeus Monodon) in Nigeria,penaeus monodon is an invasive species found in the coastal waters of nigeria although widely exploited with significant economic importance investigation into its adaptation and potential ecological impact in the newly found environment is poorly known this survey provides baseline information on the phytoplankton community and physico chemical parameters in ten selected stations from five states where they are exploited in nigeria these include ibeno akwa ibom state bonny rivers state kaa rivers state brass bayelsa state aiyetoro ondo state makoko lagos state folu lagos state apapa lagos state tin can island lagos state and tarkwa bay lagos state total of 147 species of phytoplankton from six classes were recorded during the survey with diatoms being the most prevalent 70 4 green algae 20 4 blue green algae 5 6 chrysophyceae 1 9 water parameters recorded temperature range 27 33 â 1 53â c 29 00 â 1 00â c ph 7 39 â 0 08 8 13 â 0 14 dissolved oxygen 5 40 â 3 22 mgl 1 8 00 â 1 44 mgl 1 conductivity 11 22 â 10 03 î s cm 39 33 â 5 87 î s cm and salinity 11 02 â 15 56 25 98 â 2 02 lowest values for phosphate nitrate nitrogen and sulphate were 0 11 â 0 07mgl 1 0 10 â 0 07 mgl 1 and 523 67 â 880 21 mgl 1 respectively generally ecological factors in their newly found environment are similar to their native range however negative impact as an invasive species most be checked,2015,0.695
The unpredictable characteristics of the localities where new Iberian species will be discovered,aim to describe patterns in new species descriptions examine the spatial distribution and the associated environmental conditions of the localities with newly discovered species as well as to assess whether protected areas encompass the majority of the occurrences of undescribed species location ibero balear region methods after an exhaustive literature review the temporal and spatial patterns of the terrestrial animal species described in the ibero balear region from 1994 to 2012 were mapped both linear and asymptotic functions were used to compare the rates of discovered species using akaike weights generalized linear models were used to estimate the explanatory capacity of a large set of environmental land use and distance variables on the presenceâ absence of newly discovered species and on the variation in the number of new discoveries results the average annual description rate was 112 species 99 of the species descriptions were invertebrates adjusted discovery curves suggest that we still have an incomplete animal inventory environmental variables possess a limited capacity to predict the characteristics of the localities where new species are discovered â ˆ 12 main conclusions our results indicate that it is not possible to provide an advanced estimation of the environmental and land use characteristics of the ibero balear regions in which new species will be discovered in the future current protected areas are not guaranteed to conserve these undiscovered species and non protected areas should also be considered important reservoirs of unknown biodiversity,2015,0.957
Sample data processing in an additive and reproducible taxonomic workflow by using character data persistently linked to preserved individual specimens.,unlabelled we present the model and implementation of a workflow that blazes a trail in systematic biology for the re usability of character data data on any kind of characters of pheno and genotypes of organisms and their additivity from specimen to taxon level we take into account that any taxon characterization is based on a limited set of sampled individuals and characters and that consequently any new individual and any new character may affect the recognition of biological entities and or the subsequent delimitation and characterization of a taxon taxon concepts thus frequently change during the knowledge generation process in systematic biology structured character data are therefore not only needed for the knowledge generation process but also for easily adapting characterizations of taxa we aim to facilitate the construction and reproducibility of taxon characterizations from structured character data of changing sample sets by establishing a stable and unambiguous association between each sampled individual and the data processed from it our workflow implementation uses the european distributed institute of taxonomy platform a comprehensive taxonomic data management and publication environment to i establish a reproducible connection between sampled individuals and all samples derived from them ii stably link sample based character data with the metadata of the respective samples iii record and store structured specimen based character data in formats allowing data exchange iv reversibly assign sample metadata and character datasets to taxa in an editable classification and display them and v organize data exchange via standard exchange formats and enable the link between the character datasets and samples in research collections ensuring high visibility and instant re usability of the data the workflow implemented will contribute to organizing the interface between phylogenetic analysis and revisionary taxonomic or monographic work database url http campanula e taxonomy net,2015,0.085
"How Are Oaks Distributed in the Neotropics? A Perspective from Species Turnover, Areas of Endemism, and Climatic Niches",premise of research the most important diversity hot spot of genus quercus fagaceae in america is situated in southern mexico from this area down to the colombian andes oak species diversity decreases considerably but the pattern of species distribution and turnover has not been analyzed this study aimed at determining geographical patterns of species turnover species distribution and endemism for neotropical quercus species methodology occurrence records for 58 oak species belonging to the quercus and lobatae sections were obtained patterns of species turnover were determined by comparing species composition among latitudinal longitudinal units areas of endemism were determined using weighted networks the potential distribution of oak species was determined using ecological niche models finally a principal component analysis was used to identify changes in the oak speciesâ ecological niche across areas pivotal results the species composition analysis indicated that the tehuantepec isthmus,2015,0.968
"The exotic weevil Stenopelmus rufinasus Gyllenhal, 1835 (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) across a “host-free” pond network",the presence of the exotic weevil stenopelmus rufinasus coleoptera curculionidae is closely related to the occurrence of the exotic red water fern azolla filiculoides in this paper we present the first records of s rufinasus in doã ana national park sw spain based on sampling of macroinvertebrates in 91 temporary ponds including monthly samples of 22 ponds during two successive years 2005 2007 the exotic weevil was present in 21 of the sampled ponds where the host plant a filiculiodes was not detectable because a filiculoides can reach high densities in an adjacent area of marsh we suggest that the occurrence of the exotic weevil in these ponds is a consequence of dispersal from nearby marshes our study demonstrates that s rufinasus adults can occur at relatively high densities in ponds where the host plant is not present suggesting that such apparently â œhost freeâ sites may act as stepping stones for the spread of this species,2015,0.639
Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics from central parts of the Madeira River in Brazil,the present study reconstructs the paleovegetation of a varzea seasonally flooded forest in the central parts of the madeira river floodplain in brazil using palynological data forty nine cut bank sediment samples from the madeira river were processed in the study from these ten samples contained pollen two contained pollen from the middle pleniglacial age one contained pollen from the tardiglacial age six contained pollen from the holocene and one contained more recently deposited pollen the middle pleniglacial pollen belonged to a primary succession varzea forest while the tardiglacial pollen represented a late succession varzea forest on the other hand the three holocene samples showed the characteristic composition of chavascal water logged forest or lacustrine varzea forest and three samples belonged to a late succession varzea forest the most recent pollen deposit represented a secondary succession varzea forest this paleovegetation showed a typical mosaic distribution which may be explained by the fluvial dynamics high species richness and diversity in the varzea forest and the presence of dominant species,2015,0.823
Longevity of seeds and soil seed bank of the Cerrado tree Miconia chartacea (Melastomataceae),miconia chartacea is a widely distributed tree in brazil occurring at altitudes ranging from 300 m to 1900 m in the caatinga cerrado and atlantic forest biomes in this work we attempted to classify m chartacea seeds regarding their behaviour during storage and their germination syndrome and to determine from a storage test in cerrado soil and laboratory conditions in situ and ex situ the longevity of seeds as well as the capacity of the species to form a soil seed bank the results suggested that m chartacea seeds form a transient soil seed bank in the cerrado and can be classified as orthodox in terms of storage behaviour although the seeds are dispersed with a relatively high water content the life span of seeds was favoured in soil stored seeds in comparison with dry storage at 25â c whereas storage at low temperatures prevented a decrease of the seed s germinability with storage time 330 d m chartacea seeds are dispersed during the dry season and germinate during the next rainy season which can be classified as an intermediateâ dry germination syndrome seeds of this species are dispersed in the cerrado when temperatures and soil moisture are relatively low which favours the formation of a soil seed bank considering that the seeds tolerate desiccation and their longevity is favoured by low temperatures a transient seed bank type is favoured by the loss of viability in storage at warm temperatures linked to the rainy season and the predictable seasonal variations in climate in the region with germination being restricted to the beginning of the rainy season,2015,0.612
Does the legacy of historical biogeography shape current invasiveness in pines?,why are some introduced species more successful at establishing and spreading than others until now characteristics of extant species have been intensively investigated to answer this question we propose to gain new insights on species invasiveness by exploring the long term biogeographic and evolutionary history of lineages we exemplify our approach using one of the best studied invasive plant genera pinus we notably estimated the historical biogeography of pines and the rates of trait evolution in pines these estimates were analysed with regard to species invasiveness status the results revealed that currently invasive species belong to lineages that were particularly successful at colonizing new regions in the past we also showed that highly mobile lineages had faster rates of niche evolution but that these rates are poor proxies for species adaptive potential in invaded regions estimated by niche shift among native and invaded regions in summary working at the interface of ecology historical biogeography and evolutionary history offers stimulating perspectives to improve our understanding of the drivers of invasion success,2015,0.841
History matters more when explaining genetic diversity within the context of the core-periphery hypothesis.,the core periphery hypothesis cph predicts that populations located at the periphery of a species range should have lower levels of genetic variation than those at the center of the range however most of the research on the cph focuses on geographic distance and not ecological distance or uses categorical definitions of core and periphery to explain the distribution of genetic diversity we use current climate data and historical climate data from the last glacial maxima to develop quantitative estimates of contemporary and historical ecological suitability using ecological niche models we analyzed genetic diversity using 12 polymorphic microsatellites to estimate changes in heterozygosity allelic richness and population differentiation in 31 populations of the wood frog lithobates sylvaticus spanning the species entire eastern clade 33 o to 45 o latitude from alabama u s to nova scotia canada our data support predictions based on the cph populations showed significant differences in genetic diversity across the range with lower levels of genetic variation at the geographic range edge and in areas with lower levels of historical and contemporary ecological suitability however history and geography not current ecological suitability best explain the patterns this study highlights the importance of examining more than just geography when assessing the cph and the importance of historical ecological suitability in the maintenance of genetic diversity and population differentiation this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.553
Invasion success of a global avian invader is explained by within-taxon niche structure and association with humans in the native range,aim to mitigate the threat invasive species pose to ecosystem functioning reliable risk assessment is paramount spatially explicit predictions of invasion risk obtained through bioclimatic envelope models calibrated with native species distribution data can play a critical role in invasive species management forecasts of invasion risk to novel environments however remain controversial here we assess how speciesâ association with human modified habitats in the native range and within taxon niche structure shape the distribution of invasive populations at biogeographical scales and influence the reliability of predictions of invasion risk location africa asia and europe methods we use 1200 native and invasive ring necked parakeet psittacula krameri occurrences and associated data on establishment success in combination with mtdna based phylogeographic structure to assess niche dynamics during biological invasion and to generate predictions of invasion risk niche dynamics were quantified in a gridded environmental space while bioclimatic models were created using the biomod2 ensemble modelling framework results ring necked parakeets show considerable niche expansion into climates colder than their native range only when incorporating a measure of human modification of habitats within the native range do bioclimatic envelope models yield credible predictions of invasion risk for parakeets across europe invasion risk derived from models that account for differing niche requirements of phylogeographic lineages and those that do not achieve similar statistical accuracy but there are pronounced differences in areas predicted to be susceptible for invasion main conclusions information on within taxon niche structure and especially association with humans in the native range can substantially improve predictive models of invasion risk to provide policymakers with robust predictions of invasion risk including these factors into bioclimatic envelope models is recommended,2015,0.528
"Pisolithus albus (Sclerodermataceae), a new record for Tunisia",pisolithus albus was recently collected for the first time in tunisia this ectomycorrhizal fun gus is found associated with eucalyptus occidentalis a new symbiotic relationship in the urban area of tunis the new record of this fungus on this tree permit to expand our knowledge on the ecology and distribution of p albus in tunisia the finding is also important since this fun gal symbiont has great potential in forestation efforts data on the morphology molecular iden tification distribution and ecology for p albus in tunisia are presented for the first time,2015,0.506
Combined morphological and molecular approach for identification of Stemphylium vesicarium inoculum in pear orchards,stemphylium vesicariumis the causal agent of brown spot of pear an important disease reported in pear growing areas of europe the pathogen is able to colonize pear leaf debris and dead tissues of herbaceous plants and produce abundant ascospores and conidia that are capable of infecting pear trees inoculum monitoring in pear orchards is mainly achieved through spore traps and species identification is based on conidial morphology but the similarities on conidial traits among species of stemphyliummake correct identification difficult in this work a total of thirty seven stemphyliumisolates from pear orchards were characterized at the morphological pathogenic and molecular level correspondence among its and gpdsequences and morphological traits were evaluated species identification based exclusively on morphological data was not feasible combined morphological and molecular data were necessary for unambiguous identification of isolates in the s vesicariumspecies group only isolates identified as s vesicariumwere pathogenic on pear the study revealed that several species of stemphyliumcoexist in pear orchards with s vesicarium the causal agent of bsp and that combined morphological and molecular data are needed to differentiate them consequently direct measurements of the airborne inoculum using volumetric spore traps may overestimate the actual pathogen population,2015,0.655
Characterizing common and range expanding species,climate change and biological invasions have increased the likelihood of the establishment growth spread and survival of some species with the recent and strongly motivated call for balanced consideration of the ecology and conservation of common and rare species species undergoing range expansion are of particular interest the notion of essential biodiversity variables has also re focussed attention on the value of abundance and occupancy observations for assessing conservation values threats and targets â species rare or common contracting or expanding changes in the distribution and abundance of common and range expanding species deserve further attention not only to better understand their dynamics but also as the basis for monitoring range expansions and their consequences with the aim of characterizing range expansion here we combine perspectives from typological approaches to studying species conservation status with perspectives from spread ecology and macroecology closer examination of the properties and dynamics of common species is important not only because declines in their conservation status are underappreciated but also because those species becoming more common have significant implications for biodiversity ecosystems and society,2015,0.879
"Molecular Phylogeny, Biogeography and an e-Monograph of the Papaya Family (Caricaceae) as an Example of Taxonomy in the Electronic Age",predicting the binding mode of flexible polypeptides to proteins is an important task that falls outside the domain of applicability of most small molecule and protein∠protein docking tools here we test the small molecule flexible ligand docking program glide on a set of 19 non î helical peptides and systematically improve pose prediction accuracy by enhancing glide sampling for flexible polypeptides in addition scoring of the poses was improved by post processing with physics based implicit solvent mm gbsa calculations using the best rmsd among the top 10 scoring poses as a metric the success rate rmsd â 2 0 ã for the interface backbone atoms increased from 21 with default glide sp settings to 58 with the enhanced peptide sampling and scoring protocol in the case of redocking to the native protein structure this approaches the accuracy of the recently developed rosetta flexpepdock method 63 success for these 19 peptides while being over 100 times faster cross docking was performed for a subset of cases where an unbound receptor structure was available and in that case 40 of peptides were docked successfully we analyze the results and find that the optimized polypeptide protocol is most accurate for extended peptides of limited size and number of formal charges defining a domain of applicability for this approach,2015,0.15
Biodiversity governance: a Tower of Babel of scales and cultures.,the recently created intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes originally focused on multilateral and global issues is shifting its focus to address local issues and to include in its assessments local stakeholders and indigenous and traditional systems of knowledge acknowledging that full biodiversity governance is unavoidably rooted in participation of local actors and their problems and knowledge we suggest that to deal successfully with the complexity and diversity of local issues including indigenous knowledge systems ipbes must recognize a key role of local institutions,2015,0.138
Phylogeographical structure of the boreal-montane orchid Malaxis monophyllos as a result of multi-directional gene flow,we investigated the phylogeographical structure of the boreal montane orchid malaxis monophyllos in its eurasian geographical range we analysed four sequences of plastid dna trnl trnlâ trnf rps16 and accd psai resulting in 19 haplotypes and revealing a high level of intraspecific diversity hd 0 702 and ï 0 196 ã 10∠2 but showing a lack of phylogeographical structure this pattern might be caused by multiple phenomena and processes e g broad fronted recolonization with accompanying multi directional gene flow between populations and expansion from at least two refugial areas despite the lack of phylogeographical structure three centres of haplotype diversity were indicated in the european part of the range of m monophyllos according to these data alpine and lowland glacial refugia located between the ice sheets in the european alps and the scandinavian glaciers seem most likely to be in europe moreover models of climatically suitable areas during the last glacial maximum lgm confirmed the alps as a possible refuge and indicated an opportunity for the persistence of m monophyllos populations in beringia and parts of siberia using two models model for interdisciplinary research on climate miroc and community climate system model ccsm we predicted a significant reduction in climatically suitable areas for m monophyllos in the future 2080 our study also demonstrated that the biological features of m monophyllos including breeding system and dispersal mode seem to be crucial in understanding its phylogeographical pattern our results also highlighted the importance of anthropogenic habitats as reservoirs of genetic diversity and alternative habitats for this species in the context of declining natural populations,2015,0.324
Diversification of the cold-adapted butterfly genus Oeneis related to Holarctic biogeography and climatic niche shifts.,both geographical and ecological speciation interact during the evolution of a clade but the relative contribution of these processes is rarely assessed for cold dwelling biota here we investigate the role of biogeography and the evolution of ecological traits on the diversification of the holarctic arcto alpine butterfly genus oeneis lepidoptera satyrinae we reconstructed the molecular phylogeny of the genus based on one mitochondrial coi and three nuclear gapdh rps5 wingless genes we inferred the biogeographical scenario and the ancestral state reconstructions of climatic and habitat requirements within the genus we detected five main species groups corresponding to the taxonomic division and further paraphyletic position of neominois syn n next we transferred o aktashi from the hora to the polixenes species group on the bases of molecular relationships we found that the genus originated in the dry grasslands of the mountains of central asia and dispersed over the beringian land bridges to north america several times independently holarctic mountains in particular the asian altai mts and sayan mts host the oldest lineages and most of the species diversity arctic species are more recent with pliocene or pleistocene origin we detected a strong phylogenetic signal for the climatic niche where one lineage diversified towards colder conditions altogether our results indicate that both dispersal across geographical areas and occupation of distinct climatic niches promoted the diversification of the oeneis genus,2015,0.766
"Insect species recorded in sugarcane fields of Khon Kaen Province, Thailand, over three seasons in 2012",he diversity of insect species in cultivated fields provides a number of ecosystem benefits including natural pest control and pollination however current knowledge of the insect fauna in agricultural landscapes is extremely limited when compared with information available for other ecosystems such as forests and rivers here we present data on insect diversity including functional feeding group diversity in sugarcane fields of khon kaen province thailand sugarcane is a major thai crop we collected insects using light trap systems located in 16 sugarcane field plots each light trap was deployed in an individual 0 16 ha plot trapping was conducted over three seasons including both dry and rainy periods in march june and october of 2012 on each trapping day we collected insects in the evening from 18 00 to 19 30 the traps yielded a total of 98 423 individuals including 143 species belonging to 26 fa milies we classified collections into five functional feeding groups herbivores predators decomposers parasitoids and pollinators the dominant functional species were herbivores followed in rank order by predators most individuals in the traps were predatory species we assembled an insect fauna data set that will be useful in the study of southeast asian agricultural ecosystems and provided the data in the darwin core archive format,2015,0.477
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 67. Notes on Lejeuneaceae subtribus Cololejeuneinae (Marchantiophyta),cololejeunea subg aphanolejeunea is validated two new combinations one validated species name 14 new synonyms and four new lectotypes in cololejeunea are proposed the genus austrolejeunea is shown to be invalid and all species are transferred to nephelolejeunea making three new combinations and validating five species names,2015,0.682
Adaptive plasticity and niche expansion in an invasive thistle.,phenotypic differentiation in size and fecundity between native and invasive populations of a species has been suggested as a causal driver of invasion in plants local adaptation to novel environmental conditions through a micro evolutionary response to natural selection may lead to phenotypic differentiation and fitness advantages in the invaded range local adaptation may occur along a stress tolerance trade off favoring individuals that in benign conditions shift resource allocation from stress tolerance to increased vigor and fecundity and therefore invasiveness alternately the typically disturbed invaded range may select for a plastic generalist strategy making phenotypic plasticity the main driver of invasion success to distinguish between these hypotheses we performed a field common garden and tested for genetically based phenotypic differentiation resource allocation shifts in response to water limitation and local adaptation to the environmental gradient which describes the source locations for native and invasive populations of diffuse knapweed centaurea diffusa plants were grown in an experimental field in france naturalized range under water addition and limitation conditions after accounting for phenotypic variation arising from environmental differences among collection locations we found evidence of genetic variation between the invasive and native populations for most morphological and life history traits under study invasive c diffusa populations produced larger later maturing and therefore potentially fitter individuals than native populations evidence for local adaptation along a resource allocation trade off for water limitation tolerance is equivocal however native populations do show evidence of local adaptation to an environmental gradient a relationship which is typically not observed in the invaded range broader analysis of the climatic niche inhabited by the species in both ranges suggests that the physiological tolerances of c diffusa may have expanded in the invaded range this observation could be due to selection for plastic general purpose genotypes with broad environmental tolerances,2015,0.615
"Diversity analysis of serpentine and non-serpentine flora – or, is serpentinite inhabited by a smaller number of species compared to different rock types?",it is generally accepted belief that serpentine areas are inhabited by a smaller number of species than known from other types of geological substrates based on this idea we selected as a model system the area of the northwestern serbia and å umadija with well represented serpentinite carbonate and silicate rocks in order to evaluate the influence of a different geology and habitat types on the differentiation of the analyzed floras and determine whether the serpentinites are really inhabited by a smaller number of species than other types of geological substrate based on the results of several statistical analyses of the investigated area we found that i serpentinites are inhabited by a smaller number of species compared to carbonate but a higher number of species compared to silicate geological substrate ii the particular habitat types on serpentinites exhibit greater floristic diversity than the equivalent habitat types on other geological substrates iii similarity within the same habitat type of serpentinite carbonate and silicate floras is greater than the similarity between the different serpentine floras of the different habitat types iv environmental factors such as moisture and habitat type have a larger impact on the differentiation of the flora compared to the type of geological substrate and v the largest number of serpentinophytes were registered in the xerophilous forests and xerophilous grasslands compared to other habitat types,2015,0.655
Latitudinal shift in thermal niche breadth results from thermal release during a climate-mediated range expansion,aim climate change is currently altering the geographical distribution of species but how this process contributes to biogeographical variation in ecological traits is unknown range shifting species are predicted to encounter and respond to new selective regimes during their expansion phase but also carry historical adaptations to their ancestral range we sought to identify how historical and novel components of the environment interact to shape latitudinal trends in thermal tolerance thermal tolerance breadth and phenotypic plasticity of a range shifting species location southern and central sweden methods to evaluate phenotypic responses to changes in the thermal selective environment we experimentally determined the upper and lower thermal tolerances of 2000 wild caught damselflies ischnura elegans from populations distributed across core and expanding range edge regions we then identified changing correlations between thermal tolerance climate and recent weather events across the range expansion niche modelling was employed to evaluate the relative contributions of varying climatic selective regimes to overall habitat suitability for the species in core versus range edge regions results upper thermal tolerance exhibited local adaptation to climate in the core region but showed evidence of having been released from thermal selection during the current range expansion in contrast chill coma recovery exhibited local adaptation across the core region and range expansion corresponding to increased climatic variability at higher latitudes adaptive plasticity of lower thermal tolerances acclimation ability increased towards the northern expanding range edge main conclusions our results suggest micro evolutionary mechanisms for several large scale and general biogeographical patterns including spatially and latitudinally invariant heat tolerances brett s rule and increased thermal acclimation rates and niche breadths at higher latitudes population level processes unique to climate mediated range expansions may commonly underpin many broader macro physiological trends,2015,0.729
Point process models for presence-only analysis-a review,1 presence only data are widely used for species distribution modelling and point process regression models are a exible tool that has considerable potential for this problem when data arise as point events 2 in this paper we review point process models some of their advantages and some common methods of tting them to presence only data 3 advantages include and are not limited to clari cation of what the response variable is that is modelled a framework for choosing the num ber and location of quadrature points commonly referred to as pseudo absences or background points objectively clarity of model assump tions and tools for checking them models to handle spatial dependence between points when it is present ways forward regarding difficult issues such as accounting for sampling bias 4 point process models are related to some common approaches to presence only species distribution modelling which means that a variety of di er ent software tools can be used to fit these models including maxent or generalised linear modelling software,2015,0.302
"Geographic distribution of Labidus coecus (Latr.) (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), a subterranean army ant",labidus coecus latreille hymenoptera formicidae is a new world subterranean army ant with an extensive geographic range we compiled and mapped 650 site records for l coecus documenting the earliest known report for 27 geographic areas countries us states and major west indian islands including three for which there are no previously published records margarita tobago and trinidad with the new records l coecus has now been reported from 20 countries in central and south america all except chile three west indian islands margarita trinidad and tobago and four us states arkansas louisiana oklahoma and texas the range of l coecus appears to be essentially continuous from buenos aires argentina in the south 34 6â s to delaware county oklahoma in the north 36 6â n the three west indian islands with l coecus populations are all continental shelf islands that were connected to south america during periods of lower sea levels a few thousand years ago so l coecus populations on these islands have only recently become isolated labidus coecus commonly nests in caves a microhabitat that may allow it to live in regions with otherwise inhospitable climates although recent papers listed l coecus as an exotic species in north america we found no evidence that l coecus is exotic to any part of its known range,2015,0.675
Conservation status of eight rare (Apiaceae) taxa from Syria,habitat fragmentation is one of the main threats to biodiversity hence many species nowadays occur mainly in small and isolated populations such as endemic species and will be expected to face extinction the precise evaluation of the conservation status of a particular species is a necessary condition to prevent its extinction the correct assessment of conservation status of a species is the most significant tools in biodiversity conservation extensive field studies and a large number of specimens collected from n w syria and examining herbarium specimens deposited at some limited syrian herbaria ecological properties were also observed in the field threatened categories are proposed according to iucn red list categories version 3 1 conservation status of eight species is evaluated for syria and global level threatened categories of the species are determined as â nt for peucedanum mucronatum johrenia dichotoma and eryngium desertorum locally and changed for the first two species to lc on globally the latter is endemic only to the region â vu for chaerophyllum libanoticum ferulago cassia and johrenia porteri for local and global levels â en for ferula hermonis for both the local and global levels â cr for eryngium maritimum for the local level but decreased to nt on the global level the taxa mainly distributed at coastal areas and mountains of east mediterranean this region is under various threats because of human disturbance agricultural activities and repeated forest fires in recent years therefore in situ and ex situ conservation measures should be enforced for the species,2015,0.95
Records for the Mourning Gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris) and its expansion in Costa Rica,incilius luetkenii smilisca sordida and lithobates forreri predation by birds predation on adult anurans by tropical birds has been recorded on numerous occasions where birds of various families e g accipitridae striigidae momotidae turdidae have preyed on anurans of different families e g centrolenidae dendrobatidae hylidae leptodactylidae rhinophrynidae hayes 1983 master 1999 toledo et al 2007 acosta and morãºn 2014 ramã rez fernã ndez and solã s delvalle 2014 the majority of these events are opportunistic and associated with diet generalist or invertebrate and vertebrate predator bird species toledo et al 2007 amã zquita et al 2013 paluh et al 2015 here we present information on the predation of incilius luetkenii bufonidae smilisca sordida hylidae and lithobates forreri ranidae by birds in costa rica,2015,0.542
"A further record of the marine Isopod Idotea metallica Bosc, 1802 in Irish waters and a review of the species’ habitats, trophic associations and ecology in NW European waters",on 25 may 2014 a dead adult specimen of the marine isopod idotea metallica bosc 1802 was discovered inside a stranded plastic vented bait jar of north american origin on lohar beach near waterville co kerry south west ireland the status of i metallica in irish and north west european waters is reviewed although the current paucity of records would suggest that the species is relatively rare this may simply be due to a lack of recording effort,2015,0.564
"Biogeography and Distribution of Mugilidae in the Western, Central and Southern Regions of Africa",mullets grey mullets are a family mugilidae and order of ray finned fish found in temperate and tropical waters worldwide there are approximately 80 species of mullet these fish have been considered an important food source in mediterranean europe since roman times this book provides a long overdue update on the biology and ecology of mullets and features comprehensive coverage of the key features of the mugilidae family such as recent dna evidence and morphological data that challenge the traditional taxonomy,2015,0.47
"The contribution of phenolic acids to the anti-inflammatory activity of mushrooms: screening in phenolic extracts, individual parent molecules and synthesized glucuronated and methylated derivatives",in the present study the ethanolic extracts of fourteen wild edible mushrooms were investigated for their anti inflammatory potential in lps lipopolysaccharide activated raw 264 7 macrophages furthermore the extract s were chemically characterized in terms of phenolic acids and related compounds the identified parent molecules p hydroxybenzoic p coumaric and cinnamic acids and their synthesised glucuronated and methylated derivatives obtained by chemical synthesis were evaluated for the same bioactivity in order to establish a structure activity relationship and to understand the contribution of the compounds to the activity of the extracts the extract pleurotus ostreatus m acrolepiota procera b oletus impolitus and a garicus bisporus revealed the strongest anti inflammatory potential presenting also the highest concentration in cinnamic acid which was also the individual compound with the highest anti inflammatory activity the derivatives of p coumaric acid revealed the strongest properties e specially the compound coa m1 that exhibited a very similar activity to the one showed by dexametha sone used as anti inflammatory standard by contrast the p hydroxybenzoic derivatives revealed the lowest inhibition of no production all in all whereas the conjugation reactions change the chemical structure of phenolic acids and may increase or decrea se their activity the glucuronated and methylated derivatives of the studied compounds are still displaying anti inflammatory activity,2015,0.165
Accelerating the Digitization of Biodiversity Research Specimens through Online Public Participation,a goal of the biodiversity research community is to digitize the majority of the one billion specimens in us collections by 2020 meeting this ambitious goal requires increased collaboration and technological innovation and broader engagement beyond the walls of universities and museums engaging the public in digitization promises to both serve the digitizing institutions and further the public understanding of biodiversity science we discuss three broad areas accessible to public participants that will accelerate research progress label and ledger transcription georeferencing from locality descriptions and specimen annotation from images we illustrate each activity compare useful tools present best practices and standards and identify gaps in our knowledge and areas for improvement the field of public participation in digitization of biodiversity research specimens is in a growth phase with many emerging opportunities for scientists educators and the public as well as broader communication with complementary projects in other areas e g the digital humanities,2015,0.194
Rapid multi-nation distribution assessment of a charismatic conservation species using open access ensemble model GIS predictions: Red panda (Ailurus fulgens) in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya region,the red panda ailurus fulgens is a globally threatened species living in the multi national hindu kush himalaya hkh region it has a declining population trend due to anthropogenic pressures human driven climate change is expected to have substantial impacts however quantitative and transparent information on the ecological niche potential as well as realized of this species across the vast and complex eight nations of the hkh region is lacking such baseline information is not only crucial for identifying new populations but also for restoring locally extinct populations for understanding its bio geographical evolution as well as for prioritizing regions and an efficient management first we compiled and made publicly available through an institutional repository dspace the best known â presence onlyâ red panda dataset with iso compliant metadata this was done through the international centre for integrated mountain development icimod org data platform to the global biodiversity information facility gbif org we used data mining and machine learning algorithms such as high performance commercial classification and regression trees random forest treenet and multivariate adaptive regression splines implementations we averaged all these geographic information system gis models for the first produced ensemble model for this species in the hkh region our predictive model is the first of its kind and allows to assess the red panda distribution based on empirical open access data latest methods and the major signals and drivers of the ecological niche it allows to assess and fine tune earlier habitat area estimates our models promote â best professional practicesâ it can readily be used by the red panda recovery team the red panda action plan etc because they are robust transparent publicly available fit for use and have a good accuracy as judged by several independent assessment metrics receiver operating characteristics roc auc curves expert opinion assessed by known absence regions 95 confidence intervals and new field data,2015,0.529
In situ conservation of CWR in Spain: present and future,one of the tasks carried out under the frame of the pgr secure project was the development of national strategies for the preservation of cwr across europe these national strategies have produced lists of prioritized cwr inventories and also studied the in situ and ex situ conservation status of the cwr selected as well as generated proposals for better conservation and better access to them fitzgerald 2013 rubio teso et al 2013 panella et al 2014,2015,0.34
Prioritizing West African medicinal plants for conservation and sustainable extraction studies based on market surveys and species distribution models,sub saharan african human populations rely heavily on wild harvested medicinal plants for their health the trade in herbal medicine provides an income for many west african people but little is known about the effects of commercial extraction on wild plant populations detailed distribution maps are lacking for even the most commonly traded species here we combine quantitative market surveys in ghana and benin with species distribution models sdms to assess potential speciesâ vulnerability to overharvesting and to prioritize areas for sustainable extraction studies we provide the first detailed distribution maps for 12 commercially extracted medicinal plants in west africa we suggest an iucn threat status for four forest species that were not previously assessed sphenocentrum jollyanum okoubaka aubrevillei entada gigas and piper guineense which have narrow distributions in west africa and are extensively commercialized as sdms estimate the extent of suitable abiotic habitat conditions rather than population size per se their output is of limited use to assess vulnerability for overharvesting of widely distributed species examples of such species are khaya senegalensis and securidaca longipedunculata two trees that were reported by market vendors as becoming increasingly scarce in the wild field surveys should start in predicted suitable habitats closest to urban areas and main roads as commercial extraction likely occurs at the shortest cost distance to the markets our study provides an example of applying sdms to conservation assessments aiming to safeguard provisioning ecosystems,2015,0.869
"Maasoglossum, a basal genus in Geoglossomycetes",the genus maasoglossum is examined using morphology ecology and molecular systematics of the internal transcribed spacer region and large subunit of the nuclear ribosomal rna gene all of which support the placement of maasoglossum among the basal members of geoglossomycetes the morphology of the genus extends the range of ascocarp and ascospore development in geoglossomycetes the ecology and conservational significance of the genus is discussed a nomenclatural transfer of geoglossum aseptatum to maasoglossum is made and an emended description of maasoglossum is provided,2015,0.367
Specimens as primary data: museums and 'open science'.,in 1977 eugene odum advocated a synthetic approach if ecology were to rise above the level of explanation afforded by independent individual studies 1 today odum s wish is being fulfilled and important advances are being made by synthesising data derived from great numbers of studies either by scaling up temporally or geographically 2 however to allow effective creative and reproducible integration of ecological and environmental results the methods and data used need to be made freely accessible and combinable only then can integrated ecology become a field where the ideals of â open scienceâ 3 fully come to fruition indeed although great challenges remain 4 and 5 open access to ecological data methods and analysis is rapidly improving 6 and 7 nonetheless we here call attention to what we perceive as one important obstacle to open data in biodiversity studies,2015,0.231
"An End-to-End DNA Taxonomy Methodology for Benthic Biodiversity Survey in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Central Pacific Abyss",recent years have seen increased survey and sampling expeditions to the clarion clipperton zone ccz central pacific ocean abyss driven by commercial interests from contractors in the potential extraction of polymetallic nodules in the region part of the international seabed authority isa regulatory requirements are that these contractors undertake environmental research expeditions to their ccz exploration claims following guidelines approved by the isa legal and technical commission isa 2010 section 9 e of these guidelines instructs contractors to â œâ collect data on the sea floor communities specifically relating to megafauna macrofauna meiofauna microfauna nodule fauna and demersal scavengersâ there are a number of methodological challenges to this including the water depth 4000â 5000 m extremely warm surface waters 28 â c compared to bottom water 1 5 â c and great distances to ports requiring a large and long seagoing expedition with only a limited number of scientists both scientists and regulators have recently realized that a major gap in our knowledge of the region is the fundamental taxonomy of the animals that live there this is essential to inform our knowledge of the biogeography natural history and ultimately our stewardship of the region recognising this the isa is currently sponsoring a series of taxonomic workshops on the ccz fauna and to assist in this process we present here a series of methodological pipelines for dna taxonomy incorporating both molecular and morphological data of the macrofauna and megafauna from the ccz benthic habitat in the recent abyssline cruise program to the uk 1 exploration claim a major problem on recent ccz cruises has been the collection of high quality samples suitable for both morphology and dna taxonomy coupled with a workflow that ensures these data are made available the dna sequencing techniques themselves are relatively standard once good samples have been obtained the key to quality taxonomic work on macrofaunal animals from the tropical abyss is careful extraction of the animals in cold filtered seawater microscopic observation and preservation of live specimens from a variety of sampling devices by experienced zoologists at sea essential to the long term iterative building of taxonomic knowledge from the ccz is an â œend to endâ methodology to the taxonomic science that takes into account careful sampling design at sea taxonomic identification and fixation post cruise laboratory work with both dna and morphology and finally a careful sample and data management pipeline that results in specimens and data in accessible open museum collections and online repositories,2015,0.668
Biotic and abiotic factors influencing diversification of herbivorous mammals,abstract both biotic and abiotic factors are known to control diversification though these factors are believed to operate at distinct temporal and spatial scales i e the multilevel mixed model often the scales at which key processes and outcomes of diversification operate are ambiguous or confused to explore the dependence of factors promoting diversification on spatiotemporal scales as well as the biology and ecology of clades my dissertation examined the interactive effects of lineage specific traits with ecology and environment at multiple taxonomic temporal and spatial scales i focused on the effects of a novel digestive strategy foregut fermentation in herbivorous mammals in chapter ii i tested predictions of a popular macroevolutionary model to evaluate the role of an abiotic factor ecological opportunity in the diversification of the foregut fermenting old world colobine monkeys this work corroborated a growing body of work that the model is sensitive to the geographic scale of diversification in particular to multiple dispersal divergence events within a single radiation in addition to the abiotic factor i also found evidence for an important role of dietary specialization a biotic factor on the diversification of asian colobines deviating from the current multilevel mixed model these findings showed that both biotic and abiotic factors can be important controls on diversification at long timescales and large geographical scales in chapter iii i tested the effects of foregut fermentation on the relationship between ecological specialization and speciation rates in the terrestrial herbivorous mammals my findings indicated that foregut fermentation did mediate speciation rates in mammals supporting roles for both biotic and abiotic factors in determining differences in speciation among clades at intermediate temporal and geographical scales in chapter iv i investigated the effects of environmental change specifically historical climatic perturbations and its interaction with digestive strategy on speciation rates of the terrestrial herbivorous mammals i found that climatic instability since the last glacial maximum had stronger multifarious effects on the richness of foregut fermenting mammals in contrast hindgut herbivores experienced bounded instability across the continents on which they occur these findings support important roles for both biotic and abiotic factors on species richness over short timescales and intermediate geographical scales overall my findings from chapters ii iv together show that not only are the effects of biotic and abiotic factors on diversity important on spatiotemporal scales not currently recognized in the multilevel mixed model the effects of the factors themselves are likely to vary based on the biological and ecological differences found within and among clades,2015,0.015
Arctic biodiversity: increasing richness accompanies shrinking refugia for a cold-associated tundra fauna,as ancestral biodiversity responded dynamically to late quaternary climate changes so are extant organisms responding to the warming trajectory of the anthropocene ecological predictive modeling statistical hypothesis tests and genetic signatures of demographic change can provide a powerful integrated toolset for investigating these biodiversity responses to climate change and relative resiliency across different communities within the biotic province of beringia we analyzed specimen localities and dna sequences from 28 mammal species associated with boreal forest and arctic tundra biomes to assess both historical distributional and evolutionary responses and then forecasted future changes based on statistical assessments of past and present trajectories and quantified distributional and demographic changes in relation to major management regions within the study area we addressed three sets of hypotheses associated with aspects of methodological biological and socio political importance by ask,2015,0.381
"Biogeography, Population Genetics, and Community Structure of North American Bumble Bees",in 2011 several wild north american bumble bee pollinator species were reported to ha ve declined by up to 96 in relative abundance in comparison to historic estimates and one species was speculated to be extinct none of these species have yet been documented to have recovered from these declines and additional species are now suggested to be at risk imperiled species in particular show increased specificity to narrow climatic envelopes as opposed to putatively stable species my dissertation describes patterns of population genetic diversity structure and gene flow pathways associated with climate variation and his torical biogeography of bumble bees distributed in western north america the results of my dissertation research suggests that 1 historic climate variability predicts contemporary patterns of population genetic structure and divergence in an economically important species 2 color variability in bumbl e bees is likely associated with lineage diversification and phylogeography 3 bumble be e community structure across evolutionary time is likely driven by mã llerian mimicry at narrow spatial scales and 4 bumble bees inhabiting specialized ecological niches are associated with high levels of genetic fixation at regional sp atial scales in th e pacific northwest the results of my research directly contribute to current efforts to effectively manage conserve and advocate for wild bumble bee pollinators in the context of global c hange,2015,0.975
"A Phylogenetically Based Infrageneric Classification of the Parasitic Plant Genus <I>Cuscuta</I> (Dodders, Convolvulaceae)",cuscuta dodders convolvulaceae is one of the largest and most economically important lineages of parasitic plants the genus has a sub cosmopolitan distribution with more than 75 of the species diversifying in the new world the last monograph published by truman george yuncker in 1932 provided a solid species level taxonomic foundation however as revealed by recent phylogenetic studies its infrageneric classification has been in great need of a taxonomic reappraisal mainly because the morphological characters used in the previous classifications have been greatly affected by convergent evolution several recent phylogenetic and character evolution studies with broad sampling as well as species level revisions have illustrated the deficiencies of previous classifications and provided an explicit and robust phylogenetic framework here we propose a new phylogenetic classification that places all 194 currently accepted species of cuscuta into four subgenera and 18 sections sections have a strong morphological and biogeographical predictive value and include from one to 31 species thirteen section names are new or applied for the first time at the sectional rank babylonicae yunck m a garcä ì a subulatae engelm costea stefanovic ì obtusilobae engelm costea stefanovic ì prismaticae yunck costea stefanovic ì ceratophorae yunck costea stefanovic ì umbellatae yunck costea stefanovic ì gracillimae costea stefanovic ì californicae yunck costea stefanovic ì indecorae yunck costea stefanovic ì oxycarpae engelm ex yunck costea stefanovic ì racemosae yunck costea stefanovic ì partitae costea stefanovic ì and denticulatae yunck costea stefanovic ì an identification key to sections is included together with an overview of morphology geographical distribution taxonomic notes and lists of included species,2015,0.816
Broccoli sprout extract induces detoxification-related gene expression and attenuates acute liver injury.,aim to investigate the effects of broccoli sprout extract bsex on liver gene expression and acute liver injury in the rat methods first the effects of bsex on liver gene expression were examined male rats were divided into two groups the control group was fed the ain 76 diet and the bsex group was fed the ain 76 diet containing bsex after a 10 d feeding period rats were sacrificed and their livers were used for dna microarray and real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction rt pcr analyses next the effects of bsex on acute liver injury were examined in experiments using acute liver injury models 1000 mg kg acetaminophen apap or 350 mg kg d galactosamine d galn was used to induce injury these male rats were divided into four groups control bsex inducer apap or d galn and inducer bsex the feeding regimens were identical for the two analyses twenty four hours following apap administration via p o or d galn administration via i p rats were sacrificed to determine serum aspartate transaminase ast and alanine transaminase alt levels hepatic glutathione gsh and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances accumulation and glutathione s transferase gst activity results microarray and real time rt pcr analyses revealed that bsex upregulated the expression of genes related to detoxification and glutathione synthesis in normal rat liver the levels of ast 70 91 â 15 74 iu ml vs 5614 41 â 1997 83 iu ml p 0 05 and alt 11 78 â 2 08 iu ml vs 1297 71 â 447 33 iu ml p 0 05 were significantly suppressed in the apap bsex group compared with the apap group the level of gsh 2 61 â 0 75 nmol g tissue vs 1 66 â 0 59 nmol g tissue p 0 05 and liver gst activity 93 19 â 16 55 u g tissue vs 51 90 â 16 85 u g tissue p 0 05 were significantly increased in the apap bsex group compared with the apap group ast 4820 05 â 3094 93 iu ml vs 12465 63 â 3223 97 iu ml p 0 05 and alt 1808 95 â 1014 04 iu ml vs 3936 46 â 777 52 iu ml p 0 05 levels were significantly suppressed in the d galn bsex group compared with the d galn group but the levels of ast and alt in the d galn bsex group were higher than those in the apap bsex group the level of gst activity was significantly increased in the d galn bsex group compared with the d galn group 98 04 â 15 75 u g tissue vs 53 15 â 8 14 u g tissue p 0 05 conclusion we demonstrated that bsex protected the liver from various types of xenobiotic substances through induction of detoxification enzymes and glutathione synthesis,2015,0.14
Global Ecosystem Restoration Index,the following pages describe five new indicators for assessing and reporting progress against aichi targets 5 11 12 14 15 and 19 and are derived by integrating data from three essential biodiversity variables species distributions taxonomic diversity and ecosystem extent by integrating the comple mentary strengths of different types of data the resulting indicators offer some important benefits for example they help to fill geographical and taxonomic gaps in the coverage of measures based purely on in situ biological data and are able to translate measures based purely on remote sensing for example of habitat loss and degradation into biologically scaled indicators of likely impacts on biodiversity,2015,0.395
"A new species of Paracreptotrema (Digenea, Plagiorchiformes, Allocreadiidae) infecting two species of poeciliids in Río Malila of the Río Pánuco basin, Hidalgo, México, with a key to the species of the genus.",paracreptotremarosenthali sp n was discovered in the intestine of xiphophorusmalinche and pseudoxiphophorusjonesii collected from the headwaters of rã o malila tributary of rã o conzintla in the rã o pã nuco basin hidalgo mã xico during 2008 2009 the new species differs from the five known species of paracreptotrema choudhury pã rez ponce de leã n brooks daverdin 2006 by having vitelline follicles that extend from a level anterior to the pharynx to mid testes the seminal vesicle which is more extensively folded and a wider cirrus sac the new species resembles paracreptotremaheterandriae in the length of its ceca which surpasses the posterior margin of the ovary but do not reach the testes a key to the species of paracreptotrema is provided,2015,0.828
The Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS): a ten-year appraisal,the register of antarctic marine species rams is a marine species database that manages an authoritative taxonomic list of species occurring in the southern ocean rams links with several other initiatives managing biogeographic or genomics information the current paper aims to briefly present rams and provides an updated snapshot of its contents in the form of a darwincore checklist available through http ipt biodiversity aq resource do r rams and illustrative barplots moreover this article presents a ten year appraisal since the creation of rams this appraisal first focuses on rams bibliometrics we observed that rams was cited google scholar in 50 distinct publications among which 32 were peer reviewed in 18 different journals three journals antarctic science polar biology zookeys represent almost 40 of these peer review publications the second appraisal focuses on the evolution of new rams records we observed an important decrease in data additions since 2011 as a case study we focused on an original dataset for a specific group asteroidea echinodermata it appears that around one hundred species of asteroids are lacking in rams despite the relatively high availability of these data this suggests that the usersâ community or collaborative projects such as aquares could be helpful in order to maintain the rams database over the long term,2015,0.355
Impact of model complexity on cross-temporal transferability in Maxent species distribution models: An assessment using paleobotanical data,maximum entropy modeling maxent is a widely used algorithm for predicting species distributions across space and time properly assessing the uncertainty in such predictions is non trivial and requires validation with independent datasets notably model complexity number of model parameters remains a major concern in relation to overfitting and hence transferability of maxent models an emerging approach is to validate the cross temporal transferability of model predictions using paleoecological data in this study we assess the effect of model complexity on the performance of maxent projections across time using two european plant species alnus glutinosa l gaertn and corylus avellana l with an extensive late quaternary fossil record in spain as a study case we fit 110 models with different levels of complexity under present time and tested model performance using auc area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and aicc corrected akaike information criterion through the standard procedure of randomly partitioning current occurrence data we then compared these results to an independent validation by projecting the models to mid holocene 6000 years before present climatic conditions in spain to assess their ability to predict fossil pollen presenceâ absence and abundance we find that calibrating maxent models with default settings result in the generation of overly complex models while model performance increased with model complexity when predicting current distributions it was higher with intermediate complexity when predicting mid holocene distributions hence models of intermediate complexity resulted in the best trade off to predict species distributions across time reliable temporal model transferability is especially relevant for forecasting species distributions under future climate change consequently species specific model tuning should be used to find the best modeling settings to control for complexity notably with paleoecological data to independently validate model projections for cross temporal projections of species distributions for which paleoecological data is not available models of intermediate complexity should be selected,2015,0.12
SDMdata: A Web-Based Software Tool for Collecting Species Occurrence Records.,it is important to easily and efficiently obtain high quality species distribution data for predicting the potential distribution of species using species distribution models sdms there is a need for a powerful software tool to automatically or semi automatically assist in identifying and correcting errors here we use python to develop a web based software tool sdmdata to easily collect occurrence data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and check species names and the accuracy of coordinates latitude and longitude it is an open source software gnu affero general public license agpl licensed allowing anyone to access and manipulate the source code sdmdata is available online free of charge from http www sdmserialsoftware org sdmdata,2015,0.738
"Fossil Platygastroidea in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution",platygastroid wasps preserved in dominican amber and oil shale from the kishenehn formation montana usa in the national museum of natural history are catalogued compression fossils in kishenehn oil shale yield a specimen of fidiobia a specimen of telenominae and a specimen with a scelio type ovipositor system twenty five described genera are documented from dominican amber all of which are known from the extant fauna allostemma masner huggert aradophagus ashmead calliscelio ashmead calotelea westwood duta nixon embidobia ashmead embioctonus masner fidiobia ashmead gryon haliday idris fã rster inostemma haliday leptacis fã rster leptoteleia kieffer macroteleia kieffer odontacolus kieffer opisthacantha ashmead parabaeus kieffer paridris kieffer platygaster latreille plaumannion masner johnson probaryconus kieffer psilanteris kieffer spiniteleia masner telenomus haliday and triteleia kieffer fourteen of these genera do not have previously published fossil records and are here documented for the first time plaumannion fistulosum talamas sp n and paridris yumai talamas sp n are described as new species a phylogenetic analysis of paridris including p yumai is presented a male specimen belonging to an undescribed scelionine genus is documented and illustrated but not described as the best features for circumscribing this taxon are found in the female and monographic work on this group is currently underway by other workers four specimens from baltic amber belonging to leptacis platygaster and sembilanocera brues are presented for comparison to extant specimens and inclusions in dominican amber,2015,0.673
"Environmental filtering increases in intensity at both ends of climatic gradients, though driven by different factors, across woody vegetation types of the southwest USA",species distributions are theorized to be more intensively constrained by abiotic factors in severe than in benign environments a similar concept can be applied to assemblages of species environmental filtering is expected to increase in intensity in colder and drier environments to assess the filtering effects of climate on vegetation at a regional scale climate niche values were estimated for 338 woody species across 93 vegetation types from arid sub tropical to alpine ecosystems of the southwest usa the standardized range and spacing of climatic niche values in each vegetation type â used as estimates of the intensity of climatic and micro environmental filtering respectively â were correlated with the mean niche values of those vegetation types â used as surrogates for climatic gradients â in order to assess how filtering of vegetation composition varies along broad climatic gradients the range of climatic niche values was narrower than expected in most vegetation types indicating significant climatic filtering with frost having the strongest average effect niche spacing differed little from null expectations variation in the intensity of climatic filtering along gradients of the same climate variable was primarily asymmetrical and provided support for the hypothesis that abiotic filtering is most intense in cold and growing season dry environments however filtering patterns of at least one climatic factor along gradients of other climatic factors ran counter to the trend of increasing filter intensity in cold or dry environments in other words climatic factors exhibited interactive effects on vegetation filtering often in antagonistic ways the majority of these interactions were compatible with interspecific niche relationships that correspond with anatomical and physiological tradeoffs among drought frost and heat tolerances filtering patterns and interspecific tradeoffs are likely to vary across taxa and biomes and application of the methods presented here could help to explain such variation,2015,0.486
Beyond climate: disturbance niche shifts in invasive species,aim analysing how species niches shift between native and introduced ranges is a powerful tool for understanding the determinants of species distributions and for anticipating range expansions by invasive species most studies only consider the climatic niche by correlating widely available presence only data with regional climate however habitat characteristics and disturbance also shape species niches thereby potentially confounding shifts attributed only to differences in climate here we used presence and abundance data for oxalis pes caprae a species native to south africa and invading areas globally to understand how niche shifts may be influenced by disturbance at habitat and landscape scales in addition to climate locality mediterranean climate areas world wide methods we used available presence only data and also conducted extensive surveys of the abundance of oxalis c 11 000 plots across different habitats in south africa and in the introduced range in the mediterranean basin we extended principal component analysis methods for measuring niche shifts by using bayesian generalized linear models to identify climatic and disturbance niche shifts results we found a large climatic niche expansion towards stronger seasonality and lower temperature in the introduced range but this expansion was greatly reduced when considering only conditions available in both ranges oxalis occupied more natural landscapes in the native range that remained unoccupied in the introduced range â niche unfillingâ in contrast to the similar abundances in natural and disturbed habitats in its native range oxalis was more abundant in disturbed habitats in the introduced range conclusions the large climatic niche expansion most likely reflects significant plasticity of oxalis rather than rapid evolution furthermore the unfilling of its disturbance niche in the introduced range suggests high potential for further invasion of natural areas together these findings suggest that the potential for future spread of invasive species may be underestimated by approaches that characterize species niches based only on climate or partial information about their distributions,2015,0.937
Remote assessment of locally important ecological features across landscapes: how representative of reality?,the local ecological footprinting tool left uses globally available databases modeling and algorithms to remotely assess locally important ecological features across landscapes based on five criteria biodiversity beta diversity vulnerability threatened species fragmentation connectivity and resilience this approach can be applied to terrestrial landscapes at a 300 m resolution within a given target area input is minimal latitude and longitude and output is a computer generated report and series of maps that both individually and synthetically depict the relative value of each ecological criteria a key question for any such tool however is how representative is the remotely obtained output compared to what is on the ground here we present the results from comparing remotely vs field generated outputs from the left tool on two distinct study areas for beta diversity and distribution of threatened species vulnerability the two fields computed by left for which such an approach is f,2015,0.503
How will the ‘molecular revolution’ contribute to biological recording?,soaring throughput plummeting costs and increased sensitivity for assaying degraded or low concentration dna are driving a revolution in the way that we monitor biodiversity arguably the biggest â game changerâ is environmental dna edna which refers to free floating dna released by organisms into their environment rare or elusive species can be detected with greater sensitivity and accuracy using edna than by most conventional methods and we have the capability to screen and describe whole communities as well as perform targeted monitoring of single species this paper discusses the basic approaches for molecular monitoring of biodiversity provides case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the techniques and considers any challenges and limitations that could impact molecular biological recording it is argued that edna surveys offer exciting new opportunities to engage the public in biological recording and that molecular approaches will complement conventional surveys enabling unprecedented insights into species distributions finally with the number of edna studies increasing at a rapid pace it is argued that there is a need to rapidly establish ways of managing molecular records integrating molecular records into existing biological records databases would enhance our understanding of species distributions and may be something that the biological records centre should be considering to mark its landmark anniversary,2015,0.735
Eco-geographical assessment of Avena L. wild species at the VIR herbarium and genebank collection,on the bases of analysis of the collecting sites of 1160 herbarium specimens and 1640 genebank accessions of wild avena l species from the world collection of the vavilov institute of plant genetic resources maps of areas of the species were produced data base a comparison of the climate conditions of the mediterranean southwestern asiatic and abyssinian centers of diversity with those of the oat species distribution areas shows that all oat species mostly prefer the moderately hot semi arid and dry climate an analysis of the range of soils in the areas of wild oat species distribution has shown that the collected accessions preferred different types of soil when considering the soil diversity within the areas of natural distribution of wild oat species it could be established that the majority of diploid and tetraploid taxa prefer to grow on mountain or plain cinnamon soils the hexaploid taxa favorites were the mountain forest brown or red brown soils as well as subtropical desert soils an analysis of the database of geographic distribution on wild oat species showed a full picture of oat species diversity and a basis to make plans concerning further collecting activities or a basis for selecting potential sources of novel genes that can improve some valuable traits and characters to use them for practical purposes,2015,0.989
Experimental Biodiversity Accounting as a component of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA),biodiversity the diversity of ecosystems species and genes plays an essential role in supporting human well being through maintaining functioning ecosystems that in turn deliver ecosystem services such as food the regulation of our climate and aesthetic enjoyment the system of environmental economic accounting 2012 experimental ecosyste m accounting seea eea provides a framework to measure and link ecosystem service flows supported by biodiversity and other ecosystem characteristics e g soil type altitude with the economy and other human activities it also allows comparison and inte gration of data on ecosystem services with other economic and social data biodiversity a ccount s one of a number of accounts in the seea eea framework can help understand the relationship between biodiversity within ecosystems and economic development an d planning activity by cutting across this data in a spatially explicit manner accounting for aspects of biodiversity is complex and as such experimentation of biodiversity accounting by countries is less advanced than water or carbon accounting for instance t his technical guidance document has been p repared in the context of the advancing the seea eea project it is aimed at practitioners who wish to collect and organize data to understand the status and trends of ecosystem and species diversit y and incorporate this into the seea eea framework for national accounting this document considers the concept of biodiversity in relation to ecosystem functioning a nd condition and its resilience in the context of national accounting it reviews some but not all of the e stablished approaches to assess ing the extent and condition of ecosystem diversity and for measuring species diversity and examines their suitability for accounting purposes t h is document sets out the data mobilisation process for national scale data and considers the use of global datasets and models to inform biodiversity accounts and other accounts in the seea eea framework such as ecosystem condition accounts to assist countries in implement ing biodiversity accounting th is technical g uidance document present s experimental biodiversity accounts drawing on case studies from around the world these are presented using a three tiered approach based on data availability other experimental accounts for ecosystem condition accounts and ecosy stem capacity accounts are also shown this document also highlights i ssues for resolution and recommendations for testing refining and validation in relation to biodiversity accounting,2015,0.181
Antarctic biodiversity surveys using high throughput sequencing: understanding landscape and communities of the Prince Charles Mountains.,antarctic soils are home to small inconspicuous organisms including bacteria unicellular eukaryotes fungi lichen cryptogamic plants and invertebrates antarctic soil communities are distinct from other soil biota as a consequence of long term persistence under harsh environmental conditions furthermore their long history of isolation is responsible for a high degree of endemism of major concern is the establishment of non indigenous species facilitated by human mediated climate change and increased human activity threatening the highly specialised endemic species a lack of baseline information on terrestrial antarctic biodiversity currently impairs efforts to conserve the unique but still largely unknown antarctic biota in this thesis i apply metagenetic high throughput sequencing mhts methods to address the deficiency of biological information from remote regions of continental antarctica and use the data generated to explore environmental constraints on antarctic biodiversity in chapter 1 i introduce current issues impeding the generation of baseline antarctic biodiversity data and evaluate the application of using mhts techniques this review highlights the potential of using mhts approaches using amplicon sequencing to retrieve eukaryotic biodiversity information from terrestrial antarctica in chapter 2 the eukaryotic diversity of three biologically unsurveyed regions in the prince charles mountains east antarctica pcms is explored total eukaryote biodiversity in the pcms appears to follow an altitudinal or latitudinal trend which is less obvious for terrestrial invertebrates in order to apply mhts to the study of antarctic invertebrates the comparative taxonomic assignment fidelities of metagenetic markers and morphological approaches are explored in chapter 3 fidelities of taxonomic assignments to four antarctic invertebrate phyla differed depending on metagenetic marker and only application of non arbitrary sequence processing parameters resulted in these findings in chapter 4 i use mhts derived biodiversity information to explore the relationship between soil properties and invertebrate biodiversity in the pcms across large spatial scales distribution of phyla tardigrada and arachnida and classes enoplea nematoda and bdelloidea rotifera in inland areas are constrained by terrain age related accumulation of salts while other classes chromadorea nematoda and monogonata bdelloidea are better able to tolerate high salinity in moister nutrient richer and more coastal areas this effect was less pronounced and a higher invertebrate diversity was found the methods applied and developed in this thesis are a valuable starting point to advance the collection of biodiversity information across terrestrial antarctica and other remote habitats the work presented here provides examples for generation and usage of mhts information from remote antarctic habitats demonstrates how biodiversity information retrieved using different metagenetic markers can be combined developed methods for assessing the quality of mhts markers and finally demonstrated the application of mhts data to investigate the environmental determinants of invertebrate diversity in remote ice free habitats future mhts biodiversity studies of antarctic terrestrial habitats should incorporate large sample numbers and use combined data from multiple genetic markers,2015,0.079
A semantic integration approach to publish and retrieve ecological data,purpose â the purpose of this paper is to present a four level architecture that aims at integrating publishing and retrieving ecological data making use of linked data ld it allows scientists to explore taxonomical spatial and temporal ecological information access trophic chain relations between species and complement this information with other data sets published on the web of data the development of ecological information repositories is a crucial step to organize and catalog natural reserves however they present some challenges regarding their effectiveness to provide a shared and global view of biodiversity data such as data heterogeneity lack of metadata standardization and data interoperability ld rose as an interesting technology to solve some of these challenges design methodology approach â ecological data which is produced and collected from different media resources is stored in distinct relational databases and published as rdf triples using a relational resource description,2015,0.258
The global spectrum of plant form and function,earth is home to a remarkable diversity of plant forms and life histories yet comparatively few essential trait combinations have proved evolutionarily viable in todayâ s terrestrial biosphere by analysing worldwide variation in six major traits critical to growth survival and reproduction within the largest sample of vascular plant species ever compiled we found that occupancy of six dimensional trait space is strongly concentrated indicating coordination and trade offs three quarters of trait variation is captured in a two dimensional global spectrum of plant form and function one major dimension within this plane reflects the size of whole plants and their parts the other represents the leaf economics spectrum which balances leaf construction costs against growth potential the global plant trait spectrum provides a backdrop for elucidating constraints on evolution for functionally qualifying species and ecosystems and for improving models that predict future vegetation based on continuous variation in plant form and function,2015,0.131
Projected distribution shifts and protected area coverage of range-restricted Andean birds under climate change,in this study we projected the effect of anthropogenic climate change in endemic and restricted range andean bird species that spread out from the center of bolivia to southeastern peru we also analyzed the representation of these species in protected areas the ensemble forecasts from niche based models indicated that 91â 100 of species may reduce their range size under full and no dispersal scenarios including five species that are currently threatened the large range reduction average 63 suggests these mountain species may be threatened by climate change the strong effects due to range species losses are predicted in the humid mountain forests of bolivia the representation of bird species also decreased in protected areas partial gap species 94â 86 are expected to increase over the present 62 this suggests climate change and other non climate stressors should be incorporated in conservations plans for the long term persistence of these species this study anticipates the magnitude of shifts in the distribution of endemic birds and represents in the study area the first exploration of the representation of range restricted andean birds in protected areas under climate change,2015,0.96
"Old natural history collections for new millennium – birds and mammals in the collection of PhMr. Tibor Weisz in Sarisske Museum Bardejov, Slovakia",there is a new role in front of natural history museums in 21 st century collections in museums including the local ones fulfill important role in documenting past states of biodiversity and providing benchmarks for understanding changes through time one of most important collections in region of central europe is in the sarisske museum bardejov slovakia this article has three main aims i to discuss the importance of natural history collections in light of recent scientific advances and global environmental problems ii to bring first more detailed list of mammal and bird collections in sarisske museum bardejov slovakia and finally iii to assess the possible use of such collection in evaluating biodiversity dynamics using comparison of gains and losses of bird species in region,2015,0.274
At the passing gate: past introgression in the process of species formation between Amazilia violiceps and A. viridifrons hummingbirds along the Mexican Transition Zone,aim we tested whether populations of violet crowned and green fronted hummingbirds amazilia violiceps and amazilia viridifrons are genetically and environmentally differentiated and examined the role of past geological and climatic changes in driving their diversification location trans mexican volcanic belt methods mitochondrial and nuclear dna of individuals collected throughout the species ranges were sequenced and then analysed using maximum likelihood and bayesian approaches species tree analysis bayesian species delimitation divergence time inference historical demography palaeodistribution modelling and niche divergence tests were used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the amazilia species and the isolation with migration coalescent model was assessed to determine whether genetic divergence between amazilia species occurred in the presence of gene flow results genetic divergence between a violiceps and a viridifrons was shallow with incomplete lineage sorting and introgression species delimitation supported three independent lineages a violiceps populations located north of the trans mexican volcanic belt a mixture of a violiceps south of the volcanic belt and a viridifrons populations and a villadai populations east of the isthmus of tehuantepec gene flow and divergence time estimates and demographic and palaeodistribution patterns support the model of species diversification by isolation with migration and habitat shifting in response to pleistocene climatic fluctuations main conclusions the process of speciation in the amazilia species complex may be explained by the combined effects of isolation resulting from the trans mexican volcanic belt and the lowlands at the isthmus of tehuantepec and habitat shifting in response to quaternary climatic changes,2015,0.985
Can we derive macroecological patterns from primary Global Biodiversity Information Facility data?,aim to determine whether the method used to build distributional maps from raw data influences the representation of two principal macroecological patterns the latitudinal gradient in species richness and the latitudinal variation in range sizes rapoport s rule location world wide methods all available distribution data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif for those fish species that are members of orders of fishes with only marine representatives in each order were extracted and cleaned so as to compare four different procedures point to grid gbif maps range maps applying an î shape gbif extent of occurrence eoo maps the maxent method of species distribution modelling gbif maxent maps and the maxent method but restricted to the area delimited by the î shape gbif maxent restricted maps results the location of hotspots and the latitudinal gradient in species richness or range sizes are relatively similar in the four procedures gbif eoo maps and most gbif maxent maps provide overestimations of species richness when compared with those present in a priori well surveyed cells gbif eoo maps seem to provide more reasonable world macroecological patterns maxent can erroneously predict the presence of species in environmentally similar cells of another hemisphere or in other regions that lie outside the range of the species limiting this overpredictive capacity as in the case of gbif maxent restricted maps seems to mimic the frequency of observations derived from a simple point to grid procedure with the utility of this procedure consequently being limited main conclusions in studies of macroecological patterns at a global scale the simple î shape method seems to be a more parsimonious option for extrapolating species distributions from primary data than are distribution models performed indiscriminately and automatically with maxent gbif data may be used in macroecological patterns if original data are cleaned autocorrelation is corrected and species richness figures do not constitute obvious underestimations efforts therefore should focus on improving the number and quality of records that can serve as the source of primary data in macroecological studies,2015,0.835
Will climate change increase the risk of plant invasions into mountains?,mountain ecosystems have been less adversely affected by invasions of non native plants than most other ecosystems partially because most invasive plants in the lowlands are limited by climate and cannot grow under harsher high elevation conditions however with ongoing climate change invasive species may rapidly move upwards and threaten mid and then high elevation mountain ecosystems we evaluated this threat by modeling the current and future habitat suitability for 48 invasive plant species in switzerland and new south wales australia both regions had contrasting climate interactions with elevation resulting in possible different responses of species distributions to climate change using a species distribution modeling approach that combines data from two spatial scales we built high resolution species distribution models less than or equal to 250 m that account for the global climatic niche of species and also finer variables depicting local climate and disturbances we found that differ,2015,0.771
A Unified Approach to Taxonomic Delimitation in the Fern Genus Pentagramma (Pteridaceae),the native goldback and silverback ferns of western north america composing the genus pentagramma are phylogenetically isolated within the xeric adapted cheilanthoid clade although species poor compared to its sister group pentagramma encompasses a diverse array of morphotypes cytotypes and flavonoid chemotypes because the differences are generally cryptic however the various entities are usually recognized at an infraspecific level in recent years as many as five subspecies have been ascribed to p triangularis and only p pallida has been considered sufficiently divergent to warrant recognition as a distinct species in this study we take a unified approach to taxonomic delimitation in pentagramma combining spore studies with phylogenetic analyses of plastid and nuclear sequences we identify six genetically and morphologically distinct diploid lineages each of which is here treated as a species a new species is described p glanduloviscida and three new combinations are made p maxonii p rebmanii and p viscosa,2015,0.806
Towards a global terrestrial species monitoring program,the convention on biological diversity s strategic plan lays out five goals â œ a address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society b reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use c improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems species and genetic diversity d enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services e enhance implementation through participatory planning knowledge management and capacity building â to meet and inform on the progress towards these goals a globally coordinated approach is needed for biodiversity monitoring that is linked to environmental data and covers all biogeographic regions during a series of workshops and expert discussions we identified nine requirements that we believe are necessary for developing and implementing such a global terrestrial species monitoring program the program needs to design and implement an integrated information chain from monitoring to policy reporting to create and implement minimal data standards and common monitoring protocols to be able to inform essential biodiversity variables ebvs and to develop and optimize semantics and ontologies for data interoperability and modelling in order to achieve this the program needs to coordinate diverse but complementary local nodes and partnerships in addition capacities need to be built for technical tasks and new monitoring technologies need to be integrated finally a global monitoring program needs to facilitate and secure funding for the collection of long term data and to detect and fill gaps in under observed regions and taxa the accomplishment of these nine requirements is essential in order to ensure data is comprehensive to develop robust models and to monitor biodiversity trends over large scales a global terrestrial species monitoring program will enable researchers and policymakers to better understand the status and trends of biodiversity,2015,0.396
The World Flora Online 2020 project: will Cameroon come up to the expectation?,biodiverse cameroon has been highlighted as the top country in tropical africa for plant species diversity per degree square with a higher diversity than all other west african countries added together and including two of the top documented centres of plant diversity in tropical africa despite its reduced taxonomic capacity with only six active taxonomists a high level of botanical activity in the country has resulted in accomplishments such as the databasing of the ya herbarium over 60 000 records which has an in country collection coverage of almost 95 of the known plant species that are recorded for cameroon other accomplishments are the red data book of the flowering plants of cameroon several local checklists and published volumes of the flore du cameroun which covers 37 of the countryâ s species currently the checklist of cameroon records 7 850 taxa at species and infraspecific level resources are needed to support and heighten the profile of this small botanical community already thanks to strong collaboration between cameroon and renowned botanical institutes of others countries in particular france and united kingdom one hundred and thirteen plant families have been published and would help this country to complete the recording of its biodiversity towards contributing to the world flora online 2020 project,2015,0.588
Potential impact of climatic change on medicinal plants used in the Karen women’s health care in northern Thailand,global climate change can be expected to drive losses in plant diversity to exemplifying this issue the potential impact of climate change on nine medicinal plants relating to karen womenâ s healthcare in northern thailand was investigated using species distribution models climatic and non climatic variables were used to develop the distributi on models the green house gas emissions scenarios a1b medium high emission and a2 high emission were used to examin e the potential future species distribution for year 2050 and 2080 it was shown that a combination of climatic and non climatic factors had strong effects on the distribution of medicinal plant species eight plant species were predicted to reduce suitable area in northern thailand whereas one species is predicted to increase suitable area following iucn red lis t criteria seven of the studied plant species were categorized as critically endangered under a1b or a2 scenarios by 2080 t he importance of planning for climate change effects on the availability of wild collected plant for rural population s was pointed ou,2015,0.886
"PATTERNS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN THE GLOBALLY INVASIVE SPECIES, WILD PARSNIP (PASTINACA SATIVA L.)",abstract wild parsnip is an invasive species with a global distribution in temperate climates parsnips are native to eurasia and have been cultivated for more than five centuries it is unclear whether the global invasion of this species is a consequence of escape from cultivation or the accidental introduction of a eurasian wild subspecies in this study we utilized nuclear ribosomal dna internal transcribed spacer its and chloroplast dna cpdna markers to evaluate the genetic structure of wild parsnip in its native range europe and in three distinct geographic regions where it is considered invasive eastern north america western north america and new zealand we also compared wild and cultivated parsnips to determine if they are genetically distinct from 112 individuals we recovered 14 its and 27 cpdna haplotypes one its haplotype was widespread few haplotypes were rare singletons in contrast at least two lineages of cpdna haplotypes were recovered with several novel haplotypes restricted,2015,0.811
Available Climate Regimes Drive Niche Diversification during Range Expansion,climate is a main predictor of biodiversity on a global scale yet how climate availability affects niche evolution remains poorly explored here we assess how inter continental climate differences may affect the evolution of climate niches and suggest three possible processes niche truncation along major environmental gradients inter continental differences in available climate causing differences in selective regimes and niche shifts associated with long distance dispersals leading to a pattern of punctuated evolution using the globally distributed danthonioid grasses we show significant niche differentiation among continents and several instances of niche truncation the comparison of inferred selective regimes with differences in available climatic space among continents demonstrates adaptation resulting from opportunistic evolution towards available climatic space our results suggest that niche evolution in this clade is punctuated consistent with accelerated niche evolution after long distance dispersal events finally we discuss how intrinsic constraints genetic developmental or functional and biotic interactions could have interacted with these three processes during range expansion integrating these mechanisms could improve predictions for invasive taxa and long term evolutionary responses of expanding clades to climate change available climate regimes drive niche diversification during range expansion researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 270586690 available climate regimes drive niche diversification during range expansion accessed sep 1 2015,2015,0.06
Ecogeography and utility to plant breeding of the crop wild relatives of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.).,crop wild relatives cwr are a rich source of genetic diversity for crop improvement combining ecogeographic and phylogenetic techniques can inform both conservation and breeding geographic occurrence bioclimatic and biophysical data were used to predict species distributions range overlap and niche occupancy in 36 taxa closely related to sunflower helianthus annuus l taxa lacking comprehensive ex situ conservation were identified the predicted distributions for 36 helianthus taxa identified substantial range overlap range asymmetry and niche conservatism specific taxa e g helianthus deblis nutt helianthus anomalus blake and helianthus divaricatus l were identified as targets for traits of interest particularly for abiotic stress tolerance and adaptation to extreme soil properties the combination of techniques demonstrates the potential for publicly available ecogeographic and phylogenetic data to facilitate the identification of possible sources of abiotic stress traits for plant breeding programs much of the primary genepool wild h annuus occurs in extreme environments indicating that introgression of targeted traits may be relatively straightforward sister taxa in helianthus have greater range overlap than more distantly related taxa within the genus this adds to a growing body of literature suggesting that in plants unlike some animal groups geographic isolation may not be necessary for speciation,2015,0.577
Evaluating the feasibility of using the red mason bee ( Osmia bicornis L.) in different experimental setups,background evaluating hazards of pesticides to beneficial insects has become very important for the assessment and registration of pesticides test methods for honeybees are well established in the laboratory under semi field and field conditions however experiences in using other pollinators as model species are limited here we present results of various experiments on the red mason bee osmia bicornis l a solitary commercially used bee species the aim was to compare methodologies to assess test parameters and to evaluate the feasibility of using o bicornis in late season when this bee species would have already finished its life cycle under natural conditions results hatching times and hatching rates varied depending on temperature and season provisioning and reproduction of o bicornis were very variable weather dependent and not always reliably reproducible between seasons they were higher in early than in late season in the field in late season cardboard tubes showed greater cell production than wooden boards conclusion o bicornis is a good study system under semi field and field conditions cocoons are easy to handle and to monitor since hatching rate and cell production decreased over time experiments are most recommended in early to mid season cardboard tubes can be used as standardised inexpensive nesting devices however they do not allow continuous observation and pollen sampling and involve time consuming handling in the laboratory our experiment on nest material was conducted in late season and may not mirror conditions in spring and early summer keywords solitary bees field experiments semi field experiments reproduction hatching nesting,2015,0.271
Utilizing online resources for taxonomy: a cybercatalog of Afrotropical apiocerid flies (Insecta: Diptera: Apioceridae).,a cybercatalog to the apioceridae apiocerid flies of the afrotropical region is provided each taxon entry includes links to open access online repositories such as zoobank bhl biostor blr plazi gbif morphbank eol and a research web site to access taxonomic information digitized literature morphological descriptions specimen occurrence data and images cybercatalogs as the one presented here will need to become the future of taxonomic catalogs taking advantage of the growing number of online repositories linked data and be easily updatable comments on the deposition of the holotype of apiocera braunsi melander 1907 are made,2015,0.316
Looking forward by looking back: using historical calibration to improve forecasts of human disease vector distributions.,arthropod disease vectors most notably mosquitoes ticks tsetse flies and sandflies are strongly influenced by environmental conditions and responsible for the vast majority of global vector borne human diseases the most widely used statistical models to predict future vector distributions model species niches and project the models forward under future climate scenarios although these methods address variations in vector distributions through space their capacity to predict changing distributions through time is far less certain here we review modeling methods used to validate and forecast future distributions of arthropod vectors under the effects of climate change and outline the uses or limitations of these techniques we then suggest a validation approach specific to temporal extrapolation models that is gaining momentum in macroecological modeling and has great potential for epidemiological modeling of disease vectors we performed systematic searches in the web of science sciencedirect and google scholar to identify peer reviewed english journal articles that model arthropod disease vector distributions under future environment scenarios we included studies published up to and including june 2014 we identified 29 relevant articles for our review the majority of these studies predicted current species niches and projected the models forward under future climate scenarios without temporal validation historically calibrated forecast models improve predictions of changing vector distributions by tracking known shifts through recently observed time periods with accelerating climate change accurate predictions of shifts in disease vectors are crucial to target vector control interventions where needs are greatest,2015,0.123
Downscaling Pest Risk analyses: Identifying current and future potentially suitable habitats for Parthenium hysterophorus with particular reference to Europe and North Africa,pest risk assessments pras routinely employ climatic niche models to identify endangered areas typically these models consider only climatic factors ignoring the â swiss cheeseâ nature of species ranges due to the interplay of climatic and habitat factors as part of a pra conducted for the european and mediterranean plant protection organization we developed a climatic niche model for parthenium hysterophorus explicitly including the effects of irrigation where it was known to be practiced we then downscaled the climatic risk model using two different methods to identify the suitable habitat types expert opinion following the eppo pra guidelines and inferred from the global spatial distribution the pra revealed a substantial risk to the eppo region and central and western africa highlighting the desirability of avoiding an invasion by p hysterophorus we also consider the effects of climate change on the modelled risks the climate change scenario indicated the risk of substantial further spread of p hysterophorus in temperate northern hemisphere regions north america europe and the northern middle east and also high elevation equatorial regions western brazil central africa and south east asia if minimum temperatures increase substantially downscaling the climate model using habitat factors resulted in substantial approximately 22â 53 reductions in the areas estimated to be endangered applying expert assessments as to suitable habitat classes resulted in the greatest reduction in the estimated endangered area whereas inferring suitable habitats factors from distribution data identified more land use classes and a larger endangered area despite some scaling issues with using a globally conformal land use systems dataset the inferential downscaling method shows promise as a routine addition to the pra toolkit as either a direct model component or simply as a means of better informing an expert assessment of the suitable habitat types,2015,0.106
Ecological niche variation in the Wilson's warbler Cardellina pusilla complex,wilson s warbler comprises three subspecies separated into two geographic groups c p pusilla that breeds in eastern north america and c p pileolata and c p chryseola that breed in western north america given the differences between the groups in genetics morphology habitat use and population decline we tested for ecological niche similarity in both their breeding and wintering distribution using niche modeling based on temperature and precipitation data we first conducted an inter prediction approach considering the percent of summer and winter localities of one group that are predicted by the potential distribution of the alternate group we also applied a null model approach that compares self predictions and pseudoreplicates of each group to indicate similarity divergence or indeterminate niche overlap finally we compared ecological distances between and within groups using the gower similarity equation we found that the western group had an ecological niche of broader climatic conditions while the eastern group had a narrower ecological niche the inter prediction approach showed that for both summering and wintering ranges ecological niche models of the western group predicted ∠50 of the observed distribution of the eastern group whereas eastern group models predicted 18 of the western group distribution the null model approach found that similarity in ecological niches was indeterminate possibly due to the large area occupied by the two groups but it suggests a more restricted set of climatic conditions of the eastern group distribution however the gower coefficients demonstrated that the ecological distance between the two geographic groups was larger than the ecological distance within groups indicating distinct ecological niches overall our results support the hypothesis that the eastern and western groups of wilson s warbler are two cryptic species this should be taken into consideration for future analyses particularly with respect to vulnerability categorization and conservation efforts,2015,0.179
Nature apps: Waiting for the revolution.,apps are small task orientated programs with the potential to integrate the computational and sensing capacities of smartphones with the power of cloud computing social networking and crowdsourcing they have the potential to transform how humans interact with nature cause a step change in the quantity and resolution of biodiversity data democratize access to environmental knowledge and reinvigorate ways of enjoying nature to assess the extent to which this potential is being exploited in relation to nature we conducted an automated search of the google play store using 96 nature related terms this returned data on 36 304 apps of which 6301 were nature themed we found that few of these fully exploit the full range of capabilities inherent in the technology and or have successfully captured the public imagination such breakthroughs will only be achieved by increasing the frequency and quality of collaboration between environmental scientists information engineers computer scientists and interested publics,2015,0.36
Modeling the potential distribution and conservation status of three species of oak gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) in the Iberian range,cynipids hymenoptera cynipidae induce a wide variety of complex galls on plants of different botanical families particularly on quercus species cynipid galls are well known to host large communities of insects providing fundamental ecological niches for different animal taxa which are organized in structured and relatively isolated communities at the microhabitat level gall communities of quercus woodlands could be a conservation concern considering some risks which affect several species of the parasitica group of hymenoptera within which gall wasps and their parasitoids and inquilines are included these risks concerning parasitica species are mainly due to three causes their high trophic level high host specialization and the lack of knowledge of their biology in this paper a preliminary approach to this issue is presented for the iberianâ balearic range we model and study the ecological niche of three cynipid gall species that induce galls on quercus species andricus quercustozae biorhiza pallida and plagiotrochus quercusilicis the cynipid gall species were selected for their different sets of host species and life cycle the ecological niche factor analysis and two niche models built for each species maxent and mahalanobis distances support the interpretation that the bioclimatic variables considered have effects on cynipids through their respective sets of host plants in addition the results regarding a quercustozae are consistent with the hypothetical existence of cryptic sexual generation exposed in other works parasitizing cork oak quercus suber which could have another key role in its conservation,2015,0.581
Digital technology and the conservation of nature - Springer,digital technology is changing nature conservation in increasingly profound ways we describe this impact and its significance through the concept of â digital conservationâ which we found to comprise five pivotal dimensions data on nature data on people data integration and analysis communication and experience and participatory governance examining digital innovation in nature conservation and addressing how its development implementation and diffusion may be steered we warn against hypes techno fix thinking good news narratives and unverified assumptions we identify a need for rigorous evaluation more comprehensive consideration of social exclusion frameworks for regulation and increased multi sector as well as multi discipline awareness and cooperation along the way digital technology may best be reconceptualised by conservationists from something that is either good or bad to a dual faced force in need of guidance,2015,0.364
Salvia misella (Lamiaceae)—A new record for Asia from the southern Western Ghats of India,the mint family lamiaceae is generally regarded as being one of the most highly derived plant families from the viewpoint of floral structures hedge 1992 the family is best known for their essential oils common to many members of the family and are a major source of culinary herbs within the subfamily nepetoideae tribe mentheae the subtribe salviineae includes 8 genera with about 954 species in the world harley et al 2004 the genus salvia l 1753 23 alone account for over 900 species in the subtribe and is the largest genera in labiatae mabberley 2008 it is a tropical and subtropical genus mostly found in montane areas with the major diversity in mediterranean central asia the highlands of mexico and the andes in south america rodrigues hahn et al 1992,2015,0.564
"MiFish, a set of universal PCR primers for metabarcoding environmental DNA from fishes: detection of more than 230 subtropical marine species",we developed a set of universal pcr primers mifish u e for metabarcoding environmental dna edna from fishes primers were designed using aligned whole mitochondrial genome mitogenome sequences from 880 species supplemented by partial mitogenome sequences from 160 elasmobranchs sharks and rays the primers target a hypervariable region of the 12s rrna gene 163â 185 bp which contains sufficient information to identify fishes to taxonomic family genus and species except for some closely related congeners to test versatility of the primers across a diverse range of fishes we sampled edna from four tanks in the okinawa churaumi aquarium with known species compositions prepared dual indexed libraries and performed paired end sequencing of the region using high throughput next generation sequencing technologies out of the 180 marine fish species contained in the four tanks with reference sequences in a custom database we detected 168 species 93 3 distributed across 59 families and 123 genera these fishes are not only taxonomically diverse ranging from sharks and rays to higher teleosts but are also greatly varied in their ecology including both pelagic and benthic species living in shallow coastal to deep waters we also sampled natural seawaters around coral reefs near the aquarium and detected 93 fish species using this approach of the 93 species 64 were not detected in the four aquarium tanks rendering the total number of species detected to 232 from 70 families and 152 genera the metabarcoding approach presented here is non invasive more efficient more cost effective and more sensitive than the traditional survey methods it has the potential to serve as an alternative or complementary tool for biodiversity monitoring that revolutionizes natural resource management and ecological studies of fish communities on larger spatial and temporal scales,2015,0.994
"World Checklist of Opiliones species (Arachnida). Part 2: Laniatores - Samooidea, Zalmoxoidea and Grassatoresincertae sedis.",including more than 6500 species opiliones is the third most diverse order of arachnida after the megadiverse acari and araneae this database is part 2 of 12 of a project containing an intended worldwide checklist of species and subspecies of opiliones and it includes the members of the suborder laniatores infraorder grassatores of the superfamilies samooidea and zalmoxoidea plus the genera currently not allocated to any family i e grassatores incertae sedis in this part 2 a total of 556 species and subspecies are listed,2015,0.682
BaMBa: towards the integrated management of Brazilian marine environmental data.,a new open access database brazilian marine biodiversity bamba https marinebiodiversity lncc br was developed in order to maintain large datasets from the brazilian marine environment essentially any environmental information can be added to bamba certified datasets obtained from integrated holistic studies comprising physical chemical parameters omics microbiology benthic and fish surveys can be deposited in the new database enabling scientific industrial and governmental policies and actions to be undertaken on marine resources there is a significant number of databases however bamba is the only integrated database resource both supported by a government initiative and exclusive for marine data bamba is linked to the information system on brazilian biodiversity sibbr http www sibbr gov br and will offer opportunities for improved governance of marine resources and scientists integration database url http marinebiodiversity lncc br,2015,0.305
Range increase of a Neotropical orchid bee under future scenarios of climate change,along with other human impacts climate change is an important driver of biological changes worldwide and is expected to severely affect species distributions although dramatic range shifts and contractions are predicted for many taxa occurring at higher latitudes including bumble bees the response of widespread tropical species is less clear due in part to scarcity of reliable occurrence data newly mobilized specimen records and improved species distribution models facilitate more robust assessment of future climate effects under various scenarios here we predict both current and future distribution of the orchid bee eulaema nigrita lepeletier 1841 apidae euglossinae a large bodied species widely distributed in the neotropics whose populations within the amazon region are believed to be controlled by cleptoparasitic euglossini bees such as exaerete smaragdina guã rin menã ville 1844 and aglae caerulea lepeletier and serville 1825 under both current and future scenarios of climate change el nigrita is expected to persist in deforested areas including those that might suffer desertification while under current climatic conditions this species is not expected to occur in central amazonia where the forest is still conserved its range is expected to increase under future scenarios of climate change especially in areas corresponding to the arc of deforestation in eastern amazonia the increase of human related disturbances in this biome as well as changes in the relationship of el nigritaâ ex smaragdina and el nigritaâ a caerulea may explain the potential range increase of el nigrita under future scenarios of climate change,2015,0.808
Generic identity of Camptorrhiza indica (Colchicaceae) based on cytogenetics and molecular phylogenetics,the tribe iphigenieae colchicaceace liliales includes two genera viz camptorrhiza and iphigenia which are distributed in africa india and australasia iphigenia is represented by 12 species of which six occur in india while camptorrhiza comprises one species each in africa c strumosa and india c indica the genus camptorrhiza possesses a knee shaped tuber attached to the corms filaments with a thick bulge in the middle and styles with single stigma iphigenia on the other hand lacks knee shaped tuber bears linear filaments and has styles with three stigmas camptorrhiza indica possesses ovoid corms linear filaments and styles with a single stigma these characters are intermediate between iphigenia and camptorrhiza and hence we studied the cytogenetics and phylogenetic placement of this species to ascertain its generic identity somatic chromosome count 2n 22 and karyotypic features of c indica are very similar to that of iphigenia species molecular phylogenetic studies based on atpb rbcl rps16 trnl and trnl f regions showed that c indica is nested within a lineage of indian iphigenia species thus c indica was reduced to a species of iphigenia i e i ratnagirica camptorrhiza is now a monotypic genus restricted only to southern africa a key to the indian iphigenia species is provided in addition a new combination wurmbea novae zelandiae is proposed for iphigenia novae zelandiae,2015,0.929
Bias and information in biological records,biological recording is in essence a very simple concept in which a record is the report of a species at a physical location at a certain time the collation of these records into a dataset is a powerful approach to addressing large scale questions about biodiversity change records are collected by volunteers at times and places that suit them leading to a variety of biases uneven sampling over space and time uneven sampling effort per visit and uneven detectability these need to be controlled for in statistical analyses that use biological records in particular the data are â presence onlyâ and lack information on the sampling protocol or intensity submitting â complete listsâ of all the species seen is one potential solution because the data can be treated as â presenceâ absenceâ and detectability of each species can be statistically modelled the corollary of bias is that records vary in their â information contentâ the information content is a measure of how much an individual record or collection of records contributes to reducing uncertainty in a parameter of interest the information content of biological records varies depending on the question to which the data are being applied we consider a set of hypothetical â syndromesâ of recording behaviour each of which is characterized by different information content we demonstrate how these concepts can be used to support the growth of a particular type of recording behaviour approaches to recording are rapidly changing especially with the growth of mass participation citizen science we discuss how these developments present a range of challenges and opportunities for biological recording in the future,2015,0.505
On the concept of chorotype,recent reviews of the meaning of the word â chorotypeâ in biogeography have led to contrasting definitions and a confusion of concepts this is because â chorotypeâ has been used by different authors to express two different concepts 1 groups of species with overlapping ranges overall distributions and 2 groups of species with a similar distribution within a certain area to avoid confusion i suggest the term â global chorotypeâ be used to indicate a group into which species with similar ranges can be classified and â regional chorotypeâ be used for a group of species with similar distributions within a certain region although the global chorotype represents the world wide spatial responses of species to historical and environmental pressures and does not vary with the area under consideration a particular species might be classified into different regional chorotypes in different study areas,2015,0.892
"Distributions, ex situ conservation priorities, and genetic resource potential of crop wild relatives of sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam., I. series Batatas]",crop wild relatives of sweetpotato ipomoea batatas l lam i series batatas have the potential to contribute to breeding objectives for this important root crop uncertainty in regard to species boundaries and their phylogenetic relationships the limited availability of germplasm with which to perform crosses and the difficulty of introgression of genes from wild species has constrained their utilization here we compile geographic occurrence data on relevant sweetpotato wild relatives and produce potential distribution models for the species we then assess the comprehensiveness of ex situ germplasm collections contextualize these results with research and breeding priorities and use ecogeographic information to identify species with the potential to contribute desirable agronomic traits the fourteen species that are considered the closest wild relatives of sweetpotato generally occur from the central united states to argentina with richness concentrated in mesoamerica and in the extreme southeastern united states currently designated species differ among themselves and in comparison to the crop in their adaptations to temperature precipitation and edaphic characteristics and most species also show considerable intraspecific variation with 79 of species identified as high priority for further collecting we find that these crop genetic resources are highly under represented in ex situ conservation systems and thus their availability to breeders and researchers is inadequate we prioritize taxa and specific geographic locations for further collecting in order to improve the completeness of germplasm collections in concert with enhanced conservation of sweetpotato wild relatives further taxonomic research characterization and evaluation of germplasm and improving the techniques to overcome barriers to introgression with wild species are needed in order to mobilize these genetic resources for crop breeding,2015,0.991
Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life,reconstructing the phylogenetic relationships that unite all lineages the tree of life is a grand challenge the paucity of homologous character data across disparately related lineages currently renders direct phylogenetic inference untenable to reconstruct a comprehensive tree of life we therefore synthesized published phylogenies together with taxonomic classifications for taxa never incorporated into a phylogeny we present a draft tree containing 2 3 million tips the open tree of life realization of this tree required the assembly of two additional community resources i a comprehensive global reference taxonomy and ii a database of published phylogenetic trees mapped to this taxonomy our open source framework facilitates community comment and contribution enabling the tree to be continuously updated when new phylogenetic and taxonomic data become digitally available although data coverage and phylogenetic conflict across the open tree of life illuminate gaps in both the underlying data available for phylogenetic reconstruction and the publication of trees as digital objects the tree provides a compelling starting point for community contribution this comprehensive tree will fuel fundamental research on the nature of biological diversity ultimately providing up to date phylogenies for downstream applications in comparative biology ecology conservation biology climate change agriculture and genomics,2015,0.258
Antibacterially active phenolic lipid derivatives from Comarum salesovianum (Steph.) Aschers. et Gr.,the antibacterial activity guided purification of the dichloromethane fraction of the aerial parts of comarum salesovianum steph aschers et gr led to the isolation and elucidation of three phenolic lipid derivatives 6 non 8 enyl salicylic acid 1 6 nonyl salicylic acid 2 and 3 non 8 enyl phenol 3 which were found for the first time in the natural source the equal mixture of compounds 1 and 2 exhibited potent inhibitory activity against all tested gram positive bacterial strains enterococcus faecalis micrococcus luteus staphylococcus epidermidis and staphylococcus aureus with inhibitory zones of 12 2â 22 1mm whereas each single compound showed weaker activity than the mixture of 1 and 2 however compound 3 strongly inhibited 29 9â 1 8 the growth of m luteus the presence of salicylic acid with the unsaturated aliphatic side chain is essential for the antibacterial activity strength of phenolic lipid molecules,2015,0.459
Broad Niche Overlap between Invasive Nile Tilapia Oreochromis niloticus and Indigenous Congenerics in Southern Africa: Should We be Concerned?,this study developed niche models for the native ranges of oreochromis andersonii o mortimeri and o mossambicus and assessed how much of their range is climatically suitable for the establishment of o niloticus and then reviewed the conservation implications for indigenous congenerics as a result of overlap with o niloticus based on documented congeneric interactions the predicted potential geographical range of o niloticus reveals a broad climatic suitability over most of southern africa and overlaps with all the endemic congenerics this is of major conservation concern because six of the eight river systems predicted to be suitable for o niloticus have already been invaded and now support established populations oreochromis niloticus has been implicated in reducing the abundance of indigenous species through competitive exclusion and hybridisation despite these well documented adverse ecological effects o niloticus remains one of the most widely cultured and propagated fish species in aquaculture and stock enhancements in the southern africa sub region aquaculture is perceived as a means of protein security poverty alleviation and economic development and as such any future decisions on its introduction will be based on the trade off between socio economic benefits and potential adverse ecological effects,2015,0.258
Modelled habitat suitability of a malaria causing vector (Anopheles arabiensis) relates well with human malaria incidences in Zimbabwe,accurate modelling of the geographic distribution of disease vectors is an important step towards developing strategies for effective control of vector borne diseases in this study we used maximum entropy maxent to develop a spatially explicit model to predict the habitat of a malaria causing vector anopheles arabiensis based on key environmental factors our results show that altitude combined with isothermality temperature seasonality annual precipitation and precipitation of the wettest month can be used to successfully model habitat suitability of a arabiensis based on these five key factors our results show that areas that are highly suitable for a arabiensis are generally in the north northeast south and south eastern parts of zimbabwe in fact our results show that all the five factors had auc values â 70 which is classified as good for predictive purposes the results of our maxent model overall show auc values of 0 84 for training and 0 88 for test data in addition our results also show that the habitat suitability model positively correlated p 0 05 with malaria incidences recorded at health facilities for the period 1974â 1981 and the years 1996 1997 1998 and 1999 although the correlations are weak our results suggest that a arabiensis habitat suitability can be used as an indicator of malaria incidences,2015,0.073
Invasion of the Himalayan hotspot by Acacia farnesiana: how the human footprint influences the potential distribution of alien species,the invasion of alien species in their non native range has resulted i n inevitable consequences thus the p o tential distribution of alien species must be delineated to anticipate and reduce their negative effect on native ecosystems the potential distribution can be pr e dicted using invasive species distribution mo d els isd ms thus far few studies have investigated the human influence on the distribution of alien species when modelling their potential distribution in the present study we predict the potential distribution of acacia farnesiana in the himalayan hotspot usi ng a popular isdm the effect of human influence was studied by comparing the potential distribution pr e dicted u s ing only bioclimatic variables and that using both bi o climatic and human footprint variables we found that using both bioclimatic and human fo o t print variables the pote n tial distribution of target species could be 55 38 larger than that of u s ing only bioclimatic variables this proves the positive effect of human activities on distribution of invasive species among the six considered bioclima tic variables the mean temperature of the coldest quarter the precip i tation of the coldest quarter and temperature seaso n ality are the most influential factors in determining the potential distribution of a farnes i ana,2015,0.875
"Population genetic structure of an extremely logged tree species Guaiacum sanctum L. in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico",habitat disturbance in tropical forests has affected the viability of several tree species in mexico populations of guaiacum sanctum have disappeared in some regions due to a strong habitat reduction which could endanger the genetic diversity and connectivity of remnant populations in this study 17 populations from the yucatã n peninsula were analyzed with seven nuclear microsatellites several parameters describing the genetic diversity were estimated the genetic structure was evaluated using bayesian cluster analysis population bottlenecks effective population size and genetic connectivity were estimated populations of g sanctum showed high values of genetic diversity two genetic groups with contrasting distributions were detected the first one located in northern yucatã n and quintana roo and the second in southern campeche evidence of population bottleneck was detected only for campeche populations also we found indications of significant levels of inbreeding and a low effective population size the connectivity analysis revealed exchange among populations of g sanctum but the habitat fragmentation may act to impede gene flow contributing to the division observed between clusters this genetic differentiation was possibly caused by environmental pressures although although effects of historical extensive logging practices occurred in southern mexico during the last few decades cannot be discarded fragmentation has a negative effect on ecosystem services and on the availability of favorable sites for seedling establishment which could disturb pollination and dispersion processes modifying in the long term the effective population size population genetic structure of an extremely logged tree species guaiacum sanctum l in the yucatan peninsula mexico ken oyama1 2 miguel martã nez ramos2 juan manuel peã aloza ramã rez2 3 vã ctor 3 rocha ramã rez2 esmeralda g armenta medina2 and paulina hernã ndez soto2 accepted botanical sciences februray 2015 researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 273426290 population genetic structure of an extremely logged tree species guaiacum sanctum l in the yucatan peninsula mexico ken oyama1 2 2a miguel martnez ramos2 juan manuel pealoza ramrez2 3 vctor 3 rocha ramrez2 esmeralda g armenta medina2 and paulina hernndez soto2 accepted botanical sciences februray 2015 accessed sep 3 2015,2015,0.935
Fostering ecological data sharing: collaborations in the International Long Term Ecological Research Network,the international long term ecological research ilter network was established in 1993 and is now composed of thirty eight national networks representing a diversity of ecosystems around the globe data generated by the ilter network are valuable for scientists addressing broad spatial and temporal scale research questions but only if these data can be easily discovered accessed and understood challenges to publishing ilter data have included unequal distribution among networks of information management expertise user friendly tools and resources language and translation have also been issues despite these significant obstacles ilter information managers have formed grassroots partnerships and collaborated to provide information management training adopt a common metadata standard develop information management tools useful throughout the network and organize scientist information manager workshops that encourage scientists to share and integrate data throughout this article we share lesson,2015,0.095
Biodiversity Data Discovery through Data Mining in Mountain areas,the degree of variation of life form s within a given species ecosystem biome or an entire p lanet is biodiversity mining biodiversity databases of mountain organisms will help us to get better understanding of mountain biodiversity the data will be taken from georeference biodiversity databases created through global biodiversity information fa cility biodiversity for particular mountain area depends upon range of elevation associated climatic trends topographic and soil peculiarities fragmentation and connectivity amongst biota data discovered through mining databases will be categorized ac cording to major taxonomic group with more coverage on animals specially birds mammals and fishes biodiverstity data gathered will help us in solving applied issues such as finding endangered species migration of species invasion of new species conserv ation planning etc societal issues such as ecotourism recreation public health and also basic issues which includes taxonomy diversity ecology and evolution using biodiversity databases helps us in managing biodiversity test ecological and evolutio nary theories measure impact of climate change on various species and its effects on conservation efforts data will be analyzed through niche modeling which will help us to explain past and future trends in mountain biodiversity niche of species is defin ed as set of ecological conditions within which it is able to maintain population without immigration in this paper we will discover niche of species through mining databases,2015,0.843
Invasion Expansion: Time since introduction best predicts global ranges of marine invaders.,strategies for managing biological invasions are often based on the premise that characteristics of invading species and the invaded environment are key predictors of the invader s distribution yet for either biological traits or environmental characteristics to explain distribution adequate time must have elapsed for species to spread to all potential habitats we compiled and analyzed a database of natural history and ecological traits of 138 coastal marine invertebrate species the environmental conditions at sites to which they have been introduced and their date of first introduction we found that time since introduction explained the largest fraction 20 of the variability in non native range size while traits of the species and environmental variables had significant but minimal influence on non native range size the positive relationship between time since introduction and range size indicates that non native marine invertebrate species are not at equilibrium and are still spreading posing a major challenge for management of coastal ecosystems,2015,0.81
NOBLE SEEDS: SACHA INCHI FROM AMAZONIA TO THE CARIBBEAN BASIN?,sacha inchi plukenetia volubilis is a perennial vine native to tropical america which is notable for the high oil and protein content of its seeds both this oil and protein are of great benefit to human health particularly for young and elderly persons several species of the genus plukenetia were described for mexico costa rica and suriname in the 1960s 1 however its wide dissemination within and outside of peru came two decades later and it adapted in small farms oriented to ecological production the cultivation and processing of sacha inchi mostly in edible oil may help slow the advance of the agricultural frontier and improve the income of farmers despite possible phytosanitary and marketing problems this chapter presents an overview of sacha inchi production and commercial practices its potential and the factors that limit the expansion of its cultivation and consumption in the caribbean basin in the following sections the economic and social context is described followed by a brief analysis of its nutritional properties the factors that influence the dissemination process are discussed with a view to potential integration into cropping patterns and consumption in central america and the caribbean the discussion concludes with several issues that deserve to be developed in the agenda for academic research and pilot practices in the public policies of this region,2015,0.146
Community next steps for making globally unique identifiers work for biocollections data.,biodiversity data is being digitized and made available online at a rapidly increasing rate but current practices typically do not preserve linkages between these data which impedes interoperation provenance tracking and assembly of larger datasets for data associated with biocollections the biodiversity community has long recognized that an essential part of establishing and preserving linkages is to apply globally unique identifiers at the point when data are generated in the field and to persist these identifiers downstream but this is seldom implemented in practice there has neither been coalescence towards one single identifier solution as in some other domains nor even a set of recommended best practices and standards to support multiple identifier schemes sharing consistent responses in order to further progress towards a broader community consensus a group of biocollections and informatics experts assembled in stockholm in october 2014 to discuss community next steps to overcome current roadblocks the workshop participants divided into four groups focusing on identifier practice in current field biocollections identifier application for legacy biocollections identifiers as applied to biodiversity data records as they are published and made available in semantically marked up publications and cross cutting identifier solutions that bridge across these domains the main outcome was consensus on key issues including recognition of differences between legacy and new biocollections processes the need for identifier metadata profiles that can report information on identifier persistence missions and the unambiguous indication of the type of object associated with the identifier current identifier characteristics are also summarized and an overview of available schemes and practices is provided,2015,0.197
"Revision of western Palaearctic species of the Oulema melanopus group, with description of two new species from Europe (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Criocerinae)",five species of the oulema melanopus group are recognized in the western palaearctic region o melanopus linnaeus 1758 o rufocyanea suffrian 1847 o duftschmidi redtenbacher 1874 o mauroi sp nov northern italy and o verae sp nov spain and portugal the two new species are described and illustrated the nomenclature of the group is discussed in detail oulema rufocyanea is proved to be a validly described species different to o duftschmidi to fix the nomenclatural stability of the whole group and avoid subsequent misintepretations neotypes are designated for crioceris melanopoda o f mã ller 1776 crioceris hordei geoffroy 1785 and lema cyanella var atrata waltl 1835 all conspecific with o melanopus the primary type specimens or their photographs were examined if they exist the spelling oulema melanopus is fixed as correct and explained variation in the cytochrome c oxidase cox1 gene across specimens of all the species has been analysed all species in the group had extremely similar haplotypes with interspecific sequence similarities between 90 5â 99 5 compared to intraspecific sequence similarities between 91 6â 100 as a result the phylogenetic relationships among species in the group were not well resolved based on cox1 sequences,2015,0.943
"Floral miniaturisation and autogamy in boreal-arctic plants are epitomised by Iceland's most frequent orchid, Platanthera hyperborea.",background and aims this paper concludes our series of publications comparing island and mainland speciation in european butterfly orchids by studying the morphology phylogenetics and reproductive biology of the controversial circum arctic species platanthera limnorchis hyperborea the most frequent of seven icelandic orchids we draw particular attention to its phylogenetic placement remarkable reproductive biology and morphological convergence on other platanthera lineages through floral miniaturisation methods five populations of p hyperborea in southwest iceland were measured for 33 morphological characters and subjected to detailed multivariate and univariate analyses supported by light and scanning electron microscopy of selected flowers representative samples from six populations were sequenced for nrits and placed in a taxonomically broader phylogenetic matrix derived from previous studies key results section limnorchis consists of three distinct its delimited clades based on p stricta p sparsifolia limosa aquilonis and p dilatata hyperborea within the latter group supposed species boundaries overlap instead the data indicate a crude stepwise series of ribotypic transitions extending eastward from north america to iceland morphometric data failed to identify any taxonomically meaningful partitions among icelandic p hyperborea populations despite the presence of a distinct and apparently plesiomorphic ribotype at the most glacially influenced habitat sampled microscopic study of the flowers revealed several distinguishing features some not previously reported including resupinate lateral sepals toothed bract margins club shaped papillae shared by both the interior of the labellar spur and the stigmatic surface and an exceptionally adhesive stigma that is reliably covered in disaggregated pollen masses prior to anthesis auricles are absent conclusions ribotypes suggest that icelandic p hyperborea represents the terminus of a migration route that may have begun in east asia before passing through north america and presumably greenland the incohesive pollinia rapidly desiccating anther locules weakly developed rostellum exceptionally adhesive stigma and the close juxtaposition of compact male and female reproductive organs together conspire to cause routine autogamy and frequent cleistogamy despite the continued production of substantial nectar reservoirs in the spur and consequent ongoing attraction to the flowers of insects including mosquitoes when considered in combination with independently derived lineages of platanthera on the azorean and hawaiian archipelagos also bearing small green flowers our observations show allometric and paedomorphic reductions in flower size as the primary evolutionary driver but also indicate strong developmental and functional constraints,2015,0.467
An engine for global plant diversity: highest evolutionary turnover and emigration in the American tropics.,understanding the processes that have generated the latitudinal biodiversity gradient and the continental differences in tropical biodiversity remains a major goal of evolutionary biology here we estimate the timing and direction of range shifts of extant flowering plants angiosperms between tropical and non tropical zones and into and out of the major tropical regions of the world we then calculate rates of speciation and extinction taking into account incomplete taxonomic sampling we use a recently published fossil calibrated phylogeny and apply novel bioinformatic tools to code species into user defined polygons we reconstruct biogeographic history using stochastic character mapping to compute relative numbers of range shifts in proportion to the number of available lineages through time our results based on the analysis of c 22 600 species and c 20 million geo referenced occurrence records show no significant differences between the speciation and extinction of tropical and non tropical angiosperms this suggests that at least in plants the latitudinal biodiversity gradient primarily derives from other factors than differential rates of diversification in contrast the outstanding species richness found today in the american tropics the neotropics as compared to tropical africa and tropical asia is associated with significantly higher speciation and extinction rates this suggests an exceedingly rapid evolutionary turnover i e neotropical species being formed and replaced by one another at unparalleled rates in addition tropical america stands out from other continents by having pumped out more species than it received through most of the last 66 million years these results imply that the neotropics have acted as an engine for global plant diversity,2015,0.664
Indicators of climate impacts for forests: recommendations for the U.S. National Climate Assessment indicators system,the third national climate assessment nca process for the united states focused in part on developing a system of indicators to communicate key aspects of the physical climate climate impacts vulnerabilities and preparedness to inform decisionmakers and the public initially 13 active teams were formed to recommend indicators in a range of categories including forest agriculture grassland phenology mitigation and physical climate this publication describes the work of the forest indicators technical team we briefly describe the nca indicator system effort propose and explain our conceptual model for the forest system present our methods and discuss our recommendations climate is only one driver of changes in u s forests other drivers include socioeconomic drivers such as population and culture and other environmental drivers such as nutrients light and disturbance we offer additional details of our work for transparency and to inform an nca indicator web portal we recommend metrics for 11 indicators of climate impacts on forest spanning the range of important aspects of forest as an ecological type and as a sector some indicators can be reported in a web portal now others need additional work for reporting in the near future indicators such as budburst which are important to forest but more relevant to other nca indicator teams are identified potential indicators that need more research are also presented,2015,0.165
Rarity-weighted richness: a simple and reliable alternative to integer programming and heuristic algorithms for minimum set and maximum coverage problems in conservation planning.,here we report that prioritizing sites in order of rarity weighted richness rwr is a simple reliable way to identify sites that represent all species in the fewest number of sites minimum set problem or to identify sites that represent the largest number of species within a given number of sites maximum coverage problem we compared the number of species represented in sites prioritized by rwr to numbers of species represented in sites prioritized by the zonation software package for 11 datasets in which the size of individual planning units sites ranged from 1 ha to 2 500 km2 on average rwr solutions were more efficient than zonation solutions integer programming remains the only guaranteed way find an optimal solution and heuristic algorithms remain superior for conservation prioritizations that consider compactness and multiple near optimal solutions in addition to species representation but because rwr can be implemented easily and quickly in r or a spreadsheet it is an attractive alternative to integer programming or heuristic algorithms in some conservation prioritization contexts,2015,0.812
The Potential of Sub-Saharan African Plants in the Management of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infections: A Review.,acquired immunodeficiency syndrome caused by human immunodeficiency virus hiv is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in sub saharan africa particularly in southern africa phytomedicines are an integral part of african health care the southern african flora is composed of at least 23 400 taxa despite this richness only a handful of botanical products have been assessed for activities against hiv this study aimed to summarize the potential of sub saharan african plants based on their composition and the established bioactivities as sources of agents to manage hiv symptoms and as retroviral therapy at least 109 plant species from 42 families and 94 genera that are found in southern africa were shown to have potential or actual activities against hiv only 12 of these plant species from 6 families and 10 genera were shown to harbour anti hiv properties phytochemicals that include î sitosterols terpenoids glycosides saponins flavonoids triterpenoids tannins and alkaloids which harbour anti hiv properties were found to have a near cosmopolitan presence across the plant families in the region bioactivities of multiple phytochemicals are comparable to those for standard allopathic antiretroviral drugs research to determine the anti hiv activities of the identified and other plants including clinical trials is long overdue copyright â 2015 john wiley sons ltd,2015,0.058
Eco-Genomic analysis of the poleward range expansion of the wasp spider Argiope bruennichi shows rapid adaptation and genomic admixture.,poleward range expansions are commonly attributed to global change but could alternatively be driven by rapid evolutionary adaptation a well documented example of a range expansion during the past decades is provided by the european wasp spider argiope bruennichi using ecological niche modeling thermal tolerance experiments and a genome wide analysis of gene expression divergence we show that invasive populations have adapted to novel climatic conditions in the course of their expansion their climatic niche shift is mirrored in an increased cold tolerance and a population specific and functionally differentiated gene expression response we generated an argiope reference genome sequence and used population genome re sequencing to assess genomic changes associated with the new climatic adaptations we find clear genetic differentiation and a significant admixture with alleles from east asian populations in the invasive northern european populations population genetic modeling suggests that at least some of these introgressing alleles have contributed to the new adaptations during the expansion our results thus confirm the notion that range expansions are not a simple consequence of climate change but are accompanied by fast genetic changes and adaptations that may be fuelled through admixture between long separated lineages this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.399
Modelling Hotspots for Invasive Alien Plants in India.,identification of invasion hotspots that support multiple invasive alien species ias is a pre requisite for control and management of invasion however till recently it remained a methodological challenge to precisely determine such invasive hotspots we identified the hotspots of alien species invasion in india through ecological niche modelling enm using species occurrence data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the predicted area of invasion for selected species were classified into 4 categories based on number of model agreements for a region i e high medium low and very low about 49 of the total geographical area of india was predicted to be prone to invasion at moderate to high levels of climatic suitability the intersection of anthropogenic biomes and ecoregions with the regions of high climatic suitability was classified as hotspot of alien plant invasion nineteen of 47 ecoregions of india harboured such hotspots most ecologically sensitive regions of india including the biodiversity hotspots and coastal regions coincide with invasion hotspots indicating their vulnerability to alien plant invasion besides demonstrating the usefulness of enm and open source data for ias management the present study provides a knowledge base for guiding the formulation of an effective policy and management strategy for controlling the invasive alien species,2015,0.696
Identifying User Interests within the Data Space – a Case Study with SkyServer,many scientific databases nowadays are publicly available for querying and advanced data analytics one prominent example is the sloan digital sky survey sdss â skyserver which offers data to astronomers scientists and the general public for such data it is important to understand the public focus and trending research directions on the subject described by the database i e astronomy in the case of skyserver with a large user base it is worthwhile to identify the areas of the data space that are of inter est to users in this paper we study the problem of extracting and analyz ing access areas of user queries by analyzing the query logs of the database to our knowledge both the concept of access areas and how to extract them have not been studied before we address this by first proposing a novel notion of access area which is in dependent of any specific database state it allows the detection of interesting areas within the data space regardless if they already exist in the database content second we present a detailed map ping of our notion to different query types using our mapping on the skyserver query log we obtain a transformed data set third we aggregate similar overlapping queries by dbscan and gain an abstraction from the raw query log finally we arrive at clus ters of access areas that are interesting from the perspective of an astronomer these clusters occupy only a small fraction in some cases less than 1 of the data space and contain queries issued by many users some frequently accessed areas even do not exist in the space spanned by available objects,2015,0.154
"New Reports that Monarch Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Danaus plexippus Linnaeus) are Hosts for a Pupal Parasitoid (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidae, Pteromalus cassotis Walker)",abstract monarch butterflies are one of the best studied non pest lepidopterans serving as a model for migration chemical ecology and insect conservation despite the intensity with which the larvae and adults have been studied the cryptic pupal stage is often difficult to study in the wild it is perhaps due to this difficulty that researchers have largely overlooked monarchsâ interactions with a pupal parasitoid pteromalus cassotis using field experiments in the northern u s and observational data from wild collected pupae in the southern u s we report occurrences of this host parasitoid interaction at sites minnesota georgia oklahoma texas and wisconsin at sites in minnesota rates of parasitism of experimentally placed monarch were highly variable ranging from 60 in 2010 to 0 in 2013 and 2014 observations of wild collected pupae suggest that rates of parasitism may near 100 at some sites in the southern u s the number of wasps emerging from a single host ranged from 1â 425 mean,2015,0.775
Screening genetic resources of capsicum peppers in their primary center of diversity in Bolivia and Peru,for most crops like capsicum their diversity remains under researched for traits of interest for food nutrition and other purposes a small investment in screening this diversity for a wide range of traits is likely to reveal many traditional varieties with distinguished values one objective of this study was to demonstrate with capsicum as model crop the application of indicators of phenotypic and geographic diversity as effective criteria for selecting promising genebank accessions for multiple uses from crop centers of diversity a second objective was to evaluate the expression of biochemical and agromorphological properties of the selected capsicum accessions in different conditions four steps were involved 1 develop the necessary diversity by expanding genebank collections in bolivia and peru 2 establish representative subsets of 100 accessions for biochemical screening of capsicum fruits 3 select promising accessions for different uses after screening and 4 examine how these promising accessions express biochemical and agromorphological properties when grown in different environmental conditions the peruvian capsicum collection now contains 712 accessions encompassing all five domesticated species c annuum c chinense c frutescens c baccatum and c pubescens the collection in bolivia now contains 487 accessions representing all five domesticates plus four wild taxa c baccatum var baccatum c caballeroi c cardenasii and c eximium following the biochemical screening 44 bolivian and 39 peruvian accessions were selected as promising representing wide variation in levels of antioxidant capacity capsaicinoids fat flavonoids polyphenols quercetins tocopherols and color in peru 23 promising accessions performed well in different environments while each of the promising bolivian accessions only performed well in a certain environment differences in capsicum diversity and local contexts led to distinct outcomes in each country in peru mild landraces with high values in health related attributes were of interest to entrepreneurs in bolivia wild capsicum have high commercial demand,2015,0.143
Order Chordeumatida,chordeumatida is a millipede order in which the number of body rings in the adult stage is constant within a species sometimes males have fewer rings than fema les this number is mostly even and ranges from 26 to 32 depending on family or species most europeans species have 30 body rings as characteristics the â cheeksâ the basal mandibular lobes are laterally expanded very promi nent and in most species not obviously divided in se parate cardines and stipetes only a groove at the anterior end near the base of the antennae is presen t as a remnant of the division body rings are open ventrally and not fused with the sternites almost all chordeumatidans have three pairs of large setae macrochaetae on their body rings but no other setae on them while the head is usually densely pilose the last antennal joint carries a unique seta with a mammillate conic base above the inner palps of the gnathochilarium chordeumatida have bi to quadridentate styliform processes spelda 2001 chordeumatida like the other nematophoran or ders callipodida and stemmiulida have two spinne rets under the dorsal part of the preanal ring often more in stemmiulida the last legpairs are somewhat elongated in order to manipulate the extruded silk apart from a few cave species chordeumatidans have ocelli while polydesmidans of similar habitus are always blind the collum does not overlap the head as in julidans except in the north american family striariidae except in the north american family urochordeumatidae the last segment telson does not have a prolonged process the anal valves have 2 3 setae in contrast to other millipede or ders chordeumatida have a wide range of body shapes and several taxa resemble members of other orders especially polydesmida according to verhoeff 1926 1932 six main habitus types can be recognized these types are fixed in genera but occur independently in different families shear 2000 and are listed below with examples from the iberian peninsula â atractosoma habitus with large paraterga as wide as or wi der than long similar to those of the polydesmidan genus polydesmus lusitaniosoma â ochogona habitus with smaller paraterga which are usually about twice as long as wide and ex tend over much of the metazona opisthocheiron hispaniosoma â craspedosoma habitus with the paraterga are semicircularly rounded giving the animal the ap pearance of a chain of rosary beads ceratosyphys â haasea habitus with only a hump instead of paraterga the macrochaetae are usually stout and close together cranogona typhlopsychrosoma,2015,0.856
A Pharmacological review on Gorakha ganja (Aerva lanata (Linn) Juss. Ex. Schult),aerva lanata linn juss ex schult is widely used in urinary disorders in southern part of india as a source of pashana bheda it is commonly known as gorakha ganja a member of amaranthaceae usually found as weed on mountains and bare ground it is an herb which trails on the ground with many branches and leaves are alternately arranged with fine hairs above and with wooly beneath flowers are greenish white in clusters since years many researches have been carried out to elicit the diuretic anti urolithic activity of this plant besides it has been proven for many more pharmacological activities like anti diarrhoeal anti hyperglycameic anti oxidant anti helmentic and analgesic in addition various phyto chemical investigations reveal the presence of steroids tannins flavonoids nutrients terpenoids in different parts of the plant this is an attempt to explore and high light the different phytochemical and pharmacological studies till date,2015,0.48
Future of biodiversity in the Barents Region,climate change may affect biodiversity to a large extent its effects have already caused shifts in species distributions and even species extinctions since especially high latitude regions are expected to be affected this publication assesses the impact of future climate change on the biodiversity in the barents region northern parts of norway sweden and finland and northwest russia it reports on the impact of climate change on a large range of species including amphibians butterflies birds mammals moths plants slugs snails and reptiles of which a few were studied more in depth it further identifies future hotspots of species diversity and gives recommendations on species that should be prioritized for conservation and on areas that should be included in the network of protected areas in future lastly it provides guidance on which aspects require further study,2015,0.741
Historical and current introgression in a Mesoamerican hummingbird species complex: a biogeographic perspective,the influence of geologic and pleistocene glacial cycles might result in morphological and genetic complex scenarios in the biota of the mesoamerican region we tested whether berylline blue tailed and steely blue hummingbirds amazilia beryllina amazilia cyanura and amazilia saucerottei show evidence of historical or current introgression as their plumage colour variation might suggest we also analysed the role of past and present climatic events in promoting genetic introgression and species diversification we collected mitochondrial dna mtdna sequence data and microsatellite loci scores for populations throughout the range of the three amazilia species as well as morphological and ecological data haplotype network bayesian phylogenetic and divergence time inference historical demography palaeodistribution modelling and niche divergence tests were used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this amazilia species complex an isolation with migration coalescent model and bayesian assignment analysis were assessed to determine historical introgression and current genetic admixture mtdna haplotypes were geographically unstructured with haplotypes from disparate areas interdispersed on a shallow tree and an unresolved haplotype network assignment analysis of the nuclear genome nudna supported three genetic groups with signs of genetic admixture corresponding to 1 a beryllina populations located west of the isthmus of tehuantepec 2 a cyanura populations between the isthmus of tehuantepec and the nicaraguan depression nuclear central america and 3 a saucerottei populations southeast of the nicaraguan depression gene flow and divergence time estimates and demographic and palaeodistribution patterns suggest an evolutionary history of introgression mediated by quaternary climatic fluctuations high levels of gene flow were indicated by mtdna and asymmetrical isolation with migration whereas the microsatellite analyses found evidence for three genetic clusters with distributions corresponding to isolation by the isthmus of tehuantepec and the nicaraguan depression and signs of admixture historical levels of migration between genetically distinct groups estimated using microsatellites were higher than contemporary levels of migration these results support the scenario of secondary contact and range contact during the glacial periods of the pleistocene and strongly imply that the high levels of structure currently observed are a consequence of the limited dispersal of these hummingbirds across the isthmus and depression barriers,2015,0.907
Past climate change drives current genetic structure of an endangered freshwater mussel species,historical to recent climate change and anthropogenic disturbance affect species distributions and genetic structure the rio grande watershed of the united states and mexico encompasses ecosystems that are intensively exploited resulting in substantial degradation of aquatic habitats while significant anthropogenic disturbances in the rio grande are recent inhospitable conditions for freshwater organisms likely existed prior to such disturbances a combination of anthropogenic and past climate factors may contribute to current distributions of aquatic fauna in the rio grande basin we used mitochondrial dna and 18 microsatellite loci to infer evolutionary history and genetic structure of an endangered freshwater mussel popenaias popeii throughout the rio grande drainage we estimated spatial connectivity and gene flow across extant populations of p popeii and used ecological niche models enms and approximate bayesian computation abc to infer its evolutionary history during the pleistocene structure results recovered regional and local population clusters in the rio grande enms predicted drastic reductions in suitable habitat during the last glacial maximum abc analyses suggested that regional population structure likely arose in this species during the mid to late pleistocene and was followed by a late pleistocene population bottleneck in new mexico populations the local population structure arose relatively recently perhaps due to anthropogenic factors popenaias popeii one of the few freshwater mussel species native to the rio grande basin is a case study for understanding how both geological and anthropogenic factors shape current population genetic structure conservation strategies for this species should account for the fragmented nature of contemporary populations,2015,0.93
Social media mining as an opportunistic citizen science model in ecological monitoring: a case study using invasive alien species in forest ecosystems,major environmental social and economic changes threaten ing the resilience of ecosystems world wide and new demands on a broad range of forest ecosystem services present new challenges for forest management and monitoring new risks and threats such as invasive alien species imply fundamental challenges for traditional forest management strategies which have b een based on assumption s of permanent ecosystem stability adaptive management and monitoring is called for to detect new threats and changes as early as possible but this requires large scale monitoring and monitoring resources remain a limiting factor accordingly f orest practitioners and scientists have begun to turn to public support in the form of â œcitizen scienceâ to react flexibly to specific challenges and gather critical information t he emergence of ubiquitous mobile and internet technologies p rovides a new digital source of information in the form of so called social media that essentially turns users of these media into environmental sensors and provides an immense volume of publicly accessible ambient environmental information mining s ocial media content such as facebook twitter wikis or blogs has been shown to make critical contributions to epidemic disease monitoring emergency management or earthquake detection applications in the ecological domain remain anecdotal and a methodical e xploration for this domain is lacking using the example of the micro blogging service twitter and invasive alien species in forest ecosystems this study provides a methodical exploration and assessment of social media for forest monitoring social media mining is approached as an opportunistic citizen science model and the data activities and contributors are analyzed in comparison to deliberate ecological citizen science monitoring the results show that twitter is a valuable source of information on invasive alien species and that social media in general could be a supplement to traditional monitoring data twitter proves to be a rich source of primary biodiversity observations i ncluding those of the selected invasive species in addit ion it is shown that twitter content provides distinctive thematic profiles that relate closely to key characteristics of the explored invasive alien species and provide valuable insights for invasive species management furthermore the study shows that while there are underutilized opportunities for citizen science in forest monitoring the contributors of biodiversity observations on twitter show a more than 4 casual interest in this subject and represent a large pool of potential contributors to delibera te citizen science monitoring efforts in summary social online media are a valuable source for ecological monitoring information in general and d ese rve intensified exploration to arrive at operational systems supporting real time risk assessments,2015,0.515
Semantic Bridges for Biodiversity Sciences,understanding the impact of climate change and humans on biodiversity requires the retrieval and integration of heterogeneous data sets for the generation of models that provide insights not possible with a single model scientists invest a significant amount of time collecting and manually pre processing data for the generation of such models the earth life and semantic web elseweb project aims to create a semantic based open source cyberinfrastructure to automate the ingestion of data by models this paper describes the ontologies at the backbone of elseweb that provide semantic bridges between environmental data sources and species distribution models,2015,0.064
Digitization of Biodiversity Collections Reveals Biggest Data on Biodiversity,afortunate fact of human history is that we have been amassing an abundance of information on the biodiversity of our planetâ as institutional collections of specimensâ for hundreds of years with specimens in at least 1500 institutions in the united states and in probably close to 5000 worldwide there are billions of specimens almost all with taxonomic geographic and temporal data the us national museum of natural history alone has 126 million cataloged specimens www si edu researchstudy units sorsnmnh htm,2015,0.351
Reply to 'Sources of uncertainties in cod distribution models',ngvaldsen et al 1 comment on our study assessing global fish interchanges between the north atlantic and pacific oceans for more than 500 species during the entire twenty first century2 they propose that discrepancies between our model projections and observed data for cod in the barents sea areâ,2015,0.393
The not-so-Irish spurge: Euphorbia hyberna (Euphorbiaceae) and the Littletonian plant ‘steeplechase’,the disjunct distributions of the lusitanian flora which are found only in south west ireland and northern iberia and are generally absent from intervening regions have been of great interest to biogeographers there has been much debate as to whether irish populations represent relicts that survived the last glacial maximum lgm approximately 21 kya or whether they recolonized from southern refugia subsequent to the retreat of the ice and if so whether this occurred directly i e the result of long distance dispersal or successively i e in the manner of a â steeplechaseâ with the english channel and irish sea representing successive â water jumpsâ that have to be successfully crossed in the present study we used a combined palaeodistribution modelling and phylogeographical approach to determine the glacial history of the irish spurge euphorbia hyberna the sole member of the lusitanian flora that is also considered to occur naturally in south western england our findings suggest that the species persisted through the lgm in several southern refugia and that northern populations are the result of successive recolonization of britain and ireland during the postglacial littletonian warm stage akin to the â steeplechaseâ hypothesis,2015,0.675
Rates of climatic niche evolution are correlated with species richness in a large and ecologically diverse radiation of songbirds,by employing a recently inferred phylogeny and museum occurrence records we examine the relationship of ecological niche evolution to diversification in the largest family of songbirds the tanagers thraupidae we test whether differences in species numbers in the major clades of tanagers can be explained by differences in rate of climatic niche evolution we develop a methodological pipeline to process and filter occurrence records we find that of the ecological variables examined clade richness is higher in clades with higher climatic niche rate and that this rate is also greater for clades that occupy a greater extent of climatic space additionally we find that more speciose clades contain species with narrower niche breadths suggesting that clades in which species are more successful at diversifying across climatic gradients have greater potential for speciation or are more buffered from the risk of extinction,2015,0.689
Continental-scale diversification patterns in a megadiverse genus: the biogeography of Neotropical Begonia,aim the origin of neotropical hyperdiversity is one of the most intriguing questions in modern biogeography and is best answered through the investigation of large pantropically distributed genera allowing the comparison of closely related clades in different regions we produced a dated phylogeny and reconstructed ancestral ranges of the megadiverse andean centred genus begonia to discern its dispersal history throughout the neotropics and correlates of range evolution neotropical and palaeotropical diversification rates were estimated location neotropics central america south america west indies and mexico methods plastid dna sequence data from species representing the full geographical range and majority of sections of neotropical begonia were analysed with a secondarily calibrated relaxed molecular clock in order to estimate the age of crown groups and divergence times within neotropical begonia ancestral areas were reconstructed with a bayesian approach to dispersalâ vicariance analysis a likelihood framework under a dispersalâ extinctionâ cladogenesis model and a bayesian binary method diversification rates were estimated under a bayesian framework results biogeographical reconstruction indicated two independent trans atlantic colonizations of the neotropics from africa early diverging lineages of both clades are reconstructed as having diversified in the mid miocene with multiple dispersal events between the brazilian atlantic rain forest and the andes and single radiations within the west indies and central america plus mexico main conclusions begonia displays numerous radiations within regions punctuated by long distance dispersal successful colonization and diversification is predicted by the presence of upland habitat recognizing the role of chance dispersal events between available habitats is vital for understanding the formation of current biogeographical patterns,2015,0.38
"Distribution, morphology and habitats of Elatine triandra (Elatinaceae) in Europe, with particular reference to the central part of the continent",abstractelatine triandra schkuhr is the most variable and widespread species within the genus elatine l it has been recorded in all continents except antarctica but it is mainly located in europe the study is based on an extensive data set of european literature herbaria and web data that covers the period 1828â 2012 the range of the species in europe is disjunctive covering the southern and western parts of the central european plain and the southern part of the fennoscandian shield at a smaller scale the species can also be found along some river valleys in central europe many localities particularly isolated ones in the northern part of the range are now only historical from the data set we determined that e triandra may be best observed between may and october we found that species records show a near significant shift since 1828 depending on the environmental conditions individuals of the taxon develop as one of two morphs terrestrial or aquatic the aquatic morph is characterized b,2015,0.729
Uncommon paleodistribution patterns of Chrysolophus pheasants in east Asia: explanations and implications,some modeling studies indicated that the past distributions of species in east asia during the last interglacial lig and last glacial maximum lgm periods differ from those of european and north american species and the deviant asian distribution pattern is known under the term â pre lgm expansionâ it represents the unusually similar distribution patterns between the current and the lgm scenario however there is still no satisfying explanation for this phenomenon so far therefore we took the two recently separated pheasant species of genus chrysolophus in east asia as an example to test the pattern by performing ecological niche models the main findings of this study include 1 the paleodistributions of these two pheasants also corresponded to the â pre lgm expansionâ pattern 2 climatic similarity results from mobility oriented parity analysis also revealed similar pattern for both species 3 climate regimes of east asia showed patterns different from those in europe and north america in a climate shift towards drier conditions and stronger seasonality and to more extreme temperatures of the coldest months particularly during the lig 4 the two chrysolophus species occupied significantly different ecological niches according to current distribution we suggest that ecological segregation established in allopatric glacial refugia should be the main determinants for the separation of two chrysolophus species until they came into extant post pleistocene contact,2015,0.864
Tracking changes in natural history collections utilization: A case study at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico,abstract natural history collections nhcs are used in many fields of study but general knowledge regarding their uses is poor because of this funding and support for nhcs frequently fluctuate one way in which collections professionals can illustrate a collectionâ s contribution to a variety of fields is based on the collectionâ s history of use tracking nhc utilization through time can increase nhc value to others outside of the collection allow for the analysis of changes in specimen based research trends and assist in effective collection management this case study focuses on nhc usage records held by the museum of southwestern biology msb a currently growing university collection used in many research fields and presents methods for quantifying collections utilization through time through an exploration of these data this paper illustrates msbâ s growth and changes in research produced over time and offers explanations for the changes observed last this study provides suggestions for how,2015,0.022
Class Diplopoda Order Julida,the order julida the snake millipe des are comparatively uniform in external appearance they are be tween 4 and 150 mm long together with the orders spirostreptida and spirobolida the julida belong to the superorder juliformia characterized by fused body rings but secondarily separated in nemasomatidae and are generally of cylindrical shape the number of body rings is not fixed ev en in specimens of the same species and usually exceeds 30 the three orders can be discriminated best by the form of the mouth plate the gnathochilarium in julida the outer sclerites of the gnathochilarium the gnathochilarial stipetes border each other and t he central sclerite the promentum does not carry setae enghoff 1981 the gnathochilarium of all other millip ede orders is of different structure many julidans have two long frontal setae between the eyes and a posterior row of setae on their body rings the basal segments of the mandibles â cheeksâ are clearly divided in proximal cardines and distal stipetes the collum is large and partly overlaps the head and the second body ring some species lack eyes or have only a single row of ocelli in almost all julidans the first legpair of the males is modified to a certain ex tent in some julidans especially blaniulids the ventral edges of the â c heeksâ are also modified the last body ring telson and sometimes also the anal scale vary in a taxon specific way within the julida especially in the family julidae often being prolonged or showing an upward or downward directed hook the pilosity of the telson and the anal valves also show taxon specific differences the vulvae provide helpful characters in dis crimination of species or genera as well brã lem ann 1923 blower 1985 spelda 1993 but in some tribes e g julini they are quite uniform the male gonopods see 1 7 are difficult to examine because they are normally retracted inside the body,2015,0.6
Standardizing metadata and taxonomic identification in metabarcoding studies.,high throughput sequencing based metabarcoding studies produce vast amounts of ecological data but a lack of consensus on standardization of metadata and how to refer to the species recovered severely hampers reanalysis and comparisons among studies here we propose an automated workflow covering data submission compression storage and public access to allow easy data retrieval and inter study communication such standardized and readily accessible datasets facilitate data management taxonomic comparisons and compilation of global metastudies,2015,0.384
"Conservation of biodiversity through taxonomy, data publication, and collaborative infrastructures.",taxonomy is the foundation of biodiversity science because it furthers discovery of new species globally there have never been so many people involved in naming species new to science the number of new marine species described per decade has never been greater nevertheless it is estimated that tens of thousands of marine species and hundreds of thousands of terrestrial species are yet to be discovered many of which may already be in specimen collections however naming species is only a first step in documenting knowledge about their biology biogeography and ecology considering the threats to biodiversity new knowledge of existing species and discovery of undescribed species and their subsequent study are urgently required to accelerate this research we recommend and cite examples of more and better communication use of collaborative online databases easier access to knowledge and specimens production of taxonomic revisions and species identification guides engagement of nonspecialists and international collaboration data sharing should be abandoned in favor of mandated data publication by the conservation science community such a step requires support from peer reviewers editors journals and conservation organizations online data publication infrastructures e g global biodiversity information facility ocean biogeographic information system illustrate gaps in biodiversity sampling and may provide common ground for long term international collaboration between scientists and conservation organizations,2015,0.922
"Why is Pseudosphromenus cupanus (Teleostei: Osphronemidae) reported from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Pakistan?",the native distribution of the small labyrinth fish species pseudosphromenus cupanus includes southern india and sri lanka according to literature it has a range including also pakistan bangladesh myanmar malaysia and indonesia sumatra but there are no voucher specimens or reliable observations from those areas the distribution record of p cupanus was inflated partly by including p dayi as a synonym pseudosphronemus dayi is native to the western ghats in india but the origin of the aquarium importation in 1907 was reported as both cochin kochi and malacca malaysia the latter locality obviously in error the basis for the sumatra record is an obviously mislabeled sample of p dayi from pulau weh close to sumatra the basis for reporting the species from pakistan myanmar or bangladesh could not be located misidentified museum specimens from myanmar and pakistan identified as p cupanus were never published on pseudosphromenus cupanus has been considered recently to be extinct in bangladesh but in fact it never occurred there,2015,0.617
Environmental diversity as a surrogate for species representation.,because many species have not been described and most species ranges have not been mapped conservation planners often use surrogates for conservation planning but evidence for surrogate effectiveness is weak surrogates are well mapped features such as soil types landforms occurrences of an easily observed taxon discrete surrogates and well mapped environmental conditions continuous surrogate in the context of reserve selection the idea is that a set of sites selected to span diversity in the surrogate will efficiently represent most species environmental diversity ed is a rarely used surrogate that selects sites to efficiently span multivariate ordination space because it selects across continuous environmental space ed should perform better than discrete surrogates which necessarily ignore within bin and between bin heterogeneity despite this theoretical advantage ed appears to have performed poorly in previous tests of its ability to identify 50 ã 50 km cells that represented vertebrates in western europe using an improved implementation of ed we retested ed on western european birds mammals reptiles amphibians and combined terrestrial vertebrates we also tested ed on data sets for plants of zimbabwe birds of spain and birds of arizona united states sites selected using ed represented european mammals no better than randomly selected cells but they represented species in the other 7 data sets with 20 to 84 effectiveness this far exceeds the performance in previous tests of ed and exceeds the performance of most discrete surrogates we believe ed performed poorly in previous tests because those tests considered only a few candidate explanatory variables and used suboptimal forms of ed s selection algorithm we suggest future work on ed focus on analyses at finer grain sizes more relevant to conservation decisions explore the effect of selecting the explanatory variables most associated with species turnover and investigate whether nonclimate abiotic variables can provide useful surrogates in an ed framework,2015,0.526
An integrated hypothesis on the domestication of bactris gasipaes,peach palm bactris gasipaes kunth has had a central place in the livelihoods of people in the americas since pre columbian times notably for its edible fruits and multi purpose wood the botanical taxon includes both domesticated and wild varieties domesticated var gasipaes is believed to derive from one or more of the three wild types of var chichagui identified today although the exact dynamics and location of the domestication are still uncertain drawing on a combination of molecular and phenotypic diversity data modeling of past climate suitability and existing literature we present an integrated hypothesis about peach palm s domestication we support a single initial domestication event in south western amazonia giving rise to var chichagui type 3 the putative incipient domesticate we argue that subsequent dispersal by humans across western amazonia and possibly into central america allowed for secondary domestication events through hybridization with resident wild populations and differential human selection pressures resulting in the diversity of present day landraces the high phenotypic diversity in the ecuadorian and northern peruvian amazon suggest that human selection of different traits was particularly intense there while acknowledging the need for further data collection we believe that our results contribute new insights and tools to understand domestication and dispersal patterns of this important native staple as well as to plan for its conservation,2015,0.654
"A first overview of open access digital data for the Ross Sea: complexities, ethics, and management opportunities",it is now understood that the ross sea stands as one of the last relatively pristine ocean areas many decades of international research have been carried out under the antarctic treaty system stipulating that data acquired under this scheme must be shared with the global community in line with carlson nature 469 293 2011 polar research 10 â 3402 â polar â v32i0 â 20789 2013 we find little evidence of enforcement towards making digital geographic information systems gis project data available online for the wider ross sea ecosystem while it is possible to find easily 40 digital datasets for most areas and pixels worldwide despite many decades of research in the ross sea only app 100 digital datasets can be found for the study area it simply shows that data from many studies in the region are not available high quality population and trend data explicit in space and time are mostly missing in the public realm e g from the commission for the conservation of antarctic marine living resources ccamlr org this presents an ethical dilemma because it still appears that sufficient data exist for a pro active and pre cautionary management of this region no coherent and efficient management scheme truly exists and is applied for this precious part of the world now heavily affected by global stressors and mismanagement of data and resources,2015,0.172
Discovery and resupply of pharmacologically active plant-derived natural products: A review.,medicinal plants have historically proven their value as a source of molecules with therapeutic potential and nowadays still represent an important pool for the identification of novel drug leads in the past decades pharmaceutical industry focused mainly on libraries of synthetic compounds as drug discovery source they are comparably easy to produce and resupply and demonstrate good compatibility with established high throughput screening hts platforms however at the same time there has been a declining trend in the number of new drugs reaching the market raising renewed scientific interest in drug discovery from natural sources despite of its known challenges in this survey a brief outline of historical development is provided together with a comprehensive overview of used approaches and recent developments relevant to plant derived natural product drug discovery associated challenges and major strengths of natural product based drug discovery are critically discussed a snapshot of the advanced plant derived natural products that are currently in actively recruiting clinical trials is also presented importantly the transition of a natural compound from a screening hit through a drug lead to a marketed drug is associated with increasingly challenging demands for compound amount which often cannot be met by re isolation from the respective plant sources in this regard existing alternatives for resupply are also discussed including different biotechnology approaches and total organic synthesis while the intrinsic complexity of natural product based drug discovery necessitates highly integrated interdisciplinary approaches the reviewed scientific developments recent technological advances and research trends clearly indicate that natural products will be among the most important sources of new drugs also in the future,2015,0.108
A look inside the Pl@ntNet experience,pl ntnet is an innovative participatory sensing platform relying on image based plants identification as a mean to enlist non expert contributors and facilitate the production of botanical observation data one year after the public launch of the mobile application we carry out a self critical evaluation of the experience with regard to the requirements of a sustainable and effective ecological surveillance tool we first demonstrate the attractiveness of the developed multimedia system with more than 90k end users and the nice self improving capacities of the whole collaborative workflow we then point out the current limitations of the approach towards producing timely and accurate distribution maps of plants at a very large scale we discuss in particular two main issues the bias and the incompleteness of the produced data we finally open new perspectives and describe upcoming realizations towards bridging these gaps,2015,0.084
"Torrenticola trimaculata n. sp. (Parasitengona: Torrenticolidae), a three-spotted water mite from eastern North America: taxonomic history, species delimitation, and survey of external morphology",torrenticola trimaculata fisher n sp is described from eastern north america as the first in a series of descriptions on torrenticolidae as such the study includes expanded discussions of methods early taxonomic history and numerous images surveying external morphology using a diversity of imaging methods species hypotheses were supported with analysis of the barcoding region of coi torrenticola trimaculata is found to be a wide ranging variable species with two distinct morphs that do not coexist locally also we report the first record of the diatom cocconeis placentula ehrenberg 1838 as epiphytic on water mites,2015,0.774
Evolution and biogeography of the endemic Roucela complex (Campanulaceae: Campanula) in the Eastern Mediterranean,at the intersection of geological activity climatic fluctuations and human pressure the mediterranean basin â a hotspot of biodiversity â provides an ideal setting for studying endemism evolution and biogeography here we focus on the roucela complex campanula subgenus roucela a group of 13 bellflower species found primarily in the eastern mediterranean basin plastid and low copy nuclear markers were employed to reconstruct evolutionary relationships and estimate divergence times within the roucela complex using both concatenation and species tree analyses niche modeling ancestral range estimation and diversification analyses were conducted to provide further insights into patterns of endemism and diversification through time diversification of the roucela clade appears to have been primarily the result of vicariance driven by the breakup of an ancient landmass we found geologic events such as the formation of the mid aegean trench and the messinian salinity crisis to be historically important in the evolutionary history of this group contrary to numerous past studies the onset of the mediterranean climate has not promoted diversification in the roucela complex and in fact may be negatively affecting these species this study highlights the diversity and complexity of historical processes driving plant evolution in the mediterranean basin,2015,0.621
"An annotated checklist of the jumping plant-lice (Insecta: Hemiptera: Psylloidea) from the Mercantour National Park, with seven new records for France and one new Synonymy",abstract a total of 68 psyllid species are listed from the mercantour national park in southeast france where a targeted collecting campaign was conducted between 2009 and 2012 as part of the project â œatbi mâ mercantour the insects were collected using malaise traps flight intercept traps and sweep nets to sample in the vegetation additional information on distribution biology and host plants is provided for each species seven species are recorded for the first time from france craspedolepta artemisiae foerster 1848 craspedolepta nebulosa zetterstedt 1828 cacopsylla propinqua schaefer 1949 cyamophila prohaskai priesner 1927 eryngiofaga cf refuga loginova 1966 bactericera parastriola conci ossiannilsson tamanini 1988 and trioza flixiana burckhardt lauterer 2002 trioza trioza rapisardai conci tamanini 1984 is a new subjective synonym of trioza brachyceraea hodkinson white 1979 which was previously known only from the male holotype the abundance distribution an,2015,0.535
"Annotated checklist of the spiders (Arachnida, Araneae) of the Site of Community Importance and Special Area of Conservation “Alpi Marittime” (NW Italy)",abstract we present an annotated checklist of the spiders arachnida cuvier 1812 araneae clerck 1757 of the site of community importance and special area of conservation it1160056 â œalpi marittimeâ nw italy the checklist is based on literature records and unpublished material collected from 2007 to 2013 within the first european all taxa biodiversity inventory coordinated by the european distributed institute of taxonomy edit the examination of the literature provided a list of 113 species recorded for the study area between 1890 and 2013 scattered in 35 publications the new data provided here raise the total number of species known for the study area to 295 grouped in 147 genera and 31 families we recorded a remarkable percentage 9 of endemic species including rare endemic elements poorly known in literature such as vesubia jugorum simon 1881 troglohyphantes konradi brignoli 1975 nesticus morisii brignoli 1975 and turinyphia clairi simon 1884 for each species we report detail,2015,0.607
Phylogeographic study of Mandragora L. reveals a case of ancient human assisted migration,in reconstructing taxon evolution historical biogeography is concerned with two kinds of speciation events both resulting in a fragmented taxon distribution â vicariance and dispersal we used pcr rflp of plastid dna and a ribosomal internal transcribed spacer sequencing of the rps16 trnk chloroplast region flow cytometry florescence activated cell sorter facs and ecological niche modeling to understand the role of these two processes in a disjunct distribution of genus mandragora the observed phylogeographic structure only partly coincided with currently recognized species commonly used recognition of a single species in the whole mediterranean is not supported given that a single haplotype observed from morocco and spain to turkey is strikingly different from the haplotypes found in israel in the sino himalayan area the previously recognized m chinghaiensis is nested within the m caulescens clade indicating a very recent diversification within this lineage and most importantly the obtained minimum spanning tree observed haplotype distribution and results of facs call into question the existence of m turkomanica as a species and even as a lower taxonomic unit rather the mandrake from central asia is nested within those from israel suggesting their closely related evolutionary history and ancient human assisted migration from israel to persia in historic times our study suggests that human assisted migration can explain the cases of disjunct species distribution for which vicariance was previously considered as the only plausible explanation,2015,0.805
"Creeping Environmental Problems in the Pamir Mountains: Landscape Conditions, Climate Change, Wise Use and Threats",pamir is a highland region in central asia located on the orogenic uplift known as the pamir knot which joins several asian mountain ranges the name pamir may derive from the ancient iranian pai mir â œfoot of mithra â god of the sun or from the word pamers which means the flat and wide high valleys with typical mountain meadows in altitudes around 3500â 4000 m above sea level a s l high mountain topography the highest ranges exceed 7000 m a s l is a characteristic feature of this region and acts as a barrier isolating it from the rest of the world,2015,0.314
Updated Checklist of the Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) of French Guiana.,the incredible mosquito species diversity in the neotropics can provoke major confusion during vector control programs when precise identification is needed this is especially true in french guiana where studies on mosquito diversity practically ceased 35 yr ago in order to fill this gap we propose here an updated and comprehensive checklist of the mosquitoes of french guiana reflecting the latest changes in classification and geographical distribution and the recognition of current or erroneous synonymies this work was undertaken in order to help ongoing and future research on mosquitoes in a broad range of disciplines such as ecology biogeography and medical entomology thirty two valid species cited in older lists have been removed and 24 species have been added including 12 species comprising two new genera and three new subgenera reported from french guiana for the first time new records are from collections conducted on various phytotelmata in french guiana and include the following species onirion sp cf harbach and peyton 2000 sabethes peytonulus hadrognathus harbach sabethes peytonulus paradoxus harbach sabethes peytonulus soperi lane and cerqueira sabethes sabethinus idiogenes harbach sabethes sabethes quasicyaneus peryass㺠runchomyia ctenogoeldia magna theobald wyeomyia caenomyiella sp cf harbach and peyton 1990 wyeomyia dendromyia ypsipola dyar wyeomyia hystatomyia lamellata bonne wepster and bonne wyeomyia miamyia oblita lutz and toxorhynchites lynchiella guadeloupensis dyar and knab at this time the mosquitoes of french guiana are represented by 235 species distributed across 22 genera nine tribes and two subfamilies,2015,0.893
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 74. Validation of a few names in liverworts (Marchantiophyta),for the forthcoming world checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in press a few names to be used need to be validated,2015,0.354
Improving data quality to build a robust distribution model for Architeuthis dux,the giant squid architeuthis has been reported since even before the 16th century and has recently been observed live in its habitat for the first time among the species belonging to this genus architeuthis dux has received special attention from biologists the distribution of this species is poorly understood as most of our information stems from stranded animals or stomach remains predicting the habitat and distribution of this species and more in general of difficult to observe species is important from a biological conservation perspective in this paper we present an approach to estimate the potential distribution of a dux at global scale with relative high resolution 1 degree our approach relies on a complex preparation phase which improves the reliability of presence absence and environmental data correlated to the species habitat we compare our distribution with those produced by state of the art approaches maxent and aquamaps and use an expert drawn map as reference we demonstrate that our model projection is in agreement with the expert s map and is also compliant with several biological assessments of the species habitat and with recent observations furthermore we show that our approach can be generalized as a paradigm that is applicable to other rare species,2015,0.9
Emerging technologies for biological recording,technology has played an important role in biological recording for hundreds of years from the invention of the microscope to the microprocessor we review current and emerging technologies that are changing the way we study and record the natural world from websites to smartphones data capture is becoming easier faster and more accessible increases in data volume and wider participation raises concerns over data quality which are being addressed with accurate sensors automated validation tools and verification platforms that utilize expert taxonomists and collective intelligence to ensure the highest level of quality possible data curation and interoperability have been transformed in the information age the need to collate data at continental and global scales and across institutions continues to drive the formation of standardized data formats and taxonomies once collated these data can be analysed using high performance computing and used to provide valuable feedback in the form of interactive visualizations computer generated text or even game like rewards we also address issues arising from these technological developments for example how will the role of the expert naturalist change is biological recording undergoing a revolutionary or evolutionary process how is technology leading to the empowerment of the public,2015,0.082
Spatial Distribution and Global Potential Suitability Regions of Artemisia annua,objective to study the spatial distribution and potential climatic suitability regions of artemisia annua around the world methods the spatial distribution and climatic characteristics were researched by factor analysis based on global biodiversity information facility database and world climate database the global potential suitability regions of artemisia annua were analyzed by arcgis results artemisia annua distributed in three longitude zones including 90 55 â w 77 14 â w 2 03 â e 11 75 â e and 98 27 â e 111 05 â e which were respectively in north america europe and asia the latitude range was mainly 29 15 â n 51 36 â n 80 of artemisia annua were in the regions which elevation range was 22 00 491 00 m annual precipitation was 492 30 1 366 70 mm annual average temperature was from 8 10 to 17 27 â c the potential suitability regions of artemisia annua with 95 100 climate similarity were mainly in 30 â s and 30 â n regions centered around the equator axis conclusion latitude is closely related to the distribution of artemisia annua the key affecting climatic factors are annual precipitation the wettest season precipitation the warmest season precipitation and the highest temperature in the warmest month the average temperature of the warmest season as well as the average temperature of the wettest season the potential suitability regions of artemnisia annua are in eastern north america western europe and eastern asia,2015,0.363
Potential Distribution Predicted for Rhynchophorus ferrugineus in China under Different Climate Warming Scenarios.,as the primary pest of palm trees rhynchophorus ferrugineus olivier coleoptera curculionidae has caused serious harm to palms since it first invaded china the present study used climex 1 1 to predict the potential distribution of r ferrugineus in china according to both current climate data 1981 2010 and future climate warming estimates based on simulated climate data for the 2020s 2011 2040 provided by the tyndall center for climate change research tyn sc 2 0 additionally the ecoclimatic index ei values calculated for different climatic conditions current and future as simulated by the b2 scenario were compared areas with a suitable climate for r ferrugineus distribution were located primarily in central china according to the current climate data with the northern boundary of the distribution reaching to 40 1â n and including tibet north sichuan central shaanxi south shanxi and east hebei there was little difference in the potential distribution predicted by the four emission scenarios according to future climate warming estimates the primary prediction under future climate warming models was that compared with the current climate model the number of highly favorable habitats would increase significantly and expand into northern china whereas the number of both favorable and marginally favorable habitats would decrease contrast analysis of ei values suggested that climate change and the density of site distribution were the main effectors of the changes in ei values these results will help to improve control measures prevent the spread of this pest and revise the targeted quarantine areas,2015,0.075
High-resolution genetic analysis reveals extensive gene flow within the jellyfish Pelagia noctiluca (Scyphozoa) in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea,despite the importance of gela tinous zooplankton as component s of marine ecosystems both ecologically and socio economically relatively little is known about population persistence or connectivity in jellyfish in the present study we employed a combination of nuclear microsatellite markers and sequence data from the mitochondrial cytoch rome oxidase i coi gene to determine levels and patterns of population genetic st ructuring in the holoplanktonic jellyfish pelagia noctiluca across the northeast atlantic ocea n and mediterranean sea our results indicate a high de gree of connectivity in p noctiluca with little evidence of geographical structuring of gene tic variation a small but si gnificant differentiation of atlantic ocean and mediterranean stocks was de tected based on the micr osatellite data but no evidence of differentiation was observed with the mtdna probably due to the higher power of the microsatellites to detect low levels of genetic structuring two clearly distinct groups of genotypes were observed within the mtdna coi which probably diverged in the early pleistocene but with no evidence of geographical structuri ng palaeodistribution modelling of p noctiluca at the last glacial maximum lgm ca 21 kya indicated large areas of suitable habitat south of the speciesâ current day distribution with little reduction in area the congruent evidence for minimal genetic differentiation from the nuclear microsatellites and the mtdna coupled with th e results of the palaeodistribution modelling supports the idea of long term population stab ility and connectivity thus providing key insights into the population dynamics and de mography of this important species,2015,0.442
"CitSci.org: A New Model for Managing, Documenting, and Sharing Citizen Science Data.",citizen science projects have the potential to advance science by increasing the volume and variety of data as well as innovation yet this potential has not been fully realized in part because citizen science data are typically not widely shared and reused to address this and related challenges we built citsci org see www citsci org a customizable platform that allows users to collect and generate diverse datasets we hope that citsci org will ultimately increase discoverability and confidence in citizen science observations encouraging scientists to use such data in their own scientific research,2015,0.309
Edible Non-Crustacean Arthropods in Rural Communities of Madagascar,entomophagy the practice of eating insects is not new in many countries including madagascar where insects have long been part of culinary traditions promoting this practice would help in enhancing food security as insects are nutritious and affordable for the majority of the population because eating insects is also associated with rural life we conducted a survey in rural communities of madagascar from april to june 2013 diversity of edible non crustacean arthropods was assessed for each site using the number of times names of arthropods consumed were mentioned by each household approximately 65 morpho species from seven orders of insects including hemiptera coleoptera lepidoptera orthoptera hymenoptera odonata and mantodea and two orders of arachnids including araneae and ixodida were recorded as the most frequently consumed arthropods during the survey preference rankings differed among sites possibly depending on the availability of the edible species information on seasonal availability was also recorded from the informants when comparing factors influencing food security in rural areas most of the edible species were found between october and march a time associated with the lean season and elevated food prices this pattern demonstrates the importance of entomophagy in food security as malagasy farmers rely heavily on their subsistence crops for their living rearing selected edible insects at a marketable level combined with other insect based activities such as sericulture would further improve food security promoting the importance of ethnoentomology would be ultimately leading to more effective sustainability of edible insects and conservation of forests in madagascar,2015,0.237
Modelling the distribution and transmission intensity of lymphatic filariasis in sub-Saharan Africa prior to scaling up interventions: integrated use of geostatistical and mathematical modelling,background lymphatic filariasis lf is one of the neglected tropical diseases targeted for global elimination the ability to interrupt transmission is partly influenced by the underlying intensity of transmission and its geographical variation this information can also help guide the design of targeted surveillance activities the present study uses a combination of geostatistical and mathematical modelling to predict the prevalence and transmission intensity of lf prior to the implementation of large scale control in sub saharan africa methods a systematic search of the literature was undertaken to identify surveys on the prevalence of wuchereria bancrofti microfilaraemia mf based on blood smears and on the prevalence of antigenaemia based on the use of an immuno chromatographic card test ict using a suite of environmental and demographic data spatiotemporal multivariate models were fitted separately for mf prevalence and ict based prevalence within a bayesian framework and used to make predictions for non sampled areas maps of the dominant vector species of lf were also developed the maps of predicted prevalence and vector distribution were linked to mathematical models of the transmission dynamics of lf to infer the intensity of transmission quantified by the basic reproductive number r 0 results the literature search identified 1267 surveys that provide suitable data on the prevalence of mf and 2817 surveys that report the prevalence of antigenaemia distinct spatial predictions arose from the models for mf prevalence and ict based prevalence with a wider geographical distribution when using ict based data the vector distribution maps demonstrated the spatial variation of lf vector species mathematical modelling showed that the reproduction number r 0 estimates vary from 2 7 to 30 with large variations between and within regions conclusions lf transmission is highly heterogeneous and the developed maps can help guide intervention monitoring and surveillance strategies as countries progress towards lf elimination,2015,0.88
A biogeographical regionalization of Angolan mammals,we developed a biogeographical regionalization of angolan mammals based on data collected before major declines occurred during the civil war 1975â 2002 in terms of its biodiversity angola is one of the least known of all african countries we used 9880 grid records of 140 species rodents ungulates and carnivores collected mainly in 1930â 80 at a quarter degree cell resolution biogeographical regions were identified by using cluster analysis based on î sim dissimilarity matrices and a hierarchical classification using ward s method an indicator value analysis was used to identify species characterizing each region distance based redundancy analysis was used to investigate the environmental correlates of mammalian assemblages four biogeographical subdivisions emerged from ungulate distributions while rodent and carnivore data were largely uninformative in the north the zaire lunda cuanza region was mainly characterized by ungulate species associated with congolian forests in the south the namibe and cunene cuando cubango regions were mainly characterized by ungulates widespread in south western and southern africa in between these regions the central plateau region was mainly characterized by a few widespread ungulate species that are relatively common in dense miombo woodlands biogeographical patterns were significantly associated with a dominant northâ south gradient of decreasing humidity and increasing temperature and with a concurrent gradient from dense forests and woodlands to open savannas grasslands and deserts the biogeographical regions we identified in angola were largely consistent with other bioregionalizations developed using various taxonomic groups at larger spatial scales biogeographical patterns reflected the southward penetration of congolian forest species in the north and the northward penetration of southern african desert grassland species in the south west and of open savanna species in the south these processes seem to be controlled by the distribution of vegetation types which in turn are associated with climatic gradients and soil types the stronger patterns observed for ungulates than for other mammals may reflect the close association of ungulates to specific vegetation types,2015,0.939
Polyploidy in Lilium lancifolium: Evidence of autotriploidy and no niche divergence between diploid and triploid cytotypes in their native ranges,lilium lancifolium the tiger lily constitutes a polyploid complex with both diploids reproduced by seeds and bulbils and triploids propagated exclusively via bulbils an autopolyploid origin for the triploid forms has been previously suggested based on classical cytogenetics chromosome mapping techniques ecological data and geographic distribution in their native range korea and the japanese tsushima island using 13 allozyme loci we comparatively assessed clonal structure and levels of genetic diversity in four diploid and 11 triploid populations in south korea to test the autopolyploid origin of the triploid cytotype and to infer which seedling recruitment strategy is operating within the diploid populations we also employed ecological niche modeling and multivariate analysis to determine whether triploids of l lancifolium occupy different and broader niches to those of diploids in korea and tsushima island the diploids harbored higher levels of within population genetic diversity than triploids and allele profiles found in triploids were exactly subsets of those in diploids repeated seedling recruitment was inferred for the diploids whereas all the studied triploid populations were monoclonal since there is no seedling sexual recruitment although we found no niche divergence between cytotypes of l lancifolium the triploids have a broader niche breadth genetic data further confirm the autotriploid origin of l lancifolium and the lack of a clear strong evidence for niche divergence between cytotypes of l lancifolium supports the view that ecological differentiation is not a pre requisite for the establishment of new polyploid lineages,2015,0.524
US protected lands mismatch biodiversity priorities.,because habitat loss is the main cause of extinction where and how much society chooses to protect is vital for saving species the united states is well positioned economically and politically to pursue habitat conservation should it be a societal goal we assessed the us protected area portfolio with respect to biodiversity in the country new synthesis maps for terrestrial vertebrates freshwater fish and trees permit comparison with protected areas to identify priorities for future conservation investment although the total area protected is substantial its geographic configuration is nearly the opposite of patterns of endemism within the country most protected lands are in the west whereas the vulnerable species are largely in the southeast private land protections are significant but they are not concentrated where the priorities are to adequately protect the nation s unique biodiversity we recommend specific areas deserving additional protection some of them including public lands but many others requiring private investment,2015,0.409
Studies in the genus Glutinoglossum.,glutinoglossum is a recently described genus in geoglossomycetes characterized by viscid black fruiting bodies glutinoglossum was described based on molecular evidence showing that the fungus formerly known as geoglossum glutinosum formed a well supported clade separate from geoglossum this study provides a comprehensive examination of glutinoglossum based on maximum likelihood and bayesian analyses of a dataset that includes nuc rdna internal transcribed spacer and partial 28s regions and the nuc genes for rna polymerase ii largest subunit rpb1 and minichromosome maintenance complex component 7 mcm7 four new species are described an emended description of glutinoglossum glutinosum and a key to the genus glutinoglossum is provided,2015,0.457
The Importance of Biodiversity E-infrastructures for Megadiverse Countries.,addressing the challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development requires global cooperation support structures and new governance models to integrate diverse initiatives and achieve massive open exchange of data tools and technology the traditional paradigm of sharing scientific knowledge through publications is not sufficient to meet contemporary demands that require not only the results but also data knowledge and skills to analyze the data e infrastructures are key in facilitating access to data and providing the framework for collaboration here we discuss the importance of e infrastructures of public interest and the lack of long term funding policies we present the example of brazil s specieslink network an e infrastructure that provides free and open access to biodiversity primary data and associated tools specieslink currently integrates 382 datasets from 135 national institutions and 13 institutions from abroad openly sharing 7 4 million records 94 of which are associated to voucher specimens just as important as the data is the network of data providers and users in 2014 more than 95 of its users were from brazil demonstrating the importance of local e infrastructures in enabling and promoting local use of biodiversity data and knowledge from the outset specieslink has been sustained through project based funding normally public grants for 2 4 year periods in between projects there are short term crises in trying to keep the system operational a fact that has also been observed in global biodiversity portals as well as in social and physical sciences platforms and even in computing services portals in the last decade the open access movement propelled the development of many web platforms for sharing data adequate policies unfortunately did not follow the same tempo and now many initiatives may perish,2015,0.245
Are American Pikas ( Ochotona princeps ) in the Canadian Rockies vulnerable to climate change?,the american pika ochotona princeps is vulnerable to climate change as a result of its dependence on cool moist conditions most research on climatic determinants of american pika distribution has been done in the united states where conditions are different from those in the higher latitude pika ranges of the canadian rockies i examined recent 1980â 2009 and future 2050s and 2080s average and maximum mean summer temperatures for 114 current american pika locations in alberta to assess whether future conditions are likely to place these animals at risk at all current sites mean summer temperatures msts in the 2050s are expected to be below that chosen by the united states fish and wildlife service as a threshold for at risk status of o princeps by the 2050s most current american pika locations have sufficient elevation within 5 km to allow individuals to migrate vertically to reach habitat with mst similar to that of their current location even in the 2080s almost all current sites have sufficient elevation within 5 km to maintain extreme single year and average msts lower than the highest values recorded at those sites in the recent past 13 9â c and 12 5â c respectively however by the 2080s under an extreme greenhouse gas emissions scenario only 34 of current pika sites will allow for such migration although considerable uncertainty remains particularly with respect to availability of habitat these results suggest that american pika populations in alberta will likely be capable of persisting throughout this century although their survival will depend increasingly on successful vertical migration,2015,0.405
Predicting plant diversity patterns in Madagascar: understanding the effects of climate and land cover change in a biodiversity hotspot.,climate and land cover change are driving a major reorganization of terrestrial biotic communities in tropical ecosystems in an effort to understand how biodiversity patterns in the tropics will respond to individual and combined effects of these two drivers of environmental change we use species distribution models sdms calibrated for recent climate and land cover variables and projected to future scenarios to predict changes in diversity patterns in madagascar we collected occurrence records for 828 plant genera and 2186 plant species we developed three scenarios i e climate only land cover only and combined climate land cover based on recent and future climate and land cover variables we used this modelling framework to investigate how the impacts of changes to climate and land cover influenced biodiversity across ecoregions and elevation bands there were large scale climate and land cover driven changes in plant biodiversity across madagascar including both losses and gains in diversity the sharpest declines in biodiversity were projected for the eastern escarpment and high elevation ecosystems sharp declines in diversity were driven by the combined climate land cover scenarios however there were subtle region specific differences in model outputs for each scenario where certain regions experienced relatively higher species loss under climate or land cover only models we strongly caution that predicted future gains in plant diversity will depend on the development and maintenance of dispersal pathways that connect current and future suitable habitats the forecast for madagascar s plant diversity in the face of future environmental change is worrying regional diversity will continue to decrease in response to the combined effects of climate and land cover change with habitats such as ericoid thickets and eastern lowland and sub humid forests particularly vulnerable into the future,2015,0.327
Mapping the risk of Nipah virus spillover into human populations in South and Southeast Asia.,background nipah virus niv is a significant emerging zoonotic pathogen given its wide geographic distribution and the severe morbidity and high mortality that accompanies infection moreover the layered landscape epidemiology surrounding spillover from reservoir host species to humans is ill defined identifying landscape features that contribute to niv spillover would likely prove helpful in preventing emergence in human populations methods using an inhomogeneous poisson model this study investigated the role of vegetation cover the human footprint hfp and reservoir pteropus bat distribution to identify the spatial dependence of spillover and map risk across south and southeast asia results the spatial model identified hfp rr 1 08 95 ci 1 05 1 11 and bat distribution rr 19 44 95 ci 1 92 196 7 as significant predictors of niv risk while vegetation cover was not significant after accounting for hfp and the presence of pteropus bats conclusions these findings further inform the landscape epidemiology of niv and suggest specific conduits for spillover in the landscape however more detailed field studies will be required to validate these results,2015,0.498
Late Miocene vegetation dynamics under monsoonal climate in southwestern China,to better understand vegetation dynamics and the asian monsoonal climate in the neogene we reconstructed the vegetational succession and climate of wenshan basin in southwestern china during the late miocene 11 62â 5 33ma we used newly available palynological data and the results of a quantitative bioclimatic analysis the late miocene palynoflora in wenshan basin resembles that of modern evergreen broadleaf vegetation in subtropical east asia based on pollen elements and reconstructed palaeoclimates in 72 samples we found the composition of the vegetation in the wenshan basin fluctuated during the late miocene and was likely driven by natural climate variability quantitative estimates suggest that the mean annual temperature mat ranged from 16 6 to 17 5â c the mean annual precipitation map was 1500mm and the monsoon intensity index msi ranged from 11 3 to 17 1 our results indicate that the wenshan basin experienced a warm wet and temperate to subtropical climate by comparison with other late miocene sites in yunnan we show that temperatures differed slightly from region to region and overall annual and seasonal precipitation levels were higher in the late miocene than at present but with a weaker monsoon intensity than in the wenshan basin today,2015,0.358
Atlas of Mexican Triatominae (Reduviidae: Hemiptera) and vector transmission of Chagas disease.,chagas disease is one of the most important yet neglected parasitic diseases in mexico and is transmitted by triatominae nineteen of the 31 mexican triatomine species have been consistently found to invade human houses and all have been found to be naturally infected with trypanosoma cruzi the present paper aims to produce a state of knowledge atlas of mexican triatomines and analyse their geographic associations with t cruzi human demographics and landscape modification ecological niche models enms were constructed for the 19 species with more than 10 records in north america as well as for t cruzi the 2010 mexican national census and the 2007 national forestry inventory were used to analyse overlap patterns with enms niche breadth was greatest in species from the semiarid nearctic region whereas species richness was associated with topographic heterogeneity in the neotropical region particularly along the pacific coast three species triatoma longipennis triatoma mexicana and triatoma barberi overlapped with the greatest numbers of human communities but these communities had the lowest rural urban population ratios triatomine vectors have urbanised in most regions demonstrating a high tolerance to human modified habitats and broadened historical ranges exposing more than 88 of the mexican population and leaving few areas in mexico without the potential for t cruzi transmission,2015,0.811
"Range extensions for Northern Redbelly Dace ( Chrosomus eos ), Fathead Minnow ( Pimephales promelas ), and Iowa Darter ( Etheostoma exile ) in Ontario, Canada",relatively little is known of the distribution of small fish in the far north of ontario canada particularly in the hudson bay lowlands between 2009 and 2014 we sampled 81 locations across six study areas in ontarioâ s far north to determine the extent of species occurrences beyond their reported ranges we used galvanized minnow traps and a standardized effort as well as incidental sampling that included dip and seine netting we documented 25 fish species across the region including three species beyond their known geographic ranges northern redbelly dace chrosomus eos cyprinidae fathead minnow pimephales promelas cyprinidae and iowa darter etheostoma exile percidae,2015,0.692
Taxonomy and ecological niche modeling: Implications for the conservation of wood partridges (genus Dendrortyx),ecological niche models enms have a wide range of biological applications particularly in conservation to build these models two sources of information are needed occurrence records for the species of interest and environmental variables however taxonomic limits are often unclear and the selection of occurrence data depends on the species concept being used in this study we generated enms based on different taxonomic levels within the dendrortyx group which is comprised of three species and several subspecies we analyzed the geographic and ecological distribution patterns and discuss the implications for the biogeography and conservation of this group our results suggest that the area with suitable climate depends on the taxonomic category used in the model which in turn affects the interpretation of the importance of different biogeographic barriers and introduces variation into the potential differentiation of dendrortyx in terms of conservation dendrortyx macroura and dendrortyx leucophrys are in a low risk category that of â œleast concern â although they may be amended to a higher category when their allopatric lineages are considered as the units for modeling we suggest carrying out an a priori taxonomic analysis to facilitate the empirical identification of the units to be modeled in order to allow for a better ecological and biogeographic interpretation and more sound conservation policies,2015,0.468
Bird diversity and environmental heterogeneity in North America: a test of the area-heterogeneity trade-off,aim deterministic niche theory predicts that increasing environmental heterogeneity increases species richness in contrast a recent stochastic model suggests that heterogeneity has a unimodal effect on species richness since high levels of heterogeneity reduce the effective area available per species thereby increasing the likelihood of stochastic extinction the â areaâ heterogeneity trade offâ we tested these contrasting predictions using data on bird distributions in north america location north america methods the effect of heterogeneity on species richness was tested using simultaneous autoregressive regression models based on two measures of heterogeneity elevational range and land cover richness each quantified at two scales 400 m 5 km three measures of species richness observed corrected for incomplete detection and corrected for regional richness and three variable selection methods forced entry akaike information criterion aic based and a null model approach covariates included precipitation temperature elevation and latitude for all variables both linear and quadratic terms were included in the analyses results overall heterogeneity had a weak effect on species richness and the contribution of the quadratic term of heterogeneity to the explained variance was very small 1 nevertheless in all 36 models the coefficients of both the linear and quadratic terms of heterogeneity were statistically significant and the estimated inflection point was within the range of the data as predicted by the areaâ heterogeneity trade off moreover in 30 out of the 36 models support for a unimodal effect of heterogeneity on species richness based on information theoretic criteria was strong î aic 10 and in 22 of those 30 models the null hypothesis of a monotonically positive relationship could be rejected at the 0 05 significance level main conclusions patterns of bird richness in north america were predominantly consistent with the predictions of the areaâ heterogeneity trade off future attempts to understand the mechanisms affecting species diversity should pay more attention to the potential consequences of this fundamental trade off,2015,0.471
"Evidence of niche conservatism and host fidelity in the polar shrimp Lebbeus kiae n. sp. (Decapoda: Caridea: Thoridae) from the Ross Sea, Antarctica",we report a remarkable case of â bipolarismâ where two different polar species namely lebbeus polaris in the northern hemisphere and lebbeus kiae n sp here described from the southern ocean have been found to share similar ecologies despite the great geographical distance between the two species both show high host fidelity in associations with two congeneric sea anemones bolocera tuediae and bolocera kerguelensis respectively a close molecular phylogenetic relationship between the two lebbeus species is indicated by coi data which clearly show them as sister clades with respect to other congeners as well as a plurality of other antarctic species this is the first reported case of a defensive association in the southern ocean involving shrimps and sea anemones the distribution of the new species limited to seamount systems off the ross sea may be the result of a specific colonisation speciation event in the past although more molecular data are needed to unravel the phylogenetic relationships within the genus lebbeus despite this uncertainty the persistence of ecological traits i e the defensive association with sea anemones indicates the presence of niche conservatism in this clade of shrimps,2015,0.882
"The Giant Resin Bee, Megachile sculpturalis Smith: New Distributional Records for the Mid- and Gulf-south USA",background megachile callomegachile sculpturalis smith the giant resin bee is an adventive species in the united states first established in the united states during the early 1990s records currently exist from most states east of the mississippi river along with iowa and kansas new information new distributional records are presented for megachile callomegachile sculpturalis smith an introduced bee additional records presented here expand the known distribution southwest through arkansas louisiana mississippi missouri and texas an updated host plant list containing new records is also presented expanding the number of known floral associations,2015,0.431
Data management aspects of public engagement with biodiversity documentation,technological developments open up new opportunities for collaboration between biodiversity researchers and the general public three exemplary case studies were reviewed from literature digitizing museum specimens text mining archived expedition journals and handling environmental monitoring data data management principles were applied to refine the ensuing requirements specific requirements were found to exist in three areas collecting data sharing data and improving data quality implications for data governance and quality control are discussed,2015,0.372
Preliminary analysis of the vascular flora of Mongolia_2015,the diversity of plants in mongolia country reflects its geographic position in the centre of asia this is a revision of the floristic composition of mongolia which was based on last conspectus urgamal et al 2014 recently the mongolia flora includes 3127 taxa included additional 131 subspecies and 32 varietes of vascular plants distributing over 683 genera 112 families 39 orders 14 classes or clades 5 divisions and 3 superclades are recorded according to apg iii system from mongolia since gubanovâ s conspectus 1996 published 1 family onocleaceae 20 genera and 412 species and subspecies have been added to the flora urgamal et al 2014 the about 480 new nomenclatural combinations on species and 62 on genus level have been made and more than 2700 new occurrences for about 1200 species have been found families and genera richest in species are asteraceae 478 species fabaceae 356 poaceae 259 families and astragalus 132 species artemisia 104 and oxytropis 99 genera the most made additions of the species number of followed families and genera asteraceae 80 species fabaceae 54 brassicaceae 30 families and astragalus 21 taraxacum 20 potentilla 17 genera the most made additions to the following phyto geographical regions of mongolia mongolian altai 134 species khentei 71 and mongol daurian 64 regions the information on the mongolian vascular plant species regionalized by presenting the records separately for 16 phytogeographical regions which introduced in earlier published works by v i grubov 1982 and i a gubanov 1996 a total of 151 species 4 82 of total vascular flora are endemic to mongolia added 11 species the includes to 135 species as â œvery rareâ in the mongolian red book 2013 and 148 species in the mongolian red list book 2011 to the vascular flora of mongolia preliminary analysis of the vascular flora of mongolia 2015 researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 281571223 preliminary analysis of the vascular flora of mongolia 2015 accessed nov 9 2015,2015,0.991
Population genetic structure of Iris ensata on sky-islands and its implications for assisted migration,due to global warming since the last glacial maximum many plant populations have retreated to mountain tops i e sky islands which are isolated by low elevation barriers and inhospitable habitats under projected environmental changes these populations may decline and face local extinction iris ensata thunb populations at the speciesâ most southern distribution range are in this position we used eight polymorphic nuclear microsatellite markers and three fragments of chloroplast genome to analyze population structure of six extant sky island populations of i ensata a total of 83 alleles were found across 192 individuals from six populations high levels of intra population genetic diversity h e 0 578 h o 0 608 of i ensata were detected moderate but significant levels of genetic differentiation were also found among the populations f st 0 133 p 0 001 mantel test showed no isolation by distance pattern r 0 339 p 0 161 assignment analysis classified all individuals into five groups and four populations were dominated by only one group five chloroplast dna cpdna haplotypes were found and one was shared by all populations two populations contained a private haplotype long term fragmentation but relatively large population sizes and restricted gene flow among populations contributed to the above patterns under projected habitat changes the studied populations are at risk of local extinction we identified three populations that had a high priority of ex situ conservation to be the source populations for the future assisted migration number of individuals how to select individuals and a potential recipient site were discussed,2015,0.986
The changing patterns of plant naturalization in Australia,aim to identify the temporal patterns of plant naturalization in australia particularly the interaction between taxonomy geographic origin and economic use location australia methods from australia s virtual herbarium we compiled a database of information for the entire naturalized flora of australia we then examined the database in discrete time intervals to determine the changes in patterns of naturalized species taxonomy geographic origin and economic use over time results contrary to prevailing hypotheses we found no evidence to indicate that the rate of alien flora naturalization is increasing in australia the number of naturalized species has grown linearly during the period 1880â 2000 with the underlying rate of new species detected per thousand specimens declining over the same time period despite this the diversity of both species taxonomy and geographic origin has increased over the last 120 years leading to increased rates of growth in the total phylogenetic diversity of the australian flora main conclusions by classifying species according to their likely origin and economic use we are able to infer the circumstances driving the patterns of naturalization in particular we identify how the contribution of individual pathways has changed since european settlement corresponding with the socio economic development of the continent our study illustrates how the changing nature of â high riskâ pathways is relevant to directing interventions such as biosecurity regulation,2015,0.796
B-HIT - A Tool for Harvesting and Indexing Biodiversity Data,with the rapidly growing number of data publishers the process of harvesting and indexing information to offer advanced search and discovery becomes a critical bottleneck in globally distributed primary biodiversity data infrastructures the global biodiversity information facility gbif implemented a harvesting and indexing toolkit hit which largely automates data harvesting activities for hundreds of collection and observational data providers the team of the botanic garden and botanical museum berlin dahlem has extended this well established system with a range of additional functions including improved processing of multiple taxon identifications the ability to represent associations between specimen and observation units new data quality control and new reporting capabilities the open source software b hit can be freely installed and used for setting up thematic networks serving the demands of particular user groups,2015,0.167
CHAPTER TWO MIXED POPULATION GENOMICS SUPPORT FOR THE CENTRAL MARGINAL HYPOTHESIS ACROSS THE INVASIVE RANGE OF THE CANE …,the cane toad rhinella bufo marina is one of only three amphibians to be named one of the top 100 worldâ s worst invasive species by the international union for conservation of nature this large neotropical toad has been introduced and become invasive in over 40 countries in tropical and subtropical ecosystems around the world the largest and arguably most damaging invasion site is in australia originally introduced in 1935 as a biocontrol agent to control sugar cane beetle pests the toad has since expanded its australian range across nearly 20 of the continentâ s landmass it is still expanding its range in northwest australia while range edges in eastern and southern australia are relatively stable species invasions although unfortunate provide unique opportunities to study the evolutionary and ecological causes for speciesâ geographic range limits this field has had an abundance of theoretical development over the last few decades but fewer empirical studies understanding speciesâ range limits in natural systems has become an urgent priority because global warming exotic species invasions and habitat alteration are currently changing the distributions of many species around the world we used the cane toad invasion of australia as a model system to study the ecological and evolutionary causes for speciesâ geographic range limits in a landscape genomics framework using next generation sequencing we developed approximately 28 000 genomic markers single nucleotide polymorphisms for population and landscape genomic analyses we first investigated general patterns of genomic diversity and differentiation across the cane toadâ s australian range in the context of speciesâ range limits we found that the â central marginal hypothesisâ for speciesâ range limits is supported we then used genetic differentiation outliers and genotype environment association analyses to detect genomic regions under selection we found strong evidence for rapid evolution at the expanding invasion front at even higher levels than stable range edges in eastern and southern australia finally we performed a common garden laboratory experiment and found phenotypic evidence of local adaptation to breeding pond temperatures at an arid inland edge but not at a cold southern edge of the cane toadâ s australian range,2015,0.48
Using legacy botanical literature as a source of phytogeographical data,aim â paper based publications were the main repository for phytogeographical information until the end of the 20th century these texts are still an important reference source for phytogeography and potentially a valuable source of data for research on environmental change the recent digitization of biodiversity publications text mining and mark up protocols means that these data are now more accessible than ever before here i examine the value of legacy literature specifically for studies on phytogeography methods â three contrasting data mobilisation projects are used as case studies for the extraction of phytogeographic data two were digitisations and xml mark up of floras the flore d afrique centrale from the 20th century and the flora of northumberland and durham from the 19th century a third case study used chenopodium vulvaria l as a test case where i attempted to recover as much phytogeographic data as possible for one species both from literature and from herbarium specimens results â a large amount of useful information was extractable from legacy literature the main limitations are that most localities need georeferencing and that observations are only rarely associated with a precise date in the case of c vulvaria literature contributed about 20 of all available observations of the species literature becomes a progressively more important source of data the further back in time one looks however useful observations become much rarer earlier than about 1850 main conclusions â sourcing phytogeographic data from legacy literature is valuable it contains observations and links to other data that are unavailable from any other source nevertheless its extraction takes a substantial investment in time before commencing on such a project it is important to prioritise work and understand the limitations of such data particularly with regard to georeferencing,2015,0.161
Ecological consequences of contrasting dispersal syndromes in New World Ephedra : higher rates of niche evolution related to dispersal ability,in this study we selected the new world species of ephedra to understand the ecological consequences of different dispersal syndromes the twenty three species of ephedra in the new world have a disjunct distribution in north and south american arid and semi arid habitats exhibiting three dispersal syndromes related to dispersal by birds wind and rodents using dna sequence data we inferred phylogenetic relationships and lineage divergence times and used these estimates to test different ecological assumptions using comparative methods we tested for correlations between dispersal syndromes and a set of ecological variables niche breadth niche evolution distributional ranges and niche position we found that speciation events in the new world coincided with the expansion of arid habitats in this region we suggest that the bird dispersal syndrome is related with higher rates of climatic niche evolution for all variables used including aridity index mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation distribution ranges were correlated with niche breadth they were however not significantly different between dispersal syndromes species inhabiting the extremely arid regions on niche axes had narrower niche breadths we conclude that species whose seeds are dispersed by birds have colonized a broader set of habitats and that those with wind and rodent dispersal syndromes might have promoted the colonization of more arid environments,2015,0.685
The patterns of organisation and structure of interactions in a fish-parasite network of a neotropical river.,the use of the complex network approach to study host parasite interactions has helped to improve the understanding of the structure and dynamics of ecological communities in this study this network approach is applied to evaluate the patterns of organisation and structure of interactions in a fish parasite network of a neotropical atlantic forest river the network includes 20 fish species and 73 metazoan parasite species collected from the guandu river rio de janeiro state brazil according to the usual measures in studies of networks the organisation of the network was evaluated using measures of host susceptibility parasite dependence interaction asymmetry species strength and complementary specialisation of each species as well as the network the network structure was evaluated using connectance nestedness and modularity measures host susceptibility typically presented low values whereas parasite dependence was high the asymmetry and species strength were correlated with host taxonomy but not with parasite taxonomy differences among parasite taxonomic groups in the complementary specialisation of each species on hosts were also observed however the complementary specialisation and species strength values were not correlated the network had a high complementary specialisation low connectance and nestedness and high modularity thus indicating variability in the roles of species in the network organisation and the expected presence of many specialist species,2015,0.998
Mapping phylogenetic endemism in R using georeferenced branch extents,applications are needed to map biodiversity from large scale species occurrence datasets whilst seamlessly integrating with existing functions in r phylogenetic endemism pe is a biodiversity measure based on range restricted phylogenetic diversity pd current implementations use area of occupancy aoo or frequency to estimate the spatial range of branch length i e phylogenetic range rarity rather than extent of occurrence eoo i e georeferenced phylogenetic endemism which is known to produce different range estimates we present r functions to map pd or pe weighted by aoo or eoo new georeferenced implementation taking as inputs georeferenced species occurrences and a phylogeny non parametric statistics distinguish pd pe from trivial correlates of species richness and sampling intensity,2015,0.472
"A comparative morphometric study of the genus Drepanosiphoniella Davatchi, Hille Ris Lambers and Remaudière (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Drepanosiphinae)",the genus drepanosiphoniella davatchi hille ris lambers and remaudiã re 1957 of the subfamily drepanosiphinae hemiptera aphididae is revised using comparative morphology of parthenogenetic and sexual generations on the basis of thorough examination of morphological characters a full species status of drepanosiphoniella fugans remaudiã re and leclant 1972 stat rev is given and supported by using statistical analysis â principal component analysis pca and multiple discriminant analysis canonical variates analysis a new species drepanosiphoniella remaudiã rei sp n wieczorek is described and figured in detail on the basis of specimens collected in morocco fundatrix oviparous female and apterous male of drepanosiphoniella aceris aceris davatchi hille ris lambers and remaudiã re 1957 are described and figured original keys to the identification of the known species and morphs of the genus drepanosiphoniella as well as differences with related species are given notes about the distribution and host plants of the studied taxa are supplied all species studied seem to be montane elements associated with acer monspessulanum or its subspecies,2015,0.882
Phylogeography of the temperate tree species Quercus acutissima in China: Inferences from chloroplast DNA variations,quercus acutissima is one of the most widespread temperate deciduous tree species in china to study its phylogeographical pattern and demographic history three chloroplast dna fragments atpb rbcl psba trnh and trns trng from 401 individuals representing 30 populations were sequenced a total of 19 haplotypes were identified and these showed a weak phylogeographical structure nst 0 689 gst 0 630 p 0 05 at the species level the q acutissima population harboured a high level of genetic diversity ht 0 791 and the genetic variation mainly resided among populations 59 54 the unimodal mismatch distribution and significantly negative fu s fs value indicate that the q acutissima population experienced rapid range expansion which probably occurred between 0 37 and 0 12 ma molecular phylogeography and ecological niche modelling enm data suggest the existence of multiple localized glacial refugia in central china e g the qinling dabashan and dabieshan mountain ranges and southwestern china yunnan guizhou plateau and its adjacent regions during the quaternary glaciations our study showed that geographical heterogeneity and climate changes may have shaped the genetic structure and phylogeographical pattern of this tree species in china,2015,0.733
Should species distribution models use only native or exotic records of existence or both?,this study investigated the importance of the use of appropriate species distribution records in projecting potential distributions under climate change using comparative bioclimatic models and alternative sets of data native and exotic to project a species in a new environment we built bioclimatic models for date palm phoenix dactylifera l using the maxent correlative model and the climex mechanistic niche model and fitted the models using three training data sets native data only exotic data only and entire data we compared the ability of the different data sets using the different modelling approaches to project suitable climate envelope for independent records of the species at a global scale we found that the output of projected species distributions was closely related to the modelling approach as well as the specific categorized distribution of species data used native data only exotic data only and entire data,2015,0.756
Ecological monitoring through harmonizing existing data: Lessons from the boreal avian modelling project,to accomplish the objectives of a long term ecological monitoring program ltem repurposing research data collected by other researchers is an alternative to original data collection the boreal avian modelling bam project is a 10 year old project that has integrated the data from 100 avian point count studies encompassing thousands of point count surveys and harmonized across data sets to account for heterogeneity induced by methodological and other differences the bam project faced the classic data management challenges any ltem must deal with as well as special challenges involved with harmonizing so many disparate data sources we created a data system consisting of 4 components archive to preserve each contributor s data avian database harmonized point count data biophysical database spatially explicit environmental covariates and software tools library linking the other components and providing analysis capability this system has allowed the project to answer many questions about boreal birds we believe it to be successful enough to merit consideration for use in monitoring other taxa we have learned a number of lessons that will guide the project as it moves forward these include the importance of creating a data protocol the critical importance of high quality metadata and the need for a flexible design that accommodates changes in field techniques one of the challenges the bam team facedâ gaining access to relevant data setsâ may become easier with the increased expectation by journals and funding agencies that documenting and preserving research data be a standard part of scientific research,2015,0.159
"The invasive weed ox-eye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare Lam. (Asteraceae): Prospects for its management in New South Wales",ox eye daisy leucanthemum vulgare lam asteraceae is a rhizomatous perennial herb native to europe that has become an invader in over 40 countries including australia and new zealand seed longevity is high and up to 80 of propagules are viable for six years the weed is not palatable to cattle and affects pastoral lands by reducing carrying capacity dense infestations exclude other plant species leading to soil erosion and depletion of soil organic matter ox eye daisy is found in victoria where it is a declared noxious weed and new south wales where one of the more alarming infestations is in kosciuszko national park the species appears to thrive in disturbed areas however of greatest concern is its ability to aggressively invade areas of conservation importance while mechanical and chemical control can be successfully implemented to manage localised infestations of ox eye daisy there is an urgent need for the sustainable management of this invasive plant at the landscape level especially in conservation areas in 2008 a programme was initiated to investigate the prospects for the biological control of ox eye daisy in north america over the last seven years cabi switzerland have identified and studied several promising biological control agents including a root feeding moth dichrorampha aeratana pierce metcalfe lepidoptera tortricidae a root feeding weevil cyphocleonus trisulcatus herbst coleoptera curculionidae and a flower head mining fly tephritis neesii meigen tephritidae of these d aeratana seems to hold the most promise in terms of specificity and is being developed further as the first biological control agent for north america in early 2015 a programme to investigate prospects for the classical biological control of ox eye daisy was initiated for new south wales the programme will include 1 selecting and determining the biology host range and impact of the most suitable agent for the state and 2 assessing through modelling the ecoclimatic tolerances of the agent and the weed climex and degree day as well as the environmental impact of this and other management approaches life cycle assessment the invasive weed ox eye daisy leucanthemum vulgare lam asteraceae prospects for its management in new south wales researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 283425195 the invasive weed ox eye daisy leucanthemum vulgare lam 28asteraceae 29 prospects for its management in new south wales accessed nov 9 2015,2015,0.457
"Population genetics of invasive Citrullus lanatus, Citrullus colocynthis and Cucumis myriocarpus (Cucurbitaceae) in Australia: inferences based on chloroplast and nuclear gene sequencing",to understand the invasion history of the invasive weeds citrullus lanatus camel melon citrullus colocynthis colocynth and cucumis myriocarpus prickly paddy melon in australia we studied a collection of geographically diverse samples from africa native range asia north and south america europe and australia introduced ranges we sequenced portions of two gene regions the nuclear g3pdh gene and the chloroplast ycf6â psbm intergenic spacer region to identify the diversity and relationships of alleles haplotypes present within and among sampled populations of each species we found that c lanatus and c myriocarpus populations in australia contain negligible levels of diversity in both genes indicative of single genetically impoverished founder events by both species and potentially derived from single source populations in both instances together historical and sequence information point to the north western region of the indian subcontinent as the likely source of australian c lanatus surprisingly australian c myriocarpus plants share the same genetic profile as that observed in all other invasive populations of this species but differ from that observed in native african plants this indicates a shared origin of invasive c myriocarpus populations and potentially a stepping stone pathway of founder events across the globe the origins of which are yet unidentified in contrast moderate levels of genetic diversity are present among australian c colocynthis that can be geographically sorted mainly into eastern and western regions of the continent this suggests two separate introductions of the species into australia from two different source populations most likely originating from northern africa and or southern europe turkey the evidence of impoverished genetic diversity in australian populations of c lanatus and c myriocarpus indicates they are likely to exhibit similar responses to control measures in contrast development of effective chemical or bio controls for c colocynthis in australia may present a greater challenge,2015,0.908
Geospatial data of freshwater habitats for macroecological studies: an example with freshwater fishes,global data sets are essential in macroecological studies file formats of the few available data sets of freshwater ecosystems however are either incompatible with most macroecological software packages incomplete or of coarse spatial resolutions we integrated more than 460 million geographical coordinates for freshwater habitats in the frwater data set partitioned into seven different habitats lentic wetlands reservoirs small rivers large rivers small ditches large ditches small channels large channels small drains and large drains in modestr http www ipez es modestr a comprehensive collection of geospatial rasters was assembled one for each of the seven freshwater habitats with the area in km2 occupied by each habitat presented in cells of 5 arc minute resolution the utility of frwater was evaluated using hierarchical partitioning via the identification of the contribution of the seven different freshwater habitats to both species richness and rarity to this end we used a dat,2015,0.41
Expertly validated models and phylogenetically-controlled analysis suggests responses to climate change are related to species traits in the order lagomorpha.,climate change during the past five decades has impacted significantly on natural ecosystems and the rate of current climate change is of great concern among conservation biologists species distribution models sdms have been used widely to project changes in species bioclimatic envelopes under future climate scenarios here we aimed to advance this technique by assessing future changes in the bioclimatic envelopes of an entire mammalian order the lagomorpha using a novel framework for model validation based jointly on subjective expert evaluation and objective model evaluation statistics sdms were built using climatic topographical and habitat variables for all 87 lagomorph species under past and current climate scenarios expert evaluation and kappa values were used to validate past and current models and only those deemed modellable within our framework were projected under future climate scenarios 58 species phylogenetically controlled regressions were used to test whether species traits correlated with predicted responses to climate change climate change is likely to impact more than two thirds of lagomorph species with leporids rabbits hares and jackrabbits likely to undertake poleward shifts with little overall change in range extent whilst pikas are likely to show extreme shifts to higher altitudes associated with marked range declines including the likely extinction of kozlov s pika ochotona koslowi smaller bodied species were more likely to exhibit range contractions and elevational increases but showing little poleward movement and fecund species were more likely to shift latitudinally and elevationally our results suggest that species traits may be important indicators of future climate change and we believe multi species approaches as demonstrated here are likely to lead to more effective mitigation measures and conservation management we strongly advocate studies minimising data gaps in our knowledge of the order specifically collecting more specimens for biodiversity archives and targeting data deficient geographic regions,2015,0.926
A new species of Ophryacus (Serpentes: Viperidae: Crotalinae) from eastern Mexico with comments of the taxonomy of related pitvipers,the genus ophryacus is endemic to mexico where it ranges along the sierra madre oriental from hidalgo and northern veracuz south to the sierra madre del sur in guerrero and oaxaca we obtained new material of ophryacus and compared it to specimens from all previously documented populations of o undulatus we examined scutellational characters and proportional differences and found strong evidence to support the existence of at least three species within this genus one species is undescribed and another currently is in the synonymy of o undulatus we describe a new species of ophryacus from eastern mexico and remove bothrops sphenophrys from the synonymy of o undulatus and formally place it in ophryacus we provide comparative morphological data and a key for the known species of ophryacus and mixcoatlus we also discuss the ecological and geographical distribution of ophryacus and mixcoatlus and include a distribution map for all the species with supraocular horns finally we com ment on the conservation implications for the horned pitvipers of mexico,2015,0.882
"Fourteen new additions to the list of birds of Quindío department, Colombia",recent records of bird species in the colombian andes have shown that this region is not as well known as was previously believed we compiled data from a major collection of colombian birds and from our recent field observations to complement the bird species list of quindã o department we report the addition of 14 species to quindã oâ s checklist and data of museum vouchers for 12 species reported only from field observations the majority of additions were from localities below 1 900 m above sea level a zone that has been highly transformed by human activities our dataset and other information raised the number of bird species in quindã o to 560 this information must be considered in decisions about the land use in this region of the colombian andes,2015,0.753
Predicted Shifts in Small Mammal Distributions and Biodiversity in the Altered Future Environment of Alaska: An Open Access Data and Machine Learning Perspective.,climate change is acting to reallocate biomes shift the distribution of species and alter community assemblages in alaska predictions regarding how these changes will affect the biodiversity and interspecific relationships of small mammals are necessary to pro actively inform conservation planning we used a set of online occurrence records and machine learning methods to create bioclimatic envelope models for 17 species of small mammals rodents and shrews across alaska models formed the basis for sets of species specific distribution maps for 2010 and were projected forward using the ipcc intergovernmental panel on climate change a2 scenario to predict distributions of the same species for 2100 we found that distributions of cold climate northern and interior small mammal species experienced large decreases in area while shifting northward upward in elevation and inland across the state in contrast many southern and continental species expanded throughout alaska and also moved down slope and toward the coast statewide community assemblages remained constant for 15 of the 17 species but distributional shifts resulted in novel species assemblages in several regions overall biodiversity patterns were similar for both time frames but followed general species distribution movement trends biodiversity losses occurred in the yukon kuskokwim delta and seward peninsula while the beaufort coastal plain and western brooks range experienced modest gains in species richness as distributions shifted to form novel assemblages quantitative species distribution and biodiversity change projections should help land managers to develop adaptive strategies for conserving dispersal corridors small mammal biodiversity and ecosystem functionality into the future,2015,0.989
The use of opportunistic data for IUCN Red List assessments,iucn red lists are recognized worldwide as powerful instruments for the conservation of species quantitative criteria to standardize approaches for estimating population trends geographic ranges and population sizes have been developed at global and sub global levels little attention has been given to the data needed to estimate species trends and range sizes for iucn red list assessments few regions collect monitoring data in a structured way and usually only for a limited number of taxa therefore opportunistic data are increasingly used for estimating trends and geographic range sizes trend calculations use a range of proxies i monitoring sentinel populations ii estimating changes in available habitat or iii statistical models of change based on opportunistic records geographic ranges have been determined using i marginal occurrences ii habitat distributions iii range wide occurrences iv species distribution modelling including site occupancy models and v process based modelling red list assessments differ strongly among regions europe britain and flanders north belgium across different taxonomic groups in european red lists iucn criteria b and d resulted in the highest level of threat in britain this was the case for criterion d and criterion a while in flanders criterion b and criterion a resulted in the highest threat level among taxonomic groups however large differences in the use of iucn criteria were revealed we give examples from europe britain and flemish red list assessments using opportunistic data and give recommendations for a more uniform use of iucn criteria among regions and among taxonomic groups,2015,0.623
"Floristic Checklist of District Kotli, Azad Jammu & Kashmir",a comprehensive floristic survey was conducted to record the botanical diversity ethnotaxonomy and the reproductive phenological response of the vascular flora of the district kotli azad jammu kashmir pakistan during 2011 13 a total of 463 plant species belonging to 306 genera and 93 families were recorded the most dominant families in the study area were poaceae 54 spp leguminosae 39 spp compositae 33 spp lamiaceae 23 spp and rosaceae 22 spp whereas the leading genera were ficus 8 spp ipomoea cyperus euphorbia and solanum 6 spp each use of online taxonomic literature and databases enabled us to document most of the species with their current accepted names author citations and their placement in the higher taxa two different aspects flowering duration and start of flowering event or timing were also recorded phenological studies revealed that most of the species found in flowering stage during the august 252 spp followed by july 245 spp may 239 spp and april 237 spp while with respect to flowering event maximum number of species started their flowering in the month of march 111 spp followed by april 67 spp and july 62 spp with respect to floral growth forms there was higher diversity of trees compared to the shrubs in the study area this information pertaining to nomenclatural status current placement of taxa and their phenological responses may provide baseline information to taxonomists ecologists or phytogeographer natural resource managers and conservationists for carrying out studies from this part of the western himalaya floristic checklist of district kotli azad jammu kashmir researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 283010845 floristic checklist of district kotli azad jammu kashmir accessed nov 9 2015,2015,0.6
Genome Structure of the Heavy Metal Hyperaccumulator Noccaea caerulescens and Its Stability on Metalliferous and Nonmetalliferous Soils.,noccaea caerulescens formerly known as thlaspi caerulescens an extremophile heavy metal hyperaccumulator model plant in the brassicaceae family is a morphologically and phenotypically diverse species exhibiting metal tolerance and leaf accumulation of zinc cadmium and nickel here we provide a detailed genome structure of the approximately 267 mb n caerulescens genome which has descended from seven chromosomes of the ancestral proto calepineae karyotype n 7 through an unusually high number of pericentric inversions genome analysis in two other related species noccaea jankae and raparia bulbosa showed that all three species and thus probably the entire coluteocarpeae tribe have descended from the proto calepineae karyotype all three analyzed species share the chromosome structure of six out of seven chromosomes and an unusually high metal accumulation in leaves which remains moderate in n jankae and r bulbosa and is extreme in n caerulescens among these species n caerulescens has the most derived karyotype with species specific inversions on chromosome nc6 which grouped onto its bottom arm functionally related genes of zinc and iron metal homeostasis comprising the major candidate genes nicotianamine synthase2 and zinc induced facilitator like1 concurrently copper and organellar metal homeostasis genes which are functionally unrelated to the extreme traits characteristic of n caerulescens were grouped onto the top arm of nc6 compared with arabidopsis thaliana more distal chromosomal positions in n caerulescens were enriched among more highly expressed metal homeostasis genes but not among other groups of genes thus chromosome rearrangements could have facilitated the evolution of enhanced metal homeostasis gene expression a known hallmark of metal hyperaccumulation,2015,0.814
"New mosquito species records for Ecuador, from Pululahua volcano (Andes) and Napo province (Amazon)",new records of mosquitoes diptera culicidae are reported for ecuador with the extension of their geographical distribution in south america aedes howardina fulvithorax lutz in a bromeliad and culex culex stenolepis dyar knab in a ground pool with vegetation in the province of napo amazon and the crater of the volcano pululaha province of pichincha respectively information on collection localities dates biogeographical region climate number of specimens deposited collectors and current distribution is included for each species with these records the alpha diversity of the culicidae of ecuador is estimated at 242 species,2015,0.59
Additions and amendments in the genus Hieracium L. (Asteraceae) of the Ryazan and Vladimir Regions of European Russia,the collections of hieraciu m from the ryazan region kept at mw and rsu were examined the records of h murorum s l or h gentile from the ryazan region were found to belong to h lepistoides native h sylvularum established alien new to the ryazan region and an u n identified species of hieracium alien the records of h vulgatum or h jaccardii from the ryazan region belong to another unidentified alien species hieracium lepistoides is reported as new to the vladimir region restricted to the meshchera lowlands hieracium r obustum new to the ryazan region was found sympatric with h virosum,2015,0.72
Changes in Aporia crataegi's potential habitats in accordance with climate changes in the northeast Asia,this study was conducted in an effort to provide important clues pertaining to the conservation and restoration of aporia crataegi by identifying the spatial distribution characteristics of the current habitats prospective habitats and future habitats of a crataegi in accordance with climate changes to determine the distribution of a crataegi data from a total of 36 collecting points throughout south korea north korea china japan mongolia and russia are used the spatial distributions of the data were examined through maxent modeling the distribution probability rates exceeded 75 at 18 locations among the 36 species occurrence locations with gangwon province showing the highest distribution probability in south korea the precision of the maxent model was remarkably high with an auc value of 0 982 the variables that affect the potential distribution of a crataegi by more than 10 are the degree of temperature seasonality the amount of precipitation in the warmest quarter the annual mean temperature and the amount of precipitation in the driest month in that order of importance it was found that the future potential distribution area of a crataegi continuously moves northward over time up to 2070s in addition the area of the potential distribution showing a habitable probability rate that exceeds 75 in northeast asia was where the area of potential distribution in the north part of korean peninsula was in size thus it is anticipated that the most important future habitats of a crataegi in the northeast asia will be north and south hamgyeong provinces and ryanggang province near mt baekdoosan in the northern area of the korean peninsula,2015,0.445
Future climate effects on suitability for growth of oil palms in Malaysia and Indonesia,the production of palm oil po is highly profitable the economies of the principal producers malaysia and indonesia and others benefit considerably climate change cc will most likely have an impact on the distribution of oil palms op elaeis guineensis here we present modelled cc projections with respect to the suitability of growing op in malaysia and indonesia a process oriented niche model of op was developed using climex to estimate its potential distribution under current and future climate scenarios two global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 and miroc h were used to explore the impacts of cc under the a1b and a2 scenarios for 2030 2070 and 2100 decreases in climatic suitability for op in the region were gradual by 2030 but became more pronounced by 2100 these projections imply that op growth will be affected severely by cc with obvious implications to the economies of a indonesia and malaysia and b the po industry but with potential benefits towards reducing cc a possible remedial action is to concentrate research on development of new varieties of op that are less vulnerable to cc,2015,0.201
Selection constrains phenotypic evolution in a functionally important plant trait,a long standing idea is that the macroevolutionary adaptive landscape a map of phenotype to fitness constrains evolution because certain phenotypes are fit while others are universally unfit such constraints should be evident in traits that across many species cluster around particular modal values with few intermediates between modes here i compile a new global database of 599 species from 94 plant families showing that stomatal ratio an important functional trait affecting photosynthesis is multimodal hinting at distinct peaks in the adaptive landscape the dataset confirms that most plants have all their stomata on the lower leaf surface hypostomy but shows for the first time that species with roughly half their stomata on each leaf surface amphistomy form a distinct mode in the trait distribution based on a new evolutionary process model this multimodal pattern is unlikely without constraint further multimodality has evolved repeatedly across disparate families evincing long term constraint on the adaptive landscape a simple cost benefit model of stomatal ratio demonstrates that selection alone is sufficient to generate an adaptive landscape with multiple peaks finally phylogenetic comparative methods indicate that life history evolution drives shifts between peaks this implies that the adaptive benefit conferred by amphistomy increased photosynthesis is most important in plants with fast life histories challenging existing ideas that amphistomy is an adaptation to thick leaves and open habitats i conclude that peaks in the adaptive landscape have been constrained by selection over much of land plant evolution leading to predictable repeatable patterns of evolution,2015,0.122
"A new marine cyclopoid copepod of the genus Neocyclops (Cyclopidae, Halicyclopinae) from Korea",a new cyclopoid species of the genus neocyclops gurney 1927 is described type specimens were collected from a beach on south western coast of the korean peninsula by rinsing intertidal coarse sandy sediments neocyclops hoonsooi sp n is most characteristic in showing the conspicuous chitinized transverse ridges originating from the medial margins of the coxae of all swimming legs the new species is most similar to n vicinus described from the brazilian coast and n petkovskii from australia all three species share a large body size more than 750 âµm long the presence of an exopodal seta on the antenna two setae on the mandibular palp the same seta spine armature on the third endopodal segment of leg 3 3 setae 3 spines and the fairly long inner distal spine on the third endopodal segment of the female leg 4 however n hoonsooi sp n differs from both species by the much shorter caudal rami less than 1 7 times as long as wide and the shorter dorsal caudal seta vii furthermore n hoonsooi is clearly distinguished from n vicinus by the 10 segmented antennule vs 12 segments in n vicinus and from n petkovskii by the elongate inner distal spine on leg 5 exopod and the 3 segmented leg 5 in male vs 4 segmented in n petkovskii a tabular comparison of characters separating n hoonsooi from its closest allies and a key to neocyclops species from the indo pacific ocean are provided this is the first record of the genus neocyclops from the northern pacific,2015,0.937
Estimating the geographic range of a threatened shark in a data-poor region: Cetorhinus maximus in the South Atlantic Ocean,the distribution of the pla nktivorous basking shark cetorhinus maximus is influenced by zooplankton abundance at small scales and temperature at medium scales in the north atlantic here we estimate the distribution of basking sharks on south atlantic continental shelves and the relative importance of chlorophyll concentration as a proxy for zooplankton abundance and temperature in det ermining habitat suitability for basking sharks at large scales we us ed maximum entropy maxent and maximum likelihood maxlike speci es distribution modelling to test three hypotheses the distribution of basking sharks is determined by 1 temperature 2 chlor ophyll concentration or 3 both chlorophyll and temperature while c onsidering other factors such as oxygen and salinity off south america basking shark habitat included subtropical temperate and cool temperate waters between approximately 20 o s and 55 o s off africa basking shark habitat was limited to cool temperate waters off namibia an d southern south africa maxlik e models had a better fit than maxent models the best model included minimum chlorophyll concentration dissolved oxygen concentration and sea surface temperature range supporting hypothesis 3 however of all variables included in th e best model minimum chlorophyll concentration had the highes t influence on basking shark distribution unlike the nort h atlantic distribution the south atlan tic distribution of basking sharks includ es subtropical and cool temperate waters this difference is explained by high minimum chlorophyll concentration off southern brazil as compar ed to north atlantic subtropical areas observati ons in other regions of the world support this conclusion the highest habitat suita bility for basking sharks is located close to nearshore areas that experience high anthropogenic impact,2015,0.26
"Online database for mosquito (Diptera, Culicidae) occurrence records in French Guiana.",a database providing information on mosquito specimens arthropoda diptera culicidae collected in french guiana is presented field collections were initiated in 2013 under the auspices of the center for the study of biodiversity in amazonia ceba http www labexceba fr en this study is part of an ongoing process aiming to understand the distribution of mosquitoes including vector species across french guiana occurrences are recorded after each collecting trip in a database managed by the laboratory evolution et diversitã biologique edb toulouse france the dataset is updated monthly and is available online voucher specimens and their associated dna are stored at the laboratory ecologie des forãªts de guyane ecofog kourou french guiana the latest version of the dataset is accessible through edb s integrated publication toolkit at http 130 120 204 55 8080 ipt resource do r mosquitoes of french guiana or through the global biodiversity information facility data portal at http www gbif org dataset 5a8aa2ad 261c 4f61 a98e 26dd752fe1c5 it can also be viewed through the guyanensis platform at http guyanensis ups tlse fr,2015,0.464
Building a European geothermal information network using a distributed e-Infrastructure,abstractgeothermal data are published using different it services formats and content representations and can refer to both regional and global scale information geothermal stakeholders search for information with different aims e infrastructures are collaborative platforms that address this diversity of aims and data representations in this paper we present a prototype for a european geothermal information platform that uses inspire recommendations and an e infrastructure d4science to collect aggregate and share data sets from different european data contributors thus enabling stakeholders to retrieve and process a large amount of data our system merges segmented and national realities into one common framework we demonstrate our approach by describing a platform that collects data from italian french hungarian swiss and icelandic geothermal data providers,2015,0.151
Conservation of animals traded for medicinal purposes in Brazil: Can products derived from plants or domestic animals replace products of wild animals?,the use and trade of animals in traditional medicine involves many different species some of which are threatened with extinction thus evaluating biological and cultural aspects associated with this business is essential for the conservation of these species the aim of this study was to analyze the viability of replacing wild animal with plant or domestic animals for use in medicines to conduct this analysis we used current literature from five brazilian cities that have data available for the trade in animals and plants for medicinal purposes recife caruaru campina grande belã m and boa vista we compiled data on the diversity of animals and plants traded in these locations as well as their respective therapeutic applications the potential replacement of products derived of wild animals was evaluated by the analysis of overlapping use of plants and animals and of wild and domestic animals as well as by the analysis of the relationship between zootherapeutic products and their target diseases the data showed little overlap between the use of medicinal plant and animals as well as between the use of wild and domestic animals however the analysis of the relationship between zootherapeutic products and their target diseases provides evidence of possible replacements of wild animals by domestic animals although there is an urgent need for new research on the cultural and biological contexts associated with the use of wild animals for medicinal purposes projects that aim to mitigate the impacts caused by this trade must consider the use of alternative methods,2015,1
WEB - BASED COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS FOR STUDYING PLANT BIODIVERSITY,large scale plant biodiversity bioinformatics projects are now making taxonomic datasets available at a frenetic pace via the world wide web www while these new resources provide the fundamental textual and visual backbone of expert level knowledge their information structure often impedes the development of derivative works for identification but when this informat ion is rearranged from a traditional format questions can be asked of the data that were previously thought to be unanswerable the difficulty in transformi ng this â big dataâ is manifold how to deliver it rapidly to researchers across the world whil e providing visualizations of data that encompass these large data sets interactive visual identification keys vik are introduced here to help manage this magnitude of image data using both analytic and gestalt methods chapter 2 here via the carex interactive vis ual identification key civik through matrix preparation utilizing ontological methods only a nd brute force data mining flora of north america is leveraged to develop and provide a novel identification system for the largest vascul ar p lant genus of north america carex the third chapter focuses on pollination syndromes found within the graminoids or the grasses and sedges of which carex is a member th e graminoid pollination syndrome is known as anemophily or wind pollination du ring preparation of civik it was noted repeatedly while taking the photos required for its generation that small solitary bees and flies will often visit graminoids to collect pollen during anthesis yet traditional botanical literature often neglects to mention this fact or it is described as being inadvertent or mistaken this chapter presents solid evidence that even common honey bees apis mellifera will exclusively visit a common turf grass to collect pollen then chapter 4 examines and analyzes these plan t biodiversity websites for use are they being used with what technology are trends present to be considered for future development with answers to these questions curators of museum quality data in conjunction with web develop ers may be able to provide a richer user experience in a shorter amount of time,2015,0.051
The Geographic Distribution of a Tropical Montane Bird Is Limited by a Tree: Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) and Colombian Oaks (Quercus humboldtii) in the Northern Andes.,species distributions are limited by a complex array of abiotic and biotic factors in general abiotic climatic factors are thought to explain species broad geographic distributions while biotic factors regulate species abundance patterns at local scales we used species distribution models to test the hypothesis that a biotic interaction with a tree the colombian oak quercus humboldtii limits the broad scale distribution of the acorn woodpecker melanerpes formicivorus in the northern andes of south america north american populations of acorn woodpeckers consume acorns from quercus oaks and are limited by the presence of quercus oaks however acorn woodpeckers in the northern andes seldom consume colombian oak acorns though may regularly drink sap from oak trees and have been observed at sites without colombian oaks the sole species of quercus found in south america we found that climate only models overpredicted acorn woodpecker distribution suggesting that suitable abiotic conditions e g in northern ecuador exist beyond the woodpecker s southern range margin in contrast models that incorporate colombian oak presence outperformed climate only models and more accurately predicted the location of the acorn woodpecker s southern range margin in southern colombia these findings support the hypothesis that a biotic interaction with colombian oaks sets acorn woodpecker s broad scale geographic limit in south america probably because acorn woodpeckers rely on colombian oaks as a food resource possibly for the oak s sap rather than for acorns although empirical examples of particular plants limiting tropical birds distributions are scarce we predict that similar biotic interactions may play an important role in structuring the geographic distributions of many species of tropical montane birds with specialized foraging behavior,2015,0.906
NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCARABAEIDAE (INSECTA: COLEOPTERA) FAUNA OF THE ARTVIN PROVINCE IN TURKEY,this study is based on scarabaeidae species collected from artvin during the years of 2008 2013 the beetles were collected directly by forceps from fresh dung and then transferred into the small plastic container and subsequently into the laboratory for species identification as well as infectivity to the helminthes insect net and light trap were used in collecting insects the specimens were killed by using killing jar and pinned according to taxonomic rules and regulations the samples were processed with standard methods and added to the collection totally 35 species of scarabaeidae are firstly recorded in the research area and also 11 of them are new for artvin province of eastern black sea region part of turkey for each species the worldwide and turkey distributions are given this is the first study of scarabaeidae species occuring in artvin c etonia aeruginosa protaetia netocia ungarica anatolia coprimorphus aphodius scrutator euheptaulacus sus melolontha melolontha anoxia orientalis amphimallon solstitiale palaeonthophagus fracticornis palaeonthophagus similis sisyphus schaefferi oryctes nasicornis were new records for artvin province and its surroundings among those the most abundant species are the members of scarabaeidae with 98 specimens 28 of four species including the recorded species the main four species were with the following numbers as percentage of the total catch cetonia aurata 9 8 colobopterus erraticus 7 2 emoniticellus fulvus 6 9 and colobopterus brignoli 5 7 the most abundant species is cetonia aurata with 29 specimens and this species was found in artvin in this study the most less with 1 2 species are found coprimorphus aphodius scrutator palaeonthophagus gibbulus palaeonthophagus similis sisyphus schaefferi and oryctes nasicornis it is expected that the number of scarab species will increase significantly by the future investigations of turkey scarabaeidae fauna,2015,0.999
A revision of the New World species of Cremnops Förster (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Agathidinae).,the new world species of the genus cremnops are revised thirty three species of cremnops are treated five are described as new i e c bertae sp nov c cluttsis sp nov c nymphius sp nov c wileycoyotius sp nov and c witkopegasus sp nov six species are synonymized i e cremnops caribensis berta 1998 is synonymized under c guanicanus wolcott 1924 c nigrosternum morrison 1917 is synonymized under c haematodes brullã 1846 c punctatus berta 1998 is synonymized under c marshi berta 1998 c sharkei berta 1998 is synonymized under c montrealensis morrison 1917 â c turrialbae berta de fernandez 1998 is synonymized under c ferrugineus cameron 1887 and c misionensis berta 1987 is synonymized under c slossonae morrison 1917 â â â â â â â cremnops florissanticola is transferred to its original combination bracon florissanticola cockerell 1919 st rev included are a molecular phylogeny a dichotomous key links to distribution maps an electronic interactive key and images of holotypes â,2015,0.796
AGRIS: providing access to agricultural research data exploiting open data on the web.,agris is the international system for agricultural science and technology it is supported by a large community of data providers partners and users agris is a database that aggregates bibliographic data and through this core data related content across online information systems is retrieved by taking advantage of semantic web capabilities agris is a global public good and its vision is to be a responsive service to its user needs by facilitating contributions and feedback regarding the agris core knowledgebase agris s future and its continuous development periodic agris e consultations partner meetings and user feedback are assimilated to the development of the agris application and content coverage this paper outlines the current agris technical set up its network of partners data providers and users as well as how agris s responsiveness to clients needs inspires the continuous technical development of the application the paper concludes by providing a use case of how the agris stakeholder input and the subsequent agris e consultation results influence the development of the agris application knowledgebase and service delivery,2015,0.071
Evolutionary Relationships of the Deep-Sea Pearleyes (Aulopiformes: Scopelarchidae) and a New Genus of Pearleye from Antarctic Waters,this study investigates the evolutionary relationships among species in the family scopelarchidae with molecular eight genes and morphological data a new genus of pearleye is diagnosed lagiacrusichthys new genus from a previously described species benthalbella macropinna distributed in antarctic waters the diagnosis of lagiacrusichthys is based on molecular and anatomical information including a highly reduced dorsal fin 5â 6 rays and a long anal fin 35â 39 rays the results represent the most taxonomically comprehensive molecular and total evidence hypotheses of the evolutionary relationships of the pearleyes to date 13 of 18 species and these frameworks are used to comment on the historical biogeography of this widespread group it is inferred that the pearleyes likely first evolved in central tropical waters with two independent invasions into antarctic waters,2015,0.647
Spatial autocorrelation analysis and ecological niche modelling allows inference of range dynamics driving the population genetic structure of a Neotropical savanna tree,aim spatial autocorrelation analysis of genetic diversity was combined with ecological niche modelling enm to better infer how ecological and evolutionary processes underlie population structure in eugenia dysenterica a widely distributed tree in the â cerradoâ region of central brazil location â cerradoâ region central brazil methods data were derived from 11 microsatellite loci in 23 populations of e dysenterica totalling 249 allele frequencies the expected heterozygosity he within populations and the first principal coordinates extracted from pairwise fst and from the difference between rst and fst among populations were correlated with shifts in suitability from enm frequencies were then analysed using a spatial autocorrelation analysis based on moran s i and mantel tests to contrast population differentiation for mean allele frequencies allele size and shifts in suitability since the last glacial maximum inferred from enm results spatial correlograms based on moran s i and mantel tests showed a linear decrease in autocorrelation with distance which revealed north westâ south east gradients in allele frequencies genetic diversity and differences between rst and fst these spatial patterns varied among loci and alleles and the strongest spatial patterns were found for more common alleles with higher levels of differentiation among populations and for those correlated with shifts in enm suitability main conclusions current genetic diversity and population structure in e dysenterica can be explained by geographical range shifts associated with quaternary climate dynamics thus demonstrating the value of applying spatial analyses to study the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying differentiation even within populations possessing a continuous distribution,2015,0.7
An Urban Reintroduction of Western Pond Turtles in Southern California,as a cooperative effort between the university of california los angeles ucla the turtle conservancy and the united states geological survey usgs we have developed an outline for reintroducing western pond turtles emys pallida into an urban waterway in the los angeles area first we present a brief literature review covering the biology and ecology relevant to a reintroduction of western pond turtles next we introduce the research questions central to implementing a reintroduction followed by the methodology and results of fieldwork genetic analysis and geographic information system gis mapping finally a discussion of the work that has been co mpleted so far provides final recommendations for the reintroduction and establishes a framework for the future of the project,2015,0.217
Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) in Asia: a re-examination of the native range and invasion to southeastern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,harmonia axyridis pallas is an invasive ladybird spreading in several continents it is native to east asia but its range in asia has until now been poorly understood the most complete map of the range of harmonia axyridis in asia has been compiled 432 localities harmonia axyridis occurs in the south east of west siberia the south of east siberia the south of russian far east the east of kazakhstan the north of kyrgyzstan mongolia china north korea south korea japan and the north of vietnam southeastern kazakhstan and the north of kyrgyzstan are not a part of the native range the large balkhash desert is situated between this mountainous region and the nearest part of the native range altai mountains the analysis of dates and places of findings indicates that harmonia axyridis appeared in southeastern kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan after the construction of the turkestan siberian railway it is hypothesized that the beetles crossed the desert along this railway,2015,0.354
Environmental predictors of habitat suitability and biogeographical range of Franciscana dolphins (Pontoporia blainvillei),the aim of this study was to use species distribution models to estimate the effects of environmental variables on the habitat suitability of river dolphins pontoporia blainvillei franciscanas along their overall biogeographical distribution based on the literature we selected six environmental variables to be included in the models four climatic factors surface sea temperature salinity turbidity and productivity and two biotic factors prey availability and fishing effort we determined that the biographic range is under the following limits temperature less than 19â c a salinity of 36 psu and a minimal probability of the occurrence of fish c guatucupa of 0 297 in the discussion we postulate hypotheses on the behavioural and physiological mechanisms that cause these associations between environmental predictors and franciscanas distribution there was a good fit between the distribution predicted by the species distribution model and the one proposed by the experts of the international union for conservation of nature however our analysis failed to highlight the fundamental role of bycatch as the main threat to this dolphin species,2015,0.437
"Environmental Software Systems. Infrastructures, Services and Applications",access to environmental data based on standardized data models and services is becoming ever more prevalent providing stakeholders with access to a wide range of standardized environmental data from diverse sources however exactly this success brings new problems with thematic extensions based on these standardized models being created by disparate thematic communities based on their specific requirements in contrast to the traditional standards development process which includes mechanisms for maintaining alignment of concepts across different sections of the standard once these standards are extended by a larger and not so strictly structured community the alignment process becomes increasingly difficult this position paper sketches this problem as illustrated by example of the european inspire process and serves as a basis for the conference workshop discussion that aims to capture both further facets of the problem as well as possible solutions,2015,0.091
The species versus subspecies conundrum: quantitative delimitation from integrating multiple data types within a single Bayesian approach in Hercules beetles.,with the recent attention and focus on quantitative methods for species delimitation an overlooked but equally important issue regards what has actually been delimited this study investigates the apparent arbitrariness of some taxonomic distinctions and in particular how species and subspecies are assigned specifically we use a recently developed bayesian model based approach to show that in the hercules beetles genus dynastes there is no statistical difference in the probability that putative taxa represent different species irrespective of whether they were given species or subspecies designations by considering multiple data types as opposed to relying exclusively on genetic data alone we also show that both previously recognized species and subspecies represent a variety of points along the speciation spectrum i e previously recognized species are not systematically further along the continuum than subspecies for example based on evolutionary models of divergence some taxa are statistically distinguishable on more than one axis of differentiation e g along both phenotypic and genetic dimensions whereas other taxa can only be delimited statistically from a single data type because both phenotypic and genetic data are analyzed in a common bayesian framework our study provides a framework for investigating whether disagreements in species boundaries among data types reflect i actual discordance with the actual history of lineage splitting or instead ii differences among data types in the amount of time required for differentiation to become apparent among the delimited taxa we discuss what the answers to these questions imply about what characters are used to delimit species as well as the diverse processes involved in the origin and maintenance of species boundaries with this in mind we then reflect more generally on how quantitative methods for species delimitation are used to assign taxonomic status,2015,0.95
Evaluating the potential of ecological niche modelling as a component in marine non-indigenous species risk assessments.,marine biological invasions have increased with the development of global trading causing the homogenization of communities and the decline of biodiversity a main vector is ballast water exchange from shipping this study evaluates the use of ecological niche modelling enm to predict the spread of 18 non indigenous species nis along shipping routes and their potential habitat suitability hot cold spots in the baltic sea and northeast atlantic results show that contrary to current risk assessment methods temperature and sea ice concentration determine habitat suitability for 61 of species rather than salinity 11 we show high habitat suitability for nis in the skagerrak and kattegat a transitional area for nis entering or leaving the baltic sea as many cases of nis introduction in the marine environment are associated with shipping pathways we explore how enm can be used to provide valuable information on the potential spread of nis for ballast water risk assessment,2015,0.499
Family-group names of fossil fishes,the family group names of animals superfamily family subfamily supertribe tribe and subtribe are regulated by the international code of zoological nomenclature particularly the family names are very important because they are among the most widely used of all technical animal names we have compiled a list of family group names for â œfishesâ we use the concept â œfishesâ in the usual sense i e starting with the agnatha including the conodonts upto the osteolepidiformes we list here all the family group names found to date for fossil fishes together with their author s and year of publication our main goal is to contribute to the usage of the correct family group names in fossil fishes with a uniform spelling family group names of fossil fishes researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 281645013 family group names of fossil fishes accessed oct 2 2015,2015,0.534
Morphological and phenological consequences of ex situ conservation of natural populations of red clover (Trifolium pratense L.),ex situ seed banks provide an effective conservation and utilization system for crops and their wild relatives efforts are made to reduce genetic drift in conservation where regeneration is a critical step in the present study we examined eight wild populations of red clover trifolium pratense l according to 13 morphological and phenological traits samples of original collected seed were grown and compared with plants from first and second ex situ generation with commercial cultivars and landraces being included for purposes of comparison variance analysis and tukey multiple comparisons of means showed that the commercial cultivars and landraces were clearly distinct from the wild populations and were excluded from the further analysis despite the fact that the wild accessions were collected from a geographically delimited region in norway they exhibited significant differences in several of the measured traits the main phenotypic patterns remain after ex situ regenerations however the mean values for four of the examined traits across accessions did change significantly from one generation to the next two of the eight accessions had significantly changed from one generation to the next a tendency was observed across all the studied traits the results were discussed in terms of regeneration circumstances observed changes appeared to be directional going from populations with predominantly wild morphological types towards plants more closely resembling the commercial cultivars such a directional change implies that selection or gene flow has been acting on the accessions during regeneration rather than random changes owing to genetic drift,2015,0.738
"On the occurrence of Varanus nebulosus (Gray, 1831) (Squamata: Varanidae) on Riau Archipelago, Indonesia",the occurrence of varanus nebulosus gray 1831 on sumatra still remains open for debates while records are limited especially those associated with a voucher specimen the oldest record of v nebulosus that is associated with a specimen i e smf 11554 is dated back to 1889 and presumably from bengal â œbengalenâ which now lies around bangladesh the specimen is kept at senckenberg museum frankfurt smf in germany we collected specimens from two islands in the riau archipelago just west of sumatra and provided new distribution data for this protected species of monitor lizard in indonesia the two recent records represent populations of v nebulosus other than those already known in the literature and are among the closest known occurrences to sumatra we suggest that islands in the riau archipelago might have been the stepping stones for a historical dispersal of this species from mainland southeast asia and singapore,2015,0.745
SMART ECOLOGY Surfing the Wave of Wildlife Tracking Data,technological developments of the last years have provided scientists and wildlife managers with new tools to monitor animal movements massive and detailed positioning data can be generated by global navigation satellite systems e g global positioning system gps with minimal work by operators allowing reduced sampling intervals and increased accuracy and performance compared to previous technology furthermore data can be remotely transferred to operators making real time monitoring of animals possible as a consequence the interaction between science and technology has been rapidly evolving the discipline of ecology knowing where animals move when and in which kind of habitat can help to build a mechanistic understanding of key concepts of behavioural and evolutionary ecology including resource use home range and dispersal response to climate change and population dynamics among others however the availability of large data sets can challenge scientists by their complexity that requires innovative and efficient data handling and analytical tools in fact to extract the information from raw gps tracking data and other wildlife attached monitoring devices required to address complex environmental questions at local as well as global spatial scales many steps are required these include data storage processing analysis and sharing but gps tracking routinely generates larger data sets than software tools commonly used by biologists in the past could handle instead good scientific practice requires that data are securely efficiently managed to minimize errors increase the reliability and reproducibility of inferences and ensure data persistence e g consistent use of data on multiple occasions and by several persons for gps based locations flexibility in managing very large data sets from different devices the ability to manage spatial time series generated in real time and the possibility to integrate tools for data analysis and visualization in a single software environment are key characteristics to fully exploit the potential of these tracking technologies data sharing and their long term preservation for studies beyond their initial scope is another important element for all scientific data this is especially crucial when considering that collecting wildlife tracking data is often expensive and may impose risks on animal welfare in my research i address these questions i start with a critical evaluation of the requirements for good management and processing of gps wildlife tracking data then i identify and develop a suite of tools and methodological approaches that satisfy these requirements i explore current research in wildlife data management and finally suggest a possible direction for development based on a modular software architecture with a spatial database at its core i propose methodological approaches and tools to optimize data handling and particularly the integration of gps data with other sensors data and with environmental information derived from remote sensing this innovative approach offers the opportunity to model location data as objects characterizing the presence of individuals in space and time within v their habitat my work focuses on gps based location data but is also valid for other kinds of wildlife monitoring data acquired with remote automatic device based techniques the ultimate goal of my phd research is to build a better information system to support research in the movement ecology domain making the potential offered by gps wildlife tracking data more efficient good data management is needed to produce better science proving this statement empirically is difficult although the best evidence is the enhanced efficiency and consistency in results this is especially relevant currently because new and more sensors more large scale animal tracking studies more international collaborative projects and more pressing issues on the state and the future of our environment are forcing researchers to tackle data management as one of their primary efforts this is confirmed by the growing demand for data management systems as a tool for research i think that the intrinsic consistency and integrity of spatial databases represents a necessary scientific infrastructure for rigorous science per se preventing error propagation optimizing performance of analysis and improving robustness of inferences in particular this favours the move from simple descriptive approaches towards mechanistic models with higher explanatory and predictive power focusing wildlife research on biological rather than statistical significance vi their habitat my work focuses on gps based location data but is also valid for other kinds of wildlife monitoring data acquired with remote automatic device based techniques the ultimate goal of my phd research is to build a better information system to support research in the movement ecology domain making the potential offered by gps wildlife tracking data more efficient good data management is needed to produce better science proving this statement empirically is difficult although the best evidence is the enhanced efficiency and consistency in results this is especially relevant currently because new and more sensors more large scale animal tracking studies more international collaborative projects and more pressing issues on the state and the future of our environment are forcing researchers to tackle data management as one of their primary efforts this is confirmed by the growing demand for data management systems as a tool for research i think that the intrinsic consistency and integrity of spatial databases represents a necessary scientific infrastructure for rigorous science per se preventing error propagation optimizing performance of analysis and improving robustness of inferences in particular this favours the move from simple descriptive approaches towards mechanistic models with higher explanatory and predictive power focusing wildlife research on biological rather than statistical significance,2015,0.004
"Molecular systematics of gerbils and deomyines (Rodentia: Gerbillinae, Deomyinae) and a test of desert adaptation in the tympanic bulla",recent molecular studies in gerbils found multiple instances of discordance between molecular and morphological phylogenies in this study we analyse the largest molecular data set to date of gerbils and their sister group the deomyines to estimate their phylogenetic relationships maximum likelihood and bayesian analyses were largely concordant and both generally had high levels of node support for gerbils the results were generally concordant with previous molecular phylogenies based on allozymes chromosomes dna dna hybridization and dna sequences and discordant with morphological phylogenies none of the traditional gerbil tribes and subtribes were monophyletic in addition paraphyly was found in the genera gerbillus gerbilliscus and meriones as well as in five subgenera within dipodillus gerbillurus and meriones short branches separating taxa in small clusters within dipodillus and meriones suggest synonymy within deomyines all genera and subgenera were monophyletic however two species groups within acomys appear to contain synonymous taxa we also find support for the discordance between molecular and morphological phylogenies in gerbils being partly due to convergent adaptations to arid environments primarily in the suite of traits associated with inflation of the tympanic bullae relative bullar size does appear to be a desert adaptation and is correlated with aridity independent of phylogeny further it varies more strongly along bioclimatic clines than between binary habitat classifications desert versus mesic,2015,0.357
Analysis of biodiversity experiments: A comparison of traditional and linear-model-based methods,the relationship between diversity and ecosystem functioning is often studied by biodiversity experiments traditionally the mechanisms behind biodiversity effects observed in these experiments have been evaluated by relative yield overyielding and loreau and hector s additive partitioning of net biodiversity effect and more recently by linear model based methods such as kirwan s diversityâ interaction model and bell s random partition model we compared data required and results given by these traditional and linear model based methods using three data sets a simulated data set and two pot biodiversity experiments for the simulated data we also compared expected outputs based on defined ecological species traits with actual outcomes of the methods bef experiments were designed to answer five fundamental questions q1 how does sown species richness change ecosystem functioning q2 what ecological mechanisms cause this change q3 how does the importance of ecological mechanisms change with sown species richness q4 which species are responsible for given ecological mechanisms q5 how do other experimental treatments change answers to all questions above we show that all methods were capable of answering q1 and to some extent also q5 although different methods use different procedures to reach the answer concerning q2â q4 we found that traditional methods provide more detailed insight into the ecological mechanisms than the linear model based methods which leave us just with brief information a direct comparison between traditional biodiversity effects and effects from linear model based methods showed that species interactions from the diversityâ interaction model were significantly positively correlated with the net effect while species identity effects from diversityâ interaction model were related to the species relative yield the selection of an appropriate method for bef experiment analysis thus depends on the questions we ask which in turn also affect the design of the bef experiment,2015,0.017
"Annotated Bibliography for the Kittatinny Ridge in Pennsylvania, Volume II",one year prior to the publication of this report laura mcbride compiled a comprehensive annotated bibliography consisting of over 500 resources pertaining to the kittatinny ridge in continuation of l auraâ s efforts during the summer of 2015 i compiled this a ddendum to the annotated bibliography for the kittatinny ridge in pennsylvania that includes over 250 additional contemporary and historical resources to meet the interests of researchers of various disciplines who will be utilizing the bibliography this document features a mix of resources relating to both the natural and cultural history of the ridge including but not limited to scientific and historical texts maps gis tool s legislati on photographs and artwork in compiling this addendum i primarily focused on documenting resources that are beyond the temporal and geographical range covered by lauraâ s bibliography placing a particular emphasis on research recently conducted in the central and western regions of the kittatinny ridge i located resources on such research as well as many other resources by s earching various w ebsites and databases contacting researchers at institutions and organizations in the vicin ity of the ridge and vi ewing public and private collections among other online scientific and historical resources i reviewed and p rovided links to over 70 gis tools that include interactive maps and or data available for analysis on gis platforms i also provided digital copies of approximately 50 individual maps that relate to the topography geology hydrology and other aspects of the ridge furthermore n umerous scientists provided m e with publications relating to scientific research that has be en conducted on or in the vicinity of the ridge i also had the opportunity to review unique published and unpublished resources at the trexler li brary of muhlenberg college the acopian center for ornithology and the muhlenberg college herbarium in addition to its general collection the acopian center possesses many important texts data and photographs in the private collection of maurice broun the first curator of hawk mountain sanctuary,2015,0.181
A tool to assess potential for alien plant establishment and expansion under climate change.,predicting the influence of climate change on the potential distribution of naturalised alien plant species is an important and challenging task while prioritisation of management actions for alien plants under current climatic conditions has been widely adopted very few systems explicitly incorporate the potential of future changes in climate conditions to influence the distribution of alien plant species here we develop an australia wide screening tool to assess the potential of naturalised alien plants to establish and spread under both current and future climatic conditions the screening tool developed uses five spatially explicit criteria to establish the likelihood of alien plant population establishment and expansion under baseline climate conditions and future climates for the decades 2035 and 2065 alien plants are then given a threat rating according to current and future threat to enable natural resource managers to focus on those species that pose the largest potential threat now and in the future to demonstrate the screening tool we present results for a representative sample of approximately 10 n 292 of australia s known naturalised alien plant species overall most alien plant species showed decreases in area of habitat suitability under future conditions compared to current conditions and therefore the threat rating of most alien plant species declined between current and future conditions use of the screening tool is intended to assist natural resource managers in assessing the threat of alien plant establishment and spread under current and future conditions and thus prioritise detailed weed risk assessments for those species that pose the greatest threat the screening tool is associated with a searchable database for all 292 alien plant species across a range of spatial scales available through an interactive web based portal at http weedfutures net,2015,0.427
From Darwin's Origin of Species toward a theory of natural history.,darwin is the father of evolutionary theory because he identified evolutionary patterns and with natural selection he ascertained the exquisitely ecological ultimate processes that lead to evolution the proximate processes of evolution he proposed however predated the discovery of genetics the backbone of modern evolutionary theory the later discovery of the laws of inheritance by mendel and the rediscovery of mendel in the early 20th century led to two reforms of darwinism neo darwinism and the modern synthesis and subsequent refinements if darwin s evolutionary thought required much refinement his ecological insight is still very modern in the first edition of the origin of species darwin did not use either the word evolution or the word ecology ecology was not coined until after the publication of the origin evolution for him was the origin of varieties then species which he referred to as well marked varieties whereas instead of using ecology he used the economy of nature the origin contains a high proportion of currently accepted ecological principles darwin labelled himself a naturalist his discipline natural history was a blend of ecology and evolution in which he investigated both the patterns and the processes that determine the organization of life reductionist approaches however often keep the two disciplines separated from each other undermining a full understanding of natural phenomena that might be favored by blending ecology and evolution through the development of a modern theory of natural history based on darwin s vision of the study of life,2015,0.245
"Floristic similarity, diversity and endemism as indicators of refugia characteristics and needs in the West",the floras of mountain ranges and their similarity beta diversity and endemism are indicative of processes of community assembly they are also the initial conditions for coming disassembly and reassembly in response to climate change as such these characteristics can inform thinking on refugia the published floras or approximations for 42 mountain ranges in the three major mountain systems sierra cascades rocky mountains and great basin ranges across the western usa and southwestern canada were analysed the similarity is higher among the ranges of the rockies while equally low among the ranges of the sierra cascades and great basin mantel correlations of similarity with geographic distance are also higher for the rocky mountains endemism is relatively high but is highest in the sierra cascades due to the sierra nevada as the single largest range and lowest in the great basin where assemblages are allochthonous these differences indicate that the geologic substrates of the cascade volcano,2015,0.284
"Hericium erinaceus, an amazing medicinal mushroom",medicinal mushrooms have become a compelling topic because the bioactive compounds they contain promise a plethora of therapeutic properties hericium erinaceus commonly known as â œhoutouâ or â œshishigashiraâ in china and â œyamabushitakeâ in japan has commonly been prescribed in traditional chinese medicine tcm because its consumption has been shown to be beneficial to human health the species is found throughout the northern hemisphere in europe asia and north america hericium erinaceus has been firmly established as an important medicinal mushroom and its numerous bioactive compounds have been developed into food supplements and alternative medicines however the correspondence of the active components that cause the observed effects is often not clear the mushroom as well as the fermented mycelia have been reported to produce several classes of bioactive molecules including polysaccharides proteins lectins phenols and terpenoids most interestingly two classes of terpenoid compounds hericenones and erinacines from fruiting bodies and cultured mycelia respectively have been found to stimulate nerve growth factor ngf synthesis in this review we examine the scientific literature to explore and highlight the scientific facts concerning medicinal properties of h erinaceus we provide up to date information on this mushroom including its taxonomy and a summary of bioactive compounds that appear related to the therapeutic potential of h erinaceus,2015,0.042
"Wikiplantbase #Toscana, breaking the dormancy of floristic data",the online platform â œwikiplantbase toscanaâ provides a framework where the full set of georeferenced floristic records of tuscany central italy can be entered stored updated and freely accessed through the internet as of 5 january 2015 the database stores 67 360 floristic records referable to 3578 accepted specific and subspecific taxa most records are based on published data 80 6 of the total then by published herbarium specimens 15 1 and on unpublished field data 3 8 unpublished herbarium records account only for 0 5 of the stored data at present the most represented species is the fern pteridium aquilinum l kuhn subsp aquilinum dennstaedtiaceae with 234 records for 219 localities but 625 species are still represented only by one record for a single locality data acquisition is far from complete but in slightly more than one year a massive amount of data was accumulated and can be maintained up to date with relatively little effort this could power several researches su,2015,0.482
"Climate oscillations, glacial refugia, and dispersal ability: factors influencing the genetic structure of the least salmonfly, Pteronarcella badia (Plecoptera), in Western North America.",background phylogeographic studies of aquatic insects provide valuable insights into mechanisms that shape the genetic structure of communities yet studies that include broad geographic areas are uncommon for this group we conducted a broad scale phylogeographic analysis of the least salmonfly pteronarcella badia plecoptera across western north america we tested hypotheses related to mode of dispersal and the influence of historic climate oscillations on population genetic structure in order to generate a larger mitochondrial data set we used 454 sequencing to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial genome in the early stages of the project results our analysis revealed high levels of population structure with several deeply divergent clades present across the sample area evidence from five mitochondrial genes and one nuclear locus identified a potentially cryptic lineage in the pacific northwest gene flow estimates and geographic clade distributions suggest that overland flight during the winged adult stage is an important dispersal mechanism for this taxon we found evidence of multiple glacial refugia across the species distribution and signs of secondary contact within and among major clades conclusions this study provides a basis for future studies of aquatic insect phylogeography at the inter basin scale in western north america our findings add to an understanding of the role of historical climate isolations in shaping assemblages of aquatic insects in this region we identified several geographic areas that may have historical importance for other aquatic organisms with similar distributions and dispersal strategies as p badia this work adds to the ever growing list of studies that highlight the potential of next generation dna sequencing in a phylogenetic context to improve molecular data sets from understudied groups,2015,0.069
Fear of failure in conservation: The problem and potential solutions to aid conservation of extremely small populations,the potential for extirpation of extremely small populations esps is high due to their vulnerability to demographic and environmental stochasticity and negative impacts of human activity we argue that conservation actions that could aid esps are sometimes delayed because of a fear of failure in human psychology the fear of failure is composed of several distinct cognitive elements including â œuncertainty about the futureâ and â œupsetting important others â uncertainty about the future is often driven by information obstacles in conservation information is either not easily shared among practitioners or information is lacking whereas fear of upsetting important others can be due to apprehension about angering constituents peers funders and other stakeholders we present several ways to address these fears in hopes of improving the conservation process we describe methods for increased information sharing and improved decision making in the face of uncertainty and recommend a shift in focus to cooperative actions and improving methods for evaluating success our hope is that by tackling stumbling blocks due to the apprehension of failure conservation and management organizations can take steps to move from fear to action,2015,0.395
"An overlooked invader? Ecological niche, invasion success and range dynamics of the Alexandrine parakeet in the invaded range",parrots and parakeets aves psittaciformes are prominent among avian invaders as more than 16 of living species are currently breeding with at least one population outside their native range most studies have been carried out on ring necked and monk parakeets as they are the most successful invasive parrots globally recently however reports of invasive alexandrine parakeet psittacula eupatria have increased here we summarize the current knowledge on the current occurrence of alexandrine parakeets outside the natural range and assess the degree of niche conservatism during the invasion process our results show that alexandrine parakeets have established invasive populations predominantly in europe parts of the middle east and far eastern countries such as japan and singapore during the ongoing invasion of europe the alexandrine parakeet considerably expanded its niche into colder climates with respect to those occupied in the native range our results offer some support to the hypothesis that interspecific facilitation with previously established ring necked parakeets psittacula krameri may contribute to niche expansion and invasion success of congeneric alexandrine parakeets species distribution models including both native and invaded range occurrence data predict a high invasion risk across multiple parts of the globe where the species is currently not yet present thus indicating a high potential for the species for further invasion success and range expansion,2015,0.782
Mapping the zoonotic niche of Lassa fever in Africa.,background lassa fever is a viral haemorrhagic illness responsible for disease outbreaks across west africa it is a zoonosis with the primary reservoir species identified as the natal multimammate mouse mastomys natalensis the host is distributed across sub saharan africa while the virus range appears to be restricted to west africa the majority of infections result from interactions between the animal reservoir and human populations although secondary transmission between humans can occur particularly in hospital settings methods using a species distribution model the locations of confirmed human and animal infections with lassa virus lasv were used to generate a probabilistic surface of zoonotic transmission potential across sub saharan africa results our results predict that 37 7 million people in 14 countries across much of west africa live in areas where conditions are suitable for zoonotic transmission of lasv four of these countries where at risk populations are predicted have yet to report any cases of lassa fever conclusions these maps act as a spatial guide for future surveillance activities to better characterise the geographical distribution of the disease and understand the anthropological virological and zoological interactions necessary for viral transmission combining this zoonotic niche map with detailed patient travel histories can aid differential diagnoses of febrile illnesses enabling a more rapid response in providing care and reducing the risk of onward transmission,2015,0.529
Hydrogen Production and Remediation of Carbon and Pollutants,this book details first the chemistry of hydrogen production from biomass solutions to the co2 issue are given in three chapters which describe co2 photo catalytic reduction co2 sequestration in terrestrial biomass and plants as renewable fuels further chapters review the selenium cycle in ecosystems advanced processes to treat water and ecological ways to dye textiles society growth during the last century has almost entirely relied on the carbon economy which is the use of fossil fuels for energy and materials the carbon economy has provided and will still provide many benefits however the increasing use of fossil fuels is partly responsible for the increase of atmospheric co2 concentrations and in turn global warming there is therefore an urgent need for cleaner fuels such as hydrogen as well as a need for a carbon neutral economy where each emitted co2 molecule is fast sequestered in plants algae soils sub soils and sediments,2015,0.052
"Ring out the bells, we are being invaded! Niche conservatism in exotic populations of the Yellow Bells, Tecoma stans (Bignoniaceae)",species invasions are severe drivers of environmental change invasive plants may affect soil dynamics interactions and ecosystem functioning leading to environmental and economic losses although species invasion success has been explained by niche conservatism recent studies have demonstrated that niche shifts may also play a key role in this process in this study we tested whether niche shift has occurred during the range expansion of the yellow bells tecoma stans bignoniaceae and predicted its global risk of invasion we used reciprocal ecological niche models techniques and multivariate analyses to test our hypothesis and produce a worldwide invasion risk for this species niche spaces of african australian and american exotic populations did not differ substantially from the natural one although the reciprocal models we fitted for exotic and native occurrences poorly predicted each other the predictions of the models indicated that t stans is prone to invade new areas where it has not been recorded yet given its competitive abilities preventive programs in prone to be invaded areas are highly recommended,2015,0.429
Formal Acknowledgement of Citizen Scientists’ Contributions via Dynamic Data Citations,data citation provides a valuable method for rewarding citizen scientists by formally acknowledging the contributions that they make to valuable scientific datasets the difficulty is that citizen science databases that comprise volunteer generated observations are highly dynamic and contain data contributed by a very large number of volunteers moreover the scientists re using the citizen science data often only want to cite a small sub set of the entire database as it existed at a specific date and time the majority of data citation approaches assume that the dataset is static owned by a single agent and the entire dataset is being cited not just a subset this paper describes implements and evaluates an innovative approach to dynamic data citation that potentially overcomes many of the challenges associated with citing sub sets of constantly changing citizen science datasets and thus enables formal recognition of the volunteers who contributed the data,2015,0.114
Modeling the ecologic niche of plague in sylvan and domestic animal hosts to delineate sources of human exposure in the western United States.,plague has been established in the western united states us since 1900 following the west coast introduction of commensal rodents infected with yersinia pestis via early industrial shipping over the last century plague ecology has transitioned through cycles of widespread human transmission urban domestic transmission among commensal rodents and ultimately settled into the predominantly sylvan foci that remain today where it is maintained alternatively by enzootic and epizootic transmission while zoonotic transmission to humans is much less common in modern times significant plague risk remains in parts of the western us moreover risk to some threatened species that are part of the epizootic cycle can be quite substantive this investigation attempted to predict the risk of plague across the western us by modeling the ecologic niche of plague in sylvan and domestic animals identified between 2000 and 2015 a maxent machine learning algorithm was used to predict this niche based on climate altitude land cover and the presence of an important enzootic species peromyscus maniculatus this model demonstrated good predictive ability auc 86 and identified areas of high risk in central colorado north central new mexico and southwestern and northeastern california the presence of p maniculatus altitude precipitation during the driest and wettest quarters and distance to artificial surfaces all contributed substantively to maximizing the gain function these findings add to the known landscape epidemiology and infection ecology of plague in the western us and may suggest locations of particular risk to be targeted for wild and domestic animal intervention,2015,0.861
A relict species restricted to a quartzitic mountain in tropical America: an example of microrefugium?,we examined the distribution of coccoloba cereifera a tropical endemic species that occurs in a small area in the espinhaã o mountain range southeastern brazil it is hypothesized that its narrow distribution is strongly related to the spatially scattered distribution of sandfields however this soil type extends far beyond the small region where c cereifera is currently found indicating that other factors might be involved in the distribution of this species coccoloba cereifera also displays all traits of a relict population in a microrefugium as a result we were encouraged to explore other factors potentially related to the distribution of the species in an attempt to aid in the understanding of the processes and mechanisms that lead c cereiferato present the narrow actual distribution we applied two distribution modelling approaches to investigate the potential distribution of the species beyond the small known distribution area the distribution seems to be strongly associated with sandy patches grasslands formed among rocky outcrops and is limited by some topoclimatic and or topographic features some of them related to the existence of a microrefugium a fact also suggested by the pattern of distribution of the species in the past from the management point of view the existence of a microrefugium in this area calls for changes in conservation efforts and priorities,2015,0.905
"RUMEX VESICARIUS L. (POLYGONACEAE), NEÓFITO PARA LA FL ORA VALENCIANA (ESPAÑA, MEDITERR ÁNEO OCCIDENTAL)",rumex vesicarius l polygonaceae neophyte for the valen cian flora spain western mediterranean a neophyte for the valencian flora bladder dock rumex vesicarius l is reported the species was found at lowlands in the surroundings of sagunto valencia cl ose to the mediterranean sea plants formed a single population with 131 individua ls occupying 4 7 ha a brief descrip tion of the species is given and its genera l distribution and around the mediterranean are reviewed emphasizing its invasive potential key words rumex vesicarius l floristics neophyte invasi veness chorology valencia spain western mediterra nean,2015,0.542
Uncertainty analysis of crowd-sourced and professionally collected field data used in species distribution models of Taiwanese moths,the purposes of this study are to extract the names of species and places for a citizen science monitoring program to obtain crowd sourced data of acceptable quality and to assess the quality and the uncertainty of predictions based on crowd sourced data and professional data we used natural language processing to extract names of species and places from text messages in a citizen science project bootstrap and maximum entropy methods were used to assess the uncertainty in the model predictions based on crowd sourced data from the enjoymoths project in taiwan we compared uncertainty in the predictions obtained from the project and from the global biodiversity information facility gbif field data for seven focal species of moth the proximity to locations of easy access and the ripley k method were used to test the level of spatial bias and randomness of the crowd sourced data against gbif data our results show that extracting information to identify the names of species and their locations from crowd sourced data performed well the results of the spatial bias and randomness tests revealed that the crowd sourced data and gbif data did not differ significantly in respect to both spatial bias and clustering the prediction models developed using the crowd sourced dataset were the most effective followed by those that were developed using the combined dataset those that performed least well were based on the small sample size gbif dataset our method demonstrates the potential for using data collected by citizen scientists and the extraction of information from vast social networks our analysis also shows the value of citizen science data to improve biodiversity information in combination with data collected by professionals,2015,0.314
Translating niche features: Modelling differential exposure of Argentine reptiles to global climate change,global climate change affects the distributions of ectotherms and may be the cause of several conservation problems such as great displacement of climatic suitable spaces for species and consequently important reductions of the extent of liveable places threatening the existence of many of them species exposure and hence vulnerability to global climate change is linked to features of their climatic niches such as the relative position of the inhabited localities of each species in the climatic space and therefore to characteristics of their geographic ranges such as the extent of the distributions or altitudinal range inhabited by the species in order to analyze the pattern of response of argentine reptiles to global climate change we ran phylogenetic generalized least squares models using species exposure to global climate change as a response variable and i niche properties breadth and position of the species in the climate space and ii general features of the distribution of species maximum latitude altitudinal range maximum elevation distributional range and proximity to the most important dispersal barrier as predictors our results suggest that the best way to explain climate change exposure is by combining breadth and position of climatic niche of the species or combining geographic features that are indicators of both niche characteristics our best model shows that in our study area species with the narrowest distributional ranges that also inhabit the highest elevations are the most exposed to the effects of global climate change in this sense reptile species from yungas puna and andes ecoregions could be especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change we believe that these types of models may represent an interesting tool for determining species and places particularly threatened by the effects of global climate change which should be strongly considered in conservation planning,2015,0.93
Diversity of Hyalorbilia (Orbiliales) in the Macaronesian Region,the genus hyalorbilia in macaronesia is reevaluated four species are new to this region hyalorbilia berberidis h brevistipitata h fusispora and h polypori hyalorbilia inflatula is recircumscribed the new combination hyalorbilia polypori velen baral e weber is proposed hyalorbilia lunata is redefined according to vital taxonomy a description of each species is given together with notes on its distribution ecology and taxonomy similar species are briefly discussed,2015,0.682
The collection of the Herpetological Museum of the University of Antioquia (northwestern Colombia),northwestern south america harbors one of the richest herpetofauna in the world the connection among several biogeographic provinces along with climatic and orographic complexity makes this region an important contributor to the neotropical biodiversity despite of this importance the amphibian and reptile fauna in this area remains largely unknown as few herpetological collections has been made in recent decades motivated by this the herpetological museum at the universidad de antioquia medellã n colombia has been increasing the collection in the last 16 years to better understand the herpetofaunal diversity and thus contribute to ecological systematic biogeographic and conservation research in the neotropics here we present the results of this effort and highlight how future collection will impact our understanding of the neotropical herpetofauna,2015,0.253
R-Syst::diatom a barcode database for diatoms and freshwater biomonitoring data sources and curation procedure,we present the data sources and the curation procedure of a n open access and curated reference barcoding database for diatoms called r syst diatom developed in th e framework of r syst the barcoding network of inra french national institute for agricultural research r syst diatom link s dna barcodes to their taxonomical identifications and is dedicated to identi fy barcodes from natural samples the data come from two sources a culture collection of freshwater algae maintained in inra which is regularly barcoded for new strains and from the ncbi national center for biotechnology information nucleotide database two kinds of barcodes were chosen to support the database 18s and rbc l because of their efficiency d ata are curated using innovative declic and classical bioinformatic tools blast classical phylogenies and up to date taxonomy catalogue of diatom names and peer review ed papers every 6 month s r syst diatom is updated the database is available through the r s yst website http www rsyst inra fr in addition to these information morphological features e g biovolumes chloroplasts life forms mobility colony type or ecological features taxa preferenda to pollution are indicated in r syst diatom this database should get a foot in the door of biomonitoring 2 0,2015,0.213
"Genetic structure and post-glacial expansion of Cornus florida L. (Cornaceae): integrative evidence from phylogeography, population demographic history, and species distribution modeling",repeated global climatic cooling and warming cycles during the pleistocene played a major role in the distribution and evolution of the earth biota here we integrate phylogeography coalescent based bayesian estimation of demographic history and species distribution modeling sdm to understand the genetic patterns and biogeography of the flowering dogwood cornus florida subsp florida l since the last glacial maximum lgm natural populations of the species are severely threatened by dogwood anthracnose we genotyped 306 plants from 73 locations of the species across most of its native distribution with three dna regions from the plastid genome ndhf rpl32 rps16 and trnq rps16 the genealogy and haplotype network reconstruction revealed two haplotype lineages diverging â ˆ3 70 million years ago we detected no clear geographic structuring of genetic variation although significant local structure appeared to be evident likely due to a combination of substantial localized seed dispersal by small mammals and small population size limited sampling at a location the spatial distribution of haplotype frequencies estimated population demographic history and results from hindcasting analysis using sdm suggested refugia in southeastern north america and population reduction during the lgm followed by rapid post glacial expansion to the north forecasting analysis using sdm predicted range shifts to the north under ongoing global warming our results further suggested that gene flow via seed dispersal has been high but insufficient to counter the effect of genetic drift this study demonstrates the benefit of integrating genetic data and species distribution modeling to obtain corroborative evidence in elucidating recent biogeographic history and understanding of genetic patterns and species evolution,2015,0.818
Geospatial techniques for modelling the environmental niche of the species,a protected area network like kanha tiger reserve in general protects and manages a vast spectrum of wildlife however the conservation of charismatic large mammals and wildlife of high conservation value tends to overshadow all other wild animals and birds the perceived ordinariness of these wildlife species in protected areas have also become one of the main causes of their not receiving due attention for detailed systematic studies therein and rapid decline outside in managed forests the fauna of kanha tiger reserve ktr supports the endangered tiger panthera tigris tigris and vulnerable hard ground barasingha cervus duvauceli branderi and a wide range of larger mammal species and birds the fauna also includes an amazing arboreal mammal species â indian giant squirrel ratufa indica erxleben the species belongs to the family sciuridae of order rodentia the significance of the conservation of indian giant squirrel in the tiger reserve lies in the endemicity of this mammal species to india and its consequent implications for conservation in managed forests still supporting small populations of this species an endemic species to india it commands a wide distribution in peninsular india from evergreen forests to moist and dry deciduous forests of eastern and western ghats to central india baskaran et al 2011 the indian giant squirrel has been categorised as of least concern with decreasing population trend in the red list of iucn rajamani et al 2014 it has been placed under schedule ii in the indian wildlife protection act 1972 as amended ghosh and bhattacharyya 1995 described the occurrence of this species in ktr they however recorded only one animal near the banjar river in the mukki forest range some forest guards and visitors reported its sighting at a few sites in the supkhar forest range,2015,0.994
Variation in trait trade-offs allows differentiation among predefined plant functional types: implications for predictive ecology.,plant functional types pfts aggregate the variety of plant species into a small number of functionally different classes we examined to what extent plant traits which reflect species functional adaptations can capture functional differences between predefined pfts and which traits optimally describe these differences we applied gaussian kernel density estimation to determine probability density functions for individual pfts in an n dimensional trait space and compared predicted pfts with observed pfts all possible combinations of 1 6 traits from a database with 18 different traits total of 18 287 species were tested a variety of trait sets had approximately similar performance and 4 5 traits were sufficient to classify up to 85 of the species into pfts correctly whereas this was 80 for a bioclimatically defined tree pft classification well performing trait sets included combinations of correlated traits that are considered functionally redundant within a single plant strategy this analysis quantitatively demonstrates how structural differences between pfts are reflected in functional differences described by particular traits differentiation between pfts is possible despite large overlap in plant strategies and traits showing that pfts are differently positioned in multidimensional trait space this study therefore provides the foundation for important applications for predictive ecology,2015,0.287
Adding Biotic Interactions into Paleodistribution Models: A Host-Cleptoparasite Complex of Neotropical Orchid Bees.,orchid bees compose an exclusive neotropical pollinators group with bright body coloration several of those species build their own nests while others are reported as nest cleptoparasites here the objective was to evaluate whether the inclusion of a strong biotic interaction such as the presence of a host species improved the ability of species distribution models sdms to predict the geographic range of the cleptoparasite species the target species were aglae caerulea and its host species eulaema nigrita additionally since a caerulea is more frequently found in the amazon rather than the cerrado areas a secondary objective was to evaluate whether this species is increasing or decreasing its distribution given south american past and current climatic conditions sdms methods maxent and bioclim in addition with current and past south american climatic conditions as well as the occurrences for a caerulea and e nigrita were used to generate the distribution models the distribution of a caerulea was generated with and without the inclusion of the distribution of e nigrita as a predictor variable the results indicate a caerulea was barely affected by past climatic conditions and the populations from the cerrado savanna could be at least 21 000 years old the last glacial maximum as well as the amazonian ones on the other hand in this study the inclusion of the host cleptoparasite interaction complex did not statistically improve the quality of the produced models which means that the geographic range of this cleptoparasite species is mainly constrained by climate and not by the presence of the host species nonetheless this could also be caused by unknown complexes of other euglossini hosts with a caerulea which still are still needed to be described by science,2015,0.971
Genetic variation of Lymnaea stagnalis tolerance to copper: A test of selection hypotheses and its relevance for ecological risk assessment.,the use of standardized monospecific testing to assess the ecological risk of chemicals implicitly relies on the strong assumption that intraspecific variation in sensitivity is negligible or irrelevant in this context in this study we investigated genetic variation in copper sensitivity of the freshwater snail lymnaea stagnalis using lineages stemming from eight natural populations or strains found to be genetically differentiated at neutral markers copper induced mortality varied widely among populations as did the estimated daily death rate and time to 50 mortality lt50 population genetic divergence in copper sensitivity was compared to neutral differentiation using the qst fst approach no evidence for homogenizing selection could be detected this result demonstrates that species level extrapolations from single population studies are highly unreliable the study provides a simple example of how evolutionary principles could be incorporated into ecotoxicity testing in order to refine ecological risk assessment,2015,0.623
Paradigms for parasite conservation.,parasitic species which depend directly on host species for their survival represent a major regulatory force in ecosystems and a significant component of earth s biodiversity yet the negative impacts of parasites observed at the host level have motivated a conservation paradigm of eradication moving us further from attainment of taxonomically unbiased conservation goals despite a growing body of literature highlighting the importance of parasite inclusive conservation most parasite species remain understudied underfunded and underappreciated we argue the protection of parasitic biodiversity requires a paradigm shift in the perception and valuation of their role as consumer species similar to that of apex predators in the mid 20 th century beyond recognizing parasites as vital trophic regulators existing tools available to conservation practitioners should explicitly account for the unique threats facing dependent species we build on concepts from epidemiology and economics to introduce novel metrics of margin of error and minimum investment for parasite conservation once suitable parasites are identified we describe methods for constructing population viability analyses for host parasite assemblages in the direst cases ex situ breeding programs for parasites should be evaluated to maximize success without undermining host protection though parasitic species pose a considerable conservation challenge adaptations to the conservation toolbox will help protect parasite biodiversity in the face of an uncertain environmental future this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.98
Phylogeography of Thlaspi arvense (Brassicaceae) in China Inferred from Chloroplast and Nuclear DNA Sequences and Ecological Niche Modeling.,thlaspi arvense is a well known annual farmland weed with worldwide distribution which can be found from sea level to above 4000 m high on the qinghai tibetan plateau qtp in this paper a phylogeographic history of t arvense including 19 populations from china was inferred by using three chloroplast cp dna segments trnl trnf rpl32 trnl and rps16 and one nuclear n dna segment fe regulated transporter like protein zip a total of 11 chloroplast haplotypes and six nuclear alleles were identified and haplotypes unique to the qtp were recognized c4 c5 c7 and n4 on the basis of molecular dating haplotypes c4 c5 and c7 have separated from others around 1 58 ma for cpdna which corresponds to the qtp uplift in addition this article suggests that the t arvense populations in china are a mixture of diverged subpopulations as inferred by ht vt test ht â vt cpdna and positive tajima s d values 1 87 0 05 p 0 10 for cpdna and 3 37 p 0 01 for ndna multimodality mismatch distribution curves and a relatively large shared area of suitable environmental conditions between the last glacial maximum lgm as well as the present time recognized by maxent software reject the sudden expansion population model,2015,0.163
"The distribution of the endemic plant Primula scandinavica, at local and national scales, in changing mountainous environments",primula scandinavica is endemic to norway and sweden and populations are in decline due to changes in land use future climate change might have an additive effect on its distribution to predict the future distribution of p scandinavica its potential suitable habitats with regard to land use and climate need to be investigated we have generated species distribution models sdms both for local eastern jotunheimen and national norway scales and projected future distribution based on predicted climate and land use change the best sdm at a national scale includes climate temperature precipitation number of snow days and elevation the future potential distribution is projected to expand in the mountainous areas in the south and move north at a local scale the best sdm includes historic and present land use and livestock grazing pressure future distribution in the studied mountainous area is projected to decrease with continued abandonment of grazing,2015,0.36
The pace of past climate change vs. potential bird distributions and land use in the United States.,climate change may drastically alter patterns of species distributions and richness but predicting future species patterns in occurrence is challenging significant shifts in distributions have already been observed and understanding these recent changes can improve our understanding of potential future changes we assessed how past climate change affected potential breeding distributions for landbird species in the conterminous united states we quantified the bioclimatic velocity of potential breeding distributions that is the pace and direction of change for each species suitable climate space over the past 60 years we found that potential breeding distributions for landbirds have shifted substantially with an average velocity of 1 27 km yr 1 about double the pace of prior distribution shift estimates across terrestrial systems globally 0 61 km yr 1 the direction of shifts was not uniform the majority of species distributions shifted west northwest and north multidirectional shifts suggest that changes in climate conditions beyond mean temperature were influencing distributional changes indeed precipitation variables that were proxies for extreme conditions were important variables across all models there were winners and losers in terms of the area of distributions many species experienced contractions along west and east distribution edges and expansions along northern distribution edges changes were also reflected in the potential species richness with some regions potentially gaining species midwest east and other areas potentially losing species southwest however the degree to which changes in potential breeding distributions are manifested in actual species richness depends on landcover areas that have become increasingly suitable for breeding birds due to changing climate are often those attractive to humans for agriculture and development this suggests that many areas might have supported more breeding bird species had the landscape not been altered our study illustrates that climate change is not only a future threat but something birds are already experiencing,2015,0.941
DIVERSITY OF WILD PALMS (ARECACEAE) IN THE REPUBLIC OF BENIN: FINDING THE GAPS IN THE NATIONAL INVENTORY COMBINING FIELD AND DIGITAL ACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE,despite many efforts by researchers worldwide to assess the biodiversity of plant groups many locations on earth remain not well surveyed and data deprivation biases often occur robust estimates of inventory completeness could help alleviate the problem this study aimed at identifying areas representing gaps in current knowledge of african palms with a focus on benin west africa we assessed the completeness of knowledge of african palms targeting geographical distance and climatic difference from well known sites data derived from intensive fieldwork were combined with independent data available online completeness inventory indices were calculated and coupled with other criteria to decide on the extent of knowledge results showed a high overall value for inventory completeness as well as an even distribution of well known areas across the country however poorly known areas were distinctly identified and correlated to remote locations with low accessibility this study illustrates how biodiversity survey and inventory efforts can be guided by existing knowledge we strongly recommend the combination of digital accessible knowledge and fieldwork coupled with expert knowledge to obtain a better picture of the completeness of the inventory in tropical ecosystems,2015,0.188
Shaped by uneven Pleistocene climate: mitochondrial phylogeographic pattern and population history of White Wagtail Motacilla alba (Aves: Passeriformes),we studied the phylogeography and population history of the white wagtail motacilla alba which has a vast breeding range covering areas with different pleistocene climatic histories the mitochondrial nadh dehydrogenase subunit ii gene nd2 and control region cr were analyzed for 273 individuals from 45 localities our data comprised all nine subspecies of white wagtail four primary clades were inferred m n sw and se with indications of m grandis being nested within m alba the oldest split was between two haplotypes from the endemic moroccan m a subpersonata clade m and the others at 0 63â 0 96 mya other divergences were at 0 31â 0 38 mya the entire differentiation falls within the part of the pleistocene characterized by milankovitch cycles of large amplitudes and durations clade n was distributed across the northern palearctic clade sw in southwestern asia plus the british isles and was predicted by ecological niche models enms to occur also in central and south europe and clade se was distributed in central and east asia the deep divergence within m a subpersonata may reflect retention of ancestral haplotypes regional differences in historical climates have had different impacts on different populations clade n expanded after the last glacial maximum lgm whereas milder pleistocene climate of east asia allowed clade se a longer expansion time since mis 5 clade sw expanded over a similarly long time as clade se which is untypical for european species enms supported these conclusions in that the northern part of the eurasian continent was unsuitable during the lgm whereas southern parts remained suitable the recent divergences and poor structure in the mitochondrial tree contrasts strongly with the pronounced well defined phenotypical differentiation indicating extremely fast plumage divergence,2015,0.378
Phylogeny and biogeography of the American live oaks (Quercus subsection Virentes): A genomic and population genetics approach.,the nature and timing of evolution of niche differentiation among closely related species remains an important question in ecology and evolution the american live oak clade virentes which spans the unglaciated temperate and tropical regions of north america and mesoamerica provides an instructive system in which to examine speciation and niche evolution we generated a fossil calibrated phylogeny of virentes using radseq data to estimate divergence times and used nuclear microsatellites chloroplast sequences and an intron region of nitrate reductase nia i3 to examine genetic diversity within species rates of gene flow among species and ancestral population size of disjunct sister species transitions in functional and morphological traits associated with ecological and climatic niche axes were examined across the phylogeny we found the virentes to be monophyletic with three subclades including a southwest clade a southeastern us clade and a central american cuban clade despite high leaf morphological variation within species and transpecific chloroplast haplotypes radseq and nuclear ssr data show genetic coherence of species we estimate a crown date for virentes of 11 ma and implicate the formation of the sea of cortã s in a speciation event 5 ma tree height at maturity associated with fire tolerance differs among the sympatric species while freezing tolerance appears to have diverged repeatedly across the tropical temperate divide sympatric species thus show evidence of ecological niche differentiation but share climatic niches while allopatric and parapatric species conserve ecological niches but diverge in climatic niches the mode of speciation and or degree of co occurrence may thus influence which niche axis plants diverge along this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.943
Opportunities for unlocking the potential of genomics for African trees.,trees or their absence represent one of the most defining features of landscapes on the african continent however they face major threats including habitat loss and degradation invasive alien species disturbance from frequent fire over harvesting pollution changes in pollinators or dispersers populations and climate change balmford et al 2001 davies et al 2011 understanding how trees respond to these impacts would require an integrative approach of which genomic science has a potentially major role to play plomion et al 2015 since the advent of genomic science its investigative power has been exploited for trees in temperate regions particularly involving members of pinus picea pseudotsuga populus eucalyptus quercus castanea malus prunus and fraxinus neale kremer 2011 neale et al 2013 these species serve as models for exploring various processes in molecular genetics functional biology evolutionary biology phenotypic and genotypic adaptation physiology and organismal development tuskan et al 2006 plomion et al 2015 although the tropics have exceptionally high tree diversity â with africa alone having c 50 times more native tree species than temperate europe slik et al 2015 â tree genomic research in this region lags behind that of temperate ones limited funding and the lack of reference genomes for tropical trees have limited the progress of genomic science on the african continent with over 6000 tree species on the african continent slik et al 2015 there is a need to establish reference genomes for the major tree families first we discuss ways to exploit next generation sequencing ngs technologies including genotyping by sequencing gbs de novo transcriptome assembly and whole genome sequencing to generate genomic resources for nonmodel tree species on the african continent second we discuss landscape genomics an emerging field in genomic science and discuss research areas in which the genomic resources of trees in africa can be used to inform research on landscape genomics and to improve food production,2015,0.405
Habitat suitability and protection status of four species of amphibians in the Dominican Republic,hispaniola island has both a high level of amphibian endemism and a high level of habitat degradation due to agriculture infrastructure development and extractive industries the objective of this work was to evaluate the capacity of dominican republic s current network of protection to maintain the habitat of four species of amphibians endemic to hispaniola osteopilus pulchrilineatus osteopilus vastus hypsiboas heilprini and eleutherodactylus flavescens spatial analysis was performed to relate observations of the target species to environmental factors using a maximum entropy algorithm maxent results of this analysis produced maps of probability of occurrence for each species analysis of habitat degradation was based on a change analysis of vegetation by evaluating trends in the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi between 2000 and 2011 results show that forest loss and species habitat loss within protected areas are smaller but similar to those extracted for the country as a whole suggesting that the current protected area network is not effective for the maintenance of the habitat of the amphibians analyzed enforcement of established protection and restoration within current protected areas could facilitate the protection of up to 25 7 of target amphibian habitat the methodologies presented here can be applied to measure biodiversity offset effectiveness,2015,0.601
Evolution of geographical place and niche space: patterns of diversification in the North American sedge (Cyperaceae) flora.,the role of geography and ecology in speciation are often discussed in the context of phylogenetic niche conservatism pnc the propensity of lineages to retain ancestral niche related traits however a recent paradigm shift focuses instead on measuring divergence of these traits in conjunction with patterns of speciation under this framework we analyzed the diversification of north america s third most diverse family cyperaceae sedges using a modified parsimony analysis of endemicity approach to identify floristic regions and ordination statistics to quantify species distribution in a continuous manner utilizing over 200 000 georeferenced specimens we characterized the geographical distribution and climatic and edaphic niche space occupied by each species we constructed a supermatrix phylogeny of the north american sedge flora aided in part by the sequencing of all sedges of wisconsin and employed a multifaceted approach to assess the role of geographical and ecological divergence on lineage diversification in addition to measuring phylogenetic signal for these traits we also measured pairwise phylogenetic distance of species within floristic regions calculated rates of speciation and tested for correlations of speciation rate to tempo of geographical and ecological evolution our analyses consistently show that evolutionarily related species tend to be geographically unrelated rates of geographical and ecological diversification are closely linked to tempo of speciation and exploration of geographical place coincides with divergence in ecological niche space we highlight the benefits of treating geography in a continuous manner and stress the importance of employing a diverse suite of analytical approaches in testing hypotheses regarding the evolution of range and niche,2015,0.745
Smart monitoring is key to achieving the Aichi Biodiversity Targets,in 2010 the conference of the parties cop to the convention on biological diversity cbd adopted the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011â 2020 with 20 ambitious aichi biodiversity targets a long term vision and the mission to take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity this strategic plan provides an overarching framework on biodiversity not only for the biodiversity related conventions but for the entire united nations system and all other partners engaged in biodiversity management and policy development its implementation depends on countries translating the global plan into national biodiversity strategies and action plans including sets of national targets which collectively would enable the global community to achieve the aichi biodiversity targets progress towards the achievement of the aichi biodiversity targets is tracked both globally â a mid term review was undertaken through the fourth edition of global biodiversity outlook launched at cop 12 in the republic of korea in october 2014 â and nationally through periodic reports on progress towards the targets that have been set at national â or in some cases provincial or regional â level by the time of writing 144 fifth national reports to the cbd had been submitted while others are being finalised and 50 revised national strategies and action plans had been prepared while many others are expected to be submitted shortly,2015,0.126
Invasion debt - quantifying future biological invasions,aim we develop a framework for quantifying invasions based on lagged trends in invasions â invasion debtâ with the aim of identifying appropriate metrics to quantify delayed responses at different invasion stages â from introduction to when environmental impacts occur location world wide detailed case study in south africa methods we define four components of invasion debt the number of species not yet introduced but likely to be introduced in the future given current levels of introduction propagule pressure the establishment of introduced species the potential increase in area invaded by established species including invasive species and the potential increase in impacts we demonstrate the approach in terms of number of species for 21 known invasive australian acacia species globally and estimate three components of invasion debt for 58 acacia species already introduced to south africa by quantifying key invasion factors environmental suitability species invasion status residence time propagule pressure spread rate and impacts results current global patterns of invasive species richness reflect historical trends of introduction â most acacia species that will become invasive in southern africa have already invaded but there is a substantial establishment debt in south and north america in south africa the likely consequence of invasion debt over the next 20 years was estimated at four additional species becoming invasive with an average increase of 1075 km2 invaded area per invasive species we estimate that this would require over us 500 million to clear main conclusions our results indicate that invasion debt is a valuable metric for reporting on the threats attributable to biological invasions that invasion debt must be factored into strategic plans for managing global change and as with other studies they highlight the value of proactive management given the uncertainty associated with biological invasions further work is required to quantify the different components of invasion debt,2015,0.985
RESEARCH FOR THE FUTURE LTER-AUSTRIA WHITE PAPER 2015,the white paper addresses the following key messages to stakeholders and infrastructure managers within the scientific field of â œecosystem researchâ œ in austria these messages are presented in detail in chapter 7 which derives concrete suggestions for reorganization from these an editorial team drawn from across a broad range of disciplines has produced this white paper with the involvement of more than 100 experts from different panels and workshops taking account of key european framework processes a creating framework conditions from an integrative interdisciplinary perspective âž the scientific field of â œecosystem researchâ comprises three thematic areas which address complex research issues process oriented ecosystem research biodiversity and nature conservation research and socio ecological research b the diverse research projects addressing ecological and socio ecological research issues require appropriate funding support â âž research framework programmes or appropriately adapted awarding criteria for existing programmes c core financing for necessary infrastructure incl it related infrastructure â âž core financing in line with international models is a prerequisite for maintaining and further developing the necessary infrastructure for long term environmental research and monitoring at the respective sites d pooling permanent sites for multiple utilization in national research strands and contributing to the european research area era â âž creating a pool of priority sites with a model for their long term trusteeship this should enable austria to contribute in a cost efficient way to diverse european and international programmes and to ensure an appropriate reflux of funds e operational headquarters as a hub connecting national and international activities â âž the coordination and documentation of lter sites in austria will consolidate the stakeholder network comprising research practice decision making and politics and strengthen networking at international level the integration of the sitesâ databases ensures the multiple utilization of high value information,2015,0.008
Editorial: Wherefore and whither a Check List? The journal at the age of 10,biodiversity data refers to the set of information that includes species inventories ecological interactions behavior images and sounds data sets descriptions analyses and interpretations costello et al 2013 this kind of data is essential to support not only conservation strategies but also basic ecological research for example georeferenced data of species distribution can be used to prepare red lists spatial conservation planning niche modeling and biogeographic and macroecological studies those latter fields are limited by data availability especially in tropical areas which are biologically rich but usually not well surveyed the importance of basic data about species distribution has been increasingly acknowledged in the literature many journals now publish data sets of species lists the so called data papers usually in the online only format the relevance of basic natural history information has been also increasingly emphasized e g futuyma 1998 ricklefs 2012 and now no one doubts that natural history data should be collected curated and published one of the most basic information of a place is which species occur there species inventories are also the first step taken in environmental assessments furthermore in developing megadiverse countries p ublishing species lists may be the only way to make available species records of small museums which are usually not fully digitized,2015,0.931
Current and future habitat availability for Thick-billed and Maroon-fronted parrots in northern Mexican forests,thick billed parrots rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha and maroon fronted parrots rhynchopsitta terrisi are the only parrots in mexico found in high elevation coniferous forests both species are critically endangered due to logging and climate change is expected to further reduce their available habitat our objectives were to assess the present and future availability of a suitable habitat for these parrots using ecological niche models future climatic scenarios were estimated by overlaying the present distributions of these parrots on maps of projected biome distributions generated using a north american vegetation model our climatic scenarios revealed that the distribution of key habitats for both parrots will likely be affected as the climate becomes more suitable for xeric biomes the climate associated with coniferous forests in the current range of maroon fronted parrots is predicted to disappear by 2090 and the climate associated with the key coniferous habitats of thick billed parrots may contract however our results also indicate that suitable climatic conditions will prevail for the high elevation coniferous biomes where thick billed parrots nest the degree to which both species of parrots will be able to adapt to the new scenarios is uncertain some of their life history traits may allow them to respond with a combination of adaptive and spatial responses to climatic change and in addition suitable climatic conditions will prevail in some portions of their ranges actions needed to ensure the conservation of these parrots include strict control of logging and integration of rapid response teams for fire management within the potential foraging ranges of nesting pairs a landscape with a greater proportion of restored forests would also aid in the recovery of current populations of thick billed and maroon fronted parrots and facilitate their responses to climate change,2015,0.499
Classifying degrees of species commonness: North Sea fish as a case study,species commonness is often related to abundance and species conservation status intuitively a â œcommon speciesâ is a species that is abundant in a certain area widespread and at low risk of extinction analysing and classifying species commonness can help discovering indicators of ecosystem status and can prevent sudden changes in biodiversity however it is challenging to quantitatively define this concept this paper presents a procedure to automatically characterize species commonness from biological surveys our approach uses clustering analysis techniques and is based on a number of numerical parameters extracted from an authoritative source of biodiversity data i e the ocean biogeographic information system the analysis takes into account abundance geographical and temporal aspects of species distributions we apply our model to north sea fish species and show that the classification agrees with independent expert opinion although sampling biases affect the data furthermore we show that our approach is robust to noise in the data and is promising in classifying new species our method can be used in conservation biology especially to reduce the effects of the sampling biases which affect large biodiversity collections,2015,0.784
Evolutionary and demographic history of the Californian scrub white oak species complex: An integrative approach.,understanding the factors promoting species formation is a major task in evolutionary research here we employ an integrative approach to study the evolutionary history of the californian scrub white oak species complex genus quercus to infer the relative importance of geographical isolation and ecological divergence in driving the speciation process we i analyzed inter and intra specific patterns of genetic differentiation and employed an approximate bayesian computation abc framework to evaluate different plausible scenarios of species divergence in a second step we ii linked the inferred divergence pathways with current and past species distribution models and iii tested for niche differentiation and phylogenetic niche conservatism across taxa abc analyses showed that the most plausible scenario is the one considering the divergence of two main lineages followed by a more recent pulse of speciation genotypic data in conjunction with species distribution models and niche differentiation analyses support that different factors geography vs environment and modes of speciation parapatry allopatry and maybe sympatry have played a role in the divergence process within this complex we found no significant relationship between genetic differentiation and niche overlap which probably reflects niche lability and or that multiple factors have contributed to speciation our study shows that different mechanisms can drive divergence even among closely related taxa representing early stages of species formation and exemplifies the importance of adopting integrative approaches to get a better understanding of the speciation process this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.712
Increased evapotranspiration demand in a Mediterranean climate might cause a decline in fungal yields under global warming.,wild fungi play a critical role in forest ecosystems and its recollection is a relevant economic activity understanding fungal response to climate is necessary in order to predict future fungal production in mediterranean forests under climate change scenarios we used a 15 year data set to model the relationship between climate and epigeous fungal abundance and productivity for mycorrhizal and saprotrophic guilds in a mediterranean pine forest the obtained models were used to predict fungal productivity for the 2021 2080 period by means of regional climate change models simple models based on early spring temperature and summer autumn rainfall could provide accurate estimates for fungal abundance and productivity models including rainfall and climatic water balance showed similar results and explanatory power for the analyzed 15 year period however their predictions for the 2021 2080 period diverged rainfall based models predicted a maintenance of fungal yield whereas water balance based models predicted a steady decrease of fungal productivity under a global warming scenario under mediterranean conditions fungi responded to weather conditions in two distinct periods early spring and late summer autumn suggesting a bimodal pattern of growth saprotrophic and mycorrhizal fungi showed differences in the climatic control increased atmospheric evaporative demand due to global warming might lead to a drop in fungal yields during the 21st century,2015,0.082
Interoperability and Sharing of Biodiversity Data on a National Network in Italy,biodiversity protection requires to access and to process many sources of information the italian ministry of environment has entrusted ispra italian institute for environmental protection and research to manage a program aimed to support interoperability and harmonization of the in formation stored in different data bases some aspects of such program including the national network for biodiversity nnb are highlighted and commented with reference also to other relevant initiatives nnb has already been implemented relying also on relevant systems as ec chm and eunis however the current availability of interoperability standards as for bi odiversity related themes in the annex es of inspire require to update nnb also taking into account the global development of the itc architecture of the public sector,2015,0.125
Data Infrastructures for Estuarine and Coastal Ecological Syntheses,holistic understanding of estuarine and coastal environments across interacting domains with high dimensional complexity can profitably be approached through data centric synthesis studies synthesis has been defined as â œthe inferential process whereby new models are developed from analysis of multiple data sets to explain observed patterns across a range of time and space scales â examples include ecologicalâ across ecosystem components or organization levels spatialâ across spatial scales or multiple ecosystems and temporalâ across temporal scales though data quantity and volume are increasingly accessible infrastructures for data sharing management and integration remain fractured integrating heterogeneous data sets is difficult yet critical technological and cultural obstacles hamper finding accessing and integrating data to answer scientific and policy questions to investigate synthesis within the estuarine and coastal science community we held a workshop at a coastal and estuarine research federation conference and conducted two case studies involving synthesis science the workshop indicated that data centric synthesis approaches are valuable for 1 hypothesis testing 2 baseline monitoring 3 historical perspectives and 4 forecasting case studies revealed important weaknesses in current data infrastructures and highlighted opportunities for ecological synthesis science here we list requirements for a coastal and estuarine data infrastructure we model data needs and suggest directions for moving forward for example we propose developing community standards accommodating and integrating big and small data e g sensor feeds and single data sets and digitizing â dark dataâ inaccessible non curated non archived data potentially destroyed when researchers leave science,2015,0.05
letsR: a new R package for data handling and analysis in macroecology,the current availability of large ecological data sets and the computational capacity to handle them have fostered the testing and development of theory at broad spatial and temporal scales macroecology has particularly benefited from this era of big data but tools are still required to help transforming this data into information and knowledge here we present â letsrâ a package for the r statistical computing environment designed to handle and analyse macroecological data such as speciesâ geographic distributions polygons in shapefile format and point occurrences and environmental variables in raster format the package also includes functions to obtain data on speciesâ habitat use description year and current as well as temporal trends in conservation status as provided by the iucn redlist online data base â letsrâ main functionalities are based on the presenceâ absence matrices that can be created with the package s functions and from which other functions can be applied to generate for example species richness rasters geographic mid points of species and species and site based attributes we exemplify the package s functionality by describing and evaluating the geographic pattern of speciesâ description year in tailless amphibians all data preparation and most analyses were made using the â letsrâ functions our example illustrates the package s capability for conducting macroecological analyses under a single computer platform potentially helping researchers to save time and effort in this endeavour,2015,0.517
"Predicting potential ranges of primary malaria vectors and malaria in northern South America based on projected changes in climate, land cover and human population.",background changes in land use and land cover lulc as well as climate are likely to affect the geographic distribution of malaria vectors and parasites in the coming decades at present malaria transmission is concentrated mainly in the amazon basin where extensive agriculture mining and logging activities have resulted in changes to local and regional hydrology massive loss of forest cover and increased contact between malaria vectors and hosts methods employing presence only records bioclimatic topographic hydrologic lulc and human population data we modeled the distribution of malaria and two of its dominant vectors anopheles darlingi and anopheles nuneztovari s l in northern south america using the species distribution modeling platform maxent results results from our land change modeling indicate that about 70 000 km 2 of forest land would be lost by 2050 and 78 000 km 2 by 2070 compared to 2010 the maxent model predicted zones of relatively high habitat suitability for malaria and the vectors mainly within the amazon and along coastlines while areas with malaria are expected to decrease in line with current downward trends both vectors are predicted to experience range expansions in the future elevation annual precipitation and temperature were influential in all models both current and future human population mostly affected an darlingi distribution while lulc changes influenced an nuneztovari s l distribution conclusion as the region tackles the challenge of malaria elimination investigations such as this could be useful for planning and management purposes and aid in predicting and addressing potential impediments to elimination,2015,0.434
Global patterns of plant root colonization intensity by mycorrhizal fungi explained by climate and soil chemistry,aim most vascular plants on earth form mycorrhizae a symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi despite the broad recognition of the importance of mycorrhizae for global carbon and nutrient cycling we do not know how soil and climate variables relate to the intensity of colonization of plant roots by mycorrhizal fungi here we quantify the global patterns of these relationships location global methods data on plant root colonization intensities by the two dominant types of mycorrhizal fungi world wide arbuscular 4887 plant species in 233 sites and ectomycorrhizal fungi 125 plant species in 92 sites were compiled from published studies data for climatic and soil factors were extracted from global datasets for a given mycorrhizal type we calculated at each site the mean root colonization intensity by mycorrhizal fungi across all potentially mycorrhizal plant species found at the site and subjected these data to generalized additive model regression analysis with environmental factors as predictor variables results we show for the first time that at the global scale the intensity of plant root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi strongly relates to warm season temperature frost periods and soil carbon to nitrogen ratio and is highest at sites featuring continental climates with mild summers and a high availability of soil nitrogen in contrast the intensity of ectomycorrhizal infection in plant roots is related to soil acidity soil carbon to nitrogen ratio and seasonality of precipitation and is highest at sites with acidic soils and relatively constant precipitation levels main conclusions we provide the first quantitative global maps of intensity of mycorrhizal colonization based on environmental drivers and suggest that environmental changes will affect distinct types of mycorrhizae differently future analyses of the potential effects of environmental change on global carbon and nutrient cycling via mycorrhizal pathways will need to take into account the relationships discovered in this study,2015,0.266
Occurrence of an invasive coral in the southwest Atlantic and comparison with a congener suggest potential niche expansion.,tubastraea tagusensis a coral native to the galapagos archipelago has successfully established and invaded the brazilian coast where it modifies native tropical rocky shore and coral reef communities in order to understand the processes underlying the establishment of t tagusensis we tested whether maxent a tool for species distribution modeling based on the native range of t tagusensis correctly forecasted the invasion range of this species in brazil the maxent algorithm was unable to predict the brazilian coast as a suitable environment for the establishment of t tagusensis a comparison between these models and a principal component analysis pca allowed us to examine the environmental dissimilarity between the two occupied regions native and invaded and to assess the species occupied niche breadth according to the pca results lower levels of chlorophyll a and nitrate on the atlantic coast segregate the brazilian and galapagos environments implying that t tagusensis may have expanded its realized niche during the invasion process we tested the possible realized niche expansion in t tagusensis by assuming that tubastraea spp have similar fundamental niches which was supported by exploring the environmental space of t coccinea a tropical cosmopolitan congener of t tagusensis we believe that the usage of maxent should be treated with caution especially when applied to biological invasion or climate change scenarios where the target species has a highly localized native original distribution which may represent only a small portion of its fundamental niche and therefore a violation of a sdm assumption,2015,0.734
Plant Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge for Food Security,mankind is becoming more aware that all life on earth is significantly threatened and has begun to accept this threat thus we seek to restore damaged natural resources and preserve those still existing the survival of humans on our planet is directly related to genetic resources and thus the rational exploitation of genetic resources is necessary to continually raise public awareness on their manyfold importance from the aspect of feeding the growing human population plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are invaluable making them increasingly important for world food security therefore plant genetics are significant in the implementation of many strategies designed for recovery of degraded ecosystems and natural habitats and for the conservation and protection of endangered plant and animal species sustainable use of agricultural genetic resources is not limited only to counteracting the loss of germplasm but also to maintaining the traditional knowledge related to agricultural plants in searching for the concept of sustainable development humans realized long ago that the thousands of years of knowledge and experience of indigenous people contributed significantly to solving the many challenges created by natural phenomena and human activities more active participation of local communities in biodiversity conservation programs would contribute to more efficient and cost effective conservation and biodiversity management there is no doubt that indigenous knowledge is more important today than ever before and in this sense its preservation may be considered as necessary to modern society,2015,0.269
Decoupled evolution of floral traits and climatic preferences in a clade of Neotropical Gesneriaceae.,background major factors influencing the phenotypic diversity of a lineage can be recognized by characterizing the extent and mode of trait evolution between related species here we compared the evolutionary dynamics of traits associated with floral morphology and climatic preferences in a clade composed of the genera codonanthopsis codonanthe and nematanthus gesneriaceae to test the mode and specific components that lead to phenotypic diversity in this group we performed a bayesian phylogenetic analysis of combined nuclear and plastid dna sequences and modeled the evolution of quantitative traits related to flower shape and size and to climatic preferences we propose an alternative approach to display graphically the complex dynamics of trait evolution along a phylogenetic tree using a wide range of evolutionary scenarios results our results demonstrated heterogeneous trait evolution floral shapes displaced into separate regimes selected by the different pollinator types hummingbirds versus insects while floral size underwent a clade specific evolution rates of evolution were higher for the clade that is hummingbird pollinated and experienced flower resupination compared with species pollinated by bees suggesting a relevant role of plant pollinator interactions in lowland rainforest the evolution of temperature preferences is best explained by a model with distinct selective regimes between the brazilian atlantic forest and the other biomes whereas differentiation along the precipitation axis was characterized by higher rates compared with temperature and no regime or clade specific patterns conclusions our study shows different selective regimes and clade specific patterns in the evolution of morphological and climatic components during the diversification of neotropical species our new graphical visualization tool allows the representation of trait trajectories under parameter rich models thus contributing to a better understanding of complex evolutionary dynamics,2015,0.587
Ex Situ Conservation Priorities for the Wild Relatives of Potato (Solanum L. Section Petota),crop wild relatives have a long history of use in potato breeding particularly for pest and disease resistance and are expected to be increasingly used in the search for tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses their current and future use in crop improvement depends on their availability in ex situ germplasm collections as these plants are impacted in the wild by habitat destruction and climate change actions to ensure their conservation ex situ become ever more urgent we analyzed the state of ex situ conservation of 73 of the closest wild relatives of potato solanum section petota with the aim of establishing priorities for further collecting to fill important gaps in germplasm collections a total of 32 species 43 8 were assigned high priority for further collecting due to severe gaps in their ex situ collections such gaps are most pronounced in the geographic center of diversity of the wild relatives in peru a total of 20 and 18 species were assessed as medium and low priority for further collecting respectively with only three species determined to be sufficiently represented currently priorities for further collecting include i species completely lacking representation in germplasm collections ii other high priority taxa with geographic emphasis on the center of species diversity iii medium priority species such collecting efforts combined with further emphasis on improving ex situ conservation technologies and methods performing genotypic and phenotypic characterization of wild relative diversity monitoring wild populations in situ and making conserved wild relatives and their associated data accessible to the global research community represent key steps in ensuring the long term availability of the wild genetic resources of this important crop,2015,0.994
Untangling taxonomy: a DNA barcode reference library for Canadian spiders.,approximately 1460 species of spiders have been reported from canada 3 of the global fauna this study provides a dna barcode reference library for 1018 of these species based upon the analysis of more than 30 000 specimens the sequence results show a clear barcode gap in most cases with a mean intraspecific divergence of 0 78 vs a minimum nearest neighbour nn distance averaging 7 85 the sequences were assigned to 1359 barcode index numbers bins with 1344 of these bins composed of specimens belonging to a single currently recognized species there was a perfect correspondence between bin membership and a known species in 795 cases while another 197 species were assigned to two or more bins 556 in total a few other species 26 were involved in bin merges or in a combination of merges and splits there was only a weak relationship between the number of specimens analysed for a species and its bin count however three species were clear outliers with their specimens being placed in 11 22 bins although all bin splits need further study to clarify the taxonomic status of the entities involved dna barcodes discriminated 98 of the 1018 species the present survey conservatively revealed 16 species new to science 52 species new to canada and major range extensions for 426 species however if most bin splits detected in this study reflect cryptic taxa the true species count for canadian spiders could be 30 50 higher than currently recognized,2015,0.996
"Palaeoendemic plants provide evidence for persistence of open, well-watered vegetation since the Cretaceous",aim palaeoendemics are clades that are ancient but geographically restricted often because they have been selected against in other areas ecological similarities among palaeoendemics may be indicators of ancient environments we determine the environmental ranges of the remarkable palaeoendemic plants of tasmania to deduce whether they indicate the long term persistence of particular environmental conditions location tasmania australia a global centre of plant palaeoendemism containing some of the world s most relictual plant lineages methods palaeoendemic clades in tasmania were identified using a scoring system of clade age divided by the square root of the number of 10 km ã 10 km grid cells occupied globally total palaeoendemism scores for 1199 30â grid cells were calculated by summing scores for individual clades and modelled against climate topography geology and vegetation type using random forest models palaeoendemic and non palaeoendemic species richness in climate space was measured the global distribution of climates favoured by palaeoendemics was assessed results twenty nine phylogenetically and ecologically diverse palaeoendemic clades 51 species were identified high levels of palaeoendemism occurred widely in western tasmania but the highest scoring areas were at or slightly above the tree line in relatively undisturbed vegetation palaeoendemism scores were strongly predicted by constantly moist climates lacking extreme temperatures and by open vegetation types with rare or no fire the palaeoendemics occupied a climate space that is globally rare and very different from that of non palaeoendemics main conclusions these patterns suggest the persistence since the cretaceous of open vegetation in constantly moist areas with equable temperatures and few or no fires this conclusion is consistent with an increasing body of fossil and phylogenetic evidence for the antiquity of open vegetation the methods here produce quantitative values of palaeoendemism that can be compared among regions,2015,0.147
Estimation of spatial sampling effort based on presence-only data and accessibility,sampling bias contained in data of biological surveys is very common bias is clearly a function of roads cities rivers or other physical features that determines accessibility of collectors and many data sets of species are presence only we set out to estimate spatial sampling bias in a region based on presence only data by explicitly incorporating information on these accessibility factors and by considering a target group of species that may share a common search pattern in order to indirectly estimate the number of individuals we also resort to the concept of species richness a probabilistic multinomial model is proposed enabling standard likelihood inference procedures to be implemented simulation scenarios for exploration of the model and experimentation with the estimation procedure are included illustrative examples over a region of mexico with mammals and butterflies are also reported with insightful results our model is able to estimate the sampling bias in a region and enhance the inferences regarding presence only data,2015,0.441
A cross-taxon analysis of the impact of climate change on abundance trends in central Europe,advances in phenology and pole and up ward shifts in geographic ranges are well documented signs that species are responding to climate change a deeper understanding of such responses across ecologically different species groups will help to assess future consequences for entire ecosystems a less well studied pattern linked with climate change is increases in abundances of warm adapted species compared with cold adapted species to compare how recent climate change has affected the abundances of species across different taxonomic groups we analyzed long term local population trends and related them to the species temperature niche as inferred from geographic distributions we used population data sets collected in different regions of central europe primarily germany for bats birds butterflies ground beetles springtails and dry grassland plants we found that temperature niche was positively associated with long term population trends in some of the taxonomic groups birds butterflies ground beetles but was less important in others bats springtails and grassland plants this variation in the importance of temperature niche suggested that some populations have been affected more than others by climate change which may be explained by differences in species attributes such as generation time and microhabitat preference our findings indicate that relating temperature niches of species to population trends is a useful method to quantify the impact of climate change on local population abundances we show that this widely applicable approach is particularly suited for comparative cross system analyses to identify which types of organisms in which habitats are responding the most to climate change,2015,0.924
The geographic and seasonal potential distribution of the little known Fuertes’s Oriole Icterus fuertesi,endemic species and those with restricted distribution ranges are a priority and national responsibility for global conservation fuertesâ s oriole icterus fuertesi is a mexican endemic species and is perhaps one of the least known birds in the country it has traditionally been regarded as conspecific with the orchard oriole i spurius but recently it has been suggested that it is a distinct species causing concern about its risk status there is a scarcity of information related to the geographic and seasonal distribution of fuertesâ s oriole as well as a lack of information regarding its abundance and habitat preferences we gathered all the available records and used ecological niche modelling to analyse the spatial and temporal patterns of the distribution of the species we also carried out field surveys in the surroundings of known locations of the species in order to determine its abundance we found that the species is narrowly and locally restricted to the surroundings of eight localities along the gulf coast of mexico that constitute small and discontinuous areas of presence we also found no evidence of migration to the pacific coast in winter as has been historically thought instead our results suggest that the species exhibits a short distance migration with northern populations migrating to the southern range along the gulf coast of mexico analysis of abundance and field observations confirm that the species is restricted to highly modified wetland landscapes associated with urban and semi urban habitats based on these results we suggest the urgent reassignment of its risk category,2015,0.981
Large-Scale Prediction of Seagrass Distribution Integrating Landscape Metrics and Environmental Factors: The Case of Cymodocea nodosa (Mediterranean–Atlantic),understanding the factors that affect seagrass meadows encompassing their entire range of distribution is challenging yet important for their conservation here we predict the realized and potential distribution for the species cymodocea nodosa modelling its environmental niche in the mediterranean and adjacent atlantic coastlines we use a combination of environmental variables and landscape metrics to perform a suite of predictive algorithms which enables examination of the niche and find suitable habitats for the species the most relevant environmental variables defining the distribution of c nodosa were sea surface temperature sst and salinity we found suitable habitats at sst from 5 8 â c to 26 4 â c and salinity ranging from 17 5 to 39 3 optimal values of mean winter wave height ranged between 1 2 and 1 5 m while waves higher than 2 5 m seemed to limit the presence of the species the influence of nutrients and ph despite having weight on the models was not so clear in terms of ranges that confine the distribution of the species landscape metrics able to capture variation in the coastline enhanced significantly the accuracy of the models despite the limitations caused by the scale of the study we found potential suitable areas not occupied by the seagrass mainly in coastal regions of north africa and the adriatic coast of italy the present study describes the realized and potential distribution of a seagrass species providing the first global model of the factors that can be shaping the environmental niche of c nodosa throughout its range we identified the variables constraining its distribution as well as thresholds delineating its environmental niche landscape metrics showed promising prospects for the prediction of coastal species dependent on the shape of the coast by contrasting predictive approaches we defined the variables affecting the distributional areas that seem unsuitable for c nodosa as well as those suitable habitats not occupied by the species these findings are encouraging for its use in future studies on climate related marine range shifts and meadow restoration projects of these fragile ecosystems,2015,0.955
Distribution of Date Palms in the Middle East Based on Future Climate Scenarios,one consequence of climate change is change in the phenology and distribution of plants including the date palm phoenix dactylifera l date palm as a crop specifically adapted to arid conditions in desert oases and to very high temperatures may be dramatically affected by climate changes some areas that are climatically suitable for date palm growth at the present time will become climatically unsuitable in the future while other areas that are unsuitable under current climate will become suitable in the future this study used climex to estimate potential date palm distribution under current and future climate scenarios using one emission scenario a2 with two different global climate models gcms csiro mk3 0 cs and miroc h mr the results of this study indicated that saudi arabia iraq and iran are most affected countries as a result of climate change in saudi arabia 129 million ha 68 of currently suitable area is projected to become unsuitable by 2100 however this is based on climate modelling alone the actual decrease in area may be much smaller when abiotic and other factors are taken into account onthe other hand 13million ha 33 of currently unsuitable area is projected to become suitable by 2100 in iran additionally by 2050 israel jordan and western syria will become climatically more suitable cold and heat stresses will play a significant role in date palm distribution in the future these results can inform strategic planning by government and agricultural organizations to identify areas for cultivation of this profitable crop in the future and to address those areas that will need greater attention because they are becoming marginal regions for date palm cultivation,2015,0.128
Predicting global geographical distribution of Lolium rigidum (rigid ryegrass) under climate change,lolium rigidum l rigid ryegrass is one of the most extensive and harmful weeds in winter cereal crops a bioclimatic model for this species was developed using climex the model was validated with records from north america and oceania and used to assess the global potential distribution of l rigidum under the current climate and under two climate change scenarios both scenarios represent contrasting temporal patterns of economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions the projections under current climatic conditions indicated that l rigidum does not occupy the full extent of the climatically suitable area available to it under future climate scenarios the suitable potential area increases by 3â 79 in the low emission co2 scenario and by 5â 06 under the most extreme scenario the model s projection showed an increase in potentially suitable areas in north america europe south america and asia while in africa and oceania it indicated regression these results provide the necessary knowledge for identifying and highlighting the potential invasion risk areas and for establishing the grounds on which to base the planning and management measures required,2015,0.178
APPLICATION OF WEB SERVICES FOR AQUATIC DATA WAREHOUSE SYSTEM,maintenance and monitoring of aquatic systems such lakes reservoirs and river involves properly documented valid and comprehensible data archives however aquatic data are collected and kept separately creating difficulties in data integration for effective aquatic data management it is important to have databases metadata that have been validated this study aims to discuss framework for aquatic data warehouse system using web services for sharing database components using standard format and common data exchange method to foster easier data integration and exchange the key features of the data warehouse comprises of graphical user interface gui developed using asp net xml to represent metadata for data exchange and transfer darwin core for formatting ecological and biological data management for data exchange protocol in this study,2015,0.146
The Domestication of Annatto (Bixa orellana) from Bixa urucurana in Amazonia,the domestication of annatto bixa orellana frombixa urucuranain amazonia annatto bixa orellana is an important colorant domesticated in the neotropics although it is not clear where or from which wild populations we reviewed the available biological archaeological and ethnographic information about annatto and integrated this with our recent ethnobotanical observations of cultivated and nonâ cultivated populations in order to evaluate the hypothesis that what is classified as bixa urucurana is the wild ancestor of cultivated annatto bixa orellana most b urucurana populations we found in amazonia occurred in open forests or anthropogenic landscapes although never cultivated and always associated with riparian environments while cultivated annatto always produces abundant pigment b urucurana populations that we observed contained variable amounts of pigment from very little to nearly the amount of cultivated annatto suggesting gene flow from cultivated to nonâ cultivated bixa urucurana has indehiscent fruits which indicate changes in dehiscence during annatto domestication a notable feature rarely found in other tree species local residents identified the nonâ cultivated populations as wild annatto urucum bravo and they emphasized their smaller fruits with less pigment their spontaneous regeneration their nonâ use and that they hybridize with cultivated annatto ethnography identified the symbolic importance of annatto but an explicit mention of origin only comes from southern amazonia although the oldest annatto archaeological record came from the caribbean domestication occurred in northern south america since b urucurana does not occur in the caribbean traditional ecological knowledge and morphology identified the close relationship between b urucurana never cultivated and b orellana always cultivated evidence reported here strongly supports kuntzeâ s 1925 suggestion that bixa urucurana willd is a variety of b orellana l thus identifying the wild ancestor of cultivated annatto,2015,0.971
Compiled occurrence data of migratory Hooded Cranes in Southeast Asia,presence only information for hooded cranes during spring and fall migration in asia,2015,0.41
Non-congruent fossil and phylogenetic evidence on the evolution of climatic niche in the gondwana genus Nothofagus,aim we used fossil and phylogenetic evidence to reconstruct climatic niche evolution in nothofagus a gondwana genus distributed in tropical and temperate latitudes to assess whether the modern distribution of the genus can be explained by the tropical conservatism hypothesis we tested three predictions 1 species from all nothofagus subgenera coexisted under mesothermal climates during the early eocene 2 tolerance to microthermal climates evolved during the eoceneâ oligocene cooling from an ancestor that grew under mesothermal conditions and 3 the climatic niche in nothofagus is phylogenetically conserved location australia new zealand new caledonia papua new guinea and south america methods we estimated the palaeoclimate of the early eocene fossil bearing ligorio marquez formation lmf chile using coexistence and leaf physiognomic analysis we reconstructed ancestral climatic niches of nothofagus using extant species distributions and a time calibrated phylogeny finally we used the morphological disparity index and phylogenetic generalized least squares to assess whether climatic variables follow a brownian motion bm or an ornsteinâ uhlenbeck ou model of evolution results our palaeoclimatic estimates suggest mesothermal conditions for the lmf where macrofossils associated with subgenera lophozonia and possibly fuscospora and fossil pollen of brassospora and fuscospora nothofagus were recorded these results are not supported by our phylogenetic analysis which instead suggests that the ancestor of nothofagus lived under microthermal to marginally mesothermal conditions with tolerance to mesothermal conditions evolving only in the subgenus brassospora precipitation and temperature dimensions of the realized climatic niche fit with a gradual bm or constrained ou model of evolution main conclusions our results suggest that the use of phylogenetic reconstruction methods based only on present distributions of extant taxa to infer ancestral climatic niches is likely to lead to erroneous results when climatic requirements of ancestors differ from their extant descendants or when much extinction has occurred,2015,0.269
Assessing the Risk of Invasion by Tephritid Fruit Flies: Intraspecific Divergence Matters.,widely distributed species often show strong phylogeographic structure with lineages potentially adapted to different biotic and abiotic conditions the success of an invasion process may thus depend on the intraspecific identity of the introduced propagules however pest risk analyses are usually performed without accounting for intraspecific diversity in this study we developed bioclimatic models using maxent and boosted regression trees approaches to predict the potential distribution in europe of six economically important tephritid pests ceratitis fasciventris bezzi bactrocera oleae rossi anastrepha obliqua macquart anastrepha fraterculus wiedemann rhagoletis pomonella walsh and bactrocera cucurbitae coquillet we considered intraspecific diversity in our risk analyses by independently modeling the distributions of conspecific lineages the six species displayed different potential distributions in europe a strong signal of intraspecific climate envelope divergence was observed in most species in some cases conspecific lineages differed strongly in potential distributions suggesting that taxonomic resolution should be accounted for in pest risk analyses no models lineage and species based approaches predicted high climatic suitability in the entire invaded range of b oleae the only species whose intraspecific identity of invading populations has been elucidated in california host availability appears to play the most important role in shaping the geographic range of this specialist pest however climatic suitability values predicted by species based models are correlated with population densities of b oleae globally reported in california our study highlights how classical taxonomic boundaries may lead to under or overestimation of the potential pest distributions and encourages accounting for intraspecific diversity when assessing the risk of biological invasion,2015,0.9
"Rhynchonema dighaensis sp. nov. (Monhysterida: Xyalidae): a marine nematode from the Indian coast with an illustrated guide and modified key for species of Rhynchonema Cobb, 1920",a small bodied free living marine nematode rhynchonema dighaensis sp nov is described from the intertidal sand of the east coast of india it is characterized by having a small buccal cavity longer left spicule and symmetrical dorsal gubernaculum apophysis other species of the genus are discussed with their type locality a modified key has been prepared for species of rhynchonema with an illustrated guide species of rhynchonema primarily differ from each other by the shape and size of the spicules shape of the gubernaculum and dorsal apophysis size of the buccal cavity and position of the amphid,2015,0.72
Predicting priority areas for conservation from historical climate modelling: stingless bees from Atlantic Forest hotspot as a case study,assuming that genetically diverse populations of bees are less likely to suffer the harmful effects of inbreeding and better able to avoid an extinction vortex related to the sex determination mechanism the identification of putative areas in which diversity is concentrated should be focus of a discussion models of historical climate stability constitute an elegant manner of inferring such areas the aim of the present study was to model the potential distribution of stingless bees in different periods of climate extremes of the late quaternary and the current day a spatially explicit model was designed to predict areas in which genetic diversity is putatively concentrated in an assemblage of nineteen species in the southern atlantic forest brazil these climatically stable areas i e refuges were mainly recorded in three portions of coastal forests in southeastern brazil regions that concentrate areas of high to extreme importance to the conservation of biological diversity such regions have differences regarding size and suitability scores and are distributed within the southern atlantic forest central corridor scc as well as the northern nsm and southern serra do mar corridor ssm considering that refuges historically harbor high degrees of genetic diversity these three regions are indicated as those of high importance to the conservation of stingless bees in the atlantic forest,2015,0.419
Stability and the competition-dispersal trade-off as drivers of speciation and biodiversity gradients,the geography of speciation is one of the most contentious topics at the frontier between ecology and evolution here building on previous hypotheses i propose that ecological constraints on species co existence mediate the likelihood of speciation via a trade off between competitive and dispersal abilities habitat stability as found in the tropics selects for the evolution of stronger competitive abilities since resource investment in competitive and dispersal abilities should trade off high competition in stable habitats reduces species dispersal ability decreasing effective population sizes in smaller local populations higher fixation rates of molecular substitutions increases the likelihood of speciation higher species diversity triggers more speciation by further increasing the spatial structuring of populations and decreasing effective population sizes higher resource specialization also trades off with dispersal ability and could account for speciation at higher trophic levels biotic interactions would therefore promote parapatric speciation and generate spatial patterns in diversity such as the latitudinal diversity gradient i discuss the main evidence for this mechanism and emphasize the need for studies coupling ecology and speciation theory within landscapes,2015,0.537
Comparing environmental vulnerability in the montane cloud forest of eastern Mexico: A vulnerability index,the montane cloud forest mcf is one of the most threatened ecosystems in spite of its high strategic value for sustainable development the role it plays in the hydrological cycle maintenance and as reservoir of endemic biodiversity for mexico this forest is considered the most threatened terrestrial ecosystem at national level because of land use changes and the effects of global climate change to compare and assess the environmental vulnerability in the mcf we measured two physiological traits stomatal conductance and leaf water potential four climate variables air temperature photosynthetically active radiation vapor pressure deficit water availability and the potential geographic distribution of eleven tree species from this forest we evaluated stomatal conductance responses using the envelope function method efm and after analyzing these responses we developed a vulnerability index that allowed us to compare the environmental vulnerability among species we proposed the efm as a useful tool to assess regional environmental vulnerability by comparing species our results showed differential species responses to all the studied variables however the vulnerability index allowed us to conclude that the most vulnerable species was liquidambar styraciflua and the least vulnerable persea longipes we also found that temperatures above 34â c and vapor pressure deficit above 2 9kpa with relative humidity below 30 jeopardized the stomatal conductance performance of all species we also found leaf water potential as the most influential variable over the studied species followed by vapor pressure deficit showing that even in the mcf water is a determinant factor for speciesâ development,2015,0.826
The House Crow (Corvus splendens): A Threat to New Zealand?,the house crow corvus splendens a native of the indian subcontinent has shown a rapid expansion of habitat range across eastern africa the arabian peninsula europe and asia it is an adaptable gregarious commensal bird which is regarded globally as an important pest species due to its impacts on livestock agricultural and horticultural crops and indigenous fauna and as a fecal contaminator of human environments and water resources two maxent v3 3 3k models a with presence data in australia and b with simulated entry data locations in new zealand and a third arcgis model c with environmental and social layers are used to determine an overall suitability index and establish a niche based model of the potential spatial distribution for c splendens within new zealand the results show that new zealand particularly the northern regions of north island has suitable environments for the establishment of the house crow in order of suitability model b showed highest potential land area suitability 31 84 followed by model a 13 79 and model c 10 89 the potential for further expansion of this birdâ s invasive range is high and if new zealand is invaded impacts are likely to be significant,2015,0.211
A synthetic phylogeny of freshwater crayfish: insights for conservation.,phylogenetic systematics is heading for a renaissance where we shift from considering our phylogenetic estimates as a static image in a published paper and taxonomies as a hardcopy checklist to treating both the phylogenetic estimate and dynamic taxonomies as metadata for further analyses the open tree of life project opentreeoflife org is developing synthesis tools for harnessing the power of phylogenetic inference and robust taxonomy to develop a synthetic tree of life we capitalize on this approach to estimate a synthesis tree for the freshwater crayfish the crayfish make an exceptional group to demonstrate the utility of the synthesis approach as there recently have been a number of phylogenetic studies on the crayfishes along with a robust underlying taxonomic framework importantly the crayfish have also been extensively assessed by an iucn red list team and therefore have accurate and up to date area and conservation status data available for analysis within a phylogenetic context here we develop a synthesis phylogeny for the world s freshwater crayfish and examine the phylogenetic distribution of threat we also estimate a molecular phylogeny based on all available genbank crayfish sequences and use this tree to estimate divergence times and test for divergence rate variation finally we conduct edge and hedge analyses and identify a number of species of freshwater crayfish of highest priority in conservation efforts,2015,0.059
The Catalogue of Vascular Plants of the Southern Cone and the Flora of Argentina: their contribution to the World Flora,the checklist of the vascular plants of the southern cone presents updated information of 19 787 taxa and 44 943 synonyms distributed in 2 679 genera and 318 families this checklist was prepared and its permanently updated using the database documenta florae australis with the contribution of numerous researchers and institutions and constitutes the bases for the flora of argentina currently under preparation here we evaluate the current knowledge of vascular plants in the southern cone and provide a summary of the ongoing flora of argentina and the significance of these projects for the world flora on line and to the botanical studies in the region,2015,0.17
A joint model based on longitudinal CA125 in ovarian cancer to predict recurrence.,aims to develop a new package of joint model to fit longitudinal ca125 in epithelial ovarian cancer relapse patients methods included were 305 epithelial ovarian cancer patients who reached complete remission after cytoreductive surgery and first line chemotherapy univariate and multivariate analysis with a joint model was performed to select independent risk factors which were subsequently combined to predict recurrence results independent factors were longitudinal ca125 age stage and residual tumor size p 0 05 prediction of recurrence with these factors had an average of 80 7 accuracy 5 6 10 7 better than kinetic factors conclusion the new package of joint model fits longitudinal ca125 well potential application can be extended to other biomarkers,2015,0.138
A qualitative and quantitative study of thrips (Thysanoptera) on alfalfa and records of thrips species on cultivated and wild Medicago species of Greece,foliage and litter samples of twelve medicago species medics fabaceae were collected for the study of thysanoptera from mainland and insular greece between 2007 2013 the species composition population dynamics and spatial distribution of thrips were also evaluated based on two similarly managed experimental plots except the number of cuttings within an alfalfa hay field in kopais valley central greece between 2007 2008 nine thrips species were recorded from nine medics two of which pseudodendrothrips mori and sericothrips bicornis are new to the greek fauna eight species of thysanoptera were recorded on alfalfa and five species in the rest of the medics among which medicago strasseri is an endemic shrub of crete data regarding the quantitative part of the study demonstrated that frankliniella occidentalis which was the most abundant thrips species in both plots presented a seasonal pattern of population fluctuation and also tended to aggregate the mean population density of this species significantly differed between the above mentioned plots but no such a difference was estimated for the larvae of thripidae,2015,0.978
Long-term monitoring data meet freshwater species distribution models: Lessons from an LTER-site,long term monitoring datasets provide a solid framework for ecological research such a dataset from the german long term ecological research lter site rhine main observatory was used to set up a species distribution model sdm for the kinzig catchment the extensive knowledge on the monitoring data provided by the lter site framework allowed to calibrate a robust model for 175 taxa of stream macroinvertebrates and to project their distributions on the kinzig river stream network using bioclimatic topographical hydrological land use and geological predictors on average model performance was good with a tss of 0 83 â 0 09 sd and a roc of 0 95 â 0 03 sd the model delivered valuable insights on three sources of bias that plague sdms in general a level of taxonomic identification of the modeled organisms b the spatial arrangement of sampling sites and c the sampling intensity at each sampling site taxonomic resolution did not affect sdm performance the distribution of high predicted probabilities of occurrence in the stream network coincided with those segments in the stream network most densely and frequently sampled indicating both a spatial and temporal sampling bias species richness curves confirmed the temporal sampling bias next to spatial bias sampling frequency also plays an important role in data collection affecting further analysis and modeling procedures results indicate an underrepresentation of low order streams an important aspect that should be addressed by both monitoring schemes and modeling approaches,2015,0.131
Are We Filling the Data Void? An Assessment of the Amount and Extent of Plant Collection Records and Census Data Available for Tropical South America,large scale studies are needed to increase our understanding of how large scale conservation threats such as climate change and deforestation are impacting diverse tropical ecosystems these types of studies rely fundamentally on access to extensive and representative datasets i e â œbig dataâ in this study i asses the availability of plant species occurrence records through the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the distribution of networked vegetation census plots in tropical south america i analyze how the amount of available data has changed through time and the consequent changes in taxonomic spatial habitat and climatic representativeness i show that there are large and growing amounts of data available for tropical south america specifically there are almost 2 000 000 unique geo referenced collection records representing more than 50 000 species of plants in tropical south america and over 1 500 census plots however there is still a gaping â œdata voidâ such that many species and many habitats remain so poorly represented in either of the databases as to be functionally invisible for most studies it is important that we support efforts to increase the availability of data and the representativeness of these data so that we can better predict and mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances,2015,0.454
A global analysis of parenchyma tissue fractions in secondary xylem of seed plants,parenchyma is an important tissue in secondary xylem of seed plants with functions ranging from storage to defence and with effects on the physical and mechanical properties of wood currently we lack a large scale quantitative analysis of ray parenchyma rp and axial parenchyma ap tissue fractions here we use data from the literature on ap and rp fractions to investigate the potential relationships of climate and growth form with total ray and axial parenchyma fractions rap we found a 29 fold variation in rap fraction which was more strongly related to temperature than with precipitation stem succulents had the highest rap values mean â sd 70 2 â 22 0 followed by lianas 50 1 â 16 3 angiosperm trees and shrubs 26 3 â 12 4 and conifers 7 6 â 2 6 differences in rap fraction between temperate and tropical angiosperm trees 21 1 â 7 9 vs 36 2 â 13 4 respectively are due to differences in the ap fraction which is typically three times higher in tropical than in temperate trees but not in rp fraction our results illustrate that both temperature and growth form are important drivers of rap fractions these findings should help pave the way to better understand the various functions of rap in plants,2015,0.092
"A New Dimension in Documenting New Species: High-Detail Imaging for Myriapod Taxonomy and First 3D Cybertype of a New Millipede Species (Diplopoda, Julida, Julidae).",we review the state of the art approaches currently applied in myriapod taxonomy and we describe for the first time a new species of millipede ommatoiulus avatar n sp family julidae using high resolution x ray microtomography microct as a substantive adjunct to traditional morphological examination we present 3d models of the holotype and paratype specimens and discuss the potential of this non destructive technique in documenting new species of millipedes and other organisms the microct data have been uploaded to an open repository dryad to serve as the first actual millipede cybertypes to be published,2015,0.476
Using citizen science data for conservation planning: Methods for quality control and downscaling for use in stochastic patch occupancy modelling,the incidence function model ifm has been put forward as a tool for assessing conservation plans a key benefit of the ifm is low data requirements widely available species occurrence data and information about land cover citizen science is a promising source of such data however to use these data in the ifm there are typically two problems first the spatial resolution is too coarse but existing approaches to downscaling species data tend not to extend to patch level as required by the ifm second widely available citizen science data typically report species presences only we devise ten different downscaling methods based on theoretical ecological relationships the speciesâ area relationship and the distance decay of similarity and test them against each other the better performing downscaling methods were based on patch area rather than distance from other occupied patches these methods allow data at a coarse resolution to be used in the ifm for comparing conservation management and development plans further field testing is required to establish the degree to which results of these new methods can be treated as definitive spatially explicit predictions to address the issue of false absences we present a method to estimate the probability that all species have been listed and thus that a species absence from the list represents a true absence using the species accumulation curve this measure of confidence in absence helps both to objectively identify a habitat network for fitting the ifm and to target areas for further species recording,2015,0.602
"The legal and policy framework for scientific data sharing, mining and reuse - document",legal aspects of data sharing matter to at least three decision making areas all depending on access to publicly funded research scientific and innovation policy databases publishing platforms repository and data mining applications producers public sector information and open data movements the topic of open data was discussed in the european parliament with the vote in march 2013 of the horizon 2020 eu programme for research and innovation which contained a part on open access to publication and scientific results the european commission consultation licenses for europe with stakeholders proposing to create a new exception for users and others to create a new revenue stream for pub lishers revealed similar opposition than other copyright related issues at the same time uk made progress towards open access by developing the gateway to research portal and requiring open access for certain research outputs to be considered in evaluation policies while spain argentina italy germany and peru voted laws to mandate open access considering the scientific data ecosystem in its entirety gives the opportunity to study the question of scientific data from its creation by researchers to its access and reuse by students citizens public bodies ngos and companies therefore this paper will combine a presentation of the legal framework governing the creation and the usage of data the policy options from all rights reserved to unlimited reuse and the requirements of platforms and applications to process scientific data perform queries data mining visualization or other analysis tasks without restrictions above mentioned examples from the european and latin american countries moving forward open access to scientific publication and in some cases data will together illustrate tendencies and controversies around scientific data sharing and reuse policies as for methodology and definition of scope the legal and policy framework is understood not only as the set of laws and contracts governing the access to and reuse of data regulation by law but also the opportunities and restrictions embedded in the technical architecture regulation by technology hosting the data while the article focuses of scientific data such analysis and conclusions are also applicable to public sector information and citizen data as they can also be used by researchers,2015,0.029
Ecological differentiation and habitat unsuitability maintaining a ground beetle hybrid zone,exogenous selection via interactions between organisms and environments may influence the dynamics of hybrid zones between species in multiple ways two major models of a hybrid zone allowed us to hypothesize that environmental conditions influence hybrid zone dynamics in two ways in the first model an environmental gradient determines the mosaic distribution at the boundary between ecologically differentiated species mosaic hybrid zone model in the second model a patch of unsuitable habitat traps a hybrid zone between species whose hybrids are unfit tension zone model to test these we examined the environmental factors influencing the spatial structure of a hybrid zone between the ground beetles carabus maiyasanus and c iwawakianus using gis based quantification of environmental factors and a statistical comparison of species distribution models sdms we determined that both of the hypothetical processes can be important in the hybrid zone we detected interspecific differences in the environmental factors in presence localities and their relative contribution in sdms sdms were not identical between species even within contact areas but tended to be similar within the range of each species these results suggest an association between environments and species and provide evidence that ecological differentiation between species plays a role in the maintenance of the hybrid zone contact areas were characterized by a relatively high temperature low precipitation and high topological wetness thus the contact areas were regarded as being located in an unsuitable habitat with a drier climate where those populations are likely to occur in patches with limited precipitation concentrated a comparison of spatial scales suggests that exogenous selection via environmental factors may be weaker than endogenous selection via genitalic incompatibility,2015,0.917
Green Infrastructure Design Based on Spatial Conservation Prioritization and Modeling of Biodiversity Features and Ecosystem Services,there is high level political support for the use of green infrastructure gi across europe to maintain viable populations and to provide ecosystem services es even though gi is inherently a spatial concept the modern tools for spatial planning have not been recognized such as in the recent european environment agency eea report we outline a toolbox of methods useful for gi design that explicitly accounts for biodiversity and es data on species occurrence habitats and environmental variables are increasingly available via open access internet platforms such data can be synthesized by statistical species distribution modeling producing maps of biodiversity features these together with maps of es can form the basis for gi design we argue that spatial conservation prioritization scp methods are effective tools for gi design as the overall scp goal is cost effective allocation of conservation efforts corridors are currently promoted by the eea as the means for implementing gi design but they typically target the needs of only a subset of the regional species pool scp methods would help to ensure that gi provides a balanced solution for the requirements of many biodiversity features e g species habitat types and es simultaneously in a cost effective manner such tools are necessary to make gi into an operational concept for combating biodiversity loss and promoting es,2015,0.222
Metabolomic Analysis of Human Fecal Microbiota: A Comparison of Feces-Derived Communities and Defined Mixed Communities.,the extensive impact of the human gut microbiota on its human host calls for a need to understand the types of communication that occur among the bacteria and their host a metabolomics approach can provide a snapshot of the microbe microbe interactions occurring as well as variations in the microbes from different hosts in this study metabolite profiles from an anaerobic continuous stirred tank reactors cstr system supporting the growth of several consortia of bacteria representative of the human gut were established and compared cell free supernatant samples were analyzed by 1d 1 h nuclear magnetic resonance nmr spectroscopy producing spectra representative of the metabolic activity of a particular community at a given time using targeted profiling specific metabolites were identified and quantified on the basis of nmr analyses metabolite profiles discriminated each bacterial community examined demonstrating that there are significant differences in the microbiota metabolome between each cultured community we also found unique compounds that were identifying features of individual bacterial consortia these findings are important because they demonstrate that metabolite profiles of gut microbial ecosystems can be constructed by targeted profiling of nmr spectra moreover examination of these profiles sheds light on the type of microbes present in the gut and their metabolic interactions,2015,0.365
A framework for species distribution modelling with improved pseudo-absence generation,species distribution models sdms are an important tool in biogeography and phylogeography studies that most often require explicit absence information to adequately model the environmental space on which species can potentially inhabit in the so called background pseudo absences approach absence locations are simulated in order to obtain a complete sample of the environment whilst the commonest approach is random sampling of the entire study region in its multiple variants its performance may not be optimal and the method of generation of pseudo absences is known to have a significant influence on the results obtained here we compare a suite of classic random sampling and novel methods for pseudo absence data generation and propose a generalizable three step method combining environmental profiling with a new technique for background extent restriction to this aim we consider 11 phylogenetic groups of oak quercus sp described in europe we evaluate the influence of different pseudo absence types on model performance area under the roc curve calibration reliability diagrams and the resulting suitability maps using a cross validation approach regardless of the modelling algorithm used random sampling models were outperformed by the methods that incorporate environmental profiling of the background stressing the importance of the pseudo absence generation techniques for the development of accurate and reliable sdms we also provide an integrated modelling framework implementing the methods tested in a software package for the open source r environment,2015,0.022
An integrative and dynamic approach for monographing species-rich plant groups – building the global synthesis of the angiosperm order Caryophyllales,one of the major goals of systematics is to provide a synthesis of knowledge on the diversity of a group of organisms such as flowering plants biodiversity conservation and management call for rapid and accurate global assessments at the species level at the same time the rapid development of evolutionary biology with a spectrum of approaches to test species relationships and species limits has revolutionised and is still revolutionizing the science of plant systematics including taxonomy we explore the relevant scientific and technological developments with the aim to suggest a conceptual framework for an integrated monographic synthesis which can reach global coverage our exemplar group are the caryophyllales which are a lineage of worldwide distribution comprising approx 5 of flowering plant species diversity the current situation of classification is marked by a transition from pre phylogenetic treatments to taxonomic treatments increasingly evaluated in an evolutionary context structured data both molecular and morphological linked to well documented specimens will be important as fundamental entities of information that can be subjected to evolutionary analysis as a result taxon concepts are established as hypotheses which then can be used as basis for a classification system in a second step global syntheses need to provide information and use a classification system that reflects the current state of knowledge in order to accommodate the constantly improved understanding of the organisms eventually also resulting in the change of taxon concepts the treatments need to be dynamic the workflow for a global monographic synthesis as outlined here is supported by currently available biodiversity informatics tools such as the edit platform for cybertaxonomy the availability of electronic sources names protologues type images literature greatly facilitates the access to information but as our case shows considerable efforts for data curation and research are still needed the implementation of a global monographic synthesis such as the caryophyllales requires the involvement of the global scientific community,2015,0.105
Climatic niche attributes and diversification in Anolis lizards,aim the aim of this study was to test the link between climatic niche dynamics and species diversification in anolis on islands and on the mainland we tested the hypotheses that lineages in warmer climates and with narrow climate niches diversified more than lineages in cold climates and with broad climate niches we also tested the hypothesis that species rich clades exhibit greater niche diversity than species poor clades location neotropics methods we collated occurrence records for 328 anolis species to estimate niche breadth niche position and occupied niche space as a proxy for niche diversity we compared niche breadth between insular and mainland anolis species and among anolis clades controlling for the potential confounding effect of range size using two approaches clade based and quasse we explored the association between niche metrics and diversification rates in anolis lizards results we found that caribbean anolis had a narrower niche breadth and niche space occupation compared to mainland anoles after controlling for range size differences there was a significant association between niche traits mean niche position and niche breadth and diversification in anoles anole lineages with narrow niche breadths and that occupy warmer areas exhibited higher speciation rates than those with broader niche breadths and that occupy cold areas similarly clades with higher total diversification exhibit more niche diversity than clades with lower total diversification main conclusions climatic niche attributes play a role in anole diversification with some differences between mainland and insular anole lineages climatic niche differences between regions and clades likely are related to differences in niche evolutionary rates this also suggests that climate plays a strong role in shaping species richness between and within mainland and islands,2015,0.863
Paleodistribution modeling suggests glacial refugia in Scandinavia and out-of-Tibet range expansion of the Arctic fox,quaternary glacial cycles have shaped the geographic distributions and evolution of numerous species in the arctic ancient dna suggests that the arctic fox went extinct in europe at the end of the pleistocene and that scandinavia was subsequently recolonized from siberia indicating inability to track its habitat through space as climate changed using ecological niche modeling we found that climatically suitable conditions for arctic fox were found in scandinavia both during the last glacial maximum lgm and the mid holocene our results are supported by fossil occurrences from the last glacial furthermore the model projection for the lgm validated with fossil records suggested an approximate distance of 2000 km between suitable arctic conditions and the tibetan plateau well within the dispersal distance of the species supporting the recently proposed hypothesis of range expansion from an origin on the tibetan plateau to the rest of eurasia the fact that the arctic fox disappeared from scandinavia despite suitable conditions suggests that extant populations may be more sensitive to climate change than previously thought,2015,0.48
Annual monitoring reveals rapid upward movement of exotic plants in a montane ecosystem,there is increasing evidence that invasive species are threating montane ecosystems globally however trends in species distribution are difficult to observe directly due to a lack of data with suitable spatio temporal resolution here we aimed to detect spatio temporal trends in exotic plants in a montane ecosystem and to determine which drivers had a role affecting these trends each year for a period of 7 years we recorded the upper elevational range limit of exotic plant species in road verges along an elevational gradient of 1500â 2874 m a s l in southern africa we fitted repeated measures anova models to test if upper elevational range limits changed over time generalized least squares models showed that exotic richness of annuals increased by 3 9 species per year also the upper elevational range limits of established exotics ascended by 24 5 m year for annuals n 17 species and by 9 7 m year for perennials n 26 these upward trends were too rapid to be explained by slow acting drivers such as climatic change or time since species introduction the rates of increase indicate that many exotics were not yet in equilibrium with the environment and therefore had not been in the region long enough to have filled their potential niches exotic species could reach much higher elevations than expected indicating that current prediction models are likely an underestimation of potential distributional ranges the spatial clustering of upper elevational range limits around potential points of introduction indicates ongoing human mediated propagule pressure as the major cause of rapid exotic range expansion especially along roads and near dwellings montane road verges are regularly disturbed by erosion and maintenance creating unoccupied habitats while traffic in the form of vehicles and tourists facilitates the introduction of new species this suggests that easily accessible montane ecosystems are much more susceptible to invasions than previously assumed due to a combination of anthropogenic disturbance and ongoing propagule pressure,2015,0.894
Large - Scale Spatial Data Processing on GPUs and GPU - Accelerated Clusters,t he general purpose computing on graphics processing units gpgpus techniques represent a significantly different parallel computing schem e than the mapreduce hadoop based ones that are currently adop ted by mainstream big data systems the massive data parallel computing power provided by inexpensive commodity gpus makes large scale spatial data processing on gpus and gpu accelerated clusters attractive from both a research and practical perspective i n this article we report our work on data parallel designs of spatial indexing spatial joins and several other spatial operations such as polygon rasterization polygon decomposition and point interpolation the data parallel designs are further scaled out to distributed computing nodes by integrating single node gpu implementations with high performance computing hpc toolset and the new generation in memory big data systems such as cloudera impala in addition to introducing gpgpu computing backgroun d and outlining data parallel designs for spatial operations r eferences to individual works are provided as a summary chart for interested readers to follow more details on designs implementations and performance evaluations,2015,0.042
A likelihood inference of historical biogeography in the world's most diverse terrestrial vertebrate genus: Diversification of direct-developing frogs (Craugastoridae: Pristimantis) across the Neotropics.,the geology of the northern andean region has driven the evolutionary history of neotropical fauna through the creation of barriers and connections that have resulted in speciation and dispersal events respectively one of the most conspicuous groups of anuran fauna in the andes and surrounding areas is the direct developing species of the genus pristimantis we investigated the molecular phylogenetic placement of 12 species from the montane andes of colombia in a broader geographical context with a new genus level phylogeny in order to identify the role of andean orogeny over the last 40 million years and the effect of elevational differences in diversification of pristimantis we examined the biogeographic history of the genus using ancestral range reconstruction by biogeographic regions and elevational ranges we recognized the middle elevational band between 1000 and 3000 m in the northwestern andes region of colombia and ecuador as a focal point for the origin and radiation of pristimantis species additionally we found several andean migrations toward new habitats in central andes and merida andes for some species groups we suggest that the paleogeological changes in the northwestern andes were the main promoter of speciation in pristimantis and may have served as a corridor for the dispersion of lowland species,2015,0.86
Tracking the distribution and impacts of diseases with biological records and distribution modelling,species distribution modelling is widely used in epidemiology for mapping spatial patterns and the risk of introduction of diseases and vectors and also for predicting how exposure may alter given future environmental change motivated by the high societal impact and the multiple environmental drivers of disease outbreaks although pathogens and vectors have historically been sparsely recorded monitoring systems and media sources are generating novel online data sources on occurrence moreover increasing ecological realism is being incorporated into distribution modelling techniques focussing on dispersal biotic interactions and evolutionary constraints that shape species distributions alongside abiotic factors and biases in recording effort common to pathogens and vectors and wildlife species considering pathogens and arthropod vector systems with high impact on plant animal and human health the present review describes how biological records for vectors and pathogens arise introduces the concepts behind distribution models and illustrates the potential for ecologically realistic distribution models to yield insight into the establishment and spread of pathogens because distribution modellers aim to provide policy makers with evidence and maps for planning and evaluation of disease mitigation measures we highlight factors that currently constrain direct translation of models to policy disease distributions will be better understood and mapped in the future given improved occurrence data access and integration and combined correlative and mechanistic modelling approaches that are developed iteratively in concert with stakeholders,2015,0.364
Automatic classification of climate change effects on marine species distributions in 2050 using the AquaMaps model,habitat modifications driven by human impact and climate change may influence species distribution particularly in aquatic environments niche based models are commonly used to evaluate the availability and suitability of habitat and assess the consequences of future climate scenarios on a species range and shifting edges of its distribution together with knowledge on biology and ecology niche models also allow evaluating the potential of species to react to expected changes the availability of projections of future climate scenarios allows comparing current and future niche distributions assessing a speciesâ habitat suitability modification and shift and consequently estimating potential speciesâ reaction in this study differences between the distribution maps of 406 marine species which were produced by the aquamaps niche models on current and future year 2050 scenarios were estimated and evaluated discrepancy measurements were used to identify a discrete number of categories which represent different responses to climate change clustering analysis was then used to automatically detect these categories demonstrating their reliability compared to human supervised classification finally the distribution of characteristics like extinction risk based on iucn categories taxonomic groups population trends and habitat suitability change over the clustering categories was evaluated in this assessment direct human impact was neglected in order to focus only on the consequences of environmental changes furthermore in the comparison between two climate snapshots the intermediate phases were assumed to be implicitly included into the model of the 2050 climate scenario,2015,0.673
The Biological Records Centre: a pioneer of citizen science,people have been recording wildlife for centuries and the resulting datasets lead to important scientific research the biological records centre brc established in 1964 is a national focus for terrestrial and freshwater species recording in the united kingdom uk brc works with the voluntary recording community i e a mutualistic symbiosis through support of national recording schemes i e â citizen scienceâ but unlike most citizen science it is volunteer led and adds value to the data through analysis and reporting biological recording represents a diverse range of activities involving an estimated 70 000 people annually in the uk from expert volunteers undertaking systematic monitoring to mass participation recording it is an invaluable monitoring tool because the datasets are long term have large geographic extent and are taxonomically diverse 85 taxonomic groups it supports a diverse range of outputs e g atlases showing national distributions 12 127 species from over 40 taxonomic groups and quantified trends 1636 species brc pioneers the use of technology for data capture online portals and smartphone apps and verification including automated verification through customisable inter operable database systems to facilitate efficient data flow we are confident that biological recording has a bright future with benefits for people science and nature,2015,0.466
The Cenozoic biogeographical evolution of woody angiosperms inferred from fossil distributions,aim we test whether the modern regionalization of the angiosperm flora is the result of cenozoic barriers to dispersal location global methods we used a database of cenozoic woody angiosperm fossils to build a matrix of family and genus occurrence at 11 continents regions for five time periods of the cenozoic thus defining 55 floras we used ordinations and cluster analyses to infer the relationships among these floras we tested for the effects of time land connections and dispersal barriers on the similarities between these woody angiosperm floras results for all time periods of the cenozoic the world s woody angiosperm floras were grouped into three large clusters a very compact northern hemisphere cluster north america europe temperate asia and palaeogene south china a somewhat less compact palaeotropical cluster africa india southeast asia and neogene south china and a rather diffuse gondwanan cluster antarctica australia new zealand temperate south america and the neotropics the primary clustering is evidently geographical and reflects the barriers formed by the tethys and the southern atlanticâ southern indian oceans there is evidence that the more recent gondwanan floras are more divergent than the older floras possibly due to long isolation by oceans and multiple extinction events whereas the similarities among northern hemisphere floras increased during the neogene main conclusions the modern regionalization is mainly the result of dispersal barriers that existed at diverse times in the cenozoic resulting in several woody angiosperm floras that evolved in parallel climatic change and dispersal also played important roles in shaping biogeographical patterns of cenozoic woody angiosperms,2015,0.326
The roles and contributions of Biodiversity Observation Networks (BONs) in better tracking progress to 2020 biodiversity targets: a European case study,the aichi biodiversity targets of the united nationsâ strategic plan for biodiversity set ambitious goals for protecting biodiversity from further decline increased efforts are urgently needed to achieve these targets by 2020 the availability of comprehensive sound and up to date biodiversity data is a key requirement to implement policies strategies and actions to address biodiversity loss monitor progress towards biodiversity targets as well as to assess the current status and future trends of biodiversity key gaps however remain in our knowledge of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services these are mostly a result of barriers preventing existing data from being discoverable accessible and digestible in this paper we describe what regional biodiversity observation networks bons can do to address these barriers using the european biodiversity observation network eu bon as an example we conclude that there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in how biodiversity data are collecte,2015,0.217
"A safety vs efficiency trade-off identified in the hydraulic pathway of grass leaves is decoupled from photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and precipitation.",a common theme in plant physiological research is the trade off between stress tolerance and growth an example of this trade off at the tissue level is the safety vs efficiency hypothesis which suggests that plants with the greatest resistance to hydraulic failure should have low maximum hydraulic conductance here we quantified the leaf level drought tolerance of nine c4 grasses as the leaf water potential at which plants lost 50 p50 ã rr of maximum leaf hydraulic conductance ksat and compared this trait with other leaf level and whole plant functions we found a clear trade off between ksat and p50 ã rr when ksat was normalized by leaf area and mass p 0 05 and 0 01 respectively however no trade off existed between p50 ã rr and gas exchange rates rather there was a positive relationship between p50 ã rr and photosynthesis p 0 08 p50 ã rr was not correlated with species distributions based on precipitation p 0 70 but was correlated with temperature during the wettest quarter of the year p 0 01 these results suggest a trade off between safety and efficiency in the hydraulic system of grass leaves which can be decoupled from other leaf level functions the unique physiology of c4 plants and adaptations to pulse driven systems may provide mechanisms that could decouple hydraulic conductance from other plant functions,2015,0.026
The Anticandidal and Toxicity Properties of <i>Lampranthus francisci</i>,p fungal infections have been rising due to the increasing number of immunocompromised patients and intensive use of some antifungal agents italic lampranthus francisci italic is an ornamental succulent plant in zimbabwe the fresh sap from the leaves is used to treat fungal scalp infections the activity of italic l francisci italic fresh and dry acetone ethanol hydroethanolic and aqueous extracts against italic candida albicans italic and italic candida krusei italic was determined mouse peritoneal cavity cells and sheep red blood cells were used to investigate italic l francisci italic â s toxicity profile the hydroethanolic extracts were the most effective extracts against italic c albicans italic the fresh ethanol extract was the most effective extract against italic c krusei italic the dry acetone extract dry ethanol extract and the fresh and dry aqueous extracts promoted the growth of italic c krusei italic the hydroethanolic extracts caused haemolysis of sheep cells the hydroethanolic extracts promoted the growth of the mouse peritoneal cavity red blood cells both aqueous extracts increased the density of the mouse cells but only the fresh extract increased the metabolism of the mouse cells italic l francisci italic has some fungicidal activity and boosts the growth of immune cells thus validating its use in ethnomedicine italic l francisci italic extracts are potential leads for the isolation of immune stimulatory compounds p,2015,0.177
A tad too high: Sensitivity to UV-B radiation may limit invasion potential of American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) in the Pacific Northwest invasion range,biological invasion potential can be strongly influenced by abiotic factors such as temperature water availability and solar radiation invasive species that possess phenotypically plasti c traits can mediate impacts from these stressors but may be una ble to recognize and respond to dangerous levels in a novel environment understanding potential constraints on appropriate trait resp onses induced by abiotic stressors can aid in the management and cont rol of important invaders our study explored tolerance and plas tic trait response to uv b radi ation in an invasive anur an the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus shaw 1802 we experimentally quantified larval mortality ra tes and color change responses across two la rval size classes in a second experim ent we investigated the potential for a correlated color change and behavioral refuge use response in the small size class we pr edicted that individuals would respond to stressfu l and potentially harmful uv b exposure ra tes with darkening of body coloration and when refuge was available a co rrelated defense strategy utilizing both color change and refu ge we found an increase in larval mortality across both size classes at uv b exposure rates typical to both low and high elevation aquati c breeding sites 10 12î w cm 2 and 20 24î w cm 2 respectively only bullfrog larvae in the small size class exhibited a darkening in body color when exposed to high uv b treatments although this smaller size class did exhibit color pl asticity individuals did not correlate c hanges in body coloration with changes in refuge use these results s uggest ontogenetic differences estim ated by size class in plast ic color response to uv b stress as well as cons traints on behavioral use of refuge these findings are important in understanding diffe rences in bullfrog occupancy of breeding habitats across an elevational gradient particularly in oregonâ s cascade mountain range whe re bullfrog distributions are currently limited at elevations above 1000m,2015,0.492
Novel microsatellite markers identification and diversity characterization in Pteris cretica L.,to assess genetic variation 33 novel microsatellite markers were identified through nucleotide sequencing of enriched genomic libraries of pteris cretica di repeats 79 7 were found to be most predominant followed by tri 15 8 tetra 2 3 and hexa 2 3 type of repeat motifs evaluating these markers in six populations n 48 of western himalayan range detected average polymorphism information content pic of 0 32 combined neighbor joining nj and principal coordinate analysis pcoa grouped all the populations in two major clusters with high levels of intermixing of accessions in each cluster this suggests that p cretica populations of western himalaya have broadly been mixed with two sub populations high within population variance 98 7 and low genetic differentiation î st 0 013 recorded in the analysis of molecular variance amova for the first time highly polymorphic novel genomic microsatellite markers were identified and utilized for revealing genetic diversity of p cretica in western himalayan range in context of established hypothesis of genetic variations based on allozyme markers,2015,0.625
Predicting Vulnerability of Medicinal Plants Used by Karen People in Chiang Mai Province to Climatic Change,anthropogenic climate change has already had an imp act on plant diversity and mortality around the world to exemplify this issue vulnerability o f medicinal plants used by the karen in chiang mai province to climatic change was investigated using species distribution model sdm a total of 244 medicinal plants species were evaluated the greenh ouse gas emissions scenarios a1b medium high emissions and a2 high emissions were used to exa mine the potential future species distribution unde r climatic changes for the years 2050 and 2080 it wa s found that more than 60 of the plants were predicted to suffer significant losses in their sui table ranges by the years 2050 and 2080 respective ly following the international union for conservation of nature and natural resources iucn red list criteria four plant species were predicted to beco me extinct due to climate change in chiang mai province under a1b or a2 scenarios by 2080 raising the climate change awareness of the karen people and supporting the sustainable use of medicinal pla nts will be crucial in preserving the medicinal pla nts cultivating threatened medicinal plants in the home gardens of the karen people is also recommended in order to decrease the effects of climate change on these plants,2015,0.168
"Species Richness of Noctuid Moths (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) from the State of Guanajuato, Mexico",the noctuidae are a family with many species worldwide but in mexico there is little information about their species richness despite noctuids being very important pests in agriculture with data obtained from fieldwork and specimens from the entomological collection of universidad de guanajuato a list of species found in guanajuato was made taking into account distribution and biogeographic affinity data the results showed 77 species of which 36 3 had a distribution of megamexico i affinity 33 7 had nearctic affinity and 16 8 were cosmopolitan whereas the rest of the species had distributions that corresponded to megamexico ii and iii the high percentage of northern species suggests that the biogeographic affinity of the noctuids from guanajuato is close to the southern usa and northern mexico this research reports 30 new species records for mexico and 1 species may be a potential agent for the biological control of reed canarygrass a major weed species,2015,0.975
"A geographic distribution database of the Neotropical cassava whitefly complex (Hemiptera, Aleyrodidae) and their associated parasitoids and hyperparasitoids (Hymenoptera)",whiteflies hemiptera aleyrodidae are represented by more than 1 500 herbivorous species around the world some of them are notorious pests of cassava manihot esculenta a primary food crop in the tropics particularly destructive is a complex of neotropical cassava whiteflies whose distribution remains restricted to their native range despite their importance neither their distribution nor that of their associated parasitoids is well documented this paper therefore reports observational and specimen based occurrence records of neotropical cassava whiteflies and their associated parasitoids and hyperparasitoids the dataset consists of 1 311 distribution records documented by the international center for tropical agriculture ciat between 1975 and 2012 the specimens are held at ciatâ s arthropod reference collection ciatarc cali colombia eleven species of whiteflies 14 species of parasitoids and one species of hyperparasitoids are reported approximately 66 of the whitefly records belong to aleurotrachelus socialis and 16 to bemisia tuberculata the parasitoids with most records are encarsia hispida amitus macgowni and e bellottii for a socialis and e sophia for b tuberculata the complete dataset is available in darwin core archive format via the global biodiversity information facility gbif,2015,0.707
"Benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in mangroves and open intertidal areas on the Dar es Salaam coast, Tanzania",the assemblages of benthic macroinvertebrates in mangroves and open intertidal areas of the dar es salaam coast tanzania was investigated in 2013â 2014 revealing 56 species higher density species richness and diversity were recorded in open intertidal areas compared to nearby mangrove forests non metric multidimensional scaling indicated differences in assemblages between mangrove and open intertidal samples these differences were confirmed by analysis of similarity simper identified an average dissimilarity of 97 24 between mangroves and open intertidal samples most of which were due to the malacostracan uca annulipes and the gastropod cerithidea decollata primer relate indicated significant correlation between macroinvertebrate assemblages and the measured physico chemical parameters salinity ph redox potential and sediment particle size whereas bioenv and the monte carlo permutation test indicated that redox potential sediment particle size and ph contributed significantly to variation i,2015,0.669
Mapping Dominant Tree Species over Large Forested Areas Using Landsat Best-Available-Pixel Image Composites,remotely sensed image composites that are pixel based rather than scene based are increasingly feasible to use over large areas and fine spatial resolutions for large jurisdictions that utilize remotely sensed imagery for ecosystem mapping and monitoring pixel based composites enable a wider range of applications at higher quality the goal of this study was to model spatial distributions of 6 tree species over a large forested area of saskatchewan canada 39 million ha at 30 m spatial resolution using a multiyear best available pixel bap landsat composite we tested the influence of the bap composite on the resultant maps by comparing species composition and configuration for areas where imagery was from a single sensor year and day of year to areas with variable composite characteristics model error rates ranged from 0 09 to 0 24 area under the curve values approaching 1 and met ecological expectations the bap composite was found to have little effect on model outcomes with composition and configuration values in nonreference areas being similar for all species but one which had an unexpected configuration moreover sensor year and day of year were similar for reference and nonreference blocks for all species results indicate that landsat bap image composites are useful for generating large area maps of tree species distributions,2015,0.569
Hybridization promotes speciation in Coenonympha butterflies.,hybridization has become a central element in theories of animal evolution during the last decade new methods in population genomics and statistical model testing now allow the disentangling of the complexity that hybridization brings into key evolutionary processes such as local adaptation colonization of new environments species diversification and extinction we evaluated the consequences of hybridization in a complex of three alpine butterflies in the genus coenonympha by combining morphological genetic and ecological analyses a series of approximate bayesian computation procedures based on a large snp dataset strongly suggest that the darwin s heath c darwiniana originated through hybridization between the pearly heath c arcania and the alpine heath c gardetta with different parental contributions as a result of hybridization the darwin s heath presents an intermediate morphology between the parental species while its climatic niche seems more similar to the alpine heath our results also reveal a substantial genetic and morphologic differentiation between the two geographically disjoint darwin s heath lineages leading us to propose the splitting of this taxon into two different species this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.344
Assessment of the contribution of chemoreceptor-based signaling to biofilm formation.,while it is well established that one and two component regulatory systems participate in regulating biofilm formation there also exists evidence suggesting that chemosensory pathways are also involved however little information exists about which chemoreceptors and signals modulate this process here we report the generation of the complete set of chemoreceptor mutants of pseudomonas putida kt2440 and the identification of four mutants with significantly altered biofilm phenotypes these receptors are a wspa homologue of p aeruginosa previously identified to control biofilm formation by regulating c di gmp levels and three uncharacterized chemoreceptors one of these receptors named mcpu was found to mediate chemotaxis towards different polyamines the functional annotation of mcpu was initiated by high throughput thermal shift assays of the receptor ligand binding domain lbd isothermal titration calorimetry showed that mcpu lbd specifically binds putrescine cadaverine and spermidine indicating that mcpu represents a novel chemoreceptor type another uncharacterized receptor named mcpa specifically binds 12 different proteinogenic amino acids and mediates chemotaxis towards these compounds we also show that mutants in mcpu and wspa pp have a significantly reduced ability to colonize plant roots data agree with other reports showing that polyamines are signal molecules involved in the regulation of bacteria plant communication and biofilm formation,2015,0.055
Using a global botanic gardens database to help assess the capabilities of rare eucalypt species to cope with climate change,climate change impact analyses have focused mostly on natural distributions of plants and have generally ignored their intrinsic climatic adaptability this may produce unreliable predictions of impacts eucalypts are potentially instructive for climate change studies as many species have been assessed in commercial forestry trials outside the conditions of their natural distributions however rare eucalypt species which usually have limited natural distributions and are likely to be most susceptible to climate change are often small or multi stemmed species which have generally not been included in commercial trials this study used information for 12 rare eucalypt species from the plantsearch database of botanic gardens conservation international and assessed if this information can assist determining their climatic adaptability the results should be treated with caution but indicate that most of the 12 species are growing at some botanic gardens under annual mean temperature conditions that are warmer than where they occur naturally,2015,0.435
Quality of presence data determines species distribution model performance: a novel index to evaluate data quality,context species distribution models sdms are widely used to estimate speciesâ potential distribution at landscape to regional scales however the quality of occurrence data is often compromised by sampling bias which could raise serious concerns on model accuracy objectives we propose a model independent composite measureâ representativeness and completeness rac indexâ to evaluate the quality of species occurrence data we demonstrate 1 the impact of spatial data quality as measured by rac on model performance and 2 the feasibility of applying rac in actual modeling process methods by using a set of computational experiments on a virtual species we calculated rac values for a set of occurrence data representing different degrees of sampling biases we evaluated model performance reliability and accuracy and associated model performance with rac values two case studies were also conducted to demonstrate the association between rac and model performance results model reliability stabilizes when rac reaches a threshold of 0 4 model accuracy stabilizes when rac reaches 0 4 or 0 5 for models with or without complete predictors respectively model performance is more sensitive to data completeness than representativeness our case studies further demonstrated that rac value is closely related to model performance conclusions performance of sdms is closely related to the quality of species occurrence data which can be measured by our rac index we recommend a minimum rac value of 0 4 for reliable and accurate sdm predictions to improve prediction accuracy sampling with multiple centers in a systematic fashion across the environmental space is desired,2015,0.049
Falling through the cracks: the fading history of a large iconic predator,human impact on the oceans predates scientific observation which for many animal populations has captured only recent changes such a limited knowledge can hamper finding optimal management and conservation strategies including setting appropriate recovery targets sawfishes are among the most endangered marine vertebrates in the ocean historical human impacts have resulted in sawfish extinction in many coastal areas around the world however in the mediterranean sea their past presence and possible extinction have been debated for decades recently it was concluded that the region never hosted resident populations because of unsuitable environmental conditions through an extensive bibliographic and archival search and an extinction analysis we reconstructed the history of sawfishes in the mediterranean sea between 1576 and 1959 there were 48 independent accounts of the occurrence of two sawfish species pristis pristis pristidae and pristis pectinata pristidae including 24 documented catches sawfishes were mainly recorded in the western mediterranean in areas close to large rivers with light human impact most of the documented individuals were juveniles suggesting local parturition extinction analyses yielded variable results and were affected by the sparseness of records but suggested that both species went extinct in the mediterranean sea in the 1960sâ 1970s our results challenge current assumptions on sawfish ecology and biogeography offer new options for sawfish conservation in the atlantic and highlight the importance of historical analyses for reconstructing ecosystem baselines and setting recovery targets,2015,0.602
OntoBio: A Biodiversity Domain Ontology for Amazonian Biological Collected Objects - 7367d770.pdf,the use of ontology presents a novel data integration resource when centred in semantic definitions and the need for interoperability results from previews works indicate that ontologies can drive knowledge acquisition processe s for the purpose of comprehensive transportable machine understanding and knowledge management applied to the biodiversity domain ontologies can be a valuable resource for strategic planning and its contribution toward conservation of the amazon region this work presents a biodiversity domain ontology developed at the national institute for amazonian research inpa using biological data as its object of study,2015,0.311
Using abiotic variables to predict importance of sites for species representation.,in systematic conservation planning species distribution data for all sites in a planning area are used to prioritize each site in terms of the site s importance toward meeting the goal of species representation but comprehensive species data are not available in most planning areas and would be expensive to acquire as a shortcut ecologists use surrogates such as occurrences of birds or another well surveyed taxon or land types defined from remotely sensed data in the hope that sites that represent the surrogates also represent biodiversity unfortunately surrogates have not performed reliably we propose a new type of surrogate predicted importance that can be developed from species data for a q subset of sites with species data from this subset of sites importance can be modeled as a function of abiotic variables available at no charge for all terrestrial areas on earth predicted importance can then be used as a surrogate to prioritize all sites we tested this surrogate with 8 sets of species data for each data set we used a q subset of sites to model importance as a function of abiotic variables used the resulting function to predict importance for all sites and evaluated the number of species in the sites with highest predicted importance sites with the highest predicted importance represented species efficiently for all data sets when q 25 and for 7 of 8 data sets when q 20 predicted importance requires less survey effort than direct selection for species representation and meets representation goals well compared with other surrogates currently in use this less expensive surrogate may be useful in those areas of the world that need it most namely tropical regions with the highest biodiversity greatest biodiversity loss most severe lack of inventory data and poorly developed protected area networks,2015,0.723
The genus Thoradonta in Thailand (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae: Scelimeninae) with description of two new species,abstractthe genus thoradonta hancock orthoptera tetrigidae scelimeninae is newly reported from thailand two new species of the genus thoradonta lativertexoides sp nov and thoradonta spiculobaoides sp nov are described and illustrated with photographs and compared with similar species a taxonomic review of the genus thoradonta is provided and a key to all known species of the genus is given,2015,0.648
Ecological niche transferability using invasive species as a case study.,species distribution modeling is widely applied to predict invasive species distributions and species range shifts under climate change accurate predictions depend upon meeting the assumption that ecological niches are conserved i e spatially or temporally transferable here we present a multi taxon comparative analysis of niche conservatism using biological invasion events well documented in natural history museum collections our goal is to assess spatial transferability of the climatic niche of a range of noxious terrestrial invasive species using two complementary approaches first we compare species native versus invasive ranges in environmental space using two distinct methods principal components analysis and mahalanobis distance second we compare species native versus invaded ranges in geographic space as estimated using the species distribution modeling technique maxent and the comparative index hellinger s i we find that species exhibit a range of responses from almost complete transferability in which the invaded niches completely overlap with the native niches to a complete dissociation between native and invaded ranges intermediate responses included expansion of dimension attributable to either temperature or precipitation derived variables as well as niche expansion in multiple dimensions we conclude that the ecological niche in the native range is generally a poor predictor of invaded range and by analogy the ecological niche may be a poor predictor of range shifts under climate change we suggest that assessing dimensions of niche transferability prior to standard species distribution modeling may improve the understanding of species dynamics in the invaded range,2015,0.972
The vulnerability of US apple (Malus) genetic resources,apple malus 9 domestica borkh is one of the top three us fruit crops in production and value apple production has high costs for land labor and inputs and orchards are a long term commitment production is dominated by only a few apple scion and rootstock cultivars which increases its susceptibility to dynamic external threats apple crop wild relatives including progenitor species malus sieversii ledeb m roem malus orientalis uglitzk malus sylvestris l mill and malus prunifolia willd borkh as well as many other readily hybridized species have a wide range of biotic and abiotic stress resistances as well as desirable productivity and fruit quality attri butes however access to wild materials is limited and wild malus throughout the world is at risk of loss due to human encroachment and changing climatic pat terns the usda ars national plant germplasm system npgs malus collection maintained by the plant genetic resources unit in geneva ny us is among the largest collections of cultivated apple and malus species in the world the collection currently has 5004 unique accessions in the field and 1603 seed accessions representing m 9 domestica 33 malus species and 15 hybrid species of the trees in the field 3 070 are grafted and are represented by a core collection of 258 individuals many wild species accessions are represented as single seedlings non grafted the crop vulnerability status of apple in the us is moderate because although there are a few breeders developing new commercial cultivars who also access malus species threats and challenges include new diseases pests and changing climate combined with industry needs and consumer demands with a limited number of cultivars in production,2015,0.976
Delimiting Areas of Endemism through Kernel Interpolation.,we propose a new approach for identification of areas of endemism the geographical interpolation of endemism gie based on kernel spatial interpolation this method differs from others in being independent of grid cells this new approach is based on estimating the overlap between the distribution of species through a kernel interpolation of centroids of species distribution and areas of influence defined from the distance between the centroid and the farthest point of occurrence of each species we used this method to delimit areas of endemism of spiders from brazil to assess the effectiveness of gie we analyzed the same data using parsimony analysis of endemism and ndm and compared the areas identified through each method the analyses using gie identified 101 areas of endemism of spiders in brazil gie demonstrated to be effective in identifying areas of endemism in multiple scales with fuzzy edges and supported by more synendemic species than in the other methods the areas of endemism identified with gie were generally congruent with those identified for other taxonomic groups suggesting that common processes can be responsible for the origin and maintenance of these biogeographic units,2015,0.54
Oceanographic Conditions Limit the Spread of a Marine Invader along Southern African Shores.,invasive species can affect the function and structure of natural ecological communities hence understanding and predicting their potential for spreading is a major ecological challenge once established in a new region the spread of invasive species is largely controlled by their dispersal capacity local environmental conditions and species interactions the mussel mytilus galloprovincialis is native to the mediterranean and is the most successful marine invader in southern africa its distribution there has expanded rapidly and extensively since the 1970s however over the last decade its spread has ceased in this study we coupled broad scale field surveys ecological niche modelling enm and lagrangian particle simulations lps to assess the current invaded distribution of m galloprovincialis in southern africa and to evaluate what prevents further spread of this species results showed that all environmentally suitable habitats in southern africa have been occupied by the species this includes rocky shores between rocky point in namibia and east london in south africa approx 2800 km and these limits coincide with the steep transitions between cool temperate and subtropical warmer climates on both west and southeast african coasts on the west coast simulations of drifting larvae almost entirely followed the northward and offshore direction of the benguela current creating a clear dispersal barrier by advecting larvae away from the coast on the southeast coast nearshore currents give larvae the potential to move eastwards against the prevalent agulhas current and beyond the present distributional limit however environmental conditions prevent the establishment of the species the transition between the cooler and warmer water regimes is therefore the main factor limiting the northern spread on the southeast coast however biotic interactions with native fauna may also play an important role,2015,0.856
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND DIVERSITY ASSESSMENT IN EX SITU COLLECTION OF ALBANIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS,genetic diversity and geographic distribution for 403 geo referenced observations of ex situ medicinal plants collection data including 13 species from twelve counties of albania was investigated using grids of 10 x 10 km cells to assess the number of observations per species and per district the area of occupancy the diversity indices and richness estimators geospatial analysis detects areas of high alpha diversity combination of study results for simpson index dominance shannon weiner margalef brillouin species richness and evenness equitability menhinick berger parker and fisher alpha diversity index show that areas of tirana berat shkodra lezha vlora and kukesi counties were richer and more even than other areas cluster analysis on correlation matrix of diversity indices results shows presence of high similarities among berat and vlora counties tirana and shkodra dibra and lezha counties similarity range from 64 to 80 presence of high species diversity in tirana lezha berat shkodra vlora and kukesi counties suggests presence of a greater number species and more relative stable ecosystems where more ecological niches are available and environmental changes were less likely to be damaging to the ecosystem as a whole,2015,0.876
Global drivers of species variation in mobilized point-occurrence information,despite the central role of species distributions in ecology and conservation occurrence information remains geographically and taxonomically incomplete and biased numerous socio economic and ecological drivers of uneven record collection and mobilization among species have been suggested but the generality of their effects remains untested we develop scale independent metrics of range coverage and geographical record bias and apply them to 2 8m point occurrence records of 3 625 mammal species to evaluate 13 putative drivers of species level variation in data availability we find that data limitations are mainly linked to range size and shape and the geography of socio economic conditions surprisingly species attributes related to detection and collection probabilities such as body size or diurnality are much weaker predictors of the amount and range coverage of available records our results highlight the need to prioritize range restricted species and to address the key socio economic drivers of data bias in data mobilization efforts and distribution modeling,2015,0.781
"Going West - a subtropical lineage (Vincetoxicum, Apocynaceae: Asclepiadoideae) expanding into Europe.",vincetoxicum sensu lato is a tropical lineage comprising two clades that have reached high northern latitudes of the temperate clades one is restricted to the far east the other one vincetoxicum s str clade extends into europe but their ranges overlap in central china and japan three species invasive in north america v hirundinaria v nigrum and v rossicum are members of the vincetoxicum s str clade we explore the prerequisites for the range expansion in the vincetoxicum s str clade performing bayesian and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses on sequences of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer its region the nuclear external transcribed spacer region ets and five plastid markers the resulting phylogeny is used to conduct biogeographic analysis using biogeobears to reconstruct ancestral species ranges moreover we map the known occurrences of two rare characters in asclepiadoideae the possession of phenanthroindolizidine alkaloids and reported cases of autogamy onto our phylogeny finally we have conducted ecological niche modelling using maxent on a total of 220 spatially unique occurrences of nine vincetoxicum s str species spanning more than 4 000 km along the east west gradient to learn about the climatic conditions along the presumed migration route our results indicate a north westward migration in vincetoxicum s str along the asian mountain chains to europe climatic preferences of the nine species sampled are dissimilar except for the common exposure to at least one month of subfreezing temperatures indicating a rather wide climatic tolerance for the clade as a whole the three species invasive in north america belong to the northern eurasian subclade and show the rare combination of phenanthroindolizidine alkaloids and autogamy,2015,0.832
"Dismantling Melaspileaceae: a first phylogenetic study of Buelliella, Hemigrapha, Karschia, Labrocarpon and Melaspilea",melaspileaceae is a heterogeneous group of ascomycota including lichenized lichenicolous and saprobic fungi a first phylogenetic study of melaspileaceae is presented and is based on mtssu and nulsu sequence data we obtained 49 new sequences for 28 specimens representing 15 species the genera buelliella hemigrapha karschia labrocarpon and melaspilea s str are included in a molecular phylogeny for the first time melaspileaceae is recovered as polyphyletic with members placed in two main lineages of dothideomycetes melaspilea s str is included in eremithallales eremithallaceae is placed in synonymy with melaspileaceae the genus encephalographa is placed in melaspileaceae the genera buelliella karschia labrocarpon and several members of melaspilea are demonstrated to belong to asterinales while hemigrapha is confirmed in this order the genera melaspileella melaspileopsis stictographa are reinstated for former melaspilea species now placed in asterinales karschia cezannei is described as new and the new combinations melaspilea costaricensis m enteroleuca m urceolata melaspileella proximella and melaspileopsis diplasiospora are made melaspileaceae as newly defined includes lichenized and saprobic species the lichenicolous and saprobic life styles form different intermixed lineages in asterinales that do not include lichenized taxa the phylogenetic data provide a first framework for dismantling further the genus melaspilea for which most of the species are expected to belong to asterinales,2015,0.789
Phylogenetic analysis of niche divergence reveals distinct evolutionary histories and climate change implications for tropical carnivorous pitcher plants,aim to analyse the underpinnings of historical drivers of diversity and their contributions to current distributions and future roles in a changing climate we studied the relationship between ecological niche divergence and phylogenetic signal in tropical carnivorous pitcher plants location southeast asia methods estimates of realized ecological niches were reconstructed and plotted along a newly created multilocus molecular phylogeny phylogenetic signal was analysed by comparisons of calculated phylogenetic relatedness with ecological niche divergence current and projected future potentially suitable habitats were mapped for several species of plants with variable evolutionary histories and distributions results highland and lowland species had distinct phylogenetic signals higher altitude species had significantly lower molecular divergence as compared with the lowland species yet ecological niches with less overlap when projected onto a future climate scenario highland species lose a greater amount of potentially suitable habitat compared to lower altitude species and the majority of studied higher altitude species will face an overall loss of future suitable habitat main conclusion we conclude that distinct phylogenetic signals not only unravel differing evolutionary histories but also show that the implications of species tolerances to future changing climate vary over the past million years historical climate change shaped the differing evolution and ecological niches of highland and lowland tropical pitcher plant species rapid recent radiations of the higher altitude species are reflected in limited molecular divergence which is in sharp contrast with the more gradually evolved and genetically distinct lower altitude species in our study our projections for future potentially suitable habitats show that on going climate shifts will have detrimental effects on especially the higher altitude species due to a narrower niche tolerance and dramatic loss of potentially suitable habitat,2015,0.977
Recent discovery of small naturalised populations of Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) S.T. Blake in South Africa,the discovery of a naturalised population of melaleuca quinquenervia in south africa in 2009 prompted an evaluation of the speciesâ distribution across south africa we found reco rds at seven localities in two of the nine provinces of south africa with natur alised populations at two sites â 300 plants were discovered over 0 3ha in a confined seep on a mountain slope while at an old arboretum 12 large planted trees and 9 naturalised trees were found an additional herbarium record from mozambique suggests that this glob al invader is present at other sites within the sub region and so while th e extirpation of populations in south africa is recommended and lo oks feasible further work is required to de termine the status and evaluate whether eradica tion from the sub region as a whole is possible,2015,0.476
Geographic Differentiation of Tree Ferns (Cyatheales) in Tropical America,the patterns of geographic differentiation in fern species have been linked to climatic differences across regions and the distribution of available habitat in this paper the association between some climatic features and patterns of geographic differentiation in american tree ferns was evaluated for this the occurrence ranges of 190 species were plotted and then analysed using track analysis here we identify six generalised tracks that span the main highland regions of tropical america the andes the guyana highlands the brazilian atlantic coast lower central america the greater antilles and upper central america mexico we did not find an association between cloud forest habitat and the differentiation pattern revealed by generalised tracks in central america instead these patterns are congruent with well documented geological boundaries in the region climatic variables associated with cloud forest habitat were extracted from each generalised track and subjected to anova showing that most tracks have equivalent climates the andean track showed significant climatic differences with the brazilian and guyanan tracks which were associated with main habitat discontinuities from these results we propose that historical isolation has been important in promoting geographical differentiation in tree ferns and that differentiation by dispersal cannot fully explain the large scale geographical patterns observed in tree ferns,2015,0.48
Lack of well-maintained natural history collections and taxonomists in megadiverse developing countries hampers global biodiversity exploration,recently there have been controversial discussions regarding the decline in the number of taxonomists as the main bottleneck for the discovery and complete assessment of global biodiversity in addition we here review and highlight the eminent role of natural history collections in exploring the global species diversity by discussing the current conditions of institutional infrastructure in biologically megadiverse developing countries mdcs to our knowledge this is the first critical assessment which primarily focuses on these biologically wealthy nations we show that in addition to the taxonomistsâ shortage the lack of well maintained collection infrastructure represents the main bottleneck for biodiversity exploration in mdcs no campaign to inventory biodiversity at national or global scale in a foreseeable timeframe can be successful without the creation of more positions for taxonomists and the expansion of existing or the establishment of new natural history collections in mdcs respectively considering the lack of sufficient financial resources in many mdcs we suggest that joint political priority of industrialized and developing countries should be given to the enduring maintenance and sustainable support of institutional infrastructures if convention on biological diversity targets for 2020 are to be addressed expediently,2015,0.241
Revision of the African Ants of the Bothroponera pumicosa Species Complex (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Ponerinae),african ants are poorly known especially afrotropical ants of the subfamily ponerinae despite recent advances the genus bothroponera ponerinae includes the pumicosa talpa and sulcata species complexes we here present a revision of members of the pumicosa species complex these ants can be characterized by having coarsely foveolate sculpture and by having either a raised a â œvâ or â œuâ shaped anterior medial border of the clypeus anteclypeus with or without a carina members of this complex lack the metatibial gland on the anterior side of the lower metatibia species in the bothroponera pumicosa species complex are mainly distributed in the southern part of africa they include bothroponera aspera arnold 1962 stat nov b berthoudi forel 1901 variolosa syn nov b cariosa emery 1895 b cavernosa roger 1860 b granosa roger 1860 b laevissima arnold 1915 b montivaga arnold 1947 stat nov b pumicosa roger 1860 b strigulosa emery 1895 and b umgodikulula joma and mackay 2013 a key to the workers with diagnoses and comparisons is provided together with illustrations of each species and colored photographs of the species as well as maps and the distributions of each species,2015,0.941
Using Range-Wide Abundance Modeling to Identify Key Conservation Areas for the Micro-Endemic Bolson Tortoise (Gopherus flavomarginatus).,a widespread biogeographic pattern in nature is that population abundance is not uniform across the geographic range of species most occurrence sites have relatively low numbers whereas a few places contain orders of magnitude more individuals the bolson tortoise gopherus flavomarginatus is endemic to a small region of the chihuahuan desert in mexico where habitat deterioration threatens this species with extinction in this study we combined field burrows counts and the approach for modeling species abundance based on calculating the distance to the niche centroid to obtain range wide abundance estimates for the bolson tortoise we found a robust negative relationship between observed burrows abundance and distance to the niche centroid with a predictive capacity of 71 based on these results we identified four priority areas for the conservation of this microendemic and threatened tortoise we conclude that this approach may be a useful approximation for identifying key areas for sampling and conservation efforts in elusive and rare species,2015,0.766
Predicting Invasion Risk in Coastal Marine Environments Utilizing Species Distribution Modeling,determining speciesâ distributions and understanding the underlying factors that limit speciesâ ranges is a central objective in ecological research this pursuit is especially important to the study of invasive species and understanding where species are likely to be able to survive outside of their native range invasive species can cause significant ecological and economic damages and opportunities for species introduction are becoming increasingly available in contemporary society in order to minimize the impacts of invasive species preventing species from being introduced and early detection are paramount this dissertation presents research that utilizes species distribution modeling to identify potential ranges for non native coastal marine species as a component of assessing invasion risk when combined with introduction likelihood,2015,0.94
Evolutionary History of Blepharis (Acanthaceae) and the Origin of C 4 Photosynthesis in Section Acanthodium,premise of research plants with c4 photosynthesis are able to produce carbohydrates more efficiently than plants with c3 photosynthesis in warm climates when levels of atmospheric co2 are reduced the c4 pathway has evolved multiple times in distantly related lineages but it is not known whether the same physiological transitions occurred in all lineages species with intermediate c3 c4 physiology and anatomy offer the opportunity to study how plants transition from c3 to c4 it is thus vital to characterize phylogenetic relationships and photosynthetic pathways in groups with c3 c4 intermediate species as well as c3 and c4 species methodology we assessed photosynthetic pathway evolution in the afro asian genus blepharis acanthaceae by sampling 99 species for carbon isotope ratios 18 species for leaf anatomy and 36 species for phylogenetic analysis we estimated when blepharis clades diverged using a beast molecular dating analysis and we estimated ancestral distributions using biogeobears we al,2015,0.608
Predicting Species Distributions Using Record Centre Data: Multi-Scale Modelling of Habitat Suitability for Bat Roosts.,conservation increasingly operates at the landscape scale for this to be effective we need landscape scale information on species distributions and the environmental factors that underpin them species records are becoming increasingly available via data centres and online portals but they are often patchy and biased we demonstrate how such data can yield useful habitat suitability models using bat roost records as an example we analysed the effects of environmental variables at eight spatial scales 500 m 6 km on roost selection by eight bat species pipistrellus pipistrellus p pygmaeus nyctalus noctula myotis mystacinus m brandtii m nattereri m daubentonii and plecotus auritus using the presence only modelling software maxent modelling was carried out on a selection of 418 data centre roost records from the lake district national park uk target group pseudoabsences were selected to reduce the impact of sampling bias multi scale models combining variables measured at their best performing spatial scales were used to predict roosting habitat suitability yielding models with useful predictive abilities small areas of deciduous woodland consistently increased roosting habitat suitability but other habitat associations varied between species and scales pipistrellus were positively related to built environments at small scales and depended on large scale woodland availability the other more specialist species were highly sensitive to human altered landscapes avoiding even small rural towns the strength of many relationships at large scales suggests that bats are sensitive to habitat modifications far from the roost itself the fine resolution large extent maps will aid targeted decision making by conservationists and planners we have made available an arcgis toolbox that automates the production of multi scale variables to facilitate the application of our methods to other taxa and locations habitat suitability modelling has the potential to become a standard tool for supporting landscape scale decision making as relevant data and open source user friendly and peer reviewed software become widely available,2015,0.713
A modeling approach for the distribution of two Reptiles species: Mediodactylus kotschyi and Zamenis situla,new tools are available for biogeographic researches such as the modelistic approach called â œspecies distribution modelingâ sdms is kind of approach is very useful to investigate several issues in biogeography and conservation biology and in human introduced species too in this research we applied this methodology to two case study among the italian reptiles fauna mediodactylus kotschyi and zamenis situla to study how ecological constraints may have influenced the distribution of the two species bioclimate variables were not adequate to describe the narrow distribution of the species as models predict high potential suitable area in central and southern italy where species were never recorded e italian distribution of z situla is probably constrained by the congeneric z lineatus whereas about the distribution of m kotschyi with current knowledge wasnâ t possible to discriminate among a recent introduction or competitive exclusion,2015,0.682
"Tree Diversity and Dynamics of the Forest of Seu Nico, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil",background to understand future changes in community composition due to global changes the knowledge about forest community dynamics is of crucial importance to improve our understanding about processes and patterns involved in maintaining species rich neotropical ecosystems we provide here a dataset from the one hectare forest of seu nico fsn dynamics plot from southeastern brazil new information we report diameter at breast height basal area and height measurements of 2868 trees and treelets identified from two census spanning over a nine year period furthermore soil properties and understory light availability of all 100 10 x 10m subplots from the one hectare fsn dynamics plot during the second census are given,2015,0.164
Montane bias in lowland Amazonian Peatlands: Plant assembly on heterogeneous landscapes and potential significance to palynological inference,past temperature changes in tropical mountain regions are commonly inferred from vertical elevational shifts of montane indicator taxa in the palynological record however temperature is one of several abiotic factors driving the low elevational limits of species and many montane taxa can occur in warmer lowlands by tracking appropriate habitat types especially highly flooded wetlands in this paper we explore ways in which lowland habitat heterogeneity might introduce error into paleo temperature reconstructions based on field data of seven modern peatland vegetation communities in the southern peruvian amazon 200masl peat rich substrates are common edaphic transitions in pollen cores and provide detailed records of past vegetation change the data show that indicators of modern peatlands include genera with montane as well as lowland distributions while indicators of surrounding forests on mineral substrates have predominantly lowland distributions based on family level analyses we find that modern peatland vegetation communities have taxonomic compositions appearing to be 389m to 1557m mean 1050â 391m above their actual elevations due to a high abundance and number of families with high elevation optima we interpret the relatively higher prevalence of montane elements in modern peatlands as habitat tracking of a conserved montane niche on heterogeneous lowland landscapes we suggest that both high moisture availability and stressful edaphic conditions of peatland habitat may explain the montane bias observed to the extent that fossilization provides a better record of past vegetation that occurred proximate to the site of deposition we suggest that habitat tracking of montane elements may introduce a cool bias in lowland paleo temperature reconstructions based on pollen proxies,2015,0.247
Cascading ecological effects caused by the establishment of the emerald ash borer Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) in European Russia,emerald ash borer agrilus planipennis is a destructive invasive forest pest in north america and european russia this pest species is rapidly spreading in european russia and is likely to arrive in other countries soon the aim is to analyze the ecological consequences of the establishment of this pest in european russia and investigate 1 what other xylophagous beetles develop on trees affected by a planipennis 2 how common is the parasitoid of the emerald ash borer spathius polonicus hymenoptera braconidae doryctinae and what is the level of parasitism by this species and 3 how susceptible is the native european ash species fraxinus excelsior to a planipennis a survey of approximately 1000 fraxinus pennsylvanica trees damaged by a planipennis in 13 localities has shown that hylesinus varius coleoptera curculionidae scolytinae tetrops starkii coleoptera cerambycidae and agrilus convexicollis coleoptera buprestidae were common on these trees spathius polonicus is frequently recorded about 50 percent of late instar larvae of a planipennis sampled were parasitized by s polonicus maps of the distributions of t starkii a convexicollis and s polonicus before and after the establishment of a planipennis in european russia were compiled it is hypothesized that these species which are native to the west palaearctic spread into central european russia after a planipennis became established there current observations confirm those of previous authors that native european ash fraxinus excelsior is susceptible to a planipennis increasing the threat posed by this pest the establishment of a planipennis has resulted in a cascade of ecological effects such as outbreaks of other xylophagous beetles in a planipennis infested trees it is likely that the propagation of s polonicus will reduce the incidence of outbreaks of a planipennis,2015,0.733
Historical legacies accumulate to shape future biodiversity in an era of rapid global change,aim biodiversity responses to changing environmental forcing on species are often characterized by considerable time lags relaxation times although changes to the occurrence and abundance of species likely have cascading effects e g on species of other trophic levels genes community structure and ecosystem processes current concepts addressing lagged biodiversity responses are limited to single drivers affecting a few biodiversity components e g extinction debt in terms of species numbers or population size little attention has been paid to the interacting and cumulative nature of time lag phenomena here we synthesize current knowledge mechanisms and implications of delayed biodiversity responses and propose a â cumulative biodiversity lags frameworkâ which aims to integrate lagged responses of various components of biological organization location global results effects of change in environmental forcing are transmitted along a series of linked causeâ effect relationships which act on different biodiversity components e g individuals populations species communities we show that lagged responses to environmental forcing are caused by different mechanisms e g metapopulation dynamics dispersal limitation successional dynamics which operate sequentially on these intermediary links lags manifest themselves on the respective biodiversity component which changes over time the full relaxation time of a focal system will therefore depend on the aggregate length of different lags we elucidate key mechanisms and circumstances which are likely to cause cumulative lagged responses and propose research avenues to improve understanding of cumulative biodiversity lags main conclusions the failure to give adequate consideration to widespread cumulative time lags often masks the full extent of biodiversity changes that have already been triggered effects that are particularly relevant for human livelihoods e g changes in the provision of ecosystem services may emerge with the most pronounced delay accordingly the consideration of appropriate temporal scales should become a key topic in future work at the scienceâ policy interface,2015,0.31
Evolution of invasiveness through increased resource use in a vacant niche,non native plants are now a pervasive feature of ecosystems across the globe1 one hypothesis for this pattern is that introduced species occupy open niches in recipient communities2 3 if true then non native plants should often benefit from low competition for limiting resources that define niches many plants have evolved larger size after introduction consistent with increased access to limiting resources4 â 5 â 6 â 7 â 8 â 9 it has been difficult to test whether larger size reflects adaptation to exploit open resources however because vacant niches are generally challenging to identify in plants here we take advantage of a situation in which a highly invasive non native plant centaurea solstitialis l yellow starthistle hereafter yst occupies a well described environmental niche wherein water is a known limiting resource10 11 we use a glasshouse common environment and climatic niche modelling to reveal that invading yst has evolved a higher fitness life history at the expense of increased dependence on water critically historical declines in resident competitors have made water more available for introduced plants11 12 demonstrating how native biodiversity declines can open niches and create opportunities for introduced species to evolve increased resource use a potentially widespread basis for introduction success and the evolution of invasive life histories,2015,0.228
Wrangler's user environment: A software framework for management of data-intensive computing system,the growth in the capacity and capability of nand flash based storage systems have changed the face of data oriented computational systems these systems have become both more capable and flexible in how they are used with these changes comes both increased potential and user complexity while many systems attempt to hide this complexity through the addition of more layers of storage caches the design of the wrangler system went a different route choosing instead to build a simple yet flexible web based interface to allow users to easily configure this complex data computing system based on their service and software needs this allows users to work in the environments best suited to their workflows while optimally utilizing the systems high performance and high capacity storage systems this interface also allows users to schedule long term periods of reserved capacity data campaigns for projects finally the system has been designed to support the data storage and sharing capacities of the system to enable these key aspects of data research we discuss the capabilities with respect to three already existing workflows on the system to highlight the diversity and flexibility provided by this environment to data researchers,2015,0.006
Using GIS and remote sensing to aid conservation monitoring,developments in remote sensing offer new opportunities for making evaluations of the environment this is particularly true for our overseas territories where study areas are remote or inaccessible or large areas need to be covered the different uses of imagery analysis allow a wealth of information about our environment to be collected at excellent value for money such analyses include assessments of habitat composition and vegetation structure which can be used with further gis modelling to show species suitability and help deliver conservation goals the presentation begins by demonstrating how object based analysis obia and high and ultra high resolution imagery can be used together with tar geted field work effort to produce a range of different types of environmental maps this includes maps on the terrestrial habitats of anguilla based on the structural components of the vegetation a brief explanation of how this type of technology can be used to look at change over time showing differences in vegetation cover of the island since 1984 is given some of the newer satellites produce imagery with wavelength that can â seeâ into shallow water and we discuss how this can be used to map marine features such as shallow water bathymetry and basic shallow water marine habitat maps initial findings from an mphil study on using these techniques to identify soil types on the island are also presented the last brief case study will show how obia can be used to monitor nesting birds using landscape photography in a hard to reach off shore islands in each of these snap shot case studies the importance of understanding the environment and using targeted field work is demonstrated such environmental data together with physiographic and climatic information can be used also to help understand the distribution of animal species through different modelling approaches in essence the relationship of actual species â presenceâ records with environmental parameters can provide both a better understanding of the factors that determine how a species uses it habitat i e â inferentialâ analysisâ and also allow the potential range of a species to be predicted via mapping â predictiveâ studiesâ modelling can allow assessments of the probability of a speciesâ presence in any area which is particularly valuable for filling in gaps in distribution maps aid an understanding of how populations disperse through corridors and help target conservation activities as well as providing an understanding of the current conservation status of a species these approaches can also provide a valuable tool for understanding whether this status can be considered favourable the european unionâ s habitats directive 1992 provides a good framework for such assessments identifying four parameters for evaluation namely population dynamics range habitat and future prospects gis and modelling allows these assessments at different spatial scales arc has trialled this approach for herpetofauna species the talk will show some of the outputs and identify some of the strengths and limitations it will also highlight the fact that despite the considerable utility of such work it needs to be complimented by fieldwork,2015,0.807
Reporting N-of-1 Trials to Professional Audiences,whether an n of 1 trial is undertaken to inform a particular clinical decision or to test a hypothesis publishing it in the professional literature may inform other clinical decisions and contribute to the research evidence base a well reported n of 1 trial will provide the transparency needed for readers to critically appraise the work and determine if it is applicable to their situation a well reported trial can be replicated and once replicated results can be aggregated to provide stronger and more compelling evidence this chapter will consider how to describe the individual and aggregated data of n of 1 trials for professional audiences it describes in detail a reporting guideline for n of 1 trials cent consort extension for reporting n of 1 trials cent provides a structured format to ensure that the main journal report is sufficiently detailed that it can be critically appraised and replicated as well prospective registration of the trial and data deposit is discussed as means to further increase the transparency and completeness of reporting,2015,0.223
"Rare Moss-Built Microterraces in a High-Altitude, Acid Mine Drainage-Polluted Stream (Cordillera Negra, Peru)",the rio santiago in the cordillera negra of peru is severely contaminated by acid mine drainage in its headwaters in a strongly acid stream at about 3800 m above sea level masl microterraces were found with terrace walls built up of dead moss with encrustations and interstitial fine creamy sediment the stream water was turbid due to the presence of similar suspended sediment which also occurred as a thin basal layer in inter rim basins the moss was identified as the rare bryophyte anomobryum prostratum mã ll hal besch chemical and mineralogical analyses show that green living parts of the moss are gradually coated by al fe hydr oxides inducing their senescence and death the necromass is covered by creamy crusts through precipitation of schwertmannite type material from the stream water and simultaneous â captureâ of fine sediment the latter consists of a mixture of precipitate and fine detrital primary minerals these processes are held responsible for the formation of the microterraces which regarding their composition and environment seem to be unique remarkable is the high as content of the creamy crusts and sediment attributed to strong sorption of as whereas its solute concentration is relatively low this calls for more attention to suspended fine sediment in the assessment of environmental risks of stream water use lastly the results raise serious doubts about the use of aquatic bryophytes as bioindicator for chemical pollution in acid mine drainage polluted streams,2015,0.431
Evolutionary dispersal drives the latitudinal diversity gradient of stony corals,the diversity of stony corals displays one of the most exemplary latitudinal gradients on the planet yet the evolutionary dynamics that produced this pattern remains unclear using both paleontological and distributional data we compare the origination extinction and immigration levels between low and high latitudes since the earliest proliferation of the group during the mid triassic altogether first and last occurrence localities in the fossil record do not support a positive preference towards either latitudinal bin nonetheless considering past and present scleractinian fauna the process of extinction has been apparently more pronounced at higher latitudes based on face values and correlation coefficients far above these differences immigration of extant taxa has been substantially higher towards the tropics than to temperate regions while the net dispersal toward low latitudes persists in all temporal intervals the gradient of diversity was largely built up during the cenozoic era and only becomes significantly steep from the neogene period onwards this dynamic supports the â œinto the tropical museumâ model which suggests that tropics have historically acted as a center of accumulation for marine biodiversity,2015,0.182
"Revised descriptions of the nematocysts and the asexual reproduction modes of the scyphozoan jellyfish Cassiopea andromeda (ForskÃ¥l, 1775)",our investigations on different developmental stages of the jellyfish cassiopea andromeda forskã l 1775 provide updated descriptions of nematocyst types and asexual reproduction modes which were documented by drawings and high resolution photographs in contrast to previous studies that only described three types of nematocysts we revealed five types a isorhizas o isorhizas euryteles large oval birhopaloids and small lemon shaped birhopaloids comparisons of undischarged and discharged capsules revealed significantly smaller capsule volumes 48â 51 in the latter we provide capsule lengths and widths ranges for each capsule type undischarged and developmental stage we demonstrate that for most capsule types the calculated capsule volumes were positively correlated with the progressing development and increasing size of the five developmental stages namely bud polyp strobila ephyra and medusa o isorhizas were only present in the latter three stages probably due to a change in diet related to a changing life style besides asexual reproduction by swimming buds and monodisc strobilation common in rhizostome kolpophorae we documented lateral polyp budding for the first time in this taxon our results demonstrate that cultivating living specimens facilitate detailed descriptions of nematocysts and reproductive modes in metagenetic cnidarians which cannot be achieved by studies on preserved material,2015,0.269
Evolution of codfishes (Teleostei: Gadinae) in geographical and ecological space: evidence that physiological limits drove diversification of subarctic fishes,search string advanced saved searches article tools get pdf 925k save to my profile e mail link to this article export citation for this article get citation alerts request permissions more sharing servicesshare share on citeulikeshare on facebookshare on deliciousshare on www mendeley comshare on twitter abstract article references supporting information cited by enhanced article html get pdf 925k keywords arctic climate change dispersal ecological niche modelling gadinae pleistocene radiation speciation pump temperate vicariance abstract aim to develop a holistic biogeographical history of codfishes in the subfamily gadinae based on historical relationships ecological niche and evolution of physiological tolerances two alternative diversification scenarios were tested in two co distributed northern hemisphere clades 1 clade ancestors were temperate and environmental niche has been conserved over evolutionary time implying that speciation was driven by vicariance associated with ice sheet formation and 2 clade ancestors were arctic and species convergently adapted to temperate environmental conditions implying that speciation was driven by repeated adaption to temperate environments location northern hemisphere arctic and subarctic oceans methods fifty five new sequences of four genes from 23 tissue samples were combined with 10 genbank sequences to generate a time calibrated phylogenetic hypothesis combining the phylogeny with information on species ecological niche tolerances inferred from correlational models i reconstructed ancestral environmental tolerances of each of the focal clades these results were combined with bayesian area based biogeographical analysis and regional palaeoclimatic history to develop a holistic biogeographical history of gadinae results of 18 environmental variables describing species tolerances to salinity temperature sea ice concentration and mixed layer depth only mean maximum and minimum sea bottom temperature and mean and minimum sea surface temperature showed phylogenetic signal across gadinae both ecological niche and geographical distributions of gadine fishes are largely conservative but two clades contain both pacific and atlantic species focal clade divergence time estimates suggest a pliocene origin for both with further pleistocene divergence main conclusions reconstructed ancestral environmental tolerances of crown cods and tomcods support a temperate origin of both groups the timing of diversification of these two clades and the intolerance of temperate species to sea ice suggest that cyclical arctic ice formation drove divergence future sea ice reduction may have dramatic consequences for distributions and persistence of commercially important species when currently allopatric temperate species come into secondary contact,2015,0.032
Mapping the disjunct distribution of introduced codling moth Cydia pomonella in China,eastern china was once listed as an area infested with the invasive codling moth cydia pomonella l lepidoptera tortricide intensive efforts later revealed the absence of such infestation currently the majority of the population is distributed in western china a disjunct population is also observed in the north east in present study the disjunct distribution was interpreted by mapping the climate dimension and potential distribution using an ecological niche modelling approach the preferred niche models were utilized to identify the relative roles of climate human influence and vegetation with respect to the present distribution and also to extrapolate the climate dimensions suitable for the codling moth in china the results of the present study suggest that a combination of climate suitability and human influence explain the range expansion undistributed areas in eastern china were found to have low to medium climate suitability nonetheless these areas belong to apple growing regions that have high propagule pressure thus eventual establishment appears to be possible because of host plant availability human activity and the wide ecological flexibility of the moth highly suitable habitats were found to be strongly related to high temperature and low precipitation throughout the year whereas areas with low temperature and plenty of rainfall are unfavourable,2015,0.467
"Range extensions of amphibians and reptiles in the southeastern part of the Lacandona rainforest, Mexico",the lacandona rainforest represents one of the most diverse mexican tropical wet forests although some studies have described the amphibians and reptiles of the region most herpetological lists come from the northern part of the lacandona and there are no confirmed records for many of the expected species we reviewed databases of scientific collections taxonomy and published herpetological lists to produce the most recent updated list of amphibian and reptile species in the region 35 amphibians and 90 reptiles furthermore based on recent inventories 2007â 2013 we establish 40 range extensions of 8 amphibians and 32 reptiles for the southeastern part of the lacandona rainforest four out of these 40 records confirmed the occurrence of dermophis mexicanus eleutherodactylus leprus pantherophis flavirufus and bothriechis schlegelii in the region la selva lacandona representa uno de los bosques hãºmedos tropicales mã s diversos de mã xico aunque algunos estudios han descrito a los anfibios y reptiles de la regiã n la mayorã a de los listados herpetolã gicos proceden de la parte norte de la lacandona y no existen registros confirmados para muchas de las especies esperadas se han revisado bases de datos de colecciones cientã ficas la taxonomã a y listados herpetolã gicos publicados para generar la lista mã s actualizada de especies de anfibios y reptiles de la regiã n 35 anfibios y 90 reptiles ademã s con base en inventarios recientes 2007â 2013 se estableciã la extensiã n del ã rea de distribuciã n de 8 anfibios y 32 reptiles para la parte sureste de la selva lacandona cuatro de estos 40 registros confirmaron la presencia de dermophis mexicanus eleutherodactylus leprus pantherophis flavirufus y bothriechis schlegelii en la regiã n,2015,0.08
Projecting future expansion of invasive species: Comparing and improving methodologies for species distribution modeling.,modeling the distributions of species especially of invasive species in non native ranges involves multiple challenges here we developed some novel approaches to species distribution modeling aimed at reducing the influences of such challenges and improving the realism of projections we estimated species environment relationships with four modeling methods run with multiple scenarios of 1 sources of occurrences and geographically isolated background ranges for absences 2 approaches to drawing background absence points and 3 alternate sets of predictor variables we further tested various quantitative metrics of model evaluation against biological insight model projections were very sensitive to the choice of training dataset model accuracy was much improved by using a global dataset for model training rather than restricting data input to the species native range auc score was a poor metric for model evaluation and if used alone was not a useful criterion for assessing model performance projections away from the sampled space i e into areas of potential future invasion were very different depending on the modeling methods used raising questions about the reliability of ensemble projections generalized linear models gave very unrealistic projections far away from the training region models that efficiently fit the dominant pattern but exclude highly local patterns in the dataset and capture interactions as they appear in data e g boosted regression trees improved generalization of the models biological knowledge of the species and its distribution was important in refining choices about the best set of projections a post hoc test conducted on a new partenium dataset from nepal validated excellent predictive performance of our best model we showed that vast stretches of currently uninvaded geographic areas on multiple continents harbor highly suitable habitats for parthenium hysterophorus l asteraceae parthenium however discrepancies between model predictions and parthenium invasion in australia indicate successful management for this globally significant weed this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.205
Global Cicada Sound Collection I: Recordings from South Africa and Malawi by B. W. Price & M. H. Villet and harvesting of BioAcoustica data by GBIF.,background sound collections for singing insects provide important repositories that underpin existing research e g price et al 2007 at http bio acousti ca node 11801 price et al 2010 and make bioacoustic collections available for future work including insect communication ordish 1992 systematics e g david et al 2003 and automated identification bennett et al 2015 the bioacoustica platform baker et al 2015 is both a repository and analysis platform for bioacoustic collections allowing collections to be available in perpetuity and also facilitating complex analyses using the biovel cloud infrastructure vicario et al 2011 the global cicada sound collection is a project to make recordings of the world s cicadas hemiptera cicadidae available using open licences to maximise their potential for study and reuse this first component of the global cicada sound collection comprises recordings made between 2006 and 2008 of cicadidae in south africa and malawi new information this collection of sounds includes 219 recordings of 133 voucher specimens comprising 42 taxa 25 identified to species all identified to genus from south africa and malawi the recordings have been used to underpin work on the species limits of cicadas in southern africa including price et al 2007 and price et al 2010 the specimens are deposited in the albany museum grahamstown south africa amgs the harvesting of acoustic data as occurrence records by gbif has been implemented by the scratchpads team at the natural history museum london this link increases the value of individual recordings and the bioacoustica platform within the global infrastructure of biodiversity informatics by making specimen occurence records from bioacoustica available to a wider audience and allowing their integration with other occurence datasets that also contribute to gbif,2015,0.489
"Amphibians of the Philippines, Part I: Checklist of the Species",the herpetological fauna of the philippines islands is high in diversity and endemism yet faces threats suc as habitat modification and loss natural catastrophes invasive speciesm hunting for food or the pet trade and the spread of chytrid fungus new species descriptions have been steadily rising since the early 1990s due to the increased sampling an aareness of species boundaries based on phylogenetic studies and changes in our understanding of what definesa species developing a complete species list for amphibians is essential for conservation planning and informed management decisions previous lists were derived in part from working compendiums developed and distributed separately by ric and acd these simpe lists focused on taxonomic and conservation status of the included species respectively but were of limited us for other purposes,2015,0.826
The threatened epiphytic lichen Lobaria pulmonaria in the Iberian Peninsula: Genetic diversity and structure across a latitudinal gradient.,the current genetic diversity and structure of a species plays a marked role in the species future response to environmental changes identification of the factors that might ensure the long term viability of populations along its distribution area is therefore important for conserving biodiversity in this work infraspecific genetic diversity and structure of the threatened lichen lobaria pulmonaria was investigated along a latitudinal gradient spanning the spanish latitudinal range of l pulmonaria eighteen populations in northern central and southern spain were analysed using six specific fungal microsatellites of l pulmonaria genetic diversity indices were calculated and compared among populations genetic differentiation was assessed using amova and bayesian methods additionally a redundancy analysis was used to estimate the relative importance of environmental factors on the genetic variation among populations annual precipitation was the only factor affecting the genetic diversity probably through its influence on population and thallus size of l pulmonaria and significantly higher levels of genetic diversity were detected in southern populations isolation by distance was not significant being environmental variables most important factors controlling genetic variation in l pulmonaria populations,2015,0.872
Thermophilization of adult and juvenile tree communities in the northern tropical Andes.,climate change is expected to cause shifts in the composition of tropical montane forests towards increased relative abundances of species whose ranges were previously centered at lower hotter elevations to investigate this process of thermophilization we analyzed patterns of compositional change over the last decade using recensus data from a network of 16 adult and juvenile tree plots in the tropical forests of northern andes mountains and adjacent lowlands in northwestern colombia analyses show evidence that tree species composition is strongly linked to temperature and that composition is changing directionally through time potentially in response to climate change and increasing temperatures mean rates of thermophilization thermal migration rate tmr â câ y 1 across all censuses were 0 011 â câ y 1 95 confidence interval 0 002 0 022 â câ y 1 for adult trees and 0 027 â câ y 1 95 confidence interval 0 009 0 050 â câ y 1 for juvenile trees the fact that thermophilization is occurring in both the adult and juvenile trees and at rates consistent with concurrent warming supports the hypothesis that the observed compositional changes are part of a long term process such as global warming and are not a response to any single episodic event the observed changes in composition were driven primarily by patterns of tree mortality indicating that the changes in composition are mostly via range retractions rather than range shifts or expansions these results all indicate that tropical forests are being strongly affected by climate change and suggest that many species will be at elevated risk for extinction as warming continues,2015,0.775
Catalogue of type specimens of fungi and lichens deposited in the Herbarium of the University of Granada (Spain).,background a catalogue of types from the herbarium of the university of granada has not previously been compiled as a result a search of these collections in order to compile digital images for preservation and publication yielded a large number of formerly unrecognized types new information this dataset contains the specimen records from the catalogue of the nomenclature types of fungi and lichens in the herbarium of the university of granada spain these herbarium specimens are included in the gda and gdac collections acronyms from index herbariorum thiers 2014 at this time the type collection of fungi and lichens contains 88 type specimens of 49 nominal taxa most from agaricales and the genus cortinarius described from the western mediterranean mainly spain by the following authors v antonin j ballarã a bidaud g f bills m bon c cano m casares g chevassut m contu f esteve raventã s r galã n l guzmã n dã valos r henry e horak r mahiques g malenã on p moã nne loccoz g moreno a ortega f palazã n v n suã rez santiago a vãªzda j vila and m villareal for each specimen the locality indication species name observation date collector type status related information associated sequences other catalogue numbers related to each type and image url are recorded the dataset is associated with an image collection named colecciã n de imã genes de los tipos nomenclaturales de hongos lã quenes musgos y algas incluidos en el herbario de la universidad de granada gda y gdac vizoso and quesada 2013 which is housed and accessible at the global biodiversity information facility in spain gbif es hosting and publishing service biodiversity image portal of spanish collections and is also available at the herbarium of university of granada institutional web vizoso 2014a vizoso 2014b that image collection contains 113 images of which 56 correspond to the nomenclature types of 49 taxa 47 fungi 2 lichens the rest of the images in this collection correspond to documents and specimens or microscopy photographs which are included in the herbarium specimens of fungi these complement and document the process of the typification,2015,0.289
A checklist of the centipedes (Chilopoda) of Lithuania,only 4 species of centipedes were previously reported for lithuania here we present current distributional data for a total of 20 species 12 species of lithobiomorpha and 8 species of geophilomorpha collected mainly during 7 years conducting ecological research at curonian spit drawing on samples from the central eastern and north western parts of lithuania,2015,0.851
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 65 New synonyms in Scapaniaceae,scapania portoricensis hampe amp gottsche 1852 342 is the only scapania dumortier 1831 38 dumortier 1835 14 species endemic to the neotropics and one of three species of this genus known from this area it is widespread in mountain regions of tropical america from mexico and west indies to bolivia and se brazil the species was studied in detail by herzog 1928 and hong 1988 but two species cited below as conspecific with scapania portoricensis were not included in these studies,2015,0.808
"The importance of the human footprint in shaping the global distribution of terrestrial, freshwater and marine invaders.",human activities such as transport trade and tourism are likely to influence the spatial distribution of non native species and yet species distribution models sdms that aim to predict the future broad scale distribution of invaders often rely on environmental e g climatic information only this study investigates if and to what extent do human activities that directly or indirectly influence nature hereafter the human footprint affect the global distribution of invasive species in terrestrial freshwater and marine ecosystems we selected 72 species including terrestrial plants terrestrial animals freshwater and marine invasive species of concern in a focus area located in nw europe encompassing great britain france the netherlands and belgium species distribution models were calibrated with the global occurrence of species and a set of high resolution 9ã 9 km environmental e g topography climate geology layers and human footprint proxies e g the human influence index population density road proximity our analyses suggest that the global occurrence of a wide range of invaders is primarily limited by climate temperature tolerance was the most important factor and explained on average 42 of species distribution nevertheless factors related to the human footprint explained a substantial amount 23 on average of species distributions when global models were projected into the focus area spatial predictions integrating the human footprint featured the highest cumulative risk scores close to transport networks proxy for invasion pathways and in habitats with a high human influence index proxy for propagule pressure we conclude that human related information currently available in the form of easily accessible maps and databases should be routinely implemented into predictive frameworks to inform upon policies to prevent and manage invasions otherwise we might be seriously underestimating the species and areas under highest risk of future invasions,2015,0.969
"Reconstructing changes in the genotype, phenotype, and climatic niche of an introduced species",an introduced species must contend with enormous environmental variation in its introduced range in this study we use niche models and ordination analyses to reconstruct changes in genotype phenotype and climatic niche of johnsongrass sorghum halepense which is regarded as one of the world s most threatening invasive plants in the united states johnsongrass has rapidly evolved within and among population genetic diversity our results show that genetic differentiation in expanding johnsongrass populations has resulted in phenotypic variation that is consistent with habitat and climatic variation encountered during its expansion moreover johnsongrass expanded from agricultural to non agricultural habitat and now despite occupying overlapping ranges extant agricultural and non agricultural populations are genetically and phenotypically distinct and manifest different plastic responses when encountering environmental variation non agricultural accessions are broadly distributed in climatic and geographic space and their fitness traits demonstrate plastic responses to common garden conditions that are consistent with local specialization in contrast agricultural accessions demonstrate â œgeneral purposeâ plastic responses and have more restricted climatic niches and geographic distributions they also grow much larger than non agricultural accessions if these differences are adaptive our results suggest that adaptation to local habitat variation plays a crucial role in the ecology of this invader further its success relates to its ability to succeed on dual fronts by responding simultaneously to habitat and climate variability and by capitalizing on differential responses to these factors during its range expansion,2015,0.434
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 66. Nomenclatural notes on Acrobolbaceae,the liverwort family acrobolbaceae hodgson 1962 117 is primarily distributed in the southern hemisphere and is currently described as containing three subfamilies and seven genera with approximately 60 accepted species names the subfamily acrobolboideae or acrobolbaceae s str has historically contained the genera acrobolbus gottsche et al 1844 5 marsupidium mitt in hooker 1867 751 and tylimanthus mitt in hooker 1867 751,2015,0.476
Towards Cleaning-up Open Data Portals: A Metadata Reconciliation Approach,this paper presents an approach for metadata reconciliation curation and linking for open governamental data portals odps odps have been lately the standard solution for governments willing to put their public data available for the society portal managers use several types of metadata to organize the datasets one of the most important ones being the tags however the tagging process is subject to many problems such as synonyms ambiguity or incoherence among others as our empiric analysis of odps shows these issues are currently prevalent in most odps and effectively hinders the reuse of open data in order to address these problems we develop and implement an approach for tag reconciliation in open data portals encompassing local actions related to individual portals and global actions for adding a semantic metadata layer above individual portals the local part aims to enhance the quality of tags in a single portal and the global part is meant to interlink odps by establishing relations between tags,2015,0.169
Differential effects of climate and species interactions on range limits at a hybrid zone: potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change,the relative contributions of climate versus interspecific interactions in shaping species distributions have important implications for closely related species at contact zones when hybridization occurs within a contact zone these factors regulate hybrid zone location and movement while a hybrid zone s position may depend on both climate and interactions between the hybridizing species little is known about how these factors interact to affect hybrid zone dynamics here we utilize sdm species distribution modeling both to characterize the factors affecting the current location of a moving north american avian hybrid zone and to predict potential direct and indirect effects of climate change on future distributions we focus on two passerine species that hybridize where their ranges meet the black capped poecile atricapillus and carolina p carolinensis chickadee our contemporary climate models predict the occurrence of climatically suitable habitat extending beyond the hybrid zone for p atricapillus only suggesting that interspecific interactions primarily regulate this range boundary in p atricapillus while climatic factors regulate p carolinensis year 2050 climate models predict a drastic northward shift in suitable habitat for p carolinensis because of the greater importance of interspecific interactions for regulating the southern range limit of p atricapillus these climate mediated shifts in the distribution of p carolinensis may indirectly lead to a range retraction in p atricapillus together our results highlight the ways climate change can both directly and indirectly affect species distributions and hybrid zone location in addition our study lends support to the longstanding hypothesis that abiotic factors regulate species poleward range limits while biotic factors shape equatorial range limits,2015,0.924
Trying to engage the crowd in recording invasive alien species in Europe: experiences from two smartphone applications in northwest Europe,new technologies such as smartphone appli cation software apps are increasingly used to reach a wider audience on the subject of invasive alien species ias and to involve the public in recording them in this paper we pr esent two of the more recent smartphone app lications for ias recording in northwest europe the rinse thatâ s invasive app and the korina app we present an overview of available smartphone apps for ias recording in europe and addr ess issues of data integra tion data openness data quality data harmonisation and da tabase interoperability finally we make some recommendations for future app design,2015,0.255
Supporting underrepresented forests in Mesoamerica,the third largest biodiversity hotspot of the world mesoamerican forests are declining due to human pressures based on species distribution models calibrated for 1224 native tree species in mesoamerica we identified high value forest conservation areas at the resolution of a 10kmã 10km cells using the zonation reserve selection software and investigated whether these high value forest conservation areas are well represented by the world database on protected areas network we had three key findings first dry forest is the least protected biome in mesoamerica 4 5 protected indicating that further action to safeguard this biome is warranted secondly the poor overlap between protected areas and high value forest conservation areas found herein may provide evidence that the establishment of protected areas may not be fully accounting for tree priority rank map third high percentages of forest cover and high value forest conservation areas still need to be represented by the protected areas network because deforestation rates are still increasing in this region mesoamerica needs funding and coordinated action by policy makers national and local governmental and non governmental organizations conservationists and other stakeholders,2015,0.518
Potential geographic distribution of two invasive cassava green mites.,the cassava green mites mononychellus tanajoa and m mcgregori are highly invasive species that rank among the most serious pests of cassava globally to guide the development of appropriate risk mitigation measures preventing their introduction and spread this article estimates their potential geographic distribution using the maximum entropy approach to distribution modeling we compiled 1 232 occurrence records for m tanajoa and 99 for m mcgregori and relied on the worldclim climate database as a source of environmental predictors to mitigate the potential impact of uneven sampling efforts we applied a distance correction filter resulting in 429 occurrence records for m tanajoa and 55 for m mcgregori to test for environmental biases in our occurrence data we developed models trained and tested with records from different continents before developing the definitive models using the full record sets the geographically structured models revealed good cross validation for m tanajoa but not for m mcgregori likely reflecting a subtropical bias in m mcgregori s invasive range in asia the definitive models exhibited very good performance and predicted different potential distribution patterns for the two species relative to m tanajoa m mcgregori seems better adapted to survive in locations lacking a pronounced dry season for example across equatorial climates our results should help decision makers assess the site specific risk of cassava green mite establishment and develop proportional risk mitigation measures to prevent their introduction and spread these results should be particularly timely to help address the recent detection of m mcgregori in southeast asia,2015,0.377
Visualising Geophylogenies in Web Maps Using GeoJSON.,this article describes a simple tool to display geophylogenies on web maps including google maps and openstreetmap the tool reads a nexus format file that includes geographic information and outputs a geojson format file that can be displayed in a web map application,2015,0.234
EXPLICITLY ACCOUNTING FOR UNCERTAINTY IN CROWDSOURCED DATA FOR SPECIES DISTRIBUTION MODELLING,species distribution models represent an important approach to map the spread of plant and animal species over space and time as all the statistical modelling techniques related to data from the field they are prone to uncertainty in this study we explicitly dealt with uncertainty deriving from field data sampling in particular we propose i methods to map sampling effort bias and ii methods to map semantic bias,2015,0.547
"USBombus, a database of contemporary survey data for North American Bumble Bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Bombus) distributed in the United States",background bumble bees hymenoptera apidae bombus are pollinators of wild and economically important flowering plants however at least four bumble bee species have declined significantly in population abundance and geographic range relative to historic estimates and one species is possibly extinct while a wealth of historic data is now available for many of the north american species found to be in decline in online databases systematic survey data of stable species is still not publically available the availability of contemporary survey data is critically important for the future monitoring of wild bumble bee populations without such data the ability to ascertain the conservation status of bumble bees in the united states will remain challenging new information this paper describes usbombus a large database that represents the outcomes of one of the largest standardized surveys of bumble bee pollinators hymenoptera apidae bombus globally the motivation to collect live bumble bees across the united states was to examine the decline and conservation status of bombus affinis b occidentalis b pensylvanicus and b terricola prior to our national survey of bumble bees in the united states from 2007 to 2010 there have only been regional accounts of bumble bee abundance and richness in addition to surveying declining bumble bees we also collected and documented a diversity of co occuring bumble bees however we have not yet completely reported their distribution and diversity onto a public online platform now for the first time we report the geographic distribution of bumble bees reported to be in decline cameron et al 2011 as well as bumble bees that appeared to be stable on a large geographic scale in the united states not in decline in this database we report a total of 17 930 adult occurrence records across 397 locations and 39 species of bombus detected in our national survey we summarize their abundance and distribution across the united states and association to different ecoregions the geospatial coverage of the dataset extends across 41 of the 50 us states and from 0 to 3500 m a s l authors and respective field crews spent a total of 512 hours surveying bumble bees from 2007 to 2010 the dataset was developed using sql server 2008 r2 for each specimen the following information is generally provided species name sex caste temporal and geospatial details cartesian coordinates data collector s and when available host plants this database has already proven useful for a variety of studies on bumble bee ecology and conservation however it is not publicly available considering the value of pollinators in agriculture and wild ecosystems this large database of bumble bees will likely prove useful for investigations of the effects of anthropogenic activities on pollinator community composition and conservation status,2015,0.959
Interactions between tick and transmitted pathogens evolved to minimise competition through nested and coherent networks,natural foci of ticks pathogens and vertebrate reservoirs display complex relationships that are key to the circulation of pathogens and infection dynamics through the landscape however knowledge of the interaction networks involved in transmission of tick borne pathogens are limited because empirical studies are commonly incomplete or performed at small spatial scales here we applied the methodology of ecological networks to quantify 14 000 interactions among ticks vertebrates and pathogens in the western palearctic these natural networks are highly structured modular coherent and nested to some degree we found that the large number of vertebrates in the network contributes to its robustness and persistence its structure reduces interspecific competition and allows ample but modular circulation of transmitted pathogens among vertebrates accounting for domesticated hosts collapses the network s modular structure linking groups of hosts that were previously unconnected and increasing the circulation of pathogens this framework indicates that ticks and vertebrates interact along the shared environmental gradient while pathogens are linked to groups of phylogenetically close reservoirs,2015,0.496
Biosystematics and conservation biology: critical scientific disciplines for the management of insect biological diversity,biosystematics and conservation biology are critical scientific disciplines that underpin the management of biological diversity this is because biosystematics provides two basic elements that are fundamental to conservation management the circumscription of species and the spatial distribution of species these elements in turn allow conservation biologists to determine the components of biodiversity such as local species richness î diversity composition and community structure patterns of spatial turnover and heterogeneity î diversity levels of endemism and location of â biodiversity hotspotsâ this information ultimately provides a framework for systematic conservation planning for the management of biological diversity and natural resources in this review drawing on examples of australian diurnal lepidoptera butterflies and day flying moths we discuss three areas of conservation biology that are crucial for insect biodiversity conservation 1 inventory and estimation of faunal richness 2 monitoring for conservation management and the selection and use of bioindicators and 3 assessment of conservation status and recovery of threatened species we then explore the capacity of biosystematics to complement and enhance these programmes major challenges for biosystematics are to catalogue and map the earth s known species to discover and describe new or as yet unknown species to reconstruct the evolutionary history or tree of life and to incorporate phylogenetic diversity taxonomic distinctiveness as a component of biodiversity into conservation planning and practical nature conservation the first two tasks which need to be completed relatively urgently in an era of biodiversity crisis and a limited and declining pool of taxonomic expertise are required in order to optimise conservation effort of the world s biodiversity it is recommended that to overcome the taxonomic impediment for insect conservation taxonomic attention should focus on a limited set of â priorityâ taxa and the rate at which new species are discovered and described needs to be accelerated by at least an order of magnitude an agenda for future research in biosystematics and conservation biology is proposed as a guideline for biodiversity conservation for australian entomology,2015,0.833
"South African National Survey of Arachnida (SANSA): review of current knowledge, constraints and future needs for documenting spider diversity (Arachnida: Araneae)",biodiversity is one of the most important concepts in contemporary biology with a broad range of applications in november 1995 south africa ratified the convention on biological diversity cbd signatories are obligated to develop a strategic plan for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity to meet the requirements of the cbd the south african national survey of arachnida sansa was initiated in 1997 this national project has several aims to document and describe the arachnid fauna of south africa to consolidate all the available data on south african arachnids into one relational database and to make this biodiversity information available to science and to address issues concerning their conservation and sustainable use extensive sampling took place and the sansa database contains a wealth of biodiversity data that are used to provide answers to ecological questions presently 71 spider families 471 genera and 2170 species are known from south africa representing approximately,2015,0.365
Mapping of marine benthic invertebrates in the Oslofjord and the Skagerrak: sampling data of museum collections from 1950-1955 and from recent investigations,data from large sampling programmes for the mapping of marine invertebrates in the oslofjord norway and the skagerrak spanning more than six decades are compiled and digitized to provide easy access in modern data repositories two sampling programmes undertaken in the period 1950â 55 are still the most extensive mapping of marine benthic fauna in the area information from a total of more than 900 localities or sampling events covering all benthic habitats in the oslofjord and coastal waters to kvitsã y in rogaland county have been carefully digitized from field notes original sea charts and primary observations from sample handling in the field geographical coordinates referred to wgs84 chart datum have been fixed with a general accuracy of 20 m in the oslofjord and 100â 250 m in coastal areas based on precise map sketches with cross bearings to land objects and chart annotations most samples were collected using triangular agassiz and lightweight dredges the collected material has been deposited in the collections of the natural history museum university of oslo two recent projects â polyskagâ and â bioskagâ 2006â 2014 are briefly described the projects focused on the diversity of marine bristle worms polychaeta inter alia providing material for molecular genetic analyses type localities for early described species and generally understudied biotopes were visited the data from the 1950s together with recent studies constitute a considerable resource for studies of biodiversity facilitated through the sharing of species records from the museum collections in modern data repositories the accurate positioning of sampling localities in the 1950s is of particular value for documenting species distributions over long time spans thus providing a reference base for studying present and future species changes and assessing the effects of human influence and environmental changes in the oslofjord and the skagerrak,2015,0.851
Anhydrobiosis and freezing-tolerance: adaptations that facilitate the establishment of Panagrolaimus nematodes in polar habitats.,anhydrobiotic animals can survive the loss of both free and bound water from their cells while in this state they are also resistant to freezing this physiology adapts anhydrobiotes to harsh environments and it aids their dispersal panagrolaimus davidi a bacterial feeding anhydrobiotic nematode isolated from ross island antarctica can survive intracellular ice formation when fully hydrated a capacity to survive freezing while fully hydrated has also been observed in some other antarctic nematodes we experimentally determined the anhydrobiotic and freezing tolerance phenotypes of 24 panagrolaimus strains from tropical temperate continental and polar habitats and we analysed their phylogenetic relationships we found that several other panagrolaimus isolates can also survive freezing when fully hydrated and that tissue extracts from these freezing tolerant nematodes can inhibit the growth of ice crystals we show that p davidi belongs to a clade of anhydrobiotic and freezing tolerant panagrolaimids containing strains from temperate and continental regions and that p superbus an early colonizer at surtsey island iceland after its volcanic formation is closely related to a species from pennsylvania usa ancestral state reconstructions show that anhydrobiosis evolved deep in the phylogeny of panagrolaimus the early diverging panagrolaimus lineages are strongly anhydrobiotic but weakly freezing tolerant suggesting that freezing tolerance is most likely a derived trait the common ancestors of the davidi and the superbus clades were anhydrobiotic and also possessed robust freezing tolerance along with a capacity to inhibit the growth and recrystallization of ice crystals unlike other endemic antarctic nematodes the life history traits of p davidi do not show evidence of an evolved response to polar conditions thus we suggest that the colonization of antarctica by p davidi and of surtsey by p superbus may be examples of recent ecological fitting of freezing tolerant anhydrobiotic propagules to the respective abiotic conditions in ross island and surtsey,2015,0.916
New records of corticolous lichens for South America and Brazil,background and aims â the corticolous microlichens are the greatest group of lichens in the world and also the least known for this reason intensive studies on this group are seriously needed based on this necessity the main objective of this paper is to present new records of corticolous microlichen species for south america brazil the southern region of brazil and the state of rio grande do sul methods â the species were collected in three different forest types native araucaria forest atlantic rainforest and riparian forests from the pampa biome key results â a total of 43 new records of corticolous microlichen species are here presented six species are new reports for south america cryptothelium cecidiogenum aptroot lã cking distopyrenis composita r c harris graphis pseudocinerea lã cking umaã a herpothallon echinatum aptroot lã cking will wolf lecanora thysanophora r c harris and psoroglaena stigonemoides orange henssen two species are new records for brazil pyrenula dissimulans mã ll arg r c harris and rinodina conradii kã rb while four are new occurrences for the state of rio grande do sul graphis elongata zenker graphis furcata fã e graphis longula kremp and haematomma africanum steiner dodge thirty one new records are as well reported here for the southern region of brazil conclusion â the high number of new crustose species records of this study greatly contributes to the current knowledge on lichens additionally our study highlights the importance of conserving all kinds of forest environments since they are important areas for lichen establishment and dispersion,2015,0.946
"Past Arctic aliens have passed away, current ones may stay",increased human activity and climate change are expected to increase the numbers and impact of alien species in the arctic but knowledge of alien species is poor in most arctic regions through field investigations over the last 10 years and review of alien vascular plant records for the high arctic archipelago svalbard over the past 130 years we explored long term trends in persistence and phenology in total 448 observations of 105 taxa have been recorded from 28 sites recent surveys at 18 of these sites revealed that alien species had disappeared at half of them investigations at a further 49 sites characterised by former human activity and or current tourist landing sites did not reveal any alien species patterns of alien species distribution suggest that greater alien species richness is more likely to be aligned with ongoing human inhabitation than sites of transient use the probability of an alien species being in a more advanced phenological stage increased with higher mean july temperatures as higher mean july temperatures are positively correlated with more recent year the latter finding suggests a clear warming effect on the increased reproductive potential of alien plants and thus an increased potential for spread in svalbard given that both human activity and temperatures are expected to increase in the future there is need to respond in policy and action to reduce the potential for further alien species introduction and spread in the arctic,2015,0.942
Geographic Spread of Pheidole Obscurithorax (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),the south american big headed ant pheidole obscurithorax was first found in north america in mobile alabama in 1949 since then this species has also been recorded in florida georgia mississippi and texas we compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records of p obscurithorax from 170 sites in south america and the us to evaluate the current geographic range of this species and its possible future spread we documented the earliest known records for nine geographic areas south american countries and us states site records of p obscurithorax ranged 27 5 degrees of latitude from 6 7â s to 34 2â s in south america and 3 5 degrees of latitude from 28 0â n to 31 5â n in north america it may be that the north american populations of p obscurithorax have a fairly narrow range of climatic tolerances earlier genetic analyses of native and exotic populations of p obscurithorax found that the north america populations appear to originate from a single introduction from a population most closely related to native study populations from a stretch along the paranã river in argentina from resistencia 27 5â s to santa fe 31 6â s this latitudinal range matches the current latitudinal range of p obscurithorax in north america alternatively the much greater latitudinal range of p obscurithorax in south america suggests that exotic populations of p obscurithorax may have potential for much additional expansion in north america and beyond in south america p obscurithorax has a similar native range as the invasive fire ant solenopsis invicta in the north america exotic populations of p obscurithorax may spread like s invicta has across the southeast of the us and into the west indies,2015,0.935
Update on the distribution of Myotis atacamensis (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae): first record from central Chile and description of echolocation calls,myotis atacamensis is a vespertilionid bat known from western peru to northern and central chile where it is usually associated with coastal deserts here w e report the southernmost record of th e species extending its geographical distribution by 160 km this represents the first observation of m atacamensis in the temperate sclerophyllous f orest of central chile a pluviseasonal mediterranean climate ecosystem suggesting it might not be restricted to arid and semiarid environments as previously thought we also present the first description of echolocation calls of this understudied specie s,2015,0.47
Rapid Morphological Change in the Masticatory Structures of an Important Ecosystem Service Provider.,humans have altered the biotic and abiotic environmental conditions of most organisms in some cases such as intensive agriculture an organism s entire ecosystem is converted to novel conditions thus it is striking that some species continue to thrive under such conditions the prairie deer mouse peromyscus maniculatus bairdii is an example of such an organism and so we sought to understand what role evolutionary adaptation played in the success of this species with particular interest in adaptations to novel foods in order to understand the evolutionary history of this species masticatory structures we examined the maxilla zygomatic plate and mandible of historic specimens collected prior to 1910 to specimens collected in 2012 and 2013 we found that mandibles zygomatic plates and maxilla have all changed significantly since 1910 and that morphological development has shifted significantly we present compelling evidence that these differences are due to natural selection as a response to a novel and ubiquitous food source waste grain corn zea mays and soybean glycine max,2015,0.77
Escarabajos coprófagos (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) de bosques secos colombianos en la Colección Entomológica del Instituto Alexander von Humboldt,this reports includes the records of dung beetles associated with the dry forests of colombia present at the entomological collection of the instituto de investigaciã n de recursos biolã gicos alexander von humboldt the data set includes 11686 records 19797 specimens belonging to 18 genera and 68 species the species sorting included an exhaustive study of the external morphology and male genitalia for species identification updated taxonomic revisions original descriptions re descriptions and regional revisions were used it was possible to identify 35 to species genus and species names and another 33 species were assigned a unique morpho species code identifier after the generic name was determined morph species code the lack of recent taxonomic revisions in genera such as canthon canthidium dichotomius uroxys and onthophagus has limited the identification to specific level in colombia a reason for the incomplete and imprecise species list that had been published this data set supports the most complete and verified species list of dung beetles of the dry forests of colombia,2015,0.96
Data Quality Assurance in International Supply Chains: An Application of the Value Cycle Approach,with increasing international trade and growing emphasis on security and efficiency enhanced information and data sharing between different stakeholders in global supply chains is required currently data quality is not only problematic for traders but also for various government agencies involved in border control such as customs authorities and border force we adapt principles from value cycle modelling in accounting and show how these principles enabled by ict can be extended to supply chain management to ensure quality of data reported to customs we then describe a typical application scenario based on a real but anonymsed case to show that value cycle monitoring can be applied feasibility and if applied what the expected benefits are usefulness,2015,0.292
"SIFlore, a dataset of geographical distribution of vascular plants covering five centuries of knowledge in France: Results of a collaborative project coordinated by the Federation of the National Botanical Conservatories",more than 20 years ago the french musã um national dâ histoire naturelle1 mnhn secretariat of the fauna and flora published the first part of an atlas of the flora of france at a 20km spatial resolution accounting for 645 taxa dupont 1990 since then at the national level there has not been any work on this scale relating to flora distribution despite the obvious need for a better understanding in 2011 in response to this need the federation des conservatoires botaniques nationaux2 fcbn http www fcbn fr launched an ambitious collaborative project involving eleven national botanical conservatories of france the project aims to establish a formal procedure and standardized system for data hosting aggregation and publication for four areas flora fungi vegetation and habitats in 2014 the first phase of the project led to the development of the national flora dataset siflore as it includes about 21 million records of flora occurrences this is currently the most comprehensive dataset on the distribution of vascular plants tracheophyta in the french territory siflore contains information for about 15 454 plant taxa occurrences indigenous and alien taxa in metropolitan france and reunion island from 1545 until 2014 the data records were originally collated from inventories checklists literature and herbarium records siflore was developed by assembling flora datasets from the regional to the national level at the regional level source records are managed by the national botanical conservatories that are responsible for flora data collection and validation in order to present our results a geoportal was developed by the fã dã ration des conservatoires botaniques nationaux that allows the siflore dataset to be publically viewed this portal is available at http siflore fcbn fr as the fcbn belongs to the information system for nature and landscapesâ sinp a governmental program the dataset is also accessible through the websites of the national inventory of natural heritage http www inpn fr and the global biodiversity information facility http www gbif fr siflore is regularly updated with additional data records it is also planned to expand the scope of the dataset to include information about taxon biology phenology ecology chorology frequency conservation status and seed banks a map showing an estimation of the dataset completeness based on jackknife 1 estimator is presented and included as a numerical appendix,2015,0.11
Extreme habitat loss in a Mediterranean habitat: Maytenus senegalensis subsp. europaea,maytenus senegalensis subsp europaea communities are unique vegetal formations in europe in fact they are considered priority habitat by directive 92 43 eec these are ecologically valuable plant communities found in the southeast of spain by combining modeling methods of environmental variables historical photo interpretation and fieldwork a chronosequence of the evolution of their extent of occurrence eoo has been reconstructed in 1957 and 2011 results showed a strong regression range of m senegalensis subsp europaea populations more than 26 000 ha of eoo for this species have been lost in the province of almerã a considering the final number of polygons this area has been fragmented 18 times since the 1950s these results reinforce the idea that the alteration and fragmentation of habitat due to human activities is one of the most important drivers of biodiversity loss and global change these activities are mostly intensive greenhouse agriculture and urbanization without sustainable land,2015,0.45
"First Record of Dyscinetus laevipunctatus Bates (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae, Dynastinae) in an Aquatic Environment in Mexico",abstract the scarab beetle dyscinetus laevipunctatus bates 1888 dynastinae cyclocephalini is recorded for the first time in an aquatic habitat specimens of d laevipunctatus were found submerged in association with water hyacinth eichhornia crassipes mart at several localities in the state of tabasco mexico these findings indicate that dyscinetus spp may be a broader facultatively aquatic group of species than previously realized by aquatic entomologists,2015,0.228
A phylogenetic classification of jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae),the classification of jumping spiders salticidae is revised to bring it into accord with recent phylogenetic work of the 610 recognized extant and fossil genera 588 are placed at least to subfamily most to tribe based on both molecular and morphological information the new subfamilies onomastinae asemoneinae and eupoinae and the new tribes lapsiini tisanibini neonini mopsini and nannenini are described a new unranked clade the simonida is recognized most other family group taxa formerly ranked as subfamilies are given new status as tribes or subtribes the large long recognized clade recently called the salticoida is ranked as a subfamily the salticinae with the name salticoida reassigned to its major subgroup the sister group to the amycoida heliophaninae petrunkevitch and pelleninae petrunkevitch are considered junior synonyms of chrysillini simon and harmochirina simon respectively spartaeinae wanless and euophryini simon are preserved despite older synonyms the genus meata å abka is synonymized with gedea simon and diagondas simon with carrhotus thorell the proposed relationships indicate that a strongly ant like body has evolved at least 12 times in salticids and a strongly beetle like body at least 8 times photographs of living specimens of all 7 subfamilies 30 tribes and 13 subtribes are presented,2015,0.293
Climate impacts on transocean dispersal and habitat in gray whales from the Pleistocene to 2100.,arctic animals face dramatic habitat alteration due to ongoing climate change understanding how such species have responded to past glacial cycles can help us forecast their response to today s changing climate gray whales are among those marine species likely to be strongly affected by arctic climate change but a thorough analysis of past climate impacts on this species has been complicated by lack of information about an extinct population in the atlantic while little is known about the history of atlantic gray whales or their relationship to the extant pacific population the extirpation of the atlantic population during historical times has been attributed to whaling we used a combination of ancient and modern dna radiocarbon dating and predictive habitat modelling to better understand the distribution of gray whales during the pleistocene and holocene our results reveal that dispersal between the pacific and atlantic was climate dependent and occurred both during the pleistocene prior to the last glacial period and the early holocene immediately following the opening of the bering strait genetic diversity in the atlantic declined over an extended interval that predates the period of intensive commercial whaling indicating this decline may have been precipitated by holocene climate or other ecological causes these first genetic data for atlantic gray whales particularly when combined with predictive habitat models for the year 2100 suggest that two recent sightings of gray whales in the atlantic may represent the beginning of the expansion of this species habitat beyond its currently realized range,2015,0.877
Current trends of rubber plantation expansion may threaten biodiversity and livelihoods,the first decade of the new millennium saw a boom in rubber prices this led to rapid and widespread land conversion to monoculture rubber plantations in continental se asia where natural rubber production has increased 50 since 2000 here we analyze the subsequent spread of rubber between 2005 and 2010 in combination with environmental data and reports on rubber plantation performance we show that rubber has been planted into increasingly sub optimal environments currently 72 of plantation area is in environmentally marginal zones where reduced yields are likely an estimated 57 of the area is susceptible to insufficient water availability erosion frost or wind damage all of which may make long term rubber production unsustainable in 2013 typhoons destroyed plantations worth us 250 million in vietnam alone and future climate change is likely to lead to a net exacerbation of environmental marginality for both current and predicted future rubber plantation area new rubber plantations are also frequently placed on lands that are important for biodiversity conservation and ecological functions for example between 2005 and 2010 2500km2 of natural tree cover and 610km2 of protected areas were converted to plantations overall expansion into marginal areas creates potential for loss loss scenarios clearing of high biodiversity value land for economically unsustainable plantations that are poorly adapted to local conditions and alter landscape functions e g hydrology erosion â ultimately compromising livelihoods particularly when rubber prices fall,2015,0.255
Understanding the risks of an emerging global market for cultivating bamboo: considerations for a more responsible dissemination of alien bamboos,in the past decade there has been a fast emerging culture surrounding bamboo â s potential in mediating environmental concerns and satisfying social and economic qualms modern processing techniques have enabled bamboos to be transformed into an array of products t hat in many ways outcompete traditional wood products in both production cost and product quality other enticing benefits include environmental mitigation by products such as carbon sequestration soil stabilis ation and restoration of degraded lands this has resulted in a strong drive for bamboo s to be cultivated en masse around the world lobovikov 2005 media efforts have particularly driven this movement by somewhat sensationalising bamboos potential with promising titles such as â miracle c ropâ and â wonder plantâ although there seems to be a compelling economic case for the possibilities of b amboo most research on bamboo has focused on agricultural pot ential maximising yields and on the economic valuation of the industry few studies have addressed the environmental risks associated with mass distribution and propagation of non native species of bamboo caution should be exercised in cultivating bamboo species in new ranges if a more responsible and sustainable industry is sought in this paper we will make a case for why further research is needed to anticipate invasion risks,2015,0.36
A simple approach for maximizing the overlap of phylogenetic and comparative data,biologists are increasingly using curated public data sets to conduct phylogenetic comparative analyses unfortunately there is often a mismatch between species for which there is phylogenetic data and those for which other data are available as a result researchers are commonly forced to either drop species from analyses entirely or else impute the missing data a simple strategy to improve the overlap of phylogenetic and comparative data is to swap species in the tree that lack data with â phylogenetically equivalentâ species that have data while this procedure is logically straightforward it quickly becomes very challenging to do by hand here we present algorithms that use topological and taxonomic information to maximize the number of swaps without altering the structure of the phylogeny we have implemented our method in a new r package phyndr which will allow researchers to apply our algorithm to empirical data sets it is relatively efficient such that taxon swaps can be quickly computed even for large trees to facilitate the use of taxonomic knowledge we created a separate data package taxonlookup it contains a curated versioned taxonomic lookup for land plants and is interoperable with phyndr emerging online data bases and statistical advances are making it possible for researchers to investigate evolutionary questions at unprecedented scales however in this effort species mismatch among data sources will increasingly be a problem evolutionary informatics tools such as phyndr and taxonlookup can help alleviate this issue,2015,0.579
Understanding Data Providers in a Global Scientific Data Hub,in the absence of systematic knowledge about the characteristics and practices of data collections successful data hubs and other platforms that support collaborative data sharing are unlikely to be designed and built we begin to fill this gap by performing an in depth case study of a global scientific data hub the encyclopedia of life in which we analyzed the organizational level identities of 259 data providers and developing a typology of the identities including venerable organizations repositories citizen science initiatives social media platforms education communities and subsidiaries this study will provide data aggregation and integration technology designers with background information on data collections,2015,0.176
Queensland Fruit Fly Invasion of New Zealand: Predicting Area Suitability Under Future Climate Change Scenarios ‹ ePress,the queensland fruit fly bactrocera tryoni froggatt diptera tephritidae is consistently described as the most damaging pest to australiaâ s horticulture industries with an annual economic cost averaging around 25 7 million from 2003 to 2008 in this paper and corresponding online map the authors discuss the significant risk to new zealand of invasion by this species the potential effects of climate change on the distribution and impacts of invasive species are well known this paper and emedia employs species distribution modelling using maxent to predict the suitability of new zealand to the queensland fruit fly based on known occurrences worldwide and bioclim climatic layers,2015,0.374
GBIS: the information system of the German Genebank.,the german federal ex situ genebank of agricultural and horticultural crop species is the largest collection of its kind in the countries of the european union and amongst the 10 largest collections worldwide beside its enormous scientific value as a safeguard of plant biodiversity the plant genetic resources maintained are also of high importance for breeders to provide new impulses the complex processes of managing such a collection are supported by the genebank information system gbis gbis is an important source of information for researchers and plant breeders e g for identifying appropriate germplasm for breeding purposes in addition the access to genebank material as a sovereign task is also of high interest to the general public moreover gbis acts as a data source for global information systems such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif or the european search catalogue for plant genetic resources eurisco database url http gbis ipk gatersleben de,2015,0.247
Gains and losses of plant species and phylogenetic diversity for a northern high-latitude region,aim forecasting potential patterns in speciesâ distributions and diversity under climate change is crucial for biodiversity conservation although high latitude regions are expected to experience some of the greatest increases in temperature due to global warming little is known on how individual responses in species will affect patterns in phylogenetic diversity pd location alberta canada methods we used 160 589 occurrence records for 1541 species of seed plants in alberta nearly 90 of the province s seed flora and ensemble niche models to project current and future suitable habitats we then examined climate change vulnerability of individual species and the potential impacts of climate change on species richness pd and both taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism pe we also assessed whether predicted losses of pd were distributed randomly across the plant tree of life results we found that 368 species 24 may lose on average 80 of their current suitable climates habitats while 539 species 35 were projected to more than double their current suitable range both species richness and pd were predicted to increase in most areas except for the species rich rocky mountains which are predicted to experience future declines maps of taxonomic and pe identified several regions with high conservation value and climate change threat suggesting priorities for conservation and climate change adaptation overall a non random extinction risk was found for alberta s flora demonstrating potential future impacts of climate change on the loss of evolutionary history main conclusions our analyses suggest that climate change will have asymmetrical effects on the distribution of alberta s plant diversity and endemism and a non random extinction risk of the current state of species evolutionary history our results provide practical guidance for biodiversity conservation and management in this region by prioritizing species vulnerabilities and places with higher taxonomic or evolutionary risk due to future climate change,2015,0.961
Diploid hybrid origin of Hippophaë gyantsensis (Elaeagnaceae) in the western Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,homoploid hybrid speciation the origin of a hybrid species without change in chromosome number is currently considered to be a rare form of speciation in the present study we examined the phylogenetic origin of hippophaã gyantsensis a diploid species occurring in the western qinghaiâ tibet plateau some of its morphological and molecular traits suggest a close relationship to h rhamnoides ssp yunnanensis while others indicate h neurocarpa we conducted phylogenetic analyses of sequence data of two maternally inherited chloroplast cp dna fragments and the bi parentally inherited nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer its from 17 populations of h gyantsensis 15 populations of h rhamnoides ssp yunnanensis and 27 populations of h neurocarpa across their distributional ranges and modelled the niche differentiation of the three taxa multiple lines of evidence suggested that h gyantsensis is a morphologically stable genetically independent and ecologically distinct species the inconsistent phylogenetic placements of the h gyantsensis clade that comprised the dominant cpdna haplotypes and its ribotypes suggested a probable diploid hybrid origin from multiple crosses between h rhamnoides ssp yunnanensis and h neurocarpa this tentative hypothesis is more parsimonious than alternative explanations according to the data available although more evidence based on further testing is needed,2015,0.863
Data Service Infrastructure for the Social Sciences and Humanities,6 www dasish eu ga no 283646 executive summary â part a the aim of this task was to analyse and compare the different metadata strategies of clarin dariah and cessda and to identify possibilities of cross fertilization to take profit from each other solutions where possible to have a better understanding in which stages of the research lifecycle metadata comes to the fore we looked at several research data lifecycles and business process models however the current research data lifecycle models have the â staticâ data object as basis whereas metadata design redesign creation and management can continue to be â liveâ issues within the research lifecycle we therefore developed a metadata lifecycle based closely on familiar lifecycle models but extended to support the more dynamic metadata issues to descri be the metadata management of the different infrastructures we took a double approach we looked on a more general level and outlined the policies and strategies regarding metadata of the three infrastructures we evaluated these strategies on metadata qua lity issues with the bruce and hillmann criteria on the other hand we looked with more detail how the work on metadata management is done by the individual data repositories the infrastructures of cessda clarin and dariah differ in visions strategies and initiatives regarding metadata issues similarly there is a difference in metadata management among the various repositories despite these differences cross fertilisation by c oordination on common lists of metadata elements sharing of knowledge and linking resources would leverage the overall metadata quality evaluation of the prototype of the joint clarin dariah and cessda metadata portal endorses the opinion that more coo rdination is needed metadata quality must be discussed in relation to the activities for which they are used we suggest that the infrastructures dariah and clarin prioritise future collaboration about standardisation efforts which have already been in itialised in dialogue between the clarin standards committee and the dariah representatives similar initiatives could be established with cessda,2015,0.055
Oil Governance in Uganda and Kenya: A review of efforts to establish baseline indicators on the impact of the oil sector in Uganda and Kenya,this report present s the result s of a study undertaken by unep wcmc for the macarthur foundation from nov ember 20 13 to may 2014 and updated in january 2015 to ï identify the data required to monitor the impact of the emerging oil sector in the ugandan albertine graben and kenyan turkan a basin on the environment and the socioeconomic livelihoods of affected people and communities in those areas and ï e stablish the suitability of data current ly being or proposed to be generated to meet such needs the purpose of the study is to inform the subsequent development of an indicator framework that c a n be used b y the macarthur foundation to monitor and evaluate both the impact of oil development on the environment and socioeconomic livelihoods of people as well as the performance of its own grant making in achieving the changes it seeks to facilitate in oil gove rnance in the great lakes region of eastern central africa the study was implemented through a desk based exercise and interviews with key informants to provide the following 1 identification and cataloguing of relevant aspects of polic ies laws and stand ards rel evant to governance and social economic and environmental performance of the oil sector in uganda and kenya 2 an al ys i s of such policies laws and standards in the context of the specific conditions and trends in the albertine graben and turkana bas in to inform the derivation of environme n tal social and governance objectives to be achieved when operating in such areas 3 identification of current or planned data generat ion in each country and an assessme n t of the ir quality and potential to be applied to the mon i toring of performance of t h e oil sector against the derived environm en tal social and governance objectives it is recognised that the situation with respect to all three of the above is fast moving influenced among others by the activities of oil companies emerging legislation including that being developed specifically to address the needs of the oil sector and evolving monitoring activities while the interviews and majority of the desk based exercise w ere carried out in late 2013 and early 20 1 4 a rapid review of legislation w as also undertaken in d ec em ber 2014 to u pdate th is aspect of the report to include ke y changes that have occurred since the initial analysis was undertake n th e situation is a nticipated however to remain subject to change and r equiring regular review as oil develop ment progresses in the g reat lakes region,2015,0.034
Southern Ocean Asteroidea: a proposed update for the Register of Antarctic Marine Species,background the register of antarctic marine species rams de broyer et al 2015 is the regional component of the world register of marine species worms editorial board 2015 in the southern ocean it has been operating for the last ten years with a special effort devoted towards its completion after the international polar year ipy in 2007 2008 in the framework of the census of antarctic marine life caml 2005 2010 its objective is to offer free and open access to a complete register of all known species living in the southern ocean building a workbench of the present taxonomic knowledge for that region the antarctic zone defined by this dynamic and community based tool has been investigated with a particular interest the sub antarctic zone was a secondary objective during the establishment of the rams and is still lacking the impulse of the scientific community for some taxa new information in the present study more than 13 000 occurrences records of asteroidea echinodermata have been compiled within the rams area of interest and checked against the rams species list of sea stars using worms taxon match tool few mismatches basionym mistakes i e original name misspelled or incorrect were found within the existing list and 97 unregistered species are actually occurring within the rams boundaries after this update the number of asteroidea species was increased by around 50 now reaching 295 accepted species,2015,0.907
"Digitization Workflows for Flat Sheets and Packets of Plants, Algae, and Fungi",effective workflows are essential components in the digitization of biodiversity specimen collections to date no comprehensive community vetted workflows have been published for digitizing flat sheets and packets of plants algae and fungi even though latest estimates suggest that only 33 of herbarium specimens have been digitally transcribed 54 of herbaria use a specimen database and 24 are imaging specimens in 2012 idigbio the u s national science foundation s nsf coordinating center and national resource for the digitization of public nonfederal u s collections launched several working groups to address this deficiency here we report the development of 14 workflow modules with 7â 36 tasks each these workflows represent the combined work of approximately 35 curators directors and collections managers representing more than 30 herbaria including 15 nsf supported plant related thematic collections networks and collaboratives the workflows are provided for download as portable document format pdf and microsoft word files customization of these workflows for specific institutional implementation is encouraged,2015,0.206
"Fishing for data and sorting the catch: assessing the data quality, completeness and fitness for use of data in marine biogeographic databases.",being able to assess the quality and level of completeness of data has become indispensable in marine biodiversity research especially when dealing with large databases that typically compile data from a variety of sources very few integrated databases offer quality flags on the level of the individual record making it hard for users to easily extract the data that are fit for their specific purposes this article describes the different steps that were developed to analyse the quality and completeness of the distribution records within the european and international ocean biogeographic information systems eurobis and obis records are checked on data format completeness and validity of information quality and detail of the used taxonomy and geographic indications and whether or not the record is a putative outlier the corresponding quality control qc flags will not only help users with their data selection they will also help the data management team and the data custodians to identify possible gaps and errors in the submitted data providing scope to improve data quality the results of these quality control procedures are as of now available on both the eurobis and obis databases through the biology portal of the european marine observation and data network emodnet biology a subset of eurobis records passing a specific combination of these qc steps is offered to the users in the future emodnet biology will offer a wide range of filter options through its portal allowing users to make specific selections themselves through lifewatch users can already upload their own data and check them against a selection of the here described quality control procedures database url www eurobis org www iobis org www emodnet biology eu,2015,0.071
Piecing together the biogeographic history of Chenopodium vulvaria L. using botanical literature and collections.,this study demonstrates the value of legacy literature and historic collections as a source of data on environmental history chenopodium vulvaria l has declined in northern europe and is of conservation concern in several countries whereas in other countries outside europe it has naturalised and is considered an alien weed in its european range it is considered native in the south but the northern boundary of its native range is unknown it is hypothesised that much of its former distribution in northern europe was the result of repeated introductions from southern europe and that its decline in northern europe is the result of habitat change and a reduction in the number of propagules imported to the north a historical analysis of its ecology and distribution was conducted by mining legacy literature and historical botanical collections text analysis of habitat descriptions written on specimens and published in botanical literature covering a period of more than 200 years indicate that the habitat and introduction pathways of c vulvaria have changed with time using the non european naturalised range in a climate niche model it is possible to project the range in europe by comparing this predicted model with a similar model created from all observations it is clear that there is a large discrepancy between the realized and predicted distributions this is discussed together with the social technological and economic changes that have occurred in northern europe with respect to their influence on c vulvaria,2015,0.223
Multiple abiotic stimuli are integrated in the regulation of rice gene expression under field conditions,plants rely on transcriptional dynamics to respond to multiple climatic fluctuations and contexts in nature we analyzed genome wide gene expression patterns of rice oryza sativa growing in rainfed and irrigated fields during two distinct tropical seasons and determined simple linear models that relate transcriptomic variation to climatic fluctuations these models combine multiple environmental parameters to account for patterns of expression in the field of co expressed gene clusters we examined the correspondence of our environmental models between tropical and temperate field conditions using previously published data we found that field type and macroclimate had broad impacts on transcriptional responses to environmental fluctuations especially for genes involved in photosynthesis and development nevertheless variation in solar radiation and temperature at the timescale of hours had reproducible effects across environmental contexts these results provide a basis for broad based predictive modeling of plant gene expression in the field,2015,0.185
Late-Season Survey of Bumble Bees along Canadian Highways of British Columbia and Yukon Territories,abstract bumble bees are important pollinators of flowering plants foraging and providing pollination services throughout the growing season they are adapted to cool temperatures and are among the most important of all pollinators at high elevations and northern latitudes over the past several decades multiple species of bumble bees have experienced declines in both geographic range and abundance in europe and north america while 4 species of the genus bombus bombus have suffered dramatic declines in the united states such declines are not as evident in alaska and the status of bombus remains relatively unknown in the adjacent territories of canada to begin addressing this knowledge gap we sampled the bumble bee fauna foraging on floral patches along 5 highways of canada and southeastern alaska in a short term one time survey during late summer 2010 we observed 14 species and found bombus assemblages to be structured by broad geographic features and ecoregions the bombus species b b occ,2015,0.472
Climatological correlates of seed size in Amazonian forest trees,question do precipitation temperature and seasonality drive variation in the seed size of amazonian tree genera location amazonia methods we use a combination of global biodiversity information facility gbif records climatic data from bioclim and seed size categories derived from the literature results tree genera with very small seeds were associated with lower temperatures and higher seasonality but not with precipitation the opposite patterns being observed for trees with large seeds these correlations remained even when the numerically dominant and ecologically specialized fabaceae were removed from the analysis conclusions our findings indicate that amazonian tree genera with smaller seeds occur more frequently in transitional or seasonal forests and genera with large seeds are more associated with climatically stable rain forests warmer and less seasonality these results are broadly consistent with the â recruitment hypothesisâ which predicts that large seeds have a competitive advantage in closed canopy forest vegetation,2015,0.31
The Tools of an Israelite Scribe: A Semantic Study of the Terms Signifying the Tools and Materials of Writing in Biblical Hebrew,this dissertation examines the technology of writing as it existed in ancient israel specifically the study focuses on a set of biblical hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and writing instruments while synthesizing the semantic data of the bible with the archeological and art historical evidence for writing in israel chapter 1 reviews the scholarship that exists on the technology of writing in ancient israel additionally this chapter discusses the methodology that this study utilizes that is comparative semitics archeology including discussion of relevant finds from the levant mesopotamia egypt and the mediterranean world and lexical semantics chapters 2â 5 contain the analysis of the writing related terms found in the hebrew bible each chapter evaluates a number of these lexemes from a literary linguistic and archeological art historical perspective chapter 2 analyzes terms denoting reeds marshes and manufacturable papyrus material chapter 3 considers words referring to stone and plaster surfaces used for writing chapter 4 examines a non homogenous group of terms designating animal skins scrolls tablets ostraca and uncommon materials used as writing surfaces chapter 5 examines lexemes specifying writing instruments as well as accessories of the scribal kit chapter 6 discusses israel s writing technology in light of the writing practices of mesopotamia and egypt i argue in this chapter that israel s most common form of writing i e writing on ostraca and papyrus with ink is a technology that israel borrowed from egypt this claim is supported by the fact that the hebrew terms designating papyrus ink and other writing materials are loanwords from egyptian chapter 7 reiterates the main argument of this dissertation that ancient israel s writing practices are essentially egyptian in nature additionally this chapter comments briefly on the areas in need of further research on the technology of writing in ancient israel,2015,0.116
The foraminifera.eu database: concept and status,the foraminifera eu project with its 120 avocational and professional scientific contributors has built a popular online image database containing information about fossil and recent foraminifera foraminiferal data available from over 200 years of scientific studies and publications were first analyzed in order to create a robust database using structurable and available data attributes a freely accessible database with online interfaces was established to improve the accessibility of foraminiferal data so far the database contains 9 800 records of specimens with images and accompanying metadata thirty data attributes were chosen and discrete values were defined and applied to each dataset covering the areas of identification geographical and stratigraphical positioning morphology synonyms references and collection related data the attributes were chosen based on their usefulness to both avocational and professional scientists and on their general availability a discussion and review process has been established to enlarge the database by adding more records and to implement new data attributes and interfaces in 2015 the database was accessed on average by 220 users daily excluding bots and 0 8 gigabytes of data were downloaded each day the numbers indicate the utility and relevance of the foraminifera eu database and this is also acknowledged by senior scientists and major institutions through their contributions,2015,0.125
FactorsR: An RWizard Application for Identifying the Most Likely Causal Factors in Controlling Species Richness,we herein present factorsr an rwizard application which provides tools for the identification of the most likely causal factors significantly correlated with species richness and for depicting on a map the species richness predicted by a support vector machine svm model as a demonstration of factorsr we used an assessment using a database incorporating all species of terrestrial carnivores a total of 249 species distributed across 12 families the model performed with svm explained 91 9 of the variance observed in the species richness of terrestrial carnivores species richness was higher in areas with both higher vegetation index and patch index i e containing higher numbers of species whose range distribution is less fragmented lower species richness than expected was observed in chile madagascar sumatra taiwan and sulawesi,2015,0.91
"The importance of open data for invasive alien species research, policy and management",rapidly changing environmental conditions a nd the increasing establishment of invasive alien species present many challenges fo r policy makers managers and researchers the traditional policies for data management or lack thereof are obstructing an adequate re sponse to invasive alien species which requires accurate and up to date info rmation this information can only be provided if data regar ding invasive alien species are available and useable by a ll irrespective of country status or pur pose the best way forward is for researc hers to publish their data openly by making use of repositories in which the da ta are licenced in a permissive manner while making sure they are credited by the adequate provision of citation re ducing the barriers to data sharing will im prove our ability to respond to the growing issue of biological invasions,2015,0.511
First record of the myxomycete genus Colloderma in Central America,the myxomycete genus colloderma and the species colloderma oculatum are reported for the first time in central america the species was recorded in the high elevations of the talamanca mountain range in costa rica during 2014 in a location where the structure of myxomycete assemblages has been historically associated with temperate rather than tropical communities comments on the geographical distribution and ecology of the species are included this record has increased the number of costa rican myxomycetes to 213 according to the most updated checklist,2015,0.682
"Morphological and molecular evidence supports recognition of Danaus petilia (Stoll, 1790) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) as a species distinct from D. chrysippus (Linnaeus, 1758)",the danaine butterfly danaus chrysippus linnaeus 1758 occurs widely in the afrotropical oriental and australian regions and comprises a taxonomic complex with recent authors recognizing between one and three species danaus petilia stoll 1790 has previously been considered to be a subspecies of d chrysippus but we present evidence from wing colour pattern morphological characters and molecular data that support a recent proposal to treat d petilia as a separate parapatric species the subspecies d chrysippus cratippus c felder 1860 has a limited range in indonesia and was until recently known in australia from only two specimens however on cobourg peninsula in the northern territory of australia d chrysippus cratippus and d petilia were observed flying together in melaleuca swampland comparative analysis of wing colour pattern and quantitative morphological characters of material of both taxa sampled from this geographical region of sympatry indicates at least six diagnostic featur,2015,0.51
Integrating and utilizing citizen biodiversity data on the web for science: an example,citizen science has been developing in various fields including biodiversity disciplines as a result an accumulation of additional biodiversity data is expected through citizen participation we would like to note our attempt to actively register and use an image for scientific purposes an image of the rare triggerfish hybrid rhinecanthus aculeatus ã r rectangulus was uploaded to web sakana zukan http zukan com fish,2015,0.351
"VIS - A database on the distribution of fishes in inland and estuarine waters in Flanders, Belgium.",the research institute for nature and forest inbo has been performing standardized fish stock assessments in flanders belgium this flemish fish monitoring network aims to assess fish populations in public waters at regular time intervals in both inland waters and estuaries this monitoring was set up in support of the water framework directive the habitat directive the eel regulation the red list of fishes fish stock management biodiversity research and to assess the colonization and spreading of non native fish species the collected data are consolidated in the fish information system or vis from vis the occurrence data are now published at the inbo ipt as two datasets vis fishes in inland waters in flanders belgium and vis fishes in estuarine waters in flanders belgium together these datasets represent a complete overview of the distribution and abundance of fish species pertaining in flanders from late 1992 to the end of 2012 this data paper discusses both datasets together as both have a similar methodology and structure the inland waters dataset contains over 350 000 fish observations sampled between 1992 and 2012 from over 2 000 locations in inland rivers streams canals and enclosed waters in flanders the dataset includes 64 fish species as well as a number of non target species mainly crustaceans the estuarine waters dataset contains over 44 000 fish observations sampled between 1995 and 2012 from almost 50 locations in the estuaries of the rivers yser and scheldt zeeschelde including two sampling sites in the netherlands the dataset includes 69 fish species and a number of non target crustacean species to foster broad and collaborative use the data are dedicated to the public domain under a creative commons zero waiver and reference the inbo norms for data use,2015,0.813
The Jean Gutierrez spider mite collection.,the family tetranychidae spider mites currently comprises 1 275 species and represents one of the most important agricultural pest families among the acari with approximately one hundred pest species ten of which considered major pests the dataset presented in this document includes all the identified spider mites composing the jean gutierrez collection hosted at the cbgp montferrier sur lez france gathered from 1963 to 1999 during his career at the institut de recherche pour le dã veloppement ird it consists of 5 262 specimens corresponding to 1 564 occurrences combination species host plant date location of 175 species most specimens were collected in madagascar and other islands of the western indian ocean new caledonia and other islands of the south pacific and papuasia the dataset constitutes today the most important one available on tetranychidae worldwide,2015,0.857
Mitogenome metadata: current trends and proposed standards.,abstract mitogenome metadata are descriptive terms about the sequence and its specimen description that allow both to be digitally discoverable and interoperable here we review a sampling of mitogenome metadata published in the journal mitochondrial dna between 2005 and 2014 specifically we have focused on a subset of metadata fields that are available for genbank records and specified by the genomics standards consortium gsc and other biodiversity metadata standards and we assessed their presence across three main categories collection biological and taxonomic information to do this we reviewed 146 mitogenome manuscripts and their associated genbank records and scored them for 13 metadata fields we also explored the potential for mitogenome misidentification using their sequence diversity and taxonomic metadata on the barcode of life datasystems bold for this we focused on all lepidoptera and perciformes mitogenomes included in the review along with additional mitogenome sequence data mined from genbank overall we found that none of 146 mitogenome projects provided all the metadata we looked for and only 17 projects provided at least one category of metadata across the three main categories comparisons using mtdna sequences from bold suggest that some mitogenomes may be misidentified lastly we appreciate the research potential of mitogenomes announced through this journal and we conclude with a suggestion of 13 metadata fields available on genbank that if provided in a mitogenomes s genbank record would increase their research value,2015,0.047
Checklist of free-living nematode species in the transitional environment of Lake Varano (Southern Italy),this study documents for the first time the taxonomic composition of the nematode community and the number of freeâ living nematode species in lake varano southern adriatic sea italy the nematode community was mainly composed of species typical of fine sediments that usually prevail in transitional environments te an overall high number of nematode species was recorded 55 belonging to 36 genera in 17 families these values are highly comparable to those reported for other italian te but appear lower than those recorded in other european brackishâ water systems probably in relation to the low salinity range of lake varano forty taxa were identified up to species level thus increasing the number of the nematode marine species known for the italian coasts from 443 to 463 for the adriatic basin from 310 to 313 and for the southern adriatic sector from 37 to 77 considering the importance of this phylum in the assessment of ecological quality and the great vulnerability of the adriatic sea ecosystems an intensification of sampling efforts should be planned especially in the centralâ southern part of the basin such a plan would provide new insights into the biogeography of one of the most important components of the benthic domain and potentially yield new information about the climate warming effects on the adriatic sea,2015,0.688
"Insights on the biology and ecology of the deep-water shrimp Parapontophilus occidentalis (Faxon, 1893) (Crustacea: Caridea: Crangonidae) in the eastern Pacific with notes on its morphology",the deep water crangonid parapontophilus occidentalis faxon 1893 is endemic to the eastern pacific and has been reported from mexico to chile in depths of 837â 4082 m material collected off the west coast of the baja california peninsula bcp during the talud xv xvi and xvi b cruises consists of a series of 136 specimens m f 1 3 6 with 30 of ovigerous females the material examined was captured in depths of 1296â 2093 m size ranged from 8 4 to 16 1 mm cl with females being significantly larger than males number of eggs carried by ovigerous females ranged from 7 to 998 without a significant relationship between female size and number of eggs using only data of females carrying at least 100 eggs egg mass weight varied from 0 036 to 0 181 g size of oval shaped eggs also varied considerably 0 515 to 0 922 mm larger densities of p occidentalis were observed between 1700 and 2100 m where larger individuals were collected and sex proportions differed across all depth strata at the northern bcp p occidentalis was collected at dissolved oxygen concentrations from 0 76 to 1 83 ml l 1 at temperature from 2 1 to 3 4â c and salinity from 34 54 to 34 63 kg g 1 density of p occidentalis was positively correlated with dissolved oxygen salinity and silt contribution to sediments and negatively correlated with temperature and primary productivity five months before sampling,2015,0.889
Decalepidanthus (Boraginaceae) includes and antedates Pseudomertensia; a synopsis of the genus,the small west himalayan genus decalepidanthus boraginaceae is reviewed decalepidanthus was erroneously transferred to pseudomertensia although the former name antedates the latter by four years seven species of decalepidanthus are accepted in this paper d echioides d elongatus d moltkioides d parviflorus d primuloides d racemosus and d trollii two additional entities d flavescens and d rosulatus are considered unresolved a synopsis of the genus is provided the necessary new combinations are made and a dichotomous key and distribution maps to the accepted species are given lectotypes are designated for lithospermum echioides l secundiflorum mertensia tibetica and m nuristanica and a neotype for moltkia trollii mertensia lindelofioides and pseudomertensia drummondii are excluded from decalepidanthus and referred to the genus lindelofia,2015,0.461
"Free-living marine nematodes from San Julián Bay (Santa Cruz, Argentina).",the free living marine nematodes of san juliã n bay dataset is based on sediment samples collected in january 2009 during the project pict agencia foncyt 2 33345 2005 a total of 36 samples have been taken at three locations in the san juliã n bay santa cruz province argentina on the coastal littoral at three tidal levels this presents a unique and important collection for the nematode benthic biodiversity assessment as this area remains one of the least known regions in patagonia in total 10 030 specimens of free living marine nematodes belonging to 2 classes 9 orders 35 families 78 genera and 125 species were collected the san juliã n city site presented a very high species richness,2015,0.928
Australian acacias as invasive species: lessons to be learnt from regions with long planting histories,problems associated with invasiveness of non native tree species used in forestry are increasing rapidly worldwide and are most severe in areas with a long history of plantings lessons learnt in areas with long histories of plantings and invasions may be applicable to areas with shorter planting histories most research towards understanding such tree invasions has focused on pinus species though all groups of trees that have been widely used in forestry are invasive to some extent this paper explores the experience of australian acacia species wattles unlike some other groups of trees no particular set of traits clearly separates highly invasive from less or non invasive wattles all species that have been widely planted over a long period have become invasive the extent of invasions is largely a function of human usage these findings imply that propagule pressure in concert with residence times are the main drivers of invasiveness in wattles many factors mediate these drivers including fire,2015,0.452
"No need to replace an ""anomalous"" primate (Primates) with an ""anomalous"" bear (Carnivora, Ursidae).",by means of mitochondrial 12s rrna sequencing of putative yeti bigfoot and other anomalous primate hair samples a recent study concluded that two samples presented as from the himalayas do not belong to an anomalous primate but to an unknown anomalous type of ursid that is that they match 12s rrna sequences of a fossil polar bear ursusmaritimus but neither of modern polar bears nor of brown bears ursusarctos the closest relative of polar bears and one that occurs today in the himalayas we have undertaken direct comparison of sequences replication of the original comparative study inference of phylogenetic relationships of the two samples with respect to those from all extant species of ursidae except for the giant panda ailuropodamelanoleuca and two extinct pleistocene species and application of a non tree based population aggregation approach for species diagnosis and identification our results demonstrate that the very short fragment of the 12s rrna gene sequenced by sykes et al is not sufficiently informative to support the hypotheses provided by these authors with respect to the taxonomic identity of the individuals from which these sequences were obtained we have concluded that there is no reason to believe that the two samples came from anything other than brown bears these analyses afforded an opportunity to test the monophyly of morphologically defined species and to comment on both their phylogenetic relationships and future efforts necessary to advance our understanding of ursid systematics,2015,0.919
"Diversity of Saurian Fauna from Jalgaon (Jamod) Territory, Buldhana District (M.S.), India",here this report provides th knowledge about fauna of jalgaon jamod territory it is a tehsil situated in the north of buldhana district in the indian state of maharashtra the present study is based on the field work carried out in the study sites during february 2012 to august 2015 according to the observations it has been concluded that the jagaon jamond territory of buldhana district m s india has healthy environmental and demographic setup which accomodates rich saurian diversity during study total ten species belonging to four families were identified in the observations characters were found almost same as per existing records,2015,0.467
A global perspective on decadal challenges and priorities in biodiversity informatics.,biodiversity informatics is a field that is growing rapidly in data infrastructure tools and participation by researchers worldwide from diverse disciplines and with diverse innovative approaches a recent decadal view of the field laid out a vision that was nonetheless restricted and constrained by its european focus our alternative decadal view is global i e it sees the worldwide scope and importance of biodiversity informatics as addressing five major global goals 1 mobilize existing knowledge 2 share this knowledge and the experience of its myriad deployments globally 3 avoid siloing and reinventing the tools of knowledge deployment 4 tackle biodiversity informatics challenges at appropriate scales and 5 seek solutions to difficult challenges that are strategic,2015,0.323
Why do cryptic species tend not to co-occur? A case study on two cryptic pairs of butterflies.,as cryptic diversity is being discovered mostly thanks to advances in molecular techniques it is becoming evident that many of these taxa display parapatric distributions in mainland and that they rarely coexist on islands genetic landscapes haplotype networks and ecological niche modeling analyses were performed for two pairs of non sister cryptic butterfly species aricia agestis a cramera and polyommatus icarus p celina lycaenidae to specifically assess non coexistence on western mediterranean islands and to test potential causes producing such chequered distribution patterns we show that the morphologically and ecologically equivalent pairs of species do not coexist on any of the studied islands although nearly all islands are colonized by one of them according to our models the cryptic pairs displayed marked climatic preferences and precipitation during the driest quarter was recovered as the most important climatic determinant however neither dispersal capacity nor climatic or ecological factors fully explain the observed distributions across particular sea straits and the existence of species interactions resulting in mutual exclusion is suggested as a necessary hypothesis given that the studied species are habitat generalists feeding on virtually unlimited resources we propose that reproductive interference together with climatic preferences sustain density dependent mechanisms like founder takes all and impede coexistence on islands chequered distributions among cryptic taxa both sister and non sister are common in butterflies suggesting that the phenomenon revealed here could be important in determining biodiversity patterns,2015,0.769
The use of Amerindian charm plants in the Guianas,background magical charm plants to ensure good luck in hunting fishing agriculture love and warfare are known among many amerindians groups in the guianas documented by anthropologists as social and political markers and exchangeable commodities these charms have received little attention by ethnobotanists as they are surrounded by secrecy and are difficult to identify we compared the use of charm species among indigenous groups in the guianas to see whether similarity in charm species was related to geographical or cultural proximity we hypothesized that cultivated plants were more widely shared than wild ones and that charms with underground bulbs were more widely used than those without such organs as vegetatively propagated plants would facilitate transfer of charm knowledge methods we compiled a list of charm plants from recent fieldwork and supplemented these with information from herbarium collections historic and recent literature among 11 ethnic groups in the guianas to assess similarity in plant use among these groups we performed a detrended component analysis dca on species level to see whether cultivated plants or vegetatively propagated species were more widely shared among ethnic groups than wild species or plants without rhizomes tubers or stem rooting capacity we used an independent sample t test results we recorded 366 charms representing 145 species the majority were hunting charms wild plants propagated via underground bulbs and grown in villages our data suggest that similarity in charm species is associated with geographical proximity and not cultural relatedness the most widely shared species used by all amerindian groups is caladium bicolor the tubers of this plant facilitate easy transport and its natural variability allows for associations with a diversity of game animals human selection on shape size and color of plants through clonal reproduction has ensured the continuity of morphological traits and their correlation with animal features conclusions charm plants serve as vehicles for traditional knowledge on animal behavior tribal warfare and other aspects of oral history and should therefore deserve more scientific and societal attention especially because there are indications that traditional knowledge on charms is disappearing,2015,0.673
"Do climatic requirements explain the northern range of european reptiles? Common wall lizard Podarcis muralis (Laur.) (Squamata, Lacertidae) as an example",climate seems likely to play the key role in determining the northern range limits of reptiles in mid latitude europe as these ectothermic animals are dependent on external conditions we tested this hypothesis for the example of common wall lizard podarcis muralis laur and showed that it tolerates a wide range of different climatic factors therefore could be potentially distributed more to the north from the northern limit of its native range however the main factor limiting the occurrence of the lizard in its northern range is the presence of suitable habita ts particularly rocky areas human econ omic activity in mid latitude europe resulted in the development of such suitable habitats in areas of advantag eous climatic conditions in this way humans created niches suitable fo r the species as well as provided rout es of access to th ese areas what resulted in the increase the range of this lizard to the north,2015,0.535
Ancient vicariance and climate-driven extinction explain continental-wide disjunctions in Africa: the case of the Rand Flora genus Canarina (Campanulaceae).,transoceanic distributions have attracted the interest of scientists for centuries less attention has been paid to the evolutionary origins of continent wide disjunctions in which related taxa are distributed across isolated regions within the same continent a prime example is the rand flora pattern which shows sister taxa disjunctly distributed in the continental margins of africa here we explore the evolutionary origins of this pattern using the genus canarina with three species c canariensis associated to the canarian laurisilva and c eminii and c abyssinica endemic to the afromontane region in east africa as case study we infer phylogenetic relationships divergence times and the history of migration events within canarina using bayesian inference on a large sample of chloroplast and nuclear sequences ecological niche modelling was employed to infer the climatic niche of canarina through time dating was performed with a novel nested approach to solve the problem that deep calibration points within a molecular dataset comprising both above species and population level sampling poses results show c abyssinica as sister to a clade formed by disjunct c eminii and c canariensis miocene divergences were inferred among species whereas infraspecific divergences fell within the pleistocene holocene periods although c eminii and c canariensis showed a strong genetic geographic structure among population divergences were older in the former than in the latter our results suggest that canarina originated in east africa and later migrated across north africa with vicariance and aridification driven extinction explaining the 7000 km 7 million year divergence between the canarian and east african endemics this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.687
Melting barriers to faunal exchange across ocean basins.,accelerated loss of sea ice in the arctic is opening routes connecting the atlantic and pacific oceans for longer periods each year these changes may increase the ease and frequency with which marine birds and mammals move between the pacific and atlantic ocean basins indeed recent observations of birds and mammals suggest these movements have intensified in recent decades reconnection of the pacific and atlantic ocean basins will present both challenges to marine ecosystem conservation and an unprecedented opportunity to examine the ecological and evolutionary consequences of interoceanic faunal exchange in real time to understand these changes and implement effective conservation of marine ecosystems we need to further develop modeling efforts to predict the rate of dispersal and consequences of faunal exchange these predictions can be tested by closely monitoring wildlife dispersal through the arctic ocean and using modern methods to explore the ecological and evolutionary consequences of these movements,2015,0.302
Ecological and evolution strategies of necrophagous beetles (Coleoptera),necrophagous beetles coleoptera are very interesting and diverse ecological group of species with an immense impact on a natural nutrient cycle their main food source and breeding ground are carrions of vertebrates human remains included this relationship is often used in various ways by forensic entomology but its potential was not jet fully reached because our knowledge of biology and ecology of these beetles is very much incomplete in this thesis i would like to explore geographic distribution ecological requirements and developmental biology of several central european necrophagous beetles as an outcome of their ecological and evolution strategies for that i raised three broad research questions which factors are determining the local abundance of carrion beetles coleoptera silphidae how the current geographical distribution of open landscape carrion beetles looks like in the czech republic how the temperature affects the development of sciodrepoides watsoni spence 1813 we found out that soil type can have significant effect on abundance of carrion beetles they showed preference for chernozem â nicrophorus antennatus reitter n germanicus linnaeus n interruptus stephens n sepultor charpentier silpha obscura obscura herbst t sinuatus fabricius or for fluvisol as did n humator gleditsch these findings support our hypothesis that soil type could be an important factor determining the occurrence of necrophagous european carrion beetles to collect novel data of the current geographical distribution of carrion beetles we used 420 baited pitfall traps at 84 localities and we collected 71 234 specimens of 15 silphid species among them three endangered carrion beetle species listed on the czech red list of invertebrates were found two are vulnerable thermophilic species of open landscapes nicrophorus antennatus reitter 1884 collected around louny and å idlochovice and nicrophorus germanicus linnaeus 1758 louny zã bå eh and å idlochovice the third is the near threatened species nicrophorus sepultor charpentier 1825 collected around louny kutnã hora zã bå eh and å idlochovice which also prefers open landscapes we studied development of common holarctic beetle sciodrepoides watsoni under five constant temperature regimes in laboratory 15 18 21 25 and 28â c parameters of thermal summation models and their standard errors were calculated for each developmental stage egg three larval instars and pupae we also find a new character for larval instar determination head width and proposed novel approach for future studies of size based characters in instar determination ecological and evolution strategies of necrophagous beetles coleoptera researchgate available from http www researchgate net publication 281464880 ecological and evolution strategies of necrophagous beetles 28coleoptera 29 accessed sep 24 2015,2015,0.912
"Phylogeny and biogeography of Asthenopodinae with a revision of Asthenopus, reinstatement of Asthenopodes, and the description of the new genera Hubbardipes and Priasthenopus (Ephemeroptera, Polymitarcyidae).",the neotropical species of asthenopodinae are revised in a formal phylogenetic context the five known species of asthenopus eaton 1871 together with other five new species were included in a cladistic analysis using morphological characters continuous and discretes representatives of the afro oriental group of the subfamily povilla navã s 1912 and languidipes hubbard 1984 were also included to test the monophyletic hypothesis traditionally accepted for the group additional taxa representing the other subfamilies of polymitarcyidae were incorparated ephoron williamson 1802 polymitarcyinae and campsurus eaton 1868 tortopus needham murphy 1924 and tortopsis molineri 2010 campsurinae a matrix of 17 taxa and 72 characters was analyzed under parsimony resulting in a single tree supporting the monophyly of the subfamily asthenopodinae other results include the monophyly of the afro oriental taxa povilla and languidipes the paraphyletic nature of neotropical asthenopodinae and the recognition of four south american genera asthenopus including asthenopuscurtus hagen 1861 asthenopusangelae de souza molineri 2012 asthenopusmagnus sp n asthenopushubbardi sp n asthenopusguarani sp n asthenopodes ulmer 1924 stat n including asthenopuspicteti hubbard 1975 stat n asthenopodestraverae sp n asthenopodeschumuco sp n priasthenopus gen n including priasthenopusgilliesi domã nguez 1988 comb n and hubbardipes gen n including hubbardipescrenulatus molineri et al 2011 comb n descriptions diagnoses illustrations and keys are presented for all neotropical taxa of asthenopodinae adults of both sexes eggs and nymphs additionally a key to the subfamilies and genera of polymitarcyidae is included a quantitative biogeographic analysis of vicariance is presented and discussed through the study of the taxon history of the group abstract available from the publisher,2015,0.547
Climate Change May Alter Breeding Ground Distributions of Eastern Migratory Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) via Range Expansion of Asclepias Host Plants,climate change can profoundly alter species distributions due to changes in temperature precipitation or seasonality migratory monarch butterflies danaus plexippus may be particularly susceptible to climate driven changes in host plant abundance or reduced overwintering habitat for example climate change may significantly reduce the availability of overwintering habitat by restricting the amount of area with suitable microclimate conditions however potential effects of climate change on monarch northward migrations remain largely unknown particularly with respect to their milkweed asclepias spp host plants given that monarchs largely depend on the genus asclepias as larval host plants the effects of climate change on monarch northward migrations will most likely be mediated by climate change effects on asclepias here i used maxent species distribution modeling to assess potential changes in asclepias and monarch distributions under moderate and severe climate change scenarios first asclepias distributions were projected to extend northward throughout much of canada despite considerable variability in the environmental drivers of each individual species second asclepias distributions were an important predictor of current monarch distributions indicating that monarchs may be constrained as much by the availability of asclepias host plants as environmental variables per se accordingly modeling future distributions of monarchs and indeed any tightly coupled plant insect system should incorporate the effects of climate change on host plant distributions finally maxent predictions of asclepias and monarch distributions were remarkably consistent among general circulation models nearly all models predicted that the current monarch summer breeding range will become slightly less suitable for asclepias and monarchs in the future asclepias and consequently monarchs should therefore undergo expanded northern range limits in summer months while encountering reduced habitat suitability throughout the northern migration,2015,0.206
"Tracing the evolutionary history of the mole, Talpa europaea , through mitochondrial DNA phylogeography and species distribution modelling",our understanding of the effect of pleistocene climatic changes on the biodiversity of european mammals mostly comes from phylogeographical studies of non subterranean mammals whereas the influence of glaciation cycles on subterranean mammals has received little attention the lack of data raises the question of how and to what extent the current amount and distribution of genetic variation in subterranean mammals is the result of pleistocene range contractions expansions the common mole talpa europaea is a strictly subterranean mammal widespread across europe and represents one of the best candidates for studying the influence of quaternary climatic oscillation on subterranean mammals cytochrome b sequences as obtained from a sampling covering the majority of the distribution area were used to evaluate whether pleistocene climate change influenced the evolution of t europaea and left a trace in the genetic diversity comparable to that observed in non subterranean small mammals subsequently we investigated the occurrence of glacial refugia by comparing the results of phylogeographical analysis with species distribution modelling we found three differentiated mitochondrial dna lineages two restricted to spain and italy and a third that was widespread across europe phylogenetic inferences and the molecular clock suggest that the spanish moles represent a highly divergent and ancient lineage highlighting for the first time the paraphyly of t europaea furthermore our analyses suggest that the genetic break between the italian and the european lineages predates the last glacial phase historical demography and spatial principal component analysis further suggest that the last glacial maximum left a signature both in the italian and in the european lineages genetic data combined with species distribution models support the presence of at least three putative glacial refugia in southern europe france balkan peninsula and black sea during thelast glacial maximum that likely contributed to post glacial recolonization of europe by contrast the italian lineage remained trapped in the italian peninsula and according to the pattern observed in other subterranean mammals did not contribute to the recolonization of northern latitudes,2015,0.637
"Genetic parameters in subtropical pine F1 hybrids: heritabilities, between-trait correlations and genotype-by-environment interactions",growth and stem straightness traits of 29 pinus caribaea var hondurensis ã pinus tecunumanii pch ã ptec and 26 p caribaea var hondurensis ã pinus oocarpa pch ã pooc hybrid pair crosses plus a total of 16 intraspecific families were assessed at ages 5 8 and 15 years from planting at two sites the pch ã ptec hybrid was the most productive yielding 37 more than a pinus elliottii local control and was 21 superior to either parental species in dbh growth pch ã pooc hybrid was on average 16 superior to either parental species for dbh narrow sense heritability estimates were low to moderate for growth traits average of 0 27 and stem straightness 0 16 the estimated additive genetic correlations between growth traits and ages within traits were high 0 8 and positive providing confidence in early selection based on diameter at breast height the high proportion of estimated additive genetic variance compared to dominance variance in the f1 pine hybrids suggests that breeding strategies that maximize the use of additive genetic variance may be effective the ranking of the 11 pch parents based on general hybridizing ability predictions estimated breeding values as hybrids was somewhat inconsistent between ptec and pooc hybrid crosses for all traits r 9 d f 0 38â 0 45 p ∠0 15â 0 25 there was no evidence of practically important g ã e interaction for the hybrids except for pch ã ptec height growth this study suggests that a single multi hybrid breeding population seems appropriate in zimbabwe if the trial sites are representative of the planting target zone,2015,0.147
Impacts of climate change on distributions and diversity of ungulates on the Tibetan Plateau,climate change has significant impacts on species distributions and diversity patterns understanding range shifts and changes in richness gradients under climate change is crucial for conservation the tibetan plateau home to wild yak chiru and kiang contains a biome with many endemic ungulates it is highly sensitive to climate change and a region that merits particular attention with regard to the impacts of global climate change on its biomes maximum entropy approaches were used to estimate current and future potential distributions in response to climate change for 22 ungulate species we used three general circulation mk3 hadcm3 miroc3 2 med and three emissions scenarios b1 a1b a2 to derive estimated future measurements of 14 environmental variables over three time periods 2020 2050 2080 and then modeled species distributions using these predicted environmental measurements for each time period under two dispersal hypotheses full and zero respectively this resulted in a tota,2015,0.743
Adaptive invasive species distribution models: a framework for modeling incipient invasions,the utilization of species distribution model s sdm for approximating explaining and predicting changes in speciesâ geographic locations is increasingly promoted for proactive ecological management although frameworks for modeling non invasive species distributions are relatively well developed their counterparts for invasive speciesâ which may not be at equilibrium within recipient environments and often exhibit rapid transformationsâ are lacking additionally adaptive ecological management strategies address the causes and effects of biological invasions and other complex issues in social ecological systems we conducted a review of biological invasions species distribution models and adaptive practices in ecological management and developed a framework for adaptive niche based invasive species distribution model isdm development and utilization this iterative 10 step framework promotes consistency and transparency in isdm development allows for changes in invasive drivers and filters integrates mechanistic and correlative modeling techniques balances the avoidance of type 1 and type 2 errors in predictions encourages the linking of monitoring and management actions and facilitates incremental improvements in models and management across space time and institutional boundaries these improvements are useful for advancing coordinated invasive species modeling management and monitoring from local scales to the regional continental and global scales at which biological invasions occur and harm native ecosystems and economies as well as for anticipating and responding to biological invasions under continuing global change,2015,0.443
Not the time or the place: the missing spatio-temporal link in publicly available genetic data.,genetic data are being generated at unprecedented rates policies of many journals institutions and funding bodies aim to ensure that these data are publicly archived so that published results are reproducible additionally publicly archived data can be repurposed to address new questions in the future in 2011 along with other leading journals in ecology and evolution molecular ecology implemented mandatory public data archiving the joint data archiving policy to evaluate the effect of this policy we assessed the genetic spatial and temporal data archived for 419 data sets from 289 articles in molecular ecology from 2009 to 2013 we then determined whether archived data could be used to reproduce analyses as presented in the manuscript we found that the journal s mandatory archiving policy has had a substantial positive impact increasing genetic data archiving from 49 pre 2011 to 98 2011 present however 31 of publicly archived genetic data sets could not be recreated based on information supplied in either the manuscript or public archives with incomplete data or inconsistent codes linking genetic data and metadata as the primary reasons while the majority of articles did provide some geographic information 40 did not provide this information as geographic coordinates furthermore a large proportion of articles did not contain any information regarding date of sampling 40 although the inclusion of spatio temporal data does require an increase in effort we argue that the enduring value of publicly accessible genetic data to the molecular ecology field is greatly compromised when such metadata are not archived alongside genetic data,2015,0.107
A national biodiversity offset scheme : a road map for Liberia’s mining sector,liberia had an estimated 4 3 million hectares of forests in 2011 comprising approximately 50 percent of liberiaâ s landmass these forests support very high levels of biodiversity provide a wide range of ecosystem services for example bush meat medicines construction materials and charcoal and generate employment and revenue from commercial and chainsaw logging encouraging inward investment while striking a sound balance between different interests respecting the legal and customary rights of local people and conserving biodiversity represents a major challenge this project focuses on the mining sector which has the potential to become a significant engine for growth and broader based development it explores the feasibility of implementing a national biodiversity offset scheme in liberia to help minimize adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services resulting from mining a liberian national offset scheme will entail the application of a common methodology to ensure that conservation benefits are at least equivalent to biodiversity losses due to mining investments the report is presented in seven chapters chapter one gives introduction chapter two discusses the conservation imperatives for liberia and conveys a sense of the quality and extent of biodiversity within liberia chapter three describes the challenge of securing conservation outcomes in liberia as well as the prevalence of threats to biodiversity chapter four discusses the potential for biodiversity offsets to help secure conservation outcomes chapter five covers the legal policy and institutional framework in support of biodiversity offsets chapter six discusses the methodological aspects of implementing a national biodiversity offset scheme together with the challenges of securing and effectively managing sources of funding chapter seven summarizes the reportâ s suggested next steps to implement a road map for biodiversity offsets in liberia,2015,0.168
Risk assessment of the ornamental fish trade in Mexico: analysis of freshwater species and effectiveness of the FISK (Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit),aquarium trade has been recognized as one of the major pathways of introduction of non native fishes into new regions nearly 43 million freshwater ornamental fish of different species and varieties are annually commercialized in mexico and there is a high probability for the establishment of some of these species because of their invasive attributes and the diverse climatic zones existing in the country within this context the identification of high risk species is of paramount importance considering the potential threat to mexicoâ s great biological diversity in the present study 700 freshwater aquarium fish species commonly imported and produced in the country were filtered for synonyms varieties resulting in 368 species which where submitted to revision for invasive reports using specialized invasive species databases this allowed ranking the main invasive species and the top 30 were subjected to risk analysis using the fish invasiveness screening kit fisk calibration of fisk was carried out after generating the reports a receiver operating characteristic curve was made to determine the fisk ability to discriminate between invasive and non invasive species in mexico thereafter youdenâ s index was calculated and a threshold of 24 was obtained representing the cut off value for defining high risk species a total of 17 species out of 30 were classified under a high risk category among them several species of the genus xiphophorus pterygoplichthys and poecilia most of the species were native to asia central and south america some of these species are already invasive in mexico,2015,0.991
"Beetles (Coleoptera) of Peru: A Survey of the Families. Erotylidae Latreille, 1802",diversity in peru 5 subfamilies 41 genera 303 species recognition the common name for erotylidae is the â œpleasing fungus beetlesâ due to the attractive adult coloration and mycophagous habits of many species erotylidae including languriidae â œlizard beetlesâ form a monophyletic group that is supported by phylogenetic analyses using morphological e g we ë grzynowicz 2002 leschen and buckley 2007 and molecular e g robertson et al 2004 data beetles in the erotylid familial clade may be recognized by the following combination of derived features subocular glandular ducts present supraocular line present pronotal lateral carina simple procoxal cavities with lateral extensions trochantinal notch present mesocoxal cavities laterally closed by metaventrite and aedeagus laterally compressed with relatively long struts on penis leschen et al 2010,2015,0.63
Addressing potential local adaptation in species distribution models: implications for conservation under climate change,species distribution models sdms have been criticized for involving assumptions that ignore or categorize many ecologically relevant factors such as dispersal ability and biotic interactions another potential source of model error is the assumption that species are ecologically uniform in their climatic tolerances across their range typically sdms to treat a species as a single entity although populations of many species differ due to local adaptation or other genetic differentiation not taking local adaptation into account may lead to incorrect range prediction and therefore misplaced conservation efforts a constraint is that we often do not know the degree to which populations are locally adapted however lacking experimental evidence we still can evaluate niche differentiation within a species range to promote better conservation decisions we explore possible conservation implications of making type i or type ii errors in this context for each of two species we construct three separate m,2015,0.89
Isolation by environment in White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) of the Madrean Archipelago sky islands: a landscape genomics approach.,understanding landscape processes driving patterns of population genetic differentiation and diversity has been a longstanding focus of ecology and evolutionary biology gene flow may be reduced by historical ecological or geographic factors resulting in patterns of isolation by distance ibd or isolation by environment ibe although ibe has been found in many natural systems most studies investigating patterns of ibd and ibe in nature have used anonymous neutral genetic markers precluding inference of selection mechanisms or identification of genes potentially under selection using landscape genomics the simultaneous study of genomic and ecological landscapes we investigated the processes driving population genetic patterns of white breasted nuthatches sitta carolinensis in sky islands montane forest habitat islands of the madrean archipelago using more than 4000 single nucleotide polymorphisms and multiple tests to investigate the relationship between genetic differentiation and geographic or ecological distance we identified ibe and a lack of ibd among sky island populations of s carolinensis using three tests to identify selection we identified 79 loci putatively under selection of these seven matched cds regions in the zebra finch the loci under selection were highly associated with climate extremes maximum temperature of warmest month and minimum precipitation of driest month these results provide evidence for ibe disentangled from ibd in sky island vertebrates and identify potential adaptive genetic variation this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.251
Beetles (Coleoptera) of Peru: A Survey of the Families. Part I. Overview,the beetle fauna of peru has not been enumerated since blackwelder 1944â 1957 this contribution is the first modern synopsis of beetle families based on ongoing fieldwork and a literature review ninety nine families of beetles are now documented from peru and nine families are reported in peru for the first timeâ biphyllidae bothrideridae eucinetidae monotomidae rhipiceridae scirtidae scraptiidae silvanidae and throscidae a species list for each family updated higher taxonomy and relevant literature citations are presented most families are so poorly known in the tropics and so poorly represented in museum collections that their rarity and or conservation status cannot be determined altogether the project represents the first modern catalogue of the entire beetle fauna of a hyperdiverse neotropical country,2015,0.329
Origin and evolution of fleshy fruit in woody bamboos.,several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the origin of fleshy fruit in monocots one is that they originated in the understory of tropical regions and another is that fleshy fruit originated in tropical rainforests where high year round rainfall implies that seasonality is not a limiting factor here we identify the time of origin and ecological preferences of woody bamboos to understand the evolution of the fleshy fruit known as the bacoid caryopsis bayesian inference maximum likelihood and molecular dating analyses were run based on eight plastid and two nuclear regions for 68 bamboo species climate data and soil parameters were gathered for 464 localities for these species the ancestral type of caryopsis was reconstructed by parsimony according to these analyses the bacoid caryopsis may have evolved independently seven times from the late miocene to the early pliocene and mid pliocene to mid pleistocene via convergent evolution our results suggest that in bamboos neither current climatic variables nor soil parameters were significantly correlated with the appearance of this type of fruit nor do they have a phylogenetic signal it is remarkable however that the first appearance of the bacoid caryopsis in bamboos might be associated with historical preferences for warmer and wetter climate during the miocene further research is needed to identify whether other factors such as vivipary or dispersal by small animals rather than climate could be responsible for the evolution of this trait in woody bamboos,2015,0.566
Digital data collection in paleoanthropology,understanding patterns of human evolution across space and time requires synthesizing data collected by independent research teams and this effort is part of a larger trend to develop cyber infrastructure and e science initiatives 1 at present paleoanthropology cannot easily answer basic questions about the total number of fossils and artifacts that have been discovered or exactly how those items were collected in this paper we examine the methodological challenges to data integration with the hope that mitigating the technical obstacles will further promote data sharing at a minimum data integration efforts must document what data exist and how the data were collected discovery after which we can begin standardizing data collection practices with the aim of achieving combined analyses synthesis this paper outlines a digital data collection system for paleoanthropology we review the relevant data management principles for a general audience and supplement this with technical details drawn from over 15 years of paleontological and archeological field experience in africa and europe the system outlined here emphasizes free open source software foss solutions that work on multiple computer platforms it builds on recent advances in open source geospatial software and mobile computing,2015,0.117
Coupling virtual watersheds with ecosystem services assessment: a 21st century platform to support river research and management,he demand for freshwater is projected to increase worldwide over the coming decades resulting in severe water stress and threats to riverine biodiversity ecosystem functioning and services a major societal challenge is to determine where environmental changes will have the greatest impacts on riverine ecosystem services and where resilience can be incorporated into adaptive resource planning both water managers and scientists need new integrative tools to guide them toward the best solutions that meet the demands of a growing human population but also ensure riverine biodiversity and ecosystem integrity resource planners and scientists could better address a growing set of riverine management and risk mitigation issues by 1 using a â virtual watershedsâ approach based on improved digital river networks and better connections to terrestrial systems 2 integrating virtual watersheds with ecosystem services technology artificial intelligence for ecosystem services aries and 3 incorporating the role of riverine biotic interactions in shaping ecological responses this integrative platform can support both interdisciplinary scientific analyses of pressing societal issues and effective dissemination of findings across river research and management communities it should also provide new integrative tools to identify the best solutions and trade offs to ensure the conservation of riverine biodiversity and ecosystem services,2015,0.067
From the Neotropics to the Namib: evidence for rapid ecological divergence following extreme long-distance dispersal,extreme long distance dispersal is an important process in plant biogeography such events can lead to rapid diversification due to founder effects genetic drift and novel selection in recipient environments balloon vines cardiospermum spp are mainly neotropical but include two native southern african species the endemic desert adapted c pechuelii and the moist subtropical c corindum which also occurs in the neotropics we used phylogenetic approaches internal transcribed spacer its rpl32 and trnl trnf dna sequencing data and population genetics amplified fragment length polymorphism aflp analyses to confirm the long distance dispersal of c corindum to southern africa and to reveal the subsequent divergence of the morphologically and ecologically extreme but genetically close c pechuelii we could not judge whether incongruences between ecological requirements and morphology and gene trees for the african species resulted from ongoing gene flow or incomplete lineage sorting but our findings do support recent divergence of c pechuelii from c corindum in africa following transoceanic dispersal of the lineage,2015,0.568
Using species distribution models to select species resistant to climate change for ecological restoration of bowé in West Africa,bowalization is a particular form of land degradation and leads to lateral expansion of ferricrete horizons the process occurs only in tropical regions in this study the most adapted and resistant species towards climate change were identified on bowã the 15 most common bowã species of the subhumid and semi arid climate zones of benin were submitted together with significant environmental variables elevation current bioclimatic variables soil types to three ecological niche modelling programmes maxent domain and garp for future prediction 2050 ipcc4 ciat and ipcc5 cmip5 climate data were applied asparagus africanus andropogon pseudapricus and combretum nigricans were identified as the most resistant species for ecological restoration of bowã in the semi arid climate zone and asparagus africanus detarium microcarpum and lannea microcarpa in the subhumid climate zone the â pullâ strategies were identified as appropriate for ecological restoration of bowã in benin,2015,0.666
Evolutionary signals of symbiotic persistence in the legume–rhizobia mutualism,understanding the origins and evolutionary trajectories of symbiotic partnerships remains a major challenge why are some symbioses lost over evolutionary time whereas others become crucial for survival here we use a quantitative trait reconstruction method to characterize different evolutionary stages in the ancient symbiosis between legumes fabaceae and nitrogen fixing bacteria asking how labile is symbiosis across different host clades we find that more than half of the 1 195 extant nodulating legumes analyzed have a high likelihood 95 of being in a state of high symbiotic persistence meaning that they show a continued capacity to form the symbiosis over evolutionary time even though the partnership has remained facultative and is not obligate to explore patterns associated with the likelihood of loss and retention of the n2 fixing symbiosis we tested for correlations between symbiotic persistence and legume distribution climate soil and trait data we found a strong latitudinal effect and demonstrated that low mean annual temperatures are associated with high symbiotic persistence in legumes although no significant correlations between soil variables and symbiotic persistence were found nitrogen and phosphorus leaf contents were positively correlated with legumes in a state of high symbiotic persistence this pattern suggests that highly demanding nutrient lifestyles are associated with more stable partnerships potentially because they lock the hosts into symbiotic dependency quantitative reconstruction methods are emerging as a powerful comparative tool to study broad patterns of symbiont loss and retention across diverse partnerships,2015,0.335
Habitat suitability modelling to guide long-term conservation strategies for the pygmy hog in Assam,understanding the habitat requirements and the distribution of a species is critical for its conservation as it can inform us of its needs for survival and where to target conservation action the pygmy hog porcula salvania is a critically endangered suid existing in just three populations in india having been extirpated acro ss its estimated former range in the terai grasslands it is therefore of utmost importance determine its former distribution to understand its habitat use and to develop methods to understand which areas across its range are suitable for consequent reintroductions the study contribute d to this effort looking at the programme in the past present and the future investigating the historical distribution of the species building a habitat suitability model to identify suitable areas for reintroduction and a lso evaluating the fai lu re of the 2015 release programme t he study showed that that the species did exist across its estimated range discovering two new presence records of the species the study also e valuated the failure of the 2015 release of the species the habitat suitability model showed considerable suitable areas in india and nepal identifying protected areas as potential survey sites for future reintroductions,2015,0.747
Is Huperzia hamiltonii (spreng.) Trevis. A himalayan endemic? An empirical evaluation using species distribution modeling,the distribution range of huperzia hamiltonii spreng trevis has been disputed among taxonomists since its discovery in the past it has been thought to be widely distributed in the himalaya as well as in parts of china and s e asia while some recent taxonomists think it is only a sino himalayan species whether this species occurs only in the himalayan region or is distributed throughout the indian subcontinent and indochina has not been fully understood though in indian literature it has nearly always been reported from both the himalaya and peninsular india there exist inconsistencies among taxonomists regarding its distribution range to date the present work is therefore an attempt to evaluate the distribution of h hamiltonii using evidence from field based observations herbarium specimens and species distribution modeling based on our results h hamiltonii is distributed in the western central and eastern indo himalaya of india nepal and bhutan and in the chinese himalaya as well as in south west india sri lanka myanmar vietnam and northern thailand is huperzia hamiltonii spreng trevis a himalayan endemic an empirical evaluation using species distribution modeling pdf download available available from https www researchgate net publication 274837335 is huperzia hamiltonii spreng trevis a himalayan endemic an empirical evaluation using species distribution modeling accessed mar 14 2016,2015,0.829
Disjunct populations of European vascular plant species keep the same climatic niches,aim previous research on how climatic niches vary across species ranges has focused on a limited number of species mostly invasive and has not to date been very conclusive here we assess the degree of niche conservatism between distant populations of native alpine plant species that have been separated for thousands of years location european alps and fennoscandia methods of the studied pool of 888 terrestrial vascular plant species occurring in both the alps and fennoscandia we used two complementary approaches to test and quantify climatic niche shifts for 31 species having strictly disjunct populations and 358 species having either a contiguous or a patchy distribution with distant populations first we used species distribution modelling to test for a region effect on each species climatic niche second we quantified niche overlap and shifts in niche width i e ecological amplitude and position i e ecological optimum within a bi dimensional climatic space results only one species 3 of the 31 species with strictly disjunct populations and 58 species 16 of the 358 species with distant populations showed a region effect on their climatic niche niche overlap was higher for species with strictly disjunct populations than for species with distant populations and highest for arcticâ alpine species climatic niches were on average wider and located towards warmer and wetter conditions in the alps main conclusion climatic niches seem to be generally conserved between populations that are separated between the alps and fennoscandia and have probably been so for 10 000â 15 000 years therefore the basic assumption of species distribution models that a species climatic niche is constant in space and time â at least on time scales 104 years or less â seems to be largely valid for arcticâ alpine plants,2015,1
Into and out of the tropics: global diversification patterns in a hyper-diverse clade of ectomycorrhizal fungi.,ectomycorrhizal ecm fungi symbiotic mutualists of many dominant tree and shrub species exhibit a biogeographic pattern counter to the established latitudinal diversity gradient of most macroflora and fauna however an evolutionary basis for this pattern has not been explicitly tested in a diverse lineage in this study we reconstructed a mega phylogeny of a cosmopolitan and hyper diverse genus of ecm fungi russula sampling from annotated collections and utilizing publically available sequences deposited in genbank metadata from molecular operational taxonomic unit cluster sets were examined to infer the distribution and plant association of the genus this allowed us to test for differences in patterns of diversification between tropical and extratropical taxa as well as how their associations with different plant lineages may be a driver of diversification results show that russula is most species rich at temperate latitudes and ancestral state reconstruction shows that the genus initially diversified in temperate areas migration into and out of the tropics characterizes the early evolution of the genus and these transitions have been frequent since this time we propose the generalized diversification rate hypothesis to explain the reversed latitudinal diversity gradient pattern in russula as we detect a higher net diversification rate in extratropical lineages patterns of diversification with plant associates support host switching and host expansion as driving diversification with a higher diversification rate in lineages associated with pinaceae and frequent transitions to association with angiosperms this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.535
Predicting invasions of Wedelia trilobata (L.) Hitchc. with Maxent and GARP models.,wedelia trilobata l hitchc an ornamental groundcover plant introduced to areas around the world from central america has become invasive in many regions to increase understanding of its geographic distribution and potential extent of spread two presence only niche based modeling approaches maxent and garp were employed to create models based on occurrence records from its 1 native range only and 2 full range native and invasive models were then projected globally to identify areas vulnerable to w trilobata invasion w trilobata prefers hot and humid environments and can occur in areas with different environmental conditions than experienced in its native range based on native and full occurrence points garp and maxent models produced consistent distributional maps of w trilobata although maxent model results were more conservative when used to estimate the global invasive distribution of the species both modeling approaches projected the species to occur in africa the garp full model succeeded in predicting the known occurrences in australia while the other models failed to identify favorable habitats in this region given the rapid spread of w trilobata and the serious risk of this species poses to local ecosystems practical strategies to prevent the establishment and expansion of this species should be sought,2015,0.586
Proposal of geographic information systems methodology for quality control procedures of data obtained in naturalistic driving studies,the primary goal of naturalistic driving studies is to provide a comprehensive observation of the driver apos s behaviour under real life conditions by measureing a great number of parameters at high temporal frequencies achieving this goal however is a complex endeavor that faces many challenges such as the complexity of the vehicle instrumentation during the phase of data collection and the difficult handling of large data volumes during the phase of data analysis these drawbacks often cause episodes of data losses improving the technical aspects of the collection of naturalistic data is of paramount importance to increase the return of the investment made in it an aspect to consider is the control of the quality of data obtained the procedures commonly applied often present a high workload and low levels of reliability in the results for this reason new and more efficient procedures should be implemented this study proposes an innovative methodology for the quality control of these data through geographic information systems gis which permit a fast efficient and effective data evaluation relative and absolute errors can be located through cartographic representation obtained with gis some graphical examples about the detection of the errors are shown,2015,0.136
Natural Selection Constrains Neutral Diversity across A Wide Range of Species,the neutral theory of molecular evolution predicts that the amount of neutral polymorphisms within a species will increase proportionally with the census population size nc however this prediction has not been borne out in practice while the range of nc spans many orders of magnitude levels of genetic diversity within species fall in a comparatively narrow range although theoretical arguments have invoked the increased efficacy of natural selection in larger populations to explain this discrepancy few direct empirical tests of this hypothesis have been conducted in this work we provide a direct test of this hypothesis using population genomic data from a wide range of taxonomically diverse species to do this we relied on the fact that the impact of natural selection on linked neutral diversity depends on the local recombinational environment in regions of relatively low recombination selected variants affect more neutral sites through linkage and the resulting correlation between recombination and polymorphism allows a quantitative assessment of the magnitude of the impact of selection on linked neutral diversity by comparing whole genome polymorphism data and genetic maps using a coalescent modeling framework we estimate the degree to which natural selection reduces linked neutral diversity for 40 species of obligately sexual eukaryotes we then show that the magnitude of the impact of natural selection is positively correlated with nc based on body size and species range as proxies for census population size these results demonstrate that natural selection removes more variation at linked neutral sites in species with large nc than those with small nc and provides direct empirical evidence that natural selection constrains levels of neutral genetic diversity across many species this implies that natural selection may provide an explanation for this longstanding paradox of population genetics,2015,0.916
How Aphia—The Platform behind Several Online and Taxonomically Oriented Databases—Can Serve Both the Taxonomic Community and the Field of Biodiversity Informatics,the aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information and includes an online editing environment the latter allows easy access to experts so they can update the content of the database in a timely fashion aphia is the core platform that underpins the world register of marine species worms and its more than 80 related global regional and thematic species databases but it also allows the storage of non marine data the content of aphia can be consulted online either by individual users or via machine to machine interactions aphia uses unique and stable identifiers for each available name in the database through the use of life science identifiers lsids the system not only allows the storage of accepted and unaccepted names but it also documents the relationships between names this makes it a very powerful tool for taxonomic quality control and also allows the linking of different pieces of information through scientific names both within the aphia platform and in relation to externally hosted databases through these lsids aphia has become an important player in the field of marine biodiversity informatics allowing interactions between its own taxonomic data and e g biogeographic databases some applications in the field of biodiversity informatics encompass the coupling of species traits and taxonomy as well as the creation of diverse expert validated data products that can be used by policy makers for example aphia also supplies part of its content to other data integrators and the infrastructure can be used to host orphan databases in danger of being lost,2015,0.588
Genetic Resources as Natural Information: Implications for the Convention on Biological Diversity and Nagoya Protocol,demonstrating the shortcomings of current policy and legal approaches to access and benefit sharing abs in the convention on biological diversity cbd this book recognizes that genetic resources are widely distributed across countries and that bilateral contracts undermine fairness and equity the book offers a practical and feasible regulatory alternative to ensure the goal of fairness and equity is effectively and efficiently met through a legal analysis that also incorporates historic economic and sociological perspectives the book argues that genetic resources are not tangible resources but information it shows that the existing preference for bilateralism and contracts reflects resistance on the part of many of the stakeholders involved in the cbd process to recognize them as such abs issues respond very well to the economics of information yet as the author explains these have been either sidelined or overlooked at a time when the nagoya protocol on abs has renewed interest in feasible policy options the author provides a constructive and provocative critique the institutional policy and regulatory framework constitute bounded openness under which fairness and equity emerge,2015,0.303
Photosynthetic temperature responses of tree species in Rwanda: evidence of pronounced negative effects of high temperature in montane rainforest climax species.,the sensitivity of photosynthetic metabolism to temperature has been identified as a key uncertainty for projecting the magnitude of the terrestrial feedback on future climate change while temperature responses of photosynthetic capacities have been comparatively well investigated in temperate species the responses of tropical tree species remain unexplored we compared the responses of seedlings of native cold adapted tropical montane rainforest tree species with those of exotic warm adapted plantation species all growing in an intermediate temperature common garden in rwanda leaf gas exchange responses to carbon dioxide co2 at different temperatures 20 40â c were used to assess the temperature responses of biochemical photosynthetic capacities analyses revealed a lower optimum temperature for photosynthetic electron transport rates than for rubisco carboxylation rates along with lower electron transport optima in the native cold adapted than in the exotic warm adapted species the photosynthetic optimum temperatures were generally exceeded by daytime peak leaf temperatures in particular in the native montane rainforest climax species this study thus provides evidence of pronounced negative effects of high temperature in tropical trees and indicates high susceptibility of montane rainforest climax species to future global warming,2015,0.914
Large-scale patterns of turnover and Basal area change in Andean forests.,general patterns of forest dynamics and productivity in the andes mountains are poorly characterized here we present the first large scale study of andean forest dynamics using a set of 63 permanent forest plots assembled over the past two decades in the north central andes tree turnover mortality and recruitment and tree growth declined with increasing elevation and decreasing temperature in addition basal area increased in lower montane moist forests but did not change in higher montane humid forests however at higher elevations the lack of net basal area change and excess of mortality over recruitment suggests negative environmental impacts in north western argentina forest dynamics appear to be influenced by land use history in addition to environmental variation taken together our results indicate that combinations of abiotic and biotic factors that vary across elevation gradients are important determinants of tree turnover and productivity in the andes more extensive and longer term monitoring and analyses of forest dynamics in permanent plots will be necessary to understand how demographic processes and woody biomass are responding to changing environmental conditions along elevation gradients through this century,2015,0.149
Data journals: A survey,data occupy a key role in our information society however although the amount of published data continues to grow and terms such as data deluge and big data today characterize numerous research initiatives much work is still needed in the direction of publishing data in order to make them effectively discoverable available and reusable by others several barriers hinder data publishing from lack of attribution and rewards vague citation practices and quality issues to a rather general lack of a data sharing culture lately data journals have overcome some of these barriers in this study of more than 100 currently existing data journals we describe the approaches they promote for data set description availability citation quality and open access we close by identifying ways to expand and strengthen the data journals approach as a means to promote data set access and exploitation,2015,0.17
Mining Twitter to monitor Invasive Alien Species – An analytical framework and sample information topologies,social online media increasingly emerge as important informal information sources that can contribute to the detection of trends and early warnings in critical fields such as public health monitoring or emergency management in the face of global environmental challenges the utilisation of this information in ecological monitoring contexts has been called for but examples remain sparse this can be attributed to the significant technical challenges in processing this data and concerns about the quality reliability and applicability of information mined from social media to the ecological domain here the strength and weaknesses of social media mining for ecological monitoring are assessed using the micro blogging service twitter and invasive alien species ias monitoring as an example the assessment is based on a manual analysis of 2842 tweets sampled from twitter data with potential direct or descriptive references to ias impacting forest ecosystems which was collected over a period of nearly three years the results are presented as information topologies for twitter messages of observational and non observational character for three ias with distinctive characteristics oak processionary moth emerald ash borer eastern grey squirrel the results show that the social media channel twitter is a rich source of primary and secondary observational biodiversity information it also provides useful insights in the topical landscape of public communications on ias as well as the public perception of ias and ias management the analysis suggests broad application opportunities in ias monitoring and management and points at applications for related environmental questions the results highlight that social media mining for ecological monitoring needs to be approached with the same best practices as ecological monitoring in general requiring a good understanding of the monitored subjects and specific monitoring questions the challenges in utilising this information for operational systems are of technical rather than conceptual nature and include extending the degree of automation especially with regard to image recognition and the automatic provisioning of location information,2015,0.304
Different rates of defense evolution and niche preferences in clonal and nonclonal milkweeds (Asclepias spp.).,given the dual role of many plant traits to tolerate both herbivore attack and abiotic stress the climatic niche of a species should be integrated into the study of plant defense strategies here we investigate the impact of plant reproductive strategy and components of species climatic niche on the rate of chemical defense evolution in the milkweeds using a common garden experiment of 49 species we found that across asclepias species clonal reproduction repeatedly evolved in lower temperature conditions in species generally producing low concentrations of a toxic defense cardenolides additionally we found that rates of cardenolide evolution were lower for clonal than for nonclonal species we thus conclude that because the clonal strategy is based on survival long generation times and is associated with tolerance of herbivory it may be an alternative to toxicity in colder ecosystems taken together these results indicate that the rate of chemical defense evolution is influenced by the intersection of life history strategy and climatic niches into which plants radiate,2015,0.741
Boden - ein unterschätzter Lebensraum,der boden ist einer der individuen und artenreichsten lebensrã ume der erde und ort vielfã ltiger ã kosystemarer dienstleistungen aktuelle forschungsprojekte zur entstehung und entwicklung von bodentiergemeinschaften zu den vielfã ltigen wechselwirkungen innerhalb des bodennahrungsnetzes und zur verbreitung von bodentieren geben unter anderem einblick in die ã kologischen ansprã che und anpassungsfã higkeit der welt unter unseren fã ãÿen und tragen so dazu bei eine nachhaltige nutzung der ã koressource boden zu gewã hrleisten soil â an underestimated biotope the soil is a biotope with high species abundances and richness it is furthermore a location where important ecosystem services are realized recent research projects on the origin and development of soil animal communities on the heterogeneous interactions within the soil nutrient net and the distribution of soil animals show the different ecological traits and adaptabilities of the world beneath our feet so research contributes to maintain the eco resource of soil and its sustainable use,2015,0.525
Projected impacts of climate change on protected birds and nature reserves in China,knowledge about climate change impacts on species distribution at national scale is critical to biodiversity conservation and design of management programs although china is a biodiversity hot spot in the world potential influence of climate change on chinese protected birds is rarely studied here we assess the impact of climate change on 108 protected bird species and nature reserves using species distribution modeling at a relatively fine spatial resolution 1 km for the first time we found that a large proportion of protected species would have potential suitable habitat shrink and northward range shift by 77â 90 km in response to projected future climate change in 2080 southeastern china would suffer from losing climate suitability whereas the climate conditions in qinghaiâ tibet plateau and northeastern china were projected to become suitable for more protected species on average each protected area in china would experience a decline of suitable climate for 3â 4 species by 2080 climate change will modify which species each protected area will be suitable for our results showed that the risk of extinction for chinese protected birds would be high even in the moderate climate change scenario these findings indicate that the management and design of nature reserves in china must take climate change into consideration,2015,0.852
"Dataset of Phenology of Mediterranean high-mountain meadows flora (Sierra Nevada, Spain).",sierra nevada mountain range southern spain hosts a high number of endemic plant species being one of the most important biodiversity hotspots in the mediterranean basin the high mountain meadow ecosystems borreguiles harbour a large number of endemic and threatened plant species in this data paper we describe a dataset of the flora inhabiting this threatened ecosystem in this mediterranean mountain the dataset includes occurrence data for flora collected in those ecosystems in two periods 1988 1990 and 2009 2013 a total of 11002 records of occurrences belonging to 19 orders 28 families 52 genera were collected 73 taxa were recorded with 29 threatened taxa we also included data of cover abundance and phenology attributes for the records the dataset is included in the sierra nevada global change observatory obsnev a long term research project designed to compile socio ecological information on the major ecosystem types in order to identify the impacts of global change in this area,2015,0.685
Toward a global platform for linking soil biodiversity data,soil biodiversity is immense with an estimated 10 100 million organisms belonging to over 5000 taxa in a handful of soil in spite of the importance of soil biodiversity for ecosystem functions and services information on soil species from taxonomy to biogeographical patterns is incomplete and there is no infrastructure to connect pre existing or future data here we propose a global platform to allow for greater access to soil biodiversity information by linking databases and repositories through a single open portal the proposed platform would for the first time link data on soil organisms from different global sites and biomes and will be inclusive of all data types from molecular sequences to morphology measurements and other supporting information access to soil biodiversity species records and information will be instrumental to progressing scientific research and education further as demonstrated by previous biodiversity synthesis efforts data availability is key for adapting to and creating mitigation plans in response to global changes with the rapid influx of soil biodiversity data now is the time to take the first steps forward in establishing a global soil biodiversity information platform,2015,0.463
In Vitro Cholinergic and Acute Toxicity Evaluations of Salacia lehmbachii,salacia lehmbachii has been implicated in the treatment of many disease conditions including gastrointestinal disorders by herbalists in south eastern nigeria our goals were first to assess the toxicit y level of aqueous root extract of s lehmbachii aresl in mice and then to evaluate the cholinergic activity of the extract in isolated rabbit ileum for acute toxicity study mice of either sex were randomized into five groups of 10 mice and treated wit h 1000 2000 3000 4000 and 5000 mg kg body weight overt toxic signs were monitored for 48 hours for cholinergic activity ileal muscle strips were prepared and mounted in a tissue bath containing aerated de jalonâ s solution maintained at 36â 1 o c dose r esponse relationships for acetylcholine ach was studied isometrically in the presence of fixed concentrations of aresl 0 25ã 10 ∠2 and 0 5ã 10 ∠2 mg ml similarly atropine control was investigated in the presence of ach and the effect compared with those of the extract viz a viz amplitude frequency as well as maximum achievable effects e max and concentrations which inhibited 50 of maximum effects ic 50 data were computed by one way analysis of variance anova followed by newman keuleâ s test as post hoc acute oral toxicity revealed no death but righting reflex revealed dose dependent increase and ld 50 was 631 mg kg cholinergic activity revealed a significant p 0 05 shift to the right of dose response curve of ach from pretreatment with extract 0 25 and 0 5ã 10 ∠2 mg ml and atropine 3 5 ã 10 ∠2 î g ml since there was significant reduction in e max and frequency of contraction aresl therefore possesses anticholinergic property and this explains why herbalists use it as antispasmodic agent,2015,0.213
Assessing the importance of topographic variables for the spatial distribution of tree species in a tropical mountain forest,availability and improved access to high resolution digital terrain models dtm enables new approaches for the analysis of spatially explicit biological data in this study the spatial distribution of 16 tree species in a tropical mountain rain forest in south ecuador and its relationship with topographic variables was evaluated at a fine scale ecological level using two presence only species distribution modelling techniques the maximum entropy model maxent and the ecological niche factor analysis enfa spatially explicit tree data stem from long term forest monitoring plots in three microcatchments with a total area of 11 1 ha topographic variables were derived from a high resolution dtm model performance was assessed by the true skill statistic tss and area under curve auc of the receiver operator characteristic roc using both a k fold approach and null models performance varied among species and techniques but generally maxent models showed better performance than enfa models furthermore the ecological plausibility of the models was confirmed by comparing them with a previously established forest type classification among the explanatory topographic variables elevation and a topographic position index tpi appear as the main determinants for the distribution of most of the tree species this study demonstrates that even on a small scale the use of presence only species distribution modelling techniques is a viable option for modelling suitable habitat for tree species in tropical mountain rain forests indicating suitability for supporting stand level planning and site species matching techniques for natural forest management,2015,0.741
Historical data to plan the recovery of the European eel,long term perspectives are critical to understand contemporary ecological systems however historical data on the distribution of biodiversity have only rarely been used in applied environmental sciences here we use historical sources to reconstruct the historical range of the european eel a critically endangered species we then use this baseline range to set range targets for the recovery of the european eel as opposed to the abundance based targets established by the european union which are constrained by the poor information on pre collapse stocks we collected over 10 000 historical freshwater fish records from spain in the 19th and 16th centuries as well as over 25 000 records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif to characterize historical and current european eel distribution in the iberian peninsula we converted fish records into an eel presenceâ absence data set using subcatchment as spatial unit of analysis and modelled eel distribution in the different historical periods the eel was historically widespread throughout the iberian peninsula but it has lost over 80 of its original range mainly due to river fragmentation by dams distribution models applied to 16th and 19th century data showed a high agreement supporting the use of the 19th century estimated distribution as a baseline range we identified the number and identity of dams that should be made passable for accomplishing specific range recovery targets for example showing that acting upon 20 dams would make available 60 of the baseline eel range synthesis and applications this work exemplifies how insights gained from historical ecology can support and guide present day management of migratory fishes similar approaches could be developed throughout europe to plan the recovery of the eel since there are large amounts of historical eel records historical baseline ranges for the eel range should be incorporated into the european union legal mandates aimed at the recovery of the species,2015,0.144
Location of plant species in Norway gathered as a part of a survey vegetation mapping programme,georeferenced species data have a wide range of applications and are increasingly used for e g distribution modelling and climate change studies as an integrated part of an on going survey programme for vegetation mapping plant species have been recorded the data described in this paper contains 18 521 registrations of plants from 1190 different circular plots throughout norway all species localities are georeferenced the spatial uncertainty is provided and additional ecological information is reported the published data has been gathered from 1991 until 2015 the entries contain all higher vascular plants and pteridophytes and some cryptogams other ecological information is also provided for the species locations such as the vegetation type the cover of the species and slope the entire material is stored and available for download through the gbif server,2015,0.531
Emerging semantics to link phenotype and environment,understanding the interplay between environmental conditions and phenotypes is a fundamental goal of biology unfortunately data that include observations on phenotype and environment are highly heterogeneous and thus difficult to find and integrate one approach that is likely to improve the status quo involves the use of ontologies to standardize and link data about phenotypes and environments specifying and linking data through ontologies will allow researchers to increase the scope and flexibility of large scale analyses aided by modern computing methods investments in this area would advance diverse fields such as ecology phylogenetics and conservation biology while several biological ontologies are well developed using them to link phenotypes and environments is rare because of gaps in ontological coverage and limits to interoperability among ontologies and disciplines in this manuscript we present 1 use cases from diverse disciplines to illustrate questions that could be answered more efficiently using a robust linkage between phenotypes and environments 2 two proof of concept analyses that show the value of linking phenotypes to environments in fishes and amphibians and 3 two proposed example data models for linking phenotypes and environments using the extensible observation ontology oboe and the biological collections ontology bco these provide a starting point for the development of a data model linking phenotypes and environments,2015,0.116
Up-to-date report on the distribution of Helianthemum lippii (Cistaceae) in Italy,an up to date report on the distribution of helianthemum lippii in italy is provided also on the basis of the findings by lojacono pojero in 1889 who reported the existence of a relic population in sicily southern italy which is now thought to be extinct because of human disturbance field excursions permitted to confirm the locus classicus reported by lojacono pojero as the other sicilian localities that have been reported more recently based on a careful analysis of the literature the presence of h lippii is currently excluded in calabria and apulia the main causes that threaten the habitat of h lippii in sicily are pointed out according to iucn threats classification scheme,2015,0.417
Modeling the Potential Geographical Distribution and Ecological Niche of Selected Fruit Fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) Species in Uganda,despite their overwhelming economic importance efforts to assess the distribution of fruit flies diptera tephritidae in uganda have been minimal consequently in this study potential geographical distributions and climatic envelopes of 10 selected fruit fly species were modeled two presence only predictive models namely maxent and bioclim were run using 19 bioclimatic parameters at a resolution of 30 arc seconds new detections and existing records of fruit flies were used in the model the climatic profiles of the selected fruit flies were described and the relative importance of the bioclimatic variables was explored there was a close agreement between the two models about the distribution and suitability patterns matching the main fruit agro ecological zones precipitation pc 1 61 4190 and temperature pc 2 29 214 significantly shaped fruit fly niches across the country central and mid north zones provided the most suitable niches while the western northeastern and areas around albert nile were characterized as marginally suitable the models were mostly robust in performance auc 0 815 â 0 974 with model test performance ranging from random c capitata 0 486 to excellent c cosyra 0 965 predicted marginal sites such as higher altitude zones matched negative areas of the models which reflected higher model prediction abilities these results provide an initial insight into the bioclimatic tolerance ranges of fruit flies in uganda and should assist in identification of sites for future sampling efforts and fruit fly management planning,2015,0.342
The Linsenmaier Chrysididae collection housed in the Natur-Museum Luzern (Switzerland) and the main results of the related GBIF Hymenoptera Project (Insecta).,historical notes on walter linsenmaier his entomological career and his chrysididae collection are given the purpose of this article is to supply the main results obtained during the gbif digitalization project and the subsequent reorganization of the chrysididae collection housed in the natur museum luzern switzerland we also provide the complete list of the 720 taxa described by the swiss author species group and genus group names observations on the type material is given a new synonymy valid name is first is proposed for c consanguinea mocsã ry 1889 c consanguinea iberica linsenmaier 1959 syn nov c pyrophana dahlbom 1854 c pyrophana var orionea linsenmaier 1951 syn nov hedychridium elegantulum du buysson 1887 h hybridum linsenmaier 1959 syn nov h perpunctatum balthasar 1953 h insequosum linsenmaier 1959 syn nov euchroeus pseudospinolia incrassatus spinola 1838 e p humboldti jerichoensis linsenmaier 1959 syn nov a new replacement name chrysis vulcanica rosa nom nov is proposed for chrysis brevicollis linsenmaier 1987 nom praeocc nec mocsã ry 1899 the lectotype of chrysis auriceps linsenmaier 1959 is designated,2015,0.268
Combining environmental suitability and population abundances to evaluate the invasive potential of the tunicate Ciona intestinalis along the temperate South American coast.,the tunicate ciona intestinalis is an opportunistic invader with high potential for causing economic losses in aquaculture centers recent phylogenetic and population genetic analysis support the existence of a genetic complex described as c intestinalis with two main dominant species sp a and b occurring worldwide in chile the species has been observed around 30â s of latitude but no official reports exist for the presence of c intestinalis in southern regions above 40â s where most of the mollusk aquaculture centers are located here we used occurrences from multiple invaded regions and extensive field sampling to model and validate the environmental conditions that allow the species to persist and to find the geographic areas with the most suitable environmental conditions for the spread of c intestinalis in the chilean coast by studying the potential expansion of c intestinalis southward in the chilean coast we aimed to provide valuable information that might help the development of control plans before the species becomes a significant problem especially above 40â s our results highlight that by using portions of the habitat that are apparently distinguishable the species seem to be not only genetically distinct but ecologically distinct as well the two regional models fitted for sp a and for sp b showed disagreement on which sections of chilean coastline are considered more suitable for these species while the model for sp a identifies moderately to highly suitable areas between 30â and 40â s the model for sp b classifies the areas around 45â s as the most appropriate data from field sampling show a positive linear relationship between density of c intestinalis and the index of suitability for sp a in aquaculture centers understanding the relation of the distinct species with the surrounding environment provided valuable insights about probable routes of dispersion in chile especially into those areas considered suitable for aquaculture activities but where the species has not yet been recorded we discuss the implications of our findings as a useful tool to anticipate the invasion of such harmful invasive species with regard to the most relevant environmental variables,2015,0.923
"Taxonomic Account of Dinastinae Fauna (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) of Buxa Tiger Reserve (West bengal, India)",systematics of dynastinae fauna included under 8 genera recorde d from buxa tiger reserve dooars west bengal are dealt with the generated dat a is the outcome of long term faunistic i nvestigations of the authors each of the taxa is diagnosed described and illustrated supplem entarily by digital images fu rther keys to genera and species are also provided,2015,0.463
Capitalizing on opportunistic data for monitoring relative abundances of species.,with the internet a massive amount of information on species abundance can be collected by citizen science programs however these data are often difficult to use directly in statistical inference as their collection is generally opportunistic and the distribution of the sampling effort is often not known in this article we develop a general statistical framework to combine such opportunistic data with data collected using schemes characterized by a known sampling effort under some structural assumptions regarding the sampling effort and detectability our approach makes it possible to estimate the relative abundance of several species in different sites it can be implemented through a simple generalized linear model we illustrate the framework with typical bird datasets from the aquitaine region in south western france we show that under some assumptions our approach provides estimates that are more precise than the ones obtained from the dataset with a known sampling effort alone when the opportunistic data are abundant the gain in precision may be considerable especially for rare species we also show that estimates can be obtained even for species recorded only in the opportunistic scheme opportunistic data combined with a relatively small amount of data collected with a known effort may thus provide access to accurate and precise estimates of quantitative changes in relative abundance over space and or time,2015,0.684
Mapping the zoonotic niche of Marburg virus disease in Africa.,background marburg virus disease mvd describes a viral haemorrhagic fever responsible for a number of outbreaks across eastern and southern africa it is a zoonotic disease with the egyptian rousette rousettus aegyptiacus identified as a reservoir host infection is suspected to result from contact between this reservoir and human populations with occasional secondary human to human transmission methods index cases of previous human outbreaks were identified and reports of infection in animals recorded these data were modelled within a species distribution modelling framework in order to generate a probabilistic surface of zoonotic transmission potential of mvd across sub saharan africa results areas suitable for zoonotic transmission of mvd are predicted in 27 countries inhabited by 105 million people regions are suggested for exploratory surveys to better characterise the geographical distribution of the disease as well as for directing efforts to communicate the risk of practices enhancing zoonotic contact conclusions these maps can inform future contingency and preparedness strategies for mvd control especially where secondary transmission is a risk coupling this risk map with patient travel histories could be used to guide the differential diagnosis of highly transmissible pathogens enabling more rapid response to outbreaks of haemorrhagic fever,2015,0.784
"Do geographic, climatic or historical ranges differentiate the performance of central versus peripheral populations?",aim the â centreâ periphery hypothesisâ cph predicts that species performance genetics physiology morphology demography will decline gradually from the centre towards the periphery of the geographic range this hypothesis has been subjected to continuous debate since the 1980s essentially because empirical studies have shown contrasting patterns moreover it has been proposed that species performance might not be higher at the geographic range centre but rather at the environmental optimum or at sites presenting greater environmental stability in time in this paper we re evaluate the cph by disentangling the effects of geographic climatic and historical centrality marginality on the demography of three widely distributed plant species and the genetic diversity of one of them location europe and north america methods based on a species distribution modelling approach we test whether demographic parameters vital rates stochastic population growth rates density of three plant species of contrasting life forms and the genetic diversity of one of them are higher at their geographic range centres climatic optima or projected glacial refugia results while geographic climatic and historical centreâ periphery gradients are often not concordant overall none of them explain well the distribution of species demographic performance whereas genetic diversity responds positively only to a historical centrality related to post glacial range dynamics main conclusions to our knowledge this is the first assessment of the response of species performance to three centrality gradients considering all the components of different species life cycles and genetic diversity information across continental distributions our results are inconsistent with the idea that geographically climatically or historically marginal populations generally perform worse than central ones we particularly emphasize the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the relative effects of contemporary versus historical and geographic versus ecological factors on the distribution of species performance,2015,0.842
A modelling implementation of climate change on biodegradation of Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) by Aspergillus niger in soil,aim to model the areas becoming and remaining highly suitable for aspergillus niger growth over the next ninety years by future climate alteration in relation to the speciesâ potential enhancement of low density polyethylene ldpe biodegradation in soil location global scale methods projections of a niger growth suitability for 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 were made using the a2 emissions scenario together with two global climate models gcms the csiro mk3 0 cs model and the miroc h mr model through climex software subsequently the outputs of the two gcms were overlaid to extract common areas in each period of time providing higher certainty concerning areas which will become highly suitable to a niger in the future afterwards gis software was employed to extract sustainable regions for this species growth from present time up to 2100 results central and eastern argentina uruguay southern brazil eastern united states southern france northern spain central and southern italy southern hungary eastern albania south western russia central and eastern china eastern australia south east of south africa central zambia rwanda burundi central kenya central ethiopia and north eastern oman will be highly suitable for a niger growth from present time up to 2100 main conclusions accurately evaluating the impact of landfilling on land use and predicting future climate are vital components for effective long term planning of waste management from a social and economic perspective utilization of our mapped projections to detect suitable regions for establishing landfills in areas highly sustainable for microorganisms like a niger growth will allow a significant cost reduction and improve the performance of biodegradation of ldpe over a long period of time through making use of natural climatic and environmental factors,2015,0.085
Niche dynamics of alien species do not differ among sexual and apomictic flowering plants.,biological invasions can be associated with shifts of the species climatic niches but the incidence of such shifts is under debate the reproductive system might be a key factor controlling such shifts because it influences a species evolutionary flexibility however the link between reproductive systems and niche dynamics in plant invasions has been little studied so far we compiled global occurrence data sets of 13 congeneric sexual and apomictic species pairs and used principal components analysis pca and kernel smoothers to compare changes in climatic niche optima breadths and unfilling expansion between native and alien ranges niche change metrics were compared between sexual and apomictic species all 26 species showed changes in niche optima and or breadth and 14 species significantly expanded their climatic niches however we found no effect of the reproductive system on niche dynamics instead species with narrower native niches showed higher rates of niche expansion in the alien ranges our results suggest that niche shifts are frequent in plant invasions but evolutionary potential may not be of major importance for such shifts niche dynamics rather appear to be driven by changes of the realized niche without adaptive change of the fundamental climatic niche,2015,0.838
Contribution towards a morphological and molecular taxonomic reference library of benthic marine diatoms from two Arctic fjords on Svalbard (Norway),knowledge on benthic diatom taxonomy and hence biodiversity from arctic locations is rare though the few existing analyses address morphological characteristics only morphological treatment is a time consuming process and just allows the taxonomic identification of a low sample volume in contrast molecular sequencing is a faster and universally applicable approach and also has the potential for refined analyses unfortunately a lot of molecular information in databases is not trustable and often existing genetic data do not fit together with morphological aspects therefore the main goal of our study was for the first time to combine both morphological features and dna information on benthic arctic diatoms in a first step we studied the morphology of 26 strains from the rostock culture collection of arctic diatoms via light and electron microscopies secondly we addressed their molecular taxonomy by sequencing the dna barcode 18s v4 and the chloroplast marker rbcl as a result we could identify five species seven of the altogether twelve taxa could not be attributed to any known species because listed sequences and morphology did not fit together from these three species were described as new to science here although the studied strains represent only a minor fraction of the diatom flora of svalbard this study is a first milestone in coupling morphological and molecular data of benthic diatoms in such high latitudes by making these data available online they contribute to a taxonomic reference library for arctic benthic diatoms and are available for comparative studies,2015,0.634
Challenges and opportunities for the Bolivian Biodiversity Observation Network,pragmatic methods to assess the status of biodiversity at multiple scales are required to support conservation decision making at the intersection of several major biogeographic zones bolivia has extraordinary potential to develop a monitoring strategy aligned with the objectives of the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon bolivia a geo observer since 2005 is already working on the adequacy of national earth observations towards the objectives of the global earth observation system of systems geoss however biodiversity is still an underrepresented component in this initiative the integration of biodiversity into boliviaâ s geo framework would confirm the need for a country level biodiversity monitoring strategy fundamental to assess the progress towards the 2020 aichi targets here we analyse and discuss two aspects of the process of developing such a strategy 1 identification of taxonomic temporal and spatial coverage of biodiversity data to detect both ava,2015,0.121
Phylogeography of Arabidopsis halleri (Brassicaceae) in mountain regions of Central Europe inferred from cpDNA variation and ecological niche modelling,the present study aimed to investigate phylogeographical patterns present within a halleri in central europe to propose hypotheses explaining the emergence of these patterns and to formulate hypotheses on the formation of the present day range of a halleri in the region 1281 accessions sampled from 52 populations within the investigated area were used in the study of genetic variation based on chloroplast dna over 500 high quality species occurrence records were used in ecological niche modelling experiments we evidenced the presence of a clear phylogeographic structure within a halleri in central europe our results suggest that the species might have not survived the last glacial maximum in the carpathians and sudetes and that its range during the last glacial maximum might have consisted of at least two major parts 1 a northern refugium consisting of vast refugial areas north and northeast of the alps and 2 a southern refugium located in the dinaric alps and balkan mts we postulate that the sudetes and western carpathians were colonised mainly by plants originating from the northern refugium whereas populations from the eastern carpathians originate from southern refugium we also discuss our results in relation to the problematic taxonomy of the species,2015,0.616
Geographical distribution of Dermacentor marginatus and Dermacentor reticulatus in Europe,the goal of this paper is to present up to date maps depicting the geographical distribution of dermacentor species in europe based on georeferenced sampling sites therefore a dataset was compiled resulting in 1 286 d marginatus sulzer 1776 and 1 209 d reticulatus fabricius 1794 locations special emphasis is given to the region of the european alps depicting a presumable climate barrier of the mountains and to overlaps in the distribution of both species as well as on the situation in eastern european countries for the latter newly described dermacentor findings comprise 59 locations in romania and 62 locations in ukraine the geographical distributions of both species in europe range from portugal to ukraine and continue to the east of kazakhstan although it is well known that d marginatus is adapted to a warmer and drier climate at more southern latitudes and d reticulatus to a moderately moist climate at more northern latitudes the distribution limits of both species were not well known here the northern and southern distribution limits for both species in europe as determined from the georeferenced database were specified for d marginatus by the belt of 33 51∠n latitude and for d reticulatus by the belt of 41 57∠n latitude thus overlapping species distributions were found between 41∠n and 51∠n,2015,0.856
"First Fossil Fruits and Leaves of Burretiodendron s.l. (Malvaceae s.l.) in Southeast Asia: Implications for Taxonomy, Biogeography, and Paleoclimate",premise of research burretiodendron rehder is a genus of six species that are mainly found on limestone in southeast asian mountain forests with a monsoonal climate recent molecular evidence supports its placement in malvaceae s l presently two species of burretiodendron have been classified as vulnerable according to the international union for the conservation of nature fossil burretiodendron is also extremely rare in the record and little is known about its evolutionary history methodology fossil fruits and leaves were collected from upper miocene sediments in yunnan sw china their macro and micro morphology were studied and compared with all extant species of burretiodendron and with species of fossil and extant craigia w w sm w e evans having somewhat similar fruits pivotal results we recognize fossil remains of burretiodendron on the basis of fruits described as burretiodendron parvifructum sp nov and associated leaves of burretiodendron miocenicum sp nov conclusions these miocene fossils are the first confirmed occurrence of this genus in the southeast asian fossil record this discovery supports the possibility that southeastern yunnan was already experiencing frost free winters and seasonal precipitation with wet summers and relatively dry winters it also corroborates the hypothesis that this genus might have originated at the sino vietnamese border where the biodiversity center of the genus is today,2015,0.86
The potential distribution of invading Helicoverpa armigera in North America: is it just a matter of time?,helicoverpa armigera has recently invaded south and central america and appears to be spreading rapidly we update a previously developed potential distribution model to highlight the global invasion threat with emphasis on the risks to the united states the continued range expansion of h armigera in central america is likely to change the invasion threat it poses to north america qualitatively making natural dispersal from either the caribbean islands or mexico feasible to characterise the threat posed by h armigera we collated the value of the major host crops in the united states growing within its modelled potential range including that area where it could expand its range during favourable seasons we found that the annual value of crops that would be exposed to h armigera totalled approximately us 78 billion p a with us 843 million p a worth growing in climates that are optimal for the pest elsewhere h armigera has developed broad spectrum pesticide resistance meaning that if it invades the united states protecting these crops from significant production impacts could be challenging it may be cost effective to undertake pre emptive biosecurity activities such as slowing the spread of h armigera throughout the americas improving the system for detecting h armigera and methods for rapid identification especially distinguishing between h armigera h zea and potential h armigera x h zea hybrids developing biological control programs especially using inundative techniques with entomopathogens and parasitoids could slow the spread of h armigera and reduce selective pressure for pesticide resistance the rapid spread of h armigera through south america into central america suggests that its spread into north america is a matter of time the likely natural dispersal routes preclude aggressive incursion responses emphasizing the value of preparatory communication with agricultural producers in areas suitable for invasion by h armigera,2015,0.175
Understanding the distribution of a threatened bird at multiple levels: A hierarchical analysis of the ecological niche of the Santa Marta Bush-Tyrant ( Myiotheretes pernix ),abstract an understanding of the ecological factors determining bird species distributions is essential for making informed conservation decisions these data are especially important for range restricted species such as the santa marta bush tyrant myiotheretes pernix a threatened endemic of the sierra nevada de santa marta snsm in colombia here we adopt a novel hierarchical analysis to describe the bush tyrant s ecological niche and infer the regional and local determinants of its limited distribution we first describe habitat selection based on local habitat use and microhabitats used for foraging we then use a geoprocessing modeling algorithm to combine habitat selection data with a climatic niche model the resulting model produced an index of habitat suitability which we converted into a predicted geographic distribution santa marta bush tyrants showed no clear habitat preferences but favored forested and secondary growth habitats over open areas at elevations between 2 100 and 3 300 m,2015,0.147
Predicting Current and Future Distribution of Endangered Tree Dracaena ombet Kotschy and Peyr. Under Climate Change,the endangered tree dracaena ombet kotschy and peyr asparagaceae is a native of djibouti egypt eritrea ethiopia saudi arabia somalia and sudan the tree has been experiencing population decline throughout its native ranges due to overgrazing attack by pathogens human overexploitation and climate change the conservation actions for this tree are hindered due to poor information on its geographical distribution using published occurrence data current and future distribution of d ombet under climate change was predicted in the present study using maxent the model performed better than random with area under the curve and true skill statistical values were 0 979 â 0 034 and 0 724 â 0 419 respectively the tree was predicted to be found on mountain chain around the red sea with slope and precipitation being the most influential factors future prediction of d ombet showed major loss of habitat in djibouti egypt eritrea ethiopia somalia and sudan in saudi arabia however most of the population could deal with future climate and some population even could expand their ranges to higher latitude the results from the present study can be used as a basis for further detailed survey of d ombet and for planning the conservation actions needed to conserve the species especially in dealing with future climate change,2015,0.416
When are Old Data New Data?,what is the value of â oldâ data when much more sophisticated data are being acquired today in huge quantities with modern equipment and served up in ready to use form why the hype over delving into the past when the observers were undoubtedly less well informed than they are today what can such old records possibly teach us that we donâ t already know better from modern electronic data and todayâ s sophisticated experiments as this paper demonstrates the answers to those questions lie in the critical scientific advantages of the long term date stamps which only historical data carry,2015,0.244
Ten simple rules for digital data storage,data is the central currency of science but the nature of scientific data has changed dramatically with the rapid pace of technology this change has led to the development of a wide variety of data formats dataset sizes data complexity data use cases and data sharing practices improvements in high throughput dna sequencing sustained institutional support for large sensor networks and sky surveys with large format digital cameras have created massive quantities of data at the same time the combination of increasingly diverse research teams and data aggregation in portals e g for biodiversity data gbif or idigbio necessitates increased coordination among data collectors and institutions as a consequence â œdataâ can now mean anything from petabytes of information stored in professionally maintained databases through spreadsheets on a single computer to hand written tables in lab notebooks on shelves all remain important but data curation practices must continue to keep pace with the changes brought about by new forms and practices of data collection and storage,2015,0.242
Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 70. Nomenclatural notes in hornworts (Anthocerotophyta),prior to the publication of the world checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in press some taxa still need to be validated transferred or synonymized we are here dealing with the remaining nomenclatural issues among the anthocerotophyta several taxa have not been typified properly and we are here suggesting several new lectotypes to stabilize the nomenclature,2015,0.325
ECo: A new measure evaluating the degree of consistency between environmental factors and spatial arrangement of species assemblages,we introduce a measure of environmental consistency eco which assesses the probability of reducing homogeneity in the environmental factors within a speciesâ distribution by randomly displacing its occurrences eco is computed by applying null model analysis to a species incidence matrix where each locality is associated with a set of environmental values environmental homogeneity is measured for each species as the average multiparametric distance between any pair of localities where the species occurs eco can account for the effect of species interactions and resource availability by using different null models that permit or forbid occurrence displacements altering species local abundance or species prevalence eco provides researchers with a flexible statistical framework to address a wide range of ecological and biogeographical issues we investigated in depth the properties and the potentialities of eco showing how it integrates the concepts of eltonian and grinnelian niches we demonstrate that a close relationship exists between niche breadth at species level and environmental consistency of species assemblages in addition we provide evidence that ecological consistency is closely related to species range a software to compute eco is freely available at http forest jrc ec europa eu download software eco,2015,0.924
Avian evolution and speciation in the Southeast Asian tropics,an emerging paradigm in analysis of geographic dif ferentiation and speciation is integration of phylogeo graphic analyses and paleo distributional projections to gain insight into these complex historical processes peterson 2009 this appro ach hinges on the idea of a relatively stable landscape across which species are distributed with occasional di spersal events or climate driven range shifts that open possibilities for population isolation and speciation smith et al 2014 to date the integration has been employed largely in single lineage studies such that evaluations of its effectiveness ca veats to its use and appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses have been difficult see early examples in hosner et al 2014 lim et al 2011 peterson and nyã ri 2007 in this special column we have assembled a group of 12 authors applying this methodology to bird taxa distributed across east and southeast asia and nearby islands in this set of papers we examined 10 avian lineages species or complexes of species using similar molecular and paleo geographic analytical ap proaches creating a rare comparative dataset by which to evaluate generalities underlying the process of popu lation divergence and assess region wide commonalities to understand historical processes impacting these li neages,2015,0.714
Bridging the gap between biodiversity data and policy reporting needs: An Essential Biodiversity Variables perspective,political commitment and policy instruments to halt biodiversity loss require robust data and a diverse indicator set to monitor and report on biodiversity trends gaps in data availability and narrow based indicator sets are significant information barriers to fulfilling these needs in this paper the reporting requirements of seven global or european biodiversity policy instruments were reviewed using the list of essential biodiversity variables ebvs as an analytical framework the reporting requirements for the most comprehensive policy instrument the united nation s strategic plan for biodiversity 2011â 2020 were compared with the indicator set actually used for its reporting to identify current information gaps to explore the extent to which identified gaps could be bridged the potential contribution of data mobilization modelling and further processing of existing data was assessed the information gaps identified demonstrate that decision makers are currently constrained by the lack of data and indicators on changes in the ebv classes genetic composition and to a lesser extent species populations for which data is most often available furthermore the results show that even when there is a requirement for specific information for reporting the indicators used may not be able to provide all the information for example current convention of biological diversity indicators provide relatively little information on changes in the ecosystem function and ecosystem structure classes this gap could be partly closed by using existing indicators as proxies whereas additional indicators may be computed based on available data e g for ebvs in the ecosystem structure class however for the ebv class genetic composition no immediate improvement based on proxies or existing data seems possible synthesis and applications using essential biodiversity variables ebvs as a tool theory driven comparisons could be made between the biodiversity information gaps in reporting and indicator sets analytical properties such as an identification of which data and indicator s are relevant per ebv will need to be addressed before ebvs can actually become operational and facilitate the integration of data flows for monitoring and reporting in the meantime a first analysis shows that existing indicators and available data offer considerable potential for bridging the identified information gaps,2015,0.02
Microwave-assisted synthesis of high purity β-tricalcium phosphate crystalline powder from the waste of Green mussel shells (Perna canaliculus),beta tricalcium phosphate î tcp was successfully synthesized using the waste of green mussel shells perna canaliculus calcined mussel shells and phosphoric acid were mixed in 1 5 ca p molar ratio and subjected to microwave irradiation 1100w for 30min and subsequently calcined at 750â c the synthesized powder was chemically compositionally and structurally characterized and was found to be very similar to a commercial î tcp furthermore the obtained powder was stable up to 1000â c and lost only 2 of its weight its toxic metallic contents e g cd pb and as were lower than standard limits for biogenic calcium phosphate for medical application the synthesized î tcp powder shows spherical morphology having diameter in the range of 100â 150nm and ca p molar ratio of 1 49 which is close to the stoichiometric ratio the results obtained in this study showed that pure î tcp can be produced from waste mussel shells in a simple and fast way using microwave irradiation,2015,0.376
"Lepidodactylus lugubris (Duméril & Bibron 1836) (Reptilia: Gekkonidae), an introduced lizard new for Brazil, with remarks on and correction of its distribution in the New World",recently seven specimens of the gecko lepidodactylus lugubris were collected or observed in belã m parã northern brazil this is the first vouchered occurrence in brazil of a widely dispersed pacific area and invasive species much of the pacific parts of northern south america and southern central america and florida u s a in suriname the species has already spread into the interior the distribution of the species is corrected and the history of its introduction in the new world is reconstructed with an estimation of the state of invasiveness for each country some possible routes of introduction are discussed,2015,0.859
First official record of a naturalised population of Mimosa albida Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd. var. albida in Africa,mimosa albida var albida is a woody shrub indigenous to central and south america that is well adapted to disturbed habitats this paper is the first formal report of this species outside of cultivation in africa a total of 61 plants were recorded along a 1 5km arc of the mkhomazi river in kwazulu natal south africa effort s are underway to eradicate the population,2015,0.305
Beyond maps: a review of the applications of biological records,biological records are one of the most important sources of data for a large number of research areas for example their application has made valuable contributions to climate change ecology where they are used to monitor species range shifts to conservation ecology where they are used to assess species red list status and to biogeography where they are used to highlight hotspots of biodiversity a major benefit of biological records is the large spatial extent of the coverage combined with the fine spatial precision of the data this combination is essential for any ecologist hoping to address large scale questions about biodiversity and environmental change because most biological records are collected by a vast pool of volunteer recorders studies utilizing biological records have the advantage of large scale long term data that it would otherwise be unfeasibly expensive to collect we review the application of biological records by focussing on four key areas of biodiversity research biogeography trend assessments climate change ecology and conservation biology we showcase the diversity of insights that biological records have delivered which in turn illustrates the contribution of the voluntary recording community to our understanding of biodiversity science,2015,0.414
Fidelity and Promiscuity in an Ant-Plant Mutualism: A Case Study of Triplaris and Pseudomyrmex.,the association between the myrmecophyte triplaris and ants of the genus pseudomyrmex is an often reported example of mutualism but no molecular studies have examined this association to date in this study the interspecific relationships of triplaris were reconstructed using five molecular markers two chloroplast and three nuclear and the relationships of the associated pseudomyrmex using two molecular regions one mitochondrial and one nuclear a data set including all known collections of plant hosts and resident ants was also compiled the pattern of distribution of both organisms reveals that there are varying degrees of host specificity most ants show broader host usage promiscuous but one species p dendroicus is faithful to a single species of triplaris in most ant plant interactions host usage is not specific at the species level and preferences may result from geographical or ecological sorting the specificity of p dendroicus could be based on chemical recognition of the host they were raised on,2015,0.723
Biological Flora of the British Isles: Crambe maritima,this account presents information on all aspects of the biology of crambe maritima l sea kale crambe pontica stev ex rupr that are relevant to understand its ecological characteristics and behaviour the main topics are presented within the standard framework of the biological flora of the british isles distribution habitat communities responses to biotic factors responses to environment structure and physiology phenology floral and seed characters herbivores and disease history and conservation crambe maritima is found predominantly on southern and western coasts of britain but also in scotland ireland and elsewhere it occurs primarily on neutral or slightly alkaline soils on shingle and sand beaches above the drift line out of reach of average high tides equinoctial tides or storms can increase soil salinity requiring it to be salt tolerant crambe maritima is a rosette plant with a fleshy taproot which is the main perennating organ with a capacity for vegetative propagation flowering can take 5â 8 years when grown from seeds reproduction is predominantly by seeds root and stem cuttings can be used for vegetative propagation in winter each branch ends at ground level in a leafless crimson bud and in spring it produces a succession of cabbage like leaves just above ground level the first being purple and successive leaves becoming greener crambe maritima produces weakly protogynous hermaphrodite flowers self and cross pollination occurs pollination is by insects flies and bees the plants usually produce 1000â 10 000 seeds per year in britain crambe maritima has been reported to have declined in certain areas but increased in other areas and currently does not have rare or scarce status there has been an expansion in range in ireland since the 1960s as it has been recorded at new sites and while the species has disappeared from some sites in france it has also been identified in several new sites,2015,0.19
Narrow endemics in European mountains: high genetic diversity within the monospecific genus Pseudomisopates (Plantaginaceae) despite isolation since the late Pleistocene,aim the evolutionary history of narrow endemic species has received little attention compared with that of more widely distributed species small effective population sizes and long term isolation of many narrow endemic species make research on their genetic make up important for their future conservation in this study we investigated the genetic variation and historical distribution of an isolated plant the monospecific genus pseudomisopates as an example of the phylogeographical history of narrow endemics location central range iberian peninsula mediterranean europe methods we used amplified fragment length polymorphisms aflps nuclear and plastid dna sequences and species distribution modelling sequence data were analysed using statistical parsimony molecular dating and a coalescent based bayesian model of isolation with migration genetic diversity and differentiation analyses based on aflp data were performed we compared the detection of clones using aflps with the results of a previous study that used simple sequence repeats ssrs results aflp analysis revealed that ssrs underestimate clone number the coalescent based bayesian model of isolation with migration suggested a late pleistocene divergence between the populations of pseudomisopates on two mountain massifs gredos and la serrota despite the presence of a large area suitable for population admixture moderate to high levels of genetic diversity and high effective population sizes were inferred main conclusions our results imply that the levels of genetic diversity within narrow endemic species from mediterranean mountains could primarily be driven by extrinsic historical factors rather than by intrinsic species specific factors depending on their own biological characteristics narrow endemics are widely believed to harbour low genetic diversity because of small effective population sizes however this study and others on narrow endemic angiosperms demonstrate that narrow endemism does not necessarily result in low genetic diversity,2015,0.901
Evaluation of Phytochemical and in-vivo Antihyperlipidemic Activity of Solanum spirale Roxb. Leaves,the objective of the study was to evaluate the phytochemical and in vivo antihyperlipidemic activity of solanum spirale roxb leaves the physiochemical standardization of the dried leaves powder was done with respect to ash values foaming index extractive values and moisture content the dried leaves were extracted with petroleum ether chloroform and water the phytoche mical analyses were carried out and the antihyperlipidemic activity of the chloroform and aqueous extracts were evaluated the antihyperlipidemic study was carried out by inducing hyperlipidemia in rats by means of triton the serum collected was analyzed for total cholesterol triglyceride low density lipoprotein and high density lipoprotein the result of the present study revealed that both the aqueous and chloroform extracts of leaves of solanum spirale roxb possess antihyper lipidemic activity,2015,0.43
Geographic spread of Vollenhovia emeryi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),vollenhovia emeryi wheeler is a small and inconspicuous ant species originally from east asia that recently has been found in north america here we examine the geographic spread of v emeryi and compare its native range in asia with its exotic range in north america we compiled published and unpublished v emeryi specimen records from 300 sites we documented the earliest known v emeryi records for 14 geographic areas ten in asia japan north korea south korea taiwan thailand and five provinces of china and four in north america maryland pennsylvania virginia and washington dc reports of v emeryi from lower latitude 14 3â n to 25 1â n sites in taiwan thailand and southern china however probably represent a distinct species vollenhovia emeryi has a much broader latitudinal spread in east asia at least 13 5â range 29 7â n to 43 2â n than it has in north america 1 3â range 38 7â n to 40 0â n the north american records of v emeryi are all at latitudes near the northernmost records in asia it seems likely that v emeryi will spread further in north america particularly towards the south and west,2015,0.625
Public Data Archiving in Ecology and Evolution: How Well Are We Doing?,policies that mandate public data archiving pda successfully increase accessibility to data underlying scientific publications however is the data quality sufficient to allow reuse and reanalysis we surveyed 100 datasets associated with nonmolecular studies in journals that commonly publish ecological and evolutionary research and have a strong pda policy out of these datasets 56 were incomplete and 64 were archived in a way that partially or entirely prevented reuse we suggest that cultural shifts facilitating clearer benefits to authors are necessary to achieve high quality pda and highlight key guidelines to help authors increase their data s reuse potential and compliance with journal data policies,2015,0.301
Open Data in Global Environmental Research: Findings from the Community,this paper presents selected findings of the belmont forumâ s survey on open data which targeted the global environmental research and data infrastructure community it highlights usersâ perceptions of the term â œopen dataâ expectations of infrastructure functionalities and barriers and enablers for the sharing of data respondents also pointed out a wide range of good practice examples and a desire for enhancement and consolidation,2015,0.215
Ecological and geographical analysis of the distribution of the mountain tapir (Tapirus pinchaque) in Ecuador: importance of protected areas in future scenarios of global warming.,in ecuador tapirus pinchaque is considered to be critically endangered although the species has been registered in several localities its geographic distribution remains unclear and the effects of climate change and current land uses on this species are largely unknown we modeled the ecological niche of t pinchaque using maxent in order to assess its potential adaptation to present and future climate change scenarios we evaluated the effects of habitat loss due by current land use the ecosystem availability and importance of ecuadorian system of protected areas into the models the model of environmental suitability estimated an extent of occurrence for species of 21 729 km2 in all of ecuador mainly occurring along the corridor of the eastern ecuadorian andes a total of 10 andean ecosystems encompassed 98 of the area defined by the model with herbaceous paramo northeastern andean montane evergreen forest and northeastern andes upper montane evergreen forest being the most representative when considering the effect of habitat loss a significant reduction in model area 17 occurred and the effect of climate change represented a net reduction up to 37 86 however the synergistic effect of both climate change and habitat loss given current land use practices could represent a greater risk in the short term leading to a net reduction of 19 90 to 44 65 in t pinchaque s potential distribution even under such a scenarios several protected areas harbor a portion 36 to 48 of the potential distribution defined by the models however the central and southern populations are highly threatened by habitat loss and climate change based on these results and due to the restricted home range of t pinchaque its preference for upland forests and paramos and its small estimated population size in the andes we suggest to maintaining its current status as critically endangered in ecuador,2015,0.295
Amphibian diversity and threatened species in a severely transformed neotropical region in Mexico.,many regions around the world concentrate a large number of highly endangered species that have very restricted distributions the mountainous region of central veracruz mexico is considered a priority area for amphibian conservation because of its high level of endemism and the number of threatened species the original tropical montane cloud forest in the region has been dramatically reduced and fragmented and is now mainly confined to ravines and hillsides we evaluated the current situation of amphibian diversity in the cloud forest fragments of this region by analyzing species richness and abundance comparing assemblage structure and species composition examining the distribution and abundance of threatened species and identifying the local and landscape variables associated with the observed amphibian diversity from june to october 2012 we sampled ten forest fragments investing 944 person hours of sampling effort a total of 895 amphibians belonging to 16 species were recorded notable differences in species richness abundance and assemblage structure between forest fragments were observed species composition between pairs of fragments differed by an average of 53 with the majority 58 resulting from species replacement and the rest 42 explained by differences in species richness half of the species detected are under threat of extinction according to the international union for conservation of nature and although their distribution and abundance varied markedly there were also ubiquitous and abundant species along with rare species of restricted distribution the evident heterogeneity of the ten study sites indicates that to conserve amphibians in a mountainous region such as this one it is necessary to protect groups of fragments which represent the variability of the system both individually and together cloud forest fragments are very important to conservation because each remnant is inhabited by several threatened species some of them at imminent risk of extinction,2015,0.996
Creation of the New Zealand Plant Collections Register,this article outlines the creation of a plant collections register and an associated cultivated plant names resource for new zealand this project was officially launched at the â up the garden pathâ conference in wellington on 3 march 2015,2015,0.234
DNA Metabarcoding: A New Approach for Rapid Biodiversity Assessment,biodiversity characterization is important to understand the ecological processes on earth the recent advancements in molecular techniques have enabled us to identify the species composition more efficiently than the traditional methods in dna metabarcoding the pooled genomic dna extracted from environmental samples is used to amplify evolutionarily conserved genes by universal primers and sequenced using next generation sequencing technologies in this brief review the concept of dna metabarcoding and its applications limitations and challenges have been discussed,2015,0.199
Not to Put Too Fine a Point on It — Does Increasing Precision of Geographic Referencing Improve Species Distribution Models for a Wide-Ranging Migratory Bat?,bat specimens held in natural history museum collections can provide insights into the distribution of species however there are several important sources of spatial error associated with natural history specimens that may influence the analysis and mapping of bat species distributions we analyzed the importance of geographic referencing and error correction in species distribution modeling sdm using occurrence records of hoary bats lasiurus cinereus this species is known to migrate long distances and is a species of increasing concern due to fatalities documented at wind energy facilities in north america we used 3 215 museum occurrence records collected from 1950â 2000 for hoary bats in north america we compared sdm performance using five approaches generalized linear models multivariate adaptive regression splines boosted regression trees random forest and maximum entropy models we evaluated results using three sdm performance metrics auc sensitivity and specificity and two data sets one comprised of the original occurrence data and a second data set consisting of these same records after the locations were adjusted to correct for identifiable spatial errors the increase in precision improved the mean estimated spatial error associated with hoary bat records from 5 11 km to 1 58 km and this reduction in error resulted in a slight increase in all three sdm performance metrics these results provide insights into the importance of geographic referencing and the value of correcting spatial errors in modeling the distribution of a wide ranging bat species we conclude that the considerable time and effort invested in carefully increasing the precision of the occurrence locations in this data set was not worth the marginal gains in improved sdm performance and it seems likely that gains would be similar for other bat species that range across large areas of the continent migrate and are habitat generalists,2015,0.916
Possibilities of using the German Federal States’ permanent soil monitoring program for the monitoring of potential effects of genetically modified organisms (GMO),in the directive 2001 18 ec on the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms gmo into the environment a monitoring of potential risks is prescribed after their deliberate release or placing on the market experience and data of already existing monitoring networks should be included the present paper summarizes the major findings of a project funded by the federal agency for nature conservation nutzungsmã glichkeiten der bodenâ dauerbeobachtung der lã nder fã r das monitoring der umweltwirkungen gentechnisch verã nderter pflanzen bfn skripten bonn bad godesberg 369 2014 the full report in german language can be accessed on http www bfn de and is available as additional file 1 the aim of the project was to check if it is possible to use the german permanent soil monitoring program psm for the monitoring of gmo soil organism communities are highly diverse and relevant with respect to the sustainability of soil functions they are exposed to gmo material directly by feeding or indirectly through food chain interactions other impacts are possible due to their close association to soil particles,2015,0.181
"Effect of Climate Change on Invasion Risk of Giant African Snail (Achatina fulica Férussac, 1821: Achatinidae) in India.",the giant african snail achatina fulica is considered to be one the world s 100 worst invasive alien species the snail has an impact on native biodiversity and on agricultural and horticultural crops in india it is known to feed on more than fifty species of native plants and agricultural crops and also outcompetes the native snails it was introduced into india in 1847 and since then it has spread all across the country in this paper we use ecological niche modeling enm to assess the distribution pattern of giant african snail gas under different climate change scenarios the niche modeling results indicate that under the current climate scenario eastern india peninsular india and the andaman and nicobar islands are at high risk of invasion the three different future climate scenarios show that there is no significant change in the geographical distribution of invasion prone areas however certain currently invaded areas will be more prone to invasion in the future these regions include parts of bihar southern karnataka parts of gujarat and assam the andaman and nicobar and lakshadweep islands are highly vulnerable to invasion under changed climate the central indian region is at low risk due to high temperature and low rainfall an understanding of the invasion pattern can help in better management of this invasive species and also in formulating policies for its control,2015,0.526
Applying data mining techniques for spatial distribution analysis of plant species co-occurrences,the continuous growth of biodiversity databases has led to a search for techniques that can assist researchers this paper presents a method for the analysis of occurrences of pairs and groups of species that aims to identify patterns in co occurrences through the application of association rules of data mining we propose implement and evaluate a tool to help ecologists formulate and validate hypotheses regarding co occurrence between two or more species to validate our approach we analyzed the occurrence of species with a dataset from the 50 ha forest dynamics project on barro colorado island bci three case studies were developed based on this tropical forest to evaluate patterns of positive and negative correlation our tool can be used to point co occurrence in a multi scale form and for multi species simultaneously accelerating the identification process for the spatial point pattern analysis this paper demonstrates that data mining which has been used successfully in applications such as business and consumer profile analysis can be a useful resource in ecology,2015,0.306
"The Myriapoda and Onychophora collection (MY) of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN, Paris)",the myriapoda and onychophora collection dataset inventories the occurrence records of the collection of myriapods and onychophorans in the musã um national dâ histoire naturelle paris the dataset currently consists of 202 lots of onychophorans representing all of those present and almost ten thousand 9 795 lots of myriapods representing 33 to 40 of the mnhn myriapoda collection this collection which is of key historic importance represents the results of two centuries of myriapod and onychophoran studies the sources of the collection are worldwide with a high representation for metropolitan france for the myriapods none of the occurrences are yet georeferenced access to the dataset via the data portals of the mnhn and the gbif has been made possible through the e recolnat project anr 11 inbs 0004 the myriapoda and onychophora collection of mnhn is actively expanding hence both the collection and dataset are in continuous growth the dataset can be accessed through the portals of gbif at http www gbif org dataset 3287044c 8c48 4ad6 81d4 4908071bc8db and the mnhn at http science mnhn fr institution mnhn collection my item search form,2015,0.316
"Organization, usefulness and limitations of an ATBI (All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory): the inventory of terrestrial invertebrates in the Mercantour National Park",abstract we present here the objectives organization and preliminary results of the invertebrate inventory of the mercantour national park â œterrestrial invertebrates moduleâ of the atbi mercantour alpi marittime carried out by 68 scientists and field collectors from 2009 to 2012 the conceptual framework of an atbi and the interactions between inventorying and frequently associated research aims are discussed the sampling strategy adopted combined standardized multi taxon sampling continuous and occasional with individual taxon centred sampling the successive tasks of field sampling specimen coding sorting and identification molecular analysis and data management are briefly described a coherent system of sample coding ensured the traceability of specimens the project results in terms of sampling effort abundance of collected invertebrate fauna and biological diversity are presented globally by techniques by sites and by higher taxonomic groups 259 412 specimens were obtained from 761 sor,2015,0.187
Patterns of Vertebrate Diversity and Protection in Brazil.,most conservation decisions take place at national or finer spatial scales providing useful information at such decision making scales is essential for guiding the practice of conservation brazil is one of the world s megadiverse countries and consequently decisions about conservation in the country have a disproportionate impact on the survival of global biodiversity for three groups of terrestrial vertebrates birds mammals and amphibians we examined geographic patterns of diversity and protection in brazil including that of endemic small ranged and threatened species to understand potential limitations of the data we also explored how spatial bias in collection localities may influence the perceived patterns of diversity the highest overall species richness is in the amazon and atlantic forests while the atlantic forest dominates in terms of country endemics and small ranged species globally threatened species do not present a consistent pattern patterns for birds were similar to overall species richness with higher concentrations of threatened species in the atlantic forest while mammals show a more generalized pattern across the country and a high concentration in the amazon few amphibians are listed as threatened mostly in the atlantic forest data deficient mammals occur across the country concentrating in the amazon and southeast atlantic forest and there are no data deficient birds in brazil in contrast nearly a third of amphibians are data deficient widespread across the country but with a high concentration in the far southeast spatial biases in species locality data however possibly influence the perceived patterns of biodiversity regions with low sampling density need more biological studies as do the many data deficient species all biomes except the amazon have less than 3 of their area under full protection reassuringly though rates of protection do correlate with higher biodiversity including higher levels of threatened and small ranged species our results indicate a need for expanded formal protection in brazil especially in the atlantic forest and with an emphasis on fully protected areas,2015,0.988
Native forests and climate change: Lessons from eucalypts,the purpose of this paper is to review studies relevant to potential climate change impacts on natural stands of eucalypts with a view to identifying not only specific lessons for the management of native forests in australia but also some general lessons relevant to native forests anywhere more than 800 species of eucalyptus are found naturally across australia as well as species such as e deglupta and e urophylla in countries north of australia eucalypts provide a particularly interesting opportunity to examine the likely impacts of climate change as many species have been widely evaluated in trials within and outside australia often under conditions that are warmer and sometimes drier than those found within their natural distributions results from these trials indicate the intrinsic ability of particular eucalypt species and provenances to tolerate conditions that are somewhat different from those experienced within their natural distributions eucalypts have particularly poor dispersal capabilities so natural stands will be generally unable to track changing climatic conditions therefore in the period to the end of the present century a key issue for each eucalypt species under climate change is whether its intrinsic adaptability will be sufficient to allow it to survive where it is currently located their ability to survive will be affected not only by climatic but also atmospheric changes which will affect important processes such as photosynthesis and water exchange again eucalypts provide a useful group for climate change studies as their commercial significance has led to various enhanced carbon dioxide experiments being carried out as well as detailed genomic studies this review considers eucalypts in relation to four main areas i resources and characteristics natural distributions and introduced distributions including their adaptability plasticity ii analysis tools species distribution models and growth models iii physiological factors including temperature drought and enhanced co2 and iv interactions with other species including pests and diseases priorities for future research are identified it is concluded that analyses that do not allow for the intrinsic climatic adaptability of tree species as well as their particular dispersal capabilities are unlikely to provide reliable predictions of climate change impacts,2015,0.427
Vertebrate community on an ice-age Caribbean island,significancea flooded sinkhole cave on abaco the bahamas has yielded the richest 95 species set of late pleistocene ice age vertebrates on any caribbean island we track changes in species composition on abaco through time and relate those biotic changes to climate change the warmer wetter climate and rising sea levels from 15 000 to 9 000 years ago probably led to the disappearance on abaco of at least 17 species of birds another 22 species of reptiles birds and mammals persisted through those environmental changes but did not survive the last 1 000 years of human activity for the species that remain we believe that direct human activity threatens their future more than climate change we report 95 vertebrate taxa 13 fishes 11 reptiles 63 birds 8 mammals from late pleistocene bone deposits in sawmill sink abaco the bahamas the 5 000 fossils were recovered by scuba divers on ledges at depths of 27 35 m below sea level of the 95 species 39 41 no longer occur on abaco 4 reptiles 31 birds 4 mammals we estimate that 17 of the 39 losses all of them birds are linked to changes during the pleistocene holocene transition pht 15 9 ka in climate becoming more warm and moist habitat expansion of broadleaf forest at the expense of pine woodland sea level rising from 80 m to nearly modern levels and island area receding from 17 000 km2 to 1 214 km2 the remaining 22 losses likely are related to the presence of humans on abaco for the past 1 000 y thus the late holocene arrival of people probably depleted more populations than the dramatic physical and biological changes associated with the pht,2015,0.923
"Dataset of MIGRAME Project (Global Change, Altitudinal Range Shift and Colonization of Degraded Habitats in Mediterranean Mountains).",in this data paper we describe the dataset of the global change altitudinal range shift and colonization of degraded habitats in mediterranean mountains migrame project which aims to assess the capacity of altitudinal migration and colonization of marginal habitats by quercus pyrenaica willd forests in sierra nevada southern spain considering two global change drivers temperature increase and land use changes the dataset includes information of the forest structure diameter size tree height and abundance of the quercus pyrenaica ecosystem in sierra nevada obtained from 199 transects sampled at the treeline ecotone mature forest and marginal habitats abandoned cropland and pine plantations a total of 3839 occurrence records were collected and 5751 measurements recorded the dataset is included in the sierra nevada global change observatory obsnev a long term research project designed to compile socio ecological information on the major ecosystem types in order to identify the impacts of global change in this mountain range,2015,0.291
Modeling vulnerability of protected areas to invasion by Chromolaena odorata under current and future climates,invasive plant species and climate change are among the biggest threats to the ecological integrity of many ecosystems including those of protected areas effective management of invasive plants requires information regarding their spatial distributions using maximum entropy we modeled habitat suitability for an invasive plant species chromolaena odorata under current and future climatic conditions hadgem2 es and miroc5 in protected areas of four west african countries benin cã te d ivoire ghana and togo under current climatic conditions approximately 73 of total land area within the protected areas was suitable for colonization by c odorata under future climate projections the total area of suitable habitats for this invasive plant was projected to decrease by 7â 9 hadgem2 es and 12â 14 miroc5 country specific patterns suggest that major protected areas in cã te d ivoire and ghana will be more vulnerable to invasion by c odorata than those in benin and togo under both current and futu,2015,0.22
Risk evaluation of pesticide use to protected European reptile species,environmental contamination is supposed to be a reason for population declines in reptiles especially intensification and expansion of agriculture are leading to increased pesticide exposure risks for wildlife in the european union special areas of conservation sacs have been established for the conservation of taxa listed in annex ii of the habitats directive in the sacs agricultural land use is legal therefore we conducted a risk evaluation of pesticide exposure for annex ii reptiles by calculating proportions of land use with regular pesticide applications within sacs using three evaluation factors occurrence probability physiology life history aspects a species specific risk index was created nearly half of the species at above average risk by pesticide use are globally threatened with extinction iucn red list of threatened species about 30 of their sacs are agriculturally used and one priority subspecies of the habitats directive is at highest risk vipera ursinii rakosiensis also all evaluated fresh water and land dwelling turtle species are at high risk national variation in agricultural land use in the sacs was observed species at above average risk are mainly distributed in the mediterranean and pannonian continental biogeographical regions of europe conservation status according to the iucn red list of threatened species as well as national differences among the member states argue for the inclusion of pesticide risk assessments in site specific management plans for sacs to avoid regional loss of reptilian biodiversity,2015,0.825
Mammal decline in the Middle America,the middle america is located in the nearcticâ neotropical boundary the combination of temperate and tropical biota of these two biogeographic regions plus an area of biotic overlap propitiates unusually high species diversity and endemism we present the first general assessment based on the iucn red list of threatened species that provides evidence of widespread decline in the conservation status of land mammals from southern u s a to panama one in every three species considered in our study n 273 is classified as threatened and the rate of biodiversity loss increased 0 64 between 2008 and 2012 endangered species of the middle america represents 11 8 of the global endangered mammal species and 7 9 of the threatened species habitat loss and the introduction of alien species are the major threats however the relative impact of these threats varies among habitats for continental species habitat loss is prevalent while for insular species the introduction of alien species has devastating effects our results suggest that if no integral multi species conservation actions are applied in the short term more than 20 of the extant mammal species in the region could become extinct in the near future 10â 50 years,2015,0.988
"Discovery of Natural Interspecific Hybrids Between Miscanthus Sacchariflorus and Miscanthus Sinensis in Southern Japan: Morphological Characterization, Genetic Structure, and Origin",natural miscanthus grasses are useful for improving biomass production we found a population of putative triploid interspecific hybrids between miscanthus sacchariflorus and miscanthus sinensis in southern kyushu japan this study aims to investigate its morphological variation genetic structure and origin miscanthus plants were collected from 114 points mainly beside a river along a distance of 2 8 km in the tashiroâ fumoto area they resembled m sacchariflorus but showed morphology intermediate between the two species they had a nuclear dna content corresponding to that of a hybrid between tetraploid m sacchariflorus and diploid m sinensis and had species specific alleles from both species revealed by dna marker analysis this indicates that the plants are triploid hybrids between m sacchariflorus and m sinensis genotyping using simple sequence repeat markers revealed only four genotypes among the hybrid population of which two accounted for most plants the genotypes showed mostly discrete geographical distributions the two major genotypes showed contrasting phenotypes in pollen viability and in frequency of awns in florets some seeds collected from the population germinated and the seedlings showed a wide range of nuclear dna content from diploid to tetraploid in this area many m sinensis plants also grew but we could not find m sacchariflorus the hybrid miscanthus might be selected due to its improved adaptability introduced from m sinensis furthermore genetic and phenotypic characterization suggests the polyphyletic origin and clonal propagation of this population such partially fertile hybrids could be interesting for the improvement of miscanthus as a biomass crop,2015,0.653
Species traits and climate velocity explain geographic range shifts in an ocean-warming hotspot.,species ranges are shifting globally in response to climate warming with substantial variability among taxa even within regions relationships between range dynamics and intrinsic species traits may be particularly apparent in the ocean where temperature more directly shapes species distributions here we test for a role of species traits and climate velocity in driving range extensions in the ocean warming hotspot of southeast australia climate velocity explained some variation in range shifts however including species traits more than doubled the variation explained swimming ability omnivory and latitudinal range size all had positive relationships with range extension rate supporting hypotheses that increased dispersal capacity and ecological generalism promote extensions we find independent support for the hypothesis that species with narrow latitudinal ranges are limited by factors other than climate our findings suggest that small ranging species are in double jeopardy with limited ability to escape warming and greater intrinsic vulnerability to stochastic disturbances,2015,0.933
Estimating Regions of Oceanographic Importance for Seabirds Using A-Spatial Data.,advances in gps tracking technologies have allowed for rapid assessment of important oceanographic regions for seabirds this allows us to understand seabird distributions and the characteristics which determine the success of populations in many cases quality gps tracking data may not be available however long term population monitoring data may exist in this study a method to infer important oceanographic regions for seabirds will be presented using breeding sooty shearwaters as a case study this method combines a popular machine learning algorithm generalized boosted regression modeling geographic information systems long term ecological data and open access oceanographic datasets time series of chick size and harvest index data derived from a long term dataset of maori muttonbirder diaries were obtained and used as response variables in a gridded spatial model it was found that areas of the sub antarctic water region best capture the variation in the chick size data oceanographic features including wind speed and charnock a derived variable representing ocean surface roughness came out as top predictor variables in these models previously collected gps data demonstrates that these regions are used as flyways by sooty shearwaters during the breeding season it is therefore likely that wind speeds in these flyways affect the ability of sooty shearwaters to provision for their chicks due to changes in flight dynamics this approach was designed to utilize machine learning methodology but can also be implemented with other statistical algorithms furthermore these methods can be applied to any long term time series of population data to identify important regions for a species of interest,2015,0.296
Global geographic and feature space coverage of temperature data in the context of spatio-temporal interpolation,this article highlights the results of an assessment of representation and usability of global temperature station data for global spatio temporal analysis datasets from the global surface summary of day gsod and the european climate assessment dataset eca d were merged and consisted of 10 695 global stations for the year 2011 three aspects of data quality were considered a representation in the geographical domain b representation in the feature space based on the maxent method and c usability i e fitness of use for spatio temporal interpolation based on cross validation of spatio temporal regression kriging models the results indicate significant clustering of meteorological stations in the combined data set in both geographical and feature space the majority of the distribution of stations 84 can be explained by population density and accessibility maps consequently higher elevations areas and inaccessible areas that are sparsely populated are significantly under represented under representation also reflects on the results of spatio temporal analysis spatio temporal regression kriging model of mean daily temperature using 8 day modis lst images as covariate produces average global accuracy of 2â 3 â c prediction of temperature for polar areas and mountains is 2 times lower than for areas densely covered with meteorological stations balanced spatio temporal regression models that account for station clustering are suggested,2015,0.104
Facilitating open exchange of data and information,by broad consensus open data presents great value however beyond that simple statement there are a number of complex and sometimes contentious issues that the science community must address in this review we examine the current state of the core issues of open data with the unique perspective and use cases of the ocean science community interoperability discovery and access quality and fitness for purpose and sustainability the topics of governance and data publication are also examined in detail each of the areas covered are by themselves complex and the approaches to the issues under consideration are often at odds with each other any comprehensive policy on open data will require compromises that are best resolved by broad community input in the final section of the review we provide recommendations that serve as a starting point for these discussions,2015,0.142
Estimating themissing species bias in plant trait measurements,aim do plant trait databases represent a biased sample of species and if so can that bias be corrected ecologists are increasingly collecting and analysing data on plant functional traits and contributing them to large plant trait databases many applications of such databases involve merging trait measurements with other data such as species distributions in vegetation plots a process that invariably produces matrices with incomplete trait and species data typically missing data are simply ignored and it is assumed that the missing species are missing at random methods here we argue that this assumption is unlikely to be valid and propose an approach for estimating the strength of the bias regarding which species are represented in trait databases the method leverages the fact that within a given database some species have many measurements of a trait and others have few high vs low measurement intensity in the absence of bias there should be no relationship between measurement intensity and trait values we demonstrate the method using five traits that are part of the try database a global archive of plant traits our method also leads naturally to a correction for this bias which we validate and apply to two examples results specific leaf area and seed mass were strongly positively biased frequently measured species had higher trait values than rarely measured species leaf nitrogen per unit mass and maximum height were moderately negatively biased and maximum photosynthetic capacity per unit leaf area was weakly negatively biased the bias correction method yielded greatly improved estimates in the validation tests for the two most biased traits further in our two applications ecological interpretations were shown to be sensitive to uncorrected bias in the data conclusions species inclusion in trait databases appears to be strongly biased in some cases and failure to correct this can lead to incorrect conclusions,2015,0.592
PHYTOGEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS AND DIVERSITY OF GRASSES AND SEDGES (POALES) OF NORTHERN PAKISTAN,the monocot order poales is one of the largest ca 20 000 species and economically and ecologically most important group of flowering plants exploring this important component of the biodiversity is of paramount significance in conservation of species and developing climate change models northern pakistan occupies a unique biogeographic position at the summit of the planetâ s three highest mountain ranges i e himalaya hindukush and karakurum these ranges contain the hot spots of floral and faunal diversity with high proportions of endemic and rare species the studies revealed 117 species belonging to 30 genera in three families of the order poales juncaceae is represented by single genus juncuswith four species cyperaceae by 5 genera and 27 species and poaceae being the dominant family with 25 genera and 86 species carexand poaare the largest genera having 21 and 16 species respectively phytogeographic analysis of the poalesof temperate and alpine regions of northern pakistan shows twelve different phytogeographic elements the highest percentage of species 30 belongs to the western himalayan floristic region near endemics with cosmopolitan elements 19 central asian elements 17 and eurasian elements 12 being the other significant elements the proportion of endemic species 8 is less apparent while the rest of the seven categories are poorly represented the two way cluster analysis twca divided the sixteen districts into two major groups and four subgroups based on environmental gradients of altitude latitude and longitude twca classified the data matrix including 114 species into seven clusters based on presence absence data and elevation from mean sea level species in each cluster can be attributed to similar habitat conditions and altitudinal ranges hence it is clear that climatic characters associated with each category control the species distribution pattern phytogeographic analysis and diversity of grasses and sedges poales of northern pakistan pdf download available available from https www researchgate net publication 289406557 phytogeographic analysis and diversity of grasses and sedges poales of northern pakistan accessed feb 1 2016,2015,0.989
"Monitoring ectomycorrhizal fungi at large scales for science, forest management, fungal conservation and environmental policy",key message the icp forests network can be a platform for large scale mycorrhizal studies mapping and monitoring of mycorrhizas have untapped potential to inform science management conservation and policy regarding distributions diversity hotspots dominance and rarity and indicators of forest changes context a dearth of information about fungi at large scales has severely constrained scientific forest management fungal conservation and environmental policy efforts worldwide nonetheless fungi fulfil critical functional roles in our changing environments and represent a considerable proportion of terrestrial biodiversity mycorrhizal fungi are increasingly viewed as a major functional guild across forest ecosystems and our ability to study them is expanding rapidly aims this study aimed to discuss the potential for starting a mycorrhizal monitoring programme built upon the existing forest monitoring network raise questions propose hypotheses and stimulate further discussion results an overview of the state of the art regarding forest ectomycorrhizal ecology raises questions and recommendations for scaling up mycorrhizal assessments aimed at informing a variety of stakeholders with a new focus on conservation and policy conclusion fungal research and conservation are areas that can be informed by icp forests and may lead to useful spin offs research linked to long term forest monitoring plots will enhance the relevance of science and conservation,2015,0.031
Potential topoclimatic zones as support for forest plantation in the Amazon: Advances and challenges to growing paricá (Schizolobium amazonicum),forestry using native species represents a potential climate change mitigating activity in deforested areas of the amazon the challenge is to increase knowledge of the ecology behavior and management of amazon species in addition to the preferential topoclimatic conditions necessary for plantation thus this study aims to identify and map the potential topoclimatic zones to support paricã schizolobium amazonicum plantation in the state of parã brazil by using data and information on the behavior of the species in areas where it occurrs naturally the most suitable conditions for the species were defined by using multivariate analysis techniques and field observations employing the principal component analysis pca the degree of correlation between the topoclimatic variables was evaluated selecting the representative variables in percentage of the data variance resources of map algebra were applied for the integration of the variables in a geographic information system gis the topothermic and water deficit layers were decisive in the indication of potential zones for paricã plantation the results indicate that 54 of parã is in an area with high potential 39 in a medium potential zone and 7 in a low potential zone it was also observed that paricã can be used to restore landscapes mainly in areas in the east of the state in which there is high deforestation and anthropization approximately 66 million hectares occur in the high potential zone it was then concluded that topoclimatic zoning can support strategies of forest plantation providing support to public sustainability policies in the amazon,2015,0.55
Integrating and Utilizing Citizen Biodiversity Data on the Web for Science: An Example of a Rare Triggerfish Hybrid Image Provided by a Sport Fisherman,abstract miyazaki y murase a shiina m masui r and senou h 2015 integrating and utilizing citizen biodiversity data on the web for science an example of a rare triggerfish hybrid image provided by a sport fisherman we report a photograph of the rare triggerfish hybrid rhinecanthus aculeatus ã r rectangulus order tetraodontiformes family balistidae from miyako jima island ryukyu islands southern japan that was provided by a sport fisherman via web sakana zukan an online photographic database of fish in japan the image was registered in the fish image database of the kanagawa prefectural museum of natural history to make it available for scientific scrutiny here we emphasize the importance of communication between citizens such as fishermen scuba divers and others and experts via the internet to make possible the processing of biodiversity information provided by citizens into museum collections this communication contributes global biodiversity information facility data,2015,0.144
Relative performance of ecological niche and occupancy models for predicting invasions by patchily-distributed species,ecological niche models enm have been used with mixed success for predicting the geographic extent of non native species to aid management and conservation this approach is problematic for predicting invasions of patchily distributed species e g pond breeding amphibians whose occurrence is often determined by local habitat conditions here we tested the performance of bioclimatic enm for predicting occurrence from repeated surveys of two non native pond breeding anurans at 71 wetlands in british columbia canada permanent pond specialist american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus and generalist green frog lithobates clamitans for l catesbeianus we assessed the risk of invasion beyond the invasion front we found higher correlation between enm and occupancy predictions for l clamitans r s 0 58 than for l catesbeianus r s ∠0 26 l clamitans occurrence was highest at low elevations and high annual precipitation in contrast l catesbeianus occupancy was predicted by wetland connectivity and distance from a historic introduction site low at isolated ponds 50 km from the introduction site and high 0 8 at all ponds with 10 water within 500 m conditional on successful dispersal four sites beyond the l catesbeianus invasion front surveyed in this study were at high risk of invasion due to high habitat suitability proportion of area occupied 0 33 0 04â 0 83 95 ci in conclusion enms may be useful for informing invasion management for climate driven wetland species but repeated sampling is necessary to predict invasions for habitat driven wetland species,2015,0.69
"Effect of chronological addition of records to species distribution maps: The case of Tonatia saurophila maresi (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) in South America",ecological niche models have become very popular for analysing the potential distribution of species nevertheless models are strongly influenced by many factors such as spatial resolution environmental variables and the quality of distribution records in this paper we evaluated how ecological niche models changed with the addition of records accumulated over four decades our model species was the stripe headed round eared bat tonatia saurophila thus with data organized in chronological order we could observe how the models changed in predicting distributions over time in comparison with all known point locations we tested if partial models could predict the occurrence of new unpublished records for savannah areas in central brazil considering that the species is typically associated with forest environments our results indicate a high omission rate for models built with point localities from the 1970s and 1980s 58 5 and 50 0 of all known points respectively and predicted that the species could occur in central brazil although t saurophila has indeed been recorded recently in central brazil it was found in places different from those predicted by the models using these restricted earlier data nevertheless the environmental suitability of such areas is significantly different from sites largely described in earlier records from the amazonia region as shown by principal components analysis we argue that populations of t saurophila that occupy open habitats in central south america including caatinga cerrado chaco and semi deciduous interior forests deserve further study at the genetic level to determine if bats in these very different habitats are taxonomically distinct from amazonian populations our results also suggest that models based on very limited datasets for species occurrence can lead conservationists or decision makers to wrong conclusions,2015,0.854
Drivers and Patterns of Ground-Dwelling Beetle Biodiversity across Northern Canada.,many macroecological patterns of biodiversity including the relationship between latitude and species richness are well described data collected in a repeatable standardized manner can advance the discipline beyond the description of patterns and be used to elucidate underlying mechanisms using standardized field methods and a hyper diverse focal taxon viz coleoptera we aim to 1 describe large scale latitudinal patterns of taxonomic diversity functional diversity and assemblage structure across northern canada and 2 determine which climatic spatial and habitat variables best explain these patterns we collected terrestrial beetles at twelve locations in the three northernmost ecoclimatic zones in north america north boreal subarctic and high arctic 51 81â n 60 138â w after identifying beetles and assigning them to a functional group we assessed latitudinal trends for multiple diversity indices using linear regression and visualized spatial patterns of assemblage structure with multivariate ordinations we used path analysis to test causal hypotheses for species and functional group richness and we used a permutational approach to assess relationships between assemblage structure and 20 possible climatic and environmental mechanisms more than 9 000 beetles were collected representing 464 species and 18 functional groups species and functional diversity have significant negative relationships with latitude which are likely explained by the mediating effects of temperature precipitation and plant height assemblages within the same ecoclimatic zone are similar and there is a significant relationship between assemblage structure and latitude species and functional assemblage structure are significantly correlated with many of the same climatic factors particularly temperature maxima and minima at a large spatial extent the diversity and assemblage structure of northern beetles show strong latitudinal gradients due to the mediating effects of climate particularly temperature northern arthropod assemblages present significant opportunities for biodiversity research and conservation efforts and their sensitivity to climate make them ideal targets for long term terrestrial diversity monitoring,2015,0.117
Testing the role of ecology and life history in structuring genetic variation across a landscape: a trait-based phylogeographic approach.,hypotheses to explain phylogeographic structure traditionally invoke geographic features but often fail to provide a general explanation for spatial patterns of genetic variation organisms intrinsic characteristics might play more important roles than landscape features in determining phylogeographic structure we developed a novel comparative approach to explore the role of ecological and life history variables in determining spatial genetic variation and tested it on frog communities in panama we quantified spatial genetic variation within 31 anuran species based on mitochondrial dna sequences for which hierarchical approximate bayesian computation analyses rejected simultaneous divergence over a common landscape regressing ecological variables on genetic divergence allowed us to test the importance of individual variables revealing that body size current landscape resistance geographic range biogeographic origin and reproductive mode were significant predictors of spatial genetic variation our results support the idea that phylogeographic structure represents the outcome of an interaction between organisms and their environment and suggest a conceptual integration we refer to as trait based phylogeography,2015,0.322
"Angiosperm diversity of the Great Indian Bustard Wildlife Sanctuary: a semi-arid grassland, Maharashtra, India",the great indian bustard wildlife sanctuary is a semi arid grassland ecosystem spread over an area of 1 222 km 2 in the solapur and ahmednagar districts of maharashtra india it is an abode of the critically endangered bird the great indian bustard a total of 436 plants belonging to 259 genera and 67 families are reported in the present study from the sanctuary including 22 endemic taxa grasses form one of the dominant components of the ecosystem and are represented by about 67 species the sanctuary is facing severe habitat loss and degradation posing a threat to its biodiversity this paper provides a comprehensive documentation of the floristic diversity of the sanctuary threats and conservation measures are also discussed,2015,0.298
"Cyrtarachne keralensis Jose, 2011 is a junior synonym of Anepsion maritatum (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1877) (Araneae, Araneidae)",the indo pacific araneid genus anepsion with a rhomboides l koch 1867 as the type species was erected by strand in 1929 he proposed the name anepsion as a replacement name for anepsia l koch 1871 preoccupied by anepsia gistl 1848 a dipteran genus obis australia 2015 the genus was revised by chrysanthus 1961 1969 and currently has 16 described species and 1 subspecies world spider catalog 2015 in the present paper we are reporting the genus from india for the first time and synonymising cyrtarachne keralensis jose 2011 with anepsion maritatum o pickard cambridge 1877 a redescription and illustrations of both male and female of a maritatum are provided,2015,0.461
Do Mediterranean-type ecosystems have a common history? - insights from the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae).,mediterranean type ecosystems mtes are remarkable in their species richness and endemism but the processes which have led to this diversity remain enigmatic here we hypothesize that continent dependent speciation and extinction rates have led to disparity in diversity between the five mtes of the world the cape california mediterranean basin chile and western australia to test this hypothesis we built a phylogenenetic tree for 280 rhamnaceae species estimated divergence times using eight fossil calibrations and use bayesian methods and simulations to test for differences in diversification rates rhamnaceae lineages in mtes generally show higher diversification rates than elsewhere but speciation and extinction dynamics show a pattern of continent dependence we detected high speciation and extinction rates in california and significantly lower extinction rates in the cape and western australia the independent colonization of four out of five mtes may have occurred conterminously in the oligocene early miocene but colonization of the mediterranean basin happened later in the late miocene this suggests that the in situ radiations of these clades were initiated before the onset of winter rainfall in these regions these results indicate independent evolutionary histories of rhamnaceae in mtes possibly related to the intensity of climate oscillations and the geological history of the regions this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.58
"An assessment of the distribution, population size and conservation status of the Santa Marta Foliage-gleaner Automolus rufipectus: a Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta endemic",the santa marta foliage gleaner automolus rufipectus is one of 19 endemic bird species found in the sierra nevada de santa marta snsm in northern colombia but until recently it was considered a sub species of the ruddy foliage gleaner automolus rubiginosus consequently published information on its distribution and ecology is lacking and while it is classified as near threatened this designation was based on limited quantitative data to improve our knowledge of the santa marta foliage gleanerâ s geographical distribution elevation range population density habitat use and conservation status we analysed both historical and recent site locality records and carried out variable distance transects within forested habitats and shade coffee plantations we modelled the environmental niche of the species and subsequently estimated its extent of occurrence and area of occupancy as well as population size our results consistently showed that the distribution of the santa marta foliage gleaner is more restricted than previously considered both geographically and by elevation we redefine elevation range as 600â 1 875 m this suggests that the species is more at risk of habitat transformation and combined with our estimates of population size 10 000 individuals it is likely that the species will be uplisted to a higher threat category more positively and contrary to published accounts we found that approximately 40 of the speciesâ range lies within protected areas nevertheless we recommend the implementation of strategies to maintain forest cover on the western flank of the snsm and further research to better define the speciesâ habitat needs and population dynamics,2015,0.836
ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC DATA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: RATIONALE AND ILLUSTRATIVE US AGE RIGHTS REVIEW,making scientific data openly accessible and available for re use is desirable to encourage validation of research results and or economic development understanding what users may or may not do with data in online data repositories is key to maximizing the benefits of scientific data re use many online repositories that allow access to scientific data indicate that data is â œopen â yet specifi c usage conditions reviewed on 4 0 â œopenâ sites suggest that there is no agreed upon understandin g of what â œopenâ means with respect to data this inconsistency can be an impediment to data re use by researchers and the public,2015,0.242
Multiple glacial refugia lead to genetic structuring and the potential for reproductive isolation in a herbaceous plant.,premise of the study glacial cycles have influenced the genetic structure of many species in addition to facilitating genetic divergence isolation in multiple glacial refugia may have contributed to the development of genetic incompatibility and reproductive isolation we examined the phylogeography of campanulastrum americanum a monocarpic herbaceous plant that exhibits strong intraspecific reproductive isolation to determine whether the current genetic structure reflects a history of multiple glacial refugia methods chloroplast loci and nuclear rad sequencing were used to characterize the range wide phylogeography of c americanum in order to determine locations of potential glacial refugia and recolonization routes potential locations of refugia during the last glacial maximum were also identified using ecological niche modeling key results together the chloroplast and nuclear phylogenies found support for three geographically structured genetically divergent lineages among which gene flow appears to be restricted the distribution of these lineages indicates that c americanum survived the last glacial maximum in at least three refugia located in the appalachians and on the atlantic and gulf coasts the ecological niche model also supported the existence of multiple refugia conclusions the isolation of populations of c americanum in multiple refugia has led to a degree of phylogeographic structure greater than that found in most previously studied plants in eastern north america which may be attributable to its short generation time reproductively isolated populations of c americanum belong to divergent lineages which suggests that survival in multiple glacial refugia contributed to the development of reproductive isolation in this species,2015,0.72
Uncertainty in Various Habitat Suitability Models and Its Impact on Habitat Suitability Estimates for Fish,species distribution models sdms are extensively used to project habitat suitability of species in stream ecological studies owing to complex sources of uncertainty such models may yield projections with varying degrees of uncertainty to better understand projected spatial distributions and the variability between habitat suitability projections this study uses five sdms that are based on the outputs of a two dimensional hydraulic model to project the suitability of habitats and to evaluate the degree of variability originating from both differing model types and the split sample procedure the habitat suitability index hsi of each species is based on two stream flow variables including current velocity v water depth d as well as the heterogeneity of these flow conditions as quantified by the information entropy of v and d the six sdm approaches used to project fish abundance as represented by hsi included two stochastic models the generalized linear model glm and the generalized additive model gam as well as three machine learning models the support vector machine svm random forest rf and the artificial neural network ann and an ensemble model where the latter is the average of the preceding five models the target species sicyopterus japonicas was found to prefer habitats with high current velocities the relationship between mesohabitat diversity and fish abundance was indicated by the trends in information entropy and weighted usable area wua over the study area this study proposes a method for quantifying habitat suitability and for assessing the uncertainties in hsi and wua that are introduced by the various sdms and samples this study also demonstrated both the merits of the ensemble modeling approach and the necessity of addressing model uncertainty,2015,0.204
"Floristic diversity of classified forest and partial faunal reserve of Comoé-Léraba, southwest Burkina Faso",the classified forest and partial faunal reserve of comoã lã raba belongs to the south sudanian phytogeographical sector of burkina faso and is located in the most humid area of the country this study aims to present a detailed list of the comoã l ã raba reserveâ s flora for a better knowledge and conservation floristic inventories have permitted to record 540 plant species belonging to 342 genera and 91 families thus representing 26 12 of burkina fasoâ s phytodiversity 2067 species fabaceae and poaceae with 89 and 51 species respectively were the dominant families the vegetation is characterized by the dominance of both phanerophytes 45 51 and therophytes 32 73 the importance of guineoâ â conâ golian species proves that the comoã lã raba flora belongs to the sudanoâ guinean transition sector comoã lã raba also accounts the highest number of exclusive species followed by the reserve of sahel in the country exclusive species bring out its value in flora conservation,2015,0.889
B2SHARE: An Open eScience Data Sharing Platform,scientific data sharing is becoming an essential service for data driven science and can significantly improve the scientific process by making reliable and trustworthy data available thereby reducing redundant work and providing insights on related research and recent advancements for data sharing services to be useful in the scientific process they need to fulfill a number of requirements that cover not only discovery and access to data but to ensure the integrity and reliability of published data as well b2share developed by the eudat project provides such a data sharing service to scientific communities for communities that wish to download install and maintain their own service it is also available as software b2share is developed with a focus on user friendliness reliability and trustworthiness and can be customized for different organizations and use cases in this paper we discuss the design architecture and implementation of b2share we show its usefulness in the scientific process with some case studies in the biodiversity field,2015,0.09
Biodiversity inventories in high gear: DNA barcoding facilitates a rapid biotic survey of a temperate nature reserve,background comprehensive biotic surveys or â all taxon biodiversity inventoriesâ atbi have traditionally been limited in scale or scope due to the complications surrounding specimen sorting and species identification to circumvent these issues several atbi projects have successfully integrated dna barcoding into their identification procedures and witnessed acceleration in their surveys and subsequent increase in project scope and scale the biodiversity institute of ontario partnered with the rare charitable research reserve and delegates of the 6th international barcode of life conference to complete its own rapid barcode assisted atbi of an established land trust in cambridge ontario canada new information the existing species inventory for the rare charitable research reserve was rapidly expanded by integrating a dna barcoding workflow with two surveying strategies â a comprehensive sampling scheme over four months followed by a one day bioblitz involving international taxonomic experts the two surveys resulted in 25 287 and 3 502 specimens barcoded respectively as well as 127 human observations this barcoded material all vouchered at the biodiversity institute of ontario collection covers 14 phyla 29 classes 117 orders and 531 families of animals plants fungi and lichens overall the atbi documented 1 102 new species records for the nature reserve expanding the existing long term inventory by 49 in addition 2 793 distinct barcode index numbers bins were assigned to genus or higher level taxonomy and represent additional species that will be added once their taxonomy is resolved for the 3 502 specimens the collection sequence analysis taxonomic assignment data release and manuscript submission by 100 co authors all occurred in less than one week this demonstrates the speed at which barcode assisted inventories can be completed and the utility that barcoding provides in minimizing and guiding valuable taxonomic specialist time the final product is more than a comprehensive biotic inventory â it is also a rich dataset of fine scale occurrence and sequence data all archived and cross linked in the major biodiversity data repositories this model of rapid generation and dissemination of essential biodiversity data could be followed to conduct regional assessments of biodiversity status and change and potentially be employed for evaluating progress towards the aichi targets of the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011â 2020,2015,0.329
Phylogeography of Nanorana parkeri (Anura: Ranidae) and multiple refugia on the Tibetan Plateau revealed by mitochondrial and nuclear DNA.,quaternary climatic changes have been recognized to influence the distribution patterns and evolutionary histories of extant organisms but their effects on alpine species are not well understood to investigate the pleistocene climatic oscillations on the genetic structure of amphibians we sequenced one mitochondrial and three nuclear dna fragments in nanorana parkeri a frog endemic to the tibetan plateau across its distribution range in the southern plateau mitochondrial cytochrome b cytb and three nuclear genes c myc2 rhod and tyr revealed two distinct lineages i e the lineages east and west which were strongly geographically structured the split of the two divergent lineages was dated back earlier than the middle pleistocene probably being associated with climatic and ecological factors species distribution modeling together with the phylogeographic structuring supported the hypothesis of multiple refugia for n parkeri on the tibetan plateau during the pleistocene glaciations and suggested the yarlung zangbo valley and the kyichu catchment to be the potential refugia our findings indicate that pleistocene climatic changes have had a great impact on the evolution and demographic history of n parkeri our study has important implications for conservation of this and other frog species in the tibetan plateau,2015,0.657
Peripatric speciation of an endemic species driven by Pleistocene climate change: the case of the Mexican prairie dog (Cynomys mexicanus).,the hypothesis that endemic species could have originated by the isolation and divergence of peripheral populations of widespread species can be tested through the use of ecological niche models enms and statistical phylogeography the joint use of these tools provides complementary perspectives on historical dynamics and allows testing hypotheses regarding the origin of endemic taxa we used this approach to infer the historical processes that have influenced the origin of a species endemic to the mexican plateau cynomys mexicanus and its divergence from a widespread ancestor cynomys ludovicianus and to test whether this endemic species originated through peripatric speciation we obtained genetic data for 295 individuals for two species of black tailed prairie dogs c ludovicianus and c mexicanus genetic data consisted of mitochondrial dna sequences cytochrome b and control region and 10 nuclear microsatellite loci we estimated dates of divergence between species and between lineages within each species and performed ecological niche modelling present last glacial maximum and last interglacial to determine changes in the distribution range of both species during the pleistocene finally we used bayesian inference methods diyabc to test different hypotheses regarding the divergence and demographic history of these species data supported the hypothesis of the origin of c mexicanus from a peripheral population isolated during the pleistocene ∠230 000 years ago 0 1 0 43 ma 95 hpd with a pleistocene holocene ∠9 000 11 000 years ago population expansion ∠10 fold increase in population size we identified the presence of two possible refugia in the southern area of the distribution range of c ludovicianus and another consistent with the distribution range of c mexicanus our analyses suggest that pleistocene climate change had a strong impact in the distribution of these species promoting peripatric speciation for the origin of c mexicanus and lineage divergence within c ludovicianus,2015,0.996
"Wetland Conservation in the Gulf of Mexico: The Example of the Salt Marsh Morning Glory, Ipomoea sagittata",wetland conservation in the gulf of mexico the example of the salt marsh morning glory ipomoea sagittata,2015,0.354
Invasive alien species—prioritising prevention efforts through horizon scanning ENV.B.2/ETU/2014/0016,the european union regulation eu 1143 2014 on invasive alien species ias establishes an eu wide framework for action to prevent minimise and mitigate the adverse impacts of ias on biodiversity and centres around the development of a list of ias of eu concern the initial list of ias of eu concern will be based on available risk assessments compliant with agreed minimum standards but horizon scanning is seen as critical to inform future updating of the list in order to prioritise the most threatening new and emerging ias a workshop was held with the overarching aim of reviewing and validating an approach to horizon scanning to derive a ranked list of ias which are likely to arrive establish spread and have an impact on biodiversity or related ecosystem services in the eu over the next decade the agreed horizon scanning approach involved two distinct phases i preliminary consultation between experts within five thematic groups to derive initial scores ii consensus building across expert groups including extensive discussion on species rankings coupled with review and moderation of scores across groups the outcome of the horizon scanning was a list of 95 species including all taxa except microorganisms within marine terrestrial and freshwater environments considered as very high or high priority for risk assessmen,2015,0.493
Impact of habitat loss on distributions of terrestrial vertebrates in a high-biodiversity region in Mexico,mexico is considered a country of biological megadiversity because of its exceptional species richness and endemism however much of mexicoâ s biodiversity is under threat due to a variety of factors in particular habitat loss the mexican legal standard norma oficial mexicana nom ecol 059 2010 uses four criteria to analyze specieå extinction risk at a national scale however when prioritizing areas for biodiversity conservation it is also important to incorporate knowledge of the conservation status of species at a more localized scale regional state or municipal levels for identifying possible risks associated with population declines this paper focuses on guerrero which is the fourth most biologically diverse state in mexico the total extent of the conservation areas in guerrero is low amounting to 0 09 of its total area we analyzed data for 582 terrestrial vertebrate species in guerrero 53 amphibians 115 reptiles 334 birds and 80 mammals modeling their potential distribution using a maximum entropy algorithm and 114 555 occurrence records and 23 predictive environmental 19 climatic and four topographical variables the portion of the potential distribution for each species including only remnant natural habitat was designated as its predicted distribution the area of the predicted distribution was used to compute the fraction of natural habitat remaining for each species overlapping within decreed protected areas at the state and national levels that is for guerrero and all of mexico results show significant differences in the fraction of speciesâ predicted distribution and speciesâ potential distribution at different scales state and national and differences between the vertebrate groups analyzed because quantitative conservation targets are typically set for individual species this exercise enables an analysis of the impact of the habitat lost on each speciesâ distribution by assessing the fraction of its predicted distribution that coincides with protected areas we conclude that this must be part of systematic conservation planning to prioritize areas for potential conservation in guerrero,2015,0.788
Matelea chihuahuensis (Apocynaceae): An addition to the flora of the United States and a synopsis of the species,matelea chihuahuensis is reported as an addition to the floras of new mexico and the united states with three occurrences in close proximity documented from hidalgo county a full description of the species is presented along with photos a distribution map and a review of its taxonomic history a lectotype is designated matelea chihuahuensis is compared to its close relatives and a key is provided to aid in distin guishing similar matelea species in chihuahua,2015,0.467
Summer temperature and precipitation govern bat diversity at northern latitudes in Norway,this study investigated bat diversity in a temperature and precipitation gradient in fiord and valley landscapes of western norway about 62â n equipment for automatic recording of bat calls was distributed in areas ranging from lowlands to alpine habitats with a mean july temperature range of 8â 14â c a general description of species distribution was given and diversity was analysed using both a generalised linear model glm and a mixed effects model glmm with regard to the sampling design the data were analysed on a binary scale where presence or absence of any species other than the northern bat eptesicus nilssonii is included models including temperature and precipitation explain 79 glm to 91 glmm of the overall variation in bat diversity in sub alpine and alpine areas with temperature below 10â c only the northern bat was found this species also forms maternity roosts where mean july temperatures are as low as 11â c and 10â c below july temperatures found in the warmest areas beyond the arctic circle,2015,0.658
Predicting abundance with presence-only models,context understanding and predicting the spatial patterns of species abundance is a critical need in macroecology but widespread abundance data are rare and habitat models based on species occurrences are typically poor predictors of abundance objectives i ask whether presence only species distribution models based on locations of high species abundance can more effectively predict abundance than models based on occurrences methods i created climatic suitability models for fifteen problematic non native invasive plants in the continental us using each of three datasets 1 occurrence data derived from herbarium records 2 occurrence data derived from regional expert knowledge surveys and 3 locations of high invasive plant abundance derived from regional expert knowledge surveys results models based on occurrences from regional surveys were most effective for distinguishing presence from absence models based on locations of high abundance were most effective for characterizing both intermediate and high ranks of abundance occurrence data from herbarium records were poor predictors of both presence and abundance conclusions this analysis suggests that climate suitable for abundant populations is predictable with species distribution modeling but not using distribution data alone high probability of species occurrence does not equal high probability of species abundance suggesting environmental factors differentially influence abundance and distribution this difference highlights the need for a macrosystems approach to regional habitat modeling to consider how local scale processes e g biotic interactions affect regional patterns moreover as abundance is critical for understanding species roles and impacts on ecosystems large scale surveys of quantitative or qualitative species abundance are strongly needed,2015,0.887
Pectate lyase pollen allergens: sensitization profiles and cross-reactivity pattern.,background pollen released by allergenic members of the botanically unrelated families of asteraceae and cupressaceae represent potent elicitors of respiratory allergies in regions where these plants are present as main allergen sources the asteraceae species ragweed and mugwort as well as the cupressaceae species cypress mountain cedar and japanese cedar have been identified the major allergens of all species belong to the pectate lyase enzyme family thus we thought to investigate cross reactivity pattern as well as sensitization capacities of pectate lyase pollen allergens in cohorts from distinct geographic regions methods the clinically relevant pectate lyase pollen allergens amb a 1 art v 6 cup a 1 jun a 1 and cry j 1 were purified from aqueous pollen extracts and patients sensitization pattern of cohorts from austria canada italy and japan were determined by ige elisa and cross inhibition experiments moreover we performed microarray experiments and established a mouse model of sensitization results in elisa and elisa inhibition experiments specific sensitization pattern were discovered for each geographic region which reflected the natural allergen exposure of the patients we found significant cross reactivity within asteraceae and cupressaceae pectate lyase pollen allergens which was however limited between the orders animal experiments showed that immunization with asteraceae allergens mainly induced antibodies reactive within the order the same was observed for the cupressaceae allergens cross reactivity between orders was minimal moreover amb a 1 art v 6 and cry j 1 showed in general higher immunogenicity conclusion we could cluster pectate lyase allergens in four categories amb a 1 art v 6 cup a 1 jun a 1 and cry j 1 respectively at which each category has the potential to sensitize predisposed individuals the sensitization pattern of different cohorts correlated with pollen exposure which should be considered for future allergy diagnosis and therapy,2015,0.508
Quantitative assessment of the differential impacts of arbuscular and ectomycorrhiza on soil carbon cycling.,a significant fraction of carbon stored in the earth s soil moves through arbuscular mycorrhiza am and ectomycorrhiza em the impacts of am and em on the soil carbon budget are poorly understood we propose a method to quantify the mycorrhizal contribution to carbon cycling explicitly accounting for the abundance of plant associated and extraradical mycorrhizal mycelium we discuss the need to acquire additional data to use our method and present our new global database holding information on plant species by site intensity of root colonization by mycorrhizas we demonstrate that the degree of mycorrhizal fungal colonization has globally consistent patterns across plant species this suggests that the level of plant species specific root colonization can be used as a plant trait to exemplify our method we assessed the differential impacts of am em ratio and em shrub encroachment on carbon stocks in sub arctic tundra am and em affect tundra carbon stocks at different magnitudes and via partly distinct dominant pathways via extraradical mycelium both em and am and via mycorrhizal impacts on above and belowground biomass carbon mostly am our method provides a powerful tool for the quantitative assessment of mycorrhizal impact on local and global carbon cycling processes paving the way towards an improved understanding of the role of mycorrhizas in the earth s carbon cycle,2015,0.271
Forward Planning for Scottish Gardens in the Face of Climate Change,the impact of climate change and its effects on gardens has so far received limited academic attention this paper offers a partial correction of this imbalance by investigating the potential impact of climate change on a selection of common scottish garden plants a climate envelope modelling approach was taken whereby wild species distribution data were used to build climate â envelopesâ or descriptions of the native climates of selected species the envelope models were projected onto future climate scenarios for scotland allowing observations to be made regarding the climatic suitability of scotland both currently and into the future for each of the plants studied the models and predictions for four species are described here along with strengths and limitations of the methodology it is suggested that this approach or variations of it could become a useful tool in forward planning for gardens in assisting efforts to mitigate the effect of climate change,2015,0.392
Bird composition and structure on two patches of dry forest in the valley of Cauca,the dry forest is one of the most degraded fragmented and less known ecosystems it is being transformed to implement cities livestock and crops leaving only small forest patches which are considered important reservoirs of biodiversity given the absence of birdlife information on patches of dry forest still present in the valle del cauca and their role in maintenance of the bird populations the objective of this study was to determine and compare the structure and composition of the avifauna in the forest patches the chatas and colindres and to compare their avifauna with other dry forest areas of the region in each forest three sampling days per month were performed from july until december in 2012 counting points and bird captures were done to monitor individuals seventy six species of birds belonging to twenty eight families and fourteen orders were recorded five migratory species nine moderately endangered and two regional endemic species were found although species richness and trophic groups was similar p 0 05 the colindres forest had a greater diversity h â 3 36 and 2 95 for â œlas chatasâ supported for high plant richness and quality of its landscape matrix although both forests are of similar size they shared 46 of birdspecies being they com plementary for conservation of bird populations it is important to implement a monitoring and conservation strategies that allow the restoration or recovery of these forest patches which are important refuges of bird species,2015,0.919
Signatures of niche conservatism and niche shift in the North American kudzu ( Pueraria montana ) invasion,aim recent advances have improved our ability to determine the degree to which the climatic niche of invasive populations resembles niche conservatism or differs from niche shift that of native progenitors we compared the climatic niche of kudzu pueraria montana one of the most devastating invasive species in north america between its native east asia and invasive united states ranges location east asia and united states methods to compare kudzu climatic niches we calculated niche overlap stability unfilling native climates not colonized in the invasive range and expansion invasive climates not colonized in the native range from principal component analysis and performed niche hypothesis tests reciprocal ecological niche models enms examined kudzu s current versus potential distributions to gain insight into the dynamics of different components of kudzu s niche we performed these analyses on two climate datasets one with variables selected by maxent model m and one with variables chosen a priori based on their putative ecological importance model e results niche conservatism was indicated by niche similarity tests and high niche stability niche shift between native and invasive niches was also observed but varied with variable selection niche unfilling was detected for models m 0 622â 0 903 and e 0 265â 0 577 while expansion was found only for model m 0 576â 0 959 enms predicted suitable climatic habitat throughout regions in the western united states where kudzu is currently absent main conclusions niche dynamics in the north american kudzu invasion are complex but can be thoroughly explored using unique variable datasets that illuminate different facets of the niche results presented here provide troubling evidence that kudzu has not yet occupied all climatic habitats in the united states that resemble its native range and that some invasive populations have expanded into climatically novel areas midwestern western us regions appear to be most at risk for kudzu spread in the near future,2015,0.314
Diversity and Eco-geographical Distribution of Insects,this chapter presents an integrative analysis on diversity levels distributional patterns and the implications of habitat preferences and geographic distributions of insect groups in the yucatã n peninsula over 3000 insect species have been documented in the yucatã n peninsula yet the number of species recorded may represent no more than 20â 30 of the total number of species taxonomic orders that recorded the highest number of species were diurnal lepidoptera n 510 species hymenoptera 602 and coleoptera 478 differences in insect species numbers for the three peninsular states were largely due to differences in sampling efforts maximum entropy models that were applied to a range of insect species showed that most suitable areas were fairly well distributed towards central and southern areas of the yucatã n peninsula with some spatial distributions matching â œel petã nâ or arid dry yucatã n while some others showed rather â idiosyncraticâ distributions the habitat and geographic categories analysis of 221 butterfly species revealed a declining proportion of species that were restricted to primary habitats with increasing geographic range ï 2 11 23 df 2 p 0 004 and an increasing proportion of widespread butterfly species that make use of modified habitats ï 2 40 7 df 2 p 0 001 the present status of butterfly diversity and perhaps many other insects in the yucatã n peninsula revealed important changes in species composition i e the prevalence of a large fraction of weedy species it is possible that dramatic habitat changes over much of the peninsula throughout the course of its history together with the current accelerated impact of habitat modification might have precipitated changes in species composition and diversity,2015,0.997
"Record of striped paper bubble shell, Hydatina physis (Linnaeus, 1758), from Indian waters",the opisthobranch gastropod hydatina physis linnaeus 1758 is recorded from the north west coast of india off veraval gujarat a literature review on the distribution of this species revealed that this is the first report of h physis from indian waters since 1877 when a specimen collected from chennai along the east coast of india and deposited in the australian museum was later identified to be h physis a note on the morphological features of this specimen is detailed in the present paper,2015,0.369
5- and 10-km mesh datasets of agricultural land use based on governmental statistics for 1970–2005,land use data serve as an essential part of large scale ecological research such as landscape ecology and macroecological studies for agricultural fields in japan existing time series statistical records can be used to convert map data according to a map of municipality units in this data paper we determined the areas of agricultural land use in japan from 1970 to 2005 excluding small islands at spatial resolutions of 5 and 10 km mesh grid units which are often referred to as the five fold mesh and japanese second order mesh respectively the elements considered included total farmland paddy fields dry farmland and orchards in 2005 we included abandoned agricultural areas because the related data were available in the agricultural statistical records the source data came from the census for agriculture forestry and fisheries conducted by the ministry of agriculture forestry and fisheries japan the datum was the japanese geodetic datum 2000 jgd2000 all of the datasets have open data licenses under the rules of the creative commons cc by 4 0 international https â creativecommons â org â licenses â by â 4 â 0 â legalcode,2015,0.183
Ecological niche modeling under climate change to select shrubs for ecological restoration in Central Mexico,shrub species were selected for potential use in restoration projects in the semiarid shrublands of central mexico ecological characteristics of the species were considered including tolerance to climate change inventories of shrubs were carried out in 17 semiarid shrubland fragments of xeric shrubland the 46 species recorded were ordered using a principal component analysis considering ecological characteristics such as frequency land cover sociability and interaction with mycorrhizal fungi from these the 10 species that presented the highest values of the desired characteristics were selected the response of these species to climate change was evaluated using current potential distribution models and by applying climate change scenario a2 using maxent the species that presented suitable ecological qualities for restoration and maintained or increased their distribution under the climate change scenario were acacia schaffneri ageratina espinosarum bursera fagaroides dalea bicolor eysenhardtia polystachya and karwinskia humboldtiana these species are therefore recommended for use in medium and long term ecological restoration projects in the semi arid region in central mexico,2015,0.922
"Naturalization of landscaping woody plant, Magnolia obovata potentially invasive species",magnolia obovata a tree species native to japan is a traditional landscaping tree that has also been introduced to various countries m obovata individuals have recently emerged in non planting areas in korea prompting us to investigate its distribution by establishing dosolsan in an urban forest of daejeon city as the target site in order to determine its naturalization the study explored the status of population growth by examining the diameter at breast height of the individuals and diameter diminution quotient was calculated cores of the trees were collected and the age distribution was estimated by regression analysis reproduction possibility was analyzed by verifying the flower blooming and fruit bearing spontaneous colonization was investigated in the other potential sites which have different location and environment respectively the diameter distribution showed a reverse j shaped curve and the diminution quotient was 1 8 the population was composed of different generations thus confirming the growth of the population the distributed m obovata grew and flowered normally and followed a normal life cycle the same phenomenon was observed in other planting areas residual forests in urban or rural areas alluvial islands and mountain forests the continuous spread of m obovata in new ecosystems may be attributable to its long term distribution by birds relatively fast growth and maturity time investigations on the naturalization and spread of m obovata in korea as well as in various countries are warranted,2015,0.554
The biology of Australian weeds 65. 'Tradescantia fluminensis' Vell,the genus name is derived from john tradescant 1608 1662 gardener to king charles i of england while the species is named for the rio de janeiro from the latin meaning,2015,0.435
"Contribution to the genus Chrysidea Bischoff, 1913 from China, with description of a new species (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae)",the genus chrysidea bischoff 1913 belongs to the tribe chrysidini hymenoptera chrysididae bohart 1988 revalidated the genus after it was considered as subgenus of chrysis linnaeus 1761 linsenmaier 1959 or trichrysis lichtenstein 1876 kimsey amp bohart 1981 and synonymised it with chrysis trichrysis linsenmaier 1984 kimsey amp bohart 1991 gave a checklist of 19 known species of chrysidea of which three are known from the oriental region c bidenticulata mocsã ry 1913 c furiosa cameron 1897 and c monticellii du buysson 1906 only one species c pumila klug 1845 has been recorded for the palaearctic part of china hammer 1936 rosa et al 2014,2015,0.576
Different axes of environmental variation explain the presence vs. extent of cooperative nest founding associations in Polistes paper wasps.,ecological constraints on independent breeding are recognised as major drivers of cooperative breeding across diverse lineages how the prevalence and degree of cooperative breeding relates to ecological variation remains unresolved using a large data set of cooperative nesting in polistes wasps we demonstrate that different aspects of cooperative breeding are likely to be driven by different aspects of climate whether or not a species forms cooperative groups is associated with greater short term temperature fluctuations in contrast the number of cooperative foundresses increases in more benign environments with warmer wetter conditions the same data set reveals that intraspecific responses to climate variation do not mirror genus wide trends and instead are highly heterogeneous among species collectively these data suggest that the ecological drivers that lead to the origin or loss of cooperation are different from those that influence the extent of its expression within populations,2015,0.551
Descriptive Taxonomy The Foundation of Biodiversity Research | Ecology and conservation | Cambridge University Press,description contents resources courses about the authors in an age when biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate it is vital that floristic and faunistic information is up to date reliable and easily accessible for the formulation of effective conservation strategies electronic data management and communication are transforming descriptive taxonomy radically enhancing both the collection and dissemination of crucial data on biodiversity this volume is written by scientists at the forefront of current developments of floras and faunas along with specialists from applied user groups the chapters review novel methods of research development and dissemination which aim to maximise the relevance and impact of data regional case studies are used to illustrate the outputs and impacts of taxonomic research integrated approaches are presented which have the capacity to accelerate the production of floras and faunas and to better serve the needs of a widening audience scientists at the forefront of the field review current methods in floristic and faunistic research promoting the most effective collection and dissemination of taxonomic data takes a multidisciplinary approach synthesising key topics and providing incisive case studies of current issues and methodologies presents integrated approaches that have the capacity to accelerate the production of floras and faunas and to better serve the needs of a widening audience,2015,0.053
Extending marine species distribution maps using non-traditional sources.,background traditional sources of species occurrence data such as peer reviewed journal articles and museum curated collections are included in species databases after rigorous review by species experts and evaluators the distribution maps created in this process are an important component of species survival evaluations and are used to adapt extend and sometimes contract polygons used in the distribution mapping process new information during an iucn red list gulf of mexico fishes assessment workshop held at the harte research institute for gulf of mexico studies a session included an open discussion on the topic of including other sources of species occurrence data during the last decade advances in portable electronic devices and applications enable citizen scientists to record images location and data about species sightings and submit that data to larger species databases these applications typically generate point data attendees of the workshop expressed an interest in how that data could be incorporated into existing datasets how best to ascertain the quality and value of that data and what other alternate data sources are available this paper addresses those issues and provides recommendations to ensure quality data use,2015,0.59
IEEE Xplore Full-Text HTML : Geolocation analysis using Maxent and plant sample data,a study was conducted to assess the feasibility of geolocation based on correctly identifying pollen samples found on goods or people for purposes of compliance with u s import laws and criminal forensics the analysis was based on neotropical plant data sets from the global biodiversity information facility the data were processed through the software algorithm maxent that calculates plant probability geographic distributions of maximum entropy subject to constraints derivation of single and joint continuous probability densities of geographic points for single and multiple taxa occurrences were performed statistical metrics were calculated directly from the output of maxent for single taxon probabilities and were mathematically derived for joint taxa probabilities predictions of likeliest geographic regions at a given probability percentage level were made along with the total corresponding geographic ranges we found that joint probability distributions greatly restrict the areas of possible provenance of pollen samples,2015,0.349
Hard Copy to Digital: Flora Neotropica and the World Flora Online,one of the greatest challenges in achieving the goals of the world flora online wfo will be to make available the huge amount of botanical information that is not yet available digitally the new york botanical garden is using the flora neotropica monograph series as a model for digitization we describe our efforts at digitizing flora neotropica monographs and why digitization of hardcopy descriptions must be a priority for the wfo project,2015,0.298
Thermal biases and vulnerability to warming in the world’s marine fauna,a critical assumption underlying projections of biodiversity change associated with global warming is that ecological communities comprise balanced mixes of warm affinity and cool affinity species which on average approximate local environmental temperatures nevertheless here we find that most shallow water marine species occupy broad thermal distributions that are aggregated in either temperate or tropical realms these distributional trends result in ocean scale spatial thermal biases where communities are dominated by species with warmer or cooler affinity than local environmental temperatures we use community level thermal deviations from local temperatures as a form of sensitivity to warming and combine these with projected ocean warming data to predict warming related loss of species from present day communities over the next century large changes in local species composition appear likely and proximity to thermal limits as inferred from present day speciesâ distributional ranges outweighs spatial variation in warming rates in contributing to predicted rates of local species loss,2015,0.832
"Starting to fill the gap: first record of Tantilla supracincta (Peters, 1863) (Serpentes: Colubridae) from Colombia",we report for the first time the occurrence of tantilla supracincta in colombia based on a road killed specimen found in the pacific foothills of the andes in the department of antioquia filling a gap of approximately 870 km in its distribution and extending by 473 m its altitudinal range,2015,0.357
Global exchange and accumulation of non-native plants,all around the globe humans have greatly altered the abiotic and biotic environment with ever increasing speed one defining feature of the anthropocene epoch1 2 is the erosion of biogeographical barriers by human mediated dispersal of species into new regions where they can naturalize and cause ecological economic and social damage3 so far no comprehensive analysis of the global accumulation and exchange of alien plant species between continents has been performed primarily because of a lack of data here we bridge this knowledge gap by using a unique global database on the occurrences of naturalized alien plant species in 481 mainland and 362 island regions in total 13 168 plant species corresponding to 3 9 of the extant global vascular flora or approximately the size of the native european flora have become naturalized somewhere on the globe as a result of human activity north america has accumulated the largest number of naturalized species whereas the pacific islands show the fastest increase in species numbers with respect to their land area continents in the northern hemisphere have been the major donors of naturalized alien species to all other continents our results quantify for the first time the extent of plant naturalizations worldwide and illustrate the urgent need for globally integrated efforts to control manage and understand the spread of alien species,2015,0.941
Anticipated climate and land-cover changes reveal refuge areas for Borneo's orang-utans,habitat loss and climate change pose a double jeopardy for many threatened taxa making the identification of optimal habitat for the future a conservation priority using a case study of the endangered bornean orang utan we identify environmental refuges by integrating bioclimatic models with projected deforestation and oil palm agriculture suitability from the 1950s to 2080s we coupled a maximum entropy algorithm with information on habitat needs to predict suitable habitat for the present day and 1950s we then projected to the 2020s 2050s and 2080s in models incorporating only land cover change climate change or both processes combined for future climate we incorporated projections from four model and emission scenario combinations for future land cover we developed spatial deforestation predictions from 10 years of satellite data refuges were delineated as suitable forested habitats identified by all models that were also unsuitable for oil palm a major threat to tropical biodiversity our analyses indicate that in 2010 up to 260 000 km 2 of borneo was suitable habitat within the core orang utan range an 18 24 reduction since the 1950s land cover models predicted further decline of 15 30 by the 2080s although habitat extent under future climate conditions varied among projections there was majority consensus particularly in north eastern and western regions across projections habitat loss due to climate change alone averaged 63 by 2080 but 74 when also considering land cover change refuge areas amounted to 2000 42 000 km 2 depending on thresholds used with 900 17 000 km 2 outside the current species range we demonstrate that efforts to halt deforestation could mediate some orang utan habitat loss but further decline of the most suitable areas is to be expected given projected changes to climate protected refuge areas could therefore become increasingly important for ongoing translocation efforts we present an approach to help identify such areas for highly threatened species given environmental changes expected this century,2015,0.326
Lantana camara (verbenaceae) : a potential threat to the effectiveness of protected areas to conserve flora and fauna in Benin,invasive plant species are today among the biggest threats to integrity of many ecosystems including that of the protected areas climate change may exacerbate the negative effects of invasive plant species here we used the maximum entropy model to project habitat suitability for lantana camara l an invasive plant species under current and future climates in the national protected areas network of benin the models were run using bioclimatic data and data on soil type nineteen percent of the total land in the protected areas network was highly suitable for l camara under current climate highly suitable areas under current and future climates cover about 65 of the pendjari biosphere reserve the major wildlife sanctuary in benin other bio reserves such as w national park lama agoua dogo kã tou atchã rigbã mã krou and kouandã forest reserves were also suitable for the species presence of l camara in the protected areas represents a great potential threat to the global food webs being conserved based on these results areas with highly suitable habitats are at high risk of invasion by l camara and should be accorded high priority when formulating appropriate management strategies keywords invasive species climate change habitat suitability protected areas west africa lantana camara et les aires protegees au benin les espã ces invasives font de nos jours partie des plus importantes menaces aux quelles font face les ã cosystã mes y compris les aires protã gã es les changements climatiques peuvent amplifier leurs effets nã gatifs dans la prã sente ã tude nous avons utilisã un algorithme de modã lisation de niche ã cologique le maximum entropy pour analyser la susceptibilitã des habitats ã ãªtre colonisã s par lantana camara l une plante invasive sous les conditions climatiques actuelles et futures dans les aires protã gã es du bã nin les modã les ont ã tã ã tablis en utilisant des donnã es bioclimatiques et des donnã es relatives aux types de sol dans les conditions climatiques actuelles 19 de la superficie totale du rã seau des aires protã gã es est significativement favorable ã l camara sous les conditions climatiques actuelles et futures 65 de la rã serve de biosphã re de pendjari le plus important sanctuaire de faune sauvage du bã nin est hautement favorable ã lâ espã ce dâ autres bio rã serves telles que le parc national w et les reserves forestiã res de lama agoua dogo kã tou atchã rigbã mã krou et kouandã ont aussi des habitats favorable ã lâ espã ce en nous fondant sur ces rã sultats les zones favorables sont ã haut risque dâ invasion par l camara et devraient ãªtre priorisã es lors de la formulation de stratã gies prã ventives appropriã es mots clã s espã ces envahissantes changements climatiques habitats favorables aires protã gã es afrique de lâ ouest,2015,0.362
The Digital Atlas of Ancient Life: delivering information on paleontology and biogeography via the web,the fundamental data of paleontology consist of taxonomically identified specimens of known spatiotemporal provenance that are curated in museum collections analyses of these data can lead to insights into biostratigraphy macroevolution biogeography phylogeny and paleoecology although historical collections may contain specimens of vague or indeterminate geographic and stratigraphic position most paleontologists have recorded these data with a high degree of precision for many years one challenging problem with using paleontological collections for research however is making correct identifications of fossil material at lower taxonomic levelsâ in particular species but also at the genus level one aspect of the challenge is philosophical in nature and involves the human activity of circumscribing species and higher taxa such that they best approximate biological reality see hendricks et al 2014 allmon in press this activity is the concern of the systematist who makes such decisions based on expert knowledge of a given group another concernâ which we focus on hereâ is practical in nature and has to do with identifying fossil specimens in hand sample and attaining information about the spatiotemporal occurrences of taxa from what may be far flung museum collections,2015,0.451
Phylogenetic analyses provide insights into the historical biogeography and evolution of Brachyrhaphis fishes.,the livebearing fish genus brachyrhaphis poeciliidae has become an increasingly important model in evolution and ecology research yet the phylogeny of this group is not well understood nor has it been examined thoroughly using modern phylogenetic methods here we present the first comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of brachyrhaphis by using four molecular markers 3mtdna 1nucdna to infer relationships among species in this genus we tested the validity of this genus as a monophyletic group using extensive outgroup sampling based on recent phylogenetic hypotheses of poeciliidae we also tested the validity of recently described species of brachyrhaphis that are part of the b episcopi complex in panama finally we examined the impact of historical events on diversification of brachyrhaphis and made predictions regarding the role of different ecological environments on evolutionary diversification where known historical events apparently fail to explain speciation based on our results we reject the monophyly of brachyrhaphis and question the validity of two recently described species b hessfeldi and b roswithae historical biogeography of brachyrhaphis generally agrees with patterns found in other freshwater taxa in lower central america which show that geological barriers frequently predict speciation specifically we find evidence in support of an island model of lower central american formation which posits that the nascent isthmus was partitioned by several marine connections before linking north and south america in some cases where historic events e g vicariance fail to explain allopatric species breaks in brachyrhaphis ecological processes e g divergent predation environments offer additional insight into our understanding of phylogenetic diversification in this group,2015,0.777
Snakes on the Balearic islands: an invasion tale with implications for native biodiversity conservation.,biological invasions are a major conservation threat for biodiversity worldwide islands are particularly vulnerable to invasive species especially mediterranean islands which have suffered human pressure since ancient times in the balearic archipelago reptiles represent an outstanding case with more alien than native species moreover in the last decade a new wave of alien snakes landed in the main islands of the archipelago some of which were originally snake free the identification of the origin and colonization pathways of alien species as well as the prediction of their expansion is crucial to develop effective conservation strategies in this study we used molecular markers to assess the allochthonous status and the putative origin of the four introduced snake species hemorrhois hippocrepis malpolon monspessulanus macroprotodon mauritanicus and rhinechis scalaris as well as ecological niche models to infer their patterns of invasion and expansion based on current and future habitat suitability for most species dna sequence data suggested the iberian peninsula as the potential origin of the allochthonous populations although the shallow phylogeographic structure of these species prevented the identification of a restricted source area for all of them the ecological niche models showed a current low habitat suitability in the balearic which is however predicted to increase significantly in the next few decades under climate change scenarios evidence from direct observations and spatial distribution of the first occurrence records of alien snakes but also lizards and worm lizards suggest the nursery trade and in particular olive tree importation from iberian peninsula as the main pathway of introduction of alien reptiles in the balearic islands this trend has been reported also for recent invasions in ne spain thus showing that olive trees transplantation may be an effective vector for bioinvasion across the mediterranean the combination of molecular and ecological tools used in this study reveals a promising approach for the understanding of the complex invasion process hence guiding conservation management actions,2015,0.775
Development and Validation of the College Campus Environment Scale (CCES): Promoting Positive College Experiences,one of the essential factors related to student success and satisfaction with a higher education experience is the college environment in which learning takes place the purpose of this study was to develop a scale the college campus environment scale cces to measure characteristics of college campus environments valued by students a model emerged with the following six factors academic and career expectations athletics health role models and mentors safety and social and extracurricular activities the cces demonstrates good evidence of reliability and validity and can be utilized by researchers and college personnel to promote positive college experiences for students,2015,0.197
"Click beetle diversity of Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India",the present study unfolds the diversity of click beetles of buxa tiger reserve btr a total of 34 elaterid species under 12 genera distributed over 7 subfamilies could be recorded the forest appears to be a scaled down west bengal as the area represents 1 2 1 3 rd and 1 5 th of the elaterid taxa subfamilies genera species out of 34 species 13 are considered new to science while 11 to west bengal and 9 to buxa tiger reserve the fauna shows high degree of endemism these beetles are mainly found during premonsoon 88 88 the fauna is largely oriental heteroderes sericeus candeze is the most abundant species 45 followed by cardiophorus ferruginosus sp no v 15 seventeen species are singletons while 15 species are represented by only two to seven individuals find of more number of males suggests more of their response to sex pheromones and dispersal ability,2015,0.899
"The Faces of Fungi database: fungal names linked with morphology, phylogeny and human impacts",taxonomic names are key links between various databases that store information on different organisms several global fungal nomenclural and taxonomic databases notably index fungorum species fungorum and mycobank can be sourced to find taxonomic details about fungi while dna sequence data can be sourced from ncbi ebi and unite databases although the sequence data may be linked to a name the quality of the metadata is variable and generally there is no corresponding link to images descriptions or herbarium material there is generally no way to establish the accuracy of the names in these genomic databases other than whether the submission is from a reputable source to tackle this problem a new database facesoffungi accessible at www â facesoffungi â org fof has been established this fungal database allows deposition of taxonomic data phenotypic details and other useful data which will enhance our current taxonomic understanding and ultimately enable mycologists to gain better and updated insights into the current fungal classification system in addition the database will also allow access to comprehensive metadata including descriptions of voucher and type specimens this database is user friendly providing links and easy access between taxonomic ranks with the classification system based primarily on molecular data from the literature and via updated web based phylogenetic trees and to a lesser extent on morphological data when molecular data are unavailable in fof species are not only linked to the closest phylogenetic representatives but also relevant data is provided wherever available on various applied aspects such as ecological industrial quarantine and chemical uses the data include the three main fungal groups ascomycota basidiomycota basal fungi and fungus like organisms the fof webpage is an output funded by the mushroom research foundation which is an ngo with seven directors with mycological expertise the webpage has 76 curators and with the help of these specialists fof will provide an updated natural classification of the fungi with illustrated accounts of species linked to molecular data the present paper introduces the fof database to the scientific community and briefly reviews some of the problems associated with classification and identification of the main fungal groups the structure and use of the database is then explained we would like to invite all mycologists to contribute to these web pages,2015,0.294
Geographic range size is predicted by plant mating system,species ranges vary enormously and even closest relatives may differ in range size by several orders of magnitude with data from hundreds of species spanning 20 genera and generic sections we show that plant species that autonomously reproduce via self pollination consistently have larger geographic ranges than their close relatives that generally require two parents for reproduction further analyses strongly implicate autonomous fertilization in causing this relationship as it is not driven by traits such as polyploidy or annual life history whose evolution is sometimes correlated with the transition to autonomous self fertilization furthermore we find that selfers occur at higher maximum latitudes and that disparity in range size between selfers and outcrossers increases with time since their separation together these results show that autonomous reproduction â a critical biological trait that eliminates mate limitation and thus potentially increases the probability of establishment â increases range size,2015,0.671
A macro-ecological perspective on crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) photosynthesis evolution in Afro-Madagascan drylands: Eulophiinae orchids as a case study.,crassulacean acid metabolism cam photosynthesis is an adaptation to water and atmospheric co2 deficits that has been linked to diversification in dry adapted plants we investigated whether cam evolution can be associated with the availability of new or alternative niches using eulophiinae orchids as a case study carbon isotope ratios geographical and climate data fossil records and dna sequences were used to assess the prevalence of cam in eulophiinae orchids characterize the ecological niche of extant taxa infer divergence times and estimate whether cam is associated with niche shifts cam evolved in four terrestrial lineages during the late miocene pliocene which have uneven diversification patterns these lineages originated in humid habitats and colonized dry seasonally dry environments in africa and madagascar additional key features variegation heterophylly evolved in the most species rich cam lineages dry habitats were also colonized by a lineage that includes putative mycoheterotrophic taxa these findings indicate that the switch to cam is associated with environmental change with its suite of adaptive traits this group of orchids represents a unique opportunity to study the adaptations to dry environments especially in the face of projected global aridification,2015,0.492
Correct identification and biosecurity decision-making: Two species instead of one in Aceria genistae complex (Acari: Eriophyidae) in New Zealand,in this paper aceria genistae nalepa on scotch broom cytisus scoparius from mandagout france is redescribed and a neotype is designated a gall mite on ulex europaeus l fabaceae in new zealand previously mis identified by david manson as a genistae is here redescribed as a new species aceria davidmansoni sp nov taxonomic and nomenclatural history of a genistae is reviewed,2015,0.389
Mapping current and future potential snakebite risk in the new world,snakebite envenoming is an important public health concern worldwide in the americas 300 000 bites occur annually leaving 84 110â 140 981 envenomings and 652â 3466 deaths here we modeled current and future snakebite risk using ecological niche models enms of 90 venomous snake taxa current snakebite risk predictions were corroborated by incidence data from eight regions periods with different characteristics detailed projections of potential future range shifts on distributions of the medically most relevant species indicated that north american speciesâ ranges are likely to increase in the future but mixed results were obtained for latin american snakes a likely expansion of overall risk area and an increase of rural population at risk were observed from a consensus model among future scenarios our study highlights the capacity of enms to provide detailed information on current and future potential distributions of venomous snakes as well as useful perspectives on snakebite risk at least broad scales,2015,0.353
Projected future distribution of date palm and its potential use in alleviating micronutrient deficiency.,background micronutrient deficiency develops when nutrient intake does not match nutritional requirements for maintaining healthy tissue and organ functions which may have long ranging effects on health learning ability and productivity inadequacy of iron zinc and vitamin a are the most important micronutrient deficiencies consumption of a 100 g portion of date flesh from date palm phoenix dactylifera l has been reported to meet approximately half the daily dietary recommended intake of these micronutrients this study investigated the potential distribution of p dactylifera under future climates to address its potential long term use as a food commodity to tackle micronutrient deficiencies in some developing countries results modelling outputs indicated large shifts in areas conducive to date palm cultivation based on global scale alteration over the next 60 years most of the regions suffering from micronutrient deficiencies were projected to become highly conducive for date palm cultivation conclusions these results could inform strategic planning by government and agricultural organizations by identifying areas to cultivate this nutritionally important crop in the future to support the alleviation of micronutrient deficiencies â 2015 society of chemical industry,2015,0.205
"Spatial Relations of Migratory Birds And Water Quality Management of Sirpur Lake, Indore, Madhya Pradesh",the present study has been carried out last year twenty three species of birds belonging to 8 different orders and 17 families were recorded out of these family ardeidae with 3 species was dominant followed by charadridae anatidae rallidae sturnidae muscicapidae alcedinidae corvidae coot fulica atra linnaeus have been the most common and abundant species of family rallidae in the reservoir reservoir is getting shallower each year due to silt deposition and accumulation of decomposed vegetation resulting winter birds visiting the site having decreased over the years the shallow areas of the reservoir are facing the danger of eutrophication which in turn may cause anoxic conditions thereby destroying the habitats for migratory birds forever,2015,0.628
Geographic data for Neotropical bats (Chiroptera),the global effort to digitize biodiversity occurrence data from collections museums and other institutions has stimulated the development of important tools to improve the knowledge and conservation of biodiversity the global biodiversity information facility gbif enables and opens access to biodiversity data of 321 million of records from 379 host institutions neotropical bats are a highly diverse and specialized group and the geographic information about them is increasing since few years ago but there are a few reports about this topic the aim of this study was to analyze the number of digital records in gbif of neotropical bats with distribution in 21 american countries evaluating their nomenclatural and geographical consistence at scale of country moreover we evaluated the gaps of information on 1â latitude x 1â longitude grids cells there were over 1 2 million records but 58 of them have no latitude and longitude data and 52 full fit nomenclatural and geographic evaluation we estimated that there are no records in 54 of the analyzed area the principal gaps are in biodiversity hotspots like the colombian and brazilian amazonia and southern venezuela in conclusion our study suggests that available data on gbif have nomenclatural and geographic biases gbif data represent partially the bat species richness and the main gaps in information are in south america,2015,0.329
Genetic Diversity in Corchorus olitorius Genotypes Using Jute SSRs,tossa jute corchorus olitorius l is an important lingo cellulosic bast fibre crop it provides biodegradable and environment friendly fibre next to cotton in terms of usage global consumption production and availability narrow genetic diversity of the crop is the major hurdle which is a demand at priority for any crop improvement programme in the current investigation 138 jute genotypes of c olitorius were characterized with ten jute specific ssr markers a total of 23 alleles were amplified with an average of 2 3 alleles per locus and the pic value ranged from 0 13 to 0 76 with an average of 0 455 the un weighted pair group method with arithmetic average cluster analysis of the 138 jute genotypes depicted a dendrogram using darwin which divided the genetic resource into three major clusters the study indicated the utility of ssr primers for providing useful and high levels of polymorphism for individual plant genotypes even with a narrow genetic base based on cluster analysis the most divergent genotypes identified were oij 167 from indonesia oim 058 and oim 059 india however based on the agronomic traits as maximum plant height basal diameter and fibre weight they were oij 245 oij 153 and 161 and oij 040 respectively,2015,0.189
Abutilon grandifolium,abutilon established by miller 1754 is a large genus in the malvaceae family with more than 200 species the malvaceae are traditionally placed in the order malvales which includes important families such as tiliaceae sterculiaceae and bombacaceae mitchell 1982 the malvales is a large and important natural order with its members found throughout the world except in the arctic regions masters 1868 these families are linked together by similarities in floral and pollen mor phology wood anatomy metcalfe chalk 1950 manchester miller 1978 and leaf structure manchester 1992 recent studies in molecular systematics also confirm these similarities among these four families although phylogenetic relationship within the families remains unclear alverson et al 1999,2015,0.501
Leotia cf. lubrica forms arbutoid mycorrhiza with Comarostaphylis arbutoides (Ericaceae).,arbutoid mycorrhizal plants are commonly found as understory vegetation in forests worldwide where ectomycorrhiza forming trees occur comarostaphylis arbutoides ericaceae is a tropical woody plant and common in tropical central america this plant forms arbutoid mycorrhiza whereas only associations with leccinum monticola as well as sebacina sp are described so far we collected arbutoid mycorrhizas of c arbutoides from the cerro de la muerte cordillera de talamanca costa rica where this plant species grows together with quercus costaricensis we provide here the first evidence of mycorrhizal status for the ascomycete leotia cf lubrica helotiales that was so far under discussion as saprophyte or mycorrhizal this fungus formed arbutoid mycorrhiza with c arbutoides the morphotype was described morphologically and anatomically leotia cf lubrica was identified using molecular methods such as sequencing the internal transcribed spacer its and the large subunit lsu ribosomal dna regions as well as phylogenetic analyses specific plant primers were used to confirm c arbutoides as the host plant of the leotioid mycorrhiza,2015,0.517
The future of evolutionary diversity in reef corals.,one third of the world s reef building corals are facing heightened extinction risk from climate change and other anthropogenic impacts previous studies have shown that such threats are not distributed randomly across the coral tree of life and future extinctions have the potential to disproportionately reduce the phylogenetic diversity of this group on a global scale however the impact of such losses on a regional scale remains poorly known in this study we use phylogenetic metrics in conjunction with geographical distributions of living reef coral species to model how extinctions are likely to affect evolutionary diversity across different ecoregions based on two measures phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic species variability we highlight regions with the largest losses of evolutionary diversity and hence of potential conservation interest notably the projected loss of evolutionary diversity is relatively low in the most species rich areas such as the coral triangle while many regions with fewer species stand to lose much larger shares of their diversity we also suggest that for complex ecosystems like coral reefs it is important to consider changes in phylogenetic species variability areas with disproportionate declines in this measure should be of concern even if phylogenetic diversity is not as impacted these findings underscore the importance of integrating evolutionary history into conservation planning for safeguarding the future diversity of coral reefs,2015,0.745
Worldwide spread of Tetramorium caldarium (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),tetramorium caldarium roger 1857 is a tramp ant species originally from africa that has dispersed around the world through human commerce from 1862 to 1979 t caldarium was considered a junior synonym of t simillimum smith 1851 to document the worldwide spread of t caldarium we compiled 300 published and unpublished specimen site records in addition in order to assess their species boundaries we examined the type specimens of t caldarium and t simillimum we documented tetramorium caldarium records from 67 geographic areas countries island groups major caribbean islands and us states including several for which there are no previously published records austral islands australia benin cameroon cayman islands congo republic curaã ao dubai el salvador gabon guadeloupe indonesia jamaica martinique namibia panama scotland senegal south africa tanzania and uganda tetramorium caldarium is truly cosmopolitan with records spread across seven of the world s eight bioregions all except the antarctic which has no ants tetramorium caldarium records are particularly common on atlantic islands and from greenhouses and heated buildings in temperate europe,2015,0.641
Macroecology meets IPBES,the intergovernmental platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes established in 2012 to counter the biodiversity crisis requires the best scientific input available to function as a successful science policy interface that addresses the knowledge needs of governments for safeguarding nature and its services for the macroecological research community ipbes presents a great opportunity to contribute knowledge data and methods and to help identify and address knowledge gaps and methodological impediments here we outline our perspectives on how macroecology may contribute to ipbes we focus on three essential topics for the ipbes process where contributions by macroecologists will be invaluable biodiversity data biodiversity modelling and modelling of ecosystem services for each topic we discuss the potential for contributions from the macroecological community as well as limitations challenges and knowledge gaps overall engagement of the macroecological community with ipbes should lead to mutual benefits macroecologists may profit as their contributions to ipbes may strengthen and inspire them as a community to design and conduct research that provides society relevant results furthermore macroecological contributions will help ipbes become a successful instrument of knowledge exchange and uncover the linkages between biodiversity and human well being,2015,0.121
Abiotic and biotic constraints across reptile and amphibian ranges,a long standing macroecological hypothesis posits that species range limits are primarily determined by abiotic factors e g climate at poleward boundaries and biotic factors e g competition at equatorward boundaries using correlative environmental niche models we test this hypothesis for 214 amphibian and reptile species endemic to the united states u s as predicted we find a closer association between climate and northern poleward range limits than at southern equatorward boundaries however when we separately analyze amphibians and reptiles only reptiles show the predicted pattern amphibians show the opposite pattern we also find more unoccupied but climatically habitable area beyond speciesâ southern range limits for reptiles but not amphibians this suggests that factors other than climate limit distributions at southern boundaries for reptiles and at northern boundaries for amphibians these contrasting results suggest that even in the same biogeographic regions this macroecological hypothesis does not hold further studies should investigate preferably via experimental approaches the proximate and ultimate mechanisms responsible for range limits,2015,0.555
Nemerteans in an Irish marine reserve: synopsis of current and historical records,the under rock guild of nemerteans from lough hyne south west ireland was recorded during a long term benthic survey of the marine reserve from 2004 to 2014 common nemerteans were recorded annually in late summer for ten historical monitoring sites each 10 m of shoreline more comprehensive surveys were completed in 2012 4126 low intertidal to shallow subtidal rocks were turned and 2014 1289 rocks turned with supplementary information in 2015 the bootlace worm lineus longissimus was the most abundant nemertean species it was significantly more abundant at the extremely shallow east castle site than the other nine sites peak populations across all ten sites occurred in 2012 the lusitanian nemertean paradrepanophorus crassus was abundant after 2007 to date 13 nemertean species were recorded with numerous new records for the lough including tubulanus annulatus micrura purpurea ramphogordius sanguineus micrella rufa and emplectonema gracile three additional nemertean species were previously recorded indicating that at least 16 species occur in the lough given the low densities and paucity of comprehensive earlier records we are not able to ascertain definitely whether these species are new incursions or if sparsely distributed residents have increased,2015,0.886
Anonymous nuclear markers reveal taxonomic incongruence and long-term disjunction in a cactus species complex with continental-island distribution in South America,the pilosocereus aurisetus complex consists of eight cactus species with a fragmented distribution associated to xeric enclaves within the cerrado biome in eastern south america the phylogeny of these species is incompletely resolved and this instability complicates evolutionary analyses previous analyses based on both plastid and microsatellite markers suggested that this complex contained species with inherent phylogeographic structure which was attributed to recent diversification and recurring range shifts however limitations of the molecular markers used in these analyses prevented some questions from being properly addressed in order to better understand the relationship among these species and make a preliminary assessment of the genetic structure within them we developed anonymous nuclear loci from pyrosequencing data of 40 individuals from four species in the p aurisetus complex the data obtained from these loci were used to identify genetic clusters within species and to investigate the phylogenetic relationship among these inferred clusters using a species tree methodology coupled with a palaeodistributional modelling our results reveal a deep phylogenetic and climatic disjunction between two geographic lineages our results highlight the importance of sampling more regions from the genome to gain better insights on the evolution of species with an intricate evolutionary history the methodology used here provides a feasible approach to develop numerous genealogical molecular markers throughout the genome for non model species these data provide a more robust hypothesis for the relationship among the lineages of the p aurisetus complex,2015,0.925
Anthropogenic disturbance and habitat loss for the red-listed Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus): Using ecological niche modeling and nighttime light satellite imagery,habitat loss is a critical factor driving extinction of biodiversity worldwide with models of future land use anticipating increases in rates of destruction of native habitats worldwide the asian black bear ursus thibetanus is a red listed species with a broad geographic range that has been fragmented dramatically by land use change remaining populations of u thibetanus occupy diverse habitats ranging from highlands to coastal regions we integrated ecological niche models enms with nighttime satellite imagery to identify areas suitable for u thibetanus after anthropogenic alteration we found that at least 10 of the potential distributional area for the species is not suitable owing to urban or suburban encroachment u thibetanus seems to persist in highland areas characterized by low temperature and high precipitation whereas humans concentrate in lowlands and less extreme climatic conditions enms based solely on climate frequently overestimate suitable areas available for species nighttime light imagery offers a robust alternative to refining estimates of species ranges designing protected areas and corridors prioritizing threatened species and determining areas of humanâ wildlife conflict across broad areas our approach is transferable to other taxa and contexts and should be considered in conservation planning and policy implementation,2015,0.947
"Delineation and characterization of Michigan, USA, caddisfly (Insecta: Trichoptera) biodiversity and comparison with Minnesota",based on canonical correspondence analysis cca ordination of the relative caddisfly abundance of 79 streams 5â 15 m in width the state of michigan appears to be composed of three distinct regions of caddisfly biological diversity corresponding to the upper peninsula northern lower peninsula and southern lower peninsula the analysis further determined latitude watershed gradient and anthropogenic disturbance as important variables influencing distributional patterns overall species richness was higher and trophic functional group composition was as predicted by the river continuum concept in the predominately forested upper peninsula and northern lower peninsula regions the northern lower peninsula region in particular was dominated by shredders overall species richness was lower in the agricultural southern lower peninsula region and streams were dominated 75 of specimens by filtering collectors similar patterns of biological diversity and important environmental variables were determine,2015,0.44
Towards global interoperability for supporting biodiversity research on essential biodiversity variables (EBVs),essential biodiversity variables ebvs have been proposed by the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon to identify a minimum set of essential measurements that are required for studying monitoring and reporting biodiversity and ecosystem change despite the initial conceptualisation however the practical implementation of ebvs remains challenging there is much discussion about the concept and implementation of ebvs which variables are meaningful which data are needed and available at which spatial temporal and topical scales can ebvs be calculated and how sensitive are ebvs to variations in underlying data to advance scientific progress in implementing ebvs we propose that both scientists and research infrastructure operators need to cooperate globally to serve and process the essential large datasets for calculating ebvs we introduce globis b global infrastructures for supporting biodiversity research a global cooperation funded by the horizon 2020 research,2015,0.159
Data Democracy - increased supply of geospatial information and expanded participatory processes in the production of data,the global landscape in the supply co creation and use of geospatial data is changing very rapidly with new satellites sensors and mobile devices reconfiguring the traditional lines of demand and supply and the number of actors involved in this paper we chart some of these technology led developments and then focus on the opportunities they have created for the increased participation of the public in generating and contributing information for a wide range of uses scientific and non not all of this information is open or geospatial but sufficiently large portions of it are to make it one of the most significant phenomena of the last decade in fact we argue that whilst satellite and sensors have exponentially increased the volumes of geospatial information available the participation of the public is transformative because it expands the range participants and stakeholders in society using and producing geospatial information with opportunities for more direct participation in science politi,2015,0.206
Limited sampling hampers “big data” estimation of species richness in a tropical biodiversity hotspot,macro scale species richness studies often use museum specimens as their main source of information however such datasets are often strongly biased due to variation in sampling effort in space and time these biases may strongly affect diversity estimates and may thereby obstruct solid inference on the underlying diversity drivers as well as mislead conservation prioritization in recent years this has resulted in an increased focus on developing methods to correct for sampling bias in this study we use sample size correcting methods to examine patterns of tropical plant diversity in ecuador one of the most species rich and climatically heterogeneous biodiversity hotspots species richness estimates were calculated based on 205 735 georeferenced specimens of 15 788 species using the margalef diversity index the chao estimator the second order jackknife and bootstrapping resampling methods and hill numbers and rarefaction species richness was heavily correlated with sampling effort and only rarefaction was able to remove this effect and we recommend this method for estimation of species richness with â œbig dataâ collections,2015,0.795
Lessons learned from adapting the Darwin Core vocabulary standard for use in RDF,the darwin core vocabulary is widely used to transmit biodiversity data in the form of simple text files in order to support expression of biodiversity data in the resource description framework rdf a guide was created as a non normative addition to the darwin core standard this paper describes the major issues that were addressed in the creation of the guide particularly problems related to adapting terms designed to have literal values for use with iri references by making it possible to express millions of existing records as rdf the guide is an important step towards enabling the biodiversity informatics community to participate in broader linked data and semantic web efforts,2015,0.14
Predictive spatial niche and biodiversity hotspot models for small mammal communities in Alaska: applying machine-learning to conservation planning,context changing global environmental conditions especially at northern latitudes are threatening to shift species distributions and alter wildlife communities objective we aimed to establish current distributions and community arrangements of small mammals to provide important baselines for monitoring and conserving biodiversity into the future methods we used 4 408 archived museum and open access records and the machine learning algorithm randomforests to create high resolution spatial niche models for 17 species of rodents and shrews in alaska models were validated using independent trapping results from 20 locations stratified along statewide mega transects and an average species richness curve was calculated for field samples community cluster analyses varclus identified geographic patterns of sympatry among species species models were summed to create the first small mammal species richness map for alaska results species richness increased logarithmically to a mean of 3 3 species per location over 1 500 trap nights distribution models yielded mean accuracies of 71 45â 90 and maps correctly predicted a mean of 75 60â 95 of occurrences correctly in the field top predictors included soil type ecoregion landfire land cover december sea ice and july temperature at the geographic scale cluster analysis delineated five community groups 3â 4 species group and species richness was highest 11â 13 species over the yukon tanana uplands conclusions models presented here provide spatial predictions of current small mammal biodiversity in alaska and an initial framework for mapping and monitoring wildlife distributions across broad landscapes into the future,2015,0.951
Performance metrics and variance partitioning reveal sources of uncertainty in species distribution models,species distribution models sdms are widely used in basic and applied ecology making it important to understand sources and magnitudes of uncertainty in sdm performance and predictions we analyzed sdm performance and partitioned variance among prediction maps for 15 rare vertebrate species in the southeastern usa using all possible combinations of seven potential sources of uncertainty in sdms algorithms climate datasets model domain species presences variable collinearity co2 emissions scenarios and general circulation models the choice of modeling algorithm was the greatest source of uncertainty in sdm performance and prediction maps with some additional variation in performance associated with the comprehensiveness of the species presences used for modeling other sources of uncertainty that have received attention in the sdm literature such as variable collinearity and model domain contributed little to differences in sdm performance or predictions in this study predictions from different algorithms tended to be more variable at northern range margins for species with more northern distributions which may complicate conservation planning at the leading edge of speciesâ geographic ranges the clear message emerging from this work is that researchers should use multiple algorithms for modeling rather than relying on predictions from a single algorithm invest resources in compiling a comprehensive set of species presences and explicitly evaluate uncertainty in sdm predictions at leading range margins,2015,0.527
A unified approach for quantifying invasibility and degree of invasion,habitat invasibility is a central focus of invasion biology with implications for basic ecological patterns and processes and for effective invasion management invasibility is however one of the most elusive metrics and misused terms in ecology empirical studies and meta analyses of invasibility have produced inconsistent and even conflicting results this lack of consistency and subsequent difficulty in making broad cross habitat comparisons stem in part from 1 the indiscriminant use of a closely related but fundamentally different concept degree of invasion di or level of invasion and 2 the lack of common invasibility metrics as illustrated by our review of all invasibility related papers published in 2013 to facilitate both cross habitat comparison and more robust ecological generalizations we clarify the definitions of invasibility and di and for the first time propose a common metric for quantifying invasibility based on a habitat s resource availability as inferred from relati,2015,0.183
Collections-based research in the genomic era,biological collections are at the front line of biodiversity research informing taxonomy evolution conservation and sustainable livelihoods in april 2014 we organised a meeting at the linnean society uk discussing the impact of next generation sequencing ngs methods on collections based research here we explore the main themes of this meeting and outline the incredible potential of ngs to reinvent collections based research among the many opportunities at the interface of genomics and collections we focus specifically on 1 the genomic characterisation of biological collections 2 the enhancement and development of dna based identification 3 the tree of life and 4 interdisciplinary research addressing the most pressing environmental challenges of our times across the world biological collections are at risk primarily due to declining funding and shifts in scientific fashions we encourage all users of collections to embrace the genomic era not only because of the unparalleled scientific potential that it presents but also because new cross disciplinary synergies will reinvigorate and secure the collections for future generations,2015,0.088
Why close relatives make bad neighbours: phylogenetic conservatism in niche preferences and dispersal disproves Darwin's naturalization hypothesis in the thistle tribe,the number of exotic plant species that have been introduced into the united states far exceeds that of other groups of organisms and many of these have become invasive as in many regions of the globe invasive members of the thistle tribe cardueae are highly problematic in the california floristic province an established biodiversity hotspot while darwin s naturalization hypothesis posits that plant invaders closely related to native species would be at a disadvantage evidence has been found that introduced thistles more closely related to native species are more likely to become invasive to elucidate the mechanisms behind this pattern we modelled the ecological niches of thistle species present in the province and compared niche similarity between taxa and their evolutionary relatedness using fossil calibrated molecular phylogenies of the tribe the predicted niches of invasive species were found to have higher degrees of overlap with native species than noninvasive introduced species do and pairwise niche distance was significantly correlated with phylogenetic distance suggesting phylogenetic niche conservatism invasive thistles also displayed superior dispersal capabilities compared to noninvasive introduced species and these capabilities exhibited a phylogenetic signal by analysing the modelled ecological niches and dispersal capabilities of over a hundred thistle species we demonstrate that exapted preferences to the invaded environment may explain why close exotic relatives may make bad neighbours in the thistle tribe,2015,0.986
Global priorities for an effective information basis of biodiversity distributions.,gaps in digital accessible information dai on species distributions hamper prospects of safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services and addressing central ecological and evolutionary questions achieving international targets on biodiversity knowledge requires that information gaps be identified and actions prioritized integrating 157 million point records and distribution maps for 21 170 terrestrial vertebrate species we find that outside a few well sampled regions dai on point occurrences provides very limited and spatially biased inventories of species surprisingly many large emerging economies are even more under represented in global dai than species rich developing countries in the tropics multi model inference reveals that completeness is mainly limited by distance to researchers locally available research funding and participation in data sharing networks rather than transportation infrastructure or size and funding of western data contributors as often assumed our results highlight the urgent need for integrating non western data sources and intensifying cooperation to more effectively address societal biodiversity information needs,2015,0.683
Capparis species: A potential source of bioactives and high-value components: A review,capparis species also known as caper plants are recognized as a potential source of valuable nutrients and biochemical compounds with physiological functions the multiple biological activities including antibacterial antifungal hepatoprotective anthelmintic antidiabetic anti inflammatory anti cancer and antihyperlipidemic as well as folk medicinal uses of caper plants have been ascribed to the presence of functional bioactives such as phenolic acids flavonoids alkaloids phytosterols natural sugars vitamins and organic acids in view of the high nutritional value and traditional food and folk medicinal uses of capparis species it is important to compile a comprehensive review on related aspects of these multipurposes plants hence the present review manuscript focuses on the detailed profile of valuable nutrients and biochemical compounds as well as medicinal health functions and biological activities of selected species of capparis so as to explore their potential uses as ingredients of functional food and nutraceuticals and natural pharmaceutics,2015,0.066
Specialists in ancient trees are more affected by climate than generalists,ancient trees are considered one of the most important habitats for biodiversity in europe and north america they support exceptional numbers of specialized species including a range of rare and endangered wood living insects in this study we use a dataset of 105 sites spanning a climatic gradient along the oak range of norway and sweden to investigate the importance of temperature and precipitation on beetle species richness in ancient hollow oak trees we expected that increased summer temperature would positively influence all wood living beetle species whereas precipitation would be less important with a negligible or negative impact surprisingly only oak specialist beetles with a northern distribution increased in species richness with temperature few specialist beetles and no generalist beetles responded to the rise of 4â c in summer as covered by our climatic gradient the negative effect of precipitation affected more specialist species than did temperature whereas the generalists remained unaffected in summary we suggest that increased summer temperature is likely to benefit a few specialist beetles within this dead wood community but a larger number of specialists are likely to decline due to increased precipitation in addition generalist species will remain unaffected to minimize adverse impacts of climate change on this important community long term management plans for ancient trees are important,2015,0.874
New data on the rare deep-sea skate Amblyraja jenseni (Rajidae) from the North Atlantic Ocean,in this study we present the most complete description of color variation morphometric and meristic characters for the rare deep sea north atlantic jensenâ s skate amblyraja jenseni based on analyses of a wide range of accessible material comparisons of external morphological characters of male and female specimens of varying sizes and from different regions of the north atlantic indicated regional morphological differences likely due to prolonged geographic isolation of local populations of this species the vast majority of individuals exhibited a â œdarkâ coloration with a less common â œlightâ coloration observed particularly among skates from the waters of the northeast and northwest atlantic only dark colored skates were found in the waters of the mid atlantic ridge we also provide new data on the habitat vertical distribution and size of the jensenâ s skate,2015,0.511
Long-term effects of traditional and conservation-oriented forest management on the distribution of vertebrates in Mediterranean forests: a hierarchical hybrid modelling approach,aim recently increasing attention has been devoted to the development of sustainable forestry practices aimed at finding a balance between the maintenance and enhancement of different forest resources however the long term large scale effects of conservation oriented forest management on vertebrates have been poorly studied we tested the hypothesis that conservation oriented forest management being conceived to mimic the dynamics of a natural forest succession more closely than does traditional forestry causes a less severe long term impact on the distribution of forest vertebrates location molise region central italy methods we proposed a hybrid modelling framework based on the integration of a forest dynamic model â landis iiâ with species distribution models sdms the framework was applied on four forest specialist vertebrates tiny salamander slow worm eurasian nuthatch and leisler s bat and included three components forest dynamic model fdm sdms and spatial pattern analysis spa fdm was used to simulate spatially explicit patterns of forest succession for the current time and for 2050 imposing three alternative forestry scenarios the simulated forest succession patterns were analysed through spa to calculate spatialized landscape metrics that were adopted as environmental predictors for sdms landscape trajectories were calculated on current and future species distributions predicted with sdms to evaluate the effect of alternative forestry practices on their extent and fragmentation results forest management mainly affected the spatial configuration rather than the extent of the species potential distributions conservation oriented forest management was more favourable than traditional forestry in increasing the extent and reducing the fragmentation of the studied speciesâ distributions main conclusions conservation oriented forest management by mimicking the dynamics of a natural forest succession more closely than did traditional practices favoured elements such as forest unevenness species richness aggregation of patches and variability in their distances which emerged as fundamental characteristics for preserving the long term persistence of forest vertebrates,2015,0.321
Comparison of invertebrate herbivores on native and non-native S enecio species: Implications for the enemy release hypothesis,the enemy release hypothesis posits that non native plant species may gain a competitive advantage over their native counterparts because they are liberated from co evolved natural enemies from their native area the phylogenetic relationship between a non native plant and the native community may be important for understanding the success of some non native plants because host switching by insect herbivores is more likely to occur between closely related species we tested the enemy release hypothesis by comparing leaf damage and herbivorous insect assemblages on the invasive species senecio madagascariensis poir to that on nine congeneric species of which five are native to the study area and four are non native but considered non invasive non native species had less leaf damage than natives overall but we found no significant differences in the abundance richness and shannon diversity of herbivores between native and non native senecio l species the herbivore assemblage and percentage abundance of herbivore guilds differed among all senecio species but patterns were not related to whether the species was native or not species level differences indicate that s madagascariensis may have a greater proportion of generalist insect damage represented by phytophagous leaf chewers than the other senecio species within a plant genus escape from natural enemies may not be a sufficient explanation for why some non native species become more invasive than others,2015,0.987
Toward equality of biodiversity knowledge through technology transfer,to help stem the continuing decline of biodiversity effective transfer of technology from resource rich to biodiversity rich countries is required biodiversity technology as defined by the convention on biological diversity cbd is a complex term encompassing a wide variety of activities and interest groups as yet there is no robust framework by which to monitor the extent to which technology transfer might benefit biodiversity we devised a definition of biodiversity technology and a framework for the monitoring of technology transfer between cbd signatories biodiversity technology within the scope of the cbd encompasses hard and soft technologies that are relevant to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity or make use of genetic resources and that relate to all aspects of the cbd with a particular focus on technology transfer from resource rich to biodiversity rich countries our proposed framework introduces technology transfer as a response indicator technology transfer is increased to stem pressures on biodiversity we suggest an initial approach of tracking technology flow between countries charting this flow is likely to be a one to many relationship i e the flow of a specific technology from one country to multiple countries future developments should then focus on integrating biodiversity technology transfer into the current pressure state response indicator framework favored by the cbd i e measuring the influence of technology transfer on changes in state and pressure variables structured national reporting is important to obtaining metrics relevant to technology and knowledge transfer interim measures that can be used to assess biodiversity technology or knowledge status while more in depth indicators are being developed include the number of species inventories threatened species lists or national red lists databases on publications and project funding may provide measures of international cooperation such a pragmatic approach followed by rigorous testing of specific technology transfer metrics submitted by cbd signatories in a standardized manner may in turn improve the focus of future targets on technology transfer for biodiversity conservation,2015,0.225
Past climate-driven range shifts and population genetic diversity in arctic plants,aim high intra specific genetic diversity is necessary for species adaptation to novel environments under climate change but species tracking suitable conditions are losing alleles through successive founder events during range shift here we investigated the relationship between range shift since the last glacial maximum lgm and extant population genetic diversity across multiple plant species to understand variability in species responses location the circumpolar arctic and northern temperate alpine ranges methods we estimated the climatic niches of 30 cold adapted plant species using range maps coupled with species distribution models and hindcasted species suitable areas to reconstructions of the mid holocene and lgm climates we computed the species specific migration distances from the species glacial refugia to their current distribution and correlated distances to extant genetic diversity in 1295 populations differential responses among species were related to life history traits results we found a negative association between inferred migration distances from refugia and genetic diversities in 25 species but only 11 had statistically significant negative slopes the relationships between inferred distance and population genetic diversity were steeper for insect pollinated species than wind pollinated species but the difference among pollination system was marginally independent from phylogenetic autocorrelation main conclusion the relationships between inferred migration distances and genetic diversities in 11 species independent from current isolation indicate that past range shifts were associated with a genetic bottleneck effect with an average of 21 loss of genetic diversity per 1000 km∠1 in contrast the absence of relationship in many species also indicates that the response is species specific and may be modulated by plant pollination strategies or result from more complex historical contingencies than those modelled here,2015,0.999
"Richness, systematics, and distribution of molluscs associated with the macroalga Gigartina skottsbergii in the Strait of Magellan, Chile: A biogeographic affinity study",knowledge about the marine malacofauna in the magellan region has been gained from many scientific expeditions that were carried out during the 19th century however despite the information that exists about molluscs in the magellan region there is a lack of studies about assemblages of molluscs co occurring with macroalgae especially commercially exploitable algae such as gigartina skottsbergii a species that currently represents the largest portion of carrageenans within the chilean industry the objective of this study is to inform about the richness systematics and distribution of the species of molluscs associated with natural beds in the strait of magellan a total of 120 samples from quadrates of 0 25 m2 were obtained by scuba diving at two sites within the strait of magellan sampling occurred seasonally between autumn 2010 and summer 2011 15 quadrates were collected at each site and season a total of 852 individuals corresponding to 42 species of molluscs belonging to polyplacophora 9 species gastropoda 24 and bivalvia 9 were identified the species richness recorded represents a value above the average richness of those reported in studies carried out in the last 40 years in sublittoral bottoms of the strait of magellan the biogeographic affinity indicates that the majority of those species 38 present an endemic magellanic distribution while the rest have a wide distribution in the magellanic pacific magellanic atlantic and magellanic southern ocean the molluscs from the magellan region serve as study models for biogeographic relationships that can explain long reaching patterns and are meaningful in evaluating possible ecosystemic changes generated by natural causes or related to human activities,2015,0.929
Synthetic datasets and community tools for the rapid testing of ecological hypotheses,the increased availability of both open ecological data and software to interact with it allows the fast collection and integration of information at all spatial and taxonomic scales this offers the opportunity to address macroecological questions in a cost effective way in this contribution we illustrate this approach by forecasting the structure of a stream food web at the global scale in so doing we highlight the most salient issues needing to be addressed before this approach can be used with a high degree of confidence,2015,0.21
"Sneezing and Wheezing: How Climate Change Could Increase Ragweed Allergies, Air Pollution, and Asthma",2014 was the hottest year on e arth since recordkeeping began in 1880 and ten of the previous warmest years on record occurred since 2000 1 t he scientific consensus is that climate change is the driving force behind these rising temperatures s cientific studies have also shown that our changing climate could favor the formation of more ozone smog in some areas and increase the production of allergenic pollen such as that released by the ragweed plant the principal source of pollen associated with allergic rhinitis 2 t his is bad news for allergy sufferers and asthmatics because both ragweed pollen and high levels of ozone smog can trigger asthma attacks and worsen allergic symptoms in adults and children moreover studies show that people exposed to both ragweed allergens and ozone are likely to become more ill than people exposed to just one of the two 3 t hese negative health effects are expected to worsen if carbon dioxide c o 2 concentrations keep rising and climate change continues unchecked,2015,0.302
Plasticity in thermal tolerance has limited potential to buffer ectotherms from global warming.,global warming is increasing the overheating risk for many organisms though the potential for plasticity in thermal tolerance to mitigate this risk is largely unknown in part this shortcoming stems from a lack of knowledge about global and taxonomic patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity to address this critical issue we test leading hypotheses for broad scale variation in ectotherm tolerance plasticity using a dataset that includes vertebrate and invertebrate taxa from terrestrial freshwater and marine habitats contrary to expectation plasticity in heat tolerance was unrelated to latitude or thermal seasonality however plasticity in cold tolerance is associated with thermal seasonality in some habitat types in addition aquatic taxa have approximately twice the plasticity of terrestrial taxa based on the observed patterns of variation in tolerance plasticity we propose that limited potential for behavioural plasticity i e behavioural thermoregulation favours the evolution of greater plasticity in physiological traits consistent with the bogert effect finally we find that all ectotherms have relatively low acclimation in thermal tolerance and demonstrate that overheating risk will be minimally reduced by acclimation in even the most plastic groups our analysis indicates that behavioural and evolutionary mechanisms will be critical in allowing ectotherms to buffer themselves from extreme temperatures,2015,0.122
"New Sabethes (Diptera: Culicidae) species records for Ecuador, from Colons o-Chalupas biological reserve, province of Napo (Amazon)",two new records of sabethes mosquitoes culicidae nematocera are reported for ecuador with the respective extension of their geographical distribution in the neotropics sabethes intermedius lutz and sabethes soperi lane cerqueira from the provinces of napo amazon into the natural reserve of colonso chalupas at 1 200 m altitud e beside tena city ecuador both species are considered as potential vectors of sylvatic yellow fever virus and mayaro virus information on collection locality and date biogeographical region and climate number of specimens deposited collectors and the current distribution are included for each species with these re cords the alpha diversity of culicidae of ecuador is estimated for 240 species,2015,0.792
Widespread mistaken identity in tropical plant collections,our study examined the history of all names associated with more than 4 500 specimens of aframomum we extracted the full determination history of each specimen from the time it was collected until the present figure 1a subsequently we evaluated the accuracy of names associated with each specimen over time relative to the current name as determined in the recent monograph 2 additionally we measured the inconsistency of names associated with more than 21 000 specimens of the tree family dipterocarpaceae basing this work on material duplicated in different herbaria we also assessed the percentage of synonyms and invalid names relative to the total number of names associated with 49 500 specimens of ipomoea stored in gbif supplemental figure s1a finally we documented the increase in the number of tropical herbaria and the accumulation of specimens for several taxa and geographical regions supplemental figure s1bâ ci x,2015,0.442
Predicting biofuel invasiveness: a relative comparison to crops and weeds,abstract concern raised against using highly competitive exotic large statured perennial grasses with fast growth rates as bioenergy crops has led to calls for risk assessment prior to widespread cultivation weed risk assessments are decision support tools commonly used throughout the world to determine the invasion risk of new plant taxaâ primarily used as a pre entry screen here we compare the common australian a wra and newer us us wra models to evaluate the invasion risk of 16 candidate bioenergy crops and compare their wra scores to 14 important agronomic crops and 10 invasive species with an agronomic origin of the 40 species assessed the a wra and the us wra ranked 34 and 28 species as high risk respectively including the major crops alfalfa rice canola and barley surprisingly in several cases both models failed to effectively parse weeds from crops for example cereal rye received scores above us wra or comparable a wra to kudzu a widespread damaging invader of the southeaste,2015,0.21
Phylogenetics and molecular clocks reveal the repeated evolution of ant-plants after the late Miocene in Africa and the early Miocene in Australasia and the Neotropics.,ant plant symbioses involve over 110 ant species in five subfamilies that are facultative or obligate occupants of stem leaf or root domatia formed by hundreds of ant plant species the phylogenetic distribution and geological ages of these associations and the frequency of gains or losses of domatium are largely unknown we compiled an up to date list of ant domatium bearing plants estimated their probable true number from model based statistical inference generated dated phylogenies that include c 50 of ant plant lineages and traced the occurrence of domatia and extrafloral nectaries on a 1181 species tree using likelihood and bayesian methods we found 681 vascular plants with domatia 159 genera in 50 families resulting from minimally 158 inferred domatium origins and 43 secondary losses over the last 19 myr the oldest african ant plant symbioses are younger than those in australasia and the neotropics the best statistical model suggests that the true number of myrmecophytes may approach 1140 species the phylogenetic distribution of ant plants shows that domatia evolved from a range of pre adapted morphological structures and have been lost frequently suggesting that domatia have no generalizable effect on diversification the miocene origin of ant plant symbioses is consistent with inferred changes in diet and behaviour during ant evolution,2015,0.39
Integrating and visualizing primary data from prospective and legacy taxonomic literature.,specimen data in taxonomic literature are among the highest quality primary biodiversity data innovative cybertaxonomic journals are using workflows that maintain data structure and disseminate electronic content to aggregators and other users such structure is lost in traditional taxonomic publishing legacy taxonomic literature is a vast repository of knowledge about biodiversity currently access to that resource is cumbersome especially for non specialist data consumers markup is a mechanism that makes this content more accessible and is especially suited to machine analysis fine grained xml extensible markup language markup was applied to all 37 open access articles published in the journal zootaxa containing treatments on spiders order araneae the markup approach was optimized to extract primary specimen data from legacy publications these data were combined with data from articles containing treatments on spiders published in biodiversity data journal where xml structure is part of the routine publication process a series of charts was developed to visualize the content of specimen data in xml tagged taxonomic treatments either singly or in aggregate the data can be filtered by several fields including journal taxon institutional collection collecting country collector author article and treatment to query particular aspects of the data we demonstrate here that xml markup using goldengate can address the challenge presented by unstructured legacy data can extract structured primary biodiversity data which can be aggregated with and jointly queried with data from other darwin core compatible sources and show how visualization of these data can communicate key information contained in biodiversity literature we complement recent studies on aspects of biodiversity knowledge using xml structured data to explore 1 the time lag between species discovry and description and 2 the prevelence of rarity in species descriptions,2015,0.203
Green Plants in the Red: A Baseline Global Assessment for the IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants,plants provide fundamental support systems for life on earth and are the basis for all terrestrial ecosystems a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of organisms including humans decline in plant diversity has been hard to quantify due to the huge numbers of known and yet to be discovered species and the lack of an adequate baseline assessment of extinction risk against which to track changes the biodiversity of many remote parts of the world remains poorly known and the rate of new assessments of extinction risk for individual plant species approximates the rate at which new plant species are described thus the question how threatened are plants is still very difficult to answer accurately while completing assessments for each species of plant remains a distant prospect by assessing a randomly selected sample of species the sampled red list index for plants gives for the first time an accurate view of how threatened plants are across the world it represents the first key phase of ongoing efforts to monitor the status of the world s plants more than 20 of plant species assessed are threatened with extinction and the habitat with the most threatened species is overwhelmingly tropical rain forest where the greatest threat to plants is anthropogenic habitat conversion for arable and livestock agriculture and harvesting of natural resources gymnosperms e g conifers and cycads are the most threatened group while a third of plant species included in this study have yet to receive an assessment or are so poorly known that we cannot yet ascertain whether they are threatened or not this study provides a baseline assessment from which trends in the status of plant biodiversity can be measured and periodically reassessed,2015,0.399
"A preliminary inventory of the catfishes of the lower Rio Nhamundá, Brazil (Ostariophysi, Siluriformes).",the rio nhamundã is a poorly known clearwater river draining the southern guiana shield of brazil in this study we report the findings of a preliminary ichthyological survey focusing on catfishes siluriformes we identify a total of 36 species 31 genera seven families from the nhamundã including 11 species already recorded from the river overall our survey results show that even rapid surveys can provide important information on amazon fish biodiversity suggesting potential new species providing range extensions for nominal species and additionally highlighting taxa in need of taxonomic revision and genetic study as well as the traditional forms of data collected on biodiversity surveys i e preserved specimen vouchers our study also provides new types of data in the form of dna barcodes and images of fishes exhibiting colouration in life information that will be invaluable in future work addressing difficult groups o rio nhamundã ã um rio de ã gua clara pouco conhecido que drena parte do escudo das guianas em territã rio brasileiro nesse estudo nã s reportamos os resultados de um levantamento ictiofaunã stico preliminar dessa ã rea tendo como foco os bagres siluriformes nã s identificamos um total de 36 espã cies 31 gãªneros sete famã lias provenientes de nossa coleta e adicionamos 11 espã cies jã conhecidas para o rio de maneira geral os resultados de nossa pesquisa mostram que mesmo levantamentos rã pidos podem gerar informaã ãµes importantes sobre a biodiversidade de peixes amazã nicos sugerindo potenciais espã cies novas ampliando a ã rea de distribuiã ã o de espã cies alã m de apontar a necessidade de revisãµes taxonã micas e estudos genã ticos para alguns taxa para alã m das formas tradicionais de dados coletados em pesquisas de biodiversidade i e espã cimes preservados nosso estudo fornece novas formas de dados como dna barcodes e imagens com o padrã o de coloraã ã o dos espã cimes vivos informaã ãµes essas que serã o de valor inestimã vel para futuros estudos que abordem grupos taxonã micos difã ceis,2015,0.365
"Modeling the Suitability Index of Selected Conifers on Mambilla Plateau Taraba State, Nigeria: Implication on Planted Forest",the mambilla plateau is a semi temperate highland region found within the broader tropical savannah of northeast nigeria which supported the growing of cold tolerant fruits such as apple and pears was explored to determine its suitability for growing of cold tolerant conifers in contrasts to the surrounding tropical ecosystems the authors conducted an exploratory work using both modeling and seedling germination tests to determine the feasibility of survival and suitability of conifers on the mambilla plateau the work investigated growth factors such as water availability maximum average rainfall for optimum growth minimum rainfall for survival and temperature maximum average temperature for optimum growth and minimum temperature required for survival a climate envelope model cem of species distribution and pre validated germination test were conducted on the selected species in diva gis software and on the field respectively to identify the potentially suitable sites on the plateau of the four conifer species under investigation pinus ponderosa of pacific northwest usa origin and pinus caribaea of nicaragua var honduresis origin were found to be potentially suitable to the mambilla plateau environment however relatively robust and longer field trials were suggested on the two species before any conclusive action is taken,2015,0.716
"A computerized database (CorMol) on the molluscan fauna from the Mediterranean reef ecosystems: Part I, the coralligenous formations",in the mediterranean sea infralittoral and circalittoral rocky bottoms from 15 to 120 m are characterized by a biogenic habitat named â œcoralligenousâ formed by the concretion of calcareous organisms mainly algal thalli and to a lesser extent by animal skeletons this complex habitat is inhabited by a rich fauna that belongs to different taxonomic groups sponges bryozoans cnidarians and ascidians are the most common sessile organisms that inhabit the area while crustacea and molluscs are the most common mobile organisms little information on the diversity of the molluscs that thrive in the coralligenous habitat is known though this information is highly important for biodiversity management purposes a database for the molluscs of the coralligenous habitat was compiled and a method implemented for the management of this information more than 511 species of molluscs have been recorded so far from the coralligenous formations the majority of which belong to the class gastropoda 357 sp followed by bivalvia 137 sp polyplacophora 14 sp cephalopoda 2 sp and scaphopoda 1 sp among these the gastropod luria lurida linnaeus 1758 and charonia lampas linnaeus 1758 the endemic bivalve pinna nobilis linnaeus 1758 and the endolithic bivalve lithophaga lithophaga linnaeus 1758 are protected by international conventions,2015,0.579
Climate interacts with anthropogenic drivers to determine extirpation dynamics,theoretical studies suggest that the dynamics of a speciesâ range during a period of climate change depends upon the existence and interplay of various ecological and evolutionary processes here we tested how anthropogenic pressures contribute to climate mediated extirpation patterns of 32 freshwater fish species over the last 20 years we contrasted two extreme cases to determine whether extirpations were governed by patterns of climate exposure assuming full adaptation of species to local climate or instead by the interplay between climate exposure and the distance from the centroid of speciesâ climatic niches assuming a fixed niche and asked whether anthropogenic disturbances interact with these climatic drivers we found strong support for the fixed niche hypothesis but showed that species specific local adaptation to climate may also be important in determining extirpation dynamics we also demonstrated that anthropogenic disturbance acted in concert with climate ultimately determining population changes our results add novel evidence that unravelling the direct links between range dynamics and climate requires a multifaceted treatment and that accounting for the cumulative effects of anthropogenic pressures deserves special attention in the context of climate change,2015,0.564
Enriching the isotopic toolbox for migratory connectivity analysis: a new approach for migratory species breeding in remote or unexplored areas,aim we examined three potential enhancements of the stable isotope technique for elucidating migratory connectivity in birds inhabiting poorly studied areas illustrated for eurasian cranes grus grus that overwinter in and migrate through israel first we examined the use of oxygen stable isotopes î 18o seldom applied for this purpose second we examined the relationship between ambient water î 18o and hydrogen stable isotope î 2h values derived from various models to determine the geographical origins of migrants third we introduced the use of probabilistic distribution modelling to refine the assignment to origin of migrants lacking detailed distribution maps location feather samples were collected in the hula valley northern israel and across the species breeding range in north eurasia methods we analysed î 18o and î 2h in primary and secondary flight feathers using standard mass spectrometry the maximum entropy maxent model was used to map the probability surface of potential breeding areas as a bayesian prior for assigning hula valley cranes to potential breeding grounds results we found that î 18o was suitable and informative the soil water isoscape performed better for î 18o while precipitation isoscape was preferable for î 2h the maxent based probability surface largely refined assignments overall most 85 cranes were assigned to the area west of the ural mountains but for two individuals most of the assigned area 90 was farther east suggesting for the first time that eurasian cranes may undertake the north asiaâ middle east and perhaps africa migration flyway main conclusions our results call for broader use of î 18o in migratory connectivity studies and for application of probabilistic distribution modelling we also encourage investigation of factors determining î 18o and î 2h integration into animal tissues the proposed framework may help improve our understanding of migratory connectivity of species inhabiting previously unexplored areas and thus contribute to the development of efficient conservation plans,2015,0.703
"Year 1 report for ‘Conserving Texas Biodiversity: Status, Trends, and Conservation Planning for Fishes of Greatest Conservation Need’",hendrickson et al 2015 year 1 s tate w ildlife g rant report conserving texas biodiversity status trends and conservation planning for fishes of greatest conservation need annual report for texas parks and wildlife u s fish and wildlife service state wildlife grant tx t 106 1 cfda 15 634 contract project no 459125 uta14 001402 page 1 activity 1 coordinate and facilitate science and conservation actions for conserving texas biodiversity year 1 outcomes 1 expand and strengthen ut tpwd coordination multiple meetings to coordinate data sharing and collaboration were arranged with staff from various divisions at texas parks and wildlife with outcomes summarized in 3 and 4 below 2 establish the collaborative relationship between ut and tpwd an impr oved collaborative relationship between ut and tpwd was facilitated and beneficial outcomes to both entities are detailed in 3 and 4 below and activity 3 3 provi d e data supported recommendations to tpwd for fishes in the anticipated updates to the texa s conservation action plan supports activities 2 3 and 4,2015,0.376
Space to invade? Comparative range infilling and potential range of invasive and native plants,aim our understanding of potential ranges for native and non native species is often based on their current geographic distributions non native species have had less time than co occurring native species to expand their ranges following introduction so non native ranges may under represent suitable conditions therefore it is often assumed that species distribution models will predict disproportionately smaller potential ranges for non natives than natives we compare the distributions of native endemic alien and invasive plants to determine how the different range attributes of these groups might influence ecological forecasting location continental usa methods we compared the geographic ranges of 13 575 plant species 9402 native 2397 endemic 1201 alien and 755 invasive using 1 us only and 2 global distribution data from herbarium records we calculated us longitudinal and latitudinal range extents as potential indicators of range limiting factors modelled potential range based on climate using principal components analysis and calculated occupancy of potential ranges range infilling results contrary to expectations modelled potential ranges were significantly larger for non natives than natives even for species with few occurrences distributions of native species not invasive species appeared strongly limited longitudinally however invasive plants occupied substantially less area within their climatically suitable ranges than native plants lower range infilling main conclusions invasive plant distributions were consistently broader both climatically and geographically than comparable native species this suggests that invasive plant distribution models at regional scales are not underpredicting potential ranges relative to models for native species in contrast the comparatively limited longitudinal ranges of native species suggest a high degree of non climatic limitation which is likely to cause distribution models to underpredict the potential ranges of native species invasive plants have not achieved the degree of range infilling expected relative to natives thus plants introduced to the us still have plenty of space to invade,2015,0.922
The Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory: Where ecology meets big data,advances in computing power and infrastructure increases in the number and size of ecological and environmental datasets and the number and type of data collection methods are revolutionizing the field of ecology to integrate these advances virtual laboratories offer a unique tool to facilitate expedite and accelerate research into the impacts of climate change on biodiversity we introduce the uniquely cloud based biodiversity and climate change virtual laboratory bccvl which provides access to numerous species distribution modelling tools a large and growing collection of biological climate and other environmental datasets and a variety of experiment types to conduct research into the impact of climate change on biodiversity users can upload and share datasets potentially increasing collaboration cross fertilisation of ideas and innovation among the user community feedback confirms that the bccvl s goals of lowering the technical requirements for species distribution modelling and reducing time spent on such research are being met,2015,0.432
"Notes on Early Land Plants Today. 71. New synonyms, new names and new combinations in Lejeuneaceae (Marchantiophyta)",for the coming checklist of hornworts and liverworts sã derstrã m et al in press a few validations transfers and synonymizations in the family lejeuneaceae are still required,2015,0.33
Arctic warming will promote Atlantic–Pacific fish interchange,throughout much of the quaternary period inhospitable environmental conditions above the arctic circle have been a formidable barrier separating most marine organisms in the north atlantic from those in the north pacific1 2 rapid warming has begun to lift this barrier3 potentially facilitating the interchange of marine biota between the two seas4 here we forecast the potential northward progression of 515 fish species following climate change and report the rate of potential species interchange between the atlantic and the pacific via the northwest passage and the northeast passage for this we projected niche based models under climate change scenarios and simulated the spread of species through the passages when climatic conditions became suitable results reveal a complex range of responses during this century and accelerated interchange after 2050 by 2100 up to 41 species could enter the pacific and 44 species could enter the atlantic via one or both passages consistent with historical and recent biodiversity interchanges5 6 this exchange of fish species may trigger changes for biodiversity and food webs in the north atlantic and north pacific with ecological and economic consequences to ecosystems that at present contribute 39 to global marine fish landings,2015,0.796
World collections of parasitic worms,this article provides information about the depositories of parasitic worms in the scientific institutes and museums in the united states japan and europe the total number of samples and the availability of types of helminths from various classes as well as information on the availability of electronic catalogues of the collections in the continental national and regional centers for collective use the extent of this material has determined the necessity of creating digital collections and libraries that would represent a new form of storing displaying and exchanging information for scientific research an analysis was performed of the current state of approaches and methods of development of the specialized information retrieval system irs and databases dbs on the parasitic worms in russia on the basis of a common conceptual data model taking into account their local use as desktop systems of database management and access by scientists worldwide via the internet,2015,0.11
"Oligocene niche shift, Miocene diversification - cold tolerance and accelerated speciation rates in the St. John's Worts (Hypericum, Hypericaceae).",background our aim is to understand the evolution of species rich plant groups that shifted from tropical into cold temperate biomes it is well known that climate affects evolutionary processes such as how fast species diversify species range shifts and species distributions many plant lineages may have gone extinct in the northern hemisphere due to late eocene climate cooling while some tropical lineages may have adapted to temperate conditions and radiated the hyper diverse and geographically widespread genus hypericum is one of these results to investigate the effect of macroecological niche shifts on evolutionary success we combine historical biogeography with analyses of diversification dynamics and climatic niche shifts in a phylogenetic framework hypericum evolved cold tolerance c 30 million years ago and successfully colonized all ice free continents where today 500 species exist the other members of hypericaceae stayed in their tropical habitats and evolved into 120 species we identified a 15 20 million year lag between the initial change in temperature preference in hypericum and subsequent diversification rate shifts in the miocene conclusions contrary to the dramatic niche shift early in the evolution of hypericum most extant species occur in temperate climates including high elevations in the tropics these cold temperate niches are a distinctive characteristic of hypericum we conclude that the initial release from an evolutionary constraint from tropical to temperate climates is an important novelty in hypericum however the initial shift in the adaptive landscape into colder climates appears to be a precondition and may not be directly related to increased diversification rates instead subsequent events of mountain formation and further climate cooling may better explain distribution patterns and species richness in hypericum these findings exemplify important macroevolutionary patterns of plant diversification during large scale global climate change,2015,0.872
The Status and Distribution of Freshwater Biodiversity in the Arabian Peninsula,the arabian peninsula includes three freshwater ecoregions as defined by abell et al 2008 the southwest arabian coast the oman mountains and the arabian interior ecoregions see chapter 1 and fig 1 the region includes socotra although this is not recognized as part of an ecoregion see chapter 1 all fishes found in the freshwaters of socotra are estuarine or marine species entering the streams and estuaries for foraging and are not assessed here,2015,0.405
"TAXONOMY, DISTRIBUTION AND CONSERVATION STATUS OF SOME INTERESTING HYPHOMYCETES (ANAMORPHIC FUNGI) FROM LA PALMA BIOSPHERE RESERVE, CANARY ISLANDS",taxonomy distribution and conservation status of some interesting hyphomycetes anamorphic fungi from la palma biosphere reserve canary islands bol soc micol madrid 39 15 28 fifteen interesting hyphomycetes collected on plant debris on la palma island canary islands are listed nine of them are reported as new records for spain for eight of the species the main morphological features are described and arachnophora pulneyensis is illustrated notes on the distribution ecology and conservation status of all taxa studied are provided,2015,0.587
Meeting report: Identifying practical applications of ontologies for biodiversity informatics,this report describes the outcomes of a recent workshop building on a series of workshops from the last three years with the goal if integrating genomics and biodiversity research with a more specific goal here to express terms in darwin core and audubon core where class constructs have been historically underspecified into a biological collections ontology bco framework for the purposes of this workshop the bco provided the context for fully defining classes as well as object and data properties including domain and range information for both the darwin core and audubon core in addition the workshop participants reviewed technical specifications and approaches for annotating instance data with bco terms finally we laid out proposed activities for the next 3 to 18 months to continue this work,2015,0.091
Revisiting the past to foretell the future: summer temperature and habitat area predict pika extirpations in California,abstract aim the american pika ochotona princeps appears to have experienced climate mediated upslope range contraction in the great basin of north america but this result has not yet been extended to other portions of the pika s range our goals were first to determine the environmental parameters that most influence current pika distribution within california second to infer whether these constraints explain extirpations that have occurred in california third to predict future extirpations and fourth to advance methods for assessing the degree to which pikas and other climate sensitive mammals are threatened by climate change location historical pika record locations in california usa spanning four degrees of latitude and longitude from mount shasta to the southern sierra nevada methods we identified 67 precise historical pika record locations and surveyed them exhaustively over multiple years to determine whether pika populations persist at those sites we used an information theoretic approach and logistic regression to model current pika occupancy as a function of 16 environmental variables tested our best performing model as a predictor of historical occupancy and then used our model to predict future pika occupancy given anticipated climate change results pikas no longer occurred at 10 of 67 15 historical sites in california the best predictors of occupancy were average summer temperature and talus habitat area within a 1 km radius a logistic model fitted to this relationship correctly predicted current occupancy at 94 of sites and correctly hindcasted past occupancy at 93 of sites suggesting that the model has strong temporal transferability depending on the future climate scenario our model projects that by 2070 pikas will be extirpated from 39 to 88 of these historical sites in california main conclusions our simple species distribution model for pikas performs remarkably well for both current and historical periods pika distribution appears to be governed primarily by behavioural restrictions mediated by summer temperature and by the configuration of talus habitat available to pikas locally pikas and other montane species in the western usa may be subjected to above average exposure to climate change because summer temperature is projected to rise more than annual temperature,2015,0.156
Soil biodiversity and DNA barcodes: opportunities and challenges,soils encompass a huge diversity of organisms which mostly remains to be characterized due to a number of methodological and logistical issues nonetheless remarkable progress has been made in recent years toward developing strategies to characterize and describe soil biodiversity especially thanks to the development of molecular approaches relying on direct dna extraction from the soil matrix metabarcoding can be applied to dna from any environment or organism and is gaining increasing prominence in biodiversity studies this approach is already commonly used to characterize soil microbial communities and its application is now being extended to other soil organisms i e meso and macro fauna these developments offer unprecedented scientific and operational opportunities in order to better understand soil biodiversity distribution and dynamics and to propose tools and strategies for biodiversity diagnosis however these opportunities also come with challenges that the scientific community must face such challenges are related to i clarification of terminology ii standardisation of methods and further methodological development for additional taxonomic groups iii development of a common database and iv ways to avoid waste of information and data derived from metabarcoding in order to facilitate common application of metabarcoding in soil biodiversity assessment we discuss these opportunities and challenges and propose solutions towards a more homogeneous framework,2015,0.228
Impact of past climatic changes and resource availability on the population demography of three food-specialist bees.,past climate change is known to have strongly impacted current patterns of genetic variation of animals and plants in europe however ecological factors also have the potential to influence demographic history and thus patterns of genetic variation in this study we investigated the impact of past climate and also the potential impact of host plant species abundance on intraspecific genetic variation in three co distributed and related specialized solitary bees of the genus melitta with very similar life history traits and dispersal capacities we sequenced five independent loci in samples collected from the three species our analyses revealed that the species associated with the most abundant host plant species melitta leporina displays unusually high genetic variation to an extent that is seldom reported in phylogeographic studies of animals and plants this suggests a potential role of food resource abundance in determining current patterns of genetic variation in specialized herbivorous insects patterns of genetic variation in the two other species indicated lower overall levels of diversity and that m nigricans could have experienced a recent range expansion ecological niche modelling of the three melitta species and their main host plant species suggested a strong reduction in range size during the last glacial maximum comparing observed sequence data with data simulated using spatially explicit models of coalescence suggests that m leporina recovered a range and population size close to their current levels at the end of the last glaciation and confirms recent range expansion as the most likely scenario for m nigricans overall this study illustrates that both demographic history and ecological factors may have contributed to shape current phylogeographic patterns this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2015,0.975
Corrected data re-harvested: curating literature in the era of networked biodiversity informatics.,science makes progress through a constant process of re evaluation revision and error correction are inevitable and generally healthy for the advancement of science in biodiversity literature re evaluation of earlier work can lead to new conclusions such as a revised taxonomic determination when significant errors are discovered conscientious authors may correct the record by publishing an erratum or corrigendum,2015,0.28
Role of Salacia lehmbachii extract in renal function,purpose to assess the possible role of aqueous root extract of salacia lehmbachii aresl in renal function of wistar rats materials and methods healthy rats were randomized ito 5 groups of 6 animals and administered with 25ml kg saline group i control received saline 10ml kg group ii standard received urea 1 g kg group iii and iv tests received aresl 1 and 2 g kg respectively and group v received urea plus aresl 1 2 g kg by oral gavage urine ph volume conductivity and electrolyte na k and cl concentrations were evaluated using modified lipschitzs method results preliminary phytochemical analysis of extract revealed the prences of alkaloids glycosides saponins flavonoids and anthraquinones an varied considerable quantities administration of the areslled to increase in na and k level without altering na k and cl na k ratio and non significantly increase the ph renal toxicity or any adverse effect was not observed in the course of the study conclusion the present study reveals that extract of s lehmbachii conserves significantly fluid in tested rat model and supports the pharmacological credence to the folkloric medical usage,2015,0.079
"Long-distance dispersal of a sedentary Andean flycatcher species with a small geographic range, Ochthoeca piurae (Aves: Tyrannidae)",we report a piura chat tyrant ochthoeca piurae 300 km south of its known range this record was unanticipated because the species is sedentary and restricted to a narrow eco climatic zone in valleys of the dry western andes of northwestern peru southward dispersal would require crossing broad areas of unsuitable habitat riparian zones of the western andes have been heavily impacted by humans over millennia this observation suggests that native songbirds may be able to expand their distributions along the flanks of the andes if woody vegetation is protected or restored,2015,0.481
Estimating species diversity and distribution in the era of Big Data: to what extent can we trust public databases?,aim massive digitalization of natural history collections is now leading to a steep accumulation of publicly available species distribution data however taxonomic errors and geographical uncertainty of species occurrence records are now acknowledged by the scientific community â putting into question to what extent such data can be used to unveil correct patterns of biodiversity and distribution we explore this question through quantitative and qualitative analyses of uncleaned versus manually verified datasets of species distribution records across different spatial scales location the american tropics methods as test case we used the plant tribe cinchoneae rubiaceae we compiled four datasets of species occurrences one created manually and verified through classical taxonomic work and the rest derived from gbif under different cleaning and filling schemes we used new bioinformatic tools to code species into grids ecoregions and biomes following wwf s classification we analysed species richness and altitudinal ranges of the species results altitudinal ranges for species and genera were correctly inferred even without manual data cleaning and filling however erroneous records affected spatial patterns of species richness they led to an overestimation of species richness in certain areas outside the centres of diversity in the clade the location of many of these areas comprised the geographical midpoint of countries and political subdivisions assigned long after the specimens had been collected main conclusion open databases and integrative bioinformatic tools allow a rapid approximation of large scale patterns of biodiversity across space and altitudinal ranges we found that geographic inaccuracy affects diversity patterns more than taxonomic uncertainties often leading to false positives i e overestimating species richness in relatively species poor regions public databases for species distribution are valuable and should be more explored but under scrutiny and validation by taxonomic experts we suggest that database managers implement easy ways of community feedback on data quality,2015,0.99
The application of “-omics” technologies for the classification and identification of animals,the correct classification of organisms based on specific rules is essential in biological sciences traditionally morphological characteristics such as size shape color and anatomical structures have been used to identify and classify species however as consequence of the tremendous advances in molecular technologies during the last years new approaches have become available for taxonomic research various modern high throughput technologies allow the detailed characterization of the genome proteome metabolome as well as the morphology of an organism furthermore the open access storage of such comprehensive data sets as part of an uprising digital cybertaxonomy enables highly fascinating digital dimensions for modern taxonomy including the buildup of virtual collections as well as data sets for 3d printing techniques that can be used to replicate complete voucher specimens or at least important diagnostic characters as a result of these advances we are now able to document describe and identify species much more comprehensively than just a few years ago in this review we provide an overview about the technical advances in taxonomic research in recent years and discuss their power and limitations,2015,0.31
"Review of Anasillomos Londt, 1983 with the description of a new species (Insecta: Diptera: Asilidae).",the southern african assassin fly genus anasillomos londt 1983 is reviewed a new species anasillomosjuergeni sp n is described from the namib desert and represents the second species in the genus descriptions re descriptions photographs and identification keys are provided to aid in the identification distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots sensu conservation international and seasonal incidence are discussed,2015,0.646
Functional differences between dominant grasses drive divergent responses to large herbivore loss in mesic savanna grasslands of North America and South Africa,1 grazing and fire are disturbances integral to the evolution and maintenance of savanna grasslands humans are altering or completely eliminating these disturbance regimes at a global scale with important consequences for savanna ecosystem structure and function it is unknown whether the alteration of these disturbance regimes will have similar effects on grass communities of savanna grasslands in different geographic regions that vary in their biogeographic and evolutionary histories as well as in the diversity of extant grazers 2 here we examined the effects of large herbivore loss on different aspects of grass community structure â taxonomic phylogenetic and functional â across a range of fire frequencies in c4 dominated mesic savanna grassland sites of north america konza prairie biological station kansas usa and south africa kruger national park the goal of the study was to determine whether the loss of large herbivores exerted a consistent effect on the grass communities of two physiognomically similar grasslands with different biogeographic and grazing histories 3 the removal of large herbivores resulted in divergent responses in the grass communities at konza and kruger that was consistent across fire treatments at konza there was a rapid and significant response to grazing exclusion while the response was muted and transient at kruger functional syndromes associated with grazing resistance were generally conserved across sites and it was the functional strategies of the dominant species at each site that drove the divergent responses further our study supports the hypothesis that grazing and aridity may be selective forces that act in parallel as those species that were grazing resistant also occupied drier niches 4 synthesis our study demonstrates that savanna grassland communities with different biogeographic and grazing histories respond differently to the removal of large herbivores and that climate fire and grazing are interactive forces in maintaining savanna grassland diversity and function we show that the functional attributes of the dominant grasses which are in part driven by the biogeographic and grazing history experienced are the most relevant in predicting the response of savanna ecosystems to the loss of large herbivores,2015,0.05
Advances in climate models from CMIP3 to CMIP5 do not change predictions of future habitat suitability for California reptiles and amphibians,understanding how predicted species responses to climate change are affected by advances in climate modeling is important for determining the frequency with which vulnerability assessments need to be updated we used ecological niche models to compare predicted climatic habitat suitability for 132 species of reptiles and amphibians in california usa under the previous and current generations of climate simulations from the coupled model intercomparison project cmip3 and cmip5 we used data from seven global climate models for future 2014â 2060 predictions under the following greenhouse gas emissions scenarios sres a2 for cmip3 and rcp 8 5 for cmip5 ensembles of these climate models predicted a warmer and slightly wetter future california on average cmip3 2 â c mean annual temperature 15 mm annual precipitation cmip5 2 5 â c mean annual temperature 24 mm annual precipitation cmip3 and cmip5 ensembles differed in where precipitation changes were predicted to be largest with cmip3 predicting greatest increased precipitation in the northern deserts and cmip5 predicting greatest increased precipitation in the northern mountains under both sets of climate models cmip3 and cmip5 mean habitat suitability within species ranges was predicted to decrease in the future the degree of predicted decline was similar on average for cmip3 and cmip5 ∠15 and ∠13 respectively suggesting that conclusions drawn from previous studies using ensembles of cmip3 models are robust at least for california however the effect of cmip3 vs cmip5 on future mean habitat suitability depended strongly on which gcm was used three gcms predicted little change in future habitat suitability between cmip3 and cmip5 miroc cnrm gfdl three predicted greater reductions in habitat suitability under cmip3 mpi giss ipsl and one predicted greater reductions in habitat suitability under cmip5 mri we conclude that habitat suitability assessments under cmip3 made using more than 3 gcms are likely to remain broadly applicable while those made using 3 or fewer may be conservation priorities for re evaluation under cmip5,2015,0.653
The next generation of action ecology : novel approaches towards global ecological research,advances in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge over the last decade have dramatically reshaped the way that ecological research is conducted the advent of large technology based resources such as inaturalist genbank or the global biodiversity information facility gbif allow ecologists to work at spatio temporal scales previously unimaginable this has generated a new approach in ecological research one that relies on large datasets and rapid synthesis for theory testing and development and findings that provide specific recommendations to policymakers and managers this new approach has been termed action ecology and here we aim to expand on earlier definitions to delineate its characteristics so as to distinguish it from related subfields in applied ecology and ecological management our new more nuanced definition describes action ecology as ecological research that is 1 explicitly motivated by the need for immediate insights into current pressing problems 2 collaborative and,2015,0.107
Climate reconstruction analysis using coexistence likelihood estimation (CRACLE): A method for the estimation of climate using vegetation,unlabelled â premise of the study plant distributions have long been understood to be correlated with the environmental conditions to which species are adapted climate is one of the major components driving species distributions therefore it is expected that the plants coexisting in a community are reflective of the local environment particularly climate â methods presented here is a method for the estimation of climate from local plant species coexistence data the method climate reconstruction analysis using coexistence likelihood estimation cracle is a likelihood based method that employs specimen collection data at a global scale for the inference of species climate tolerance cracle calculates the maximum joint likelihood of coexistence given individual species climate tolerance characterization to estimate the expected climate â key results plant distribution data for more than 4000 species were used to show that this method accurately infers expected climate profiles for 165 sites with diverse climatic conditions estimates differ from the worldclim global climate model by less than 1 5â c on average for mean annual temperature and less than ∠250 mm for mean annual precipitation this is a significant improvement upon other plant based climate proxy methods â conclusions cracle validates long hypothesized interactions between climate and local associations of plant species furthermore cracle successfully estimates climate that is consistent with the widely used worldclim model and therefore may be applied to the quantitative estimation of paleoclimate in future studies,2015,0.315
"Vascular plant community composition from the campos rupestres of the Itacolomi State Park, Brazil.",camposrupestres are rare and endangered ecosystems that accommodate a species rich flora with a high degree of endemism here we make available a dataset from phytosociological surveys carried out in the itacolomi state park minas gerais southeastern brazil all species in a total of 30 plots of 10 x 10 m from two study sites were sampled their cardinality a combination of cover and abundance was estimated altogether we registered occurrences from 161 different taxa from 114 genera and 47 families the families with the most species were poaceae and asteraceae followed by cyperaceae abiotic descriptions including soil properties such as type acidity nutrient or aluminum availability cation exchange capacity and saturation of bases as well as the percentage of rocky outcrops and the mean inclination for each plot are given this dataset provides unique insights into the campo rupestre vegetation its specific environment and the distribution of its diversity,2015,0.587
The potential effect of climate change on the geographical distribution of insect pest species in the Swedish boreal forest,abstractwith the expected rising temperatures outbreaks of insect pests may be more frequent which can have large consequences on forest ecosystems and may therefore negatively affect the forestry sector in order to be better able to predict where but not if outbreaks may occur in future we investigated the potential future 2070 geographical distribution of 30 prospective insect pest species coleoptera and lepidoptera by applying species distribution modelling we also assessed the geographical extent to which the boreal forest in sweden may be affected we found that numerous species may experience large increases in their potential distribution in future which may result in outbreaks in â œnewâ areas it is therefore likely that more trees will be infested by pests in future which may have large implications for the swedish forestry sector,2015,0.629
"GLOBIO-Aquatic, a global model of human impact on the biodiversity of inland aquatic ecosystems",biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems â rivers lakes and wetlands â is undergoing rapid global decline major drivers are land use change eutrophication hydrological disturbance climate change overexploitation and invasive species we developed a global model for assessing the dominant human impacts on inland aquatic biodiversity the system consists of a biodiversity model named globio aquatic that is embedded in the image model framework i e linked to models for demography economy land use changes climate change nutrient emissions a global hydrological model and a global map of water bodies the biodiversity model is based on a recompilation of existing data thereby scaling up from local regional case studies to global trends we compared species composition in impacted lakes rivers and wetlands to that in comparable undisturbed systems we focussed on broad categories of human induced pressures that are relevant at the global scale the drivers currently included are catchment land use changes and nutrient loading affecting water quality and hydrological disturbance and climate change affecting water quantity the resulting relative mean abundance of original species is used as indicator for biodiversity intactness for lakes we used dominance of harmful algal blooms as an additional indicator the results show that there is a significant negative relation between biodiversity intactness and these stressors in all types of freshwater ecosystems in heavily used catchments standing water bodies would lose about 80 of their biodiversity intactness and running waters about 70 while severe hydrological disturbance would result in losses of about 80 in running waters and more than 50 in floodplain wetlands as an illustration an analysis using the oecd â baseline scenarioâ shows a considerable decline of the biodiversity intactness in still existing water bodies in 2000 especially in temperate and subtropical regions and a further decline especially in tropical regions in 2050 historical loss of wetland areas is not yet included in these results the model may inform policy makers at the global level in what regions aquatic biodiversity will be affected most and by what causes and allows for scenario analysis to evaluate policy options,2015,0.129
Predicting and setting conservation priorities for Bolivian mammals based on biological correlates of the risk of decline,the recognition that growing proportions of species worldwide are endangered has led to the development of comparative analyses to elucidate why some species are more prone to extinction than others understanding factors and patterns of species vulnerability might provide an opportunity to develop proactive conservation strategies such comparative analyses are of special concern at national scales because this is the scale at which most conservation initiatives take place we applied powerful ensemble learning models to test for biological correlates of the risk of decline among the bolivian mammals to understand species vulnerability at a national scale and to predict the population trend for poorly known species risk of decline was nonrandomly distributed higher proportions of large sized taxa were under decline whereas small sized taxa were less vulnerable body mass mode of life i e aquatic terrestrial volant geographic range size litter size home range niche specialization and reproductive potential were strongly associated with species vulnerability moreover we found interacting and nonlinear effects of key traits on the risk of decline of mammals at a national scale our model predicted 35 data deficient species in decline on the basis of their biological vulnerability which should receive more attention in order to prevent their decline our results highlight the relevance of comparative analysis at relatively narrow geographical scales reveal previously unknown factors related to species vulnerability and offer species by species outcomes that can be used to identify targets for conservation especially for insufficiently known species predecciã n y definiciã n de prioridades de conservaciã n para mamã feros de bolivia con base en correlaciones biolã gicas del riesgo de declinaciã n,2015,0.933
Ontology models of the impacts of agriculture and climate changes on water resources: Scenarios on interoperability and information recovery,agriculture is both highly dependent on water resources and impacting on these resources regardless of advances in the area the impacts of water scarcity and climatic changes on agriculture as well as the impacts of agriculture on water resources remain uncertain potentially collaborative systems can support the management and information sharing of multifaceted and large scale data sources providing valuable and indispensable information for research however these solutions rely on semantic interoperability the construction of complex knowledge representation models as well as information recovery this work describes interoperability issues in the engineering process of the ontoagrohidro an ontology that represents knowledge about impacts of agricultural activities and climatic changes on water resources the paper presents representative scenarios and questions and discusses the reuse and integration of concepts using knowledge visualization techniques experiments on the information recovery scenario point out the potential and limitations of the ontoagrohidro,2015,0.08
Calliergon megalophyllum rediscovered in the Netherlands after 50 years: comparison to Swedish habitats,the moss calliergon megalophyllum is rediscovered in the netherlands after approximately 50 years of absence in a location different from before national park weerribben wieden this is a natura 2000 wetland area and a dutch hotspot for rich fen bryophytes the species was growing in a fen pool plant species composition and water chemistry were compared with swedish samples collected throughout the country water chemistry of c megalophyllum in sweden was also compared with four other semi aquatic species c giganteum scorpidium scorpioides sarmentypnum trichophyllum and s exannulatum the species is characteristic for poorly buffered habitats but has nevertheless relatively high ph which makes it sensitive to acidification especially when atmospheric deposition is high in the dutch locality buffer capacity is maintained by input of base rich ditch water through small channels in the fen the data further suggest that like other calliergon species c megalophyllum is growing in relatively nutrient rich habitats especially with respect to p and k in the netherlands plant nutrient concentrations suggest that p is indeed not limiting which may enhance survival of the species as p poor habitats in this country have become very rare,2015,0.961
"The Genus Bolivaritettix in Thailand (Orthoptera: Tetrigidae: Metrodorinae), with Three New Species and One New Record",three species of bolivaritettix orthoptera tetrigidae metrodorinae are reported for thailand bolivaritettix lativertexoides sp nov b maculatus sp nov and b chiangraiensis sp nov are described and illustrated with photographs and compared with similar species a taxonomic review of the genus bolivaritettix is provided and a key to species of bolivaritettix known from thailand is provided,2015,0.679
Combining the least cost path method with population genetic data and species distribution models to identify landscape connectivity during the late Quaternary in Himalayan hemlock,himalayan hemlock tsuga dumosa experienced a recolonization event during the quaternary period however the specific dispersal routes are remain unknown recently the least cost path lcp calculation coupled with population genetic data and species distribution models has been applied to reveal the landscape connectivity in this study we utilized the categorical lcp method combining species distribution of three periods the last interglacial the last glacial maximum and the current period and locality with shared chloroplast mitochondrial and nuclear haplotypes to identify the possible dispersal routes of t dumosa in the late quaternary then both a coalescent estimate of migration rates among regional groups and establishment of genetic divergence pattern were conducted after those analyses we found that the species generally migrated along the southern slope of himalaya across time periods and genomic makers and higher degree of dispersal was in the present and mtdna haplotype furthermore the direction of range shifts and strong level of gene flow also imply the existence of himalayan dispersal path and low area of genetic divergence pattern suggests that there are not any obvious barriers against the dispersal pathway above all we inferred that a dispersal route along the himalaya mountains could exist which is an important supplement for the evolutionary history of t dumosa finally we believed that this integrative genetic and geospatial method would bring new implications for the evolutionary process and conservation priority of species in the tibetan plateau,2015,0.638
Data Management of Information Projects and ICT Equipments: Focused on KISTI Case,the data management of public institutes funded by governments should be done in well organized way to response for the regular requests of central governments as well as to utilize its data in other business purposes the data requests of information resources recently have been increased due to new law establishment and the data management has become one of routine works this paper describes the kinfs of request from govenment agencies the data management problems of information projects and ict equipments and some ideas to improve the data management work in kisti,2015,0.173
"How can effect the synergy of climate change, soil units and vegetation groups the potential global distribution of plants up to 2300: a modelling study for prediction of potential global distribution and migration of the N 2 fixing species Alnus spp.",plant migration is a well known adaptation strategy of plant groups or species with evidence from historical to present observation and monitoring studies importance of n 2 fixing plants has increased in last decades alnus alder is an important plant group because of its nitrogen fixation ability alders are generally distributed in humid 5 locations of boreal temperate and tropical climate zones where the nitrogen fixation is an important nitrogen source for other plants to model the nitrogen fixation by alder data about the global distribution of alder is absolutely required in this study a new method and model are presented to predict the distribution of n 2 fixing genus on global scale and its migration in the future by using climate change scenarios three linear functions were defined for the determination of climate niche of alders the distribution and migration model alnus distribution model adm was improved with the aid of the soil units from fao unesco soil database and vegetation types from schmithã senâ s biogeographical atlas the model was also developed to predict the impact of climate change on alder distribution by using climate data from experiments performed by the community climate system model version 4 ccsm4 including the representative concentration pathways rcps mitigation scenarios and extensions of the scenarios beyond 2100 to 2300 the model covered basic approaches to understand the combine e ect of climate soil and vegetation on plant distribution and migration in the current time and future,2015,0.02
"Testing the large genome constraint hypothesis: plant traits, habitat and climate seasonality in Liliaceae",the factors driving genome size evolution in liliaceae were examined in particular we investigated whether species with larger genomes are confined to less stressful environments with a longer vegetative season we tested our hypotheses by correlating the genome size with other plant traits and environmental variables to determine the adaptive nature of the genome size we also compared the performances of brownian motion bm processes with those inferred by ornsteinâ uhlenbeck ou models of trait evolution a positive correlation of genome size with plant size mean temperature and habitat moisture and a negative correlation with altitude and precipitation seasonality were found models of trait evolution revealed a deviation from a drift process or bm instead changes in genome size were significantly associated with precipitation regimes according to an ou process specifically the evolutionary optima towards which the genome size evolves were higher for humid climates and lower for drier ones taken together our results indicate that the genome size increase in liliaceae is constrained by climate seasonality,2015,0.54
SWI: A Semantic Web Interactive Gazetteer to support Linked Open Data,current implementations of gazetteers geographic directories that associate place names to geographic coordinates cannot use semantics to answer complex queries most gazetteers are just thesauri of place names use domain ontologies for place name disambiguation make their data sets available in the semantic web or support the use of volunteered geographic information vgi a new generation of gazetteers has to tackle these problems in this paper we present a new architecture for gazetteers that uses vgi and semantic web tools such as ontologies and linked open data to overcome these limitations we also present a gazetteer the semantic web interactive gazetteer swi implemented using this architecture and show that it can be used to add absent geographic coordinates to biodiversity records in our tests we use this gazetteer to correct geographic data from a big sample around 142 000 occurrence records of amazonian specimens from specieslink a big repository of biodiversity collection records from brazil the tests showed that the swi gazetteer was able to add geographic coordinates to around 30 000 records increasing the records with coordinates from 30 29 to 57 5 of the total number of records in the sample representing an increase of 90,2015,0.154
Bumble Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) of Oklahoma: Past and Present Biodiversity,bumble bees bombus latreille provide indispensable ecosystem services for natural and agricultural systems by increasing crop yield and quality with documented bumble bee declines throughout the world the need for baseline data on these important insects becomes apparent the bumble bees of oklahoma have previously not been surveyed hampering assessment of temporal change the objectives of this study were to determine the past and present bumble bee species richness of oklahoma and indicate possible temporal trends records were gathered from museum and university collections as well as from a field survey of 46 sites in 21 counties historical records indicated ten bumble bee species in oklahoma four of which had fewer than ten total records only five species have been recorded since 2000 four being found in the targeted survey b pensylvanicus degeer b griseocollis degeer b fraternus smith and b impatiens cresson the american bumble bee b pensylvanicus has been and continues to be the most common bumble bee species in oklahoma despite showing clear patterns of decline in other regions of north america our results parallel several recent studies that failed to locate extant populations of the variable cuckoo bee bombus variabilis cresson supporting possible extirpation in portions of its north american range a targeted survey for this species is warranted as its host b pensylvanicus remains common in oklahoma,2015,0.819
Seven common mistakes in population genetics and how to avoid them,as the data resulting from modern genotyping tools are astoundingly complex genotyping studies require great care in the sampling design genotyping data analysis and interpretation such care is necessary because with data sets containing thousands of loci small biases can easily become strongly significant patterns such biases may already be present in routine tasks that are present in almost every genotyping study here i discuss seven common mistakes that can be frequently encountered in the genotyping literature i giving more attention to genotyping than to sampling ii failing to perform or report experimental randomization in the laboratory iii equating geopolitical borders with biological borders iv testing significance of clustering output v misinterpreting mantel s r statistic vi only interpreting a single value of k and vii forgetting that only a small portion of the genome will be associated with climate for every of those issues i give some suggestions how to avoid the mistake overall i argue that genotyping studies would benefit from establishing a more rigorous experimental design involving proper sampling design randomization and better distinction of a priori hypotheses and exploratory analyses,2015,0.158
Distributional and ecophysiological study on the Antarctic lichens species pair Usnea antarctica/Usnea aurantiaco-atra,the factors that control lichen distribution in antarctica are still not well understood and in this investigation we focused on the distribution local and continental and gas exchange of a species pair closely related lichens with differing reproductive strategies usnea aurantiaco atra fertile and usnea antarctica sterile sorediate the local distributions of these species were recorded along an altitudinal gradient of nearly 300 m at south bay livingston island and microclimate was also recorded over 1 year the photosynthetic responses to temperature light and thallus water content were determined under controlled conditions in the laboratory the species were almost identical in their photosynthetic profiles locally on livingston island u antarctica was confined to low altitude sites which were warmer and drier whilst u aurantiaco atra was present at all altitudes this contrasts with its distribution across antarctica where u antarctica grows 9â latitude further south than u aurantiaco atra temperature appears not to be the main controller of distribution in these species but dryness of habitat which will influence length of activity periods may be important,2015,0.79
"Clarification of the author and year of publication of Cotesia chilonis, a species used widely for biological control of Chilo stem borers",cotesia chilonis munakata 1912 hymenoptera braconidae microgastrinae is a species used widely for biological control of several species of chilo lepidoptera crambidae stem borers the genus name species author and year of publication associated with this parasitoid wasp species have varied historically based on the available evidence a complete account of the history and nomenclatural acts associated with c chilonis is presented the different alternatives are weighed and discussed and what is considered as the best alternative is proposed it is expected that this paper will contribute to clarity and stability in the use of this species name author and year,2015,0.747
"Pleistocene climatic fluctuations explain the disjunct distribution and complex phylogeographic structure of the Southern Red-backed Salamander, Plethodon serratus",the southeastern united states u s has experienced dynamic climatic changes over the past several million years that have impacted species distributions in many cases contiguous ranges were fragmented and a lack of gene flow between allopatric populations led to genetic divergence and speciation the southern red backed salamander plethodon serratus inhabits four widely disjunct regions of the southeastern u s the southern appalachian mountains the ozark plateau the ouachita mountains and the southern tertiary uplands of central louisiana we integrated phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial dna sequences 1399 base pairs with ecological niche modeling to test the hypothesis that climate fluctuations during the pleistocene drove the isolation and divergence of disjunct populations of p serratus appalachian ozark and louisiana populations each formed well supported clades in our phylogeny ouachita mountain populations sorted into two geographically distinct clades one ouachita clade was sister to the louisiana clade whereas the other ouachita clade grouped with the appalachian and ozark clades but relationships were unresolved plethodon serratus diverged from its sister taxon p sherando 5 4 million years ago ma and lineage diversification within p serratus occurred 1 9â 0 6 ma pleistocene ecological niche models showed that the four geographic isolates of p serratus are currently separated by unsuitable habitat but the species was likely more continuously distributed during the colder climates of the pleistocene our results support the hypothesis that climate induced environmental changes during the pleistocene played a dominant role in driving isolation and divergence of disjunct populations of p serratus,2015,0.934
Southern Great Plains Rapid Ecoregional Assessment—Pre-Assessment Report,the purpose of the pre assessment report for the southern great plains rapid ecoregional assessment rea is to document the selection process for and final list of conservation elements change agents and management questions developed during phase i the overall goal of the reas being conducted for the bureau of land management blm is to provide information that supports regional planning and analysis for the management of ecological resources the rea provides an assessment of baseline ecological conditions an evaluation of current risks from drivers of ecosystem change and a predictive capacity for evaluating future risks the rea also may be used for identifying priority areas for conservation or restoration and for assessing the cumulative effects of a variety of land uses there are several components of the reas management questions developed by the blm and partners for the ecoregion identify the information needed for addressing land management responsibilities conservation elements represent regionally significant terrestrial and aquatic species and communities that are to be conserved and or restored for each conservation element key ecological attributes will be evaluated to determine the status of each species and community the rea also will evaluate major drivers of ecosystem change or change agents currently affecting or likely to affect the status of conservation elements in the future the relationships between change agents and key ecological attributes will be summarized using conceptual models the rea process is a two phase process phase i pre assessment includes developing and finalizing the lists of priority management questions conservation elements and change agents culminating in the rea pre assessment report chapter 1 provides an overview of the rea process chapter 2 describes the biophysical and anthropogenic features of the southern great plains and chapter 3 explains the process used to identify conservation elements change agents and management questionss the remaining chapters each feature one of 19 conservation elementsâ 6 ecological communities and 13 species including 2 species assemblages â to be addressed in phase ii for each conservation element we will address the four primary change agentsâ development fire invasive species and climate changeâ required for the rea in addition we will evaluate insect pests and disease for particular conservation elements development includes effects related to energy and infrastructure agricultural activities and other human activities including urbanization and recreation an overview on the ecology and management issues for each conservation element is provided including distribution and ecology landscape structure and dynamics and associated species of management concern affiliated with each conservation element for each conservation element effects of the change agents are described an overview of potential key ecological attributes and potential change agents are summarized by conceptual models and tables the tables provide an organizational framework and background information for evaluating the key ecological attributes and change agents in phase ii,2015,0.31
The first global integrated marine assessment,the first world ocean assessment provides an important scientific basis for the consideration of ocean issues by governments intergovernmental processes and all policy makers and others involved in ocean affairs the assessment reinforces the science policy interface and establishes the basis for future assessments together with future assessments and related initiatives it will help in the implementation of the recently adopted 2030 agenda for sustainable development particularly its ocean related goals,2016,0.312
Constraints to Threatened Plant Recovery in Commonwealth National Parks,this report reviews the current knowledge for a range of threatened plant species across commonwealth national parks the review aimed to improve understanding of the current conservation status and key processes that threaten the long term persistence of the vulnerable endangered and significant plants in our national estate,2016,0.145
Weed Risk Assessment for Phyllostachys aureosulcata McClure (1945) (Poaceae) – Yellow groove bamboo,the maryland department of agriculture regulates terrestrial ornamental invasive plants under the authority of md agriculture code ann â 9 5 101 et seq invasive plant prevention and control an invasive plant is defined as â œa terrestrial plant species that a did not evolve in the state and b if introduced within the state will cause or is likely to cause as determined by the secretary economic harm ecological harm environmental harm or harm to human health â marylandâ s invasive plant advisory committee ipac was established by legislative mandate in october 2011 the ipacâ s primary responsibility is to advise the secretary of agriculture on regulating the sale of invasive plants and on preventing them from entering maryland or from spreading further in the state ipac evaluates the risk potential of plants already present in maryland newly detected in the maryland or the united states those proposed for import and those emerging as weeds elsewhere in the world the ipac evaluates the potential invasiveness of plants using the weed risk assessment wra process developed by the plant protection and quarantine ppq program of the us department of agricultureâ s animal and plant health inspection service koop et al 2012 ppqâ s risk model uses information about a speciesâ biological traits and behavior to evaluate its risk potential koop et al 2012 because the ppq wra model is geographically and climatically neutral it can be used to evaluate the baseline invasive weed potential of any plant species for the entire united states or for any specific region in the united states in the ppq process the geographic potential of the species is evaluated separately so that risk managers can make decisions appropriate for their regions with respect to marylandâ s evaluation process we use ppqâ s geographic information system overlays of climate to evaluate the potential for a plant to establish and grow in maryland the ppq weed risk assessment also uses a stochastic simulation to evaluate how the uncertainty associated with the assessments affects the modelâ s predictions detailed information on the ppq wra process is available in the document guidelines for the usda aphis ppq weed risk assessment process aphis ppq 2015 which is available upon request the ipac uses a second tool the maryland filter to assign plant species that score as highly invasive either tier 1 or tier 2 status maryland regulations define tier 1 plants as â œinvasive plant species that cause or are likely to cause severe harm within the stateâ and tier 2 plants as â œinvasive plant species that cause or are likely to cause substantial negative impact within the state â the maryland filter considers the actual and potential distribution of a species in maryland its threat to threatened and endangered ecosystems and species in the state the difficulty of control of the species and whether added propagule pressure would be likely to increase its persistence and spread significantly the ipac then recommends regulations to reduce the risk of the tiered invasive plants in maryland,2016,0.405
"Climate change may alter genetic diversity of Duchesnea indica, a clonal plant species",climate change may alter the genetic diversity of plants however the relationship between genetic diversity in clonal plant species and climate change is unclear to address this we examined a representative clonal plant species duchesnea indica we used microsatellite markers to analyze the genetic diversity of the species and used a correlation analysis to infer the relationship between climatic suitability and genetic diversity by using maxent modeling then we used a geographical information system approach to evaluate the change in genetic diversity of d indica under climate change scenarios there was a significantly negative relationship between climatic suitability and the genetic diversity of the clonal plant species using a proxy of genetic diversity we found that climate change may alter the genetic diversity and even lead to a reduction in regional genetic diversity in d indica annual precipitation in particular contributes to these changes in genetic diversity hence climatic factors can be used as indicators of genetic diversity for clonal plant species and studies should examine the impact of climate change on the maintenance of genetic diversity in plant species,2016,0.88
Environmental factors determining the establishment of the African Long-legged Buzzard Buteo rufinus cirtensis in Western Europe,winters have become warmer under the impact of climate change which has modified the phenology of birds and also their distribution ranges the african long legged buzzard buteo rufinus cirtensis has recently colonized europe via the strait of gibraltar we aim to explain the native distribution of this species and to predict favourable areas in newly colonized parts of europe using geospatial modelling to identify the most influential factors in this process we applied the favourability function a generalized linear model describing environmental favourability for the presence absence of breeding areas in northern morocco and the southern iberian peninsula according to a set of variables describing climate topography human activity vegetation and purely spatial trends a model was built using some known breeding sites in northern morocco and was used to forecast future suitable breeding areas in europe a second model was built with the available data for northern morocco and europe in order to explain the current distribution of breeding sites both models were assessed according to discrimination calibration and parsimony criteria and the influence of each factor was analysed using variation partitioning we conclude that the iberian peninsula could provide new suitable areas for the species and facilitate its northward expansion this result together with the increasing number of records available suggests that this species could soon spread throughout europe steady temperatures and abundant but seasonally distributed precipitation showed the strongest predictive power in the models this indicates a close relationship between the speciesâ distribution and climate in the study area and suggests that this species finds its most favourable environments in the mediterranean biome topography and vegetation specifically cliffs and woods near hunting zones point to a fine scale habitat selection for breeding as the case of the african long legged buzzard is not a unique event our results may be useful to determine whether a northward expansion of the mediterranean biome could be followed by distribution shifts of bird species that have so far been restricted to africa,2016,0.395
Linking ecology with social development for tropical aquatic conservation,1 tropical aquatic ecosystems are species rich with high numbers of endemics increasing pressure from human activities including demands for food and energy growing human population and economic aspirations highlights the need for a more concerted effort towards aquatic conservation 2 understanding of tropical aquatic ecosystems has developed largely from a northern temperate perspective that might not be always appropriate applying classic models of how water bodies function can hinder effective conservation strategies this is coupled with very incomplete knowledge of species distributions and their ecology 3 better understanding of tropical aquatic ecology to guide conservation needs a research agenda that connects more strongly with the social ecological realities of tropical ecosystems 4 although approaches to conservation may be contested a fundamental challenge to protection of aquatic habitats is a lack of capacity at the individual and institutional level without this the development of improved techniques and approaches for tropical aquatic conservation will fail to reverse current trends of degradation research outputs on tropical aquatic ecosystems remain dominated by institutions based outside the tropics 5 building awareness and practice to conserve the aquatic ecosystems of the tropics can be supported through extending the dialogue across sectors and by connecting tiers of governance an ecosystem services framework that identifies the benefits that humans derive from ecosystems provides a powerful tool often linked with estimates of economic value however this can neglect important regulating services or distract from more fundamental existence value 6 the preservation of tropical aquatic diversity will only be achieved if recognized as important at all levels from local to global targeted external support can build awareness and capacity but conserving aquatic ecosystems requires local commitment developing community monitoring that provides straightforward information on ecosystem health presents opportunities to connect citizens with the ecosystems that ultimately they depend on copyright â 2016 john wiley sons ltd,2016,0.154
Complex niche divergence underlies lineage diversification in Oophaga poison frogs,aim despite the incredible diversity of lowland tropical rain forests we still have limited understanding of the drivers of speciation in these ecoregions here we investigated the relative contribution of geographical and environmental factors to the diversification of a neotropical genus of poison frogs oophaga location central and south america including regions from southern nicaragua to northern ecuador methods we generated gene genealogies 12s 16s coi cytb and trna val siah1 h3 and rag1 and used species phylogenetic methods mdc and beast to generate a robust phylogeny of oophaga frogs then we combined the resulting phylogenetic hypothesis with detailed geographical data and environmental niche modelling enm to test the role of geographical isolation climatic niche divergence and altitudinal gradients results gene genealogies were discordant and did not show exclusive genealogical patterns however species tree resolved the phylogenetic relationship among oophaga species with strong node support 0 9 ml bpp geographical ranges showed little overlap between distantly related species however within the south american and central american clades sister taxa showed substantially overlapping ranges analyses of ecological disparity dtt indicated a departure from a neutral brownian model of evolution and age range correlations predicted niche occupancy profiles and seeva analyses showed that different species tend to evolve under different potential climatic niches main conclusions oophaga frogs originated in central america and reached south america after the closure of the panama isthmus the south and central american clades of this genus have convergently evolved to similar patterns of geographical distribution and niche occupancy within clades sister taxa showed parapatric distributions replacing each other along elevational gradients as predicted by the models of divergence along continuous ecological gradients accordingly we found strong shifts in climatic niches throughout the history of these two clades however the largest niche shifts seem to post date the final elevation of the talamanca and northern andes overall our data suggest that speciation along climatic gradients on a structured landscape has been a major evolutionary force behind the diversification of oophaga poison frogs,2016,0.773
The global distribution of bamboos: assessing correlates of introduction and invasion.,there is a long history of species being moved around the world by humans these introduced species can provide substantial benefits but they can also have undesirable consequences we explore the importance of human activities on the processes of species dissemination and potential invasions using the grass subfamily bambusoideae bamboos a group that contains taxa that are widely utilised and that are often perceived as weedy we 1 compiled an inventory of bamboo species and their current distributions 2 determined which species have been introduced and become invasive outside their native ranges and 3 explored correlates of introduction and invasion distribution data were collated from kew s grassbase the global biodiversity information facility and other online herbarium information sources our list comprised 1662 species in 121 genera of which 232 14 have been introduced beyond their native ranges twelve species were found to be invasive a non random selection of bamboos have been introduced and become invasive asiatic species in particular have been widely introduced there was a clear over representation of introduced species in the genera bambusa and phyllostachys which also contain most of the listed invasive species the introduction of species also correlated with certain traits taxa with larger culm dimensions were significantly more likely to have been moved to new areas and those with many cultivars had a higher rate of dissemination and invasion it is difficult to determine whether the patterns of introduction and invasion are due simply to differences in propagule pressure or whether humans have deliberately selected inherently invasive taxa in general we suggest that human usage is a stronger driver of introductions and invasions in bamboos than in other taxa that have been well studied it is likely that as bamboos are used more widely the number and impact of invasions will increase unless environmental risks are carefully managed,2016,0.985
"Indicative response of Oxysternon festivum Linné (Coleoptera: Scarabaidae) to vegetation condition in the basin of the Orinoco river, Venezuela",a good indicator species should be easy to sample identify and measure and be informative about its ecological context we analysed data from a nation wide dung beetle survey in venezuela in order to assess the indicative response of oxysternon festivum coleoptera scarabaeinae to vegetation and climatic condition in the orinoco river basin our approach consisted of two steps estimating habitat suitability hs from historical records and mean environmental conditions and analysing four different properties measured during a nationwide survey occurrence total abundance individual body size and total biomass in relationship with hs and current environmental covariates measured from remote sensors o festivum population status could not be completely explained by historical or current conditions alone but rather by combinations of both it was strongly associated with forest vegetation but abundance biomass and body size increased under harsher hotter and drier climatic conditions thus o festivum seems to be sensitive to changes in vegetation cover but tolerant to certain levels of perturbance where it probably replaces other more sensitive species fully understanding the role of o festivum requires the analysis of its relationships to other species we strongly recommend the development of similar protocols for the analysis of other potential ecological indicator species drawing information from historical and contemporary sources and exploiting the available statistical tools to reveal complex patterns given the high diversity of dung beetles and the growing interest in this group several candidates will probably be found in most tropical countries,2016,0.449
"Rediscovery of the Frilled Tail Gecko Hemidactylus platyurus (Schneider, 1792) in Sri Lanka after more than 160 years",eight species of hemidactylus are currently recognized in sri lankaâ frenatus leschenaultii scabriceps parvimaculatus depressus hunae lankae and pieresiiâ with the latter four endemic to the island a ninth species hemidactylus platyurus was until now only confirmed from sri lanka by two specimens sent to the british museum of natural history by e f kelaart in 1855 there was no exact collection locality recorded for these specimens which are associated simply with the provenance â œceylonâ now sri lanka the present communication reports the rediscovery of the gecko h platyurus and confirms its occurrence in sri lanka,2016,0.595
INVASIVESNET towards an International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species,in a world where invasive alien species ias are recognised as one of the major threats to biodiversity leading scientists from five continents have come together to propose the c oncept of developing an international association for open knowledge and open data on iasâ termed â œinvasivesnetâ this new association wi ll facilitate greater understanding and improved management of in vasive alien species ias a nd biological invasions globally by devel oping a sustainable network of networks for effective knowledge exchange in a ddition to their inclusion in the cbd strategic plan for biodiversity the increasing ecological social cultural and econom ic impacts associated with ias have driven the development of multiple legal instruments and policies this in creases the need for greater co ordination co operation and information exchange among scien tists management the community of practice and the public invasivesnet will be formed by linking new and existing networks of interested stakeholders including international and national expert working groups and in itiatives individual scientists database managers thematic op en access journals environmental agencies practitioners managers industry non government or ganisations citizens a nd educational bodies the association will develop technical tools and cyberinfrastruct ure for the collection management and dissemination of data and information on ias create an effective communication plat form for global stakeholders and promote coordination and collaboration through international meetings wo rkshops education training and outreach to date the sustainability of many st rategic national and international initiat ives on ias have unfortunately been hampered by time limited grants or funding cycles recognising that ias initiatives need to be globally coordinated and on going we aim to develop a sustainable know ledge sharing association to connect the outputs of ias research and to inform the consequential management and societal challenges arising from ia s introductions invasivesnet will provide a dynamic and enduring network of networks to ensure the cont inuity of connections among th e ias community of practice science and management,2016,0.124
A phylogeographical survey of a highly dispersive spider reveals eastern Asia as a major glacial refugium for Palaearctic fauna,aim the phylogeographical history of wide ranging palaearctic species is not well understood here we present a range wide phylogeographical study of the wasp spider argiope bruennichi scopoli 1772 a highly dispersive and widely distributed palaearctic species we aim to identify glacial refugia and patterns of interglacial gene flow across the palaearctic location palaearctic region including the azores madeira europe north africa and asia methods we conduct a range wide phylogeographical survey our study is based on nuclear and mitochondrial dna markers as well as morphological characters we use species distribution models to predict the speciesâ current range as well as its historical distribution during and shortly after the last glacial maximum lgm results all analysed genetic markers and morphological characters support the divergence of a lineage in eastern asia from the remainder of the palaearctic within the western palaearctic a less pronounced divergence into an azorean and a european clade is found species distribution models predict a pronounced loss of suitable habitat for western palaearctic lineages during the lgm whereas the range of east asian populations remained largely unaffected main conclusions our results highlight the existence of non european glacial refugia for palaearctic species particularly in east asia the current genetic structure is best explained by the recent recolonization of the western palaearctic from eastern asia or repeated interglacial contact of populations,2016,0.906
The discovery of devil's gardens: an ant–plant mutualism in the cloud forests of the Eastern Amazon,devil s gardens are one of the most remarkable mutualistic associations between ants and plants myrmelachista ants eliminate all vegetation from around their host plants resulting in wide forest clearings which have intrigued scientists from the start despite their noticeability here we report the discovery of devil s gardens in remote highland cloud forests of the eastern amazon more than 2000 km away from their nearest known analogues in western amazonia we describe the ecological characteristics of these gardens and consider what factors could have produced the geographic isolation of eastern amazonian devil s gardens three hypotheses are investigated 1 the host plant distribution restricts the distribution of the mutualism 2 the ecological tolerances of myrmelachista explain the isolation and 3 the devil s gardens of the eastern amazon constitute relicts from ancient forest refugia the distribution of the possible associated myrmecophytes and previously described ecological ranges of devil s gardens cannot explain their ecological restriction to cloud forests in eastern amazonia but our discovery is consistent with the biogeographic refuge hypothesis i e highlands along the amazon basin constitute refugia for humid forests that spread during the cenozoic our finding opens exciting perspectives for comparative studies of the origin ecology and evolutionary history of this antâ plant mutualism,2016,0.309
"Subaerial naticid gastropod drilling predation by Natica tigrina on the intertidal molluscan community of Chandipur, Eastern Coast of India",chandipur intertidal flat in eastern coast of india is a killing field the vast stretch of intertidal habitat opens up during the low tide and is monopolized by a single naticid species which preys extensively on intertidal taxa the predator natica tigrina wades through the soft sediments and ambushes on epi or infaunal prey there were reports on naticid subaerial hunting where the workers made vivid observations but only in few instances quantified different aspects of predation detailed quantitative analyses of the present study revealed that n tigrina attacks opportunistically on all infaunal and epifaunal intertidal bivalve and gastropod prey taxa drilling frequencies ranged from 9 70 to 67 67 with no apparent relation with relative abundances of the taxa high drilling frequency on conspecific predation perhaps suggested elimination of the potential competitor as well as a profitable prey behavioral data of predation i e stereotypy of site and size of drillholes on prey shells and low prey effectiveness indicated that the predator was highly efficient,2016,0.453
Bird conservation and biodiversity research in Mexico: status and priorities,mexico has a megadiverse avifauna that includes many endemic elements as well as rich sets of species ranging farther north or farther south in the americas this avifauna nonetheless has suffered considerable losses as a consequence of long term intensive human activity across the landscape we review what is known about the mexican avifauna specifically its diversity and endemism and how that knowledge has and has not turned into effective conservation measures to assure the long term integrity of the avifauna,2016,0.437
Influence of Discontinuity Inclination on the Shear Strength of Mont Terri Opalinus Claystones,the shear strength of rocks along discontinuities has the highestinfluence on rock slope stability therefore its accuratedetermination is crucial this paper presents a potential solutionfor the 3d surface detection of the rock discontinuity surfacesby using photogrammetric methods shapemetrix3d from which one of the most important shear strength influencingparameters can be determined and analyzed from thedetermination of the angle enclosed by the plane of the samplesurface and the shear plane in the direction of shear besidesthe effect of the upslope downslope shearing further analysiscan be carried out in case the examined rock sample containsbedding planes or foliation the magnitude of the influence onthe shear strength for both cases is demonstrated on existingdirect shear strength test measurements that were carried outon over consolidated mont terri opalinus claystones from therock laboratory of mont terri in switzerland,2016,0.257
Freshwater vertebrate and invertebrate diversity patterns in an Andean-Amazon basin: implications for conservation efforts,the napo basin in ecuador is an important drainage of the amazon basin the most biodiverse ecosystem for freshwater species at the same time this basin has conspicuous information gaps on its biodiversity patterns and human threats here we estimated the diversity distribution patterns of freshwater vertebrates and invertebrates in the napo basin as a tool for present and future management and conservation efforts also we assessed the spatial congruence of the diversity patterns observed between aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates for this we compiled occurrence records for 481 freshwater vertebrate species amphibians birds mammals reptiles and fish and 54 invertebrate families obtained across an altitudinal gradient of the basin 200â 4500 m using these occurrence records and environmental variables we modeled the distribution of each vertebrate species and invertebrate family then we stacked these distributions to build species richness maps for vertebrates and a family richness m,2016,0.699
Global Genome Biodiversity Network: saving a blueprint of the Tree of Life – a botanical perspective,background genomic research depends upon access to dna or tissue collected and preserved according to high quality standards at present the collections in most natural history museums do not sufficiently address these standards making them often hard or impossible to use for whole genome sequencing or transcriptomics in response to these challenges natural history museums herbaria botanical gardens and other stakeholders have started to build high quality biodiversity biobanks unfortunately information about these collections remains fragmented scattered and largely inaccessible without a central registry or even an overview of relevant institutions it is difficult and time consuming to locate the needed samples scope the global genome biodiversity network ggbn was created to fill this vacuum by establishing a one stop access point for locating samples meeting quality standards for genome scale applications while complying with national and international legislations and conventions increased accessibility to genomic samples will further genomic research and development conserve genetic resources help train the next generation of genome researchers and raise the visibility of biodiversity collections additionally the availability of a data sharing platform will facilitate identification of gaps in the collections thereby empowering targeted sampling efforts increasing the breadth and depth of preservation of genetic diversity the ggbn is rapidly growing and currently has 41 members the ggbn covers all branches of the tree of life except humans but here the focus is on a pilot project with emphasis on â harvestingâ the tree of life for vascular plant taxa to enable genome level studies conclusion while current efforts are centred on getting the existing samples of all ggbn members online a pilot project ggi gardens has been launched as proof of concept over the next 6 years ggi gardens aims to add to the ggbn high quality genetic material from at least one species from each of the approx 460 vascular plant families and one species from half of the approx 15 000 vascular plant genera,2016,0.444
Biodiversity monitoring by community-based restoration groups in New Zealand,in recent decades community groups have transformed habitat restoration pest control and species translocations in new zealand large areas of wild new zealand benefit hugely from ongoing management by community based restoration groups areas near cities and towns have especially good access to pools of keen volunteers community groups are involved in monitoring progress with their work as well as monitoring biodiversity changes in general at their project sites new tools powered by modern technologies are creating the opportunity for new zealand s community volunteers to play a transformative role in biodiversity monitoring for either purpose these tools are reducing the resources and expertise required for species detection and identification smartphones with cameras gps audio recorders and data apps make it easier than ever to record species observations crowd sourced identification of species in photographs and sounds loaded onto naturewatch nz allow volunteers to make observations of a much wider range of taxa than just common birds and trees realising this potential requires community groups scientists and their institutions to collaborate in building and maintaining simple accessible monitoring systems that i require and promote standard monitoring methods ii provide efficient data entry in standard formats iii generate automated results of use to community groups and iv facilitate public sharing of data to contribute to regional national and global biodiversity monitoring some new zealand monitoring systems developed recently to assist community based restoration groups with monitoring mammalian predator control are good examples of this approach making this happen at a large scale across many community groups and taxa requires increased and coordinated long term institutional support for monitoring systems and training,2016,0.389
"Kalanchoe (Crassulaceae) as invasive aliens in China – new records, and actual and potential distribution",kalanchoe daigremontiana and k delagoensis are reported for the first time from sichuan and hainan china for k daigremontiana a new population located in chengdu downtown has been found being the first one in western china and thus representing a significant range extension of this species within the country for k delagoensis a new population has been observed in the old quarter of haikou being the southernmost population of this species in china the distribution areas of both species in china are summarized based on a review of the literature as well as that of their putative hybrid k ã houghtonii in addition the potential range of k delagoensis is estimated through a niche based modelling approach finally a key to taxa of kalanchoe in china is provided,2016,0.61
Combining citizen science species distribution models and stable isotopes reveals migratory connectivity in the secretive Virginia rail,1 stable hydrogen isotope î d methods for tracking animal movement are widely used yet often produce low resolution assignments incorporating prior knowledge of abundance distribution or movement patterns can ameliorate this limitation but data are lacking for most species we demonstrate how observations reported by citizen scientists can be used to develop robust estimates of species distributions and to constrain î d assignments 2 we developed a bayesian framework to refine isotopic estimates of migrant animal origins conditional on species distribution models constructed from citizen scientist observations to illustrate this approach we analysed the migratory connectivity of the virginia rail rallus limicola a secretive and declining migratory game bird in north america 3 citizen science observations enabled both estimation of sampling bias and construction of bias corrected species distribution models conditioning î d assignments on these species distribution models yielded comparably high resolution assignments 4 most virginia rails wintering across five gulf coast sites spent the previous summer near the great lakes although a considerable minority originated from the chesapeake bay watershed or prairie pothole region of north dakota conversely the majority of migrating virginia rails from a site in the great lakes most likely spent the previous winter on the gulf coast between texas and louisiana 5 synthesis and applications in this analysis virginia rail migratory connectivity does not fully correspond to the administrative flyways used to manage migratory birds this example demonstrates that with the increasing availability of citizen science data to create species distribution models our framework can produce high resolution estimates of migratory connectivity for many animals including cryptic species empirical evidence of links between seasonal habitats will help enable effective habitat management hunting quotas and population monitoring and also highlight critical knowledge gaps,2016,0.811
"Model Simulation of Potential Distribution of Lobesia botrana (Denis &amp; Schiffermüller) in Grape, Vitis vinifera (L.) Vineyard Regions of Mexico",abstract environmental suitability for the european grapevine moth lobesia botrana denis schiffermã ller was studied in mexico nineteen weather variables were studied in grapevine vitis vinifera l regions of the country the model calculated areas with high and medium probability of environmental suitability in baja california medium probability in central and northern chihuahua and low probability in coahuila durango puebla sonora and zacatecas the environmental variables with most impact were average annual temperature 17 2 rainfall amount during coldest month 16 4 average temperature of most humid quartile 14 4 and minimum temperature of coldest month 11 4 baja california state is most at risk for invasion by european grapevine moth,2016,0.124
The Analysis Portal and the Swedish LifeWatch e-infrastructure for biodiversity research,background during the last years more and more online portals were generated and are now available for ecologists to run advanced models with extensive data sets some examples are the biodiversity virtual e laboratory biovel portal https portal biovel eu for ecological niche modelling and the mobyle snap workbench https snap hpc ncsu edu for evolutionary and population genetics analysis such portals have the main goal to facilitate the run of advanced models through access to large capacity computers or servers in this study we present the analysis portal www analysisportal se which is a part of the swedish lifewatch e infrastructure for biodiversity research that combines a variety of swedish web services to perform different kinds of dataprocessing new information for the first time the swedish analysis portal for integrated analysis of species occurrence data is described in detail it was launched in 2013 and today over 60 million swedish species observation records can be assessed visualized and analyzed via the portal datasets can be assembled using sophisticated filtering tools and combined with environmental and climatic data from a wide range of providers different validation tools for example the official swedish taxon concept database dyntaxa ensure high data quality results can be downloaded in different formats as maps tables diagrams and reports,2016,0.376
A manifesto for the valorization of wild edible plants,ethnopharmacological relevance wild foods constitute an essential component of people s diets around the world but despite their widespread use and their cultural importance wild edible plants weps lack recognition as significant contributors to the human diet in developed countries materials and methods we stimulate national and international bodies dealing with food and agriculture to increase their attention and investments on weps leveraging the results of scientific investigation enhancing the link between in situ conservation strategies and sustainable use of plant genetic diversity results and conclusions weps should be reconsidered throughout their value chain capturing their important socio cultural health and economic benefits to indigenous and local communities and family farmers who are engaged in their production and wild harvesting,2016,0.464
Major drivers of invasion risks throughout the world,in this paper we investigate how climate land use habitat characteristics and socioeconomic activities contribute to predict the current potential distributions of the â œ100 among the world s worst invasive alien speciesâ we calculated the predictive power of each of the 41 variables for the 95 species including a large number of plants vertebrates and invertebrates we then calibrated the species distribution models with a set of appropriate variables for each invasive alien species to predict the potential distribution of these species and identify the major regions of origin of the invasive alien species we found that climate variables were primarily predictors of the distribution of the global invaders studied in addition the habitat characteristics were also important predictors following by the socioeconomic variables such as the nearest distance to airports seaports and human population density we show that the potential areas at the highest risk of invasions from these species are located in western europe eastern united states central america the eastern coast of australia and some indonesian islands we argue that these potential hotspots of invasions should be monitored in priority to prevent new invasions from these species this study provides evidence of the importance of considering both habitat characteristics socioeconomic and climate change factors for the current and future predictions of biological invasions,2016,0.78
The Avian Collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of Athens (ZMUA),background the zoological museum of the university of athens zmua was established in 1858 it is the oldest natural history museum of greece the museum began its operation with the acquisition of a core collection and has been expanding ever since one of the most substantial parts of the museum s collection consists of the avian exhibits originating from around the world new information today the avian collection consists of 2 948 specimens preserved mostly through taxidermy along with a significant number of eggs the birds have been collected from around the world a substantial part of the collection consists of individuals originating from greece brazil canada and australia having this valuable source of biogeographic information and a potential reserve of historical genetic diversity zmua presents here the contents of the avian collection,2016,0.555
"Beekeeping practices and geographic distance, not land use, drive gene flow across tropical bees",across the globe wild bees are threatened by ongoing natural habitat loss risking the maintenance of plant biodiversity and agricultural production despite the ecological and economic importance of wild bees and the fact that several species are now managed for pollination services worldwide little is known about how land use and beekeeping practices jointly influence gene flow using stingless bees as a model system containing wild and managed species that are presumed to be particularly susceptible to habitat degradation here we examine the main drivers of tropical bee gene flow we employ a novel landscape genetic approach to analyse data from 135 populations of 17 stingless bee species distributed across diverse tropical biomes within the americas our work has important methodological implications as we illustrate how a maximum likelihood approach can be applied in a meta analysis framework to account for multiple factors and weight estimates by sample size in contrast to previously held beliefs gene flow was not related to body size or deforestation and isolation by geographic distance ibd was significantly affected by management with managed species exhibiting a weaker ibd than wild ones our study thus reveals the critical importance of beekeeping practices in shaping the patterns of genetic differentiation across bee species additionally our results show that many stingless bee species maintain high gene flow across heterogeneous landscapes we suggest that future efforts to preserve wild tropical bees should focus on regulating beekeeping practices to maintain natural gene flow and enhancing pollinator friendly habitats prioritizing species showing a limited dispersal ability,2016,0.988
Citizen Science: New Research Challenges for Human–Computer Interaction,abstractcitizen science broadly describes citizen involvement in science citizen science has gained significant momentum in recent years brought about by widespread availability of smartphones and other internet and communications technologies ict used for collecting and sharing data not only are more projects being launched and more members of the public participating but more humanâ computer interaction hci researchers are focusing on the design development and use of these tools together citizen science and hci researchers can leverage each otherâ s skills to speed up science accelerate learning and amplify societyâ s well being globally as well as locally the focus of this article is on hci and biodiversity citizen science as seen primarily through the lens of research in the authorâ s laboratory the article is framed around five topics community data technology design and a call to save all species including ourselves the article ends with a research agenda that focuses on these ar,2016,0.054
"Potential climate change favored expansion of a range limited species, Haematostaphis barteri Hook f.",understanding impact of climate change on range breadth of rare species can improve the ability to anticipate their decline or expension and take appropriate conservation measures haematatostaphis barteri is an agroforestry species of the sudanian centre of endemism in africa we investigeted impact of climate change on range of suitable habitats for this species in benin using the maximum entropy algorithm under r software five environmental variables were used with the regional climate model under the new representation concentration pathways rcp moisture index of the moist quarter and slope variability had the greatest predictive importance for the range of suitable habitats for h barteri its potential breadth was found to be currently limited to the atacora mountain chain amc and covers 0 51 of national territory climate change was projected to favor expansion of suitable habitats for h barteri by 0 12 and 0 05 respectively for the rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 these habitats were however mostly out of the local protected areas network climate change would extend range of habitats for h barteri observed protection gaps suggest need for integrating this species into formal in situ on farm or ex situ conservation schemes,2016,0.603
Interaction between Digestive Strategy and Niche Specialization Predicts Speciation Rates across Herbivorous Mammals,abstractbiotic and abiotic factors often are treated as mutually exclusive drivers of diversification processes in this framework ecological specialists are expected to have higher speciation rates than generalists if abiotic factors are the primary controls on species diversity but lower rates if biotic interactions are more important speciation rate is therefore predicted to positively correlate with ecological specialization in the purely abiotic model but negatively correlate in the biotic model in this study i show that the positive relationship between ecological specialization and speciation expected from the purely abiotic model is recovered only when a species specific trait digestive strategy is modeled in the terrestrial herbivorous mammals mammalia this result suggests a more nuanced model in which the response of specialized lineages to abiotic factors is dependent on a biological trait i also demonstrate that the effect of digestive strategy on the ecological specializationâ speci,2016,0.386
Report of the Special Committee on Registration of Algal and Plant Names (including fossils),the special committee on registration of algal and plant names including fossils was established at the xviii inter national botanical congress ibc in melbourne in 2011 its mandate being to consider what would be involved in registering algal and plant names including fossils using a procedure analogous to that for fungal names agreed upon in melbourne and included as art 42 in the international code of nomenclature for algae fungi and plants because experience with voluntary registration was key to persuading mycologists of the advantages of mandatory registration we began by asking institutions with a history of nomenclatural indexing to develop mechanisms that would permit registration the task proved more difficult than anticipated but considerable progress has been made as is described in this report it also became evident that the nomenclature section needs a structure that will allow ongoing discussion of registration and associated issues simultaneously with this report we are submitting four proposals that would provide such a structure,2016,0.147
"Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Expeditions: Their Explorations In Brazil, With the First Contributions To Knowledge of the Hydrozoa",abstract prior to 1800 exploring expeditions were usually of a commercial and political nature undertaken to colonize or expand relations with new countries and territories among those to be explored as the 19th century progressed was brazil the largest nation in south america this account is a brief historical overview of some 19th and early 20th century expeditions to brazil focusing on those that included investigations of hydrozoans phylum cnidaria among the more important of these expeditions were l expã dition de la coquille france the voyage of the beagle great britain the united states exploring expedition l expã dition hswms eugenie sweden the thayer expedition united states the challenger expedition great britain the albatross expedition 1887â 1888 united states the scottish national scotia antarctic expedition the british antarctic expedition and the hartt expedition united states maps of routes taken and names of expedition commanders and scientists are provided,2016,0.178
An Information System for European culture collections: the way forward,culture collections contain indispensable information about the microorganisms preserved in their repositories such as taxonomical descriptions origins physiological and biochemical characteristics bibliographic references etc however information currently accessible in databases rarely adheres to common standard protocols the resultant heterogeneity between culture collections in terms of both content and format notably hampers microorganism based research and development r d the optimized exploitation of these resources thus requires standardized and simplified access to the associated information to this end and in the interest of supporting r d in the fields of agriculture health and biotechnology a pan european distributed research infrastructure mirri including over 40 public culture collections and research institutes from 19 european countries was established a prime objective of mirri is to unite and provide universal access to the fragmented and untapped resources information and expertise available in european public collections of microorganisms a key component of which is to develop a dynamic information system for the first time both culture collection curators as well as their users have been consulted and their feedback concerning the needs and requirements for collection databases and data accessibility utilised users primarily noted that databases were not interoperable thus rendering a global search of multiple databases impossible unreliable or out of date and in particular non homogenous taxonomic information was also considered to be a major obstacle to searching microbial data efficiently moreover complex searches are rarely possible in online databases thus limiting the extent of search queries curators also consider that overall harmonizationâ including standard operating procedures data structure and software toolsâ is necessary to facilitate their work and to make high quality data easily accessible to their users clearly the needs of culture collection curators coincide with those of users on the crucial point of database interoperability in this regard and in order to design an appropriate information system important aspects on which the culture collection community should focus include the interoperability of data sets with the ontologies to be used setting best practice in data management and the definition of an appropriate data standard,2016,0.043
Biogeography of the cosmopolitan sedges (Cyperaceae) and the area-richness correlation in plants,aim across angiosperm families the area occupied by a family is strongly correlated with its richness we explore the causes of this area richness correlation using the cosmopolitan family cyperaceae juss as a model we test the hypothesis that despite a proposed tropical origin temperate lineages in the family diversified at elevated rates we test the hypothesis that the area richness correlation is maintained within intrafamilial clades and that this relationship could be described as a function of niche space we also test the hypothesis that the partitioning of geographical and ecological space not the extent of this space is the factor most closely associated with clade richness location cosmopolitan methods we use molecular data from four genes sequenced in 384 taxa to develop a chronogram of cyperaceae we then develop a model of ancestral ranges and measure rates of diversification throughout the history of the family integrating data from over 4 800 000 digitized herbarium records we characterize the range and niche of more than 4500 species and test for correlations of the species richness maintained within clades with range size range partitioning range overlap niche clade age and rate of diversification results cyperaceae originated in south america in the late cretaceous and subsequently dispersed throughout the globe of three increases in diversification rate two occurred in the temperate northern hemisphere the variable most closely associated with clade richness is the partitioning of geographical space by species within each clade main conclusions we show that species rich clades in cyperaceae are not only more widespread occupy more niche space and diversify more quickly but also exhibit patterns that are consistent with the partitioning of geographical and ecological space as a major correlate to diversification,2016,0.537
Biodiversity Databases in Russia: Towards a National Portal,russia holds massive biodiversity data accumulated in botanical and zoological collections literature publications annual reports of natural reserves nature conservation and monitoring study project reports while some data has been digitized and organized in databases or spreadsheets most of the biodiversity data in russian remains dormant and digitally inaccessible concepts of open research data is spreading the lack of data publishing tradition and of use of data standards remain prominent the majority of russian biodiversity databases does not have web interfaces and are accessible only to a limited numbers of researchers a few information systems have interactive maps with the species occurrence data and systems allowing registered users to upload data despite the complexity and size of the biodiversity data landscape in russia the interest in publishing data through international biodiversity portals is increasing among russian researchers since 2014 institutional data publishers in russia have published about 130 000 species occurrences through gbif org the increase in data publishing activity calls for creation a gbif node in russia aiming to support russian biodiversity experts in international data work,2016,0.271
Biogeography and diversification of Brassicales: A 103million year tale,brassicales is a diverse order perhaps most famous because it houses brassicaceae and its premier member arabidopsis thaliana this widely distributed and species rich lineage has been overlooked as a promising system to investigate patterns of disjunct distributions and diversification rates we analyzed plastid and mitochondrial sequence data from five gene regions 8000bp across 150 taxa to 1 produce a chronogram for major lineages in brassicales including brassicaceae and arabidopsis based on greater taxon sampling across the order and previously overlooked fossil evidence 2 examine biogeographical ancestral range estimations and disjunct distributions in biogeobears and 3 determine where shifts in species diversification occur using bamm the evolution and radiation of the brassicales began 103mya and was linked to a series of inter continental vicariant long distance dispersal and land bridge migration events north america appears to be a significant area for early stem lineages in the order shifts to australia then african are evident at nodes near the core brassicales which diverged 68 5mya hpd 75 6â 62 0 this estimated age combined with fossil evidence indicates that some new world clades embedded amongst old world relatives e g new world capparoids are the result of different long distance dispersal events whereas others may be best explained by land bridge migration e g forchhammeria based on these analyses the brassicaceae crown group diverged in europe northern africa in the eocene circa 43 4mya hpd 46 6â 40 3 and arabidopsis separated from close congeners circa 10 4mya these ages fall between divergent dates that were previously published suggesting we are slowly converging on a robust age estimate for the family three significant shifts in species diversification are observed in the order 1 58mya at the crown of capparaceae cleomaceae and brassicaceae 2 38mya at the crown of resedaceae stixis clade and 3 21mya at the crown of the tribes brassiceae and sisymbrieae within brassicaceae,2016,0.441
The African Crane Database (1978-2014): Records of three threatened crane species (Family: Gruidae) from southern and eastern Africa,background the international crane foundation icf endangered wildlife trustâ s ewt african crane conservation programme has recorded 26 403 crane sightings in its database from 1978 to 2014 this sightings collection is currently ongoing and records are continuously added to the database by the ewt field staff icf ewt partnership staff various partner organizations and private individuals the dataset has two peak collection periods 1994 1996 and 2008 2012 the dataset collection spans five african countries kenya rwanda south africa uganda and zambia 98 of the data were collected in south africa georeferencing of the dataset was verified before publication of the data the dataset contains data on three african crane species blue crane anthropoides paradiseus grey crowned crane balearica regulorum and wattled crane bugeranus carunculatus the blue and wattled cranes are classified by the iucn red list of threatened species as vulnerable and the grey crowned crane as endangered new information this is the single most comprehensive dataset published on african crane species that adds new information about the distribution of these three threatened species we hope this will further aid conservation authorities to monitor and protect these species the dataset continues to grow and especially to expand in geographic coverage into new countries in africa and new sites within countries the dataset can be freely accessed through the global biodiversity information facility data portal,2016,0.891
Range geometry and socio-economics dominate species-level biases in occurrence information,aim despite the central role of species distributions in ecology and conservation occurrence information remains geographically and taxonomically incomplete and biased efforts to address this problem such as targeted data mobilization and advanced distribution modelling all crucially rely on a solid understanding of the patterns and determinants of occurrence information numerous socio economic and ecological drivers of uneven record collection and mobilization among species have been suggested but the generality of their effects remains untested here we provide the first global analysis of patterns and drivers of species level variation in different metrics of occurrence information location global including separate analyses for six zoogeographical realms methods we evaluated three alternative metrics of occurrence information 1 the record count per species 2 the coverage of a range with records and 3 the geographical bias in how the records represent different range parts to this end we developed scale independent metrics of range coverage and geographical record bias we applied the three metrics to 2 8 million point occurrence records and extent of occurrence range maps of 3625 mammalian species we used multi model inference to evaluate 13 putative drivers of species level variation in data availability results all three metrics of occurrence information revealed severe species level biases these data limitations were mainly linked to range size and shape and the within range geography of socio economic conditions species attributes related to detection and collection probabilities such as body size or diurnality were remarkably weak predictors of record count and range coverage main conclusions species level biases in mobilized occurrence information hamper its broader application in basic and applied biodiversity research to successfully account for these limitations the site specific socio economic constraints to record collection and mobilization rather than species specific constraints to detection should be explicitly incorporated into ecological models furthermore our results strongly suggest that range restricted species should be prioritized in future data mobilization efforts,2016,0.902
A promising future for integrative biodiversity research: an increased role of scale-dependency and functional biology.,studies into the complex interaction between an organism and changes to its biotic and abiotic environment are fundamental to understanding what regulates biodiversity these investigations occur at many phylogenetic temporal and spatial scales and within a variety of biological and geological disciplines but often in relative isolation this issue focuses on what can be achieved when ecological mechanisms are integrated into analyses of deep time biodiversity patterns through the union of fossil and extant data and methods we expand upon this perspective to argue that given its direct relevance to the current biodiversity crisis greater integration is needed across biodiversity research we focus on the need to understand scaling effects how lower level ecological and evolutionary processes scale up and vice versa and the importance of incorporating functional biology placing function at the core of biodiversity research is fundamental as it establishes how an organism interacts with its abiotic and biotic environment and it is functional diversity that ultimately determines important ecosystem processes to achieve full integration concerted and ongoing efforts are needed to build a united and interactive community of biodiversity researchers with education and interdisciplinary training at its heart,2016,0.035
Using Global and Regional Species Distribution Models (SDM) to Infer the Invasive Stage of Latrodectus geometricus (Araneae: Theridiidae) in the Americas,the brown widow spider latrodectus geometricus c l koch 1841 is a large spider of the family theridiidae that belongs to a genus of medical interest owing to its potent neurotoxic venom which causes severe pain in humans in america this alien spider has been found in virtually all countries in the region mainly associated with human dwellings but also in agricultural sectors however the invasive process and potential distribution of this invasive species across the american continent are completely unknown in this context using a combination of both global and regional niche models it is possible to hypothesize the invasive phase of the species as well as the geographic space where these different phases occur by comparing the global and regional niches of l geometricus we examined its invasive process and potential distribution across the american continent this work is an innovative approach to understanding the invasion of the brown widow spider in this area and the ecological processes that underlie this invasion in this context the global and regional niche comparison constitutes an appropriate tool to account for the complexities of the invasive process generating different hypotheses amenable to being tested in future studies,2016,0.505
"Taxonomic similarity, more than contact opportunity, explains novel plant-pathogen associations between native and alien taxa",novel associations between plants and pathogens can have serious impacts on managed and natural ecosystems world wide the introduction of alien plants increases the potential for biogeographically novel plantâ pathogen associations to arise when pathogens are transmitted from native to alien plant species and vice versa we quantified biogeographically novel associations recorded in new zealand over the last 150 yr between plant pathogens fungi oomycetes and plasmodiophorids and vascular plants we examined the extent to which taxonomic similarity pathogen traits contact opportunity and sampling effort could explain the number of novel associates for host and pathogen species novel associations were common approximately one third of surveyed plants and pathogens were recorded with at least one biogeographically novel associate native plants had more alien pathogens than vice versa taxonomic similarity between the native and alien flora and the total number of recorded associations a measure of sampling effort best explained the number of novel associates among species the frequency of novel associations and the importance of sampling effort as an explanatory variable emphasize the need for effective monitoring and risk assessment tools to mitigate the potential environmental and economic impact of novel pathogen associations,2016,0.317
Epiphytic bryozoans on Neptune grass – a sample-based data set,background the seagrass posidonia oceanica l delile commonly known as neptune grass is an endemic species of the mediterranean sea it hosts a distinctive and diverse epiphytic community dominated by various mac roalgal and animal organisms mediterranean bryozoans have been extensively studied but quantitative data assessing temporal and spatial variability have rarely been documented in lepoint et al 2014a b occurrence and abundance data of epiphytic bryozoan communities on leaves of p oceanica inhabiting the revellata bay corsica mediterranean sea were reported and trophic ecology of electra posidoniae gautier assessed new information here we provide metadata information on data set discussed in lepoint et al 2014a and published on the gbif portal as a sampling event data set http ipt biodiversity be resource r ulg bryozoa v 1 0 the data set compared to lepoint et al 2014a is enriched by data concerning species settled on posidonia scales dead petiole of posidonia leaves remaining after limb abscission,2016,0.294
Does range-restricted evolutionary history predict extinction risk? A case study in lizards,aim conservation is often prioritized by identifying regional clusters of threatened or endemic species another approach is to assess the evolutionary distinctiveness of groups of taxa using phylodiversity measures however quantification of evolutionary history has traditionally not accounted for its uneven geographical distribution due to the variation in species ranges we assess the efficacy of phylogenetic endemism pe to predict high extinction risk in comparison to estimates of species range restriction weighted endemism we and phylogenetic diversity pd pe measures the relative range restriction of evolutionary history lineages while we concentrates on the tips of the tree of life treating all such branches as being of equal length location methods using new zealand s endemic skinks and geckos we mapped the geographical variation in their extinction risk pe we and pd and measured the extent to which extinction risk exhibited phylogenetic clustering for each group correlations between geographical concentrations of high skink and gecko extinction risk with pe we and pd were calculated results pe was predictive of spatial clusters of high extinction risk for geckos r2 0 34 p 0 001 while we was markedly less so r2 0 19 p 0 001 the reverse applied to skinks with we most predictive of high risk r2 0 26 p 0 001 the phylogenetic signal of extinction risk was significantly conserved for geckos but was weaker and non significant for skinks pe and we were not predictive of low risk pd was not predictive of risk main conclusions pe and related measures may be predictive of extinction risk when risk is phylogenetically conserved mapping the geographical variation in pe could be a useful first assessment of extinction risk for many groups because phylogenies are increasingly available while full risk status categories are not these findings might apply to other groups and locations and warrant further investigation,2016,0.566
Mapping the climatic suitable habitat of oriental arborvitae (Platycladus orientalis) for introduction and cultivation at a global scale,oriental arborvitae platycladus orientalis is an important afforestation and ornamental tree species which is native in eastern asian therefore a global suitable habitat map for oriental arborvitae is urgently needed for global promotion and cultivation here the potential habitat and climatic requirements of oriental arborvitae at global scale were simulated using herbariums data and 13 thermal moisture variables as input data for maximum entropy model maxent the simulation performance of maxent is evaluated by ten fold cross validation and a jackknife procedure results show that the potential habitat and climate envelop of oriental arborvitae can be successfully simulated by maxent at global scale with a mean test auc value of 0 93 and mean training auc value of 0 95 thermal factors play more important roles than moisture factors in controlling the distribution boundary of oriental arborvitaeâ s potential ranges there are about 50 countries suitable for introduction and cultivation of oriental arborvitae with an area of 2 0 ã 107 km2 which occupied 13 8 of land area on the earth this unique study will provide valuable information and insights needed to identify new regions with climatically suitable habitats for cultivation and introduction of oriental arborvitae around the world,2016,0.239
CONSERVATION PLANNING AT COUNTRY BORDERS: A CASE STUDY ON THE DAURIAN STEPPE IN CHINA AND EASTERN MONGOLIA,there is an urgent need to make long term conservation strategies in areas with global biodiversity significance where the economic development is fast one major challenge for developing the strategies in the national boundary a reas is the inconsistency of data from different countries the daurian steppe in the northeastern china and the eastern mongolia has the best and most intact steppe ecosystem in the palearctic that still supports stable herds of larger vertebrates e g m illions of mongolian gazelle procapra gutturosa based on a biodiversity conservation project being carried out during 2006 2009 we conducted systematic conservation planning in this transboundary region dealing with inconsistent information of spec ies occurrences and threatening factors in the two countries we selected two focal species the mongolian gazelle and the white naped crane grus vipio as conservation targets we used watershed as planning unit calculated cost values of every planning unit based on human footprint index and road density climate change vulnerability and ratio of protected areas were used as other sources of cost the conservation targets of every planning unit were quantified using the range maps in mongolia and point occurrences in china combining the values of conservation cost and targets we proposed conservation priority areas for the two species in summary the two species are more abundant in eastern mongolia where will suffer more severe climate change the p lanning units with high conservation priority are mostly located at the border of china and mongolia effective conservation of the priority areas we suggested would secure the long term survival of the mongolia gazelle and the white naped crane as well a s many other associated species and ecosystems,2016,0.548
Biogeo: an R package for assessing and improving data quality of occurrence record datasets,occurrence data from museum and herbarium collections are valuable for mapping biodiversity patterns in space and time unfortunately these collections datasets contain many errors and suffer from several data quality issues that can influence the quality of the products derived from them it is up to the user to identify these errors and data quality issues when using these data despite the large number of potential users of these datasets there are few software tools dedicated to error detection and correction of collections datasets the r package biogeo was developed for detecting and correcting errors and for assessment of data quality of collections datasets consisting of occurrence records features of the package include error detection such as mismatches between the recorded country and the country where the record is plotted records of terrestrial species that fall into the sea and outlier detection a key feature of the package is the ability to identify likely alternative positions for points that represent obvious errors in the dataset and functions to explore records in geographical and environmental space in order to identify possible errors in the dataset functions are also available for converting coordinates that are in various text formats into degrees minutes and seconds and then into decimal degrees,2016,0.352
The importance of digitized biocollections as a source of trait data and a new VertNet resource,for vast areas of the globe and large parts of the tree of life data needed to inform trait diversity is incomplete such trait data when fully assembled however form the link between the evolutionary history of organisms their assembly into communities and the nature and functioning of ecosystems recent efforts to close data gaps have focused on collating trait by species databases which only provide species level aggregated value ranges for traits of interest and often lack the direct observations on which those ranges are based perhaps under appreciated is that digitized biocollection records collectively contain a vast trove of trait data measured directly from individuals but this content remains hidden and highly heterogeneous impeding discoverability and use we developed and deployed a suite of openly accessible software tools in order to collate a full set of trait descriptions and extract two key traits body length and mass from 18 million specimen records in vertnet a global biodiversity data publisher and aggregator we tested success rate of these tools against hand checked validation data sets and characterized quality and quantity a post processing toolkit was developed to standardize and harmonize data sets and to integrate this improved content into vertnet for broadest reuse the result of this work was to add more than 1 5 million harmonized measurements on vertebrate body mass and length directly to specimen records rates of false positives and negatives for extracted data were extremely low we also created new tools for filtering querying and assembling this research ready vertebrate trait content for view and download our work has yielded a novel database and platform for harmonized trait content that will grow as tools introduced here become part of publication workflows we close by noting how this effort extends to new communities already developing similar digitized content database url http portal vertnet org search advanced 1,2016,0.335
Demographical history and palaeodistribution modelling show range shift towards Amazon Basin for a Neotropical tree species in the LGM,we studied the phylogeography and demographical history of tabebuia serratifolia bignoniaceae to understand the disjunct geographical distribution of south american seasonally dry tropical forests sdtfs we specifically tested if the multiple and isolated patches of sdtfs are current climatic relicts of a widespread and continuously distributed dry forest during the last glacial maximum lgm the so called south american dry forest refugia hypothesis using ecological niche modelling enm and statistical phylogeography we sampled 235 individuals of t serratifolia in 17 populations in brazil and analysed the polymorphisms at three intergenic chloroplast regions and its nuclear ribosomal dna coalescent analyses showed a demographical expansion at the last c 130 ka thousand years before present simulations and enm also showed that the current spatial pattern of genetic diversity is most likely due to a scenario of range expansion and range shift towards the amazon basin during the colder and arid climatic conditions associated with the lgm matching the expected for the south american dry forest refugia hypothesis although contrasting to the pleistocene arc hypothesis populations in more stable areas or with higher suitability through time showed higher genetic diversity postglacial range shift towards the southeast and atlantic coast may have led to spatial genome assortment due to leading edge colonization as the species tracks suitable environments leading to lower genetic diversity in populations at higher distance from the distribution centroid at 21 ka haplotype sharing or common ancestry among populations from caatinga in northeast brazil atlantic forest in southeast and cerrado biome and enm evince the past connection among these biomes,2016,0.54
Reproductive Biology of Albacore Tuna (Thunnus alalunga) in the Western Indian Ocean,the reproductive biology of albacore tuna thunnus alalunga in the western indian ocean was examined through analysis of the sex ratio spawning season length at maturity l50 spawning frequency and fecundity from 2013 to 2015 a total of 923 female and 867 male albacore were sampled a bias in sex ratio was found in favor of females with fork length lf 100 cm using histological analyses and gonadosomatic index spawning was found to occur between 10â s and 30â s mainly to the east of madagascar from october to january large females contributed more to reproduction through their longer spawning period compared to small individuals the l50 mean â standard error of female albacore was estimated at 85 3 â 0 7 cm lf albacore spawn on average every 2 2 days within the spawning region and spawning months from november to january batch fecundity ranged between 0 26 and 2 09 million oocytes and the relative batch fecundity mean â standard deviation was estimated at 53 4 â 23 2 oocytes g 1 of somatic gutted weight the study provides new information on the reproductive development and classification of albacore in the western indian ocean the reproductive parameters will reduce uncertainty in current stock assessment models which will eventually assist the fishery to be sustainable for future generations,2016,0.458
Seed collection data encompassing half of the vascular flora of the Pannonian Ecoregion stored by the Pannon Seed Bank,seed bank collections have multiple benefits store genetic material for conservation and research and their data can also provide valuable scientific information the pannon seed bank was established during an eu life project between 2010 and 2014 with the target to collect and store seeds of approx 50 of the wild native vascular flora of the pannonian biogeographic region seed accessions of at least 800 storable species this task was fully achieved by the end of the project as altogether 1 853 seed accessions of 910 species are stored the aim of the present paper is to provide access to the collection data and metadata of the pannon seed bank as it was completed by the end of the project the collection campaign involved about 40 experts and covered the whole country collection and storing applied standard methodology based on the ensconet project the collection data published in this paper can be used manifold geographical data on species occurrences are major input for nature conservation,2016,0.339
"Taxonomic revision of the rock-dwelling door snail genus Montenegrina Boettger, 1877 (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Clausiliidae)",the genus montenegrina is revised on the basis of material available at the hungarian natural history museum budapest naturhistorisches museum wien vienna and the naturmuseum senckenberg frankfurt am main as well as newly discovered populations the following new taxa are described m haringae sp n m lillae sp n m prokletiana sp n m sturanyana sp n m grammica erosszoltani ssp n m grammica improvisa ssp n m hiltrudae desaretica ssp n m hiltrudae selcensis ssp n m laxa delii ssp n m nana barinai ssp n m prokletiana kovacsorum ssp n m rugilabris golikutensis ssp n m rugilabris gregoi ssp n m skipetarica danyii ssp n m skipetarica gurelurensis ssp n m skipetarica pifkoi ssp n m skipetarica puskasi ssp n m sporadica tropojana ssp n m sturanyana gropana ssp n m sturanyana ostrovicensis ssp n and m tomorosi hunyadii ssp n a neotype is designated for m helvola kã ster 1860 and m cattaroensis antivaricostata nom n was introduced to replace the junior homonym clausilia umbilicata costata boettger 1907 non pfeiffer 1928 of each taxon types or specimens from the type localities are figured and distribution maps are provided,2016,0.549
High migration rates shape the postglacial history of amphi-Atlantic bryophytes,paleontological evidence and current patterns of angiosperm species richness suggest that european biota experienced more severe bottlenecks than north american ones during the last glacial maximum how well this pattern fits other plant species is less clear bryophytes offer a unique opportunity to contrast the impact of the last glacial maximum in north america and europe because about 60 of the european bryoflora is shared with north america here we use population genetic analyses based on approximate bayesian computation on eight amphi atlantic species to test the hypothesis that north american populations were less impacted by the last glacial maximum exhibiting higher levels of genetic diversity than european ones and ultimately serving as a refugium for the postglacial recolonization of europe in contrast with this hypothesis the best fit demographic model involved similar patterns of population size contractions comparable levels of genetic diversity and balanced migration rates between european and north american populations our results thus suggest that bryophytes have experienced comparable demographic glacial histories on both sides of the atlantic although a weak but significant genetic structure was systematically recovered between european and north american populations evidence for migration from and towards both continents suggests that amphi atlantic bryophyte population may function as a metapopulation network reconstructing the biogeographic history of either north american or european bryophyte populations therefore requires a large trans atlantic geographic framework,2016,0.795
New Records of Entocytherid Ostracods from New York and New Jersey,abstract ostracods of the family entocytheridae are obligate ectosymbionts primarily of crayfishes although the distribution and diversity of crayfishes is well known in the northeastern us little is known about entocytherids in this region in this study we examined 5 species of crayfishesâ procambarus acutus white river crayfish orconectes limosus spinycheek crayfish orconectes propinquus northern clearwater crayfish cambarus bartonii common crayfish and cambarus robustus big water crayfish â from 3 counties in new york saratoga orange and tompkins and 8 counties in new jersey essex sussex atlantic burlington camden cumberland gloucester and ocean we recovered 2 species of entocytherid ostracods donnaldsoncythere cayugaensis and donnaldsoncythere donnaldsonensis records from our study expand the known range of d cayuagensis and fill in gaps in the known range of d donnaldsonensis,2016,0.423
Genetic diversity of Enterolobium cyclocarpum in Colombian seasonally dry tropical forest: implications for conservation and restoration,enterolobium cyclocarpum is a characteristic legume tree species of seasonally dry tropical forests sdtfs of mesoamerica and northern south america typically used in silvopastoral and agroforestry systems remaining populations of e cyclocarpum in colombia are severely fragmented owing to the highly degraded state of sdtf in the country posing threats to both their in situ persistence and their usefulness as seed sources for future planting efforts we genotyped e cyclocarpum populations at nine sampling sites across a latitudinal gradient of sdtf in colombia by means of eight nssr markers to elucidate the species diversity distribution in the country our data suggest that a deep divide seems to have existed between caribbean and andean populations of e cyclocarpum in colombian sdtf that may date back to the last glacial maximum 21 000 bp or longer however we only found evidence of genetic differentiation between trees from the southern cauca river valley and populations at more northern locations all the latter populations showed signs of admixture which may be the result of human influenced movement of germplasm particularly after the introduction of cattle by european settlers most of the sampled sites showed heterozygosity scores close to hardyâ weinberg expectations only the three southern most populations displayed significantly positive values of inbreeding coefficient potentially affecting their in situ maintenance and their use as seed sources based on our findings we identify priority areas for the in situ conservation of remaining e cyclocarpum populations and propose a strategy for sourcing of appropriate planting material for use in future tree planting efforts,2016,0.872
The higher you go the less you will know: placing camera traps high to avoid theft will affect detection,vandalism and theft of camera traps is common imposing financial and data losses on wildlife professionals like many â victimsâ our response to a spate of thefts was to attempt to install camera traps at heights we suspected would reduce detection and interference by vandals we sought to determine if placing camera traps above humansâ eye line to reduce the likelihood of detection and theft by vandals would compromise predator detection in road based surveys our efforts to resolve this problem led us to discover the importance of placing camera traps at a height commensurate with the height of the animals being studied monitoring stations comprised of two camera traps one at 0 9 m and another at 3 m above ground level were established at regular intervals along trails during two survey periods we also conducted a pilot trial to compare vertical facing downwards to horizontal facing across orientation of camera traps to detect medium sized mammals we compared images recorded by the pairs of camera to consider whether height made a significant difference to detections of predators we found that cameras placed 3 m high and those facing downwards reduced the detection rate of all species compared to those at 0 9 m so placing camera traps higher than normal significantly compromised our survey data it is important to note that such data loss would not necessarily be apparent without a robust comparison between deployment strategies saving camera traps but concurrently sacrificing data quality is unlikely to be an acceptable outcome for many wildlife professionals this study reports that placing camera traps too high will reduce the detection of animals and compromise the quality of the survey data,2016,0.695
Predicting the Potential Distribution of Polygala tenuifolia Willd. under Climate Change in China,global warming has created opportunities and challenges for the survival and development of species determining how climate change may impact multiple ecosystem levels and lead to various species adaptations is necessary for both biodiversity conservation and sustainable biological resource utilization in this study we employed maxent to predict changes in the habitat range and altitude of polygala tenuifolia willd under current and future climate scenarios in china four representative concentration pathways rcp2 6 rcp4 5 rcp6 0 and rcp8 5 were modeled for two time periods 2050 and 2070 the model inputs included 732 presence points and nine sets of environmental variables under the current conditions and the four rcps in 2050 and 2070 the area under the receiver operating characteristic roc curve auc was used to evaluate model performance all of the aucs were greater than 0 80 thereby placing these models in the â œvery goodâ category using a jackknife analysis the precipitation in the warmest quarter annual mean temperature and altitude were found to be the top three variables that affect the range of p tenuifolia additionally we found that the predicted highly suitable habitat was in reasonable agreement with its actual distribution furthermore the highly suitable habitat area was slowly reduced over time,2016,0.468
"A comparison of research data management platforms: architecture, flexible metadata and interoperability",research data management is rapidly becoming a regular concern for researchers and institutions need to provide them with platforms to support data organization and preparation for publication some institutions have adopted institutional repositories as the basis for data deposit whereas others are experimenting with richer environments for data description in spite of the diversity of existing workflows this paper is a synthetic overview of current platforms that can be used for data management purposes adopting a pragmatic view on data management the paper focuses on solutions that can be adopted in the long tail of science where investments in tools and manpower are modest first a broad set of data management platforms is presentedâ some designed for institutional repositories and digital librariesâ to select a short list of the more promising ones for data management these platforms are compared considering their architecture support for metadata existing programming interfaces as well as their search mechanisms and community acceptance in this process the stakeholdersâ requirements are also taken into account the results show that there is still plenty of room for improvement mainly regarding the specificity of data description in different domains as well as the potential for integration of the data management platforms with existing research management tools nevertheless depending on the context some platforms can meet all or part of the stakeholdersâ requirements,2016,0.034
"Climate change influences on pollinator, forest, and farm interactions across a climate gradient",climate impact models are often implemented at horizontal resolutions â œscalesâ too coarse to be readily applied in local impact assessments however recent advancements in fine scale modeling are allowing the creation of impact models that can be applied to landscape scale adaptation planning here we illustrate the use of fine scale impact models for landscape scale adaptation planning of pollination services for six sites in central america the strategies include the identification of 1 potential reservoir areas that may retain bee diversity and serve as a source of recolonization after climate shocks such as droughts and 2 potential restoration areas where improving forest cover is likely to lead to increases in pollinator services both in the present and in the future coarse scale 1 km horizontal resolution climatic controls on pollinator diversity and forest cover determine the general location of these areas in our six landscapes fine scale 100 m horizontal resolution variation in climatic water deficit provides an index of forest health which can help identify intervention strategies within these zones all sites have significant areas in which protecting or restoring forest cover is likely to enhance pollination services the gradient in rainfall change across the study sites dictates choice of adaptation strategies,2016,0.178
Do Ecological Niche Models Accurately Identify Climatic Determinants of Species Ranges?,defining species niches is central to understanding their distributions and is thus fundamental to basic ecology and climate change projections ecological niche models enms are a key component of making accurate projections and include descriptions of the niche in terms of both response curves and rankings of variable importance in this study we evaluate maxent s ranking of environmental variables based on their importance in delimiting species range boundaries by asking whether these same variables also govern annual recruitment based on long term demographic studies we found that maxent based assessments of variable importance in setting range boundaries in the california tiger salamander ambystoma californiense cts correlate very well with how important those variables are in governing ongoing recruitment of cts at the population level this strong correlation suggests that maxent s ranking of variable importance captures biologically realistic assessments of factors governing population persistence however this result holds only when maxent models are built using best practice procedures and variables are ranked based on permutation importance our study highlights the need for building high quality niche models and provides encouraging evidence that when such models are built they can reflect important aspects of a species ecology,2016,0.506
"The Great Plains Ratsnake, Pantherophis emoryi Baird & Girard, 1853, (Squamata: Colubridae), a new state record from Aguascalientes, México",we report an adult male specimen of the snake pantherophis emoryi from xerophytic scrub habitat in the municipality of real de asientos aguascalientes mã xico this specimen represents the first state record of p emoryi from aguascalientes and extends the known distribution of the species 107 km in a straight line west northwest from the nearest previous record our specimen was found in habitat that is under heavy agricultural pressure and recently threatened by mining this may indicate that other chihuahuan desert taxa may be found in this area,2016,0.557
Generating intelligence for decision making and sustainable use of natural capital in Mexico,we describe the concept underlying the creation of conabio its nature and aspects of its philosophy operation and results in almost a quarter of a century of its existence conabio is a mexican interministerial governmental organization that has compiled with the participation of an interdisciplinary group constituted by hundreds of academics ngo and governmental officers the largest and most complete database on the biodiversity of any country 9 6 million specimens all taxonomically vouched by specialists and accurately geo referenced housed under a single institutional roof such database has become the backbone for the programs and projects of the institution and is publically available to be used for decision making and resource management at all levels ranging from local to national the challenges faced to bring conabio to its current status along with examples of projects undertaken in partnership with local communities are described and discussed in this paper as a means to showcase the potential of this and other similar efforts to contribute to sustainability,2016,0.327
"Genus Glyphonycteris Thomas, 1896 (Mammalia: Chiroptera) in Ecuador: first confirmed record of G. sylvestris Thomas, 1896 and a geographical review to G. daviesi (Hill, 1965)",herein we present a geographical review to the genus glyphonycteris in ecuador we confirm the first record for g sylvestris for the country which extends its range about 680 km southwest of the nearest previously known record this first record belongs to an individual captured in sangay national park morona santiago province eastern slopes of the andes we also review the records of g daviesi deposited in scientific collections and mentioned in literature report a new record from west of the andes and present a distribution map,2016,0.253
"Current and Potential Distribution of the Cactus Weevil, Cactophagus spinolae (Gyllenhal) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), in Mexico",abstract the maximum entropy algorithm maxent was used to create a model of the suitable environment for the cactus weevil cactophagus spinolae gyllenhal coleoptera curculionidae in mexico and to analyze the climatic factors influencing the weevil s potential distribution and possible impacts on another cactaceae species areas located west of the transmexican volcanic belt south of the mexican plateu east of the balsas basin and northwest of the sierra madre del sur biogeographical provinces were found to be more suitable for the emergence of the cactus weevil the climatic variables that determine the distribution of c spinolae were seasonal temperatures 24 5 and precipitation of coldest quarter 24 0 the commercial production areas of edible opuntia mill prickly pear cactus and barbary fig and pitahaya in central mexico match with the environmental suitability calculated for the cactus weevil,2016,0.157
"Revision of the genus Trichrysis Lichtenstein, 1876 from China, with description of three new species (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae)",the chinese species of the genus trichrysis lichtenstein 1876 are revised for the first time thirteen species are recorded of which three species are new for science t coeruleamaculata rosa wei xu sp n t tridensnotata rosa wei xu sp n and t yuani rosa feng xu sp n two species are revalidated t tonkinensis mocsã ry 1914 and t formosana mocsã ry 1912 two new synonymies are proposed t formosana mocsã ry 1912 t sauteri mocsã ry 1912 syn n t taial tsuneki 1970 syn n the lectotype of chrysis pellucida du buysson 1887 is designated,2016,0.838
Ecological networks are more sensitive to plant than to animal extinction under climate change,impacts of climate change on individual species are increasingly well documented but we lack understanding of how these effects propagate through ecological communities here we combine species distribution models with ecological network analyses to test potential impacts of climate change on 700 plant and animal species in pollination and seed dispersal networks from central europe we discover that animal species that interact with a low diversity of plant species have narrow climatic niches and are most vulnerable to climate change in contrast biotic specialization of plants is not related to climatic niche breadth and vulnerability a simulation model incorporating different scenarios of species coextinction and capacities for partner switches shows that projected plant extinctions under climate change are more likely to trigger animal coextinctions than vice versa this result demonstrates that impacts of climate change on biodiversity can be amplified via extinction cascades from plants to animals in ecological networks,2016,0.827
RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions,the tropical vegetation of africa is characterized by high levels of species diversity but is undergoing important shifts in response to ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures although our knowledge of plant species distribution patterns in the african tropics has been improving over the years it remains limited here we present rainbio a unique comprehensive mega database of georeferenced records for vascular plants in continental tropical africa the geographic focus of the database is the region south of the sahel and north of southern africa and the majority of data originate from tropical forest regions rainbio is a compilation of 13 datasets either publicly available or personal ones numerous in depth data quality checks automatic and manual via several african flora experts were undertaken for georeferencing standardization of taxonomic names and identification and merging of duplicated records the resulting rainbio data allows exploration and extraction of distribution data for 25 356 native tropical african vascular plant species which represents ca 89 of all known plant species in the area of interest habit information is also provided for 91 of these species,2016,0.827
Evolution and biogeography of the cushion life form in angiosperms,cushion forming species occur in all cold and dry environments worldwide where they play important engineering roles understanding the origins of cushion plants may thus provide insights into the evolutionary assembly of biomes under extreme climatic conditions here we investigate the evolutionary and biogeographic history of cushions in angiosperms based on a global checklist of all cushion plants along with phylogenetic climatic and biogeographic information our aim is to measure the frequency of this evolutionary convergence and to identify its historic environmental and biogeographic drivers we show that cushions appeared at least 115 times in angiosperms and that they mainly belong to families that occupy the coldest and driest environments on earth we found that cushions have intensively diversified in the himalayas the andes or new zealand while other regions like patagonia have probably been hubs enabling cushion species to migrate between different alpine regions we conclude that the cushion life form is a remarkable example of convergent key innovation which has favored the colonization of cold and dry habitats,2016,0.294
"Effects of climate change on three species of Cupido (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae) with different biogeographic distribution in Andalusia, southern Spain",knowledge of the spatial distribution of rare or endangered species is of key importance to assess conservation status at different geographic scales and to develop conservation and recovery programs in this paper we review and update the distribution of three species of lycaenid butterflies in andalusia southern spain cupido carswelli c lorquinii and c osiris cupido carswelli is endemic in south east spain and is considered a vulnerable species in the red book of invertebrates of andalusia cupido lorquinii is an iberianâ maghrebian endemism found in the southern half of the iberian peninsula cupido osiris widely distributed in europe and central asia has its southern limit of distribution in andalusia we modeled the potential current distribution of these species in andalusia using maxent their potential distribution was mainly conditioned by the presence of their host plants and to a lesser extent by climatic variables rainfall during the warmest and coldest quarters of the year and annual mean temperature auc test values sensitivity and specificity for the three models were high confirming the accuracy of the models and their high predictive values we also modeled the potential future distributions of the three species under the climate change scenario a2a our results predict a significant reduction in the potential distribution for c lorquinii â which has a wider distribution in andalusia than the other two speciesâ and for the more localized species c osiris and c carswelli this expected decline in the south of the iberian peninsula highlights the pressing need to design and implement specific conservation plans for these species,2016,0.828
Ecological divergence of two closely related Roscoea species associated with late Quaternary climate change,aim ecological differentiation of closely related species has attracted wide attention to explore its evolutionary significance in speciation in particular the prevalence of ecological speciation of sister species driven by quaternary climate changes is debated here we used two parapatric sister species roscoea humeana and r cautleoides to test whether ecological speciation was associated with quaternary climate changes in these taxa location hengduan mountain region hmr south west of china methods nuclear ribosomal its and chloroplast dna cpdna psbaâ trnh and trnlâ trnf were sequenced from 200 individuals gene genealogies were reconstructed using network bayesian inference and maximum likelihood methods interspecific divergence times were estimated with an isolation with migration model suitable habitats for each species were estimated with ecological niche modelling using maxent and bioclim niche overlap and niche divergence were tested using schoener s d and warren s i principal components analysis pca multivariate analysis of variance manova and discriminant function analysis dfa were also used to test ecological differentiation results gene genealogies indicated that the low elevational species r cautleoides was derived from the high elevational species r humeana divergence among species occurred during the middle to late quaternary 0 01â 1 48 ma the species distribution and phylogeographical pattern were inconsistent with a geographical barrier niche models and statistical analyses showed significant ecological differentiation main conclusions divergence between r humeana and r cautleoides was recent and coincident with quaternary climate cycles ecological niche differentiation within quaternary refugia may have promoted speciation,2016,0.944
"Genetic diversity and structure of the globally invasive tree, Paraserianthes lophantha subspecies lophantha, suggest an introduction history characterised by varying propagule pressure",an emerging insight in invasion biology is that intra specific genetic variation human usage and introduction histories interact to shape genetic diversity and its distribution in populations of invasive species we explore these aspects for the tree species paraserianthes lophantha subsp lophantha a close relative of australian wattles genus acacia this species is native to western australia and is invasive in a number of regions globally using microsatellite genotype and dna sequencing data we show that native western australian populations of p lophantha subsp lophantha are geographically structured and are more diverse than introduced populations in australia new south wales south australia and victoria the hawaiian islands portugal and south africa introduced populations varied greatly in the amount of genetic diversity contained within them from being low e g portugal to high e g maui hawaiian islands irrespective of provenance native or introduced all populations appeared to be highly inbred f is ranging from 0 55 to 0 8 probably due to selfing although introduced populations generally had lower genetic diversity than native populations bayesian clustering of microsatellites and phylogenetic diversity indicated that introduced populations comprise a diverse array of genotypes most of which were also identified in western australia the dissimilarity in the distribution and number of genotypes in introduced regions suggests that non native populations originated from different native sources and that introduction events differed in propagule pressure,2016,0.979
Beetles versus Fungi: Trophic Interactions in Boreal Forests,larvae or adults of fungivorous coleoptera selectively feed on a primarily fungal diet fruit bodies mycelia and spores evolutionary success and diversity of fungi and beetles make patterns of their co occurrence and interactions among the most complex in terrestrial habitats this chapter provides an illustration of this ecological complexity focusing on studies of fungusâ beetle interactions from european boreal forests taxonomic functional and life form diversity of both fungi and beetles clashes in a number of interaction types resulting in diverse species assemblage patterns and varying degrees of trophic specialisation of beetles,2016,0.398
"One of the northernmost records of Eleocharis mamillata subsp. mamillata (Cyperaceae) in Europe, and the first discovery in Murmansk Region (Russia)",we report the first locality 67â 55â 13â n 33â 39â 73â e in murmansk region of eleocharis mamillata h lindb f subsp mamillata the species distribution range in europe extends to nearly 68â n attested by one older 1924 record in finland and two recent ones 2008â 2009 in norway the new site at a similar latitude in lapponia imandrae in russia is briefly described it is proposed to include this species in the next regional red data book in the group â in need of monitoringâ,2016,0.574
Predicting species richness and distribution ranges of centipedes at the northern edge of Europe,in recent decades interest in understanding species distributions and exploring processes that shape species diversity has increased leading to the development of advanced methods for the exploitation of occurrence data for analytical and ecological purposes here with the use of georeferenced centipede data we explore the importance and contribution of bioclimatic variables and land cover and predict distribution ranges and potential hotspots in norway we used a maximum entropy analysis maxent to model species distributions aiming at exploring centres of distribution latitudinal spans and northern range boundaries of centipedes in norway the performance of all maxent models was better than random with average test area under the curve auc values above 0 893 and true skill statistic tss values above 0 593 our results showed a highly significant latitudinal gradient of increased species richness in southern grid cells mean temperatures of warmest and coldest quarters explained much of the potential distribution of species predictive modelling analyses revealed that south eastern norway and the atlantic coast in the west inclusive of the major fjord system of sognefjord are local biodiversity hotspots with regard to high predictive species co occurrence we conclude that our predicted northward shifts of centipedes distributions in norway are likely a result of post glacial recolonization patterns species ecological requirements and dispersal abilities,2016,0.748
"Digitising legacy zoological taxonomic literature: Processes, products and using the output",by digitising legacy taxonomic literature using xml mark up the contents become accessible to other taxonomic and nomenclatural information systems appropriate schemas need to be interoperable with other sectorial schemas atomise to appropriate content elements and carry appropriate metadata to for example enable algorithmic assessment of availability of a name under the code legacy and new literature delivered in this fashion will become part of a global taxonomic resource from which users can extract tailored content to meet their particular needs be they nomenclatural taxonomic faunistic or other to date most digitisation of taxonomic literature has led to a more or less simple digital copy of a paper original â the output of the many efforts has effectively been an electronic copy of a traditional library while this has increased accessibility of publications through internet access the means by which many scientific papers are indexed and located is much the same as with traditional libraries ocr and born digital papers allow use of web search engines to locate instances of taxon names and other terms but ocr efficiency in recognising taxonomic names is still relatively poor peopleâ s ability to use search engines effectively is mixed and many papers cannot be searched directly instead of building digital analogues of traditional publications we should consider what properties we require of future taxonomic information access ideally the content of each new digital publication should be accessible in the context of all previous published data and the user able to retrieve nomenclatural taxonomic and other data information in the form required without having to scan all of the original papers and extract target content manually this opens the door to dynamic linking of new content with extant systems automatic population and updating of taxonomic catalogues zoobank and faunal lists all descriptions of a taxon and its children instantly accessible with a single search comparison of classifications used in different publications and so on a means to do this is through marking up content into xml and the more atomised the mark up the greater the possibilities for data retrieval and integration mark up requires xml that accommodates the required content elements and is interoperable with other xml schemas and there are now several written to do this particularly taxpub taxonx and taxmlit the last of these being the most atomised we now need to automate this process as far as possible manual and automatic data and information retrieval is demonstrated by projects such as inotaxa and plazi as we move to creating and using taxonomic products through the power of the internet we need to ensure the output while satisfying in its production the requirements of the code is fit for purpose in the future,2016,0.024
Estimating absence locations of marine species from data of scientific surveys in OBIS,estimating absence locations of a species is important in conservation biology and conservation planning for instance using reliable absence as much as presence information species distribution models can enhance their performance and produce more accurate predictions of the distribution of a species unfortunately estimating reliable absence locations is difficult and often requires a deep knowledge of the speciesâ distribution and of its abiotic and biotic environmental preferences and tolerance in this paper we propose a methodology to reconstruct reliable absence information from presence only information and the conditions that those presence only data have to meet to make this possible large species occurrence data collections otherwise called occurrence datasets contain high quality and expert reviewed species observation records from scientific surveys these surveys can be used to retrieve species presence locations but they also record places where the species in their target list were not observed although these absences could be simply due to sampling variation it is possible to intersect many of these reports to estimate true absence locations i e those due to habitat unsuitability or geographical hindrances in this paper we present a method to generate reliable absence locations of this type for marine species using scientific surveys reports contained in the ocean biogeographic information system obis an authoritative species occurrence dataset our method spatially aggregates information from surveys focussing on the same target species it detects absence locations for a given species as those locations in which repeated surveys that included the species of interest in their target list reported information only on other species we qualitatively demonstrate the reliability of our method using distribution records of the atlantic cod as a case study additionally we quantitatively estimate its performance using another authoritative large species occurrence dataset the global biodiversity information facility gbif we also demonstrate that our approach has higher accuracy and presents complementary behaviour with respect to another method using environmental envelopes our process can support species distribution models as well as other types of models e g climate change models by providing reliable data to presence absence approaches it can manage regional as well as global scale scenarios and runs within a collaborative e infrastructure d4science that publishes it as a service allowing biologists to reproduce repeat and share experimental results,2016,0.976
"Time Budget and Diet of the Booted Eagles in the breeding season in Xinjiang, China",during the breeding seasons of 2010 2016 we have found seven nests of the booted eagle hieraaetus pennatus in xinjiang the west of china we used a method of focal sampling and infrared cameras to continually observe behaviors and nestlings growth nestling behaviors were different between nestling period and post nestling period attendance at the nests by both adults decreased as the nestling aged the female brooded significantly more than the male did during daylight hours p 0 016 f 8 38 df 1 the daily mean number of food items delivered to the nests by adults was 3 2 times day in nestling period and 0 96 day in post nestling period seven orders of wild birds three orders of mammals and domestic poultry were documented as prey,2016,0.416
"Myosotis refracta Boiss. (Boraginaceae), an Unexpected Forget-me-not in the Slovene Flora",boiss is reported as a new and unexpected finding for the slovene flora the species was found in three collections stored in the herbarium lju from south east slovenia in the kolpa river valley bordering croatia all plants thrived under overhanging dolomite rocks on account of an earlier misidentification the respective plant community had been described as the association,2016,0.405
Crop niche modeling projects major shifts in common bean growing areas,crops experience different climate stresses during development the magnitude of damage will depend on the phenological stage of the crop and the stress duration climate change could intensify some or all of these stresses thus negatively impacting agriculture an assessment of staple crop productivity quality and climatically suitable areas under climate change conditions is necessary to undertake any global initiatives to tackle food security issues the common bean phaseolus vulgaris l is a staple crop and the main source of proteins and nutrients in africa and latin america the purpose of this study is to develop a process oriented niche model to assess the impacts of climate change on the current and future potential distribution of common bean and to use this model to investigate the changes in heat cold dry and wet stresses under climate change we used a2 and a1b emission scenarios and two different global climate models csiro mk3 0 and miroc h for the years 2050 and 2100 our results indicate future climate conditions are more favorable for common bean cultivation in the northern hemisphere but are less favorable in the southern hemisphere heat and dry stresses are the main factors limiting and reducing common bean distribution under current and future projected conditions africa and latin america are projected to decrease with respect to suitability for common bean cultivation the model projections indicate that a shift in the common bean productive areas is highly likely with a loss of suitability of the current common bean cultivation areas and an increase in cold regions such as canada the nordic countries and russia the results indicate the likelihood of changes in climatic suitability and the distribution of common bean at a global scale under a future climate which will affect regions where this legume is a staple crop and an important source of household income regions in the northern hemisphere could take advantage of the increase in suitability by increasing the production and exportation of this grain,2016,0.055
Identifying appropriate protected areas for endangered fern species under climate change,the management of protected areas pas is widely used in the conservation of endangered plant species under climate change however studies that have identified appropriate pas for endangered fern species are rare to address this gap we must develop a workflow to plan appropriate pas for endangered fern species that will be further impacted by climate change here we used endangered fern species in china as a case study and we applied conservation planning software coupled with endangered fern species distribution data and distribution modeling to plan conservation areas with high priority protection needs under climate change we identified appropriate pas for endangered fern species under climate change based on the iucn protected area categories from ia to vi and planned additional pas for endangered fern species the high priority regions for protecting the endangered fern species were distributed throughout southern china with decreasing temperature seasonality the priority ranking of all endangered fern species is projected to increase in existing pas accordingly we need to establish conservation areas with low climate vulnerability in existing pas and expand the conservation areas for endangered fern species in the high priority conservation regions,2016,0.978
Multiple colonisations of the Lake Malawi catchment by the genus Opsaridium (Teleostei: Cyprinidae),it has been proposed that the fish faunas of african rivers assemble through multiple colonisation events while lake faunas form additionally through intralacustine speciation while this pattern has been established for many lineages most notably cichlids there are opportunities to further investigate the concept using phylogenies of congeneric endemic species within ancient lake catchments the lake malawi catchment contains three river spawning cyprinids of the genus opsaridium two of which are endemic these species differ in body size migratory behaviour and habitat use but it has never previously been tested if these represent a monophyletic radiation or have instead colonised the lake independently we placed these species in a broader phylogeny of opsaridium and the related genus raiamas including all known species from the river systems surrounding lake malawi our results suggest that each of the species has independently colonised the lake catchment with all three taxa having well defined sister taxa outside of the lake and all sharing a common ancestor ∠14 9 million years ago before the lake malawi basin started to form ∠8 6 million years ago additionally the results strongly support previous observations that opsaridium is not a monophyletic group but instead contains raiamas from the congo drainage together these results are supportive of the concept that river fish faunas within african catchments are primarily assembled through a process of accumulation from independent origins rather than within catchment speciation and adaptive radiation in light of these results we also suggest there is scope for a re evaluation of systematics of both opsaridium and raiamas,2016,0.784
A world of sequences: can we use georeferenced nucleotide databases for a robust automated phylogeography?,aim comparative phylogeography across a large number of species allows investigating community level processes at regional and continental scales an effective approach to such studies would involve automatic retrieval of georeferenced sequence data from nucleotide databases a first step towards an â automated phylogeographyâ it remains unclear if despite repeated calls georeferencing of nucleotide databases has increased in frequency and if accumulated data allow for broad applications based on automated retrieval of sequence data and associated geographical information here we investigated geographical information available in ncbi genbank accessions for tetrapods exploring temporal and geographical patterns in georeferencing and quantifying data available for automated phylogeography location global methods we developed python and r scripts to 1 download metadata from genbank 1 125 514 accessions 20 000 species 2 geocode accessions from associated metadata 3 map originally georeferenced and geocoded accessions and plot their frequency against time 4 assess the size of intraspecific sets of homologous sequences and compare their geographical extent with species ranges thus evaluating their potential for phylogeographical analyses results only 6 2 of surveyed tetrapod genbank submissions reported geographical coordinates without increase in recent years our geocoding raised georeferenced accessions to 15 1 the geographical distribution of georeferenced accessions is patchy and especially sparse in economically underdeveloped areas automatically retrievable informative data sets covering most of the range are available for very few species of wide ranging tetrapods main conclusions although geocoding offers a partial solution to the scarcity of direct georeferencing the amount of data potentially useful for automated phylogeography is still limited strong underrepresentation of hard to access areas suggests that sampling logistics represent a main hindrance to global data availability we propose that besides enhancing georeferencing of genetic data future research agendas should focus on collaborative efforts to sample genetic diversity in biodiversity rich tropical areas,2016,0.635
"Climatic niche conservatism and ecological opportunity in the explosive radiation of arvicoline rodents (Arvicolinae, Cricetidae).",climatic niche conservatism shapes patterns of diversity in many taxonomic groups while ecological opportunity eo can trigger rapid speciation that is less constrained by the amount of time a lineage has occupied a given habitat these two processes are well studied but limited research has considered their joint and relative roles in shaping diversity patterns we characterized climatic and biogeographic variables for 102 species of arvicoline rodents arvicolinae cricetidae testing the effects of climatic niche conservatism and eo on arvicoline diversification as lineages transitioned between biogeographic regions we found that the amount of time a lineage has occupied a precipitation niche is positively correlated with diversity along a precipitation gradient suggesting climatic niche conservatism in contrast shift in diversification rate explained diversity patterns along a temperature gradient our results suggest that an indirect relationship exists between temperature and diversification that is associated with eo as arvicoline rodents colonized warm palearctic environments climatic niche conservatism alone did not fully explain diversity patterns under density dependence highlighting the additional importance of eo related processes in promoting the explosive radiation in arvicoline rodents and shaping diversity pattern among biogeographic regions and along climatic gradients this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.277
Density and spatial distribution of Parkia biglobosa pattern in Benin under climate change,parkia biglobosa is an indigenous species which traditionally contributes to the resilience of the agricultural production system in terms of food security source of income poverty reduction and ecosystem stability therefore it is important to improve knowledge on its density current and future spatial distribution the main objective of this study is to evaluate the tree density the climate change effects on the spatial distribution of the species in the future for better conservation the modeling of the current and future geographical distribution of the species is based on the principle of maximum entropy maxent on a total of 286 occurrence points from field work and global biodiversity information facility gbif data portal www gbif org two climatic models hadgem2 es and csiro mk3 6 0 have been used under two scenarios rcp 2 6 and rcp 8 5 for the projection of the species distribution at the horizon 2050 the correlation analyses and jackknife test have helped to identify seven variables which are less correlated r 0 80 with highest modeling participation the soil annual precipitation bio12 and temperature diurnal average deviation are the variables which have mostly contributed to performance of the models currently 53 of national territory spread from north to south is very suitable to the cultivation of p biglobosa the scenarios have predicted at the horizon 2050 a loss of the habitats which are currently very suitable for the cultivation and conservation of p biglobosa to the benefit of moderate and weak habitats 51 and 57 are the highest proportion of this lost which will be registered with hadgem2 es model under two scenarios these results revealed that the suitable habitat of the species is threatened by climate change in benin in order to limit damage such as decreased productivity extinction of species some appropriate solutions must be found,2016,0.662
"First report of teardrop threadfin bream,Nemipterus isacanthus (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Nemipteridae), from the Solomon Sea, Papua New Guinea",the teardrop threadfin bream nemipterus isacanthus bleeker 1873 is reported from northern new guinea for the first time based on specimens caught by hook and line and photographed in june 2008 and september 2014 at kamiali wildlife management area kwma morobe province papua new guinea a large permanent population exists at kwma thus the known range of n isacanthus is extended by at least 1400 km morphometric and meristic data for specimens caught in september 2014 are provided,2016,0.345
From the Namib around the world: biogeography of the Inuleae-Plucheinae (Asteraceae),aim we investigated the historical biogeography of the inuleaeâ plucheinae asteraceae a group of arid adapted plants with partly unresolved generic circumscriptions in order to understand its origin and spatiotemporal evolutionary history in relation to the cenozoic climate shifts location global with highest species diversity in the southern hemisphere methods the spatiotemporal biogeography of the plucheinae was estimated by both a discrete method using a set of general distribution areas and a relaxed random walk based on extant species distributions the topology was time calibrated using a combination of secondary node ages and secondary derived rates for included loci results our results indicate the median age of the plucheinae to be approximately 15 4 ma the biogeographical analyses infer an ancestral origin in southern africa with the relaxed random walk analysis narrowing the uncertainty down to an area reaching from coastal namibia to the western kalahari africa was colonized in a south westernâ north eastern direction following the spread of arid habitats ancestral representatives of the plucheinae colonized south america on at least three separate occasions 13 0â 4 0 4 3â 3 1 and 4 1â 3 7 ma with one subsequent spread to north america australia was colonized three times between 3 6 and 0 4 ma madagascar and the mascarenes were colonized at least seven times main conclusions the origin of the plucheinae is estimated to the namib region with early speciations and radiations concurring with the timing of aridification of southern africa following the increase in strength of the antarctic circumpolar current and subsequent formation of the benguela upwelling at c 11 8 ma the current biogeographical distribution of the plucheinae is best explained by several neogene long distance dispersal events from tropical africa,2016,0.259
Surfacing the deep data of taxonomy,taxonomic databases are perpetuating approaches to citing literature that may have been appropriate before the internet often being little more than digitised 5 ã 3 index cards typically the original taxonomic literature is either not cited or is represented in the form of a typically abbreviated text string hence much of the â œdeep dataâ of taxonomy such as the original descriptions revisions and nomenclatural actions are largely hidden from all but the most resourceful users at the same time there are burgeoning efforts to digitise the scientific literature and much of this newly available content has been assigned globally unique identifiers such as digital object identifiers dois which are also the identifier of choice for most modern publications this represents an opportunity for taxonomic databases to engage with digitisation efforts mapping the taxonomic literature on to globally unique identifiers can be time consuming but need be done only once furthermore if we reuse existing identifiers rather than mint our own we can start to build the links between the diverse data that are needed to support the kinds of inference which biodiversity informatics aspires to support until this practice becomes widespread the taxonomic literature will remain balkanized and much of the knowledge that it contains will linger in obscurity,2016,0.252
Historical colonization and dispersal limitation supplement climate and topography in shaping species richness of African lizards (Reptilia: Agaminae),to what extent deep time dispersal limitation shapes present day biodiversity at broad spatial scales remains elusive here we compiled a continental dataset on the distributions of african lizard species in the reptile subfamily agaminae a relatively young neogene radiation of agamid lizards which ancestors colonized africa from the arabian peninsula and tested to what extent historical colonization and dispersal limitation i e accessibility from areas of geographic origin can explain present day species richness relative to current climate topography and climate change since the late miocene 10 mya the pliocene 3 mya and the last glacial maximum lgm 0 021 mya spatial and non spatial multi predictor regression models revealed that time limited dispersal via arid corridors is a key predictor to explain macro scale patterns of species richness in addition current precipitation seasonality current temperature of the warmest month paleo temperature changes since the lgm and late miocene and topographic relief emerged as important drivers these results suggest that deep time dispersal constraints â in addition to climate and mountain building â strongly shape current species richness of africaâ s arid adapted taxa such historical dispersal limitation might indicate that natural movement rates of species are too slow to respond to rates of ongoing and projected future climate and land use change,2016,0.825
"Phylogeny, biogeography, and diversification of barn owls (Aves: Strigiformes)",the existence of substantial morphological variation has resulted in the description of numerous subspecies of the cosmopolitan barn owl tyto alba however preliminary studies have revealed a high degree of genetic variation between old and new world barn owls suggesting that the t alba complex may consist of several species we present a comprehensive study of its taxonomy and propose a spatiotemporal framework to explain the origin and patterns of dispersal and diversification within these cosmopolitan owls we used a bayesian relaxed molecular clock approach to assess the timing of diversification to evaluate the biogeographical pattern we considered dispersal in addition to temporal connectivity between areas finally we used ecological niche modelling to evaluate their ecological niches our phylogenetic analyses suggest that barn owls of the old and new world show a high degree of genetic divergence and the barn owls of south and south east asia tyto alba stertens and tyto alba javanica cluster with the australian barn owl tyto delicatula we propose to treat the t alba complex as three species t alba africa europe tyto furcata new world and tyto javanica australasia the dating analyses indicate that the early divergence among the species of the t alba complex took place in the middle miocene and we hypothesize that a common ancestor of the t alba complex lived in africa a potential scenario suggests that t alba dispersed to europe and south western asia during the interglacial periods of the miocene pliocene and dispersed into the new world either via an eastern asian route or a western north atlantic one,2016,0.672
"2nd EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable (Berlin, Germany): How can a European biodiversity network support citizen science?",the second eu bon stakeholder roundtable took place on 27 november 2014 at the museum fã r naturkunde in berlin the roundtable was dedicated to explore ways in which eu bon can support citizen science cs activities eu bon is building an integrated biodiversity information platform in order to serve science policy and administration also citizen scientists and related projects and networks are important stakeholders moreover citizen scientists can play an essential role for biodiversity networks as they support the increase of knowledge in the field of biodiversity in various aspects they may debate research questions most often they collect data in the field and they may interpret data and publish their results at the stakeholder roundtable in berlin various stakeholders from the field of citizen science were invited to discuss possibilities of interactions and the role of eu bon for supporting citizen science on a european scale eu bon products could help cs stakeholders in various ways e g with tools for the standardization of data and training on widely used and accepted data collection standards as well as tools for the visualization interpretation of data also best practice examples and guidelines could help for developing a sound projects design as well as for data curation storage and reward mechanisms for the community e g by making data citable publication of data papers etc the discussions and break out groups gave valuable impulses for the development of the eu bon portal and citizen science gateway for data mobilization from different communities and the linkage to the european citizen science association ecsa and its activities the main outcomes and results of the workshop are outlined and summarized in this roundtable report,2016,0.068
Systematics of Elatine L. (Elatinaceae),little is known about the systematics of elatinaceae which include only bergia and elatine previous taxonomic studies of elatine a group of mostly annual aquatic plants were based only on morphological data thus a comprehensive study using modern molecular techniques would seem necessary in order to gain further insights on the systematics of the genus in this chapter i review the previous taxonomic studies on elatine and summarize the approaches i have taken throughout this dissertation project to achieve a better understanding of the systematics of elatine,2016,0.17
Case study of the implications of climate change for lichen diversity and distributions,there is ample evidence for species distributional changes in response to recent climate change but most studies are biased toward better known taxa thus an integrated approach is needed that includes the â œcryptic diversityâ represented partly by lichens which are among the most sensitive organisms to environmental change due to their physiological characteristics the use of functional traits and ecological attributes may improve the interpretation of how species respond to climate change thus we quantified the future climate change impacts on 41 lichen species distributed in the iberian peninsula using ensemble climatic suitability maps derived from generalized linear and generalized additive models and classification and regression tree analysis and different metrics we also determined the lichen traits attributes that might be related to a shared response to climate change the results indicated a loss of bioclimatic space for 75 of the species studied and an increase for 10 species especially in mediterranean ones most of the species that will lose more than 70 of their current modeled distribution area comprised big macrolichens with cyanobacteria as the photobiont thereby indicating a great biomass loss in forests which might affect nutrient cycles we also found that the predicted distributions were trait related smaller species green algae lichens and saxicolous and epiphyte species will respond better to future climate change the results of this type of study may help to identify the species that are most vulnerable to climate change and facilitate the development of conservation measures to avoid their decline,2016,0.921
"First Report of Peltophorus adustus (Fall) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Baridinae) in Mexico, with Two New Host Associations",peltophorus adustus fall coleoptera curculionidae baridinae is recorded for the first time in mexico on agave vivipara l agave angustifolia haw and a cupreata trel a berger asparagaceae adult weevils were found attacking the agave seed pods and larvae fed in seeds of these agaves the damage to the seed pods and seeds of agave l by this weevil are described mexico is a center of diversity for agave with many native and commercial species with local regional and international impact gentry 1982 granados 1993 in the mexican state of guerrero wild populations and small commercial plantations of â œmaguey espadã nâ a vivipara and â œmaguey papaloteâ a cupreata are harvested for elaboration of the distilled beverage mezcal with a continuing increase in land area dedicated to this crop barrios et al 2006 cultivated agaves are affected by many insect pests mainly the agave weevil scyphophorus acupunctatus gyllenhal coleoptera curculionidae vaurie 1971 waring and smith 1986 velã zquez et al 2006 in mexico agave species are also affected by several other insect pests espinosa et al 2005 barrios et al 2006 aquino et al 2007 gonzã lez et al 2007 pã rez and rubio 2007 in guerrero two weevils have been reported as pests in mezcal agaves s acupunctatus barrios et al 2006 and the spotted agave weevil peltophorus polymitus boheman gonzã lez hernã ndez et al 2015 during recent collecting efforts conducted in native agave populations in guerrero we observed adults of p adustus damaging seed pods fig 1a and larvae feeding in seeds of a cupreata and a vivipara fig 1b which affected seed viability pupal development occurred inside the seed pods among damaged seeds fig 1c adults emerged from their pupal chamber constructed of damaged seed parts fig 1d e adult weevils were killed and conserved in 70 alcohol pinned and identified using the key by sleeper 1963 and by comparison with identified specimens of p polymitus voucher specimens were deposited in the entomological collection at facultad de ciencias naturales universidad autã noma de querã taro querã taro mexico peltophorus adustus fig 2 is a moderately abundant species in agave palmeri engelm sleeper 1963 in arizona and new mexico usa fig 3 it can be easily distinguished from p polymitus by color pattern in p adustus the propleura is whitish and the pronotum is black with lateral areas whitish in contrast the propleura and pronotum of p polymitus are white with irregular black spots additionally p adustus has the lateral margins of the prothorax parallel in basal the two thirds to three fourths in p polymitus the lateral margins of the prothorax are convergent sleeper 1963,2016,0.961
National Earthworm Recording Scheme Report 2016,the earthworm society of britain esb was founded in 2009 to promote earthworms and conduct research distribution data for earthworms across the uk and ireland remains relatively poor compared to other taxa despite acceptance from the scientific community and general public that earthworms are important organisms providing vital ecosystem services such as soil aeration drainage nutrient recycling and decomposition of dead plant material and even our own garden waste in compost heaps between 2009 and 2013 the esbâ s main focus was on training new earthworm recorders achieving grants to purchase vital equipment and promoting the society to the general public via community events family orientated workshops and bioblitz events in 2014 the national earthworm recording scheme ners was launched in earnest and the focus of the society shifted to recording during 2015 the earthworm society of britain continued to improve the guidance and resources available to earthworm recorders and delivered 6 earthworm identification training events across england this report summarises the records received for the period of january 2014 to december 2016 with a focus on 2016,2016,0.244
A vision for global monitoring of biological invasions,managing biological invasions relies on good global coverage of species distributions accurate information on alien species distributions obtained from international policy and cross border co operation is required to evaluate trans boundary and trading partnership risks however a standardized approach for systematically monitoring alien species and tracking biological invasions is still lacking this perspective presents a vision for global observation and monitoring of biological invasions we show how the architecture for tracking biological invasions is provided by a minimum information set of essential variables global collaboration on data sharing and infrastructure and strategic contributions by countries we show how this novel synthetic approach to an observation system for alien species provides a tangible and attainable solution to delivering the information needed to slow the rate of new incursions and reduce the impacts of invaders we identify three essential variables for invasion monitoring alien species occurrence species alien status and alien species impact we outline how delivery of this minimum information set by joint complementary contributions from countries and global community initiatives is possible country contributions are made feasible using a modular approach where all countries are able to participate and strategically build their contributions to a global information set over time the vision we outline will deliver wide ranging benefits to countries and international efforts to slow the rate of biological invasions and minimize their environmental impacts these benefits will accrue over time as global coverage and information on alien species increases,2016,0.925
A review of geographical distribution of the stag beetles in Mediterranean countries (Coleoptera: Lucanidae),a list of recent records of stag beetles coleoptera lucanidae species occurring in mediterranean countries is given to improve the current knowledge on their geographic distribution the saproxylic larvae of the stag beetles are very important for forest ecosystems and some lucanid species are included in the iucn red list and in several national protection lists however the knowledge on their distribution is rather heterogeneous for several countries and taxa because the distribution records are scattered in poorly known papers or hidden in museum or private collections this paper is an attempt to better understanding the distribution of the stag beetle species across the mediterranean region to facilitate research and conservation efforts,2016,0.515
Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph,background one way to think about core biodiversity data is as a network of connected entities such as taxa taxonomic names publications people species sequences images and collections that form the biodiversity knowledge graph many questions in biodiversity informatics can be framed as paths in this graph this article explores this futher and sketches a set of services and tools we would need in order to construct the graph new information in order to build a usable biodiversity knowledge graph we should adopt json ld for biodiversity data develop reconciliation services to match entities to identifiers and a use a mixture of document and graph databases to store and query the data to bootstrap this project we can create wrappers around each major biodiversity data provider and a central cache that is both a document store and a simple graph database this power of this approach should be showcased by applications that use the central cache to tackle specific problems such as augmenting existing data,2016,0.179
A Troubleshooting Guide for Mechanistic Plant Pest Forecast Models,there is copious literature on development and validation of models to forecast risk to crops from arthropods and diseases however there is little published on causes of failure associated with these models this manuscript provides mechanistic model builders and users with a list of likely problems potential causes possible solutions and associated references the problems are divided into four categories environmental inputs model construction and parameterization validation and implementation the list is based on the authorsâ extensive experiences developing and running mechanistic modeling systems a multidisciplinary approach involving researchers with expertise in pest biology crop management meteorology and information technology is recommended for delivering the most effective pest forecast models,2016,0.113
Current and future trends in marine image annotation software,given the need to describe analyze and index large quantities of marine imagery data for exploration and monitoring activities a range of specialized image annotation tools have been developed worldwide image annotation â the process of transposing objects or events represented in a video or still image to the semantic level may involve human interactions and computer assisted solutions marine image annotation software mias have enabled over 500 publications to date we review the functioning application trends and developments by comparing general and advanced features of 23 different tools utilized in underwater image analysis mias requiring human input are basically a graphical user interface with a video player or image browser that recognizes a specific time code or image code allowing to log events in a time stamped and or geo referenced manner mias differ from similar software by the capability of integrating data associated to video collection the most simple being the position coordinates of the video recording platform mias have three main characteristics annotating events in real time posteriorly to annotation and interact with a database these range from simple annotation interfaces to full onboard data management systems with a variety of toolboxes advanced packages allow to input and display data from multiple sensors or multiple annotators via intranet or internet posterior human mediated annotation often include tools for data display and image analysis e g length area image segmentation point count and in a few cases the possibility of browsing and editing previous dive logs or to analyze the annotations the interaction with a database allows the automatic integration of annotations from different surveys repeated annotation and collaborative annotation of shared datasets browsing and querying of data progress in the field of automated annotation is mostly in post processing for stable platforms or still images integration into available mias is currently limited to semi automated processes of pixel recognition through computer vision modules that compile expert based knowledge important topics aiding the choice of a specific software are outlined the ideal software is discussed and future trends are presented,2016,0.115
The enhancement of invasion ability of an annual grass by its fungal endophyte depends on recipient community structure,this research was funded by the university of buenos aires ubacyt g434 2008 2011 dir dr m semmartin and by the national council of scientific and technical research conicet pict 2010 1525 2011 2014 and pict 992 2008 2010 both dir dr m omacini cc was supported by a phd fellowship from conicet,2016,0.286
Relative importance of hydrological variables in predicting the habitat suitability of Euryale ferox Salisb.,aims aquatic ecosystems are a priority for conservation as they have become rapidly degraded with land use changes predicting the habitat range of an endangered species provides crucial information for biodiversity conservation in such rapidly changing environments however the complex network structure of aquatic ecosystems restricts spatial prediction variables and has hitherto limited the use of habitat models to predict species occurrence in aquatic ecosystems we used the maximum entropy model to evaluate the potential distribution of an endangered aquatic species euryale ferox salisb we tested the relative influence of 1 climatic variables 2 topographic variables and 3 hydrological variables derived from remote sensing data to improve the prediction of occurrence of aquatic plant species methods we considered the southern part of the korean peninsula as the modeling extent for the potential distribution of e ferox occurrence records for e ferox were collected from the literature and field surveys we applied maximum entropy modeling using remotely sensed environmental variables and evaluated their relative importance as prediction variables with variation partitioning important findings the species distribution model predicted potential habitats of e ferox that matched the actual distribution well floodplain wetlands and shallow reservoirs were the favored habitats of e ferox quantitative loss and fragmentation of wetland habitats appeared to be a major reason for the decrease of e ferox populations our results also imply that hydrological variables i e ndwi derived from remote sensing data greatly increased model prediction relative contribution 10 5 37 0 in the aquatic ecosystem however inter specific competition within a similar niche environment should be considered to increase the accuracy of the distribution model,2016,0.603
Late Pleistocene divergence and postglacial expansion in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: multilocus phylogeography of Rhopias gularis (Aves: Passeriformes),in the last decade phylogeographic studies have revealed a complex evolutionary history of the brazilian atlantic forest af biota here we investigated the evolutionary history of rhopias gularis an endemic bird of the af based on sequences of two mitochondrial genes and three nuclear introns from 64 specimens from 15 localities we addressed three main questions 1 does the genetic diversity of r gularis exhibit a distribution pattern congruent with the refuge hypothesis postulated for the af 2 is the population genetic structure of r gularis congruent with those observed in other af species 3 what were the possible historical events responsible for the population structure of this species our mtdna data revealed two phylogroups 1 phylogroup central south with samples from the central and southern parts of the range 2 and phylogroup north which included individuals from southern bahia nevertheless nuclear loci did not reveal any evidence of population structure bottleneck tests indicated that the central south lineage experienced demographic expansion starting around 20 kya which coincides with the end of the last glacial maximum however there was no evidence of population growth in phylogroup north isolation with migration analysis indicated that these phylogroups split c a 304 kya with limited gene flow among them palaeodistribution models indicated that r gularis had a reduced distribution in the south and central af during the last glacial maximum our results support a diversification scenario that is in accordance with proposed pleistocene refugia the phylogeographic results from our study exhibited spatial and temporal concordances and discordances with previous studies of organisms from the af differences in habitat requirements of these species could be behind this complex scenario future studies correlating variables of the niche of these species with the observed phylogeographic patterns may help understand why there are congruent and incongruent results,2016,0.824
Species-rich and polyploid-poor: Insights into the evolutionary role of whole-genome duplication from the Cape flora biodiversity hotspot,premise of the study whole genome duplication wgd in angiosperms has been hypothesized to be advantageous in unstable environments and or to increase diversification rates leading to radiations under the first hypothesis floras in stable environments are predicted to have lower proportions of polyploids than highly recently disturbed floras whereas species rich floras would be expected to have higher than expected proportions of polyploids under the second the south african cape flora is used to discriminate between these two hypotheses because it features a hyperdiverse flora predominantly generated by a limited number of radiations cape clades against a backdrop of climatic and geological stability methods we compiled all known chromosome counts for species in 21 clades present in the cape 1653 species including 24 cape clades inferred ploidy levels for these species by inspection or derived from the primary literature and compared cape to non cape ploidy levels in these clades 17 520 species using g tests key results the cape flora has anomalously low proportions of polyploids compared with global levels this pattern is consistently observed across nearly half the clades and across global latitudinal gradients although individual lineages seem to be following different paths to low levels of wgd and to differing degrees conclusions this pattern shows that the diversity of the cape flora is the outcome of primarily diploid radiations and supports the hypothesis that wgd may be rare in stable environments,2016,0.714
An assessment of the conservation status of Mesoamerican crop species and their wild relatives in light of climate change,the landmass from mexico to panama here referred to as mesoamerica is one of the most vulnerable areas to the negative impacts of climate change bid and cepal 2010 almost all climate models predict a decrease in annual precipitation and increased drought in this area in the decades to come magrin et al 2014 it is thought that climate change will lead to an increase in the frequency or intensity of extreme meteorological events in the region seriously affecting national infrastructure and production systems eclac 2014 the region has already shown to be extremely vulnerable to extreme events hurricane mitch in 1998 and stan in 2005 destroyed livelihoods and set back the economy several years recent agricultural statistics show that variations in production in the region are mostly due to climate problems in the form of excess or lack of rainfall and the associated incidence of pests and diseases it will be crucial to develop strategies and efficient and appropriate adaptation actions for the agricultural sector in order to improve food security in the region reduce its vulnerability and increase the resilience of production systems lobell and gourdji 2012 on the other hand adapting to change is not exactly new in the history of agriculture domestication of plants and the origin of agriculture coincided precisely with the global warming that marked the end of the last ice age about 10 000 years ago piperno 2011 since then farmers around the world have modified the adaptive capacity of crops to thrive in a wide variety of climatic conditions resulting in the rich diversity of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture pgrfa we have today pickersgill 2007 gremillion et al 2014 maize for example is cultivated from sea level up to over 4000m a s l in the bolivian altiplano a direct consequence of traditional agricultural innovation today farmers face changes of a nature and scale never experienced in the history of agriculture they need to increase their abilities to use the diversity and wisdom accumulated over several thousands of years to further improve cultivated species adapting them to new climatic conditions and meeting the challenge of feeding a growing population using fewer external inputs the best use of regional genetic diversity will depend on our ability to maximize the synergy of traditional agricultural practices and their body of knowledge with modern multidisciplinary scientific methods an assessment of the conservation status of mesoamerican crop species and their wild relatives in light of climate change pdf download available available from https www researchgate net publication 290193343 an assessment of the conservation status of mesoamerican crop species and their wild relatives in light of climate change accessed apr 26 2016,2016,0.124
Sherborn’s influence on Systema Dipterorum,flies make up more than 10 of the planetary biota and our well being depends on how we manage our coexistence with flies storing and accessing relevant knowledge about flies is intimately connected with using correct names and systema dipterorum provides a single authoritative classification for flies developed by consensus among contributors the 160 000 species of flies currently known are distributed among 160 recent families and some 12 000 genera which with their synonyms encompass a total of more than a quarter of a million names these names and their associated classification are shared with relevant global solutions sherborn appears to have done remarkably well indexing diptera names with an overall error rate estimated to be close to 1,2016,0.463
"Novelties in the family Acanthaceae from South Western Ghats, India.",within the context of the floristic study of the family acanthaceae from south western ghats one new species strobilanthes philipmathewiana j mathew amp yohannan is described in addition a new combination hygrophila auriculata k schum heine var alba parmar p m salim j mathew amp yohannan and substantiate the occurrence of asystasia variabilis nees trimen in india are made here their taxonomic description morphological differences to their allied taxa and colour photographs are provided to facilitate easy identification in the field,2016,0.414
Modelling responses of western Amazonian palms to soil nutrients,understanding the responses of individual plant species along different edaphic gradients is a key question in ecology with implications to community assembly functioning of forest ecosystems niche theory and conservation planning in tropical rain forests responses to soil nutrients have been described only for a handful of species even abundant and conspicuous components of the forest such as the palms arecaceae remain largely unknown in this respect we inventoried all palm species and analysed soil chemistry in 96 sites across western amazonia to i assess the relative importance of some micronutrients vs macronutrients as drivers of patterns in palm species composition ii model the response shapes of 61 palm taxa and of canopy vs understorey palms along gradients of selected soil nutrients iii determine if the response shapes of conspecific palm varieties differ in relation to the most important observed soil nutrient and iv assess if the rank order of the most abundant canopy species changes along edaphic gradients patterns in palm species composition were best explained by mehlich iii extractable exchangeable bases ca k mg and phosphorus p with the different palm species clearly separating along the soil cation concentration gradient all 61 palm taxa exhibited statistical responses along soil nutrient gradients response shapes in relation to exchangeable bases varied among bimodal skewed 51 of species unimodal skewed 47 and monotonic 2 there were no significant differences between canopy vs understorey species in their mean response shapes to the exchangeable bases but canopy species had significantly higher mean optimum value for soil p and greater mean niche width along the ca k mg p and boron b gradients varieties of the same species of bactris desmoncus and geonoma generally had different response shapes and different optima for the exchangeable bases synthesis among the soil variables we studied macronutrients especially exchangeable bases and p emerged as more important than micronutrients in predicting species abundances in palm communities of western amazonian non inundated forests non gaussian responses were predominant conspecific palm varieties exhibited different response types and the rank order of dominance of canopy palms varied along the gradients of exchangeable bases and p together these findings advance niche theory about palms and may be used for generating better predictive models of palm species distributions and for experimental studies that search for the physiological mechanisms underlying inter and infra specific trade offs along edaphic gradients,2016,0.977
Early warning systems for biodiversity in southern Africa – How much can citizen science mitigate imperfect data?,it is a hard reality that virtually all countries no matter how well resourced take conservation and land use decisions based on highly patchy and imperfect data if indeed any data at all despite a mushrooming of scientific evidence and journals in the past decade and open access provision of many expensive global datasets developing countries in particular often have to make do with inaccurate and coarse scale global data in the absence of targeted local data to solve immediate conservation problems to what extent can citizen science data compensate for the patchiness of conventional government gathered scientific data in order to support planning policy and management we demonstrate how southern africa s citizen science based â œearly warning system for biodiversityâ is used to support land use planning and conservation decisions including red list strategic and project based environmental impact assessments and national protected area expansion and implementation strategies this system integrates volunteer based species atlases such as the protea atlas project and southern african bird atlas project sabap species population monitoring such as the custodians of rare and endangered wildflowers crew project and site based rapid assessment and monitoring such as mybirdpatch and bioblitz countries in southern africa are on a sharp continuum of research capacity funding political engagement and own datasets yet there is the capacity for adaptive management systems based in significant part on civil society volunteerism crucially these must be underpinned by statistically sound simple repeatable scientific protocols which are still rare in africa,2016,0.164
A New Engagement Model to Complete and Operate the National Ecological Observatory Network,as the impacts of environmental change grow there is a more urgent imperative to provide consistent long term ecological data for research and education for the societal benefit of the united statesâ that is north america and elsewhere holdren et al 2014 peters et al 2008 2014 president s council of advisors on science and technology pcast 2011 collins et al 2010 to meet these needs the national ecological observatory network neon was conceived after more than a decade of planning and engagement with the ecological communities neon is novel by 1 adopting the cause and effect paradigm and 2 providing a robust scaling strategy to collect local site based information and scale this information to the region and continent and from instantaneous to decadal temporal scales schimel et al 2011 www neonscience org neon is designed to act as a single coordinated continental scale instrument to assess the ecological trends and environmental pulse of the nation neon s data products are intended to address the grand challenges for environmental science that the national academy of science has advocatedâ biodiversity biogeochemistry climate change ecohydrology invasive species infectious disease and land use change national research council nrc 2001 building a large scale distributed research infrastructure for the environmental science community such as neon has never been attempted before and its full potential has yet to be realized by the ecological community loescher et al 2016 neon has been under an extended period of public scrutiny of late office of inspector general oig 2014 mervis 2015a b c engineers and scientists actually involved in the design and construction of a large scale research infrastructure understand that it is a complex problem influenced by multiple opinions as to what it should be and why it should be built schimel and keller 2015,2016,0.099
"The cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka: an annotated provisional catalogue, regional checklist and bibliography",background the cicadas of the indian subcontinent like many other insects in the region have remained understudied since the early part of the 20th century and await modern taxonomic systematic and phylogenetic treatment this paper presents an updated systematic catalogue of cicadas hemiptera cicadidae from india bangladesh bhutan myanmar nepal and sri lanka the first in over a century new information this paper treats 281 species including india and bangladesh 189 species bhutan 19 species myanmar 81 species nepal 46 species and sri lanka 22 species for each species all recognized junior synonyms are included with information on the type material and additional specimens where relevant the global distributional range and notes on the taxonomy of each species are included where appropriate two lists are provided 1 species known to occur in india and bangladesh treated as a geographic unit bhutan myanmar nepal and sri lanka and 2 species previously listed from these countries in error a bibliography of species descriptions is provided with the papers containing the original descriptions provided where copyright allows,2016,0.936
"The invasion of the azooxanthellate coral Tubastraea (Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) throughout the world: history, pathways and vectors",in this review we describe the history pathways and vectors of the biological invasion of the azooxanthellate coral tubastraea scleractinia dendrophylliidae throughout the world in order to do so we consulted previous reports in the literature and also compiled new unpublished information on the distribution of the three species of tubastraea which have been reported as non indigenous species both within their native and non native ranges and also on vectors and where cryptogenic we combine these data with historical aspects of marine vectors in order to get insights into how tubastraea species have successfully spread around the world established and invaded and where future studies would be best focused t coccinea and t tagusensis are recognized as being highly invasive and are causing significant environmental economic and social impacts requiring management actions the third species t micranthus so far only reported outside its native range on oil platforms may have similar potential for negative impact the vectors of introduction of tubastraea may have changed throughout history and the biological invasion of these invasive corals may reflect changing practices demands and legislation in shipping activities over the years today it is clear that these corals are fouling organisms strongly associated with oil and gas platforms worldwide which are thus primary vectors for new introductions,2016,0.631
Distinct Processes Drive Diversification in Different Clades of Gesneriaceae,using a time calibrated phylogenetic hypothesis including 768 gesneriaceae species out of 3300 species and more than 29 000 aligned bases from 26 gene regions we test gesneriaceae for diversification rate shifts and the possible proximal drivers of these shifts geographic distributions growth forms and pollination syndromes bayesian analysis of macroevolutionary mixtures analyses found five significant rate shifts in beslerieae core nematanthus core columneinae core streptocarpus and pacific cyrtandra these rate shifts correspond with shifts in diversification rates as inferred by binary state speciation and extinction model and geographic state speciation and extinction model associated with hummingbird pollination epiphytism unifoliate growth and geographic area our results suggest that diversification processes are extremely variable across gesneriaceae clades with different combinations of characters influencing diversification rates in different clades diversification patterns between new and old world lineages show dramatic differences suggesting that the processes of diversification in gesneriaceae are very different in these two geographic regions,2016,0.408
Modelling the influence of biotic factors on species distribution patterns,biotic interactions can have large effects on species distributions yet their role in shaping species ranges is seldom explored due to historical difficulties in incorporating biotic factors into models without a priori knowledge on interspecific interactions improved sdms which account for biotic factors and do not require a priori knowledge on species interactions are needed to fully understand species distributions here we model the influence of abiotic and biotic factors on species distribution patterns and explore the robustness of distributions under future climate change we fit hierarchical spatial models using integrated nested laplace approximation inla for lagomorph species throughout europe and test the predictive ability of models containing only abiotic factors against models containing abiotic and biotic factors we account for residual spatial autocorrelation using a conditional autoregressive car model model outputs are used to estimate areas in which abiotic and biotic factors determine speciesâ ranges inla models containing both abiotic and biotic factors had substantially better predictive ability than models containing abiotic factors only for all but one of the four species in models containing abiotic and biotic factors both appeared equally important as determinants of lagomorph ranges but the influences were spatially heterogeneous parts of widespread lagomorph ranges highly influenced by biotic factors will be less robust to future changes in climate whereas parts of more localised species ranges highly influenced by the environment may be less robust to future climate sdms that do not explicitly include biotic factors are potentially misleading and omit a very important source of variation for the field of species distribution modelling to advance biotic factors must be taken into account in order to improve the reliability of predicting species distribution patterns both presently and under future climate change,2016,0.885
"Records of bilateral gynandromorphism in three species of ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) in Norway",a olsen k m 2016 records of bilateral gynandromorphism in three species of ants hymenoptera formicidae in norway norwegian journal of entomology 63 65â 70 this paper describes and illustrates three new cases of gynandromorphism in three ant species leptothorax kutteri buschinger 1965 polyergus rufescens latreille 1798 and formica lugubris zetterstedt 1838 all specimens described have bilateral asymmetry in which one side is male and one is female gynandromorphism is in general a very rare phenomenon the specimens of p rufescens and f lugubris were collected from exceptionally warm microhabitats a fact that might affect the probability for gynandromorphism to appear,2016,0.584
Subtropical species of Sinningia (Gesneriaceae): distribution patterns and limiting environmental factors,the neotropical genus sinningia nees encompasses tuberous herbs or subshrubs which occupy a wide range of environments with respect to climate and soil or substrate types the genus has more than 70 species distributed from southern mexico to northern argentina with a diversity centre in the brazilian atlantic rainforest in this ecosystem a large number of species occur in several particular vegetation types occupying terrestrial rupestrial and epiphytic substrates the aims of this study were to describe the distribution patterns of subtropical sinningia species and to determine possible limiting factors for their range extension we summarized environmental data for 21 subtropical species ten geographical and ecological variables were subdivided into several regional or local conditions the occurrence of species in each of these conditions was obtained from published material herbarium reviews and field expeditions we used exploratory multivariate approaches cluster and ordination analyses to assess the contribution of these variables to speciesâ ecological and geographical distributions comparisons between groups of species were evaluated using randomization tests two major patterns of geographic distribution were identified for subtropical sinningia species widespread and restricted species richness according to spatial and climatic variables showed four distinct patterns habitat tolerance of the species also distinguished two groups in a wider continuum context cluster analysis resulted in two stable groups which coincided almost entirely with an a priori classification based on geographic range ordination analysis showed a distinction between widespread and restricted species as well as a gradient of substrate occupancy patterns of ecological and geographical distribution were strongly related to the evolutionary history of the genus the southern distribution limit of sinningia is mainly linked to shifts in vegetation types around the 30â s parallel where the northern forested atlantic and paranean biogeographic provinces give place to the southern non forested espinal and pampean provinces,2016,0.959
The Flora Mycologica Iberica Project fungi occurrence dataset,the dataset contains detailed distribution information on several fungal groups the information has been revised and in many times compiled by expert mycologist s working on the monographs for the flora mycologica iberica project fmi records comprise both collection and observational data obtained from a variety of sources including field work herbaria and the literature the dataset contains 59 235 records of which 21 393 are georeferenced these correspond to 2 445 species grouped in 18 classes the geographical scope of the dataset is iberian peninsula continental portugal and spain and andorra and balearic islands the complete dataset is available in darwin core archive format via the global biodiversity information facility gbif,2016,0.461
"Abyssal fauna of the UK-1 polymetallic nodule exploration area, Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific Ocean: Cnidaria",background we present data from a dna taxonomy register of the abyssal cnidaria collected as part of the abyssal baseline abyssline environmental survey cruise â ab01â to the uk seabed resources ltd uksrl polymetallic nodule exploration area â uk 1â in the eastern clarion clipperton zone ccz central pacific ocean abyssal plain this is the second paper in a series to provide regional taxonomic data for a region that is undergoing intense deep sea mineral exploration for high grade polymetallic nodules data were collected from the uk 1 exploration area following the methods described in glover et al 2015b new information morphological and genetic data are presented for 10 species and 18 records identified by a combination of morphological and genetic data including molecular phylogenetic analyses these included 2 primnoid octocorals 2 isidid octocorals 1 anemone 4 hydroids including 2 pelagic siphonophores accidentally caught and a scyphozoan jellyfish in the benthic stage of the life cycle two taxa matched previously published genetic sequences pelagic siphonophores two taxa matched published morphological descriptions abyssal primnoids described from the same locality in 2015 and the remaining 6 taxa are potentially new species for which we make the raw data imagery and vouchers available for future taxonomic study we have used a precautionary approach in taxon assignments to avoid over estimating species ranges the clarion clipperton zone is a region undergoing intense exploration for potential deep sea mineral extraction we present these data to facilitate future taxonomic and environmental impact study by making both data and voucher materials available through curated and accessible biological collections for some of the specimens we also provide image data collected at the seabed by rov wich may facilitate more accurate taxon designation in coming rov or auv surveys,2016,0.593
Paradise lost already? A naturalist interpretation of the pelagic avian and marine mammal detection database of the IceAGE cruise off Iceland and Faroe Islands in fall 2011,we present naturalist sightings of seabirds and marine mammals made during a research cruise with the iceage project off iceland and the faroe islands during september 2011 our findings from the obtained pelagic database are in line with many other more in depth studies showing major declines for pelagic seabirds and likely sea mammals thus revising the role that iceland now plays for such species northern fulmar fulmarus glacialis was the most recorded species followed by different gulls black legged kittiwake rissa tridactyla and northern gannet morus bassanus however atlantic puffin fratercula arctica and common murre uria aalge were only seen very rarely and no observations were made of dovekie alle alle or thick billed murre u lomvia these observations were surprising since iceland is known so far to host globally relevant populations of these auk species a surprising high number of thirteen species of passerines were also detected offshore mostly wheatear oenanthe oenanthe meadow pipit anthus pratensis and reed bunting emberiza schoeniclus only a few marine mammals balaenoptera and megaptera sp were encountered our detections present underestimates but are discussed in relation to ongoing and recently reported but dramatic anthropogenic changes of iceland and in the north atlantic overall these include the substantial decrease in bird populations overfishing and subsequent trophic cascades as well as climate change arctic shipping and more industrial development to come in light of these dramatic ecological changes we conclude with an urgent request for an improved effective conservation management for iceland the north atlantic and its stakeholders for directly related global governance to handle problems proactively,2016,0.757
A high-resolution model of bat diversity and endemism for continental Africa,bats are the second most species rich mammal group numbering more than 1270 species globally our knowledge of their geographic distributions and diversity patterns however is very limited â possibly the poorest among mammals â mainly due to their nocturnal and volant life history and challenging fieldwork conditions in the tropics where most bat species occur this knowledge gap obscures the geographic extent of ecosystem services provided by bats i e pollination seed dispersal and insect control translates into inefficient conservation policies and restricts macroecological analyses to coarse spatial resolutions in contrast to the currently prevailing method of estimating species distributions using expert drawn range maps correlative species distribution models sdms can provide estimates at very fine spatial grains and largely account for widespread sample bias as well as the prevalent wallacean shortfall in species occurrence data very few such studies have hitherto been published that cover a large and complete taxonomic group with fine resolution at continental extent using an unparalleled amount of occurrence data the maxent algorithm and tailored solutions to specific modelling challenges we created sdms for nearly all 250 african bat species to explore emerging diversity patterns at a resolution of 1km2 predicted species richness generally increases towards the equator conforming to expectations within the tropical area of elevated richness several pronounced richness peaks and lows stand out hinting at a complex interplay of determining factors richness gradients are often steep decreasing strongly away from streams and especially so in savanna biomes species richness also seems positively associated with rugged terrain in particular at lower elevations centres of endemism are found primarily at low latitudes near major elevational ranges overlap with hotspots of species richness is rather low and confined to five or six topodiverse relatively low lying areas between western guinea and the east african coast several poorly sampled regions are identified that may represent rewarding future survey targets our results demonstrate the value of stacking sdms to infer plausible continent wide diversity gradients at a spatial resolution fine enough to directly inform conservation policies and to open up new avenues in macroecological research,2016,0.959
"Investigating past range dynamics for a weed of cultivation, Silene vulgaris",since the last glacial maximum lgm many plant and animal taxa have expanded their ranges by migration from glacial refugia weeds of cultivation may have followed this trend or spread globally following the expansion of agriculture or ruderal habitats associated with human mediated disturbance we tested whether the range expansion of the weed silene vulgaris across europe fit the classical model of postglacial expansion from southern refugia or followed known routes of the expansion of human agricultural practices we used species distribution modeling to predict spatial patterns of postglacial expansion and contrasted these with the patterns of human agricultural expansion a population genetic analysis using microsatellite loci was then used to test which scenario was better supported by spatial patterns of genetic diversity and structure genetic diversity was highest in southern europe and declined with increasing latitude locations of ancestral demes from genetic cluster analysis were consistent with areas of predicted refugia species distribution models showed the most suitable habitat in the lgm on the southern coasts of europe these results support the typical postglacial northward colonization from southern refugia while refuting the east to west agricultural spread as the main mode of expansion for s vulgaris we know that s vulgaris has recently colonized many regions including north america and other continents through human mediated dispersal but there is no evidence for a direct link between the neolithic expansion of agriculture and current patterns of genetic diversity of s vulgaris in europe therefore the history of range expansion of s vulgaris likely began with postglacial expansion after the lgm followed by more recent global dispersal by humans,2016,0.543
Biogeographic bases for a shift in crop C : N : P stoichiometries during domestication,we lack both a theoretical framework and solid empirical data to understand domestication impacts on plant chemistry we hypothesised that domestication increased leaf n and p to sup port high plant production rates but biogeographic and climate patterns further influenced the magnitude and direction of changes in specific aspects of chemistry and stoichiometry to test these hypotheses we used a data set of leaf c n and p from 21 herbaceous crops and their wild progenitors domestication increased leaf n and or p for 57 of the crops moreover the lati tude of the domestication sites negatively related to temperature modulated the domestication effects on p c n p and c p ratios further results from a litter decomposition assay showed that domestication effects on litter chemistry affected the availability of soil n and p our findings draw attention to evolutionary effects of domestication legacies on plant and soil stoichiometry and related ecosystem services e g plant yield and soil fertility,2016,0.219
Support for the elevational Rapoport's rule among seed plants in Nepal depends on biogeographical affinities and boundary effects,as one of the most important hypotheses on biogeographical distribution rapoport s rule has attracted attention around the world however it is unclear whether the applicability of the elevational rapoport s rule differs between organisms from different biogeographical regions we used stevensâ method which uses species diversity and the averaged range sizes of all species within each 100 m elevational band to explore diversity elevation range elevation and diversity range relationships we compared support for the elevational rapoport s rule between tropical and temperate species of seed plants in nepal neither tropical nor temperate species supported the predictions of the elevational rapoport s rule along the elevation gradient of 100â 6 000 m a s l for any of the studied relationships however along the smaller 1 000â 5 000 m a s l gradient 4 300 m a s l for range elevation relationships which is thought to be less influenced by boundary effects we observed consistent support for the rule by tropical species although temperate species did not show consistent support the degree of support for the elevational rapoport s rule may not only be influenced by hard boundary effects but also by the biogeographical affinities of the focal taxa with ongoing global warming and increasing variability of temperature in high elevation regions tropical taxa may shift upward into higher elevations and expand their elevational ranges causing the loss of temperate taxa diversity relevant studies on the elevational rapoport s rule with regard to biogeographical affinities may be a promising avenue to further our understanding of this rule,2016,0.539
Comparing species distributions modelled from occurrence data and from expert-based range maps. Implication for predicting range shifts with climate change,species range and climate change risk are often assessed using species distribution models sdm that model species niche from presence points and environmental variables and project it in space and time these presence points frequently originate from occurrence data downloaded from public biodiversity databases but such data are known to suffer from high biases there is thus a need to find alternative sources of information to train these models in this regard expert based range maps such as those provided by the international union for conservation of nature iucn have the potential to be used as a source of species presence in a sdm workflow here i compared the predictions of sdm built using true occurrences provided by gbif or inaturalist or using pseudo occurrences sampled from iucn expert based range maps in current and future climate i found that the agreement between both types of sdm did not depend on the spatial resolution of environmental data but instead were affected by the number of points sampled from range maps and even more by the spatial congruence between input data a strong agreement between occurrence data and range maps resulted in very similar sdm outputs which suggests that expert knowledge can be a valuable alternative source of data to feed sdm and assess potential range shifts when the only available occurrences are biased or fragmentary,2016,0.753
Mapping ignorance: 300 years of collecting flowering plants in Africa,aim spatial and temporal biases in species occurrence data can compromise broad scale biogeographical research and conservation planning although spatial biases have been frequently scrutinized temporal biases and the overall quality of species occurrence data have received far less attention this study aims to answer three questions 1 how reliable are species occurrence data for flowering plants in africa 2 where and when did botanical sampling occur in the past 300 years 3 how complete are plant inventories for africa location africa methods by filtering a publicly available dataset containing 3 5 million records of flowering plants we obtained 934 676 herbarium specimens with complete information regarding species name date and location of collection based on these specimens we estimated inventory completeness for sampling units sus of 25 km ã 25 km we then tested whether the spatial distribution of well sampled sus was correlated with temporal parameters of botanical sampling finally we determined whether inventory completeness in individual countries was related to old or recently collected specimens results thirty one per cent of sus contained at least one specimen whereas only 2 4 of sus contained a sufficient number of specimens to reliably estimate inventory completeness we found that the location of poorly sampled areas remained almost unchanged for half a century moreover there was pronounced temporal bias towards old specimens in south africa the country that holds half of the available data for the continent there high inventory completeness stems from specimens collected several decades ago main conclusions despite the increasing availability of species occurrence data for africa broad scale biogeographical research is still compromised by the uncertain quality and spatial and temporal biases of such data to avoid erroneous inferences the quality and biases in species occurrence data should be critically evaluated and quantified prior to use to this end we propose a quantification method based on inventory completeness using easily accessible species occurrence data,2016,0.769
"Zelkova carpinifolia ( Pall . ) C . Koch ( Ulmaceae ) in Turkey (Relict Tree):Floristics,Ecology,DistrubitionandThreats",zelkova spach an ancient tree is a member of the ulmaceae family zelkova of about six species zelkova sicula di pasq garfã quã zel zelkova abelicea lam boiss zelkova carpinifolia pall c koch zelkova serrata thunb makino zelkova schneideriana hand mazz and zelkova sinica c k schneid of deciduous semi evergreen trees occurring in written in woodland thickets and in italy greece turkey iran and asia zelkova have alternate ovate to elliptic toothed leaves most species display good fall colour of yellows and orange browns zelkova carpinifolia known as caucasian elm caucasian zelkova or just zelkova is a species of zelkova native to the caucasus kaã kar and alborz mountains in the extreme southeast of europe and southwest asia turkey azerbaijan iran georgia armenia zelkova carpinifolia is highly valued as an ornamental owing to its unusual outline having a relatively short wide trunk that divides into many ascending branches it is rare in many regions and listed as near threatened according to iucn red list criteria in turkey for example only a few highly isolated populations are known kars hakkã ri siirt muåÿ it seems very probable that other yet undiscovered sites with z carpinifolia still exist on turkey therefore additional field surveys should be undertaken currently there is no legal protection for this species in this study the genus of zelkova floristic and ecological characteristics were studied distribution areas in the world and turkey is shown on the map and threat categoriesis based on the iucn red list criteria in addition pictures and images of the zelkova carpinifolia species is given photos are taken in turkey s hakkari province,2016,0.895
Why is gynodioecy a rare but widely distributed sexual system? Lessons from the Lamiaceae.,gynodioecy a sexual system where females and hermaphrodites co occur is found in 1 of angiosperm species to understand why gynodioecy is rare we need to understand why females are maintained in some lineages but not in others we modelled the evolution of gynodioecy in the lamiaceae and investigated whether transition rates between gynodioecious and nongynodioecious states varied across the family we also investigated whether the evolution of gynodioecy was correlated with the evolution of a herbaceous growth form and temperate distribution transition rates differed between lamiaceae subfamilies in the nepetoideae there were many transitions towards gynodioecy n 11 but also many reversions to nongynodioecy n 29 in addition a herbaceous growth form but not a temperate distribution affected the rate of transitions both towards and away from gynodioecy transitions towards gynodioecy occurred ëœ16 times more frequently and transitions away from gynodioecy occurred ëœ11 times more frequently in herbaceous lineages than in woody lineages within the lamiaceae lineages in which gynodioecy has frequently evolved also have a high rate of reversions to the nongynodioecious state consequently to understand why gynodioecy is rare we need to understand why sexual systems are more evolutionarily labile in some lineages than in others,2016,0.167
A comparison of absolute performance of different correlative and mechanistic species distribution models in an independent area,to investigate the comparative abilities of six different bioclimatic models in an independent area utilizing the distribution of eight different species available at a global scale and in australia global scale and australia we tested a variety of bioclimatic models for eight different plant species employing five discriminatory correlative species distribution models sdms including generalized linear model glm maxent random forest rf boosted regression tree brt bioclim together with climex cl as a mechanistic niche model these models were fitted using a training dataset of available global data but with the exclusion of australian locations the capabilities of these techniques in projecting suitable climate based on independent records for these species in australia were compared thus australia is not used to calibrate the models and therefore it is as an independent area regarding geographic locations to assess and compare performance we utilized the area under the receiver operating characteristic roc curves auc true skill statistic tss and fractional predicted areas for all sdms in addition we assessed satisfactory agreements between the outputs of the six different bioclimatic models for all eight species in australia the modeling method impacted on potential distribution predictions under current climate however the utilization of sensitivity and the fractional predicted areas showed that glm maxent bioclim and cl had the highest sensitivity for australian climate conditions bioclim calculated the highest fractional predicted area of an independent area while rf and brt were poor for many applications it is difficult to decide which bioclimatic model to use this research shows that variable results are obtained using different sdms in an independent area this research also shows that the sdms produce different results for different species for example bioclim may not be good for one species but works better for other species also when projecting a â œlargeâ number of species into novel environments or in an independent area the selection of the â œbestâ model technique is often less reliable than an ensemble modeling approach in addition it is vital to understand the accuracy of sdms predictions further while tss together with fractional predicted areas are appropriate tools for the measurement of accuracy between model results particularly when undertaking projections on an independent area auc has been proved not to be our study highlights that each one of these models cl bioclim glm maxent brt and rf provides slightly different results on projections and that it may be safer to use an ensemble of models,2016,0.359
Biodiversity data obsolescence and land uses changes,background primary biodiversity records pbr are essential in many areas of scientific research as they document the biodiversity through time and space however concerns about pbr quality and fitness for use have grown especially as derived from taxonomical geographical and sampling effort biases nonetheless the temporal bias stemming from data ageing has received less attention we examine the effect of changes in land use in the information currentness and therefore data obsolescence in biodiversity databases methods we created maps of land use changes for three periods 1956â 1985 1985â 2000 and 2000â 2012 at 5 kilometres resolution for each cell we calculated the percentage of land use change within each period we then overlaid distribution data about small mammals and classified each data as â non obsolete or â obsolete â depending on both the amount of land use changes in the cell and whether changes occurred at or after the data samplingâ s date results a total of 14 528 records out of the initial 59 677 turned out to be non obsolete after taking into account the changes in the land uses in navarra these obsolete data existed in 115 of the 156 cells analysed furthermore more than one half of the remaining cells holding non obsolete records had not been visited at least for the last fifteen years conclusion land use changes challenge the actual information obtainable from biodiversity datasets and therefore its potential uses with the passage of time one can expect a steady increase in the availability and use of biological recordsâ but not without them becoming older and likely to be obsolete by land uses changes therefore it becomes necessary to assess recordsâ obsolescence as it may jeopardize the knowledge and perception of biodiversity patterns,2016,0.234
"New Records of Ants from Oaxaca, Southern Mexico",abstract a new list of ant species from the state of oaxaca southern mexico is presented eighteen species are reported for the first time from the state the genera are acromyrmex mayr 1865 atta fabricius 1818 camponotus mayr 1861 cephalotes latreille 1802 dorymyrmex mayr 1866 ectatomma smith 1858 monomorium mayr 1855 neoponera emery 1901 odontomachus latreille 1804 pheidole westwood 1839 tapinoma fã erster 1850 and tetramorium pergande 1896 after this study the total number of ant species recorded for oaxaca was 108,2016,0.397
Standardization and Quality Control in Data Collection and Assessment of Threatened Plant Species,informative data collection is important in the identification and conservation of rare plant species data sets generated by many small scale studies may be integrated into large distributed databases and statistical tools are being developed to extract meaningful information from such databases a diversity of field methodologies may be employed across smaller studies however resulting in a lack of standardization and quality control which makes integration more difficult here we present a case study of the population level monitoring of two threatened plant species with contrasting life history traits that require different field sampling methodologies the limestone glade bladderpod physaria filiformis and the western prairie fringed orchid plantanthera praeclara although different data collection methodologies are necessary for these species based on population sizes and plant morphology the resulting data allow for similar inferences different sample designs may frequently be necessary for rare plant sampling yet still provide comparable data various sources of uncertainty may be associated with data collection e g random sampling error methodological imprecision observer error and should always be quantified if possible and included in data sets and described in metadata ancillary data e g abundance of other plants physical environment weather climate may be valuable and the most relevant variables may be determined by natural history or empirical studies once data are collected standard operating procedures should be established to prevent errors in data entry best practices for data archiving should be followed and data should be made available for other scientists to use efforts to standardize data collection and control data quality particularly in small scale field studies are imperative to future cross study comparisons meta analyses and systematic reviews,2016,0.458
A new Eurasian phylogeographical paradigm? Limited contribution of southern populations to the recolonization of high latitude populations in Juniperus communis L. (Cupressaceae),aim the aims of this population genetics study of the common juniper across eurasia were to 1 assess the contribution of southern mountain ranges to the post glacial recolonization of high latitudes and 2 test whether recent expansion or high gene flow could explain the low genetic differentiation in northern eurasia location northern eurasia and mountain regions of central europe and asia methods six hundred and twenty two individuals were sampled in 42 populations two chloroplast dna cpdna fragments were investigated trnt trnl and 16s trna analyses of the distribution of haplotypes across the continent included a suite of phylogeographical and phylogenetic tests putative geographical distribution in the past was reconstructed using environmental niche modelling results eighty four haplotypes clustered into four main clades gl1 gl4 the largest clade gl3 corresponds to populations from the alps northern europe western caucasus and siberia these populations were moderately differentiated 28 compared to the total range 76 and fu s fs statistic was negative indicating a population expansion some haplotypes within gl3 form subclades with a restricted geographical distribution suggesting a local origin of the mutation and limited dispersal in line with these findings modelling of ecological niches found no significant reduction in the expected range during the lgm remarkably populations from the eastern part of north caucasus the himalayas tien shan and south siberia were distinctly different from populations in the rest of the range main conclusions as in siberian larch species the pattern of genetic diversity at cpdna across the natural range of j communis suggests that colonization of northern europe and siberia started from a limited area and predated the last glaciation it is likely that juniper survived the subsequent glacial epoch at high latitudes in cryptic refugia serving as secondary centres of recolonization southern mountain refugia contribution to the recolonization of high latitudes was at best limited,2016,0.789
"Revised distribution of an Alaskan endemic, the Alaska Hare (Lepus othus), with implications for taxonomy, biogeography, and climate change",the alaska hare lepus othus merriam 1900 is the largest lagomorph in north america but remains one of the most poorly studied terrestrial mammals on the continent its current distribution is restricted to western alaska south of the brooks range but historical accounts from north of the brooks range the north slope have led to confusion over its past present and predicted future distributions to determine if l othus occurs or historically occurred on the north slope we surveyed museum collections vetted observational accounts and produced a spatial distribution model based on the resulting georeferenced records we located a historic specimen long presumed lost that suggests the occurrence of l othus on the north slope as recently as the late 1800s we also uncovered evidence of l othus and or mountain hare lepus timidus linnaeus 1758 on several islands in the bering sea raising the possibility of recurring gene flow between these closely related species across seasonal ice connecting,2016,0.484
Rabies in Costa Rica: Documentation of the Surveillance Program and the Endemic Situation from 1985 to 2014.,this is the first comprehensive epidemiological analysis of rabies in costa rica we characterized the occurrence of the disease and demonstrated its endemic nature in this country in costa rica as in other countries in latin america hematophagous vampire bats are the primary wildlife vectors transmitting the rabies virus to cattle herds between 1985 and 2014 a total of 78 outbreaks of bovine rabies was reported in costa rica with documented cases of 723 dead cattle of cattle outbreaks 82 occurred between 0 and 500 meters above sea level and seasonality could be demonstrated on the pacific side of the country with significantly more outbreaks occurring during the wet season a total of 1588 animal samples or an average of 55 samples per year was received by the veterinary authority senasa for rabies diagnostic testing at this time of all samples tested 9 143 1588 were positive of these 85 6 125 1588 were from cattle four dogs 0 3 4 1588 were diagnosed with rabies in this 30 year period simultaneously an extremely low number n 3 of autochthonous rabies cases were reported among human patients all of which were fatal however given the virus zoonotic characteristics and predominantly fatal outcome among both cattle and humans it is extremely important for healthcare practitioners and veterinarians to be aware of the importance of adequate wound hygiene and postexpositional rabies prophylaxis when dealing with both wild and domestic animal bites,2016,0.874
Habitat diversity predicts orchid diversity in the tropical south-west Pacific,aim to determine if habitat diversity as estimated by climatic and topographic variables can predict patterns of orchid diversity on different islands and archipelagos with similar explanatory power to biogeographical variables such as area isolation and age of an island location sixty three islands on eight archipelagos solomon islands vanuatu new caledonia fiji samoa tonga niue and the cook islands in the south west pacific methods for each island we determined the orchid species present age area isolation and indicators of topographic heterogeneity and climatic variability we then determined the power of various biogeographical climatic and topographic variables to predict the number of indigenous and endemic species on archipelagos and on islands within archipelagos using generalized linear models glms and generalized linear mixed models glmms respectively results we identified a total of 552 species in 110 genera area was the only significant biogeographical variable for predicting patterns of orchid species diversity on archipelagos and islands however climatic and topographic predictors of habitat diversity performed similarly well the range in curvature was the best indicator of species richness from the topographic variables while the range of temperature was the best climatic predictor these key variables were often strongly correlated with area main conclusions climatic and topographic variables are useful indicators of habitat diversity the high explanatory power of area and climatic and topographic predictors and the strong correlation among these variables suggests that increasing habitat diversity with increasing area may be the major driver of the speciesâ area relationship using climatic and topographic variables as predictors of species richness therefore allows determining the key environmental factors and processes driving species diversity,2016,0.939
Using a WebMapping Platform to Engage Volunteers to Collect Data on Invasive Plants Distribution,webmapping and citizen science are increasing their importance as tools both in science communication and in gathering abundant data nevertheless gathering good and plentiful data from citizens when the scientific theme is unknown to them is a demanding challenge invasoras pt is a science communication endeavor that targets the general public and one of its core elements is a webmapping platform that intends to engage volunteers to geolocate invasive plants in portugal besides gathering data for scientific research and to support management the platform raises awareness about invasive plants the platform has been available since march 2013 and receives data from a smartphone application and a web application validated sightings are shown on an online map all data is available through a google fusion table and gbif database open data logic several strategies interactive contents printed materials workshops and social media were used to overcome the challenges of engaging contributors and making them better skilled to contribute with good data after two years of steady growth in members ca 600 and sightings 5400 the results are better than expected particularly amongst a population not familiarized with either citizen science or invasive plants the outcomes of the platform and the efficacy of each strategy are analyzed and the accuracy and usefulness of the data are discussed,2016,0.081
Improving spatial transferability of ecological niche model of Hevea brasiliensis using pooled occurrences of introduced ranges in two biogeographic regions of India,improved spatial transferability of ecological niche models is crucial for accurately predicting species preferred habitat this is especially true for a planted tree species hevea brasiliensis muell arg amazonian valley of south america az is known as native range of this species to test the transferability of maxent ecological niche model among two distinct bio geographical regions of india western ghats wg and north east ne regions and az the present study was designed the present spatial distribution of h brasiliensis was evaluated using the maxent algorithm using bioclimatic variables and species occurrence data from respective regions an alternate approach of calibrating the model with pooled occurrence points of various introduced ranges of the species was adapted for predicting the species presence in unsampled region spatial distribution of hevea species in two biogeographic regions of india modelled by maxent was found to be quite accurate when the model was calibrated with the sampled occurrence points of the same region as evidenced from our previous studies however the present study addresses the issue related to transferability of niche based model to predict the probable distribution of hevea species in an unsampled region based on either its native or introduced range of the species the result indicates that transferability depends on the extent of similarity between the climatic spaces occupied by the species in sampled region and unsampled regions of the species distribution the spatial transferability of the model was improved by using pooled occurrence data of the species from both introduced regions,2016,0.967
"Capronia josefhafellneri sp. nov. (Ascomycota, Herpotrichiellaceae) and some other Lichenicolous Fungi from Vietnam",abstract zhurbenko m p etayo j demidova a n zhdanov i s 2016 capronia josefhafellneri sp nov ascomycota herpotrichiellaceae and some other lichenicolous fungi from vietnam â herzogia 29 364â 373 eleven species of lichenicolous fungi are recorded from bi doup nui ba national park in vietnam capronia josefhafellneri growing on apothecia and thallus of septotrapelia triseptata is described as new to science it is characterized by comparatively short setae up to 30 î m long and 0 1 2 septate ascospores clypeococcum rugosisporum and zwackhiomyces diederichii are reported as new to asia and abrothallus usneae arthophacopsis cf parmeliarum lichenoconium erodens pseudoseptoria usneae and roselliniella cladoniae new to southeast asia arthophacopsis cf parmeliarum is found on hypotrachyna species,2016,0.516
World Register of marine Cave Species (WoRCS): a new Thematic Species Database for marine and anchialine cave biodiversity,scientific exploration of marine cave environments and anchialine ecosystems over recent decades has led to outstanding discoveries of novel taxa increasing our knowledge of biodiversity however biological research on underwater caves has taken place only in a few areas of the world and relevant information remains fragmented in isolated publications and databases this fragmentation makes assessing the conservation status of marine cave species especially problematic and this issue should be addressed urgently given the stresses resulting from planned and rampant development in the coastal zone worldwide the goal of the world register of marine cave species worcs initiative is to create a comprehensive taxonomic and ecological database of known species from marine caves and anchialine systems worldwide and to present this as a thematic species database tsd of the world register of marine species worms worcs will incorporate ecological data e g type of environment salinity regimes and cave zone as well as geographical information on the distribution of species in cave and anchialine environments biodiversity data will be progressively assembled from individual database sources at regional national or local levels as well as from literature sources estimate 20 000 existing records of cave dwelling species scattered in several databases information will be organized in the worcs database following a standard glossary based on existing terminology cave related information will be managed by the worcs thematic editors with all data dynamically linked to worms and its team of taxonomic editors in order to mobilize data into global biogeographic databases a gazetteer of the marine and anchialine caves of the world will be established the presence records of species could be eventually georeferenced for submission to the ocean biogeographic information system obis and constitute an important dataset for biogeographical and climate change studies on marine caves and anchialine systems,2016,0.89
Cryptic diversity in the New World burying beetle fauna: Nicrophorus hebes Kirby; new status as a resurrected name (Coleoptera: Silphidae: Nicrophorinae),burying beetles silphidae nicrophorus fabricius 1775 are known for their biparental care and monopolization of small vertebrate car â casses in subterranean crypts they have been the focus of intense behavioral ecological research since the 1980s and the new world fauna was taxonomically revised in the 1980s here with new molecular ecological reproductive incompatability and morphological data we report the discovery that n vespilloides in most of north america except alaska yukon northwest territories is not conspecific with old world n vespilloides dna barcode data split this species into two bins each shows different habitat preferences most larvae from hybrid crosses fail to reach four days of age and diagnostic characters were found on the epipleuron and metepisternum that help to sepaâ rate the species the oldest available name for this other set of north american populations is nicrophorus hebes kirby 1837 which we now treat as valid new status this study brings the new world total to 22 species for the genus and given the rarity of n hebes and its tight association with wetlands justifies further investigation into its conservation status,2016,0.747
Long-distance dispersal and inter-island colonization across the western Malagasy Region explain diversification in brush-warblers (Passeriformes: Nesillas ),the present study examines the colonization history and phylogeography of the brush warblers nesillas a genus of passerines endemic to islands of the western indian ocean madagascar comoros and aldabra atoll the phylogeny of all recognized nesillas taxa was reconstructed employing bayesian phylogenetic methods and divergence times were estimated using a range of substitution rates and clock assumptions spatiotemporal patterns of population expansion were inferred and niches of different lineages were compared using ecological niche modelling our results indicate that taxa endemic to the comoros are paraphyletic and that the two endemic species on madagascar nesillas typica and nesillas lantzii are not sister taxa the brush warblers started to diversify approximately 1 6 mya commencing with the separation of the clade formed by two species endemic to the comoros nesillas brevicaudata and nesillas mariae from the rest of the genus the lineages leading to the two malagasy species diverged approximately 0 9 mya each with significantly different modern ecological niches and the subject of separate demographic processes patterns of diversification and endemism in nesillas were shaped by multiple long distance dispersal events and inter island colonization a recurring pattern for different lineages on western indian ocean islands the diversification dynamics observed for nesillas are also consistent with the taxon cycle hypothesis,2016,0.64
The biodiversity hotspot as evolutionary hot-bed: spectacular radiation of Erica in the Cape Floristic Region,the disproportionate species richness of the worldâ s biodiversity hotspots could be explained by low extinction the evolutionary â œmuseumâ and or high speciation the â œhot bedâ models we test these models using the largest of the species rich plant groups that characterise the botanically diverse cape floristic region cfr the genus erica l we generate a novel phylogenetic hypothesis informed by nuclear and plastid dna sequences of c 60 of the c 800 erica species of which 690 are endemic to the cfr and use this to estimate clade ages using reltime beast net diversification rates geiger and shifts in rates of diversification in different areas bamm musse the diversity of erica species in the cfr is the result of a single radiation within the last c 15 million years compared to ancestral lineages in the palearctic the rate of speciation accelerated across africa and madagascar with a further burst of speciation within the cfr that also exceeds the net diversification rates of other cape clades erica exemplifies the â œhotbedâ model of assemblage through recent speciation implying that with the advent of the modern cape a multitude of new niches opened and were successively occupied through local species diversification,2016,0.844
Integrating Multiple Spatial Datasets to Assess Protected Areas: Lessons Learnt from the Digital Observatory for Protected Area (DOPA),the digital observatory for protected areas dopa has been developed to support the european unionâ s efforts in strengthening our capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data so that they are readily accessible to policymakers managers researchers and other users assessing protected areas for biodiversity conservation at national regional and international scales implies that methods and tools are in place to evaluate characteristics such as the protected areasâ connectivity their species assemblages including the presence of threatened species the uniqueness of their ecosystems and the threats these areas are exposed to typical requirements for such analyses are data on protected areas information on species distributions and threat status and information on ecosystem distributions by integrating all these global data consistently in metrics and indicators the dopa provides the means to allow end users to evaluate protected areas individually but also to compare protected areas at the country and ecoregion level to for example identify potential priorities for further conservation research action and funding since the metrics and indicators are available through web services the dopa further allows end users to develop their own applications without requiring management of large databases and processing capacities in addition to examples illustrating how the dopa can be used as an aid to decision making we discuss the lessons learnt in the development of this global biodiversity information system and outline planned future developments for further supporting conservation strategies,2016,0.456
"Haemoproteus erythrogravidus n. sp. (Haemosporida, Haemoproteidae): Description and molecular characterization of a widespread blood parasite of birds in South America.",the great diversity of birds and ecosystems in the andean mountains has been understudied in terms of their parasite species we describe a new haemoproteus parasite h parahaemoproteus erythrogravidus infecting zonotrichia capensis rufous collared sparrow in south america the description of this blood parasite species is supported by morphological and molecular data based on a fragment of cytochrome b gene cyt b and complete mitochondrial genome sequences the new species is closely related to h parahaemoproteus coatneyi and it can be readily distinguished from the latter parasite due to morphology of its blood stages particularly 1 the formation of a marked protrusion on envelope of infected erythrocytes by the majority of developing gametocytes a feature which is unique for this haemoproteus species and 2 the extremely attenuated width of the growing dumbbell shaped macro and microgametocytes additionally h erythrogravidus is shown to be a monophyletic taxon that diverges from h coatneyi at the molecular level we provide the complete mitochondrial dna genome for both h coatneyi and h erythrogravidus molecular and morphological evidences indicate that h erythrogravidus is present in ecuador and colombia and genetic lineages with 100 of identity for the cyt b gene were reported in chile per㺠and venezuela our study also indicates that h erythrogravidus and h coatneyi are sympatric sister taxa sharing z capensis as a host species across its distribution which could be the result of sympatric speciation or complex biogeographic processes further studies on the distribution and evolutionary history of z capensis and its parasites h erythrogravidus and h coatneyi insight for our better understanding of the factors and dynamics driving parasite speciation,2016,0.968
Phytochemical constituents and pharmacological activities of Lagerstroemia floribunda Jack. (Kedah bungor): A Review,this is the first report on review of lagerstroemia species which includes the detailed description on phytochemistry and its pharmacological research despite being rich in important phytochemicals and having possible medicinal value there is no enough information available on this plant lagerstroemia floribunda jack also known as thai crape myrtle and kedah bungor is a species of flowering plant in the lythraceae family this delightful ornamental plant is native to subtropical and tropical south east asia from southern china to myanmar thailand cambodia indo china and peninsular malaysia the phytoconstituents of lagerstroemia floribunda includes 23 hydroxyursoiic acid alphitolic acid ursolic acid dihydro î cyclopyrethrosin sesamin î sitosterol clauslactone k betulinic acid lingueresinol ent isolariciresinol some of the researches that are being carried out on this plant include total phenolic contents and antioxidative activity of its flowers this review will help to provide detailed information on recent researches done on this plant,2016,0.304
Meter scale variation in shrub dominance and soil moisture structure Arctic arthropod communities,the arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world this impacts arctic species both directly through increased temperatures and indirectly through structural changes in their habitats species are expected to exhibit idiosyncratic responses to structural change which calls for detailed investigations at the species and community level here we investigate how arthropod assemblages of spiders and beetles respond to variation in habitat structure at small spatial scales we sampled transitions in shrub dominance and soil moisture between three different habitats fen dwarf shrub heath and tall shrub tundra at three different sites along a fjord gradient in southwest greenland using yellow pitfall cups we identified 2 547 individuals belonging to 47 species we used species richness estimation indicator species analysis and latent variable modeling to examine differences in arthropod community structure in response to habitat variation at local within site and regional scales between sites we estimated species responses to the environment by fitting species specific generalized linear models with environmental covariates species assemblages were segregated at the habitat and site level each habitat hosted significant indicator species and species richness and diversity were significantly lower in fen habitats assemblage patterns were significantly linked to changes in soil moisture and vegetation height as well as geographic location we show that meter scale variation among habitats affects arthropod community structure supporting the notion that the arctic tundra is a heterogeneous environment to gain sufficient insight into temporal biodiversity change we require studies of species distributions detailing species habitat preferences,2016,0.993
The Network of Knowledge approach: improving the science and society dialogue on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Europe,the absence of a good interface between scientific and other knowledge holders and decision makers in the area of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been recognised for a long time despite recent advancements e g with the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes challenges remain particularly concerning the timely provision of consolidated views from different knowledge domains to address this challenge a strong and flexible networking approach is needed across knowledge domains and institutions here we report on a broad consultation process across europe to develop a network of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services nok an approach aiming at 1 organising institutions and knowledge holders in an adaptable and responsive framework and 2 informing decision makers with timely and accurate biodiversity knowledge the consultation provided a critical analysis of the needs that should be addressed by a nok and how it could complement existing european initiatives and institutions at the interface between policy and science among other functions the nok provides consolidated scientific views on contested topics identification of research gaps to support relevant policies and horizon scanning activities to anticipate emerging issues the nok includes a capacity building component on interfacing activities and contains mechanisms to ensure its credibility relevance and legitimacy such a network would need to ensure credibility relevance and legitimacy of its work by maximizing transparency and flexibility of processes quality of outputs the link to data and knowledge provision the motivation of experts for getting involved and sound communication and capacity building,2016,0.093
Species distribution models for natural enemies of monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) larvae and pupae: distribution patterns and implications for conservation,prey populations can be strongly influenced by predators and parasitoids and migratory prey whose distributions vary geographically throughout their breeding seasons encounter different combinations of predators and parasitoids throughout their range north american monarch butterflies danaus plexippus are susceptible to a wide variety of natural enemies but the distribution of these natural enemies has not been quantified we developed ecological niche models using environmental data to identify areas with suitable abiotic conditions for eight known natural enemies of monarchs including six predators arilus cristatus harmonia axyridis monomorium minimum podisus maculiventris polistes spp and solenopsis geminata and two parasitoids lespesia archippivora and pteromalus cassotis we combined correlated suitable areas for individual predators and parasitoids to identify regions with the most predator and parasitoid species potential the gulf coast west coast florida and parts of the eastern united states are predicted to have the most natural enemy species we suggest that future research should assess monarch mortality rates in these areas and that monarch conservation strategies consider pressure from natural enemies,2016,0.55
"Biodiversity assessment of the Fagaras Mountains, Romania",this report aims to summarise the existing knowledge concerning the biodiversity of the fagaras mountains in the southern carpathians of romania it is intended to provide a basis for an assessment of the ecosystem services that are being provided and that could be provided by the area the fagaras mountains consist of an uninterrupted 70 80 km long ridge that reaches to over 2500 m in altitude with many side ridges branching off creating a highly variable topography as well as containing romanian s highest mountain it also contains the largest area of continuous alpine zone habitat in romania the slopes are covered with spruce forests at higher altitudes and mixed deciduous forests at lower altitudes at lower altitudes land use gives way extensive low intensity agriculture at the forest farmland interface and then more intensive agriculture where soils permit most of the mountain range is protected within two natura 2000 sites that combine to an area of 2436 km2 and these adjoin several other natura 2000 sites and other romanian protected areas our biodiversity assessment consisted of collecting existing data from published and unpublished sources over 72 of the area is forested with the rest consisting of alpine grasslands 25 and rock scree and bogs some patches of virgin forest have been identified along the northern slopes of the mountain range and many areas have not been surveyed the biodiversity of the fagaras mountains has not been as well studied as in many of the neighbouring regions however it was still possible to build up a good preliminary species of species diversity for some species groups including mammals 57 species birds 130 species amphibians 17 species reptiles 13 species fish 12 species freshwater crayfish 2 species butterflies and moths 563 species beetles 125 species dragonflies 15 species spiders 40 species water bugs 22 species water mites 28 species lichens 144 species and plants 895 species for other species groups such as fungi 19 species snails 6 species and crickets 2 species there is clearly a lot more registration to do before these species lists will become complete of these species a total of 107 are of eu community interest being listed on either the habitats directive or the birds directive many of the species are also on the national romanian red list in terms of its size species diversity and ecological integrity the fagaras mountains are clearly an area with a very high biodiversity value the majority of the records we found come from only two areas that have been comparatively well studied sinca noua and the upper dambovita river basin as a result further studies of new areas andother species groups are clearly going to lead to an increase in the areas known diversity most of the area is subject to multiple human land uses such as forestry hunting livestock grazing the gathering of berries and mushrooms and low intensity agriculture these have formerly been conducted with low intensity and in ways that have been largely compatible with biodiversity conservation however recent trends have been towards an intensification of all human activities in recent years most visibly shown by the introduction of poorly regulated clear cutting of forests in addition the area has been subject to a lot of poorly planned development such as small scale hydro electric plants second homes and tourist infrastructure there is therefore a desperate need to establish land use zoning plans and guidelines for practices forestry hunting livestock grazing gathering of non timber forest products infrastructure development agriculture that are compatible with the conservation objectives of the natura 2000 site while the urgency of the situation requires that this work start at once to avoid irreversible changes a great deal of further work to map habitats and species is needed in order to fine tune management guidelines for the specific human activities and land uses,2016,1
Modelling present and future global distributions of razor clams (Bivalvia: Solenidae),razor clams pharidae and solenidae are deep burrowing bivalves that inhabit shallow waters of the tropical subtropical and temperate seas using â maximum entropyâ a species distribution modelling software we predicted the most suitable environments for the entire family and 14 solen species to indicate their present and future geographic distributions distance to land depth and sea surface temperature sst were the most important environmental variables in training and creating the present and future distribution models both at the family and species level in the present distribution models at the family level the most suitable environment was where distance to land was between 0 and 100 km a depth of 0â 150 m wave height of 5â 7 m a mean chlorophyll a concentration about 0 7 mg m∠3 and mean sst between 12 and 28 â c comparison with the future distribution models at the species level found that most species were predicted to shift their distribution ranges poleward under the future environmental scenarios i e species in the northern hemisphere would shift northward and southern species southward models also predicted that half of the species would expand their distribution ranges 29 of species would not change their distribution and 21 of species would shrink their distribution ranges under future climate change expanding geographic ranges would result in overlap in species ranges and thus greater species richness at regional scales model results predict that the mid latitude peaks of species richness will move further apart increasing the dip in richness near the equator due to global climate change,2016,0.99
Vulnerability of subarctic and arctic breeding birds,recent research predicts that future climate change will result in substantial biodiversity loss associated with loss of habitat for species however the magnitude of the anticipated biodiversity impacts are less well known studies of species vulnerability to climate change through species distribution models are often limited to assessing the extent of speciesâ exposure to the consequences of climate change to their local environment neglecting species sensitivity to global change the likelihood that species or populations will decline or go extinct due to climate change also depends on the general sensitivity and adaptive capacity of species hence analyses should also obtain more accurate assessments of their vulnerability we addressed this by constructing a vulnerability matrix for 180 bird species currently breeding in subarctic and arctic europe that integrates a climatic exposure based vulnerability index and a natural history trait based vulnerability index species that may need extra conservation attention based on our matrix include the great snipe gallinago media the rough legged buzzard buteo lagopus the red throated pipit anthus cervinus the common swift apus apus the horned lark eremophila alpestris and the bar tailed godwit limosa lapponica our vulnerability matrix stresses the importance of looking beyond exposure to climate change when species conservation is the aim for the species that scored high in our matrix the future in the region looks grim and targeted conservation actions incorporating macro ecological and global perspectives may be needed to alleviate severe population declines we further demonstrate that climate change is predicted to significantly reduce the current breeding range of species adapted to cold climates in subarctic and arctic europe the number of incubation days and whether the species was a habitat specialist or not were also amongst the variables most strongly related to predicted contraction or expansion of speciesâ breeding ranges this approach may aid the identification of vulnerable bird species worldwide,2016,0.994
Is it possible to distinguish alien species of beetles (Coleoptera) from native ones?,species established outside their native ranges are termed alien biological invasions of beetles are poorly studied distinguishing between alien and native species is necessary for conservation as well as for taxonomic zoogeographic and evolutionary studies it constitutes a difficult problem but the experience of botany and some branches of zoology gives reasons to believe that it is not unsolvable the following criteria for distinguishing alien beetle species from native ones are proposed based on the criteria developed for plants algae mammals and marine invertebrates 1 detection of an established population of the species which has not been recorded earlier in the region 2 disjunction of the range which cannot be explained by disjunction of suitable landscapes or host plant ranges 3 expansion of a part of the range isolated from its main part 4 highly localized distribution in an area adjacent to a known invasion pathway 5 establishment in other regions 6 dependency on another non native species feeding on an alien host plant or animal 7 absence of specific parasites in the given region and their presence in some other region 8 association with anthropogenic biotopes 9 sharp fluctuations of abundance 10 lack of taxonomically close species in the given region and their presence in other regions 11 detection in the region of two or more taxonomically and or ecologically close species typical of another region 12 presence of known vectors of invasion 13 low genetic diversity 14 reproduction by parthenogenesis or inbreeding these criteria are mere indirect evidences of the alien status of a species in the given territory because numerous exceptions exist usually it is impossible to recognize an alien species by a single criterion but matching several criteria characterizes the species as an alien one with high probability,2016,0.993
Scaling-up camera traps: monitoring the planet's biodiversity with networks of remote sensors,countries committed to implementing the convention on biological diversity s 2011â 2020 strategic plan need effective tools to monitor global trends in biodiversity remote cameras are a rapidly growing technology that has great potential to transform global monitoring for terrestrial biodiversity and can be an important contributor to the call for measuring essential biodiversity variables recent advances in camera technology and methods enable researchers to estimate changes in abundance and distribution for entire communities of animals and to identify global drivers of biodiversity trends we suggest that interconnected networks of remote cameras will soon monitor biodiversity at a global scale help answer pressing ecological questions and guide conservation policy this global network will require greater collaboration among remote camera studies and citizen scientists including standardized metadata shared protocols and security measures to protect records about sensitive species with modest investment in infrastructure and continued innovation synthesis and collaboration we envision a global network of remote cameras that not only provides real time biodiversity data but also serves to connect people with nature,2016,0.432
"Distribution, biology and habitat of the rare European osmiine bee species Osmia (Melanosmia) pilicornis (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae, Osmiini)",osmia pilicornis is distributed from western temperate europe to western siberia where it exclusively occurs in open structured mesophilous and mainly deciduous woodland below 1000 m a s l in central europe its peak activity ranges from the last third of march to the first third of june due to its rarity and its low population densities over most of its range the biology of o pilicornis was only fragmentarily known the discovery of six nests in the course of the present study revealed that females of o pilicornis have a unique nesting behaviour among the osmiine bees they gnaw their nests in dead wood with the aid of their strong mandibles which have a peculiar chisel like shape hypothesized to be an adaptation to the speciesâ specialized nesting behaviour all six nests were in dead fallen branches of different tree and shrub species and of varying wood hardness the nesting branches had a diameter of 1 5â 6 1 cm lay on sun exposed ground and were largely hidden under vegetation the nests contained one to three linearly arranged brood cells both cell partitions and nest plug were built from chewed leaves harvested from fragaria vesca osmia pilicornis was identified as a new host of the chrysidid wasp chrysura hirsuta and the ichneumonid wasp hoplocryptus confector developed in its nests microscopical analysis of scopal pollen loads of collected females revealed that pollen is mainly collected from three plant taxa i e pulmonaria boraginaceae fabaceae e g lathyrus vicia and lamiaceae e g ajuga glechoma on flowers of pulmonaria which is the most important pollen host over most of the speciesâ range the females use specialized bristles on their proboscis to brush pollen out of the narrow corolla tube they almost exclusively exploit pollen rich flowers in the early red stage and they often steal pollen from still closed flowers by forcefully opening buds on their search for females males of o pilicornis patrol flowers of pulmonaria in a rapid flight regularly interrupted by short resting periods on the ground females are grasped for copulation both during flower visits and in flight between the flowers the wide spectrum of semi open mesophilous woodland types colonized by o pilicornis suggests that dead fallen branches and a rich spring flora in combination with a rather warm but not xeric microclimate are the only requisites needed by the species as the great majority of woodland habitats currently occupied by o pilicornis in central europe owe their origin to human forest use the recent decline of o pilicornis in many regions of europe may have been caused by changes in woodland management practices leading to closed and dark forests not suitable as habitats for this specialized bee species,2016,0.844
Improving collection efforts to avoid loss of biodiversity: lessons from comprehensive sampling of lycophytes and ferns in the subtropical Atlantic Forest,estimating species richness with herbarium data and new collections allows us to understand the distribution of diversity we investigated the accuracy of lycophyte and fern sampling along a vegetation gradient in the subtropical atlantic forest in southern brazil we compiled lycophyte and fern collection metadata and estimated species richness and assessed sampling accuracy for sixty 50 x 50 km units using ace chao 1 chao 2 jackknife 1 and jackknife 2 estimators we compiled data for 12 779 fern specimens of 441 species 67 of which were sampled in only one unit singletons and 35 in two units duplicates of the 60 units examined only 11 had observed values that were above 70 of their estimated values and 14 had observed levels between 65 70 of the estimated values meaning that 35 units had a sampling accuracy of less than 65 in spite of the long history of lycophyte and fern collecting in the study area there remain units with a lower than expected sampling accuracy for a subtropical forest this finding indicates that a sizeable collection effort is needed in order to discover the actual distribution of species before the effects of fragmentation and deforestation become permanent,2016,0.697
Towards Process-based Range Modeling of Many Species,understanding and forecasting speciesâ geographic distributions in the face of global change is a central priority in biodiversity science the existing view is that one must choose between correlative models for many species versus process based models for few species we suggest that opportunities exist to produce process based range models for many species by using hierarchical and inverse modeling to borrow strength across species fill data gaps fuse diverse data sets and model across biological and spatial scales we review the statistical ecology and population and range modeling literature illustrating these modeling strategies in action a variety of large coordinated ecological datasets that can feed into these modeling solutions already exist and we highlight organisms that seem ripe for the challenge,2016,0.42
Molecular data and ecological niche modelling reveal the evolutionary history of the common and Iberian moles (Talpidae) in Europe,according to mitochondrial data the common mole talpa europaea is paraphyletic this could be explained by either an ancient introgression of mtdna from the iberian blind mole t occidentalis to t europaea or the existence of a differentiated taxonomic entity in northern spain that needs to be described in this study we combined mitochondrial cytb and nuclear hdac2 data to investigate these two alternative hypotheses based on both mitochondrial and nuclear data and an extensive geographical sampling 399 sequenced individuals we show that the populations of t europaea from spain and south western france south of the loire river are phylogenetically closer to t occidentalis than to t europaea the spanishâ french lineage has some morphological characters resembling more to t occidentalis e g eyes and others resembling more to t europaea external measurements mesostyle of the first upper molar it also seems to have several distinctive dental characters suggesting that it should be recognized as a new species within the three lineages we found a marked phylogeographical pattern with several allopatric or parapatric lineages dating from the pleistocene our genetic data combined with species distribution models support the presence of several putative glacial refugia during glacial maxima for each species,2016,0.733
"The Stonefly (Plecoptera) of Ireland – Distribution, Life Histories & Ecology.",the stonefly are a ubiquitous freshwater insect group with origins dating back to the permian period and the super continent pangea about 250 million years ago they are one of the largest and longest lived of aquatic insects found in our streams rivers and lakes second only to the dragonflies in both respects freshwater ecologists often identify this group by their â two tailsâ or cerci when doing bankside assessments of rivers and lakes at present nineteen species of stonefly occur in ireland with some very common and some very rare in their distribution the juvenile or larval stage is aquatic and is generally found in our streams rivers and lakes for most of the year the majority of the irish stonefly live for about one year and reach approximately 6 to 10 mm in length however two of the larger stonefly species in irish waters from the subgroup known as perlidae can reach up to 33 mm in length and may live as larvae for over three years before becoming adults all stonefly adults are terrestrial emerging or â hatchingâ onto banksides in late spring and early summer once out of the water they quickly mate and lay their eggs before dying usually within a few days or weeks at most stonefly are known to exhibit some amazing behaviours one of which is the technique to find a mate this behaviour known as â drummingâ involves the adult male stonefly hitting its abdomen against vegetation trees or bankside substrates and listening for a similar reply from a female the female remains stationary with the male moving regularly stopping to â drumâ until the pair meet and mate amazingly each species appears to have a unique drumming signal which can even be used to identify them this book contains the most up to date knowledge on the irish stoneflies bringing together detailed information on the ecology and distributions of each species the book is fully illustrated with comprehensive distribution maps and is complemented with images and illustrations for each species published by the national biodiversity data centre in waterford this is the first of a series of species atlases being brought to the irish public over the next few years now available to purchase from biodiversity ireland at ht the stonefly plecoptera of ireland â distribution life histories ecology pdf download available available from https www researchgate net publication 290394655 the stonefly plecoptera of ireland distribution life histories ecology accessed mar 30 2016,2016,0.961
Checklist of Serengeti Ecosystem Grasses,we present the first taxonomic checklist of the poaceae species of the serengeti tanzania a review of the literature and herbarium specimens recorded 200 species of grasses in line with similar studies in other parts of east africa the checklist is supported by a total of 939 herbarium collections full georeferenced collection data is made available alongside a summary checklist in pdf format more than a quarter of the species are known from a single collection highlighting the need for further research especially concerning the rare species and their distribution,2016,0.632
Integrated Cytogenetic and Mitochondrial DNA Analyses Indicate That Two Different Phenotypes of Hypancistrus (L066 and L333) Belong to the Same Species.,the diversity of hypancistrus species in the xingu river is remarkable and the variation in color morphs represents a real challenge to taxonomists to delimit species boundaries one of the most recognizable hypancistrus complexes is the worm lined species known in the aquarium trade as king tiger plec in english hypancistrus pã o in portuguese or under the l numbers l066 and l333 that represent two melanic pigment pattern phenotypes to assess the identity of these two phenotypes we described their karyotypes and sequenced part of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase i gene dna barcode these fishes have 52 chromosomes 40 meta submetacentric and 12 subtelo acrocentric and a strong heteromorphism in chromosome pair 21 was observed which does not correlate with the two phenotypes or sex dna barcodes separated the samples analyzed from hypancistrus zebra and other publicly available sequences of loricariidae showing no divergence between the two phenotypes the data set indicates that worm lined hypancistrus from the xingu form a single species with clear chromosomal and melanic pigment pattern polymorphisms,2016,0.802
The Role of Mount Pleasant Cemetery in the ex situ Conservation of Tree Species at Risk of Extinction,protecting tree species at risk of extinction is an important global issue but there is a lack of research on the role that canadian arboretums play in actively conserving these species ex situ unep 2009 la vie et al 2009 in order to investigate this subject a case study of mount pleasant cemetery mpc was conducted mpc acts not only a cemetery but as an arboretum home to a wide variety of tree species this study examines the role of mpc in the ex situ conservation of tree species at risk by investigating the following questions i which tree species at risk are currently held in the mpc collection ii and which species at risk are found in other canadian arboretum and botanical garden collections the results of this study show that mount pleasant cemetery has the following canadian tree species at risk currently held in in their collection magnolia acuminate castanea dentata fraxinus quadrangulata juglans cinerea ptelea trifoliate gymnocladus dioicus pinus flexilis and morus rubra while the average number of tree species at risk for other canadian arboretums and botanical gardens was 7 there are 8 at mpc these findings demonstrate that mount pleasant cemetery has tree species at risk in their collection and that these species should be managed accordingly specifically mpc has the opportunity to play a role in the ex situ conservation of these species through activities such as research propagation education and display,2016,0.977
Water supply and demand remain coordinated during breakdown of the global scaling relationship between leaf size and major vein density,vein networks that disobey the global scaling of major vein density with leaf size shed light on functional constraints of vein network formation in dicotyledons understanding their evolution distribution and impact on veinâ stomataâ climate associations is an important contribution to our global view of vein network organization based on vein traits of 55 species of pantropical ochnaceae stomata and climatic niche data and a dated molecular phylogeny we unveil major structural shifts in vein networks through deep time relationships between leaf size vein and stomata traits and their interplay with climate dense 2â veins reduction of minor veins and the associated breakdown of veinâ leaf size scaling evolved multiple times independently in ochnaceae in spite of the drastic changes in vein architecture in this venation type vein and stomatal densities remain correlated our study demonstrates that shortening the major veinâ stomata distance is economically not less advantageous than by increasing minor vein density as illustrated by the same degree of coordination between vein and stomatal densities and the similar construction costs across networks with dense 2â veins and those with â normallyâ spaced 2â veins,2016,0.213
"Water quality and biotic interaction of two cavefish species: Typhleotris madagascariensis Petit, 1933 and Typhleotris mararybe Sparks &amp;amp; Chakrabarty, 2012, in the Mahafaly Plateau groundwater system, Madagascar",the karstic subterranean aquatic system of the mahafaly plateau in south western madagascar is inhabited by two species of cavefish typhleotris madagascariensis and typhleotris mararybe knowledge about both cavefish species is scant in order to learn more about the distribution of the two species 15 caves and sinkholes spread over the mahafaly plateau were inventoried for their presence abiotic water quality and interspeciï c relations of the two species were investigated in six of these caves and five of the sinkholes during the dry and the rainy seasons typhleotris madagascariensis was present in all sampled water bodies while t mararybe was restricted to five sites in the region around the town of itampolo the inventories extend the known range of both species of typhleotris on the mahafaly plateau abiotic water characteristics did not differ between seasons the abundances of both species were negatively correlated with iron concentrations further correlations between the abundance of either fish species and abiotic water characteristics remained inconclusive as these water characteristics co varied with geographical latitude that in turn was correlated with fish abundance for both species neither the abundance nor a condition factor based on body mass showed any significant seasonal variation also the presence of t mararybe had no influence on the abundance and the condition of t madagascariensis thus no evidence for competition was noticed between the two species,2016,0.974
From ecological records to big data: the invention of global biodiversity,this paper is a critical assessment of the epistemological impact of the systematic quantification of nature with the accumulation of big datasets on the practice and orientation of ecological science we examine the contents of big databases and argue that it is not just accumulated information records are translated into digital data in a process that changes their meanings in order to better understand what is at stake in the â dataficationâ process we explore the context for the emergence and quantification of biodiversity in the 1980s along with the concept of the global environment in tracing the origin and development of the global biodiversity information facility gbif we describe big data biodiversity projects as a techno political construction dedicated to monitoring a new object the global diversity we argue that biodiversity big data became a powerful driver behind the invention of the concept of the global environment and a way to embed ecological science in the political agenda,2016,0.139
"Macroalgas bénticas de la Bahía de Tumaco, Pacífico colombiano",background the benthic phycological flora of the colombian pacific is found in one of the less known areas of the eastern tropical pacific with a total registry of 133 species algal biodiversity on the pacific coast is relatively low compared to the colombian caribbean where previous research has registered about 549 species goals this study evaluated the marine macroalgal flora of tumaco bay southern colombian pacific including inventory species description and new records in this coastal region methods algal material was collected from rocky shores and estuarine creeks within the bay between may and december 2009 and march to october 2010 subtidal algal specimens were collected with scuba further the study recorded additional species and new species locations in the region results the study registered a total of 26 species of which eight are chlorophyta two are ochrophyta phaeophyceae and 16 are rhodophyta these records were distributed in nine orders 14 families and 19 genera the study described the coastal habitats within the bay and the relationships between ecological features and species distribution descriptions of each species included morphological data habitat and species distribution conclusions tumaco bay exhibited low algal diversity 26 species when compared to studies on gorgona island and along the shores of costa rica panama el salvador nicaragua and guatemala with 42 216 174 146 24 and 16 species respectively similar results have been recorded on the pacific coasts of nicaragua and guatemala with registries of 24 and 16 algal species respectively,2016,0.996
A 6900-year history of landscape modification by humans in lowland Amazonia,a sedimentary record from the peruvian amazon provided evidence of climate and vegetation change for the last 6900 years piston cores collected from the center of lake sauce a 20 m deep lake at 600 m elevation were 19 7 m in length the fossil pollen record showed a continuously forested catchment within the period of the record although substantial changes in forest composition were apparent fossil charcoal found throughout the record was probably associated with humans setting fires two fires at c 6700 cal bp and 4270 cal bp appear to have been stand replacing events possibly associated with megadroughts the fire event at 4270 cal bp followed a drought that caused lowered lake levels for several centuries the successional trajectories of forest recovery following these large fires were prolonged by smaller fire events fossil pollen of zea mays cultivated maize provided evidence of agricultural activity at the site since c 6320 cal bp about 5150 years ago the lake deepened and started to deposit laminated sediments maize agriculture reached a peak of intensity between c 3380 and 700 cal bp fossil diatom data provided a proxy for lake nutrient status and productivity both of which peaked during the period of maize cultivation a marked change in land use was evident after c 700 cal bp when maize agriculture was apparently abandoned at this site iriartea a hyperdominant of riparian settings in western amazonia increased in abundance within the last 1100 years but declined markedly at c 1070 cal bp and again between c 80 and 10 cal bp,2016,0.46
"Lignified woods of Pinus (Pinaceae) from the late Miocene of central Yunnan, China, and their biogeographic and paleoclimatic implications",two new species pinus uniseriata and p nanfengensis were described on the basis of lignified fossil woods from the late miocene of the xianfeng basin central yunnan southwestern china the woods of both species are characterized by gradual transition from early wood to late wood predominantly uniseriate pitting in the tracheid walls the absence of axial parenchyma and traumatic resin canals the presence of axial and radial resin ducts uniseriate rays smooth to slightly pitted ray tracheids and pinoid taxodioid pits in cross field pits they differ in that p uniseriata wood has unisetiate marginal ray tracheids and taxodioid occasionally cupressoid pits whereas p nanfengensis wood has ray tracheids usually arranged as biseriate as well as pinoid and taxodioid cross field pits the fossil woods showed a considerable anatomical similarity to extant species p bungeana and p roxburghii respectively which are now absent from central yunnan pinus uniseriata is the first macrofossil record for subsection gerardianae pinus nanfengensis is the first fossil record of the subsection pinaster outside europe,2016,0.732
How diploidization turned a tetraploid into a pseudotriploid,premise of the studydespite being highly fertile and occupying a large geographic region the north american heartleaf bittercress cardamine cordifolia brassicaceae has a puzzling triploid like chromosome number 2n 3x 24 as most triploids are sterile we embarked on a detailed analysis of the c cordifolia genome to elucidate its origin and structure methodsmitotic and meiotic chromosome complement of c cordifolia was analyzed by comparative chromosome painting using chromosome specific bac contigs of arabidopsis thaliana resulting chromosome patterns were documented by multicolor fluorescence microscopy and compared with known ancestral and extant brassicaceae genomes key resultswe discovered that c cordifolia is not a triploid hybrid but a diploidized tetraploid with the prevalence of regular diploid like meiotic pairing the ancestral tetraploid chromosome number 2n 32 was reduced to a triploid like number 2n 24 through four terminal chromosome translocations conclusionsthe structure of the pseudotriploid c cordifolia genome results from a stepwise diploidization process after whole genome duplication we showed that translocation based descending dysploidy from n 16 to n 12 was mediated by the formation of five new chromosomes the genome of c cordifolia represents the diploidization process in statu nascendi and provides valuable insights into mechanisms of postpolyploidy rediploidization in land plants our data further suggest that chromosome number alone does not need to be a reliable proxy of species evolutionary past and that the same chromosome number may originate either by polyploidization hybridization or due to descending dysploidy,2016,0.3
Understanding and monitoring the consequences of human impacts on intraspecific variation,intraspecific variation is a major component of biodiversity yet it has received relatively little attention from governmental and non governmental organizations especially with regard to conservation plans and the management of wild species this omission is ill advised because phenotypic and genetic variation within and among populations can have dramatic effects on ecological and evolutionary processes including responses to environmental change the maintenance of species diversity and ecological stability and resilience at the same time environmental changes associated with many human activities such as land use and climate change have dramatic and often negative impacts on intraspecific variation we argue for the need for local regional and global programs to monitor intraspecific genetic variation we suggest that such monitoring should include two main strategies 1 intensive monitoring of multiple types of genetic variation in selected species and 2 broad brush modeling for representative species for predicting changes in variation as a function of changes in population size range extent and connectivity overall we call for collaborative efforts to initiate the urgently needed monitoring of intraspecific variation,2016,0.698
Patterns of abiotic niche shifts in allopolyploids relative to their progenitors,polyploidy has extensive genetic physiological morphological and ecological ramifications while the patterns underlying the genetic and morphological consequences of polyploidy are being rapidly elucidated the effects on ecological niche are still largely unknown this study investigated 13 allopolyploid systems in north america 10 ferns and three angiosperms using digitized natural history museum specimens the abiotic niches of the allopolyploids were compared with those of their diploid progenitors using ecological niche modeling niche analyses and multivariate analyses we identified four patterns of niche shifts through our analyses niche expansion niche contraction niche intermediacy and niche novelty the classification of these shifts depended on the amount of niche overlap and breadth between the polyploid and progenitors the most common niche shift was niche intermediacy in which the polyploid inhabited a geographic range between that of the progenitors and had a high degree of niche overlap each polyploid had at least partial geographic sympatry and abiotic niche overlap with one of its progenitors suggesting that biotic and or microclimate factors may play a larger role in polyploid establishment than previously hypothesized this study provides a baseline for future comparisons of the diverse outcomes of genome merger and duplication on abiotic niche preference,2016,0.23
Integration of data and computing infrastructures for earth science: an image mosaicking use-case,this paper addresses the emerging issue of integrating data sharing and computing e infrastructures for multidisciplinary applications in the recent years several solutions have been proposed to implement digital infrastructures for sharing and processing scientific data and observations spatial data infrastructures currently enable effective and efficient geo information data sharing in many disciplinary communities and innovative solutions are under development to support new open data and linked data paradigms in parallel high performance computing systems computing grids and more recently cloud services enable fast processing of big data however the integration of data and computing e infrastructures is a raising issue in multidisciplinary research in the context of the global earth observation system of systems geoss initiative an innovative approach has been proposed taking into account that the heterogeneity of data and computing e infrastructures and related technologies cannot be reduced beyond a certain extent since it is due to the need of supporting use cases and scenarios from different scientific communities a brokering solution has been designed and developed a business process broker bpb is a component which takes a formal description of a scientific business process and translates it in an executable process which can be run on multiple and remote processing and workflow services in doing this it solves all the interoperability issues in a semi automated way it allows lowering the entry barrier for both computing service providers and users decoupling the specification of the scientific process from the underlying enabling infrastructures the paper presents and discusses a bpb use case from the european project iason implementing an earth observation application involving satellite image mosaicking hpc computing services and spatial data e infrastructures,2016,0.008
"A new species of Mastigodiaptomus Light, 1939 from Mexico, with notes of species diversity of the genus (Copepoda, Calanoida, Diaptomidae)",a new species of the genus mastigodiaptomus light 1939 named mastigodiaptomus cuneatus sp n was found in a freshwater system in the city of mazatlã n in the northern region of mexico morphologically the females of this new species are distinguishable from those of its congeners by the following combination of features the right distal corner of the genital double somite and second urosomite have a wedge shaped projection the fourth urosomite has no dorsal projection and its integument is smooth the males are distinct by the following features the right caudal ramus has a wedge shaped structure at the disto ventral inner corner the basis of the right fifth leg has one triangular and one rounded projection at the distal and proximal margins respectively plus one hyaline membrane on the caudal surface close to the inner margin the aculeus length is almost the width of the right second exopod exp2 and the frontal and caudal surfaces of the right exp2 are smooth furthermore the analysis of the coi gene of m cuneatus sp n has revealed that m albuquerquensis herrick 1895 is its nearest congener with 18 64 of genetic distance a key for the identification of the known species of the genus is provided,2016,0.713
Survey and analysis of scientific data publishing,modern scientific activities tend to increasingly rely on data which in a way makes data openness a prerequisite for current scientific research facing with obstacles in data sharing data publication enables an exploratory approach to coordinating different stakeholders and reducing open data obstacles the survey tries to understand these issues by investigating authors of data papers from units including earth system science data essd ecological society of america esa global biodiversity information facility gbif dryad digital repository dryad and data publisher for earth environmental science pangaen the survey was carried out during august and october 2014 with a focus on the motivation means operational model and quality evaluation of data publishing results show that data publication has gained wide recognition as an effective way of data sharing and it is currently at a rapid development stage however compared with traditional publications its academic status recognition and credibility still need to be improved results reveal some major concerns of data publishing including the immature operational model data copyrights protection and compensation mechanism evaluation of data citation is derived from the traditional academic system but the result differs indicating that an effective and reasonable mechanism for incentive is yet to be established,2016,0.015
The Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Data Standard specification,genomic samples of non model organisms are becoming increasingly important in a broad range of studies from developmental biology biodiversity analyses to conservation genomic sample definition description quality voucher information and metadata all need to be digitized and disseminated across scientific communities this information needs to be concise and consistent in today s ever increasing bioinformatic era for complementary data aggregators to easily map databases to one another in order to facilitate exchange of information on genomic samples and their derived data the global genome biodiversity network ggbn data standard is intended to provide a platform based on a documented agreement to promote the efficient sharing and usage of genomic sample material and associated specimen information in a consistent way the new data standard presented here build upon existing standards commonly used within the community extending them with the capability to exchange data on tissue environmental and dna sample as well as sequences the ggbn data standard will reveal and democratize the hidden contents of biodiversity biobanks for the convenience of everyone in the wider biobanking community technical tools exist for data providers to easily map their databases to the standard database url http terms tdwg org wiki ggbn data standard,2016,0.28
Assessing the distribution and conservation status of a long-horned beetle with species distribution models,data shortfalls on species distribution affect species differently but it is frequent among insects species distribution models sdms are important tools to fill biogeographic deficits and provide support for practical conservation actions particularly for cryptic or hard to survey species we employed sdms to evaluate one such species the long horned beetle macrodontia cervicornis listed as â vulnerableâ in the iucnâ s red list of threatened species given new distributional data for this species we applied three different sdms to 1 provide the first assessment of this speciesâ distribution and potential dispersal routes 2 evaluate the effectiveness of the current south american protected areas system for its conservation and 3 discuss its potential distribution as well as historical biogeographical and taxonomic issues related to it our models reached fair true skilled statistics values tss 0 5 with the core area for m cervicornis located in the amazon forest although suitable areas were also predicted along the atlantic forest areas in the dry diagonal south american corridor dry biomes of cerrado caatinga and pampas in south america were not predicted as suitable the preference of m cervicornis for humid areas with high temperatures may guarantee a better physiological control for dehydration considering that large insects are more affected by water loss in general approximately 15 of the distribution of m cervicornis is in humid protected areas the disconnected distribution of the long horned beetle may be an indication of the existence of cryptic species under the same classification we suggest that similar studies with other insect groups e g butterflies bees should be conducted to properly assess their distributions conservation status and responses to hot humid gradients throughout south america,2016,0.874
Contextualized niche shifts upon independent invasions by the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus,the historical contingencies of biological invasions may have important consequences for final invasion outcomes here we characterize the variations in the realized niche during the invasions of the bull headed dung beetle onthophagus taurus coleoptera scarabaeidae from its native mediterranean range following accidental eastern north america as well as deliberate western north america western australia and eastern australia releases into novel exotic ranges approximately 50 years ago specifically we examined whether the climatic responses of exotic o taurus have diverged from those characterizing their native range and if so to what degree and in what dimensions we found that when compared to the native range all exotic populations exhibited similar overlap proportions regardless of invasion history however more detailed analysis of climatic niche features showed that all three deliberately established populations were characterized by overall similar climatic niche features whereas the accidentally established eastern north american populations have undergone significant changes in their climatic niche specifically when analog climates were considered on the background of each pairwise range comparison accidentally established eastern north american populations showed a different climatic niche expansion than their deliberately introduced australian or western north american counterparts in particular towards colder and more humid climates we discuss our results in the context of the widely divergent introduction histories of o taurus in australia and north america and highlight the possible roles of contrasting propagule sizes disparate genetic profiles and variances adaptive processes and invadable landscapes in shaping invasion outcomes in the different exotic ranges,2016,0.645
Effect of simulated air dive and decompression sickness on the plasma proteome of rats.,decompression sickness dcs is a poorly understood systemic disease caused by inadequate desaturation following a reduction in ambient pressure although recent studies highlight the importance of circulating factors the available data are still puzzling in this study we aimed to identify proteins and biological pathways involved in the development of dcs in rats eighteen male sprague dawley rats were subjected to a same simulated air dive to 1000 kpa absolute pressure and divided into two groups no dcs or dcs a third control group remained at atmospheric pressure venous blood was collected after hyperbaric exposure and the plasma proteomes from four individuals per group were analyzed by using a two dimensional electrophoresis based proteomic strategy quantitative analysis identified nine protein spots with abundances significantly changed fdr 0 1 between the tested conditions three protein spots identified as apolipoprotein a1 serine protease inhibitor a3k serpin a3k and alpha 1 antiproteinase appeared increased in dcs animals but displayed only weak changes by contrast one protein spot identified as transthyretin dramatically decreased i e quite disappeared in animals displaying dcs symptoms before diving transthyretin level was not different in dcs than non diving group these results may lead to the use of transthyretin as an early biomarker of dcs this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.38
A Comprehensive Review of Woodfordia Floribunda Salisb.,indian medicinal plants are the essence of ayurveda and ayurvedic treatments when used judicially and clocking with the basic principles they produce miraculous effects fire flamed bush woodfordia floribunda salisb commonly called as dhavari dhataki belongs to the family lythraceae it is an important medicinal plant of tropical and subtropical india dhataki is a deciduous shrub usually with a much fluted stem spreading branches 1 3 m high rarely up to 7 m commonly occurring throughout north india ascending to an altitude of 1 500 m in the himalayas but rather scarce in south india acharya charak quot ed it among the fermenting agents asava yoni and described under purisasangrahniya mutravirajaniya and sandhaniya group of drugs the reported pharmacological activities of woodfordia floribunda salisb are antitumor activity dna inhibitory activity i mmunomodulatory activity antioxidant activities antihyperglycemic activity anti inflammatory and analgesic properties antimicrobial activity hepatoprotective activity etc dhataki is one of the major ingredient of many important formulations used in ayurvedic system of medicine such as dhatakyadi taila dhatakyadi curna pusyanuga curna brhat gangadhara curna arvindasava so this review paper is an attempt of the author to provide details of this medicinal plant dhataki about its classical referenc es synonyms botanical description phytochemical and pharmacological activity and classical medicinal uses,2016,0.015
Climate change and habitat conversion favour the same species,land use change and climate change are driving a global biodiversity crisis yet how species responses to climate change are correlated with their responses to land use change is poorly understood here we assess the linkages between climate and land use change on birds in neotropical forest and agriculture across 300 species we show that affiliation with drier climates is associated with an ability to persist in and colonise agriculture further species shift their habitat use along a precipitation gradient species prefer forest in drier regions but use agriculture more in wetter zones finally forest dependent species that avoid agriculture are most likely to experience decreases in habitable range size if current drying trends in the neotropics continue as predicted this linkage suggests a synergy between the primary drivers of biodiversity loss because they favour the same species climate and land use change will likely homogenise biodiversity more severely than otherwise anticipated,2016,0.878
Digitization of The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium,the william and lynda steere herbarium of the new york botanical garden has been digitizing specimens since 1995 at first digitization included only specimen label data transcription but specimen imaging was added in 1999 over the years computer technology has changed greatly and consequently so have the hardware software and workflow for accomplishing this work rapid digitization techniques developed mostly during the past five years have allowed a doubling in the rate at which specimens are digitized approximately 2 5 million specimens have been databased and 1 4 million have been digitally photographed these data are served through the gardenâ s c v starr virtual herbarium and are shared through other data portals as well completion of the digitization of all american specimens roughly five million is projected by 2021,2016,0.337
Phylogeny of Apiaceae subtribe Daucinae and the taxonomic delineation of its genera,scandiceae subtribe daucinae encompasses umbellifers that have fruits with prominent secondary ridges projecting into wings former tribe laserpitieae or spines former tribe caucalideae pro parte it comprises several economically or medicinally important genera including cuminum daucus laser laserpitium and thapsia among others recent molecular studies based mostly on nrdna its sequences revealed that neither daucus nor laserpitium are monophyletic to address issues of relationships and apply respective nomenclatural changes we obtained additional its sequences as well as independent data from three plastid markersâ rps16 intron rpoc1 intron and rpob trnc intergenic spacerâ for a comprehensive sample of the subtribe we examined data for 260 accessions representing all genera of daucinae and 81 of its ca 93 species phylogenetic trees were estimated using maximum likelihood and bayesian inference methods the results indicate that former laserpitieae constitute a paraphyletic grade at the base of the spiny fruited members of daucinae while traditionally delimited daucus and laserpitium are polyphyletic to maintain a monophyletic daucus we suggest including the following genera and species into its synonymy agrocharis melanoselinum monizia pachyctenium pseudorlaya rouya tornabenea athamanta dellacellae and cryptotaenia elegans the species of laserpitium occur in seven clades and only six species of the laserpitium s str clade retain the generic name several species are transferred to ekimia laser and thapsia additionally a monospecific genus siler is restored and a new genus silphiodaucus is established the inclusion of ammodaucus into thapsia suggested in an earlier study is not supported the position of laserpitium pseudomeum requires further study,2016,0.881
A comprehensive investigation of mesophotic coral ecosystems in the Hawaiian Archipelago,although the existence of coral reef habitats at depths to 165 m in tropical regions has been known for decades the richness diversity and ecological importance of mesophotic coral ecosystems mces has only recently become widely acknowledged during an interdisciplinary effort spanning more than two decades we characterized the most expansive mces ever recorded with vast macroalgal communities and areas of 100 coral cover between depths of 50â 90 m extending for tens of km 2 in the hawaiian archipelago we used a variety of sensors and techniques to establish geophysical characteristics biodiversity patterns were established from visual and video observations and collected specimens obtained from submersible remotely operated vehicles and mixed gas scuba and rebreather dives population dynamics based on age growth and fecundity estimates of selected fish species were obtained from laser videogrammetry specimens and otolith preparations trophic dynamics were determined using carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic analyses on more than 750 reef fishes mces are associated with clear water and suitable substrate in comparison to shallow reefs in the hawaiian archipelago inhabitants of mces have lower total diversity harbor new and unique species and have higher rates of endemism in fishes fish species present in shallow and mesophotic depths have similar population and trophic except benthic invertivores structures and high genetic connectivity with lower fecundity at mesophotic depths mces in hawaiâ i are widespread but associated with specific geophysical characteristics high genetic ecological and trophic connectivity establish the potential for mces to serve as refugia for some species but our results question the premise that mces are more resilient than shallow reefs we found that endemism within mces increases with depth and our results do not support suggestions of a global faunal break at 60 m our findings enhance the scientific foundations for conservation and management of mces and provide a template for future interdisciplinary research on mces worldwide,2016,0.762
"Climate, habitat associations and the potential distributions of Neotropical birds: Implications for diversification across the Andes",contrary to the long held view that the uplift of the andes spurred biotic diversification by causing vicariance across multiple lineages with formerly continuous distributions recent work suggests that dispersal across the andes occurring after major uplift episodes was a major driver of speciation in neotropical birds with the ability of lineages to persist and disperse in the landscape being strong predictors of speciation however where and when dispersal events across the andes occurred is unknown and the role of climatic fluctuations and associated shifts in vegetation in promoting cross andes dispersal at different moments remains to be studied we used models of species potential distributions based on contemporary and historical climatic data to examine scenarios of cross andes dispersal by 41 species of neotropical lowland birds with varying habitat affinities our results indicate that ecological connectivity favoring cross andes dispersal at the present is higher in low lying passes across the andes of southern ecuador and northern peru than in passes in colombia and this spatial pattern appears to have been consistent at four different moments over the past 130 000 years we also found that although some areas may be presently unsuitable for the dispersal of birds across the andes under past climatic conditions i e during cooler and drier periods they were substantially more likely to allow for ecological connectivity of populations across the cordillera no consistent differences were found in ecological connectivity across the andes in the present nor in the past for species occupying different habitat types we suggest that valleys in the andes are major drivers of evolutionary diversification not only by isolating populations of montane species but also by allowing episodic dispersal of lowland species our models allow us to make predictions about gene flow which may be assessed in future studies examining fine grain patterns of genetic exchange with landscape genetics tools â acad colomb cienc ex fis nat 2016,2016,0.807
"Mecistogaster linearis (Fabricius) (Odonata: Coenagrionidae): First Record from Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil",commonly called â œhelicopter damselfliesâ mecistogaster species coenagrionidae are recognized by their large body size in comparison with other odonata species ability to flap both anterior and posterior wings in opposite directions and preference for dense forest these species feed on spiders and require trunks or plants that can accumulate water like bromeliads for laying eggs this relationship with phytotelm environments makes the mecistogaster species sensitives to forest fragmentation and habitat changes in brazil there are records of seven species mainly in amazon forest regions mecistogaster linearis fabricius has a wide distribution reported in the brazilian states of acre amazonas roraima parã rondã nia mato grosso rio de janeiro and sã o paulo herein we report the first record of m linearis in the state of mato grosso do sul with specimens sampled from the municipality of corumbã in the pantanal,2016,0.813
A mistletoe tale: postglacial invasion of Psittacanthus schiedeanus (Loranthaceae) to Mesoamerican cloud forests revealed by molecular data and species distribution modeling.,background ecological adaptation to host taxa is thought to result in mistletoe speciation via race formation however historical and ecological factors could also contribute to explain genetic structuring particularly when mistletoe host races are distributed allopatrically using sequence data from nuclear its and chloroplast trnl f dna we investigate the genetic differentiation of 31 psittacanthus schiedeanus loranthaceae populations across the mesoamerican species range we conducted phylogenetic population and spatial genetic analyses on 274 individuals of p schiedeanus to gain insight of the evolutionary history of these populations species distribution modeling isolation with migration and bayesian inference methods were used to infer the evolutionary transition of mistletoe invasion in which evolutionary scenarios were compared through posterior probabilities results our analyses revealed shallow levels of population structure with three genetic groups present across the sample area nine haplotypes were identified after sequencing the trnl f intergenic spacer these haplotypes showed phylogeographic structure with three groups with restricted gene flow corresponding to the distribution of individuals populations separated by habitat cloud forest localities from san luis potosã to northwestern oaxaca and chiapas localities with xeric vegetation in central oaxaca and localities with tropical deciduous forests in chiapas with post glacial population expansions and potentially corresponding to post glacial invasion types similarly 44 its ribotypes suggest phylogeographic structure despite the fact that most frequent ribotypes are widespread indicating effective nuclear gene flow via pollen gene flow estimates a significant genetic signal of demographic expansion and range shifts under past climatic conditions predicted by species distribution modeling suggest post glacial invasion of p schiedeanus mistletoes to cloud forests however approximate bayesian computation abc analyses strongly supported a scenario of simultaneous divergence among the three groups isolated recently conclusions our results provide support for the predominant role of isolation and environmental factors in driving genetic differentiation of mesoamerican parrot flower mistletoes the abc results are consistent with a scenario of post glacial mistletoe invasion independent of host identity and that habitat types recently isolated p schiedeanus populations accumulating slight phenotypic differences among genetic groups due to recent migration across habitats under this scenario climatic fluctuations throughout the pleistocene would have altered the distribution of suitable habitat for mistletoes throughout mesoamerica leading to variation in population continuity and isolation our findings add to an understanding of the role of recent isolation and colonization in shaping cloud forest communities in the region,2016,0.876
State of the art and perspectives on neotropical fern and lycophyte systematics,for ferns and lycophytes the neotropics is a hotspot of diversity 3000â 4500 species and second only to southeastern asia in richness and endemism this paper presents the current state of knowledge on fern and lycophyte systematics in the neotropics and emphasizes sampling sufficiency and current taxonomic and phylogenetic knowledge plant systematics plays an important role in documenting diversity and geographic distribution patterns that are needed to understand relationships and evolutionary patterns and a vital role in species conservation although in recent decades this field of science has undergone a revolution because of new approaches and techniques data presented in this work shows that large gaps remain and there is still a long path towards fully understanding fern and lycophyte systematics in neotropics approaches and how to choose areas that should be targeted in order to try to fulfill these knowledge gaps are discussed,2016,0.406
"Biodiversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi in surface mine spoil restoration stands in Poland – first time recorded, rare, and red-listed species",results of mycological research conducted in the years 2001â 2013 in the restoration stands growing on reclaimed mine spoils are presented four opencast lignite mine spoil heaps in poland were examined pä tnã w jã åºwin adamã w mt kamieå sk and turã w the paper focuses on 71 species of ectomycorrhizal fungi recorded for the first time in the country 16 taxa currently red listed 23 taxa known from few localities only 32 taxa notes on their ecology and habitats are provided as well as their distribution in europe and in poland restoration tree stands established as part of the reclamation process of mine spoils form a unique habitat for many rare and interesting fungal taxa among them are pioneer species species known mainly from northern europe or mountainous locations highly specialized and narrow niche taxa and many threatened species afforested mine spoils contribute significantly to the fungal biodiversity both at a local and at a larger scale,2016,0.684
Defoliation and Silverthiosulphate Pulse Treatment Prolongs the Vase Life of Cut Stalks of Clarkia amoena,a study was conducted to examine the vase life of cut stalks of clarkia amoena stalks were harvested at 09 00 hrs one day before anthesis of the first mature bud and held in following test solutions distilled water controls and sucrose 0 05 m 0 10 m 0 15 m and 0 20 m half of the stalks were manually defoliated before their transfer to these test solutions another set of stalks was pulse treated with either distilled water silverthiosulphate sts 0 5 mm or cycloheximide chi 0 5 mm for 1 hr at 25 â c and held in distilled water or suc 0 1 m cocl2 0 1 mm in distilled water controls vase life of stalks was 11 3 days manual defoliation of stalks held in distilled water enhanced vase life by 2 3 days sucrose in the holding solution had no significant effect on the vase life of either foliated or defoliated stalks sts pulse treatment of stalks before transfer to distilled water significantly prolonged vase life by 3 days as compared to controls whereas chi pulse treatment reduced it by 7 8 days suc 0 1 m cocl2 0 1 mm in the holding solution showed negative effect irrespective of pulse treatment with either distilled water sts or chi it is suggested that the cutoff of nutrient supply is not a limiting factor for the development and opening of buds on the cut stalks and that the ethylene and leaves are involved in the senescence of cut stalks of clarkia amoena,2016,0.143
Traditional Agroecosystems and Global Change Implications in Mexico,garcã a martã nez y g c ballesteros h bernal o villarreal l jimã nez garcã a and d jimã nez garcã a 2016 traditional agroecosystems and global change implications in mexico bulg j agric sci 22 548â 565 global warming is producing negative effects on agriculture changing the distribution and production of vulnerable crops this phenomenon could also modify the production and distribution of plant species agroecosystems are highly diverse systems which could potentially reduce the impact of climate change the following research work is founded due to this situation the main objec tive of this study is to assess the impact of climate change on an unconventional agricultural system agroecosystems in the state of puebla mexico were analyzed under the horizons of the present 2020 2050 and 2080 under different socioeconomic scenarios a1b a2a b1 and b2 to identify which areas could present changes in the distribution of at least 3 species in the state of puebla three races of maize conico elotes conicos y tuxpeã o zea mays ssp mays were selected and the most important crops from the state of puebla bean phaseolus vulgaris amaranth amaranthus hypochondracus courgette cucurbita pepo coffee coffea ara bica chili capsicum frutescens sugar cane saccharum offi cinarum potato solanum tuberosum avocado persea americana apple malus domestica peach prunus persica orange citrus sinensis mexican hawthorn crataegus pubescens and wheat triticum spp we built niche models for some species and determinated the overlap areas agroecosystems with special emphasis on maize races our results showed an important persistence of different agroecosystems 73 of the territory in puebla these systems are likely to increase their surface area under scenario a1b and b1 while in the a2a and b2 scenarios the impact of climate change is greater in agroecosystems in the fi rst case agroecosystems lose in average up to 13 of surface area and 12 for the second scenario finally the growth margin is 8 compared to the a1b and b1 models we determinate vulnerability areas to global change in the southwestern of puebla maize origin center and the north rainforest protect area,2016,0.266
A Standardized Reference Data Set for Vertebrate Taxon Name Resolution.,taxonomic names associated with digitized biocollections labels have flooded into repositories such as gbif idigbio and vertnet the names on these labels are often misspelled out of date or present other problems as they were often captured only once during accessioning of specimens or have a history of label changes without clear provenance before records are reliably usable in research it is critical that these issues be addressed however still missing is an assessment of the scope of the problem the effort needed to solve it and a way to improve effectiveness of tools developed to aid the process we present a carefully human vetted analysis of 1000 verbatim scientific names taken at random from those published via the data aggregator vertnet providing the first rigorously reviewed reference validation data set in addition to characterizing formatting problems human vetting focused on detecting misspelling synonymy and the incorrect use of darwin core our results reveal a sobering view of the challenge ahead as less than 47 of name strings were found to be currently valid more optimistically nearly 97 of name combinations could be resolved to a currently valid name suggesting that computer aided approaches may provide feasible means to improve digitized content finally we associated names back to biocollections records and fit logistic models to test potential drivers of issues a set of candidate variables geographic region year collected higher level clade and the institutional digitally accessible data volume and their 2 way interactions all predict the probability of records having taxon name issues based on model selection approaches we strongly encourage further experiments to use this reference data set as a means to compare automated or computer aided taxon name tools for their ability to resolve and improve the existing wealth of legacy data,2016,0.036
"The forgotten type specimen of the grey seal [ Halichoerus grypus (Fabricius, 1791)] from the island of Amager, Denmark",the conservation and management of biological diversity rely heavily on clear definitions of appropriate target units such as populations subspecies and species however the nomenclature of the grey seal halichoerus grypus fabricius 1791 has for many years been misled by two persistent assumptions that there was no type specimen for the species and that the type locality lay in greenland here we describe a grey seal skull held in the collections of the natural history museum of denmark and present written and morphological evidence to demonstrate that this skull is identical to fabriciusâ original specimen collected in 1788 near copenhagen on the island of amager denmark in addition we perform genetic analyses to clearly affiliate this specimen with the baltic grey seal subspecies accordingly we appoint this specimen zmuc m11 1525 the holotype of the grey seal and the island of amager denmark the type locality of the species hereby the baltic subspecies of the grey seal by definition becomes the nominate race of the species to henceforth be classified as halichoerus grypus grypus putting the hitherto used subspecies name macrorhynchus in reference to hornschuch schilling 1850 in junior synonymy as a further consequence we resurrect halichoerus grypus atlantica in reference to nehring 1886 as the earliest available name for the atlantic subspecies the type specimen s digital morphological and genetic data are made publicly available for future reference and as an inspiration for baseline data to include in descriptions of other type specimens,2016,0.935
"The effects of increasing dietary levels of amino acid-supplemented soy protein concentrate and constant dietary supplementation of phosphorus on growth, composition and immune responses of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.)",diets with 50 spc50 65 spc65 and 80 spc80 substitution of prime fish meal fm with soy protein concentrate spc were evaluated against a commercial type control feed with 35 fm replacement with spc increases in dietary spc were combined with appropriate increases in methionine lysine and threonine supplementation whereas added phosphorus was constant among treatments diets were administered to quadruplicate groups of 29 g juvenile atlantic salmon were exposed to constant light for 97 days on day 63 salmon were subjected to vaccination significant weight reductions in spc65 and spc80 compared with spc35 salmon were observed by day 97 linear reductions in body cross sectional ash ca p ratios and ca p mn and zn were observed at days 63 prior vaccination and 97 34 days post vaccination while mg presented a decrease at day 63 in salmon fed increasing dietary spc significant reductions in zn ca p and ca p ratios persisted in spc65 and spc80 compared with spc35 salmon at day 97 significant haematocrit reductions in spc50 spc65 and spc80 salmon were observed at days 63 70 and 97 enhanced plasma haemolytic activity increased total igm and a rise in thrombocytes were demonstrated in spc50 and spc65 salmon on day 97 while increased lysozyme activity was demonstrated for these groups on days 63 70 and 97 leucocyte and lymphocyte counts revealed enhanced immunostimulation in salmon fed with increasing dietary spc at day 97 high spc inclusion diets did not compromise the immune responses of salmon while spc50 diet also supported good growth without compromising elemental concentrations,2016,0.247
Vicariance events shaping Southern South American insect distributions,the main goal of this study is to use multiple insect phylogenies along with geographical information to test known vicariance hypotheses for southern south america we analysed the phylogenies and geographical distributions of seven insect genera endemic to southern south america using hovenkamp s 1997 protocol which have been in part implemented in software vicariance inference program using this software we were able to hypothesize 55 traceable vicariance events among these we recognized four supported vicariance events i e confirmed by more than a single sister group the first supported vicariance event consisted of an east west separation of the faunas in all analysed trees the second supported vicariance event is a north south separation of the fauna located east of the andes the third supported vicariance event was found in the southernmost fauna located east of the andes which separates allopatric patagonian species in a north south direction and finally the fourth supported vicariance event separates in a north south direction clades of the central chilean fauna located west of the andes our results suggest that these four supported vicariance events could be correlated with the uplifting of the andes and the marine ingressions that occurred during the cenozoic that is the estimated age at which these events occurred finally we discuss that current software implementation of hovenkamp s ideas need to be expanded particularly regarding the automated selection of traceable vicariance events,2016,0.591
The Epiphytic Lichenized Fungi in Armenia: Diversity and Conservation,a total of 230 taxa of lichenized fungi are reported from epiphytic habitats in armenia based on field studies from 2011 to 2015 and evaluation of the available literature for each species notes on taxonomy chemistry ecology and local regional and world distribution are presented as well as presence in the protected areas of the country an identification key for all species is added of the total 219 are specialized epiphytes rarely found on other substrates while 11 species occur only incidentally on bark and more usually on rock the epiphytic lichenized fungi of armenia belong to 13 orders 34 families and 88 genera the most species rich higher taxa are lecanorales parmeliaceae physciaceae teloschistaceae arthoniales peltigerales and pertusariales lecanora usnea and phaeophyscia are the most species rich genera the following 28 taxa are new records for armenia arthonia atra bacidia biatorina bacidina adastra biatora longispora bryoria fuscescens bryostigma muscigenum buellia erubescens candelariella efflorescens flavoparmelia soredians hypocenomyce scalaris lecidella cf pulveracea lepraria jackii lepraria leuckertiana leptogium cyanescens ochrolechia pallescens pertusaria slesvicensis phaeophyscia endophoenicea phlyctis agelaea phlyctis argena placynthiella icmalea pyrrhospora quernea ramalina panizzei rinodina griseosoralifera rinodina polysporoides strigula stigmatella varicellaria hemisphaerica four genera are for the first time reported for the country hypocenomyce phlyctis pyrrhospora and strigula 188 species 82 of the epiphytic lichen mycobiota were found in the specially protected nature areas of armenia the conservation status of 74 species has been evaluated following the iucn red list of threatened species categories and criteria among them we assessed 9 taxa as critically endangered 5 taxa as endangered 2 taxa as vulnerable 4 taxa as data deficient and 54 taxa as least concern epiphytic lichens reported from armenia showed predominantly holarctic distributional patterns 187 species were found in the temperate deciduous and mixed forests which dominate in northern and central armenia and 56 species in the open arid woodlands of southern armenia,2016,0.985
"Key to Holarctic species of Epitrix flea beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae: Alticini) with review of their distribution, host plants and history of invasions",the genus epitrix foudras 1860a has a worldwide distribution some species of epitrix are major pests of potato tomato eggplant tobacco and other plants in north america and europe some pest species have been inadvertently introduced from north america to europe from europe to north america and from both continents to some islands in atlantic and pacific oceans therefore a key for the identification of all holarctic species is necessary for plant quarantine and protection services we have compiled the key for distinguishing epitrix from genera that could be confused with it and a key for all holarctic species of epitrix with the figures of spermathecae and aedeagi and the checklist with a review of the geographical distribution host plants and history of invasions the following species are included e abeillei bauduer e allardii wollaston e atropae foudras e brevis schwarz e caucasica heikertinger e cucumeris harris e dieckmanni mohr e ermischi mohr e fasciata blatchley e flavotestacea horn e fuscula crotch e hirtipennis melsheimer e humeralis dury e intermedia foudras e krali dã berl e lobata crotch e muehlei dã berl e priesneri heikertinger e pubescens koch e ogloblini iablokov khnzorian e robusta jacoby e setosella fairmaire e similaris gentner e solani blatchley e subcrinita leconte e tuberis gentner e warchalowskii mohr and e papa orlova bienkowskaja,2016,0.599
Anticipating extinctions of glacial relict populations in mountain refugia,glacial relict populations at the rear edge of species distributions are expected to respond dramatically to climate warming yet very few studies have compared their conservation status in current refugia here we combine population genetics with species distribution modelling to assess patterns and causes of extinction or persistence in two cold adapted species salix hastata and juncus balticus which survived post glacial retractions in calcareous fens of the iberian peninsula in both species we detected extremely low genetic diversity and clonal strategies in red listed populations of the most marginal region cantabrian range but high genetic diversity linked with sexual reproduction in populations from a less marginal region of the rear edge pyrenees genetic patterns were partially explained by past and present speciesâ climatic niches more remarkably in the arctic alpine s hastata than in the boreo atlantic j balticus suggesting different biogeographic history but similar sensitivity to global change our results show different magnitudes of extinction debt in regional populations that have survived in mountain refugia since the last glacial maximum functional extinction of the most marginal populations can be explained by postglacial climate change and the historical decline of mire habitats in contrast with the current trend of predicting future effects of climate change we highlight that glacial relict populations might be currently going into extinction in climatically marginal regions these populations can provide valuable information about the processes involved in species extinctions improving our capacity to anticipate the effect of global change across regions and habitats,2016,0.947
Inconvenient hyperdiversity – the traditional concept of “Pheidole pallidula” includes four cryptic species (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),results of a pilot study are presented suggesting that edward wilsonâ s guess of some 1500 species in the hyperdiverse genus pheidole westwood 1839 is likely to turn out as rather moderate estimate investigation of 112 nest samples containing 287 major workers of westpalaearctic ants currently named pheidole pallidula nylander 1849 was performed by the explorative data analyses nc ward and nc k means clustering in combination with cross validated linear discriminant analysis seventeen primary morphometric data were recorded by high resolution stereomicroscopy allometric variance of shape variables was removed four cryptic species forming the ph pallidula complex were resolved ph pallidula ph balcanica nov sp ph koshewnikovi ruzsky 1905 and ph cicatricosa stitz 1917 the classification error varied between 0 and 2 8 in nc clustering of nest samples and between 1 6 and 3 7 in cross validated linear discriminant analysis of individuals ph cicatricosa has a north african distribution whereas ph pallidula ph balcanica nov sp and ph koshewnikovi are eurasian species with large sympatric ranges in the balkans and asia minor colonization of urban regions north of the alps and of offshore islands in the mediterranean sea indicates an invasive potential of the supercolonial social type of ph pallidula there are no indications that any of these four taxa might represent an intraspecific polymorphism and signals for putative interspecific hybridization are not significant the following synonymies were established ph subdentata mayr 1853 ph pallidula var obscura santschi 1936 and xenoaphaenogaster inquilina baroni urbani 1964 are junior synonyms of ph pallidula ph pallidula var arenarum ruzsky 1905 and ph pallidula ssp orientalis mã ller 1923 are junior synonyms of ph koshewnikovi and ph pallidula var recticeps menozzi 1932 is a junior synonym of ph cicatricosa the senior synonymy of the following seven westpalaearctic taxa with any member of the ph pallidula complex was excluded by type investigation and diagostic statements in the original descriptions ph sinaitica mayr 1862 ph jordanica saulcy 1874 ph teneriffana forel 1893 ph laticeps mayr 1904 ph schmitzi forel 1911 ph obtusa stitz 1917 and ph pallidula selenia ã zdikmen 2010 species delimitation in the less differentiated caste of minor workers was not tested but seems possible when accessory morphological characters are included,2016,0.85
"Mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies of streams and marshes of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, USA",united states national parks have protected natural communities for one hundred years indiana dunes national lakeshore indu is a park unit along the southern boundary of lake michigan in indiana usa an inventory of 19 sites consisting of a seep 12 streams four marshes a bog and a fen were examined for mayflies ephemeroptera stoneflies plecoptera and caddisflies trichoptera ept taxa volunteers and authors collect 35 ultraviolet light traps during summer 2013 and supplementary benthic and adult sampling added species not attracted by lights or that were only present in colder months seventy eight ept species were recovered 12 mayflies two stoneflies and 64 caddisflies the ept richness found at indu was a low proportion of the number of species known from indiana caddisflies contributed only 32 7 of known state fauna mayflies and stoneflies contributed 8 4 and 2 3 respectively site ept richness ranged from one for a seep to 34 for an 8 m wide stream richness in streams generally increased with stream size seven new state records and rare species are reported the number of ept species at indu is slightly larger than that found at isle royale national park in 2013 and the community composition and evenness between orders were different,2016,0.977
Geographical clines of body size in terrestrial amphibians: water conservation hypothesis revisited,aim faced with the dispute regarding spatial gradients of body size in ectotherms we build upon their long known allometric relationship with water economy which scales with thermal and hydric regimes to revisit and refine the water conservation hypothesis wch we provide a brief description of the wch including its physiological basis and geographical predictions for body size clines in terrestrial amphibians and test it against heat based hypotheses in four amphibian clades location the americas methods we employ phylogenetic comparative analyses to examine relationships between body size and both temperature as a descriptor of the effect of heat alone and potential evapotranspiration which describes the water constraint along evaporative gradients we assess these relationships in four amphibian clades the subfamily of leaf frogs phyllomedusinae genera of gladiator frogs hypsiboas salamanders plethodon and the family of glass frogs centrolenidae results three clades did not show phylogenetic signals in body size variation in addition three clades showed a positive relationship with potential evapotranspiration as predicted and all of them were unrelated to temperature when present however the explanatory power of evaporative energy on body size variation was relatively weak main conclusions the conservation of water across evaporative gradients is both a more comprehensive explanation and a more pervasive driver of spatial clines in body size among terrestrial amphibians than is the balance of heat alone however the relatively low predictive ability of evaporative energy and its dependence on specific climatic configurations both emphasize and elucidate the non universality of the phenomenon,2016,0.195
Unusual records of deepwater teleosteans trawled off the western coast of Mexico,the first records of three midwater species for the mexican ichthyofauna holtbyrnia laticauda brama dussumieri and cubiceps baxteri caught off the coast of baja california mexico in mid 2014 are reported as far as is known they are the first verified specimens geo referenced and catalogued in a reference fish collection for the west coast of mexico the species known distributions were extended northward in the eastern pacific ocean ranging from 3495 to 8300 km,2016,0.732
Integrating subsistence practice and species distribution modeling: assessing invasive elodea's potential impact on Native Alaskan subsistence of Chinook salmon and whitefish.,alaska has one of the most rapidly changing climates on earth and is experiencing an accelerated rate of human disturbance including resource extraction and transportation infrastructure development combined these factors increase the state s vulnerability to biological invasion which can have acute negative impacts on ecological integrity and subsistence practices of growing concern is the spread of alaska s first documented freshwater aquatic invasive plant elodea spp elodea in this study we modeled the suitable habitat of elodea using global and state specific species occurrence records and environmental variables in concert with an ensemble of model algorithms furthermore we sought to incorporate local subsistence concerns by using native alaskan knowledge and available statewide subsistence harvest data to assess the potential threat posed by elodea to chinook salmon oncorhynchus tshawytscha and whitefish coregonus nelsonii subsistence state models were applied to future climate 2040 2059 using five general circulation models best suited for alaska model evaluations indicated that our results had moderate to strong predictability with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve values above 0 80 and classification accuracies ranging from 66 to 89 state models provided a more robust assessment of elodea habitat suitability these ensembles revealed different levels of management concern statewide based on the interaction of fish subsistence patterns known spawning and rearing sites and elodea habitat suitability thus highlighting regions with additional need for targeted monitoring our results suggest that this approach can hold great utility for invasion risk assessments and better facilitate the inclusion of local stakeholder concerns in conservation planning and management,2016,0.377
"Predicted rarity-weighted richness, a new tool to prioritize sites for species representation",lack of biodiversity data is a major impediment to prioritizing sites for species representation because comprehensive species data are not available in any planning area planners often use surrogates such as vegetation communities or mapped occurrences of a well inventoried taxon to prioritize sites we propose and demonstrate the effectiveness of predicted rarity weighted richness prwr as a surrogate in situations where species inventories may be available for a portion of the planning area use of prwr as a surrogate involves several steps first rarity weighted richness rwr is calculated from species inventories for a q subset of sites then random forest models are used to model rwr as a function of freely available environmental variables for that q subset this function is then used to calculate prwr for all sites including those for which no species inventories are available and prwr is used to prioritize all sites we tested prwr on plant and bird datasets using the species accumulation index to measure efficiency of prwr sites with the highest prwr represented species with median efficiency of 56 range 32 â 77 across six datasets when q 20 and with median efficiency of 39 range 20 â 63 when q 10 an efficiency of 56 means that selecting sites in order of prwr rank was 56 as effective as having full knowledge of species distributions in prwr s ability to improve on the number of species represented in the same number of randomly selected sites our results suggest that prwr may be able to help prioritize sites to represent species if a planner has species inventories for 10 â 20 of the sites in the planning area,2016,0.852
Stable isotope physiology of stem succulents across a broad range of volume-to-surface area ratio,volume to surface area ratio v s across stem succulent taxa varies by almost two orders of magnitude the broad range in v s of cacti and other succulent species likely has considerable importance for adaptation since stem volume determines the storage capacity of water carbon and nutrients and stem surface area is directly related to whole stem photosynthetic capacity we examined the intrinsic physiological tradeoffs across diverse stem morphologies in three divergent evolutionary groups where stem succulence is common cactoideae opuntioideae cactaceae and euphorbiaceae we predicted that variation in physiological response to environmental conditions would be 1 constrained by stem v s and 2 detectable in the stable isotope ratios of plant tissues stable isotope ratios were measured in the spines prickles of 62 stem succulent species occurring in a common garden setting in phoenix az usa biomass î 13c î 2h and î 18o increased with v s in cactoideae only possibly reflecting various levels of crassulacean acid metabolism cam strength in the other lineages within cactoideaeâ group with the highest cam strength and largest range in v sâ î 13c and î 18o increased 2 2 and 11 5 â respectively with a 22 fold increase in v s both î 13c and v s decreased with species climate niche estimates of precipitation indicating that stem morphology and physiology in cactoideae may be constrained by available moisture taken together these data suggest that physiological tradeoffs associated with stem v s are detectable across broad evolutionary groups despite differences in cam strength,2016,0.671
"Digital data for quick response (QR) codes of alkalophilic Bacillus pumilus to identify and to compare bacilli isolated from Lonar Crator Lake, India",microbiologists are routinely engaged isolation identification and comparison of isolated bacteria for their novelty 16s rrna sequences of bacillus pumilus were retrieved from ncbi repository and generated qr codes for sequences fasta format and full gene bank information 16srrna were used to generate quick response qr codes of bacillus pumilus isolated from lonar crator lake 19â 58â n 76â 31â e india bacillus pumilus 16s rrna gene sequences were used to generate cgr fcgr and pca these can be used for visual comparison and evaluation respectively the hyperlinked qr codes cgr fcgr and pca of all the isolates are made available to the users on a portal https sites google com site bhagwanrekadwad this generated digital data helps to evaluate and compare any bacillus pumilus strain minimizes laboratory efforts and avoid misinterpretation of the species,2016,0.801
Environmental niche drives genetic and morphometric structure in a widespread bat,aim to explore whether environmental factors are correlated with genetic and morphometric differences in the widely distributed bat species tadarida brasiliensis location north america and central america methods we used an extensive sampling comprising 131 localities that represent heterogeneous environments across the nearctic and neotropical regions museum specimens were examined and 25 craniodental characters were recorded individuals were genotyped at one mitochondrial locus mtdna and nine nuclear loci ndna clustering and phylogenetic analyses were used to identify differentiated groups environmental variables and pca env approaches were used to determine the climatic niche and to measure the niche overlap equivalence and similarity between groups mantel tests between genetic groupings and environmental variables dispersal costs euclidean geographical distances and niche overlap were performed results we identified six genetic groups within central and north american t brasiliensis based on ndna the most strongly differentiated group in both ndna and mtdna was located in central mexico morphometric data showed that individuals from populations in florida are slightly larger than the others niche overlap was detected among neotropical groups but not among nearctic groups the currently recognized subspecies were not recovered as distinct groups with either genetic or morphometric data main conclusions our approaches suggest that environmental niche variation may help shape the distribution of genetic variation across heterogeneous landscapes particularly in widely distributed species environmental niche analyses suggest that genetic differences between migratory and non migratory groups of t brasiliensis may be promoted by climatic variation throughout the nearctic and neotropical regions in addition genetic and morphometric analyses do not support the current subspecies classification of t brasiliensis in north and central america which should be abandoned,2016,0.708
Updates to the zoonotic niche map of Ebola virus disease in Africa,as the outbreak of ebola virus disease evd in west africa is now contained attention is turning from control to future outbreak prediction and prevention building on a previously published zoonotic niche map pigott et al 2014 this study incorporates new human and animal occurrence data and expands upon the way in which potential bat evd reservoir species are incorporated this update demonstrates the potential for incorporating and updating data used to generate the predicted suitability map a new data portal for sharing such maps is discussed this output represents the most up to date estimate of the extent of evd zoonotic risk in africa these maps can assist in strengthening surveillance and response capacity to contain viral haemorrhagic fevers,2016,0.566
Potential Implications of Climate Change on Aegilops Species Distribution: Sympatry of These Crop Wild Relatives with the Major European Crop Triticum aestivum and Conservation Issues.,gene flow from crop to wild relatives is a common phenomenon which can lead to reduced adaptation of the wild relatives to natural ecosystems and or increased adaptation to agrosystems weediness with global warming wild relative distributions will likely change thus modifying the width and or location of co occurrence zones where crop wild hybridization events could occur sympatry this study investigates current and 2050 projected changes in sympatry levels between cultivated wheat and six of the most common aegilops species in europe projections were generated using maxent on presence only data bioclimatic variables and considering two migration hypotheses and two 2050 climate scenarios rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 overall a general decline in suitable climatic conditions for aegilops species outside the european zone and a parallel increase in europe were predicted if no migration could occur the decline was predicted to be more acute outside than within the european zone the potential sympatry level in europe by 2050 was predicted to increase at a higher rate than species richness and most expansions were predicted to occur in three countries which are currently among the top four wheat producers in europe russia france and ukraine the results are also discussed with regard to conservation issues of these crop wild relatives,2016,0.932
"Climate Change Influences on the Global Potential Distribution of the Mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, Vector of West Nile Virus and Lymphatic Filariasis",rapid emergence of most vector borne diseases vbds may be associated with range expansion of vector populations culex quinquefasciatus say 1823 is a potential vector of west nile virus saint louis encephalitis virus and lymphatic filariasis we estimated the potential distribution of cx quinquefasciatus under both current and future climate conditions the present potential distribution of cx quinquefasciatus showed high suitability across low latitude parts of the world reflecting the current distribution of the species suitable conditions were identified also in narrow zones of north africa and western europe model transfers to future conditions showed a potential distribution similar to that under present day conditions although with higher suitability in southern australia highest stability with changing climate was between 30â s and 30â n the areas present high agreement among diverse climate models as regards distributional potential in the future but differed in anticipating potential for distribution in north and central africa southern asia central usa and southeastern europe highest disparity in model predictions across representative concentration pathways rcps was in saudi arabia and europe the model predictions allow anticipation of changing distributional potential of the species in coming decades,2016,0.496
Biodiversity potential of Nothofagus forests in Tierra del Fuego (Argentina): tool proposal for regional conservation planning,it is difficult to map and quantify biodiversity at landscape level in areas with low data availability despite demand from decision makers we propose a methodology to determine potential biodiversity pattern using habitat suitability maps of the understory plant species with highest cover and occurrence frequency in the three different forests types of tierra del fuego argentina we used a database of vascular plants from 535 surveys from which we identified 35 indicative species we explored more than 50 potential explanatory variables to develop habitat suitability maps of the indicative species which were combined to develop a map of the potential biodiversity correlation among environmental topographic and forest landscape variables were discussed as well as the marginality and the specialization of the indicative species we detected differences in the niches of the species prevailing in the three forest types the developed map of potential biodiversity uncovered hotspots of biodiversity in the ecotone of nothofagus pumilio and n antarctica as well as in the wettest part of the mixed n pumilioâ n betuloides forests it allowed thus to identify forest areas with different conservation potential and can be readily used as a decision support system for conservation and management strategies at different scales including the identification of land use conflicts e g of biodiversity with timber production and livestock and the development of a network of protected areas which currently does not cover the forests of highest conservation value,2016,0.657
The development of ornithology in Mexico and the importance of access to scientific information,mexican ornithology has seen a curious trajectory beginning with remarkably well documented indigenous knowledge progressing to colonial expeditions and intensive nineteenth century exploration the baton passed to collectors and scientists from the united states of america around the beginning of the twentieth century and most recently to mexican scientists the documentation of mexican bird diversity grew in each of these phases but has now become a mexican enterprise thanks to the combined availability of information both from within the country and that â œrepatriatedâ from around the world and funding provided in largest part by the mexican government this evolutionary process of a science community is perhaps general and global but with different phases emphasized in different countries and at diverse points in the process,2016,0.227
Estimating potential range and hence climatic adaptability in selected tree species,estimating climatic conditions within the potential range of different species is important as it can assist evaluating their ability to tolerate climate change potential range was analysed using a bioclim analysis in relation to three climatic variables a growth index the mean minimum temperature of the coldest period week and a moisture index three eucalypt species were analysed to demonstrate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the method these included a well known commercially important species eucalyptus globulus a lesser known species e botryoides and a rare species e kruseana to provide a simple assessment of climatic adaptability the highest values of mean annual temperature were determined from within the potential ranges of the three species it is concluded that if they are available analysing conditions at eucalypt plantings outside their natural distributions may be most useful for determining how species may cope with changing climates however if such data are not available for example for lesser known or rare species then the analysis of the potential range may provide some tentative indication of species likely climatic adaptability,2016,0.873
Invasion risk of the pond slider turtle is underestimated when niche expansion occurs,in recent years changes have been detected in the climatic niches of several non native species in spite of this and although ecological niche models enms assume species show climatic niche conservatism most studies still use enm to assess the risks of invasion by alien species in this study we tested how niche expansion of the pond slider trachemys scripta differs in invaded continents and how the performance of enms is affected by different niche shift scenarios we described niche equivalence whether native and invaded niches are identical unfilling native niche not present in invasive niche expansion invasive niche not present in native niche and stability based on the pond slider native and invaded occurrence points we created an enm using a maxent method based on the native occurrences of this turtle and evaluated the model s performance using invasive records our results indicate that the pond slider niche changed when new areas that were either warmer asia and latin america or colder europe than its native niche were invaded processes related to niche shift stability unfilling and expansion varied between continents we also found that niche expansion is not a good predictor of enm performance which may indicate that the effects of this process on model performance are more complex than a simple direct effect finally enms had especially poor performance when evaluated for sensitivity percentage of presence records correctly predicted as presences in the models reiterating the problems of using enms and their traditional evaluation methods when focal species do not conserve their native niche we draw attention to important mitigatory measures such as environmental education and strong control of trade to manage invasion by the pond slider turtle since we still lack standard methods to predict the potential invasion risks for new areas when focal species do not conserve their native niche,2016,0.595
Range Extension of Two Bumble Bee Species (Hymenoptera: Apidae) into Olympic National Park,abstract bumble bees hymenoptera apidae bombus are cold adapted insects primarily known for their importance in providing ecosystem services to wild and cultivated flowering plants recent expeditions into the wilderness regions of the olympic mountains of olympic national park usa discovered undocumented populations of two bumble bee species bombus sylvicola and b vandykei application of species distribution models with range wide locality records identified the olympic mountains to have high habitat suitability for b sylvicola and low habitat suitability for b vandykei our results suggest that olympic national park is a habitat island for b sylvicola isolated from the relatively contiguous distribution of the species in the cascade and sierra nevada mountain ranges bumble bees are sensitive to environmental change thus our discoveries will likely stimulate conservation oriented investigations on these charismatic pollinators on the olympic peninsula and throughout the pacific northwest,2016,0.841
Protecting an Ecosystem Service: Approaches to Understanding and Mitigating Threats to Wild Insect Pollinators,insect pollination constitutes an ecosystem service of global importance providing significant economic and aesthetic benefits as well as cultural value to human society alongside vital ecological processes in terrestrial ecosystems it is therefore important to understand how insect pollinator populations and communities respond to rapidly changing environments if we are to maintain healthy and effective pollinator services this chapter considers the importance of conserving pollinator diversity to maintain a suite of functional traits and provide a diverse set of pollinator services we explore how we can better understand and mitigate the factors that threaten insect pollinator richness placing our discussion within the context of populations in predominantly agricultural landscapes in addition to urban environments we highlight a selection of important evidence gaps with a number of complementary research steps that can be taken to better understand i the stability of pollinator communities in different landscapes in order to provide diverse pollinator services ii how we can study the drivers of population change to mitigate the effects and support stable sources of pollinator services and iii how we can manage habitats in complex landscapes to support insect pollinators and provide sustainable pollinator services for the future we advocate a collaborative effort to gain higher quality abundance data to understand the stability of pollinator populations and predict future trends in addition for effective mitigation strategies to be adopted researchers need to conduct rigorous field testing of outcomes under different landscape settings acknowledge the needs of end users when developing research proposals and consider effective methods of knowledge transfer to ensure effective uptake of actions,2016,0.012
Southernmost records of two Seriola species in an Australian ocean-warming hotspot,changes in marine species distributions in response to climate warming are being observed globally however there is great variation in the magnitude and rate of species responses south eastern australia represents a global hotspot for ocean warming and subsequently numerous poleward extensions in marine species distributions are evident within the region we report on two species of carangid not previously found in this region recorded through photo verified observations by citizen scientists this includes the first record of amberjack seriola dumerili in eastern tasmania and an extension of the previously most southern reported observation of a similarly mobile congener the yellowtail kingfish seriola lalandi along south eastern tasmania out of range observations may simply represent vagrant individuals however there is also evidence that they are often indicators of future colonisation potential moreover the observations presented here are potentially representative of a range of climate driven changes to marine biodiversity in this region and highlight the utility of community observations in acting as an effective early warning system for reporting changes in the marine environment early detection and reporting of distributional changes are important for proactive environmental management and is enhanced by establishing an informed community and mechanisms for conveying these observations to science and management authorities,2016,0.632
Guide to the littoral zone vascular flora of Carolina bay lakes (U.S.A.),background carolina bays are elliptic directionally aligned basins of disputed origin that occur on the atlantic coastal plain from the delmarva peninsula to southern georgia in southeastern north carolina several large natural lacustrine systems i e carolina bay lakes exist within the geomorphological features known as carolina bays within the current distribution of carolina bays bladen and columbus counties north carolina contain the only known examples of carolina bay lakes the carolina bay lakes can be split into two major divisions the â œbladen lakes groupâ which is characterized as being relatively unproductive dystrophic â oligotrophic and lake waccamaw which stands alone in columbus county and is known for its high productivity and species richness although there have been several studies conducted on these unique lentic systems none have documented the flora comprehensively new information over the 2013∠2014 growing seasons the littoral zone flora of carolina bay lakes was surveyed and vouchered literature reviews and herbarium crawls complemented this fieldwork to produce an inventory of the vascular plant species this survey detected 205 taxa species subspecies and varieties in 136 genera and 80 vascular plant families thirty one species 15 2 are of conservation concern lake waccamaw exhibited the highest species richness with 145 catalogued taxa and 26 species of conservation concern across all sites the cyperaceae 25 spp poaceae 21 spp asteraceae 13 spp ericaceae 8 spp juncaceae 8 spp and lentibulariaceae 6 spp were the six most species rich vascular plant families encountered a guide to the littoral zone flora of carolina bay lakes is presented herein including dichotomous keys species accounts including abundance habitat phenology and exsiccatae as well as images of living species and vouchered specimens,2016,0.91
Ecological and Geographic Dimensions of Diversification in Piper subgenus Ottonia: A Lineage of Neotropical Rainforest Shrubs,abstract the neotropics are home to incomparable plant diversity to evaluate the potential roles of geography and ecology on speciation in neotropical plants we selected a small tractable lineage of shrubby angiosperms piper subgenus ottonia we reconstructed a molecular phylogeny and provided insights into the species divergence times based on fossil calibration of the molecular clock we support the monophyly of piper subg ottonia and the two main lineages amazonian and atlantic forest the latter containing the non atlantic species pair p darienenseâ p piscatorum we also propose the origin of piper subg ottonia in the early eocene and suggest that the diversification of piper subg ottonia was influenced by geo historical events such as the paleocene eocene thermal maximum petm and the uplift of the andes in the miocene as is the case for other angiosperms furthermore we combined our phylogeny with geographic and environmental data in order to evaluate geographical and ecological contexts,2016,0.158
Contrasting genetic patterns between two coexisting Eleutherococcus species in northern China.,climate oscillations are the key factors to understand the patterns in modern biodiversity east asia harbors the most diverse temperate flora largely because an extensive terrestrial ice cap was absent during repeated pleistocene glaciation interglacial cycles comparing the demographic histories of species that are codistributed and are close relatives may provide insight into how the process of climate change influences species ranges in this study we compared the spatial genetic structure and demographic histories of two coexisting eleutherococcus species eleutherococcus senticosus and e sessiliflorus both species are distributed in northern china regions that are generally considered to be sensitive to climatic fluctuations these regions once hosted temperate forest but this temperate forest was replaced by tundra and taiga forest during the last glacial maximum lgm according to pollen records using three chloroplast dna fragments we assessed the genetic structure of 20 and 9 natural populations of e senticosus and e sessiliflorus respectively extremely contrasting genetic patterns were found between the two species e sessiliflorus had little genetic variation whereas e senticosus had considerably higher levels of genetic variation 15 haplotypes we speculated that a recent severe bottleneck may have resulted in the extremely low genetic diversity in e sessiliflorus in e senticosus populations in northeast china nec harbored all of the haplotypes found in this species and included private haplotypes the populations in nec had higher levels of genetic diversity than did those from north china nc therefore we suggest that both the nc and nec regions can sustain lgm refugia and that lineage admixture from multiple refugia took place after the lgm elevated the local genetic diversity in nec in nec multiple genetic hot spots were found in the changbai mountains and the xiaoxing an range which implied that multiple locations in nec may sustain lgm refugia even in the xiaoxing an range,2016,0.916
An assessment of fungi endemic to Japan,the names of mushrooms were taken from â œcolored illustrations of mushrooms of japan vol 1 and 2â imazeki and hongo 1987 1989 and categorized as follows 1 â œendemicâ 182 taxa 2 known to be distributed in overseas countries 815 and 3 distribution range unknown 2931 the overseas distribution of mushrooms in the first category was further assessed using data from the global biodiversity information facility the results revealed that 109 taxa were distributed overseas and not classed as endemic however the endemicity of 71 taxa was unclear therefore these should be regarded as possible endemic mushrooms,2016,0.302
"Assembled Plastid and Mitochondrial Genomes, as well as Nuclear Genes, Place the Parasite Family Cynomoriaceae in the Saxifragales",cynomoriaceae one of the last unplaced families of flowering plants comprises one or two species or subspecies of root parasites that occur from the mediterranean to the gobi desert using illumina sequencing we assembled the mitochondrial and plastid genomes as well as some nuclear genes of a cynomorium specimen from italy selected genes were also obtained by sanger sequencing from individuals collected in china and iran resulting in matrices of 33 mitochondrial 6 nuclear and 14 plastid genes and rdnas enlarged to include a representative angiosperm taxon sampling based on data available in genbank we also compiled a new geographic map to discern possible discontinuities in the parasitesâ occurrence cynomorium has large genomes of 13 70 13 61 italy to 13 95 13 76 pg china its mitochondrial genome consists of up to 49 circular subgenomes and has an overall gene content similar to that of photosynthetic angiosperms while its plastome retains only 27 of the normally 116 genes nuclear plastid and mitochondrial phylogenies place cynomoriaceae in saxifragales and we found evidence for several horizontal gene transfers from different hosts as well as intracellular gene transfers,2016,0.56
"Collecting in the Museum: New Species, Taxonomic Changes, and Range Extensions of Euplectite Pselaphinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) of the Southeastern United States",abstract nine new species of pselaphine rove beetles from the southeastern usa are described within four euplectite genera rhexius amyae owens and carlton new species rhexius jaceus owens and carlton new species pseudactium jaitlynum owens and carlton new species actium riobuffaloensis owens and carlton new species bibloplectus baylessae owens and carlton new species bibloplectus bossartae owens and carlton new species bibloplectus faulknerensis owens and carlton new species bibloplectus ferroi owens and carlton new species and bibloplectus kylei owens and carlton new species a single new synonymy is noted in the genus conoplectus brendel 1888 conoplectus acornus carlton 1983 with conoplectus canaliculatus leconte 1849 new synonymy regional checklists of the species in each genus are provided and new species are integrated into previously published keys and supported by illustrations of diagnostic characters all specimens in this study were obtained from the pinned collection,2016,0.982
Identifying the “demon whale-biter”: Patterns of scarring on large whales attributed to a cookie-cutter shark Isistius sp,the presence of crater like wounds on cetaceans and other large marine vertebrates and invertebrates has been attributed to various organisms we review the evidence for the identity of the biting agent responsible for crater wounds on large whales using data collected from sei balaenoptera borealis fin b physalus inshore and offshore brydeâ s b brydeii sp and sperm whales physeter macrocephalus examined at the donkergat whaling station saldanha bay south africa between march and october 1963 we then analyse the intensity and trends in its predation on large whales despite the scarcity of local records we conclude that a cookie cutter shark isistius sp is the most likely candidate we make inferences about the trends in 1 total counts of unhealed bitemarks and 2 the proportion of unhealed bitemarks that were recent we use day of the year reproductive class social grouping or sex depth interval and body length as candidate covariates the models with highest support for total counts of unhealed bitemarks involve the day of the year in all species depth was an important predictor in all species except offshore brydeâ s whales models for the proportion of recent bites were only informative for sei and fin whales we conclude that temporal scarring patterns support what is currently hypothesized about the distribution and movements of these whale species given that isistius does not occur in the antarctic and has an oceanic habitat the incidence of fresh bites confirms the presence of isistius in the region the lower numbers of unhealed bites on medium sized sperm whales suggests that this group spends more time outside the area in which bites are incurred providing a clue to one of the biggest gaps in our understanding of the movements of mature and maturing sperm males,2016,0.788
Natural history collections as windows on evolutionary processes,natural history collections provide an immense record of biodiversity on earth these repositories have traditionally been used to address fundamental questions in biogeography systematics and conservation however they also hold the potential for studying evolution directly while some of the best direct observations of evolution have come from long term field studies or from experimental studies in the lab natural history collections are providing new insights into evolutionary change in natural populations by comparing phenotypic and genotypic changes in populations through time natural history collections provide a window into evolutionary processes recent studies utilizing this approach have revealed some dramatic instances of phenotypic change over short time scales in response to presumably strong selective pressures in some instances evolutionary change can be paired with environmental change providing a context for potential selective forces moreover in a few cases the genetic basis of phenotypic change is well understood allowing for insight into adaptive change at multiple levels these kinds of studies open the door to a wide range of previously intractable questions by enabling the study of evolution through time analogous to experimental studies in the laboratory but amenable to a diversity of species over longer timescales in natural populations this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.336
Identifying particular areas for potential seed collections for restoration plantings under climate change,a method to assist identifying potential sites for seed collections for restoration plantings is demonstrated using the atlas of living australia ala and an example site near albury new south wales the mean annual temperature mat and mean annual precipitation map of the example site are determined using the ala data on likely changes in mat and map are accessed from the â climate change in australiaâ website the ala s â define environmental envelopeâ function is then used to identify areas currently experiencing conditions similar to the future climatic conditions projected for the site species distribution data in the ala indicate locations where suitable provenances of the chosen species are likely to be present in the case of trees satellite images in the ala can indicate whether isolated trees or extensive stands that may be genetically diverse exist at locations of interest shrublands grasslands or wetlands may also be identified from the satellite images the monitoring evaluation reporting and improvement tool merit within the ala can be used to identify existing trials that may already be using suitable provenances for the restoration site some considerations for provenance selection under climate change are outlined as well as the advantages and limitations of using the ala for this purpose,2016,0.323
"Notes on the distribution of the genus Pseudopaludicola Miranda-Ribeiro, 1926 (Anura: Leptodactylidae) in Paraguay",four species of pseudopaludicola pseudopaludâ icola boliviana p falcipes p mystacalis and p ternetzi are usually cited for paraguay however after analyzing 407 specimens assigned to this genus in herpetological collections of the country we conclude that there are no specimens of p falcipes in paraguayan collections or vouchers cited in the literature and almost all individuals referred to p ternetzi are most probably p ameghini at the same time a recently described species p motorzinho is recorded for the first time in the country information on the distribution of these and the remaining species of pseudopaludicola in paraguay p boliviana and p mystacalis is provided,2016,0.682
"Molecular Phylogenetics of the Ronnbergia Alliance (Bromeliaceae, Bromelioideae) and insights into their morphological evolution.",the tank epiphytic clade of berry fruited bromeliads also known as the core bromelioideae represents a remarkable event of adaptive radiation within the bromeliaceae however the details of this radiation have been difficult to study because this lineage is plagued with generic delimitation problems in this study we used a phylogenetic approach to investigate a well supported albeit poorly understood lineage nested within the core bromelioideae here called the ronnbergia alliance in order to assess the monophyly and phylogenetic relationships of this group we used three plastid and three nuclear dna sequence markers combined with a broad sampling across three taxonomic groups and allied species of aechmea expected to comprise the ronnbergia alliance we combined the datasets to produce a well supported and resolved phylogenetic hypothesis our main results indicated that the ronnbergia alliance was a well supported monophyletic group sister to the remaining core bromelioideae and it was composed by species of the polyphyletic genera aechmea hohenbergia and ronnbergia we identified two major internal lineages with high geographic structure within the ronnbergia alliance the first of these lineages called the pacific clade contained species of aechmea and ronnbergia that occur exclusively from southern central america to northwestern south america the second clade called the atlantic clade contained species of aechmea hohenbergia and ronnbergia mostly limited to the atlantic forest and the caribbean we also explored the diagnostic and evolutionary importance of 13 selected characters using ancestral character reconstructions on the phylogenetic hypothesis we found that the combination of tubular corollas apically spreading and unappendaged ovules had diagnostic value for the ronnbergia alliance whereas flower size length of the corolla tube and petal pigmentation and apex were important characters to differentiate the pacific and atlantic clades this study opens new perspectives for future taxonomic reorganizations and provides a framework for evolutionary and biogeographic studies,2016,0.66
Neotropical forest expansion during the last glacial period challenges refuge hypothesis.,the forest refuge hypothesis frh has long been a paradigm for explaining the extreme biological diversity of tropical forests according to this hypothesis forest retraction and fragmentation during glacial periods would have promoted reproductive isolation and consequently speciation in forest patches ecological refuges surrounded by open habitats the recent use of paleoclimatic models of species and habitat distributions revitalized the frh not by considering refuges as the main drivers of allopatric speciation but instead by suggesting that high contemporary diversity is associated with historically stable forest areas however the role of the emerged continental shelf on the atlantic forest biodiversity hotspot of eastern south america during glacial periods has been ignored in the literature here we combined results of species distribution models with coalescent simulations based on dna sequences to explore the congruence between scenarios of forest dynamics through time and the genetic structure of mammal species cooccurring in the central region of the atlantic forest contrary to the frh predictions we found more fragmentation of suitable habitats during the last interglacial lig and the present than in the last glacial maximum lgm probably due to topography we also detected expansion of suitable climatic conditions onto the emerged continental shelf during the lgm which would have allowed forests and forest adapted species to expand the interplay of sea level and land distribution must have been crucial in the biogeographic history of the atlantic forest and forest refuges played only a minor role if any in this biodiversity hotspot during glacial periods,2016,0.804
Assessing how habitat loss restricts the geographic range of Neotropical anurans,habitat loss and fragmentation exert unquestionable negative effects in a wide range of taxa on both regional and local scales however there is a debate over whether habitat change impacts geographic species distribution we assess how habitat loss restricts large scale species distribution on a geographic scale for four south american anurans that are known to occur in well conserved habitats yet which are absent in others that are close by and more degraded we used occurrence records of each species in brazil and performed different modeling algorithms to compare ensemble distribution models generated by two different sets of predictors a climate only versus a climate habitat procedure we found that the distribution area predicted by the climate only procedure was larger than that of the climate habitat procedure for all species the areas not predicted by the climate habitat but predicted by the climate only procedure for all species are commonly located in inland areas in southeastern brazil which coincides with areas that have suffered the most from habitat loss in the country plotting the predictions against well surveyed areas where the species have not been recorded we found evidence that habitat loss may have restricted the current geographic ranges of hypsiboas faber and rhinella ornata finally modeling approaches incorporating habitat landscape metrics particularly for habitat specialist species may be a helpful tool for identifying areas that harbored these species before deforestation took place,2016,0.966
Low Density of Top Predators (Seabirds and Marine Mammals) in the High Arctic Pack Ice,the at sea distribution of top predators seabirds and marine mammals was determined in the high arctic pack ice on board the icebreaker rv polarstern in july to september 2014 in total 1 620 transect counts were realised lasting 30 min each the five most numerous seabird species represented 74 of the total of 15 150 individuals registered kittiwake rissa tridactyla fulmar fulmarus glacialis puffin fratercula arctica rossâ s gull rhodostethia rosea and little auk alle alle eight cetacean species were tallied for a total of 330 individuals mainly white beaked dolphin lagenorhynchus albirostris and fin whale balaenoptera physalus five pinniped species were represented by a total of 55 individuals and the polar bear ursus maritimus was represented by 12 individuals four main geographical zones were identified from tromsã to the outer marginal ice zone omiz the arctic pack ice close pack ice cpi the end of lomonosov ridge off siberia and the route off siberia and northern norway important differences were detected between zones both in species composition and in individual abundance low numbers of species and high proportion of individuals for some of them can be considered to reflect very low biodiversity numbers encountered in zones 2 to 4 were very low in comparison with other european arctic seas the observed differences showed strong patterns,2016,0.912
Realized niche shift associated with the Eurasian charophyte Nitellopsis obtusa becoming invasive in North America,nitellopsis obtusa starry stonewort is a dioecious green alga native to europe and asia that has emerged as an aquatic invasive species in north america nitellopsis obtusa is rare across large portions of its native range but has spread rapidly in northern tier lakes in the united states where it can interfere with recreation and may displace native species little is known about the invasion ecology of n obtusa making it difficult to forecast future expansion using ecological niche modeling we investigated environmental variables associated with invasion risk we used species records climate data and remotely sensed environmental variables to characterize the speciesâ multidimensional distribution we found that n obtusa is exploiting novel ecological niche space in its introduced range which may help explain its invasiveness while the fundamental niche of n obtusa may be stable there appears to have been a shift in its realized niche associated with invasion in north america large portions of the united states are predicted to constitute highly suitable habitat for n obtusa our results can inform early detection and rapid response efforts targeting n obtusa and provide testable estimates of the physiological tolerances of this species as a baseline for future empirical research,2016,0.717
Comparing macroecological patterns across continents: evolution of climatic niche breadth in varanid lizards,macroecological analyses often test hypotheses at the global scale or among more closely related species in a single region e g continent here we test several hypotheses about climatic niche widths among relatively closely related species that occur across multiple continents and compare patterns within and across continents to see if they differ we focus on the lizard genus varanus monitor lizards which occurs in diverse environments in africa asia and australia we address three main questions 1 how do climatic niche breadths of species on a given niche axis change based on the position of species along that niche axis e g are species that occur in more extreme environments more narrowly specialized for those conditions 2 are there trade offs in niche breadths on temperature and precipitation axes among species or are niche widths on different axes positively related 3 is variation in niche breadths among species explained primarily by within locality seasonal variation or by differences in climatic conditions among localities across the species range we generate a new time calibrated phylogeny for varanus and test these hypotheses within and between continents using climatic data and phylogenetic methods our results show that patterns on each continent often parallel each other and global patterns however in many other cases the strength of relationships can change dramatically among closely related species on different continents overall we found that 1 species in warmer environments have narrower temperature niche breadths but there is no relationship between precipitation niche breadth and niche position 2 temperature and precipitation niche breadths tend to be positively related among species rather than showing trade offs 3 within locality seasonal variation explains most variation in climatic niche breadths some of these results are concordant with previous studies in amphibians and north american lizards and might represent general macroecological patterns,2016,0.992
Historical Biogeography of Five Characidium Fish Species: Dispersal from the Amazon Paleobasin to Southeastern South America,characidium is a neotropical fish genus its distribution ranges from eastern panama to northern argentina and it is an important component of the neotropical ichthyofauna present in the major rivers of south america we here provide an approximation to the dispersal and historical distributions of characidium the biogeographic history of five species of the genus was analyzed through nuclear rag 2 and mitochondrial 16s genes and a time calibrated phylogenetic analysis using three outgroup species a biogeographical reconstruction was performed to estimate ancestral geographic ranges and infer the historical events that impacted the geographic distributions of characidium species our results showed characidium as a monophyletic group the molecular clock suggests that the most recent common ancestor of characidium originated during the eocene about 50 2 mya in addition different dispersion and vicariance events could be inferred which possibly gave rise to the present geographical distribution of the genus our results point to the rise of the andean mountains and sea fluctuations as being important events in the formations and delimitation of different rivers which influenced the distribution of south american ichthyofauna,2016,0.679
"First records of the Gull-billed Tern, Gelochelidon nilotica (Gmelin, 1789) (Aves: Sternidae), from Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil",here we report the first documented records of the gull billed tern gelochelidon nilotica gmelin 1789 from rio de janeiro state on the coast of southeastern brazil the species was recorded in sepetiba bay in rio de janeiro municipality in august and september 2014 and september 2015 in all cases the birds had full nuptial plumage which suggests breeding in the austral spring and summer this is inconsistent with the possibility of a migrant from the northern hemisphere the regular monitoring of the coastal environments of this region should provide more conclusive insights into seasonal patterns and the migration routes of this species,2016,0.57
A comprehensive database of quality-rated fossil ages for Sahul’s Quaternary vertebrates,the study of palaeo chronologies using fossil data provides evidence for past ecological and evolutionary processes and is therefore useful for predicting patterns and impacts of future environmental change however the robustness of inferences made from fossil ages relies heavily on both the quantity and quality of available data we compiled quaternary non human vertebrate fossil ages from sahul published up to 2013 this the fossahul database includes 9 302 fossil records from 363 deposits for a total of 478 species within 215 genera of which 27 are from extinct and extant megafaunal species 2 559 records we also provide a rating of reliability of individual absolute age based on the dating protocols and association between the dated materials and the fossil remains our proposed rating system identified 2 422 records with high quality ages i e a reduction of 74 there are many applications of the database including disentangling the confounding influences of hypothetical extinction drivers better spatial distribution estimates of species relative to palaeo climates and potentially identifying new areas for fossil discovery,2016,0.441
"Is There Any Evidence for Rapid, Genetically-Based, Climatic Niche Expansion in the Invasive Common Ragweed?",climatic niche shifts have been documented in a number of invasive species by comparing the native and adventive climatic ranges in which they occur however these shifts likely represent changes in the realized climatic niches of invasive species and may not necessarily be driven by genetic changes in climatic affinities until now the role of rapid niche evolution in the spread of invasive species remains a challenging issue with conflicting results here we document a likely genetically based climatic niche expansion of an annual plant invader the common ragweed ambrosia artemisiifolia l a highly allergenic invasive species causing substantial public health issues to do so we looked for recent evolutionary change at the upward migration front of its adventive range in the french alps based on species climatic niche models estimated at both global and regional scales we stratified our sampling design to adequately capture the species niche and localized populations suspected of niche expansion using a combination of species niche modeling landscape genetics models and common garden measurements we then related the species genetic structure and its phenotypic architecture across the climatic niche our results strongly suggest that the common ragweed is rapidly adapting to local climatic conditions at its invasion front and that it currently expands its niche toward colder and formerly unsuitable climates in the french alps i e in sites where niche models would not predict its occurrence such results showing that species climatic niches can evolve on very short time scales have important implications for predictive models of biological invasions that do not account for evolutionary processes,2016,0.931
Open Data in Global Environmental Research: The Belmont Forum's Open Data Survey.,this paper presents the findings of the belmont forum s survey on open data which targeted the global environmental research and data infrastructure community it highlights users perceptions of the term open data expectations of infrastructure functionalities and barriers and enablers for the sharing of data a wide range of good practice examples was pointed out by the respondents which demonstrates a substantial uptake of data sharing through e infrastructures and a further need for enhancement and consolidation among all policy responses funder policies seem to be the most important motivator this supports the conclusion that stronger mandates will strengthen the case for data sharing,2016,0.21
Prevalence of physical inactivity in Iran: a systematic review,introduction physical inactivity is one of the most important risk factors for chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease cancer and stroke we aim to conduct a systematic review of the prevalence of physical inactivity in iran methods we searched international databases isi pubmed medline scopus and national databases irandoc barakat knowledge network system and scientific information database sid we collected data for outcome measures of prevalence of physical inactivity by sex age province and year quality assessment and data extraction has been conducted independently by two independent research experts there were no limitations for time and language results we analyzed data for prevalence of physical inactivity in iranian population according to our search strategy we found 254 records of them 185 were from international databases and the remaining 69 were obtained from national databases after refining the data 34 articles that met eligible criteria remained for data extraction from them respectively 9 20 2 and 3 studies were at national provincial regional and local levels the estimates for inactivity ranged from approximately 30 to almost 70 and had considerable variation between sexes and studied sub groups conclusion in iran most of studies reported high prevalence of physical inactivity our findings reveal a heterogeneity of reported values often from differences in study design measurement tools and methods different target groups and sub population sampling these data do not provide the possibility of aggregation of data for a comprehensive inference,2016,0.518
Out of the weeds? Reduced plant invasion risk with climate change in the continental United States,identifying invasion risk is critical for regional prioritization of management and monitoring however we currently lack a comprehensive assessment of the invasion risk posed by plants for the united states we aim to quantify geographic invasion risk for currently established terrestrial invasive plants in the continental u s under current and future climate we assembled a comprehensive occurrence database for 896 terrestrial invasive plant species from 33 regional collections of field and museum data and projected species ranges using maxent species distribution models based on current 1950â 2000 average and future 2040â 2060 average climate we quantified geographic invasion risk as differences in species richness invasion debt range infilling and identification of hotspots potential invasive plant richness was higher than observed richness particularly in eastern temperate forests where as many as 83 of species with suitable climate have not yet established a small percentage median 0 22 of species potential ranges are currently occupied by them with climate change potential invasive plant richness declined by a median of 7 3 by 2050 about 80 of invasive plant hotspots were geographically stable with climate change with the remaining 20 shifting northward invasion hotspots and current invasion debt reveal extensive ongoing risk from existing invasive plants across the u s particularly in the southeast climate change alters the spatial distributions of focal species for monitoring and is likely to reduce overall invasion risk in many areas early detection and rapid response programs could be most effective in stemming the spread of invasive plant species in areas with increased risk under climate change while areas with persistent high risk are candidates for containment and control the areas with reduced risk are prime locations for invasion of new imports from tropical and subtropical climates highlighting the simultaneous need for prevention strategies,2016,0.78
Ecology suitability regions and ecological characteristics of Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F.H. Chen based on maximum entropy model,the ecology suitability and ecological characteristics of panax notoginseng burk f h chen were studied to provide a reference for its artificial introduction and cultivation the maximum entropy model maxent and geographic information system gis were used to investigate the global ecology suitability regions for panax notoginseng burk f h chen based on its 67 distribution points collected from global biodiversity information facility gbif chinese virtual herbarium cvh and the related references the results showed that the possible ecological suitable regions of panax notoginseng burk f h chen were located in yunnan guangxi guangdong guizhou hainan sichuan fujian and chongqing provinces the areas with ecological similarity higher than 60 were about 89 571 3 square kilometers in total mainly distributing in yunnan and guangxi provinces and small portion was located in guangdong and guizhou provinces the areas with ecological similarity between 40 and 60 were about 155 172 square kilometers mainly in yunnan guangxi guangdong guizhou hainan sichuan provinces the distribution areas were about 329 952 8 square kilometers with ecological similarity between 20 and 40 mainly in yunnan guangxi guangdong guizhou hainan sichuan fujian and chongqing the climate factors mainly affecting the distribution of panax notogimeng burk f h chen were precipitation of warmest quarter sd of temperature seasonality altitude isothermality coefficient of variation of precipitation seasonality mean temperature of monthly precipitation of driest month reference bulk density of soil and soil texture,2016,0.275
Isolation and characterization of three benzylisoquinoline alkaloids from Thalictrum minus L. and their antibacterial activity against bovine mastitis,ethno pharmacological relevance the roots of thalictrum minus are traditionally used in the treatment of inflammation and infectious diseases such as bovine mastitis however there are no reports available in literature till date regarding the antibacterial studies of t minus against bovine mastitis aim of the study the present study was undertaken to evaluate the antibacterial potential of crude extract of t minus root and some of its isolated constituents against bovine mastitis in order to scientifically validate its traditional use materials and methods a total of three alkaloid compounds were isolated from the dcm meoh extract of roots of t minus using silica gel column chromatography structural elucidation of the isolated compounds was done by using spectroscopic techniques like mass spectrometry and nmr spectroscopy pathogens were isolated from cases of bovine mastitis and identified by using 16s rrna gene sequencing the broth micro dilution method was used to evaluate the antibacterial activities of dcm meoh extract and isolated compounds against mastitis pathogens results the three isolated compounds were identified as benzylisoquinoline alkaloids 1 5â hydroxythalidasine 2 thalrugosaminine and 3 o methylthalicberine compounds 2 and 3 are reported for the first time from the roots of t minus five mastitis pathogens viz staphylococcus xylosus staphylococcus lentus staphylococcus equorum enterococcus faecalis and pantoea agglomerans were identified on the basis of sequence analysis of isolates using the nucleotide blast algorithm this study reports for the first time the isolation and molecular characterization of mastitis pathogens from kashmir valley india the dcm meoh extract exhibited broad spectrum antibacterial activities that varied between the bacterial species mic 250 500âµg ml 5â hydroxythalidasine and thalrugosaminine showed promising antibacterial activity with mic values of 64 128âµg ml while staphylococcus species were found to be the most sensitive strains conclusions the antibacterial activities of the dcm meoh extract and isolated compounds support the traditional use of t minus in the treatment of bovine mastitis,2016,0.677
“Are 3°C too much?” - Thermal niche breadth in Bromeliaceae and global warming,1 by the end of this century temperature is predicted to increase by about 6â c at higher latitudes and about 3â c in the tropics although values predicted for tropical latitudes are lower rising temperatures in the tropics are likely to have more severe consequences for tropical species that are generally assumed to have narrower climatic niches due to a higher degree of climatic stability and higher niche specialization 2 even though temperature affects all ontogenetic stages the regeneration niche of a species is fundamental for overall niche breadth and hence represents a potential major bottleneck for its distribution 3 we conducted germination experiments along a range of temperatures with 41 epiphytic bromeliad species to determine thermal germination traits thermal niche breadth lower and upper thermal limit thermal optimum based on these traits we asked whether the thermal germination niche breadth of these species is wide enough to cope with the predicted increase in temperature furthermore we conducted phylogenetic comparative analyses to detect possible niche conservatism of these traits in bromeliaceae 4 for 93 of all tested bromeliad species the predicted mean annual temperature range does not exceed the thermal niche breadth moreover for 85 of all tested species the current mean annual temperature across the distribution range is well below our estimates of their thermal optima furthermore we found evidence for phylogenetic niche conservatism in most assessed traits 5 synthesis our report represents an important first step to understand and predict present and future responses of epiphytic bromeliads to global warming at least with regard to seed germination epiphytic bromeliads should not be negatively affected by the predicted temperature rise of 3â c to the contrary future temperatures are closer to the thermal optima of most species potentially leading to an increase in performance however since niche conservatism in bromeliaceae may limit their adaptability to novel climatic conditions a negative effect of increasing temperatures cannot be completely rejected when considering ontogenetic niche shifts,2016,0.565
Sharing Italian Botanic Gardens’ living collections: The role of the National Biodiversity Network,abstractthis paper presents the role of the italian national biodiversity network in making available biodiversity data from italian botanic gardens at a national and international level the case study of the botanic garden of rome is presented explaining procedures and methods for collecting georeferenced data on living plant species and making them available through web based applications,2016,0.231
Limitations to the Use of Species-Distribution Models for Environmental-Impact Assessments in the Amazon.,species distribution models sdm are tools with potential to inform environmental impact studies eia however they are not always appropriate and may result in improper and expensive mitigation and compensation if their limitations are not understood by decision makers here we examine the use of sdm for frogs that were used in impact assessment using data obtained from the eia of a hydroelectric project located in the amazon basin in brazil the results show that lack of knowledge of species distributions limits the appropriate use of sdm in the amazon region for most target species because most of these targets are newly described and their distributions poorly known data about their distributions are insufficient to be effectively used in sdm surveys that are mandatory for the eia are often conducted only near the area under assessment and so models must extrapolate well beyond the sampled area to inform decisions made at much larger spatial scales such as defining areas to be used to offset the negative effects of the projects using distributions of better known species in simulations we show that geographical extrapolations based on limited information of species ranges often lead to spurious results we conclude that the use of sdm as evidence to support project licensing decisions in the amazon requires much greater area sampling for impact studies or alternatively integrated and comparative survey strategies to improve biodiversity sampling when more detailed distribution information is unavailable sdm will produce results that generate uncertain and untestable decisions regarding impact assessment in many cases sdm is unlikely to be better than the use of expert opinion,2016,0.624
Deciphering range dynamics: effects of niche stability areas and post-glacial colonization on alpine species distribution,aim niche stability areas nsas are portions of the species range where climate conditions remain suitable through time they represent the core of species ranges their distribution and extent coupled with dispersal and colonization shape the realized range of species in this study we quantified the roles of survival within nsas and post glacial dispersal in determining the current distribution of two groups of alpine butterflies two taxa in the erebia tyndarus species complex three taxa in the parnassius apolloâ p phoebus species complex location holarctic methods nsas were identified for each taxon by combining current and past potential distributions models estimated using different modelling techniques and general circulation models we then 1 assessed the distributional bias towards nsas by comparing actual occurrence records with randomized occupancies of the current potential range and 2 quantified post glacial dispersal by examining the distribution of distances from each occurrence record to the nearest nsa results in almost all taxa realized distributions are biased towards nsas however while erebia s present range is strongly dominated by nsas some populations of parnassius are found very far from nsas suggesting more effective colonization of the available geographical space main conclusions our study highlights the relative roles of survival within nsas and post glacial dispersal in shaping the ranges of different alpine butterflies during the holocene results suggest that erebia was unable to disperse far from nsas thus experiencing increasing range fragmentation parnassius populations on the other hand coupled local survival with northward dispersal as nsas allowed the long term survival of the species acting as sources for recolonization and tend to preserve most of each speciesâ genetic diversity identifying nsas and understanding their importance in determining the current distribution of species represents a pivotal task for the conservation of biological diversity,2016,0.892
Iberian fish records in the vertebrate collection of the Museum of Zoology of the University of Navarra,the study of freshwater fish species biodiversity and community composition is essential for understanding river systems the effects of human activities on rivers and the changes these animals face conducting this type of research requires quantitative information on fish abundance ideally with long term series and fish body measurements this data descriptor presents a collection of 12 datasets containing a total of 146 342 occurrence records of 41 freshwater fish species sampled in 233 localities of various iberian river basins the datasets also contain 148 749 measurement records length and weight for these fish data were collected in different sampling campaigns from 1992 to 2015 eleven datasets represent large projects conducted over several years and another combines small sampling campaigns the iberian peninsula contains high fish biodiversity with numerous endemic species threatened by various menaces such as water extraction and invasive species these data may support the development of large biodiversity conservation studies,2016,0.741
Identifying cryptic diversity with predictive phylogeography,identifying units of biological diversity is a major goal of organismal biology an increasing literature has focused on the importance of cryptic diversity defined as the presence of deeply diverged lineages within a single species while most discoveries of cryptic lineages proceed on a taxon by taxon basis rapid assessments of biodiversity are needed to inform conservation policy and decision making here we introduce a predictive framework for phylogeography that allows rapidly identifying cryptic diversity our approach proceeds by collecting environmental taxonomic and genetic data from codistributed taxa with known phylogeographic histories we define these taxa as a reference set and categorize them as either harbouring or lacking cryptic diversity we then build a random forest classifier that allows us to predict which other taxa endemic to the same biome are likely to contain cryptic diversity we apply this framework to data from two sets of disjunct ecosystems known to harbour taxa with cryptic diversity the mesic temperate forests of the pacific northwest of north america and the arid lands of southwestern north america the predictive approach presented here is accurate with prediction accuracies placed between 65 and 98 79 depending of the ecosystem this seems to indicate that our method can be successfully used to address ecosystem level questions about cryptic diversity further our application for the prediction of the cryptic non cryptic nature of unknown species is easily applicable and provides results that agree with recent discoveries from those systems our results demonstrate that the transition of phylogeography from a descriptive to a predictive discipline is possible and effective,2016,0.272
Species Distribution 2.0: An Accurate Time- and Cost-Effective Method of Prospection Using Street View Imagery.,species occurrence data provide crucial information for biodiversity studies in the current context of global environmental changes such studies often rely on a limited number of occurrence data collected in the field and on pseudo absences arbitrarily chosen within the study area which reduces the value of these studies to overcome this issue we propose an alternative method of prospection using geo located street view imagery svi following a standardised protocol of virtual prospection using both vertical aerial photographs and horizontal svi perceptions we have surveyed 1097 randomly selected cells across spain 0 1x0 1 degree i e 20 of spain for the presence of arundo donax l poaceae in total we have detected a donax in 345 cells thus substantially expanding beyond the now two centuries old field derived record which described a donax only 216 cells among the field occurrence cells 81 1 were confirmed by svi prospection to be consistent with species presence in addition we recorded by svi prospection 752 absences i e cells where a donax was considered absent we have also compared the outcomes of climatic niche modeling based on svi data against those based on field data using generalized linear models fitted with bioclimatic predictors we have found svi data to provide far more compelling results in terms of niche modeling than does field data as classically used in sdm this original cost and time effective method provides the means to accurately locate highly visible taxa reinforce absence data and predict species distribution without long and expensive in situ prospection at this time the majority of available svi data is restricted to human disturbed environments that have road networks however svi is becoming increasingly available in natural areas which means the technique has considerable potential to become an important factor in future biodiversity studies,2016,0.336
"""New"" mountain species from Silesia in the Polish lowlands",the paper presents information on four mountain species of vascular plants inhabiting areas outside the mountains which were not mentioned by szafer 1930 or were omitted in the last monographic study by zajä c 1996 the â œnewâ species are cardamine trifolia and lonicera nigra and the omitted ones are cirsium erisithales and selaginella helvetica these species increase to 122 the number of mountain species present in the polish lowlands,2016,0.581
Towards citizen-expert knowledge exchange for biodiversity informatics: A conceptual architecture,this article proposes a conceptual architecture for citizen expert knowledge exchange in biodiversity management expert services such as taxonomic identification are required in many biodiversity management activities yet these services remain inaccessible to poor communities such as small scale farmers the aim of this research is to combine ontol ogy and crowdsourcing technologies to provide taxonomic services to such communities the study used a design science research dsr approach to develop the conceptual architecture the dsr approach generates knowledge through building and evaluation of novel artefacts the research instantiated the architecture through the development of a platform for experts and farmers to share knowledge on fruit flies the platform is intended to support rural fruit farmers in kenya with control and management of fruit flies expert knowledge about fruit flies is captured in an ontology that is integrated into the platform the non expert citizen participation includes harnessing crowdsourcing technologies to assist with organism identification an evaluation of the architecture is done through an experiment of fruit fly identification using the platform the results show that the crowds supported by an ontology of expert knowledge could identify most samples to species level and in some cases to sub family level the conceptual architec ture may guide and enable creation of citizen expert knowledge exchange applications which may alleviate the taxonomic impediment as well as allow poor citizens access to expert knowledge such a conceptual architecture may also enable the implementation of systems that allow non experts to participate in sharing of knowledge thus providing opportunity for the evolution of comprehensive biodiversity knowledge systems,2016,0.021
"Three new additions to the grass (Poaceae) flora of Manipur, India",three grass species viz avena fatua l chrysopogon zizanioides l roberty and digitaria violascens link poaceae nom alt gramineae are reported here for the first time from manipur india as new records to the state a key to the identification of species along with detail description and illustrations is provided to facilitate their easy identification,2016,0.576
Pollination service delivery for European crops: Challenges and opportunities,crop pollination by bees has long been recognized as an ecosystem service of huge economic value a large number of food crops depend upon pollination features across landscapes that are important for pollination delivery include nesting habitats floral resource availability at foraging distance and climate the conditions for presence absence of pollinators are therefore complex and rely upon a combination of biotic and abiotic factors to date there has been no easily available method for landowners to determine the potential of pollination delivery across the land effectively and rapidly in this paper we develop a method that uses freely available datasets to remotely estimate the relative provision of pollination service delivery provided by bees across europe at a 300m pixel resolution we then identify the potential pollination delivery and efficiency across europe at country and regional level this study illustrates an approach that obtains a first approximation for land managers to identify potential areas across landscapes to protect in order to enhance pollination service delivery,2016,0.12
"Species Diversity, Distribution, and Conservation Status in a Mesoamerican Region: Amphibians of the Uxpanapa-Chimalapas Region, Mexico",the uxpanapa chimalapas region with one of the most extensive and best preserved tropical forest areas in mexico is undergoing major anthropogenic changes and only some portions of the territory are under the protection of local communities although the biodiversity of the region is known to be high no study has yet analyzed the diversity of amphibian species in the region or contributed to valuing the region in a context of amphibian conservation based on a review of databases and the existing scientific literature as well as our own fieldwork in this study we analyze the amphibian species richness species composition their spatial distribution and their conservation status in the uxpanapa chimalapas region additionally we compare this information with the available data for seven other tropical regions in central northern mesoamerica the amphibian fauna recorded at the study region comprises 51 species which makes it the richest tropical region in amphibian species in central northern mesoamerica and mexico among the regions compared this one stands out as the one with the most distinctive composition of amphibian species sharing on average only 35 of its species with the other regions however it is also the region with the highest number of threatened species since one third of its species are in higher extinction risk categories these characteristics turn the uxpanapa chimalapas into a high priority region for both mexico and mesoamerica and a regional conservation plan is necessary for the immediate protection of areas where the forest is being replaced and to promote or to support community protected areas,2016,0.911
Molecular and iridescent feather reflectance data reveal recent genetic diversification and phenotypic differentiation in a cloud forest hummingbird,the present day distribution and spatial genetic diversity of mesoamerican biota reflects a long history of responses to habitat change the hummingbird lampornis amethystinus is distributed in northern mesoamerica with geographically disjunct populations based on sampling across the species range using mitochondrial dna mtdna sequences and nuclear microsatellites jointly analysed with phenotypic and climatic data we 1 test whether the fragmented distribution is correlated with main evolutionary lineages 2 assess body size and plumage color differentiation of populations in geographic isolation and 3 evaluate a set of divergence scenarios and demographic patterns of the hummingbird populations analysis of genetic variation revealed four main groups blue throated populations sierra madre del sur two groups of amethyst throated populations trans mexican volcanic belt and sierra madre oriental and populations east of the isthmus of tehuantepec it with males showing an amethyst throat the most basal split is estimated to have originated in the pleistocene 2 39â 0 57 million years ago mya and corresponded to groups of populations separated by the it however the estimated recent divergence time between blue and amethyst throated populations does not correspond to the 2 my needed to be in isolation for substantial plumage divergence likely because structurally iridescent colors are more malleable than others results of species distribution modeling and approximate bayesian computation analysis fit a model of lineage divergence west of the isthmus after the last glacial maximum lgm and that the speciesâ suitable habitat was disjunct during past and current conditions these results challenge the generality of the contraction expansion glacial model to cloud forest interior species and urges management of cloud forest a highly vulnerable ecosystem to climate change and currently facing destruction to prevent further loss of genetic diversity or extinction,2016,0.921
Climate Warming and Seasonal Precipitation Change Interact to Limit Species Distribution Shifts across Western North America,using an extensive network of occurrence records for 293 plant species collected over the past 40 years across a climatically diverse geographic section of western north america we find that plant species distributions were just as likely to shift upwards i e towards higher elevations as downward i e towards lower elevations â despite consistent warming across the study area although there was no clear directional response to climate warming across the entire study area there was significant region to region variation in responses i e from as many as 73 to as few as 32 of species shifting upward to understand the factors that might be controlling region specific distributional shifts of plant species we explored the relationship between the direction of change in distribution limits and the nature of recent climate change we found that the direction that distribution limits shifted was explained by an interaction between the rate of change in local summer temperatures and seasonal precipitation specifically species were more likely to shift upward at their upper elevational limit when minimum temperatures increased and snowfall was unchanging or declined at slower rates 0 5 mm year this suggests that both low temperature and water availability limit upward shifts at upper elevation limits by contrast species were more likely to shift upwards at their lower elevation limit when maximum temperatures increased but also shifted upwards under conditions of cooling temperatures when precipitation decreased this suggests increased water stress may drive upward shifts at lower elevation limits our results suggest that speciesâ elevational distribution shifts are not predictable by climate warming alone but depend on the interaction between seasonal temperature and precipitation change,2016,0.906
"Do ants drive speciation in aphids? A possible case of ant-driven speciation in the aphid genus Stomaphis Walker (Aphidoidea, Lachninae)",ecological divergence is an accepted mode of speciation in phytophagous insects such as aphids adaptations of ancestral populations to various feeding locations on a plant seem to be a promoted mode of such speciation in this study we present a thesis that for obligatorily myrmecophilous aphids it is a mutualistic relationship with distinct ants that constitutes a significant selective factor it leads to the separation of ecological niches of ancestral aphid populations and development of sibling species the thesis is supported by the example of two sibling aphid species of the genus stomaphis s quercus l and s wojciechowskii depa which show very peculiar adaptations to feeding on trees and are both undoubtedly obligatorily myrmecophilous species their separateness is proven by mitochondrial markers as well as their life modes and ecological adaptations they all follow the biology of their respective ant hosts lasius dendrolasius fuliginosus and l l brunneus proven and modelled geographical distributions indicate a high level of sympatry and the fact that environmental requirements of both aphid species overlap it is suggested that their divergence has resulted from having adapted to living with ants of distinct life modes foraging strategies and positions in the hierarchy of ant assemblages this in turn indirectly affected their adaptations to exploit different host plant genera,2016,0.822
Building confidence in projections of the responses of living marine resources to climate change,the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change highlights that climate change and ocean acidification are challenging the sustainable management of living marine resources lmrs formal and systematic treatment of uncertainty in existing lmr projections however is lacking we synthesize knowledge of how to address different sources of uncertainty by drawing from climate model intercomparison efforts we suggest an ensemble of available models and projections informed by observations as a starting point to quantify uncertainties such an ensemble must be paired with analysis of the dominant uncertainties over different spatial scales time horizons and metrics we use two examples i global and regional projections of sea surface temperature and ii projection of changes in potential catch of sablefish anoplopoma fimbria in the 21st century to illustrate this ensemble model approach to explore different types of uncertainties further effort should prioritize understanding dominant undersampled dimensions of uncertainty as well as the strategic collection of observations to quantify and ultimately reduce uncertainties our proposed framework will improve our understanding of future changes in lmr and the resulting risk of impacts to ecosystems and the societies under changing ocean conditions,2016,0.099
"On the Mimela Kirby, 1823 (Rutelinae: Scarabaeidae) of Buxa Tiger Reserve (a forest under biodiversity hot spot zone), Dooars, West Bengal, India",taxonomic account of mimela kirby 1823 fauna included within the subfamily rutelinae recorded from buxa tiger reserve dooars west bengal india are dealt herewith long term faunistic survey by the authors resulted in the present outcome each of the species is redescribed and illustrated supplemented by digital images for easy identification of the species a key has also been provided,2016,0.576
Improving niche and range estimates with Maxent and point process models by integrating spatially explicit information,aim accurate spatial information on species occurrence is essential to address global change models for presence only data are central to predicting species distributions because these represent the only geographical information available for many species in this paper we introduce extensions to incorporate a variety of types of additional spatially explicit sources of information in maxent and poisson point process models this spatial information comes from the output of other statistical or conceptual models innovation our approach relies on minimizing the relative or cross entropy known as minxent between the predicted distribution and a prior distribution in many scenarios researchers have some additional information or expectations about the species distribution such as outputs from previous models here we show how to use this information to improve predictions of both niche models and spatial distributions depending on what types of spatially explicit prior information is available and how it is incorporated in the model main conclusions we illustrate applications of minxent that include models for sampling bias explicitly incorporating dispersal other ecological processes combining native and invasive range data incorporating expert maps and borrowing strength across taxonomic relatives these applications focus on addressing biological scenarios where range modelling is extremely challenging â non equilibrium species distributions and rare and narrowly distributed species â due to data limitations when data are limited we are typically forced to make informal assumptions or lean on predictions of other models in order to obtain useful predictions our applications of minxent provide a formal way of describing these assumptions and connections to other models,2016,0.466
The African hexaploid Torini (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae): review of a tumultuous history,a review of the tumultuous history of the alpha and genus level taxonomy of the hexaploid african torini i e labeobarbus s l synonym varicorhinus as well as of the closely related monospecific genera acapoeta and sanagia is provided the main purpose of the present paper is to provide a continental framework for multidisciplinary research on this megadiverse vertebrate group based on the inspection of almost all relevant type specimens a complete and fully annotated checklist of all valid species and junior synonyms is provided for each of the four nominal genera it comprises ∠275 nominal taxa 125 of which are valid african labeobarbus spp and three of which are formally named hybrid phenotypes particular attention is drawn to the diversity and taxon specific distribution of mouth phenotypes which previously served as generic identification characters i e â rubberlipsâ with strongly developed sometimes hypertrophied lips and a mental lobe and â chiselmouthsâ former varicorhinus spp with a cornified sharp cutting edge on their lower jaw interestingly many species are polymorphic and include a large array of intermediate mouth phenotypes the recurrent occurrence of similar mouth phenotype diversity within but also far beyond the borders of labeobarbus s l is highlighted raising numerous evolutionary questions â 2016 the linnean society of london,2016,0.303
Biodiversity and ecosystem services in life cycle impact assessment – Inventory objects or impact categories?,biodiversity and ecosystem services are both sensitive to the way we utilize and manage ecosystems and landscapes but they are not unambiguously linked it is argued that in life cycle impact assessment lcia the area of protection aop â natural environmentâ should be divided into two aop s namely â biodiversityâ and â ecosystem servicesâ the aop biodiversity has more emphasis on intrinsic existence values than on utilitarian functional value perceptions that are covered by the aop ecosystem services ecosystem services can in some aspects be substituted or restored whereas certain biodiversity losses e g loss of old growth forest or extinction of a species are irreversible and thus require a precautionary conservationist approach further it is suggested that global environmental change scenarios are used in lcia in order to assess future pressures and potential damages to biodiversity and ecosystem service supplies as a basis for calculating the contribution of a product life cycle to the overall environmental damage,2016,0.265
Invertebrate Collection Donated by Professor Dr. Ion Cantacuzino to ”Grigore Antipa” National Museum of Natural History from Bucharest,the catalogue of the invertebrate collection donated by prof dr ion cantacuzino represents the first detailed description of this historical act the early years of prof dr ion cantacuzinoâ s career are dedicated to natural sciences collecting and drawing of marine invertebrates followed by experimental studies the present paper represents gathered data from grigore antipa 1931 inventory also from the original handwritten labels the specimens were classified by current nomenclature the present donation comprises 70 species of protozoa porifera coelenterata mollusca annelida bryozoa sipuncula arthropoda chaetognatha echinodermata tunicata and chordata the specimens were collected from the north west of the mediterranean sea villefrancheâ surâ mer and in 1899 were donated to the museum of natural history from bucharest the original catalogue of the donation was lost and along other 27 specimens this contribution represents an homage to professorâ s dr cantacuzino generosity and withal restoring this donation to its proper position on cultural heritage hallway,2016,0.469
"New South American species of Lamiinae (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae)",two new species of cerambycid beetles are described from south america ataxia camiriensis pteropliini from bolivia and falsamblesthis uniformis forsteriini from peru the new species are included in previous keys,2016,0.578
Ecological criteria to identify areas for biodiversity conservation,a challenge in implementing biodiversity conservation is in reconciling criteria for identifying significant areas and representative networks for biodiversity protection many international environmental initiatives include biological ecological economic social and governance criteria to aid selection of areas for biodiversity conservation here we reviewed criteria used by 15 international initiatives and what minimum set of biodiversity variables would be needed to support them from a range of ecological and biological criteria we identified eight criteria commonly used to identify areas for biodiversity conservation across these initiatives four criteria identified areas that 1 contained unique and rare habitats 2 included fragile and sensitive habitats 3 were important for ecological integrity and 4 were representative of all habitats another four criteria were based on species attributes including 5 the presence of species of conservation concern 6 the occurrence of restricted range species 7 species richness and 8 importance for life history stages information required to inform these criteria include habitat cover species occurrence species richness species geographic range and population abundance this synthesized set of ecological and biological criteria and their biodiversity variables will simplify the process to identify additional areas of high biodiversity significance that in turn support achieving the convention on biological diversity cbd targets to fill gaps in the representativeness of the global coverage of protected areas,2016,0.858
Holocene Variability of an Amazonian Hyperdominant,little is known regarding the long term stability or instability of amazonian plant communities we assessed whether the most abundant species hyperdominants may have risen to prominence at the pleistocene holocene transition following subsequent changes in moisture regimes or as a result of human activity later in the holocene the fossil pollen history of the commonest western amazonian tree iriartea deltoidea hereafter iriartea is investigated using fossil pollen data from 13 lakes iriartea is a monospecific genus with diagnostic pollen it is also considered a â usefulâ plant and its abundance could have been enriched by human action iriartea pollen was found to have increased in abundance in the last 3000 years but did not show a consistent relationship with human activity the suggestion that the hyperdominants in modern amazonian forests are a legacy of pre columbian people is unsupported the abundance of iriartea pollen is related to increasing precipitation not human activity over the last 3000 years this member of the hyperdominant category of amazonian trees has only recently acquired this status synthesis our findings our consistent with the observation that communities in complex systems are ephemeral the populations of even the most abundant species can change over a few tens of generations the relative abundance of tree species even in relatively stable systems such as those of amazonian floodplains changes on ecological not evolutionary timescales,2016,0.443
Surrogate species protection in Bolivia under climate and land cover change scenarios,the amazon rainforest covers more than 60 of boliviaâ s lowlands providing habitat for many endemic and threatened species bolivia has the highest rates of deforestation of the amazon biome which degrades and fragments species habitat anthropogenic habitat changes could be exacerbated by climate change and therefore developing relevant strategies for biodiversity protection under global change scenarios is a necessary step in conservation planning in this research we used multi species umbrella concept to evaluate the degree of habitat impacts due to climate and land cover change in bolivia we used species distribution modeling to map three focal species jaguar lowland tapir and lesser anteater and assessed current protected area network effectiveness under future climate and land cover change scenarios for 2050 the studied focal species will lose between 70 and 83 of their ranges under future climate and land cover change scenarios decreasing the level of protection to 10 of their original ranges existing protected area network should be reconsidered to maintain current and future biodiversity habitats,2016,0.808
Georeferencing orchids specimen history cards in Bogor Botanic Gardens to increase their use for conservation efforts,orchi ds are considered valuable plant resource but overharvesting and habitat conversion have threatened their population bogor botanic gardens kebun raya bogor bbg stores millions of plant specimens including orchids taken from the wild or captivity ori gin of specimens is recorded in specimen tags and cards where each of these can be converted to species occurrence datum for investigations of biodiversity its relationship with the environment evaluating conservation efforts and anthropogenic disturban ces along spatial or temporal scales however data from tags and cards available are often insufficient because localities are typically being recorded as textual descriptions without geographic coordinates thus making analysis using geographical inform ation system gis tools difficult in this paper we reviewed the use of online resources i e googlemapsâ protectedplanet net for georeferencing specimen cards and quantum gis as a gis tool to store and display the data specimen cards from the chosen genera of orchid in bbg were reviewed the georeferencing process encountered several obstacles includes geographically biased locations changes in spatial administrative borders unregistered location name unavailability of location name in online re sources and typographic errors during specimen recording process we also encounter quality difference along georeferenced records some are good quality i e record coordinates or nearest village and some are poor only record the provinces georefere ncing is an underappreciated task but once it is done it can be used for future expeditionary research national conservation planning species status review and other large scale analysis for both spatial and temporal scales,2016,0.393
First Record of Morphological and Molecular Identification of Mealybug Pseudococcus Jackbeardsleyi (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) in Costa Rica,pseudococcus jackbeardsleyi is a native species of the neotropical region currently there is not an updated record of these species of mealybug in costa rica the aim of this study was to analyze female mealybugs from siquirreã a plantation siquirres province of limã n describing the morphology of the insect through the traditional technique of light microscopy and also a molecular description by three universal genes 18s ribosomal e f 1î and coxi the morphological description was made in the center for research on microscopic structures ciemic acronyms in spanish ucr on 2012 and the molecular analysis was done in the molecular phytopathology laboratory ending on 2014 according to the obtained results the insect was described by the presence of the oral rim tubular duct which was corroborated by the technique of scanning electron microscopy as defining characteristic that differentiates p jackbeardsleyi from p elisae likewise through phylogenetic trees from molecular results it was observed that the species p jackbeardsleyi reported in the genbank ncbi showed no association with any of the sequences of the study therefore this research presents the first record of p jackbeardsleyi in costa rica,2016,0.677
Functional distance to recipient communities may favour invasiveness: insights from two invasive frogs,aim invasive species present negative impacts on native biodiversity at a global scale a key goal of community ecology is to identify what drives invasiveness but hypotheses relying on biotic mechanisms remain largely untested for many groups here we asked whether source and recipient communities of two highly successful invasive anurans the bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus and the cane toad rhinellla marina differ consistently from a taxonomic and or functional standpoint if affirmative this pattern could suggest that taxonomic and or functional distances between an invasive species and a potentially recipient community might influence the alien s invasive potential location world wide methods based on co occurrence data of 1061 amphibian species we compared 30 source to 30 recipient communities of bullfrogs and cane toads by means of biotic metrics that summarize taxonomic and functional diversity and the relative position of the invasive species within the community we also included environmental drivers that reportedly influence invasibility climate resource availability spatial heterogeneity and propagule pressure results both invasive species were functionally distant to their respective recipient communities in contrast community diversity did not explain much variation between source and recipient communities climate matching possibly influenced cane toad s but not bullfrog s invasiveness and landscape factors had little relevance overall main conclusion this study advances the notion that the relative position of a recently introduced species within the native functional space may help predicting its invasive potential,2016,0.354
A database on the distribution of butterflies (Lepidoptera) in northern Belgium (Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region).,in this data paper we describe two datasets derived from two sources which collectively represent the most complete overview of butterflies in flanders and the brussels capital region northern belgium the first dataset further referred to as the inbo dataset http doi org 10 15468 njgbmh contains 761 660 records of 70 species and is compiled by the research institute for nature and forest inbo in cooperation with the butterfly working group of natuurpunt vlinderwerkgroep it is derived from the database vlinderdatabank at the inbo which consists of historical collection and literature data 1830 2001 for which all butterfly specimens in institutional and available personal collections were digitized and all entomological and other relevant publications were checked for butterfly distribution data it also contains observations and monitoring data for the period 1991 2014 the latter type were collected by a small butterfly monitoring network where butterflies were recorded using a standardized protocol the second dataset further referred to as the natuurpunt dataset http doi org 10 15468 ezfbee contains 612 934 records of 63 species and is derived from the database http waarnemingen be hosted at the nature conservation ngo natuurpunt in collaboration with stichting natuurinformatie this dataset contains butterfly observations by volunteers citizen scientists mainly since 2008 together these datasets currently contain a total of 1 374 594 records which are georeferenced using the centroid of their respective 5 ã 5 kmâ universal transverse mercator utm grid cell both datasets are published as open data and are available through the global biodiversity information facility gbif,2016,0.534
Is phylogeography helpful for invasive species risk assessment? The case study of the bark beetle genus Dendroctonus ?,despite evidence that conspecific lineages may display different climatic tolerances most invasion risk assessment tools are calibrated without considering phylogeographic information this study aims to investigate the existence of intraspecific niche divergence within a group of insect pests and to explore how the inclusion of phylogeographic information into species distribution models may alter the estimation of the potential distribution of a species we studied north american bark beetles belonging to the genus dendroctonus a group of pests of conifers that are listed as quarantine species in numerous countries most dendroctonus species exhibit strong genetic divergence that appears to be geographically structured and shaped by historical events and biotic factors we modeled all lineage distributions within five species using maxent and boosted regression trees and compared the results with the models fitted at the species scale multivariate analysis and niche similarity and equivalency tests were additionally performed to investigate the existence and magnitude of climatic niche divergence between conspecific lineages we also tested the ability of lineage based models to predict the region invaded by d valens in china conspecific lineages showed a climatic niche more similar than expected by chance but displayed different climatic envelopes in their native range and consequently different estimates of potential distributions we also observed that classical models calibrated using the entire range of the species could potentially under or overestimate the potential range of the species when compared to a global prediction built by aggregating lineage based projections this study showed that the invasive phylogeographic lineage of d valens has invaded regions characterized by climatic conditions highly similar to those encountered in its native range suggesting that preadaptations to environment might have played a role in this invasion this study highlights how our perception of the invasion risk of pests may be altered when integrating phylogeographic information,2016,0.899
A checklist of global distribution of Liturgusidae and Thespidae (Mantodea: Dictyoptera),the praying mantiss are a group of over 2500 predatory insects order mantodea superorder dictyoptera distributed in tropical and subtropical habitats of the world from the rainforest to the desert ground currently the order mantodea comprises over 20 families out of which the global distribution of 2 families liturgusidae and thespidae is provided in this compilation the family liturgusidae includes a broad assemblage of genera distributed on five continents all members being characterized as ecomorphic specialists on tree trunks or branches the family consists of 19 genera and 92 species distributed in neotropical central and south america tropical africa and australasia the family thespidae is the most speciose 41 genera 224 species and ecologically diversified lineage of neotropical praying mantiss comprising 6 subfamilies haaniinae 2 genera 10 species hoplocoryphinae 3 genera 41 species miobantiinae 3 genera 19 species oligonicinae 16 genera 71 species pseudomiopteriginae 7 genera 28 species and thespinae 10 genera 44 species,2016,0.957
"Biogeographical, ecological and ploidy variation in related asexual and sexual Limonium taxa ( Plumbaginaceae )",limonium is a widespread genus of halophytes and taxa found on the atlantic coast include sexual diploids of the l ovalifolium complex agamospermous tetraploids of the l binervosum complex and the triploid l algarvense in this study we investigated 1 cytotype distribution and diversity within and among populations in an overlapping region of diploid and polyploid limonium spp in south western iberia and north western morocco and 2 patterns of geographical parthenogenesis and ecological preferences across a latitudinal gradient on the atlantic coast we show here for the first time that l nydeggeri and l algarvense are found further south in morocco than previously reported genome size and ploidy estimates showed that the distribution of these species is not random at the overlapping region studied tetraploid apomicts tend to be found at higher latitudes than the sexual diploids and l algarvense grows in sympatry at the southern boundaries of the diploids natural populations showed a constancy in ploidy in these complexes however we report for the first time the occurrence of mixed ploidy populations of l ovalifolium s l euploid triploids in l algarvense and aneuploids in the l binervosum complex on the atlantic coasts l algarvense followed by l ovalifolium complexes occur significantly more frequently in thermomediterranean and dry ombrotype habitats than the l binervosum complex significant differences were also observed among taxa in the frequency of occurrences on the most common lithological groups in conclusion this work presents the first biogeographical insights for the group based in a coarse scale analysis of data and it provides evidence of ecological differentiation between the studied limonium complexes,2016,0.706
Predicting the geographical distributions of the macaque hosts and mosquito vectors of Plasmodium knowlesi malaria in forested and non-forested areas.,background plasmodium knowlesi is a zoonotic pathogen transmitted among macaques and to humans by anopheline mosquitoes information on p knowlesi malaria is lacking in most regions so the first step to understand the geographical distribution of disease risk is to define the distributions of the reservoir and vector species methods we used macaque and mosquito species presence data background data that captured sampling bias in the presence data a boosted regression tree model and environmental datasets including annual data for land classes to predict the distributions of each vector and host species we then compared the predicted distribution of each species with cover of each land class results fine scale distribution maps were generated for three macaque host species macaca fascicularis m nemestrina and m leonina and two mosquito vector complexes the dirus complex and the leucosphyrus complex the leucosphyrus complex was predicted to occur in areas with disturbed but not intact forest cover 60 tree cover whereas the dirus complex was predicted to occur in areas with 10 100 tree cover as well as vegetation mosaics and cropland of the macaque species m nemestrina was mainly predicted to occur in forested areas whereas m fascicularis was predicted to occur in vegetation mosaics cropland wetland and urban areas in addition to forested areas conclusions the predicted m fascicularis distribution encompassed a wide range of habitats where humans are found this is of most significance in the northern part of its range where members of the dirus complex are the main p knowlesi vectors because these mosquitoes were also predicted to occur in a wider range of habitats our results support the hypothesis that conversion of intact forest into disturbed forest for example plantations or timber concessions or the creation of vegetation mosaics will increase the probability that members of the leucosphyrus complex occur at these locations as well as bringing humans into these areas an explicit analysis of disease risk itself using infection data is required to explore this further the species distributions generated here can now be included in future analyses of p knowlesi infection risk,2016,0.916
A high-precision rule-based extraction system for expanding geospatial metadata in GenBank records,objective the metadata reflecting the location of the infected host loih of virus sequences in genbank often lacks specificity this work seeks to enhance this metadata by extracting more specific geographic information from related full text articles and mapping them to their latitude longitudes using knowledge derived from external geographical databases materials and methods we developed a rule based information extraction framework for linking genbank records to the latitude longitudes of the loih our system first extracts existing geospatial metadata from genbank records and attempts to improve it by seeking additional relevant geographic information from text and tables in related full text pubmed central articles the final extracted locations of the records based on data assimilated from these sources are then disambiguated and mapped to their respective geo coordinates we evaluated our approach on a manually annotated dataset comprising of 5728 genbank records for the influenza a virus results we found the precision recall and f measure of our system for linking genbank records to the latitude longitudes of their loih to be 0 832 0 967 and 0 894 respectively discussion our system had a high level of accuracy for linking genbank records to the geo coordinates of the loih however it can be further improved by expanding our database of geospatial data incorporating spell correction and enhancing the rules used for extraction conclusion our system performs reasonably well for linking genbank records for the influenza a virus to the geo coordinates of their loih based on record metadata and information extracted from related full text articles,2016,0.176
"JellyWeb: an interactive information system on Scyphozoa, Cubozoa and Staurozoa",identification of organisms is traditionally based on the use of â œclassicâ identification keys normally printed on paper these keys have several drawbacks they are mainly based on the systematics requiring identification of orders families and genera at first they are written by experts for other experts in a specific scientific jargon they have a â œfrozenâ structure sequence of theses antitheses once published they cannot be changed or updated without printing a new edition due to the use of computers it is now possible to build new digital identification tools which 1 can be produced automatically if the characters are stored in a database 2 can be freed from the traditional systematics giving priority to easy to observe characters incl those usually uncommon to the classical keys such as ecology and distribution 3 can be updated in real time once published on line 4 can be available on different media and on mobile devices an important feature of these new digital tools is their â œcollaborativeâ nature they can be enriched by the contribution of several researchers which can cooperate while maintaining rights and property of the resources and data they contribute to the system jellyweb the information system on scyphozoa cubozoa and staurozoa has been developed in trieste since 2010 the system was created with the aim of â potentially â becoming a starting point for a wide collaborative effort in developing a user friendly worldwide digital identification system for jellyfishes,2016,0.085
World climate suitability projections to 2050 and 2100 for growing oil palm,palm oil po is a very important commodity used as food in pharmaceuticals for cooking and as biodiesel po is a major contributor to the economies of many countries especially indonesia and malaysia novel tropical regions are being explored increasingly to grow oil palm as current land decreases whilst recent published modelling studies by the current authors for malaysia and indonesia indicate that the climate will become less suitable countries that grow the crop commercially include those in latin america africa and asia how will climate change cc affect the ability to grow oil palm in these countries worldwide projections for apt climate were made using climex software in the present paper and the global area with unsuitable climate was assessed to increase by 6 whilst highly suitable climate hsc decreased by 22 by 2050 the suitability decreases are dramatic by 2100 suggesting regions totally unsuitable for growing op which are currently appropriate the global area with unsuitable climate increased from 154 to 169 million km2 and hsc decreased from 17 to 4 million km2 this second assessment of indonesia and malaysia confirmed the original findings by the current authors of large decreases in suitability many parts of latin america and africa were dramatically decreased reductions in hsc for brazil columbia and nigeria are projected to be 119 000 35 and 1 from 5 000 000 219 and 69 km2 respectively however increases in aptness were observed in 2050 for paraguay and madagascar hsc increases were 90 and 41 respectively which were maintained until 2100 95 and 45 respectively lesser or transient increases were seen for a few other countries hot dry and cold climate stresses upon oil palm for all regions are also provided these results have negative implications for growing oil palm in countries as a alternatives to malaysia and indonesia or b economic resources per se the inability to grow oil palm may assist in amelioration of cc although the situation is complex data suggest a moderate movement of apposite climate towards the poles as previously predicted,2016,0.169
The future of the Wart-biter Bush Cricket in Kent,the wart biter bush cricket decticus verrucivorus is one of the rarest insects in the uk the species recovery trust is working with its partners to protect this species and this project formed a key part of this work the project aimed to investigate the key factors influencing the survival of the cricket in the uk and to provide predictions of the potential impact of climate change on the species to help to inform conservation planning for the future the project focussed on a population of crickets in kent at lydden temple ewell a species distribution model was used to predict the potential effects of climate change by 2050 under a severe climate change scenario and a more moderate scenario under the severe scenario the cricket was predicted to lose much of its current range and to be unlikely to be able to continue to survive in the uk however under the more moderate scenario the five current sites in england were predicted to become more suitable for the cricket it is therefore concluded that we need to redouble our efforts to protect the cricket as sites such as lydden temple ewell may become important strongholds for the species over the coming years as the climate warms it may also be useful to undertake translocation projects to establish new populations in areas that are predicted to be suitable in the future,2016,0.718
A new quality management perspective for biodiversity conservation and research: Investigating Biospecimen Reporting for Improved Study Quality (BRISQ) and the Standard PRE-analytical Code (SPREC) using Natural History Museum and culture collections as ca,the aims of this paper are to debate and raise awareness about the use of systematic interconnected approaches for biodiversity collection curation by exploring the multi disciplinary relevance of quality management tools developed by clinical biobanks an appraisal of their best practices indicated the need for improved sample and process chain annotation as a significant number of historical collections used in medical research were of inadequate quality this stimulated the creation of a new discipline biospecimen science to develop quality management tools for clinical biobanks two of which biospecimen reporting for improved study quality brisq and the standard pre analytical code sprec report critical information about samples and process chain variables unprecedented advances in molecular genetic and in silico technologies applied across the tree of life require international conservation networks to generate and share knowledge this is used in biodiversity and systematics research and to address the accelerating loss of species including the sustainable use of bioresources this review investigates the application of brisq and sprec for biodiversity research and conservation using natural history museum and living culture collections as case studies the distinction between preservation and conservation is discussed with regard to process and storage treatments and how they impact on the usability of biospecimens and cultures we conclude i more rigorous approaches are needed for the quality management of biospecimens bioresources and their associated sample and processing data to assure their fitness for purpose and ii biospecimen science tools developed by clinical biobanks can be adapted to future proof the quality of biodiversity collections and the reliability of molecular data generated from their use,2016,0.142
Alien wetland annual Lindernia dubia (Scrophulariaceae): the first recently mentioned localities in Slovakia and their central European context,lindernia dubia l pennell a northern american species was recently found in two localities in central slovakia near trenä and å tiavnickã bane villages as a new species for the flora of slovakia individuals of the species grew in wetland vegetation of the class isoã to nano juncetea in both cases the second mentioned locality probably belongs to the altitudinal maxima of l dubia in europe although the origin of l dubia in the slovak localities remains unknown we suppose that zoochory or anthropochory are the most probable modes of its introduction into the territory of slovakia,2016,0.712
"A geographical distribution database of the genus Dysdera in the Canary Islands (Araneae, Dysderidae)",the ground dweller spider genus dysdera shows very high species richness on the oceanic archipelago of the canary islands providing one of the most outstanding examples of island radiation among spiders only paralleled by tetragnatha spiders on the hawaiian archipelago a georeferenced database of the 48 dysdera species occurring in the canary islands was assembled to facilitate ongoing and future research on this remarkable lineage all species are endemic to the archipelago except for the cosmopolitan dysdera crocata the dataset consists of 794 distributional records documented from 1971 to 2015 each locality being represented only once per species distribution maps are provided for each species along with basic diversity and distribution information the database and geographical maps included in this article stand for the most updated accurate and complete information on the distribution of the spider genus dysdera in the canary islands,2016,0.742
"Phylogenetic relationships, song and distribution of the endangered Rufous-headed Robin Larvivora ruficeps",the rufous headed robin larvivora ruficeps is one of the world s rarest and least known birds we summarise the known records since it was first described in 1905 from shaanxi province central china all subsequent chinese records are from seven adjacent localities in nearby sichuan province we studied its phylogenetic position for the first time using mitochondrial and nuclear markers for all species of larvivora and a broad selection of other species in the family muscicapidae our results confirmed that l ruficeps is appropriately placed in the genus larvivora and suggested that it is sister to the rufous tailed robin l sibilans with these two forming a sister clade to a clade comprising both the japanese robin l akahige and ryukyu robin l komadori siberian blue robin l cyane and indian blue robin l brunnea formed the sister clade to the other larvivora species in contrast song analyses indicated that the song of l ruficeps was most similar to that of l komadori while song of l sibilans was relatively more similar to that of l akahige and songs of l cyane and l brunnea bore much resemblance to each other we used ecological niche modelling to estimate the suitable habitats of l ruficeps based on the records from breeding grounds suggesting that north and central sichuan south gansu south shaanxi and south east tibet are likely to contain the most suitable habitats for this species,2016,0.763
Taxonomic revision of Peperomia (Piperaceae) from Uruguay,the genus peperomia is represented by eight species in uruguay p catharinae p comarapana p hispidula p increscens p pereskiifolia p psilostachya p tetraphylla and p trineuroides peperomia psilostachya is reported for the first time for the flora of uruguay from material collected in moist hillside and riverside forests from the northeast and east of the country three new synonyms are proposed p arechavaletae var arechavaletae as synonym of p trineuroides p arechavaletae var minor of p tetraphylla and p trapezoidalis of p psilostachya lectotypes for p arechavaletae p arechavaletae var minor and p tacuariana and a neotype for p herteri are designated the taxonomic treatment includes synonymies used in uruguay morphological descriptions distribution and habitat data phenology conservation assesment observations and material examined for each species treated a species identification key plant illustrations and distribution maps in uruguay are provided,2016,0.797
A fully illustrated web-based guide to distinguish native and introduced polychaetes of Australia,introduction of non native species threatens local marine biodive rsity generating substantial costs for the aquaculture and to urism industries when native including commercial species are displaced it is important that non indigenous sp ecies are identified and contro lled before they establish locally becoming invasive pe sts the important vectors contributing to human related dispersal of marine species include ship hull biofouling ballast water and the a quaculture trade among over 80 polychaete fa milies fouling serpulidae and sabellidae and burrowing spionidae worms are most commonl y introduced to new localities to assist in identification of potentially invasive non native polychaetes a web based guide fully illustrated with original photographs was developed at the australian museum the guide co vers 66 species including 38 species of serpulidae 14 species of sabellidae and 14 species of spionidae this guide is intended for u se by biologists environmental consultants qua rantine officers and port management author ities as correct identification of species is essential for marine pest monitoring and management the â œpolychaete identifierâ will be extended to include other potentially invasive marin e species of polychaetes as well as crustaceans and molluscs in the near future subject to funding availability,2016,0.969
Community engagement: The ‘last mile’ challenge for European research e-infrastructures,europe is building its open science cloud a set of robust and interoperable e infrastructures with the capacity to provide data and computational solutions through cloud based services the development and sustainable operation of such e infrastructures are at the forefront of european funding priorities the research community however is still reluctant to engage at the scale required to signal a europe wide change in the mode of operation of scientific practices the striking differences in uptake rates between researchers from different scientific domains indicate that communities do not equally share the benefits of the above european investments we highlight the need to support research communities in organically engaging with the european open science cloud through the development of trustworthy and interoperable virtual research environments these domain specific solutions can support communities in gradually bridging technical and socio cultural gaps between traditional and open digital science practice better diffusing the benefits of european e infrastructures,2016,0.074
Monographs on Invasive Plants in Europe: Baccharis halimifolia L.,abstractthis account presents information on all aspects of the biology and ecology of baccharis halimifolia l that are relevant to understanding its invasive behaviour the main topics are presented within the framework of the new series of botany letters on monographs on invasive plants in europe taxonomy distribution history of introduction and spread ecology including preferred climate and habitats responses to abiotic and biotic factors ecological interactions biology including physiology phenology and reproductive biology impacts and management baccharis halimifolia l asteraceae groundsel bush is a broad leaved shrub native to the coastal area of southeastern north america introduced for ornamental and amenity purposes during the nineteenth century it has become naturalized in several coastal habitats as well as in disturbed areas of western europe the shrub is now common on the atlantic coast of europe from northern spain to belgium and it is an emerging problem on the medit,2016,0.242
Local biodiversity is higher inside than outside terrestrial protected areas worldwide,protected areas are widely considered essential for biodiversity conservation however few global studies have demonstrated that protection benefits a broad range of species here using a new global biodiversity database with unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage we compare four biodiversity measures at sites sampled in multiple land uses inside and outside protected areas globally species richness is 10 6 higher and abundance 14 5 higher in samples taken inside protected areas compared with samples taken outside but neither rarefaction based richness nor endemicity differ significantly importantly we show that the positive effects of protection are mostly attributable to differences in land use between protected and unprotected sites nonetheless even within some human dominated land uses species richness and abundance are higher in protected sites our results reinforce the global importance of protected areas but suggest that protection does not consistently benefit species with small ranges or increase the variety of ecological niches,2016,0.782
COMADRE: a global data base of animal demography,the open data scientific philosophy is being widely adopted and proving to promote considerable progress in ecology and evolution open data global data bases now exist on animal migration species distribution conservation status etc however a gap exists for data on population dynamics spanning the rich diversity of the animal kingdom world wide this information is fundamental to our understanding of the conditions that have shaped variation in animal life histories and their relationships with the environment as well as the determinants of invasion and extinction matrix population models mpms are among the most widely used demographic tools by animal ecologists mpms project population dynamics based on the reproduction survival and development of individuals in a population over their life cycle the outputs from mpms have direct biological interpretations facilitating comparisons among animal species as different as caenorhabditis elegans loxodonta africana and homo sapiens thousands of animal demographic records exist in the form of mpms but they are dispersed throughout the literature rendering comparative analyses difficult here we introduce the comadre animal matrix database an open data online repository which in its version 1 0 0 contains data on 345 species world wide from 402 studies with a total of 1625 population projection matrices comadre also contains ancillary information e g ecoregion taxonomy biogeography etc that facilitates interpretation of the numerous demographic metrics that can be derived from its mpms we provide r code to some of these examples synthesis we introduce the comadre animal matrix database a resource for animal demography its open data nature together with its ancillary information will facilitate comparative analysis as will the growing availability of databases focusing on other aspects of the rich animal diversity and tools to query and combine them through future frequent updates of comadre and its integration with other online resources we encourage animal ecologists to tackle global ecological and evolutionary questions with unprecedented sample size,2016,0.551
Rose-ringed Parakeet Populations and Numbers in Europe: A Complete Overview,purpose alien species are considered one of the major causes contributing to the current loss of biodiversity over the past few decades a large and increasing number of alien species have become invasive in many parts of the world their impacts range from competition for resources with native species to damage of urban infrastructure in europe over a thousand alien species are now established of which 74 are birds among 12 established alien parrot species in europe introduction the rose ringed parakeet rrp psittacula krameri scopoli 1769 is the most abundant and widespread since the 1960 s rrps have established more than 100 wild populations in several european countries for western europe long term demographic data indicate the species has grown considerably in number although some populations have failed to persist data is scarce and dispersed for countries in central eastern and northern europe therefore here we present detailed demographic data of rrp for 90 populations in 10 european countries furthermore we present information on the status of the species in another 27 european countries for which previously no data were published conclusion our synthesis reveals a positive demographic trend across the continent although locally some populations appear to have reached carrying capacity,2016,0.976
"Major factors affecting the diversity of aquatic insects in 13 streams with contrasting riparian vegetation in the river Tana, North Norway",benthic invertebrate samples taken in august and october 2000 2001 2002 at three sites in each of 13 streams total 39 sites over a 200 km stretch of river were used to i classify the species taxa into groups according to their occurrence ii compare species taxa richness and biodiversity across all sites iii detect environmental variables responsible for differences between sites of 87 recorded taxa 79 were aquatic insects 19 were common to 12 streams 19 were rare found in â 2 streams and the remaining 49 were found in most but not all streams in both months multivariate analysis separated the latter 49 taxa into benthic assemblies flowing through i willow forest ii non forested alpine habitat iii birch october only iv birch and mixed birch pine august only v mixed birch pine habitat october only multiple regression evaluated the relationships between 12 environmental variables and i the residuals from a power function relating benthic density and variation in number of taxa among sites ii simpson and shannon wiener diversity indices overhanging cover and stream width affected positively the larger number of species taxa and diversity in august with diversity also affected positively by moss cover in both months instream cover had a positive and water velocity a negative effect on species taxa richness whilst their effects on diversity were the exact opposite the importance of overhanging and instream cover in this study has shown that enhancing riparian vegetation should always be an important factor in stream restoration and conservation projects,2016,0.702
Explaining Spatial Variation in the Recording Effort of Citizen Science Data across Multiple Taxa.,the collation of citizen science data in open access biodiversity databases makes temporally and spatially extensive species observation data available to a wide range of users such data are an invaluable resource but contain inherent limitations such as sampling bias in favour of recorder distribution lack of survey effort assessment and lack of coverage of the distribution of all organisms any technical assessment monitoring program or scientific research applying citizen science data should therefore include an evaluation of the uncertainty of its results we use ignorance scores i e spatially explicit indices of sampling bias across a study region to further understand spatial patterns of observation behaviour for 13 reference taxonomic groups the data is based on voluntary observations made in sweden between 2000 and 2014 we compared the effect of six geographical variables elevation steepness population density log population density road density and footpath density on the ignorance scores of each group we found substantial variation among taxonomic groups in the relative importance of different geographic variables for explaining ignorance scores in general road access and logged population density were consistently important variables explaining bias in sampling effort indicating that access at a landscape scale facilitates voluntary reporting by citizen scientists also small increases in population density can produce a substantial reduction in ignorance score however the between taxa variation in the importance of geographic variables for explaining ignorance scores demonstrated that different taxa suffer from different spatial biases we suggest that conservationists and researchers should use ignorance scores to acknowledge uncertainty in their analyses and conclusions because they may simultaneously include many correlated variables that are difficult to disentangle,2016,0.264
Expected impact quantification-based reliability assessment methodology for Chilean copper smelting process: A case study,currently a lack of interpretation tools and methodologies hinders the ability to assess the performance of a single piece of equipment or a total system therefore a reliability availability and maintainability analysis must be combined with a quantitative reliability impact analysis to interpret the actual performance and identify bottlenecks and improvement opportunities this article proposes a novel methodology that uses reliability availability and maintainability analysis to quantify the expected impact the strengths of the failure expected impact methodology include its ability to systematically and quantitatively assess the expected impact in terms of reliability availability and maintainability indicators and the logical configuration of subsystems and individual equipment which show the direct effects of each element on the total system this proposed analysis complements plant modeling and analysis determining the operational effectiveness impact as the final result of the computation process enables the quantitative and unequivocal prioritization of the system elements by assessing the associated loss as a â œproduction lossâ regarding its unavailability and effect on the system process the chilean copper smelting process study provides useful results for developing a hierarchization that enables an analysis of improvement actions that are aligned with the best opportunities,2016,0.038
"Traits of a lineage with extraordinary geographical range: ecology, behavior and life-history of the sailfin tetra Crenuchus spilurus",current broad geographical distributions of species can only exist because individuals dispersed from their natal sites the amazonâ s sailfin tetra crenuchus spilurus has a geographical range of over 3 million km2 an area 5 7 times larger than france which includes regions of very distinct abiotic and biotic conditions what traits may aid in explaining such a broad geographical range and which make the range exceptional here we investigate the speciesâ ecology and behavior using several approaches direct field observations ecological surveys analyses of reproductive parameters and diet broad trophic niche and frequent reproduction may help explain the wide geographical range whereas most other traits are typical of short ranged species small body size specific habitat requirements small populations low mobility site fidelity low fecundity and large relative size at maturation we propose that the broad geographical range of c spilurus is better explained by passive processes related to river dynamics interestingly this species is one of few strongly dichromatic species of amazon fish having mutual signaling during courtship and males exerting exclusive parental care of eggs and early larval stages while the combination of such behavioral and ecological characteristics should promote differences among lineages and eventually speciation populations far apart are remarkably morphologically similar we suggest that ecology along with sexual selection may interplay and contribute to the inter population morphological similarity criterion on which crenuchus is considered a monotypic genus,2016,0.869
Where are threatened ferns found? Global conservation priorities for pteridophytes,recent efforts to improve the representation of plant species included on the iucn red list of threatened species through the iucn sampled red list index srli for plants have led to the assessment of almost 1000 additional species of pteridophytes and lycophytes under iucn red list criteria species were selected at random from all lineages of pteridophytes and lycophytes and are taxonomically as well as ecologically representative of pteridophyte and lycophyte diversity 16 of pteridophyte and lycophyte species are globally threatened with extinction and 22 are of elevated conservation concern threatened or near threatened of species of pteridophytes and lycophytes previously included on the red list 54 were considered threatened over half of pteridophyte and lycophyte species assessed for the srli use estimates of range size therefore the method used to measure range may affect the red list category assigned we evaluated this using two alternative metrics for estimating range species distribution modelling sdm and ecologically suitable habitat esh for 227 species endemic to the neotropical biogeographic realm differences between range estimates were small when ranges were small but increased with increasing range size for 58 25 6 species alternative modelling techniques result in the species meeting the threshold for a different iucn red list category from using extent of occurrence modelling threatened species distributions also highlights priority areas for conservation in tropical and subtropical montane forests that are the most species rich habitat for small range pteridophyte and lycophyte species but which are now increasingly subject to rapid conversion to agriculture,2016,0.988
Environmental suitability for Agrilus auroguttatus (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) in Mexico using MaxEnt and database records of four Quercus (Fagaceae) species,the goldspotted oak borer agrilus auroguttatus schaeffer is an invasive pest of three quercus species in southern california u s a as a native and potentially indigenous exotic species its distribution and potential damage is largely unknown in mexico we used the maximum entropy algorithm to determine the bioclimatic variables that may explain the distribution of a auroguttatus as well as its interaction with the distribution of known hosts in mexico our model calculated high suitability for a auroguttatus in the biogeographical provinces of california the northern and southern areas of sierra madre occidental and the northwestern area of the mexican plateau moderate suitability was projected in the baja california sonora and sierra madre occidental provinces potential distribution of a auroguttatus was overlapping with native ranges of quercus agrifolia quercus emoryi torrey and quercus hypoleucoides a camus precipitation of the coldest quarter 23 6 isothermality 23 5 precipitation seasonality 17 3 and mean temperature of the coldest quarter 11 2 contributed most to explaining its distribution in mexico the geographical interaction i e the likelihood that the habitat would be suitable for coexistence of a auroguttatus with its hosts in mexico was projected in the california province 46 382 60 km2 probably as an exotic species and the northwestern areas of mexican plateau and sierra madre occidental provinces 74 013 45 km2 probably as native determining the areas of environmental suitability for a auroguttatus and its host distribution can focus ground surveys contribute to management efforts and assist in the development of risk assessments for mexico,2016,0.773
Spatio-temporal dynamic of suitable areas for species conservation in West Africa: eight economically important wild palms under present and future climates,sustainable conservation of tropical resources required understanding of their distribution for effective assessment and definition of conservation priorities in tropical areas wild palms are highly valued keystone resources with growing demand for both subsistence uses and commercial trade here we focused on eight such species borassus aethiopum mart eremospatha macrocarpa g mann h wendl h wendl hyphaene thebaica mart laccosperma opacum g mann h wendl drude phoenix reclinata jacq raphia hookeri g mann h wendl raphia sudanica a chev and raphia vinifera p beauv this study tested i how those palms distributions may be affected under future climate scenarios and ii if species are effectively conserved currently and under future forecasts for their native distributional areas finally we defined spatial priorities for the speciesâ conservation available bioclimatic and soil data layers were used for the modelling with maximum entropy approaches and resulting maps were overlaid on the existing protected areas network results showed that much of the distribution of the species will remain largely stable albeit with some expansion and retraction in some species relationships with protected areas networks suggest that protected portions of species distributions will also remain stable the areas identified as highest conservation priority differ between models even though the highest priority areas holding most palm species are located along the coast from guinea to nigeria further development of these analyses could aid in forming a more complete picture of the distributions and populations of the species which in turn could aid in developing effective conservation strategies for this botanically important family,2016,0.922
Remotely sensed temperature and precipitation data improve species distribution modelling in the tropics,aim species distribution modelling typically relies completely or partially on climatic variables as predictors overlooking the fact that these are themselves predictions with associated uncertainties this is particularly critical when such predictors are interpolated between sparse station data such as in the tropics the goal of this study is to provide a new set of satellite based climatic predictor data and to evaluate its potential to improve modelled speciesâ climate associations and transferability to novel geographical regions location rain forests areas of central africa the western ghats of india and south america methods we compared models calibrated on the widely used worldclim station interpolated climatic data with models where either temperature or precipitation data from worldclim were replaced by data from cru modis trmm and chirps each predictor set was used to model 451 plant species distributions to test for chance associations we devised a null model with which to compare the accuracy metric obtained for every species results fewer than half of the studied rain forest species distributions matched the climatic pattern better than did random distributions the inclusion of modis temperature and chirps precipitation estimates derived from remote sensing each allowed for a better than random fit for respectively 40 and 22 more species than models calibrated on worldclim furthermore their inclusion was positively related to a better transferability of models to novel regions main conclusions we provide a newly assembled dataset of ecologically meaningful variables derived from modis and chirps for download and provide a basis for choosing among the plethora of available climate datasets we emphasize the need to consider the method used in the production of climate data when working on a region with sparse meteorological station data in this context remote sensing data should be the preferred choice particularly when model transferability to novel climates or inferences on causality are invoked,2016,0.188
Coalescent Simulation and Paleodistribution Modeling for Tabebuia rosealba Do Not Support South American Dry Forest Refugia Hypothesis,studies based on contemporary plant occurrences and pollen fossil records have proposed that the current disjunct distribution of seasonally dry tropical forests sdtfs across south america is the result of fragmentation of a formerly widespread and continuously distributed dry forest during the arid climatic conditions associated with the last glacial maximum lgm which is known as the modern day dry forest refugia hypothesis we studied the demographic history of tabebuia rosealba bignoniaceae to understand the disjunct geographic distribution of south american sdtfs based on statistical phylogeography and ecological niche modeling enm we specifically tested the dry forest refugia hypothesis i e if the multiple and isolated patches of sdtfs are current climatic relicts of a widespread and continuously distributed dry forest during the lgm we sampled 235 individuals across 18 populations in central brazil and analyzed the polymorphisms at chloroplast trns trng psba trnh and ycf6 trnc intergenic spacers and nuclear its nrdna genomes we performed coalescence simulations of alternative hypotheses under demographic expectations from two a priori biogeographic hypotheses 1 the pleistocene arc hypothesis and 2 a range shift to amazon basin and other two demographic expectances predicted by enms 3 expansion throughout the neotropical south america including amazon basin and 4 retraction during the lgm phylogenetic analyses based on median joining network showed haplotype sharing among populations with evidence of incomplete lineage sorting coalescent analyses showed smaller effective population sizes for t roseoalba during the lgm compared to the present day simulations and enm also showed that its current spatial pattern of genetic diversity is most likely due to a scenario of range retraction during the lgm instead of the fragmentation from a once extensive and largely contiguous sdtf across south america not supporting the south american dry forest refugia hypothesis,2016,0.369
Distribution and Abundance of the Endangered Yellow Spotted Mountain Newt Neurergus Microspiletus (Caudata: Salamandridae) in Western Iran,the endangered yellow spotted mountain newt neurergus microspilotus occurs in highland streams of the hawraman mountains in western iran eastern iraq and possibly in southern turkey until recently n microspilotus was known from 26 localities in a 3 974 km 2 area we documented 16 new localities that increased the known distribution to 6 366 km 2 most localities were breeding streams in a 205 km section of the zagros mountain range along the shared border of iran and iraq terrestrial habitats adjacent to the streams ranged from tree less floating meadows to dense oak woodlands all breeding localities were high elevation mean 1 314 m above sea level m a s l range 630 â 2 057 m a s l first order streams the mean nearest neighbor distances among the 42 localities was 7 95 km range 1 5 â 45 km we surveyed 32 of the 42 localities within the iranian range of the newts 1∠4 times and counted 1 379 adult juveniles and larvae mean stream 43 range 1∠601 in 5 5 km of stream reaches most of the observed newts 51 were found in just two of the localities 44 were found in 14 streams and the remaining 5 were scattered among 16 streams,2016,0.532
Fibroporia gossypium in northeastern Poland – a preliminary study,a fibroporia gossypium speg parmasto fruit body was found on a norway spruce picea abies l karst stump in the northeast of poland waliå y forest district the mycelium from wood samples was sequenced kf725876 identified and used to examine i linear growth of the mycelium on malt extract medium and ii the decay of spruce wood samples we observed slow mycelium growth 84 mm colony diameter after 28 days after the first 3 months of wood decay the average loss of dry mass was 6 7 after next 3 months a further loss of 15 4 the average loss was recorded until finally 35 98 loss the maximum loss of wood for a single sample occurred fibroporia gossypium can be considered as a protective biological agent against root rot in threatened norway spruce stands,2016,0.417
Forecasting fine-scale changes in the food-web structure of coastal marine communities under climate change,climate change is inducing deep modifications in local communities worldwide as a consequence of individualistic species range shifts understanding how complex interaction networks will be reorganized under climate change represents a major challenge in the fields of ecology and biogeography however forecasting the potential effects of climate change on local communities and more particularly on food web structure requires the consideration of highly structuring processes such as trophic interactions a major breakthrough is therefore expected by combining predictive models integrating habitat selection processes the physiological limits of marine species and their trophic interactions in this study we forecasted the potential impacts of climate change on the local food web structure of the highly threatened gulf of gabes ecosystem located in the south of the mediterranean sea we coupled the climatic envelope and habitat models to an allometric niche food web model hence taking into account the different processes acting at regional climate and local scales habitat selection and trophic interactions our projections under the a2 climate change scenario showed that future food webs would be composed of smaller species with fewer links resulting in a decrease of connectance generality vulnerability and mean trophic level of communities and an increase of the average path length which may have large consequences on ecosystem functioning the unified framework presented here by connecting food web ecology biogeography and seascape ecology allows the exploration of spatial aspects of interspecific interactions under climate change and improves our current understanding of climate change impacts on local marine food webs,2016,0.369
Absolute estimates of the propagule pressure of viable dinoflagellates across Canadian coasts: the variable influence of ballast water exchange,estimates of propagule pressure in invasion biology are often unavailable due to widespread use of proxy variables leading to uncertainty in absolute introduction effort of marine non indigenous species nis we present a first estimate of absolute propagule pressure probability distributions of the total number of individuals introduced per release event and per year for viable non indigenous dinoflagellates transported via commercial vessels to major ports on the east and west coasts of canada thereby establishing a baseline metric against which to test future hypotheses about factors controlling invasion rates to quantify the influence of ballast water management on absolute propagule pressure three shipping routes were evaluated 1 transoceanic with mandatory ballast water exchange bwe 2 coastal with bwe and 3 coastal without bwe results provide insufficient evidence that bwe consistently reduces propagule pressure of dinoflagellates in ballast tanks moreover controlled growth experiments confirmed that several dinoflagellate species were viable e g capable to reproduce following their release from arriving vessels including those conducting exchange we caution that the ecological significance of these findings is unclear without a better understanding of the factors that allow offshore dinoflagellates to establish in nearshore marine environments however several dinoflagellates nis may have the potential to become established in canadian coastal marine ecosystems following ballast water exchange,2016,0.337
Ethnography for Investigating the Internet,several concepts are used to describe ethnographic approaches for investigating the internet competing concepts include virtual ethnography netnography digital ethnography web ethnography online ethnography and e ethnography however as the field matures several writers simply call their approach ethnography and specify new fields of practice in this paper we will explore the content of ethnographic approach for investigating the internet and the direction in which this new field of ethnography is moving that is whether it is the study of blended worlds or online worlds we start by introducing the emerg ing field sites or fields of practice then we describe how participant observation and other data collection techniques are carried out next we describe how ethnographic practice is understood within the emerging field finally we discuss some possibl e changes in the ethnographic landscape unobtrusive methods the communal commercial relationship and team ethnography,2016,0.199
Quality of citizen science data and its consequences for the conservation of skipper butterflies (Hesperiidae) in Flanders (northern Belgium),citizen science projects have become important data sources for ecologists however opportunistic data are not only characterized by spatial and temporal biases but probably also contain species identification errors especially concerning morphologically similar species such misidentifications may result in wrongly estimated distribution ranges and trends and thus in inadequate conservation measures we illustrate this issue with three skipper butterflies hesperiidae in flanders northern belgium using photographs uploaded with observations in data portals ochlodes sylvanus and thymelicus lineola records had relatively low identification error rates 1 and 11 respectively but the majority 59 of thymelicus sylvestris records turned out to be misidentified using verified records only allowed us to model their distribution more accurately especially for t sylvestris whose actual distribution area had hitherto been strongly overestimated an additional field study on t sylvestris confirmed the species distribution model output as the species was almost completely restricted to sites with verified records and was largely absent from sites with unverified records the preference of t sylvestris for unimproved grasslands was confirmed by the negative correlation between its model predicted presence and elevated nitrogen and ammonia levels thus quality control of citizen science data is of major importance to improve the knowledge of species distribution ranges biotope preferences and other limiting factors this in turn will help to better assess species conservation statuses and to suggest more appropriate management and mitigation measures,2016,0.692
"Occurrence of Holacanthus clarionensis (Pomacanthidae), Stegastes leucorus, and Stegastes acapulcoensis (Pomacentridae) at Magdalena Bay, B.C.S., Mexico",pomacanthids and pomacentrids are mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions and inhabit shallow rocky and coral reefs due to their colorful patterns and unusual body shapes they have been widely targeted by aquarium fish trade these species are of great commercial interest here we document the occurrence of one pomacanthid holacanthus clarionensis and two pomacentrids stegastes acapulcoensis and s leucorus north of their reported distribution range during the 2014 warm water period in the eastern tropical eastern pacific sightings took place at magdalena almejas bay complex located in the western margin of the baja california peninsula using a series of abiotic data for the tropical eastern pacific we created a maximum entropy model for each species and identified that high probability of occurrence at magdalena almejas bay complex was only denoted for s leucorus here we report the occurrence of h clarionensis s acapulcoensis and s leucorus 70 km 300 km and 300 km north of the northernmost reported limits,2016,0.539
Explorations into Euphorbia sect. Anisophyllum (euphorbiaceae) in the trans-Pecos region of Texas with a focus on the Fendleri Clade,several new discoveries in euphorbia l subg chamaesyce raf sect anisophyllum roeper for the trans pecos region of texas are documented these include e ophthalmica pers a species new to the trans pecos from marfa presidio county e abramsiana l c wheeler new to texas from brewster and presidio counties e vermiculata raf new to texas from alpine brewster county e cryptorubra n c taylor m terry a newly described species from southern hudspeth county and northern chihuahua mexico notes on e golondrina l c wheeler including two potential novelties and notes on e fendleri torr a gray a problematic species complex the sections concerning e abramsiana and e cryptorubra have been published by taylor and terry 2016 in phytoneuron and the journal of the botanical institute of texas respectively within e golondrina and e fendleri there is much room for study and directions for future investigations are indicated provided at the end is a key to all species now known for the trans pecos region of texas,2016,0.828
Phylogenetic Analysis of Streptomyces spp. Exhibited Different Antimicrobial Activities,fourteen isolates were collected from a previous study and all were assigned to be streptomyces genus according to physiological and biochemical tests however all the isolates varied morphologically and exhibited different antimicrobial activity all 14 isolates were confirmed streptomyces by 16s r rna pcr amplification six isolates with high antimicrobial activities were ascertained streptomyces spp by sequencing and phylogenetic analysis two isolates among the selected 6 isolates with antimicrobial activity against e coli a nd s aureus it recommended to make a complete sequence for 16 s rrna to detect the species that produce antimicrobial substances also itâ s very necessary to identify the natural structure of these product,2016,0.792
Using Risk Assessment and Habitat Suitability Models to Prioritise Invasive Species for Management in a Changing Climate,accounting for climate change in invasive species risk assessments improves our understanding of potential future impacts and enhances our preparedness for the arrival of new non native species we combined traditional risk assessment for invasive species with habitat suitability modeling to assess risk to biodiversity based on climate change we demonstrate our method by assessing the risk for 15 potentially new invasive plant species to alberta canada an area where climate change is expected to facilitate the poleward expansion of invasive species ranges of the 15 species assessed the three terrestrial invasive plant species that could pose the greatest threat to albertaâ s biodiversity are giant knotweed fallopia sachalinensis tamarisk tamarix chinensis and alkali swainsonpea sphaerophysa salsula we characterise giant knotweed as â extremely invasiveâ with 21 times the suitable habitat between baseline and future projected climate tamarisk is â extremely invasiveâ with a 64 increase in suitable habitat and alkali swainsonpea is â highly invasiveâ with a 21 increase in suitable habitat our methodology can be used to predict and prioritise potentially new invasive species for their impact on biodiversity in the context of climate change,2016,0.879
Population genetic isolation and limited connectivity in the purple finch ( Haemorhous purpureus ),using a combination of mitochondrial and z linked sequences microsatellite data and spatio geographic modeling we examined historical and contemporary factors influencing the population genetic structure of the purple finch haemorhous purpureus mitochondrial dna data show the presence of two distinct groups corresponding to the two subspecies h p purpureus and h p californicus the two subspecies likely survived in separate refugia during the last glacial maximum one on the pacific coast and one east of the rocky mountains and now remain distinct lineages with little evidence of gene flow between them southwestern british columbia is a notable exception as subspecies mixing between central british columbia and vancouver island populations suggests a possible contact zone in this region z linked data support two mitochondrial groups however coastal oregon and central british columbia sites show evidence of mixing contemporary population structure based on microsatellite data identified at least six genetic clusters three h p purpureus clusters two h p californicus clusters and one mixed cluster which likely resulted from high site fidelity and isolation by distance combined with sexual selection on morphological characters reinforcing subspecies differences,2016,0.613
An updated checklist of shrimps on the Indian coast,this study reports an updated checklist of marine shrimps found along the indian coast including the lakshadweep and the andaman amp nicobar islands a total of 364 species classified under 128 genera belonging to the order decapoda is reported thus adding 27 species to the existing checklist of 337 species marine shrimps are classified under two suborders of the order decapoda viz dendrobranchiata and pleocyemata and the two suborders account for 155 42 6 and 209 species 57 4 of these 364 species respectively pleocyemata is represented by three infraorders viz axiidea caridea and stenopodidea while caridea has a maximum of 199 reported species among the 12 superfamilies penaeoidea contributed to 38 13 135 species followed by paleaemonidea with 18 07 64 species all other superfamilies were found to contribute less than 12 superfamilies bresilloidea and psalidopodoidea had only single species representatives 0 28 each the final list was compiled after reviewing all existing literature including monographs catalogues checklists websites and fishery reports the scientific names were validated with the world register of marine species worms database a total of 25 issues were identified from the previous checklist out of which 19 species have been updated with the correct accepted names and six species have been removed from the previous list,2016,0.993
"Brachyuran crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda) from the Canary Islands (eastern Atlantic): checklist, zoogeographic considerations and conservation",just 20 years have passed since gonzã lez 1995 finished one of his seminal works on decapod crustaceans of the canary islands thanks to the help of the reputed carcinologists l b holthuis and c h j m fransen this publication allowed dâ udekem dâ acoz 1999 to include the canarian decapods in his inventory of the ne atlantic no checklists of decapod fauna specifically covering this area have been published since then and an update is needed the current list of canarian brachyuran crabs comprises 132 species additional species have been recorded thanks to intensified research into deep water natural range expansions from nearby areas introduction by anthropogenic activities and description of new taxa several of these changes are detailed in this review although the description of new brachyuran species is not expected to occur at a significant rate an increase in the number of species from the canaries is expected to result from trawling and dredging sampling as well as from introduction of non native species for the first time some zoogeographic comments on the canarian brachyuran carcinofauna are made finally crab species of commercial interest are listed their current threats are identified and some updated conservation measures are proposed,2016,0.787
Project Report: IPBES Regional Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Asia and the Pacific. Towards teh Zero Order Draft (ZOD),this brief project report summarizes the work program of the ipbes asia pacific regional assessment and my contributions as a lead author towards producing and reviewing the zero order draft as a visiting fellow at kyoto universityâ s centre for ecological research,2016,0.321
Introducing BioSARN - an ecological niche model refinement tool,environmental niche modeling outputs a biological species potential distribution further work is needed to arrive at a species realized distribution the biological species approximate realized niche biosarn application provides the ecological modeler with a toolset to refine environmental niche models enms these tools include soil and land class filtering niche area quantification and novelties like enhanced temporal corridor definition and output to a high spatial resolution land class model biosarn is exemplified with a study on fraser fir a tree species with strong land class and edaphic correlations soil and land class filtering caused the potential distribution area to decline 17 enhanced temporal corridor definition permitted distinction of current continuing and future niches and thus niche change and movement tile quantification analysis provided further corroboration of these trends biosarn does not substitute other established enm methods rather it allows the experimenter to work with their preferred enm refining it using their knowledge and experience output from lower spatial resolution enms to a high spatial resolution land class model is a pseudo high resolution result still it maybe the best that can be achieved until wide range high spatial resolution environmental data and accurate high precision species occurrence data become generally available,2016,0.754
GPS tracking data of Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls breeding at the southern North Sea coast,in this data paper bird tracking gps tracking of lesser black backed gulls and herring gulls breeding at the southern north sea coast is described a species occurrence dataset published by the research institute for nature and forest inbo the dataset version 5 5 contains close to 2 5 million occurrences recorded by 101 gps trackers mounted on 75 lesser black backed gulls and 26 herring gulls breeding at the belgian and dutch coast the trackers were developed by the university of amsterdam bird tracking system uva bits http www uva bits nl these automatically record and transmit bird movements which allows us and others to study their habitat use and migration behaviour in great detail our bird tracking network is operational since 2013 it is funded for lifewatch by the hercules foundation and maintained in collaboration with uva bits and the flanders marine institute vliz the recorded data are periodically released in bulk as open data http dataset inbo be bird tracking gull occurrences and are also accessible through cartodb and the global biodiversity information facility gbif,2016,0.271
Genetic and paleomodelling evidence of the population expansion of the cattle egret Bubulcus ibis in Africa during the climatic oscillations of the Late Pleistocene,increasing aridity during glacial periods produced the retraction of forests and the expansion of arid and semi arid environments in africa with consequences for birds cattle egret bubulcus ibis is a dispersive species that prefers semiarid environments and requires proximity to bodies of water we expected that climatic oscillations led to the expansion of the range of the cattle egret during arid periods such as the last maximum glacial lgm and contraction of distribution during the last interglacial lig period resulting in contact of populations previously isolated we investigated this hypothesis by evaluating the genetic structure and population history of 15 cattle egret breeding colonies located in west and south africa using the mitochondrial dna mtdna control region mtdna atpase 8 and 6 and an intron of nuclear gene transforming growth factor beta 2 occurrence data and bioclimatic information were used to generate ecological niche models of three periods present lgm and lig we used the genetic and paleomodelling data to assess the responses of the cattle egret from africa to the climatic oscillations during the late pleistocene genetic data revealed low levels of genetic differentiation signs of isolation by distance as well as recent increases in effective population size that started during the lgm the observed low genetic structure may be explained by recent colonization events due to the demographic expansion following the last glacial period and by dispersal capacity of this species the paleomodels corroborated the expansion during the lgm and a more restricted potential distribution during the lig our findinds supports the hypothesis that the species range of the cattle egret expanded during arid periods and contracted during wet periods,2016,0.763
New locality of Hymenochaete cruenta in the Olbina nature reserve and revisiting of distribution of this fungus in Poland,hymenochaete cruenta is a saprotrophic fungus grown mainly on the bark of dead branches and trunks of abies trees and thus the distribution of this fungus in poland and other european countries is closely connected with natural range of silver fir despite its wide range h cruenta is considered as rare in the whole area of its occurrence in this paper we present a new locality of h cruenta discovered in may and september 2016 in the olbina nature reserve southern wielkopolska lowland kalisz forest district ecological notes and macro and microscopic feature of basidiocarps of this fungus are presented additionally the current distribution of h cruenta in poland comprising 78 localities is provided the rank of h cruenta among threatened species categories in different european countries is discussed it seems that the species is rare and threatened in poland and it should be still classified as â œvulnerableâ on the red list of macrofungi the significance of h cruenta for diversity of mycobiota and the necessity of further research on the dynamic of occurrence of h cruenta inside and outside of the natural range of a alba is underlined,2016,0.486
Information Management Strategies for Deep-Sea Biology,good data management practices are becoming increasingly important in ocean research and allowing more effective integration and reuse of data this chapter outlines best practices for developing and implementing a data management plan for deep sea biological research topics include determining what data to collect selecting a metadata standard organizing and representing data effectively undertaking quality assessment selecting a data archive and data repository and intellectual property concerns special considerations for species occurrence data image data and genetic sequence data are presented,2016,0.299
Insect phylogenetics in the digital age,insect systematists have long used digital data management tools to facilitate phylogenetic research web based platforms developed over the past several years support creation of comprehensive openly accessible data repositories and analytical tools that support large scale collaboration accelerating efforts to document earth s biota and reconstruct the tree of life new digital tools have the potential to further enhance insect phylogenetics by providing efficient workflows for capturing and analyzing phylogenetically relevant data recent initiatives streamline various steps in phylogenetic studies and provide community access to supercomputing resources in the near future automated web based systems will enable researchers to complete a phylogenetic study from start to finish using resources linked together within a single portal and incorporate results into a global synthesis,2016,0.078
Birds caught in spider webs in Asia,a recent global review of birds caught in spider webs reported only three asian cases given this surprisingly low number i made a concerted effort to obtain additional asian cases from the literature the internet and field workers i present a total of 56 asian cases which pertain to 33 bird species as in the global dataset mostly small bird species were caught in spider webs with a mean body mass of 17 5 g and a mean wing chord length of 73 1 mm consequently birds with a body mass 30 g were very rarely caught this asian review corroborates the global review that smaller birds are more likely to be caught and that nephila spiders are most likely to be the predators continuous monitoring of spider webs is recommended to ascertain the frequency of these events,2016,0.267
Global biodiversity monitoring: From data sources to Essential Biodiversity Variables,essential biodiversity variables ebvs consolidate information from varied biodiversity observation sources here we demonstrate the links between data sources ebvs and indicators and discuss how different sources of biodiversity observations can be harnessed to inform ebvs we classify sources of primary observations into four types extensive and intensive monitoring schemes ecological field studies and satellite remote sensing we characterize their geographic taxonomic and temporal coverage ecological field studies and intensive monitoring schemes inform a wide range of ebvs but the former tend to deliver short term data while the geographic coverage of the latter is limited in contrast extensive monitoring schemes mostly inform the population abundance ebv but deliver long term data across an extensive network of sites satellite remote sensing is particularly suited to providing information on ecosystem function and structure ebvs biases behind data sources may affect the representativeness of global biodiversity datasets to improve them researchers must assess data sources and then develop strategies to compensate for identified gaps we draw on the population abundance dataset informing the living planet index lpi to illustrate the effects of data sources on ebv representativeness we find that long term monitoring schemes informing the lpi are still scarce outside of europe and north america and that ecological field studies play a key role in covering that gap achieving representative ebv datasets will depend both on the ability to integrate available data through data harmonization and modeling efforts and on the establishment of new monitoring programs to address critical data gaps,2016,0.127
Spatial Gaps in Global Biodiversity Information and the Role of Citizen Science,because of a range of constraints the availability of biodiversity related information varies considerably over space time taxa and types of data thereby causing gaps in knowledge despite growing awareness of this issue among scientists it is still poorly known howâ and whetherâ scientific efforts have contributed to overcoming these information gaps focusing on spatial gaps in global biodiversity data we show that the accumulation rates of nonbird species occurrence records stored in the global biodiversity information facility have not improvedâ and have even potentially declinedâ over the past three decades in data poor often biodiversity rich regions meanwhile one citizen science project ebird has been making a considerable contribution to the collection and sharing of bird records even in the data poorest countries and is accelerating the accumulation of bird records globally we discuss the potentials and limitations of citizen science projects for tackling gaps in biodiversity information particularly from the perspective of biodiversity conservation,2016,0.402
"Strategies of Successful Synthesis Solutions: Mapping, Mechanisms, and More",organic synthesis problems require the solver to integrate knowledge and skills from many parts of their courses without a well defined systematic method for approaching them even the strongest students can experience difficulties our research goal was to identify the most successful problem solving strategies and develop associated teaching models and learning activities specifically we asked 1 what problem solving strategies do undergraduate students use when solving synthesis type problems are these strategies used correctly as intended 2 what strategies have the highest association with successful answers 3 what relationships exist between these strategies we analyzed more than 700 responses to synthesis problems from the final exams of undergraduate organic chemistry courses at a large research intensive institution we analyzed the data using an open coding system and a theoretical framework based on meaningful learning and representational systems in problem solving our analysis found that successful answers demonstrated six key strategies 1 identified newly formed bonds in the target molecule 2 identified atoms added to the starting molecule to form the target 3 identified key regiochemical relationships 4 mapped the atoms of the starting material onto the target 5 used a partial or complete retrosynthetic analysis and 6 drew reaction mechanisms the vast majority of successful answers demonstrated the use of multiple strategies in concert this higher degree of success is logical in the context of meaningful learning and of representational systems in problem solving these strategies were often absent from unsuccessful answers possibly because students did not know these strategies did not believe them to be useful or did not write them down for teaching our results suggest that students should be taught encouraged and given opportunities to use multiple key strategies sample problems are included herein organic synthesis problems require the solver to integrate knowledge and skills from many parts of their courses without a well defined systematic method for approaching them even the strongest students can experience difficulties our research goal was to identify the most successful problem solving strategies and develop associated teaching models and learning activities specifically we asked 1 what problem solving strategies do undergraduate students use when solving synthesis type problems are these strategies used correctly as intended 2 what strategies have the highest association with successful answers 3 what relationships exist between these strategies we analyzed more than 700 responses to synthesis problems from the final exams of undergraduate organic chemistry courses at a large research intensive institution we analyzed the data using an open coding system and a theoretical framework based on meaningful learning and representational systems in problem solving our analysis found that successful answers demonstrated six key strategies 1 identified newly formed bonds in the target molecule 2 identified atoms added to the starting molecule to form the target 3 identified key regiochemical relationships 4 mapped the atoms of the starting material onto the target 5 used a partial or complete retrosynthetic analysis and 6 drew reaction mechanisms the vast majority of successful answers demonstrated the use of multiple strategies in concert this higher degree of success is logical in the context of meaningful learning and of representational systems in problem solving these strategies were often absent from unsuccessful answers possibly because students did not know these strategies did not believe them to be useful or did not write them down for teaching our results suggest that students should be taught encouraged and given opportunities to use multiple key strategies sample problems are included herein,2016,0.001
Distribution dynamics of South American savanna birds in response to Quaternary climate change,several lines of evidence suggest that savannas currently distributed disjointedly in the southern and northern portions of south america might have been connected and disconnected many times during the quaternary climatic fluctuations here we investigated how climate change since the last interglacial may have modified the distribution of bird species associated with south american savannas we evaluated the connections between south america s savannas using 10 broadly distributed species and the impact of climate changes in community composition using 18 species endemic to cerrado we fit ecological niche models to each of the 28 bird species to compare the potential distribution patterns for the last interglacial 120 kyr bp the last glacial maximum 21 kyr bp and the present our results corroborated hypotheses of past connections between northern and southern blocks of savannas through three hypothetical corridors that existed along the andes atlantic coast and through central amazonia in addition our results also suggested the existence of a fourth plausible corridor located along the madeira river crossing amazonia from the southwest to the northeast finally our analysis showed significant changes in the community composition dynamics of endemic cerrado species our results further reinforce the notion that climate change has major impacts on the distribution of savanna species,2016,0.907
"""Anyone Know What Species This Is?"" - Twitter Conversations as Embryonic Citizen Science Communities.",social media like blogs micro blogs or social networks are increasingly being investigated and employed to detect and predict trends for not only social and physical phenomena but also to capture environmental information here we argue that opportunistic biodiversity observations published through twitter represent one promising and until now unexplored example of such data mining as we elaborate it can contribute to real time information to traditional ecological monitoring programmes including those sourced via citizen science activities using twitter data collected for a generic assessment of social media data in ecological monitoring we investigated a sample of what we denote biodiversity observations with species determination requests n 191 these entail images posted as messages on the micro blog service twitter as we show these frequently trigger conversations leading to taxonomic determinations of those observations all analysed tweets were posted with species determination requests which generated replies for 64 of tweets 86 of those contained at least one suggested determination of which 76 were assessed as correct all posted observations included or linked to images with the overall image quality categorised as satisfactory or better for 81 of the sample and leading to taxonomic determinations at the species level in 71 of provided determinations we claim that the original message authors and conversation participants can be viewed as implicit or embryonic citizen science communities which have to offer valuable contributions both as an opportunistic data source in ecological monitoring as well as potential active contributors to citizen science programmes,2016,0.23
"Recent trends in phytochemistry, ethnobotany and pharmacological significance of Alchornea cordifolia (Schumach. &amp; Thonn.) Muell. Arg.",ethnopharmacological relevance alchornea cordifolia schumach thonn muell arg euphorbiaceae a cordifolia is widely distributed throughout tropical africa where it is used extensively in traditional medicine conditions for which the plant has enjoyed wide use are coughs gonorrhoea infertility prostatitis bacterial infections diarrhoea ulcers pain inflammation fever and bronchial troubles this review summarizes the achievements of the investigations in traditional uses ethnobotany phytochemistry biological activities and toxicological profile of a cordifolia this review also describes the shortcomings of studies on this herbal drug and thus serves as the basis of further scientific research and development of this traditional herbal drug materials and methods a cordifolia related information was collected from various resources including published articles in peer reviewed journals unpublished materials textbooks government survey reports and scientific databases such as scifinderâ pubmed science direct wiley springer acs scielo web of science and other web search instruments google yahoo published on the subject from 1950 to 2016 â the plant listâ www theplantlist org and â kew royal botanic gardensâ mpns kew org were used to validate the scientific name of the plant results the literature revealed several reports on traditional uses biological activities chemical constituents and toxicological evaluation of a cordifolia the phytochemical information indicates identification of 95 compounds including fatty acids terpenoids flavonoids phenolic acids alkaloids which exhibited various pharmacological activities such as wound healing anti inflammation anticancer antioxidant immunomodulation antidiarrhoeal antimicrobial antidepressant hepatoprotective antiplasmodial and anxiolytic however there are still significant gaps in the completeness of our understanding of a cordifolia bioactivity therapeutic value and roles played by each of the numerous phytoconstituents conclusions the present review indicated that a cordifolia is a valuable medicinal plant with multiple pharmacological effects however further research on the pharmacological mechanism of action of this plant is recommended in order to unravel the pharmacokinetics pharmacodynamics clinical relevance and toxicity of its extracts as well as constituents,2016,0.019
Gas Chromatographic and Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Phytochemicals Present in Frond and Rhizome Methanolic Extract of Drynaria Quercifolia (L.) J. SM.,drynaria quercifolia l j sm commonly known as oak leaf fern is a pteridophyte belonging to the family polypodiaceae with wide spread ethno pharmacological uses the present study reports the gas chromatography mass spectrometry method for the fingerprinting analysis of phytochemicals present in the methanolic extract of fronds and rhizomes of drynaria quercifolia gc ms analysis was performed using shimadzu gcms qp2010 system rtx 5ms column was used for the experiment and phytochemicals were separated using temperature programmed run the mass spectra of the compounds found in the extract were matched with the national institute of standards and technology nist library the gc ms analysis has shown the presence of 34 compounds in the frond and 67 compounds in the rhizome of drynaria quercifolia including alkaloids flavonoids triterpenoids phytosterols tannins saponins and fatty acids further studies are needed to isolate the active components of the extracts as well as to elucidate their exact mechanism of action against various disorders,2016,0.261
Life History Traits and Niche Instability Impact Accuracy and Temporal Transferability for Historically Calibrated Distribution Models of North American Birds.,a primary assumption of environmental niche models enms is that models are both accurate and transferable across geography or time however recent work has shown that models may be accurate but not highly transferable while some of this is due to modeling technique individual species ecologies may also underlie this phenomenon life history traits certainly influence the accuracy of predictive enms but their impact on model transferability is less understood this study investigated how life history traits influence the predictive accuracy and transferability of enms using historically calibrated models for birds in this study i used historical occurrence and climate data 1950 1990s to build models for a sample of birds and then projected them forward to the future 1960 1990s the models were then validated against models generated from occurrence data at that future time internal and external validation metrics as well as metrics assessing transferability and generalized linear models were used to identify life history traits that were significant predictors of accuracy and transferability this study found that the predictive ability of enms differs with regard to life history characteristics such as range migration and habitat and that the rarity versus commonness of a species affects the predicted stability and overlap and hence the transferability of projected models projected enms with both high accuracy and transferability scores still sometimes suffered from over or under predicted species ranges life history traits certainly influenced the accuracy of predictive enms for birds but while aspects of geographic range impact model transferability the mechanisms underlying this are less understood,2016,0.431
Risk hotspots for terrestrial plant invaders under climate change at the global scale,terrestrial plant invaders tpis have a large potential to threaten plant diversity under climate change to prevent the spread of tpis under climate change we must identify the risk hotspots for tpis however the risk hotspots for tpis have not yet been explicitly addressed at the global scale under climate change here we selected 336 tpis from the invasive species specialist group list and used species distribution modelling and hot spot analysis to map the risk hotspots of tpis based on the terrestrial ecoregions in the current low and high gas concentration scenarios the risk hotspots of tpis were mainly distributed in south america europe australia new zealand and northern and southern africa climate change may decrease the areas of hotspots that allow for tpi expansion but the potential distribution probabilities of tpis may increase in the high concentration scenario furthermore tpis particularly herbaceous and woody ones might still expand into critical or endangered ecoregions of these risk hotspots in the current low and high concentration scenarios we also need to focus on the impact of tpi expansion on both vulnerable and relatively stable ecoregions due to the increasing potential distribution probabilities of tpis in risk hotspots and should integrate climate change into the risk assessment of plant invasion in the vulnerable and relatively stable ecoregions,2016,0.438
Patterns of contribution to citizen science biodiversity projects increase understanding of volunteers’ recording behaviour,the often opportunistic nature of biological recording via citizen science leads to taxonomic spatial and temporal biases which add uncertainty to biodiversity estimates however such biases may also give valuable insight into volunteersâ recording behaviour using greater london as a case study we examined the composition of three citizen science datasets â from greenspace information for greater london cic ispot and irecord with respect to recorder contribution and spatial and taxonomic biases i e when where and what volunteers record we found most volunteers contributed few records and were active for just one day each dataset had its own taxonomic and spatial signature suggesting that volunteersâ personal recording preferences may attract them towards particular schemes there were also patterns across datasets speciesâ abundance and ease of identification were positively associated with number of records as was plant height we found clear hotspots of recording activity the 10 most popular sites containing open water we note that biases are accrued as part of the recording process e g speciesâ detectability as well as from volunteer preferences an increased understanding of volunteer behaviour gained from analysing the composition of records could thus enhance the fit between volunteersâ interests and the needs of scientific projects,2016,0.472
"Agrocybe putaminum (Agaricales, Basidiomycota), New for Poland",maire singer a species hitherto unknown in poland is reported from two localities in the southwestern part of the country with descriptions and illustrations of the morphological characters of the newly collected basidiomata the delimitation of,2016,0.587
"Pharmacodynamics and safety of the novel selective progesterone receptor modulator vilaprisan: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled phase 1 trial in healthy women",study question does administration of vilaprisan vpr to healthy women for 12 weeks reduce menstrual bleeding summary answer in this 12 week proof of concept phase 1 trial most women 30 33 90 who received vpr at daily doses of 1â 5 mg reported the absence of menstrual bleeding what is known already vilaprisan bay 1002670 is a novel highly potent selective progesterone receptor modulator that markedly reduces the growth of human leiomyoma tissue in a preclinical model of uterine fibroids ufs,2016,0.172
"Have grass carp driven declines in macrophyte occurrence and diversity in the Vaal River, South Africa?",the vaal river south africa historically had a rich diversity of native submerged macrophytes with at least 13 species from 5 families recorded over the past 10 years there has been a noticeable reduction in the occurrence and diversity of submerged macrophytes in the river it is possible that this is linked to the recent increase in the populations of invasive alien grass carp ctenopharyngodon idella cuvier valenciennes cyprinidae in the river where populations have been a concern since 2005 grass carp invasions worldwide have been shown to have severe impacts on macrophyte biodiversity and ecosystem functioning this fish is an aggressive feeder on submerged macrophytes as well as being an ecosystem engineer that can change water and sediment chemistry,2016,0.608
Reconstructing the Mexican Tropical Dry Forests via an Autoecological Niche Approach: Reconsidering the Ecosystem Boundaries.,we used ecological niche modeling enm of individual species of two taxonomic groups plants and birds in order to reconstruct the climatic distribution of tropical dry forests tdfs in mexico and to analyze their boundaries with other terrestrial ecosystems the reconstruction for tdfs distribution was analyzed considering the prediction and omission errors based upon the combination of species obtained from the overlap of individual models only plants only birds and all species combined two verifications were used a primary vegetation map and 100 independent tdfs localities we performed a principal component pca and discriminant analysis da to evaluate the variation in the environmental variables and ecological overlap among ecosystems the modeling strategies showed differences in the ecological patterns and prediction areas where the all species combined model with a threshold of â 10 species was the best strategy to use in the tdfs reconstruction we observed a concordance of 78 with the primary vegetation map and a prediction of 98 of independent locality records although pca and da tests explained 75 78 and 97 9 of variance observed respectively we observed an important overlap among the tdfs with other adjacent ecosystems confirming the existence of transition zones among them we successfully modeled the distribution of mexican tdfs using a number of bioclimatic variables and co distributed species this autoecological niche approach suggests the necessity of rethinking the delimitations of ecosystems based on the recognition of transition zones among them in order to understand the real nature of communities and association patterns of species,2016,0.744
Pre-adaptation or genetic shift after introduction in the invasive species Impatiens glandulifera?,invasive exotic plants often grow fast reproduce rapidly and display considerable phenotypic plasticity in their invasive range which may be essential characteristics for successful invasion however it remains unclear whether these characteristics are already present in native populations pre adaptation hypothesis or evolve after introduction genetic shift hypothesis to test these hypotheses we compared means and phenotypic plasticity of vegetative and reproductive traits between populations of impatiens glandulifera collected from either the invasive norway or native range india seeds were sown and the resulting plants were exposed to different experimental environments in a glasshouse we also tested whether trait means and reaction norms harbored genetic variation as this may promote fitness in the novel environment we did not find evidence that invasive populations of i glandulifera grew more vigorously or produced more seeds than native populations phenotypic plasticity did not differ between the native and invasive range except for the number of nodes which was more plastic in the invasive range genetic variation in the slope of reaction norms was absent suggesting that the lack of change in phenotypic plasticity between native and invasive populations resulted from low genetic variation in phenotypic plasticity initially harbored by this species post introduction evolution of traits thus probably did not boost the invasiveness of i glandulifera instead the species seems to be pre adapted for invasion we suggest that differences in habitat between the native and invasive range more specifically the higher nutrient availability observed in the new environment are the main factor driving the invasion of this species indeed plants in the more nutrient rich invasive range had greater seed mass likely conferring a competitive advantage while seed mass also responded strongly to nutrients in the glasshouse interactions between habitat productivity and herbivore defense may explain the lack of more vigorous growth in the new range,2016,0.773
Genetic structure and connectivity of the endangered Giant Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys ingens) in a heterogeneous environment,movement ecology and dispersal are important aspects of speciesâ life histories that can 31 inform conservation and management dispersal is often cryptic and difficult to detect but recent 32 advances genetic technology and applications have provided new approaches to identifying and 33 describing dispersal patterns giant kangaroo rats dipodomys ingens are an endangered 34 heteromyid that appear to persist in small subpopulations in a heterogeneous environment of 35 their northern range the ciervo panoche natural area california previous work suggested high 36 levels of genetic diversity between populations with genetic distances not being correlated to 37 geographic distances here i identified landscape population structure through clustering 38 programs structure and tess as well as a moran eigenvector map i identified straight 39 line geographic distance between related individuals using the program colony finally i 40 evaluated parameterization and combinations of hypothesized costs created from precipitation 41 slope vegetation and roads for isolation by resistance and least cost path using mantel and 42 partial mantel tests tess and structure identified 3 4 subpopulations but this structure is 43 most likely due to isolation by distance effects i identified a full sibling pair 5 52km apart the 44 best model suggested that straight line geographic distance as well as slopes greater than 10 45 degrees negatively influenced dispersal conservation and de listing of giant kangaroo rats will 46 be dependent on habitat protection and creation rather than corridor protection,2016,0.356
Historical Distribution of Bluehead Shiner (Pteronotropis hubbsi),abstract we documented the historical distribution of pteronotropis hubbsi bluehead shiner based on a survey of museum records to compile historical records we searched 6 online databases and contacted 28 individuals associated with natural history museums state agencies and public and private universities eleven individuals had records of bluehead shiner in their collections geographically the records were from 5 states which included a disjunct population in illinois in the core of the distribution i e 4 states all collections were in the red river and 4 major tributary rivers to the red river the number of different localities within each of these waterways ranged from 1â 17 these records spanned 57 y 1949â 2006 with the majority 95 of records from the 1970s to the 1990s the number of specimens cataloged per locality ranged from 1 to 144 individuals all major tributary drainages had at least 1 collection with more than 25 individuals archived we argue that this geographic analy,2016,0.139
PlayLearn: A Platform for the Development and Management of Learning Experiences in Location-Based Mobile Games,â mobile location based games exploiting the unique capabilities of mobile devices such as camera gps and compass can have high learning potential on one hand they present a very attractive form of learning for modern students even very young ones who have already developed their skills in computer games and are very familiar with the use of mobile devices on the other hand location based games provide a unique opportunity for education since they connect an area with a story and their activities may result in social experiential and situated learning these characteristics can make them a powerful tool in a number of applications including education nature and museum exploration city sightseeing natural disasters awareness and prevention training in this paper we present the design and implementation of playlearn a platform for the development and management of learning experiences in mobile location based games consisting of a an authoring tool supporting the creation and management of games scenario editing user interface customization and organization of gaming activities and b a mobile application compatible with most state of the art mobile devices and platforms supporting the play of games created by the authoring tool our implementation supports the experience api allowing the activities that happen as part of gaming learning experiences to be recorded tracked and shared in a learning record store,2016,0.044
"Incidence of red Pierrot, Talicada nyseus nyseus (Lycaenidae) on the green mother of millions, Bryophyllum pinnatum (Crassulaceae)",the present observations of incidence of t nyseus on bryophyllum pinnatum fam crassulaceae was observed at a home garden in bengaluru and reveal that the red pierrot has successfully established in home gardens in bengaluru reported to be source site for popul ations establishing in north india four generations of t nyseus has been observed in the same plant during 2015 16 percent da mage in the entire plant and percent damage of individual leaves of total l eaf area leaf were recorded based on visual observation of the foliar damage the mining pattern was initia lly blisters transformin g into blotches as the larvae gradually increased in size,2016,0.386
Completeness of Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Plants of Ghana,biodiversity informatics open journal systems journal help current issue atom logo rss2 logo rss1 logo user username password remember me journal content search search scope browse by issue by author by title other journals information for readers for authors for librarians article tools print this article indexing metadata how to cite item email this article login required email the author login required home about login register search current archives home 2016 asase cover image completeness of digital accessible knowledge of the plants of ghana alex asase a townsend peterson abstract providing comprehensive informative primary research grade biodiversity information represents an important focus of biodiversity informatics initiatives recent efforts within ghana have digitized 90 of primary biodiversity data records associated with specimen sheets in ghanaian herbaria additional herbarium data are available from other institutions via biodiversity informatics initiatives such as the global biodiversity information facility however data on the plants of ghana have not as yet been integrated and assessed to establish how complete site inventories are so that appropriate levels of confidence can be applied in this study we assessed inventory completeness and identified gaps in current digital accessible knowledge dak of the plants of ghana to prioritize areas for future surveys and inventories we evaluated the completeness of inventories at â â spatial resolution using statistics that summarize inventory completeness and characterized gaps in coverage in terms of geographic distance and climatic difference from well documented sites across the country the southwestern and southeastern parts of the country held many well known grid cells the largest spatial gaps were found in central and northern parts of the country climatic difference showed contrasting patterns with a dramatic gap in coverage in central northern ghana this study provides a detailed case study of how to prioritize for new botanical surveys and inventories based on existing dak,2016,0.001
Richness and zoogeography of ascidians (Tunicata: Ascidiacea) in eastern Canada,managers and policymakers in eastern canada embrace science based management of nonindigenous species and may benefit from having comprehensive regional species checklists at subnational jurisdictional levels in this paper regional checklists provide an account of the richness of ascidians in eastern canada records of 58 ascidians resulted from reviewing 108 published sources accessing data from two online databases and collecting some common indigenous ascidian specimens analysis comparing the similarity of species among nine regions indicates that there is greater similarity in species composition between contiguous regions than between noncontiguous regions and suggests that there are four zoogeographic clusters in eastern canada our checklists can inform managers and policymakers of the diversity of the ascidian taxa and can minimize taxonomic uncertainties of established nonindigenous and prospective invading species for example by identifying indigenous species that are congeners of nonindi,2016,0.82
Investigation of Hepatic Toxicity of Salacia lehmbachii,herbs have been used traditionally as therapeutic agents since the beginning of human civilization in the whole world salacia lehmbachii has a wide folkloric usage in southeastern nigeria and its toxic effects on hepatocytes are worth evaluating scientifically this study assessed the toxic effects of aqueous asl and ethanol esl root bark extracts of s lehmbachii on hepatocytes in albino rats defatted petroleum ether residue of the plant powder was soxhlet extracted using water and ethanol thirty five healthy albino rats weighing 180 200g were randomly divided into seven groups a g n 5 group a control received 2ml of distilled water groups b c and d received 250 500 and 750mg kg of asl respectively while groups e f and g received 250 500 and 750mg kg of esl respectively administration was per oral using an orogastric tube for 28 consecutive days at the end of treatment blood samples were collected via cardiac puncture for biochemical analysis rats livers were excised weighed and processed for histological examination data obtained were computed by one way analysis of variance anova followed by turkeyâ s multiple comparison as post hoc the results revealed that serum levels of alt ast alp bilirubin protein and albumin were not significantly p 0 05 changed as compared to control group liver cytoarchitecture was well preserved for lower doses except at 750mg kg where there were mild changes which were again not significant this study shows that the two extracts at the doses used were not hepatotoxic and lays credence to the plant being used in folkloric medicine in southeastern nigeria,2016,0.278
"Spiny plants, mammal browsers, and the origin of African savannas.",savannas first began to spread across africa during the miocene a major hypothesis for explaining this vegetation change is the increase in c4 grasses promoting fire we investigated whether mammals could also have contributed to savanna expansion by using spinescence as a marker of mammal herbivory looking at the present distribution of 1 852 tree species we established that spinescence is mainly associated with two functional types of mammals large browsers and medium sized mixed feeders using a dated phylogeny for the same tree species we found that spinescence evolved at least 55 times the diversification of spiny plants occurred long after the evolution of afrotherian proboscideans and hyracoids however it is remarkably congruent with diversification of bovids the lineage including the antelope that predominantly browse these plants today our findings suggest that herbivore adapted savannas evolved several million years before fire maintained savannas and probably in different environmental conditions spiny savannas with abundant mammal herbivores occur in drier climates and on nutrient rich soils whereas fire maintained savannas occur in wetter climates on nutrient poor soils,2016,0.25
Climate change influences on the global potential distribution of bluetongue virus,the geographic distribution of arboviruses has received considerable attention after several dramatic emergence events around the world bluetongue virus btv is classified among category a diseases notifiable to the world organization of animal health oie and is transmitted among ruminants by biting midges of the genus culicoides here we developed a comprehensive occurrence data set to map the current distribution estimate the ecological niche and explore the future potential distribution of btv globally using ecological niche modeling and based on diverse future climate scenarios from general circulation models gcms for four representative concentration pathways rcps the broad ecological niche and potential geographic distribution of btv under present day conditions reflected the disease s current distribution across the world in tropical subtropical and temperate regions all model predictions were significantly better than random expectations as a further evaluation of model robustness we compared our model predictions to 331 independent records from most recent outbreaks from the food and agriculture organization emergency prevention system for transboundary animal and plant pests and diseases information system empres i all were successfully anticipated by the btv model finally we tested ecological niche similarity among possible vectors and btv and could not reject hypotheses of niche similarity under future climate conditions the potential distribution of btv was predicted to broaden especially in central africa united states and western russia,2016,0.068
Updated Checklist and Distribution of Mantidae (Mantodea : Insecta) of the World,the praying mantids order mantodea class insecta are a group of over 2500 carnivorous polyneopteran insects distributed in tropical and subtropical habitats of the world from the rainforest to the desert ground the order mantodea comprises o ver 20 families out of which the family mantidae is the largest one and consists of almost 50 of the total mantids described so far in this compilation the family mantidae was grouped into most acceptable 21 subfamilies amelinae 148 spp angelinae 55 spp antemninae 2 spp choeradodinae 8 spp chroicopterinae 70 spp compsothespinae 14 spp danuriinae 29 spp deroplatyinae 20 spp dystactinae 17 spp heterochaetinae 11 spp mantinae 420 spp mellierinae 7 spp mioman tinae 187 spp orthoderinae 11 spp oxyothespinae 49 spp photinainae 75 spp phyllothelyinae 15 spp schizocephalinae 1 spp stagmatopterinae 45 spp stagmomantinae 29 spp vatinae 48 spp consisting 1261 species subspecies in i ndia 89 species of mantidae are reported so far the global distribution of each species was given,2016,0.693
Final Report: Predicting Effects of Climate Change on Riparian Obligate Species in the Southwestern United States,united states department of the interior bureau of reclamation desert landscape conservation cooperative agreement number r11ac81532,2016,0.354
Re-defining historical geographic range in species with sparse records: Implications for the Mexican wolf reintroduction program,reintroduction is often the only remaining option for recovery of extirpated species according to the u s endangered species act species should be reintroduced to suitable habitats within their probable historical range however accurately defining historical range often proves difficult especially for taxa with limited historical information and may represent a significant impediment for successful recovery here we combine ecological modeling methods with morphometric and phylogenetic data from museum specimens to define a more biologically realistic historical distribution we apply this approach to the mexican wolf canis lupus baileyi the most endangered and genetically distinct wolf subspecies in the new world our model substantially increases the potential geographic range of the mexican wolf to include areas in southern california and baja california areas not previously recognized as part of the historical range motivated by this prediction we reanalyzed morphometric data and genetically typed the only historical specimen known from southern california which was previously assigned to another wolf subspecies we found that the specimen was in fact of pure mexican wolf ancestry and fell within our predicted range for this subspecies our findings provide an impetus for reconsidering reintroduction sites for the mexican wolf and highlight how critical taxonomic assignment can be to reintroduction programs and species recovery re analysis of potential range in other extirpated species that have ranges defined by antiquated taxonomic approaches used on a limited number of specimens could enhance the success of future reintroduction programs and restore historical processes such as admixture that can preserve the adaptive legacy of endangered species,2016,0.931
"Metadata provide insights on patterns of epiparasitism in mistletoes (Santalales), an overlooked topic in forest biology",mistletoes are aerial branch parasites belonging to one of five families in santalales usually mistletoe hosts are autotrophic but if the hosts themselves are parasitic the plant parasitizing the host is an epiparasite three categories of epiparasites are recognized chance obligate and auto epiparasites loranthaceae and viscaceae comprise about 97 of mistletoe species and also the largest number of epiparasites we report frequencies and biogeographical distributions of epiparasite â parasite host combinations for loranthaceae and viscaceae and we summarize epiparasitism in other mistletoe families parasitic hosts are primarily recruited from loranthaceae whereas most epiparasites are members of viscaceae twenty six species are considered likely obligate epiparasites data suggest species abundance influences whether mistletoes serve as host to other mistletoes we found no reports of epiparasitism in misodendraceae and only a few reports for santalaceae although santalaceae are often root parasitic hosts in phacellaria amphorogynaceae all species are obligate epiparasites mainly on loranthaceae epiparasitism occurs worldwide and is most common in the tropics and subtropics the greatest number of reports is from oceania the smallest from africa epiparasitism in mistletoes has received little research attention yet our research shows that this life form contributes to species and structural diversity in forest ecosystems across the globe,2016,0.923
"iCollections – Digitising the British and Irish Butterflies in the Natural History Museum, London",he natural history museum london nhmuk has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections the first phase of this programme has been to undertake a series of pilot projects that will develop the necessary workflows and infrastructure development needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections this paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects â icollections this project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies 181 545 specimens representing 89 species from the british isles and ireland the data digitised includes species name georeferenced location collector and collection date the what where who and when of specimen data in addition a digital image of each specimen was taken this paper explains the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections which made up the project new information specimen level data associated with british and irish butterfly specimens have not been available before and the icollections project has released this valuable resource through the nhm data portal,2016,0.197
A Range Extension for Carex sartwellii in Interior Alaska,our documentation of sartwellâ s sedge carex sartwellii on nine shrinking lakes during fieldwork in the central yukon flats alaska represents a range extension for this species previously its range extended as far northwest as yukon canada with a reported but lost collection from alaska in 1895 two earlier collections from the yukon flats have been verified one was misidentified as carex praegracilis until 2007 carex sartwellii â s assumed absence from alaska and yukon flora misidentification of an earlier collection and the remoteness of the yukon flats may have contributed to the rarity of its collection in alaska this species is morphologically similar to c praegracilis but can be distinguished using traits of the perigynia leaf sheaths and the production of true vegetative culms,2016,0.589
Reexamining Phylloscopus trochiloides complex as a ring species: A refugial counter-hypothesis,the idea of ring species has been viewed as a demonstration of the potential for species level differentiation produced by isolation by distance in otherwise continuous populations although the concept is attractive the list of empirical examples has narrowed significantly as detailed studies have been carried out one of the few examples still cited among birds is the warbler species complex phylloscopus trochiloides which comprises p trochiloides sensu stricto p plumbeitarsus and p nitidus the ring comprises a series of populations surrounding the tibetan plateau in which a species level break is apparent at the north end of the ring although recent theoretical treatments have indicated that such differentiation is possible in theory recent genomic analyses indicated multiple differentiated populations around the ring unlikely to have resulted from isolation by distance here we complement the genomic studies to date with paleodistributional projections of ecological niche models that provide further evidence for multiple isolated refugia around the ring during and since the late pleistocene as such this group should not be interpreted as exemplifying an isolation by distance mechanism of speciation and should no longer be considered as a ring species genomic and geographic evidence coincide in indicating that its differentiation took place in allopatry,2016,0.905
Specimens at the Center: An Informatics Workflow and Toolkit for Specimen-level Analysis of Public DNA Database Data,abstract major public dna databases â ncbi genbank the dna databank of japan ddbj and the european molecular biology laboratory embl â are invaluable biodiversity libraries systematists and other biodiversity scientists commonly mine these databases for sequence data to use in phylogenetic studies but such studies generally use only the taxonomic identity of the sequenced tissue not the specimen identity thus studies that use dna supermatrices to construct phylogenetic trees with species at the tips typically do not take advantage of the fact that for many individuals in the public dna databases several dna regions have been sampled and for many species two or more individuals have been sampled thus these studies typically do not make full use of the multigene datasets in public dna databases to test species coherence and select optimal sequences to represent a species in this study we introduce a set of tools developed in the r programming language to construct individual based trees from,2016,0.402
"Some interesting lichenized fungi from old Fraxinus excelsior and Ulmus glabra in Norway, including four new country records",the four lichenized fungi ramonia luteola strigula jamesii s phaea and vezdaea aestivalis are reported as new to norway comments are also given on the rare species enchylium coccophorum gomphillus calycioides piccolia ochrophora ramonia interjecta scytinium fragrans and wadeana minuta for which several new findings were made that shed new light on their distribution and ecology in norway,2016,0.463
A Cartographic Tool for Managing African Swine Fever in Eurasia: Mapping Wild Boar Distribution Based on the Quality of Available Habitats,the current african swine fever asf epidemic in eurasia represents a risk for the swine industry with devastating socio economic and political consequences wild boar appears to be a key factor in maintaining the disease in endemic areas mainly the russian federation and spreading the disease across borders including within the european union to help predict and interpret the dynamics of asf infection we developed a standardized distribution map based on global land cover vegetation globcover that quantifies the quality of available habitats qah for wild boar across eurasia as an indirect index for quantifying numbers of wild boar qahs were estimated using a seven level scale based on expert opinion and found to correlate closely with georeferenced presence of wild boar n 22 362 the highest wild boar densities 74 47 were found in areas at the two highest qah levels while the lowest densities 5 66 were found in areas at the lowest qah levels mapping notifications from 2007 to 2016 onto the qah map showed that in endemic areas 60 of asf notifications occurred in domestic pigs mostly in agricultural landscapes qahs 1 75 and 1 containing low biosecurity domestic pig farms in the eu in contrast 95 of asf notifications occurred in wild boar within natural landscapes qah 2 these results suggest that the qah map can be a useful epi tool for defining risk scenarios and identifying potential travel corridors for asf this tool will help inform resource allocation decisions and improve prevention control and surveillance of asf and potentially of other diseases affecting swine and wild boar in eurasia,2016,0.967
Adaptive evolution of seed oil content in angiosperms: accounting for the global patterns of seed oils,background studies of the biogeographic distribution of seed oil content in plants are fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of adaptive evolution in plants as seed oil is the primary energy source needed for germination and establishment of plants however seed oil content as an adaptive trait in plants is poorly understood here we examine the adaptive nature of seed oil content in 168 angiosperm families occurring in different biomes across the world we also explore the role of multiple seed traits like seed oil content and composition in plant adaptation in a phylogenetic and nonphylogenetic context result it was observed that the seed oil content in tropical plants 28 4 was significantly higher than the temperate plants 24 6 a significant relationship between oil content and latitude was observed in three families papaveraceae sapindaceae and sapotaceae indicating that selective forces correlated with latitude influence seed oil content evaluation of the response of seed oil content and composition to latitude and the correlation between seed oil content and composition showed that multiple seed traits seed oil content and composition contribute towards plant adaptation investigation of the presence or absence of phylogenetic signals across 168 angiosperm families in 62 clades revealed that members of seven clades evolved to have high or low seed oil content independently as they did not share a common evolutionary path conclusion the study provides us an insight into the biogeographical distribution and the adaptive role of seed oil content in plants the study indicates that multiple seed traits like seed oil content and the fatty acid composition of the seed oils determine the fitness of the plants and validate the adaptive hypothesis that seed oil quantity and quality are crucial to plant adaptation,2016,0.015
Juvenile biological traits of Impatiens species are more strongly associated with naturalization in temperate climate than their adult traits,potentially invasive species can be identified before they start to spread by comparing their traits with those of successful invaders a powerful tool for delimiting the traits associated with invasiveness are analyses of a number of species of the same genus where it is more likely to detect relevant differences because of elimination of biases that constrain the search for such traits in whole floras since the influence of traits on invasion success may differ with respect to the stage of the plant s life cycle comparative studies should address the whole life cycle including early stages here we studied which biological traits are associated with the ability to naturalize within the genus impatiens how frequency of planting affects naturalization success and whether naturalized species with biological traits similar to the native representative of this genus are more successful the genus impatiens includes a number of cultivated species popular in horticulture among them several widespread invaders we used one native and 10 alien annual taxa this data set involved all commonly cultivated species and representatives of different invasion status in europe in garden experiments and climatic chambers we measured seed mass time to germination percentage of seeds germinated seedling growth rate total seedling biomass seedling root total biomass ratio adult biomass and fecundity these traits and planting frequency were used to explain the invasion success of the species expressed as i invasion status in europe and ii the number of global temperate regions in which the species has been reported as naturalized the frequency of planting was used as a proxy of propagule pressure to separate this potentially biasing factor known to affect plant invasiveness from the effect of plant traits we found that both species traits and frequency of planting were correlated with naturalization species naturalized in many temperate regions of the world had heavier seeds high seedling growth rate and allocated low proportion of seedling biomass to roots importantly common planting was more strongly correlated with naturalization success than with biological traits impatiens species naturalized in europe exhibited better seed germination in the common garden and it took a longer time for the seeds to germinate species escaped from cultivation but occurring only as casuals in europe had heavy seeds and invested more resources into shoots than roots whereas species not escaping from cultivation were characterized by fast seed germination and light seed in general traits linked to early stages of the life cycle were more strongly associated with invasion success than those of the adults frequently planted species tend to naturalize more easily than those planted scarcely the successful invaders share traits similar to the one native impatiens species in europe and those with traits distinct from it do not invade our results indicate that many impatiens species represent potential invaders should their planting become more widespread this prediction is supported by the fact that impatiens species included in the experiment completed their life cycles in an experimental garden in central europe,2016,0.998
"Erosion in Mediterranean mountain landscapes during the last millennium: a quantitative approach based on lake sediment sequences (Iberian Range, Spain)",land degradation and soil erosion are key environmental problems in mediterranean mountains characterized by both a long history of human occupation and strong seasonality of hydrological regimes experimental monitored catchments have identified main controlling factors on erosion dynamics but because of the short time span of the instrumental measurements they do not integrate the complete temporal and spatial variability of these environments to obtain some long term series of mediterranean landscape evolution we propose a novel strategy based on multi proxy analyses of lake sediments aimed to quantify sediment delivery and erosion dynamics karstic lakes in the iberian range central spain provide an opportunity to reconstruct the depositional evolution of the watersheds and to evaluate the response to both the variable anthropogenic impacts and climate forcings during the last 1000years the most significant periods of increased sediment delivery 26â 483tkm yr∠1 in the iberian range sites took place during the 15thâ 16th and 18thâ 19th centuries as a result of large land use changes and land clearing positive synergies between increasing human population and more humid periods led to peaks in sediment deliver during some phases of the little ice age recent changes associated with the rural exodus and land abandonment during mid 20th century are more clearly shown in larger watersheds by decreased sediment delivery to the lakes due to the re vegetation of the landscape 6â 200tkm yr∠1 this new integrated approach based on long term lake sequences provides a longer perspective of erosion processes in mediterranean watersheds and validates the main factors identified in monitoring surveys land cover and surface formations erodibility in both settings lakes and experimental catchments most sediment delivery occurs during flooding events measured and reconstructed values show comparable large ranges underlying the punctuated nature of sediment dynamics in mediterranean landscapes at decadal and centennial scales,2016,0.159
Insights into global diatom distribution and diversity in the world’s ocean,significancediatoms considered one of the most diverse and ecologically important phytoplanktonic groups contribute around 20 of global primary productivity they are particularly abundant in nutrient rich coastal ecosystems and at high latitudes here we have explored the dataset generated by tara oceans from a wide range of oceanic regions to characterize diatom diversity patterns on a global scale we confirm the dominance of diatoms as a major photosynthetic group and identify the most widespread and diverse genera we also provide a new estimate of marine planktonic diatom diversity and a global view of their distribution in the worlds ocean diatoms bacillariophyta constitute one of the most diverse and ecologically important groups of phytoplankton they are considered to be particularly important in nutrient rich coastal ecosystems and at high latitudes but considerably less so in the oligotrophic open ocean the tara oceans circumnavigation collected samples from a wide range of oceanic regions using a standardized sampling procedure here a total of 12 million diatom v9 18s ribosomal dna rdna ribotypes derived from 293 size fractionated plankton communities collected at 46 sampling sites across the global ocean euphotic zone have been analyzed to explore diatom global diversity and community composition we provide a new estimate of diversity of marine planktonic diatoms at 4 748 operational taxonomic units otus based on the total assigned ribotypes chaetoceros was the most abundant and diverse genus followed by fragilariopsis thalassiosira and corethron we found only a few cosmopolitan ribotypes displaying an even distribution across stations and high abundance many of which could not be assigned with confidence to any known genus three distinct communities from south pacific mediterranean and southern ocean waters were identified that share a substantial percentage of ribotypes within them sudden drops in diversity were observed at cape agulhas which separates the indian and atlantic oceans and across the drake passage between the atlantic and southern oceans indicating the importance of these ocean circulation choke points in constraining diatom distribution and diversity we also observed high diatom diversity in the open ocean suggesting that diatoms may be more relevant in these oceanic systems than generally considered,2016,0.426
Molecular analyses and species distribution models indicate cryptic northern mountain refugia for a forest-dwelling ground beetle,aim identification of potential glacial refugia and post glacial colonization processes of a flightless cold adapted ground beetle location central and eastern europe methods we analysed the genetic structure of 33 carabus sylvestris populations sampled across its entire distribution range using nuclear and mitochondrial markers we further compiled occurrence records to develop species distribution models to predict distribution ranges for the last glacial period and the present based on the speciesâ current climatic niche results distinct genetic lineages were detected for a number of mountain ranges and were congruent for both molecular marker systems most genetic splits were the results of vicariance whereas dispersal was rare our models suggest that the speciesâ distribution range was larger and more interconnected in the past main conclusions our data support multiple glacial refugia for c sylvestris some of which were located north of the alps some lower mountain ranges were likely recolonized post glacially,2016,0.339
Tree fern ecology in New Zealand: A model for southern temperate rainforests,tree ferns are a ubiquitous and often locally dominant element of wet southern temperate rainforests across australasia southern africa and in regions adjacent to the tropics in south america published data on the ecology of tree ferns throughout these forest ecosystems is piecemeal with the most comprehensive literature describing the ecology of tree ferns coming from new zealand therefore using new zealand forests as a model system we review the ecology and importance of tree ferns for forest structure and composition most studies of the ecology and function of forest species in new zealand have focussed on spermatophytes even though tree ferns cyatheaceae dicksoniaceae can represent more than 50 of basal area and more than 20 of forest biomass they have been largely overlooked and quantitative information on their contribution to forest structure and function is relatively scarce here for the first time we synthesise information on nzâ s indigenous tree ferns published over the last 100years and present new data on their ecology and potential ecosystem influences irradiance and nutrient n p levels constrain development of tree fern gametophytes with p limitation potentially influencing sporophyte production tree ferns establish during temporary removal of forest canopies across various spatio temporal scales including after local disturbances wind throw openings of the canopy and landslides members of the cyatheaceae exhibit spatial differentiation along temperature and solar radiation gradients the dicksoniaceae species differentiate most strongly on their frost tolerance frequency abundance of all nine understory tree fern species indigenous to new zealand increases with total soil phosphorus with some niche differentiation among species along a broader nutrient gradient tree ferns are prominent in early and mid successional forest communities where they may persist for more than 250years individually and as a group tree ferns impact nutrient cycling organic matter accumulation and ground level irradiance often shading out tree seedlings tree ferns also have long term physical impacts on the regeneration niche of associated species with epiphytism on tree fern trunks providing alternative establishment surfaces for many species domination of nutrient resources by tree ferns early in succession is likely a key factor influencing community establishment we conclude with key recommendations for future research on fundamental unknown elements of the ecology and synecology of tree ferns including greater determination of their ecophysiology and influence on forest community assemblages,2016,0.393
"First Alaskan records and a significant northern range extension for two species of Diplura (Diplura, Campodeidae)",species in the class diplura are recorded from alaska for the first time two species tricampa rileyi silvestri from dall and prince of wales islands in the alexander archipelago of southeast alaska and metriocampa allocerca conde geeraert from near quartz lake southeast of fairbanks both in the family campodeidae are documented based on recently collected specimens deposited in the university of alaskamuseum insect collection a brief review of the history of the documentation of the alaskan soil microarthropod fauna is provided as well as discussion of possible glacial refugia,2016,0.556
Evolutionary melting pots: a biodiversity hotspot shaped by ring diversifications around the Black Sea in the Eastern tree frog ( Hyla orientalis ),hotspots of intraspecific genetic diversity which are of primary importance for the conservation of species have been associated to glacial refugia i e areas where species survived the quaternary climatic oscillations however the proximate mechanisms generating these hotspots remain an open issue hotspots may reflect the long term persistence of large refugial populations alternatively they may result from allopatric differentiation between small and isolated populations that later admixed here we test these two scenarios in a widely distributed species of tree frog hyla orientalis which inhabits asia minor and southeastern europe we apply a fine scale phylogeographic survey combining fast evolving mitochondrial and nuclear markers with a dense sampling throughout the range as well as ecological niche modeling to understand what shaped the genetic variation of this species we documented an important diversity center around the black sea composed of multiple allopatric and or parapatric diversifications likely driven by a combination of pleistocene climatic fluctuations and complex regional topography remarkably this diversification forms a ring around the black sea from the caucasus through anatolia and eastern europe with terminal forms coming into contact and partially admixing in crimea our results support the view that glacial refugia generate rather than host genetic diversity and can also function as evolutionary melting pots of biodiversity moreover we report a new case of ring diversification triggered by a large yet cohesive dispersal barrier a very rare situation in nature finally we emphasize the black sea region as an important center of intraspecific diversity in the palearctic with implications for conservation,2016,0.606
Trade-off relationship between modern agriculture and biodiversity: Heavy consolidation work has a long-term negative impact on plant species diversity,human driven land use changes often cause a decline in biodiversity although traditional agricultural practices maintained biodiversity at high levels recent land use changes may have negative consequences on species composition in this study we examined the hypothesis that land consolidation which is a major recent land use change in agricultural areas decreases plant species diversity over the long term the so called negative legacy to test this hypothesis we examined the relationships between consolidated areas and the occurrence of threatened plant species across japan and at the prefecture scale twenty three threatened plant species were selected all of which were formerly common our results show that areas containing records of threatened plant species rarely experienced consolidation at whole country and prefectural scales breakdown analysis showed that unconsolidated agricultural areas contained significantly more threatened species than consolidated agricultural areas these results suggest that threatened plant species require unconsolidated agricultural areas i e these species could not grow in consolidated areas thus we propose that consolidation history could be used as an indicator of the potential for biodiversity recovery we also suggest that consolidated agricultural areas should be used for food production rather than for the restoration of biodiversity for reasons of cost efficiency,2016,0.964
A Review of Agave mitis (Asparagaceae/Agavaceae),ction taxonomy nomenclature dis tribution habitats ecology and characteristics of agave mitis syn a celsii is provided a revised taxonomic concept is introduced the invalidly published a mitis var albidior shows broad over lap in its diagnostic features leaf colour and length of the tepal lobes with a mitis var mitis and is therefore referred to the synonymy no in fraspecific taxa are recognized a ehrenbergii and a goeppertiana are established as new synonyms a neotype is designated for a albicans a mitis is more widespread than previously known and occurs in the mexican states of coahuila nuevo leã n tamaulipas san luis potosã guanajuato querã taro hidalgo and puebla a distribution map is given,2016,0.354
Finding needles in the haystack: Where to look for rare species in the American tropics,tropical america the neotropics harbours more plant species than any other region on earth the contribution of rare species to this diversity has been recently recognised but their spatial distribution remains poorly understood here we use all collection records of angiosperms from the global biodiversity information facility to delineate neotropical bioregions and to identify putatively rare species within the neotropics and the amazonian rainforest we analyse the spatial distribution of these species and validate the results on a largely independent dataset based on vegetation plots from the amazon tree diversity network we find that rare species are homogeneously distributed through most parts of the lowland neotropics and amazonia but more concentrated in highlands the second collection of any rare species is most often found in the close vicinity of the first but in 20 of cases they are more than 580 kilometres apart we also find cross taxonomic patterns of disjunct distributions within the andes the atlantic forest in eastern brazil and between amazonia and the atlantic forest but no clear disjunction patterns within lowland areas these results suggest that a considerable proportion of rare plant species have surprisingly large distribution ranges and that collections of rare species across most of the lowland neotropics and in particular in amazonia show no clear directionality the second record of many rare species may be found virtually anywhere urging the need for intensifying and broadening biological sampling,2016,0.98
Bayesian estimation of the global biogeographical history of the Solanaceae,aim the tomato family solanaceae is distributed on all major continents except antarctica and has its centre of diversity in south america its worldwide distribution suggests multiple long distance dispersals within and between the new and old worlds here we apply maximum likelihood ml methods and newly developed biogeographical stochastic mapping bsm to infer the ancestral range of the family and to estimate the frequency of dispersal and vicariance events resulting in its present day distribution location worldwide methods building on a recently inferred megaphylogeny of solanaceae we conducted ml model fitting of a range of biogeographical models with the program â biogeobearsâ we used the parameters from the best fitting model to estimate ancestral range probabilities and conduct stochastic mapping from which we estimated the number and type of biogeographical events results our best model supported south america as the ancestral area for the solanaceae and its major clades the bsm analyses showed that dispersal events particularly range expansions are the principal mode by which members of the family have spread beyond south america main conclusions for solanaceae south america is not only the family s current centre of diversity but also its ancestral range and dispersal was the principal driver of range evolution the most common dispersal patterns involved range expansions from south america into north and central america while dispersal in the reverse direction was less common this directionality may be due to the early build up of species richness in south america resulting in large pool of potential migrants these results demonstrate the utility of bsm not only for estimating ancestral ranges but also in inferring the frequency direction and timing of biogeographical events in a statistically rigorous framework,2016,0.193
Performance tradeoffs in target-group bias correction for species distribution models,species distribution models sdms are often calibrated using presence only datasets plagued with environmental sampling bias which leads to a decrease of model accuracy in order to compensate for this bias it has been suggested that background data or pseudoabsences should represent the area that has been sampled however spatially explicit knowledge of sampling effort is rarely available in multi species studies sampling effort has been inferred following the target group tg approach where aggregated occurrence of tg species informs the selection of background data however little is known about the species specific response to this type of bias correction the present study aims at evaluating the impacts of sampling bias and bias correction on sdm performance to this end we designed a realistic system of sampling bias and virtual species based on 92 terrestrial mammal species occurring in the mediterranean basin we manipulated presence and background data selection to calibrate four sdm types unbiased unbiased presence data and biased biased presence data sdms were calibrated using randomly distributed background data we used real and tg estimated sampling efforts in background selection to correct for sampling bias in presence data overall environmental sampling bias had a deleterious effect on sdm performance in addition bias correction improved model accuracy and especially when based on spatially explicit knowledge of sampling effort however our results highlight important species specific variations in susceptibility to sampling bias which were largely explained by range size widely distributed species were most vulnerable to sampling bias and bias correction was even detrimental for narrow ranging species furthermore spatial discrepancies in sdm predictions suggest that bias correction effectively replaces an underestimation bias with an overestimation bias particularly in areas of low sampling intensity thus our results call for a better estimation of sampling effort in multispecies system and cautions the uninformed and automatic application of tg bias correction,2016,0.911
The abiotic and biotic drivers of rapid diversification in Andean bellflowers (Campanulaceae).,the tropical andes of south america the world s richest biodiversity hotspot are home to many rapid radiations while geological climatic and ecological processes collectively explain such radiations their relative contributions are seldom examined within a single clade we explore the contribution of these factors by applying a series of diversification models that incorporate mountain building climate change and trait evolution to the first dated phylogeny of andean bellflowers campanulaceae lobelioideae our framework is novel for its direct incorporation of geological data on andean uplift into a macroevolutionary model we show that speciation and extinction are differentially influenced by abiotic factors speciation rates rose concurrently with andean elevation while extinction rates decreased during global cooling pollination syndrome and fruit type both biotic traits known to facilitate mutualisms played an additional role in driving diversification these abiotic and biotic factors resulted in one of the fastest radiations reported to date the centropogonids whose 550 species arose in the last 5 million yr our study represents a significant advance in our understanding of plant evolution in andean cloud forests it further highlights the power of combining phylogenetic and earth science models to explore the interplay of geology climate and ecology in generating the world s biodiversity,2016,0.479
"Riparian trees and aridland streams of the southwestern United States: An assessment of the past, present, and future",riparian ecosystems are vital components of aridlands within the southwestern united states historically surface flows influenced population dynamics of native riparian trees many southwestern streams has been altered by regulation however and will be further affected by greenhouse warming our analysis of stream gage data revealed that decreases in volume of annual discharge and mean peak discharge and a shift to earlier peak discharge will occur in the southern rockies region of colorado new mexico and utah these changes will likely decrease rates of reproduction and survival of cottonwood populus fremontii and populus deltoides ssp wislizenii goodding s willow salix gooddingii and boxelder acer negundo which rely on surface flows to stimulate germination and recharge groundwater aquifers streams in the central highlands of arizona and new mexico will likely see reductions in annual discharge volume which could limit reproduction and survival of the above taxa and arizona sycamore platanus wrightii these effects may be exacerbated by demands of expanding urban areas and agricultural operations but could also be ameliorated by increasing water use efficiency and environmental mitigation these factors must be considered along with climate projections when planning for conservation of riparian trees and the animal communities they support,2016,0.203
Environmental-mechanistic modelling of the impact of global change on human zoonotic disease emergence: a case study of Lassa fever,human infectious diseases are a significant threat to global human health and economies e g ebola sars with the majority of infectious diseases having an animal source zoonotic despite their importance the lack of a quantitative predictive framework hampers our understanding of how spillovers of zoonotic infectious diseases into the human population will be impacted by global environmental stressors here we create an environmental mechanistic model for understanding the impact of global change on the probability of zoonotic disease reservoir hostâ human spillover events as a case study we focus on lassa fever virus las we first quantify the spatial determinants of las outbreaks including the phylogeographic distribution of its reservoir host natal multimammate rat mastomys natalensis las host secondly we use these determinants to inform our environmental mechanistic model to estimate present day las spillover events and the predicted impact of climate change human population growth and land use by 2070 we find phylogeographic evidence to suggest that las is confined to only one clade of las host western clade mastomys natalensis and that the probability of its occurrence was a major determinant of the spatial variation in las historical outbreaks 69â 8 along with human population density 20â 4 our estimates for present day las spillover events from our environmental mechanistic model were consistent with observed patterns and we predict an increase in events per year by 2070 from 195 125 to 406 725 within the las endemic western african region of the component drivers climate change and human population growth are predicted to have the largest effects by increasing landscape suitability for the host and humanâ host contact rates while land use change has only a weak impact on the number of future events las spillover events did not respond uniformly to global environmental stressors and we suggest that understanding the impact of global change on zoonotic infectious disease emergence requires an understanding of how reservoir host species respond to environmental change our environmental mechanistic modelling methodology provides a novel generalizable framework to understand the impact of global change on the spillover of zoonotic diseases,2016,0.356
Natural history museum data on Canadian Arctic marine benthos,natural history museumâ s collection data remain an underutilized resource that can help answer important questions such as those related to the understanding of the spatial patterns of arctic marine diversity the present study compiles historical museum records from the canadian museum of nature 6 002 records and from the us national museum of natural history â smithsonian institution 240 records on marine benthic taxa collected in the canadian arctic this information is used to explore museum collection history and to examine the geographic distribution of collection records within five regions of the canadian arctic the present museum datasets together cover a total of 774 taxa collected over 100 years with most of the specimens being collected between the 1920s and 1980s in the hudson bay complex and eastern arctic regions to better represent the overall canadian arctic diversity of marine benthos in museum collections future specimen acquisition efforts could be directed towards certain taxonomic groups e g polychaetes and regions e g arctic basin museum records significantly complement published reviews on benthic diversity and are critical for generating a comprehensive and accurate baseline status on benthic species distribution and diversity across the canadian arctic regions we therefore stress the urgency for natural history museums holding arctic marine benthic data to make their collection data accessible and informative,2016,0.781
Macroevolutionary patterns of ultraviolet floral pigmentation explained by geography and associated bioclimatic factors.,selection driven by biotic interactions can generate variation in floral traits abiotic selection however also contributes to floral diversity especially with respect to patterns of pigmentation combining comparative studies of floral pigmentation and geography can reveal the bioclimatic factors that may drive macroevolutionary patterns of floral color we create a molecular phylogeny and measure ultraviolet uv floral pattern for 177 species in the potentilleae tribe rosaceae species are similar in flower shape and visible color but vary in uv floral pattern we use comparative approaches to determine whether uv pigmentation variation is associated with geography and or bioclimatic features uv b precipitation temperature floral uv pattern was present in half of the species while others were uniformly uv absorbing phylogenetic signal was detected for presence absence of pattern but among patterned species quantitative variation in uv absorbing area was evolutionarily labile uniformly uv absorbing species tended to experience higher uv b irradiance patterned species occurring at higher altitudes had larger uv absorbing petal areas corresponding with low temperature and high uv exposure this analysis expands our understanding of the covariation of uv b irradiance and uv floral pigmentation from within species to that among species and supports the view that abiotic selection is associated with floral diversification among species,2016,0.983
"Geographic heat maps of lichen traits derived by combining LIAS light description and GBIF occurrence data, provided on a new platform",lias gtm a new platform of the lias lichen information system is presented it allows for the visualization of phenotypic traits via geographic heatmapping of relative trait frequencies rtfs based on data derived from gbif occurrence data and from lias light taxon description data the data are combined and referred to defined geographic areas of interest exemplarily lias gtm provides distribution patterns of a selection of single dual or multiple traits the data are visualized for two lichen record hotspots scandinavia and australia detailed technical information is provided on the platform web site itself,2016,0.27
bdvis: visualizing biodiversity data in R,biodiversity studies are relying increasingly on primary biodiversity records pbrs for modelling and analysis because biodiversity data are frequently â harvestedâ â i e not collected by the researcher for that particular study but obtained from data aggregators such as the global biodiversity information facilityâ researchers need to be aware of strengths and weaknesses of their data before they venture into further analysis r is becoming a lingua franca of data exploration and analysis here we describe an r package bdvis which facilitates efforts to understand the gaps and strengths of pbr data with quick and useful visualization functions,2016,0.4
Filling in the GAPS: evaluating completeness and coverage of open-access biodiversity databases in the United States,primary biodiversity data constitute observations of particular species at given points in time and space open access electronic databases provide unprecedented access to these data but their usefulness in characterizing species distributions and patterns in biodiversity depend on how complete species inventories are at a given survey location and how uniformly distributed survey locations are along dimensions of time space and environment our aim was to compare completeness and coverage among three open access databases representing ten taxonomic groups amphibians birds freshwater bivalves crayfish freshwater fish fungi insects mammals plants and reptiles in the contiguous united states we compiled occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the north american breeding bird survey bbs and federally administered fish surveys ffs we aggregated occurrence records by 0 1â ã 0 1â grid cells and computed three completeness metrics to classify each grid cell as well surveyed or not next we compared frequency distributions of surveyed grid cells to background environmental conditions in a gis and performed kolmogorovâ smirnov tests to quantify coverage through time along two spatial gradients and along eight environmental gradients the three databases contributed 13 6 million reliable occurrence records distributed among 190 000 grid cells the percent of well surveyed grid cells was substantially lower for gbif 5 2 than for systematic surveys bbs and ffs 82 5 still the large number of gbif occurrence records produced at least 250 well surveyed grid cells for six of nine taxonomic groups coverages of systematic surveys were less biased across spatial and environmental dimensions but were more biased in temporal coverage compared to gbif data gbif coverages also varied among taxonomic groups consistent with commonly recognized geographic environmental and institutional sampling biases this comprehensive assessment of biodiversity data across the contiguous united states provides a prioritization scheme to fill in the gaps by contributing existing occurrence records to the public domain and planning future surveys,2016,0.382
Macro-Climatic Distribution Limits Show Both Niche Expansion and Niche Specialization among C4 Panicoids.,grasses are ancestrally tropical understory species whose current dominance in warm open habitats is linked to the evolution of c4 photosynthesis c4 grasses maintain high rates of photosynthesis in warm and water stressed environments and the syndrome is considered to induce niche shifts into these habitats while adaptation to cold ones may be compromised global biogeographic analyses of c4 grasses have however concentrated on diversity patterns while paying little attention to distributional limits using phylogenetic contrast analyses we compared macro climatic distribution limits among 1300 grasses from the subfamily panicoideae which includes 4 5 of the known photosynthetic transitions in grasses we explored whether evolution of c4 photosynthesis correlates with niche expansions niche changes or stasis at subfamily level and within the two tribes paniceae and paspaleae we compared the climatic extremes of growing season temperatures aridity and mean temperatures of the coldest months we found support for all the known biogeographic distribution patterns of c4 species these patterns were however formed both by niche expansion and niche changes the only ubiquitous response to a change in the photosynthetic pathway within panicoideae was a niche expansion of the c4 species into regions with higher growing season temperatures but without a withdrawal from the inherited climate niche other patterns varied among the tribes as macro climatic niche evolution in the american tribe paspaleae differed from the pattern supported in the globally distributed tribe paniceae and at family level,2016,0.576
Which Combinations of Techniques and Modes of Delivery in Internet-Based Interventions Effectively Change Health Behavior? A Meta-Analysis,background many online interventions designed to promote health behaviors combine multiple behavior change techniques bcts adopt different modes of delivery mod eg text messages and range in how usable they are research is therefore needed to examine the impact of these features on the effectiveness of online interventions objective this study applies classification and regression trees cart analysis to meta analytic data in order to identify synergistic effects of bcts mods and usability factors methods we analyzed data from webb et al this review included effect sizes from 52 online interventions targeting a variety of health behaviors and coded the use of 40 bcts and 11 mods our research also developed a taxonomy for coding the usability of interventions meta cart analyses were performed using the bcts and mods as predictors and using treatment success ie effect size as the outcome results factors related to usability of the interventions influenced their efficacy specifically subgroup analyses indicated that more efficient interventions interventions that take little time to understand and use are more likely to be effective than less efficient interventions meta cart identified one synergistic effect interventions that included barrier identification problem solving and provided rewards for behavior change reported an average effect size that was smaller á 0 23 95 ci 0 08 0 44 than interventions that used other combinations of techniques á 0 43 95 ci 0 27 0 59 no synergistic effects were found for mods or for mods combined with bcts conclusions interventions that take little time to understand and use were more effective than those that require more time few specific combinations of bcts that contribute to the effectiveness of online interventions were found furthermore no synergistic effects between bcts and mods were found even though mods had strong effects when analyzed univariately in the original study j med internet res 2016 18 6 e155,2016,0.022
Exploring the pteridophyte flora of the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot,in this review we explore our current understanding of the fern and lycophyte diversity occurring in the eastern afromontane biodiversity hotspot eabh the review explores the species diversity of this region in the context of the afromadagascan pteridophyte diversity based on an exhaustive species list assembled in the synopsis of afromadagascan pteridophytes published by roux in 2009 the list was updated by incorporating recent progress in our understanding of the taxonomy and phylogeny of these plants evidence for a distinct pteridophyte flora occurring in the east african mountain region was discovered using ordination and clustering analyses this eabh floras shares links to other afromadagascan pteridophyte floras such as the one in the tropical lowland forests of central and western africa these floras share the dominance of species that preferably occur in humid climates whereas other african pteridophyte floras tend to contain a higher proportion of xeric adapted ferns the phylogenetic composition of the eabh pteridophyte flora was assessed by comparing global versus local proportion of orders families and genera this analysis revealed distinct patterns that are partly caused by the radiation of blotiella and triplophyllum besides selective colonization of species pre adapted to afromadagascan climates in situ speciation in the east african tropical mountains may have contributed to the global diversity of widespread genera such as asplenium and pteris in summary this is the first comprehensive attempt to assess the pteridophyte diversity of the east african mountains providing the framework for future studies on their conservation ecology and evolution,2016,0.414
Essential Biodiversity Variables for measuring change in global freshwater biodiversity,a critical requirement in assessing progress towards global biodiversity targets is improving our capacity to measure changes in biodiversity global biodiversity declined between 2000 and 2010 and there are indications that the decline was greater in freshwater than in terrestrial or marine systems however the data tools and methods available during that decade were inadequate to reliably quantify this decline recent advances in freshwater monitoring make a global assessment now close to becoming feasible here we identify priorities for freshwater biodiversity assessment for 2020 and 2030 based on the essential biodiversity variables ebv framework we identify 22 priority activities for 2020 under three of the ebv classes species populations community composition and ecosystem structure which include a globally systematic approach to collecting and assessing species data collating existing and new data within global platforms coordinated effort towards mapping wetland extent at high spatial resolution linking in situ data to modelling across regions and mobilising citizen science for the collection and verification of data accomplishing these will allow the state of global biodiversity to be assessed according to a red list index with expanded geographic and taxonomic cover an improved freshwater living planet index with a greater number and phylogenetic range of species measures of alpha and beta diversity and globally consistent estimates of wetland extent to assess variables in the other ebv classes genetic composition species traits and ecosystem function we identify 15 priorities which include development of environmental dna methods species traits databases eco informatics and modelling over the next 15years,2016,0.51
"Achievements and challenges in the integration, reuse and synthesis of vegetation plot data",aims i aim to review vegetation plot data discovery the major international efforts to integrate these data some of the remaining barriers to data integration reuse and synthesis and how they can be overcome and some of the emergent issues associated with data attribution and acknowledgement for data providers users and aggregators results vegetation plot data from 231 databases containing over three million plot records can be discovered via the metadata catalogue of the global index of vegetation plot databases givd major efforts to integrate data at national and international scales are well underway including the north american vegbank the european vegetation archive the botanical information and ecology network bien and splot barriers to data reuse and synthesis remain the most important are missing or incorrect geographic coordinates geo coordinates and inconsistencies in plant names many scientific journals now require the data underpinning published results to be archived in a publically accessible location via a digital object identifier doi such policies may be at odds with those of vegetation plot databases and funding agencies the linkage between the new zealand national vegetation survey databank and an institutional data repository illustrates one solution to satisfying journal requirements to make data publically available while retaining a direct linkage to the source data archive conclusions although further progress needs to be made in digitising publishing and integrating vegetation plot data many once insurmountable barriers are rapidly being overcome developing effective solutions to the problems posed by changing taxonomic concepts in space and time is likely the most urgent requirement although changing journal requirements may result in vegetation plot data being archived in some form for a specific publication this does not provide the integration required to enable data reuse and synthesis for vegetation scientists a recommended best practice is to archive plot data in an established vegetation plot repository as a first step and when required provide versioned data or summaries to meet journal requirements in a suitable repository with a clear linkage to the vegetation plot repository the concepts outlined in this paper have wide ranging implications for other types of ecological data,2016,0.023
"Notes on the Behavior and Distribution of the Day-Flying Moth, Heterusia atalantata (Guenée, [1858]) (Lepidoptera, Geometridae, Larentiinae), with Special Reference to Mexico.",abstract collecting and observation of the diurnal geometrid heterusia atalantata guenã e 1858 in natura park veracruz by the first coauthor led to an interest in the distribution and behavior of this species in mexico records from the literature and several mexican collections as well as the mcguire center for lepidoptera and biodiversity in florida have resulted in these notes on the distribution altitudinal occurrences and behavior of this species,2016,0.302
Pleistocene molluscs from Klasies River (South Africa): Reconstructing the local coastal environment,we explore if taxonomic analysis of archaeological mollusc assemblages can be used to reconstruct late pleistocene mis 5â 3 coastal environments at klasies river in south africa to obtain a balanced reconstruction we analyse the large molluscs separately from the so called incidentals the small mollusc species based on modern mollusc habitat preferences and tolerances we identify four different eco profiles to help characterise sea surface temperatures and the character of the shore temperature profile geographical distribution substrate wave interaction we hypothesise that changes in the klasies river mollusc community eco profiles can be linked to global glacial and interglacial events and we define several testable assumptions we found that in response to global warming and cooling events the klasies river mollusc communities change slightly yet significantly other sources of marine environmental data confirm that average sea surface temperatures gradually decreased but probably remained within the modern southern east coast range of variation it appears that coastal sea surface temperatures of the warm agulhas current were not particularly depressed during the occupation sequence the character of the coastal topography does change more apparently during the occupation sequence of the sites and with it the mollusc assemblages from an interglacial rocky shore in the klasies and two mossel bay phases to a more glacial sandy environment during the howiesons poort and the msa iii in conclusion the temperature tolerance levels of many klasies river mollusc species are too broad to reflect small changes in sea surface temperatures however in conjunction with other eco profiles and environmental proxies such as substrate requirements and oxygen isotopes the temperature approximations are useful particularly when evaluating large scale sea surface temperature fluctuations for the characterisation of the shore and substrate we found the eco profile approach very useful,2016,0.511
From GenBank to GBIF: Phylogeny-Based Predictive Niche Modeling Tests Accuracy of Taxonomic Identifications in Large Occurrence Data Repositories.,accuracy of taxonomic identifications is crucial to data quality in online repositories of species occurrence data such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif which have accumulated several hundred million records over the past 15 years these data serve as basis for large scale analyses of macroecological and biogeographic patterns and to document environmental changes over time however taxonomic identifications are often unreliable especially for non vascular plants and fungi including lichens which may lack critical revisions of voucher specimens due to the scale of the problem restudy of millions of collections is unrealistic and other strategies are needed here we propose to use verified georeferenced occurrence data of a given species to apply predictive niche modeling that can then be used to evaluate unverified occurrences of that species selecting the charismatic lichen fungus usnea longissima as a case study we used georeferenced occurrence records based on sequenced specimens to model its predicted niche our results suggest that the target species is largely restricted to a narrow range of boreal and temperate forest in the northern hemisphere and that occurrence records in gbif from tropical regions and the southern hemisphere do not represent this taxon a prediction tested by comparison with taxonomic revisions of usnea for these regions as a novel approach we employed principal component analysis on the environmental grid data used for predictive modeling to visualize potential ecogeographical barriers for the target species we found that tropical regions conform a strong barrier explaining why potential niches in the southern hemisphere were not colonized by usnea longissima and instead by morphologically similar species this approach is an example of how data from two of the most important biodiversity repositories genbank and gbif can be effectively combined to remotely address the problem of inaccuracy of taxonomic identifications in occurrence data repositories and to provide a filtering mechanism which can considerably reduce the number of voucher specimens that need critical revision in this case from 4 672 to about 100,2016,0.623
Caribbean Dry Forest Networking: An Opportunity for Conservation,seasonally dry tropical forest is the most threatened tropical forest in the world though its overall plant species diversity is lower than in neighboring biomes such as rain forest species endemism can be high and its conservation has often been neglected carib bean dry forests face diverse threats including tourism agriculture and climate change the latin american dry tropical forest floristic network dryflor is a research network that seeks to understand the flora of dry forests at a broad scale across the neotropics in order to promote their conservation dryflor is developing a continental scale floristic dataset that can be used to contextualize regional and local dry forests with the aim of pro viding local communities non governmental organizations and regional authorities with information that can help to underpin conservation decisions,2016,0.42
Advances in biodiversity: metagenomics and the unveiling of biological dark matter,background efforts to harmonize genomic data standards used by the biodiversity and metagenomic research communities have shown that prokaryotic data cannot be understood or represented in a traditional classical biological context for conceptual reasons not technical ones results biology like physics has a fundamental dualityâ the classical macroscale eukaryotic realm vs the quantum microscale microbial realmâ with the two realms differing profoundly and counter intuitively from one another just as classical physics is emergent from and cannot explain the microscale realm of quantum physics so classical biology is emergent from and cannot explain the microscale realm of prokaryotic life classical biology describes the familiar macroscale realm of multi cellular eukaryotic organisms which constitute a highly derived and constrained evolutionary subset of the biosphere unrepresentative of the vast mostly unseen microbial world of prokaryotic life that comprises at least half of the planetâ s biomass and most of its genetic diversity the two realms occupy fundamentally different mega niches eukaryotes interact primarily mechanically with the environment prokaryotes primarily physiologically further many foundational tenets of classical biology simply do not apply to prokaryotic biology conclusions classical genetics one held that genes arranged on chromosomes like beads on a string were the fundamental units of mutation recombination and heredity then molecular analysis showed that there were no fundamental units no beads no string similarly classical biology asserts that individual organisms and species are fundamental units of ecology evolution and biodiversity composing an evolutionary history of objectively real lineage defined groups in a single rooted tree of life now metagenomic tools are forcing a recognition that there are no completely objective individuals no unique lineages and no one true tree the newly revealed biosphere of microbial dark matter cannot be understood merely by extending the concepts and methods of eukaryotic macrobiology the unveiling of biological dark matter is allowing us to see for the first time the diversity of the entire biosphere and to paraphrase darwin is providing a new view of life advancing and understanding that view will require major revisions to some of the most fundamental concepts and theories in biology,2016,0.236
The Genome of the Model Moss Physcomitrella patens,for more than two decades the moss physcomitrella patens has been developed and employed as a model species for comparative studies of plant biology as well as a safe production system for biotechnology early on the generation and dissemination of transcriptomic and genomic resources was an important focal point of physcomitrella research which together with the ease of genetic modification and flexibility of cultivation over the years has attracted more and more research groups all around the world to use this moss as a model for basic and applied research the establishment of genomic resources has culminated in the role of the p patens genome as a reference genome for plant evolution there are two main parts of this chapter in the first part we provide an overview and history of the established genomic resources and in the second part we summarize the current biological knowledge about the genome structure nature of nonprotein and protein coding genes including codon usage bias repeats and transposable elements encoded by the physcomitrella genome and where applicable discuss these attributes in an evolutionary context furthermore we focus on the duplicated parts of the moss genome like the paralogous genes that were retained after ancestral large scale to whole genome duplication events and can be used to gain insights into the evolutionary history of physcomitrella finally we conclude this chapter by highlighting a special class of ancient paralogs in the physcomitrella genome that have been actively retained as redundant copies and might act as pseudoalleles,2016,0.077
Importance of Picoa spp. as Desert Truffles Fungi,birds truffles picoa spp have been the topic of few reviews they are considered between desert truffles which are a valuable food and used as medicine in arabian gulf countries including saudi arabia and several other countries of the world recently many researchers have demonstrated that desert truffles including bird s truffles are source of important nutritional elements also present biological activities such as antibacterial and antioxidant activities have a kind of medicinal properties and used in folk medicine meanwhile birds truffles were not investigated for its cultivation ecology taxonomy physiology edibility medicinal properties as well as antimicrobial activities rare studies of bird truffles could be found in literatures concerning geographic distribution and molecular studies which were achieved to elucidate the ambiguity of the classification of bird s truffles this with the help of the advanced recent techniques in molecular biology in this present article we compile recent data on the importance of picoa spp as desert truffles fungi the picoa can play a significant role in biological control agents provide food for birds decomposition of the fruit bodies of picoa in the soils can improve the physical chemical and biological conditions of the soils that will improve their ecological conditions,2016,0.011
Including Fossils in Phylogenetic Climate Reconstructions: A Deep Time Perspective on the Climatic Niche Evolution and Diversification of Spiny Lizards (Sceloporus),fossils and other paleontological information can improve phylogenetic comparative method estimates of phenotypic evolution and generate hypotheses related to species diversification here we use fossil information to calibrate ancestral reconstructions of suitable climate for sceloporus lizards in north america integrating data from the fossil record general circulation models of paleoclimate during the miocene climate envelope modeling and phylogenetic comparative methods provides a geographically and temporally explicit species distribution model of sceloporus suitable habitat through time we provide evidence to support the historic biogeographic hypothesis of sceloporus diversification in warm north american deserts and suggest a relatively recent sceloporus invasion into mexico around 6 ma we use a physiological model to map extinction risk we suggest that the number of hours of restriction to a thermal refuge limited sceloporus from inhabiting mexico until the climate cooled enough to provide suitable habitat at approximately 6 ma if the future climate returns to the hotter climates of the past mexico the place of highest modern sceloporus richness will no longer provide suitable habitats for sceloporus to survive and reproduce,2016,0.144
Supporting the Development and Management of Learning Experiences in Location-Based Mobile Games The EVANDE project,â mobile location based games exploiting the unique capabilities of mobile devices such as camera gps and compass can have high learning potential on one hand they present a very attractive form of learning for modern students even very young ones who have already developed their skills in computer games and are very familiar with the use of mobile devices on the other hand location based games provide a unique opportunity for education since they connect an area with a story and their activities may result in social experiential and situated learning these characteristics can make them a powerful tool in a number of applications including education nature and museum exploration city sightseeing natural disasters awareness and prevention training in this paper we present the design and implementation of playlearn a platform for the development and management of learning experiences in mobile location based games consisting of a an authoring tool supporting the creation and management of games scenario editing user interface customization and organization of gaming activities and b a mobile application compatible with most state of the art mobile devices and platforms supporting the play of games created by the authoring tool our implementation supports the experience api allowing the activities that happen as part of gaming learning experiences to be recorded tracked and shared in a learning record store playlearn is part of the evande enhancing volunteer awareness and education against natural disasters through e learning project learning infrastructure used for the development of mobile games for the training of civil protection volunteers and local authorities staff,2016,0.042
Genetic diversity in the locally declining Laserpitium prutenicum L. and the more common Selinum carvifolia (L.) L.: a “silent goodbye”?,evaluating the consequences of the decline of threatened species on their population genetic structure is crucial for establishing effective conservation strategies in the strongly fragmented landscapes of central europe laserpitium prutenicum is a bi to perennial forb occurring in intermittently wet meadows and light oak forests throughout central to eastern and south eastern europe during the past 70 years the western limit of its distributional range retracted dramatically the number of populations decreased and the remaining populations faced a considerable increase of fragmentation to study the effects of this decline on the genetic diversity of l prutenicum we conducted an aflp study on 20 populations from germany poland and the czech republic for comparison we collected the same data on selinum carvifolia a taxonomically related and both ecologically and morphologically similar species which is still more common in the study area both species showed similarly weak spatial genetic structuring and intermediate genetic diversities we attribute this result to the loss of habitat being faster than the loss of genetic diversity in smaller and fragmented populations depending on the ecological characteristics of a species even a gradual disappearance is not necessarily accompanied by any detectable effect at the population genetic level â œsilent goodbyeâ in the case of l prutenicum habitat preservation should be given priority over all other conservation measures,2016,0.903
Phenological shifts of native and invasive species under climate change: insights from the Boechera–Lythrum model,warmer and drier climates have shifted phenologies of many species however the magnitude and direction of phenological shifts vary widely among taxa and it is often unclear when shifts are adaptive or how they affect long term viability here we model evolution of flowering phenology based on our long term research of two species exhibiting opposite shifts in floral phenology lythrum salicaria which is invasive in north america and the sparse rocky mountain native boechera stricta genetic constraints are similar in both species but differences in the timing of environmental conditions that favour growth lead to opposite phenological shifts under climate change as temperatures increase selection is predicted to favour earlier flowering in native b stricta while reducing population viability even if populations adapt rapidly to changing environmental conditions by contrast warming is predicted to favour delayed flowering in both native and introduced l salicaria populations while increasing long term viability relaxed selection from natural enemies in invasive l salicaria is predicted to have little effect on flowering time but a large effect on reproductive fitness our approach highlights the importance of understanding ecological and genetic constraints to predict the ecological consequences of evolutionary responses to climate change on contemporary timescales this article is part of the themed issue â human influences on evolution and the ecological and societal consequencesâ,2016,0.338
"First record of Opuntia pubescens H.L.Wendland ex Pfeiffer, 1835 naturalised in South Africa",opuntioid cacti have caused some of the most damaging plant inva sions globally while many of these invaders were introduced fo r ornamental and some agriculture use there are an increasing number of r ecords of invasive ornamental sp ecies here we report the first de tailed invasion by opuntia pubescens and investigate the potential for eradicating the species fr om south africa we found the species only at one location pretoria national botanical gardens where the population was approximately 5023 plants over th e undeveloped area of 3 66 ha the plant was not found during surveys of neighbouring natural areas we be lieve it was introduced to staff gardens as an ornamental plan t but we have not found it on sale in nurseries nor mentioned in histori cal literature however as the species was initially confused w ith o aurantiaca surveys were conducted in the neighbouri ng hills and gauteng province for all known o aurantiaca infested farms initial efforts on surveying the limpopo kwazulu natal and east ern cape provinces with the assistance of department of agriculture forestry and fisheries land use and soil management resource auditors have been initiate d but more work still needs to be done therefore while prel iminary control efforts in the garden looking promising it is not clear whether nation wide eradication is feasible the australian we ed risk assessment was used to collate informati on and determine the invasive potential of o pubescens in south africa this method has been used worldwide and within the programme to determine risk potential of invasive species in the country to determine the potential d istribution of o pubescens we developed a species distribution model using maxent 3 3 3e based on native and non native range this study highlights the need to discourage the use of opuntioid cacti as ornamental sp ecies due to their invasiveness even if they are not yet known t o be invasive,2016,0.8
Dynamics of non-structural carbohydrates in terrestrial plants: a global synthesis,plants store large amounts of non structural carbohydrates nsc while multiple functions of nsc have long been recognized the interpretation of nsc seasonal dynamics is often based on the idea that stored nsc is a reservoir of carbon that fluctuates depending on the balance between supply via photosynthesis and demand for growth and respiration the source sink dynamics concept consequently relatively high nsc concentrations in some plants have been interpreted to reflect excess supply relative to demand an alternative view however is that nsc accumulation reflects the relatively high nsc levels required for plant survival an important issue that remains highly controversial here we assembled a new global database to examine broad patterns of seasonal nsc variation across organs leaves stems and belowground plant functional types coniferous drought deciduous angiosperms winter deciduous angiosperms evergreen angiosperms and herbaceous and biomes boreal temperate mediterranean and tropical we compiled data from 123 studies including seasonal measurements for 179 species under natural conditions our results showed that on average nsc account for 10 of dry plant biomass and are highest in leaves and lowest in stems whereas belowground organs show intermediate concentrations total nsc starch and soluble sugars ss varied seasonally with a strong depletion of starch during the growing season and a general increase during winter months particularly in boreal and temperate biomes across functional types nsc concentrations were highest and most variable in herbaceous species and in conifer needles conifers showed the lowest stem and belowground nsc concentrations minimum nsc values were relatively high 46 of seasonal maximums on average for total nsc and in contrast to average values were similar among biomes and functional types overall although starch depletion was relatively common seasonal depletion of total nsc or ss was rare these results are consistent with a dual view of nsc function whereas starch acts mostly as a reservoir for future use soluble sugars perform immediate functions e g osmoregulation and are kept above some critical threshold if confirmed this dual function of nsc will have important implications for the way we understand and model plant carbon allocation and survival under stress,2016,0.01
Metagenomics as a Tool for Biodiscovery and Enhanced Production of Marine Bioactives,the application of metagenomics technologies to the area of marine bioprospecting and biodiscovery has seen a major advance in our capacity to harness the bioactive potential of the ocean not least when we consider the limitations surrounding culturability of microorganisms from this and other ecosystems combining genomics bioinformatics and systems biology metagenomics has provided new levels of access to the rich tapestry of novel bioactivities from the marine microbiome notwithstanding this early promise considerable limitations to the technology exist that currently prevent us from harnessing the full potential of marine microbial natural products the continued growth in the number and diversity of metagenomic studies allied with the advances in next generation sequencing platforms has brought with it a global appreciation of the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure future developments in this applied research area in this chapter we present the application of metagenomics for biodiscovery discussing the potential value of this technology and the current limitations preventing its full realization already advances in bioinformatics robotics molecular cloning and expression dna sequencing and isolation as well as the continued development of improved chemical profiling systems have led to the discovery of new natural products and bioactivities successful implementation of further improvements that circumvent current bottlenecks will open new horizons for medical and industrial developments,2016,0.092
"Commentary: Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species",amazonian forests provide ecosystem services that are critical at the planetary scale unfortunately human land use threatens to drive many rainforest species to extinction in a recent study ter steege et al 2015 provide valuable insight into the threats that current and future deforestation potentially pose for amazonian tree species in any such large scale analysis dealing with thousands of poorly known species there are clearly going to be many assumptions and possible sources of uncertainty here i highlight two major assumptions used by ter steege et al 2015 to simplify their analysesâ namely in the handling of widespread species and rare species these assumptions have the potential to strongly influence predictions of how many and which species are at risk of being lost to deforestation over the coming decades,2016,0.776
Effect of Climate Change on the Distribution of a Critically Threatened Specie,climate change cc is modifying the habitat and distribution of wild fauna causing distribution area reduction and or altitudinal or latitudinal movements of species in response to increased temperatures and changes in precipitation this increases the risk of species extinction particularly for those with small population sizes habitat specialists microendemics and or those with already restricted distributions we examine how the effects of cc could influence the distribution and availability of habitat for the critically threatened and endemic species the tehuantepec jackrabbit lepus flavigularis as well as the species of grasses on which it feeds our models were constructed using maxent occurrence data of jackrabbits and grasses from the years 1959 to 2014 were analyzed along with climatic and slope variables for three time periods present 2014 and future 2050 and 2070 the climatic variables were taken from worldclim resolution 30â utilizing the hadgem2 es model with scenarios 4 5 and 8 5 potential distribution models estimate an area of 9 274 ha of habitat suitable for the jackrabbit in 2014 with a 19 3 increment in this area to 11 071 ha by 2070 with scenario 4 5 and 9 increment with an area of 10 111 ha by 2070 with scenario 8 5 according to a jackknife analysis precipitation of wettest month bio13 and precipitation of warmest quarter bio18 are the variables that contribute most to the construction of the potential distribution models of l flavigularis from 2014 to 2070 future scenarios 4 5 and 8 5 estimate temperature increase and precipitation reduction in places where jackrabbits and grasses currently inhabit also these scenarios estimate an increase in areas with suitable climatic conditions in the future however anthropogenic factors not considered in this study have influenced the distribution and retention of the populations of l flavigularis in the study area so the outlook of the species is not encouraging it is clear that cc will have an effect on the distribution of this critically threatened and endemic species through modification of the area and distribution of its available habitat,2016,0.902
"A new species of Amphitecna (Bignoniaceae) endemic to Chiapas, Mexico",amphitecna loreae ortiz rodr burelo sp nov bignoniaceae a new species endemic to the karst rainforest in southern mexico is described and illustrated the new species differs from the other species of amphitecna by the combination of cauliflorous inflorescences larger flowers buds rounded at apex and globose ellipsoid rather than acuminate fruits a key to the mexican species of amphitecna is presented,2016,0.816
A Step Forward to Empower Global Microbiome Research Through Local Leadership,obtaining the full microbial potential to benefit local communities and citizens as well as ongoing conservation efforts is a major challenge for brazil and other developing countries we propose policies and priorities for organizing microbiome studies locally and worldwide aiming for a comprehensive catalogue of microbiomes as recently urged microorganisms are recognized as a fundamental resource for creating a fast and efficient strategy for ecosystem management and scientific and technological development microbial community assembly and functions are tightly linked to local geographic and environmental features 1 developing countries such as brazil house biomes evolving under specific environmental conditions that likely harbor unique microbiomes challenges in profiling microbial diversity include a lack of standardized methods and metadata collection that precludes robust interstudy comparisons limiting the value of these studies 2 3 and 4 advances in sequencing technologies and associated bioinformatics approaches should now enable comparison of the diversity abundance and function of microbial communities at much greater resolution than was previously possible 5 recently three papers have pointed to the need for microbiome research coordination 4 6 and 7 these proposals envisioned guidelines for intellectual property rights research priorities for funding including a long term interagency funding strategy the development of new analytical tools training programs data integration through an in country distributed data center and policies on data sharing we argue here that there is a need for developing local leadership in microbiome research 8 and propose establishing an initiative to foster international collaborations in order to marshal microbiome research in brazil recently the us government along with the private sector has announced a significant budget to launch the national microbiome initiative nmi 9 considering geography as an important part of the microbiome puzzle the development of local initiatives will strengthen the nmi and provide a basis for a global microbiome effort 6,2016,0.132
The terpene synthase gene family in Tripterygium wilfordii harbors a labdane‐type diterpene synthase among the monoterpene synthase TPS‐b subfamily,tripterygium wilfordii celastraceae is a medicinal plant with anti inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties identification of a vast array of unusual sesquiterpenoids diterpenoids and triterpenoids in t wilfordii has spurred investigations of their pharmacological properties the tri epoxide lactone triptolide was the first of many diterpenoids identified attracting interest due to the spectrum of bioactivities to probe the genetic underpinning of diterpenoid diversity an expansion of the class ii diterpene synthase ditps family was recently identified in a leaf transcriptome following detection of triptolide and simple diterpene scaffolds in the root we sequenced and mined the root transcriptome this allowed identification of the root specific complement of tpss and an expansion in the class i ditps family functional characterization of the class ii ditpss established their activities in the formation of four c 20 diphosphate intermediates precursors of both generalized and specialized metabolism and a novel scaffold for celastraceae functional pairs of the class i and ii enzymes resulted in formation of three scaffolds accounting for some of the terpenoid diversity found in t wilfordii absence of activity forming abietane type diterpenes encouraged further testing of tpss outside the canonical class i ditps family twtps27 close relative of mono tpss was found to couple with twtps9 converting normal copalyl diphosphate to miltiradiene the phylogenetic distance to established ditpss indicates neo functionalization of twtps27 into a ditps a function not previously observed in the tps b subfamily this example of evolutionary convergence expands the functionality of tpss in the tps b family and may contribute miltiradiene to the diterpenoids of t wilfordii,2016,0.04
"Botanical , Phytochemical and Pharmacological Review of Flacourtia Jangomas (Lour.) Raeusch",flacourtia jangomas is traditionally used in india china malaya peninsula brazil for the treatment against asthma anemia diarrhoea diabetes considering its medicinal and economic values the plant is not attractive to the farmers because of its low yield and lack of awareness towards its potential aim of this review is to provide an up to date knowledge or overview about the vernac ular names distribution botanical aspects chemical constituent and phytochemical analysis further phytochemical and pharmacological potential of this species are suggested for future investigations,2016,0.394
"Possible co-existence of two species of genus Meleagris at Monte Albán, Oaxaca",this paper presents results from the analysis of 69 bones of the genus meleagris collected from households and public areas near the main plaza of the archaeological site of monte albã n oaxaca mexico different sizes were observed using a one dimensional comparative analysis these differently sized elements were identified as the meleagris gallopavo and meleagris ocellata species suggesting that both species were present at this zapotec site between the late preclassic and classic periods the results confirm that in the preclassic period human activity expanded the original geographic distribution of the genus meleagris farther south m gallopavo and north m ocellata in mesoamerica,2016,0.59
"Chloroplast phylogenomic analyses reveal the deepest-branching lineage of the Chlorophyta, Palmophyllophyceae class. nov.",the green plants viridiplantae are an ancient group of eukaryotes comprising two main clades the chlorophyta which includes a wide diversity of green algae and the streptophyta which consists of freshwater green algae and the land plants the early diverging lineages of the viridiplantae comprise unicellular algae and multicellularity has evolved independently in the two clades recent molecular data have revealed an unrecognized early diverging lineage of green plants the palmophyllales with a unique form of multicellularity and typically found in deep water the phylogenetic position of this enigmatic group however remained uncertain here we elucidate the evolutionary affinity of the palmophyllales using chloroplast genomic and nuclear rdna data phylogenetic analyses firmly place the palmophyllalean verdigellas peltata along with species of prasinococcales prasinophyte clade vi in the deepest branching clade of the chlorophyta the small compact and intronless chloroplast genome cpdna of v peltata shows striking similarities in gene content and organization with the cpdnas of prasinococcales and the streptophyte mesostigma viride indicating that cpdna architecture has been extremely well conserved in these deep branching lineages of green plants the phylogenetic distinctness of the palmophyllales prasinococcales clade characterized by unique ultrastructural features warrants recognition of a new class of green plants palmophyllophyceae class nov,2016,0.13
Conservation of reef corals in the South China Sea based on species and evolutionary diversity,the south china sea in the central indo pacific is a large semi enclosed marine region that supports an extraordinary diversity of coral reef organisms including stony corals which varies spatially across the region while one third of the worldâ s reef corals are known to face heightened extinction risk from global climate and local impacts prospects for the coral fauna in the south china sea region amidst these threats remain poorly understood in this study we analyse coral species richness rarity and phylogenetic diversity among 16 reef areas in the region to estimate changes in species and evolutionary diversity during projected anthropogenic extinctions our results show that richness rarity and phylogenetic diversity differ considerably among reef areas in the region and that their outcomes following projected extinctions cannot be predicted by species diversity alone although relative rarity and threat levels are high in species rich areas such as west malaysia and the philippines areas with fewer species such as northern vietnam and paracel islands stand to lose disproportionately large amounts of phylogenetic diversity our study quantifies various biodiversity components of each reef area to inform conservation planners and better direct sparse resources to areas where they are needed most it also provides a critical biological foundation for targeting reefs that should be included in a regional network of marine protected areas in the south china sea,2016,0.842
"Development of a National Center of Genetic Resources Passport Database: Managing Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock, Microbial, and Aquatic Genetic Resources with an Integrated Schema",although databases for genetic resources have been developed a comprehensive schema to manage such multiple subsystems as forestry livestock microbial and aquatic germplasm has yet to be fully developed mexico s national center of genetic resources faces the challenge of managing all of these subsystems therefore we projected an integral system to meet such demands in this work we present the first stage of implementing this system we have developed a new schema and an input output system for passport data that will improve the data management of multi subsystem germplasm this schema can unify all subsystems with a comprehensive identifier at the accession level by establishing a sub identifier elements that were traditionally allocated as independent accessions would be set as a subgroup of the same accession the sub identifier allows variability in element treatments facilitates diverse sample management and avoids redundancy the passport database is complemented by an effective insertion and retrieval system that will facilitate transition from the previous data management of individual subsystems to a subsystem comprehensive database system,2016,0.061
"KAEMPFEROL GLYCOSIDES IN CROCUS: SOURCES, BIOSYNTHESIS, AND USES",the genus crocus iridaceae comprises about 160 species occurring in the wild in europe the middle east and north africa and grown as ornamentals all over the world for their white yellow pale brown purple to lilac mauve and blue flowers among these species the cultivated saffron crocus sativus l stands out for the highly valued stigmas of its flowers used as spice food additive and medicinal drug kaempferol glycosides are major flavonoids in the flowers of this genus 70 90 of the total content in the perianth and are also present in the leaves in this work the occurrence of kaempferol and its glycosidic patterns in different crocus species are discussed biosynthesis aspects such as pathways for sequential glycosylation of kaempferol together with the role of kaempferol in the current food therapeutic or ornamental uses and in other potential uses of the species of the genus crocus are also analysed special attention is paid to saffron crocus sativus l and the growing interest of its tepals which are rich in kaempferol 3 osophoroside as a source of antioxidants and active principles,2016,0.83
High spatial variation in terrestrial arthropod species diversity and composition near the Greenland ice cap,arthropods form a major part of the terrestrial species diversity in the arctic and are particularly sensitive to temporal changes in the abiotic environment it is assumed that most arctic arthropods are habitat generalists and that their diversity patterns exhibit low spatial variation the empirical basis for this assumption however is weak we examine the degree of spatial variation in species diversity and assemblage structure among five habitat types at two sites of similar abiotic conditions and plant species composition in southwest greenland using standardized field collection methods for spiders beetles and butterflies we employed non metric multidimensional scaling species richness estimation community dissimilarity and indicator species analysis to test for local within site and regional between site scale differences in arthropod communities to identify specific drivers of local arthropod assemblages we used a combination of ordination techniques and linear regression species richness and the species pool differed between sites with the latter indicating high species turnover local scale assemblage patterns were related to soil moisture and temperature we conclude that arctic arthropod species assemblages vary substantially over short distances due to local soil characteristics while regional variation in the species pool is likely influenced by geographic barriers i e inland ice sheet glaciers mountains and large water bodies in order to predict future changes to arctic arthropod diversity further efforts are needed to disentangle contemporary drivers of diversity at multiple spatial scales,2016,0.966
Assumption- versus data-based approaches to summarizing species’ ranges,speciesâ geographic distributions are mapped using various approaches for use in conservation decision making some such mapping efforts have relied on modifications of coarse resolution extent of occurrence maps to downscale them to fine resolutions for conservation planning this contribution examines 1 the quality of the extent of occurrence maps as range summaries and 2 the utility of refining those maps into fine resolution distributional hypotheses in both cases we found significant problems the extent of occurrence maps are overly simple omit many known and well documented populations and likely frequently include many areas not holding populations refinement steps involve typological assumptions about habitat preferences and elevational ranges of species which can introduce significant error in anticipating speciesâ true distributional areas however as no model evaluation steps are taken to assess predictive ability of models â œbadâ models are not noticed whereas range summaries derived by these methods may be useful in coarse grained global extent studies their continued use in on the ground conservation challenges at fine resolutions is not advisable on the other hand data driven techniques that integrate primary biodiversity occurrence data with remotely sensed data summarizing environmental dimensions termed ecological niche modeling or species distribution modeling with rigorous and quantitative testing of model predictions prior to any use these data driven approaches constitute a well founded widely accepted alternative with a minimum of assumptions,2016,0.574
Key innovations and climatic niche divergence as drivers of diversification in subtropical Gentianinae in southeastern and eastern Asia,premise of the study geological and climatic changes associated with the uplift of the qinghai tibet plateau qtp have been suggested as drivers for biological diversification locally and in neighboring regions to test this hypothesis we investigated the niche evolution of tripterospermum gentianaceae and related asian genera through time methods we conducted species distribution modeling using maximum entropy modeling maxent furthermore we performed stochastic character mapping and produced disparity through time plots and examined putative key innovations using the binary state speciation and extinction approach bisse key results kuepferia and sinogentiana prefer the coolest and driest habitat having rather conserved niches despite a tendency for niche evolution crawfurdia and metagentiana are probably restricted to a narrow distribution range because of their poor dispersal ability in contrast tripterospermum has the broadest niche and occurs under the warmest and wettest conditions a higher degree of niche evolution and a more efficient dispersal mechanism allowed this genus to diversify more and occupy a broader distribution range conclusions the qtp genera producing dry capsules whether displaying niche conservatism kuepferia and sinogentiana or a tendency for niche evolution crawfurdia and metagentiana are less species rich and have a more restricted distribution than tripterospermum stronger niche evolution and berry like fruits the evolution of berry like fruits corresponds to increased speciation rates and could therefore be viewed as a key innovation in contrast to the majority of studies on plants occurring around the qtp we find that speciation was probably mediated by niche breadth and dispersal ability rather than geophysical changes,2016,0.272
Evolutionary dynamics and biogeography of Musaceae reveal a correlation between the diversification of the banana family and the geological and climatic history of Southeast Asia.,tropical southeast asia which harbors most of the musaceae biodiversity is one of the most species rich regions in the world its high degree of endemism is shaped by the region s tectonic and climatic history with large differences between northern indo burma and the malayan archipelago here we aim to find a link between the diversification and biogeography of musaceae and geological history of the southeast asian subcontinent the musaceae family including five ensete 45 musa and one musella species was dated using a large phylogenetic framework encompassing 163 species from all zingiberales families evolutionary patterns within musaceae were inferred using ancestral area reconstruction and diversification rate analyses all three musaceae genera ensete musa and musella originated in northern indo burma during the early eocene musa species dispersed from northwest to southeast into southeast asia with only few back dispersals towards northern indo burma musaceae colonization events of the malayan archipelago subcontinent are clearly linked to the geological and climatic history of the region musa species were only able to colonize the region east of wallace s line after the availability of emergent land from the late miocene onwards,2016,0.831
Advancing taxonomy and bioinventories with DNA barcodes,we use three examples field and ecology based inventories in costa rica and papua new guinea and a museum and taxonomic based inventory of the moth family geometridae to demonstrate the use of dna barcoding a short sequence of the mitochondrial coi gene in biodiversity inventories from facilitating workflows of identification of freshly collected specimens from the field to describing the overall diversity of megadiverse taxa from museum collections and most importantly linking the fresh specimens the general museum collections and historic type specimens the process also flushes out unexpected sibling species hiding under long applied scientific names thereby clarifying and parsing previously mixed collateral data the barcode of life database has matured to an essential interactive platform for the multi authored and multi process collaboration the bin system of creating and tracking dna sequence based clusters as proxies for species has become a powerful way around some parts of the taxonomic impediment especially in entomology by providing fast but testable and tractable species hypotheses tools for visualizing the distribution of those in time and space and an interim naming system for communication this article is part of the themed issue from dna barcodes to biomes,2016,0.368
Micro-CTvlab: A web based virtual gallery of biological specimens using X-ray microtomography (micro-CT),background during recent years x ray microtomography micro ct has seen an increasing use in biological research areas such as functional morphology taxonomy evolutionary biology and developmental research micro ct is a technology which uses x rays to create sub micron resolution images of external and internal features of specimens these images can then be rendered in a three dimensional space and used for qualitative and quantitative 3d analyses however the online exploration and dissemination of micro ct datasets are rarely made available to the public due to their large size and a lack of dedicated online platforms for the interactive manipulation of 3d data here the development of a virtual micro ct laboratory micro ctvlab is described which can be used by everyone who is interested in digitisation methods and biological collections and aims at making the micro ct data exploration of natural history specimens freely available over the internet new information the micro ctvlab offers to the user virtual image galleries of various taxa which can be displayed and downloaded through a web application with a few clicks accurate detailed and three dimensional models of species can be studied and virtually dissected without destroying the actual specimen the data and functions of the micro ctvlab can be accessed either on a normal computer or through a dedicated version for mobile devices,2016,0.215
"Cissus erecta (Vitaceae), a new non-viny herbaceous species from Mt. Popa, Myanmar",cissus erecta a new endemic species of vitaceae from myanmar is described and illustrated the species is similar to c aubertiana in habit but it is readily distinguished by its less deeply lobed leaves with serrate margins persistent stipules and larger berries this species is also similar to c woodrowii in leaf shape but it is distinguished by having herbaceous habit leaves with serrate margin greenish and persistent stipules compound umbel and larger globose berries,2016,0.698
New locations of protected lichens of Sakhalin island,in this work floristic findings of protected rare and poorly studied lichens of sakhalin island are presented information is based on expedition research in 2014â 2015 from 19 species included in this paper â biatora chrysantha coenogonium pineti diplotomma alboatrum evernia esorediosa hypogymnia fujisanensis and thelotrema foveolare are provided first time for the study area rinodina polyspora is the new species for the south of the russian far east new locations on sakhalin island are pointed out for the anzia colpodes coccocarpia erythroxyli hypogymnia fragillima h hypotrypa lethariella togashii nephromopsis laii n laureri n ornata rinodina degeliana sticta limbata s fuliginosa and tetramelas geophilus all of these lichen species are epiphytic ones excepting coenogonium pineti which is epibryophytic 7 lichen species are protected 5 species are included in red book of russia and red book of sakhalin region coccocarpia erythroxyli hypogymnia fragillima nephromopsis laureri n ornata and sticta limbata two species nephromopsis laii and hypogymnia hypotrypa are included in red book of sakhalin region for each species labels are cited data about substrate and community distribution and frequency of occurrence are given brief information about distribution of studied lichen species on sakhalin island in russia and general distribution is presented photos of several lichen species are given key words lichens floristic find russian far east,2016,0.939
"Noteworthy Polypores of Pushkin City near the Saint Petesburg (Russia), the Reserve of Old-Growth Trees. 1. Trametes Suaveolens",the paper opens a series focused on noteworthy polypores associated presumable with old growth broadleaf trees in the pushkin tsarskoye selo ensemble near st petersburg some nemoral species complexes are reserved here due to protection of old growth trees over this area the species in focus of the present paper is trametes suaveolens polyporaceae agaricomycetes the species with rather uneven taxonomical history the basionym initially was applied to another fragrant polypore and its nomenclature was stabilized rather recently after its neotypification this is a rare species associated presumable with large willow trees in some countries britain montenegro finland estonia some regions of russia this species is protected four habitats of this protected on st petersburg species were revealed in the pushkin city all these are documented and an enlarged morphological and ecological description of t suaveolens is given a new form t suaveolens f dorsalis was described,2016,0.706
Differential methylation as a biomarker of response to etanercept in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.,background biologic drug therapies represent a huge advance in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis ra however very good disease control is only achieved in 30 of patients making identification of biomarkers of response a research priority we therefore hypothesize that differential dna methylation patterns may provide biomarkers predictive of response to tnf inhibitor tnfi therapy in patients with ra methods an epigenome wide association study was performed on pre treatment whole blood dna from patients with ra patients who displayed good response n 36 or no response n 36 to etanercept therapy at 3 months were selected differentially methylated positions dmps were identified using linear regression variance of methylation at dmps was assessed for correlation with cis acting snps a replication experiment for prioritised snps was performed in an independent cohort of 1 204 ra patients results five dmps between responders groups were identified with a fdr 5 the top two dmps mapped to exon 7 of the lrpap1 gene on chromosome 4 cg04857395 p 1 39e 08 and cg26401028 1 96e 08 the a allele of the snp rs3468 was correlated with higher levels of methylation for both of the top two dmps 2 63e 07 and 1 05e 06 respectively further the a allele of rs3468 was correlated with eular non response in the discovery cohort n 56 p 0 03 and in the independent replication cohort n 1 204 p 0 003 conclusions we identify dna methylation as a potential biomarker of tnfi response and report the association between response and the lrpap1 gene which encodes a chaperone of low density lipoprotein receptor related protein 1 additional replication experiments in independent sample collections are now required this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.02
Morphology and Anatomy of Guacamaya superba (Rapateaceae) and Schoenocephalieae with Notes on the Natural History of the Flor de inírida,abstract rapateaceae are a monophyletic family of 17 genera with greatest species diversity on the mountains and savannas of the guiana shield the family has intrigued botanists because of their interesting and unusual inflorescence and leaf morphologies the small tribe schoenocephalieae three genera and seven species are regionally prized for their showy inflorescences that are harvested as everlasting flowers here we report on local cultivation efforts to minimize harvesting from wild populations and examine vegetative morphology and anatomy reporting for the first time the presence of a lateral thickening meristem in rapateaceae schoenocephalieae exhibit possible adaptations to their oligotrophic open and fire prone habitats such as abundant mucilage idioblasts containing a tannin like substance leaf fibers presence of epidermal silica the formation of telmata in guacamaya and vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi,2016,0.565
Climatic Similarity of Extant and Extinct Dasypus Armadillos,the similar geographic distributions of an extinct dasypus bellus and an extant d novemcinctus armadillo species have long been of interest to scholars because of the unresolved phylogeny the relationship between the two species has been investigated through morphological and phylogenetic studies whereas the ecological perspective has been overlooked the importance of which is more and more acknowledged in speciation events here we used ecological niche models to study the climatic niche similarity of three species of dasypus d bellus d novemcinctus and d kappleri and provide new insights on the relationship among them the climatic niche similarity was compared in two ways hindcast of ecological niche models based on occurrences and climatic layers and direct niche boundary comparison along bioclimatic axes the fossil records of d bellus were not predicted suitable by the ecological niche models of the two extant armadillos the direct comparison of niche boundary showed that d bellus lived in colder and relative dryer climates with high temperature variation and low precipitation variation our results did not support the previously assumed ecological similarity of d bellus and d novemcinctus based on their geographic distributions and emphasized the possibility of a cold adapted characteristic of the life history of d bellus,2016,0.514
"Abyssal fauna of the UK-1 polymetallic nodule exploration claim, Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific Ocean: Echinodermata",we present data from a dna taxonomy register of the abyssal benthic echinodermata collected as part of the abyssal baseline abyssline environmental survey cruise â ab01â to the uk seabed resources ltd uksrl polymetallic nodule exploration claim â uk 1â in the eastern clarion clipperton zone ccz central pacific ocean abyssal plain morphological and genetic data are presented for 17 species 4 asteroidea 4 crinoidea 2 holothuroidea and 7 ophiuroidea identified by a combination of morphological and genetic data no taxa matched previously published genetic sequences but 8 taxa could be assigned to previously described species based on morphology although here we have used a precautionary approach in taxon assignments to avoid over estimating species ranges the clarion clipperton zone is a region undergoing intense exploration for potential deep sea mineral extraction we present these data to facilitate future taxonomic and environmental impact study by making both data and voucher materials available through curated and accessible biological collections,2016,0.73
"ANURAN FAUNA OF THE HIGH-ELEVATION AREAS OF THE PARQUE NACIONAL DA SERRA DOS ÓRGÃOS (PARNASO), SOUTHEASTERN BRAZIL",there is a lack of knowledge regarding the diversity of anurans in high elevation areas of the brazilian atlantic forest in order to improve the knowledge about the diversity of this group in this kind of environment we present a list of anuran amphibians recorded in high elevation areas above 1 200 m of the parque nacional da serra dos ã rgã os parnaso in southeastern brazil the list was compiled based on primary data from fieldwork and on secondary data from surveys of institutional collections twenty eight species belonging to seven families were recorded brachycephalidae 6 species bufonidae 3 spp cycloramphidae 4 spp hemiphractidae 5 spp hylidae 8 spp hylodidae 1 sp and odontophrynidae 1 sp according to the iucn red list eight of those species are classified as â œdata deficientâ and two species have not been assessed yet i e dendrophryniscus organensis and fritziana sp nov ten species are classified as â œleast concernâ but with populations in decline although six of them bokermannohyla carvalhoi b circumdata ischnocnema parva proceratophrys appendiculata scinax albicans and zachaenus parvulus were frequently found during fieldwork at parnaso and seem to be locally abundant the other eight species classified as â œleast concernâ have stable populations we add three species to the list of anurans endemic to the high elevation areas of serra dos ã rgã os cycloramphus organensis d organensis and fritziana sp nov raising to 14 the number of endemic taxa in the area,2016,0.965
Geropogon hybridus (L.) Sch.Bip. (Asteraceae) exhibits micro-geographic genetic divergence at ecological range limits along a steep precipitation gradient,we analyzed the population genetic pattern of 12 fragmented geropogon hybridus ecological range edge populations in israel along a steep precipitation gradient in the investigation area 45 ã 20 km2 the annual mean precipitation changes rapidly from 450 mm in the north mediterranean influenced climate zone to 300 mm in the south semiarid climate zone without significant temperature changes our analysis 91 individuals 12 populations 123 polymorphic loci revealed strongly structured populations amova î st 0 35 p 0 001 however differentiation did not change gradually toward range edge ibd was significant mantel test r 0 81 p 0 001 and derived from sharply divided groups between the northernmost populations and the others further south due to dispersal or environmental limitations this was corroborated by the pca and structure analyses ibd and ibe were significant despite the micro geographic scale of the study area which indicates that reduced precipitation toward range edge leads to population genetic divergence however this pattern diminished when the hypothesized gene flow barrier was taken into account applying the spatial analysis method revealed 11 outlier loci that were correlated to annual precipitation and moreover were indicative for putative precipitation related adaptation bayescan mcheza the results suggest that even on micro geographic scales environmental factors play prominent roles in population divergence genetic drift and directional selection the pattern is typical for strong environmental gradients e g at species range edges and ecological limits and if gene flow barriers and mosaic like structures of fragmented habitats hamper dispersal,2016,0.665
Distribution Data of Birds Nest Fungi in Japan: Nidula niveotomentosa and Crucibulum laeve,nidula niveotomentosa and crucibulum laeve are distributed widely in temperate countries but the true distribution in japan has not been investigated we hereby update the distribution record of these two species in japan based on observation of morphological characters from recently collected samples from some areas in japan e g chichibu nikko mt fuji and mt daisen as well as the distribution data from gbif and other herbarium records detailed description of macro and microscopic characters with photographs and distribution records in each prefecture in japan are provided,2016,0.599
Plants capable of selfing are more likely to become naturalized,many plant species have established self sustaining populations outside their natural range because of human activities plants with selfing ability should be more likely to establish outside their historical range because they can reproduce from a single individual when mates or pollinators are not available here we compile a global breeding system database of 1 752 angiosperm species and use phylogenetic generalized linear models and path analyses to test relationships between selfing ability life history native range size and global naturalization status selfing ability is associated with annual or biennial life history and a large native range which both positively correlate with the probability of naturalization path analysis suggests that a high selfing ability directly increases the number of regions where a species is naturalized our results provide robust evidence across flowering plants at the global scale that high selfing ability fosters alien plant naturalization both directly and indirectly,2016,0.215
Collaborating on open science: The journey of the Biodiversity Heritage Library,the biodiversity heritage library bhl 11 is an established and successful digital library formed by a global consortium of natural history libraries with engaged and enthusiastic users the extensive partnerships curated content innovative tools and services the ease of mining the data all combine to establish an open science resource that advances scientific progress through linking use and reuse the aim of bhl as stated on the web page is â œinspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge the biodiversity heritage library works collaboratively to make biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community bhl also serves as the foundational literature component of the encyclopedia of life eol â bhl and eol are linked via taxonomic names and bibliographies bhl is linked in a similar way to the global biodiversity information facility gbif and thus has broad exposure to scientists across the globe as well as a global public,2016,0.356
Spatial Data Relations as a Means to Enrich Species Observations from Crowdsourcing,the general fascination of nature has always been a major driver for studies on living animal and plant species a large number of professionals and especially volunteers are organized in related initiatives and projects from the local to the global level leading to the vast amount of species observations nowadays available on the web this article seeks to enhance this knowledge base by the determination management and analysis of feature entity relations among the observations those relationships are considered important for comprehensive biological monitoring and in general facilitate the integrated use of existing data sources on the web particular emphasis is put on crowdsourcing which increasingly receives attention and support by citizen science initiatives the linked data paradigm representing the core of the semantic web is applied to describe handle and exploit relations in a standardized and thus interoperable manner methodologies to determine and validate relationships are developed and implemented the implementation combines the analysis of spatio temporal behavioral patterns of species with a crowdsourcing approach for the validation of determined relations the vagueness of results is addressed by assessing the probability of a relation,2016,0.273
Where are the Alien Species? Predictions of Global Plant Species Invasions under Current Environmental Conditions and the Human Footprint,species invasion is a significant concern because of its substantial effect on native ecosystems a number of species specific invasion predictions that correspond to environmental conditions are available but literature predicting global species invasion that corresponds to environmental conditions and human activity is scarce in this study the potential geographic ranges of 308 alien plant species were predicted under current environmental conditions and human activities environmental conditions were delineated by bioclimatic mean annual temperature mean annual precipitation mean temperature of wettest quarter and precipitation of driest quarter and topographic variables annual solar radiation and topographic wetness index human activity was delineated by the human footprint which is a raster data layer created from nine global data layers that describe human population pressure land use and infrastructure and human access the potential distribution of the target species was predicted using the different types of models by searching the correlated literature we identified and excluded the native geographic range of the studied species in the predicted geographic range to obtain the exclusive invasive range results demonstrated that the invasion hotspots included the southern part of north america southern and western europe the south coast of asia coastal regions of australia and new zealand the coast of west africa the ivory coast of africa and the southern part of brazil in addition the land areas of the low proper for less than 50 alien species moderate 51 100 aliens and high risk regions more than 100 aliens are 213 23 18 15 and 2 50 million km2 respectively all variables bioclimatic and topographic variables and human footprint were positively correlated with increasing richness of alien species the highest correlation coefficient was obtained for the human footprint,2016,0.924
Announcement-guidance document for acquiring reliable data in ecological restoration projects,the laurentian great lakes are undergoing intensive ecological restoration in canada and the united states in the united states an interagency committee was formed to facilitate implementation of quality practices for federally funded restoration projects in the great lakes basin the committee s responsibilities include developing a guidance document that will provide a common approach to the application of quality assurance and quality control qa qc practices for restoration projects the document will serve as a â œhow toâ guide for ensuring data quality during each aspect of ecological restoration projects in addition the document will provide suggestions on linking qa qc data with the routine project data and hints on creating detailed supporting documentation finally the document will advocate integrating all components of the project including qa qc applications into an overarching decision support framework the guidance document is expected to be released by the u s epa great lakes national program office in 2017,2016,0.178
Digging for historical data on the occurrence of benthic macrofaunal species in the southeastern Mediterranean,background the benthic macrofaunal biodiversity of the southeastern mediterranean is considerably understudied compared to other mediterranean regions monitoring biodiversity in this area is crucial as this region is particularly susceptible to biological invasions and temperature alteration historical biodiversity data could provide a useful baseline for monitoring potential changes and provide informarion to support a better understanding of the possible effects of anthropogenic activities on marine benthic communities new information in this study performed under the lifewatchgreece research infrastructure we present historical benthic occurrence data obtained from the sampling expedition carried out in 1933 by adolf steuer in the coastal area around alexandria egypt eastern mediterranean the occurrences were geo referenced to more than 170 stations mostly located in the area of alexandria and the nearby coasts and lakes all records were digitized and species names were cross checked and taxonomically updated using the world register of marine species the outcome clearly shows that such initiatives can reveal an unexpected amount of highly valuable biodiversity information for â œdata poorâ regions,2016,0.234
Drug discovery of neurodegenerative disease through network pharmacology approach in herbs,neurodegenerative diseases referring to as the progressive loss of structure and function of neurons constitute one of the major challenges of modern medicine traditional chinese herbs have been used as a major preventive and therapeutic strategy against disease for thousands years the numerous species of medicinal herbs and traditional chinese medicine tcm compound formulas in nervous system disease therapy make it a large chemical resource library for drug discovery in this work we collected 7362 kinds of herbs and 58 147 traditional chinese medicinal compounds tcmcs the predicted active compounds in herbs have good oral bioavailability and central nervous system cns permeability the molecular docking and network analysis were employed to analyze the effects of herbs on neurodegenerative diseases in order to evaluate the predicted efficacy of herbs automated text mining was utilized to exhaustively search in pubmed by some related keywords after that receiver operator characteristic roc curves was used to estimate the accuracy of predictions our study suggested that most herbs were distributed in family of asteraceae fabaceae lamiaceae and apocynaceae the predictive model yielded good sensitivity and specificity with the auc values above 0 800 at last 504 kinds of herbs were obtained by using the optimal cutoff values in roc curves these 504 herbs would be the most potential herb resources for neurodegenerative diseases treatment this study would give us an opportunity to use these herbs as a chemical resource library for drug discovery of anti neurodegenerative disease,2016,0.113
Prestoration: using species in restoration that will persist now and into the future,climate change presents new challenges for selecting species for restoration if migration fails to keep pace with climate change as models predict the most suitable sources for restoration may not occur locally at all to address this issue we propose a strategy of â œprestorationâ utilizing species in restoration for which a site represents suitable habitat now and into the future using the colorado plateau united states as a case study we assess the ability of grass species currently used regionally in restoration to persist into the future using projections of ecological niche models or climate envelope models across a suite of climate change scenarios we then present a technique for identifying new species that best compensate for future losses of suitable habitat by current target species we found that the current suite of species selected by a group of experts is predicted to perform reasonably well in the short term but that losses of prestorable habitat by mid century would approach 40 using an algorithm to identify additional species we found that fewer than 10 species could compensate for nearly all of the losses incurred by the current target species this case study highlights the utility of integrating ecological niche modeling and future climate forecasts to predict the utility of species in restoring under climate change across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales,2016,0.972
Isoëtes vanensis (Isoëtaceae) sp. nov. from Turkey,a previously undescribed species isoã tes vanensis is described and illustrated isoã tes vanensis is distinguished from allied species by its papery scales and small megaspores bearing a low tuberculate texture and a fimbriate ecuelate micro ornamentation a table of comparative diagnostic characters and character states for i vanensis and allied taxa a geographic distribution map and sem images of megaspores and microspores showing ornamentation patterns are included,2016,0.576
Endophytic Microorganisms Isolated of Plants Grown in Colombia: A Short Review,colombia is listed as the second largest country in plant diversity in the world presenting more than 6000 species of endemic plants the different genus and species of plants as well as the various environments encountered in the country are responsible for the countless amount of endophytic bacteria and fungi so far only a few endophytic microorganisms were isolated in colombia including the genera pseudomonas burkholderia chromobacterium curtobacterium acremonium alternaria aspergillus and fusarium which have been isolated from rice coffee rose grass and espeletia plants fungi and bacteria isolated from these plants have great potential for use in biocontrol bioremediation and in promoting plant growth colombia for its rich flora have become a promising country for finding new microorganisms associated with plants especially those with potential for food industry pharmaceuticals and agriculture,2016,0.312
Species distribution modeling for king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla) and its prey species in the Gulf of Mexico,ecosystem based fisheries management ebfm has been broadly recognized throughout the world as a way to achieve better conservation therefore as an important part of ebfm mapping multi species interactions or spatial distributions has been strongly needed species distribution models are widely applied since information regarding the presence of species is usually only available for limited locations due to the high cost of field surveys furthermore a large proportion of the fisheries survey data have only presence records instead of regular presence and absence records thus presence only species distribution models are needed in this study four presence only species distribution algorithms bioclim domain mahal and maxent were applied using 12 environmental parameters as predictors to model the distribution of king mackerel scomberomorus cavalla and 31 of its prey species in the gulf of mexico based on the results 10 major distribution patterns were proposed to describe the distribution of the 32 species post hoc with tukeyâ s test shows that area under curve auc for the maxent based models were significantly p 0 05 higher than those for bioclim and domain based models but insignificantly different from those for mahal based models p 0 955 while correlation coefficients r for the maxent based models were significantly higher than those for all the other three types of models p 0 05 thus maxent based models were concluded to have the best performance generalized linear models glm generalized additive models gam and random forest models rf were applied to model the abundance distribution of three shrimp species throughout the gulf results show that abundance distributions predicted were quite close to the species distribution predicted by the presence only models which validated the good performance of the presence only models evaluation of the models by correlation shows that the gam models had the best performance for brown shrimp abundance modeling while the rf models had the best performance for the other two shrimp species good performance of the species distribution abundance modelsshowsthat interesting distribution patterns especially the special zones eg the dead zone can provide some insights for scientists or government managers to better manage fisheries resources in the gulf of mexico,2016,0.981
Prevalence of multimodal species abundance distributions is linked to spatial and taxonomic breadth,aim species abundance distributions sads are a synthetic measure of biodiversity and community structure although typically described by unimodal logseries or lognormal distributions empirical sads can also exhibit multiple modes however we do not know how prevalent multimodality is nor do we have an understanding of the factors leading to this pattern here we quantify the prevalence of multimodality in sads across a wide range of taxa habitats and spatial extents location global methods we used the second order akaike information criterion for small sample sizes aicc and likelihood ratio tests lrts to test whether models with more than one mode accurately describe the empirical abundance frequency distributions of the underlying communities we analysed 117 empirical datasets from intensely sampled communities including taxa ranging from birds plants fish and invertebrates from terrestrial marine and freshwater habitats results we find evidence for multimodality in 14 5 of the sads when using aicc and lrt this is a conservative estimate as aicc alone estimates a prevalence of multimodality of 22 we additionally show that the pattern is more common in data encompassing broader spatial scales and greater taxonomic breadth suggesting that multimodality increases with ecological heterogeneity main conclusions we suggest that higher levels of ecological heterogeneity underpinned by larger spatial extent and higher taxonomic breadth can yield multimodal sads our analysis shows that multimodality occurs with a prevalence that warrants its systematic consideration when assessing sad shape and emphasizes the need for macroecological theories to include multimodality in the range of sads they predict,2016,0.585
Scalariform-to-simple transition in vessel perforation plates triggered by differences in climate during the evolution of Adoxaceae,background and aims angiosperms with simple vessel perforations have evolved many times independently of species having scalariform perforations but detailed studies to understand why these transitions in wood evolution have happened are lacking we focus on the striking difference in wood anatomy between two closely related genera of adoxaceae viburnum and sambucus and link the anatomical divergence with climatic and physiological insights methods after performing wood anatomical observations we used a molecular phylogenetic framework to estimate divergence times for 127 adoxaceae species the conditions under which the genera diversified were estimated using ancestral area reconstruction and optimization of ancestral climates and xylem specific conductivity measurements were performed key results viburnum characterized by scalariform vessel perforations ancestral diversified earlier than sambucus having simple perforations derived ancestral climate reconstruction analyses point to cold temperate preference for viburnum and warm temperate for sambucus this is reflected in the xylem specific conductivity rates of the co occurring species investigated showing that viburnum lantana has rates much lower than sambucus nigra conclusions the lack of selective pressure for high conductive efficiency during early diversification of viburnum and the potentially adaptive value of scalariform perforations in frost prone cold temperate climates have led to retention of the ancestral vessel perforation type while higher temperatures during early diversification of sambucus have triggered the evolution of simple vessel perforations allowing more efficient long distance water transport,2016,0.533
Contribution of citizen science towards international biodiversity monitoring,to meet collective obligations towards biodiversity conservation and monitoring it is essential that the world s governments and non governmental organisations as well as the research community tap all possible sources of data and information including new fast growing sources such as citizen science cs in which volunteers participate in some or all aspects of environmental assessments through compilation of a database on cs and community based monitoring cbm a subset of cs programs we assess where contributions from cs and cbm are significant and where opportunities for growth exist we use the essential biodiversity variable framework to describe the range of biodiversity data needed to track progress towards global biodiversity targets and we assess strengths and gaps in geographical and taxonomic coverage our results show that existing cs and cbm data particularly provide large scale data on species distribution and population abundance species traits such as phenology and ecosystem function variables such as primary and secondary productivity only birds lepidoptera and plants are monitored at scale most cs schemes are found in europe north america south africa india and australia we then explore what can be learned from successful cs cbm programs that would facilitate the scaling up of current efforts how existing strengths in data coverage can be better exploited and the strategies that could maximise the synergies between cs cbm and other approaches for monitoring biodiversity in particular from remote sensing more and better targeted funding will be needed if cs cbm programs are to contribute further to international biodiversity monitoring,2016,0.199
"Continental Refugium in the Mongolian Plateau during Quaternary Glacial Oscillations: Phylogeography and Niche Modelling of the Endemic Desert Hamster, Phodopus roborovskii",the mongolian plateau mp which is situated in the interior of asia and possesses a typical continental climate experienced harsh climatic conditions during the quaternary glacial fluctuations although these events likely had huge impacts on the local animal populations the current effects have hardly been explored to investigate whether the mp supported a refugium along an oceanic continental gradient rocg and whether this refugium was glacial or interglacial we investigated the demographic and phylogeographic history of an endemic mammal species the desert hamster phodopus roborovskii we reconstructed the demographic variation the phylogeographic diffusion and modelled the potential habitat during historical periods the genetic diversity in the mp was the highest among all the localities and the mp was a suitable habitat throughout the modelled historical periods a phylogeographic diffusion analysis emphasized the importance of the mp as the centre of origin preservation and spread for p roborovskii the homogeneous landscape provided the opportunity for a wide gene flow which resulted in low resolution of the phylogenetic relationships moreover p roborovskii was favoured by the interglacial condition with both its demographical and geographical ranges expanded within the interglacial periods the range variation from the last glacial maximum to the current condition reflects a distinct longitudinal shift while both ranges largely contracted from that of the last interglacial our results support that the mp served as a refugium and spread centre for p roborovskii during the quaternary climate fluctuations the interglacial expansion and the longitudinal shifts highlighted the important effects of precipitations on the distribution range of species adapted to arid and semi arid during glacial oscillations,2016,0.441
Inferring extinction in North American and Hawaiian birds in the presence of sighting uncertainty,for most species the timing of extinction events is uncertain occurring sometime after the last sighting however the sightings themselves may also be uncertain recently a number of methods have been developed that incorporate sighting uncertainty in the inference of extinction based on a series of sightings here we estimate the timing of extinction for 41 of 52 north american and hawaiian bird taxa and populations the results of which suggest all became extinct before 2009 by acknowledging sighting uncertainty it results in two opposite effects one pushing the timing of extinction away from the last sighting and the other drawing the timing of extinction nearer to it however for 14 assessed taxa and populations the upper 95 bounds lie beyond the end of the observation period and therefore suggest the possibility of continued persistence this has important implications for conservation decision makers and potentially reduces the likelihood of romeoâ s error,2016,0.433
The Borneo carnivore database and the application of predictive dstribution modelling,south east asian mammals face a particularly severe threat of extinction borneo the third largest island in the world is located in the centre of south east asia it harbours more endemic carnivores than does any other island except madagascar almost half the bornean carnivore species have been classiî ed by the iucn red list of threatened species as threatened because little is known about most bornean carnivores predicting their spatial distribution is important for management strategies to improve the conservation of these species as a part of the 1 st borneo carnivore symposium bcs we started to assemble a knowledge base of bornean carnivores we established the borneo carnivore database which contains the previously largely fragmented occurrence records of carnivores on the island and then used these records to predict the distribution of 20 bornean carnivores all native species except sun bear helarctos malayanus and the four otter species eurasian otter lutra lutra asian small clawed otter aonyx cinereus hairy nosed otter lutra sumatrana and smooth coated otter lutrogale perspicillata we describe general considerations â the underlying assumptions advantages and most importantly the limitations and constraints â of species distribution modelling we then summarise the methodological framework of our modelling approach and results of the sensitivity analyses we emphasise that despite the extensive efforts to compile existing information so few or spatially biased occurrence records exist for some species that the model outcomes presented in this journal issue must be interpreted cautiously we recommend using new data as they become available to test our projections and improve our understanding of carnivore distributions on borneo,2016,0.792
Rethinking Ecology – Challenging Current Thinking in Ecological Research,rethinking ecology is a new open access peer reviewed journal that aims at fostering both forward thinking and the publication of novel ideas in all aspects of ecology evolution and environmental science this editorial briefly presents the rationale unique features and the aspiration of the journal,2016,0.347
Medicinal plants used in the traditional management of diabetes and its sequelae in Central America: a review.,ethnopharmacological relevance globally 387 million people currently have diabetes and it is projected that this condition will be the 7th leading cause of death worldwide by 2030 as of 2012 its total prevalence in central america 8 5 was greater than the prevalence in most latin american countries and the population of this region widely use herbal medicine the aim of this study is to review the medicinal plants used to treat diabetes and its sequelae in seven central american countries belize costa rica el salvador guatemala honduras nicaragua and panama materials and methods we conducted a literature review and extracted from primary sources the plant use reports in traditional remedies that matched one of the following disease categories diabetes mellitus kidney disease urinary problems skin diseases and infections cardiovascular disease sexual dysfunctions visual loss and nerve damage use reports were entered in a database and data were analysed in terms of the highest number of use reports for diabetes management and for the different sequelae we also examined the scientific evidence that might support the local uses of the most reported species results out of 535 identified species used to manage diabetes and its sequelae 104 species are used to manage diabetes and we found in vitro and in vivo preclinical experimental evidence of hypoglycaemic effect for 16 of the 20 species reported by at least two sources however only seven of these species are reported in more than 3 studies momordica charantia l neurolaena lobata l r br ex cass tecoma stans l juss ex kunth persea americana mill psidium guajava l anacardium occidentale l and hamelia patens jacq several of the species that are used to manage diabetes in central america are also used to treat conditions that may arise as its consequence such as kidney disease urinary problems and skin conditions conclusion this review provides an overview of the medicinal plants used to manage diabetes and its sequelae in central america and of the current scientific knowledge that might explain their traditional use in central america a large number of medicinal plants are used to treat this condition and its sequelae although relatively few species are widely used across the region for the species used to manage diabetes there is variation in the availability and quality of pharmacological chemical and clinical studies to explain traditional use,2016,0.527
"A dataset of fishes in and around Inle Lake, an ancient lake of Myanmar, with DNA barcoding, photo images and CT/3D models",ackground inle inlay lake an ancient lake of southeast asia is located at the eastern part of myanmar surrounded by the shan mountains detailed information on fish fauna in and around the lake has long been unknown although its outstanding endemism was reported a century ago new information based on the fish specimens collected from markets rivers swamps ponds and ditches around inle lake as well as from the lake itself from 2014 to 2016 we recorded a total of 948 occurrence data 2120 individuals belonging to 10 orders 19 families 39 genera and 49 species amongst them 13 species of 12 genera are endemic or nearly endemic to the lake system and 17 species of 16 genera are suggested as non native the data are all accessible from the document â œa dataset of inle lake fish fauna and its distribution http ipt pensoft net resource do r inle fish 2014 16 â as well as dna barcoding data mitochondrial coi for all species being available from the ddbj embl genbank accession numbers lc189568â lc190411 live photographs of almost all the individuals and ct 3d model data of several specimens are also available at the graphical fish biodiversity database http ffish asia inle2016 http ffish asia inle2016 3d the information can benefit the clarification public concern and conservation of the fish biodiversity in the region,2016,0.736
Staghorn Sumac: Rhus typhina or R. hirta (Anacardiaceae),prior to 1892 the staghorn or velvet sumac cultivated worldwide was known by the name rhus typhina l e g gray 1890 however sudworth 1892 noted that r typhina linnaeus 1756 and datisca hirta l linnaeus 1753 are conspecific since the rule of priority below the genus rank was strictly maintained until august 1981 in the code e g leningrad code art 14 stafleu et al 1978 sydney code art 14 voss et al 1983 he transferred d hirta to rhus and made the new combination r hirta l sudw and cited r typhina as a synonym in spite of its priority the usage of r hirta was only occasional e g britton and brown 1897 britton 1901 whereas the usage of r typhina continued until 1991 e g fernald 1950 kartesz and kartesz 1980 radford et al 1968 usda scs 1982 voss 1985 when kartesz and gandhi 1991 revived the usage of r hirta however reveal 1991 argued against the revival of r hirta he stated that â œrhus typhina is in current use in all modern agricultural botanical and horticultural literature including all of the world s recent floras manuals and checklists where the plant occurs it has been used without exception in all recent horticultural encyclopedias to replace it with r hirta will result in unnecessary nomenclatural confusion â nevertheless r hirta was used by kartesz 1994 kartesz and meacham 1999 and also by the usda plants database during 1994â 2000 in the above regard reveal 1995 proposed the rejection of datisca hirta rhus hirta and provided an excellent summary of past usage quoted â œâ with adoption of the tokyo code it becomes possible to reject any name that causes nomenclatural instability accordingly the basionym of this disruptive name datisca hirta is proposed for rejection rhus hirta was used by a few authors from 1892 until 1916 but the name was largely ignored after 1906 under art 51 3 of the vienna rules which permitted rejection of names based on a monstrosity as was britton s lectotype of datisca hirta rhus hirta remained rejected under art 71 of post 1935 codes until that article was deleted in 1975 even then the name was not taken up until its priority was noted in 1991 by kartesz and gandhi â reveal s proposal was accepted and the names datisca hirta and rhus hirta have been listed as rejected in the codes e g greuter et al 2000 st louis code appendix iv wiersema et al 2015 melbourne code appendix iv therefore since 2000 one must use rhus typhina for staghorn sumac not datisca hirta or rhus hirta accordingly gleason and cronquist 2007 us national plant germplasm system grin taxonomy 2015 and usda nrcs 2015 list r typhina as the accepted name the preceding name is used in the flora of north america s forthcoming volume 13 containing anacardiaceae,2016,0.135
Establishing a community-wide DNA barcode library as a new tool for arctic research,dna sequences offer powerful tools for describing the members and interactions of natural communities in this paper we establish the to date most comprehensive library of dna barcodes for a terrestrial site including all known macroscopic animals and vascular plants of an intensively studied area of the high arctic the zackenberg valley in northeast greenland to demonstrate its utility we apply the library to identify nearly 20 000 arthropod individuals from two malaise traps each operated for two summers drawing on this material we estimate the coverage of previous morphology based species inventories derive a snapshot of faunal turnover in space and time and describe the abundance and phenology of species in the rapidly changing arctic environment overall 403 terrestrial animal and 160 vascular plant species were recorded by morphology based techniques dna barcodes co1 offered high resolution in discriminating among the local animal taxa with 92 of morphologically distinguishable taxa assigned to unique barcode index numbers bins and 93 to monophyletic clusters for vascular plants resolution was lower with 54 of species forming monophyletic clusters based on barcode regions rbcla and its2 malaise catches revealed 122 bins not detected by previous sampling and dna barcoding the insect community was dominated by a few highly abundant taxa even closely related taxa differed in phenology emphasizing the need for species level resolution when describing ongoing shifts in arctic communities and ecosystems the dna barcode library now established for zackenberg offers new scope for such explorations and for the detailed dissection of interspecific interactions throughout the community this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.644
"Species diversity driven by morphological and ecological disparity: a case study of seeds of Zingiberales (bananas, gingers, and relatives).",phenotypic variation can be attributed to genetic heritability as well as biotic and abiotic factors across zingiberales there is a high variation in the number of species per clade and in phenotypic diversity factors contributing to this phenotypic variation have never been studied in a phylogenetic or ecological context seeds of 166 species from all eight families in zingiberales were analyzed for 51 characters using synchrotron based 3d x ray tomographic microscopy to determine phylogenetically informative characters and to understand the distribution of morphological disparity within the order all families are distinguishable based on seed characters non metric multidimensional scaling analyses show zingiberaceae occupy the largest seed morphospace relative to the other families and environmental analyses demonstrate that zingiberaceae inhabit both temperate and tropical regions while other zingiberales are almost exclusively tropical temperate species do not cluster in morphospace nor do they share a common suite of character states this suggests that the diversity seen is not driven by adaptation to temperate niches rather the morphological disparity seen likely reflects an underlying genetic plasticity that allowed zingiberaceae to repeatedly colonize temperate environments the notable morphoanatomical variety in zingiberaceae seeds may account for their extraordinary ecological success and high species diversity as compared to other zingiberales,2016,0.639
"A revision of the distribution of sea kraits (Reptilia, Laticauda) with an updated occurrence dataset for ecological and conservation research",the genus laticauda reptilia elapidae commonly known as sea kraits comprises eight species of marine amphibious snakes distributed along the shores of the western pacific ocean and the eastern indian ocean we review the information available on the geographic range of sea kraits and analyze their distribution patterns generally we found that south and south west of japan philippines archipelago parts of indonesia and vanuatu have the highest diversity of sea krait species further we compiled the information available on sea kraitsâ occurrences from a variety of sources including museum records field surveys and the scientific literature the final database comprises 694 occurrence records with l colubrina having the highest number of records and l schistorhyncha the lowest the occurrence records were georeferenced and compiled as a database for each sea krait species this database can be freely used for future studies,2016,0.616
"Meta-Barcoding accelerates species discovery and unravel great biodiversity of benthic invertebrates in marine sediments in Campos basin, Brazil",biodiversity is currently assessed for environmental characterizations and monitoring through a laborious and time consuming process of morphological taxonomy we used rrna 18s rrna 28s and coi together with ngs and bioinformatics to identify benthic invertebrate organisms from sediment samples collected in five stations in the campos basin in southeast brazil an important oil extraction area and one of the best studied marine biota in brazil a total of 3 3 million sequences were clustered in operational taxonomic units and more than 1 6 million sequences about 50 of all reads were assigned to 957 prokaryotes and 577 eukaryotes blast identified 23 phyla 60 classes 62 orders 70 families 67 genus and 46 species of eukaryotes by meta barcoding we identified phyla that are traditionally found in samples of marine benthos such as annelida arthropoda mollusca and chordata as well as rare phyla like entoprocta and gastrotricha taxa identified with meta barcoding were compared to morphology data from previous studies in the area revizee habitats project and geo validated with the database global biodiversity information facility for several taxa this is the first evidence of occurrence in campos the area and the number of otu identified suggests an enormous unveiled benthic biodiversity in campos basin our study supports the application of meta barcoding for environmental characterization and monitoring programs reducing from years to few months the time currently required for species identification and biodiversity determination,2016,0.843
Predicting potential distribution of poorly known species with small database: the case of four-horned antelope Tetracerus quadricornis on the Indian subcontinent,information gaps on the distribution of data deficient and rare species such as four horned antelope fha in nepal may impair their conservation we aimed to empirically predict the distribution of fha in nepal with the help of data from the indian subcontinent additionally we wanted to identify core areas and gaps within the reported range limits and to assess the degree of isolation of known nepalese populations from the main distribution areas in india the tropical part of the indian subcontinent 65â â 90â eastern longitude 5â â 30â northern latitude that is the areas south of the himalayan mountains using maxent and accounting for sampling bias we developed predictive distribution models from environmental and topographical variables and known presence locations of the study species in india and nepal we address and discuss the use of target group vs random background the prediction map reveals a disjunct distribution of fha with core areas in the tropical parts of central to southernâ western india at the scale of the indian subcontinent suitable fha habitat area in nepal was small the indo gangetic plain isolates nepalese from the indian fha populations but the distribution area extends further south than proposed by the current iucn map a low to intermediate temperature seasonality as well as low precipitation during the dry and warm season contributed most to the prediction of fha distribution the predicted distribution maps confirm other fha range maps but also indicate that suitable areas exist south of the known range results further highlight that small populations in the nepalese terai arc are isolated from the indian core distribution and therefore might be under high extinction risk,2016,0.791
Towards the top: niche expansion of Taraxacum officinale and Ulex europaeus in mountain regions of South America,in the current context of ongoing global change the understanding of how the niches of invasive species may change between different geographical areas or time periods is extremely important for the early detection and control of future invasions we evaluated the effect of climate and non climate variables and the sensitivity to various spatial resolutions i e 1 and 20 km on niche changes during the invasion of taraxacum officinale and ulex europaeus in south america we estimated niche changes using a combination of principal components analyses pca and reciprocal ecological niche modelling renm we further investigated future invasion dynamics under a severe warming scenario for 2050 to unravel the role of niche shifts in the future potential distribution of the species we observed a clear niche expansion for both species in south america towards higher temperature precipitation and radiation relative to their native ranges in contrast the set of environmental conditions only occupied in the native ranges i e niche unfilling were less relevant the magnitude of the niche shifts did not depend on the resolution of the variables models calibrated with occurrences from native range predicted large suitable areas in south america outside of the andes range where t officinale and u europaeus are currently absent additionally both species could increase their potential distributions by 2050 mostly in the southern part of the continent in addition the niche unfilling suggests high potential to invade additional regions in the future which is extremely relevant considering the current impact of these species in the southern hemisphere these findings confirm that invasive species can occupy new niches that are not predictable from knowledge based only on climate variables or information from the native range,2016,0.817
Current status of Asplenium sagittatum (Aspleniaceae) in the Maltese islands,asplenium sagittatum is a rare indigenous fern which was assumed extinct in the dated maltese red data book until 2008 when a small number of individuals was rediscovered new records of this fern are reported including a large and important population located in the north of mainland malta for the first time the anatomical characters of maltese material are described and compared with those of material from central europe the paper also presents taxonomical clarifications dealing with a scolopendrium as also the results of a local red list assessment for this endangered fern,2016,0.256
More than counting pixels - perspectives on the importance of remote sensing training in ecology and conservation,as remote sensing rs applications and resources continue to expand their importance for ecology and conservation increases â and so does the need for effective and successful training of professionals working in those fields methodological and applied courses often form part of university curricula but their practical and long term benefits only become clear afterwards having recently received such training in an interdisciplinary master s programme we provide our perspectives on our shared education through an online survey we include experiences of students and professionals in different fields most participants perceive their rs education as useful for their career but express a need for more training at university level hands on projects are considered the most effective learning method besides methodological knowledge soft skills are clear gains including problem solving self learning and finding individual solutions and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams the largest identified gaps in current rs training concern the application regarding policy making methodology and conservation to successfully prepare students for a career study programmes need to provide rs courses based on state of the art methods including programming and interdisciplinary projects linking research and practice supported by a sound technical background,2016,0.037
"Mammals in the MZNA Vertebrate Collection of University of Navarra, Spain",in this paper five datasets are described that provide information about records of mammals in the vertebrate collection of the museum of zoology of the university of navarra mzna vert the datasets contain 3 466 records belonging to 20 species of mammals sampled across the transition zone between the atlantic and mediterranean biogeographical regions north iberian peninsula the datasets include both distributional data georeferenced records and basic biometric data of most of the vouchered specimens stored in the museum facilities the samples originated mainly within research projects and phd theses carried out in the former department of zoology and ecology of the university of navarra between 1982 and 2011 the darwin core archive format datasets are accessible through gbif,2016,0.298
A molecular phylogeny of marine amphipods in the herbivorous family Ampithoidae,ampithoid amphipods dominate invertebrate assemblages associated with shallow water macroalgae and seagrasses worldwide and represent the most species rich family of herbivorous amphipod known to generate the first molecular phylogeny of this family we sequenced 35 species from 10 genera at two mitochondrial genes the cytochrome c oxidase subunit i coi and the large subunit of 16 s lsu and two nuclear loci sodiumâ potassium atpase nak and elongation factor 1 alpha ef1 for a total of 1453 base pairs all 10 genera are embedded within an apparently monophyletic ampithoidae amphitholina ampithoe biancolina cymadusa exampithoe paragrubia peramphithoe pleonexes plumithoe pseudoamphithoides and sunamphitoe biancolina was previously placed within its own superfamily in another suborder within the family single locus trees were generally poor at resolving relationships among genera combined locus trees were better at resolving deeper nodes but complete resolution will require greater taxon sampling of ampithoids and closely related outgroup species and more molecular characters despite these difficulties our data generally support the monophyly of ampithoidae novel evolutionary relationships among genera several currently accepted genera that will require revisions via alpha taxonomy and the presence of cryptic species,2016,0.814
"Evolutionary history of the Persian Jird, Meriones persicus, based on genetics, species distribution modelling and morphometric data",the persian jird meriones persicus is distributed from eastern anatolia to afghanistan and western pakistan six subspecies were described based on skull features and coat colours but the validity of these subspecies is uncertain and no molecular work has ever been conducted on this species iran appears to be a key geographical region in which to revise the systematic and evolutionary history of this species because five of the six subspecies are present in this country to evaluate the phylogeographical history and taxonomy of this species in iran we used a combination of genetic cytochrome b gene sequences of 70 specimens and geometric morphometric 2d landmarks on the ventral side of skull of 258 specimens analyses we also used ecological niche modelling to make inferences about the evolutionary history of these lineages our molecular data highlight the existence of four genetic lineages but they only partly correspond to the previously described subspecies our molecular and morphometric data confirm the validity of m p rossicus and show that it has a wider geographical range than previously thought m p gurganensis and m p baptistae are genetically very close the skull of m p gurganensis is morphologically distinguishable from other subspecies the subspecies m p persicus and m p baptistae are genetically distinct but morphologically close meriones p ambrosius is genetically close to m p persicus and additional analyses with more specimens are needed to validate its subspecific status the genetic structure observed in iran seems to fit the topography and biogeography of the country and emphasize the role of the abarkooh central and lut deserts as barriers to gene flow all intraspecific divergent events within the persian jird occurred during the last 1 4 my suggesting that climatic changes probably trigger diversification within this species our genetic and species niche modelling results suggest that potential refugial areas persisted during glacial periods for this species in north western zagros mountains north eastern alborz mountains and kohrud mountains,2016,0.905
"The Rarefaction of Phylogenetic Diversity: Formulation, Extension and Application",like other measures of diversity phylogenetic diversity pd increases monotonically and asymptotically with increasing sample size this relationship can be described by a rarefaction curve tracing the expected pd for a given number of accumulation units accumulation units represent individual organisms collections of organisms e g sites or even species or equivalent giving individual based sample based and species based curves respectively the formulation for the exact analytical solution for the rarefaction of pd is given in an expanded form to demonstrate congruence with the classic formulation for the rarefaction of species richness rarefaction is commonly applied as a standardisation for diversity values derived from differing numbers of sampling units however the solution can be simply extended to create measures of phylogenetic evenness phylogenetic beta diversity and phylogenetic dispersion derived from individual based sample based and species based curves respectively this extension termed ∠pd is simply the initial slope of the rarefaction curve and is related to entropy measures such as pie probability of interspecific encounter and gini simpson entropy the application of rarefaction of pd to sample standardisation and measurement of phylogenetic evenness phylogenetic beta diversity and phylogenetic dispersion is demonstrated future prospects for pd rarefaction include the recognition of evolutionary hotspots independent of species richness the basis for ecological theory such as phylogeny area relationships and the prediction of unseen biodiversity,2016,0.676
Species Distribution Modeling of Deep Pelagic Eels,the oceanâ s midwaters the mesopelagic and bathypelagic zones make up the largest living space on the planet but are undersampled and relatively poorly understood the true distribution of many midwater species let alone the abiotic factors most important in determining that distribution is not well known because collecting specimens and data from the deep ocean is expensive and logistically difficult it would be useful to be able to predict where species of interest are likely to occur so that sampling effort can be concentrated in appropriate areas the distribution of two representative midwater fishes the gulper eel eurypharynx pelecanoides and the bobtail eel cyema atrum teleostei saccopharyngiformes were modeled with maxent software to examine the viability of species distribution modeling sdm for globally distributed midwater fishes using currently available environmental data from the ocean surface and bottom these species were chosen because they are relatively abundant easily recognized and unlikely to have been misidentified in database records and are true midwater fishes not known to undertake significant vertical diurnal migration models for both species show a generally worldwide distribution with some exceptions including the southern ocean and bering sea variable contributions show that surface and bottom environmental variables correlate with species presence both species are more likely to be found in areas with low levels of silicate sdm is a promising method for better understanding the ecology of midwater organisms,2016,0.929
Implant-prosthetic rehabilitation after radiation treatment in head and neck cancer patients: a case-series report of outcome,slovenia is among the countries with the highest incidence of oral and oropharyngeal cancer 1 2 in a population of 2 million people approximately 450 cases are diagnosed per year 3 most tumours are regionally advanced and the patients are treated with radical resection and reconstruction followed by radiation therapy 3 afterwards patients experience profound changes in the oral anatomy function and facial appearance radiation therapy causes irreversible damage to both hard and soft tissues by creating a hypoxic hypocellular and hypovascular environment which impedes wound healing and creates a risk for osteoradionecrosis 4 a protocol involving hyperbaric oxygen treatment hbo has been proposed to enhance wound healing by increasing the tissue oxygenation 5 following the radical procedures to eradicate cancer the greatest problems perceived by irradiated patients are swallowing mouth opening xerostomia and compromised aeshetics 6 prosthodontic treatment is advocated to regain lost oral functions enhance the physical appearance and enable the patient to take part in normal daily activities with greater confidence however comprehensive prosthetic treatment after head and neck cancer is challenging time consuming and costly therefore only 40 of such patients are treated following the postsurgical prosthetic protocol among them 70 receive dentures supported by the residual teeth and bone and 30 receive implant supported dentures 7 edentulous patients with head and neck cancer after radiation therapy are an especially vulnerable subgroup radiation treatment sequelae persist throughout the patient s lifetime and in the past radiation therapy used to be an absolute contraindication to placing of dental implants 8 treatment options have therefore been limited to conventional complete dentures or no prosthetic rehabilitation at all advanced surgical and prosthodontic techniques such as 3d planning and guided implant surgery have expanded the treatment options 9 in addition to conventional ball and bar retained dentures new attachments have been introduced to clinical practice locator attachment is commonly used in removable implant prosthodontics it is a self aligning system with relatively simple maintenance requirements 10 locator is however a non rigid type of attachment and does not completely relieve the stress from the underlying mucosa the nylon matrices and male parts are subjected to wear which diminishes retention their replacement is one of the most frequent reasons for maintenance visits 11â 13 to address these issues a technically more advanced system of prefabricated double crowns on implants has been introduced 14 the syncone system dentsply germany is indicated in unfavourable resection areas where completely rigid constructions are necessary due to the anatomical constraints among the possible complications debonding of the secondary crowns and the abutment screw loosening are reported 15 both locator and syncone systems are commonly used at the university medical centre ljubljana slovenia these attachment systems have expanded the treatment possibilities for the rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients which is always a collaborative work between oral surgeons and prosthodontists the aim of the study was to review the outcome of the implant prosthetic rehabilitation of irradiated patients performed at the university medical centre ljubljana,2016,0.006
Should I stay or should I go? Climate change effects on the future of Neotropical savannah bats,most extant species are survivors of the last climate change event 20 000 years ago while past events took place over thousands of years current climate change is occurring much faster over a few decades we modelled the potential distribution area of bat species in the brazilian cerrado a neotropical savannah and assessed the potential impacts of climate change up to 2050 in two scenarios first we evaluated what the impact on the distributions of bat species would be if they were unable to move to areas where climate conditions might be similar to current ones the novelty of our paper is that based on least cost path analyses we identified potential corridors that could be managed now to mitigate potential impacts of climate change our results indicate that on average in the future bat species would find similar climate conditions 281 km southeast from current regions if bat species were not able to move to new suitable areas and were unable to adapt then 36 species 31 6 could lose 80 of their current distribution area and five species will lose more than 98 of their distribution area in the brazilian cerrado in contrast if bat species are able to reach such areas then the number of highly impacted species will be reduced to nine with none of them likely to disappear from the cerrado we present measures that could be implemented immediately to mitigate future climate change impacts,2016,0.896
"Northern range expansion of the American talon crab, Euchirograpsus americanus A. Milne-Edwards, 1880 (Decapoda, Grapsoidea, Plagusiidae), to the Bay of Fundy, Canada",the recent collection 2009 of an american talon crab euchirograpsus americanus a milne edwards 1880 in the bay of fundy canada has expanded the known distribution of this enigmatic plagusiid crab species typically found in subtropical and tropical waters of the gulf of mexico caribbean and carolinas although historical records are limited they document a northward range expansion of the species with occurrences off north carolina in 1962 delaware in 1979 and further to new jersey in 1981 which would discount these northerly records as independent accidental introductions the present exclusive record of the talon crab in canadian waters is also from the shallowest 6 3 m and coldest waters 8 3â c that the species has thus far been documented in the literature until now indicated an affinity for sandy or rocky bottom between 31 and 510 m depth at temperatures of 11 24â c while establishment of the species in the region remains uncertain the present record is perhaps indicative of large scale processes such as climate change that are altering species distributions,2016,0.853
"Distributional Status of an Introduced Land Snail Discus rotundatus (Rotund Disc, Mollusca: Discidae) in Canada",first collected in north america in 1937 on the avalon peninsula of the island of newfoundland the introduced primarily european land snail discus rotundatus has now been recorded from the island of newfoundland nova scotia new brunswick quebec ontario and british columbia we review all known records from canada demonstrate that d rotundatus is more widespread than was previously recognized on the island of newfoundland and report the first record from new brunswick,2016,0.384
Digital Accessible Knowledge and well-inventoried sites for birds in Mexico: baseline sites for measuring faunistic change,background faunal change is a basic and fundamental element in ecology biogeography and conservation biology yet vanishingly few detailed studies have documented such changes rigorously over decadal time scales this study responds to that gap in knowledge providing a detailed analysis of digital accessible knowledge of the birds of mexico designed to marshal dak to identify sites that were sampled and inventoried rigorously prior to the beginning of major global climate change 1980 methods we accumulated dak records for mexican birds from all relevant online biodiversity data portals after extensive cleaning steps we calculated completeness indices for each 0 05â pixel across the country we also detected â hotspotsâ of sampling and calculated completeness indices for these broader areas as well sites were designated as well sampled if they had completeness indices above 80 and 200 associated dak records results we identified 100 individual pixels and 20 broader â hotspotsâ of sampling that were demonstrably well inventoried prior to 1980 these sites are catalogued and documented to promote and enable resurvey efforts that can document events of avifaunal change and non change across the country on decadal time scales conclusions development of repeated surveys for many sites across mexico and particularly for sites for which historical surveys document their avifaunas prior to major climate change processes would pay rich rewards in information about distributional dynamics of mexican birds,2016,0.181
Reuse of scientific data in academic publications,purpose â in recent years a large number of data repositories have been built and used however the extent to which scientific data are re used in academic publications is still unknown the purpose of this paper is to explore the functions of re used scientific data in scholarly publication in different fields design methodology approach â to address these questions the authors identified 827 publications citing resources in the dryad digital repository indexed by scopus from 2010 to 2015 findings â the results show that the number of citations to scientific data increases sharply over the years but mainly from data intensive disciplines such as agricultural biology science environment science and medicine the majority of citations are from the originating articles and researchers tend to reuse data produced by their own research groups research limitations implications â dryad data may be re used without being formally cited originality value â the conservatism in data sharing suggests tha,2016,0.143
Genome fingerprinting confirms the species status of the Loosestrifes Lysimachia punctata and L. verticillata (Primulaceae),background and aims â despite their vicariant distribution and slightly distinct morphologies the dotted loosestrife l punctata l and the whorled loosestrife l verticillata green hand mazz have sometimes been treated as synonyms or even confounded by several authors here we examine the genetic divergence of these two taxa in order to clarify their species status methods â we apply aflp genome fingerprinting to samples from eleven wild and two naturalized populations and compile occurrence data from herbaria and public data depositories key results â the distribution of genotypes in a multivariate space confirms the distinct species status of the two species and highlights the absence of natural hybrids between the two in their native area this result contrasts with the hybrid nature of naturalized populations from northern europe likely produced through horticultural practices,2016,0.878
Improving the forecast for biodiversity under climate change,new biological models are incorporating the realistic processes underlying biological responses to climate change and other human caused disturbances however these more realistic models require detailed information which is lacking for most species on earth current monitoring efforts mainly document changes in biodiversity rather than collecting the mechanistic data needed to predict future changes we describe and prioritize the biological information needed to inform more realistic projections of speciesâ responses to climate change we also highlight how trait based approaches and adaptive modeling can leverage sparse data to make broader predictions we outline a global effort to collect the data necessary to better understand anticipate and reduce the damaging effects of climate change on biodiversity,2016,0.321
"First records of three fishes, and southern records of a further four fishes, from New South Wales, Australia",a study of fishes from port stephens in new south wales australia has identified first records for three species in new south wales â genicanthus watanabei yasuda tominaga 1970 parupeneus indicus shaw 1803 and plectorhinchus chaetodonoides lacã pã de 1801 â and southernmost records for a further four species cantherhines fronticinctus gã nther 1866 coris bulbifrons randall kuiter 1982 mulloidichthys vanicolensis valenciennes 1831 and paracirrhites forsteri schneider 1801 new sightings were up to 980 km south of previous records indicating prolonged survival of tropical fish larvae in the east australian current,2016,0.615
A multi-criteria decision analysis approach to assessing malaria risk in northern South America.,background malaria control in south america has vastly improved in the past decade leading to a decrease in the malaria burden despite the progress large parts of the continent continue to be at risk of malaria transmission especially in northern south america the objectives of this study were to assess the risk of malaria transmission and vector exposure in northern south america using multi criteria decision analysis methods the risk of malaria transmission and vector exposure in northern south america was assessed using multi criteria decision analysis in which expert opinions were taken on the key environmental and population risk factors results results from our risk maps indicated areas of moderate to high risk along rivers in the amazon basin along the coasts of the guianas the pacific coast of colombia and northern colombia in parts of peru and bolivia and within the brazilian amazon when validated with occurrence records for malaria an darlingi an albimanus and an nuneztovari s l t test results indicated that risk scores at occurrence locations were significantly higher p 0 0001 than a control group of geographically random points conclusion in this study we produced risk maps based on expert opinion on the spatial representation of risk of potential vector exposure and malaria transmission the findings provide information to the public health decision maker policy makers to give additional attention to the spatial planning of effective vector control measures therefore as the region tackles the challenge of malaria elimination prioritizing areas for interventions by using spatially accurate high resolution 1 km or less risk maps may guide targeted control and help reduce the disease burden in the region,2016,0.071
Visualizing and interacting with large-volume biodiversity data using client–server web-mapping applications: The design and implementation of antmaps.org,the rise of informatics has presented new opportunities for analyzing visualizing and interacting with data across the sciences and biodiversity science is no exception recently comprehensive datasets on the geographic distributions of species have been assembled that represent a thorough accounting of a given taxonomic group of species e g birds mammals etc and which form critical tools for both basic biology and conservation however these databases present several challenges for visualization interaction and participation for users across a broad range of scientists and the public in support of the development of a new comprehensive ant biodiversity database containing over 1 7 million records we developed a new clientâ server web mapping application antmaps org to visualize and interact with the geographic distributions of all 15 050 ant species and aggregate patterns of their diversity and biogeography our application development approach was based on user centered design principles of usability engineering human computer interaction and cartography the resulting application is highly focused on providing efficient and intuitive access to geographic biodiversity data using a clientâ server interaction that allows users to query and retrieve data on the fly this is achieved with a backend solution to efficiently work with large volumes of geospatial data the usability and utility of the final version of the application was measured based on effectiveness efficiency and user satisfaction and assessed using questionnaires usability lab studies and surveys while the development of antmaps org was motivated by a particular ant biodiversity dataset the basic framework design and functionality are not specific to ants and could be used to interact with biodiversity data of any taxonomic group,2016,0.276
Quantifying the value of user-level data cleaning for big data: A case study using mammal distribution models,the recent availability of species occurrence data from numerous sources standardized and connected within a single portal has the potential to answer fundamental ecological questions these aggregated big biodiversity databases are prone to numerous data errors and biases the data user is responsible for identifying these errors and assessing if the data are suitable for a given purpose complex technical skills are increasingly required for handling and cleaning biodiversity data while biodiversity scientists possessing these skills are rare here we estimate the effect of user level data cleaning on species distribution model sdm performance we implement several simple and easy to execute data cleaning procedures and evaluate the change in sdm performance additionally we examine if a certain group of species is more sensitive to the use of erroneous or unsuitable data the cleaning procedures used in this research improved sdm performance significantly across all scales and for all performance measures the largest improvement in distribution models following data cleaning was for small mammals 1gâ 100g data cleaning at the user level is crucial when using aggregated occurrence data and facilitating its implementation is a key factor in order to advance data intensive biodiversity studies adopting a more comprehensive approach for incorporating data cleaning as part of data analysis will not only improve the quality of biodiversity data but will also impose a more appropriate usage of such data,2016,0.237
Fostering integration between biodiversity monitoring and modelling,modelling and monitoring adaptive biodiversity management in the 21st century with increasing threats on biodiversity informed conservation decisions need to be based on currently observed and future predicted trends of biodiversity pereira navarro martins 2012 guisan et al 2013 in this regard two essential components supporting informed biodiversity conservation decisions are good monitoring data to assess recent and ongoing trends collen et al 2013 pereira et al 2013 and robust models to anticipate possible future trends pereira et al 2010a akã akaya et al 2016 models benefit from robust monitoring data sets that is repeated observations of biodiversity as they need data to be fitted or validated but models can also help assess data representativeness e g by highlighting any bias support proper data collection e g covering the relevant gradients or be used to make more effective use of biodiversity observations guisan et al 2006 2013 ferrier 2011 on the data side species occurrence data bases with global coverage â like the global biodiversity information facility gbif scholes et al 2012 â provide increasingly large amounts of data but these are often geographically and taxonomically biased revealing highly uneven sampling efforts across regions and countries boakes et al 2010 meyer et al 2015 proenã a et al 2016 the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geo bon has proposed the development of national monitoring programmes for a variety of habitats and taxa thus potentially representing a more unbiased data source to support biodiversity management pereira et al 2010b scholes et al 2012 this is a challenging endeavour as biodiversity monitoring is expected to provide relevant data not only for large scale policy but also to meet regional and local management needs while ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently green et al 2005 haughland et al 2010 biodiversity monitoring has already proven essential to improve management and evaluate success of policies pereira cooper 2006 collen et al 2013 but it also represents a valuable support to basic research couvet et al 2011 as exemplified by the multiple research studies using data from the north american breeding bird survey e g miller rushing primack bonney 2012 schipper et al 2016 or from other monitoring programmes e g weber hintermann zangger 2004 pearman weber 2007 hanspach et al 2014 however monitoring schemes also have limitations for instance they can be underpinned by unclear objectives and may consequently fail to identify clear trends or to properly evaluate the success of conservation actions e g nichols williams 2006 lindenmayer et al 2012 also they are often limited in extent spatial and or temporal due to lack of human and financial resources levrel et al 2010 nevertheless despite these limitations even monitoring schemes targeting individual species at small scales or particular habitats still deliver data that may often prove valuable for modelling e g bastos et al 2016 on the modelling side predictive biodiversity modelling has developed as a core field of ecological research during the last two decades see ferrier watson 1997 guisan zimmermann 2000 peterson 2001 mouquet et al 2015 while consolidating as a powerful research tool predictive models of species distributions have also been helpful in providing insights on the drivers of biodiversity across scales and in delivering spatially explicit forecasts of biodiversity responses to environmental pressures guisan et al 2013 such as climate change e g bellard et al 2012 land use change e g ficetola et al 2010 invasion by non native species e g petitpierre et al 2012 and interactions between these drivers e g vicente et al 2011 gonã alves et al 2016 predictions can be made at different levels of biological complexity from species and communities to habitat or ecosystem types ferrier guisan 2006 hely et al 2006 kerr dobrowski 2013 however so far there has been limited use of predictive models in support of biodiversity monitoring even if there are examples in the literature illustrating their potential added value e g guisan theurillat 2005 tuanmu et al 2011 amorim et al 2014 a more systematic application of models would benefit the planning of monitoring as well as the integration of observations into valuable data products this would then enable the improvement of model predictions and the reporting of biodiversity changes near real time geo bon 2015 the four papers in this special feature represent a starting point to fill existing gaps and pave some ways towards fostering integration between biodiversity monitoring and modelling bastos et al carvalho et al geijzendorffer et al vicente et al in this editorial we provide a general review of recent advances and identify some future research directions we emphasize the species level dimensions of biodiversity in our analysis and particularly species distributions and populations pereira et al 2013 we start by identifying how models can be used to improve the design of monitoring programmes and networks we then assess how monitoring data can be used to improve models and validate their predictions we discuss how models can be used to integrate biodiversity observations from different sources and other environmental data to produce estimates of biodiversity measures in space and time finally we discuss how modelling and monitoring could be further integrated to improve biodiversity conservation and management across scales,2016,0.027
Realising the potential of herbarium records for conservation biology,one of the major challenges in ecosystem conservation is obtaining baseline data particularly for regions that have been poorly inventoried such as regions of the african continent here we use a database of african herbarium records and examples from the literature to show that although herbarium records have traditionally been collected to build botanical reference â œlibrariesâ for taxonomic and inventory purposes they provide valuable and useful information regarding species their distribution in time and space their traits phenological characteristics associated species and their physical environment these data have the potential to provide invaluable information to feed into evidence based conservation decisions,2016,0.552
Widespread range expansions shape latitudinal variation in insect thermal limits,current anthropogenic impacts including habitat modification and climate change may contribute to a sixth mass extinction1 to mitigate these impacts and slow further losses of biodiversity we need to understand which species are most at risk and identify the factors contributing to current and future declines such information is often obtained through large scale comparative and biogeographic analysis of lineages or traits that are potentially sensitive to ongoing anthropogenic changeâ for instance to predict which regions are most susceptible to climate change induced biodiversity loss2 3 4 however for this approach to be generally successful the underlying causes of identified geographical trends need to be carefully considered5 here i augment and reanalyse a global data set of insect thermal tolerances evaluating the contribution of recent and contemporary range expansions to latitudinal variation in thermal niche breadth previous indications that high latitude ectotherms exhibit broad thermal niches and high warming tolerances held only for species undergoing range expansions or invasions in contrast species with stable or declining geographic ranges exhibit latitudinally decreasing absolute thermal tolerances and no latitudinal variation in tolerance breadths thus non range expanding species particularly insular or endemic species which are often of highest conservation priority are unlikely to tolerate future climatic warming at high latitudes,2016,0.762
Demographic structure and genetic variability throughout the distribution of Platte thistle ( Cirsium canescens Asteraceae),aim understanding spatial variation in the demographic and genetic structure of populations is central to explaining causes of species range limits and to species conservation the abundant centre hypothesis ach predicts that as one moves away from the centre of a speciesâ biogeographical range populations become less frequent and more isolated as well as exhibiting decreasing within population density this increased isolation may lead to reduced genetic variability in peripheral populations by limiting gene flow in this study we asked whether the frequency within population density and genetic diversity of cirsium canescens platte thistle populations decreased from the range centre to the edge as predicted by the ach location central united states including portions of the great plains and rocky mountains methods frequency of population occurrence at regional and landscape scales within population density and within population genetic variation were evaluated along eight centre edge transects within the speciesâ distribution leaf tissue samples were collected from each population to establish genetic variability using six simple sequence repeat loci results consistent with the ach peripheral regions of c canescensâ range were less likely to contain populations than central regions in regions where c canescens did occur however frequency of populations at a landscape scale peaked at intermediate distances from centre and within population density was unrelated to distance populations exhibited reduced genetic variability towards range edges main conclusions the ach underestimates the complexity of the relationship between variation in abundance and genetic diversity with distance from c canescensâ range centre decreases in platte thistle population frequency combined with no decreases in within population density near range edges suggest that quality habitat exists in the peripheral range but these patches are rarer although genetic variability was reduced at the distribution edges this decline was stronger towards the western edge associated with increased topographic complexity,2016,0.981
AxIOM: Amphipod crustaceans from insular Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows,background the neptune grass posidonia oceanica l delile 1813 is the most widespread seagrass of the mediterranean sea this foundation species forms large meadows that through habitat and trophic services act as biodiversity hotspots in neptune grass meadows amphipod crustaceans are one of the dominant groups of vagile invertebrates forming an abundant and diverse taxocenosis they are key ecological components of the complex pivotal yet critically endangered neptune grass ecosystems nevertheless comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data about amphipod fauna found in mediterranean neptune grass meadows remain scarce especially in insular locations new information here we provide in depth metadata about axiom a sample based dataset published on the gbif portal axiom is based on an extensive and spatially hierarchized sampling design with multiple years seasons day periods and methods samples were taken along the coasts of calvi bay corsica france and of the tavolara punta coda cavallo marine protected area sardinia italy in total axiom contains 187 samples documenting occurrence 1775 records and abundance 10720 specimens of amphipod crustaceans belonging to 72 species spanning 29 families the dataset is available at http ipt biodiversity be resource r axiom,2016,0.454
Incorporating anthropogenic variables into ecological niche modeling to predict areas of invasion of Popillia japonica,niche conservatism providing support for using ecological niche modeling in biological invasions has been widely noticed nonetheless the impacts of human disturbance on niche changes and model predictions are not fully recognized in this study climate niche changes during the invasion of japanese beetle popillia japonica were studied under the framework of niche unfilling stability and expansion situations the beetle might undergo niche expansion because of the small native range japan relative to the broad invade range north america relative roles of climatic and anthropogenic factors and their interactions in determining the spread of p japonica were investigated results suggest that the climate niche was conserved during p japonica invasion climate niche unfilling rather than niche expansion was observed suggesting there are suitable climate space remain unoccupied inclusion of anthropogenic factors into climate niche model has improved niche model prediction values in areas of high human activity during p japonica invasion anthropogenic factors influenced the climate niche expression and altered the effect of climate suitability in areas of poor or unsuitable climate the human activities facilitated the establishment of p japonica and functioned synergistically whereas in highly suitable areas including anthropogenic variables decreased climate suitability these findings are pivotal to our understanding of climate niche conservatism and niche model transferability when predicting areas of invasion of p japonica and can be applied elsewhere for predicting other pestâ s invasion potential,2016,0.097
Forecasting Chikungunya spread in the Americas via data-driven empirical approaches.,background chikungunya virus chikv is endemic to africa and asia but the asian genotype invaded the americas in 2013 the fast increase of human infections in the american epidemic emphasized the urgency of developing detailed predictions of case numbers and the potential geographic spread of this disease methods we developed a simple model incorporating cases generated locally and cases imported from other countries and forecasted transmission hotspots at the level of countries and at finer scales in terms of ecological features results by late january 2015 1 2 m chikv cases were reported from the americas with country level prevalences between nil and more than 20 in the early stages of the epidemic exponential growth in case numbers was common later however poor and uneven reporting became more common in a phenomenon we term surveillance fatigue economic activity of countries was not associated with prevalence but diverse social factors may be linked to surveillance effort and reporting conclusions our model predictions were initially quite inaccurate but improved markedly as more data accumulated within the americas the data driven methodology explored in this study provides an opportunity to generate descriptive and predictive information on spread of emerging diseases in the short term under simple models based on open access tools and data that can inform early warning systems and public health intelligence,2016,0.126
Using open-ended geographic information system assessments to allow students to construct relevant geographies given the internationalisation of tertiary education in New Zealand,the geospatial skills shortage in new zealand requires the development of more undergraduate geographic information system gis courses however the internationalisation of new zealand s tertiary education system has resulted in an increasingly diverse tertiary student population which makes it challenging to teach gis in a way that maximises relevance to all tertiary students one approach to this challenge is to make use of the recent proliferation of openly available gis data and to internationalise gis curricula by using open ended assessments that provide students with the opportunity to learn gis by constructing their own geographies of relevance,2016,0.215
"The primary freshwater crabs of Guatemala (Decapoda: Brachyura: Pseudothelphusidae), with comments on their conservation status",the freshwater crabs of the family pseudothelphusidae ortmann 1893 are restricted to the neotropics and many species have an elevated risk of extinction the majority of pseudothelphusids is considered to be data deficient which impedes the assessment of their vulnerability levels more than 50 of pseudothelphusids are endemic to guatemala and half of the species are categorized as data deficient in order to update and broaden our knowledge of the freshwater crab fauna of guatemala several surveys were carried out from 2014 to 2015 combined with the examination of collections of freshwater crabs of guatemala deposited in several museums a total of 55 specimens comprising six pseudothelphusid species were collected the most common species were potamocarcinus armatus h milne edwards 1853 20 of the material identified to the species level phrygiopilus ibarrai pretzmann 1978 raddaus bocourti a milne edwards 1866 and potamocarcinus magnus rathbun 1896 14 5 each the collection of the universidad del valle de guatemala consisted of 57 lots with 69 individuals of nine pseudothelphusid species predominant species were r bocourti 61 7 of all identified lots and p magnus 20 5 the following species are reported here as new records for guatemala elsalvadoria zurstrasseni bott 1956 raddaus mertensi bott 1956 and two undescribed species phrygiopilus sp zilchia sp almost half of the 17 freshwater crab species including the two undescribed are either data deficient or not yet assessed and 65 11 species are endemic to guatemala conservation strategies are urgently needed to preserve the integrity of the sites and habitats occupied by freshwater crabs along with studies aiming to fill the gap of the data deficient species,2016,0.994
Niche breadth and the implications of climate change in the conservation of the genus Astrophytum (Cactaceae),the niche breadth of a species reflects its ability to inhabit different conditions and to use different resources hence species with wider niche are expected to be more resilient to anthropogenic derived climate change we estimated the niche breadth of all species of the genus astrophytum from macro environmental variables and measures of local habitat uses in order to evaluate whether species having wider niche breadths are less prone to experience unsuitable conditions projected by the a1b and a2 scenarios of the ipcc for 2020 and 2050 and analyzed the implications of projections for the conservation of the genus astrophytum our analysis suggests that most of populations of the four species will experience increasingly unsuitable conditions due to the increase of temperature and reduction in precipitation the species less affected were those with wider niche breadth and situated in the middle of the latitudinal range and in the middle or lower extreme of the precipitation range for the genus a capricorne and a myriostigma although the main threats for astrophytum species come from the destruction of their habitats and activities as illegal extraction climate change may reduce the chances for the regeneration of populations and the success of reintroduction programs,2016,0.889
"Myosotis refracta Boiss. (Boraginaceae ), an unexpected forget-me-not in the Slovene flora",myosotis refracta boiss is reported as a new and unexpected finding for the slovene flora the species was found in three collections stored in the herbarium lju from south east slovenia in the kolpa river valley bordering croatia all plants thrived under overhang ing dolomite rocks on account of an earlier misidentification the respective plant community had been described as the association arabido alpinae myosotidetum strictae accetto 2008 which is here corrected to arabido alpinae myosotidetum refractae accet to 2008 corr strgulc krajå ek accetto jogan 2016 myosotis refracta has a disjunct mediterranean southwest asian distribution the reported new localities extend its known range more than 500 km in north west direction from its nearest known occurrences on the southern balkan peninsula,2016,0.418
Mobilizing and integrating big data in studies of spatial and phylogenetic patterns of biodiversity,the current global challenges that threaten biodiversity are immense and rapidly growing these biodiversity challenges demand approaches that meld bioinformatics large scale phylogeny reconstruction use of digitized specimen data and complex post tree analyses e g niche modeling niche diversification and other ecological analyses recent developments in phylogenetics coupled with emerging cyberinfrastructure and new data sources provide unparalleled opportunities for mobilizing and integrating massive amounts of biological data driving the discovery of complex patterns and new hypotheses for further study these developments are not trivial in that biodiversity data on the global scale now being collected and analyzed are inherently complex the ongoing integration and maturation of biodiversity tools discussed here is transforming biodiversity science enabling what we broadly term â œnext generationâ investigations in systematics ecology and evolution i e â œbiodiversity scienceâ new training that integrates domain knowledge in biodiversity and data science skills is also needed to accelerate research in these areas integrative biodiversity science is crucial to the future of global biodiversity we cannot simply react to continued threats to biodiversity but via the use of an integrative multifaceted big data approach researchers can now make biodiversity projections to provide crucial data not only for scientists but also for the public land managers policy makers urban planners and agriculture,2016,0.308
Distribution records and extended range of the Sri Lanka Frogmouth Batrachostomus moniliger (Aves: Caprimulgiformes: Podargidae) in the Western Ghats: a review from 1862 to 2015,the sri lanka frogmouth or ceylon frogmouth batrachostomus moniliger is an endemic resident bird confined to the evergreen and secondary forests of sri lanka and the western ghats of india the earlier distribution range of the frogmouth was from the uttara kannada district of karnataka to the southern tip of india and most of sri lanka recently the range has been extended further north to goa and up to mumbai in maharashtra a number of observations summarized into 202 distributional records published reports and records uploaded to ebird basic data set oriental bird images and gbif org from the years 1862 to 2015 of the frogmouth have been tabulated with its maps and reviewed for their state wise distribution records the need of undertaking surveys to fill up the gaps in their distribution range as well as any further northward extension till the culmination of the western ghats has been discussed it is urged that taxonomical and molecular phylogenetic studies are required to be carried out in different populations of frogmouths across the entire range,2016,0.385
Persistent reduction of segment growth and photosynthesis in a widespread and important sub-Arctic moss species after cessation of three years of experimental winter warming,winter is a period of dormancy for plants of cold environments however winter climate is changing leading to an increasing frequency of stochastic warm periods winter warming events and concomitant reductions in snow cover these conditions can break dormancy for some plants and expose them to freeze and thaw stress mosses are a major component of high latitude ecosystems yet the longer term impacts of such winter warming events on mosses remain unknown in order to determine the longer term legacy effects of winter warming events on mosses we undertook a simulation of these events over three consecutive winters in a sub arctic dwarf shrub dominated open woodland the mat forming feathermoss hylocomium splendens the most abundant cryptogam in this system is one of the most widespread arctic and boreal mosses and plays a key functional role in ecosystems we studied the ecophysiological performance of this moss during the summers of the experimental period 2007 2009 and in the following years 2010 2013 we show that the previously reported warming induced reduction in segment growth and photosynthesis during the experimental years was persistent four years after the last event photosynthesis and segment growth were still 30 and 36 lower than control levels which was only a slight improvement from 44 and 43 four years earlier winter warming did not affect segment symmetry during the years after the last simulated event in both warmed and control plots chlorophyll fluorescence and segment growth but not net photosynthesis increased slightly the increases were probably driven by increased summer rainfall over the study years highlighting the sensitivity of this moss to rainfall change overall the legacy effects shown here demonstrate that this widespread and important moss is likely to be significantly disadvantaged in a future sub arctic climate where frequent winter warming events may become the norm given the key importance of mosses for soil insulation shelter and carbon sequestration in high latitude regions such persistent impacts may ultimately affect important ecosystem functions,2016,0.017
The Neogene rise of the tropical Andes facilitated diversification of wax palms ( Ceroxylon : Arecaceae) through geographical colonization and climatic niche separation,he tropical andes are a biodiversity hotspot partly due to their rich and complex floristic composition a fundamental question regarding this outstanding biodiversity is what role the andean orogeny has played in species diversification ceroxylon is a genus of endemic andean palms that stands out in the palm family arecaceae due to its adaptation to cold mountainous environments here we reconstruct the biogeography and climatic preference of this lineage to test the hypothesis that andean uplift allowed diversification by providing suitable habitats along climatic and elevational gradients ancestral areas were reconstructed under a model allowing for founder event speciation and climatic niches were inferred from climatic variables at present day occurrences of all species niche evolution in a phylogenetic framework was evaluated by testing differences between the climatic niches of clades our analyses identified four main clades with a general pattern of diversification through geographical colonization from south to north after the pliocene uplift of the northern andes adaptation to low temperatures was conserved at the generic level with climatic niche differentiation among clades along elevational temperature gradients we conclude that the neogene andean uplift has facilitated the diversification of this iconic plant group via opportunities for geographical migration and separation within its climatic niche,2016,0.497
Ecological and historical views of the diversification of Geositta miners (Aves: Furnariidae: Sclerurinae),diverse historical and ecological factors determine and drive diversification of vertebrate lineages historical factors e g orogenic movements are expected to act on coarser spatial and temporal scales than contemporary ecological factors e g climate and biotic interactions however distinctions between such scales remain arbitrary and yet are important to understanding which factors acted in the emergence of new species we inferred ancestral states for climatic niches on ecological scales and ancestral area reconstructions for the genus geositta on deeper time scales ecological niches did not overlap more between sister species than among more distant relatives and rather pointed to a plastic scenario for climatic diversification of geositta rather than niche conservatism events temporally associated with the formation of the andes miocene seem to explain most of the diversification in sum climatic factors may not have had a great influence in the diversification of geositta at least in the context of pleistocene climate fluctuations,2016,0.523
"3rd EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable (Granada, Spain): Biodiversity data workflow from data mobilization to practice",at the third eu bon roundtable participants from global european and regional projects institutions governmental organizations and universities met to discuss biodiversity data workflows across different scales and their current limitations furthermore the roundtable focused on tools and products from eu bon and other projects that may help to improve data collection and evaluation the roundtable that took place from 10 to 11 december 2015 in granada spain particularly addressed the eu bon test sites to discuss data mobilization at the site level workflows of data information and the further usage for policy reporting and political processes these issues were discussed with partners from eu bon and related biodiversity projects lter geo bon lifewatch ecoscope and stakeholders of biodiversity data regional biodiversity networks the environmental information network of andalusia rediam the center for monitoring and assessment of global change caescg the life project adaptamed as well as local scientists on the first day the different approaches from global geo bon and european initiatives eu bon lter lifewatch ecoscope were presented with a special emphasis on data collection integration and analysis tools from eu bon furthermore regional stakeholders pointed out their demands with regards to data mobilizations issues a survey of the participants conducted before the roundtable showed that still gaps exist not so much in terms of needed tools but more in the area of biodiversity data on the second day the workflow of biodiversity data and the current barriers as well as the possible solutions to overcome the problems was discussed in the world cafã session smaller groups discussed details of the biodiversity data workflows particularly on the topics of 1 data mobilization 2 data and tools 3 implementation and 4 upscaling of data as outcomes of the discussions at the roundtable several recommendations were drafted there are several biodiversity data workflows existing at the test sites that could be improved by additional existing tools guidelines and standards from projects such as eu bon and by an enhanced communication between local sites regional networks as â œmiddle wareâ and european networks recommendations are for example to prioritize developed eu bon tools for further usage in the project and through the portal to better address the user groups on different levels and provide a detailed and specific description for the tools for the end users of the data it is important to develop either â œeasy to useâ tools or provide results in a tailored way overall it was agreed that a showcase for the workflow of biodiversity data from collection up to visualization is needed to showcase better the benefits of a european biodiversity network and enhance current functionalities by analyzing barriers and limitations in such an example of an â œeu bon storylineâ,2016,0.068
"Free-living marine nematodes from San Antonio Bay (Río Negro, Argentina)",the dataset of free living marine nematodes of san antonio bay is based on sediment samples collected in february 2009 during doctoral theses funded by conicet grants a total of 36 samples has been taken at three locations in the san antonio bay santa cruz province argentina on the coastal littoral at three tidal levels this presents a unique and important collection for benthic biodiversity assessment of patagonian nematodes as this area remains one of the least known regions in total 7 743 specimens of free living marine nematodes belonging to two classes eight orders 37 families 94 genera and 104 species were collected,2016,0.927
Distribution and community structure of chloropid flies (Diptera: Chloropidae) in Nearctic glacial and post-glacial grasslands,arthropod species inhabiting disjunct xeric grasslands in the yukon territory canada may be relicts of pleistocene steppe assemblages widespread in beringia during glaciation or they may be recent remnants of northward expansion of southern grassland communities during the early holocene hypsithermal to assess the likely origin of the yukon grassland arthropod community grassland associated chloropidae diptera were compared from three regions the canadian prairies the peace river region of alberta and the southern yukon if yukon grassland insect communities like those in the peace region result primarily from northward dispersal during the hypsithermal chloropid assemblages in all regions would be similar except that species richness would decline with increasing latitude if however they are primarily relicts of pleistocene steppe communities yukon chloropid assemblages would be distinct from southern assemblages there was a latitudinal gradient of decreasing species richness and yukon assemblages were distinct from prairie and peace region assemblages based on cluster analysis non metric multidimensional scaling and pairwise comparisons of morisita similarity indices community level analyses suggest that yukon assemblages have been separated from those in the prairies and peace regions since before the hypsithermal and likely contain a mix of relict populations inhabiting pleistocene steppe remnants in east beringia with recent northward post glacial dispersal from the southern prairies dispersal from eastern russia via beringia appears to have been negligible,2016,0.735
Climate and the distribution of grasses in West Africa,questions which environmental variables influence grass diversity in west africa what are the effects of climate and grass functional traits on the spatial patterns richness and abundance of the grass clades andropogoneae paniceae and chloridoideae location west africa demarcated by the atlantic ocean in the west and south 20â w and 4â n the sahara desert in the north 25â n and the border between niger and chad in the east 20â e methods based on 38 912 georeferenced occurrence records we modelled the distribution of 302 grass species 51 of west african grass diversity we integrated species richness abundance and functional traits life cycle photosynthetic type and height to determine the contribution of the most speciose grass clades andropogoneae paniceae and chloridoideae to overall grass diversity in west africa results precipitation is the variable most often influencing the species distribution models of grasses in west africa richness and relative abundance of the tribe andropogoneae show a centre of diversity in sudanian savanna regions the height of andropogoneae species generally 150 cm is driving this ecological dominance species richness of the tribe paniceae is more dispersed and shows two main centres of abundance the southern regions with higher mean annual precipitation and tree density are dominated by c3 paniceae species the sahelian regions in the north are dominated by short paniceae species with the c4 nad me photosynthetic subtype as well as chloridoideae possessing the same functional attributes conclusions our study provides insight into the environmental correlates of grass species richness in west africa and contributes to the much needed research on tropical rangelands moreover the integration of evolutionary history significantly improves our understanding of large scale biodiversity patterns,2016,0.669
Hydrocleys nymphoides (Humb. & Bonpl. ex Willd.) Buchenau: first record of naturalisation in South Africa,hydrocleys nymphoides water poppy an aquatic plant native to south america has been recorded as invasive on several continents europe australia and asia here we report on the first known natura lized population in south africa in a dam in the kwazulu natal k zn midlands region near the town of howick this popu lation first detected and identified in 2009 had by the end of the 2013 summer seas on occupied 1 8ha 30 of the dam surveys of 34 surrounding water bodies during the period between 2012 and 2013 did not result in detection of any new populations the only other population 0 1 ha was recorded growin g in cultivation at the durban botanic gardens this note re ports on the history of h nymphoides in south africa details its current and potential distribution looks at the risk it poses and outlines plans for nation wid e eradication,2016,0.55
"Caracterización de la calidad de agua mediante macroinvertebrados bentónicos en el río Puyo, en la Amazonía Ecuatoriana",in 2012 a biologic water quality study was conducted in the central part of rã o puyo in pastaza province the river is characterized for an increasing environmental degradation due to a rise in population with a simultaneous housing development increase goals to assess rio puyo water quality with macroinvertebrate monitoring and chemical parameters methods the macroinvertebrates were collected at four different dates and two biotic indexes biological monitoring working party for costa rica bmwp cr and biological family index for el salvador ibf sv were determined for each site the study was complemented with ph and dissolved oxygen sampling to determine their correlation with the biotic indices results there were 14 orders 40 families and 2 808 individuals identified most of the especimens belong to leptohyphidae 23 3 and hydropsychidae 18 7 families the indexes showed that the water quality in the river drops significantly between points 1 fã tima and 3 la isla showing some increase at point 4 uniã n base a 5 significance correlation were established between dissolved oxygen and bmwp cr index r 0 915 and 1 significance correlation between bmwp cr an ibf sv index 0 947 conclusions all indexes show a significant drop of quality at the urban areas one of them ibf sv shows some recovery when the river leaves the city,2016,0.402
"Taxonomic Status and the Phylogenetic Placement of Amphisbaena leucocephala Peters, 1878 (Squamata, Amphisbaenidae)",abstract since 1965 amphisbaena leucocephala peters 1878 has been considered species inquirenda due to overlap in meristic data between it and a pretrei and the the low number of specimens available for analysis herein based on recently collected specimens we review its taxonomic status through morphological and genetic data both analyses recovered a leucocephala as a distinct species sister to but widely divergent from a pretrei it is characterized by having 10â 13 precloacal pores 231â 246 body annuli 25â 29 caudal annuli autotomy site at the 6thâ 8th caudal annulus 17â 22 dorsal and 20â 23 ventral segments at midbody,2016,0.349
"On natural history collections, digitized and not: a response to Ferro and Flick",ferro and flick 2015 describe their efforts to estimate the distribution for a species of rove beetle via the study of specimens from entomological collections and compare these results to digitally accessible open data their study provides an informed and accurate case study that contrasts targeted data capture with generalized public repositories of digital specimen data however we feel the conclusions on how global biodiversity data aggregation and publication work require clarification and correction of common misconceptions that we believe will interest those concerned with the future of natural history collections and taxonomy,2016,0.377
Which Factors Determine Spatial Segregation in the South American Opossums (Didelphis aurita and D. albiventris)? An Ecological Niche Modelling and Geometric Morphometrics Approach,didelphis albiventris and d aurita are neotropical marsupials that share a unique evolutionary history and both are largely distributed throughout south america being primarily allopatric throughout their ranges in the araucaria moist forest of southern brazil these species are sympatric and they might potentially compete having similar ecology for this reason they are ideal biological models to address questions about ecological character displacement and how closely related species might share their geographic space little is known about how two morphologically similar species of marsupials may affect each other through competition if by competitive exclusion and competitive release we combined ecological niche modeling and geometric morphometrics to explore the possible effects of competition on their distributional ranges and skull morphology ecological niche modeling was used to predict their potential distribution and this method enabled us to identify a case of biotic exclusion where the habit generalist d albiventris is excluded by the presence of the specialist d aurita the morphometric analyses show that a degree of shape discrimination occurs between the species strengthened by allometric differences which possibly allowed them to occupy marginally different feeding niches supplemented by behavioral shift in contact areas overlap in skull morphology is shown between sympatric and allopatric specimens and a significant but weak shift in shape occurs only in d aurita in sympatric areas this could be a residual evidence of a higher past competition between both species when contact zones were possibly larger than today therefore the specialist d aurita acts a biotic barrier to d albiventris when niche diversity is not available for coexistence on the other hand when there is niche diversification e g habitat mosaic both species are capable to coexist with a minimal competitive effect on the morphology of d aurita,2016,0.919
"Do 120,000 years of plant–pollinator interactions predict floral phenotype divergence in Calceolaria polyrhiza? A reconstruction using species distribution models",quaternary climatic changes impacted speciesâ demography and distribution worldwide although response to climate change could have been modulated by mutualistic interactions with other species studies exploring the dynamics of these interactions and their role facilitating species persistence during past climatic variations are scarce in this work we attempt to explore the spatial dynamic of calceolaria polyrhiza and its oil collecting bee pollinators during the last 120 000 years identifying stable areas of persistence and statistically determining whether the distribution of pollinator related floral ecotypes is associated with these shared areas of persistence to do this we used 395 presence records of the interacting species and constructed species palaeodistribution models additionally we gathered phenotypic measures of the plant and used decision tree and multiple regression analyses to link the plant phenotypic divergence with the distribution of stable areas our species distribution models suggest that past climatic changes affected the interaction between c polyrhiza and both bee species in time and space while the interaction between the plant and c caeruleus predominated in the andean patagonian forest and was relatively stable in space and time that was not the case for the pollinator c cineraria in the patagonian steppe this along with our analyses of spatial phenotypic divergence indicates that current floral phenotypes are the result of two historical different pollination regimes,2016,0.894
The role of citizen science in a global assessment of extinction risk in palms (Arecaceae),citizen science networks and tools offer researchers innovative ways of gathering data which can be used for conservation purposes by engaging multiple stakeholders from non specialist members of the public to professional researchers harnessing the enthusiasm and goodwill of a global community of interested parties can enormously speed up the collection of data conservationists urgently need to accelerate the rate at which the extinction risk of species are assessed ideally using international union for conservation of nature iucn red list criteria the palms are a group of plants with a particularly high risk of extinction across the family in the face of increasing habitat destruction and overexploitation of economically important taxa as many as 83 of palm species in madagascar are threatened with extinction a global assessment of conservation status for the palm family was recognized as being urgently required nearly 20 years ago but 20 of palm species are on the iucn red list of threatened species the citizen science tool inaturalist may be one way in which we can promote communities working together to gather data for prioritization and conservation outcomes the palm community could work together using this tool to achieve this urgent target for the palm family,2016,0.576
Long-term data set of small mammals from owl pellets in the Atlantic-Mediterranean transition area,we describe the pellet sampling data set from the vertebrate collection of the museum of zoology of the university of navarra this data set compiles all information about small mammals obtained from the analysis of owl pellets the collection consists on skulls mandibles and some skeletons of 36 species of more than 72 000 georeferenced specimens these specimens come from the iberian peninsula although most samples were collected in navarra a highly diverse transitional area of 10 000 kilometre square sitting across three biogeographical regions the collection spans more than forty years and is still growing as a result of the establishment of a barn owl pellet monitoring network in 2015 the program will provide critical information about the evolution of the small mammalsâ community in this transition zone as it changes over time,2016,0.484
"A New Species of Clown Tree Frog, Dendropsophus leucophyllatus Species Group, from Amazonia (Anura, Hylidae)",we describe a new species of dendropsophus anura hylidae hylinae dendropsophini from the amazon river rio amazonas basin state of amazonas northern brazil the new taxon is included in the d leucophyllatus group based on its phylogenetic position and on the presence of a pair of pectoral glands a likely synapomorphy of the group the species is distinguished from other species in the group by its color pattern and the morphology of hand and feet tubercles in order to assess the phylogenetic relationships of the new taxon we compiled a dataset including mitochondrial and nuclear dna sequence data for all but one species in the d leucophyllatus group plus a series of hylid outgroups a tree alignment direct optimization parsimony analysis firmly support the new species as the sister taxon of d sarayacuensis the monophyly of the d leucophyllatus species group is not recovered in our analysis and the issue is discussed further,2016,0.915
Comparing Suitable Habitat Models to Predict Rare and Endemic Plant Species Distributions: What are the Limits of the Niche of Cola lorougnonis (Malvaceae) in Cote d'Ivoire?,cola lorougnonis is an endemic rare and treated species it was recently recorded in dekpa forest near agbaou a village of divo region cote dâ ivoire in the same forest 20 other rare and endemic plant species were recorded accurate modeling of geographical distributions of these species is crucial to various applications in ecology and biodiversity conservation the present study analyzed suitable habitat models for the 21 species the main objective was to test geographical predictions for the focused species cola lorougnonis we used maxent modelling method for predicting potential suitable habitats combining environmental variables and species records we evaluated maxent predictions using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve auc for each species the map of distribution was engineered using diva gis we compared the suitable habitat areas among species principal canonical analysis allowed the ordination of species according to environmental variables auc values allowed to get 11 species with excellent distribution models 8 species with good distribution models and 2 species with predictive models considered as acceptable cola lorougnonis auc 0 99 and drypetes singroboensis auc 0 96 have the same focused area moist semi deciduous forest in cote dâ ivoire they are more sensitive to changes in rainfall of both warmest and coldest seasons the state of cã te dâ ivoire has to undertake monitoring assessment and reporting of conservation status facilitation for all habitats where these species could be found within the territory additional studies focusing on the investigation areas and niche models onto future conditions of climate could be considered,2016,0.991
Distribución de Eunotia parasiolii (Bacillariophyceae) en ríos neotropicales (Colombia) y su implicancia en la taxonomía de la especie,microorganisms have traditionally been considered cosmopolitan nevertheless recent studies of diverse groups demonstrated that this is an erroneous concept reviews of diatoms from the neotropics have shown high biodiversity and numerous endemic species colombia has great habitat diversity in relatively small areas due to its latitudinal position and topography so it is an ideal site for biogeographic studies one of the better represented genera in lowland rivers eunotia and eunotia parasiolii a neotropical species was reported in several countries in the region goals in order to establish whether the three morphotypes found are discrete taxonomic entities their morphometric data fine morphology and geographical distribution were analyzed methods 170 periphyton samples corresponding to 83 lotic systems were analyzed samples were prepared following the cent tc 230 2002 protocol they were observed with light lm and scanning electronic microscope sem distribution maps were made using gis and a moranâ s i autocorrelation spatial index was applied results the analyses of several specimens collected at 83 lotic systems allowed us to differentiate a priori 3 morphotypes based on the valve outline development of subapical costae and striae density the species was extensively distributed in the study area in basins with different hydrogeomorphology and chemical characteristics the morphological characteristics that distinguish these morphotypes varied gradually besides the morphotypes were randomly distributed conclusions we conclude that eunotia parasiolii is a species with a great morphological variability and wide distribution we propose to emend the description of the species since the original diagnosis does not include characteristics of the fine structure of the frustules and therefore is insufficient to differentiate it from its allied taxa,2016,0.829
Evolutionary history and species diversity of African pouched mice (Rodentia: Nesomyidae: Saccostomus ),we explore diversity of african pouched mice genus saccostomus rodentia nesomyidae by sampling molecular and morphological variation across their continental scale distribution in southern and eastern african savannahs and woodlands both mitochondrial cytochrome b and nuclear dna irbp rag1 as well as skull morphology confirm the distinction between two recognized species s campestris and s mearnsi with disjunct distribution in the zambezian and somaliâ maasai bioregions respectively molecular dating suggests the divergence of these taxa occurred in the early pliocene 3 9 ma before present whereas the deepest divergences within each of them are only as old as 2 0 ma for s mearnsi and 1 4 ma for s campestris based on cytochrome b phylogeny we defined five clades three within s campestris two in s mearnsi whose species status was considered in the light of nuclear dna markers and morphology we conclude that s campestris group consists of two subspecies s campestris campestris peters 1846 comprising two cytochrome b clades and s campestris mashonae de winton 1897 that are moderately differentiated albeit distinct in irbp and skull form they likely hybridize to a limited extent along the kafueâ zambezi rivers saccostomus mearnsi group consists of two species s mearnsi heller 1910 and s umbriventer miller 1910 that are markedly differentiated in both nuclear markers and skull form and may possibly co occur in south western kenya and north eastern tanzania analysis of historical demography suggests both subspecies of s campestris experienced population expansion dated to the last glacial in the present range of s campestris group the distribution modelling suggests a moderate fragmentation of suitable habitats during the last glacial cycle whereas in the range of s mearnsi group it predicts substantial shifts of its occurrence in the same period,2016,0.679
Will climate change impact the potential distribution of a native vine ( Merremia peltata ) which is behaving invasively in the Pacific region?,merremia peltata is a species with uncertain status in the island nations of the pacific region it has been designated introduced and invasive in some countries whereas it is considered native in others recent increase in its abundance across some island landscapes have led to calls for its designation as an invasive species of environmental concern with biological control being suggested as a control strategy climate change will add to the complications of managing this species since changes in climate will influence its range limits in this study we develop a process oriented niche model of m peltata using climex to investigate the impacts of climate change on its potential distribution information on the climatic requirements of m peltata and its current geographic distribution were used to calibrate the model the results indicate that under current climate 273 132 km2 of the land area in the region is climatically unsuitable or marginal for m peltata whereas 664 524 km2 is suitable to highly suitable under current climate areas of climatic suitability for m peltata were identified on the archipelagos of fiji papua new guinea solomon islands and vanuatu by the end of the century some archipelagos like fiji hawaii new caledonia and vanuatu will probably become more suitable while png and solomon islands become less suitable for m peltata the results can be used to inform biosecurity planning management and conservation strategies on islands,2016,0.46
"The Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas) Invasion in Scandinavian Coastal Waters: Impact on Local Ecosystem Services : Biological Invasions in Changing Ecosystems Vectors, Ecological Impacts, Management and Predictions",shellfish have always played an important role in subsistence and income for coastal communities shallow water bivalve beds are easily accessible and have been exploited and overexploited for centuries depletion of stocks has lead to farming and aquaculture of many species few species if any have been as popular and successful as the the pacific oyster c gigas its highly efficient filter feeding high growth rates massive repoductive output and tolerance of a large range of abiotic conditions has not only made it one of the worldâ s 20 most cultured species but also one of the most invasive this chapter tracks the pacific oyster on its way towards the north eastern corner of its european distribution predicts its future distribution and discusses the implications for local ecosystems,2016,0.602
Modelling food web structure using an end-to-end approach in the coastal ecosystem of the Gulf of Gabes (Tunisia),given the ecological importance and high socio economic value of the fishery of the gulf of gabes an end to end model was applied to its continental shelf ecosystem to characterize the structure of the food web in the 2000s this approach consisted in forcing a high trophic level model osmose with an existing biogeochemical model eco3m med representing the seasonal dynamics of the low trophic levels the two models were linked through trophic interactions to represent the ecosystem dynamics from primary producers to top predators in this study we developed the multispecies individual based model osmose in the gulf of gabes osmose gog this model aims to capture the main processes that influence species life cycle and simulate the functioning of the ecosystem according to opportunistic predation process based on size selection and spatio temporal co occurrence between a predator and its prey the spatial distribution of the eleven modelled species was derived from a multi scale species distribution modelling approach we calibrated osmose gog model with available data of biomass and fishing yield using an optimization method based on evolutionary algorithms which is suitable for complex and stochastic models finally osmose gog was validated against independent data sets at different hierarchical levels the individual diet composition population mean size of commercial catch and community levels mean trophic level following the pattern oriented modelling approach the model outputs were overall consistent with the diet compositions and mean trophic levels derived from the ecopath model of the gulf of gabes ecopath gog and the observations of mean size of catches the osmose gog can be considered as a baseline model to investigate ecosystem responses to environmental changes and fishing management measures in the gulf of gabes,2016,0.065
Application of Machine Learning Techniques to High-Dimensional Clinical Data to Forecast Postoperative Complications,objective to compare performance of risk prediction models for forecasting postoperative sepsis and acute kidney injury design retrospective single center cohort study of adult surgical patients admitted between 2000 and 2010 patients 50 318 adult patients undergoing major surgery measurements we evaluated the performance of logistic regression generalized additive models naã ve bayes and support vector machines for forecasting postoperative sepsis and acute kidney injury we assessed the impact of feature reduction techniques on predictive performance model performance was determined using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve accuracy and positive predicted value the results were reported based on a 70 30 cross validation procedure where the data were randomly split into 70 used for training the model and the 30 for validation main results the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve for different models ranged between 0 797 and 0 858 for acute kidney injury and between 0 757 and 0 909 for severe sepsis logistic regression generalized additive model and support vector machines had better performance compared to naã ve bayes model generalized additive models additionally accounted for non linearity of continuous clinical variables as depicted in their risk patterns plots reducing the input feature space with lasso had minimal effect on prediction performance while feature extraction using principal component analysis improved performance of the models conclusions generalized additive models and support vector machines had good performance as risk prediction model for postoperative sepsis and aki feature extraction using principal component analysis improved the predictive performance of all models,2016,0.014
A prototype system for multilingual data discovery of International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) Network data,shared ecological data have the potential to revolutionize ecological research just as shared genetic sequence data have done for biological research however for ecological data to be useful it must first be discoverable a broad scale research topic may require that a researcher be able to locate suitable data from a variety of global regional and national data providers which often use different local languages to describe their data thus one of the challenges of international sharing of long term data is facilitation of multilingual searches such searches are hindered by lack of equivalent terms across languages and by uneven application of keywords in ecological metadata to test whether a thesaurus based approach to multilingual data searching might be effective we implemented a prototype web services based system for searching international long term ecological research network data repositories the system builds on the use of a multilingual thesaurus to make searches more complete than would be obtained through search term translation alone the resulting system when coupled to commodity online translation systems demonstrates the possibility of achieving multilingual searches for ecological data,2016,0.037
A Survey of Official Online Sources of High-quality Free-of-charge Geospatial Data for Maritime Geographic Information Systems Applications,maritime information systems are innovative geographic information systems for study monitoring and action taking in maritime areas they respond to needs in the development of intelligent systems for applications such as scientific research and safety monitoring the global ecosystem the atmosphere the oceans the biosphere ice fields fish populations etc or the support of the maritime industry and its related organizations tracking the position of vessels in motion providing them with safe routing etc for these systems to efficiently handle the complex demands made on such specialized applications up to date real world data purchased or downloaded from official trustworthy online data sources is needed this article examines geospatial free of charge data sources and discusses the various classes of available data several hundred resources and their available datasets were empirically tested and their quality and usefulness verified producing a selective thesaurus an accompanying website summarizing useful available information about the data sources and datasets also includes information which could not be mentioned in the article the survey covering a wide spectrum of online information regarding up to date sources for genuine valuable real world high precision maritime data worldwide is to the best of the authorsâ knowledge the only one of its kind at the time of writing,2016,0.021
"The past, present and future distribution of a deep-sea shrimp in the Southern Ocean.",shrimps have a widespread distribution across the shelf slope and seamount regions of the southern ocean studies of antarctic organisms have shown that individual species and higher taxa display different degrees of sensitivity and adaptability in response to environmental change we use species distribution models to predict changes in the geographic range of the deep sea antarctic shrimp nematocarcinus lanceopes under changing climatic conditions from the last glacial maximum to the present and to the year 2100 the present distribution range indicates a pole ward shift of the shrimp population since the last glaciation this occurred by colonization of slopes from nearby refugia located around the northern part of scotia arc southern tip of south america south georgia bouvet island southern tip of the campbell plateau and kerguelen plateau by 2100 the shrimp are likely to expand their distribution in east antarctica but have a continued pole ward contraction in west antarctica the range extension and contraction process followed by the deep sea shrimp provide a geographic context of how other deep sea antarctic species may have survived during the last glaciation and may endure with projected changing climatic conditions in the future,2016,0.526
Climate change since the last glacial period in Lebanon and the persistence of Mediterranean species,in this study we quantified the mean january temperature tjan and both winter pw and summer ps precipitation from three fossil pollen records from lebanon tjan showed a strong correlation with the global temperature changes retrieved in the ngrip greenland ice core the amplitude of ca 8 â c between the younger dryas yd period and the holocene is coherent with climate reconstructions from the eastern mediterranean the overall amount of precipitation was also lower during the yd than during the holocene but the contrast between pw and ps was much more reduced less than 2 times during the yd than during the holocene up to 8 times such different seasonal contrast compare to the present day is coherent with some climate proxies from the levant that tend to indicate the presence of moisture during the last glacial period in effect the low pw during the yd reflects the replacement of the forest ecosystem by a more shrubby or herbaceous vegetation concomitantly the occurrence of an amount of precipitation higher than the current one during the summer season along with a reduced evaporation due to lower temperature may have contributed to some local observed high lake levels in the area during the last glacial period lebanon was not under a typical mediterranean climate such as the one we know today i e with a strong precipitation and temperature contrast between summer and winter seasons but rather under a less contrasted climate mediterranean species persisted in this area due to the low amplitude of temperature change between the last glacial period and the holocene as well as to an availability of moisture throughout the year instead of an occurrence mainly during the winter season as is the case today,2016,0.52
"The environment ontology in 2016: bridging domains with increased scope, semantic density, and interoperation",background the environment ontology envo http www environmentontology org first described in 2013 is a resource and research target for the semantically controlled description of environmental entities the ontology s initial aim was the representation of the biomes environmental features and environmental materials pertinent to genomic and microbiome related investigations however the need for environmental semantics is common to a multitude of fields and envo s use has steadily grown since its initial description we have thus expanded enhanced and generalised the ontology to support its increasingly diverse applications methods we have updated our development suite to promote expressivity consistency and speed we now develop envo in the web ontology language owl and employ templating methods to accelerate class creation we have also taken steps to better align envo with the open biological and biomedical ontologies obo foundry principles and interoperate with existing obo ontologies further we applied text mining approaches to extract habitat information from the encyclopedia of life and automatically create experimental habitat classes within envo results relative to its state in 2013 envo s content scope and implementation have been enhanced and much of its existing content revised for improved semantic representation envo now offers representations of habitats environmental processes anthropogenic environments and entities relevant to environmental health initiatives and the global sustainable development agenda for 2030 several branches of envo have been used to incubate and seed new ontologies in previously unrepresented domains such as food and agronomy the current release version of the ontology in owl format is available at http purl obolibrary org obo envo owl conclusions envo has been shaped into an ontology which bridges multiple domains including biomedicine natural and anthropogenic ecology â omics and socioeconomic development through continued interactions with our users and partners particularly those performing data archiving and sythesis we anticipate that envoâ s growth will accelerate in 2017 as always we invite further contributions and collaboration to advance the semantic representation of the environment ranging from geographic features and environmental materials across habitats and ecosystems to everyday objects in household settings,2016,0.156
Potential risk levels of invasive Neoleucinodes elegantalis (small tomato borer) in areas optimal for open-field Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) cultivation in the present and under predicted climate change,neoleucinodes elegantalis is one of the major insect pests of solanum lycopersicum currently n elegantalis is present only in america and the caribbean and is a threat in the world s largest s lycopersicum producing countries in terms of potential impact on agriculture the impact of climate change on insect invasions must be a concern currently no research exists regarding the effects of climatic change on risk level of n elegantalis the purpose of this study is to develop a model for s lycopersicum and n elegantalis utilizing climex to determine risk levels of n elegantalis in open field s lycopersicum cultivation in the present and under projected climate change using the global climate model csiro mk3 0 results large areas are projected to be suitable for n elegantalis and optimal for open field s lycopersicum cultivation under current time however in the future these areas will become unsuitable for both species conversely in others regions in the future may become optimal for open field s lycopersicum cultivation with varying risk level for n elegantalis conclusion the risk levels results presented here provide a useful tool to design strategies to prevent the introduction and establishment of n elegantalis in open field s lycopersicum cultivation,2016,0.089
Changing global risk of invading greenbug Schizaphis graminum under climate change,the geographical range abundance growth rate survival and mortality of insects are largely influenced by abiotic factors such as temperature and humidity when suitable these factors can positively influence the abundance of insect pests it is in this light that the influence of climate change particularly global warming has direct bearing to crop protection in this study we simulated the potential distribution of the greenbug or wheat aphid schizaphis graminum rondani aphididae a major global pest of wheat using the climate matching tool climex climatic index in global warming scenarios to predict the potential distribution of the insect on climex at time periods 2030 2070 and 2100 we utilize two global climate models gcms at two emission scenarios the result of climex modelling shows that the favourable climatic areas for s graminum are subtropical to temperate at the current time with global warming under different scenarios current suitable and highly suitable areas in the northern hemisphere are expected to expand to higher latitudes by 2030 towards 2100 while areas in the southern hemisphere where the pestâ s living areas already have high temperature ranges the occurrence of the pest will contract by 2030 since temperatures will exceed its heat limits this study assists in predicting the potential risk areas that may be threatened by this pest in the future providing supportive information for agricultural management practices and aid in the preparation of strategic plans to avoid possible economic damage posed by future expansion of the pest population due to climate change,2016,0.313
From pole to pole: the potential for the Arctic seastar Asterias amurensis to invade a warming Southern Ocean,due to climatic warming asterias amurensis a keystone boreal predatory seastar that has established extensive invasive populations in southern australia is a potential high risk invader of the sub antarctic and antarctic to assess the potential range expansion of a amurensis to the southern ocean as it warms we investigated the bioclimatic envelope of the adult and larval life stages we analysed the distribution of adult a amurensis with respect to present day and future climate scenarios using habitat temperature data to construct species distribution models sdm to integrate the physiological response of the dispersive phase we determined the thermal envelope of larval development to assess their performance in present day and future thermal regimes and the potential for success of a amurensis in poleward latitudes the sdm indicated that the thermal niche of the adult stage correlates with a 0 17 â c and 1 22 5 â c range in winter and summer respectively as the ocean warms the range of a amurensis in australia will contract while more southern latitudes will have conditions favorable for range expansion successful fertilisation occurred from 3 23 8 â c by day 12 development to the early larval stage was successful from 5 5 18 â c although embryos were able to reach the blastula stage at 2 â c they had arrested development and high mortality the optimal thermal range for survival of pelagic stages was 3 5 19 2 â c with a lower and upper critical limit of 2 6 â c and 20 3 â c respectively our data predict that a amurensis faces demise in its current invasive range while more favourable conditions at higher latitudes would facilitate invasion of both larval and adult stages to the southern ocean our results show that vigilance is needed to reduce the risk that this ecologically important arctic carnivore may invade the southern ocean and antarctica this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.609
"1st EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable (Brussels, Belgium): Biodiversity and Requirements for Policy",the first eu bon stakeholder roundtable was held on 18 june 2013 at the leibniz association in brussels under the motto biodiversity and requirements for policy important topics regarding biodiversity information were discussed with political stakeholders and a variety of valuable recommendations were given for the future process of eu bon in order to improve biodiversity knowledge availability and usability among the participants were members of the european policy representatives of recent european biodiversity projects and eu bon members at the roundtable intensive discussions took place regarding what biodiversity policy needs for example which indicators and measurements are needed to answer policy questions that are related to biodiversity and ecosystems suggestions were made to formalize essential biodiversity variables ebvâ s and aichi targets a future approach was set towards producing a guideline and timeline for the work on ebvs that should be established within eu bon the challenges of future research policy were also discussed and the collaboration of eu bon with the group on earth observations geo will be a substantial part of the continuous contributions to the global process eu bon should also serve as a showcase for the european commission in this respect eu bon also aims to answer crucial questions regarding data policy e g how to establish a general repository for a long lasting storage of data and how to handle â big dataâ another future task will be to integrate eu relevant projects and initiatives and their data portals datasets and metadata at the roundtable it was also discussed how public stakeholders can be involved in the future particularly citizen scientists so that they could be integrated in eu bon and provide useful information for scientists and researchers the general outcomes were collected and compiled in this report and provide useful recommendations for science policy interfaces in europe in general,2016,0.137
Mechanistic simulation models in macroecology and biogeography: state-of-art and prospects,macroecology and biogeography are concerned with understanding biodiversity patterns across space and time in the past the two disciplines have addressed this question mainly with correlative approaches despite frequent calls for more mechanistic explanations recent advances in computational power theoretical understanding and statistical tools are however currently facilitating the development of more system oriented mechanistic models we review these models identify different model types and theoretical frameworks compare their processes and properties and summarize emergent findings we show that ecological physiology demographics dispersal biotic interactions and evolutionary processes as well as environmental and human induced drivers are increasingly modelled mechanistically and that new insights into biodiversity dynamics emerge from these models yet substantial challenges still lie ahead for this young research field among these we identify scaling calibration validation and balancing complexity as pressing issues moreover particular process combinations are still understudied and so far models tend to be developed for specific applications future work should aim at developing more flexible and modular models that not only allow different ecological theories to be expressed and contrasted but which are also built for tight integration with all macroecological data sources moving the field towards such a â systems macroecologyâ will test and improve our understanding of the causal pathways through which eco evolutionary processes create diversity patterns across spatial and temporal scales,2016,0.028
Phylogeography and ecological niche modelling in Eugenia uniflora (Myrtaceae) suggest distinct vegetational responses to climate change between the southern and the northern Atlantic Forest,in this study we evaluate phylogeographic patterns and predictions of ecological niche modelling enm for eugenia uniflora myrtaceae a widely distributed taxon in the atlantic forest domain to understand the effect of past climatic oscillations on the demographic history of this species an analysis of phylogeographic population structure and demography was conducted on e uniflora from 46 localities in natural environments across the distribution range of the species based on three plastid markers enm was also performed to predict suitable environments and areas of dramatic decrease in future suitability for the species under distinct representative concentration pathways rcps eugenia uniflora exhibited higher haplotype and nucleotide diversity in the southern part of its distribution than in the northern part two divergent lineages were revealed in the phylogenetic analysis of haplotypes with an estimated divergence at c 4 9 mya the populations in the northern and central regions of the range probably experienced population growth whereas populations in the southern region are marked by historical demographic stability enm results indicate that the distribution of e uniflora was fragmented in cool periods and was broader and more connected during warm periods during pleistocene the results suggest distinct evolutionary histories in southern to northern populations indicating region specific responses to changes,2016,0.797
"Atlas of Ohio Aquatic Insects: Volume II, Plecoptera",we provide volume ii of a distributional atlas of aquatic insects for the eastern usa state of ohio this treatment of stoneflies plecoptera is companion to armitage et al 2011 on caddisflies trichoptera we build on a recent analysis of ohio stonefly diversity patterns based on large drainages dewalt et al 2012 but add 3717 new records to the data set we base most analyses on the united states geological survey hierarchical unit code eight huc8 drainage scale in addition to distributional maps for each species we provide analyses of species richness versus huc8 drainage area and the number of unique locations in a huc8 drainage species richness versus ohio counties analyze adult presence phenology throughout the year and demonstrate stream size range affiliation for each species,2016,0.76
Towards a paradigm for open and free sharing of scientific data on global change science in China,despite great progress in data sharing that has been made in china in recent decades cultural policy and technological challenges have prevented chinese researchers from maximizing the availability of their data to the global change science community to achieve full and open exchange and sharing of scientific data chinese research funding agencies need to recognize that preservation of and access to digital data are central to their mission and must support these tasks accordingly the chinese government also needs to develop better mechanisms incentives and rewards while scientists need to change their behavior and culture to recognize the need to maximize the usefulness of their data to society as well as to other researchers the chinese research community and individual researchers should think globally and act personally to promote a paradigm of open free and timely data sharing and to increase the effectiveness of knowledge development,2016,0.166
Phylogeography and evolution of two closely related oak species (Quercus) from north and northeast China,orographic and climatic influences during the pleistocene have had a crucial role on interspecific divergence and population demography during speciation however associations between demographic histories of closely related species and related climatic events especially in north and northeast china are still underexplored genetic analyses with four chloroplast dna and two nuclear genes and species distribution modeling were used for two closely related oak species quercus liaotungensis and quercus mongolica to test if their interspecific divergence and phylogeographical histories were possibly related to the pleistocene era climatic events potential divergence of the two oak species was estimated at about 0 92â 2 15 ma species distribution models and genetic data showed varying phylogeographical histories and spatial population structures between the two oaks leading to different patterns of interspecific gene flow between the chloroplast and nuclear genes the results indicate that speciation event between the two species is recent and may have been triggered by geological and climatic fluctuations linked to the upheavals of the qinghai tibetan plateau at the pliocene pleistocene boundary the two closely related oaks possess varying population demography during the interglacial glacial climatic oscillations of the quaternary probably due to the various niche adaptations among different distribution ranges across their species trajectories,2016,0.962
"Annotated type catalogue of lymnaeid snails (Mollusca, Gastropoda) in the collection of the Natural History Museum, Berlin",the article deals with examination of the type materials of sixty one species and variety of lymnaeid snails mollusca gastropoda lymnaeidae housed in molluscan collection of the natural history museum berlin germany zmb each taxon is discussed following the same scheme including synomymy information on the type materials current taxonomic allocation taxonomic and nomenclatorial remarks,2016,0.25
"Multidimensional biases, gaps and uncertainties in global plant occurrence information",plants are a hyperdiverse clade that plays a key role in maintaining ecological and evolutionary processes as well as human livelihoods biases gaps and uncertainties in plant occurrence information remain a central problem in ecology and conservation but these limitations remain largely unassessed globally in this synthesis we propose a conceptual framework for analysing gaps in information coverage information uncertainties and biases in these metrics along taxonomic geographical and temporal dimensions and apply it to all c 370 000 species of land plants to this end we integrated 120 million point occurrence records with independent databases on plant taxonomy distributions and conservation status we find that different data limitations are prevalent in each dimension different metrics of information coverage and uncertainty are largely uncorrelated and reducing taxonomic spatial or temporal uncertainty by filtering out records would usually come at great costs to coverage in light of these multidimensional data limitations we discuss prospects for global plant ecological and biogeographical research monitoring and conservation and outline critical next steps towards more effective information usage and mobilisation our study provides an empirical baseline for evaluating and improving global floristic knowledge along with a conceptual framework that can be applied to study other hyperdiverse clades,2016,0.15
"Current and future perspectives on the systematics, taxonomy and nomenclature of testate amoebae",testate amoebae are a polyphyletic assemblage of at least three major unrelated taxonomic groups of unicellular amoeboid eukaryotes exhibiting a test the focus on testate amoebae in scientific research has greatly increased in the past 20 years from an average of about 5 papers a year in the mid 1990 s to the current rate of more than 50 papers published yearly the application range of these organisms is rapidly expanding as well from the traditional fields of environmental monitoring and paleoecology to forensic sciences and ecotoxicology studies these developments are nevertheless strongly dependent on reliable taxonomy and nomenclature however scientometric data reveals that despite an ever increasing necessity for the use of names the product of taxonomy the corresponding effort has not been achieved for improving testate amoebae systematics as a consequence inaccurate taxonomy yields to misinterpretations in the diversity of the organisms and to potentially incorrect conclusions these and related problems are discussed in this study highlighting the outcome of poor taxonomic expertise in accurate classification and phylogeny of testate amoebae and the consequences derived from it additionally this study is aimed to discuss the current status of testate amoebae classification and to present all nomenclature and taxonomic changes in higher and lower taxonomic levels of testate amoebae as a result of recent molecular reconstructions finally we conclude with a list of the needs and suggestions toward a unified and modernized taxonomy of testate amoebae,2016,0.155
"Macrofaunal assemblages associated with the sponge Sarcotragus foetidus Schmidt, 1862 (Porifera: Demospongiae) at the coasts of Cyprus and Greece",background this paper describes a dataset of macrofaunal organisms associated with the sponge sarcotragus foetidus schmidt 1862 collected by scuba diving from two sampling sites one in greece north aegean sea and one in cyprus levantine sea new information this dataset includes macrofaunal taxa inhabiting the demosponge sarcotragus foetidus and contributes to the ongoing efforts of the ocean biogeographic information system obis which aims at filling the gaps in our current knowledge of the world s oceans this is the first paper to our knowledge where the macrofauna associated with s foetidus from the levantine basin is being recorded in total 90 taxa were recorded from which 83 were identified to the species level eight of these species are new records for the levantine basin the dataset contains 213 occurrence records fully annotated with all required metadata,2016,0.303
"Phylogeny of Elatinaceae and the Tropical Gondwanan Origin of the Centroplacaceae(Malpighiaceae, Elatinaceae) Clade",the flowering plant family elatinaceae is a widespread aquatic lineage inhabiting temperate and tropical latitudes including ∠35 50 species its phylogeny remains largely unknown compromising our understanding of its systematics moreover this group is particularly in need of attention because the biogeography of most aquatic plant clades has yet to be investigated resulting in uncertainty about whether aquatic plants show histories that deviate from terrestrial plants we inferred the phylogeny of elatinaceae from four dna regions spanning 59 accessions across the family an expanded sampling was used for molecular divergence time estimation and ancestral area reconstruction to infer the biogeography of elatinaceae and their closest terrestrial relatives malpighiaceae and centroplacaceae the two genera of elatinaceae bergia and elatine are monophyletic but several traditionally recognized groups within the family are non monophyletic our results suggest two ancient biogeographic events in the centroplacaceae malpighiaceae elatinaceae clade involving western gondwana while elatinaceae shows a more complicated biogeographic history with a high degree of continental endemicity our results indicate the need for further taxonomic investigation of elatinaceae further our study is one of few to implicate ancient gondwanan biogeography in extant angiosperms especially significant given the centroplacaceae malpighiaceae elatinaceae clade s largely tropical distribution finally elatinaceae demonstrates long term continental in situ diversification which argues against recent dispersal as a universal explanation commonly invoked for aquatic plant distributions,2016,0.282
Rapid climate-driven loss of breeding habitat for Arctic migratory birds,millions of birds migrate to and from the arctic each year but rapid climate change in the high north could strongly affect where species are able to breed disrupting migratory connections globally we modelled the climatically suitable breeding conditions of 24 arctic specialist shorebirds and projected them to 2070 and to the mid holocene climatic optimum the world s last major warming event 6000 years ago we show that climatically suitable breeding conditions could shift contract and decline over the next 70 years with 66â 83 of species losing the majority of currently suitable area this exceeds in rate and magnitude the impact of the mid holocene climatic optimum suitable climatic conditions are predicted to decline acutely in the most species rich region beringia western alaska and eastern russia and become concentrated in the eurasian and canadian arctic islands these predicted spatial shifts of breeding grounds could affect the species composition of the world s major flyways encouragingly protected area coverage of current and future climatically suitable breeding conditions generally meets target levels however there is a lack of protected areas within the canadian arctic where resource exploitation is a growing threat given that already there are rapid declines of many populations of arctic migratory birds our results emphasize the urgency of mitigating climate change and protecting arctic biodiversity,2016,0.592
Novel methods to select environmental variables in MaxEnt: A case study using invasive crayfish,the popularity of maxent in species distribution modeling has been driven by several factors including its high degree of accuracy and flexibility to tailor efforts to species specific situations although many recent studies have identified the importance of adjusting mathematical transformation feature class and regularization of coefficient values collectively known as tuning few studies have addressed the need to customize the variables used in species distribution modeling and use unselected variable sets this study presents two novel methods to select for environmental variables in maxent the first involves selecting from a priori determined environmental variable sets pre selected based on ecological or biological knowledge and the second utilizes a reiterative process of model formation and stepwise removal of least contributing variables both methods were tested on eight known species of invasive crayfish with results reinforcing the need for species specific environmental variable sets while the reiterative process generally performs better than the a priori selected variables selection of method can be based on information availability these techniques appear to outperform the current practice of utilizing unselected variable sets and is especially important considering the increasing application of species distribution modeling across spatial and temporal barriers in conservation and management efforts whereby inaccurate predictions might have adverse effects,2016,0.684
Future risks of pest species under changing climatic conditions,most agricultural pests are poikilothermic species expected to respond to climate change currently they are a tremendous burden because of the high losses they inflict on crops and livestock smallholder farmers in developing countries of africa are likely to suffer more under these changes than farmers in the developed world because more severe climatic changes are projected in these areas african countries further have a lower ability to cope with impacts of climate change through the lack of suitable adapted management strategies and financial constraints in this study we are predicting current and future habitat suitability under changing climatic conditions for tuta absoluta ceratitis cosyra and bactrocera invadens three important insect pests that are common across some parts of africa and responsible for immense agricultural losses we use presence records from different sources and bioclimatic variables to predict their habitat suitability using the maximum entropy modelling approach we find that habitat suitability for b invadens c cosyra and t absoluta is partially increasing across the continent especially in those areas already overlapping with or close to most suitable sites under current climate conditions assuming a habitat suitability at three different threshold levels we assessed where each species is likely to be present under future climatic conditions and if this is likely to have an impact on productive agricultural areas our results can be used by african policy makers extensionists and farmers for agricultural adaptation measures to cope with the impacts of climate change,2016,0.352
Assessing future habitat availability for coastal lowland anurans in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest,abstractglobal warming is expected to cause several modifications to physical environments and sea level rise is a certain outcome however assessment of the potential impacts caused by sea level rise on biodiversity is still emerging therefore we assessed the combined impact of global warming and sea level rise on the potential distribution of 19 coastal lowland anurans in the biodiversity hotspot atlantic forest we applied a correlative species distribution model sdm bioclim and gis based spatial analyses we evaluated the extent of changes of potential distributions under extreme and moderate global warming scenarios as well as two extreme sea level rise scenarios our results suggest wide areas of suitable habitat for most species in the future however for 15 of these species the sdms predict massive losses of range extent as a result of a combination of global warming and sea level rise such observations highlight an immediate need to consider the potential effects of sea level rise in c,2016,0.223
A PLUGIN TO INTERFACE OPENMODELLER FROM QGIS FOR SPECIES' POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION MODELLING,this contribution describes the development of a plugin for the geographic information system qgis to interface the openmodeller software package the aim is to use openmodeller to generate speciesâ potential distribution models for various archaeological applications site catchment analysis for example since the usage of openmodellerâ s command line interface and configuration files can be a bit inconvenient an extension of the qgis user interface to handle these tasks in combination with the management of the geographic data was required the implementation was realized in python using pyqgis and pyqt the plugin in combination with qgis handles the tasks of managing geographical data data conversion generation of configuration files required by openmodeller and compilation of a project folder the plugin proved to be very helpful with the task of compiling project datasets and configuration files for multiple instances of species occurrence datasets and the overall handling of openmodeller in addition the plugin is easily extensible to take potential new requirements into account in the future,2016,0.17
Charles Davies Sherborn and the “Indexer’s Club”,the first few words of the title of this symposium are â œanchoring biodiversity informationâ in order to properly anchor anything for a long lasting future a solid foundation needs to have been laid for the zoological portion of biodiversity information that firm foundation is best exemplified in the works of charles davies sherborn this man like others of his ilk was intimately focused on indexing names this incredible focus was a life long passion for him and culminated in his 9500 page index animalium of over 400 000 names of animals this index represents not only one of the most prodigious efforts in publication by a single man and the single most important reference to names in zoology but a permanent legacy to the efforts of an indexer that proved to be an inspiration to many,2016,0.504
Reinforcing the foundations of ornithological nomenclature: Filling the gaps in Sherborn’s and Richmond’s historical legacy of bibliographic exploration,due to its public popularity ornithology has a huge corpus of scientific publication for a relatively small number of species although there are global checklists of currently recognised taxa there has been only limited mainly individual effort to build a nomenclatural database that the science of ornithology deserves this is especially true in relation to concise synonymies with the arrival of zoobank and the biodiversity heritage library the time has come to develop synonymies and to add fuller bibliographic detail to databases the preparation for both began at the start of the 20th century with extensive work by sherborn and richmond i discuss their legacy offer notes on significant work since then and provide suggestions for what remains to be done to make solid the foundations for ornithological nomenclature and taxonomy especially for synonymies ornithologists will need to collaborate much more and contribute to the digital infrastructure,2016,0.34
Weak agreement between the species conservation status assessments of the European habitats directive and red lists,public acceptance of conservation measures and measuring the effectiveness of conservation efforts essentially depends on the agreement among experts on the conservation status of species here we provide the first european union wide comparison of assessments of conservation status of species using two independent frameworks reports under the european habitats directive hd and red lists we compared the national and eu wide conservation status of species assessed for the two last hd reports 2001â 2006 2007â 12 with national 27 eu member states and european union red lists discrepancies in species conservation status assessments of red lists and the hd were substantial the average spearman correlation coefficient was 0 49 for the first and 0 47 for the second hd report for countries and 0 39 for the first and 0 45 for the second hd report for the whole eu in addition correlations differed widely between different eu member states with the national assessments of several european countries showing no relationship at all surprisingly many presumably well known species were assessed very differently moreover there was no evidence of any convergence between the red lists and hd reports over time on average red lists were more pessimistic about the conservation status of species than the hd reports these low agreements between the two methods raise doubts about the reliability and validity of these assessments and certainly call for a careful revision of the many divergent assessments,2016,0.732
Bombus occidentalis in Alaska and the need for future study (Hymenoptera: Apidae),pollinators are important for ecosystem health in alaska and across the world cameron et al 2011 while all members of this group are important the role of bumblebees as native pollinators has received considerable recent attention bumblebees are especially good at pollination due to their ability to buzz while collecting pollen and nectar from flowers cameron et al 2011 their tendency to be long distance foragers heinrich 1979 also makes them ecologically important they pollinate a wide variety of plants making them a valuable component of ecosystems throughout their range hatfield et al 2015 bumblebees usually are also among the first insects to pollinate plants that emerge and bloom in early spring heinrich 1979 they are more common than solitary bees in cooler habitats such as closed canopy boreal forest or alpine zones armbruster and guinn 1989 bumblebees are important to the success of many agricultural enterprises that are dependent on pollinators primarily for greenhouse crops williams et al 2012 pampell et al 2015 although agriculture is not a predominant business in alaska koch and strange 2012 bumblebees are the primary pollinators of many native berries used by alaskans,2016,0.179
"First record of egg sac predation on a wall crab spider Selenopidae (Araneae) by the wasp Camera lunavenatrix sp. n. (Ichneumonidae, Cryptinae)",we report the first record of egg sac predation on the wall crab spider selenops cocheleti by wasps of the genus camera ichneumonidae cryptinae with the description of a new species as well as biological information on the wasp and the spider host the rearing record and information presented herein are the first biological data for the genus,2016,0.479
Beyond climate: convergence in fast evolving sclerophylls in Cape and Australian Rhamnaceae predates the mediterranean climate,morphological convergence in mediterranean type ecosystems mtes has long been interpreted as adaptation to climatic similarities among the five mtes of the world here we challenge this model using the globally distributed rhamnaceae we collected functional trait data specific leaf area leaf area spinescence leaf phenology growth form and leaf margin type and biome data to test for trait convergence in mtes for models of trait evolution and ancestral state reconstruction and for the effect of traits on speciation and extinction rates using a phylogenetic framework we show that leaf functional traits evolve to three optima which correspond to a the edaphically specialized australian and cape mtes ac b the mediterranean type climates but edaphically normal chile california and mediterranean basin ccm and c the non mediterranean habitats we find that rhamnaceae in ccm are predominantly characterized by non sclerophylly the ancestral state in rhamnaceae and rhamnaceae in ac by sclerophylly these leaf character syndromes have evolved prior to mediterranean climates in mtes thereby failing to be adaptive to this selective regime however sclerophylly evolved contemporaneously with the transitions to ac and may therefore be an adaptation to nutrient poor soils the evolution of sclerophylly has contributed to increased diversification rates of pomaderreae in australia and phyliceae in the cape by reducing extinction rates and thereby facilitating evolutionary persistence the historical relatively stable conditions in ac are consistent with this persistence hypothesis synthesis in this study we integrate the fields of macroevolution and ecology and show that low extinction rates may not only account for the ecological but also for the floristic dominance of sclerophylly in the hyperdiverse australian and cape mediterranean type ecosystems,2016,0.116
Historical change and drivers of insect pest abundances in red clover seed production,plant feeding insects reduce yields substantially in all major crops despite considerable crop protection efforts a lack of long term monitoring data and insufficient ecological knowledge of pest insects limit our possibilities to characterize drivers of change in their abundances we demonstrate how a suite of complementary methods and data sources can be used to analyse historical shifts in pest abundance and species composition when continuous monitoring data for pest insects and their natural enemies are lacking we compared historic and current abundances of seed weevils protapion spp in red clover fields grown for seed in southernmost sweden using data from 60 fields 1935â 1937 and 53 fields 2008â 2011 respectively we found higher pest abundances in the current data and parasitism rates provided by wasps appeared to be lower in recent times compared with the 1930s a separate analysis of 1504 observations of the insect pest species made 1936â 2012 and reported into a public database showed that a formerly subdominant seed weevil species protapion trifolii l has now become the dominating pest species whereas protapion apricans hbst became relatively less common over time this shift correlated with increased spring temperatures in the study area finally we analysed if the proportion farmland in the surrounding landscape temperature precipitation and distance to nearest clover field in the previous year could explain pest abundances 2008â 2011 we found that fields with less precipitation that were embedded in landscapes with a high proportion of farmland at the 5km radius had higher pest abundances our results combined suggest that landscape scale changes in agricultural land use and increased spring temperatures both have contributed to the increased pest abundances observed 2008â 2011 compared to 1935â 1937 this study illustrates that a combination of approaches can compensate for the common situation when continuous long term monitoring data is lacking and improve our understanding of historic versus current insect pest abundances and the potential drivers of change,2016,0.677
Macrobenthic molluscs from a marine - lagoonal environmental transition in Lesvos Island (Greece),background this paper describes an occurence dataset also including numerical abundance and biomass data pertaining to the macrobenthic molluscan assemblages from a marine lagoonal environmental transition the study system was the soft substrate benthoscape of the area of the kalloni solar saltworks lesvos island greece specifically the study area extended from the infralittoral zone of the inner kalloni gulf marine habitat to the bottoms of the first two evaporation ponds of the kalloni solar saltworks lagoonal habitat bottom sediment samples 3 replicates were collected with a van veen grab sampler 0 1 m2 at four sampling sites along a 1 5 km long line transect that spanned the marine lagoonal environmental transition a total of four surveys were carried out seasonally in 2004 a total of 39 345 molluscan individuals were sorted out of the sediment samples and were identified to 71 species belonging to the gastropoda 36 bivalvia 34 and scaphopoda 1 classes numerical abundance and wet biomass with shells data are included in the dataset new information the dataset described in the present paper partially fills a significant gap in the scientific literature because ecological research of coastal lagoons has seldom explicitly considered the marine lagoonal habitats interface there are no openly accessible datasets pertaining to the particular structural component of the transitional waters benthoscapes of the mediterranean sea such datasets could prove valuable in the research of the structure and functioning of transitional waters benthoscapes the present dataset is available as a supplementary file suppl material 1 and can also be accessed at http ipt medobis eu resource r kalloni saltworks phd,2016,0.241
Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Data Imputation for Daily Rainfall Series in Homogeneous Zones,spatio temporal modelling is an area of increasing importance in which models and methods have often been developed to deal with specific applications in this study a spatio temporal model was used to estimate daily rainfall data rainfall records from several weather stations obtained from the agritempo system for two climatic homogeneous zones were used rainfall values obtained for two fixed dates january 1 and may 1 2012 using the spatio temporal model were compared with the geostatisticals techniques of ordinary kriging and ordinary cokriging with altitude as auxiliary variable the spatio temporal model was more than 17 better at producing estimates of daily precipitation compared to kriging and cokriging in the first zone and more than 18 in the second zone the spatio temporal model proved to be a versatile technique adapting to different seasons and dates,2016,0.105
Taxonaut: an application software for comparative display of multiple taxonomies with a use case of GBIF Species API,background the species api of the global biodiversity information facility gbif provides public access to taxonomic data aggregated from multiple data sources each data source follows its own classification which can be inconsistent with classifications from other sources even with a reference classification e g the gbif backbone taxonomy a comprehensive method to compare classifications in the data aggregation is essential especially for non expert users new information a java application was developed to compare multiple taxonomies graphically using classification data acquired from gbifâ s checklistbank via the gbif species api it uses a table to display taxonomies where each column represents a taxonomy under comparison with an aligner column to organise taxa by name each cell contains the name of a taxon if the classification in that column contains the name each column also has a cell showing the hierarchy of the taxonomy by a folder metaphor where taxa are aligned and synchronised in the aligner column a set of those comparative tables shows taxa categorised by relationship between taxonomies the result set is also available as tables in an excel format file,2016,0.357
Taxonomic revision of Stigmatomma Roger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the Malagasy region,in this study we present the first taxonomic revision of the ant genus stigmatomma in the malagasy biogeographic region reâ describe the previously known s besucheti baroni urbani and describe seven new species to science s bolabola sp n s irayhady sp n s janovitsika sp n s liebe sp n s roahady sp n s sakalava sp n and s tsyhady sp n the revision is based on the worker caste but we provide brief descriptions of gynes and males for some species species descriptions diagnosis character discussion identiï cation key and glossary are illustrated with 360 high quality montage and sem images the distribution of stigmatomma species in madagascar are mapped and discussed within the context of the islandâ s biomes and ecoregions we also discuss how some morphometric variables describe the diï erences among the species in the bioregion open science is supported by providing access to r scripts raw measurement data and all specimen data used all specimens used in this study were given unique identifies and holotypes were imaged specimens and images are made accessible on antweb org,2016,0.887
Pine pest aphids of the genus Eulachnus (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Lachninae): how far can their range extend?,species of the aphid genus eulachnus hemiptera aphididae associated with pine trees are an example of insects reported as rare over their native geographical range in europe and serious pine pests far from their natural distribution to predict the risk of invasion of spotted pine aphid eulachnus agilis kaltenbach 1843 green pine aphid eulachnus brevipilosus bã rner 1940 and narrow brown pine aphid eulachnus rileyi williams 1911 on a global scale ecological niche modelling was applied we used the maximum entropy model based on associations between unique occurrence localities and a set of environmental variables we obtained models of potentially suitable habitats based on climatic variables and distribution of host plants suggesting that favourable conditions for each species may be present on every continent however e agilis and e rileyi appear to be potentially the most widespread species in europe models showed that the potential distribution of the representatives of the genus eulachnus overlapped with that of the host plants in places where they have been introduced these aphid species have readily adapted to indigenous or introduced pines including trees grown commercially for timber a jackknife test indicated that annual mean temperature and mean temperature of the coldest quarter were the most important environmental variables restricting the expansion of the species under investigation moreover the most important factor in the decrease in population density of the feeding aphids is the rainy season and on a smaller scale the presence of their natural enemies,2016,0.435
Current Understanding of Acute Bovine Liver Disease in Australia,acute bovine liver disease abld is a hepatotoxicity principally of cattle which occurs in southern regions of australia severely affected animals undergo rapid clinical progression with mortalities often occurring prior to the recognition of clinical signs less severely affected animals develop photosensitization and a proportion can develop liver failure the characteristic histopathological lesion in acute fatal cases is severe with acute necrosis of periportal hepatocytes with hemorrhage into the necrotic areas currently there are a small number of toxins that are known to cause periportal necrosis in cattle although none of these have so far been linked to abld furthermore abld has frequently been associated with the presence of rough dogâ s tail grass cynosurus echinatus and drechslera spp fungi in the pasture system but it is currently unknown if these are etiological factors much of the knowledge about abld is contained within case reports with very little experimental research investigating the specific cause s this review provides an overview of the current and most recently published knowledge of abld it also draws on wider research and unpublished reports to suggest possible fungi and mycotoxins that may give rise to abld,2016,0.478
"Despite phylogenetic effects, C3–C4 lineages bridge the ecological gap to C4 photosynthesis",c4 photosynthesis is a physiological innovation involving several anatomical and biochemical components that emerged recurrently in flowering plants this complex trait evolved via a series of physiological intermediates broadly termed â c3â c4â which have been widely studied to understand c4 origins while this research program has focused on biochemistry physiology and anatomy the ecology of these intermediates remains largely unexplored here we use global occurrence data and local habitat descriptions to characterize the niches of multiple c3â c4 lineages as well as their close c3 and c4 relatives while c3â c4 taxa tend to occur in warm climates their abiotic niches are spread along other dimensions making it impossible to define a universal c3â c4 niche phylogeny based comparisons suggest that despite shifts associated with photosynthetic types the precipitation component of the c3â c4 niche is particularly lineage specific being highly correlated with that of closely related c3 and c4 taxa our large scale analyses suggest that c3â c4 lineages converged toward warm habitats which may have facilitated the transition to c4 photosynthesis effectively bridging the ecological gap between c3 and c4 plants the intermediates retained some precipitation aspects of their c3 ancestorsâ habitat and likely transmitted them to their c4 descendants contributing to the diversity among c4 lineages seen today,2016,0.155
Niche expansion and temperature sensitivity of tropical African montane forests,aim climate and land use change will have a dramatic impact on future ecosystems through alterations to species ranges and community composition when forming conservation strategies correlative species distribution models are often created to assess risks for individual species these models are based on the assumption of climatic equilibrium such that the modern range is representative of the full range of conditions under which species could thrive however the palaeo ecological record illustrates examples of disequilibrium in species today and recent studies suggest that many species could occur in much broader climatic settings than previously thought montane ecosystems are thought to be at disproportionate risk due to temperature sensitivity and restricted geographical ranges however in the afrotropics the palaeo ecological record shows that montane forest taxa expanded into the lowlands numerous times suggesting a possible tolerance to warm temperatures location africa methods we integrate palaeo ecological and palaeo climatic data in order to compare climate conditions in which species are currently found with those in the past we use species distribution models to construct potential modern ranges for afromontane species based on modern distributions and distributions in the palaeo ecological record in order to evaluate the equilibrium of species ranges results we show that many afromontane trees have occupied warmer climates in the past which suggests that the current low elevation boundaries are not set by climate interestingly the species with the largest disequilibrium between palaeo and modern distributions are those whose modern distributions show the least temperature sensitivity mapping of species potential ranges based on modern and palaeo distributions clearly shows that suitable climate conditions exist today in the lowlands for less temperature sensitive species main conclusions these results imply that the current range of these forest trees does not necessarily inform risk from climatic change and that human land use may be the major pressure for many species in the future,2016,0.987
"A review and phylogeny of Scarabaeine dung beetle fossils (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae), with the description of two Canthochilum species from Dominican amber",despite the increasing rate of systematic research on scarabaeine dung beetles coleoptera scarabaeidae scarabaeinae their fossil record has remained largely unrevised in this paper we review all 33 named scarabaeine fossils and describe two new species from dominican amber canthochilum alleni sp n canthochilum philipsivieorum sp n we provide a catalogue of all fossil scarabaeinae and evaluate their assignment to this subfamily based primarily on the original descriptions but also where possible by examining the type specimens we suggest that only 21 fossil taxa can be reliably assigned to the scarabaeinae while the remaining 14 should be treated as doubtful scarabaeinae the doubtful scarabaeines include the two oldest dung beetle fossils known from the cretaceous and we suggest excluding them from any assessments of the minimum age of scarabaeine dung beetles the earliest reliably described scarabaeine fossil appears to be lobateuchus parisii known from oise amber france which shifts the minimum age of the scarabaeinae to the eocene 53 ma we scored the best preserved fossils namely lobateuchus and the two canthochilum species described herein into the character matrix used in a recent morphology based study of dung beetles and then inferred their phylogenetic relationships with bayesian and parsimony methods all analyses yielded consistent phylogenies where the two fossil canthochilum are placed in a clade with the extant species of canthochilum and lobateuchus is recovered in a clade with the extant genera ateuchus and aphengium additionally we evaluated the distribution of dung beetle fossils in the light of current global dung beetle phylogenetic hypotheses geological time and biogeography the presence of only extant genera in the late oligocene and all later records suggests that the main present day dung beetle lineages had already been established by the late oligoceneâ mid miocene,2016,0.514
The strong influence of collection bias on biodiversity knowledge shortfalls of Brazilian terrestrial biodiversity,aim the knowledge of biodiversity facets such as species composition distribution and ecological niche is fundamental for the construction of biogeographic hypotheses and conservation strategies however the knowledge on these facets is affected by major shortfalls which are even more pronounced in the tropics this study aims to evaluate the effect of sampling bias and variation in collection effort on linnean wallacean and hutchinsonian shortfalls and diversity measures as species richness endemism and beta diversity location brazil methods we have built a database with over 1 5 million records of arthropods vertebrates and angiosperms of brazil based on specimens deposited in scientific collections and on the taxonomic literature we used null models to test the collection bias regarding the proximity to access routes we also tested the influence of sampling effort on diversity measures by regression models to investigate the wallacean shortfall we modelled the geographic distribution of over 4000 species and compared their observed distribution with models to quantify the hutchinsonian shortfall we used environmental euclidean distance of the records to identify regions with poorly sampled environmental conditions to estimate the linnean shortfall we measured the similarity of species composition between regions close to and far from access routes results we demonstrated that despite the differences in sampling effort the strong collection bias affects all taxonomic groups equally generating a pattern of spatially biased sampling effort this collection pattern contributes greatly to the biodiversity knowledge shortfalls which directly affects the knowledge on the distribution patterns of diversity main conclusions the knowledge on species richness species composition and endemism in the brazilian biodiversity is strongly biased spatially despite differences in sampling effort for each taxonomic group roadside bias affected them equally species composition similarity decreased with the distance from access routes suggesting collection surveys at sites far from roads could increase the probability of sampling new geographic records or new species,2016,0.927
"Risk factors for neonatal intensive care unit admission in Amman, Jordan",a better understanding of risk factors for neonatal intensive care unit nicu admission can inform interventions to improve neonatal survival this study aimed to describe a population of newborns admitted to a nicu in amman jordan and compare them with newborns discharged to home newborns born within 96 hours at al bashir hospital were enrolled from february 2010 to june 2011 demographic and clinical data were collected for mothers and newborns of 5466 enrolled neonates 373 6 8 were admitted to the nicu the median gestational age of nicu infants was 36 weeks median birth weight was 2 2 kg and 49 5 were delivered by non elective caesarean section lower gestational age lower birth weight delivery by caesarean section and birth in the month of may were statistically significant risk factors for nicu admission risk factors for nicu admission were consistent with other populations worldwide however median gestational age and birth weight were higher than in developed countries,2016,0.23
Towards a Global Names Architecture: The future of indexing scientific names,for more than 250 years the taxonomic enterprise has remained almost unchanged certainly the tools of the trade have improved months long journeys aboard sailing ships have been reduced to hours aboard jet airplanes advanced technology allows humans to access environments that were once utterly inaccessible gps has replaced crude maps digital hi resolution imagery provides far more accurate renderings of organisms that even the best commissioned artists of a century ago and primitive candle lit microscopes have been replaced by an array of technologies ranging from scanning electron microscopy to dna sequencing but the basic paradigm remains the same perhaps the most revolutionary change of all â which we are still in the midst of and which has not yet been fully realized â is the means by which taxonomists manage and communicate the information of their trade the rapid evolution in recent decades of computer database management software and of information dissemination via the internet have both dramatically improved the potential for streamlining the entire taxonomic process unfortunately the potential still largely exceeds the reality the vast majority of taxonomic information is either not yet digitized or digitized in a form that does not allow direct and easy access moreover the information that is easily accessed in digital form is not yet seamlessly interconnected in an effort to bring reality closer to potential a loose affiliation of major taxonomic resources including gbif the encyclopedia of life nbii catalog of life itis ipni iczn index fungorum and many others have been crafting a â œglobal names architectureâ gna the intention of the gna is not to replace any of the existing taxonomic data initiatives but rather to serve as a dynamic index to interconnect them in a way that streamlines the entire taxonomic enterprise from gathering specimens in the field to publication of new taxa and related data,2016,0.347
Long-term monitoring reveals a highly structured interspecific variability in climatic control of sporocarp production,understanding factors triggering fungal sporocarp productivity responses to climate at an individual species level is critical to predicting future species composition and abundance under global climate change scenarios different climatic responses at a species level may lead to shifts in species turnover and in the relative contributions of different species which may in turn have strong impacts on community functional attributes we used sporocarp production data compiled over 15 years of weekly sampling during the mushroom fruiting season in a continental mediterranean climate pine forest to estimate i the interspecific variability on the climatic factors constraining fungal sporocarp productivity ii the relationship of this variability linked to mushroom phenology and trophic guilds and iii the impact of different species responses on sporocarp community composition and diversity under projected climate change scenarios fungal fruitbody production was closely correlated with climatic conditions throughout the year indicating that sporocarp development may be controlled by processes occurring well before the fruiting season the large interspecific variability in the climatic factors controlling sporocarp production was highly structured with differences inlength of the temporal window controlling this process and the timing of the summer autumn rainfall climatic signal being the most relevant factors climatic response was unrelated to fungal phenology or trophic guild when individual models are applied to future climate scenarios 2021â 2080 they predict a decrease in total sporocarp productivity which agrees with community based models as well as a shift in community composition leading to less species diverse assemblages,2016,0.634
New Records of Cold-Water Corals from Korea,two cold water coral taxa octocorallia in the class anthozoa and stylasteridae in the class hydrozoa were identified deep water samples were collected in fishing nets at depths ranging between 20 and 200 m along the coasts of the east sea in korea from 1976 to 1993 the two species found in this study represent new records for korea paragorgia arborea linnaeus 1758 in the class anthozoa and stylaster profundiporus broch 1936 in the class hydrozoa two families paragorgiidae and stylasteridae are also newly recorded in korea furthermore the species name of another cold water gorgonian species primnoa pacifica kinoshita 1907 in the family primnoidae is amended in this report the two newly recorded cold water coral species from korea are described in detail based on their morphological characteristics paragorgia arborea is characterized by its growth form medulla and cortex zooid dimorphism canal system and spicule composition stylaster profundiporus is distinguished by its external skeletal characteristics such as the coordination of dactylopores and gastropores presence or absence of gastrostyles and dactylostyles cyclosystem orientation ampullar position gastropore tube shape and coenosteal texture,2016,0.912
"Venturiella sinensis (Erpodiaceae, Bryophyta), a new species and a new family for the moss flora of Russia",venturiella sinensis venturi mã ll hal the species with temperate amphipacific distribution was recently found on mt sinyaya the east manchurian mountains south of primorskij territory the russian far east the description and illustrations of the species based on the russian specimen are provided its ecology and distribution are considered though the present record of the species is not surprising it provides a remarkable extension of the russian moss flora as the first representative of the generally tropic family erpodiaceae the manchurian mountains represent the easternmost distribution limit of several species of vascular plants and liverworts with generally southern distribution,2016,0.713
DNA barcoding and taxonomy: dark taxa and dark texts,both classical taxonomy and dna barcoding are engaged in the task of digitizing the living world much of the taxonomic literature remains undigitized the rise of open access publishing this century and the freeing of older literature from the shackles of copyright have greatly increased the online availability of taxonomic descriptions but much of the literature of the mid to late twentieth century remains offline â dark textsâ dna barcoding is generating a wealth of computable data that in many ways are much easier to work with than classical taxonomic descriptions but many of the sequences are not identified to species level these â dark taxaâ hamper the classical method of integrating biodiversity data using shared taxonomic names voucher specimens are a potential common currency of both the taxonomic literature and sequence databases and could be used to help link names literature and sequences an obstacle to this approach is the lack of stable resolvable specimen identifiers the paper concludes with an appeal for a global â digital dashboardâ to assess the extent to which biodiversity data are available online,2016,0.222
Habitat specificity of selected grassland fungi in Norway,132 taxa of fungi regularly found in semi natural grasslands from the genera camaro phyllopsis clavaria clavulinopsis dermo loma entoloma geoglossum hygrocybe microglossum porpoloma ramariopsis and trichoglossum were selected their habitat specificity was investigated based on 39818 records from norway approximately 80 of the records were from seminatural grasslands ca 10 from other open habitats like parks gardens and road verges rich fens coastal heaths open rocks with shallow soil waterfall meadows scree meadows and alpine habitats while 13 were found in different forest types some records had more than one habitat type the sum therefore exceeds 100 of all records in forests at least 85 were from rich types both deciduous and coni ferous forests while relatively few were from poor forests differences in habitat specificity between the taxa were analyzed 70 taxa 53 had less than 10 of their records in forests while 23 17 had more than 20 of their records in forests the taxa which had the highest frequency in forests in norway are mostly the same as the most common species in forests in sweden,2016,0.524
A description of the larva of Mesopodagrion tibetanum australe (Odonata: “Megapodagrionidae”),the larva of the genus mesopodagrion was identified with the help of dna barcoding and described for the first time the larvae have flat horizontal gills resembling those of argiolestidae but the adults lack setae on the shaft of the genital ligula molecular data are shown to be useful and necessary in larval identification and should be adopted as a standard tool in future studies,2016,0.418
Parasitism of Hymenoepimecis manauara Pádua &amp;amp; Oliveira (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae) on Leucauge henryi Mello-Leitão (Araneae: Tetragnathidae) in Brazilian Amazonian,background a parasitoid wasp hymenoepimecis manauara pã dua oliveira 2015 was recorded parasitizing for the first time a female spider of leucauge henryi mello leitã o 1940 in the amazon rainforest brazil images description of the cocoon and comments about this interaction were added new information first record of hymenoepimecis manauara parasitizing leucauge henryi with description of cocoon and comments about this interaction,2016,0.363
"Modeling suitable habitat of invasive red lionfish Pterois volitans (Linnaeus, 1758) in North and South America’s coastal waters",we used two common correlative species distribution models to predict suitable habitat of invasive red lionfish pterois volitans linnaeus 1758 in the western atlantic and eastern pacific oceans the generalized linear model glm and the maximum entropy maxent model were applied using the software for assisted habitat modeling we compared models developed using native oc currences using non native occur rences and using both native and non native occurrences models were trained using occurrence data collected before 2010 and evaluated wit h occurrence data collected from the invaded range during or after 2010 we consider ed a total of 22 marine environmental variables models built with non native only or both native and non native occurrence data outperformed those that used only native occurrences evaluation metrics bas ed on the independent test data were highest for models that used both native and non native occurrences bathymetry was the strongest en vironmental predictor for all models and showed increasing suitability as oc ean floor depth decreased with salinity ranking the second str ongest predictor for models that used native and both native and non native occurrences indicating low habitat suitability for salinities 30 our model results also suggest that red lionfish could continue to invade southern latitudes in the western atlantic ocean and may establish localized populations in the eastern pacific ocean we reiterate the importance in the choice of the training data source native non native or native non native used to develop correlative species distributio n models for invasive species,2016,0.657
Predicting the global incidence of seed desiccation sensitivity,1 the ability of seeds to tolerate desiccation plays an important role in plant regeneration ecology globally the majority of species produce desiccation tolerant orthodox seeds whilst comparatively few produce desiccation sensitive recalcitrant seeds that are unable to survive dehydration the trait has important implications for species conservation as desiccation sensitive species cannot be conserved using traditional seed banking techniques additionally these species may be less resilient to the increases in droughts predicted for some regions under climate change scenarios 2 the best available resource on seed desiccation tolerance is the royal botanic gardens kew s seed information database this database contains seed desiccation sensitivity data for over 18 000 taxa approximately 3 of which have desiccation sensitive seeds however this database is likely biased towards desiccation tolerant species previous attempts to estimate the proportion of seed plants with desiccation sensitive seeds have ranged from 7 to 50 here we aimed to overcome sampling bias to derive a best estimate for the proportion of seed plants with desiccation sensitive seeds based on current data 3 we used a recently developed method based on taxonomic relatedness to account for sampling bias and estimate the proportion of seed plants with desiccation sensitive seeds as a comparison given that seed desiccation sensitivity is strongly related to habitat we repeated our analyses using habitat as a basis 4 the predictions from our taxonomy based models ranged between estimates of 7 5 and 19 6 of the world s seed plant species with desiccation sensitive seeds depending on model type whilst the habitat based models suggested a value of approximately 8 our evidence suggests that based on current data the best estimate of the proportion of species with desiccation sensitive seeds is likely to be approximately 8 tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests had the highest incidence of seed desiccation sensitivity where an estimated 18 5 of the seed plant flora possessed the trait 5 synthesis alongside our estimation of the numbers of species with desiccation sensitive seeds we provide data on taxa and habitats where this trait may be most prevalent these findings can be used to support conservation planning particularly with respect to providing decision support for in and ex situ conservation techniques,2016,0.137
Is plant collecting in Germany coming to an end?,abstract we analysed plant collecting in germany between 1826 and 2014 by counting specimens of common rare and invasive species deposited in the herbaria of munich during that period plant collecting increased in the late 1940s and continued until the mid 1980s but has since declined to levels similar to 1900 in spite of the decline in collecting the number of specimens of invasive species has strongly increased the only other attempt to analyse botanical collecting in a large european region an analysis of botanical recording in the british isles 1836 to 1988 did not find a decline by the mid 1980s for the united states an analysis of collecting between the 1890s and 1999 found that it peaked in the 1930s museum time series representing the same species collected at different times have been integral to identifying temporal responses to environmental change for example changed flowering times in response to an earlier onset of spring and the change of a region s floristic composition a,2016,0.537
"Integrating morphology, phylogeography, and ecological niche modeling to explore population differentiation in North African Common Chaffinches",diagnosing distinct evolutionary taxa requires careful assessment of genetic morphological ecological and behavioral variation within and among populations in this study data on phenotype mensural and plumage coloration genotype mitochondrial dna control region sequences and distributional projections derived from ecological niche models were used to investigate population differentiation of north african common chaffinches results showed substantial genetic variation among populations mostly 56 distributed between libyan populations and other north african populations rather than within populations isolation by distance analysis indicated severely restricted gene flow between populations historical demographic analyses indicate that population expansion began before the last glacial maximum which is consistent with ecological niche model paleoprojections interestingly differentiation of the libyan population fringilla coelebs harterti apparently did not take place under the last glacial conditions hence although its taxonomic status must await robust testing using multilocus dna data this population is an important element in the conservation of bird diversity in north africa,2016,0.808
"Assessing the importance of four sandfly species (Diptera: Psychodidae) as vectors of Leishmania mexicana in Campeche, Mexico.",localized cutaneous leishmaniasis represents a public health problem in many areas of mexico especially in the yucatan peninsula an understanding of vector ecology and bionomics is of great importance in evaluations of the transmission dynamics of leishmania parasites a field study was conducted in the county of calakmul state of campeche during the period from november 2006 to march 2007 phlebotomine sandfly vectors were sampled using centers for disease control light traps baited disney traps and shannon traps a total of 3374 specimens were captured in the two villages of once de mayo 93 8 and arroyo negro 6 1 in once de mayo the most abundant species were psathyromyia shannoni lutzomyia cruciata bichromomyia olmeca olmeca and psychodopygus panamensis all diptera psychodidae the shannon trap was by far the most efficient method of collection the infection rate as determined by leishmania mexicana specific polymerase chain reaction was 0 3 in once de mayo and infected sandflies included psy panamensis b o olmeca and psa shannoni there were significant differences in human biting rates across sandfly species and month of sampling ecological niche modelling analyses showed an overall overlap of 39 1 for the four species in the whole state of campeche in addition the finding of nine vector reservoir pairs indicates a potential interaction the roles of the various sandfly vectors in calakmul are discussed,2016,0.716
Soybean vein necrosis virus: Impacts of infection on yield loss and seed quality and expansion of plant host range,soybean vein necrosis virus svnv rapidly became a widespread soybean glycine max virus within a few years of its initial confirmation in 2008 the economic impact of soybean vein necrosis svn disease remains unknown soybean is a crop of global importance with nearly 4 billion bushels of soybeans produced in the united states in 2014 this study was designed to pursue two main questions is there any yield loss or change in seed quality associated with svn and are there horticultural or cover crop species that could be serving as sources of svnv inoculum,2016,0.582
The collection of birds from São Tomé and Príncipe at the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical of the University of Lisbon (Portugal),the former instituto de investigaã ã o cientã fica tropical iict lisbon portugal recently integrated into the university of lisbon gathers important natural history collections from portuguese speaking african countries in this study we describe the bird collection from the democratic republic of sã o tomã and prã ncipe which was fully taxonomically checked and georeferenced the iict bird collection contains 5598 specimens of which 559 are from sã o tomã and prã ncipe representing 85 taxa including 19 endemic species and 13 endemic subspecies of birds the specimens were collected between 1946 and 1973 although 43 of the records are from 1954 and 45 are from 1970 the geographic distribution of samples covers the whole territory with a higher number of records from sã o tomã than from prã ncipe the districts with highest number of records are paguã equivalent to prã ncipe island and ã gua grande and mã zochi on sã o tomã despite the relatively low number of specimens per taxon the importance of the collection is considerable due to the high number of endemic and threatened species represented furthermore it adds valuable information to the gbif network especially for a country whose two islands are each an endemic bird area and for which substantial gaps in ornithological knowledge remain,2016,0.77
Data Policy Recommendations for Biodiversity Data. EU BON Project Report,there is a strong need for a comprehensive coherent and consistent data policy in europe to increase interoperability of data and to make its reuse both easy and legal available single recommendations guidelines on different topics need to be processed structured and unified within the context of the eu bon project a team from the eu bon partners from museum fã r naturkunde berlin plazi and pensoft has prepared this report to be used as a part of the data publishing guidelines and recommendations in the eu bon biodiversity portal the document deals with the issues i mobilizing biodiversity data ii removing legal obstacles iii changing attitudes iv data policy recommendations and is addressed to legislators researchers research institutions data aggregators funders and publishers,2016,0.242
"Species richness, community composition, and species distribution patterns in Aleutian plants",botanical collecting efforts in alaska have largely concentrated on easily accessible highways river corridors near shore environments and hub communities huettmann ickert bond 2016 even within well collected areas certain habitats such as wetlands are often left under collected lipkin parker 1995 lichvar et al 1997 we have comparatively few collections from remote areas of alaska due to the difficulties assessing these regions although alaska represents 17 5 of the u s a s land area collection records from alaska in the global biodiversity information facility represent only 1 2 gbif http www gbif org accessed may 2016 this averages to approximately 3 5 specimens per square mile for alaska while the u s a averages 52 5 specimens square mile the aleutian islands an island chain extending in an arc west of the alaska peninsula runs between north america and eastern russia are some of the most remote areas of alaska the chain is known for its fierce storms and near constant wind fog and precipitation which make field conditions difficult in addition accessing the islands is expensive as there are no commercial flights other than to unalaska and adak,2016,0.544
A Taxonomy of Open Government Data Research Areas and Topics,abstractthe opening of government data in order to have both social and economic value generated from them has attracted the attention and interest of both researchers and practitioners from various disciplines such as information systems management sciences political and social sciences and law despite the rapid growth of this multidisciplinary research domain which has led to the emergence and continuous evolution of technologies and management approaches for open government data ogd a detailed analysis of the specific areas and topics of this research is still missing in this paper a detailed taxonomy of research areas and corresponding research topics of the ogd domain is presented it includes four main research areas odg management policies infrastructures interoperability and usage value which are further analysed into 35 research topics an important advantage of this taxonomy beyond its high level of detail is that it has been developed through extraction and combination o,2016,0.064
Distribución actual y potencial de especies leñosas alimenticias en África para la formulación de estrategias de conservación,ecological niche models have a wide range of biological applications and they are useful tools to support conservation decision making in this study was created a current distribution model and a climate change assessment model of four vegetal species valued for their ability to provide food even in extreme environment conditions adansonia digitata balanites aegyptiaca boscia senegalensis y ziziphus mauritiana in order to build these models two resources are needed presence records and climatic variables these variables must lack of correlation and colinearity and have the greatest deviance as possible the species current habitat model was generated with maxent a software based on the maximum entropy approach which takes as inputs plants occurrence bias free variables and the suitable number of background points for the study area extent the results assessment prove the model efficiency auc minimum value was 0 926 which indicates a great classification between presence absence and the smallest regularized training gain was 1 358 four times bigger than absenceâ s showing a suitable approach to presence cluster,2016,0.121
"Rescuing biogeographic legacy data: The &quot;Thor&quot; Expedition, a historical oceanographic expedition to the Mediterranean Sea",background this article describes the digitization of a series of historical datasets based î n the reports of the 1908â 1910 danish oceanographical expeditions to the mediterranean and adjacent seas all station and sampling metadata as well as biodiversity data regarding calcareous rhodophytes pelagic polychaetes and fish families engraulidae and clupeidae obtained during these expeditions were digitized within the activities of the lifewatchgreece research î nfrastructure project and presented in the present paper the aim was to safeguard public data availability by using an open access infrastructure and to prevent potential loss of valuable historical data on the mediterranean marine biodiversity new information the datasets digitized here cover 2 043 samples taken at 567 stations during a time period from 1904 to 1930 in the mediterranean and adjacent seas the samples resulted in 1 588 occurrence records of pelagic polychaetes fish clupeiformes and calcareous algae rhodophyta in addition basic environmental data e g sea surface temperature salinity as well as meterological conditions are included for most sampling events in addition to the description of the digitized datasets a detailed description of the problems encountered during the digitization of this historical dataset and a discussion on the value of such data are provided,2016,0.087
Making eco logic and models work,dynamical ecosystem models are important tools that can help ecologists understand complex systems and turn understanding into predictions of how these systems respond to external changes this thesis revolves around pclake an integrated ecosystem model of shallow lakes that is used by both scientists and water quality managers to understand and predict eutrophication effects in shallow lake ecosystems shallow lakes provide some of the clearest examples of alternative stable states in natural systems pclake can be used to calculate the critical nutrient loading that is the nutrient loading where an abrupt regime shift occurs from a clear aquatic plant dominated state to a turbid phytoplankton dominated state or vice versa four different aspects of modelling with pclake are addressed in this thesis 1 making the model better accessible for the modelling community 2 improving the model 3 developing scientific theory and 4 exploring new applications for water quality management,2016,0.022
"Additions to the Fern Flora of the Trus Madi Range, Sabah, Malaysia",this paper reports the addition of seven species of ferns to the flora of the trus m adi ra nge leptochilus cf decurrens bl is reported as new to sabah these new records are among the 72 species of ferns collected during an ecological study at the northwestern part of mount trus madi in the tambunan district with these additions the number of ferns recorded in the trus m adi range stands at 1 79 species in 76 genera and 23 families,2016,0.697
Phytochemistry and pharmacology of the genus Drypetes: A review,aims traditional medicinal use of species of the genus drypetes is widespread in the tropical regions the aim of this review is to systematically appraise the literature available to date on phytochemistry ethnopharmacology toxicology and bioactivity in vitro and in vivo of crude extracts and purified compounds ethnopharmacological relevance plants of the genus drypetes putranjivaceae are used in the subsaharan african and asian traditional medicines to treat a multitude of disorders like dysentery gonorrhoea malaria rheumatism sinusitis tumours as well as for the treatment of wounds headache urethral problems fever in young children typhoid and several other ailments some drypetes species are used to protect food against pests as an aphrodisiac a stimulant depressant a rodenticide and a fish poison against insect bites to induce conception and for general healing this review deals with updated information on the ethnobotany phytochemistry and biological activities of ethnomedicinally important drypetes species in order to provide an input for the future research opportunities methods an extensive review of the literature available in various recognized databases e g google scholar pubmed science direct scifinder web of science www theplantlist org and www gbif org as well as the herbier national du cameroun yaoundã and botanic gardens of limbe databases on the uses and bioactivity of various species of the drypetes was undertaken results the literature provided information on ethnopharmacological uses of the subsaharan african and asian species of the genus drypetes e g drypetes aubrã villii d capillipes d chevalieri d gerrardii d gossweileri d ivorensis d klainei d natalensis d pellegrini all endemic to africa and d roxburghii asian species for the treatment of multiple disorders from a total of 19 species more than 140 compounds including diterpenes sesquiterpenes triterpenes friedelane oleanane lupane and hopane type flavonoids lignans phenylpropanoids and steroids as well as some thiocyanates were isolated several crude extracts of these plants and isolated compounds displayed significant analgesic anthelmintic antidiabetic anti emetic anti inflammatory antioxidant antiparasitic central nervous system depressant cytotoxic and insecticidal activities both in vitro and in vivo some toxicities associated with the stem bark seed and leaf extracts of d roxburghii and the flavonoid amentoflavone isolated from the stem extract of d littoralis as well as d gerrardii were confirmed in the animal models and in the rat skeletal myoblast cells assays as a consequence traditional medicine from this genus should in future be applied with care conclusions plants of this genus have offered bioactive samples both from crude extracts and pure compounds partly validating their effectivity in traditional medicine however most of the available scientific litteratures lacks information on relevant doses duration of the treatment storage conditions and positive controls for examining bioefficacy of extract and its active compounds additional toxicological studies on the species used in local pharmacopeia are urgently needed to guarantee safe application due to higth toxicity of some crude extracts interestingly this review also reports 10 pimarane dinorditerpenoids structures with the aromatic ring c isolated from the species collected in asia drypetes littoralis taiwan d perreticulata china and in africa d gerrardii kenya d gossweileri cameroon these compounds might turn out to be good candidates for chemotaxonomic markers of the genus,2016,0.586
"Linking Earth Observation and taxonomic, structural and functional biodiversity: Local to ecosystem perspectives",impacts of human civilization on ecosystems threaten global biodiversity in a changing environment traditional in situ approaches to biodiversity monitoring have made significant steps forward to quantify and evaluate bd at many scales but still these methods are limited to comparatively small areas earth observation eo techniques may provide a solution to overcome this shortcoming by measuring entities of interest at different spatial and temporal scales this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the role of eo to detect describe explain predict and assess biodiversity here we focus on three main aspects related to biodiversity ∠taxonomic diversity functional diversity and structural diversity which integrate different levels of organization ∠molecular genetic individual species populations communities biomes ecosystems and landscapes in particular we discuss the recording of taxonomic elements of biodiversity through the identification of animal and plant species we highlight the importance of the spectral traits st and spectral trait variations stv concept for eo based biodiversity research furthermore we provide examples of spectral traits spectral trait variations used in eo applications for quantifying taxonomic diversity functional diversity and structural diversity we discuss the use of eo to monitor biodiversity and habitat quality using different remote sensing techniques finally we suggest specifically important steps for a better integration of eo in biodiversity research eo methods represent an affordable repeatable and comparable method for measuring describing explaining and modelling taxonomic functional and structural diversity upcoming sensor developments will provide opportunities to quantify spectral traits currently not detectable with eo and will surely help to describe biodiversity in more detail therefore new concepts are needed to tightly integrate eo sensor networks with the identification of biodiversity this will mean taking completely new directions in the future to link complex large data different approaches and models,2016,0.035
A Review of the North American Halophyte Suaeda linearis (Ell.) Moq.,suaeda linearis ell moq is a new world temperate subtropical and tropical maritime species that typically occurs 1 0â 1 5 m above the mean high tide mark it is a facultative annual that occurs on saturated substrates consisting of unconsolidated sand shell fragments and slightly elevated saline clays and sandy clays also known as sea blite it is found in salinity conditions ranging from 10 to 50 parts per thousand sexual reproduction is the only mechanism of reproduction seed production is prolific and seed banks are well supplied with this species seeds are dimorphic and germination is high in both full sun and in shaded conditions,2016,0.543
Combining trade data and niche modelling improves predictions of the origin and distribution of non-native European populations of a globally invasive species,aim although propagule pressure and environmental constraints are among the most important factors determining invasion success studies considering both factors simultaneously are scarce moreover while recent evidence suggests that the environmental requirements of individuals from different geographical ranges may be different the role of propagule origin in invasions has been largely overlooked our aim was to disentangle the relative role of niche requirements propagule origin and propagule pressure on the distribution of an invasive bird species location europe asia and africa methods we used species distribution models niche and deviance partitioning analyses to investigate the relative roles of propagule pressure international trade origin of individuals asian or african and environmental constraints in determining the distribution of invasive ring necked parakeets across 25 european countries results differences between niches of native asian and african parakeets were found with the asian niche matching the european niche more closely in the invasive european range distribution of parakeets was mainly explained by the pure effect of year of first importation as a proxy of time since first introduction the pure effect of geographical origin of propagules and the joint effect of environmental suitability and year of first importation but not by overall propagule pressure only when taking into account the fraction of individuals whose native niche fitted better the european conditions â asian parakeets â was the role of propagule pressure highlighted by models main conclusions while environmental based predictions calibrated on native ranges can constitute a useful first screening tool incorporating information about propagule pressure and especially about the variability in its geographical origin may result in a much more thorough assessment of invasion risk trade data reveal as a valuable proxy of propagule origin and pressure that can be combined with niche modelling for predicting the fate of trade mediated invasions in a variety of organisms,2016,0.524
Open Nomenclature in the biodiversity era,1 the uncertainty or the provisional status of a taxonomic identification can be expressed by a set of terms and abbreviations known as open nomenclature on qualifiers this approach is widely applied across biological disciplines and a high amount of biodiversity data left in on can be found in literature and databases however there is no consensus about on qualifiers and their meaning 2 the use of on qualifiers has been reviewed in order to provide a summary and guide to current practice in zoology some recommendation is given to avoid inconsistencies or vagueness a flowchart is proposed to clarify the sources of uncertainties during identification and to facilitate the application of on qualifiers 3 this review provides a guide for taxonomists and ecologists currently involved in biomonitoring and biodiversity programs as well as for researchers dealing with biodiversity data infrastructures and tools offering a starting point for a methodological harmonization,2016,0.169
"The Zambian Macrophyte Trophic Ranking scheme, ZMTR: A new biomonitoring protocol to assess the trophic status of tropical southern African rivers",the zambian macrophyte trophic ranking system zmtr is a new bioassessment scheme to indicate the trophic status of tropical southern african river systems it was developed using a dataset of 218 samples of macrophytes and water chemistry collected during 2009â 2012 from river sites located in five world freshwater ecoregions primarily represented in zambia a typology based on these ecoregions and three stream order categories was used to determine soluble reactive phosphate srp reference conditions zambian trophic ranking scores ztrssp were calculated for 156 species using direct allocation from srp data for 80 species in samples for which sufficient available srp data existed an indirect quantitative procedure based upon occurrence of species in six sample groups of differing mean srp status produced by twinspan classification allocated provisional ztrssp values for the remaining 76 species additional data for nitrate ph alkalinity and conductivity were used to help assess the trophic preferences of macrophyte species showing differing ztrssp values zmtrsample values were calculated as the mean ztrssp score of species present per sample zmtr indicated trophic status reasonably accurately for 83 1 of zambian samples and for all samples within a test dataset from botswanan rivers examples of application of the methodology and its potential for hindcasting river trophic status are provided the scheme currently underestimates highly enriched conditions and to a lesser extent overestimates the trophic status of some very low nutrient rivers but at this pilot stage of development it generally predicts the trophic status of tropical southern african river systems quite well,2016,0.808
Unusual suspects in the usual places: a phylo-climatic framework to identify potential future invasive species,a framework for identifying species that may become invasive under future climate conditions is presented based on invader attributes and biogeography in combination with projections of future climate we illustrate the framework using the climex niche model to identify future climate suitability for three species of hawkweed that are currently present in the australian alps region and related species that are present in the neighbouring region potential source regions under future climate conditions are identified and species from those emerging risk areas are identified we use dynamically downscaled climate projections to complement global analyses and provide fine scale projections of suitable climate for current and future 2070â 2099 conditions at the regional scale changing climatic conditions may reduce the suitability for some invasive species and improve it for others invasive species with distributions strongly determined by climate where the projected future climate is highly suitable are those with the greatest potential to be future invasive species in the region as the alps region becomes warmer and drier many more regions of the world become potential sources of invasive species although only one additional species of hawkweed is identified as an emerging risk however in the longer term as the species in these areas respond to global climate change the potential source areas contract again to match higher altitude regions knowledge of future climate suitability based on species specific climatic tolerances is a useful step towards prioritising management responses such as targeted eradication and early intervention to prevent the spread of future invasive species,2016,0.938
Scientific background document in support of the development of a CCAMLR MPA in the Weddell Sea (Antarctica) – Version 2016 -Part A: General context of the establishment of MPAs and background information on the Weddell Sea MPA planning area-,the authors present to the working group on ecosystem monitoring and management wg emm the scientific background and justification for the development of a marine protected area mpa in the weddell sea planning area in accordance with the recommendations by wg emm 14 sc camlr xxiii annex 6 this was done in three separate documents part a c wg emm 16 01 part a sets out the general context of the establishment of ccamlr mpas and provides the background information on the weddell sea mpa wsmpa planning area wg emm 16 02 part b informs on the data retrieval process and wg emm 16 03 part c describes the methods and the results of the scientific analyses as well as the development of the objectives and finally of the borders for the wsmpa earlier versions of parts a c were already presented at the meetings of emm and sc camlr in 2015 the scientific committee did recognise that the body of science of the background documents sc camlr xxxiv bg 15 bg 16 bg 17 provides the necessary foundation for developing a wsmpa proposal sc camlr xxxiv â 5 11 here the authors present the final version of part a to wg emm part a has undergone final editorial corrections in the 2015 16 intersessional period and contains i a synopsis in terms of the establishment of mpas chapter 1 ii a description of the boundaries of the wsmpa planning area chapter 2 iii a comprehensive yet succinct general description of the weddell sea ecosystem chapter 3 iv and finally a guidance regarding the future work beyond the development of the scientific basis for the evaluation of a wsmpa chapter 4,2016,0.137
The present knowledge of the Symphyla and Pauropoda (Myriapoda) in Germany – An annotated checklist,symphyla and pauropoda are seriously neglected classes of myriapoda worldwide with sparse information on ecology and distribution on species level available the few records of these taxa are scattered in literature and many new species remain to be discovered even in europe for the first time a comprehensive checklist is provided for the symphyla and pauropoda of germany based on a literature review and database and collection queries information on distribution and ecology for both taxa so far available is given currently 18 taxa of symphyla and 36 taxa of pauropoda are known for germany new species records from museum collections and new investigations are given most of these are from baden wã rttemberg bavaria hesse north rhine westphalia rhineland palatinate sampled during the last decades decapauropus broelemanni remy 1935 and acopauropus ornatus latzel 1884 are recorded for germany for the first time trachypauropus cordatus scheller 1974 is confirmed for germany from nine localities,2016,0.586
Hydraulic basis for the evolution of photosynthetic productivity,clarifying the evolution and mechanisms for photosynthetic productivity is a key to both improving crops and understanding plant evolution and habitat distributions current theory recognizes a role for the hydraulics of water transport as a potential determinant of photosynthetic productivity based on comparative data across disparate species however there has never been rigorous support for the maintenance of this relationship during an evolutionary radiation we tested this theory for 30 species of viburnum diverse in leaf shape and photosynthetic anatomy grown in a common garden we found strong support for a fundamental requirement for leaf hydraulic capacity kleaf in determining photosynthetic capacity amax as these traits diversified across this lineage in tight coordination with their proportionality modulated by the climate experienced in the species range variation in kleaf arose from differences in venation architecture that influenced xylem and especially outside xylem flow pathways these findings substantiate an evolutionary basis for the coordination of hydraulic and photosynthetic physiology across species and their co dependence on climate establishing a fundamental role for water transport in the evolution of the photosynthetic rate,2016,0.514
"Cantharellus (Cantharellales, Basidiomycota) revisited in Europe through a multigene phylogeny",resolving species delimitation issues of european cantharellus is crucial to correctly name chanterelles around the globe thirty names referring to cantharellus s str have been described in europe some of which are used in other continents based on combined analyses of its2 lsu rpb2 and tef 1 merely eight species are here recognized in europe applying the genealogical concordance phylogenetic species recognition criteria one of which c roseofagetorum is described as new morphological characters used in species delimitation are mapped and their variability evaluated the colour of the hymenophore in young specimens is found to be a rather constant morphological character of taxonomic use european species of cantharellus are morphologically distinguished by unique combinations of characters such as the presence of a pink pileal coating pileus and hymenophore colour when young and in some cases the mean spore length and ecology eighteen type specimens from europe are sequenced based on revised species concepts sixteen novel taxonomic synonyms are here proposed for european chanterelles c alborufescens c henrici c ilicis c lilacinopruinatus c amethysteus c cibarius subsp squamulosus c cibarius var umbrinus c rufipes c cibarius c cibarius var atlanticus c parviluteus c ferruginascens c cibarius var flavipes c friesii c ignescens c pallens c cibarius var albidus c cibarius var bicolor c subpruinosus and c romagnesianus c pseudominimus c lourizanianus c romagnesianus var parvisporus the type of cantharellus c cibarius is epitypified descriptions colour illustrations and a key to all european species are provided,2016,0.931
Modeling co-occurrence between toxic prey and naïve predators in an incipient invasion,biological invasions can represent important threats to endemic species including those within the invadersâ food webs the asian common toad duttaphrynus melanostictus was introduced to madagascar in 2011 this introduction presents a potentially dangerous prey item to a relatively naã ve highly diverse endemic carnivore fauna using a multivariate niche modeling approach background test we assessed the predicted niche overlap between d melanostictus and six endemic carnivores in eastern madagascar the overlap between this potential prey and predators was assessed on four environmental niche axes temperature precipitation vegetation cover and elevation our results showed a mixture of niche overlap and divergence between d melanostictus and the six carnivores for environmental axes tested there was significant overlap with five of the carnivores on temperature and ndvi axes on the precipitation axis there was significant overlap between d melanostictus with two species our results suggested that wide ranging locally rare carnivores may overlap extensively with d melanostictus the six carnivores that inhabit the eastern rainforest of madagascar will likely share multiple niche axes with this novel potential prey item species that eat the non native common toad and are susceptible to its toxins are at conservation risk because their populations may not be robust enough to adapt quickly to this threat we advocate closely monitoring these emerging interactions and suggest a preemptive conservation strategy for carnivores potentially at risk,2016,0.748
Modeling habitat distribution of Cornus officinalis with Maxent modeling and fuzzy logics in China,aimspredicting suitable habitat distribution is an effective way to protect rare or endangered medicinal plants cornus officinalis is a perennial tree growing in forest edge and its air dried pericarp is one of the traditional chinese medicines tcm with significant medicinal values in recent years c officinalis has undergone severe degeneration of its natural habitat owing to growing market demands and unprecedented damage to the forests moreover the degeneration of suitable habitat has threatened the supply of medicinal materials and even led to the extinction of some engendered medicinal plant species in this case there is a great risk to introduce and cultivate medicinal plants if planners determine the suitable cultivation regions based on personal subjective experience alone therefore predicting suitable potential habitat distribution of medicinal plants e g c officinalis and revealing the environmental factors determining such distribution patterns are important to habitat conservation and environmental restoration methodsin this paper we report the results of a study on the habitat distribution of c officinalis using maximum entropy maxent modeling and fuzzy logics together with loganin content and environmental variables the localities of 106 c officinalis in china were collected by our group and other researchers and used as occurrence data the loganin content of 234 c officinalis germplasm resources were tested by high performance liquid chromatography hplc and used as content data 79 environmental variables were selected and processed with multi collinearity test by using pearson correlation coefficient r to determine a set of independent variables the chosen variables were then processed in the fuzzy linear model according to the cell values maximum minimum of localities with estimated loganin content the sdmtoolbox was used to spatially rarefy occurrence data and prepare bias files furthermore combined maxent modeling and fuzzy logics were used to predict the suitable habitat of c officinalis the modeling result was validated using null model method important findingsas a result six environmental factors including tmin3 prec3 bio4 alt bio12 and bio3 were determined as key influential factors that mostly affected both the habitat suitability and active ingredient of c officinalis the highly suitable regions of c officinalis mainly core distribution zone of the east central china the statistically significant auc value indicated that combined maxent modeling and fuzzy logics could be used to predict the suitable habitat distribution of medicinal plants furthermore our results confirm that ecological factors played critical roles in assessing suitable geographical regions as well as active ingredient of plants highlighting the need for effective habitat rehabilitation and resource conservation,2016,0.013
A novel bioenergy feedstock in Latin America? Cultivation potential of Acrocomia aculeata under current and future climate conditions,plant oil is a key commodity in the global economy particularly for food and bioenergy markets however current production practices often impair smallholder livelihoods cause land use changes and compete for food production the neotropical palm acrocomia aculeata is currently being promoted as a novel sustainable biomass feedstock particularly for bioenergy but only little is known about the palm s ecological requirements based on a comprehensive literature and database search for recorded occurrences of a aculeata in latin america we computed an ecological niche modeling to determine the palm s potential distribution area based on climatic and soil variables we subsequently considered current land cover and predicted future climate change scenarios to discuss the cultivation potential of a aculeata within its possible distribution area the results revealed a large potential to cultivate a aculeata in latin america under current abiotic environmental conditions the two core distribution regions identified were 1 central america including the caribbean northern colombia and venezuela and 2 southern brazil and eastern paraguay a considerable proportion of the medium to highly suitable growing areas were found to be currently used for agricultural production or covered by land types with high conservation and carbon sequestration value applying the model under the ipcc s a2a business as usual emission scenario suggested that by 2080 the vast majority of suitable growing areas severely decline in extent or disappear entirely our ecological niche modeling thus shows that despite the palm s high cultivation potential a sustainable deployment of a aculeata requires a precautious evidence based approach,2016,0.24
Oceanic circulation models help to predict global biogeography of pelagic yellow-bellied sea snake,it is well recognized that most marine vertebrates and especially tetrapods precisely orient and actively move in apparently homogeneous oceanic environments here we investigate the presumptive role of oceanic currents in biogeographic patterns observed in a secondarily marine tetrapod the yellow bellied sea snake hydrophis pelamis platurus state of the art world ocean circulation models show how h platurus the only pelagic species of sea snake can potentially exploit oceanic currents to disperse and maintain population mixing between localities that spread over two thirds of the earth s circumference the very close association of these snakes with surface currents seems to provide a highly efficient dispersal mechanism that allowed this species to range extensively and relatively quickly well beyond the central indo pacific area the centre of origin abundance and diversity of sea snakes our results further suggest that the pan oceanic population of this species must be extraordinarily large,2016,0.573
Shallow subtidal octocorals in an Irish marine reserve,alcyonacean octocorals are anthozoans which are found in many coastal benthic habitats where they can be sensitive to environmental and or anthropogenic stress as part of a two decade monitoring study of lough hyne europeâ s first marine reserve and irelandâ s only one we documented benthic communities at rocky shore sites as a fully marine semi enclosed tidal â lakeâ connected to the atlantic ocean via tidal rapids lough hyne has long been noted for its high species and habitat diversity one of the noteworthy guilds we report here was the alcyonacean octocorals 1 the soft coral alcyonium hibernicum under shallow subtidal rocks at monitoring sites in the lough from 2002 to 2015 and 2 the first known records 2013 to present of the red soft coral a glomeratum inside the lough above the rapids furthermore in august september 2014 and 2015 we rediscovered the stoloniferous octocoral sarcodictyon catenatum last reported in the lough in the 1930s we documented the distribution and abundance of these species in shallow subtidal areas of the lough as a baseline in the face of rapidly degrading conditions due to extreme oxygen fluctuations from eutrophication,2016,0.572
The Corvids Literature Database-500 years of ornithological research from a crow's perspective.,corvids corvidae play a major role in ornithological research because of their worldwide distribution diversity and adaptiveness they have been studied extensively the aim of the corvids literature database cld http www corvids de cld is to record all publications citation format on all extant and extinct crows ravens jays and magpies worldwide and tag them with specific keywords making them available for researchers worldwide the self maintained project started in 2006 and today comprises 8000 articles spanning almost 500 years the cld covers publications from 164 countries written in 36 languages and published by 8026 authors in 1503 journals plus books theses and other publications forty nine percent of all records are available online as full text documents or deposited in the physical cld archive the cld contains 442 original corvid descriptions here we present a metadata assessment of articles recorded in the cld including a gap analysis and prospects for future research database url http www corvids de cld,2016,0.222
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW ON GYNURA PROCUMBENS LEAVES,gynura procumbens gp commonly known as longevity spinach is one of those precious medicinal herbs of asterceaes that are still included in an un utilized herbs inspite of the variety of useful pharmacological properties it possesses it is mainly popular in south east asian countries for its traditional medicinal properties it is usually used as a traditional medicine for the treatment of inflammation herpes simplex virus rashes fever rheumatism kidney diseases migraines diabetes mellitus cancer and hypertension this article provides the collective information about the phytochemical constituents isolated from leaves of this plant used in modern scenario for the treatment of various ailments like kaempferol 3 o rutinoside astragalin rutin kaempferol sterol glycosides flavonoids saponins tannins and terpenoids etc here we have reviewed all the reported pharmacological properties such as anti inflammatory anticancer antidiabetic anti herpes simplex virus antiulcerogenic vasorelaxant toxicity and some others activities,2016,0.05
Mapping the impact of alien species on marine ecosystems: the Mediterranean Sea case study,aim to develop a standardized quantitative method for mapping cumulative impacts of invasive alien species on marine ecosystems location the methodology is applied in the mediterranean sea but is widely applicable methods a conservative additive model was developed to account for the cumulative impacts of invasive alien species cimpal on marine ecosystems according to this model cumulative impact scores are estimated on the basis of the distributions of invasive species and ecosystems and both the reported magnitude of ecological impacts and the strength of such evidence in the mediterranean sea case study the magnitude of impact was estimated for every combination of 60 invasive species and 13 habitats for every 10 ã 10 km cell of the basin invasive species were ranked based on their contribution to the cumulative impact score across the mediterranean results the cimpal index showed strong spatial heterogeneity spatial patterns varied depending on the pathway of initial introduction of the invasive species in the mediterranean sea species introduced by shipping gave the highest impact scores and impacted a much larger area than those introduced by aquaculture and the suez canal overall invasive macroalgae had the highest impact among all taxonomic groups these results represent the current best estimate of the spatial variation in impacts of invasive alien species on ecosystems in the mediterranean sea main conclusions a framework for mapping cumulative impacts of invasive alien species was developed the application of this framework in the mediterranean sea provided a baseline that can be built upon with future improved information such analysis allows the identification of hotspots of highly impacted areas and prioritization of sites pathways and species for management actions,2016,0.933
Speciation and genetic diversity in Centaurea subsect. Phalolepis in Anatolia,mountains of anatolia are one of the main mediterranean biodiversity hotspots and their richness in endemic species amounts for 30 of the flora two main factors may account for this high diversity the complex orography and its role as refugia during past glaciations we have investigated seven narrow endemics of centaurea subsection phalolepis from anatolia by means of microsatellites and ecological niche modelling enm in order to analyse genetic polymorphisms and getting insights into their speciation despite being narrow endemics all the studied species show moderate to high ssr genetic diversity populations are genetically isolated but exchange of genes probably occurred at glacial maxima likely through the anatolian mountain arches as suggested by the enm the lack of correlation between genetic clusters and morpho species is interpreted as a result of allopatric diversification on the basis of a shared gene pool as suggested in a former study in greece post glacial isolation in mountains would be the main driver of diversification in these plants mountains of anatolia would have acted as plant refugia allowing the maintenance of high genetic diversity ancient gene flow between taxa that became sympatric during glaciations may also have contributed to the high levels of genetic diversity,2016,0.788
Using Spatiotemporal Information to Integrate Heterogeneous Biodiversity Semantic Data,biodiversity is essential to life on earth and motivates many efforts to collect data about species these data are collected in different places and published in different formats researchers use it to extract new knowledge about living things but it is difficult to retrieve combine and integrate data sources from different places this work will investigate how to integrate biodiversity information from heterogeneous sources using semantic web technologies its main objective is to propose an architecture to link biodiversity data using mainly their spatiotemporal dimension effectively search these linked data sets and test them using real use cases defined with the help of biodiversity experts it is also an important objective to propose a suitable provenance model that captures not only data origin but also temporal information this architecture will be tested on a set of representative data from important brazilian institutions that are involved in studies of biodiversity,2016,0.397
Historical reconstruction of climatic and elevation preferences and the evolution of cloud forest-adapted tree ferns in Mesoamerica,cloud forests characterized by a persistent frequent or seasonal low level cloud cover and fragmented distribution are one of the most threatened habitats especially in the neotropics tree ferns are among the most conspicuous elements in these forests and ferns are restricted to regions in which minimum temperatures rarely drop below freezing and rainfall is high and evenly distributed around the year current phylogeographic data suggest that some of the cloud forest adapted species remained in situ or expanded to the lowlands during glacial cycles and contracted allopatrically during the interglacials although the observed genetic signals of population size changes of cloud forest adapted species including tree ferns correspond to predicted changes by pleistocene climate change dynamics the observed patterns of intraspecific lineage divergence showed temporal incongruence methods here we combined phylogenetic analyses ancestral area reconstruction and divergence time estimates with climatic and altitudinal data environmental space for phenotypic traits of tree fern species to make inferences about evolutionary processes in deep time we used phylogenetic bayesian inference and geographic and altitudinal distribution of tree ferns to investigate ancestral area and elevation and environmental preferences of mesoamerican tree ferns the phylogeny was then used to estimate divergence times and ask whether the ancestral area and elevation and environmental shifts were linked to climatic events and historical climatic preferences results bayesian trees retrieved cyathea alsophyla gymnosphaera and sphaeropteris in monophyletic clades splits for species in these genera found in mesoamerican cloud forests are recent from the neogene to the quaternary australia was identified as the ancestral area for the clades of these genera except for gymnosphaera that was mesoamerica climate tolerance was not divergent from hypothesized ancestors for the most significant variables or elevation for elevational shifts we found repeated change from low to high elevations conclusions our data suggest that representatives of cyatheaceae main lineages migrated from australia to mesoamerican cloud forests in different times and have persisted in these environmentally unstable areas but extant species diverged recentrly from their ancestors,2016,0.843
"Species limits, geographical distribution and genetic diversity in Johannesteijsmannia (Arecaceae)",four species are recognized in the understorey palm genus johannesteijsmannia arecaceae all of which occur in close geographical proximity in the malay peninsula we hypothesize that overlapping distributions are maintained by a lack of gene flow among species and that segregation along morphological trait or environmental axes confers ecological divergence and hence defines species limits although some species have sympatric distributions differentiation was detected among species in morphological and genetic data corroborating current species delimitation differences in niche breadth were not found to explain the overlapping distribution and co existence of johannesteijsmannia spp four species formed over the last 3 mya showing that diversity accumulated within a short time frame and wide range expansion has not occurred potentially due to a lack of time for dispersal or the evolution of traits to facilitate movement an assessment of genetic diversity is presented and as expected the widest distribution in the genus harbours the highest genetic diversity,2016,0.954
Overlooked habitat of a vulnerable gorgonian revealed in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic by ecological niche modelling,factors shaping the distribution of mesophotic octocorals 30â 200 m depth remain poorly understood potentially leaving overlooked coral areas particularly near their bathymetric and geographic distributional limits yet detailed knowledge about habitat requirements is crucial for conservation of sensitive gorgonians here we use ecological niche modelling enm relating thirteen environmental predictors and a highly comprehensive presence dataset enhanced by scuba diving surveys to investigate the suitable habitat of an important structuring species paramuricea clavata throughout its distribution mediterranean and adjacent atlantic models showed that temperature 11 5â 25 5 â c and slope are the most important predictors carving the niche of p clavata prediction throughout the full distribution tss 0 9 included known locations of p clavata alongside with previously unknown or unreported sites along the coast of portugal and africa including seamounts these predictions increase the understanding of the potential distribution for the northern mediterranean and indicate suitable hard bottom areas down to 150 m depth poorly sampled habitats with predicted presence along algeria alboran sea and adjacent atlantic coasts encourage further investigation we propose that surveys of target areas from the predicted distribution map together with local expert knowledge may lead to discoveries of new p clavata sites and identify priority conservation areas,2016,0.571
"Endorsing Darwin: global biogeography of the epipelagic goose barnacles Lepas spp. (Cirripedia, Lepadomorpha) proves cryptic speciation",it was darwin that noted the large intraspecific diversity of the goose barnacle lepas linnaeus 1758 and thought about distinct regional varieties today biogeographic compartmentation is known from marine species but data from globally occurring species remain scarce we analysed inter and intraspecific divergence within the epipelagic rafter lepas from tropical and temperate oceans by means of two mitochondrial and one nuclear dna marker besides phylogenetic relations we resolved biogeography and controlling factors inhabiting the southern hemisphere lepas australis darwin 1851 shows separate populations from coastal chile and from circum antarctic waters most probably related to temperature differences in the current systems the cosmopolitan lepas anatifera linnaeus 1758 displays four regional subgroups coastal chile northeast pacific oregon the southern hemisphere indopacific and the atlantic and a global group which might be an ancestral stem group the differentiation reflects vicariance effects rooted in geological history the closure of the neogene tethys in the middle east and at the panama isthmus the installation of the cool benguela current differing pleistocene currents and temperatures and modern current systems the extreme ecological generalists lepas anserifera linnaeus 1767 and lepas pectinata spengler 1793 are not differentiated and might represent true global species in conclusion compartmentation of the oceans acts at the species level according to ecospace limits for lepas the multitude of barriers favours allopatric speciation,2016,0.642
Teaching Mycology Worldwide,taxonomy is the discipline responsible for the classification of organisms and involves sampling discovery and description of species fungi are a large group of eukaryotic organisms very diverse in morphology physiology and ecology it is very difficult to delimit a species concept which is common to all fungal groups in general taxonomists continue using morphological characters however dna sequence analysis barcoding is now essential to discover the true identity of new fungal species in this chapter some aspects of teaching mycology will be summarized including websides where fungi from different countries are well documented as well as scientific databases available for various groups of fungi and the application of new technologies some examples when training taxonomists all around the world are included such as collecting in the rain forest with malaysian and thai students teaching general and master courses in australia brazil ecuador and india and on line tools needed for the effective training of students and teachers when they are particularly when separated by long distances,2016,0.648
In situ and ex situ diversity analysis of priority crop wild relatives in Norway,aim to contribute directly to norway s national and international commitments to systematic long term conservation of crop wild relatives cwr by ensuring both the in situ and ex situ protection and availability of a broad range of cwr genetic diversity within the country location norway methods we created a priority list of cwr within norway based upon four main criteria including economic value from national to global level of associated crops and inclusion in annex 1 of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture itpgrfa species presence data were gathered from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and used for predictive species distribution modelling in maxent capfitogen software was utilized to create an ecogeographic land characterization elc map and to identify complementary in situ genetic reserves and ex situ collecting priorities which target the full range of ecogeographic diversity of taxa results an inventory of 204 priority cwr within norway was compiled a grid cell complementary network of 19 in situ areas 10 km2 conserved 201 priority cwr and a separate analysis identified a protected area complementary network of 23 reserves that conserved 181 priority taxa for ex situ conservation 177 taxa did not have ex situ accessions and of the 24 with accessions 15 had the minimum of five populations conserved throughout their ecogeographic range main conclusions we present the first comprehensive national recommendations for in situ and ex situ conservation of 204 priority cwr in norway proposals target the conservation of the ecogeographic diversity of the priority cwr and hence their genetic diversity both the priority taxa and the methodology used are applicable at regional and global scales with the recommendations not only helping norway to meet its international obligations for conservation of genetic diversity of cwr but also ensuring this genetic diversity is available for use in tackling global food security,2016,0.675
"Diversity of wild yams (Dioscorea spp., Dioscoreaceae) collected in continental Africa",plant genetic resources especially crop wild relatives like wild yams are under high risks of extinction due to habitat loss climate change unacceptable collection practices shifting cultivation practice and over exploitation to contribute to their conservation the diversity of wild yams dioscorea spp collected in continental africa was analyzed specimens from herbaria b br k p wag and ya databases literature and actual collection from cameroon were considered the collection localities were georeferenced and projected to lambert azimuthal equal area projection spatial analyses of sampling and diversity were conducted at three different resolutions 50 ã 50 100 ã 100 and 150 ã 150 km sized grid cells four thousand and eighty seven specimens collected in 2895 localities were inventoried and grouped into 55 taxa including 43 species five subspecies four varieties and seven morpho species the genus dioscorea occurred in fifteen out of the eighteen phytochoria recognized on african mainland the guineoâ congolian regional centre of endemism was the most sampled and the richest phytochorion with 28 taxa in terms of floristic composition the sudanian regional centre of endemism and the guineaâ congolia sudania regional transition zone were the most similar similarity coefficient sci 0 84 globally the most diversified grid cells were located in sierra leone liberia ivory coast ghana togo benin nigeria cameroon gabon equatorial guinea car congo drc tanzania and malawi in terms of phytogeography they were found in two regional centres of endemism guineoâ congolian and zambezian two regional transition zones guineaâ congolia zambezia and guineaâ congolia sudania and one regional mosaic zanzibarâ inhambane these areas could therefore be considered as potential sites for in situ conservation of wild yams in continental africa,2016,0.952
Insect distribution in response to climate change based on a model: Review of function and use of CLIMEX,the significant dependence of agricultural productivity on pest control requires pest distribution predictions at an early stage of pest invasion because pest cycles are critically affected by climate climate is one of the most important factors for predicting an invasive pest climex is a highly effective tool that can predict potential geographical species distributions and test the regional suitability for a target species habitat based on data including climate change scenarios climex has been recently used in europe north america china and australia among others however for modeling species distributions in korea the use of the model has been limited to date this study aimed to first introduce the function and application of climex by reviewing important studies using this model second we investigated previous studies using the model simulation to demonstrate the practical applicability of climex for the agricultural sector and its use in forecasting,2016,0.182
Introducing accessibility analysis in mapping cultural ecosystem services,in recent years there has been an increasing interest in the study of the spatial link between service providing areas spa and service benefiting areas sba understanding the spatial link between spas and sbas is essential when studying the ecosystem service delivery and the fulfilment of ecosystem service demand however far too little attention has been paid to the user movement related ecosystem services and where people should be geographically situated in order to benefit from these services in the movement related services benefiting areas are equal to providing areas and the spatial link from residential area to spa is important the spatial link is addressed through the concept of accessibility which determines the opportunity to move from the area where beneficiaries are located to areas where ecosystem services are produced this study presents an accessibility approach to the ecosystem services research accessibility analyses offer an opportunity to identify the gap between the ecosystemsâ potential to produce services and the actual usage possibilities of such services we demonstrate the suitability of the method by using outdoor recreation and cultural heritage as examples of cultural ecosystem services that people actively want to reach accessibility was calculated using a geographical information system based least cost path analysis which measures travel time by car between residential location and the nearest spa via road network the examples highlight that accessibility varies according to the ecosystem service and depends mostly on population distribution and travel possibilities our results demonstrate that the density of the analysed ecosystem service opportunities is higher near urban areas than elsewhere the accessibility of different ecosystem services also depends on how much time people are willing to spend for reaching these services our study emphasised that from a population perspective accessibility analyses provide a powerful tool for illustrating the utilisation possibilities of spatially distributed ecosystem services the accessibility approach offers great potential to assess the potential use of spas and respond to the need to develop a practical tool for ecosystem service research it effectively shows for example the areas where the risk of overuse of ecosystem services is increased knowing about the regional differences in ecosystem service usage also gives background information for the decision makers for drawing conclusions about how much and where it is sensible to invest in the maintenance of ecosystem services,2016,0.041
Infomap Bioregions: Interactive Mapping of Biogeographical Regions from Species Distributions,biogeographical regions reveal how species are spatially grouped and therefore are important units for conservation historical biogeography ecology and evolution several methods have been developed to identify bioregions based on species distribution data rather than expert opinion one approach successfully applies network theory to simplify and highlight the underlying structure in species distributions data however there are no tools that make this methodology simple and efficient to use here we present infomap bioregions an interactive web application that inputs species distribution data and generates bioregion maps species distributions may be provided as georeferenced point occurrences or range maps and can be of local regional or global scale the application uses a novel adaptive resolution method to make best use of often incomplete species distribution data the results can be downloaded as vector graphics shapefiles or in table format we validate the tool by processing large datasets of publicly available species distribution data of the world s amphibians using species ranges and mammals using point occurrences potential applications include ancestral range reconstructions in historical biogeography and identification of indicator species for targeted conservation,2016,0.916
Identifying regions vulnerable to habitat degradation under future irrigation scenarios,the loss and degradation of natural habitats is a primary cause of biodiversity decline the increasing impacts of climate and land use change affect water availability ultimately decreasing agricultural production areas devoted to irrigation have been increased to compensate this reduction causing habitat and biodiversity losses especially in regions undergoing severe water stress these effects might intensify under global change probably contributing to a decrease in habitat quality we selected four european river basins across a gradient of water scarcity and irrigation agriculture the habitat quality in the basins was assessed as a function of habitat suitability and threats under current and future global change scenarios of irrigation results revealed that the most threatened regions under future scenarios of global change were among those suffering of water scarcity and with bigger areas devoted to irrigation loss of habitat quality reached 10 in terrestrial and 25 in aquatic ecosystems under climate change scenarios involving drier conditions the aquatic habitats were the most degraded in all scenarios since they were affected by threats from both the terrestrial and the aquatic parts of the basin by identifying in advance the regions most vulnerable to habitat and biodiversity loss our approach can assist decision makers in deciding the conservation actions to be prioritized for mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change particularly front the development of irrigation plans,2016,0.06
Extinction of South American sparassodontans (Metatheria): environmental fluctuations or complex ecological processes?,sparassodontans are a diverse but now extinct group of metatherians that were apex predators in south america during most of the cenozoic studying their decline has been controversial mainly due to the scarcity of the fossil record and different methodological approaches have led to contradictory hypotheses in an effort to explore questions about their extinction we developed a novel multi model statistical approach to analyse all of the currently available data at a continental scale using multiple regression analysis and new advances in beta diversity analysis we used all currently available fossil data at a continental scale to test four competing hypotheses to account for the decline of sparassodontans competition with placental carnivorans competition with avian phorusrhacids non competitive ecological interactions and environmental fluctuations our results show that the sparassodontan extinction was a gradual process with species disappearing throughout the cenozoic multiple regression analysis supported non competitive ecological interactions as the best extinction model native south american ungulates african migrants caviomorph rodents and platyrrhine primates and didelphimorphians were the groups with the highest statistical significance sparassodontan beta diversity increased between south american land mammal ages after the paleoceneâ eocene boundary our results demonstrate that ecological modelling techniques illuminate aspects of extinction processes whilst mitigating the limitations of the fossil record our study suggests that non competitive ecological interactions could have been the main driver for sparassodontan extinction rather than as commonly assumed a result of competition and or abiotic fluctuations,2016,0.265
"On the Identity and Nomenclature of Syzygium sriganesanii K. Ravik. &amp; V. Lakshm. (Myrtaceae) in southern Western Ghats, India",syz yg i um s r i g an e san i i k ravik v lakshm is synonymised under s pa r ame s wa r an i i m mohanan a n henry elaborate note description and photographs are provided to substantiate the synonymy of the species,2016,0.476
A New Species of Bachia Gray 1845 (Squamata: Gymnophthalmidae) from the Eastern Guiana Shield,abstract a new species of bachia of the b heteropa group is described from the parque nacional montanhas do tumucumaque in northeastern amazonia amapã state brazil the new species morphologically resembles b heteropa and b guianensis nonetheless the absence of interparietal and prefrontal scales and the number of supraciliary scales can distinguish the new species from its close relatives this description increases the species diversity of the b heteropa group after a number of decades of stasis in the taxonomy of this group in amazonia in addition we present an updated key to the groups of bachia including the species and subspecies of the b heteropa group,2016,0.67
Methods to select areas to survey for biological control agents: An example based on growth in relation to temperature and distribution of the weed Conyza bonariensis,a novel approach for selecting areas to survey for biological control agents incorporating climate and a hypothesised biological control agent is demonstrated using the target weed conyza bonariensis asteraceae this weed has become important in australian cropping regions due to its persistence and herbicide resistance and it is also increasingly an environmental weed both are reasons for the investigation of biological control options we developed a species niche model for c bonariensis in climex based on parameters informed by plant growth and distribution of the species in the americas a hypothetical biological control agent hbca cold was proposed that has its ideal growth range 5â c below that of the weed so as to favour development of the agent over that of the weed in parts of australia the southern part of the weedâ s native distribution in argentina chile and the highlands of ecuador and columbia were identified as the most suitable areas for surveys that take into account both the climate suitable for the hbca cold and the target regions in australia this was compared to a model hbca hot that had an ideal growth range 5â c above that of the weed but which identified potential areas for surveys in south america that were not climatically aligned with the main regions of the weedâ s economic impact in australia this species distribution modelling method allows for prioritisation of search areas for biological control agents in the case of widespread target species such as c bonariensis,2016,0.442
Reproductive character displacement and environmental filtering shape floral variation between sympatric sister taxa,divergence in reproductive traits between closely related species that co occur contributes to speciation by reducing interspecific gene flow in flowering plants greater floral divergence in sympatry than allopatry may reflect reproductive character displacement rcd by means of divergent pollinator mediated selection or mating system evolution however environmental filtering ef would prevail for floral traits under stronger selection by abiotic factors than pollination and lead to sympatric taxa being more phenotypically similar we determine whether floral uv pigmentation and size show signatures of rcd or ef using a biogeographically informed sister taxa comparison we determine whether 35 sister pairs in the potentilleae tribe rosaceae are allopatric or sympatric and confirm that sympatric sisters experience more similar bioclimatic conditions an assumption of the ef hypothesis we test whether interspecific differences are greater in allopatry or sympatry while accounting for divergence time for uv pigmentation sympatric sisters are more phenotypically similar than allopatric ones for flower size sympatric sisters show increased divergence with time since speciation but allopatric ones do not we conclude that floral uv pigmentation shows a signature of ef whereas flower size shows a signature of rcd discordant results between the traits suggest that the dominant selective agent differs between them,2016,0.344
Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Gammaherpesvirus from a Microbat Cell Line,while employing deep sequencing and de novo assembly to characterize the mrna transcript profile of a cell line derived from the microbat myotis velifer incautus we serendipitously identified mrnas encoding proteins with a high level of identity to herpesviruses a majority were closely related to proteins of equine herpesvirus 2 ehv 2 a horse gammaherpesvirus we demonstrated by electron microscopy the presence of herpesvirus like particles in the microbat cells passage of supernatants from microbat cells to vero cells resulted in syncytium formation and expression of viral genes and amplification of viral dna were demonstrated by quantitative pcr susceptibility of human cell lines to productive infection was also demonstrated next generation sequencing and de novo assembly of the viral genome from supernatants from vero cells yielded a single contig of approximately 130 kb with at least 77 open reading frames orfs predicted micrornas mirnas and a gammaherpesvirus genomic organization phylogenic analysis of the envelope glycoprotein gb and dna polymerase pold1 revealed similarity to multiple gammaherpesviruses including those from as yet uncultured viruses of the rhadinovirus genus that were obtained by deep sequencing of bat tissues moreover the assembled genome revealed orfs that share little or no homology to known orfs in ehv 2 but are similar to accessory proteins of other gammaherpesviruses some also have striking homology to predicted myotis bat proteins cumulatively this study provides the first isolation and characterization of a replication competent bat gammaherpesvirus,2016,0.361
"Biodiversity informatics in Eastern Africa: Status, drivers and barriers",this article uses content analysis to review policies and relevant documents that promote or hinder the generation and use of biodiversity data in eastern africa the review found that all countries in the region are committed to international and regional conventions that emphasize the protection and conservation of biodiversity some of the other drivers for biodiversity informatics include countriesâ national biodiversity related policies although there are few which highlight the need for biodiversity data management systems however the existing policies are deficient in terms of policies for biodiversity data management suggestions to ensure the success of biodiversity informatics in east africa include i avoiding overlaps but promoting complementarities within and or between different institutions and stakeholders involved in biodiversity conservation ii putting in place clear complete and simple policy documents pertaining to biodiversity data management,2016,0.044
Worldwide Alien Invasion: A Methodological Approach to Forecast the Potential Spread of a Highly Invasive Pollinator.,the ecological impacts of alien species invasion are a major threat to global biodiversity the increasing number of invasion events by alien species and the high cost and difficulty of eradicating invasive species once established require the development of new methods and tools for predicting the most susceptible areas to invasion invasive pollinators pose serious threats to biodiversity and human activity due to their close relationship with many plants including crop species and high potential competitiveness for resources with native pollinators although at an early stage of expansion the bumblebee species bombus terrestris is becoming a representative case of pollinator invasion at a global scale particularly given its high velocity of invasive spread and the increasing number of reports of its impacts on native bees and crops in many countries we present here a methodological framework of habitat suitability modeling that integrates new approaches for detecting habitats that are susceptible to bombus terrestris invasion at a global scale our approach did not include reported invaded locations in the modeling procedure instead those locations were used exclusively to evaluate the accuracy of the models in predicting suitability over regions already invaded moreover a new and more intuitive approach was developed to select the models and evaluate different algorithms based on their performance and predictive convergence finally we present a comprehensive global map of susceptibility to bombus terrestris invasion that highlights priority areas for monitoring,2016,0.623
Plant Distribution Data Show Broader Climatic Limits than Expert-Based Climatic Tolerance Estimates,background although increasingly sophisticated environmental measures are being applied to species distributions models the focus remains on using climatic data to provide estimates of habitat suitability climatic tolerance estimates based on expert knowledge are available for a wide range of plants via the usda plants database we aim to test how climatic tolerance inferred from plant distribution records relates to tolerance estimated by experts further we use this information to identify circumstances when species distributions are more likely to approximate climatic tolerance methods we compiled expert knowledge estimates of minimum and maximum precipitation and minimum temperature tolerance for over 1800 conservation plant species from the â plant characteristicsâ information in the usda plants database we derived climatic tolerance from distribution data downloaded from the global biodiversity and information facility gbif and corresponding climate from worldclim we compared expert derived climatic tolerance to empirical estimates to find the difference between their inferred climate niches î cn and tested whether î cn was influenced by growth form or range size results climate niches calculated from distribution data were significantly broader than expert based tolerance estimates mann whitney p values 0 001 the average plant could tolerate 24 mm lower minimum precipitation 14 mm higher maximum precipitation and 7â c lower minimum temperatures based on distribution data relative to expert based tolerance estimates species with larger ranges had greater î cn for minimum precipitation and minimum temperature for maximum precipitation and minimum temperature forbs and grasses tended to have larger î cn while grasses and trees had larger î cn for minimum precipitation conclusion our results show that distribution data are consistently broader than usda plants expertsâ knowledge and likely provide more robust estimates of climatic tolerance especially for widespread forbs and grasses these findings suggest that widely available expert based climatic tolerance estimates underrepresent speciesâ fundamental niche and likely fail to capture the realized niche,2016,0.101
Big data for forecasting the impacts of global change on plant communities,aim plant distributions and vegetation dynamics underpin key global phenomena including biogeochemical cycling ecosystem productivity and terrestrial biodiversity patterns aggregated and remotely collected â big dataâ are required to forecast the effects of global change on plant communities we synthesize advances in developing and exploiting big data in global change plant ecology and identify challenges to their effective use in global change studies location global methods we explored databases catalogues and registries with respect to their accessibility geographical and taxonomic extent sample bias and other types of uncertainty from the perspective both users and contributors we identified four kinds of big data needed to predict the impacts of global change on plant populations and communities using spatially explicit models remotely sensed and other environmental maps species occurrence records community composition plots and species traits especially demographics results digital environmental maps including remotely sensed data are the most mature class of big data discussed herein whereby protocols for archiving discovering and analysing them have developed over three decades species locality records are being aggregated into databases that are easy to search and access and while methods for addressing uncertainties are a major research focus better spatial representation is still needed plot data from inventories have tremendous potential for monitoring and modelling the impacts of global change on plant communities but tend to be restricted to forests or concentrated in certain geographical areas ongoing efforts to aggregate plot and trait data from multiple sources are challenged by their heterogeneous coverage attributes and protocols and a lack of data standards main conclusions future goals include developing systematic frameworks for selecting geospatial data improving tools for assessing the quality of species occurrence records and increased aggregation and discoverability of plot and trait data aggregated data collected by scientists not sensors provide more meaningful insights when data collectors are involved in analysis,2016,0.685
Protecting Soil Biodiversity and Soil Functions: Current Status and Future Challenges,living soils are fundamental for human life as we know it the top layer of earthâ s crust essentially composed of minerals water and air harbours an immense variety of organisms from plants to microorganisms which qualifies it as a living system soil biodiversity is the main actor underlying the provision of services that are essential for regulating providing and supporting human life the increasing level of human activity has been subjecting soil to multiple pressures resulting in soil degradation and biodiversity decline hence deterioration in the systemâ s capability to render those ecosystem services growing concern on this resourceâ s misuse has led to a series of conventions and strategies targeting its conservation such as the thematic strategy for soil protection in the european union ec 2006 and advocating for specific protection measures that can ensure a sustainable use of soil these measures mainly focus on extending our knowledge on how soil functions but also on developing monitoring programmes that can detect trends and changes in soil biodiversity this demand boosted research on soil ecology over the last decades with significant increases of scientific knowledge on its structural and functioning complexity however there are still some gaps and needs to be addressed in order to design adequate measures for soil protection in this chapter we review the main advances in soil ecological research and monitoring and further discuss the status of current strategies towards soil protection and sustainability moreover we present here a strategy consisting of three action lines for effectively contributing to soil protection it is based on monitoring and mapping experimentation and raising awareness towards soil issues which hopefully can change the way we perceive and use soil this very dynamic but non renewable resource at the human life time scale,2016,0.045
The effects of warming on the ecophysiology of two co-existing kelp species with contrasting distributions,the northeast atlantic has warmed significantly since the early 1980s leading to shifts in species distributions and changes in the structure and functioning of communities and ecosystems this study investigated the effects of increased temperature on two co existing habitat forming kelps laminaria digitata a northern boreal species and laminaria ochroleuca a southern lusitanian species to shed light on mechanisms underpinning responses of trailing and leading edge populations to warming kelp sporophytes collected from southwest united kingdom were maintained under 3 treatments ambient temperature 12 â c 3 â c 15 â c and 6 â c 18 â c for 16 days at higher temperatures l digitata showed a decline in growth rates and fv fm an increase in chemical defence production and a decrease in palatability in contrast l ochroleuca demonstrated superior growth and photosynthesis at temperatures higher than current ambient levels and was more heavily grazed whilst the observed decreased palatability of l digitata held at higher temperatures could reduce top down pressure on marginal populations field observations of grazer densities suggest that this may be unimportant within the study system overall our study suggests that shifts in trailing edge populations will be primarily driven by ecophysiological responses to high temperatures experienced during current and predicted thermal maxima and although compensatory mechanisms may reduce top down pressure on marginal populations this is unlikely to be important within the current biogeographical context better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning climate driven range shifts is important for habitat forming species like kelps which provide organic matter create biogenic structure and alter environmental conditions for associated communities,2016,0.261
The roles and impacts of human hunter-gatherers in North Pacific marine food webs,there is a nearly 10 000 year history of human presence in the western gulf of alaska but little understanding of how human foragers integrated into and impacted ecosystems through their roles as hunter gatherers we present two highly resolved intertidal and nearshore food webs for the sanak archipelago in the eastern aleutian islands and use them to compare trophic roles of prehistoric humans to other species we find that the native aleut people played distinctive roles as super generalist and highly omnivorous consumers closely connected to other species although the human population was positioned to have strong effects arrival and presence of aleut people in the sanak archipelago does not appear associated with long term extinctions we simulated food web dynamics to explore to what degree introducing a species with trophic roles like those of an aleut forager and allowing for variable strong feeding to reflect use of hunting technology is likely to trigger extinctions potential extinctions decreased when an invading omnivorous super generalist consumer focused strong feeding on decreasing fractions of its possible resources this study presents the first assessment of the structural roles of humans as consumers within complex ecological networks and potential impacts of those roles and feeding behavior on associated extinctions,2016,0.818
The influence of habitat on the evolution of plants: a case study across Saxifragales.,background and aims organismal evolution tends to be closely associated with ecological conditions however the extent to which this association constrains adaptation or diversification into new habitats remains unclear we studied habitat evolution in the hyper diverse angiosperm clade saxifragales methods we used species level phylogenies for approx 950 species to analyse the evolution of habitat shifts as well as their influence on plant diversification we combined habitat characterization based on floristic assignments and state of the art phylogenetic comparative methods to estimate within and across habitat diversification patterns key results our analyses showed that saxifragales diversified into multiple habitats from a forest inhabiting ancestor and that this diversification is governed by relatively rare habitat shifts lineages are likely to stay within inferred ancestral ecological conditions adaptation to some habitat types e g aquatic desert may be canalizing events that lineages do not escape although associations between increased diversification rates and shifts in habitat preferences are occasionally observed extreme macroevolutionary rates are closely associated with specific habitats lineages occurring in shrubland and especially tundra and rock cliffs exhibit comparatively high diversification whereas forest grassland desert and aquatic habitats are associated with low diversification conclusions the likelihood of occupation of new habitats appears to be asymmetric shifts to aquatic and desert habitats may be canalizing events other habitats such as tundra might act as evolutionary sources while forests provide the only habitat seemingly colonized easily by lineages originating elsewhere however habitat shifts are very rare and any major environmental alteration is expected to have dramatic evolutionary consequences,2016,0.358
First record of Ambidexter symmetricus (Decapoda: Caridea: Processidae) from the Yucatán Peninsula,the first record of ambidexter symmetricus from the yucatã n peninsula is herein reported extending the geographic range of the species to the southeastern gulf of mexico during monthly visits to seybaplaya campeche in 2014 a total of 13 specimens were collected from may to november 1 specimen was male and the rest were ovigerous females suggesting that this species has a continuous reproduction se presenta el primer registro de ambidexter symmetricus para la penã nsula de yucatã n con este registro se extiende la distribuciã n geogrã fica conocida de esta especie al sureste del golfo de mã xico en visitas mensuales de mayo a noviembre del aã o 2014 a seybaplaya campeche se recolectaron 13 ejemplares de esta especie 1 ejemplar macho y el resto hembras ovã geras lo que muestra que esta especie presenta una reproducciã n continua,2016,0.448
Immunmodulatory and Antiproliferative Properties of Rhodiola Species,the traditional medicines of asia and europe have long used various rhodiola species which are endemic to the subarctic areas of the northern hemisphere as tonic adaptogen antidepressant and anti inflammatory drugs in order to establish the therapeutic uses of these plants in modern medicine the pharmacological effects of rhodiola sp have been widely studied indeed the most amply researched species rhodiola rosea has been shown to possess antioxidant adaptogenic antistress antimicrobial immunomodulatory angiomodulatory and antitumoral effects salidroside p hydroxyphenethyl î d glucoside a major compound in rhodiola seems to be responsible for many of the effects observed with rhodiola extracts the aim of this paper is to review the pharmacological effects not only of various rhodiola species mainly r rosea along with rhodiola imbricata rhodiola algida and rhodiola crenulata but also of salidroside focusing especially on its antioxidant immunomodulatory antitumoral and antiproliferative activities as well as to describe their therapeutic significance in disease management although previous pharmacological studies have established a scientific basis for possible therapeutic uses of rhodiola extracts and salidroside high quality randomized controlled clinical trials are still needed,2016,0.16
"Environmental variability and heavy metal concentrations from five lagoons in the Ionian Sea (Amvrakikos Gulf, W Greece)",background coastal lagoons are ecosystems of major importance as they host a number of species tolerant to disturbances and they are highly productive therefore these ecosystems should be protected to ensure stability and resilience the lagoons of amvrakikos gulf form one of the most important lagoonal complexes in greece the optimal ecological status of these lagoons is crucial for the well being of the biodiversity and the economic prosperity of the local communities thus monitoring of the area is necessary to detect possible sources of disturbance and restore stability new information the environmental variables and heavy metals concentrations from five lagoons of amvrakikos gulf were measured from seasonal samplings and compared to the findings of previous studies in the area in order to check for possible sources of disturbance the analysis showed that i the values of the abiotic parameters vary with time season space lagoon and with space over time ii the variability of the environmental factors and enrichment in certain elements is naturally induced and no source of contamination is detected in the lagoons,2016,0.492
"Species composition, community and population dynamics of two gallery forests from the Brazilian Cerrado domain",background to understand the impacts of global changes on future community compositions knowledge of community dynamics is of crucial importance to improve our knowledge of community composition biomass stock and maintenance of gallery forests in the brazilian cerrado we provide two datasets from the 0 5 ha corrego fazendinha gallery forest dynamics plot and the corrego fundo gallery forest dynamics plot situated in the bom despacho region minas gerais southeastern brazil new information we report diameter at breast height basal area and height measurements of 3417 trees and treelets identified during three censuses in both areas,2016,0.184
Is there nothing new under the sun? The influence of herbals and pharmacopoeias on ethnobotanical traditions in Albacete (Spain),ethnopharmacological relevance this paper has two overarching aims 1 presenting the results of studying the albacete tariff of medicines of 1526 and 2 broadly analyzing the origin and influences of medicinal traditional knowledge in the region of albacete spain we use historical and modern literature that may have influenced this knowledge our primary goal was to determine the ingredients used in the pharmacy in the 16th century ce in albacete through the analysis of the tariff and our secondary goal was to investigate until when ingredients and uses present in pharmacy and herbals persisted in later periods methods the identity of medicines and ingredients was determined by analyzing contemporary pharmacopoeias and classical pharmaceutical references we analyzed further 21 sources manuscripts herbals and books of medicines pharmacopoeias pharmacy inventories and modern ethnobotanical records for the presence absence of ingredients and complex formulations of the tariff using factorial and cluster analysis and bayesian inference applied to evolution models reversible jump markov chain monte carlo we compared textual sources finally we analyzed the medicinal uses of the top 10 species in terms of frequency of citation to assess the dependence of modern ethnobotanical records on renaissance pharmacy and herbals and ultimately on dioscorides results in albacete 1526 we determined 101 medicines 29 simple drugs and 72 compound medicines comprising 187 ingredients 85 botanical 7 5 mineral and 7 5 zoological substances all composed medicines appear standardized in the pharmacopoeias notably in the pharmacopoeia of florence from 1498 however most were no longer in use by 1750 in the pharmacy and were completely absent in popular herbal medicine in albacete 1995 as well as in alta valle del reno italy in 2014 among the ingredients present in different formulation are the flowers of rosa gallica honey apis mellifera the roots of nardostachys jatamansi and convolvulus scammonia pistils of crocus sativus grapes and raisins vitis vinifera rhizomes of zingiber officinale bark of cinnamomum verum leaves and fruits of olea europaea mastic generally of pistacia lentiscus and wood of santalum album the statistical analysis of sources produces four well separated clusters renaissance herbals and pharmacopoeias ethnobotany and folk medicine old phytotherapy and modern phytotherapy including naturopathy confirming our a priori classification the clade of renaissance herbals and pharmacopoeias appears separated from the rest in 97 of bootstrapped trees bayesian inference produces a tree determined by an initial set of two well distinct core groups of ingredients 64 locally used in mediterranean europe during centuries and 45 imported used in pharmacy during centuries complexity reached its maximum in albacete 1526 and contemporary pharmacopoeias gradually decreasing over time the analysis of medicinal uses of the top 10 ingredients showed low coincidence between dioscorides and different renaissance herbals or medical treatises and of all of them with ethnobotany in albacete conclusions regarding our question is there something new under the sun in some aspects the answer is â œnoâ the contrast between expensive drugs highly valued medicines and unappreciated local wild medicinal plants persists since the salerno s school of medicine old medicine in mediterranean europe as reflected by albacete 1526 tariff of medicines involved strict formulations and preferences for certain ingredients despite other ingredients locally available but underappreciated this confirms the fact that any system of medicine does not get to use all available resources ethnobiological records of materia medica in rural areas of albacete describe systems with a high degree of stability and resilience where the use of local resources largely wild but also cultivated is predominant in contrast with the weight of imported exotic products in pharmacy,2016,0.197
Sensitivity of fine-scale species distribution models to locational uncertainty in occurrence data across multiple sample sizes,to generate realistic predictions species distribution models require the accurate coregistration of occurrence data with environmental variables there is a common assumption that species occurrence data are accurately georeferenced however this is often not the case this study investigates whether locational uncertainty and sample size affect the performance and interpretation of fine scale species distribution models this study evaluated the effects of locational uncertainty across multiple sample sizes by subsampling and spatially degrading occurrence data distribution models were constructed for kelp ecklonia radiata across a large study site 680 km2 off the coast of southeastern australia generalized additive models were used to predict distributions based on fine resolution 2â 5 m cell size seafloor variables generated from multibeam echosounder data sets and occurrence data from underwater towed video the effects of different levels of locational uncertainty in combination with sample size were evaluated by comparing model performance and predicted distributions while locational uncertainty was observed to influence some measures of model performance in general this was small and varied based on the accuracy metric used however simulated locational uncertainty caused changes in variable importance and predicted distributions at fine scales potentially influencing model interpretation this was most evident with small sample sizes results suggested that seemingly high performing fine scale models can be generated from data containing locational uncertainty although interpreting their predictions can be misleading if the predictions are interpreted at scales similar to the spatial errors this study demonstrated the need to consider predictions across geographic space rather than performance alone the findings are important for conservation managers as they highlight the inherent variation in predictions between equally performing distribution models and the subsequent restrictions on ecological interpretations,2016,0.198
An Ecological Assessment of the Pandemic Threat of Zika Virus,the current outbreak of zika virus poses a severe threat to human health while the range of the virus has been cataloged growing slowly over the last 50 years the recent explosive expansion in the americas indicates that the full potential distribution of zika remains uncertain moreover many studies rely on its similarity to dengue fever a phylogenetically closely related disease of unknown ecological comparability here we compile a comprehensive spatially explicit occurrence dataset from zika viral surveillance and serological surveys based in its native range and construct ecological niche models to test basic hypotheses about its spread and potential establishment the hypothesis that the outbreak of cases in mexico and north america are anomalous and outside the native ecological niche of the disease and may be linked to either genetic shifts between strains or el nino or similar climatic events remains plausible at this time comparison of the zika niche against the known distribution of dengue fever suggests that zika is more constrained by the seasonality of precipitation and diurnal temperature fluctuations likely confining autochthonous non sexual transmission to the tropics without significant evolutionary change projecting the range of the diseases in conjunction with three major vector species aedes africanus ae aegypti and ae albopictus that transmit the pathogens under climate change suggests that zika has potential for northward expansion but based on current knowledge our models indicate zika is unlikely to fill the full range its vectors occupy and public fear of a vector borne zika epidemic in the mainland united states is potentially informed by biased or limited scientific knowledge with recent sexual transmission of the virus globally we caution that our results only apply to the vector borne transmission route of the pathogen and while the threat of a mosquito carried zika pandemic may be overstated in the media other transmission modes of the virus may emerge and facilitate naturalization worldwide,2016,0.845
Caraway essential oil composition and morphology: The role of location and genotype,caraway carum carvi is used as a vegetable more commonly the fruits are used to flavour foods or as a preservative quality is a key issue however little is known about the respective influences of type of material and location and the interaction of these factors on essential oil composition in this study wild populations and commercial cultivars from the nordic germplasm collection were examined plants were grown in two locations iceland and sweden and essential oil composition and phenotypic characteristics identified carvone and limonene were the two major compounds detected at levels around 14 and 70 of total peak area respectively also p cymene trans ocimene terpinolene and myrcene each were detected at levels above or around 2 in total 47 compounds were detected of which 40 were identified the effects of material type and location were established where location had a greater impact than genotype in 15 out of the 35 compounds detected at levels below 2 significant location dependent differences were detected for morphological traits genotype had a more significant effect than location,2016,0.635
"Distribution, Abundance, and Habitat Characteristics of Fundulus jenkinsi (Evermann) (Saltmarsh Topminnow) in Coastal Mississippi Watersheds, with Comments on Range-Wide Occurrences Based on Non-Vouchered and Museum Records",abstract fundulus jenkinsi saltmarsh topminnow is listed as â œat riskâ by the usfws and as a tier 2 conservation priority in mississippi in part because of marsh habitat loss due to storms urbanization and its specialized habitat requirements and limited geographic distribution to provide additional quantitative data for conservation planning our objectives were to 1 determine the distribution and abundance of saltmarsh topminnow within coastal mississippi 2 characterize its habitat requirements and 3 organize and present all saltmarsh topminnow data records non vouchered and museum records and those from this study for use in the development of management conservation plans we collected 497 fish and associated habitat data from 27 february to 1 august 2009 pca produced 3 meaningful components 1 a landscape position axis 32 40 of the total variance 2 a seasonal spatial axis of species occurrence 18 99 and 3 a geomorphic bank slope axis 18 78 ninety six percent of all,2016,0.256
Threatened amphibians of Uruguay: Effectiveness of protected areas face of climate change,threatened amphibians of uruguay effectiveness of protected areas face of climate change climate change cc constitutes one of the main biodiversity threats the effects of cc on species are apparent worldwide with primarily poleward and upward shifts in species distribution due to their narrow distribution threatened species are highly vulnerable to cc in this context protected areas pa could be key tools for adaptation to cc our aims were to study the effects of cc on the distribution and richness of the threatened and near threatened amphibians of uruguay and to evaluate the effectiveness of the national network of protected areas nnpa at present and under future climate scenarios to model the distribution of nine species we obtained records from herpetological collections scientific publications and gbif as well as current data and future climate projections of the general circulation model hadcm3 under the a2 and b2 ipcc scenarios from worldclim to model species distribution we applied maximum entropy techniques maxent to evaluate the effectiveness of nnpa we conducted a gap analysis by overlaying pa with the distribution of species the models indicate that the distribution of most amphibian species could expand in uruguay in the future except for pleurodema bibroni y melanophryniscus montevidensis local amphibian richness is predicted to increase mainly in the northwest and east of the country while amphibians studied are included in at least one pa less than 2 of the distribution is actually covered by the nnpa both currently and under cc scenarios which it is a strong indicator of the inefficiency of the system although projected cc for this region would not constitute a major threat to amphibians studied the scarce protection by the nnpa represents a risk to the conservation of herpetofauna facing the other components of global change,2016,0.675
"A new Ampedus Dejean (Elateridae : Elaterinae) from Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India",ampedus dejean of buxa tiger reserve is monotypic being represented by the only new species a furunculus species is described and illustrated based on the basis of a single male specimen,2016,0.546
Impact of pollen resources drift on common bumblebees in NW Europe,several bee species are experiencing significant population declines as bees exclusively rely on pollen for development and survival such declines could be partly related to changes in their host plant abundance and quality here we investigate whether generalist bumblebee species with stable population trends over the past years adapted their diets in response to changes in the distribution and chemical quality of their pollen resources we selected five common species of bumblebee in nw europe for which we had a precise description of their pollen diet through two time periods â prior to 1950â and â 2004â 2005â for each species we assessed whether the shift in their pollen diet was related with the changes in the suitable area of their pollen resources concurrently we evaluated whether the chemical composition of pollen resources changed over time and experimentally tested the impact of new major pollen species on the development of b terrestris microcolonies only one species i e b lapidarius significantly included more pollen from resources whose suitable area expanded this opportunist pattern could partly explain the expansion of b lapidarius in europe regarding the temporal variation in the chemical composition of the pollen diet total and essential amino acid contents did not differ significantly between the two time periods while we found significant differences among plant species this result is driven by the great diversity of resources used by bumblebee species in both periods our bioassay revealed that the shift to new major pollen resources allowed microcolonies to develop bringing new evidence on the opportunist feature of bumblebee in their diets overall this study shows that the response to pollen resource drift varies among closely related pollinators and a species rich plant community ensures generalist species to select a nutrient rich pollen diet,2016,0.977
Predicting suitable cultivation regions of medicinal plants with Maxent modeling and fuzzy logics: a case study of Scutellaria baicalensis in China,scientific prediction of suitable cultivation regions is an effective way for the assessment of habitat suitability and resource conservation to protect endangered medicinal plants in recent years the natural habitat of scutellaria baicalensis georgi has been degenerating and disappearing in china owing to excessive market demand of medicinal plant resource this paper reports a new approach to predict potential suitable cultivation regions and to explore the key environmental factors affecting the content of active ingredients in s baicalensis using integrated maxent maximum entropy modeling and fuzzy logics the modeling procedure used 275 occurrence records and baicalin contents of s baicalensis collected through 2000â 2014 and 16 worldclim environmental factors as well as hwsd soil data the result showed that six environmental factors alt prec7 prec1 bio4 bio1 and t ph were determined as key influential factors that mostly affect both the habitat distribution and baicalin content of s baicalensis the highly suitable cultivation regions of s baicalensis mainly distribute with probability â 0 50 in the northeast the north central and the northwest of china total 419 857 km2 the statistically significant auc area under the curve value 0 952 of roc receiver operating characteristic curve indicated that integrated maxent modeling and fuzzy logics could be used to predict the potential suitable cultivation regions of medicinal plants these results could pave the road for the habitat conservation and resource utilization of endangered medicinal plants,2016,0.098
Evaluating β Diversity as a Surrogate for Species Representation at Fine Scale,species turnover or î diversity is a conceptually attractive surrogate for conservation planning however there has been only 1 attempt to determine how well sites selected to maximize î diversity represent species and that test was done at a scale too coarse 2 500 km2 sites to inform most conservation decisions we used 8 plant datasets 3 bird datasets and 1 mammal dataset to evaluate whether sites selected to span î diversity will efficiently represent species at finer scale sites sizes 1 ha to 625 km2 we used ordinations to characterize dissimilarity in species assemblages î diversity among plots inventory data or among grid cells atlas data we then selected sites to maximize î diversity and used the species accumulation index sai to evaluate how efficiently the surrogate selecting sites for maximum î diversity represented species in the same taxon across all 12 datasets sites selected for maximum î diversity represented species with a median efficiency of 24 i e the surrogate was 24 more effective than random selection of sites and an interquartile range of 4 to 41 efficiency î diversity was a better surrogate for bird datasets than for plant datasets and for atlas datasets with 10 km to 14 km grid cells than for atlas datasets with 25 km grid cells we conclude that î diversity is more than a mere descriptor of how species are distributed on the landscape in particular î diversity might be useful to maximize the complementarity of a set of sites because we tested only within taxon surrogacy our results do not prove that î diversity is useful for conservation planning but our results do justify further investigation to identify the circumstances in which î diversity performs well and to evaluate it as a cross taxon surrogate,2016,0.895
Bradley Lake Hydroelectric Project Invasive Plant Management Plan,in 2010 homer soil water conservation district hswcd staff surveyed the bradley lake hydroelectric complex for invasive plants that survey work identified three notable invasives white sweetclover melilotus alba narrowleaf hawksbeard crepis tectorum and oxeye daisy luecanthemum vulgare these plants were spread out around four locations on the property this yearsâ project conducted a thorough vegetation survey for high priority invasives and updated the vegetation mapping for the bradley lake complex this project also provides best management practices and future considerations for managing invasives and undesirable vegetation around the complex footprint,2016,0.207
Modeling the Geographic Distribution of Prosopis africana (G. and Perr.) Taub. in Niger,prosopis africana is a species of great socio economic importance threatened with extinction from its natural habitat in niger due to overexploitation the main objective of this study is to determine the potential geographic distribution of p africana in niger climatic and botanical data has been collected and used to model the distribution on the basis of principle of maximum entropy maxent using maxent 3 3 3k diva gis 7 5 and arcgis 10 0 programs rainfall and temperature are the most significant variables in the distribution of p africana in niger thus the southern band of the country from the sudanian zone to the sahelio soudanian zone the wettest is the area conducive to the development of p africana 128 692 32 km2 in total 10 16 of the territory given the extent of this area revealed by this study a reforestation policy implementation of p africana would allow to restore its stands in niger,2016,0.419
Population Genetic Structure and Reproductive Strategy of the Introduced Grass Centotheca lappacea in Tropical Land-Use Systems in Sumatra,intensive transformation of lowland rainforest into oil palm and rubber monocultures is the most common land use practice in sumatra indonesia accompanied by invasion of weeds in the jambi province centotheca lappacea is one of the most abundant alien grass species in plantations and in jungle rubber an extensively used agroforest but largely missing in natural rainforests here we investigated putative genetic differentiation and signatures for adaptation in the introduced area we studied reproductive mode and ploidy level as putative factors for invasiveness of the species we sampled 19 populations in oil palm and rubber monocultures and in jungle rubber in two regions bukit duabelas and harapan amplified fragment length polymorphisms aflp revealed a high diversity of individual genotypes and only a weak differentiation among populations fst 0 173 and between the two regions fst 0 065 there was no significant genetic differentiation between the three land use systems the metapopulation of c lappacea consists of five genetic partitions with high levels of admixture all partitions appeared in both regions but with different proportions within the bukit duabelas region we observed significant isolation by distance nine aflp loci 5 3 of all loci were under natural diversifying selection all studied populations of c lappacea were diploid outcrossing and self incompatible without any hints of apomixis the estimated residence time of c 100 years coincides with the onset of rubber and oil palm planting in sumatra in the colonization process the species is already in a phase of establishment which may be enhanced by efficient selection acting on a highly diverse gene pool in the land use systems seed dispersal might be enhanced by adhesive spikelets at present the abundance of established populations in intensively managed land use systems might provide opportunities for rapid dispersal of c lappacea across rural landscapes in sumatra while the invasion potential in rainforest ecosystems appears to be moderate as long as they remain undisturbed,2016,0.605
Taxonomic description of in situ bee pollen from the middle Eocene of Germany,abstractthe middle eocene messel and eckfeld localities are renowned for their excellently preserved faunas and diverse floras here we describe for the first time pollen from insect pollinated plants found in situ on well preserved ancient bees using light and scanning electron microscopy there have been 140 pollen types reported from messel and 162 pollen types from eckfeld here we document 23 pollen types six from messel and 18 from eckfeld one is shared the taxa reported here are all pollinated by insects and mostly not recovered in the previously studied dispersed fossil pollen records typically a single or two pollen types are found on each fossil bee specimen the maximum number of distinct pollen types on a single individual is five only five of the 23 pollen types obtained are angiosperms of unknown affinity the remainder cover a broad taxonomic range of angiosperm trees and include members of several major clades monocots 1 pollen type fabids 7 malvids 4 asterids 5 and othe,2016,0.384
Pleistocene sea level fluctuation and host plant habitat requirement influenced the historical phylogeography of the invasive species Amphiareus obscuriceps (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) in its native range,on account of repeated exposure and submergence of the east china sea ecs land bridge sea level fluctuation played an important role in shaping the population structure of many temperate species across the ecs during the glacial period the flower bug amphiareus obscuriceps poppius 1909 hemiptera anthocoridae is an invasive species native to the sino japanese region sjr of east asia we tested the hypothesis of the ecs land bridge acting as a dispersal corridor or filter for a obscuriceps during the glacial period specifically we tested whether and the extent to which dispersal ability and host plant habitat requirement influenced the genetic structure of a obscuriceps during the exposure of the ecs land bridge phylogenetic and network analyses indicated that a obscuriceps is composed of two major lineages i e china and japan divergence time on both sides of the ecs was estimated to be approximately 1 07 0 79â 1 32 ma which was about the same period that the sea level increased no significant isolation by distance ibd relationship was found between ð st and euclidean distances in the mantel tests which is consistent with the hypothesis that this species has a good dispersal ability our last glacial maximum lgm niche modeling of plants that constitute preferred habitats for a obscuriceps exhibited a similar habitat gap on the exposed ecs continental shelf between china and japan but showed a continuous distribution across the taiwan strait our results suggest that ecological properties habitat requirement and dispersal ability together with sea level fluctuation during the pleistocene across the ecs have shaped the genetic structure and demographic history of a obscuriceps in its native area the host plant habitat requirement could also be a key to the colonization of the a obscuriceps species during the exposure of the ecs land bridge our findings will shed light on the potential role of habitat requirement in the process of biological invasion in future studies,2016,0.381
Middle Miocene climate and vegetation models and their validation with proxy data,the miocene is a relatively recent epoch of the earth s history with warmer climate than today particularly during the middle miocene climatic optimum mmco approximately 17â 15ma although the cause of the warming is probably not only attributable to co2 but also to changes in orography and configuration of ocean gateways this time interval represents an ideal case study to test the ability of climate models to simulate warm climates comparable to those that the earth may experience in the near future however even with higher than present day co2 concentrations the mmco warming inferred from terrestrial proxy data has been difficult to reproduce in climate models since fossil flora do not provide direct information on climate but on flora and vegetation climate model results are generally compared to climate reconstructions obtained from the fossil flora in this study we apply an alternative method by simulating palaeovegetation from the outputs of the climate model using a dynamic vegetation model model vegetation reconstruction can then be compared to the vegetation cover indicated by the fossil flora record at the various localities provided that a common classification of plant functional types pfts is used for the data and the model here we reconstruct the vegetation of the middle miocene with the global dynamic vegetation model caraib using the climatologies derived from five atmospheric general circulation models the reliability of the simulations is examined on a presence absence basis of pfts by comparison of vegetation reconstructions to palaeoflora data recorded in the northern hemisphere and the tropics this comparison provides an overall agreement around 60 between model and data when all sites and tree types are considered three model simulations out of five show to be better at predicting the absence than the presence the presence of warm temperate mixed forests in the middle latitudes dominated by broadleaved deciduous warm temperate and subtropical trees is generally well reproduced in caraib simulations however poor agreement is obtained for the presence of tropical pfts out of the tropics and for warm pfts at latitudes northward of 50â n where climate models remain too cold to produce assemblages of trees consistent with the data nevertheless the modelâ data comparison performed here highlights several mismatches that could result not only from missing feedbacks in the climate simulations but also from the data the results of the likelihood analysis on presence absence of pfts illustrate the uncertainties in the pft classification of the neogene floral records the coexistence of some pfts in the palaeovegetation data is impossible to reproduce in the vegetation model simulations because of the climatic definition of the modern pfts this result indicates either a bias in the identification of modern analogues for fossil plant taxa or a possible evolution of environmental requirements of certain plants,2016,0.019
Climatic patterns in the establishment of wintering areas by North American migratory birds,long distance migration in birds is relatively well studied in nature however one aspect of this phenomenon that remains poorly understood is the pattern of distribution presented by species during arrival to and establishment of wintering areas some studies suggest that the selection of areas in winter is somehow determined by climate given its influence on both the distribution of bird species and their resources we analyzed whether different migrant passerine species of north america present climatic preferences during arrival to and departure from their wintering areas we used ecological niche modeling to generate monthly potential climatic distributions for 13 migratory bird species during the winter season by combining the locations recorded per month with four environmental layers we calculated monthly coefficients of climate variation and then compared two glm generalized linear models evaluated with the aic akaike information criterion to describe how these coefficients varied over the course of the season as a measure of the patterns of establishment in the wintering areas for 11 species the sites show nonlinear patterns of variation in climatic preferences with low coefficients of variation at the beginning and end of the season and higher values found in the intermediate months the remaining two species analyzed showed a different climatic pattern of selective establishment of wintering areas probably due to taxonomic discrepancy which would affect their modeled winter distribution patterns of establishment of wintering areas in the species showed a climatic preference at the macroscale suggesting that individuals of several species actively select wintering areas that meet specific climatic conditions this probably gives them an advantage over the winter and during the return to breeding areas as these areas become full of migrants alternative suboptimal sites are occupied nonrandom winter area selection may also have consequences for the conservation of migratory bird species particularly under a scenario of climate change,2016,0.958
Metapopulation Capacity Meets Evolutionary Distinctness: Spatial Fragmentation Complements Phylogenetic Rarity in Prioritization,many species have declined or already gone extinct due to the human activities across the world causing what is termed the current sixth mass extinction event the biggest determinant of species survival is the availability of a network of suitable habitat affecting population size and eventual extinction risk considering that modern technology allows us to efficiently quantify habitat loss species distribution data can inform us of the required minimum connectivity of habitats evolutionary distinctiveness ed is already part of conservation schemes to prioritize rare traits and unique phylogenetic history however so far none of these prioritisations quantifies the spatial constraints of a species to estimate long term persistence based on the fragmentation of the landscape metapopulation capacity î m is one such measurement for quantifying fragmentation here we propose a combination of metapopulation capacity and phylogenetic distinctiveness to prioritize important specific habitat patches for evolutionary distinct species we applied the new framework to prioritize island mammals and found data deficient and least concern species with a high combined value in ed and î m balancing between the extinction risks of solitary islands and the potential loss of unique evolutionary history of rare species on these islands can be a worthwhile exercise in prioritization schemes,2016,0.914
Oviposition site selection of the Alcon blue butterfly at the northern range margin,female oviposition decisions in insects may strongly affect offspring growth and survival and thus determine population performance in this study we examined oviposition site selection in the xerophilous ecotype of the endangered myrmecophilous butterfly phengaris maculinea alcon lepidoptera lycaenidae in estonia at the northern distribution margin of both the butterfly and its host plant gentiana cruciata l egg distribution on individual host plants appeared to be highly uneven plants carrying high egg loads contrasted to a high proportion of host plants without any or with a few eggs host plant use for oviposition was strongly dependent on plant characteristics and environmental context host plant height relative to the surrounding vegetation rather than the absolute height of host plants was a key factor determining the use of particular host plant individuals for oviposition in particular plants protruding above surrounding vegetation had a higher probability of being used for oviposition and carried more eggs additionally the number of eggs laid on individual host plants was positively associated with the presence of flowers and the number of shoots more aggregated host plants received fewer eggs than those with less conspecifics around feeding damage by wild herbivores found in a substantial proportion of the butterflyâ s host plants strongly reduced the number of eggs on individual plants our results underline the need to assure that butterflyâ s host plants do not become overgrown by surrounding vegetation best practices for opening vegetation around host plants may need further studies that explicitly account for butterflyâ s host antsâ their abundance in relation to vegetation height and their response to opening vegetation,2016,0.118
"Morphological and Genetic Variation along a North-to-South Transect in Stipa purpurea, a Dominant Grass on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau: Implications for Response to Climate Change",estimating the potential of species to cope with rapid environmental climatic modifications is of vital importance for determining their future viability and conservation the variation between existing populations along a climatic gradient may predict how a species will respond to future climate change stipa purpurea is a dominant grass species in the alpine steppe and meadow of the qinghai tibetan plateau qtp ecological niche modelling was applied to s purpurea and its distribution was found to be most strongly correlated with the annual precipitation and the mean temperature of the warmest quarter we established a north to south transect over 2000 km long on the qtp reflecting the gradients of temperature and precipitation and then we estimated the morphological by sampling fruited tussocks and genetic divergence by using 11 microsatellite markers between 20 populations along the transect reproductive traits the number of seeds and reproductive shoots the reproductive vegetative growth ratio and the length of roots in the s purpurea populations varied significantly with climate variables s purpurea has high genetic diversity he 0 585 a large effective population size ne 1 000 and a considerable level of gene flow between populations the s purpurea populations have a mosaic genetic structure some distant populations over 1000 km apart clustered genetically whereas closer populations 100 km apart had diverged significantly suggesting local adaptation asymmetrical long distance inter population gene flow occurs along the sampling transect and might be mediated by seed dispersal via migratory herbivores such as the chiru pantholops hodgsonii these findings suggest that population performance variation and gene flow both facilitate the response of s purpurea to climate change,2016,0.914
Evolutionary radiations of Proteaceae are triggered by the interaction between traits and climates in open habitats,aim ecologically driven diversification can create spectacular diversity in both species numbers and form however the prediction that the match between intrinsic e g functional trait and extrinsic e g climatic niche variables may lead to evolutionary radiation has not been critically tested here we test this hypothesis in the southern hemisphere plant family proteaceae which shows a spectacular diversity in open mediterranean shrublands in the southwest australian floristic region swafr and the cape floristic region cfr species in the proteaceae family occupy habitats ranging from tropical rain forests to deserts and are remarkably variable in leaf morphology location southern hemisphere methods we built a phylogenetic tree for 337 proteaceae species 21 of the total representing all main clades climatic tolerances and morphologies and collected leaf functional traits leaf area sclerophylly leaf shape for 261 species and climatic niche data for 1645 species phylogenetic generalized least squares regression and quantitative trait evolutionary model testing were used to investigate the evolutionary pathways of traits and climatic niches and their effect on diversification rates results we found that divergent selection may have caused lineages in open vegetation types to evolve towards trait and climatic niche optima distinct from those in closed forests furthermore we show that the interaction between open habitats dry warm and or mediterranean climates and small sclerophyllous toothed leaves increases net diversification rates in proteaceae main conclusions our results suggest that the evolution of specific leaf adaptations may have allowed proteaceae to adapt to variable climatic niches and diversify extensively in open ecosystems such as those in the cfr and swafr this match between morphology and environment may therefore more generally lead to evolutionary radiation,2016,0.802
Measures of biologically relevant environmental heterogeneity improve prediction of regional plant species richness,aim relatively few models of species richness explicitly consider aspects of environmental heterogeneity other than topographic heterogeneity we hypothesized that environmental heterogeneity is an important determinant of species richness especially in ancient climatically stable environments location south africa which accommodates a range of biomes that differ strongly in species richness methods we included measures of climatic edaphic and biotic variables and their spatial heterogeneities in boosted regression tree models of vascular plant species richness species richness was assessed using herbarium records per quarter degree square qds to avoid autocorrelation and problems of variable collection rates we iteratively randomly subsampled 20 of the available qds we also verified estimates of species richness using an independent data source results the models predicted 68 of qds species richness and 95 of biome richness spatial variability in diurnal temperature range was the strongest predictor of species richness and inclusion of edaphic and biotic terms as well as spatial heterogeneities increased the explanatory power of the model considerably heterogeneity variables featured strongly 8 of 13 as predictors of species richness but several resource variables e g precipitation seasonality and evapotranspiration were also important the spatial heterogeneities of some variables e g water availability fire were related to their mean values possibly explaining why some global models that have not explicitly included heterogeneity other than topographic perform well main conclusions environmental heterogeneities are important predictors of species richness yielding accurate predictions even in the absence of any consideration of diversification rates or environmental stability greater heterogeneity of some resource variables when limiting contributed to modelled species richness adding to understanding of why species richness of some resource poor mediterranean ecosystems is high we suggest that species richness in ancient climatically stable mediterranean ecosystems is contingent on resource and environmental heterogeneity that has enabled both the diversification and maintenance of regional species richness,2016,0.991
"Modelling winter survival, mating and trapping of Queensland fruit fly in Auckland, New Zealand",in february 2015 an established population of the queensland fruit fly qfly bactrocera tryoni was detected in grey lynn auckland it was questionable whether qfly might successfully overwinter in auckland and how trap efficacy and mating behaviour would be affected by winter conditions during the official biosecurity response to eradicate qfly these questions were addressed using published qfly models that had been developed and parameterised from biological data from its native range a model for cold acclimatisation suggested that auckland winters would not be sufficiently cold to cause significant mortality of adult qfly but substantial cold mortality might occur in more southern locations the temperature requirement for mating suggested mating would be relatively rare from june to october and two models for relative trap efficacy suggested that traps would be relatively ineffective until late spring october november the ministry for primary industryâ s biosecurity response was successful with no detection of qfly after march 2015 and eradication formally declared in december 2015,2016,0.397
Split Diversity: Measuring and Optimizing Biodiversity Using Phylogenetic Split Networks,about 20 years ago the concepts of phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic split networks were separately introduced in conservation biology and evolutionary biology respectively while it has been widely recognized that biodiversity assessment should better take into account the phylogenetic tree of life it has also been widely acknowledged that phylogenetic networks are more appropriate for phylogenetic analysis in the presence of hybridization horizontal gene transfer or contradicting trees among genomic loci here we aim to combine phylogenetic diversity and networks into one concept split diversity sd which properly measures biodiversity for conflicting phylogenetic signals moreover we reformulate well known conservation questions under the sd framework and present computational methods to solve these in general computationally intractable questions notably integer programming a technique widely used to solve many real life problems serves as a general and efficient strategy that delivers optimal solutions to many biodiversity optimization problems we finally discuss future directions for the new concept,2016,0.509
Study of biodiversity of nature reserves of the Russia in the digital age: experience and perspectives,in the paper is given a short review of the modern state of implementation of digital methods and facilities in the study of biodiversity of nature reserves in russia in the context of global and domestic experience based on practical examples some possible ways and perspectives for future development of research on nature reserves biodiversity in russia in the digital age are considered,2016,0.138
Character displacement under influence of Bergmann’s rule in Cerdocyon thous (Mammalia: Canidae),in south america the crab eating fox cerdocyon thous occurs in sympatry to the ecologically similar and phylogenetically close lycalopex vetulus to the north and lycalopex gymnocercus to the south of its range we studied character displacement in cerdocyon under the effect of bergmann s rule and the presence or absence either of lycalopex within the crab eating fox range we performed skull shape analysis on 191 c thous specimens and divided them in three distinct groups depending on whether cerdocyon occurs in sympatry or in allopatry to lycalopex species we tested for differences in size and shape between cerdocyon groups and regressed both skull size and sexual size dimorphism against latitude and temperature while controlling for spatial autocorrelation in the phenotypes southern cerdocyon specimens present enlarged temporalis muscle and slender carnassial both suggestive of a shift towards increased carnivory such a niche shift is interpreted as a mean to reduce competition to the larger lycalopex species which is still smaller than cerdocyon consistently with the above the degree of sexual shape and size dimorphism in cerdocyon increases southward we found a complex but coherent pattern of size and shape differentiation in cerdocyon groups which is consistent with the effects of both competition and bergmann s rule cerdocyon reduces competition to lycalopex by growing larger in the north to the south cerdocyon is still larger in keeping with bergmann s rule but strongly differs in skull shape from both its lycalopex competitor and from any other cerdocyon since the southern lycalopex species is much more similar in size to cerdocyon than its northern congeneric this suggests that shape differences serve the goal of reducing competition between cerdocyon and lycalopex to the south as size differences do to the north the absence of the hypercarnivorous canid speothos venaticus from the southern range of cerdocyon may have allowed such a pattern to take place,2016,0.743
Integrating occurrence data and expert maps for improved species range predictions,aim knowledge of species geographical distributions is critical for many ecological and evolutionary questions and underpins effective conservation decision making yet it is usually limited in spatial resolution or reliability over large spatial extents range predictions are typically derived from expert knowledge or increasingly species distribution models based on individual occurrence records expert maps are useful at coarse resolution where they are suitable for delineating unoccupied regions in contrast point records typically provide finer scale occurrence information that can be characterized for its environmental association but usually suffers from observer biases and does not representatively or fully address the geographical or environmental range occupied by a species innovation we develop a new modelling methodology to combine the complementary informative attributes of both data types to improve fine scale large extent predictions we use expert delineations to constrain predictions of a species distribution model parameterized with incidental point occurrence records we introduce a maximum entropy approach for combining the two data types and generalize it to poisson point process models we illustrate critical decision making during model construction using two detailed case studies and illustrate features more generally with applications to species with vastly different range and data attributes our methods are illustrated in the supporting information and with a new r package bossmaps that integrates with existing generalized linear modelling and maxent software main conclusions our modelling strategy flexibly accommodates expert maps with different levels of bias and precision the approach can also be useful with other coarse sources of spatially explicit information including habitat associations elevational bands or vegetation types the flexible nature of this methodological innovation can support improved characterization of species distributions for a variety of applications and is being implemented as a standard element underpinning integrative species distribution predictions in the map of life https mol org,2016,0.365
Genetically informed ecological niche models improve climate change predictions,we examined the hypothesis that ecological niche models enms more accurately predict species distributions when they incorporate information on population genetic structure and concomitantly local adaptation local adaptation is common in species that span a range of environmental gradients e g soils and climate moreover common garden studies have demonstrated a covariance between neutral markers and functional traits associated with a speciesâ ability to adapt to environmental change we therefore predicted that genetically distinct populations would respond differently to climate change resulting in predicted distributions with little overlap to test whether genetic information improves our ability to predict a speciesâ niche space we created genetically informed ecological niche models genms using populus fremontii salicaceae a widespread tree species in which prior common garden experiments demonstrate strong evidence for local adaptation four major findings emerged i genms predicted population occurrences with up to 12 fold greater accuracy than models without genetic information ii tests of niche similarity revealed that three ecotypes identified on the basis of neutral genetic markers and locally adapted populations are associated with differences in climate iii our forecasts indicate that ongoing climate change will likely shift these ecotypes further apart in geographic space resulting in greater niche divergence iv ecotypes that currently exhibit the largest geographic distribution and niche breadth appear to be buffered the most from climate change as diverse agents of selection shape genetic variability and structure within species we argue that genms will lead to more accurate predictions of species distributions under climate change,2016,0.858
"Status, trends and drivers of kelp forests in Europe: an expert assessment",a comprehensive expert consultation was conducted in order to assess the status trends and the most important drivers of change in the abundance and geographical distribution of kelp forests in european waters this consultation included an on line questionnaire results from a workshop and data provided by a selected group of experts working on kelp forest mapping and eco evolutionary research differences in status and trends according to geographical areas species identity and small scale variations within the same habitat where shown by assembling and mapping kelp distribution and trend data significant data gaps for some geographical regions like the mediterranean and the southern iberian peninsula were also identified the data used for this study confirmed a general trend with decreasing abundance of some native kelp species at their southern distributional range limits and increasing abundance in other parts of their distribution saccharina latissima and saccorhiza polyschides the expansion of the introduced species undaria pinnatifida was also registered drivers of observed changes in kelp forests distribution and abundance were assessed using expertsâ opinions multiple possible drivers were identified including global warming sea urchin grazing harvesting pollution and fishing pressure and their impact varied between geographical areas overall the results highlight major threats for these ecosystems but also opportunities for conservation major requirements to ensure adequate protection of coastal kelp ecosystems along european coastlines are discussed based on the local to regional gaps detected in the study,2016,0.484
"Two new species of Crocicreas (Helotiaceae, Ascomycota) revealed by morphological and molecular data",two new species of crocicreas are established based on morphological features and dna sequence data crocicreas luteolum is distinct by combination of the following features caulicolous hymenium surface yellow margin plane ectal excipulum of textura prismatica asci j 62∠81 ã 6 0∠7 7 âµm and ascospores fusoid biguttulate 11∠14 ã 2 2∠3 3 âµm crocicreas pseudobambusae is featured by combination of bambusicolous hymenium surface white to beige margin plane ectal excipulum of textura intricata asci j 36∠58 ã 3 5∠5 5 âµm and ascospores ellipsoid eguttulate 4 5∠7 7 ã 1 8∠2 5 âµm description illustration and comparison with related fungi are provided for each species sequence analyses of the internal transcribed spacer of nuclear ribosomal dna are used to confirm their generic positions,2016,0.512
Plants' native distributions do not reflect climatic tolerance,aim biogeographers have long known that plant species do not fully encompass their fundamental niche nonetheless in practice species distribution modelling assumes that plant distributions represent a reasonable approximation of their environmental tolerance for ecological forecasting projections of habitat loss due to climate change assume that many species will be unable to tolerate climate conditions outside of those found within their current distributional ranges we aim to test how well occurrences in the native range approximate the climatic conditions in which plant species can survive location continental usa methods we compared the climatic conditions between occurrences in the us native versus us non native ranges using 144 non invasive plant species we quantified differences in january minimum temperature july maximum temperature and annual precipitation as indicators of climatic tolerance we also compared modelled potential distributions throughout the us based on native and total ranges to test how expanded climatic tolerance translates into predicted geographical range results most species 86 had non native occurrences in climates outside those described by their native distributions for the 80 species with lower minimum temperatures at non native occurrences the median expansion of minimum temperature tolerance was ∠2 9 â c similarly for the 90 species with lower precipitation at non native occurrences the median expansion of minimum annual precipitation was ∠23 cm broader climatic conditions at non native occurrences expanded the modelled potential geographical range by a median of 35 with smaller range species showing larger expansions of potential geographical range main conclusions our results show that plants native ranges strongly underestimate climatic tolerance leading species distribution models to underpredict potential range the climatic tolerance of species with narrow native ranges appears most prone to underestimation these findings suggest that many plants will be able to persist in situ with climate change for far longer than projected by species distribution models,2016,0.939
"Nanoparticles and nucleic acids: Binding, dissociation, and RNAi",traditional methods of pest control are threatened by the development of insecticide resistance discovery of rna interference rnai has created new opportunities to develop new insect control methods this study investigates the potential for silica nanoparticles to improve the delivery of double stranded rna dsrna by providing protection from nucleases initially the binding of rna onto porous and nonporous nanoparticles was investigated we then investigated the protection afforded by different nanoparticles to a length of rna from a single ribonuclease results of these studies show that certain types of porous nanoparticles can provide protection to rna from rnase iii,2016,0.185
Biology and phylogenetic placement of a new species of Lasiokapala Ashmead from Argentina (Hymenoptera: Eucharitidae),within the ant parasitic wasp family eucharitidae hymenoptera the kapala clade is a monophyletic group attacking ectatomminae and ponerinae members often express extreme phenotypic features especially in the morphology of the paired frenal spines although the means of attack and developmental history of the eucharitid wasps within the ant nest are very similar the means by which they oviposit and optimize encounters of their active first instar larvae with ants is highly variable the relationships and life history strategies of lasiokapala ashmead hymenoptera eucharitidae and related taxa within the kapala clade are discussed based on phylogenetic analyses of morphological and molecular data descriptions are provided for the adults both sexes eggs and planidia of lasiokapala spiralicornis sp n from santiago del estero argentina females deposit their eggs on the underside of leaves of sida cordifolia l malvaceae and the likely host is postulated to be the genus ectatomma formicidae ectatomminae even within a closely related group of genera there is extreme independent divergence in morphology of scutellar spines antennae and other features but the larvae and larval biology are highly conserved across a much larger group of eucharitidae,2016,0.687
Assessing the need and potential of assisted migration using species distribution models,assisted migration am has been suggested as a management strategy for aiding species in reaching newly suitable locations as climate changes species distribution models sdms can provide important insights for decisions on whether to assist a species in its migration however their application includes uncertainties in this study we use consensus sdms to model the future suitable areas for 13 vascular plant species with poor dispersal capacity based on the outputs of sdms under different climate change scenarios and future times we quantify the predicted changes in suitable area by calculating metrics that describe the need and potential for migration we find that by the end of the 21st century one of the species would benefit from am under mild climate change seven under moderate change and for 12 out of 13 species studied am appears to be a relevant conservation method under strong climate change we also test the effect of different modeling attributes on the metrics and find little variation between sdms constructed using different combinations of modeling methods and variable sets however the choice of climate variables had a larger influence on the level of the metrics than did the modeling method we therefore suggest that the choice of climate variables should receive ample attention when measuring climate change threat using sdms and that experiments aiming to uncover critical environmental factors for individual species should be extensively conducted this study illustrates that dispersal assistance may be needed for many species under a wide range of possible future climates,2016,0.792
The discovery of the Amazonian tree flora with an updated checklist of all known tree taxa,amazonia is the most biodiverse rainforest on earth and the debate over how many tree species grow there remains contentious here we provide a checklist of all tree species collected to date and describe spatial and temporal trends in data accumulation we report 530 025 unique collections of trees in amazonia dating between 1707 and 2015 for a total of 11 676 species in 1225 genera and 140 families these figures support recent estimates of 16 000 total amazonian tree species based on ecological plot data from the amazonian tree diversity network botanical collection in amazonia is characterized by three major peaks centred around 1840 1920 and 1980 which are associated with flora projects and the establishment of inventory plots most collections were made in the 20th century the number of collections has increased exponentially but shows a slowdown in the last two decades we find that a speciesâ range size is a better predictor of the number of times it has been collected than the speciesâ estimated basin wide population size finding describing and documenting the distribution of the remaining species will require coordinated efforts at under collected sites,2016,0.912
Much more give than take: South Africa as a major donor but infrequent recipient of invasive non-native grasses,aim some regions donate more invaders from particular taxonomic and functional groups than they receive we demonstrate a particularly striking donorâ recipient asymmetry in invasion ecology in grasses specifically we explore whether low numbers of invasive grasses in south africa can be explained by sampling biases introduction dynamics species traits or invasibility of ecosystems location south africa australia chile europe and the usa methods we tested for a donorâ recipient asymmetry using lists of native and non native grasses in five regions across the globe then using distribution trait and environmental data we tested whether regions differed in 1 herbarium sampling effort 2 introduction dynamics of non native grasses primary uses area of origin and minimum residence time of non native grasses 3 traits of native and non native grasses leaf size height life history growth form c3 c4 ratio and taxonomic placement and 4 fire frequency results south africa has fewer invasive grasses and fewer widespread invasive grasses than other regions while grasses native to south africa are much more likely to be invasive elsewhere than other grasses this asymmetry cannot be explained by sampling biases historical trade links or minimum residence time rather it is likely to be due to a combination of 1 the massive scale of the introduction of south african grasses around the world 2 specific traits that make south african grasses successful competitors and 3 the high fire frequency of many south african ecosystems to which many native grasses are adapted but introduced grasses are not main conclusion south africa has a high diversity of grasses that possess specific traits to cope with fire grazing and disturbance this makes them more competitive moreover the high diversity of certain grass lineages in south africa acts as a reservoir of potential invaders and possibly helps limit invasions in south africa by promoting fire,2016,0.49
"Nuevos registros para la distribución geográfica de la serpiente cornuda mexicana esmeralda Ophryacus smaragdinus, en la zona centro del estado de …",we present new records to the geographical distribution of emerald horned pitviper ophryacus smaragdinus in the central part of the state of veracruz the locations of specimens were performed within ecosystems pine oak forest and mountain cloud forest in four municipalities along of the sierra madre oriental xico coacoatzintla rafael lucio and tlacolulan the study contributes to knowledge about their ecology and geographical distribution in the state of veracruz,2016,0.348
Geographical range expansion of alien birds and environmental matching,the international wildlife trade is a significant source of introduced alien species some of which proceed to become invasive and cause negative environmental and economic effects however not all introduced aliens establish viable populations and it is important to identify the factors that determine establishment success we explore the role of environmental suitability including anthropogenic influences climate and habitat types in the establishment success of alien bird species introduced to taiwan using maximum entropy modelling we employed a recursive feature elimination and akaike information criterion aic based stepwise model selection approach to assess whether the environmental suitability native range size body size residence time and the numbers of birds for sale in the shops affect variation in the extent of alien bird range size in taiwan we show that species with larger native range sizes and larger body sizes tend to have larger alien range sizes in taiwan there was no effect of environmental suitability on alien range size in taiwan but environmental suitability influenced the establishment success of bird species there,2016,0.702
Records of five bryozoan species from offshore gas platforms rare for the Dutch North Sea,this study reports on bryozoan species collected at three offshore gas platforms in the dutch part of the north sea four out of thirteen observed species are considered as rare in the netherlands whereas cribrilina punctata is a new species for dutch waters,2016,0.775
Lack of human-assisted dispersal means Pueraria montana var. lobata (kudzu vine) could still be eradicated from South Africa,the legume pueraria montana var lobata kudzu vine is one of the worst plant invaders globally here we present the first study of p montana in south africa we found only seven p montana populations covering an estimated condensed area of 74 hectares during the height of the growing season based on a species distribution model it appears that large parts of the globe are suitable including parts of the eastern escarpment of south africa where most populations occur south african populations of p montana appear to have a similar ecology to populations in the usa high growth rates low seed germination no natural long distance dispersal little herbivory and vigorous post fire resprouting in contrast to the usa most south african populations do flower and flowers are capable of producing seed in the absence of pollinators however p montana appears to have never been widely planted in south africa and the incursion was for many years restricted to a single introduction site the comparison between the invasions of p montana in the usa and south africa highlights the often overriding importance of human assisted dispersal and cultivation in creating widespread invasions and should serve as a warning to people who have proposed to utilize the species in africa,2016,0.937
Elevational diversity patterns as an example for evolutionary and ecological dynamics in ferns and lycophytes,evolutionary processes such as adaptation ecological filtering and niche conservatism involve the interaction of organisms with their environment and are thus commonly studied along environmental gradients elevational gradients have become among the most studied environmental gradients to understand large scale patterns of species richness and composition because they are highly replicated with different combinations of geographical environmental and historical factors we here review the literature on using elevational gradients to understand evolutionary processes in ferns some phylogenetic studies of individual fern clades have considered elevation in the analysis or interpretation and postulated that fern diversification is linked to the colonization of mountain habitats other studies that have linked elevational community composition and hence ecological filtering with phylogenetic community composition and morphological traits usually only found limited phylogenetic signal however these studies are ultimately only correlational and there are few actual tests of the evolutionary mechanisms leading to these patterns we identify a number of challenges for improving our understanding of how evolutionary and ecological processes are linked to elevational richness patterns in ferns i limited information on traits and their ecological relevance ii uncertainties on the dispersal kernels of ferns and hence the delimitation of regional species pools from which local assemblages are recruited iii limited genomic data to identify candidate genes under selection and hence actually document adaptation and selection and iv conceptual challenges in developing clear and testable hypotheses to how specific evolutionary processes can be linked to patterns in community composition and species richness,2016,0.277
CITES PROPOSAL FOR AMENDMENT OF APPENDICES I AND II: Clarion angelfish,listing in appendix ii of holacanthus clarionensis in accordance with art i cl e ii paragraph 2 a of the convention and in line with criterio n a of an n ex 2 a of resolution conf 9 24 rev cop16 owing to the levels of international trade relative to the population dens ities reported and projected in the areas of the speciesâ distribution,2016,0.351
"Landscape connectivity of Cercidiphyllum japonicum, an endangered species and its implications for conservation",cercidiphyllum japonicum a tertiary relict recolonized areas north of the yangtze river after the last glacial however little is known about its specific colonization corridors together with distribution models the least cost path lcp analysis has been used to reveal the landscape connectivity of species in this study we utilized the categorical lcp method combining the species distribution with genetic data from cpdna and nuclear markers to identify the possible dispersal routes of c japonicum after the lgm across time periods and genetic markers the results revealed that the species generally spread from the western edge of the sichuan basin while the highest degree of dispersal potential corresponds with the year 2080 and the cpdna haplotype furthermore shifts in the species range and the indication of an area of low genetic divergence further support the existence of a dispersal corridor overall we believe that a dispersal route from the western edge of the sichuan basin through the qinling mountains and further to the northeast could exist and therefore the results are an important supplement to the evolutionary history of c japonicum in the future we believe species distribution models sdm and connectivity assessment in relation to climate change will provide increasingly useful information and new implications for prioritizing the conservation of the endangered species,2016,0.803
"Save Our Bats, Save Our Tequila: Industry and Science Join Forces to Help Bats and Agaves",abstract the genus agave is one of the most diverse and rich groups of plants of mexico mexican people have developed several technologies to extract products from agave and for many years they have consumed five different alcoholic beverages derived from agave tequila mezcal bacanora raicilla and pulque additionally agave has coevolved with nectar feeding bats and in several cases bats play the main role as functional pollinators in this ecological relationship but with growth in the demand of agave derived products management practices have reduced dependence on bat pollination using instead clonal shoots to replant fields and harvesting plants before flowering thereby negatively affecting both bats by decreasing food availability and agaves by lowering their genetic diversity we explore the possibility that bat friendly practices may be incorporated into the production system we compiled data about the pollination biology of agave to infer how many bats could use the available res,2016,0.029
Assessing the ecological risk posed by a recently established invasive alien predator: Harmonia axyridis as a case study,invasive alien predators are a serious threat to biodiversity worldwide however there is no generic method for assessing which local species are most at risk following the invasion of a new predator the harlequin ladybird harmonia axyridis pallas coleoptera coccinellidae is an alien in europe and many other parts of the world where it affects other species of ladybirds through competition for food and intra guild predation igp here we describe a method developed to assess which european ladybird species are most at risk following the invasion of h axyridis the three components of the risk assessment are the likelihood that the assessed native species encounters h axyridis in the field the hazard of competition for food and the igp hazard thirty native european ladybird species were assessed through data obtained from field observations laboratory experiments and literature reviews the species that are considered most at risk are found on deciduous trees have immature stages which are highly vulnerable to igp by h axyridis and are primarily aphidophagous these species should be the focus of specific studies and possibly conservation actions the risk assessment method proposed here could be applied to other alien predators which are considered a threat to native species through competition and predation,2016,0.802
The evolution of host specialisation in avian brood parasites,traditional ecological theory predicts that specialisation can promote speciation hence recently derived species are specialists however an alternative view is that new species have broad niches which become narrower and specialised over time here we test these hypotheses using avian brood parasites and three different measures of host specialisation brood parasites provide an ideal system in which to investigate the evolution of specialisation because some exploit more than 40 host species and others specialise on only one we find that young brood parasite species are smaller and specialise on a narrower range of host sizes as expected if specialisation is linked with the generation of new species moreover we show that highly virulent parasites are more specialised supporting findings in other hostâ parasite systems finally we demonstrate that different measures of specialisation can lead to different conclusions and specialisation indices should be designed taking into account the biology of each system,2016,0.729
Can You Judge a Disease Host by the Company It Keeps? Predicting Disease Hosts and Their Relative Importance: A Case Study for Leishmaniasis,zoonoses are an important class of infectious diseases an important element determining the impact of a zoonosis on domestic animal and human health is host range although for particular zoonoses some host species have been identified until recently there have been no methods to predict those species most likely to be hosts or their relative importance complex inference networks infer potential biotic interactions between species using their degree of geographic co occurrence and have been posited as a potential tool for predicting disease hosts here we present the results of an interdisciplinary empirical study to validate a model based on such networks for predicting hosts of leishmania l mexicana in mexico using systematic sampling to validate the model predictions we identified 22 new species of host 34 of all species collected with the probability to be a host strongly dependent on the probability of co occurrence of vector and host the results confirm that leishmania l mexicana is a generalist parasite but with a much wider host range than was previously thought these results substantially change the geographic risk profile for leishmaniasis and provide insights for the design of more efficient surveillance measures and a better understanding of potential dispersal scenarios,2016,0.901
Pheromone Lure and Trap Color Affects Bycatch in Agricultural Landscapes of Utah,aerial traps using combinations of color and attractive lures are a critical tool for detecting and managing insect pest populations yet despite improvements in trap efficacy collection of nontarget species â œbycatchâ plagues many insect pest surveys bycatch can influence survey effectiveness by reducing the available space for target species and increasing trap screening time especially in areas where thousands of insects are captured as bycatch in a given season additionally bycatch may negatively impact local nontarget insect populations including beneficial predators and pollinators here we tested the effect of pheromone lures on bycatch rates of coccinellidae coleoptera apoidea hymenoptera and nontarget lepidoptera multicolored primarily yellow and white bucket traps containing a pheromone lure for capturing one of three survey target species spodoptera litura f s littoralis boisduval or helicoverpa armigera hã bner were placed in alfalfa and corn fields and compared to multicolored traps without a pheromone lure all green traps with and without h armigera lures were employed in a parallel study investigating the effect of lure and trap color on bycatch over 2 600 coccinellidae representing seven species nearly 6 400 bees in 57 species and 9 000 nontarget moths in 17 genera were captured across 180 traps and seven temporal sampling events significant effects of lure and color were observed for multiple taxa in general nontarget insects were attracted to the h armigera lure and multicolored trap but further studies of trap color and pheromone lure specificity are needed to better understand these interactions and to minimize nontarget captures,2016,0.843
Prediction of the effects of climate change on Sechium edule (Jacq.) Swartz varietal groups in Mexico,climate change has significant impacts on biodiversity and particularly on agriculture in this study the impact of climate change on five varietal groups of sechium edule up to the year 2050 was determined through the application of the hadgem2 cc model based on bioclimate layers the varietal groups nigrum minor albus dulcis and nigrum xalapensis will lose more than 50 of their potential current distribution due to a high impact in both the rcp 45 and the rcp 85 scenarios these two varietal groups also have a limited distribution which makes them highly susceptible in the case of nigrum spinosum a loss under 50 is predicted with scenario rcp 45 the varietal group that increases its distribution in 11 is virens levis the model forecasts significant impacts up to the year 2050 however the groups evaluated present high genetic diversity and phenotypic plasticity which allow adapting to new conditions that may contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change,2016,0.155
"New species of Chaetonema (Nematoda, Anoplostomatidae) and Admirandus (Nematoda, Oncholaimidae) from Patagonia, Río Negro and Santa Cruz, Argentina",two new species are described from the patagonia coast of argentina south atlantic and written keys to both genera are given chaetonema patagonica sp nov can most easily be differentiated from the other four species of the genus by the amphid shape and by the absence of a precloacal organ admirandus sanjuliensis sp nov is characterized by position of the demanian pores one preanal and two postanal the configuration of pre and postcloacal papillae and setae and by having the shortest stoma in the genus,2016,0.645
Citizen science networks in natural history and the collective validation of biodiversity data.,biodiversity data are in increasing demand to inform policy and management a substantial portion of these data is generated in citizen science networks to ensure the quality of biodiversity data standards and criteria for validation have been put in place we used interviews and document analysis from the united kingdom and the netherlands to examine how data validation serves as a point of connection between the diverse people and practices in natural history citizen science networks we found that rather than a unidirectional imposition of standards validation was performed collectively specifically it was enacted in ongoing circulations of biodiversity records between recorders and validators as they jointly negotiated the biodiversity that was observed and the validity of the records these collective validation practices contributed to the citizen science character or natural history networks and tied these networks together however when biodiversity records were included in biodiversity information initiatives on different policy levels and scales the circulation of records diminished these initiatives took on a more extractive mode of data use validation ceased to be collective with important consequences for the natural history networks involved and citizen science more generally,2016,0.375
"Encyclia inopinata (Orchidaceae, Laeliinae) a new species from Mexico",a new species of encyclia from mexico e inopinata is described and illustrated this species is similar to e diota but it can be distinguished by its usually more robust plants with 2â 3 leaves per pseudobulb and its flowers with longer and narrower sepals 1 8â 0 1 ã 0 63â 0 03 cm in e inopinata versus 1 48 â 0 14 ã 0 65â 0 06 cm in e diota and petals 1 7â 0 05 ã 0 59â 0 05 cm in e inopinata vs 1 36 â 0 19 ã 0 81â 0 13 cm in e diota and the labellum with narrower lateral lobes 0 18â 0 02 cm in e inopinata vs 0 41â 0 10 cm in e diota other characters that differentiate these two species are the coriaceous sepals pink callus and white anther of encyclia inopinata versus fleshy leathery sepals white callus and yellow anther of e diota the new species can be found in deciduous forests along the pacific slope of oaxaca state near of the border with guerrero state at about 1200 m it blooms between march and july,2016,0.513
"Dataset of Passerine bird communities in a Mediterranean high mountain (Sierra Nevada, Spain)",in this data paper a dataset of passerine bird communities is described in sierra nevada a mediterranean high mountain located in southern spain the dataset includes occurrence data from bird surveys conducted in four representative ecosystem types of sierra nevada from 2008 to 2015 for each visit bird species numbers as well as distance to the transect line were recorded a total of 27847 occurrence records were compiled with accompanying measurements on distance to the transect and animal counts all records are of species in the order passeriformes records of 16 different families and 44 genera were collected some of the taxa in the dataset are included in the european red list this dataset belongs to the sierra nevada global change observatory obsnev a long term research project designed to compile socio ecological information on the major ecosystem types in order to identify the impacts of global change in this area,2016,0.484
A Survey of Big Data Management: Taxonomy and State-of-the-Art,the rapid growth of emerging applications and the evolution of cloud computing technologies have significantly enhanced the capability to generate vast amounts of data thus it has become a great challenge in this big data era to manage such voluminous amount of data the recent advancements in big data techniques and technologies have enabled many enterprises to handle big data efficiently however these advances in techniques and technologies have not yet been studied in detail and a comprehensive survey of this domain is still lacking with focus on big data management this survey aims to investigate feasible techniques of managing big data by emphasizing on storage pre processing processing and security moreover the critical aspects of these techniques are analyzed by devising a taxonomy in order to identify the problems and proposals made to alleviate these problems furthermore big data management techniques are also summarized finally several future research directions are presented,2016,0.224
Global patterns of terrestrial assemblage turnover within and among land uses,land use has large effects on the diversity of ecological assemblages differences among land uses in the diversity of local assemblages alpha diversity have been quantified at a global scale effects on the turnover of species composition between locations beta diversity are less clear with previous studies focusing on particular regions or groups of species using a global database on the composition of ecological assemblages in different land uses we test for differences in the betweenâ site turnover of species composition within and among landâ use types overall we show a strong impact of land use on assemblage composition while we find that compositional turnover within land uses does not differ strongly among land uses human land uses and secondary vegetation in an early stage of recovery are poor at retaining the species that characterise primary vegetation the dissimilarity of assemblages in humanâ impacted habitats compared with primary vegetation was more pronounced in the tropical than temperate realm an exploratory analysis suggests that this geographic difference might be caused primarily by differences in climate seasonality and in the numbers of species sampled taken together the results suggest that while smallâ scale beta diversity within land uses is not strongly impacted by landâ use type compositional turnover between land uses is substantial therefore landâ use change will lead to profound changes in the structure of ecological assemblages,2016,0.727
A Suitability Model for White-Footed Voles with Insights into Habitat Associations at the Southern Boundary of Their Range,abstract the white footed vole arborimus albipes is one of the least studied small mammals in north america most reported occurrence data come from incidental captures from larger trapping efforts and have demonstrated a strong affinity for red alder alnus rubra trees recent research represented a range expansion in western oregon but little is known about the species at the southern end of its range in california we developed a distribution model for the species to identify areas best targeted for additional white footed vole research we used this model to survey by trapping in humboldt and del norte counties california and documented 3 new occurrences for the species these 3 occurrences were incorporated into a final distribution model this model suggests the possibility of white footed vole occurrence in southern humboldt and northern mendocino counties which would represent a southern expansion of their range white footed voles were captured in areas with smaller alders than non capture,2016,0.207
"Herpetological Survey of Iona National Park and Namibe Regional Natural Park, with a Synoptic List of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Namibe Province, Southwestern Angola",namibe province is the southernmost province of angola and as the result of sever al expeditions from the nineteenth century to the present it is one of the most her petofaunally well known areas of the country the province harbors a high diversi ty of amphibians and reptiles including roughly one third of the reptile taxa report ed for angola as a whole in this paper we present the results of a joint herpetologi cal expedition to namibe province in 2013 by the california academy of sciences and the instituto nacionalda biodiversidade e ã reas de conservaã ã o as well as a synoptic list of all the herpetological bibliographic records for the taxa known from the province a total of 37 herpetological taxa was collected including at least three then undescribed species two new country records and new records for rarely cited taxa in angola these taxa belong to four amphibian genera and 15 reptile gen era species accounts are provided for each of the species collected we also highlight biogeographic patterns conservation issues and possible future paths for the explo ration and knowledge of the herpetofauna of namibe,2016,0.726
"Evidence for Bombus occidentalis (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Populations in the Olympic Peninsula, the Palouse Prairie, and Forests of Northern Idaho.",since the mid 1990s bombus occidentalis green has declined from being one of the most common to one of the rarest bumble bee species in the pacific northwest of the united states although its conservation status is unresolved a petition to list this species as endangered or threatened was recently submitted to the u s fish and wildlife service to shed light on the conservation situation and inform the u s fish and wildlife service decision we report on the detection and abundance of b occidentalis following bumble bee collection between 2012 and 2014 across the pacific northwest collection occurred from the san juan islands and olympic peninsula east to northern idaho and northeastern oregon excluding the arid region in central washington b occidentalis was observed at 23 collection sites out of a total of 234 with the exception of three sites on the olympic peninsula all of these were in the southeastern portion of the collection range,2016,0.655
"Genomic evidence of demographic fluctuations and lack of genetic structure across flyways in a long distance migrant, the European turtle dove",understanding how past climatic oscillations have affected organismic evolution will help predict the impact that current climate change has on living organisms the european turtle dove streptopelia turtur is a warm temperature adapted species and a long distance migrant that uses multiple flyways to move between europe and africa despite being abundant it is categorized as vulnerable because of a long term demographic decline we studied the demographic history and population genetic structure of the european turtle dove using genomic data and mitochondrial dna sequences from individuals sampled across europe and performing paleoclimatic niche modelling simulations overall our data suggest that this species is panmictic across europe and is not genetically structured across flyways we found the genetic signatures of demographic fluctuations inferring an effective population size ne expansion that occurred between the late pleistocene and early holocene followed by a decrease in the ne that started between the mid holocene and the present our niche modelling analyses suggest that the variations in the ne are coincident with recent changes in the availability of suitable habitat we argue that the european turtle dove is prone to undergo demographic fluctuations a trait that makes it sensitive to anthropogenic impacts especially when its numbers are decreasing also considering the lack of genetic structure we suggest all populations across europe are equally relevant for conservation,2016,0.63
A Model of Provenance Applied to Biodiversity Datasets,nowadays the web has become one of the main sources of biodiversity information an increasing number of biodiversity research institutions add new specimens and their related information to their biological collections and make this information available on the web however mechanisms which are currently available provide insufficient provenance of biodiversity information in this paper we propose a new biodiversity provenance model extending the w3c prov data model biodiversity data is mapped to terms from relevant ontologies such as dublin core and geosparql stored in triple stores and queried using sparql endpoints additionally we provide a use case using our provenance model to enrich collection data,2016,0.05
Strategies Employed by Citizen Science Programs to Increase the Credibility of Their Data,the success of citizen science in producing important and unique data is attracting interest from scientists and resource managers nonetheless questions remain about the credibility of citizen science data citizen science programs desire to meet the same standards of credibility as academic science but they usually work within a different context for example training and managing significant numbers of volunteers with limited resources we surveyed the credibility building strategies of 30 citizen science programs that monitor environmental aspects of the california coast we identified a total of twelve strategies three that are applied during training and planning four that are applied during data collection and five that are applied during data analysis and program evaluation variation in the application of these strategies by program is related to factors such as the number of participants the focus on group or individual work and the time commitment required of volunteers the structure of each program and available resources require program designers to navigate tradeoffs in the choices of their credibility strategies our results illustrate those tradeoffs and provide a framework for the necessary discussions between citizen science programs and potential users of their dataâ including scientists and decision makersâ about shared expectations for credibility and practical approaches for meeting those expectations,2016,0.236
Bioquality Hotspots in the Tropical African Flora,â all plant species in the region were star rated categories of global rarity â a species distribution database was assembled for tropical african plants â a reliable minimum estimate of global irreplaceability was mapped across the region â the results allow global conservation values to be translated into local action,2016,0.485
"Biology, ecology, use, conservation and cultivation of round- leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia L.): a review",drosera rotundifolia is a perennial insectivorous herb which occupies open wet oligotrophic habitats such as acidic bogs and poor fens and specifically grows in sphagnum dominated communities since mediaeval times the species has been collected from natural habitats and used as a remedy for coughs and pulmonary diseases due to the substantial decline of drosera habitat the p lant has been protected in most european countries since the 1980s which means that wild d rotundifolia has become unavailable to the pharmaceutical industry the persistent demand has stimulated research into the cultivation of drosera in several european countries these studies have shown that drosera cultivation is time consuming and not yet cost effective and there is a need for the development of cultivation methods this article reviews the morphology distribution ecology and reproduction of drosera rotundifolia outlines its commercial use and n ature conservation requirements and describes previous research on its propagation and cultiva tion,2016,0.388
Digitization workflows for paleontology collections,the development of digitization workflows is an essential part of any formalized large scale digitization program paleontological collections literature has addressed the need for and utility of digitized collections for nearly four decades but no modern community vetted set of digitization workflows to accomplish this goal has been widely adopted with the advent of the u s national science foundationâ s nsf advancing the digitization of biodiversity collections adbc program in 2011 idigbio nsfâ s national coordinating center for facilitating digitization in collaboration with broad community representation from numerous institutions launched a series of working groups to address workflow development across all major preparation types workflow modules have been developed for pre digitization curation data entry imaging objects catalogs field notes and other materials not stored with specimens labels two and three dimensionally preserved specimens image processing and proactive digitization modules and the tasks they include may be implemented in any order and customized for specific configurations and institutional parameters the workflows are made publicly available for download and customization at github and via the idigbio documentation pages a review of platforms for electronic data publishing through online aggregators a crucial step in any digitization program is also provided,2016,0.143
Speciation dynamics and biogeography of Neotropical spiral gingers (Costaceae),species can arise via the divisive effects of allopatry as well as due to ecological and or reproductive character displacement within sympatric populations two separate lineages of costaceae are native to the neotropics an early diverging clade endemic to south america consisting of ca 16 species in the genera monocostus dimerocostus and chamaecostus and the neotropical costus clade ca 50 species a diverse assemblage of understory herbs comprising nearly half of total familial species richness we use a robust dated molecular phylogeny containing most of currently known species to inform macroevolutionary reconstructions enabling us to examine the context of speciation in neotropical lineages analyses of speciation rate revealed a significant variation among clades with a rate shift at the most recent common ancestor of the neotropical costus clade there is an overall predominance of allopatric speciation in the south american clade as most species display little range overlap in contrast sympatry is much higher within the neotropical costus clade independent of node age our results show that speciation dynamics during the history of costaceae is strongly heterogeneous and we suggest that the costus radiation in the neotropics arose at varied geographic contexts,2016,0.89
Intrageneric and Intergeneric Phylogenetics Based on Available Mitochondrial Genes and Nuclear Gene Variation among Ten Peiratine Species: Nine Species of Ectomocoris Mayr and One Species of Catamiarus (Serville) (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Peiratinae),the phylogenetic analysis of a nuclear gene 28s ribosomal rna of two determined and three undetermined species of ectomocoris mayr and the mitochondrial gene cytochrome c of three determined and one undetermined species of ectomocoris and one species of catamiarus serville from australia and asia was made it reveals the interspecific and intrageneric phylogenetic affinity among ectomocoris and intergeneric affinity between ectomocoris and catamiarus moreover the cty c sequence analysis warrant further studies on the undetermined species of ectomocoris and the validation of catamiarus as genus or subgenus of ectomocoris the study also proves the usefulness of 28s rrna and cyt c oxidase subunit i genes as useful molecular markers in the phylogenetic analysis of the peiratine genera ectomocoris and catamiarus,2016,0.867
Efficient parallel simulation of spatially-explicit agent-based epidemiological models,agent based approaches enable simulation driven analysis and discovery of system level properties using descriptive models of known behaviors of the entities constituting the system accordingly a spatially explicit agent based ecological modeling parallel simulation and analysis environment called searums has been developed however the conservatively synchronized parallel simulation infrastructure of searums did not scale effectively furthermore the initial multithreaded shared memory design prevented utilization of resources on multiple compute nodes of a distributed memory cluster consequently the simulation infrastructure of searums was redesigned to operate as a time warp synchronized parallel and distributed discrete event simulation pdes on modern distributed memory supercomputing platforms the new pdes environment is called searums the spatially explicit nature of the models posed several challenges in achieving scalable and efficient pdes necessitating new approaches in searums for â modeling spatial interactions and initial partitioning of agents â logical migration of an agent during simulation using proxy agents to reflect migratory characteristics and â ghosting of agents using multiple proxy agents to handle boundary cases that occur during logical migration of agents this article presents our optimization efforts involving new methods to address aforementioned challenges the design of searums and experimental evaluation of various alternatives that were explored to achieve scalable and efficient pdes are also discussed our experiments indicate that searums provide 200 performance improvement and maintains scalability to a larger number of processors thus enabling efficient parallel simulation of spatially explicit agent based epidemiological models,2016,0.02
Host ant use of the Alcon blue butterfly at the northern range margin,in myrmecophilous insects interactions with ants are often a key factor determining persistence of their populations regional variation in host ant use is therefore an essential aspect to consider to provide adequate conservation practices for such species in this study we examined this important facet of speciesâ ecology in an endangered myrmecophilous butterfly phengaris maculinea alcon lepidoptera lycaenidae the investigations conducted in peripheral populations in estonia allowed us to expand the knowledge of its host ant use to the northern distribution limit of the species our data indicate that in its northernmost populations the xerophilous ecotype of phengaris alcon is primarily parasitizing a single host ant species myrmica schencki the data collected are in line with the emerging evidence suggesting that peripheral and core populations of p alcon use different host ants and peripheral populations tend to display higher host ant specificity we also show that at its northern range margin p alcon might be more limited by the availability of its sole larval food plant in the region gentiana cruciata than the densities of its host ant finally we found a strong negative correlation between myrmica spp and lasius spp colony densities suggesting that interspecific competition between ants could have a substantial influence on host ant availability of phengaris butterflies and thus should be taken into account in conservation plans of these species,2016,0.976
Pliocene reversal of late Neogene aridification.,the pliocene epoch 5 3 2 6 ma represents the most recent geological interval in which global temperatures were several degrees warmer than today and is therefore considered our best analog for a future anthropogenic greenhouse world however our understanding of pliocene climates is limited by poor age control on existing terrestrial climate archives especially in the southern hemisphere and by persistent disagreement between paleo data and models concerning the magnitude of regional warming and or wetting that occurred in response to increased greenhouse forcing to address these problems here we document the evolution of southern hemisphere hydroclimate from the latest miocene to the middle pliocene using radiometrically dated fossil pollen records preserved in speleothems from semiarid southern australia these data reveal an abrupt onset of warm and wet climates early within the pliocene driving complete biome turnover pliocene warmth thus clearly represents a discrete interval which reversed a long term trend of late neogene cooling and aridification rather than being simply the most recent period of greater than modern warmth within a continuously cooling trajectory these findings demonstrate the importance of high resolution chronologies to accompany paleoclimate data and also highlight the question of what initiated the sustained interval of pliocene warmth,2016,0.396
Completeness of Digital Accessible Knowledge of Plants of Benin and Priorities for Future Inventory and Data Discovery,discovery of and access to primary biodiversity data are critical components in informed decision making regarding sustainable use of biological resources and conservation of biodiversity primary biodiversity data are increasingly available from benin but information about completeness of this information across the country is still lacking for most groups this study analyzed the digital accessible knowledge regarding the plants of benin to identify gaps in both geographic and environmental dimensions many gaps exist in plant data for benin particularly in the northern most departments central and southern benin are better known but some gaps remain even there the resulting view of beninese digital accessible knowledge can guide future inventory and data discovery efforts,2016,0.27
Geographical boundary and climatic analysis of Pinus tabulaeformis in China: Insights on its afforestation,pinus tabulaeformis as an endemic species in china is one of the main tree species for afforestation for rational cultivation planning and conservation it is necessary to understand the geographical boundaries and the ecological characteristics of p tabulaeformis and to explore its priority afforestation areas in this study maximum entropy modeling maxent was used to identify and prioritize suitable habitats of p tabulaeformis based on 13 climatic variables and globcover 2009 data the results show that the maxent model performs better than random prediction with an average test area under the curve auc value of 0 93 0 91â 0 94 precipitation of wettest month pwm annual biotemperature abt mean temperature of the coldest month mtcm annual mean temperature amt precipitation of driest month pdm coldness index ci annual precipitation ap and mean temperature of the warmest month mtwm are identified as dominant variables which explain 94 6 of variability the geographical distribution of p tabulaeformis climatic conditions of p tabulaeformis in the core area of its distribution are as follows pwm 100â 246mm abt 3 0â 4 7â c mtcm ∠20 2 to ∠1 1â c amt 2 9â 14 7â c pdm 2â 11mm ci ∠49 4â 0â c ap 431â 1122mm and mtwm 19 6â 31 2â c the suitable areas for afforestation are 2 6ã 104km2 patches with an area 1km2 1 6ã 104km2 patches with an area 10km2 and 1 2ã 104km2 patches with an area 100km2 which are mainly located in north shaanxi south ningxia and the middle of gansu and liaoning provinces with serious landscape fragmentation caused by human agricultural activities our simulation results can improve our understanding of the geographical and ecological characteristics of p tabulaeformis and provide prediction of priority areas for afforestation of this species under current and future climate change scenarios in china,2016,0.269
Buying environmental problems: The invasive potential of imported freshwater turtles in Argentina,in recent years decisionâ makers in argentina have allowed the legal import of thousands of specimens of freshwater turtles given their invasive potential many of the imported species have become established and have spread to other countries the three most commonly imported species recently have been graptemys pseudogeographica trachemys scripta and pseudemys nelsoni all of them native to north america this study assessed the invasive potential of these species in argentina based on i bioclimatic envelope models ii distribution of water bodies iii location of the most populated cities iv comparisons between their alien and native climatic niches and v the main ecological traits of those species the results showed that these species are able to establish viable populations in argentina especially t scripta and g pseudogeographica this is because the country offers a large amount of suitable climatic space for these species in which there are large areas with rivers and other water bodies the situation is especially problematic in freshwater ecosystems of the north east as well as in the most populated portion of the country a range of regulatory policies are suggested which could help to reduce biodiversity loss and economic impacts in the future,2016,0.868
Diversification into novel habitats in the Africa clade of Dioscorea (Dioscoreaceae): erect habit and elephant’s foot tubers,dioscorea is a widely distributed and highly diversified genus in tropical regions where it is represented by ten main clades one of which diversified exclusively in africa in southern africa it is characterised by a distinct group of species with a pachycaul or â œelephantâ s footâ structure that is partially to fully exposed above the substrate in contrast to african representatives of the genus from other clades occurring mainly in forest or woodland the pachycaul taxa and their southern african relatives occur in diverse habitats ranging from woodland to open vegetation here we investigate patterns of diversification in the african clade time of transition from forest to more open habitat and morphological traits associated with each habitat and evaluate if such transitions have led to modification of reproductive organs and mode of dispersal the africa clade originated in the oligocene and comprises four subclades the dioscorea buchananii subclade southeastern tropical africa and south africa is sister to the east african subclade which is respectively sister to the recently evolved sister south african e g cape and pachycaul subclades the cape and pachycaul subclades diversified in the east of the cape peninsula in the mid miocene in an area with complex geomorphology and climate where the fynbos thicket succulent karoo and forest biomes meet diversification out of forest is associated with major shifts in morphology of the perennial tuber specifically an increase in size and orientation which presumably led them to become pachycaul and rotation of stem from twining to non twining the iconic elephant s foot morphology observed in grasslands and thicket biomes where its corky bark may offer protection against fire and herbivory evolved since mid miocene a shift in pollination trait is observed within the forest but entry into open habitat does not show association with reproductive morphology except in the seed wing which has switched from winged all round the seed margin to just at the base or at the apex of it or has been even replaced by an elaiosome,2016,0.702
Student Identity and Aversions to Science: A Study of Translation in Higher Education,biodiversity informatics bdi is a science focused on biodiversity data management and bdi courses cast studentsâ attention to matters related to the physical environment global change translating data collections across multiple sciences and also to the translation needed to bring bdi findings from the scholarly community to the public even as students learn about science communication in bdi courses they struggle to translate their studies into their own identities and lives based on an examination of student talk in a course on bdi and science communication this research illustrates how students linguistically frame science and their science identity the data show that obstacles barring the taking up of a science identity are plentiful and that those barriers often relate to issues of identity and language interventions for addressing this translational problem the disruptions to sharing scientific information are discussed,2016,0.237
The Global Diversity of Hemichordata,phylum hemichordata composed of worm like enteropneusta and colonial pterobranchia has been reported to only contain about 100 species however recent studies of hemichordate phylogeny and taxonomy suggest the species number has been largely underestimated one issue is that species must be described by experts and historically few taxonomists have studied this group of marine invertebrates despite this previous lack of coverage interest in hemichordates has piqued in the past couple of decades as they are critical to understanding the evolution of chordatesâ as acorn worms likely resemble the deuterostome ancestor more closely than any other extant animal this review provides an overview of our current knowledge of hemichordates focusing specifically on their global biodiversity geographic distribution and taxonomy using information available in the world register of marine species and published literature we assembled a list of 130 described extant species the majority 83 of these species are enteropneusts and more taxonomic descriptions are forthcoming ptychoderidae contained the greatest number of species 41 species closely followed by harrimaniidae 40 species of the recognized hemichordate families hemichordates are found throughout the worldâ s oceans with the highest reported numbers by regions with marine labs and diligent taxonomic efforts e g north pacific and north atlantic pterobranchs are abundant in antarctica but have also been found at lower latitudes we consider this a baseline report and expect new species of hemichordata will continue to be discovered and described as new marine habitats are characterized and explored,2016,0.985
Diversity and constraints in the floral morphological evolution of Leandra s.str. (Melastomataceae),background and aims putative processes related to floral diversification and its relation to speciation are still largely unaccounted for in the melastomataceae leandra s str is one of the most diverse lineages of the neotropical miconieae and ranks among the ten most diverse groups in the atlantic forest here we describe the floral diversity of this lineage in a continuous framework and address several questions related to floral evolution and putative developmental and environmental constraints in its morphology methods the morphological data set includes individual size measurements and shape scores from elliptical fourier analysis for hypanthia petals stamens and styles we evaluate whether there is evidence of correlation among these floral structures shifts and convergent patterns and association of these traits with elevation key results leandra s str flower structures present a strong phylogenetic signal and tend to be conserved among close relatives the extremes in flower regimes seem to be quite distinct but non overlapping discrete flower types are not observed overall the morphology of leandra s str floral structures is correlated and anther colour and inflorescence architecture correlate with flower structures additionally the rates of species diversification and morphological evolution are correlated in most clades conclusions although some flower regimes tend to occur in different elevational ranges no significant association is observed the general idea that hypanthiumâ ovary fusion is associated with fruit types in the melastomataceae does not hold for leandra s str where instead hypanthiumâ ovary fusion seems to be associated with anther shape the lowest rate of flower morphological change when compared with species diversification rates is observed in the clade that possesses the most specialized flowers in the group while stuck on a single general pollination system leandra s str seems to be greatly wandering around it given the flower diversity and convergent patterns observed in this group,2016,0.351
"Updated Checklist and Global Diversity of Chaeteessidae, Mantoididae, Metallyticidae, Acanthopidae, Amorphoscelididae and Sibyllidae (Mantodea: Insecta)",the praying mantids order mantodea class insecta are a group of over 2500 carnivorous polyneopteran insects distributed in tropics and subtropics of the world from the rainforest to the desert ground the order mantodea comprises over 20 families out of which the global distribution of six families chaeteessidae mantoididae metallyticidae acanthopidae amorphoscelididae and sibyllidae were provided in this compilation chaeteessidae includes just one extant genus with 6 species and mantoididae com prises two genera with 12 species and both are distributed in neotrpical south america metallyticidae includes just one genus containing 5 species inhabiting in southeast asia acanthopidae commonly known as dead leaf mantids or boxer mantids consists o f 1 4 genera and 96 species and are exclusively distributed in neotropics of south america it includes 3 subfamilies acanthopinae 8 genera 53 species acontistinae 5 genera 40 speies and stenophyllinae 1 genus 3 species amorphoscelidae commonly known as bark mantids are includes three subfamilies amorphoscelinae 5 genera 62 species paraoxypilinae 8 genera 30 species and perlamantinae 2 genera 3 species with 15 genera and 95 species subspecies distributed in the tropical and southern regions of africa over to the middle east and the oriental region including new guinea sibyllidae is exclusively african family including only three genera and 17 species,2016,0.991
Conservation status and threats for African reptiles,the assimilation of information on taxonomy distribution basic ecology and conservation status of africa s reptiles lags far behind that for most other continents many regions of mainland africa are rarely surveyed resulting in severe knowledge gaps that currently limit effective conservation of african reptiles here we provide a prã cis on the knowledge gaps and conservation status of mainland african reptiles and quantify the main threats based on iucn red list of threatened species assessments using publicly available distribution data our results show that these data are insufficient to confidently identify areas of high biodiversity with large gaps in knowledge in the horn of africa central africa and west africa there is a strong overall taxonomic bias in extinction risk with 45 of families more threatened than expected by chance furthermore amphisbaenidae chameleonidae gerrhosauridae testudinidae viperidae all have a high percentage of their constituent species at risk overall land transformation for agriculture particularly subsistence farming constitutes the primary threat to african reptiles and our derived threat index based on socio economic traits of african countries show that risk is high in burundi ethiopia liberia malawi rwanda and sierra leone these findings highlight important challenges facing the conservation of african reptiles and we suggest that conservation priorities in mainland africa be focussed on areas where the potential for overall loss of biodiversity is high particularly in regions where knowledge is inadequate,2016,0.48
Mixed population genomics support for the central marginal hypothesis across the invasive range of the cane toad ( Rhinella marina ) in Australia,understanding factors that cause species geographic range limits is a major focus in ecology and evolution the central marginal hypothesis cmh predicts that species cannot adapt to conditions beyond current geographic range edges because genetic diversity decreases from core to edge due to smaller more isolated edge populations we employed a population genomics framework using 24 235â 33 112 snp loci to test major predictions of the cmh in the ongoing invasion of the cane toad rhinella marina in australia cane toad tissue samples were collected along broad scale core to edge transects across their invasive range geographic and ecological core areas were identified using gis and habitat suitability indices from ecological niche modelling bayesian clustering analyses revealed three genetic clusters in the northwest invasion front region northeast precipitation limited region and southeast cold temperature limited region core to edge patterns of genetic diversity and differentiation were consistent with the cmh in the southeast but were not supported in the northeast and showed mixed support in the northwest results suggest cold temperatures are a likely contributor to southeastern range limits consistent with cmh predictions in the northeast and northwest ecological processes consisting of a steep physiological barrier and ongoing invasion dynamics respectively are more likely explanations for population genomic patterns than the cmh,2016,0.726
Inhibitory Control and Hedonic Response towards Food Interactively Predict Success in a Weight Loss Programme for Adults with Obesity.,objective low inhibitory control and strong hedonic response towards food are considered to contribute to overeating and obesity based on previous research the present study aimed at examining the potentially crucial interplay between these two factors in terms of long term weight loss in people with obesity methods bmi inhibitory control towards food and food liking were assessed in obese adults prior to a weight reduction programme optifastâ 52 after the weight reduction phase week 13 and the weight loss maintenance phase week 52 participants bmi was re assessed results baseline bmi inhibitory control and food liking alone did not predict weight loss as hypothesised however inhibitory control and food liking interactively predicted weight loss from baseline to week 13 and to week 52 albeit the latter effect was less robust participants with low inhibitory control and marked food liking were less successful in weight reduction conclusion these findings underscore the relevance of the interplay between cognitive control and food reward valuation in the maintenance of obesity,2016,0.066
Plateau: a new method for ecologically plausible climate envelopes for species distribution modelling,cologists often wish to describe mathematical relationships between response variables and climate covariates in spatial models of species distribution these relationships are commonly termed climate envelopes there are many situations when the functional form of the envelopes should be either unimodal or monotonic but current practice tends towards the use of either low degree single variable spline curves fitted as part of a generalised additive model gam or piecewise linear forms in software such as maxent we argue that such curves are often inappropriate as they i can easily produce relationships which are ecologically implausible and ii frequently ignore interactions between multiple climate variables in a general regression context we propose an novel alternative parametric form for climate envelopes that appeals to ecological plausibility and can encompass realistic features of species presence climate relationships on several variables simultaneously the proposed plateau climate envelope function is applied via a spatial bayesian species distribution model to data on two european tree species to demonstrate the approach for fagus sylvatica a complete climate envelope is estimable but for quercus coccifera only a partial climate envelope can be estimated as the geographical extent of the data set does not cover the full environmental niche for the species we show that such an approach is practical produces climate envelopes with an ecologically meaningful form and furthermore allows the inclusion of information external to the data set being analysed we discuss the use of this new plateau climate envelope function in the context of ecological niche modelling and argue that in some instances ecological realism should be regarded as more important than the use of formal model comparison statistics,2016,0.114
"Short Communication: Inventory of native orchids in Makki Sub-District, Lanny Jaya, Papua, Indonesia",agustini v zebua l wenda n 2016 inventory of native orchids in makki sub district lanny j aya papua indonesia biodiversitas 17 3 0 1 305 orchids have been over exploitation since yers ago some of orchids species are becoming threatened endanger ed or even vanished that which may have not been found or discovered lanny jaya papua indonesia is a new district located at latitude 03 o 57 â 08 â s and longitude 138 o 25â 05 02 â e covers an area of 2 248 km 2 the establisment of this new district gives impact to the plant habitat including orchids the study was done in makki sub district lanny jaya pap ua indonesia the present study is an inventory orchid species in lanny jaya by explorative method there were 2 2 species 17 genera consist of epiphytic terrestrial and lithophytic orchids among them dendrobium subclausum is the most abundance species in this area with the combination of bright orange and yellow colours in sepal it can be seen throughout the year,2016,0.726
A synthesis of transplant experiments and ecological niche models suggests that range limits are often niche limits,global change has made it important to understand the factors that shape species distributions central to this area of research is the question of whether species range limits primarily reflect the distribution of suitable habitat i e niche limits or arise as a result of dispersal limitation over the edge transplant experiments and ecological niche models are commonly used to address this question yet few studies have taken advantage of a combined approach for inferring the causes of range limits here we synthesise results from existing transplant experiments with new information on the predicted suitability of sites based on niche models we found that individual performance and habitat suitability independently decline beyond range limits across multiple species furthermore inferences from transplant experiments and niche models were generally concordant within species with 31 out of 40 cases fully supporting the hypothesis that range limits are niche limits these results suggest that range limits are often niche limits and that the factors constraining species ranges operate at scales detectable by both transplant experiments and niche models in light of these findings we outline an integrative framework for addressing the causes of range limits in individual species,2016,0.829
Genus Arabshamshevia Naglis (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) in the Palaearctic Region,the formerly afrotropical genus arabshamshevia naglis 2014 is recorded from the palaearctic region for the first time a new species arabshamshevia ne ge vensis n sp from israel is described a modified diagnosis of the genus is comâ piled possible synonymy of shamshevia grichanov 2012 and arab sham shevia is briefly discussed,2016,0.499
"The marine fishes of St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean",in this paper the findings are presented of the ichthyofaunal component of the statia marine biodiversity expedition 2015 roving visual surveys were used to rapidly assess presence absence of fish species at 37 sampling locations within the waters of st eustatius dutch caribbean a total of 206 fish species were observed using a species accrual curve total species richness was estimated to be between 240 and 250 prior to the expedition 215 fish species were recorded on st eustatius bringing the total richness to 307 listed species 43 increase of these 246 were recorded by visual observation and fisheries data the ichthyofaunal richness of st eustatius exceeds the upper estimate of 250 gained from these surveys highlighting the inadequacies of visual surveys alone st eustatius has comparable levels of species richness to similar sized islands in the caribbean there were significant differences among fish communities in different habitats and depth classes further sampling is recommended using a variety of methods in order to produce a more accurate species richness estimate,2016,0.912
Impacts of the spatial scale of climate data on the modeled distribution probabilities of invasive tree species throughout the world,species distribution models sdms are powerful tools to predict species distributions and thus support invasion risk assessments for tree species at the global scale however sdms may produce different species distribution probabilities depending on the spatial scale of climate data included in the model hence we must understand impacts of the climate data scale on the modeled distribution probabilities of invasive tree species its throughout the world we used nine its from the list of â œthe 100 of the world s worst invasive alien speciesâ as our study species and applied maxent modeling based on presence and background points to model the distribution probabilities of these its across the globe using three climate data scales 2 5 5 0 and 10 0â the average distribution probabilities of presence and background points across the nine focal its increased significantly from the 2 5 to the 10 0â resolution indicating that coarse climate data scales may increase the distribution probabilities of presence and background points for these focal species the large gap between different climate data scales resulted in high prediction uncertainty for the distribution probabilities of its we offer two suggestions for decreasing the prediction uncertainty of the distribution probabilities of its at the global scale due to the effects of the climate data scale when using sdms 1 use 5 0â resolution as the input to sdms when using gbif or other specimen databases and 2 decrease the gap between 2 5 5 0 and 10 0â in the number of presence points of its,2016,0.505
Biological flora of Central Europe: Cyperus esculentus L.,this paper presents information on all aspects of the biology of cyperus esculentus l yellow nutsedge and deals with its taxonomy morphology genetic diversity distribution habitat requirements ecology and life cycle with special emphasis on uses and cultivation history of introduction impact and management in europe c esculentus is a tuber geophyte and most likely originates from the mediterranean and southwest asia it is a variable plant and four wild type varieties are presently recognized in addition to a cultivated form c esculentus reproduces primarily by its underground tubers although abundant seeds are produced in temperate climates tubers usually sprout in late spring and the plant withers at the beginning of the winter c esculentus is only cultivated in the valã ncia region in spain invasion foci emerged across europe at the beginning of the 1980s and at present c esculentus is most abundant on arable land and in ruderal habitats followed by riverine vegetation in heavily infested regions of europe c esculentus causes substantial yield losses in field crops and although different management strategies are available c esculentus remains difficult to control,2016,0.355
rotl : an R package to interact with the Open Tree of Life data,while phylogenies have been getting easier to build it has been difficult to reuse combine and synthesize the information they provide because published trees are often only available as image files and taxonomic information is not standardized across studies the open tree of life otl project addresses these issues by providing a digital tree that encompasses all organisms built by combining taxonomic information and published phylogenies the project also provides tools and services to query and download parts of this synthetic tree as well as the source data used to build it here we present rotl an r package to search and download data from the open tree of life directly in r rotl uses common data structures allowing researchers to take advantage of the rich set of tools and methods that are available in r to manipulate analyse and visualize phylogenies here and in the vignettes accompanying the package we demonstrate how rotl can be used with other r packages to analyse biodiversity data as phylogenies are being used in a growing number of applications rotl facilitates access to phylogenetic data and allows their integration with statistical methods and data sources available in r,2016,0.195
Contributions to publications and management plans from 7years of citizen science: Use of a novel evaluation tool on Earthwatch-supported projects,the use of citizen science to address global and local environmental challenges will depend on demonstrated evidence that it can lead to meaningful contributions to science management and social action systematic evaluation of citizen science projects is important yet lacking to date we developed an evaluation tool and used it to conduct a meta analysis of 51 earthwatch projects over a 7 year period assessing their ability to produce peer reviewed publications and contribute to management plans and policies the development and testing of an evaluation tool identified key factors to improve outcomes of citizen science projects including deliberate design of projects through direct engagement with scientists in turn scientists increased their reporting of outcomes when outcomes were being used for program assessment and feedback to participants over this period outcomes for the 51 projects consisted of 333 peer reviewed publications and 264 contributions to management plans and policies with a mean of 1 6 peer reviewed publications per project per year and 1 3 contributions to management plans per project per year across this period projects averaged 6 5 publications and 5 2 contributions to plans and policies per project range 0â 26 contributions per project several other project attributes were found to lead to higher outcomes we found that the creation of evaluation tools helped hold projects accountable for outcomes and highlighted to project managers and scientists the characteristics of projects that lead to improved outcomes elements of this approach could be transferred to other projects helping to fulfill the potential of citizen science to address global challenges,2016,0.131
Barn owls display larger black feather spots in cooler regions of the British Isles,although in many organisms genotypes are adapted to specific environmental conditions the identification of the ecological factors explaining patterns of local adaptation is not a trivial task in relation to the cosmopolitan barn owl tyto alba its plumage varies from white to dark pheomelanic and shows a difference in the number and size of black spots located at the tip of ventral feathers the expression of these traits is strongly heritable and weakly sensitive to variation in body condition therefore if owls located in cold or rainy regions are differently plumaged compared to owls living in warm or dry regions this may not be a result of climate affecting the expression of plumage traits instead different plumages might be selected under different environmental conditions we have found that on the british isles comparatively larger spots are present on barn owls found in regions that are cooler in summer this is similar to the findings of a previous study performed in north america and on continental europe raising the possibility that larger spotted barn owls better cope in cold temperatures during the rearing period or that they are better adapted to some environmental factors prevailing in cooler summers,2016,0.298
Using DEM to predict Abies faxoniana and Quercus aquifolioides distributions in the upstream catchment basin of the Min River in southwest China,the species distribution model sdm which is used to spatially predict species distributions can also identify the probable causes of the location of certain species i e the mathematical description of habitat requirements therefore sdm has the potential to guide resource management and biodiversity conservation in the topographically complex terrain sdms are often complicated by the lack of environmental data however the first information that is typically obtained for these analyses is a topographic map here the possibility of using 16 predictor variables derived from the digital elevation model dem to model the distributions of abies faxoniana and quercus aquifolioides in the mountainous upstream catchment basin of the min river ucbm in southwest china was investigated in particular with the ensemble modeling approach based on eight niche models and nine model training and testing datasets changes in model performance and shifts in the explanatory power of the predictor variable over five different levels of spatial resolution 30m 90m 120m 240m 900m were assessed almost all models succeed in predicting the distributions of both species although predictive accuracies differed significantly among spatial scales and model classes on average model accuracies increased to the highest level at the meso scale 120m and 240m for a faxoniana and q aquifolioides respectively and then decreased as resolution became coarser indicating that high spatial resolution does not imply a better model the relative importance rankings for each topographical variable were consistent across all spatial scales but their explanatory powers did differ significantly among spatial scales elevation and terrain distributed solar radiation for growing season srg drive the distributions of a faxoniana and q aquifolioides with a much higher level of confidence than other predictors across all spatial scales the former tended to decrease and the latter tended to increase when spatial resolution became coarse our findings confirm that dem can be used exclusively and effectively to predict species distribution multi scale analysis is needed to detect highly subtle variations in species habitat requirements and to select the spatial scale that corresponds to known spatial characteristics of the species habitat this has broad implications for distribution modeling of species in rugged terrain,2016,0.316
"Ergatomorph wingless males in Technomyrmex vitiensis Mann, 1921 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)",ergatomorph wingless males are known in several species of the genus technomyrmex mayr 1872 the first record of these males is given in t vitiensis mann 1921 in comparison with winged males wingless males have a smaller thorax and genitalia but both forms have ocelli and the same size of eyes wingless males seem to form a substantial portion more than 10 of all adults in examined colony fragments wingless males are present in colonies during the whole year whereas the presence of winged males seems to be limited by season wingless males do not participate in the taking care of the brood and active foraging outside the nest males of both types possess metapleural gland openings beside males with normal straight scapes strange hockey stick like scapes have been observed in several males the cause of this divergence is unclear,2016,0.606
Mexican plums (Spondias spp.): their current distribution and potential distribution under climate change scenarios for Mexico,plums spondias spp are species native to mexico with adaptive nutritional and ethnobotanical advantages the aim of this study was to assess the current and potential distribution of two species of mexican plum spondias purpurea l and spondias mombin l the method applied was ecological niche modeling in maxent software which has been used in mexico with good results in fieldwork information on the presence of these species in the country was collected in addition environmental variables of biogeographic importance all with nationwide coverage were generated the climate change scenario applied was for the horizon 2075 2099 considering the gfdl cm3 hadgem2 es and ensamble rea models all under rcp 8 5 w∠m 2 scenarios distribution models were validated by four concordance indices the most important environmental factors for modeling spondias spp were thermal oscillation low temperatures and precipitation in some months of the year in the reference scenario suitability for plums was found in 3 8 and 6 6 of the country for s purpurea and s mombin respectively with climate change scenarios at the national level s mombin recorded a 13 3 decrease in suitability growing areas while s purpurea recorded a 5 7 drop,2016,0.688
The use of occurrence data to predict the effects of climate change on insects,experimental information on the roles played by climatic factors in determining the ecology and distribution of insect species is scarce this has stimulated the increasing use of the climatic characteristics of the localities in which the species are observed to derive predictions under different climatic scenarios the so called species distribution models or sdms this text reviews the main limitations of these correlative models when they are applied to organisms such as insects that are characterized by a high degree of collector bias and incompleteness it is argued that sdms must rely solely on presence information rejecting the use of background or pseudoabsences and that we are not predicting the future distribution of a species but exploring the future location of the climatic conditions in which a species was observed the scarcity and bias of the available occurrence information in insects as well as our ignorance about the non climatic factors delimiting species ranges forces us to be extremely careful it is therefore desirable to avoid the use of central tendency measures reflecting supposed optimum niche conditions because they are particularly dependent on the quantity and biases of the occurrence information the use of simple algorithms and procedures aimed at extracting information on environmental limits from the available occurrences would be more convenient in this case,2016,0.783
Cyanobacteria of Greece: an annotated checklist,background the checklist of greek cyanobacteria was created in the framework of the greek taxon information system gtis an initiative of the lifewatchgreece research infrastructure esfri that has resumed efforts to compile a complete checklist of species reported from greece this list was created from exhaustive search of the scientific literature of the last 60 years all records of taxa known to occur in greece were taxonomically updated new information the checklist of greek cyanobacteria comprises 543 species classified in 130 genera 41 families and 8 orders the orders synechococcales and oscillatoriales have the highest number of species 158 and 153 species respectively whereas these two orders along with nostocales and chroococcales cover 93 of the known greek cyanobacteria species it is worth mentioning that 18 species have been initially described from greek habitats the marine epilithic ammatoidea aegea described from saronikos gulf is considered endemic to this area our bibliographic review shows that greece hosts a high diversity of cyanobacteria suggesting that the mediterranean area is also a hot spot for microbes,2016,0.776
"Adding fish images taken in other countries to the biodiversity database of a Japanese public museum, with report of range extension of Labrisomus jenkinsi from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica",many biodiversity databases have been launched in recent years various species of certain developed taxa such as fish quadrupeds and butterflies are currently able to be photographically identified in particular for ecological and biogeographic studies however there are problems that result from registration of images from countries with different primary languages in this study we provide an example of the challenges associated with registering fish images specifically one case that has functioned as a voucher for the range extension of labrisomus jenkinsi heller and snodgrass 1903 perciformes labrisomidae from the galapagos islands to the pacific coast of costa rica the fish image database in question belongs to a japanese public museum the kanagawa prefectural museum of natural history the online version fishpix is provided by the museum and the national museum of nature and science we propose that there are problems associated with image registration caused by using different languages furthermore these challenges should be a common subject for discussion among museums as they attempt to accumulate biodiversity data from citizens in the future,2016,0.404
Quantifying the long-term decline of the West European hedgehog in England by subsampling citizen-science datasets,it is increasingly important to be aware of trends in species abundances in order to be able to act ahead of possible irrecoverable declines and extinctions long term monitoring of species is generally used to determine how a species is faring which is essential knowledge for conservation planning and design however monitoring programmes that encompass large areas and long timespans are rare or non existent for the vast majority of species citizen science based datasets provide a wealth of data on past and present speciesâ occurrences but are often biased to a large extent we evaluate the potential use of such datasets by subsampling datasets collected over different time periods to detect trends in the long term temporal abundance of west european hedgehogs erinaceus europaeus a species which is thought to be in decline in parts of its geographic range we used subsampling as a means to account for quantitative differences between two non systematic datasets of west european hedgehog occurrences in england one dataset was collected by the public between 1960 and 1975 and one was collected between 2000 and 2015 here we confirm and quantify previous anecdotal evidence of a long term decline of the species throughout england we find that although the west european hedgehog is still widespread in england a 5 0 to 7 4 decline in occupied grid cells was observed when comparing the 2000â 2015 dataset to the previous survey in 1960â 1975 after adjusting for differences in effort this suggests that the decline of the relative abundance of west european hedgehogs is moderate in england 25 being an amber alert for birds of conservation concern in the uk importantly we show that subsampling disparate citizen science datasets is a useful tool for monitoring species population trends,2016,0.97
Climatic suitability influences species specific abundance patterns of Australian flying foxes and risk of Hendra virus spillover,hendra virus is a paramyxovirus of australian flying fox bats it was first detected in august 1994 after the death of 20 horses and one human since then it has occurred regularly within a portion of the geographical distribution of all australian flying fox fruit bat species there is however little understanding about which species are most likely responsible for spillover or why spillover does not occur in other areas occupied by reservoir and spillover hosts using ecological niche models of the four flying fox species we were able to identify which species are most likely linked to spillover events using the concept of distance to the niche centroid of each species with this novel approach we found that 20 out of 27 events occur disproportionately closer to the niche centroid of two species p alecto and p conspicillatus with linear regressions we found a negative relationship between distance to the niche centroid and abundance of these two species thus we suggest that the bioclimatic niche of these two species is likely driving the spatial pattern of spillover of hendra virus into horses and ultimately humans,2016,0.986
Developing priority variables (“ecosystem Essential Ocean Variables” — eEOVs) for observing dynamics and change in Southern Ocean ecosystems,reliable statements about variability and change in marine ecosystems and their underlying causes are needed to report on their status and to guide management here we use the framework on ocean observing foo to begin developing ecosystem essential ocean variables eeovs for the southern ocean observing system soos an eeov is a defined biological or ecological quantity which is derived from field observations and which contributes significantly to assessments of southern ocean ecosystems here assessments are concerned with estimating status and trends in ecosystem properties attribution of trends to causes and predicting future trajectories eeovs should be feasible to collect at appropriate spatial and temporal scales and are useful to the extent that they contribute to direct estimation of trends and or attribution and or development of ecological statistical or simulation models to support assessments in this paper we outline the rationale including establishing a set of criteria for selecting eeovs for the soos and develop a list of candidate eeovs for further evaluation other than habitat variables nine types of eeovs for southern ocean taxa are identified within three classes state magnitude genetic species size spectrum predatorâ prey diet foraging range and autecology phenology reproductive rate individual growth rate detritus most candidates for the suite of southern ocean taxa relate to state or diet candidate autecological eeovs have not been developed other than for marine mammals and birds we consider some of the spatial and temporal issues that will influence the adoption and use of eeovs in an observing system in the southern ocean noting that existing operations and platforms potentially provide coverage of the four main sectors of the region â the east and west pacific atlantic and indian lastly we discuss the importance of simulation modelling in helping with the design of the observing system in the long term regional boundary south of 30â s,2016,0.051
"Variances in the projections, resulting from CLIMEX, Boosted Regression Trees and Random Forests techniques",the aim of this study was to have a comparative investigation and evaluation of the capabilities of correlative and mechanistic modeling processes applied to the projection of future distributions of date palm in novel environments and to establish a method of minimizing uncertainty in the projections of differing techniques the location of this study on a global scale is in middle eastern countries we compared the mechanistic model climex cl with the correlative models maxent mx boosted regression trees brt and random forests rf to project current and future distributions of date palm phoenix dactylifera l the global climate model gcm the csiro mk3 0 cs using the a2 emissions scenario was selected for making projections both indigenous and alien distribution data of the species were utilized in the modeling process the common areas predicted by mx brt rf and cl from the cs gcm were extracted and compared to ascertain projection uncertainty levels of each individual technique the common areas identified by all four modeling techniques were used to produce a map indicating suitable and unsuitable areas for date palm cultivation for middle eastern countries for the present and the year 2100 the four different modeling approaches predict fairly different distributions projections from cl were more conservative than from mx the brt and rf were the most conservative methods in terms of projections for the current time the combination of the final cl and mx projections for the present and 2100 provide higher certainty concerning those areas that will become highly suitable for future date palm cultivation according to the four models cold hot and wet stress with differences on a regional basis appears to be the major restrictions on future date palm distribution the results demonstrate variances in the projections resulting from different techniques the assessment and interpretation of model projections requires reservations especially in correlative models such as mx brt and rf intersections between different techniques may decrease uncertainty in future distribution projections however readers should not miss the fact that the uncertainties are mostly because the future ghg emission scenarios are unknowable with sufficient precision suggestions towards methodology and processing for improving projections are included,2016,0.056
Modelling the potential geographic distribution of an endangered pollination corridor in Mexico and the United States,aim every spring endangered mexican long nosed bats leptonycteris nivalis migrate up to 1200 km from central mexico to southern united states evidence suggests that l nivalis follows the blooms of paniculate agave plants genus agave subgenus agave paniculate agave inflorescences are adapted to attract bats and studies have indicated that leptonycteris spp played a key role in agave speciation we test the hypothesis of the agave migratory corridor by 1 modelling the distribution of the relevant agave species and 2 testing whether bat records are significantly related to agave species richness as predicted by our models location mexico and united states methods we selected nine paniculate agave species based on a set of criteria and modelled the current distribution of those species using maxent and the genetic algorithm for rule set production garp and geographic information systems to analyse the spatial correspondence of agave richness and presence of l nivalis results we combined the agave presence maps that resulted from the models with higher performance to create a richness map this map indicated up to five species overlapping l nivalis occurrence areas correspond with areas with two three and four agave species more often than random expectations at the 0 05 significance level the opposite is observed for areas with 0 agave species where l nivalis correspond less often than random main conclusions presenceâ pseudo absence and presenceâ background modelling tools allowed us to map potential agave presence these maps could guide conservation actions to ensure the maintenance of this pollination corridor areas with higher number of agave species are distributed along mountain chains and may provide foraging resources for l nivalis for longer period of time during its migration we recommend implementing a long term monitoring programme in those areas to document inflorescence timing in agave species and the presence of l nivalis,2016,0.907
Biodiversity analysis in the digital era,this paper explores what the virtual biodiversity e infrastructure will look like as it takes advantage of advances in big data biodiversity informatics and e research infrastructure which allow integration of various taxon level data types genome morphology distribution and species interactions within a phylogenetic and environmental framework by overcoming the data scaling problem in ecology this integrative framework will provide richer information and fast learning to enable a deeper understanding of biodiversity evolution and dynamics in a rapidly changing world the atlas of living australia is used as one example of the advantages of progressing towards this future living in this future will require the adoption of new ways of integrating scientific knowledge into societal decision making this article is part of the themed issue from dna barcodes to biomes,2016,0.121
"Toward a Self-Updating Platform for Estimating Rates of Speciation and Migration, Ages, and Relationships of Taxa",rapidly growing biological data â including molecular sequences and fossilsâ hold an unprecedented potential to reveal how evolutionary processes generate and maintain biodiversity however researchers often have to develop their own idiosyncratic workflows to integrate and analyse these data for reconstructing time calibrated phylogenies in addition divergence times estimated under different methods and assumptions and based on data of various quality and reliability should not be combined without proper correction here we introduce a modular framework termed supersmart self updating platform for estimating rates of speciation and migration ages and relationships of taxa and provide a proof of concept for dealing with the moving targets of evolutionary and biogeographical research this framework assembles comprehensive datasets of molecular and fossil data for any taxa and infers dated phylogenies using robust species tree methods also allowing for the inclusion of genomic data produced through next generation sequencing techniques we exemplify the application of our method by presenting phylogenetic and dating analyses for the mammal order primates and for the plant family arecaceae palms we believe that this framework will provide a valuable tool for a wide range of hypothesis driven research questions in systematics biogeography and evolution supersmart will also accelerate the inference of a â œdated tree of lifeâ where all node ages are directly comparable,2016,0.137
Influences of climate and historical land connectivity on ant beta diversity in East Asia,aim biodiversity patterns reflect both ecological and evolutionary processes interacting with geographical variation in climate and the current and historical connectivity between land areas we sought to disentangle these effects in explaining the organization of ant diversity across geographical areas and islands in east asia location the japanese archipelago including the ryukyu and ogasawara islands taiwan and coastal continental regions of korea china and russia methods we aggregated species occurrence records from published literature specimen databases and museum records and compiled climatic variables for islands and politically defined continental areas current and historical land connections in the last glacial maximum were determined using bathymetric databases we analysed factors driving patterns of simpson composition dissimilarity using multiple regression of distance matrices results temperature was the largest driver of dissimilarity among areas with geographical distance and historical land contiguity also being important current land contiguity had no detectable effect main conclusions we found climate to be a primary driver of ant diversity patterns on large scales consistent with previous work on ants and other organisms interestingly land connectivity during historical periods of low sea level was more important than current land connectivity in explaining faunal similarities this implies that despite the potential overwater dispersal of ants overland dispersal via transient land connections is a more important driver of regional scale biogeographical pattern in east asia,2016,0.304
Species interactions in occurrence data for a community of tick-transmitted pathogens,interactions between tick species their realized range of hosts the pathogens they carry and transmit and the geographic distribution of species in the western palearctic were determined based on evidence published between 1970â 2014 these relationships were linked to remotely sensed features of temperature and vegetation and used to extract the network of interactions among the organisms the resulting datasets focused on niche overlap among ticks and hosts species interactions and the fraction of the environmental niche in which tick borne pathogens may circulate as a result of interactions and overlapping environmental traits the resulting datasets provide a valuable resource for researchers interested in tick borne pathogens as they conciliate the abiotic and biotic sides of their niche allowing exploration of the importance of each host species acting as a vertebrate reservoir in the circulation of tick transmitted pathogens in the environmental niche,2016,0.744
The extensive geographical range of several species of Teloschistaceae: evidence from Russia,the current view of the geographical ranges of lichens is often distorted by overly narrow or overly broad applications of names and by insufficient survey of most regions of the world here we present several cases where species of teloschistaceae formerly thought to be limited to rather small territories in the western or eastern parts of eurasia are in fact widespread in northern eurasia we support our findings with its nrdna data in several new trees showing relationships in the genera athallia calogaya caloplaca flavoplaca and gyalolechia the widespread species have little in common except that most of them reproduce both sexually and asexually and we discuss the possible influence of the combined reproduction on geographical range calogaya bryochrysion calogaya saxicola gyalolechia epiphyta and gyalolechia ussuriensis are new combinations calogaya alaskensis is a younger synonym for c bryochrysion the generally arctic alpine calogaya bryochrysion also occurs on the bark of solitary trees in dry parts of the altai mountains the australian flavoplaca cranfieldii is a younger synonym of f flavocitrina gyalolechia epiphyta has been described numerous times from different regions and substrata as caloplaca juniperi c laricina c tarani gyalolechia arizonica and g juniperina the name gyalolechia xanthostigmoidea has recently been used for g epiphyta but it represents a distinct taxon gyalolechia ussuriensis is closely related to and morphologically indistinguishable from g persimilis but they have a different ecology and distribution and we regard them as distinct species caloplaca juniperina tomin is lectotypified,2016,0.652
Five Years Later: An Update on the Status of Collections of Endemic Gulf of Mexico Fishes Put at Risk by the 2010 Oil Spill,background the 2010 gulf of mexico oil spill took place over 180 000 square kilometers during a 12 week period over five years ago however this event continues to influence the development and distribution of organisms in and around the region of the disaster here we examine fish species that may have been most affected by noting their past distribution in the region of the spill and examining data of known collecting events over the last 10 years five years prior to the spill five years post spill new information we found that more than half of the endemic fish species of the gulf 45 of 77,2016,0.562
Evolutionary history of Gymnocarpos (Caryophyllaceae) in the arid regions from North Africa to Central Asia,gymnocarpos has only about ten species distributed in the arid regions of asia and africa but it exhibits a geographical disjunction between eastern central asia and western north africa and minor asia we sampled eight species of the genus and sequenced two chloroplast regions rps16 and psbbâ psbh and the nuclear rdna its to study the phylogeny and biogeography the results of the phylogenetic analyses corroborated that gymnocarpos is monophyletic in the phylogenetic tree two well supported clades are recognized clade 1 includes gymnocarpos sclerocephalus and g decandrus mainly the north african group whereas clade 2 comprises the remaining species mainly in the southern arabian peninsula molecular dating analysis revealed that the divergence age of gymnocarpos was c 31 33 mya near the eocene and oligocene transition boundary the initial diversification within gymnocarpos dated to c 6 69 mya in the late miocene and the intraspecific diversification mostly occurred during the quaternary climate oscillations ancestral area reconstruction suggested that the southern arabian peninsula was the ancestral area for gymnocarpos our conclusions revealed that the aridification since mid late miocene significantly affected the diversification of the genus in these areas,2016,0.693
A review of the palaeoclimatic inference potential of Iberian Quaternary fossil batrachians,ecological suitability analysis aims to model the potential or probable distribution of species using environmental variables and available species occurrence information as predictors most of the european fossil quaternary amphibians belong to extant species and being physiologically ectothermic animals their current ecological niches could become a reliable inference tool to infer past environmental conditions however this expectation has never been properly verified the validity and accuracy of palaeoclimatic inferences based on batrachian species ranges is tested on the iberian peninsula using both palaeofaunistic and recent distribution data and an updated database of georeferenced species occurrences is provided the difficulties of using current geographic information to represent the full spectrum of environmental conditions at which a species occurs are critically examined a palaeofaunistic review of the role played by historical factors as dispersal limitations for present amphibian species ranges is presented using the available phylogeographical scenarios virtual hypothetical taxa can be devised by considering the distributions of several species together and relating their known joint presences with the environmental conditions in these locations species distribution models based on these virtual taxa provide the best advisable inferential procedure for direct raw inferences of the mutual climatic range method contrary to expectations the combined taxa sets do not increase their accuracy with the number of species included this preliminary review shows that iberian amphibian palaeoclimatic inferences are both valid and reliable enough a sufficient approximation to complement other techniques the precision however is quite variable among taxa reflecting the effect of non climatic distributional constraints,2016,0.905
Gene expression under thermal stress varies across a geographic range expansion front.,many ectothermic species are currently expanding their distributions polewards due to anthropogenic global warming molecular genetic mechanisms facilitating range expansion under these conditions are largely unknown but understanding these could help mitigate expanding pests and disease vectors or help explain why some species fail to track changing climates here using rna seq data we examine genome wide changes in gene expression under heat and cold stress in the range expanding damselfly ischnura elegans in northern europe we find that both the number of genes involved and levels of gene expression under heat stress have become attenuated during the expansion consistent with a previously reported release from selection on heat tolerances as species move polewards genes upregulated under cold stress differed between core and edge populations corroborating previously reported rapid adaptation to cooler climates at the expansion front expression of sixty nine genes exhibited a region x treatment effect these were primarily upregulated in response to heat stress in core populations but in response to cold stress at the range edge suggesting that some cellular responses originally adapted to heat stress may switch to cold stress functionality upon encountering novel thermal selection regimes during range expansion transcriptional responses to thermal stress involving heat shock and neural function genes were largely geographically conserved while retrotransposon regulatory muscle function and defence gene expression patterns were more variable flexible mechanisms of cold stress response and the ability of some genes to shift their function between heat and cold stress might be key mechanisms facilitating rapid poleward expansion in insects this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.051
"Maxent modeling for predicting the potential distribution of endangered medicinal plant (H. riparia Lour) in Yunnan, China",climate change influences ecosystem by altering the habitat of species in it we report the quantitative predictions of climate change on riparian species homonoia riparia h riparia lour a species native to yunnan province china is a medicinal plant with high ecological and economic value its population has declined significantly and the species has become locally endangered in recent decades understanding the habitat requirements of this species evaluating habitat quality and predicting its potential habitat are significant for protecting h riparia lour one positional variable three topographic variables and eight bioclimatic variables were used to model its distribution and potential habitat the eight main bioclimatic variables influencing species distribution were selected from 19 bioclimatic variables based on correlation analysis and principal component analysis an maxent model because of the advantages of using presence only data and performing well with incomplete data small sample sizes and gaps was employed to simulate the habitat suitability distribution the results show that seven variables namely annual mean temperature altitude precipitation seasonality precipitation of coldest quarter the distance to the nearest river temperature seasonality and precipitation during the driest month are significant factors determining h riparia lourâ s suitable habitat habitat suitability for three historical periods and two future climate warming scenarios were calculated the habitat suitability of h riparia lour in yunnan province is predicted to improve with global warming,2016,0.78
"Revised classification and catalogue of global Nepticulidae and Opostegidae (Lepidoptera, Nepticuloidea)",a catalogue of all named nepticulidae and opostegidae is presented including fossil species the catalogue is simultaneously published online in the scratchpad http nepticuloidea info and in catalogue of life http www catalogueoflife org col details database id 172 we provide a historical overview of taxonomic research on nepticuloidea and a brief â state of the artâ a dna barcode dataset with 3205 barcodes is made public at the same time providing dna barcodes of ca 779 species of which 2563 are identified as belonging to 444 validly published species we recognise 862 extant and 18 fossil species of nepticulidae in 22 extant genera and the fossil form genus stigmellites we count 192 valid opostegidae species in 7 genera without fossils we also list seven dubious nepticulidae names that cannot be placed due to absent type material and poor descriptions 18 unavailable names in nepticulidae that cannot be placed and we also list the 33 names including four fossils that once were placed as nepticulidae or opostegidae but are now excluded all synonyms and previous combinations are listed the generic classification follows the molecular phylogeny that is published almost simultaneously subfamilies and tribes are not recognised trifurculinae scoble 1983 is synonymised with nepticulidae stainton 1854 and opostegoidinae kozlov 1987 is synonymised with opostegidae meyrick 1893 the status of casanovula hoare 2013 etainia beirne 1945 fomoria beirne 1945 glaucolepis braun 1917 menurella hoare 2013 muhabbetana koã ak kemal 2007 and zimmermannia hering 1940 is changed from subgenus to full genus whereas two genera are considered synonyms again manoneura davis 1979 a synonym of enteucha meyrick 1915 and levarchama beirne 1945 a synonym of trifurcula zeller 1848 we propose 87 new combinations in nepticulidae and 10 in opostegidae largely due to the new classification and re examination of some species we propose the following 37 new synonymies for species 35 in nepticulidae 2 in opostegidae stigmella acerifoliella dovnar zapolski 1969 unavailable s acerna puplesis 1988 stigmella nakamurai kemperman wilkinson 1985 s palionisi puplesis 1984 nepticula amseli skala 1941 unavailable s birgittae gustafsson 1985 stigmella cathepostis kemperman wilkinson 1985 s microtheriella stainton 1854 stigmella populnea kemperman wilkinson 1985 s nivenburgensis preissecker 1942 nepticula obscurella braun 1912 revised synonymy s myricafoliella busck 1900 nepticula mandingella gustafsson 1972 s wollofella gustafsson 1972 stigmella rosaefoliella pectocatena wilkinson scoble 1979 s centifoliella zeller 1848 micropteryx pomivorella packard 1870 s oxyacanthella stainton 1854 stigmella crataegivora puplesis 1985 s micromelis puplesis 1985 stigmella scinanella wilkinson scoble 1979 s purpuratella braun 1917 stigmella palmatae puplesis 1984 s filipendulae wocke 1871 stigmella sesplicata kemperman wilkinson 1985 s lediella schleich 1867 stigmella rhododendrifolia dovnar zapolski tomilova 1978 unavailable s lediella schleich 1867 stigmella oa kemperman wilkinson 1985 s spiculifera kemperman wilkinson 1985 stigmella gracilipae hirano 2014 s monticulella puplesis 1984 nepticula chaoniella herrich schã ffer 1863 s samiatella zeller 1839 bohemannia piotra puplesis 1984 b pulverosella stainton 1849 bohemannia nipponicella hirano 2010 b manschurella puplesis 1984 sinopticula sinica yang 1989 glaucolepis oishiella matsumura 1931 trifurcula collinella nel 2012 glaucolepis magna a laå tuvka z laå tuvka 1997 obrussa tigrinella puplesis 1985 etainia trifasciata matsumura 1931 microcalyptris vittatus puplesis 1984 and m arenosus falkovitsh 1986 both acalyptris falkovitshi puplesis 1984 ectoedemia castaneae busck 1913 e heinrichi busck 1914 and e helenella wilkinson 1981 all three zimmermannia bosquella chambers 1878 ectoedemia chloranthis meyrick 1928 and e acanthella wilkinson newton 1981 both zimmermannia grandisella chambers 1880 ectoedemia coruscella wilkinson 1981 zimmermannia mesoloba davis 1978 ectoedemia piperella wilkinson newton 1981 and e reneella wilkinson 1981 both zimmermannia obrutella zeller 1873 ectoedemia similigena puplesis 1994 e turbidella zeller 1848 ectoedemia andrella wilkinson 1981 e ulmella braun 1912 nepticula canadensis braun 1917 e minimella zetterstedt 1839 opostega rezniki kozlov 1985 o cretatella chrã tien 1915 pseudopostega cyrneochalcopepla nel varenne 2012 p chalcopepla walsingham 1908 stigmella caryaefoliella clemens 1861 and zimmermannia bosquella chambers 1878 are taken out of synonymy and re instated as full species lectotypes are designated for trifurcula obrutella zeller 1873 and nepticula grandisella chambers 1880,2016,0.953
Biological introduction risks from shipping in a warming Arctic,1 several decades of research on invasive marine species have yielded a broad understanding of the nature of species invasion mechanisms and associated threats globally however this is not true of the arctic a region where ongoing climatic changes may promote species invasion here we evaluated risks associated with non indigenous propagule loads discharged with shipsâ ballast water to the high arctic archipelago svalbard as a case study for the wider arctic 2 we sampled and identified transferred propagules using traditional and dna barcoding techniques we then assessed the suitability of the svalbard coast for non indigenous species under contemporary and future climate scenarios using ecophysiological models based on critical temperature and salinity reproductive thresholds 3 ships discharging ballast water in svalbard carried high densities of zooplankton mean 1522 â 335 se individuals m∠3 predominately comprised of indigenous species ballast water exchange did not prevent non indigenous species introduction non indigenous coastal species were present in all except one of 16 ballast water samples mean 144 â 67 se individuals m∠3 despite five of the eight ships exchanging ballast water en route 4 of a total of 73 taxa 36 species including 23 non indigenous species were identified of those 23 sufficient data permitted evaluation of the current and future colonization potential for eight widely known invaders with the exception of one of these species modelled suitability indicated that the coast of svalbard is unsuitable presently under the 2100 rcp 8 5 climate scenario however modelled suitability will favour colonization for six species 5 synthesis and applications we show that current ballast water management practices do not prevent non indigenous species from being transferred to the arctic consequences of these shortcomings will be shipping route dependent but will likely magnify over time our models indicate future conditions will favour the colonization of non indigenous species arctic wide invasion threats will be greatest where shipping transfers organisms across biogeographic realms and for these shipping routes ballast water treatment technologies may be required to prevent impacts our results also highlight critical gaps in our understanding of ballast water management efficacy and prioritization thereby our study provides an agenda for research and policy development,2016,0.959
"Piapiacs ( Ptilostomus afer Linnaeus, 1766) and yellow-billed oxpeckers ( Buphagus africanus Linnaeus, 1766) avoid proximity when on African buffaloes ( Syncerus caffer Sparrman, 1779)",many african bird species totalling 96 according to dean macdonald 1981 show feeding associations with mammals however little attention if any has been paid to interspecific interactions among birds attending the same mammal moreover except for the red billed oxpecker buphagus erythrorhyncus stanley 1814 and yellow billed oxpecker buphagus africanus linnaeus 1766 which are obligate ectoparasite gleaners there are only suggestions for any of the other species about the extent of their dependence on mammals dean macdonald 1981 the piapiac ptilostomus afer linnaeus 1766 is a savannah corvid of sub saharan africa north of the equator ranging west eastwards from senegal to extreme w kenya madge 2009 considering its wide distribution consistent numbers and conspicuous behaviour it is an understudied species it is frequently seen on the backs of slowly moving herbivorous mammals which serve as lookouts not only to catch the insects which the mammal flushes from the ground but also as feeding substrate for the mammal s ectoparasites analysis of stomach contents has been very scarce for the piapiac among the 181 specimens listed in the global biodiversity information facility http www gbif org accessed 25 march 2016 only five specimens four of which collected in 2 days in the same area had stomach contents reported which were all insects mainly grasshoppers however wilson 1981 found â ticksâ in the one piapiac stomach he examined the piapiac may be second to only the oxpeckers in its apparent although still understudied morphological specializations to use grazing mammals for foraging interestingly the piapiac prefers balancing on rather than clinging to the mammal s body fig 1 this may be the reason why elephants loxodonta africana blumenbach 1797 more easily tolerate piapiacs on their sensitive skin see e g mundy haynes 1996 and why oxpeckers and not piapiacs are usually found on the sloping back of giraffes giraffa camelopardalis linnaeus 1758 the search for a stable perch may also explain why piapiacs would especially be attracted to domestic ungulates quieter animals than their wild counterparts the suggestion of a partial niche overlap and consequent competition between piapiacs and oxpeckers prompted this study i chose the african buffalo syncerus caffer sparrman 1779 as the associated mammal because of its apparent attractiveness for both the piapiacs and the oxpeckers its abundance in the study area and it being the closest wild african relative of the domestic cattle to which the oxpeckers often become detrimental through wound feeding e g weeks 2000,2016,0.991
Global patterns in threats to vertebrates by biological invasions,biological invasions as drivers of biodiversity loss have recently been challenged fundamentally we must know where species that are threatened by invasive alien species ias live and the degree to which they are threatened we report the first study linking 1372 vertebrates threatened by more than 200 ias from the completely revised global invasive species database new maps of the vulnerability of threatened vertebrates to ias permit assessments of whether ias have a major influence on biodiversity and if so which taxonomic groups are threatened and where they are threatened we found that centres of ias threatened vertebrates are concentrated in the americas india indonesia australia and new zealand the areas in which ias threatened species are located do not fully match the current hotspots of invasions or the current hotspots of threatened species the relative importance of biological invasions as drivers of biodiversity loss clearly varies across regions and taxa and changes over time with mammals from india indonesia australia and europe are increasingly being threatened by ias the chytrid fungus primarily threatens amphibians whereas invasive mammals primarily threaten other vertebrates the differences in ias threats between regions and taxa can help efficiently target ias which is essential for achieving the strategic plan 2020 of the convention on biological diversity,2016,0.84
"Two new species of Sarcoscypha (Sarcosyphaceae, Pezizales) from Taiwan",after studying the sarcoscypha specimens deposited in the herbarium of the national museum of natural science taiwan tnm four species of sarcoscypha s humberiana s mescoscyatha s minuta and s tatakensis were recognized by morphological and molecular characteristics sarcoscypha mescoscyatha is new to taiwan and s minuta and s tatakensis are new to science sarcoscypha minuta is characterized by small apothecia and asci and a single large guttule in each ascospore while s tatakensis is characterized by sessile to subsessile apothecia and small ascospores with truncate ends,2016,0.463
Diversity patterns of monocotiledonous geophytes in Mexico,background geophytes plants with underground perennating organs that lose their aerial organs annually are able to survive in harsh habitats this life form is common in the monocots that inhabit mediterranean climates around the world in mexico only the northern area of baja california has this type of climate hypothesis in this study we recorded the species and distribution of mexican geophyte monocots to pinpoint diversity hotspots our hypothesis is that the highest diversity of geophytes will be found in biogeographic areas with complex topography and seasonal climate such like trans mexican volcanic belt and sierra madre del sur not only in the north of the baja california peninsula data description records of geophytes were taken from different sources collections taxonomic references and diversity databases geophyte locations were mapped in the context of biogeographic and protected areas results the mexican geophyte flora is composed of 476 species approximately 10 of the total diversity of monocots echeandia and tigridia were the two most diverse genera this flora is dominated by the taxa of orchidaceae asparagaceae and iridaceae and nine small endemic genera were recorded geophyte diversity was highest in two biogeographic provinces the trans mexican volcanic belt and the sierra madre del sur in dry forests such as oak pine seasonally dry tropical forests and semi arid shrubby vegetation conclusions diversity of geophytes in mexico is similar compared with certain regions with mediterranean climate around the world areas sustaining a high diversity and endemism of geophytes are located in the mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot in unprotected and threatened areas,2016,0.452
"A global perspective on Campanulaceae: Biogeographic, genomic, and floral evolution.",premise of the study the campanulaceae are a diverse clade of flowering plants encompassing more than 2300 species in myriad habitats from tropical rainforests to arctic tundra a robust multigene phylogeny including all major lineages is presented to provide a broad evolutionary perspective of this cosmopolitan clade methods we used a phylogenetic framework in combination with divergence dating ancestral range estimation chromosome modeling and morphological character reconstruction analyses to infer phylogenetic placement and timing of major biogeographic genomic and morphological changes in the history of the group and provide insights into the diversification of this clade across six continents key results ancestral range estimation supports an out of africa diversification following the cretaceous tertiary extinction event chromosomal modeling with corroboration from the distribution of synonymous substitutions among gene duplicates provides evidence for as many as 20 genome wide duplication events before large radiations morphological reconstructions support the hypothesis that switches in floral symmetry and anther dehiscence were important in the evolution of secondary pollen presentation mechanisms conclusions this study provides a broad phylogenetic perspective on the evolution of the campanulaceae clade the remarkable habitat diversity and cosmopolitan distribution of this lineage appears to be the result of a complex history of genome duplications and numerous long distance dispersal events we failed to find evidence for an ancestral polyploidy event for this clade and our analyses indicate an ancestral base number of nine for the group this study will serve as a framework for future studies in diverse areas of research in campanulaceae,2016,0.1
First records of fungi pathogenic on spiders for the Republic of Serbia,during an investigation into parasitic fungi on arthropods in the mixed forests of mt fruå ka gora republic of serbia two pathogenic species were found cordyceps thaxteri mains anamorph cordyceps thaxteri mains anamorph akanthomyces aranearum petch mains and torrubiella arachnophila j r johnst mains anamorph gibellula leiopus vuill ex maubl mains hypocreales cordycipitaceae both specimens were found in the anamorphic asexual stage previously there have been no investigations of this group of fungi in this region thus these are the first records of pathogenic fungi for both mt fruå ka gora and the entire territory of the republic of serbia collected specimens are deposited in the herbarium of the national park fruå ka gora republic of serbia,2016,0.795
"Taxonomy and molecular phylogeny of Diatrypaceae (Ascomycota, Xylariales) species from the Brazilian semi-arid region, including four new species",members of the diatrypaceae are predominantly saprotrophic on the decaying wood of angiosperms worldwide and the family has received little attention due to its difficult taxonomy however the recent detection of several pathogenic species once considered saprotrophic associated with the wood of diseased grapevines has increased interest in this family the diversity of tropical species is less well known and more poorly sampled in phylogenetic studies than temperate species in the present study we investigated the diversity of diatrypaceous fungi from three areas in the brazilian semi arid region and performed phylogenetic analyses of the family based on the entire internal transcribed spacer its region and partial ãÿ tubulin gene twenty eight new its and 19 new ãÿ tubulin sequences were generated representing eight species distributed in five clades diatrypella atlantica eutypa guttulata eutypella cearensis and peroneutypa diminutispora are proposed here as new species while eutypella microtheca and p curvispora are new records for brazil all eight species are described illustrated and discussed,2016,0.918
Using ecological niche modelsto plan conservation in a changing environment: A case for the plant Chasmanthera dependens Hochst (Menispermaceae) in West Africa,climatic envelope modeling techniques implemented in two algorithms genetic algorithm for rule set production garp and bioclimatic variables bioclim were used to assess effects of climatic conditions on distributions of plants and anticipate how climate would have delimited their distribution under future conditions using a liana species chasmanthera dependens as a case example in all 120 geo referenced plant records generated from fieldwork and drawn from data served by the global biodiversity information facility gbif environmental variables were derived from monthly temperature and rainfall data from worldclim eliminating environmental variables with correlations of 0 75 and left eight 8 variables for analysis results show that the current suitable range ecological niche of the model plant was broad across the tropical rain forest regions predictions to future climate scenarios 2050 predicted a significant reduction of suitable distributional areas for the species suggesting possible loss of plant species indeed ex situ conservation may be the most appropriate conservation tool for this species and others in similar situations key words bioclimatic variables bioclim climate change conservation ecological niche models genetic algorithm for rule set production garp,2016,0.377
The evolution of intrinsic reproductive isolation in the genus Cakile (Brassicaceae),n theory adaptive divergence can increase intrinsic post zygotic reproductive isolation ri either directly via selection on loci associated with ri or indirectly via linkage of incompatibility loci with loci under selection to test this hypothesis we measured ri at five intrinsic post zygotic reproductive barriers between 18 taxa from the genera cakile and erucaria brassicaceae using a comparative framework we tested whether the magnitude of ri was associated with genetic distance geographic distance ecological divergence and parental mating system early stages of post zygotic ri related to f1 viability i e initial seed set tended to be stronger than later stages related to f1 fecundity i e flower number fruit number mating system significantly influenced early stages of ri such that ri was lowest when the mother was selfing and father was outcrossing consistent with an imbalance between sink strength and resistance to provisioning we found little evidence that adaptive divergence accelerates the evolution of intrinsic post zygotic ri consistent with a nonecological model of evolution that predicts the nonlinear accumulation of ri and ri asymmetry with time i e genetic distance irrespective of adaptive divergence thus although certain aspects of ecological divergence do not appear to have contributed strongly to the evolution of ri in this system divergence in mating system actually reduced ri suggesting that mating system evolution may play a significant role in speciation dynamics,2016,0.11
"Provenance: Past, Present and Future in Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Perspective",this chapter presents a multi and interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas about the definition and theoretical conceptualization of provenance drawing from disciplines such as archival science law computer science library and information science and visual analytics through the lens of these distinct domains the chapter explores different purposes served by provenance various ways that diverse fields are capturing representing and using provenance information provenance standards and specifications and a range of open research challenges relating to theorizing about provenance and capturing representing and using provenance information in increasingly distributed heterogeneous information eco systems combining machine and human intelligence from this blending of perspectives on provenance from different disciplines and â interdisciplinesâ a rich picture emerges of provenance as a dynamic construct and evolving focus of research,2016,0.148
Predicting global invasion risks: a management tool to prevent future introductions,predicting regions at risk from introductions of non native species and the subsequent invasions is a fundamental aspect of horizon scanning activities that enable the development of more effective preventative actions and planning of management measures the asian cyprinid fish topmouth gudgeon pseudorasbora parva has proved highly invasive across europe since its introduction in the 1960s in addition to direct negative impacts on native fish populations p parva has potential for further damage through transmission of an emergent infectious disease known to cause mortality in other species to quantify its invasion risk in regions where it has yet to be introduced we trained 900 ecological niche models and constructed an ensemble model predicting suitability then integrated a proxy for introduction likelihood this revealed high potential for p parva to invade regions well beyond its current invasive range these included areas in all modelled continents with several hotspots of climatic suitability and risk of introduction we believe that these methods are easily adapted for a variety of other invasive species and that such risk maps could be used by policy makers and managers in hotspots to formulate increased surveillance and early warning systems that aim to prevent introductions and subsequent invasions,2016,0.464
Climate drives shifts in grass phenology across the western U.S.,the capacity of grass species to alter their reproductive timing across space and through time can indicate their ability to cope with environmental variability and help predict their future performance under climate change we determined the long term 1895â 2013 relationship between flowering times of grass species and climate in space and time using herbarium records across ecoregions of the western usa there was widespread concordance of c3 grasses accelerating flowering time and general delays for c4 grasses with increasing mean annual temperature with the largest changes for annuals and individuals occurring in more northerly wetter ecoregions flowering time was delayed for most grass species with increasing mean annual precipitation across space while phenologyâ precipitation relationships through time were more mixed our results suggest that the phenology of most grass species has the capacity to respond to increases in temperature and altered precipitation expected with climate change but weak relationships for some species in time suggest that climate tracking via migration or adaptation may be required divergence in phenological responses among grass functional types species and ecoregions suggests that climate change will have unequal effects across the western usa,2016,0.858
Assessing the invasiveness of Berberis aristata and B. julianae (Berberidaceae) in South Africa: Management options and legal recommendations,the detection of two alien species spreading in natural ecosystems namely berberis julianae and berberis aristata prompted investigation into the risk that they pose as invasive plants to south africa here we determined their distribution in south africa assessed population structure and reproductive size determined seed germinability evaluated the risks posed by the species by conducting weed risk assessments and provide recommendations for control we also assessed the extent of current and historic cultivation b julianae was found to be widely cultivated while but b aristata was not found in cultivation only a single naturalized population was found for each species with b julianae occupying an area of 14ha 0 02ha condensed canopy and b aristata occupying an area 180ha 1 58ha condensed canopy given its very limited known distribution there is an opportunity to eradicate b aristata although this would need to be reviewed if further surveys find new populations we recommend that it be classified as category 1a invasive according to the national environmental management biodiversity act we do not yet recommend that b julianae be regulated particularly given its horticultural popularity however it is clearly a species that needs to be monitored,2016,0.696
"The potential global distribution of Chilo partellus, including consideration of irrigation and cropping patterns",chilo partellus is a major crop pest in asia and africa and has recently spread to the mediterranean region knowledge of its potential distribution can inform biosecurity policies aimed at limiting its further spread and efforts to reduce its impact in areas that are already invaded three models of the potential distribution of this insect have been published each with significant shortcomings we re parameterized an existing climex model to address some parameter inconsistencies and to improve the fit to the known distribution of c partellus the resulting model fits the known distribution better than previous models highlights additional risks in equatorial regions and reduces modelled risks in wet and extremely dry regions we bring new insights into the role of irrigation in the potential spread of this invasive insect and compare its potential distribution with the present known distribution of its hosts we also distinguish regions that are suitable for supporting persistent populations from those that may be at risk from ephemeral populations during favourable seasons we present one of the first demonstrations of a new capability in climex to automatically estimate parameter sensitivity and model uncertainty our climex model highlights the substantial invasion risk posed by c partellus to cropping regions in the americas australia china europe new zealand and west africa its broad host range and reported impacts suggest that it should be a pest of significant concern to biosecurity agencies in these presently uninvaded regions,2016,0.137
"Environmental, land cover and land use constraints on the distributional patterns of anurans: Leptodacylus species (Anura, Leptodactylidae) from Dry Chaco",subtropical dry forests are among the most vulnerable biomes to land transformation at a global scale among them the dry chaco suffers an accelerated change due to agriculture expansion and intensification the dry chaco ecoregion is characterized by high levels of endemisms and species diversity which are the result of a variety of climates and reliefs allowing a wide variety of environments the amphibian group exhibits a high richness in the dry chaco which has been barely studied in relation to land cover changes we used ecological niche models enms to assess the potential geographic distribution of 10 leptodactylus species anura leptodactylidae which are mainly distributed within the dry chaco we characterized these distributions environmentally analyzed their overlap with land cover classes and assessed their diversity of ecoregions also we evaluated how these species potential distribution is affected by the transformation of land and quantified the proportional area of the potential distribution in protected areas we found that temperature seasonality is the main constraint to the occurrence of the species studied whose main habitats are savannas grasslands and croplands the main threats to these species are the effects of climate change over spatial patterns of seasonality which could affect their breeding and reproduction mode the loss of their natural habitat the exposure to contaminants used by intensive agriculture and their underrepresentation in protected areas,2016,0.74
"Zachsia zenkewitschi (Teredinidae), a Rare and Unusual Seagrass Boring Bivalve Revisited and Redescribed",the sea grass borer zachsia zenkewitschi belongs to a group of economically and ecologically important bivalves commonly referred to as shipworms the sole recognized representative of the genus zachsia this species displays an unusual life history and reproductive strategy that is now understood to include environmental sex determination of free swimming larvae extreme sexual and size dimorphism between males and females internal fertilization maintenance of often large harems of male dwarfs within a specialized cavity of the female mantle and complex maternal care of larvae in specialized brood pouches within the gill it is also the only shipworm species known to burrow in sea grass rhizomes rather than terrestrial wood although z zenkewitschi is rare and little studied understanding of its biology and anatomy has evolved substantially rendering some aspects of its original description inaccurate moreover no existing type specimens are known for this species in light of these facts we designate a neotype from among specimens recently collected at the type location and undertake a re description of this species accounting for recent reinterpretation of its life history and functional anatomy,2016,0.852
Diversity of Local Landraces Collected during 2009-2010 Period and their Representativeness in Abanian Genebank,diversity of 630 geo observations representing local landraces 27 genera and 36 species collected in albanian territory during seedn et project on plant genetic resources 2009 2010 and their representativeness in genebank was carried out the number of observations per species and per district the area of occupancy the diversity indices and the richness estimators were assessed using grids cells of 1 x 1 km of 10 x 10 km the genetic representativeness of collected local landraces was detected creating the circular buffer zones with a 1 and 10 km radius around the genebank ex situ data and circular buffer zones with a 1 km radius around the external seedn et collecting data geospatial analysis detects areas of high alpha diversity similarity and differences between 10 principal regions of albania combination of diversity indices as simpson index 1 d shannon weiner brillouin and alpha diversity index found the areas of elbasan korca tirana shkodra and vlora regions were richer and more even than other areas cluster analysis using similarity method on correlation found higher similarity among vlora and gjirokastra fieri shkodra and tirana regions similarity index range from 49 61 to 64 22 and correlation coefficient range from 0 63 to 0 86 comparisons methodology of genebank ex situ data with seedn et external data proved the presence of new alleles 12 genera 17 species in collected germplasm of local landraces increasing their representativeness in genebank the ecological areas of tirana korca elbasan vlora and shkodra regions found as more relative stable ecosystem areas should be used for the assessment of the current status of conservation of plant genetic resources and for the prioritization of potential ecological areas suitable for in situ conservation discover the world s research,2016,0.899
Data management for urban tree monitoring – software requirements,the creation of this report was organized by the pe nnsylvania horticultural society phs and the usda forest service philadelphia field station to explor e how technology could be used to support the long term systematic monitoring of urban trees by traine d professionals student interns and volunteers assist with tree planting and maintenance data proc esses and enable data to be organized and shared between researchers and practitioners interviews with researchers and forestry practition ers led to the development of user stories demonstrating how various individuals would interac t with a software tool designed for long term urban forestry monitoring the information gathered from the interviews also resulted in a list of related system requirements for an ideal software monitorin g system using that list of requirements an evaluation of eleven existing software platforms in three general categories proprietary forestry software proprietary non forestry specific softwar e and free and open source software was completed and options listed for expanding the software to me et the system requirements data model and data integration workflows for a software system that me t the majority of the system requirements were outlined and phs served as a test case for how suc h a system might work for tree planting and monitoring the report concludes with a series of r ecommendations regarding cost and tech support establishing an open data standard creating a cent ral data repository and balancing collaboration an d leadership,2016,0.086
In silico evaluation of plant genetic resources to search for traits for adaptation to climate change,plant genetic resources display patterns resulting from ecological and co evolutionary processes such patterns are instrumental in tracing the origin and diversity of crops and locating adaptive traits with climate change and the anticipated increase in demand for food new crop varieties will be needed to perform under unprecedented climatic,2016,0.349
The future of invasive African grasses in South America under climate change,climate change will promote substantial effects on the distribution of invasive species here i used an ensemble of bioclimatic envelope models gower distance chebyshev distance and mahalanobis distance to forecast climatically suitable areas of south america for 13 invasive african grass species under future climate conditions year 2050 under current climatic conditions the areas with the potential for the highest invasive species richness are located mostly in the tropical climates of south america except for the amazon region in the year 2050 the overall pattern of invasive species richness will not change considerably and increases in northeastern amazon and portions of the temperate regions of south america are predicted,2016,0.657
Isolation barriers and genetic divergence in non-territorial Argia damselflies,isolation barriers work at different instances during the mating process in odonate insects in territorial damselflies heterospecific interactions are mainly precluded by sexual visual isolation while in non territorial damselflies heterospecific interactions are mostly precluded by mechanical isolation and sexual tactile isolation in this study we investigated the strength of three premating barriers visual mechanical and tactile genetic divergence and degree of sympatry on their entire distribution between four non territorial argia damselflies a anceps a extranea a oenea and a tezpi our results are explained in the light of learned mating preferences and kaneshiro s hypothesis we detected a strong reproductive isolation between all pairs of species by the joint action of the three studied barriers visual 90 6 mechanical 8 7 and tactile 0 7 sexual visual isolation was the most important barrier perhaps driven by learning mating preferences one of the studied species a extranea which is the most derived of the studied species showed a highly asymmetric isolation in reciprocal crosses which is consistent with kaneshiro s hypothesis moreover we detected a negligible ecological niche differentiation between the studied species 70 of shared distribution our results suggest that sexual visual selection may be an important force driving speciation in non territorial species,2016,0.969
Effects of life-history requirements on the distribution of a threatened reptile,survival and reproduction are the two primary life history traits essential for speciesâ persistence however the environmental conditions that support each of these traits may not be the same despite this fact reproductive requirements are seldom considered when estimating speciesâ potential distributions the aims of this study were 1 to examine potentially limiting environmental factors influencing the distribution of an oviparous reptile of conservation concern with respect to the speciesâ survival and reproduction 2 to assess the implications of the speciesâ predicted climatic constraints on current conservation management practices we used ecological niche modeling to predict the probability of environmental suitability for the alligator snapping turtle macrochelys temminckii using an annual climate model survival and a nesting climate model reproduction we also incorporated alligator snapping turtle incubation temperature requirements and modeled soil temperature data with our estimated distributions to determine if embryonic development constrains the northern distribution of the species we found that low annual precipitation likely constrains the western distribution of alligator snapping turtles while the northern distribution is most probably constrained by thermal requirements during embryonic development only a portion of the geographic range predicted to have a high probability of suitability for alligator snapping turtle survival was estimated to be capable of supporting successful embryonic development historic occurrence records suggest that adult alligator snapping turtles are able to survive in regions with colder climes than those associated with consistent and successful production of offspring estimated egg incubation requirements indicate that current reintroductions at the northern edge of the speciesâ range are within reproductively viable environmental conditions our study highlights the importance of considering survival and reproduction when estimating speciesâ ecological niches implicating conservation management plans and the benefits of incorporating physiological data when evaluating speciesâ distributions,2016,0.241
A NEW RECORD OF DaturaferoxL. FROM SABARMATI RIVER BED NEAR LAKRODA OF MANSA TALUKA (MEHSANA DISTRICT,a common weed population dynamics of daturaferox l has been built based on previously reported checklist data from banaskantha district of north gujarat meena 2012 the floristic survey were conducted along the sabarmati river bed at galteshwar near prantij and the fields near taranga hills and sipor village in mehsana district resulted in collection of various angiospermic plant species besides all the species new species of family solanaceaeie daturaferoxl were also collected description of this species is presented along with a brief account on habitat habit biochemistry and weed control measures,2016,0.843
"Melampsora pakistanica sp. nov., a new rust fungus on Euphorbia helioscopia (Sun spurge) from Pakistan",a rust fungus was found on the leaves of euphorbia helioscopia during a field study in pakistan previously melampsora euphorbiae m euphorbiae gerardianae and m helioscopiae have been reported on e helioscopia the first two of which are also known from pakistan morphological observations of the newly collected rust samples detected some differences from the previously described melampsora species on e helioscopia the molecular analysis of the its and lsu sequences also detected that the rust is different from the previously reported rusts described from e helioscopia based on both morphological comparisons and sequence analysis the rust is described here as m pakistanica sp nov this species could have potential as a bio control agent against its host plantâ e helioscopiaâ which is a weed of wheat fields in pakistan and elsewhere in the world,2016,0.862
Both morph- and species-dependent asymmetries affect reproductive barriers between heterostylous species,the interaction between floral traits and reproductive isolation is crucial to explaining the extraordinary diversity of angiosperms heterostyly a complex floral polymorphism that optimizes outcrossing evolved repeatedly and has been shown to accelerate diversification in primroses yet its potential influence on isolating mechanisms remains unexplored furthermore the relative contribution of pre versus postmating barriers to reproductive isolation is still debated no experimental study has yet evaluated the possible effects of heterostyly on pre and postmating reproductive mechanisms we quantify multiple reproductive barriers between the heterostylous primula elatior oxlip and p vulgaris primrose which readily hybridize when co occurring and test whether traits of heterostyly contribute to reproductive barriers in unique ways we find that premating isolation is key for both species while postmating isolation is considerable only for p vulgaris ecogeographic isolation is crucial for both species while phenological seed developmental and hybrid sterility barriers are also important in p vulgaris implicating sympatrically higher gene flow into p elatior we document for the first time that in addition to the aforementioned species dependent asymmetries morph dependent asymmetries affect reproductive barriers between heterostylous species indeed the interspecific decrease of reciprocity between high sexual organs of complementary floral morphs limits interspecific pollen transfer from anthers of short styled flowers to stigmas of long styled flowers while higher reciprocity between low sexual organs favors introgression over isolation from anthers of long styled flowers to stigmas of short styled flowers finally intramorph incompatibility persists across species boundaries but is weakened in long styled flowers of p elatior opening a possible backdoor to gene flow through intramorph pollen transfer between species therefore patterns of gene flow across species boundaries are likely affected by floral morph composition of adjacent populations to summarize our study highlights the general importance of premating isolation and newly illustrates that both morph and species dependent asymmetries shape boundaries between heterostylous species,2016,0.983
A rapid survey of the invasive plant species in western Angola,angola is one of the most neglected african countries in terms of botanical research in respect of both native and naturalized species we conducted a rapid assessment of invasive plant species in western angola during august 2014 in thirteen primary vegetation types we recorded populations of 44 naturalized plant species nineteen of which are conclusively invasive spreading far from introduction sites dense invasive populations of chromolaena odorata inga vera and opuntia stricta pose the greatest environmental and economic threats some species with known taxonomic and or biogeographic uncertainties e g chromolaena odorata and ageratina adenophora or which lacked key characteristics for identification such as flowers during our survey e g eucalyptus spp were subjected to dna barcoding for comparisons with available genetic data from other studies this approach allowed us to confirm the identity of taxonomically challenging taxa such as inga vera opuntia stricta and prosopis chilensis to conclusively differentiate chromolaena odorata from ageratina adenophora and identify the subspecific identity of acacia saligna canonical correspondence analysis was used to assess the presence and abundance of invasive plant species with respect to the major abiotic factors and vegetation types three fairly distinct groups of species emerge from this analysis i species of dry lowland habitats calotropis gigantea leucaena leucocephala and opuntia stricta ii species of relatively wet habitats at mid elevations ageratum conyzoides bidens pilosa cardiospermum grandiflorum chromolaena odorata solanum mauritianum and tithonia diversifolia and iii upland species ageratina adenophora galinsoga parviflora and tagetes minuta several invasive species that are widespread in other tropical and subtropical african countries are currently either missing e g many australian acacia species azolla filiculoides broussonetia papyrifera clidemia hirta parthenium hysterophorus rubus rosaefolius salvinia molesta have only very localized populations in angola e g lantana camara prosopis chilensis or exist only as planted individuals e g acacia mearnsii and a saligna subsp saligna,2016,0.994
World checklist of hornworts and liverworts,a working checklist of accepted taxa worldwide is vital in achieving the goal of developing an online flora of all known plants by 2020 as part of the global strategy for plant conservation we here present the first ever worldwide checklist for liverworts marchantiophyta and hornworts anthocerotophyta that includes 7486 species in 398 genera representing 92 families from the two phyla the checklist has far reaching implications and applications including providing a valuable tool for taxonomists and systematists analyzing phytogeographic and diversity patterns aiding in the assessment of floristic and taxonomic knowledge and identifying geographical gaps in our understanding of the global liverwort and hornwort flora the checklist is derived from a working data set centralizing nomenclature taxonomy and geography on a global scale prior to this effort a lack of centralization has been a major impediment for the study and analysis of species richness conservation and systematic research at both regional and global scales the success of this checklist initiated in 2008 has been underpinned by its community approach involving taxonomic specialists working towards a consensus on taxonomy nomenclature and distribution,2016,0.273
Diversity of arthropod fauna associated with chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) in Punjab,india is the largest producer and exporter of chilli capsicum annuum in the world and attack of insect pests is a major constraint in its production arthropod population was recorded weekly during kharif 2013 at bharti field fresh farm ladhowal ludhiana and during rabi 2014 at department of forestry and natural resources research farm pau ludhiana primary goal of this study was to record the arthropod fauna associated with the chilli agroecosystem and to identify the insect and mite pests among them forty one arthropod species were found to be associated with the chilli crop among which fourteen species were each of pests and natural enemies twelve species of casual visitors and one species of pollinator order coleoptera occupied the maximum share 26 83 in arthropod fauna recorded on chilli ecosystem the results of diversity indices represented a highly diverse arthropod fauna which was evenly distributed and without dominance of any species during both the seasons,2016,0.825
Challenges and priorities for modelling livestock health and pathogens in the context of climate change,climate change has the potential to impair livestock health with consequences for animal welfare productivity greenhouse gas emissions and human livelihoods and health modelling has an important role in assessing the impacts of climate change on livestock systems and the efficacy of potential adaptation strategies to support decision making for more efficient resilient and sustainable production however a coherent set of challenges and research priorities for modelling livestock health and pathogens under climate change has not previously been available to identify such challenges and priorities researchers from across europe were engaged in a horizon scanning study involving workshop and questionnaire based exercises and focussed literature reviews eighteen key challenges were identified and grouped into six categories based on subject specific and capacity building requirements across a number of challenges the need for inventories relating model types to different applications e g the pathogen species region scale of focus and purpose to which they can be applied was identified in order to identify gaps in capability in relation to the impacts of climate change on animal health the need for collaboration and learning across disciplines was highlighted in several challenges e g to better understand and model complex ecological interactions between pathogens vectors wildlife hosts and livestock in the context of climate change collaboration between socio economic and biophysical disciplines was seen as important for better engagement with stakeholders and for improved modelling of the costs and benefits of poor livestock health the need for more comprehensive validation of empirical relationships for harmonising terminology and measurements and for building capacity for under researched nations systems and health problems indicated the importance of joined up approaches across nations the challenges and priorities identified can help focus the development of modelling capacity and future research structures in this vital field well funded networks capable of managing the long term development of shared resources are required in order to create a cohesive modelling community equipped to tackle the complex challenges of climate change,2016,0.042
Temperature is better than precipitation as a predictor of plant community assembly across a dryland region,question how closely do plant communities track climate research suggests that plant species converge toward similar environmental tolerances relative to the environments that they experience whether these patterns apply to severe environments or scale up to plant community level patterns of relative climatic tolerances is poorly understood using estimates of species climatic tolerances acquired from occurrence records we determined the contributions of individual species climatic niche breadths and environmental filtering to the relationships between community average climatic tolerances and the local climates experienced by those communities location southwestern united states drylands methods interspecific variation in niche breadth was assessed as a function of species climatic optima median climatic niche value the relationships between climatic optima and tolerances were used as null expectations for the relationship between abundance weighted mean climatic tolerances of communities and the local climate of that community deviations from this null expectation indicate that species with greater or lesser climatic tolerances are favoured relative to co occurring species the intensity of environmental filtering was estimated by comparing the range of climatic tolerances within each community to a null distribution generated from a random assembly algorithm results the temperature niches of species were consistently symmetrical and of similar breadths regardless of their temperature optima in contrast precipitation niches were skewed toward wetter conditions and niche breadth increased with increasing precipitation optima at the community level relationships with climate were much stronger for temperature than for precipitation furthermore cold and heat were stronger assembly filters than drought or precipitation with the intensity of environmental filtering increasing at both ends of climatic gradients community average climatic tolerances did deviate significantly from null expectations indicating that species with higher or lower relative climatic tolerances were favoured under certain conditions conclusions despite strong water limitation of plant performance in dryland ecosystems communities tracked variation in temperature much more closely intimating strong responses to anticipated temperature increases furthermore abundance distributions were biased toward species with higher or lower relative climatic tolerances under different climatic conditions but predictably so indicating the need for assembly models that include processes other than simple environmental filtering,2016,0.828
Attributes That Confer Invasiveness and Impacts Across the Large Genus Bromus: Lessons from the Bromus REEnet Database,bromus l species are cool season grasses of temperate regions and tropical high elevations some species in the genus bromus have been widely introduced into new areas of the globe and are invasive in the western united states while others occur only in their native ranges we developed a database with information about traits of bromus species and their interactions with biotic and abiotic features of their environments using the collected data we looked for correlations among wide introduction weediness a suite of traits including taxonomic section year life span seed awn length average seed mass polyploidy human use and cultivar availability and climate factors annual bromus species were often destructive crop weeds ruderal weeds and environmental natural habitat weeds long awn length was associated with wide introduction and weediness in annual bromus grasses perennial bromus grasses generally remained confined to their native regions unless they were polyploid species cultivated for hay forage and revegetation and few were invasive invasiveness in bromus species was associated with the ability to grow at high and low temperature and precipitation levels and with human activities most research focuses on highly invasive species such as bromus tectorum l downy brome or cheatgrass and cultivated species such as bromus inermis leyss smooth brome while information about most other species is more limited information about bromus species in a central location facilitates comparisons among species and provides data that can be used for modeling prediction management and control of bromus grass invasions,2016,0.987
Carissa opaca : A plant with great potential for future drugs for degenerative and infectious diseases,emergence of new diseases and development of complications in the old ones coupled with safety efficacy and affordability factors associated with existing medicines have necessitated continuous quest for new remedies plants being a virtually unending reservoir of potential bioactive natural products hold great hope for more effective safer and affordable therapeutic agents in order to facilitate these studies it is therefore desirable to publish reviews on medicinal plants the present review is an effort to cover ethnomedicinal properties and research work done on medicinal plant carissa opaca apocynaceae which is traditionally used for a number of purposes including jaundice hepatitis rheumatism and asthma pharmacologically different parts of plant have been studied for various bioactivities such as antioxidant antimicrobial anti cancer anti diabetic antipyretic anti inflammatory hepatoprotective and cytotoxic phytochemical investigations have resulted in the isolation of many natural products including terpenoids and flavonoids as the extensive literature review suggests c opaca holds great promise for novel therapeutic remedies for various degenerative and pathological ailments more rigorous in vitro and in vivo analyses and clinical studies are therefore recommended,2016,0.053
Coral snakes predict the evolution of mimicry across New World snakes.,batesian mimicry in which harmless species mimics deter predators by deceitfully imitating the warning signals of noxious species models generates striking cases of phenotypic convergence that are classic examples of evolution by natural selection however mimicry of venomous coral snakes has remained controversial because of unresolved conflict between the predictions of mimicry theory and empirical patterns in the distribution and abundance of snakes here we integrate distributional phenotypic and phylogenetic data across all new world snake species to demonstrate that shifts to mimetic coloration in nonvenomous snakes are highly correlated with coral snakes in both space and time providing overwhelming support for batesian mimicry we also find that bidirectional transitions between mimetic and cryptic coloration are unexpectedly frequent over both long and short time scales challenging traditional views of mimicry as a stable evolutionary end point and suggesting that insect and snake mimicry may have different evolutionary dynamics,2016,0.56
CLEIej,in the last decade research in computer vision has developed several algorithms to help botanists and non experts to classify plants based on images of their leaves leafsnap is a mobile application that uses a multiscale curvature model of the leaf margin to classify leaf images into species it has achieved high levels of accuracy on 184 tree species from northeast us we extend the research that led to the development of leafsnap along two lines first leafsnapâ s underlying algorithms are applied to a set of 66 tree species from costa rica then texture is used as an additional criterion to measure the level of improvement achieved in the automatic identification of costa rica tree species a 25 6 improvement was achieved for a costa rican clean image dataset and 42 5 for a costa rican noisy image dataset in both cases our results show this increment as statistically significant further statistical analysis of visual noise impact best algorithm combinations per species and best value of k the minimal cardinality of the set of candidate species that the tested algorithms render as best matches is also presented in this research,2016,0.587
"'Life in Data'-Outcome of a Multi-Disciplinary, Interactive Biobanking Conference Session on Sample Data.",introduction clinical biodiversity and environmental biobanks share many data standards but there is a lack of harmonization on how data are defined and used among biobank fields this article reports the outcome of an interactive multidisciplinary session at a meeting of the european middle eastern and african society for biopreservation and biobanking esbb designed to encourage a learning from each other approach to achieve consensus on data needs and data management across biobank communities materials methods and results the enviro bio and esbbperanto working groups of the esbb co organized an interactive session at the 2013 conference verona italy presenting data associated with biobanking processes using examples from across different fields one hundred sixty 160 diverse biobank participants were provided electronic voting devices with real time screen display of responses to questions posed during the session the importance of data standards and robust data management was recognized across the conference cohort along with the need to raise awareness about these issues within and across different biobank sectors discussion and conclusion while interactive sessions require a commitment of time and resources and must be carefully coordinated for consistency and continuity they stimulate the audience to be pro active and direct the course of the session this effective method was used to gauge opinions about significant topics across different biobanking communities the votes revealed the need to a educate biobanks in the use of data management tools and standards and b encourage a more cohesive approach for how data and samples are tracked exchanged and standardized across biobanking communities recommendations for future interactive sessions are presented based on lessons learned,2016,0.084
"The potential effects of climate change on amphibian distribution, range fragmentation and turnover in China",many studies predict that climate change will cause species movement and turnover but few studies have considered the effect of climate change on range fragmentation for current species and or populations we used maxent to predict suitable habitat fragmentation and turnover for 134 amphibian species in china under 40 future climate change scenarios spanning four pathways rcp2 6 rcp4 5 rcp6 and rcp8 5 and two time periods the 2050s and 2070s our results show that climate change will cause a major shift in the spatial patterns of amphibian diversity suitable habitats for over 90 of species will be located in the north of the current range for over 95 of species in higher altitudes and for over 75 of species in the west of the current range the distributions of species predicted to move westwards southwards and to higher altitudes will contract while the ranges of the species not showing these trends will expand amphibians will lose 20 of their original ranges on average the distribution outside current ranges will increase by 15 climate change will likely modify the spatial configuration of climatically suitable areas changes in area and fragmentation of climatically suitable patches are related which means that species may be simultaneously affected by different stressors as a consequence of climate change,2016,0.973
Plantago maritima. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species,the species is widespread and while it is possibly declining in parts of its range it is not thought that any global population decline is likely to meet or be close to meeting the threshold for vulnerable therefore the species is assessed as least concern,2016,0.509
"Modelling the potential distribution, net primary production and phenology of common ragweed with a physiological model",aim common ragweed ambrosia artemisiifolia l is a medically relevant invasive species of great public interest due to its highly allergenic pollen we aimed at modelling its potential range its net primary production npp and important phenological stages location europe and north america methods we developed a new physiological model for common ragweed and applied it to simulate the speciesâ potential distribution calibrated with the native range npp and phenology in north america and europe based on this model we investigated which regions are suitable for ragweed growth in europe and simulated the timing of phenological stages that determine pollen release results the model predicted the observed distribution of ragweed in north america well the application to europe suggests that large parts of europe are climatically suitable for ragweed growth and reproduction the highest potential npp was predicted in southern central and south eastern europe and southern france roughly corresponding with hotspots of atmospheric pollen load but also indicating a higher potential than currently achieved in western europe and along parts of the northern edge of its distribution the predicted time of pollen releases in europe corresponded well with measurements from pollen traps main conclusions the results suggest that our mechanistic model adequately represents physiological and ecological characteristics that determine the potential distribution productivity and phenology of common ragweed the model could be used for predicting the potential distribution and performance of ragweed in the future under climate change and might thus contribute to improved longer term predictions of exposure to allergenic pollen,2016,0.071
Sequence-based classification and identification of Fungi.,fungal taxonomy and ecology have been revolutionized by the application of molecular methods and both have increasing connections to genomics and functional biology however data streams from traditional specimen and culture based systematics are not yet fully integrated with those from metagenomic and metatranscriptomic studies which limits understanding of the taxonomic diversity and metabolic properties of fungal communities this article reviews current resources needs and opportunities for sequence based classification and identification sbci in fungi as well as related efforts in prokaryotes to realize the full potential of fungal sbci it will be necessary to make advances in multiple areas improvements in sequencing methods including long read and single cell technologies will empower fungal molecular ecologists to look beyond its and current shotgun metagenomics approaches data quality and accessibility will be enhanced by attention to data and metadata standards and rigorous enforcement of policies for deposition of data and workflows taxonomic communities will need to develop best practices for molecular characterization in their focal clades while also contributing to globally useful datasets including its changes to nomenclatural rules are needed to enable validpublication of sequence based taxon descriptions finally cultural shifts are necessary to promote adoption of sbci and to accord professional credit to individuals who contribute to community resources,2016,0.05
New records of snail-killing flies (Diptera: Sciomyzidae) from Iran,during a two week sampling campaign in iran from april 17th to may 1th 2016 15 species of snailkilling flies diptera sciomyzidae were caught three species pherbellia schoenherri p nana and p ventralis are mentioned for the first time from iran all species caught are commented in this paper and references to literature are given,2016,0.574
The Sensitivity of Mapping Methods to Reference Data Quality: Training Supervised Image Classifications with Imperfect Reference Data,the accuracy of a map is dependent on the reference dataset used in its construction classification analyses used in thematic mapping can for example be sensitive to a range of sampling and data quality concerns with particular focus on the latter the effects of reference data quality on land cover classifications from airborne thematic mapper data are explored variations in sampling intensity and effort are highlighted in a dataset that is widely used in mapping and modelling studies these may need accounting for in analyses the quality of the labelling in the reference dataset was also a key variable influencing mapping accuracy accuracy varied with the amount and nature of mislabelled training cases with the nature of the effects varying between classifiers the largest impacts on accuracy occurred when mislabelling involved confusion between similar classes accuracy was also typically negatively related to the magnitude of mislabelled cases and the support vector machine svm which has been claimed to be relatively insensitive to training data error was the most sensitive of the set of classifiers investigated with overall classification accuracy declining by 8 significant at 95 level of confidence with the use of a training set containing 20 mislabelled cases,2016,0.148
"Status Review Report of 3 Species of Angelsharks: Squatina aculeata, S. oculata, and S. squatina",this report was produced in response to a petition received from wildearth guardians on july 15 2013 to list 81 marine species as endangered or threatened under the endangered species act esa on november 6 2013 nmfs announced in the federal register that the petition present ed substantial informati on that listing may be warranted for five of the petitioned angelshark species and requested information on th e s e species from the public 78 fr 66675 subsequently nmfs initiated a status review of these species this report is the status review for thr ee of the five angelshark species namely squatina aculeata squatina oculata and squatina squatina this report summarizes available data and information on the se three angelshark species and presents an evaluation of the ir status and extinction risk squatina aculeata more commonly referred to as the sawback angelshark historically occurred throughout central and western mediterranean waters and the eastern atlantic from morocco to angola in depths of 30 m to 500 m however re cent records point t o its presence in the eastern mediterranean as well specifically the aegean and levantine sea s based on available historical information anecdotal observations and fisheries survey and catch data it appears the species may no longer be found in the ad riatic sea or central aegean sea although once present in commercial landings and characterized as abundant in certain mediterranean waters in the 1970s e g within the tyrrhenian sea and tunisian waters the available information suggests the species is presently a rare occurrence t hroughout its historical mediterranean range with evidence of potential extirpations in the ligurian and tyrrhenian sea s off the balearic islands and in the catalan sea similarly in the eastern atlantic the available i nformation suggests the species was abundant off the west coast of africa in the 1970s but has since undergone declines to the point where it is now a rare occurrence in these waters squatina oculata more commonly referred to as the smoothback angelshar k historically occurred throughout the mediterranean sea and eastern atlantic from morocco to angola in depths of 20 m to 560 m based on available historical information anecdotal observations and fisheries survey and catch data it appears the speci es may be rare throughout most of its mediterranean range with the exception of the central mediterranean and the levantine sea where qualitative descriptions of the species characterize it as common however these characterizations date back almost 1 0 years and as such the current status of the population in these areas is unknown the species is also thought to be possibly extirpated in the aegean sea ligurian and tyrrhenian sea s off the balearic islands and in the catalan sea in the eastern at lantic the available data indicate the species may have been common off the west coast of africa back in the 1970s and 1980s but has since undergone declines to the point where it is now rarely observed in these waters squatina squatina referred to as the common angel shark is the most northerly distributed of the three angelshark species its historical range extended along the eastern atlantic from scandinavia to mauritania including the canary islands and it was also found in the english channel throughout the mediterranean and black sea s it occurs in depths of 5 m to 150 m and iv may also be observed in estuaries and brackish waters although there are no population estimates for s squatina historical records and anecdotal reports indicate that s squatina was commonly observed in the north sea off the coasts of england and ireland within the bay of biscay and in the mediterranean sea comparison s of historical and current catch and survey data suggest significant declines in s squatina popula tion throughout its historical range with the species possibly extirpated from the western english channel north sea baltic sea ligurian and tyrrhenian sea s black sea catalan sea and portions of the adriatic sea presently the only part of its rang e where the species is still a common occurrence is off the canary islands however this area comprises an extremely small portion of the speciesâ range and its present abundance in this portion remains uncertain t he decline in the se squatina species is mainly attributed to the historical and current overutilization of the se species by demersal fisheries because angelsharks are sedentary bottom dwelling species they are highly susceptible to being caught in trawl fisheries additionally given their l ow productivity they are unable to quickly rebound from threats that decrease their abundance consequently as the demersal fisheries expanded throughout the mediterranean and eastern atlantic in the 1890s through the use of steam powered trawlers the squatina species began to experience declines to the point where they are now extirpated from large portions of their historical range the remaining squatina populations are likely small fragmented isolated and in decline with a high likelihood of bei ng strongly influenced by stochastic or depensatory processes these species continue to be threatened with overutilization as the demersal fisheries that historically contributed to their declines remain active throughout their respective ranges w ith tra wling provid ing the great est economic return in the fishery sector operating throughout the m editerranean it is unlikely that this threat will decrease in the near future overutilization by a rtisanal and recreational fish eries are also threats to the squ atina species with existing regulatory mechanisms inadequate to decrease fishing mortality in these and the commercial demersal fisheries to the point where further declines in the species are unlikely given the speciesâ demographic risks and the present threats that continue to contribute to the decline of existing populations i conclude that s aculeata s oculata and s squatina are presently at a high risk of extinction throughout their respective ranges,2016,1
Risk Assessment of Gunnera tinctoria–submission for consideration of Union listing under EU IAS Regulation No. 1143/2014,this risk assessment is based on the non native species application based risk analysis for ireland napra ireland tool version 2 66 and the eu non native organism risk assessment scheme template,2016,0.402
Winter conditions influence biological responses of migrating hummingbirds,conserving biological diversity given ongoing environmental changes requires the knowledge of how organisms respond biologically to these changes however we rarely have this information this data deficiency can be addressed with coordinated monitoring programs that provide field data across temporal and spatial scales and with process based models which provide a method for predicting how species in particular migrating species that face different conditions across their range will respond to climate change we evaluate whether environmental conditions in the wintering grounds of broad tailed hummingbirds influence physiological and behavioral attributes of their migration to quantify winter ground conditions we used operative temperature as a proxy for physiological constraint and precipitation and the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi as surrogates of resource availability we measured four biological response variables molt stage timing of arrival at stopover sites body mass and fat consistent with our predictions we found that birds migrating north were in earlier stages of molt and arrived at stopover sites later when ndvi was low these results indicate that wintering conditions impact the timing and condition of birds as they migrate north in addition our results suggest that biologically informed environmental surrogates provide a valuable tool for predicting how climate variability across years influences the animal populations,2016,0.196
Comparison of Temporally Classified and Unclassified Map Animations,while animation is a natural and under certain circumstances effective way to present spatio temporal information it has its limitations studying animations of large point datasets can be cognitively very demanding aiming to help users to comprehend such data this study presents a new concept of temporal classification a phenomenon is classified into periods of increasing decreasing and steady intensity and each is assigned different colours in an animation this concept was tested with a group of experts in the field of the phenomenon the results suggest that this kind of classified animation together with a traditional animation presenting the same dataset supports users in their analysis process and adds to the impression they get of the phenomenon it also seems that the viewing order of the animations matters the full potential of the tested method is reached by viewing the traditional version first and temporally classified version after that,2016,0.176
Pollination Mode and Mating System Explain Patterns in Genetic Differentiation in Neotropical Plants,we studied genetic diversity and differentiation patterns in neotropical plants to address effects of life history traits lht and ecological attributes based on an exhaustive literature survey we used generalized linear mixed models glmms to test the effects as fixed and random factors of growth form pollination and dispersal modes mating and breeding systems geographical range and habitat on patterns of genetic diversity hs hes ï and h inbreeding coefficient fis allelic richness ar and differentiation among populations fst for both nuclear and chloroplast genomes in addition we used phylogenetic generalized least squares pgls to account for phylogenetic independence on predictor variables and verify the robustness of the results from significant glmms in general glmm revealed more significant relationships among lhts and genetic patterns than pgls after accounting for phylogenetic independence i e using pgls fst for nuclear microsatellites was significantly related to pollination mode mating system and habitat plants specifically with outcrossing mating system had lower fst moreover ar was significantly related to pollination mode and geographical range and hes for nuclear dominant markers was significantly related to habitat our findings showed that different results might be retrieved when phylogenetic non independence is taken into account and that lhts and ecological attributes affect substantially the genetic pattern in neotropical plants hence may drive key evolutionary processes in plants,2016,0.035
Locating Suitable Habitat for a Rare Species: Evaluation of a Species Distribution Model for Bog Turtles (Glyptemys Muhlenbergii) in the Southeastern United States,because rare and cryptic species can be difficult to locate distribution maps for such species are often inaccurate or incomplete bog turtles glyptemys muhlenbergii are emblematic of this challenge conducting surveys of known historical and potential bog turtle habitat is a specific need stated in the bog turtle northern population recovery plan and in most comprehensive wildlife conservation strategies of states in the southern population to address this need we constructed a species distribution model for the southern population of bog turtles and ground validated the model to assess its ability to locate suitable bog turtle habitat our final model identified 998 325 ha of potentially suitable habitat on the ground evaluation of h abitat identified as potentially suitable was carried out at 113 wetlands in georgia and 83 in south carolina of these only nine wetlands met criteria for suitable bog turtle habitat in georgia and 13 in south carolina trapping efforts at the nine geo rgia sites and eight of the south carolina sites showed bog turtles to be present at two of the georgia sites this ground validation effort demonstrates that the species distribution model greatly over predicts the amount of suitable habitat for bog turt les nonetheless this manner of searching for rare and cryptic species does avoid the typical biases of haphazard searches and helps identify habitat on private property given these findings the model is most useful when the area of interest is small such as a county within the range of a species that currently has no known occurrence records,2016,0.778
The European Distribution of Sus Scrofa. Model Outputs from the Project Described within the Poster – Where are All the Boars? An Attempt to Gain a Continental Perspective,wild boar is a host of a number of arthropod vectored diseases and its numbers are on the rise in mainland europe the species potentially impacts ecosystems humans and farming practices and so its distribution is of interest to policy makers in a number of fields beyond that of the primarily epidemiological goal of this study three statistical model outputs describing the distribution and abundance of the species sus scrofa wild boar are included in this data package the extent of this dataset covers continental europe these data were presented as a poster 1 at the conference genes ecosystems and risk of infection geri 2015 the first of the three models provide a european map presenting the probability of presence of sus scrofa which can be used to describe the likely geographical distribution of the species the second and third models provide indices to help describe the likely abundance across the continent the two indices include â œthe proportion of suitable habitat where presence is estimatedâ and a simple classification of boar abundance across europe using quantiles of existing abundance data and proxies,2016,0.853
ReefMedMol: Mollusca from the infralittoral rocky shores - the biocoenosis of photophilic algae - in the Mediterranean Sea,background this paper describes two datasets on the molluscan fauna from the mediterranean infralittoral reef ecosystem the biocoenosis of photophilic algae the ï rst dataset is taken from the east mediterranean node of the nagisa project the second one is a compilation based on the available published material in peer reviewed journals as well as from the accessible grey literature these datasets cover a time period of 43 years from 1969 to 2012 from several locations spanning the mediterranean sea new information this dataset is the only one available from this important mediterranean habitat coded as 1170 in the habitats directive 92 43 eec and can provide valuable information on the needs of ecosystems functions and services assessment habitat and species conservation as well as marine spatial planning,2016,0.221
The genus Asteromella (Fungi: Ascomycota) in Poland,the critical revision of 59 asteromella species occurring in poland is presented based primarily on specimens from poland as well as selected herbarial materials from france germany italy latvia lithuania romania slovakia switzerland and ukraine some exsiccata including types of asteromella carlinae petr asteromella ludwigii petr asteromella ovata thã m asteromella petasitidis petr depazea agrimoniae lasch mycosphaerella agrimoniae syd phyllosticta borszczowii thã m phyllosticta cicutae lind phyllosticta eupatoriicola kabã t bubã k phyllosticta pleurospermi died phyllosticta salicina kabã t bubã k phyllosticta senecionis nemorensis säƒvul sandu phyllosticta wandae namyså were also studied each species is accompanied by the information pertaining to host spectrum morphology of conidiomata conidiophores conidiogenous cells and conidia distribution in poland and globally as well as information on synanamorphs and teleomorph if present two species asteromella moeszii ruszkiewicz michalska muå enko spec nov on pulmonaria obscura and asteromella rupprechtii ruszkiewicz michalska spec nov on agrimonia eupatoria are described based on polish specimens a new name asteromella huubii ruszkiewicz michalska nom nov is proposed to replace asteromella angelicae sacc moesz ex bat peres nine phyllosticta and two depazea species were redisposed into asteromella asteromella acetosae sacc ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella adoxicola lasch ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella alnicola c massal ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella bacilloides dominik ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella prunellae ellis everh ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella garbowskii guceviä ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella lysimachiae allesch ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella populina fuckel ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov asteromella salicina kabã t bubã k ruszkiewicz michalska comb nov neotype of asteromella bacilloides and a lectotype of asteromella adoxicola are designated nine species reported in the literature are not confirmed to occur in poland this includes two species that need to be recollected asteromella scabiosae kalymb vanev aa and asteromella mali briard boerema dorenb as dried specimens are scarce and deficient affinity of asteromella confusa bubã k petr to asteromella vs phoma is briefly disputed new records and new data on the distribution of asteromella species in latvia poland slovakia switzerland and ukraine are also provided three species are reported as new to polish funga asteromella prunellae asteromella melampyrina and asteromella moeszii,2016,0.957
A Complex System of Glacial Sub-Refugia Drives Endemic Freshwater Biodiversity on the Tibetan Plateau,although only relatively few freshwater invertebrate families are reported from the tibetan plateau the degree of endemism may be high many endemic lineages occur within permafrost areas raising questions about the existence of isolated intra plateau glacial refugia moreover if such refugia existed it might be instructive to learn whether they were associated with lakes or with more dynamic ecosystems such as ponds wetlands or springs to study these hypotheses we used pulmonate snails of the plateau wide distributed genus radix as model group and the lake donggi cona drainage system located in the north eastern part of the plateau as model site first we performed plateau wide phylogenetic analyses using mtdna data to assess the overall relationships of radix populations inhabiting the lake donggi cona system for revealing refugial lineages we then conducted regional phylogeographical analyses applying a combination of mtdna and nuclear aflp markers to infer the local structure and demographic history of the most abundant endemic radix clade for identifying location and type of sub refugia within the drainage system our phylogenetic analysis showed a high diversity of radix lineages in the lake donggi cona system subsequent phylogeographical analyses of the most abundant endemic clade indicated a habitat related clustering of genotypes and several late pleistocene spatial demographic expansion events the most parsimonious explanation for these patterns would be a scenario of an intra plateau glacial refugium in the lake donggi cona drainage system which might have consisted of isolated sub refugia though the underlying processes remain unknown an initial separation of lake and watershed populations could have been triggered by lake level fluctuations before and during the last glacial maximum this study inferred the first intra plateau refugium for freshwater animals on the tibetan plateau it thus sheds new light on the evolutionary history of its endemic taxa and provides important insights into the complex refugial history of a high altitude ecosystem,2016,0.445
Mapping Life – Quality Assessment of Novice vs. Expert Georeferencers,the majority of the worldâ s billions of biodiversity specimens are tucked away in museum cabinets with only minimal if any digital records of the information they contain global efforts to digitize specimens are underway yet the scale of the task is daunting fortunately many activities associated with digitization do not require extensive training and could benefit from the involvement of citizen science participants however the quality of the data generated in this way is not well understood with two experiments presented here we examine the efficacy of citizen science participants in georeferencing specimen collection localities in the absence of an online citizen science georeferencing platform and community students served as a proxy for the larger citizen science population at tulane university and florida state university undergraduate students and experts used the geolocate platform to georeference fish and plant specimen localities respectively our results provide a first approximation of what can be expected from citizen science participants with minimal georeferencing training as a benchmark for future innovations after outliers were removed the range between student and expert georeferenced points was 1 0 to ca 40 0 km for both the fish and the plant experiments with an overall mean of 8 3 km and 4 4 km respectively engaging students in the process improved results beyond geolocateâ s algorithm alone calculation of a median point from replicate points improved results further as did recognition of good georeferencers e g creation of median points contributed by the best 50 of contributors we provide recommendations for improving accuracy further we call for the creation of an online citizen science georeferencing platform,2016,0.109
"Lost in the North: The first record of Diretmichthys parini (Post and Quéro, 1981) in the northern North Sea",in june 2015 an individual of diretmichthys parini post and quero 1981 was trawled at 530m depth in the north sea off norway and donated to research this capture the first for this species in the north sea was the northernmost recorded so far and provided an opportunity to document some aspects of the biology and ecology of this data poor species this individual was a female 331mm total length of 33years old with low mercury content in muscle and liver 0 2î gg∠1 wet mass stable isotope ratios c and n in muscle and liver were consistent with the planktonic diet expected for this species the capture of this fish at the northern latitude known so far would be consistent with the extension of the home range and the latitudinal shift hypothesized for this species in the 1990â s,2016,0.736
Global conservation priorities for crop wild relatives,the wild relatives of domesticated crops possess genetic diversity useful for developing more productive nutritious and resilient crop varieties however their conservation status and availability for utilization are a concern and have not been quantified globally here we model the global distribution of 1 076 taxa related to 81 crops using occurrence information collected from biodiversity herbarium and gene bank databases we compare the potential geographic and ecological diversity encompassed in these distributions with that currently accessible in gene banks as a means to estimate the comprehensiveness of the conservation of genetic diversity our results indicate that the diversity of crop wild relatives is poorly represented in gene banks for 313 29 1 of total taxa associated with 63 crops no germplasm accessions exist and a further 257 23 9 are represented by fewer than ten accessions over 70 of taxa are identified as high priority for further collecting in order to improve their representation in gene banks and over 95 are insufficiently represented in regard to the full range of geographic and ecological variation in their native distributions the most critical collecting gaps occur in the mediterranean and the near east western and southern europe southeast and east asia and south america we conclude that a systematic effort is needed to improve the conservation and availability of crop wild relatives for use in plant breeding,2016,0.58
"Demography of the threatened endemic shrub, Arbutus pavarii, in the Al-Akhdar mountainous landscape of Libya",we sampled twenty populations of the vulnerable endemic shrub or tree arbutus pavarii pampan at different elevations and aspects within the al akhdar mountainous region of libya our sampling sites were at elevations ranging from 285 to 738 m above sea level and several different habitats vallies locally known as wadis north and south facing slopes and mountaintops all individuals within each quadrat were studied population size and structure and plant functional traits were assessed none of the populations had a stable distribution of size classes some consisted mostly of small plants with little or no fruit production others consisted only of mid sized and large plants with high fruit production but no juvenile recruitment there was a significant increase in percent cover with increasing elevation reproductive output the number of fruits per branch and total number of fruits per individual also generally increased with elevation in some of these populations the lack of recruitment and in others the failure to produce fruit together constituted serious demographic threats in light of these results recommendations are made for conservation of this vulnerable endemic species,2016,0.306
Extraordinary range expansion in a common bat: the potential roles of climate change and urbanisation.,urbanisation and climate change are two global change processes that affect animal distributions posing critical threats to biodiversity due to its versatile ecology and synurbic habits kuhl s pipistrelle pipistrellus kuhlii offers a unique opportunity to explore the relative effects of climate change and urbanisation on species distributions in a climate change scenario this typically mediterranean species is expected to expand its range in response to increasing temperatures we collected 25 132 high resolution occurrence records from p kuhlii european range between 1980 and 2013 and modelled the species distribution with a multi temporal approach using three bioclimatic variables and one proxy of urbanisation temperature in the coldest quarter of the year was the most important factor predicting the presence of p kuhlii and showed an increasing trend in the study period mean annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality were also relevant but to a lower extent although urbanisation increased in recently colonised areas it had little effect on the species presence predictability p kuhlii expanded its geographical range by about 394 in the last four decades a process that can be interpreted as a response to climate change,2016,0.823
Global scientific research commons under the Nagoya Protocol: Towards a collaborative economy model for the sharing of basic research assets,this paper aims to get a better understanding of the motivational and transaction cost features of building global scientific research commons with a view to contributing to the debate on the design of appropriate policy measures under the recently adopted nagoya protocol for this purpose the paper analyses the results of a world wide survey of managers and users of microbial culture collections which focused on the role of social and internalized motivations organizational networks and external incentives in promoting the public availability of upstream research assets overall the study confirms the hypotheses of the social production model of information and shareable goods but it also shows the need to complete this model for the sharing of materials the underlying collaborative economy in excess capacity plays a key role in addition to the social production while for data competitive pressures amongst scientists tend to play a bigger role,2016,0.051
"Savannahs of Asia: antiquity, biogeography, and an uncertain future",the savannahs of asia remain locally unrecognized as distinctive ecosystems and continue to be viewed as degraded forests or seasonally dry tropical forests these colonial era legacies are problematic because they fail to recognize the unique diversity of asian savannahs and the critical roles of fire and herbivory in maintaining ecosystem health and diversity in this review we show that the palaeo historical evidence suggests that the savannahs of asia have existed for at least 1 million years long before widespread landscape modification by humans savannah regions across asia have levels of c4 grass endemism and diversity that are consistent with area based expectations for non asian savannahs there are at least three distinct asian savannah communities namely deciduous broadleaf savannahs deciduous fine leafed and spiny savannahs and evergreen pine savannahs with distinct functional ecologies consistent with fire and herbivory driven community assembly via an analysis of savannah climate domains on other continents we map the potential extent of savannahs across asia we find that the climates of african savannahs provide the closest analogues for those of asian deciduous savannahs but that asian pine savannahs occur in climates different to any of the savannahs in the southern continents finally we review major threats to the persistence of savannahs in asia including the mismanagement of fire and herbivory alien woody encroachment afforestation policies and future climate uncertainty associated with the changing asian monsoon research agendas that target these issues are urgently needed to manage and conserve these ecosystems this article is part of the themed issue tropical grassy biomes linking ecology human use and conservation,2016,0.033
"First Record of Sexual Structures in Pterosiphonia Parasitica (Rhodomelaceae, Rhodophyta) from the Iberian Peninsula",pterosiphonia parasitica is a species of the family rhodomelaceae that inhabits in the lower intertidal and subtidal of the atlantic iberian peninsula the first observation of spermatangial branches procarps and cystocarps in the iberian peninsula is reported in this paper,2016,0.351
Eleven Myxomycete species new to Finland,the aim of the present paper is to introduce 11 new myxomycete species for finland the latest extensive publication of finnish myxomycetes by hã rkã nen varis 2012 in finnish presented altogether 213 species based on specimens stored in finnish herbaria h joe jyv kuo tur oulu since then kunttu et al 2013 presented one new species for finland â dianema corticatum lister â and several new findings from the ã land islands knowledge about biodiversity of myxomycetes in finland still remains incomplete,2016,0.543
Gait Biometric Recognition,the gait biometric has demonstrated potential promises as an alternative or complementary identifier for use in human recognition systems however there is no single measure that encompasses the full set of complex dynamics reflecting what we consider to be the human gait instead important aspects of gait can be measured using one or more of several analysis techniques among these techniques are visual approaches involving cameras which can capture differing angles of gait from a distance and sensor approaches which collect information about gait while in contact with the subject being analyzed in this chapter we explore the ways in which these varying approaches have previously been applied to achieve gait biometric recognition while also highlighting important possible areas of concern in their usage with respect to practicality privacy and security this chapter provides a foundation of knowledge with respect to gait and machine learning which will be built upon through the remainder of the book as we demonstrate via the application of powerful machine learning techniques and the levels of gait recognition performance we might hope to achieve using a sensor based approach for demonstration,2016,0.197
"Range, genetic diversity and future of the threatened butterfly, Pieris virginiensis",pieris virginiensis the west virginia white butterfly faces severe potential habitat loss and degradation of existing suitable habitat in the near future from climate change and plant invasion increasing isolation and local extinction events resulting from deforestation and climate change have a chance to significantly impact the future of this butterfly we used genetic analysis and spatial modelling techniques to estimate the current spatial and genetic scope of p virginiensis we used linear modelling and machine learning to predict the occurrence of p virginiensis through space and time using occurrence records between 1879 and 2014 and environmental predictors from a world climate dataset we predicted the future occurrence of p virginiensis with climate projections for the year 2070 we sequenced the cytochrome oxidase i and the internal transcribed spacer region i in the mitrochondrial and nuclear genomes respectively then used a combination of genetic diversity measures and phylogeny construction to evaluate the genetic diversity of p virginiensis we found that latitude accounts for nearly one fifth of the variation in emergence date spatial models predicted that p virginiensis may lose up to 60 of available habitat in the next 50 years genetic data indicated some isolation in an ohio population s coi gene and low genetic diversity across the range of p virginiensis in its these may be indicative of either the last glacial expansion or a more recent disturbance a large effective population size indicates that p virginiensis are not yet nearing extinction,2016,0.455
Crop wild relatives of the brinjal eggplant (Solanum melongena): Poorly represented in genebanks and many species at risk of extinction,premise of the study crop wild relatives cwr provide important traits for plant breeding including pest pathogen and abiotic stress resistance therefore their conservation and future availability are essential for food security despite this need the world s genebanks are currently thought to conserve only a small fraction of the total diversity of cwr methods we define the eggplant genepool using the results of recent taxonomic and phylogenetic studies we identify the gaps in germplasm accessions for eggplant solanum melongena l cwr by comparing georeferenced herbarium records and germplasm accessions using a gap analysis methodology implementing species distribution models sdm preliminary conservation assessments using iucn criteria were done for all species and were combined with the gap analysis to pinpoint where under collected and threatened cwr species coincide with high human disturbance and occur outside of protected areas key results we show that many eggplant cwr are poorly represented in genebanks compared to their native ranges priority areas for future collecting are concentrated in africa especially along the kenya tanzania border fourteen species of eggplant cwr are assessed as threatened or near threatened these are also concentrated in eastern africa conclusions the knowledge base upon which conservation of wild relative germplasm depends must take into account both taxonomic and phylogenetic advances beyond traditional research focus on close relatives of crops we emphasize the benefits of defining a broad cwr genepool and the importance of assessing threats to wild species when targeting localities for future collection of cwr to improve crop breeding in the face of environmental change,2016,0.892
The first comprehensive description of the biodiversity and biogeography of Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic intertidal communities,aim to describe the distribution of biodiversity and biogeographical patterns of intertidal organisms in southern temperate and polar waters we hypothesized that there would be differences in community structure between the antarctic which is most affected by ice and the sub antarctic and other neighbouring regions we also hypothesized that rafting and west wind drift will be the significant drivers of biogeographical patterns additionally the size age isolation volcanic or glacial history of a region and the presence of large beach dwelling mammals and birds would all play a role in determining the level of biodiversity observed location south atlantic indian and pacific oceans and the southern ocean methods we examined all available intertidal records from the antarctic and sub antarctic with additional data from neighbouring regions for comparison and context we compiled 3902 occurrences of 1416 species of high southern latitude intertidal organisms from 229 locations and used primer 6 to perform multivariate statistical analyses results the antarctic and sub antarctic are shown to be distinct biogeographical regions with patterns driven by a small number of widely distributed species these wide ranging molluscs and macroalgae dominate the biogeographical structure of the southern ocean intertidal most likely as a result of rafting in the antarctic circumpolar current east antarctic intertidal habitats are potentially isolated by the ross and weddell sea ice shelves but represent a great unknown in this biogeographical scheme main conclusions the view that the antarctic intertidal is a lifeless desert does not hold true with antarctic peninsula intertidal communities being richer and more diverse than those in southern south america and the sub antarctic islands changing conditions in the antarctic and sub antarctic intertidal mean that a representative baseline is needed acquired through standardized and quantitative sampling to assess future changes and to detect any invasive species,2016,0.87
Using open access observational data for conservation action: A case study for birds,ensuring that conservation decisions are informed by the best available data is a fundamental challenge in the face of rapid global environmental change too often new science is not easily or quickly translated into conservation action traditional approaches to data collection and science delivery may be both inefficient and insufficient as conservation practitioners need access to salient credible and legitimate data to take action open access data could serve as a tool to help bridge the gap between science and action by providing conservation practitioners with access to relevant data in near real time broad scale citizen science data represent a fast growing resource for open access databases providing relevant and appropriately scaled data on organisms much in the way autonomous sensors do so on the environment several such datasets are now broadly available yet documentation of their application to conservation is rare here we use ebird a project where individuals around the world submit data on bird distribution and abundance as an example of how citizen science data can be used to achieve tangible conservation science and action at local regional and global scales our examination illustrates how these data can be strategically applied to improve our understanding of spatial and temporal distributions of birds the impacts of anthropogenic change on ecological systems and creative conservation solutions to complex problems we raise awareness of the types of conservation action now happening with citizen science data and discuss the benefits limitations and caveats of this approach,2016,0.146
Using ICT to Strengthen Agricultural Extension Systems for Plant Health,abstractplant pests cause crop losses of 30â 40 contributing significantly to global food insecurity the plantwise program works alongside national agricultural extension services who advise smallholder farmers on plant health issues and collect data on problems they face in a 1 year pilot plantwise tested the use of information and communication technologies ict â tablets and short message service sms â with 60 kenyan extension workers they were able to assist more farmers with better advice had significantly improved access to plant health information valued being able to ask their peers for advice and dramatically improved the quality and speed of the data they collected,2016,0.366
Hypsodonty of Dipodidae (Rodentia) in Correlation with Diet Preferences and Habitats,the evolution of molar teeth from low crowned brachyodont to high crowned hypsodont has traditionally been recognized as a response to increasing tooth wear due to endogenous e g fiber silica and or exogenous e g dust grit properties of ingested food recent work indicates that the mean hypsodonty level of large herbivorous land mammalian communities is a strong predictor of precipitation in their habitats for small mammals however the research is still in an early stage this study performed comparative studies of hypsodonty on 26 extant dipodid species with and without consideration of phylogeny the results confirm the role of diet in shaping the cheek tooth crown height in dipodidae the significant relationship of investigated environmental variables with hypsodonty may be partly due to phylogenetic effects nonetheless the mean hypsodonty of dipodid communities has significant relationship with regional climatic variables hence the hypsodonty of dipodids also has great potential to be a regional climate proxy,2016,0.202
Measuring size and composition of species pools: a comparison of dark diversity estimates,ecological theory and biodiversity conservation have traditionally relied on the number of species recorded at a site but it is agreed that site richness represents only a portion of the species that can inhabit particular ecological conditions that is the habitat specific species pool knowledge of the species pool at different sites enables meaningful comparisons of biodiversity and provides insights into processes of biodiversity formation empirical studies however are limited due to conceptual and methodological difficulties in determining both the size and composition of the absent part of species pools the so called dark diversity we used 50 000 vegetation plots from 18 types of habitats throughout the czech republic most of which served as a training dataset and 1083 as a subset of test sites these data were used to compare predicted results from three quantitative methods with those of previously published expert estimates based on species habitat preferences 1 species co occurrence based on beals smoothing approach 2 species ecological requirements with envelopes around community mean ellenberg values and 3 species distribution models using species environmental niches modeled by biomod software dark diversity estimates were compared at both plot and habitat levels and each method was applied in different configurations while there were some differences in the results obtained by different methods particularly at the plot level there was a clear convergence especially at the habitat level the better convergence at the habitat level reflects less variation in local environmental conditions whereas variation at the plot level is an effect of each particular method the co occurrence agreed closest the expert estimate followed by the method based on species ecological requirements we conclude that several analytical methods can estimate species pools of given habitats however the strengths and weaknesses of different methods need attention especially when dark diversity is estimated at the plot level,2016,0.861
Rapid genetic and ecological differentiation during the northern range expansion of the venomous yellow sac spider Cheiracanthium punctorium in Europe,although poleward range expansions are commonly attributed to global change a complex interaction of ecological and evolutionary factors might contribute to expansion success here we study the expansion of the yellow sac spider cheiracanthium punctorium a medically important species in central europe using microsatellite markers and dna sequences morphological and climate niche analyses we identify factors associated with the spider s expansion success our results indicate that the speciesâ initial expansion has been triggered by environmental change and preadaptation in the source populations however despite extensive gene flow expanding populations maintain genetic and morphological differentiation from native ones which is correlated with climatic niche differences moreover expanding spiders might have temporarily escaped an eggsac parasite that causes high mortality in the native range hence our results paint a complex picture of diverse factors associated with expansion success we speculate that expanding populations might be capable of adapting to novel ecological conditions in northern europe this could allow a substantial range expansion much farther than by environmental change alone our distribution model predicts that the spider will soon massively spread over most of northern europe bringing along considerable health concerns,2016,0.666
Bone age estimation based on multislice computed tomography study of the scapula,progress in medical imaging has opened new areas of research in forensic anthropology especially in the context of the study of bone age assessment the study of bone age has become a useful tool for age estimation at death or age of young adult migrants in an anthropological context we retrospectively evaluated multislice computed tomography msct explorations focused on scapulae of 232 individuals 123 males 109 females aged between 8 and 30 years old computed tomography ct scans were viewed in axial and multiplanar reconstructed images using osirix 5 9 64 bit â the ossification centers of the scapula studied were as follows acromial sub coracoid glenoid coracoid coracoid apex and inferior angle epiphyses fusion status was scored based on a five stage system stage 1 no ossification stage 2 visualization of an ossification center stage 3 partial ossification stage 4 full ossification associated to an epiphyseal scar and stage 5 full ossification without epiphyseal scar intra observer variability was excellent and inter observer variability was good demonstrating the reliability of this msct staging system the fusion of scapular ossification centers was statistically associated with age p 0 001 but not with sex p 0 05 in conclusion msct of the scapula is an efficient method for age assessment which is complementary to preexisting methods particularly for specifying the 18 year threshold further studies with larger groups are needed to support our results,2016,0.117
Urban warming favours C 4 plants in temperate European cities,elucidating the mechanisms responsible for the structure of urban communities is a key aim of urban ecology but one that is often confounded by the multitude of environmental changes that are caused by urbanization we applied trait based techniques to identify the specific environmental drivers that shape urban plant assemblages and predict how these drivers will further impact biotas with increasing urbanization and global environmental change urbanized areas across temperate europe have significantly higher abundance and richness of plants using the c4 photosynthetic pathway relative to the total number and species richness of all plant records than non urban areas urban warming mediated by the contrasting physiological responses of c3 and c4 plants to warming is the main driver of observed patterns of plant assemblage structure this mirrors broadscale and historical distribution patterns of c3 and c4 plants the increased relative abundance of c4 plants in cities demonstrated here may be indicative of more geographically widespread assemblage changes to be expected in temperate environments under continuing global climate change synthesis applying a combined trait based ecoinformatic and remote sensing approach provides new insight into the landscape level consequences of urbanization specifically we show that localized urban warming in cities across temperate europe favours c4 plant species which respond positively to increased temperatures urban plant assemblages are shaped by environmental warming and exhibit significant increases in c4 plant relative abundance compared to non urban assemblages,2016,0.088
Spatio-temporal point process statistics: A review,spatio temporal point process data have been analysed quite a bit in specialised fields with the aim of better understanding the inherent mechanisms that govern the temporal evolution of events placed in a planar region in particular in the last decade there has been an acceleration of methodological developments accompanied by a broad collection of applications as spatio temporally indexed data have become more widely available in many scientific fields we present a self contained review describing statistical models and methods that can be used to analyse patterns of points in space and time when the questions of scientific interest concern both their spatial and their temporal behaviour we revisit moment characteristics that define summary statistics as well as conditional intensities which uniquely characterise certain spatio temporal point processes we make use of these concepts to describe models and associated methods of inference for spatio temporal point process data three new motivating real data examples are described and analysed throughout the paper to illustrate the most relevant techniques discussing the pros and cons of the different considered approaches,2016,0.092
Is citizen science an open science in the case of biodiversity observations?,1 there is a high demand for biodiversity observation data to inform conservation and environmental policy and citizen scientists generate the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity observations as this work is voluntary many people assume that these data are openly available for use in conservation and scientific research 2 here the openness of biodiversity observation data that are contributed to the global biodiversity information facility is examined by the data provider contrary to what many people assume datasets from volunteers are among the most restrictive in how they can be used 3 policy implications the assumption that voluntary data collection leads to data sharing does not recognize the wishes and motivations of those who collect data nor does it respect the crucial contributions of these data to long term monitoring of biodiversity trends to improve data openness citizen scientists should be recognised in ways that correspond with their motivations furthermore organisations that manage these data should make their data sharing policies open and explicit,2016,0.286
Likely allopatric origins of Adiantum × meishanianum (Pteridaceae) through multiple hybridizations,adiantum ã meishanianum f s hsu ex y c liu w l chiou was regarded as an endemic species in meishan village kaohsiung taiwan china and a hybrid between a malesianum ghatak the maternal parent and a sexually reproducing diploid cryptic species of a philippense l the paternal parent as revealed by chloroplast and nuclear markers however morphological research revealed that a ã meishanianum is also disjunctively distributed in yunnan and that its paternal parent is possibly a menglianense y y qian thus this study aimed to confirm these findings by using two chloroplast regions and a low copy nuclear marker in dna barcoding and phylogenetic analyses spore measurement and flow cytometry our results indicated that a ã meishanianum in yunnan is triploid and abortive the same as a ã meishanianum in taiwan and they both originated from the hybridization between the maternal parent of a malesianum and the paternal parent of a menglianense but not a philippense in conclusion a ã meishanianum probably originated from multiple hybridizations in taiwan and yunnan,2016,0.452
"Past climate changes facilitated homoploid speciation in three mountain spiny fescues (Festuca, Poaceae)",apart from the overwhelming cases of allopolyploidization the impact of speciation through homoploid hybridization is becoming more relevant than previously thought much less is known however about the impact of climate changes as a driven factor of speciation to investigate these issues we selected festuca picoeuropeana an hypothetical natural hybrid between the diploid species f eskia and f gautieri that occurs in two different mountain ranges cantabrian mountains and pyrenees separated by more than 400 km to unravel the outcomes of this mode of speciation and the impact of climate during speciation we used a multidisciplinary approach combining genome size and chromosome counts data from an extensive nuclear genotypic analysis plastid sequences and ecological niche models enm our results show that the same homoploid hybrid was originated independently in the two mountain ranges being currently isolated from both parents and producing viable seeds parental species had the opportunity to contact as early as 21000 years ago although niche divergence occurs nowadays as result of a climate driven shift a high degree of niche divergence was observed between the hybrid and its parents and no recent introgression or backcrossed hybrids were detected supporting the current presence of reproductive isolation barriers between these species,2016,0.835
Divergent morphological and acoustic traits in sympatric communities of Asian barbets,the opposing effects of environmental filtering and competitive interactions may influence community assembly and coexistence of related species competition both in the domain of ecological resources and in the sensory domain for example acoustic interference may also result in sympatric species evolving divergent traits and niches delineating these scenarios within communities requires understanding trait distributions and phylogenetic structure within the community as well as patterns of trait evolution we report that sympatric assemblages of asian barbets frugivorous canopy birds consist of a random phylogenetic sample of species but are divergent in both morphological and acoustic traits additionally we find that morphology is more divergent than expected under brownian evolution whereas vocal frequency evolution is close to the pattern expected under brownian motion i e a random walk together these patterns are consistent with a role for competition or competitive exclusion in driving community assembly phylogenetic patterns of morphological divergence between related species suggest that these traits are key in species coexistence because vocal frequency and size are correlated in barbets we therefore hypothesize that frequency differences between sympatric barbets are a by product of their divergent morphologies,2016,0.816
"Taxonomic revision of the tarantula genus Aphonopelma Pocock, 1901 (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Theraphosidae) within the United States",this systematic study documents the taxonomy diversity and distribution of the tarantula spider genus aphonopelma pocock 1901 within the united states by employing phylogenomic morphological and geospatial data we evaluated all 55 nominal species in the united states to examine the evolutionary history of aphonopelma and the groupâ s taxonomy by implementing an integrative approach to species delimitation based on our analyses we now recognize only 29 distinct species in the united states we propose 33 new synonymies a apacheum a minchi a rothi a schmidti a stahnkei a chalcodes a arnoldi a armada a behlei a vogelae a marxi a breenei a anax a chambersi a clarum a cryptethum a sandersoni a sullivani a eutylenum a clarki a coloradanum a echinum a gurleyi a harlingenum a odelli a waconum a wichitanum a hentzi a heterops a moderatum a jungi a punzoi a vorhiesi a brunnius a chamberlini a iviei a lithodomum a smithi a zionis a iodius a phanum a reversum a steindachneri 14 new species a atomicum sp n a catalina sp n a chiricahua sp n a icenoglei sp n a johnnycashi sp n a madera sp n a mareki sp n a moellendorfi sp n a parvum sp n a peloncillo sp n a prenticei sp n a saguaro sp n a superstitionense sp n and a xwalxwal sp n and seven nomina dubia a baergi a cratium a hollyi a mordax a radinum a rusticum a texense our proposed species tree based on anchored enrichment data delimits five major lineages a monotypic group confined to california a western group an eastern group a group primarily distributed in high elevation areas and a group that comprises several miniaturized species multiple species are distributed throughout two biodiversity hotspots in the united states i e california floristic province and madrean pine oak woodlands keys are provided for identification of both males and females by conducting the most comprehensive sampling of a single theraphosid genus to date this research significantly broadens the scope of prior molecular and morphological investigations finally bringing a modern understanding of species delimitation in this dynamic and charismatic group of spiders,2016,0.992
Plant-O-Matic : A dynamic and mobile guide to all plants of the Americas,1 advances in both informatics and mobile technology are providing exciting new opportunities for generating disseminating and engaging with information in the biological sciences at unprecedented spatial scales particularly in disentangling information on the distributions and natural history of hyperdiverse groups of organisms 2 we describe an application serving as a mobile catalogue of all of the plants of the americas developed using species distribution models estimated from field observations of plant occurrences the underlying data comprise over 3 5 million standardized observations of over 88 000 plant species 3 plant o matic a free ios application combines the species distribution models with the location services built into a mobile device to provide users with a list of all plant species expected to occur in the 100 ã 100 km geographic grid cell corresponding to the user s location the application also provides ancillary information on speciesâ attributes when available including growth form reproductive mode flower color and common name results can be searched and conditionally filtered based on these attributes links to externally sourced specimen images further aid in identification of species by the user 4 the application s ability to assemble locally relevant lists of plant species and their attributes on demand for anywhere in the americas provides a powerful new tool for identifying exploring and understanding plant diversity mobile applications such as plant o matic can facilitate dynamic new approaches to science conservation and science education,2016,0.661
Surveying Rubisco diversity and temperature response to improve crop photosynthetic efficiency,the threat to global food security of stagnating yields and population growth makes increasing crop productivity a critical goal over the coming decades one key target for improving crop productivity and yields is increasing the efficiency of photosynthesis central to photosynthesis is rubisco which is a critical but often rate limiting component here we present full rubisco catalytic properties measured at three temperatures for 75 plants species representing both crops and undomesticated plants from diverse climates some newly characterized rubiscos were naturally â œbetterâ compared to crop enzymes and have the potential to improve crop photosynthetic efficiency the temperature response of the various catalytic parameters was largely consistent across the diverse range of species though absolute values showed significant variation in rubisco catalysis even between closely related species an analysis of residue differences among the species characterized identified a number of candidate amino acid substitutions that will aid in advancing engineering of improved rubisco in crop systems this study provides new insights on the range of rubisco catalysis and temperature response present in nature and provides new information to include in models from leaf to canopy and ecosystem scale,2016,0.304
Mapping the ecological dimensions and potential distributions of endangered relic shrubs in western Ordos biodiversity center,potential distributions of endemic relic shrubs in western ordos were poorly mapped which hindered our implementation of proper conservation here we investigated the applicability of ecological niche modeling for endangered relic shrubs to detect areas of priority for biodiversity conservation and analyze differences in ecological niche spaces used by relic shrubs we applied ordination and niche modeling techniques to assess main environmental drivers of five endemic relic shrubs in western ordos namely ammopiptanthus mongolicus amygdalus mongolica helianthemum songaricum potaninia mongolica and tetraena mongolica we calculated niche overlap metrics in gridded environmental spaces and compared geographical projections of ecological niches to determine similarities and differences of niches occupied by relic shrubs all studied taxa presented different responses to environmental factors which resulted in a unique combination of niche conditions precipitation availability and soil quality characteristics play important roles in the distributions of most shrubs each relic shrub is constrained by a unique set of environmental conditions the distribution of one species cannot be implied by the distribution of another highlighting the inadequacy of one fits all type of conservation measure our stacked habitat suitability maps revealed regions around yellow river which are highly suitable for most species thereby providing high conservation value,2016,0.426
Present-Day Genetic Structure of the Holoparasite Conopholis americana (Orobanchaceae) in Eastern North America and the Location of Its Refugia during the Last Glacial Cycle,premise of research understanding how various organisms respond to previous changes in climate could provide insight into how they may respond or adapt to the current changes conopholis americana has a broad distribution across eastern north america covering both previously glaciated and unglaciated regions in this study we investigated the postglacial history and phylogeographic structure of this parasitic plant species to characterize its genetic variation and structure and to identify the number and locations of refugia methodology molecular data from 10 microsatellite markers and dna sequences from the plastid gene introns clpp were obtained for 281 individuals sampled from 75 populations spanning the current range of the species in eastern north america and analyzed using a variety of phylogeographic methods distribution modeling was carried out to determine regions with relatively suitable climate niches for populations at the last glacial maximum lgm and present pivotal results we infer,2016,0.641
Toward a comprehensive COI DNA barcode library for Swiss Stoneflies (Insecta: Plecoptera) with special emphasis on the genus Leuctra,the swiss barcode of life initiative swissbol aims to inventory the genetic biodiversity in switzerland using a short dna sequence dna barcoding provides an additional tool for species identification that complements traditional morphological approaches we report on the establishment of a dna barcode library for plecoptera taxa that are of great importance as bioindicators of water quality and that often present difficulties in species level identification for larvae and female specimens non destructive dna extraction pcr amplification and sequencing of part of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase i coi was conducted for 440 individuals one to eight per species belonging to 90 species of the 112 reported from switzerland intra and interspecific distances were calculated and gene trees reconstructed in most cases coi was efficient in delimiting stonefly species some doubtful specimens were subsequently re examined and a few misidentifications were found especially in some problematic groups in the genus leuctra stephens 1836 larger genetic distances in some species e g leuctra nigra olivier 1811 indicate the possible presence of sibling species while in a few cases closely related species are genetically difficult to separate within the leuctra fusca species group,2016,0.987
Citizen science data as an efficient tool for mapping protected saproxylic beetles,global change imposes rapid assessments to obtain reliable and updated distribution data to implement conservation measures this task is undoubtedly unaffordable for numerous invertebrate species both in terms of time and economic resources because they are often elusive detectable life stages are present for a restricted time and ecological data are scarce citizen science might be able to provide a large number of records and these data might facilitate the evaluation of extinction risks large saproxylic beetles represent an ideal group to assess the potential of citizen science to map distributions on a large scale geographic distribution the data presented were collected during a citizen science program developed within the life project â œmonitoring of insects with public participationâ which used a website and a mobile app to involve citizens we selected three pan european species protected under the habitats directive lucanus cervus morimus asper funereus and rosalia alpina and we compared the data gathered by the citizen science project with distributional data from the official national species inventory for all species we found a low overlap of occupied cells and the integration of the two datasets resulted in an increase in the distributional ranges of up to one third furthermore taking into account the time frame of data collection we found that the extent of occurrence obtained in 10years of records present in the national dataset was comparable to data collected in only two years of the citizen science data project similar results were obtained for the estimates of spatial parameters for the iucn red list assessment our study shows the potential and the efficacy of citizen science projects as rapid tools to provide reliable distributional data for neglected species of high conservation priority,2016,0.844
Potential breeding distributions of U.S. birds predicted with both short-term variability and long-term average climate data,climate conditions such as temperature or precipitation averaged over several decades strongly affect species distributions as evidenced by experimental results and a plethora of models demonstrating statistical relations between species occurrences and long term climate averages however long term averages can conceal climate changes that have occurred in recent decades and may not capture actual species occurrence well because the distributions of species especially at the edges of their range are typically dynamic and may respond strongly to short term climate variability our goal here was to test whether bird occurrence models can be predicted by either covariates based on short term climate variability or on long term climate averages we parameterized species distribution models sdms based on either short term variability or long term average climate covariates for 320 bird species in the conterminous u s and tested whether any life history trait based guilds were particularly sensitive to short term conditions models including short term climate variability performed well based on their cross validated auc score 0 85 as did models based on long term climate averages 0 84 similarly both models performed well compared to independent presence absence data from the north american breeding bird survey independent auc of 0 89 and 0 90 respectively however models based on short term variability covariates more accurately classified true absences for most species 73 of true absences classified within the lowest quarter of environmental suitability versus 68 in addition they have the advantage that they can reveal the dynamic relationship between species and their environment because they capture the spatial fluctuations of species potential breeding distributions with this information we can identify which species and guilds are sensitive to climate variability identify sites of high conservation value where climate variability is low and assess how speciesâ potential distributions may have already shifted due recent climate change however long term climate averages require less data and processing time and may be more readily available for some areas of interest where data on short term climate variability are not available long term climate information is a sufficient predictor of species distributions in many cases however short term climate variability data may provide information not captured with long term climate data for use in sdms,2016,0.94
Mammal assemblages recorded by camera traps inside and outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident,in 2011 the fukushima daiichi power plant accident resulted in the evacuation of about 81 000 people from the evacuation zone which suffered from high levels of radioactive contamination large scale and long term land abandonment can cause changes in species assemblages despite the extensive global attention this incident received open and spatially explicit datasets of mammal fauna from fukushima remain quite limited we established a continuous monitoring protocol using camera traps for mammals both inside and outside the evacuation zone this paper presents our first dataset these data represent the monitoring results from 45 camera traps from may 2014 to october 2014 including the location and actuation time of each camera and the list of video records after the publication of this initial data paper we intend to continue monitoring until 2023 and the dataset will be hereafter updated with new observations,2016,0.231
Use of molecular and environmental analyses for integrated in situ and ex situ conservation: The case of the Mexican prairie dog,an important step in species conservation is to identify populations that significantly contribute to it considering both in situ and ex situ populations provides an integrated approach to the preservation of a species evolutionary potential the joint use of molecular and environmental analyses allows conservation schemes to be implemented when reintroducing captive populations and wild populations to be prioritized for conservation purposes we used genetic data and environmental analyses to select candidate areas for the reintroduction of a captive population of the mexican prairie dog cynomys mexicanus and prioritize wild populations for the conservation of this endangered endemic species we estimated the levels of genetic diversity and differentiation of the captive population and compared them with those of six wild populations we used species distribution modeling sdm to perform forecasts under future climate change scenarios and identify areas with suitable environmental conditions for the populations to persist in the medium to long term the captive population showed high levels of genetic diversity hd 0 692 he 0 52 but was genetically differentiated from the wild populations the genetic structure of wild populations should therefore be considered when reintroducing captive mexican prairie dogs in the wild populations we found a correlation between colony area and nuclear genetic diversity suggesting that genetic drift and or inbreeding have been stronger in smaller colonies the occupied climate space was well differentiated among wild colonies the impact of agriculture and roads was stronger in the northeastern area of the species range where sdm forecasts suggest that environmental conditions may remain suitable in the future finally we identified three colonies as conservation priorities based on both genetic and ecological criteria,2016,0.999
Priority areas for conservation of beach and dune vegetation of the Mexican Atlantic coast,we modeled the potential distribution of plant species that grow on the beaches and dunes of the mexican atlantic coast in order to identify areas of high biodiversity we used environmental layers in combination with georeferenced data utilizing the maxent algorithm and produced four regional consensus maps according to the geographic distribution of the species along the entire mexican atlantic coast the gulf of mexico the yucatan peninsula and all species combined together on a single map the largest number of widely distributed species in the gulf of mexico was concentrated in the northern and central regions while biodiversity on the yucatan peninsula was likely to be concentrated in the north and on cozumel island which is the biggest island in the mexican caribbean the map combining all species together revealed a potential concurrence of species in the gulf of mexico and yucatan peninsula transition where climatic characteristics converge within a small geographic area in order to conserve beach and coastal dune plant biodiversity special attention must be paid to the management plans of established protected areas and to the promotion of new protected areas consistent with the areas reported in this study particularly in the central gulf of mexico and northern yucatan peninsula where areas under protection are currently scarce,2016,0.893
History of Influenza: Pandemics in Iran and the World,influenza type a virus is well known for its capability of genetic changes either through antigen drift or antigen shift antigen shift is derived from reassortment of gene segments between viruses and may result in an antigenically novel virus capable of causing a worldwide pandemic 1 pandemic influenza was recorded in 1830 33 1898 1900 four times in the 20th century 2 and once in the 21st century 3 the current paper aimed to discuss the time of influenza pandemics occurrence in iran 2,2016,0.2
Epiphytic Bryophyte Communities of Prunus lusitanica Iberian Forests: Biogeographic Islands Shaped by Regional Climates,epiphytic communities of iberian forests remain partly unknown and most studies have focused on the dominant oak forests we provide a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the epiphytic bryophyte communities of forests dominated by the tertiary relict evergreen cherry prunus lusitanica this type of forest scattered in the western and northern half of the iberian peninsula harbours a noticeable richness of epiphytic bryophytes including an outstanding number of liverwort species their floristic composition varies markedly across the peninsula yet is driven by the main climate patterns prevailing in the area multivariate analyses twinspan cca render two main groups of epiphytic communities with their respective indicator species both groups share a high proportion of non mediterranean species a circumstance that is most remarkable in the forests that fall within the mediterranean region which could be considered as ecological refuges or biogeographic islands,2016,0.631
Modelling the effects of climate change on the risk of invasion by alien squirrels,assessing invasion risk by alien organisms implies evaluating the likelihood of successful establishment and spread once they are accidentally or deliberately introduced the importance of implementing accurate riskâ assessment procedures is further stressed by the evidence that ongoing climate change can promote invasion processes from initial introduction through establishment and spread although squirrels are considered powerful invaders with wellâ documented negative impacts on biodiversity and human activities there is a noticeable gap of comprehensive investigations specifically focused on this group especially as far as the effect of climate change on worldwide invasion risk is concerned in this study we predicted current and 2070 potential distributions of eight squirrel species with a sdmâ based framework also detecting current potential hotspots of invasion and evaluating how these could be modified by climate change in 2070 sdm predicted the eight species to potentially occur in large areas worldwide 12 12 to 39 23 of the mainland with 70 to 129 countries vulnerable to a potential invasion model projections over the 2070 climate change scenarios predicted five to seven squirrel species undergoing an increase in their future potential distribution in nonâ native ranges current hotspots of potential invasion were predicted to occur in southeastern asia northeastern australia tropical africa and south america as well as central and north america projections to 2070 showed most of the hotspots of invasion to remain substantially stable in terms of number of potential invasive species regardless of the scenario the most relevant increase reduction in extent of species distribution and in the number of potential invasive species in invasiveness hotspots were predicted for 2070 under the most severe scenarios we emphasize a strong speciesâ specific response to climate change which could also affect invasive species by making them less competitive therefore potentially leading to a retreat from the invaded ranges,2016,0.821
A structurally enriched agricultural landscape maintains high reptile diversity in sub-arid south-western Madagascar,the concept of biodiversity conservation relies primarily on protected areas yet protected areas are influenced by the surrounding anthropogenic matrix as degradation of landscapes used by humans also has negative consequences on species within the adjacent protected non degraded ecosystems increasing the heterogeneity of the anthropogenic landscape has the potential to promote biodiversity conservation in protected and non protected sites to find options for reconciling land use and biodiversity conservation we evaluated reptile diversity of two areas both areas contained three types of habitat cultivated areas degraded forest and undegraded forest in one area tsim a network of hedges surrounding fields provided a variety of possible resources for reptile species another area andremba lacked such landscape elements in 480 survey walks on 48 transects evenly distributed over two areas we recorded a total of 24 reptile species of which 18 occurred in both areas perennial plant cover explained the variation in local per transect species richness best species richness was low along field margins in the cultivated area that lacked hedges and had a perennial plant cover below 20 it was high in undegraded and degraded forest and along hedges in the cultivated area where perennial plant cover was above 40 similarities of reptile assemblages were higher between habitat types in the area structurally enriched with hedges than in the area lacking such enrichment in the latter area beta diversity was largely the result of species losses which could result from impeded movement between habitats synthesis and applications a continuous network of hedges and associated trees and shrubs contribute to the maintenance of reptile biodiversity in dry south western madagascar when present these interconnected landscape elements enhance habitat suitability of the agriculturally used matrix they also provide habitat for species of conservation concern high similarity between assemblages in the area with hedges indicated that movement between habitats was facilitated we conclude that incorporating hedges in pastures contributes not just to the suitability of the matrix but also enhances landscape connectivity and thus improves biodiversity conservation in the human used landscape,2016,0.873
Salvia Lanigera var . grandiflora Benth : A New Record in the Flora of Egypt,salvia lanigera var grandiflora benth is a new record to the flora of egypt taxon recognition chracterization photographs morphological characters and a distribution map are given,2016,0.354
"Integrating local pastoral knowledge, participatory mapping, and species distribution modeling for risk assessment of invasive rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora) in Ethiopia’s Afar region",the threats posed by invasive plants span ecosystems and economies worldwide local knowledge of biological invasions has proven beneficial for invasive species research but to date no work has integrated this knowledge with species distribution modeling for invasion risk assessments in this study we integrated pastoral knowledge with maxent modeling to assess the suitable habitat and potential impacts of invasive cryptostegia grandiflora robx ex r br rubber vine in ethiopiaâ s afar region we conducted focus groups with seven villages across the amibara and awash fentale districts pastoral knowledge revealed the growing threat of rubber vine which to date has received limited attention in ethiopia and whose presence in afar was previously unknown to our team rubber vine occurrence points were collected in the field with pastoralists and processed in maxent with modis derived vegetation indices topographic data and anthropogenic variables we tested model fit using a jackknife procedure and validated the final model with an independent occurrence data set collected through participatory mapping activities with pastoralists a multivariate environmental similarity surface analysis revealed areas with novel environmental conditions for future targeted surveys model performance was evaluated using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve auc and showed good fit across the jackknife models average auc 0 80 and the final model test auc 0 96 our results reveal the growing threat rubber vine poses to afar with suitable habitat extending downstream of its current known location in the middle awash river basin local pastoral knowledge provided important context for its rapid expansion due to acute changes in seasonality and habitat alteration in addition to threats posed to numerous endemic tree species that provide critical provisioning ecosystem services this work demonstrates the utility of integrating local ecological knowledge with species distribution modeling for early detection and targeted surveying of recently established invasive species,2016,0.546
Increasing the Number of Allergenic Pollen Species in SILAM Forecasts,silam has been among the first regional dispersion models to develop the ability to compute pollen emission and dispersion for previous seasons forecasts have been provided for birch grasses olive and ragweed for the current season this list has been extended by alder and mugwort the growing number of modelled species makes it possible to draw conclusions from the existing experiences related to the features of the input data and algorithms applied to describe the pollen emission we demonstrate that the currently available options in silam allow adding new pollen species with minimal development effort and limited input data to allow forecasts with comparable quality to the previously developed taxa,2016,0.439
Effects of ivermectin application on the diversity and function of dung and soil fauna: Regulatory and scientific background information,the application of veterinary medical products vmps to livestock can impact soil organisms in manure amended fields or adversely affect organisms that colonize dung pats of treated animals and potentially retard the degradation of dung on pastures for this reason the authorization process for vmps in the european union includes a requirement for higher tier tests when adverse effects on dung organisms are observed in single species toxicity tests however no guidance documents for the performance of higher tier tests are available hence an international research project was undertaken to develop and validate a proposed test method under varying field conditions of climate soil and endemic coprophilous fauna at lethbridge canada montpellier france zurich switzerland and wageningen the netherlands the specific objectives were to determine if faecal residues of an anthelmintic with known insecticidal activity ivermectin showed similar effects across sites on 1 insects breeding in dung of treated animals 2 coprophilous organisms in the soil beneath the dung and 3 rates of dung degradation by evaluating the effects of parasiticides on communities of dung breeding insects and soil fauna under field conditions the test method meets requirements of a higher tier test as mandated by the european union the current paper provides contextual information on authorisation requirements for vmps and on the structure and function of dung and soil organism communities it also provides a summary of the main findings subsequent papers in this issue provide detailed information on different aspects of this overall project this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved,2016,0.048
A revision of the genus Orbilia in the Canary Islands,based on field work and herbarium studies a taxonomic revision of the genus orbilia in the canary islands was carried out eighteen species of the genus are recognized in the present study eight of these are new records for the archipelago orbilia cejpii o euonymi o flavida o flavidorosella o hesperidea o scolecospora o vinosa and o vitalbae three of them are here described in detail o cejpii o flavida and o vitalbae because they were not reported again since their first publication corrections and clarifications about the identity of four previously reported species o alnea o auricolor o delicatula and o epipora are provided being renamed to o eucalypti o tenuissima o xanthostigma and o dryadum respectively the last one being a new combination for o alnea var dryadum two species with a rather short original diagnoses reported for the canary islands are redescribed in detail o corculispora and o gambelii and those being endemic for the archipelago are illustrated and briefly discussed orbilia adenocarpi o asomatica o pisciformis and o succulenticola a key for the identification of these species a discussion about closely related taxa notes on their global distribution and ecological data are provided,2016,0.81
Evolution of morphological and climatic adaptations in Veronica L. (Plantaginaceae),perennials and annuals apply different strategies to adapt to the adverse environment based on â toleranceâ and â avoidanceâ respectively to understand lifespan evolution and its impact on plant adaptability we carried out a comparative study of perennials and annuals in the genus veronica from a phylogenetic perspective the results showed that ancestors of the genus veronicawere likely to be perennial plants annual life history of veronica has evolved multiple times and subtrees with more annual species have a higher substitution rate annuals can adapt to more xeric habitats than perennials this indicates that annuals are more drought resistant than their perennial relatives due to adaptation to similar selective pressures parallel evolution occurs in morphological characters among annual species of veronica,2016,0.392
Extinction risk of North American seed plants elevated by climate and land-use change,climate and land use change are expected to substantially alter future plant species distributions leading to higher extinction rates however little is known about how plant species ranges richness and phylogenetic diversity of continents will be affected by these dynamics we address this gap here by examining the patterns of species distributions and phylogenetic relationships for 7465 seed plant taxa in north america an ensemble of species distribution models was used to estimate the potential suitable habitat of species under different sets of climate land use and dispersal constraint scenarios we then evaluated the vulnerability and extinction risk of individual species to changes in climate and land use and examined whether rare endangered and evolutionarily distinct species were disproportionally threatened by climate and land use change we show that 2000 species may lose 80 of their suitable habitats under the a1b emission scenario for the 2080s while 100 species may experience 80 range expansions a 20 1 ratio of loss to gain when considering 50 range retraction and expansion the ratio of loss to gain was 13 1 a greater loss of species diversity is expected at low latitudes while larger gains are expected at high latitudes evolutionarily distinct species are predicted to have significantly higher extinction risks than extant species this suggests a disproportionate future loss of phylogenetic diversity for the north american flora synthesis and applications our study provides continental scale evidence of plant species extinction risk caused by future climate and land use change and highlights the importance of integrating phylogenetic measures into conservation risk assessments this work provides insight into the status trends and threats for a large share of north america s plant species by identifying risks and prioritizing conservation in a rapidly changing world,2016,0.993
Towards a Protocol for the Collection of VGI Vector Data,a protocol for the collection of vector data in volunteered geographic information vgi projects is proposed vgi is a source of crowdsourced geographic data and information which is comparable and in some cases better than equivalent data from national mapping agencies nmas and commercial surveying companies csc however there are many differences in how nmas and csc collect analyse manage and distribute geographic information to that of vgi projects nmas and csc make use of robust and standardised data collection protocols whilst vgi projects often provide guidelines rather than rigorous data collection specifications the proposed protocol addresses formalising the collection and creation of vector data in vgi projects in three principal ways by manual vectorisation field survey and reuse of existing data sources this protocol is intended to be generic rather than being linked to any specific vgi project we believe that this is the first protocol for vgi vector data collection that has been formally described in the literature consequently this paper shall serve as a starting point for on going development and refinement of the protocol,2016,0.192
Assessing the performance of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in Brazil: a test using two regional-scale indices related to coastal and marine ecosystem conservation,one of the main challenges of international environmental agreements is improving relevant policy actions to promote adequate environmental responses to support the work of decision makers recent studies have used environmental and social indicators to construct global and regional scale indices this study aimed to use the ocean health index and the management ranking for brazilian states to assess brazilâ s performance regarding the aichi biodiversity targets abts for coastal and marine ecosystems thus six abts were matched and their performance was evaluated these abts focused on the following topics pollution fish and invertebrate stocks pressures on coral threatened species and their conservation the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks and the national biodiversity strategy and action plan however although the indices used showed many pathways to explore how brazil is performing it is still complex to evaluate abtsâ performance regarding coastal and marine ecosystems at a global and regional scale,2016,0.271
Putting insects on the map: Near-global variation in sphingid moth richness along spatial and environmental gradients,despite their vast diversity and vital ecological role insects are notoriously underrepresented in biogeography and conservation and key broad scale ecological hypotheses about them remain untested â largely due to generally incomplete and very coarse spatial distribution knowledge integrating records from publications field work and natural history collections we used a mixture of species distribution models and expert estimates to provide geographic distributions and emergent richness patterns for all ca 1 000 sphingid moth species found outside the americas in high spatial detail total sphingid moth richness the first for a higher insect group to be documented at this scale shows distinct maxima in the wet tropics of africa and the oriental with notable decay toward australasia using multivariate models controlling for spatial autocorrelation we found that primary productivity is the dominant environmental variable associated with moth richness while temperature contrary to our predictions is an unexpectedly weak predictor this is in stark contrast to the importance we identify for temperature as a niche variable of individual species despite divergent life histories both main sub groups of moths exhibit these relationships tribal level deconstruction of richness and climatic niche patterns indicate idiosyncratic effects of biogeographic history for some of the less species rich tribes which in some cases exhibit distinct richness peaks away from the tropics the study confirms for a diverse insect group overall richness associations of remarkable similarity to those documented for vertebrates and highlights the significant within taxon structure that underpins emergent macroecological patterns results do not however meet predictions from vertebrate derived hypotheses on how thermoregulation affects the strength of temperature richness effects our study thus broadens the taxonomic focus in this data deficient discourse our procedures of processing incomplete scattered distribution data are a template for application to other taxa and regions,2016,0.55
Establishment of invasive plant species in canopy gaps on Robinson Crusoe Island,to design preventive and management measures it is crucial to identify the mechanisms that facilitate an invasion process we evaluated how microsites affect establishment success of the alien small tree aristotelia chilensis the alien climber rubus ulmifolius and endemic tree species on robinson crusoe island forest seedling and sapling densities were estimated in 65 canopy gaps in two forest stands pey and villagra along a canopy forest gap gradient and in three microsites mound pit and trunk of canopy gap maker trees two statistical models were applied to evaluate the effects of the position in the gap center edge and close forest and substrate microsites in relation to topographic and structural variables on invasive and endemic species establishment the density of invasive species was higher in the center of canopy gaps and forest edges than under forest canopy invasive plants were present in 86 5 n 32 gaps in pey and 89 8 n 25 forest gaps in villagra a higher seedling and sapling density of endemic rather than invasive species was found in canopy gap center and gap edges however trunks mounds and pits were dominated by invasive species we found different responses in seedlings saplings and juvenile stages in relation to the explanatory variables studied and between the two stands the decomposition state of gap maker trees which was used as a proxy of gap age was the only variable that showed the same tendency in the two forest stands and for both invasive and endemic seedlings in this case we found that the densities of invasive and endemic seedlings were lower in older gaps but sapling densities were higher in older gaps based on the results we cannot conclude a general pattern of seedling sapling and juvenile establishment in forest gaps for either invasive species but in some gaps the invasion seems to start in trunks mounds and pits we recommend focusing invasive species control on mounds and pits in some forest stands and in general we recommend controlling invasive saplings more than seedlings or juveniles,2016,0.871
Potential distribution of Ursus americanus in Mexico and its persistence: Implications for conservation,the black bear ursus americanus is an endangered species in mexico its historical distribution has decreased by approximately 80 although its current distribution is not known with precision it is only reported to be present in the mountains of northern mexico this study proposes two ensemble models mexicã s black bear a potential distribution compared with natural protected areas npas and b persistence areas for 2024 the current distribution variables are coniferous forest elevation and dry forest suitable habitat for black bear 354 047km2 18 07 of the country was found mainly in the north of the sonoran biogeographical zone along the sierra madre occidental the center and south of the sierra madre oriental and some northern regions of the altiplano norte comparing these areas with npas documented that only 12 41 of potential distribution coincided with current suitable habitat there are unprotected areas in sierra madre occidental center and central and southern of sierra madre oriental the model for 2024 indicates a reduction of suitable habitat of 64 5 mainly in the northern sonoran zone and the center sierra madre occidental on the other hand areas that will persist 125 673km2 are located along the two main mountain ranges of mexico identification of these sites will allow strengthening of long term conservation strategies,2016,0.587
Ocean tracking technologies: observing species at risk,the ocean tracking network is a major global project to establish tracking of endangered fish and marine mammal species through acoustic telemetry the project has only begun to generate the policy related outcomes that may be utilized as benchmarks for evaluating the success of the project we propose that projects like this one make technical advances before scientific ones and that scientific advances may be quite long term further the development of policy outcomes is shaped by the larger political economies in which the technologies are located scientists are quite used to â œflying under the radarâ waiting for more propitious circumstances there are serious questions regarding which actors are capable of making matters of fact issues of public debate,2016,0.386
"Status of Basic Taxonomic Skills in Botanical Articles Related to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan: A Review",the problems of synonymy incorrect species author citation abbreviation and spelling errors are hampering botanical research around the globe this article was aimed to quantify the intensity and errors encountered in this regard in published botanical articles pertaining to the azad jammu and kashmir pakistan to address this issue 100 articles published in 1999 2015 were reviewed a total of 5460 entries were processed carefully and 1350 species binomials excluding repititions were extracted that were linked with 1333 accepted binomials according to theplantlist org out of these accepted species binomials 1109 were communicated correctly whereas the remaining 224 binomials were conveyed in the form of 241 synonyms average synonyms to accepted binomials ratio for the said timespan was calculated quite high as 13 99 by taking these conveyed synonyms as our sub sample we further detected 712 errors related to orthography author citations and abbreviations a strong positive and significant pearson correlation was observed amongst the number of articles published total numbers of species binomials communicated and the number of synonyms conveyed these taxonomic errors and nomenclatural issues in botanical articles are causing ambiguity and confusions thus reducing the reliability and reproducibility of botanical researches our results prove modest basic taxonomic skills of authors dwindling taxonomic understanding and non updating of regional floras on a periodic basis as primary reasons we briefly discuss this global issue and its consequences and also document numerous suggestions to mitigate the impacts,2016,0.412
Queens become workers: pesticides alter caste differentiation in bees,bees are important for the world biodiversity and economy because they provide key pollination services in forests and crops however pesticide use in crops has adversely affected decreased queen production because of increased mortality among larvae here we demonstrated that in vitro reared queens of a neotropical social bee species plebeia droryana also showed high larval mortality after exposure to an organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos via larval food moreover most of the surviving larvae that were destined to develop into queens became workers more likely because they ate less food than expected without pesticide skewing thus caste differentiation in this bee species this adverse effect has not been previously reported for any other social insects such as honeybees or bumblebees queens are essential for breeding and colony growth therefore if our data are applicable to other pantropical social bee species across the globe it is likely that these bees are at a serious risk of failure to form new colonies,2016,0.676
Bimodal latitudinal species richness and high endemicity of razor clams (Mollusca),aim to examine the global distribution endemicity and latitudinal gradients of species richness of razor clams family solenidae location global methods a total of 3105 distribution records for 77 solen and solena species were used species richness was plotted in 5â latitudeâ longitude cells and related to environmental variables results the north west pacific and the indo west pacific have the highest species richness about 85 of all species â mostly in the sea of japan china sea the gulf of thailand and the andaman sea cluster analysis of similarity patterns of species composition i e presence of solenidae species for 5â latitudinalâ longitudinal grid cells showed 16 significant biogeographical regions that concur with existing marine biogeographical hypotheses more than half of the species were endemic to specific biogeographical regions the geographical distribution of species in 5â latitudinal bands showed a significant bimodal pattern global patterns of species richness increased from the poles to intermediate latitudes and dipped near the equator a non linear relationship between species richness and mean sea surface temperature sst values was compatible with this bimodal pattern two inflection points of species richness with correlation of sst at 12 â c low species richness and 28 â c high species richness were coincident with the bimodal latitudinal species richness pattern species richness was highly positively correlated with mean sst over all latitudes and within the northern and southern hemispheres species richness decreased with sst range over all latitudes and in the northern hemisphere species richness also decreased with chlorophyll a concentration and primary productivity but increased with ocean area in the northern hemisphere only main conclusions the latitudinal distribution in species richness of solenidae peaked at 10â n and 25â s rather than at the equator exhibiting a strongly bimodal pattern that is likely to be temperature driven,2016,1
Climate change will increase the naturalization risk from garden plants in Europe,aim plant invasions often follow initial introduction with a considerable delay the current non native flora of a region may hence contain species that are not yet naturalized but may become so in the future especially if climate change lifts limitations on species spread in europe non native garden plants represent a huge pool of potential future invaders here we evaluate the naturalization risk from this species pool and how it may change under a warmer climate location europe methods we selected all species naturalized anywhere in the world but not yet in europe from the set of non native european garden plants for this subset of 783 species we used species distribution models to assess their potential european ranges under different scenarios of climate change moreover we defined geographical hotspots of naturalization risk from those species by combining projections of climatic suitability with maps of the area available for ornamental plant cultivation results under current climate 165 species would already find suitable conditions in 5 of europe although climate change substantially increases the potential range of many species there are also some that are predicted to lose climatically suitable area under a changing climate particularly species native to boreal and mediterranean biomes overall hotspots of naturalization risk defined by climatic suitability alone or by a combination of climatic suitability and appropriate land cover are projected to increase by up to 102 or 64 respectively main conclusions our results suggest that the risk of naturalization of european garden plants will increase with warming climate and thus it is very likely that the risk of negative impacts from invasion by these plants will also grow it is therefore crucial to increase awareness of the possibility of biological invasions among horticulturalists particularly in the face of a warming climate,2016,0.847
First official record of naturalised populations of Solidago altissima L. var. pluricephala M.C. Johnst. (Asteraceae: Astereae) in Africa,solidago altissima var pluricephala is recorded for the first time as naturalised in africa with two populations detected in south africa one 0 5ha population has been found near harding and another of 403 shoots near hilton both in kwazulu natal a projected species distribution model for south africa indicates that the grassland biome is the most at risk from invasion by this species these plants are most likely garden escapees although we are uncertain how widely they are cultivated in south africa,2016,0.635
Dry-washes determine gene flow and genetic diversity in a common desert shrub,context in deserts many plant species exhibit a patchy spatial distribution within a harsh habitat matrix where the likelihood of propagule dispersal among patches is uncertain but may be promoted by landscape corridors or dispersal vectors objectives we examine the connectivity of a representative desert plant species acacia senegalia greggii and the ability of three major factors animal dispersal agents water flow along dry washes and climate to facilitate dispersal within four watersheds in the mojave national preserve methods we genotyped 323 individuals sampled across 22 one hectare sites using ten nuclear microsatellite markers results a hierarchical amova revealed no significant differentiation among watersheds f rt 0 00 p 0 10 and very little genetic structure among all sites f st 0 03 p 0 001 indicating regional connectivity mantel tests indicated distance along dry washes best explained genetic distance between sites r 0 47 p 0 05 when compared to euclidean distance p 0 05 a distance measure based on rodent dispersal p 0 05 and a distance measure avoiding inhospitable climate p 0 05 an aic comparison of generalized linear models found that within site genetic diversity h e and allelic richness and average relatedness were best explained by slope which increases seed dispersal potential via water flow and area of the upstream watershed which determines the number of potential seed donors rather than plant density or habitat suitability conclusions together these findings indicate that dry washes are key landscape features that enhance dispersal and regional connectivity in this patchy desert plant,2016,0.324
"Effects of marine protein-, marine oil- and marine-free diets on the growth performance and innate immune responses of Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar , L.) post-smolts",atlantic salmon post smolts of an average of 940 g were fed six diets including two marine based commercial diets one with partial inclusion of vegetable proteins vps and oils vos 2011 12 eu standards mb and a second with partial inclusion of vps land animal by product abp proteins and vos non eu standards mbabp a fully vegetable protein vp diet a fully algal and vos vo diet a fishery free vegetable based vp vo diet and a fishery free diet with a mix of vps and abp proteins and a mix of algal and vegetable oils mfabp growth was assessed at days 104 and 175 whereas fillet proximate composition haematology and innate immune responses were assessed upon termination overall mb salmon was the best performing group for the full period in terms of feed intake and overall weight gain mb and vp salmon exhibited the highest fcrs compared to the other groups while vp salmon exhibited the highest condition factor k and vo salmon the lowest k compared to the other groups fillet proximate composition did not present differences among the six groups mb salmon demonstrated the highest plasma lysozyme activity compared to the other groups while mfabp vp and vp vo salmon demonstrated higher plasma anti protease activity in contrast to mb salmon the dietary groups did not present differences in plasma protein total igm or natural haemolytic activity while unaltered head kidney macrophage respiratory burst activity was also observed overall diets free from marine proteins or oils and or both were satisfactorily utilized by salmon without compromising their immune capacity although longer adaptation periods are required,2016,0.115
Contracting montane cloud forests: a case study of the Andean alder ( Alnus acuminata ) and associated fungi in the Yungas,alnus acuminata is a keystone tree species in the yungas forests and host to a wide range of fungal symbionts while species distribution models sdms are routinely used for plants and animals to study the effects of climate change on montane forest communities employing sdms in fungi has been hindered by the lack of data on their geographic distribution the well known host specificity and common biogeographic history of a acuminata and associated ectomycorrhizal ecm fungi provide an exceptional opportunity to model the potential habitat for this symbiotic assemblage and to predict possible climate driven changes in the future we 1 modeled the present and future distributions of suitable habitats for a acuminata 2 characterized fungal communities in different altitudinal zones of the yungas using dna metabarcoding of soil and root samples and 3 selected fungi that were significant indicators of alnus fungal communities were strongly structured according to altitudinal forest types and the presence of alnus fungal indicators of alnus particularly ecm and root endophytic fungi were also detected in alnus roots current and future year 2050 habitat models developed for a acuminata predict a 25â 50 percent decrease in suitable area and an upslope shift of the suitable habitat by ca 184â 380 m depending on the climate change scenario although a acuminata is considered to be an effective disperser recent studies suggest that andean grasslands are remarkably resistant to forest invasion and future range contraction for a acuminata may be even more pronounced than predicted by our models,2016,0.49
ScaleNet: a literature-based model of scale insect biology and systematics.,scale insects hemiptera coccoidea are small herbivorous insects found on all continents except antarctica they are extremely invasive and many species are serious agricultural pests they are also emerging models for studies of the evolution of genetic systems endosymbiosis and plant insect interactions scalenet was launched in 1995 to provide insect identifiers pest managers insect systematists evolutionary biologists and ecologists efficient access to information about scale insect biological diversity it provides comprehensive information on scale insects taken directly from the primary literature currently it draws from 23 477 articles and describes the systematics and biology of 8194 valid species for 20 years scalenet ran on the same software platform that platform is no longer viable here we present a new open source implementation of scalenet we have normalized the data model begun the process of correcting invalid data upgraded the user interface and added online administrative tools these improvements make scalenet easier to use and maintain and make the scalenet data more accurate and extendable database url http scalenet info,2016,0.299
Alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders (Belgium),biological invasions of aquatic macroinvertebrates are gaining in terest because of their potential for significant ecological a nd socio economic impacts positive and negative in the present study an inventory was made of the alien macroinvertebrates occurring in fland ers northern belgium based on extensive existing collections of biological samples and supplemented with our additional sampling programs fresh and brackish waters as well as the belgian coastal harbours situated at the interface of the marine environment were investigated over 2 500 samples containing alien macroinvertebrates were identified to species level which allowed us to accurately map their distribution in flanders alien macroinvertebrates are widespread and abundant in many watercourses in flanders four new macroinvertebrate species for flander s were discovered procambarus clarkii girard 1852 echinogammarus trichiatus martynov 1932 synurella ambulans f mã ller 1846 and laonome calida capa 2007 fifty two alien macroinvertebrat es were encountered in fresh and slightly brackish surface waters and 21 alien spe cies were reported for the belgian part of the north sea and its adjacent estuaries most alien macroinvertebrates collected were cr ustaceans and molluscs alien species found in fresh and brackish water mainly originate from the ponto caspian area and north america fewer species originated from asia and south and east europe the major pathways were probably shipping and dispersal through canals based on observations in neighbouring countries several additional sp ecies are expect ed to arrive in the near future follow up work is needed to as sess the ecological and economic impacts of existing alien macroinvertebrates and a moni toring program is needed to detect new incoming species,2016,0.915
What determines spatial bias in citizen science? Exploring four recording schemes with different proficiency requirements,aim to understand how the integration of contextual spatial data on land cover and human infrastructure can help reduce spatial bias in sampling effort and improve the utilization of citizen science based species recording schemes by comparing four different citizen science projects we explore how the sampling design s complexity affects the role of these spatial biases location denmark europe methods we used a point process model to estimate the effect of land cover and human infrastructure on the intensity of observations from four different citizen science species recording schemes we then use these results to predict areas of under and oversampling as well as relative biodiversity â hotspotsâ and â desertsâ accounting for common spatial biases introduced in unstructured sampling designs results we demonstrate that the explanatory power of spatial biases such as infrastructure and human population density increased as the complexity of the sampling schemes decreased despite a low absolute sampling effort in agricultural landscapes these areas still appeared oversampled compared to the observed species richness conversely forests and grassland appeared undersampled despite higher absolute sampling efforts we also present a novel and effective analytical approach to address spatial biases in unstructured sampling schemes and a new way to address such biases when more structured sampling is not an option main conclusions we show that citizen science datasets which rely on untrained amateurs are more heavily prone to spatial biases from infrastructure and human population density objectives and protocols of mass participating projects should thus be designed with this in mind our results suggest that where contextual data is available modelling the intensity of individual observation can help understand and quantify how spatial biases affect the observed biological patterns,2016,0.186
Global Caridean Shrimp Fauna,the dataset consists of all geographical records of freshwater shrimps prior to 2013 records have various levels of accuracy,2016,0.354
Global Potential Distribution of Bactrocera carambolae and the Risks for Fruit Production in Brazil,the carambola fruit fly bactrocera carambolae is a tephritid native to asia that has invaded south america through small scale trade of fruits from indonesia the economic losses associated with biological invasions of other fruit flies around the world and the polyphagous behaviour of b carambolae have prompted much concern among government agencies and farmers with the potential spread of this pest here ecological niche models were employed to identify suitable environments available to b carambolae in a global scale and assess the extent of the fruit acreage that may be at risk of attack in brazil overall 30 maxent models built with different combinations of environmental predictors and settings were evaluated for predicting the potential distribution of the carambola fruit fly the best model was selected based on threshold independent and threshold dependent metrics climatically suitable areas were identified in tropical and subtropical regions of central and south america sub saharan africa west and east coast of india and northern australia the suitability map of b carambola was intersected against maps of fruit acreage in brazil the acreage under potential risk of attack varied widely among fruit species which is expected because the production areas are concentrated in different regions of the country the production of cashew is the one that is at higher risk with almost 90 of its acreage within the suitable range of b carambolae followed by papaya 78 tangerine 51 guava 38 lemon 30 orange 29 mango 24 and avocado 20 this study provides an important contribution to the knowledge of the ecology of b carambolae and the information generated here can be used by government agencies as a decision making tool to prevent the carambola fruit fly spread across the world,2016,0.421
Methodology for Evaluating the Quality of Ecosystem Maps: A Case Study in the Andes,uncertainty in thematic maps has been tested mainly in maps with discrete or fuzzy classifications based on spectral data however many ecosystem maps in tropical countries consist of discrete polygons containing information on various ecosystem properties such as vegetation cover soil climate geomorphology and biodiversity the combination of these properties into one class leads to error we propose a probability based sampling design with two domains multiple stages and stratification with selection of primary sampling units psus proportional to the richness of strata present validation is undertaken through field visits and fine resolution remote sensing data a pilot site in the center of the colombian andes was chosen to validate a government official ecosystem map twenty primary sampling units psus of 10 ã 15 km were selected and the final numbers of final sampling units fsus were 76 for the terrestrial domain and 46 for the aquatic domain our results showed a confidence level of 95 with the accuracy in the terrestrial domain varying between 51 8 and 64 3 and in the aquatic domain varying between 75 and 92 governments need to account for uncertainty since they rely on the quality of these maps to make decisions and guide policies,2016,0.068
Standardized Sampling Plan for the Thrips Frankliniella schultzei (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) on Watermelon Crops,sampling plans are essential components of integrated pest management programs the thrips frankliniella schultzei trybom thysanoptera thripidae is an important pest of watermelon crops despite the importance of sampling plans and of f schultzei as a pest of watermelon crops no research has been previously conducted on this subject for this crop the objective of this work was to create a standardized sampling plan for f schultzei in watermelon crops over two consecutive years weekly samplings were performed in commercial watermelon crops the aim of these assessments was to select the best sampling unit and the best sampling technique for f schultzei assessment and to determine the number of samples necessary for a standardized sampling plan for this pest in watermelon crops in the vegetative flowering and fruiting stages the ideal location for sampling f schultzei was the most apical leaf of the branches the best sampling technique was a direct count of f schultzei individuals the f schultzei sampling plan involved the evaluation of 69 samples per plot the execution duration of this sampling plan in 1 to 15 ha plots was 1 h and was inexpensive us 2 per sampling this has not been reported for watermelon before,2016,0.407
Improved surveillance for early detection of a potential invasive species: the alien Rose-ringed parakeet Psittacula krameri in Australia,the rose ringed parakeet psittacula krameri is the most widely introduced parrot in the world and is an important agricultural pest and competitor with native wildlife in australia it is classified as an â extreme threatâ yet captive individuals frequently escape into the wild the distribution and frequency of incursions are currently unknown as are the potential impacts of the species in australia this lack of critical ecological information greatly limits effective biosecurity surveillance and decision making efforts we compiled a unique dataset which combined passive surveillance sources from government and online resources for all available information on parakeet detections at large in australia we investigated whether geographic variables successfully predicted parakeet incursions and used species distribution models to assess the potential distribution and economic impacts on agricultural assets we recorded 864 incursions for the period 1999â 2013 mostly escaped birds reported to missing animal websites escapes were reported most frequently within or around large cities incursions were best predicted by factors related to human presence and activity such as global human footprint and intensive land uses we recommend surveillance of high predicted establishment areas adjacent to cities where a feral parakeet population could most affect horticultural production novel passive surveillance datasets combined with species distribution models can be used to identify the regions where potential invasive species are most likely to establish subsequently active surveillance can be targeted to the areas of highest predicted potential risk we recommend an integrated approach that includes outreach programs involving local communities as well as traditional biosecurity surveillance for detecting new incursions,2016,0.83
"Potential distribution of margay (Leopardus wiedii, Schinz, 1821) in Northeastern Mexico",the margay leopardus wiedii schinz 1821 is a small neotropical cat that is native with distribution from south america into northeastern mexico this species is now threatened by illegal hunting and habitat destruction and in northeastern mexico their habitat has been fragmented and population sizes have been dramatically reduced we use the maxent algorithm to model the potential distribution of this elusive species based on trustable presence records and information about their habitat condition the aim of this study was to estimate the potential distribution of margays in northeastern mexico we determined potential distribution in the physiographic subprovinces psp of llanuras y lomerios gran sierra plegada and carso huasteco a model was generated using recent and historical records through the maxent algorithm we used four records from online databases 36 from literature and 13 from our own fieldwork as well as 27 predictive variables 19 associated with climate two with land use and vegetation type four associated with topography and two with anthropogenic effects seven variables contributed to over 90 of the distribution model and were highly predictive auc 0 964 the potential distribution of margay represents 9 0 7 607 km2 of the area which is highly fragmented the psp gran sierra plegada and carso huasteco showed the widest distribution range the four most relevant variables were precipitation of the most humid quarter vegetation type and both altitude and topographic indexes we applied species distribution modeling by incorporating recent information collected through fieldwork and surveys as well as historical records in order to predict the margayâ s potential distribution in northeastern mexico we obtained a robust model based on the most relevant bioclimatic and landscape variables the landscape in this region is highly fragmented and the largest continuous areas were located in the roughest and inaccessible landscape of the mountainous localities of gran sierra plegada and carso huasteco where an important portion of these psp maintains continuity in the area of the potential distribution of the margay very little is known of the status and abundance of the margay and this study complements our current knowledge of this species in northeastern mexico and provides important information regarding the quality of the habitat in this portion of the country there are several current threats that are being caused by changes in land use in northeastern mexico and other parts of their distribution and this information is essential to establish conservation plans for this species and their habitat more studies assessing potential distribution throughout their range are needed to support adequate conservation efforts,2016,0.666
Genetic and geographical structure of boreal plants in their southern range: phylogeography of Hippuris vulgaris in China.,background our current understanding of the evolutionary history of boreal and arctic alpine plants in their southern range in asia remains relatively poor using three cpdna non coding regions and nine nuclear microsatellite nssr loci we examine the phylogeographic pattern in a broad geographic sampling of the boreal plant hippuris vulgaris to infer its dispersal and diversification in china in addition the species distributions at the last glacial maximum lgm and at present were predicted using ecological niche modeling enm results the cpdna results revealed two distinct lineages a and b a is restricted to northeast china b is distributed in northwest china the qinghai tibet plateau qtp and north and northeast nne china and a and b diverged ca 1 36 ma the nssr data revealed two genetic clusters corresponding to the two cpdna lineages and nonreciprocal hybridization with lineage a as the maternal lineage in northeast china cluster b further divided into three subclusters i mainly in nne china and the northeastern border of the qtp ii in northwest china and the qtp and iii on the qtp enm predicted a marked range shift on the qtp at the lgm retreating from the platform to the northeast and southeast edges conclusions hippuris vulgaris probably diverged into lineages a and b in high latitudes and then immigrated into northeast china and northwest china respectively lineage a persisted and diversified in northeast china lineage b reached the qtp during the mid pleistocene diversified in that region due to the influence of climatic oscillations migrated into northeast china and subsequently hybridized with lineage a our findings give empirical evidence that boreal plants display complex evolutionary history in their southern range in asia and provide new insights into the evolution of boreal and arctic alpine plants,2016,0.129
What Can an Invasive Dung Beetle Tell Us About Niche Conservatism?,human alteration of the global environment has triggered the sixth major extinction event in the history of life and caused widespread changes in the global distribution of organisms these changes in biodiversity alter ecosystem processes and change the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change this has profound consequences for services that humans derive from ecosystems the large ecological and societal consequences of changing biodiversity should be minimized to preserve options for future solutions to global environmental problems,2016,0.335
"A systematic florula of a disturbed urban habitat: Pavements of Sheffield, England",background human settlements are of increasing interest to ecologists a fact demonstrated by the recent cluster of book length treatments of the topic forman 2008 mcdonnell et al 2009 gaston 2010 niemelã et al 2011 wilson 2011 forman 2014 the natural world as a fascinating feature of towns and cities has a much longer history e g fitter 1945 and has also played a strong part in local biological conservation in some countries over the late 20th century goode 2014â despite much existing information on urban plant and animal communities resulting from these trends very little easily accessible systematic data on urban biodiversity is currently available new information few systematic randomised surveys at fine spatial grain exist for urban habitats and even fewer of these surveys are in the public domain this study was designed as a systematic florula i e a small flora of a relatively discrete urban habitat in order to provide a baseline that would enable robust insights into future environmental change in addition the dataset is likely to be useful for comparative studies of plant traits particularly those of highly disturbed habitats williams et al 2009â the survey is an occupancy study of the vascular plants of pavements i e sidewalks within 16 500 x 500 m 0 25 km2 urban grid cells stratified by quadrant at the scale of the focal city sheffield england in order to provide more even coverage the final dataset comprises 862 records of 183 taxa,2016,0.109
"Small, rare and trendy: traits and biogeography of lizards described in the 21st century",the pace of new reptile species descriptions especially of new lizard descriptions is rapidly increasing the number of recognized lizard species has increased by more than 30 since the turn of the century i examined the traits of newly described lizard taxa and compared them to those of species described earlier to predict where new species will be found what traits they have and whether they are likely to be more extinction prone than well known species i compiled data on the biogeography and ecology of newly described forms and examined the relationship between these traits and the date of description as expected new descriptions are generally of small species predominantly with small geographic ranges most species have been described from the oriental realm whereas few new species were described from africa new descriptions are disproportionally biased in favor of geckos and of nocturnal species â and surprisingly contain few subterranean forms newly described lizard species are more likely to be threatened with extinction and may be more susceptible to population decline although the rate of new lizard descriptions is still accelerating this work contributes to predicting what types of species are likely to be found in the future â and where the small ranges of such species in regions suffering from severe habitat degradation suggests that strong mitigation measures are needed to ensure that many of these species will not be lost shortly after being described,2016,0.998
Modeling the distribution of Mexican plants: knowledge and challenges in the face of biodiversity loss,este manuscrito no tiene introducciã n pues es solo la editorial introducciã n a la secciã n especial modeling the distribution of mexican plants knowledge and challenges in the face of biodiversity loss,2016,0.272
The Influence of the Spatial Scale on the Fishery Landings-SST Relationship,possible effects of the spatial scale of analysis on the relationship between fishery landings and the water temperature in the mediterranean sea have been investigated using the fao capture database 1970 2010 the analysis was performed by dividing species in three thermal affinity categories cold temperate and hot species results showed significant changes in fishery landings composition during the last four decades in terms of the relative contribution of cold temperate and hot species to landings moreover the presence of a strong influence of water warming in determining the landings temporal pattern has been confirmed this relationship however resulted to be not homogenous across the tested spatial scales entire mediterranean basin three main sub basins eight fao areas the best models based on the akaike information criterion were the ones fitted at the finer spatial definition i e the eight fao areas for all the three thermal affinity categories the recorded relationship showed clear differences in terms of direction depending on both areas and thermal affinity groups cold species showed a negative relationship with the increasing water temperature in all the fao areas being partially replaced by temperate ones with the exception of the adriatic and black sea the coldest areas in the mediterranean basin where a moderate increase in the water temperature is still favoring the cold affinity group this kind of results could be useful within the context of the management plans definition within a context of climate changes,2016,0.572
"Reconstructing the paleoenvironment of Loltún Cave, Yucatán, Mexico, with Pleistocene amphibians and reptiles and their paleobiogeographic implications",loltãºn cave on the ucatã n peninsula is an important fossil site the cave preserves pleistocene fauna and lithic tools and it s among teh few sites with amphibian and reptile fossila of the mexican pleistocene we used teh fossil amphibians and reptiles community to reconstruct the paleoclimate and paleoenvironment of loltãºn cave in the late pleistocene the pleistocene amphibian and reptiles community in loltãºn cave consists of one frog three lizards five snakes and one turtle applying the habitat weighting method to teh fossil herpetofaunal assemblage we inferred a vegetation mosaic non analog with the present one comprising evergreen seasonal forest tropical deciduous forest found nowadays around loltãºn cave using teh mutual climatic range mcr method we inferred a mean annual temperature of 25 33 c and a mean annual precipitation of 1183 74 mm teh temperature was 1 47 c lower and teh map was 85 14 mm higher than teh present climate condition it is the first time that a paleoclimatic reconstruction using amphibians and reptiles in a tropical region is made using mcr method our result are in concordance with other paleoclimatic inferences using fossil pollen as a proxy we found a range shift of the iguanid ctenosaura subgenus loganiosaura during teh late pleistocene of 446 4 km north of teh present distribution surely given by the climatic and vegertation structure changes in the past,2016,0.238
Wild Felid Range Shift Due to Climatic Constraints in the Americas: a Bottleneck Explanation for Extinct Felids?,theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that the ecological niche of species tends to be conservative over evolutionary time in many taxonomic groups thus representing long term stable constraints on species geographic distributions using an ecological niche modeling approach we assessed the impact of climatic change on wild felid species potential range shifts over the last 130 k years in the americas and the potential of such shifts as an extinction driver we found a significant range shift for most species both living and extinct across their distributions driven by large scale environmental changes proportionally the most drastic range increase for all species occurred in the last glacial maximum lgm 18 k years â current transition while for the last inter glacial lig 130 k years â lgm transition an important range reduction occurred which was larger for extinct north american species in conclusion the reduction of climatically suitable areas for many species in the transition ligâ lgm may have produced population reductions which in turn may have played an important role in speciesâ extinction throughout the continent,2016,0.944
"To increase trust, change the social design behind aggregated biodiversity data",abstract growing concerns about the quality of aggregated biodiversity data are lowering trust in large scale data networks aggregators frequently respond to quality concerns by recommending that biologists work with original data providers to correct errors â at the source â we show that this strategy falls systematically short of a full diagnosis of the underlying causes of distrust in particular trust in an aggregator is not just a feature of the data signal quality provided by the sources to the aggregator but also a consequence of the social design of the aggregation process and the resulting power balance between individual data contributors and aggregators the latter have created an accountability gap by downplaying the authorship and significance of the taxonomic hierarchiesâ frequently called â backbonesâ â they generate and which are in effect novel classification theories that operate at the core of data structuring process the darwin core standard for sharing occurrence records plays an under appreciated role in maintaining the accountability gap because this standard lacks the syntactic structure needed to preserve the taxonomic coherence of data packages submitted for aggregation potentially leading to inferences that no individual source would support since high quality data packages can mirror competing and conflicting classifications i e unsettled systematic research this plurality must be accommodated in the design of biodiversity data integration looking forward a key directive is to develop new technical pathways and social incentives for experts to contribute directly to the validation of taxonomically coherent data packages as part of a greater trustworthy aggregation process,2017,0.018
"Hypoglycemic, Hepatoprotective and Hypolipidemic Effects of Pleurotus ostreatus in Alloxan-Induced Hyperglycemic Rats",croton gratissimus burch is a deciduous shrub used in traditional medicines and a local traditional herbal tea in south africa c gratissimus is used in treating several disease conditions including cough influenza colds malaria fever bleeding gums chest complaints indigestion skin inflammation earache respiratory disorders diabetes and oedema this review focuses on the botanical attributes distribution traditional uses phytochemistry nutritional constituents and pharmacological properties of c gratissimus a wide range search of previous literature on various scientific databases including google google scholar science direct pubmed scopus theses dissertations and ethnobotanical textbooks was conducted the search showed that c gratissimus has several reported traditional uses with over 55 compounds identified and isolated from it some of the compounds include cembrane trachylobane and pimarane type diterpenes triterpenes sesquiterpenes sterols flavonoids and flavonoids glycosides the bioactive compounds had biological activities such as antioxidant antiplasmodial anticancer antibacterial vasorelaxant and cholinesterase inhibitory action c gratissimus is reported to have antimicrobial antidiabetic antiparasitic antiviral antioxidant haemostatic anticancer anti inflammatory toxicity and immune boosting properties other pharmacological activities of c gratissimus include analgesic anticonvulsant antipyretic nephroprotective and ulcerogenic properties c gratissimus nutritional constituents include total sugar protein amino acids fat dietary fibre carbohydrate energy ash moisture dry matter and calcium it is hoped that the present review will add further value to the scientific research on c gratissimus and boost the increased interest in the study development and sustainable commercial exploitation of c gratissimus as a medicine and as a health herbal tea,2017,0.013
Weed Risk Assessment for Pyrus calleryana Decne. (Rosaceae) – Callery pear,the maryland department of agriculture regulates terrestrial ornamental invasive plants under the authority of md agriculture code ann â 9 5 101 et seq invasive plant prevention and control an invasive plant is defined as â œa terrestrial plant species that a did not evolve in the state and b if introduced within the state will cause or is likely to cause as determined by the secretary economic harm ecological harm environmental harm or harm to human health â marylandâ s invasive plant advisory committee ipac was established by legislative mandate in october 2011 the ipacâ s primary responsibility is to advise the secretary of agriculture on regulating the sale of invasive plants and on preventing them from entering maryland or from spreading further in the state the ipac evaluates the risk potential of plants already present in maryland newly detected in the maryland or the united states those proposed for import and those emerging as weeds elsewhere in the world the ipac evaluates the potential invasiveness of plants using the weed risk assessment wra process developed by the plant protection and quarantine ppq program of the us department of agricultureâ s animal and plant health inspection service koop et al 2012 ppqâ s risk model uses information about a speciesâ biological traits and behavior to evaluate its risk potential koop et al 2012 because the ppq wra model is geographically and climatically neutral it can be used to evaluate the baseline invasive weed potential of any plant species for the entire united states or for any specific region in the united states in the ppq process the geographic potential of the species is evaluated separately so that risk managers can make decisions appropriate for their regions with respect to marylandâ s evaluation process we use ppqâ s geographic information system overlays of climate to evaluate the potential for a plant to establish and grow in maryland the ppq weed risk assessment also uses a stochastic simulation to evaluate how the uncertainty associated with the assessments affects the modelâ s predictions detailed information on the ppq wra process is available in the document guidelines for the usda aphis ppq weed risk assessment process aphis ppq 2015 which is available upon request the ipac uses a second tool the maryland filter to assign plant species that score as highly invasive either tier 1 or tier 2 status maryland regulations define tier 1 plants as â œinvasive plant species that cause or are likely to cause severe harm within the stateâ and tier 2 plants as â œinvasive plant species that cause or are likely to cause substantial negative impact within the state â the maryland filter considers the actual and potential distribution of a species in maryland its threat to threatened and endangered ecosystems and species in the state the difficulty of control of the species and whether added propagule pressure would be likely to increase its persistence and spread significantly the ipac then recommends regulations to reduce the risk of the tiered invasive plants in maryland,2017,0.405
"COSEWIC assessment and status report on the eastern banded tigersnail, Anguispira kochi kochi, and western banded tigersnail, Anguispira kochi occidentalis, in Canada .",this large terrestrial snail remains in small isolated habitat patches on middle and pelee islands in lake erie the loss of subpopulations on some smaller islands was probably due to habitat destruction from overabundant double crested cormorants which colonized the islands in the early 1980s as well as human activities habitat loss and alteration on pelee island likely led to subpopulation declines and fragmentation climate change is the most serious threat this large terrestrial snail is known from numerous sites and appears to be abundant in southeastern british columbia most records come from the west kootenay region where it is mainly found in riparian and floodplain habitats continuing low impact threats include habitat loss from residential development roads logging fire silvicultural activity and droughts and temperature extremes related to climate change given the current circumstances this species is not at risk,2017,0.499
Monographs on invasive plants in Europe N° 2: Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms,eichhornia crassipes is notorious as the worldâ s worst aquatic weed and here we present all aspects of its biology ecology and invasion behaviour within the framework of the new series of botany letters on monographs on invasive plants in europe native to the amazon in south america the plant has been spread around the world since the late 1800s through the ornamental plant trade due to its attractive lilac flowers and is established on every continent except antarctica its distribution is limited in europe to the warmer southern regions by cold winter temperatures but it has extensive ecological and socio economic impacts where it invades its reproductive behaviour characterised by rapid vegetative spread and high seed production as well as its wide physiological tolerance allows it to proliferate rapidly and persist in a wide range of environments it has recently been regulated by the eu under regulation no 1143 2014 which states that e crassipes shall not be brought into the territory of the union kept bred or transported to from or within the union however in the absence of effective control measures such as herbicidal and biological control it will continue to be a significant threat to european waterways particularly in eutrophic waters and under future climate change scenarios,2017,0.222
"Study on Invasive Alien Species –Development of risk assessments to tackle priority species and enhance prevention: Risk Assessment for Lampropeltis getula (Linnaeus, 1766)",lampropeltis getula is a regularly introduced popular pet species casual records in several eu member states illustrate the species is widely kept as a pet in the eu and that escapes occur regularly common kingsnake is especially popular among beginner pet amateurs as they generally require little specific care have a low purchase price and are easy to handle,2017,0.576
"Integrating biogeography, threat and evolutionary data to explore extinction crisis in the taxonomic group of cycads",will the ongoing extinction crisis cause a severe loss of evolutionary information accumulated over millions of years on the tree of life this question has been largely explored particularly for vertebrates and angiosperms however no equivalent effort has been devoted to gymnosperms here we address this question focusing on cycads the gymnosperm group exhibiting the highest proportion of threatened species in the plant kingdom we assembled the first complete phylogeny of cycads and assessed how species loss under three scenarios would impact the cycad tree of life these scenarios are as follows 1 all top 50 of evolutionarily distinct ed species are lost 2 all threatened species are lost and 3 only all threatened species in each iucn category are lost finally we analyzed the biogeographical pattern of cycad diversity hotspots and tested for gaps in the current global conservation network first we showed that threatened species are not significantly clustered on the cycad tree of life second we showed that the loss of all vulnerable or endangered species does not depart significantly from random loss in contrast the loss of all top 50 ed all threatened or all critically endangered species would result in a greater loss of pd phylogenetic diversity than expected to inform conservation decisions we defined five hotpots of diversity and depending on the diversity metric used these hotspots are located in southern africa australia indo pacific and mexico and all are found within protected areas we conclude that the phylogenetic diversity accumulated over millions of years in the cycad tree of life would not survive the current extinction crisis as such prioritizing efforts based on ed and concentrating efforts on critically endangered species particularly in southern africa australia indo pacific and mexico are required to safeguarding the evolutionary diversity in the cycad tree of life,2017,0.96
"No Evidence of Hybridization Between the Arizona Toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus) and Woodhouse's Toad (A. woodhousii) in New Mexico, USA",hybridization facilitated by habitat modification poses a significant conservation risk to many amphibian species the construction of water impoundments which alter stream conditions has facilitated the spread of woodhouseâ s toads anaxyrus woodhousii and resulted in hybridization with arizona toads a microscaphus in arizona nevada and utah usa to date there has been no evaluation or reported occurrence of hybridization between a microscaphus and a woodhousii in new mexico in new mexico the range of a microscaphus encompasses an area of approximately 9 585 km2 and extends primarily in the upper gila river and upper mimbres river basins we conducted a morphological comparison using hybrid index scores of specimens collected over a 107 y period to determine whether hybridization has occurred and if it represents a threat to a microscaphus in new mexico we found no evidence of hybridization between a microscaphus and a woodhousii in new mexico however we uncovered numerous misidentified specimens this finding resulted in a significant revision of the distribution of a woodhousii reducing the number of previously recognized areas of syntopy of the two species from 20 to two we speculate that the construction of a proposed water diversion project along the gila river in the gila cliff valley one area where the two species occur within 2 km of each other may facilitate the spread of a woodhousii increasing the likelihood of contact and hybridization with a microscaphus this research highlights the importance of museum specimens in assessment of conservation risks and validation of identifications to assess species distributions accurately,2017,0.871
Forecasting distributions of an aquatic invasive species (Nitellopsis obtusa) under future climate scenarios,starry stonewort nitellopsis obtusa is an alga that has emerged as an aquatic invasive species of concern in the united states where established starry stonewort can interfere with recreational uses of water bodies and potentially have ecological impacts incipient invasion of starry stonewort in minnesota provides an opportunity to predict future expansion in order to target early detection and strategic management we used ecological niche models to identify suitable areas for starry stonewort in minnesota based on global occurrence records and present day and future climate conditions we assessed sensitivity of forecasts to different parameters using four emission scenarios i e rcp 2 6 rcp 4 5 rcp 6 and rcp 8 5 from five future climate models i e ccsm giss ipsl miroc and mri from our niche model analyses we found that i occurrences from the entire range instead of occurrences restricted to the invaded range provide more informed models ii default settings in maxent did not provide the best model iii the model calibration area and its background samples impact model performance iv model projections to future climate conditions should be restricted to analogous environments and v forecasts in future climate conditions should include different future climate models and model calibration areas to better capture uncertainty in forecasts under present climate the most suitable areas for starry stonewort are predicted to be found in central and southeastern minnesota in the future suitable areas for starry stonewort are predicted to shift in geographic range under some future climate models and to shrink under others with most permutations indicating a net decrease of the speciesâ suitable range our suitability maps can serve to design short term plans for surveillance and education while future climate models suggest a plausible reduction of starry stonewort spread in the long term if the trends in climate warming remain,2017,0.023
Assessing species climatic requirements beyond the realized niche: some lessons mainly from tree species distribution modelling,almost all climate change studies of plants and animals adopt an â equilibrium assumptionâ that analyses of natural distributions provide reliable estimates of species climatic requirements yet commercial forestry trials around the world have shown that many tree species can grow successfully under climatic conditions somewhat different from those of their natural distributions under climate change it is reasonable to assume that a long lived tree species already well established at particular sites may be able to display some of the climatic adaptability shown in trials outside its natural distribution the purpose of this paper is to outline how some species distribution modelling sdm and ecological niche modelling enm studies have estimated species climatic requirements beyond those shown by conventional analyses of just their natural distributions and to show how recent developments are facilitating these analyses some of the earliest sdm studies of trees demonstrated the desirability of assessing species climatic requirements using data from outside as well as within their natural distributions in recent years with the advent of large biodiversity databases and some revised sdm analysis methods there has been a revival of interest in measuring species climatic requirements using data from beyond their realized niches it is recommended that at least for tree species natural distribution data and where possible results from plantings beyond natural distributions should be analysed in climate change studies when this is not possible some alternative methods of estimating species climatic requirements are identified and some of their advantages and disadvantages are considered,2017,0.943
"NICHE CONSERVATISM OR DIVERGENCE: INSIGHTS INTO THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORIES OF Pinus taeda, Pinus rigida, AND Pinus pungens",environmentally related selective pressures and community interactions are well documented drivers for niche differentiation as natural selection acts on adaptive traits best fit for survival here we investigated niche evolution between and within pinus taeda pinus rigida and pinus pungens and sought to identify which climate variables contributed to species divergence we also sought to describe niche differentiation across genetic groupings previously identified for p taeda and p rigida ecological niche models were produced using maximum entropy followed by statistical testing based on a measure of niche overlap schoenerâ s d both niche conservatism and niche divergence were detected thus leading us to conclude that directional or disruptive selection drove divergence of the p taeda lineage from its ancestor with p rigida and p pungens while stabilizing selection was associated with the divergence of p rigida and p pungens the latter implies that factors beyond climate are important drivers of speciation within pinus,2017,0.352
Rethinking the Social Contract between Science and Society: Steps to an Ecology of Science Communication,three key questions guide this thesis first how is public communication of science and technology pcst organized in different models of expertâ public interaction second how do different models of science and technology popularization frame science and technology narratives third building on the first two questions what are the implications of these models for the social contract between science and society this thesis involves both an exploratory cross case analysis of pcst and a comparative mixed methods study the case studies were conducted using a broad array of methods reviewing policy documents articles from 3 newspapers over 12â 18 years and the study of participation in experiments and new infrastructures for doing citizen science through documents observations and interviews this thesis has eight crucial contributions to an improved understanding of public communication of science and technology by critically examining the three science communication models dissemination dialogue and participation the thesis makes five contributions 1 a study of how public appreciation of science and technology are promoted by the use of bias 2 a study of how public engagement with science and technology are promoted by mediatization processes 3 a study of how researchers in their popularization activities promote critical understanding of science and technology being modest witnesses 4 a study of the dialogue modelsâ room for participation in knowledge and policy construction processes and 5 in studying the participation model a better understanding of citizen science and boundary infrastructures finally the thesis has three more general contributions 6 it represents the first comprehensive examination of science communication policy in norway 7 focusing on technology it links science communication research and innovation studies and 8 it contributes to a more analytical approach studying the three science communication models as trading zones within the context of the nordic model of science communication rethinking the social contract between science and society steps to an ecology of science communication available from https www researchgate net publication 316910960 rethinking the social contract between science and society steps to an ecology of science communication accessed may 24 2017,2017,0.126
Anatomy of the invasive orchid Oeceoclades maculata: ecological implications,oeceoclades maculata is the most successful invasive orchid in the neotropics the anatomy of the vegetative organs peduncle and seeds of o maculata was characterized to identify features of possible physiological and ecological importance plants from four locations in soconusco chiapas mexico were selected transverse longitudinal and paradermal sections of vegetative organs were observed using light and scanning electron microscopes oeceoclades maculata has amphistomatous leaves with smooth and a thin to slightly thickened cuticle a single layered epidermis a low density of small stomata 13 mm∠2 and numerous sunken glandular hairs on both surfaces mesophyll is homogeneous with abundant extravascular fibre bundles the root has a multilayered velamen with abundant tilosomes numerous idioblasts with raphides were observed in leaves pseudobulbs and roots the seeds are fusiform with smooth surfaces and transverse folds some of these traits link o maculata with terrestrial and epiphytic habits and with xerophytic habits with humid and high light intensity and humid environments this combination of traits might be a key factor behind the success and expansion of o maculata nonetheless a detailed characterization of the microhabitats occupied demography reproductive strategies and mycorrhizal associations will be essential for understanding the behaviour of this invasive species and if necessary designing strategies for its control,2017,0.343
Description of a new species of Capederces (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Cerambycinae) from South Africa,a new species of longhorned beetle in the tribe tillomorphini capederces madibai sp nov is described from the â œalbany districtâ in south eastern south africa adult specimens are illustrated and compared with the only other known species from this previously mono specific genus c hauseri adlbauer 2001 an illustration of the female of c hauseri is provided for the first time,2017,0.694
Inferring the demographic history of an oligophagous grasshopper: effects of climatic niche stability and host-plant distribution,understanding the consequences of past environmental changes on the abiotic and biotic components of the landscape and deciphering their impacts on the demographic trajectories of species is a major issue in evolutionary biogeography in this study we combine nuclear and mitochondrial genetic data to study the phylogeographical structure and lineage specific demographic histories of the scrub legume grasshopper chorthippus binotatus binotatus a montane taxon distributed in the iberian peninsula and france that exclusively feeds on certain scrub legume species genetic data and paleo distribution modelling indicate the presence of four main lineages that seem to have diverged in allopatry and long term persisted in iberian and french refugia since the mid pleistocene comparisons of different demographic hypotheses in an approximate bayesian computation abc framework supported a population bottleneck in the northwestern french clade and paleo distribution modelling indicate that the populations of this lineage have experienced more severe environmental fluctuations during the last 21 000 years than those from the iberian peninsula accordingly we found that nuclear genetic diversity of the populations of scrub legume grasshopper is positively associated with local stability of suitable habitats defined by both pleistocene climate changes and historical distributional shifts of host plant species overall our study highlights the importance of integrating the potential effects of abiotic i e climate and geography and biotic components i e inter specific interactions into the study of the evolutionary and demographic history of specialist taxa with narrow ecological requirements,2017,0.769
Diversity and suitability of existing methods and metrics for quantifying species range shifts,aim the quantification of species range shifts is critical for developing effective plans to conserve biodiversity there are numerous methods and metrics for quantifying species range shifts but we currently lack a comprehensive review of existing approaches used in species range shift studies location global time period 2013 â 2014 major taxa studied all taxa methods we conducted a quantitative literature review to first identify the methods currently used for defining a species range over a particular time and then to identify metrics used for measuring changes in species ranges over time we provide a roadmap for the selection of methods and metrics for measuring species ranges and species range shifts by discussing opportunities assumptions and constraints of the different approaches results our literature review revealed six main methods for defining species ranges observational studies grid based mapping convex hull kriging species distribution modelling and hybrid methods these methods are used with three main metric classes to measure species range shifts changes in range limit size and the probability of species occurrences or suitability most methods for defining species ranges and subsequent range shifts can be applied to different spatial extents and resolutions and taxa however only species distribution models sdms and hybrid methods allow for the exploration of the relationship between species occurrence and environmental variables and only these methods can be used for forecasting species ranges into future environments likewise the inclusion of ecological processes in range shift calculations requires researchers to use hybrid methods or mechanistic models main conclusions our review revealed a high diversity of methods and metrics used to quantify species range shifts as these methods and metrics underlie many of the conservation strategies proposed for climate change mitigation e g protection of refugia we urge the conservation community to evaluate underlying approaches for defining species ranges and measuring species range shifts with an equal level of scrutiny as the conservation strategies that these methods and metrics enable,2017,0.99
Facts and misconceptions on the Palaearctic existence of the striped ground squirrel,the striped ground squirrel has a wide distribution in the ethiopian region but is restricted to a small isolated area in palaearctic africa this fragment was first recorded in the late 1940s in the souss valley morocco however not a single new observation has been published in the following decades in september 2016 we surveyed the souss valley and found squirrels at 43 sites within the triangle between agadirâ taroudantâ tiznit occupied sites were not distributed at random but occurred between an altitude of 45â 254 m and on a substrate with coarse texture containing 65 sand the vast majority of the sites with squirrels 69 were classified as suburban cultivated or both habitat suitability was estimated by applying geographically weighted logistic regression analysis the influence of local predictor variables varied across the study area indicating the heterogeneous effects on the determination of the occurrence of the species the modelled highly suitable habitat area for the striped ground squirrel in morocco covers almost 690 km,2017,0.539
Combining occurrence and abundance distribution models for the conservation of the Great Bustard,species distribution models sdms have become important and essential tools in conservation and management however sdms built with count data referred to as species abundance models sams are still less commonly used to date but increasingly receiving attention species occurrence and abundance do not frequently display similar patterns and often they are not even well correlated therefore only using information based on sdms or sams leads to an insufficient or misleading conservation efforts how to combine information from sdms and sams and how to apply the combined information to achieve unified conservation remains a challenge in this study we introduce and propose a priority protection index pi the pi combines the prediction results of the occurrence and abundance models as a case study we used the best available presence and count records for an endangered farmland species the great bustard otis tarda dybowskii in bohai bay china we then applied the random forest algorithm salford systems ltd implementation with eleven predictor variables to forecast the spatial occurrence as well as the abundance distribution the results show that the occurrence model had a decent performance roc 0 77 and the abundance model had a rmse of 26 54 it is noteworthy that environmental variables influenced bustard occurrence and abundance differently the area of farmland and the distance to residential areas were the top important variables influencing bustard occurrence while the distance to national roads and to expressways were the most important influencing abundance in addition the occurrence and abundance models displayed different spatial distribution patterns the regions with a high index of occurrence were concentrated in the south central part of the study area and the abundance distribution showed high populations occurrence in the central and northwestern parts of the study area however combining occurrence and abundance indices to produce a priority protection index pi to be used for conservation could guide the protection of the areas with high occurrence and high abundance e g in strategic conservation planning due to the widespread use of sdms and the easy subsequent employment of sams these findings have a wide relevance and applicability than just those only based on sdms or sams we promote and strongly encourage researchers to further test apply and update the priority protection index pi elsewhere to explore the generality of these findings and methods that are now readily available,2017,0.559
A new association between goblet worms (Entoprocta) and xeniid corals (Cnidaria),the phylum entoprocta is a cryptic group of sessile primarily marine filter feeding invertebrates commonly called goblet worms during a recent survey of mesophotic reef diversity at green island ludao taiwan in february 2017 zooids of the solitary entoproct loxosomella sp were first recorded in association with a cespitularia like xeniid soft coral collected at 40 m depth this association was observed on all 14 coral colonies inspected where their density reached 5 4 â 1 4 zooids per polyp n 5 this record not only constitutes the first report of entoprocts in taiwan but is also the first documentation of an association between entoprocts and octocorals and highlights the importance of examining other host candidates in this taxon for a better understanding of their diversity the exact nature of this potential symbiotic relationship needs to be elucidated but the isolation of intact zooids suggests that loxosomella sp lives on the surface of coral tissues by a tight attachment of their foot loxosomella sp could perhaps benefit from protection offered by soft corals against predators and competitors the pinnate polyps and fleshy morphology of the coral colony can also assist in sediment removal which may help entoprocts to avoid burial overall the discovery of this association increases the known diversity of the associated fauna of octocorals but possible implications in coral fitness still need to be explored,2017,0.624
Pest Risk Analysis for Cardiospermum grandiflorum,cardiospermum grandiflorum presents a moderate phytosanitary risk for the endangered area within the eppo region with moderate uncertainty the risk of further spread within and among countries is moderate the overall likelihood of c grandiflorum continuing to enter the eppo region is moderate because the species is traded by a small number of suppliers given the species known occurrences within the eppo region and its desirable characteristics as an ornamental it remains likely that it could be moved non commercially e g through seed exchange by collectors resulting in further human assisted spread natural dispersal from existing populations within the region is the most likely mode of further spread the seed carrying balloons of c grandiflorum can float for extensive periods in watercourses e g along rivers and across the sea and are carried by wind and thus can cover substantial distances over short time scales under climate change the range of suitable habitat for establishment is expected to expand and shift northwards,2017,0.637
"First observation of another invasive mud dauber wasp in Belgium: Sceliphron caementarium (Drury, 1773) (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae)",in this article we present the observation of an exotic mud dauber wasp in belgium sceliphron caementarium drury 1773 with this observation the occurrence of this sphecid wasp can be confirmed in belgium we also discuss the literature about this species and other invasive wasps in belgium and the neighbouring countries first observation of another invasive mud dauber wasp in belgium sceliphron caementarium drury 1773 hymenoptera sphecidae available from https www researchgate net publication 316683383 first observation of another invasive mud dauber wasp in belgium sceliphron caementarium drury 1773 hymenoptera sphecidae accessed may 24 2017,2017,0.325
LifeCLEF 2017 Lab Overview: Multimedia Species Identification Challenges,automated multimedia identification tools are an emerging solution towards building accurate knowledge of the identity the geographic distribution and the evolution of living plants and animals large and structured communities of nature observers as well as big monitoring equipment have actually started to produce outstanding collections of multimedia records unfortunately the performance of the state of the art analysis techniques on such data is still not well understood and far from reaching real world requirements the lifeclef lab proposes to evaluate these challenges around 3 tasks related to multimedia information retrieval and fine grained classification problems in 3 domains each task is based on large volumes of real world data and the measured challenges are defined in collaboration with biologists and environmental stakeholders to reflect realistic usage scenarios for each task we report the methodology the data sets as well as the results and the main outcomes,2017,0.263
SSDM: an R package to predict distribution of species richness and composition based on stacked species distribution models,there is growing interest among conservationists in biodiversity mapping based on stacked species distribution models ssdms a method that combines multiple individual species distribution models to produce a community level model however no user friendly interface specifically designed to provide the basic tools needed to fit such models was available until now the â ssdmâ package is a computer platform implemented in r providing a range of methodological approaches and parameterization at each step in building the ssdm e g pseudo absence selection variable contribution and model accuracy assessment inter model consensus forecasting species assembly design and calculation of weighted endemism the object oriented design of the package is such that users can modify existing methods extend the framework by implementing new methods and share them to be reproduced by others the package includes a graphical user interface to extend the use of ssdms to a wide range of conservation scientists and practitioners,2017,0.135
How do invasive species travel to and through urban environments?,globalisation has resulted in the movement of organisms outside their natural range often with negative ecological and economic consequences as cities are hubs of anthropogenic activities with both highly transformed and disturbed environments these areas are often the first point of entry for alien species we compiled a global database of cities with more than one million inhabitants that data had on alien species occurrence we then identified the most prominent pathways of introduction and vectors of spread of alien species in these cities most species were intentionally introduced to cities and were released or escaped from confinement the majority of alien species then spread within cities through natural means primarily unaided dispersal pathway prominence varied across the taxonomic groups of alien species the most prominent pathway for plants and vertebrates was the escape pathway for invertebrates the stowaway and contaminant pathways were most likely to facilitate introductions for some organisms pathway prominence varied with the geographical and climatic characteristics of the city the characteristics of the cities also influenced the prominence of vectors of spread for alien species preventing the natural spread of alien species within cities and into adjacent natural environments will be at best difficult to prevent invasions both the intentional and unintentional introduction of potentially harmful alien species to cities must be prevented the pathways of introduction and vectors of spread identified here should be prioritised for management,2017,0.948
Species climatic niche explains drought-induced die-off in a Mediterranean woody community,during the last decades plant die off has been reported worldwide as a result of increased frequency and intensity of extreme drought events from a niche perspective a species performance should decrease as the climatic conditions defining a drought event differ from those characterizing the species climatic niche the average conditions experienced by the species species distribution models sdms can potentially be used to test the link between species performance and their climatic niche by means of climatic suitability indexes we studied the remaining green canopy of 18 woody species co occurring in a mediterranean shrubland from the central iberian peninsula that experienced a severe die off following an extreme drought event we found that the suitability of the climatic conditions estimated by sdms strongly declined for all species during the extreme drought event species die off was significantly explained by the decrease in climatic suitability during the event estimated as the ratio between the historic and the extreme event climatic suitability species with high occupancy levels across the landscape exhibited higher die off likely because 1 these species have short life span and mortality would be compensated by later high recruitment or 2 populations of rare species may have experienced local adaptation to drier conditions our results indicate that extreme drought events can have a negative effect even in shrubland communities living in arid environments also we develop a new approach that connects population level responses to species climatic niches through sdms and it can be applied to predict community responses to strong climatic variability such as drought events,2017,0.966
"On the Monophyly of Macrolobium Schreb., an Ecologically Diverse Neotropical Tree Genus (Fabaceae-Detarioideae)",premise of research the neotropical endemic macrolobium is one of the most species rich genera ca 75 species within subfamily detarioideae fabaceae alternatively leguminosae two sections distinguished by floral morphology have been recognized in the past although morphologically diverse species within the genus share several characters including a single well developed petal in adaxial position however previous analyses based on plastid markers have suggested that the genus is not monophyletic we produce the most densely sampled molecular phylogeny of macrolobium and test the monophyly of the genus and the two sections methodology we analyzed nucleotide sequence data from the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer its and plastid matk trng genomes using bayesian and maximum likelihood analyses pivotal results the combined analysis retains macrolobium as a monophyletic genus with two well supported subclades corresponding to the two recognized sections macrolobium pendulum is the only species placed in a section different from its taxonomic treatment the relationships recovered with the plastid markers differ slightly from the combined and its analyses but without significant support conclusions macrolobium is shown to be a monophyletic genus and to contain two well supported and morphologically defined sections with differing amazonian and andean central american distributions corresponding to the gentry pattern species are also found to group partly according to habitat preferences and leaf morphology both sections contain groups of multijugate and unijugate species and there appear to have been multiple shifts of this character,2017,0.784
Dispersal Effects on Species Distribution and Diversity across Multiple Scales in the Southern Appalachian Mixed Mesophytic Flora,seed and spore dispersal play important roles in the spatial distribution of plant species and communities though dispersal processes are often thought to be more important at larger spatial scales the distribution patterns of species and plant communities even at small scales can be determined at least in part by dispersal i studied the influence of dispersal in southern appalachian mixed mesophytic forests by categorizing species by dispersal morphology and by using spatial pattern and habitat connectivity as predictors of species distribution and community composition all vascular plant species were recorded at three nested sample scales 10000 1000 and 100 m2 on plots with varying levels of habitat connectivity across the great smoky mountains national park models predicting species distributions generally had higher predictive power when incorporating spatial pattern and connectivity particularly at small scales despite wide variation in performance models of locally dispersing species species without adaptations to dispersal by wind or vertebrates were most frequently improved by the addition of spatial predictors patterns in plant communities were also compared among dispersal categories and though it was shown that species without dispersal adaptations were less likely to co occur this was more likely to be caused by differences in frequency across dispersal categories than by dispersal limitation per se spatial pattern distance and connectivity were significant predictors of non random patterns of species turnover at all scales and were stronger among dispersal limited species groups species with limited dispersal were also less frequent at all three sampling scales than those with adaptations for vertebrate dispersal and had smaller geographic ranges than either wind or vertebrate dispersed species species with no dispersal adaptations were overrepresented among southern appalachian endemics and lineages endemic to north america whereas species dispersed by vertebrates were overrepresented among tertiary disjunct lineages and species dispersed by spores were cosmopolitan relationships among dispersal and biogeographic affinity reflect the evolutionary history of the mixed mesophytic flora owing to adaptation of dispersal mechanisms to regional environmental conditions the relative ages of lineages and the effect of dispersal mechanism on the distributions of plants across time and space,2017,0.997
"Using DNA barcodes to confirm new records of Amazon longfin herrings Pellona castelnaeana Valenciennes, 1847 and Pellona flavipinnis (Valenciennes, 1837) (Clupeiformes: Pristigasteridae) in the Branco River sub-basin",this note demonstrates the use of a dna barcoding methodology in confirming new occurrence records of pellona castelnaeana and pellona flavipinnis in the branco river sub basin the dna barcode result was verified by identification based on morphological characters of both species thus these records increase the speciesâ ranges by more than 600 km in the amazon and show evidence of high genetic variability in p flavipinnis,2017,0.427
Shifts in habitat suitability and the conservation status of the Endangered Andean cat Leopardus jacobita under climate change scenarios,organisms adapted to life at high elevations are particularly threatened by climate change which can cause them to become isolated on mountain tops yet their responses may vary according to their position in the food chain and their ecological flexibility predicting the future distributions of such organisms requires fine tuned species specific models building on a previous ecological niche model we explored shifts in the suitability of habitats for the endangered andean cat leopardus jacobita and assessed how these will be represented within existing protected areas in the future using a robust set of presence records and corrected climate surfaces we applied the maxent algorithm to model habitat suitability for this carnivore and for its preferred prey the mountain viscacha lagidium viscacia our predictions indicate that the areas climatically suitable for andean cats could contract by up to 30 by 2080 under the most pessimistic scenario with an overall upwards shift of 225 m and a polewards displacement of 98â 180 km the predicted range contraction was more pronounced in the speciesâ core range in the bolivian and peruvian andes whereas suitable conditions may increase in the southern range in patagonia bolivia and peru are predicted to suffer the most marked decline in habitat representativeness within protected areas the southern range appears to be less vulnerable to climate change offering opportunities for the conservation of this genetically distinct population we discuss the value and limitations of using species distribution modelling to assess changes in the potential distribution and conservation status of this and other andean species,2017,0.566
"Temperature drives abundance fluctuations, but spatial dynamics is constrained by landscape configuration: Implications for climate-driven range shift in a butterfly",1 prediction of species distributions in an altered climate requires knowledge on how global and local scale factors interact to limit their current distributions such knowledge can be gained through studies of spatial population dynamics at climatic range margins 2 here using a butterfly pyrgus armoricanus as model species we first predicted based on species distribution modelling that its climatically suitable habitats currently extend north of its realized range projecting the model into scenarios of future climate we showed that the distribution of climatically suitable habitats may shift northward by an additional 400 km in the future 3 second we used a 13 year monitoring dataset including the majority of all habitat patches at the species northern range margin to assess the synergetic impact of temperature fluctuations and spatial distribution of habitat microclimatic conditions and habitat quality on abundance and colonizationâ extinction dynamics 4 the fluctuation in abundance between years was almost entirely determined by the variation in temperature during the species larval development in contrast colonization and extinction dynamics were better explained by patch area between patch connectivity and host plant density this suggests that the response of the species to future climate change may be limited by future land use and how its host plants respond to climate change it is thus probable that dispersal limitation will prevent p armoricanus from reaching its potential future distribution 5 we argue that models of range dynamics should consider the factors influencing metapopulation dynamics especially at the range edges and not only broad scale climate it includes factors acting at the scale of habitat patches such as habitat quality and microclimate and landscape scale factors such as the spatial configuration of potentially suitable patches knowledge of population dynamics under various environmental conditions and the incorporation of realistic scenarios of future land use appears essential to provide predictions useful for actions mitigating the negative effects of climate change,2017,0.492
Matching seed to site by climate similarity: Techniques to prioritize plant materials development and use in restoration,land management agencies are increasing the use of native plant materials for vegetation treatments to restore ecosystem function and maintain natural ecological integrity this shift toward the use of natives has highlighted a need to increase the diversity of materials available a key problem is agreeing on how many and which new accessions should be developed here we describe new methods that address this problem our methods use climate data to calculate a climate similarity index between two points in a defined extent this index can be used to predict relative performance of available accessions at a target site in addition the index can be used in combination with standard cluster analysis algorithms to quantify and maximize climate coverage mean climate similarity given a modeled range extent and a specified number of accessions we demonstrate the utility of this latter feature by applying it to the extents of 11 western north american species with proven or potential use in restoration first a species specific seed transfer map can be readily generated for a species by predicting performance for accessions currently available this map can be readily updated to accommodate new accessions next the increase in climate coverage achieved by adding successive accessions can be explored yielding information that managers can use to balance ecological and economic considerations in determining how many accessions to develop this approach identifies sampling sites referred to as climate centers which contribute unique complementary climate coverage to accessions on hand thus providing explicit sampling guidance for both germplasm preservation and research we examine how these and other features of our approach add to existing methods used to guide plant materials development and use finally we discuss how these new methods provide a framework that could be used to coordinate native plant materials development evaluation and use across agencies regions and research groups,2017,0.159
"Avian SDMs: current state, challenges, and opportunities",quantifying species distributions using species distribution models sdms has emerged as a central method in modern biogeography these empirical models link species occurrence data with spatial environmental information since their emergence in the 1990s thousands of scientific papers have used sdms to study organisms across the entire tree of life with birds commanding considerable attention here we review the current state of avian sdms and point to challenges and future opportunities for specific applications ranging from conservation biology invasive species and predicting seabird distributions to more general topics such as modeling avian diversity niche evolution and seasonal distributions at a biogeographic scale while sdms have been criticized for being phenomenological in nature and for their inability to explicitly account for a variety of processes affecting populations we conclude that they remain a powerful tool to learn about past current and future species distributions â at least when their limitations and assumptions are recognized and addressed we close our review by providing an outlook on prospects and synergies with other disciplines in which avian sdms can play an important role,2017,0.732
Species distribution model of invasive alien species Acacia nilotica for Central-Eastern Indonesia using Biodiversity Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL),sutomo van etten e 2017 species distribution model of invasive alien species acacia nilotica for central eastern indonesia nbsp using biodiversity climate change virtual laboratory bccvl trop drylands 1 36 42 climate change may facilitate alien species nbsp invasion into new areas this study uses biodiversity and climate change virtual laboratory to develop a species distribution model nbsp sdm of acacia nilotica l willd ex delile based upon its naturalized distribution to project the potential distribution of a nilotica nbsp throughout tropical environment of indonesia under current and future climate conditions global biodiversity information facility nbsp database was utilized to obtain the species occurrences data the climate factors were precipitation and temperature layers available in nbsp worldclim current conditions 1950 2000 at 2 5 arcmin we used generalized linear model the result was then projected to the year nbsp 2045 using rcp 8 5 greenhouse gas emissions scenarios to influence the climate model csiro mark 3 0 with 30â â resolution final nbsp results show that global climate change is likely to increase markedly the potential distribution of a nilotica in indonesia by the year nbsp 2045 a nilotica is most likely to spread to eastern parts of indonesia in general our model performance is good auc 0 82 nbsp however like many other sdms it does not take into account biotic interactions as well as other environmental factors nonetheless nbsp climatic suitability is an essential requirement for successful establishment of an invasive species and species distribution models that nbsp can disclose general patterns and convey useful estimate,2017,0.616
Notes on using LifeScanner for DNA-based identification of non-marine macroinvertebrates,we at the kenai national wildlife refuge knwr have been intent on inventorying and monitoring invertebrates for some time in fulfillment of our congressional mandate to â œto conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity â 2 recently the us fish wildlife service alaska region has collaborated with the university of alaska museum to build a dna barcode library of alaskan non marine arthropods to better enable identifications of alaskan material by dna barcoding sikes et al 2017 in this project arthropods were submitted for dna barcoding in 95 well plates to the canadian center for dna barcoding ccdb and resulting sequences were uploaded to bold ratnasingham and hebert 2007 at knwr dna barcoding has enabled us to add to knwrâ s checklist kenai national wildlife refuge biology staff 2017 species that could not have been identified by morphological methods we have also added to our list molecular operating taxonomic units motus blaxter et al 2005 not necessarily associated with any accepted name especially those recognized by boldâ s barcode index number bin algorithm ratnasingham and hebert 2013 beginning in fall 2015 knwr obtained a number of lifescanner kits http lifescanner net for identification of animal specimens i also purchased kits for use in a homeschool science project on willow rose gall midges and to identify pest insects around my familyâ s small farming operation in kasilof in this article i will present a summary of the results highlight some of the more noteworthy identifications obtained and discuss the pros and cons of the lifescanner service based on my experience,2017,0.475
Improvised Hand Injury Treatment Using Traditional Veterinary Medicine in Ethiopia,in remote wilderness environments local people with traditional knowledge of medicinal plants are potentially important first line health care providers we present a case of a 31 year old man who fell off a horse while trekking through a remote mountain landscape in ethiopia and sustained blunt force trauma to the hand a local mountain hut keeper examined the patientâ s hand and used heated leaves of the succulent plant kalanchoe petitiana to treat a suspected metacarpal fracture as first responder in a low resource setting the hut keeper relied on his traditional knowledge of ethnoveterinary medicine to improvise a treatment for a human injury in a remote mountain environment although in this case the outcome of the traditional intervention was positive our analysis shows that the massage component of the intervention could have led to complications conversely reports from the use of related kalanchoe species suggest that heated kalanchoe leaves could be useful in the compression component of traditional care for hand injuries validation of traditional remedies and their therapeutic potential are needed if they are to complement wilderness wound care safely and reliably the documentation and validation of these remedies are urgently needed as many medicinal plants and indigenous knowledge of how to use these valuable natural resources are being lost,2017,0.181
Conservation of Indigenous Vegetables from a Hotspot in Tropical Asia: What Did We Learn from Vavilov?,conservation biologists have allocated an indo burma biodiversity hotspot among 34 regions around the world especially rich in plants animals and other species myers et al 2000 more than 13 500 different vascular plant species of which 7000 are endemic have been detected in this hotspot tordoff et al 2012 ninety years ago the russian scientist vavilov 1926 pointed to the richness of cultivated plant species and their crop wild relatives in certain areas around the world of which the tropical asia center was one of eight later zeven and zhukovsky 1975 applied the term indochineseâ indonesian region of diversity for the area which by then had been divided by various authors into an indochinese region including myanmar laos cambodia thailand bangladesh and parts of northeastern india and southern china and a more southern region including malaysia and indonesia darlington 1956 li 1969 schery 1972 janick 2002 nandwani 2014 rice oryza sp mungbean vigna radiata gourd species and indigenous vegetables were among crops that zeven and zhukovsky 1975 listed in the indochinese region of diversity,2017,0.921
A new phytogeographic map for the Southwest Australian Floristic Region after an exceptional decade of collection and discovery,after an 11 year period of exceptional specimen acquisition we evaluated the robustness of the western australian herbarium specimen database in elucidating patterns of diversity and phytogeographic maps of the southwest australian floristic region swafr using rarefaction strategies to compensate for sample bias and a novel approach to multivariate classification and site ordination we generated maps of floristic provinces and districts in the swafr a 33 increase in specimen numbers and 10 additional taxa were recorded in the study area swafr and 75km inland buffer over the 11 years although historical biases in collecting patterns tended to persist although floristic district concepts were robust regional and provincial concepts were more equivocal we therefore opted for broad delineations rather than geographically precise ones we propose a novel phytogeographic map adding a new floristic province kalbarri five new districts and other boundary adjustments for and in the swafr the updated swafr has 8379 native vascular plant taxa 82 species and 18 subspecies of which 47 are endemic and 49 have been described since 1970 biodiversity indices generated from collections data should be used cautiously in contrast the new phytogeographic regionalization of the swafr is robust at the district level despite shortcomings herbarium collections provide the best information available for broadscale analyses of plant diversity,2017,0.353
Niche modeling of a freshwater fish species: Estimating and mapping the uncertainty among modeling methods and freshwater variables.,enms are increasingly accurate which give us more reliability to define environmentally suitable areas to species although it is necessary to remember that even the predicted suitable areas are suffused with uncertainty and thus may not indicate the â œrealâ effect of the environment over the species dynamics considering this the aim of this work is to assess which factors create more uncertainties on freshwater large fish species modelling methods or climate variables to predict the species distribution we collected the occurrence sites of brachyplathystoma filamentosum and 1 km freshwater specific variables available in climate and environmental groups the suitability maps showed that the areas with great environmental suitability values were the amazon large rivers and nearby areas moreover the amazon basin presented high uncertainty values for the methods component while for the variables the uncertainty mapped in this area was lower the methods and variables were responsible for 46 and 40 of the uncertainty therefore due to the predictionsâ uncertainty presented it is necessary to be caution in choosing the variables and methods to model a specie distribution moreover we emphasize the importance of using uncertainty analysis to verify the accuracy of enms in future works,2017,0.789
"Insect Visitors of Cirsium pitcheri, a Threatened and Endemic Dune Species, in Relation to Annual Weather Variation",cirsium pitcheri torr ex eaton torr a gray pitcherâ s thistle is a threatened herbaceous plant endemic to sand dune ecosystems along lakes huron michigan and superior in north america habitat for this plant is limited to active dunes with moving sand i observed floral visitors of c pitcheri in indiana dunes national lakeshore and indiana dunes state park and calculated frequency and density of visitor families additionally i tested for relationships between visitor counts and previous growing season mean temperature and precipitation formicidae anthomyiidae and cecidomyiidae were the most frequent families however apidae was the only family correlated with the number of subsequent c pitcheri seedlings counts of mean visitors per plant were different between years with 2013 being the lowest these values were related to previous growing season precipitation which was lowest in 2012 due to a widespread severe drought there was clear depression of floral visitor frequency and density following the 2012 drought but that was short lived and subsequent years displayed recovery of visitor numbers many of the floral visitors of c pitcheri are likely feeding on nectar pollen and vegetative structures and providing minimal if any pollination benefit however families such as apidae and halictidae carry visible pollen loads between multiple individual plants pollinator augmentation with these families may benefit c pitcheri reproduction especially following years of drought,2017,0.249
"Invasive house geckos (Hemidactylus spp.): their current, potential and future distribution",in this study we identified the current distribution of five globally distributed invasive hemidactylus species and predicted their potential and future distribution using species distribution models based on climate and elevation data these species included h brookii h frenatus h garnotii h mabouia and h turcicus we show that many regions with tropical and mediterranean climates are suitable for most of these species however their current and potential distributions suggest that climate is not the only limiting factor we hypothesize that climatic conditions may affect competition and other interactions resulting in a segregated distribution of the studied hemidactylus species as an effect of global climate change it is likely that h brookii will expand its range to areas that are currently colonized by h mabouia and or h frenatus while h turcicus is likely to expand its range to areas that are not yet invaded by any hemidactylus species the role of species interactions in the range expansion of these five hemidactylus species still remains poorly understood but could be of major importance in understanding and managing these invasive species,2017,0.948
"Quantifying quality: the ""Apparent Quality Index"", a measure of data quality for occurrence datasets",when making an initial assessment of a dataset originating from an unfamiliar source a user typically relies on the visible properties of the dataset as a whole such as the title the publisher and the size of the dataset aspects of data quality are usually out of view beyond some intuitions and hard to compare assertions in 2007 at gbif spain we tried to correct that by developing an index that enables a user to assess the quality of darwin core datasets published by gbif spain and to track improvements in quality over time our goal was to create an index that is explicit easy to understand and easy to obtain we dubbed that index ica gbif spain 2010 for its name in spanish ã ndice de calidad aparente apparent quality index we say ica measures apparent quality because although unlikely a dataset can have a high ica while its records are actually a poor reflection of the reality to which they refer ica summarizes data quality on the three primary dimensions of biodiversity data taxonomic geospatial and temporal in this contribution we will present the rationale behind the ica how it is calculated how it works within the darwin test tool ortega maqueda and pando 2008 how it is integrated in the data publication processes of gbif spain and some discussion and results about its utility and potential we also compare ica to the emerging framework for data quality assessmenttdwg data quality interest group 2016,2017,0.143
Strategies for Popularisation of Taxonomy in India,taxonomy provides a window to the broad understanding of biodiversity while it is being increasingly recognized that taxonomy is the most important tool for identification and evaluation of living organisms there is also a growing apprehension that interest in this important branch of science is rapidly declining at a time when human induced species extinctions far outnumber the natural processes it would be a sorry state of affairs if species were to disappear even before they are discovered named and classified in the present day scenario where students from institutions of higher learning evince only a modicum of interest in taxonomy and concomitantly these systems being able to produce far fewer schools of taxonomists the task of reviving interest in taxonomy seems indeed daunting several measures are suggested herein to address this issue and some strategies proposed as part of the implementation of the global taxonomic initiative in the indian context,2017,0.292
"Bioinformatics in the Plant Genomic and Phenomic Domain: The German Contribution to Resources, Services and Perspectives",plant genetic resources are a substantial opportunity for plant breeding preservation and maintenance of biological diversity as part of the german network for bioinformatics infrastructure de nbi the german crop biogreenformatics network gcbn focuses mainly on crop plants and provides both data and software infrastructure which are tailored to the needs of the plant research community our mission and key objectives include 1 provision of transparent access to germplasm seeds 2 the delivery of improved workflows for plant gene annotation and 3 implementation of bioinformatics services that link genotypes and phenotypes this review introduces the gcbnâ s spectrum of web services and integrated data resources that address common research problems in the plant genomics community,2017,0.131
Historical Biogeography of endemic seed plant genera in the Caribbean: Did GAARlandia play a role?,the caribbean archipelago is a region with an extremely complex geological history and an outstanding plant diversity with high levels of endemism the aim of this study was to better understand the historical assembly and evolution of endemic seed plant genera in the caribbean by first determining divergence times of endemic genera to test whether the hypothesized greater antilles and aves ridge gaarlandia land bridge played a role in the archipelago colonization and second by testing south america as the main colonization source as expected by the position of landmasses and recent evidence of an asymmetrical biotic interchange we reconstructed a dated molecular phylogenetic tree for 625 seed plants including 32 caribbean endemic genera using bayesian inference and ten calibrations to estimate the geographic range of the ancestors of endemic genera we performed a model selection between a null and two complex biogeographic models that included timeframes based on geological information dispersal probabilities and directionality among regions crown ages for endemic genera ranged from early eocene 53 1 ma to late pliocene 3 4 ma confidence intervals for divergence times crown and or stem ages of 22 endemic genera occurred within the gaarlandia time frame contrary to expectations the antilles appears as the main ancestral area for endemic seed plant genera and only five genera had a south american origin in contrast to patterns shown for vertebrates and other organisms and based on our sampling we conclude that gaarlandia did not act as a colonization route for plants between south america and the antilles further studies on caribbean plant dispersal at the species and population levels will be required to reveal finer scale biogeographic patterns and mechanisms,2017,0.187
Native and non-native aquatic plants of South America: comparing and integrating GBIF records with literature data,the global biodiversity information facility gbif is at the moment one of the largest and most widely used biodiversity databases nevertheless there are still some limitations e g in terms of plant species status native vs non native and geographic resolution of records at the same time it is well known that alien plant invasions in inland freshwaters can alter community structure ecosystem functions and services with significant negative impacts on biodiversity and human activities we assessed if the gbif database has a geospatial homogeneous information for native and non native aquatic plant species for south america and whether or not literature resources not yet digitalized floras checklists and other papers could provide additional information we selected a set of 40 native and 40 non native aquatic species these 80 species included a sub set of 40 alien species previously evaluated with the usaqwra scheme us aquatic weed risk assessment species with non reliable identification duplicates of the same collection records poorly georeferenced were removed from the dataset new records were manually compiled through classical literature research all the georeferenced records gbif literature were used for the mapping and the comparative analysis as a result we can conclude that the two datasets provide quite significantly different information and the combination of the two offers new information that would not exist in a single data source nevertheless a careful quality evaluation of the primary information both in the case of literature and gbif should be conducted before the data is used for further analyses,2017,0.596
"Biogeographical comparison of the emergent macrophyte, Sagittaria platyphylla in its native and introduced ranges",understanding why some plant species become invasive is important to predict and prevent future weed threats and identify appropriate management strategies many hypotheses have been proposed to explain why plants become invasive yet few studies have quantitatively compared plant and population parameters between native and introduced range populations to gain an objective perspective on the causes of plant invasion the present study uses a biogeographical field survey to compare morphological and reproductive traits and abundance between the native range usa and two introduced ranges australia and south africa of sagittaria platyphylla engelm j g sm alismataceae a highly invasive freshwater macrophyte introduced and native populations differed in sexual reproductive output with the number of achenes per fruiting head and individual achene weight found to be 40 and 50 greater in introduced populations respectively however no other morphological traits were found to be consistently different between the native and both introduced ranges especially after taking into account differences in environmental conditions between the three ranges although populations in introduced regions were larger and occupied greater percentage cover no differences in plant density were evident our results suggest that apart from sexual reproduction many of the trait patterns observed in s platyphylla are influenced by environmental and habitat conditions within the native and invaded ranges we conclude that the enemy release hypothesis best explains the results observed for sexual reproduction in particular we hypothesise that a release from natural enemies specifically a pre dispersal seed predator may induce reproductive plasticity in s platyphylla,2017,0.709
Remote sensing-derived fractures and shrub patterns to identify groundwater dependence,the identification and location of groundwater dependent ecosystems gdes are the first steps in protecting and managing them such identifications are challenging where the surface expressions of groundwater are not obvious this work presents a remote sensing based approach to infer the groundwater dependence of semi arid shrubs from their association with fractures that facilitate root access to groundwater as a case study we used the ziziphus lotus matorral in se spain a priority conservation habitat in the european union habitat 5220 directive 92 43 eec that is highly threatened by agricultural and urban sprawl the approach combines object based image analysis of high resolution orthoimages to map ziziphus individuals geomorphometric analysis of a lidar derived terrain model to map bedrock fractures and spatial statistics to assess the association between ziziphus and fractures electrical resistivity tomography was used to validate the identified fractures and the seasonal dynamics of the normalized difference vegetation index was used to prove that z lotus maintained higher greenness during the summer drought and was less coupled with precipitation than the nearby non phreatophytic vegetation a majority 61 of the ziziphus patches particularly the smallest ones occurred within 50 m of faults this spatial association between phreatophyte shrubs and fractures contributes to the identification of gdes this approach offers several advantages since it is simple low cost and non destructive in addition the differentiation of shrubs into size classes provided insights into the long term environmental controls underlying the establishment of ziziphus individuals the evidence of groundwater dependence by z lotus in habitat 5220 indicates the need for its urgent protection under the water framework directive,2017,0.205
"Monitoring recreation across European nature areas: A geo-database of visitor counts, a review of literature and a call for a visitor counting reporting standard",2017 it nl de data management gbif cited recreation sampling,2017,0.326
The distribution of Taeniophallus nicagus (Colubridae) in Suriname with some information on morphology,taeniophallus nicagus colubridae was first listed in suriname from the brownsberg nature park in 1976 additional specimens were collected in that same year at raleighvallen nature reserve on the bank of the coppename river two additional locations for this species along with morphological data are provided in this paper apart from the number of infralabial scales all specimens are unambiguously identified as t nicagus presently this species is only known from the central part of suriname,2017,0.59
Where to survey? Spatial biodiversity survey gap analysis: a multicriteria approach,the aim of this study was to quantify the relative effort for biodiversity surveys across the public forest estate in the south west of western australia we collated information on historical surveys into a metadatabase and recorded locations where surveys had been conducted in a spatial geodatabase we then used multicriteria modelling to rank land conservation units on the basis of relative survey effort the results indicated that the western particularly the south western parts of the study area were relatively well surveyed while eastern parts were relatively poorly surveyed this is likely to reflect greater habitat loss and fragmentation of vegetation on the eastern margins of the forest estate where it adjoins the extensively cleared western australian wheatbelt there was also an emphasis on monitoring biodiversity in forest habitats closer to the main population centres of the south west the results of this analysis provide a basis for assessing future survey needs for the region which should also consider patterns of distribution in species richness the extent connectivity and conservation status of native vegetation and the relative risks posed to biodiversity by infrastructure and industrial land uses we discuss the potential limitations of the multicriteria modelling approach in the context of our study,2017,0.357
Exotic ants in Denmark (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),the number of exotic and invasive tramp organisms is increasing rapidly in the age of global trade ants can be particularly problematic when introduced into new ecosystems by human activities here we present a list of 30 exotic ant species so far introduced to denmark a total of 16 species temporarily established colonies inside heated buildings another 14 species were only sporadically introduced to the country with cargo without documented establishment in a search for exotic ants in five danish hothouse complexes in the years 2013 2015 we recorded a total of ten species anochetus mayri gnamptogenys striatula hypoponera ergatandria h punctatissima linepithema angulatum neoponera unidentata strumigenys rogeri technomyrmex albipes t vitiensis and solenopsis sp of these only h punctatissima and technomymex spp have previously been found in denmark and a mayri was to our knowledge not reported from europe before we conclude that exotic ant communities in greenhouses are subject to turnover and that the number of exotic ant species distributed with plants likely increased in recent time finally we discuss the potential of the observed species to become pests outside their native ranges,2017,0.857
Myxomycetes of National Nature Park Slobozhanskiy (Ukraine): biodiversity and noteworthy species,seventy seven species of myxomycetes were found in the oak and pine forests of the national nature park slobozhanskiy north eastern ukraine among them arcyria imperialis didymium ovoideum lamproderma gulielmae trichia subfusca oligonema fulvum and physarum spectabile are new for ukraine the specimen preliminary identified as arcyria cf bulbosa may represent a new species,2017,0.63
Seed micromorphology and its systematic significance in tribe Alsineae (Caryophyllaceae),despite the increasing number of molecular phylogenetic studies conducted recently in caryophyllaceae the relationships within several major lineages remain unresolved tribe alsineae including the large genera cerastium and stellaria is among the poorly studied taxa in the family in terms of seed morphology in order to test the utility of seed characters in delimitation of genera in the stellaria cerastium complex seeds of eight genera and 66 taxa were studied morphologically using light and scanning electron microscopy sem among the scored characters seed size and shape provide valuable diagnostic information at generic rank in addition six types of seed ornamentation are recognized which might be attributed to different genera of tribe alsineae the most remarkable seeds in terms of color and ornamentation were found in members of the genus dichodon supporting its recognition at the generic rank cerastium seeds are characterized mostly by triangular shape reddish brown color and colliculate tuberculate or rugose testa while stellaria can be divided into two groups large and small seeded taxa mesostemma and the large seeded stellaria taxa resemble each other both in gross morphology and in seed micromorphology in addition the small seeded taxa show two distinct types of seed ornamentation tuberculate or rugose seed characters do not completely support the current sectional and subsectional concept in cerastium but they appear to be useful to differentiate subsect fugacia as well as some closely related species,2017,0.373
Simulating plant invasion dynamics in mountain ecosystems under global change scenarios,across the globe invasive alien species cause severe environmental changes altering species composition and ecosystem functions so far mountain areas have mostly been spared from large scale invasions however climate change land use abandonment the development of tourism and the increasing ornamental trade will weaken the barriers to invasions in these systems understanding how alien species will react and how native communities will influence their success is thus of prime importance in a management perspective here we used a spatially and temporally explicit simulation model to forecast invasion risks in a protected mountain area in the french alps under future conditions we combined scenarios of climate change land use abandonment and tourism linked increases in propagule pressure to test if the spread of alien species in the region will increase in the future we modelled already naturalized alien species and new ornamental plants accounting for interactions among global change components but also competition with the native vegetation our results show that propagule pressure and climate change will interact to increase overall species richness of both naturalized aliens and new ornamentals as well as their upper elevational limits and regional range sizes under climate change woody aliens are predicted to more than double in range size and herbaceous species to occupy up to 20 of the park area in contrast land use abandonment will open new invasion opportunities for woody aliens but decrease invasion probability for naturalized and ornamental alien herbs as a consequence of colonization by native trees this emphasises the importance of interactions with the native vegetation either for facilitating or potentially for curbing invasions overall our work highlights an additional and previously underestimated threat for the fragile mountain flora of the alps already facing climate changes land use transformations and overexploitation by tourism,2017,0.686
Niche shifts and the potential distribution of Phenacoccus solenopsis (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) under climate change,the cotton mealybug phenacoccus solenopsis tinsley hemiptera pseudococcidae is a serious invasive species that significantly damages plants of approximately 60 families around the world it is originally from north america and has also been introduced to other continents our goals were to create a current and future potential global distribution map for this pest under climate change with maxent software we tested the hypothesis of niche conservatism for p solenopsis by comparing its native niche in north america to its invasive niches on other continents using principal components analyses pca in r the potentially suitable habitat for p solenopsis in its native and non native ranges is presented in the present paper the results suggested that the mean temperature of the wettest quarter and the mean temperature of the driest quarter are the most important environmental variables determining the potential distribution of p solenopsis we found strong evidence for niche shifts in the realized climatic niche of this pest in south america and australia due to niche unfilling however a niche shift in the realized climatic niche of this pest in eurasian owing to niche expansion,2017,0.299
Chasing ghosts: Allopolyploid origin of Oxyria sinensis (Polygonaceae) from its only diploid congener and an unknown ancestor,reconstructing the origin of a polyploid species is particularly challenging when an ancestor has become extinct under such circumstances the extinct donor of a genome found in the polyploid may be treated as a â ghostâ species in that its prior existence is recognised through the presence of its genome in the polyploid in this study we aimed to determine the polyploid origin of oxyria sinensis 2n 40 for which only one congeneric species is known i e diploid o digyna 2n 14 genomic in situ hybridization gish transcriptome phylogenetic and demographic analyses and ecological niche modeling were conducted for this purpose gish revealed that o sinensis comprised 14 chromosomes from o digyna and 26 chromosomes from an unknown ancestor transcriptome analysis indicated that following divergence from o digyna involving genome duplication around 12 million years ago ma a second genome duplication occurred approximately 6 ma to give rise to o sinensis oxyria sinensis was shown to contain homologous gene sequences divergent from those present in o digyna in addition to a set that clustered with those in o digyna coalescent simulations indicated that o sinensis expanded its distribution approximately 6 7 ma possibly following the second polyploidization event whereas o digyna expanded its range much later it was also indicated that the distributions of both species contracted and re expanded during the pleistocene climatic oscillations ecological niche modeling similarly suggested that both species experienced changes in their distributional ranges in response to quaternary climatic changes the extinction of the unknown â ghostâ tetraploid species implicated in the origin of o sinensis could have resulted from superior adaptation of o sinensis to repeated climatic changes in the region where it now occurs,2017,0.894
Inventory and prioritization for the conservation of crop wild relatives in The Netherlands under climate change,crop related wild plant species are a rich source of genetic diversity and are potentially useful in plant breeding for the development of varieties with novel traits however many crop wild relatives are poorly represented in gene banks while their continued survival in situ is by no means ensured here we introduced a methodology to inventory relevant taxa and to assess their threat levels for continued survival in situ including the expected effects of climate change and applied it to crop wild relatives in the netherlands a total number of 214 taxa of wild relatives of economically important agricultural and horticultural crops were identified of which 53 are included in the dutch red list of plant species the group of 53 red list species was studied in more detail to prioritize species for conservation based on recent distribution data the number of dutch populations consisting of at least 50 individuals varied strongly among the red list species the majority of these â largeâ populations were found to be located in protected areas furthermore niche modelling was used to study the expected effects of climate change on the future distribution of the red list species these analyses predicted a reduced distribution area for the majority of species although also positive effects of climate change were observed for several species similar patterns of change were observed when only protected areas were considered results of the study were used to prioritize the conservation of crop wild relatives in the netherlands,2017,0.994
Open-access and open-source for remote sensing training in ecology,remote sensing is one of the most important tools in ecology and conservation for an effective monitoring of ecosystems in space and time hence a proper training is crucial for developing effective conservation practices based on remote sensing data in this paper we aim to highlight the potential of open access data and open source software and the importance of the inter linkages between these and remote sensing training with an interdisciplinary perspective we will first deal with the importance of open access data by further providing several examples of free and open source software foss for a deeper and more critical understanding of remote sensing applications,2017,0.117
Domestication and dispersal of African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud.): from West Africa to the Americas,asian rice oryza sativa and african rice oryza glaberrima are the only two species of a large genus known to be cultivated as crops together they serve as a staple food for the majority of our worldâ s growing population whereas asian rice was domesticated from o rufipogon around 9000 years ago rice was domesticated independently in west africa from a different wild progenitor and thus poses an interesting example of parallel evolution its exact origins however are still contested recent genome wide studies have supported either a centric or a non centric origin of o glaberrima here we review the evidence for both scenarios through a critical reassessment of 206 publicly available whole genome sequences of domesticated and wild accessions african rice while genetic diversity analyses support a bottleneck caused by domestication signatures of recent and strong positive selection do not unequivocally point to candidate domestication genes suggesting that domestication of african rice may have proceeded differently than in asian rice â either through selection on different alleles or through different modes of selection the possibility that population subdivision could account for this pattern was assessed by conducting a structure analysis which revealed five genetic clusters localising to different geographic regions phylogenetic relationships of these clusters with four wild populations support a centre of origin along the niger river followed by diversification along the atlantic coast analysis of multiple domestication genes furthermore demonstrates the presence of ancestral haplotypes confined to the southwest coastal population suggesting that at least one of several key domestication genes might have originated there these findings shed new light on an old controversy concerning the process of plant domestication in africa in which two models have traditionally been competing namely the rapid transition model proposed by porteì res 1962 and the protracted transition model proposed by harlan et al 1976 our data provides evidence for both supporting an origin in the proposed primary domestication centre of the rapid transition model and highlighting the possibility of multiple origins consistent with the protracted transition model including a separate centre of domestication activity in the guinea highlands in addition this study demonstrates the genetic similarity of a natural landrace cultivated in suriname to a previous sample collected in suriname and confirms their relatedness with accessions sampled from the tropical forest belt along the coast of west africa future sampling and analysis of whole genome sequences of o glaberrima across the species range on both continents will further elucidate the origins of rice in west africa and in the americas,2017,0.777
Pest Risk Analysis for Cinnamomum camphora,cinnamomum camphora was identified as a species of interest during an eu wide â œhorizon scanningâ effort led by roy et al 2015 to identify potentially invasive alien species ias and prevent and mitigate their ecological effects they developed a ranked list of species that are likely to be introduced spread and have significant impacts on biodiversity and should be further evaluated with risk assessment approaches subsequently eppo included the species as one of concern in having the potential to establish and spread in novel areas within the next ten years cinnamomum camphora was identified as 1 of 16 species with high priority for a pra given its known ecological impacts in its invasive range coupled with the potential for spread in natural areas within the eppo region and cost effectiveness of management efforts the species is a large tree native to asia that has been intentionally introduced for ornamental timber and industrial purposes in regions around the world in some regions e g southeastern australia south africa usa c camphora is often considered highly problematic because of its significant effects on native biodiversity and forest regeneration initial distribution maps indicated the potential occurrence of c camphora islimited to southern areas of the eppo region under current climate conditions but the projected range is expected to expand under future climate scenarios in 2016 the species was prioritized along with 36 additional species from the eppo list of invasive alien plants and a recent horizon scanning study2 for pra within the life funded project â œmitigating the threat of invasive alien plants to the eu through pest risk analysis to support the regulation 1143 2014â c camphora was one of 16 species identified as having a high priority for pra,2017,0.916
Global thermal niche models of two European grasses show high invasion risks in Antarctica,the two non native grasses that have established long term populations in antarctica poa pratensis and poa annua were studied from a global multidimensional thermal niche perspective to address the biological invasion risk to antarctica these two species exhibit contrasting introduction histories and reproductive strategies and represent two referential case studies of biological invasion processes we used a multistep process with a range of species distribution modelling techniques ecological niche factor analysis multidimensional envelopes distance entropy algorithms together with a suite of thermoclimatic variables to characterize the potential ranges of these species their native bioclimatic thermal envelopes in eurasia together with the different naturalized populations across continents were compared next the potential niche of p pratensis was wider at the cold extremes however p annua life history attributes enable it to be a more successful colonizer we observe that particularly cold summers are a key aspect of the unique antarctic environment in consequence ruderals such as p annua can quickly expand under such harsh conditions whereas the more stress tolerant p pratensis endures and persist through steady growth compiled data on human pressure at the antarctic peninsula allowed us to provide site specific biosecurity risk indicators we conclude that several areas across the region are vulnerable to invasions from these and other similar species this can only be visualized in species distribution models sdms when accounting for founder populations that reveal nonanalogous conditions results reinforce the need for strict management practices to minimize introductions furthermore our novel set of temperature based bioclimatic gis layers for ice free terrestrial antarctica provide a mechanism for regional and global species distribution models to be built for other potentially invasive species,2017,0.823
Models that predict risk of Hendra virus transmission from flying foxes to horses,hendra virus emerged in 1994 and after a high profile index outbreak affecting horse stables in the brisbane suburb of hendra spilled over rarely for the next sixteen years approximately one event per year however it had a high case fatality rate in horses and humans 50 75 in 2011 a large cluster of 21 spillover events occurred along a coastal strip of 160 km from southern qld to northern nsw in response to the increased spillover risk potential for propagating epidemics and the high virulence in both horses and humans the national hev research program nhvrp was launched in 2012 and included this project the objective of the project was to develop models that could predict the risk of hendra virus spillover specifically the transmission of hendra virus from flying foxes to horses this would enable better targeting of risk mitigation strategies improved health outcomes for horses and humans and cost savings in disease prevention horse owners veterinary practitioners wildlife managers and policymakers are likely to directly benefit from these outcomes,2017,0.619
Large but uneven reduction in fish size across species in relation to changing sea temperatures,ectotherms often attain smaller body sizes when they develop at higher temperatures this phenomenon known as the temperature size rule has important consequences for global fisheries whereby ocean warming is predicted to result in smaller fish and reduced biomass however the generality of this phenomenon and the mechanisms that drive it in natural populations remain unresolved in this study we document the maximal size of 74 fish species along a steep temperature gradient in the mediterranean sea and find strong support for the temperature size rule importantly we additionally find that size reduction in active fish species is dramatically larger than for more sedentary species as the temperature dependence of oxygen consumption depends on activity levels these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that oxygen is a limiting factor shaping the temperature size rule in fishes these results suggest that ocean warming will result in a sharp but uneven reduction in fish size that will cause major shifts in size dependent interactions moreover warming will have major implications for fisheries as the main species targeted for harvesting will show the most substantial declines in biomass,2017,0.618
Consequences of climate change for conserving leafy vegetable CWR in Europe,crop wild relatives cwr are an indispensable source of useful traits for crop improvement when these can no longer be found in the cultivated species therefore safeguarding of cwr is widely regarded as a high priority however cwr are currently severely underrepresented in ex situ genetic resources collections and their in situ survival has become at risk due to various human influences especially during the last decades the survival of cwr in their natural habitats has become a growing concern due to the increasing awareness of climate change and the effects thereof on flora and fauna recent predictions by species distribution modelling of eight dutch iucn red listed cwr revealed large range contractions in europe as a result of climate change two study species were even predicted to go extinct in the netherlands notwithstanding their present occurrence in protected areas aguirre gutiã rrez et al 2017 the study showed that to develop sound conservation measures the effects of climate change cannot be ignored analysis of the expected effects of climate change on the distribution of cwr is fundamental to support in situ conservation measures and to decide for which species ex situ backing up is essential,2017,0.691
"Diversity, threat, and conservation of reptiles from continental Ecuador",ecuador is one of the most reptile diverse countries in the world with 464 currently recognized species similar to other taxa reptiles in ecuador face important conservation challenges because of anthropogenic activities using distribution data of nearly 90 of the species of reptiles from continental ecuador as well as information on ecosystem protection status and anthropogenic activities we present the first comprehensive quantitative study of reptile conservation in ecuador while species richness is higher in northwestern ecuador and the central northern amazon the conservation priority areas identified in this study also include the central pacific coast southwestern ecuador and the central southern amazon similar areas have been identified by previous studies as conservation gaps thus our study reinforces the idea of protecting those areas to improve the conservation of biodiversity in continental ecuador,2017,0.478
Lineage-specific climatic niche drives the tempo of vicariance in the Rand Flora,aim the disjunct distribution patterns of sister taxa can arise when previously continuous distribution ranges are fragmented by environmental changes such as major climatic events populations become isolated on either side of the newly established environmental barrier and absence of gene flow promotes allopatric speciation in a process that is known as ecological vicariance if climate change altered the ancestral range gradually such as along temporal temperature or moisture gradients the age of divergence of disjunct species should be related to the lineage tolerance to climatic conditions here we investigate this hypothesis using as a study model the african rand flora a continental scale floristic pattern that relates sister taxa distributed on either side of the saharan desert location africa macaronesia mediterranean basin and the middle east methods we estimated the extant climatic tolerances of 14 rand flora lineages based on present occurrence data and correlated the phylogenetic age of divergence between vicariant clades we tested whether the tempo of the vicariance in the rand flora lineages was associated with the average values of their climatic niches in agreement with niche driven divergence we hindcasted species ranges using species distribution models combined with palaeoclimate simulations to infer the potential distribution of each lineage s ancestors results we found a positive relationship between the lineage temperature niche and the age of the rand flora disjunction lineages with subtropical affinities diverged first whereas those with a higher tolerance to drier conditions temperate or sub xeric adaptations exhibited younger disjunctions the range reconstructions showed the existence of climatic corridors south of the sahara in the wetter late miocene which became interrupted during the mid pliocene warming event main conclusions our results suggest that climate change leading to the formation of the sahara desert drove rand flora lineages divergences along a temporal sequence that matched the climatic niche of species,2017,0.513
Agroforestry systems in the Upper Mara River Basin,farming is a tough business with a strong competition and high risks one way to make your farm competitive is to produce more on the same plot of land in a growing season and with lower costs innovation can also help information that helps you to test new practices to see what works for you and knowing how to increase farm production sustainability and respond to market information is key this guide aims to provide such information for farmers in the upper mara river basin in kenya providing practical guidance on agroforestry growing trees in combination with agricultural crops,2017,0.207
Bringing together raptor collections in Europe for contaminant research and monitoring in relation to chemicals regulations,raptors are good sentinels of environmental contamination and there is good capability for raptor biomonitoring in europe raptor biomonitoring can benefit from natural history museums nhms environmental specimen banks esbs and other collections e g specialist raptor specimen collections europeâ s nhms esbs and other collections hold large numbers of raptor specimens and samples covering long periods of time these collections are potentially a valuable resource for contaminant studies over time and space there are strong needs to monitor contaminants in the environment to support eu and national chemical management however data on raptor specimens in nhms esbs and other collections are dispersed few are digitised and they are thus not easy to access specimen coverage is patchy in terms of species space and time contaminant research with raptors would be facilitated by creating a framework to link relevant collections digitising all collections developing a searchable meta database covering all existing collections making them more visible and accessible for contaminant research this would also help identify gaps in coverage and stimulate specimen collection to fill gaps in support of prioritised contaminant monitoring collections can further support raptor biomonitoring by making samples available for analysis on request,2017,0.294
Atlas of the Reptiles of Libya,libya has one of the most depauperate reptile faunas in africa but it also remains one of the most poorly documented although localized collecting was carried out during the italian colonial period 1912â 1943 post world war ii field surveys have largely been limited to el kouf national park in northern cyrenaica and a number of short duration field trips in other parts of the country a combination of limited accessibility to much of the country and periods of political instability have preclud ed more extensive herpetological research in contrast to some other regions of north africa although there has been active research by libyan scientists in recent years in order to provide a starting point for future faunal and biogeographic studies of libyan reptiles we collected locality data from 3350 museum specimens and 163 lit erature sources yielding 683 unique localities which we georeferenced and used to generate a gazetteer and corresponding index maps as well as species maps of each of the 66 species of reptiles confirmed to occur in libya data relating to type mate rial as well as taxonomic and distributional comments are also provided for each taxon libyan reptiles include three marine turtles only one nesting three terres trial chelonians one with two subspecies 39 lizards two with two subspecies and 21 snakes tarentola fascicularis phyllodactylidae is a species complex represented by several as yet undescribed taxa three subspecies and one full species of reptile are currently regarded as endemic to libya although myriopholis lanzai from southwestern fezzan is likely to occur in neighboring algeria libyaâ s fauna is very different from that of its southern neighbors in which sahel taxa predominate but similarities with egypt tunisia and especially algeria are great the dominant bio geographic pattern in libya is the contrasts between the narrow mediterranean zone and the arid zones of the sahara desert and steppe desert transition however many species of mesic areas occur sporadically in the arid zone usually in associa tion with oases and others seem euryoecious a secondary pattern is an east west division of the mediterranean zone in the gulf of sirte which separates tripolitan ian taxa with faunal ties to the maghreb from cyrenaican taxa with affinities to egypt and even the middle east,2017,0.899
"The collection of type specimens belonging to the subfamily Pimeliinae (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) in the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, Spain",the type collection of the subfamily pimeliinae coleoptera tenebrionidae deposited in the natural sciences museum of barcelona spain was organised revised and documented the collection contains 438 type specimens representing 140 different taxa of note is a considerable number of species belonging to a subfamily described by francesc espaã ol maurice antoine zoltã n kaszab and carlo koch in this paper we provide all the available information relating to these type specimens and for all taxa species or subspecies we give the following information original and current taxonomic status original citation of type material the exact transcription of the original label and the pres ervation condition of the specimen we also discuss the differences between the original descriptions and labels if a taxonomic change has occurred the references describing those changes are included at the end of the description,2017,0.406
The Registry component of Atlas of Living Australia,atlas of living australia ala 1 is a biodiversity information system that has been developed to support the biodiversity community it offers access to open data allowing queries downloads and interoperability it uses standards to show and make accessible the information json 2 darwin core archive 3 and ogc 4 and users can see the data have access to the metadata at different levels occurrence dataset collection institution data provider ala is developed on an architecture based on restful 5 web services and it is composed of several components that interact with each other using those services to reach a common goal making biodiversity information that exists more accessible around the world some ala components are search engine or generic hub 6 registry or generic collectory 7 data ingestion biocache store 8 species generic bie 9 geospatial spatial portal 10 and more components that you can find in the github 11 repository in this training session we will focus on the registry component collectory plugin 12 this component allows us to manage the information related to datasets collections institutions data providers contacts and generate reports associated with those entities this training will be split into 4 sections the first will present how it technically works the second section will present the administrator panel in this section we will see how to create modify delete the different entities and how they have been composed we will also show how to create the relation between institutions collections and datasets with providers code and theirs mapping at the end we will present the reports available on ala administrator webpage in the third section we will show the user collectory interface and the structure of metadata available the fourth section we will present an overview of the collectory web service api note we will use the spanish data portal 13 to explain each section,2017,0.311
Morphological studies and meiotic chromosome analysis of Epimedium elatum (Morr &amp; Decne) - Rare endemic medicinal plant of Northwestern Himalayas in India.,epimedium elatum berberidaceace is a rare endemic medicinal herb of northwestern himalayas in india recent ethnopharmacological reports have demonstrated its traditional medicinal use against various bone related diseases in the kashmir himalayas it owes its pharmaceutical importance due to high concentration of flavonoid glycosides like epimedin a b c and icariin which are known mainly for aphrodisiac antiosteoporosis anticancer antioxidant antiaging antifatigue and antiviral activities it is a neglected medicinal plant in northwestern himalayan region and may fall in the list of endangered species due to continuous anthropogenic pressures in its native habitats in this study we investigated distributional and altitudinal range of this prized species from twenty diverse eco geographical zones of kashmir himalayas for the first time we also report here its diversity in morphological attributes both in wild and captive cultivation the species has a very small population size in most of the surveyed habitats with no natural protection under cultivation it showed increased plant height 63 09â 4 9cm more number of leaves 95 53â 11cm and flowers 160 76â 20cm indicating importance of high altitude medicinal garden for its immediate ex situ conservation further the acetocarmine staining and squashing of young anthers confirmed it as a diploid species 2n 12 like other epimedium species chromosome number and meiotic abnormalities are also reported for the first time in the species finally constant anthropogenic pressures in northwestern himalayas demand immediate in situ and ex situ conservation programmes for e elatum,2017,0.915
Open Farm Management Information System Supporting Ecological and Economical Tasks,a farm management information system fmis is a sophisticated tool managing geospatial data and functionalities as it provides answers to two basic questions what has happened and where the presented foodie farm oriented open data in europe and databio data driven bioeconomy approach may be recognized as an openfmis where environmental and reference geospatial data for precision agriculture are provided free of charge on the other hand added value services like yield potential sensor monitoring and or machinery fleet monitoring are provided on a paid basis through standardised web services due to the costs of hardware and non trivial computations results i e reference environmental and farm oriented geospatial data may be obtained from the foodie platform all such results of whatever kind are used in the european databio project in order to minimise the environmental burden while maximising the economic benefits,2017,0.281
Blueprints of Effective Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge Products That Support Marine Policy,biodiversity and conservation data are generally costly to collect particularly in the marine realm hence data collected for a givenâ often scientificâ purpose are occasionally contributed towards secondary needs such as policy implementation or other types of decision making however while the quality and accessibility of marine biodiversity and conservation data have improved over the past decade the ways in which these data can be used to develop and implement relevant management and conservation measures and actions are not always explicit for this reason there are a number of scientifically sound datasets that are not used systematically to inform policy and decisions transforming these marine biodiversity and conservation datasets into knowledge products that convey the information required by policy and decision makers is an important step in strengthening knowledge exchange across the science policy interface here we identify seven characteristics of a selection of online biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that contribute to their ability to support policy and decision making in the marine realm as measured by e g mentions in policy resolutions decisions or use for reporting under selected policy instruments use in high level screening for areas of biodiversity importance these characteristics include a clear policy mandate established networks of collaborators iterative co design of a user friendly interface standardised comprehensive and documented methods with quality assurance consistent capacity and succession planning accessible data and value added products that are fit for purpose and metrics of use collated and reported the outcomes of this review are intended to a support data creators owners providers in designing and curating biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that have greater influence and hence impact in policy and decision making and b provide recommendations for how decision and policy makers can support the development implementation and sustainability of robust biodiversity and conservation knowledge products through the framing of marine policy and decision making frameworks,2017,0.068
Repatriation Data: More than two million species occurrence records added to the Brazilian Biodiversity Information Facility Repository (SiBBr),background primary biodiversity data records available on line are essential for conservation planning of the mega diversity countries brazil have reached a high level of scientific research in describing their biodiversity however there still remain significant limitations in recovering collating and organizing available information on brazil s biological diversity and its distribution since the colonial period biological material were often collected and transferred to other countries which were characterized stored and maintained as a result natural history museums worldwide possess large amounts of primary biodiversity data originally from brazil which are then published on line in the international global biodiversity information facility gbif infrastructure aiming to recover these data the brazilian biodiversity information system sibbr developed an automatic repatriation tool capable of retrieving all records registered in brazil but published outside brazilian territory in an automated manner new information thus 2 459 366 records were added to sibbrâ s repository in one day europe and the united states hold about 80 of all records the data set covers all life kingdoms animalia is the most represented group with 3 main phylum s chordata arthropoda and mollusca within more than 40 of all records plantae also comprises a large portion of the records with angiosperms having the major number of entries,2017,0.39
A United States national prioritization framework for tree species vulnerability to climate change,climate change is one of several threats that will increase the likelihood that forest tree species could experience population level extirpation or species level extinction scientists and managers from throughout the united states forest service have cooperated to develop a framework for conservation priority setting assessments of forest tree species this framework uses trait data and predictions of expected climate change pressure to categorize and prioritize 339 native tree species for conservation monitoring management and restoration across all forested lands in the contiguous united states and alaska the framework allows for the quantitative grouping of species into vulnerability classes that may require different management and conservation strategies for maintaining the adaptive genetic variation of the species within each group this categorization is based on risk factors relating to the speciesâ 1 exposure to climate change 2 sensitivity to climate change and 3 capacity to adapt to climate change we used k means clustering to group species into seven classes based on these three vulnerability dimensions the most vulnerable class encompassed 35 species with high scores for all three vulnerability dimensions these will require the most immediate conservation intervention a group of 43 species had high exposure and sensitivity probably requiring conservation assistance while a group of 69 species had high exposure and low adaptive capacity probably needing close monitoring this assessment tool should be valuable for scientists and managers determining which species and populations to target for monitoring efforts and for pro active gene conservation and management activities,2017,0.973
Elevation modulates how Arctic arthropod communities are structured along local environmental gradients,the organization of ecological communities along local environmental gradients provides important information about how such communities may respond to environmental change in the arctic the importance of gradients in shrub cover and soil moisture for non marine arthropod communities has been clearly demonstrated by replicating studies along shrub and moisture gradients at multiple elevations and using space for time substitution it is possible to examine how arthropod communities may respond to future environmental change we collected and identified 4640 adult specimens of spiders and beetles near narsarsuaq south greenland between 8 july and 25 august 2014 from 112 pitfall traps the traps were arranged in eight plots covering local gradients in either soil moisture or tall shrub dominance at both low and high elevation multivariate generalized linear models revealed that community composition was significantly related to shrub height and soil moisture and that this relationship varied between low and high elevation among the 46 species we found more species were unique to the high elevation plots than to the low elevation plots a finding that was most pronounced for spiders in plots along soil moisture gradients indicator species analysis corroborated earlier findings of the indicator value of specific species in greenland and suggested that beetles may serve as better indicators of specific habitats than spiders the location of plots along local environmental gradients allowed us to detect fine scale variation in arthropod communities together our results suggest that arctic arthropod community responses to environmental change may differ among low and high elevation sites,2017,0.89
Improving the community-temperature index as a climate change indicator,climate change indicators are tools to assess visualize and communicate the impacts of climate change on species and communities indicators that can be applied to different taxa are particularly useful because they allow comparative analysis to identify which kinds of species are being more affected a general prediction supported by empirical data is that the abundance of warm adapted species should increase over time relative to the cool adapted ones within communities under increasing ambient temperatures the community temperature index cti is a community weighted mean of speciesâ temperature preferences and has been used as an indicator to summarize this temporal shift the cti has the advantages of being a simple and generalizable indicator however a core problem is that temporal trends in the cti may not only reflect changes in temperature this is because speciesâ temperature preferences often covary with other species attributes and these other attributes may affect species response to other environmental drivers here we propose a novel model based approach that separates the effects of temperature preference from the effects of other species attributes on speciesâ abundances and subsequently on the cti using long term population data of breeding birds in denmark and demersal marine fish in the southeastern north sea we find differences in cti trends with the original approach and our model based approach which may affect interpretation of climate change impacts we suggest that our method can be used to test the robustness of cti trends to the possible effects of other drivers of change apart from climate change,2017,0.552
"New record of the Six-holed Keyhole Urchin, Leodia sexiesperforata (Leske, 1778) (Clypeasteroida, Mellitidae), from the Brazilian coast, with an updated distribution map",a new record of leodia sexiesperforata is reported from the coast of rio grande do norte state northeastern brazil an updated distribution map based on data collected from literature museums and scientific collections is also presented this new report fills a distribution gap on the coast of northeastern brazil leodia sexiesperforata has a continuous range between the states of cearã and alagoas,2017,0.493
European OneHealth/EcoHealth workshop report,the workshop organisation was coordinated by hans keune belgian community of practice biodiversity health belgian biodiversity platform with support from representatives from several belgian and international organisations lucette flandroy and pierre biot belgian federal public service health food chain safety and environment dg environment ierry van den berg marcella mori and nick de re e veterinary and agrochemical research centre coda cerva seì verine ys and isra deblauwe institute of tropical medicine of antwerp maarten p m vanhove royal belgian institute of natural sciences rbins cebios nicolas antoine moussiaux university of lieì ge faculty of veterinary medicine ulieì ge javiera rebolledo steven van gucht scienti c institute of public health wiv isp and herman van oyen research institute nature forest inbo cristina romanelli cbd and unu iigh and marina maiero who barbara haìˆsler royal veterinary college london uk and network for evaluation of one health neoh aureì lie binot french agricultural research and international cooperation organisation cirad and comacross eu project wim hiemstra dutch farm experience natural livestock farming,2017,0.186
Pleistocene refugia and genetic diversity patterns in West Africa: Insights from the liana Chasmanthera dependens (Menispermaceae),processes shaping the african guineo congolian rain forest especially in the west african part are not well understood recent molecular studies based mainly on forest tree species confirmed the previously proposed division of the western african guineo congolian rain forest into upper guinea ug and lower guinea lg separated by the dahomey gap dg here we studied nine populations in the area of the dg and the borders of lg and ug of the widespread liana species chasmanthera dependens menispermaceae by amplified fragment length polymorphism aflp a chloroplast dna sequence marker and modelled the distribution based on current as well as paleoclimatic data holocene climate optimum ca 6 kyr bp and last glacial maximum ca 22 kyr bp current population genetic structure and geographical pattern of cpdna was related to present as well as historical modelled distributions results from this study show that past historical factors played an important role in shaping the distribution of c dependens across west africa the cameroon volcanic line seems to represent a barrier for gene flow in the present as well as in the past distribution modelling proposed refugia in the dahomey gap supported also by higher genetic diversity this is in contrast with the phylogeographic patterns observed in several rainforest tree species and could be explained by either diverging or more relaxed ecological requirements of this liana species,2017,0.817
Biology of B. sorokiniana (syn. Cochliobolus sativus) in genomics era,bipolaris sorokiniana sacc shoemaker is a hemi biotrophic fungal pathogen which is an anamorph teleomorph cochlibolus sativus it causes spot blotch root rot and leaf spot diseases in a number of cereals including wheat barley and other small grain cereals in the genomics era the fungus has been subjected to a variety of studies using molecular approaches correct chromosome number was determined and molecular karyotypes were prepared using contour clamped homogeneous electric field molecular maps were prepared using markers like rflps ssrs rapds and snps for this purpose segregating progenies derived from crosses between diverse isolates of the pathogen were used whole genome sequencing wgs data was collected not only for b sorokiniana isolates but also for several species of cochliobolus genes involved in secondary metabolism and virulence were identified from genome sequences the wgs data has also been utilized for comparative genomics giving useful information about evolutionary trends a brief account of this information is presented in this review,2017,0.597
"Spore morphology of Haplopteris C. Presl species (Vittarioideae, Pteridaceae) from China",a comparative study of spores of four species of haplopteris c presl h amboinensis fã e x c zhang h forrestiana ching e h crane h linearifolia ching x c zhang and h mediosora hayata x c zhang from china was performed using the method of scanning electronic microscopy sem spores of haplopteris species are bilateral monolete ellipsoidal or ellipsoidal but slightly narrowed in the middle perispore thin easily breakable smooth exospore smooth its surface is finely granulate or finely undulate as seen at higher magnification haplopteris amboinensis have the largest spores 79 5ã 34 3ã 40 9 î ð h mediosora â the smallest one 49 2ã 24 5ã 24 9 î ð,2017,0.481
Continental divide: Predicting climate-mediated fragmentation and biodiversity loss in the boreal forest,climate change threatens natural landscapes through shifting distribution and abundance of species and attendant change in the structure and function of ecosystems however it remains unclear how climate mediated variation in speciesâ environmental niche space may lead to large scale fragmentation of species distributions altered meta population dynamics and gene flow and disrupted ecosystem integrity such change may be especially relevant when species distributions are restricted either spatially or to a narrow environmental niche or when environments are rapidly changing here we use range wide environmental niche models to posit that climate mediated range fragmentation aggravates the direct effects of climate change on species in the boreal forest of north america we show that climate change will directly alter environmental niche suitability for boreal obligate species of trees birds and mammals n 12 with most species ranges becoming smaller and shifting northward through time importantly species distributions will become increasingly fragmented as characterized by smaller mean size and greater isolation of environmentally suitable landscape patches this loss is especially pronounced along the ontario quã bec border where the boreal forest is narrowest and roughly 78 of suitable niche space could disappear by 2080 despite the diversity of taxa surveyed patterns of range fragmentation are remarkably consistent with our models predicting that spruce grouse dendragapus canadensis boreal chickadee poecile hudsonicus moose alces americanus and caribou rangifer tarandus could have entirely disjunct east west population segments in north america these findings reveal potentially dire consequences of climate change on population continuity and species diversity in the boreal forest highlighting the need to better understand 1 extent and primary drivers of anticipated climate mediated range loss and fragmentation 2 diversity of species to be affected by such change 3 potential for rapid adaptation in the most strongly affected areas and 4 potential for invasion by replacement species,2017,0.977
ANISEED 2017: extending the integrated ascidian database to the exploration and evolutionary comparison of genome-scale datasets,aniseed www aniseed cnrs fr is the main model organism database for tunicates the sister group of vertebrates this release gives access to annotated genomes gene expression patterns and anatomical descriptions for nine ascidian species it provides increased integration with external molecular and taxonomy databases better support for epigenomics datasets in particular rna seq chip seq and selex seq and features novel interactive interfaces for existing and novel datatypes in particular the cross species navigation and comparison is enhanced through a novel taxonomy section describing each represented species and through the implementation of interactive phylogenetic gene trees for 60 of tunicate genes the gene expression section displays the results of rna seq experiments for the three major model species of solitary ascidians gene expression is controlled by the binding of transcription factors to cis regulatory sequences a high resolution description of the dna binding specificity for 131 ciona robusta formerly c intestinalis type a transcription factors by selex seq is provided and used to map candidate binding sites across the ciona robusta and phallusia mammillata genomes finally use of a washu epigenome browser enhances genome navigation while a genomicus server was set up to explore microsynteny relationships within tunicates and with vertebrates amphioxus echinoderms and hemichordates,2017,0.536
Accounting for sampling patterns reverses the relative importance of trade and climate for the global sharing of exotic plants,aim the distributions of exotic species reflect patterns of human mediated dispersal species climatic tolerances and a suite of other biotic and abiotic factors the relative importance of each of these factors will shape how the spread of exotic species is affected by ongoing economic globalization and climate change however patterns of trade may be correlated with variation in scientific sampling effort globally potentially confounding studies that do not account for sampling patterns location global time period museum records generally from the 1800s up to 2015 major taxa studied plant species exotic to the united states methods we used data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif to summarize the number of plant species with exotic occurrences in the united states that also occur in each other country world wide we assessed the relative importance of trade and climatic similarity for explaining variation in the number of shared species while evaluating several methods to account for variation in sampling effort among countries results accounting for variation in sampling effort reversed the relative importance of trade and climate for explaining numbers of shared species trade was strongly correlated with numbers of shared u s exotic plants between the united states and other countries before but not after accounting for sampling variation among countries conversely accounting for sampling effort strengthened the relationship between climatic similarity and species sharing using the number of records as a measure of sampling effort provided a straightforward approach for the analysis of occurrence data whereas species richness estimators and rarefaction were less effective at removing sampling bias main conclusions our work provides support for broad scale climatic limitation on the distributions of exotic species illustrates the need to account for variation in sampling effort in large biodiversity databases and highlights the difficulty in inferring causal links between the economic drivers of invasion and global patterns of exotic species occurrence,2017,0.927
Combining Biodiversity Resurveys across Regions to Advance Global Change Research,more and more ecologists have started to resurvey communities sampled in earlier decades to determine long term shifts in community composition and infer the likely drivers of the ecological changes observed however to assess the relative importance of and interactions among multiple drivers joint analyses of resurvey data from many regions spanning large environmental gradients are needed in this article we illustrate how combining resurvey data from multiple regions can increase the likelihood of driver orthogonality within the design and show that repeatedly surveying across multiple regions provides higher representativeness and comprehensiveness allowing us to answer more completely a broader range of questions we provide general guidelines to aid the implementation of multiregion resurvey databases in so doing we aim to encourage resurvey database development across other community types and biomes to advance global environmental change research,2017,0.123
"Extending the Northeastern Distribution of Mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) into the Dja Faunal Reserve, Cameroon",mandrills mandrillus sphinx linnaeus 1758 are restricted to forests of the atlantic equatorial forests ecoregion eastern portions of the northwestern congolian lowland forest ecoregion and northern portions of the western congolian forest savanna mosaic ecoregion of central africa olson et al 2001 oates butynski 2008 the species distribution is imperfectly known especially the northeastern limits of its estimated range here we report on the presence of mandrills in the northwestern region of the dja faunal reserve in south central cameroon a protected area with no known published records for this species,2017,0.649
Using ensemble forecasting to examine how climate change promotes worldwide invasion of the golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata),the golden apple snail pomacea canaliculata is one of the worldâ s 100 most notorious invasive alien species knowledge about the critical climate variables that limit the global distribution range of the snail as well as predictions of future species distributions under climate change is very helpful for management of snail in this study the climatically suitable habitats for this kind of snail under current climate conditions were modeled by biomod2 and projected to eight future climate scenarios 2 time periods 2050s 2080s ã 2 representative concentration pathways rcps rcp2 6 rcp8 5 ã 2 atmospheric general circulation models gcms canadian centre for climate modelling and analysis cccma commonwealth scientific and industrial research organisation csiro the results suggest that the lowest temperature of coldest month is the critical climate variable to restrict the global distribution range of p canaliculata it is predicted that the climatically suitable habitats for p canaliculata will increase by an average of 3 3 in 2050s and 3 8 in 2080s for the rcp2 6 scenario while they increase by an average of 8 7 in 2050s and 10 3 in 2080s for the rcp8 5 scenario in general climate change in the future may promote the global invasion of the invasive species therefore it is necessary to take proactive measures to monitor and preclude the invasion of this species,2017,0.698
"Origin, paleoecology, and extirpation of bluebirds and crossbills in the Bahamas across the last glacial–interglacial transition",on low islands or island groups such as the bahamas surrounded by shallow oceans quaternary glacialâ interglacial changes in climate and sea level had major effects on terrestrial plant and animal communities we examine the paleoecology of two species of songbirds passeriformes recorded as late pleistocene fossils on the bahamian island of abacoâ the eastern bluebird sialia sialis and hispaniolan crossbill loxia megaplaga each species lives today only outside of the bahamian archipelago with s sialis occurring in north and central america and l megaplaga endemic to hispaniola unrecorded in the holocene fossil record of abaco both of these species probably colonized abaco during the last glacial interval but were eliminated when the island became much smaller warmer wetter and more isolated during the last glacialâ interglacial transition from ∠15 to 9 ka todayâ s warming temperatures and rising sea levels although not as great in magnitude as those that took place from ∠15 to 9 ka are occurring rapidly and may contribute to considerable biotic change on islands by acting in synergy with direct human impacts,2017,0.667
Publish openly but responsibly,in their perspective â œdo not publishâ 26 may p 800 d lindenmayer and b scheele warn that publishing location data for rare endangered or newly described species could promote wildlife poaching strain landholder relations and accelerate habitat destruction to prevent these outcomes they recommend that researchers withhold such location data we recognize the need for security around localities of highly collectable species and support care in publishing precise site locations however sensitive data management approaches have sufficiently matured to minimize misuse,2017,0.538
Environmental drivers of distribution and reef development of the Mediterranean coral Cladocora caespitosa,cladocora caespitosa is the only mediterranean scleractinian similar to tropical reef building corals while this species is part of the recent fossil history of the mediterranean sea it is currently considered endangered due to its decline during the last decades environmental factors affecting the distribution and persistence of extensive bank reefs of this endemic species across its whole geographic range are poorly understood in this study we examined the environmental response of c caespitosa and its main types of assemblages using ecological niche modeling and ordination analysis we also predicted other suitable areas for the occurrence of the species and assessed the conservation effectiveness of mediterranean marine protected areas mpas for this coral we found that phosphate concentration and wave height were factors affecting both the occurrence of this versatile species and the distribution of its extensive bioconstructions in the mediterranean sea a set of factors diffuse attenuation coefficient calcite and nitrate concentrations mean wave height sea surface temperature and shape of the coast likely act as environmental barriers preventing the species from expansion to the atlantic ocean and the black sea uncertainties in our large scale statistical results and departures from previous physiological and ecological studies are also discussed under an integrative perspective this study reveals that mediterranean mpas encompass eight of the ten banks and 16 of the 21 beds of c caespitosa preservation of water clarity by avoiding phosphate discharges may improve the protection of this emblematic species,2017,0.82
"Morphological, Karyological and Molecular Characteristics of Festuca Arietina Klok. – A Neglected Psammophilous Species of the Festuca Valesiaca Agg. from Eastern Europe",until recently festuca arietina was practically an unknown species in the flora of eastern europe such a situation can be treated as a consequence of insufficient studying of festuca valesiaca group species in eastern europe and misinterpretation of the volume of some taxa as a result of a complex study of f arietina populations from the territory of ukraine including the material from locus classicus belarus and lithuania original anatomy morphology and molecular data were obtained these data confirmed the taxonomical status of f arietina as a separate species eleven morphological and 12 anatomical characters its1 5 8s its2 cluster of nuclear ribosomal genes as well as the models of secondary structure of its1 and its2 transcripts were studied in this approach it was found for the first time that f arietina is hexaploid 6x 42 which is distinguished from all the other narrow leaved fescues by specific leaf anatomy as well as in its1 5 8s its2 sequences molecular data indicating possible hybridogenous origin of f arietina fall in line with the anatomical morphological data and explain the tendency toward sclerenchyma strands fusion with formation of a continuous ring in f arietina as well as f arietina ecological confinement to psammophyte biotopes,2017,0.789
WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas,we created a new dataset of spatially interpolated monthly climate data for global land areas at a very high spatial resolution approximately 1 km2 we included monthly temperature minimum maximum and average precipitation solar radiation vapour pressure and wind speed aggregated across a target temporal range of 1970â 2000 using data from between 9000 and 60 000 weather stations weather station data were interpolated using thin plate splines with covariates including elevation distance to the coast and three satellite derived covariates maximum and minimum land surface temperature as well as cloud cover obtained with the modis satellite platform interpolation was done for 23 regions of varying size depending on station density satellite data improved prediction accuracy for temperature variables 5â 15 0 07â 0 17 â c particularly for areas with a low station density although prediction error remained high in such regions for all climate variables contributions of satellite covariates were mostly negligible for the other variables although their importance varied by region in contrast to the common approach to use a single model formulation for the entire world we constructed the final product by selecting the best performing model for each region and variable global cross validation correlations were â 0 99 for temperature and humidity 0 86 for precipitation and 0 76 for wind speed the fact that most of our climate surface estimates were only marginally improved by use of satellite covariates highlights the importance having a dense high quality network of climate station data,2017,0.168
Bioclimatic approach to assessing the potential impact of climate change on two flea beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) species in Canada,both the striped flea beetle phyllotreta striolata fabricius and crucifer flea beetle phyllotreta cruciferae goeze coleoptera chrysomelidae are invasive alien species to north america in western canada they are the most significant insect pests of cruciferous brassicaceae crops climate is the one of the most dominant factors regulating the geographic distribution and population density of most insect species recent bioclimatic simulation models of the two flea beetle species fostered a better understanding of how the two species responded to selected climate variables they demonstrated that selected climate variables increased population densities and geographic range of the two species general circulation model inputs were applied in this study to assess the impact of a changing climate on the response of p cruciferae and p striolata populations model output using the climate change scenarios predicted that both p cruciferae and p striolata populations will shift north in future climates and the degree of geographic overlap between these two species will be greater than for current climate this suggests that the two species could potentially cause economic losses over an expanded area in the future,2017,0.945
Identifying Reliable Opportunistic Data for Species Distribution Modeling: A Benchmark Data Optimization Approach,the purpose of this study is to increase the number of species occurrence data by integrating opportunistic data with global biodiversity information facility gbif benchmark data via a novel optimization technique the optimization method utilizes natural language processing nlp and a simulated annealing sa algorithm to maximize the average likelihood of species occurrence in maximum entropy presence only species distribution models sdm we applied the kruskalâ wallis test to assess the differences between the corresponding environmental variables and habitat suitability indices hsi among datasets including data from gbif facebook fb and data from optimally selected fb data to quantify uncertainty in sdm predictions and to quantify the efficacy of the proposed optimization procedure we used a bootstrapping approach to generate 1000 subsets from five different datasets 1 gbif 2 fb 3 gbif plus fb 4 gbif plus optimally selected fb and 5 gbif plus randomly selected fb we compared the performance of simulated species distributions based on each of the above subsets via the area under the curve auc of the receiver operating characteristic roc we also performed correlation analysis between the average benchmark based sdm outputs and the average dataset based sdm outputs median aucs of sdms based on the dataset that combined benchmark gbif data and optimally selected fb data were generally higher than the aucs of other datasets indicating the effectiveness of the optimization procedure our results suggest that the proposed approach increases the quality and quantity of data by effectively extracting opportunistic data from large unstructured datasets with respect to benchmark data,2017,0.525
A review on Cleome aspera,herbal medicine is the oldest form of health care system known to our mankind herbs are the potential source of chemical constituents which have high therapeutic value herbal medicines are now in great demand in the developing world for primary health care not because they are inexpensive but also for their better cultural acceptability better compatibility with the human body and minimal side effects it is estimated that approximately one quarter of prescribed drugs contain plant extracts or active ingredients obtained from plant substances this review summarizes the research carried out on cleome aspera cleome aspera belongs to the family cleomaceae cleome aspera is known to possess anti diabetic activity the anti diabetic effect of methanolic extract of whole plant of cleome aspera showed a dose dependent hypoglycemic effect and prevented rise in blood glucose levels in diabetic rats leaf paste of cleome aspera is used to cure eczema and other skin disorders,2017,0.154
"First records of Hylaeus ( Paraprosopis ) pictipes Nylander, 1852 (Hymenoptera: Colletidae) in North America",cavity nesting bees such as members of the genus hylaeus fabricius hymenoptera colletidae are prone to accidental introductions by human mediated transportation the first records of hylaeus paraprosopis pictipes nylander 1852 in north america are reported hylaeus pictipes is a european species newly discovered from mississauga ontario canada meadville pennsylvania usa and cleveland ohio usa notes on its identification and a discussion of exotic bees in north america are provided,2017,0.653
"Investigating the cause of dieback in the invasive plant, Parkinsonia aculeata",invasive plants cost australia directly and indirectly around au 4 billion pa displacing native species changing sensitive ecosystems and sometimes affecting human health and safety developing novel tools to control invasive species will benefit landholders and the environment not just in australia but globally biocontrol of invasive plants via dieback causative agents is one such potential tool dieback causes a progressive reduction in plant population health resulting in the death of plant parts and often complete plant death it is prevalent in many invasive woody weeds in australia and has been suggested as a potential mechanism for their biocontrol particularly because local native plants appear unaffected,2017,0.247
Integrated Pest Management for the Wheat Head Armyworm Complex in the Pacific Northwest,the wheat head armyworm complex whac is comprised of two armyworm species dargida diffusa walker and dargida terrapictalis buckett which caused recent intermittent damage to cereal crops in the pacific northwest pnw this was the first record of d diffusa as a pest in the pnw while d terrapictalis is native to the region it has not been recorded previously as a pest this publication covers identification biology and integrated pest management for whac we emphasize pest monitoring and field scouting methods and also discuss natural insecticides,2017,0.463
"SILVA, RDP, Greengenes, NCBI and OTT — how do these taxonomies compare?",background a key step in microbiome sequencing analysis is read assignment to taxonomic units this is often performed using one of four taxonomic classifications namely silva rdp greengenes or ncbi it is unclear how similar these are and how to compare analysis results that are based on different taxonomies results we provide a method and software for mapping taxonomic entities from one taxonomy onto another we use it to compare the four taxonomies and the open tree of life taxonomy ott conclusions while we find that silva rdp and greengenes map well into ncbi and all four map well into the ott mapping the two larger taxonomies on to the smaller ones is problematic,2017,0.154
Distribution of Persea schiedeana in Mexico and Potential for the Production of Fruits with High-quality Oil,the fruit of persea schiedeana is consumed in various rural regions of mexico and central america and is mainly sold in local markets information regarding the ecological conditions where it grows and the potential for its distribution in mexico has been little studied the states of chiapas hidalgo oaxaca puebla tabasco and veracruz in mexico were explored to locate p schiedeana trees the ecological conditions of the places where p schiedeana was found were characterized using thematic cartography and by evaluating the ecological niches to identify potential areas for its distribution the trees were found in wide physiographic geological and edaphic conditions but they were primarily located in semiwarm humid and warm humid climates persea schiedeana trees grow from almost sea level to 2000 m in altitude zones with the best developmental conditions for p schiedeana were in the region of the high mountains in the center of veracruz and the highland zone of northern oaxaca the oil obtained from the fruit of p schiedeana trees growing at 1300 m had high oleic acid content this wild fruit has the potential for obtaining new products for cosmetic and alimentary industries,2017,0.285
Acutodesmus dimorphus: A Promising Alga for Commercial Scale Cultivation for Biofuels and Biomass,this article summarizes the potential of fresh water microalgae acutodesmus dimorphus a dimorphus for commercial scale cultivation recent studies on this alga are discussed a recently concluded field trial of genetically modified strain of this alga when cultivated outdoor in natural environment demonstrated that the alga was able to express the modified phenotype with no observed adverse effect on native algal species in surrounding medium being first such us epa approved evaluation of a genetically modified algae this study has projected a dimorphus as a promising gm alga that may now be taken up for industrial scale production the article concludes by highlighting certain issues that need to be focused in order to make gm a dimorphus a desirable strain for commercial scale cultivation,2017,0.128
Extinction risk or lack of sampling in a threatened species: Genetic structure and environmental suitability of the neotropical frog Pristimantis penelopus (Anura: Craugastoridae),iucn red lists have been a valuable tool to prioritize conservation plans in endemic neotropical frogs however many areas in this region are poorly known in terms of their diversity and endemism based on examined museum specimens of the threatened species pristimantis penelopus we revised its geographic distribution and determined the habitat suitability using niche modeling techniques using a mitochondrial fragment of coi gene we determine the phylogenetic position and the extent of the genetic variation across its distribution in colombia we present the first records of p penelopus for the cordillera oriental the western versant of cordillera occidental and the northern portion of the cauca river basin based on the molecular phylogenetic analysis pristimantis penelopus belongs to the p ridens series sensu padial et al 2014 the mean of intraspecific genetic variation is 2 1 and the variation among population ranges between 2 3 and 3 5 the genetic distance between the western populations and the magdalena valley populations suggests a potential phylogeographic break in northwestern antioquia we expand the realized distribution by 258 kilometers north 200 km east and 223 km northwest based on our results and according to the iucn criteria we propose a new category for the species and highlight the need to increase the surveys in poorly known regions to better understand the geographic distribution and conservation status of listed species,2017,0.81
The Evolution of Clutch Size in Hosts of Avian Brood Parasites,coevolution with avian brood parasites shapes a range of traits in their hosts including morphology behavior and breeding systems here we explore whether brood parasitism is also associated with the evolution of host clutch size several studies have proposed that hosts of highly virulent parasites could decrease the costs of parasitism by evolving a smaller clutch size because hosts with smaller clutches will lose fewer progeny when their clutch is parasitized we describe a model of the evolution of clutch size which challenges this logic and shows instead that an increase in clutch size or no change should evolve in hosts we test this prediction using a broad scale comparative analysis to ask whether there are differences in clutch size within hosts and between hosts and nonhosts consistent with our model this analysis revealed that host species do not have smaller clutches and that hosts that incur larger costs from raising a parasite lay larger clutches we suggest that brood parasitism might be an influential factor in clutch size evolution and could potentially select for the evolution of larger clutches in host species,2017,0.567
Impact of climate and host availability on future distribution of Colorado potato beetle,colorado potato beetle cpb is a devastating invasive pest of potato both in its native north america and now across eurasia it also damages eggplant tomato and feeds on several wild species in the solanaceae such as s eleagnifolium and s rostratum dunal sr since first categorized as a pest in 1864 cpb has spread rapidly across north america europe and asia in light of its invasiveness and economic importance it is necessary to study how climate change and host availability may alter the distribution of the cpb maximum entropy maxent models were used to anticipate global range expansion as influenced by environmental conditions and by the possibility of cooperative invasion of cpb and its wild host sr the results indicate that both cpb and sr can occupy warm areas of north america south africa europe china and australia future climate conditions may promote cpb expansion into northern regions and sr into the circumpolar latitudes the existing range and continued spread of sr may also assist the global expansion of cpb future management of this pest should consider the impacts of global climate change and host availability on its potential global distribution,2017,0.627
On the need to consider multiphasic sensitivity of marine organisms to climate change: a case study of the Antarctic acorn barnacle,aim species distribution models sdms are routinely employed to evaluate shifts in the geographic distributions of organisms in response to changing climatic conditions many marine invertebrates exhibit a biphasic life cycle benthic adults and planktonic larvae which inhabit different environments and may react dissimilarly to anticipated changes in climatological patterns to date sdms applied to benthic species have only considered adult life history stages here we present the first study in which sdms have been simultaneously developed for both the larval and adult stages of the same organism location the southern ocean methods occurrence data for the study species the antarctic barnacle bathylasma corolliforme were sourced from 1 benthic geo referenced records from museum collections and online databases and 2 observations of planktonic larvae identified with genetic and morphological methods these records were used to construct two independent sdms adult larvae with maxent 3 3 3k their outputs were then projected to environmental conditions forecast for the year 2050 ipcc scenario a1b results the two different sdms had high predictive capability and identified preferred environmental conditions of each life history stage for the projected 2050 climate change scenario sdms predicted that the extent of environmentally suitable areas of both life history stages was reduced with planktonic larvae experiencing greater reductions and latitudinal displacement of their suitable areas main conclusions for multiphasic species considering only a single life history stage while studying distribution shifts may lead to erroneous conclusions for the species as a whole regardless of the predictive capability of models employed ignoring the changes in suitable areas for larval stages can lead to underestimation of habitat reduction distribution shifts effects on population connectivity and potential for colonization of newly available habitats,2017,0.918
Deliverable 7.4 (D7. 4) Strategies and business plan for regional and global biodiversity information infrastructures M52,the eu bon project aims to build the european biodiversity observation network and is the european contribution to the group on earth observation biodiversity observation network geo bon this present deliverable entitled â œstrategies and business plan for regional and global biodiversity information infrastructuresâ d7 4 fits under eu bon work package wp 7 â œimplementation of geo bon strategies and solutions at european and global levelsâ and provides an overview of the outputs resulting from two wp7 tasks the objectives of this deliverable were to develop 1 a strategy for a global geo bon infrastructure with optimised functionality in terms of efficiency and operability as part of task 7 4 and 2 a business plan for sustaining the european biodiversity observation network after the funded phase as part of task 7 5 building on the outputs from other eu bon work packages and extensive consultation including externally to the project consortium these objectives have been met the global and european level map of the biodiversity informatics landscape task 7 4 has led to a better understanding of the landscapeâ s current structure and functioning this will enable key players to establish or strengthen collaborations avoid effort duplication and facilitate access to the biodiversity data information and knowledge required to support effective decision making the business plan for the european biodiversity observation network task 7 5 summarises what the network has to offer to identified end users from policy science research and citizen science in terms of products tools and services including those that can potentially generate income a possible organisational structure potential sources of funding along with entry points for the network in other projects and initiatives established or upcoming are also presented,2017,0.122
"Mapping the spatial distribution of the Japanese encephalitis vector, Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles, 1901 (Diptera: Culicidae) within areas of Japanese encephalitis risk",background japanese encephalitis je is one of the most significant aetiological agents of viral encephalitis in asia this medically important arbovirus is primarily spread from vertebrate hosts to humans by the mosquito vector culex tritaeniorhynchus knowledge of the contemporary distribution of this vector species is lacking and efforts to define areas of disease risk greatly depend on a thorough understanding of the variation in this mosquitoâ s geographical distribution results we assembled a contemporary database of cx tritaeniorhynchus presence records within japanese encephalitis risk areas from formal literature and other relevant resources resulting in 1 045 geo referenced spatially and temporally unique presence records spanning from 1928 to 2014 71 9 of records obtained between 2001 and 2014 these presence data were combined with a background dataset capturing sample bias in our presence dataset along with environmental and socio economic covariates to inform a boosted regression tree model predicting environmental suitability for cx tritaeniorhynchus at each 5 ã 5 km gridded cell within areas of je risk the resulting fine scale map highlights areas of high environmental suitability for this species across india nepal and china that coincide with areas of high je incidence emphasising the role of this vector in disease transmission and the utility of the map generated conclusions our map contributes towards efforts determining the spatial heterogeneity in cx tritaeniorhynchus distribution within the limits of je transmission specifically this map can be used to inform vector control programs and can be used to identify key areas where the prevention of cx tritaeniorhynchus establishment should be a priority,2017,0.573
Projected Future Bioclimate-Envelope Suitability for Reptile and Amphibian Species of Concern in South Central USA,future climate change has impacts on the distribution of species using species distribution models sdm we modeled the bioclimatic envelopes of four herpetofauna species in the south central usa including two salamanders the sacramento mountain salamander aneides hardii and the jemez mountains salamander plethodon neomexicanus one anuran the chiricahua leopard frog lithobates chiricahuensis and one turtle the rio grande cooter pseudemys gorzugi we used generalized linear model random forest boosted regression tree maxent and multivariate adaptive regression splines and binary ensembles to develop the present day distributions of the species based on climate driven models alone we projected future distributions of the species using data from four climate models run according to two greenhouse gas concentration pathways rcp 2 6 and rcp 8 5 our model results projected losses and gains in suitable bioclimatic envelopes for the years 2050 and 2070 the boosted regression tree model consistently performed well among sdms based on area under the curve auc range 0 88 to 0 97 values and kappa statistics k 0 75,2017,0.683
The Data Book : Collection and Management of Research Data,first edition scope and content the data book collection and management of research data is the first practical book written for researchers and research team members covering how to collect and manage data for research the book covers basic types of data and fundamentals of how data grow move and change over time focusing on pre publication data collection and handling the text illustrates use of these key concepts to match data collection and management methods to a particular study in essence making good decisions about data the first section of the book defines data introduces fundamental types of data that bear on methodology to collect and manage them and covers data management planning and research reproducibility the second section covers basic principles of and options for data collection and processing emphasizing error resistance and traceability the third section focuses on managing the data collection and processing stages of research such that quality is consistent and ultimately capable of supporting conclusions drawn from data the final section of the book covers principles of data security sharing and archival this book will help graduate students and researchers systematically identify and implement appropriate data collection and handling methods provided by publisher,2017,0.146
"NEW RECORDS IN THE FLORA CHECKLISTS OF LAOS, RESULTING FROM A SURVEY OF PHOU HIN POUN NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AREA",the flora of laos remains one of the least known within the indo burma biodiversity hotspot a floristic inventory was carried out in phou hin poun national biodiversity conservation area an under explored area of the khammouane limestone this study provides a list of 27 taxa that are additions to the most recent country checklists the ebenaceae euphorbiaceae and myrtaceae are the families with the highest species number in this list four species are endemic to indochina cambodia laos and vietnam cynometra dongnaiensis pierre jasminum vidalii p s green memecylon chevalieri guillaumin and pothos gigantipes buchet ex p c boyce these results illustrate the paucity of our knowledge of the region surveyed and of the flora of laos in general,2017,0.589
Phylogeography of the moonwort fern Botrychium lunaria (Ophioglossaceae) based on chloroplast DNA in the Central-European Mountain System,botrychium s s is a cosmopolitan fern genus comprising about 35 currently recognized species despite unexpected high genetic diversity recently highlighted within botrychium lunaria in the circumboreal region few studies have included representative samples from central europe therefore the aim of this work was to study the phylogeography of b lunaria in the central european mountain system and to compare it with that of flowering plants two noncoding chloroplast regions psba trnh and trnl f were sequenced 918 bp from 87 individuals from 34 populations in the major european mountain chains sierra nevada pyrenees massif central jura vosges black forest alps apennines and carpathians among the 24 haplotypes found in the b lunaria aggregate in europe bayesian phylogeny and median joining network support four main clades lun1 lun2 lun3 and tun nst and gst comparison as well as homogeneous groups indicated by samova indicate a clear phylogeographical pattern however unlinked to geographical distance genetic diversity is greatest in the prealps and highlights three main barriers to gene flow sâ n of central alps aosta lepontic alps and two separating eâ w alps lago di como rhaetian alps and dolomites noric julian alps our results indicate that alpine populations of the b lunaria aggregate survived the quaternary glaciations in situ in two main refugia in the southern and eastern periphery of the alps not only areas with higher values of genetic diversity but also refugia and sites of geographical boundaries to gene flow appear similar in both ferns and flowering plants,2017,0.353
New sesquiterpene lactones from Inula oculus-christi L.,investigation of the aerial parts of inula oculus christi l led to the identification of four new sesquiterpene lactones an eudesmanolide 4î 15î epoxypulchellin e and three guaianolides 2î acetoxy 4î 9î dihydroxy 1î guaia 11 13 10 14 dien 12 8î olide 9î 10î epoxygaillardin 9î 10î epoxy 2 epi gaillardin in addition to the known gaillardin pulchellin e pulchellin c and 3 o palmitates of 16î hydroxylupeol 16î hydroxy î amyrin and faradiol the structures of all compounds have been elucidated on the basis of their spectral data,2017,0.351
A new Aceria species (Acari: Eriophyidae) from Spain on Pycnocomon rutifolium (Dipsacaceae) and supplementary descriptions of Aceria eucricotes and A. kuko from Lycium spp. (Solanaceae),a new species of eriophyoid mite aceria pycnocomi sp nov associated with pycnocomon rutifolium dipsacaceae is described and illustrated from spain morphological differences distinguishing this new species from similar aceria species are discussed the female male and nymph of aceria eucricotes nalepa 1892 and aceria kuko kishida 1927 are redescribed and illustrated from spain and hungary respectively both were collected from lycium spp solanaceae morphological differences distinguishing these two species are discussed,2017,0.865
Geographic distribution modeling of the margay (Leopardus wiedii) and jaguarundi (Puma yagouaroundi): a comparative assessment,the neotropical region currently harbors 8 recognized species of small cats including the margay leopardus wiedii and jaguarundi puma yagouaroundi these similar sized species have broad geographic distributions and commonly occur in sympatry we constructed species occurrence databases and used the maximum entropy maxent modeling approach to develop models of habitat suitability for each of these species we identified the environmental predictors with the highest importance for species occurrence and evaluated how they influence habitat suitability for both wild cats variables related to temperature and precipitation were good predictors of species occurrence with both cats responding similarly to them however margay showed higher variation in habitat suitability depending on local climatic predictors the estimated models indicated high niche similarity 76 between these cats but despite this we identified different areas with the most favorable conditions for each speciesâ occurrence approximately 50 and 72 of the entire suitable area were estimated as being moderately to highly suitable for margay and jaguarundi respectively with the margay model comprising a higher proportion of forest environments in comparison to that of the jaguarundi these findings will be relevant in the context of conservation planning when indicating the priority areas for their long term preservation,2017,0.854
Functional types in the Bromeliaceae: relationships with drought resistance traits and bioclimatic distributions,1 neotropical bromeliaceae occupy an exceptional diversity of habitats the five principal functional types which are defined by innovations such as crassulacean acid metabolism cam epiphytism the tank growth form and neoteny display distinct ecological water use strategies 2 the contribution of putative drought resistance traits to the ecological differentiation of functional types has not previously been assessed despite growing interest in the importance of these traits in other plant groups 3 we formulated a set of hypotheses to be tested through a major survey of 376 bromeliad species over 10 of the entire family representing different functional types and ecologies we quantified four drought resistance traits osmotic potential at full turgor ï o saturated water content swc water mass per unit area wma and dry leaf mass per unit area lma for a subset of 308 species relationships between drought resistance traits and species bioclimatic envelopes were also analysed 4 swc wma and lma were closely inter correlated and there was weaker coordination with ï o but the four traits differed significantly between functional types species of different functional types occupied distinct areas of bioclimatic space and the relationships mapping drought resistance trait values into bioclimatic space also varied between functional types 5 we conclude that divergences in drought resistance trait values form an integral part of the evolution of functional type distinctiveness and climatic niche differentiation in this megadiverse tropical plant family 6 this study demonstrates how rapid taxonomically extensive quantification of plant functional traits can provide important insights into the evolution of ecological diversity,2017,0.02
Mapping priorities for conservation in Southeast Asia,southeast asian biodiversity is a global priority for conservation due to the high levels of diversity and endemism combined with some of the greatest levels of threat conservation planning is essential to ensure that hotspots of biodiversity and endemism have the protection needed to prevent deforestation hunting and other forms of exploitation in some of the southeast asia s most diverse areas yet this requires data which in many cases does not exist growing volumes of online available data provides the ability to develop accurate models of species distributions and gain new perspectives on regional diversity patterns and provide essential baseline data for planning and conservation here using the best available information i develop maps of the ranges of 2471 vertebrate birds mammals reptiles and amphibians and 1198 plant species and explore patterns of biodiversity and the adequacy of protection each taxon shows different patterns of diversity and no taxa provided an effective surrogate for diversity patterns in different groups i show that for the majority of biodiversity hotspots fall outside protected areas with between 10 and 55 of areas with at least 75 of the maximum number of species unprotected the percentage of species ranges protected areas also varies by taxa from a maximum of 40 to reptiles with a mean of only 13 5 of species ranges protected furthermore comparison between my predictions and iucn maps of diversity differed greatly for all taxa examined with iucn hotspots covering a much larger portion of the region and potentially overestimating the ranges of many species further efforts are needed to better protect centres of diversity and the inclusion of these methods into regional conservation planning may greatly assist in increasing the effectiveness of conservation,2017,0.819
Geographic Variation in Dispersal Traits of Cakile Edentula: Implications for the Evolution of Species' Range Limits,dispersal is a key process that influences the geographic extent of speciesâ ranges through colonization and gene flow models have commonly assumed that all populations within species have an equal dispersal kernel but there is evidence that traits determining dispersal can vary due to genetic or environmental differences among populations geographic variation in dispersal traits has the potential to influence patterns of colonization and gene flow however this has rarely been evaluated i investigated dispersal trait variation in a great lakes beach plant american sea rocket cakile edentula var lacustris brassicaceae and the potential consequences of that variation for the geographic range dynamics of the species this species has a dimorphic fruit that has two dispersal strategies a proximal fruit segment that stays attached to the plant and a distal fruit segment that disperses short distances via wind and long distances via water specifically i tested for 1 geographic variation in dispersal traits and potential environmental predictors from 30 sites across this speciesâ geographic range 2 the effects of dispersal kernel evolution and existing geographic patterns in dispersal on range dynamics and the response of dispersal to selection in a speciesâ experiencing climate change and 3 how differences in dispersal and phenotypic traits would influence performance of marginal and core populations during colonization into the range core first i found a relationship between many dispersal traits and latitude which was significantly predicted by metrics of habitat quality and amount a common garden experiment indicated that a proportion of this variation is due to genetic differences among sites these results indicate that dispersal traits vary significantly and even predictably across the range of this species second i developed an individual based spatially explicit model that incorporates latitudinal variation among populations in the dispersal kernel model results showed that dispersal kernel evolution and geographic variation in dispersal where dispersal distance was longer at the range edges vs the interior allowed for the species to colonize new habitat more quickly under climate change third i found that marginal populations phenotypic traits involved in local adaptation did not result in lower performance of marginal populations than range core residents in a field common garden and lower dispersal ability did not occur in populations that had lower performance at the range the results of this dissertation imply that dispersal variation could influence patterns of colonization and gene flow and ultimately species range limits this could impact the ability of species to respond to environmental change such as climate change,2017,0.964
Pillar of strength: Columnar cactus as a key factor in Yoreme heritage and wildland preservation,the persistence of traditional cultures and modes of land use within rapidly changing globalized societies is a central issue in understanding ecological and cultural change in the anthropocene located in the heart of the green revolution the yoreme mayo people of the mayo valley in mexico still obtain a significant proportion of their sustenance from wild ecosystems in the midst of this intensive technological and agricultural development they live in and around the thornscrub dominated by pitaya stenocereus thurberi engelm buxb in this study we hypothesize that pitaya supports yoreme heritage and sustenance amidst anthropogenic changes to the landscape and we asked three specific questions what is the land use status of the s thurberi habitat what are its potential uses does s thurberi provide economic value to address these questions we conducted interviews vegetation surveys and land use analysis based on geographic information systems we found that a land conversion of the pitaya rich thornscrub is occurring at a precipitous rate b local producers preserve and adapt their traditions and c s thurberi supports yoreme heritage while providing economic benefit the resulting land use projections along with the cultural value of pitaya products shows the importance of conserving land and promoting sustainable projects instead of clearing land for other uses if habitat shrinking continues at the current rate it is likely that both yoreme livelihoods and continued cultural practices will suffer,2017,0.252
"Rediscovery of the holotypes of Mustela africana stolzmanni Taczanowski, 1881 (Carnivora: Mustelidae) and Cuniculus taczanowskii Stolzmann, 1885 (Rodentia: Cuniculidae) at the Museum and Institute of Zoology Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland",the turbulent history of warsaw resulted in great losses in polish zoological museums and archives especially during first and second world war kazubski 1996 fedorowicz feliksiak 2016 however before 1939 warsawâ s zoological collection deposited in the state zoological museum now called the museum and institute of zoology polish academy of sciences in warsawâ miz pas especially the department of neotropics used to be one of the best developed and well cataloged collections in europe there were also many holotypes of mammal species stored here after polish expeditions to the neotropics as a result of these events current bibliography and on line databases gbif vertnet up to now did not mention the location of holotypes of collected taxa or even recognize them as missing ramã rez chavez et al 2014 patton et al 2015 we reviewed the collection to estimate the presence and status of the surviving descriptive types holotypes the aim of this study was to order our knowledge about the holotypes taking into account especially information about lost specimens and to explain the contradictory information about their status in the present in 2015â 2016 all type specimens in the miz pas collection of neotropical mammals were revised during revision relevant information from specimen labels was compared with the data provided in the original descriptions contained in publications from the end of nineteenth century taczanowski 1881 thomas 1884 stolzmann 1885 thomas 1893 1894 the results were compared with the collection databases of the natural history museum in london http data nhm ac uk systematics and species nomenclature were followed by wilson reeder 2005 zoological nomenclature types were followed by international commission on zoological nomenclature iczn the results of the revision are presented as a systematic list,2017,0.655
Bergamot–an identity crisis,bergamot is one of many essential oils extracted from the outer peel of citrus fruit it differs from other citrus oils by its chemical composition and different therapeutic guidelines and safety precautions apply to it this is especially true for safety limits to prevent phototoxic reactions due to the bergapten content of bergamot oil unless it is bergapten free it is therefore imperative to correctly distinguish bergamot oil from that of other citruses however there is currently no consensus on what actually is the correct botanical name for bergamot,2017,0.362
Detecting climatically driven phylogenetic and morphological divergence among spruce (&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Picea&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;) species worldwide,this study aimed to elucidate the relationship between climate and the phylogenetic and morphological divergence of spruces picea worldwide climatic and georeferenced data were collected from a total of 3388 sites distributed within the global domain of spruce species a phylogenetic tree and a morphological tree for the global spruces were reconstructed based on dna sequences and morphological characteristics spatial evolutionary and ecological vicariance analysis seeva was used to detect the ecological divergence among spruces a divergence index d with 0 1 scaling was calculated for each climatic factor at each node for both trees the annual mean values extreme values and annual range of the climatic variables were among the major determinants for spruce divergence the ecological divergence was significant p 0 001 for 185 of the 279 comparisons at 31 nodes in the phylogenetic tree as well as for 196 of the 288 comparisons at 32 nodes in the morphological tree temperature parameters and precipitation parameters tended to be the main driving factors for the primary divergences of spruce phylogeny and morphology respectively generally the maximum d of the climatic variables was smaller in the basal nodes than in the remaining nodes notably the primary divergence of morphology and phylogeny among the investigated spruces tended to be driven by different selective pressures given the climate scenario of severe and widespread drought over land areas in the next 30â 90 years our findings shed light on the prediction of spruce distribution under future climate change,2017,0.283
A Bayesian semiparametric GLMM for historical and newly collected presence-only data: An application to species richness of Ross Sea Mollusca,historical data sets from vast and relatively inaccessible areas are sources of potentially unique information still valuable for biodiversity studies today in many research fields ranging from climate change to projection of species loss great efforts have been made to integrate historical data sets with recent data to create databases that are as complete as possible unlocking the information contained in presence only data largely prevalent in such databases presents a challenge for statistical modeling because of insidious observational errors due to the opportunistic nature of the data gathering process in this article we propose an appropriate statistical method for the joint analysis of historical and newly collected presence only data that is a bayesian semiparametric generalized linear mixed model with dirichlet process random effects the potential of the method is illustrated by considering the ross sea section of the sombase an international compilation of southern ocean mollusc distributional records from 1899 to 2004 and beyond despite the presence of sampling bias and nondetection errors the proposed model draws latent information from the data such that the resulting estimates of the parameters of interest not only are coherent with those obtained in indirectly related studies based on well structured data but also suggest interesting ideas for further research,2017,0.278
Spatial quantification of the world population potentially exposed to Zika virus,background zika virus is an emerging flaviviridae virus which has spread rapidly in the last few years it has raised concern because it has been associated with fetus microcephaly when pregnant women are infected the main vector is the mosquito aedes aegypti distributed in tropical areas methods niche modelling techniques were used to estimate the potential distribution area of a aegypti this was overlapped with human population density determining areas of potential transmission risk worldwide afterwards we quantified the population at risk according to risk level results the vector transmission risk is distributed mainly in asia and oceania on the shores of the indian ocean in america the risk concentrates in the atlantic coast of south america and in the caribbean sea shores in central and north america in africa the major risk is concentrated in the pacific and atlantic coasts of central and south africa the world population under high and very high risk levels includes 2 261 billion people conclusions these results illustrate zika virus risk at the global level and provide maps to target the prevention and control measures especially in areas with higher risk in countries with less sanitation and poorer resources many countries without previous vector reports could become active transmission zones in the future so vector surveillance should be implemented or reinforced in these areas,2017,0.328
"A revision of the Oriental species of Bolitogyrus Chevrolat (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Staphylininae)",the oriental species of the relictual genus bolitogyrus are revised based on 200 specimens an updated description of the genus is provided including additional putative synapomorphies fifty valid oriental species are diagnosed herein and the following nineteen are described as new to science b concavus sp n b confusus sp n b himalayicus sp n b khasiensis sp n b luteus sp n b mulayitensis sp n b nanus sp n b nokrek sp n b pecki sp n b pederseni sp n b phukhieo sp n b rougemonti sp n b sepilok sp n b schillhammeri sp n b smetanai sp n b solodovnikovi sp n b temburong sp n b tigris sp n and b tumidus sp n the following synonymies are proposed cyrtothorax borneensis cameron 1942 syn n cyrtothorax caesareus bernhauer 1915 cyrtothorax octomaculatus cameron 1937 syn n quedius ornatipennis wendeler 1927 quedius raphirus ornatipennis is moved to bolitogyrus as b ornatipennis wendeler comb n a lectotype is designated for cyrtothorax rufipennis cameron 1937 several species are named in recognition of conservation efforts to protect tropical primary forests in asia that are important to the survival of many bolitogyrus species all available bionomic and distributional data for oriental bolitogyrus are summarized and an identification key is provided,2017,0.978
"New state record and range extension of the Big Crested Mastiff Bat, Promops centralis Thomas, 1915 (Chiroptera, Molossidae), in Veracruz, Mexico",the diversity of bats in the mexican state of veracruz is high comprising 89 species many of these species deserve special attention because either they remain underrepresented in collections or they are known from fewer than 5 localities we confirm the presence of the big crested mastiff bat promops centralis in veracruz and provide additional occurrence records that extend the known geographic distribution of this species by 216 km to the north from previously known sites our new record represents the northernmost record of the species on the coastal plain of the gulf of mexico our findings highlight the presence of gaps in past surveys of mammalian diversity in veracruz,2017,0.817
ConR : An R package to assist large-scale multispecies preliminary conservation assessments using distribution data,the red list categories and the accompanying five criteria developed by the international union for conservation of nature iucn provide an authoritative and comprehensive methodology to assess the conservation status of organisms red list criterion b which principally uses distribution data is the most widely used to assess conservation status particularly of plant species no software package has previously been available to perform large scale multispecies calculations of the three main criterion b parameters extent of occurrence eoo area of occupancy aoo and an estimate of the number of locations and provide preliminary conservation assessments using an automated batch process we developed conr a dedicated r package as a rapid and efficient tool to conduct large numbers of preliminary assessments thereby facilitating complete red list assessment conr 1 calculates key geographic range parameters aoo and eoo and estimates the number of locations sensu iucn needed for an assessment under criterion b 2 uses this information in a batch process to generate preliminary assessments of multiple species 3 summarize the parameters and preliminary assessments in a spreadsheet and 4 provides a visualization of the results by generating maps suitable for the submission of full assessments to the iucn red list conr can be used for any living organism for which reliable georeferenced distribution data are available as distributional data for taxa become increasingly available via large open access datasets conr provides a novel timely tool to guide and accelerate the work of the conservation and taxonomic communities by enabling practitioners to conduct preliminary assessments simultaneously for hundreds or even thousands of species in an efficient and time saving way,2017,0.482
Guidelines on Assessing Biodiverse Foods in dietary intake surveys,current foods systems are facing mounting challenges to provide growing populations with safe diverse and nutritionally adequate foods because of resource constraints environmental degradation as well as the continual narrowing of the food base and the loss of biodiversity biodiversity is intricately intertwined with food security and nutrition for it is critical to the availability of nutrients needed to support health and well being as well as to the sustainability of the natural resource base upon which food systems rely nutrition is at the heart of the sustainable development agenda as a follow up to the second international conference on nutrition icn2 1 in april 2016 the un general assembly proclaimed a decade of action on nutrition for the period 2016 2025 and endorsed the rome declaration on nutrition and the accompanying framework for action recommendation 10 of the framework for action called for the promotion of â œthe diversification of crops including underutilized traditional cropsâ applying sustainable food production and natural resource management practices â in order to mainstream biodiversity and to improve nutrition at national and local levels a thorough understanding of the contribution of food biodiversity to healthy diets and sustainable food systems is needed the commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture cgrfa â s voluntary guidelines for mainstreaming biodiversity into policies programmes and national and regional plans of action on nutrition recognizes that the limited availability of data on use and consumption of biodiverse foods acts as a major bottleneck in determining the importance of biodiverse foods to food security and nutrition2 dietary assessment surveys provide information on the nutrient adequacy of diets but few are designed to capture the consumption of foods with taxonomical details below the level of â speciesâ thus their usefulness for understanding food biodiversity in diets and the nutritional contribution of biodiverse foods is limited fortunately there is potential for many of these instruments to be adapted to capture this information and thus to provide better information to agriculture practices and programmes nutrition programmes and research and the policy spheres surrounding agriculture nutrition and health,2017,0.032
"The value of museums in the production, sharing, and use of entomological data to document hyperdiversity of the changing North",if the current rate of climate change continues the composition distribution and relative population sizes of species in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere are likely to change considerably understanding the magnitude of this change requires a well documented baseline against which to compare although specimen less observations can help augment such a baseline for the minority of organisms that can be confidently identified in the field or from photographs the vast majority of species are small bodied invertebrates primarily arthropods that can only be identified from preserved specimens and or their tissues museum staff archive specimens and make them and their data available for research this paper describes a number of challenges to the goal of thorough documentation of high latitude arthropod biodiversity and their potential solutions examples are provided from ongoing and recently completed research that demonstrate the value of museum specimens and the sharing of their data via global portals like gbif org,2017,0.418
"Hydroides Gunnerus, 1768 (Annelida, Serpulidae) is feminine: a nomenclatural checklist of updated names",as a service to taxonomists and ecologists using names in the well known and species rich ship fouling serpulid genus hydroides we present an update of all 107 non synonymised scientific names with additional information on hydroides nomenclature original names etymologies and type localities derived from original literature and in accord with the world register of marine species worms database an update is needed because the gender of genus hydroides has from 1 january 2000 reverted to the original feminine due to a change in the wording of international code of zoological nomenclature which was overlooked at that time and is contrary to the usage in practice of hydroides as masculine which had started about 1992 although code required from the 1960s we match 31 further original names of current worms subjective junior synonyms to each non synonymised name and also report on the world distribution of the genus as illustrated by type localities of the valid names we include notes on seven species inquirenda the correct rendering is given of six names that have been altered for gender agreement for the first time herein hydroides gottfriedi nom n replaces junior homonym h rostrata pillai 1971 currently there are 41 non synonymised species group names in hydroides which should be gender invariant and 23 names which would only change if moved to a neuter genus the remaining 43 names are fully gender variable place names 23 and personal names 16 make up more than a third 36 of the species names with most of the remainder 68 being descriptive of species character states usually of operculum morphology 54 all species except h norvegica 63â n have type localities in shallow water coastal locations in temperate to tropical waters below latitude 44â with the highest number of new species 54 from the adjoining western pacific and indian ocean areas the other concentration of new species 31 are those first found on the pacific and atlantic coasts of north america and in the caribbean,2017,0.974
Checklist of the freshwater fishes of Colombia: a Darwin Core alternative to the updating problem,the present work is part of a process to create a catalogue of the freshwater fishes of colombia and consisted in the depuration and updating of the taxonomic and geographic components of the checklist of the freshwater fishes of colombia an exhaustive revision of the 1435 species recorded in 2008 was necessary to 1 add new species described since 2009 and species originally described from colombia but inadvertently omitted in 2008 2 add new records of already described species 3 delete species whose presence in colombia was not supported by voucher specimens in ichthyological collections and 4 revise the geographic distribution of the species listed in 2008 this process resulted in the following numbers 1 total number of freshwater fish species in colombia 1494 2 number of species recorded by hydrographic region amazon 706 orinoco 663 caribbean 223 magdalena cauca 220 pacific 130 and 3 number of endemic species 374 76 from the trans andean region updating the current checklist is a fundamental requirement to ensure its incorporation in the decision making process with regard to the conservation of colombian aquatic species and ecosystems which are facing transformation processes as a result of activities such as mining construction of hydroelectric plants expansion of the agricultural frontier and subsequent deforestation industrial and domestic pollution development of waterways introduction of exotic species and climate change,2017,0.981
Contrasting habitat and landscape effects on the fitness of a long-lived grassland plant under forest encroachment: do they provide evidence for extinction debt?,habitat loss fragmentation and transformation threaten the persistence of many species worldwide population and individual fitness are often compromised in small degraded and isolated habitats but extinction can be a slow process and extinction debts are common long lived species are prone to persist as remnant populations in low quality habitats for a long time but the population and individual level mechanisms of extinction debt remain poorly explored so far we here investigate the mechanisms involved in the long term persistence of the common grassland specialist long lived clonal plant aphyllanthes monspeliensis l asparagaceae after forest encroachment into semi natural mediterranean calcareous grasslands in catalonia ne iberian peninsula for this purpose we assess vegetative aboveground and belowground and reproductive plant performance indicators and their habitat and landscape current and historical drivers we confirm the existence of an extinction debt for this species since current plant frequency is related to historical but not current connectivity and we also find a positive effect of historical connectivity on seed set in addition current tree cover negatively affects individual size and aboveground belowground biomass ratio and biotic soil acidification leads to a reduction in the flowering probability of individuals and stems however we also find that current connectivity negatively affects flowering and that tree cover enhances seed set the forestation process thus also exerts a positive effect on some fitness traits probably by providing a moister environment synthesis habitat loss and deterioration result in a decreased vegetative performance of aphyllanthes monspeliensis a grassland specialist but show contrasting effects on its reproductive performance this suggests that the species would perform better in open forests than grasslands in a context of climate change however further forest encroachment would increase light competition and soil acidification threatening its persistence and promoting the payment of the extinction debt if no conservation measures are taken like opening gaps in forests and enhancing grassland connectivity,2017,0.374
Effects of Climate Change on the Potentially Suitable Climatic Geographical Range of Liriodendron chinense,identifying the potentially suitable climatic geographical range for liriodendron chinense l chinense and predicting its responses to climate change is urgently necessary as l chinense is an important tertiary relict tree species in this study we simulated the potentially suitable climatic habitat of l chinense in china using maximum entropy maxent modeling we found that the maxent model was highly accurate with an average training area under the curve auc value of 0 912 annual precipitation and mean temperature of the driest quarter are the main factors controlling the geographical distribution of l chinense currently the suitable climatic habitat of l chinense is mainly located in southeastern china forecasted patterns of predicted suitable climatic habitat show a significant change by the 2050s and 2070s suggesting that the suitable climatic habitat of l chinense would shift north with future climate change based on four representative concentrations pathways for carbon dioxide co2 emissions the southern extent of the current distribution would become unsuitable for l chinense pointing to a threat of extinction and highlighting the urgent need for conservation within the next half century the potentially suitable climatic habitat of l chinense was predicted to move further north but those habitat gains may be inaccessible because of dispersal limitations our unique findings offer a climatic suitability map for l chinense in china which can help to identify locations where l chinense may already exist but has not yet been detected to recognize locations where l chinense is likely to spread in the future given forecasted climate change and to select priority areas for its introduction cultivation and conservation,2017,0.396
"Developing integrative systematics in the informatics and genomic era, and calling for a global Biodiversity Cyberbank",systematics is the science of discovering organizing and interpreting the diversity of all living organisms recent developments in genomics and biodiversity informatics are transforming systematics and have opened up many new opportunities major digitization efforts and developments in biodiversity informatics have helped the systematics community explore ways to enhance the efficiency in organizing publishing and utilizing systematic information at the same time genomics is rapidly facilitating construction of the tree of life improving taxonomic classification and disentangling complex evolutionary histories in the informatics and genomics era systematics has an incredible capacity to integrate with computational and exploratory platforms for discovery as well as with other related disciplines while maintaining its core strengths in biological collections and morphology we call for the establishment of a new global cyberinfrastructure or biodiversity cyberbank that will function as the main repository of many types of biodiversity data to ensure the long term sustainability of the vast and growing amount of systematic data this biodiversity cyberbank will contain new and efficient analytical pipelines for systematics research especially for efficiently generating taxonomic treatments revisions e monographs and floras integrative systematics requires the training of the next generation systematists with taxonomic phylogenomic and informatics skills to address grand questions about biodiversity and its assembly and continue to develop the biodiversity cyberbank integrative systematics must also proactively educate the public and policy makers on the importance of systematics and collections for addressing the biodiversity crisis of the anthropocene and a biodiversity cyberbank may represent one powerful tool for outreach,2017,0.097
Wind effects on habitat distributions of wind-dispersed invasive plants across different biomes on a global scale: Assessment using six species,a number of widespread invasive plants are wind dispersed and wind may facilitate their dispersal and migration over a large distance while wind is an important factor for seed dispersal and pollination few studies have examined its potential to affect the habitat distribution of invasive plants over large spatial scales we selected six of the world s worst invasive plants with wind driving seed dispersal and pollination and used wind speed as an indicator of wind ecological niche modelling enm was used to quantify the effects of wind on the habitat distribution of these invasive plants on a global scale and across 14 biomes wind had a negative effect on the habitat distribution of invasive plants in tropical and subtropical moist biomes and a positive effect on those in temperate conifer forests boreal forests taiga temperate grasslands savannas and shrublands and montane grasslands and shrublands we concluded that wind affected the habitat distribution of wind dispersed invasive plants over a large scale and this effect varied across different biomes thus wind speed and biomes should be used as global monitoring indicators of invasion by wind dispersed plants and wind speed variables should be included in the projection of habitat distributions of such invasive species when using enm,2017,0.041
"COST Action short term scientific mission – Alien plant species in Overseas Territories in Cyprus, 5th-18th March 2017",two weeks were spent in march 2017 surveying alien species in cyprus building on work conducted during an earlier mission the surveys were directed within four key areas the akrotiri forest phrygana within both the akrotiri and dhekelia sovereign base areas sbas and the fassouri marsh,2017,0.463
Running bamboo invasion in native and non-native regions worldwide,bamboo is native to all continents except europe and antarctica although it now also occurs in europe bamboo is an important forest resource in many countries that serves as an excellent substitute for timber products and provides a multitude of other food and non food uses this societal and economic significance has led to increased bamboo cultivation globally this review describes the global distribution of bamboo species as well as the rapid expansion of bamboo hectarage both intentional and by encroachment in native and non native countries bamboos include both clumping and running rhizomatous species running species are long lived spread aggressively via their rhizomes and commonly invade and eventually replace adjacent forests evidence is presented that supports categorizing running bamboos as invasive plants also presented are details of the influence of bamboo invasion on biodiversity and ecological processes finally we suggest some strategies for controlling bamboo invasion and needs for further scientific research,2017,0.447
Marine and Aquatic Sciences Information Literacy,marine and aquatic sciences encompass the study of oceanic and freshwater environments research in this area is often multidisciplinary and is conducted worldwide by academia industry and government and nongovernment organizations this chapter examines unique aspects to consider when searching for this information e g by scientific name or geographical area and the importance of publication types beyond journal literature it highlights key information resources such as taxonomy tools and species databases encyclopedias field guides journals databases repositories government sites intergovernmental organizations data and map sources and citizen science websites it includes practical examples for teaching information literacy skills to undergraduate and graduate students as well as advice for staying current in the field,2017,0.418
LepNet: The Lepidoptera of North America Network,the lepidoptera of north america network or lepnet is a digitization effort recently launched to mobilize biodiversity data from 3 million specimens of butterflies and moths in united states natural history collections http www lep net org lepnet was initially conceived as a north american effort but the project seeks collaborations with museums and other organizations worldwide the overall goal is to transform lepidoptera specimen data into readily available digital formats to foster global research in taxonomy ecology and evolutionary biology,2017,0.316
Database of Himalayan Plants Based on Published Floras During a Century,the himalaya is the largest mountain range in the world spanning approximately ten degrees of latitude and elevation between 100 m asl to the highest mountain peak on earth the region varies in plant species richness being highest in the biodiversity hotspot of eastern himalaya and declining to the north western parts of the himalaya we examined all published floras 31 floras in 42 volumes spanning the years 1903â 2014 from the indian himalayan region nepal and bhutan to compile a comprehensive checklist of all gymnosperms and angiosperms a total of 10 503 species representing 240 families and 2322 genera are reported we evaluated all the botanical names reported in the floras for their updated taxonomy and excluded 3000 synonyms additionally we identified 1134 species reported in these floras that presently remain taxonomically unresolved and 160 species with missing information in the global plant database the plant list 2013 this is the most comprehensive estimate of plant species diversity in the himalaya,2017,0.884
An integrated assessment of the vascular plant species of the Americas,the cataloging of the vascular plants of the americas has a centuries long history but it is only in recent decades that an overview of the entire flora has become possible we present an integrated assessment of all known native species of vascular plants in the americas twelve regional and national checklists prepared over the past 25 years and including two large ongoing flora projects were merged into a single list our publicly searchable checklist includes 124 993 species 6227 genera and 355 families which correspond to 33 of the 383 671 vascular plant species known worldwide in the past 25 years the rate at which new species descriptions are added has averaged 744 annually for the americas and we can expect the total to reach about 150 000,2017,0.612
eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Consevation,data collection storage analysis visualization and dissemination are changing rapidly due to advances in new technologies driven by computer science and universal access to the internet these technologies and web connections place human observers front and center in citizen science driven research and are critical in generating new discoveries and innovation in such fields as astronomy biodiversity and meteorology research projects utilizing a citizen science approach address scientific problems at regional continental and even global scales otherwise impossible for a single lab or even a small collection of academic researchers here we describe ebutterfly an integrative checklist based butterfly monitoring and database web platform that leverages the skills and knowledge of recreational butterfly enthusiasts to create a globally accessible unified database of butterfly observations across north america citizen scientists conservationists policy makers and scientists are using ebutterfly data to better understand the biological patterns of butterfly species diversity and how environmental conditions shape these patterns in space and time ebutterfly in collaboration with thousands of butterfly enthusiasts has created a near real time butterfly data resource producing tens of thousands of observations per year open to all to share and explore,2017,0.247
"DEEP-WATER FORM OF THE DEVONSHIRE CUP CORAL CARYOPHYLLIA SMITHII VAR. CLAVUS SCACCHI, 1835 (ANTHOZOA, SCLERACTINIA …",the devonshire cup coral caryophyllia smithii stokes broderip 1828 occurs as two ecotypes a â shallow waterâ sub cylindrical form var smithii and a â deep waterâ conical form var clavus scacchi 1835 although both eco types are well known there are relatively few definitive records of the deep water eco type from irish waters the current article reports on a recent record of c smithii var clavus from the west coast of ireland and summarises previous reports from irish waters other caryophyllia species occurring in the north east ne atlantic are briefly reviewed,2017,0.334
Conservation of endangered plants: a roadmap for the selection of translocation sites,the conservation translocations of endangered plant species have become increasingly used techniques for withstanding the increase of species loss worldwide however a comprehensive approach that merges natural history with modern modelling techniques to identify suitable restoration sites does not exist today in this study i propose a hierarchical and holistic roadmap to identify appropriate reintroduction and introduction sites the first step of this method includes modelling of bioclimatic and topographical niches of target species in order to ensure a long term viability of plants current and future niches are modelled the second step consists in analysing ecological parameters such as vegetation and soil of reference populations in addition life history traits of the target species are measured in order to establish a connexion between those biological traits and favourable environmental factors all data are then statistically analysed to extract the most important parameters for the speciesâ ecology the third step is dedicated to the improvement of prediction maps obtained in step 1 using field data gathered in step 2 and the creation of a field guidebook with crucial parameters to be taken into account when performing translocations in order to illustrate this methodology this study focuses on the ladyâ s slipper orchid cypripedium calceolus l orchidaceae growing in switzerland for which conservation plans have existed for years but generally unfruitful the three steps of this roadmap allowed identifying sites for future reintroduction and introduction corresponding to this speciesâ ecology for studied parameters in addition laboratory analysis of soils highlighted several potential causes of weak success of already performed reintroductions as well as a better understanding of the ecology of this rare species this work can be considered as the basis of a broader roadmap that will include more ecological factors such as biological historical and demographical ones in order to lead to more accurate identifications of suitable translocation sites,2017,0.752
"Leptodactylus mystaceus (Spix, 1824): Distribution extension for the Brazilian Cerrado (Anura: Leptodactylidae)",fifty seven species of anurans belonging to the genus leptodactylus are registered and widely distributed throughout brazil sã et al 2014 sbh 2016 among these species leptodactylus mystaceus spix 1824 spreads throughout the whole northern region and some areas of northeastern and central brazil affonso et al 2011 it also occurs in smaller patches within the southeastern and southern regions affonso et al 2011 frost 2016,2017,0.701
Insect Biodiversity in the Afrotropical Region,the afrotropical region is renowned for its charismatic megafauna and diverse botanical wealth but these aspects are overshadowed by the sheer diversity of insects that occupy the continent of africa and its associated islands miller and rogo 2001 reviewed some of the aspects of insect biodiversity science in an excellent synthesis of african and afrotropical insect diversity they highlighted a series of challenges that face insect biodiversity science in africa which they had identified in an earlier study this chapter addresses some of the questions they raised and challenges they identified and focuses on african biodiversity science by means of insect groups with which we are familiar it discusses the role of insects in ecosystem processes and as indicators e g dung beetles of environmental quality dung beetles are useful indicators of effects related to local transformation from natural habitat to farmland,2017,0.28
"Seven years of NeoBiota – the times, were they a changin’?",during the neobiota conference 2010 in copenhagen see http www neobiota eu conferences for an overview of all conferences the attendants decided to transform the serial of the european group on biological invasions neobiota edited by ingo kowarik and uwe starfinger into an international open access journal in the following year neobiota was relaunched under the same name but with an upper case â bâ by pensoft publishers in the editorial of the first issue a large group of co editors claimed for openness in covering a broad range of issues in invasion science including the intersections with applied and social sciences and referring to different groups of taxa and geographical regions kã hn et al 2011 what happened since then we think that it is now time to shortly reflect how the new neobiota journal has developed in the first years of its infancy â based on some data on the published papers the addressed topics and the geographical background of our contributing authors first of all we are pleased with the increasing visibility of neobiota â thankworthy to many papers by our esteemed authors that you our readers found interesting since the relaunch in 2011 we passed through two stages with respect to visibility in major bibliometric databases namely isi web of science since 2017 clarivate analytics http www webofknowledge com and scopus https www scopus com home uri we were scrutinised for the first five years by both companies all papers published since 2015 by neobiota are now listed by web of science as well as scopus but also papers published before 2015 are well visible up to october 2017 they were cited on average more than 6 times in web of science the more conservative of the two bibliometric databases recognised in this study,2017,0.216
Novel mandibular gland volatiles from Apterostigma ants,the fungus farming ants are a well studied evolutionary radiation within the subfamily myrmicinae that associate with a web of symbionts that span kingdoms members of the apterostigma pilosum species group cultivate unique basidiomycete fungi belonging to the coral mushroom family pterulaceae a family of fungi that is distantly related to the agaricaceae leucoagaricus and leucocoprinus fungi grown by most fungus farmers including other members in the genus apterostigma a auriculatum group and a megacephala a chemical analysis using gas chromatographyâ mass spectroscopy of the mandibular gland volatiles of two species â a dentigerum and a manni â revealed the presence of an extraordinary diversity of natural products many of these compounds are new to arthropoda such as a homologous series of 3 methyl 2 alkanones 2 methyl 2 alkenals and 1 phenyl 2 propanone in a dentigerum and 1 phenyl 2 propanol in a manni these results identify a remarkable divergence of compounds across the fungus growing ants and other members in myrmicinae functions of these natural products are proposed and discussed,2017,0.634
"Taxonomic revision of Plyomydas Wilcox Papavero, 1971 with the description of two new species and its transfer to Mydinae (Insecta: Diptera: Mydidae)",the monotypic neotropical mydidae genus plyomydas wilcox papavero 1971 to date confined to coastal peru is reviewed two new species plyomydas adelphe sp nov and plyomydas phalaros sp nov are described from mid elevational western argentina which extends the distribution of the genus considerably distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots sensu conservation international and seasonal incidence are discussed descriptions re descriptions photographs illustrations and identification keys are provided and made openly accessible in data depositories to support future studies of the included taxa plyomydas is transferred from the leptomydinae to the mydinae messiasiini based on the absence of acanthophorite spines on abdominal tergite 10 in females and the presence of vein m3 m4 terminating in the costal vein c leptomydinae is therefore restricted to the northern hemisphere with the exception of hessemydas kondratieff carr irwin 2005 known from madagascar messiasia notospila wiedemann 1828 is compared to plyomydas species,2017,0.644
Climatic variables determining Rhododendron sister taxa distributions and distributional overlaps in the Himalayas,endemic species in mountains are vulnerable to rapid cli mate change we elucidated distribu onal overlaps and related cli ma c variables for two endemic sister taxa of rhododendron and a generalist with respect to current and future climate condi ons our research ques ons are i which climate factors separate the distri bu ons of rhododendron cowanianum r lepidotum and r lowndesii ii how large is the geographic overlap in current and fu ture distribu ons iii is it likely that the species are able to track their niches in the future to answer these ques ons we performed species distribu on modelling on binomial rhododendron occurrenc es accompanied by random pseudo absences and absences con strained by other rhododendron taxa we used generalized linear modelling to select variables and modelled the distribu on of each species using random forest algorithms predic ng their poten al distribu on in current and future climates we also examined range di erences to iden fy the variables segrega ng the distribu on of these sister taxa and es mated current and future distribu onal overlap between and within species precipita on variables explained r lowndesii distribu on whereas temperature variables explained distribu ons of the other two species we found that sister taxa have similar climate niche and hence high overlap in geographic distribu on in current climate 46â 68 and poten ally in future climate 53 â 77 under future climate condi ons the poten al distribu on area of r lepidotum and r cowanianum is predicted to be at a high er eleva on while the predic on for r lowndesii is similar to its cur rent geography our models suggest that there are more poten al distribu on areas for these narrowly distributed endemic species than are currently occupied which illustrates that it is rather uncer tain whether the rhododendron species will be able to track the geo graphical loca on of their niches in the future,2017,0.973
Modelling plant invasion pathways in protected areas under climate change: implication for invasion management,global climate change may enable invasive plant species ips to invade protected areas pas but plant invasion on a global scale has not yet been explicitly addressed here we mapped the potential invasion pathways for ips in pas across the globe and explored potential factors determining the pathways of plant invasion under climate change we used species distribution modelling to estimate the suitable habitats of 386 ips and applied a corridor analysis to compute the potential pathways of ips in pas under climate change subsequently we analysed the potential factors affecting the pathways in pas according to our results the main potential pathways of ips in pas are in europe eastern australia new zealand southern africa and eastern regions of south america and are strongly influenced by changes in temperature and precipitation protected areas can play an important role in preventing and controlling the spread of ips under climate change this is due to the fact that measures are taken to monitor climate change in detail to provide effective management near or inside pas and to control the introduction of ips with a high capacity for natural dispersal a review of conservation policies in pas is urgently needed,2017,0.326
Detecting changes in essential ecosystem and biodiversity properties-towards a Biosphere Atmosphere Change Index: BACI,deliverable d8 4 aims at assessing the utility of high resolution description of ecosystem properties based on eo data for enhancing fine scale species distribution models for a wide range of plant and bird species the final goal is to test the value of a framework where species distributions can be continuously updated as new high resolution remote sensing layers become available for d8 4 we specifically assessed the value of available high resolution remote sensing data for the projection of plant and bird species distributions in denmark we use synthetic aperture radar sar to investigate if we can improve models of the geographical ranges of species by characterising attributes of the physical environment that affect organisms at higher spatial resolutions than previously possible,2017,0.494
Bioclimatic niches are conserved and unrelated to pollination syndromes in Antillean Gesneriaceae,the study of the evolution of abiotic niches can be informative regarding the speciation drivers in a given group yet two factors that could potentially affect niche evolution have seldom been addressed concomitantly which are biotic interactions and geographical isolation in this study we used as a model group the antillean plant genera gesneria and rhytidophyllum gesneriaceae to evaluate the effect of pollinators and geographical isolation on the bioclimatic niche these genera possess species characterized by interspecific geographical isolation in different islands and are pollinated by different pollinators some species are pollinated by hummingbirds other by bats while some are more generalists and are pollinated by pollinators from both functional groups after describing the bioclimatic niches of plant species we measured niche overlap for species pairs and we fitted brownian motion and ornsteinâ uhlenbeck ou evolution models with multiple evolutionary regimes to test for an effect of pollination strategy or geographical isolation on bioclimatic niche evolution of these plants the analysis of niche overlap between plant species which could not be corrected for phylogenetic relationships showed that it was significantly influenced by pollination mode and island distribution by contrast the best fitting evolutionary model on niche optima and tolerance was always an ou model with a unique selective regime suggesting that neither pollination strategy nor island isolation had an important effect on bioclimatic niches at a macroevolutionary scale instead we conclude that bioclimatic niches of antillean gesneriaceae evolved under phylogenetic conservatism and hypothesize that this macroevolutionary pattern could result from adaptation to temporally variable climates in the antilles,2017,0.68
Would behavioral thermoregulation enables pregnant viviparous tropical lizards to cope with a warmer world?,sceloporus lizards depend on external heat to achieve their preferred temperature tse1 for performing physiological processes evidence both in the field and laboratory indicates that pregnant females of this genus select body temperatures tb lower than 34â c as higher temperatures may be lethal to embryos therefore thermoregulation is crucial for successful embryo development given the increase in global air temperature it is expected that the first compensatory response of species that inhabit tropical climates will be behavioral thermoregulation we tested if viviparous sceloporus formosus group lizards in the wild exhibited differences in thermoregulatory behavior to achieve the known tse1 for developing embryos regardless of local thermal conditions we quantified field active body temperature thermoregulatory behavior mechanisms time of sighting microhabitat used and basking time and available microhabitat thermal conditions i e operative temperature for ten lizard species during gestation distributed along an altitudinal gradient we applied both conventional and phylogenic analyses to explore if tb or behavioral thermoregulation could be regulated in response to different thermal conditions these species showed no significant differences in field tb during gestation regardless of local thermal conditions in contrast they exhibited significant differences in their behavioral thermoregulation associated to local environmental conditions based on these observations the differences in thermoregulatory behavior identified are interpreted as compensatory adjustments to local thermal conditions we conclude that these species may deal with higher stressing environmental temperatures scenarios forecasted to the tropics by modulating their thermoregulatory behavior repertoire as first reaction,2017,0.444
Promising Indigenous and Endemic Medicinal Plants from Mauritius,the republic of mauritius is part of sub saharan africa and one of the three islands that constitute the mascarene archipelago due to its volcanic origin the tropical island of mauritius has a diverse flora and has been endorsed by international authorities as one of the indian ocean islands biodiversity hotspots the local flora bears its essence from the floristic heritage of the mascarenes and harbor a wide array of endemic or highly specialized species that has evolved as a result of the variation in topography climate and the geographical isolation of the islands indeed a major portion of this flora is exploited for its medicinal properties by the local people to treat and or manage common ailments nonetheless there is still a dearth of scientific validation and compilation of some indigenous plants in common use the present chapter endeavors to highlight the botanical description ethnopharmacological uses and the main therapeutic benefits of common indigenous and endemic medicinal plants of mauritius special emphasis has been geared towards recent in vitro and in vivo data which tend to support ethnopharmacological uses of these medicinal plants in traditional medicine of mauritius,2017,0.117
Catchment vegetation and temperature mediating trophic interactions and production in plankton communities,climatic factors influence the interactions among trophic levels in an ecosystem in multiple ways however whereas most studies focus on single factors in isolation mainly due to interrelation and correlation among drivers complicating interpretation and analyses there are still only few studies on how multiple ecosystems respond to climate related factors at the same time here we use a hierarchical bayesian model with a bioenergetic predator prey framework to study how different climatic factors affect trophic interactions and production in small arctic lakes natural variation in temperature and catchment land cover was used as a natural experiment to exemplify how interactions between and production of primary producers phytoplankton and grazers zooplankton are driven by direct temperature and indirect catchment vegetation factors as well as the presence or absence of apex predators fish the results show that increased vegetation cover increased phytoplankton growth rate by mediating lake nutrient concentration at the same time increased temperature also increased grazing rates by zooplankton presence of fish increased zooplankton mortality rates thus reducing grazing the arctic is currently experiencing an increase in both temperature and shrub vegetation cover due to climate change a trend which is likely to continue our results point towards a possible future general weakening of zooplankton grazing on phytoplankton and greening of arctic lakes with increasing temperatures at the same time the impact of the presence of an apex predator indicate considerable local variation in the response this makes direction and strength of global change impacts difficult to forecast,2017,0.417
Land-use effects on local biodiversity in tropical forests vary between continents,land use change is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity especially in the tropics where secondary and plantation forests are expanding while primary forest is declining understanding how well these disturbed habitats maintain biodiversity is therefore importantâ specifically how the maturity of secondary forest and the management intensity of plantation forest affect levels of biodiversity previous studies have shown that the biotas of different continents respond differently to land use any continental differences in the response could be due to differences in land use intensity and maturity of secondary vegetation or to differences among species in their sensitivity to disturbances we tested these hypotheses using an extensive dataset collated from published biodiversity comparisons within four tropical regionsâ asia africa central america and south americaâ and a wide range of animal and plant taxa we analysed responses to land use of several aspects of biodiversityâ species richness species composition and endemicityâ allowing a more detailed comparison than in previous syntheses within each continent assemblages from secondary vegetation of all successional stages retained species richness comparable to those in primary vegetation but community composition was distinct especially in younger secondary vegetation plantation forests particularly the most intensively managed supported a smallerâ and very distinctâ set of species from sites in primary vegetation responses to land use did vary significantly among continents with the biggest difference in richness between plantation and primary forests in asia responses of individual taxonomic groups did not differ strongly among continents giving little indication that species were inherently more sensitive in asia than elsewhere we show that oil palm plantations support particularly low species richness indicating that continental differences in the response of biodiversity to land use are perhaps more likely explained by asiaâ s high prevalence of oil palm plantations,2017,0.925
An event model for phylogenetic biogeography using explicitly geographical ranges,aim to develop and implement a method for phylogenetic biogeography that is both event based and geographically explicit that is that uses the geographical ranges observed in the terminals instead of â predefined areas â methods the method gem geographically explicit event model attributes vicariance sympatry range copying point sympatry subset sympatry or founder events to the internal nodes of the tree the cost of a reconstruction is calculated as the event cost plus the amount of range changes along a branch and the best reconstruction is the combination of the event and range assignments that minimize the cost results the approach was implemented in a computer program evs using a geographical data model a raster in which range changes were measured by pixel counts the program can be used in real sized datasets using an heuristic to find reasonable solutions in short times main conclusion gem provides a method for direct analysis of joint data on phylogeny and explicit distribution ranges and proposes both the ancestral ranges and the biogeographical events connected with cladogenesis,2017,0.079
Potential distributional changes of invasive crop pest species associated with global climate change,this study investigated the potential global distributional shifts of poikilothermic invasive crop pest species associated with climate change aiming to understand if their overall global distributions will expand or contract and how the species distributions will vary across different regions an ecological niche modelling analysis was conducted for 76 species the potential distributional changes of the species in 2050 and 2070 were scrutinized for two climate change scenarios which were further examined across different temperature and precipitation ranges results showed that averages of the mean probabilities of presence of the 76 crop pest species were predicted to increase higher species turnovers were predicted mostly to occur in areas with increasing predicted species richness lower species turnovers however were predicted mostly to occur in areas with decreasing predicted species richness species richness increases were predicted to occur more often in currently lower temperature annual mean temperature approximately 21 â c or lower precipitation annual precipitation approximately 1100 mm regions areas with the current annual mean temperatures at around 27 â c and 7 5 â c respectively were predicted to experience the highest decrease and increase in species richness as the climate warms in conclusion climate change is likely to expand the pest speciesâ overall distribution across the globe it could have more profound impacts on the species distributions of those regions where species richness increases are expected by altering the speciesâ community compositions,2017,0.995
Can Aquatic Plants Keep Pace with Climate Change?,the persistence of species may depend upon their capacity to keep pace with climate change however dispersal has been ignored in the vast majority of studies that aimed at estimating and predicting range shifts as a response to climate change long distance dispersal ldd in particular might promote rapid range shifts and allow species to track suitable habitat many aquatic plant species are dispersed by birds and have the potential to be dispersed over hundreds of kilometers during the bird migration seasons i argue that such dispersal potential might be critical to allow species to track climate change happening at unprecedented high rates as a case study i used dispersal data from three aquatic plant species dispersed by migratory birds to model range shifts in response to climate change projections by comparing four dispersal scenarios â 1 no dispersal 2 unlimited dispersal 3 ldd 100 km and 4 ldd mediated by bird migratory movements â it was shown that for bird mediated dispersal the rate of colonization is sufficient to counterbalance the rate of habitat loss the estimated rates of colonization 3 2â 31 5 kmâ year 1 are higher than for example the rate of global warming previously estimated at 0 42 kmâ year 1 although further studies are needed the results suggest that these aquatic plant species can adjust their ranges under a severe climate change scenario therefore investigating the dispersal capacity of species namely their ldd potential may contribute to estimate the likelihood of species to keep pace with climate change,2017,0.902
"Taxonomic affinity, habitat and seed mass strongly predict seed desiccation response: a boosted regression trees analysis based on 17 539 species",background and aims seed desiccation response plays an important role in plant regeneration ecology and has significant implications for species conservation the majority of seed plants produce desiccation tolerant orthodox seeds whilst comparatively few produce desiccation sensitive recalcitrant seeds that are unable to survive dehydration and which cannot be conserved in traditional seed banks this study develops a set of models to predict seed desiccation response in unstudied species methods taxonomy trait location and climate data were compiled to form a global data set of 17 539 species three boosted regression trees models were then developed to predict speciesâ seed desiccation responses based on habitat and trait information for the species and the seed desiccation responses of close relatives either members of the same genus family or order depending on the model ten fold cross validation was used to test model predictive success the utility of the models was then demonstrated by predicting seed desiccation response for two floras ecuador and britain and ireland key results the three models had varying success rates for identifying the desiccation sensitive species 89 for the genus level model 79 for the family level model and 60 for the order level model the most important predictor variables were the seed desiccation responses of a speciesâ relatives seed mass and annual precipitation it is predicted that 10 of seed plants from ecuador and 1 2 of those from britain and ireland produce desiccation sensitive seeds due to data availability prediction accuracy is likely to be higher for the british and irish flora where it is estimated that a desiccation sensitive species had a 96 7 chance of being correctly identified compared with 80 8 in the ecuador flora conclusions these models can utilize existing data to predict speciesâ likely seed desiccation responses providing a gap filling tool for global studies of plant traits as well as critical decision making support for plant conservation activities,2017,0.032
Molecular data and distribution dynamics indicate a recent and incomplete separation of manakins species of the genus Antilophia (Aves: Pipridae) in response to Holocene climate change,to determine a hypothetical scenario that accounts for the diversification of the two species of the genus antilophia we conducted multilocus molecular comparisons and species distribution modeling for the two taxa which have distinct male plumage coloration patterns and allopatric geographic distributions despite the high degree of genetic similarity indicated by recent studies three mitochondrial and three nuclear fragments were analyzed the results indicate clear differences in the genetic diversity of the two species but with ample sharing of haplotypes in all the markers analyzed reflecting the absence of reciprocal monophyly presumably due to the relatively recent and still incomplete separation of the two species the paleoclimatic distribution models together with the observed genetic profile indicate a recent process of divergence by geographic isolation in the ancestral populations of the two species this scenario coincides with the recent climatic events of the south american dry diagonal which involves the gallery forests of the cerrado biome and the cloud forest enclaves of the seasonal tropical dry forest of the caatinga between the late pleistocene and the mid holocene,2017,0.893
Physiological limits in an ecological niche modeling framework: A case study of water temperature and salinity constraints of freshwater bivalves invasive in USA,ecological niche modeling has emerged as a notable tool in invasive species risk assessment however the advances of the ecological niche theory the basis of ecological niche modeling are not matched by availability of detailed biological data thus we proposed a conceptual framework to refine the boundaries of ecological niche differentiating the speciesâ existence status survival growth and reproduction based on physiological limits of major life history characteristics we discussed differences between the classic and the proposed frameworks and emphasized the importance of the time axis in understanding speciesâ existence status we exemplified the implementation potential of this framework by reviewing published studies of physiological limits temperature and salinity for survival growth and reproduction of invasive freshwater bivalves in usa we found considerable amount of physiological information through the literature review though there is a research bias toward more influential invasive species vs less influential invasive species temperature tolerance vs salinity tolerance and survival limits vs growth and reproduction limits filling the knowledge gaps will strengthen the potential of the proposed framework our framework addresses the lack of long term field data but is limited in that one can only identify unsuitable instead of suitable conditions for species given incomplete understanding of speciesâ physiological tolerance future studies may consider developing new algorithms that utilize physiological limits as priors in a bayesian approach,2017,0.468
Future climate scenarios project a decrease in the risk of fall armyworm outbreaks,spodoptera frugiperda or the fall armyworm faw lepidoptera noctuidae is an endemic and important agricultural pest in america several outbreaks have occurred with losses estimated at millions of dollars insects are affected by climate factors and climate change may affect geographical range growth rate abundance survival mortality number of generations per year and other characteristics these effects are difficult to project due to the complex interactions among insects hosts and predators the aim of the current research is to project the impact of climate change on future suitability for the expansion and final range of faw as well as highlight the risk of damage due to the pest under current and future conditions the modelling was carried out using two general circulation models gcms csiro mk3 0 and miroc h for 2050 and 2100 under the a2 special report on emissions scenarios sres using the known distribution of the species and the climond meteorological database the possible number of generations was estimated to exceed five in the south eastern usa by 2100 a unique modelling approach linking environmental suitability and number of generations was developed to project the risks of faw damage the results show changes in suitability and risk across america with an increase in the northern hemisphere and decreases or extinction in the southern hemisphere except for southern brazil uruguay paraguay and northern argentina which indicate high future levels of risk the current study highlights the possible extinction of a tropical pest in areas near the equator the two gcms both projected increases in the low risk category of 40 by 2050 and 23 by 2100 with the medium and high risk categories decreasing by gt 50 by 2050 and gt 39 by 2100 compared with the current risk in general agricultural pest management may become more challenging under future climate change and variation and thus understanding and quantifying the possible impacts of faw under future climate conditions is essential for the future economic production of crops,2017,0.425
As vivid as a weed… Medicinal and cosmetic plant uses amongst the urban youth in French Guiana,ethnopharmacological relevance french guiana is a french overseas territory with a rich history of migration that has led to a highly intercultural society today its population is one of the youngest in the french territory and is rapidly increasing despite a context of cultural revival seeking â œtraditionâ a distanced baseline of local practices is still lacking this work addresses some aspects of the cultural hybridizations in progress in urban areas methods semi directed interviews were conducted with willing participants aged between 18 and 40 interviews took place in french guiana s two main urban centres cayenne and saint laurent du maroni people were interviewed about the last medicinal plant they used in the preceding year due to the high use of plant baths in french guiana a focus was made on baths results and discussion eighty three people answered 43 women and 40 men mean age of 28 7 years old in total 226 remedies were counted in our study 155 single plant remedies and 71 compound remedies leading to 316 use reports of plants from 16 cultural groups a surprising number of 108 botanical species were recorded eighty one recipes for baths were also collected despite this high citation rate a rather low proportion of people declare a systematic and regular recourse upon local pharmacopoeia 46 38 83 although many interviewees used plants far from the majority used them on a regular basis in practice 50 of the species 54 108 spp 99 316 urs are non native but domesticated exotic species imported from asia europe africa or remote parts of america either during colonization the slave trade era or more recently with the latest migrations conclusion although phytotherapy use is often thought to be related to countryside dwellers and older people medicinal plants seem to play an important role in the lives of urban french guianese youth research shows a large diversity of medicinal species used linked with the great cultural diversity of the guianese cities one characteristic of this population is the hybridization process leading to a perpetual renewal of practices both in terms of species and practice,2017,0.291
Are the radiations of temperate lineages in tropical alpine ecosystems pre-adapted?,aim tropical mountains around the world harbour an extraordinarily rich pool of plant species and are hotspots of biodiversity climatically they can be zoned into montane climates at mid altitudes and tropical alpine climates above the tree line around half of the tropical alpine species belong to plant lineages with a temperate ancestry although these regions are often geographically distant we test the hypothesis that these temperate lineages are pre adapted to the tropical alpine climate location new world with a focus on tropical alpine andes time period miocene to present major taxa studied flowering plants methods we build multidimensional environmental models representing the full space of new world climates we quantify the environmental similarity between the tropical alpine ecosystem and those of potential source areas while correcting for regional differences by kernel density smoothers based on spatial observations of the genus hypericum st john s wort we quantify niche overlap and test for niche conservatism following intercontinental dispersal using density weighted nonparametric tests a dated species tree biogeographical estimation multi optima ornsteinâ uhlenbeck models and model selection approaches are used to test for niche shifts during establishment in the tropical alpine andes results the tropical alpine ecosystem is isolated by its climate from adjacent regions and is climatically similar to temperate lowland biomes of both hemispheres niche conservatism is evident in the study group except in the tropical alpine lineage that is characterized by niche expansion and shifts in temperature optima main conclusions our results reject the pre adaptation hypothesis and instead suggest pronounced niche evolution during colonization of tropical alpine ecosystems establishment involved substantial niche shifts mainly in temperature related variables and resulted in a tremendous proliferation of species in the newly invaded tropical alpine ecosystem,2017,0.566
The acacia ants revisited: convergent evolution and biogeographic context in an iconic ant/plant mutualism,phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses can enhance our understanding of multispecies interactions by placing the origin and evolution of such interactions in a temporal and geographical context we use a phylogenomic approachâ ultraconserved element sequence captureâ to investigate the evolutionary history of an iconic multispecies mutualism neotropical acacia ants pseudomyrmex ferrugineus group and their associated vachellia hostplants in this system the ants receive shelter and food from the host plant and they aggressively defend the plant against herbivores and competing plants we confirm the existence of two separate lineages of obligate acacia ants that convergently occupied vachellia and evolved plant protecting behaviour from timid ancestors inhabiting dead twigs in rainforest the more diverse of the two clades is inferred to have arisen in the late miocene in northern mesoamerica and subsequently expanded its range throughout much of central america the other lineage is estimated to have originated in southern mesoamerica about 3 myr later apparently piggy backing on the pre existing mutualism initiation of the pseudomyrmex vachellia interaction involved a shift in the ants from closed to open habitats into an environment with more intense plant herbivory comparative studies of the two lineages of mutualists should provide insight into the essential features binding this mutualism,2017,0.201
Digital Herbarium of Moscow State University: The Largest Russian Biodiversity Database,in 2015â 2016 785887 specimens were scanned at the herbarium of moscow state university mw which comprised 77 7 of the total collection the metadata of the digital herbarium include the identifier id of each specimen its species name and geographical reference area code as the largest in russia database with respect to biodiversity the herbarium includes 712925 images of specimens of vascular plants and 72962 specimens of bryophytes the digital herbarium is interrelated with the catalogue of life international database and has enriched it with 160 new species images of 781882 specimens have been put online as jpg files the resolution is 300 dpi on the web portal of the national depository bank of live sys tems https plant depo msu ru the portal is open for all russian biological collections,2017,0.472
"Quantifying the non-breeding provenance of staging Ruffs, Philomachus pugnax, using stable isotope analysis of different tissues",international conservation efforts for migratory populations are most effectively based on quantification of the geographical linkages between wintering staging and breeding areas patterns that may not remain constant in times of global change we used stable isotope î 13c î 15n and î 2h measurements of different tissues representing distinct periods of dietary integration to quantify the non breeding provenance of a threatened staging population of ruffs philomachus pugnax in 199 staging ruffs captured in 2012 during northward migration in the netherlands we compared the multi isotope patterns of feathers grown at wintering grounds with the î 13c and î 15n profiles of blood cells and plasma representative of staging areas few birds had the 13c depleted and 15n enriched feathers suggestive of wintering quarters in european agricultural areas most ruffs had higher feather î 13c values suggesting that they wintered in sub saharan africa feather î 2h values were not informative due to the overlap of values from european and african moulting sites blood cell î 13c and î 15n values indicated that sub saharan ruffs fuelled on low trophic level foods in habitats dominated by c3 terrestrial or freshwater aquatic primary production e g the rice fields in africa or the mediterranean stable isotope ratios in plasma suggested that ruffs made stopovers in southern european agricultural areas stable isotopes thus enabled assessments of wintering origin in large numbers of birds we further propose that conservation measures to protect ruffs must include the adequate management of sub saharan wetlands based on a better understanding of the role of human made rice fields for fuelling birds,2017,0.3
Effectiveness of protected areas for vertebrates based on taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity,establishing protected areas is the primary goal and tool for preventing irreversible biodiversity loss however the effectiveness of protected areas that target specific species has been questioned for some time because targeting key species for conservation may impair the integral regional pool of species diversity and phylogenetic and functional diversity are seldom considered we first assessed the efficacy of protected areas in china for the conservation of phylogenetic diversity using the ranges and phylogenies of 2279 terrestrial vertebrates we found a strong positive correlation between phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity and only 12 1 â 43 8 of the priority areas are currently covered by protected areas however the patterns and coverage of phylogenetic diversity were affected when weighted by species richness these results indicate that overall in china protected areas targeting high species richness protected total phylogenetic diversity well but failed to do so in some regions with more unique and or threatened communities for instance the coastal areas of eastern china where there are severely threatened avian communities were less protected our results suggest that the distributions of the currently protected areas still have room for improvement although most of the areas protect both taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity,2017,0.742
"A new record of Harlequin Shrimp (Malacostraca: Decapoda: Palaemonidae: Hymenocera picta Dana, 1852) in the southern Mexican Pacific Reefs",the harlequin shrimp hymenocera picta is abundant in the indo pacific and central pacific regions but there are few reports of it from the eastern pacific two pairs of the harlequin shrimp were observed feeding on the sea star phataria unifascialis gray 1840 in the reefs of huatulco national park mexican pacific this paper reports the occurrence of h picta in mexican pacific waters and extends its previous distribution by 1 270km north of el ocotal costa rica in the eastern pacific equatorial zone in addition we evaluate the potential distribution of h picta along the tropical eastern pacific using the maximum entropy modelling algorithm,2017,0.329
"Annotated Checklist of the Spiders, Harvestmen, and Pseudoscorpions of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia",the current state of knowledge of the spiders harvestmen and pseudoscorpions of the falkland islands islas malvinas and south georgia is summarized forty six spider species 1 harvestman and 1 pseudoscorpion species are listed for the falkland islands and 6 spider species for south georgia introduced species not yet proven to be established are also listed the distribution of species within the islands and their biogeography is discussed,2017,0.844
Typification and notes on fruit colour of Viscum orientale (Santalaceae),the name viscum orientale is here lectotypified for precise application of the name an epitype is also designated fruit colour of the species as stated in the protologue differs from our observation from indian sundarban the probable reasons for incorrect information in the protologue have been clarified,2017,0.463
Climatic changes can drive the loss of genetic diversity in a Neotropical savanna tree species,the high rates of future climatic changes compared with the rates reported for past changes may hamper species adaptation to new climates or the tracking of suitable conditions resulting in significant loss of genetic diversity trees are dominant species in many biomes and because they are long lived they may not be able to cope with ongoing climatic changes here we coupled ecological niche modelling enm and genetic simulations to forecast the effects of climatic changes on the genetic diversity and the structure of genetic clusters genetic simulations were conditioned to climatic variables and restricted to plant dispersal and establishment we used a neotropical savanna tree as species model that shows a preference for hot and drier climates but with low temperature seasonality the enm predicts a decreasing range size along the more severe future climatic scenario additionally genetic diversity and allelic richness also decrease with range retraction and climatic genetic clusters are lost for both future scenarios which will lead genetic variability to homogenize throughout the landscape besides climatic genetic clusters will spatially reconfigure on the landscape following displacements of climatic conditions our findings indicate that climate change effects will challenge population adaptation to new environmental conditions because of the displacement of genetic ancestry clusters from their optimal conditions,2017,0.261
Reproductive biology of endemic Solanum melissarum Bohs (Solanaceae) and updating of its current geographic distribution as the basis for its conservation in the Brazilian Cerrado,abstract the genus solanum family solanaceae includes more than 1400 species and has buzz pollinated flowers with poricidal anthers the present study aimed to describe the distribution breeding system and pollination mechanism of solanum melissarum a species endemic to brazil the study of breeding system was conducted in an urban forest fragment in jataã go distribution data were gathered from floristic surveys and digital plant databases the floral morphology and the pollination mechanism were studied on through field observations and preserved flowers the breeding system was determined through hand pollination treatments the species has a distribution only in the brazilian atlantic forest coastal and this study provides the first records of s melissarum for the state of goiã s the pendulous flowers have poricidal anthers close to the stigma with membranous thecae joined by a connective bearing osmophores that attract males of euglossa cordata bees as they collect fragrances the bees press the thecae and pollen is released through a bellows mechanism based on the hand pollination treatments this species is self incompatible isolated forest fragments may not include enough pollinators to ensure the pollination of plants with specialized systems however they are essential for the conservation of species with interesting phytogeographic patterns such as the vicariance observed in s melissarum and for the conservation of regional diversity,2017,0.116
"Global patterns of insect herbivory in gap and understorey environments, and their implications for woody plant carbon storage",insect herbivory is thought to favour carbon allocation to storage in juveniles of shade tolerant trees this argument assumes that insect herbivory in the understorey is sufficiently intense as to select for storage however understoreys might be less attractive to insect herbivores than canopy gaps because of low resource availability and â at temperate latitudes â low temperatures although empirical studies show that shade tolerant species in tropical forests do allocate more photosynthate to storage than their light demanding associates the same pattern has not been consistently observed in temperate forests does this reflect a latitudinal trend in the relative activity of insect herbivory in gap versus understorey environments to date there has been no global review of the effect of light environment on insect herbivory in forests we postulated that if temperature is the primary factor limiting insect herbivory the effect of gaps on rates of insect herbivory should be more evident in temperate than in tropical forests due to low growing season temperatures in the oceanic temperate forests of the southern hemisphere the effect of gaps on insect herbivory rates should in turn be stronger there than in the more continental temperate climates of the northern hemisphere we examined global patterns of insect herbivory in gaps versus understories through meta analysis of 88 conspecific comparisons of leaf damage in contrasting light environments overall insect herbivory in gaps was significantly higher than in the understorey insect herbivory was 50 higher in gaps than in understoreys of tropical forests but did not differ significantly between gaps and understories in temperate forests of either hemisphere results are consistent with the idea that low resource availability â and not temperature â limits insect herbivore activity in forest understoreys especially in the tropics and suggest the selective influence of insect herbivory on late successional tree species may have been over estimated,2017,0.505
Chorological maps for the main European woody species,a novel chorological data compilation for the main european tree and shrub species is presented this dataset was produced by combining numerous and heterogeneous data collected from 20th century atlas monographs providing complete species distribution maps and from more recent national to regional atlases occurrence geodatabases and scientific literature the dataset is composed of numerous species distribution maps available in geographical information system gis format created by compiling evaluating and synthesizing data of all collected sources the geometry of the individual datasets describes contiguous large areas of occupancy of each species as polygons and fragmented or isolated occurrences as points since this geodatabase is intended to provide a synthetic continental scale overview of the species ranges the maps represent the speciesâ general chorology and the presence absence information should not be considered absolute in terms of geolocation errors and imprecisions arising from the interpretation and digitalization processes are likely to occur especially in those areas where detailed information is scarce as new information sources become available these will be used to address current data gaps implement corrections and updates of the chorology dataset as well as expanding it to comprise additional species,2017,0.899
Vessel diameter is related to amount and spatial arrangement of axial parenchyma in woody angiosperms,parenchyma represents a critically important living tissue in the sapwood of the secondary xylem of woody angiosperms considering various interactions between parenchyma and water transporting vessels we hypothesise a structure function relationship between both cell types through a generalised additive mixed model approach based on 2 332 woody angiosperm species derived from the literature we explored the relationship between the proportion and spatial distribution of ray and axial parenchyma and vessel size while controlling for maximum plant height and a range of climatic factors when factoring in maximum plant height we found that with increasing mean annual temperatures mean vessel diameter showed a positive correlation with axial parenchyma proportion and arrangement but not for ray parenchyma species with a high axial parenchyma tissue fraction tend to have wide vessels with most of the parenchyma packed around vessels while species with small diameter vessels show a reduced amount of axial parenchyma that is not directly connected to vessels this finding provides evidence for independent functions of axial parenchyma and ray parenchyma in large vesselled species and further supports a strong role for axial parenchyma in long distance xylem water transport,2017,0.561
Introgressiomics: a new approach for using crop wild relatives in breeding for adaptation to climate change,the need to boost agricultural production in the coming decades in a climate change scenario requires new approaches for the development of new crop varieties that are more resilient and more efficient in the use of resources crop wild relatives cwrs are a source of variation for many traits of interest in breeding in particular tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses however their potential in plant breeding has largely remained unexploited cwrs can make an effective contribution to broadening the genetic base of crops and to introgressing traits of interest but their direct use by breeders in breeding programs is usually not feasible due to the presence of undesirable traits in cwrs linkage drag and frequent breeding barriers with the crop here we call for a new approach which we tentatively call â introgressiomicsâ which consists of mass scale development of plant materials and populations with introgressions from cwrs into the genetic background of crops introgressiomics is a form of pre emptive breeding and can be focused when looking for specific phenotypes or un focused when it is aimed at creating highly diverse introgressed populations exploring germplasm collections and identifying adequate species and accessions from different genepools encompassing a high diversity using different strategies like the creation of germplasm diversity sets focused identification of germplasm strategy figs or gap analysis is a first step in introgressiomics interspecific hybridization and backcrossing is often a major barrier for introgressiomics but a number of techniques can be used to potentially overcome these and produce introgression populations the generation of chromosome substitution lines csls introgression lines ils or multi parent advanced inter cross magic populations by means of marker assisted selection allows not only the genetic analysis of traits present in cwrs but also developing genetically characterized elite materials that can be easily incorporated in breeding programs genomic tools in particular high throughput molecular markers facilitate the characterization and development of introgressiomics populations while new plant breeding techniques npbts can enhance the introgression and use of genes from cwrs in the genetic background of crops an efficient use of introgressiomics populations requires moving the materials into breeding pipelines in this respect publicâ private partnerships ppps can contribute to an increased use of introgressed materials by breeders we hope that the introgressiomics approach will contribute to the development of a new generation of cultivars with dramatically improved yield and performance that may allow coping with the environmental changes caused by climate change while at the same time contributing to a more efficient and sustainable agriculture,2017,0.111
Setting conservation priorities for Argentina's pseudocereal crop wild relatives,although the considerable value of crop wild relatives cwrs as gene donors is well known in many crop complexes they are subject to increasing threats from anthropogenic factors the development of a prioritized inventory of cwr species is an essential step towards the conservation of this vital resource so in this study we developed a national inventory of pseudocereal cwr species in argentina and established ex situ and in situ conservation priorities the resulting prioritized inventory consisted of 16 species almost all of which were underrepresented in national and global ex situ gene banks similarly the extant reserve network was found to be insufficient for the preservation of pseudocereal cwrs especially chenopodium diversity three hotspot groups were identified in the andean region northern central and southern the northern group has the highest conservation priority because it harbours cwr species from the primary and secondary gene pools but the central and southern groups are also important because they harbour endemic species that are poorly represented in the extant reserve network therefore new priority areas for protection are necessary for their conservation this study emphasizes that the conservation of pseudocereal cwrs in argentina must be maximized using a complementary in situ and ex situ approach,2017,0.907
"The role of niche divergence and geographic arrangement in the speciation of Eared Pheasants (Crossoptilon, Hodgson 1938)",one of the most contentious theories in current ecology is the ecological niche conservatism which is defined as conservatism among closely related species however the ecological niche can also be shifted as documented in several cases genetic drift and ecological divergent selection may cause ecological niche divergence the current study aims to test whether the ecological niche is conserved or divergent and to determine the main factor that drives ecological niche divergence or conservation we analyzed the phylogenetic relationship ecological niche model enm and demographic history of eared pheasants in the genus crossoptilon galliformes phasianidae to test niche conservatism with respect to different geographically distributed patterns the phylogenetic relationship was reconstructed using ∠beast with mitochondrial cytochrome b cyt b and 44 unlinked autosomal exonic loci and enms were reconstructed in maxent using an average of 41 occurrence sites in each species and 22 bioclimatic variables a background similarity test was used to detect whether the ecological niche is conserved demographic history was estimated using the isolation with migration im model we found that there was asymmetric gene flow between the allopatric sister species crossoptilon mantchuricum and c auritum and the parapatric sister species c harmani and c crossoptilon we found that ecological niches were divergent not conserved between c mantchuricum and c auritum which began to diverge at approximately 0 3 million years ago however the ecological niches were conserved between c crossoptilon and c harmani which gradually diverged approximately half a million years ago ecological niches can be either conserved or divergent and ecological divergent selection for local adaptation is probably an important factor that promotes and maintains niche divergence in the face of gene flow this study provides a better understanding of the role that divergent selection has in the initial speciation process the platform combined demographic processes and ecological niches to offer new insights into the mechanism of biogeography patterns,2017,0.619
How to deal with ground truthing affected by human-induced habitat change?: Identifying high-quality habitats for the Critically Endangered Red Siskin,species distribution models sdm can be valuable for identifying key habitats for conservation management of threatened taxa but anthropogenic habitat change can undermine sdm accuracy we used data for the red siskin spinus cucullatus a critically endangered bird and ground truthing to examine anthropogenic habitat change as a source of sdm inaccuracy we aimed to estimate 1 the red siskin s historic distribution in venezuela 2 the portion of this historic distribution lost to vegetation degradation and 3 the location of key habitats or areas with both a high probability of historic occurrence and a low probability of vegetation degradation we ground truthed 191 locations and used expert opinion as well as landscape characteristics to classify species habitat suitability as excellent good acceptable or poor we fit a random forest model rf and enhanced vegetation index evi time series to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the expert categorization of habitat suitability we estimated the probability of historic occurrence by fitting a maxlike model using 88 presence records 1960â 2013 and data on forest cover and aridity index of the entire study area 23 20 696 km2 had a historic probability of red siskin occurrence over 0 743 furthermore 85 of ground truthed locations had substantial reductions in mean evi resulting in key habitats totaling just 976 km2 in small blocks in the western and central regions decline in area of occupancy over 15 years was between 40 and 95 corresponding to an extinction risk category between vulnerable and critically endangered relating key habitats with other landscape features revealed significant risks and opportunities for proposed conservation interventions including the fact that ongoing vegetation degradation could limit the establishment of reintroduced populations in eastern areas while the conservation of remaining key habitats on private lands could be improved with biodiversity friendly agri and silviculture programs,2017,0.464
Multilocus genetic analyses and spatial modeling reveal complex population structure and history in a widespread resident North American passerine ( Perisoreus canadensis ),an increasing body of studies of widely distributed high latitude species shows a variety of refugial locations and population genetic patterns we examined the effects of glaciations and dispersal barriers on the population genetic patterns of a widely distributed high latitude resident corvid the gray jay perisoreus canadensis using the highly variable mitochondrial dna mtdna control region and microsatellite markers combined with species distribution modeling we sequenced 914 bp of mtdna control region for 375 individuals from 37 populations and screened seven loci for 402 individuals from 27 populations across the gray jay range we used species distribution modeling and a range of phylogeographic analyses haplotype diversity î st samova fst bayesian clustering analyses to examine evolutionary history and population genetic structure mtdna and microsatellite markers revealed significant genetic differentiation among populations with high concordance between markers paleodistribution models supported at least five potential areas of suitable gray jay habitat during the last glacial maximum and revealed distributions similar to the gray jay s contemporary during the last interglacial colonization from and prolonged isolation in multiple refugia is evident historical climatic fluctuations the presence of multiple dispersal barriers and highly restricted gene flow appear to be responsible for strong genetic diversification and differentiation in gray jays,2017,0.946
Soil water storage appears to compensate for climatic aridity at the xeric margin of European tree species distribution,based on macroecological data we test the hypothesis whether european tree species of temperate and boreal distribution maintain their water and nutrient supply in the more arid southern margin of their distribution range by shifting to more fertile soils with higher water storage than in their humid core distribution range cf soil compensatory effects to answer this question we gathered a large dataset with more than 200 000 plots that we related to summer aridity sa derived from worldclim data as well as soil available water capacity awc and soil nutrient status derived from the european soil database the soil compensatory effects on tree species distribution were tested through generalized additive models the hypothesis of soil compensatory effects on tree species distribution under limiting aridity was supported in terms of statistical significance and plausibility compared to a bioclimatic baseline model inclusion of soil variables systematically improved the modelsâ goodness of fit however the relevance measured as the gain in predictive performance was small with largest improvements for p sylvestris q petraea and a alba all studied species except p sylvestris preferred high awc under high sa for f sylvatica p abies and q petraea the compensatory effect of soil awc under high sa was even more pronounced on acidic soils soil compensatory effects might have decisive implications for tree species redistribution and forest management strategies under anthropogenic climate change therefore soil compensatory effects deserve more intensive investigation ideally in studies combining different spatial scales to reduce the uncertainty associated with the precision of soil information,2017,0.49
Composition of the epibenthic decapod crustacean megafauna of the German Exclusive Economic Zone: comparison and analysis of past and recent surveys,this study comprises and compares epibenthic samples of the marine crustacean decapod megafauna taken with a beam trawl at numerous stations in the german exclusive economic zone of the north sea in the years 1987 1990 2007 and 2013 all decapod crustacean species were recorded quantitatively an overview of the decapod faunal composition with respect to changes in space species and abundance with time is given a time dependent decrease of rare and often northern species at the research area is obvious as a result of an increase of some dominant species concentrating in coastal areas in 2013 a more uniform species composition seems to have developed decapod species and abundance depletions may be influenced by many factors among them also climate change and fisheries,2017,0.858
N4-N15 Sligo Urban Improvement Scheme,sligo county council scc has developed proposals for the improvement of a section of the n4 and n15 national road corridor on the northwestern extents of sligo city the design of the n4 n15 sligo urban improvement scheme sligo uis hereafter referred to as â œthe proposed developmentâ has been developed in the preparation of the environmental assessment of the proposed development and to establish land take requirements the study area includes the interface of the n4 n15 and n16 national primary routes the proposed development is therefore located on a strategic transport link connecting sligo with donegal to the north leitrim and northern ireland to the east and dublin and the remainder of the national road network to the south the location of the proposed development in the context of its location relative to the n4 n15 route corridor and sligo city urban area is shown in figure 1 1 of volume 3 of this environmental assessment report ear while a full description is provided in chapter 2,2017,0.219
Fishes Out of Water: Biology and Ecology of Mudskippers,mudskippers are amphibious fishes native to the indo west pacific and tropical western africa unlike most fishes mudskippers emerse to forage find mates and defend territories adaptations to their morphology physiology and behavior enable mudskippers to accommodate both aquatic and terrestrial habitats for these traits mudskippers have long captured the fascination of scientists naturalists and fish hobbyists some mudskipper taxa e g periophthalmodon spp periophthalmus spp boleophthalmus spp are readily observed on mudflats and mangrove forests during the ebb tide correspondingly these conspicuous and widespread taxa are relatively well studied the autecology and basic biology for the remaing taxa e g apocryptodon spp and oxuderces spp are still poorly understood,2017,0.357
"Joint ecological, geographical and cultural approach to identify territories of opportunity for large vertebrates conservation in Mexico",the objective of the present paper is to provide a holistic framework to delineate â œterritories of opportunityâ where agrarian communities can manage areas to enhance the conservation of large vertebrates the study was conducted mexico which is sociologically culturally and ecologically complex similar to other â œmegadiverseâ countries we conducted ensemble niche modeling of endangered top predators to define a set of large vertebrate species environmental attributes were used to perform three distance based and two artificial intelligence based algorithms socio cultural attributes were included to depict agricultural communities with strong social government schemes and clear evidence of well managed natural resources other socio economic attributes such as land acquisition cost human agglomeration and anthropogenic land use were included in the analysis scenarios were computed and displayed cartographically with the aid of a geographic information system results showed that the largest concentration of biodiversity converges on regions with large land cover persistence and high local governance defined as potential willingness to engage in conservation actions the cartographic areas identified overlapped with current mexican protected areas in only 2 7 of the country thus conservation law enforcement in most of the country seems to be ineffective here we show that in a number of territories agrarian communities that have coexisted for millennia with umbrella species can be regarded as allies in biodiversity conservation results are discussed in the light of their relevance for future niche modeling environmental policy design and implications for climate change,2017,0.208
"First records of Croaking Gourami, Trichopsis vittata (Cuvier, 1831)&amp;nbsp;(Teleostei: Osphronemidae), from Myanmar and Bangladesh",the croaking gourami trichopsis vittata cuvier 1831 is native to southeast asia and sundaland with introductions reported from usa philippines and india the species was found by us in myanmar 1997 and 2013 and bangladesh 2014 and 2016 dna analysis supports the view that t vittata is a species complex specimens from bangladesh myanmar and the european aquarium trade are the same genotype as specimens from thailand possibly corresponding to trichopsis harrisi fowler 1934 considered a synonym of t vittata non native populations are likely due to release from aquarium specimens,2017,0.747
Ecological niche model comparison under different climate scenarios: a case study of Olea spp. in Asia,ecological niche modeling and the related species distribution modeling has been used as a tool with which to assess potential impacts of climate change processes on geographic distributions of species however the factors introducing variation into niche modeling outcomes are not well understood to this end we used seven algorithms to develop models maxent garp bioclim artificial neural networks support vector machines climate envelope and environmental distance to estimate the potential geographic distribution of olives olea europaea sensu lato including olea ferruginea under two climatic data sets current 2000 and future 2050 five general circulation models and two representative concentration pathway scenarios were used as predictor variables in future projections of the geographic potential of this species models were fit at global extents 10â spatial resolution but transferred and interpreted for a region of particular interest in central asia which largely avoids problems with truncation of niche estimates we found marked differences among approaches in predicted distributions and model performance as well as in the future distributional pattern reconstructed from one algorithm to another these general approaches when model to model variation is managed appropriately appear promising in predicting the potential geographic distribution of o europaea sensu lato and thus can be an effective tool in restoration and conservation planning for wild populations as well as possible commercial plantations of this species,2017,0.665
"The genus Lycium as food and medicine: A botanical, ethnobotanical and historical review",ethnopharmacological relevance lycium is widely distributed in the arid to semi arid environments of north and south america africa and eurasia in recent years lycium barbarum and l chinense have been advertised as â œsuperfoodâ with healthy properties despite of its popularity there is a lack of an integrated and critical appraisal of the existing evidence for the use of lycium aim of the study there is a need to understand 1 which species were used and how the uses of lycium developed spatially and over time 2 how uses differ among regions with different culture backgrounds and 3 how traditional and current therapeutic and preventive health claims correlate with pharmacological findings methods information was retrieved from floras taxonomic botanical and ethnobotanical databases research articles recent editions of historical chinese herbals over the last 2000 years and pharmacopoeias results of totally 97 species 31 have recorded uses as food and or medicine worldwide usually the fruits are used while 85 of the lycium species occur in the americas and africa 26 of them are used but 9 out of 14 species in eurasia in china seven species and two varieties of the genus lycium occur of which four species have been used by different ethnic groups only l barbarum and l chinense have been transformed into globally traded commodities in china based on the name â œæž æ žâ their use can be traced back over the last two millennia lycium fruits for anti aging improving eyesight and nourishment were documented already in 500 c e mingyi bielu recent findings explain the pharmacological foundations of the traditional uses especially polysaccharides zeaxanthin dipalmitate vitamins betaine and mixed extracts were reported to be responsible for anti aging improving eyesight and anti fatigue effects conclusions the integration of historical ethnobotanical botanical phytochemical and pharmacological data has enabled a detailed understanding of lycium and its wider potential it highlights that the focus so far has only been on two species and that the genus can potentially yield a wide range of other products with different properties,2017,0.541
"Climate change, tourism and historical grazing influence the distribution of Carex lachenalii Schkuhr – A rare arctic-alpine species in the Tatra Mts",mountain vegetation is highly specialized to harsh climatic conditions and therefore is sensitive to any change in environment the rarest and most vulnerable plants occurring in alpine regions are expected to respond rapidly to environmental changes an example of such a species is carex lachenalii subsp lachenalii schkuhr which occurs in poland on only a few isolated sites in the tatra mts the aim of this study was to assess changes in distribution of c lachenalii in the tatra mts over the past 50â 150 years and the effects of climate change tourism and historical grazing on the ecological niche of c lachenalii we focused on changes in the importance of functional diversity components in shaping plant species composition over the past 50â 150 years the elevation of the average distribution of c lachenalii shifted about 178 m upward alongside a significant prolongation of the vegetative season by approximately 20 days in the last 50â 60 years species composition of plots without c lachenalii was characterized by competition between plants whereas on plots with c lachenalii habitat filtering was the most important component our results suggest that climate change was the main factor driving upward shift of c lachenalii moderate trampling enhanced horizontal spread of this plant whereas cessation of grazing grazing caused decline of c lachenalii the three environmental factors studied that determined shifts in distribution of c lachenalii may also contribute to changes in distribution of other rare mountain plant species causing changes in ecosystem functioning,2017,0.423
Measuring and reporting biodiversity change,efforts to halt the loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services are difficult to evaluate because of the lack of reliable measures of the state of local national regional and global biodiversity this special issue contains 11 papers that review and advance the field of biodiversity measurement including thematic gaps and global priorities making full use of all data sources and opportunities the importance of indices and metrics linkages to management and reporting biodiversity change this body of work is an important contribution to the ongoing efforts to take the measurement of biodiversity from an uncoordinated and disparate situation to a harmonised framework that is scalable flexible pragmatic and ready to inform management these papers describe advances in this field but they also highlight the important challenges that remain including consensus on the most important measures the filling of thematic gaps and communicating biodiversity change to wider audiences,2017,0.218
Medicago truncatula : Genetic and Genomic Resources,medicago truncatula was chosen by the legume community along with lotus japonicus as a model plant to study legume biology since then numerous resources and tools have been developed for m truncatula these include for example its genome sequence core ecotype collections transformation regeneration methods extensive mutant collections and a gene expression atlas this review aims to describe the different genetic and genomic tools and resources currently available for m truncatula we also describe how these resources were generated and provide all the information necessary to access these resources and use them from a practical point of view c 2017 by john wiley sons inc,2017,0.166
"A reference library of DNA barcodes for the earthworms from Upper Normandy: Biodiversity assessment, new records, potential cases of cryptic diversity and ongoing speciation",this study presents the assemblage of an exhaustive reference library for one of the major groups of soil invertebrates earthworms focused on the long sampled french location of upper normandy previous morphological appraisal of the diversity enumerated 20 species in the area after an extensive campaign of dna barcoding aiming at several typical habitats of upper normandy 22 species were found and 561 sequences were produced a total of 36 discrete molecular operational taxonomic units motus were detected among these species twenty two of these motus corresponded to several complexes of motus within the morphological boundaries of 8 species based on a previous set of investigations on the allolobophora chlorotica aporrectodea rosea lumbricus rubellus and aporrectodea icterica complexes and on the analysis of the distribution of pairwise comparisons we were able to hypothesize on the specific and subspecific status of the motus in the 8 complexes detected globally up to 21 of the 36 motus detected potentially corresponded to species level entities the remaining 15 motus were considered as putative subspecies where gene flow can still be present between the members of a complex discussed in the perspective of previously detected physiological and ecological discrepancies between some of these specific but also subspecific motus these results emphasize the need to take into account all those genetic entities and to annotate them consistently throughout the literature as a consequence the genotyping of specimens in surveys and experiments is highly recommended when complexes of motus are detected this study also illustrates the usefulness of the dna barcoding approach as a fast and powerful exploration tool for communities and therefore as a premise for more specific and integrative approaches,2017,0.938
Climate-change-induced range shifts of three allergenic ragweeds ( Ambrosia L.) in Europe and their potential impact on human health,invasive allergenic plant species may have severe health related impacts in this study we aim to predict the effects of climate change on the distribution of three allergenic ragweed species ambrosia spp in europe and discuss the potential associated health impact we built species distribution models based on presence only data for three ragweed species using maxent software future climatic habitat suitability was modeled under two ipcc climate change scenarios rcp 6 0 and rcp 8 5 we quantify the extent of the increase in â high allergy riskâ har areas i e parts of europe with climatic conditions corresponding to the highest quartile 25 of present day habitat suitability for each of the three species we estimate that by year 2100 the distribution range of all three ragweed species increases towards northern and eastern europe under all climate scenarios har areas will expand in europe by 27â 100 depending on species and climate scenario novel har areas will occur mostly in denmark france germany russia and the baltic countries and overlap with densely populated cities such as paris and st petersburg we conclude that areas in europe affected by severe ragweed associated allergy problems are likely to increase substantially by year 2100 affecting millions of people to avoid this management strategies must be developed that restrict ragweed dispersal and establishment of new populations precautionary efforts should limit the spread of ragweed seeds and reduce existing populations only by applying cross countries management plans can managers mitigate future health risks and economical consequences of a ragweed expansion in europe,2017,0.937
Thermal limits to the geographic distributions of shallow-water marine species,temperature profoundly affects speciesâ geographic ranges but the extent to which it limits contemporary range edges has been difficult to assess from laboratory experiments of thermal tolerance the persistence of populations depends on temperature mediated outcomes of ecological and demographic processes across all stages of a speciesâ life history as well as any adaptation to local temperature regimes we assessed the relationships between sea temperature and observed distributional ranges for 1 790 shallow water marine species from 10 animal classes and found remarkable consistencies in trends in realized thermal limits among taxa and ocean basins as well as general agreement with previous laboratory findings realized thermal niches increase from the equator towards coldâ temperate locations despite an opposite trend in geographic range size speciesâ cool distribution limits are best predicted by the magnitude of seasonality within their range while a relatively firm thermal barrier exists on the equatorward range edge for temperate species our findings of consistencies in realized thermal limits indicate potential limits to adaptation among common marine species and highlight the value of realized thermal niches for predicting speciesâ distributional dynamics in warming seas,2017,0.659
Designing protected area networks that translate international conservation commitments into national action,most countries have committed to protect 17 of their terrestrial area by 2020 through aichi target 11 of the convention on biological diversity with a focus on protecting areas of particular importance for biodiversity this means national scale spatial conservation prioritisations are needed to help meet this target and guide broader conservation and land use policy development however to ensure these assessments are adopted by policy makers they must also consider national priorities this situation is exemplified by guyana a corner of amazonia that couples high biodiversity with low economic development in recent years activities that threaten biodiversity conservation have increased and consequently protected areas are evermore critical to achieving the aichi targets here we undertake a cost effective approach to protected area planning in guyana that accounts for domestic conditions to do this we conducted a stakeholder led spatial conservation prioritisation based on meeting targets for 17 vegetation types and 329 vertebrate species while minimising opportunity costs for forestry mining agriculture and urbanisation our analysis identifies 3 million ha of priority areas for conservation helping inform government plans to double the current protected area network from 8 5 to 17 as part of this we also develop a new technique to prioritise engagement with local communities whose lands are identified as important to conservation our study both provides a scientific politically acceptable protected area expansion strategy for guyana and illustrates the importance of conservation planning at the country scale to translate international commitments into national action,2017,0.202
Habitat connectivity affects specialist species richness more than generalists in veteran trees,intensified human land use continues to increase habitat loss and fragmentation and leads to a homogenization of biodiversity specialized species with narrow niches seem to be declining more rapidly than generalist species veteran trees offer an excellent model system for testing the responses of habitat specialists vs generalists in a changing environment as they host a rich fauna of associated insects with different degrees of strict habitat affinity in this study we use an extensive dataset of more than 22 000 wood living beetles collected from 62 veteran oaks across southern norway combined with a full cover map predicting the occurrence of similar oaks in the surrounding landscape we calculate three different connectivity measures at eight different scales up to 25 km radius and compare the response to patch size and patch connectivity for the specialist beetles in the veteran oak community with that of the remaining beetle species in the community we investigate these responses in oaks in two different surroundings forests and parks our overall aim is to test whether habitat specialists and generalists respond differently to habitat patch connectivity and if so if differences in species traits or close surroundings can explain the response we found that the specialists showed a positive response to habitat amount on a small scale 0 5 km and this effect of small scale connectivity was the only common factor explaining a high species richness of specialists in all models independent of park or forest surroundings for generalists there was no or only a weak response to connectivity and only at the largest scale 25 km tested the differences in response to habitat connectivity between specialists and generalists in veteran oaks can partly be explained by differences in traits as the specialists were found to have larger body sizes and feed on larger and more decayed dead wood material these are all traits that have been related to increased sensitivity to forest fragmentation in earlier studies the size and vitality of the oak as well as the openness around it also influenced the species richness with different patterns between specialists and generalists and between the two types of oak surroundings we conclude that increasing biotic homogenization is likely to take place with further fragmentation and loss of veteran trees and specialist species will be the major group affected,2017,0.895
"Fishing an Extreme Environment: Science, Sovereignty and Hudson Bay",was a deep sea commercial fishery possible in hudson bay this question brought the dominion government of canada through the department of marine and fisheries to sponsor several mostly forgotten expeditions beginning in the 1880s to gauge its fishery potential logically fisheries should have been possible given the importance of many fisheries in far northern watersâ the groundfish fishery in barents sea north of norway for example and the whale fishery in northern hudson bay sea fisheries had apparently not developed yet in hudson bay due to its inaccessibility the use of only small craft for near shore fishing and the climateâ s severity or did the lack of a fishery reflect a real absence of fish the canadian governmentâ s queries were perplexing however given the challenges in fishing hudson bayâ s ice shrouded waters its interest in the region had been so scanty that parts of northern hudson bay had not yet been charted also the prolific east coast fishery already harvested too many fish for domestic markets and faced depressed prices in international markets toronto and other inland markets were well supplied by great lake fish simply put canada did not require more fish,2017,0.434
A Review on Ten Sacred Flowers in Kerala: Dasapushpam,the ten sacred flowers constitute the group dasapushpam these ten favorable herbs are used in ayurvedic system of medicine and it possesses tremendous therapeutic and potential benefits it includes different flowers with different characters these flowers are comes under different families like amaranthaceae oxalidaceae sapindoideae asteraceae convolvulaceae poaceae hypoxidaceae etc which possess divine power it deals with activities such as anti inflammatory antimicrobial anticancer antifungal antipsychotic anti rheumatic antiarrhythmic antidiarrheal anthelmintic anti diabetic etc it provides a well established traditional system of medicine moreover they give therapeutic benefit with no side effects the main objective of this review to provide general information about these herbs and their therapeutic values,2017,0.091
Richness pattern and phytogeography of the Cerrado's herb-shrub flora and implications for conservation,aims the herb shrub flora has been widely neglected in science and conservation policy all over the world so that this biodiversity component remains largely unknown the objective of this study was to elucidate the spatial patterns of species richness and phytogeographic regions of the cerrado s herb shrub flora and to estimate the percentage of areas with high species richness that is still covered by natural vegetation and which is located in protected areas or priority areas for conservation location central brazil and surrounding territories methods to estimate the pattern of species richness we produced species distribution models sdms for 5 362 species using botanical records combined with 17 least correlated environmental variables all sdms were tested against a bias corrected null model and the 5 039 significant sdms were stacked to generate the pattern of botanical richness the resulting presence absence matrix was subjected to a partitioning around medoids pam cluster analysis to delineate phytogeographic regions results the pattern of species richness indicated that the highest levels of richness are found in the central southern and western parts of the cerrado the study recognized two floristically distinct clusters at the core of the cerrado region and seven additional regions that share floristic elements with the two core clusters many areas with high levels of modelled species richness are located outside protected and priority areas for conservation conclusions we were able to recognize patterns of regional variation reflected in the phytogeographic division furthermore we have shown that the current protected areas in brazil do not effectively protect high richness areas of the herb shrub flora,2017,0.95
"Morphology and genetics reveal the occurrence of Girardinus&amp;nbsp;falcatus (Eigenmann, 1903) (Cyprinodontiformes, Poeciliidae) in&amp;nbsp;eastern Cuba",girardinus is a cuban genus of poeciliid fishes it comprises 7 freshwater restricted species most of them inhabiting specific ecosystems or regions within the island girardinus falcatus the gold bellied topminnow is common in lowlands of western and central cuba but thought not to be present in the east herein we provide the first wellsupported evidence of the occurrence of this species in eastern cuba sixteen specimens were collected and identified primarily by body shape and coloration and corroborated by gonopodial morphology and by sequences of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b,2017,0.683
BioBeacon: an Online Field Guide to Digital Biodiversity Information Resources,managing the biodiversity crisis requires access to credible information on species as well as their changing abundance and spatio temporal distributions among other variables technological advances are expanding both the variety and volume of data available resulting in the emergence of biodiversity informatics as a rapidly growing research paradigm many online resources exist such as gbif s resources and tools page anonymous 2017 however the lack of fundamental categorization inhibits efficient location and use of relevant data for biological research conservation education and industrial application biobeacon is a student driven collaboration between the biodiversity major at university of guelph and the biodiversity institute of ontario its purpose is to shine a light on biodiversity information resources and characterize them according to objective criteria that simplify their navigation and increase accessibility criteria will include several categories such as data type source region of focus and current status as well as many tags for more refined searches the refined search feature and categorization of databases will be the primary distinguishing charactersitics that separate biobeacon from previous biodiversity database indexing efforts we envision biobeacon to be cooperatively managed by its creators and steering committee while inviting input from stakeholders and other parties of interest ideally biobeacon will grow to incorporate relevant biodiversity information resources that bear diverse types of data from locations around the world,2017,0.342
"KRILLBASE: a circumpolar database of Antarctic krill and salp numerical densities, 1926–2016",antarctic krill euphausia superba and salps are major macroplankton contributors to southern ocean food webs and krill are also fished commercially managing this fishery sustainably against a backdrop of rapid regional climate change requires information on distribution and time trends many data on the abundance of both taxa have been obtained from net sampling surveys since 1926 but much of this is stored in national archives sometimes only in notebooks in order to make these important data accessible we have collated available abundance data numerical density no m∠2 of postlarval e superba and salp individual multiple species and whether singly or in chains these were combined into a central database krillbase together with environmental information standardisation and metadata the aim is to provide a temporal spatial data resource to support a variety of research such as biogeochemistry autecology higher predator foraging and food web modelling in addition to fisheries management and conservation previous versions of krillbase have led to a series of papers since 2004 which illustrate some of the potential uses of this database with increasing numbers of requests for these data we here provide an updated version of krillbase that contains data from 15 194 net hauls including 12 758 with krill abundance data and 9726 with salp abundance data these data were collected by 10 nations and span 56 seasons in two epochs 1926â 1939 and 1976â 2016 here we illustrate the seasonal inter annual regional and depth coverage of sampling and provide both circumpolar and regional scale distribution maps krill abundance data have been standardised to accommodate variation in sampling methods and we have presented these as well as the raw data information is provided on how to screen interpret and use krillbase to reduce artefacts in interpretation with contact points for the main data providers the doi for the published data set is doi 10 5285 8b00a915 94e3 4a04 a903 dd4956346439,2017,0.194
Subtidal Benthic Invertebrates Shifting Northward Along the US Atlantic Coast,numerous marine and terrestrial species have shifted their ranges poleward in response to warming from global climate change however few studies have examined range shifts of subtidal benthic communities in estuarine and nearshore waters this study examined 20 years 1990â 2010 of occurrence and abundance data of soft bottom benthic invertebrates along the atlantic coast of the usa data from two biogeographic provinces carolinian and virginian which spanned 15â of latitude from mid florida to cape cod were extracted from a national coastal assessment program mean water temperatures increased significantly during the study period bottom water by 1 6 â c and surface water by 1 7 â c of 25 species with significant changes in centers of abundance out of the 30 most prevalent 18 60 shifted northward and 7 23 shifted southward species that shifted north moved an average distance of 181 km in contrast with 65 km for species that shifted south the southern limits of 22 species showed significant northward shifts because there was little change in northern limits this resulted in an average 25 range contraction community composition changed during the study period most notably in southern latitudes five carolinian species surmounted their northerly biogeographic boundary consequences of these range shifts include changes in benthic community structure and function which have strong implications for ecosystem functioning and services including changes in fisheries dependent upon benthic prey,2017,0.926
"The Archaeology of Camas Production and Exchange on the Northwest Coast: With Evidence from a Sts'ailes (Chehalis) Village on the Harrison River, British Columbia",edible root resources were widely cultivated and consumed by first peoples throughout north america from the early to mid holocene to historic times in recent decades archaeobotanists ethnobotanists archaeologists and traditional knowledge holders have explored and clarified many aspects of root food ecology production and exchange this paper focuses on camas considered a cultural keystone species across much of western north america because of its high cultural value and influence in defining the cultural identities and land use of resident communities while historic camas use by first peoples has been widely documented throughout the pacific northwest the archaeology of camas is little known at coastal sites this paper presents evidence for a concentration of camas bulbs camassia spp found in an earth oven complex within an ancient sts ailes chehalis village in the upper fraser valley of southwestern british columbia canada we contextualize this find by exploring the abundant ethnobot,2017,0.276
Comparison of climate envelope models developed using expert-selected variables versus statistical selection,climate envelope models are widely used to describe potential future distribution of species under different climate change scenarios it is broadly recognized that there are both strengths and limitations to using climate envelope models and that outcomes are sensitive to initial assumptions inputs and modeling methods selection of predictor variables a central step in modeling is one of the areas where different techniques can yield varying results selection of climate variables to use as predictors is often done using statistical approaches that develop correlations between occurrences and climate data these approaches have received criticism in that they rely on the statistical properties of the data rather than directly incorporating biological information about species responses to temperature and precipitation we evaluated and compared models and prediction maps for 15 threatened or endangered species in florida based on two variable selection techniques expert opinion and a statistical method we compared model performance between these two approaches for contemporary predictions and the spatial correlation spatial overlap and area predicted for contemporary and future climate predictions in general experts identified more variables as being important than the statistical method and there was low overlap in the variable sets 40 between the two methods despite these differences in variable sets expert versus statistical models had high performance metrics 0 9 for area under the curve auc and 0 7 for true skill statistic tss spatial overlap which compares the spatial configuration between maps constructed using the different variable selection techniques was only moderate overall about 60 with a great deal of variability across species difference in spatial overlap was even greater under future climate projections indicating additional divergence of model outputs from different variable selection techniques our work is in agreement with other studies which have found that for broad scale species distribution modeling using statistical methods of variable selection is a useful first step especially when there is a need to model a large number of species or expert knowledge of the species is limited expert input can then be used to refine models that seem unrealistic or for species that experts believe are particularly sensitive to change it also emphasizes the importance of using multiple models to reduce uncertainty and improve map outputs for conservation planning where outputs overlap or show the same direction of change there is greater certainty in the predictions areas of disagreement can be used for learning by asking why the models do not agree and may highlight areas where additional on the ground data collection could improve the models,2017,0.462
On the absence of the Green-tailed Trainbearer Lesbia nuna (Trochilidae) from Venezuela: an analysis based on environmental niche modelling,background lesbia nuna a hummingbird distributed in the tropical andes has been included in venezuela s bird list on the basis of a specimen collected in 1873 at sierra nevada mã rida and deposited in the natural history museum london with no further records for this country since then this record largely considered as valid by most authors has been questioned by others although without formal analyses new information the potential habitat range of the green tailed trainbearer lesbia nuna gouldii trochilidae in the northern andes from ecuador to venezuela was modelled using maximum entropy niche modelling environmental covariates and records from locations across the colombian andes the predicted suitable habitat range corresponded well to the known range of the subspecies l n gouldii in colombia and clearly excluded sierra nevada therefore these analyses suggest that this species should be removed from the venezuelan bird list,2017,0.526
Larval interference competition between the native Neotropical mosquito Limatus durhamii and the invasive Aedes aegypti improves the fitness of both species,interspecific competition with native species during biological invasions can sometimes limit alien expansion we aimed to determine the potential ecological effects of limatus durhamii theobald 1901 a native neotropical mosquito diptera culicidae species on the invasive species aedes stegomyia aegypti linnaeus 1762 that breeds in the same artificial water containers development time and adult dry mass were measured in three rearing conditions control a single larva intraspecific competition two conspecific larvae and interspecific competition two heterospecific larvae food was provided ad libitum to eliminate exploitative competition for ae aegypti development time was not affected by interspecific interference competition non significant differences with the control and the adult dry mass was significantly higher meaning that individual fitness likely increased yet because previous studies showed longer development time and lighter adults during competition with other invasive mosquitoes it is likely that ae aegypti can express a different phenotype depending on the competing species the similar pattern found for li durhamii females and the non significant difference with the control for males explain in part why this species can compete with ae aegypti,2017,0.874
Essential biodiversity variables are not global,recent initiatives have focused on biological diversity and the ecosystem services that it provides and have proposed a series of â œessential biodiversity variables â as a means of describing and characterizing that diversity although such variables would shed considerable and interesting light on distribution of biodiversity related dimensions here we examine the feasibility of assembling such data resources for terrestrial systems on worldwide extents to evaluate whether they can be feasibly characterized globally we found large scale consistent information gaps across five ebv related dimensions genetic composition species populations species traits community composition and primary biodiversity data most markedly across africa the middle east central asia and eastern europe lesser gaps cover much of asia and south america our results raise concerns that ebv based initiatives and the studies and policy decisions that they make will be constrained from any global inference by these information gaps concrete progress towards making ebvs genuinely global will depend on adequate funding training of high level personnel and creation of robust institutions in which to base these initiatives,2017,0.472
Owls - A guide to every species,discover the fascinating and mysterious world of owls with this stunning full color encyclopedic visual guide that explores all 225 known species packed with maps photographs illustrations informative scientific details and a bonus 35â x 12 accordion poster illustrated with the true to size wing length of the largest owl overlayed with the wing length of the smallest owl and several owls in between,2017,0.463
PREDICTING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF F. Muell. Flindersia pimenteliana IN INDONESIAN PAPUA AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA,population of flindersia pimenteliana maple silkwood in indonesian papua and papua new guinea is severely fragmented and experiencing a continuing decline due to habitat destruction and illegal logging this species is very susceptible to environmental changes and at greater risk of extinction due to its small and fragmented geographic ranges and low abundance using maximum entropy maxent method the present study predicted the impact of climate change on the distribution of the species across its native distribution area elevation and 19 bioclimatic variables commonly used in species distribution modeling were used as predictors the prediction model of the 2 current potential distribution identified a total area of 156 214 km in indonesian papua and papua new guinea 18 of total land area as suitable habitat for f pimenteliana elevation and precipitation of the wettest coldest and warmest quarters contributed most to the model based on the average of hadgem2 es and miroc esm models potential distribution projections under rcp8 5 scenario suggested a habitat gain of 16 for 2050 and 8 for 2070 in the species distribution whereas under rcp4 5 an average habitat gain of 7 was predicted for both 2050 and 2070 the newly suitable habitats were predicted to be found mainly in southern and western highland of papua new guinea protection of these areas from habitat destruction and land use change is needed to assist f pimenteliana find the most suitable climate for its survival,2017,0.63
The influence of climate change on an endangered riparian plant species: The root of riparian Homonoia,the root of riparian homonoia rrh a medical plant with high economic value is mainly distributed at riparian area in southeast asia its population has declined significantly and the species has become endangered in recent decades understanding the habitat requirement evaluating the habitat quality and predicting its potential habitat are significant for protecting this species here 223 occurrence records of the rrh were collected globally the key eco factors influencing species distribution were selected based on correlation analysis and principal component analysis habitat suitability simulation found on four climate warming scenarios rcp 2 6 rcp4 5 rcp6 0 and rcp8 5 given by ipcc the results found that both the suitable area and the suitability of the rrh habitat increase as the climate warming the increasing range achieved a maximum at rcp4 5,2017,0.802
Stepping in the Same River Twice: Replication in Biological Research,an international team of biologists philosophers and historians of science explores the critically important process of replication in biological and biomedical research without replication the trustworthiness of scientific research remains in doubt although replication is increasingly recognized as a central problem in many scientific disciplines repeating the same scientific observations of experiments or reproducing the same set of analyses from existing data is remarkably difficult in this important volume an international team of biologists philosophers and historians of science addresses challenges and solutions for valid replication of research in medicine ecology natural history agriculture physiology and computer science after the introduction to important concepts and historical background the book offers paired chapters that provide theoretical overviews followed by detailed case studies these studies range widely in topics from infectious diseases and environmental monitoring to museum collections meta analysis bioinformatics and more the closing chapters explicate and quantify problems in the case studies and the volume concludes with important recommendations for best practices,2017,0.139
Modeling of the ecological niches of the anopheles spp in Ecuador by the use of geo-informatic tools,ecuador in the northwestern edge of south america is struggling by vector borne diseases with an endemic epidemic behavior leading to an enormous public health problem malaria which has a cyclicality in its dynamics is closely related to climatic ecological and socio economic phenomena the main objective of this research has been to compare three different prediction species models the so called maxent logistic regression and multi criteria evaluation with fuzzy logic in order to determine the model which best describes the ecological niche of the anopheles spp species which transmits malaria within ecuador after performing a detailed data collection and data processing we applied the mentioned models and validated them with a statistical analysis in order to discover that the maxent model has been the model that best defines the distribution of anopheles spp within the territory the determined sites which are of high strategic value and important for the increasing national development will now be able to initiate preventive countermeasures based on this study,2017,0.265
"Automatic Modeling System: a database based infrastructure to develop, validate and evaluate scientific models. An application to combustion kinetic models",scientific data repository is a concept which has been developed in the past few years all digital libraries used until now are tied to a specific context and cannot develop or share their resources with other scientific communities making cultural growth difficult over the past few years research has been aimed towards creating a universal digital library not just for textual documents but also scientific and experimental data sharing these data must have certain authentication documentation and formatting elements to allow sharing and conversion the chemical reaction engineering and chemical kinetics group of the politecnico di milano is experimenting sharing and formatting issues for the experimental data in its research field there are several data formats and data repositories in the reaction engineering and chemical kinetics field but none of these can be used by the community as a whole this paper explores the idea of a universal structure for data archiving for all european universities the main goal is to create a data repository to manage internal data and chemical simulations studied within the politecnico di milano this software automates all study processes of simulations and unifies the use of current programs such as opensmoke gnuplot e curvematching a database has been created to save and manage data and an interface has been developed to make the researcherâ s study process quicker and more efficient this database is the starting point for sharing data and creating formats to extend sharing to other universities allowing the exchange of structured and easily importable information in the various repositories,2017,0.07
From Germany through Livonia to St. Petersburg: Gardener Johann Peter Bueck's life and horticultural work,this article deals with the life of hamburg born gardener johann peter bueck 1769â 1852 in livonia estonia and latvia in historic context and st petersburg little has been known about his life so far and the few facts about it have been misinterpreted the new and as yet untapped data reveal that at some point in time bueck moved from hamburg to the town of pã rnu now in the republic of estonia in the capacity of a gardener there he authored a piece of writing on herbs published in germany in 1799 in which he presented 16 original plant species growing in the town at suure rãµngu manor schloss ringen and elsewhere e g gentiana asclepiadea glaux maritima plantago maritima and saxifraga hirculus of these 13 were natives two evidently aliens and one either of a misidentified or unidentified species it is altogether unknown when j p bueck arrived in the then livonian province according to an indirect estimate he may have been employed at suure rãµngu manor first it was apparently in pã rnu that he married catharina elisabeth oht the youngest daughter of a horticulturist deceased in 1796 three children were born into the family johann peter in 1797 died after 7 days catharina amalie helena in 1799 and johann gustav in 1801 next bueck proceeded as a gardener to marienburg manor now alçœksne latvia his employment there may have been connected with the university of tartu and the founding of its botanical garden in 1800 as the gardener august schmidt is known to have transferred from alçœksne to that botanical garden at alçœksne peter ludwig burchard was born into the bueck family in 1802 and dorothea henriette in 1804 in the birth year of the latter bueck relocated to the university of tartu dorpat botanical garden to replace the head gardener johann kieser his career in tartu however proved short lived and evidently the next year he and his family resettled to st petersburg where he received the position of gardener of the park complex on jelagin island owned by count grigori v orlov there bueck established a rich plant collection of 5 000 species with plants being supplied by a number of famous botanists across the globe in 1818 the entire park complex was purchased for the royal family and bueck continued as gardener until his death in this capacity he earned great respect six more children were born into his family in st petersburg yet it remains unclear whether the mother of all his children was catharina elisabeth bueck nee oht,2017,0.489
Predictive modeling for allopatric Strix (Strigiformes: Strigidae) owls in South America: determinants of their distributions and ecological niche-based processes,strix strigidae is a worldwide genus of 17 owl species typical of forested habitats including rusty barred owls s hylophila chaco owls s chacoensis and rufous legged owls s rufipes in south america these species are distributed allopatrically but the ecological traits that determine their distributions remain largely unknown and their phylogenetic relationships are unclear we used species distribution models sdms to identify variables explaining their distribution patterns and test hypotheses about ecological divergence and conservatism based on niche overlap analysis for rusty barred owls and chaco owls climatic factors related to temperature played a major role whereas a rainfall variable was more important for rufous legged owls when niche overlaps were compared accounting for regional similarities in the habitat available to each species an ecological niche divergence process was supported for chaco owl rusty barred owl and chaco owl rufous legged owl whereas a niche conservatism process was supported for rusty barred owl rufous legged owl different ecological requirements support current species delimitation but they are in disagreement with the two main hypotheses currently envisaged about their phylogenetic relationships chaco owls as the sister taxa of either rufous legged owls or rusty barred owls and support a new phylogenetic hypothesis rufous legged owls as sister taxa of rusty barred owls our findings suggest that speciation of rusty barred owls and rufous legged owls was a vicariant event resulting from atlantic marine transgressions in southern south america in the miocene but their niche was conserved because habitat changed little in their respective ranges in contrast chaco owls diverged ecologically from the other two species as a result of their adaptations to the habitat they currently occupy ecological and historical approaches in biogeography can be embedded to explain distribution patterns and results provided by sdms can be used to infer historical and ecological processes in an integrative way,2017,0.793
Assessing global range expansion in a cryptic species complex: insights from the red seaweed genus Asparagopsis (Florideophyceae),the mitochondrial genetic diversity distribution and invasive potential of multiple cryptic operational taxonomic units otus of the red invasive seaweed asparagopsis were assessed by studying introduced mediterranean and hawaiian populations invasive behavior of each asparagopsis otu was inferred from phylogeographic reconstructions past historical demographic dynamics recent range expansion assessments and future distributional predictions obtained from demographic models genealogical networks resolved asparagopsis gametophytes and tetrasporophytes into four a taxiformis and one a armata cryptic otus falkenbergia isolates of a taxiformis l3 were recovered for the first time in the western mediterranean sea and represent a new introduction for this area neutrality statistics supported past range expansion for a taxiformis l1 and l2 in hawaii on the other hand extreme geographic expansion and an increase in effective population size were found only for a taxiformis l2 in the western mediterranean sea distribution models predicted shifts of the climatically suitable areas and population expansion for a armata l1 and a taxiformis l1 and l2 our integrated study confirms a high invasive risk for a taxiformis l1 and l2 in temperate and tropical areas despite the differences in predictions among modelling approaches a number of regions were identified as zones with high invasion risk for a taxiformis l2 since range shifts are likely climate driven phenomena future invasive behavior cannot be excluded for the rest of the lineages,2017,0.46
Gene Banks and Bioprospecting,gene banks are biorepositories which preserve the genetic material of the organism for long term storage and subsequent utilization of the bioresource in a sustainable manner unlike biodiversity hotspots these are manmade repositories which conserve the biological material under in situ or ex situ conditions by simulating the ecological niche the status and nature of the taxa actually define the conservation strategy required for its preservation and accordingly various technology driven methods have been developed across the globe however conservation measures need to be adequately compensated not only to make them self sustained but also to reward the communities concerned as they are the custodians of this biological wealth and the associated traditional knowledge the signatories to the convention on biological diversity cbd armed with the provisions available in its article for access to genetic resources and benefit sharing abs have formed a legal framework to protect their biodiversity and interest a judicious and balancing strategy on a case to case basis formulated by the member countries linking their preserved germplasm with bioprospecting efforts will certainly pay dividend in the future,2017,0.154
Combining NCBI and BOLD databases for OTU assignment in metabarcoding and metagenomic datasets: The BOLD_NCBI _Merger,background metabarcoding and metagenomic approaches are becoming routine techniquesfor use in biodiversity assessment and in ecological studies the assignment of taxonomic information to millions of sequences obtained via high throughput sequencing is challenging as many dna reference libraries are lacking information on certain taxonomic groups and can contain erroneous sequences combining different reference databases is therefore a promising approach for maximising taxonomic coverage and reliability of results new information the â œbold ncbi mergerâ bash script is introduced which combines sequence data obtained from the national centre for biotechnology information ncbi genbank and the barcode of life database bold and prepares it for taxonomic assignment with the software megan,2017,0.366
"Incorporating biotic interactions in the distribution models of African wild silk moths ( Gonometa species, Lasiocampidae) using different representations of modelled host tree distributions",biotic interactions influence species niches and may thus shape distributions nevertheless species distribution modelling has traditionally relied exclusively on environmental factors to predict species distributions while biotic interactions have only seldom been incorporated into models this study tested the ability of incorporating biotic interactions in the form of host plant distributions to increase model performance for two host dependent lepidopterans of economic interest namely the african silk moth species gonometa postica and gonometa rufobrunnea lasiocampidae both species are dependent on a small number of host tree species for the completion of their life cycle we thus expected the host plant distribution to be an important predictor of gonometa distributions model performance of a species distribution model trained only on abiotic predictors was compared to four species distribution models that additionally incorporated biotic interactions in the form of four different representations of host plant distributions as predictors we found that incorporating the mothâ host plant interactions improved g rufobrunnea model performance for all representations of host plant distribution while for g postica model performance only improved for one representation of host plant distribution the best performing representation of host plant distribution differed for the two gonometa species while these results suggest that incorporating biotic interactions into species distribution models can improve model performance there is inconsistency in which representation of the host tree distribution best improves predictions therefore the ability of biotic interactions to improve species distribution models may be context specific even for species which have obligatory interactions with other organisms,2017,0.931
Review: DNA Barcoding and Chromatography fingerprints For the Authentication of Botanicals in Herbal Medicinal Products: Two Good Heads Are Better than One,in the last two decades there has been a tremendous increase in the global use of herbal medicinal product hmp due to their claimed health benefits easy availability perceived effectiveness and safety this situation has led to increase in their demand and consequently also resulted in massive adulteration this is due to the fact that most of the traditional methods such as organoleptic microscopic and macroscopic and chemical methods cannot identify closely related species in a process product form therefore the urgent need for simple and rapid identification methods resulted in the discovery of a noble technique dna barcoding is processes that use short dna sequence from the standard genome for species identification this noble technique is reliable and provides consistent results as it is not influenced by factors such as variation in climates age plant part used or environmental factors dna barcoding as a technique for species identification have some challenges and limitation regarding their use for perfect identification and authentication of hmp isolation of dna of high quality is the prerequisite for molecular identification of biological specimen and this is often difficult with regards to herbal products the dna in the processed form of hmp is mostly degraded or completely removed in addition to the presence of high amount of secondary metabolite from the plant which affects the genomic dna extraction process other factors such as primer affinity pcr amplification sequencing method and lack of reference library containing authentic reference barcodes sequences are among the challenges encountered using the dna barcoding for authentication of hmp these limitations indicated that using dna barcoding alone may ineffectively authenticate the hmp therefore the combination of dna barcoding with chromatographic fingerprint a popular and generally accepted technique for the assessment and quality control of hmp will offer an efficient solution to evaluate the authenticity and quality consistency of hmp detailed and quality information about the main composition of the hmps will help to ascertain their efficacy and safety as these are very important towards quality control,2017,0.721
PREDICTED SUITABLE HABITAT DECLINES FOR MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES AMPHIBIANS UNDER FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE AND LAND-USE CHANGE …,with current declines of vertebrate taxa meeting or exceeding those of historic mass extinction events there is a growing need to investigate the main drivers of losses two of the main drivers of declines are global climate and land use changes both affecting multiple groups of taxa amphibians are at great risk from these two drivers of change and investigations into the impact of future change could assist with the formation of conservation plans to mitigate losses forecasting changes in suitable habitat with ecological niche modeling serves as a useful tool to begin to understand how species may respond to anthropogenic change we used maxent to model suitable habitat space of 33 amphibian species within the midwestern u s under multiple future climate change scenarios and used current and predicted changes in land use to examine the predicted impact of global climate and land use change we predicted reductions in suitable habitat for a high proportion of species in all model scenarios while few species were predicted to gain suitable habitat no significant differences in percentage change in habitat space were determined between models predicting suitable habitat solely using climate change scenarios or model output that incorporated the impact of land use change species richness of amphibians is predicted to decrease based on future climate and climate land use scenarios in the future we encourage continuation of the examination of land use and other global stressors and further investigations into physiological tolerances of amphibian species to create more robust predictions,2017,0.784
Data and Metadata Brokering – Theory and Practice from the BCube Project,earthcube is a u s national science foundation initiative that aims to create a cyberinfrastructure ci for all the geosciences an initial set of â œbuilding blocksâ was funded to develop potential components of that ci the brokering building block bcube created a brokering framework to demonstrate cross disciplinary data access based on a set of use cases developed by scientists from the domains of hydrology oceanography polar science and climate weather while some successes were achieved considerable challenges were encountered we present a synopsis of the processes and outcomes of the bcube experiment,2017,0.235
Suitability of Laurentian Great Lakes for invasive species based on global species distribution models and local habitat,efficient management and prevention of species invasions requires accurate prediction of where species of concern can arrive and persist species distribution models provide one way to identify potentially suitable habitat by developing the relationship between climate variables and species occurrence data however these models when applied to freshwater invasions are complicated by two factors the first is that the range expansions that typically occur as part of the invasion process violate standard species distribution model assumptions of data stationarity second predicting potential range of freshwater aquatic species is complicated by the reliance on terrestrial climate measurements to develop occurrence relationships for species that occur in aquatic environments to overcome these obstacles we combined a recently developed algorithm for species distribution modelingâ range baggingâ with newly available aquatic habitat specific information from the north american great lakes region to predict suitable habitat for three potential invasive species golden mussel killer shrimp and northern snakehead range bagging may more accurately predict relative suitability than other methods because it focuses on the limits of the species environmental tolerances rather than central tendency or â œtypicalâ cases overlaying the species distribution model output with aquatic habitat specific data then allowed for more specific predictions of areas with high suitability our results indicate there is suitable habitat for northern snakehead in the great lakes particularly shallow coastal habitats in the lower four great lakes where literature suggests they will favor areas of wetland and submerged aquatic vegetation these coastal areas also offer the highest suitability for golden mussel but our models suggest they are marginal habitats globally the great lakes provide the closest match to the currently invaded range of killer shrimp but they appear to pose an intermediate risk to the region range bagging provided reliable predictions when assessed either by a standard test set or by tests for spatial transferability with golden mussel being the most difficult to accurately predict our approach illustrates the strength of combining multiple sources of data while reiterating the need for increased measurement of freshwater habitat at high spatial resolutions to improve the ability to predict potential invasive species,2017,0.917
"Convergence, Consilience, and the Evolution of Temperate Deciduous Forests",the deciduous habit of northern temperate trees and shrubs provides one of the most obvious examples of convergent evolution but how did it evolve hypotheses based on the fossil record posit that deciduousness evolved first in response to drought or darkness and preadapted certain lineages as cold climates spread an alternative is that evergreens first established in freezing environments and later evolved the deciduous habit we monitored phenological patterns of 20 species of viburnum spanning tropical lucidophyllous subtropical montane and warm temperate and cool temperate asian forests in lucidophyllous forests all viburnums were evergreen plants that exhibited coordinated leaf flushes with the onset of the rainy season but varied greatly in the timing of leaf senescence in contrast deciduous species exhibited tight coordination of both flushing and senescence and we found a perfect correlation between the deciduous habit and prolonged annual freezing in contrast to previous stepw,2017,0.475
Current knowledge of fungi from Neotropical montane cloud forests: distributional patterns and composition,montane cloud forests in the neotropics harbor a great wealth of biological diversity and a large number of endemic species here we present i a comprehensive data mining exercise of fungi from neotropical montane cloud forests nmcf ii an extensive review of the current knowledge of fungal richness distribution and composition and iii a preliminary analysis of fungal endemicity in mexican montane cloud forests based on a survey of literature and other sources we assembled a database of 6349 records representing 2962 fungal species in nmcf the computed individual based species rarefaction curve remained non asymptotic and the extrapolation curve estimated an expected increment of 42 in the number of species by doubling the sampling effort fungal species richness was highest in nmcf from mesoamerica particularly from mexico and costa rica fungi from mesoamerica caribbean and south america are significantly different at diverse taxonomic levels and there is a little overlap in the fungal species recorded from these regions the analyses of endemicity of the mexican dataset performed with parsimony and bayesian methods were highly complementary they showed the following areas of endemicity supported by the congruent distribution of fungal species i two main regions in the trans mexican volcanic belt tmvb ii a region in the southern part of veracruz and iii a region located in the eastern part of tmvb with affinities with sierra madre oriental and the chiapan guatemala highlands this last area was supported by five species of glomeromycota and is consistent with an area of endemicity previously found in vascular plants in this study we provide a perspective on gaps in knowledge regarding the diversity and distribution of fungi in nmcf and provide a full dataset of fungal records with geographical bibliographic and taxonomic information,2017,0.852
Barriers to globally invasive species are weakening across the Antarctic,aim biological invasions are a substantial threat to antarctic biodiversity and a priority conservation policy focus for antarctic treaty parties and the sovereign states of surrounding islands key to their strategies is prevention including assessment of establishment risk for alien species despite establishment of some of the worst globally invasive species across the antarctic region assessments of establishment potential of these species are non existent here we address this deficit and determine whether these invasive species constitute a significant conservation threat to the broader antarctic region both now and in response to future regional climate change location antarctica and the southern ocean islands 45â â 90â s methods we used ensemble species distribution models to assess the current and future climate suitability of the antarctic region for 69 of the worst globally invasive species and 24 insect and plant species that have already established somewhere in the region results the antarctic continent is unsuitable for all of the worst globally invasive species under current conditions but areas of the antarctic peninsula are predicted to become climatically suitable for up to six globally invasive species within the next century by contrast all southern ocean islands are presently climatically suitable for additional non native species with the threat increasing in the future main conclusions our findings demonstrate that climate which is often cited as a key barrier to alien species establishment may afford some protection to continental antarctica but that this protection is not currently extended to the southern ocean islands furthermore existing climatic barriers to alien species establishment will weaken as warming continues across the region this not only illustrates the value of applying distribution modelling methods to this largely ice covered region but demonstrates how these methods can be used to inform targeted surveillance of introduction pathways and sites that have the highest risk of establishment of invasive alien species,2017,0.991
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF FIBRES WITHIN COPPICED AND NON-COPPICED ROSEWOOD (Pterocarpus erinaceus Poir.) AND THEIR APTNESS FOR WOOD - AND PAPER - BASED PRODUCTS,rosewood pterocarpus erinaceus is highly priced for furniture flooring and cabinetry for its rich hue and durability its coppiced wood augments the timber for regular supply and sustainable utilization fibre morphology from macerated slivers within its coppiced and non coppiced stems and their utilization potential were assessed derived ratios for the fibres were also calculated the axial positions butt middle crown affected the fibre dimensions fibre length was greater for coppiced trees i e 1663â 11 1488â 5 1511â 10âµm for sapwood and 1498â 10 1486â 9 1394â 4âµm for heartwood than the non coppiced i e 1240â 7 1013â 5 1137â 5âµm sapwood and 1094â 8 1002â 2 1041â 9âµm heartwood in all those for sapwoods were greater than heartwoodsâ significant differences pë 0 05 existed between fibre lengths from the coppiced 1394â 4 1663â 11âµm and non coppiced trees 1002â 2 1240â 7âµm fibre diameters for coppiced sapwood and heartwood were 23â 1 20â 1 22â 0 8âµm and 21 5â 0 3 20 7â 0 5 21 3â 2âµm and noncoppiced recorded 21â 0 6 20 7â 0 3 20 6â 0 1âµm and 21â 0 21â 0 4 21â 0 8âµm respectively their respective double wall thicknesses were 8 4â 0 2 7 2â 0 2 9 4â 1âµm and 8 2â 0 2 9â 0 3 9 1â 0 4âµm for coppiced wood and 9 1â 1 7 8â 0 1 8 1â 0 3âµm and 8 5â 0 3 8â 0 4 8â 1 for non coppiced thus radial stem position also influenced fibre morphology the fibre indices i e runkel ratio slenderness ratio and flexibility coefficient for coppiced wood 0 6â 0 06 0 85â 0 06 68â 4 77â 6 56â 4 64â 2 respectively and non coppiced 0 64â 0 12 0 8â 0 49â 1 58â 4 57â 3 62â 2 respectively indicate the timberâ s aptness for pulp and paper besides the wood industry could exploit the fibre characteristics of coppiced wood also for engineering of fibre based products and structural applications,2017,0.049
Parasite biodiversity faces extinction and redistribution in a changing climate,climate change is a well documented driver of both wildlife extinction and disease emergence but the negative impacts of climate change on parasite diversity are undocumented we compiled the most comprehensive spatially explicit data set available for parasites projected range shifts in a changing climate and estimated extinction rates for eight major parasite clades on the basis of 53 133 occurrences capturing the geographic ranges of 457 parasite species conservative model projections suggest that 5 to 10 of these species are committed to extinction by 2070 from climate driven habitat loss alone we find no evidence that parasites with zoonotic potential have a significantly higher potential to gain range in a changing climate but we do find that ectoparasites especially ticks fare disproportionately worse than endoparasites accounting for host driven coextinctions models predict that up to 30 of parasitic worms are committed to extinction driven by a combination of direct and indirect pressures despite high local extinction rates parasite richness could still increase by an order of magnitude in some places because species successfully tracking climate change invade temperate ecosystems and replace native species with unpredictable ecological consequences,2017,0.926
Testing the role of ancient and contemporary landscapes on structuring genetic variation in a specialist grasshopper,understanding the processes underlying spatial patterns of genetic diversity and structure of natural populations is a central topic in evolutionary biogeography in this study we combine data on ancient and contemporary landscape composition to get a comprehensive view of the factors shaping genetic variation across the populations of the scrub legume grasshopper chorthippus binotatus binotatus from the biogeographically complex region of southeast iberia first we examined geographical patterns of genetic structure and employed an approximate bayesian computation abc approach to compare different plausible scenarios of population divergence second we used a landscape genetic framework to test for the effects of 1 late miocene paleogeography 2 pleistocene climate fluctuations and 3 contemporary topographic complexity on the spatial patterns of population genetic differentiation genetic structure and abc analyses supported the presence of three genetic clusters and a sequential west to east splitting model that predated the last glacial maximum lgm c 21 kya landscape genetic analyses revealed that population genetic differentiation was primarily shaped by contemporary topographic complexity but was not explained by any paleogeographic scenario or resistance distances based on climate suitability in the present or during the lgm overall this study emphasizes the need of integrating information on ancient and contemporary landscape composition to get a comprehensive view of their relative importance to explain spatial patterns of genetic variation in organisms inhabiting regions with complex biogeographical histories,2017,0.515
"Better evidence, better decisions, better environment: emergent themes from the first environmental evidence conference",the first international collaboration for environmental evidence cee conference took place in august 2016 at the swedish museum of natural history in stockholm with nearly 100 participants from 14 countries this conference reflected and contributed to the growth of a global network of people interested in the production and use of evidence syntheses in environmental management the conference also provided an opportunity to identify emerging themes and reflect on those ideas and perspectives to help direct future activities of the cee and the broader community an increasingly engaged community of practice was evident but there is uneven distribution of experience resources capacity and commitment to evidence synthesis in different sectors and regions there is much opportunity to bring academics practitioners and other partners together which will help to further demonstrate impact of evidence synthesis activities and enhance relevance as the discipline evolves there is growing interest in rapid evidence synthesis but the benefits and risks of that approach remain unclear there was also a recognition that improvements in empirical science will enhance the likelihood that more studies can be fully exploited as part of evidence synthesis there are opportunities for capacity building engaging the next generation e g students and enhancing connections within and beyond the cee community to advance evidence based environmental management it is our desire that this paper will serve as a template for future cee activities i e where to invest resources but also as an invitation to those that were unable to attend to participate in cee and the evidence based environmental management movement in whichever ways resonate with them,2017,0.014
A molecular portrait of maternal sepsis from Byzantine Troy,pregnancy complications are poorly represented in the archeological record despite their importance in contemporary and ancient societies while excavating a byzantine cemetery in troy we discovered calcified abscesses among a womanâ s remains scanning electron microscopy of the tissue revealed â ghost cellsâ resulting from dystrophic calcification which preserved ancient maternal fetal and bacterial dna of a severe infection likely chorioamnionitis gardnerella vaginalis and staphylococcus saprophyticus dominated the abscesses phylogenomic analyses of ancient historical and contemporary data showed that g vaginalis troy fell within contemporary genetic diversity whereas s saprophyticus troy belongs to a lineage that does not appear to be commonly associated with human disease today we speculate that the ecology of s saprophyticus infection may have differed in the ancient world as a result of close contacts between humans and domesticated animals these results highlight the complex and dynamic interactions with our microbial milieu that underlie severe maternal infections,2017,0.622
An updated report on the distribution and conservation status of the endangered Cat’s Head Rockrose Helianthemum caput-felis (Magnoliopsida: Violales: Cistaceae) in Algeria,helianthemum caput felis is an endangered plant species growing in the western mediterranean basin its distribution is well known to the european and moroccan regional populations but no data from its distribution in algeria have been reported since the middle 20th century in this study we provide an up to date report on the distribution of the species in algeria fieldwork surveys in the classical locations were unsuccessful in finding the species probably due to human habitat disturbances however a relict location was found in ain el kerma near one of the historical known locations as there is reduced distribution we point out the main causes that threaten the habitat of h caput felis according to iucn threats classification scheme and we also propose to label it in the algerian red list as regionally critically endangered crreg b1ab i ii iii v 2ab i ii iii v c2a i ii d,2017,0.669
"Combining dispersal, landscape connectivity and habitat suitability to assess climate-induced changes in the distribution of Cunningham’s skink, Egernia cunninghami",the ability of species to track their climate niche is dependent on their dispersal potential and the connectivity of the landscape matrix linking current and future suitable habitat however studies modeling climate driven range shifts rarely address the movement of species across landscapes realistically often assuming â œunlimitedâ or â œnoâ dispersal here we incorporate dispersal rate and landscape connectivity with a species distribution model maxent to assess the extent to which the cunninghamâ s skink egernia cunninghami may be capable of tracking spatial shifts in suitable habitat as climate changes our model was projected onto four contrasting but equally plausible scenarios describing futures that are relative to now hot wet warm dry hot with similar precipitation and warm wet at six time horizons with decadal intervals 2020â 2070 and at two spatial resolutions 1 km and 250 m the size of suitable habitat was projected to decline 23â 63 at 1 km and 26â 64 at 250 m by 2070 combining maxent output with the dispersal rate of the species and connectivity of the intervening landscape matrix showed that most current populations in regions projected to become unsuitable in the medium to long term will be unable to shift the distance necessary to reach suitable habitat in particular numerous populations currently inhabiting the trailing edge of the speciesâ range are highly unlikely to be able to disperse fast enough to track climate change unless these populations are capable of adaptation they are likely to be extirpated we note however that the core of the species distribution remains suitable across the broad spectrum of climate scenarios considered our findings highlight challenges faced by philopatric species and the importance of adaptation for the persistence of peripheral populations under climate change,2017,0.929
Paleocene decapod Crustacea from northeastern Mexico: Additions to biostratigraphy and diversity,new decapod specimens from mid paleocene shallow marine deposits of ne mexico represents an important addition to the diversity paleobiogeography and evolution of the crustacea record in this work we describe additions to the decapod assemblage from the paleocene selandian rancho nuevo formation difunta group parras basin coahuila due to the evident size differences with other decapod assemblages we compare the new assemblage with those from the lower paleocene danian mexia clay member of the wills point formation texas and the lower eocene ypresian el bosque formation in chiapas species reported from the mid paleocene selandian assemblage of the porters creek formation alabama are correlatable to the decapod species from ne mexico in age size and systematic composition the erymid lobster enoploclytia gardnerae rathbun 1935 is represented by several carapaces and chelae remains one isolated palm of callianassidae is included numerous carapaces of linuparus wilcoxensis rathbun 1935 are described representing the most abundant lobster a new record for the raninid notopoides sp and presence of quasilaeviranina sp cf arzignagnensis and quasilaeviranina ovalis are here reported new raninids claudioranina latacantha sp nov and claudioranina sp cyrtorhininae are also part of this assemblage paraverrucoides alabamensis rathbun 1935 and tehuacana americana rathbun 1935 are represented by several carapaces exhibiting intraspecific morphological variation different sizes among the early and middle paleocene and early eocene decapod populations suggests a possible effect of variation in seawater temperatures and or a lilliput effect after the k pg event,2017,0.815
A procedure to assess the spatial variability in the importance of abiotic factors affecting distributions: the case of world freshwater fishes,understanding the factors shaping speciesâ distribution is a key longstanding topic in ecology with unresolved issues the aims were to test whether the relative contribution of abiotic factors that set the geographical range of freshwater fish species may vary spatially and or may depend on the geographical extent that is being considered the relative contribution of factors to discriminate between the conditions prevailing in the area where the species is present and those existing in the considered extent was estimated with the instability index included in the r package spedinstabr we used three different extent sizes 1 each river basin where the species is present local 2 all river basins where the species is present regional and 3 the whole earth global we used a data set of 16 543 freshwater fish species with a total of 845 764 geographical records together with bioclimatic and topographic variables factors associated with temperature and altitude show the highest relative contribution to explain the distribution of freshwater fishes at the smaller considered extent altitude and a mix of factors associated with temperature and precipitation were more important when using the regional extent factors associated with precipitation show the highest contribution when using the global extent there was also spatial variability in the importance of factors both between species and within species and from region to region factors associated with precipitation show a clear latitudinal trend of decreasing in importance toward the equator,2017,0.866
"Long-distance dispersal or postglacial contraction? Insights into disjunction between Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains and Taiwan in a cold-adapted herbaceous genus, Triplostegia",current disjunct patterns can result from long distance dispersal or postglacial contraction we herein investigate the evolutionary history of triplostegia to elucidate the disjunction between the himalayaâ hengduan mountain region hhm and taiwan tw genetic structure of triplostegia was investigated for 48 populations using sequences from five chloroplast loci and the ribosomal nuclear internal transcribed spacer divergence time estimation ancestral area reconstruction and species distribution modeling sdm were employed to examine the biogeographic history of triplostegia substantial genetic differentiation among populations from southwestern china sw central china cc and tw was detected triplostegia was inferred to have originated in sw and diversification began during the late miocene cc was colonized in the mid pliocene and tw was finally colonized in the early pleistocene sdm suggested an expansion of climatically suitable areas during the last glacial maximum and range contraction during the last interglacial in triplostegia disjunction between hhm and tw in triplostegia is most likely the consequence of topographic isolation and postglacial contraction the potential climatic suitability areas for triplostegia by 2070s 2061â 2080 are predicted to slightly shrink and move northward with continued global warming and human induced deforestation extinction risk may increase for the cold adapted species and appropriate strategies should be employed for ecosystem conservation,2017,0.803
"The genus Achyranthes: A review on traditional uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities",ethnopharmacological relevance achyranthes l amaranthaceae also known as chaff flower and niuxi ç è mainly includes two famous medicinal species namely a bidentata and a aspera a bidentata has been widely used as blood activating and stasis resolving medicine for the treatment of various diseases including amenorrhea dysmenorrhea lumbago gonalgia paraplegia edema stranguria headache dizziness odontalgia oral ulcer hematemesis and epistaxis a aspera has been widely used to treat various diseases including gynecological disorder asthma ophthalmia odontalgia haemorrhoids and abdominal tumor and has been applied to difficult labour wound healing insect and snake bites aim of this review this review aims to provide systematically reorganized information on distributions botanical characteristics ethnopharmacology chemical constituents qualitative and quantitative analysis pharmacological activities and toxicity of achyranthes species to support their therapeutic potential materials and methods the relevant information on achyranthes species was gathered from worldwide accepted scientific databases via electronic search google scholar web of science sciencedirect acs publications pubmed wiley online library scifinder cnki information was also obtained from international plant names index chinese pharmacopoeia chinese herbal classic books phd and msc dissertations etc results a comprehensive analysis of literatures obtained through the above mentioned sources confirms that the ethnomedicinal uses of achyranthes species are mainly recorded in china india korea pakistan ethiopia kenya sri lanka bangladesh philippines etc phytochemical investigations revealed that the major bioactive substances of achyranthes plants are polysaccharides polypeptides triterpenoid saponins and ketosteroids achyranthes plants have been shown to not only act on immune system nervous system bone metabolism and reproduction but also possess a wide range of biological activities including blood activating anti tumor anti inflammation anti arthritis anti oxidation anti aging wound healing etc toxicity studies indicated that a bidentata and a aspera seem non toxic at the common therapeutic doses conclusions a bidentata and a aspera are very promising to be fully utilized in the development of nutraceutical and pharmaceutical products there are however needs for further in depth studies to confirm some ethnomedicinal uses of achyranthes plants and to elucidate the scientific connotation of the widely documented property of conducting drug downward of a bidentata in addition other widespread achyranthes species like a japonica and a rubrofusca ought to be studied likewise systematic comparative studies of the chemical constituents of medicinal achyranthes plants resources with the same local name are also needed furthermore not only should the investigations on the structure activity relationship of the main bioactive compounds triterpenoid saponins and ketosteroids be carried out but the pathways of absorption distribution metabolism and excretion ought to be clarified last but not least there is also a need to evaluate the long term chronic toxicity and acute toxicity in vivo of the main bioactive compounds,2017,0.097
N81 Tullow Footbridges Scheme & Associated Road Reconfiguration Works,atkins was commissioned by carlow county council ccc to examine a number of design options for footbridges adjacent to the existing n81 slaney bridge in tullow co carlow the commission also includes design of a lighting system the redesign of the junction of the n81 and r418 to improve turning movements for hgv vehicles turning northbound on the n81 from the r418 and the creation of a one way traffic management system from the n81 to r418 via hawkins lane,2017,0.119
Mutualism influences species distribution predictions for a bromeliad-breeding anuran under climate change,ecological niche models or species distribution models have been widely used to identify potentially suitable areas for species in future climate change scenarios however there are inherent errors to these models due to their inability to evaluate species occurrence influenced by non climatic factors with the intuit to improve the modelling predictions for a bromeliad breeding treefrog phyllodytes melanomystax hylidae we investigate how the climatic suitability of bromeliads influences the distribution model for the treefrog in the context of baseline and 2050 climate change scenarios we used point occurrence data on the frog and the bromeliad vriesea procera bromeliaceae to generate their predicted distributions based on baseline and 2050 climates using a consensus of five algorithms we compared the accuracy of the models and the geographic predictions for the frog generated from two modelling procedures i a climate only model for p melanomystax and v procera and ii a climate biotic model for p melanomystax in which the climatic suitability of the bromeliad was jointly considered with the climatic variables both modelling approaches generated strong and similar predictive power for p melanomystax yet climate biotic modelling generated more concise predictions particularly for the year 2050 specifically because the predicted area of the bromeliad overlaps with the predictions for the treefrog in the baseline climate both modelling approaches produce reasonable similar predicted areas for the anuran alternatively due to the predicted loss of northern climatically suitable areas for the bromeliad by 2050 only the climate biotic models provide evidence that northern populations of p melanomystax will likely be negatively affected by 2050,2017,0.249
Understanding transmissibility patterns of Chagas disease through complex vector–host networks,chagas disease is one of the most important vector borne zoonotic diseases in latin america control strategies could be improved if transmissibility patterns of its aetiologic agent italic trypanosoma cruzi italic were better understood to understand transmissibility patterns of chagas disease in mexico we inferred potential vectors and hosts of italic t cruzi italic from geographic distributions of nine species of triatominae and 396 wild mammal species respectively the most probable vectors and hosts of italic t cruzi italic were represented in a complex inference network from which we formulated a predictive model and several associated hypotheses about the ecological epidemiology of chagas disease we compiled a list of confirmed mammal hosts to test our hypotheses our tests allowed us to predict the most important potential hosts of italic t cruzi italic and to validate the model showing that the confirmed hosts were those predicted to be the most important hosts we were also able to predict differences in the transmissibility of italic t cruzi italic among triatomine species from spatial data we hope our findings help drive efforts for future experimental studies,2017,0.699
Integration of Samples from Multiple Sources for Predictive Mapping over Large Areas,predictive mapping is widely used to establish the spatial variation of geographic variables over large areas when mapping large areas it is usually difficult to obtain a sample set adequately covering the entire study area more commonly several sample sets from various sources are available those multi source samples provide both opportunities and challenges for predictive mapping on one hand they may provide more comprehensive coverage when integrated on the other hand their unique characteristics such as the incompatibility between sample sets and different levels of reliability need to be considered in the integration process,2017,0.238
"Curves, Maps and Hotspots: The Diversity and Distribution of Araneomorph Spiders in the Neotropics",the infraorder araneomorphae comprises more than nine tenths of spider diversity including most of the better known web weaving spiders as observed for other taxa the group is particularly diverse in the neotropics where it can be find in any terrestrial ecosystem in this chapter we synthesize the current taxonomic and biogeographic knowledge on the neotropical araneomorphs based on a large database of species described since 1758 we describe the pattern of described species accumulation through time in the neotropics and explore factors responsible for variations in species discovery in space and time we also use statistical methods to predict the total number of species in the neotropics and discuss the challenges involved in the description of the remaining neotropical species finally we describe biogeographical patterns throughout the neotropics based on detailed species distribution data for well known spider families,2017,0.866
Adaptive sequence evolution is driven by biotic stress in a pair of orchid species ( Dactylorhiza ) with distinct ecological optima,the orchid family is the largest in the angiosperms but little is known about the molecular basis of the significant variation they exhibit we investigate here the transcriptomic divergence between two european terrestrial orchids dactylorhiza incarnata and d fuchsii and integrate these results in the context of their distinct ecologies that we also document clear signals of lineage specific adaptive evolution of protein coding sequences are identified notably targeting elements of biotic defence including both physical and chemical adaptations in the context of divergent pools of pathogens and herbivores in turn a substantial regulatory divergence between the two species appears linked to adaptation acclimation to abiotic conditions several of the pathways affected by differential expression are also targeted by deviating post transcriptional regulation via srnas finally dactylorhiza incarnata appears to suffer from insufficient srna control over the activity of rna dependent dna polymerase resulting in increased activity of class i transposable elements and over time in larger genome size than that of d fuchsii the extensive molecular divergence between the two species suggests significant genomic and transcriptomic shock in their hybrids and offers insights into the difficulty of coexistence at the homoploid level altogether biological response to selection accumulated during the history of these orchids appears governed by their microenvironmental context in which biotic and abiotic pressures act synergistically to shape transcriptome structure expression and regulation,2017,0.432
How well documented is Australia's flora? Understanding spatial bias in vouchered plant specimens,massive digitization of natural history collections nhc has opened the door for researchers to conduct inferential studies on the collection of biological diversity across space and time the widespread use of nhcs in scientific research makes it essential to characterize potential sources of spatial bias in this study we assessed spatial patterns in records from the australian virtual herbarium avh based on 3 000 000 vouchered specimens of around 21 000 native plant species the avh is the main database for describing australia s flora and identifying its limitations is of paramount interest for the validity of conservation and environmental studies we characterized how sampling effort is distributed across each interim bioregion of australia ibra then asked i how complete are species inventories for each bioregion we define completeness c as the ratio of observed to estimated species richness using the chao 1 estimator ii how is sampling effort related to a commonly used human influence index hii and iii what is the probability that additional collections would result in the identification of previously unrecorded species in each bioregion sampling effort across bioregions is unequal which partially reflects the collecting behaviour of naturalists in relation to species richness patterns the density of records in bioregions ranges from 0 02â 8 37 km∠2 at the bioregional scale completeness is generally high with 79 of bioregions estimated to have records for at least 80 of their species completeness is partly explained by sampling effort r 0 43 p 0 01 although some bioregions e g northern kimberley and burt plain have high completeness yet relatively low sampling effort the inventory of hampton however is substantially less complete than other bioregions c 0 66 bioregions with high hii consistently have high completeness while regions with low hii span the full range of completeness values we calculated that an additional specimen collected from a bioregion has a 0 33 wet tropics to 11 7 arnhem coast probability of representing a new species for that region our assessment can assist with directing future systematic survey efforts by identifying bioregions where additional surveying may result in the greatest return in terms of increasing knowledge of species richness and diversity,2017,0.899
European Red List of Lycopods and Ferns,the european red list is a review of the conservation status of european species according to iucnâ s regional red listing guidelines it identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level so that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status this red list publication summarises results for all known native european lycopod and fern species,2017,0.451
Locating sufficient plant distribution data for accurate estimation of geographic range: The relative value of herbaria and other sources,in a megadiverse country such as south africa plant locality data are routinely sourced from the south african national herbarium pre evidence suggests that large areas of the country remain poorly collected and that locality records are not always adequately represented in pre our aim was to assess whether distribution information obtained exclusively from pre adequately represented the known range of selected species we also assessed the relative value of regional herbaria and supplementary sources of locality data locality information was sourced from pre 17 regional herbaria sight records and literature for a subset of 121 ethnomedicinal plant species that are currently regarded to be threatened with extinction or of conservation concern according to the iucn red list criteria geographic range km2 was calculated using distribution information quarter degree squares qds obtained from pre and non pre sources the species ranges were examined to compare the differences in range size and the overall proportion of qds records represented in pre and non pre sources supplementary data obtained from regional herbaria and other sources increased the number of known qds records by â 45 per species across the various iucn red list threat categories and the ranges increased by â 28 per species as the threat status of a species increased proportionally more qds were likely to come from supplementary sources rarer species tended to be found only in herbaria within their province of occupancy â return for effortâ analyses indicated that qds records should be sourced from pre plus one other herbarium located within each province in which a species of interest occurs qds coverage within species geographic ranges was under represented using only data obtained from pre reducing the accuracy of species occurrences and distributions relying solely on information sourced from that repository we demonstrate that this can impact on the accuracy of conservation planning resources such as red lists our results highlight the relative importance of regional herbaria,2017,0.989
Genetic structure of dioecious and trioecious Salix myrsinifolia populations at the border of geographic range,gene flow in plant populations is heavily affected by species sexual systems in order to study the effect of sexual systems on genetic structure we examined plastid and nuclear dna of 12 dioecious males and females and 18 trioecious males females and hermaphrodites populations of salix myrsinifoliaâ a boreal shrub with slow range expansion populations were located along latitudinal gradients across submarginal and marginal parts of the range individuals of each sex morph were all hexaploid we identified 10 chloroplast dna haplotypes and scored 205 polymorphic bands with amplified fragment length polymorphism we found dioecious populations that differed from trioecious populations via the presence of four unique haplotypes and significant difference in neiâ s gene diversity index 0 119 vs 0 116 and down weighed marker value 1 17 vs 1 02 the latter parameter together with haplotype and nucleotide diversity significantly decreased with latitude similar to the expansion front also we found that 89 of hermaphrodite individuals belong to one distinct in tree parsimony network haplotype this frequency significantly decreased with latitude towards the expansion front we suspect that the presence of hermaphrodites in trioecious populations may represent a trade off between the possibility of producing progeny by single hermaphrodites and genetic variability loss through autogamy s myrsinifolia benefits from trioecious sexual systems under colonization events this phenomenon is no longer a gain closer to the core of the species range,2017,0.872
Spatio Temporal Land Use Land Cover Change Mapping of Malete Elemere: Implication on Development Planning of Emerging Communities,the use of ecosystem and biodiversity mapping land use land cover change detection has been advocated in preparation of developmental master plan in towns and cities noticeable changes have been observed within malete elemere community since the establishment of kwara state university malete yet its spatial pattern and socio ecological implication have not been investigated this work seek to determine and produce land cover land use change map of malete elemere over the last 10 years and post 15 year periods through change detection techniques so as to evaluate the impact of the establishment of kwara state university on the settlement spatial development landsat 7 enhanced thematic mapper plus etm satellite images of 2005 2010 and 2015 of the study area were acquired from usgs at spatial resolution of 30 m radiometric correction were applied to all the images using radiance modules in idrisi32 with radiance spectral value set at dn 0 lmin and 255 lmax an unsupervised classification was carried out on the composite images of bands 4 3 2 1 for all the selected years to identify possible maximum spectral reflectance classes this was followed by supervised classification using training sample from the field survey from which image to image spatio temporal changes statistics were extracted to generate a prediction of lulc changes for 2025 cellular automata markovian transition estimator ca markov in idrisi32 was used various kappa statistics was used to evaluate the performance of prediction with an average k statistics of above 0 83 recorded the result shows that built up area gained an astronomical increase 180 between 2005 and 2015 while forest lost significantly 34 within the same periods with most of the gains occurring in 2010 and 2015 after the establishment of kwasu by 2025 two major growth pole centres will emerge along malete elemere axis and one minor in jenkunu omoni axis which will exert a great stress on infrastructural facilities and may create a chaotic condition if left unattended to,2017,0.138
Effects of Environmental Changes on the Occurrence of Oreomunnea mexicana (Juglandaceae) in a Biodiversity Hotspot Cloud Forest,the tropical montane cloud forests are recognized as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in spite of this they are among the most threatened ecosystems in the world this study integrates three ecological approaches generally studied separately climate change scenery ecological niche and population dynamics of oreomunnea mexicana an endangered and relict species to understand how environmental change affects the population structure in the cloud forest that will allow its conservation potential distribution under future climatic scenarios of the species at national and regional levels was generated from the maxent algorithm also the current abundance distribution and the ecological niche of the species were analyzed at the regional level changes in potential distribution under two climatic models suggest a habitat reduction from 36 to 55 nationally and 2 to 9 at a regional level for 2050 and 2070 respectively the current distribution of the species is fragmented and consists of subpopulations that have spatial structures of aggregated populations and a size structure in reversed â œjâ form the ecological niche of the species is highly specialized and sensitive to environmental changes o mexicana is a flagship species of biological and cultural importance to the regionâ s inhabitants and could be fundamental to the conservation of tropical montane cloud forests,2017,0.871
Light pollution: spatial analysis and potential ecological effects in rural Ireland,increasing use of artificial light at night has led to many areas across the globe being exposed to light conditions above the natural background level research is only now uncovering the impacts ofâ ecological light pollutionâ on the environment artificial light at night can disrupt circadian rhythms cause interference with orientationandmigration alterpredator preyinteractionsandaffectotherbehaviour and physiological features intercalibration of defense meteorological satellite programâ s operational linescan system images shows that night light emissions in ireland have increased significantly from 1995 to 2010 in this period artificial light has spreadintopreviouslydarkruralareas includingcountymayowhere28 ofland surface is designated for habitat and species conservation purposes to investigate light pollution in rural areas examination into the conservation area of owenduff nephin beg complex was undertaken spatial analysis of light measurements taken from sky quality meters surrounding the site were overlaid with species distribution records to determine the proximity of protected species to sources of artificial light at night light measurements from the area show pristine night skies according to international dark sky association standards with one site indicating the presence of localisedlightpollution furtherworkis requiredtodetermineifanypotentialadverse ecologicalimpacts onprotectedspecies inthe localityareoccurringfromartificiallight at night the findings of this study provide a foundation for ecological light pollution effects assessment in ireland further work is required to establish the temporal and spatial scales of artificial light in irish rural areas and determine the specific effects on species presentthere,2017,0.375
Impact of climate change on potential distribution of xero-epiphytic selaginellas (Selaginella involvens and S. repanda) in Southeast Asia,climate change is one of the greatest challenges for all life on earth as it may become the dominant driver of changes in ecosystem services and biodiversity loss at the global level selaginella is a group of spike mosses that seem easily affected by global warming climate change due to requiring water medium for fertilization however some species have been adapted to dry condition and may grow as epiphytes such as s involvens and s repanda both species are commonly found in opposing a range of elevation s involvens is often found in high altitude regions whereas s repanda is often found at lower altitude regions the difference in this altitudinal distributions is expected to limit redistribution mechanism of each species to adapt the climate change projections this study model examines the potential geographic distribution of s involvens and s repanda under current climatic conditions and models the impact of projected climate change on their potential distribution future climate predictions are made with four detailed bioclimatic scenarios i e rcp 2 6 rcp 4 5 rcp 6 0 and rcp 8 5 and three time intervals 2030 2050 2080 which combine various climatic factors in this modeling it can be concluded that s involvens and s repanda can adapt to future climate change and continue to be sustainable although it is strongly influenced and shifting habitat distribution in some areas,2017,0.518
From species to trait evolution in Aethionema (Brassicaceae),the economically important plant family brassicaceae includes many crops e g cabbage canola caulifower and turnip and the model plant arabidopsis thaliana brassicaceae contains 3741 species in 325 genera al shehbaz 2012 and phylogenetc analyses have identfed a larger core group with three main lineages and a smaller sister clade aethionemeae beilstein et al 2006 beilstein et al 2008 couvreur et al 2010 franzke et al 2009 more recently the family has been split into lineages a f huang et al 2016 polyploidy or whole genome duplicaton wgd is a common feature of angiosperm evoluton solts et al 2009 solts et al 2010 the entre brassicaceae shares a common whole genome duplicaton event referred to as at alpha edger et al 2015 haudry et al 2013 brassicaceae are globally distributed over the temperate regions hohmann et al 2015 and contain species that are metal tolerant e g noccaea caerulescens salt tolerant e g eutrema halophila drought tolerant e g allysum montanum and cold tolerant e g draba chionophila important synapomorphies of the brassicaceae are not restricted to morphological characters like dissymmetric fowers tetradynamous stamens ovary with a false septum etc but also include the ecologically importantsecondary defence compounds the methionine derived glucosinolates edger et al 2015 stevens 2001,2017,0.513
"The avian community of the Karen Mogensen Reserve, a wealth of biodiversity within the poorly investigated and threatened environments of northwestern Costa Rica",despite being characterized by some of the most threatened forest ecosystems of mesoamerica the nicoya peninsula is among the least known regions of neotropical costa rica in terms of its birdlife within this region in the framework of an ongoing international cooperation program between italy and costa rica we had the opportunity to investigate the karen mogensen reserve a protected area distinguished by the presence of a variety of habitats including tropical dry forest and moist forest species richness in the reserve was relatively high compared with similar areas in northwestern costa rica a series of surveys carried out over a 20 year period documented an avian community consisting of 207 species of which 115 were breeding in the zone and another 14 were potentially breeding we recorded five iucn globally vulnerable or near threatened species along with six species reported for the first time from the nicoya peninsula each representing range extension of more than 100 km twenty six species mostly breeding in the area are at their southernmost range borders and are likely susceptible to global environmental alterations such as the effects of climate change furthermore our study revealed the presence of two species endemic to a restricted area of central america and four subspecies endemic to costa rica along with breeding populations of two species that are geographically isolated from the main ones the present analysis led to the ecological characterization of the resident avian community showing that 65 of the species are strictly associated with forested environments and especially with the understory or middle tree level hence more vulnerable to environmental change climatic anthropogenic etc and susceptible to local extinction these results underscore the importance of the karen mogensen reserve for bird conservation within a vulnerable environmental context and warrant the continuation of periodic bird surveys taxonomic study of isolated populations or endemic taxa and improvement of local conservation measures the data collected will be an important tool for future studies aimed at evaluating the consequences of habitat fragmentation and to monitor the effects of climate change on the resident avifauna we exhort the creation of programs that integrate bird monitoring ecological research conservation initiatives and the involvement of the local communities by promoting environmental education capacity building and income generation to this purpose the karen mogensen reserve may represent a convincing model and valuable example to apply in similar neotropical contexts,2017,0.934
Mapping Ecosystem Services,the worldâ s economic prosperity and well being are underpinned by its natural capital i e its biodiversity including ecosystems that provide essential goods and services for mankind from fertile soils and multi functional forests to productive land and seas from good quality fresh water and clean air to pollination and climate regulation and protection against natural disasters this is the reason why for example the first priority objective of the 7th environment action programme 7th eap of the european union eu is to protect conserve and enhance the eu natural capital in order to mainstream biodiversity in our socio economic system the 7th eap highlights the need to integrate economic indicators with environmental and social indicators including by means of natural capital accounting to measure the changes in the stock of natural capital at a variety of levels including both continental and national levels the eu biodiversity strategy to 2020 called on member states to map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory by 2014 with the assistance of the european commission the economic value of such services should also be assessed and the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at eu and national level should be promoted by 2020 see target 2 action 5 this specific action aims to provide a knowledge base on ecosystems and their services in europe to underpin the achievement of the six specific biodiversity targets of the strategy as well as including a number of other sectoral policies such as agriculture maritime affairs and fisheries and cohesion mapping ecosystem services is essential to understand how ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing and to support policies which have an impact on natural resources in 2013 an eu initiative on mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services maes was launched and a dedicated working group was established with member states scientific experts and relevant stakeholders the first delivery was the development of a coherent analytical framework to be applied by the eu and its member states in order to ensure consistent approaches in 2014 a second technical report was issued which proposes indicators that can be used at european and member stateâ s level to map and assess ecosystem services the indicators are proposed for the main ecosystems agro forest freshwater and marine and the important issue of how the overarching data flow from the reporting of nature directives can be used to assess the condition of ecosystems is also addressed from the start of maes some exploratory work was undertaken in parallel to assess how some of the biophysical indicators could be used for natural capital accounting it was also important to ensure that the data flows available at european level and in particular those from reporting obligations from member states would be used for the mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their condition more recently dedicated work on urban ecosystems was initiated with the active contribution of many cities and a fourth technical report on mapping and assessment of urban ecosystems and their services was published an overlapping activity on the strengthening of the mapping and assessment of soil condition and function in the long term delivery of ecosystem services is also being developed in the context of the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity teeb a study of available approaches to assess and value ecosystem services in the eu was supported by the european commission to support eu countries in taking forward action 5 of the eu biodiversity strategy in 2015 a knowledge innovation project on an integrated system for natural capital and ecosystem services accounting kip inca was launched jointly by four commission services eurostat environment the joint research centre and research and innovation and the european environment agency this project aims to design and implement an integrated accounting system for ecosystems and their services in the eu to serve a range of information needs and inform decision making of different policy sectors building on existing work in eu countries important ecosystems services provided by nature will therefore be explicitly taken into account and demonstrate in physical and to the greatest extent possible in monetary terms the benefits of investing in the sustainable management of ecosystems and natural resources finally the european work undertaken under target 2 action 5 is actively contributing to major ongoing initiatives such as the global regional and thematic assessments under the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes and the un guidelines on experimental ecosystem accounting from the system of environmental economic accounts un seea eea at present with the constructive support of research and innovation projects and actions such as esmeralda and with the amount of work already accomplished in the member states and at eu level the momentum for the next steps is impressive http biodiversity europa eu maes maes countries the policy developments in europe but also in many other countries and at global scale have spurred the scientific community to map ecosystem services to develop new methods to assess uncertainty of maps and to provide practical applications of using maps in various decision making processes this book is an excellent summary of the achievements of ecosystem service mapping and provides guidance for scientists students practitioners and decision makers who need to map ecosystem services there are still big challenges ahead of us such as the improvement of the mapping and assessment of the ecosystem condition and the integration of the assessment of the ecosystem condition with ecosystem services and the construction of the first ecosystem accounts as highlighted in this book we are however on a very positive track,2017,0
The second Southern African Bird Atlas Project: Causes and consequences of geographical sampling bias,using the southern african bird atlas project sabap2 as a case study we examine the possible determinants of spatial bias in volunteer sampling effort and how well such biased data represent environmental gradients across the area covered by the atlas for each province in south africa we used generalized linear mixed models to determine the combination of variables that explain spatial variation in sampling effort number of visits per 5â ã 5â grid cell or â œpentadâ the explanatory variables were distance to major road and exceptional birding locations or â œsampling hubs â percentage cover of protected urban and cultivated area and the climate variables mean annual precipitation winter temperatures and summer temperatures further we used the climate variables and plant biomes to define subsets of pentads representing environmental zones across south africa lesotho and swaziland for each environmental zone we quantified sampling intensity and we assessed sampling completeness with species accumulation curves fitted to the asymptotic lomolino model sampling effort was highest close to sampling hubs major roads urban areas and protected areas cultivated area and the climate variables were less important further environmental zones were not evenly represented by current data and the zones varied in the amount of sampling required representing the species that are present sabap2 volunteers preferences in birding locations cause spatial bias in the dataset that should be taken into account when analyzing these data large parts of south africa remain underrepresented which may restrict the kind of ecological questions that may be addressed however sampling bias may be improved by directing volunteers toward undersampled regions while taking into account volunteer preferences,2017,0.379
The French Muséum national d’histoire naturelle vascular plant herbarium collection dataset,we provide a quantitative description of the french national herbarium vascular plants collection dataset held at the musã um national dâ histoire naturelle paris it currently comprises records for 5 400 000 specimens representing 90 of the estimated total of specimens ninety nine percent of the specimen entries are linked to one or more images and 16 have field collecting information available this major botanical collection represents the results of over three centuries of exploration and study the sources of the collection are global with a strong representation for france including overseas territories and former french colonies the compilation of this dataset was made possible through numerous national and international projects the most important of which was linked to the renovation of the herbarium building the vascular plant collection is actively expanding today hence the continuous growth exhibited by the dataset which can be fully accessed through the gbif portal or the mnhn database portal available at https science mnhn fr institution mnhn collection p item search form this dataset is a major source of data for systematics global plants macroecological studies or conservation assessments,2017,0.112
"Invasive Plants of West Africa: Concepts, Overviews and Sustainable Management",invasive species are considered as one of the most environmental challenges of the 21st century they constitute the second cause of biodiversity loss and lead to high economic disruption and public health despite significant financial and human investments made by countries and world conservation of biodiversity agencies there are not strategies that lead to appropriate measures for sustainable management and control the objective of this study is to assess the state of knowledge on invasive plants in west africa and to promote knowledge and exchange information it contributes also to establish in western african region a coordinated early warning system through a network of intervention the paper discusses concepts and bio ecology of invasive plants gives precise indications on their diversity and distribution to achieve the objectives a literature review was carried out to collect data on invasive species from western african countries therefore different information sources included floras database and collection were consulted the results how that in west africa the information collected on invasive plants indicate that 113 invasive species are reported distributed in 94 genera and 43 families the most represented families are poaceae 17 species and leguminosae 16 species they are followed by cyperaceae 9 species and asteraceae 6 species euphorbiaceae solanaceae and nympheaceae have 4 species each one the most common invasive species in west african countries are present in at least eight countries they are chromolaena odorata eichhornia crassipes salvinia molesta typha domingensis and pistia stratiotes depending on data availability the presence and importance of invasive plants vary from one country to another it must be noticed that there are few data related to cape verde guinea bissau and nigeria recommendations were formulated to improve knowledge and sustainable management of invasive plants in west africa the expected results of this work should improve the understanding of issues related to invasive species at national and regional levels,2017,0.674
Identification of ecogeographical gaps in the Spanish Aegilops collections with potential tolerance to drought and salinity,drought one of the most important abiotic stress factors limiting biomass significantly reduces crop productivity salinization also affects the productivity of both irrigated and rain fed wheat crops species of genus aegilops can be considered crop wild relatives cwr of wheat and have been widely used as gene sources in wheat breeding especially in providing resistance to pests and diseases five species ae biuncialis ae geniculata ae neglecta ae triuncialis and ae ventricosa are included in the spanish national inventory of cwrs this study aimed to identify ecogeographic gaps in the spanish network on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture pgrfa with potential tolerance to drought and salinity data on the spanish populations of the target species collected and conserved in genebanks of the spanish network on pgrfa and data on other population occurrences in spain were compiled and assessed for their geo referencing quality the records with the best geo referencing quality values were used to identify the ecogeographical variables that might be important for aegilops distribution in spain these variables were then used to produce ecogeographic land characterization maps for each species allowing us to identify populations from low and non represented ecogeographical categories in ex situ collections predictive characterization strategy was used to identify 45 aegilops populations in these ecogeographical gaps with potential tolerance to drought and salinity conditions further efforts are being made to collect and evaluate these populations,2017,0.849
"The Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake, Crotalus atrox Baird & Girard, 1853, (Squamata: Viperidae): a new state record for Aguascalientes, México.",the distribution of crotalus atrox baird and girard 1853 extends throughout the southwestern united states including southeastern california the southern tip of nevada central and southern arizona new mexico texas oklahoma and arkansas frost et al 2007 in meì xico the range includes the states of baja california baja california sur chihuahua coahuila durango guanajuato hidalgo nuevo leoì n oaxaca queretaro san luis potosiì sinaloa sonora tamaulipas veracruz and zacatecas and the species is also found on san pedro maì rtir santa cruz santa mariì a tiburoì n and turner islands in the gulf of california campbell and lamar 2004 lazcano villarreal et al 2010 lemos espinal and dixon 2013 ramiì rez bautista et al 2014,2017,0.656
"Squeezing more information out of biological data-development and application of bioinformatic tools for ecology, evolution and genomics",new experimental methods have drastically accelerated the pace and quantity at which biological data is generated high throughput dna sequencing is one of the pivotal new technologies it offers a number of novel applications in various fields of biology including ecology evolution and genomics however together with those opportunities many new challenges arise specialized algorithms and software are required to cope with the amount of data often requiring substantial training in bioinformatic methods another way to make those data accessible to non bioinformaticians is the development of programs with intuitive user interfaces in my thesis i developed analyses and programs to tackle current problems with high throughput data in biology in the field of ecology this covers the establishment of the bioinformatic workflow for pollen dna meta barcoding furthermore i developed an application that facilitates the analysis of ecological communities in the context of their traits information from multiple public databases have been aggregated and can now be mapped automatically to existing community tables for interactive inspection in evolution the new data are used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees from multiple genes i developed the tool bcgtree to automate this process for bacteria many plant genomes have been sequenced in current years sequencing reads of those projects also contain data from the chloroplasts the tool chloroextractor supports the targeted extraction and analysis of the chloroplast genome to compare the structure of multiple genomes specialized software is required for calculation and visualization of the relationships i developed alitv to address this in contrast to existing programs for this task it allows interactive adjustments of produced graphics thus facilitating the discovery of biologically relevant information another application i developed helps to analyze transcriptomes even if no reference genome is present this is achieved by aggregating the different pieces of information like functional annotation and expression level for each transcript in a web platform scientists can then search filter subset and visualize the transcriptome together the methods and tools expedite insights into biological systems that were not possible before,2017,0.074
"Anatolian origins and diversification of Aethionema , the sister lineage of the core Brassicaceae",premise of the study the irano turanian region harbors three biodiversity hotspots and ∠25 of brassicaceae species are endemic to the region aethionema ∠61 species is the sister lineage to the core brassicaceae and occurs mainly in the irano turanian region the evolutionary important position of aethionema makes it an ideal reference for broader comparative genetics and genomics to understand the evolution of aethionema and for a broader understanding of crucifer evolution a time calibrated phylogenetic tree and biogeographical history of the genus is needed methods seventy six plastome coding regions and nuclear rdna genes mainly from herbarium material covering 75 of all aethionema species were used to resolve a time calibrated aethionema phylogeny the different clades were characterized based on four morphological characters the ancestral area of aethionema was estimated with historical biogeographical analyses key results three well supported major clades within aethionema were resolved the ancestral area reconstruction and divergence time estimates are consistent with major dispersal events during the pliocene from the anatolian diagonal conclusions we find that most aethionema lineages originated along the anatolian diagonal a floristic bridge connecting the east to the west during the pliocene the dispersal of aethionema correlates with the local geological events such as the uplift of the anatolian and iranian plateaus and the formation of the major mountain ranges of the irano turanian region knowing the paleo ecological context for the evolution of aethionema in addition to the other lineages of brassicaceae facilitates our broader understanding for trait evolution and species diversification across the brassicaceae,2017,0.511
Forest management could counteract distribution retractions forced by climate change,climate change is expected to drive the distribution retraction of northern species however particularly in regions with a history of intensive exploitation changes in habitat management could facilitate distribution expansions counter to expectations under climate change here we test the potential for future forest management to facilitate the southward expansion of an oldâ forest species from the boreal region into the boreoâ nemoral region contrary to expectations under climate change we used an ensemble of species distribution models based on citizen science data to project the response of phellinus ferrugineofuscus a redâ listed oldâ growth indicator woodâ decaying fungus to six forest management and climate change scenarios we projected change in habitat suitability across the boreal and boreoâ nemoral regions of sweden for the period 2020â 2100 scenarios varied in the proportion of forest set aside from production the level of timber extraction and the magnitude of climate change habitat suitabilities for the study species were projected to show larger relative increases over time in the boreoâ nemoral region compared to the boreal region under all scenarios by 2100 mean suitabilities in setâ aside forest in the boreoâ nemoral region were similar to the suitabilities projected for setâ aside forest in the boreal region in 2020 suggesting that occurrence in the boreoâ nemoral region could be increased however across all scenarios consistently higher projected suitabilities in setâ aside forest in the boreal region indicated that the boreal region remained the species stronghold furthermore negative effects of climate change were evident in the boreal region and projections suggested that climatic changes may eventually counteract the positive effects of forest management in the boreoâ nemoral region our results suggest that the current rarity of this oldâ growth indicator species in the boreoâ nemoral region may be due to the history of intensive forestry forest management therefore has the potential to compensate for the negative effects of climate change however increased occurrence at the southern range edge would depend on the dispersal and colonization ability of the species an increase in the amount of setâ aside forest across both the boreal and boreoâ nemoral regions is therefore likely to be required to prevent the decline of oldâ forest species under climate change,2017,0.789
The pharmacological and therapeutic importance of Eucalyptus species grown in Iraq,eucalyptus species grown in iraq were included eucalyptus bicolor syn eucalyptus largiflorens eucalyptus griffithsii eucalyptus camaldulensis syn eucalyptus rostrata eucalyptus incrassate eucalyptus torquata and eucalyptus microtheca syn eucalyptus coolabahs eucalypts contained volatile oils which occurred in many parts of the plant depending on the species but in the leaves that oils were most plentiful the main constituent of the volatile oil derived from fresh leaves of eucalyptus species was 1 8 cineole the reported content of 1 8 cineole varies for 54 95 the most common constituents co occurring with 1 8 cineole were limonene î terpineol monoterpenes sesquiterpenes globulol and î î and ï eudesmol and aromatic constituents the pharmacological studies revealed that eucalypts possessed gastrointestinal antiinflammatory analgesic antidiabetic antioxidant anticancer antimicrobial antiparasitic insecticidal repellent oral and dental dermatological nasal and many other effects the current review highlights the chemical constituents and pharmacological and therapeutic activities of eucalyptus species grown in iraq,2017,0.614
"Soil microbial carbon utilization, enzyme activities and nutrient availability responses to Bidens pilosa and a non-invasive congener under different irradiances",two bidens species bidens pilosa and b bipinnata that originate from america have been introduced widely in pan tropics with the former regarded as a noxious invasive weed whereas the latter naturalized as a plant resource whether the two species exhibit different effects on the belowground system remains rarely studied this study was conducted to investigate soil microbial carbon c utilization enzyme activities and available nitrogen phosphorus and potassium contents under the two species in a subtropical garden soil of southern china under different levels of light intensity results showed that the microbial c utilization and enzyme activities were not significantly different under the two species implying that the strong invasiveness of b pilosa could not be due to the plant soil microbe interactions at least plant induced alterations of microbial community function to utilize c substrates alternatively available soil nitrogen and potassium contents were significantly higher under b pilosa than under b bipinnata in full sun indicating that the strong invasiveness of b pilosa could result from rapid nutrient mobilizations by b pilosa however the differences turned non significant as light intensity decreased suggesting that light availability could substantially alter the plant effects on soil nutrient mobilizations,2017,0.379
Vegetation and climate development of the New Jersey hinterland during the late Middle Miocene (IODP Expedition 313 Site M0027),we investigated the palynology of sediment cores from site m0027 iodp exp 313 45 km off the present day coast of new jersey to infer palaeoenvironmental conditions during the second half of the midâ miocene climatic optimum and the transition to global cooler conditions in sum 79 taxa were identified via light microscopy 13 gymnosperms 63 angiosperms 3 pteridophytes among them diospyros and reveesia which until now have not been identified from the eastern coast of north america most of the identified taxa belong to the extended multi layered broadleaved mesophytic forest that occupied the lowlands of the new jersey hinterland and reflects the zonal vegetation during time of deposition in higher altitudes or on edaphically drier slopes the mesophytic forest was replaced by conifer forest landscape changes probably induced the spread and diminution of several vegetation units during the late middle miocene an expansion of a conifer forest from 15 8 to 15 6 ma is probably connected to the appalachian uplift and a subsequent spreading of cupressaceae between 15 0 and 14 8 ma probably reflects a period of enhanced inundation of coastal lowlands the modern representatives of the main climatic elements among the encountered taxa are characterized by a typical temperate distribution climatic parameters mat cmmt wmmt map were calculated using bioclimatic analysis in light of the ongoing discussion concerning identifications of cupressaceae pollen grains two different variations of the bioclimatic analysis were performed both variations indicate humid warm temperate climatic conditions with mean annual temperatures of 13 â c â 5 â c coldest month temperatures of 4 3 â c â 5 3 â c and warmest month temperatures of 21 9 â c â 4 5 â c annual precipitation values exceed 1000 mm for all samples both zonal vegetation and the calculated regional lowland palaeoclimate show no significant changes one factor creating generally climatically stable conditions between 15 8 and 12 7 ma was likely the buffering effect of the gulf current loop,2017,0.147
Heritability of early growth traits and their plasticity in 14 woody species of Chinese subtropical forest,aims genetic variation in plant traits represents the raw material for future adaptive evolution its extent can be estimated as heritability based on the performance of experimental plants of known relatedness such as maternal half sib seed families while there is considerable heritability information for herbaceous plants and commercially important trees little is known for woody species of natural subtropical forest moreover it is open whether heritability is higher for species with r or k strategies for more common species with larger distribution ranges than for rarer ones or for populations closer to the centres of distributional ranges methods for 14 woody species in chinese subtropical forest we collected 13â 38 maternal seed families assessed seed size grew replicates of each seed family in one more and one less benign nursery environment and measured stem diameter and plant height after 7 months important findings for the different species plants grew 1 8â 8 1 times taller in the more benign environment for all 14 species variation between seed families and thus heritability was significant with very few exceptions at the p 0 001 level for seed size and for stem diameter and plant height in both nurseries moreover significant seed family by nursery interactions for stem diameter and plant height for all species p 0 001 indicated significant heritability for plasticity in these traits multiple regression analysis suggests that heritabilities were higher for species with higher age at reproduction and higher wood density traits indicating a k strategy but also for species with higher specific leaf area a trait rather indicating an r strategy furthermore heritabilities were higher for species with larger range sizes while there was no significant relationship between heritabilities and the distance of the study area to the range margins of our study species in conclusion the detected large heritability estimates suggest considerable potential for the evolution of plant performance and its plasticity for trees of subtropical forest moreover our study shows that the simple method of comparing plants of different maternal seed families is valuable to address evolutionary ecological questions for so far understudied species,2017,0.955
Data and Metadata Management for Better VGI Reusability,the rapid expansion of citizen science projects and crowdsourcing applications is yielding a huge and varied pool of volunteered geographic information vgi on a wide variety of themes this vgi may be of huge value for institutions individuals and decision makers but only if it can be discovered evaluated for quality and fitness for purpose and combined with data from other sources if vgi data are to be discovered used and reused to their full potential they must be actively managed in this chapter we assess the current state of the art regarding data management practices in vgi identify some challenges obstacles and best practice examples and review a range of developing and established open source technologies which can underpin robust and sustainable data management for vgi we conclude that vgi is likely to remain patchy and heterogeneous and that existing standards may not be exploited to their full potential nevertheless automated support for documenting the generation and use of vgi as well as annotations following the linked data paradigm can help to improve interoperability and reuse we were able to identify good practices within different existing systems but more research and development work is needed in order to support their joint application for the benefit of vgi new data management methodologies can only succeed if their benefits for example simplifying administration or lowering the entry barrier to data publication exceed the implementation costs,2017,0.033
Ecology and Distribution of Myxomycetes,in this chapter the results obtained from recent studies of myxomycete ecology are discussed with special emphasis on their distribution patterns in particular habitats the relationships that exist between myxomycetes and other organisms and the effect of disturbance events on myxomycete communities it is important to note that most of the available data are based on collections of fruiting bodies which probably represent in a literal sense only the tip of the iceberg because it is possible that these reflect only a minor fraction of the real diversity of myxomycetes in a particular habitat therefore it appears unlikely that a single method will be universally applicable for assessing myxomycete diversity in all habitats and on all substrates the approaches techniques and their potential limitations are discussed herein along with recent advances e g moist chamber cultures environmental pcr metagenomics and barcoding attempts that have been applied to studies of myxomycete ecology and will undoubtedly increase our understanding of myxomycete communities in the future,2017,0.25
The first authenticated record of Pygmy Killer Whale (Feresa attenuata Gray 1874) in Mozambique; has it been previously overlooked?,background the cetacean fauna of the poorly studied waters off eastern africa is still being described information on the cetacean species occurring in specific range states is important for understanding their geographical distribution ranges and for implementing national and international conservation and management measures this report presents the first authenticated record of the pygmy killer whale in mozambican waters and the first record on the eastern coast of southern africa since 1970 methods as a part of regular informal surveys for birds and other marine life from maputo mozambique three pygmy killer whales were seen approached and photographed north of inhaca island 25â 52â 54 22â s 33â 8â 33 62â e on 23 april 2017 results the animals were seen interacting on the surface for 35 min travelling at ca 1 km h along the shelf edge in water 235 m deep all three animals had been overlooked by the authors earlier in the day misidentified as spinner dolphins stenella longirostris conclusion this is the first authenticated record of pygmy killer whale in mozambican waters and the first recent record on the eastern coast of southern africa since 1970 emphasising the lack of knowledge of offshore marine biodiversity in mozambique previous reported records of the species in mozambique lie outside mozambique exclusive economic zones or lack evidence the species should be included in relevant conservation planning available identification material focusses on the separation of this species from melon headed whale peponocephala electra and fails to note the great similarities of this species with smaller dolphins at sea observers are encouraged to consider this species when identifying â dolphinsâ pygmy killer whales are easily overlooked,2017,0.964
Notas nomenclaturales en el género schinopsis (anacardiaceae),nomenclatural notes in the genus schinopsis anacardiaceae during the monographic study of the genus schinopsis anacardiaceae a nomenclatural revision of its species and synonyms was performed the names schinopsis brasiliensis s brasiliensis var glabra s heterophylla s marginata and s peruviana are lectotypified and some cases of inadvertent lectotypifications in previous works are indicated an epitype for s haenkeana entity so far considered doubtful is designated,2017,0.457
Delimiting priority areas for the conservation of endemic and threatened Neotropical birds using a niche-based gap analysis,knowledge of spatiotemporal distribution of biodiversity is still very incomplete in the tropics this is one of the major problems preventing the assessment and effectiveness of conservation actions mega diverse tropical regions are being exposed to fast and profound environmental changes and the amount of resources available to describe the distribution of species is generally limited thus the tropics is losing species at unprecedented rates without a proper assessment of its biodiversity species distribution models sdms can be used to fill such biogeographic gaps within a speciesâ range and when allied with systematic conservation planning e g analyses of representativeness gap analysis help transcend such data shortage and support practical conservation actions within the neotropics eastern amazon and northern cerrado present a high variety of environments and are some of the most interesting ecotonal areas within south america but are also among the most threatened biogeographic provinces in the world here we test the effectiveness of the current system of protected areas pas in protecting 24 threatened and endemic bird species using sdms we found that taxa with wider distributions are potentially as protected as taxa with smaller ranges and larger pas were more efficient than smaller pas while protecting these bird species nonetheless cerrado pas are mostly misallocated we suggest six priority areas for conservation of neotropical birds finally we highlight the importance of indigenous lands in the conservation of neotropical biodiversity and recommend the development of community management plans to conserve the biological resources of the region,2017,0.781
"The biology and management of prickly paddy melon (Cucumis myriocarpus L.), an important summer annual weed in Australia",cucumis myriocarpus is an annual cucurbitaceous summer weed infesting fallow fields and pastures infestation results in reduced moisture availability for winter cereal crops as well as reduced crop yields and pasture quality the need to manage this weed is of paramount importance given its adverse effects on farming systems biodiversity and grazing livestock and its ranking as the number one weed of importance in australian summer fallows of grain crops land management practices including movement of grazing animals and over stocking are potentially assisting the spread of cucumis myriocarpus fruits and viable seed the plant is characterized by the presence of small ellipsoid to spherical melon fruits with spiny appendages each plant can produce up to 50 or more melons per plant with each fruit containing up to 200 viable seeds seed is often dormant upon fruit maturity and our results under controlled environmental conditions suggest both physiological and physical factors influence dormancy under field conditions seedlings can form large vines growing upto 3 m in length field pollination experiments suggest that this melon is mainly self pollinated by insects including bees flies and wasps cucumis myriocarpus is generally managed by the use of various broadleaf phenoxy herbicides and systemic post emergent products it is found in this study that this weed established through multiple flushes of germination hence multiple herbicidal applications coinciding with rainfall events one suggested for more efficacious management however rotation of infested pastures with cereal crops such as canola and wheat also results in improved control additional studies into the impact of soil with and physical properties disturbance and grazing are recommended for development of more efficacious control measures this review discusses taxonomy genetic variation biology and ecology and management of this important summer annual weed,2017,0.082
Genome Size Diversity in Lilium (Liliaceae) Is Correlated with Karyotype and Environmental Traits,genome size gs diversity is of fundamental biological importance the occurrence of giant genomes in angiosperms is restricted to just a few lineages in the analyzed genome size of plant species so far it is still an open question whether gs diversity is shaped by neutral or natural selection the genus lilium with giant genomes is phylogenetically and horticulturally important and is distributed throughout the northern hemisphere gs diversity in lilium and the underlying evolutionary mechanisms are poorly understood we performed a comprehensive study involving phylogenetically independent analysis on 71 species to explore the diversity and evolution of gs and its correlation with karyological and environmental traits within lilium including nomocharis the strong phylogenetic signal detected for gs in the genus provides evidence consistent with that the repetitive dna may be the primary contributors to the gs diversity while the significant positive relationships detected between gs and the haploid chromosome length hcl provide insights into patterns of genome evolution the relationships between gs and karyotypes indicate that ancestral karyotypes of lilium are likely to have exhibited small genomes low diversity in centromeric index cvci values and relatively high relative variation in chromosome length cvcl values significant relationships identified between gs and annual temperature and between gs and annual precipitation suggest that adaptation to habitat strongly influences gs diversity we conclude that gs in lilium is shaped by both neutral genetic drift and adaptive evolution these findings will have important consequences for understanding the evolution of giant plant genomes and exploring the role of repetitive dna fraction and chromosome changes in a plant group with large genomes and conservation of chromosome number,2017,0.543
Pest risk assessment of Diaporthe vaccinii for the EU territory,as requested by the european commission the efsa panel on plant health plh panel assessed the risk of diaporthe vaccinii in the eu focusing on entry establishment spread and impacts on cultivated and wild vaccinium species the principal hosts being american and european cranberry and blueberry several outbreaks occurred in the eu since 1956 but most were eradicated except in latvia the panel considered entry via fruits and plants for planting the risk of establishment from discarded infected berries is much lower than from infected plants for planting of which potted plants and cuttings pose the greatest risk while plug plants derived from tissue culture and grown in pest free structures pose a low risk nine per cent of the eu is highly suitable for establishment of the pathogen mostly in the se and ne following establishment the pathogen could spread naturally over short range and by human assistance over long range calculations with an integrated model for entry establishment and spread indicate that with current regulations over a period of 5 years a few hundred cultivated vaccinium plants and several thousand vaccinium plants in natural ecosystems would contract the disease the associated loss of commercial production is small less than one tonne of berries per year on natural vegetation the median impact after 5 years was estimated to be negligible affecting a negligible proportion of the natural vaccinium population 2 ã 10∠8 however the uncertainty of this estimate was high due to uncertainty about the rate of spread in a worst case scenario 99th percentile almost 1 of plants in natural areas would become infected complete deregulation scenario a1 was predicted to increase the impact substantially especially in natural areas while additional measures scenario a2 would effectively eliminate the entry of infected plants for planting further reducing the impacts below the current situation,2017,0.064
The communities of terrestrial macrofungi in different forest types in vicinities of Khanty-Mansiysk (middle taiga zone of West Siberia),background the diversity of macrofungi in the vicinities of khanty mansiysk yugra russia was surveyed using a method of permanent sampling plots ten plots each consisting of a number of micro plots were established in several different communities ranging from old growth mixed taiga forest to its derivatives in cutting succession and bogged areas for more complete registration of the mycota plots were supplemented with random walking routes directly nearby survey results were subjected to various quantitative analyses which allowed not only to evaluate the diversity of fungi but also to obtain valuable information on occurrence abundance and ecology of individual species as well as community structure and its dynamics in the course of ecological succession the paper reports the results of the first year of observations new information 460 species of terrestrial macrofungi revealed in a poorly explored area in middle taiga of west siberia the plot based study revealed differences between communities of terrestrial macrofungi of old coniferous forests their after cutting secondary formations and bogged stages the survey allowed to reveal records of 3 species listed in the red data book of russia and 9 species listed in the red data book of yugra,2017,0.618
Genetic population structure of the round whitefish (Prosopium cylindraceum) in North America: multiple markers reveal glacial refugia and regional subdivision.,round whitefish prosopium cylindraceum have a broad disjunct range across northern north america and eurasia and little is known about their genetic population structure we performed genetic analyses of round whitefish from 16 sites across its range using nine microsatellites two mitochondrial dna mtdna loci and 4 918 to 8 835 single nucleotide polymorphism snp loci our analyses identified deep phylogenetic division between eastern and western portions of the range likely indicative of origins from at least two separate pleistocene glacial refugia regionally microsatellites and snps identified congruent patterns in subdivision and population structure was consistent with expectations based on hydrologic connectivity within the laurentian great lakes lake huron and lake ontario were identified as key areas of interest lake huron appears to be a contemporary source population for several other great lakes and lake ontario contains a genetically discrete group of round whitefish in all c,2017,0.413
Beyond climate control on species range: The importance of soil data to predict distribution of Amazonian plant species,aim to evaluate the relative importance of climatic versus soil data when predicting species distributions for amazonian plants and to gain understanding of potential range shifts under climate change location amazon rain forest methods we produced species distribution models sdm at 5 km spatial resolution for 42 plant species trees palms lianas monocot herbs and ferns using species occurrence data from herbarium records and plot based inventories we modelled species distribution with bayesian logistic regression using either climate data only soil data only or climate and soil data together to estimate their relative predictive powers for areas defined as unsuitable to species occurrence we mapped the difference between the suitability predictions obtained with climate only versus soil only models to identify regions where climate and soil might restrict species ranges independently or jointly results for 40 out of the 42 species the best models included both climate and soil predictors the models including only soil predictors performed better than the models including only climate predictors but we still detected a drought sensitive response for most of the species edaphic conditions were predicted to restrict species occurrence in the centre the north west and in the north east of amazonia while the climatic conditions were identified as the restricting factor in the eastern amazonia at the border of roraima and venezuela and in the andean foothills main conclusions our results revealed that soil data are a more important predictor than climate of plant species range in amazonia the strong control of species ranges by edaphic features might reduce speciesâ abilities to track suitable climate conditions under a drought increase scenario future challenges are to improve the quality of soil data and couple them with process based models to better predict species range dynamics under climate change,2017,0.964
Global alterations in areas of suitability for maize production from climate change and using a mechanistic species distribution model (CLIMEX),at the global level maize is the third most important crop on the basis of harvested area given its importance an assessment of the variation in regional climatic suitability under climate change is critical climond 10â data were used to model the potential current and future climate distribution of maize at the global level using the climex distribution model with climate data from two general circulation models csiro mk3 0 and miroc h assuming an a2 emissions scenario for 2050 and 2100 the change in area under future climate was analysed at continental level and for major maize producing countries of the world regions between the tropics of cancer and capricorn indicate the highest loss of climatic suitability contrary to poleward regions that exhibit an increase of suitability south america shows the highest loss of climatic suitability followed by africa and oceania asia europe and north america exhibit an increase in climatic suitability this study indicates that globally large areas that are currently suitable for maize cultivation will suffer from heat and dry stresses that may constrain production for the first time a model was applied worldwide allowing for a better understanding of areas that are suitable and that may remain suitable for maize,2017,0.104
"Novitates neocaledonicae VI: Acropogon mesophilus (Malvaceae, Sterculioideae), a rare and threatened new species from the mesic forest of New Caledonia",a new species acropogon mesophilus munzinger amp gã teblã malvaceae sterculioideae is described from new caledonia this species is endemic to non ultramafic areas along the southwestern coast of grande terre the species has large leaves widely ovate to ovate and entire and might be confused with only two other endemic species namely a bullatus pancher amp sebert morat and a veillonii morat however a mesophilus differs from the other two species most evidently by its leaves 3 nerved flat and with truncate to rounded bases versus leaves 5 nerved bullate and with cordate bases a line drawing and color photos are provided for the new species along with a discussion of its morphological affinities and a preliminary risk of extinction assessment of endangered,2017,0.899
"Newly discovered reefs in the southern Abrolhos Bank, Brazil: Anthropogenic impacts and urgent conservation needs",the abrolhos bank is an area of high ecological socio economic importance and harbour the richest and most extensive coral reefs in the south atlantic here we report the discovery of shallow 12â 25 m depth reef complex with ten large biogenic structures intermediate between the typical mushroom shaped pinnacles of the northern abrolhos bank 17â â 18â s and the small patch reefs found on the central southern coast of the espã rito santo state 19â â 20â s the newly discovered reefs harbour a relatively rich and abundant reef community with 73 fish and 14 benthic cnidarian species including endangered and commercially important ones we discuss on urgent needs of properly mapping and understanding the ecological functioning of this reef system information provided here is a baseline for future impact evaluations particularly considering the recent worst environmental disaster of brazil from a dam collapse in doce river that affected the region,2017,0.521
Distribution of Dibranchus species (Pisces: Ogcocephalidae) from the Eastern Central Pacific and their relationship with environmental factors,the geographic and bathymetric distribution of the genus dibranchus throughout the eastern central pacific was analyzed using historical distribution records and results from bottom trawls undertaken from 11 research cruises performed in the mexican pacific talud project a total of three species were collected dibranchus hystrix nine specimens six trawls dibranchus spinosus 25 specimens nine trawls and dibranchus spongiosa 134 specimens 19 trawls the greatest density of specimens was confined to 800â 1200 m depth but they were caught together in a small number of trawls d hystrix d spinosus three trawls d hystrix d spongiosa one trawl this work extends the known latitudinal ranges of d hystrix by 230 km and of d spongiosa by 650 km and provides the first records for d spinosus and d spongiosa in the gulf of california and for d hystrix in the central gulf of california also the shallowest depth and maximum sizes records of d hystrix 865 m 148 mm sl and d spongiosa 479 m 156 mm sl were extended dibranchus spongiosa inhabits the shallowest and warmer sites almost only within the omz while both d hystrix and d spinosus are able to live in a wide range of do concentrations mainly in the deeper and oxygenated zone these environmental preferences could be related to their distinct geographical ranges throughout the eastern pacific,2017,0.607
Polysaccharides in Grifola frondosa mushroom and their health promoting properties: A review,grifola frondosa dicks gray is a widely consumed edible and medicinal fungus ancient books record that it can boost qi and fortify the spleen moisten the lung and protect the liver modern people mainly use it to assist in the treatment of diabetes mellitus and various cancers over the past three decades g frondosa polysaccharides were shown to possess various promising bioactivities mainly including antitumor and immunomodulation anti oxidation and hepatoprotection anti hyperglycemia and meanwhile can effectively act on the skin and hematopoietic stem cells the purpose of the present review is to provide systematically reorganized information on structural characteristics biological activities and structure activity relationship of g frondosa polysaccharides to support their further therapeutic potentials and sanitarian functions,2017,0.129
Addressing biodiversity shortfalls in meiofauna,technological advances throughout different fields of research have enhanced our understanding of biodiversity especially for meiofaunal organisms which are notoriously difficult to study because of their small size scanning and transmission electron microscopy together with confocal laser scanning microscopy has increased the amount of external and internal morphological information improving the quantity and quality of species descriptions as well as deepening our understanding of the evolutionary adaptations of meiofauna in ecology the characterization of molecules such as stable isotopes and fatty acids have permitted us to infer trophic niches of meiofauna species enhancing our understanding of their functional role in the ecosystem in parallel advances in dna sequencing techniques have allowed us to quantify with much higher accuracy the phylogenetic position of meiofaunal species we here review the main biodiversity shortfalls in the studies of meiofauna discussing how such shortfalls could be addressed especially by merging different approaches important steps towards such interdisciplinary approach are to promote data sharing to explore new technologies that combine disciplines and to base studies on a clear theoretical framework working at the interface between different disciplines imposes several challenges and will require creative approaches but well designed studies making use of different methodologies will quickly contribute to address the main biodiversity shortfalls in the study of meiofauna,2017,0.391
Incorporating fragmentation and non-native species into distribution models to inform fluvial fish conservation,fluvial fishes face increased imperilment from anthropogenic activities but the specific factors contributing most to range declines are often poorly understood for example the shoal bass micropterus cataractae is a fluvial specialist species experiencing continual range loss yet how perceived threats have contributed to range loss is largely unknown we employed species distribution models sdms to disentangle which factors are contributing most to shoal bass range loss by estimating a potential distribution based on natural abiotic factors and by estimating a series of current occupied distributions that also incorporated variables characterizing land cover non native species and fragmentation intensity no fragmentation dams only and dams and large impoundments model construction allowed for interspecific relationships between non native congeners and shoal bass to vary across fragmentation intensities results from the potential distribution model estimated shoal bass presence throughout much of their native basin whereas models of current occupied distribution illustrated increased range loss as fragmentation intensified response curves from current occupied models indicated a potential interaction between fragmentation intensity and the relationship between shoal bass and non native congeners wherein non natives may be favored at the highest fragmentation intensity response curves also suggested that free flowing fragment lengths of 100 km were necessary to support shoal bass presence model evaluation including an independent validation suggested models had favorable predictive and discriminative abilities similar approaches that use readily available diverse geospatial datasets may deliver insights into the biology and conservation needs of other fluvial species facing similar threats,2017,0.567
Using Google Earth Engine for Landsat NDVI time series analysis to indicate the present status of forest stands,remote sensing is an important tool for studying the effects of deforestation land use change as well as climate change on forest stands worldwide as carbon sinks forests are of very high importance for the global carbon cycle in this study the google earth engine gee in conjunction with landsat 5 and 8 images was used to study the development of the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi over time in three study areas across germany the study areas are located in the biosphere reserve schwã bische alb national park hainich and biosphere reserve schorfheide chorin and are part of the biodiversity exploratories network temporal patterns in the ndvi data from 1984 to 2013 showed that while ndvi in plots at all study sites was increasing from 1984 to 1990 ndvi was strongly declining in recent years 2013 2016 this decline in ndvi is linked to land use change and its negative effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function as well as ecosystem services temporal patterns show much variation between deciduous and coniferous trees as well as between study areas study area biosphere reserve schorfheide chorin showed the most stable ndvi development in recent years while ndvi at the other two sites declined more steeply pointing toward a healthier forest at biosphere reserve schorfheide chorin remote sensing of forest stands will likely play an even more important role with advancing climate change scripts developed in this thesis can be re used and adapted for other study areas worldwide,2017,0.168
A combination of long term fragmentation and glacial persistence drove the evolutionary history of the Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus,the current distribution of genetic diversity is the result of a vast array of microevolutionary processes including short term demographic and ecological mechanisms and long term allopatric isolation in response to quaternary climatic fluctuations we investigated past processes that drove the population differentiation and spatial genetic distribution of the italian wall lizard podarcis siculus by means of sequences of mitochondrial cytb n 277 from 115 localities and nuclear mc1r and î fibint7genes n 262 and n 91 respectively from all its distribution range the pattern emerging from the genetic data was compared with current and past last glacial maximum species distribution modeling sdm we identified seven deeply divergent parapatric clades which presumably remained isolated in different refugia scattered mainly throughout the tyrrhenian coast conversely the adriatic coast showed only two haplogroups with low genetic variability these results appear to agree with the sdm prediction at the last glacial maximum lgm indicating a narrow area of habitat suitability along the tyrrhenian coast and much lower suitability along the adriatic one however the considerable land exposure of the adriatic coastline favored a glacial colonization of the balkan peninsula our population level historical demography showed a common trend consistent with glacial expansions and regional persistence during the last glacial maximum this complex genetic signature appears to be inconsistent with the expectation of the expansion contraction model and post lgm re colonizations from southern refugia hence it is one of an increasing number of cases in which these assumptions are not met indicating that long term fragmentation and pre lgm events such as glacial persistence were more prominent in shaping genetic variation in this temperate species,2017,0.593
Integrating multiple datasets with species distribution models to inform conservation of the poorly-recorded Chinese seahorses,modeling and mapping species distributions are vital to biodiversity conservation but challenging for data limited species whose localities are poorly recorded here we examine the utility of three datasets and species distribution models in conservation of seahorses hippocampus spp a genus of poorly recorded marine fishes we collated occurrences from field data of species sightings ss peer reviewed literature prl and fishers local ecological knowledge lek for five seahorse species in china we modelled seahorse distributions using different combinations of these datasets we first compared model performance and predictions between prl and lek and then evaluated the impact of adding lek and or prl to ss our results indicated that lek provided higher resolution maps than prl and tended to generate slightly better models there is more predictive consistency between lek and prl on presence probability maps than on presence absence maps adding lek and or prl to ss improved model performance across species our study suggests that integrating lek and prl and limited ss with species distribution models can usefully inform conservation for poorly recorded species,2017,0.946
Climate change both facilitates and inhibits invasive plant ranges in New England,forecasting ecological responses to climate change invasion and their interaction must rely on understanding underlying mechanisms however such forecasts require extrapolation into new locations and environments we linked demography and environment using experimental biogeography to forecast invasive and native speciesâ potential ranges under present and future climate in new england united states to overcome issues of extrapolation in novel environments we studied two potentially nonequilibrium invasive plantsâ distributions alliaria petiolata garlic mustard and berberis thunbergii japanese barberry each paired with their native ecological analogs to better understand demographic drivers of invasions our models predict that climate change will considerably reduce establishment of a currently prolific invader a petiolata throughout new england driven by poor demographic performance in warmer climates in contrast invasion of b thunbergii will be facilitated because of higher growth and germination in warmer climates with higher likelihood to establish farther north and in closed canopy habitats in the south invasion success is in high fecundity for both invasive species and demographic compensation for a petiolata relative to native analogs for a petiolata simulations suggest that eradication efforts would require unrealistic efficiency hence management should focus on inhibiting spread into colder currently unoccupied areas understanding sourceâ sink dynamics and understanding community dynamics should a petiolata which is allelopathic decline our resultsâ based on considerable differences with correlative occurrence models typically used for such biogeographic forecastsâ suggest the urgency of incorporating mechanism into range forecasting and invasion management to understand how climate change may alter current invasion patterns,2017,0.144
"Beyond the “Code”: A Guide to the Description and Documentation of Biodiversity in Ciliated Protists (Alveolata, Ciliophora)",recent advances in molecular technology have revolutionized research on all aspects of the biology of organisms including ciliates and created unprecedented opportunities for pursuing a more integrative approach to investigation of biodiversity however this goal is complicated by large gaps and inconsistencies that still exist in the foundation of basic information about biodiversity of ciliates the present paper reviews issues relating to the taxonomy of ciliates and presents specific recommendations for best practice in the observation and documentation of their biodiversity this effort stems from a workshop that explored ways to implement six grand challenges proposed by the international research coordination network for biodiversity of ciliates ircn bc as part of its commitment to strengthening the knowledge base that supports research on biodiversity of ciliates the ircn bc proposes to populate the ciliate guide an online database with biodiversity related data and metadata to create a resource that will facilitate accurate taxonomic identifications and promote sharing of data,2017,0.141
Convergence of bark investment according to fire and climate structures ecosystem vulnerability to future change,fire regimes in savannas and forests are changing over much of the world anticipating the impact of these changes requires understanding how plants are adapted to fire in this study we test whether fire imposes a broad selective force on a key fire tolerance trait bark thickness across 572 tree species distributed worldwide we show that investment in thick bark is a pervasive adaptation in frequently burned areas across savannas and forests in both temperate and tropical regions where surface fires occur geographic variability in bark thickness is largely explained by annual burned area and precipitation seasonality combining environmental and species distribution data allowed us to assess vulnerability to future climate and fire conditions tropical rainforests are especially vulnerable whereas seasonal forests and savannas are more robust the strong link between fire and bark thickness provides an avenue for assessing the vulnerability of tree communities to fire and demands inclusion in global models,2017,0.417
Potential Distribution of Sterile Oat (Avena sterilis L.) in Turkey under Changing Climate,species distribution models sdms or habitat suitability models are increasingly being used by ecologists to understand and map the current and future spread of invasive species at regional or global scales however these models are not well tested to predict the potential distribution ranges of native species therefore we tested the range expansion potential of a native species avena sterilis l â a troublesome weed of wheat based cropping systemsâ in turkey we used maxent model in a hierarchical fashion i e the model was calibrated at global scale and projected for turkey only the distribution of the species was predicted for current and future 2030 2050 and 2080 climatic conditions of the country climate data generated by two global circulation models gcms i e the commonwealth scientific and industrial research organization csiro mk3 6 0 and model for interdisciplinary research on climate miroc miroc5 were used in the study similarly the distribution range was predicted under two different climate change scenarios i e representative concentration pathways rcp rcp2 6 moderate climate change and rcp8 5 severe climate change the model predicted a consistent increase in the potential distribution areas of the species in the future the predicted suitable area was 35 56 of the total surface area of the country under current climatic conditions which increased to 44 87 in 2080 the model predicted higher distribution area under rcp8 5 climate change scenario compared with rcp2 6 no shifts in the potential distribution range were predicted by the model in future rather the suitable areas remained adjacent to the potential distribution range under current climatic conditions it is concluded that future climate warming will result in the range expansion of the species which could result in severe infestation moreover the increasing herbicide resistance due to the unwise use of chemicals will further increase the distribution of the species thus the results of the current study necessitate the development of suitable management practices to halt the further spread of the species in the country,2017,0.58
"DataCite as a novel bibliometric source: Coverage, strengths and limitations",this paper explores the characteristics of datacite to determine its possibilities and potential as a new bibliometric data source to analyze the scholarly production of open data open science and the increasing data sharing requirements from governments funding bodies institutions and scientific journals has led to a pressing demand for the development of data metrics as a very first step towards reliable data metrics we need to better comprehend the limitations and caveats of the information provided by sources of open data in this paper we critically examine records downloaded from the datacite s oai api and elaborate a series of recommendations regarding the use of this source for bibliometric analyses of open data we highlight issues related to metadata incompleteness lack of standardization and ambiguous definitions of several fields despite these limitations we emphasize datacite s value and potential to become one of the main sources for data metrics development,2017,0.132
“gnparser”: a powerful parser for scientific names based on Parsing Expression Grammar,background scientific names in biology act as universal links they allow us to cross reference information about organisms globally however variations in spelling of scientific names greatly diminish their ability to interconnect data such variations may include abbreviations annotations misspellings etc authorship is a part of a scientific name and may also differ significantly to match all possible variations of a name we need to divide them into their elements and classify each element according to its role we refer to this as â parsingâ the name parsing categorizes nameâ s elements into those that are stable and those that are prone to change names are matched first by combining them according to their stable elements matches are then refined by examining their varying elements this two stage process dramatically improves the number and quality of matches it is especially useful for the automatic data exchange within the context of â œbig dataâ in biology results we introduce global names parser gnparser it is a java tool written in scala language a language for java virtual machine to parse scientific names it is based on a parsing expression grammar the parser can be applied to scientific names of any complexity it assigns a semantic meaning such as genus name species epithet rank year of publication authorship annotations etc to all elements of a name it is able to work with nested structures as in the names of hybrids gnparser performs with â ˆ99 accuracy and processes 30 million name strings hour per cpu thread the gnparser library is compatible with scala java r jython and jruby the parser can be used as a command line application as a socket server a web app or as a restful http service it is released under an open source mit license conclusions global names parser gnparser is a fast high precision tool for biodiversity informaticians and biologists working with large numbers of scientific names it can replace expensive and error prone manual parsing and standardization of scientific names in many situations and can quickly enhance the interoperability of distributed biological information,2017,0.169
Integrating ethnobiological knowledge into biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Himalayas,biocultural knowledge provides valuable insight into ecological processes and can guide conservation practitioners in local contexts in many regions however such knowledge is underutilized due to its often fragmented record in disparate sources in this article we review and apply ethnobiological knowledge to biodiversity conservation in the eastern himalayas using sikkim india as a case study we i traced the history and trends of ethnobiological documentation ii identified priority species and habitat types and iii analyzed within and among community differences pertaining to species use and management our results revealed that sikkim is a biocultural hotspot where six ethnic communities and 1128 species engage in biocultural relationships since the mid 1800s the number of ethnobiological publications from sikkim has exponentially increased however our results also indicate that much of this knowledge is both unwritten and partitioned within an aging gendered and caste or ethnic group specific stratum of society reviewed species were primarily wild or wild cultivated native to subtropical and temperate forests and pend iucn red list of threatened species assessment our results demonstrate the value of engaging local knowledge holders as active participants in conservation and suggest the need for further ethnobiological research in the eastern himalayas our interdisciplinary approach which included rank indices and geospatial modelling can help integrate diverse datasets into evidence based policy,2017,0.734
Niche dynamics of two cryptic Prosopis invading South American drylands,whether or not species track native climatic conditions during invasions i e climate match hypothesis is fundamental to understand and prevent potential impacts of invasive species recent empirical work suggests that climatic mismatches between native and invasive ranges are pervasive whether these differences are due to adaptation to new climatic spaces in the invasive range or due to partial filling of the potential climatic space are still subject to debate here we analyze climatic niche dynamics associated with the invasion of the two most common invasive plants in brazilian semi arid areas prosopis juliflora and prosopis pallida these species have been simultaneously introduced in the region which creates a unique opportunity to compare their niche dynamics during invasion given that p juliflora have a much wider native range size we expect these species would present different dispersal potentials which might translate into different unfilling levels using an ordination method with kernel smoother and null models we contrasted climate spaces occupied by each species in both native and invasive ranges we further used ecological niche models enms to compare reciprocal predictions of potentially suitable areas against our expectation based on differences in native range sizes climatic niches of p juliflora and p pallida overlapped greatly both in their native and invasive ranges our results support niche conservatism during the invasion process climatic mismatches among native and invaded ranges were exclusively attributed to unfilling of native climates in the invasive range both species showed similar unfilling levels likewise enms predicted regions not yet occupied in the invasive range revealing a potential for further expansion we discuss colonization time lag and founder effect as potential mechanisms that may have prevented these species to fully occupy their native niches in the invasive range,2017,0.661
"Is Port Stephens, eastern Australia, a global hotspot for biodiversity of Aplysiidae (Gastropoda: Heterobranchia)?",abstractport stephens a large natural harbour on the central new south wales nsw coast provides ideal oceanographic and benthic conditions for the growth of marine algae and seagrasses and this promotes a suite of herbivorous heterobranch sea slugs such as sea hares and sap sucking sea slugs in this article we document both historic and recent observations of sea hares family aplysiidae from port stephens with the intention of recording species diversity the western south pacific region has the richest aplysiid fauna in the world with 16 species now recorded in port stephens this location is the most taxonomically diverse for this family in australia despite this hotspot of aplysiid diversity the taxonomy and nomenclature of 12 species is uncertain a fact highlighted by a series of nomenclatural notes included in this article we herein report the first observation of petalifera sp in australian waters dolabrifera jacksoniensis pilsbry 1896 is newly synonymised with d brazieri g b sower,2017,0.347
Neotropical Arachnological Collections: Basic Tools for the Development of Spider Research,natural history collections are essential tools for development in biological research since the nineteenth century arachnological collections in the neotropics have been collaborating to carry out research on spiders and human resource training in many cases they have been the starting point of several research fields and the first steps allowing the development of arachnological studies in many latin american countries an important part of the future production of arachnological knowledge is deposited in these collections they preserve critical data about the natural history of neotropical spiders in several areas of knowledge such as taxonomy systematics ecology ethology and biogeography the present chapter is focused on the historical present and future perspectives of neotropical arachnological collections and their contribution to spider research we also discuss the main role that araneological collections will play in the future of knowledge of neotropical spider diversity and its conservation,2017,0.174
The thermal niche of Neotropical nectar-feeding bats: Its evolution and application to predict responses to global warming,the thermal niche of a species is one of the main determinants of its ecology and biogeography in this study we determined the thermal niche of 23 species of neotropical nectar feeding bats of the subfamily glossophaginae chiroptera phyllostomidae we calculated their thermal niches using temperature data obtained from collection records by generating a distribution curve of the maximum and minimum temperatures per locality and using the inflection points of the temperature distributions to estimate the species optimal stz and suboptimal srz zones of the thermal niche additionally by mapping the values of the stz and srz on a phylogeny of the group we generated a hypothesis of the evolution of the thermal niches of this clade of nectar feeding bats finally we used the characteristics of their thermal niches to predict the responses of these organisms to climate change we found a large variation in the width and limits of the thermal niches of nectar feeding bats additionally while the upper limits of the thermal niches varied little among species their lower limits differ wildly the ancestral reconstruction of the thermal niche indicated that this group of neotropical bats evolved under cooler temperatures the two clades inside the glossophaginae differ in the evolution of their thermal niches with most members of the clade choeronycterines evolving â œcolderâ thermal niches while the majority of the species in the clade glossophagines evolving â œwarmerâ thermal niches by comparing thermal niches with climate change models we found that all species could be affected by an increase of 1â c in temperature at the end of this century this suggests that even nocturnal species could suffer important physiological costs from global warming our study highlights the value of scientific collections to obtain ecologically significant physiological data for a large number of species,2017,0.947
The potential effects of future climate change on suitable habitat for the Taiwan partridge (Arborophila crudigularis): an ensemble-based forecasting method,climate change is considered to be one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in this century especially for range restricted island species this study explored the potential effects of climate change on arborophila crudigularis a weak flying endemic bird species in taiwan the potential effects of climate change on climatically suitable habitat for a crudigularis were analyzed in biomod2 and arcgis software future climate change could increase the availability of climatically suitable habitat for a crudigularis while decreasing the mean suitability for both the entire suitable area and the area with known presence records by 2050 and 2080 climatically suitable habitat is expected to increase by an average of 4 57 and 5 18 respectively the mean suitability of the entire climatically suitable habitat is expected to decrease by 4 80 and 6 61 and the mean suitability of known presence records is expected to decrease by 2 70 and 4 62 respectively future climate change will not be disastrous for a crudigularis in taiwan future efforts to conserve this species should focus on northwestern taiwan,2017,0.475
Projecting present and future habitat suitability of ship-mediated aquatic invasive species in the Canadian Arctic,a rise in arctic shipping activity resulting from global warming and resource exploitation is expected to increase the likelihood of aquatic invasive species ais introductions in the region in this context the potential threat of future ais incursions at a canadian arctic regional scale was examined habitat suitability under current environmental conditions and future climate change scenarios was projected for a subset of eight potential invaders ranked as having a high risk of establishment in the canadian arctic based on dispersal pathways donor regions biological attributes and invasion history 1 amphibalanus improvisus 2 botrylloides violaceus 3 caprella mutica 4 carcinus maenas 5 littorina littorea 6 membranipora membranacea 7 mya arenaria and 8 paralithodes camtschaticus habitat modelling was performed using maxent based on globally known native and non native occurrence records and environmental ranges for these species results showed that under current environmental conditions the habitat is suitable in certain regions of the canadian arctic such as the hudson complex and beaufort sea for l littorea m arenaria and p camtschaticus under a future climate change scenario all species showed poleward gains in habitat suitability with at least some regions of the canadian arctic projected to be suitable for the complete suite of species modelled the use of these models is helpful in understanding potential future ais incursions as a result of climate change and shipping at large spatial scales these approaches can aid in the identification of high risk regions and species to allow for more focused ais monitoring and research efforts in response to climate change,2017,0.691
Anthropogenic impact on habitat connectivity: A multidimensional human footprint index evaluated in a highly biodiverse landscape of Mexico,evaluating the cumulative effects of the human footprint on landscape connectivity is crucial for implementing policies for the appropriate management and conservation of landscapes we present an adjusted multidimensional spatial human footprint index shfi to analyze the effects of landscape transformation on the remnant habitat connectivity for 40 terrestrial mammal species representative of the trans mexican volcanic system in michoacã n tmvsmich in western central mexico we adjusted the shfi by adding fragmentation and habitat loss to its original three components land use intensity time of human landscape intervention and biophysical vulnerability the adjusted shfi was applied to four scenarios one grouping all species and three grouping several species by habitat spatial requirements using the shfi as a dispersal resistance surface and applying a circuit theory based approach we analyzed the effects of cumulative human impact on habitat connectivity in the different scenarios for evaluating the relationship between habitat loss and connectivity we applied graph theory based equivalent connected area eca index results show over 60 of the tmvsmich has high shfi values considerably lowering current flow for all species nevertheless the effect on connectivity of human impact is higher for species with limited dispersal capacity 100â 500m our approach provides a new form of evaluating human impact on habitat connectivity that can be applied to different scales and landscapes furthermore the approach is useful for guiding discussions and implementing future biodiversity conservation initiatives that promote landscape connectivity as an adaptive strategy for climate change,2017,0.44
"Craniomandibular Variation in the Taxonomically Problematic Gerbil Genus Gerbillus (Gerbillinae, Rodentia): Assessing the Influence of Climate, Geography, Phylogeny, and Size",the taxonomy of gerbillus the most speciose gerbil genus is highly debated of particular contention is the relationship of dipodillus to gerbillus some consider it to be a closely related genus while others synonymize it with gerbillusâ either with or without recognizing it as a subgenus the main objective of this study is to test the validity of common taxonomic groupings within the gerbillus dipodillus species complex which was achieved by using geometric morphometrics to examine cranial and mandibular variation in 34 out of the 52 gerbillus dipodillus species craniomandibular size and shape were highly correlated indicating strong allometric patterns in shape variation the common taxonomic groups were significantly different in craniomandibular size and shape yet they did overlap considerably in morphospace a notable exception was the extreme divergence of monodia g mauritaniae from all other species in the occlusal view of the mandible morphospace overlap is likely a consequence of both phylogenetic history and environmental adaptation only the ventral cranium was associated with climate particularly in areas related to resource acquisition geographic distance was not significantly associated with craniomandibular morphometric distance and the groups overlapped greatly in their geographic range cranial and mandibular regions differed in discrimination powerâ the ventral cranium had among the highest while the dorsal cranium and the occlusal mandible had the lowest craniomandibular regions varied in association with climate phylogeny and sizeâ previous studies suggest this difference may be a consequence of different genetic controls for shape variation,2017,0.743
Investigation of floristic similarities between Taiwan and terrestrial ecoregions in Asia using GBIF data,background floristic compositions of non endemic plants of continental islands were related to the neighboring continents because non endemic plant species had historically migrated to continental islands from source areas this study attempts to identify source areas of a continental island by means of floristic analysis and to assess possible migration routes on the basis of geographical distribution ranges of plants large quantities of angiosperm data records were downloaded from the global biodiversity information facility gbif similarity index and cluster analysis were used to identify the floristic similarities among 22 geographical localities of taiwan glts and 34 terrestrial ecoregions in asia geographical distribution ranges of non endemic angiosperm species in taiwan neasts were evaluated to mirror the possible migration routes from different source areas to taiwan results there are 3275 angiosperm species in taiwan derived from the dataset of gbif among them 847 are endemic and 2428 are neasts geographical distribution ranges of the 2428 neasts were categorized into 7 distribution groups they were widely distribution from equator to siberia 27 species tropical ecoregions 345 species tropical and subtropical ecoregions 663 species tropical to temperate ecoregions 591 species subtropical ecoregions 265 species subtropical to temperate ecoregions 387 species and temperate ecoregions 150 species results of similarity indices and cluster analysis demonstrated that high floristic similarities were observed among glts at lowland and southern taiwan and tropical and subtropical ecoregions in asia glts at high mountains were assumed to have floristic similarity with temperate ecoregions in asia whereas the assumption was not supported by our analysis it is partly because of that angiosperms with tropical and subtropical distributions extend their ranges from low to high elevations in taiwan conclusions subtropical ecoregions at southern china and tropical ecoregions at indochina were more important than temperate ecoregions on playing source areas of neasts geographical distribution ranges of neasts implied that most of the neasts were probably migrated from topical or subtropical ecoregions of asian continent to taiwan,2017,0.958
"Research, education, and conservation in developing countries in a networked global ecosystem",our species faces twin threats of nuclear war and climate change to meet challenges that are global require global integrated responses the un 2030 six key sustainable development goals addressed the need and committed to act collectively to translate these lofty plans into action requires practical steps we explore how we can respond in the areas of environmental conservation and sustainability by â œthinking globally and acting locallyâ we demonstrated effectiveness with a case study from palestine a palestine institute of biodiversity and sustainability pibs quickly connected plugged in globally and locally managed to achieve success in less than three years since it was founded pibs promotes research education and conservation we highlight six key successes of pibs and six key reasons for achieving these successes in such a short time even under difficult situation of colonization and economic deprivation we highlight the tools for leveraging information technology such as researchgate and scholar google com the importance of involving people of various backgrounds including local regional and global networking lessons learned from our successes can be applicable to other developing countries the tools and methods are easily learned and are applicable for fundraising getting donations in kind research publications environmental education innovation conservation of natural resources and improving local economies by permaculture and ecotourism among others we offer these experiences learned sometimes with trial and error to fellow arabs interested in a more sustainable development in line with the unâ s millennial goals arab development goals and local sustainable development in villages and towns throughout the arab world,2017,0.311
Biogeography and priority areas for the conservation of bats in the Brazilian Cerrado,in this study we describe the distribution pattern of bat species and select priority areas for the conservation of the cerrado based on a systematic planning approach we estimated species richness and calculated the total beta diversity based on sã rensenâ s dissimilarity index î sor we estimated the species turnover using simpsonâ s dissimilarity index î sim we then evaluated the nesting î sne by the difference between the dissimilarity indices î sor and î sim based on this analysis we identified the priority areas for the conservation of bats in the cerrado based on the zonation approach we found that the species richness and beta diversity of bats in the cerrado are concentrated primarily in the central and northern portions of the biome we also discovered that the conservation units of the cerrado are ineffective for the protection of species with a restricted distribution â 150 grid cells such as vampyrum spectrum for which we propose the creation of new conservation units that better cover the diversity patterns observed in the present study by conserving this diversity we will also be protecting local habitats which will in turn enable the survival of a wide range of species and provide the ecosystems with the capacity to respond adequately to future changes in the environment,2017,0.761
Seed desiccation tolerance and dispersal in tropical dry forests in Colombia: Implications for ecological restoration,the widely documented loss of tropical dry forests tdfs is a consequence of multiple and complex causes the conservation status of colombian tdfs is critical currently these forests only occupy eight percent of their original cover evidence shows that tdfs have a low probability of natural regeneration and may require ecological restoration seeds are central to the existence permanence and dynamics of plant communities in forests seeds exhibit a varied set of traits that exerts control on plant communities by limiting or facilitating plant establishment according to previous research in tdfs most seeds are small dry and wind dispersed with a high drought tolerance orthodox storage behavior in this study available information on the fruits and seeds of tree species distributed in colombian tdfs was synthesized twelve colombia tdfs datasets were selected which included speciesâ individual occurrences and diameters at breast height for each tdf the most important species were selected and the literature was searched for their seed storage behaviors dispersal syndromes and general fruit and seed attributes in contrast to initial expectations the search results suggested that the most common dispersal syndrome of the most important species was animal dispersal followed by wind dispersal thirty nine species were found that were not currently naturally established and should be introduced by active restoration most of these species had capsule and drupe fruits the most common dispersal syndrome was animal dispersal and the most common seed storage behavior was orthodox dominance of animal dispersed species exacerbates fragmentation and habitat loss in tdfs making available niches difficult to colonize and reducing the ability of seeds to reach degraded sites orthodox germination of seeds can facilitate seed storage in ex situ germoplasm banks to overcome low seed availability and or forest soil seed bank,2017,0.866
Wallace : a flexible platform for reproducible modeling of species niches and distributions built for community expansion,1 scientific research increasingly calls for open source software that is flexible interactive and expandable while providing methodological guidance and reproducibility currently many analyses in ecology are implemented with â œblack boxâ graphical user interfaces that lack flexibility or command line interfaces that are infrequently used by non specialists 2 to help remedy this situation in the context of species distribution modeling we created wallace an open and modular application with a richly documented graphical user interface to underlying r scripts that is flexible and highly interactive 3 wallace guides users from acquiring and processing data to building models and examining predictions additionally it is designed to grow via community contributions of new modules to expand functionality all results are downloadable along with code to reproduce the analysis 4 wallace provides an example of an innovative platform to increase access to cutting edge methods and encourage plurality in science and collaboration in software development,2017,0.341
"A temporally explicit species distribution model for a long distance avian migrant, the common cuckoo",modelling the distribution of migratory species has rarely been extended beyond breeding and wintering ranges despite many species showing much more complex movement patterns with multiple stopovers we aimed to create a temporally explicit species distribution model describing the full annual distribution cycle and use it to model the complex seasonal shifts in distribution of the common cuckoo cuculus canorus a declining long distance migrant to do this we used full year satellite telemetry occurrence data with their associated temporal information to inform a temporally explicit species distribution model using maxent the resulting full year distribution model was highly predictive auc 0 894 and appeared to have generality at the species level despite being informed by data from a single breeding population comparison of our methodology with seasonal distribution models describing the breeding winter and migration ranges separately showed that our full year method provided more general and extensive predictions and performed better when tested with an independent dataset when species distribution models based on a single season exclude environmental conditions experienced by birds in other parts of the annual cycle they risk underestimating niche breadth and neglecting the importance of stopover habitat conversely models which simply average conditions across a season may miss the significance of finer scale within season movements and overestimate niche breadth in contrast our framework for a full year migrant distribution model successfully captures the finer scale changes expected in seasonal environments and can be used to inform conservation management at every stage of migration the full year model framework appears to produce temporal distribution models generalised to the species level from occurrence data limited to few individuals of a single population and may have particular utility when aiming to describe the distribution of species with complex migration patterns from telemetry data,2017,0.369
DNA barcoding and phylogenetic analyses of the genus Coleosporium (Pucciniales) reveal that the North American goldenrod rust C. solidaginis is a neomycete on introduced and native Solidago species in Europe,recently an unknown rust fungus of the genus coleosporium appeared in germany and switzerland on giant goldenrod solidago gigantea an invasive neophyte from north america and on the indigenous european goldenrod s virgaurea for identification dna barcodes were assembled in the course of the german barcode of life gbol project and the investigation of neomycetes in switzerland phylogenetic analyses were performed using its and lsu sequences of coleosporium species representing various host plants and geographic regions these analyses resulted in the first molecular evidence of the north american rust coleosporium solidaginis in europe coleosporium solidaginis is split into two subclades that are closely related to coleosporium asterum a species on aster s l which was formerly synonymized with c solidaginis the genus is divided into an american and a eurasian clade this phylogenetic pattern indicates that the geographic distribution rather than the relationship with host plants played a major role in the evolution of coleosporium species this finding particularly applies to the european species which are genetically uniform according to the its and lsu sequences taxonomical consequences are discussed coleosporium solidaginis is fragmentarily distributed in europe the place of its introduction and host shift to s virgaurea remains uncertain life cycle and propagation are mainly restricted to asexual urediniospores telia were found only once and the aecial stage was not observed at all on pine trees the ecological impact of this neomycete is still unknown but c solidaginis has the potential to harm wild and cultivated goldenrods in europe,2017,0.859
Using Herbarium-Derived DNAs to Assemble a Large-Scale DNA Barcode Library for the Vascular Plants of Canada,premise of the study constructing complete accurate plant dna barcode reference libraries can be logistically challenging for large scale floras here we demonstrate the promise and challenges of using herbarium collections for building a dna barcode reference library for the vascular plant flora of canada methods our study examined 20 816 specimens representing 5076 of 5190 vascular plant species in canada 98 for 98 of the specimens at least one of the dna barcode regions was recovered from the plastid loci rbcl and matk and from the nuclear its2 region we used beta regression to quantify the effects of age type of preservation and taxonomic affiliation family on dna sequence recovery results specimen age and method of preservation had significant effects on sequence recovery for all markers but influenced some families more e g boraginaceae than others e g asteraceae discussion our dna barcode library represents an unparalleled resource for metagenomic and ecological genetic research working on temperate and arctic biomes an observed decline in sequence recovery with specimen age may be associated with poor primer matches intragenomic variation for its2 or inhibitory secondary compounds in some taxa,2017,0.395
Molecular dataset from BELSPO project B-BLOOMS 2,this entry is dedicated to answer the need of a link between molecular data environmental parameters and counting depositions in the field of microbial ecology indeed it is necessary to implement a new approach to link data that are deposited in gbif with molecular data set that are deposited on genbank or that stay in lab computers in the frame of the brain belspo project safred we attempt to achieve this goal by supplying a sequence template set as designed by the microbial antarctic resource system mars for the b blooms 2 molecular data set we also supply a fasta file which contains curated sequences obtained by the dgge method these sequences are not published elsewhere in addition we added a sequence list which contains event id information for each sequences,2017,0.228
Spatially explicit multi-threat assessment of food tree species in Burkina Faso: A fine-scale approach,over the last decades agroforestry parklands in burkina faso have come under increasing demographic as well as climatic pressures which are threatening indigenous tree species that contribute substantially to income generation and nutrition in rural households analyzing the threats as well as the species vulnerability to them is fundamental for priority setting in conservation planning guided by literature and local experts we selected 16 important food tree species acacia macrostachya acacia senegal adansonia digitata annona senegalensis balanites aegyptiaca bombax costatum boscia senegalensis detarium microcarpum lannea microcarpa parkia biglobosa sclerocarya birrea strychnos spinosa tamarindus indica vitellaria paradoxa ximenia americana ziziphus mauritiana and six key threats to them overexploitation overgrazing fire cotton production mining and climate change we developed a species specific and spatially explicit approach combining freely accessible datasets species distribution models sdms climate models and expert survey results to predict at fine scale where these threats are likely to have the greatest impact we find that all species face serious threats throughout much of their distribution in burkina faso and that climate change is predicted to be the most prevalent threat in the long term whereas overexploitation and cotton production are the most important short term threats tree populations growing in areas designated as â highly threatenedâ due to climate change should be used as seed sources for ex situ conservation and planting in areas where future climate is predicting suitable habitats assisted regeneration is suggested for populations in areas where suitable habitat under future climate conditions coincides with high threat levels due to short term threats in the case of vitellaria paradoxa we suggest collecting seed along the northern margins of its distribution and considering assisted regeneration in the central part where the current threat level is high due to overexploitation in the same way population specific recommendations can be derived from the individual and combined threat maps of the other 15 food tree species the approach can be easily transferred to other countries and can be used to analyze general and species specific threats at finer and more local as well as at broader continental scales in order to plan more selective and efficient conservation actions in time the concept can be applied anywhere as long as appropriate spatial data are available as well as knowledgeable experts,2017,0.892
"Grasses as invasive plants in South Africa revisited: Patterns, pathways and management",background in many countries around the world the most damaging invasive plant species are grasses however the status of grass invasions in south africa has not been documented recently objectives to update sue miltonâ s 2004 review of grasses as invasive alien plants in south africa provide the first detailed species level inventory of alien grasses in south africa and assess the invasion dynamics and management of the group method we compiled the most comprehensive inventory of alien grasses in south africa to date using recorded occurrences of alien grasses in the country from various literature and database sources using historical literature we reviewed past efforts to introduce alien grasses into south africa we sourced information on the origins uses distributions and minimum residence times to investigate pathways and patterns of spatial extent we identified alien grasses in south africa that are having environmental and economic impacts and determined whether management options have been identified and legislation created for these species results there are at least 256 alien grass species in the country 37 of which have become invasive alien grass species richness increased most dramatically from the late 1800s to about 1940 alien grass species that are not naturalised or invasive have much shorter residence times than those that have naturalised or become invasive most grasses were probably introduced for forage purposes and a large number of alien grass species were trialled at pasture research stations a large number of alien grass species in south africa are of eurasian origin although more recent introductions include species from elsewhere in africa and from australasia alien grasses are most prevalent in the south west of the country and the fynbos biome has the most alien grasses and the most widespread species we identified 11 species that have recorded environmental and economic impacts in the country few alien grasses have prescribed or researched management techniques moreover current legislation neither adequately covers invasive species nor reflects the impacts and geographical extent of these species conclusion south africa has few invasive grass species but there is much uncertainty regarding the identity numbers of species distributions abundances and impacts of alien grasses although introductions of alien grasses have declined in recent decades south africa has a potentially large invasion debt this highlights the need for continued monitoring and much greater investment in alien grass management research and legislation,2017,0.991
Crop wild relatives range shifts and conservation in Europe under climate change,aim climate change is expected to have a great impact on the distribution of wild flora around the world wild plant species are an important component of the genetic resources for crop improvement which is especially important in face of climate change impacts still many crop wild relatives cwrs are currently threatened in their natural habitat and are poorly represented in gene bank collections to guide in situ conservation measures and to prioritize species for ex situ conservation predictions are needed about future species distributions as a result of climate change location europe methods using species occurrence data and present and future climatic information we investigated the possible impacts of future climate change on the european distribution of a selection of cwrs red listed in the netherlands using a species distribution modelling framework the representation of the cwrs in european protected areas was investigated for the current and future climatic conditions the models were created based on an optimistic rcp 2 6 and pessimistic rcp 8 5 climate change scenario results a shift in distribution range mostly towards northern locations was observed for all investigated species a loss of distribution area of up to 61 10 full dispersal assumption and 68 91 no dispersal according to rcp 2 6 was observed for some species a distribution area loss of up to 90 92 full dispersal and 98 36 no dispersal was predicted for the most affected species under the rcp 8 5 based on the predicted distribution in protected areas present occupation in nature reserves appeared to be no guarantee for the speciesâ future protection and persistence main conclusions we conclude that in situ conservation measures ignoring the effects of climate change will not be effective for many cwrs and that large scale ex situ conservation actions are needed to safeguard cwrs,2017,0.952
Endemism and conservation of Amazon palms,endemicity is important for the delimitation of conservation areas endemic areas are those that contain two or more taxa with their distribution restricted to the area the aim of this study was to detect endemic areas for palms in the amazon region and to determine whether the species that define these endemic areas are protected within conservation units records of occurrence were extracted from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the final dataset consisted of 17 310 records for 177 species of amazonian palms for analysis we used parsimony analysis of endemicity pae and ndm vndm program and grid square size of 1â and 3â as operational geographic units ogus the distribution of endemic species was superimposed on occurrence of the conservation units cus pae did not show endemic areas in grid squares of 1â but found 10 palm endemic areas in grid squares of 3â in the western amazon and andean sub region however the ndm vndm program identified an endemic area in grid squares of 1â located at the eastern guiana with endemicity score 2 9 and in grid squares of 3â it identified seven consensus areas with endemicity score 6 0 all in the western amazon the combination of pae and ndm vndm analyses resulted in eight endemic palm areas in the combined western amazon and andean sub region of the species that define the endemic areas five are threatened with extinction in one of three iucn categories en vu nt and they are not protected in any conservation units the western amazon besides having high palm richness also has palm endemic areas especially near the andean sub region and the peruvian amazon,2017,0.891
Predicting Plant Invasions Following China’s Water Diversion Project,chinaâ s south to north water diversion snwd project connects portions of the yangtze river in the south to the yellow river system in the north overcoming biogeographic barriers to water movement the diversion will supply potable water to over 110 million people and provide multiple other socioeconomic benefits however an inadvertent negative impact of this connection includes creation of conduits for species invasions alligator weed alternanthera philoxeroides water hyacinth eichhornia crassipes and water lettuce pistia stratiotes are the only aquatic plant species on chinaâ s shortlists for special control these species are mainly invasive in the yangtze river basin if these species are able to invade the snwd and further spread via the snwd they have the potential to alter water supply including water quantity and quality as well as local ecology and agriculture threatening the goals of the diversion understanding the full potential for these species to invade northern china is cri,2017,0.776
Predictable invasion dynamics in North American populations of the Eurasian collared dove Streptopelia decaocto,species invasions represent a significant dimension of global change yet the dynamics of invasions remain poorly understood and are considered rather unpredictable we explored interannual dynamics of the invasion process in the eurasian collared dove streptopelia decaocto and tested whether the advance of the invasion front of the species in north america relates to centrality versus peripherality within its estimated fundamental ecological niche we used ecological niche modelling approaches to estimate the dimensions of the fundamental ecological niche on the old world distribution of the species and then transferred that model to the new world as measures of centrality versus peripherality within the niche for the species although our hypothesis was that the invasion front would advance faster over more favourable i e more central conditions the reverse was the case the invasion expanded faster in areas presenting less favourable i e more peripheral conditions for the species as it advanced across north america this result offers a first view of a predictive approach to the dynamics of species invasions and thereby has relevant implications for the management of invasive species as such a predictive understanding would allow better anticipation of coming steps and advances in the progress of invasions important to designing and guiding effective remediation and mitigation efforts,2017,0.805
Distribution and diversity of amphibians in Albania: new data and foundations of a comprehensive database,albania is part of the mediterranean biodiversity hotspot yet its amphibian fauna is poorly known due to little scientific exploration during the long political isolation of the country to fill this gap we constructed a georeferenced database with occurrences of all known amphibian species based on records from published sources and personal data collected during expeditions to poorly known areas our database includes 1097 records of 16 species collected between 1920 and 2017 based on aggregated records we analysed richness patterns of amphibians in 10 ã 10 km grid cells as a function of altitude climate land cover diversity and distance from the sea the mean number of species per cell was 1 8 â 0 11 s e maximum 10 species and at least one species occurred in 238 of the 349 cells sampling effort was uneven and sampling hotspots were mostly in popular sites of natural heritage cells with high amphibian diversity were near the prokletije mountains in the north west near lura korab and grammos mountains and ohrid and prespa lakes in the east and near ã ikã s mountains and in coastal areas of vlorã in the south west general linear models showed that the most important predictors of presence and diversity of amphibian species are land cover diversity and precipitation our study presents the largest database of amphibian occurrences in albania to date that will be useful for biogeographical and ecological studies and for conservation purposes,2017,0.911
Implications of poor taxonomy in conservation,red lists are legal instruments that guide decisions within the context of conservation such lists can indicate the most appropriate conservation actions leading to choices of priority areas for conservation or create alternatives to ensure the preservation of threatened species however if red lists are effective tools in the conservation of threatened species then it is important that we have guaranteed the quality of taxonomic delimitation of these taxa here we discuss a case of taxonomic confusion emphasizing the implications of misidentification in red lists to avoid mistakes in species conservation we advocate that a minimum level of taxonomic knowledge is needed to ensure success in preserving target species therefore complementarity of taxonomy and conservation guarantee stronger conservation actions,2017,0.502
Database Taxonomics as Key to Modern Plant Biology,the advent of omic technologies opened new and multiple avenues to access higher levels of complexity taxonomy â discovering and naming biodiversity â has also entered a taxonomics epoch and serves as a tool not only to name biological diversity but also to fully explore biological knowledge and to build bridges between disciplines,2017,0.354
"The Type of Nicrophorus chryseus Mazokhin-Porshnyakov, 1953 (Coleoptera: Silphidae) Rediscovered and a Commentary on “Accidental Taxonomy”",study of the previously lost type of nicrophorus chryseus mazokhin porshnyakov 1953 determined it to be a member of the polymorphic holarctic species nicrophorus investigator zetterstedt 1824 new synonymy the unintentional but formal changing of a taxonomic classification which we term â œaccidental taxonomy â is discussed,2017,0.457
The Owls of Guatemala,this compilation of recent data on the distribution ecology and conservation status of owls strigiformes in guatemala is based on an extensive literature review and numerous unpublished observations twenty species of owls have been recorded in guatemala of which 18 are resident breeding has been reported for 17 species and it is assumed for one species two species are considered rare or accidental nonbreeding visitors to guatemala during the northern winter guatemalaâ s region with the highest species richness in owls is the highlands where 17 species have been recorded twelve species have been recorded in the pacific slope lowlands and 13 species in the atlantic slope lowlands we analyzed the data in the presence and relative abundance of owls from 105 sites from 1989 to 2016 according to the weighted mean value of the relative abundance index across three ornithogeographic regions the most common owls in the country are abundance ranking in descending order mexican wood owl strix squamulata ridgwayâ s pygmy owl glaucidium ridgwayi guatemalan screech owl megascops guatemalae black and white owl strix nigrolineata american barn owl tyto furcata central american pygmy owl glaucidium griseiceps guatemalan pygmy owl glaucidium cobanense great horned owl bubo virginianus fulvous owl strix fulvescens unspotted saw whet owl aegolius ridgwayi whiskered screech owl megascops trichopsis crested owl lophostrix cristata and pacific screech owl megascops cooperi guatemala has an adequate legal framework to protect owl species 32 of the country is legally protected but the conservation is not efficient causing threats to owl populations of 18 resident owl species 12 are forest specialists in a vulnerability assessment applying iucn red list criteria on a national level one species has been evaluated as critically endangered cr one as endangered en nine as vulnerable vu five as near threatened nt two as least concern lc and two as not applicable habitat alterations through agriculture mining and oil drilling are the main threats of the remaining forests 14 5500 km2 were lost from 2000 to 2010 and the pressure on natural habitat will further increase in addition owls in guatemala are threatened by direct persecution because of popular superstitions the network of 21 important bird areas iba in guatemala includes populations of all owl species three species have been recorded in at least 10 ibas 12 species in 5â 9 ibas 4 in 2â 4 ibas and 1 species in only one iba we consider the increase of the education level among the guatemalan society the main key to protect habitats within the ibas a higher level of education would help to slow down population growth increase environmental awareness and consequently diminish pressure on natural areas,2017,0.997
"First record of Harmothoe aspera (Hansen, 1879) (Polychaeta: Polynoidae) in the Dutch North Sea",harmothoe aspera has been recorded in surveys off the strait of georgia the skagerrak and the barents mediterranean and japanese sea the recorded depth ranged from circa 48 m to circa 1500 m this is the first report of h aspera in the dutch exclusive economic zone eez and the first report in a depth range between 15 and 20 m,2017,0.354
Why input matters: Selection of climate data sets for modelling the potential distribution of a treeline species in the Himalayan region,betula utilis is a major constituent of alpine treeline ecotones in the western and central himalayan region the objective of this study is to analyse for the first time the performance of different climatic predictors in modelling the potential distribution of b utilis in the subalpine and alpine belts of the himalayan region using generalized linear models glm we aim at examining climatic factors controlling the species distribution under current climate conditions we evaluate the predictive ability of climate data derived from different statistical methods glms were created using least correlated bioclimatic variables derived from two different climate data sets 1 interpolated climate data i e worldclim hijmans et al 2005 and 2 quasi mechanistical statistical downscaling i e chelsa karger et al 2016 model accuracy was evaluated using threshold independent area under the curve and threshold dependent true skill statistics measures although there were no significant differences between the models in auc we found highly significant differences pâ 0 01 in tss we conclude that models based on variables of chelsa climate data had higher predictive power whereas models using worldclim climate data consistently overpredicted the potential suitable habitat for b utilis although climatic variables of worldclim are widely used in modelling species distribution our results suggest to treat them with caution when topographically complex regions like the himalaya are in focus unmindful usage of climatic variables for environmental niche models potentially causes misleading projections,2017,0.351
"New records for the flora of Mount Mulanje, Malawi: Sansevieria sinus-simiorum Chahin.(Asparagaceae/Dracaenaceae), Crassula swaziensis Schönland and …",three species of succulents are recorded as new for the flora of mt mulanje the highest mountain in south tropical africa in the southern region of malawi the unidentified â œsansevieria sp â in the â œchecklist of the spermatophytes of mount mulanjeâ strugnell 2006 is identified as sansevieria sinus simiorum asparagaceae dracaenaceae as well as crassula swaziensis and crassula setulosa crassulaceeae which were already collected on mt mulanje in 1946 and 1979 but the specimens escaped attention until now two collections from the nyika plateau in the northern region of malawi similar to but clearly different from crassula setulosa are reported which might represent a new taxon,2017,0.642
Climatic zoning of chia (Salvia hispanica L.) in Chile using a species distribution model,salvia hispanica l known as chia is a plant species originally from tropical and subtropical mesoamerica it is economically important because its seeds produce omega 3 thus its demand has increased in chile and internationally as there is no commercial production in chile we investigated the places in the country where this species could be cultivated in order to satisfy at the least the national demand the aim of the study was to quantify the main climatic requirements of chia and to produce a climatic aptitude map for chia cultivation in chile the methodology was based on the maxent species distribution model we used 78 georeferenced data points where chia is grown throughout the world mostly from the gbif database along with raster climatic layers from the worldclim project we estimated the performance curves of annual precipitation and temperature along with their respective optimal and critical values in analogy with the ecocrop method the maps used two scenarios for crops in different conditions with and without irrigation the results indicated that the intermediate depression and coastal edge of mainly the arica y parinacota tarapacã antofagasta and atacama regions have optimum conditions for irrigated crops but it would be impossible in rainfed conditions we conclude that chiaâ s cultivation niche is reduced due to its tropical climate requirements however it can be cultivated under irrigation in northern chile,2017,0.168
"An Online Database of the Immatures of Coleoptera (Arthopoda, Insecta) Described from Brazil",an online database of the described immature beetles from brazil is presented for the first time based on published literature the main purpose of this online database is to ensure accessibility to data associated with the described immature coleoptera from brazil which will be useful for future biological ecological conservational and biogeographical studies,2017,0.439
"Revisions of the Afrotropical genera of Argidae and species of Pampsilota Konow, 1899 (Hymenoptera, Tenthredinoidea)",the afrotropical fauna contains five genera of argidae these are keyed new subjective synonyms followed by the valid name in brackets are calarge enslin 1911 arge schrank 1802 calarge africana enslin 1911 arge congrua konow 1907 clyparge pasteels 1963 scobina lepeletier serville 1828 clyparge terminalis pasteels 1963 scobina poecila klug 1834 and sterictophora sic afra pasteels 1963 sphacophilus afer comb n species inquirenda near s monjarasi smith morales reyes 2015 the type material of both c terminalis and s afra was probably collected in the new world but labelled with the wrong locality â œkamerunâ an introduction of both species to africa not followed by long term establishment seems less likely the removal of these taxa from the faunal list of the region is recommended the nine known afrotropical species of pampsilota are revised and an illustrated dichotomous identification key presented with distribution maps for all species four species are here described as new to science p dahomeyanus goergen koch liston sp n p nigeriae liston koch sp n p tsavoensis liston koch sp n and p zebra liston koch sp n lectotypes are designated for pampsilota afer konow 1899 and cipdele africana mocsã ry 1909 the immature stages and host plant of only one species are known p dahomeyanus on lannea nigritana anacardiaceae its larval morphology strongly resembles that of european and north american species of arge we provisionally retain pampsilota as a valid genus although it could justifiably be treated as comprising merely a species group or groups within arge,2017,0.984
Landscape predictors of pathogen prevalence and range contractions in US bumblebees,several species of bumblebees have recently experienced range contractions and possible extinctions while threats to bees are numerous few analyses have attempted to understand the relative importance of multiple stressors such analyses are critical for prioritizing conservation strategies here we describe a landscape analysis of factors predicted to cause bumblebee declines in the usa we quantified 24 habitat land use and pesticide usage variables across 284 sampling locations assessing which variables predicted pathogen prevalence and range contractions via machine learning model selection techniques we found that greater usage of the fungicide chlorothalonil was the best predictor of pathogen nosema bombi prevalence in four declining species of bumblebees nosema bombi has previously been found in greater prevalence in some declining us bumblebee species compared to stable species greater usage of total fungicides was the strongest predictor of range contractions in declining species with bumblebees in the northern usa experiencing greater likelihood of loss from previously occupied areas these results extend several recent laboratory and semi field studies that have found surprising links between fungicide exposure and bee health specifically our data suggest landscape scale connections between fungicide usage pathogen prevalence and declines of threatened and endangered bumblebees,2017,0.98
"Progression of Ash Dieback in Norway Related to Tree Age, Disease History and Regional Aspects",ash dieback caused by the ascomycete hymenoscyphus fraxineus has been spreading throughout europe since the early 1990s threatening european ash at a continental scale little is known about the development of the disease in individual forest trees and in different age classes in this study we monitored ash dieback on trees of different diameter classes in five permanent plots in ash stands in south eastern norway from 2009 to 2016 and from 2012 to 2016 in three plots in western norway with a shorter disease history our results showed that more than 80 of the youngest and more than 40 of the intermediate future crop trees in the plots in south eastern norway were dead by 2016 while the disease development in large dominant trees was slower although less damage has been observed in the plots in western norway the trend for the juvenile trees is the same as in south eastern norway with rapidly increasing damage and mortality most dead trees in south eastern norway were found at sites with high soil moisture and showed symptoms of root rot caused by armillaria species infected trees both young and old ones are weakened by the disease and appear to be more susceptible to other secondary pathogens especially under unfavourable site conditions,2017,0.443
"Fish and fishery historical data since the 19th century in the Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean",historic data on biodiversity provide the context for present observations and allow studying long term changes in marine populations here we present multiple datasets on fish and fisheries of the adriatic sea covering the last two centuries encompassing from qualitative observations to standardised scientific monitoring the datasets consist of three groups 1 early naturalistsâ descriptions of fish fauna including information e g presence perceived abundance size on 255 fish species for the period 1818â 1936 2 historical landings from major northern adriatic fish markets venice trieste rijeka for the period 1902â 1968 italian official landings for the northern and central adriatic 1953â 2012 and landings from the lagoon of venice 1945â 2001 3 trawl survey data from seven surveys spanning the period 1948â 1991 and including catch per unit of effort data kgh∠1 and or nh∠1 for 956 hauls performed at 301 stations the integration of these datasets has already demonstrated to be useful to analyse historical marine community changes over time and its availability through open source data portal will facilitate analyses in the framework of marine historical ecology,2017,0.448
Big data of tree species distributions: how big and how good?,background trees play crucial roles in the biosphere and societies worldwide with a total of 60 065 tree species currently identified increasingly a large amount of data on tree species occurrences is being generated worldwide from inventories to pressed plants while many of these data are currently available in big databases several challenges hamper their use notably geolocation problems and taxonomic uncertainty further we lack a complete picture of the data coverage and quality assessment for open public databases of tree occurrences methods we combined data from five major aggregators of occurrence data e g global biodiversity information facility botanical information and ecological network v 3 dryflor rainbio and atlas of living australia by creating a workflow to integrate assess and control data quality of tree species occurrences for species distribution modeling we further assessed the coverage â the extent of geographical data â of five economically important tree families arecaceae dipterocarpaceae fagaceae myrtaceae pinaceae results globally we identified 49 206 tree species 84 69 of total tree species pool with occurrence records the total number of occurrence records was 36 69 m among which 6 40 m could be considered high quality records for species distribution modeling the results show that europe north america and australia have a considerable spatial coverage of tree occurrence data conversely key biodiverse regions such as south east asia and central africa and parts of the amazon are still characterized by geographical open public data gaps such gaps are also found even for economically important families of trees although their overall ranges are covered only 15 140 species 26 05 had at least 20 records of high quality conclusions our geographical coverage analysis shows that a wealth of easily accessible data exist on tree species occurrences worldwide but regional gaps and coordinate errors are abundant thus assessment of tree distributions will need accurate occurrence quality control protocols and key collaborations and data aggregation especially from national forest inventory programs to improve the current publicly available data,2017,0.864
Integrating disparate occurrence reports to map data-poor species ranges and occupancy: a case study of the Vulnerable bearded pig Sus barbatus,monitoring species ranges and suitable and occupied habitat are core components of biogeography ecology and conservation biology but it is difficult to do for rare cryptic wide ranging migratory or nomadic species we present a transparent and objective process to combine multiple types of locality data peer reviewed and grey literature museum collections camera trap inventories and citizen science reports we illustrate the advantages of this pooled approach by assessing change in range and patch occupancy for a data poor and threatened nomadic keystone species the bearded pig sus barbatus in borneo sumatra and peninsular malaysia we used a collated set of all occurrence observations n 240 to create minimum convex polygons for forested habitats for two time periods we evaluated confidence that a patch was truly occupied by the overlap among data types we found that 62 of the forest habitat of the sumatran bearded pig s barbatus oi was lost during 1990â 2010 and that its range contracted by 76 the bornean bearded pig s barbatus barbatus lost 23 and 24 of its forest habitat and range respectively and in peninsular malaysia the 93 range collapse of this subspecies during 1985â 2010 is more severe than the 33 habitat loss alone would suggest we conclude that integrating data types can improve mapping of the ranges of many data poor species,2017,0.777
Biological Modelling for Sustainable Ecosystems,modelling of biological systems is discussed in terms of the primary producers of trophic levels of organisation of life richness of plant communities enables sustainability to be reached within subsequent trophic levels plant dimensions of life history strategy primary metabolic type and life form are defined and discussed with respect to the waterâ energy topography dynamic of climatic variables the role of biogeography is given and classical approaches to species distributions and both antecedent and consequent variables within plants differentiated modelling frameworks are discussed the algorithmic modelling frameworks applied in plant systems are justified statistically and with reference to established models mechanisms of dispersing discrete distributes are covered in consideration of genetic programming techniques further analysis expanding discrete approaches through functional transformations is considered and detail of a gaussian process model is shown case study data of global locations is considered by means of discrete approaches of strategy and photosynthetic type and a continual approach of life form distribution algorithms for all processes and techniques are shown and graphical distributions made in illustration of the techniques synergy which may take place between the techniques is elaborated and flow diagrams of multiple benefits in pattern identification and further analysis are given recommendations for planting policies and policy implementation methods are covered in the final section which also gives further direction on which we can base investigations which allow rational truth of distributes to be maximised and hence modulation of future modelling frameworks value is provided in terms of empirical causeâ effect and combinatorial approaches allowing us to process information effectively structuring trophic levels and our own communitiesâ expansive needs,2017,0.051
AnnoSys—implementation of a generic annotation system for schema-based data using the example of biodiversity collection data,biological research collections holding billions of specimens world wide provide the most important baseline information for systematic biodiversity research increasingly specimen data records become available in virtual herbaria and data portals the traditional physical annotation procedure fails here so that an important pathway of research documentation and data quality control is broken in order to create an online annotation system we analysed modeled and adapted traditional specimen annotation workflows the annosys system accesses collection data from either conventional web resources or the biological collection access service biocase and accepts xml based data standards like abcd or darwincore it comprises a searchable annotation data repository a user interface and a subscription based message system we describe the main components of annosys and its current and planned interoperability with biodiversity data portals and networks details are given on the underlying architectural model which implements the w3c openannotation model and allows the adaptation of annosys to different problem domains advantages and disadvantages of different digital annotation and feedback approaches are discussed for the biodiversity domain annosys proposes best practice procedures for digital annotations of complex records database url https annosys bgbm fu berlin de annosys annosys,2017,0.043
An Indo-Pacific damselfish in the Gulf of Mexico: origin and mode of introduction,the indo west pacific iwp coral reef damselfish neopomacentrus cyanomos is well established across the southwest gulf of mexico swgomx comparisons of mtdna sequences of the swgomx population with those from conspecifics from 16 sites scattered across its native range show that the swgomx population is derived from two of four native lineages one from the north west pacific ocean the other from the northern indian ocean three hypotheses address how this species was introduced to the swgomx 1 aquarium release 2 borne by cargo ship and 3 carried by offshore petroleum platform petro platform the first is unlikely because this species rarely features in the aquarium trade and â œn cyanomosâ traded to the usa from the sole iwp source we are aware of are a misidentified congener n taeniurus the second hypothesis is unlikely because shipping has not been associated with the introduction of alien damselfishes there is little international shipping between the iwp and the swgomx and voyages between those areas would be lengthy and along environmentally unfavorable routes various lines of evidence support the third hypothesis i bio fouled petro platforms represent artificial reefs that can sustain large and diverse populations of tropical reef fishes including n cyanomos in the swgomx ii relocation of such platforms has been implicated in trans ocean introductions leading to establishment of non native populations of such fishes and iii genetic characteristics of the swgomx population indicate that it was established by a large and diverse group of founders drawn from the regions where many swgomx petro platforms originated,2017,0.714
Assessing the current and future biological control potential of Trichogramma ostriniae on its hosts Ostrinia furnacalis and Ostrinia nubilalis,background understanding interactions between biocontrol agents and their pest hosts under climate change should assist implementation of biocontrol strategies by identifying appropriate biocontrol agents for release or determining the optimal timing of releases species distribution models sdms are applied to evaluate the distributions of trichogramma ostriniae and its native host ostrinia furnacalis in southeastern asia and a non native host ostrinia nubilalis in a novel range north america using maxent and climex modelling approaches results both models led to similar predictions about the expected distribution of the two species in asia and emphasized likely mismatches between host and natural enemy trichogramma ostriniae was predicted to occur in the summer corn region of china with distribution limits linked to its sensitivity to cold seasonality of radiation and precipitation modelled ostrinia nubilalis distribution overlaps with the main corn production areas of northeastern united states and canada temporary seasonal suitable habitat was predicted across southeastern states as well climate change scenarios are predicted to favor t ostriniae over its hosts in northeastern china and north america conclusions the modelling approaches used here proved useful for assessing environmental factors linked to an egg parasitoid and its lepidopteran hosts and identifying areas potentially suitable for inundative releases,2017,0.594
Characterization of two polyvalent phages infecting Enterobacteriaceae,bacteriophages display remarkable genetic diversity and host specificity in this study we explore phages infecting bacterial strains of the enterobacteriaceae family because of their ability to infect related but distinct hosts we isolated and characterized two novel virulent phages sh6 and sh7 using a strain of shigella flexneri as host bacterium morphological and genomic analyses revealed that phage sh6 belongs to the t1virus genus of the siphoviridae family conversely phage sh7 was classified in the t4virus genus of the myoviridae family phage sh6 had a short latent period of 16 min and a burst size of 103 â 16 pfu infected cell while the phage sh7 latent period was 23 min with a much lower burst size of 26 â 5 pfu infected cell moreover phage sh6 was sensitive to acidic conditions ph 5 while phage sh7 was stable from ph 3 to 11 for 1 hour of the 35 bacterial strains tested sh6 infected its s flexneri host strain and 8 strains of e coli phage sh7 lysed additionally strains of e coli o157 h7 salmonella paratyphi and shigella dysenteriae the broader host ranges of these two phages as well as their microbiological properties suggest that they may be useful for controlling bacterial populations,2017,0.399
"Associating Occurrences with Genes, Phenotypes, and Environments through the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo)",over the last few decades the research practice in natural sciences has changed dramatically remote sensing rapid identification and molecular approaches allow us to efficiently monitor the changing world around us and understand the cause of those changes advances of digital genomic and information technologies enable natural science collections to provide novel discoveries and ask for new collection types and attributes while fostering the development of innovative approaches to face the urgent societal challenges natural science collections three billion specimens globally represent an unparalleled scientific asset they constitute a unique source of diverse data classes including genomic chemical morphological and geo spatial information despite existing successful examples of infrastructures aggregating and publishing specific data classes such as the global biodiversity information facility genbank or the encyclopedia of life traitbank the landscape remains fragmented with limited capacity to bring together this information in a systematic and robust manner the distributed system of scientific collections dissco represents a pan european initiative and the largest ever agreement of natural science museums to jointly address the fragmentation of european collections dissco is set to unify european natural science collections into a coherent new research infrastructure able to provide bio and geo diversity data at the scale form and precision required by a multi disciplinary user base at the heart of the technical implementation of dissco is the development of a cloud based non relational data store that links occurrence genomic chemical and trait data classes by robustly and unambiguously anchoring each data object back to the physical object by harmonising digitisation curation and publication processes and workflows across all its nodes dissco can populate and serve a knowledge graph for european natural science collections in this paper we will introduce the vision mission and objectives of dissco discuss the technical approach and touch upon the socio cultural and governance aspects supporting this large scale european endeavour,2017,0.039
Global Patterns of Mycorrhizal Distribution and Their Environmental Drivers,mycorrhizal symbiosis is an important driver of ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycling processes due to their wide distribution three types of mycorrhizal symbiosis arbuscular ecto and ericoid mycorrhizas arguably play a prominent role in controlling ecosystem functioning at global scale however our understanding of the nature and degree of their involvement in ecosystem processes worldwide is hindered by a lack of knowledge on global distribution patterns of mycorrhizal plants we review the state of the art of our data and knowledge with respect to global mycorrhizal distribution patterns present first maps of the registered occurrences of plant species that feature arbuscular ecto and ericoid mycorrhizas and provide recommendations for further improvement of our understanding of mycorrhizal geography and their environmental drivers,2017,0.208
Modelling the potential distribution of Betula utilis in the Himalaya,developing sustainable adaptation pathways under climate change conditions in mountain regions requires accurate predictions of treeline shifts and future distribution ranges of treeline species here we model for the first time the potential distribution of betula utilis a principal himalayan treeline species to provide a basis for the analysis of future range shifts our target species betula utilis is widespread at alpine treelines in the himalayan mountains the distribution range extends across the himalayan mountain range our objective is to model the potential distribution of b utilis in relation to current climate conditions we generated a dataset of 590 occurrence records and used 24 variables for ecological niche modelling we calibrated generalized linear models using the akaike information criterion aic and evaluated model performance using threshold independent auc area under the curve and threshold dependent tss true skill statistics characteristics as well as visual assessments of projected distribution maps we found two temperature related mean temperature of the wettest quarter temperature annual range and three precipitation related variables precipitation of the coldest quarter average precipitation of march april and may and precipitation seasonality to be useful for predicting the potential distribution of b utilis all models had high predictive power auc â 0 98 and tss â 0 89 the projected suitable area in the himalayan mountains varies considerably with most extensive distribution in the western and central himalayan region a substantial difference between potential and real distribution in the eastern himalaya points to decreasing competitiveness of b utilis under more oceanic conditions in the eastern part of the mountain system a comparison between the vegetation map of schweinfurth 1957 and our current predictions suggests that b utilis does not reach the upper elevational limit in vast areas of its potential distribution range due to anthropogenically caused treeline depressions this study underlines the significance of accuracies of current environmental niche models for species distribution modelling under climate change scenarios analysing and understanding the environmental factors driving the current distribution of b utilis is crucial for the prediction of future range shifts of b utilis and other treeline species and for deriving appropriate climate change adaptation strategies,2017,0.446
On specimen killing in the era of conservation crisis – A quantitative case for modernizing taxonomy and biodiversity inventories,background to the work for centuries taxonomy has relied on dead animal specimens a practice that persists today despite the emergence of innovative biodiversity assessment methods taxonomists and conservationists are engaged in vigorous discussions over the necessity of killing animals for specimen sampling but quantitative data on taxonomic trends and specimen sampling over time which could inform these debates are lacking methods we interrogated a long term research database documenting 2 723 land vertebrate and 419 invertebrate taxa from madagascar and their associated specimens conserved in the major natural history museums we further compared specimen collection and species description rates for the birds mammals and scorpions over the last two centuries to identify trends and links to taxon descriptions results we located 15 364 specimens documenting endemic mammals and 11 666 specimens documenting endemic birds collected between 1820 and 2010 most specimens were collected at the time of the mission zoologique franco anglo amã ricaine mzfaa in the 1930s and during the last two decades with major differences according to the groups considered the small mammal and bat collections date primarily from recent years and are paralleled by the description of new species lemur specimens were collected during the mzfaa but the descriptions of new taxa are recent with the type series limited to non killed specimens bird specimens particularly of non passerines are mainly from the time of the mzfaa the passerines have also been intensely collected during the last two decades the new material has been used to solve the phylogeny of the groups and only two new endemic taxa of passerine birds have been described over the last two decades conclusions our data show that specimen collection has been critical for advancing our understanding of the taxonomy of madagascarâ s biodiversity at the onset of zoological work in madagascar but less so in recent decades it is crucial to look for alternatives to avoid killing animals in the name of documenting life and encourage all efforts to share the information attached to historical and recent collections held in natural history museums in times of conservation crisis and the advancement in digital technologies and open source sharing it seems obsolete to kill animals in well known taxonomic groups for the sake of enriching natural history collections around the world,2017,0.971
"An integrated approach for the assessment of the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus global spatial distribution, and determination of the zones susceptible to the development of Zika virus",the zika virus one of the new epidemic diseases is reported to have affected millions of people in the past year the suitable climate conditions of the areas where zika virus has been reported especially in areas with a high population density are the main cause of the current outbreak and spread of the disease indeed the suitable climatic conditions of certain territories constitute perfect breading nest for the propagation and outbreak of worldwide diseases the main objective of this research is to analyze the global distribution and predicted areas of both mosquitoes ae aegypti and ae albopictus which are the main vectors of zika virus physical srtm and climatic variables worldclim were used to obtain the susceptibility maps based on the optimum conditions for the development of these mosquitoes the susceptibility model was developed using a species distribution model â correlative model namely the maximum entropy that used as input the spatial references of both vectors dryad digital repository the results show the most important classes of each independent variable used in assessing the presence of each species of mosquitoes and the areas susceptible to the presence of these vector species it turns out that ae aegypti has greater global dispersion than the ae albopictus specie although two common regions stand out as the most prone to the presence of both mosquito species tropical and subtropical zones the crossing of these areas of greater susceptibility with areas of greater population density e g india china se of usa and brazil shows some agreement and these areas stand out due to the presence of several records of zika virus healthmap project in this sense through the intersection of susceptibility and human exposure the areas with increased risk of development and spread of zika virus are pinpointed suggesting that there may be a new outbreak of this virus in these places if preventive measures are not adopted,2017,0.957
Design for ground beetle abundance and diversity sampling within the National Ecological Observatory Network,the national ecological observatory network neon will monitor ground beetle populations across a network of broadly distributed sites because beetles are prevalent in food webs are sensitive to abiotic factors and have an established role as indicator species of habitat and climatic shifts we describe the design of ground beetle population sampling in the context of neon s long term continental scale monitoring program emphasizing the sampling design priorities and collection methods freely available neon ground beetle data and associated field and laboratory samples will increase scientific understanding of how biological communities are responding to land use and climate change,2017,0.375
"The Exotic Slugs of the Genus Deroceras (Agriolimacidae) in Mexico: Morphological and Molecular Characterization, and New Data on Their Distribution",this study reports the current distribution in mexico of deroceras laeve mã ller 1774 and d invadens reise hutchinson schunack and schlitt 2011 both previously recorded and the first records of d reticulatum mã ller 1774 in this country the taxonomic identifications were made on the basis of morphology and dna sequences of a fragment of the cytochrome oxidase i gene a phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood was carried out in order to support the identification and to explore the association of mexican specimens d reticulatum and d invadens appear restricted to the central portion of the country while d laeve is widely distributed due to the invasive and pest character of these species it is important to know their distribution in the country and the possible risk to native fauna and crops,2017,0.52
What makes the Sino-Himalayan mountains the major diversity hotspots for pheasants?,aim the sino himalayas have higher species richness than adjacent regions making them a global biodiversity hotspot various mechanisms including ecological constraints energetic constraints diversification rate divrate variation time for speciation effect and multiple colonizations have been posited to explain this pattern we used pheasants aves phasianidae as a model group to test these hypotheses and to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that have generated the extraordinary diversity in these mountains location sino himalayas and adjacent regions taxon pheasants methods using distribution maps predicted by species distribution models sdms and a time calibrated phylogeny for pheasants we examined the relationships between species richness and predictors including net primary productivity npp niche diversity nichediv divrate evolutionary time evoltime and colonization frequency using pearson s correlations and structural equation modelling sem we reconstructed ancestral ranges at nodes and examined basal derived species patterns to reveal the mechanisms underlying species richness gradients in the sino himalayas results we found that ancestral pheasants originated in africa in the early oligocene 33 ma and then colonized the sino himalayan mountains and other regions in the sino himalayas species richness was strongly related to divrate npp nichediv and colonization frequency but weakly correlated with evoltime the direct effects of nichediv and divrate on richness were stronger than npp and evoltime npp indirectly influenced species richness via divrate but its effect on richness via nichediv was relatively weak main conclusions higher species diversity in the sino himalayas was generated by both ecological and evolutionary mechanisms an increase in available niches rapid diversifications and multiple colonizations was found to be key direct processes for the build up of the diversity hotspots of pheasants in the sino himalayan mountains productivity had an important but indirect effect on species richness which worked through increased divrate our study offers new insights on species accumulation in the sino himalayas and provides a useful model for understanding other biodiversity hotspots,2017,0.928
"Biocrust moss populations differ in growth rates, stress response, and microbial associates",aims a growing body of research supports the feasibility of biocrust rehabilitation identifying populations of key species that are amenable to cultivation and that are resilient in rehabilitation contexts would advance the efficacy of these technologies here we investigate the growth and stress response of the cosmopolitan biocrust moss syntrichia ruralis methods we sampled populations of s ruralis along a precipitation seasonality gradient from the colorado plateau ecoregion of the western united states we cultivated these populations in an experiment manipulating duration of hydration periods on a weekly cycle we then treated greenhouse grown materials with brief stressful watering events measuring how many events they could survive results all populations grew at an accelerated rate compared to growth in a natural setting at least doubling biomass in five months increasing duration of hydration periods led to more growth in all but one population volunteer biocrust algae and cyanobacteria developed during cultivation and differed among populations greenhouse grown mosses differed in their response to stressful watering with the most susceptible populations dying at half the number events compared to the most tolerant conclusions these findings argue for informed selection and deployment of syntrichia ruralis populations for soil rehabilitation,2017,0.617
Feasibility assessment for the classical biological control of Tamarix in Argentina,saltcedars are woody plants in the genus tamarix l caryophyllales tamaricaceae and are native to eurasia and africa several species have become invasive in the americas australia and south africa in argentina there are four species of tamarix distributed in arid semi arid and coastal areas of most provinces the taxonomic isolation of tamarix spp in argentina their widespread distribution negative impact to natural areas and lack of impact from existing natural enemies all indicate that tamarix is an ideal candidate for classical biological control in argentina biological control of tamarix spp has been rapid and highly successful in the usa after the introduction of four diorhabda spp coleoptera chrysomelidae biological control of tamarix spp in argentina could be implemented easily rapidly and at a low cost by utilizing the information developed in the usa,2017,0.718
The latitudinal diversity gradient in New World swallowtail butterflies is caused by contrasting patterns of out-of- and into-the-tropics dispersal,aim the aim was to determine processes driving the latitudinal diversity gradient ldg in new world swallowtail butterfly diversity we tested three mechanisms commonly invoked to explain the ldg ecological opportunity evolutionary rates and biogeographical history location new world and eurasia time period oligoceneâ present major taxa studied new world swallowtail butterfly clade papilio agehana alexanoria chilasa heraclides and pterourus methods we integrated data from the most complete current phylogeny of this clade with geographical distributions of each species inferred from ecological niche models enms we tested for correlation between breadth of available abiotic ecological niche space latitude and differential rates of diversification between tropical and non tropical lineages the clade s history of climatic and geographical occupancy was also reconstructed using both continuous ancestral character reconstructions and biogeographical history inferred under a dispersalâ extinctionâ cladogenesis model we considered both latitudinal and climatic definitions of tropicality in our reconstructions results there was no strong support for ecological opportunity or macroevolutionary processes as latitudinal diversity gradient drivers instead we recovered discordant patterns in phylogenetic reconstructions of latitudinal geographical range and suitable abiotic climate conditions heraclides are likely to have originated and diversified in climatically and latitudinally tropical environments before some lineages dispersed to temperate habitats the alexanoria chilasa pterourus clade is likely to have originated in climatically and latitudinally temperate habitat before dispersing and diversifying some lineages are likely to have dispersed into the latitudinal tropics via highland temperate analogue environments main conclusions the ldg in new world swallowtails results from complex interactions between ecological niche evolution and biogeographical history both out of the tropics and into the tropics processes have contributed to the ldg our results present an example where temperate zones appear to be a source instead of a sink for biodiversity our results emphasize the need to consider biogeographical history not only from the perspective of shifts in geographical space but also in terms of constraints enforced by ecological niche conservatism,2017,0.202
The Data Standard ABCD EFG - Access to Biological Collection Data Extended for Geosciences,the data schema abcd access to biological collection data version 2 06 is a standard for biological collection units including living and preserved specimen together with field observation data its extension efg extension for geosciences is suitable for sharing and publishing data related to paleontological mineralogical and petrological objects in addition to detailed object descriptions and collection events abcd efg provides fine grained data structures for information on stratigraphy chemical analyses and host rock composition the comprehensive efg was developed in 2006 since then it has been used by different initiatives including the publication of collection related data in domain specific and interdisciplinary portals such as gbif geocase gfbio and europeana the tdwg paleo interest group meeting 2017 will include a focus on the relationship between darwin core and abcd efg and following that theme this presentation will give an introduction to the current state of abcd efg its common use cases and an outlook towards the next version abcd 3 0 we expect that the abcd efg terms are suitable for embedding elements into the darwin core paleo context thus this talk will also initiate the discussion about the most important elements for further use cases from the paleobiological community,2017,0.277
"Specimen records of spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) by monthly census for 3 years in forest areas of Yakushima Island, Japan",background spiders arachnida araneae are a classic indicator taxon for evaluating the health of natural environments however studies of spidersâ responses to forest succession under natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes are lacking yakushima island in southwestern japan has a unique forest ecosystem and part of the island is designated as a world natural heritage site by unesco approximately 90 of yakushima is covered by forest including both plantations and natural forests new information we made an inventory of spiders on yakushima island by collecting specimens in five forests two plantations and three natural forests with malaise and window traps from 2006 to 2008 a total of 637 traps we collected 3487 specimens representing 31 families and 165 species or morphotypes including undescribed and unidentified species all specimens were preserved in 70 ethanol and all data were gathered into a darwin core archives as sample event data the data set is available from the gbif network http www gbif org dataset f851fd75 32b2 4a23 8046 9c8ae7013a3c because there have been no spider inventories based on such a systematic trapping survey in japan this data set provides new insight into the biodiversity on yakushima island,2017,0.525
The dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata) of Angola,prior to 2012 only 158 species of odonata were known from angola surveys in 2012 and 2013 added 76 species and two further additions in 2016 brought the national total to 236 species we provide a revised checklist with taxonomic notes and discuss the history of research the biogeography of the fauna and the potential for further discoveries the national total is likely to be above 300 species this would make angola one of the richest countries for odonata in africa the endemic species formerly classified in chlorocypha are transferred to platycypha,2017,0.8
Genomic characterization of African cultivated and wild Oryza species,the university of queensland in 2017 queensland alliance for agriculture and food innovation ii abstract rice is the most important crop in the world acting as the staple food for over half of the world s population it belongs to the oryza genus and has a wide genetic diversity of both wild and cultivated species with a substantial proportion of this diversity being found in africa in this thesis african cultivated and wild oryza species have been characterized using genomic tools with the goal of promoting their conservation and utilization a desk based study aimed at documenting the current state of conservation and utilization of african oryza genetic resources revealed that they remain under collected and hence underrepresented in germplasm collections moreover they are under characterized and therefore grossly underutilized in order to obtain maximum benefits from these resources it is imperative that they are collected efficiently conserved and optimally utilized efficient conservation and utilization of the oryza gene pool is however hindered by lack of conclusive consistent and well resolved phylogenetic and evolutionary relationships between the various cultivated and wild species this study therefore sought to define the genetic and evolutionary relationships between the various wild and cultivated african species that form part of the aa genome group this was done by reconstructing the phylogeny of oryza aa genome species by massive parallel sequencing of whole chloroplast genomes the analysis resulted in a well resolved and strongly supported phylogeny of the aa genome species showing strong genetic differentiation the clearly defined relationships between the various taxa provide a robust platform for supporting the conservation and utility of these species in an effort at promoting utility of these species their starch physicochemical properties and the functional diversity relating to these starch related traits were analyzed african rice was found to have some unique starch structure and properties among these being high amylose content which is higher than in asian rice amylose content is a key starch trait in rice the health benefits of high amylose foods are increasingly getting recognized african rice therefore seems to be a valuable genetic resource for breeding premium value genotypes with high amylose content the deployment of african rice genetic resources in rice improvement is however,2017,0.94
The native bee fauna of the Palouse Prairie (Hymenoptera: Apoidea),while synoptic collections provide data on the range and general composition of the north american bee fauna bee communities associated with specific habitats are largely uncharacterized this report describes the community of native bees currently found in remnant fragments of the palouse prairie of northern idaho and southeastern washington state native bees were collected using standardized collection techniques including blue vane traps colored pan traps and aerial netting more than 13 000 individuals were collected representing at least 174 species and 36 morphospecies in 29 genera these data provide the most thorough characterization of the bee fauna of this vulnerable ecosystem as well as community level information on bee species of unknown conservation status these results are relevant to regional conservation efforts and more broadly are representative of conditions in fragmented grasslands surrounded by intense agriculture a common global land use pattern of conservation concern,2017,0.639
New discovery of Harpiocephalus harpia in Hunan province and its potential distribution area in China,in august 2015 through harp traps forest habitated bat was collected from yanlin county hunan province three specimens are medium sized with distinct tubed nostrils and thick red brown pelages the hind legs wing membrane and uropatagium membrane are covered with fine hair the forearm ranges from 47 8 mm to 52 2 mm while the greatest skull length is 20 66 22 21 mm although our sampling is limited the males are smaller than the female which is consistent with pervious conclusion of sexual dimorphism they were identified as harpiocephalus harpia a new chiropteran record in hunan province china meanwhile maxent ecological model was used to predict the potential distribution of h harpia within china our results indicate that low temperature is a key limiting factor that influences its distribution and coastal area of south china is its main distribution area furthermore the predicted distribution within hainan province needs to be further verified in future,2017,0.407
"Future marine ecosystem drivers, biodiversity, and fisheries maximum catch potential in Pacific Island countries and territories under climate change",the increase in anthropogenic co2 emissions over the last century has modified oceanic conditions affecting marine ecosystems and the goods and services that they provide to society pacific island countries and territories are highly vulnerable to these changes because of their strong dependence on ocean resources high level of exposure to climate effects and low adaptive capacity projections of mid to late 21st century changes in sea surface temperature sst dissolved oxygen ph and net primary productivity npp were synthesized across the tropical western pacific under strong climate mitigation and business as usual scenarios these projections were used to model impacts on marine biodiversity and potential fisheries catches results were consistent across three climate models indicating that sst will rise by â 3 â c surface dissolved oxygen will decline by â 0 01 ml l∠1 ph will drop by â 0 3 and npp will decrease by 0 5 g m∠2 d∠1 across much of the region by 2100 under the business as usual scenario these changes were associated with rates of local species extinction of 50 in many regions as fishes and invertebrates decreased in abundance or migrated to regions with conditions more suitable to their bio climate envelope maximum potential catch mcp was projected to decrease by 50 across many areas with the largest impacts in the western pacific warm pool climate change scenarios that included strong mitigation resulted in substantial reductions of mcp losses with the area where mcp losses exceeded 50 reduced from 74 4 of the region under business as usual to 36 0 of the region under the strong mitigation scenario,2017,0.05
The niche and phylogeography of a passerine reveal the history of biological diversification between the Andean and the Atlantic forests,the atlantic forest is separated from the andean tropical forest by dry and open vegetation biomes chaco and cerrado despite this isolation both rainforests share closely related lineages which suggest a past connection this connection could have been important for forest taxa evolution in this study we used the saffron billed sparrow arremon flavirostris as a model to evaluate whether the andean and the atlantic forests act as a refugia system as well as to test for a history of biogeographic connection between them in addition we evaluated the molecular systematic of intraspecific lineages of the studied species we modeled the current and past distribution of a flavirostris performed phylogeographic analyses based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes and used approximate bayesian computation abc analyses to test for biogeographic scenarios the major phylogeographic disjunction within a flavirostris was found between the andean and the atlantic forests with a divergence that occurred during the mid pleistocene our paleodistribution models indicated a connection between these forest domains in different periods and through both the chaco and cerrado additionally the phylogeographic and abc analyses supported that the cerrado was the main route of connection between these rainforests but without giving decisive evidence against a chaco connection our study with a flavirostris suggest that the biodiversity of the andean and of the atlantic forests could have been impacted and perhaps enriched by cycles of connections through the cerrado and chaco this recurrent cycle of connection between the andean and the atlantic forest could have been important for the evolution of neotropical forest taxa in addition we discussed taxonomic implications of the results and proposed to split the studied taxon into two full species,2017,0.584
Determining conservation priority areas for Palearctic passerine migrant birds in sub-Saharan Africa,migratory bird species breeding in the palearctic and overwintering in sub saharan africa face multiple conservation challenges as a result many of these species have declined in recent decades some dramatically we therefore used the best available database for the distribution of 68 passerine migrants in sub saharan africa to determine priority regions for their conservation after modeling each speciesâ distribution using biomod software we entered the resulting species distributions at a 1â ã 1â grid resolution into marxan software we then used several different selection procedures that varied the boundary length modifier species penalty factor and the inclusion of grid cells with high human footprint and with protected areas while results differed between selection procedures four main regions were regularly selected 1 one centered on southern mali 2 one including eritrea central sudan and northern ethiopia 3 one encompassing southwestern kenya and much of tanzania and uganda and 4 one including much of zimbabwe and southwestern zambia we recommend that these four regions become priority regions for research and conservation efforts for the bird species considered in this study,2017,0.809
DNA barcoding reveals widespread occurrence of Leptidea juvernica (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) in southern Finland,dna barcoding was used to identify 54 specimens of butterfly genus leptidea collected from various parts of southern finland in 2011 2013 results reveal the presence of both the widespread leptidea sinapis and its cryptic congener l juvernica from several locations throughout the southern finland our sampling also reveals different habitat preferences between these species in finland specimens collected from open disturbed habitats were mainly identified as l juvernica whereas specimens from forest habitats were all found to represent l sinapis a morphometric analysis revealed that l juvernica and l sinapis hardly differ by their fore wing shape although males and females seem to differ from each other our attempts to dna barcode selected museum specimens failed and we were not able to verify historical presence of l juvernica in finland the recently increased observations of leptidea butterflies in large numbers in unusually open habitats across the southern finland together with our findings suggests ongoing rapid expansion of l juvernica in finland,2017,0.838
VAT: A Scientific Toolbox for Interactive Geodata Exploration,data driven research requires interactive systems supporting fast and intuitive data exploration an important component is the user interface that facilitates this process in biodiversity research data is commonly of spatio temporal nature this poses unique opportunities for visual analytics approaches in this paper we present the core concepts of the web based front end of our vat visualization analysis and transformation system a distributed geo processing application we present the results of two user studies and highlight unique features among others for the management of time and the generalization of data,2017,0.1
New record of Japanese snake blenny Xiphasia matsubarai (Perciformes: Blenniidae) from South China Sea,specimens belonging to the family blenniidae were collected in a fishery resource investigation from the coastal waters of xisha islands and hainan island south china sea in 2016 combining morphological results with sequence analysis we identified one specimen as xiphasia matsubarai okada suzuki 1952 this represents a new record in the south china sea in morphology the specimen has the following traits body elongated eel like or ribbon like in shape flanks medium flat the head small bluntly rounded anteriorly and without a moustache eyes is slightly smaller on upper lateral position of head which is about equal to 1 5 of the length of the head body without scales lateral line has been degraded both sides of the upper and lower jaws with a canine gill is opening at the top of the pectoral fin base approximately equal to the length of eye diameter dorsal fin xi 96 pectoral fin 10 anal fin ii 95 head and body grey brown including 26 dark grey brown bands abdomen and lower operculum yellowish grey and colour lighter and dorsal base long with dark grey origin of dorsal is located over the anterior margin of pupil black blotch on dorsal fin between 8th and 10th dorsal spine anal and caudal fins dark grey pectoral and ventral fins pale yellow sequence analysis of cytochrome oxidase subunit i gene coi strongly supports the identity of the specimen as x matsubarai,2017,0.465
Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science,mobile apps and web based platforms are increasingly used in citizen science projects while extensive research has been done in multiple areas of studies from human computer interaction to public engagement in science we are not aware of a collection of recommendations specific for citizen science that provides support and advice for planning design and data management of mobile apps and platforms that will assist learning from best practice and successful implementations in two workshops citizen science practitioners with experience in mobile application and web platform development and implementation came together to analyse discuss and define recommendations for the initiators of technology based citizen science projects many of the recommendations produced during the two workshops are applicable to non mobile citizen science project therefore we propose to closely connect the results presented here with ecsaâ s ten principles of citizen science,2017,0.212
Improving nomenclatural consistency: a decade of experience in the World Register of Marine Species,the world register of marine species worms has been established for a decade the early history of the database involved compilation of existing global and regional species registers this aggregation combined with changes to data types and the changing needs of worms users has resulted in an evolution of data entry consistency over time with the task of aggregating the accepted species names for all marine species approaching completion our focus has shifted to improving the consistency and quality of data held while keeping pace with the addition of 2000 new marine species described annually this paper defines priorities and longer term aims that promote standardisation within and interoperability among biodiversity databases provides editors with further information on how to input nomenclatural data in a standardised way and clarifies for users of worms how and why names are represented as they are we 1 explain the categories of names included 2 list standard reasons used to explain why a name is considered â unacceptedâ or â uncertainâ 3 present and explain the more difficult situations encountered 4 describe categories of sources and notes linked to a taxon and 5 recommend how type material type locality and environmental information should be entered,2017,0.75
Canadensys and GBIF France: collaboration through the GBIF network to help launch the new Canadensys explorer,with over 780 million records the global biodiversity information facility gbif is an international consortium whose goal is to collect data on biodiversity and make them available free and online to everyone canadensys http www canadensys net is a network of researchers collectors curators information technologists students and educators that shares data on the occurrence and taxonomic identity of plants animals and fungi in canada it is an associate participant of gbif the french node of gbif gbif france http www gbif fr among other objectives provides and helps french data publishers to connect their data through the gbif network since 2014 gbif france s technical team has installed and configured their data portal using atlas of living australia ala tools one of the main missions of gbif is to assist nodes in creating global and regional collaborations in order to transfer knowledge on tools and methods which help providers enhance their data and upload them into the gbif network to achieve this gbif initiated the capacity enhancement support program cesp http www gbif org programme capacity support the mentoring activity presented in this poster is one of the five types of activities supported by cesp the amount of data served through canadensys has increased dramatically during the past years the consequence is that its current system is not sufficiently powerful to effectively treat this increased volume of data in order to meet this requirement canadensys has begun to configure and install its system based on the ala framework through this cesp mentoring activity gbif france is helping canadensys launch its own data portal by providing assistance on technical specifications such as server configuration and customization in addition to this main objective gbif france and canadensys aim to extend the ala community and include french speaking countries especially in africa and the caribbean in fact projects with the aforementioned countries have already been proposed through cesp and other calls efforts to improve the ala integration documentation and provide french translations are underway in this poster canadensys presents its new system and its functionalities we also describe the collaboration between gbif france and canadensys and the improvements made on the documentation which will facilitate installation of national or regional data portals in french speaking countries,2017,0.083
"The pre-Columbian introduction and dispersal of Algarrobo (Prosopis, Section Algarobia) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile",archaeological and palaeoecological studies throughout the americas have documented widespread landscape and environmental transformation during the pre columbian era the highly dynamic formative or neolithic period in northern chile ca 3700â 1550 yr bp brought about the local establishment of agriculture introduction of new crops maize quinoa manioc beans etc along with a major population increase new emergent villages and technological innovations even trees such as the algarrobos prosopis section algarobia may have been part of this transformation here we provide evidence that these species were not native to the atacama desert of chile 18â 27â s appearing only in the late holocene and most likely due to human actions we assembled a database composed of 41 taxon specific ams radiocarbon dates from archaeobotanical and palaeoecological records rodent middens leaf litter deposits as well an extensive bibliographical review comprising archaeobotanical paleoecological phylogenetic and taxonomic data to evaluate the chronology of introduction and dispersal of these trees although algarrobos could have appeared as early as 4200 yr bp in northernmost chile they only became common throughout the atacama over a thousand years later during and after the formative period cultural and natural factors likely contributed to its spread and consolidation as a major silvicultural resource,2017,0.234
Open biological and ecological data for tuna and tuna-like species: The time has come!,we describe the methodological approach developed to collect and manage a large range of biological and ecological data for large pelagic species sampled throughout several routine monitoring and research programs conducted in the indian ocean in the last decades to cover the large habitats of occurrence of tuna and tuna like species collaboration with fishermen and processing factories was instrumental in fish sampling we propose a minimum set of standard variables to be collected to describe and keep track of the fishing environment in industrial fisheries information from logbooks and traceability of tuna and tuna like species through the storage process is key to fully represent the spatio temporal uncertainty associated with the capture of each fish morphometric measurements and data retrieved from specific analysis are hosted in a relational database in a way that allows for any type of measure to be added without modifying the database design and structure standard code lists and metadata are used to describe the data managed in the database which facilitates their visibility and diffusion we argue that the use of standard generic well described sampling and analytical protocols combined with standard code lists is key for sharing and merging data sets at the scales of interest of tuna and tuna like species the comprehensive description of the methods used to collect and produce biological and ecological data requires interactions with computer scientists to make the most of data that are costly and mostly financed by public funds,2017,0.585
DNA reference libraries of French Guianese mosquitoes for barcoding and metabarcoding,the mosquito family diptera culicidae constitutes the most medically important group of arthropods because certain species are vectors of human pathogens in some parts of the world the diversity is so high that the accurate delimitation and or identification of species is challenging a dna based identification system for all animals has been proposed the so called dna barcoding approach in this study our objectives were i to establish dna barcode libraries for the mosquitoes of french guiana based on the coi and the 16s markers ii to compare distance based and tree based methods of species delimitation to traditional taxonomy and iii to evaluate the accuracy of each marker in identifying specimens a total of 266 specimens belonging to 75 morphologically identified species or morphospecies were analyzed allowing us to delimit 86 dna clusters with only 21 of them already present in the bold database we thus provide a substantial contribution to the global mosquito barcoding initiative our results confirm that dna barcodes can be successfully used to delimit and identify mosquito species with only a few cases where the marker could not distinguish closely related species our results also validate the presence of new species identified based on morphology plus potential cases of cryptic species we found that both coi and 16s markers performed very well with successful identifications at the species level of up to 98 for coi and 97 for 16s when compared to traditional taxonomy this shows great potential for the use of metabarcoding for vector monitoring and eco epidemiological studies,2017,0.963
Species distribution modeling for wildlife management: Ornamental butterflies in México,butterflies are biotic natural resources that have an economic value in different countries because of their aesthetic features the objective of this paper was to estimate the geographic distribution of 17 species considered of ornamental importance in mã xico presence data was compiled from specialized sources and public databases distribution maps were generated for each species with maxent using predictor variables related to temperature and precipitation a spatial similarity and species diversity analysis was applied to group the species based on their geographic distribution the distribution models were considered appropriate based on the area under the curve which ranged from 0 75 to 0 94 computed with independent data three geographic groups were identified the first group had the largest coverage of national area and comprised the species pyrisitia proterpia 59 danaus gilippus 70 and zerene cesonia 72 the second group ranged in coverage from 23 archaeoprepona demophon to 50 anteos maerula while the third group had the smallest coverage ranging from 17 to 40 overall the species diversity presents a latitudinal gradient increasing from the north to the southern neotropical part of mã xico states with the highest species potential are veracruz tabasco colima michoacã n guerrero chiapas oaxaca and most of the yucatan peninsula the application of these results to use butterflies to make souvenirs and as components of ecotourism is discussed,2017,0.938
Prioritisation of native legume species for further evaluation as potential forage crops in water-limited agricultural systems in South Africa,in the face of climate change identification of forage species suitable for dryland farming under low rainfall conditions in south africa is needed currently there are only a limited number of forage species suitable for dryland farming under such conditions the objective of this study was to identify and prioritise native legume species that could potentially be used in dryland farming systems in water limited agro ecosystems in south africa using a combination of ecological niche modelling techniques plant functional traits and indigenous knowledge 18 perennial herbaceous or stem woody legume species were prioritised for further evaluation as potential fodder species within water limited agricultural areas these species will be evaluated further for their forage quality and their ability to survive and produce enough biomass under water limitation and poor edaphic conditions,2017,0.519
"Parmotrema perforatum new to Canada from Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site in Nova Scotia, Canada",parmotrema perforatum is a large macrolichen that is common in southeastern north america we report the first canadian records from kejimkujik national park and national historic site in nova scotia canada the taxon was located during surveys of the nationally rare atlantic coastal plain habitat in southern nova scotia where many disjunct species of vascular plants bryophytes and other lichens reach their northern limit in eastern north america,2017,0.506
The rediscovery of Ipomoea macedoi (Convolvulaceae),a new population of ipomoea macedoi a critically endangered species from brazil was found in chapada do apodi rio grande do norte state the species is recognized by its large distinctly cordate outer sepals a detailed description comments on its distribution and conservation a taxonomic comparison photographs and a line drawing are provided,2017,0.669
Biocache-store: Command-Line Interface tool for managing occurrence records,the atlas of living australia ala https www ala org au is a collaborative open infrastructure for sharing biodiversity data the software and tools are publicly available for reuse and customization https github com atlasoflivingaustralia gbif sweden hosted at the swedish museum of natural history is in the process of deploying the swedish data portal bioatlas sweden https bioatlas se adopting the components from ala gbif sweden serves over 66 million occurrence records and is one of the biggest contributors to the gbif network the requirement for managing of this volume of data led to implementation of the components from ala in the swedish data portal this presentation provides a technical overview of one of the tools from ala the biocache store the functionalities for loading sampling processing and indexing of occurrence records using the command line interface tool will be covered in depth additional functionalities to support outliers detection duplicate detection and identifying extra limital outliers based on authoritative distribution polygons for taxa shall be demonstrated following the demonstration there will be time to explore the features of the presented tools,2017,0.218
Comparison of four modeling tools for the prediction of potential distribution for non-indigenous weeds in the United States,this study compares four models for predicting the potential distribution of non indigenous weed species in the conterminous u s the comparison focused on evaluating modeling tools and protocols as currently used for weed risk assessment or for predicting the potential distribution of invasive weeds we used six weed species three highly invasive and three less invasive non indigenous species that have been established in the u s for more than 75 years the experiment involved providing non u s location data to users familiar with one of the four evaluated techniques who then developed predictive models that were applied to the united states without knowing the identity of the species or its u s distribution we compared a simple gis climate matching technique known as proto3 a simple climate matching tool climex match climates the correlative model maxent and a process model known as the thornley transport resistance ttr model two experienced users ran each modeling tool except ttr which had one user models were trained with global species distribution data excluding any u s data and then were evaluated using the current known u s distribution the influence of weed species identity and modeling tool on prevalence and sensitivity effects was compared using a generalized linear mixed model each modeling tool itself had a low statistical significance while weed species alone accounted for 69 1 and 48 5 of the variance for prevalence and sensitivity respectively these results suggest that simple modeling tools might perform as well as complex ones in the case of predicting potential distribution for a weed not yet present in the united states considerations of model accuracy should also be balanced with those of reproducibility and ease of use more important than the choice of modeling tool is the construction of robust protocols and testing both new and experienced users under blind test conditions that approximate operational conditions,2017,0.772
The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga,we undertook a comprehensive critical review of literature concerning the distribution conservation status and taxonomy of species of mammals endemic to the cerrado and the caatinga the two largest biomes of the south american dry diagonal we present species accounts and lists of species which we built with criteria that in our opinion yielded results with increased scientific rigor relative to previously published lists â e g excluding nominal taxa whose statuses as species have been claimed only on the basis of unpublished data incomplete taxonomic work or weak evidence for various taxa we provided arguments regarding species distributions conservation and taxonomic statuses previously lacking in the literature two major findings are worth highlighting first we unveil the existence of a group of species endemic to both the cerrado and the caatinga i e present in both biomes and absent in all other biomes from the biogeographic point of view this group herein referred to as caatinga cerrado endemics deserves attention as a unit â just as in case of the caatinga only and the cerrado only endemics we present preliminary hypotheses on the origin of these three endemic faunas cerrado only caatinga only and caatinga cerrado endemics secondly we discovered that a substantial portion of the endemic mammalian faunas of the caatinga and the cerrado faces risks of extinction that are unrecognized in the highly influential red list of threatened species published by the international union for conservation of nature iucn â œdata deficientâ is a category that misrepresents the real risks of extinction of these species considering that a some of these species are known only from a handful of specimens collected in a single or a few localities long ago b the cerrado and the caatinga have been sufficiently sampled to guarantee collection of additional specimens of these species if they were abundant c natural habitats of the cerrado and the caatinga have been substantially altered or lost in recent decades failures either in the design of the iucn criteria or in their application to assign categories of extinction risks represent an additional important threat to these endemic faunas because their real risks of extinctions become hidden it is imperative to correct this situation particularly considering that these species are associated to habitats that are experiencing fast transformation into areas for agriculture at an unbearable cost for biodiversity,2017,0.988
A review of the emergent ecosystem of collaborative geospatial tools for addressing environmental challenges,to solve current environmental challenges such as biodiversity loss climate change and rapid conversion of natural areas due to urbanization and agricultural expansion researchers are increasingly leveraging large multi scale multi temporal and multi dimensional geospatial data in response a rapidly expanding array of collaborative geospatial tools is being developed to help collaborators share data code and results successful navigation of these tools requires users to understand their strengths synergies and weaknesses in this paper we identify the key components of a collaborative spatial data science workflow to develop a framework for evaluating the various functional aspects of collaborative geospatial tools using this framework we then score thirty one existing collaborative geospatial tools and apply a cluster analysis to create a typology of these tools we present this typology as a map of the emergent ecosystem and functional niches of collaborative geospatial tools we identify three primary clusters of tools composed of eight secondary clusters across which divergence is driven by required infrastructure and user involvement overall our results highlight how environmental collaborations have benefitted from the use of these tools and propose key areas of future tool development for continued support of collaborative geospatial efforts,2017,0.047
Managing data quality in GBIF: status and plans,the data quality topic is getting some traction within the biodiversity community as a data aggregator and one of the primary source for biodiversity data gbif needs to adapt enhance and expand its current data quality activities for users unfamiliar with nature and characteristics of the globally aggregated data data quality remains one of the major concerns and the barriers for use for expert users data modifications to ensure fitness for use remain a time and effort consuming activity data quality and credit should be the primary concerns of data publishers worldwide but the practices vary the presentation will cover the current state of the gbif parsing and interpretation with a focus on the current data quality flags that are applied and on how to make use of data quality flags in addition the recent development on the gbif data validator enables a dataset to be parsed and interpreted before its publication online by using data validator some errors and enhancement possibilities can be detected and possibly fixed before the publication of the data through gbif org major effort has been put into data quality documentation and solutions over the last years among different aggregators institutions and contributors within the community based on the contributions from tdwg biodiversity data quality bdq interest group especially from task group 2 data quality tests and assertions as well as the implementations available in the biodiversity informatics community we will present an initial plan to merge different informatic code bases together in order to make it available to the community into a more lightweight form,2017,0.224
"A giant squid (Architeuthis dux) off Reunion Island, western Indian Ocean: the greatest giant ever?",a freshly dead individual of the giant squid architeuthis dux presumably mutilated by a predator of bigger or comparable size is reported from the south western indian ocean in proximity to reunion island the species was identified from body and beak morphology and validated genetically the dorsal mantle length dml estimated from beak measurements lower rostral length lrl varied between 2153 and 3060 mm depending on the allometric equation used the architeuthis dux individual described here is the biggest giant squid ever reported for the region,2017,0.474
DATASETS FOR: Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Birds of India: Characterizing Gaps in Time and Space,this dataset is derived from data originally provided by ebird processed and cleaned and refined as described in the paper the full ebird content has been distilled down to species name latitude longitude and time this latter as year month day,2017,0.349
Proposed Extension to Darwin Core for People and their Roles in the Curation of Physical and Digital Objects,the global biodiversity information facility s 2017 2021 implementation plan includes an item with a scheduled start in 2017 to develop mechanisms to support and reflect the skills expertise and experience of individual and organizational contributions to their network this includes revision of their identity management system and integration of open researcher and contributor ids orcid likewise the joint tdwg research data alliance interest group on metadata standards for attribution of physical and digital collection stewardship seeks to develop metadata standards for attributing curatorial actions here i propose a lightweight extension to darwin core to accommodate new terms for agent identifiers and their roles in the curation of physical and digital objects in parallel i propose shared mechanisms and codebases to help parse and disambiguate agent names in the existing darwin core terms recordedby identifiedby and scientificnameauthorship the solutions to deal with legacy data must fit within the biodiversity data quality interest group s recently proposed conceptual framework and be made available to individual museums and national and international aggregators of biodiversity data a case study using occurrence data from the canadensys network will reveal the challenges in reconciling people names and will uncover exciting opportunities for engagement when people are shown the impact they have on their research and collections communities,2017,0.074
"New species of Callichromatini Swainson, 1840. (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae). New Cerambycidae from Vietnam. Part 6",three new species of cerambycidae callichromatini from vietnam are described aphrodisium lingafelteri sp nov mimochelidonium vietnamicum sp nov and polyzonus striatopolyzonus tonkinensis sp nov the genus mimochelidonium bentanachs drouin is recorded as new for the fauna of vietnam,2017,0.569
Aridity drove the evolution of extreme embolism resistance and the radiation of conifer genus Callitris,xylem vulnerability to embolism is emerging as a major factor in drought induced tree mortality events across the globe however we lack understanding of how and to what extent climate has shaped vascular properties or functions we investigated the evolution of xylem hydraulic function and diversification patterns in australia s most successful gymnosperm clade callitris the world s most drought resistant conifers for all 23 species in this group we measured embolism resistance p50 xylem specific hydraulic conductivity ks wood density and tracheary element size from natural populations we investigated whether hydraulic traits variation linked with climate and the diversification of this clade using a time calibrated phylogeny embolism resistance varied widely across the callitris clade p50 ∠3 8 to ∠18 8 mpa and was significantly related to water scarcity as was tracheid diameter we found no evidence of a safety efficiency tradeoff ks and wood density were not related to rainfall callitris diversification coincides with the onset of aridity in australia since the early oligocene our results highlight the evolutionary lability of xylem traits with climate and the leading role of aridity in the diversification of conifers the uncoupling of safety from other xylem functions allowed callitris to evolve extreme embolism resistance and diversify into xeric environments,2017,0.153
The collection of Bathynellacea specimens of MNCN (CSIC) Madrid: microscope slices and DNA extract,this is the first published database of a bathynellacea chappuis 1915 collection of slices and dna extracts it includes all data of bathynellaceans crustacea syncarida collected in the last 48 years 1968 to 2016 on the iberian peninsula and balearic islands studied since 1984 it also includes specimens studied across many countries of europe portugal romania france italy slovenia bulgaria and england as well as some specimens obtained from samples of north america montana washington alaska and texas south america brazil chile and argentina asia china thailand vietnam mongolia and india africa morocco and chad and australia new south wales â nsw and queensland the samples come from groundwater caves springs wells and hyporrheic habitat associated with rivers obtained from both sampling campaigns and occasional sampling efforts the data set includes 3399 records 2657 slices and 742 dna extracts corresponding to three families parabathynellidae noodt 1965 leptobathynellidae noodt 1965 and bathynellidae grobben 1905 of the order bathynellacea the existence of three families is accepted but this is a controversial issue and here is not the appropriate context to address this problem 52 genera and 92 species formally described in addition to 30 taxa under study and thus still unpublished this represents more than half of all the genera known worldwide 80 and almost one third of the species currently known in the world 329 which increases every year this dataset contains especially relevant collection that includes holotypes and type series of 43 new species of bathynellacea 33 from the parabathynellidae and ten from the bathynellidae described by ana i camacho aic hereinafter eleven of these are the type species for new genera described from all around the world ten belonging to the parabathynellidae and one from the bathynellidae as previously mentioned these new species come from all continents although 26 of them are from the iberian peninsula the most important feature of this collection is that it has been created and reviewed by a specialist of the group aic and each specimen regardless of its shape either permanent slices or dna extracts includes taxonomic geographical and authorship information the specialist has been involved in all stages of the process from field sampling to the digitization of the results we are now presenting and has worked in close collaboration with the curators responsible for the different collections involved in this project,2017,0.916
Geospatial Informatics Key to Recovering and Sharing Historical Ecological Data for Modern Use,many scientific disciplines need to locate digitize and integrate the collections of historical ecological data that often remain hidden in paper archives synthesizing historical and contemporary ecological data with ecosystem models can help researchers understand how species communities and landscapes are changing across space and time since these data are often stored in multiple collections and in various formats data integration can be challenging this paper presents a case study of the digitization of a large historical vegetation survey i e the wieslander vegetation type mapping vtm project in california which highlights the importance of recovering and sharing such datasets the protocol developed to digitize georeference visualize and share these data is founded in geospatial concepts and the vtm project showcases the increasingly important role of geospatial experts in the fields of ecology history and other sciences these methods are flexible transferable and broadly applicable to other fields,2017,0.224
Non-native marine species in north-west Europe: Developing an approach to assess future spread using regional downscaled climate projections,1 climate change can affect the survival colonization and establishment of non native species many non native species common in europe are spreading northwards as seawater temperatures increase the similarity of climatic conditions between source and recipient areas is assumed to influence the establishment of such species however in a changing climate those conditions are difficult to predict 2 a risk assessment methodology has been applied to identify non native species with proven invasive qualities that have not yet arrived in north west europe but which could become problematic in the future those species with the highest potential to become established or be problematic have been taken forward as well as some that may be economically beneficial for species distribution modelling to determine future potential habitat distributions under projected climate change 3 in the past species distribution models have usually made use of low resolution global environmental datasets here to increase the local resolution of the distribution models downscaled shelf seas climate change model outputs for north west europe were nested within global outputs in this way the distribution model could be trained using the global species presence data including the species native locations and then projected using more comprehensive shelf seas data to understand habitat suitability in a potential recipient area 4 distribution modelling found that habitat suitability will generally increase further north for those species with the highest potential to become established or problematic most of these are known to be species with potentially serious consequences for conservation with caution a small number of species may present an opportunity for the fishing industry or aquaculture the ability to provide potential future distributions could be valuable in prioritizing species for monitoring or eradication programmes increasing the chances of identifying problem species early this is particularly important for vulnerable infrastructure or protected or threatened ecosystems,2017,0.989
Using coarse-scale species distribution data to predict extinction risk in plants,aim less than 6 of the worlds described plant species have been assessed on the iucn red list leaving many species invisible to conservation prioritization large scale red list assessment of plant species is a challenge as most speciesâ ranges have only been resolved to a coarse scale as geographic distribution is a key assessment criterion on the iucn red list we evaluate the use of coarse scale distribution data in predictive models to assess the global scale and drivers of extinction risk in an economically important plant group the bulbous monocotyledons location global methods using coarse scale species distribution data we train a machine learning model on biological and environmental variables for 148 species assessed on the iucn red list in order to identify correlates of extinction risk we predict the extinction risk of 6439 â bulbous monocotâ species with the best of 13 models and map our predictions to identify potential hotspots of threat results our model achieved 91 classification accuracy with 88 of threatened species and 93 of non threatened species accurately predicted the model predicted 35 of bulbous monocots presently â not evaluatedâ under iucn criteria to be threatened and human impacts were a key correlate of threat spatial analysis identified some hotspots of threat where no bulbous monocots are yet on the iucn red list for example central chile main conclusions this is the first time a machine learning model has been used to determine extinction risk at a global scale in a species rich plant group as coarse scale distribution data exist for many plant groups our methods can be replicated to provide extinction risk predictions across the plant kingdom our approach can be used as a low cost prioritization tool for targeting field based assessments,2017,0.534
Comparative population genetics of two dominant plant species of high Andean wetlands reveals complex evolutionary histories and conservation perspectives in Chile’s Norte Chico,high andean wetlands are naturally fragmented ecosystems that are impacted by anthropogenic activities although they constitute important reservoirs of biodiversity and ecosystem service providers many aspects of their ecology are still unknown in this study we investigated the population genetic structure of two dominant and highly interactive plant species of high altitude wetlands patosia clandestina juncaceae and carex gayana cyperaceae in 21 high andean wetlands of chileâ s norte chico using rbcl gene sequences and aflp markers we found that both species displayed low levels of within wetland genetic diversity high inter population genetic differentiation and spatially dependent genetic variation arising from isolation by distance the distance at which populations become genetically independent was of the same order of magnitude in both species 125â 175 km despite these similarities idiosyncratic spatial patterns were detected c gayana in the three most northeastern wetlands demonstrated marked differences relative to the rest of the populations with the latter group following a latitudinal stepping stone pattern in p clandestina a genetic barrier was found to divide the northern and southern populations into two balanced groups and spatial genetic variation was consistent with a hierarchical island model the data indicate that each of the two species likely responded to different geological and ecological events resulting in the definition of unique evolutionarily significant units in both these results suggest that the implementation of global conservation programs at regional scales would likely result in the loss of important components of biodiversity in these ecosystems and underscore the need for caution in designing effective conservation strategies,2017,0.923
Zoology and Animal Sciences Information Literacy,the study of zoology and animal sciences encompasses a broad range of subdisciplines that includes genetics natural history and everything in between like the vastness of the subject matter so too are the number of information resources that make up the body of zoological literature this chapter identifies the core databases in this discipline and provides a selected listing of encyclopedias reference books journals data repositories grey literature and open access resources it describes techniques for teaching information literacy skills to undergraduate and graduate zoology students along with sources for finding additional material on information literacy in the life sciences,2017,0.336
An Online Multi-Access Identification Key to the Propagules of Selected Biosecurity-Relevant Asteraceae (Daisy or Sunflower Family),exotic weed propagules seeds or fruits often contaminate goods intended for import into australia biosecurity officers must identify such propagules to manage risks prevent incursions and decide on potentially costly actions such as cleaning treating or destroying cargo according to observations made by the australian department of agriculture and water resources more than 20 of the propagules found by biosecurity officers currently cannot be identified by far the most important weed families contributing to seed load of imported goods are the grass family poaceae and the daisy family asteraceae accounting together for approximately 80 of cases to facilitate fast and secure identification increase the capabilities of biosecurity staff and reduce the risk of weed incursions we have developed an interactive digital identification key to the propagules of an initial priority list of 43 species of asteraceae,2017,0.497
Integrated species distribution models: combining presence-background data and site-occupany data with imperfect detection,two main sources of data for species distribution models sdms are site occupancy so data from planned surveys and presence background pb data from opportunistic surveys and other sources so surveys give high quality data about presences and absences of the species in a particular area however due to their high cost they often cover a smaller area relative to pb data and are usually not representative of the geographic range of a species in contrast pb data is plentiful covers a larger area but is less reliable due to the lack of information on species absences and is usually characterised by biased sampling here we present a new approach for species distribution modelling that integrates these two data types we have used an inhomogeneous poisson point process as the basis for constructing an integrated sdm that fits both pb and so data simultaneously it is the first implementation of an integrated soâ pb model which uses repeated survey occupancy data and also incorporates detection probability the integrated model s performance was evaluated using simulated data and compared to approaches using pb or so data alone it was found to be superior improving the predictions of species spatial distributions even when so data is sparse and collected in a limited area the integrated model was also found effective when environmental covariates were significantly correlated our method was demonstrated with real so and pb data for the yellow bellied glider petaurus australis in south eastern australia with the predictive performance of the integrated model again found to be superior pb models are known to produce biased estimates of species occupancy or abundance the small sample size of so datasets often results in poor out of sample predictions integrated models combine data from these two sources providing superior predictions of species abundance compared to using either data source alone unlike conventional sdms which have restrictive scale dependence in their predictions our integrated model is based on a point process model and has no such scale dependency it may be used for predictions of abundance at any spatial scale while still maintaining the underlying relationship between abundance and area,2017,0.579
"Importance: nomenclatural action to restrict the submission of superfluous generic names Tomogonopus (Diplopoda, Spirostreptida, Spirostreptidae) a replacement name for Umbraticus Özdikmen, 2009 (Spirostreptida, Spirostreptidae)",tomogonopus nomen novum sierwald mauriã s is introduced as a replacement for tomogonus demange 1971 pre occupied by tomogonus d orbigny 1904 coleoptera for an african millipede genus from sierra leone spirostreptida spirostreptidae a previously introduced generic replacement name umbraticus ã zdikmen 2009 pre occupied by umbraticus voet 1806 coleoptera is invalid currently tomogonopus n gen contains six species all forming new combinations,2017,0.48
Biodiversity - Threats and Conservation,the biodiversity diversity in life forms suffers greater threat from degradation habitat fragmentation spreading of invasive species indiscriminate use of natural resources climate change pollution within aquatic environment and water flows biological resources serve about 40 per cent of the worldâ s economy and nearly 80 per cent of the needs of the people it provides greater opportunity in the field of medical research education and economic development declining biodiversity is therefore a concern for countless reasons preserving species in their habitats is the in situ conservation and includes identification of biological hot spots to protect them as natural park sanctuary biosphere reserve etc the ex situ conservation includes developing gene banks zoos and botanical garden cryopreservation artificial propagation of plants biotechnological approach etc genetic manipulation of the endangered and threatened species can be the effective tool for maintaining biodiversity,2017,0.448
Taxonomic Revision of the Syngnathinae (Pices: Syngnathidae) in Taiwan,syngnathin fish body is covered with ring like bony plates without any scale they are colorful fishes and their color pattern may vary according to their habitats male syngnathines are responsible for parental care with a underside brood pouch located either on abdomal trunk brooding or tail tail brooding the structure of pouch can be divided into sealed pouch inverted pouch semi pouch and open pouch preys such as small crustaceans and zooplanktons and sometimes eggs of other males are sucked in by a slender and tube like snout most syngnathines inhabitat in the coastal and brackish waters and some species are found in freshwaters there are nearly 40 species of syngnathines in taiwan however taxonomic revision on syngnathines is not available to date in order to make thorough revision of this fish group 424 specimens of 38 species accommodated in taiwan are examined meristic counts and morphometric measurements of each specimens are made and each species is photographed each species is revised and described based on the examined specimens and an identification key to syngnathines of taiwan is built the present study shows that there are 38 syngnathine species of 17 genera including a new record species microphis yoshi undetermined microphis sp and phoxocampus sp principal component analysis is conducted using primer 6 0 for those genera with more than one species inter specific resemblance of each genus is higher than 85 for monotypic genera in taiwan the intra specific similarities of choeroichthys sculptus dunckerocampus dactyliophorus syngnathoides biaculeatus are 82 94 and 94 respectively let measurement meristics to be the morphology characters which can idetificate the species with principal component analysis for doryrhamphus halicampus hippichthys microphis phoxocampus and trachyrhamphus with multiple species pc1 and pc2 accumulated variation are over 80 except trachyrhamphus indicating that identification using morphology characters is possible bulbonaricus brucei campichthys nanus festucalex erythraeus and syngnathus schlegeli have been recorded in the taiwan fish database however neither report nor specimen of b brucei was found in taiwan specimen asizp0062057 of campichthys nanus is identified as species of genus phoxocampus by circumorbital bone densly covered with triangular prominence specimen nmmsf0511 of halicampus grayi is identified as trachyrhamphus lonirostris according to the ratio between snout length and head length specimens nmmsf525 of f erythraeus are identified as halicampus dunckeri by body covered with long filaments specimen asizp0055352 of s schlegeli is supposed to be s pelagicus base on its ring number and the ratio between snout length and head length therefore b brucei c nanus and f erythraeus were suggested to be removed from the database and s plegicus was is a new record although acentronura breviperula corythoichthys schultzi and solegnathus lettensis were recorded in the checklist of syngnathinae of taiwan biodiversity information facility no specimen was found in any museums of taiwan,2017,0.997
Life cycle of Agriotes wireworms and their effect in maize cultivation,maize production has increased by almost 60 in sweden over the last decade given this increase in maize cultivation there is a possibility that problems with wireworm increase wireworm species that are present in agricultural settings in sweden are agriotes lineatus l agriotes obscurus l and agriotes sputator l there is little in depth research made on the life cycle of these wireworm species which is problematic when control of these pests is needed species from the genus agriotes have a long life cycle and control measures need to be long term and considered in the entre crop rotation agriotes favour grassland such as ley due to the availability of underground plant part which their major a source of food these types of arable land also have high moisture content which is needed for eggs and larvae to develop when these conditions are met populations tend to increase damage in maize from germination to the 8 leaf stage can lead to yield loss to control a wireworm population several agronomic practices can be used one of these is to mechanically control populations by ploughing when wireworms are close to the soil surface which in sweden is from april to middle of june and late august to october another way to decrease the risk of damage in maize is to not sow maize 1 to 3 years after a ley is broken for other cultivation during and directly after a ley is removed can the number of wireworms in a population be high but will decrease yearly due to more unfavourable environment,2017,0.663
Checklist of bees (Apoidea) from a private conservation property in west-central Montana,background here we present preliminary results from the first three years of a long term bee survey conducted at a 3 840 ha private conservation property in the northern sapphire mountains and bitterroot river valley and a pilot study at an associated 80 ha property in the swan river valley missoula county montana usa the survey includes hand net bowl trap and blue vane trap collections the resulting checklist comprises 229 bee species and morphospecies within 5 families 38 genera and 91 subgenera of the total species in the list 34 of them represent first state records montana this survey expands the number of bee species recorded in montana to 366 included in these species is megachile eutricharaea apicalis spinola showing a range expansion for this introduced bee new information we present new distributional records for 34 bee species including megachile eutricharaea apicalis spinola an introduced bee that was discovered to be resident in north america in 1984 in santa barbara county california this species has since expanded its range in the across the west but had not been previously recorded in montana,2017,0.916
Fire and plant diversity at the global scale,aim understanding the drivers of global diversity has challenged ecologists for decades drivers related to the environment productivity and heterogeneity are considered primary factors while disturbance has received less attention given that fire is a global factor that has been affecting many regions around the world and over geological time scales we hypothesize that fire regime should explain a significant proportion of global coarse scale plant diversity location the entire globe excluding antarctica time period data collected over the late 20 th and early 21 st century taxa seed plants spermatophytes phanerogamae methods we used available global plant diversity information at the ecoregion scale and compiled productivity heterogeneity and fire information for each ecoregion using 15 years of remotely sensed data we regressed plant diversity against environmental variables and them tested whether fire activity still explained a significant proportion of the variance results ecoregional plant diversity was positively related to both productivity r 2 0 30 and fire activity r 2 0 38 once productivity and other environmental variables were in the model r 2 0 50 fire regime still explained a significant proportion of the variability in plant diversity overall model r 2 0 71 the results suggest that fire drives temporal and spatial variability in many ecosystems providing opportunities for a diversity of plants main conclusions fire regime is a primary factor explaining plant diversity across the globe even after accounting for productivity fires delay competitive exclusion increase landscape heterogeneity and generate new niches and thus they provide opportunities for a large variety of species consequently fire regime should be considered in order to understand global ecosystem distribution and diversity,2017,0.057
"Natural History Collections: Teaching about Biodiversity Across Time, Space, and Digital Platforms",natural history collections offer unique physical and virtual opportunities for formal and informal progressive learning collections are unique data in that they each represent a biological record at a single place and time that cannot be obtained by any other method collections based experiences lead to an increased understanding of and substantive interaction with the living world global biological diversity and changes in that diversity are directly tracked through specimens in collections regardless of whether changes are ancient or recent we discuss how collections specimens and the data associated with them can be critical components linking nature and scientific inquiry specimens are the basic tools for educating students and interested citizens through direct or virtual contact with the diversity of collections such interactions include instruction in a formal classroom setting volunteering to gather and curate collections and informal presentations at coffee shops we emphasize how the recent surge in specimen based digitization initiatives has resulted in unprecedented access to a wealth of biodiversity information and how this availability vastly expands the reach of natural history collections the emergence of online databases enables scientists and the public to utilize the specimens and associated data contained in natural history collections to address global regional and local issues related to biodiversity in a way that was unachievable a decade ago,2017,0.174
Spread of Sporobolus neglectus and S. vaginiflorus (Poaceae) in Slovenia and neighbouring countries,systematic field sampling revealed that within 50 years since the first records in slovenia sporobolus neglectus and s vaginiflorus became widespread they are two superficially similar n american annual grass species with cleistogamous spikelets and similar ecology that are confined to dry ruderal places in their european secondary range especially along roads the oldest records of naturalised populations of both species in europe date back to the 1950s when both were found for the first time in the vipava valley sw slovenia they spread slowly in the next decades to ne italy n croatia and s austria until recently when an explosive expansion has been observed along almost all the main roads in lowland and montane slovenia in addition to that one or both of them have recently been recorded scattered in se europe hungary serbia b h montenegro and w europe france switzerland sporobolus vaginiflorus is herein reported for the first time for serbia herzegovina in b h and slavonia in croatia,2017,0.65
Temporal degradation of data limits biodiversity research,spatial and or temporal biases in biodiversity data can directly influence the utility comparability and reliability of ecological and evolutionary studies while the effects of biased spatial coverage of biodiversity data are relatively well known temporal variation in data quality i e the congruence between recorded and actual information has received much less attention here we develop a conceptual framework for understanding the influence of time on biodiversity data quality based on three main processes 1 the natural dynamics of ecological systemsâ such as species turnover or local extinction 2 periodic taxonomic revisions and 3 the loss of physical and metadata due to inefficient curation accidents or funding shortfalls temporal decay in data quality driven by these three processes has fundamental consequences for the usage and comparability of data collected in different time periods data decay can be partly ameliorated by adopting standard protocols for generation storage and sharing data and metadata however some data degradation is unavoidable due to natural variations in ecological systems consequently changes in biodiversity data quality over time need be carefully assessed and if possible taken into account when analyzing aging datasets,2017,0.142
Niche Modelling: A comparison between Modelling Methods best applied for Cnidaria Niche Dispersion Studies,the use of predictive modelling or ecological niche modelling has been increasing rapidly in the last decades the applications to this tool are just as wide with the possibility of using it for business projections or on biology fields regarding biological areas it is becoming more important once it can generate results otherwise impossible if not for models such as future distribution projections for species despite its wide range of applications the aquatic environment still presents obstacles our aim here was to make a bibliographic research on papers published on open access websites regarding niche modelling on cnidaria our results have shown that in much of those papers sessile animals were used and that most of them date from the year 2011 with the preference for the maxent algorithm this can be explained by the fact that the software was developed on the xxi century with computers popularization our project also showed the potential for future improvements on this area and as it was the first it can serve as base for future researches,2017,0.417
Assessing the suitability of pioneer species for secondary forest restoration in Benin in the context of global climate change,in this study species distribution modelling sdm was applied to the management of secondary forests in benin this study aims at identifying suitable areas where the use of candidate pioneer species such as lonchocarpus sericeus and anogeissus leiocarpa could be targeted to ensure at low cost currently and in the context of global climate change fast reconstitution of secondary forests and disturbed ecosystems and the recovery of their biodiversity using occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif website and current environmental data the factors that affected the distribution of the species were assessed in west africa the models developed in maxent and r software for west africa only for both species showed good predictive power with auc 0 80 and auc ratios well above 1 5 the results were projected in future climate at the horizon 2055 using africlim data under rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 and suggested a little reduction in the range of l sericeus and any variation for a leiocarpa the potential distribution of the two species indicated that they could be used for vegetation restoration activities both now and in the mid 21st century improvement are needed through the use of complementary data the extension to others species and the assessment of uncertainties related to these predictions,2017,0.733
(2523) Proposal to conserve the name Conoria cuspa ( Aspidosperma cuspa ) against Aspidosperma bicolor ( Apocynaceae ),aspidosperma cuspa kunth s f blake apocynaceae is the most widely distributed species of the genus occurring in countries of the west indies haiti dominican republic trinidad tobago ven ezuela colombia ecuador brazil and bolivia morillo in steyermark al fl venez guayana 2 486 1995 idaì rraga piedrahita al fl antioquia 2 9â 939 2011 jã rgensen al in monogr syst bot mis souri bot gard 127 234 2014 brazilian flora 2020 http florado brasil jbrj gov br accessed 7 mar 2017 tropicos http www tropicos org accessed 7 mar 2017 global biodiversity information facility http www gbif org accessed 27 mar 2017 furthermore the species is used in chemical studies due to its medicinal properties burnell medina in phytochemistry 5 2045â 2051 1968 simoìƒes al in phytochemistry 15 543â 544 1976 peì rez al in j ethnopharmacol 143 599â 603 2012 it is easily distinguished from other species by the paniculate inflorescence opposite to subtending leaves and the falciform fruit with two external and two internal seeds,2017,0.605
The large scale impact of offshore windfarm structures on pelagic primary production in the southern North Sea,the increasing demand for renewable energy is projected to result in a 40 fold increase in offshore wind electricity in the european union by 2030 despite a great number of local impact studies for selected marine populations the regional ecosystem impacts of offshore windfarm structures are not yet well investigated nor understood our study investigates whether the accumulation of epifauna dominated by the filter feeder mytilus on turbine structures affects pelagic primary production and ecosystem functioning in the southern north sea we estimate the anthropogenically increased potential distribution based on the current projections of turbine locations and understanding of species m edulis settlement patterns this distribution is integrated through the modular coupling system for shelves and coasts to state of the art hydrodynamic and ecosystem models our simulations reveal non negligible changes in regional annual primary production of up to a few percent and larger changes up to â 10 of the phytoplankton stock and thus water clarity during the bloom period our setup and modular coupling are effective tools for system scale studies of other environmental changes arising from large scale offshore wind farming such as ocean physics and distribution of pelagic top predators,2017,0.237
Amazon plant diversity revealed by a taxonomically verified species list,recent debates on the number of plant species in the vast lowland rain forests of the amazon have been based largely on model estimates neglecting published checklists based on verified voucher data here we collate taxonomically verified checklists to present a list of seed plant species from lowland amazon rain forests our list comprises 14 003 species of which 6 727 are trees these figures are similar to estimates derived from nonparametric ecological models but they contrast strongly with predictions of much higher tree diversity derived from parametric models based on the known proportion of tree species in neotropical lowland rain forest communities as measured in complete plot censuses and on overall estimates of seed plant diversity in brazil and in the neotropics in general it is more likely that tree diversity in the amazon is closer to the lower estimates derived from nonparametric models much remains unknown about amazonian plant diversity but this taxonomically verified dataset provides a valid starting point for macroecological and evolutionary studies aimed at understanding the origin evolution and ecology of the exceptional biodiversity of amazonian forests,2017,0.601
"Rango geográfico y estructura espacial de linajes genéticos en sophora linearifolia (Fabaceae), un arbusto endÉmico de las sierras centrales de Argentina",geographical range and spatial structure of genetic lineages in sophora linearifolia fabaceae an endemic shrub of central argentina a large number of endemic species occur in the sierras of cã rdoba and san luis a significant group of them shows a disjunct geographic distribution between these two mountain regions until the present study there were none genetic studies that allow us to infer historical processes underlying this geographical pattern for this purpose we characterize the distribution area and phylogeographic patterns of sophora linearifolia across its geographic range which includes sierras chicas sc and cumbres de gaspar cg in cã rdoba and in the southwestern area of sierras of san luis sl we compared the current with the predicted species area of distribution using ecological niche modelling analysis we also analyzed genetic variability and spatial structure of the dna chloroplast marker trnh psba and reconstructed the genealogical relationships among the retrieved haplotypes current and the predicted distribution agreed in showing a climatic topographic disjunction between sierras of cordoba and san luis hills although the current distribution presents a disjunction between sc and cg in cã rdoba not shown in the potential distribution map we obtained eight haplotypes with restricted distribution and low levels of genetic differentiation that were grouped into four phylogroups sc cg and two in sl our results indicate that s linearifolia presents low dispersal ability and it would have recently diversified suggesting a neoendemic taxon resumen las sierras de cã rdoba y san luis albergan una gran riqueza de especies endã micas un grupo importante de ellas muestra una distribuciã n disyunta entre ambas serranã as hasta la actualidad no existã an estudios genã ticos que permitieran inferir procesos histã ricos asociados a este patrã n con este propã sito caracterizamos el ã rea de distribuciã n y el patrã n filogeogrã fico de sophora linearifolia abarcando todo su rango geogrã fico que incluye las sierras chicas sc y las cumbres de gaspar cg en cã rdoba y el suroeste de las sierras de san luis sl contrastamos la distribuciã n actual con la distribuciã n predicha a partir del modelado del nicho ecolã gico analizamos el nivel de variabilidad genã tica la estructuraciã n espacial del marcador de adn plastidial trnh psba y reconstruimos las relaciones genealã gicas entre los haplotipos la distribuciã n actual y la predicha mostraron una disyunciã n entre cã rdoba y san luis pero la distribuciã n actual presentã una disyunciã n entre sc y cg que no fue modelada en la distribuciã n potencial se obtuvieron 8 haplotipos de distribuciã n restringida con bajos niveles de diferenciaciã n genã tica agrupados en 4 filogrupos sc cg y dos en sl nuestros resultados indican que s linearifolia presentarã a baja capacidad de dispersiã n y que se habrã a diversificado recientemente sugiriendo que se tratarã a de un neoendemismo palabras clave adn cloroplastidial biogeografã a distribuciã n disyunta filogeografã a modelado de nicho ecolã gico neoendemismo sierras pampeanas,2017,0.136
Sustainable Biodiversity Management in India: Remote Sensing Perspective,remote sensing a state of art technology has gained significance due to its capability to map and monitor compositional structural and functional biodiversity remote sensing data provides a perspective on how ecosystems and species are being affected by the multiple disturbances this paper presents consolidated information of earth observation based biodiversity research and conservation applications in india progress achieved for understanding essential biodiversity variables with reference to species populations species traits community composition ecosystem function and ecosystem structure have been reviewed studies mostly focused on remote sensing based biodiversity indicators in understanding of land cover forest cover forest type fragmentation biological richness carbon stocks fires and protected area monitoring at multiple spatial and temporal scales fine resolution understanding with reference to vegetation structure function distribution of threatened endemic and invasive species is required for effective conservation strategies the declining trend of deforestation and effectiveness of protected area network indicates indiaâ s commitment towards the global conservation targets ensured continuity of remote sensing can support in near real monitoring of habitats and achieving conservation effectiveness,2017,0.118
Boxwood Borer Heterobostrychus brunneus (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae) Infesting Dried Cassava: A Current Record from Southern Ethiopia,insect specimens of adult beetles and larvae of 7â 9 and 9â 10 mm length respectively were collected from infested dry cassava at two locations from multiple stores in southern ethiopia the specimens were identified as heterobostrychus brunneus murray 1867 commonly known as boxwood borer and auger beetle the study presents a current record of h brunneus in ethiopia particularly in the context of infesting food products additionally a wide geographical distribution of the pest was reviewed and presented in this article current evidence suggests that h brunneus is a serious pest of forest wood structural timbers and dried food products and that it carries a risk to be introduced into various other parts of the world via global trade,2017,0.429
Phenotypic distribution models corroborate species distribution models: A shift in the role and prevalence of a dominant prairie grass in response to climate change,phenotypic variation within species can vary widely across environmental gradients but forecasts of speciesâ responses to environmental change often assume species respond homogenously across their ranges we compared predictions from species and phenotype distribution models under future climate scenarios for andropogon gerardii a widely distributed dominant grass found throughout the central united states phenotype data on aboveground biomass height leaf width and chlorophyll content were obtained from 33 populations spanning a 1000 km gradient that encompassed the majority of the speciesâ environmental range species and phenotype distribution models were trained using current climate conditions and projected to future climate scenarios we used permutation procedures to infer the most important variable for each model the species level response to climate was most sensitive to maximum temperature of the hottest month but phenotypic variables were most sensitive to mean annual precipitation the phenotype distribution models predict a gerardii could be largely functionally eliminated from where this species currently dominates with biomass and height declining by up to 60 and leaf width by 20 by the 2070s the core area of highest suitability for a gerardii is projected to shift up to 700 km northeastwards further short statured phenotypes found in the present day shortgrass prairies on the western periphery of the speciesâ range will become favored in the current core 800 km eastward of their current location combined species and phenotype models predict this currently dominant prairie grass will decline in prevalence and stature thus sourcing plant material for grassland restoration and forage should consider changes in the phenotype that will be favored under future climate conditions phenotype distribution models account for the role of intraspecific variation in determining responses to anticipated climate change and thereby complement predictions from species distributions models in guiding climate adaptation strategies,2017,0.951
Distribution of the Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) within California as of 2015,the goals of this study were to map the distribution of the invasive eastern gray squirrel sciurus carolinensis in california as of 2015 and to assess range expansion since the first documented sightings within the state range maps exist but the last update by the california department of fish and wildlife was in 2007 an assessment of the rate of range expansion over time has not been conducted but comparisons between the locations of initial sightings and the current distribution are included location data were obtained from museum specimens wildlife rehabilitation centers a roadkill database and research grade citizen observations range maps were produced with arcgis software populations of eastern gray squirrels are currently concentrated around sacramento and davis the western side of san francisco bay within as well as north and east of santa cruz within monterey north of the golden gate bridge through marin county as well as around santa rosa and around the bellota stockton area isolated populations on the eastern side of san francisco bay occur around berkeley hayward and pleasanton observations extend into the foothills of the sierra nevada mountain range from north of the american river to south of the san antonio river we suggest that the eastern gray squirrel might become more damaging to the two native diurnal species of tree squirrels in california sciurus griseus and tamiasciurus douglasii than the introduced eastern fox squirrel sciurus niger,2017,0.753
Modeling Hotspots of Plant Diversity in New Guinea,new guinea is widely known for rich biodiversity this study provides a foundation for understanding vascular and non vascular plant distributions at the genus taxonomic level analyses objectively and quantitatively showed collection density and biases at 50 km spatial resolution and predict genus richness at 1 km spatial resolution to model the distribution of 1354 genera presence only data and the maxent niche model were used results showed many cells with fewer than 5 unique genera whereas other cells had upwards of 600 unique genera model performance achieved a mean test auc score of 0 7 the most influential environmental variables were elevation slope and temperature annual range predicted genus richness increased from south to north across the island and west to east along the central mountain range models predicted higher richness in topographically complex regions at higher elevations comparatively lower elevations with homogenous topography had larger tracts of high genus richness modeling genus level data supplied baseline information about plant distributions yet some genera are more speciose than others so the full scope of richness or endemism may not be captured results can be used to prioritize sampling needs support conservation strategies compare genus diversity to other regions and discuss biogeography principles,2017,0.132
Phylogeographic investigation and ecological niche modelling of the endemic frog species Nanorana pleskei revealed multiple refugia in the eastern Tibetan Plateau,the largest plateau tibetan plateau supplied an excellent opportunity to investigate the influence of the pleistocene events on the high elevation species to test for the alternative hypotheses of pleistocene glacial refugia we used partial sequences of two mitochondrial genes and one nuclear gene to examine the phylogeographic patterns of the endemic frog species nanorana pleskei across its known range in the eastern tibetan plateau and conducted species distribution modelling sdm to explore changes of its distribution range through current and paleo periods in all data sets the species was divided into lineage north occupying open plateau platform and lineage south colonizing the mountainous plateau the divergence of two major clades was estimated at the early pleistocene in mtdna lineage north contained northeastern and northwestern sublineages and lineage south had two overlapping distributed sublineages different lineages possessed distinct demographic characteristics i e subdivision in the northeastern sublineage historical bottleneck effects and recent expansions in the northwestern sublineage and the southeastern sublineage sdms depicted that stable suitable habitats had existed in the upper middle streams of the yellow river dadu river jinsha river and yalong river these regions were also recognized as the ancestral areas of different lineages in conclusion nanorana pleskei lineages have probably experienced long term separations stable suitable habitats existing in upper middle streams of major rivers on the eastern tibetan plateau and distinct demographic dynamics of different lineages indicated that the lineages possessed independent evolutionary processes in multiple glacial refugia the findings verified the profound effects of pleistocene climatic fluctuations on the plateau endemic species,2017,0.794
"ETHNOBOTANICAL, PHYTOCHEMICAL, PHARMACOLOGICAL AND HOMOEOPATHIC REVIEW OF ARNICA MONTANA LINN",arnica montana is a popular traditional remedy used in folk medicine and homoeopathy to alleviate pain inflammation and swelling of muscles and joints associated with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions it a high altitude perennial plant that belongs to asteraceae compositae family and is native to the mountain slopes in europe northern asia siberia canada and america 1 2 7 this review was conducted to summarize the available scientific information obtained from literature medical databases laboratory studies and human clinical studies on arnica montana linn arnica montana linn contains essential oil fatty acids thymol pseudoguaianolide sesquiterpene lactones helenalin 11 13 dihydrohelenalin and their fatty acid esters and flavonoid glycosides spinacetin hispidulin patuletin and isorhamnetin 1 the anti arthritic efficiency of arnica montana is attributed to a synergism of phenolic and flavonoid compounds 12 the analgesic and anti inflammatory property of arnica monatana has been attributed at helenalin 14 helenalin also has anti tumour activity against a variety of chemically induced tumours 16 17 it has been pharmacologically proven for arthritis anti inflammatory analgesic anti oxidant wound healing and post operative healing properties the homoeopathic preparations of arnica montana have been pharmacologically proven beneficial for arthritis anti inflammatory action anti haemorrhagic action wound healing post operative healing cellulitis and furunculosis,2017,0.119
Predicting the Potential Role of Non-human Hosts in Zika Virus Maintenance,arboviruses are often maintained in complex cycles involving vertebrates such as mammals or birds and blood feeding mosquitoes however the role of wildlife hosts in their emergence or re emergence in human populations has received little attention the recent emergence of zika virus in america and previous occurrences of chikungunya and dengue forces us to confront a potential new disease emergence phenomenon using a spatial data mining framework to identify potential biotic interactions based on the degree of co occurrence between different species we identified those mammal species with the highest potential for establishing mammalâ vector interactions considering as principal vector aedes aegypti seven of the top ten identified mammal species with highest potential were bats with two of them having previously been confirmed as positive hosts for dengue in mexico we hope that this will raise interest of mexican public health authorities and academic institutions to assess the role of wild hosts in the maintenance and spread of arboviruses,2017,0.879
"A quantitative and statistical biological comparison of three semi-enclosed seas: the Red Sea, the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, and the Gulf of California",similar habitats separated by great distances can provide remarkable examples of convergent evolution in biological diversity and have been influential in our understanding of community ecology historical biogeography and evolution here we compare three semi enclosed seas in arid regions of the northern hemisphere the red sea the persian arabian gulf and the gulf of california and test whether they show similar biodiversity patterns despite large geographic separations between the seas the similar shapes and latitudinal locations lead to several analogous abiotic conditions these similarities however do not result in equivalent biodiversity patterns even when correcting for different regional species pools comparisons revealed that the red sea contains a greater species diversity of vertebrates but that the gulf of california contains the greatest species diversity of invertebrates notably vertebrate abundance patterns were statistically similar between the persian gulf and the gulf of california divergences are likely due to variable habitats within each sea several influential abiotic differences and dissimilar histories among the seas while these results support a null hypothesis of biological dissimilarity despite abiotic similarities they are the first statistical comparisons of the biotas of these three regions continued statistical comparisons among marine ecosystems have the potential to reveal ecological and evolutionary patterns that typically go unnoted,2017,0.626
Species distribution modeling and molecular markers suggest longitudinal range shifts and cryptic northern refugia of the typical calcareous grassland species Hippocrepis comosa (horseshoe vetch),calcareous grasslands belong to the most diverse endangered habitats in europe but there is still insufficient information about the origin of the plant species related to these grasslands in order to illuminate this question we chose for our study the representative grassland species hippocrepis comosa horseshoe vetch based on species distribution modeling and molecular markers we identified the glacial refugia and the postglacial migration routes of the species to central europe we clearly demonstrate that h comosa followed a latitudinal and due to its oceanity also a longitudinal gradient during the last glacial maximum lgm restricting the species to southern refugia situated on the peninsulas of iberia the balkans and italy during the last glaciation however we also found evidence for cryptic northern refugia in the uk the alps and central germany both species distribution modeling and molecular markers underline that refugia of temperate oceanic species such as h comosa must not be exclusively located in southern but also in western of parts of europe the analysis showed a distinct separation of the southern refugia into a western cluster embracing iberia and an eastern group including the balkans and italy which determined the postglacial recolonization of central europe at the end of the lgm h comosa seems to have expanded from the iberian refugium to central and northern europe including the uk belgium and germany,2017,0.938
First record of Physarum spectabile (Myxomycetes) in Russia,is reported from the central forest state nature biosphere reserve nelidovsky district tver region new to russia the short description of ecology and distribution of this rare species is provided the morphology of the fruit bodies sporocarps of the species was examined by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy sem and images of relevant details are included,2017,0.656
"Distribution and growth dynamics of invasive goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) in its introduced range in Estonia, and some Australian comparisons",understanding the distribution and population dynamics of invasive plant species is fundamental to our capacity to appropriately predict and manage plant invasions the invasion biology of nonnative solidago canadensis in estonia was investigated for the first time by assessing its distribution patterns and growth dynamics first fifty two peri urban populations were surveyed and population location size adjacent communities number of shoots as well as shoot height were recorded then thirty genets were excavated from previously surveyed populations in order to analyze their age and growth traits in the vicinity of tartu the majority of s canadensis populations were small i e occupying less than 50 m2 had 1 to 50 plants per population and were located predominantly on disturbed roadsides the surveyed populations were young with the average age of genets estimated to be five years at the time of sampling in 2006 we suggest that s canadensis is well adapted to a wide range of habitats but predominantly occurs in human disturbed habitats adjacent to settlements and roads we found that solidago canadensis genet age did not affect significantly its growth traits suggesting that growth traits are similar between younger and older genets,2017,0.893
Remote-sensing based approach to forecast habitat quality under climate change scenarios,as climate change is expected to have a significant impact on species distributions there is an urgent challenge to provide reliable information to guide conservation biodiversity poli cies in addressing this challenge we propose a remote sensing based approach to fore cast the future habitat quality for european badger a species not abundant and at risk of local extinction in the arid environments of southeastern spain by incorporating environ mental variables related with the ecosystem functioning and correlated with climate and land use using ensemble prediction methods we designed global spatial distribution mod els for the distribution range of badger using presence only data and climate variables then we constructed regional models for an arid region in the southeast spain using evi enhanced vegetation index derived variables and weighting the pseudo absences with the global model projections applied to this region finally we forecast the badger potential spatial distribution in the time period 2071â 2099 based on ipcc scenarios incorporating the uncertainty derived from the predicted values of evi derived variables by including remotely sensed descriptors of the temporal dynamics and spatial patterns of ecosystem functioning into spatial distribution models results suggest that future forecast is less favor able for european badgers than not including them in addition change in spatial pattern of habitat suitability may become higher than when forecasts are based just on climate vari ables since the validity of future forecast only based on climate variables is currently ques tioned conservation policies supported by such information could have a biased vision and overestimate or underestimate the potential changes in species distribution derived from cli mate change the incorporation of ecosystem functional attributes derived from remote sensing in the modeling of future forecast may contribute to the improvement of the detec tion of ecological responses under climate change scenarios,2017,0.377
Phylogenetic Classification of Seed Plants of Taiwan,background biological classification the hierarchical arrangement of scientific names of organisms constitutes the core infrastructure of biological databases for an efficient management of biological databases adopting a stable and universal biological classification system is crucial currently in taiwan biodiversity information facility taibif http taibif tw the national portal website that integrates taiwanâ s biodiversity information databases angiosperms are arranged according to cronquistâ s system of classification which is not compatible with current trend of the angiosperm phylogeny group apg classification to consolidate the function and management of the database taibif is moving to adopt the apg iv classification and christenhusz et al phytotaxa 19 55â 70 2011 â s classification of gymnosperms which we summarize as the phylogenetic classification of seed plants of taiwan results the phylogenetic classification of seed plants of taiwan places gymnosperms in five families vs eight families in the flora of taiwan fot and angiosperms in 210 families vs 193 families in fot three fot gymnosperm families are synonymized in current treatment of the 210 apg iv families familial circumscriptions of 114 families are identical with fot and 50 families are recircumscription of fot with 46 families newly added of the 29 fot families not included in current classification two families are excluded and 27 families are synonymized conclusions the adoption of the phylogenetic classification of seed plants of taiwan in taibif will provide better service and efficient management of the nationâ s biodiversity information databases,2017,0.027
The role of root decomposition in global mangrove and saltmarsh carbon budgets,this study aims to determine the drivers of root decomposition and its role in carbon c budgets in mangroves and saltmarsh we review the patterns of root decomposition and its contribution to c budgets in mangroves and saltmarsh the impact of climatic temperature and precipitation geographic latitude temporal decay period and biotic ecosystem type drivers using multiple regression models best fit models explain 50 and 48 of the variance in mangrove and saltmarsh root decay rates respectively a combination of biotic climatic geographic and temporal drivers influences root decay rates rainfall and latitude have the strongest influence on root decomposition rates in saltmarsh for mangroves forest type is the most important decomposition is faster in riverine mangroves than other types mangrove species avicennia marina and saltmarsh species spartina maritima and phragmites australis have the highest root decomposition rates root decomposition rates of mangroves were slightly higher in the indo west pacific region average 0 16 day∠1 than in the atlantic east pacific region 0 13 day∠1 mangrove root decomposition rates also show a negative exponential relationship with porewater salinity in mangroves global root decomposition rates are 0 15 day∠1 based on the median value of rates in individual studies and 0 14 day∠1 after adjusting for area of mangroves at different latitudes in saltmarsh global root decomposition rates average 0 12 day∠1 no adjustment for area with latitude necessary our global estimate of the amount of root decomposing is 10tgcyr∠1 in mangroves 8tgcyr∠1 adjusted for area by latitude and 31tgcyr∠1 in saltmarsh local root c burial rates reported herein are 51â 54gcm∠2yr∠1 for mangroves 58â 61tgcyr∠1 adjusted for area by latitude and 191gcm∠2yr∠1 for saltmarsh these values account for 24 1â 29 1 mangroves and 77 9 saltmarsh of the reported sediment c accumulation rates in these habitats globally dead root c production is the significant source of stored sediment c in mangroves and saltmarsh,2017,0.383
Advancing federal capacities for the early detection of and rapid response to invasive species through technology innovation,invasive species early detection and rapid response edrr actions could integrate technologies innovation and other outside expertise into invasive species management from early detection by forecasting the next invasion and improved surveillance through automation to tools to improve rapid response the next generation of management tools for a national edrr program could integrate advances in technologies including the small size and ubiquity of sensors satellites drones and bundles of sensors like smartphones advances in synthetic molecular and micro biology improved algorithms for artificial intelligence machine vision and machine learning and open innovation and citizen science this paper reviews current and emerging technologies that the federal government and resource managers could utilize as part of a national edrr program and makes a number of recommendations for integrating technological solutions and innovation into the overall federal government response,2017,0.216
"Ichneumonid parasitoid wasps from the Early Eocene Green River Formation: five new species and a revision of the known fauna (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae)",the parasitoid wasp family ichneumonidae is one of the most species rich groups of organisms but its fossil record remains very poorly studied which impedes inferences of the origin of its diversity we here describe two new fossil genera and five new species of ichneumonidae from the eocene green river formation carinibus molestus gen et sp nov ichninsum appendicrassum gen et sp nov mesoclistus yamataroti sp nov scambus mandibularis sp nov and scambus parachuti sp nov the newly described mesoclistus yamataroti represents the first record of the subfamily acaenitinae from this fossil locality in addition we revise the ten previously described fossil ichneumonids from the green river formation following a conservative approach when re assessing their taxonomic positions we keep the current placement of six revised fossils but express the uncertainty in genus assignment according to open nomenclature rules eclytus lutatus scudder glypta transversalis scudder pimpla eocenica cockerell phygadeuon petrifactellus cockerell plectiscidea lanhami cockerell and rhyssa juvenis scudder we exclude three fossil genera from their current subfamilies and place them within ichneumonidae incertae subfamiliae eopimpla cockerell lithotorus scudder and tilgidopsis cockerell furthermore we move tryphon amasidis cockerell and leveque to the new genus trymectus gen nov in the light of these revisions we discuss the importance of careful taxonomic placement of fossils and difficulties in ichneumonid palaeontology caused by host related homoplasies and a lack of knowledge about the age of the recent subfamilies,2017,0.722
Neglect of the Tropics Is Widespread in Ecology and Evolution: A Comment on Clarke et al.,neglect of the tropics is a widespread problem across ecology and evolution and not specific to the field of biodiversity and ecosystem function in a recent paper clarke et al 1 present evidence for a bias against the tropics in studies of biodiversityâ ecosystem function bef unfortunately bef is not the only field in ecology and evolution that suffers from gross geographical sampling biases rather this is just one example of a more widespread lack of studies from the tropics that needs to be recognized and accounted for â especially in the face of growing conservation challenges,2017,0.09
"New geographical record and morphological features of the Indo‑Pacific tropical sand goby, Favonigobius reichei (Bleeker, 1854) from Iranian coast of the Makran Sea (Teleostei, Gobiidae)",the indo pacific tropical sand goby favonigobius reichei bleeker 1854 is a gobiid fish native to estuarine and marine waters of the coasts of the indian and the western pacific oceans four specimens of f reichei were collected from iranian coast of the makran sea during a fish survey in november 2015 the morphological features of these specimens are described and discussed this is the first record of the species from iranian waters and is an extension of its known range within the indian ocean,2017,0.587
"Taxonomic realignment in the southern African Tetraria (Cyperaceae, tribe Schoeneae; Schoenus clade)",tetraria â an austral genus with 54 currently accepted species â is polyphyletic with species located across at least three different clades of the schoeneae tribe of cyperaceae the small african endemic genus epischoenus is embedded within one of these cladesâ the schoenus clade of tetraria the majority of species in two of the major clades of tetraria the tricostularia and schoenus clades are endemic to the cape floristic region of southern africa species in the tricostularia clade have noded culms and reticulate sheath bases whereas species of the schoenus clade do not have nodes along their culms or reticulate sheaths importantly the type species of the genera schoenus tetraria and epischoenus are resolved as part of the schoenus clade and the former has taxonomic priority here we realign the taxonomy of the schoenus clade of tetraria to reflect our current understanding of the phylogenetic relationships within the schoeneae in addition we outline the characteristics of three subclades tetraria comparâ tetraria picta and allies epischoenus and allies as well as tetraria cuspidata and allies that will be used to guide species groupings in forthcoming taxonomic revisions finally we transfer 17 species of tetraria and seven species of epischoenus to schoenus,2017,0.975
Complex phylogeographic patterns indicate Central American origin of two widespread Mesoamerican Quercus (Fagaceae) species,the northern neotropical region is characterized by a heterogeneous geological and climatic history recent studies have shown contrasting patterns regarding the role of geographic elements as barriers that could have determined phylogeographic structure in various species recently the phylogeography and biogeography of quercus species have been studied intensively and the patterns observed so far suggest contrasting evolutionary histories for neotropical species in comparison with their holarctic relatives the goal of this study was to describe the phylogeographic structure of two neotropical oak species quercus insignis and quercus sapotifolia in the context of the geological and palaeoclimatic history of the northern neotropics populations through the distribution range of both species were collected and characterized using nine chloroplast dna microsatellite loci both oak species showed high levels of genetic diversity and strong phylogeographic structure the distribution of genetic variation in q insignis suggested an influence of two major barriers the isthmus of tehuantepec and the nicaraguan depression while q sapotifolia exhibited a genetic structure defined by the heterogeneity of the chortis highlands the haplotype networks of both species indicated complex histories suggesting that colonization from the sierra madre de chiapas to central mexico and from the north of the nicaraguan depression to the costa rican mountains may have occurred during different stages and apparently more than one time in conclusion the phylogeographic structure of neotropical oak species seems to be defined by a combination of geological and climatic events,2017,0.97
Metadata of European Lake Fishes Dataset,here we provide the metadata for an overview on fish species presence absence in 1943 palearctic europe turkey lakes and reservoirs the data have been obtained by standardized multi mesh gillnet fishing primarily to fulfill the requirements of the european water framework directive wfd the species list encompasses about 100 species a few of them split into subspecies the database has been accumulated for the purpose of intercalibration of the evaluation systems for the wfd and has systematically been used for research in the eu project wiser,2017,0.563
"North American Herbaria and their Tropical Plant collections: what exists, what is available, and what the future may bring.",herbaria and biological collections in general provide an invaluable record of the diversity of plants and animals through time and space and are used in studies addressing climate change tracking invasive species niche modeling and assembling the tree of life they are our only direct documentation of biological diversity and therefore serve as essential tools for research and education in biological sciences according to index herbariorum there are 2885 registered herbaria containing approximately 375 480 850 specimens in north america there are 723 herbaria and over 85 million specimens accounting for 25 of the herbaria and 23 of the collections in the world herbaria in north america began by exploring local plant diversity and over time some became research centers with broader interests in fact the 33 largest herbaria in north america those with at least 600 000 collections hold 63 of the specimens and have substantial holdings from outside the area nearly all of these large institutions were founded in the mid 1800 s oldest is ph in 1812 and have strong collections from the neotropics an informal investigation indicated that non north american collections account for about half of those housed in the larger north american institutions the 20th century was a period of expansion and a large number flora and inventory projects were started so it was characterized by intensive collecting and staff growth fuelled by these projects however by the late 20th century the creation of these projects had slowed as funding for such baseline efforts had mostly disappeared in north america to be replaced by question driven research that sponsors more targeted collecting efforts today many herbaria are under valued and their existence is threatened more small and medium sized herbaria especially at universities are being downsized or closed and some are relocated to larger herbaria removing them from their niche and creating additional pressure on the budgets of their new home in the early days collecting expeditions took most material to their home institutions however in the last 30 years most large herbaria have increased their collaboration with tropical institutions by providing access to valuable historical collections and literature as well as graduate education,2017,0.238
Evolutionary and domestication history of Cucurbita (pumpkin and squash) species inferred from 44 nuclear loci,phylogenetics can facilitate the study of plant domestication by resolving sister relationships between crops and their wild relatives thereby identifying the ancestors of cultivated plants previous phylogenetic studies of the six cucurbita crop lineages pumpkins and squashes and their wild relatives suggest histories of deep coalescence that complicate uncovering the genetic origins of the six crop taxa we investigated the evolution of wild and domesticated cucurbita using the most comprehensive and robust molecular based phylogeny for cucurbita to date based on 44 loci derived from introns of single copy nuclear genes we discovered novel relationships among cucurbita species and recovered the first cucurbita tree with well supported resolution within species cucurbita comprises a clade of mesophytic annual species that includes all six crop taxa and a grade of xerophytic perennial species that represent the ancestral xerophytic habit of the genus based on phylogenetic resolution within species we hypothesize that the magnitude of domestication bottlenecks varies among cucurbita crop lineages our phylogeny clarifies how wild cucurbita species are related to the domesticated taxa we find close relationships between two wild species and crop lineages not previously identified expanded geographic sampling of key wild species is needed for improved understanding of the evolution of domesticated cucurbita,2017,0.995
The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.,the predicts project projecting responses of ecological diversity in changing terrestrial systems www predicts org uk has collated from published studies a large reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use we have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures we describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database containing more than 3 2 million records sampled at over 26 000 locations and representing over 47 000 species we outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology to our knowledge this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity,2017,0.289
Using worldwide edaphic data to model plant species niches: An assessment at a continental extent,ecological niche modeling enm is a broadly used tool in different fields of plant ecology despite the importance of edaphic conditions in determining the niche of terrestrial plant species edaphic data have rarely been included in enms of plant species perhaps because such data are not available for many regions recently edaphic data has been made available at a global scale allowing its potential inclusion and evaluation on enm performance for plant species here we take advantage of such data and address the following main questions what is the influence of distinct predictor variables e g climatic vs edaphic on different enm algorithms and what is the relationship between the performance of different predictors and geographic characteristics of species we used 125 plant species distributed over the neotropical region to explore the effect on enms of using edaphic data available from the soilgrids database and its combination with climatic data from the chelsa database in addition we related these different predictor variables to geographic characteristics of the target species and different enm algorithms the use of different predictors climatic edaphic and both significantly affected model performance and spatial complexity of the predictions we showed that the use of global edaphic plus climatic variables generates enms with similar or better accuracy compared to those constructed only with climate variables moreover the performance of models considering these different predictors separately or jointly was related to geographic properties of species records such as number and distribution range the large geographic extent the variability of environments and the different speciesâ geographical characteristics considered here allowed us to demonstrate that global edaphic data adds useful information for plant enms this is particularly valuable for studies of species that are distributed in regions where more detailed information on soil properties is poor or does not even exist,2017,0.689
Additions to the Lichen Diversity of Macedonia (FYROM),selected localities in galiä ica national park matka canyon in the suva gora mountains mavrovo national park ohrid basin vardar river valley and popova å apka in the å ar planina mountains were briefly studied during a field excursion in 2014 seventy seven lichenized fungi are reported for the first time from macedonia fyrom eight species candelariella aggregata halecania viridescens lecanora albula lepraria diffusa normandina acroglypta parmelia barrenoae sarcogyne fallax and schaereria corticola are new to the balkan peninsula caloplaca substerilis fuscopannaria mediterranea gyalecta croatica g geoica leptochidium albociliatum lobarina scrobiculata protoblastenia lilacina sclerophora pallida and thelopsis rubella represent other remarkable records an enigmatic collection of an immersaria closely resembling i athroocarpa and possibly representing a new species is briefly discussed the present paper brings the total number of lichenized and lichenicolous fungi known for macedonia to 675 and 22 respectively,2017,0.721
"Molecular phylogeny, biogeography and ecological niche modelling of Cardiocrinum (Liliaceae): insights into the evolutionary history of endemic genera distributed across the Sino-Japanese floristic region.",background and aims the patterns of evolutionary assembly in the sino japanese floristic region sjfr remain largely unknown due to a lack of integrative multidimensional studies throughout the region to address this issue we elucidated the evolutionary history of cardiocrinum liliaceae a genus containing four taxa distributed across the sjfr methods fifty four populations were sampled throughout the geographical range of cardiocrinum to assess genetic structure analyse phylogenetic relationships and reconstruct ancestral area based on six chloroplast dna cpdna fragments and three low copy nuclear genes lcng ecological niche modelling was used to examine the potential range shifts of cardiocrinum in response to climatic change key results the molecular data showed high genetic similarity in the cpdna 98â 37 and lcng 94â 53 sequences the biogeographical analyses revealed that the ancestor of cardiocrinum diversified during the late miocene approx 7â 32 mya in central china the ancestor of the c giganteum lineage dispersed westward to the himalayas and south west china with the split between c giganteum and c giganteum var yunnanense occurring around 4â 11 mya consistent with the period of orogeny of the hengduan mountains some populations of the c cathayanum lineage dispersed eastward to south japan via the land bridge approx 4â 97 mya providing opportunities for allopatric speciation of c cordatum the predicted suitable habitats of cardiocrinum have become smaller and more fragmented since the last glacial maximum conclusions our study provides evidence of a biogeographical pattern of dispersal from central china to the himalayas in the west and japan in the east for genera distributed across the sjfr and highlights that the orogeny of the hengduan mountains and fluctuations of the sea level of the east china sea played important roles in promoting species divergence,2017,0.386
TOTAL FLAVONOID CONTENT ANALYSIS OF LAGERSTROEMIA FLORIBUNDA JACK (KEDAH BUNGOR),till date there is no scientific data available regarding total flavonoid content analysis of lagerstroemia floribunda jack the purpose of this study was to investigate the total flavonoid content of lagerstroemia floribunda jack leaves and fruits extraction was carried out by using soxhlet apparatus the standard curve for total flavonoids was made using rutin standard in results the flavonoid content in methanolic leaves and fruits extract were found as 653 3 re g and 220 re g respectively based on the results it can be concluded that lagerstroemia floribunda leaves extract showed higher existence of flavonoid constituents than its fruits,2017,0.349
Pet snakes illegally marketed in Brazil: Climatic viability and establishment risk,invasive species are one among many threats to biodiversity brazil has been spared generically of several destructive invasive species reports of invasive snakesâ populations are nonexistent but the illegal pet trade might change this scenario despite the brazilian laws forbid to import most animals illegal trade is frequently observed and propagules are found in the wild the high species richness within brazilian biomes and accelerated fragmentation of natural reserves are a critical factors facilitating successful invasion an efficient way to ease damages caused by invasive species is identifying potential invaders and consequent prevention of introductions for the identification of potential invaders many factors need to be considered including estimates of climate matching between areas native vs invaded ecological niche modelling has been widely used to predict potential areas for invasion and is an important tool for conservation biology this study evaluates the potential geographical distribution and establishment risk of lampropeltis getula linnaeus 1766 lampropeltis triangulum lacã pã de 1789 pantherophis guttatus linnaeus 1766 python bivittatus kuhl 1820 and python regius shaw 1802 through the maximum entropy modelling approach to estimate the potential distribution of the species within brazil and qualitative evaluation of specific biological attributes our results suggest that the north and midwest regions harbor major suitable areas furthermore p bivittatus and p guttatus were suggested to have the highest invasive potential among the analyzed species potentially suitable areas for these species were predicted within areas which are highly relevant for brazilian biodiversity including several conservation units therefore these areas require special attention and preventive measures should be adopted,2017,0.983
A Sourcebook of Methods and Procedures for Monitoring Essential Biodiversity Variables in Tropical Forests with Remote Sensing,past decades have seen a growing demand for biodiversity data to inform development decisions at the local to national scale for underpinning global and sub global assessments e g united nations convention on biological diversity un cbd and national biodiversity strategies and action plans nbsap the essential biodiversity variables ebv concept proposed by the geo bon space agencies and the earth observation research community at large aims to support efforts for biodiversity monitoring however there is a lack of information and consensus on the standardised and harmonised biodiversity data and monitoring methods that are required to assess how tropical forest biodiversity is evolving and what the drivers of change are in this context gofc gold and geo bon propose a new sourcebook this joint effort based on a wide international group of forest researchers and earth observation practitioners aims to promote the best operational monitoring practices for the relevant ebvs based on scientific literature and consensus,2017,0.143
AnnoSys – an online tool for sharing annotations to enhance data quality,annosys is a web based open source information system that enables users to correct and enrich specimen data published in data portals thus enhancing data quality and documenting research developments over time this brings the traditional annotation workflows for specimens to the internet as annotations become visible to researchers who subsequently observe the annotated specimen during its first phase the annosys project developed a fully functional prototype of an annotation data repository for complex and cross linked xml standardized data in the abcd access to biological collection data berendsohn 2007 and darwin core dwc wieczorek et al 2012 standards including back end server functionality web services and an on line user interface tschoepe et al 2013 annotation data are stored using the open annotation data model sanderson et al 2013 and an rdf database suhrbier et al 2017 public access to the annotations and the corresponding copy of the original record is provided via linked data rest and sparql web services annosys can easyly be integrated into portals providing specimen data see suhrbier al this session as a result the individual specimen page then includes two links one providing access to existing annotations stored in the annosys repository the other linking to the annosys annotation editor for annotation input annosys is now integrated into a dozen specimen portals including the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the global genome biodiversity network ggbn in contrast to conventional site based annotation systems annotations regarding a specimen are accessible from all portals providing access to the specimen s data independent of which portal has originally been used as a starting point for the annotation apart from that users can query the data in the annosys portal or create a subscription to get notified about annotations using criteria referring to the data record for example a specialist for a certain family of organisms working on a flora or fauna of a certain country may subscribe to that family name and the country the subscriber is notified by email about any annotations that fulfil these criteria other possible subscription and filter criteria include the name of collector identifer or annotator catalogue or accession numbers and collection name or code for curators a special curatorial workflow supports their handling of annotations for example confirming a correction according to the annotation in the underlying primary database user feedback on the currently available system has led to a significantly simplified version of the user interface which is currently undergoing testing and final implementation moreover the current second project phase aims at extending the generic qualities of annosys to allow processing of additional data formats including rdf data with machine readable semantic concepts and thus opening up the data gathered through annosys for the semantic web we developed a semantic concept driven annotation management including the specification of a selector concept for rdf data and a repository for original records extended to rdf and other formats based on dwc rdf terms and the abcd ontology which deconstructs the abcd xml schema into individually addressable rdf resources we built an â œannosys ontologyâ the annosys 2 system is currently in the testing phase and will be released in 2018 in future research see suhrbier this volume we will examine the use of annosys for taxon level data as well as its integration with image annotation systems bgbm berlin is committed to sustain annosys beyond the financed project phase,2017,0.015
Ryegrass staggers in The Netherlands,ryegrass staggers is a syndrome caused by lolitrem b a mycotoxin produced by the endophyte neotyphodium lolli in horses and ruminants clinical signs of the disease in horses are tremors head shaking incoordination staggering swaying gait unstable standing and fasciculations of the neck and limbs the aim of the study was to gain a better insight of the risk of lolitrem b exposure and adverse effects in horses with special emphasis on the situation in netherlands to this end the literature was reviewed and data from the analysis of hay samples were compiled results show that the risk of a lolitrem b intoxication is low in the netherlands and confined to individual cases in late autumn however lolitrem intoxications remains an important differential diagnosis in daily equine practice having in contrast to other neurological diseases a very good prognosis for entire recovery of the affected animal,2017,0.329
"Phylogeography and ecological niche modeling unravel the evolutionary history of the African green toad, Bufotes boulengeri boulengeri (Amphibia: Bufonidae), through the Quaternary",recent integration of ecological niche models in phylogeographic studies is improving our understanding of the processes structuring genetic variation across landscapes previous studies on the amphibian bufotes boulengeri boulengeri uncovered a surprisingly weak intraspecific differentiation across the maghreb region we widely sampled this species from morocco to egypt and sequenced one nuclear and three mitochondrial mtdna genes to determine the level of genetic variability across its geographic range we evaluated these data with ecological niche modeling to reveal its evolutionary history in response to climate change during the quaternary our results highlight some mtdna phylogeographic structure within this species with one haplogroup endemic to coastal morocco and one haplogroup widely distributed throughout north africa no or little genetic differentiation is observed between isolated populations from the hoggar mountains the sabha district and the islands of kerkennah and lampedusa compared to others populations this can be explained by the expansion of the distribution range of b b boulengeri during glacial periods this might have facilitated the speciesâ dispersal and subsequent gene flow between most north african localities,2017,0.753
"Life history, identity and damage assessment of galip weevil",galip canarium indicum is a native tree of the lowlands of papua new guinea solomon islands and vanuatu which has been used traditionally as a food source building material medicinal plant and in cultural life jones 2012 braidotti 2016 over the past 20 years the nut has been in development as a commercial crop with the support of aciar and in collaboration with pngâ s national agricultural research institute nari akus 1996 nevenimo et al 2008 wallace et al 2016 nissan and buka varieties of galip referred to as elite varieties were propagated and distributed in png with plantations in the gazelle peninsula of east new britain established in mid 2015 a few trees in the experimental galip blocks at nariâ s keravat fieldstation in east new britain were under severe stress nari staff found gw to be the pest agent causing significant mortality in the elite varieties of galip which had been planted extensively in the gazelle peninsula including the keravat blocks in response to the detection of gw nari and the national agricultural and quarantine inspection agency naqia undertook a delimiting survey in east new britain in late 2015 these agencies detected a broad scale outbreak of gw from smallholdings up to 100 galip trees to large scale commercial plantings ca 6000 trees the damage to galip trees was catastrophic with up to 90 tree morbidity and mortality at multiple sites the issue of gw and its damage to galip plantations was brought to the attention of prof cassis unsw and dr reid australian museum during their entomological capacity building workshop in east new britain in november 2015 dfat funded they inspected galip trees in blocks at the keravat field station and confirmed catastrophic damage to the trees attributed to gw during the workshop dr sim sar of nari called a meeting of nari keravat staff including tio nevenimo fidelis hela godfrey hannet and john bokosou to discuss the status of the gw it was decided at this meeting that the unsw australian museum team would partner with nari staff to carry out a scoping study of gw the university of new south wales unsw was engaged by aciar sra pilot project fst 2016 013 to undertake fact finding surveys in northern png including island provinces building on the nari naqia delimiting survey of 2015 as well as reviewing existing data this project aligns with aciar project fst 2014 099 on the development of galip as a commercial crop and with aciarâ s aop targets including improved sustainability and resilience of production systems and the diagnosis and development of strategies combating emerging pests and diseases,2017,0.165
"First confirmed record of the Striped Hog-nosed Skunk Conepatus semistriatus from peri-urban Bogotá, Colombia",the striped hog nosed skunk conepatus semistriatus is widespread neotropical carnivore species with a disjunct distribution from mexico to brazil poorly known across its range in colombia the species is mostly known only from scarce and sporadic records but with no information for most aspects of its ecology or conservation status here we present the first record of the species for a peri urban area of bogotã capital city of colombia our record is the first for a large city across its range located outside previous range estimates and confirming its presence for the tutelar mountains of the city although this record does not expand significantly the range of the species it represents an important addition to the fauna of bogotã highlighting the importance of improving conservation measures for this important forest patch and thus ecological integrity in one of the largest cities in the neotropics,2017,0.846
Relative importance of different mecanisms underlying fish response to climate change,global change constitutes a severe threat against marine ecosystems stability these systems are composed of different species and of their interactions between themselves but also with the environment perturbation of the environment might break ecosystem balance and could affect the whole system through loss of species or outbreak of invasive species since humans have started to exploit marine resources they have modified the system dynamics and have induced a decline of species abundance and richness hiddink and ter hofstede 2008 portner and knust 2007 in parallel with the global demographical expansion and the increasing use of fossil energy human activity has developed more and more and has contributed to greenhouse gases release into the atmosphere responsible of the global warming of atmosphere and the oceans climate change is a recognized threat for marine ecosystems hoegh guldberg and bruno 2010 sumaila et al 2011 but its effect on marine resources is more difficult to quantify and to anticipate than fishing effects another anthropogenic pressure impacting them fishing pressure has indeed been analyzed for a longer period than the effects of climate change and more information on the different effects of fishing pressure is nowadays available and partly used in management since the beginning of the 1990â s research programs were launched to understand how climate change will affect marine system and anticipate the future organization of our oceans in the next 50 or 100 years ahead harley et al 2006 this constitutes a very ambitious objective because the effects of climate change on marine systems are complex as they involve different abiotic variables sea surface temperature acidification of ocean sea level rise and can occur directly on species but can also result from indirect effects of the perturbation of the abiotic and biotic environment in which species live,2017,0.304
New records of hunting ants (Poneroids and Ectatomminoids) in the northern part of the Colombian Orinoquia region,we reviewed 466 specimens of hunting ant species collected in flooded savanna environments and their adjacent forest fragments in the rural area of arauca municipality arauca colombia samples were taken from eight forest fragments with sizes between 0 25 and 220 ha in each location we set linear transects with seven sampling points separated by 20 m in each sampling point we used three capture methods a pitfall trap left 24 hours a sample of 1m2 of soil and litter to be processed with a mini winkler extractor and direct capture fifteen species were recorded the most diverse genus was neoponera with six species followed by odontomachus with two species and ectatomma anochetus gnamptogenys prionopelta pseudoponera pachycondyla and thaumatomyrmex each with one species this study extends the geographical distribution of 15 hunting ant species to the northern part of the colombian orinoquia region and documents for the first time the presence of thaumatomyrmex cf mutilatus in colombia,2017,0.944
Unblocking the flow of biodiversity data for decision-making in Africa,african countries need to conserve biodiversity and use natural resources rationally if they are to avoid continued environmental degradation that jeopardizes sustainable development and human wellbeing however many government agencies cannot access or use the biodiversity data they need to make informed decisions for environmental and economic management more than forty stakeholders representing governments civil society organizations csos and un agencies including delegates from 20 african states identified decisions that require biodiversity information and explored blockages and potential solutions to data access and use the participants concluded that the key enabling environment includes data availability data quality and usability willingness to collect and use data and financial and technical capacity we recommend that african government departments across sectors work with academic bodies and csos to i enhance internal resources for monitoring and develop partnerships with donors ii build capacity for data collection using tools guidelines and communities surrounding cbd planning and biodiversity monitoring iii improve national and international co ordination and cross sectoral collaboration for biodiversity data management iv produce and use more data derived products that encourage data use especially assessments that demonstrate the importance of biodiversity to economies and wellbeing and dashboards that facilitate interpretation and analysis governments csos and academic bodies should test different science policy interfaces in a handful of pilot countries or regions building on existing models to demonstrate how data providers and users can work together to break down barriers to data access and sharing and mainstream biodiversity information into decision making,2017,0.161
"Xibalbanus cozumelensis, a new species of Remipedia (Crustacea) from Cozumel, Mexico, and a molecular phylogeny of Xibalbanus on the Yucatán Peninsula",a new species belonging to the crustacean class remipedia is described from an anchialine cave system on the island of cozumel mexico and is illustrated and compared morphologically and molecularly co1 and 16s with closely related taxa xibalbanus cozumelensis sp nov the first remipede described from cozumel is morphologically similar to xibalbanus tulumensis yager 1987 from the yucatã n peninsula but the two species are genetically separate from each other about 10 in co1 a phylogenetic bayesian analysis of yucatã n remipede populations based on co1 and 16s placed them in a monophyletic xibalbanus in xibalbanidae fam nov with x cozumelensis as most closely related to x tulumensis the yucatã n peninsula and cozumel have been separate since approx early cenozoic 65 ma which suggests allopatric speciation for x cozumelensis sp nov and x tulumensis however the comparatively low genetic divergence between the two species may indicate that there has been gene flow between â mainlandâ yucatã n and cozumel long after the geological separation of the two landmasses e g in cave systems under the sea bed either continuously or sporadically for example during the last glacial maximum when the sea level was about 120 m lower than today,2017,0.739
"Factors restricting the range expansion of the invasive green anole Anolis carolinensis on Okinawa Island, Japan",the green anole anolis carolinensis invaded the ogasawara islands in japan drove various native species to extinction and its distribution expanded 14 years after initial establishment a carolinensis invaded okinawa island but it has not expanded its distribution in more than 25 years although its density is extremely high in the southern region to determine whether a carolinensis has the potential to expand its distribution on okinawa island we performed phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial nd2 dna sequences to study the origin of a carolinensis that invaded okinawa island we further used a species distribution model maxent based on the distribution of native populations in north america to identify ecologically suitable areas on okinawa island nucleotide sequence analysis shows that the invader a carolinensis originated in the western part of the gulf coast and inland areas of the united states and that a portion of the anoles on okinawa was not introduced via the ogasawara islands the maxent predictions indicate that most areas in okinawa island are suitable for a carolinensis therefore a carolinensis may have the potential to expand its distribution in okinawa island the predictions indicate that habitat suitability is high in areas of high annual mean temperature and urbanized areas the values of precipitation in summer in the northern region of okinawa island were higher compared with those of north america which reduced the habitat suitability in okinawa island adaptation to low temperatures an increase in the mean temperature through global warming and an increase in open environments through land development will likely expand the distribution of a carolinensis in okinawa island therefore we must continue to monitor the introduced populations and be alert to the possibility that city planning that increases open environments may cause their range to expand,2017,0.703
"Connectivity, persistence, and loss of high abundance areas of a recovering marine fish population in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean",in the early 1990s the northwest atlantic ocean underwent a fisheries driven ecosystem shift today the iconic cod gadus morhua remains at low levels while atlantic halibut hippoglossus hippoglossus has been increasing since the mid 2000s concomitant with increasing interest from the fishing industry currently our knowledge about halibut ecology is limited and the lack of recovery in other collapsed groundfish populations has highlighted the danger of overfishing local concentrations here we apply a bayesian hierarchical spatiotemporal approach to model the spatial structure of juvenile atlantic halibut over 36 years and three fisheries management regimes using three model parameters to characterize the resulting spatiotemporal abundance structure persistence similarity of spatial structure over time connectivity coherence of temporal pattern over space and spatial variance variation across the seascape two areas of high juvenile abundance persisted through three decades whereas two in the northeast are now diminished despite the increased abundance and landings throughout the management units the persistent areas overlap with full and seasonal area closures which may act as refuges from fishing connectivity was estimated to be 250 km an order of magnitude less than the distance assumed by the definition of the canadian management units 2 000 km the underlying question of whether there are distinct populations within the southern stock unit cannot be answered with this model but the smaller 250 km scale of coherent temporal patterns suggests more complex population structure than previously thought which should be taken into consideration by fishery management,2017,0.308
Origin and cross-century dynamics of an avian hybrid zone,background characterizations of the dynamics of hybrid zones in space and time can give insights about traits and processes important in population divergence and speciation we characterized a hybrid zone between tanagers in the genus ramphocelus aves thraupidae located in southwestern colombia we evaluated whether this hybrid zone originated as a result of secondary contact or of primary differentiation and described its dynamics across time using spatial analyses of molecular morphological and coloration data in combination with paleodistribution modeling results models of potential historical distributions based on climatic data and genetic signatures of demographic expansion suggested that the hybrid zone likely originated following secondary contact between populations that expanded their ranges out of isolated areas in the quaternary concordant patterns of variation in phenotypic characters across the hybrid zone and its narrow extent are suggestive of a tension zone maintained by a balance between dispersal and selection against hybrids estimates of phenotypic cline parameters obtained using specimens collected over nearly a century revealed that in recent decades the zone appears to have moved to the east and to higher elevations and may have become narrower genetic variation was not clearly structured along the hybrid zone but comparisons between historical and contemporary specimens suggested that temporal changes in its genetic makeup may also have occurred conclusions our data suggest that the hybrid zone likey resulted from secondary contact between populations the observed changes in the hybrid zone may be a result of sexual selection asymmetric gene flow or environmental change,2017,0.533
Are research efforts on Animalia in the South Pacific associated with the conservation status or population trends?,analyses of knowledge gaps can highlight imbalances in research encouraging greater proportionality in the distribution of research efforts in this research we used generalized linear mixed models glmm with the aim to determine if research efforts for the period 2005â 2015 for terrestrial vertebrates of amphibia aves mammalia and reptilia in the south pacific region were correlated with conservation status critically endangered cr endangered en vulnerable vu least concern lc and near threatened nt or population trends increasing stable decreasing and unknown through the international union for conservation of nature iucn database our results showed that research distribution was uneven across different classes out of 633623 investigated papers the average number of publications per species was 43 7 306 7 717 6 and 115 3 for amphibia 284 species aves 1306 species mammalia 243 species and reptilia 400 species respectively consistently the lower publication effort on amphibia compared to other taxonomic classes was revealed as significant by glmm analysis there was no significant differences in research effort among levels of conservation status however we found significantly different publication efforts among population trends of all examined species in that species with â œunknownâ population trends gained significantly lower researchersâ attention compared to species with â œdecreasingâ trend results also indicated that although it was not significant the highest attention is given to species with â œincreasingâ population trend over all taxonomic classes using the information theoretic approach we also generated a set of competing models to identify most important factors influencing research efforts revealing that the highest ranked model included taxonomic class and population trend,2017,0.949
Bt rice in China - focusing the non-target risk assessment,bt rice can control yield losses caused by lepidopteran pests but may also harm non target species and reduce important ecosystem services a comprehensive data set on herbivores natural enemies and their interactions in chinese rice fields was compiled this together with an analysis of the cry protein content in arthropods collected from bt rice in china indicated which non target species are most exposed to the insecticidal protein and should be the focus of regulatory risk assessment,2017,0.648
"Traditional uses, phytochemistry and pharmacological properties of African Nauclea species: A review",ethnopharmacoalogical relevance the genus nauclea in africa comprises seven species among them n latifolia n diderrichii and n pobeguinii are widely used by the local population in traditional remedies preparation from various parts of plants e g roots bark leaves are indicated by traditional healers for a wide range of diseases including malaria pain digestive ailments or metabolic diseases materials and methods a literature search was conducted on african species of the genus nauclea using scientific databases such as google scholar pubmed or scifinder every document of ethnopharmacological phytochemical or pharmacological relevance and written in english or french were analyzed results and discussion the nauclea genus is used as ethnomedicine all along sub saharan africa several local populations consider nauclea species as a major source of remedies for malaria in this regard two improved traditional medicines are currently under development using extracts from n latifolia and n pobeguinii concerning the chemical composition of the nauclea genus indoloquinolizidines alkaloids could be considered as the major class of compounds as they are reported in every analysed nauclea species with numerous structures identified based on traditional indications a considerable amount of pharmacological studies were conducted to ensure activity and attempt to link them to the presence of particular compounds in plant extracts conclusion many experimental studies using plant extracts of the african species of the genus nauclea validate traditional indications e g malaria and pain however bioactive compounds are rarely identified and therefore there is a clear need for further evaluations as well as for toxicity experiments the sustainability of these plants especially of n diderrichii a threatened species should be kept in mind to adapt local uses and preparation modes of traditional remedies,2017,0.685
Integrating AnnoSys into your specimen data portal,access to annosys from your portal makes it possible to 1 annotate and to 2 show existing annotations for specimen data records to this end weblinks from the page displaying the individual specimen record to annosys are incorporated into your website in the current xml based system the portal should provide a link called annotate or similar which redirects users to annosys in order to create annotations based on the record data actually shown in your portal of course to enable annotation an access point for the record to be annotated has to be transmitted with the request annosys can then download the referred specimen data record after successfully transferring the data the user will be redirected to the annosys annotation editor first and if they start editing an annotation to the annosys user login registration dialog subsequently to at present annosys supports abcd 2 06 abcd 2 1 or simpledarwincore in xml formats if you already use a biocase provider to deliver abcd data from your collection database then this is sufficient but you can also provide any other url that provides the record in one of the supported formats and annosys will download the data from that url,2017,0.166
Long-distance dispersal explains the bipolar disjunction in Carex macloviana.,premise of the study the sedge carex macloviana d urv presents a bipolar distribution to clarify the origin of its distribution we consider the four main hypotheses long distance dispersal either by mountain hopping or by direct dispersal vicariance parallel evolution and human introduction methods phylogenetic phylogeographic and divergence time estimation analyses were carried out based on two nuclear ribosomal ets and its regions one nuclear single copy gene catp and three plastid dna regions rps16 and 5 trnk introns and psba trnh spacer using bayesian inference maximum likelihood and statistical parsimony bioclimatic data were used to characterize the climatic niche of c macloviana key results carex macloviana constitutes a paraphyletic species dating back to the pleistocene 0 62 mya 95 highest posterior density 0 29 1 00 mya this species displays strong genetic structure between hemispheres with two different lineages in the southern hemisphere and limited genetic differentiation in northern hemisphere populations also populations from the southern hemisphere show a narrower climatic niche with regards to the northern hemisphere populations conclusions carex macloviana reached its bipolar distribution by long distance dispersal although it was not possible to determine whether it was caused by mountain hopping or by direct dispersal while there is some support that carex macloviana might have colonized the northern hemisphere by south to north transhemisphere dispersal during the pleistocene unlike the southwards dispersal pattern inferred for other bipolar carex l species we cannot entirely rule out north to south dispersion,2017,0.729
Exploring the floristic diversity of tropical Africa,background understanding the patterns of biodiversity distribution and what influences them is a fundamental pre requisite for effective conservation and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity such knowledge is increasingly urgent as biodiversity responds to the ongoing effects of global climate change nowhere is this more acute than in species rich tropical africa where so little is known about plant diversity and its distribution in this paper we use rainbio â one of the largest mega databases of tropical african vascular plant species distributions ever compiled â to address questions about plant and growth form diversity across tropical africa results the filtered rainbio dataset contains 609 776 georeferenced records representing 22 577 species growth form data are recorded for 97 of all species records are well distributed but heterogeneous across the continent overall tropical africa remains poorly sampled when using sampling units su of 0 5â just 21 reach appropriate collection density and sampling completeness and the average number of records per species per su is only 1 84 species richness observed and estimated and endemism figures per country are provided benin cameroon gabon ivory coast and liberia appear as the botanically best explored countries but none are optimally explored forests in the region contain 15 387 vascular plant species of which 3013 are trees representing 5â 7 of the estimated worldâ s tropical tree flora the central african forests have the highest endemism rate across africa with approximately 30 of species being endemic conclusions the botanical exploration of tropical africa is far from complete underlining the need for intensified inventories and digitization we propose priority target areas for future sampling efforts mainly focused on tanzania atlantic central africa and west africa the observed number of tree species for african forests is smaller than those estimated from global tree data suggesting that a significant number of species are yet to be discovered our data provide a solid basis for a more sustainable management and improved conservation of tropical africaâ s unique flora and is important for achieving objective 1 of the global strategy for plant conservation 2011â 2020 in turn rainbio provides a solid basis for a more sustainable management and improved conservation of tropical africaâ s unique flora,2017,0.906
Improving the use of environmental diversity as a surrogate for species representation,the continuous p median approach to environmental diversity ed is a reliable way to identify sites that efficiently represent species a recently developed maximum dispersion maxdisp approach to ed is computationally simpler does not require the user to reduce environmental space to two dimensions and performed better than continuous p median for datasets of south african animals we tested whether maxdisp performs as well as continuous p median for 12 datasets that included plants and other continents and whether particular types of environmental variables produced consistently better models of ed we selected 12 species inventories and atlases to span a broad range of taxa plants birds mammals reptiles and amphibians spatial extents and resolutions for each dataset we used continuous p median ed and maxdisp ed in combination with five sets of environmental variables five combinations of temperature precipitation insolation ndvi and topographic variables to select environmentally diverse sites we used the species accumulation index sai to evaluate the efficiency of ed in representing species for each approach and set of environmental variables maxdisp ed represented species better than continuous p median ed in five of 12 biodiversity datasets and about the same for the other seven biodiversity datasets efficiency of ed also varied with type of variables used to define environmental space but no particular combination of variables consistently performed best we conclude that maxdisp ed performs at least as well as continuous p median ed and has the advantage of faster and simpler computation surprisingly using all 38 environmental variables was not consistently better than using subsets of variables nor did any subset emerge as consistently best or worst further work is needed to identify the best variables to define environmental space results can help ecologists and conservationists select sites for species representation and assist in conservation planning,2017,0.836
Taxonomy assignment approach determines the efficiency of identification of OTUs in marine nematodes,precision and reliability of barcode based biodiversity assessment can be affected at several steps during acquisition and analysis of data identification of operational taxonomic units otus is one of the crucial steps in the process and can be accomplished using several different approaches namely alignment based probabilistic tree based and phylogeny based the number of identified sequences in the reference databases affects the precision of identification this paper compares the identification of marine nematode otus using alignment based tree based and phylogeny based approaches because the nematode reference dataset is limited in its taxonomic scope otus can only be assigned to higher taxonomic categories families the phylogeny based approach using the evolutionary placement algorithm provided the largest number of positively assigned otus and was least affected by erroneous sequences and limitations of reference data compared to alignment based and tree based approaches,2017,0.095
Approaching Twenty Five Years of the Convention on Biological Diversity: A Retrospective and Plea for Reinvigoration - EA Journals,the convention on biological diversity cbd was agreed upon in un conference on environment and development earth summit at rio de janeiro brazil in 1992 as a response to the alarming and accelerating rate of extinction of worldâ s species and ecosystems this convention had acquired ratification from approximately 197 parties in pursuance to the cbd india has enacted the biological diversity act in 2002 took 10 years and biological diversity rules 2014 and formed biological diversity committees this review paper is an attempt to retrospect the achievements sought the problems encountered in the implementation and the future course of actions required to be undertaken to meet the goals that originally motivated its creation,2017,0.245
"Parasite beta diversity, host beta diversity and environment: application of two approaches to reveal patterns of flea species turnover in Mongolia",aim we investigated the beta diversity patterns of fleas parasitic on rodents along environmental and host turnover gradients using linear and nonlinear approaches we asked 1 which factors explain a larger proportion of the variation in flea beta diversity and 2 whether the results of the linear versus the nonlinear approach are similar in indicating the relative roles of environment versus host turnover location mongolia methods the linear approach was represented by a partial linear regression of flea turnover against rodent turnover environmental variables and a spatial term the nonlinear approach was represented by generalized dissimilarity modelling gdm with the response variable being the dissimilarity of flea composition and the predictors being dissimilarity in rodent composition dissimilarity in environmental variables and geographic distances between localities to test for the response of rodent beta diversity to environmental gradients this factor was used as a response variable matrix results partial regression analyses explained only 24 of observed variance environmental variables mainly air temperature and rodent turnover independently explained similarly small portions of flea turnover gradients of air temperature and rodent turnover were the most important factors in explaining flea turnover across space whereas the altitudinal gradient and the gradient of annual variation in precipitation were the most important in explaining rodent turnover the gdm resulted in 68 4 of explained deviance the best predictor of flea species turnover was the air temperature gradient followed by rodent host beta diversity and to a lesser degree the precipitation gradient the responses of rodent and flea turnover to environmental gradients differed main conclusions air temperature and rodent host turnover were the main factors affecting flea beta diversity with the latter responding to climate directly and not being mediated by host responses accommodation of the nonlinearity of species turnover responses to gradients allows patterns obscured by linear approaches to be revealed,2017,0.432
Koleksi Serangga Papua: collection management and digitization,since the end of 2015 the staff of kelompok entomologi papua kep and the universitas cenderawasih uncen in waena are responsible for the care of the magnificent entomology collection koleksi serangga papua ksp in order to boost the professional management this large collection requires kep members co organized in may 2017 a short collection management training together with uncen the papua insects foundation and naturalis biodiversity center also the four organizations launched a pilot digitization project data and image capture in order to facilitate access to the collection for scientists and students promoting collection based research and ensuring the preservation of the ksp specimens this paper gives a short report of the activities during the collection management training and the takeoff of the digitization project,2017,0.17
What is Cochlearia venusta (Cruciferae)?,available material on the improperly known cruciferae brassicaceae species cochlearia venusta pseudosempervivum venustum is revised and identified the taxon is found to be conspecific with the eastern anatolian endemic noccaea bornmuelleri previously long known as thlaspi bornmuelleri based on syrenopsis bornmuelleri the 10 years younger s bornmuelleri is reduced to synonymy of c venusta and a combination noccaea venusta is validated original material of both names is briefly discussed a lectotype instead of holotype is recognized for s bornmuelleri and that is designated for c venusta,2017,0.469
"Alien flora of Turkey: checklist, taxonomic composition and ecological attributes",the paper provides an updated checklist of the alien flora of turkey with information on its structure the alien flora of turkey comprises 340 taxa among which there are 321 angiosperms 17 gymnosperms and two ferns of the total number of taxa 228 68 are naturalized and 112 32 are casual there are 275 neophytes 172 naturalized and 103 casual and 61 archaeophytes 52 naturalized and 9 casual four species could not be classified with respect to the residence time in addition 47 frequently planted taxa with a potential to escape are also listed the richest families are asteraceae 38 taxa poaceae 30 fabaceae 23 and solanaceae 22 as for the naturalized alien plants the highest species richness is found in asteraceae 31 taxa poaceae 22 amaranthaceae 18 and solanaceae 15 the majority of alien taxa are perennial 63 8 of the total number of taxa with this life history assigned including those with multiple life histories annuals contribute 33 8 and 2 4 are biennial aliens among perennials the most common life forms are phanerophytes of which 20 3 are trees and 12 6 shrubs woody vines stem succulents and aquatic plants are comparatively less represented most of the 340 alien taxa introduced to turkey have their native ranges in americas 44 7 and asia 27 6 of other regions 9 1 originated in africa 4 4 in eurasia 3 8 in australia and oceania and 3 5 in the mediterranean the majority of taxa 71 9 were introduced intentionally whereas the remaining 28 1 were introduced accidentally among the taxa introduced intentionally the vast majority are ornamental plants 55 2 10 0 taxa were introduced for forestry and 6 7 as crops casual alien plants are most commonly found in urban and ruderal habitats 40 1 where naturalized taxa are also often recorded 27 3 plants that occur as agricultural weeds are typically naturalized rather than casual 16 0 vs 7 1 respectively however semi natural habitats in turkey are often invaded by alien taxa especially by those that are able to naturalize,2017,0.124
Genetic and ecological insights into glacial refugia of walnut (Juglans regia L.),the distribution and survival of trees during the last glacial maximum lgm has been of interest to paleoecologists biogeographers and geneticists ecological niche models that associate species occurrence and abundance with climatic variables are widely used to gain ecological and evolutionary insights and to predict species distributions over space and time the present study deals with the glacial history of walnut to address questions related to past distributions through genetic analysis and ecological modeling of the present lgm and last interglacial lig periods a maximum entropy method was used to project the current walnut distribution model on to the lgm 21â 18 kyr bp and lig 130â 116 kyr bp climatic conditions model tuning identified the walnut data set filtered at 10 km spatial resolution as the best for modeling the current distribution and to hindcast past lgm and lig distributions of walnut the current distribution model predicted southern caucasus parts of west and central asia extending into south asia encompassing northern afghanistan pakistan northwestern himalayan region and southwestern tibet as the favorable climatic niche matching the modern distribution of walnut the hindcast of distributions suggested the occurrence of walnut during lgm was somewhat limited to southern latitudes from southern caucasus central and south asian regions extending into southwestern tibet northeastern india himalayan region of sikkim and bhutan and southeastern china both ccsm and miroc projections overlapped except that miroc projected a significant presence of walnut in the balkan peninsula during the lgm in contrast genetic analysis of the current walnut distribution suggested a much narrower area in northern pakistan and the surrounding areas of afghanistan northwestern india and southern tajikistan as a plausible hotspot of diversity where walnut may have survived glaciations overall the findings suggest that walnut perhaps survived the last glaciations in several refugia across a wide geographic area between 30â and 45â north latitude however humans probably played a significant role in the recent history and modern distribution of walnut,2017,0.328
An annotated checklist of Thaliaceans (Chordata: Tunicates),a checklist of the class thaliacea is presented after an extensive literature review synonymies type locality diagnostic characters of different life cycle stages and a summary of worldwide distribution are presented for the maximum number of available species possible a total of 106 species names are listed and among them 81 species in 25 genera and 2 subgenera are treated as valid while the other 25 are treated as species inquirendum an additional 184 names are treated as synonymies of 52 species among the 81 valid thaliacean species 17 belong to the doliolidae family 3 to the doliopsoididae 1 to the doliolunidae 3 to the doliopsidae 1 to the paradoliopsidae 48 to the salpidae and 8 to the family pyrosomatidae,2017,0.839
A continuous morphological approach to study the evolution of pollen in a phylogenetic context: An example with the order Myrtales,the study of pollen morphology has historically allowed evolutionary biologists to assess phylogenetic relationships among angiosperms as well as to better understand the fossil record during this process pollen has mainly been studied by discretizing some of its main characteristics such as size shape and exine ornamentation one large plant clade in which pollen has been used this way for phylogenetic inference and character mapping is the order myrtales composed by the small families alzateaceae crypteroniaceae and penaeaceae collectively the â œcap cladeâ as well as the large families combretaceae lythraceae melastomataceae myrtaceae onagraceae and vochysiaceae in this study we present a novel way to study pollen evolution by using quantitative size and shape variables we use morphometric and morphospace methods to evaluate pollen change in the order myrtales using a time calibrated supermatrix phylogeny we then test for conservatism divergence and morphological convergence of pollen and for correlation between the latitudinal gradient and pollen size and shape to obtain an estimate of shape myrtales pollen images were extracted from the literature and their outlines analyzed using elliptic fourier methods shape and size variables were then analyzed in a phylogenetic framework under an ornstein uhlenbeck process to test for shifts in size and shape during the evolutionary history of myrtales few shifts in myrtales pollen morphology were found which indicates morphological conservatism heterocolpate small pollen is ancestral with largest pollen in onagraceae convergent shifts in shape but not size occurred in myrtaceae and onagraceae and are correlated to shifts in latitude and biogeography a quantitative approach was applied for the first time to examine pollen evolution across a large time scale using phylogenetic based morphometrics and an ou process hypotheses of pollen size and shape were tested across myrtales convergent pollen shifts and position in the latitudinal gradient support the selective role of harmomegathy the mechanism by which pollen grains accommodate their volume in response to water loss,2017,0.132
"Invasion and potential impacts of the first alien carnivore in China: American minks (Neovison vison) in Altai region, Xinjiang",american minks neovison vison which cause great impacts on local small and median sized animals through direct predation and diseases tramission had been characterized as an invasive species worldwide as well known fur animals american minks were introduced to europe in early 20th century and to china in mid 20th century american minks spread nearly entire europe soon after escaping from fur farms in european countries and they had already established naturalized population in northern altai mountain in russia for years northern altai mountain is one of the main distribution areas of american minks in russia in recent years american minks were reported in southern altai mountains altai region or chinese altai in xinjiang china american minks occurred in forest parks and national nature reserves in altai region earlier records in china were misidentified as european minks or both of them based on field survey and photo identification we confirmed that all these records were belong to american minks although american minks had been imported to china for over half a century now they were found in wild in north western china instead of eastern china where had more mink farms thus american minks found in chinese altai may be border crossing invaders through field survey and investigation american minks were not rare in the forest parks and nature reserves of chinese altai region thus we suggested that american mink had already established populations in china we discussed the potential impacts of american minks invasion in china through habitat simulation potential prey and competing species and wildlife diseases we discussed the current status of otters in china which had similar niches to minks using maxent model for habitats simulation at global scales we predicted climate suitable areas for american minks we find that coastal regions of north america south tip of south america europe eastern asia north africa south eastern australia and new zealand harbor highly suitable habitats of american minks all these coastal areas should be exceptionally precautious for live minks transport in addition mountains of central asia are the only inland highly suitable habitats of american minks central asia harbors plentiful endemic fishes and should be precautious for american minks invasion in china chinese altai and middle to lower reaches of yangtze river are highly suitable habitats for american minks where otters are almost disappeared as chinaâ s first alien carnivore american minks will impose great predation pressures on endemic waterfowls and fishes and will have impact on chinaâ s endangered otters and other mustelids all three major minks epidemic diseases canine distemper aleutian disease and mink viral enteritis had already have outbreak records in chinese mink farms and theses diseases had been proven to transmit to wildlife in addition china the has largest mink farming industry of the world therefore besides controlling border crossing invasion eco security assessments should be strengthened in domestic mink farms,2017,0.932
"Distribution, spatial interaction and niche analysis in three species of European moles (genus Talpa, Soricomorpha: Mammalia) in Italy",we investigated the spatial relationships among three phylogenetically related and ecologically convergent moles in italy talpa europaea talpa romana and talpa caeca the spatial niche of each species was described through environmental predictors of climate soil moisture and topography niche overlap between each species pair was quantified and niche similarity tests were performed through a randomization procedure the potential distributions of mole species were modelled through an ensemble forecasting approach while their actual distributions were derived by using a fixed radius local convex hull technique talpa europaea and t caeca exhibited the narrowest and the broadest niche respectively the highest values of niche overlap were detected between t caeca and each of the two large moles t romana and t europaea while the lowest value emerged between the last two the potential and actual distribution ranges of t europaea were almost equivalent whereas t romana and t caeca were each restricted to limited portions of their potential distribution we discuss whether competitive interactions could be responsible for their actual distribution pattern with t europaea dominant over the other two and t caeca occupying the most marginal portion of its niche due to competitive exclusion this study provides an example of how eco evolutionary factors may be involved in driving the geographical range of closely related and ecologically convergent taxa,2017,0.76
Management of invasive species in inland waters: technology development and international cooperation,in 2016 two important aquatic invasive species conferences occurred the 19th international conference on aquatic invasive species icais was held in winnipeg canada from april 10 to 14 2016 and was hosted by the western canada chapter of the international society for ecological restoration serwc https www icais org html previous19 html and http chapter ser org westerncanada event 19th inter national conference on aquatic invasive species the icais is widely recognized as the most comprehensive international forum on aquatic invasive species and continues to evolve and address new and emerging issues in recent years the conference has typically involved over 400 participants from over 30 countries from the fields of academia industry government non government organizations ngos and other stakeholders involved in this issue lucy and panov 2014 the 2nd â œfreshwater invasives â networking for strategy iiâ fins ii conference was held in zagreb croatia from july 11 to 14 2016 organised jointly by the university of zagreb and the european inland fisheries and aquaculture advisory commission eifaac http finsconference eu,2017,0.705
"Host range and potential distribution of the rust fungus, Miyagia pseudosphaeria, a biological control agent for Sonchus species",sonchus species sowthistles have a world wide distribution and are serious weeds of crops and the environment we assessed the suitability of the rust miyagia pseudosphaeria for use in biological control of sonchus species in australia and elsewhere testing of a limited range of plant species showed the host range of the rust to be restricted to sonchus species we measured spore germination and development of the rust on the host plant in relation to temperature these measurements the biology and distribution of the rust and that of the host s oleraceus were used to model the potential world distribution of the rust in climex the model indicated that there was limited potential for further spread in australia the rust already being widespread the rust is not present in canada but the climex model indicated that cold temperature will be the main limiting factor for the rust should it be introduced compromising its suitability as a biological control agent in south america the rust could potentially be introduced as a biological control agents in areas with mediterranean and subtropical climate molecular studies in combination with more comprehensive inoculation and temperature studies are needed to establish if there are pathotypes of the rust that might be more suitable for use in biological control,2017,0.532
The Fossil History of Quercus,the evolution of plant ecosystems during the cenophytic was complex and influenced by both abiotic and biotic factors among abiotic forces were tectonics the distribution of continents and seas climate and fires of biotic factors were herbivores pests and intra and interspecific competition the genus quercusl quercoideae fagaceae evolved in this context to become an established member of the plant communities of the northern hemisphere commencing in the paleogene and spreading to a diverse range of environments in the later cenozoic its palaeontological record dominated by leaves and pollen but also including wood fruits and flowers is widespread in eurasia and north america consequently a great number of species have been described from the 19th century to the present day although quercus is currently an ecologically and economically important component of the forests in many places of the northern hemisphere and southeastern asia no comprehensive summary of its fossil record exists the present work written by an international team of palaeobotanists provides the first synthesis of the fossil history of the oaks from their appearance in the early paleogene to the quaternary,2017,0.297
Host Range Evolution of Cleptoparasite Meloe franciscanus (Coleoptera: Meloidae),chemosensory signals play a major role in reproductive isolation and mate location in both invertebrate and vertebrate species closely related species often produce similar but distinct signals by varying the ratios or minor components in pheromone blends to avoid interference in their communication channels and cross attraction among congeners however exploitation of reproductive signals by predators and parasites also may provide strong selective pressure on semiochemical communication signals for example bolas spiders mimic the pheromones of several moth species to attract their prey within reach and parasitic phoretic blister beetle larvae mimic the pheromone of their female host bees to attract male bees as the first step in their being transported to the nests of their hosts in both cases there is strong selection pressure on the host to discriminate real mates from aggressive mimics and conversely on the predator parasite or parasitoid to track and locally adapt to the evolving signals of their hosts chapter 1 investigates parasite host adaptation to multiple hosts across the geographic range of cleptoparasite meloe franciscanus coleoptera meloidae meloe franciscanus mimics the pheromone chemistry and mate location behavior of its hosts different species of solitary bees in the genus habropoda the larvae of m franciscanus hatch synchronously and aggregate to collectively produce an olfactory signal that mimics the host femaleâ s sex pheromone to attract male bees to pseudocopulate we report that m franciscanus â deceptive signal is locally host adapted in its chemical composition and ratio of components with host bees from each allopatric population preferring the deceptive signals of their sympatric parasite population further in different locales the parasite has adapted its aggregation height to the height at which male bees typically patrol while searching for females in chapter 2 we tested the hypothesis that all four allopatric populations of meloe franciscanus are the same species parasitizing each host bee at different localities these four populations had been defined as a single species based on morphological characters of both the adult and larvae we examined all four populations using two mitochondrial genes cox 1 and 16s mtdna and three nuclear genes 28s its 2 rdna and ef1 î we used meloe strigulosus meloe proscarabaeus and tenebrio molitor as outgroups analysis using bayesian and mp methods of single genes and concatenated mtdna sequences cox 1 and 16s and concatenated nuclear sequences 28s its 2 ef1 î and total evidence resulted in alternative tree topologies separate species for each population chapter 3 explores the utility of multiple functional traits as filters for predicting host range of the parasite meloe franciscanus including host parasite spatial overlap host parasite temporal overlap local host population abundance and reliability across time and host physiological suitability using size as a proxy for bee nest provisions several functional traits of host bees tested were useful in predicting host range including local host population abundance and reliability and host mass as a proxy for nest provisions semiochemical signals and behavioral traits which where examined in chapter 1 were also important filters for host range for the solitary bee nest parasite m franciscanus taken together my dissertation shows that m franciscanus is locally adapted to its solitary bee host habropoda pallida in the mojave desert and h miserabilis in oregon it customizes its chemical blend to match the female sex pheromone of its local host in addition its cooperative aggregation behavior has been fixed to match the patrolling behavior of the local host bee using bayesian and parsimony analysis of molecular sequences from two mitochondrial and three nuclear genes four parasite populations studied are inferred to be a single species m franciscanus,2017,1
"Potential distribution of native freshwater fish in Tabasco, Mexico",the distribution patterns of the freshwater fish within tabasco wetlands have not being yet studied at a regional scale we implemented an ecological niche modeling approach to 1 identify the potential richness distribution patterns of native fish 2 evaluate the relative importance of climatic and topographic variables in fish distribution and 3 analyze if the natural protected areas correspond to areas with higher potential species richness we used occurrence records of 41 native fish species and 22 interpolated surfaces that represent topographic features and annual seasonal and extreme trends of temperature and precipitation to generate niche based potential geographic distribution maps using the garp and maxent algorithms our results show that habitat affinities can be detected at the regional scale using macro climatic and topographic variables despite the apparent evenness of the system speciesâ distributions were not homogenous at the regional scale the classification tree analysis showed that the mean temperature of the driest quarter was the most influential variable for clustering species we found that areas with the highest potential species richness are not included in the natural protected areas network this information can be used for the development of new and better native fish conservation strategies like expanding the current ones or establishing new natural protected areas los patrones de distribuciã n de los peces dulceacuã colas de los humedales de tabasco no han sido estudiados a escala regional en este estudio obtuvimos modelos de nicho ecolã gico para 1 identificar los patrones de distribuciã n potencial de riqueza de peces nativos 2 evaluar la importancia relativa de las variables climã ticas y topogrã ficas en su distribuciã n y 3 analizar si las ã reas naturales protegidas coinciden con las ã reas de mayor riqueza potencial utilizamos registros de presencia de 41 especies de peces nativos y 22 superficies interpoladas que representan las caracterã sticas topogrã ficas y las tendencias anuales estacionales y extremas de temperatura y precipitaciã n para generar mapas de distribuciã n potencial basados en los algoritmos garp y maxent nuestros resultados muestran que las afinidades de hã bitat pueden ser detectadas a escala regional utilizando variables macroclimã ticas y topogrã ficas a pesar de la aparente uniformidad del sistema la distribuciã n de especies no fue homogã nea a escala regional el anã lisis de ã rbol mostrã que la temperatura media del trimestre mã s seco es la variable mã s influyente en el agrupamiento de especies ademã s las ã reas con mayor riqueza potencial no estã n incluidas en la red de ã reas naturales protegidas esta informaciã n puede utilizarse para desarrollar nuevas y mejores estrategias de conservaciã n de peces como la ampliaciã n o el establecimiento de nuevas ã reas naturales protegidas,2017,0.121
Geographical and Ecological Drivers of Mitonuclear Genetic Divergence in a Mediterranean Grasshopper,the study of the neutral and or selective processes driving genetic variation in natural populations is central to determine the evolutionary history of species and lineages and understand how they interact with different historical and contemporary components of landscape heterogeneity here we combine nuclear and mitochondrial data to study the processes shaping genetic divergence in the mediterranean esparto grasshopper ramburiella hispanica our analyses revealed the presence of three main lineages two in europe that split in the early middle pleistocene and one in north africa that diverged from the two european ones after the messinian lineage specific potential distribution models and tests of environmental niche differentiation suggest that the phylogeographic structure of the species was driven by allopatric divergence due to the re opening of the gibraltar strait at the end of the messinian europeâ africa split and population fragmentation in geographically isolated pleistocene climatic refugia european split although we found no evidence for environment as an important driver of genetic divergence at the onset of lineage formation our analyses considering the spatial distribution of populations and different aspects of landscape composition suggest that genetic differentiation at mitochondrial loci was largely explained by environmental dissimilarity whereas resistance based estimates of geographical distance were the only predictors of genetic differentiation at nuclear markers overall our study shows that although historical factors have largely shaped concordant range wide patterns of mitonuclear genetic structure in the esparto grasshopper different contemporary processes neutral gene flow vs environmental based selection seem to be governing the spatial distribution of genetic variation in the two genomes,2017,0.746
Species are not most abundant in the centre of their geographic range or climatic niche,the pervasive idea that species should be most abundant in the centre of their geographic range or centre of their climatic niche is a key assumption in many existing ecological hypotheses and has been declared a general macroecological rule however empirical support for decreasing population abundance with increasing distance from geographic range or climatic niche centre distanceâ abundance relationships remains fairly weak we examine over 1400 bird mammal fish and tree species to provide a thorough test of distanceâ abundance relationships and their associations with species traits and phylogenetic relationships we failed to detect consistent distanceâ abundance relationships and found no association between distanceâ abundance slope and species traits or phylogenetic relatedness together our analyses suggest that distanceâ abundance relationships may be rare difficult to detect or are an oversimplification of the complex biogeographical forces that determine species spatial abundance patterns,2017,0.817
Diverse range dynamics and dispersal routes of plants on the Tibetan Plateau during the late Quaternary,article authors metrics comments related content abstract introduction data and methods results discussion conclusions supporting information acknowledgments author contributions references reader comments 0 media coverage 0 figures abstract phylogeographical studies have suggested that several plant species on the tibetan plateau tp underwent recolonization during the quaternary and may have had distinct range dynamics in response to the last glacial to further test this hypothesis and locate the possible historical dispersal routes we selected 20 plant species from different parts of the tp and modeled their geographical distributions over four time periods using species distribution models sdms furthermore we applied the least cost path method together with sdms and shared haplotypes to estimate their historical dispersal corridors we identified three general scenarios of species distribution change during the late quaternary the â contraction expansionâ scenario for species in the northeastern tp the â expansion contractionâ scenario for species in the southeast and the â stableâ scenario for widespread species during the quaternary we identified that these species were likely to recolonize along the low elevation valleys huge mountain ranges and flat plateau platform e g the yarlung zangbo valley and the himalaya we inferred that quaternary cyclic glaciations along with the various topographic and climatic conditions of the tp could have resulted in the diverse patterns of range shift and dispersal of tibetan plant species finally we believe that this study would provide valuable insights for the conservation of alpine species under future climate change,2017,0.462
A Bayesian semi‐parametric GLMM for historical and newly collected presence‐only data: an applica on to species richness of Ross Sea Mollusca,historical datasets from vast and relatively inaccessible areas are sources of potentially unique information still valuable for biodiversity studies today in many research fields ranging from climate change to projection of species loss great e⠵orts have been made to integrate historical datasets with recent data to create databases as complete as possible unlocking the information contained in presence only data largely prevalent in such databases presents a challenge for statistical modeling because of insidious observational errors due to the opportunistic nature of the data gathering process in this article we propose an appropriate statistical method for the joint analysis of historical and newly collected presence only data i e a bayesian semi parametric generalized linear mixed model glmm with dirichlet process random e⠵ects the potential of the method is illustrated by considering the ross sea section of the sombase an international compilation of southern ocean mollusc distributional records from 1899 to 2004 and beyond despite the presence of sampling bias and non detection errors the proposed model draws latent information from the data such that the resulting estimates of the parameters of interest are not only coherent with those obtained in indirectly related studies based on well structured data but also suggest interesting ideas for further research,2017,0.329
Interactive Data Exploration for Geoscience,data driven research requires interactive systems supporting fast and intuitive data ex ploration an important component is the user interface that facilitates this process in biodiversity research data is commonly of spatio temporal nature this poses unique opportunities for visual analytics approaches in this paper we present the core concepts of the web based front end of our vat visualization analysis and transformation system a distributed geo processing application we present the results of a user study and highlight unique features for the management of time and the generalization of data,2017,0.097
Forensic applications of micropalaeontology,microfossils are an abundant component of the sedimentary rock record their analysis can reveal not only the environments in which the rocks were deposited but also their age when combined the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of microfossils offer enormous utility for archaeological and forensic investigations their presence can act as a geological â fingerprintâ and the tiniest fragment of material such as a broken iron age potsherd can contain a microfossil signature that reveals the geographical source of the materials under investigation this book explores how microfossils are employed as tools to interpret human society and habitation throughout history examples include microfossil evidence associated with palaeolithic human occupation at boxgrove in sussex alongside investigations into human induced landscape change during the holocene further examples include the use of microfossils to provenance the source materials of iron age ceramics roman mosaics and minoan pottery in addition to their application to help solve modern murder cases highlighting the diverse applications of microfossils to improving our understanding of human history,2017,0.413
"Protecting bias: Across time and ecology, open-source bat locality data are heavily biased by distance to protected area",open source species locality data are widely used in species distribution modeling but may be spatially biased by uneven sampling effort across a species range spatial biases may vary across ecological trait groups if traits affect associations with landscape features and capture probability furthermore spatial biases may change across time as research priorities funding and methodologies change which may confound modeling of temporal changes in distributions we used locality records from 93 bat species from the global biodiversity information facility to characterize the differential contribution of bias variables to spatial bias and how contribution varied across ecological trait groups next we examined how historical changes in protected area proliferation economic development and sampling method advancement affected protected area and university biases roosting and foraging traits influenced spatial bias but distance to protected areas was the greatest contributor to spatial sampling bias in a pooled model and 8 out of 10 ecological trait group models over time distance to protected areas significantly decreased following protected area proliferation but economic improvement did not influence distance to universities sampling method advancements increased protected area bias for two out of three foraging groups although sampling effort has increased over time effort is becoming more biased towards protected areas which may not encompass the entirety of species ranges or allow for equal sampling across taxa characterizing spatial bias differences among species and across time clarifies underlying causes of spatial bias information that can be leveraged to improve spatial bias correction,2017,0.729
"Taxonomy of the Ronnbergia Alliance (Bromeliaceae: Bromelioideae): new combinations, synopsis, and new circumscriptions of Ronnbergia and the resurrected genus Wittmackia",the ronnbergia alliance is a recently described lineage composed of two highly supported and identifiable clades with strong geographic correlation the pacific and the atlantic clades these clades however are composed by species currently placed in the polyphyletic genera aechmea hohenbergia and ronnbergia this study aims to reorganize the species that comprise both the pacific and atlantic clades into stable and predictable taxonomic categories in this context the 26 species that compose the pacific clade are here circumscribed in the genus ronnbergia whereas the 44 species grouped in the atlantic clade are assigned to the resurrected genus wittmackia an updated circumscription of these two genera is presented including a taxonomic key to recognize the species additionally the respective taxonomic transferences and general information to the species are presented in the form of a synopsis this taxonomic treatment will facilitate future approaches on the study of the systematics conservation and evolution of the ronnbergia alliance,2017,0.85
Invasive American bullfrogs and African Clawed Frogs in South America: High Suitability of Occurrence in Biodiversity Hotspots,invasion of protected areas by non native species is currently one of the main threats to global biodiversity using an ensemble of bioclimatic envelope models we quantify the degree of exposure of south american protected areas to invasion by two invasive amphibian species we focus on protected areas that coincide with global biodiversity hotspots the species modeled lithobates catesbeianus and xenopus laevis have been reported to threaten local faunas in several non native areas that they invaded including areas in asia europe north america and south america we show that 87 5 of the protected areas within the atlantic forest may be most at risk of invasion by l catesbeianus and x laevis under current climate conditions followed by areas in the cerrado 51 7 tropical andes 37 6 tumbes choco magdalena 22 5 and chilean winter rainfall and valdivian forests 20 5 conservation plans for these regions should therefore consider latent threats from multiple sources including invasion by highly competitive non native species such as the ones modeled in our study,2017,0.729
Studies in Hyaloscyphaceae associated with major vegetation types in the Canary Islands II: a revision of Hyaloscypha,four species of the genus hyaloscypha are presented for the canary islands the study is based on recent collections and 12 previous records the earlier reports of the genus hyaloscypha fuckelii h hyalina and h leuconica are corrected all of the reported species are new to the canarian archipelago h aureliella h intacta h spiralis and h strobicola and only one has been reported before from the macaronesian region h aureliella a key descriptions illustrations and notes about ecology are provided,2017,0.54
Seven Recommendations to Make Your Invasive Alien Species Data More Useful,science based strategies to tackle biological invasions depend on recent accurate well documented standardised and openly accessible information on alien species currently and historically biodiversity data are scattered in numerous disconnected data silos that lack interoperability the situation is no different for alien species data and this obstructs efficient retrieval combination and use of these kinds of information for research and policy making standardization and interoperability are particularly important as many alien species related research and policy activities require pooling data we describe seven ways that data on alien species can be made more accessible and useful 1 create data management plans 2 increase interoperability of information sources 3 document data through metadata 4 format data using existing standards 5 adopt controlled vocabularies 6 increase data availability and 7 ensure long term data preservation we identify four properties specific and integral to alien species data species status introduction pathway degree of establishment and impact mechanism that are either missing from existing data standards or lack a recommended controlled vocabulary improved access to accurate real time and historical data will repay the long term investment in data management infrastructure by providing more accurate timely and realistic analyses if we improve core biodiversity data standards by developing their relevance to alien species it will allow the automation of common activities regarding data processing in support of environmental policy furthermore we call for considerable effort to maintain update standardise archive and aggregate datasets to ensure proper valorisation of alien species data and information before they become obsolete or lost,2017,0.579
Changes in future potential distributions of apex predator and mesopredator mammals in North America,climate change has determined shifts in distributions of species and changing climates are likely to continue to affect species in the future in this study we used maxent an ecological niche modeling algorithm to estimate the potential future distributions of apex predator and mesopredator mammals in boreal forest and tundra biomes of north america we projected the climatic niche models of apex predators and mesopredators on future climate datasets based on three global circulation models beijing climate center climate system model hadley global environment model and model for interdisciplinary research on climate earth system model and four greenhouse gas emission scenarios rcp2 6 rcp4 5 rcp6 and rcp8 5 under future climate projections the potential distributions of most of the predators studied increased by 2050 and 2070 the potential distributions of two apex predators brown bear ursus arctos and polar bear u maritimus and two mesopredator species canadian lynx lynx canadensis and arctic fox vulpes lagopus were predicted to decline under all emission scenarios by 2050 and 2070 the only apex predator that was predicted to increase its distribution under all greenhouse gas emission scenarios was u americanus american black bear similarly distributions of mesopredators like mephitis mephitis striped skunk and procyon lotor raccoon were predicted to increase greatly under future climate conditions of all four emission scenarios predicted expansions of distribution ranges of most mesopredators and contractions of distribution ranges of apex predators included in this study may result in changes of species interactions in north american boreal forests and tundras in the future,2017,0.758
Quaternary refugia are associated with higher speciation rates in mammalian faunas of the Western Palaearctic,quaternary climate changes have contributed to shape the biogeographic distribution of extant species the combination of climatic niche conservatism and glacial interglacial cycles forced many species to retract their range limits for surviving under the advance of pleistocene ice sheets refugia offered geographical opportunities for species to retreat persist and later on begin recolonization processes under favourable environmental conditions here we explore the hypothesis that refugia have been not only crucial for the survival of multiple species but also acted as speciation centres for western palaearctic mammals we define â recurrent massive refugiaâ as those geographical regions that have historically accumulated the highest levels of co occurring species for several quaternary cycles our assemblage level analyses identify the existence of refugia within the iberian peninsula and the atlantic french margin that were recurrently selected by most mammals the topographic heterogeneity climatic stability and microhabitat availability of these refugial areas may have offered suitable habitat conditions for multiple species during different climatic events over time using a bayesian analysis of macroevolutionary mixtures we detected that the higher level of divergence and accumulative evolutionary changes in mammals of the western palaearctic are found in refugia the continuous retractions and expansions of speciesâ ranges during the pleistocene promoted temporal changes in the composition and richness of communities in this biogeographic region the reorganization of ecological composition driven by cyclical climatic events may have favoured the emergence of biotic interactions and ecological responses conducive to novel selective pressures our findings suggest first that multiple climatic changes in the form of glacial interglacial transitions during the quaternary have left a detectable imprint on the observed geographical patterns of species richness in mammalian faunas of the western palaearctic and second highlight the importance of refugia for the preservation of species â museumsâ and as centers of speciation and endemism â cradlesâ as well,2017,0.935
Taxonomy of Poa jubata and a new section of the genus (Poaceae),poa jubata a kern is an ephemeral southeastern european species of which little is known a molecular phylogenetic analysis of poa l including all previously identified major lineages shows this species to be isolated with a genotype here designated as j plastid j nrdna it is assigned to the monotypic p sect jubatae sect nov the section is differentiated from other poa sections in having 5 nerved upper glumes very narrow palea flanges an annual habit and erect solitary culms poa jubata occurs along coastal regions of the balkans and is rather rare two new collections were made in 2015 in thrace turkey in vernal pool habitats with clay soils thus expanding its known habitat the species is described in detail illustrated and its relationships are discussed,2017,0.788
Phytochemical characterization of fruit extracts of Rubus adenotrichus and evaluation of their antioxidant power for dermocosmetics formulation,there are more than 700 species of the genus rubus popularly known as mora tropical highland blackberry in countries like costa rica it is commonly used in human food and in others as part of animal feed in costa rica the species rubus adenotrichus has been characterized by its high content of antioxidant substances becoming one of the most cultivated species and that may have characteristics to be used in cosmetics or medicine the objective of the present study is to identify the main phytochemical groups and to quantify the main markers in order to associate them with cosmetic or medicinal functions in pharmaceutical products materials and methods ripe fruits of rubus adenotrichius were fractionated with solvents of low medium and high polarity followed by a phytochemical screening according to the guidelines for the control of quality of products of natural origin of the world organization of health the antioxidant properties were evaluated by means of the h orac and dpph test the concentration of total phenols by follin ciocalteau and antocinanins by differential ph was determined finally the physicochemical properties of the aqueous extract such as ph specific gravity brix grades conductimetry and osmometry were determined and an absorption spectrum from 260 to 700 nm was obtained results and conclusions phenolic compounds were found as condensed and non condensed tannins anthocyanins flavonoids terpenes and alkaloids as major phytochemical groups a high antioxidant power measured in h orac 311 â 7 63 mg mol trolox equivalent g of dry fruit and ec 50 118 46 mg l for the aqueous extract the total phenols found were 20 85 â 0 27 mg g of dry sample of gallic acid equivalents which makes the rubus adenotrichus fruit an excellent active for bacteriostatic anti aging anti wrinkle nourishing and moisturizing formulations and the astrigent effect also allows its application to small superficial wounds on the skin likewise the acidic ph of 3 55 â 0 1 is beneficial for maintaining the cutaneous acid mantle and thereby favoring the normal flora of the skin but may be a problem for the formulation of carbomer based gels or the incorporation of preservatives the aqueous extract is hyperosmotic 559 66 â 3 21 mos kg and has a high electrical conductivity 285 â 2 î s cm due to the presence of electrolytes and a considerable amount of sugars according to brix degrees 7 543â â 0 005â finally the 4 w w aqueous extract shows an absorption of ultraviolet radiation of 25 in the wavelengths from 260 to 400 nm by which it also could be useful for formulating compositions for sun protection,2017,0.281
A landscape genetic analysis of important agricultural pest species in Tunisia: The whitefly Bemisia tabaci,combining landscape ecology and genetics provides an excellent framework to appreciate pest population dynamics and dispersal the genetic architectures of many species are always shaped by environmental constraints because little is known about the ecological and genetic traits of tunisian whitefly populations the main objective of this work is to highlight patterns of biodiversity genetic structure and migration routes of this pest we used nuclear microsatellite loci to analyze b tabaci populations collected from various agricultural areas across the country and we determine their biotype status molecular data were subsequently interpreted in an ecological context supplied from a species distribution model to infer habitat suitability and hereafter the potential connection paths between sampling localities an analysis of landscape resistance to b tabaci genetic flow was thus applied to take into account habitat suitability genetic relatedness and functional connectivity of habitats within a varied landscape matrix we shed light on the occurrence of three geographically delineated genetic groups with high levels of genetic differentiation within each of them potential migration corridors of this pest were then established providing significant advances toward the understanding of genetic features and the dynamic dispersal of this pest this study supports the hypothesis of a long distance dispersal of b tabaci followed by infrequent long term isolations the inference of population sources and colonization routes is critical for the design and implementation of accurate management strategies against this pest,2017,0.521
"PROVISION OF INFORMATION - FOR SCREENING FOR APPROPRIATE ASSESSMENT - PROPOSED RECREATIONAL PROJECT IN MOUNT CARMEL PARK, FIRHOUSE ROAD, DUBLIN 24.",this report which contains information required for the competent authority in this instance south dublin county council to undertake a screening for appropriate assessment aa has been prepared by scott cawley ltd it provides information on and assesses the potential for a proposed recreational project in mount carmel park dodder valley to impact on natura 2000 sites hereafter referred to as european sites,2017,0.334
Dispersal barriers and climate determine the geographic distribution of the helicopter damselfly Mecistogaster modesta,speciesâ ranges are typically constrained by the interplay of physical barriers to dispersal environmental requirements such as suitable climatic conditions and biotic constraints such as from predation or competition however teasing apart the relative importance of these constraints in determining species distributions still represents a major challenge for ecologists the neotropical damselfly mecistogaster modesta coenagrionidae odonata inhabits wet and moist forests in mainland central america and north western south america this habitat specialist spends its larval development exclusively in tank bromeliads where it acts as a keystone predator within the aquatic food web although tank forming bromeliads occur from the southern united states throughout most of south america m modesta is absent from the caribbean islands and south america south east of the andes mountain chain we employed species distribution models to explore the relative importance of physical barriers andes mountain range and oceanic barriers climate mean annual temperature and annual precipitation and biotic interactions competition from other bromeliad dwelling odonates in limiting the geographic distribution of m modesta we found that dispersal barriers strongly limit the geographic distribution of m modesta in addition its range is restricted by low temperatures and low precipitation competition from other bromeliad dwelling odonates was not important in limiting the damselfly s range because of the physical barriers to dispersal m modesta does not occupy its full potential geographic range specifically our model predicted suitable habitat on the caribbean islands and throughout most of south america where the species is currently absent these findings have important conservation implications particularly as the aridification of rainforests and subsequent localised extinctions due to climate change continue on the other hand the species may respond to warming temperatures by tracking climate to higher elevations with subsequent effects on naã ve high elevation bromeliad food webs an upwards migration could also increase the probability of m modesta overcoming the dispersal barrier presented by the andes enabling the damselfly to invade large areas of suitable habitat in south america,2017,0.632
Knowledge linked to museum specimen vouchers: measuring scientific production from a major biological collection in Colombia,biological collections are sources of knowledge particularly critical to understand life when they house specimens from megadiverse countries however the scientific value of biological collections is usually unknown because the lack of an explicit link between knowledge and specimens here we compiled 628 papers from 152 journals that used collection objects from the colecciones biolã gicas del instituto de investigaciã n de recursos biolã gicos alexander von humboldt colombia iavh cb as sources the compilation was largely based on expert knowledge however to assess the performance of our method we compared our results with results obtained conducting automatic searches in academic databases we calculated different metrics and depicted geographical taxonomic and bibliometric trends we found that geographic coverage of the iavh cb objects used in the studies is largely regional or national taxonomically we found records of 176 families in 61 orders of taxa but there is large variation among the number of studies in different groups the bibliometric analyses indicated that there is a growing trend in the number of publications and citations over the years and that the citation number as well as the h index of this set of papers is comparable to the knowledge produced by major researchers in colombia and of similar magnitude to that of the production of relatively small or medium sized collections in the usa the compilation method used performed well with broad coverage and an omission rate below 8 compared with automated searches however we conclude that both approaches expert knowledge and automated searches are complementary iavh cb are a massive source of scientific knowledge about colombian biodiversity and they are instrumental for documenting basic issues about taxa in the country,2017,0.139
"Non-native fish species in Hungarian waters: historical overview, potential sources and recent trends in their distribution",due to its central position in the danube basin and its considerable fishery sector hungary plays a key role in the spread of non native fish species in europe nevertheless the status of non native fish has not yet been reviewed for hungary therefore our aims were 1 to give a comprehensive historical overview regarding the occurrence of non native fish species of hungary 2 to show their recent distribution patterns using gis and 3 to evaluate the importance of the possible drivers in their spread literature data show 59 non native fish species from hungary the appearance of new speciesâ mostly due to aquarium fish releasesâ shows an accelerating trend nowadays although non native fish have appeared at 78 7 of the studied 767 sites during our recent countrywide survey their distribution was uneven lowland streams lowland rivers and the river danube were the most affected by non native fish particularly the gibel carp topmouth gudgeon and pumpkinseed escaped from fish angling ponds and the recent invasion of ponto caspian gobies our results indicated that in order to reduce the effects and intensity of further invasions more rigorous control of aquarium trade angling pond stockings and inter watershed fish transports are necessary,2017,0.624
Cookbooks and Curriculum,since 2014 the coastal and ocean information network atlantic coinatlantic in collaboration with the canadian node of the ocean biogeographic information system obis and other academic government and non governmental organizations in atlantic canada have been rescuing species occurrence data in primary and grey literature and processing it to standards for publication through obis the project has been funded in part by the atlantic ecosystem initiative of environment and climate change canada and fisheries and oceans canada the project was awarded honourable mention in the 2016 international data rescue award in the geosciences by elsevier and the interdisciplinary earth data alliance,2017,0.458
Different definitions of species presence to refine estimates of local species richness,abstract aim to improve predictions of spatial and temporal patterns of species richness it is important to consider how species presence at a site is defined this is because this definition affects our estimate of species richness which should be aligned with the aims of the study e g estimating richness of the breeding community here we explore the sensitivity of species richness estimates to criteria for defining presence of species e g in relation to number of days present during the breeding season at 107 wetlands innovation we use opportunistic citizen science data of high density a total of 151 817 observations of 77 wetland bird species i e about 16 observations per day to build site occupancy models calculating occupancy probabilities at a high temporal resolution e g daily occupancies to derive probabilistic estimates of seasonal site use of each species we introduce a new way for defining species presence by using different criteria related to the number of days the species are required to be present at local sites we compared patterns of species richness when using these different criteria of species inclusions main conclusion while estimates of local species richness derived from high temporal resolution occupancy models are robust to observational bias these estimates are sensitive to restrictions concerning the number of days of presence required during the breeding season unlike complete local species lists summaries of seasonal site use and different presence criteria allow identifying differences between sites and amplifying the variability in species richness among sites thus this approach allows filtering out species according to their phenology and migration behaviour e g passer by species and could improve the explanatory power of environmental variables on predictive models,2017,0.996
Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS): Building a data-driven framework to inform policy,imagine a future where dynamically from year to year we can track the progression of alien species as identify emerging problem species assess their current and future risk and timely inform policy in a seamless data driven workflow one that is built on open science and open data infrastructures by using international biodiversity standards and facilities we would ensure interoperability repeatability and sustainability this would make the process adaptable to future requirements in an evolving as policy landscape both locally and internationally in recent years belgium has developed decision support tools to inform invasive alien species ias policy including information systems early warning initiatives and risk assessment protocols however the current workflows from biodiversity observations to ias science and policy are slow not easily repeatable and their scope is often taxonomically spatially and temporally limited this is mainly caused by the diversity of actors involved and the closed fragmented nature of the sources of these biodiversity data which leads to considerable knowledge gaps for ias research and policy we will leverage expertise and knowledge from nine former and current belspo projects and initiatives alien alert invaxen diars inplanbel alien impact ensis cordex be speedy and the belgian biodiversity platform the project will be built on two components 1 the establishment of a data mobilization framework for as data from diverse data sources and 2 the development of data driven procedures for risk evaluation based on risk modelling risk mapping and risk assessment we will use facilities from the global biodiversity information facility gbif standards from the biodiversity information standards organization tdwg and expertise from lifewatch to create and facilitate a systematic workflow alien species data will be gathered from a large set of regional national and international initiatives including citizen science with a wide taxonomic scope from marine terrestrial and freshwater environments observation data will be funnelled in repeatable ways to gbif in parallel a belgian checklist of as will be established benefiting from various taxonomic and project based checklists foreseen for gbif publication the combination of the observation data and the checklist will feed indicators for the identification of emerging species their level of invasion in belgium changes in their invasion status and the identification of areas and species of concern that could be impacted upon by bioinvasions data driven risk evaluation of identified emerging species will be supported by niche and climate modelling and consequent risk mapping using critical climatic variables for the current and projected future climate periods at high resolution the resulting risk maps will complement risk assessments performed with the recently developed harmonia protocol to assess risks posed by emergent species to biodiversity and human plant and animal health the use of open data will ensure that interested stakeholders in belgium and abroad can make use of the information we generate the open science ensures everyone is free to adopt and adapt the workflow for different scenarios and regions the checklist will be used at national level but will also serve as the belgian reference for international databases iucn griis easin and impact assessments ipbes sebi the workflow will be showcased through geo bon the invasivesnet network and the cost actions alien challenge and parrotnet the observations and outcomes of risk evaluations will be used to provide science based support for the implementation of ias policies at the regional federal and eu levels the publication of belgian data and checklists on ias is particularly timely in light of the currently ongoing eu ias regulation and its implementation in belgium by proving that automated workflows can provide rapid and repeatable production of information we will open up this technology for other conservation assessments,2017,0.607
"""My naturesound"" - nature observations with sound recordings",online systems for observation reporting by citizen scientists have been operating for many years inaturalist california academy of sciences 2016 ebird cornell lab of ornithology 2016 and observado observation international 2016 are well known international systems artportalen swedish species information centre 2016 and artsobservasjoner norwegian biodiversity information centre 2016 are scandinavian in addition databases and online solutions exist that are more directly research oriented but still offer participation by citizen scientists such as the plutof university of tartu natural history museum 2016 platform the university of tartu natural history museum maintains the plutof platform abarenkov et al 2010 for storing and managing biodiversity data including taxon observations in 2014 development was started to integrate an observation app minu loodusheli my naturesound university of tartu natural history museum 2017b my naturesound fig 1 within plutof system in 2017 an english language version of the app university of tartu natural history museum 2017c was launched that includes nearly all major sound producing taxon groups in its taxonomy the application also acts as a practical tool for collecting and publishing occurrence data for the global biodiversity information facility global biodiversity information facility 2017 in standardized darwin core format together with download links to the multimedia files although the sound recording ability of mobile phones opens new opportunities to validate taxon occurrences current technological solutions limit the use of recordings in biodiversity research,2017,0.135
Potential effects of climate change on geographic distribution of the Tertiary relict tree species Davidia involucrata in China,this study using species distribution modeling involving a new approach that allows for uncertainty predicts the distribution of climatically suitable areas prevailing during the mid holocene the last glacial maximum lgm and at present and estimates the potential formation of new habitats in 2070 of the endangered and rare tertiary relict tree davidia involucrata baill the results regarding the mid holocene and the lgm demonstrate that south central and southwestern china have been long term stable refugia and that the current distribution is limited to the prehistoric refugia given future distribution under six possible climate scenarios only some parts of the current range of d involucrata in the mid high mountains of south central and southwestern china would be maintained while some shift west into higher mountains would occur our results show that the predicted suitable area offering high probability 0 5â 1 accounts for an average of only 29 2 among the models predicted for the future 2070 making d involucrata highly vulnerable we assess and propose priority protected areas in light of climate change the information provided will also be relevant in planning conservation of other paleoendemic species having ecological traits and distribution ranges comparable to those of d involucrata,2017,0.527
"Predicting suitable habitat of the Chinese monal ( Lophophorus lhuysii ) using ecological niche modeling in the Qionglai Mountains, China",understanding the distribution and the extent of suitable habitats is crucial for wildlife conservation and management knowledge is limited regarding the natural habitats of the chinese monal lophophorus lhuysii which is a vulnerable galliform species endemic to the high montane areas of southwest china and a good candidate for being an umbrella species in the qionglai mountains using ecological niche modeling we predicted current potential suitable habitats for the chinese monal in the qionglai mountains with 64 presence points collected between 2005 and 2015 suitable habitats of the chinese monal were associated with about 31 mm precipitation of the driest quarter about 15 â c of maximum temperature of the warmest month and far from the nearest human residential locations 5 000 m the predicted suitable habitats of the chinese monal covered an area of 2 490 km 2 approximately 9 48 of the qionglai mountains and was highly fragmented 54 78 of the suitable habitats were under the protection of existing nature reserves and two conservation gaps were found based on these results we provide four suggestions for the conservation management of the chinese monal 1 ad hoc surveys targeting potential suitable habitats to determine species occurrence 2 more ecological studies regarding its dispersal capacity 3 establishment of more corridors and green bridges across roads for facilitating species movement or dispersal and 4 minimization of local disturbances,2017,0.866
The importance of herbivore density and management as determinants of the distribution of rare plant species,herbivores are often drivers of ecosystem states and dynamics and in many situations are managed either as livestock or through controlled or exploitative hunting of wild populations changes in herbivore density can affect the composition of plant communities management of herbivore densities could therefore be regulated to benefit plant species of conservation concern in this study we use a unique spatial dataset of large herbivores in norway to test whether herbivore density affects the distribution of rare red listed plant species in tundra ecosystems and to identify regions where herbivore density is the most important factor in determining the habitat suitability for the plant species for all selected species a climatic variable was the most important determinant of the distribution but herbivore density was an important determinant of some species notably primula scandinavica herbivore density was the most important factor determining habitat suitability for this species in 13 of mainland norway regions of norway where the management of herbivore densities is most strongly linked to the habitat suitability of red listed plant species are mapped however there was very low concordance in the localities of these areas at any individual locality habitat suitability was limited by herbivore density for only a small subset of the species this suggests that management of herbivores for the benefit of rare plant species needs to be tailored for individual locations or species,2017,0.987
Niche-breadth of freshwater macrophytes occurring in tropical southern African rivers predicts species global latitudinal range,the study tested the hypothesis that measurement using multivariate principal components analysis pca of the niche breadth of river macrophyte species in southern tropical africa may predict their larger scale biogeographical range two measures of niche breadth were calculated for 44 riverine macrophyte species from 20 families commonly occurring in zambia using an approach based on pca ordination with 16 bio physico chemical input variables these included altitude stream order stream flow ph conductivity and soluble reactive phosphate concentration srp in the absence of additional chemical water quality data for zambian rivers invertebrate based measures of general water quality were also used these were benthic macroinvertebrate average score per taxon aspt and individual abundance of nine macroinvertebrate families with differing water quality tolerance indicated by their sensitivity weightings within the zambian invertebrate scoring system ziss macrophyte large scale latitudinal range was derived from world geopositional records held by online databases and additional records held by the authors the two niche breadth metrics divided the species into narrow niche and intermediate broad niche categories showing significant variation from one or both of correlation and anova test outcomes in altitude stream flow conductivity srp ph and aspt but not stream order macrophyte alpha diversity as a measure of number of individual niches co existing per habitat showed no significant relationship with individual species niche breadth narrow niche species included a higher proportion of afrotropical endemics than did species with broader niche size there were significant predictive relationships between macrophyte niche breadth and latitudinal range of the target species at global and afrotropical scales but not for the neotropics,2017,0.846
Contemporary Remotely Sensed Data Products Refine Invasive Plants Risk Mapping in Data Poor Regions,invasive weeds are a serious problem worldwide threatening biodiversity and damaging economies modeling potential distribution of invasive weeds can prioritize locations for monitoring and control efforts increasing management efficiency forecasts of invasion risk at regional to continental scales are enabled by readily available downscaled climate surfaces together with an increasing number of digitized and georeferenced species occurrence records and species distribution modeling techniques however predictions at a finer scale and in landscapes with less topographic variation may require predictors that capture biotic processes and local abiotic conditions contemporary remote sensing rs data can enhance predictions by providing a range of spatial environmental data products at fine scale beyond climatic variables only in this study we used the global biodiversity information facility gbif and empirical maximum entropy maxent models to model the potential distributions of 14 invasive plant species across southeast asia sea selected from regional and vietnamâ s lists of priority weeds spatial environmental variables used to map invasion risk included bioclimatic layers and recent representations of global land cover vegetation productivity gpp and soil properties developed from earth observation data results showed that combining climate and rs data reduced predicted areas of suitable habitat compared with models using climate or rs data only with no loss in model accuracy however contributions of rs variables were relatively limited in part due to uncertainties in the land cover data we strongly encourage greater adoption of quantitative remotely sensed estimates of ecosystem structure and function for habitat suitability modeling through comprehensive maps of overall predicted area and diversity of invasive species we found that among lifeforms herb shrub and vine shrub species have higher potential invasion risk in sea native invasive species which are often overlooked in weed risk assessment may be as serious a problem as non native invasive species awareness of invasive weeds and their environmental impacts is still nascent in sea and information is scarce freely available global spatial datasets not least those provided by earth observation programs and the results of studies such as this one provide critical information that enables strategic management of environmental threats such as invasive species,2017,0.645
Using standard keywords in publications to facilitate updates of new fungal taxonomic names,the combination of manual curation and the reliance on updates from submitters to the public sequence databases is currently ine cient and impedes the comprehensive and timely release of records with new taxonomic names is should be improved by making several steps during data release more e cient is article focuses on one such step by proposing a standard way for publications to ag papers with novel taxonomic information as a result the potential for automated searches of publication aggregators are improved as well as the accurate curation of taxonomic information,2017,0.232
"New State Record for the Bee Species Macropis Steironematis (Robertson, 1891) (Hymenoptera, Melittidae)",the melittidae are a relatively small family of ground nesting oil collecting bees with 14 genera and 200 described species worldwide michener 2000 michez and patiny 2005 michez and eardley 2007 the genus macropis panzer 1809 currently includes only 16 species michener 1981 macropis steironematis robertson 1891 is a great plains species and occurs in north america snelling and stage 1995 but only 39 specimen records exist from 3 counties in north america 1 in illinois and 2 in kansas gbif org 2017 b buckles pers comm with entomological collections in mo ks ia mn ky ma ne ar tn ga ok and washington d c although mitchell 1960 listed the distribution of m steironematis as iowa and missouri east to virginia north carolina and georgia there are no deposited specimens throughout most of this range additionally efforts to relocate the species in sites where the type specimen was collected have not been fruitful marlin and la berge 2001,2017,0.848
Abandoned Foreigners: is the stage set for exotic pet reptiles to invade Central Europe?,considerable scientific politic and economic attention has been directed to biological invasions multiple pathways serve to introduce species to new environments and the release or escape of pets are among the most important sources for species invasions risk assessments help to identify species that are likely to become invasive and to set up preventive measures weighing the relative importance of ecological and human factors driving the establishment success of abandoned pets we here present a new methodological guideline to help prioritising management activities for frequently traded pet reptiles climate match scores between the different distribution ranges as well as traits and niche axes shared by native and non native species were assessed moreover we tested for discrepancies in niche breadth between native and non native ranges and estimated the ability of species to coexist with humans potentially moderate to high establishment success in most species was linked to appropriate climate match scores broader niches with restrained human impacts and high similarities in reproductive traits with the native herpetofauna providing baseline information on the invasion potential of pet reptiles this assessment calls for trade regulations and to an even greater degree for large scale education campaigns to prevent the establishment of non native populations,2017,0.803
The use of biodiversity data in rural development programming,this study focuses on rural development policy implementers and evaluators as users of european biodiversity data it critically analyses the use of biodiversity data for measuring the impact of agri environment programmes and related rural development funding and highlights good practices from a range of countries the examples show the possibilities for better targeting and evaluation of agricultural funding to biodiversity conservation if sufficient biodiversity data are available and are used in policy however many biodiversity datasets exist at the national or regional but are still not integrated in the rdp monitoring system and thus not accessible to evaluators and many rdps still feature only the obligatory eu level indicators it is important to differentiate between the need for standardised eu level datasets that can be used for an overall assessment of the impact of the cap where there is still a huge data gap and the national or regional programming level where there are often existing data that are not being used for various reasons the study is part of the eu bon project which aimed to build an integrated biodiversity information system for europe,2017,0.101
Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France,data has become more and more ubiquitous in the research context as a result a growing number of services are created to analyze store and share research data this has induced the research data working group of the digital scientific library bsn10 to launch an inventory of french research data management services funded by the ministry of higher education and research the inventory covers all services that are managed by french institutions and infrastructures and dedicated to public research teams from all fields sixty services provided by forty five structures have already been identified and analyzed the paper describes the methodology used to carry out the inventory and analyzes these first results by service type scope and research field it also emphasizes the heterogeneous and emergent nature of the inventoried services,2017,0.083
Modelling the Risk Posed by the Zebra Mussel Dreissena polymorpha: Italy as a Case Study,we generated a risk map to forecast the potential effects of the spreading of zebra mussels dreissena polymorpha across the italian territory we assessed the invaderâ s potential impact on rivers lakes watersheds and dams at a fine grained scale and detected those more at risk that should be targeted with appropriate monitoring we developed a maxent model and employed weighted overlay analyses to detect the speciesâ potential distribution and generate risk maps for italy d polymorpha has a greater probability of occurring at low to medium altitudes in areas characterised by fluviatile deposits of major streams northern and central italy appear more at risk some hydroelectric power dams are at high risk while most dams for irrigation drinkable water reservoirs and other dam types are at medium to low risk the lakes and rivers reaches representing likely expansion pathways at medium high or high risk mostly occur in northern and central italy we highlight the importance of modelling potential invasions on a country scale to achieve the sufficient resolution needed to develop appropriate monitoring plans and prevent the invaderâ s harmful effects further high resolution risk maps are needed for other regions partly or not yet colonised by the zebra mussel,2017,0.134
ETH Zurich's Collections and Archives,the second english edition of the documentation on eth zurichâ s collections is now available it provides an outlook and takes stock based on the strategy 2015â 2020 for the collections and archives eth zurich consistently exploits the potential of digital technology as an additional and contemporary form that enables its collections and archives to be opened up for research teaching and the public the results are impressive extensive indexing and digitisation projects are underway in four scientific collections in the university archives the final index card will soon be transferred to a modern archival information system which will enable the entire holdings to be searched in one single place and the establishment of a digital infrastructure for the scientific object collections has begun none of the new projects embodies the goal of combining eth libraryâ s information science expertise with the technical expertise of the departments for the benefit of eth zurich and thus creating attractive publicly accessible online services better than the latter restoration preventive conservation anti theft and emergency planning measures are also being taken to protect switzerlandâ s cultural heritage and the precious analogue research data that eth zurichâ s collections and archives safeguard and curate significant progress has also been made in these areas and eth zurich can fulfil its responsibility in this way we are gradually reinforcing the dialogue with society and similarly with eth zurichâ s researchers and students inward anchoring and outward radiance will remain priorities in the next few years in this sense eth zurich counts on its collections and archives â and they can count on eth zurich,2017,0.217
Biodiversity conservation gaps in the Brazilian protected areas,although brazil is a megadiverse country and thus a conservation priority no study has yet quantified conservation gaps in the brazilian protected areas pas using extensive empirical data here we evaluate the degree of biodiversity protection and knowledge within all the brazilian pas through a gap analysis of vertebrate arthropod and angiosperm occurrences and phylogenetic data our results show that the knowledge on biodiversity in most brazilian pas remain scant as 71 of pas have less than 0 01 species records per km2 almost 55 of brazilian species and about 40 of evolutionary lineages are not found in pas while most species have less than 30 of their geographic distribution within pas moreover the current pa network fails to protect the majority of endemic species most importantly these results are similar for all taxonomic groups analysed here the methods and results of our countrywide assessment are suggested to help design further inventories in order to map and secure the key biodiversity of the brazilian pas in addition our study illustrates the most common biodiversity knowledge shortfalls in the tropics,2017,0.785
Informing decisions on an extremely data poor species facing imminent extinction,some of the species that are believed to have the highest probability of extinction are also amongst the most poorly known and this makes it extremely difficult to decide how to spend scarce resources assessments of conservation status made on the basis of loss or degradation of habitat and lack of records may provide compelling indications of a decline in geographical range and population size but they do not help identify where conservation action might be best targeted methods for assessing the probability of extinction and for modelling speciesâ distributions exist but their data requirements often exceed the information that is available for some of the most urgent conservation cases here we use all available information localities expert information climate and landcover about a high priority vietnamese bird species edwards s pheasant lophura edwardsi to assess objectively the probability of its persistence and where surveys or other conservation action should be targeted it is clear that the species is on the threshold of extinction and there is an urgent need to survey bach ma national park including the extension and to consider surveying ke go nature reserve this approach has potential to help identify where conservation action should be targeted for other critically endangered species for which there is an extreme scarcity of information,2017,0.803
Preliminary Study to Investigate Variation in Flooding Tolerance Across Six Rhododendron viscosum (L.) Torr. Subpopulations,the ability for ornamental shrubs to withstand periodic poorly drained and waterlogged soils greatly improves their utility in the landscape many cultivars of deciduous azaleas rhododendron subg hymenanthes sect pentanthera g don while ornamental and cold hardy are poorly characterized for adaptations to flooded or waterlogged soils often present in commercial or residential landscapes we present research illustrating the flooding tolerance of one species rhododendron viscosum l torr a deciduous azalea that occurs naturally in flooded sites throughout many parts of the southern and southeastern united states periodic inundation of seedling root zones was conducted over a 53 day period to simulate severe flooding events rhododendron viscosum maintained vigor and growth based on accumulated root and shoot biomass despite periodic flooding however significant variation in the flooding response existed between subpopulations collected in four states in the southeastern us other notable responses to flooding included leaf discoloration and changes in root architecture this research suggests that some r viscosum subpopulations are tolerant of periodic inundation and would serve as good places to identify parents for the breeding of future deciduous azalea cultivars with improved tolerance of flooded or waterlogged soils,2017,0.435
The Flavonoid Fraction from Rhoeo discolor Leaves Acting as Antiviral Against Influenza A Virus,in vitro antiviral effect of a crude methanol extract and six fractions isolated from rhoeo discolor against pandemic influenza a h1n1 was evaluated in this study the phytochemical analysis to identify the main classes of secondary metabolites was performed by thin layer chromatography tlc the cytotoxic effect and cell viability was determined in mdck cells and the antiviral activity was evaluated by qrt pcr to detect influenza virus nucleoprotein np gene finally a metabolomic analysis was performed using uplc ms the phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of coumarins tannins saponins and flavonoids in the methanol extracts cytotoxicity related to 50 cell viability indicated concentrations of 1î g ml for the six fractions tested and 1î g ml for the crude extracts fraction mf1 inhibited synthesis of viral np at co treatment level at a concentration of 0 30 â 0 02 g ml with a selectivity index si of 30 the metabolomic analysis identified the presence of five flavonoids kaempferol quercetin isoquercetin luteolin 5 glucoside and rutin antiviral activity of flavonoids from r discolor against the influenza a h1n1 virus are reported for the first time,2017,0.474
Local adaptation of Grauer's gorilla gut microbiome,the availability of high throughput sequencing technologies has enabled metagenomic investigations into complex bacterial communities with unprecedented resolution and throughput the production of dedicated data sets for metagenomic analyses is however a costly process and frequently the first research questions focus on the study species itself if the source material is represented by fecal samples target capture of host specific sequences is applied to enrich the complex dna mixtures contained within a typical fecal dna extract yet even after this enrichment the samples still contain a large amount of environmental dna that is usually left unanalysed in my study i investigate the possibility of using shotgun sequencing data that has been subjected to target enrichment for mtdna from the host species grauerâ s gorilla gorilla beringei graueri for further analysis of the microbial community present in these samples the purpose of these analyses is to study the differences in the bacterial communities present within a high altitude grauerâ s gorilla low altitude grauerâ s gorilla and a sympatric chimpanzee population additionally i explore the adaptive potential of the gut microbiota within these great ape populations i evaluated the impact that the enrichment process had on the microbial community by using pre and post capture museum preserved samples in addition to this i also analysed the effect of two different extraction methods on the bacterial communities my results show that the relative abundances of the bacterial taxa remain relatively unaffected by the enrichment process and the extraction methods the overall number of taxa is however reduced by each additional capture round and is not consistent between the extraction methods this means that both the enrichment and extraction processes introduce biases that require the usage of abundance based distance measures for biological inferences additionally even if the data cannot be used to study the bacterial communities in an unbiased manner it provides useful comparative insights for samples that were treated in the same fashion with this background i used museum and fecal samples to perform cluster analysis to explore the relationships between the gut microbiota of the three great ape populations i found that populations cluster by species first and only then group according to habitat i further found that a bacterial taxon that degrades plant matter is enriched in the gut microbiota of all three great ape species where it could help with the digestion of vegetative foods another bacterial taxon that consumes glucose is enriched in the gut microbiota of the low altitude gorilla and chimpanzee populations where it could help with the modulation of the hostâ s mucosal immune system and could point to the availability of fruit in the animals diet in addition i found a bacterial taxon that is linked with diarrhea in humans to be part of the gut microbiota of the habituated high altitude gorilla population which could indicate that this pathogen has been transmitted to the gorillas from their interaction with humans or it could be indicative of the presence of a contaminated water source,2017,0.99
"An evaluation of the status of living collections for plant, environmental, and microbial research",while living collections are critical for biological research support for these foundational infrastructure elements is inconsistent which makes quality control regulatory compliance and reproducibility difficult in recent years the ecological society of america has hosted several national science foundationâ sponsored workshops to explore and enhance the sustainability of biological research infrastructure at the same time the united states culture collection network has brought together managers of living collections to foster collaboration and information exchange within a specific living collections community to assess the sustainability of collections a survey was distributed to collection scientists whose responses provide a benchmark for evaluating the resiliency of these collections among the key observations were that plant collections have larger staffing requirements and that living microbe collections were the most vulnerable to retirements or other disruptions many higher plant and vertebrate collections have institutional support and several have endowments other collections depend on competitive grant support in an era of intense competition for these resources opportunities for synergy among living collections depend upon complementing the natural strong engagement with the research communities that depend on these collections with enhanced information sharing communication and collective action to keep them sustainable for the future external efforts by funding agencies and publishers could reinforce the advantages of having professional management of research resources across every discipline,2017,0.112
No general relationship between mass and temperature in endotherm species,bergmann s rule is a widely accepted biogeographic rule that individuals within a species are smaller in warmer environments while there are many single species studies and integrative reviews documenting this pattern a data intensive approach has not been used to determine the generality of this pattern we assessed the strength and direction of the relationship between temperature and individual mass for almost 1 000 bird and mammal species the majority of species did not have a strong relationship between temperature and mass most species had non significant correlations with coefficients near zero these results suggest that bergmann s rule is not general and temperature is not a dominant driver of biogeographic variation in mass further understanding size variation will require integrating multiple processes that influence size the lack of dominant temperature forcing weakens the justification for the hypothesis that global warming could result in widespread decreases in body size,2017,0.764
Jabot - Sistema de Gerenciamento de Coleções Botânicas: a experiência de uma década de desenvolvimento e avanços,information systems are critical to the management of biological collections of research institutions in biodiversity since they have been making significant investments in the computerization process and digitization of their collections systems of herbarium and botanical gardens databases have evolved to provide online data from herbarium specimens and related collections in addition to your images in this paper is presented the new version of jabot the botanical collections management system developed at the botanical garden of rio de janeiro the system now reflects the knowledge acquired by a multidisciplinary team of botanists and computer professionals in a decade of intensive use in the management of digital content and curator of the herbarium,2017,0.057
Identifying Novel Features from Specimen Data for the Prediction of Valuable Collection Trips,primary biodiversity data provide â œwhat where and whenâ data points the assertion that a species occurred at a particular point in space and time these are most valuable when associated with specimens stored in natural history museums and herbaria which evidence the assertions with reference to a physical specimen the research presented uses novel data mining techniques to uncover two hidden dimensions in specimen data who collected the specimens and how they were collected a combination of unsupervised and supervised learning techniques are used which establish two new entities collector and collection trip features are defined against these higher order representations of the data which support the use of the data to answer novel questions such as which collection trips discover the most new species we explore the features by building classifiers to predict species discovery and compare these with a baseline model grouped using collector team transcriptions derived from the raw specimen data preliminary results are promising and whilst the particular focus of this research was botanical specimens the technique is equally applicable to datasets of field collected specimens from other scientific domains,2017,0.733
The collection of birds from Mozambique at the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical of the University of Lisbon (Portugal),the instituto de investigaã ã o cientã fica tropical of the university of lisbon which resulted from the recent merger in 2015 of the former state laboratory instituto de investigaã ã o cientã fica tropical in the university of lisbon holds an important collection of bird skins from the portuguese speaking african countries angola mozambique sã o tomã and prã ncipe guinea bissau and cape verde gathered as a result of several scientific expeditions made during the colonial period in this paper the subset from mozambique is described which was taxonomically revised and georeferenced it contains 1585 specimens belonging to 412 taxa collected between 1932 and 1971 but mainly in 1948 43 of specimens and 1955 30 of specimens the collection covers all eleven provinces of the country although areas south of the zambezi river are better represented than those north of the river the provinces with the highest number of specimens were maputo sofala and gaza although it is a relatively small collection with a patchy coverage it adds significantly to global biodiversity information facility with 15 of all records available before and during the collecting period 1830â 1971 being the second largest dataset for that period for mozambique,2017,0.381
"Geographical variation in morphology of Chaetosiphella stipae stipae Hille Ris Lambers, 1947 (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Chaitophorinae)",chaetosiphella stipae stipae is a xerothermophilous aphid associated with palaearctic temperate steppe zones or dry mountain valleys where there are grasses from the genus stipa its geographical distribution shows several populations that are spread from spain across europe and asia minor to mongolia and china geographical variation in chaetotaxy and other morphological features were the basis to consider whether individuals from different populations are still the same species moreover using ch stipae stipae and stipa species occurrences as well as climatic variables we predict potential geographical distributions of the aphid and its steppe habitat additionally for stipa species we projected current climatic conditions under four climate change scenarios for 2050 and 2070 while highly variable our results of morphometric analysis demonstrates that all ch stipae stipae populations are one very variable subspecies and in view of predicted climate change we expect reduction of stipa grasslands the disappearance of these ecosystems could result in stronger separation of the east european and asian steppes as well as european â warm stageâ refuges therefore the geographic morphological variability that we see today in the aphid subspecies ch stipae stipae may in the future lead to speciation and creation of separate subspecies or species,2017,0.868
Manual of Afrotropical Diptera,true flies or diptera constitute one of the largest orders of insects in the biosphere with over 160 000 described species worldwide more than 20 000 of which occur in the afrotropical region they are as diverse morphologically and biologically as they are numerous and many groups have evolved spectacular structural adaptations that are commensurate with their environment and biology during their long evolutionary history virtually every terrestrial niche has been occupied by the diptera making them one of the most successful groups of organisms on earth many have co evolved in association with other organisms and become highly specialised parasites or parasitoids of a range of disparate groups of plants and animals whether focusing on their systematics biology biogeography conservation or the more applied aspects the diptera remain a fascinating and intriguing group this four volume book a collaboration of over 90 international experts on diptera is the first ever synopsis of the 108 families of flies known from the afrotropical region and includes discussions on biology and immature stages economic importance classification identification to the generic level as well as a synopsis of each genus this work provides the basics for understanding the diversity of a major order of insects in a large tropical and sub tropical region and is the first such synopsis of its kind for any major insect order occurring in the afrotropics,2017,0.461
Linking molecular and morphological biodiversity evidence by building a single name space,gbif is working on the solution to represent molecular dna evidence of species presence in time and space alongside the currently prevailing morphological evidence among many benefits of this approach are filling the geographic and taxonomic gaps and adequate representation of functionally important organism groups experimental modification of gbif backbone includes provisional non linnaean names from unite and bold systems enabling indexing georeferenced sequences alongside other records life on earth does not depend on the language we use to name taxa single index and access point to global biodiversity data is essential for good science and adequate decision making,2017,0.42
A taxonomic revision of the Verbascum daenzeri group (Scrophulariaceae),taxonomy and distribution of the verbascum daenzeri group has been revised the group comprises four species three of them endemic to greece and the fourth extending to bulgaria and turkey in europe celsia peraffinis rech f previously sunk into the synonymy of verbascum boissieri heldr sartori ex boiss kuntze is resurrected as an independent species and recombined as verbascum peraffine rech f zografidis strid,2017,0.595
Producing a plant diversity portal for South Africa,taxonomy provides a universal method to classify biodiversity at different scales locally and globally currently existing taxonomic treatments are scattered limiting their accessibility and utility the convention on biological diversity has responded to this challenge by setting the goal of compiling a world flora online global strategy for plant conservation target 1 2011â 2020 this can be done by aggregating electronically available information provided by each country region or specialist group developing a flora or a high level monographic product requires time and input from a large pool of taxonomic specialists completing a flora may be difficult to accomplish for phytodiverse countries such as south africa if the 2020 target is to be met fortunately a large number of taxonomic contributions and many electronic tools exist that can enhance progress where these are available efforts have to be made to access and digitise the literature here we describe a pragmatic approach to developing an online flora involving taking floristic information from multiple previously published sources digitising the legacy literature where needed and aggregating the required information into a single portal south africa is committed to producing an online flora the e flora of south africa and contributing the information to the world flora online initiative following the aggregator portal approach a method described here that might be useful for other countries with high phytodiversity,2017,0.151
Mobilization and integration of bacterial phenotypic data—Enabling next generation biodiversity analysis through the BacDive metadatabase,microbial data and metadata are scattered throughout the scientific literature databases and unpublished lab notes and thereby often are difficult to access hot spots of meta data are internal descriptions of culture collections and initial descriptions of novel taxa in primary literature here we describe three exemplary mobilization projects which yielded metadata published through the prokaryotic metadatabase bacdive the reichenbach collection of myxobacteria includes information on 12 535 typewritten index cards which were digitized a total of 37 156 data points were extracted by text mining in the second mobilization project analytical profile index api tests on paper forms were targeted overall 6820 api tests were digitized which provide physiological data of 4524 microbial strains thirdly the extraction of metadata from 523 new species descriptions of the international journal of systematic and evolutionary microbiology yielding 35 651 data points is described all data sets were integrated and published in bacdive thereby these metadata not only became accessible and searchable but were also linked to strain taxonomy isolation source cultivation condition and molecular biology data,2017,0.326
Biodiversity patterns and conservation of the coastal forests of Eastern Africa,biodiversity patterns in space and time biological diversity is distributed unevenly across the earth well known current biodiversity gradients such as the latitudinal e g fig 1 altitudinal diversity gradients and the mid domain effect have contributed significantly to our understanding of diversity patterns however how biodiversity has changed over time is also an important factor that can explain past and current patterns mannion et al 2014 in the past decades significant progress in our understanding of biodiversity at spatial and temporal scales have been made rosenzweig 1995 gaston blackburn 2007 and how this relates to global change and conservation kerr et al 2007 endemism and the persistence of biodiversity over time is hypothesized to be strongly influenced by long term climatic stability and topography sandel et al 2011 harrison noss 2017 over millions of years refugia are suspected to play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity during times of geological and climate change mayr o hara 1986 moreau 1933 dynesius jansson 2000 the persistence of diversity over time in refugia is known to lead to areas that support unique biodiversity that has become locally extinct elsewhere this is especially true in areas with complex topography where a species may only need to move a small distance in response to climate change compared to the large distance that a species in a flat landsape would need to move to adapt to the same climate change conditions recent studies using the concept of climate change velocity as a measure of long term climate stability have shown that areas subjected to high levels of climate change are associated with a marked absence of small ranged birds mammals and amphibians sandel et al 2011 with areas that are comparatively stable identified as essential refugia for narrow ranged species that are sensitive to habitat change,2017,0.538
Modeling the biogeography of pelagic diatoms of the Southern Ocean,species distribution models sdm are a widely used and well established method for biogeographical research on terrestrial organisms though already used for decades experience with marine species is scarce especially for protists more and more observation data sometimes even aggregated over centuries become available also for the marine world which together with high quality environmental data form a promising base for marine sdms in contrast to these sdms typical biogeographical studies of diatoms only considered observation data from a few transects species distribution methods were evaluated for marine pelagic diatoms in the southern ocean at the example of f kerguelensis based on the experience with these models sdms for further species were built to study biogeographical patterns the anthropogenic impact of climate change on these species is assessed by model projections on future scenarios for the end of this century besides observation data from public data repositories such as gbif own observations from the hustedt diatom collection were used the models presented here rely on so called presence only observation data for this simple data type maxent has been proven to be a good modeling method sdm seems a suitable modeling method to study biogeography of marine pelagic diatoms in the southern ocean models of decent quality could be built despite partly poor data future projections indicate a moderate decrease of the suitable areas towards the end of the century for most of the investigated species,2017,0.448
Model uncertainties do not affect observed patterns of species richness in the Amazon,background climate change is arguably a major threat to biodiversity conservation and there are several methods to assess its impacts on species potential distribution yet the extent to which different approaches on species distribution modeling affect species richness patterns at biogeographical scale is however unaddressed in literature in this paper we verified if the expected responses to climate change in biogeographical scaleâ patterns of species richness and species vulnerability to climate changeâ are affected by the inputs used to model and project species distribution methods we modeled the distribution of 288 vertebrate species amphibians birds and mammals all endemic to the amazon basin using different combinations of the following inputs known to affect the outcome of species distribution models sdms 1 biological data type 2 modeling methods 3 greenhouse gas emission scenarios and 4 climate forecasts we calculated uncertainty with a hierarchical anova in which those different inputs were considered factors results the greatest source of variation was the modeling method model performance interacted with data type and modeling method absolute values of variation on suitable climate area were not equal among predictions but some biological patterns were still consistent all models predicted losses on the area that is climatically suitable for species especially for amphibians and primates all models also indicated a current east western gradient on endemic species richness from the andes foot downstream the amazon river again all models predicted future movements of species upwards the andes mountains and overall species richness losses conclusions from a methodological perspective our work highlights that sdms are a useful tool for assessing impacts of climate change on biodiversity uncertainty exists but biological patterns are still evident at large spatial scales as modeling methods are the greatest source of variation choosing the appropriate statistics according to the study objective is also essential for estimating the impacts of climate change on species distribution yet from a conservation perspective we show that amazon endemic fauna is potentially vulnerable to climate change due to expected reductions on suitable climate area climate driven faunal movements are predicted towards the andes mountains which might work as climate refugia for migrating species,2017,0.97
Bottlenecks in the PGRFA use system: stakeholders’ perspectives,an essential component of efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change on crop production and food security is the production of new varieties of crops which can thrive in more extreme changeable and uncertain environmental conditions humankind is therefore dependent on the continual availability of a wide pool of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture pgrfa to sustain our food and economic security yet despite the vast pool of resources that exists we face significant hurdles in mobilizing them for effective and sustainable use the governing body of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture the treaty has recognized the pivotal role of sustainable use of pgrfa in addressing global challengesâ including climate change adaptation food security and biodiversity lossâ and the need to assist countries in designing measures to promote the sustainable use of pgrfa a global survey was conducted by the secretariat of the treaty to gather the views and needs of pgrfa stakeholders the results of which have allowed a clearer understanding of the â bottlenecksâ in the pgrfa use system and a deeper comprehension of the constraints and needs regarding the implementation of the sustainable use provisions of the treaty in particular there is a critical need to address a limitations regarding policy in support of sustainable use activities b capacity building needs in all areas of the pgrfa sustainable use spectrum and c access to plant genetic material and associated information,2017,0.131
Pervasive human-mediated large-scale invasion: analysis of spread patterns and their underlying mechanisms in 17 of China's worst invasive plants,biological invasions constitute a major component of human induced environmental change and have become a world wide problem threatening global biodiversity and incurring massive economic costs consequently research on biological invasions proliferates placing a major emphasis on species traits and habitat characteristics associated with successful invasion yet the mechanisms underlying rapid spread and the resulting patterns remain largely unexplored using data collected since 1980 and earlier at the county level all over china we studied the contribution of potential dispersal vectors â railroads rail stations roads general human activity rivers and winds â to the spread of 17 of china s worst invasive plant species focusing on long distance dispersal events we calculated the minimal arrival speed for the first record of each species in each county we also developed and applied a new method to account for observation bias due to the proximity to roads using observational data of 776 native non invasive plant species throughout china we found that human related vectors are accountable for the vast spread of all 17 invasive plant species we examined spread patterns were characterized by long jumps of tens to hundreds of kilometres and extremely fast average spread rates of roughly 2â 4 km per year and a very broad range 0â 1â 128â 2 km per year with high variability between years these rates are much higher than those expected from classic dispersal vectors such as water wind or animals commonly used fat tailed dispersal kernels did not fit the observed distribution of long jumps for any species synthesis we found pervasive empirical evidence for the overriding role of humans in the large scale spread of invasive plants from multiple taxa the observed spread patterns differ significantly from those portrayed in the literature emphasizing the need to develop new frameworks to explore large scale spread in general and invasive spread in particular with public data sets of invasive species observations becoming increasingly more available the time is ripe to go beyond exploration of species traits and habitat suitability and to examine the actual patterns and the mechanisms of large scale invasive spread even at a scale of thousands of kilometres over land,2017,0.828
Molecular and taxonomic characterisation of introduced specimens of Poecilia reticulata in the lower Paraguay River basin (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae),abstract poeciliids comprise around 300 species inhabiting the fresh and brackish waters of the americas and africa poecilia reticulata is native to northeastern south america and trinidad and tobago in this paper introduced specimens of p reticulata collected in the lower paraguay river in argentina were characterized by means of molecular and taxonomic approaches we further explore by means of dna barcoding the singularity of the genetic identity of these specimens ocurrence of p reticulata in the lower paraguay river represents the first record of this species in argentina thirteen individuals of p reticulata were collected dna barcoding showed that all five specimens sampled belong to a single mitochondrial lineage which was also present in 11 countries from five continents the distance based tree clearly grouped separetely four different clusters of p reticulata when including public data genetic distance between the most divergent p reticulata almost paralleled distance between this species and poecilia mexicana and p vivipara established populations from paraguay could be one of the plausible sources for the introduced populations recorded in the lower paraguay river the presence of p reticulata in an open waterway with known drainage to a natural stream is of major concern,2017,0.652
Integrating genetics and suitability modelling to bolster climate change adaptation planning in Patagonian Nothofagus forests,we investigated the impact of past changes in habitat suitability on the current patterns of genetic diversity of two southern beeches nothofagus nervosa and nothofagus obliqua in their eastern fragmented range in patagonian argentina and model likely future threats to their population genetic structure our goal was to develop a spatially explicit strategy for guiding conservation and management interventions in light of climate change we combined suitability modelling under current past last glacial maximum 21 000 bp and future 2050s climatic conditions with genetic characterization data based on chloroplast dna isozymes and microsatellites we show the complementary usefulness of the distribution of chloroplast haplotypes and locally common allelic richness calculated from microsatellite data for identifying the locations of putative glacial refugia our findings suggest that contemporary hotspots of genetic diversity correspond to convergence zones of different expansion routes most likely as a consequence of admixture processes future suitability predictions suggest that climate change might differentially affect both species all genetically most diverse populations of n nervosa and several of n obliqua are located in areas that may be most severely impacted by climate change calling for forward looking conservation interventions we propose a practical spatially explicit strategy to target conservation interventions distinguishing priority populations for 1 in situ conservation hotspots of genetic diversity likely to remain suitable under climate change 2 ex situ conservation in areas where high genetic diversity overlaps with high likelihood of drastic climate change 3 vulnerable populations areas expected to be negatively affected by climate change and 4 potential expansion areas under climate change,2017,0.486
Assessing the Relevance of Herbarium Collections as Tools for Conservation Biology,herbarium collections constitute permanent and often well documented records of the distribution of taxa through space and time since their creation their uses have dramatically expanded and with many new uses being proposed including some for which herbaria were not initially intended for in this paper we assess the potential of these collections on conservation biology by providing exemplary studies that use herbarium specimens grouped into four categories 1 based on occurrence data such as studies about plant extinction or introduction or those focused on modelling their ecological niche 2 based on the specimens themselves such as morphological or phenological studies to evaluate the impact of climate change 3 based in genetic data such as phylogeographic or taxonomical studies and 4 other applied studies,2017,0.188
Human management and hybridization shape treegourd fruits in the Brazilian Amazon Basin,local people s perceptions of cultivated and wild agrobiodiversity as well as their management of hybridization are still understudied in amazonia here we analyze domesticated treegourd crescentia cujete whose versatile fruits have technological symbolic and medicinal uses a wild relative c amazonica of the cultivated species grows spontaneously in amazonian flooded forests we demonstrated using whole chloroplast sequences and nuclear microsatellites that the two species are strongly differentiated nonetheless they hybridize readily throughout amazonia and the proportions of admixture correlate with fruit size variation of cultivated trees new morphotypes arise from hybridization and are recognized by people and named as local varieties small hybrid fruits are used to make the important symbolic rattle maracã suggesting that management of hybrid trees is an ancient human practice in amazonia effective conservation of amazonian agrobiodiversity needs to incorporate this interaction between wild and cultivated populations that is managed by smallholder families beyond treegourd our study clearly shows that hybridization plays an important role in tree crop phenotypic diversification and that the integration of molecular analyses and farmers perceptions of diversity help disentangle crop domestication history,2017,0.847
Automated dataset generation for image recognition using the example of taxonomy,this master thesis addresses the subject of automatically generating a dataset for image recognition which takes a lot of time when being done manually as the thesis was written with motivation from the context of the biodiversity workgroup at the city university of applied sciences bremen the classification of taxonomic entries was chosen as an exemplary use case in order to automate the dataset creation a prototype was conceptualized and implemented after working out knowledge basics and analyzing requirements for it it makes use of an pre trained abstract artificial intelligence which is able to sort out images that do not contain the desired content subsequent to the implementation and the automated dataset creation resulting from it an evaluation was performed other manually collected datasets were compared to the one the prototype produced in means of specifications and accuracy the results were more than satisfactory and showed that automatically generating a dataset for image recognition is not only possible but also might be a decent alternative to spending time and money in doing this task manually at the very end of this work an idea of how to use the principle of employing abstract artificial intelligences for step by step classification of deeper taxonomic layers in a productive system is presented and discussed,2017,0.05
How Agricultural Researchers Share their Data: a Landscape Inventory,the united states agricultural research service ars recently declared a grand challenge transform agriculture to deliver a 20 increase in quality 1 food availability with 20 lower environmental impact by 2025 addressing this challenge requires a sea change in how it conducts agricultural research not only will teams need to be multi disciplinary as they begin to pursue big data and data intensive approaches they will need to find effective ways to share their diverse kinds of data with each other with other research teams with members of farming and business communities and with policy makers biodiversity is a key component of food production crop and livestock species for example and the pollinators and microbes they depend on and the impact that food production including reduction of pest and pathogen species has on the environment species richness invasive species and ecosystem services for example it is currently unclear how much biodiversity data relevant to agriculture is being made available and if so where it is these questions are part of a general need to understand how our pilot platform for usda funded data cataloging and publication the ag data commons https data nal usda gov can best support grand challenge research it will also help agricultural librarians assist their researchers in data management and publication therefore we conducted an extensive inventory of the options available to researchers both for finding data and sharing data related to the broader areas of agricultural research we present the general results for agriculture overall then explore the agrobiodiversity sector specifically we found 230 active and publicly available agriculture specific databases and repositories only 16 6 of which accept submissions outside their institution consortium or projects and most of which are not using or not relevant to tdwg standards such as darwin core the use of taxonomic identifiers is also not standardized while 73 more general repositories including the global biodiversity information facility gbif have easily discoverable agricultural data in many cases the amounts are currently much smaller than one might expect given vast investments in agricultural research we reviewed the total number of datasets returned by seven agriculture related search terms as well as the percent of the total repository each term represented only twenty five 34 2 of the general repositories returned over 500 results from at least one agricultural search term only ten repositories 13 7 returned 5 or more of their collection with any of these agricultural search terms of the top 50 journals where usda researchers published in 2016 40 80 host supplemental datasets and most state that supplemental material is published as submitted and will not be edited thirty 60 either require or strongly encourage authors to deposit supporting data in public repositories with 21 42 recommending discipline specific repositories four journals name gbif for example only one journal recommended metadata standards according to type of data future work should include an assessment of how many of these databases and repositories have machine readable data dictionaries which could be used to more effectively discover agriculturally relevant data and to foster meaningful data integration future work should also explore how mining the biodiversity heritage library and other sources can increase the availability of machine readable legacy agrobiodiversity data,2017,0.318
JabotG: Extending the Herbarium Dataset Frontiers,herbaria around the world have been collecting and curating data throughout the years many of them maintain web portals to provide online data from herbarium specimens and related collections in addition to their images more recently open governmental data portals have been the standard solution for government institutions willing to put their public data available for the society however publishing data which originally is stored in relational databases into open linked data initiatives is not an easy task this work reports on the efforts and the benefits of publishing one of the data collections of the rio de janeiro botanical garden research institute into an rdf graph named jabotg a set of queries illustrates the analytical potential of the new format and how two related datasets can be queried to provide new interesting and useful insights,2017,0.174
Invasive Tamarix (Tamaricaceae) in South Africa: current research and the potential for biological control,most species of tamarix originate in eurasia and at least five species have become invasive around the world including south africa however t usneoides is indigenous to southern africa where the potential for biological control of the invasive species is being investigated recent research on the invasive species is reviewed here with particular reference to these south african biocontrol efforts the successful biological control programme against invasive tamarix in the usa using several species of â œtamarisk beetleâ is being used as a guide for the south african research the south african programme is complicated by firstly the presence of the indigenous t usneoides which raises the precision of host specificity required and secondly the introduced and indigenous tamarix have a high intrinsic value for phytoremediation of mine tailings dams in south africa the phylogenetic proximity of these tamarix species to each other has contributed to this challenge which has nevertheless been successfully addressed by molecular techniques used to separate the species in addition classical morphological techniques have been used to separate the tamarisk beetles so that now they can generally be matched to tamarix tree species overall it is concluded that given the broad knowledge now available on the ecology and identity of both the trees and their biocontrol agents the prospects for successful biological control of tamarix in south africa are good,2017,0.977
Extending the Natural Distribution Range of Astroloba herrei Uitewaal (Asphodelaceae: Alooideae): Implications for Its Conservation Status,astroloba herrei uitewaal asphodelaceae alooideae is currently regarded as one of the rarest and most threatened species in the genus the species is mostly recorded as having a small restricted geographical distribution range as well as a habitat that is vulnerable due in part at least to its proximity to human activity its distribution range is interpreted as disjunct as the species is considered to be restricted to two widely separated areas 1 the immediate surrounds of prince albert in the great karoo western cape province south africa and 2 a contested spot north of uniondale in the little karoo we hypothesised that these two areas separated by 100 km 60 miles were contiguous but not through the most frequented routes connecting these two spots map overlays for vegetation type soil type and geology were used to predict likely habitats in the more inaccessible region through which the areas could be connected specifically along the northern great karoo slopes of the swartberg based on the results the most likely potential localities were identified and visited and the species was found where predicted ground truthing of the predicted range therefore confirmed that a herrei is in fact far more widespread than previously believed its distribution stretches from west of prince albert along the eastern swartberg and across the provincial border into the eastern cape province where it occurs along the r407 road that connects prince albert to willowmore at the eastern edge of its range it crosses the swartberg to the south and occurs north of uniondale significantly a herrei has a natural range which in size by far outstrips that of a number of other astroloba species based on the results of our work we propose that the conservation status of astroloba herrei be changed from â œvulnerable d2â to â œleast concernâ,2017,0.838
The zoon R package for reproducible and shareable species distribution modelling,the rapid growth of species distribution modelling sdm as an ecological discipline has resulted in a large and diverse set of methods and software for constructing and evaluating sdms the disjointed nature of the current sdm research environment hinders evaluation of new methods synthesis of current knowledge and the dissemination of new methods to sdm users the zoon r package aims to overcome these problems by providing a modular framework for constructing reproducible sdm workflows zoon modules are interoperable snippets of r code each carrying out an sdm method that zoon combines into a single analysis object rather than defining these modules zoon instead draws modules from an open version controlled online repository zoon makes it easy for sdm researchers to contribute modules to this repository enabling others to rapidly deploy new methods in their own workflows or to compare alternative methods each workflow object created by zoon is a re runnable record of the data code and results of an entire sdm analysis this can then be easily shared scrutinized reproduced and extended by the whole sdm research community we explain how zoon works and demonstrate how it can be used to construct a completely reproducible sdm analyses create and share a new module and perform a methodological comparison study,2017,0.192
"First record of an Apterichtus kendalli (Gilbert, 1891) (Anguilliformes, Ophichthidae) leptocephalus in the Southeast Brazilian Bight: a southward occurrence record extension",the first record of apterichtus kendalli in the southeast brazilian bight is reported based on one leptocephalus collected at around the 100 m isobath during an oceanographic cruise in 1979 it is the southernmost record of this species in the atlantic the leptocephalus of a kendalli was identified based on myomeres counts fin positions nine moderate gut swellings and midline prominent patches of pigments,2017,0.53
INFLUENCES OF FRAGMENTATION ON FLUVIAL-SPECIALIST BLACK BASS SPECIES,north americaâ s fluvial fish fauna are becoming increasingly imperiled primarily by habitat degradation non native species invasions and fragmentation the present study was conducted to understand how these conservation threats have affected native fluvialspecialist black bass genus micropterus species that support popular sport fisheries and that can be used as umbrella species for the conservation of other aquatic organisms species distribution models illustrated that shoal bass m cataractae were potentially distributed across up to 84 of the available stream length in their native basin but that fragmentation by dams and large impoundments as well as a potential asymmetric relationship with non native congeners has contributed to range loss a range wide genetic survey demonstrated that although the shoal bass has been described as potamodromous appreciable population structure exists five distinct genetic clusters were recovered at the uppermost hierarchical level each generally corresponding to natural isolating mechanisms e g the fall line some substructure was detected within these clusters which was likely related to recent fragmentation i e impoundments and variable recruitment finer scale case studies of the conservation genetic influences of impoundments and non native congener fisheries revealed that impoundments generate propagule pressure that encourages invasion and introgression of non native alleles into native black bass populations inhabiting upstream tributaries but whether impoundments serve as barriers to gene flow for native populations was somewhat unclear quantifying local scale population dynamics of shoal bass inhabiting three isolated tributaries of the upper chattahoochee river basin revealed that these populations grew slower lived longer and experienced lower annual mortality than other studied populations which may be adaptations to variable recruitment or lower over winter survival of age 0 fish the big creek population appears at risk of extirpation because of its isolated nature low numbers of adults and greater variation in recruitment overall results provide novel insights into the factors influencing range loss a framework for management units to conserve existing genetic diversity a characterization of non native invasion and hybridization in impoundment tributaries and quantified population dynamics of several isolated shoal bass populations inhabiting the northern extent of the speciesâ range,2017,0.946
Shelled pteropods in peril: Assessing vulnerability in a high CO 2 ocean,the impact of anthropogenic ocean acidification oa on marine ecosystems is a vital concern facing marine scientists and managers of ocean resources euthecosomatous pteropods holoplanktonic gastropods represent an excellent sentinel for indicating exposure to anthropogenic oa because of the sensitivity of their aragonite shells to the oa conditions less favorable for calcification however an integration of observations experiments and modelling efforts is needed to make accurate predictions of how these organisms will respond to future changes to their environment our understanding of the underlying organismal biology and life history is far from complete and must be improved if we are to comprehend fully the responses of these organisms to the multitude of stressors in their environment beyond oa this review considers the present state of research and understanding of euthecosomatous pteropod biology and ecology of these organisms and considers promising new laboratory methods advances in instrumentation such as molecular trace elements stable isotopes palaeobiology alongside autonomous sampling platforms ct scanning and high quality video recording and novel field based approaches i e studies of upwelling and co2 vent regions that may allow us to improve our predictive capacity of their vulnerability and or resilience in addition to playing a critical ecological and biogeochemical role pteropods can offer a significant value as an early indicator of anthropogenic oa this role as a sentinel species should be developed further to consolidate their potential use within marine environmental management policy making,2017,0.183
Plant feeding promotes diversification in the Crustacea,about half of the worldâ s animal species are arthropods associated with plants and the ability to consume plant material has been proposed to be an important trait associated with the spectacular diversification of terrestrial insects we review the phylogenetic distribution of plant feeding in the crustacea the other major group of arthropods that commonly consume plants to estimate how often plant feeding has arisen and to test whether this dietary transition is associated with higher species numbers in extant clades we present evidence that at least 31 lineages of marine freshwater and terrestrial crustaceans including 64 families and 185 genera have independently overcome the challenges of consuming plant material these plant feeding clades are on average 21 fold more speciose than their sister taxa indicating that a shift in diet is associated with increased net rates of diversification in contrast to herbivorous insects most crustaceans have very broad diets and the increased richness of taxa that include plants in their diet likely results from access to a novel resource base rather than host associated divergence,2017,0.173
Demersal and pelagic species of fish and squid from the Patagonian shelf,the dataset contains 2007 records of occurrence of 39 species of fish and 2 species of squid distributed on the patagonian continental shelf and slope this dataset describes a new and revised version of the original data published through obis with individual morphometrics specimens are representative of pelagic demersal demersal pelagic demersal benthic and benthic habits and they were collected by commercial fishing vessels in autumn mayâ june 2001 51 catches winter julyâ august 2001 38 catches and summer january february 2002 112 catches the sampling was carried out with bottom trawls at a depth range of 73â 370 m the survey was located between 39â â 52â s and 55â â 65â w,2017,0.7
"Mapping the Potential Global Range of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys, with Particular Reference to New Zealand",originating from asia the brown marmorated stink bug bmsb is a significant pest of horticultural agricultural crops grapes woody ornamental and herbaceous plants and is also a nuisance to people due to its overwintering behavior in human habitation the global range of this pest is steadily increasing and previous predictions of environmental suitability have shown new zealand to be highly suitable due to the economic value of horticultural and agricultural industries to the new zealand economy it is vital to understand the range of potential risk within the country global and new zealand potential suitability for bmsb was modeled using three algorithms and the resulting predictions ensembled to predict the potential range under current climatic conditions and under trajectories of future low representative concentration pathways rcp 2 6 and high rcp 8 5 greenhouse gas emissions for both 2050 and 2070 under current conditions models showed a high global suitability within latitudes 25â â 50â n southern south america southeast and southwest regions of australia and large areas of new zealand modeling the effect of climate change on bmsb range in new zealand resulted in a southerly range shift over time particularly with high emissions trajectory currently bmsb is not established in new zealand and it is vital that this remains the case,2017,0.165
An analysis of sensitivity of CLIMEX parameters in mapping species potential distribution and the broad-scale changes observed with minor variations in parameters values: an investigation using open-field Solanum lycopersicum and Neoleucinodes elegantalis,a sensitivity analysis can categorize levels of parameter influence on a model s output identifying parameters having the most influence facilitates establishing the best values for parameters of models providing useful implications in species modelling of crops and associated insect pests the aim of this study was to quantify the response of species models through a climex sensitivity analysis using open field solanum lycopersicum and neoleucinodes elegantalis distribution records and 17 fitting parameters including growth and stress parameters comparisons were made in model performance by altering one parameter value at a time in comparison to the best fit parameter values parameters that were found to have a greater effect on the model results are termed sensitive through the use of two species we show that even when the ecoclimatic index has a major change through upward or downward parameter value alterations the effect on the species is dependent on the selection of suitability categories and regions of modelling two parameters were shown to have the greatest sensitivity dependent on the suitability categories of each species in the study results enhance user understanding of which climatic factors had a greater impact on both species distributions in our model in terms of suitability categories and areas when parameter values were perturbed by higher or lower values compared to the best fit parameter values thus the sensitivity analyses have the potential to provide additional information for end users in terms of improving management by identifying the climatic variables that are most sensitive,2017,0.479
Citizen-generated Data on Invasive Alien Species in Romania: Trends and Challenges,raising public awareness about invasive alien species ias is essential and one step in citizen assumed responsibility is represented by their willingness to cooperate and help the scientists recent citizen science initiatives all around the world are bringing promising results but in romania almost no citizen generated data cgd projects on ias were initiated mobile agriculture applications apps started to develop in romania and to be used by farmers but not the ias apps the present article analyses the romanian cgd activities on ias on easin gbif and inaturalist web platforms and the citizen feedback on halyomorpha halys alert leaflets and public presentations in the same direction we initiated a questionnaire for reporting on ias addressed to students and teachers of the university of agronomic sciences and veterinary medicine in bucharest report rates varied from 0 79 to 0 38 for web platforms to 0 14 for e mail and phones while the ias survey received 21 2 answers from teachers and colleagues and 10 5 from students face to face communication seemed to improve the participatory rate but only when personal commitment and passion of the researcher is shown,2017,0.142
Natural biotic resources in LCA: Towards an impact assessment model for sustainable supply chain management,natural resources biotic and abiotic are fundamental from both the ecological and socio economic point of view being at the basis of life support however since the demand for finite resources continues to increase the sustainability of current production and consumption patterns is questioned both in developed and developing countries a transition towards an economy based on biotic renewable resources bio economy is considered necessary in order to support a steady provision of resources providing an alternative to a fossil and abiotic resource based economy however to ensure a sustainable use of biotic resources there is the need of properly accounting for their use along supply chains as well as a robust and comprehensive model of impact assessment since so far naturally occurring biotic resources have gained little attention in impact assessment methods such as life cycle assessment the aim of this study is to enable the inclusion of biotic resources in the assessment of products the paper puts forward a model for biotic resources assessment including i a definition of system boundaries between ecosphere and technosphere namely between naturally occurring and man made biotic resources ii an impact pathway to identify potential impacts on both resource provision and ecosystem quality iii a list of naturally occurring biotic resources which have a commercial value as basis for building life cycle inventories e g wild animals plants etc iv a renewability based indicator nobrri for the impact assessment of naturally occurring biotic resources and the associated characterization factors the study building on a solid review of literature and of available statistical data highlights and discusses the critical aspects and paradoxes related to biotic resource inclusion in lca from the system boundaries definition up to the resource characterization,2017,0.115
Protected areas offer refuge from invasive species spreading under climate change,protected areas pas are intended to provide native biodiversity and habitats with a refuge against the impacts of global change particularly acting as natural filters against biological invasions in practice however it is unknown how effective pas will be in shielding native species from invasions under projected climate change here we investigate the current and future potential distributions of 100 of the most invasive terrestrial freshwater and marine species in europe we use this information to evaluate the combined threat posed by climate change and invasions to existing pas and the most susceptible species they shelter we found that only a quarter of europe s marine and terrestrial areas protected over the last 100 years have been colonized by any of the invaders investigated despite offering climatically suitable conditions for invasion in addition hotspots of invasive species and the most susceptible native species to their establishment do not match at large continental scales furthermore the predicted richness of invaders is 11 â 18 significantly lower inside pas than outside them invasive species are rare in long established national parks and nature reserves which are actively protected and often located in remote and pristine regions with very low human density in contrast the richness of invasive species is high in the more recently designated natura 2000 sites which are subject to high human accessibility this situation may change in the future since our models anticipate important shifts in species ranges toward the north and east of europe at unprecedented rates of 14â 55 km decade depending on taxonomic group and scenario this may seriously compromise the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services this study is the first comprehensive assessment of the resistance that pas provide against biological invasions and climate change on a continental scale and illustrates their strategic value in safeguarding native biodiversity,2017,0.879
Scientific data from and for the citizen,powered by advances of technology todayâ s citizen science projects cover a wide range of thematic areas and are carried out from local to global levels this wealth of activities creates an abundance of data for example in the forms of observations submitted by mobile phones readings of low cost sensors or more general information about peoplesâ activities the management and possible sharing of this data has become a research topic in its own right we conducted a survey in the summer of 2015 in order to collectively analyze the state of play in citizen science this paper summarizes our main findings related to data access standardization and data preservation we provide examples of good practices in each of these areas and outline actions to address identified challenges,2017,0.123
Climatic niche evolution is faster in sympatric than allopatric lineages of the butterfly genus Pyrgus,understanding how speciation relates to ecological divergence has long fascinated biologists it is assumed that ecological divergence is essential to sympatric speciation as a mechanism to avoid competition and eventually lead to reproductive isolation while divergence in allopatry is not necessarily associated with niche differentiation the impact of the spatial context of divergence on the evolutionary rates of abiotic dimensions of the ecological niche has rarely been explored for an entire clade here we compare the magnitude of climatic niche shifts between sympatric versus allopatric divergence of lineages in butterflies by combining next generation sequencing parametric biogeography and ecological niche analyses applied to a genus wide phylogeny of palaearctic pyrgus butterflies we compare evolutionary rates along eight climatic dimensions across sister lineages that diverged in large scale sympatry versus allopatry in order to examine the possible effects of the spatial scale at which sympatry is defined we considered three sets of biogeographic assignments ranging from narrow to broad definition our findings suggest higher rates of niche evolution along all climatic dimensions for sister lineages that diverge in sympatry when using a narrow delineation of biogeographic areas this result contrasts with significantly lower rates of climatic niche evolution found in cases of allopatric speciation despite the biogeographic regions defined here being characterized by significantly different climates higher rates in allopatry are retrieved when biogeographic areas are too widely definedâ in such a case allopatric events may be recorded as sympatric our results reveal the macro evolutionary significance of abiotic niche differentiation involved in speciation processes within biogeographic regions and illustrate the importance of the spatial scale chosen to define areas when applying parametric biogeographic analyses,2017,0.184
"Scientific Big Data Management: Concepts, Technologies and System",in recent years as more and more large scale scientific facilities have been built and significant scientific experiments have been carried out scientific research has entered an unprecedented big data era scientific research in big data era is a process of big science big demand big data big computing and big discovery it is of important significance to develop a full life cycle data management system for scientific big data in this paper we first introduce the background of the development of scientific big data management system then we specify the concepts and three key characteristics of scientific big data after an review of scientific data resource development projects and scientific data management systems a framework is proposed aiming at the full life cycle management of scientific big data further we introduce the key technologies of the management framework including data fusion real time analysis long termstorage cloud service and data opening and sharing finally we summarize the research progress in this field and look into the application prospects of scientific big data management system,2017,0.023
"World Vegetable Center Eggplant Collection: Origin, Composition, Seed Dissemination and Utilization in Breeding",eggplant is the fifth most economically important solanaceous crop after potato tomato pepper and tobacco apart from the well known brinjal eggplant solanum melongena l two other under utilized eggplant species the scarlet eggplant s aethiopicum l and the gboma eggplant s macrocarpon l are also cultivated the taxonomy and identification of eggplant wild relatives is challenging for breeders due to the large number of related species but recent phenotypic and genetic data and classification in primary secondary and tertiary genepools as well as information on the domestication process and wild progenitors facilitates their utilization in breeding the world vegetable center worldveg holds a large public germplasm collection of eggplant which includes the three cultivated species and more than 30 eggplant wild relatives with more than 3 200 accessions collected from 90 countries over the last 15 years more than 10 000 seed samples from the center s eggplant collection have been shared with public and private sector entities including other genebanks an analysis of the global occurrences and genebank holdings of cultivated eggplants and their wild relatives reveals that the worldveg genebank holds the world s largest public collection of the three cultivated eggplant species the composition seed dissemination and utilization of germplasm from the center s collection are highlighted in recent years more than 1 300 accessions of eggplant have been characterized for yield and fruit quality parameters further screening for biotic and abiotic stresses in eggplant wild relatives is a priority as is the need to amass more comprehensive knowledge regarding wild relatives potential for use in breeding however as is the case for many other crops wild relatives are highly under represented in the global conservation system of eggplant genetic resources,2017,0.991
Division within the North American boreal forest: Ecological niche divergence between the Bicknell's Thrush (Catharus bicknelli) and Gray‐cheeked Thrush (C. minimus),sister species that diverged in allopatry in similar environments are expected to exhibit niche conservatism using ecological niche modeling and a multivariate analysis of climate and habitat data i test the hypothesis that the bicknell s thrush catharus bicknelli and gray cheeked thrush c mimimus sister species that breed in the north american boreal forest show niche conservatism three tree species that are important components of breeding territories of both thrush species were combined with climatic variables to create niche models consisting of abiotic and biotic components abiotic only abiotic biotic and biotic only models were evaluated using the area under the curve auc criterion abiotic biotic models had higher auc scores and did not over project thrush distributions compared to abiotic only or biotic only models from the abiotic biotic models i tested for niche conservatism or divergence by accounting for the differences in the availability of niche components by calculating 1 niche overlap from ecological niche models and 2 mean niche differences of environmental values at occurrence points niche background similarity tests revealed significant niche divergence in 10 of 12 comparisons and multivariate tests revealed niche divergence along 2 of 3 niche axes the bicknell s thrush breeds in warmer and wetter regions with a high abundance of balsam fir abies balsamea whereas gray cheeked thrush often co occurs with black spruce picea mariana niche divergence rather than conservatism was the predominant pattern for these species suggesting that ecological divergence has played a role in the speciation of the bicknell s thrush and gray cheeked thrush furthermore because niche models were improved by the incorporation of biotic variables this study validates the inclusion of relevant biotic factors in ecological niche modeling to increase model accuracy,2017,0.752
Assessment of the eradication measures applied to Phytophthora ramorum in Irish Larix kaempferi forests,phytophthora ramorum is the causal agent of the sudden larch death epidemic in ireland and the uk within the eu it is a quarantine pathogen and eradication measures are required if it is detected in horticultural or forest environments eradication measures in forests include the clearance of susceptible tree hosts from the infected stand along with all host known to support pathogen sporulation within a 250 m buffer zone of the infected stand between 2010 and 2016 these measures have affected over 18 000 ha of larix kaempferi forests in ireland and the uk but the epidemic continues to spread an assessment of the efficacy of the eradication measures has not been published to date here we provide details of the detection frequency of p ramorum from aerial rainwater and terrestrial soil watercourses plant material sources in three forest locations in ireland that had significant areas of l kaempferi affected by p ramorum before their removal monitoring of six plots with differing infection and eradication management histories was carried out from september 2013 to 2015 presence of p ramorum was confirmed by plating plant material onto selective media followed by morphological identification phytophthora ramorum was detected in 65 of 1283 samples in all sample types and in 17 of the 20 months sampled only three of the 295 soil samples were positive for p ramorum with all of these coming from an area under perennial standing water the most positive samples came from a plot where symptomatic larix trees had not been removed and the findings occurred consistently over the 2 year study plots where infected larix had been removed were rarely positive for p ramorum across all the sample types indicating a level of success from the eradication measures in reducing pathogen levels on the sites,2017,0.711
Adapting the botanical landscape of Melbourne Gardens (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria) in response to climate change,botanic gardens around the world maintain collections of living plants for science conservation education beauty and more these collections change over time â in scope and content â but the predicted impacts of climate change will require a more strategic approach to the succession of plant species and their landscapes royal botanic gardens victoria has just published a â landscape succession strategyâ for its melbourne gardens a spectacular botanical landscape established in 1846 the strategy recognizes that with 1 6 million visitors each year responsibility for a heritage listed landscape and the need to care for a collection of 8 500 plant species of conservation and scientific importance planting and planning must take into account anticipated changes to rainfall and temperature the trees we plant today must be suitable for the climate of the twenty second century specifically the strategy sets out the steps needed over the next twenty years to transition the botanic garden to one resilient to the climate modelled for 2090 the document includes a range of practical measures and achievable and at times somewhat aspirational targets climate analogues will be used to identify places in australia and elsewhere with conditions today similar to those predicted for melbourne in 2090 to help select new species for the collection modelling of the natural and cultivated distribution of species will be used to help select suitable growth forms to replace existing species of high value or interest improved understanding of temperature gradients within the botanic garden water holding capacity of soils and plant water use behaviour is already resulting in better targeted planting and irrigation the goal is to retain a similar diversity of species but transition the collection so that by 2036 at least 75 of the species are suitable for the climate in 2090 over the next few years we hope to provide 100 of irrigation water from sustainable water sources and infrastructure will be improved to adapt to predicted higher temperatures and more climatic extremes at all times there will be a strong focus on assisting the broader community in their response to climate change,2017,0.781
Identification of important marine areas using ecologically or biologically significant areas (EBSAs) criteria in the East to Southeast Asia region and comparison with existing registered areas for the purpose of conservation,the biodiversity of east to southeast eâ se asian waters is rapidly declining because of anthropogenic effects ranging from local environmental pressures to global warming to improve marine biodiversity the aichi biodiversity targets were adopted in 2010 the recommendation of the subsidiary body on scientific technical and technological advice sbstta encourages application of the ecologically or biologically significant area ebsa process to identify areas for conservation however there are few examples of the use of ebsa criteria to evaluate entire oceans in this article seven criteria are numerically evaluated to identify important marine areas ebsa candidates in the eâ se asia region the discussion includes 1 the possibility of ebsa criteria quantification throughout the eâ se asia oceans and the suitability of the indices selected 2 optimal integration methods for criteria and the relationships between the criteria and data robustness and completeness and 3 a comparison of the ebsa candidates identified and existing registered areas for the purpose of conservation such as marine protected areas mpas most of the ebsa criteria could be quantitatively evaluated throughout the asia pacific region however three criteria in particular showed a substantial lack of data our methodological comparison showed that complementarity analysis performed better than summation because it considered criteria that were evaluated only in limited areas most of the difference between present day registered areas and our results for ebsas resulted from a lack of data and differences in philosophy for the selection of indices,2017,0.158
The Global Pollen Project: A New Tool for Pollen Identification and the Dissemination of Physical Reference Collections,1 the study of fossil and modern pollen assemblages provides essential information about vegetation dynamics in space and time a major methodological component of these studies is the identification of pollen grains to plant family genus and species this identification is achieved through the use of pollen keys and reference collections of physical specimens which are regional in scope disparate and incomplete slowing the identification process reference material is also held in museums and research institutions where access can be limited identification is particularly challenging for those new to the field such as graduate students 2 to aid the identification of pollen grains and provide virtual access to reference material we present a new online tool the global pollen project https globalpollenproject org the project aims to enable people to share and identify pollen grains and through this will create an open free and accessible reference library for pollen identification 3 the online tool has been developed as an open peer reviewed database of global pollen where content and expertise is crowdsourced from across the world the tool enables a the submission and identification of unknown pollen grains b the submission and digitisation of existing â œphysicalâ reference collections and c the availability of a free public database of pollen images and their metadata for use in scientific research and education the tool connects to external services including the global biodiversity information facility and neotoma palaeoecology database to provide botanical descriptions and occurrence data for each taxon alongside pollen images and metadata 4 the database currently holds information for over 1 500 species from europe the americas and asia as the collection grows we envision easier pollen identification and greater use of the database for novel research on pollen morphology and other characteristics especially when linked to other palaeoecological databases such as neotoma,2017,0.285
"Inventory, Features, and Protection of Underground Roosts Used by Bats in Mexico",the disturbance and loss of diurnal roosts is one of the major causes of decline in cave dwelling bat populations thus the identification and protection of these sites is essential to the implementation of effective conservation plans we conducted a search for information on caves mines tunnels and culverts used as roosts by bats in mexico in order to create an inventory and a database as well as a list of priority sites for their protection in total 970 underground roosts have been reported 73 7 are caves 16 6 are mines 5 2 are culverts and 4 5 are tunnels the roost sites are more commonly located in tropical deciduous forests 24 and secondary vegetation modified by farming 18 5 in 92 of underground roosts the surrounding vegetation has been altered for several causes regarding internal disturbance 46 6 of the 176 roost sites analyzed present little to no disturbance 43 7 have moderate levels of disturbance and 9 7 are highly disturbed the use of underground roosts was documented for 88 bat species included in 44 genera and seven families of these six species are endemic to mexico and according to the iucn red list three are listed as near threatened three as vulnerable and two as endangered based on species richness and bat abundance we considered 53 sites as having the highest priority for conservation of cave dwelling bats in mexico and based on a complementarity analysis we identified 167 roosts that must be protected to maintain a greater diversity of bats in the country it is urgent to implement actions to regulate visits to roosts in order to prevent structural and microenvironmental deterioration in addition to preserving the foraging areas around roosts so that conservation of cave dwelling bats will be more effective at both a local and regional level,2017,0.482
Plant conservation in the Anthropocene – challenges and future prospects,despite the massive efforts that have been made to conserve plant diversity across the world during the past few decades it is becoming increasingly evident that our current strategies are not sufficiently effective to prevent the continuing decline in biodiversity as a recent report by the cbd indicates current progress and commitments are insufficient to achieve the aichi biodiversity targets by 2020 threatened species lists continue to grow while the worldâ s governments fail to meet biodiversity conservation goals clearly we are failing in our attempts to conserve biodiversity on a sufficient scale the reasons for this situation are complex including scientific technical sociological economic and political factors the conservation community is divided about how to respond some believe that saving all existing biodiversity is still an achievable goal on the other hand there are those who believe that we need to accept that biodiversity will inevitably continue to be lost despite all our conservation actions and that we must focus on what to save why and where it has also been suggested that we need a new approach to conservation in the face of the challenges posed by the anthropocene biosphere which we now inhabit whatever view one holds on the above issues it is clear that we need to review the effectiveness of our current conservation strategies identify the limiting factors that are preventing the aichi goals being met and at the same time take whatever steps are necessary to make our conservation protocols more explicit operational and efficient so as to achieve the maximum conservation effect this paper addresses the key issues that underlie our failure to meet agreed targets and discusses the necessary changes to our conservation approaches while we can justifiably be proud of our many achievements and successes in plant conservation in the past 30 years which have helped slow the rate of loss unless we devise a more coherent consistent and integrated global strategy in which both the effectiveness and limitations of our current policies action plans and procedures are recognized and reflect this in national strategies and then embark on a much bolder and ambitious set of actions progress will be limited and plant diversity will continue to decline,2017,0.112
FRAXINUS PENNSYLVANICA–AN INVASIVE TREE SPECIES IN MIDDLE EUROPE: CASE STUDIES FROM THE DANUBE BASIN,the study characterizes the invasion process of the north american green ash fraxinus pennsylvanica marsh in europe using two areas in the danube basin as examples the territory of the danube national park and adjacent areas austria and the transcarpathia ukraine the paper addresses mainly three questions 1 what are the distribution patterns and the dynamic processes of the invasion process 2 do natural habitats like old growth forests resist to the invasion of green ash and 3 are there management implications to control the spread of the invasive green ash to give a rough survey of the today distribution and to trace the invasion process of the species we used archive material floristic data from literature and herbarium specimens the predominatly wind dispersed fruits early maturity and the adaption to the ecological conditions in floodplains enable a rapid spread from plantations or single individuals in settlements fraxinus pensylvanica is currently at the stage of explosive distribution in many european countries the broad ecological plasticity allows the species to take almost any invasion opportunity however the floodplain habitats are the favourite green ash has got plant attributes both from â œruderalâ and â œcompetitorâ functional groups fraxinus pennsylvanica is still far from having occupied all suitable stands in the investigated areas even natural habitats like old growth forest patches are vulnerable to invasion green ash replaces old individuals and out competes all tree species native to floodplain habitats in middle europe the conservation management would be mostly linked to the removal single trees and seedlings of fraxinus pensylvanica as well as from plantation in the present state of distribution in middle europe the eradication of the species is impossible but there is a strong need to control areas of high conservation value,2017,0.382
DO ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AFFECT THE TAXONOMIC RELIABILITY OF LEAF CUTICULAR MICROMORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS? A CASE STUDY IN PODOCARPACEAE,leaf cuticle micromorphology has been cited as an important set of taxonomic characters in gymnosperms but previous studies have largely been based on small sample sizes the premise of this study was to understand whether external factors affect cuticular micromorphology of podocarpaceae two example species prumnopitys andina and podocarpus salignus were studied of 21 sampled characters nine c 43 of the total were visually assessed as being moderately reliable or highly reliable for taxonomic discrimination for both species with an additional six c 29 being moderately reliable or highly reliable for only one or other of the example species and six characters c 29 unreliable for both seven of the most variable stomatal characters were selected for further analysis to establish whether environmental factors affect them the relationship between these seven stomatal characters the environment and climate was analysed using the r â veganâ package and climate data gathered from worldclim our results showed that both species had larger stomata in moist and shady conditions and a higher density of smaller stomata in sunny and drier conditions an additional novel finding was the presence of stomata on the adaxial leaf surface in 46 of samples of prumnopitys andina the first record of adaxial stomata in this species highlighting the necessity of studying multiple samples of a given species in conclusion these results indicate that larger sample sizes than have hitherto been employed in cuticle micromorphological studies are necessary to fully document the amount of phenotypic variation that exists,2017,0.789
Modelling the niche space of desert annuals needs to include positive interactions,the niche is a necessary consideration when estimating habitable area and geographic range of a species modellers often examine the fundamental niche and the environmental requirements for plant species ignoring interactions among species in deserts positive plant interactions are important drivers of biodiversity and structure communities through many mechanistic pathways including modifying environmental conditions thus we tested the hypothesis that desert shrubs increase the geographical extent of some annual species because through modifying the microclimate they match the niche requirements of beneficiary species we used the database of the global biodiversity information facility to construct maxent species distribution models sdm with and without reported benefactor species within the mojave desert in california we chose 20 annual species to be modeled including 10 species that had been previously reported in the literature as being facilitated beneficiary and 10 that had no record of being facilitated unreported beneficiary annuals co occurred significantly more with benefactor shrubs than the unreported annual species the inclusion of shrubs into sdms significantly improved model predictability and geographic range for all the beneficiary annual species but not for the unreported annual species thus positive interactions are species specific and it is possible to determine annual species dependency on benefactor shrubs at the regional scale the co occurrence of benefactor shrubs and annual species can be used as a proxy for facilitation and recent developments in sdm techniques encourage the inclusion of biotic interactions species distribution models should include estimates of facilitation because biotic interactions determine the niche of species and can have implications with a changing climate,2017,0.999
Less favourable climates constrain demographic strategies in plants,correlative species distribution models are based on the observed relationship between speciesâ occurrence and macroclimate or other environmental variables in climates predicted less favourable populations are expected to decline and in favourable climates they are expected to persist however little comparative empirical support exists for a relationship between predicted climate suitability and population performance we found that the performance of 93 populations of 34 plant species worldwide â as measured by in situ population growth rate its temporal variation and extinction risk â was not correlated with climate suitability however correlations of demographic processes underpinning population performance with climate suitability indicated both resistance and vulnerability pathways of population responses to climate in less suitable climates plants experienced greater retrogression resistance pathway and greater variability in some demographic rates vulnerability pathway while a range of demographic strategies occur within speciesâ climatic niches demographic strategies are more constrained in climates predicted to be less suitable,2017,0.579
Modeling the impacts of climate change on Species of Concern (birds) in South Central U.S. based on bioclimatic variables,we used 19 bioclimatic variables five species distribution modeling sdm algorithms four general circulation models and two climate scenarios 2050 and 2070 to model nine bird species identified as species of concern soc we highlighted these birds northern masked bobwhite quail colinus virginianus scaled quail callipepla squamata pinyon jay gymnorhinus cyanocephalus juniper titmouse baeolophus ridgwayi mexican spotted owl strix occidentalis lucida cassinâ s sparrow peucaea cassinii lesser prairie chicken tympanuchus pallidicinctus montezuma quail cyrtonyx montezumae and white tailed ptarmigan lagopus leucurus the generalized linear model random forest boosted regression tree maxent multivariate adaptive regression splines and an ensemble model were used to identify present day core bioclimatic envelopes for the species we then projected future distributions of suitable climatic conditions for the species using data derived from four climate models run according to two greenhouse gas representative concentration pathways rcps 2 6 and 8 5 our models predicted changes in suitable bioclimatic envelopes for all species for the years 2050 and 2070 among the nine species of birds the quails were found to be highly susceptible to climate change and appeared to be of most future conservation concern the white tailed ptarmigan would lose about 62 of its suitable climatic habitat by 2050 and 67 by 2070 among the species distribution models sdms the boosted regression tree model consistently performed fairly well based on area under the curve auc range 0 89 to 0 97 values the ensemble models showed improved true skill statistics all tss values 0 85 and kappa statistics all k values 0 80 for all species relative to the individual sdms,2017,0.879
Sharing biodiversity data: citizen scientists? concerns and motivations,citizen scientists play a pivotal role in providing necessary biodiversity data to ensure the continued involvement of a strong volunteer base insight into the concerns and motivations of voluntary recorders is crucial this paper presents the findings of a large scale survey n 2193 among dutch volunteer biodiversity recorders of diverse taxa and focuses on three questions what are the characteristics of these citizen scientists regarding their activities and socio demographic background what are their motivations for recording biodiversity and what are their views on data sharing and ownership our findings show that a connection to interest in and concern for nature are the most important motivations for biodiversity recorders volunteer recorders have high expectations regarding the impact of their data both for their own learning as well as for science and management almost half the volunteers consider their data to be public goods but this does not mean they support unconditional data sharing instead the acceptability of data sharing with third parties seems strongly linked to the goals of the user we discuss the implications of our findings for practitioners such as the role of biology curricula and the importance of learning opportunities to redress the lack of younger volunteers we argue that conceptualising volunteer recorders as data custodians rather than owners helps to understand their perspective on data sharing and emphasize the importance of clear and transparent data policy that respects volunteersâ views on their data,2017,0.102
The Global Ant Biodiversity Informatics (GABI) database: synthesizing data on the geographic distribution of ant species (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),the global distribution patterns of most vertebrate groups and several plant groups have been described and analyzed over the past few years a development facilitated by the compilation of important databases similar efforts are needed for large insect groups that constitute he majority of global biodiversity as a result of this lack of information invertebrate taxa are often left out of both large scale analyses of biodiversity patterns and large scale efforts in conservation planning and prioritization here we introduce the first comprehensive global database of ant species distributions the global ant biodiversity informatics gabi database based on the compilation of 1 72 million records extracted from over 8811 publications and 25 existing databases we first present the main goals of the database the methodology used to build the database is well as its limitations and challenges then we discuss how different fields of ant biology may benefit from utilizing this tool finally we emphasize the importance of future participation of myrmecologists to improve the database and use it to identify and fill holes in our knowledge of ant biodiversity,2017,0.272
Changes in the realized niche of the invasive succulent CAM plant Furcraea foetida,furcraea foetida asparagaceae is a native plant of central america and northern south america but there is no information about its country of origin the species was introduced into brazil and is now considered invasive particularly in coastal ecosystems to date nothing is known about the environmental factors that constrain its distribution and there is only inconclusive information about its location of origin we used reciprocal distribution models rdm to assess invasion risk of f foetida across brazil and to identify source regions in its native range we also tested the niche conservatism hypothesis using principal components analyses and statistical tests of niche equivalency and similarity between its native and invaded ranges for rdm analysis we built two models using maximum entropy one using records in the native range to predict the invaded distribution forward ecological niche model or forward enm and one using records in the invaded range to predict the native distribution reverse enm forward enm indicated invasion risk in the cerrado region and the innermost region of the atlantic forest however failed to predict the current occurrence in southern brazil reverse enm supported an existing hypothesis that f foetida originated in the orinoco river basin amazon basin and caribbean islands prediction errors in the rdm and multivariate analysis indicated that the species expanded its realized niche in brazil the niche similarity test further suggested that the niche differences are because of differences in habitat availability between the two ranges not because of evolutionary changes we hypothesize that physiological pre adaptation especially the crassulacean acid metabolism human driven propagule pressure and high competitive ability are the main factors determining the current spatial distribution of the species in brazil our study highlights the need to include f foetida in plant invasion monitoring programs especially in priority conservation areas where the species has still not been introduced,2017,0.885
Mapping species distributions with social media geo-tagged images: Case studies of bees and flowering plants in Australia,data sources on species distribution and range are typically expensive and time consuming to build and traditional survey techniques often have spatial temporal or scale related gaps social network sites on the other hand can provide massive amounts of cost effective data that may potentially yield information of direct benefit to supplement and understand ecological phenomena previous research explored using social network site content to enhance information collected by experts or professional surveys in domains including species distribution and land cover however the data quality and general suitability of social network sites data for answering questions related to species distribution and range is highly variable and this aspect of its value to science remains underexplored in this research we investigate some causes of social network site data unreliability and explore how to mitigate it we filter data points based on our estimates of reliability and relevance we then use the filtered data to infer species ranges and distributions in concert with global biodiversity information facility gbif data our proposed methodology was applied to four australian case studies including two insect pollinators and two flowering plants the case studies were chosen from australia because of its unique geographical features large landmass sparse population and the many tourists and residents who travel across it taking photos and sharing them through social media we show that despite some barriers there are instances where the social network site data clearly complements the existing source making our technique a valuable means of making repeatable efficient additions to traditional species distribution data,2017,0.563
Simple yet effective: Historical proximity variables improve the species distribution models for invasive giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum s.l.) in Poland,species distribution models are scarcely applicable to invasive species because of their breaking of the modelsâ assumptions so far few mechanistic semi mechanistic or statistical solutions like dispersal constraints or propagule limitation have been applied we evaluated a novel quasi semi mechanistic approach for regional scale models using historical proximity variables hpv representing a state of the population in a given moment in the past our aim was to test the effects of addition of hpv sets of different minimal recentness information capacity and the total number of variables on the quality of the species distribution model for heracleum mantegazzianum on 116000 km2 in poland as environmental predictors we used fragments of 103 1ã 1 km world wide free access rasters from worldgrids org single and ensemble models were computed using biomod2 package 3 1 47 working in r environment 3 1 0 the addition of hpv improved the quality of single and ensemble models from poor to good and excellent the quality was the highest for the variants with hpvs based on the distance from the most recent past occurrences it was mostly affected by the algorithm type but all hpv traits minimal recentness information capacity model type or the number of the time periods were significantly important determinants the addition of hpvs improved the quality of current projections raising the occurrence probability in regions where the species had occurred before we conclude that hpv addition enables semi realistic estimation of the rate of spread and can be applied to the short term forecasting of invasive or declining species which also break equal dispersal probability assumptions,2017,0.693
Geoportal cloud,within the article a technology is proposed for creating a geoportal for the collection and exchange of data between subject specialists the technology is based on the developed model geoportal that implements common functions for many information systems the technology significantly accelerates the creation of a subject oriented geoportal that implements a ready made set of various functions,2017,0.108
The greening of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau under climate change,the possible disruption of climate change cc on the ecological economic and social segments of human interest has made this phenomenon a major issue over the last couple of decades mountains are fragile ecosystems projected to endure a higher impact from the increased warming this study presents modelled cc projections with respect to the suitability for the growth of nine near treeline plant species of the himalayas and tibetan plateau through niche modelling technique using climex and estimates their potential future distribution and the extent of greening of the himalayas two global climate models csiro mk 3 0 cs and miroch h mr were used under ipcc a1b and a2 emission scenarios for the year 2050 and 2100 the results indicate that climatic suitability of the nine species expands towards higher elevations into areas that are currently unsuitable while currently suitable areas in many regions become climatically unsuitable in the future the total climatically suitable area for the nine species at current time is around 1 09 million km2 with an additional 0 68 and 0 35 million km2 becoming suitable by 2050 and 2100 respectively high elevation belts especially those lying above 3500 m will see more climatically suitable areas for the nine species in the future cold stress is the main factor limiting current distribution and its decrease will affect the overall expansion of climatic suitability in the region impacts on nature conservation and water and food security could be expected from such shift of climatic suitability in the region,2017,0.529
Carex disticha (Cyperaceae) Newly Reported For the United States,we report the presence of carex disticha huds in dukes county massachusetts on the island of marthaâ s vineyard a new record for the united states the species is a eurasian sedge known in north america since at least 1927 from a few locations in ontario and quebec catling et al 1988 identification,2017,0.523
An invasion risk map for non-native aquatic macrophytes of the Iberian Peninsula,freshwater systems are particularly susceptible to non native organisms owing to their high sensitivity to the impacts that are caused by these organisms species distribution models which are based on both environmental and socio economic variables facilitate the identification of the most vulnerable areas for the spread of non native species we used maxent to predict the potential distribution of 20 non native aquatic macrophytes in the iberian peninsula some selected variables such as the temperature seasonality and the precipitation in the driest quarter highlight the importance of the climate on their distribution notably the human influence in the territory appears as a key variable in the distribution of studied species the model discriminated between favorable and unfavorable areas with high accuracy we used the model to build an invasion risk map of aquatic macrophytes for the iberian peninsula that included results from 20 individual models it showed that the most vulnerable areas are located near to the sea the major rivers basins and the high population density areas these facts suggest the importance of the human impact on the colonization and distribution of non native aquatic macrophytes in the iberian peninsula and more precisely agricultural development during the green revolution at the end of the 70 s our work also emphasizes the utility of species distribution models for the prevention and management of biological invasions,2017,0.506
An endemic rat species complex is evidence of moderate environmental changes in the terrestrial biodiversity centre of China through the late Quaternary,the underlying mechanisms that allow the hengduan mountains hdm the terrestrial biodiversity centre of china to harbour high levels of species diversity remain poorly understood here we sought to explore the biogeographic history of the endemic rat niviventer andersoni species complex nasc and to understand the long term persistence of high species diversity in this region in contrast to previous studies that have proposed regional refuges in eastern or southern of the hdm and emphasized the influence of climatic oscillations on local vertebrates we found that hdm as a whole acted as refuge for the nasc and that the historical range shifts of nasc mainly occurred in the marginal regions demographic analyses revealed slight recent population decline in yunnan and south eastern tibet whereas of the populations in sichuan and of the entire nasc were stable this pattern differs greatly from classic paradigms of temperate or alpine and holarctic species interestingly the mean elevation area and climate of potential habitats of clade a n excelsior an alpine inhabitant showed larger variations than did those of clade b n andersoni a middle high altitude inhabitant these species represent the evolutionary history of montane small mammals in regions that were less affected by the quaternary climatic changes,2017,0.867
History of nonnative Monk Parakeets in Mexico,nonnative monk parakeets have been reported in increasing numbers across many cities in mexico and were formally classified as an invasive species in mexico in late 2016 however there has not been a large scale attempt to determine how international pet trade and national and international governmental regulations have played a part in colonization and when the species appeared in different areas we describe the changes in regulations that led the international pet trade market to shift to mexico then used international trade data to determine how many parakeets were commercially imported each year and where those individuals originated we also quantified the recent increases in monk parakeet myiopsitta monachus sightings in mexico in both the scientific literature and in citizen science reports we describe the timeline of increased reports to understand the history of nonnative monk parakeets in mexico as in other areas where the species has colonized the main mode of transport is through the international pet trade over half a million monk parakeets were commercially imported to mexico during 2000â 2015 with the majority of importation 90 occurring in 2008â 2014 and almost all 98 were imported from uruguay the earliest record of a free flying monk parakeet was observed during 1994â 1995 in mexico city but sightings of the parakeets did not become geographically widespread in either the scientific literature or citizen science databases until 2012â 2015 by 2015 parakeets had been reported in 97 cities in mexico mexico city has consistently seen steep increases in reporting since this species was first reported in mexico here we find that both national and international legal regulations and health concerns drove a rise and fall in monk parakeet pet trade importations shortly followed by widespread sightings of feral parakeets across mexico further monitoring of introduced monk parakeet populations in mexico is needed to understand the establishment growth and spread of introduced populations,2017,0.727
Using streamflow observations to estimate the impact of hydrological regimes and anthropogenic water use on European stream macroinvertebrate occurrences,understanding the drivers of stream macroinvertebrate distribution patterns â the most diverse animal group in freshwater ecosystems â is a major goal in freshwater biogeography climate and topography have been shown to explain species distributions at continental scales but the contribution of natural and anthropogenically altered streamflow is often omitted in large scale analyses due to the lack of appropriate data we test how macroinvertebrate occurrences can be linked to streamflow observations and evaluate the relative importance of streamflow regimes and water use for macroinvertebrate occurrences from 19 orders across europe we first paired species sampling locations with hydrological gauging stations considering five combinations of the geographic distance and difference in flow accumulation upstream contributing area we then used generalized linear models glms to assess the influence of the streamflow regime simulated water use and climate and topography on the occurrence of macroinvertebrates the pairing method that assigned species records to the closest gauging station in terms of both distance and flow accumulation performed best most of the species studied occurred preferentially in river habitats with low mean annual streamflow and streamflow variability high winter streamflow and low levels of water withdrawals for irrigation or manufacturing we conclude that flow accumulation is a useful proxy to evaluate the proximity of species records to gauging stations omitting species records that do not belong to a given stream reach the strong contribution of streamflow and water use indicators on macroinvertebrate occurrences underline their importance for yielding robust occurrence estimates,2017,0.818
Analysis on the Graph Techniques for Data-mining and Visualization of Heterogeneous Biodiversity Data Sets,extisting biodiversity databases contain an abundance of information to turn such information into knowledge it is necessary to address several information model issues biodiversity data are collected for various scientific objectives often even without clear preliminary objectives may follow different taxonomy standards and organization logic and be held in multiple file formats and utilising a variety of database technologies this paper presents a graph catalogue model for the metadata management of biodiversity databases it explores the possible operation of data mining and visualization to guide the analysis of heterogeneous biodiversity data in particular we would propose contributions to the problems of 1 the analysis of heterogeneous distributed data found across different databases 2 the identification of matches and approximations between data sets and 3 the identificaton of relationships between various databases this paper describes a proof of concept of an infrastructure testbed and its basic operations presenting an evaluation of the resulting system in comparison with the ideal expectations of the ecologist,2017,0.111
Predicting habitat suitability for the wart-biter bush cricket (Decticus verrucivorus) in Europe,the wart biter bush cricket is a relatively abundant species in mainland europe but has been declining at the northern edge of its range with the predicted changes to the global climate that are expected to occur over the next century it is probable that many species will shift their ranges polewards and to higher altitudes to track suitable climates in this paper a species distribution model was used to explore the effects of potential climate change scenarios on the distribution of the wart biter bush cricket the model predicts that suitable habitat will shift towards the north and to higher altitudes under a moderate climate change scenario and that under severe climate change the cricket will be left with very little suitable habitat in europe this highlights the threat of climate change to the species but also the importance of maintaining the current habitat in the northern and high altitude areas of its range as these areas may become important strongholds for the species in the future,2017,0.566
"First record of Alienoclypeus insolitus Shenefelt, 1978 (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) from Guerrero and distributional data from Jalisco and Oaxaca, Mexico",alienoclypeus insolitus shenefelt 1978 is a large braconid wasp described from the united states arizona california and texas and mexico nuevo leon and yucatan mason 1978 since its original description scarce data on a insolitus distribution has been published one specimen from yucatan was reared from the agave weevil scyphophorus acupunctatus gyllenhal 1838 coleoptera dryophthoridae mason 1978 possibly on sisal plants agave sisalana perrine asparagaceae it has been recorded as a natural control agent of agave weevil in jalisco barraza 2007 and oaxaca figueroa 2009 martã nez martã nez et al 2003 and has been reported to occur in hidalgo saavedra 2009 revealing an apparent disjunctive distribution,2017,0.298
Digitizing Specimens in a Small Herbarium: A Viable Workflow for Collections Working with Limited Resources,premise of the study small herbaria represent a significant portion of herbaria in the united states but many are not digitizing their collections methods at the arkansas state university herbarium star we have created a viable workflow to help small herbaria begin the digitization process including suggestions for publishing data on the internet we calculated hourly rates of each phase of the digitization process we also mapped accessions at the county level to determine geographic strengths in the collection results all 17 678 accessioned flowering plant specimens at star are imaged databased in specify and available electronically on the herbarium s website students imaged the specimens at a mean rate of 145 h we found differences in databasing rates between the graduate student leading the project 47 h and undergraduate assistants 25 h the majority of specimens at star were collected within the counties neighboring the institution discussion with this workflow we estimate that,2017,0.25
"Migration of green mirid, Creontiades dilutus (StÃ¥l) and residence of potato bug, Closterotomus norwegicus (Gmelin) in Tasmania (Hemiptera: Miridae: Mirinae: Mirini)",adults but not nymphs of green mirid creontiades dilutus stã l hemiptera miridae are sometimes detected in tasmania the species has been recorded as adults at least from a wide range of habitats localities and plants in mainland australia and suitable host plants occur in tasmania most tasmanian detections of c dilutus have been in a long term light trap and coincide with movements of known long distance migratory insects and airflows favourable for migration across bass strait in contrast adults and juveniles of the potato bug closterotomus norwegicus gmelin hemiptera miridae are collected regularly in crops for which details are given a published degree day development model for c dilutus was used to identify several impediments to fecundity egg and juvenile survival and adult maturation such that even ephemeral seasonal establishment is highly unlikely the absence of juveniles coincidence of adults with migratory insects and northerly airflows and modelled obstacles to breeding in combination indicate that c dilutus migrates to tasmania the results provide another example of a pest that fails to establish even ephemerally in tasmania despite repeated migration from mainland australia publications stating that the distribution of c dilutus includes tasmania are based only on captures of migratory adults climate matching models are prone to error if they assume c dilutus is resident in tasmania,2017,0.399
A Bayesian geostatistical approach to modeling global distributions of Lygodium microphyllum under projected climate warming,species distribution modeling aimed at forecasting the spread of invasive species under projected global warming offers land managers an important tool for assessing future ecological risk and for prioritizing management actions the current study applies bayesian inference and newly available geostatistical tools to forecast global range expansion for the ecosystem altering invasive climbing fern lygodium microphyllum the presented modeling framework emphasizes the need to account for spatial processes at both the individual and aggregate levels the necessity of modeling non linear responses to environmental gradients and the explanatory power of biotic covariates results indicate that l microphyllum will undergo global range expansion in concert with anthropogenic global warming and that the species is likely temperature and dispersal limited predictions are undertaken for current and future climate conditions assuming both limited and unlimited dispersal scenarios,2017,0.527
"Predicting the risk of plant invasion on islands: the case of Miconia calvescens in the Marquesas, French Polynesia (South Pacific)",predicting the distribution of alien plant species in newly introduced areas where they are found in small numbers is crucial for biodiversity management miconia calvescens melastomataceae a small tree native to central and south america has become one of the worldâ s worst plant invader in tropical rainforest including in the society islands french polynesia the hawaiian islands and the australian state of queensland in this study we aim to predict the potential distribution of miconia in the marquesas islands french polynesia where it has been recently introduced in nuku hiva and fatu hiva and where the species is still not in equilibrium with its environment we used maxent models to combine occurrence records from its native and introduced ranges with 1 largescale climatic variables and 2 fine scale topographic variables results produced with climatic variables confirm that miconia has the potential to spread over most marquesas islands where it is still absent according to the most accurate results obtained with topographic variables ca 45 of nuku hiva and 35 of fatu hiva present suitable environmental conditions for miconia despite theoretical limitations associated with projecting distribution of alien species in areas with different recipient communities our approach provides valuable information for stakeholders,2017,0.614
Species distribution models as a tool to predict range expansion after reintroduction: A case study on Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber),species distribution models sdms may provide important information for the follow up phase of reintroduction operations by identifying the main areas most likely to be colonized by the reintroduced species we used sdms to identify the potential distribution of eurasian beavers castor fiber reintroduced to serbia and bosnia and herzegovina in 2004â 2006 after being historically driven to extinction by overhunting models were also used to carry out a gap analysis to assess the degree of protection granted by the national reserve networks to the potentially expanding population distances from hydrographic network broadleaved forest main watercourses and farmland were the main factors influencing model performance we estimated that suitable habitat covers 14 0 31 000 km2 of the whole study area in serbia in 2004â 2013 beavers expanded their range at a mean colonization speed of 70 9 â 12 8 km year mean â sd only 2 89 of and 9 72 of beaverâ s suitable habitat lie within the national network of protected areas of bosnia and serbia respectively we detected new potential areas where beavers will likely settle in the near future advising on where further monitoring should be focused we also identified low suitability areas to be targeted with appropriate management to improve their conditions as well as important regions falling outside reserve boundaries where protection should be granted,2017,0.363
Future directions and priorities for Arctic bryophyte research,the development of evidence based international strategies for the conservation and management of arctic ecosystems in the face of climate change is hindered by critical knowledge gaps in arctic floristic diversity and evolution particularly poorly studied are the bryophytes which dominant the vegetation across vast areas of the arctic and consequently play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles currently much of what is known about arctic floristic evolution is based on studies of vascular plants bryophytes however possess a number of features such as poikilohydry totipotency several reproductive strategies and the ability to disperse through microscopic diaspores which may cause their responses to arctic environments to differ from those of the vascular plants here we discuss several priority areas identified in the arctic council s â arctic biodiversity assessmentâ that are necessary to illuminate patterns of arctic bryophyte evolution and diversity including dispersal glacia,2017,0.138
Taxonomic perils and pitfalls of dataset assembly in ecology: a case study of the naturalized Asteraceae in Australia,the value of plant ecological datasets with hundreds or thousands of species is principally determined by the taxonomic accuracy of their plant names however combining existing lists of species to assemble a harmonized dataset that is clean of taxonomic errors can be a difficult task for non taxonomists here we describe the range of taxonomic difficulties likely to be encountered during dataset assembly and present an easy to use taxonomic cleaning protocol aimed at assisting researchers not familiar with the finer details of taxonomic cleaning the protocol produces a final dataset fd linked to a companion dataset cd providing clear details of the path from existing lists to the fd taken by each cleaned taxon taxa are checked off against ten categories in the cd that succinctly summarize all taxonomic modifications required two older publicly available lists of naturalized asteraceae in australia were merged into a harmonized dataset as a case study to quantify the impacts of ignoring the critical process of taxonomic cleaning in invasion ecology our fd of naturalized asteraceae contained 257 species and infra species without implementation of the full cleaning protocol the dataset would have contained 328 taxa a 28 overestimate of taxon richness by 71 taxa our naturalized asteraceae cd described the exclusion of 88 names due to nomenclatural issues e g synonymy the inclusion of 26 updated currently accepted names and four taxa newly naturalized since the production of the source datasets and the exclusion of 13 taxa that were either found not to be in australia or were in fact doubtfully naturalized this study also supports the notion that automated processes alone will not be enough to ensure taxonomically clean datasets and that manual scrutiny of data is essential in the long term this will best be supported by increased investment in taxonomy and botany in university curricula,2017,0.626
"The potential range of Ailanthus altissima (tree of heaven) in South Africa: the roles of climate, land use and disturbance",invasive trees are a major problem in south africa many species are well established whereas others are still in the early stages of invasion the management of invasive species is most cost effective at the early stages of invasion it is thus essential to target and contain naturalizing invaders before they spread across the landscape multi scale species distribution models sdms provide useful insights to managers they combine species occurrence observations with climatic variables to predict potential distributions of alien species applying sdms in human dominated ecosystems is complicated because many factors associated with human actions interact in complex ways with climatic and edaphic factors to determine the potential suitability of sites for species the aim of this study was to determine the degree to which a worldwide invader a altissima simaroubaceae has occupied its potential range in south africa to identify areas at risk of future invasion to do this we built a set of sdms at both global and country scales using climatic land use and human footprint data climatic data best explained the distribution of a altissima at the global scale whereas variables reflecting human mediated disturbances were most influential at the national scale our analyses show the importance of human mediated disturbances at a global scale and human occupancy at a country scale in determining the range limits of a altissima populations of this tree species are already present in most parts of south africa that are environmentally suitable for the species and management actions need to focus on preventing increases in density in these areas,2017,0.876
Phylogeography and climate-associated morphological variation in the endemic white oak Quercus deserticola (Fagaceae) along the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt,mexico is a center of diversification for the genus quercus with an important number of taxa occurring along the trans mexican volcanic belt tmvb however the impact of the interaction between historical and current climatic variation and geological heterogeneity in the tmvb on the genetic and phenotypic diversification within oak species has been scarcely investigated we used chloroplast dna microsatellites and a geometric morphometrics analysis of leaf shape to understand differentiation between populations of quercus deserticola which inhabits dry highlands along the tmvb ecological niche modeling enm for present day conditions and projections into past scenarios were performed to evaluate the influence of environmental variables on the evolutionary history of the species results showed high genetic diversity hs 0 774 and high genetic structure rst 0 75 and the morphological subdivision of populations into two clusters corresponding to the west south and east north sectors of the q deserticola geographic distribution enm indicated that the potential distribution of the species has remained similar from the late pleistocene to the present seemingly the phylogeographic structure of the species has been shaped by low seed mediated gene flow and mostly local migration patterns in turn leaf shape is responding to climate differences either through phenotypic plasticity or local adaptation,2017,0.787
At Home with Mastomys and Rattus : Human–Rodent Interactions and Potential for Primary Transmission of Lassa Virus in Domestic Spaces,the multimammate mouse mastomys natalensis is the reservoir for lassa virus lasv zoonotic transmission occurs when humans are directly or indirectly exposed to fluids of the multimammate mouse such as urine saliva and blood housing characteristics and domestic organization affect rodent density in and around households and villages and are likely to be a risk factor for lassa fever in humans where the reservoir exists we use semiâ structured interviews n 51 a quantitative survey n 429 direct observations and a rodent ecology study to provide new insights into how the organization of domestic spaces brings together humans and rodents and creates pathways for infection in rural settlements in bo district sierra leone rodents were frequently reported inside houses 92 4 of respondents in which we predominantly trapped m natalensis 57 of trapped rodents and rattus rattus 38 of trapped rodents building design and materials provide hiding and nesting places for rodents and lead to close proximity with humans patterns of contact are both unintentional and intentional and research participants reported high levels of contact with rodents 34 2 of respondents and rodent fluids 52 8 of respondents rodents are also perceived as a serious threat to food security these results present detailed knowledge about how humans live with and come into contact with rodents including the lasv reservoir our results argue for further collaborative research in housing and environmental modification such as ceiling construction food storage and sanitation as prevention against zoonotic lasv transmission,2017,0.279
CHITDB: a database for documenting and analysing diversification of Ordovician-Silurian chitinozoans in the Baltic region,chitinozoans are a key group in ordovician and silurian biostratigraphy and the baltic region hosts some of the largest collections of these microfossils in the world here we present an online database â â chitdbâ â for documenting and analysing the distribution of chitinozoans in the baltic region the system is integrated with the estonian geocollections database and includes a public query portal http chitinozoa net which allows browsing and searching for chitinozoan taxa samples sections references and sem images downloading raw data by sections and generating range charts summary reports and conop9 input files the chitinozoan database holds currently over 35000 occurrence records of 300 chitinozoan taxa from 6400 micro palaeontological samples and 100 sections quantitative stratigraphical analysis of this data set enabled compilation of the highest resolution chitinozoan diversity curves through the ordovician and silurian to date and assessment of the rates of evolutionary changes the new model incorporates k bentonite and carbon isotope data that help to constrain time relationships between bioevents and environmental changes the highest chitinozoan diversity in the baltic region is encountered in late darriwilian to mid katian and in the telychian when the standing diversity reached 30â 35 species overall the latest ordovician and silurian faunas show more dynamic diversity patterns with higher extinction and origination rates than was typical for most of the ordovician period,2017,0.362
Occurrences: Data resources and Biocache-hub,atlas of living australia ala 1 framework is an open source infrastructure used to share biodiversity data through severals modules adding datasets in ala is an important step that give access to occurrences setting of parameters needs to be accurate in order to correctly view occurrences biocache hub 2 is an interface that allows research on ingested occurrences by biocache store 3 itâ s an advanced data explorer with filters this training will be divided in two parts first part will provide tools and techniques to add datasets from a csv local resource to a gbif dataset dwc file within the administration management of the collectory module 4 it will also present the important steps to link occurrences with datasets and how to update a dataset second part within user view will present the access to occurrences and options available from a simple search to a spatial search,2017,0.223
Can incomplete knowledge of species’ physiology facilitate ecological niche modelling? A case study with virtual species,aim ecological niche modelling enm is widely used in biogeography and conservation studies the performance of enm is influenced by the quality of speciesâ presence and absence datasets presences may include marginal localities and absences are usually difficult to collect we evaluated the use of speciesâ physiological limits to improve selection of presences and absences for enm in a virtual species framework with defined response functions as surrogates for physiological knowledge location the lower 48 states in usa methods we generated physiologically informed absences based on either complete or incomplete knowledge of speciesâ physiology with the same physiological knowledge we reduced noise incorrect or marginal locations from presence datasets completely or incompletely we compared i models based on physiologically informed absences and random background points ii models based on presences with and without noise and iii models obtained with and without incorporating physiological knowledge in absence and presence datasets results only absences based on complete physiological information produced better performing models than random background points model improvement was positively correlated with the percentage of noise being removed from the presence data and best performing models were obtained with true presences all noise removed manipulating both absences and presences led to better models than manipulating only presences when all or majority of physiological limits were known main conclusions the benefit of incorporating physiological information into enm datasets largely depends on completeness of physiological knowledge but in reality incomplete understanding of speciesâ physiology is the norm we found that applying incomplete physiological knowledge to absences may bias enm and thus use of random background points is recommended on the other hand removing noise from speciesâ presence datasets based on incomplete physiological limits increases model performance thus this approach could potentially improve the effectiveness of enm applications in conservation planning and invasive species management,2017,0.219
Phylogeography of the dry vegetation endemic species Nephila sexpunctata (Araneae: Araneidae) suggests recent expansion of the Neotropical Dry Diagonal,aim the neotropical dry diagonal dd is a corridor of distinct dry environments in central south america the main hypotheses suggest that these environments may have expanded during the glacial cycles together with a retraction of rainforests and then shrank when the climate became wetter and warmer however few studies have explicitly tested the hypotheses on dd evolution we conducted a phylogeographical study on nephila sexpunctata a spider endemic to neotropical dry habitats to enrich the understanding of dd evolutionary history location south western portion of the dd cerrado and chaco methods we sequenced two mitochondrial regions and one nuclear dna region of 65 individuals from 10 locations across the speciesâ range we conducted analyses of genetic structure variability demography and inferred divergence times we used an ecological niche modelling framework to generate hypotheses on the speciesâ distribution along the last glacial cycle and a model based approach to test the demographical scenarios that might explain the genetic patterns results both markers presented low genetic diversity mitochondrial markers had high genetic structure with specific geographical lineages within each biome while the nuclear marker presented low genetic structure phylogeographical and demographical events encompass the last glacial cycle with a strong post last glacial maximum lgm population and spatial expansion model testing corroborated the recent demographical expansion of n sexpunctata main conclusions our data suggest that quaternary climate cycles when moist forests periodically expanded towards the dry vegetation influenced the diversification of dd organisms by promoting demographical events these events might explain the genetic structure observed in n sexpunctata differently from what was expected by the pleistocene refugia model some dd species may have experienced post lgm expansion climate and geological events have both affected dd endemic organismsâ diversification,2017,0.237
Geographic distribution and conservation of nine species of the genus Ferocactus (Cactaceae) in Mexico,the genus ferocactus has complex taxonomy and phylogenetic and evolutionary history affected greatly by geographic and reproductive isolation in its diversification and evolution however the number of species classified in risk categories is shocking therefore the knowledge on speciesâ distribution patterns and their environmental determinants as well as the processes of habitat loss due to land use change is important in this paper we used ecological niche modeling to generate potential distribution of nine species of ferocactus protected by mexican law then using geographic information systems we obtained the bioclimatic profile of each species and the influence of climatic variables in their geographic distribution we also evaluated the effects of the change of land use in their distribution area and estimated the safeguarded area within a natural protected area the results show that habitat loss is greater in the species whose distribution area is in the center of mã xico compared to those living in the baja california peninsula and the representativeness of most species is low in natural protected areas it might be necessary to re evaluate the risk categories of species as well as coordinate efforts to identify potential areas suitable for conservation strategies or recovery plans and to promote the decree of new areas or extension thereof to protect the habitat of the species i,2017,0.875
"Genetic structure of a regionally endangered orchid, the dark red helleborine (Epipactis atrorubens) at the edge of its distribution",the genetic structure and diversity of species is determined by both current population dynamics and historical processes population genetic structure at the edge of the distribution is often expected to differ substantially from populations at the centre as these edge populations are often small and fragmented in addition populations located in regions that have experienced repeated glaciations throughout the pleistocene may still carry imprints from the genetic consequences of frequent distribution shifts using chloroplast dna sequences and nuclear microsatellite markers we studied the genetic structure of epipactis atrorubens at the northern edge of its distribution contrary to populations in the centre of the distribution populations at the northern range are regionally endangered as they are small and disjunct sequence data of 2 chloroplast loci and allelic data from 6 nuclear microsatellite markers were obtained from 297 samples from finland estonia and russia we sought for genetic indicators of past population processes such as post glacial colonisation history of e atrorubens as expected we observed low genetic variation in terms of numbers of substitutions haplotypes and alleles and significant levels of differentiation especially pronounced in the chloroplast dna these features suggest that the edge populations could be prone to extinction,2017,0.882
Aligning marine species range data to better serve science and conservation,species distribution data provide the foundation for a wide range of ecological research studies and conservation management decisions two major efforts to provide marine species distributions at a global scale are the international union for conservation of nature iucn which provides expert generated range maps that outline the complete extent of a species distribution and aquamaps which provides model generated species distribution maps that predict areas occupied by the species together these databases represent 24 586 species 93 1 within aquamaps 16 4 within iucn with only 2 330 shared species differences in intent and methodology can result in very different predictions of species distributions which bear important implications for scientists and decision makers who rely upon these datasets when conducting research or informing conservation policy and management actions comparing distributions for the small subset of species with maps in both datasets we found that aquamaps and iucn range maps show strong agreement for many well studied species but our analysis highlights several key examples in which introduced errors drive differences in predicted species ranges in particular we find that iucn maps greatly overpredict coral presence into unsuitably deep waters and we show that some aquamaps computer generated default maps only 5 7 of which have been reviewed by experts can produce odd discontinuities at the extremes of a speciesâ predicted range we illustrate the scientific and management implications of these tradeoffs by repeating a global analysis of gaps in coverage of marine protected areas and find significantly different results depending on how the two datasets are used by highlighting tradeoffs between the two datasets we hope to encourage increased collaboration between taxa experts and large scale species distribution modeling efforts to further improve these foundational datasets helping to better inform science and policy recommendations around understanding managing and protecting marine biodiversity,2017,0.952
"Regionalisation of the Mediterranean basin, a MERMEX synthesis",regionalisation aims at delimiting provinces within which physical conditions chemical properties and biological communities are reasonably homogeneous this article proposes a synthesis of the many recent regionalisations of the open sea regions of the mediterranean sea the nine studies considered here defined regions based on different and sometimes complementary criteria dynamics of surface chlorophyll concentration ocean currents three dimensional hydrological and biogeochemical properties or the distribution of organisms although they identified different numbers and patterns of homogeneous regions their compilation in the epipelagic zone identifies nine consensus frontiers eleven consensus regions with relatively homogeneous conditions and four heterogeneous regions with highly dynamical conditions the consensus frontiers and regions are in agreement with well known hydrodynamical features of the mediterranean sea which constrain the distribution of hydrological and ecological variables the heterogeneous regions are rather defined by intense mesoscale activity the synthesis proposed here could constitute a reference step for management actions and spatial planning such as the application of the european marine strategy framework directive and for future biogeochemical and ecological studies in the mediterranean sea,2017,0.026
The impact of human population pressure on flying fox niches and the potential consequences for Hendra virus spillover,hendra virus hev is an emerging pathogen of concern in australia given its ability to spillover from its reservoir host pteropid bats to horses and further on to humans and the severe clinical presentation typical in these latter incidental hosts specific human pressures over recent decades such as expanding human populations urbanization and forest fragmentation may have altered the ecological niche of pteropus species acting as natural hev reservoirs and may modulate spillover risk this study explored the influence of inter decadal net human local migration between 1970 and 2000 on changes in the habitat suitability to p alecto and p conspicillatus from 1980 to 2015 in eastern australia these ecological niches were modeled using boosted regression trees and subsequently fitted along with additional landscape factors to hev spillovers to explore the spatial dependency of this zoonosis the spatial model showed that the ecological niche of these two flying fox species the human footprint and proximity to woody savanna were each strongly associated with hev spillover and together explained most of the spatial dependency exhibited by this zoonosis these findings reinforce the potential for anthropogenic pressures to shape the landscape epidemiology of hev spillover,2017,0.665
Tree diversity and elevational gradient: the case of Lauraceae in the Atlantic Rainforest,lauraceae have an ancient evolutionary history and wide distribution providing a great model for studies of the biogeographical distribution patterns of plant species the effects of elevational variation on plant diversity in tropical forests have been the subject of many studies we investigated the following question how does the lauraceae family contribute to the diversity of the tree community in the atlantic rainforest along an elevational gradient data from 15 floristic surveys plots of one ha were analyzed comparing the variation in the patterns of lauraceae richness to the richness of the whole tree community the similarity relations of the plots were analyzed based on lauraceae species and the distribution patterns of the family were tested through null distribution models of the species the surveys recorded 22 895 live individual trees in total distributed among 859 species belonging to 70 families lauraceae contributed 4 3 of the total abundance and presented the third highest species richness 6 4 of the total in general lauraceae diversity was highest in the montane region and their composition changed along the elevational gradient presenting four elevational belts the lauraceae diversity has a strong positive relationship with abundance we found an exponential positive correlation between elevation and the richness of the family differing from the tree community pattern the results showed a new pattern of species variation along elevational gradients for the tree component in the tropical forest thus we suggest that patterns of diversity variation in tree communities should be analyzed separately among the richest families,2017,0.854
Threatened plants species of Guinea-Conakry: A preliminary checklist,guinea conakry has one of the highest plant diversities in sub saharan west africa and is part of the upper guinean forest ecoregion and the guinean forests of west africa biodiversity hotspot guinea is a major supplier of the worldâ s bauxite and has significant reserves of high grade iron ore it also has small reserves of diamonds gold and uranium as a result large areas of open cast mining exist in the country and pressure on habitats and vegetation are increasing with the need to bring revenue into the country this is in addition to unsustainable slash and burn agriculture and a growing population an initial list of 482 was drawn up from the flore de guinã e subsequent discussion and screening reduced the list to 253 which is presented here it is estimated that c 10 of the countries flora is threatened rediscoveries and new species are being made in guinea but they are often already threatened having been discovered as part of environmental impact assessments a comprehensive red list of threatened species is much needed to support the countryâ s environmental policy as well as their international obligations,2017,0.487
"Description of the female, egg and first instar nymph of the stick insect Paraphasma paulense (Phasmatodea: Pseudophasmatidae) from Southeast Brazil",the stick insect paraphasma paulense was described based on one male from the vicinity of sã o paulo city state of sã o paulo brazil here we describe and illustrate the female egg and first instar nymph of the species including scanning electron micrographs of the egg in addition we give brief behavioural reports and present a few comments on the biology and morphology of p paulense,2017,0.493
Germinate 3: Development of a Common Platform to Support the Distribution of Experimental Data on Crop Wild Relatives,conservation and exploitation of crop wild relative species is an important component in ensuring food security and improving current agricultural output by identifying agriculturally important characteristics that express favorable response to both biotic and abiotic stress currently unused by breeders the incorporation of this new genetic material into genetic background stocks may help mitigate problems imposed by climate change land degradation and population pressure this is particularly important in countries that will be more severely affected by the threat of reduced yields the ability to effectively manage genetic resources collections and integrate unique and diverse data types is crucial in exploring understanding and exploiting the diversity contained within genebanks providing a common interface through which experimental and background data can be disseminated to both researchers and breeders will bring focus and facilitate community building into research communities we have taken wild barley hordeum spp and potato solanum spp collections along with wheat triticum spp and maize zea mays subsp mays and their wild relatives and incorporated this data into web based information resources built using the germinate platform https ics hutton ac uk get germinate accessed 4 apr 2017 we have tailored these to better meet the demands of researchers by developing both new data visualization tools and integration with current software such as helium flapjack and curlywhirly https ics hutton ac uk software accessed 4 apr 2017 and presented the data in a common platform while the underlying species differ the approach taken ensures that tools are compatible across all database instances we will describe these database instances and show that germinate offers a common platform that will aid in the exploration and wider use of these species,2017,0.767
Biological control opportunities of ragweed are predicted to decrease with climate change in East Asia,the control of invasive alien plants iap that jeopardize our ecosystems and economy constitutes a significant challenge for natural resource management classical biological control referring to the introduction of specialist antagonists from the native range has proven to be a highly cost effective management tool against iap a critical issue in biological control research is to guide informed decision making on the potential spread and distribution and thus impact of biological control candidates especially under climate change here we propose a biogeographic modeling approach to predict the cover of the suitable area of a plant invader in east asia ea by two biological control agents and their combinations our study system is ambrosia artemisiifolia native to north america and invasive worldwide and two north american biological control agents ophraella communa and epiblema strenuana that were accidentally and deliberately introduced into east asia ea in the late 20th century respectively specifically we ask 1 what percentage of the suitable a artemisiifolia area is also suitable for the two agents in ea and 2 which part of the suitable a artemisiifolia area in ea is likely to remain uncovered by these two agents both under current and future climatic scenarios and 3 which particular biotypes would be needed to fill in the yet uncovered part of the suitable a artemisiifolia range in ea for this we simultaneously modelled the species distributions based on worldwide occurrences and important bioclimatic variables for the target invasive plant and its two biological control agents ordination techniques were used to explore climatic constraints of each species and to perform niche overlap and similarity tests with a artemisiifolia between its native north american and introduced ea range our results show that o communa has a larger overlap with the geographic range of a artemisiifolia than e strenuana both under current and future climatic scenarios importantly climate change is expected to reduce the total geographic overlap of a artemisiifolia by the two agents combined with a higher reduction by o communa than by e strenuana our analyses also identified for which abiotic conditions to select in order to develop climatically adapted strains for particular regions where a artemisiifolia is presently unlikely to be covered,2017,0.157
Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist,background the last annotated checklist of marine polychaetes in greece was published in 2001 since then global taxonomic progress combined with many new species records for greece required a thorough review of the taxonomic nomenclatural and biogeographic status of the national species list this checklist revises the status of all extant polychaete species reported from the greek exclusive economic zone since 1832 the work was undertaken as part of the efforts on compiling a national species inventory greek taxon information system initiative in the framework of the lifewatchgreece research infrastructure new information this checklist comprises an updated and annotated inventory of polychaete species in greek waters compiled from literature reports online databases museum collections and unpublished datasets the list provides information on 836 species level taxa from greece of which 142 are considered questionable an additional 84 species reported in the past are currently considered absent from greece reasons for the exclusion of each species are given fourteen species are reported here for the first time from greek waters at least 52 species in the present list constitute in fact a complex of cryptic or pseudo cryptic species forty seven species are considered non native to the area in addition to the species level taxa reported in this checklist eleven genera have been recorded from greece with no representatives identified to species level one replacement name is introduced for each species a comprehensive bibliographic list of occurrence records in greece and the synonyms used in these publications are provided as supplementary material where necessary the taxonomic nomenclatural or biogeographic status is discussed finally the findings are discussed in the wider context of mediterranean polychaete biogeography taxonomic practice and worldwide research progress,2017,0.989
Distribution of the invasive plant species Heracleum sosnowskyi Manden. in the Komi Republic (Russia),occurrences of the invasive plant species heracleum sosnowskyi manden in the komi republic northeastern part of european russia were recorded and published in the global biodiversity information facility gbif http www gbif org using the rivr information system http ib komisc ru add rivr en rivr stands for â œrasprostranenie invasionnyh vidov rastenijâ occurrence of invasion plant species this citizen science project aims at collecting occurrence data about invasive plant species with the help of citizen scientists information can be added by any user after a simple registration concept process however the data published in gbif are provided only by professional scientists the total study area is approximately 19 000 km2 the gbif resource contains 10894 h sosnowskyi occurrence points each with their geographical coordinates and photographs of the plants in the locus of growth the preliminary results of species distribution modelling on the territory of european north east russia presented,2017,0.573
"Pseudocyphellaria crocata (Ascomycota: Lobariaceae) in the Americas is revealed to be thirteen species, and none of them is P. crocata",we provide a phylogenetic revision of the pseudocyphellaria crocata complex in the americas specimens traditionally identified as p crocata based on their cyanobacterial photobiont yellow pseudocyphellae at least partially white medulla and yellow soralia or soralia like structures are shown to represent 13 distinct species forming a monophyletic group divided into four large clades three comprising one species each and one containing eight species plus two taxa for which no molecular data are available seven species correspond to what was previously recognized as p crocata and one to p dozyana whereas a further one is identified as the sorediate counterpart of the usually apotheciate taxon p lechleri and another as a pseudosorediate morph of the usually phyllidiate species p neglecta surprisingly none of the species represents p crocata s str which must therefore be excluded from the american lichen biota the 13 recognized species include three species new to science and three new combinations p citrina gyeln lã cking moncada s stenroos comb nov bas cyanisticta citrina gyeln nom nov pro sticta citrina pers nom illeg p desfontainii delise vain p deyi lã cking sp nov p dozyana mont bosch d j galloway p epiflavoides gyeln lã cking farkas lå kã s comb nov bas cyanisticta epiflavoides gyeln p hawaiiensis h magn p hillii c w dodge d j galloway p holarctica mccune lã cking moncada sp nov p lechleri mã ll arg du rietz p neglecta mã ll arg h magn p punctata lendemer lã cking moncada sp nov p sandwicensis zahlbr moncada lã cking comb nov bas sticta crocata f sandwicensis zahlbr and p xanthosticta pers moncada lã cking based on sequenced specimens a neotype is selected for p citrina and epitypes for p hawaiiensis p lechleri p sandwicensis and p xanthosticta a key to all sorediate or pseudosorediate species of this complex in the americas is presented and all species are described discussed and illustrated,2017,0.981
The Orthoptera of Castro Verde Special Protection Area (Southern Portugal): new data and conservation value,with the increasing awareness of the need for orthoptera conservation greater efforts must be gathered to implement specific monitoring schemes despite recent surveys little is known about portuguese orthoptera populations this study was performed in 2014 and 2015 mainly in castro verde special protection area spa southern portugal and is the first orthoptera inventory conducted in the area a total of 35 orthoptera species was recorded with two new species reported for portugal we provide speciesâ habitat occurrences within the protected area and use information on the conservation status and the iberian distribution of each documented species to discuss the importance of castro verde spa for orthoptera conservation the data presented here sheds new light on castro verde spa biodiversity and emphasizes the inclusion of this area in the conservation of orthoptera diversity particularly in the protection of threatened endemic species,2017,0.804
Semantic Annotation of Natural History Collections,large archival collections of historical biodiversity expeditions are housed in natural history museums throughout the world they should serve as rich sources of data for cultural history and biodiversity research but disclosing their content remains challenging although many collections have been digitised they exist as poorly catalogued specimen repositories and images of unstructured non standardised hand written text and drawings moreover they are often written in multiple languages referring to historical place names and outdated taxonomic classifications efforts to transcribe the hand written text can make the content accessible we however argue that the content should be semantically modelled and interlinked to facilitate research we propose a semantic model that serves to structure the entities in natural history collections in addition we present a semantic annotation approach for crowd sourcing annotations from these collections whilst documenting their provenance this approach serves as an initial step for an adaptive learning approach for semi automated extraction of named entities from natural history collections the applicability of the semantic model and the annotation approach is demonstrated using image scans from a collection of 8000 field book pages gathered by the committee for natural history of the netherlands indies between 1820 and 1850,2017,0.152
Niche conservatism and the invasive potential of the wild boar,1 niche conservatism i e the retention of a speciesâ fundamental niche through evolutionary time is cornerstone for biological invasion assessments the fact that species tend to maintain their original climate niche allows predictive maps of invasion risk to anticipate potential invadable areas unraveling the mechanisms driving niche shifts can shed light on the management of invasive species 2 here we assessed niche shifts in one of the world s worst invasive species the wild boar sus scrofa we also predicted potential invadable areas based on an ensemble of three ecological niche modeling methods and evaluated the performance of models calibrated with native vs pooled native plus invaded species records by disentangling the drivers of change on the exotic wild boar population s niches we found strong evidence for niche conservatism during biological invasion 3 ecological niche models calibrated with both native and pooled range records predicted convergent areas also observed niche shifts are mostly explained by niche unfilling i e there are unoccupied areas in the exotic range where climate is analogous to the native range 4 niche unfilling is expected as result of recent colonization and ongoing dispersal and was potentially stronger for the neotropics where a recent wave of introductions for pig farming and game hunting has led to high wild boar population growth rates the invasive potential of wild boar in the neotropics is probably higher than in other regions which has profound management implications if we are to prevent their invasion into species rich areas such as amazonia coupled with expansion of african swine fever and possibly great economic losses 5 although the originally eurasian wide distribution suggests a pre adaptation to a wide array of climates the wild boar worldwide invasion does not exhibit evidence of niche evolution the invasive potential of the wild boar therefore probably lies on the reproductive dietary and morphological characteristics of this species coupled with behavioral thermoregulation,2017,0.984
Hydraulics link leaf shape and environmental niche in terrestrial bromeliads,terrestrial species of the megadiverse bromeliad family display a wide variety of leaf shapes many of which have evolved convergently in different lineages here i examine the links between leaf shape venation architecture hydraulic function and bioclimatic relations in two bromeliad groups displaying diverse leaf shapes the genus pitcairnia pitcairnioideae and the terrestrial grade of the bromelioideae subfamily leaf shapes with broader leaf blades notably petiolate and lanceolate morphologies tend to show wider vein spacing which is associated with reduced hydraulic capacity and higher hydraulic vulnerability in turn these leaf shapes tend to occur in species restricted to moist aseasonal environments suggesting that hydraulic function is an important mediator of the relationship between leaf shape and bromeliad environmental niches this network of traitâ trait and traitâ environment relationships may have been of profound important in the ecological and evolutionary diversification of the bromeliads similar structureâ function principles are likely to apply in other tropical herbaceous monocots which are of great ecological importance but generally neglected in plant hydraulic research,2017,0.155
Frequency of invasive plant occurrence is not a suitable proxy for abundance in the Northeast United States,measuring and predicting invasive plant abundance is critical for understanding impacts on ecosystems and economies although spatial abundance datasets remain rare occurrence datasets are increasingly available across broad regional scales we asked whether the frequency of these point occurrences can be used as a proxy for abundance of invasive plants we compiled both occurrence and abundance data for 13 regionally important invasive plants in the northeast united states from herbarium records and several contributed distribution datasets we integrated all available abundance information based on infested area stem count percent cover or qualitative descriptions into abundance rankings ranging from 0 absent to 4 highly abundant within equal area grid cells of 800 m we counted numbers of occurrence points and used ordinal regression to test whether higher densities of occurrence points increased the odds of a higher abundance ranking we compiled a total of 86 854 occurrence points in 34 596 grid cells of which 26 114 points 30 within 11 976 cells 35 had some form of abundance information eleven of the 13 species had a slight but significantly positive odds ratio that is more occurrence points of a species increased the odds that the species was abundant within the grid cell however the predictive ability of the models was poor îº 0 2 for the majority of species additionally most grid cells contained only one or two occurrence points making it impossible to infer abundance in all but a few locations these results suggest that currently available occurrence datasets do not effectively represent abundance which could explain why many distribution models based on occurrence data are poor predictors of abundance increased efforts to consistently collect and report invasive species abundance ideally estimating both infested area and average cover are strongly needed for regional scale assessments of potential abundance and associated impact,2017,0.739
"Tracking data from nine free-roaming Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) collared in the Thabazimbi area, Limpopo Province, South Africa",background in partnership with the university of pretoria the endangered wildlife trustâ s carnivore conservation programme collared six male and three female free roaming cheetahs acinonyx jubatus in the thabazimbi area in limpopo province south africa this study was undertaken to determine the spatial ecology of free roaming cheetahs that occur outside of formal protected areas on private ranchland where they frequently come into conflict with and are sometimes killed by private landowners the data were collected between september 2003 and november 2008 resulting in a total of 3165 location points 65 points from vhf collars and 3100 from gps collars for nine individual cheetahs new information this dataset provides distribution information about this vulnerable species occurring outside of protected areas within south africa the dataset has been published to the global biodiversity information facility www gbif org and provides the largest dataset on cheetahs thus far and although it is spatially limited to a relatively small region on the african continent it is the first study of its kind within south africa also of significance is that the fate of 6 of the 9 collared cheetahs is known all except one of which died of anthropogenic causes,2017,0.65
Automated Generation of Lists of Unique Values from iDigBio Data Fields to Facilitate Data Quality Improvements,idigbio currently has over 100 million records with up to 260 fields per record matsunaga et al 2013 many of these fields are mapped to the darwin core dwc and audubon core standards how well do the data in those fields meet the term definitions of those standards amassing biodiversity collections data into very large aggregated datasets offers never before possible ways in which to use the existing data to enhance current data and improve future data while most data providers attempt to adhere to the recommended standards looking inside the data entered for a given field across aggregated datasets has revealed significant data quality issues among other issues data might be the wrong data type mapped incorrectly use old terminology be formatted incorrectly or use a non standard controlled vocabulary the darwin core hour webinar initiative zermoglio et al 2017 started in january of 2017 to improve dwc implementation and documentation as well as community engagement and understanding of the dwc standard and standards process as part of that process it was recognized that while aggregators with informatics skills can easily see the above data issues it is not simple for most data providers or downstream users to visualize large datasets in fact it is often difficult for data providers to visualize issues in their own local datasets one place to start improving data quality is with the fields from the dwc standard that recommend the use of a controlled vocabulary there are 23 fields that recommend the use of a controlled vocabulary a call went out to large aggregators to share comma separated values csv files containing a list of distinct values found in each of these 23 fields along with a count the responses from idigbio the global biodiversity information facility gbif and vertnet are stored in the tdwg darwin core q a github repository paul 2017 based on this community need to have more insight into controlled vocabulary data as well as experience with idigbioâ s existing data cleaning approaches we have constructed an automated process to generate lists of unique values in idigbio fields we used the data available from dumps of the entire idigbio data set which are written out weekly and stored on the guoda global unified open data access infrastructure collins et al 2017 the distributed processing engine apache spark and the job management software jenkins the resulting csv files are archived and automatically made publicly available once a week through the web on idigbioâ s ceph object store dynamically generating this distinct value data is a first step in understanding the current vocabularies in use by data providers using summarization and clustering algorithms data in the fields can be easily visualized and analyzed with these data not only can patterns beyond typos and counts be seen by anyone but metrics can be put in place as discipline specific communities are able to easily see what is in a given field they can work together to synthesize recommended vocabularies to improve future data as the data are improved the number of distinct clusters would be expected to decrease as would the number of values found in a given cluster without these kinds of automated tools that build data products from aggregated data it would be much harder to tackle many data quality issues,2017,0.031
Computational bioacoustics : biodiversity monitoring and assessment,latest advances in signal processing and machine learning methods for speech and audio processing coverage of various methods and techniques for measuring and calibrating auditory communication includes technology methods and good practices in computational bioacoustics the book covers the fundamentals and applications of computational bioacoustics in monitoring and control applications the work provides a thorough discussion of cross disciplinary research including new engineering technology with a discussion of codes and demos illustrating the application of various audio parameterization and machine learning techniques on the task of automated recognition and monitoring the concepts can be used in monitoring of healthcare patients but can also be used in broader biodiversity monitoring and assessment provided by publisher,2017,0.212
Essential Annotation Schema for Ecology (EASE)—A framework supporting the efficient data annotation and faceted navigation in ecology,ecology has become a data intensive science over the last decades which often relies on the reuse of data in cross experimental analyses however finding data which qualifies for the reuse in a specific context can be challenging it requires good quality metadata and annotations as well as efficient search strategies to date full text search often on the metadata only is the most widely used search strategy although it is known to be inaccurate faceted navigation is providing a filter mechanism which is based on fine granular metadata categorizing search objects along numeric and categorical parameters relevant for their discovery selecting from these parameters during a full text search creates a system of filters which allows to refine and improve the results towards more relevance we developed a framework for the efficient annotation and faceted navigation in ecology it consists of an xml schema for storing the annotation of search objects and is accompanied by a vocabulary focused on ecology to support the annotation process the framework consolidates ideas which originate from widely accepted metadata standards textbooks scientific literature and vocabularies as well as from expert knowledge contributed by researchers from ecology and adjacent disciplines,2017,0.096
Naturalization of ornamental plant species in public green spaces and private gardens,ornamental horticulture is the most important pathway for alien plant introductions worldwide and consequently invasive spread of introduced plants often begins in urban areas although most introduced ornamental garden plant species are locally not naturalized yet many of them have shown invasion potential elsewhere in the world and might naturalize when climate changes we inventoried the planted flora of 50 public and 61 private gardens in radolfzell a small city in southern germany to investigate whether local naturalization success of garden plants is associated with their current planting frequency climatic suitability as assessed with climatic niche modelling and known naturalization status somewhere in the world we identified 954 introduced garden plant species of which 48 are already naturalized in radolfzell and 120 in other parts of germany all currently naturalized garden plants in radolfzell have a climatic suitability probability of â 0 75 and are naturalized in â 13 out of 843 regions globally these values are significantly higher than those of garden plants that have not become locally naturalized yet current planting frequencies however were not related to current naturalization success using the identified local naturalization thresholds of climatic suitability and global naturalization frequency and climate projections for the years 2050 and 2070 we identified 45 garden plant species that are currently not naturalized in radolfzell but are likely to become so in the future although our approach cannot replace a full risk assessment it is well suited and applicable as one element of a screening or horizon scanning type approach,2017,0.219
"Phylogeography of a widespread small carnivore, the western spotted skunk ( Spilogale gracilis ) reveals temporally variable signatures of isolation across western North America",we analyzed phylogeographic patterns in the western spotted skunk spilogale gracilis merriam 1890 carnivora mephitidae in relation to historical events associated with pre pleistocene divergence ppd and quaternary climate change qcc using mitochondrial dna from 97 individuals distributed across western north america divergence times were generated using beast to estimate when isolation in putative refugia occurred patterns and timing of demographic expansion was performed using bayesian skyline plot putative climatic refugia resulting from quaternary climate change were identified using paleoecological niche modeling and divergence dates compared to major vicariant events associated with pre pleistocene conditions we recovered three major mitochondrial clades corresponding to western north america california baja and across the great basin east central north america texas central mexico new mexico and southwestern arizona northwestern mexico time to most recent common ancestor for s gracilis occurred 1 36 ma divergence times for each major clade occurred between 0 25 and 0 12 ma with signature of population expansion occurring 0 15 and 0 10 ma ecological niche models identified three potential climatic refugia during the last interglacial 1 west coast of california and oregon 2 northwestern mexico and 3 southern texas northeastern mexico as well as two refugia during the last glacial maximum 1 western usa and 2 southern texas northeastern mexico this study supports ppd in shaping species level diversity compared to qcc driven changes at the intraspecific level for spilogale similar to the patterns reported for other small mammals e g rodents and bats phylogeographic patterns also appear to have been shaped by both habitat and river vicariance especially across the desert southwest further continuing climate change during the holocene coupled with anthropogenic modifications during the anthropocene appears to be removing both of these barriers to current dispersal of western spotted skunks,2017,0.599
The relative roles of local climate adaptation and phylogeny in determining leaf-out timing of temperate tree species,background leaf out times of temperate forest trees are a prominent determinant of global carbon dynamics throughout the year abiotic cues of leaf emergence are well studied but investigation of the relative roles of shared evolutionary history phylogeny and local adaptation to climate in determining the species level responses to these cues is needed to better apprehend the effect of global change on leaf emergence we explored the relative importance of phylogeny and climate in determining the innate leaf out phenology across the temperate biome methods we used an extensive dataset of leaf out dates of 1126 temperate woody species grown in eight northern hemisphere common gardens for these species information on the native climate and phylogenetic position was collected using linear regression analyses we examine the relative effect of climate variables and phylogeny on leaf out variation among species results climate variables explained twice as much variation in leaf out timing as phylogenetic information a process that was driven primarily by the complex interactive effects of multiple climate variables although the primary climate factors explaining species level variation in leaf out timing varied drastically across different families our analyses reveal that local adaptation plays a stronger role than common evolutionary history in determining tree phenology across the temperate biome conclusions in the long term the direct effects of physiological adaptation to abiotic effects of climate change on forest phenology are likely to outweigh the indirect effects mediated through changes in tree species composition,2017,0.689
Expansion of the range of the introduced moth Acontia candefacta in southeastern Europe,the nearctic moth acontia candefacta lepidoptera noctuidae is expanding its range in europe the species is considered a suc cessful agent for biological control of ambrosia artemisiifolia asterales asteraceae a weed whose pollen causes allergies in humans a few additional findings of the moth have been recorded at several new sites in southeastern europe serbia using light trapping we here present and discuss the current distribution of the moth in europe and the paths of its spreading on the basis of gis data gis technology was used to map the distribution and quantify values of environmental variables within the range of the analysed moth species additionally the potential colonization of the moth across europe is modelled on the basis of its current distribution environmental variables and the host plant s distribution,2017,0.595
Lepidoptera Collection Curation and Data Management,the collections of lepidoptera often serve as foundational basis for a wide range of biological ecological and climate science disciplines species identification and higher taxa delimitation based on collection specimens and especially on types test scientific hypotheses provide multiple types of evidence for a broad range of users curation and data management approaches applied in lepidoptera collections benefit greatly from many newly developed information techniques which link and integrate data mostly attention is focused on clean verified collection and taxonomic literature mining data to obtain correct species group and higher taxa names as well as reliable data on the distribution of lepidoptera and their trophic interactions collection creation and management became a subject of natural sciences itself the chapter provides a historic overview on collection creation and curation together with a short discussion on collection goals and purposes the creation of a virtual collection based on interlinked data is emphasized information science and data management tools became very important in lepidoptera collection curation the complexity of techniques and computing tools used in taxonomy and the increase in the amount of data that can be obtained by collection based disciplines make it necessary to automate data gathering manipulation analysis and visualization processes,2017,0.402
Habitat filtering not dispersal limitation shapes oceanic island floras: species assembly of the Galápagos archipelago,remote locations such as oceanic islands typically harbour relatively few species some of which go on to generate endemic radiations species colonising these locations tend to be a non random subset from source communities which is thought to reflect dispersal limitation however non random colonisation could also result from habitat filtering whereby only a few continental species can become established we evaluate the imprints of these processes on the galã pagos flora by analysing a comprehensive regional phylogeny for 39 000 species alongside information on dispersal strategies and climatic suitability we found that habitat filtering was more important than dispersal limitation in determining species composition this finding may help explain why adaptive radiation is common on oceanic archipelagoes â because colonising species can be relatively poor dispersers with specific niche requirements we suggest that the standard assumption that plant communities in remote locations are primarily shaped by dispersal limitation deserves reconsideration,2017,0.913
"Citizen science for assessing ecosystem services: Status, challenges and opportunities",citizen science approaches provide opportunities to support ecosystem service assessments to evaluate the recent trends challenges and opportunities of utilizing citizen science in ecosystem service studies we conducted a systematic literature and project review we reviewed the range of ecosystem services and formats of participation in citizen science in 17 peer reviewed scientific publications and 102 ongoing or finished citizen science projects out of over 500 screened publications and over 1400 screened projects we found that citizen science is predominantly applied in assessing regulating and cultural services the assessments were often performed by using proxy indicators that only implicitly provide information on ecosystem services direct assessments of ecosystem services are still rare participation formats mostly comprise contributory citizen science projects that focus on volunteered data collection however there is potential to increase citizen involvement in comprehensive ecosystem service assessments including the development of research questions design data analysis and dissemination of findings levels of involvement could be enhanced to strengthen strategic knowledge on the environment scientific literacy and the empowerment of citizens in helping to inform and monitor policies and management efforts related to ecosystem services we provide an outlook how to better operationalise citizen science approaches to assess ecosystem services,2017,0.079
An analysis of characteristics and structures embedded in data papers: a preliminary study,research data or datasets can be regarded as a catalyst to inspire new research by repurposing or combining existing research data and grant applicants have been requested by funding institutions to include a data management plan as part of research project proposals in addition to the metadata approach data papers may mirror the scientific publication model as an alternative means of description and management of research data however there is not a common standard for all data papers across various communities this study aimed to build up a common structural framework to investigate the embedded characteristics and structures of the content of data papers by using a content analysis approach and 26 data journals from 16 publishers were selected as subject in this study this study has proposed a common framework and further embodied a concept map candela et al 2015 into more concrete components for the structure of data papers,2017,0.086
"Biodiversity information resources. I. Species distribution, catalogue, phylogeny, and life history traits",species distribution catalogues phylogeny and life history traits are the data basis of biodiversity studies playing critical roles in understanding species origins evolution and conservation biodiversity recently a large number of scientific data sharing platforms have been created greatly contributing to the development of biodiversity informatics however it is difficult for most researchers to deal with big data with high complexity and heterogeneity determining how to select and utilize these data accurately and effectively becomes a huge challenge for ecologists and conservation biologists to better deal with existing problems related to scattered distributed data we classify biodiversity data resources into four groups species distribution catalogues phylogeny and life history traits and select representative databases e g global biodiversity information facility the plant list open tree of life and the plant trait database try for demonstration for each database data type and sampling design geographic coverage and data availability are reported and selected publications using these datasets are briefly introduced meanwhile we describe recent achievements on the construction of chinaâ s biodiversity digital platforms in each section overall we hope that this paper provides a starting point for researchers to be familiar with these databases and use them correctly and could have the potential to stimulate the development of related fields in research and conservation of biodiversity under the efforts of researchers and the public,2017,0.412
Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences,studying and protecting each and every living species on earth is a major challenge of the 21st century yet most species remain unknown or unstudied while others attract most of the public scientific and government attention although known to be detrimental this taxonomic bias continues to be pervasive in the scientific literature but is still poorly studied and understood here we used 626 million occurrences from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the biggest biodiversity data portal to characterize the taxonomic bias in biodiversity data we also investigated how societal preferences and taxonomic research relate to biodiversity data gathering for each species belonging to 24 taxonomic classes we used the number of publications from web of science and the number of web pages from bing searches to approximate research activity and societal preferences our results show that societal preferences rather than research activity strongly correlate with taxonomic bias which lead us to assert that scientists should advertise less charismatic species and develop societal initiatives e g citizen science that specifically target neglected organisms ensuring that biodiversity is representatively sampled while this is still possible is an urgent prerequisite for achieving efficient conservation plans and a global understanding of our surrounding environment,2017,0.581
Effects of environmental factors and burial depth on seed germination and emergence of two populations of Caucalis platycarpos,caucalis platycarpos is a weed species in irrigated and dry land farming systems in east azerbaijan and kermanshah provinces of iran experiments were undertaken to compare c platycarpos seed germination and emergence of a population from each province over a range of environmental factors burial depth and crop residue treatments the azerbaijan population required lower temperatures 20 10â c day night temperature for its highest 90 germination compared with the kermanshah population 88 germination at 25 15â c day night temperature in both populations germination was 84â 90 over a wide range of light dark periods 10â 24 h light but considerable reduction up to 42 occurred under continuous darkness the osmotic potential required for 50 inhibition of germination was ∠0 54 and ∠0 40 mpa for azerbaijan and kermanshah populations respectively the nacl concentration of 8 83 and 5 71 ds m∠1 caused 50 inhibition of germination in azerbaijan and kermanshah populations respectively the x50 parameter the burial depth at which emergence is reduced by 50 for azerbaijan and kermanshah population was 2 18 and 2 86 cm respectively crop residues had more inhibitory effects on the azerbaijan than kermanshah population adaptive differentiation of c platycarpos populations has also resulted in smaller seeds of the azerbaijan compared with the kermanshah population and resulted in higher emergence for kermanshah population seedlings from greater soil depths these results suggest that differences in germination requirements drought and salinity tolerance of c platycarpos populations are correlated with environmental conditions of the habitats of the studied populations,2017,0.763
Unraveling Salt Tolerance Mechanisms in Halophytes: A Comparative Study on Four Mediterranean Limonium Species with Different Geographic Distribution Patterns,we have performed an extensive study on the responses to salt stress in four related limonium halophytes with different geographic distribution patterns during seed germination and early vegetative growth the aims of the work were twofold to establish the basis for the different chorology of these species and to identify relevant mechanisms of salt tolerance dependent on the control of ion transport and osmolyte accumulation seeds were germinated in vitro in the presence of increasing nacl concentrations and subjected to â œrecovery of germinationâ tests germination percentages and velocity were determined to establish the relative tolerance and competitiveness of the four limonium taxa salt treatments were also applied to young plants by 1 month irrigation with nacl up to 800 mm then growth parameters levels of monovalent and divalent ions in roots and leaves and leaf contents of photosynthetic pigments and common osmolytes were determined in control and stressed plants of the four species seed germination is the most salt sensitive developmental phase in limonium the different germination behavior of the investigated species appears to be responsible for their geographical range size l narbonense and l virgatum widespread throughout the mediterranean are the most tolerant and the most competitive at higher soil salinities the endemic l santapolense and l girardianum are the most sensitive and more competitive only at lower salinities during early vegetative growth all taxa showed a strong tolerance to salt stress although slightly higher in l virgatum and l santapolense salt tolerance is based on the efficient transport of na and cl∠to the leaves and on the accumulation of fructose and proline for osmotic adjustment despite some species specific quantitative differences the accumulation patterns of the different ions were similar in all species not explaining differences in tolerance except for the apparent activation of k transport to the leaves at high external salinity observed only in the most tolerant l narbonense and l virgatum this specific response may be therefore relevant for salt tolerance in limonium the ecological implications of these results which can contribute to a more efficient management of salt marshes conservation regeneration programs are also discussed,2017,0.501
Snakes of Africa - Exploitation and Conservation,the african snake fauna is incredibly diverse 571 species inhabit the african mainland with hotspots located in east west and south africa unfortunately snake populations worldwide are seeing declines and this includes several african species anthropogenic threats are the cause of these declines specifically habitat destruction climate change and over exploitation the iucn and cites are the two main entities founded to protect wildlife but the coverage in africa is disturbingly scarce one third of the snake species have been assessed by the iucn red list and even fewer are featured on the cites appendices furthermore the knowledge gaps of african snakes are substantial including basic information on distribution population dynamics reproduction and ecology this project aims at quantifying the ongoing exploitation of african snakes by focusing on 1 harvest for the international pet trade 2 trade in skins from african snakes 3 hunting of snakes for bushmeat the online trade in african snakes was investigated by monitoring online sales venues all snake species listed as wild caught or otherwise indicated to be originating from wild sources were recorded together with information on price and seller location a complete picture described many species of non cites listed snakes to be part of the international pet trade specifically venomous vipers and elapids made up the majority of species traded and endemic species showed regularly in the trade a total of 2269 snakes covering 42 species were recorded as primarily sold from north american german czech and dutch sellers skin from african snakes are exported from several african countries destined for the european and north american fashion market senegal and mali showed to be the largest exporters of primarily rock python python sebae skins on an international scale the trade in african snake skin is small in comparison to the trade in asian snake skins however illegal trade not incorporated into the cites database show concerning trends bushmeat trade in west africa is proving detrimental across many taxonomic groups however the pressure on snakes from bushmeat trade has never been quantified before here i provide the first study focusing on snakes in the bushmeat trade and quantifying a number of snakes sold for bushmeat in the capital of cameroon the majority of snakes sold in yaoundã were gaboon vipers bitis gabonica followed by the protected rock python python sebae snakes made up 9 3 of the total carcasses recorded during at the markets with gaboon vipers being the fourth most traded species it shows an alarming trend in wild snakes harvested to supply a growing urban population combined the analysis of these threats shows african snakes to be exploited extensively both internationally and nationally as anthropogenic threats are projected to increase monitoring and finding solutions to this exploitation must be made a priority,2017,0.996
Reconstruction of LGM faunal patterns using Species Distribution Modelling. The archaeological record of the Solutrean in Iberia,this paper focuses on analyzing the links between archaeological sites and their environments by calculating the catchment areas of solutrean sites in iberia and the habitat suitability for the different hunted species in each site this research uses geographic information systems gis for calculating the catchment areas and species distribution modelling sdm for reconstructing potential distributions of prey species the results of this modelling for the solutrean sites were then compared to a database on faunal remains the sdm results show differences between northern and southern iberia in the habitat suitability for some species there are also visible differences between the faunal record and in the subsistence strategies in both areas which can be linked to the climatic and topographic conditions inferred by means of site catchment analysis and the sdm,2017,0.52
Spatial Downscaling of Alien Species Presences Using Machine Learning,spatially explicit assessments of alien species environmental and socio economic impacts and subsequent management interventions for their mitigation require large scale high resolution data on species presence distribution however these data are often unavailable this paper presents a method that relies on random forest rf models to distribute alien species presence counts at a finer resolution grid thus achieving spatial downscaling a bootstrapping scheme is designed to account for sub setting uncertainty and subsets are used to train a sufficiently large number of rf models rf results are processed to estimate variable importance and model performance the method is tested with an 8 ã 8 km2 grid containing floral alien species presence and several potentially exploratory indices of climatic habitat land use and soil property covariates for the mediterranean island of crete greece alien species presence is aggregated at 16 ã 16 km2 and used as a predictor of presence at the original resolution thus simulating spatial downscaling uncertainty assessment of the spatial downscaling of alien species occurrences was also performed and true false presences and absences were quantified the approach is promising for downscaling alien species datasets of larger spatial scale but coarse resolution where the underlying environmental information is available at a finer resolution furthermore the rf architecture allows for tuning toward operationally optimal sensitivity and specificity thus providing a decision support tool for designing a resource efficient alien species census,2017,0.884
"First record of the invasive Brown Anole, Anolis sagrei Duméril &amp; Bibron, 1837 (Squamata: Iguanidae: Dactyloinae), in South America",we report the first record of the invasive brown anole anolis sagrei dumã ril amp bibron 1837 in south america based on nine specimens from samborondã n guayas province ecuador we also present some information related to the current distribution in ecuador and its possible impacts on native lizard species,2017,0.446
Bryozoan diversity around the Falkland and South Georgia Islands: Overcoming Antarctic barriers,there are a number of remote archipelagos distributed between 45 and 60 â s the biota of these islands provide useful information to describe and understand patterns in biodiversity and biogeography as well as potential impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems they are in key locations either side of the polar front but also have limited influence from human activities here we investigate one taxon bryozoans on south atlantic shelf habitats of the falkland fi and the sub antarctic island of south georgia sg we present new data on spatial distribution in these islands as well as an analysis of the bryozoological similarities between these and neighbouring regions a total of 85 species of cheilostome bryozoans 351 samples were found belonging to 33 genera including 18 potentially new genera and 23 new species remarkably 65 and 41 of species were reported for the first time at fi and sg respectively the highest and the lowest value of species richness and species genus ratio were found at east efi and west falkland wfi respectively likely showing a tendency for stronger intrageneric competition new data from this study were jointly analysed with data from the literature and existing databases revealing new bathymetric ranges in 32 species the biogeographic affinities of the bryozoans found give further evidence of the hypothesis of sequential separation of gondwana and support the changing concept that although the polar front acts as a circumpolar biogeographic barrier it is not as impermeable as originally thought potential dispersal mechanisms are also discussed,2017,0.822
"The Central American tree snake, Imantodes gemmistratus (Cope, 1861) (Squamata: Dipsadinae): a new record for Zacatecas, Mexico",we document the first record of imantodes gemmi stratus for zacatecas state mexico in august 2016 one adult male was found in a dry forest and oak forest ecotone in the municipality of valparaiso this new record extends known distribution of the species 166 km to the northeast from the nearest previous record in nayarit state,2017,0.589
Phylogeography of a widespread sub-Saharan murid rodent Aethomys chrysophilus: the role of geographic barriers and paleoclimate in the Zambezian bioregion,murid rodents of the genus,2017,0.354
Climate change influences on the potential geographic distribution of the disease vector tick Ixodes ricinus,background ixodes ricinus is a species of hard tick that transmits several important diseases in europe and north africa including lyme borreliosis and tick borne encephalitis climate change is affecting the geographic distributions and abundances of arthropod vectors which in turn influence the geographic distribution and epidemiology of associated vector borne diseases to date few studies have investigated effects of climate change on the spatial distribution of i ricinus at continental extents here we assessed the potential distribution of i ricinus under current and future climate conditions to understand how climate change will influence the geographic distribution of this important tick vector in coming decades method we used ecological niche modeling to estimate the geographic distribution of i ricinus with respect to current climate and then assessed its future potential distribution under different climate change scenarios this approach integrates occurrence records of i ricinus with six relevant environmental variables over a continental extent that includes europe north africa and the middle east future projections were based on climate data from 17 general circulation models gcms under 2 representative concentration pathway emissions scenarios rcps for the years 2050 and 2070 result the present and future potential distributions of i ricinus showed broad overlap across most of western and central europe and in more narrow zones in eastern and northern europe and north africa potential expansions were observed in northern and eastern europe these results indicate that i ricinus populations could emerge in areas in which they are currently lacking posing increased risks to human health in those areas however the future of i ricinus ticks in some important regions such the mediterranean was unclear owing to high uncertainty in model predictions,2017,0.122
Miocene 'fin-winged' fruits and Pliocene drift fruits - the first record of Combretaceae (Terminalia) from New Zealand,two types of fossil terminalia combretaceae fruits are described from warmer periods in new zealand s past one is represented by large â fin wingedâ fruit samara from the early miocene manuherikia group sediments of bannockburn and the nevis valley the form and size of the fruits are entirely unknown in new zealand today but strongly resemble those of the genus terminalia with which they are identified the second are numerous fruits from the late pliocene drift deposit of weymouth manukau harbour these are identified with the common drift fruit terminalia catappa the â sea almondâ the presence of terminalia in the miocene and pliocene of new zealand is consistent with warmer conditions at those times the later extinction of the genus meant the loss of the combretaceae from new zealand which is not in the current flora based on the current climatic range of other terminalia around the world and most combretaceae the extinction and continuing absence are probably linked to cold climate conditions,2017,0.293
CrowdCurio: an online crowdsourcing platform to facilitate climate change studies using herbarium specimens,phenology is a key aspect of plant success recent research has demonstrated that herbarium specimens can provide important information on plant phenology massive digitization efforts have the potential to greatly expand herbarium based phenological research but also pose a serious challenge regarding efficient data collection here we introduce crowdcurio a crowdsourcing tool for the collection of phenological data from herbarium specimens we test its utility by having workers collect phenological data number of flower buds open flowers and fruits from specimens of two common new england usa species chelidonium majus and vaccinium angustifolium we assess the reliability of using nonexpert workers i e amazon mechanical turk against expert workers we also use these data to estimate the phenological sensitivity to temperature for both species across multiple phenophases we found no difference in the data quality of nonexperts and experts nonexperts however were a more efficient way of collecting more data at lower cost we also found that phenological sensitivity varied across both species and phenophases our study demonstrates the utility of crowdcurio as a crowdsourcing tool for the collection of phenological data from herbarium specimens furthermore our results highlight the insight gained from collecting large amounts of phenological data to estimate multiple phenophases,2017,0.656
Species selection under long-term experimental warming and drought explained by climatic distributions,global warming and reduced precipitation may trigger large scale species losses and vegetation shifts in ecosystems around the world however currently lacking are practical ways to quantify the sensitivity of species and community composition to these often confounded climatic forces here we conducted long term 16 yr nocturnal warming 0 6â c and reduced precipitation ∠20 soil moisture experiments in a mediterranean shrubland climatic niche groups cngs â species ranked or classified by similar temperature or precipitation distributions â informatively described community responses under experimental manipulations under warming cngs revealed that only those species distributed in cooler regions decreased correspondingly under reduced precipitation a u shaped treatment effect observed in the total community was the result of an abrupt decrease in wet distributed species followed by a delayed increase in dry distributed species notably while partially correlated cng explanations of community response were stronger for their respective climate parameter suggesting some species possess specific adaptations to either warming or drought that may lead to independent selection to the two climatic variables our findings indicate that when climatic distributions are combined with experiments the resulting incorporation of local plant evolutionary strategies and their changing dynamics over time leads to predictable and informative shifts in community structure under independent climate change scenarios,2017,0.856
"Multiresponse algorithms for community-level modelling: Review of theory, applications, and comparison to species distribution models",communityâ level models clms consider multiple coâ occurring species in model fitting and are lesser known alternatives to species distribution models sdms for analysing and predicting biodiversity patterns communityâ level models simultaneously model multiple species including rare species while reducing overfitting and implicitly considering drivers of coâ occurrence many clms are direct extensions of wellâ known sdms and therefore should be familiar to ecologists however clms remain underutilized and there have been few tests of their potential benefits and no systematic reviews of their assumptions and implementations here we review this emerging field and provide examples in r to fit common clms our goal is to introduce clms to a broader audience and discuss their attributes benefits and limitations relative to sdms we review 1 statistical implementations and applications of clms 2 their advantages and limitations and 3 comparative analyses of clms and sdms we also suggest directions for future research we identify seven clm algorithms with similar data structures and predictive outputs as sdms that should be most accessible to ecologists familiar with speciesâ level modelling including five methods that predict assemblage composition and individual species distributions and two methods that model compositional turnover along environmental gradients communityâ level models have been applied to numerous taxa regions and spatial scales and a variety of topics e g studying drivers of community structure or assessing relationships between community composition and functional traits studies suggest that the relative benefits of clms and sdms may be case specific especially in terms of predicting species distributions and community composition however clms may offer advantages in terms of computational efficiency modelling rare species and projecting to noâ analog climates a major shortcoming of clms is their reliance on presenceâ absence community composition data studies are needed to assess the relative merits of sdms and clms and different clm algorithms with a focus on three key areas 1 under which circumstances clms improve predictions for rare species 2 how clms perform under different community compositions e g relative abundance of rare vs common species including the extent to which coâ occurrence patterns are structured by biotic interactions and 3 ability to project across time space,2017,0.279
Population dynamics affect the capacity of species distribution models to predict species abundance on a local scale,aim species distribution models based on occurrence data sdm are used to derive broad scale estimates of relative abundance but a triangular relationship between predicted suitability for species occurrence and abundance is commonly observedâ that is a low suitability would correspond to low abundances whereas a high suitability would correspond to either low or high abundances to properly understand the factors behind this triangular relationship we assessed 1 the capacity of sdm to explain variations in population abundance and 2 the effect of population growth in the dynamics on the triangular relationship by comparing its variation in two sampling periods in the case of a species that is increasing in numbers location mainland spain methods data on roe deer capreolus capreolus relative abundance were obtained for 441 localities of which 145 were surveyed twice 2006â 2007 and 2011â 2013 species distribution was modelled using the favourability function the relationship between favourability values for species occurrence and abundances were explored using quantile regressions results the number of roe deer is increasing on a regional scale the results from the earlier survey showed a weaker relationship than those obtained from the survey carried out later growth rates were significantly related to the residuals of the quantile regression fitted to the earlier survey the higher the residual difference between observed and expected abundances the higher the population growth rates main conclusions our results support the use of the residuals of the quantile regression as a proxy of the population growth rate they also partly support the interpretation of the upper limit of abundance delimited by the regression as the environmental carrying capacity overall the results are of general interest when using sdm to predict the population abundance of expanding species such as alien species and or in changing environments,2017,0.591
Time series data of a broadleaved secondary forest in Japan as affected by deer and mass mortality of oak trees,background abandonment of broadleaved secondary forests that have been used for various purposes may cause the loss of biodiversity some of these forests suffer from diseases such as japanese oak wilt an increasing number of deer also impact some of them monitoring and recording the status of such forests is important for their proper management new information this data set provides a concrete example of temporal changes in a temperate broadleaved secondary forest the forest has been damaged by mass mortality of oak trees caused by japanese oak wilt disease in addition the forest has been under foraging pressure by sika deer cervus nippon temminck the data set can provide information on how such a forest has changed in species composition of the canopy and sub canopy layers and in species occurrence in the understory layer,2017,0.483
Historical biogeography and the evolution of environmental niche and fruit type in Datureae (Solanaceae),understanding the distribution of species is a major goal in ecology and evolutionary biology investigations of species distribution patterns trace as far back as the works of buffon 20 in 1749 von humboldt 228 in 1805 and de candolle 40 in 1820 for example buffon 20 and von humboldt 228 considered how climate and geographical distance influence species assembly and de candolle 40 factored in geological history and age to explain the distribution of different species darwin 36 and wallace 230 built on these ideas acknowledging the importance of centers of origin and dispersal including long distance and recognizing that geographical distance was related to chronology i e that species found close together likely share a more recent common ancestor in the first half of the 20th century new biogeographic theories emerged including continental drift wegener 231 mechanisms of allopatric speciation mayr 137 multidimensional niche concept hutchinson 94 and island biogeography macarthur and wilson 241 theoretical and applied work in biogeography demonstrate that the distribution and ecological niche of a given clade are the product of the interplay of factors such as climate geology and time e g lemmon 113 antonelli 2 niemiller 153,2017,0.777
"The invasive potential of tilapias (Osteichthyes, Cichlidae) in the Americas",the invasion of tilapia can result in substantial impacts on native communities thus understanding the spatial dynamics of invasions may help prevent future introductions and mitigate impacts this study estimated the environmentally suitable areas for occurrence of eight tilapia species genera coptodon oreochromis pelmatolapia and sarotherodon in the americas and their invasive potential using ecological niche models enms the united states is the most invaded country receiving all tilapia species in south america the southeast and south regions of brazil are highlighted as the areas where two species are concentrated the enms predicted that all tilapia species have high invasive potential in the americas and despite having more tilapias in north america south and central americas are more susceptible to tilapia invasion all south american basins were predicted to harbor tilapia species that have not yet arrived on the subcontinent our study evidences the need to implement management measures and governmental policies in the americas to deal with problems caused by tilapia introductions in north america the focus is on the control of tilapia populations and in central and south america priority should be given to contention of introduction processes,2017,0.898
"IRBAS: An online database to collate, analyze, and synthesize data on the biodiversity and ecology of intermittent rivers worldwide",key questions dominating contemporary ecological research and management concern interactions between biodiversity ecosystem processes and ecosystem services provision in the face of global change this is particularly salient for freshwater biodiversity and in the context of river drying and flow regime change rivers that stop flowing and dry herein intermittent rivers are globally prevalent and dynamic ecosystems on which the body of research is expanding rapidly consistent with the era of big data however the data encapsulated by this work remain largely fragmented limiting our ability to answer the key questions beyond a case by case basis to this end the intermittent river biodiversity analysis and synthesis irbas http irbas cesab org project has collated analyzed and synthesized data from across the world on the biodiversity and environmental characteristics of intermittent rivers the irbas database integrates and provides free access to these data contributing to the growing and global knowledge base on these ubiquitous and important river systems for both theoretical and applied advancement the irbas database currently houses over 2000 data samples collected from six countries across three continents primarily describing aquatic invertebrate taxa inhabiting intermittent rivers during flowing hydrological phases as such there is room to expand the biogeographic and taxonomic coverage for example through addition of data collected during nonflowing and dry hydrological phases we encourage contributions and provide guidance on how to contribute and access data ultimately the irbas database serves as a portal storage standardization and discovery tool enabling collation synthesis and analysis of data to elucidate patterns in river biodiversity and guide management contribution creates high visibility for datasets facilitating collaboration the irbas database will grow in content as the study of intermittent rivers continues and data retrieval will allow for networking meta analyses and testing of generalizations across multiple systems regions and taxa,2017,0.102
TSUNAGARI: a new interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study toward conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services,the expanding economical activities have accelerated losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services which are especially pronounced in asia to find solutions to stop these losses a group of scientists studying both ecological and social sciences has launched an interdisciplinary research network entitled tsunagari trans system unified approach for global and regional integration of social ecological study toward sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services the project is based on two main perspectives 1 integrating different disciplines of environmental research across multiple spatial scales and 2 evaluating the importance of ecosystem connectivity between land and ocean for biodiversity and ecosystem services the integrative studies have been started as follows 1 integrating global scale analyses of biodiversity and economy by developing gis based footprint analysis 2 establishing the link between the studies of local good practices of ecosystem management and life cycle assessment on ecosystem good and services 3 linking local scale ecosystem studies to decision making processes for sustainable society by multiple stakeholders and 4 upscaling local analyses of ecosystem processes to broad scale analyses of ecosystem patterns the proposed approaches are considered effective to solve problems that impede conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of multiple ecosystem services in various situations although we also find some gaps such as regional biases in biodiversity data and involvement of different types of stakeholders by overcoming the major bottlenecks we believe the new integrated approaches will promote conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem services research and contribute to advance decision making processes from local communities to international levels,2017,0.057
Curation of Physical Objects in Botany: Architecture and Development of a Linked Open Data-Based Application,cultural heritage institutions store and manage large volumes of historical information that have great material and humanitarian value their means of data organization often obsolete hinders the dissemination and reuse of information to be made in an effective way in this sense an application of linked open data lod technology is the possibility to extend the knowledge of a collection with the use of open data already consolidated on the web to describe artworks or any type of physical object this paper introduces a generic architecture based on an extract transform load etl methodology that connects lod data from cultural heritage available on the web generates descriptive content for physical objects and provides the mapping of research institutes engaged in studying them highlighting their collaboration network for instance an implementation of the architecture was dedicated to the domain of botany and can assist herbarium managers in creating exhibitions about medicinal plants in this paper we present a software architecture that provides an automatic method for creating dynamic pages from data stored in interconnected databases and an application which supports visitation systems with visualization and interaction mechanisms to encourage visitor learning,2017,0.023
"A revision of the Afrotropical genus Prytanomyia Özdikmen, 2006 (Asilidae, Laphriinae)",the monotypic afrotropical genus prytanomyia ã zdikmen 2006 is revised laphystia kochi lindner 1973 is found to belong to prytanomyia and is identical to prytanomyia albida oldroyd 1974 type of the genus as a consequence l kochi is newly combined with prytanomyia and p albida is placed in the synonymy of p kochi the species inhabits arid environments is restricted to the namib desert from southern angola to southern namibia and is found on vegetated sand mounds and dunes and in dry riverbeds the highly reduced pulvilli characteristic of this species are believed to be an adaptation to living and perching on sandy surfaces,2017,0.667
The ‘golden kelp’ Laminaria ochroleuca under global change: integrating multiple eco-physiological responses with species distribution models,1 the loss of marine foundation species in particular kelps at temperate latitudes has been linked to climatic drivers and co occurring human perturbations ocean temperature and nutrients typically co vary over local and regional scales and play a crucial role on kelp dynamics examining their independent and interactive effects on kelp physiological performance is essential to understand and predict patterns of kelp distribution particularly under scenarios of global change 2 crossed combinations of ocean temperatures and availability of nutrients were experimentally tested on juveniles of the â golden kelpâ laminaria ochroleuca from the northwestern iberian peninsula eco physiological responses included survival growth and total n content results were embedded into a species distribution model sdm which relates presence records and climatic and non climatic data to forecast distribution patterns of l ochroleuca under different climate change scenarios 3 temperatures above 24 6 â c were lethal irrespective of nutrients optimal growth of juvenile sporophytes occurred between 12 â c and 18 â c and no nutrient limitation the sdm where ocean temperature was the main predictor of kelp distribution in line with temperature thresholds given by eco physiological responses suggests a future expansion towards northern latitudes and a retreat from the southern limit boundary of the current distribution 4 synthesis range shifting of the golden kelp can have severe ecological impacts at regional and local scales the expansion or retraction of the species along the european coast seems to be modulated mainly by temperature but nutrient availability would be key to maintain optimal physiological performance our work highlights that the combination of empirical and modelling approaches is accessible to researchers and crucial to building more robust predictions of ecological and biogeographic responses of habitat forming species to forecasted environmental change,2017,0.52
The Impacts of Geography and Climate Change on Magdalenian Social Networks,this dissertation uses a comparative approach to investigate long term human environment interrelationships in times of climate change it uses geographical information systems and ecological models to reconstruct the magdalenian 20 000â 14 000 calibrated years ago environments of the coastal mountainous zone of cantabria northwest spain and the interior valleys of the dordogne southwest france to contextualize the social networks that could have formed during a time of high climate and resource variability it simulates the formation of such networks in an agent based model which documents the processes underlying the formation of archaeological assemblages and evaluates the potential impacts of climate topography interactions on cultural transmission this research then reconstructs the magdalenian social networks visible through a multivariate statistical analysis of stylistic similarities among portable art objects as these networks cannot be analyzed directly to infer social behavior their characteristics are compared to the results of the agent based model which provide characteristics estimates of the magdalenian latent social networks that most likely produced the empirical archaeological assemblage studied this research contributes several new results most of which point to the advantages of using an inter disciplinary approach to the study of the archaeological record it demonstrates the benefits of using an agent based model to parse social data from long term palimpsests it shows that geographical and environmental contexts affect the structure of social networks which in turn affects the transmission of ideas and goods that flow through it this shows the presence of human environment interactions that not only affected our ancestorsâ reaction to resource insecurities but also led them to innovate and improve the productivity of their own environment however it also suggests that such alterations may have reduced the populationsâ resilience to strong climatic changes and that the region with diverse resources provided a more stable and resilient environment than the region transformed to satisfy the immediate needs of its population,2017,0.05
A free-access online key to identify Amazonian ferns,there is urgent need for more data on species distributions in order to improve conservation planning a crucial but challenging aspect of producing high quality data is the correct identification of organisms traditional printed floras and dichotomous keys are difficult to use for someone not familiar with the technical jargon in poorly known areas such as amazonia they also become quickly outdated as new species are described or ranges extended recently online tools have allowed developing dynamic interactive and accessible keys that make species identification possible for a broader public in order to facilitate identifying plants collected in field inventories we developed an internet based free access tool to identify amazonian fern species we focused on ferns because they are easy to collect and their edaphic affinities are relatively well known so they can be used as an indicator group for habitat mapping our key includes 302 terrestrial and aquatic entities mainly from lowland amazonian forests it is a free access key so the user can freely choose which morphological features to use and in which order to assess them all taxa are richly illustrated so specimens can be identified by a combination of character choices visual comparison and written descriptions the identification tool was developed in lucid 3 5 software and it is available at http keyserver lucidcentral org 8080 sandbox keys jsp,2017,0.645
"Taxonomy and systematics of three species of the genus Eumerus Meigen, 1822 (Diptera: Syrphidae) new to southeastern Europe",the genus eumerus meigen diptera syrphidae is considered one of the most species rich hoverfly genera here we present two new species e montanum grkoviä radenkoviä et vujiä sp nov montenegro greece and e rubrum grkoviä et vujiä sp nov greece and one species e uncipes rondani 1850 recorded for the first time in southeastern europe the species are members of three different taxon groups respectively e strigatus sensu speight et al 2013 e tricolor sensu chroni et al 2017 and e clavatus as defined here diagnostic characters for each of the three taxon groups and descriptions of the two new species are provided in addition we employed morphological and molecular data for available taxa of the e strigatus taxon group in order to corroborate their taxonomical status and systematic position finally we discuss the diversity of these taxon groups e clavatus e strigatus and e tricolor and give a detailed overview of the differences between closely related species,2017,0.941
"Inventory of medium-sized and large mammals in the wetlands of Laguna de Terminos and Pantanos de Centla, Mexico",wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world however they have received little attention in the tropics biodiversity data from the terminos centla wetlands is limited despite the conservation efforts to protect these wetlands in this study we list the medium szied and large mammals from 8 sites within the terminos centla wetlands we recorded 30 native and 1 introduced species representing 9 orders 14 families and 27 genera four of the recorded species are threatened 9 endangered and 1 under special protection under mexican legislation compared with other sites of southeastern mexico the area of the terminos centla wetlands has a many more species our results highlight the terminos centla wetlands as one of the most important systems of mesoamerica for the medium sized and large mammals and and underlines the urgent need to develop conservation strategies for the area,2017,0.573
A novel approach to time-slicing areas within biogeographic-area classifications: Wallacea as an example,time slicing of areas is a novel biogeographic method that helps resolve conflicting area relationships and assess temporal overlap as an explanation for the conflict the method differs from others currently popular in biogeography in that it does not date nodes before analysis e g divergence dating to infer area relationships and classification here time slicing is used as a proof of concept approach to interpret the inter relationships of neogene and palaeogene biotic areas of wallacea a well studied area of biogeographic overlap between south east asia and australasia we used 18 palaeogene and 25 neogene areas within wallacea represented in 28 areagrams from 25 published phylogenetic hypotheses areas were delimited using palaeogeographical reconstructions and biotic distribution data paralogy free subtree and transparent methods of analysis were used to find a general area cladogram ga which was then compared with palaeogeographical reconstructions palaeogene areas formed clades different from those of neogene areas area relationships correlated strongly with palaeogeographical reconstructions of the neogene and the palaeogene the new approach demonstrated that palaeogene and neogene areas have distinct biogeographic histories wallacea is a temporal as well as a geographic composite that lies between two inferred barriers of distribution namely the palaeogene wallaceâ s line and the neogene weberâ s line,2017,0.184
Historical and ecological biogeography of the genus Crotalus in Mexico,the genus crotalus is well represented in all biogeographic provinces including most major vegetation communities and climatic zones described for mexico for this reason we use the assumptions of panbiogeography with the objective to establish a biogeographic framework for the 26 species of rattlesnakes native to mexico on the basis of 1472 records 26 individual tracks derived from the distribution of each species resulted in two generalised tracks the first is located in the peninsula of baja california in the biogeographic provinces of california and baja california and is identified by three species c enyo c mitchellii and c ruber the second generalised track is located on the eastern portion of the transmexican volcanic belt the balsas basin and sierra madre del sur supported by c ravus and c intermedius an analysis of partition of variance found that vegetation explains the most variation in the distribution of species very similar results were obtained by analysis of ancestral reconstruction for biogeographic provinces vegetation types and elevation our results are consistent with different climatic events during the pleistocene and tectonic events such as the lifting of the sierra madre occidental and sierra madre oriental in addition our results showed similarities with historical distributions of birds mammals and beetles further studies of the distribution and phylogeography of other groups of reptiles with significant information gaps in their historical and current distribution are needed to shed further light on the biogeography and diversity of reptiles of mexico,2017,0.84
"Integrating biodiversity, ecosystem services and socio-economic data to identify priority areas and landowners for conservation actions at the national scale",gaps in research exist for country wide analyses to identify areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services to help reach aichi target 11 in developing countries here we provide a spatial conservation prioritization approach that ranks landowners for maximizing the representation of biodiversity features and ecosystem services while exploring the trade offs with agricultural and commercial forestry production and land cost using uruguay as a case study specifically we explored four policy scenarios ranging from a business as usual scenario where only biodiversity and ecosystem services were included in the analysis to a potentially unsustainable scenario where expansion of alternative land uses and economic development would be given higher priority over biodiversity and ecosystem services at the 17 land target proposed for conservation the representation levels for biodiversity and ecosystem services were on average higher under the business as usual scenario however a small addition to the proposed target from 17 to 20 allowed to meet same representation levels for biodiversity and ecosystem services while decreasing conflict with agricultural and commercial forestry production and opportunity costs to local landowners under the unsustainable scenario a striking 41 addition to the conservation target from 17 to 58 was needed to meet same representation levels for threatened ecosystems and ecosystem services which are crucial to sustain human well being our results highlight that more realistic and potentially higher conservation targets than politically set targets can be achieved at the country level when sustainable development needs are also accounted for,2017,0.24
"One Hundred New Provincial, National, and Continental Lichen and Allied Fungi Records from Parc National de la Gaspésie, Québec, Canada",we report 100 lichen and allied fungi species for the first time from quã bec canada six of these species are new to north america arthonia subastroidea biatora mendax cornutispora pyramidalis gyalecta hypoleuca taeniolella pertusariicola and varicellaria lactea six additional species are new to canada cecidonia xenophana lecidea commaculans l herteliana polycoccum sporastatiae scoliciosporum intrusum and stereocaulon leucophaeopsis all collections are from parc national de la gaspã sie on the gaspã peninsula in eastern quã bec our collections were made between 2012 and 2017 primarily during crum and tuckerman workshops we provide diagnostic descriptions of all species that are new continental or national records our results demonstrate the park s rich and unexplored biodiversity and conservation importance and contribute to a better understanding of the lichen and allied fungus biota of canada and north america,2017,0.751
Modern occurrence of and size data for Quadrula aurea (Mollusca: Unionidae) from the Medina River of Texas,abstractâ during a 2014 aquatic species survey in the medina river of the san antonio river basin of texas we located a reproducing population of the state listed threatened golden orb quadrula aurea in total 124 live q aurea were recovered from a 200 m stretch of the river and the length height and width of all specimens q aurea were recorded lengths ranged from 10â 40 mm with a mean length of 27 mm our findings represent the first modern since 1970 record of a reproducing population of q aurea within the medina river and indicate that this species could potentially be present in smaller tributaries and rivers throughout its range and may be more widely distributed than previously thought this information is significant as this species is currently under review for future federal protections by the united states fish and wildlife service,2017,0.715
An early suitability assessment of two exotic Ophraella species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) for biological control of invasive ragweed in Europe,classical biological control is an important means of managing the increasing threat of invasive plants it constitutes the introduction of natural enemies from the native range of the target plant into the invaded area this method may be the only cost effective solution to control the rapidly expanding common ragweed ambrosia artemisiifolia in non crop habitats in europe therefore candidate biocontrol agents urgently need to be assessed for their suitability for ragweed control in europe a previous literature review prioritized the host specific leaf beetle ophraella slobodkini as a candidate agent for ragweed control in europe whereas it rejected its oligophagous congener o communa meanwhile o communa was accidentally introduced and became established south of the european alps and we show here that it is expanding its european range we then present a short version of the traditional pre release risk benefit assessment for these two candidate agents to facilitate fast decision making about further research efforts we selected two complementary tests that can be conducted relatively rapidly and inform about essential risks and benefits we conducted a comparative no choice juvenile performance assay using leaves of ragweed and sunflower the most important non target plant in petri dishes in climatic conditions similar to that in the current european range of o communa this informs on the fundamental host range and potential for increasing abundance on these host plants the results confirm that o slobodkini does not survive on and is hence unlikely to cause severe damage to sunflower while o communa can survive but develops more slowly on sunflower than on ragweed in parallel our species distribution models predict no suitable area for the establishment of o slobodkini in europe while o communa is likely to expand its current range to include a maximum of 18 of the european ragweed distribution based on this early assessment the prioritization and further assessment of o slobodkini seem unwarranted whereas the results urgently advocate further risk benefit analysis of o communa having revealed that most of the european area colonized by ragweed is unlikely to be suitable for these species of ophraella we suggest the use of such relatively short and cheap preliminary assessment to prioritise other candidate agents or strains for these areas,2017,0.087
LEFT - a web-based tool for the remote measurement and estimation of ecological value across global landscapes,1 the overall aim in the development of the local ecological footprinting tool left was to design a web based tool that could provide quickly obtained quantitative data to assist landowners when making land use change decisions and to help them minimise the environmental impact and determine areas of greatest ecological risk in their operations 2 left works for almost any region in the world and uses freely available satellite imagery biotic and abiotic data from existing global databases models and algorithms to deliver a customised report for a selected area within one hour of job submission 3 biotic data automatically obtained for a selected landscape includes terrestrial vertebrate and plant species occurrence data information on their conservation status and remotely sensed vegetation productivity abiotic information obtained includes temperature precipitation water availability insolation topography elevation distribution of urban infrastructure and location of wetlands 4 the tool performs a number of analyses on the biotic and abiotic data to produce maps for the selected area at a 30m resolution depicting land cover type numbers of globally threatened terrestrial vertebrate and plant species beta diversity of terrestrial vertebrates and plants habitat intactness wetland habitat connectivity numbers of migratory species and vegetation resilience results are also aggregated to produce a summary map demonstrating areas of high and low ecological value across the selected area 5 left has been designed to be intuitive to use requiring no specialised software or user expertise input is extremely easy and requires the user to highlight the area of interest on a map or using grid co ordinates output is delivered via the web application and comprises a customised pdf containing the maps and a zip file of gis data for the area requested users may run an unlimited number of left analyses and download reports free of charge in addition to the free tool described in this paper there is also a paid service individual left analyses can be upgraded for a charge to allow access to the geographically subsetted datasets generated for each report this data is supplied as a zip file containing raster datasets for the layers in the left analysis in geotiff format these can be opened and queried in a geographical information system gis software package,2017,0.13
"First record of the Fitzinger’s False Coral Snake, Oxyrhopus fitzingeri (Tschudi, 1845) (Reptilia: Dipsadidae) in Atiquipa, southwestern Peru",oxyrophus fitzingeri is distributed in ecuador and peru in this study we present an extension of the geographical distribution for peru the first record of the species in the department of arequipa this new report was made in the lomas de atiquipa private conservation area,2017,0.429
World checklist of flea-beetles of the genus Epitrix (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Galerucinae: Alticini),the world checklist of the genus epitrix coleoptera chrysomelidae galerucinae alticini is necessary since many species of this genus are serious pests of potato and other solanaceae and since some species have been inadvertedly introduced from one continent to another and established we have compiled the catalogue of all species described to date there are 162 species and 11 subspecies in the world the geographic distribution is indicated for each species,2017,0.849
"Revisiting the lectotype of Lycaena melissa (Lycaenidae), with additional remarks",scott et al 2016 attempted to designate a replacement lectotype for the nominal taxon lycaena melissa w h edwards 1873 which they named using its current combination plebejus melissa not only does their article contain inaccurate and misleading information i respectfully disagree with their historical and technical analysis this topic has probably received more attention than it deserves but i would like to offer some much needed clarification warning to readers this is a lengthy and tedious discussion it may cause intense drowsiness,2017,0.234
"Ceradenia spectabilis (Polypodiaceae), a New Species from Cerro del Torrá, Colombia",ceradenia spectabilis a new species is described from cerro del torrã an isolated peak in western colombia well known for harboring rare and narrowly distributed species of plants the new species is readily distinguished from its congeners by its broadly alate petiole and rachis creeping rhizome with widely spaced leaves and large oblanceolate leaves with elongate and ascending pinnae three other species c curvata c discolor and c pearcei share characteristics in common with c spectabilis including thick sub spongiose laminae that are sparsely setose or setae absent provided throughout with whitish waxy glands alate petioles and rachises setose rhizome scales that are also provided with a few whitish waxy glands and sub marginal sori however ceradenia spectabilis can be distinguished from each of them by its longer petioles 4â 6 cm long vs 2 cm or less broader petiole wings 2 5â 3 5 mm wide vs 0 5 cm or less and longer pinnae up to 10 cm long vs 4 cm long or less ceradenia spectabilis is known only from the type despite extensive investigations in herbaria housing large collections of colombian ferns this new species brings the total number of ceradenia species in colombia to 25 and ca 74 world wide,2017,0.886
On the Reuse of Scientific Data,while science policy promotes data sharing and open data these are not ends in themselves arguments for data sharing are to reproduce research to make public assets available to the public to leverage investments in research and to advance research and innovation to achieve these expected benefits of data sharing data must actually be reused by others data sharing practices especially motivations and incentives have received far more study than has data reuse perhaps because of the array of contested concepts on which reuse rests and the disparate contexts in which it occurs here we explicate concepts of data sharing and open data as a means to examine data reuse we explore distinctions between use and reuse of data lastly we propose six research questions on data reuse worthy of pursuit by the community how can uses of data be distinguished from reuses when is reproducibility an essential goal when is data integration an essential goal what are the tradeoffs between collecting new data and reusing existing data how do motivations for data collection influence the ability to reuse data how do standards and formats for data release influence reuse opportunities we conclude by summarizing the implications of these questions for science policy and for investments in data reuse,2017,0.172
SPEDInstabR: An algorithm based on a fluctuation index for selecting predictors in species distribution modeling,here we present spedinstabr available as an r package on cran and as an rwizard application on http www ipez es rwizard which provides tools for the identification of the environmental factors that better discriminate between the conditions prevailing in the area of a species and those existing in the geographical background over which the study is carried out this could include the world countries regions river basins etc or the extent of occurrence of the species estimated by using convex hull î shape or kernel density distributions the procedure consists of dividing each factor into a number of intervals or bins decided by the user calculating the number of records in each bin separately considering the cells where the species occur and those of the selected geographical background a peak of instability is observed when there are important differences in the factor comparing the bins of presence with the corresponding ones of extent we consider that those factors with a higher percentage contribution to the instability index better discriminate between the cells of presence and the extent we tested the algorithm using virtual species comparing the generated selections with those produced by maxent,2017,0.684
Nature protection areas of Europe are insufficient to preserve the threatened beetle Rosalia alpina (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae): evidence from species distribution models and conservation gap analysis,1 natura 2000 network n2000 and national protected areas npas are recognised as the most important core â unitsâ for biological conservation in europe 2 species distribution models sdms were developed to detect the potential distribution of the rare and threatened cerambycid beetle rosalia alpina l in europe and the amount of suitable habitat within the n2000 network special areas of conservation sacs and special protection areas spas npas e g national parks regional parks state reserves natural monuments and protected landscapes and the overall european protected area network epan n2000 npas was quantified 3 according to this analysis the suitable habitat for r alpina in europe amounts to c 754 171 km2 and stretches across substantially uninterrupted areas from portugal to romania west to east and from greece to germany south to north the overlay between the existing system of conservation areas in europe n2000 and npas and the binary map for r alpina showed that only c 42 of potential habitat is protected sacs and spas protect c 25 and 21 of potential habitat respectively however because the two site types often spatially overlap when taken together the entire n2000 network protects c 31 of potential habitat instead npas offer a degree of protection of c 29 overall almost 60 of the area potentially suitable for the species is unprotected by the epan an aspect that should be considered carefully when planning the conservation of this beetle at a large scale 4 these results may also help to focus field surveys in selected areas where greater chances of success are encountered to save resources and increase survey effectiveness,2017,0.487
Ecological niche modelling of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) supports the ‘expansion–contraction’ model of Pleistocene biogeography,during the pleistocene glacial periods the ranges of many temperate species in europe contracted southwards to refugia near the mediterranean basin this study tested the â expansionâ contractionâ model by applying the ecological niche modelling approach to one widespread temperate tree species pedunculate oak quercus robur l distributed across europe and anatolia we projected the distribution of q robur under climatic conditions of the present the mid holocene hol c 6000 years before present ybp the last glacial maximum lgm c 22000 ybp and the last interglacial lig c 130000 ybp quercus robur was at equilibrium with the climate as the model prediction was highly compatible with the its known distribution range under present bioclimatic conditions the lig and the hol predictions gave a much broader distribution range than that during the lgm suggesting its range contracted towards favourable areas in southern europe and anatolia the results indicate that the glacial refugia hypothesis based mainly on the â expansionâ contractionâ model applies to q robur although possible extra mediterranean refugia in northern western and southern france are also identified this study therefore supports claims that european biogeography is significantly more complex than previously thought,2017,0.258
"First Record of the Collared Sprite, Thainycteris aureocollaris (Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) from China",thainycteris aureocollaris is a rare vespertilionid bat species reported from remote forest habitats of lao pdr vietnam and thailand in 15 september 2015 one vespertilionid bat with a well defined ochraceous collar running from the base of ears across the throat was collected at shuijia village guizhou province china based on its morphological characteristics and phylogenetic inference using partial cytochrome c oxidase subunit i gene it was identified as t aureocollaris representing the first record of the species in china this northernmost occurrence largely extends the species potential distribution area and through maxent modeling its potentially suitable habitats are mapped herewith,2017,0.763
Climate change versus deforestation: Implications for tree species distribution in the dry forests of southern Ecuador,seasonally dry forests in the neotropics are heavily threatened by a combination of human disturbances and climate change however the severity of these threats is seldom contrasted this study aims to quantify and compare the effects of deforestation and climate change on the natural spatial ranges of 17 characteristic tree species of southern ecuador dry deciduous forests which are heavily fragmented and support high levels of endemism as part of the tumbesian ecoregion we used 660 plant records to generate species distribution models and land cover data to project species ranges for two time frames a simulated deforestation scenario from 2008 to 2014 with native forest to anthropogenic land use conversion and an extreme climate change scenario ccsm4 0 rcp 8 5 for 2050 which assumed zero change from human activities to assess both potential threats we compared the estimated annual rates of species loss i e range shifts affecting each species deforestation loss for all species averaged approximately 71 km2 year while potential climate attributed loss was almost 21 km2 year moreover annual area loss rates due to deforestation were significantly higher than those attributed to climate change p 0 01 however projections into the future scenario show evidence of diverging displacement patterns indicating the potential formation of novel ecosystems which is consistent with other species assemblage predictions as result of climate change furthermore we provide recommendations for management and conservation prioritizing the most threatened species such as albizia multiflora ceiba trichistandra and cochlospermum vitifolium,2017,0.881
Analyzing ecological networks of species interactions,networks provide one of the best representation for ecological communities composed of many speecies with dense connections between them yet the methodological literature allowing one to analyse and extract meaning from ecological networks is dense fragmented and unwelcoming we provide a general overview to the field outlining both the intent of the different measures their assumptions and the contexts in which they can be used we anchor this discussion in examples from empirical studies and conclude by highlighting what we think should be the future developments in the field,2017,0.257
Evolution of biogeographic disjunction between eastern Asia and North America in Chamaecyparis: Insights from ecological niche models,the disjunct distribution of plants between eastern asia ea and north america na is one of the most well known biogeographic patterns however the formation and historical process of this pattern have been long debated chamaecyparis is a good model to test previous hypotheses about the formation of this disjunct pattern as it contains six species disjunctly distributed in ea western north america wna and eastern north america ena in this study we applied ecological niche models to test the formation of the disjunct pattern of chamaecyparis the model calibrated with the ea species was able to predict the distribution of eastern na species well but not the western na species furthermore the eastern asian species were shown to have higher niche overlap with the eastern north american species the ea species were also shown to share more similar habitats with ena species than with wna species in the genus chamaecyparis species in wna experienced a significant niche shift compared with congeneric species chamaecyparis had a low number of suitable regions in europe and the middle and western na during the last glacial maximum lgm period and became extinct in the former region whereas it retains residual distribution in the latter the extirpations in western na and europe in response to the late neogene and quaternary climatic cooling and the more similar habitats between ena and ea ultimately shaped the current intercontinental disjunct distribution of chamaecyparis both current hypotheses may be also jointly applied to explain more eastern asian and eastern north american disjunctions observed today,2017,0.902
Varieties of Melampyrum lineare (Orobanchaceae) Revisited,patterns of morphological variation within the north american annual hemiparasite melampyrum lineare are reexamined in this study of its four varieties m lineare var americanum m lineare var latifolium m lineare var lineare and m lineare var pectinatum data were collected from 248 herbarium specimens drawn from the species geographic range in canada and the united states and included 45 vegetative reproductive and ecological characters each variety was found to have a broader distribution than previously reported which expanded the area of known sympatry among the varieties to include most of the species range multivariate analysis of variance revealed statistically significant differences in morphology among the four varieties p 0 001 in all cases however linear discriminant analysis of morphological data showed a continuum of variation and accurately identified the taxonomic variety of individual specimens only 44â 75 of the time moreover principal component analysis of continuous morphological variables failed to uncover partitions of the data that would support alternative circumscriptions of subspecific taxa a chi squared contingency test to determine if varietal determinations depended on soil moisture level failed to find evidence supporting such a conclusion p 0 121 results show that morphological variation observed in this species cannot be divided into reliably diagnosable groups while ecotypes are common in eurasian melampyrum species and are explained in part by seasonal variation no common garden experiments to determine how abiotic and biotic conditions affect phenotype have been conducted using m lineare ongoing molecular phylogeographic study of this species may provide alternative metrics for characterizing the diversity of this wide ranging species,2017,0.903
Geographic Distribution of Monomorium ebeninum (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),monomorium ebeninum is a small black ant with a widespread distribution in the west indies central america and mexico as well as southernmost texas and florida monomorium ebeninum has been considered native to the bahamas yet exotic to florida to examine the geographic distribution of m ebeninum i compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records from 550 sites i documented the earliest known m ebeninum records for 34 geographic areas countries major west indian islands and island groups and us states including several for which i found no previously published records barbuda the cayman islands st kitts st lucia st martin and the turks and caicos islands the northernmost records of m ebeninum in both the florida keys and in the bahamas are at the same latitude 25 1â n which is at the northern edge of an essentially continuous range through the west indies if m ebeninum is native in the bahamas then there is little justification for considering populations immediately to the west in the florida keys to be exotic,2017,0.422
"Herbarium of the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (HUCP), Curitiba, Southern Brazil",the main objective of this paper is to present the herbarium of the pontifical catholic university of paranaâ s and its collection the history of the hucp had its beginning in the middle of the 1970s with the foundation of the biology museum that gathered both botanical and zoological specimens in april 1979 collections were separated and the hucp was founded with preserved specimens of algae green red and brown fungi and embryophytes as of october 2016 the collection encompasses nearly 25 000 specimens from 4934 species 1609 genera and 297 families most of the specimens comes from the state of paranã but there were also specimens from many brazilian states and other countries mainly from south america chile argentina uruguay paraguay and colombia but also from other parts of the world cuba usa spain germany china and australia our collection includes 42 fungi 258 gymnosperms 299 bryophytes 2809 pteridophytes 3158 algae 17 832 angiosperms and only one type of mimosa mimosa tucumensis barneby ex ribas m morales santos silvaâ fabaceae we also have botanical education and education for sustainability programs for basic and high school students and training for teachers,2017,0.439
Lagoons and saltwater wetlands getting more diversity: A molecular approach reveals cryptic lineages of a euryhaline submerged macrophyte ( Ruppia ),ruppia species are distantly related to seagrasses and occur in saltwater coastal and inland lagoons mostly as monospecific beds the diversity of euryhaline ruppia populations from different continents recently became better understood from a suite of chloroplast sequences but limited nuclear markers these revealed a high complexity from hybridization introgression polyploidy and haplotypic divergence because of this complexity within the genus and multiple allelic states in polyploids three multiplexed sets of 24 nuclear microsatellites were developed from four ruppia provenances and cross amplified on 130 individuals from a wide range of taxa in various aquatic habitats on different continents secondly pure r cirrhosa and r maritima individuals could be unambiguously identified from their introgressed hybrids and from other known or yet unidentified taxa using diagnostic markers that referred to autotetraploid individuals in r cirrhosa and allotetraploidy in an ancient hybrid complex â haplogroup eâ thirdly a phenetic barcoding approach of trnh psba chloroplast haplotypes taking into account insertionâ deletion variations revealed lineages of recently described taxa from lagoons in different continents i e r sinensis r brevipedunculata r mexicana in addition to separate lineages of hybrid origin congruence between pollination mode and diversification of lineages allows one to hypothesize whether selfing underwater leads to clearly separated lineages whereas outcrossing at the water surface allows hybridization and extensive introgression with potential chloroplast capture this study raises a renewed interest in cryptic lineages hybrid taxa and shallow phylogenies of ruppia lineages thereby critically questioning worldwide distributions of least concern species recognition and monitoring of unique ruppia lineages will support further studies on connectivity survival strategies and movement ecology to aid in determining the conservation status of a wide variety of lagoon and coastal wetland habitats,2017,0.625
"On the occurrence of blue button, Porpita porpita (Cnidaria: Hydrozoa) from Levantine coast of Turkey",the present report is the first record of this species in levantine sea since 1842 this sample stranded at the shore of gazipaåÿa antalya in the south of turkey it was recorded in 14 july 2016 in this study the description and distribution of the species has been presented,2017,0.584
"Afromontane forests hide 19 new species of an ancient chafer lineage (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae): Pleophylla Erichson, 1847 – phylogeny and taxonomic revision",the species of pleophylla erichson 1847 are revised here and the phylogenetic relationships of all known species inferred based on external and genital morphology for almost half of the species we were able to reconstruct gene trees for one nuclear marker internal transcribed spacer 1 and one mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 based on the morphology based taxonomic revision of the type material the following new synonymy is established pleophylla navicularis burmeister 1855 pleophylla flavicornis schaufuss 1871 syn nov pleophyllapilosa boheman 1857 pleophylla opalina schaufuss 1871 syn nov additionally both pleophylla ferruginea burmeister 1855 and pleophylla pilosa boheman 1857 are removed from synonymy with pleophylla fasciatipennis blanchard 1850 nineteen new species are described mainly from south africa rsa pleophylla burundiensissp nov burundi pleophylla charlyisp nov tanzania pleophylla congoensissp nov rwanda pleophylla harrisonisp nov rsa pleophylla kruegerisp nov rsa pleophylla lizlerisp nov tanzania pleophylla mlilwaneensissp nov swaziland pleophylla mpumalangasp nov rsa pleophylla murzinisp nov rsa pleophylla nelshoogteensissp nov rsa pleophylla pseudopilosasp nov rsa pleophylla ruthaesp nov rsa pleophylla settentrionalissp nov democratic republic of congo pleophylla silvaticasp nov rsa pleophylla stalsisp nov rsa pleophylla taitaensissp nov kenya pleophylla transkeiensissp nov rsa pleophylla wakkerstroomensissp nov rsa and pleophylla warnockaesp nov rsa the lectotypes of the following taxa are designated p fasciatipennis blanchard 1850 p ferruginea burmeister 1855 p flavicornis schaufuss 1871 pleophylla maculipennis boheman 1857 p navicularis burmeister 1855 p opalina schaufuss 1871 p pilosa boheman 1857 and pleophylla tongaatsana pã ringuey 1904,2017,0.703
A tool for collections-specific searches in genetic databases,it is becoming increasingly important for museums and other scientific collections to quantify the amount of genetic resources being derived from their holdings genetic database records such as genbank and barcode of life bold have an optional field for indicating the specimen that it derived from and on the other side specimen databases such as gbif gbif org and idigbio idigbio org have an optional field for indicating sequence records that were derived from it making connections between the two types of records should be easy but unfortunately they are made difficult by inconsistent standards for example genbank has a catch all country term that holds all geographic locality data for a specimen whereas in darwin core dwc there are 12 atomized levels of locality names the software tool described here was originally created for smithsonian data managers to search genetic databases in a targeted manner for dna sequences generated from smithsonian specimens it is being made open source to be utilized by other scientific institutions to quantify and document the genetic impact of their collections other potential uses include checking for data inconsistencies between sequence records and specimen records and enforcing specimen loan agreements,2017,0.387
Climate warming as a driver of tundra shrubline advance,climate warming is predicted to alter ecological boundaries in high latitude ecosystems including the elevational or latitudinal extent of tall shrubs in arctic and alpine tundra over 60 studies from 128 locations around the tundra biome have investigated shrub expansion in tundra ecosystems however only six studies test whether shrublines are actually advancing up hill slopes or northward into tundra where tall shrubs are currently absent we test the hypothesis that willow shrublines have expanded to higher elevations in relation to climate across a 50 x 50 km area in the kluane region of the southwest yukon territory canada by surveying of 379 shrubs at 14 sites and sampling of 297 of the surveyed shrubs at 10 sites we compared growth and recruitment to climate variables to test the climate sensitivity of shrub increase using annual radial growth analysis age distributions and repeat field surveys to estimate the current rate of shrubline advance we found consistent and increasing rates of recruitment of alpine willows with estimates of faster advancing shrublines on shallower hill slopes mortality was extremely low across the elevation gradient aspect elevation and species identity did not explain variation in recruitment patterns suggesting a regional factor such as climate as the driver of the observed shrubline advance annual radial growth of willows was best explained by variation in summer temperatures and recruitment pulses by winter temperatures measured recruitment rates are ëœ20 â 5 individuals per hectare per decade mean â se and measured rates of increased shrub cover of ëœ5 â 1 per decade mean â se measured at the pika camp site between field surveys in 2009 and 2013 our results suggest that shrubline will continue to advance over the next 50 years if growing conditions remain suitable however if future conditions differ between summer and winter seasons this could lead to contrasting trajectories for recruitment versus growth and influence the vegetation change observed on the landscape synthesis our findings in the context of a review of the existing literature indicate that elevational and latitudinal shrublines like treelines are advancing in response to climate warming however the trajectories of change will depend on the climate drivers controlling recruitment versus growth,2017,0.075
Understanding the (inter)disciplinary and institutional diversity of citizen science: A survey of current practice in Germany and Austria,article authors metrics comments related content abstract introduction methods results discussion conclusions supporting information acknowledgments author contributions references reader comments 0 media coverage 0 figures abstract citizen science has become more popular in recent years quickly taking on a variety of potentially conflicting characteristics a way to collect massive data sets at relatively low cost a way to break science out of the ivory tower and better engage the public an approach to educate lay people in scientific methods but the extent of current citizen science practiceâ the types of actors and scientific disciplines who take partâ is still poorly understood this article builds on recent surveys of citizen science in plos one by analyzing citizen science practice in germany and austria through the projects on two online platforms we find evidence supporting previous findings that citizen science is a phenomenon strongest in biodiversity and environmental monitoring research but at home in a number of scientific fields such as history and geography in addition our survey method yields new insights into citizen science projects initiated by non scientific actors we close by discussing additional methodological considerations in attempting to present a cross disciplinary overview of citizen science,2017,0.006
Review: DNA Barcoding and Chromatography Fingerprints for the Authentication of Botanicals in Herbal Medicinal Products,in the last two decades there has been a tremendous increase in the global use of herbal medicinal products hmps due to their claimed health benefits this has led to increase in their demand and consequently also resulted in massive adulteration this is due to the fact that most of the traditional methods cannot identify closely related species in a process product form therefore the urgent need for simple and rapid identification methods resulted in the discovery of a novel technique dna barcoding is a process that uses short dna sequence from the standard genome for species identification this technique is reliable and is not affected by external factors such as climates age or plant part the difficulties in isolation of dna of high quality in addition to other factors are among the challenges encountered using the dna barcoding in the authentication of hmp these limitations indicated that using dna barcoding alone may ineffectively authenticate the hmp therefore the combination of dna barcoding with chromatographic fingerprint a popular and generally accepted technique for the assessment and quality control of hmp will offer an efficient solution to effectively evaluate the authenticity and quality consistency of hmp detailed and quality information about the main composition of the hmps will help to ascertain their efficacy and safety as these are very important for quality control,2017,0.618
Phylogeny of the Neotropical longhorn beetle genus Ateralphus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae),ateralphus restello iannuzzi marinoni 2001 is a neotropical genus of longhorn beetles composed of nine species this genus was proposed from splitting alphus white 1855 into other two genera ateralphus and exalphus restello iannuzzi marinoni 2001 even though ateralphus nine species alphus four and exalphus 18 were recently revised their validity has not been tested using phylogenetic methods in this study we carried out a cladistic analysis of ateralphus and its related genera alphus and exalphus based on 44 morphological characters of the adults to test their monophyly and infer the relationships between their species our results support the monophyly of the three genera and recovered two clades that corroborate the species groups previously recognized in ateralphus a new genus grandateralphus gen n is proposed for one of these clades which is supported by three synapomorphies width of upper ocular lobes less than width between the lobe and the coronal suture character state 6 0 genae parallel in frontal view 8 1 and scape gradually expanded toward apex reaching widest diameter just near apex 9 2 grandateralphus gen n includes three new combinations g lacteus galileo martins 2006 comb n g tumidus souza monnã 2013 comb n and g variegatus mendes 1938 comb n notes on the distribution of g variegatus comb n and a new record of e cicatricornis schmid 2014 for bolivia santa cruz are provided,2017,0.757
GGBN letter to CBD,science is a truly global enterprise and many of the challenges facing us have a global dimension not least of which are the threats to the worldâ s biodiversity one of the most important and obvious signs of this is the emergence strength and impact of scientific communities and organizations that transcend geopolitical boundaries to promote research and scientific inquiry for the benefit of humankind,2017,0.312
Living Atlases Community,since 2010 the atlas of living australia ala provides information on all the known species in australia and contributes to the global biodiversity information facility gbif by lending access to this national open source platform the open and modular architecture of ala enables re use of ala tools by other countries and regions over the years thanks to the ala team and gbif the community has grown in different ways from production to training courses firstly data portals based on ala but residing outside australia have been launched in several institutions such as inbio in costa rica and canadensys in canada and in the gbif network via at least six nodes presently operating national ala based portals e g spain portugal france sweden argentina united kingdom others will follow in the coming years e g colombia peru other countries such as andorra and benin have also begun to develop their own installations with the aid of partners in the living atlases community secondly we are now able to set up workshops geared to different levels of expertise at tdwg 2017 we will propose both beginnerâ s and advanced workshops thirdly the experience gained by installing and customizing their own data portals has allowed many advanced participants to share their expertise in subjects like internationalization data management and customization with others during workshops adding to these points as an open source software developers contribute to the community by implementing new functionalities and improving the translation into several languages for users of the software today some modules are fully translated into spanish french and portuguese in this poster we will show the human aspect of the project by introducing the living atlases an international community created around the ala framework highlighting how re using existing software can be motivating and stimulating we will also present the new official website that we will launch through the gbif capacity enhancement support programme cesp 1 around the next advanced workshop and future projects planned in order to increase the durability of our community,2017,0.259
Molecular Markers and Their Use in Taxonomic Characterization of Trichoderma spp,species of hypocrea trichoderma are universally reported from decaying woody substrata and diverse soil samples different strains of trichoderma are explored for their industrial relevant enzymes plant growth promotion as well as biocontrol agent and plant immune response modulator attributes both locally and systematically the accurate species strain identification of hypocrea trichoderma is an important issue due to plasticity in phenetic characters identification based on morphological features like ascospore color stromal anatomy growth rate etc is difficult to apply for hypocrea trichoderma strains use of molecular markers either in single or more than one have been used for concordant identification and differentiation of hyprocrea trichoderma strains in this book chapter role of different molecular markers in taxonomic identification of hyprocrea trichoderma strains is given,2017,0.45
A crowdsourcing approach to collecting photo-based insect and plant observation records,background scientific field observation by members of the public is known as citizen science and has become popular all across the world citizen science is advantageous for collecting large amounts of scientific data and can be seen as a crowdsourcing approach to data collection information and communications technology is enhancing the availability of citizen science mobile devices such as mobile phones that have a digital camera with a global positioning system gps are necessities for contemporary life and can be utilised as powerful observation tools in citizen science new information a web based system has been developed as a data collection tool for citizen science participants submit an e mail with a photo taken by their mobile phones the photos contain location information which can be easily and automatically embedded if the mobile phone is equipped with gps collaboration has been undertaken with regional event managers such as museum curators and held citizen science events in each region and for various target taxonomic groups all photos were stored in the data server and the organisms were taxonomically identified by citizen scientists regional managers and the authors in total 154 species and 843 data records were collected in this project conducted from 2011 to 2016,2017,0.337
The Eurasian hot nightlife: Environmental forces associated with nocturnality in lizards,aim lizards are ancestrally diurnal and most of them remain so nocturnality is common among lizards but the environmental factors associated with lizard nocturnal activity are still unknown here we contrasted the ambient temperature and productivity hypotheses where we predicted that cold temperatures will pose a stonger limit to nocturnal species richness than diurnal lizards moreover we contrasted the relative importance of annual day and night mean temperatures to pinpoint the drivers of nocturnal lizard richness location mainland eurasia methods we collected distribution range and activity time data for all 1 113 lizard species found throughout mainland eurasia this represents the largest geographical scope to date for studies of lizard species richness we examined the spatial patterns of nocturnal species richness in relationship to diurnal species richness across environmental gradients of ambient temperature and productivity results nocturnal lizards are richest in the tropics and in deserts and their richness decreases with latitude however nocturnal lizards are absent from the highest latitudes and coldest regions inhabited by lizards diurnal and nocturnal lizards respond in a similar manner to climatic factors ambient temperature has a strong influence on both whereas productivity is more tightly related to the proportion of nocturnal species main conclusions nocturnality is widespread among eurasian lizards however nocturnal lizards are absent from invariably cold regions and low temperatures seem to be a limiting factor for lizard activity period we suggest that the year round warm nights of the tropics reduce the cost of being active at night and open the nocturnal niche for many lizards in hot deserts the combination of hot days and aridity increases the cost of diurnal activity whereas nocturnal activity provides a shelter from these extreme conditions,2017,0.925
Centenary coppicing maintains high levels of genetic diversity in a root resprouting oak (Quercus pyrenaica Willd.),studies disentangling the anthropogenic influences of traditional forest uses are crucial to assess the current conservation value of cultural landscapes by promoting asexual regeneration centenary coppicing in the predominantly root resprouter quercus pyrenaica is assumed to have reduced genetic diversity levels contributing to the decline of abandoned coppices and the common lack of acorn production this work aims to test the widespread assumption that historical coppicing in q pyrenaica has caused depleted levels of genetic diversity seven microsatellite markers were used to assess clonal structure and population genetic diversity levels in six abandoned coppices of q pyrenaica which were compared to three open woodlands in national parks in spain asexual regeneration was higher in coppices leading to more frequent and larger clonal assemblies clonal diversity parameters genotypic richness and proportion of unique genotypes were significantly lower in coppices although density of genotypes per surface area and levels of population genetic diversity were comparable to those observed in open parklands heterogenic clonal structures were found both within and among stands hindering the inference of concrete anthropogenic disturbances despite promoting asexual reproduction coppicing maintains high levels of genotypic and genetic diversity and allows the incorporation of new genotypes by seed recruitment the natural resprouting capacity of q pyrenaica preserved the species in face of long lasting anthropogenic disturbances fostering ecosystem resilience and harbouring high conservation values,2017,0.351
Data Management Plan: Brazil's Virtual Herbarium,the goal of the brazil virtual herbarium is to facilitate the identification of taxonomic and geographic information gaps of plants and fungi of brazil the system displays the status of online data for all valid species in the list of species of the brazilian flora including those without any record the system also compares the brazilian states where specialists indicate that the species occurs with the states that have occurrence points in brazil s virtual herbarium highlighting the gaps this data management plan was prepared as part of a pilot project run on behalf of the international development research centre canada on data management policy for development funders https doi org 10 3897 rio 2 e8880,2017,0.611
Bioclimatic approach to assessing factors influencing shifts in geographic distribution and relative abundance of two flea beetle species (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in North America,crucifer flea beetle phyllotreta cruciferae goeze and striped flea beetle phyllotreta striolata fabricius coleoptera chrysomelidae are the most chronic and economically important flea beetle pests of cruciferous brassicaceae crops in western canada there have been reports that populations of p striolata are increasing in numbers and expanding their geographic range climate is the fundamental factor regulating the distribution and abundance of most insect species bioclimate simulation models of the two flea beetle species were developed to assess climatic factors influencing shifts in their geographic distribution and density the results fostered a better understanding of how the two species responded to selected climate variables growing seasons with above average precipitation were predicted to favour the geographic distribution of p striolata more than p cruciferae both p cruciferae and p striolata were sensitive to temperature changes in the range of ∠2 â c to 2 â c the ecoclimatic index suitability index for p cruciferae increased with increasing temperatures whereas the index for p striolata declined with increasing temperatures this study highlights the regions of the prairies and boreal plains ecozones that are most sensitive to shifts of the two populations and which may require changes in insecticidal seed treatments for effective control,2017,0.719
"Pathogens collections, biobanks and related-data in a One Health legal and ethical perspective",research on emerging infectious diseases calls for a work on collections of pathogens including hosts or vectors from which the pathogens were isolated related to human and animal health to wildlife or on the environmental material in this respect the adoption of a one health perspective is determined by the need for a common approach to consider the collection storage and use of pathogens coming from human or non human sources and particularly when the same pathogen is taken from different environments in response to this development our purpose is to delineate a flexible regulation framework concerning collections of pathogens from various origins or hosts and their associated data in order to facilitate scientific work and research partnerships the legal and ethical cutting edge research on biomedical big data is particularly stimulating when it comes to address challenges related to collections or biobanks of pathogens such as prior informed consent and accessibility material transfer agreement or benefit sharing,2017,0.321
Proto-consonants were information-dense via identical bioacoustic tags to proto-vowels,why did our ancestors combine the first consonant and vowel like utterances to produce the first syllable or word to answer this question it is essential to know what constituted the communicative function of proto consonants and of proto vowels before their combined use became universal almost nothing is known however about consonant like calls in the primate order 1 2 here we investigate a large collection of voiceless consonant like calls in nonhuman great apes our closest relatives namely orangutans pongo spp we analysed 4 486 kiss squeaks collected across 48 individuals in four wild populations despite idiosyncratic production mechanics consonant like calls displayed information dense content and the same acoustic signatures found in voiced vowel like calls by nonhuman primates implying similar biological functions selection regimes between proto consonants and proto vowels were thus probably indistinguishable at the dawn of spoken language evolution our findings suggest that the first proto syllables or proto words in our lineage probably constituted message reiterations instead of messages of increasing intricacy,2017,0.43
A study on climatic adaptation of dipteran mitochondrial protein coding genes,diptera the true flies are frequently found in nature and their habitat is found all over the world including antarctica and polar regions the number of documented species for order diptera is quite high and thought to be 14 of the total animal present in the earth 1 most of the study in diptera has focused on the taxa of economic and medical importance such as the fruit flies ceratitis capitata and bactrocera spp tephritidae which are serious agricultural pests the blowflies calliphoridae and oestrid flies oestridae which can cause myiasis the anopheles mosquitoes culicidae are the vectors of malaria and leafminers agromyzidae vegetable and horticultural pests 2 insect mitochondrion consists of 13 protein coding genes 22 trnas and 2 rrnas are the remnant portion of alpha proteobacteria is responsible for simultaneous function of energy production and thermoregulation of the cell through the bi genomic system thus different adaptability in different climatic condition might have compensated by complementary changes is the both genomes 3 4 in this study we have collected complete mitochondrial genome and occurrence data of one hundred thirteen such dipteran insects from different databases and literature survey our understanding of the genetic basis of climatic adaptation in diptera is limited to the basic information on the occurrence location of those species and mito genetic factors underlying changes in conspicuous phenotypes to examine this hypothesis we have taken an approach of nucleotide substitution analysis for 13 protein coding genes of mitochondrial dna individually and combined by different software for monophyletic group as well as paraphyletic group of dipteran species moreover we have also calculated codon adaptation index for all dipteran mitochondrial protein coding genes following this work we have classified our sample organisms according to their location data from gbif https www gbif org finally result suggests that dipteran insects from different regions are gone through distinct selection process and even our outcome also indicate that dipteran mitochondrial genes from different climatic condition shows differential efficacy in their translation process,2017,0.529
Global status of production and commercialization of soft-shell crabs,commercial exploration of swimming crab is rapidly increasing worldwide in 2015 total production of crabs fisheries plus aquaculture reached almost 1300 thousand tons one of the most valuable marketing forms is called â œsoft shell crabâ the internet is one of the most important marketing channels for soft shell crab with prices starting at us 3 5 a unit but going up to us 8 00â 10 00 depending on the size and presentation form of the product live cooled frozen or processed in luxury restaurants a dish containing one large animal may cost well over us 75 00 increasingly this market requires exporting companies to present some kind of quality certification of the product or process mainly certifications related to food safety almost all soft shell crab production is based on crabs caught in the wild by either trawling or trapping crab populations are suffering from environmental impacts associated with human activity so much that obtaining the raw material crabs in pre molt stage has become the biggest challenge for companies that market soft shell swimming crab nowadays even recognizing the aquaculture as an alternate form to acquire crabs it is necessary to understand that technology for commercial crab cultivation is still incipient and restricted to some species of few genera such as scylla portunus and callinectes the present article reviews and discusses the problems and challenges related to the productive chain of soft shell swimming crab and presents an overview of the worldwide market identifying the main exporting and importing centers and their respective trading methods,2017,0.359
No support for Heincke's law in hagfish (Myxinidae): lack of an association between body size and the depth of species occurrence,this study tests for interspecific evidence of heincke s law among hagfishes and advances the field of research on body size and depth of occurrence in fishes by including a phylogenetic correction and by examining depth in four ways maximum depth minimum depth mean depth of recorded specimens and the average of maximum and minimum depths of occurrence results yield no evidence for heincke s law in hagfishes no phylogenetic signal for the depth at which species occur but moderate to weak phylogenetic signal for body size suggesting that phylogeny may play a role in determining body size in this group,2017,0.408
Using biodiversity to provide multiple services in sustainable farming systems,agriculture dominates global land use over 38 of the worldâ s land is used for agriculture with 11 under arable production 1 with the human population projected to reach up to 9 billion by 2050 there are increasing pressures to produce greater quantities of food it is unlikely however that significantly more land can be converted from native vegetation and brought into production most of the land potentially suitable for agriculture is already being used for that purpose and agricultural expansion is already noted as having caused significant negative environmental effects such as deforestation and desertification to exacerbate this situation climate change projections indicate that every decade until 2050 food demand will increase by 14 globally but agricultural production will decrease on average by 1 2 threatening in particular regions that are already food insecure such as sub saharan africa and south asia 3 4 in these two regions major crop yields will face an estimated average decline of at least 8 by 2050 4 5,2017,0.154
Climatic-Induced Shifts in the Distribution of Teak (Tectona grandis) in Tropical Asia: Implications for Forest Management and Planning,modelling the future suitable climate space for tree species has become a widely used tool for forest management planning under global climate change teak tectona grandis is one of the most valuable tropical hardwood species in the international timber market and natural teak forests are distributed from india through myanmar laos and thailand the extents of teak forests are shrinking due to deforestation and the local impacts of global climate change however the direct impacts of climate changes on the continental scale distributions of native and non native teak have not been examined in this study we developed a species distribution model for teak across its entire native distribution in tropical asia and its non native distribution in bangladesh we used presence only records of trees and twelve environmental variables that were most representative for current teak distributions in south and southeast asia maxent maximum entropy models were used to model the distributions of teak under current and future climate scenarios we found that land use land cover change and elevation were the two most important variables explaining the current and future distributions of native and non native teak in tropical asia changes in annual precipitation precipitation seasonality and annual mean actual evapotranspiration may result in shifts in the distributions of teak across tropical asia we discuss the implications for the conservation of critical teak habitats forest management planning and risks of biological invasion that may occur due to its cultivation in non native ranges,2017,0.676
Mosquito-Borne Diseases: Advances in Modelling Climate-Change Impacts,vector borne diseases are on the rise globally as the consequences of climate change are becoming evident climate based models of disease risk are of growing importance here we review the current state of the art in both mechanistic and correlative disease modelling the data driving these models the vectors and diseases covered and climate models applied to assess future risk we find that modelling techniques have advanced considerably especially in terms of using ensembles of climate models and scenarios effects of extreme events precipitation regimes and seasonality on diseases are still poorly studied thorough validation of models is still a challenge and is complicated by a lack of field and laboratory data on a larger scale the main challenges today lie in cross disciplinary and cross sectoral transfer of data and methods,2017,0.154
"Species Information pages, how are the data discovered, consolidated and presented.",a number of different projects consolidate species information from widely disparate datasets and compile them into a single resource these projects vary in several dimensions including taxonomic coverage depth of information and audience such as humans or machines some focus on life history information others focus on observations and specimens or taxonomies and phylogenies encyclopedia of life eol org was one of the early projects and in 2007 took on the challenge of creating a web page for every species in the world from bacteria to birds other projects focused on specific taxonomic groups or regions such as fishbase fishbase org and atlas of living australia ala efforts such as the global biodiversity infromation facility gbif consolidate observational data globally at least 5 projects focus solely on the life histories of birds including birds of north america neotropical birds handbook of birds of the world alive hbw and others the species data included can range from genomic sequences to studies on demography and behavior from photos and sound recordings to museum specimens all these various resources are scattered around the globe and discovering the data of interest and accurately resolving the data to the correct â speciesâ is an ongoing and significant challenge publishing taxonomic concepts is still in it infancy yet is key to discovering and resolving these types of data additionally biological and environmental trait data are often consolidated within a species account yet the discovery of these data is frequently a difficult and labor intensive process in this talk we will review jaguar a content management system cms being used by the cornell lab of ornithology to manage species account projects focused on birds and currently includes birds of north america neotropical birds merlin and all about birds this custom cms was designed with taxonomic concepts at the foundation and utilizing these taxonomic concepts species accounts are automatically extended with observation maps multimedia and results from various big data analysis projects a set of common trait data associated with species is managed using controlled vocabularies and displayed within these species accounts we have defined a set of traits focused on birds that are generally known and which are most useful to a broad ornithological audience we will discuss challenges we have faced in managing these species accounts and future opportunities to extend and enhance these accounts especially as taxonomic concepts are published and adopted and trait ontologies are defined and most importantly applied,2017,0.928
Evaluating Mobile-Based Citizen Science in Increasing Citizen Participants in Environmental Management,mobile based citizen science as thriving citizen education tool increases the non expert citizen involvement in the scientific world by encouraging the public upload nature observation to assist scientific research while learning scientific knowledge mobile base citizen science as social media has potential to facilitate citizen engagement in the environmental management based on the conceptual framework of citizen science incorporation with environmental management large users in the program foster the citizen involvement in the environmental management research here applies swot strength weakness opportunity threats analysis to evaluate mobile based citizen science regarding data management citizen participation and partnership it revealed the current status of mobile based citizen including advantages and disadvantages the simplicity of observation collection public data accessibility communication channel provided for participants and strong supporter or collaborative partners are effective in making citizen science strong candidate in engaging citizen into environmental management however there are absent of data quality filter privacy protection and the fact that large registered users and data submission doesnâ t lead to high citizen participation impede the development of mobile based citizen science therefore the suggestion for current programs is to obtain investment from other organizations or agencies to develop more effective strategies to keep and maintain participants the results of this study proves that mobile based citizen science has potential to engage citizens in environmental management but they need the improvement of sustaining strengths and opportunity and removing weakness and threats,2017,0.055
"EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe",we present eu forest a dataset that integrates and extends by almost one order of magnitude the publicly available information on european tree species distribution the core of our dataset 96 of the occurrence records came from an unpublished large database harmonising forest plot surveys from national forest inventories on an inspire compliant 1 kmã 1 km grid these new data can potentially benefit several disciplines including forestry biodiversity conservation palaeoecology plant ecology the bioeconomy and pest management,2017,0.461
"Standardized spider (Arachnida, Araneae) inventory of Hankoniemi, Finland",background during a field course on spider taxonomy and ecology at the university of helsinki the authors had the opportunity to sample four plots with a dual objective of both teaching on field methods spider identification and behaviour and uncovering the spider diversity patterns found in the southern coastal forests of hankoniemi finland as an ultimate goal this field course intended to contribute to a global project that intends to uncover spider diversity patterns worldwide with that purpose a set of standardised methods and procedures was followed that allow the comparability of obtained data with numerous other projects being conducted across all continents new information a total of 104 species and 1997 adults was collected of these 41 species 39 were linyphiidae and 13 12 theridiidae all other families had 6 or less species represented linyphiidae were also dominant in terms of adult individuals captured with 1015 51 followed by 428 21 lycosidae 158 8 tetragnathidae and 145 7 theridiidae all other families had less than 100 individuals the most abundant species were neriene peltata alopecosa taeniata piratula hygrophila and dismodicus elevatus all with more than 100 individuals all sites had between 56 and 62 species and between 445 and 569 individuals,2017,0.896
Response to selection for improved nitrogen fixation in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.),breeding for high symbiotic nitrogen n fixation snf in common bean phaseolus vulgaris l is expected to contribute to reduced application of chemical fertilizers in cropping systems involving common bean the magnitude of variation and the genetic and phenotypic correlation among seed yield snf estimated as the percentage of nitrogen derived from atmosphere and related traits were studied in a population of 140 f4 derived f5 recombinant inbred lines developed from a cross between low and high snf bean genotypes â sanilacâ and â mistâ respectively the experiment was conducted in a total of five location years in ontario canada from 2011 to 2013 these location years were grouped into stress and optimum moisture test sites based on the total precipitation during the growing season in each test site two nitrogen supply management strategies snf dependent and n fertilizer dependent were simulated separately in the field by inoculating the seed with a commercial rhizobium leguminosarum bv phaseoli and by application of n fertilizers at 100 kg ha∠1 respectively the genetic variation was significant for seed yield snf and related traits the heritability of the traits ranged from 14 to 71 and 4 to 25 in optimum moisture and in stress environments respectively no significant correlation between snf and seed yield indicated that selection for high snf does not necessarily lead to greater seed yield and that selection for both traits should be performed simultaneously,2017,0.286
Evaluating citizen science data for forecasting species responses to national forest management,the extensive spatial and temporal coverage of many citizen science datasets csd makes them appealing for use in species distribution modeling and forecasting however a frequent limitation is the inability to validate results here we aim to assess the reliability of csd for forecasting species occurrence in response to national forest management projections representing 160 366 km2 by comparison against forecasts from a model based on systematically collected colonizationâ extinction data we fitted species distribution models using citizen science observations of an old forest indicator fungus phellinus ferrugineofuscus we applied five modeling approaches generalized linear model poisson process model bayesian occupancy model and two maxent models models were used to forecast changes in occurrence in response to national forest management for 2020 2110 forecasts of species occurrence from models based on csd were congruent with forecasts made using the colonizationâ extinction model based on systematically collected data although different modeling methods indicated different levels of change all models projected increased occurrence in set aside forest from 2020 to 2110 the projected increase varied between 125 and 195 among models based on csd in comparison with an increase of 129 according to the colonizationâ extinction model all but one model based on csd projected a decline in production forest which varied between 11 and 49 compared to a decline of 41 using the colonizationâ extinction model all models thus highlighted the importance of protected old forest for p ferrugineofuscus persistence we conclude that models based on csd can reproduce forecasts from models based on systematically collected colonizationâ extinction data and so lead to the same forest management conclusions our results show that the use of a suite of models allows csd to be reliably applied to land management and conservation decision making demonstrating that widely available csd can be a valuable forecasting resource,2017,0.289
Estimating global ecosystem iso/anisohydry using active and passive microwave satellite data,the concept of iso anisohydry describes the degree to which plants regulate their water status operating from isohydric with strict regulation to anisohydric with less regulation though some species level measures of iso anisohydry exist at a few locations ecosystem scale information is still largely unavailable in this study we use diurnal observations from active ku band backscatter from quikscat and passive x band vegetation optical depth vod from amsr e microwave satellite data to estimate global ecosystem iso anisohydry here diurnal observations from both satellites approximate predawn and midday plant canopy water contents which are used to estimate iso anisohydry the two independent estimates from radar backscatter and vod show reasonable agreement at low and mid latitudes but diverge at high latitudes grasslands croplands wetlands and open shrublands are more anisohydric whereas evergreen broadleaf and deciduous broadleaf forests are more isohydric the direct validation with upscaled in situ species iso anisohydry estimates indicates that the vod based estimates have much better agreement than the backscatter based estimates the indirect validation with prior knowledge suggests that both estimates are generally consistent in that vegetation water status of anisohydric ecosystems more closely tracks environmental fluctuations of water availability and demand than their isohydric counterparts however uncertainties still exist in the iso anisohydry estimate primarily arising from the remote sensing data and to a lesser extent from the methodology the comprehensive assessment in this study can help us better understand the robustness limitation and uncertainties of the satellite derived iso anisohydry estimates the ecosystem iso anisohydry has the potential to reveal new insights into spatio temporal ecosystem response to droughts,2017,0.342
Spatial Distribution Modelling of Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea) on Breeding Grounds,ecological niche modeling is used to predict a speciesâ distribution in a geographic area based on abiotic and biotic variables understanding a speciesâ range is important for conservation and restoration efforts as anthropogenic forces may alter or deplete habitat it is important to know the ecological requirements of a species to understand how and what habitat to protect with the increasing threat of climate change and rising temperature and precipitation the suitable habitat and the distribution for many species is expected to shift migratory species are particularly at risk of these changes as they require suitable habitat not only on their wintering and stopover grounds but on their breeding grounds without suitable breeding grounds reproductive success is guaranteed to decline for a species understanding how these changes affect the range and distribution of a species allows researchers and conservationist to better formulate effective species management plans,2017,0.813
"New records, distributional range, and notes on Marisora brachypoda (Squamata: Mabuyidae) in Mexico",the middle american short limbed skink marisora brachypoda taylor 1956 formerly in the synonymy of mabuya unimarginata for a taxonomic review see hedges and conn 2012 is a poorly known species that generally is considered rare although it can be locally abundant chaves 2013 provided general information on the habitat of this species whose conservation status has been assessed as least concern by iucn the evidence suggests that m brachypoda represents a species complex throughout its wide distribution which comprises nicaragua costa rica honduras el salvador guatemala belize and mexico hedges and conn 2012 in mexico the available locality records for this species are dispersed throughout the literature and in herpetological collections hedges and conn 2012 in mexico the known distribution of m brachypoda extends from veracruz and northern nayarit south to the belize and guatemala borders however there is no a clear distribution pattern for this species e g ochoa ochoa 2006 chaves et al 2013,2017,0.704
Modelling the spatial baseline for amphibian conservation in West Africa,to answer questions such as whether the existing network of protected areas is sufficient conservation needs data covering complete taxonomic groups and large geographic areas however most distributional data sets are either coarse patchy and or based solely on expert opinion which is often hard to verify in addition not all regions are equally well studied for example sub saharan africa remains comparatively under sampled for most taxa especially central and western africa however these regions contain many threatened species including a high diversity of highly threatened vertebrates amphibians to fill this knowledge gap we extrapolated species occurrence records n 15 944 on a 30 arc seconds grid for most known west african amphibian taxa 92 using environmental niche modelling and employing relevant environmental parameters climate vegetation elevation distance to rivers we provide for the first time a fine scale distribution map of amphibian alpha diversity for the entire west african region already known centres of high biodiversity were confirmed e g south western ghana and south eastern cã te dâ ivoire and new ones were identified e g northern liberia and the borders of liberia with guinea and sierra leone diversity analyses focusing on unique amphibians i e threatened endemic and evolutionary distinct species revealed that areas of high diversity also contained many high conservation priority species herewith we offer a comprehensive baseline for identifying those areas which are important for amphibian conservation for one of the most periled regions on the continent those areas of high diversity were only partly in accordance with previous analyses such as the hotspot definitions the ecoregion analyses or analyses of other taxa highlighting the added new value of our approach the most outstanding areas of amphibian diversity were only partly covered by the existing network of protected areas thus there is an urgent need to devise a regional conservation concept to protect west african amphibians from extinction,2017,0.726
Estimating the benefits of plasticity in ectotherm heat tolerance under natural thermal variability,1 plasticity is a near ubiquitous feature of the thermal physiology of ectothermic organisms understanding the significance of plasticity in evolutionary and ecological contexts requires determining whether observed plasticity is beneficial and if so to what extent plasticity can compensate for environmental change i e is plasticity â œcompleteâ or â œincompleteâ 2 using site specific daily temperature records spanning several decades we test the â œbeneficial acclimation hypothesisâ by calculating the number of days predicted to exceed the heat tolerance limits of 103 terrestrial ectotherm populations when incorporating observed taxon specific plasticity and when plasticity is ignored 3 we find that heat tolerance plasticity can reduce the predicted number of overheating events though the effects are clade specific with plasticity providing greater benefits to amphibians than to reptiles or arthropods despite these benefits heat tolerance plasticity is incomplete as temperatures rise plasticity cannot prevent an increase in the risk of overheating specifically we find that a one degree increase in mean maximum temperature leads to approximately one additional day of predicted overheating during the warmest months of the year on average 4 we conducted a broad scale analysis of the degree to which plasticity in heat tolerance reduces the probability that ectotherms experience temperatures beyond their physiological heat limits our results indicate that plasticity in heat tolerance benefits ectotherms but consistent with previous studies those benefits are inadequate to provide complete compensation for global climate change,2017,0.27
Evaluating simplistic methods to understand current distributions and forecast distribution changes under climate change scenarios: an example with coypu (Myocastor coypus),invasive species provide a unique opportunity to evaluate factors controlling biogeographic distributions we can consider introduction success as an experiment testing suitability of environmental conditions predicting potential distributions of spreading species is not easy and forecasting potential distributions with changing climate is even more difficult using the globally invasive coypu myocastor coypus molina 1782 we evaluate and compare the utility of a simplistic ecophysiological based model and a correlative model to predict current and future distribution the ecophysiological model was based on winter temperature relationships with nutria survival we developed correlative statistical models using the software for assisted habitat modeling and biologically relevant climate data with a global extent we applied the ecophysiological based model to several global circulation model gcm predictions for mid century we used global coypu introduction data to evaluate these models and to explore a hypothesized physiological limitation finding general agreement with known coypu distribution locally and globally and support for an upper thermal tolerance threshold global circulation model based model results showed variability in coypu predicted distribution among gcms but had general agreement of increasing suitable area in the usa our methods highlighted the dynamic nature of the edges of the coypu distribution due to climate non equilibrium and uncertainty associated with forecasting future distributions areas deemed suitable habitat especially those on the edge of the current known range could be used for early detection of the spread of coypu populations for management purposes combining approaches can be beneficial to predicting potential distributions of invasive species now and in the future and in exploring hypotheses of factors controlling distributions,2017,0.122
Digitization of museum collections holds the potential to enhance researcher diversity,natural history collections preserve critical information on biodiversity in space and time but collections housed in museums have traditionally been inaccessible to many at the same time there remains great under representation of many groups among researchers in science and education even though diverse research teams approach problems with greater combinations of expertise and background often resulting in more highly cited papers1 here we highlight how the advent of digitization open access to images and specimen data now makes a wealth of biodiversity information broadly available and represents one method that can simultaneously increase access to those samples and help diversify our community digitization allows access to museum holdings to those for whom collections have typically been out of reach,2017,0.237
"Zetzellia erzincanica sp. nov., an intermediate species between the genera Zetzellia and Agistemus (Acari, Stigmaeidae)",a new species of the genus zetzellia oudemans z erzincanica sp nov stigmaeidae collected from erzincan turkey is described this is a species between the genera zetzellia oudemans and agistemus summers the new species has characteristic features of zetzellia but some paratypes resemble agistemus in that setae d2 are partly or completely situated on the central hysterosomal shield some variations and abnormalities were observed in this species,2017,0.871
Regional-scale variability in the response of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages to a marine heatwave,extreme climatic events are predicted to increase in severity as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change in marine ecosystems the importance of marine heatwaves mhws â discrete periods of anomalously high sea temperaturesâ is gaining recognition in 2011 the highest magnitude mhw ever recorded impacted the west coast of australia southeast indian ocean the mhw was associated with widespread mortality of habitat forming species including corals and kelps and structural changes in assemblages of macroalgae and fish however the responses of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages have not yet been fully documented here we resurveyed 2 subtidal habitat types reef â flatsâ and â slopesâ at 4 locations spanning 800 km of coastline and 6â of latitude during the period 1999 2015 to examine the effects of the 2011 mhw on herbivorous macroinvertebrates i e sea urchins gastropod molluscs responses to the mhw varied with latitude at our warmest study location abundances were severely depleted whereas no effects were detected at the coolest location across the entire study region subtle but significant shifts in assemblage structure were observed due to decreased abundances of more southerly distributed species i e â coolâ affinity and increased abundances of several more northerly distributed species i e â warmâ affinity the 2011 mhw has had profound effects on the marine biota off the west coast of australia across multiple trophic levels and taxonomic groups here as in many other regions contemporary warming events are superimposed onto gradual warming trends increasing the likelihood of abrupt changes in ecosystem structure and functioning,2017,0.557
Potential Distribution of Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae) in Relation to Alternate Hosts in Mexico,the spotted wing drosophila drosophila suzukii matsumura diptera drosophilidae is one of the most important pests of berry crop production in mexico the purpose of this research was to model the potential distribution of d suzukii in the mexico relative to 4 non crop hosts using maximum entropy ecological niche modeling spotted wing drosophila records were collected from a survey conducted in commercial blackberry plots and non cultivated areas between 2013â 2015 the data for the presence of non crop hosts in the country and the bioclimatic variables used in the modeling were obtained from the global biodiversity information facility and worldclim websites respectively for climatic variable selection a principal component analysis on climatic variables was conducted prior to the maxent modeling the results demonstrate that the potential distribution of spotted wing drosophila was primarily in central mexico however other suitable locations in the southeastern portion of the county were identified which were not previously known likewise the joint modeling depicted areas of coincidence between the spotted wing drosophila distribution and 4 alternating non crop hosts commonly distributed in the berry producing region which includes the states of michoacã n jalisco guanajuato and mexico this joint modeling of the potential distribution of spotted wing drosophila and non crop hosts partly explains how the populations of the pest sustain themselves during seasons of low or no commercial berry production in mexico,2017,0.547
"On the importance of geographic and taxonomic sampling in phylogeography: A reevaluation of diversification and species limits in a Neotropical thrush (Aves, Turdidae)",phylogeographic studies seeking to describe biogeographic patterns infer evolutionary processes and revise species level classification should properly characterize the distribution ranges of study species and thoroughly sample genetic variation across taxa and geography this is particularly necessary for widely distributed organisms occurring in complex landscapes such as the neotropical region here we clarify the geographic range and revisit the phylogeography of the black billed thrush turdus ignobilis a common passerine bird from lowland tropical south america whose evolutionary relationships and species limits were recently evaluated employing phylogeographic analyses based on partial knowledge of its distribution and incomplete sampling of populations our work employing mitochondrial and nuclear dna sequences sampled all named subspecies and multiple populations across northern south america and uncovered patterns not apparent in earlier work including a biogeographic interplay between the amazon and orinoco basins and the occurrence of distinct lineages with seemingly different habitat affinities in regional sympatry in the colombian amazon in addition we found that previous inferences about the affinities and taxonomic status of andean populations assumed to be allied to populations from the pantepui region were incorrect implying that inferred biogeographic and taxonomic scenarios need re evaluation we propose a new taxonomic treatment which recognizes two distinct biological species in the group our findings illustrate the importance of sufficient taxon and geographic sampling to reconstruct evolutionary history and to evaluate species limits among neotropical organisms considering the scope of the questions asked advances in neotropical phylogeography will often require substantial cross country scientific collaboration,2017,0.936
A description of the naturalised Clusia rosea Jacq. (Clusiaceae) populations in South Africa,background clusia rosea is an ornamental plant that has been cultivated in south africa since the late 19th century ornamental plant species are known to be a source of invasive plants objectives to document the current distribution of c rosea in south africa and its naturalisation status method reports of c rosea were verified in the field and herbarium vouchers were collected coordinates were taken for each plant their reproductive status was assessed and heights were measured in addition the southern african plant invaders atlas database and five herbaria were checked for records results a total of 284 plants were found outside of cultivation mostly in the kwazulu natal coastal belt grassland clusia rosea appears to be reproducing through apomixis no records of naturalisation could be found elsewhere in africa conclusion it is recommended that c rosea be added to the species under surveillance â possible eradication or containment targets suspect list to investigate whether it requires formal legal listing,2017,0.377
Multiple resistance to ACCase and ALS-inhibiting herbicides in Beckmannia syzigachne (Steud.) Fernald without mutations in the target enzymes,american slough grass beckmannia syzigachne steud fernald is a worldwide weed and is widely distributed in rice wheat rotations in china fenoxaprop p ethyl and mesosulfuron methyl are two major herbicides used to control b syzigachne resistance has evolved in b syzigachne under continuous selective pressure from herbicides this study aimed to establish the cross resistance pattern of a resistant population and explore the potential non target site based resistance mechanisms of b syzigachne sequencing of target enzyme genes acetyl coenzyme a carboxylase accase and acetolactate synthase als revealed that there were no resistance endowing amino acid substitutions in the resistant b syzigachne population rf1 compared with the sensitive population sf1 and obtained the purified materials furthermore piperonyl butoxide pbo and malathion showed synergistic effects with fenoxaprop p ethyl and mesosulfuron methyl respectively in rf1 therefore we speculate that the resistance observed in b syzigachne was related with metabolic mostly involving the cytochrome p450 enzymes cross resistance patterns showed that the purified resistant b syzigachne produce high resistance to fenoxaprop p ethyl and pyroxsulam intermediate resistance to flucarbazone sodium low resistance to quizalofop p ethyl clodinafop propargyl sethoxydim and mesosulfuron methyl sensitive to clethodim pinoxaden and isoproturon,2017,0.103
"The effects of climate change on the distribution of European glass lizard Pseudopus apodus (PALLAS, 1775) in Eurasia",the distribution area of pseudopus apodus includes the balkan crimean peninsulas and ciscaucasia region in europe and asia minor and the middle east this area has experienced a significant habitat loss and fragmentation because of human population growth increased farming logging and climate change to estimate how climate change will affect the presumed future distribution of the studied species we constructed the possible current distribution of the species and its potential environmental risk for future dispersion we used an ensemble prediction to forecast the location and distribution of suitable habitats for p apodus in present and future i e 2070 based on 19 environmental variables the results were consistent among models and indicated that there are two most important variables that affect distribution pattern of the species temperature seasonality and precipitation seasonality all of the models used in this study showed a significant auc and tss value based upon fda and ensemble maps it is proposed here that species range will be extended to the east in particular in higher altitude regions like afghanistan but its western range in jordan will be shrunk comparison of the current distribution and future prediction reveals that suitable habitats of pseudopus apodus will be shifted to higher elevations by 2070 and during this period the species is predicted to migrate from lowlands to higher elevations change in latitudinal range is also probable to find new suitable areas under predicted future climate scenarios,2017,0.793
Aphyllophoroid fungi in insular woodlands of eastern Ukraine,background fungi play crucial roles in ecosystems and are among the species richest organism groups on earth however knowledge on their occurrence lags behind the data for animals and plants recent analyses of fungal occurrence data from western central and northern europe provided important insights into response of fungi to global warming the consequences of the global changes for biodiversity on a larger geographical scale are not yet understood landscapes of eastern europe and particularly of eastern ukraine with their specific geological history vegetation and climate can add substantially new information about fungal diversity in europe new information we describe the dataset and provide a checklist of aphyllophoroid fungi non gilled macroscopic basidiomycota from eastern ukraine sampled in 16 areas between 2007 and 2011 the dataset was managed on the plutof biodiversity workbench http dx doi org 10 15156 bio 587471 and can also be accessed via global biodiversity information facility gbif parts of datasets https doi org 10 15468 kuspj6 and https doi org 10 15468 h7qtfd this dataset includes 3418 occurences namely 2727 specimens and 691 observations of fructifications belonging to 349 species of fungi with these data the digitised cwu herbarium v n karazin kharkiv national university ukraine doubled in size a most detailed description of the substrate s properties and habitat for each record is provided the specimen records are supplemented by 26 nuclear ribosomal dna its sequences and six 28s sequences additionally 287 photographs depicting diagnostic macro and microscopic features of fungal fruitbodies as well as studied habitats are linked to the dataset most of the specimens have at least one mention in literature and relevant references are displayed as associated with specimen data in total 16 publication references are linked to the dataset the dataset sheds new light on the fungal diversity of eastern europe it is expected to complement other public sources of fungal occurrence information on continental and global levels in addressing macroecological and biogeographical questions,2017,0.401
"Taxonomy and distribution of the imperilled Newfoundland Gray-cheeked Thrush, Catharus minimus minimus",gray cheeked thrushes breeding on newfoundland are purported to be a distinct subspecies catharus minimus minimus and have declined precipitously since the 1980s to assess the validity of gray cheeked thrush subspecies we collected blood samples and morphological measurements from 51 individuals captured at 15 sites in newfoundland and labrador 2013â 2015 analysis of mitochondrial nd2 and nuclear intron adam ts 6 fib7 sequences from these and additional samples from nova scotia newfoundland labrador quebec alaska and siberia showed low genetic variation at both nuclear loci and shallow mitochondrial divergence between subspecies there were no shared haplotypes between thrushes from newfoundland nova scotia n 41 and those from western labrador and further west n 24 thrushes from newfoundland also had shorter wing chords tails and culmens and less black in the mandible compared to those from western labrador and quebec samples from the southeast coast of labrador n 13 included nd2 haplotypes both from newfoundland and western labrador plus one putative hybrid that was phenotypically a gray cheeked thrush but that had a bicknellâ s thrush c bicknelli nd2 haplotype and was heterozygous at a segregating site in fib7 we detected thrushes during point counts at 7 of 24 sites on newfoundland but failed to detect them at 10 historically occupied sites on newfoundland or in the reported distribution gap between subspecies in labrador sites where thrushes have apparently disappeared had less shrub habitat within 1250 m and more large broadleaf trees within territory scale areas compared to sites where they persist additionally red squirrels tamiasciurus hudsonicus are an introduced species on newfoundland and thrush occurrence was 3x higher at sites where red squirrels were not detected our results support previous designations of c m minimus from newfoundland and southeastern labrador as a subspecies distinct from c m aliciae found further west,2017,0.781
Factoring economic costs into conservation planning may not improve agreement over priorities for protection,conservation organizations must redouble efforts to protect habitat given continuing biodiversity declines prioritization of future areas for protection is hampered by disagreements over what the ecological targets of conservation should be here we test the claim that such disagreements will become less important as conservation moves away from prioritizing areas for protection based only on ecological considerations and accounts for varying costs of protection using return on investment roi methods we combine a simulation approach with a case study of forests in the eastern united states paying particular attention to how covariation between ecological benefits and economic costs influences agreement levels for many conservation goals agreement over spatial priorities improves with roi methods however we also show that a reliance on roi based prioritization can sometimes exacerbate disagreements over priorities as such accounting for costs in conservation planning does not enable society to sidestep careful consideration of the ecological goals of conservation,2017,0.278
Influence of climate and forest management on damage risk by the pine weevil Hylobius abietis in northern Sweden,the pine weevil hylobius abietis l is an economically important pest insect that kills high proportions of conifer seedlings in reforestation areas it is present in conifer forests all over europe but weevil abundance and risk for damage varies considerably between areas this study aimed to obtain a useful model for predicting damage risks by analyzing survey data from 292 regular forest plantations in northern sweden a model of pine weevil attack was constructed using various site characteristics including both climatic factors and factors related to forest management activities the optimal model was rather imprecise but showed that the risk of pine weevil attack can be predicted approximatively with three principal variables 1 the proportion of seedlings expected to be planted in mineral soil rather than soil covered with duff and debris 2 age of clear cut at the time of planting and 3 calculated temperature sum at the location the model was constructed using long run average temperature sums for epoch 2010 and so effects of climate change can be inferred from the model by adjustment to future epochs increased damage risks with a warmer climate are strongly indicated by the model effects of a warmer climate on the geographical distribution and abundance of the pine weevil are also discussed the new tool to better estimate the risk of damage should provide a basis for foresters in their choice of countermeasures against pine weevil damage in northern europe,2017,0.025
From microscope to management: The critical value of plankton taxonomy to marine policy and biodiversity conservation,taxonomic information provides a crucial understanding of the most basic component of biodiversity â which organisms are present in a region or ecosystem taxonomy however is a discipline in decline at times perceived as â obsoleteâ due to technical advances in science and with fewer trained taxonomists and analysts emerging each year to replace the previous generation as it retires simultaneously increasing focus is turned towards sustainable management of the marine environment using an ecosystem approach and towards conserving biodiversity key species and habitats sensitive indicators derived from taxonomic data are instrumental to the successful delivery of these efforts at the base of the marine food web and closely linked to their immediate environment plankton are increasingly needed as indicators to support marine policy inform conservation efforts for higher trophic organisms and protect human health detailed taxonomic data containing information on the presence absence and abundance of individual plankton species are required to underpin the development of sensitive species and community level indicators which are necessary to understand subtle changes in marine ecosystems and inform management and conservation efforts here the critical importance of plankton taxonomic data is illustrated and therefore plankton taxonomic expertise in informing marine policy and conservation and outline challenges and potential solutions facing this discipline,2017,0.454
"A new Cenozoic record of spinilomatine aporrhaids (Stromboidea, Caenogastropoda) in the early Paleocene of Faxe, Denmark",a new find is identified as a representative of the subfamily spinilomatinae viz spiniloma faxensis sp nov the specimen was found as an impression in coral limestone of the early paleocene middle danian faxe formation in the faxe quarry in denmark the genus spiniloma was until now known exclusively from the mesozoic of europe the new find extends the stratigraphic range of the genus into the early paleocene furthermore the gastropod fauna of the faxe formation is dominated by gastropods with a preference for hard substrates while soft substrate genera like spiniloma are extremely rare,2017,0.409
A review on the state of the biodiversity knowledge on Iran’s southern seas: introducing a methodology to evaluate the validity of the reported cases,high maritime activities in the persian gulf and the gulf of oman as the major waterways for oil and gas transport and the lack of a documented database on total taxa diversity require greater attention for the biodiversity of these environments the available marine biodiversity data in iran are sparse and abandoned on librariesâ shelves and as such accessing relevant and reliable current information about the status of iranian southern seas biodiversity is challenging therefore there is an urgent need to extract standardize and evaluate these biodiversity data a comprehensive review of the available biodiversity data on the iranian southern seas provided an estimate about the species diversity and highlighted the amount of reliable biodiversity data research gaps and required information for the lesser known areas in the present review the available biodiversity data records of the persian gulf and the gulf of oman under iranian ownership was extracted from non database information sources books theses research reports and articles and open access database portals such as the ocean biogeographic information system obis global biodiversity information facility gbif https doi org 10 15468 dl jm7hat and those museum collections with online portal data collection search facilities in total 59 745 biodiversity records were extracted from all information sources after data standardization based on the obis data scheme darwin core format eight criteria with 29 sub criteria were considered and scored to measure the validity of each record consequently the presence of 3364 valid species more than twice the number predicted earlier for the total species diversity was reported for the study area describing new species shows an increasing trend as most of the 80 new species until the beginning of 2018 were described recently mollusca phylum had the most amount of synonymy in non database information sources the results show that some marine taxa have been ignored in previous studies and the focus was on a certain group of organisms multi criteria scoring analysis shows that 6 of the extracted biodiversity data for non database information sources have 75â 100 credit valid 70 have 50â 75 credit semi valid 23 4 have 25â 50 credit a little valid and 0 9 have 0â 25 credit invalid on the other hand obis data extracted for iran do not have invalid data due to its good data quality control but 58 and 20 of its extracted data are semi valid and valid respectively we believe that all of the eight mentioned criteria are required for reporting biodiversity data and our proposed weighting system helps different users who need to know how reliable is the published data,2017,0.394
The comparison of molecular and morphology-based phylogenies of trichaline net-winged beetles (Coleoptera: Lycidae: Metriorrhynchini) with description of a new subgenus,separate morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses are presented and the classification of trichaline net winged beetles is revised the clade earlier given a subfamily tribe or subtribe rank is a terminal lineage in metriorrhynchina and contains diatrichalus kleine 1926 eniclases waterhouse 1879 flabellotrichalus pic 1921 lobatang bocak 1998 microtrichalus pic 1921 schizotrichalus kleine 1926 and trichalus waterhouse 1877 maibrius subgen nov is proposed in flabellotrichalus with the type species flabellotrichalus maibrius horaki sp nov unlike previous studies lobatang is included in the trichaline clade further spinotrichalus kazantsev 2010 stat nov is down ranked to the subgenus in lobatang bocak 1998 and a new combination lobatang spinotrichalus telnovi kazantsev 2010 comb nov is proposed the morphology does not provide a sufficient support for robust phylogeny due to the intrageneric variability of most phenotypic traits and the limited number of characters supporting deep relationships most morphological generic diagnoses must be based on the shape of male genitalia other characters such as the shapes of pronotum and antennae are commonly variable within genera the fronto lateral pronotal ridges of eniclases schizotrichalus resemble the ancestral condition in metriorrhynchini and they re evolved in the terminal clade and do not indicate the early split of eniclases schizotrichalus from other trichaline genera the evolution of morphological traits and the conflict in the morphological and molecular phylogenetic signal are discussed in details we suggest that the general appearance is affected by the evolution of mimetic complexes the patterns of elytral costae by their strengthening function and the presence of flabellate antennae by their role in sexual communication then similar phenotypic traits evolve in unrelated lineages the results demonstrate that phylogenetic classification must be based on all available information because neither morphological traits nor dna data robustly support all recovered relationships,2017,0.275
Data fitness for use in conservation planning: Conservation of crop wild relatives in Norway,crop wild relatives cwr are plants that through their close genetic relationship to crop plants have the potential to bring new genetic diversity into crops conservation of cwr is therefore an important task both globally and nationally a national recommendation of in situ and ex situ conservation of cwr in norway has been made by phillips et al 2016 using occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and species distribution modelling sdm with maxent to find hotspots of cwr diversity the goal of this study is to explore some of the limitations when using typical gbif mediated data which can be opportunistically and unsystematically sampled presence only occurrence data in order to investigate this sdms were made with gbif mediated presence only occurrence data from five different cwr plant species from the cwr priority list for norway made by phillips et al 2016 namely allium ursinum l ramsons carum carvi l caraway ribes uva crispa l gooseberry rubus chamaemorus l cloudberry and rubus idaeus l wild raspberries for each species occurrence data was sampled to three different time periods all points from before 1950 from 1950 to 2000 and all after 2000 in addition sdms were made using smaller and smaller sample sizes to test sdms there is a need to gather independent and unbiased test data from field work and a preliminary work has here been done to investigate possible methods of field validation results indicate that older occurrence data give different models than newer data and an approach is suggested for identifying the minimum number of presence points needed for stable sdms this thesis has highlighted some of the issues with spatial temporal and species bias in gbif data being aware that the biases exist is the first step towards finding solutions to deal with it and many solutions have been suggested by others,2017,0.853
Efficient occupancy model-fitting for extensive citizen-science data,appropriate large scale citizen science data present important new opportunities for biodiversity modelling due in part to the wide spatial coverage of information recently proposed occupancy modelling approaches naturally incorporate random effects in order to account for annual variation in the composition of sites surveyed in turn this leads to bayesian analysis and model fitting which are typically extremely time consuming motivated by presence only records of occurrence from the uk butterflies for the new millennium data base we present an alternative approach in which site variation is described in a standard way through logistic regression on relevant environmental covariates this allows efficient occupancy model fitting using classical inference which is easily achieved using standard computers this is especially important when models need to be fitted each year typically for many different species as with british butterflies for example using both real and simulated data we demonstrate that the two approaches with and without random effects can result in similar conclusions regarding trends there are many advantages to classical model fitting including the ability to compare a range of alternative models identify appropriate covariates and assess model fit using standard tools of maximum likelihood in addition modelling in terms of covariates provides opportunities for understanding the ecological processes that are in operation we show that there is even greater potential the classical approach allows us to construct regional indices simply which indicate how changes in occupancy typically vary over a speciesâ range in addition we are also able to construct dynamic occupancy maps which provide a novel modern tool for examining temporal changes in species distribution these new developments may be applied to a wide range of taxa and are valuable at a time of climate change they also have the potential to motivate citizen scientists,2017,0.107
Oaks Under Mediterranean-Type Climates: Functional Response to Summer Aridity,mediterranean type climates are characterized by warm or hot summers mild or cold winters and especially by the existence of a summer drought period driven by the low or even nule precipitation during this season mediterranean type climates are represented in different areas of the world both in the northern and the southern hemisphere specifically regarding the existence of quercus under these climatic conditions two main geographical areas should be considered namely the mediterranean basin in the palearctic and california usa and baja california mexico in the nearctic despite the relatively low geographical extension of the areas occupied by oaks under this type of climate it has deserved its own phytoclimatical entity since the first geobotanical synthesis at a global scale although evergreen and sclerophyllous oak species are widely assumed as a prototype of mediterranean oaks both palaeoecological evidences and present biogeographical analysis confirm the co existence of this oak type with winter deciduous species of the same genus in this chapter the different advantages and disadvantages of both phenological patterns evergreeness and winter deciduousness are presented moreover the strategies for saving water through the overall leaf size reduction the stomatal control of water losses or some xeromorphic traits for a further reduction of transpiration are also shown finally the development of a high resistance to drought induced cavitation as a way for coping with low water potential during dry periods is discussed,2017,0.57
"THE SPOTTED SANDGROUSE, PTEROCLES SENEGALLUS (LINNAEUS, 1771) AS A NEW HOST FOR THE SPIRURID NEMATODE HARTERTIA GALLINARUM (THEILER, 1919) IN IRAQ",in this work the spirurid nematode hartertia gallinarum was reported in the intestine of the spotted sandgrouse pterocles senegallus collected in three different locations ga ara depression iraqi western desert zurbatiyah and al attariyah middle of iraq description and measurements of the nematode were given the role of termites in the infection of p senegallus with h gallinarum was discussed occurrence of h gallinarum in p senegallus represents a new host record,2017,0.54
Do consensus models outperform individual models? Transferability evaluations of diverse modeling approaches for an invasive moth,transferability is key to many of the most novel and interesting applications of ecological niche models such that maximizing predictive power of model transfers is crucial here we explored consensus methods as a means of reducing uncertainty and improving model transferability in anticipating the potential distribution of an invasive moth hyphantria cunea individual native range niche models were calibrated using seven modelling algorithms and four environmental datasets representing different degrees of dimensionality spatial correlation and ecological relevance and showing different degrees of climate niche expansion four consensus methods were used to combine individual niche models we assessed transferability of consensus models and the individual models used to generate them the results suggested that ideal criteria for environmental variable selection vary among algorithms as different algorithms showed different sensitivities to spatial dimensionality and correlation consensus models reflected the central tendency of individual models and reduced uncertainty by consolidating consistency across individual models but did not outperform individual models the question of whether interpolation accuracy comes at the expense of transferability suggests caution in planning methodologies for processing niche models to predict invasive potential these explorations outline approaches by which to reduce uncertainty and improve niche model transferability with vital implications for ensemble forecasting,2017,0.086
Phylogenetic study of indigenous grapevine leaf rust fungi in North America and biological identity of an invasive grapevine leaf rust fungus in Brazil,two american grapevine leaf rust glr fungi phakopsora muscadiniae and p uva were found to be phylogenetically different from asian australasian glr fungi in the phylogram based on rdna region sequences a clade of the american fungi was sister to an inclusive clade of three autoecious species on meliosma and a heteroecious species host alternating between meliosma and parthenocissus an invasive brazilian glr fungus as p meliosmae myrianthae was included in the asian australasian glr fungi clade or the clade of the thai population of phakopsora sp it could be assumed that the brazilian glr fungus originated from an inadvertently introduced thai population,2017,0.714
Convolvulus sabatius subsp. mauritanicus (Boiss.) Murb. – just a new casual alien plant in Dalmatia or…?,background and purpose e genus convolvulus convolvulaceae is distributed worldwide several species are used as ornamental plants and one of them is c sabatius a native species in magreb africa and italy for croatia it was reported just as a cultivated plant after six years of continuous monitoring we present here the rst locality of its subspecies c sabatius subsp mauritanicus outside of cultivation materials and methods e oristic survey of the city of kasìœtela was conducted during the summer of 2011 and 2016 and the site was geocoded by a gps device e population of the new alien convolvulus taxon was continuously observed for six years results e new alien convolvulus taxon was recorded in 2011 in the settlement rudine of kasìœtel novi dalmatia on an anthropogenic meadow at rst it was determined as c sabatius and it was its rst nding outside of cultivation in 2016 the plant was more precisely determined as c sa batius subsp mauritanicus from a few individuals observed in 2011 after six years the population of the new alien taxon enlarged its size and in 2016 covers an area of approximately 6 m2 conclusion due to our observation that this plant on the surrounding areas of our locality rudine is constantly planted we assumed that c sa batius subsp mauritanicus is just a casual alien plant however due to the enlargement of its population and weed â žbehaviourâ in similar climatic areas of europe and australia further monitoring of the locality is recom mended and possible eradication measures in the future as well,2017,0.464
A second species of the genus Cretoleptochromus Cai &amp; Huang (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Scydmaeninae) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber,a second species of the extinct scydmaenine genus cretoleptochromus cai huang c burmiticus sp nov is described and figured based on three exquisitely preserved specimens embedded in mid cretaceous burmese amber the new taxon possesses an extremely elongate body form and strongly extended legs and antennae that provide reliable means for species diagnosis and a ready separation from the only known congener the type species c archaicus cai huang also reported from burmese amber the morphology of c burmiticus also suggests that this species was probably an active diurnal predator living in open environments,2017,0.732
The radiation and biogeography of snakes across south-eastern Africa with respect to the evolution of the savanna biome,the heterogeneous landscape of the african continent was preceded by a pan african forest that has been transformed by concomitant contractions and expansions of this biome since the oligocene epoch to primarily savanna at present as such faunal groups that emerged during the paleogene neogene period and have species distributed in both forest and savanna habitat should show a genetic signature of the possible evolutionary impact of these biome developments crotaphopeltis and philothamnus were ideal candidate taxa to investigate the evolutionary impact of these biome developments on widespread african colubrid snakes species in these two genera occur throughout sub saharan africa and are associated with either closed forest open e g savanna as well as both habitat types the main research aim was to investigate synchronised timing and patterns of radiation for crotaphopeltis and philothamnus with respect to these african biome developments knowledge of the evolutionary relationships for the two genera was needed to construct their biogeographic histories reliably therefore described species of crotaphopeltis and philothamnus were investigated for their validity under the evolutionary species concept with an aim to identify cryptic species that are otherwise masked by phenotypic and or ecological parallels newly identified species were used in subsequent analysis of timing of lineage diversification and the reconstruction of ancestral habitat states the influence of historical environmental conditions on the evolution of the climatic niche of two wide ranging species in each of the genera c hotamboeia and p angolensis were additionally studied the climatic distributions of the two species were modelled for contrasting climatic conditions during the pleistocene period and their ancestral climatic states were reconstructed results show that both genera are monophyletic up to seven candidate species are recognised within philothamnus and two within crotaphopeltis which provide a basis for future taxonomic revisions timing of lineage diversification and associated shifts of species into novel habitats correspond to the historical developments of the forest and savanna biomes since the oligocene philothamnus showed an ancestral preference toward closed habitat while the ancestral habitat type for crotaphopeltis was equivocal between closed and open habitat types the miocene epoch signifies a period of increased diversity within both genera it specifically appears that the climatic oscillations during early mid miocene facilitated the evolution of c hotamboeia as a climatic generalist whilst the late miocene climatic conditions induced specialisation of p angolensis in subtropical climate the research presented here demonstrates that development of habitat throughout the late oligocene influenced the radiation patterns of the colubrid snake genera crotaphopeltis and philothamnus,2017,0.973
"The Genus Derancistrus Audinet-Serville, 1832 (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Prioninae: Solenopterini) in Cuba, with Description of a New Species",abstract the species of derancistrus audinet serville 1832 from cuba are reviewed derancistrus pilosus devesa fonseca and barro new species is described diagnoses photographs distributional maps and a key to all derancistrus species known from cuba are provided,2017,0.39
Pest Risk Analysis for Hygrophila polysperma,hygrophila polysperma roxb t anderson has a strong negative impact in other regions of the world which warrants an evaluation of its potential impacts in the eppo region the high phenotypic plasticity allows the species to grow in variable habitats and the predicted climate change will result in increasing suitable habitat in the eppo region overall species biology its impacts and the predicted spread potential make a pra for the eppo region essential h polysperma currently has a limited distribution in the eppo region the species is present in thermally heated waters in austria germany hungary and poland h polysperma was added to the eppo alert list in 2010 and transferred to the eppo list of alien invasive plants in 2012 in 2016 the species was prioritized along with 36 additional species from the eppo list of invasive alien plants and a recent horizon scanning study2 for pra within the life funded project â œmitigating the threat of invasive alien plants to the eu through pest risk analysis to support the regulation 1143 2014â h polysperma scored a high priority for pra and was thus included in the list of 16 species to undergo risk analysis as part of the life project,2017,0.684
"First record of the fourfinger threadfin, Eleutheronema tetradactylum (Shaw, 1804) in Belgium",a single small specimen 810 mm total length of polynemid fish was caught in the zeeschelde near the village of branst the fish was captured in a mid water beam trawl from an anchored boat in september 2016 it is the first record of eleutheronema tetradactylum shaw 1804 in belgium,2017,0.354
Simple Rules for an Efficient Use of Geographic Information Systems in Molecular Ecology,geographic information systems gis are becoming increasingly popular in the context of molecular ecology and conservation biology thanks to their display options efficiency flexibility and management of geodata indeed spatial data for wildlife and livestock species is becoming a trend with many researchers publishing genomic data that is specifically suitable for landscape studies gis uniquely reveal the possibility to overlay genetic information with environmental data and as such allow us to locate and analyze genetic boundaries of various plant and animal species or to study gene environment associations gea this means that using gis we can potentially identify the genetic bases of species adaptation to particular geographic conditions or to climate change however many biologists are not familiar with the use of gis and underlying concepts and thus experience difficulties in finding relevant information and instructions on how to use them in this paper we illustrate the power of free and open source gis approaches and provide essential information for their successful application in molecular ecology first we introduce key concepts related to gis that are too often overlooked in the literature for example coordinate systems gps accuracy and scale we then provide an overview of the most employed open source gis related software file formats and refer to major environmental databases we also reconsider sampling strategies as high costs of next generation sequencing ngs data currently diminish the number of samples that can be sequenced per location thereafter we detail methods of data exploration and spatial statistics suited for the analysis of large genetic datasets finally we provide suggestions to properly edit maps and to make them as comprehensive as possible either manually or trough programming languages,2017,0.105
Report: 4th NECLIME Workshop on Digital Plant Distribution,the 4th neclime workshop on digital plant distribution was held in liã ge at the institut de physique universitã de liã ge from may 30â 31 2017 and was hosted by louis franã ois and alexandra jane henrot fourteen scientists from 5 countries attended this very productive workshop of the neclime working group on digital plant distribution the workshop was organised in 4 sessions detailed below each with introductory talks and round table discussions moreover four presentations on various related topics were given marie dury alexandra henrot matthew pound robert a spicer,2017,0.304
"One for each ocean: revision of the Bursa granularis (Röding, 1798) species complex (Gastropoda: Tonnoidea: Bursidae)",bursa granularis rã ding 1798 is a tonnoidean gastropod that is regarded as broadly distributed throughout the indo pacific and tropical western atlantic because of its variable shell it has received no less than thirteen names now all synonymized under the name b granularis we sequenced a fragment of the cox1 gene for 82 specimens covering a large part of its distribution and most type localities two delimitation methods were applied one based on genetic distance abgd and one based on phylogenetic trees gmyc all analyses suggest that specimens identified as b granularis comprise four distinct species one limited to the tropical western atlantic another to southwestern western australia and two in the indo pacific from the red sea to the open pacific that are partly sympatricâ but not syntopicâ in japan the philippines vanuatu and new caledonia based on comparison of shell characters we applied the following available names to the four species respectively b cubaniana dâ orbigny 1841 b elisabettae nappo pellegrini bonomolo 2014 b granularis s s and b affinis broderip 1833 we provide new standardized conchological descriptions for each of them our results demonstrate that a long planktotrophic larval stage common among tonnoidea does not necessarily ensure a circumtropical species distribution,2017,0.547
Independent contrasts reveal climatic relationships of divaricate plants in New Zealand,plant species with divaricate forms are particularly common in new zealand where approximately 10 of all endemic woody species can be categorised as divaricate a number of potential selective pressures have been proposed in order to explain this unusual feature of new zealand flora it has been suggested that divaricate architecture is a defensive adaptation that limits damage caused by either moa browsing or by climatic stresses climate based hypotheses have proposed that the growth form confers a selective advantage in variable environments that are windy droughty or frost prone one specific mechanism proposed for a climatic explanation is that the divaricate form might shield inner foliage from photoinhibition on cold sites with high winter solar irradiance by determining which climatic factors are most associated with the occurrence of divaricate plants we aim to evaluate these hypothesised climate relationships this study uses organism occurrence records and logistic regression to compare the climate relationships of 12 divaricate species with those of larger leaved congeners of the seven climatic variables that were considered july minimum temperature was the variable that most consistently differentiated between divaricate species and their broad leaved congeners the former growing on sites that were significantly colder on average during this month in general divaricate plants were associated with lower winter light intensity than their broad leaved congeners although moderation analysis showed that this relationship was reversed on the coldest sites the small size of this effect gives little support to the hypothesis that the divaricate form is especially advantageous in environments conducive to photoinhibition however the strong association with cold winters adds to a body of evidence that the divaricate form is favoured in frosty environments,2017,0.398
Nearly 400 million people are at higher risk of schistosomiasis because dams block the migration of snail-eating river prawns,dams have long been associated with elevated burdens of human schistosomiasis but how dams increase disease is not always clear in part because dams have many ecological and socio economic effects a recent hypothesis argues that dams block reproduction of the migratory river prawns that eat the snail hosts of schistosomiasis in the senegal river basin there is evidence that prawn populations declined and schistosomiasis increased after completion of the diama dam restoring prawns to a water access site upstream of the dam reduced snail density and reinfection rates in people however whether a similar cascade of effects from dams to prawns to snails to human schistosomiasis occurs elsewhere is unknown here we examine large dams worldwide and identify where their catchments intersect with endemic schistosomiasis and the historical habitat ranges of large migratory macrobrachium spp prawns river prawn habitats are widespread and we estimate that 277â 385 million people live within schistosomiasis endemic regions where river prawns are or were present out of the 800 million people who are at risk of schistosomiasis using a published repository of schistosomiasis studies in sub saharan africa we compared infection before and after the construction of 14 large dams for people living in i upstream catchments within historical habitats of native prawns ii comparable undammed watersheds and iii dammed catchments beyond the historical reach of migratory prawns damming was followed by greater increases in schistosomiasis within prawn habitats than outside prawn habitats we estimate that one third to one half of the global population at risk of schistosomiasis could benefit from restoration of native prawns because dams block prawn migrations our results suggest that prawn extirpation contributes to the sharp increase of schistosomiasis after damming and points to prawn restoration as an ecological solution for reducing human disease,2017,0.442
Long-term monitoring of diversity and structure of two stands of an Atlantic Tropical Forest,this study aimed to report the long term monitoring of diversity and structure of the tree community in a protected semideciduous atlantic forest in the south of minas gerais state southeast brazil the study was conducted in two stands b and c each with 26 and 38 10 m x 30 m plots censuses of stand b were conducted in 2000 2005 and 2011 and stand c in 2001 2006 and 2011 in both stands the most abundant and important species for biomass accumulation over the inventories were trees larger than 20 cm of diameter which characterize advanced successional stage within the forest,2017,0.397
Using predicted locations and an ensemble approach to address sparse data sets forspecies distribution modelling: Long-horned beetles (Cerambycidae) of the Fiji islands,several modelling tools were utilised to develop maps predicting the suitability of the fiji islands for long horned beetles cerambycidae that include endemic and endangered species such as the giant fijian beetle xixuthrus heros this was part of an effort to derive spatially relevant knowledge for characterising an important taxonomic group in an area with relatively few biodiversity studies occurrence data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and bioclimatic variables from the worldclim database were used as input for species distribution modelling sdm due to the low number of available occurrence data resulting in inconsistent performance of different tools several algorithms implemented in the dismo package in r bioclim domain glm mahalanobis svm rf and maxent were tested to determine which provide the best performance occurrence sets at several distribution densities were tested to determine which algorithm and sample size combination provided the best model results the machine learning algorithms rf svm and maxent consistently provided the best performance as evaluated by the true skill statistic tss kappa and area under curve auc metrics the occurrence set with a density distribution of one sampling point per 10km2 provided the best performance and was used for the final prediction model an ensemble of the best performing algorithms generated the final suitability predictive map the results can serve as a basis for additional studies and provide initial information that will eventually support decision making processes supporting conservation in the archipelago,2017,0.206
Nahuatlea: a new genus of compositae (Gochnatieae) from North America,in the course of a detailed molecular study of the tribe gochnatieae compositae gochnatioideae it became apparent that the genus gochnatia sensu cabrera was not monophyletic but composed of a number of morphologically geographically and molecularly distinct clades all but one of these clades had previously been recognized at the generic or sectional level and therefore had a name that could be applied however one clade whose members are from mexico and adjacent parts of the united states had never been recognized as a distinct taxon the mexican clade is the sister group of the caribbean clade which seems to indicate a dispersal event from southern south america to mexico and from mexico to the caribbean here we provide the mexican clade with a genus name nahuatlea and make the necessary new combinations the name is derived from nahuatl the major indigenous language that is spoken in the area where most of the collections were gathered a genus description key to species images and a short species descriptions are provided,2017,0.417
On the identity of Helianthemum mathezii and H. pomeridianum (Cistaceae),the original description of helianthemum mathezii regarded the species to be a therophyte however the detailed observation of the holotype of h mathezii as well as newly collected specimens from the type locality does not support its condition of annual plant further study has led to the conclusion that all these plants can readily be identified as h pomeridianum the descriptions of h mathezii and h pomeridianum are equivalent except for the habit being the former annual and the latter suffruticose we show in this study that h mathezii is to be considered a synonym of h pomeridianum and report a new locality of h pomeridianum in morocco also we provide the first chromosome count for this species 2n 22 which emphasizes the close relationship of h pomeridianum to h subgen plectolobum,2017,0.489
The influence of spatial scales on Red List composition: Forest species in Fennoscandia,national red lists are widely used prioritizing tools for nature conservation however status and trends of species vary with scale and accounting for a larger spatial scale may provide complementary perspectives for nature conservation we investigate effects of up scaling and influence of wider scale distribution patterns for composition of red lists we collated nationally red listed forest species in norway sweden and finland and extracted â œcandidates for a fennoscandian red listâ cfrl defined as species red listed where they appear in the region for each country we compared composition of organism groups and forest type associations of species that were national cfrl to the nationally red listed species not cfrl european distribution patterns were compared to investigate how broader scale distribution is reflected in national red lists among the 4830 nationally red listed forest species in fennoscandia 58 were cfrl the fraction of species in the different forest type and species groups differed significantly between the two spatial scales for several groups although the overall differences in composition were relatively small red listed species had more confined distribution patterns suggesting that many nationally red listed species owe their status to being at the edge of their distribution range an up scaling had a large effect on which species designated to a red list but a relatively small impact on which organism groups or forest types that contained most red listed species a regional perspective generated by compilation of national red lists can give valuable complementary information on the status of species and effects of scale,2017,0.981
A suite of essential biodiversity variables for detecting critical biodiversity change,key global indicators of biodiversity decline such as the iucn red list index and the living planet index have relatively long assessment intervals this means they due to their inherent structure function as late warning indicators that are retrospective rather than prospective these indicators are unquestionably important in providing information for biodiversity conservation but the detection of early warning signs of critical biodiversity change is also needed so that proactive management responses can be enacted promptly where required generally biodiversity conservation has dealt poorly with the scattered distribution of necessary detailed information and needs to find a solution to assemble harmonize and standardize the data the prospect of monitoring essential biodiversity variables ebvs has been suggested in response to this challenge the concept has generated much attention but the ebvs themselves are still in development due to the complexity of the task the limited resources available and a lack of long term commitment to maintain ebv data sets as a first step the scientific community and the policy sphere should agree on a set of priority candidate ebvs to be developed within the coming years to advance both large scale ecological research as well as global and regional biodiversity conservation critical ecological transitions are of high importance from both a scientific as well as from a conservation policy point of view as they can lead to long lasting biodiversity change with a high potential for deleterious effects on whole ecosystems and therefore also on human well being we evaluated candidate ebvs using six criteria relevance sensitivity to change generalizability scalability feasibility and data availability and provide a literature based review for eight ebvs with high sensitivity to change the proposed suite of ebvs comprises abundance allelic diversity body mass index ecosystem heterogeneity phenology range dynamics size at first reproduction and survival rates the eight candidate ebvs provide for the early detection of critical and potentially long lasting biodiversity change and should be operationalized as a priority only with such an approach can science predict the future status of global biodiversity with high certainty and set up the appropriate conservation measures early and efficiently importantly the selected ebvs would address a large range of conservation issues and contribute to a total of 15 of the 20 aichi targets and are hence of high biological relevance,2017,0.029
Macroclimatic niche limits and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in Gomphrenoideae (Amaranthaceae),during the evolution of vascular plants c4 photosynthesis has developed 60 times but most studies concerning the evolution and the ecophysiological advantages of the c4 syndrome have been carried out in grasses among eudicots c4 photosynthesis has developed in lineages that are morphologically more diverse than the relatively homogeneous grasses and conclusions about c4 evolution based on grasses may or may not apply to eudicots little is known about the origin of c4 photosynthesis in amaranthaceae s s one of the most c4 species rich lineages of eudicots among subfamily gomphrenoideae c3 and c4 species are found in arid regions but high andean species display the c4 pathway in this study we aimed to compare the climatic extremes between c3 and c4 species in gomphrenoideae in particular we evaluated the upper and lower extremes of three climatic variables among closely related c3 and c4 lineages using phylogenetic generalized least squares pgls applied on four topologies maximum parsimony bayesian and maximum likelihood ml topologies including species with available dna sequences and a ml topology that included unsequenced species with available climate data we tested whether the evolution of c4 photosynthesis correlates with a niche specialization where both the upper and the lower extremes change position or a niche expansion where only a single extreme changes position pgls results showed that c4 species of gomphrenoideae have specialized to dryer regions and expanded into colder ones than their c3 relatives however the niche expansion into colder climates only includes areas with low temperatures during winter not during the growing period finally we found no evidence for a niche change into warmer climates therefore the model for the evolution of c4 photosynthesis in gomphrenoideae may differ from the one supported in chenopodioideae and seems to be more similar to that found in grasses where the c4 pathway appears to have evolved in humid habitats but facilitated an expansion into arid ones however we found no support for the common expectation that c4 species reach warmer climates than their c3 relatives contrasting with previous results on grasses,2017,0.912
Entomological citizen science in Canada,citizen science involves voluntary participation in the scientific process typically by gathering data in order to monitor some aspect of the natural world entomological citizen science as an extension of traditional amateur entomology is an active field in canada with online databases such as ebutterfly and bugguide attracting both contributors and database users as well traditional amateur entomology continues to be important in canada as do short term insect themed educational events the involvement of amateurs in entomological societies and online crowdsourcing initiatives success of citizen science projects can be measured in many ways in terms of published papers that analyse trends in citizen science data canadian projects have only begun to deliver more valuable are particular records that improve our knowledge of geographic ranges and phenology in terms of the endurance of particular projects and the willingness of volunteers to participate citizen science entomology in canada is clearly a success however quality control of citizen science data remains an issue for some projects as well challenges remain with respect to balancing the goals of researchers participants and supporting institutions,2017,0.141
Detecting invertebrate species in archived collections using next-generation sequencing,invertebrate biodiversity measured at mostly family level is widely used in biological monitoring programmes to assess anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems however next generation sequencing ngs could allow development of new more sensitive biomonitoring tools by allowing rapid species identification this could be accelerated if archived invertebrate collections and environmental information from past programmes are used to understand species distributions and their environmental responses in this study we take archived macroinvertebrate samples from two sites collected on multiple occasions and test whether ngs can successfully detect species samples had been stored in 70 ethanol at room temperature for up to 12 years three amplicons ranging from 197 to 274 bps within the dna barcode region were amplified from samples and compared to dna barcoding libraries to identify species we were able to amplify partial dna barcodes from most samples and species were often detected with multiple amplicons however some singletons and taxa poorly covered by dna barcoding were missed this suggests additional dna barcodes will be required to fill â gapsâ in current dna barcode libraries for aquatic macroinvertebrates and or that it may not be possible to detect all taxa in a sample furthermore older samples often detected fewer taxa and were less reliable for amplification suggesting ngs is best used on samples within 8 years of collection nevertheless many common taxa with existing dna barcodes were reliably identified with ngs and were often present at sites across multiple years showing the potential of ngs for detecting common and abundant species in archived material,2017,0.973
Setting up an Interdisciplinary Data Infrastructure: Why Cooperation between Domain Experts and Computer Scientists Matters - An Experience Report from the GFBio Project,the german federation for biological data gfbio diepenbroek et al 2014 is implementing a national infrastructure for the preservation integration and publication of biological data collected in german research projects gfbio is built upon an archive infrastructure comprised of nine data centers including pangaea and the major german natural science collections german federation for biological data gfbio 2017a creating and running gfbio requires close collaborations within a highly interdisciplinary consortium bringing together expertise from collections scientists in the relevant fields biodiversity informaticians and computer scientists proved to be essential for designing and building this system gfbio is currently in its second funding phase essential services required for the operation of the future infrastructure have been successfully implemented the realized technologies and tools use globally accepted standards as well as innovative concepts e g for data visualisation or semantic integration a portal https www gfbio org provides a common point of access to all gfbio services data submission data discovery data visualisation and analysis a terminology service and a help desk in addition archived research data is shared with international information infrastructures such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the biological collection access service biocase as the data centers use different systems and thus internally build upon different data structures german federation for biological data gfbio 2017b the search functionality integrated in the portal is an good example of the collaboration between teams of different expertise since the aim was to provide an integrated faceted search it was necessary to agree on common fields that can be used to feed the facets therefore the gfbio data centers agreed on using abcd 2 06 access to biological collection data as a common standard and specified thirty elements for data exchange here it was essential to bring together 1 domain experts for defining which facets they consider useful for an effective search 2 computer scientists for providing the implementation based on elasticsearch elasticsearch 2017 3 biodiversity informaticians for defining mappings between different standards and 4 data curators from the gfbio data centers and long term repositories for negotiating the set of mandatory fields the starting point for broader research data management workflows was derived from high quality data provided via publishing pipelines established at each data center with that primary collection and research data are available with metadata and data units according to the abcd community standard and are ready to be reused following the fair data principles wilkinson et al 2016 findable accessible interoperable re usable consequently interdisciplinary cooperation is the gfbio data portalâ s measure of success,2017,0.052
The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation,the distributions of amphibians birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity in contrast the global distributions of reptiles representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity have been unavailable this prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity here we present and analyse the global distribution of 10 064 reptile species 99 of extant terrestrial species we show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa moreover existing protected areas sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles we show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles particularly lizards and turtles adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important notably investing resources in some of the worldâ s arid grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently,2017,0.697
Virtualizing Lifemapper software infrastructure for biodiversity expedition,one of the activities of the pacific rim applications and grid middleware assembly pragma is fostering virtual biodiversity expeditions by bringing domain scientists and cyber infrastructure specialists together as a team over the past few years pragma members have been collaborating on virtualizing the lifemapper software virtualization and cloud computing have introduced great flexibility and efficiency into it projects virtualization refers to the technologies that provide a layer of abstraction between server hardware system and software that runs on it this abstraction enables a logical view of computing resources and allows multiple servers to run on the same hardware with this project we are virtualizing lifemapper by enabling its installation and configuration on a virtual cluster virtualization provides application scalability maximizes resources utilization and creates a more efficient agile and automated infrastructure however there are downsides to the complexity inherent in these environments including the need for special techniques to deploy cluster hosts dependence on virtual environments and challenging application installation management and configuration in this study we report on progress of the lifemapper virtualization framework focused on a reproducible and highly configurable infrastructure capable of fast deployment lifemapper is a distributed software application developed by the biodiversity institute at the university of kansas lifemapper creates and maintains a publicly accessible archive of species distribution maps calculated from public specimen data lifemapper software also provides a suite of tools for biodiversity researchers that calculate single and multispecies distribution predictions and macroecological analyses through application programming interfaces our goal is to create a viable solution that can be easily adopted and reused by scientists from multiple institutions or projects this solution 1 allows fast deployment of ready made cluster images 2 reproduces the complete lifemapper processing pipeline on demand at multiple sites and in different hosting environments and 3 enables scientists to perform lifemapper facilitated data processing on restricted use data very large datasets or other unique data a key contribution of this work is describing the practical experience in taking a complex clustered domain specific data analysis and simulation system and enabling its operation on a variety of system configurations uses of this portability range from whole cluster replication to teaching and experimentation on a single laptop system virtualization is used to practically define and make portable the full application stack including all of its complex set of supporting software and allows lifemapper deployment in a variety of environments,2017,0.115
"The importance of data quality for generating reliable distribution models for rare, elusive, and cryptic species",the availability of spatially referenced environmental data and species occurrence records in online databases enable practitioners to easily generate species distribution models sdms for a broad array of taxa such databases often include occurrence records of unknown reliability yet little information is available on the influence of data quality on sdms generated for rare elusive and cryptic species that are prone to misidentification in the field we investigated this question for the fisher pekania pennanti a forest carnivore of conservation concern in the pacific states that is often confused with the more common pacific marten martes caurina fisher occurrence records supported by physical evidence verifiable records were available from a limited area whereas occurrence records of unknown quality unscreened records were available from throughout the fisherâ s historical range we reserved 20 of the verifiable records to use as a test sample for both models and generated sdms with each dataset using maxent the verifiable model performed substantially better than the unscreened model based on multiple metrics including auctest values 0 78 and 0 62 respectively evaluation of training and test gains and statistical tests of how well each model predicted test localities in addition the verifiable model was consistent with our knowledge of the fisherâ s habitat relations and potential distribution whereas the unscreened model indicated a much broader area of high quality habitat indices 0 5 that included large expanses of high elevation habitat that fishers do not occupy because pacific martens remain relatively common in upper elevation habitats in the cascade range and sierra nevada the sdm based on unscreened records likely reflects primarily a conflation of marten and fisher habitat consequently accurate identifications are far more important than the spatial extent of occurrence records for generating reliable sdms for the fisher in this region we strongly recommend that practitioners avoid using anecdotal occurrence records to build sdms but if such data are used the validity of resulting models should be tested with verifiable occurrence records,2017,0.278
Ecological opportunity and ecomorphological convergence in Australasian robins (Petroicidae),ecological theories of adaptive radiation predict that ecological opportunity eo stimulates cladogenesis through entry into a novel environment and or release of competition pressures due to its dynamic paleoclimatic and geological history the australo papuan region constitutes an opportune scenario to study patterns of diversification in relation to the colonization of new ecological niches here we employ a comparative framework using the australasian robins petroicidae as a model system to test whether the diversification of this bird family fulfils a niche filling process as predicted by the eo model and to test whether the observed morphological similarity is described by a pattern of phylogenetic niche conservatism pnc or convergence although we detected an early burst we did not find a slowdown in speciation or morphological evolution as expected in a niche filling scenario divergence in tarsus length and tail length pc1 was consistent with a multi peak model in which pc1 represents a convergent trait among distantly related clades sharing the same foraging strategy our study thus shows that convergence rather than pnc seems to explain the existence of morphological similarity across independent lineages in the petroicidae we also found a low level of pnc regarding annual variations in temperature and precipitation which is in agreement with the hypothesis that diversification within the petroicidae involved repeated radiations we suggest two non mutually exclusive hypotheses to explain the overall lack of density dependent cladogenesis first the extreme spatial and temporal heterogeneity of this region may have generated a pattern of repeated ecological opportunity over time and second this family may not yet have reached equilibrium diversity,2017,0.152
Man-made microrefugium of Pterostichus anthracinus,an organism can survive grow reproduce and maintain a viable population only under certain climatic conditions however sometimes viable populations are found outside of favorable climate conditions which is attributed to local microclimatic conditions such small areas with local favorable environmental features in which small populations can survive outside their main distribution area protected from the unfavorable regional environmental conditions are called microrefugia in this paper i describe a man made microrefugium of pterostichus anthracinus where a stable population has been observed for 9 years the importance of microrefugia is discussed,2017,0.256
"Vascular plant diversity with special reference to invasion of alien species on the Doon University Campus, Dehradun, India",the present study was conducted to assess vascular plant diversity in a modified habitat in shivalik region extensive surveys were conducted to document the species in each season and identification was done with the help of regional floras a total of 191 species comprising 181 species of angiosperms 176 genera and 76 families 2 species of pteridophytes 2 genera and 1 family and 8 species of gymnosperms 7 genera and 5 families were observed the dominant angiosperms families include asteraceae 18 genera and 18 species followed by fabaceae 16 genera and 18 species lamiaceae 8 genera and 9 species solanaceae 5 genera and 9 species amaranthaceae 7 genera and 8 species euphorbiaceae 4 genera and 8 species and apocynaceae 6 genera and 7 species in gymnosperms 5 families were recorded which include family pinaceae cycadaceae zamiaceae araucariaceae and cupressaceae in pteridophytes only two species of the family pteridaceae were recorded the categorizations on the basis of species habit 96 species were recorded as herbs 23 shrubs 48 trees 14 climbers 8 grasses and 2 species of ferns on the basis of species economic importance 111 species had medicinal value 43 ornamental 8 medicinal edible 8 fodder 7 edible 2 medicinal ornamental 2 edible fodder 1 medicinal timber 1 fuel fodder 1 fuel timber edible ornamental 1 medicinal fiber 1 medicinal fuel fodder religious 1 ornamental fuel 1 ornamental religious 1 condiment uses while rests of the 2 species have other uses in terms of occurrence 36 64 species were native while 63 35 species were non native the study provides baseline information on a modified habitat in an important eco region and would be helpful in monitoring the changes in future,2017,1
Prospects for biological control of Lonicera japonica (Caprifoliaceae) in New Zealand,surveys in the native range of japanese honeysuckle lonicera japonica in honshu japan revealed a natural enemy biota attacking the plant that was rich in potential biocontrol agents for new zealand nz including 11 herbivorous insect species and one fungal pathogen this contrasts with previously published surveys in nz that found only generalist arthropod herbivores and only two weakly pathogenic specialist pathogens the japanese insect herbivores included leaf mining and stem boring feeding guilds that were absent in nz among the insect herbivores a nymphalid butterfly limenitis glorifica a cerambycid beetle oberea shirahatai and a cosmopterigid moth allotalanta sp were prioritised as potential biocontrol agents their larvae cause potentially complementary damage to leaves woody stems and shoot tips respectively host range testing of lim glorifica and o shirahatai indicated that both species are sufficiently host specific to be released in nz and formal approval to release these species has been obtained lim glorifica was released into the field in 2014 and has become established o shirahatai is due to be released in late 2016 preliminary testing indicates that the fundamental host range for allotalanta sp larval feeding and development is narrowly oligophagous allotalanta sp is therefore likely to have potential for use as a biocontrol agent in nz if the first two agents provide insufficient control although further host range testing would be desirable to more accurately predict the likely field host range of this species,2017,0.905
Challenges and Perspectives for Achieving the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation Targets in Brazil,brazil holds the largest flora in the world with more than 35 000 described native species however a large portion of its flora is poorly known and more than 2000 species are threatened with extinction because similar situations exist in virtually all other countries the united nations convention on biological diversity launched a program called the global strategy for plant conservation gspc the vision of gspc is to halt the continuing loss of plant diversity through the achievement of 16 outcome oriented global targets set for 2020 here we discuss the challenges ahead for countries committed to achieving gspc targets and use the experience of the national centre for flora conservation cncflora in brazil as a case study of successes in pursuing some targets and some perceived failures we offer information that might help other countries decision makers and policymakers to address difficulties and move themselves toward achieving gspc targets we also synthesize the main targets upon which cncflora acts their current situation and the desired improvements necessary to achieve targets by 2020 finally we provide recommendations to actors stakeholders decision makers and policymakers in brazil that could foster conservation actions and strategies in the country,2017,0.644
The prognosis for Ailanthus altissima (Simaroubaceae; tree of heaven) as an invasive species in South Africa; insights from its performance elsewhere in the world,south africa has a major problem with invasive plant species many species have long residence times are well established and have large invasive ranges whereas others are still in the early stages of invasion predicting the full extent of invasions for species that have only recently started spreading is important for guiding management strategies ailanthus altissima is a widespread invasive species in many parts of the world although it has had a long residence time in south africa it is yet to replicate the extent of invasiveness and major impacts reported for the species in other parts of its adventive range we mapped the countries in which a altissima has been reported and evaluated the invasion status of the species in each i e the position of the species on the introduction naturalization invasion continuum as conceptualized by richardson and pyå ek 2012 we then mapped the current distribution in more detail for south africa the species is known to be present in at least 51 countries and is invasive in 23 countries ailanthus altissima is present in all south african provinces except limpopo and is most common and abundant in the western cape gauteng eastern cape and the free state we applied species distribution modelling using global distribution data to determine parts of the world and in particular regions within south africa that are climatically suitable for the species large parts of africa are potentially invasible by this species seven regions in south africa were identified as high risk areas for invasion by a altissima the species is already far too widespread in south africa for eradication at the national scale to be feasible a national strategy for managing the species should focus on 1 early detection and rapid response in areas identified as climatically suitable and where the species is not already present and 2 local and regional scale initiatives based on objective prioritization in terms of feasibility of management success and asset protection,2017,0.996
Exploiting opportunistic observations to estimate changes in seasonal site use: An example with wetland birds,nonsystematically collected a k a opportunistic species observations are accumulating at a high rate in biodiversity databases occupancy models have arisen as the main tool to reduce effects of limited knowledge about effort in analyses of opportunistic data these models are generally using long closure periods e g breeding season for the estimation of probability of detection and occurrence here we use the fact that multiple opportunistic observations in biodiversity databases may be available even within days e g at popular birding localities to reduce the closure period to 1 day in order to estimate daily occupancies within the breeding season we use a hierarchical dynamic occupancy model for daily visits to analyze opportunistic observations of 71 species from nine wetlands during 10 years our model derives measures of seasonal site use within seasons from estimates of daily occupancy comparing results from our â œseasonal site use modelâ to results from a traditional annual occupancy model using a closure criterion of 2 months or more showed that our model provides more detailed biologically relevant information for example when the aim is to analyze occurrences of breeding species an annual occupancy model will over estimate site use of species with temporary occurrences e g migrants passing by single itinerary prospecting individuals as even a single observation during the closure period will be viewed as an occupancy alternatively our model produces estimates of the extent to which sites are actually used model validation based on simulated data confirmed that our model is robust to changes and variability in sampling effort and species detectability we conclude that more information can be gained from opportunistic data with multiple replicates e g several reports per day almost every day by reducing the time window of the closure criterion to acquire estimates of occupancies within seasons,2017,0.381
Expanding the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) beyond species occurrences,the ocean biogeographic information system obis aims to integrate smaller isolated datasets into a larger more comprehensive picture of life in our oceans therefore obis provides a gateway to many datasets containing information on where and when marine species have been observed the datasets within obis are contributed by a network of hundreds of institutes projects and individuals all with the common goal to gain scientific knowledge and to make these data and knowledge easily available to the public until recently obis had solely focused on biogeographic data in the form of presence of marine species in space and time data collected for biological studies however often include more than just presence or abundance physical and chemical measurements are often taken concomitantly providing insights into the environmental conditions the species live in details on the nature of the sampling methods equipment used and effort can also be of major importance based on requirements from the growing obis community for data archiving and scientific applications obis completed the obis env data project in 2017 to enhance its data standard by accommodating additional data types de pooter et al 2017 the proposed standard allows for the management of sampling methodology animal tracking and telemetry data and environmental measurements such as nutrient concentrations sediment characteristics and other abiotic parameters measured during sampling the new obis data standard builds on the darwin core archive and on practices adopted by the global biodiversity information facility gbif it consists of an event core in combination with an occurrence extension and an enhanced measurementorfact extension fig 1 this new structure enables the linkage of measurements or facts quantitative or qualitative properties to both sampling events and species occurrences and includes additional fields for property standardization the obis standard also embraces the use of the new darwin core term parenteventid enabling a sampling event hierarchy,2017,0.562
Comprehensive and reliable: a new online portal of critical plant taxa in Germany,morphological identification of apomictic micro species is difficult and requires detailed comparisons with referenced herbarium material access to such is limited because herbaria are scattered and even in public collections misidentifications are not uncommon in these critical taxa in close collaboration with taxonomic experts of the apomictic polyploid genera hieracium pilosella taraxacum sect palustria asteraceae and alchemilla crataegus rosa rubus rosaceae we established an online portal http webapp senckenberg de bestikri displaying georeferenced and validated herbarium specimens for each respective micro species of the german flora our focus was on taxonomic reliability rather than on sheer data quantity and thus identifications were validated we additionally offer macro photographs as well as descriptions of taxonomically important morphological characters of the respective genera comprising currently 400 taxa we trust the online portal will greatly facilitate research into difficult polyploid apomictic taxa of the central european flora,2017,0.498
"Linking speciation and the niche: taxonomy, phylogeny and niche evolution in neotropical Begonia",begonia l is one of the ten largest plant genera with 1 830 currently accepted species distributed throughout the tropical americas africa and asia this exceptional diversity offers the opportunity to study the processes underlying recent and rapid radiations including the theory of adaptive radiations but also poses major challenges methods to test adaptive radiation theory require sufficient occurrence data to produce species distribution models for the majority of species in a group in many groups including andean central american and mexican begonia this criterion is not met the availability of specimen data on gbif for species distribution modelling in vascular plants as a whole was assessed the potential contribution of databased and freely available but indetermined or non georeferenced specimens to the field of species distribution modelling was estimated more than half of vascular plant species are currently unavailable for species distribution modelling our results indicate 22 of currently unavailable species could be modelled with already available herbarium data that is not yet georeferenced or determined to species we argue that a greater focus on georeferencing and identification skills are vital if herbaria are to contribute fully to the growing field of species distribution modelling we highlight those families and geographic regions that would most benefit from this approach and discuss the historical factors have influenced differences among regions another prerequisite for species distribution modelling is a stable species level taxonomy in preparation for investigation involving sdmâ s in begonia five taxonomic papers are presented including revised species concepts distribution data suitable for use in species distribution models seven new species and a new section of begonia three plastid markers for 574 species and 809 accessions of begonia were used to produce the largest most representative phylogeny of begonia published to date an updated sectional classification of the genus is provided the sections of begonia are used frequently as analogues to genera in other families but despite their taxonomic utility few of the current sections have been examined in the light of molecular phylogenetic analyses the relationships among some species and sections are poorly resolved but many sections and deeper nodes receive strong support we recognise 77 sections of begonia including four new sections astrotricha jackia kollmannia and stellanthera five sections are reinstated from synonymy australes exalabegonia latistigma pereira and poecilia and four sections are newly synonymised the new sectional classification is discussed with reference to identifying characters and previous classifications central to the theory of an adaptive radiation is that the majority of speciation events are adaptive implying speciation driven by adaptation to different environments and resulting in niche shifts species in an adaptive radiation should display distinct ecological niches and environmental disparity across the groupâ s phylogeny should best fit a kappa â niche shiftâ or â speciationalâ model of character evolution these characteristics were tested in two clades of neotropical begonia species were compared through the comparison of their distributions in environmental space calculated from species distribution models the fit of four models of environmental evolution a kappa â niche shiftâ model a brownian motion model an early burst model and a white noise model to the observed niche disparity in the group were assessed using the akaike information criterion patterns of ecological diversification in the two clades of begonia examined strongly diverge from those predicted by an adaptive model and we conclude begonia is not an adaptive radiation with respects to climatic niche ecological disparity within begonia clades best fits the predictions of a brownian model of niche evolution the characteristics of a brownian model include constant niche evolution over the phylogeny no increases in niche evolution during speciation and independent niche evolution in sister lineages this is incompatible with the predictions of an adaptive radiation we suggest the remarkable diversity of the genus has developed through geographic speciation and subsequent adaptation to local environments this phenomenon may be widespread among plant radiations in topographically and environmentally heterogeneous areas and a re evaluation of putative adaptive radiations throughout the worldâ s montane regions may be necessary,2017,0.976
Environmental stress effects on reproduction and sexual dimorphism in the gynodioecious species Silene acaulis,in gynodioecious species hermaphrodite plants invest both in seed and pollen production whereas female plants only produce fruits for both sexes to coexist such unbalanced investment is expected to translate in some kind of reproductive compensation particularly under severe nutrient shortage or environmental stress this study investigates 1 whether females of the gynodioecious boreo alpine plant silene acaulis show any overall compensation in fitness components 2 the existence of sexual dimorphism in flowers that favor different modes in each sex 3 whether environmental severity characterized by means of a species distribution model strength these patterns flower size fruit and seed production and germination success were recorded in six populations across the pyrenees and the alps fruit set was significantly higher in female 59 than in hermaphrodite plants 17 and female organs ovary and style were larger in female than in hermaphrodite plants but female flowers were smaller contrary to expectations environment severity was not related with most of the biological traits studied and only germination was associated to environmental gradients these results confirm that fruit production plays an important role as a compensatory strategy between sexes and consequently may favor the presence of both sexes in a gynodioecious species,2017,0.234
Two Beringian Origins for the Allotetraploid Fern Polystichum braunii (Dryopteridaceae),although some polyploids in the genus polystichum are well studied and have well resolved evolutionary histories the origin of the circumboreally distributed allotetraploid polystichum braunii remains obscure we use the chloroplast markers rbcl rps4 trns and trnl f as well as the nuclear markers pgic and gapcp to demonstrate that p braunii is a single allotetraploid with a minimum of two origins the two variants isolated from the nucleus resolve with divergent clades one eastern asian and one north american however they do not have near allies among morphologically appropriate taxa in our sample the north american progenitor appears to be extinct a divergence time analysis based on the cpdna markers yielded evidence of an older time of origin for p braunii than for an array of well known allotetraploids in the eupolypod ferns niche modeling in the light of geological and paleontological evidence leads to the conclusion that the two origins were in beringia since p braunii is genetically undifferentiated but widely distributed we argue that it has expanded to its circumboreal range in the recent past though it has a relatively ancient origin,2017,0.394
The origin and evolution of coral species richness in a marine biodiversity hotspot,the coral triangle region of the indo pacific realm harbors an extraordinary number of species with richness decreasing away from this biodiversity hotspot despite multiple competing hypotheses the dynamics underlying this regional diversity pattern remain poorly understood here we use a time calibrated evolutionary tree of living reef coral species their current geographic ranges and model based estimates of regional rates of speciation extinction and geographic range shifts to show that origination rates within the coral triangle are lower than in surrounding regions a result inconsistent with the long standing center of origin hypothesis furthermore endemism of coral species in the coral triangle is low and the coral triangle endemics are older than relatives found outside this region overall our model results suggest that the high diversity of reef corals in the coral triangle is largely due to range expansions into this region of species that evolved elsewhere these findings strongly support the notion that geographic range shifts play a critical role in generating species diversity gradients they also show that preserving the processes that gave rise to the striking diversity of corals in the coral triangle requires protecting not just reefs within the hotspot but also those in the surrounding areas,2017,0.724
"A reflection on the origins, evolution, and future of PRAGMA",all of the papers in this special collection have been shaped by and or have helped shape pragma this paper a reflection on pragma will provide additional technical scientific and human context to many of these papers we hope to illustrate that it is the people who set directions by following their interests or posing questions who make progress by honoring their commitments and who build community by establishing open communications and trust,2017,0.161
Phytochemical Screening and GC-MS Analysis of Methanolic leaf Extract of an Endemic Plant Kayea assamica.,kayea assamica is an endemic plant species of clusiaceae family found only in padumoni park and dullung reserved forest of lakhimpur district of assam india it has significant ethnopharmacological evidence but still now has not been scientifically validated in this present study the phytocompounds from k assamica leaves were extracted using methanol as polar solvent and subjected to qualitative phytochemical screening followed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry gc ms analysis the result revealed the presence of important phytochemicals including alkaloids phenols tannins flavonoids terpenoids coumarins and cardiac glycosides which comprises thirty different compounds these identified compounds reported to have important bio activities like antibacterial antifungal anti inflammatory anticancer antioxidant antimutagenic etc many of the identified compounds are recognized as major constituent of the essential oil producing plants which are copaene beta caryophyllene î cadinene etc more interestingly some compounds like î cadinene lanceol methyl palmitate linolenic acid have unique therapeutic properties further these identified compounds of the plant extract possess as baseline in determining the possible health benefits in future therefore these identified bioactive compounds explores the goodness of the endemic plant species and advised for its conservation,2017,0.386
Promoting interoperability of biodiversity spreadsheets via purpose recognition= Promovendo interoperabilidade de planilhas de biodiversidade através do …,there are many initiatives to promote intelligent openness or fair principles of data i e ways to turn data findable accessible interoperable and reusable they rely on a compliance with reference schemas common standards or ontologies however in the biodiversity domain it is still usual that biologists produce their data in ad hoc and heterogeneous formats a compliance with a standard imposes on them an upfront cost of restructuring and annotating their data this research addresses this scenario focusing on spreadsheets it presents our technique to automatically produce semantic annotations in data extracted from spreadsheets exploring the way that attributes are arranged in their schemas to infer their purpose elements of the resulting semantic dataset can be integrated articulated and handled according to their purpose in an incremental and exploratory approach allowing biologists to navigate and interact with an interconnected network of biodiversity data,2017,0.146
Using iNaturalist observations to detect disease in Red Mangroves (Rhizophora mangle),detection of disease over broad spatial scales is important to managing the spread of many diseases one way to do this is to work with citizen scientists to collect data over broad spatial and temporal scales citizen science observations are becoming more widely available through web and app interfaces such as inaturalist org inaturalist org provides passive sampling of organisms through photographs with a geolocation these observations are often used to examine biodiversity and species monitoring but disease detection is also possible here i demonstrate the utility of using inaturlist org observations of red mangrove to detect foliar disease symptoms such as lesions i downloaded observations of red mangrove from inaturalist org filtered them and examined images for foliar disease symptoms out of 153 filtered images i found that 42 showed no signs of foliar disease while 58 did show foliar disease symptoms i also found that observations of red mangrove were recorded from 15 countries in total with 11 countries having at least one observation with foliar disease symptoms present while small this study demonstrates the utility of using resources such as inaturalist org to obtain preliminary disease observations which can be used to further focus in person disease surveys and sampling,2017,0.707
Anatomo-pathological aspects of parasitism by nematodes of the superfamily Metastrongyloidea in wild crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous) in Midwestern Brazil,nematodes of the superfamily metastrongyloidea affect the respiratory cardiovascular and nervous systems of domestic carnivores and are uncommonly detected in wild animals this report describes the lesions associated with pulmonary parasitism by nematodes of the superfamily metastrongyloidea in a wild crab eating fox cerdocyon thous in the federal district brazil grossly there was pulmonary hyperemia edema and emphysema microscopically there was granulomatous arteritis associated with intravascular metastrongylid the anatomical location characteristic lesion and histological features of the parasite suggested that the nematode involved in this case is angiostrongylus vasorum this worm is frequently reported parasitizing pulmonary arteries of domestic canids but is uncommonly described in wild canids in midwestern brazil,2017,0.978
A preliminary assessment of indicators for SDG 14 on “Oceans”,â tackling the challenges of sustainable development goal sdg monitoringâ is an important topic of which at different levels of government actors are facing many challenges hence this issue paper focuses on indicators for the sdg 14 on oceans seas and marine resources which consists of 10 individual targets the paper describes the nature of these sdg 14 indicators and provides an overview of the factors that have an impact on the effectiveness of monitoring the sdg 14 targets it reviews the existing framework for the sdg 14 indicators including uncertainty irreversibility and thresholds in the marine context and transboundary and terrestrial marine spatial considerations at the regional and national levels it examines potential synergies with multilateral environmental agreements meas indicators the role of big data links among the sdg 14 targets and between sdg 14 and other sdgs targets it touches upon the indicative correspondences of sdg 14 indicators to the united nations un system of environmental economic accounting seea definitions in addition the preliminary indicators for the sdg 14 at the un level proposed by the inter agency and expert group on sdg indicators iaeg sdgs are discussed some non exhaustive indicators at the regional and national levels are also explored this issue paper reviews the framework for the sdg 14 indicators highlights existing gaps in the indicator set and proposes possible indicators that could be developed,2017,0.038
"First Record of the Keeltail Pomfret Taractes rubescens (Jordan &amp; Evermann, 1887) (Teleostei: Perciformes: Bramidae) from the South-Eastern Arabian Sea",present study reports the first record of the keeltail pomfret taractes rubescens jordan evermann 1887 in the south eastern arabian sea based on four specimens collected from the cochin fisheries harbour kerala india the results of the comparative morphometric and meristic analysis of the present and previous records are presented here this study revealed the first record of t rubescens in south eastern arabian sea extending its known geographical range by more than 2000 km in southward direction from the oman coast further it is an addition to the deep sea ichthyofaunal biodiversity of the west coast of india,2017,0.433
Spatial phylogenetics of the vascular flora of Chile,current geographic patterns of biodiversity are a consequence of the evolutionary history of the lineages that comprise them this study was aimed at exploring how evolutionary features of the vascular flora of chile are distributed across the landscape using a phylogeny at the genus level for 87 of the chilean vascular flora and a geographic database of sample localities we calculated phylogenetic diversity pd phylogenetic endemism pe relative pd rpd and relative pe rpe categorical analyses of neo and paleo endemism canape were also performed using a spatial randomization to assess statistical significance a cluster analysis using range weighted phylogenetic turnover was used to compare among grid cells and with known chilean bioclimates pd patterns were concordant with known centers of high taxon richness and the chilean biodiversity hotspot in addition several other interesting areas of concentration of evolutionary history were revealed as potential conservation targets the south of the country shows areas of significantly high rpd and a concentration of paleo endemism and the north shows areas of significantly low pd and rpd and a concentration of neo endemism range weighted phylogenetic turnover shows high congruence with the main macrobioclimates of chile even though the study was done at the genus level the outcome provides an accurate outline of phylogenetic patterns that can be filled in as more fine scaled information becomes available,2017,0.176
Producing a Knowledge Commons: Tensions Between Paid Work and Peer-production in a Public Institution image,this paper reports on peer production initiated and organised by a public institution we explore tensions around work and production in the digitisation project of the marie victorin herbarium in which a team of volunteers is working to photograph thousands of herbarium specimens complete a database entry for each specimen and associate the digital photos with the database carried out in the context of a digital infrastructure canadensys whose aim is to make information contained in canadian biological collections freely accessible online the project is realised almost exclusively with volunteer labour we suggest that this case may shed light on issues surrounding peer production in a capitalist context the marie victorin herbarium is a public institution that benefits from the freely given work of volunteers in pursuit of a noble goal the production of an open access knowledge commons it is not a capitalist firm and does not seek financial profit yet this peer production is strongly framed and organised by an institution although the situation reproduces some facets of traditional labour organisation such as a modular production process and â œtime sheetsâ filled out by the coordinator production output i e the number of entries produced is not the primary consideration as might be expected in a museum situation data quality is of much greater concern similarly while they recognise what they are doing as â œwork â the volunteers themselves reject any idea of exploitation and regularly point to the benefits they receive from participation as well as to producing something for the common good or for generations to come relationships between volunteers and the two paid employeesâ a curator and a collections managerâ are not antagonistic in fact staff members try to maximise volunteer choice of hours tasks etc are attentive to opportunities for learning and integrate volunteersâ suggestions for process improvement they do however mobilise a pool of volunteer labour in order to carry out this colossal project they orient and supervise the project and are ultimately responsible for the efficiency and speed of the process i e making specimens accessible online more rapidly and for the quality of the resulting product based on six months of observation a series of interviews with participants and two further months of voluntary participation in the digitisation project we ask in what ways the public character of the institution and the goods produced as well as the collaborative process may influence our interpretations of the relationship between paid work and peer production the paper is organised as follows first we review significant literature in order to situate our case we then describe the work of digitisation in detail with particular attention to who is involved in various stages of the process a discussion of key themes follows,2017,0.028
Potential distribution of Mikania micrantha Kunth in India − evidence of climatic niche and biome shifts,native to latin america mikania micrantha is considered as one of the top invaders in the moist tropical zones of the pacific and asian countries including india this study was conducted with two specific objectives ∠first to examine the niche and biome conservancy of m micrantha between its native and indian ranges and second to understand the potential distribution of this invasive plant in india principal component analysis of climatic variables associated with known occurrences of m micrantha in india and native ranges indicated significant shifts in climatic niche of m micrantha in india temperature and precipitation seasonality were found to be the driving factors for the niche shift in india our study also revealed that in india m micrantha invaded a novel biome viz the temperate broadleaf and mixed forest which was present but unoccupied in the native range given the climatic niche shift both indian and native occurrence data were used to model the potential distribution of this weed in india using maxent the predicted distribution identified that a larger extent of the indian landmass is climatically suitable for m micrantha growth high climatic suitability of some of the urban centers of india adds to the risk of further spread of this plant into â still to be invadedâ areas the niche and biome inconsistencies of m micrantha in india highlight the need for further investigation of the underlying mechanisms and careful interpretation of its potential distribution,2017,0.188
"Aliens in Europe: updates on the distributions of Modisimus culicinus and Micropholcus fauroti (Araneae, Pholcidae)",the pholcid spiders modisimus culicinus simon 1893 and micropholcus fauroti simon 1887 are pantropical species that have spread around the world at least several decades ago here we present numerous new records for both species most of which fall into the expected latitudes i e between the tropics of cancer and capricorn 93 and 87 of records respectively however we also report the first records for m culicinus from central europe germany and czech republic 50â n and the first european record for m fauroti from outside of belgium germany the fact that in both species several specimens have been found at more than one locality suggests that they may already be in the stage of establishment and spreading in europe finally we present an updated identification key to the genera of pholcidae in europe,2017,0.712
Using Stable Isotope Analysis to Infer Breeding Latitude and Migratory Timing of Juvenile Pacific- Slope Flycatchers (Empidonax Difficilis),effective conservation of migratory species is hindered by a lack of knowledge of population links between breeding wintering and stopover habitats the pacific slope flycatcher empidonax difficilis is one of the many neotropical migratory songbirds whose populations are steadily declining throughout western north america this research contributed to the assessment of connectivity in this species by inferring relative breeding origins and habitat selection of juvenile birds that migrate along the pacific flyway to the south san francisco bay area in the fall feather data collected from july 20 to october 12 2014 were analyzed for three stable isotopes î 2h î 13c î 15n findings revealed that populations migrated sequentially from western regions throughout expected breeding latitudes with early season migrants most likely coming from the more southern warmer and dryer regions of northern california oregon and southern washington while late season migrants had probable origins in the more northern cooler and wetter regions of northern washington and southwestern british columbia this study provided new information on the annual cycle and migratory timing of pacific slope flycatchers and lays the foundation for future assessments of migratory connectivity of this species,2017,0.814
BRITISH BLOWFLIES (CALLIPHORIDAE) AND WOODLOUSE FLIES (RHINOPHORIDAE),feedback to steven sfalk wanadoo co uk draft key to british calliphoridae and rhinophoridae steven falk 2016 2 preface this informal publication attempts to update the resources currently available for identifying the families calliphoridae and rhinophoridae prior to this british dipterists have struggled because unless you have a copy of the fauna ent scand volume for blowflies rognes 1991 you will have been largely reliant on van emden s 1954 res handbook which does not include all the british species notably the common pollenia pediculata has very outdated nomenclature and very outdated classification with several calliphorids and tachinids placed within the rhinophoridae and eurychaeta palpalis placed in the sarcophagidae as well as updating keys i have also taken the opportunity to produce new species accounts which summarise what i know of each species and act as an invitation and challenge to others to update correct or clarify what i have written as a result of my recent experience of producing an attractive and fairly user friendly new guide to british bees i have tried to replicate that approach here incorporating lots of photos and clear conveniently positioned diagrams presentation of identification literature can have a big impact on the popularity of an insect group and the accuracy of the records that result calliphorids and rhinophorids are fascinating flies sometimes of considerable economic and medicinal value and deserve to be well recorded what is more many gaps still remain in our knowledge we still do not know the biology of the common melanomya nana and biological information for our common pollenia species is a mess due to unreliable past identification with much information being uncritically assigned to p rudis other species may be increasing or declining and we the entomological and conservation communities need to keep an eye on this particularly in the light of climate change and the impact that this could have on some of our boreal species in particular e g calliphora uralensis and bellardia pubicornis in addition to this publication there is a wealth of useful information on calliphoridae and rhinophoridae available freely on the web and this has been listed in the references further reading sections further on this includes my own flickr site which furnishes many more photos of living calliphorids and rhinophorids plus carefully taken microscope shots designed to show key features in essence it provides a virtual field experience plus a virtual museum collection covering almost every british species,2017,0.893
"The perils of online biogeographic databases: a case study with the ‘monospecific’ genus Aegina (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa, Narcomedusae)",abstractonline biogeographic databases are increasingly being used as data sources for scientific papers and reports for example to characterize global patterns and predictors of marine biodiversity and to identify areas of ecological significance in the open oceans and deep seas however the utility of such databases is entirely dependent on the quality of the data they contain we present a case study that evaluated online biogeographic information available for a hydrozoan narcomedusan jellyfish aegina citrea this medusa is considered one of the easiest to identify because it is one of very few species with only four large tentacles protruding from midway up the exumbrella and it is the only recognized species in its genus online resources such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the ocean biogeographic information system obis suggest that a citrea is broadly distributed throughout the worldâ s oceans however lack of traceability to information from original providers m,2017,0.512
Unresolved native range taxonomy complicates inferences in invasion ecology: Acacia dealbata Link as an example,elaborate and expensive endeavours are underway worldwide to understand and manage biological invasions however the success of such efforts can be jeopardised due to taxonomic uncertainty we highlight how unresolved native range taxonomy can complicate inferences in invasion ecology using the invasive tree acacia dealbata in south africa as an example acacia dealbata is thought to comprise two subspecies based on morphological characteristics and environmental requirements within its native range in australia ssp dealbata and spp subalpina biological control is the most promising option for managing invasive a dealbata populations in south africa but it remains unknown which genetic taxonomic entities are present in the country resolving this question is crucial for selecting appropriate biological control agents and for identifying areas with the highest invasion risk we used species distribution models sdms and phylogeographic approaches to address this issue the ability of subspecies specific and overall species sdms to predict occurrences in south africa was also explored furthermore as non overlapping bioclimatic niches between the two taxonomic entities may translate into evolutionary distinctiveness we also tested genetic distances between the entities using dna sequencing data and network analysis both approaches were unable to differentiate the two putative subspecies of a dealbata however the sdm approach revealed a potential niche shift in the non native range and dna sequencing results suggested repeated introductions of different native provenances into south africa our findings provide important information for ongoing biological control attempts and highlight the importance of resolving taxonomic uncertainties in invasion ecology,2017,0.442
Habitat Suitability and Distribution Models,this book introduces the key stages of niche based habitat suitability model building evaluation and prediction required for understanding and predicting future patterns of species and biodiversity beginning with the main theory behind ecological niches and species distributions the book proceeds through all major steps of model building from conceptualization and model training to model evaluation and spatio temporal predictions extensive examples using r support graduate students and researchers in quantifying ecological niches and predicting species distributions with their own data and help to address key environmental and conservation problems reflecting this highly active field of research the book incorporates the latest developments from informatics and statistics as well as using data from remote sources such as satellite imagery a website at www unil ch hsdm contains the codes and supporting material required to run the examples and teach courses,2017,0.204
Historical gene flow constraints in a northeastern Atlantic fish: phylogeography of the ballan wrasse Labrus bergylta across its distribution range,the distribution and demographic patterns of marine organisms in the north atlantic were largely shaped by climatic changes during the pleistocene when recurrent glacial maxima forced them to move south or to survive in northern peri glacial refugia these patterns were also influenced by biological and ecological factors intrinsic to each species namely their dispersion ability the ballan wrasse labrus bergylta the largest labrid fish along europe s continental margins is a target for fisheries and aquaculture industry the phylogeographic pattern population structure potential glacial refugia and recolonization routes for this species were assessed across its full distribution range using mitochondrial and nuclear markers the existence of a marked population structure can reflect both recolonization from three distinct glacial refugia and current and past oceanographic circulation patterns although isolated in present times shared haplotypes between continental and azores populations and historical exchange of migrants in both directions point to a common origin of l bergylta this situation is likely to be maintained and or accentuated by current circulation patterns in the north atlantic and may lead to incipient speciation in the already distinct azorean population future monitoring of this species is crucial to evaluate how this species is coping with current environmental changes,2017,0.829
Rapid prioritization of alien plants for eradication based on climatic suitability and eradication feasibility,identifying which introduced species have the greatest potential for establishment spread and impact is critical for prioritizing pre and post border control using species distribution modelling and existing species locations we assessed the establishment risk based on the climatic suitability areas of 25 plant species listed as eradication targets under south african regulations to improve confidence three bioclimatic models were used to predict the potential distribution of each species this information was combined with the number of localities and the â œeradication feasibility syndromesâ in a scoring categorical system to rank the species three management groups were identified group â œaâ includes species with medium high establishment risk and higher likelihood to be eradicated these species should be a priority for eradication group â œbâ includes species with a medium low establishment risk but given the low number of known population and the species characteristics eradication is likely to be feasible finally species in group â œcâ scored a medium high establishment risk but the eradication would be difficult due to the high number of known localities this ranking provides a rapid method to prioritize the management towards the eradication of new potential invasive plant species in the country combining the establishment risk known number of localities and the inferred eradication success,2017,0.975
American amphitropical disjuncts: Perspectives from vascular plant analyses and prospects for future research,premise of the study historical patterns and processes of plants with an american amphitropical disjunct aad distribution have long interested botanists and biogeographers here we update examples of aad vascular plants their biogeographic history and aspects of their biology elucidated by recent studies to make inferences about common patterns of aad plants and formulate future research questions methods all known examples of aad vascular plants were tabulated along with data on plant duration and habit chromosome number dispersal direction and divergence time the data were then compared with regard to taxonomic categories aad bioregions and character evolution key results we clarify the definition of amphitropical and summarize features of aad plants we identify 237 aad plant divergence events timing of these events generally corresponds with taxonomic category plant duration and habit are associated with aad bioregions increases in chromosome number mostly occurred in members of the recipient area the aad plants of bipolar or temperate bioregions entirely or largely dispersed from north to south america whereas almost half of desert plants dispersed from south to north america conclusions tabulating aad plants by taxonomic group and bioregion yields insight into character evolution and processes of divergence phylogenetic studies provide information on the timing and direction of dispersal however more research on aad plants is needed to draw inferences regarding general patterns and processes especially those at the clade level our aad working group website provides current information on aad vascular plants to aid workers doing research in this field,2017,0.004
Biological Flora of the British Isles: Phragmites australis,this account presents comprehensive information on the biology of phragmites australis cav trin ex steud p communis trin common reed that is relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behaviour the main topics are presented within the standard framework of the biological flora of the british isles distribution habitat communities responses to biotic factors and to the abiotic environment plant structure and physiology phenology floral and seed characters herbivores and diseases as well as history including invasive spread in other regions and conservation phragmites australis is a cosmopolitan species native to the british flora and widespread in lowland habitats throughout from the shetland archipelago to southern england it is widespread throughout ireland and is native in the channel islands native populations occur naturally in temperate zones and on every continent except antarctica some populations in australia and north america have been introduced from elsewhere and have become naturalized and in north america some of these are known to be invasive where they compete with native local populations of p australis typical habitats in britain range from shallow still water along waterbody edges to marshlands saltmarshes and drier habitat on slopes up to 470 m above sea level additional habitats outside britain are springs in arid areas riverine lowlands ∠5 m above sea level and groundwater seepage points up to 3600 m above sea level although it occurs on a wide range of substrates and can tolerate ph from 2â 5 to 9â 8 in britain it prefers ph 4â 5 and elsewhere it thrives in mildly acidic to mildly basic conditions ph 5â 5â 7â 5 the species plays a pivotal role in the successional transition from open water to woodland phragmites australis is a tall helophytic wind pollinated grass with annual shoots up to 5 m above ground level from an extensive system of rhizomes and stolons a single silky inflorescence develops at the end of each fertile stem and produces 500â 2000 seeds the plant is highly variable genetically and morphologically expansion of established populations is mainly through clonal growth of the horizontal rhizome system and ground surface stolons while new populations can establish from rhizomes stem fragments and seeds shoots generally emerge in spring with timing determined primarily by physiology that is mediated by external conditions e g local climate including frost many populations in the british isles have experienced some decline over the past two decades and there is concern that there might be further losses along the east coast as sea level rises there have recently also been localized expansions especially in highly modified habitats where p australis reedbeds have been planted as wildlife habitat rehabilitated mineral and gravel beds and bioremediation filter beds for industrial and transport infrastructure native populations outside britain also demonstrate both types of trend they are declining in many parts of western europe and north america yet also colonize many disturbed ruderal habitats e g the edges of agricultural fields and motorways throughout its native and non native range and can form â weedyâ monodominant populations e g in australia and china,2017,0.694
Improving data availability with “OBIS-ENV-DATA”: Examples from OBIS-USA,during biological sampling events measurements are routinely collected about the event as well as about the biological observations for example the same sampling event might collect event measurements like water temperature and salinity as well as biological measurements like abundance and weight keeping these measurements together is important to be able to assess how species might be responding to changes in their environment and to be able to make predictions into the future however the implementation of darwin core utilized on the integrated publishing toolkit ipt open source software developed and supported by the global biodiversity information facility gbif did not have a way to capture both of these types of measurements the ocean biogeographic information system obis formed a working group to explore this problem and they developed and published a simple solution to the issue of keeping environmental data values collected along with the biological data in a common structure their solution called â œobis env dataâ uses the event core implementation of darwin core in the ipt and adds an extended measurement or fact extension to include both environmental measurements and biological measurements the extended measurement or facts extension is currently a registered extension for ipt and available for anyone to use the ocean biogeographic information system usa obis usa node decided to switch from using the occurrence core implementation of darwin core in the ipt to using â œobis env dataâ and have been impressed with the results of that decision information that was frequently left out when aligning marine biological sampling data with occurrence core can now be included in our submissions to obis and gbif via ipt obis usa has several use cases to that demonstrate how additional information has been made accessible through â œobis env dataâ and new opportunities for data analysis,2017,0.663
How much does climate change threaten European forest tree species distributions?,although numerous species distribution models have been developed most were based on insufficient distribution data or used older climate change scenarios we aimed to quantify changes in projected ranges and threat level by the years 2061 2080 for 12 european forest tree species under three climate change scenarios we combined tree distribution data from the global biodiversity information facility euforgen and forest inventories and we developed species distribution models using maxent and 19 bioclimatic variables models were developed for three climate change scenarios â optimistic rcp2 6 moderate rcp4 5 and pessimistic rpc8 5 â using three general circulation models for the period 2061 2080 our study revealed different responses of tree species to projected climate change the species may be divided into three groups â œwinnersâ â mostly late successional species abies alba fagus sylvatica fraxinus excelsior quercus robur and q petraea â œlosersâ â mostly pioneer species betula pendula larix decidua picea abies and pinus sylvestris and alien species â pseudotsuga menziesii q rubra and robinia pseudoacacia which may be also considered as â œwinnersâ assuming limited migration most of the species studied would face significant decrease of suitable habitat area the threat level was highest for species that currently have the northernmost distribution centers ecological consequences of the projected range contractions would be serious for both forest management and nature conservation,2017,0.935
A conceptual framework for quality assessment and management of biodiversity data,the increasing availability of digitized biodiversity data worldwide provided by an increasing number of institutions and researchers and the growing use of those data for a variety of purposes have raised concerns related to the fitness for use of such data and the impact of data quality dq on the outcomes of analyses reports and decisions a consistent approach to assess and manage data quality is currently critical for biodiversity data users however achieving this goal has been particularly challenging because of idiosyncrasies inherent in the concept of quality dq assessment and management cannot be performed if we have not clearly established the quality needs from a data userâ s standpoint this paper defines a formal conceptual framework to support the biodiversity informatics community allowing for the description of the meaning of fitness for use from a data userâ s perspective in a common and standardized manner this proposed framework defines nine concepts organized into three classes dq needs dq solutions and dq report the framework is intended to formalize human thinking into well defined components to make it possible to share and reuse concepts of dq needs solutions and reports in a common way among user communities with this framework we establish a common ground for the collaborative development of solutions for dq assessment and management based on data fitness for use principles to validate the framework we present a proof of concept based on a case study at the museum of comparative zoology of harvard university in future work we will use the framework to engage the biodiversity informatics community to formalize and share dq profiles related to dq needs across the community,2017,0.142
The Bhutan Pine Aphid Pseudessigella brachychaeta Hille Ris Lambers (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Lachninae) From India Reveals the Hitherto Unknown Oviparous Female and Dwarfish Male,here we describe the presence of the monotypic and poorly known aphid genus pseudessigella hille ris lambers hemiptera aphididae lachninae in india so far the genus has only been known from punjab pakistan representatives of p brachychaeta hille ris lambers were collected from pinus wallichiana a b jacks in the yousmarg region of the state of jammu and kashmir in india hitherto unknown oviparous females and dwarfish males the latter reported in eulachnini for the first time are described and illustrated the male s antennal sensilla and genitalic morphology are additionally studied and presented using scanning electron microscopy notes on the biology distribution and previously overlooked generic features are given we provide morphological identification keys to the genera of the tribe eulachnini and to the species of aphid living on p wallichiana,2017,0.589
Winter distribution and niche dynamics in migratory passeriformes,animal migration consists of the relocation of individuals on large spatial scales which habitually implies seasonal journeys from one range to another dingle 2014 compared to other animal groups birds are well adapted for migration because in addition to their ability to fly they display efficient behaviour and extraordinary physiological and morphological adaptability newton 2010 this combination of features produces some of the most incredible migrations in the animal world this is the case for instance of the endurance flights exceeding 10 000 km carried out by bar tailed godwits limosa lapponica or the nonstop flight of common swifts apus apus which complete the equivalent of up to seven roundtrips to the moon during their lifetimes gill et al 2009 hedenstrã m et al 2016 overall 10 000 or so bird species are known to be migratory and move distances ranging from short hops to extraordinarily long journeys across continents greenberg marra 2005 newton 2008 all these characteristics make bird migration a fascinating natural phenomenon,2017,0.577
OpenBiodiv Computer Demo: an Implementation of a Semantic System Running on top of the Biodiversity Knowledge Graph,we present openbiodiv an implementation of the open biodiversity knowledge management system we believe openbiodiv is possibly the first pilot stage implenatation of a semantic system running on top of the biodiversity knowledge graph the need for an integrated information system serving the needs of the biodiversity community can be dated at least as far back as the sanctioning of the bouchout declaration in 2007 the bouchout declaration proposes to make biodiversity knowledge freely available as linked open data lod 1 at tdwg2016 fig 1 we presented the prototype of the sytem then called open biodiversity knolwedge management system obkms the specification and design of openbiodiv was outlined by senderov and penev 2016 and in this computer demo we would like to showcase its pilot we will show how to use the sparql 2 endpoint directly we will illustrate the semantic search capabilities of the system and we will showcase some high level applications that run on top of it we will also look at the core dataset the biodiversity knowledge graph and the r tools used to create it,2017,0.083
Quality Measures for Visual Point Clustering in Geospatial Mapping,visualizing large amounts of point data in a way that resembles the density of the distribution is a complex problem if the size of the drawing area is constrained naã vely drawing points on top of each other leads to occlusion and therefore a loss of information an intuitive approach is combining close points as clusters that resemble their size as well as their geographic location however traditional clustering algorithms are not designed for visual clusterings rather than minimizing an error function independent of a graphical representation this paper introduces measures for the quality of circle representations based on clustering outputs our experimental evaluation revealed that all methods had weaknesses regarding at least one of these criteria,2017,0.119
An electronic management system for a digital herbarium: development and future prospects,the paper describes the structure and functional aspects of the electronic herbarium system with a web interface developed at the botanical garden institute feb ras bgi in 2016 2017 the main purpose of the system is to provide online access to the herbarium data including online search operations and the facilities to enter new records into the herbarium database and to generate labels for specimens the system is therefore multipurpose it is primarily written in the python programming language and has several key features a two step validation process of digitized herbarium records multi user and multi acronym support semi automatic herbarium sheet labelling based on entered data handling of multispecies herbarium records e g cryptogams flexible taxon level search and filtering within geographical areas via a web interface or automated search engine relying on http api the current system is actively used to manage a digital herbarium at the bgi including its departments in sakhalin and amur branches the system can be used as well to integrate herbarium information from many other collections,2017,0.025
Improving conservation planning for subtidal estuarine biodiversity,conservation planning is used to identify areas for protection of biodiversity in marine systems however such planning is often based on limited information and may therefore be conducted using conservation targets such as arbitrary fixed percentage targets that are unrepresentative of underlying biological assemblages which frequently exhibit considerable spatial variability amongst areas there is a clear need for improved methods for gathering and classifying subtidal marine biodiversity data and for setting targets in conservation planning here methods for collecting data for subtidal estuarine habitats and fish and mollusc assemblages were developed a novel method for classifying habitats was established and techniques for modelling surrogacy relationships between biological assemblages and abiotic variables were examined the resulting data were used to assess the relative efficiency of different target setting approaches in conservation planning highlighting the benefits that accrue when conservation planning takes underlying biological diversity into consideration the study was based on data gathered in the port stephens estuary in new south wales australia part of the port stephens great lakes marine park habitats within port stephens were surveyed using a combination of towed video and aerial photography over an area exceeding 50 km2 a classification system for habitats was developed using surveys of benthic cover across a range of sites and depths relationships between habitat distributions and abiotic variables were explored using distance based linear modelling and for seagrass habitats the novel application of relative environmental suitability modelling fish and mollusc assemblage data were gathered across habitat types using underwater visual census and distance based linear modelling was again used to examine whether habitats and abiotic variables provided useful surrogates for fish and mollusc assemblages approaches to setting targets for conservation planning were investigated including the potential for setting quantitative non uniform targets based on species area relationships habitat classification identified a number of significantly different benthic habitats within port stephens and identified previously unknown areas of some habitats in the study area modelling identified strong correlations between benthic habitat distributions and abiotic variables of depth location substrate type and current strength for seagrass habitats wave exposure and turbidity were also shown to influence habitat distributions and predictive modelling indicated that future sea level rises and increases in turbidity would result in substantial loss of seagrasses modelling demonstrated that significant differences in fish and mollusc assemblages occurred among benthic habitats and found significant relationships between these assemblages and abiotic variables both abiotic variables and benthic habitats were found to be useful surrogates for biodiversity in conservation planning with combined biotic and abiotic variables providing the highest level of discrimination among assemblages examination of the relative efficiency of different target setting approaches in conservation planning identified that non uniform conservation targets for benthic habitats based on species area relationships provided significant improvements in protection of species richness of fish and molluscs compared with uniform percentage targets in conclusion this study demonstrated the value of assembling comprehensive biodiversity and species distributional data prior to commencing conservation planning where these data are available conservation targets can be set using species area relationships that provide increased levels of protection for species across habitat classes where comprehensive biodiversity data are not available the combination of data on benthic habitats and relevant abiotic variables provides the best representation of species assemblages in conservation planning,2017,0.39
The Value of the IUCN Red List for Business Decision-making,the iucn red list of threatened species provides assessments of extinction risk for over 80 000 species it has become an important tool for conservation and for informing natural resource policy and management more broadly over the last 10â 15 years the role of the red list in business decision making has become increasingly significant we describe the key business uses of the red list and their benefits to conservation focusing on industrial scale development and supply chains the red list is used by business throughout the process of planning and implementing projects in order to understand and manage potential impacts on biodiversity it informs screening and impact avoidance baseline survey design impact assessment and mitigation biodiversity action plan development and offset design and implementation business use could be strengthened by recognising business needs when prioritising improvements so as to address specific aspects of consistency and coverage access information relevance and assessment transparency finding effective ways to feed relevant business generated data back into the red list process would in turn strengthen the assessments the crucial role that the red list has assumed in good practice business decision making represents both a success and an opportunity for the red list community,2017,0.212
An uncommon or just an ecologically demanding species? Finding of aggregations of the brittle-star Ophiothrix maculata on the Northwest African slope,ophiuroidea constitutes the largest class of the phylum echinodermata it includes families with suspension feeder behaviour that can be found in dense aggregations in all oceans worldwide ophiothrix maculata was known as a rare suspension feeder brittle star with only four records in the eastern central atlantic dating from almost 100 years ago during the ten multidisciplinary spanish and norwegian surveys carried out from 2004 to 2012 off northwest africa between the gibraltar strait and the sierra leone border from 19 to 1888 m depth we sampled 1298 stations we gathered about one million individuals and 124 kg of brittle stars at 501 of the stations eight hundred and thirty two specimens of ophiothrix maculata were collected at six localities on the continental slope off mauritania western sahara and guinea bissau at depths between 155 and 594 m the guinea bissau samples represent the southernmost current record for the species even though ophiothrix maculata has been previously recorded only in isolation we discovered dense concentrations on the mauritanian slope on the wolof s seamount 580 individuals and off the western sahara in a lophelia pertusa reef 202 individuals in this paper we describe these findings and discuss the association of this species to hard bottom habitats and high primary production areas outside of the oxygen minimum zone omz we also analyse what other factors may explain the patchy distribution of o maculata on the northwest african slope,2017,0.718
Sphagnum beothuk new to Sweden,sphagnum beothuk was recently found new to europe in norway as the dark morph of sphagnum fuscum proved to be conspecific with the north american s beothuk the norwegian distribution suggests that it may also occur in other oceanic parts of northwestern europe in 2016 i made a brief survey of a number of mires in the province of bohuslã n in the westernmost part of sweden in three bogs i found only s fuscum but in one bog this species co occurred with s beothuk this implies that s fuscum is the most common of the two species in the suboceanic part of sweden however to determine the actual frequency and distribution of s beothuk a more extensive survey of bogs in the westernmost part of sweden is required,2017,0.64
"Reproductive strategy as a piece of the biogeographic puzzle: a case study using Antarctic sea stars (Echinodermata, Asteroidea)",aim to describe and analyse asteroid biogeographic patterns in the southern ocean so and test whether reproductive strategy brooder versus broadcaster can explain distribution patterns at the scale of the entire class we hypothesize that brooding and broadcasting species display different biogeographic patterns location southern ocean south of 45 â s methods over 14 000 asteroid occurrences are analysed using bootstrapped spanning network bsn non metrical multidimensional scaling nmds and clustering to uncover the spatial structure of faunal similarities among 25 bioregions results main biogeographic patterns are congruent with previous works based on other taxa and highlight the isolation of new zealand the high richness in the scotia arc area particularly of brooding species an east west antarctic differentiation and the faunal affinities between south america and sub antarctic islands asteroids show lower endemism levels than previously reported with 29 of species occurring in antarctica only in particular asteroids from tierra del fuego showed affinities with those of west antarctica at the species level suggesting a recent mixing of assemblages biogeographic patterns are highly linked to reproductive strategy patterns also differ according to the taxonomic level revealing the underlying role of historical factors main conclusions patterns of sea star biogeography are consistent with results obtained for other marine groups and are strongly linked to reproductive strategy,2017,0.675
OBSERVATIONS ON THE PHYTOGEOGRAPHY OF THE LECYTHIDACEAE CLADE (BRAZIL NUT FAMILY),the lecythidaceae clade of the order ericales is distributed in africa including madagascar asia in the broadest sense and south and central america distribution maps are included for the lecythidaceae clade as follows family maps for napoleonaeaceae and scytopetalaceae subfamily maps for the barringtonioideae foetidioideae and lecythidoideae and maps for the subclades of lecythidaceae subfam lecythidoideae the following topics are discussed 1 the difficulties using herbarium specimens for studies of phytogeography 2 the worldwide distribution of the lecythidaceae clade 3 the migration of lecythidaceae from the old into the new world or vice versa 4 the phytogeography of the new world subclades of lecythidaceae 5 the ability of some new world subclades of lecythidaceae to occupy very large distributions 6 the adaptations of new world lecythidaceae to different habitats 7 the pleistocene refuge hypothesis 8 the evolution of high species diversity of the family in eastern central america northwestern south america 9 the possible migration of species from the guayana lowlands and western amazonia into central amazonia after large wetland areas drained after the amazon river began to flow eastward 10 the migration of lecythidaceae into the atlantic forest of brazil from both northeastern and southwestern amazonia or vice versa and 11 the worldwide distribution of floral symmetry of the lecythidaceae clade,2017,0.604
"Abyssal fauna of the UK-1 polymetallic nodule exploration area, Clarion-Clipperton Zone, central Pacific Ocean: Mollusca",we present the first dna taxonomy publication on abyssal mollusca from the clarion clipperton zone ccz central pacific ocean using material collected as part of the abyssal baseline abyssline environmental survey cruise â ab01â to the uk seabed resources ltd uksrl polymetallic nodule exploration area â uk 1â in the eastern ccz this is the third paper in a series to provide regional taxonomic data for a region that is undergoing intense deep sea mineral exploration for high grade polymetallic nodules taxonomic data are presented for 21 species from 42 records identified by a combination of morphological and genetic data including molecular phylogenetic analyses these included 3 heterodont bivalves 5 protobranch bivalves 4 pteriomorph bivalves 1 caudofoveate 1 monoplacophoran 1 polyplacophoran 4 scaphopods and 2 solenogastres gastropoda were recovered but will be the subject of a future study seven taxa matched published morphological descriptions for species with deep pacific type localities and our sequences provide the first genetic data for these taxa one taxon morphologically matched a known cosmopolitan species but with a type locality in a different ocean basin and was assigned the open nomenclature â cfâ as a precautionary approach in taxon assignments to avoid over estimating species ranges one taxon is here described as a new species ledella knudseni sp n for the remaining 12 taxa we have determined them to be potentially new species for which we make the raw data imagery and vouchers available for future taxonomic study the clarion clipperton zone is a region undergoing intense exploration for potential deep sea mineral extraction we present these data to facilitate future taxonomic and environmental impact study by making both data and voucher materials available through curated and accessible biological collections,2017,0.871
A systematic conservation strategy for crop wild relatives in the Czech Republic,aim to create a crop wild relative cwr conservation strategy for the czech republic the first national cwr conservation strategy for central and eastern europe location czech republic methods we generated a cwr checklist for the czech republic and then prioritized taxa using widely adopted criteria modified with input from local experts to create a national cwr inventory for 204 priority cwr species we collated 206 760 presence records we carried out spatial analyses to identify patterns in species richness gaps in existing conservation actions complementary conservation networks and collecting strategies to increase representativeness of gene bank accessions we considered both specific and genetic conservation using geographic and ecogeographic proxies for the latter results passive in situ conservation of cwr in the czech republic is comprehensive at present with all but one priority cwr species being contained in protected areas active in situ cwr conservation could be focussed within 11 ca 10 km by 10 km grid cells containing 94 of priority species or their overlapping protected areas to augment the genetic coverage of the in situ conservation network active cwr conservation is encouraged within 11 supplementary areas meanwhile there are huge gaps in ex situ collections with no known conserved material for 134 of the 204 priority species furthermore existing accessions are generally unrepresentative of genetic diversity main conclusions in the czech republic active in situ conservation of priority cwr should be instigated within the 22 recommended grid cell areas or their 14 overlapping protected areas for ex situ conservation strategic and targeted collection of germplasm would markedly increase the value of gene bank collections diversity of priority czech cwr is concentrated in south moravia making this a particularly important cwr area for the country and for europe,2017,0.882
Cistus ladanifer (Cistaceae): a natural resource in Mediterranean-type ecosystems,cistus ladanifer is a dominant shrub species endemic to the western mediterranean region due to its dominant nature and its potential ecological aromatic or pharmacological applications c ladanifer has been the object of numerous studies in this review current knowledge on different aspects of this species is summarized from its taxonomy to its chemical characterisation or its competitive traits there are no doubts about the taxonomic entity of c ladanifer although the recognition of infraspecific taxa deserves more attention given that the fragrant exudate of c ladanifer holds a very specific composition one species specific carotenoid 2 2 6 trimethylcyclohexanone derivative is proposed as an authenticity marker for uses of c ladanifer in pharmacological or aromatic industries evidence is also gathered on the extreme adaptation of c ladanifer to stressful conditions in the mediterranean region such as the ability to survive in low hydric and high solar exposition conditions presistence in poor and contaminated soils and growth inhibition of several other plants through the release of allelochemicals thus the finding of potential applications for this plant may contribute to enhance the economic dimension of derelict lands such as mine tailings or poor agricultural mediterranean areas,2017,0.236
Strategies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity data,the present paper describes policies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity and biodiversity related data elaborated and updated during the framework program 7 eu bon project on the basis of an earlier version published on pensoft s website in 2011 the document discusses some general concepts including a definition of datasets incentives to publish data and licenses for data publishing further it defines and compares several routes for data publishing namely as 1 supplementary files to research articles which may be made available directly by the publisher or 2 published in a specialized open data repository with a link to it from the research article or 3 as a data paper i e a specific stand alone publication describing a particular dataset or a collection of datasets or 4 integrated narrative and data publishing through online import download of data into from manuscripts as provided by the biodiversity data journal the paper also contains detailed instructions on how to prepare and peer review data intended for publication listed under the guidelines for authors and reviewers respectively special attention is given to existing standards protocols and tools to facilitate data publishing such as the integrated publishing toolkit of the global biodiversity information facility gbif ipt and the darwincore archive dwc a a separate section describes most leading data hosting indexing infrastructures and repositories for biodiversity and ecological data,2017,0.018
Disentangling the Reticulate Evolutionary History of a Neotropical Plant Radiation,determining the causes and nature of speciation is important for understanding the origin and maintenance of the worldâ s biodiversity hybridizationâ the exchange of genes between different speciesâ is sometimes recognized as an important process in the evolution of animals and fungi but seems to be a ubiquitous feature of the evolutionary history of plants where it is particularly prominent hybrid speciation can occur either by keeping the same genome sizeâ homoploid hybrid speciationâ or more frequently via hybridization and genome duplicationâ allopolyploidy hybridization in the form of homoploid hybrid speciation and polyploidy has contributed extensively to angiosperm diversity but also represents a great challenge for phylogenetic reconstruction due the incongruence patterns that a reticulate process produces within and between the nuclear and chloroplast genomes additional processes can also produce similar reticulate patterns creating the necessity to disentangle these processes and model phylogenetic networks that best represent species relationships in the presence of reticulation rather than a classic bifurcating tree this dissertation combines extensive natural history collections with a plurality of molecular phylogenetic methods to elucidate the reticulate evolutionary history of the plant genus lachemilla in the rose family this is a morphologically highly variable group of ca 60 species that includes perennial herbs and shrubs with a nearly ubiquitous presence in the neotropical high altitude grasslands and remarkable diversity in the andes first i reconstructed the phylogeny of lachemilla using nuclear ribosomal its and plastid trnl f dna sequences i identified four major clades in lachemilla that are in part congruent with previous morphological classifications of the group however widespread patterns of cytonuclear discordance was detected that in combination with chromosome counts and genome size estimates provided evidence of the putative allopolyploid origin of multiple species finally i established the date of origin of lachemilla to be around 15 million years ago with a rapid accumulation of lineages during the last five million years in my second chapter i conducted a phylogenomic analysis of 396 loci from low copy nuclear genes and complete chloroplast sequences to clarify the relationships among the major groups of lachemilla and explore a multiple of sources of conflict among gene trees and species trees all phylogenetic approaches used recovered the four major groups previously proposed for lachemilla but these methods all recovered different topologies for the relationships of these four clades species network analyses revealed that one of the four major clades is actually of ancient hybrid origin and represents one of the main sources of the incongruence among the species trees additionally i found evidence for a whole genome duplication event shared by lachemilla and allied genera in my third chapter i used pcr target enrichment in combination with high throughput sequencing to obtain allelic information for the nuclear ribosomal cistron and multiple regions of the plastid genome in 219 samples of 48 species of lachemilla to provide direct evidence of the allopolyploid speciation in this group i found evidence of the allopolyploid origin of 30 species of lachemilla demonstrating that this condition is common and widespread in the genus additionally based on a well resolved chloroplast phylogeny i identified that the monotypic genus farinopsis is the sister group of lachemilla and allied genera within subtribe fragariinae however this result is discordant with the nrdna phylogeny a pattern also observed between lachemilla and allied genera which corroborates the notion of widespread hybridization in fragariinae finally with the extensive fieldwork that i conducted throughout the neotropics i discovered and described the new species lachemilla mexiquense which is endemic to central mexico this species is characterized by a unique combination of characters in the genus and through the network based analyses that i conducted was later shown to be of hybrid origin with all this work i have attempted to clarify the role that hybridization has played in the evolutionary history of lachemilla this work will not only facilitate continued research questions including historical biogeography diversification patterns trait evolution and future taxonomic treatments of the genus but also broader questions regarding the evolutionary and ecological consequences of polyploidy and hybridization,2017,0.988
Growth responses to elevated temperatures and the importance of ontogenetic niche shifts in Bromeliaceae,epiphytic bromeliads represent a major component of neotropical forests but the potential effect of climate change on these plants is unclear we investigated whether and how bromeliads are affected by the predicted 3â c temperature rise by the end of the century we conducted growth experiments with 17 epiphytic bromeliad species at different temperatures to determine their fundamental thermal niches by comparing those with niches for germination we tested whether ontogenetic niche shift or niche contraction occurs in bromeliaceae applying a classical growth analysis we assessed the relative importance of the underlying growth components on interspecific variations in growth members of two bromeliad subfamilies differed in their response to elevated temperatures tillandsioideae may be negatively affected whereas bromelioideae moved closer to their thermal optimum across different ontogenetic stages thermal niche characteristics revealed both niche shift and niche contraction interspecific variation in growth was driven almost exclusively by net assimilation rate at all temperatures we conclude that the vulnerability of tropical plants to a future increase in temperature may be more variable than suggested by previous studies we emphasize the importance of assessing niche breadth over multiple life stages and the need for better microclimatic data to link laboratory data with field conditions,2017,0.058
A Multispecies Collecting Strategy for Crop Wild Relatives Based on Complementary Areas with a High Density of Ecogeographical Gaps,amidst the general concern about the need to conserve crop wild relatives cwr as a source of genetic diversity potentially useful in crop breeding recent studies have assessed global gaps in cwr conservation using predictive distribution approaches however few options are available to downscale such studies and conduct efficient seed collecting expeditions in specific target areas for ex situ conservation a new type of optimized collecting design ocd to determine priority areas for collecting cwr is presented to fit this purpose the new approach is based on the principles of complementarity and ecogeographical representativeness of ex situ collections using ecogeographical variation as a proxy for genetic diversity of adaptive value it aims to offer a collecting strategy that captures the maximum genetic diversity of adaptive value at a minimum cost ninety eight priority species related to cereal and legume crops selected by the spanish national strategy for cwr conservation were targeted to illustrate this approach the analysis resulted in a ranking of 10 ã 10 km areas containing decreasing richness of complementary ecogeographical gaps of selected cwr taxa the top 10 complementary areas were overlapped with the spanish sites of community importance of the natura 2000 network to prioritize collection in areas not covered by the network which would be more exposed to habitat destruction and other anthropic risks this new kind of ocd allows collectors to efficiently sample nonrepresented populations of many species growing in adaptive scenarios within a relatively reduced area at the same time,2017,0.504
Niche centrality and human influence predict rangewide variation in population abundance of a widespread mammal: The collared peccary ( Pecari tajacu ),aim 1 to evaluate whether geographic variation in population abundance of a widespread mammal pecari tajacu is related to its location with respect to the centroid of its ecological niche or to the centroid of its geographic range 2 to assess whether the abundanceâ niche centrality relationship defines the maximum expected abundance at any location rather than the realized abundance 3 to test whether including human impacts improves the abundanceâ niche centrality relationship and therefore the prediction of geographic variation in population abundance location the americas methods we modelled the ecological niche of the species using occurrence and environmental data and created spatial models of distance to the niche centroid dnc and to the geographic centroid dgc we tested the relationships between population abundance and dnc and between abundance and dgc we evaluated whether the rate of change in the abundanceâ dnc relationship was steeper near the upper boundary of quantile regressions we tested whether the human influence index hii contributed to improve niche based predictions of population abundance finally we generated broad scale predictions of collared peccary population abundances results we found a negative relationship between abundance and dnc and a non significant relationship between abundance and dgc the abundanceâ dnc relationship was wedge shaped steeper in the upper quantile boundary than in the median hii also had a negative effect on abundance the model including dnc and hii was best supported for predicting the median abundance while dnc alone was the best to predict the upper boundary of population abundances main conclusions population abundances are associated with the structure of the ecological niche especially the maximum abundance expected in an area thus the dnc approach can be useful in obtaining a spatial approximation of potential abundance patterns at biogeographic extents to achieve a better prediction of realized abundances it is critical to consider the human influence,2017,0.344
"Delimiting the Geographic Distribution of Lygophis anomalus (Günther, 1858) (Squamata, Dipsadidae) from Natural History and Ecological Niche Modeling",abstract historically there has been taxonomic confusion among some lygophis and erythrolamprus species previously belonging to the genus liophis due to their high similarity in color and general body form in addition to a lack of understanding of their natural history and distribution lygophis anomalus is a common snake thought to be widely distributed in the pampas and chaco regions of argentina uruguay southern brazil and paraguay while studying a sample of lygophis anomalus specimens from throughout its distributional range we observed that those from several northern provinces in argentina were misidentified the aim of this study is to clarify the area of occurrence of lygophis anomalus by combining a revision of the available literature and traditional morphology body measures and lepidosis using only confirmed records of l anomalus we performed ecological niche modelling enm as a means of corroborating our results after analyzing body measures and lepidosis the specimens from cã,2017,0.234
The establishment threat of the obligate brood-parasitic Pin-tailed Whydah ( Vidua macroura ) in North America and the Antilles,abstract the pin tailed whydah vidua macroura is a generalist obligate brood parasitic bird native to africa frequently found in the pet trade which has successfully established exotic populations in 2 biodiversity hotspots in the americas we analyze the species potential future distribution by identifying key locations in the continental united states hawaii and the antilles that contain suitable climatic characteristics host species and habitat requirements we used species distribution modeling maxent to depict the geographic patterns of possible pin tailed whydah establishment and compared the predictive power of models that included combinations of climatic data â œclimateâ land cover â œhabitatâ and localities of historical and one known novel host â œhostsâ the preferred model the â œhostsâ model was the highest performing the most important variable characterizing pin tailed whydah distribution in the preferred model was the presence of a frequent historical host that is also estab,2017,0.412
Ecological niche modeling and strategies for the conservation of Dialium guineense Willd. (Black velvet) in West Africa,dialium guineense is a multipurpose species useful in many respects it is used in agroforestry and the trade of most of its organs is source of income for rural populations despite the high interests of this species to populations we do not know much about how its spatial distribution could be impacted by climate change and which strategies to implement for its sustainable use and conservation in order to overcome these challenges maxent was used to model the ecological niche of d guineense and different decision thresholds were used to interpret and classify the outputs climate will impact the distribution of d guineense indeed under africlim rcp 4 5 horizon 2055 the predicted stable areas of species distribution will be about 73 of west africa when the threshold of the minimum training presence is considered and will decrease to 12 when the threshold of the maximum training sensitivity plus specificity is considered under africlim 8 5 horizon 2055 the corresponding values for the stable areas of the species are respectively 70 and 8 of the study area in comparison with the global results of west africa in benin d guineense will be less threatened by climate change as strategies for sustainable use and conservation of the species growing and introducing it in its favorable areas to account for its absence or low densities is recommended also building capacities to the users of the species so that they can grow it on their farms is recommended,2017,0.903
Using Citizen Science to Advance Environmental Research and Monitoring in Alberta,on june 30 2016 the environmental monitoring and science division emsd was created within the department of environment and parks the department emsd is led by the chief scientist whose role and delegated responsibility for delivering albertaâ s environmental science program is established under s 15 of the environmental protection and enhancement act epea one of the core business priorities for emsd is planning coordinating and conducting environmental monitoring which includes the establishment of citizen science and community based monitoring programs this report establishes a foundation for the chief scientist and emsd to understand the state of citizen science in alberta and beyond and to demonstrate the value of citizen science in supporting and advancing the development and implementation of an environmental science program citizen science is research and monitoring where volunteers engage with a scientist to answer real questions from collecting grizzly bear scat to listening to amphibian calls to reporting on groundwater levels many albertans are already participating in citizen science the role of volunteers can be diverse from citizens contributing field observations to sorting or classifying images from their home computers to identifying relevant research questions to address a local issue of concern in addition citizen science projects can range in scale from a local conservation challenge e g pollution in a local water body to global in scope e g tracking monarch butterflies across north america,2017,0.161
Ecological impacts of atmospheric pollution and interactions with climate change in terrestrial ecosystems of the Mediterranean Basin: Current research and future directions,mediterranean basin ecosystems their unique biodiversity and the key services they provide are currently at risk due to air pollution and climate change yet only a limited number of isolated and geographically restricted studies have addressed this topic often with contrasting results particularities of air pollution in this region include high o3 levels due to high air temperatures and solar radiation the stability of air masses and dominance of dry over wet nitrogen deposition moreover the unique abiotic and biotic factors e g climate vegetation type relevance of saharan dust inputs modulating the response of mediterranean ecosystems at various spatiotemporal scales make it difficult to understand and thus predict the consequences of human activities that cause air pollution in the mediterranean basin therefore there is an urgent need to implement coordinated research and experimental platforms along with wider environmental monitoring networks in the region in particular a robust deposition monitoring network in conjunction with modelling estimates is crucial possibly including a set of common biomonitors ideally cryptogams an important component of the mediterranean vegetation to help refine pollutant deposition maps additionally increased attention must be paid to functional diversity measures in future air pollution and climate change studies to establish the necessary link between biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services in mediterranean ecosystems through a coordinated effort the mediterranean scientific community can fill the above mentioned gaps and reach a greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying the combined effects of air pollution and climate change in the mediterranean basin,2017,0.079
Metapopulation vicariance in the Pacific genus Coprosma (Rubiaceae) and its Gondwanan relatives,coprosma is perhaps the most ubiquitous plant genus in new zealand it belongs to the tribe anthospermeae which is distinctive in the family rubiaceae through its small simple wind pollinated flowers and its southern hemisphere distribution the tribe comprises four main clades found respectively in south africa africa australia and the pacific the high level of allopatry among the four subtribes is attributed here to their origin by vicariance the pacific clade subtribe coprosminae is widespread around the margins of the south pacific and also occurs on most of the high islands distributions of the main clades in the subtribe are mapped here and are shown to be repeated in other groups the distribution patterns also coincide with features of regional geology large scale volcanism has persisted in the central pacific region since at least the jurassic at that time the oldest of the pacific large igneous provinces the shatsky rise began to be erupted in the region now occupied by french polynesia large scale volcanism in the central pacific continued through the cretaceous and the cenozoic the sustained volcanism along with details of the clade distributions both suggest that the coprosminae have persisted in the central pacific by survival of metapopulations on individually ephemeral islands it is also likely that vicariance of metapopulations has taken place mediated by processes such as the subsidence of the pacific seafloor by thousands of metres and rifting of active arcs by transform faults it is sometimes argued that a vicariance origin is unlikely for groups on young oceanic islands that have never been connected by continuous land but metapopulation vicariance does not require physical contact between islands,2017,0.315
"Biological notes on the reef stingray, Urobatis concentricus , an endemic species of Mexico",this study found that the reef stingray urobatis concentricus presents a matrotrophic aplacental viviparous reproduction with yolk sac and trophonemata formation growth of ovarian follicles occurs asynchronously and continuously with fecundity of three embryos per female a maximum size of 58â 4 cm total length and 37â 6 cm disc width was recorded corresponding to a mature female of 3 or 4 years of age,2017,0.309
Two sides of a coin: Effects of climate change on the native and non-native distribution of Colossoma macropomum in South America,climate change and species invasions interact in nature disrupting biological communities based on this knowledge we simultaneously assessed the effects of climate change on the native distribution of the amazonian fish colossoma macropomum as well as on its invasiveness across river basins of south america using ecological niche modeling we used six niche models within the ensemble forecast context to predict the geographical distribution of c macropomum for the present time 2050 and 2080 given that this species has been continuously introduced into non native south american basins by fish farming activities we added the locations of c macropomum farms into the modeling process to obtain a more realistic scenario of its invasive potential based on modelling outputs we mapped climate refuge areas at different times our results showed that a plenty of climatically suitable areas for the occurrence of c macropomum occurrence are located outside the original basins at the present time and that its invasive potential is greatly amplified by fish farms simulations of future geographic ranges revealed drastic range contraction in the native region implying concerns not only with respect to the species conservation but also from a socio economic perspective since the species is a cornerstone of artisanal and commercial fisheries in the amazon although the invasive potential is projected to decrease in the face of climate change climate refugia will concentrate in paranã river southeast atlantic and east atlantic basins putting intense negative pressures on the native fish fauna these regions our findings show that short and long term management actions are required for i the conservation of natural stocks of c macropomum in the amazon and ii protecting native fish fauna in the climate refuges of the invaded regions,2017,0.369
Distribution patterns of the cold adapted bumblebee Bombus alpinus in the Alps and hints of an uphill shift (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apidae),climate change is threatening species and habitats altitudinal shifts uphill and negative population trends are commonly observed in altitude related taxa the bumblebee bombus alpinus linnaeus 1758 has a disjoint distribution restricted to fennoscandia and the alps and is considered threatened we studied the ecology and distribution of b alpinus in the alps where the endemic subspecies bombus alpinus helleri dalla torre 1882 is found as a case model because of its rarity habitat and mutual dependence with the ecosystem for pollination and resources we developed species distribution models including both climatic and habitat variables to obtain the surface suitable for this subspecies and quantified its protected portion our analyses indicate that this bumblebee is restricted to the upper altitudes and has a narrow niche mainly related to the presence of glaciers the cool temperature a low temperature variation and a specific range of precipitation a strong altitudinal shift is also taking place probably due to climate change after years of no changes in altitudinal distribution its lowest altitudinal limit has moved up 479 m since the year 1984 while its upper altitudinal limit has remained unchanged over half of the suitable area in the alps is included within protected areas but conservation has not been planned yet however rare species with narrow niche such as b alpinus are highly threatened by climate change potential short term mitigation actions are discussed including exchange of males between locations and integral protection of prairies in the vicinity of glaciers,2017,0.731
Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) now with more than 1/3 billion species occurrences,biodiversity information serving our nation bison is a web based resource https bison usgs gov for finding and accessing occurrence records of species found in the united states us its territories and marine exclusive economic zones bison serves as a data aggregator that compiles and standardizes species occurrence data from multiple data providers and now contains more than 1 3 billion species occurrences bison uses the integrated taxonomic information system itis to standardize species names in searches it is also the us hub of the global biodiversity information facility gbif and obtains much of its data from that resource bison also enables access to numerous federal datasets such as the us forest service s forest inventory and analysis and the us geological survey s bird banding lab bison accepts all us species occurrence datasets that are darwin core compatible but especially seeks to mobilize pollinator and invasive species occurrence datasets data from bison can also be accessed via various map services and the us national parks service s species checklists application is currently available in a development environment as an example of use of bison web services,2017,0.918
"First record of the predatory stinkbug Eocanthecona concinna (Walker, 1867) (Pentatomidae: Asopinae) from India",the genus eocanthecona is distributed in oriental ethiopian and australasian regions this genus is represented by 24 species from the world of which only five species are reported from india the bug eocanthecona concinna was first reported from hong kong china in 1867 later again reported from different regions of china and taiwan in 1910 1934 1961 and 2013 the review of literature indicates no record of e concinna in india hence the report of this stinkbug from kolhapur becomes first report for india and the geographic range of the species in china and taiwan is extended towards india,2017,0.58
"SPECIES OF FRESHWATER GASTROPODS DESCRIBED BY YA. I. STAROBOGATOV: PULMONATA (ACROLOXIDAE), HETEROBRANCHIA (VALVATIDAE) AND …",professor yaroslav igorevich starobogatov was a famous russian biologist zoologist and malacologist of wide knowledge in different fields of invertebrate zoology ya i starobogatov travelled all over the former soviet union and collected numerous samples of mollusks and other invertebrates as a result he studied and described many new species genera and families of different invertebrates including mollusks more than one thousand names of mollusca were introduced by ya i starobogatov this paper is a continuation of publishing the photographs of extant type specimens or topotypes of freshwater gastropods described by ya i starobogatov 1932â 2004 with his disciples and coauthors photographs are given for 83 of 84 considered species belonging to acroloxidae pulmonata valvatidae heterobranchia and viviparidae amnicolidae baicaliidae bithyniidae hydrobiidae lithoglyphidae melanopsidae and thiaridae caenogastropoda the data presentation includes detailed information about types the â œadditional recordsâ section lists only the zoological institute zin catalog based data because zin is the place of storage of the type specimens and the whole material studied by ya i starobogatov published data on subsequent records of the species are cited in the section â œhistory of the name applicationâ the references are provided with brief information about their content the synonymy if exists includes the references to authors of synonymization the ecology information is based on publications and label data,2017,0.657
Modeled Shifts in Polylepis Species Ranges in the Andes from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Present,polylepis woodlands the dominant high elevation woodland species of the andes of south america are an increasingly important focus of conservation and restoration efforts as a buffer to the regional effects of climate change however the natural extent of these woodlands before the arrival of human populations is still debated one significant approach to this question is an assessment of the change in woodland extent from a hypothetical peak at the time of the last glacial maximum lgm to the present where distributions have been altered by both holocene climate oscillations and anthropogenic pressures of pre colombian and modern communities lgm and present distributions for 21 polylepis species were modeled using maxent with environmental data obtained from the worldclim database overall potential woodland extent is 36 smaller today than at lgm however a few species have experienced a projected increase in potential range of 180 this has occurred at the interface of the southern amazonian basin with the altiplano where polylepis species richness is highest bioclimatically stable areas for each species averaged 20 â 4 of the modeled range and mostly occurred in disjunct pockets from central peru to northern argentina and chile,2017,0.862
A systematic approach to estimate the distribution and total abundance of British mammals,robust policy decisions regarding the protection and management of terrestrial mammals require knowledge of where species are and in what numbers the last comprehensive review presenting absolute estimates at a national scale was published nearly 20 years ago and was largely based on expert opinion we investigated and propose a systematic data driven approach combing publically available occurrence data with published density estimates to predict species distribution maps and derive total abundance figures for all terrestrial mammals inhabiting britain our findings suggest that the methodology has potential generally producing plausible predictions consistent with existing information however inconsistencies in the availability and recording of data impact the certainty of this output limiting its current application for policy restrictions on access and use of occurrence data at a local level produces â œdata desertsâ for which models cannot compensate this leads to gaps in spatial distribution of species and consequently underestimates abundance for many species the limited number of geo referenced densities hampered the extrapolation from habitat suitability to absolute abundance even for well studied species further density estimates are required many density estimates used were pre 1995 and therefore the derived abundance should not be considered a current estimate to maximise a systematic approach in the future we make the following recommendations to mitigate the attitudes of a minority of local data providers occurrence records must be submitted to national surveys such as the mammal societyâ s mammal tracker studies are required to estimate density for common species and in areas of low or no abundance to ensure such studies can be collated and used efficiently we propose a standardised approach reporting density estimates based on the 1km resolution british national grid or habitat representative of the 1km square with digital maps to accompany publications,2017,0.657
Demystifying the Landscape of Ecological Data Repositories in the United States,the landscape of repositories holding ecological data is complex and promotes the isolation of data from subdisciplines in separate repositories ecological synthesis can involve data from many subdisciplines and therefore may require researchers to navigate multiple data repositories to aggregate data for analysis additional challenges to coordinating the cyberinfrastructure needed to manage the nation s ecological data include the absence of an overall strategic approach including a plan for the sustainability of data repositories and the lack of technical and financial resources for managing data generated by individuals and small projects development of a strategic vision for infrastructure to manage ecological data at a national scale is of prime importance for simplifying and integrating the complex landscape of ecological data repositories as part of that vision an ecological data center could provide services that would make the current system of repositories and aggregators function better for both individual data providers and data users,2017,0.103
New records of the larval forms Cerataspis monstrosa and Amphionides reynaudii (Crustacea: Decapoda) from the western tropical Atlantic,the current biogeographic and taxonomic knowledge on decapod larvae in tropical oceans is still very incomplete in spite of their huge ecological and socio economic importance the present study reports two new records for decapod larval forms in pelagic environments off oceanic islands in the western tropical atlantic and provides detailed diagnoses and images of these larvae samples were taken from july 2010 to november 2014 using neuston bongo and wp 2 nets at three localities st peter and st paulâ s archipelago spsp rocas atoll ra and fernando de noronha archipelago fn the larval forms cerataspis monstrosa gray 1828 and amphionides reynaudii h milne edwards 1832 were recorded around these areas constituting the first record for these oceanic islands out of 121 samples analyzed one specimen of c monstrosa mysis ii was found off fn and 20 specimens of a reynaudii in nine distinct stages mysis ii iv vi vii viii ix x xi xii were found off spsp ra and fn,2017,0.608
Conservation status of some rare plant species on the watershed of the middle section of river Devoll (South Central Albania) and their distribution in Albania,in this study the conservation status was estimated for six important rare and endemic plant taxa from the watershed of the middle section of river devoll it was assessed by the geospatial conservation assessment tool geocat the geocat method is a standardized method for determination of the conservation status of the red list species as a result bubon albanicum and echium maculatum were estimated for the first time as endangered while bornmuellera baldaccii subsp baldacii and subsp rechingeri respectively were estimated as endangered and critically endangered the conservation status of endangered was confirmed for campanula hawkinsiana while festucopsis serpentini and cistus sintenisii were proposed to be included in the iucn red list of species as vulnerable and endangered respectively comments on the species distribution were also included,2017,0.461
"Exceptionally well-preserved Permocalculus cf. tenellus (Pia) (Gymnocodiaceae) from Upper Permian Khuff Formation limestones, Saudi Arabia",an exceptionally well preserved specimen of the articulated rhodophyte permocalculus compared with p tenellus sensu elliott 1955 is described from fine grained upper permian limestones of the khuff formation of saudi arabia longitudinal medullary and sheaf like cortical filaments extend through the uniserial series of elongate globular concave and convex terminating interlocking segments for which they are interpreted to have functioned in articulation the filaments tend to splay and branch laterally into the cortex where they terminate at the pores at the terminal aperture the filaments extend as bifurcating and possibly trifurcating branches and may serve as the origin of a new segment numerous elongate globular chambers up to five in each row and intimately involved with the filaments are developed in the outer medulla and are considered to represent reproductive sporangia the specimen is considered to have occupied predominantly low energy normal to slightly elevated salinity shallow conditions within the subtidal regime of a lagoon,2017,0.289
Climate change impacts on date palm cultivation in Saudi Arabia,date palm phoenix dactylifera l is an important cash crop in many countries including saudi arabia understanding the likely potential distribution of this crop under current and future climate scenarios will enable environmental managers to prepare appropriate strategies to manage the changes in the current study the simulation model climex was used to develop a niche model to estimate the impacts of climate change on the current and future potential distribution of date palm two global climate models gcms csiro mk3â 0 and miroc h under the a2 emission scenario for 2050 and 2100 were used to assess the impacts of climate change a sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify which model parameters had the most effect on date palm distribution further refinements of the potential distributions were performed through the integration of six non climatic parameters in a geographic information system areas containing suitable soil taxonomy soil texture soil salinity land use landform and slopes of 7â for date palm were selected as suitable refining variables in order to achieve more realistic models the results from both gcms exhibited a significant reduction in climatic suitability for date palm cultivation in saudi arabia by 2100 climate sensitivity analysis indicates that the lower optimal soil moisture cold stress temperature threshold and wet stress threshold parameters had the most effect on sensitivity while other parameters were moderately sensitive or insensitive to change the study also demonstrated that the inclusion of non climatic parameters with climex outputs increased the explanatory power of the models such models can provide early warning scenarios for how environmental managers should respond to changes in the distribution of the date palm in saudi arabia,2017,0.114
Comprehensive analysis of the volatilome of Scytinostroma portentosum,fruiting bodies of the corticoid fungus scytinostroma portentosum known as mothball crust have been sampled from a dead branch of sallow volatile organic compounds of the samples were extracted by means of liquid liquid extraction and purified by solvent assisted flavour evaporation in addition solid phase microextraction was applied on one fruiting body sample the odour active compounds were identified by gas chromatography mass spectrometry and olfactometry on two columns of different polarity and described by sensory detection furthermore an aroma extract dilution analysis was performed to identify the main flavour compounds the main odour compounds of s portentosum with an fd factors â 16 were 3 chloroindole responsible for the typical mothball odour the mushroom odours oct 1 en 3 ol and oct 1 en 3 one methyl p anisate having an anise like smell the bloomy and sweet smelling terpenes linalool and nerolidol as well as benzylacetone and methyl hexadecanoate herewith a comprehensive aroma active volatilome of s portentosum is presented,2017,0.423
"Nutrient acquisition, soil phosphorus partitioning and competition among trees in a lowland tropical rain forest",we hypothesized that dinitrogen n2 and non n2 fixing tropical trees would have distinct phosphorus p acquisition strategies allowing them to exploit different p sources reducing competition we measured root phosphatase activity and arbuscular mycorrhizal am colonization among two n2 and two non n2 fixing seedlings and grew them alone and in competition with different inorganic and organic p forms to assess potential p partitioning we found an inverse relationship between root phosphatase activity and am colonization in field collected seedlings indicative of a trade off in p acquisition strategies this correlated with the predominantly exploited p sources in the seedling experiment the n2 fixer with high n2 fixation and root phosphatase activity grew best on organic p whereas the poor n2 fixer and the two non n2 fixers with high am colonization grew best on inorganic p when grown in competition however am colonization root phosphatase activity and n2 fixation increased in the n2 fixers allowing them to outcompete the non n2 fixers regardless of p source our results indicate that some tropical trees have the capacity to partition soil p but this does not eliminate interspecific competition rather enhanced p and n acquisition strategies may increase the competitive ability of n2 fixers relative to non n2 fixers,2017,0.464
Towards Insect Digital Collections and Data Publishing: A journey for the GBIF-funded African Insect Atlas Collaborative Project,museums from six african countries botswana kenya zimbabwe south africa madagascar mozambique with support from the california academy of sciences are currently collaborating on the gbif funded project african insect atlas unleashing the potential of insects in conservation and sustainability research in africa bid af2015 0134 reg this project was initiated to move biodiversity knowledge out of insect collections into the hands of a new generation of global biodiversity researchers interested in direct outcomes the project acknowledges that insects are the glue that hold ecosystems together and are ideal organisms for climate change biology conservation planning mapping local and regional patterns of diversity and monitoring threats to ecosystem services and natural capital thereby addressing the sustainable development goal 15 life on land http www undp org content undp en home sustainable development goals html the consortium partners have since june 2016 embarked on a journey to learn digitization techniques and have successfully digitized 50 of the project goals the targeted insect orders include coleoptera odonata ephemeroptera plecoptera trichoptera and hymenoptera the data being mobilized includes specimen and species data habitat information as well as identification of possible threats such as deforestation these are being captured into a standardized platform using darwin core elaborate data cleaning is being carried out using tools in open refine http openrefine org and microsoft excel 2010 the captured data is also being geo referenced using appropriate software such as geolocate http www museum tulane edu geolocate and geo calculator http manisnet org gci2 html the specimen occurrence records will be made available on the gbif platform and will continuously be updated as more information becomes available any specimen images taken will also be linked to the database specify and microsoft excel assessments will be carried out to establish which species are native and endemic as well as to establish their conservation status simplified image catalogues checklists distribution and habitat maps in suitable formats will also be produced to help scientists and other users to identify these species during their research and in the field,2017,0.469
Data from the ichthyological collection of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi,this dataset contains information on the occurrence of neotropical fishes actinopterygii chondrichthyes sarcopterygii collected in south america mostly from the brazilian amazon the ichthyology collections of the museu paraense emã lio goeldi mpeg http www museu goeldi br include specimens collected between 1900 and 2014 the dataset is now available for public consultation on the global biodiversity information facility portal http www gbif org dataset b0059a3a 5cab 4a08 8d14 d92c23378e43 and through sistema de informaã ã o sobre a biodiversidade brasileira http gbif sibbr gov br explorador pt recurso 62,2017,0.571
Quantification of climatic niches in birds: adding the temporal dimension,quantification of the climatic niche from geographic occurrences is an increasingly important tool for studying speciesâ relationships to their environment for example to predict responses to climate change however as the geographic distributions of birds are seasonally dynamic they pose a challenge to carrying out comparable and appropriate quantification of climatic niches in this review we first assess how relevant seasonal dynamics are across birds as a whole by compiling a database of migratory behaviour for 10443 bird species second we examine how studies have quantified climatic niches of birds finally using australia as a case study we investigate how well existing distribution datasets represent temporal dynamics by comparing seasonal patterns of species richness obtained from point occurrence data with those from range maps and assess the consequences for niche quantification we provide a consistent classification of migratory behaviour across all birds and find that a huge variety exists between and within species that should be considered when quantifying climatic niches despite this our review of the literature revealed that seasonal dynamics have often not been accounted for for future studies we provide a framework for selecting appropriate occurrence data depending on migratory behaviour and data availability our comparison of seasonal species richness patterns obtained from extent of occurrence range maps and point occurrence data suggests that range maps are less able to detect temporal dynamics of bird distributions than point occurrence data we conclude that seasonally explicit range maps combined with climatic data for the corresponding time period can be used to adequately quantify climatic niches for resident birds but are not adequate to quantify the climatic niches of migratory and nomadic species therefore consistent quantification of climatic niches across all birds requires temporally explicit occurrence points as such increasing the availability of occurrence data and methods correcting biases should be a priority,2017,0.566
Disruption of Angiogenesis by Anthocyanin-Rich Extracts of Hibiscus sabdariffa,abnormal vessel formations contribute to the progression of specific angiogenic diseases including age related macular degeneration adequate vessel growth and maintenance represent the coordinated process of endothelial cell proliferation matrix remodeling and differentiation however the molecular mechanism of the proper balance between angiogenic activators and inhibitors remains elusive in addition quantitative analysis of vessel formation has been challenging due to complex angiogenic morphology we hypothesized that conjugated double bond containing natural products including anthocyanin extracts from hibiscus sabdariffa may control the proper angiogenesis the current study was designed to determine whether natural molecules from african plant library modulate angiogenesis further we questioned how the proper balance of anti or pro angiogenic signaling can be obtained in the vascular microenvironment by treating anthocyanin or fatty acids using chick chorioallantoic membrane angiogenesis model in ovo the angiogenic morphology was analyzed systematically by measuring twenty one angiogenic indexes using angiogenic analyzer software chick chorioallantoic model demonstrated that anthocyanin rich extracts inhibited angiogenesis in time and concentration dependent manner molecular modeling analysis proposed that hibiscetin as a component in hibiscus may bind to the active site of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 vegfr2 with dg 8 42 kcal mol of binding energy our results provided the evidence that anthocyanin is an angiogenic modulator that can be used to treat uncontrolled neovascular related diseases including age related macular degeneration,2017,0.094
Environmental drivers of freshwater macrophyte diversity and community composition in calcareous warm-water rivers of America and Africa,this study assessed the hypothesis that spatial and environmental drivers of river macrophyte diversity and community composition differ in relative importance in calcareous river systems located in warm regions of america versus africa we collected aquatic vegetation and spatio environmental data during 2006â 11 from 200 hardwater rivers and associated floodplain waterbodies located up to 30â north or south of the equator in mã xico trinidad brazil argentina u s a florida south africa botswana and zambia species rarefaction procedures were used to assess the impacts of differing sampling effort in the two continents upon estimation of î diversity â œspecies poolâ we then used a cluster analysis approach two way indicator species analysis twinspan to classify samples into groups based upon species composition variation in species richness community composition and six spatial and environmental variables among samples making up these groups were compared using anova and kruskalâ wallis procedures regression trees and redundancy analysis were used to infer the relative importance of spatial and environmental drivers in explaining variation in local species richness and species community composition between the two continents sorensen s index cs was calculated to estimate species turnover î diversity between african and american samples in total 378 macrophyte taxa were recorded with no significant difference in mean macrophyte î diversity between african and american sites but with evidence for high species turnover between the two continents cs 0 17 rarefaction analysis confirmed the existence of a larger macrophyte species pool in the hardwater rivers sampled in africa compared to america twinspan classification identified seven sample end groups only one of which contained a mix of sites from both continents permanova and non metric multidimensional scaling ordination analysis confirmed significant differences in community composition present in these sample groups there were substantial differences between the sample groups for î diversity and for spatial and environmental variables the high species turnover between africa and america may be accounted for by geographical segregation along with differences in aquatic habitat characteristics and varying long distance dispersal capacities of individual species the relative importance of spatial and physicochemical drivers latitude ph altitude alkalinity and electrical conductivity but not flow differed between the continents in influencing variation in both macrophyte diversity and community composition latitude was a significant although nonlinear and rather complex spatial driver of macrophyte î diversity in both american and african hardwater rivers water chemistry variables varied in relative importance as drivers of macrophyte î diversity for african and american sites individually and for all sites combined but ph and or electrical conductivity were more important than alkalinity in each case in all three cases altitude was consistently the third most important driver of î diversity spatial and environmental variables played important roles in structuring macrophyte community composition in warm water calcareous rivers in both america and africa with latitude being the strongest individual driver thus this spatial variable which is a surrogate for numerous enviro climatic variables appears to be of importance in determining macrophyte distributions at large spatial scales for the ecosystem type examined here,2017,0.995
Epiphytic Lichen Diversity and Conservation in Armenia,the present doctoral thesis work reports the results of extensive lichenological research in the recent years and combines them with known literature data the work presents the current state of knowledge on the diversity of epiphytic lichenized fungi and their aspects in armenia as well as the research on the phylogeny of the ramalina pollinaria aggregate of the genus ramalina a total of 230 taxa of lichenized fungi are reported from epiphytic habitats in armenia based on field studies from 2011 to 2015 and evaluation of the available literature for each species notes on taxonomy chemistry ecology and local regional and world distribution are presented as well as presence in the protected areas of the country an identification key for all species is added of the total 219 are specialized epiphytes rarely found on other substrata while 11 species occur only incidentally on bark and more usually on rock the epiphytic lichenized fungi of armenia belong to 13 orders 34 families and 88 genera the most species rich higher taxa are lecanorales parmeliaceae physciaceae teloschistaceae arthoniales peltigerales and pertusariales lecanora usnea and phaeophyscia are the most species rich genera 188 species 82 of the epiphytic lichen mycobiota were found in the specially protected nature areas of armenia the conservation status of 74 species was evaluated following the iucn red list of threatened species categories and criteria among them nine taxa were assessed as critically endangered cr five taxa as endangered en two taxa as vulnerable vu four taxa as data deficient dd and 54 taxa as least concern lc epiphytic lichens reported from armenia showed predominantly holarctic distributional patterns 187 species were found in the temperate deciduous and mixed forests which dominate in northern and central armenia and 56 species in the open arid woodlands of southern armenia overall 196 taxa are new records of lichen fungi including epiphytic saxicolous and terricolous taxa and 12 are new records of lichenicolous fungi for armenia 37 genera are for the first time reported for the country,2017,0.979
Anticipating species distributions: Handling sampling effort bias under a Bayesian framework,anticipating species distributions in space and time is necessary for effective biodiversity conservation and for prioritising management interventions this is especially true when considering invasive species in such a case anticipating their spread is important to effectively plan management actions however considering uncertainty in the output of species distribution models is critical for correctly interpreting results and avoiding inappropriate decision making in particular when dealing with species inventories the bias resulting from sampling effort may lead to an over or under estimation of the local density of occurrences of a species in this paper we propose an innovative method to i map sampling effort bias using cartogram models and ii explicitly consider such uncertainty in the modeling procedure under a bayesian framework which allows the integration of multilevel input data with prior information to improve the anticipation species distributions,2017,0.659
Local conditions affecting current and potential distribution of the invasive round goby – Species distribution modelling with spatial constraints,the establishment of non indigenous species nis has become a global phenomenon and is acknowledged as one of many potential threats against biodiversity and the functioning of marine ecosystems to support effective management there is a need to predict nis distribution and identify areas with the highest invasion risk in this study we have developed local species distribution models by combining observations of one of the top tier invasive nis the round goby neogobius melanostomus with high resolution maps of environmental conditions along the baltic sea coast of south eastern sweden by applying the model with and without spatial constraints we estimate the current and potential distribution the difference between these two maps outlines high risk areas for potential colonization should round goby continue to spread in accordance with environmental preference in the area we additionally highlight the significance of scale for distribution modelling by comparing the importance of local environmental conditions to variables important on a regional scale,2017,0.234
Uses of Haematostaphis barteri Hook.f. among the Waaba and Btammarib in North-Benin and impact on the species vulnerability,haematostaphis barteri hook f is an endemic plant species with a high economic potential that mostly grows on rocky soils in the sudanian zone from ghana to sudan in b eacute nin the species is found only around the commune of natitingou but there is little knowledge on its uses by the local populations and how these uses potentially affect its conservation status this study aimed to evaluate the vulnerability of h barteri in its natural range in benin based on the assessment of its indigenous uses and its population inventory an ethnobotanical survey was conducted in eight villages of the commune of natitingou from eighty people belonging to the b egrave tammarib egrave and waaba ethnic groups to identify their knowledge and usage of the species the species population inventory was also carried out to estimate the frequency and density of h barteri populations the species 39 vulnerability score was determined using results from the ethnobotanical survey population inventory and information in the literature rural populations in natitingou use h barteri mainly for food 100 of interviewees traditional medicine 76 3 and wood fuel 37 5 most of the respondents 91 3 usually harvest immature fruits so as to preserve them both for their consumption and for commercialization twenty nine populations of h barteri were identified with densities averaging 46 6 adult individuals per hectare and a regeneration of 9 7 individuals per hectare the average vulnerability score for h barteri was estimated at 2 4 on a scale of 1 not vulnerable to 3 highly vulnerable h barteri is thus a vulnerable species that deserves to be included in benin rsquo s list of endangered species nbsp key words west africa atacora mountains ethnobotany endemic species exploitation vulnerability non timber forest products ntfp,2017,0.984
Monitoring ecological change during rapid socio-economic and political transitions: Colombian ecosystems in the post-conflict era,after more than 50 years of armed conflict colombia is now transitioning to a more stable social and political climate due to a series of peace agreements between the government and different armed groups consequences of these socio economic and political changes on ecosystems are largely uncertain but there is growing concern about derived increases in environmental degradation here we review the capacity of colombia to monitor the state of its ecosystems and their rate of change over time we found several important programs currently set in place by different institutions as well as by independent groups of scientists that address different aspects of environmental monitoring however most of the current initiatives could be improved in terms of data coverage quality and access and could be better articulated among each other we propose a set of activities that would increase the capacity of colombia to monitor its ecosystems provide useful information to policy makers and facilitate scientific research these include 1 the establishment of a national center for ecological synthesis that focuses on analyzing existing information 2 the establishment of an ecological observatory system that collects new information integrates remote sensing products and produces near real time products on key ecological variables and 3 the creation of new platforms for dialog and action within existing scientific and policy groups,2017,0.072
Projected climate change threatens pollinators and crop production in Brazil,animal pollination can impact food security since many crops depend on pollinators to produce fruits and seeds however the effects of projected climate change on crop pollinators and therefore on crop production are still unclear especially for wild pollinators and aggregate community responses using species distributional modeling we assessed the effects of climate change on the geographic distribution of 95 pollinator species of 13 brazilian crops and we estimated their relative impacts on crop production we described these effects at the municipality level and we assessed the crops that were grown the gross production volume of these crops the total crop production value and the number of inhabitants overall considering all crop species we found that the projected climate change will reduce the probability of pollinator occurrence by almost 0 13 by 2050 our models predict that almost 90 of the municipalities analyzed will face species loss decreases in the pollinator occurrence probability varied from 0 08 persimmon to 0 25 tomato and will potentially affect 9 mandarin to 100 sunflower of the municipalities that produce each crop municipalities in central and southern brazil will potentially face relatively large impacts on crop production due to pollinator loss in contrast some municipalities in northern brazil particularly in the northwestern amazon could potentially benefit from climate change because pollinators of some crops may increase the decline in the probability of pollinator occurrence is found in a large number of municipalities with the lowest gdp and will also likely affect some places where crop production is high 20 to 90 of the gdp and where the number of inhabitants is also high more than 6 million people our study highlights key municipalities where crops are economically important and where pollinators will potentially face the worst conditions due to climate change however pollinators may be able to find new suitable areas that have the potential to improve crop production the results shown here could guide policy decisions for adapting to climate change and for preventing the loss of pollinator species and crop production,2017,0.387
"The Effect of Agricultural Management on the Distribution and Abundance of Arsenura Armida (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) in Chiapas, Mexico",arsenura armida plays an important ecological role in the development of woods and forests throughout latin america it is also consumed in several rural communities of mexico at present there is no information on the host preferences of this species of moth habitat type or the effects of human consumption on population numbers this paper determines the effect of agricultural management on the distribution occupation and abundance of larvae of a armida in order to promote strategies for its sustainable exploitation six observation plots each with an area of 4 km2 were established in three localities of the state of chiapas mexico three plots were subject to agricultural management la pimienta la ilusion and la loma and three without management carrizal huachinadero and mirador all host plants together with their diameter at breast height dbh were quantified in order to estimate host preference occupation distribution and abundance the number of larvae per tree were recorded over two consecutive years between march and october the occupation and abundance of a armida varied among plots and the six tree species observed both variables presented a relationship with the mean dbh of the host species a preference for the host species heliocarpus appendiculatus and rollinia mucosa was observed the greatest abundance of larvae and host occupation was found in plots subject to agricultural management during the first year abundance decreased during the second year due to tree mortality the insect presented a clustered distribution that depended on the distribution and development of host trees highest dbh it is suggested that host management is considered for the control of populations of a armida in agricultural areas and its sustainable exploitation for human consumption,2017,0.873
"Taxonomy and Biogeography without frontiers – WhatsApp, Facebook and smartphone digital photography let citizen scientists in more remote localities step out of the dark",background taxonomy and biogeography can benefit from citizen scientists the use of social networking and open access cooperative publishing can easily connect naturalists even in more remote areas with in country scientists and institutions as well as those abroad this enables taxonomic efforts without frontiers and at the same time adequate benefit sharing measures new information we present new distribution and habitat data for diving beetles of bali island indonesia as a proof of concept the species hydaticus luczonicus aubã 1838 and eretes griseus fabricius 1781 are reported from bali for the first time the total number of dytiscidae species known from bali is now 34,2017,0.524
"Biodiversity, distribution, and conservation status of Pinaceae in Puebla, Mexico",pinaceae is the most species rich conifer family in mexico here we describe the diversity and geographic distribution of the family in the state of puebla based on revision of herbarium specimens and field exploration 572 georeferenced records for 15 species and 1 variety were mapped these were included in potential distribution models to predict the most species rich regions in the state and quantify the known species distributions in 10â ã 10â latitudinal ã longitudinal cells the conservation status of each taxon was evaluated by calculating its area of occupation and conservation category within the state a speciesâ accumulation curve agreed with the number of taxa employed suggesting that the family is relatively well sampled the resulting potential distribution models indicated that the regions of highest predicted diversity in the state correspond well to the actual diversity estimates although in some sites more species were predicted than were recorded the sierra madre oriental and the trans mexican volcanic belt were the biogeographic regions with the greatest known and potential richness finally the regional evaluation of conservation status provides relevant information for local conservationists and authorities given that 12 of the 16 taxa were determined to be at risk,2017,0.822
Impact of Climate Variability on the Frequency and Severity of Ecological Disturbances in Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Sky Island Ecosystems,many high elevation conifer species including high elevation five needle pines are declining throughout western north america warming temperatures mountain pine beetle white pine blister rust and alteration of naturally occurring fire regimes represent an interactive set of circumstances leading to greater risk the loss of these treeline pines can detrimentally impact biodiversity and valuable ecosystem services including wildlife habitat watershed and soil protection aesthetics and recreation great basin bristlecone pine ecosystems are naturally highly fragmented because of their elevational requirements however they may become even more fragmented due to combined impacts of warming temperature insects and diseases listed above this study increased the knowledge of great basin bristlecone pine ecology by examining response to climate change with respect to fire fuels and tree chemistry the first study examined alteration of the fire regime and showed that fuels in great basin bristlecone pine decreased with elevation yet canopy fuels that are more susceptible to fire suggested fire potential may increase at higher elevations with warming air temperatures which could threaten the oldest individuals of this iconic species examination of tree chemistry to environmental gradients like elevation and temperature demonstrated a clear response to climate induced environmental stress this has the potential to alter flammability and the effectiveness of tree defenses to mountain pine beetle lastly this research determined that volatile organic compounds emitted from great basin bristlecone pine foliage influence host selection for mountain pine beetle all three of these studies will aid in developing unique forest management practices to increase forest resilience of treeline species and could provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the incredible longevity of great basin bristlecone pine,2017,0.483
Therapeutic Importance Of Ephedra Alata And Ephedra Foliata- A Review,the preliminary phytochemical analysis of ephedra alata indicated the presence of cardiac glycosides reducing sugars flavonoids phenolic compounds and alkaloids ephedra species contain alkaloids ephedrine pseudoephedrine norephedrine norpseudoephedrine methylephedrine and methylpseudoephedrine beside the e type alkaloids ephedroxane and macrocyclic spermidines called ephedradine a d were isolated from some ephedra species the total amount of alkaloids isolated from ephedra alata aerial parts was 0 2 0 22 phenolic compounds included chlorogenic acid rutin catechin quercetin coumaric acid flavonoid vicenin ii lucenin iii kaempferol 3 rhamnoside quercetin 3 rhamnoside herbacetin 7 glucoside herbacetin 8 methyl ether 3 o glucoside 7 o rutinoside and herbacetin 7 o 6â quinylglucoside and furanofuran â syringaresinol digalloylglucose nilocitin p coumaric acid were isolated from ephedra alata ephedra foliata also produced ephedrine and pseudoephedrine the total alkaloids contents of ephedra foliata ephedrine and psudoephedrine were 0 04 0 2 previous pharmacological studies revealed that ephedra species possessed antimicrobial antioxidant antidiabetic hepatoprotective and cardiovascular effects this review discussed the chemical constituents and pharmacological effects of ephedra alata and ephedra foliata,2017,0.699
"Genome size in arthropods; different roles of phylogeny, habitat and life history in insects and crustaceans",despite the major role of genome size for physiology ecology and evolution there is still mixed evidence with regard to proximate and ultimate drivers the main causes of large genome size are proliferation of noncoding elements and or duplication events the relative role and interplay between these proximate causes and the evolutionary patterns shaped by phylogeny life history traits or environment are largely unknown for the arthropods genome size shows a tremendous variability in this group and it has a major impact on a range of fitnessâ related parameters such as growth metabolism life history traits and for many species also body size in this study we compared genome size in two major arthropod groups insects and crustaceans and related this to phylogenetic patterns and parameters affecting ambient temperature latitude depth or altitude insect developmental mode as well as crustacean body size and habitat for species where data were available for the insects the genome size is clearly phylogenyâ dependent reflecting primarily their life history and mode of development while for crustaceans there was a weaker association between genome size and phylogeny suggesting life cycle strategies and habitat as more important determinants maximum observed latitude and depth and their combined effect showed positive and possibly phylogenetic independent correlations with genome size for crustaceans this study illustrate the striking difference in genome sizes both between and within these two major groups of arthropods and that while living in the cold with low developmental rates may promote large genomes in marine crustaceans there is a multitude of proximate and ultimate drivers of genome size,2017,0.379
Handout on Edible Plants of the Kenai Peninsula,this handout was originally written as a teaching aid for an edible plants class provided to several kenai peninsula homeschool families its geographic focus is the western kenai peninsula fungi and marine algae are outside of the taxonomic scope of this handout but i encourage the reader to learn more about these groups since they include multiple edible species available locally medicinal uses of plants are not covered the text is biased towards plants that i know and use includes some of my personal opinions and should not be considered authoritative it is intended as a help for learning about local edible plants,2017,0.158
"Beyond the gardens: notes on nomenclature, distribution and conservation of Philodendron melinonii Brongn. ex Regel, an emblematic Amazonian aroid",philodendron melinonii is an amazonian species common in botanical gardens and urban landscaping however its taxonomy natural distribution and conservation are barely addressed in the literature this work presents the nomenclatural history of the species with lectotype designation a typographical correction and comments on its biogeographic distribution and conservation,2017,0.576
The impact of climate change on the distribution of two threatened Dipterocarp trees,two ecologically and economically important and threatened dipterocarp trees sal shorea robusta and garjan dipterocarpus turbinatus form mono specific canopies in dry deciduous moist deciduous evergreen and semievergreen forests across south asia and continental parts of southeast asia they provide valuable timber and play an important role in the economy of many asian countries however both dipterocarp trees are threatened by continuing forest clearing habitat alteration and global climate change while climatic regimes in the asian tropics are changing research on climate change driven shifts in the distribution of tropical asian trees is limited we applied a bioclimatic modeling approach to these two dipterocarp trees sal and garjan we used presence only records for the tree species five bioclimatic variables and selected two climatic scenarios rcp4 5 an optimistic scenario and rcp8 5 a pessimistic scenario and three global climate models gcms to encompass the full range of variation in the models we modeled climate space suitability for both species projected to 2070 using a climate envelope modeling tool â œmaxentâ the maximum entropy algorithm annual precipitation was the key bioclimatic variable in all gcms for explaining the current and future distributions of sal and garjan sal 49 97 â 1 33 garjan 37 63 â 1 19 our models predict that suitable climate space for sal will decline by 24 and 34 the mean of the three gcms by 2070 under rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 respectively in contrast the consequences of imminent climate change appear less severe for garjan with a decline of 17 and 27 under rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 respectively the findings of this study can be used to set conservation guidelines for sal and garjan by identifying vulnerable habitats in the region in addition the natural habitats of sal and garjan can be categorized as low to high risk under changing climates where artificial regeneration should be undertaken for forest restoration,2017,0.467
"Emerging Ornamental Plant Invaders in Urban Areas—Centranthus ruber in Cape Town, South Africa as a Case Study",plant species that receive significant human introduction effort and assistance generally are the most problematic invaders despite this invasive ornamental species in urban settings have received relatively little attention if not invading natural areas here we consider centranthus ruber in an urban setting in south africa as a case study and explore when emerging invaders are able to cross the urbanâ wildland interface and what hinders early eradication in urban environments centranthus ruber was introduced into cape town south africa more than a century ago as a garden ornamental but until recently was not considered invasive we determine the current and potential future distribution in south africa evaluate current management activities and provide recommendations for control and legislation by august 2013 we had found 64 populations of which 31 were casual 27 naturalized and 6 invasive this increased to more than 530 identified populations by the end of 2015 due to both spread and increased awareness centranthus ruber can invade near pristine areas with one population found in natural vegetation in the table mountain national park however with only one slowly spreading population the threat might be limited we found no difference in plant mortality between chemical and mechanical clearing but with mechanical clearing stimulating the soil seedbank we recommend chemical methods using a species distribution model we found large parts of south africa including the southwestern cape where we conducted our surveys to be climatically suitable for this species consequently the category 1b regional listing in nem ba in the western cape is justified but a listing in other parts of the country also might be appropriate based on our findings we suggest that the extirpation of c ruber in south africa is possible but without buy in from residents in urban environments reinvasion will render this impossible this study stresses the importance of managing and legislating emerging invaders at the urbanâ wildland interface and the monitoring of common ornamental species with invasive traits,2017,0.914
Derivation of netput shadow prices under different levels of pest pressure,in this paper we propose a framework to derive agricultural netput shadow prices that assign values to netputs in terms of their contribution to technical and environmental efficiency our modeling approach is based on the dual representation of an event specific data envelopment model and is applied to a panel dataset of dutch arable farms results show that netput shadow prices vary significantly across pest pressure events suggesting the relevance to consider the event specific nature of the production technology when computing them by revealing the relative importance of pesticides in terms of their contribution to environmental efficiency this study provides a potential framework for constructing penalties aiming to internalize some portion of the social cost of pesticide use,2017,0.124
Improved species-occurrence predictions in data-poor regions: using large-scale data and bias correction with down-weighted Poisson regression and Maxent,species distribution modelling sdm has become an essential method in ecology and conservation in the absence of survey data the majority of sdms are calibrated with opportunistic presence only data incurring substantial sampling bias we address the challenge of correcting for sampling bias in the data sparse situations we modelled the relative intensity of bat records in their entire range using three modelling algorithms under the point process modelling framework glms with subset selection glms fitted with an elastic net penalty and maxent to correct for sampling bias we applied model based bias correction by incorporating spatial information on site accessibility or sampling efforts we evaluated the effect of bias correction on the modelsâ predictive performance auc and tss calculated on spatial block cross validation and a holdout data set when evaluated with independent but also sampling biased test data correction for sampling bias led to improved predictions the predictive performance of the three modelling algorithms was very similar elastic net models have intermediate performance with slight advantage for glms on cross validation and maxent on hold out evaluation model based bias correction is very useful in data sparse situations where detailed data are not available to apply other bias correction methods however bias correction success depends on how well the selected bias variables describe the sources of bias in this study accessibility covariates described bias in our data better than effort covariates and their use led to larger changes in predictive performance objectively evaluating bias correction requires bias free presence absence test data and without them the real improvement for describing a speciesâ environmental niche cannot be assessed,2017,0.126
A DNA barcode database of Australia’s freshwater macroinvertebrate fauna,macroinvertebrates are widely used for monitoring freshwater ecosystems in most monitoring programs identifications take substantial time and expense methods that improve the speed accuracy and cost effectiveness of macroinvertebrate identification would benefit such programs increasingly dna barcodes are being used to provide accurate species level identifications and have the potential to change how macroinvertebrates are routinely identified herein we discuss the need for dna barcodes of freshwater macroinvertebrates with particular reference to australia we examine the use of dna barcodes for species identification and compare dna barcoding efforts of macroinvertebrates from australia with those globally we consider the role of high throughput sequencing of dna barcodes in freshwater bioassessment and its potential use in biosurveillance finally we outline a strategy for developing a comprehensive national dna barcode database for australian freshwater macroinvertebrates and present the initial efforts in creating this database,2017,0.385
Horses in the Cloud: big data exploration and mining of fossil and extant Equus (Mammalia: Equidae),extant species of the genus equus e g horses asses and zebras have a widespread distribution today on all continents except antarctica extinct species of equus represented by fossils were likewise widely distributed in the pliocene and even more so during the pleistocene in order to understand the efficacy of â œbig dataâ for paleo biogeographic analyses location records latitude longitude and fossil occurrences for the genus equus were mined and further explored from six databases including idigbio paleobiology database vertnet bison neotoma and gbif these were chosen from a priori knowledge of where relevant data might be aggregated we also realized that these databases have different objectives and data sources and therefore would provide a useful comparative study of the widespread taxon equus in space and time,2017,0.458
Open data on fungi and bacterial plant pathogens in New Zealand,abstractthe landcare research collections of biological specimens and their associated databases provide an essential resource for local and international researchers administrators of new zealandâ s plant disease related biosecurity system border control agencies and non professional citizen scientists this article focuses on data provided for new zealandâ s non lichenised fungi and plant pathogenic bacteria through the nzfungi nomenclatural and bibliographic database and the associated specimen databases for the pdd fungarium and international collection of microorganisms from plants culture collection a brief history of the development of the databases is provided along with the resources used to deliver the data to users the data is managed through an enterprise data management system rather than an off the shelf product using international standards to allow exchange of data with other providers such as gbif index fungorum straininfo and species 2000,2017,0.111
Modeling impacts of human footprint and soil variability on the potential distribution of invasive plant species in different biomes,human footprint and soil variability may be important in shaping the spread of invasive plant species ips however until now there is little knowledge on how human footprint and soil variability affect the potential distribution of ips in different biomes we used maxent modeling to project the potential distribution of 29 ips with wide distributions and long introduction histories in china based on various combinations of climatic correlates soil characteristics and human footprint then we evaluated the relative importance of each type of environmental variables climate soil and human footprint as well as the difference in range and similarity of the potential distribution of ips between different biomes human footprint and soil variables contributed to the prediction of the potential distribution of ips and different types of biomes had varying responses and degrees of impacts from the tested variables human footprint and soil variability had the highest tendency to increase the potential distribution of ips in montane grasslands and shrublands we propose to integrate the assessment in impacts of human footprint and soil variability on the potential distribution of ips in different biomes into the prevention and control of plant invasion,2017,0.4
Faunistic analysis of Cerambycidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) in an area of Atlantic Forest,the atlantic forest is considered a hotspot biome one of the most diverse in the world currently due to deforestation only 22 of the original cover remains and only 7 5 well preserved despite the global importance of this biome it still lacks basic studies e g primary inventories cerambycidae is one of the most diverse groups of beetles with high ecological and economic importance the aim of this work was to survey the longhorn beetles cerambycidae in three fragments pacang㪠vila 5 and pancada grande of atlantic forest within reserva ecolã gica da michelin southern bahia state brazil a total of 166 individuals belonging to 53 species were recorded 15 of them new geographical records for the state and one for brazil the shannon index h shows pacang㪠h 2 665 as the most diverse fragment followed by pancada grande h 2 658 and vila 5 h 2 565 the most abundant species were nyssodrysina lignaria 38 specimens collected followed by compsibidion vanum 31 specimens one hundred and ten specimens were captured in malaise traps while in light traps only 56 specimens were caught however the richness and consequently the diversity in light traps was higher this is one of the few studies carried out in atlantic forest surveying longhorn beetles and provides primary data on these taxa to help develop conservation policies for this threatened biome,2017,0.776
"A Winteraceae pollen tetrad from the early Paleocene of western Greenland, and the fossil record of Winteraceae in Laurasia and Gondwana",aim winteraceae comprise c 130 species in seven genera with the greatest species diversity in the pacific pseudowintera zygogynum australia bubbia tasmannia new guinea belliolum bubbia zygogynum tasmannia and madagascar takhtajania only drimys occurs in south america because of their cretaceous leaves wood and pollen fossils and their lack of xylem vessels winteraceae throw light on early angiosperm evolution we describe a winteraceae pollen tetrad from the paleocene of greenland review the family s fossil record and palaeogeography and document its current climate preferences location worldwide methods extant and fossil pollen were studied with light and scanning electron microscopy molecular phylogenetic and character mapping approaches were used to infer the evolution of pollen characters and 37 842 collections from the global biodiversity information facility were used to infer the climate and vegetation types occupied by today s winteraceae and to compare them to the paleocene climate and vegetation of greenland as inferred from the fossil record of other families results winteraceae are the only flowering plants with persistent acalymmate tetrads composed of ulcerate grains with a distinct reticulate sculpturing the tetrad described here as pseudowinterapollis agatdalensis grã msson zetter spec nov comes from agatdalen valley in western greenland and dates to the early paleocene danian 64â 62 ma it shows the complete character suite of modern winteraceae and overlaps the lm characters of the three previously known pseudowinterapollis species from australia new zealand and south africa the palaeoflora of the agatdal formation consisted of a mixed deciduousâ evergreen forest resembling habitats where winteraceae occur today main conclusions macro and microfossil records of winteraceae extend back to the upper cretaceous in both laurasia and gondwana and the family s biogeography like that of its sister family canellaceae cannot be understood by focusing only on southern gondwana winteraceae instead were part of broadleaved forests in paleocene and eocene north american and greenland and may have reached europe via the north atlantic land bridge explaining eocene winteraceae wood in northern germany,2017,0.447
Will climate change increase hybridization risk between potential plant invaders and their congeners in Europe?,aim interspecific hybridization can promote invasiveness of alien species in many regions of the world public and domestic gardens contain a huge pool of non native plants climate change may relax constraints on their naturalization and hence facilitate hybridization with related species in the resident flora here we evaluate this possible increase in hybridization risk by predicting changes in the overlap of climatically suitable ranges between a set of garden plants and their congeners in the resident flora location europe methods from the pool of alien garden plants we selected those which 1 are not naturalized in europe but established outside their native range elsewhere in the world 2 belong to a genus where interspecific hybridization has been previously reported and 3 have congeners in the native and naturalized flora of europe for the resulting set of 34 alien ornamentals as well as for 173 of their european congeners we fitted species distribution models and projected suitable ranges under the current climate and three future climate scenarios changes in range overlap between garden plants and congeners were then assessed by means of the true skill statistic results projections suggest that under a warming climate suitable ranges of garden plants will increase on average while those of their congeners will remain constant or shrink at least under the more severe climate scenarios the mean overlap in ranges among congeners of the two groups will decrease variation among genera is pronounced however and for some congeners range overlap is predicted to increase significantly main conclusions averaged across all modelled species our results do not indicate that hybrids between potential future invaders and resident species will emerge more frequently in europe when climate warms these average trends do not preclude however that hybridization risk may considerably increase in particular genera,2017,0.196
Five New Records for the Ichthyofauna of Miliç River in Turkey,this study was carried out seasonally by three months intervals in the flood channel associated with miliã river terme samsun between 2014 and 2015 some of the fish sampled in this study have not been recorded in the previous studies these newly recorded species were petroleuciscus borysthenicus kessler 1859 alburnus derjugini berg 1923 gasterosteus aculeatus linnaeus 1758 atherina boyeri risso 1810 and gambusia holbrooki girard 1859 placed in cyprinidae gasterosteidae atherinidae and poecilidae families,2017,0.451
Prioritising surveillance for alien organisms transported as stowaways on ships travelling to South Africa,the global shipping network facilitates the transportation and introduction of marine and terrestrial organisms to regions where they are not native and some of these organisms become invasive south africa was used as a case study to evaluate the potential for shipping to contribute to the introduction and establishment of marine and terrestrial alien species i e establishment debt and to assess how this varies across shipping routes and seasons as a proxy for the number of species introduced i e â colonisation pressureâ shipping movement data were used to determine for each season the number of ships that visited south african ports from foreign ports and the number of days travelled between ports seasonal marine and terrestrial environmental similarity between south african and foreign ports was then used to estimate the likelihood that introduced species would establish these data were used to determine the seasonal relative contribution of shipping routes to south africaâ s marine and terrestrial establishment debt additionally distribution data were used to identify marine and terrestrial species that are known to be invasive elsewhere and which might be introduced to each south african port through shipping routes that have a high relative contribution to establishment debt shipping routes from asian ports especially singapore have a particularly high relative contribution to south africaâ s establishment debt while among south african ports durban has the highest risk of being invaded there was seasonal variation in the shipping routes that have a high relative contribution to the establishment debt of the south african ports the presented method provides a simple way to prioritise surveillance effort and our results indicate that for south africa port specific prevention strategies should be developed a large portion of the available resources should be allocated to durban and seasonal variations and their consequences for prevention strategies should be explored further,2017,0.791
"La clase Bivalvia en sitios rocosos de las Regiones Marinas Prioritarias en Guerrero, México: riqueza de especies, abundancia y distribución",bivalves are part of the fauna that inhabit the coast of the state of guerrero many species are of commer cial importance and few studies exist of this class in the state the national commission for the use and conservation of diversity acknowledges the lack of studies regarding the diversity that exists in the priority marine regions pmrs located in guerrero this study focused on the bivalves and its goals were to document species richness by analyzing the composition of the community based on the representation of families estimate the density and establish the geo graphical distribution of species methods sampling was conducted at 21 sites the area was 10 m2 and the unit was 1 m2 results 5962 specimens were analyzed and 40 species were identi ed mytilidae and arcidae families were the best represented in species richness and mytilidae and isognomonidae families were the best represented in abundance the density was 18 63 organisms m2 and choromytilus palliopunctatus 4 5 organisms m2 and isognomon janus 4 0 organisms m2 showed the highest densities we determined that three species have wide distribution one species has frequent distribution eight species have limited distribution and 32 species have restricted distribution this study registered ve new additions to bivalve fauna in the mexican paci c transition one for the state of guerrero ve for pmr 30 six for pmr 31 and 17 for pmr 33 conclusions results from this study signi cantly advance our understanding of biodiversity and ecology of bivalves in the state of guerrero,2017,0.954
Influence of device accuracy and choice of algorithm for species distribution modelling of seabirds: A case study using black-browed albatrosses,species distribution models sdm based on tracking data from different devices are used increasingly to explain and predict seabird distributions however different tracking methods provide different data resolutions ranging from 10m to 100km to better understand the implications of this variation we modeled the potential distribution of black browed albatrosses thalassarche melanophris from south georgia that were simultaneously equipped with a platform terminal transmitter ptt high resolution and a global location sensor gls logger coarse resolution and measured the overlap of the respective potential distribution for a total of nine different sdm algorithms we found slightly better model fits for the ptt than for gls data auc values 0 958â 0 048 vs 0 95â 0 05 across all algorithms the overlaps of the predicted distributions were higher between device types for the same algorithm than among algorithms for either device type uncertainty arising from coarse resolution location data is therefore lower than that associated with the modeling technique consequently the choice of an appropriate algorithm appears to be more important than device type when applying sdms to seabird tracking data despite their low accuracy gls data appear to be effective for analyzing the habitat preferences and distribution patterns of pelagic species,2017,0.416
Measuring biodiversity in ICCAs: problems and possibilities,indigenous peoples and local community conserved territories and areas iccas are managed as common pool resources by local and indigenous communities with the specific feature of containing relevant biodiversity the sustainable management of natural resources can be achieved by either traditional or new rules or institutions or a combination of the two the categories of iccas were developed in the context of the iucn and uncbd to acknowledge the important role that local communities and indigenous peoples have in conserving biodiversity globally according to context specific relationships of a localized human group with the natural resources it depends upon for livelihoods or religious meanings the fact that iccas are internationally acknowledged as conserved areas is itself a strong indication that they are effective in preserving biodiversity however the effect of community based management on natural resources especially biodiversity is not easy to demonstrate in measurable terms indeed the literature review shows that very few cases of iccas have empirically been tested due to the intrinsic features of iccas in many cases governance mechanisms have been existing for centuries independently of state law many iccas are not recognized or not even acknowledged under such conditions it is methodologically impossible to implement forms of measurement or monitoring biodiversity before and after the introduction of new rules in other cases effective community governance has been revived or newly established in some countries iccas are officially sustained and included in the official system of protected areas many iccas either recognized or not overlap with official protected areas such cases can provide insights on ways to correlate biodiversity indicators to community governance in this paper the problem of measuring biodiversity in iccas will be addressed by analyzing three case studies selected from different regional contexts of the world and different modality of interaction with the official system of protected areas the regole of cortina d ampezzo italy an alpine common that established an official protected area indigenous protected areas ipas in australia formally included in the official protected areas system of the country the guassa area of menz high altitude ethiopian highlands where customary governance has been revived with new modalities the analysis of the selected case studies highlights difficulties in providing a definitive methodological answer to the difficult problem of measuring biodiversity in relation to community governance but potentials can be identified in terms of combining data from different gis and remote sensing methods methodology based on remote techniques needs to be validated and complemented by interdisciplinary in situ enquires keeping into account the leading governance role of the indigenous peoples and local communities this requires giving special attention to indigenous knowledge to devise context specific modalities of participatory monitoring,2017,0.005
"Multilocus phylogeny of East African gerbils (Rodentia , Gerbilliscus ) illuminates the history of the Somali-Masai savanna",aim the rodent genus gerbilliscus is widespread in savannas throughout sub saharan africa the eastern clade comprises four species with distributions centred in the somali masai biogeographical region of east africa we investigated the genetic diversity of the group with a view to illuminating the historical plio pleistocene processes that formed contemporary biota of the understudied somali masai region location somali masai savanna east africa methods we performed multilocus genetic analyses of 240 samples from 112 localities combining genotyping of recently collected samples n 145 454 pyrosequencing of museum material n 34 and published sequences n 61 we used bayesian and maximum likelihood approaches for phylogenetic reconstructions and coalescent based methods to delimit species we also estimated divergence times and modelled recent and past distributions to reconstruct the major evolutionary influences in the somali masai region during the plio pleistocene results genetic analyses provided evidence for six lineages possibly corresponding to distinct species the two main species groups with two and four putative species respectively have overlapping distributions but species within each group are distributed parapatrically the origin of the eastern clade dates back to the pliocene while individual species diverged in the pleistocene the distribution of genetic diversity and ecological niche modelling point to the importance of the rift valley and the presence of unsuitable xeric habitats in the allopatric diversification of gerbilliscus in the somali masai savanna within the last 5 myr conclusions this is the first detailed phylo bio geographical study of animals with predominant distribution in the somali masai region it revealed currently underestimated diversity of eastern clade of gerbilliscus and proposed a scenario of its evolution during plio pleistocene conspicuous genetic structure of these taxa can be now used to test detailed phylogeographical hypotheses related to plio pleistocene history of gerbils and to some extent also biota of somali masai bioregion in general,2017,0.981
The movement of pre-adapted cool taxa in north-central Amazonia during the last glacial,the effects of climate change on the lowland vegetation of amazonia during the last glacial cycle are partially known for the middle and late pleniglacial intervals late mis 3 59â 24 ka and mis 2 24â 11 ka but are still unclear for older stages of the last glacial and during the last interglacial it is known that a more seasonal dry wet climate caused marginal forest retraction and together with cooling rearranged forest composition to some extent this is observed in pollen records across amazonia depicting presence of taxa at glacial times in localities where they do not live presently the understanding of taxa migration is hindered by the lack of continuous interglacial glacial lowland records we present new data from a known locality in nw amazonia six lakes hill showing a vegetation record that probably started during mis 5 130â 71 ka and lasted until the onset of the holocene the vegetation record unravels a novel pattern in tree taxa migration 1 from the beginning of this cycle podocarpus and myrsine are recorded and 2 only later do hedyosmum and alnus appear the latter group is largely restricted to montane biomes or more distant locations outside amazonia whereas the first is found in lowlands close to the study site on sandy soils these findings imply that podocarpus and myrsine responded to environmental changes equally and this reflects their concomitant niche use in nw amazonia temperature drop is not discarded as a trigger of internal forest composition change but its effects are clearer later in the pleniglacial rather than the early glacial therefore early climatic environmental changes had a first order effect on vegetation that invoke alternative explanations we claim last glacial climate induced modifications on forest composition favoured the expansion of geomorphologic soil related processes that initiated forest rearrangement,2017,0.336
"O AQUECIMENTO GLOBAL IRÁ ALTERAR A DISTRIBUIÇÃO GEOGRÁFICA DE Lepiselaga crassipes (DIPTERA: TABANIDAE), VETOR DE TRIPANOSSOMÍASES EM EQUINOS, NA REGIÃO NEOTROPICAL?",climate changes affect species distributions worldwide however their consequences associated to vector borne diseases are poorly known this lack of information is even more pressing regarding vectors of livestock pathogens such as lepiselaga crassipes diptera tabanidae the mechanical vector of trypanosomiasis in horses and cattle in the neotropical region to examine the potential distribution of this tabanid in the neotropics and estimate its future distribution an environmental suitability analysis was carried out as well as an analysis of size and geographic boundaries of the current distribution with the generation of distribution maps range the results were compared with those generated for future projections based on possible climate changes in 2050 and 2070 nineteen bioclimatic layers and one high altitude layer were used future projections were based on general circulation models cccma canesm2 for 2050 and 2070 using the most optimistic rcp 2 6 and the most pessimist scenarios rcp 8 5 high environmental suitability for all scenarios was concentrated in the brazilian and colombian amazon regions extending to areas in venezuela peru and ecuador with good performance of the models auc 0 7 analysis of area distribution shows a range retraction for all scenarios despite this the models indicated new areas of occurrence of l crassipes concentrated mainly in argentina and according to the models for future scenarios its occurrence remained in southern south america areas with horse herds that would be exposed and susceptible to trypanosomiasis transmitted by tabanids,2017,0.257
New species of Prolachesilla Mockford &amp;amp; Sullivan (Psocodea: ‘Psocoptera’: Lachesillidae: Graphocaeciliini) from Bolivia and Mexico,the genus prolachesilla mockford sullivan presently includes nine species all described when the genus was erected since then no other species have been discovered here we describe and illustrate one bolivian and three mexican species this is the first record of prolachesilla from bolivia a key to the species of the genus is included,2017,0.772
"Biodiversity informatics: global trends, national perspective and regional progress in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug",this paper briefly summarizes the history and the contemporary trends in biodiversity informatics as well as the standards used for biodiversity databases construction we provide the examples of modern global and local projects on data integration in biodiversity in russia and worldwide finally we discuss the developing of the regional system in the khanty mansi autonomous region yugra where biological collections hasnâ t been digitized and their data hasnâ t been shared through global repositories such as gbif until recently,2017,0.176
"A little bit everyday: range size determinants in Arachis (Fabaceae), a dispersal-limited group",aim even though all species of arachis wild peanuts develop pods underground geocarpy strongly limiting their dispersal ability this genus is quite widespread in south america thus our goal was to test potential explanations for how arachis species may have achieved their current distribution location south america methods we used a dated phylogeny and 1 052 georeferenced records to run several analyses to select the variables that best explain the variation in range size in arachis species we tested a set of models incorporating both abiotic age association with rivers niche parameters and biotic life span vegetative growth dispersal ability factors thought to influence geographical distribution in order to select those variables that may best explain the range size of arachis species results we found that no single factor was able to satisfactorily explain the geographical distribution of wild peanuts our results showed that arachis range sizes are influenced by a combination of differential dispersal ability and age although the effect of time alone was small we also found that as arachis species are geocarpic their dispersal ability is positively influenced by presence of rhizomes which improves the distances reached by individuals main conclusions our research shows that the range sizes of wild peanuts are mainly constrained by differential dispersal ability and time and they are improved by the presence of rhizomatous growth we also advocate that applying a set of candidate hypotheses to explain species range sizes is a much better alternative than previous attempts in which single or few hypotheses have been tested at a time,2017,0.897
Big biology meets microclimatology: Defining thermal niches of ectotherms at landscape scales for conservation planning,temperature profoundly affects ecology a fact ever more evident as the ability to measure thermal environments increases and global changes alter these environments the spatial structure of thermalscapes is especially relevant to the distribution and abundance of ectothermic organisms but the ability to describe biothermal relationships at extents and grains relevant to conservation planning has been limited by small or sparse datasets here we combine a large occurrence database of 23 000 aquatic species surveys with stream microclimate scenarios supported by an equally large temperature database for a 149 000 km mountain stream network to describe thermal relationships for 14 fish and amphibian species species occurrence probabilities peaked across a wide range of temperatures 7 0â 18 8 â c but distinct warm or cold edge distribution boundaries were apparent for all species and represented environments where populations may be most sensitive to thermal changes warm edge boundary temperatures for a native species of conservation concern were used with geospatial datasets and a habitat occupancy model to highlight subsets of the network where conservation measures could benefit local populations by maintaining cool temperatures linking that strategic approach to local estimates of habitat impairment remains a key challenge but is also an opportunity to build relationships and develop synergies between the research management and regulatory communities as with any data mining or species distribution modeling exercise care is required in analysis and interpretation of results but the use of large biological datasets with accurate microclimate scenarios can provide valuable information about the thermal ecology of many ectotherms and a spatially explicit way of guiding conservation investments,2017,0.808
Ten Quick Tips for Finding Research Data,over the past decades science has experienced rapid growth in the volume of data available for research from a relative paucity of data in many areas to what has been recently described as a data deluge 1 data volumes have increased exponentially across all fields of science and human endeavour including data from sky earth and ocean observatories social media such as facebook and twitter wearable health monitoring devices gene sequences and protein structures and climate simulations 2 this brings opportunities to enable more research especially cross disciplinary research that could not be done before however it also introduces challenges in managing describing and making data findable accessible interoperable and reusable by researchers 3 when this vast amount and variety of data are made available finding relevant data to meet a research need is increasingly a challenge in the past when data were relatively sparse researchers discovered existing data by searching literature attending conferences and asking colleagues in todayâ s data rich environment with accompanying advances in computational and networking technologies researchers increasingly conduct web searches to find research data the success of such searches varies greatly and depends to a large degree on the expertise of the person looking for data the tools used and partially on luck this article offers ten quick tips that researchers can follow to more effectively and precisely discover data that meets their specific needs a list of useful resources and examples from the article are listed in the final resources section,2017,0.066
Brazilian Semi-Arid Ascomycetes III: New records of Dothideomycetes and Sordariomycetes,this is the third paper in a series of articles reporting the diversity of dothideomycetes and sordariomycetes in the semi arid region of brazil two dothideomycetes and three sordariomycetes are reported in this study annulatascus joannae and kirschsteiniothelia lignicola are new records for the new world hilberina caudata and saccardoella macrasca are new records for south america and macrodiplodiopsis uniseptata is a new record for brazil we provide illustrations descriptions and discussions for all five species,2017,0.421
"Data and Information Availability on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production in East Africa.",pollination is a critical ecosystem service with immense ecological agricultural cultural and social value pollination takes place when pollen is transferred from the anther to the stigma leading to fertilization and seed fruit formation the intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes published its first thematic assessment on pollinators pollination and food production last year 2016 the report noted that over 90 of wild flowering plants and over 75 of global food crops rely at least in part on animal agents to effect pollen transfer plants are critical for ecosystem functioning as they provide food habitats and other resources to a wide range of other species pollination is an important input in the production of pollinator dependent crops and is comparable to other agricultural inputs such as fertilizer and labor as it greatly affects the yield and quality of the harvest in north western europe and north america available data shows declining trends in both occurrence and diversity of wild pollinators at both local and regional scales among the key threats facing pollinators are habitat destruction through land use change agricultural practices such as large fields of monoculture crops that are not conducive to the conservation of pollinators indiscriminate application of pesticides that poison and kill pollinators environmental pollution invasive alien species disease and climate change the ipbes report highlighted data and knowledge gaps as well as low capacity for monitoring the status and trends of pollinators and pollination in developing countries in particular africa most of africa lacks the baseline data effective monitoring methods information services and evidence of pollinator status and value to influence policy and decision making a search on 20 november 2017 for east african kenya uganda and tanzania lepidoptera data published to the global biodiversity information facility gbif produced about 32 300 species occurrence records in total with most species represented by a single occurrence over a half of the occurrences are from kenya all the occurrence records were published by institutions outside east arica except for 140 occurrences based on observations published by the national biodiversity data bank uganda occurrences for the three focus families of the project were as follows hawkmoths sphingidae 731 occurrences skipper butterflies hesperiidae 404 occurrences swallowtails papilionidae 3 484 occurrences museums and herbaria in east africa can contribute data and knowledge on pollinators and pollination if specimens and their label data are digitized in standard formats and published online openly,2017,0.481
"Phylogeography and ecological niche modelling of the desert iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis, Baird &amp; Girard 1852) in the Baja California Peninsula",understanding the factors that explain the patterns of genetic structure or phylogeographic breaks at an intraspecific level is key to inferring the mechanisms of population differentiation in its early stages these topics have been well studied in the baja california region with vicariance and the dispersal ability of individuals being the prevailing hypothesis for phylogeographic breaks in this study we evaluated the phylogeographic patterns in the desert iguana dipsosaurus dorsalis a species with a recent history in the region and spatial variation in life history traits we analysed a total of 307 individuals collected throughout 19 localities across the baja california peninsula with 15 microsatellite dna markers our data reveal the existence of three geographically discrete genetic populations with moderate gene flow and an isolation by distance pattern presumably produced by the occurrence of a refugium in the cape region during the pleistocene last glacial maximum bayesian methods and ecological niche modelling were used to assess the relationship between population genetic structure and present and past climatic preferences of the desert iguana we found that the present climatic heterogeneity of the baja california peninsula has a marked influence on the population genetic structure of the species suggesting that there are alternative explanations besides vicariance the information obtained in this study provides data allowing a better understanding of how historical population processes in the baja california peninsula can be understood from an ecological perspective,2017,0.835
SELFIE: Self-Aware Information Extraction from Digitized Biocollections,biological collections store information with broad societal and environmental impact in the last 15 years after worldwide investments and crowdsourcing efforts 25 of the collected specimens have been digitized a process that includes the imaging of text attached to specimens and subsequent extraction of information from the resulting image this information extraction ie process is complex thus slow and typically involving human tasks we propose a hybrid human machine information extraction model that efficiently uses resources of different cost machines volunteers and or experts and speeds up the biocollections digitization process while striving to maintain the same quality as human only ie processes in the proposed model called selfie self aware ie processes determine whether their output quality is satisfactory if the quality is unsatisfactory additional or alternative processes that yield higher quality output at higher cost are triggered the effectiveness of this model is demonstrated by three selfie workflows for the extraction of darwin core terms from specimens images compared to the traditional human driven ie approach selfie workflows showed on average a reduction of 27 in the information capture time and a decrease of 32 in the required number of humans and their associated cost while the quality of the results was negligibly reduced by 0 27,2017,0.123
Fossil record improves biodiversity risk assessment under future climate change scenarios,aim conservationists have been using ecological niche modelling enm to understand how climate change impacts species estimate their extinction risk and assess species conservation status in the future however most enms are built using just current species occurrences as short term observations are naturally biased and incomplete in both geographical and climate spaces palaeontologists have recommended the use of fossil data to improve species vulnerability assessments here we used a time structured data set of the jaguar panthera onca linnaeus 1758 to test the implications of fossil data on distinct distribution dynamics and conservation status predicted by enms under future climate change scenarios location the new world methods we built two classes of enms i using only current occurrences of p onca and ii combining current and fossil information models were then projected onto current and future climates results niche models calibrated using fossil data broadly predicted more optimistic conservation statuses with larger suitable areas for the species in the future which are geographically nearest to its current distribution and better represented within protected areas current network of protected areas will hold significant suitable areas main conclusions fossils provided complementary information about different climate conditions that species experienced though time and filled empty spaces in currently unoccupied fundamental niche our analyses reinforce the idea the fossil record is a valuable source of alternative information to increase the reliability of enms when assessing biodiversity risk combining ecological and palaeontological data for niche modelling increase our understanding about species responses to changing climates consequently it potentially improves our knowledge on how to manage biodiversity by more reliably anticipating the effects of climate change and proactivelyâ rather than reactivelyâ planning conservation actions over longer periods going forward,2017,0.758
"A gene-tree test of the traditional taxonomy of American deer: the importance of voucher specimens, geographic data, and dense sampling",the taxonomy of american deer has been established almost entirely on the basis of morphological data and without the use of explicit phylogenetic methods hence phylogenetic analyses including data for all of the currently recognized species even if based on a single gene might improve current understanding of their taxonomy we tested the monophyly of the morphology defined genera and species of new world deer odocoileini with phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial dna sequences this is the first such test conducted using extensive geographic and taxonomic sampling our results do not support the monophyly of mazama odocoileus pudu m americana m nemorivaga od hemionus and od virginianus mazama contains species that belong to other genera we found a novel sister taxon relationship between â œmazamaâ pandora and a clade formed by od hemionus columbianus and od h sitkensis and transfer pandora to odocoileus the clade formed by od h columbianus and od h sitkensis may represent a valid species whereas the remaining subspecies of od hemionus appear closer to od virginianus pudu pudu puda was not found sister to pudu pudella mephistophiles if confirmed this result will prompt the recognition of the monotypic pudella as a distinct genus we provide evidence for the existence of an undescribed species now confused with mazama americana and identify other instances of cryptic taxonomically unrecognized species level diversity among populations here regarded as mazama temama â œmazamaâ nemorivaga and hippocamelus antisensis noteworthy records that substantially extend the known distributions of m temama and â œm â gouazoubira are provided and we unveil a surprising ambiguity regarding the distribution of â œm â nemorivaga as it is described in the literature the study of deer of the tribe odocoileini has been hampered by the paucity of information regarding voucher specimens and the provenance of sequences deposited in genbank we pinpoint priorities for future systematic research on the tribe odocoileini,2017,0.887
Systems and techniques used in the culture of soft-shell swimming crabs,the academic interest in the production of soft shell swimming crabs has increased in direct proportion to the increasing demand worldwide for this gastronomic delicacy the techniques of obtaining this product are essentially based on the maintenance of swimming crabs at premoult stage in open semi closed or closed farming systems until the moment of moulting these different types of systems reflect the biological e environmental control method evolution to achieve industrial scale production of soft swimming crabs the option of using closed systems has increased in recent years this type of system offers several advantages such as greater control over environmental variables greater ease of installation higher storage densities greater ease of monitoring ecdysis occurrence and especially the possibility of incorporating several forms of automation in this review the main production systems currently used as well as the main techniques for obtaining the animals their management under controlled conditions harvesting and slaughter are presented and discussed focusing on future perspectives for the world production of soft shell swimming crabs,2017,0.051
GlobalTreeSearch – the first complete global database of tree species and country distributions,this paper presents for the first time an overview of all known tree species by scientific name and country level distribution and describes an online databaseâ globaltreesearchâ that provides access to this information based on our comprehensive analysis of published data sources and expert input the number of tree species currently known to science is 60 065 representing 20 percent of all angiosperm and gymnosperm plant species nearly half of all tree species 45 are found in just ten families with the three most tree rich families being leguminosae rubiaceae and myrtaceae geographically brazil colombia and indonesia are the countries with the most tree species the countries with the most country endemic tree species reflect broader plant diversity trends brazil australia china or islands where isolation has resulted in speciation madagascar papua new guinea indonesia nearly 58 percent of all tree species are single country endemics our intention is for globaltreesearch to be used as a tool for monitoring and managing tree species diversity forests and carbon stocks on a global regional and or national level it will also be used as the basis of the global tree assessment which aims to assess the conservation status of all of the worldâ s tree species by 2020,2017,0.969
Building a database for long-term monitoring of benthic macrofauna in the Pertuis-Charentais (2004-2014),background long term benthic monitoring is rewarding in terms of science but labour intensive whether in the field the laboratory or behind the computer building and managing databases require multiple skills including consistency over time as well as organisation via a systematic approach here we introduce and share our spatially explicit benthic database comprising 11 years of benthic data it is the result of intensive benthic sampling that has been conducted on a regular grid 259 stations covering the intertidal mudflats of the pertuis charentais marennes olã ron bay and aiguillon bay samples were taken by foot or by boats during winter depending on tidal height from december 2003 to february 2014 the present dataset includes abundances and biomass densities of all mollusc species of the study regions and principal polychaetes as well as their length accessibility to shorebirds energy content and shell mass when appropriate and available this database has supported many studies dealing with the spatial distribution of benthic invertebrates and temporal variations in food resources for shorebird species as well as latitudinal comparisons with other databases in this paper we introduce our benthos monitoring share our data and present a guide of good practices for building cleaning and using it efficiently providing examples of results with associated r code new information the dataset has been formatted into a geo referenced relational database using postgresql open source dbms we provide density information measurements energy content and accessibility of thirteen bivalve nine gastropod and two polychaete taxa a total of 66 620 individuals â for 11 consecutive winters figures and maps are provided to describe how the dataset was built cleaned and how it can be used this dataset can again support studies concerning spatial and temporal variations in species abundance interspecific interactions as well as evaluations of the availability of food resources for small and medium size shorebirds and potentially conservation and impact assessment studies,2017,0.354
Semantics for interoperability of distributed data and models: Foundations for better-connected information,correct and reliable linkage of independently produced information is a requirement to enable sophisticated applications and processing workflows these can ultimately help address the challenges posed by complex systems such as socio ecological systems whose many components can only be described through independently developed data and model products we discuss the first outcomes of an investigation in the conceptual and methodological aspects of semantic annotation of data and models aimed to enable a high standard of interoperability of information the results operationalized in the context of a long term active large scale project on ecosystem services assessment include a definition of interoperability based on semantics and scale a conceptual foundation for the phenomenology underlying scientific observations aimed to guide the practice of semantic annotation in domain communities a dedicated language and software infrastructure that operationalizes the findings and allows practitioners to reap the benefits of data and model interoperability the work presented is the first detailed description of almost a decade of work with communities active in socio ecological system modeling after defining the boundaries of possible interoperability based on the understanding of scale we discuss examples of the practical use of the findings to obtain consistent interoperable and machine ready semantic specifications that can integrate semantics across diverse domains and disciplines,2017,0.015
Completeness and coverage of open-access freshwater fish distribution data in the United States,aim open access databases provide unprecedented access to records of species occurrence but their utility depends on how complete species inventories are at given surveying resolutions and how uniformly distributed surveys are in space and time our aims were to assess 1 the completeness of freshwater fish surveys across spatial scales and among habitats and 2 survey coverage along spatial and temporal gradients location contiguous united states methods we compiled occurrence records of freshwater fish species from the global biodiversity information facility the multi state aquatic resources information server and federally administered surveys we evaluated survey completeness across seven spatial resolutions and separately for lotic and lentic habitats using three thresholds of two survey completeness indices we evaluated survey coverage from 1800 to 2016 and along climatic and local environmental gradients using histograms and kolmogorovâ smirnov tests results over 21 million reliable abundance 1 5 million incidence records representing 892 species were available from 1800 to 2016 the proportion of catchments containing 1 record increased as spatial resolution coarsened as did the proportion of surveyed catchments classified as well surveyed records were distributed among 37 775 lotic reaches but only 1 626 lentic water bodies thirteen percentage of surveyed lotic reaches and 33 of surveyed lentic water bodies were well surveyed based on the most conservative completeness thresholds most well surveyed lotic reaches 94 and lentic water bodies 96 were surveyed since 1980 climates representative of the west and gulf coasts as well as headwater streams and small ponds were under represented main conclusions contemporary surveys of freshwater fish communities are abundant and generally representative of environmental characteristics in the contiguous usa survey clustering within maris participating states highlights the value of state agency data for biodiversity science and should encourage participation in thisâ and similarâ data compilation endeavours future work should focus on surveying more lakes and reservoirs compiling historical data and filling environmental gaps,2017,0.715
Morphometric comparison of British Pseudorchis albida with Icelandic P. straminea (Orchidaceae: Orchidinae),although the majority of taxonomic studies of european orchids treat pseudorchis as a monotypic genus some observers have argued that the apparently circumboreal segregate p straminea should also be treated as a full species here we compare detailed in vivo measurements of 55 plants from nine populations of p albida in britain with ten plants from three populations of p straminea in iceland we apply morphometric statistics to data for 31 morphometric characters culled from an original set of 36 we also review current limited dna based evidence of their evolutionary divergence of the 31 variable morphometric characters 14 help to distinguish the two species including labellum dimensions spur length flower colour bract and leaf lengths leaf colour and apical hooding molecular divergence notably in its approximates the lowest level needed for acceptance of species level distinction but thus far the molecular information is typological and does not encompass seemingly intermediate populations of â p tricuspisâ occurring in the mountains of central europe pseudorchis has the potential to become a valuable model system for the study of speciation and subsequent inter post glacial migration despite persistent rumours we found no evidence that p straminea or â p tricuspisâ occurs in the british isles nonetheless this species should continue to be sought in suitable habitats in northern scotland morphological variation within p albida is comparatively low though the most exposed of our study populations exhibits presumably ecophenotypic dwarfing,2017,0.517
Acoustic profiling of Orthoptera for species monitoring and discovery: present state and future needs,background bioacoustic monitoring and classification of animal communication signals has developed into a powerful tool for measuring and monitoring species diversity within complex communities and habitats the high number of stridulating species among orthoptera allows their detection and classification in a non invasive and economic way particularly in habitats where visual observations are difficult or even impossible such as tropical rainforests methods major sound archives where queried for orthoptera songs with special emphasis on usability as reference training libraries for computer algorithms results orthoptera songs are highly stereotyped reliable taxonomic features however exploitation of songs for acoustic profiling is limited by the small number of reference recordings existing song libraries represent only about 1 000 species mainly from europe and north america covering less that 10 of extant stridulating orthoptera species available databases are fragmented and lack tools for song annotation and efficient feature based search results from recent bioacoustic surveys illustrate the potential of the method but also challenges and bottlenecks impeding further progress a major problem is time consuming data analysis of recordings computer aided identification software has been developed for classification and identification of cricket and grasshopper songs but these tools are still far from practical field application discussion a framework for acoustic profiling of orthoptera should consist of the following components 1 protocols for standardised acoustic sampling at species and community level using acoustic data loggers for autonomous long term recordings 2 open access to and efficient management of song data and voucher specimens involving the orthoptera species file osf and global biodiversity information facility gbif 3 an infrastructure for automatised analysis and song classification 4 complementation and improvement of orthoptera sound libraries using orthoptera species file as taxonomic backbone and repository for representative song recordings taxonomists should be encouraged to deposit original recordings particularly if they form part of species descriptions or revisions,2017,0.875
Honey Bee Versus Apis Mellifera: A Semantic Search for Biological Data,while literature portals in the biomedical domain already enhance their search applications with ontological concepts data portals offering biological primary data still use a classical keyword search similar to publications biological primary data are described along meta information such as author title location and time which is stored in a separate file in xml format here we introduce a semantic search for biological data based on metadata files the search is running over 4 6 million datasets from gfbio the german federation for biological data gfbio https www gfbio org a national infrastructure for long term preservation of biological data the semantic search method used is query expansion instead of looking for originally entered keywords the search terms are expanded with related concepts from different biological vocabularies hosting our own terminology service with vocabularies that are tailored to the datasets we demonstrate how ontological concepts are integrated into the search and how it improves the search result,2017,0.188
Thermal affinity as the dominant factor changing Mediterranean fish abundances,recent decades have seen profound changes in species abundance and community composition in the marine environment the major anthropogenic drivers of change comprise exploitation invasion by non indigenous species and climate change however the magnitude of these stressors has been widely debated and we lack empirical estimates of their relative importance in this study we focused on eastern mediterranean a region exposed to an invasion of species of red sea origin extreme climate change and high fishing pressure we estimated changes in fish abundance using two fish trawl surveys spanning a twenty year period and correlated these changes with estimated sensitivity of species to the different stressors we estimated sensitivity to invasion using the trait similarity between indigenous and non indigenous species sensitivity to fishing using a published composite index based on the speciesâ life history and sensitivity to climate change using species climatic affinity based on occurrence data using both a meta analytical method and random forest analysis we found that for shallow water species the most important driver of population size changes is sensitivity to climate change species with an affinity to warm climates increased in relative abundance and species with an affinity to cold climates decreased suggesting a strong response to warming local sea temperatures over recent decades this decrease in the abundance of cold water associated species at the trailing â œwarmâ end of their distribution has been rarely documented despite the immense biomass of non indigenous species and the presumed high fishing pressure these two latter factors seem to have only a minor role in explaining abundance changes the decline in abundance of indigenous species of cold water origin indicates a future major restructuring of fish communities in the mediterranean in response to the ongoing warming with unknown impacts on ecosystem function,2017,0.96
How are endemic and widely distributed bromeliads responding to warming temperatures? A case study in a Brazilian hotspot,the increase in mean global temperature is causing extensive changes in ecosystems however little is yet known about the heat tolerance of neotropical plant species here we investigate heat tolerance variation in both restricted and widely distributed bromeliad species co occurring in campo rupestre a megadiverse ecosystem in central and eastern brazil we determined the heat tolerance of the photosynthetic apparatus using chlorophyll fluorescence measurements to test if the endemic species vriesea minarum is more heat sensitive than two widely distributed species vriesea bituminosa and aechmea nudicaulis furthermore we tested if the distinct photosynthetic metabolisms of the species sun exposure and rainfall seasonality of campo rupestre influence this outcome our results show that contrary to our expectations the endemic campo rupestre species did not show the greatest heat sensitivity but did have one of the lowest heat tolerance plasticities the cam bromeliad a nudicaulis was more heat tolerant than the other bromeliad species but both heat tolerance and its plasticity are highly affected by sun exposure and the rainfall seasonality of campo rupestre the low values and plasticity of v minarum thermal tolerance could indicate that the threat of global warming could be greater for this campo rupestre endemic species our results also indicate that heat tolerance especially the ability to withstand stressful temperatures for a long time is an important parameter that differentiates the ecological strategies of these bromeliads species,2017,0.977
Environmental niche conservatism explains the accumulation of species richness in Mediterranean-hotspot plant genera,the causes of exceptionally high plant diversity in mediterranean climate biodiversity hotspots are not fully understood we asked whether a mechanism similar to the tropical niche conservatism hypothesis could explain the diversity of four large genera protea moraea banksia and hakea with distributions within and adjacent to the greater cape floristic region south africa or the southwest floristic region australia using phylogenetic and spatial data we estimated the environmental niche of each species and reconstructed the mode and dynamics of niche evolution and the geographic history of each genus for three genera there were strong positive relationships between the diversity of clades within a region and their inferred length of occupation of that region within genera there was evidence for strong evolutionary constraint on niche axes associated with climatic seasonality and aridity with different niche optima for hotspot and nonhotspot clades evolutionary transitions away from hotspots were associated with increases in niche breadth and elevated rates of niche evolution our results point to a process of â œhotspot niche conservatismâ whereby the accumulation of plant diversity in mediterranean type ecosystems results from longer time for speciation with dispersal away from hotspots limited by narrow and phylogenetically conserved environmental niches,2017,0.372
VAT: A System for Data-Driven Biodiversity Research,visual analytics plays a leading role in data driven research this requires systems for fast and intuitive data exploration in this paper we demonstrate vat a system for visualizing analyzing and transforming spatio temporal data the sys tem consists of a distributed back end for low latency pro cessing and a web front end that allows creating workflows of computations in an exploratory fashion a novel quality of the system is the combination of scientific processing while simultaneously tracking the provenance of the data and ag gregating a list of data citations these features make a visual analytics approach for large heterogeneous spatio temporal data feasible,2017,0.064
The genus Endocena (Icmadophilaceae): DNA evidence suggests the same fungus forms different morphologies,numerous recent studies of lichenized fungi have uncovered hidden genetic diversity within a single phenotypic entity so called â cryptic speciesâ here we report the opposite situation with vastly different morphologies apparently deriving from the same genotype endocena is a monotypic genus known only from southern south america the single reported species the terricolous e informis is morphologically variable the type and other collections from the west coast of chile being subfruticose whereas specimens from further south and east are almost crustose in form a sorediate terricolous lichen that is frequent on the falkland islands was confirmed by phylogenetic analysis of its rdna and mtssu rdna sequences as being congeneric with e informis and surprisingly both taxa were recovered as congeneric with the recently described genus and species chirleja buckii which is morphologically distinct from both e informis and the sorediate taxon consequently the genus chirleja is included in the synonymy of endocena and the new combination endocena buckii is proposed because e informis and the sorediate specimens have a similar thallus structure that differs radically from that of e buckii the name e informis var falklandica is proposed for the sorediate taxon poorly developed incipient apothecia are also described from both varieties of e informis the first time that these have been reported for endocena we also report two lichenicolous fungi from e informis var informis which are the first reports of lichenicolous fungi occurring on this genus,2017,0.766
Spatial phylogenetics of the native California flora,background california is a world floristic biodiversity hotspot where the terms neo and paleo endemism were first applied using spatial phylogenetics it is now possible to evaluate biodiversity from an evolutionary standpoint including discovering significant areas of neo and paleo endemism by combining spatial information from museum collections and dna based phylogenies here we used a distributional dataset of 1 39 million herbarium specimens a phylogeny of 1083 operational taxonomic units otus and 9 genes and a spatial randomization test to identify regions of significant phylogenetic diversity relative phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic endemism pe as well as to conduct a categorical analysis of neo and paleo endemism canape results we found 1 extensive phylogenetic clustering in the south coast ranges southern great valley and deserts of california 2 significant concentrations of short branches in the mojave and great basin deserts and the south coast ranges and long branches in the northern great valley sierra nevada foothills and the northwestern and southwestern parts of the state 3 significant concentrations of paleo endemism in northwestern california the northern great valley and western sonoran desert and neo endemism in the white inyo range northern mojave desert and southern channel islands multiple analyses were run to observe the effects on significance patterns of using different phylogenetic tree topologies uncalibrated trees versus time calibrated ultrametric trees and using different representations of otu ranges herbarium specimen locations versus species distribution models conclusions these analyses showed that examining the geographic distributions of branch lengths in a statistical framework adds a new dimension to california floristics that in comparison with climatic data helps to illuminate causes of endemism in particular the concentration of significant pe in more arid regions of california extends previous ideas about aridity as an evolutionary stimulus the patterns seen are largely robust to phylogenetic uncertainty and time calibration but are sensitive to the use of occurrence data versus modeled ranges indicating that special attention toward improving geographic distributional data should be top priority in the future for advancing understanding of spatial patterns of biodiversity,2017,0.469
Harmal,harmal the genus peganum is an in depth treatment of one of the most commanding plants in the botanical kingdom humble in appearance modest in its needs peganum harmala has been venerated for millennia as a deity manifesting entheogen and a powerful medicine this book traverses harmalâ s medicinal chemistry its possible role in the origins of religion and its employment from ancient times to the present in the therapy of patients suffering from infections infestations metabolic derangements neurological degeneration visual weakness and cancer its peculiar indolic compounds known as harmala alkaloids are now appreciated as exerting profound effects on the mind and on the body these effects are the result of the alkaloidsâ interactions with and binding to serotonin receptors on the cell surfaces of neurons in the brain and lymphocytes in the blood the latter constituting the diffuse structural basis of the immune system this biphasic modulation by harmala alkaloids has led to a novel pharmacologic re visioning presented herein for the first time the concept of a lymphoneuric syncytium and its possible long term tuning via somatodelic as well as psychedelic effects the scientific rationale underlying the use of harmal in the medicines of the past and the healing technologies of our future is developed through exhaustive and meticulous explorations in both ethnopharmacology and modern phytochemistry the presentation is enhanced through appraisals of the effects of harmal in two clinical cancer case scenarios and of intentional inebriation and provings by one of the authors and a psychiatric colleague the noted and esteemed botanically trained physician dr andrew weil states in his preface that this monumental volume will become the standard reference work in the field harmal the genus peganum will be an invaluable addition to the personal libraries of professional pharmacognosists botanists physicians psychologists neuroscientists and all persons interested in the interrelationship of consciousness medicine and coevolution,2017,0.094
Wildlife species benefitting from a greener Arctic are most sensitive to shrub cover at leading range edges,widespread expansion of shrubs is occurring across the arctic shrub expansion will substantially alter arctic wildlife habitats identifying which wildlife species are most affected by shrubification is central to predicting future arctic community composition through meta analysis we synthesized the published evidence for effects of canopy forming shrubs on birds and mammals in the arctic and subarctic we examined variation in species behaviour distribution and population dynamics in birds and mammals in response to shrub cover including shrub cover indicators such as shrub occurrence extent density and height we also assessed the degree of heterogeneity in wildlife responses to shrub cover and synthesized the remaining literature that did not fit the criteria for our quantitative meta analyses species from higher green vegetation biomass habitats high normalized difference vegetation index ndvi across their distribution were more likely to respond positively to shrub cover demonstrating the potential for species to expand from boreal to arctic habitats under shrubification wildlife populations located in the lowest vegetation biomass low ndvi areas of their speciesâ range had the greatest proportion of positive responses to shrub cover highlighting how increases in performance at leading edges of invaders distributions may be particularly rapid this demonstrates the need to study species at these leading edges to accurately predict expansion potential arctic specialists were poorly represented across studies limited to 5 bird and 0 mammal species this knowledge gap potentially explains the few reported negative effects of shrub cover 3 of 29 species species responses to shrub cover showed substantial heterogeneity and varied among sites and years in all studies with sufficient replication to detect such variation our study highlights the importance of responses at species range edges in determining outcomes of shrubification for arctic birds and mammals and the need for greater examination of potential wildlife losers under shrubification,2017,0.923
Implications and alternatives of assigning climate data to geographical centroids,aim when precise coordinate data for training species distribution models sdms are lacking climatic variables are often assigned to centroids of geopolitically defined regions frequently counties this is problematic because approximations using centroids may not be representative of the regional climate or the locality from where species actually occur thus leading to spurious conclusions we evaluated county centroid climate versus simple alternatives for assigning climate to species observations in the absence of precise occurrence data location united states of america methods we assessed the disparity between the actual climate of all points within a county and metrics estimating county climate using the climate of geographical centroid mean county climate and median county climate to further evaluate the performance of these metrics we generated sdms of four common species using these estimates and compared the results with observed species distributions red trillium pacific trillium tall thistle and annual fleabane finally we projected future ranges for annual fleabane to examine the difference in predicted range change between models results mean and median climate metrics were significantly better fits for approximating the climate of specimen records than climate of the geographical centroid moreover county mean climate sdms were the most similar to sdms using actual coordinate data in contrast models applying climate to county centroid significantly overpredicted species range this had implications for future projections of annual fleabane sdms the county centroid model predicted a decrease in suitable habitats for this species while other models predicted an increase main conclusions county centroid climate although commonly applied is not suitable for sdms as a means to approximate species climate when locality data are less precise when only county level data are available and more computationally intensive methods of accounting for spatial uncertainty cannot be readily implemented we suggest considering mean county climate as an alternative,2017,0.671
Intrinsic factors are relatively more important than habitat features in modulating risk perception in a tropical lizard,anti predator responses in animals are dynamic and depend on multiple factors however most of our understanding about animal escape responses comes from studies which examine only a small set of factors at a time and are done over a short period of animal life spans this limits our understanding of the dynamic nature of animal escape behaviour and the relative importance of individual factors in determining their escape behaviour we used a repeated measures study design to assess the anti predator response of a wild population of a sexually dimorphic tropical lizard psammophilus dorsalis we followed marked individuals throughout their breeding lifespan repeatedly assayed their escape response and measured representative intrinsic and extrinsic factors that could modulate their escape response our findings suggest that intrinsic factors such as sex and body size influenced escape response relatively more than extrinsic factors did such as distance to refuge and perch height although individual variables influenced escape behaviour in a direction mostly consistent with predictions from optimal escape theory the interaction between factors led to novel insights into how animals dynamically evaluate multiple and changing costs throughout their lifetime to evade predation,2017,0.484
"Biologically informed ecological niche models for an example pelagic, highly mobile species",background although pelagic seabirds are broadly recognised as indicators of the health of marine systems numerous gaps exist in knowledge of their at sea distributions at the species level these gaps have profound negative impacts on the robustness of marine conservation policies correlative modelling techniques have provided some information but few studies have explored model development for non breeding pelagic seabirds here i present a first phase in developing robust niche models for highly mobile species as a baseline for further development methodology using observational data from a 12 year time period 217 unique model parameterisations across three correlative modelling algorithms boosted regression trees maxent and minimum volume ellipsoids were tested in a time averaged approach for their ability to recreate the at sea distribution of non breeding wandering albatrosses diomedea exulans to provide a baseline for further development principle findings results overall minimum volume ellipsoids outperformed both boosted regression trees and maxent however whilst the latter two algorithms generally overfit the data minimum volume ellipsoids tended to underfit the data conclusions the results of this exercise suggest a necessary evolution in how correlative modelling for highly mobile species such as pelagic seabirds should be approached these insights are crucial for understanding seabird environment interactions at macroscales which can facilitate the ability to address population declines and inform effective marine conservation policy in the wake of rapid global change,2017,0.147
envirem : An expanded set of bioclimatic and topographic variables increases flexibility and improves performance of ecological niche modeling,species distribution modeling is a valuable tool with many applications across ecology and evolutionary biology the selection of biologically meaningful environmental variables that determine relative habitat suitability is a crucial aspect of the modeling pipeline the 19 bioclimatic variables from worldclim are frequently employed primarily because they are easily accessible and available globally for past present and future climate scenarios yet the availability of relatively few other comparable environmental datasets potentially limits our ability to select appropriate variables that will most successfully characterize a speciesâ distribution we identified a set of 16 climatic and two topographic variables in the literature which we call the envirem dataset many of which are likely to have direct relevance to ecological or physiological processes determining species distributions we generated this set of variables at the same resolutions as worldclim for the present mid holocene and last glacial maximum lgm for 20 north american vertebrate species we then assessed whether including the envirem variables led to improved species distribution models compared to models using only the existing worldclim variables we found that including the envirem dataset in the pool of variables to select from led to substantial improvements in niche modeling performance in 13 out of 20 species we also show that when comparing models constructed with different environmental variables differences in projected distributions were often greater in the lgm than in the present these variables are worth consideration in species distribution modeling applications especially as many of the variables have direct links to processes important for species ecology we provide these variables for download at multiple resolutions and for several time periods at envirem github io furthermore we have written the â enviremâ r package to facilitate the generation of these variables from other input datasets,2017,0.617
Large-Scale Automatic Species Identification,the crowd sourced naturewatch gbif dataset is used to obtain a species classification dataset containing approximately 1 2 mil lion photos of nearly 20 thousand different species of biological organ isms observed in their natural habitat we present a general hierarchical species identification system based on deep convolutional neural networks trained on the naturewatch dataset the dataset contains images taken under a wide variety of conditions and is heavily imbalanced with most species associated with only few images we apply multi view classifica tion as a way to lend more influence to high frequency details hierarchi cal fine tuning to help with class imbalance and provide regularisation and automatic specificity control for optimising classification depth our system achieves 55 8 accuracy when identifying individual species and around 90 accuracy at an average taxonomy depth of 5 1â equivalent to the taxonomic rank of family â when applying automatic specificity control,2017,0.664
Naturalized alien flora of the world,using the recently built global naturalized alien flora glonaf database containing data on the distribution of naturalized alien plants in 483 mainland and 361 island regions of the world we describe patterns in diversity and geographic distribution of naturalized and invasive plant species taxonomic phylogenetic and life history structure of the global naturalized flora as well as levels of naturalization and their determinants the mainland regions with the highest numbers of naturalized aliens are some australian states with new south wales being the richest on this continent and several north american regions of which california with 1753 naturalized plant species represents the worldâ s richest region in terms of naturalized alien vascular plants england japan new zealand and the hawaiian archipelago harbour most naturalized plants among islands or island groups these regions also form the main hotspots of the regional levels of naturalization measured as the percentage of naturalized aliens in the total flora of the region such hotspots of relative naturalized species richness appear on both the western and eastern coasts of north america in north western europe south africa south eastern australia new zealand and india high levels of island invasions by naturalized plants are concentrated in the pacific but also occur on individual islands across all oceans the numbers of naturalized species are closely correlated with those of native species with a stronger correlation and steeper increase for islands than mainland regions indicating a greater vulnerability of islands to invasion by species that become successfully naturalized south africa india california cuba florida queensland and japan have the highest numbers of invasive species regions in temperate and tropical zonobiomes harbour in total 9036 and 6774 naturalized species respectively followed by 3280 species naturalized in the mediterranean zonobiome 3057 in the subtropical zonobiome and 321 in the arctic the new world is richer in naturalized alien plants with 9905 species compared to 7923 recorded in the old world while isolation is the key factor driving the level of naturalization on islands zonobiomes differing in climatic regimes and socioeconomy represented by per capita gdp are central for mainland regions the 11 most widely distributed species each occur in regions covering about one third of the globe or more in terms of the number of regions where they are naturalized and at least 35 of the earthâ s land surface in terms of those regionsâ areas with the most widely distributed species sonchus oleraceus occuring in 48 of the regions that cover 42 of the world area other widely distributed species are ricinus communis oxalis corniculata portulaca oleracea eleusine indica chenopodium album capsella bursa pastoris stellaria media bidens pilosa datura stramonium and echinochloa crus galli using the occurrence as invasive rather than only naturalized yields a different ranking with lantana camara 120 regions out of 349 for which data on invasive status are known calotropis procera 118 eichhornia crassipes 113 sonchus oleraceus 108 and leucaena leucocephala 103 on top as to the life history spectra islands harbour more naturalized woody species 34 4 thanmainland regions 29 5 and fewer annual herbs 18 7 compared to 22 3 ranking families by their absolute numbers of naturalized species reveals that compositae 1343 species poaceae 1267 and leguminosae 1189 contribute most to the global naturalized alien flora some families are disproportionally represented by naturalized aliens on islands arecaceae araceae acanthaceae amaryllidaceae asparagaceae convolvulaceae rubiaceae malvaceae and much fewer so on mainland e g brassicaceae caryophyllaceae boraginaceae relating the numbers of naturalized species in a family to its total global richness shows that some of the large species rich families are over represented among naturalized aliens e g poaceae leguminosae rosaceae amaranthaceae pinaceae some under represented e g euphorbiaceae rubiaceae whereas the one richest in naturalized species compositae reaches a value expected from its global species richness significant phylogenetic signal indicates that families with an increased potential of their species to naturalize are not distributed randomly on the evolutionary tree solanum 112 species euphorbia 108 and carex 106 are the genera richest in terms of naturalized species over represented on islands are cotoneaster juncus eucalyptus salix hypericum geranium and persicaria while those relatively richer in naturalized species on the mainland are atriplex opuntia oenothera artemisia vicia galium and rosa the data presented in this paper also point to where information is lacking and set priorities for future data collection the glonaf database has potential for designing concerted action to fill such data gaps and provide a basis for allocating resources most efficiently towards better understanding and management of plant invasions worldwide,2017,0.999
A baseline study using Plantwise information to assess the contribution of extension services to the uptake of augmentative biological control in selected low- to lower- middle- income countries,the uptake of augmentative biological control agents bcas is still limited particularly in many low to lower middle income countries this study focuses on factors that affect the uptake of bcas for arthropod pests by national extension partners neps in plantwiseâ an agricultural development programme facilitating the establishment of plant clinics where farmers can obtain diagnosis and plant health advice using data generated by neps bca recommendations in extension material and given by extension workers in ghana kenya zambia india nepal and pakistan were analysed the rate of bca recommendation ranged from 13 0 zambia to 61 1 india in extension materials and from 0 0 zambia to 18 2 india in recommendations given by extension workers knowledge availability and price were identified as the main factors affecting the uptake of bcas by neps this baseline study gives novel insight into the potential of neps to facilitate the use of bcas,2017,0.261
A confirmed observation of Oxalis dillenii in Spain,a confirmed observation of oxalis dillenii in spain â we confirm the presence of oxalis dillenii jacq in the catalonian province lleida catalonia spain identification was confirmed morphologically and through dna barcode sequencing a map of the distribution of o dillenii is supplied as are notes on its identification,2017,0.41
Dataset of herbarium specimens of threatened vascular plants in Catalonia,this data paper describes a specimensâ dataset of the catalonian threatened vascular plants conserved in five public catalonian herbaria bc bcn hgi hbil and mtte catalonia is an administrative region of spain that includes large autochthon plants diversity and 199 taxa with iucn threatened categories ex ew re cr en and vu this dataset includes 1 618 records collected from 17th century to nowadays for each specimen the species name locality indication collection date collector ecology and revision label are recorded more than 94 of the taxa are represented in the herbaria which evidence the paper of the botanical collections as an essential source of occurrence data,2017,0.171
Bipolar distributions in vascular plants: A review,bipolar disjunct distributions are a fascinating biogeographic pattern exhibited by about 30 vascular plants whose populations reach very high latitudes in the northern and southern hemispheres in this review we first propose a new framework for the definition of bipolar disjunctions and then reformulate a list of guiding principles to consider how to study bipolar species vicariance and convergent evolution hypotheses have been argued to explain the origin of this fragmented distribution pattern but we show here that they can be rejected for all bipolar species except for carex microglochin instead human introduction and dispersal either direct or by mountain hopping â facilitated by standard and nonstandard vectorsâ are the most likely explanations for the origin of bipolar plant disjunctions successful establishment after dispersal is key for colonization of the disjunct areas and appear to be related to both intrinsic e g self compatibility and extrinsic mutualistic and antagonistic interactions characteristics most studies on plant bipolar disjunctions have been conducted in carex cyperaceae the genus of vascular plants with the largest number of bipolar species we found a predominant north to south direction of dispersal with an estimated time of diversification in agreement with major cooling events during the pliocene and pleistocene bipolar carex species do not seem to depend on specialized traits for long distance dispersal and could have dispersed through one or multiple stochastic events with birds as the most likely dispersal vector,2017,0.584
Structure and tree species composition in different habitats of savanna used by indigenous people in the Northern Brazilian Amazon,woody plant diversity from the amazonian savannas has been poorly quantified in order to improve the knowledge on wood plants of these regional ecosystems a tree inventory was carried out in four different habitats used by indigenous people living in the savanna areas of the northern brazilian amazon the habitats were divided into two types or groups of vegetation formations forest riparian forest forest island and buritizal mauritia palm formation and non forest typical savanna the inventory was carried out in two hectares established in the darora indigenous community region north of the state of roraima,2017,0.196
"Niche shifts after long-distance dispersal events in bipolar sedges ( Carex , Cyperaceae)",premise of the study bipolar species represent the greatest biogeographical disjunction on earth raising many questions about the colonization and adaptive processes behind such striking distribution we investigated climatic niche differences of five carex bipolar species in north and south america to assess niche shifts between these two regions moreover we assessed potential distribution changes with future climate change methods we used 1202 presence data points from herbarium specimens and 19 bioclimatic variables to assess climatic niche differences and potential distributions among the five species using ordination methods and maxent key results the niche overlap analyses showed low levels of niche filling and high climatic niche expansion between north and south america carex macloviana and c maritima showed the greatest niche expansion 60 and 96 respectively followed by c magellanica 45 and c microglochin 39 only c canescens did not colonize new environments niche expansion 0 2 in contrast all species but c magellanica had niche filling that was 40 hence they are absent in the south from many environments they inhabit in north america climate change will push all species toward higher latitudes and elevation reducing the availability of suitable environments conclusions the colonization of south america seems to have involved frequent climatic niche shifts most species have colonized new environments from those occupied in the north observed niche shifts appear congruent with time since colonization and with current genetic structure within species in these cold dwelling species climate change will most likely decrease their suitable environments in the future,2017,0.906
Recent origin of Neotropical orchids in the world's richest plant biodiversity hotspot,the andean mountains of south america are the most species rich biodiversity hotspot worldwide with about 15 of the world s plant species in only 1 of the world s land surface orchids are a key element of the andean flora and one of the most prominent components of the neotropical epiphyte diversity yet very little is known about their origin and diversification we address this knowledge gap by inferring the biogeographical history and evolutionary dynamics of the two largest neotropical orchid groups cymbidieae and pleurothallidinae using two unparalleled densely sampled orchid phylogenies including 400 newly generated dna sequences comparative phylogenetic methods geological and biological datasets we find that the majority of andean orchid lineages only originated in the last 15 million years most andean lineages are derived from lowland amazonian ancestors with additional contributions from central america and the antilles species diversification is correlated with andean orogeny and multiple migrations and re colonizations across the andes indicate that mountains do not constrain orchid dispersal over long timescales our study sheds new light on the timing and geography of a major neotropical radiation and suggests that mountain uplift promotes species diversification across all elevational zones,2017,0.767
Lignicolous species of Helotiales associated with major vegetation types in the Canary Islands,a historical worldwide overview of the family helotiaceae in a broad sense and a revision of its members in the canary islands are presented nine lignicolous species are described in detail ascocoryne cylichnium a sarcoides chlorociboria aeruginascens cyathicula cyathoidea c hysterioides durella connivens pseudohelotium sordidulum strossmayeria basitricha and velutarina rufoolivacea the species of the genus ascocoryne are revised and corrected the genera durella pseudohelotium and velutarina are reported for first time for the canary islands each with one species as is cyathicula hysterioides species considered closely related are briefly discussed,2017,0.822
The Extended Specimen : Emerging Frontiers in Collections-Based Ornithological Research,the extended specimen highlights the research potential for ornithological specimens and is meant to encourage ornithologists poised to initiate a renaissance in collections based ornithological research contributors illustrate how collections and specimens are used in novel ways by adopting emerging new technologies and analytical techniques case studies use museum specimens and emerging and non traditional types of specimens which are developing new methods for making biological collections more accessible and usable for ornithological researchers thus book documents the power of ornithological collections to address key research questions of global importance,2017,0.218
Potential distribution of endangered Mexican golden trout (Oncorhynchus chrysogaster) in the Rio Sinaloa and Rio Culiacan basins (Sierra Madre Occidental) based on landscape characterization and species distribution models,the mexican golden trout oncorhynchus chrysogaster is a threatened native species inhabiting three river basins in the sierra madre occidental despite some efforts from science groups to obtain information about this trout the rio sinaloa and rio culiacan basins to the south remain the least studied area compared to the rio fuerte basin to overcome this gap a survey 2014 to 2015 was undertaken to obtain new records and confirm the presence for historic records in both watersheds after filtering records for this species eighteen locations were used to model potential distribution using the garp and maxent including landscape characterization based on hydrologic analysis and satellite imagery classification coincidence between models was 85 for a potential distribution area of 4300 km2 defined by six bioclimatic and physiographic variables with the hydrologic network covering 3000 km to avoid overestimation the final distribution area included only the 100 m fringe surrounding the drainage network and its associated landscape features jackknife resampling was used to validate both the models successfully predicting more than 80 of the locations p 0 001 the estimated area covers 275 km2 mainly defined by second and third order streams at altitudes 2000 m high water quality transparent dissolved oxygen 5 mg l 1 temperature 26 â c and was part of a matrix of undisturbed forests this study provides new findings about this endangered species and new elements for designing appropriate monitoring programs supporting trout conservation and management,2017,0.638
Environmental correlates of phylogenetic endemism in amphibians and the conservation of refugia in the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa,aims to quantify the spatial distribution of amphibian phylogenetic endemism pe an indicator of potential refugia to test pe for correlations with current and historical environmental predictors and to evaluate the effectiveness of current protected areas at conserving evolutionary history location coastal forests of eastern africa cfea and the adjacent low elevation eastern afromontane ea methods we integrated new and existing spatial and phylogenetic data to map pe for almost the full amphibian assemblage 41 of 55 species including 35 intraspecific lineages from several species and complexes showing high phylogeographic structure using spatial and non spatial regressive models we tested whether pe can be predicted by measures of quaternary climate change forest stability topographic heterogeneity and current climate pe results were intersected with the protected area network to evaluate current conservation effectiveness results we detect refugia in tanzania and coastal kenya previously identified as cfea centres of endemism but also new areas lowland tanga region and pangani river zaraninge forest mafia island matumbi hills results show that refugia for amphibians high pe are located in areas with long term quaternary climate stability and benign current climate high precipitation of driest quarter high annual precipitation with climatically unstable areas demonstrating low pe conservation analyses revealed that ten pe hotspots account for over 25 of the total pe but only small parts of these areas are under conservation protection main conclusions utilizing cryptic diversity from novel phylogeographic data and distribution modelling improves our understanding of endemism patterns with climate stability being strongly correlated with the distribution of pe our analyses point towards high pe areas being refugia which require an urgent need to consolidate protected areas within centres of endemism in this highly threatened biodiversity hotspot,2017,0.532
Constructing a biodiversity terminological inventory,the increasing growth of literature in biodiversity presents challenges to users who need to discover pertinent information in an efficient and timely manner in response text mining techniques offer solutions by facilitating the automated discovery of knowledge from large textual data an important step in text mining is the recognition of concepts via their linguistic realisation i e terms however a given concept may be referred to in text using various synonyms or term variants making search systems likely to overlook documents mentioning less known variants which are albeit relevant to a query term domain specific terminological resources which include term variants synonyms and related terms are thus important in supporting semantic search over large textual archives this article describes the use of text mining methods for the automatic construction of a large scale biodiversity term inventory the inventory consists of names of species amongst which naming variations are prevalent we apply a number of distributional semantic techniques on all of the titles in the biodiversity heritage library to compute semantic similarity between species names and support the automated construction of the resource with the construction of our biodiversity term inventory we demonstrate that distributional semantic models are able to identify semantically similar names that are not yet recorded in existing taxonomies such methods can thus be used to update existing taxonomies semi automatically by deriving semantically related taxonomic names from a text corpus and allowing expert curators to validate them we also evaluate our inventory as a means to improve search by facilitating automatic query expansion specifically we developed a visual search interface that suggests semantically related species names which are available in our inventory but not always in other repositories to incorporate into the search query an assessment of the interface by domain experts reveals that our query expansion based on related names is useful for increasing the number of relevant documents retrieved its exploitation can benefit both users and developers of search engines and text mining applications,2017,0.137
"Ramalina europaea and R. labiosorediata, two new species of the R. pollinaria group (Ascomycota: Ramalinaceae), and new typifications for Lichen pollinarius and L. squarrosus",ramalina europaea gasparyan sipman amp lã cking and r labiosorediata gasparyan sipman amp lã cking two species of the r pollinaria group are described here as new to science ramalina europaea widely distributed in europe can be distinguished by small punctiform often terminal soralia starting out on small spine like branchlets whereas r labiosorediata from north america differs from r pollinaria s str and r europaea in the almost exclusively terminal soralia formed on the tips of normal lobes originating from the underside and becoming irregularly labriform morphological characters chemistry ecology and geographical distribution are discussed and a key to the species of the ramalina pollinaria group is provided the topology of a maximum likelihood tree based on its shows the presence of three well supported clades corresponding to the morphological differences of the three species the status of several historical names variously placed in synonymy with or described as infraspecific entities of r pollinaria is reassessed and a new neotype and an epitype are designated for lichen pollinarius a neotype for l squarrosus making it a synonym of r farinacea and lectotypes for r pollinaria var elatior making it a synonym of r pollinaria s str and for var humilis a taxon of yet unknown affinity,2017,0.697
Agrobiodiversity and genetic erosion of crop varieties and plant resources in the Central Great Caucasus,kazbegi municipality is located in the central great caucasus at an altitude between 1250 and 5047 m a s l agriculture of this area is extreme internal variability and complexity with a multiplicity of highly localized providing the habitats and agricultural lands for much genetic erosion of crop varieties animals plants fungi and other life forms for wild plant resources historically kazbegi producers had begun cultivating the land to prepare for planting in of distribution local varieties of wheat barley rye oats etc in the only cereals legumes herbs and some fruits are cultivated in alpine zone as the upper limit till the location of 2160 m a s l genetic erosion has been determined historically of aboriginal crops from sheep and cattle grazing problem and reached extreme levels from 1970s in kazbegi municipality and causes a problem to maintain agriculture plant resources remained in forests and subalpine grasslands and shrub lands the problems of these materials are habitat degradation by disturbance in many forest types with destroyed and burned tree seedlings are grazing by animals and forest is not restoring naturally forest planting is good relation for restoration of plant wild species resources investigation on exchange on mountain agriculture and plant resources will now be rapidly accelerated in the vital interests of mountain communities,2017,0.821
High invasion potential of Hydrilla verticillata in the Americas predicted using ecological niche modeling combined with genetic data,ecological niche modeling is an effective tool to characterize the spatial distribution of suitable areas for species and it is especially useful for predicting the potential distri bution of invasive species the widespread submerged plant hydrilla verticillata hy drilla has an obvious phylogeographical pattern four genetic lineages occupy distinct regions in native range and only one lineage invades the americas here we aimed to evaluate climatic niche conservatism of hydrilla in north america at the intraspecific level and explore its invasion potential in the americas by comparing climatic niches in a phylogenetic context niche shift was found in the invasion process of hydrilla in north america which is probably mainly attributed to high levels of somatic mutation dramatic changes in range expansion in the americas were predicted in the situation of all four genetic lineages invading the americas or future climatic changes especially in south america this suggests that there is a high invasion potential of hydrilla in the americas our findings provide useful information for the management of hydrilla in the americas and give an example of exploring intraspecific climatic niche to better understand species invasion keywords,2017,0.328
"R Python, and Ruby clients for GBIF species occurrence data",background the number of individuals of each species in a given location forms the basis for many sub fields of ecology and evolution data on individuals including which species and where they re found can be used for a large number of research questions global biodiversity information facility hereafter gbif is the largest of these programmatic clients for gbif would make research dealing with gbif data much easier and more reproducible methods we have developed clients to access gbif data for each of the r python and ruby programming languages rgbif pygbif gbifrb results for all clients we describe their design and utility and demonstrate some use cases discussion programmatic access to gbif will facilitate more open and reproducible science the three gbif clients described herein are a significant contribution towards this goal,2017,0.407
"RNames, a stratigraphical database designed for the statistical analysis of fossil occurrences–the Ordovician diversification as a case study",rnames rnames luomus fi is an open access relational database linking stratigraphic units with each other that are considered to be time equivalent or time overlapping rnames is also a tool to correlate among stratigraphic units the structure of the database allows for a wide range of queries and applications currently three algorithms are available which calculate a set of correlation tables with ordovician stratigraphic units time binned into high resolution chronostratigraphic slices global ordovician stages stage slices time slices the ease of availability of differently binned stratigraphic units and the potential to create new schemes are the main advantages and goals of rnames different timebinned stratigraphic units can be matched with other databases and allow for simultaneous up to date analyses of stratigraphically constrained estimates in various schemes we exemplify these new possibilities with our compiled ordovician data and analyse fossil collections of the paleobiology database based on the three different binning schemes the presented diversity curves are the first sub stage level global marine diversity curves for the ordovician a comparison among the curves reveals that differences in time slicing have a major effect on the shape of the curve despite uncertainties in early and late ordovician diversities our calculations confirm earlier estimates that ordovician diversification climaxed globally during the darriwilian stage,2017,0.186
A high-throughput FTIR spectroscopy approach to assess adaptive variation in the chemical composition of pollen,the two factors defining male reproductive success in plants are pollen quantity and quality but our knowledge about the importance of pollen quality is limited due to methodological constraints pollen quality in terms of chemical composition may be either genetically fixed for high performance independent of environmental conditions or it may be plastic to maximize reproductive output under different environmental conditions in this study we validated a new approach for studying the role of chemical composition of pollen in adaptation to local climate the approach is based on high throughput fourier infrared ftir characterization and biochemical interpretation of pollen chemical composition in response to environmental conditions the study covered three grass species poa alpina anthoxanthum odoratum and festuca ovina for each species plants were grown from seeds of three populations with wide geographic and climate variation each individual plant was divided into four genetically identical clones which were grown in different controlled environments high and low levels of temperature and nutrients in total 389 samples were measured using a high throughput ftir spectrometer the biochemical fingerprints of pollen were species and population specific and plastic in response to different environmental conditions the response was most pronounced for temperature influencing the levels of proteins lipids and carbohydrates in pollen of all species furthermore there is considerable variation in plasticity of the chemical composition of pollen among species and populations the use of high throughput ftir spectroscopy provides fast cheap and simple assessment of the chemical composition of pollen in combination with controlled condition growth experiments and multivariate analyses ftir spectroscopy opens up for studies of the adaptive role of pollen that until now has been difficult with available methodology the approach can easily be extended to other species and environmental conditions and has the potential to significantly increase our understanding of plant male function,2017,0.391
"Notes on endemic Alpine chrysidids, with key to Alpine Philoctetes Abeille de Perrin, 1879, and remarks on two rarely collected species (Hymenoptera, Chrysididae)",a detailed study of two endemic alpine species of the genus philoctetes abeille de perrin 1879 is given as well as a key to the alpine philoctetes species and a brief discussion on alpine chrysididae new distributional data notes on type specimens and pictures are provided a new synonym philoctetes putoni du buysson 1892 philoctetes delvarei tussac tussac 1993 syn n is proposed,2017,0.559
"Anomala Samouelle, 1819 (Rutelinae: Scarabaeidae) of Buxa Tiger Reserve, Dooars, West Bengal, India. Part – I",taxonomy of anomala samouelle 1819 recorded from buxa tiger reserve dooars west bengal india is dealt herewith present discourse is the result of long term investigation on insect fauna of the study area carried out by the authors the current paper presents the detailed taxonomic account of 10 species while rest of the species will be presented in the succeeding issue each of the species is redescribed and illustrated supplemented by digital images further an identification key and a note on the distribution of the recorded taxa is also provided,2017,0.516
"Freshwater crayfish invasions in South Africa: past, present and potential future",freshwater crayfish invasions have been studied around the world but less so in africa a continent devoid of native freshwater crayfish the present study reviews historical and current information on alien freshwater crayfish species introduced into south africa and aims to indicate which areas are at risk from invasion as is the case elsewhere south africans have shown a keen interest in both farming and keeping freshwater crayfish as pets which has resulted in cherax cainii cherax destructor cherax quadricarinatus and procambarus clarkii being introduced to the country there is evidence of successful establishment in the wild for c quadricarinatus and p clarkii in different parts of the country species distribution models suggest that the eastern part of the country and parts of the eastern and western cape are at higher risk of invasion at present illegal translocations represent the most likely pathway of crayfish spread in south africa a continued risk of invasion by freshwater crayfish species in south africa is highlighted which reinforces the need for more research as well as for strong mitigation measures such as stronger policing of existing regulations management or eradication where feasible and public education,2017,0.765
"A Review on the Taxonomy, Ethnobotany, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology of Guriea senegalensis J.F.Gmel. (Combretaceae)",guiera senegalesis g senegalensis family combretaceae is shrubs or trees widely distributed in west and central africa in traditional medicine g senegalensis used to treat malaria dysentery and or diarrhea cough and cold abdominal pains leprosy hypotension and hypertension diabetes snakebites eczema impotence epilepsy breast cancer depressant and jaundice phytochemical screening investigated by scientists showed the presence of alkaloids flavonoids tannin saponin terpinoids sterols and cardionolics mainly in leaves and roots of the plant the biological activities showed positive results as anti tuberculosis anti diarrhoeal anti plasmodia analgesic and devoid of anti inflammatory antifungal antioxidant anti lipid peroxidation activity anti malaria and with low toxicity antifungal anti acetylcholinesterase antilipid peroxidation in ratâ s brain homogenate erythrocytes hemolysis inhibitory activities and antitussive activities the review revealed the importance of g senegalensis as a natural therapy and recommend for further study and the work of the pharmaceutical formulation,2017,0.172
Climatic niche evolution in the viviparous Sceloporus torquatus group (Squamata: Phrynosomatidae).,the cold climate hypothesis is the main and most supported explanation of the evolution of viviparity among reptiles this hypothesis sustains that viviparity arose as a means to save eggs from an increased mortality in nests linked with low temperatures in this sense some authors have stated that viviparity could constitute an evolutionary constraint however the link between evolutionary constraints and the evolution of ecological niches has not been well studied here we study the climatic niche evolution of a group of viviparous lizards from north america to test whether the diversification of the group is linked with phylogenetic niche conservatism pnc we evaluated phylogenetic signals and trait evolution besides a reconstruction of ancestral climate tolerances and did not find pnc in the ecological niche of the species in the group surprisingly we did not find conservatism in any bioclimatic variables associated with temperature we only had evidence of conservatism in precipitation seasonality bio15 and precipitation of coldest quarter bio19 analysis of relative disparity through time dtt indicates high divergence around 4 0 mya and 0 65 mya that coincides with orogenic and glacial periods there is no evidence that climatic niche differentiation was the main factor in the diversification of the studied group orogenic and glacial periods probably promote cycles of the availability of new territories and isolation which could promote the rapid accumulation of ecological differences between the species of the group,2017,0.645
Abundance indices and biological traits of juvenile salmon (Salmo salar) sampled in three rivers on the Atlantic and Channel coasts (France),background atlantic salmon salmo salar is an anadromous migratory species adapted to cool temperatures it is protected by the bern convention and by the european habitats directive it has been listed as vulnerable by the french iucn red list salmon decline is the result of combined and cumulated mainly anthropic causes climate change increasingly high number of impoundments degradation of water quality and habitat and over exploitation by fisheries monitoring of this species has been carried out on three rivers in france southern part of the distribution area to produce data and knowledge growth precocious maturity survival for stock management for 24 years a specific and standardised electric fishing protocol has been used to target young of the year 0 parr atlantic salmon sampling was restricted to areas with shallow running water that flows over a coarse bottom substrate i e the preferred habitat of young salmon this monitoring and inventory of growing areas thus allows assessment of juvenile recruitment and provides baseline data required to calculate total allowable catches tacs new information the dataset currently consists of 47 077 occurrence data points from 105 sites spanning up to 24 years in three different watersheds in france beyond our project this dataset has a clear utility to research since it associates abundance measurements with the measurement of biological traits and the collection of tissue samples it allows for current and retrospective characterisation of individuals or populations according to life history traits and genetic features in relation to changes in environmental conditions the fact that the monitoring takes place in france the southern part of the distribution area over 24 years makes the dataset particularly relevant for climate change studies,2017,0.37
"New data on the occurrence of the critically endangered common angelshark, Squatina squatina, in the Croatian Adriatic Sea",two out of three critically endangered species of angelsharks genus squatina dumeril 1806 inhabiting the mediterranean have been recorded in the adriatic sea namely smoothback angelshark s oculata bonaparte 1840 and common angelshark s squatina linnaeus 1758 while s oculata has been extirpated from the adriatic sea due to overfishing the presence of s squatina remained questionable and some authors propose the species is regionally extinct since the 1980s we present new data on the occurrence of s squatina in the croatian adriatic sea based upon inspection of collections from natural history museums and literature sources as well as three new records resulting from bycatch in commercial bottom trawls in 2016 and 2017 a low overall number of records and the complete absence of the species in scientific trawl surveys conducted since 1958 indicate its low abundance and question the effectiveness of scientific surveying in detecting rare species our analysis showed that this formerly abundant species is still present in the adriatic sea emphasizing the importance of implementing novel approaches such as citizen science programmes in studying its current distribution although the legal framework for angelshark conservation already exists poor implementation and lack of any species specific conservation measures will most probably result in further population declines and extinction of s squatina from the adriatic sea,2017,0.912
Late cretaceous PUPOIDES pfeiffer 1854 (gastropoda: Pupillidae) from Uruguay (queguay formation),a new species of pupoides pfeiffer 1854 subgenus ischnopupoides pilsbry 1926 is described for the late cretaceous of uruguay queguay formation being the oldest record of the genus and subgenus pupoides i gnocco new species is characterized by a small dextral fusiform shell constituted by a spire comprising five slightly convex whorls oblicuous axial ornamentation subrounded aperture and an expanded outer lip that lacks dentition,2017,0.568
"Cutting the Gordian Knot: Phylogenetic and ecological diversification of the Mesalina brevirostris species complex (Squamata, Lacertidae)",mesalina are small lacertid lizards occurring in the saharo sindian deserts from north africa to the east of the iranian plateau earlier phylogenetic studies indicated that there are several species complexes within the genus and that thorough taxonomic revisions are needed in this study we aim at resolving the phylogeny and taxonomy of the m brevirostris species complex distributed from the middle east to the arabian persian gulf region and pakistan we sequenced three mitochondrial and three nuclear gene fragments and in combination with species delimitation and species tree estimation we infer a time calibrated phylogeny of the complex the results of the genetic analyses support the presence of four clearly delimited species in the complex that diverged approximately between the middle pliocene and the pliocene pleistocene boundary species distribution models of the four species show that the areas of suitable habitat are geographically well delineated and nearly allopatric and that most of the species have rather divergent environmental niches morphological characters also confirm the differences between the species although sometimes minute as a result of all these lines of evidence we revise the taxonomy of the mesalina brevirostris species complex we designate a lectotype for mesalina brevirostris blanford 1874 resurrect the available name eremias bernoullii schenkel 1901 from the synonymy of m brevirostris elevate m brevirostris microlepis angel 1936 to species status and describe mesalina saudiarabica a new species from saudi arabia,2017,0.993
Genetic mapping and phylogenetic analysis reveal intraspecific variation in sex chromosomes of the Virginian strawberry,with their extraordinary diversity in sexual systems flowering plants offer unparalleled opportunities to understand sex determination and to reveal generalities in the evolution of sex chromosomes comparative genetic mapping of related taxa with good phylogenetic resolution can delineate the extent of sex chromosome diversity within plant groups and lead the way to understanding the evolutionary drivers of such diversity the north american octoploid wild strawberries provide such an opportunity we performed linkage mapping using targeted sequence capture for the subdioecious western fragaria virginiana ssp platypetala and compared the location of its sex determining region sdr to those of two other sub dioecious species the eastern subspecies f virginiana ssp virginiana whose sdr is at 0â 5 5 mb on chromosome vi of the b2 subgenome and the sister species f chiloensis whose sdr is at 37 mb on chromosome vi of the av subgenome male sterility was dominant in f virginiana ssp platypetala and mapped to a chromosome also in homeologous group vi likewise one major qtl for female fertility overlapped the male sterility region however the sdr mapped to a yet another subgenome b1 and to a different location 13 mb but similar to the location inferred in one population of the naturally occurring hybrid between f chiloensis and f virginiana f x ananassa ssp cuneifolia phylogenetic analysis of chromosomes across the octoploid taxa showed consistent subgenomic composition reflecting shared evolutionary history but also reinforced within species variation in the sdr carrying chromosome suggesting either repeated evolution or recent turnovers in sdr,2017,0.619
"Genetic diversity of Patellifolia patellaris from the Iberian Peninsula, a crop wild relative of cultivated beets",the genetic diversity of patellifolia patellaris has been investigated to generate information required for the organisation of a systematic genetic resources conservation action combining the best elements of the ex situ and in situ conservation concept to this end ten occurrences of the species were sampled on the iberian peninsula in portugal and spain a total of 271 individuals was analysed using 24 microsatellite markers the factorial analysis separated the material into two occurrences from portugal two occurrences sampled east of gibraltar and six occurrences from the eastern spanish coast the pairwise genetic distance between occurrences and the complementary compositional differentiation among occurrences were calculated the genetic distance values were used to construct an unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean tree which can be separated into four equidistant clusters two clusters are located in portugal and two further clusters in spain the factorial analysis as well as the genetic distance and differentiation analysis indicate that the two occurrences from portugal are clearly genetically different from the spanish group of occurrences both occurrences have low population sizes and are therefore highly endangered in situ conservation actions are urgently required for both occurrences further investigations are needed to organise better informed conservation actions for p patellaris namely to study genetic relationships between occurrences on the spanish mainland and occurrences distributed on the canary islands madeira and cape verde islands as well as in morocco,2017,0.375
"Longitudinal assessment of thermal and perceived air quality acceptability in relation to temperature, humidity, and CO2 exposure in Singapore",thermal acceptability ta and perceived air quality acceptability paqa are typically analyzed in climate chambers or cross sectional field studies individual factors such as expectations and perceived environment history may influence the acceptability response longitudinal studies with multi day design are absent in the literature fifteen singaporean subjects participated in a 7 day longitudinal experiment in which they carried a portable sensor that continuously recorded personal air temperature relative humidity and carbon dioxide concentration at 1 min intervals instantaneous ta and paqa were regularly sampled by survey for each subject high acceptability was found at home restaurants and workplaces whereas low acceptability was found for outdoor and transport environments the participants from singapore s modern tropical environment spent an average of 96 of their time indoors weak associations were reported between acceptabilities and measured physical parameters taken independently clustering data by location subject s sleeping ventilation habit air conditioning operation status and the changes in physical parameters over a designated time period enhanced the understanding of the acceptability results in general acceptability was lower for those who slept in air conditioned environments than for those who slept without air conditioning the carbon dioxide mixing ratio was critical for paqa predictions but not for ta the gaussian process gp had a better predictive power than a multiple linear regression approach using gp we found that a general predictive model had comparable simulation performance as for individual predictive models the longitudinal experiment has demonstrated effectiveness for ta and paqa analysis which could be beneficial to future studies in personal comfort prediction,2017,0.231
"First fossil of Pterolobium (Leguminosae) from the Middle Miocene Yunnan, South China",here we describe the first fossil species of pterolobium leguminosae pterolobium punctatopsis sp nov based on two compressed fruits from the middle miocene 16 5 15 2 ma maguan basin southeastern yunnan south china the fruits are asymmetrically winged consisting of an elliptical fruit body and a laterally extended membranous wing extensive comparisons with both extant and extinct genera that produce asymmetric winged fruits indicate that our fossil fruits can be unequivocally referred to pterolobium this fossil finding adds a new member into the fossil leguminosae enriching our knowledge of the past diversity of the large family it implies that the genus already existed in south china where it currently grows at least by the middle miocene as modern species of pterolobium live in warm regions the discovery of p punctatopsis indicates a warm climate in maguan region during the middle miocene in contrast to the scarce fossil occurrence of pterolobium its sister group mezoneuron has a relatively good fossil record that traces back to the eocene,2017,0.473
"Molecular genetic analysis of two native desert palm genera, Washingtonia and Brahea , from the Baja California Peninsula and Guadalupe Island",the complex geological and ecological processes that have generated high levels of biodiversity and endemism in the baja california peninsula have been the subject of intensive study however relatively little is known about phylogeography of the iconic endemic palm species of this region we therefore analyzed a total of 2 294 bp of chloroplast and 738 bp of nuclear sequence data in 169 samples of five native palm species from baja california sonora and guadalupe island we found that washingtonia and brahea palms had low levels of genetic diversity and were highly structured with the majority of species and major geographic regions being characterized by distinct haplotypes we also found strong support for currently recognized species in washingtonia but our results were less clear cut for brahea due to haplotype sharing furthermore patterns of population structure were broadly consistent with historical vicariant events such as the inundation of the isthmus of la paz the formation of the sea of cortez and the more recent colonization and isolation of guadalupe island s palms our findings contribute toward a growing appreciation of the complexity of plant responses to past geological changes and also provide valuable baseline genetic data on relict american palm species,2017,0.9
Population structure and landscape genetics of western ruffed grouse,this study was the first to examine the genetic structure of a widespread game bird the ruffed grouse bonasa umbellus we uncovered multiple factors acting in concert that are likely responsible for mediating contemporary population connectivity in this species a combination of autosomal intron mitochondrial and high resolution microsatellite markers revealed many populations of ruffed grouse are genetically isolated furthermore the addition of landscape genetic methods not only corroborated genetic structure results but also uncovered compelling evidence that dispersal resistance created by unsuitable habitat is the most important factor mediating population connectivity among the sampled populations our data revealed evidence of high elevation mountains acting as dispersal barriers as well as two corridors creating limited connectivity among populations that are otherwise isolated by the rocky mountains this research may have implications for both our study species and other inhabitants of the early successional forest habitat required by ruffed grouse,2017,0.819
"Re-establishment of the overlooked species Torenia godefroyi (Linderniaceae), and notes on the identity of T. lindernioides",torenia godefroyi an asian species overlooked since first described has been considered as a variety of lindernia crustacea now treated as torenia crustacea however detailed examination of fresh specimens type and additional material clearly indicates that t godefroyi is distinct from t crustacea therefore t godefroyi is re established here as a distinct species furthermore the taxonomic identity of another asian species torenia lindernioides described from india is discussed we observe that morphological characters of t lindernioides overlap with t godefroyi and suggest to synonymise it under t godefroyi an amended description photographs and notes about the distribution and habitat of t godefroyi are provided,2017,0.674
Decreasing desired opportunity for energy supply of a globally acclaimed biofuel crop in a changing climate,under the pressure of growing populations and climate change globally biofuel crops have motivated accelerating interest in the production of renewable bioenergy to provide a substantial proportion of the future energy supply both habitat suitability for cultivation and potential aggravating environmental problems from biofuel crops attract concerns worldwide jatropha curcas l jatropha is acclaimed as a magical biofuel crop with high potential to replace fossil fuels sustainably as well as a multitude of environmental benefits however jatropha is categorized as an invasive plant with a massive investment in new cultivations on a global scale but without a profound ecological knowledge given the ambitious policy target in production it is urgent to achieve spatially explicit estimates of habitat suitability for increasing cultivation of jatropha the opportunities and risks for jatropha were evaluated under climate change using the minimum and maximum representative concentration pathways rcp2 6 and rcp8 5 by 2100 the extent of predicted suitable habitats may shrink by more than 45 regardless of time slices and the rcps even considered assuming the most optimistic ability of dispersal the impacts of climate change vary considerably among continents with the greater habitat loss in the americas and oceania than in asia and africa and a high risk of habitat loss at low latitudes the findings indicate that jatropha would show a decreasing opportunity for desired energy supply due to the complexities of the likely impacts of climate change this study provides important insights into developing cultivation policies for the utilization of jatropha within a sustainable biofuel program,2017,0.261
Utilization of photographs taken by citizens for estimating bumblebee distributions,citizen science is a powerful tool for collecting large volumes of observational data on various species these data are used to estimate distributions using environmental factors with species distribution models sdm however if citizens are inexperienced in recognizing organisms they may report different species as the subject species here we show nation wide bumblebee distributions using photographs taken by citizens in our project and estimated distributions for six bumblebee species using land use climate and altitude data with sdm we identified species from photographic images and took their locations from gps data of photographs or the text in e mails when we compared our data with conventional data for specimens in the global biodiversity information facility gbif we found that the volume and the number of species were larger and the bias of spatial range was lower than those of gbif our estimated distributions were more consistent with bumblebee distributions reported in previous studies than with those of gbif our method was effective for collecting distribution data and estimating distributions with sdm the estimated sdm allows us to predict the previous and future species distributions and to develop conservation policies taking account of future city planning and or global climate changes,2017,0.921
"Southern Ocean Echinoids database – An updated version of Antarctic, Sub-Antarctic and cold temperate echinoid database",this database includes over 7 100 georeferenced occurrence records of sea urchins echinodermata echinoidea obtained from samples collected in the southern ocean 180â w 180â e 35â 78â s during oceanographic cruises led over 150 years from 1872 to 2015 echinoids are common organisms of southern ocean benthic communities a total of 201 species is recorded which display contrasting depth ranges and distribution patterns across austral provinces and bioregions echinoid species show various ecological traits including different nutrition and reproductive strategies information on taxonomy sampling sites and sampling sources are also made available environmental descriptors that are relevant to echinoid ecology are also made available for the study area 180â w 180â e 45â 78â s and for the following decades 1955â 1964 1965â 1974 1975â 1984 1985â 1994 and 1995â 2012 they were compiled from different sources and transformed to the same grid cell resolution of 0 1â per pixel we also provide future projections for environmental descriptors established based on the bio oracle database tyberghein et al 2012,2017,0.663
Toward a new data standard for combined marine biological and environmental datasets - expanding OBIS beyond species occurrences,the ocean biogeographic information system obis is the worldâ s most comprehensive online open access database of marine species distributions obis grows with millions of new species observations every year contributions come from a network of hundreds of institutions projects and individuals with common goals to build a scientific knowledge base that is open to the public for scientific discovery and exploration and to detect trends and changes that inform society as essential elements in conservation management and sustainable development until now obis has focused solely on the collection of biogeographic data the presence of marine species in space and time and operated with optimized data flows quality control procedures and data standards specifically targeted to these data based on requirements from the growing obis community to manage datasets that combine biological physical and chemical measurements the obis env data pilot project was launched to develop a proposed standard and guidelines to make sure these combined datasets can stay together and are not as is often the case split and sent to different repositories the proposal in this paper allows for the management of sampling methodology animal tracking and telemetry data biological measurements e g body length percent live cover as well as environmental measurements such as nutrient concentrations sediment characteristics or other abiotic parameters measured during sampling to characterize the environment from which biogeographic data was collected the recommended practice builds on the darwin core archive dwc a standard and on practices adopted by the global biodiversity information facility gbif it consists of a dwc event core in combination with a dwc occurrence extension and a proposed enhancement to the dwc measurementorfact extension this new structure enables the linkage of measurements or facts quantitative and qualitative properties to both sampling events and species occurrences and includes additional fields for property standardization we also embrace the use of the new parenteventid dwc term which enables the creation of a sampling event hierarchy we believe that the adoption of this recommended practice as a new data standard for managing and sharing biological and associated environmental datasets by iode and the wider international scientific community would be key to improving the effectiveness of the knowledge base and will enhance integration and management of critical data needed to understand ecological and biological processes in the ocean and on land,2017,0.352
200 years of marine research at Senckenberg: selected highlights,a history of the marine zoology department at the senckenberg society for the study of nature senckenbergische naturforschende gesellschaft has not yet been published still there is no lack of documentation of research activities at the senckenberg research institute and natural history museum marine zoology studies began with eduard rã ppell 1794â 1884 after his admission to the senckenberg society in 1818 one year after its foundation and his collections of fishes molluscans and crustaceans from the mediterranean made in 1820 during the nineteenth century further progress in marine zoology studies was slow and serious interest in the study of marine organisms expanded significantly only during the twentieth century after the foundation of the marine station at wilhelmshaven in 1928 the amount of marine biology and geology literature originating from researchers associated with the senckenberg has become overwhelming and the dwarfs once standing on the shoulder of giants have become giants themselves in this article we present the marine zoology department its sections and assess the most important researchers associated with the senckenberg research institute including the founders of the sections and their place in two centuries of history since the foundation of the senckenberg society in 1817,2017,0.088
Parallel natural selection in the cold-adapted crop-wild relative Tripsacum dactyloides and artificial selection in temperate adapted maize,artificial selection has produced varieties of domesticated maize which thrive in temperate climates around the world however the direct progenitor of maize teosinte is indigenous only to a relatively small range of tropical and sub tropical latitudes and grows poorly or not at all outside of this region tripsacum a sister genus to maize and teosinte is naturally endemic to the majority of areas in the western hemisphere where maize is cultivated a full length reference transcriptome for tripsacum dactyloides generated using long read isoseq data was used to characterize independent adaptation to temperate climates in this clade genes related to phospholipid biosynthesis a critical component of cold acclimation on other cold adapted plant lineages were enriched among those genes experiencing more rapid rates of protein sequence evolution in t dactyloides in contrast with previous studies of parallel selection we find that there is a significant overlap between the genes which were targets of artificial selection during the adaptation of maize to temperate climates and those which were targets of natural selection in temperate adapted t dactyloides this overlap between the targets of natural and artificial selection suggests genetic changes in crop wild relatives associated with adaptation to new environments may be useful guides for identifying genetic targets for breeding efforts aimed at adapting crops to a changing climate,2017,0.403
Terrestrial reproduction as an adaptation to steep terrain in African toads,how evolutionary novelties evolve is a major question in evolutionary biology it is widely accepted that changes in environmental conditions shift the position of selective optima and advancements in phylogenetic comparative approaches allow the rigorous testing of such correlated transitions a longstanding question in vertebrate biology has been the evolution of terrestrial life histories in amphibians and here by investigating african bufonids we test whether terrestrial modes of reproduction have evolved as adaptations to particular abiotic habitat parameters we reconstruct and date the most complete species level molecular phylogeny and estimate ancestral states for reproductive modes by correlating continuous habitat measurements from remote sensing data and locality records with life history transitions we discover that terrestrial modes of reproduction including viviparity evolved multiple times in this group most often directly from fully aquatic modes terrestrial modes of reproduction are strongly correlated with steep terrain and low availability of accumulated water sources evolutionary transitions to terrestrial modes of reproduction occurred synchronously with or after transitions in habitat and we therefore interpret terrestrial breeding as an adaptation to these abiotic conditions rather than an exaptation that facilitated the colonization of montane habitats,2017,0.312
Regional climate oscillations and local topography shape genetic polymorphisms and distribution of the giant columnar cactus Echinopsis terscheckii in drylands of the tropical Andes,aim we sought to determine if the present fragmentary distribution of the giant columnar cactus echinopsis terscheckii in tropical drylands is a relict of a previously more widespread range during cold and dry phases of the last glacial maximum lgm location tropical and subtropical dry ecotonal areas of northern and central andes of argentina methods we combined ecological niche models enm with molecular polymorphisms of isozymes and dna sequences we collected samples from 30 individuals at 24 locations for genetic analysis covering a wide range of environmental conditions we sequenced the nuclear its and three non coding regions of the chloroplast dna and we resolved 15 isozyme loci potential distribution was modelled using 88 e terscheckii presence training records and a reduced set of 10 modern bioclimatic variables lgm and the mid holocene distributions were derived by projecting bioclimatic data under present to past environmental conditions according to ccsm4 and miroc esm global climate models results we detected high isozyme diversity towards the south the multivariate cluster analysis yielded two groups of populations that were geographically concordant with the dna haplotypes located north and south of a divide at 27â s distribution models show range expansion during the lgm in two north and south areas separated by a gap of low suitability at 27â s suitable areas in the south were close to current populations while in the north populations survived in more disjunct locations that probably suffered from founder effects in contrast mid holocene bioclimatic conditions were relatively unsuitable in the south main conclusions our results suggest that the divergence of north and south groups of e terscheckii populations reflect long lasting persistence through climatic cycles that were reinforced by the presence of an orogenic divide at mid latitudes latitudinally divergent groups of populations should be treated as distinct evolutionary significant units that deserve independent conservation actions increased genetic diversity and inbreeding towards the south may guide setting up priorities for the long term protection of a dominant element of drylands as e terscheckii,2017,0.69
Modelling distribution and associated environmental preferences of South African kelps and their close relatives,kelp are central components of marine ecosystems that are found on the west coast of south africa and in temperate regions around the world they are ecologically important in providing vertical habitats and sustaining diverse life forms the kelp species that are investigated in this study are ecklonia cava ecklonia maxima ecklonia radiata laminaria pallida and laminaria ochroleuca ecklonia maxima e radiata and l pallida are dominant south african kelps therefore studying these species provides information about their distributions and environmental preferences e cava and l ochloleuca are of interest as they are close relatives to south african kelp species and add to the understanding of ecklonia and laminaria in a more global context the aims of this study were to map the biogeographical distribution of each species and model their potential niches based on the environmental conditions that facilitate their growth species distribution modelling was used to map the fundamental niche of each species the maxent method was used to model predictive niches by layering known coordinates of where each species is found along with the bio oracle dataset of 23 environmental variables consisting of satellite and in situ data the carto cloud computing platform was used to map the current distribution of each species the major environmental predictors of each species distribution were identified in the modelling process and contributed to the final predicted habitat suitability maps the results of this study show that maxent identified maximum minimum mean and range in sea surface temperature to be associated with all speciesâ distribution measures of irradiance or light availability specifically photosynthetically active radiation diffuse attenuation and cloud cover were important predictors of four of the speciesâ distributions chlorophyll a proxy for nutrients emerged as an important correlate of most distributions whilst silicate phosphate and calcite were important particularly to the distribution of kelp species found outside of south africa there were regions identifiedkelp are central components of marine ecosystems that are found on the west coast of south africa and in temperate regions around the world they are ecologically important in providing vertical habitats and sustaining diverse life forms the kelp species that are investigated in this study are ecklonia cava ecklonia maxima ecklonia radiata laminaria pallida and laminaria ochroleuca ecklonia maxima e radiata and l pallida are dominant south african kelps therefore studying these species provides information about their distributions and environmental preferences e cava and l ochloleuca are of interest as they are close relatives to south african kelp species and add to the understanding of ecklonia and laminaria in a more global context the aims of this study were to map the biogeographical distribution of each species and model their potential niches based on the environmental conditions that facilitate their growth species distribution modelling was used to map the fundamental niche of each species the maxent method was used to model predictive niches by layering known coordinates of where each species is found along with the bio oracle dataset of 23 environmental variables consisting of satellite and in situ data the carto cloud computing platform was used to map the current distribution of each species the major environmental predictors of each species distribution were identified in the modelling process and contributed to the final predicted habitat suitability maps the results of this study show that maxent identified maximum minimum mean and range in sea surface temperature to be associated with all speciesâ distribution measures of irradiance or light availability specifically photosynthetically active radiation diffuse attenuation and cloud cover were important predictors of four of the speciesâ distributions chlorophyll a proxy for nutrients emerged as an important correlate of most distributions whilst silicate phosphate and calcite were important particularly to the distribution of kelp species found outside of south africa there were regions identified,2017,0.998
Flexibility of habitat use in novel environments: insights from a translocation experiment with lesser black-backed gulls,being faced with unknown environments is a concomitant challenge of species range expansions strategies to cope with this challenge include the adaptation to local conditions and a flexibility in resource exploitation the gulls of the larus argentatus fuscus cachinnans group form a system in which ecological flexibility might have enabled them to expand their range considerably and to colonize urban environments however on a population level both flexibility and local adaptation lead to signatures of differential habitat use in different environments and these processes are not easily distinguished using the lesser black backed gull larus fuscus as a system we put both flexibility and local adaptation to a test we compare habitat use between two spatially separated populations and use a translocation experiment during which individuals were released into novel environment the experiment revealed that on a population level flexibility best explains the differences in habitat use between the two populations we think that our results suggest that the range expansion and huge success of this species complex could be a result of its broad ecological niche and flexibility in the exploitation of resources however this also advises caution when using species distribution models to extrapolate habitat use across space,2017,0.63
"ECOLOGICAL LITERACY, URBAN GREEN SPACE, AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGY: EXPLORING THE IMPACTS OF AN ARBORETUM CURRICULUM DESIGNED …",increasing individual ecological literacy levels may help citizens make informed choices about the environmental challenges facing society the purpose of this study was to explore the impacts of an arboretum curriculum incorporating mobile technology and an urban greenspace on the ecological knowledge environmental attitudes and beliefs and environmental behaviors of undergraduate biology students and pre service k 8 teachers during a summer course using a convergent parallel mixed methods design both quantitative and qualitative data were collected analyzed and later merged to create an enhanced understanding of the impact of the curriculum on the environmental attitudes and beliefs of the participants quantitative results revealed a significant difference between pre and post survey scores for ecological knowledge with no significant differences between pre and post scores for the other variables measured however no significant difference in scores was found between experimental and comparison groups for any of the three variables when the two data sets were compared results from the quantitative and qualitative components were found to converge and diverge quantitative data indicated the environmental attitudes and beliefs of participants were unaffected by the arboretum curriculum similarly qualitative data indicated participantsâ perceived environmental attitudes and beliefs about the importance of nature remained unchanged throughout the course of the study however qualitative data supporting the theme connecting with the curriculum suggested experiences with the arboretum curriculum helped participants develop an appreciation for trees and nature and led them to believe they increased their knowledge about trees,2017,0.253
"Siegius, a replacement name for Bilobatus Sieg, 1993 (Crustacea: Tanaidacea: Apseudidae), preoccupied by Bilobatus Machatschke, 1970 (Insecta: Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae)",sieg 1993 established the then monotypic genus bilobatus for his new species crenulatus an apseudomorphan tanaidacean from darwin harbour northern territory australia the genus was later synonymised under apseudes leach 1814 by bamber 2000 but then revalidated by guå u 2002 it is currently considered valid blazewicz paszkowycz1 et al 2012 anderson 2016,2017,0.463
"Intercontinental and intracontinental biogeography of the eastern Asian – eastern North American disjunct Panax (the ginseng genus, Araliaceae), emphasizing its diversification processes in eastern Asia",oceans and altitudinal shifts which further contribute to the knowledge of the uneven species diversification between eastern asia and north america the evolution of the intercontinental disjunctions have been hampered by the lack of studies on the intracontinental biogeography in eastern asia a region with complex geology geography climates and habitats herein we studied the biogeographic history of the eastern asian eastern north american disjunct genus panax with special emphasis on the investigation of its uneven diversification in asia this study reconstructs the diversification history of panax and also emphasizes a large clade of panax taxa which has a wide distribution in eastern asia but was unresolved in previous studies we examined the noncoding plastid dna fragments of trnh psba rps16 and psbm trnd the mitochondrial b c intron of nad1 and the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer its region of 356 samples from 47 populations the results revealed the subtropical northern hemisphere origin asia or asia and north america of panax in the paleocene intercontinental disjunctions between eastern asia and eastern north america formed twice in panax once estimated in early eocene for the split of p trifolius and another in mid miocene for the divergence of p quinquefolius intercontinental diversifications in panax showed temporal correlation with the increase of global temperature the evolutionary radiation of the p bipinnatifidus species complex occurred around the boundary of oligocene and miocene strong genetic structure among populations of the species complex was detected and the populations may be isolated by distance the backbone network and the bayesian clustering analysis revealed a major evolutionary radiation centered in the hengduan mountains of western china our results suggested that the evolutionary radiation of panax was promoted by geographic barriers including mountain ranges hengduan mountains nanling mountains and wuyishan mountains the intercontinental biogeography between eastern asia and eastern north america has attracted much attention from evolutionary biologists further insights into understanding,2017,0.929
The iNaturalist Species Classification and Detection Dataset,existing image classification datasets used in computer vision tend to have a uniform distribution of images across object categories in contrast the natural world is heavily imbalanced as some species are more abundant and easier to photograph than others to encourage further progress in challenging real world conditions we present the inaturalist species classification and detection dataset consisting of 859 000 images from over 5 000 different species of plants and animals it features visually similar species captured in a wide variety of situations from all over the world images were collected with different camera types have varying image quality feature a large class imbalance and have been verified by multiple citizen scientists we discuss the collection of the dataset and present extensive baseline experiments using state of the art computer vision classification and detection models results show that current non ensemble based methods achieve only 67 top one classification accuracy illustrating the difficulty of the dataset specifically we observe poor results for classes with small numbers of training examples suggesting more attention is needed in low shot learning,2017,0.831
New and little known weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) from the Paleocene of Menat (France),two new genera petropsis gen n and menatorhis gen n and two species petropsis rostrata gen et sp n ithyceridae and perapion menatensis sp n brentidae are described from the paleocene of menat france petropsis rostrata gen et sp n is similar to cretocar luzzii gratshev et zherikhin 2000 but differs from it in the comparatively short ventrites 1 and 2 almost straight and not dilated metatibiae short precoxal portion of the prosternum slightly convex elytra and antennae inserted more closely to the middle of the rostrum perapion menatensis sp n is similar to perapion antiquum gyllenhal 1833 but differs from it in the straight rostrum sparser and finer punctures of the pronotum and somewhat larger body the families ithyceridae and brentidae are recorded for the first time in the paleocene of menat the systematic positions of balaninus elegans piton 1940 type species of menatorhis gen n and hipporhinus ventricosus piton 1940 are discussed,2017,0.766
"Are native ranges of the most destructive invasive pests well known? A case study of the native range of the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae)",knowledge of the native range of invasive pests is vital for understanding their biology for ecological niche modeling to infer potential invasive distribution and for searching of natural enemies standard descriptions of pest ranges frequently pass from one publication to another without verification our goal is to test the reliability of distributional information exemplified by the native range of one of the most destructive and most studied invasive forest insect pests of asian originâ the emerald ash borer eab agrilus planipennis fairmaire since the first detections of this notorious insect pest in north america in 2002 and european russia in 2003 it has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees based on the examination of museum specimens and literature sources we compiled the most comprehensive database of records 108 localities and the most detailed map of the native range of eab in east asia to date there are documented records for 87 mainland localities of eab in the russian far east primorskiy khabarovskiy kray china heilongjiang jilin liaoning beijing hebei tianjin shandong and xinjiang and south korea and 21 localities in japan records from nei mongol sichuan mongolia and taiwan are ambiguous since no documented records are available the example of eab shows that standard descriptions of pest ranges could include false or ambiguous data compilation of the database of documented localities is the only way to obtain reliable information on the range,2017,0.326
"Cytological, genetic and morphological variation in mixed stands of dogroses (Rosa section Caninae; Rosaceae) in Germany with a focus on the hybridogenic R. micrantha",polyploid hemisexual dogroses are known for their complicated reticulate evolutionary history and their ongoing hybridization events that challenge taxonomic concepts we investigated how spontaneous hybrids between subsections rubigineae and caninae can be identified by cytological genetic and morphological analyses and how they fit into the current taxonomic treatment we sampled plants from mixed stands of both subsections in germany and performed morphological measurements we compared the morphological data with data from flow cytometry and microsatellite analyses compiled from a previous study based on a much wider sampling most of the investigated plants were pentaploid but some species were composed of tetra and hexaploid individuals co occurring with the pentaploids in germany all hexaploid plants were of hybridogenic origin and they were more frequently found in south western germany genetic and morphological data differentiated clearly between subsections and between informal aggregates of subsection rubigineae however the currently accepted microspecies could be neither genetically nor morphologically unambiguously recognized in contrast multivariate analyses of genetic and morphological data distinguished between hexaploid and pentaploid cytotypes of the r rubiginosa aggregate the hexaploid hybridogenic individuals mostly identified as r micrantha were characterized by more hairs and fewer glands on the leaflets and a smaller angle of the lamina base characters typical for the paternal parent of subsection caninae,2017,0.189
Geographical variation in sexual behavior and body traits in a sex role reversed wolf spider,mating partners need to recognize assess each other and exchange information through behavioral events that occur before during and after mating sexual signals as well as life history traits are influenced by selective pressures and environmental factors that can vary across distant geographical areas allocosa senex is a sand dwelling wolf spider which constructs burrows along the sandy coasts of argentina brazil and uruguay females are the mobile sex that searches for males and initiates courtship they prefer males which construct longer burrows and males prefer virgin females in good body condition the objective of this study was to compare sexual behavior patterns as well as body characteristics and burrow dimensions between two geographically distant locations of a senex one in uruguay uruguayan location and the other from central argentina argentinean location we found differences in the number of male abdominal vibrations male and female touches during mating and number of erections of male leg spines which all were higher in matings of argentinean pairs on the other hand male body mass and female body condition were higher in uruguayan individuals the wide distribution of a senex could be determining variations in the biotic and abiotic features that affect the species generating differences in the strength of selective forces acting on individuals from the two studied locations,2017,0.544
Type study of Japanese Dacrymycetes described by Yosio Kobayasi: Redescriptions of five species and a new name proposal,the japanese mycologist yosio kobayasi described 16 species of japanese dacrymycetes almost all of the type specimens were thought to have been destroyed during world war ii in this study kobayasi s specimens were surveyed and holotypes of six species dacrymyces adpressus kobayasi d applanatus d pezizoides d puniceus d subalpinus and dacryopinax imazekiana were found and recognized as distinct species dacrymyces adpressus kobayasi a later homonym of d adpressus grognot was redescribed with a new name d kobayasii the mycoflora of japanese dacrymycetes has been updated to 44 species in nine genera,2017,0.792
Coupling of pollination services and coffee suitability under climate change,climate change will cause geographic range shifts for pollinators and major crops with global implications for food security and rural livelihoods however little is known about the potential for coupled impacts of climate change on pollinators and crops coffee production exemplifies this issue because large losses in areas suitable for coffee production have been projected due to climate change and because coffee production is dependent on bee pollination we modeled the potential distributions of coffee and coffee pollinators under current and future climates in latin america to understand whether future coffee suitable areas will also be suitable for pollinators our results suggest that coffeesuitable areas will be reduced 73â 88 by 2050 across warming scenarios a decline 46â 76 greater than estimated by global assessments mean bee richness will decline 8â 18 within future coffee suitable areas but all are predicted to contain at least 5 bee species and 46â 59 of future coffee suitable areas will contain 10 or more species in our models coffee suitability and bee richness each increase i e positive coupling in 10â 22 of future coffee suitable areas diminished coffee suitability and bee richness i e negative coupling however occur in 34â 51 of other areas finally in 31â 33 of the future coffee distribution areas bee richness decreases and coffee suitability increases assessing coupled effects of climate change on crop suitability and pollination can help target appropriate management practices including forest conservation shade adjustment crop rotation or status quo in different regions,2017,0.376
"New records, potential distribution, and conservation of the Near Threatened cave bat Natalus macrourus in Brazil",species with specific roosting foraging or breeding requirements are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss and degradation for bats the availability and environmental condition of caves can be a limiting factor the cave specialist natalus macrourus formerly natalus espiritosantensis is categorized as near threatened on the iucn red list but as vulnerable in brazil based on a projected population reduction and a decline in its area of occupancy extent of occurrence and or quality of habitat there is a lack of knowledge about the speciesâ distribution natural history and ecology information that is required for conservation using new occurrence data and potential distribution modelling we evaluated the distribution of n macrourus in brazil analysed pressures on and threats to the species and assessed the speciesâ conservation needs natalus macrourus is positively associated with areas with higher probability of cave occurrence and negatively associated with areas of high variation in mean daily temperature and mean annual rainfall areas with high environmental suitability for n macrourus correspond to only 3 of the potential distribution modelled we estimate that the species has already lost 54 of its natural habitat and that there is 35 of habitat remaining in areas with high environmental suitability we calculated that approximately half of the caves in areas with high environmental suitability are 5 km from mining operations and only 4 of the speciesâ potential distribution lies within protected areas given the strong association of n macrourus with caves it is important to protect these habitats and we recommend that caves where the species is present should receive immediate protection,2017,0.714
Computer Science Meets Ecology - Edited Panel discussions,this report summarizes the program and main outcomes of the dagstuhl seminar 17091 entitled computer science meets ecolog ecology is a discipline that poses many challenging problems involving big data collection provenance and integration as well as difficulties in data analysis prediction and understanding all these issues are precisely the arena where computer science is concerned the seminar motivation was rooted in the belief that ecology could largely benefit from modern computer science the seminar attracted scientists from both fields who discussed important topics in ecology e g botany animal science biogeochemistry and how to approach them with machine learning computer vision pattern recognition and data mining a set of specific problems and techniques were treated and the main building blocks were set up the important topics of education outreach data and models accessibility were also touched upon the seminar proposed a distinctive perspective by promoting cross fertilization in a unique environment and a unique set of individuals,2017,0.206
Assessing adaptive genetic variation for conservation and management of the European grayling (Thymallus thymallus),in this phd functional genetic variation of european grayling thymallus thymallus is assessed to inform conservation and management of the species this study is the first to characterize immune variation at the major histocompatibility complex mhc in grayling the mhc is a marker of high ecological relevance because of the strong association between immunity and fitness taking advantage of advances in sequencing technology an analytical pipeline optimized for high throughput efficient and accurate genotyping of multi gene families in non model species is presented immune genetic variation is compared to neutral marker data results confirm the hypothesis that neutral marker variation does not predict immune genetic variation further the possible effect of supplementing wild populations with hatchery reared fish on immune genetic variation is evaluated significantly lower estimates of heterozygosity were found in stocked than purely native populations lower differentiation at immune genes than at neutral markers are indicative of the effects of balancing selection acting upon the mhc within purely native but not stocked populations furthermore species distribution modelling is used to identify environmental parameters shaping the distribution of grayling to evaluate risks imposed by climate change the sensitivity of grayling to climatic variables and range changes under predicted future scenarios are assessed locally optimised mitigation strategies are shown to increase habitat suitability estimates under conditions of climate change evolutionary dynamics between hosts and pathogens are important factors in determining an individualâ s susceptibility to disease studying the microbiome is therefore a promising tool to investigate the risk of disease mediated extinctions in relation to environmental conditions and host genetics this study presents a preliminary analysis on the microbiome of grayling to inform experimental design for future large scale studies altogether data presented here contribute to improve the management of european grayling more broadly it informs conservation research in general demonstrating the value of taking multiple approaches,2017,0.251
A new species of Andinobates (Anura: Dendrobatidae) from the Urabá region of Colombia,northwestern south america is among the most biodiverse albeit unexplored regions of the world the genus andinobates is made up of 14 species all distributed in northwestern south america colombia and northern ecuador and adjacent panamã within the last decade five species of this genus have been described in this paper we describe yet another species belonging to the andinobates fulguritus group from the urabã region of northwestern colombia the new species can be distinguished from other members of andinobates on the basis of a unique combination of coloration size and advertisement call parameters molecular phylogenetic and genetic distance analyses corroborate the speciesâ taxonomic affinity and further support its status as a distinct lineage finally we discuss the implications of our findings on the systematics of the a fulguritus group,2017,0.636
"Ecology, Biogeography, and Conservation of Amphibians of the Caatinga",in this chapter we review current knowledge on the ecology biodiversity biogeography and conservation of amphibians of the caatinga we recorded 98 species belonging to 12 families with 20 endemic species and 67 of the regional diversity concentrated in two families hylidae and leptodactylidae we generated a surface of potential anuran richness based on binary maps generated through niche modeling our resulting map corroborated most areas previously recognized as highly diverse but also suggested others that must be further studied a general pattern of higher richness areas on the east portion of the biome associated with the atlantic forest is evident but central and western portions with higher richness values are also evident the biodiversity of the caatinga is just starting to be understood with the vast majority of papers on amphibians published only in the last 20 years a concerted effort is needed to fill information gaps regarding caatinga amphibians including geographic distribution and biogeography community and population ecology physiology and taxonomic and phylogenetic appraisals that can adequately support conservation policies and practices for its fauna,2017,0.402
An Expanding Hybrid Zone between Black-Headed and Red-Headed Buntings in Northern Iran,black headed bunting emberiza melanocephala and red headed bunting emberiza bruniceps are closely related passerine species that were reported to meet in a hybrid zone southeast of the caspian sea iran over 70 years ago in this study we revisited the hybrid zone in the northern parts of iran to compare its present extension and position with previous reports and to determine the relative importance of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in defining range limits of these bunting species in the contact zone species distribution models sdms were constructed to characterize the factors affecting the current location of the zone our results show that the hybrid zone has expanded westwards approximately 170 km in recent decades and that the black headed bunting is being replaced by the red headed bunting in a westward movement the blackheaded bunting has retreated a little from its eastern range in north iran in recent decades the hybrid zone has expanded westward rather than shifted model outputs show t,2017,0.689
Mollusc species richness and abundance from shelf to abyssal depths in the Ross Sea (Antarctica): the importance of fine-mesh-towed gears and implications for future sampling,in polar areas where benthic sampling is constrained by a series of limitations imposed by climate and logistic challenges knowledge about the key elements required to plan a successful survey is fundamental during the international polar year ipy 2007 2008 under the census of antarctic marine life caml new sampling campaigns were undertaken in several antarctic areas comprising the ross sea in this region the 2008 niwa ipy caml voyage obtained benthos samples from shelf to abyssal depths in the present study we focus on the mollusca from this expedition and on the possible variations in their richness and composition with latitude and depth given the use of sampling gears selective for different size fractions of the macrofauna we also assess which size fraction contained the highest biodiversity differences were detected in species composition with latitude averaged across depth groups but not for depth averaged across latitudinal groups richness varied locally and showed a variety of patterns depending on the areas and depths considered the greatest diversity of molluscs was found in the fine fraction i e 4 1 mm where a considerable number of species corresponded to new species or new regional records rarity was high with up to 41 of species represented by single individuals and 63 occurring at one station only fine mesh trawling appears to be of fundamental importance in accelerating the census of the fine fraction which is the one containing the highest diversity and is recommended for future sampling in antarctica and in polar areas in general,2017,0.841
Movement ecology research to advance conservation of South America's grassland migratory birds,south america is home to some of the largest most diverse grasslands on the planet providing critical habitat for numerous plants and animals and vital resources for millions of people yet at the dawn of the 21st century south america s grasslands are experiencing rapid widespread and unprecedented impacts from activities such as pesticide use drainage urbanization and conversion to industrial monocultures in combination with the pervasive effects of global climate change these impacts have the potential to ripple across grassland food webs in ways we still poorly understand how do these impacts affect the behavior ecology and population demographics of the numerous migratory birds that call these grasslands home given the historical lack of research on grassland birds across the new world we know very little about how to best conserve them much less which grassland migratory birds are currently impacted or likely will be in the near future we argue that by applying recent theoretical and technological advances in the field of movement ecology rapid advances can be achieved in understanding grassland migratory birds in south america we outline the current state of knowledge about grassland birds that migrate within south america the main threats to their survival and how the emerging field of movement ecology can contribute to understanding how to conserve and manage their populations only with information on the full annual cycle of these birds will we be able to formulate effective conservation and management plans to ensure the long term viability of these unique species,2017,0.308
Pollination Syndromes of Chinese Gesneriaceae: a Comparative Study between Hainan Island and Neighboring Regions,the species rich gesneriaceae are typically a tropical family in asia showing a monophyletic radiation and high endemism in southwest china and hainan island the chinese species have diverse floral traits and pollination systems but the detailed patterns of diversity and possible differentiations between hainan island and the chinese mainland remain unclear here we enumerate the species diversity and proportion of endemics of gesneriaceae for hainan island and the nearby chinese provinces of yunnan guangxi guizhou and guangdong we then investigate the species evolutionary histories and main floral traits to evaluate speciation and pollination syndromes for the island and mainland flora we recognize 24 eight endemic species on hainan island 236 106 endemic in yunnan 211 120 endemic in guangxi 97 28 endemic in guizhou and 60 20 endemic in guangdong although hainan island harbors fewer species than nearby regions probably due to its smaller area its endemic ratio is high only slightly lower than guangxi a phylogenetic tree based on nuclear its 1 2 and chloroplast trn l f indicated most hainan endemic species were genetically close to species from southeast asia rather than mainland china for most floral traits e g growth form corolla type and color hainan island species show no differences from other regions hainan island and yunnan province have equal proportions of species with four or two stamens whereas most species in other regions have two stamens hainan island has a much higher percentage 21 of actinomorphic species than other regions 10 most species in hainan island have exserted stamens while stamens are included in most species in other regions we did not find any increased tendency in floral traits that promote selfing for the island flora generalist pollination mechanisms supported by characters such as actinomorphic corolla appear to provide sufficient reproductive assurance in pollinator depauperate hainan island,2017,0.994
Environmental and vegetation changes in southeastern Amazonia during the late Pleistocene and Holocene,new insights about climate conditions and their effect on vegetation and lakes of southeastern amazonia were achieved over the last 50 cal ka using recent data obtained from a filled lake located in the serra sul de carajã s our analysis was done in a sediment core r2 comprising of faciological palynological isotopic and radio carbon measurement supported by bayesian age depth modeling as well species distribution modeling wet and cool climate conditions are proposed for the mid pleniglacial which is favorable to intense weathering of the lake s catchment area and the expansion of high altitude taxa cool adapted into forest formations during this period from the late pleniglacial to the last glacial maximum a change from relatively wet to dry climate possibly converted the studied lake from oxidizing to reducing conditions which leads to the formation of diagenetic siderites at the end of this time interval warming during the pleistocene to holocene transition caused the disappearance of cool adapted taxa in the study site concomitantly increasing precipitation allowed the expansion of forest and high lake levels a drier early mid holocene produced extensive open vegetation and desiccated lakes current climate and environmental conditions were likely attained in the region from the mid to late holocene,2017,0.219
"'Rose Coral' Pentapora foliacea (Ellis & Solander, 1786) in Irish & UK waters",the first known records of the rose coral pentapora foliacea were recently reported from the east coast of ireland irish sea,2017,0.354
"iCollections methodology: workflow, results and lessons learned",the natural history museum london nhmuk has embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its collections the first phase of this programme was to undertake a series of pilot projects to develop the workflows and infrastructure needed to support mass digitisation of very large scientific collections this paper presents the results of one of the pilot projects â icollections this project digitised all the lepidopteran specimens usually considered as butterflies 181 545 specimens representing 89 species from the british isles and ireland the data digitised includes species name georeferenced location collector and collection date the what where who and when of specimen data in addition a digital image of each specimen was taken a previous paper explained the way the data were obtained and the background to the collections that made up the project the present paper describes the technical logistical and economic aspects of managing the project,2017,0.166
"Migration corridors for alpine plants among the ‘sky islands’ of eastern Africa: do they, or did they exist?",the tropical alpine ecosystem in eastern africa is highly fragmented among biological â sky islandsâ where populations of frost tolerant organisms are isolated from each other by a â seaâ of tropical lowlands one third of the species in the afroalpine flora are exclusively alpine but the other species can to varying degrees extend into grasslands and open forests of lower vegetation belts a long debated question is whether colonization of the alpine zone of these mountains and subsequent intermountain gene flow entirely depend on long distance dispersal across unsuitable habitats or whether suitable habitats shifted far enough downslope under past colder climates to form bridges enabling gradual migration here we address this question using a classification tree model we mapped the extent of the current alpine habitat and projected it to the last glacial maximum lgm climate to assess whether gradual migration was possible for exclusively alpine taxa during this glacial period and thus potentially also during earlier pleistocene glaciations next we modelled landcover under current and lgm climates to assess whether grassland and open forests could have served as migration corridors for alpine taxa that today extend into lower vegetation belts we estimated that the lgm treeline was about 1000 m lower and the alpine habitat was about eight times larger than that today at the lgm we found that most of the currently fragmented alpine habitat of the ethiopian highlands was interconnected except across the great rift valley whereas the solitary mountains of east central africa remained isolated for exclusively alpine species however for drought tolerant alpine species that today extend below the treeline gradual migration through habitat corridors may have been possible among mountains during the dry glacial periods and possibly also under the current climate before agriculture transformed the low lying landscapes,2017,0.877
"The demographic response of a deciduous shrub (the Indigofera bungeana complex, Fabaceae) to the Pleistocene climate changes in East Asia",east asia harbors the highest level of floristic diversity among the worldâ s temperate regions despite the increase in phylogeographic studies of temperate plants in east asia far less attention has been paid to widely distributed deciduous shrubs that widespread across several floral regions we sequenced two chloroplast dna cpdna fragments ndhj trnf and trnd trnt and one nuclear dna pgk1 of 472 individuals from 51 populations of such a group the indigofera bungeana complex we used population genetic data as well as ecological niche modelling to examine the evolutionary history and glacial refugia during the last glacial maximum lgm of this group we recovered 133 cpdna and 68 nuclear haplotypes the star phylogeny of the recovered cpdna and nuclear haplotypes and demographic analyses suggested distinct range expansion of i bungeana complex have occurred during the early and middle pleistocene the climate change of the lgm might have affected little on the distribution of this complex based on the niche modelling however these climate changes and geographic isolation probably resulted in fixtures of the private haplotypes and genetic differentiations between regions our results suggested that this arid tolerant species complex may have different responses to the quaternary climate changes with those climate sensitive species,2017,0.709
Phylogenomic analysis of the recently radiated sapsucker (Sphyrapicus) superspecies complex,sphyrapicus varius s ruber and s nuchalis are members of a closely related and recently radiated superspecies complex widely distributed throughout north america with areas of range overlap and hybrid zones i used genomic data to determine the evolutionary history of the three species three distinct genetic clusters corresponding to phenotypic species identification using both neutral and non neutral genetic markers were identified along with possible candidate genes under selection these genes may have played a role in adaptive evolution driving speciation additionally i studied the genomic structure of a hybrid zone between s varius and s nuchalis it was composed of advanced generation hybrids with lots of admixture within the zone but no introgression of interspecific alleles outside of the contact zone within the zone backcrosses differed along a north to south gradient where southern individuals were more skewed to s nuchalis ancestry and northern individuals to s varius,2017,0.519
An operational definition of essential biodiversity variables,the concept of essential biodiversity variables ebvs was proposed in 2013 to improve harmonization of biodiversity data into meaningful metrics ebvs were conceived as a small set of variables which collectively capture biodiversity change at multiple spatial scales and within time intervals that are of scientific and management interest despite the apparent simplicity of the concept a plethora of variables that describes not only biodiversity but also any environmental features have been proposed as potential ebv i e candidate ebv the proliferation of candidates reflects a lack of clarity on what may constitute a variable that is essential to track biodiversity change which hampers the operationalization of ebvs and therefore needs to be urgently addressed here we propose that an ebv should be defined as a biological state variable in three key dimensions time space and biological organization that is critical to accurately document biodiversity change,2017,0.236
CATALOGUE OF ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTION BOUGHT BY GRIGORE ANTIPA FROM GUSTAV SCHNEIDER,on april 1 1893 grigore antipa is named director of the natural history museum from bucharest where he commenced an ample campaign of acquisitions and donations in order to enrich the museum s collections between 1897 and 1898 he purchased 102 species of animals marine invertebrates poriferans coelenterates worms molluscs crustaceans brachiopods runicates and vertebrates fishes and birds from a merchant from basel gustav schneider the geographical origin of the material is very diverse mediterranean sea atlantic indian and pacific oceans south america testern africa sri lanka madagascar indonesia and australia one hundred of these species are still present in the museum this paper presents the catalogue of this small collection of this famous taxidermist biologist and merchant this paper marks the 150 years jubilee since the birth of grigoreantipa great scientist scholar and visionary of the first half of the o d century,2017,0.44
Lowland extirpation of anuran populations on a tropical mountain,background climate change and infectious diseases threaten animal and plant species even in natural and protected areas to cope with these changes species may acclimate adapt move or decline here we test for shifts in anuran distributions in the luquillo mountains lm a tropical montane forest in puerto rico by comparing species distributions from historical 1931â 1989 and current data 2015 2016 methods historical data which included different methodologies were gathered through the global biodiversity information facility gbif and published literature and the current data were collected using acoustic recorders along three elevational transects results in the recordings we detected the 12 native frog species known to occur in lm over a span of ∠25 years two species have become extinct and four species suffered extirpation in lowland areas as a consequence low elevation areas in the lm 300 m have lost at least six anuran species discussion we hypothesize that these extirpations are due to the effects of climate change and infectious diseases which are restricting many species to higher elevations and a much smaller area land use change is not responsible for these changes because lm has been a protected reserve for the past 80 years however previous studies indicate that 1 climate change has increased temperatures in puerto rico and 2 batrachochytrium dendrobatidis bd was found in 10 native species and early detection of bd coincides with anurans declines in the lm our study confirms the general impressions of amphibian population extirpations at low elevations and corroborates the levels of threat assigned by iucn,2017,0.976
Distribution of the Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger) within California as of 2015,the eastern fox squirrel sciurus niger has been introduced to many areas outside of its native range once introduced to a new region the species has generally expanded its geographic range and is considered to be an invasive species causing both ecological and economic harm while some information is available on where introductions have occurred detailed information is not available on the current geographic distribution of the species within california since invasive species tend to be under represented in specimen collections at museums new methods for obtaining location data were needed we used a time period of 1995 through 2015 for observations so that location data would be most up to date a majority 51 of location data used in this study came from wildlife rehabilitation centers approximately 31 came from citizen science type sources such as the california road kill observation system a previously published journal article and research grade submissions to inaturalist 10 came from the california department of public health west nile virus surveillance program and 8 came from the authors and trained student observers maps are presented to show the current geographic distribution of the species indicating a broader range than what was previously known,2017,0.822
A global method for calculating plant CSR ecological strategies applied across biomes world-wide,competitor stress tolerator ruderal csr theory is a prominent plant functional strategy scheme previously applied to local floras globally the wide geographic and phylogenetic coverage of available values of leaf area la leaf dry matter content ldmc and specific leaf area sla representing respectively interspecific variation in plant size and conservative vs acquisitive resource economics promises the general application of csr strategies across biomes including the tropical forests hosting a large proportion of earth s diversity we used trait variation for 3068 tracheophytes representing 198 families six continents and 14 biomes to create a globally calibrated csr strategy calculator tool and investigate strategyâ environment relationships across biomes world wide due to disparity in trait availability globally co inertia analysis was used to check correspondence between a â wide geographic coverage few traitsâ data set and a â restricted coverage many traitsâ subset of 371 species for which 14 whole plant flowering seed and leaf traits including leaf nitrogen content were available csr strategy environment relationships within biomes were investigated using fourth corner and rlq analyses to determine strategy climate specializations strong significant concordance rv 0â 597 p 0â 0001 was evident between the 14 trait multivariate space and when only la ldmc and sla were used biomes such as tropical moist broadleaf forests exhibited strategy convergence i e clustered around a cs csr median c s r 43 42 15 with cs selection associated with warm stable situations lesser temperature seasonality with greater annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration other biomes were characterized by strategy divergence for example deserts varied between xeromorphic perennials such as larrea divaricata classified as s selected c s r 1 99 0 and broadly r selected annual herbs e g claytonia perfoliata r cr selected c s r 21 0 79 strategy convergence was evident for several growth habits e g trees but not others forbs the csr strategies of vascular plants can now be compared quantitatively within and between biomes at the global scale through known linkages between underlying leaf traits and growth rates herbivory and decomposition rates this method and the strategyâ environment relationships it elucidates will help to predict which kinds of species may assemble in response to changes in biogeochemical cycles climate and land use,2017,0.131
Self-compatibility is over-represented on islands,because establishing a new population often depends critically on finding mates individuals capable of uniparental reproduction may have a colonization advantage accordingly there should be an over representation of colonizing species in which individuals can reproduce without a mate particularly in isolated locales such as oceanic islands despite the intuitive appeal of this colonization filter hypothesis known as baker s law more than six decades of analyses have yielded mixed findings we assembled a dataset of island and mainland plant breeding systems focusing on the presence or absence of self incompatibility because this trait enforces outcrossing and is unlikely to re evolve on short timescales if it is lost breeding system is especially likely to reflect the colonization filter we found significantly more self compatible species on islands than mainlands across a sample of 1500 species from three widely distributed flowering plant families asteraceae brassicaceae and solanaceae overall 66 of island species were self compatible compared with 41 of mainland species our results demonstrate that the presence or absence of self incompatibility has strong explanatory power for plant geographical patterns island floras around the world thus reflect the role of a key reproductive trait in filtering potential colonizing species in these three plant families,2017,0.929
First occurrence of Dioclea ruddiae Maxwell (Leguminosae) in Brazil,abstract first occurrence of dioclea ruddiae maxwell leguminosae in brazil dioclea ruddiae leguminosae papilionoideae is recorded for the first time in brazil specimens were collected in the serra do tepequã m a tepui in the state of roraima near the border with venezuela this study expands the distribution range of dioclea ruddiae in the region of the guiana shield where this species is probably endemic,2017,0.421
MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS OF SOME ORCHIS SPECIES (ORCHIDACEAE) NATIVE TO TURKEY USING NUCLEAR AND CHLOROPLAST DNA SEQUENCES,phylogenetic relationships among nine turkish orchis species were inferred from variation in the internal transcribed spacer and maturase kinase regions foreign sequences were also retrieved from ncbi to increase interspecific sampling the topology of its tree was broadly congruent to that of matk tree the trees showed two major clades the first one included species from orchis and neotinea subgenera and the second included species of anacamptis subgenus phylogenetic separation of some species found in neotinea and anacamptis subgenera were previously reported and the current study also indicated that moving these species into neotinea and anacamptis genera could be reasonable,2017,0.862
From past to future: impact of climate change on range shifts and genetic diversity patterns of circumboreal plants,climate change is projected to influence the genetic resources of plant species recent research has examined genetic diversity patterns under current climate conditions with little attention to the future genetic consequences for species in this study we combined ecological niche modeling and population genetic approaches to project future changes in genetic diversity using plastid and nuclear dna and reconstructed distribution patterns of three circumboreal plants chamaedaphne calyculata linnaea borealis ssp borealis and pedicularis sceptrum carolinum ssp sceptrum carolinum in the last glacial maximum we found that circumboreal plants could potentially lose their geographic ranges in the future 2070 35â 52 in rcp 4 5 representative concentration pathways 37â 53 in rcp 6 0 and 56â 69 in rcp 8 5 only slightly compensated by a predicted range gain of 18â 33 across the three rcps it is expected that future genetic diversity level could remain similar or lower than the present level on the other hand the homogeneity of the genetic backgroundâ a lack of admixture and domination of one gene pool in most populations of c calyculata and l borealis ssp borealisâ was predicted to become more pronounced in the future combining the paleoecological niche modeling and genetic data revealed more precisely the climate refugia for circumboreal plants in the alps central asia beringia and southern north america and the macrorefugia more restricted to the northern part of eurasia and north america reaching the arctic zone,2017,0.319
Baseline distribution of invasive alien species of Union concern,a current eu geographical distribution of spatial information for the 37 invasive alien species ias of union concern ias regulation 1143 2014 is set based on the best available knowledge resulting from an assessment of data aggregated through the european alien species information network easin in collaboration with the member states ms competent authorities of 18 eu countries this baseline is an important tool supporting the implementation of the ias regulation and also provides a factual basis for the review of the application of the ias regulation ultimately the information included can be used for monitoring the achievement of target 5 of the eu biodiversity strategy to 2020 for combatting ias but also to the implementation of other eu policies with requirements on alien species such as the birds and habitats directives and the marine strategy and water framework directives,2017,0.505
"Biotechnological Approaches to Enhance Halotolerance and Photosynthetic Efficacy in the Cyanobacterium, Fremyella Diplosiphon",growing concerns over dwindling energy supplies linked to nonrenewable fossil fuels have driven profound interest in biofuels as a clean and sustainable alternative cyanobacteria are a promising source of third generation biofuel due to their fast generation time and high net biomass conversion in this study the effect of salinity stress on fremyella diplosiphon a model organism for studying photosynthetic pathways was investigated and nanobiotechnological approaches undertaken to enhance its halotolerance and photosynthetic efficacy heat induced mutagenesis resulted in a mutant strain that could survive in 20 g lâ 1 sodium chloride nacl with no loss in pigmentation to further enhance f diplosiphon halotolerance expression plasmids harboring the hlyb and mdh genes were overexpressed in the wild type resulting in two transformants that thrived in 35 g lâ 1 nacl the average salinity of sea water in addition no significant reduction in photosynthetic efficacy was detected in the halotolerant strains relative to the wild type total lipid content and fatty acid methyl ester composition of wild type and halotolerant strains were assessed for their potential as a production scale biofuel agent methyl palmitate the methyl ester of hexodeconoate c16 0 was found to be most abundant in the wild type and transformants accounting for 60â 70 of total fames produced efforts to enhance the photosynthetic efficiency of the strains revealed that gold nanoparticle derived surface plasmon resonance augmented culture growth and pigment accumulation cell nanoparticles interactions were visualized using scanning and transmission electron microscopy our findings address two key challenges that cyanobacterial biofuel agents need to overcome enhanced halotolerance and photosynthetic efficacy to minimize freshwater input and artificial light supply these innovations have paved the way for an efficient cyanobacterial cultivation system for large scale production of biofuel,2017,0.229
"Biogeography of Amazon birds: rivers limit species composition, but not areas of endemism",amazonian rivers are usually suggested as dispersal barriers limiting biogeographic units this is evident in a widely accepted areas of endemism aoes hypothesis proposed for amazonian birds we empirically test this hypothesis based on quantitative analyses of species distribution we compiled a database of bird species and subspecies distribution records and used this dataset to identify aoes through three different methods our results show that the currently accepted amazonian aoes are not consistent with areas identified which were generally congruent among datasets and methods some amazonian rivers represent limits of aoes but these areas are not congruent with those previously proposed however spatial variation in species composition is correlated with largest amazonian rivers overall the previously proposed amazonian aoes are not consistent with the evidence from bird distribution however the fact that major rivers coincide with breaks in species composition suggest they can act as dispersal barriers though not necessarily for all bird taxa this scenario indicates a more complex picture of the amazonian bird distribution than previously imagined,2017,0.728
Symbiosis limits establishment of legumes outside their native range at a global scale,microbial symbiosis is integral to plant growth and reproduction but its contribution to global patterns of plant distribution is unknown legumes fabaceae are a diverse and widely distributed plant family largely dependent on symbiosis with nitrogen fixing rhizobia which are acquired from soil after germination this dependency is predicted to limit establishment in new geographic areas owing to a disruption of compatible host symbiont associations here we compare non native establishment patterns of symbiotic and non symbiotic legumes across over 3 500 species covering multiple independent gains and losses of rhizobial symbiosis we find that symbiotic legume species have spread to fewer non native regions compared to non symbiotic legumes providing strong support for the hypothesis that lack of suitable symbionts or environmental conditions required for effective nitrogen fixation are driving these global introduction patterns these results highlight the importance of mutualisms in predicting non native species establishment and the potential impacts of microbial biogeography on global plant distributions,2017,0.459
NuBBEDB: an updated database to uncover chemical and biological information from Brazilian biodiversity,the intrinsic value of biodiversity extends beyond species diversity genetic heritage ecosystem variability and ecological services such as climate regulation water quality nutrient cycling and the provision of reproductive habitats it is also an inexhaustible source of molecules and products beneficial to human well being to uncover the chemistry of brazilian natural products the nuclei of bioassays ecophysiology and biosynthesis of natural products database nubbedb was created as the first natural product library from brazilian biodiversity since its launch in 2013 the nubbedb has proven to be an important resource for new drug design and dereplication studies consequently continuous efforts have been made to expand its contents and include a greater diversity of natural sources to establish it as a comprehensive compendium of available biogeochemical information about brazilian biodiversity the content in the nubbedb is freely accessible online https nubbe iq unesp br portal nubbedb html and provides validated multidisciplinary information chemical descriptors species sources geographic locations spectroscopic data nmr and pharmacological properties herein we report the latest advancements concerning the interface content and functionality of the nubbedb we also present a preliminary study on the current profile of the compounds present in brazilian territory,2017,0.34
Enhancing biodiversity conservation in existing land-use plans with widely available datasets and spatial analysis techniques,in many developing countries high rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss make conservation efforts urgent improving existing land use plans can be an option for enhancing biodiversity conservation we showcase an approach to enhancing an existing forest land use plan using widely available data and spatial tools focusing on argentina s southern yungas ecoregion we mapped the distribution of wilderness areas and species and habitats of conservation concern assessed their representation in the land use plan and quantified potential changes in habitat availability and forest connectivity wilderness comprised 48 of the study area and the highest concentrations of elements of conservation concern were in the north in the current land use plan wilderness areas often occur in regions where logging and grazing are allowed and a large proportion of the forest with the highest conservation value 43 is under some level of human influence furthermore we found that deforestation being legally allowed in the land use plan could reduce forest connectivity and habitat availability substantially we recommend updating the current land use plan by considering human influence and elements of conservation concern more broadly we demonstrate that widely available spatial datasets and straightforward approaches can improve the usefulness of existing land use plans so that they more fully incorporate conservation goals,2017,0.267
Fishes Out of Water,oxudercine gobies commonly known as mudskippers are tropical and subtropical fishes naturally occurring in shallow sublittoral littoral and supralittoral zones of the indo pacific and western africa ten generaâ apocryptes apocryptodon boleophthalmus oxuderces parapocryptes periophthalmodon periophthalmus pseudapocryptes scartelaos and zappaâ comprising 43 species are presently recognized jaafar and parenti 2016 polgar et al 2013 jaafar and larson 2008 murdy 1989 these fishes commonly associate with soft bottom habitats espe cially mangrove forests and exposed mudflats species such as periophthalmodon septemradia tus and periophthalmus weberi also occur further upriver in areas where salinity is negligible larson 2008 within the indo pacific mudskippers are distributed longitudinally from the red sea east africa 40â e to samoa tonga 165â w and latitudinally from japan south korea 35â n to australia 20â s polgar et al 2014 murdy 1989 along the western african coast a single species of mudskipper periophthalmus barbarus is recognized and its natural distribution is from morocco south to northern angola murdy 2016,2017,0.736
Glaciation as a migratory switch,migratory behavior in birds is evolutionarily plastic but it is unclear how this behavior responded during glacial cycles one view is that at glacial maxima species simply shifted their breeding ranges south of glacial ice and remained migratory to test this hypothesis we constructed ecological niche models for breeding and wintering ranges of 56 species finding that 70 of currently long distance north american migrant species likely lacked suitable breeding habitat in north america at the last glacial maximum lgm and we hypothesized that they reverted to the ancestral state of being tropical sedentary residents a smaller percentage of short distance migrants 27 experienced altered migratory behavior at the lgm although the ranges of all species were shifted southward as traditionally envisioned we suggest that many species oscillate between sedentary and migratory strategies with each glacial cycle acting as an adaptive switch thus range shifts occur more frequently than speciation events and are inadequately depicted by phylogenetic reconstructions we suggest that reconstructing the evolutionary history of traits such as migratory behavior is best served by using ranges at glacial maxima a phylogeny of warblers strongly predicted lgm but not present distributions and suggested that migration was re expressed from three tropical centers of warbler diversity understanding of evolutionary history will be improved when reconstructions use distributions relevant to the time of character transitions,2017,0.839
"NEMATODA: TYLENCHIDA, TRIPLONCHIDA and APHELENCHIDA (Plant-Parasitic and Fungivorous Nematodes)",nematodes are biologically diverse and versatile occupying diverse habitats and constitute nearly 90 of all metazoans in number and have 26646 recorded species hugot et al 2001 soil inhabiting nematodes predominate over all other soil animals both in number and species these nematodes display various feeding habits on the basis of which they are classified as plant feeders herbivorous fungal feeders fungivorous bacterial feeders bacterivorous predators and omnivores yeates et al 1993 taxonomically the orders tylenchida and triplonchida constitute plant feeders some fungal feeders and predaceous forms while aphelenchida comprises of fungal feeders and predators order dorylaimida includes species that are plant feeders fungal feeders predators and omnivores bacterial feeders are found in orders rhabditida diplogasterida monhysterida alaimida enoplida and araeolaimida whereas predators occur in various orders like mononchida diplogasterida aphelenchida and dorylaimida all these types of nematodes have been found to co occur in soil plant parasitic nematodes or herbivorous nematodes threaten the agricultural crops throughout the world particularly in the tropics and subtropics the average annual yield loss worldwide is around 10 or even more ahmad 1996 on the other hand fungivorous nematodes are important component of food web and play significant role in the decomposition processes bongers 1990 neher 2001 though extensive work has been done on the nematode fauna of state uttarakhand few works have been recorded from district dehradun some of the significant contributions on herbivorous and fungivorous nematodes from district dehradun have been made by husain khan 1967 khera chaturvedi 1977 rahmani et al 1986 thapa 1990 ahmad et al 1991 lal khan 1993 thapa ganguly 1999 singh khan 1999 srivastava et al 2000 and rizvi 2007 2008 2010a b the present paper reports 37 species 29 herbivorous and 8 fungivorous of nematodes under two orders 7 families and 20 genera,2017,0.997
The Marine Ichthyofauna of Egypt,this work is the result of a compilation of the egyptian ichthyofauna aiming to provide a basis for monitoring and assessing potential biodiversity changes in the area the main sources used were peer reviewed papers and grey literature i e unpublished reports theses conference proceedings etc fishbase and the global biodiversity information facility overall 956 fish species 71 elasmobranchii 2 holocephali and 883 actinopteri have been recorded to date from the egyptian marine waters of those 592 species are present only in the red sea 263 species are present only in the mediterranean sea and the remaining 101 species are reported from both seas in addition to those 956 fishes 52 species have been reported based on photos but these records require further documentation with samples finally for 64 species which are listed in fishbase as belonging to the ichthyofauna of egypt no publication or museum sample report verifying their presence in egypt could be traced thus their presence remains questionable until further evidence becomes available,2017,0.92
"A review of the Cercyon Leach (Coleoptera, Hydrophilidae, Sphaeridiinae) of the Greater Antilles",the representatives of the genus cercyon leach occurring in the greater antilles are reviewed ten species are recorded of which five are described here as new c gimmeli sp n dominican republic c armatipenis sp n dominican republic c taino sp n dominican republic c sklodowskae sp n jamaica and c spiniventris sp n dominican republic diagnoses and detailed distributional data are also provided for c floridanus horn 1890 distributed in southeastern united states of america and cayman islands c insularis chevrolat 1863 endemic to the antilles c praetextatus say 1825 widely distributed in the new world incl greater antilles c quisquilius linnaeus 1761 an adventive species of paleartic origin and c nigriceps marshall 1802 an adventive species probably of oriental origin cercyon armatipenis c gimmeli c taino form a group of closely related species only distinguishable by male genitalia and dna sequences a key to the great antillean cercyon is provided and important diagnostic characters are illustrated the larvae of c insularis and c taino were associated with adults using coi barcode sequences illustrated and diagnosed full occurrence data additional images and coi barcode sequences were submitted to open access on line depositories in an effort to provide access to complete data,2017,0.942
Taxonomy and Systematics: Current Knowledge and Approaches on the Taxonomic Treatment of Myxomycetes,myxomycetes have been classified with the animal kingdom and with fungi the major trophic stage the plasmodium is multinucleate and ingests food in an amoebalike manner the amoeboflagellate cells that precede the formation of the plasmodium certainly hint at a connection with protozoan like organisms in the animal kingdom the plasmodium gives rise to spore producing fruiting bodies and the funguslike fruiting bodies with spores motivated a supposed relationship with the fungi presently myxomycetes with protostelids and dictyostelids are regarded as phylogenetically closely related and represent a separate side branch of an evolutionary line from amoeboid organisms this side branch is separate from the line from which fungi and animals arose over the past 30 years numerous papers with descriptions of new species of myxomycetes have been published and more than 380 new species have been described in the present treatment 64 genera and 980 species are recognized a revision of the taxonomy and classification as well as an update on the nomenclature of the group are presented recent phylogenetic approaches based on molecular techniques also have been taken into consideration thanks to the explosive development of the internet during recent decades it has been possible to develop new tools and design online databases with the purpose to serve favor and facilitate taxonomic research by acting as global repositories for data on taxa and literature on myxomycetes an enumeration of some useful databases projects virtual libraries software and other tools that facilitate the taxonomic work are included,2017,0.62
Global trade networks determine the distribution of invasive non-native species,aim although global trade is implicated in biological invasions the assumption that trade networks explain the large scale distributions of non native species remains largely untested we addressed this by analysing relationships between global trade networks and plant pest invasion location forty eight countries in europe and the mediterranean time period current major taxa studied four hundred and twenty two non native plant pests 173 invertebrates 166 pathogens 83 plants methods ten types of connectivity index were developed representing potential roles of trade networks air transport links geographical proximity climatic similarity and source country wealth in facilitating invasion generalized linear mixed models glmms identified the connectivity index that best explained both historical and recent invasion then more complex glmms were developed including connectivity through trade networks for multiple commodities relevant for pests live plants forest products fruit and vegetables and seeds and speciesâ transport associations with those commodities results total import volumes speciesâ global prevalence and connectivity measures based on air transport geographical distance or climate did not explain invasion as well as connectivity through global trade networks invasion was strongly promoted by agricultural imports from countries in which the focal species was present and that were climatically similar to the importing country however live plant imports from nearby countries provided a better explanation of the most recent invasions connectivity through multiple trade networks predicted invasion better than total agricultural trade and there was support for our hypothesis that species known to be transported with a particular network had greater sensitivity to its connectivity main conclusions our findings show that patterns of invasion are governed to a large extent by global trade networks connecting source areas for non native species and the dispersal of those species through multiple trade networks this enhances potential for developing a predictive framework to improve risk assessment biosecurity and surveillance for invasions,2017,0.517
A performance based consensus approach for predicting spatial extent of the Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) in New Zealand under climate change,the predicted distribution of the chinese windmill palm trachycarpus fortunei was modelled using several algorithms with inputs consisting of occurrence information and bioclimatic datasets a global species distribution model was developed and projected into new zealand to provide a visualization of suitability for the species in current and future conditions to ensure model robustness occurrence data was checked for redundancy spatial auto correlation and the environmental variables checked for cross correlation and collinearity the final maps predicting suitability resulted from ensembling the predictions of all the algorithms the resulting ensembled maps were weighted based on the evaluation parameters auc kappa and tss when reclassified into low medium and high suitability categories results show an expansion of high suitability areas accompanied by a reduction of low suitability areas for the species the centroids of the high suitability areas also exhibit a general movement towards the southwest under future climate conditions the range expansion was proportional with the representative values of emission trajectories rcps 2 5 4 5 6 0 and 8 5 used in projecting into future conditions the movement magnitude and direction of predicted high suitability area centroids for the palm supports the use of the plant as an indicator of climate change,2017,0.3
Alternative glacial-interglacial refugia demographic hypotheses tested on Cephalocereus columna-trajani (Cactaceae) in the intertropical Mexican drylands,historic demography changes of plant species adapted to new world arid environments could be consistent with either the glacial refugium hypothesis grh which posits that populations contracted to refuges during the cold dry glacial and expanded in warm humid interglacial periods or with the interglacial refugium hypothesis irh which suggests that populations contracted during interglacials and expanded in glacial times these contrasting hypotheses are developed in the present study for the giant columnar cactus cephalocer eus columna trajani in the intertropical mexican drylands where the effects of late qua ternary climatic changes on phylogeography of cacti remain largely unknown in order to determine if the historic demography and phylogeographic structure of the species are con sistent with either hypothesis sequences of the chloroplast regions psba trnh and trnt trnl from 110 individuals from 10 populations comprising the full distribution range of this species were analysed standard estimators of genetic diversity and structure were calculated the historic demography was analysed using a bayesian approach and the palaeodistribution was derived from ecological niche modelling to determine if in the arid environments of south central mexico glacial interglacial cycles drove the genetic divergence and diversifi cation of this species results reveal low but statistically significant population differentiation fst 0 124 p 0 001 although very clear geographic clusters are not formed genetic diversity haplotype network and approximate bayesian computation abc demographic analyses suggest a population expansion estimated to have taken place in the last intergla cial 123 04 kya 95 ci 115 3â 130 03 the species palaeodistribution is consistent with the abc analyses and indicates that the potential area of palaedistribution and climatic suitability were larger during the last interglacial and holocene than in the last glacial maximum overall these results suggest that c columna trajani experienced an expansion following the warm conditions of interglacials in accordance with the grh,2017,0.889
Grass plastomes reveal unexpected paraphyly with endemic species of Micrairoideae from India and new haplotype markers in Arundinoideae.,premise of the study we investigated the little studied arundinoideae micrairoideae clade of grasses with an innovative plastome phylogenomic approach this method gives robust results for taxa of uncertain phylogenetic placement arundinoideae comprise ∠45 species although historically was much larger arundinoideae is notable for the widely invasive phragmites australis micrairoideae comprise nine genera and ∠200 species some are threatened with extinction including hubbardia some isachne spp and limnopoa two micrairoid genera eriachne and pheidochloa exhibit c4 photosynthesis in this otherwise c3 subfamily and represent an independent origin of the c4 pathway among grasses methods five new plastomes were sequenced with next generation sequencing by synthesis methods plastomes were assembled by de novo methods and phylogenetically analyzed with eight other recently published arundinoid or micrairoid plastomes and 11 outgroup species stable carbon isotope ratios were determined for micrairoid and arundinoid species to investigate ambiguities in the proxy evidence for c4 photosynthesis key results phylogenomic analyses showed strong support for ingroup nodes in the arundinoideae micrairoideae subtree including a paraphyletic clade of hubbardieae with isachneae anatomical biochemical and positively selected sites data are ambiguous with regard to the photosynthetic pathways in micrairoideae species of hubbardia isachne and limnopoa were definitively shown by î 13 c measurements to be c3 and eriachne to be c4 conclusions our plastome phylogenomic analyses for micrairoideae are the first phylogenetic results to indicate paraphyly between isachneae and hubbardieae the definitive î 13 c data for four genera of micrairoideae indicates the breadth of variation possible in the proxy evidence for photosynthetic pathways of both c3 and c4 taxa,2017,0.433
"The herpetofauna of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula: composition, distribution, and conservation",the herpetofauna of the mexican yucatan peninsula is comprised of 145 species including 22 anurans three salamanders two crocodylians 102 squamates and 16 turtles we examined the state level distribution of the herpetofauna of this region which revealed that the largest number of amphibian species 24 of 25 is recorded for campeche followed by quintana roo 22 and then by yucatã n 17 the largest number of crocodylians squamates and turtles is reported for quintana roo 107 of 120 with the next highest number in campeche 104 and then in yucatã n 88 we documented the distribution of the herpetofauna among the six physiographic regions recognized herein including four mainland regions and two insular ones the total number of species in these six regions ranges from 43 in the gulf islands region to 120 in the karstic hills and plains of campeche the individual species inhabit from one to six regions x â 3 7 the largest number of single region species five is restricted to the yucatecan karstic plains we constructed a coefficient of biogeographic resemblance cbr matrix that demonstrates the number of shared species ranging from 26 between the caribbean islands and gulf islands to 104 between the karstic hills and plains of campeche and the yucatecan karstic plains the cbr values range from 0 44 between the karstic hills and plains of campeche and the caribbean islands to 0 88 between the gulf islands and the karstic hills and plains of campeche based on the cbr data we constructed an unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean upgma dendrogram which indicates that the four mainland physiographic regions are fairly closely related to one another because they share a sizable number of broadly distributed species and are fairly distantly related to the two insular groupings perhaps because of the dispersal ability bias seen among members of the mainland herpetofauna only about 24 of the herpetofauna is distributed in one or two of the six regions demonstrating the relatively broad distribution of many species on the peninsula we placed the members of the herpetofauna into four distributional categories of which the largest number 127 of 145 is allocated to the non endemic category relatively small numbers are placed in the regional endemic category 11 followed by the non native species six and the country endemic category one we identified the principal environmental threats as agriculture and deforestation hurricanes and other tropical storms forest fires tourist development infectious diseases invasive species climate change illegal collecting oil mining killing on roads and other forms of direct and incidental killing we assessed the conservation status of the native species by employing the semarnat nom 059 iucn and environmental vulnerability score evs systems of which the evs proved to be the most useful the number of species in the three evs categories decreased from low 57 through medium 51 to high 26 we also used the evs rankings to determine how species in the iucn not evaluated ne and least concern lc categories might be evaluated more informatively in addition we used a means of determining relative herpetofaunal priority rhp a simple method for ascertaining the rank order of a physiographic regional herpetofauna based on the number of peninsular and national endemic species as well as the number of high vulnerability evs species using these measures we concluded that the yucatecan karstic plains ranked as the highest priority region in both cases moreover we discuss the capability of the protected areas of the mexican yucatan peninsula to provide protection for members of the herpetofauna based on our analysis we erected a set of conclusions and recommendation for the perpetual protection of the peninsular herpetofauna,2017,0.993
Overview on EU-SEA funding opportunities for S&T research projects in the thematic of food security and safety,although asia is characterized by fast economic growth and a sharp decline of poverty over the years extreme poverty however remains over 20 in several economies especially in south asia but also in myanmar and lao people s democratic republic despite overall impressive performance poverty reduction and the achievement of sustainable and inclusive growth remain considerable challenges at the same time the environment is under growing pressure as a result of population growth economic development urbanization land and soil degradation deforestation water scarcity air pollution and climate change1 in the area of agriculture the asia pacific region homes 57 of the world population and 73 of world agricultural population for only 1 3 of world farmland however it produces 90 of world rice production 40 of cereal production 40 of meat production and accounts for 70 of global market vegetables and 80 of the aquaculture despite these results 63 of the world population living below the poverty line and suffering from famine is still in the area2 asean countries also export large quantities of staple food products to europe for both southeast asia and europe a clear benefit would therefore arise from providing high quality and affordable food along the whole agrifood chain production harvesting processing and distribution in this context joint eu sea agricultural and food research is one of the best ways to assist in solving key problems such as eradicating poverty and hunger preventing conflict and making food accessible varied safe and affordable issues coming up in southeast asia may apply to europe as well solutions to problems in europe may be found in southeast asia besides innovative food research will remain a key factor of competitiveness jobs sustainable growth and social progress both in europe and southeast asia3 food and agricultural research in its broadest sense is one of the ways to help solve key problems like eradicating poverty and hunger preventing conflict and making food accessible varied and safe,2017,0.132
"Waarnemingen.be – Plant occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium",waarnemingen be plant occurrences in flanders and the brussels capital region belgium is a species occurrence dataset published by natuurpunt the dataset contains almost 1 2 million plant occurrences of 1 222 native vascular plant species mostly recorded by volunteers citizen scientists mainly since 2008 the occurrences are derived from the database http www waarnemingen be hosted by stichting natuurinformatie and managed by the nature conservation ngo natuurpunt together with the datasets florabank1 van landuyt and brosens 2017 and the belgian ifbl instituut voor floristiek van belgiã en luxemburg flora checklists van landuyt and noã 2015 the dataset represents the most complete overview of indigenous plants in flanders and the brussels capital region,2017,0.482
"Bioclimatic analyses for the distributions of Onthophagus nuchicornis, Onthophagus taurus, and Digitonthophagus gazella (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) in North America",onthophagus nuchicornis linnaeus onthophagus taurus schreber and digitonthophagus gazella fabricius coleoptera scarabaeidae scarabaeinae onthophagini are species of dung beetles that have been used in relocation programmes to accelerate the degradation of cattle dung on pastures exotic in north america all three species have expanded their distributions since their introduction onto the continent here we report development of climex bioclimatic models using data collected before 2011 that predict the eventual north american distributions of these species data collected after 2010 is used to validate these models model outputs identify large regions of the central united states of america suitable for establishment of o nuchicornis and o taurus where these species have not been reported these results indicate that the latter two species may already be present in these regions and undetected that they have yet to expand into these regions and or that factors restricting migration or dispersal prevent these species from occupying these areas model outputs for d gazella suggest that the species has largely reached its predicted maximum distribution these models can be used to aid the success of future relocation programmes elsewhere in the world and or to predict regions where these species are likely to spread without human intervention,2017,0.945
SIMULATION OF POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION AND MIGRATION OF ALNUS SPP. UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE,plant migration is a well known adaptation strategy of plant groups or species with evidence from historical to present observation and monitoring studies importance of n2 fixing plants has increased in last decades alnus alder is an important plant group because of its nitrogen fixation ability alders are generally distributed in humid locations of boreal temperate and tropical climate zones where the nitrogen fixation is an important nitrogen source for other plants to model the nitrogen fixation by alder data about the global distribution of alder is absolutely required in this study a new method and model alnus distribution model adm are presented to predict the distribution of n2 fixing genus on global scale and its migration in the future by using climate change scenarios up to 2300 results of the study showed that the potential distribution of alnus spp not only depending on solitary use of climate variables soil types and vegetation groups but on combined effect of all tree influencing variables the adm also presented that the alnus spp potentially will migrate mainly northwards in the northern hemisphere this study covered basic approaches to understand the combine effect of climate soil and vegetation on modelling of plant distribution and migration,2017,0.06
Palms of the Darién Gap (Colombia-Panama),the dariã n gap is a poorly explored area of pristine forest around the panama colombia border and it marks the only break in the pan american highway that runs from alaska to tierra del fuego this area has been a crossroad for the migration of plants and animals between north america and south america ever since the closure of the panama isthmus around 10 million years ago the palms of this unique area are discussed here for the first time,2017,0.411
EU BON's contributions towards meeting Aichi Biodiversity Target 19,the eu bon â œbuilding the european biodiversity observation networkâ project has made important contributions towards the achievement of global conservation targets this infographic illustrates eu bon s contributions towards the achievement of aichi biodiversity target 19 by 2020 knowledge the science base and technologies relating to biodiversity its values functioning status and trends and the consequences of its loss are improved widely shared and transferred and applied â,2017,0.342
Unidentifiable by morphology: DNA barcoding of plant material in local markets in Iran,local markets provide a rapid insight into the medicinal plants growing in a region as well as local traditional health concerns identification of market plant material can be challenging as plants are often sold in dried or processed forms in this study three approaches of dna barcoding based molecular identification of market samples are evaluated two objective sequence matching approaches and an integrative approach that coalesces sequence matching with a priori and a posteriori data from other markers morphology ethnoclassifica tion and species distribution plant samples from markets and herbal shops were identified using morphology descriptions of local use and vernacular names with relevant floras and pharmacopoeias dna barcoding was used for identification of samples that could not be identified to species level using morphology two methods based on blast similarity based identification were compared with an integrative identification approach integrative identification combining the optimized similarity based approach with a priori and a posteri ori information resulted in a 1 67 1 95 and 2 00 fold increase for its trnl f spacer and both combined respectively dna barcoding of traded plant material requires objective strategies to include data from multiple markers morphology and traditional knowledge to optimize species level identification success introduction,2017,0.257
Structured decision making as a conservation tool for recovery planning of two endangered salamanders,at least one third of all amphibian species face the threat of extinction and current amphibian extinction rates are four orders of magnitude greater than background rates preventing extirpation often requires both ex situ i e conservation breeding programs and in situ strategies i e protecting natural habitats flatwoods salamanders ambystoma bishopi and a cingulatum are protected under the u s endangered species act the two species have decreased from 476 historical locations to 63 recently extant locations 86 8 loss we suggest that recovery efforts are needed to increase populations and prevent extinction but uncertainty regarding optimal actions in both ex situ and in situ realms hinders recovery planning we used structured decision making sdm to address key uncertainties regarding both captive breeding and habitat restoration and we developed short medium and long term goals to achieve recovery objectives by promoting a transparent logical approach sdm has proven vital to recovery plan development for flatwoods salamanders the sdm approach has clear advantages over other previous approaches to recovery efforts and we suggest that it should be considered for other complex decisions regarding endangered species,2017,0.753
Rewilding defaunated Atlantic Forests with tortoises to restore lost seed dispersal functions,the extinction of frugivores has been considered one of the main drivers of the disruption of important ecological processes such as seed dispersal many defaunated forests are too small to restore function by reintroducing large frugivores such as tapirs or ateline monkeys and the long term fate of large seeded plants in these areas is uncertain however such small fragments still host many species and play relevant ecosystem services here we explore the use of two tortoise species the red footed tortoise chelonoidis carbonarius and the yellow footed tortoise chelonoidis denticulatus as ecological substitutes for locally extinct large seed dispersers in small forest patches in the brazilian atlantic forest we employed prior knowledge on the known occurrences of chelonoidis species and used ecological niche modeling enm to identify forest patches for tortoise rewilding based on habitat suitability food availability and conservation co benefits we further refined our analysis and identified that the more suitable areas for tortoise reintroduction are forest patches of northern atlantic forest areas with high defaunation intensity giant tortoises have been used to restore lost ecological services in island ecosystems we argue that reintroducing relatively smaller tortoises is an easy to use control conservation measure that could be employed to partially substitute the seed dispersal services of extinct large disperser species mitigating the negative cascading effects of defaunation on reducing plant diversity,2017,0.5
A comparative survey and investigation into the functional role of root anatomy in the Poaceae,given the diversity of grasses and the habitats they occupy it was predicted that a broad survey of root anatomy would reveal a range of variation a comparative survey of trans sectional root anatomy of the mature stele in the poaceae sampling 76 species representing all 12 subfamilies from herbarium and fresh fixed specimens has been undertaken the species are a subset of the 157 species of grasses for which plastomes plastid genome leaf shape data and leaf anatomical data are available quantitative and qualitative characters including endodermal cell radial thickness and inner tangential wall thickness stele area and metaxylem vessel diameters were measured additionally some characters such as the number of endodermal and pericycle cell layers were scored and some ratios such as total metaxylem vessel area to stele area were calculated this study represents the first comprehensive survey of trans sectional root anatomy in grasses in a phylogenetic context to document existing variation and to better understand the functional significance of anatomical variation in the evolution and diversification of this ecologically successful and economically important family more variation than expected from relatively sparse reports in the literature was uncovered and two unique features internal phloem and an apparently multiseriate endodermis were documented internal phloem is confirmed in a few taxa of the bambusoideae as well as newly reported in a few species in the micrairoideae an apparently multiseriate endodermis of up to seven cell layers was found in many species in several subfamilies the presence of a casparian strip in any of the layers was not confirmed but the characteristically asymmetrical cell wall thickening was similar or identical among layers however there were a few taxa that exhibited an apparent multiseriate endodermis with varied asymmetrical cell wall thickening among the layers characters were coded and tested for phylogenetic signal photosynthetic pathway signal and potential functional correlations with climatic factors characters showed no phylogenetic or photosynthetic pathway signal but some aspects of root anatomy showed an ecological moisture precipitation and temperature signal anatomical variation especially in the complete root should be documented in pursuit of the potential for cereal or other crop development in the context of global climate change,2017,0.544
Evaluating Bayesian spatial methods for modelling species distributions with clumped and restricted occurrence data,1 statistical approaches for inferring the spatial distribution of taxa species distribution models sdms commonly rely on available occurrence data which is often non randomly distributed and geographically restricted although available sdm methods address some of these problems the errors could be more directly and accurately modelled using a spatially explicit approach software to implement spatial autocorrelation terms into sdms are now widely available but whether such approaches for inferring sdms are an improvement over existing methodologies is unknown 2 here within a simulated environment using 1000 generated species ranges we compared the performance of two commonly used non spatial sdm methods maximum entropy modelling maxent and boosted regression trees brt to a spatially explicit bayesian sdm method integrated laplace approximation inla when the underlying data exhibit varying combinations of clumping and geographic restriction finally we tested whether any recommended methodological settings for all methods were further impacted by spatially non random patterns in these data 3 spatially explicit inla was the most consistently accurate method being most or equal most accurate in 5 out of 8 data sampling scenarios within high coverage sample datasets all methods performed fairly similarly but when sampling points were randomly spread brt had a 1 3 greater accuracy over the other methods and when samples were clumped spatial inla had a 4 8 better in auc score alternatively when sampling points were restricted to a small section of the true range all methods were on average 10 12 less accurate with higher variation among the methods none of the recommended settings for the different methods were found to be sensitive to clumping or restriction of data except the complexity of the inla spatial term 4 inla based modelling approaches can be successfully used to account for spatial autocorrelation in an sdm context and by taking account of random effects produce outputs that can better elucidate the role of covariates in predicting species occurrence given that it is often unclear what the drivers are behind data clumping in an empirical occurrence dataset or indeed how geographically restricted these data are spatially explicit inla based sdms may be the better choice when modelling the spatial distribution of target species,2017,0.376
Local overfishing may be avoided by examining parameters of a spatio-temporal model,spatial erosion of stock structure through local overfishing can lead to stock collapse because fish often prefer certain locations and fisheries tend to focus on those locations fishery managers are challenged to maintain the integrity of the entire stock and require scientific approaches that provide them with sound advice here we propose a bayesian hierarchical spatio temporal modelling framework for fish abundance data to estimate key parameters that define spatial stock structure persistence similarity of spatial structure over time connectivity coherence of temporal pattern over space and spatial variance variation across the seascape the consideration of these spatial parameters in the stock assessment process can help identify the erosion of structure and assist in preventing local overfishing we use atlantic cod gadus morhua in eastern canada as a case study an examine the behaviour of these parameters from the height of the fishery through its collapse we identify clear signals in parameter behaviour under circumstances of destructive stock erosion as well as for recovery of spatial structure even when combined with a non recovery in abundance further our model reveals the spatial pattern of areas of high and low density persists over the 41 years of available data and identifies the remnant patches models of this sort are crucial to recovery plans if we are to identify and protect remaining sources of recolonization for atlantic cod our method is immediately applicable to other exploited species,2017,0.279
Conservation assessments in climate change scenarios: spatial perspectives for present and future in two Pristidactylus (Squamata: Leiosauridae) lizards from Argentina,the consequences of global climate change can already be seen in many physical and biological systems and these effects could change the distribution of suitable areas for a wide variety of organisms to the middle of this century we analyzed the current habitat use and we projected the suitable area of present conditions into the geographical space of future scenarios 2050 to assess and quantify whether future climate change would affect the distribution and size of suitable environments in two pristidactylus lizard species comparing the habitat use and future forecasts of the two studied species p achalensis showed a more restricted use of available resource units rus and a moderate reduction of the potential future area on the contrary p nigroiugulus uses more available rus and has a considerable area decrease for both future scenarios these results suggest that both species have a moderately different trend towards reducing available area of suitable habitats the persistent localities for both 2050 co2 concentration models and in the available rus used we discussed the relation between size and use of the current habitat changes in future projections along with the protected areas from present future and the usefulness of these results in conservation plans this work illustrates how ectothermic organisms might have to face major changes in their availability suitable areas as a consequence of the effect of future climate change,2017,0.318
Global biodiversity research tied up by juridical interpretations of access and benefit sharing,the toolbox of instruments regulating access transfer and use of biological material is currently re equipped the nagoya protocol was initiated to provide a legal framework to the third objective of the convention on biological diversity â the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge an aspect not discussed here in the ongoing implementation of the protocol potentially harmful and far reaching effects on biological research become evident here we illustrate how vague definitions lack of legal clarity and coordination and often restrictive and complex regulations affect the transfer of biological material and associated data instead of promoting basic research in conservation and biodiversity the current situation potentially jeopardises international collaboration biodiversity research and its applications in monitoring biocontrol and food safety we address these challenges and discuss possible options for its practical implementation in the future,2017,0.126
Decoupled leaf and root carbon economics is a key component in the ecological diversity and evolutionary divergence of deciduous and evergreen lineages of genus Rhododendron.,premise we explored trait trait and trait climate relationships for 27 rhododendron species while accounting for phylogenetic relationships and within species variation to investigate whether leaf and root traits are coordinated across environments and over evolutionary time as part of a whole plant economics spectrum methods we examined specific leaf area sla and four root traits specific root length srl specific root tip abundance srta first order diameter and link average length for plants growing in a cold seasonal climate kirtland ohio and a warmer less seasonal climate federal way washington in the united states we estimated a phylogeny and species climate of origin determined phylogenetic signal on mean traits and within species variation and used phylogenetically informed analysis to compare trait trait and trait climate relationships for deciduous and evergreen lineages results mean sla and within species variation in srl were more similar between close relatives than expected by chance sla and root traits differed according to climate of origin and across growth environments though sla differed within and among species less than roots a negative srl srta correlation indicates investment in foraging scale vs precision as a fundamental trade off defining the root economic spectrum also the deciduous clade exhibited a strong negative relationship between sla and srl while evergreen clades showed a weaker positive or no relationship conclusions our work suggests that natural selection has shaped relationships between above and belowground traits in genus rhododendron and that leaf and root traits may evolve independently morphological decoupling may help explain habitat diversity among rhododendron species as well as the changes accompanying the divergence of deciduous and evergreen lineages,2017,0.899
Relating vascular plant species richness & environmental heterogeneity across spatial scales in the Greater Cape Floristic Region & the Southwest Australia Floristic …,environmental heterogeneity is a possible explanation for the paradox of species co existence particularly in highly biodiverse regions stimulate ecological speciation and supporting diverse assemblages with a larger potential niche space environmental heterogeneity is often under represented in macro ecological models of species richness two mediterranean type terrestrial biodiversity hotspots the southwest australia floristic region swafr and the greater cape floristic region gcfr are ecologically very similar yet the former is flat while the latter is mountainous the question thus arises whether heterogeneity is a significant contributor to swafr species richness as is likely the case in the gcfr in the absence of topographic variability in the swafr it is proposed that the heterogeneity of that region is due to the juxtaposition of soil types i hypothesise the greater abiotic heterogeneity in the gcfr compared to the swafr and finer spatial scale of that heterogeneity accounts for the gcfrâ s greater species richness per unit area i test whether i the gcfr is more environmentally heterogeneous than the swafr ii the gcfr exhibits finer spatial scales of heterogeneity than the swafr iii plant species richness is adequately related to environmental heterogeneity in both regions and iv the gcfr and swafr have different sets of environmental axes that predict plant species richness using statistical analyses and machine learning techniques i find support for these predictions this demonstrates and supports the growing generality of the idea that environmental heterogeneity is positively associated with species richness i also highlight the implications of my findings with regard to which environmental axes are of consequence for the regions considered,2017,0.904
"Humboldt Core - toward a standardized capture of biological inventories for biodiversity monitoring, modeling and assessment",species inventories i e the recording of multiple species for a specific place and time are routinely performed and offer particular value for characterizing biodiversity and its change however reporting standards allowing these inventories to be re used compared to one another and further integrated with other sources of biodiversity data are lacking impeding their broadest utility here we provide a conceptual informatics framework for capturing in a standardized and general way core information about processes underpinning inventory work we dub this set of terms humboldt core and demonstrate its utility this proposed framework is based on a community input process followed by extensive refinement and testing using published inventories we first develop a typology of inventories and inventory processes distinguishing between single elementary inventories extended and summary inventories representing increasing levels of sampling event aggregation we then further describe typical reporting content for inventory processes along with their value for inferring absence and use in occupancy modeling next we provide an overview of the humboldt core terms for capture of geospatial temporal taxonomic and environmental conditions along with methodological descriptors related to the assessment of sampling effort and inventory completeness finally we introduce a pilot implementation of humboldt core for the ingestion and provision of inventory process metadata into map of life demonstrating standardized mobilization of metadata from several hundred previously published summary inventories humboldt core helps facilitate integration of different types of inventories and their use in model supported assessment of spatial biodiversity and its change critical for meeting global monitoring goals humboldt core will benefit from further enhancements based on community testing and input but represents a step toward significantly expanding biodiversity dataset discovery interoperability and modeling utility for a type of data essential to the assessment of biodiversity variation in space and time,2017,0.162
Are fundamental niches larger than the realized? Testing a 50-year-old prediction by Hutchinson,for more than 50 years ecological niches have been defined as combinations of multidimensional environmental conditions permitting a species to survive and reproduce a fundamental niche nf is defined as the set of conditions within which a species can live in the absence of competitors and a realized niche nr is a nf hypothetically reduced by competitive interactions and some other limiting factors this definition implies that nf is â œlargerâ than nr something that has been nearly universally accepted by ecologists however there have been few attempts at empirical tests here we present a novel quantitative test using one dimensional estimates of nf for 105 species of reptiles and amphibians and estimates of nr obtained from 1 4 x 104 field observations to specify our test we operationalize the original classification of niche types our results predominantly support the hypothesis that nf â is largerâ than nr and we highlight the theoretical and practical importance of quantifying niches,2017,0.487
Diversidad de Vanilla spp. (Orchidaceae) y sus perfiles bioclimáticos en México,the genus vanilla comprises around 110 species distributed throughout earthâ s tropical regions with the largest number of report ed species growing in the american continent vanilla farming is associated with many mexican cultures such as the totonac mayan chinantec and mazatec among others currently this crop is threatened by technical social ecological and climatic conditioning factors limiting its production and the preservation of wild and cultivated species it is therefore necessary to ascertain the current diversity status of each of these species as well as some of their main bioclimatic profile indicators in order to help decision making aimed at preserving and genetically improve these species during 2008 we gathered data from ipn mexu and xal herbaria as well as from conabioâ s world information network on biodiversity remib the global biodiversity and information facility gbif and we also used data from live access to buapâ s vanilla germplasm bank obtained between 2008 and 2014 distribution maps were generated using a geographical information system bioclimatic profiles for each species were obtained considering 19 worldclim variables and altitude at a spatial resolution of approximately 1 km2 variance mean and standard deviation for each of the 19 variables were calculated at each of the registered points extreme environmental condition intervals minimum average and maximum were also obtained in order to determine the most important distribution variables of the species we performed a principal component analysis and carried out kruskal wallis and dunnâ s tests on the variables iden tified as significant results indicated records for v planifolia v pompona v insignis v inodora v odorata v cribbiana and v sprucei in mexico distributed throughout nine states in the country v planifolia presented wide intervals of temperature and rain precipitation while v pompona v odorata v insignis and v inodora presented intermediate intervals the amplitudes of extreme data for each species can be considered in locating areas where ex situ regional preservation strategies could be put in place as well as in establishing areas for cultivation the bioclimatic profile we found allows for an indirect inference of each speciesâ genetic condition which could be used in genetic improvement programs for instance v odorata grows at high altitudes and toler ates low temperatures while v inodora tolerates high temperatures and v odorata v pompona and v planifolia tolerate low rain precipitation rev biol trop 65 3 975 987 epub 2017 september 01,2017,0.913
The spectral variability hypothesis does not hold across landscapes,one of the biodiversity metrics to track from space is the spatial variability in reflectance that has previously been proposed as a proxy of species counts per unit area the corresponding hypothesis is known as the spectral variability hypothesis svh little attention has been paid so far to the questions whether the svh holds over broader regions and across time here we addressed these questions by using a spatially contiguous dataset of vascular plant species occurrences in southern germany along with modis data at 14 time steps the floristic dataset consists of species occurrence data for 815 areas of 10 longitudinal by 6 latitudinal minutes approximately 12 km by 11 km referred to as mapping units the spectral variability in space within these units was determined using modis pixels of 0 5 km by 0 5 km we used two different measures of spectral variability in combination with a moving window approach to derive statistical links between spectral variability and species counts through space and time the moving windows consisting of several mapping units were shifted in space and meanwhile used as target areas for correlation analyses the performance of the spectral variability to predict species counts was influenced by the location and the extent of the reference windows in some regions high spectral variability was connected to high species counts in other regions comparably low spectral variability was linked to high species counts and vice versa furthermore the relation between spectral variability and species varied with season certain areas changed from almost no correlation to very high correlation depending on the applied scene also the applied spectral variability measure had a notable influence on the observed results based on these results we conclude that the spectral variability hypothesis does not hold across landscapes at this spatial grain using spectral variability alone as a proxy for species counts in a monitoring approach for larger extents and grains is therefore unlikely to work in many parts of the world this does not mean that it cannot help as a covariate in analyses with more predictors,2017,0.957
"Spring predictability explains different leaf-out strategies in the woody floras of North America, Europe and East Asia",intuitively interannual spring temperature variability stv should influence the leaf out strategies of temperate zone woody species with high winter chilling requirements in species from regions where spring warming varies greatly among years we tested this hypothesis using experiments in 215 species and leaf out monitoring in 1585 species from east asia ea europe eu and north america na the results reveal that species from regions with high stv indeed have higher winter chilling requirements and when grown under the same conditions leaf out later than related species from regions with lower stv since 1900 stv has been consistently higher in na than in eu and ea and under experimentally short winter conditions na species required 84 more spring warming for bud break eu ones 49 and ea ones only 1 these previously unknown continental scale differences in phenological strategies underscore the need for considering regional climate histories in global change models,2017,0.786
Nutritional and Phytochemical Analysis of Ripe and Unripe Roystonea regia Fruit Pericarp,this study investigated the potential of roystonea regia fruit pericarp for use as food and medicine this was done by comparatively assessing the mineral proximate and phytochemical compositions of ripe and unripe fruit pericarps results of phytochemical screening of the pericarp ethanol extract showed that reducing sugar tannin saponin cardiac glycoside alkaloid phenolic and flavonoid were present in both ripe and unripe fruit pericarps while anthocyanosides and anthraquinones were not detected in both results of the proximate analysis showed that the ripe pericarp contained more moisture 7 58 crude protein 8 07 ash 11 14 fat 9 80 and carbohydrate 39 86 while the unripe pericarp contained more dry matter 92 90 and crude fibre 30 56 however results of the mineral analysis showed that ca mg k na mn fe zn and ni were higher in the unripe pericarp while both pericarps had the same concentration of p 119 95â mg 100g co cd and pb were not detected in both samples while ni 0 73 mg 100g was found only in the unripe pericarp relative to other minerals k was highest in both ripe 1600 24 mg 100g and unripe pericarp 1804 42 mg 100g based on the presence of pharmaceutically important phytochemicals essential minerals and proximate values this study concluded that both ripe and unripe r regia pericarps have significant nutritional and medicinal potentials which could be exploited domestically and industrially,2017,0.49
Additions to the knowledge of Nevada carabid beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and a preliminary list of carabids from the Great Basin National Park,background additions to the list of carabidae known for nevada usa and carabid beetles found in the great basin national park nv are reported with notes on ecology and identification resources new information for 79 species of carabids we present 57 new state records two state records previously reported in online resources one confirmation of a previous questionable record for the state and report 22 records for the great basin national park that includes three new state records,2017,0.719
Utility of the CLIMEX ‘match climates regional’ algorithm for pest risk analysis: an evaluation with non-native ants in New Zealand,pest risk analysts frequently ask if the climate of a pest risk analysis area could be suitable for the establishment of an organism of concern species distribution models can help to answer this question but constructing them is technically complex time consuming and uninformative for additional non modelled species a quicker more broadly applicable approach involves using environmental distance metrics including climate matching algorithms such as the â match climates regionalâ function of climex climex mcr to generate indices of climatic similarity between different locations without reference to particular species several studies have shown that various environmental distance metrics can provide biologically meaningful results however the veracity of the climex mcr algorithm remains unevaluated despite its application in numerous published studies we used climex mcr and high resolution new zealand climate data to measure climatic similarities between new zealand and the rest of the world we then tested the veracity of the climatic match estimates by evaluating if their predictions regarding the suitability of new zealandâ s climate for 43 non native ant species corresponded with empirical observations of those species in new zealand non native ants that are or were once established outdoors in new zealand had overseas distributions that were climatically well matched with new zealand in contrast species that either are established only indoors in new zealand or were observed to temporarily nest outdoors then die in new zealand had overseas distributions that were poorly matched species that are frequently intercepted at new zealandâ s border but are not established there generally also had overseas distributions with low climatic similarities to new zealand we also measured climatic similarities between new zealandâ s 13 national parks and the rest of the world the overseas distributions of the non native ants showed poor climatic matches with new zealandâ s national parks which was consistent with the absence of persistent outdoor non native ant populations in those parks our results support the utility of climex mcr algorithm for pest risk analysis,2017,0.848
Trypanosoma cruzi reservoir—triatomine vector co-occurrence networks reveal meta-community effects by synanthropic mammals on geographic dispersal,contemporary patterns of land use and global climate change are modifying regional pools of parasite host species the impact of host community changes on human disease risk however is difficult to assess due to a lack of information about zoonotic parasite host assemblages we have used a recently developed method to infer parasite host interactions for chagas disease cd from vector host co occurrence networks vector host networks were constructed to analyze topological characteristics of the network and ecological traits of speciesâ nodes which could provide information regarding parasite regional dispersal in mexico twenty eight triatomine species vectors and 396 mammal species potential hosts were included using a data mining approach to develop models to infer most likely interactions the final network contained 1 576 links which were analyzed to calculate centrality connectivity and modularity the model predicted links of independently registered trypanosoma cruzi hosts which correlated with the degree of parasite vector co occurrence wiring patterns differed according to node location while edge density was greater in neotropical as compared to nearctic regions vectors with greatest public health importance i e triatoma dimidiata t barberi t pallidipennis t longipennis etc did not have stronger links with particular host species although they had a greater frequency of significant links in contrast hosts classified as important based on network properties were synanthropic mammals the latter were the most common parasite hosts and are likely bridge species between these communities thereby integrating meta community scenarios beneficial for long range parasite dispersal this was particularly true for rodents 50 of species are synanthropic and more than 20 have been identified as t cruzi hosts in addition to predicting potential host species using the co occurrence networks they reveal regions with greater expected parasite mobility the neotropical region which includes the mexican south and southeast and the transvolcanic belt had greatest potential active t cruzi dispersal as well as greatest edge density this information could be directly applied for stratification of transmission risk and to design and analyze human infected vector contact intervention efficacy,2017,0.986
4th European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) Stakeholder Roundtable: Pathways to sustainability for EU BONs network of collaborators and technical infrastructure,background eu bon building the european biodiversity observation network www eubon eu is a project funded under the eu fp7 framework it presents an innovative approach towards the integration of biodiversity data and information systems both from in situ and remote sensing data sources the aim is to address policy and information needs in a timely manner customized for various stakeholders on different levels from local test sites to european and international policy the stakeholder roundtables are a specific task and part of a work package in the project wp6 that focuses on the stakeholder engagement and the science policy dialogue the main aim of the stakeholder roundtables is to carry out regular engagement with relevant political authorities and other stakeholders at european and national level in support of the delivery of the eu bon project furthermore the roundtables seek to build up a stakeholder dialogue with exemplar sector specific user communities to incorporate feedback loops for the products of eu bon data tools and models as well as to develop improvements of existing biodiversity data workflows and to discuss sustainability issues new information the 4th eu bon stakeholder roundtable aimed to present current achievements and products of the project eu bon which can be assigned to three categories firstly to tools and infrastructure secondly to the consortium and its network of collaborators and thirdly to biodiversity monitoring and scientific forecasting the last stakeholder roundtable in contrast to the former roundtables which addressed european policy wetzel et al 2016 citizen science and the eu bon citizen science gateway vohland et al 2016 runnel et al 2016 and local research networks vohland et al 2016b â focused on sustainability issues of the different components of the european biodiversity observation network the guiding question of the roundtable was how to achieve sustainability for the products of eu bon after the project will end it was also discussed what among the many different products such as tools software scientific knowledge models and infrastructure are the most essential components of the project for the specific stakeholders e g agencies citizen science researchers and what is needed for the future adjustments sustainability for development funding one of the central questions was how the essential components could be sustained by which institutions or networks and how they can be used in the best way for the european and national policy and research needs e g monitoring reporting as well as for the global level e g for the group on earth observations geo finally and not to forget another essential aspect was how a european biodiversity network as a whole with its different components can be further sustained for fulfilling its goals as a central infrastructure for generating biodiversity data and information on a european scale here we report the outcomes and discussions of the meeting and also highlight the main messages,2017,0.043
Climate Modelling Shows Increased Risk to Eucalyptus sideroxylon on the Eastern Coast of Australia Compared to Eucalyptus albens,aim to identify the extent and direction of range shift of eucalyptus sideroxylon and e albens in australia by 2050 through an ensemble forecast of four species distribution models sdms each was generated using four global climate models gcms under two representative concentration pathways rcps location australia methods we used four sdms of i generalized linear model ii maxent iii random forest and iv boosted regression tree to construct sdms for species e sideroxylon and e albens under four gcms including a mri cgcm3 b miroc5 c hadgem2 ao and d ccsm4 under two rcps of 4 5 and 6 0 here the true skill statistic tss index was used to assess the accuracy of each sdm results results showed that e albens and e sideroxylon will lose large areas of their current suitable range by 2050 and e sideroxylon is projected to gain in eastern and southeastern australia some areas were also projected to remain suitable for each species between now and 2050 our modelling showed that e sideroxylon will lose suitable habitat on the western side and will not gain any on the eastern side because this region is one the most heavily populated areas in the country and the populated areas are moving westward the predicted decrease in e sideroxylonâ s distribution suggests that land managers should monitor its population closely and evaluate whether it meets criteria for a protected legal status main conclusions both eucalyptus sideroxylon and e albens will be negatively affected by climate change and it is projected that e sideroxylon will be at greater risk of losing habitat than e albens,2017,0.573
Predicting Optimal Release Sites for Rehabilitated Monkeys: a Vervet Monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops) Case Study,primate rehabilitation is challenging but has become crucial as many species are threatened with extinction vervet monkeys chlorocebus aethiops are a widespread primate species in africa despite the release of comparatively large numbers of rehabilitated monkeys the success rate is poor with low survival this is partly due to choosing substandard release sites here we use an environmental envelope model that combines species specific environmental and spatial data including environmental conditions such as temperature and rainfall access to permanent water and proximity to anthropogenic influence to predict the best areas for release of rehabilitated vervet monkeys in kwazulu natal south africa approximately 80 of the land in kwazulu natal qualifies as general habitat however only 6225 km2 6 7 is classed as habitat desirable for release as human occupation and limited water access render other areas unsuitable unsurprisingly ideal release land is limited and may prove difficult to access however there are accessible land areas that may be viable despite human impact this uncertainty highlights the need for site visits early in the selection process our model provides easily read maps that rehabilitators can use to assist with this process and potentially optimize release site selection this method could be easily adapted to other primate species,2017,0.688
Pl@ntNet - My Business,pl ntnet is a world scale participatory platform and information system dedicated to the monitoring of plant biodiversity through image based plant identification nowadays the mobile front end of pl ntnet has been downloaded by more than 4 millions users in about 170 countries and an active community of contributors produce and revise new observations everyday it is often referred to as the shazam of plants this paper presents a business proposal allowing enterprises or organizations to set up their own private collaborative workflow within pl ntnet information system the main added value is to allow them working on their own business object e g plant disease diagnostic deficiency measurements railway lines maintenance fishery surveillance etc and with their own community of contributors and end users employees sales representatives clients observers network etc this business idea answers to a growing demand in agriculture and environmental economics actors in these domains begin to know that machine learning techniques are mature enough but the lack of training data and of efficient tools to collect them is a major breakthrough a collaborative platform like pl ntnet is the ideal tool to bridge this gap it initiates a powerful positive feedback loop boosting the production of training data while improving the work of the employees,2017,0.053
Impact of delivery mode on the colostrum microbiota composition,background breast milk is a rich nutrient with a temporally dynamic nature in particular numerous alterations in the nutritional immunological and microbiological content occur during the transition from colostrum to mature milk the objective of our study was to evaluate the potential impact of delivery mode on the microbiota of colostrum at both the quantitative and qualitative levels bacterial abundance and microbiota network methods twenty nine italian mothers 15 vaginal deliveries vs 14 cesarean sections were enrolled in the study the microbiota of colostrum samples was analyzed by next generation sequencing ion torrent personal genome machine the colostrum microbiota network associated with cesarean section and vaginal delivery was evaluated by means of the auto contractive map autocm a mathematical methodology based on artificial neural network ann architecture results numerous differences between cesarean section and vaginal delivery colostrum were observed vaginal delivery colostrum had a significant lower abundance of pseudomonas spp staphylococcus spp and prevotella spp when compared to cesarean section colostrum samples furthermore the mode of delivery had a strong influence on the microbiota network as cesarean section colostrum showed a higher number of bacterial hubs if compared to vaginal delivery sharing only 5 hubs interestingly the colostrum of mothers who had a cesarean section was richer in environmental bacteria than mothers who underwent vaginal delivery finally both cesarean section and vaginal delivery colostrum contained a greater number of anaerobic bacteria genera conclusions the mode of delivery had a large impact on the microbiota composition of colostrum further studies are needed to better define the meaning of the differences we observed between cesarean section and vaginal delivery colostrum microbiota,2017,0.165
De novo transcriptome assembly analysis of weed Apera spica-venti from seven tissues and growth stages,background loose silky bentgrass apera spica venti is an important weed in europe with a recent increase in herbicide resistance cases the lack of genetic information about this noxious weed limits its biological understanding such as growth reproduction genetic variation molecular ecology and metabolic herbicide resistance this study produced a reference transcriptome for a spica venti from different tissues leaf root stem and various growth stages seed at phenological stages 05 07 08 09 the de novo assembly was performed on individual and combined dataset followed by functional annotations individual transcripts and gene families involved in metabolic based herbicide resistance were identified results eight separate transcriptome assemblies were performed and compared the combined transcriptome assembly consists of 83 349 contigs with an n50 and average contig length of 762 and 658 bp respectively this dataset contains 74 724 transcripts consisting of total 54 846 111 bp among them 94 had a homologue to uniprotkb 73 retrieved a go mapping and 50 were functionally annotated compared with other grass species a spica venti has 26 proteins in common to brachypodium distachyon and 41 to lolium spp glycosyltransferases had the highest number of transcripts in each tissue followed by the cytochrome p450s the gstf1 and cyp89a2 transcripts were recovered from the majority of tissues and aligned at a maximum of 66 and 30 to proven herbicide resistant allele from alopecurus myosuroides and lolium rigidum respectively conclusions de novo transcriptome assembly enabled the generation of the first reference transcriptome of a spica venti this can serve as stepping stone for understanding the metabolic herbicide resistance as well as the general biology of this problematic weed furthermore this large scale sequence data is a valuable scientific resource for comparative transcriptome analysis for poaceae grasses,2017,0.09
The economic value of grassland species for carbon storage,carbon storage by ecosystems is valuable for climate protection biodiversity conservation may help increase carbon storage but the value of this influence has been difficult to assess we use plant soil and ecosystem carbon storage data from two grassland biodiversity experiments to show that greater species richness increases economic value increasing species richness from 1 to 10 had twice the economic value of increasing species richness from 1 to 2 the marginal value of each additional species declined as species accumulated reflecting the nonlinear relationship between species richness and plant biomass production our demonstration of the economic value of biodiversity for enhancing carbon storage provides a foundation for assessing the value of biodiversity for decisions about land management combining carbon storage with other ecosystem services affected by biodiversity may well enhance the economic arguments for conservation even further,2017,0.876
"Populus luzae (Salicaceae), a new species of white poplar endemic to the western Transmexican Volcanic Belt, in Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico",populus luzae a new species of white poplar from the western transmexican volcanic belt zapopan jalisco mexico is described and illustrated populus luzae belongs to section populus and is morphologically close to p guzmanantlensis but it differs from the latter in having smaller size and soboliferous habit narrower twigs and petioles ovate to ovate deltoid and chartaceous leaf blades adaxial leaf surface with less depressed veins abaxial surface puberulent thrice smaller ovate male bracteoles with entire margin twice longer female bracteoles sparsely denticulate but none lobed smaller number of pistillate flowers capsules pubescent twice longer mature male inflorescence and a lax and longer infrutescence,2017,0.44
Setting temporal baselines for biodiversity: the limits of available monitoring data for capturing the full impact of anthropogenic pressures,temporal baselines are needed for biodiversity in order for the change in biodiversity to be measured over time the targets for biodiversity conservation to be defined and conservation progress to be evaluated limited biodiversity information is widely recognized as a major barrier for identifying temporal baselines although a comprehensive quantitative assessment of this is lacking here we report on the temporal baselines that could be drawn from biodiversity monitoring schemes in europe and compare those with the rise of important anthropogenic pressures most biodiversity monitoring schemes were initiated late in the 20th century well after anthropogenic pressures had already reached half of their current magnitude setting temporal baselines from biodiversity monitoring data would therefore underestimate the full range of impacts of major anthropogenic pressures in addition biases among taxa and organization levels provide a truncated picture of biodiversity over time these limitations need to be explicitly acknowledged when designing management strategies and policies as they seriously constrain our ability to identify relevant conservation targets aimed at restoring or reversing biodiversity losses we discuss the need for additional research efforts beyond standard biodiversity monitoring to reconstruct the impacts of major anthropogenic pressures and to identify meaningful temporal baselines for biodiversity,2017,0.082
Evaluation of intercept feeding to reduce livestock depredation by grizzly bears,abstract supplemental and diversionary feeding can reduce conflicts between wildlife and people however feeding also can increase species abundance survival and reproductive success which might increase humanâ wildlife conflicts in southwestern alberta canada the provincial government fed road killed ungulates to grizzly bears ursus arctos each spring during 1998â 2013 attempting to reduce spring depredation of livestock by grizzly bears we used non invasive genetic sampling remote trail cameras and complaint records to evaluate the efficacy of alberta s intercept feeding program we monitored 12 intercept feeding locations in 2012 and 2013 using dna we identified 22 grizzly bears 19 m 3 f at the intercept feeding sites remote trail cameras detected grizzly bears at all intercept feeding sites but detected females with dependent offspring at only 4 of the 12 sites we reviewed complaint data for incidents before during and after the intercept feeding program we defined an incident as,2017,0.473
Morphological patterns in a world collection of Cleome gynandra,cleome gynandra l is a leafy vegetable native to sub saharan africa and asia and cultivated on dry areas the plant plays an important role in the food and nutrition security of local communities the objective of this study was to illustrate variation and diversity in the cleome collection held at the world vegetable center in total 242 accessions were cultivated and morphologically characterized and analyzed the gynophore and filament both important organs of the flower played a key role in taxonomical identification high morphological variation was detected in traits including plant height pod length leaf size flower color and earliness distinct morphological differentiation was detected between asian and african accessions on average the african accessions were larger less uniform and later in flowering and seed maturation than the asian accessions the results were used to establish a core collection of 49 cleome accessions gaps in the current collection were detected high within accessions diversity challenges the existing ex situ conservation system to maintain diversity seed should be collected from a large number of plants both during the collection mission and in ex situ regeneration the results are relevant for germplasm collection strategies and regeneration protocols for good genebank practices,2017,0.529
The Lost Species,the tiny lungless thorius salamander from southern mexico thinner than a match and smaller than a quarter the lushly white coated saki an arboreal monkey from the brazilian rainforests the olinguito a native of the andes which looks part mongoose part teddy bear these fantastic species are all new to scienceâ at least newly named and identified but they werenâ t discovered in the wild instead they were unearthed in the drawers and cavernous basements of natural history museums as christopher kemp reveals in the lost species hiding in the cabinets and storage units of natural history museums is a treasure trove of discovery waiting to happen with kemp as our guide we go spelunking into museum basements dig through specimen trays and inspect the drawers and jars of collections scientific detectives on the hunt for new species we discover king crabs from 1906 unidentified tarantulas mislabeled himalayan landsnails an unknown rove beetle originally collected by darwin and an overlooked squeaker frog among other curiosities in each case these specimens sat quietly for decadesâ sometimes longer than a centuryâ within the collections of museums before sharp eyed scientists understood they were new each year scientists continue to encounter new species in museum collectionsâ a stark reminder that we have named only a fraction of the worldâ s biodiversity sadly some specimens have waited so long to be named that they are gone from the wild before they were identified victims of climate change and habitat loss as kemp shows these stories showcase the enduring importance of these very collections the lost species vividly tells these stories of discoveryâ from the latest information on each creature to the people who collected them and the scientists who finally realized what they had unearthedâ and will inspire many a museumgoer to want to peek behind the closed doors and rummage through the archives,2017,0.977
Present and future distribution of three aquatic plants taxa across the world: decrease in native and increase in invasive ranges,inland aquatic ecosystems are vulnerable to both climate change and biological invasion at broad spatial scales the aim of this study was to establish the current and future potential distribution of three invasive plant taxa egeria densa myriophyllum aquaticum and ludwigia spp in their native and exotic ranges we used species distribution models sdms with nine different algorithms and three global circulation models and we restricted the suitability maps to cells containing aquatic ecosystems the current bioclimatic range of the taxa was predicted to represent 6 6â 12 3 of their suitable habitats at global scale with a lot of variations between continents in europe and north america their invasive ranges are predicted to increase up to two fold by 2070 with the highest gas emission scenario suitable new areas will mainly be located to the north of their current range in other continents where they are exotic and in their native range south america the surface areas of suitable locations are predicted to decrease with climate change especially for ludwigia spp in south america down to ∠55 by 2070 with rcp 8 5 scenario this study allows to identify areas vulnerable to ongoing invasions by aquatic plant species and thus could help the prioritisation of monitoring and management as well as contribute to the public awareness regarding biological invasions,2017,0.422
Mutualism in museums: A model for engaging undergraduates in biodiversity science,museums have an untapped potential to engage students in hands on learning here we describe the development of a tiered museum based program at the university of california berkeley as a model for engaging undergraduates in biodiversity science this decade long effort to increase student participation in collections demonstrates the mutual benefits of undergraduate involvement museums benefit from critical help in collections care and an increased intellectual vitality while students simultaneously gain essential research skills and an unparalleled exposure to biodiversity five first steps to creating a program are dedicate a coordinator offer credit diversify participation create a tiered structure and build community,2017,0.251
Arctic science education using public museum collections from the University of Alaska Museum: An evolving and expanding landscape,alaska faces unique challenges in stem science technology engineering and mathematics education including limited accessibility to resources and learning opportunities and a lack of place based education resources museum education programs traditionally focused on public outreach through docent led tours are playing an increasingly important role in both formal and informal aspects of stem education to help address these challenges the university of alaska museum uam stands as a model in the arctic region exemplifying how public natural history museum collections can be utilized to create active place based learning experiences with the aim of increasing engagement in stem literacy and building connections between museums and communities these efforts take many forms including the development of teaching materials involving physical objects and or online data from the open access database arctos training pre service teachers and implementing citizen science projects because many uam spec,2017,0.201
Large-Scale Plant Classification with Deep Neural Networks,this paper discusses the potential of applying deep learning techniques for plant classification and its usage for citizen science in large scale biodiversity monitoring we show that plant classification using near state of the art convolutional network architectures like resnet50 achieves significant improvements in accuracy compared to the most widespread plant classification application in test sets composed of thousands of different species labels we find that the predictions can be confidently used as a baseline classification in citizen science communities like inaturalist or its spanish fork natusfera which in turn can share their data with biodiversity portals like gbif,2017,0.32
Databasing Crop Plants from the People's Biodiversity Register of India,documenting and understanding agrobiodiversity is important for human well being agricultural sustainability and food security this is more significant and urgent in the current context of massive landscape transformation industrialization of agriculture and climate change recognizing the limited data on agricultural biodiversity abd the global biodiversity information facility gbif constituted a task force on abd which published its final report in february 2016 arnaud et al 2016 the report highlighted the need for comprehensive standards for databasing structuring exchange and use of information on abd which included not only genebank and germplasm databases but also in situ information of landraces and cultivars held by farmers and cultivators across the world while there are standards to facilitate germplasm passport information exchange multi crop passport descriptors mcpd databases of crop wild relatives cultivars landraces and neglected and underutilized crop species are completely absent the world over farmer and cultivator groups have selected and bred crop varieties especially in tropical areas which have not entered genebanks and are much more dynamic and constantly evolving documenting and databasing such information has challenges in effectively integrating wild relatives landraces cultivars vernacular names cultivation practices and crop traits into a consistent taxonomic backbone india has identified 22 agro biodiversity hotspots where attempts have been made to document the abd in a systematic way the peopleâ s biodiversity register pbr national biodiversity authority india 2013 conceived in the late 1990s gadgil 2000 was an attempt to capture the biodiversity of a village level administrative unit called a panchayat with 31 predefined formats covering crop plants to natural biodiversity extensively documented by community initiatives across india while the implementation has been patchy there are a few detailed pbrs in the eastern himalayas the brahmaputra valley and assam which is an important agro biodiversity hotspot and center for speciation and domestication of rice some of these areas have detailed over 180 crop plants along with their scientific name local name variety habitat local status and agronomy details we will discuss the challenges in databasing this extensive community generated information and referencing it on a taxonomic backbone that will have the ability to capture infraspecific taxonomy levels with additional attributes related to the crop wild relative species landraces and cultivars along with local names it should provide the flexibility of referencing databasing editing synonymizing and splitting names on the taxonomic backbone it should have the ability to capture other details of cultivars and landraces including location local status morphology and cultivation practices with the ability to share and export the data in structured formats and standards as they evolve,2017,0.401
SoilGrids250m: Global gridded soil information based on machine learning,this paper describes the technical development and accuracy assessment of the most recent and improved version of the soilgrids system at 250m resolution june 2016 update soilgrids provides global predictions for standard numeric soil properties organic carbon bulk density cation exchange capacity cec ph soil texture fractions and coarse fragments at seven standard depths 0 5 15 30 60 100 and 200 cm in addition to predictions of depth to bedrock and distribution of soil classes based on the world reference base wrb and usda classification systems ca 280 raster layers in total predictions were based on ca 150 000 soil profiles used for training and a stack of 158 remote sensing based soil covariates primarily derived from modis land products srtm dem derivatives climatic images and global landform and lithology maps which were used to fit an ensemble of machine learning methodsâ random forest and gradient boosting and or multinomial logistic regressionâ as implemented in the r packages ranger xgboost nnet and caret the results of 10â fold cross validation show that the ensemble models explain between 56 coarse fragments and 83 ph of variation with an overall average of 61 improvements in the relative accuracy considering the amount of variation explained in comparison to the previous version of soilgrids at 1 km spatial resolution range from 60 to 230 improvements can be attributed to 1 the use of machine learning instead of linear regression 2 to considerable investments in preparing finer resolution covariate layers and 3 to insertion of additional soil profiles further development of soilgrids could include refinement of methods to incorporate input uncertainties and derivation of posterior probability distributions per pixel and further automation of spatial modeling so that soil maps can be generated for potentially hundreds of soil variables another area of future research is the development of methods for multiscale merging of soilgrids predictions with local and or national gridded soil products e g up to 50 m spatial resolution so that increasingly more accurate complete and consistent global soil information can be produced soilgrids are available under the open data base license,2017,0.044
The Brazilian Microbiome Project,brazil harbors about 20 of global macro biodiversity but despite the well accepted tenet that microbes are essential for ecosystem maintenance and although microbes represent a fundamental resource for brazilâ s economic and technological development knowledge of brazilâ s microbial diversity is still largely neglected this might be partially explained by our inefficiency in detecting microbes directly from the environment however recent advances in biomolecule extraction purification procedures next generation sequencing ngs technologies and computational biology and modeling are now changing this scenario important discoveries and advances have recently been made but such advances have not been as enlightening as expected we argue that the success of microbiome studies is tied to appropriate integration with the scientific community and only integrated research models will be able to reveal the full microbial potential to benefit local communities and citizens as well as ongoing conservation efforts in this chapter we introduce the brazilian microbiome project a local initiative that aims to coordinate national microbiome research enabling appropriate integration with international initiatives to better decipher brazilian microbial diversity and its dynamics and environmental interrelationships,2017,0.202
"Xylobolus subpileatus, a specialized basidiomycete functionally linked to old canopy gaps",documenting succession in forest canopy gaps provides insights into the ecological processes governing the temporal dynamics of species within communities we analyzed the fruiting patterns of a rare but widely distributed saproxylic macromycete xylobolus subpileatus during the ageing of natural canopy gaps in oak forests in one of the last remaining quercus ilex old growth forests on the island of corsica western mediterranean basin we systematically recorded and conducted molecular analyses of x subpileatus basidiomes in 80 dated natural canopy gaps representing a 45 year long sequence of residence time of tree logs on the forest floor x subpileatus fruited exclusively on q ilex logs the probability of fruiting of x subpileatus significantly increases during the process of wood decomposition to reach its maximum in the oldest gaps ca 40 years after treefall in contrast the abundance and the richness of saprobic and ectomycorrhizal fruitbodies de,2017,0.363
Detecting outliers in species distribution data,aim species distribution data play a pivotal role in the study of ecology evolution biogeography and biodiversity conservation although large amounts of location data are available and accessible from public databases data quality remains problematic of the potential sources of error positional errors are critical for spatial applications particularly where these errors place observations beyond the environmental or geographical range of species these outliers need to be identified checked and removed to improve data quality and minimize the impact on subsequent analyses manually checking all species records within large multispecies datasets is prohibitively costly this work investigates algorithms that may assist in the efficient vetting of outliers in such large datasets location we used real spatially explicit environmental data derived from the western part of victoria australia and simulated species distributions within this same region methods by adapting species distribution modelling sdm we developed a pseudo sdm approach for detecting outliers in species distribution data which was implemented with random forest rf and support vector machine svm resulting in two new methods rf pdsdm and svm pdsdm using virtual species we compared eight existing multivariate outlier detection methods with these two new methods under various conditions results the two new methods based on the pseudo sdm approach had higher true skill statistic tss values than other approaches with tss values always exceeding 0 more than 70 of the true outliers in datasets for species with a low and intermediate prevalence can be identified by checking 10 of the data points with the highest outlier scores main conclusions pseudo sdm based methods were more effective than other outlier detection methods however this outlier detection procedure can only be considered as a screening tool and putative outliers must be examined by experts to determine whether they are actual errors or important records within an inherently biased set of data,2017,0.799
Three species of Sordariomycetes (Ascomycota: Pezizomycotina) new to Norway,three species from sordariomycetes ascomycota are reported as new to norway hypoxylon subticinense on dead wood of ash fraxinus excelsior ophiocordyceps stylophora on a click beetle larva elateridae and paranectria oropensis on epiphytic lichens the finds are presented together with the known occurrence in fennoscandia,2017,0.485
Cross-realm assessment of climate change impacts on species’ abundance trends,climate change land use change pollution and exploitation are among the main drivers of speciesâ population trends however their relative importance is much debated we used a unique collection of over 1 000 local population time series in 22 communities across terrestrial freshwater and marine realms within central europe to compare the impacts of long term temperature change and other environmental drivers from 1980 onwards to disentangle different drivers we related speciesâ population trends to species and driver specific attributes such as temperature and habitat preference or pollution tolerance we found a consistent impact of temperature change on the local abundances of terrestrial species populations of warm dwelling species increased more than those of cold dwelling species in contrast impacts of temperature change on aquatic speciesâ abundances were variable effects of temperature preference were more consistent in terrestrial communities than effects of habitat preference suggesting that the impacts of temperature change have become widespread for recent changes in abundance within many terrestrial communities of central europe,2017,0.818
"A new species of the genus Bertholdia Schaus, 1896 (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae) from the Neotropical region: Bertholdia zoenia sp. n.",a new species of bertholdia schaus is described bertholdia zoenia sp n based on males and females from argentina and paraguay this new species is closer to bertholdia myosticta hampson 1901 from costa rica iraz㺠bertholdia zoenia sp n can be recognized externally because its hyaline spot on forewing is the widest among all species of genus also the shape of this hyaline spot is like a right triangle with smooth outer margin different from other species of genus which have an irregular spot habitus male and female genitalia and particular structures of b zoenia sp n are illustrated habitus and male genitalia of b myosticta are also illustrated a distribution map and commentaries of habitat of b zoenia sp n and b myosticta are given remarks on nomenclature of the genus are provided,2017,0.84
Perspectives on invasive amphibians in Brazil,introduced species have the potential to become invasive and jeopardize entire ecosystems the success of species establishing viable populations outside their original extent depends primarily on favorable climatic conditions in the invasive ranges species distribution modeling sdm can thus be used to estimate potential habitat suitability for populations of invasive species here we review the status of six amphibian species with invasive populations in brazil four domestic species and two imported species we i modeled the current habitat suitability and future potential distribution of these six focal species ii reported on the disease status of eleutherodactylus johnstonei and phyllodytes luteolus and iii quantified the acoustic overlap of p luteolus and leptodactylus labyrinthicus with three co occurring native species our models indicated that all six invasive species could potentially expand their ranges in brazil within the next few decades in addition our sdms predicted important expansions in available habitat for 2 out of 6 invasive species under future 2100 climatic conditions we detected high acoustic niche overlap between invasive and native amphibian species underscoring that acoustic interference might reduce mating success in local frogs despite the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus being recognized as a potential reservoir for the frog killing fungus batrachochytrium dendrobatidis bd in brazil we did not detect bd in the recently introduced population of e johnstonei and p luteolus in the state of sã o paulo we emphasize that the number of invasive amphibian species in brazil is increasing exponentially highlighting the urgent need to monitor and control these populations and decrease potential impacts on the locally biodiverse wildlife,2017,0.999
Species pool distributions along functional trade-offs shape plant productivity–diversity relationships,grasslands deliver the resources for food production and are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems these characteristics are often in conflict as increasing yield through fertilization can lead to biodiversity loss thus the challenge in grassland management is to sustain both yield and diversity biodiversityâ ecosystem functioning experiments typically reveal a positive relationship between manipulated species diversity and productivity in contrast observations of the effect of increasing productivity via fertilization suggest a negative association with biodiversity using a mathematical model simulating species co existence along a resource gradient we show that trade offs and species pool structure size and trait distribution determines the shape of the productivity diversity relationship at a constant resource level over yielding drives a positive relationship between biodiversity and productivity in contrast along a resource gradient the shape of the productivity diversity relationship is determined by the distribution of species along trade off axes and often resulted in a bell shaped relationship in accordance to this theoretical result we then explain the general trend of plant biodiversity loss with fertilisation in the european flora by showing empirical evidence that trait distribution of plant species pools throughout europe is biased toward species preferring poorer soils,2017,0.848
Rapid poleward distributional shifts in the European cave-dwelling Meta spiders under the influence of competition dynamics,aim to describe the distribution of two congeneric species of cave dwelling spiders under current climatic conditions and future warming scenarios keeping into account their bioclimatic requirements dispersal capacity and competition dynamics location europe and north africa methods we gathered detailed occurrence data for meta menardi and m bourneti araneae tetragnathidae and modelled their distribution across their bioclimatic range we evaluated the breadth of the bioclimatic niche of the two species and assessed the potential overlap between their multidimensional hutchinsonian hypervolumes we compared these results with their current distribution maps obtained by species distribution modelling sdms keeping into account dispersal and competition dynamics and we projected future trends of distribution according to different climatic scenarios results the overall size of the niche hypervolumes of the two species was very similar and highly overlapping however when accounting for competition in the model the predicted ranges of the two species showed only minor areas of overlap on the base of sdm analysis we predicted a significant poleward shift in the distribution of both species with the appearance of a new contact area especially in central europe southern uk france and northern spain main conclusions interspecific competition keeps the current ranges of the two european meta species apart although their fundamental bioclimatic niches are very similar rapid poleward shifts of the two species are likely due to the high dispersal capacity of the two spiders the case of meta spiders exemplifies rapid shift in range of distribution associated with global warming which are unlikely to occur in the case of most cave dwelling arthropods,2017,0.882
"Catalogue and illustrated key of Achelous De Haan, 1833 and Portunus Weber, 1795 (Brachyura: Portunidae: Portuninae) species occurring in Brazilian waters",the subfamily portuninae includes about 130 species organized in 11 genera the genera portunus weber 1795 and achelous de haan 1833 include about 80 species altogether in brazilian waters there are five known species of achelous and four of portunus in the present contribution a catalogue and illustrated key are provided for all brazilian achelous and portunus species known to date,2017,0.751
Climate change and national crop wild relative conservation planning,climate change is likely to be one of the most important factors affecting our future food security to mitigate negative impacts we will require our crops to be more genetically diverse such diversity is available in crop wild relatives cwrs the wild taxa relatively closely related to crops and from which diverse traits can be transferred to the crop conservation of such genetic resources resides within the nation where they are found therefore national level conservation recommendations are fundamental to global food security we investigate the potential impact of climate change on cwr richness in norway the consequences of a 1 5 and 3 0 â c temperature rise were studied for the years 2030 2050 2070 2080 and then compared to the present climate the results indicate a pattern of shifting cwr richness from the south to the north with increases in taxa turnover and in the numbers of threatened taxa recommendations for in situ and ex situ conservation actions over the short and long term for the priority cwrs in norway are presented the methods and recommendations developed here can be applied within other nations and at regional and global levels to improve the effectiveness of conservation actions and help ensure global food security,2017,0.533
Myxomycetes in the 21st Century,several advancements in the study of myxomycetes have been made during the past few decades in particular the development of modern protocols to obtain information about their phylogeny taxonomic status and genetics are leading the way however integrated research that considers transversal elements in the fields of conservation management sustainability and climate change have not yet become parts of myxomycete research in the 21st century moreover the limited capacity of researchers to communicate relevant information about the group outside of scientific communities has not facilitated the inclusion of myxomycetes in political agendas in this chapter a series of contextual elements to move on from the traditional biological fields of study into other disciplines of human knowledge will be discussed such multidisciplinary interaction of academic social and historical elements is imperative in the context of modern science,2017,0.114
Hydro-edaphic conditions defining richness and species composition in savanna areas of the northern Brazilian Amazonia,background studies on plant communities in the amazon have reported that different hydro edaphic conditions can affect the richness and the species composition of different ecosystems however this aspect is poorly known in the different savanna habitats understanding how populations and plant communities are distributed in these open vegetation areas is important to improve the knowledge about which environmental variables influence the occurrence and diversity of plants in this type of regional ecosystem thus this study investigated the richness and composition of plant species in two savanna areas of the northern brazilian amazonia using the coverage of the different life forms observed under different hydro edaphic conditions as a structural reference new information we report 128 plant species classified in 34 botanical families distributed in three savanna habitats with different levels of hydro edaphic restrictions in this study the habitats are conceptually presented and they integrate environmental information edaphic factors and drainage type which determines differences between floristic composition species richness and coverage of plant life forms,2017,0.5
The Plot-Based Databases of the Iberian Vegetation,the longstanding phytosociological tradition in the iberian peninsula has produced a large number of relevã s resulting in the development of some regional databases before developing the national scale project sivim the iberian and macaronesian vegetation information system sivim compiles all vegetation plot data for the iberian peninsula the balearic and macaronesian archipelagos created in 2007 sivim offers its users free access to these large datasets and it also provides a set of advanced analytical tools useful for scientific research land and biodiversity management according to the global index of vegetation plot databases givd sivim is the 5th largest database in number of relevã s worldwide its data is shared in centralised databases that integrate relevã s from various european and worldwide vegetation plot databases allowing data to be used in large scale studies due to financial restrictions the future and continued development of the sivim database is uncertain,2017,0.182
"Three new species of Psyrassa Pascoe, 1866 (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Cerambycinae)",currently psyrassa pascoe 1866 includes 37 species distributed mainly in southern united states to central america monnã 2016 tavakilian and chevillotte 2016 only four species occur in northern south america p meridionalis martins 2005 ecuador p rufescens nonfried 1894 brazil p testacea linsley 1935 colombia venezuela french guiana and p subglabra linsley 1935 ecuador,2017,0.648
Glacial survival of trophically linked boreal species in northern Europe,whether non arctic species persisted in northern europe during the last glacial maximum lgm is highly debated until now the debate has mostly focused on plants with little consideration for other groups of organisms e g the numerous plant dependent insect species here we study the late quaternary evolution of the european range of a boreo montane leaf beetle gonioctena intermedia which feeds exclusively on the boreal and temperate trees prunus padus and sorbus aucuparia using species distribution models we estimated the congruence between areas of past and present suitable climate for this beetle and its host plants then we derived historical hypotheses from the congruent range estimates and evaluated their compatibility with observed dna sequence variation at five independent loci we investigated compatibility using computer simulations of population evolution under various coalescence models we find strong evidence for range modifications in response to late quaternary climate changes and support for the presence of populations of g intermedia in northern europe since the beginning of the last glaciation the presence of a co dependent insect in the region through the lgm provides new evidence supporting the glacial survival of cold tolerant tree species in northern europe,2017,0.744
Importance of environmental and spatial components for species and trait composition in terrestrial snail communities,despite the huge diversity of soil animals and their recognized contribution to many ecosystem functions little is known about the relative importance of fac tors controlling their abundance and distribution we examined the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors in explaining the species and functional trait composition of terrestrial snail communities at the level of meta communities spatial extent c 100 9 100 km in a heterogeneous intensively used landscape we hypothesized that both spatial and environmental factors con tribute to the variation in community structure across the landscape but expected environmental variables describing local habitat conditions to be most important,2017,0.472
Adaptive variation in vein placement underpins diversity in a major Neotropical plant radiation,vein placement has been hypothesised to control leaf hydraulic properties but the ecophysiological significance of variation in vein placement in the angiosperms has remained poorly understood the highly diverse neotropical bromeliaceae offers an excellent system for exploring understudied relationships between leaf vein placement physiological functions and species ecology to test key hypotheses regarding the links between vein placement functional type divergences and ecological diversity in the bromeliaceae i characterised the ratio of interveinal distance ivd to vein epidermis distance ved in 376 species representing all major functional types and 10 of the species diversity in the family as well as bioclimatic properties and key leaf traits for subsets of species there were significant differences in vein placement parameters in species of contrasting functional type habitat association and bioclimatic distribution in many c3 tank epiphytes a greater ratio between interveinal distance and the depth of veins within the mesophyll reflects optimisation for resource foraging in shady humid habitats in succulent terrestrials overinvestment in veins probably facilitates rapid recharge of water storage tissue as well as restricting water loss these results highlight how divergences in vein placement relate to distinctive ecophysiological strategies between and within bromeliad functional types and provide timely insights into how structuralâ functional innovation has impacted the evolution of ecological diversity in a major radiation of tropical herbaceous angiosperms,2017,0.051
A distribution and taxonomic reference dataset of Geranium in the New World,geranium l is a genus of over 350 species distributed throughout most of the world except in lowland tropical areas it is the largest genus of the geraniaceae and is represented in the new world by 137 species this dataset includes 8 937 records that covers the genus geranium the new world providing an updated taxonomically consistent and a sound geographical distribution of the 137 species of geranium in america specimens from 128 herbaria were reviewed these were supplemented by others collected during nine field trips which allowed better knowledge of the variability of characters within populations and refining species distribution ranges each record represents a specimen that has been reviewed and in some cases collected by c aedo accepted scientific name locality details distribution status introduced native naturalized uncertain geographic coordinates are given for 8 538 95 records and habitat information for 3 952 44 all data have been released under a cc by license in a standardized format which enables easy integration with other data for example through gbif org,2017,0.922
"A new species of Heterachthes Newman, 1840 from Colombia (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae)",heterachthes was originally created by newman 1840 for a single species from the united states of america florida h ebenus newman 1840 currently heterachthes encompasses 68 species distributed to southern usa to southern south america monnã 2016 tavakilian and chevillotte 2016 of these species six occur in colombia h concretus martins 1970 h ebenus h lateralis martins 1962 h sablensis blatchley 1920 h signaticollis thomson 1865 and h vauriae martins 1971,2017,0.774
"Taxonomic Checklists as Biodiversity Data: How Series of Checklists can Provide Information on Synonymy, Circumscription Change and Taxonomic Discovery",taxonomic checklists are a fundamental and widely used product of taxonomy providing a list of recognized taxa within a taxonomic group in a particular geographical area series of taxonomic checklists provide snapshots of recognized taxa over a period of time identifying and classifying the changes between these checklists can provide information on rates of name synonym and circumscription change and can improve aggregation of datasets reconciled to different checklists to demonstrate this i used a series of north american bird checklists to test hypotheses about drivers of splitting rates in north america birds in particular i asked if splitting was predominantly undoing previous lumping that happened during the heyday of the modern synthesis i found that bird species have been split at an accelerating rate since the 1980s while this was partially the result of previously lumped species being resplit most splits were unrelated to previous lumps and thus represent new discoveries rather than simply the undoing of previous circumscription changes i also used a series of north american freshwater algal checklists to measure stability over fifteen years and found that 26 of species names were not shared or synonymized over this period rates of synonymization lumping or splitting of species remained flat a marked difference from north american birds species that were split or lumped 7 of species considered had significantly higher abundance than other species in the usgs nawqa dataset a biodiversity database that uses these checklists as an index they were associated with 19 of associated observations showing that a small number of recircumscribed species could significantly affect interpretation of biodiversity data to facilitate this research i developed a software tool that could identify and annotate taxonomic changes among a series of checklists and could use this information to aggregate biodiversity data which will hopefully facilitate similar research in the future my dissertation demonstrates the value of taxonomic checklists series to answer specific questions about the drivers of taxonomic change ranging from philosophical and technical changes to characteristics of species themselves such as their abundance,2017,0.946
Living Atlases Architecture,the atlas of living australia ala has developed a software platform since 2009 this open source platform was initially developed by the ala team in canberra the platform is now in use in several other countries as part of the living atlases community with support from gbif the architecture is a microservices based architecture as such it consists of multiple components that communicate through the alaâ s web services this presentation will include a general overview of ala components it will cover some of the technologies used and the overall design and philosophy behind the system,2017,0.184
"Marine Biodiversity, Biogeography, Deep-Sea Gradients, and Conservation",the oceans appear ideal for biodiversity â they have unlimited water a large area are well connected have less extreme temperatures than on land and contain more phyla and classes than land and fresh waters yet only 16 of all named species on earth are marine species richness decreases with depth in the ocean reflecting wider geographic ranges of deep sea than coastal species here we assess how many marine spe cies are named and estimated to exist paying particular regard to whether discoveries of deep sea organ isms microbes and parasites will change the proportion of terrestrial to marine species we then review what factors have led to species diversification and how this knowledge informs conservation priorities the implications of this understanding for marine conservation are that the species most vulnerable to extinc tion will be large and endemic unfortunately these species are also the most threatened by human impacts such threats now extend globally and thus the only refuges for these species will be large permanent fully protected marine reserves introduction there are several reasons to expect there to be more species in the oceans than on land life has existed in the sea longer than on land â fossils indicate bacteria existed in the oceans over 3 7 billion years ago 1 and on land by 3 1 billion years ago 2 the fossil record indicates that marine diversity ex ceeded that on land for 3 6 billion years 3 but currently only 16 of named living species are marine 4 according to biogeographic theory species richness increases with habitat area and the oceans cover 71 of the earth s surface 5 this greater connectivity between ocean populations would have reduced the risk of extinctions such as may happen on land and in freshwater habitats due to natural catastrophes if we consider land to provide habitat for species to a combined height into the air and depth into the soil of 10 m then the ocean has 900 times more liveable volume than exists on land water is essential for life but is often scarce on land on land extreme hot and cold temperatures and rapid tempera ture variation contrast with the generally slow changing and mild range of temperatures in the ocean,2017,0.989
Pattersoniomyces tillandsiae gen. et comb. nov.: linking sexual and asexual morphs of the only known smut fungus associated with Bromeliaceae,the enigmatic species ustilago tillandsiae is the only known smut fungus associated with bromeliaceae its generic position is evaluated by morphological physiological and molecular phylogenetic analyses using large subunit rdna sequences phylogenetic analyses resolved u tillandsiae as a member of the ustilaginales in a sister relationship to the lineage containing tranzscheliella species however u tillandsiae differs from tranzscheliella species by the development of sori in flowers a different structure of sori and a different type of spore ornamentation consequently a new genus pattersoniomyces is described to accommodate u tillandsiae the new combination pattersoniomyces tillandsiae is substantiated in the sexual stage teleomorph this species infects bromeliads tillandsia flabellata tillandsia leiboldiana and tillandsia sp in central america between southern mexico and costa rica the yeast stage anamorph of p tillandsiae was found associated with the phylloplane of canistrum improcerum and in water tanks phytotelmata of vriesea minarum two bromeliads occurring in northeast and southeast brazil respectively the link between the teleomorph and anamorphic strains is supported by identical sequences of the d1 d2 domains of the large subunit rdna pattersoniomyces represents the tenth endemic smut genus to the americas but the only one that occurs in both north and south america being a truly neotropical genus the host plant families of ustilaginales are extended to the bromeliaceae as far as we know pattersoniomyces represents the single event of a host jump from cyperaceae or poaceae to bromeliaceae apparently without further species radiation on multiple bromeliad species and genera growing in south america,2017,0.964
"Steter Wandel der Internationalen Kommission für Zoologische Nomenklatur und des ""Kodex"": Warum, Wie, Wo, Wann?",continuous transformations of the international commission on zoolog ical nomenclature and the code why how where when the 4th edition of the international code of zoological nomenclature comprises the preamble 90 articles grouped in 18 chapters including 727 provisions and a glossary of 372 terms which all are mandatory in contrast 120 illustrative examples and 131 recommendations are not binding the index with 986 entries does not form part of the legislative text and is not exhaustive but heavily cross references the articles recommendations and glossary since two declarations i e 44 and 45 have been added in 2003 and 2016 respectively as well as an amendment of articles 8 9 10 21 and 78 in 2012 the code is no longer an entity on 16 december 2015 seven new members joined the international commission of zoological nomenclature and afterwards it was decided to prepare the 5th edition of the code an innovation is that all commission members are in the editorial committee six subcommittees viz on typification stabilizing usage rules of publication constitution and bylaws harmonization of codes and code cleanâ up will consider additions and changes of the next official version prospectively coming into force on 1 january 2020,2017,0.306
Do large-seeded herbs have a small range size? The seed mass-distribution range trade-off hypothesis,we aimed to introduce and test the â œseed massâ distribution range trade offâ hypothesis that is that range size is negatively related to seed mass due to the generally better dispersal ability of smaller seeds studying the effects of environmental factors on the seed mass and range size of species we also aimed to identify habitats where species may be at risk and need extra conservation effort to avoid local extinctions we collected data for seed mass global range size and indicators for environmental factors of the habitat for 1 600 species of the pannonian ecoregion central europe from the literature we tested the relationship between speciesâ seed mass range size and indicator values for soil moisture light intensity and nutrient supply we found that seed mass is negatively correlated with range size thus a seed massâ distribution range trade off was validated based on the studied large species pool we found increasing seed mass with decreasing light intensity and increasing nutrient availability but decreasing seed mass with increasing soil moisture range size increased with increasing soil moisture and nutrient supply but decreased with increasing light intensity our results supported the hypothesis that there is a trade off between seed mass and distribution range we found that species of habitats characterized by low soil moisture and nutrient values but high light intensity values have small range size this emphasizes that species of dry infertile habitats such as dry grasslands could be more vulnerable to habitat fragmentation or degradation than species of wet and fertile habitats the remarkably high number of species and the use of global distribution range in our study support our understanding of global biogeographic processes and patterns that are essential in defining conservation priorities,2017,0.902
Accounting for uncertainty in predictions of a marine species: Integrating population genetics to verify past distributions,we develop a new perspective on the uncertainties affecting the predictions of coastal species distributions using patterns of genetic diversity to assess the congruence of hindcasted distribution models we model the niche of the subtidal seagrass cymodocea nodosa for which previous phylogeographic findings are used to contrast hypotheses for the last glacial maximum lgm in the mediterranean and adjacent atlantic coastal regions we focus on amelioration of sampling bias and explore the influence of other sources of uncertainty such as the number of variables ocean general circulation models ogcms and thresholds used to do that we test geographical and environmental filtering of presences and a species specific weighted filter related to political boundaries for background data contrary to our initial hypothesis that reducing sampling bias by means of geographical environmental or background filtering would enhance predictive power and reliability of the models none of these approaches consistently improved performance these counter intuitive results might be explained by the higher relative occurrence area roa inherent to linear coastal study areas in relation to terrestrial regions which may cause worse predictions and thus higher variability among models we found that the ocean general circulation models ogcms the threshold and to a smaller extent the number of variables used conditioned greatly the variability of the predictions in both accuracy and geographic range despite these uncertainties all models achieved the goal of identifying long term persistence regions glacial refugia where the highest genetic diversity for cymodocea nodosa is found nowadays however only the ccsm corroborated the hypothesis raised in previous studies of a vicariant process in shaping the speciesâ genetic structure,2017,0.422
"Checklist of Lichen-Forming, Lichenicolous and Allied Fungi of Eagle Hill and Its Vicinity, Maine",600 lichens and 82 lichenicolous and allied fungi have been recorded from eagle hill in steuben me and its vicinity over the past 25 years mainly as a consequence of courses and research centered upon the eagle hill institute formerly the humboldt field research institute of the 682 taxa listed 331 have been recorded within the institute s boundary of which 27 were not found elsewhere in the vicinity a further 66 taxa recorded but lacking voucher material are listed one lichen lambiella fuscosora and 7 lichenicolous fungi cornutispora pyramidalis epicladonia stenospora monodictys epilepraria muellerella polyspora taeniolella cladinicola and tremella coppinsii are additional to the north american checklist lambiella fuscosora and cornutispora pyramidalis are also recorded as new for canada five lichens alyxoria ochrocheila cladonia albonigra ephebe solida myriolecis schofieldii and parmotrema stuppeum are new for maine notes on new records and interesting taxa are provided,2017,0.325
"Reticulate Evolution in Elatine L. (Elatinaceae), a Predominantly Autogamous Genus of Aquatic Plants",the study of hybridization in aquatic plants is complicated by rarity of flower production absence of roots and asexuality elatine is a cosmopolitan genus of aquatic flowering plants with about 25 species worldwide historically there has been little concern regarding hybridization in the genus due to the prevalence of autogamy i e self pollination which potentially limits xenogamous pollen transfer among the species two morphologically complex species elatine hexandra and e americana are the only known polyploids in the genus in previous phylogenetic analyses both species resolved incongruently in gene trees obtained from nuclear its versus plastid matk trnk and rbcl regions suspecting that the phylogenetic incongruence might be a consequence of past hybridization events we tested that hypothesis by conducting an additional phylogenetic analysis of elatine which incorporated sequences from a low copy nuclear gene phyc elatine hexandra and e americana were the only elatine species exhibiting intraspecific polymorphic sites i e heterozygosity in phyc allele specific amplification enabled us to resolve these polymorphisms for inclusion in a phylogenetic analysis along with the monomorphic phyc sequences within species obtained for the remaining elatine species the phyc tree confirmed that both polyploids probably are allopolyploids in a pattern consistent with the placement of the putative parental taxa in previous phylogenetic analyses of its matk trnk and rbcl sequence data the distributions of e americana and e hexandra along with their potential parental species are consistent with the proposed hybrid origins for the polyploids and provide additional clues on their geographic regions of origin,2017,0.968
"Extinct, obscure or imaginary: The lizard species with the smallest ranges",aim small geographic ranges make species especially prone to extinction from anthropogenic disturbances or natural stochastic events we assemble and analyse a comprehensive dataset of all the world s lizard species and identify the species with the smallest rangesâ those known only from their type localities we compare them to wide ranging species to infer whether specific geographic regions or biological traits predispose species to have small ranges location global methods we extensively surveyed museum collections the primary literature and our own field records to identify all the species of lizards with a maximum linear geographic extent of 10 km we compared their biogeography key biological traits and threat status to those of all other lizards results one in seven lizards 927 of the 6 568 currently recognized species are known only from their type localities these include 213 species known only from a single specimen compared to more wide ranging taxa they mostly inhabit relatively inaccessible regions at lower mostly tropical latitudes surprisingly we found that burrowing lifestyle is a relatively unimportant driver of small range size geckos are especially prone to having tiny ranges and skinks dominate lists of such species not seen for over 50 years as well as of species known only from their holotype two thirds of these species have no iucn assessments and at least 20 are extinct main conclusions fourteen per cent of lizard diversity is restricted to a single location often in inaccessible regions these species are elusive usually poorly known and little studied many face severe extinction risk but current knowledge is inadequate to properly assess this for all of them we recommend that such species become the focus of taxonomic ecological and survey efforts,2017,0.998
Climatic niche divergence and habitat suitability of eight alien invasive weeds in China under climate change,testing climatic niche divergence and modeling habitat suitability under conditions of climate change are important for developing strategies to limit the introduction and expansion of alien invasive weeds aiws and providing important ecological and evolutionary insights we assessed climatic niches in both native and invasive ranges as well as habitat suitability under climate change for eight representative chinese aiws from the american continent we used climatic variables associated with occurrence records and developed ecological niche models with maxent interestingly the climatic niches of all eight aiws diverged significantly between the native and invasive ranges the american continent and china furthermore the aiws showed larger climatic niche breadths in the invasive ranges than in the native ranges our results suggest that climatic niche shifts between native and invasive ranges occurred thus the occurrence records of both native and invasive regions must be considered when modeling and predicting the spatial distributions of aiws under current and future climate scenarios owing to high habitat suitability aiws were more likely to expand into regions of low latitude and future climate change was predicted to result in a shift in the aiws in qinghai and tibet regions of higher altitude as well as heilongjiang jilin liaoning inner mongolia and gansu regions of higher latitude our results suggest that we need measures to prevent and control aiw expansion at the country wide level,2017,0.218
"Repeated expansions and fragmentations linked to Pleistocene climate changes shaped the genetic structure of a woody climber, Actinidia arguta (Actinidiaceae)",the genetic structure of temperate plants was extremely affected by pleistocene climate changes in east asia however there are limited phylogeography studies in widely distributed species actinidia arguta actinidiaceae a widely distributed woody climber was chosen in this study twelve haplotypes were obtained using five chloroplast fragments no haplotypes were shared on two sides of the qingling dabie mt indicating a phylogeographic break the break was further revealed by analysis of molecular variance spatial analysis of molecular variance and ecological niche modelling the most recent common ancestor of all haplotypes showed global cooling and asian interior aridity at the pliocene pleistocene boundary may triggered the divergence two monophyletic lineages north and south lineage were revealed by bayesian phylogeny and the most parsimony network in north lineage mismatch analysis indicated an ancient spatial expansion distant distribution of closely related haplotypes indicated subsequent allopatric fragmentation the widespread haplotype h2 implied another significant range expansion in south lineage considerable sea level rise in east china sea may have triggered population fragmentation the nested clade analysis also indicated expansion and allopatric fragmentation were the main processes shaping the haplotype distributions so repeated range expansions and fragmentations have shaped the present genetic structure of a arguta,2017,0.424
"Potosia opaca, an Insect Newly Found on Canary Palm (Phoenix canariensis) in Tunisia",ornamental palm tree phoenix canariensis has been introduced in tunisia at late 1800 s and becomes a symbol of the city landscape in different localities p canariensis was seriously attacked since 2011 by the red palm weevil rpw rhynchophorus ferrugineus recently a new pest potosia opaca was detected in north of tunisia on living p canariensis trees solely or associated with rpw p opaca develops one generation per a year adult mating takes place in june july and females lay in humus inside decayed trunks of living palms tree larva lives in most accumulations of organic matter inside trunks between fibers and sheaths into close proximity with live wood the pupa stage lasts on average 50 days p opaca lives on living trees and seems not to be associated with tree mortality however it is essential to consider a number of indirect damage as this insect is likely becoming a vector of many pathogens,2017,0.338
Speciation And Ecological Niche Divergence Of A Boreal Forest Bird Species Complex,evolutionary biologists are supremely interested in the events that cause populations to diverge and speciate and the mechanisms that maintain divergence over time here i investigate the evolutionary history of a boreal bird species complex boreal bird species are co distributed diverged during the pleistocene and generally have patterns of genetic divergence that are consistent with a single â œborealâ clade in northern and eastern north america the gray cheeked thrush species complex however shows a possible species break in eastern north america between the bicknellâ s thrush catharus bicknelli and gray cheeked thrush catharus minimus using population genetic and genomic analyses of the largest sampling to date of either species i find that the eastern break indeed coincides with a species level divergence although low levels of admixture in a few individuals and one probable hybrid hint at the possibility of occasional hybridization species distribution models sdms of the last glacial maximum revealed that divergence may have been maintained by residence in different latepleistocene refugia however because speciation occurred mid pleistocene i examined the geographical context of divergence of the bicknellâ s thrush and gray cheeked thrush using multivariate analyses and ecological niche modeling techniques of local scale habitat data and broad scale climate and tree species distributions local scale habitat analyses reveal that the thrushes breed at sites with unique tree species composition physiognomy forest structure and ground cover characteristics furthermore broad scale analyses reveal that niche divergence rather than conservatism was the predominant pattern for these species suggesting that ecological divergence has played a role in their speciation this dissertation supports the hypothesis that the bicknellâ s thrush and gray cheeked thrush are distinctive species that breed in divergent local and broad scale niches and emphasizes that this species level divergence seems unique among boreal bird species,2017,0.99
"First record of Scybalocanthon nigriceps (Harold, 1868) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) in Rio Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil",the dung beetle scybalocanthon nigriceps harold 1868 is recorded in rio grande do sul state brazil for the first time at the moreno fortes biological reserve municipality of dois irmã os das missãµes northwest region of the state expanding the area of occurrence and distribution of this species in the country,2017,0.525
"The beetle fauna (Insecta, Coleoptera) of the Rawdhat Khorim National Park, Central Saudi Arabia",this study was conducted as a part of a comprehensive baseline survey of insect biodiversity of rawdhat khorim national park rknp central kingdom of saudi arabia ksa during this study a total of 262 coleoptera species belong to 182 genera in 35 families were identified of which 247 are named at a species level fifteen species 6 0 are apparently endemic to ksa thirty eight species are new to the known beetle fauna of ksa including 25 species reported from the arabian peninsula for the first time the families tenebrionidae 45 species scarabaeidae 34 species and carabidae 27 species were the most species rich families about 37 of the beetle abundance was represented by species of scarabaeidae especially aphodius ictericus ghardimaouensis balthasar karumia inaequalis pic dascillidae was also an abundant species approximately 43 5 of beetle species collected during this study are considered very rare taxa in rknp the rknp beetle fauna shows more affinity to sahro arabian 36 4 afrotropical sahro arabian 17 4 and palaearctic sahro arabian 10 5 twenty three species 9 3 are considered cosmopolitan or subcosmopolitan the data on month of collection method of collection and abundance status within rknp together with the distribution within ksa and the general distribution zoogeography of each species are presented,2017,0.998
Krzysztof Kluk's ‘Dykcyonarz roÅ›linny’ as an example of phytotherapeutical science development in 18th century Poland: A contribution to European heritage,â dykcyonarz roå linnyâ â dictionary of plantsâ by krzysztof kluk published in 1786 vol i 1787 vol ii and 1788 vol iii contains the descriptions of 1598 species of algae fungi and plants to a large extent with their therapeutic and utilitarian value the goal of this study was to present â dykcyonarz roå linnyâ as an important contribution to the european botanical heritage of the age of enlightenment the accession of the state of knowledge in the area of herbal medicine was studied with analysis of the monographs of selected medicinal species described in â dykcyonarz roå linnyâ against their historical and contemporary therapeutic relevance monographs were developed based on krzysztof kluk s own scientific experience supplemented by bibliographic references to ancient authors 16th and 17th century botanists and kluk s contemporary researchers the novelty of the â dykcyonarzâ was the regularisation of polish nomenclature and the simultaneous application of the linnaean classification system of plants for the first time in the history of polish botanical literature kluk used comprehensive knowledge of the morphology anatomy and physiology of plants he proposed accurate and comprehensible naming of the morphological parts of plants enabling their precise descriptions information on the therapeutic use of herbs is mostly confirmed by modern scientific research â dykcyonarz roå linnyâ by krzysztof kluk played an important role in systematising improving and popularising the knowledge of medicinal plants and incorporated unique ethnobotanical information valuable to modern scientists,2017,0.089
Report on the Southern Ocean Continuous Plankton Recorder (SO-CPR) Standards Workshop 2016: SCAR SO-CPR Database Expert Group,the â œsouthern ocean continuous plankton recorder so cpr survey standards workshopâ was held at the australian antarctic division on 12âš 16 december 2016 the purposes of the workshop were to confirm that consistent and high standards of species identification methodology and data quality were being maintained amongst the main analysts in the so cpr survey and to discuss future training methods including a so cpr manual that will include a counting rule book and a future road map for the so cpr program during the workshop we discussed a range of topics including taxonomic resolution issues particularly for foraminifera and euphausiid larval identification and staging laboratory methods preservation and storage with emphasis on maintaining correct ph shipboard techniques training methods data handling metadata database data sharing gap analysis spatial temporal data quantitative and future workshops conferences including comprehensive training workshops for emerging so cpr survey partners india we agreed that there should be a larger workshop every two years to ensure that the high standards of the so cpr program are maintained,2017,0.422
"A Multicriteria Analysis for Prioritizing Areas for Conservation of Oaks (Fagaceae: Quercus ) in Oaxaca, Southern Mexico",mexico has the fifth place among megadiverse countries and the southern part of the country belongs to the mesoamerican hotspot where oaxaca state has a very rich flora related to its intricate topography in this study a multicriteria analysis species richness rareness irreplaceability turnover and vulnerability was used to prioritize conservation areas in oaxaca using as model system the genus quercus oaks due to its high diversity and ecological importance our results indicate that the sierra madre de oaxaca smoax is the physiographic subprovince with the highest richness 38 species rareness and irreplaceability of quercus species followed by the montaã as y valles del occidente mvo 29 species the sierra madre del sur sms 25 species and the montaã as y valles del centro 20 species areas that have retained most primary vegetation cover from 2000 to 2010 are mainly in the smoax in the ixtlã n district and in the sms in the miahuatlã n district on the other hand mvo is the,2017,0.826
Shifts in the ecological niche of Lutzomyia peruensis under climate change scenarios in Peru,the peruvian andes presents a climate suitable for many species of sandfly that are known vectors of leishmaniasis or bartonellosis including lutzomyia peruensis diptera psychodidae among others in the present study occurrences data for lu peruensis were compiled from several items in the scientific literature from peru published between 1927 and 2015 based on these data ecological niche models were constructed to predict spatial distributions using three algorithms support vector machine svm the genetic algorithm for rule set prediction garp and maximum entropy maxent in addition the environmental requirements of lu peruensis and three niche characteristics were modelled in the context of future climate change scenarios a potential changes in niche breadth b shifts in the direction and magnitude of niche centroids and c shifts in elevation range the model identified areas that included environments suitable for lu peruensis in most regions of peru 45 77 and an average altitude of 3289 m a s l under climate change scenarios a decrease in the distribution areas of lu peruensis was observed for all representative concentration pathways however the centroid of the species ecological niche showed a northwest direction in all climate change scenarios the information generated in this study may help health authorities responsible for the supervision of strategies to control leishmaniasis to coordinate plan and implement appropriate strategies for each area of risk taking into account the geographic distribution and potential dispersal of lu peruensis,2017,0.254
Extraction of phenolic compounds from garden sage (salvia officinalisl) leaves using ultrasound,aim of the work evaluate quality of extracts from dried sage extracted using maceration and ultrasound,2017,0.354
An Ontology of Data Events Based on GBIF Data Papers Preliminary Findings,the data paper is an emerging genre of scientific publication that became gradually popular during the past decade deeply connected to the idea of data publication candela castelli manghi tani 2015 a data paper is a â œscholarly publication of a searchable metadata document describing a particular online accessible dataset or a group of datasets published in accordance to the standard academic practicesâ chavan penev 2011 p 3 the data paper arguably only aims at describing data objects which is the most notable difference between this format of scientific publication compared with classic scientific papers this new type of scientific publication potentially bound by academic practices and norms calls for an examination of how it represents the processes in which datasets are created manipulated and published and how this pattern is different from what has been identified by empirical laboratory studies such as the model of information transformation in scientific studies proposed by knorr 1981 â instrumental mode to decontextualize scientific results from â œunnecessaryâ technical details and â literary mode to recontextualize the results into constructed research purposes in scientific writings the present study is designed to examine how lifecycles of research data objects are represented in data papers so that to develop an empirical driven ontology to express data events and lifecycles described in these papers because of the exploratory nature of this study we selected all the 82 data papers curated by the global biodiversity information facility gbif which describe datasets that are shared in the gbif network a content analysis was conducted to manually identify and classify all data events inscribed in these papers our classification was further mapped to an existing data lifecycle our preliminary results are presented in this poster accompanied by a brief discussion of the results as well as the next step of the project,2017,0.058
"A Late Pleistocene Guloninae (Carnivora, Mustelidae) from South America (Argentina, Entre Ríos province), biogeographic implications",the record of guloninae presents mainly a holarctic distribution with only eira barbara occurring in south america sa this lineage immigrated from central america at least in the pleistocene the fossil record of guloninae for sa is limited to a few known specimens of eira from late pleistocene of brazil we report a new specimen of e barbara an upper carnassial from late pleistocene of entre rã os argentina we also discuss the taxonomic assignation of this new fossil and its paleoenvironmental relevance using species distribution modeling sdm the new material comes from ensenada creek salto ander egg formation from the late pleistocene between 120 and 60 ky bp the locality is farther south than its recent distribution and sdm shows low suitability values for such area which also indicates that the species is absent from this area in present time the p4 is bigger and the protocone has a more anterior position relative to the paracone than that of recent specimens of e barbara this new fossil indicates that e barbara had a wider distribution over the late pleistocene and if our interpretation is correct it has been present in sa at least since 120 60 ky bp the presence of e barbara in such a southern locality together with other taxa recorded in this site and the associated geological and paleoenvironmental evidences indicates warmer and more humid conditions compared with the current conditions which might have allowed a southern displacement of taxa more related to forested and tropical environments,2017,0.596
REVIEW ON SWERTIA CHIRATA BUCH.-H TO ITS PHYTOCHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGI,swertia chirata buch ham ex wall is a medicinal plant indigenous to temperate himalaya s chirata has an erect about 2 3 ft long stem the middle portion is round while the upper is four angled with a prominent decurrent line at each angle the plant is found at an altitude of 1200 3000m from kashmir to bhutan and in the khasi hills at 1200 1500m it can be grown in sub temperate regions between 1500 2100m altitudes main chemical constituent of s chirata are amarogentin swertiamarin mangiferin swechirin sweroside amaroswerin gentianine oleanolic acid ursolic acid swertanoone its medicinal usage is reported in indian pharmaceutical codex the british and the american pharmacopoeias and in different traditional systems of medicines such as the ayurveda unani and siddha the plant is used as a bitter tonic in ayurvedic herbal system to cure fever and for curing various other diseases this article briefly reviews the taxonomy classical review botany distribution habitat varieties substitutes phytochemistry biological activity and pharmacological effects of s chirata this is an attempt to compile and document information on different aspects of s chirata and highlight the need for research and development,2017,0.064
"Agabus didymus (Olivier, 1795) and A. dilatatus (Brullé, 1832), two species new to the fauna of Croatia with notes on the ecology and distribution of both species …",agabus didymus olivier 1795 and a dilatatus brullã 1832 are newly recorded for croatia the new records are given and the ecology and overall distribution of both species is mapped and discussed with the addition of these two species the number of species of dytiscidae known from croatia increases to 122,2017,0.682
Vocalization and Natural History in Populations of a Glassfrog Assigned to Nymphargus griffithsi in the Central Andes of Colombia,anurans of the family centrolenidae commonly known as glassfrogs have been a good model for understanding the evolution of breeding behavior and parental care in vertebrates delia et al 2013 2014 bravo valencia and delia 2015 mangold et al 2015 patterns of diversity hutter et al 2013 castroviejofisher et al 2014 and conservation biology mendoza and arita 2014 these studies are based on good knowledge of species biology however despite recent advances little is known about most species of glassfrogs,2017,0.482
"A PROLEGOMENON TO THE SYSTEMATICS OF SOUTH AMERICAN COTTONTAIL RABBITS (MAMMALIA, LAGOMORPHA, LEPORIDAE: SYLVILAGUS): DESIGNATION OF A NEOTYPE FOR S. BRASILIENSIS (LINNAEUS, 1758), AND RESTORATION OF S. ANDINUS (THOMAS, 1897) AND S. TAPETILLUS THOMAS, 191",a critical issue with species names derived from linnaeusâ 10th edition of the systema naturae is the lack of holotypes which in many instances has led to taxonomic confusion and uncertainty as well as an unstable taxonomy in the particular case of the south american cottontail currently known as sylvilagus brasiliensis linnaeus listed the type locality as â œamerica meridionali â or south america as a result s brasiliensis was ascribed a widespread distribution in north and south america over an area estimated as approximately 1 09 ã 107 km2 and containing upwards of 37 named subspecies in order to stabilize the taxonomy and initiate the process of illumination of evolutionary and biogeographic relationships among the south american cottontails we designate herein a neotype for s brasiliensis because the original description by linnaeus was based on the posthumously published 1648 work of georg marcgraff we restrict the type locality of s brasiliensis to coastal pernambuco state near recife where marcgraff largely was based we select and describe a neotype from that area speci cally from a forest fragment in the pernambuco endemism center of the atlantic forest biome collected at ca 7o50â 38 4â â s 35o6â 7 3â â w elevation ca 137 m niche modeling suggests that s brasiliensis as thus de ned may have a much more restricted range of 500â 700 km2 in a narrow distributional band along northern atlantic coastal brazil we compare the neotype of s brasiliensis to holotype material of s andinus and s tapetillus and nd suf cient distinction in characters and measurements between s brasiliensis s andinus and s tapetillus to retain the latter two as valid species level taxa molecular phylogenetic analyses based on a limited number of sequences from the mitochondrial 12s rrna and cytochromeâ b genes support the distinction between s andinus and s brasiliensis genetic distances also support the lack of close relationship between the two taxa with cytochromeâ b showing a patristic distance between the two of ca 15 the largest interspeci c distance among sylvilagus species previously examined for that locus our analysis of lineages through time suggests that the vast unreported taxonomic diversity among tropical sylvilagus is based on high speciation rates in the genus combined with unusually low extinction rates episodes of explosive speciation in sylvilagus hypothesized to be ecologically driven have been coeval with cooling events at the mioceneâ pliocene transition and following the piacenzan warm period late pliocene into the pleistocene warm periods have in contrast slowed down speciation rates the status of all described subspecies of s brasiliensis will require careful scrutiny and comparison with the neotype to ascertain and establish species limits because of a lack of specimens of neotropical sylvilagus in collections our study suffers from a typological schema however our approach from rst principlesâ examination of holotypesâ not only serves to establish a more stable taxonomic framework for neotropical sylvilagus but also further suggests that many of the existing taxa currently subsumed as subspecies within sylvilagus brasiliensis likely are valid species in their own right,2017,0.791
Building capacity in biodiversity monitoring at the global scale,human driven global change is causing ongoing declines in biodiversity worldwide in order to address these declines decision makers need accurate assessments of the status of and pressures on biodiversity however these are heavily constrained by incomplete and uneven spatial temporal and taxonomic coverage for instance data from regions such as europe and north america are currently used overwhelmingly for large scale biodiversity assessments due to lesser availability of suitable data from other more biodiversity rich regions these data poor regions are often those experiencing the strongest threats to biodiversity however there is therefore an urgent need to fill the existing gaps in global biodiversity monitoring here we review current knowledge on best practice in capacity building for biodiversity monitoring and provide an overview of existing means to improve biodiversity data collection considering the different types of biodiversity monitoring data our review comprises insights from work in africa south america polar regions and europe in government funded volunteer and citizen based monitoring in terrestrial freshwater and marine ecosystems the key steps to effectively building capacity in biodiversity monitoring are identifying monitoring questions and aims identifying the key components functions and processes to monitor identifying the most suitable monitoring methods for these elements carrying out monitoring activities managing the resultant data and interpreting monitoring data additionally biodiversity monitoring should use multiple approaches including extensive and intensive monitoring through volunteers and professional scientists but also harnessing new technologies finally we call on the scientific community to share biodiversity monitoring data knowledge and tools to ensure the accessibility interoperability and reporting of biodiversity data at a global scale,2017,0.054
Museum Specimens and their Meanings,there are many different kinds of museum but all share a basic mission to preserve and display artifacts and natural specimens among the larger such institutions are a number of traditional research museums which augment public exhibits with programs of scientific investigation and publication most research museums focus on natural history and the related fields of anthropology and archaeology though many libraries and art museums also conduct formal studies in social and cultural history victorian natural science was based on collecting and by the late nineteenth century every major western country had a national museum of natural history1 in what was still an age of exploration these institutions launched collecting expeditions to the jungles and shores of far flung lands returning with specimens that formed the core of vast collections often housed in elaborate and expensive buildings at the same time dedicated amateur collectors worked in association with the museums building up specialized private collections that eventually would form part of the institutionâ s holdings though most of the great national museums remain open today their research focus has gradually shifted from cataloging the fruits of voyages of discovery to new work in systematics conservation and environmental science their original collections nevertheless remain largely intact and are providing fertile ground for new forms of investigation2 many are affiliated with universities and their curators also teach the principles and methods of natural history research at all levels by comparison with the discover and describe enterprise of a century ago natural science in the 21st century is becoming increasingly holistic as the pan global issues of climate change and habitat destruction call on everyone scientists and citizens alike to participate in collecting collating and analyzing data 3 without a detailed understanding of the local effects of global change it becomes harder to create and implement workable solutions,2017,0.073
Morphological and ecological divergence in South American canids,aim closely related species are expected to be similar in their ecological attributes however clades colonizing new environments and diversifying due to ecological processes often show morphological and ecological divergence canids arrived in south america after the formation of the isthmus of panama and diversified to occupy a variety of habitats we test whether the diversification of this group was followed by divergence in species niches if ecological processes are associated with species divergences we expect to see species occupying distinct climatic niches showing divergent phenotypes and showing a close association between their phenotypes and ecological attributes location south america methods we use comparative and multivariate climatic niche analysis geometric morphometric skull and jaw and distance based phylogenetic regressions to test whether the diversification of south american canids was followed by divergence in their climatic niches and phenotypic traits results we found a pattern of continental niche occupancy north to south along a complex climatic gradient as species diverged they evolved distinct climatic tolerances climatic niche similarities are not related to species phylogenetic relationships indicating that closely related species may have distinct climatic tolerances our morphological analysis also showed strong phenotypic divergence between species our results suggest that these differences were related to climatic and trophic niches results show divergent phenotypes in both the skull and jaw and that there is a close association between phenotype and ecological strategies main conclusions our study integrates phylogenetic history ecological and morphological data to study the evolution of south american canids canid colonization of south america was followed by species ecological divergences our results support the hypothesis that ecological processes are the main drivers of diversification of this clade and illustrate a complex biogeographical history of ecological diversification of canids at continental scale,2017,0.971
Recurrent breakdowns of mutualisms with ants in the neotropical ant-plant genus Cecropia (Urticaceae),mutualisms could be evolutionarily unstable with changes in partner abundances or in the spatial context of interactions potentially promoting their dissolution we test this prediction using the defense mutualisms between species of the neotropical genus cecropia and azteca ants a new multigene phylogeny with representatives of all five genera of cecropieae most of them from the neotropics and half of the 61 species of cecropia shows the west african endemic musanga 2spp as sister to cecropia implying dispersal from the neotropics to africa with a molecular clock suggesting that this occurred about 23mya cecropia a genus of neotropical pioneer trees started diversifying ca 8mya we infer a single origin of specialized symbiosis with azteca within cecropia eight complete losses of this symbiosis and a potential partner shift involving the replacement of azteca by neoponera luteola ants niche space modeling based on geo referenced occurrences of over 9000 collections representing 58 of the 61 species of cecropia together with several comparative analyses implies that mutualism loss is concentrated at high altitudes and on caribbean islands with the surprisingly frequent breakdowns potentially facilitated by low species specificity of interacting cecropia and azteca mutualists,2017,0.762
A New Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Eupatorium adenophorum under Climate Change in China,eupatorium adenophorum has caused tremendous ecological and economic losses in china since the 1940s although a great deal of money has been expended on the prevention and control of the weed the situation is still deteriorating to identify its crucial environmental constraints an ecological niche factor analysis was employed the distribution of the weed was predicted by the maximum entropy model the results indicate that the temperature in winter is more influential than that in other quarters of a year and the maximum temperature in march restricts the spread of e adenophorum most currently the weed is mainly distributed in four provinces of southwest china from the present to the 2080s the center of l3 which has a potential distribution probability of 0 7 to 1 0 will move 53 km to the southwest accordingly the area of l3 will expand by 16 04 to prevent its further expansion we suggest differentiating the prevention and control measures according to the potential distribution levels predicted meanwhile the integration of various means of removal and comprehensive utilization of e adenophorum is highly encouraged additionally precautions should be taken in regions that have not yet or have been only slightly invaded by the e adenophorum,2017,0.204
20th century Betula pubescens subsp. czerepanovii tree- and forest lines in Norway,background georeferenced tree and forest line data has a wide range of applications and are increasingly used for e g monitoring of climate change impacts and range shift modelling as part of a research project registrations of previously re mapped tree and forest lines have been georeferenced the data described in this paper contains 100 re mapped registrations of betula pubescens subsp czerepanovii throughout norway all of the re mapped tree and forest line localities are georeferenced elevation and aspect are given elevational and spatial uncertainty are provided and the re mapping methods are explained the published data weremapped for the first time between 1819 and 1963 the same sites were re mapped between 1928 and 1996 but have until now been missing spatial coordinates the entries contain 40 x 2 tree lines and 60 x 2 forest lines most likely presenting the regionally highest registered tree and forest lines at the given time the entire material is stored and available for download through the gbif server new information previously the entries have been published in journals or reports partly in norwegian or german only without the provision of the spatial coordinates the specific locations have been unknown the material is now available for modelling and monitoring of tree and forest line range shifts the recordings are useful for interpretation of climate change impacts on tree and forest lines and the locations of re mapped tree and forest lines can be implemented in future monitoring projects since the recordings most likely provide the highest registered betula pubescens subsp czerepanovii locations within their specific regions they are probably representing the contemporary physiognomic range limits,2017,0.094
The Genomic Observatories Metadatabase (GeOMe): A new repository for field and sampling event metadata associated with genetic samples,the genomic observatories metadatabase geome http www geome db org is an open access repository for geographic and ecological metadata associated with biosamples and genetic data whereas public databases have served as vital repositories for nucleotide sequences they do not accession all the metadata required for ecological or evolutionary analyses geome fills this need providing a user friendly web based interface for both data contributors and data recipients the interface allows data contributors to create a customized yet standard compliant spreadsheet that captures the temporal and geospatial context of each biosample these metadata are then validated and permanently linked to archived genetic data stored in the national center for biotechnology informationâ s ncbiâ s sequence read archive sra via unique persistent identifiers by linking ecologically and evolutionarily relevant metadata with publicly archived sequence data in a structured manner geome sets a gold standard for data management in biodiversity science,2017,0.286
"Spatial, seasonal and climatic predictive models of Rift Valley fever disease across Africa",understanding the emergence and subsequent spread of human infectious diseases is a critical global challenge especially for high impact zoonotic and vector borne diseases global climate and land use change are likely to alter host and vector distributions but understanding the impact of these changes on the burden of infectious diseases is difficult here we use a bayesian spatial model to investigate environmental drivers of one of the most important diseases in africa rift valley fever rvf the model uses a hierarchical approach to determine how environmental drivers vary both spatially and seasonally and incorporates the effects of key climatic oscillations to produce a continental risk map of rvf in livestock as a proxy for human rvf risk we find rvf risk has a distinct seasonal spatial pattern influenced by climatic variation with the majority of cases occurring in south africa and kenya in the first half of an el niã o year irrigation rainfall and human population density were the main drivers of rvf cases independent of seasonal climatic or spatial variation by accounting more subtly for the patterns in rvf data we better determine the importance of underlying environmental drivers and also make space and time sensitive predictions to better direct future surveillance resources this article is part of the themed issue â one health for a changing world zoonoses ecosystems and human well beingâ,2017,0.094
"The biology, phenology and management of Australian weed-camel melon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. and Nakai)",citrullus lanatus camel melon is an important summer weed of australian fallows and can rapidly develop monocultural stands in sandy soils receiving adequate soil moisture as a general review on the biology of c lanatus this paper reviewed the current published literature including our recent published studies and also summarised extensive field and laboratory studies performed on its biology phenology and management in the south west slopes of new south wales recent population genetics studies conducted in australia have shown that the species is monotypic and was introduced as a single colonisation event in the mid 1800 s our studies showed genetic diversity in c lanatus to be non existent across australia and invasive ranges and highest in the native range in africa further genetic analyses have shown the species in australia is identical to citrullus lanatus var citroides the citron melon native to africa and now naturalised across africa asia and north america where it is a weedy nuisance or occasionally a food source for livestock and humans although limited genotypic diversity may facilitate potential biocontrol strategies for citrullus lanatus in australia biocontrol may be difficult due to its close genetic similarity to commercial watermelon a major horticultural crop in australia and more globally in australia field germination was observed to occur during a two to three month period between late spring and summer when warm soil temperatures occurred and field establishment was typically observed after significant rainfall events and was associated with soil moisture availability controlled environment seed dormancy findings indicated that dormancy was significantly reduced by storage at ambient laboratory temperatures over eighteen months seed dormancy was transient and appeared to be both physical and physiological in nature and was dependent on the period of after ripening during the post harvest period key reproductive attributes including high seed production self compatibility and pollination facilitated by several non specific pollinators have likely resulted in increased spread of this weed in australia and more globally management of c lanatus is achieved using iwm strategies including pre and post emergent applications of herbicides as well as limiting fruit production by cultural practices including mowing grazing and cultivation,2017,0.32
Use of necrophagous insects as evidence of cadaver relocation: myth or reality?,the use of insects as indicators of post mortem displacement is discussed in many texts courses and tv shows and several studies addressing this issue have been published although the concept is widely cited it is poorly understood and only a few forensic cases have successfully applied such a method the use of necrophagous insects as evidence of cadaver relocation actually involves a wide range of biological aspects distribution microhabitat phenology behavioral ecology and molecular analysis are among the research areas associated with this topic this article provides the first review of the current knowledge and addresses the potential and limitations of different methods to evaluate their applicability this work reveals numerous weaknesses and erroneous beliefs as well as many possibilities and research opportunities,2017,0.081
A new species of Bertiella (Melanommataceae) from Brazil and a key to accepted species,during an inventory of ascomycetes in the semi arid region of brazil an undescribed specimen of bertiella was found it is described and illustrated as b gelatinosa sp nov based on morphological data the new fungus is distinguished by the size of the ascospores which are surrounded by a gelatinous sheath a synoptic table and a key to all known species of bertiella are presented,2017,0.561
Distribution and diversity of reptiles in Albania: a novel database from a Mediterranean hotspot,although albania has a rich reptile fauna efforts to reveal its diversity have so far been limited to fill this gap we collected available published and unpublished museum collections online sources records of reptile occurrences and conducted several expeditions to search for reptiles in areas with few or no previous records our georeferenced database contains 3731 records of 40 species from between 1918 and 2015 based on this comprehensive dataset we prepared distribution maps for each reptile species of the country applying spatial statistics we revealed that overall sampling effort was clustered with hotspots associated with easily accessible areas and natural heritage sites the maximum number of species per cell was 26 with an average of seven cells harbouring large reptile diversity were located along the adriatic and ionian coasts on the western slopes of south albanian mountains i e in areas generally considered as balkans biodiversity hotspots or potential historical refugia we found that species presence and diversity is strongly influenced by landscape features diversity of land cover altitudinal variation temperature and precipitation variation explained the observed pattern in our models our study presents the largest database of reptile occurrences to date and is the first to analyse reptile diversity patterns in albania the database and the diversity patterns can provide a basis for future macroecological studies and conservation planning,2017,0.836
Multilocus phylogeny and statistical biogeography clarify the evolutionary history of major lineages of turtles,despite their complex evolutionary history and the rich fossil record the higher level phylogeny and historical biogeography of living turtles have not been investigated in a comprehensive and statistical framework to tackle these issues we assembled a large molecular dataset maximizing both taxonomic and gene sampling as different models provide alternative biogeographical scenarios we have explicitly tested such hypotheses in order to reconstruct a robust biogeographical history of testudines we scanned publicly available databases for nucleotide sequences and composed a dataset comprising 13 loci for 294 living species of testudines which accounts for all living genera and 85 of their extant species diversity phylogenetic relationships and species divergence times were estimated using a thorough evaluation of fossil information as calibration priors we then carried out the analysis of historical biogeography of testudines in a fully statistical framework our study recovered the first large scale phylogeny of turtles with well supported relationships following the topology proposed by phylogenomic works our dating result consistently indicated that the origin of the main clades pleurodira and cryptodira occurred in the early jurassic the phylogenetic and historical biogeographical inferences permitted us to clarify how geological events affected the evolutionary dynamics of crown turtles for instance our analyses support the hypothesis that the breakup of pangaea would have driven the divergence between the cryptodiran and pleurodiran lineages the reticulated pattern in the ancestral distribution of the cryptodiran lineage suggests a complex biogeographic history for the clade which was supposedly related to the complex paleogeographic history of laurasia on the other hand the biogeographical history of pleurodira indicated a tight correlation with the paleogeography of the gondwanan landmasses,2017,0.612
The first megafossil record of Goniophlebium (Polypodiaceae) from the Middle Miocene of Asia and its paleoecological implications,the first megafossil record of goniophlebium macrosorum xu et zhou n sp is described from the middle miocene climate optimum mmco 15 2â 16 5 ma sediments in wenshan southeastern yunnan china the fossils are with well preserved leaf pinnae and in situ spores and are represented by pinnatifid fronds and crenate pinna margins with oval sori almost covering 3 5 area of areolae on each side of the main costa in situ spores have verrucate outer ornamentation and are elliptical in polar view and bean shaped in equatorial view the venation is characterized by anastomosing veins with simple included veinlets forming 2 3 order pentagonal areolae all these morphological characters confirm the assignment of this species to the genus goniophlebium polypodiaceae now is distributed in southeastern asia to australia among living species g macrosorum shows the closest morphological affinity to the extant g subamoenum the discovery of g macrosorum suggests that goniophlebium occurred in this region no later than the middle miocene moreover the result of this study is consistent with the paleoenvironment of wenshan flora as reconstructed in previous research which concluded that modern evergreen broadleaved forests with complex ecological structure have been possibly established in southwestern china since at least 15 ma,2017,0.592
Bias and perspectives in insect conservation: A European scale analysis,insects are among the most diverse and abundant organisms on earth and they play a major role in ecosystem functioning to protect them from decline some conservation measures have been put in place based primarily on threatened species lists this is the case in europe where 123 of the 105 000 known european insect species are currently protected yet how were these few species selected are those species representative of the european entomofauna is it possible for a conservation policy based on the protection of only 0 12 of described species to be effective in this study we aimed to measure bias in the selection of species for conservation by comparing protected and unprotected species in europe to this end we considered 15 characteristics divided into five main categories â taxonomyâ â morphologyâ â dietâ â knowledgeâ and â distributionâ we investigated bias in species selection and found that protected species were significantly larger better known more widespread and more multicoloured than a randomly selected set of unprotected species moreover butterflies dragonflies and grasshoppers were overrepresented as were nectarivorous and saproxylophagous species in contrast hymenopterans and dipterans together representing 40 of european entomofauna do not appear on the current list of protected species to address this bias we propose recommendations to improve the protection of insects at the european scale including making lists more â dynamicâ introducing new criteria and a paradigm shift towards conserving assemblages and ecological function existing technical and societal means could be used to achieve an integrative conservation approach for insects,2017,0.921
Evolutionary flexibility in five hummingbird/plant mutualistic systems: testing temporal and geographic matching,aim partners in co evolutionary interactions must be ecologically interdependent and at least at some stage have matching traits and more or less overlapping ranges as co evolution is a process neither the mutual dependence nor the trait and range matching are expected to be static or perfect here we investigate the extent of evolutionary flexibility in tight pollination mutualisms between hummingbirds and plants ranging from straight billed species to sicklebills location the americas methods the five considered pollination mutualisms are between the following hummingbird and plant species calypte anna and ribes speciosum grossulariaceae basilinna xantusii and arbutus peninsularis ericaceae two species of sephanoides and tristerix aphyllus corymbosus loranthaceae two species of eutoxeres and 34 species of curved corolla centropogon campanulaceae and six species of oreotrochilus and seven species of chuquiraga asteraceae while ecological interdependence and trait matching in these mutualisms are well established geographic occurrence data and molecular clock based ages for the 10 clades were newly compiled results we found matching bird and plant stem ages in two of the five systems and much older bird than plant ages in the other three the implied adaptation of plant populations to already existing hummingbird species fits with the modelled distributions in three of the systems the ranges of the plants overlap those of their pollinators by 90 conversely the range overlap between the bird species and the plant species they pollinate is much less than that surprisingly the age mismatch was greatest in the eutoxeres centropogon system in spite of the perfect morphological fit among bills and corollas illustrating the evolutionary flexibility of these mutualisms and the apparently rapid â additionâ of further plant species main conclusions these findings illuminate the macroevolutionary assembly of hummingbird plant mutualisms which has been highly dynamic even in specialized systems with perfect morphological trait fitting,2017,0.935
Bioactive Seco-Lanostane-Type Triterpenoids from the Roots of Leplaea mayombensis,fractionation of the ethyl acetate soluble extract of the roots of leplaea mayombensis afforded two new 3 4 seco lanostane type triterpenoids leplaeric acids a and b 1 2 the new lanostane type triterpenoid leplaeric acid c 3 and six known natural products 5â 10 derivatization of the main constituent 1 afforded the dimethyl ester 4 the monoamide 11 and diamide 12 for sar studies the structures of these compounds were established through spectroscopic methods and a single crystal x ray diffraction analysis was used to confirm the relative configuration of compound 1 these lanostane derivatives are unique since they are the first c 21 oxygenated lanostanes isolated from plant sources preliminary biological assays against the mda mb 231 breast cancer cell line showed that compounds 1 2 4 and 11 have modest cytotoxic activity compound 2 was the most active with an ic50 of 55 â 7 î m from these results the amides 11 12 derived from triterpenoid 1 were found to be less active than the derived esters 2 4,2017,0.354
Vermicomposting and anaerobic digestion − viable alternative options for terrestrial weed management − a review,the management of terrestrial weed is of great concern for the scientific community as these weeds cause adverse effect in different ecosystems like forest agriculture and urban the widespread of these weeds by their adaptive capability and morphological advancement is difficult to control parthenium hysterophorous lantena camara sacharam spontaenium azaratum conyzoides this are the weeds spread all over the world there are various management practices employed for the control of this weeds but all of these practices have some drawbacks those are neither environment friendly nor economical in this paper a review has been done to evaluate various alternative management practices for these terrestrial weeds and to analyze their feasibility vermicomposting and anaerobic digestion can be viable alternative option which is cost effective as well there are few studies regarding vermicomposting and anaerobic digestions of terrestrial weeds are done,2017,0.135
"A revision of the Solanum elaeagnifolium clade (Elaeagnifolium clade; subgenus Leptostemonum, Solanaceae)",the solanum elaeagnifolium clade elaeagnifolium clade contains five species of small often rhizomatous shrubs from deserts and dry forests in north and south america members of the clade were previously classified in sections leprophora nycterium and lathyrocarpum and were not thought to be closely related the group is sister to the species rich monophyletic old world clade of spiny solanums the species of the group have an amphitropical distribution with three species in mexico and the southwestern united states and three species in argentina solanum elaeagnifolium occurs in both north and south america and is a noxious invasive weed in dry areas worldwide members of the group are highly variable morphologically and this variability has led to much synonymy particularly in the widespread s elaeagnifolium we here review the taxonomic history morphology relationships and ecology of these species and provide keys for their identification descriptions full synonymy including designations of lectotypes and nomenclatural notes illustrations distribution maps and preliminary conservation assessments are provided for all species,2017,0.908
Explicitly integrating a third dimension in marine species distribution modelling,marine species distribution modelling sdm studies frequently pair surface environmental variables with deep water occurrence records despite the disparity of environmental conditions at the surface and at depth straightforward methods which require only simple modification of existing sdm techniques have been recently proposed as a means to overcome this problem nevertheless subsequent marine sdm studies have not adopted these modified techniques continuing to draw conclusions from analyses that associate 2 dimensional 2d i e surface environmental data with occurrence points distributed in a 3 dimensional 3d space i e across a range of depths these include studies involving multi species macroecological assessments where sdms are rarely tailored to suit each species modelled here we use traditional 2d and modified 2 5d sdm methods to emphasise the importance of incorporating depth in marine ecological modelling we demonstrate that ignoring depth may lead to misrepresentative and potentially misleading results and show that relatively straightforward 2 5d techniques provide an enhanced representation of the environmental niche and therefore produce more representative range estimates than their 2d counterparts explicit 3d approaches need to be developed to better represent marine diversity and distributions and to test macroecological generalisations,2017,0.34
Acoustic monitoring data of avian species inside and outside the evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident,large scale land abandonment and reconstruction activity has altered the ecosystem structure in the evacuation area for the fukushima daiichi power plant accident in 2011 despite social concerns about changes in the avian assemblages that occurred after the accident publicly accessible data are quite limited we engaged in acoustic monitoring of birds using digital voice recorders from 2014 in and around the fukushima evacuation zone all monitoring sites were located within schoolyards including those that had been converted to community centers to examine the bird assemblages in the urban and rural landscapes that were heavily altered by land abandonment due to the nuclear plant accident a digital voice recorder was installed at each monitoring site during mayâ july and we recorded 20 min a day using timer recording mode we divided the audio data into 1 min segments and identified species occurred in sampled segments by experts these data represent the presence absence records from 52 sites monitored in 2014 in 2014 we identified the species for 7138 segments in total and 68 species occurred we are continuing to monitor and intend to update the dataset with new observations hereafter our dataset will help people to recognize the status and dynamics of avian assemblage inside the evacuation zone and will contribute to promote open science in avian ecological studies,2017,0.764
"Wetlands, wild Bovidae species richness and sheep density delineate risk of Rift Valley fever outbreaks in the African continent and Arabian Peninsula",rift valley fever rvf is an emerging vector borne viral zoonosis that has significantly impacted public health livestock health and production and food security over the last three decades across large regions of the african continent and the arabian peninsula the potential for expansion of rvf outbreaks within and beyond the range of previous occurrence is unknown despite many large national and international epidemics the landscape epidemiology of rvf remains obscure particularly with respect to the ecological roles of wildlife reservoirs and surface water features the current investigation modeled rvf risk throughout africa and the arabian peninsula as a function of a suite of biotic and abiotic landscape features using machine learning methods intermittent wetland wild bovidae species richness and sheep density were associated with increased landscape suitability to rvf outbreaks these results suggest the role of wildlife hosts and distinct hydrogeographic landscapes in rvf virus circulation and subsequent outbreaks may be underestimated these results await validation by studies employing a deeper field based interrogation of potential wildlife hosts within high risk taxa,2017,0.545
The prioritisation of a short list of alien plants for risk analysis within the framework of the Regulation (EU) No. 1143/2014,thirty seven alien plant species pre identified by horizon scanning exercises were prioritised for pest risk analysis pra using a modified version of the eppo prioritisation process designed to be compliant with the eu regulation 1143 2014 in stage 1 species were categorised into one of four lists â a residual list eu list of minor concern eu observation list and the eu list of invasive alien plants only those species included in the latter proceeded to the risk management stage where their priority for pra was assessed due to medium or high spread potential coupled with high impacts twenty two species were included in the eu list of invasive alien plants and proceeded to stage 2 four species ambrosia trifida egeria densa fallopia baldschuanica and oxalis pes caprae were assigned to the eu observation list due to moderate or low impacts albizia lebbeck clematis terniflora euonymus japonicus lonicera morrowii prunus campanulata and rubus rosifolius were assigned to the residual list due to a current lack of information on impacts similarly cornus sericea and hydrilla verticillata were assigned to the residual list due to unclear taxonomy and uncertainty in native status respectively chromolaena odorata cryptostegia grandiflora and sphagneticola trilobata were assigned to the residual list as it is unlikely they will establish in the union under current climatic conditions in the risk management stage euonymus fortunei ligustrum sinense and lonicera maackii were considered a low priority for pra as they do not exhibit invasive tendencies despite being widely cultivated in the eu over several decades nineteen species were identified as having a high priority for a pra acacia dealbata ambrosia confertiflora andropogon virginicus cardiospermum grandiflorum celastrus orbiculatus cinnamomum camphora cortaderia jubata ehrharta calycina gymnocoronis spilanthoides hakea sericea humulus scandens hygrophila polysperma lespedeza cuneata lygodium japonicum pennisetum setaceum prosopis juliflora sapium sebiferum pistia stratiotes and salvinia molesta,2017,0.672
"NEMATODA: RHABDITIDA, ARAEOLAIMIDA, MONYSTERIDA, CHROMADORIDA, ENOPLIDA and ALAIMIDA (Bacterivorous and some Predatory Nematodes)",earlier most of the researches were focused on plant feeders because of the economic losses to agriculture free living nematodes bacterial and fungal feeders have remained ignored for a long time due to their apparent low economic value however recent researches proved that these groups are important components of food chains and possess several attributes that make them useful ecological indicators freckman 1988 bongers 1990 neher 2001 the bacterivorous bacterial feeders nematodes occur in several orders like rhabditida alaimida monhysterida aerolaimida enoplida etc bacterivorous nematodes affect organic matter decomposition in several ways they include feeding on microbes and regulating the rate at which organic compounds are degraded into inorganic ions dispersing microbes throughout the soil and water feeding on saprophytic and plant pathogenic bacteria and influencing the composition of the microbial community serving as prey and a source of nutrients for fauna and microflora such as soil nematophagous fungi affecting the distribution and function of plant symbionts freckman 1988 nematodes can be used as bioindicators of soil health because they are ubiquitous and have diverse feeding behaviors and life strategies ranging from colonizers to persisters some nematodes can survive harsh polluted or disturbed environments better than others and some have short life cycles and respond to environmental changes rapidly yeates et al 2003 neher 2001,2017,0.834
"Rediscovery lichen Lobaria pulmonaria, apparently extinct in the Valencian Community",the lichen lobaria pulmonaria becoming considered extinct in the valencian community e spain has been newly found in the north of castellã n the large period since it was cited here by cavanilles in the 18th century and by j vilanova in the 19th century confers additional importance to this discovery,2017,0.292
Evidence of niche shift and invasion potential of Lithobates catesbeianus in the habitat of Mexican endemic frogs,invasive alien species are one of most severe threats to biodiversity and natural resources these biological invasions have been studied from the niche conservatism and niche shifts perspective niche differentiation may result from changes in fundamental niche or realized niche or both in biological invasions niche differences between native and non native ranges can appear through niche expansion niche unfilling and niche stability the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus is an invasive species that can have negative impacts on native amphibian populations this research examines the climate niche shifts of this frog its potential range of expansion in mexico and the risk of invasion by bullfrog in the habitats of 82 frog species endemic to mexico that based on their climatic niche similarity were divided in four ecological groups the results indicate that species in two ecological groups were the most vulnerable to invasion by bullfrog however the climate niche shifts of l catesbeianus may allow it to adapt to new environmental conditions so species from the two remaining groups cannot be dismissed as not vulnerable this information is valuable for decision making in prioritizing areas for conservation of mexican endemic frogs,2017,0.834
Taxonomy assignment approach determines the efficiency of identification of metabarcodes in marine nematodes,precision and reliability of barcode based biodiversity assessment can be affected at several steps during acquisition and analysis of the data identification of barcodes is one of the crucial steps in the process and can be accomplished using several different approaches namely alignment based probabilistic tree based and phylogeny based number of identified sequences in the reference databases affects the precision of identification this paper compares the identification of marine nematode barcodes using alignment based tree based and phylogeny based approaches because the nematode reference dataset is limited in its taxonomic scope barcodes can only be assigned to higher taxonomic categories families phylogeny based approach using evolutionary placement algorithm provided the largest number of positively assigned metabarcodes and was least affected by erroneous sequences and limitations of reference data comparing to alignment based and tree based approaches,2017,0.095
Inferring long-distance dispersal modes in American amphitropically disjunct species through adaptive dispersal structures,premise of the study a repeated pattern of american amphitropical disjunct species or sister species distributed on either side of the equator has long fascinated botanists but the modes of these disjunctions remain untested we evaluated diaspore morphology to generate hypotheses on probable dispersal mechanisms methods the sizes and structures of diaspores habit habitat distribution and dispersal units were collected for 108 species from literature searches and herbarium specimens variation was evaluated with summary statistics ï 2 tests with monte carlo simulations anovas and the nonparametric mannâ whitney test key results seeds were the dispersing diaspore in 38 0 of the species 45 4 were dispersed as fruits and the remaining were dispersed as infructescences or spores diaspores were epizoochorous 52 8 anemochorous 20 4 achorous 15 7 endozoochorous 8 3 and hydrochorous 2 8 epizoochory was significantly greater than expected zoochory occurred more frequently than expected when considering achorous diaspores as animal dispersed most species were associated with wetland woodland and grassland habitats an anova revealed that diaspores associated with hydrochory were larger and anemochory was smaller all other syndromes were not significantly different conclusions botanists have long held the assumption that bird migrations are responsible for amphitropical disjunctions our results support this hypothesis with the majority of these events occurring by external attachment of small fruits however our results also indicate that anemochory might play a greater role in producing amphitropical distributions than previously thought and at a greater rate than endozoochory or hydrochory,2017,0.814
Marine Species Distributions: From data to predictive models,throughout most of human history knowledge of species diversity and their respective distributions was an essential skill for survival and civilization in this respect it is not surprising that distributions of species and the mechanisms governing the distributions has intrigued humans from the early dawn of humanity up till present some of the earliest scientific writings about distributions of species and the interrelationships between species and the environment in which they live are found in history of animals by aristotle and enquiry into plants by theophrastus mayr 1985 magner 2002 more recently the link between species distributions geography and the physical environment was noted by the likes of von humboldt and bonpland 1805 watson 1847 de candolle 1855 wallace 1876 and grinnell 1904 gradually leading to the advent of the research fields ecology and biogeography,2017,0.729
Automated assembly of a reference taxonomy for phylogenetic data synthesis,taxonomy and nomenclature data are critical for any project that synthesizes biodiversity data as most biodiversity data sets use taxonomic names to identify taxa open tree of life is one such project synthesizing sets of published phylogenetic trees into comprehensive summary trees no single published taxonomy met the taxonomic and nomenclatural needs of the project here we describe a system for reproducibly combining several source taxonomies into a synthetic taxonomy and we discuss the challenges of taxonomic and nomenclatural synthesis for downstream biodiversity projects,2017,0.243
Sustainability of Jaborandi in the eastern Brazilian Amazon,the genus pilocarpus rutaceae includes the only known species able to synthesize pilocarpine an imidazole alkaloid largely employed in glaucoma and xerostomia treatments pilocarpus microphyllus stapf ex wardleworth has a broad geographical distribution in the northeast brazilian territory produces a substantial amount of pilocarpine and constitutes the only known natural source of this metabolite intensive extractivism and deforestation over recent decades have led to substantial declines in yields plant populations and genetic diversity of p microphyllus currently it is recognized as a threatened species and the few remaining areas harboring large populations and potentially high genetic diversity experience substantial farming and mining pressures in addition extractivism in these areas is still occurring by local communities because of the high market demand for pilocarpine conservation programs and sustainable management are urgently needed to maintain the long term viability of this species in natural areas here we highlighted the socioeconomic importance of this species showing the massive reduction in the harvesting of raw materials and the consequences for the local people we identified new potential areas of natural occurrence including locations beyond the brazilian borders using species distribution modeling we showed well synchronized patterns of vegetative and reproductive phenophases which may facilitate the management of this species finally we emphasized the importance of cultivating p microphyllus in a sustainable and productive way involving the local communities and companies as a conservation strategies,2017,0.928
Global biogeography of seed dormancy is determined by seasonality and seed size: a case study in the legumes,seed dormancy is expected to provide ecological advantages by adjusting germination to the favorable growth period however many species produce nondormant seeds particularly in wet tropical forests a biogeographic pattern that is not well accounted for in current models we hypothesized that the global distribution of dormant seeds derives from their adaptive value in predictably fluctuating i e seasonal environments however the advantage conferred by dormancy might ultimately depend on other seed attributes particularly size this general model was tested within a phylogenetically informed framework using a data set comprising 216 000 world wide observations of fabaceae spanning three orders of magnitude in seed size and including both dormant and nondormant seeds our results confirmed our hypothesis nondormant seeds can only evolve in climates with long growing seasons and or in lineages that produce larger seeds conversely dormancy should be evolutionarily stable in temperate lineages with small seeds when the favorable season is fleeting seed dormancy is the only adaptive strategy based on these results we predict that within a given lineage taxa producing larger nondormant seeds will necessarily predominate in aseasonal environments while plants bearing small dormant seeds will be dominant under short growing seasons,2017,0.091
"On Open Access, data mining and plant conservation in the Circumpolar North with an online data example of the Herbarium, University of Alaska Museum of the North",with the advent of global online data sharing initiatives few limits remain to using the treasure troves of museum data for biodiversity and conservation the university of alaska herbarium ala is fully online with metadata over 260 000 specimens representing the largest collection of alaska plants anywhere can be data mined we found that most specimens were collected through the national park serviceâ s inventory and monitoring program at denali national park and preserve the majority of specimens were collected along roads trails coastline or waterways while high altitude remote and pristine sampling locations are underrepresented still actual field efforts varied over the years peaking in the late 1980s from 1 400 specimens were collected per sampling location and on average 40 species were obtained per collection event at a unique location our analysis presents a first data mining inventory of such open access data allowing for a rapid assessment quality control and predictive modeling involving automated high performing machine learning algorithms and mapping analysis using open geographic information systems gis concepts our research sets a first template for more investigations in the arctic and we briefly compare with selected specimen details from adjacent landscapes like the russian far east canada and the circumpolar north,2017,0.849
Ex situ conservation of plant diversity in the world’s botanic gardens,botanic gardens conserve plant diversity ex situ and can prevent extinction through integrated conservation action here we quantify how that diversity is conserved in ex situ collections across the worldâ s botanic gardens we reveal that botanic gardens manage at least 105 634 species equating to 30 of all plant species diversity and conserve over 41 of known threatened species however we also reveal that botanic gardens are disproportionately temperate with 93 of species held in the northern hemisphere consequently an estimated 76 of species absent from living collections are tropical in origin furthermore phylogenetic bias ensures that over 50 of vascular genera but barely 5 of non vascular genera are conserved ex situ while botanic gardens are discernibly responding to the threat of species extinction just 10 of network capacity is devoted to threatened species we conclude that botanic gardens play a fundamental role in plant conservation but identify actions to enhance future conservation of biodiversity,2017,0.931
"Patterns, biases and prospects in the distribution and diversity of Neotropical snakes",motivation we generated a novel database of neotropical snakes one of the world s richest herpetofauna combining the most comprehensive manually compiled distribution dataset with publicly available data we assess for the first time the diversity patterns for all neotropical snakes as well as sampling density and sampling biases main types of variables contained we compiled three databases of species occurrences a dataset downloaded from the global biodiversity information facility gbif a verified dataset built through taxonomic work and specialized literature and a combined dataset comprising a cleaned version of the gbif dataset merged with the verified dataset spatial location and grain neotropics behrmann projection equivalent to 1â ã 1â time period specimens housed in museums during the last 150 years major taxa studied squamata serpentes software format geographical information system gis results the combined dataset provides the most comprehensive distribution database for neotropical snakes to date it contains 147 515 records for 886 species across 12 families representing 74 of all species of snakes spanning 27 countries in the americas species richness and phylogenetic diversity show overall similar patterns amazonia is the least sampled neotropical region whereas most well sampled sites are located near large universities and scientific collections we provide a list and updated maps of geographical distribution of all snake species surveyed main conclusions the biodiversity metrics of neotropical snakes reflect patterns previously documented for other vertebrates suggesting that similar factors may determine the diversity of both ectothermic and endothermic animals we suggest conservation strategies for high diversity areas and sampling efforts be directed towards amazonia and poorly known species,2017,0.88
"The Sud Expert Plantes Développement Durable (SEP2D) Program, Supporting Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) Achievement and the Aichi Targets",in keeping with the 2011â 2020 strategic plan adopted by the 10th meeting of the conference of the parties cop to the convention on biological diversity cbd in nagoya japan in october 2010 france scaled up its biodiversity action with a new national biodiversity strategy nbs for 2011â 2020 target 16 aims at strengthening international solidarity and ensuring greater mainstreaming of biodiversity into french development assistance and target 17 addresses reinforcing green diplomacy and international governance for biodiversity in this context france launched in 2015 the sud expert plantes dã veloppement durable sep2d program a five year multilateral program aiming at sustaining the scientific communities in 22 francophone countries in western and central africa the indian ocean and southeast asia focusing on the sustainable management of plant biodiversity sep2d is supported by agence franã aise de dã veloppement afd the french global environment facility gef and ministã re des affaires ã trangã res et du dã veloppement international maedi as well as other public and private partners among which are the musã um national d histoire naturelle mnhn and the institut de recherche pour le dã veloppement ird sep2d is making every effort to bolster partnerships and collaboration on plant biodiversity building bridges between research education and societal demands in this regard it encourages the scientific community to work on applied topics such as the major challenges associated with conservation and tropical plant biodiversity assessment it advocates the national authorities public stakeholders private sector operators and associations to meet societal demands by developing a culture of public private partnership and backing vocational training for the green economy job market the program steering committee includes the institutional funders southern representatives and key partners it relies on a scientific and pedagogical council articulated around four themes forestry and mines the valorization of plants for medicinal cosmetics and agrobiodiversity purposes research and collections and training and awareness the program and its context planned actions for research innovation training and transversal activities are presented in this paper,2017,0.052
Revealing areas of high nature conservation importance in a seasonally dry tropical forest in Brazil: Combination of modelled plant diversity hot spots and threat patterns,the caatinga biome has been identified as one of the important wilderness areas on earth however less than 1 of the region is under strictly legal protection although seasonally dry tropical forests sdtfs are globally highly endangered there is an urgent need to increase the understanding of diversity pattern and threaten status of caatinga plant species to preserve the unique biodiversity and protect endangered species species distribution modelling sdm can support strategic decisions in nature conservation for poorly researched tropical regions this study provides the first highly representative spatially explicit overview of plant diversity and threat status for the entire caatinga a semi arid area in northeast brazil for this purpose we developed a a stacked species distribution modelling s sdm approach to predict quantitatively floristic species richness and patterns of threatened plant species and b a combined approach of diversity hot spots and hubs of threatened species to derive conservation importance units ciu to contribute to improved nature reserve management we applied the modelling technique maxent to establish predictive distribution models with 22 uncorrelated predictors including climate topography solar radiation and soil information at a high spatial resolution of 30 arc seconds approx 1km spatial patterns of species richness and threat status were derived by stacking 1062 plant species and 27 endangered species respectively these outputs were compared to two levels of protected areas brazilian and international standards and intensive human land use patterns to define a set of recommendations for conservation management our complementary s sdm approach showed that our predicted cius covered an area of 24 across the entire biome whereas only 7 of the caatinga is currently protected based on the brazilian standards we found that apart from an excellent overlap of 38 between cius and the current protected areas a substantial proportion of cius 89 was predicted outside the existing reserve network moreover our findings enable targeted surveys to be done in order to enhance conservation efforts and ensure the efficient use of available resources in this poorly studied tropical region future upcoming local and regional studies could focus on a multi taxonomic approach including e g insects reptiles or mammals as a holistic perspective towards biodiversity conservation,2017,0.97
"Applying species distribution modelling to a data poor, pelagic fish complex: the ocean sunfishes",aim conservation management of vulnerable species requires detailed knowledge of their spatial and temporal distribution patterns within this context species distribution modelling sdm can provide insights into the spatial ecology of rarely encountered species and is used here to explore the distribution pattern of ocean sunfishes mola mola and m ramsayi both species are prone to high levels of bycatch and are classified respectively as globally vulnerable and not assessed by the iucn although their overall range and drivers of distribution remain poorly defined here we constructed suitable habitat models for mola spp on a global scale and considered how these change seasonally to provide a much needed baseline for future management location global methods sighting records collected between 2000 and 2015 were used to build sdms and provided the first global overview of sunfish seasonal distribution post hoc analyses provided a quantitative assessment of seasonal changes in total range extent and latitudinal shifts in suitable habitat results mola is a widely distributed genus however sightings exhibited significant spatial clustering most notably in coastal regions sdms suggested that mola presence was strongly dependent on sea surface temperatures with highest probability of presence between 16 and 23â c the models identified significant variation in seasonal range extent with latitudinal shifts throughout the year although large areas of suitable year round habitat exist globally main conclusions we provided the first assessment of mola distribution on a global scale with evidence of a wide latitudinal range and significant clustering in localized â œhotspotsâ notably between 40â 50â n by assessing the results of sdms alongside evidence from published satellite tagging studies we suggest that the species within the genus mola are highly mobile acting as facultative seasonal migrants by identifying key suitable habitat alongside potential movement paths this study provides a baseline that can be used in active conservation management of the genus,2017,0.787
Projections of Future Suitable Bioclimatic Conditions of Parthenogenetic Whiptails,this paper highlights the results of bioclimatic envelope modeling of whiptail lizards belonging to the aspidoscelis tesselata species group and related species we utilized five species distribution models sdm including generalized linear model random forest boosted regression tree maxent and multivariate adaptive regression splines to develop the present day distributions of the species based on climate driven models alone we then projected future distributions of whiptails using data from four climate models run according to two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios rcp 4 5 and rcp 8 5 results of a tesselata species group suggested that climate change will negatively affect the bioclimatic habitat and distribution of some species while projecting gains in suitability for others furthermore when the species group was analyzed together climate projections changed for some species compared to when they were analyzed alone suggesting significant loss of syntopic areas where suitable climatic conditions for more than two species would persist in other words syntopy within members of the species group will be drastically reduced according to future bioclimatic suitability projections in this study,2017,0.942
Niche conservatism and spread of seaweed invasive lineages with different residence time in the Mediterranean Sea,marine algae invasions attract a lot of interest as they are altering the structure of marine ecosystems however niche dynamics and risk predictions of marine invasions integrating phylogeographic structure in the analyses have not yet been investigated in this study we perform a comprehensive analysis of two invasive lineages of caulerpa taxifolia with different residence time in the mediterranean sea for a better understanding of their invasive processes we performed lineage based and species based niche models to assess the risk of invasion the spatial overlap and the variables delimiting the distribution of the two lineages we also compared the effect of using different extents on niche overlap and niche shift analyses intraspecific models with pooled occurrences accurately found two separate regions susceptible of invasion for each invasive lineage in the mediterranean while species based predictions underestimated invaded regions the invasive lineages spread across colder coastal areas than the species altogether we provide evidence that different invasive lineages of algae show dissimilar environmental responses and invasive ranges that are not detectable by species based analyses moreover niche overlap and niche shift analyses seem to depend greatly on the geographical extent used according to the most appropriate extent worldwide the invaded range did not show niche shift and thus no evidence of a post introduction adaptation scenario was found as both lineages invaded habitats similar to their australian native locations actions to prevent further spreading of the most recent invasive lineage are needed,2017,0.675
Big data integration: Pan-European fungal species observations' assembly for addressing contemporary questions in ecology and global change biology,species occurrence observations are increasingly available for scientific analyses through citizen science projects and digitization of museum records representing a largely untapped ecological resource when combined with open source data there is unparalleled potential for understanding many aspects of the ecology and biogeography of organisms here we describe the process of assembling a pan european mycological meta database climfun and integrating it with open source data to advance the fields of macroecology and biogeography against a backdrop of global change initially 7 3 million unique fungal species fruit body records spanning nine countries were processed and assembled into 6 million records of more than 10 000 species this is an extraordinary amount of fungal data to address macro ecological questions we provide two examples of fungal species with different life histories one ectomycorrhizal and one wood decaying to demonstrate how such continental scale meta databases can offer unique insights into climate change effects on fungal phenology and fruiting patterns in recent decades,2017,0.625
Crumble analysis of the historic sympatric distribution between Dendrortyx macroura and D. barbatus (Aves: Galliformes),in mexico the long tailed wood partridge dendrortyx macroura is distributed in the mountains of the trans mexican volcanic belt sierra madre del sur and sierra norte de oaxaca while the bearded wood partridge d barbatus is distributed in the sierra madre oriental smo there is a controversial overlap in distribution sympatry between these two species on the cofre de perote and pico de orizaba volcanoes smo and sierra norte de oaxaca based on the ambiguity and current lack of information regarding the distribution of these two species in order to disentangle the possible presence of both species in the area of sympatry we conducted a crumble analysis of the historic knowledge regarding the geographic distribution of both species based on a review of scientific literature database records the specimen examination in ornithological collections field work and a reconstruction of the distribution range based on ecological niche modeling our results support the presence of only one of these two species in the overlapping area rejecting the existence of such an area of sympatry between the two species we discuss alternative hypotheses that could explain the historically reported distribution pattern 1 an error in the single existing historical record 2 a possible local extinction of the species and 3 the past existence of interspecific competition that has since been resolved under the principle of competitive exclusion we propose that the santo domingo river in northern oaxaca and western slope of the sierra madre oriental mark the distribution limits between these species,2017,0.89
Fucaceae: A Source of Bioactive Phlorotannins,fucaceae is the most dominant algae family along the intertidal areas of the northern hemisphere shorelines being part of human customs for centuries with applications as a food source either for humans or animals in agriculture and as remedies in folk medicine these macroalgae are endowed with several phytochemicals of great industrial interest from which phlorotannins a class of marine exclusive polyphenols have gathered much attention during the last few years due to their numerous possible therapeutic properties these compounds are very abundant in brown seaweeds such as fucaceae and have been demonstrated to possess numerous health promoting properties including antioxidant effects through scavenging of reactive oxygen species ros or enhancement of intracellular antioxidant defenses antidiabetic properties through their acarbose like activity stimulation of adipocytes glucose uptake and protection of î pancreatic cells against high glucose oxidative stress anti inflammatory effects through inhibition of several pro inflammatory mediators antitumor properties by activation of apoptosis on cancerous cells and metastasis inhibition among others these multiple health properties render phlorotannins great potential for application in numerous therapeutical approaches this review addresses the major contribution of phlototannins for the biological effects that have been described for seaweeds from fucaceae in addition the bioavailability of this group of phenolic compounds is discussed,2017,0.017
Ten years of progress in the study of Hadena -Caryophyllaceae nursery pollination. A review in light of new Mediterranean data,nursery pollination interactions are widespread between caryophyllaceae species and the pollinating seed predator hadena moths noctuidae a previous revision of this system was based mainly on widely distributed species in the north and center of europe however there was no information from the mediterranean region one of the global diversification centers of both taxa the aim of this work is to review the progress on the knowledge of this nursery pollination system since the first revision providing unpublished data of caryophyllaceae hadena associations from spain furthermore we conduct a preliminary network analysis to illustrate the advantages of this approach to explore nursery pollination systems in the last 10 years most of studies have focused on selective forces exerted by hadena on the plant reproductive traits through pollination and predation hadena moths are selectively attracted by flower scents flower sizes and number of flowers per plant are also crucial for attraction of the moths caryophyllaceae species may have developed some phenological chemical morphogical and physiological adaptations to avoid overexploitation by larvae the evolution of sexual dimorphism in caryophyllaceae may be a consequence of mutualistic and antagonistic interactions other pollinators as well as an anther smut fungus and larval parasitoids are important selective agents that can shift this interaction between mutualism and parasitism whereas most studies highlighted the parasitic nature of the hadena caryophyllaceae interaction we need further analyses on the pollinator effectiveness of hadena and on the spatio temporal variation of the interaction outcome based on our field surveys and bibliographic records we found evidence of nursery pollination between 22 noctuid species mostly hadena and 70 caryophyllaceae species from 11 genera mostly silene and dianthus from these interactions 26 were new for the iberian peninsula and 18 were not described before results of our preliminary network analysis suggest that these interactions are constrained by phylogenetic geographical and ecological filters,2017,0.629
Growth and Drought Responses of Three Prunus spinosa L. Ecotypes,conservationists and some government guidelines emphasize preferential use of local population propagules with the assumption that they are locally adapted and preserve genetic diversity we evaluated growth and morphological physiological and biochemical responses to drought of three populations of prunus spinosa to check whether they are inclined to local adaptation two german and one italian population of prunus spinosa l were cultivated in 5 litre pots on a container area for years and later transferred to a greenhouse for drought experiments plants were subjected to three levels of watering regime two drought treatments of irrigating 25 fast stress or 50 slow stress of lost water and well watered control plants growth was evaluated during the cultivation period while morphological physiological and biochemical responses to drought were evaluated in the greenhouse there was no evident advantage of local adaptation but the phenological stage fruiting proved to have an influential effect on drought responses the german populations bb and rpf did not differ in any aspect but the italian population ita differed from the german population bb in growth fruit load and the intensity of leaves shedding the italian population also significantly declined its stomata conductance in day three after drought initiation but not further as drought progressed concerning biomarkers bb increased glucose sucrose fructose and proline in both stress treatments ita increased glucose and fructose due to slow stress while only fructose increased due to fast stress ita sucrose concentration was unaffected by stress treatment german and italian populations differed significantly only in fast stress bb had higher sucrose concentration than ita however ita had higher proline concentration than bb,2017,0.332
Microbial Biogeography and Specificity as a Tool of Identification in Forensic Caseworks-A Review based on Meta analysis,microorganisms are dispersed on exterior and interior surfaces within homes workplaces and schools with the prospective to cause disease and impact human health variety of materials and environment like air soil and water represent a distinctive prospect to discover the dissemination of microorganisms in built and natural environments because of high densities of human population and occurrence of various evolution processes such wide and high diversity in microorganism distribution created unique bio geographical and specific pattern of microbial communities therefore in the present review various studies carried out to assess the biogeographical and environmental specific pattern of microorganisms were used for meta analysis and discussed for their utility in forensic caseworks,2017,0.245
The contribution of small collections to species distribution modelling: A case study from Fuireneae (Cyperaceae),the recent and rapid digitization of biodiversity data from natural history collection nhc archives has enriched collections based data repositories this data continues to inform studies of species geographic distributions here we investigate the relative impact of plant data from small natural history collections collections with 100 000 specimens on species distributional models in an effort to document the potential of data from small nhcs to contribute to and inform biodiversity research we modelled suitable habitat of five test case species from fuireneae cyperaceae in the united states using specimen records available via the global biodiversity information facility and that of data ready to mobilize from two regional small herbaria data were partitioned into three datasets based on their source 1 collections based records from large nhcs accessed gbif 2 collections based records from small nhcs accessed from gbif and 3 collections based records from two small regional herbaria not yet mobilized to gbif we extracted and evaluated the ecological niche represented for each of the three datasets by applying dataset occurrences to 14 environmental factors and we modelled habitat suitability using maxent to compare the represented distribution of the environmental values among the datasets our analyses indicate that the data from small nhcs contributed unique information in both geographic and environmental space when data from small collections were combined with data from large collections species models of the ecological niche resulted in more refined predictions of habitat suitability indicating that small collections can contribute unique occurrence data which enhance species distribution models by bridging geographic collection gaps and shifting modelled predictions of suitable habitat inclusion of specimen records from small collections in ongoing digitization efforts is essential for generating informed models of a species niche and distribution,2017,0.767
"Brooding sea anemones (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Actiniaria): paragons of diversity in mode, morphology, and maternity",brooding has been reported in at least 57 species of sea anemone more than three quarters 44 57 of the species that are known to brood have been described since the last comprehensive treatment of brooding in this lineage different authors focusing on different taxonomic groups within sea anemones over the last 115 years have collectively produced an imprecise and inconsistent set of terminology with respect to brooding in general and to the variety of conditions of brooding in particular in this review i characterize brooding as a behavior in which offspring are retained by the adult to at least the juvenile stage in contrast with the more common release of eggs embryos or larvae brooding occurs in two primary modes internal and external in which offspring may be produced via sexual or asexual means i categorize structures associated with external brooding in three types pits chambers and grooves early inferences that external brooding has a primarily bipolar distribution continue to be supported with current data but it is doubtful that small size and simultaneous hermaphroditism are correlated with brooding in sea anemones finally i identify open questions about brooding in sea anemones and suggest future lines of research that will broaden our understanding of this phenomenon,2017,0.499
"Geographic distribution of the African weaver ant, Oecophylla longinoda",african weaver ants oecophylla longinoda latreille 1802 are conspicuous arboreal ants well known in the humid tropics of africa weaver ants build large distinctive nest structures in trees by binding together clusters of leaves using a silk like substance although many regard weaver ants as pests due to their bite local people also use weaver ants for food medicine and as biological control agents here i mapped the geographic distribution of o longinoda based on 500 site records from 34 countries angola benin burkina faso burundi cameroon central african republic congo brazzaville congo kinshasa equatorial guinea ethiopia gabon gambia ghana guinea guinea bissau ivory coast kenya liberia malawi mali mozambique niger nigeria rwanda sao tomã and principe senegal sierra leone south africa south sudan tanzania togo uganda zambia and zimbabwe the documented range of o longinoda is confined almost entirely within areas with tropical group a climates as defined by the kã ppen geiger system rainforest af monsoon am and savanna aw this range map based on site records corrects inaccuracies in earlier published range maps and allows p,2017,0.297
Origins of North American arid-land Verbenaceae: More than one way to skin a cat,premise of the study verbenaceae originated and initially diversified in south america in wet forest habitats they have diversified extensively in arid habitats in both south and north america this study aims to understand the origin of the north american arid land members of verbenaceae methods a phylogenetic approach is used to examine four genera aloysia citharexylum glandularia verbena in three distinct clades with representatives in north american deserts and disjunct south and north american distributions phylogenetic analyses were conducted using maximum likelihood and bayesian approaches analyses included both plastid and nuclear dna regions and include the first study of citharexylum and an expanded sampling of tribe verbeneae glandularia and verbena ancestral areas were reconstructed for each group key results north american desert species of aloysia and glandularia were likely derived from ancestors in arid temperate south america perhaps by long distance dispersal the pattern for verbena was less clear with evidence from plastid dna implicating an andean dispersal route to the north american clade whereas nuclear data suggest that the andean and north american species resulted from independent dispersals from southern south america a previously unrecognized clade of andean verbeneae was discovered raising the possibility of an andean origin of verbena or verbena and glandularia north american desert species of citharexylum represent multiple independent origins from mesic habitat ancestors in mesoamerica conclusions north american arid zone verbenaceae are derived from south and central american ancestors via multiple avenues including long distance amphitropical dispersal andean migration corridors and in situ evolution of desert adapted species,2017,0.663
Range shifting species reduce phylogenetic diversity in high latitude communities via competition,under anthropogenic climate change many species are expanding their ranges to higher latitudes and altitudes resulting in novel species interactions the consequences of these range shifts for native species patterns of local biodiversity and community structure in high latitude ecosystems are largely unknown but critical to understand in light of widespread poleward expansions by many warm adapted generalists using niche modelling phylogenetic methods and field and laboratory studies we investigated how colonisation of scotland by a range expanding damselfly ischnura elegans influences patterns of competition and niche shifts in native damselfly species and changes in phylogenetic community structure colonization by i elegans was associated with reduced population density and niche shifts in the resident species least related to i elegans lestes sponsa reflecting enhanced competition furthermore communities colonized by i elegans exhibited phylogenetic underdispersion reflecting patterns of relatedness and competition our results provide a novel example of a potentially general mechanism whereby climate change mediated range shifts can reduce phylogenetic diversity within high latitude communities if colonising species are typically competitively superior to members of native communities that are least closely related to the coloniser,2017,0.852
Historical biogeography and ecological niche modelling of the Asimina-Disepalum clade (Annonaceae): role of ecological differentiation in Neotropical-Asian disjunctions and diversification in Asia,the asimina disepalum clade annonaceae subfam annonoideae tribe annoneae includes a major neotropical asian biogeographical disjunction we evaluate whether this disjunction can be explained by the eocene boreotropics hypothesis which relies on the existence of extensive boreotropical forests during the late palaeocene early eocene thermal maximum 52â 50 ma followed by disruption of boreotropical vegetation during post eocene cooling molecular dating using an uncorrelated relaxed molecular clock ucld model with two fossil calibrations ancestral range estimation and ecological niche modelling across evolutionary time were performed our focus was the geographical origin of disepalum and general biogeographic patterns within this genus comparison of ecological tolerance among extant species and niche reconstructions at ancestral nodes within the clade enabled insights in likely migration routes of lineages as well as evaluating the role of bioclimatic ecological differentiation in the diversification of disepalum within southeast asia,2017,0.36
IDENTIFICATION OF LICHEN MOTHS IN THE GENUS CISTHENE Walker 1854,twenty species of the lichen moth genus cisthene walker erebidae arctiinae lithosiini occur in the united states ferguson opler 2006 schmidt opler 2008 lafontaine schmidt 2010 pohl et al 2016 of which at least 13 species are found in the central and eastern us heppner 2003 knudson bordelon 2010 moth photographers group 2017 the original descriptions of many of the species in early literature are brief and ambiguous some species were described when only one or a few specimens were available thus the full range of variation was not understood stretch 1885 ottolengui 1899 kellogg 1906 barnes mcdunnough 1913 barnes benjamin 1925 other descriptions encompassed what would later be determined to be multiple species walker 1854 harvey 1877 snow 1905 barnes mcdunnough 1916 1918 knowlton 1967 was the latest author to address the identification of the north american cisthene fauna in detail,2017,0.86
A Preliminary Description of the Mogollon Highlands Ecoregion,in this paper we describe and present the results of our efort to establish a spatial delineation of the mogollon highlands regionâ an ecologically fascinating north american transition zone of continental importance tis dramatic landscape of escarpments canyons mesas deserts and high conifer forestsâ where the sonoran desert of the basin and range province meets the redrock country of the colorado plateau and the southern rocky mountains where the northern limits of some species coexist with the southern limits of othersâ is a land of high biological ecological and cultural diversity tis area of dramatic elevational gradients at a continental scale biogeographic crossroads is especially well suited for studies that can provide understanding of global climate change and the capacity of species and ecological communities to adapt,2017,0.399
Presence and distribution of Chimaeriformes in the Colombian Caribbean Sea,georeferenced maps are presented for the chimaeriformes species mentioned for colombian caribbean waters chimaera cubana neoharriotta carri hydrolagus alberti and h mirabilis comments on their distribution depth range and relative abundance patterns are given,2017,0.463
Global risk levels for corn rusts ( Puccinia sorghi and Puccinia polysora ) under climate change projections,common rust puccinia sorghi and southern rust puccinia polysora are two of the most important foliar corn diseases worldwide these fungi have caused severe economic loss to corn yields worldwide the current and future potential distribution of these diseases was modelled with climex using the known current geographic locations of the rusts growth and stress indices the models were run under the a2 scenario using csiro mk3â 0 and miroc h for 2050 and 2100 the current projection shows areas with marginal to optimal suitability in all the continents the models for future projections display a general reduction in the southern hemisphere and increase in the northern hemisphere especially for the southern rust the overlay of the general circulation models produce an estimation of the common areas under risk for future climate conditions for the simultaneous occurrence for both corn rusts with a reduction of the medium and high risk categories by 2100 this study highlights the possible effects of climate change at a global level for common and southern rust as well as the risk of occurrence of both diseases in common areas for future climate that could be particularly harmful for crops,2017,0.156
Citizen Science as a Tool for Expanding Environmental Monitoring Capabilities of the Convention on Biological Diversity,the united nations convention on biological diversity cbd was established in 1992 in order to provide a framework for the preservation of biodiversity while ensuring pathways for development the success of the treaty is dependent on the capability and action of the nations that are party to the convention unfortunately many underdeveloped countries lack the environmental monitoring capability necessary to inform the governance functions of the united nationâ s convention this has led to gaps in environmental monitoring that undermine the cbd citizen science represents an emerging set of tools well suited for conducting environmental monitoring citizen science is an effective method for conducting monitoring in countries that lack traditional scientific institutions currently citizen science is not formally being promoted within the cbd therefore there exists an opportunity to increase the use of citizen science in the cbd to address the existing environmental monitoring gaps this paper identifies the wilson center as a pivotal actor in the creation of new scientific techniques within the cbd based on the wilson centerâ s role this paper makes the following policy proposal 1 the wilson center should prepare a report to inform the cbdâ s subsidiary body on science technical and technological advice sbstta about the viability of citizen science for conducting biological diversity monitoring 2 the wilson center should recommend that the conference of parties of the cbd move to adopt a sbstta recommendation to use citizen science styled projects for monitoring tools as part of its national biodiversity action and strategy plans while there are diverse sets of issues facing the cbd basic environmental monitoring underpins the effectiveness and capability of the regime by expanding and improving environmental monitoring the cbd is better suited for executing its mission and achieving its goals therefore the policy goal of this recommendation is to expand environmental monitoring coverage to more globally acceptable levels,2017,0.049
First record of a cold-period myxomycete species Dianema depressum (Lister) Lister in Poland,a myxomycete species dianema depressum is reported for the first time in poland it has been found in the jaszowiec stream valley localized in the beskid åšlä ski mts the carpathians in november 2015 the cool period seems to be the typical time of the speciesâ occurrence,2017,0.498
Assessment of global warming impact on biodiversity using the extinction risk index in LCIA: a case study of Japanese plant species,purpose there has been an increasing number of studies on species extinction because of global warming based on estimations of changes in species distributions life cycle impact assessment methods do not have a biodiversity damage factor for global warming that uses the extinction risk index in this study a method for determining the extinction risks of individual species per unit co2 emission was proposed and test calculations of the extinction risks of 216 species of japanese vascular plants were performed we also examined the possibility of determining local and global extinction risk factors using this method methods this method uses the expected increase in the number of extinction species eines which is defined as the inverse of the time to extinction as the extinction risk index procedures for determining the extinction risks of individual species per unit co2 emission eines species kg are as follows first based on the base scenario of co2 emission a niche based species distribution model is used to estimate species distribution areas in 2000 and 2100 and calculate the distribution area decrease over 100 years the number of years before the zero distribution area is then determined by assuming that the decrease is constant extinction risk is defined as the inverse of this time the final step is to determine the extinction risk at specific co2 emissions in addition to the base emission scenario and divide the difference in the extinction risk by the additional amount of co2 emissions results and discussion the distribution areas of 216 species of japanese vascular plants having southern distribution limits were estimated to decrease by 40â 85 in 100 years the accuracy of the estimation was sufficient according to the value of area under the curve auc considering climate models and migration conditions the extinction risk per unit co2 emission was estimated between ∠0 6 ã 10∠18 and 4 7 ã 10∠18 eines species kg we converted the normalization values of the extinction risk of japan for the 216 species to compare impact of land use changes and waste processing with that of global warming on the species we found that global warming has smaller impact compared with land use changes and larger impact compared with waste processing conclusions a method for estimating the extinction risks of species per unit co2 emission was proposed and it can be used to determine the local and global extinction risk factors of co2,2017,0.876
"Paintings predict the distribution of species, or the challenge of selecting environmental predictors and evaluation statistics",aim species distribution modelling a family of statistical methods that predicts species distributions from a set of occurrences and environmental predictors is now routinely applied in many macroecological studies however the reliability of evaluation metrics usually employed to validate these models remains questioned moreover the emergence of online databases of environmental variables with global coverage especially climatic has favoured the use of the same set of standard predictors unfortunately the selection of variables is too rarely based on a careful examination of the species ecology in this context our aim was to highlight the importance of selecting ad hoc variables in species distribution models and to assess the ability of classical evaluation statistics to identify models with no biological realism innovation first we reviewed the current practices in the field of species distribution modelling in terms of variable selection and model evaluation then we computed distribution models of 509 european species using pseudo predictors derived from paintings or using a real set of climatic and topographic predictors we calculated model performance based on the area under the receiver operating curve auc and true skill statistics tss partitioning occurrences into training and test data with different levels of spatial independence most models computed from pseudo predictors were classified as good and sometimes were even better evaluated than models computed using real environmental variables however on average they were better discriminated when the partitioning of occurrences allowed testing for model transferability main conclusions these findings confirm the crucial importance of variable selection and the inability of current evaluation metrics to assess the biological significance of distribution models we recommend that researchers carefully select variables according to the species ecology and evaluate models only according to their capacity to be transfered in distant areas nevertheless statistics of model evaluations must still be interpreted with great caution,2017,0.458
Distribution of the North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) in Northern California,the north american porcupine erethizon dorsatum is one of the most widely distributed mammals in north america but recent reports have suggested declines in parts of its range in the west in california little is known about the historical or current status of the porcupine and maps of its distribution conflict considerably nevertheless the species is of interest to natural resource managers for much of the 1900s foresters and others primarily treated porcupines as pests because of the undesirable damage they inflict feeding on trees and gnawing on manmade items in search of salt more recently porcupines have been recognized for their role in promoting forest structure and diversity and as potential prey for the fisher pekania pennanti we collected records of porcupine occurrence in the northern part of california since the beginning of the 20 th century relying on government and private databases reports from the public and other sources these records confirm that porcupines may occur in most major regions and habitat types across northern california in contrast to many published range maps the contemporary distribution of porcupines in the state most closely resembles the california wildlife habitat relationships system cwhr range map which is based on projections of suitable habitat we are unable to offer deeper insight into trends of abundance and possible changes in distribution because these records are likely spatiotemporally correlated with observer effort this work is a first step and we recommend that a broader statewide effort be conducted to better understand the distribution abundance and ecology of north american porcupines in california,2017,0.63
Predicting the Global Potential Distribution of Four Endangered Panax Species in Middle-and Low-Latitude Regions of China by the Geographic Information System for Global Medicinal Plants (GMPGIS),global biodiversity is strongly influenced by the decrease in endangered biological species predicting the distribution of endangered medicinal plants is necessary for resource conservation a spatial distribution modelâ geographic information system for global medicinal plants gmpgis â is used to predict the global potential suitable distribution of four endangered panax species including panax japonicas t nees c a meyer and panax japonicas var major burkill c y wu k m feng distributed in low and middle latitude panax zingiberensis c y wu k m feng and panax stipuleanatus c t tsai k m feng in low latitude regions of china based on seven bioclimatic variables and 600 occurrence points results indicate that areas of p japonicus and p japonicus var major are 266 29 ã 105 and 77 5 ã 105 km2 respectively which are mainly distributed in china and america by contrast the areas of p zingiberensis and p stipuleanatus are 5 09 ã 105 and 2 05 ã 105 km2 respectively which are mainly distributed in brazil and china p japonicus has the widest distribution among the four species the data also indicate that the mean temperature of coldest quarter is the most critical factor this scientific prediction can be used as reference for resource conservation of endangered plants and as a guide to search for endangered species in previously unknown areas,2017,0.32
Pseudephemerum nitidum (Hedw.) loeske (bryophyta) rediscovered in Brazil,the sole record of the genus pseudephemerum recorded from brazil consists of the type specimen of ephemerella caldensis mã ll hal which is currently a synonym of p nitidum hedw loeske while conducting a revision of the ditrichaceae from brazil several specimens of pleuridium were evaluated that proved to be this species and thus after 154 years we rediscovered pseudephemerum nitidum in brazil in the most recent checklists of brazilian mosses this species was excluded for lack of knowledge this is the second record in brazil and the third in south america,2017,0.785
Twenty species of bitunicate ascomycetes new to Norway,we here report the following 20 species of non lichenized bitunicate ascomycetes as new to norway antealophiotrema brunneosporum botryosphaeria corticola capronia munkii capronia normandinae capronia parasitica capronia spinifera exosporiella fungorum helminthosporium oligosporum jahnula aquatica lophiostoma fuckelii lophiostoma rugulosum massaria macra massaria platanoidea massarina rubi moristroma quercinum navicella elegans poetschia buellioides splanchnonema pupula splanchospora ampullacea and trematosphaeria hydrela fifteen of the species belong in the class dothideomycetes and five in the subclass chaetothyriomycetidae of class eurotiomycetes,2017,0.576
Faunistic Collections of Demersal and Benthic Species from Mauritania,thousands of invertebrates and fishes were collected and preserved throughout the maurit surveys and are currently part of the biological reference collections of the spanish institute of oceanography ieo almost 800 specimens 567 lots of 365 species have already been catalogued in the marine fauna collection ieo mã laga spain and 250 specimens 135 lots of 64 species in the decapoda and stomatopoda crustacean collection ieo cã diz spain thousands of lots are still waiting to be catalogued at the ieo tenerife canary islands spain and around 13 300 specimens 3015 lots of 360 species have been identified and preserved in the invertebrate collections of the marine zoology laboratory at the university of vigo where 1257 lots are pending final identification this collection is the largest and most important natural archive of biodiversity of mauritanian deep water fauna and has enabled molecular genetic analyses biogeographic studies resolution of issues concerning the description of communities and assemblages and the discovery of new species and new records natural collections are extremely beneficial to society they provide further knowledge on biodiversity and are essential for understanding current biological and ecological challenges extremely rare or invaluable samples such as those from the marine deep ecosystems in our study are made available to researchers accessibility to specimens and to their online datasets through collaborative worldwide biodiversity networks is vital for the best use of collections which must be maintained and further strengthened by scientific institutions,2017,0.821
"Ixion Alderslade, 2001 and Ixioninae Alderslade, 2001 (Coelenterata: Octocorallia: Xeniidae): correctio errorum",in 2001 a festschrift was published in the bulletin of the biological society of washington to honour frederick ted bayer preeminent octocoral taxonomist and zoologist emeritus of the smithsonian institution on his 80th birthday the volume was edited by stephen cairns and charles messing and contained papers and articles by many of bayerâ s colleagues and past students the contents included a paper by the first author alderslade 2001 within which a number of new genera were described and a new xeniid subfamily was proposed not long after the volume was published a nomenclatural problem in the paper was brought to the attention of the first author sometime after this a second problem became apparent one of imperfect technique that also has nomenclatural implications despite good intentions for prompt action to correct the situation the task slipped furtively into the first authorâ s â œmust not forget to do thatâ receptacle a container already over full and seemingly with very limited attention holding ability all too easy to blame on â œbusy life syndromeâ miriam r this very belated note finally addresses the nomenclatural issues,2017,0.14
DNA barcode-based survey of Trichoptera in the Crooked River reveals three new species records for British Columbia DNA barcode-based survey of Trichoptera in the Crooked River reveals three new species,anthropogenic pressures on aquatic systems have placed a renewed focus on biodiversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates by combining classical taxonomy and dna barcoding we identified 39 species of caddisflies from the crooked river a unique and sensitive system in the southernmost arctic watershed in british columbia our records include three species never before recorded in british columbia lepidostoma togatum lepidostomatidae ceraclea annulicornis leptoceridae and cheumatopsyche harwoodi hydropsychidae three other specimens may represent new occurrence records and a number of other records seem to be substantial observed geographic range expansions within british columbia peerj preprints https doi org 10 7287 peerj preprints 3034v1 cc by 4 0 open access rec abstract 9 anthropogenic pressures on aquatic systems have placed a renewed focus on biodiversity of 10 aquatic macroinvertebrates by combining classical taxonomy and dna barcoding we identified 11 39 species of caddisflies from the crooked river a unique and sensitive system in the 12 southernmost arctic watershed in british columbia our records include three species never 13,2017,0.243
A Hister Beetle Carcinops pumilio (Erichson) (Insecta: Coleoptera: Histeridae: Dendrophilinae: Paromalini),the hister beetle carcinops pumilio erichson is a predator and natural enemy of the pestiferous house fly musca domestica linnaeus figure 1 carcinops pumilio has a broad world distribution and is associated with wild bird nests and bat guano piles this speciesâ ability to limit house fly populations in poultry production settings led to its study as an augmentative biological control agent bills 1973 kaufman et al 2002a 2002b achiano and giliomee 2005,2017,0.48
Agricultural Informatics Contributions to Biodiversity Science and Biodiversity Assessments,agricultural biodiversity has long been ignored by the traditional biodiversity community and the aggregators of their data the arnaud et al 2016 gbif final report of the task group on gbif data fitness for use in agrobiodiversity provided recommendations primarily regarding crops and their wild relatives but did not address wider issues of crop pests plant diseases and their vectors arthropods and management systems that affect the greater biodiversity of those crops the biodiversity information standards tdwg 2016 symposium agricultural biodiversity standards semantics highlighted the current status of agrobiodiversity data management and discussed major challenges in this field this yearâ s symposium provides a progress report on addressing challenges such as crop management and experimental protocol standards and infraspecific taxonomic coverage it dives deeper into trends in semantics and data mining for agriculture and in application of standards to biodiversity assessments this symposium provides specific examples where shared data management standards and practices across both basic and applied biodiversity research communities can lead to improved outcomes for both science and society a discussion will follow the formal talks included in this symposium,2017,0.254
Amphibian distributions and extinction risk in China under climate and land use change,species extinctions are inevitable irreversible and a time delayed process that is accelerating due to the warming climate and the loss of habitats worldwide the most threatened vertebrate group in terrestrial ecosystems is amphibians in this thesis i assess potential range shifts and extinction risks of amphibians in china and test whether the current distribution of protected areas is effective in protecting amphibian habitats both today and under conditions imposed by climate and land use change in the future this was done by use of circular statistics metapopulation models climate velocity algorithms and ensemble species distribution modeling overall i found 1 large conservation protected area gaps were found throughout china and especially the southern parts of tibet and the hengduan mountains an amphibian diversity hotspot vulnerable to climate change and human activities 2 correlations between directional range shift of species and climate velocity were evident with range shifts of amphibians in china being mostly tri directional in pattern preferring northern eastern or northeastern directions for different dispersal scenarios and climatic data used 3 relaxation time of extinction debt for amphibians in china was related to the strength of the allee effect forest cover change and the trade off between colonization and emigration rates metapopulation models with and without allee effects estimated average time to half extinction for endemic amphibians of china to be 44 9 and 71 8 years respectively collectively this thesis research identifies regional conservation needs of amphibians fuels the development and application of novel statistical methods in the estimate of species extinction and paves the ways for future studies on extinction debt modeling,2017,0.557
Linking macroecology and community ecology: refining predictions of species distributions using biotic interaction networks,macroecological models for predicting species distributions usually only include abiotic environ mental conditions as explanatory variables despite knowledge from community ecology that all species are linked to other species through biotic interactions this disconnect is largely due to the different spatial scales considered by the two sub disciplines macroecologists study patterns at large extents and coarse resolutions while community ecologists focus on small extents and fine resolutions a general framework for including biotic interactions in macroecological models would help bridge this divide as it would allow for rigorous testing of the role that biotic interac tions play in determining species ranges here we present an approach that combines species dis tribution models with bayesian networks which enables the direct and indirect effects of biotic interactions to be modelled as propagating conditional dependencies among speciesâ presences we show that including biotic interactions in distribution models for species from a california grassland community results in better range predictions across the western usa this new approach will be important for improving estimates of species distributions and their dynamics under environmental change keywords,2017,0.922
OpenBiodiv: an Implementaion of a Semantic System Running on top of the Biodiversity Knowledge Graph,we present openbiodiv an implementation of the open biodiversity knowledge management system the need for an integrated information system serving the needs of the biodiversity community can be dated at least as far back as the sanctioning of the bouchout declaration in 2007 the bouchout declaration proposes to make biodiversity knowledge freely available as linked open data lod 1 at tdwg2016 fig 1 we presented the prototype of the sytem then called open biodiversity knolwedge management sysyttem obkms the specification and design of openbiodiv was outlined by senderov and penev 2016 and in this talk we would like to showcase its pilot we believe openbiodiv is possibly the first pilot stage implenatation of a semantic system running on top of the biodiversity knowledge graph,2017,0.172
"Analysis of historical and current distribution of potato psyllid (Bactericera cockerelli) and the induced plant disease psyllid yellows, in relation to standard climate …",the biogeography of herbivorous insects often depends on climate and host plants potato psyllid bactericera cockerelli sulc is an insect that presents a threat to the western canadian potato industry it is native to the usa and central america and currently found at very low numbers on the canadian prairies potato psyllid can transmit candidatus liberibacter solanacearum lso causing â œzebra chipâ severe tuber necrosis feeding by potato psyllid nymphs causes psyllid yellows on potato leaves historical records of this disease indicate potato psyllid abundance i used random forest model methods to analyze the climate conditions of the historical psyllid yellows records i used maxent models to predict the presence probability of potato psyllids the results indicate that higher temperatures and moderate precipitation are related to larger potato psyllid populations and suggest the northern expansion of climatically suitable range in western canada and decrease in the southwestern usa under climate change,2017,0.427
Towards GPU-Accelerated Web-GIS for Query-Driven Visual Exploration,web gis has played an important role in supporting accesses visu alization and analysis of geospatial data over the web for the past two decades however most of existing webgis software stacks are not able to exploit in creasingly available parallel computing power and provide the desired high per formance to support more complex applications on large scale geospatial data built on top our past works on developing high performance spatial query pro cessing techniques on graphics processing units gpus we propose a novel yet practical framework on developing a gpu accelerated web gis environment to support query driven visual explorations qdve on big spatial data an application case on visually exploring global biodiversity data is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed framework and re lated techniques on both the frontend and backend of the prototype system,2017,0.126
Equipped to cope with climate change: traits associated with range filling across European taxa,in order to understand the ecological effects of climate change it is essential to forecast suitable areas for species in the future however speciesâ ability to reach potentially suitable areas is also critical for species survival these â range shiftâ abilities can be studied using life history traits related to four range shift stages emigration movement establishment and proliferation here we use the extent to which speciesâ ranges fill the climatically suitable area available â range fillingâ as a proxy for the ability of european mammals and birds to shift their ranges under climate change we detect which traits associate most closely with range filling drawing comparisons with a recent analysis for plants we ask whether the latitudinal position of speciesâ ranges supports the assertion that post glacial range shift limitations cause disequilibrium between ranges and climate we also disentangle which of the three taxonomic groups has greatest range filling for mammals generalists and early reproducing species have the greatest range filling for birds generalist species with high annual fecundity which live longer than expected based on body size have the greatest range filling although we consider traits related to the four range shift stages only traits related to establishment and proliferation ability significantly influence range filling of mammals and birds species with the greatest range filling are those whose range centroid falls in the latitudinal centre of europe suggesting that post glacial range expansion is a leading cause of disequilibrium with climate although other explanations are also possible range filling of plants is lower than that of mammals or birds suggesting that plants are more range limited by non climatic factors therefore plants might be face greater non climatic restraints on range shifts than mammals or birds,2017,0.246
"Morphological and nutritional assessment of leaf, stem and root of Zanthoxylum macrophylla (Rutaceae)",morphological and nutritional studies were carried out on various parts leaf stem root and petiole of zanthoxylum macrophylla to determine its taxonomical and nutrient data with regards to morphological and nutritional characters using standard methods analysis of variance anova was employed in data analyses result revealed among other features the habit of the plant to be tree with prickle stem imparipinnately compound and reticulate leaves the various parts contained all the investigated nutrients but in varied quantities moisture and fibre were highest in the leaf 9 40 â 0 009 and 14 55 â 0 016 of z macrophylla respectively fat and ash were highest in the stem 10 75 â 0 125 and 5 10â 0 010 of z macrophylla respectively both the stem and the leaf z macrophylla have equal amount of protein 5 95â 0 007 and 5 95â 0 001 respectively results have indicated that these parts of z macrophylla are rich in nutrient and could be extracted for the manufacture of food supplements and drugs the obtained data could be used to enhance proper taxonomic characterisation and identification of the species z macrophylla,2017,0.403
Climate driven range divergence among host species affects range-wide patterns of parasitism,species interactions like parasitism influence the outcome of climate driven shifts in species ranges for some host species parasitism can only occur in that part of its range that overlaps with a second host species thus predicting future parasitism may depend on how the ranges of the two hosts change in relation to each other in this study we tested whether the climate driven species range shift of odocoileus virginianus white tailed deer accounts for predicted changes in parasitism of two other species from the family cervidae alces alces moose and rangifer tarandus caribou in north america we used maxent models to predict the recent 2000 and future 2050 ranges probabilities of occurrence of the cervids and a parasite parelaphostrongylus tenuis brainworm taking into account range shifts of the parasiteâ s intermediate gastropod hosts our models predicted that range overlap between a alces r tarandus and p tenuis will decrease between 2000 and 2050 an outcome that reflects decreased overlap between a alces r tarandus and o virginianus and not the parasites themselves geographically our models predicted increasing potential occurrence of p tenuis where a alces r tarandus are likely to decline but minimal spatial overlap where a alces r tarandus are likely to increase thus parasitism may exacerbate climate mediated southern contraction of a alces and r tarandus ranges but will have limited influence on northward range expansion our results suggest that the spatial dynamics of one host species may be the driving force behind future rates of parasitism for another host species,2017,0.979
Mining underground alert signals for seismic detection using wireless sensor nodes,seismic disturbances are a sudden phenomenon predicting them early can serve as a key factor to reduce damage to life and property a seismic antecedent or precursor is an event that occurs significantly much before such life taking disturbances underwater seabed as well as ground seismic reactions commonly termed as tsunami and earthquake respectively produces fundamental results when analyzed with basic soil and water properties 1 many geophysical hazards are correlated i e submarine earthquakes can cause tsunamis and hurricanes can lead to coastal flooding and erosion these hazards which are correlated when analyzed with fundamental physical parameters gives rise to identifiable pattern of occurrences amongst terrestrial and marine animal behavior 2 animal behavior has been graded as unusual much before these unwanted disturbances and reactions in various post hoc reports 3 seismicity in land and water can be caused due to multiple factors these factors can be categorized as induced parameters caused by human activities exploiting the natural resources or various geo physical parameters controlled under natural phenomenon a similar observations have been made in north of netherlands where induced seismicity is prevalent due to various human activities since 1986 these induced seismic responses have been observed to cause similar non structural damage to mankind as caused by tectonic movements 4 the major years for such induced seismic reponses is 1997 as discussed in 5 animals on basis of such observations unusual animal behavior has been discussed as one of the persistent precursor to such alarming situations in this paper thus an alert system if had existed in seismic year of 1997 a loss to mankind and structure would have been easily saved in this paper we present a comprehensive methodology where the alert information is mined based on decision trees and a consequent prediction for alert or safe state is proposed in 5 authors have clearly stated the size of animal being directly proportional to its seismic sensory reception i e small size animals do detect seismicity much earlier as earthworms being abundant specie in netherlands we present an novel implementation based case study on earthworms in order to validate our proposed framework to detect unwanted disturbances in real time thus existence of similar sensory reception based system would have helped in escaping netherlands induced earthquakes in real time this proposed framework is a blue print for formulating a conjunction based earthquake and tsunami detection based on animal behavior the paper is further described as section 2 reviews the current state of literature for both tsunami and earthquake alarming systems and their precursors section 3 presents our proposed framework with a thorough description of identified parameters consequently section 4 and 5 presents the data collection and implementation based case study i e the methodology for the earthworm dataset followed by a devised prediction algorithm lastly we present the results produced by the classifier,2017,0.024
Recent origin and rapid speciation of Neotropical orchids in the world's richest plant biodiversity hotspot,the andean mountains of south america are the most species rich biodiversity hotspot worldwide with c 15 of the world s plant species in only 1 of the world s land surface orchids are a key element of the andean flora and one of the most prominent components of the neotropical epiphyte diversity yet very little is known about their origin and diversification we address this knowledge gap by inferring the biogeographical history and diversification dynamics of the two largest neotropical orchid groups cymbidieae and pleurothallidinae using two unparalleled densely sampled orchid phylogenies including more than 400 newly generated dna sequences comparative phylogenetic methods geological and biological datasets we find that the majority of andean orchid lineages only originated in the last 20â 15 million yr andean lineages are derived from lowland amazonian ancestors with additional contributions from central america and the antilles species diversification is correlated with andean orogeny and multiple migrations and recolonizations across the andes indicate that mountains do not constrain orchid dispersal over long timescales our study sheds new light on the timing and geography of a major neotropical diversification and suggests that mountain uplift promotes species diversification across all elevational zones,2017,0.767
Clock-dated phylogeny for 48% of the 700 species of Crotalaria (Fabaceae–Papilionoideae) resolves sections worldwide and implies conserved flower and leaf traits throughout its pantropical range,background with some 700 species the pantropical crotalaria is among the angiospermâ s largest genera we sampled 48 of the species from all sections and representatives of the 15 remaining crotalarieae genera for nuclear and plastid dna markers to infer changes in climate niches flower morphology leaf type and chromosome numbers results crotalaria is monophyletic and most closely related to african bolusia five species from which it diverged 23 to 30 ma ago ancestral state reconstructions reveal that leaf and flower types are conserved in large clades and that leaf type is uncorrelated to climate as assessed with phylogenetically informed analyses that related compound vs simple leaves to the mean values of four bioclim parameters for 183 species with good occurrence data most species occur in open habitats 1000 m alt and trifoliolate leaves are the ancestral condition from which unifoliolate and simple leaves each evolved a few times the former predominantly in humid the latter mainly in dry climates based on chromosome counts for 36 of the 338 sequenced species most polyploids are tetraploid and belong to a neotropical clade conclusions an unexpected finding of our study is that in crotalaria simple leaves predominate in humid climates and compound leaves in dry climates which points to a different adaptive value of these morphologies regardless of whether these two leaf types evolved rarely or frequently in our focal group,2017,0.823
A Study on the Anatomy of Zanthoxylum macrophylla (L.) Sarg. (Rutaceae),anatomical studies were carried out on various parts of zanthoxylum macrophylla to determine its taxonomical data with regards to anatomical characters anatomical study of the transverse sections of the parts leaf stem petiole and root was carried out using microtomy while leaf epidermal study was carried out using impression technique results showed that the transverse sections of various parts leaf stem petiole and root of the zanthoxylum macrophylla had similar features including rays in the secondary stem and root the leaf epidermal study showed the presence of stomata on the abaxial surface only with paracytic stomatal type the obtained data can be used to enhance proper taxonomic characterization and identification of the plant species,2017,0.497
"Immatures of Cerambycinae (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) collected in Litchi chinensis Sonn. (Sapindaceae) in Brazil",larvae and pupae of coleoxestia waterhousei gounelle 1909 cerambycini sphallotrichina and retrachydes thoracicus olivier 1790 trachyderini trachyderina collected in lychee trees are described and illustrated this is the first record of litchi chinensis sonn as a host plant retrachydes thoracicus,2017,0.558
"Multiple markers, niche modelling, and bioregions analyses to evaluate the genetic diversity of a plant species complex",background the classification of closely related plants is not straightforward these morphologically similar taxa frequently maintain their inter hybridization potential and share ancestral polymorphisms as a consequence of their recent divergence under the biological species concept they may thus not be considered separate species the petunia integrifolia complex is especially interesting because in addition to the features mentioned above its taxa share a pollinator and their geographical ranges show multiple overlaps here we combined plastid genome sequences nuclear microsatellites aflp markers ecological niche modelling and bioregions analysis to investigate the genetic variability between the different taxa of the p integrifolia complex in a comprehensive sample covering the entire geographical range of the complex results results from molecular markers did not fully align with the current taxonomic classification niche modelling and bioregions analyses revealed that taxa were associated with different ecological constraints indicating that the habitat plays an important role in preserving species boundaries for three taxa our analyses showed a mostly conserved non overlapping geographical distribution over time however for two taxa niche modelling found an overlapping distribution over time these taxa were also associated with the same bioregions conclusions cpdna markers were better able to discriminate between petunia taxa than ssrs and aflps overall our results suggest that the p integrifolia complex represents a continuum of individuals from distant and historically isolated populations which share some morphological traits but are established in four different evolutionary lineages,2017,0.756
"Range expansion pattern of Carabus granulatus Linnaeus, 1758 (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in eastern North America and a new northern range record",this paper reports the first record of carabus granulatus l from moosonee ontario the record extends the range of the species northward in ontario by approximately 200 km carabus granulatus was first introduced into north america in 1890 from europe the historic area of c granulatus in north america was plotted against year the square root of area occupied by c granulatus was linear over time r2 0 96 a type 1 expansion curve a pattern associated with expansion driven by neighbourhood diffusion,2017,0.343
Ecosystem engineering by Fascicularia bicolor in the canopy of the South-American temperate rainforest,ecosystem engineers are organisms that modify habitats and resource flows they therefore could have a disproportionate impact on the diversity of ecological communities evidence suggests that trash basket epiphytes tbe can be considered ecosystem engineers of forest canopies due to their relationship with arboreal soil availability and treetop communities here we evaluated whether the tbe fascicularia bicolor bromeliaceae modulates temperature and humidity in the forest canopy we also investigated if this bromeliad is related with greater arboreal soil accumulation and is associated to higher diversity of other epiphytic plants and invertebrates in the canopy of the south american temperate rainforest satr in chile we measured temperature and humidity in ten trees within the forest before and after the experimental addition of f bicolor we also related the presence of f bicolor with occurrence of soil macro fauna and other canopy dwelling plants in a comparative field survey temperature variability in the canopy was reduced by f bicolor soil availability was higher in sites with mats of f bicolor the richness of vascular epiphytes was unaltered by the presence of f bicolor but species composition differed between sites with and without mats on each tree at the group level the cover of lichens and bryophytes was greater in sites without f bicolor while vascular epiphytes show a larger cover in sites with f bicolor the species richness of invertebrates increased in treetop sites colonized by f bicolor but species composition was not different from soil in branch bifurcations our results show that f bicolor must be considered in forest management practices to determine which trees must be logged in order to preserve the viability of populations of these key organisms in the treetops of south american temperate rainforests,2017,0.633
How much do we know about the frequency of hybridization and polyploidy in the Mediterranean region?,natural hybridization and polyploidy are currently recognized as drivers of biodiversity despite early sceptical views about their importance the mediterranean region is a biodiversity hotspot where geological and climatic events have created numerous opportunities for speciation through hybridization and polyploidy still our knowledge on the frequency of these mechanisms in the region is largely limited despite both phenomena have been frequently cited in studies of mediterranean plants in this manuscript we reviewed the information available from biodiversity and cytogenetic databases to provide the first estimates of hybridization and polyploidy frequency in the mediterranean region we have also inspected the most comprehensive modern mediterranean flora flora iberica to survey the frequency and taxonomic distribution of hybrids and polyploids in iberian peninsula we found that less than 6 of mediterranean plants were hybrids although a higher frequency was estimated for the iberian peninsula 13 hybrids were concentrated in a few families and in even fewer genera the overall frequency of polyploidy 36 5 was comparable with previous estimates in other regions however our estimates increased when analysing the iberian peninsula 48 8 a surprisingly high incidence of species harboring two or more ploidy levels was also observed 21 7 a review of the available literature also showed that the ecological factors driving the emergence and establishment of new entities are still poorly studied in the mediterranean flora although geographical barriers seem to play a major role in polyploid complexes finally this study reveals several gaps and limitations in the current knowledge about the frequency of hybridization and polyploidy in the mediterranean region the obtained estimations might change in the future with the increasing number of studies still rather than setting the complete reality we hope that this work triggers future studies about hybridization and polyploidy in the mediterranean region,2017,0.103
Treating leishmaniasis in Amazonia: A review of ethnomedicinal concepts and pharmaco-chemical analysis of traditional treatments to inspire modern phytotherapies,ethnopharmacological relevance cutaneous and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis are neglected tropical diseases that occur in all intertropical regions of the world amazonian populations have developed an abundant knowledge of the disease and its remedies therefore we undertook to review traditional antileishmanial plants in amazonia and have developed new tools to analyze this somewhat dispersed information material and methods a literature review of traditional remedies for cutaneous mucocutaneous leishmaniasis in the amazon was conducted and the data obtained was used to calculate distribution indexes designed to highlight the most relevant uses in amazonia the cultural distribution index represents the distribution rate of a given taxon among different cultural groups and was calculated as the ratio of the number of groups using the taxon to the total number of groups cited the geographical distribution index allowed us to quantify spatial distribution of a taxonâ s uses in amazonia and was calculated geometrically by measuring the average distance between the points where uses have been reported and the barycenter of those points the general distribution index was defined as an arithmetic combination of the previous two and provides information on both cultural and spatial criteria results 475 use reports concerning 291 botanical species belonging to 83 families have been gathered depicted from 29 sources uses concern 34 cultural groups while the use of some taxa appears to be pan amazonian some others are clearly restricted to small geographical regions particular attention has been paid to the recipes and beliefs surrounding treatments topical application of the remedies dominated the other means of administration and this deserves particular attention as the main treatments against neotropical leishmaniasis are painful systemic injections the data set was analyzed using the previously defined distribution indexes and the most relevant taxa were further discussed from a phytochemical and pharmacological point of view conclusions the amazonian biodiversity and cultural heritage host a fantastic amount of data whose systematic investigation should allow a better large scale understanding of the dynamics of traditional therapies and the consequent discovery of therapeutic solutions for neglected diseases distribution indices are indeed powerful tools for emphasizing the most relevant treatments against a given disease and should be very useful in the meta analysis of other regional pharmacopeia this focus on renowned remedies that have not yet benefitted from extended laboratory studies could stimulate future research on new treatments of natural origin for leishmaniasis,2017,0.08
"Climate change risks, extinction debt, and conservation implications for a threatened freshwater fish: Carmine shiner (Notropis percobromus)",climate change is affecting many freshwater species particularly fishes predictions of future climate change suggest large and deleterious effects on species with narrow dispersal abilities due to limited hydrological connectivity in turn this creates the potential for population isolation in thermally unsuitable habitats leading to physiological stress species declines or possible extirpation the current extent of many freshwater fish species spatio temporal distribution patterns and their sensitivity to thermal impacts from climate change ∠critical information for conservation planning ∠are often unknown carmine shiner notropis percobromus is an ecologically important species listed as threatened or imperilled nationally canada and regionally south dakota united states due to its restricted range and sensitivity to water quality and temperature this research aimed to determine the current distribution and spatio temporal variability in projected suitable habitat for carmine shiner using niche based modeling approaches maxent bioclim and domain models statistically downscaled bias corrected global circulation models gcms data was used to model the distribution of carmine shiner in central north america for the period of 2041â 2060 2050s maximum mean july temperature and temperature variability were the main factors in determining carmine shiner distribution patterns of projected habitat change by the 2050s suggest the spatial extent of the current distribution of carmine shiner would shift north with 50 of the current distribution changing with future projections based on two representative concentrations pathways for co2 emissions whereas the southern extent of the distribution would become unsuitable for carmine shiner suitable habitats are predicted to become available further north if accessible importantly the majority of habitat gains for carmine shiner would be in areas currently inaccessible due to dispersal limitations suggesting current populations may face an extinction debt within the next half century these results provide evidence that carmine shiner may be highly vulnerable to a warming climate and suggest that management actions such as assisted migration may be needed to mitigate impacts from climate change and ensure the long term persistence of the species,2017,0.638
Assessing the Potential of Sponges (Porifera) as Indicators of Ocean Dissolved Si Concentrations,we explore the distribution of sponges along dissolved silica dsi concentration gradients to test whether sponge assemblages are related to dsi and to assess the validity of fossil sponges as a palaeoecological tool for inferring dsi concentrations of the past oceans we extracted sponge records from the publically available global biodiversity information facility gbif database and linked these records with ocean physiochemical data to evaluate if there is any correspondence between dsi concentrations of the waters sponges inhabit and their distribution over 320 000 records of porifera were available of which 62 360 met strict quality control criteria our analyses was limited to the taxonomic levels of family order and class because dsi concentration is correlated with depth in the modern ocean we also explored sponge taxa distributions as a function of depth we observe that while some sponge taxa appear to have dsi preferences e g class hexactinellida occurs mostly at high dsi the overall distribution of sponge orders and families along dsi gradients is not sufficiently differentiated to unambiguously relate dsi concentrations to sponge taxa assemblages we also observe that sponge taxa tend to be similarly distributed along a depth gradient in other words both dsi and or another variable that depth is a surrogate for may play a role in controlling sponge spatial distribution and the challenge is to distinguish between the two we conclude that inferences about palaeo dsi concentrations drawn from the abundance of sponges in the stratigraphic records must be treated cautiously as these animals are adapted to a great range of dsi conditions and likely other underlying variables that are related to depth our analysis provides a quantification of the dsi ranges of common sponge taxa expands on previous knowledge related to their bathymetry preferences and suggest that sponge taxa assemblages are not related to particular dsi conditions,2017,0.26
Invasive potential of the pied crow ( Corvus albus ) in eastern Brazil: best to eradicate before it spreads,biological invasion is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage invasive species are difficult to eradicate and prevention is considered the best approach the pied crow corvus albus was recently recorded in eastern brazil south america this african bird species is being considered as a â œnative invaderâ in south africa and has the potential of causing serious ecological impacts therefore it is important to identify the potential suitable areas and entry points of this species in brazil this sort of information allows for a better assessment of where surveillance is needed and if eradication procedures are required we used ecological niche models to assess the potential distribution of the pied crow in brazil models predicted high suitability for the southeast central and northeast regions of brazil mainly in the atlantic forest region pied crow occurrence was associated with human infrastructure binary models failed to include published records for c albus in brazil however suitable areas are found 46 km away from known occurrence records we argue that ports are non intentional points of entry and that surveillance measures should be put into place to prevent novel propagules from arriving and establishing in brazil,2017,0.901
Comparative cytomolecular analyses reveal karyotype variability related to biogeographic and species richness patterns in Bombacoideae (Malvaceae),bombacoideae is one out of nine subfamilies of malvaceae and encompasses 160 tree species the subfamily is karyotypically characterized by small and numerous chromosomes and is traditionally known by a remarkable inter and intraspecific chromosome number variation we conducted a comparative cytogenetic analysis to investigate karyotype diversity and chromosome evolution within bombacoideae to achieve this we performed new chromosome counts cma dapi double staining genome size estimations and localization of 5s and 45s rdna by fluorescence in situ hybridization for 21 species distributed across the bombacoideae phylogeny we performed ancestral states reconstruction analyses to elucidate chromosome evolution and provide insights into the systematics and evolution of bombacoideae in comparison with other malvaceae species newly generated data on chromosome number on bombacoideae revealed diploids ochroma 2n 84 cavanillesia pochota pseudobombax 2n 88 and pachira 2n 92 and polyploids adansonia digitata 2n 160 and eriotheca species 2n ca 194 and 2n 276 for most species in situ hybridization revealed karyotype with two pairs of 45s rdna sites co located with cma bands and 5s rdna sites in only one chromosome pair taken together our results provide support to the hypothesis of karyotypic stability in bombacoideae only the pachira s l clade displayed some variability in ploidy level number of cma bands and 45s rdna sites and genome size compared to other bombacoideae clades the striated bark clade was characterized by comparatively small genomes and low cytomolecular variability karyotypic data were related to biogeographic and species richness patterns of bombacoideae,2017,0.779
A revision of the genus Eutetrapha Bates (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae: Saperdini),a revision of the genus eutetrapha bates 1884 is presented four new species are described from china e parastigmosa lin yang sp nov from hubei chongqing and shaanxi e tianmushana lin bi sp nov from zhejiang e shaanxiana lin yang sp nov from shaanxi hubei gansu and e gui lin yang sp nov from hainan eutetrapha virides pu jin 1991 is transferred to the genus paraglenea and glenea ocelota bates 1873 is transferred from eutetrapha to saperda lopezcolonia eutetrapha laosensis is newly recorded from india and myanmar while eutetrapha flavoguttata pu jin 1991 is newly recorded from myanmar india and myanmar represent new country records for eutetrapha twenty one taxa are recognized in the genus eutetrapha and a key to the described species of the genus is presented,2017,0.656
A novel approach in fish cyber taxonomy,a revolution in taxonomic practice is underway that will make taxonomy an even more reliable source of information for ecologists the process by which information available in or converted into from non digital sources standardized electronic format is collated analysed and synthesised into a digital representation of one or more taxon concepts the end product of which is a combination of outputs in both digital and non digital format cyber taxonomy should not be confused with the practice of creating databases of taxonomic information databases are an integral part of the process but cybertaxonomy refers to a wide range of hardware software instrumentation communication tools and work practices that collectively allow taxonomists to do their work more efficiently while maintaining the highest levels of excellence,2017,0.29
The Wikiplantbase project: the role of amateur botanists in building up large online floristic databases,the wikiplantbase project started in 2013 provides a framework where the full set of georeferenced floristic records of tuscany and sardinia can be entered stored updated and freely accessed through the internet mainly thanks to the collaboration of amateur botanists data have accumulated quickly all records entered by collaborators are submitted to the project coordinators who are enabled to accept modify or reject them as of 22 november 2016 wikiplantbase toscana holds 116 402 verified floristic records 90 based on published literature 5 on unpublished herbarium specimens 5 on field observations and wikiplantbase sardegna 40 043 77 published literature 18 unpublished herbarium specimens 5 on field observations the records include over 90 of the specific and subspecific taxa known for tuscany and about 70 â but rapidly growing â of those known for sardinia the most recorded species are quercus ilex l fagaceae for tuscany and pistacia lentiscus l anacardiaceae for sardinia with minor software tweaking the online platform wikiplantbase might be adopted in other contexts resulting in a well connected network of regional floristic databases suited to exploit the involvement â still largely untapped â of nonacademic collaborators as advocated by citizen science,2017,0.389
Recreational freshwater fishing drives non-native aquatic species richness patterns at a continental scale,aim mapping the geographic distribution of non native aquatic species is a critically important precursor to understanding the anthropogenic and environmental factors that drive freshwater biological invasions such efforts are often limited to local scales and or to single species due to the challenges of data acquisition at larger scales here we map the distribution of non native freshwater species richness across the continental united states and investigate the role of human activity in driving macroscale patterns of aquatic invasion location the continental united states methods we assembled maps of non native aquatic species richness by compiling occurrence data on exotic animal and plant species from publicly accessible databases using a dasymetric model of human population density and a spatially explicit model of recreational freshwater fishing demand we analysed the effect of these metrics of human influence on the degree of invasion at the watershed scale while controlling for spatial and sampling bias we also assessed the effects that a temporal mismatch between occurrence data collected since 1815 and cross sectional predictors developed using 2010 data may have on model fit results non native aquatic species richness exhibits a highly patchy distribution with hotspots in the northeast great lakes florida and human population centres on the pacific coast these richness patterns are correlated with population density but are much more strongly predicted by patterns of recreational fishing demand these relationships are strengthened by temporal matching of datasets and are robust to corrections for sampling effort main conclusions distributions of aquatic non native species across the continental us are better predicted by freshwater recreational fishing than by human population density this suggests that observed patterns are driven by a mechanistic link between recreational activity and aquatic non native species richness and are not merely the outcome of sampling bias associated with human population density,2017,0.877
New records and probable migration routes of the sora Porzana carolina (Aves: Rallidae) in Peru,the sora porzana carolina is the most abundant rail of north america and historical records 1877â 1994 indicate peru as the southern limit of its wintering octoberâ may range here we present data from three consecutive austral summers february 2014 to march 2016 recording this species on wetlands in north peru which fill a geographic gap of approximately 1 000 km between tumbes and lima regions based on our records and secondary sources for south america we indicate that sora probably follows two parallel migration routes in western south america the pacific coast and the andean routes another recent study recorded sora on cusco province which suggests that peruvian andes wetlands may currently be becoming more important as non breeding sites for neartic migrant waterbirds unlike the sites of historical records of sora in peru the wetlands on which this rail was recently recorded have no legal protection deserving management policies and continued monitoring,2017,0.439
Networks of global bird invasion altered by regional trade ban,wildlife trade is a major pathway for introduction of invasive species worldwide however how exactly wildlife trade influences invasion risk beyond the transportation of individuals to novel areas remains unknown we analyze the global trade network of wild caught birds from 1995 to 2011 as reported by cites convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora we found that before the european union ban on imports of wild caught birds declared in 2005 invasion risk was closely associated with numbers of imported birds diversity of import sources and degree of network centrality of importer countries after the ban fluxes of global bird trade declined sharply however new trade routes emerged primarily toward the nearctic afrotropical and indo malay regions although regional bans can curtail invasion risk globally to be fully effective and prevent rerouting of trade flows bans should be global,2017,0.859
Rare plants and plant communities of rich fens of “Malaya Sosva” Nature Reserve (Western Siberia),a geobotanical survey of rich fens on the left bank terraces of the em egan river the right tributary of the malaya sosva river in the southern part of the nature reserve â œmalaya sosvaâ 61 79â 62 05â n 64 06â 64 55â e 179 species have been identified including 84 species of higher vascular plants 69 species of mosses and 26 types of liverworts of these 11 species are included in the red data book of the khanty mansi autonomous district including 9 species of higher vascular plants and 2 species of mosses baeothryon alpinum cardamine nymanii dactylorhiza traunsteineri d incarnata hammarbya paludosa huperzia selago saxifraga hirculus thelypteris palustris triglochin palustre meesia triquetra paludella squarrosa three more species â corallorrhiza trifida calliergon richardsonii meesia uliginosa are included in the list of species whose condition in the natural environment requires special attention in addition such rare species as eriophorum brachyantherum stellaria crassifolia bistorta major rare species of mosses such as bryum bimum calliergonella cuspidata campylium pretense hamatocaulis vernicosus scorpidium cossonii tomentypnum nitens are listed in the mire plant communities x0d on the basis of the ecological floral approach of the j brown blanke school 8 associations 6 subassociations and 3 communities from 5 unions 3 orders and 3 classes of vegetation were allocated in the vegetation cover of rich fens the belonging of one more vegetation community type of the bistorta majorâ sphagnum fuscum dwarf birch community with the sparse fir picea obovata to the class and the order is not established the highest phytocenotic diversity and the highest concentration of rare and protected species are found in communities of the order sphagno warnstorfii tomentypneetalia phytocenotic association and frequency of occurrence of rare species in different types of plant communities are established,2018,0.983
The Agrobiodiversity Index: Methodology Report v.1.0.,the agrobiodiversity index is an innovative tool that measures the current state of agrobiodiversity in markets and consumption in agricultural production and in genetic resource management and the extent to which commitments and actions at country company and project level support sustainable use and conservation of agrobiodiversity status indicators are scored based on spatial global data sets and national data sets accessed through global databases at united nations agencies action indicators are scored based on country reports such as those from the world information and early warning system on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture wiews and in the state of the world biodiversity for food and agriculture both compiled by the food and agriculture organization of the un fao as well as other spatial datasets commitment indicators are scored based a text mining tool that analyzes policies strategies and other national legislation retrieved from the faoâ s legislation and policies database faolex the agrobiodiversity index has 22 indicators comprising 3 commitment indicators 4 action indicators and 15 status indicators,2018,0.165
State of Michigan’s Status and Strategy for European Water-Clover (Marsilea quadrifolia L.) Management,marsilea quadrifolia l european water clover hereafter ewc is native to eurasia and has been documented in africa australia new zealand north america and south america holm et al 1997 globally ewc is classified as a species of least concern but at least 21 european countries and japan list ewc as a vulnerable threatened or endangered species strat 2012 it is extinct from the wild in germany poland spain and switzerland schneider binder 2014 other countries in southeast asia and the mediterranean consider ewc a weed especially in rice fields holm et al 1997 strat 2012 in north america where it is not considered a native species it has been documented in the united states of america in arkansas connecticut delaware georgia illinois indiana iowa kansas kentucky maine maryland massachusetts michigan missouri new jersey new york north carolina ohio and pennsylvania and in ontario canada johnson 1985a simpson et al 2008 usda 2018 it is on the michigan â œwatch list â a list of priority exotic species that pose an immediate and significant threat to michiganâ s natural resources this document was produced by central michigan university cmu and reviewed by michigan departments of environmental quality mdeq and natural resources mdnr for the purposes of â consolidating current science based knowledge relative to the biology and ecology of ewc â summarizing scientific literature and research efforts that inform management options for ewc in michigan â identifying future directions for research relative to successful ewc management in michigan this document referenced peer reviewed journals and publications any chemical company or organization that was mentioned was included for its involvement in peerreviewed published or publicly shared information not to imply endorsement of the chemical company or organization,2018,0.788
"COSEWIC assessment and status report on the Striped Whitelip, Webbhelix multilineata, in Canada / Annegret Nicolai.",this large terrestrial snail is present on pelee island in lake erie and at three sites on the mainland of southwestern ontario point pelee national park walpole island and bickford oak woods conservation reserve the species appears to have been extirpated from four other historically known mainland sites and at least one site on pelee island humandriven habitat loss and alteration led to decline and population isolation threats are extreme weather events e g droughts prescribed burns and human disturbance i e trampling as the species forages on trails in moist conditions wild turkeys on pelee island and in point pelee national park also might eat this snail,2018,0.838
Monographs of invasive plants in Europe: Carpobrotus,this report synthesizes all aspects of the taxonomy distribution history of introduction and spread ecological constrains including preferred climate substratum and habitats responses to biotic and abiotic factors biology including phenology vegetative and reproductive biology economic importance and human uses ecological impacts legislation and management of carpobrotus n e br aizoaceae a prominent invasive plant in europe carpobrotus species are mat forming trailing succulent perennial herbs native from south africa introduced in europe for ornamental and soil stabilization purposes since the beginning of the seventeenth century now widely naturalized on coastal habitats of southern and western europe c acinaciformis and c edulis are the main species recognized outside south africa together with their hybrids and potential hybrid swarms identification conflicts both in the native and invaded areas raise doubts on the taxonomy of these taxa but hybridization processes may boost adaptive changes in the invaded range the release of carpobrotus in natural environments and protected areas is prohibited in several european countries but this taxon is not included in the list of invasive species of union concern carpobrotus is a pioneer of disturbed sites and coastal areas including cliffs and sand dune systems due to its tolerance to stress factors such as salinity drought and excess of light carpobrotus invasion ultimately affects patterns of native species diversity moreover it has been recognized as a major driver of soil conditions shifts and soil geochemical processes disruptions representing a serious threat for coastal habitats management plans for carpobrotus must consider its high plasticity for morphological and ecophysiological traits which may probably explain its tolerance to a wide range of ecological conditions its flexible mating systems which represent an optimal strategy to facilitate local adaptation and habitat colonization include ability to produce apomictic seeds self and cross pollination and an intense vegetative clonality in addition carpobrotus produces a large seed bank with a moderate short term persistence and fruits are effectively dispersed by mammals the most efficient control methods are physical removal and herbicide application on leaves whereas integration of biological control with other conventional management methods are likely to be most effective a long term monitoring of control actions and restoration of soil conditions are needed to prevent recovering from clonal parts seed bank or mammal faeces as well as potential new invasions by other opportunistic species,2018,0.321
"Poaceae. Index Florae Bosnae et Hercegovinae, Part 4.",three parts of the index florae bosnae et hercegovinae published in the bulletin of the national museum of bosnia and herzegovina included three large families of flowering plants angiospermae in the first part the fabaceae family gzm 34 2014 was covered by prof dr ljubomir miå iä who listed 51 genera 260 species and 74 subspecies the second part of the index compiled by dr å eljka bjelä iä covered the brassicaceae family gzm 35 2015 with 53 genera 171 species and 44 subspecies the third part of the index presented the lamiaceae family gzm 37 2017 which was elaborated by dr äœedomil å iliä who listed 30 genera 124 species 58 subspecies and 8 hybrids,2018,0.594
Taxonomy based on science is necessary for global conservation,taxonomy is a scientific discipline that has provided the universal naming and classification system of biodiversity for centuries and continues effectively to accommodate new knowledge a recent publication by garnett and christidis 1 expressed concerns regarding the difficulty that taxonomic changes represent for conservation efforts and proposed the establishment of a system to govern taxonomic changes their proposal to â œrestrict the freedom of taxonomic actionâ through governing subcommittees that would â œreview taxonomic papers for complianceâ and their assertion that â œthe scientific communityâ s failure to govern taxonomy threatens the effectiveness of global efforts to halt biodiversity loss damages the credibility of science and is expensive to societyâ are flawed in many respects they also assert that the lack of governance of taxonomy damages conservation efforts harms the credibility of science and is costly to society despite its fairly recent release garnett and christidis proposition has already been rejected by a number of colleagues 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 herein we contribute to the conversation between taxonomists and conservation biologists aiming to clarify some misunderstandings and issues in the proposition by garnett and christidis,2018,0.24
"Digitization of vascular plant herbarium collections at the Central Siberian Botanical Garden, Novosibirsk, Russia",the herbaria at the central siberian botanical garden siberian branch of the russian academy of sciences csbg were started in 1946 there are two herbarium collections with their own codes and registrations in the index herbariorum m g popov herbarium nsk and i m krasnoborov herbarium ns approximately 800000 herbarium specimens of vascular plants mosses lichens and fungi collected in siberia the russian far east europe asia and north america are stored in nsk and ns digitization of the herbarium specimens of vascular plants at the resolution of 600 dpi began in 2014 using a special scanner herbscan starting with type specimens in 2017 a new research group unique scientific unit â herbarium usu herbarium was organized in the csbg for the digitization and management of herbarium collections herbarium specimens are being digitized using three customized scanners herbscan and two objectscan 1600 according to the international standards at 600 dpi with a barcode 24 color scale and spatial scale bar images and metadata are stored in the csbg database generated by scanwizard botany and mivapp botany software microtek taiwan,2018,0.215
"New records and range extension of Habenaria dutrae Schltr. (Orchidaceae) in southern Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil",we describe 4 new records of habenaria dutrae schltr a threatened orchid species that is endemic of rio grande do sul state brazil the new record from pontal da barra increases the distribution of h dutrae by approximately 180 km south and represents the southernmost known location for the species we also re evaluate the conservation status of the species including the new records finding it to be endangered under criteria b2ab iii d,2018,0.748
New Geographical Records of Bat Flies (Diptera: Streblidae) Associated With Phyllostomid Bats (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) in the West Highlands of Mexico,streblidae are ectoparasites exclusive to bats and feed only on their blood studies on ectoparasite fauna have increased our ecological knowledge of the parasitic relationship between streblids and their bat hosts we evaluate assemblages of phyllostomid bats and their ectoparasitic flies in three scenarios with different types of anthropogenic use pineâ oak forest avocado orchards and an urban park during an annual cycle in the highlands of michoacan mexico we recorded a total of 325 bats belonging to nine species in three subfamilies glossophaginae desmodontinae and stenodermatinae and obtained 225 bat flies belonging to seven species the nectivorous bat anoura geoffroyi gray 1838 had the highest prevalence of infestation and the hematophagous bat desmodus rotundus ã geoffroy 1810 was the host with the highest mean parasite abundance and mean intensity aspidoptera delatorrei wenzel 1966 megistopoda proxima sã guy 1926 paratrichobius longicrus miranda ribeiro 1907 trichobius brennani wenzel 1966 and t parasiticus gervais 1844 are new records for the state of michoacan reported in this study,2018,0.765
"Filling distribution gaps of a little-known endemic species, Rojasianthe superba Standl. & Steyerm. (Asteraceae) in northern Central America",rojasianthe superba standl steyerm asteraceae is an endemic species limited to a few localities in mexico and guatemala here we report a new occurrence point at a departmental scale in guatemala it also extends its known distribution by 40 km to the northeast we ran species distribution models sdm to evaluate the potential spatial distribution of the species rojasianthe superba has a higher probability of occurrence in the country highlands and also a high probability of extending its range in the volcanic chain where it has been found in some isolated sites elevation was the most important variable explaining this potential distribution these high altitude montane forests where r superba occurs have been identified as endemism sites for different taxa in guatemala,2018,0.763
The informative value of museum collections for ecology and conservation: A comparison with target sampling in the Brazilian Atlantic forest,since two decades the richness and potential of natural history collections nhc were rediscovered and emphasized promoting a revolution in the access on data of species occurrence and fostering the development of several disciplines nevertheless due to their inherent erratic nature nhc data are plagued by several biases understanding these biases is a major issue particularly because ecological niche models enms are based on the assumption that data are not biased based on it a recent body of research have focused on searching adequate methods for dealing with biased data and proposed the use of filters in geographical and environmental space although the strength of filtering in environmental space has been shown with virtual species nothing has yet been tested with a real dataset including field validation in order to contribute to this task we explore this issue by comparing a dataset from nhc to a recent targeted sampling of the cockroach genus monastria saussure 1864 in the brazilian atlantic forest we showed that despite strong similarities the area modeled with nhc data was much smaller these differences were due to strong climate biases which increased modelâ s specificity and reduced sensitivity by applying two forms of rarefaction in the environmental space we showed that deleting points at random in the most biased climate class is a powerful way for increasing modelâ s sensitivity so making predictions more suitable to the reality,2018,0.313
Mapping the global potential distributions of two arboviral vectors Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus under changing climate,background aedes aegypti and ae albopictus are the primary vectors that transmit several arboviral diseases including dengue chikungunya and zika the world is presently experiencing a series of outbreaks of these diseases so we still require to better understand the current distributions and possible future shifts of their vectors for successful surveillance and control programs few studies assessed the influences of climate change on the spatial distributional patterns and abundance of these important vectors particularly using the most recent climatic scenarios here we updated the current potential distributions of both vectors and assessed their distributional changes under future climate conditions methods we used ecological niche modeling approach to estimate the potential distributions of ae aegypti and ae albopictus under present day and future climate conditions this approach fits ecological niche model from occurrence records of each species and environmental variables for each species future projections were based on climatic data from 9 general circulation models gcms for each representative concentration pathway rcp in each time period with a total of 72 combinations in four rcps in 2050 and 2070 all enms were tested using the partial receiver operating characteristic proc and a set of 2 048 and 2 003 additional independent records for ae aegypti and ae albopictus respectively finally we used background similarity test to assess the similarity between the enms of ae aegypti and ae albopictus results the predicted potential distribution of ae aegypti and ae albopictus coincided with the current and historical known distributions of both species aedes aegypti showed a markedly broader distributional potential across tropical and subtropical regions than ae albopictus interestingly ae albopictus was markedly broader in distributional potential across temperate europe and the united states all ecological niche models enms were statistically robust p 0 001 enms successfully anticipated 98 1 999 2 048 and 99 1 985 2 003 of additional independent records for both ae aegypti and ae albopictus respectively p 0 001 enms based on future conditions showed similarity between the overall distributional patterns of future day and present day conditions however there was a northern range expansion in the continental usa to include parts of southern canada in case of ae albopictus in both 2050 and 2070 future models also anticipated further expansion of ae albopictus to the east to include most of europe in both time periods aedes aegypti was anticipated to expand to the south in east australia in 2050 and 2070 the predictions showed differences in distributional potential of both species between diverse rcps in 2050 and 2070 finally the background similarity test comparing the enms of ae aegypti and ae albopictus was unable to reject the null hypothesis of niche similarity between both species p 0 05 conclusion these updated maps provided details to better guide surveillance and control programs of ae aegypti and ae albopictus they have also significant public health importance as a baseline for predicting the emergence of arboviral diseases transmitted by both vectors in new areas across the world,2018,0.225
The usage of subgenera in mammalian taxonomy,in this note i discuss the advantages of the usage of subgenera as a practical taxonomic rank in mammalian taxonomy use of this category preserves traditional usage reduces nomenclatural instability and avoids unnecessary change of names subgenera are useful to label diagnosable clades of closely related species especially in morphologically and ecologically diverse monophyletic genera without alteration of traditional binomial usage contrary to informal names such as â œdivisionsâ or â œgroupsâ subgenera are governed by the rules of the international commission on zoological nomenclature iczn having usage constrained and stability promoted by typification and priority,2018,0.485
The latitudinal diversity gradient of epiphytic lichens in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: does Rapoport's rule apply?,a latitudinal diversity gradient ldg with increasing species richness towards tropical zones has been amply documented in the literature for many organisms among the factors hypothesized to explain the ldg is rapoport s rule which postulates deceasing distribution ranges for species at lower latitudes in turn fostering higher species richness per area so far little is known about ldgs and a rapoport effect in lichens and tropical regions or the southern hemisphere have not yet been considered in such studies in order to elucidate a potential ldg in the brazilian atlantic forest species occurrence data from four representative families of largely epiphytic lichens were used graphidaceae lobariaceae parmeliaceae and trypetheliaceae we employed niche distribution modeling on a subset of species to surpass the limitation of geographically strongly unbalanced sampling in the study area including sampling bias in the modeling approach the four families presented significant ldgs which were however opposed in lobariaceae and parmeliaceae rare species that were not modeled further pronounced these patterns rapoport s rule i e an inverse correlation between richness and mean species range was supported for all four families richness values for the four families and size ranges for parmeliaceae showed strong and significant correlations with bioclimatic parameters particularly temperature and precipitation seasonality and precipitation in the driest quarter we hypothesize that based on the specific situation of the atlantic forest the observed lgds and rapoport effects are secondary consequences of underlying environmental gradients that happen to run parallel to latitude and that rapoport s rule is not primarily linked to latitude but to gradients of adverse environmental conditions including rare species predicted species richness values for the four studied families combined would result in between 400 and 700 species per 55 ã 55 km grid cell,2018,0.96
Crassulacean acid metabolism and distribution range in Chilean Bromeliaceae: Influences of climate and phylogeny,aim crassulacean acid metabolism cam is a widespread physiological adaptation to drought cam is common in plants distributed in arid regions such as bromeliaceae species in chile latitude is an accurate predictor of climate with increasing temperature and decreasing moisture towards north northern species of chilean bromeliads mainly show cam photosynthesis while southernâ distributed species rely on the c3 pathway we evaluated the influence of latitude and associated climatic variables on the adoption of photosynthetic pathways by chilean bromeliads accounting for phylogenetic relatedness we expected a significant relation between photosynthetic pathway and the latitudinal limits of speciesâ distribution ranges independent of phylogeny location data from bromeliaceae species native to chile latitudinal distribution range 15â s to 43â s methods we gathered information on geographical ranges and isotopic discrimination data î 13c an indicator of photosynthetic pathway of chilean bromeliads we evaluated whether î 13c values were related to latitude temperature and precipitation using separate multiple linear regressions in northern and southern distribution limits of chilean bromeliads to account for phylogeny we performed phylogenetically independent contrasts results in the south î 13c values were not significantly correlated with latitude temperature or precipitation in the north î 13c values were significantly correlated with latitude and annual precipitation after phylogenetic correction both variables were still significantly associated with î 13c main conclusions in chilean bromeliads for those taxa reaching northernmost latitudes both aridity and other factors associated with latitude are probably the main drivers of adaptive evolution of cam photosynthesis while advancing towards their present limits in arid regions phylogenetic relatedness also influences cam photosynthesis in this lineage,2018,0.624
Appropriate application of information from biodiversity databases is critical when investigating species distributions and diversity: a comment on Dallas et al . (),using data from biodiversity informatics resources dallas et al ecol lett 20 2017 1526â 1533 suggested limited relationships between climate and local abundance among several taxonomic groups investigation of a subset of these data suggests that their results may be misleading due to inappropriate application of the biodiversity data,2018,0.347
Where will Invasive Plants Colonize in Response to Climate Change: Predicting the Invasion of Galinsoga quadriradiata in China,galinsoga quadriradiata an annual herbaceous plant originating in central and south america has caused great harm to agriculture and natural communities in china recently however the distribution and influence of this invader are poorly documented it is also unclear how climate change will affect the expansion of g quadriradiata in this study we built a series of maximum entropy maxent models to predict the potential distribution areas of g quadriradiata under current and future 2030s 2050s and 2080s climatic scenarios using six uncorrelated bioclimatic variables obtained from the fifth report of the ipcc and 274 occurrences the maxent model obtained high auc value of 0 960 and the prediction showed that highly suitable areas for g quadriradiata mainly locate in central eastern southwestern and southern china in the context of climate change its suitable area will tend to contract in the future and disappear in southern and eastern china but will expand in northeastern china overall by the end of the century its suitable area will be reduced by 12 1 and move northward in china our study suggests that g quadriradiata has high invasive potential currently however to some extent ongoing climate change will inhibit its expansion in china in addition the invasion risk of g quadriradiata in northeastern china will continuously increase keeping pace with global climate change in the coming decades while the invasion risk in central southwestern and eastern china will stay continuously urgent preventative measures against g quadriradiata invasion are necessary in these areas,2018,0.216
The relation between global palm distribution and climate,fossil palms provide qualitative evidence of sub tropical conditions and frost free winters in the geological past including modern cold climate regions e g boreal or polar climates the freeze intolerance of palms varies across different organs and life stages with seedlings in particular less tolerant of sub zero temperatures than adult plants limiting successful establishment of populations while permitting adult palms to survive in cultivation outside their natural ranges quantitatively palms indicate minimum cold month mean temperature cmmt at 2â 8 â c in palaeoclimate reconstructions these data have accentuated model proxy mismatches for high latitudes during paleogene hyperthermals when palms expanded poleward in both hemispheres we constructed a manually filtered dataset of 20 000 georeferenced arecaceae records by eliminating cultivars statistically derived mean annual temperature mean annual temperature range and cmmt thresholds for the arecaceae and lower rank subfamilies and tribes reveal large differences in temperature sensitivity depending on lower taxonomic classification cold tolerant tribes such as the trachycarpeae produce thresholds as low as cmmt â 2 2 â c however within the palm family cmmt 5 â c is anomalous moreover palm expansion into temperate biomes is likely a post palaeogene event we recognize a cmmt â 5 2 â c threshold for the palm family unless a lower taxonomic rank can be assigned,2018,0.232
New state record and potential distribution of the snake Sibon nebulatus (Dipsadidae) from Mexico,we report the northernmost atlantic coast record of the cloudy snail sucker sibon nebulatus from the state of hidalgo at a straight line distance of about 185 km from the nearest historical locality in sierra norte de puebla mexico we assess the potential distribution of this species and compare morphological characteristics of specimens from mexico and central america no significant morphometric or meristic differences were found a species distribution model suggests that s nebulatus is widely distributed on both coasts of mexico with a high probability of occurrence at a wider range of latitudes than current records indicate,2018,0.497
Global database of plants with root-symbiotic nitrogen fixation: NodDB,plants associated with symbiotic nitrogen fixing bacteria play important roles in early successional riparian and semidry ecosystems these so called nitrogen fixing plants are widely used for reclamation of disturbed vegetation and improvement of soil fertility in agroforestry yet available information about plants that are capable of establishing nodulation is fragmented and somewhat outdated this article introduces the noddb database of nitrogen fixing plants based on morphological and phylogenetic evidence available at http dx doi org 10 15156 bio 587469 and discusses plant groups with conflicting reports and interpretation such as certain legume clades and the zygophyllaceae family during angiosperm evolution nitrogen fixing plants became common in the fabid rather than in the â nitrogen fixingâ clade the global gbif plant species distribution data indicated that nitrogen fixing plants tend to be relatively more diverse in savanna and semidesert biomes the compiled and re interpreted information about nitrogen fixing plants enables accurate analyses of biogeography and community ecology of biological nitrogen fixation,2018,0.028
Solanecio biafrae: An underutilized nutraceutically-important african indigenous vegetable,solanecio biafrae olive and hierne c jeffrey 1986 family asteraceae has synonyms senecio biafrae olive and hierne 1877 and crassocephalum biafrae olive and hierne s moore 1912 it is a perennial standent underutilized african indigenous medicinal vegetable it was first reported and published in flora of tropical africa its common names varied from gnanvule in cote d ivoire to worowo bologi in nigeria it has alternate simple succulent petiolated and exauriculate leaves its propagation is vegetative by rooting of cuttings however there is no report on its propagation by seed it is ubiquitous in cocoa plots in nigeria especially southwest due to deliberate protection for economic revenue but this has little uncoordinated cultivation indication these deliberately protected few are exposed to contamination by a chemical used for protecting cocoa plants it is highly nutritive and rich in protein it is also medicinally important as a galactagogue and for treatment of diabetes high blood pressure and infertility it has biological activity against staphylococcus aureus and escherichia coli it also has traditional and cultural claims for initiation and rituals personal interviews and search of the available literature on s biafrae in electronic peer reviewed english journals using scientific databases such as google scholar science direct pubmed scopus and web of science was employed,2018,0.24
"Report of the 1st Annual General Meeting of ENETWILD Parma, 16‐18 January 2018",the enetwild consortium www enetwild com has implemented an efsaâ funded project whose main objective is to collect information and model the geographical distribution and abundance of wild boar throughout europe this is of particular concern owing to the spread of african swine fever from eastern areas in january 2018 enetwild organised discussion workshops for 70 experts in the field of the ecology management and epidemiology of wild boar three workshops addressed the following questions 1 what kind of data is needed to develop wild boar abundance maps 2 how can estimates of boar abundance be harmonised between regions and 3 how can the collection of wild boar distribution and abundance data be improved in order to collect data on the presence absence and abundance of wild boar obtained from different sources administrations hunters naturalists and researchers it is necessary to work on the generation collection and processing of data in a harmonised manner thus enabling the information to be comparable and used at a european level the use of information on hunting statistics number of animals hunted and hunting effort per surface unit is particularly essential the strategy is based on firstly collecting existing nonâ harmonised wild boar data in the shortâ term occurrence and hunting statistics by collecting the more accessible data as a second step enetwild distributed a questionnaire on how and where the data concerning hunting statistics are collected throughout the different countries or regions in europe the objective of this questionnaire was to identify those places in which hunting statistics are still disaggregated at the highest spatial resolution with the purpose of standardising the means employed to collect hunting data in europe the following step consisted of the appropriate collection of data using a data model and supported by a dataâ sharing agreement,2018,0.86
Historical collections as a tool for assessing the global pollination crisis,there is increasing concern about the decline of pollinators worldwide however despite reports that pollinator declines are widespread data are scarce and often geographically and taxonomically biased these biases limit robust inference about any potential pollinator crisis non structured and opportunistic historical specimen collection data provide the only source of historical information which can serve as a baseline for identifying pollinator declines specimens historically collected and preserved in museums not only provide information on where and when species were collected but also contain other ecological information such as species interactions and morphological traits here we provide a synthesis of how researchers have used historical data to identify long term changes in biodiversity species abundances morphology and pollination services despite recent advances we show that information on the status and trends of most pollinators is absent we highlight opportunities and limitations to progress the assessment of pollinator declines globally finally we demonstrate different approaches to analysing museum collection data using two contrasting case studies from distinct geographical regions new zealand and spain for which long term pollinator declines have never been assessed there is immense potential for museum specimens to play a central role in assessing the extent of the global pollination crisis,2018,0.584
"Highly structured genetic diversity of Bixa orellana var. urucurana, the wild ancestor of annatto, in Brazilian Amazonia",annatto bixa orellana l is a tropical american crop commercially valuable due to its application in the food and cosmetics industries as a natural dye the wild ancestor of cultivated annatto is b orellana var urucurana although never cultivated this variety occurs in open forests and anthropogenic landscapes and is always associated with riparian environments in this study we evaluated the genetic diversity and structure of b orellana var urucurana populations in brazilian amazonia using 16 microsatellite loci we used ecological niche modeling enm to characterize the potential geographical range of this variety in northern south america we analyzed 170 samples from 10 municipalities in the states of rondã nia parã and roraima a total of 194 alleles was observed with an average of 12 1 alleles per locus higher levels of expected he than observed ho heterozygosities were found for all populations bayesian analysis neighbor joining dendrograms and pcas suggest the existence of three strongly structured groups of populations a strong and positive correlation between genetic and geographic distances was found suggesting that genetic differentiation might be caused by geographic isolation from species distribution modelling we detected that south rondã nia madre di dios river basin llanos de mojos llanos de orinoco and eastern ecuador are highly suitable areas for wild annatto to occur providing additional targets for future exploration and conservation climatic adaptation analyses revealed strong differentiation among populations suggesting that precipitation plays a key role in wild annattoâ s current and potential distribution patterns,2018,0.953
Designing Citizen Science for Both Science and Education,in january 2017 bscs convened a group of scientists educators and technologists with significant experience in citizen science to consider the challenges of designing citizen science projects to achieve ambitious objectives in the areas of both science and education the workshop was based on the following premise achieving both scientific and educational benefits in a citizen science initiative requires not just a commitment to both but the expertise and resources to design for both the goals of the workshop were to 1 gather the insights of experienced citizen science project organizers about how to design citizen science projects and platforms for both scientific and educational outcomes and to 2 organize these insights into a set of recommendations for software developers on how to design online citizen science platforms for both scientific and educational outcomes,2018,0.145
Disentangling uncertainties from niche modeling in freshwater ecosystems,predictions by ecological niche models enm are affected by several sources of uncertainty including the modeling methods and type of variables employed the predictive uncertainty has been often assessed in terrestrial ecosystems but it is still unknown how freshwater variables affect the performance of enms contributing to unreliable predictions for aquatic species here we used the ecologically and economically relevant amazon giant catfish brachyplatystoma filamentosum as a model species to assess uncertainties on enm predictions in freshwater ecosystems specifically we assessed uncertainty by coupling enm predictions using five modeling methods and four sets of freshwater environmental variables our results indicate that the modeling methods and secondarily the variables account for significant uncertainty in predicting freshwater species distribution using enm areas with high environmental suitability such as the amazon large rivers and nearby areas presented high uncertainty for the methods component and lower uncertainties for freshwater variables moreover freshwater variables accounted also for uncertainties in metrics of modelsâ performance whereas topographic variables better predicted presences higher sensitivities and lower omission errors land cover and soil variables better predicted pseudo absences higher specificities and lower commission errors the hydroclimatic variables had better accuracy metrics values auc and tss but also generated the greatest uncertainty for the final models when included variables from all groups enms presented low uncertainties and good accuracy in sum our findings suggest the importance of measuring and mapping the uncertainties of enms using freshwater environmental database,2018,0.387
"Tapping into technology and the biodiversity informatics revolution: updated terrestrial mammal list of Angola, with new records from the Okavango Basin",using various sources including the global biodiversity information facility gbif published literature recent 2015â 2017 collections as well as bat detector and camera trap surveys with opportunistic sightings and live capture in the upper okavango catchment in central angola we present an updated mammal checklist of 275 species from 15 different orders for angola including the cabinda region recent surveys captures and bat detectors of small mammals from the upper okavango catchment yielded 46 species 33 species of bats ten species of rodents and three species of shrews one bat pipistrellusrusticus rusty pipistrelle two rodents mussetzeri setzerâ s mouse and zelotomyswoosnami woosnamâ s broad faced mouse and one shrew suncusvarilla lesser dwarf shrew were captured for the first time in angola while our species lists of bats conformed to predicted totals terrestrial small mammals were under sampled with only 13 species recorded by our trapping survey compared to a total of 42 shrew and rodent species expected based on gbif records for the central angolan highlands seven terrestrial small mammal species one shrew and six rodents are endemic to the central and western angolan highlands but none of these were captured in our survey the bat detector surveys added three further bat species to the country list pipistrellushesperidus kerivoulaargentata and mopsmidas camera trap surveys and opportunistic sightings in the upper okavango catchment in 2016 yielded a total of 35 species of medium large mammals from 17 families although all of these had been reported previously in angola gbif proved to be an excellent source of biodiversity data for angolan mammals most importantly for documenting dramatic historical range changes of larger mammals such as the sable hippotragusnigerniger kirkâ s sable h nigerkirkii and the giant sable h nigervariani,2018,0.987
Formation of disjunct plant distributions in Northeast Asia: a case study of Betula davurica using a species distribution model,repeated climate change during glacial and interglacial periods of the quaternary led to mass migrations that resulted in disjunct distributions for many species however few studies have examined the processes that form disjunct distributions in northeast asia nea in this study we examined the disjunct distribution of betula davurica pall in the japanese archipelago this species is a dominant canopy tree found in cool temperate deciduous broad leaved forests of continental nea we hypothesized that quaternary climate change caused the present disjunct distribution pattern of this species to test this hypothesis we adopted a species distribution model and examined a series of potential habitats in the last glacial maximum lgm the mid holocene and the present we generated models in maxent with b davurica presence as the response variable and six bioclimatic variables as predictor variables during the lgm projected potential habitats were distributed around the korean peninsula east china and the japanese archipelago excluding hokkaido in the mid holocene habitats retreated both from east china and western japan remained unchanged in the korean peninsula and central honshu mountains and expanded to northern china the russian far east as well as northern japan hokkaido thus post lgm global warming led to an expansion of b davurica distribution to northern parts of continental nea along with a retreat in the japanese archipelago this shift in populations formed the present disjunct distribution,2018,0.926
Involving recreational snorkelers in inventory improvement or creation: a case study in the Indian Ocean,four amateur naturalists and underwater photographers established sixty first records and discovered three species probably new to science at reunion island indian ocean between january 2010 and january 2016 although the marine environment of this island has been studied for some forty years by professional scientists these results were achieved after snorkeling in coastal areas at a maximum depth of 2 m all records were validated by professional experts of the relevant groups with appropriate reservations for photograph based identifications the analysis of the methodology used by this group of reef observers highlights three central elements individual initiative regular random path snorkeling practice by local observers and availability of correspondent observers with sufficient naturalist skills to select accurate data and manage an optimal link with professional scientists such achievement emphasizes the efficiency of a citizen based approach aimed at creating or improving local fauna inventories and discovering new species considering that ecological data can be collected during observers random path snorkeling sessions such a project is also of interest for local conservationists and marine ecosystems managers we therefore recommend the inclusion of these practices in the process of designing standardised observation programs aimed at non professionals everywhere snorkeling can be practiced especially in under studied regions,2018,0.308
"Genus Retama: a review on traditional uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities",plants of the genus retama fabaceae are used in traditional medicine of the mediterranean basin as an emetic purgative and vermifuge certain retama species are also employed to treat a multitude of disorders including diabetes hepatitis jaundice sore throat skin diseases joint pain rheumatism fever and inflammation this review deals with updated information on the distribution botanical characteristics ethnopharmacology phytochemistry pharmacological activities and toxicity of the retama species in order to support their therapeutic potential and to provide an input for future research prospects the retama species are mainly employed as ethnomedicinal remedies in mediterranean countries including algeria egypt italy lebanon libya morocco and spain previous phytochemical studies show a complex composition rich in carbohydrates galactomannans polyols pinitol fatty acids phenolic compounds genistein daidzein and alkaloids retamine lupanine the pharmacological activity of their various extracts has been widely studied revealing among others the anti microbial anti inflammatory and anti diabetic effects of these species the potential toxicity of these medicinal plants has also been discussed although recent experimental evidence confirms the pharmacological interest of this genus further studies are necessary,2018,0.231
Lean Multiclass Crowdsourcing,we introduce a method for efficiently crowdsourcing multiclass annotations in challenging real world image datasets our method is designed to minimize the number of human annotations that are necessary to achieve a desired level of confidence on class labels it is based on combining models of worker behavior with computer vision our method is general it can handle a large number of classes worker labels that come from a taxonomy rather than a flat list and can model the dependence of labels when workers can see a history of previous annotations our method may be used as a drop in replacement for the majority vote algorithms used in online crowdsourcing services that aggregate multiple human annotations into a final consolidated label in experiments conducted on two real life applications we find that our method can reduce the number of required annotations by as much as a factor of 5 4 and can reduce the residual annotation error by up to 90 when compared with majority voting furthermore the online risk estimates of the models may be used to sort the annotated collection and minimize subsequent expert review effort,2018,0.027
A first checklist of the Pteridophytes of Togo (West Africa),the present work proposes for the first time a study exclusively focused on the diversity of pteridophytes in togo,2018,0.348
Widespread but heterogeneous responses of Andean forests to climate change,global warming is forcing many species to shift their distributions upward causing consequent changes in the compositions of species that occur at specific locations this prediction remains largely untested for tropical trees here we show using a database of nearly 200 andean forest plot inventories spread across more than 33 5â latitude from 26 8â s to 7 1â n and 3 000 m elevation from 360 to 3 360 m above sea level that tropical and subtropical tree communities are experiencing directional shifts in composition towards having greater relative abundances of species from lower warmer elevations although this phenomenon of â thermophilizationâ is widespread throughout the andes the rates of compositional change are not uniform across elevations the observed heterogeneity in thermophilization rates is probably because of different warming rates and or the presence of specialized tree communities at ecotones that is at the transitions between distinct habitats such as at the timberline or at the base of the cloud forest understanding the factors that determine the directions and rates of compositional changes will enable us to better predict and potentially mitigate the effects of climate change on tropical forests,2018,0.647
The Relic Trochodendron aralioides Siebold & Zucc. (Trochodendraceae) in Taiwan: Ensemble Distribution Modeling and Climate Change Impacts,trochodendron aralioides siebold zuccarini trochodendraceae is a famous relic tree species understanding the comprehensive spatial distribution and likely impacts of climate change on t aralioides in its main habitatâ taiwanâ is of great importance we collected occurrence data and bioclimatic data to predict the current and future year 2050 distribution by ensemble distribution modeling on the biomod2 platform visualization of occurrence point data revealed that the main population of t aralioides was concentrated at medium altitudes and extended to both ends of taiwan being especially rich in the northern low mountains a similar distribution pattern of occurrence probability was shown by ensemble prediction of the true skill statistic 0 8 models comparing the current and future distribution of t aralioides the overlay analysis with profile display demonstrated spatial turnover that revealed a discrepancy between different latitudes and altitudes in the future climate t aralioides at the middle altitudes of central taiwan could migrate upward but its population in northern taiwan could lose most of its habitat consequently t aralioides in the low mountains of northern taiwan could be particularly in need of further conservation research which is urgently required to mitigate climate change impacts,2018,0.559
Specimens as Research Objects: Reconciliation Across Distributed Repositories to Enable Metadata Propagation,botanical specimens are shared as long term consultable research objects in a global network of specimen repositories multiple specimens are generated from a shared field collection event generated specimens are then managed individually in separate repositories and independently augmented with research and management metadata which could be propagated to their duplicate peers establishing a data derived network for metadata propagation will enable the reconciliation of closely related specimens which are currently dispersed unconnected and managed independently following a data mining exercise applied to an aggregated dataset of 19 827 998 specimen records from 292 separate specimen repositories 36 or 7 102 710 specimens are assessed to participate in duplication relationships allowing the propagation of metadata among the participants in these relationships totalling 93 044 type citations 1 121 865 georeferences 1 097 168 images and 2 191 179 scientific name determinations the results enable the creation of networks to identify which repositories could work in collaboration some classes of annotation particularly those regarding scientific name determinations represent units of scientific work appropriate management of this data would allow the accumulation of scholarly credit to individual researchers potential further work in this area is discussed,2018,0.238
The history and impact of digitization and digital data mobilization on biodiversity research,the first two decades of the twenty first century have seen a rapid rise in the mobilization of digital biodiversity data this has thrust natural history museums into the forefront of biodiversity research underscoring their central role in the modern scientific enterprise the advent of mobilization initiatives such as the united states national science foundation s advancing digitization of biodiversity collections adbc australia s atlas of living australia ala mexico s national commission for the knowledge and use of biodiversity conabio brazil s centro de referãªncia em informaã ã o cria and china s national specimen information infrastructure nsii has led to a rapid rise in data aggregators and an exponential increase in digital data for scientific research and arguably provide the best evidence of where species live the international global biodiversity information facility gbif now serves about 131 million museum specimen records and integrated digitized biocollections idigbio in the usa has amassed more than 115 million these resources expose collections to a wider audience of researchers provide the best biodiversity data in the modern era outside of nature itself and ensure the primacy of specimen based research here we provide a brief history of worldwide data mobilization their impact on biodiversity research challenges for ensuring data quality their contribution to scientific publications and evidence of the rising profiles of natural history collections,2018,0.201
"Ecological niche modelling and predicted geographic distribution of Lutzomyia cruzi, vector of Leishmania infantum in South America",in some transmission foci of leishmania infantum in brazil lutzomyia cruzi could be considered the main vector of this pathogen in addition l cruzi is a permissive vector of l amazonensis its geographical distribution seems to be restricted and limited to cerrado and pantanal biomes which includes some areas in brazil and bolivia considering that predicting the distribution of the species involved in transmission cycles is an effective approach for assessing human disease risk this study aims to predict the spatial distribution of l cruzi using a multiscale ecological niche model based in both climate and habitat variables ecological niche modelling was used to identify areas in south america that are environmentally suitable for this particular vector species but its presence is not recorded vector occurrence records were compiled from the literature museum collections and brazilian health departments bioclimatic variables altitude and land use and cover were used as predictors in five ecological niche model algorithms bioclim generalised linear model logistic regression maximum entropy random forests and support vector machines the vector occurs in areas where annual mean temperature values range from 21 76â c to 26 58â c and annual total precipitation varies from 1005 mm and 2048 mm urban areas were most present around capture locations the potential distribution area of l cruzi according to the final ecological niche model spans brazil and bolivia in patches of suitable habitats inside a larger climatically favourable area the bigger portion of this suitable area is located at brazilian states of mato grosso do sul and mato grosso our findings identified environmentally suitable areas for l cruzi in regions without its known occurrence so further field sampling of sand flies is recommended especially in southern goiã s state mato grosso do sul borders with mato grosso sã o paulo and minas gerais and in bolivian departments santa cruz and el beni,2018,0.403
Real gaps in European bird monitoring: A reply to Voříšek et al.,in the correspondence paper â œwetzel et al fail to identify the real gaps in european bird monitoringâ voå ã å ek et al appear to have misinterpreted our analysis firstly we give recommendations on data accessibility data discoverability and future directions in increasing the value of biodiversity monitoring data of any species group in europe and world wide we also draw on the framework of essential biodiversity variables pereira et al 2013 schmeller et al 2017 and criteria outlined in kissling et al 2018 such data need to fulfill secondly our criteria outlined in the method section remained unconsidered by the authors in their criticism the main purpose of our analysis was not to focus on one species group but to show the data gaps among different taxonomic groups and to show that even within a well monitored species group such as birds important differences between countries exist not allowing for a large scale assessment of biodiversity change across europe,2018,0.455
Botanic gardens are an untapped resource for studying the functional ecology of tropical plants,functional traits are increasingly used to understand the ecology of plants and to predict their responses to global changes unfortunately trait data are unavailable for the majority of plant species the lack of trait data is especially prevalent for hard to measure traits and for tropical plant species potentially owing to the many inherent difficulties of working with species in remote hyperdiverse rainforest systems the living collections of botanic gardens provide convenient access to large numbers of tropical plant species and can potentially be used to quickly augment trait databases and advance our understanding of species responses to climate change in this review we quantitatively assess the availability of trait data for tropical versus temperate species the diversity of species available for sampling in several exemplar tropical botanic gardens and the validity of garden based leaf and root trait measurements our analyses support the contention that the living collections of botanic gardens are a valuable scientific resource that can contribute significantly to research on plant functional ecology and conservation,2018,0.334
Mountains of diversity,mountain chains are global centres of biological diversity â they harbour one third of all terrestrial species1 these places have long fascinated biologists2 but are notoriously difficult to explore and study our knowledge of the distribution of species diversity on mountains is incomplete as is our understanding of how species richness the total number of species and the rates of formation of new species speciation vary in single mountain ranges in a paper in nature quintero and jetz3 tackle these issues by studying the diversity and evolution of birds on the 46 major mountain ranges of the world,2018,0.608
Intraspecific and interspecific adaptive latitudinal cline in Brassicaceae seed oil traits,premise of the study nearly all seed plants rely on stored seed reserves before photosynthesis can commence natural selection for seed oil traits must have occurred over 319 million years of evolution since the first seed plant ancestor accounting for the biogeographic distribution of seed oil traits is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of adaptive evolution in seed plants however the evolution of seed oils is poorly understood we provide evidence of the adaptive nature of seed oil traits at the intraspecific and interspecific levels in brassicaceaeâ an oilseed rich and economically important plant family methods univariate statistics pearson s correlation multiple regression generalized linear mixed model analysis and phylogenetic autocorrelation tests on seed oil traits of 360 accessions of arabidopsis thaliana and 216 brassicaceae species helped provide evidence of the adaptive nature of seed oil traits key results at higher latitudes both seed oil content and unsaturated fatty acids have selective advantages in arabidopsis thaliana intraspecific level while only unsaturated fatty acids have selective advantages across 216 brassicaceae species interspecific level the seed oil patterns fit within the theoretical framework of the gradient model seed oil content increases significantly from temperate to subtropical to tropical regions in brassicaceae herbs absence of phylogenetic signals for seed oil traits and high seed oil content in four tribes of brassicaceae were observed conclusions multiple seed oil traits are adaptive in nature and follow a gradient model consistent evolutionary patterns of seed oil traits were observed at the intraspecific and interspecific levels in brassicaceae seed oil traits change with latitude and across biomes suggesting selection the absence of a phylogenetic signal for seed oil traits and the occurrence of high seed oil content in four brassicaceae tribes provides evidence of the adaptive nature of seed oil traits in brassicaceae,2018,0.076
Rapid enhancement of biodiversity occurrence records using unconventional specimen data,distributions of taxa across time and space are central to understanding biodiversity and biotic change yet currently available occurrence data drawn from biodiversity specimen records and observational datasets are often insufficient to answer many driving questions records of â œassociated taxa â taxa co occurring with a specimen at the time and place of collection have the potential to fill data gaps and expand the spatiotemporal scope of current occurrence records i developed a method to extract associated taxon records from 84 328 digitized specimen records and examined the potential of these data to improve the quantity and quality of existing species occurrence data adding associated taxon records increased the size of the test dataset by 18 5 spanned multiple decades 1937â 2016 and potentially extended the known range of 217 taxa in florida and up to 1500 taxa in the united states demonstrating the capacity of these records to deepen our understanding of changes in the distributions of taxa on earth these results suggest that increased attention to documenting associated taxa could be a promising way to maximize the impact of every collecting event,2018,0.378
Dispersal biophysics and adaptive significance of dimorphic diaspores in the annual Aethionema arabicum (Brassicaceae),heteromorphic diaspores fruits and seeds are an adaptive betâ hedging strategy to cope with spatioâ temporally variable environments particularly to fluctuations in favourable temperatures and to unpredictable precipitation regimes in arid climates we conducted comparative analyses of the biophysical and ecophysiological properties of the two distinct diaspores mucilaginous seed m vs indehiscent ind fruit in the dimorphic annual aethionema arabicum brassicaceae linking fruit biomechanics dispersal aerodynamics pericarpâ imposed dormancy diaspore abscisic acid aba content and phenotypic plasticity of dimorphic diaspore production to its natural habitat and climate two very contrasting dispersal mechanisms of the a arabicum dimorphic diaspores were revealed dehiscence of large fruits leads to the release of m seed diaspores which adhere to substrata via seed coat mucilage thereby preventing dispersal antiâ telechory ind fruit diaspores containing nonâ mucilaginous seeds disperse by wind or water currents promoting dispersal telechory over a longer range the pericarp properties confer enhanced dispersal ability and degree of dormancy to the ind fruit morph to support telechory while the m seed morph supports antiâ telechory combined with the phenotypic plasticity to produce more ind fruit diaspores in colder temperatures this constitutes a betâ hedging survival strategy to magnify the prevalence in response to selection pressures acting over hilly terrain,2018,0.064
Scientific opinion on the safety of monacolins in red yeast rice,the panel on food additives and nutrient sources added to food ans was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on the safety of monacolins in red yeast rice ryr and to provide advice on a dietary intake of monacolins that does not give rise to concerns about harmful effects to health the panel reviewed the scientific evidences available as well as the information provided by interested parties in response of a public â call for dataâ launched by efsa the panel considered that monacolin k in lactone form is identical to lovastatin the active ingredient of several medicinal products authorised for the treatment of hypercholesterolaemia in the eu on the basis of the information available the panel concluded that intake of monacolins from ryr via food supplements could lead to estimated exposure to monacolin k within the range of the therapeutic doses of lovastatin the panel considered that the available information on the adverse effects reported in humans were judged to be sufficient to conclude that monacolins from ryr when used as food supplements were of significant safety concern at the use level of 10 mg day the panel further considered that individual cases of severe adverse reactions have been reported for monacolins from ryr at intake levels as low as 3 mg day the panel concluded that exposure to monacolin k from ryr could lead to severe adverse effects on musculoskeletal system including rhabdomyolysis and on the liver in the reported cases the product contained other ingredients in addition to ryr however these reported effects in particular musculoskeletal effects have both occurred after ingestion of monacolin k and lovastatin independently on the basis of the information available and several uncertainties highlighted in this opinion the panel was unable to identify a dietary intake of monacolins from ryr that does not give rise to concerns about harmful effects to health for the general population and as appropriate for vulnerable subgroups of the population,2018,0.087
Consequences of dispersal limitation and habitat fragmentation for the Brazilian heart-tongued frogs ( Phyllodytes spp.),poorly known species may be cryptically endangered especially when they inhabit fragmented and threatened habitats heartâ tongued frogs genus phyllodytes family hylidae lophyohylinae comprise 17 species of poorly known frogs that have obligatory associations with tank bromeliads the distributions of all species are restricted to a small extremely fragmented region of atlantic forest in eastern brazil we model climate and tank bromeliad distributions to better understand frog distribution limits using records from several sources for frogs and bromeliads with climate data from worldclim we modelled the distribution of phyllodytes using maximum entropy we compared climate and altitude within the distribution and nearby to test how climate may limit distribution climate together with bromeliad distributions provided the best model and predicted the smallest suitable area for phyllodytes that was larger than that occupied from the state of paraã ba in the north to rio grande do sul in the south phyllodytes occurs in lower elevations that are warmer wetter and less variable than the surrounding regions where it does not occur and dispersal is apparently limited by the surrounding inhospitable region dispersal limitation and habitat fragmentation have relegated phyllodytes to many very small habitat fragments with many species in this genus being known from a single or few samples this unfortunate combination of limitation and fragmentation suggests that some or all species of phyllodytes may be threatened with extinction especially if habitat fragmentation continues at its present pace in eastern brazil,2018,0.828
Literature-based latitudinal distribution and possible range shifts of two US east coast dune grass species ( Uniola paniculata and Ammophila breviligulata ),previous work on the us atlantic coast has generally shown that coastal foredunes are dominated by two dune grass species ammophila breviligulata american beachgrass and uniola paniculata sea oats from virginia northward a breviligulata dominates while u paniculata is the dominant grass south of virginia previous work suggests that these grasses influence the shape of coastal foredunes in species specific ways and that they respond differently to environmental stressors thus it is important to know which species dominates a given dune system the range boundaries of these two species remains unclear given the lack of comprehensive surveys in an attempt to determine these boundaries we conducted a literature survey of 98 studies that either stated the range limits and or included field based studies observations of the two grass species we then produced an interactive map that summarizes the locations of the surveyed papers and books the literature review suggests that the current southern range limit for a breviligulata is cape fear nc and the northern range limit for u paniculata is assateague island on the maryland and virginia border our data suggest a northward expansion of u paniculata possibly associated with warming trends observed near the northern range limit in painter va in contrast the data regarding a range shift for a breviligulata remain inconclusive we also compare our literature based map with geolocated records from the global biodiversity information facility and inaturalist research grade crowd sourced observations we intend for our literature based map to aid coastal researchers who are interested in the dynamics of these two species and the potential for their ranges to shift as a result of climate change,2018,0.746
Slimy invasion: Climatic niche and current and future biogeography of Arion slug invaders,aim the current volume of global trade has led to an unprecedented rate of biological invasions causing severe problems to native ecosystems the knowledge of species introduction routes and areas suitable for establishment is therefore an important step in preventing future invasions the situation can be further exacerbated by climate change which might alter the amount of environmentally suitable areas for establishment of invasive species here we focus on three arion slug species recently introduced to north america and australia with potentially significant impactâ a ater a rufus and a vulgaris location worldwide results we combined interception records molecular analyses and species distribution modelling to assess their introduction history and to predict which regions are at highest risk of future invasions we found extensive sharing of mitochondrial haplotypes among continents in all three species in concordance with the genetic analyses interception records suggest that slugs were introduced to the usa and australia primarily from france the netherlands and the uk but also from other locations in north america the models predicted climatically suitable regions for the three arion species in several areas across the globe for which management actions can be targeted main conclusions while the amount of regions with climatic conditions that would be suitable for slug establishment is predicted to slightly decrease under future scenarios new suitable areas will also emerge we therefore recommend that prevention efforts to limit new introductions should continue in order to protect vulnerable native ecosystems,2018,0.846
"Assessing Accuracy Methods of Species Distribution Models: AUC, Specificity, Sensitivity and the True Skill Statistic",we aimed to assess different methods for evaluating performance accuracy in species distribution models based on the application of five types of bioclimatic models under three threshold selections to predict the distributions of eight different species in australia treated as an independent area five discriminatory correlative species distribution models sdms were used to predict the species distributions of eight different plants a global training data set excluding the australian locations was used for model fitting four accuracy measurement methods were compared under three threshold selections of i maximum sensitivity specificity ii sensitivity specificity and iii predicted probability of 0 5 default results showed that the choice of modeling methods had an impact on potential distribution predictions for an independent area examination of the four accuracy methods underexamined threshold selections demonstrated that tss is a more realistic and practical method in comparison with auc sensitivity and specificity accurate projection of the distribution of a species is extremely complex,2018,0.469
Ecological and life history traits explain a climate-induced shift in a temperate marine fish community,a better understanding of community dynamics and ecosystem functioning can be achieved by describing how community functional structure responds to environmental change over both time and space and by identifying which functional groups best mediate community responses here we used a trait based approach in combination with a newly developed application of principal response curves to functionally characterize a rapid taxonomic shift in the eastern english channel fish community in the late 1990s we identified the functional groups with the greatest contributions to the overall shift in fish functional structure and uncovered significant trait∠environment relationships we found that pelagic species with rapid life history cycles characterized by broadcast spawning small offspring size and early maturation declined considerably in abundance following an increase in sea surface temperature associated with a warming phase of the atlantic multidecadal oscillation which was likely exacerbated by historical fishing pressure in contrast species with late maturation high parental care and few well developed offspring increased in abundance reinforcing that fish community responses to climate warming are strongly mediated through life history traits by examining how environmental factors drove a community shift at the trait level we provide a mechanistic understanding of how fish functional structure responds to rapid environmental change,2018,0.051
The Bari Manifesto: An interoperability framework for essential biodiversity variables,essential biodiversity variables ebv are fundamental variables that can be used for assessing biodiversity change over time for determining adherence to biodiversity policy for monitoring progress towards sustainable development goals and for tracking biodiversity responses to disturbances and management interventions data from observations or models that provide measured or estimated ebv values which we refer to as ebv data products can help to capture the above processes and trends and can serve as a coherent framework for documenting trends in biodiversity using primary biodiversity records and other raw data as sources to produce ebv data products depends on cooperation and interoperability among multiple stakeholders including those collecting and mobilising data for ebvs and those producing publishing and preserving ebv data products here we encapsulate ten principles for the current best practice in ebv focused biodiversity informatics as â the bari manifestoâ serving as implementation guidelines for data and research infrastructure providers to support the emerging ebv operational framework based on trans national and cross infrastructure scientific workflows the principles provide guidance on how to contribute towards the production of ebv data products that are globally oriented while remaining appropriate to the producer s own mission vision and goals these ten principles cover data management planning data structure metadata services data quality workflows provenance ontologies vocabularies data preservation and accessibility for each principle desired outcomes and goals have been formulated some specific actions related to fulfilling the bari manifesto principles are highlighted in the context of each of four groups of organizations contributing to enabling data interoperability data standards bodies research data infrastructures the pertinent research communities and funders the bari manifesto provides a roadmap enabling support for routine generation of ebv data products and increases the likelihood of success for a global ebv framework,2018,0.025
Leightoniella zeylanensis belongs to the Pannariaceae,recent finds of leightoniella zeylanensis classified variously in the collemataceae and pannariaceae enabled us to generate dna sequence data for investigating its phylogenetic affiliation newly generated sequence data from the internal transcribed spacer its region and the large subunit of the nuclear ribosomal dna nrlsu the small subunit of the mitochondrial ribosomal mrssu dna and the largest subunit of the rna polymerase ii gene rpb1 indicate that l zeylanensis is a member of the pannariaceae belonging to a strongly supported clade together with physma lepidocollema and gibbosporina the â physma cladeâ with the currently available data however relationships within this clade are largely impossible to reconstruct with confidence l zeylanensis was found to possess ellipsoid ascospores surrounded by a thick gelatinous perispore with pointed ends supporting a previously published hypothesis that such a perispore type is an synapomorphy for the physma clade,2018,0.451
Using the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy to prepare and publish a treatment for the Caryophyllales Network: an online synthesis of the Nepenthaceae,the caryophyllales network strives to assemble an online dynamic synthesis of the order caryophyllales uniting the current knowledge about the phylogeny of the order with up to date information on the individual taxa contained capturing taxonomic data and the decision processes involved in the definition and circumscription of the taxa requires highly complex specialized software the caryophyllales network uses the edit platform for cybertaxonomy for that purpose in the context of the online treatment of the family nepenthaceae we describe the steps taken to assemble the database the interaction with other electronic sources the links with the world flora online initiative and the prospects for the maintenance and further development of the nepenthaceae segment of the caryophyllales database nepenthaceae constitute an example of a family with a relatively recent flora treatment flora malesiana published in 2001 which to a large extent covers its total range of distribution but with further species subsequently described as new to science in mostly regional treatments and with an analysis of relationships and species limits on the basis of evolutionary methods just emerging a snapshot of the current state of the database is provided as an annotated checklist in pdf format in the supplementary material online which includes 176 species and nine naturally occurring named hybrids and treats 435 species and infraspecific names,2018,0.578
The evolution of floral signals in relation to range overlap in a clade of California Jewelflowers ( Streptanthus s.l.),because of their function as reproductive signals in plants floral traits experience distinct selective pressures related to their role in speciation reinforcement and prolonged coexistence with close relatives however few studies have investigated whether population level processes translate into detectable signatures at the macroevolutionary scale here we ask whether patterns of floral trait evolution and range overlap across a clade of california jewelflowers reflect processes hypothesized to shape floral signal differentiation at the population level we found a pattern of divergence in floral scent composition across the clade such that close relatives had highly disparate floral scents given their age accounting for range overlap with close relatives explained additional variation in floral scent over time with sympatric species pairs having diverged more than allopatric species pairs given their age however three other floral traits flower size scent complexity and flower color did not fit these patterns failing to deviate from a null brownian motion model of evolution together our results suggest that selection for divergence among close relatives in the composition of floral scents may play a key sustained role in mediating speciation and coexistence dynamics across this group and that signatures of these dynamics may persist at the macroevolutionary scale,2018,0.254
Delineating limits: confronting predicted climatic suitability to field performance in mistletoe populations,1 biotic stressors such as hemiparasites have a profound impact on forest functioning however predicting the future incidence of these stressors on forests remains challenging because climateâ based distribution do not consider treeâ hemiparasite interactions or the impacts of extreme climate events on stressorsâ performance 2 we use species distribution models sdms and ecophysiological and demographic field data to assess whether climatic suitability is a proxy for the performance of the hemiparasite mistletoe viscum album in two forests with contrasting climatic conditions two hostâ tree species representing wetâ cold scots pine and dryâ warm aleppo pine conditions were selected we fitted sdms based on climate variables and measured different ecophysiological variables capturing coldâ photoinhibition and droughtâ tolerance intrinsic waterâ use efficiency iwue we also assessed demographic variables related to seed germination and establishment rates of mistletoe through a translocation experiment 3 sdms showed a high climatic suitability of mistletoe in both forests mistletoes living in the scots pines site presented a higher cold tolerance whilst those inhabiting the aleppo pine site showed a higher iwue seedlings coming from local seeds showed a lower mortality than seedlings coming from translocated seeds germination and seedling establishment showed temporal mismatches when comparing local and translocated seeds 4 synthesis habitat suitability predicted by sdms based on climate data and field performance were related in this mistletoe species however ecophysiological and demographic variables indicated a lower fitness of mistletoe in the dryâ warm site associated with drought stress in conclusion predicted climate suitability based on sdms forecasts should be refined using field data on actual performance and considering plantâ toâ plant interactions and extreme climate events,2018,0.238
Using niche conservatism information to prioritize hotspots of invasion by non-native freshwater invertebrates in New Zealand,aim identifying suitable areas for invasive species establishment is of critical importance for their early detection and rapid eradication however our ability to detect suitable areas is impeded by the tendency of species to shift their niche postinvasion in this study we a investigate the frequency of niche shift within invasive freshwater invertebrates and b use niche conservatism information to prioritize potential hotspots of invasion for nonâ native freshwater invertebrates in new zealand location global occurrence data and predictions over new zealand methods we characterized the native and invasive realized niche using occurrence data for 22 invasive freshwater invertebrates in relation to 27 derived climate variables using principal component analysis and species distribution models we measured the degree of niche shift for each species and identified hotspots of invasion and niche conservatism described within biogeographic units in new zealand results niche shift was detected frequently among the invasive freshwater invertebrates studied here where 90 showed a significant niche change the characterization of the species niche enabled the identification of species whose management might be hampered because of their ability to colonize novel environments locations covering more than half of the land area of new zealand were found to be climatically suitable for at least four and up to 11 species areas that were found to be climatically suitable for several species but were not identified as hotspots of niche conservatism could be considered less critical for surveillance and monitoring main conclusions aquatic invertebrates show a high degree of niche shift by combining climate suitability predictions and niche conservatism we were able to prioritize invasion areas,2018,0.952
"Genesis, goals and achievements of Long-Term Ecological Research at the global scale: A critical review of ILTER and future directions",since its founding in 1993 the international long term ecological research network ilter has gone through pronounced development phases the current network comprises 44 active member lter networks representing 700 lter sites and 80 ltser platforms across all continents active in the fields of ecosystem critical zone and socio ecological research the critical challenges and most important achievements of the initial phase have now become state of the art in networking for excellent science at the same time increasing integration accelerating technology networking of resources and a strong pull for more socially relevant scientific information have been modifying the mission and goals of ilter this article provides a critical review of ilter s mission goals development and impacts major characteristics tools services partnerships and selected examples of relative strengths relevant for advancing ilter are presented we elaborate on the tradeoffs between the needs of the scientific community and stakeholder expectations the embedding of ilter in an increasingly collaborative landscape of global environmental observation and ecological research networks and infrastructures is also reflected by developments of pioneering regional and national lter networks such as saeon in south africa cern ceobex in china tern in australia or elter ri in europe the primary role of ilter is currently seen as a mechanism to investigate ecosystem structure function and services in response to a wide range of environmental forcings using long term place based research we suggest four main fields of activities and advancements for the next decade through development delivery of a 1 global multi disciplinary community of researchers and research institutes 2 strategic global framework and strong partnerships in ecosystem observation and research 3 global research infrastructure gri and 4 a scientific knowledge factory for societally relevant information on sustainable use of natural resources,2018,0.012
"Herbarium collection of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (RB), Brazil",this paper provides a quantitative and general description of the rio de janeiro botanical garden herbarium rb dataset created over a century ago the rb currently comprises ca 750 000 mounted specimens with a strong representation of brazilian flora mainly from the atlantic and amazon forests nearly 100 of these specimens have been entered into the database and imaged and at present about 17 have been geo referenced this data paper is focused exclusively on rb s exsiccatae collection of land plants and algae which is currently increasing by about twenty to thirty thousand specimens per year thanks to fieldwork exchange and donations since 2005 many national and international projects have been implemented improving the quality and accessibility of the collection the most important facilitating factor in this process was the creation of the institutional system for plants collection and management named jabot since the rb is continuously growing the dataset is updated weekly on sibbr and gbif portals,2018,0.044
"Distribution of aquatic beetles from the east of Morocco (Coleoptera, Polyphaga)",we present old and new faunistic and distributional data on aquatic polyphaga coleoptera from the east of morocco comprising the oriental region and the basin of moulouya river a checklist of 91 species belonging to 27 genera and seven families is provided ochthebius quadrifossulatus hydraenidae and pomatinus substriatus dryopidae are new records for the basin of moulouya river and helophorus occidentalis h discrepans h flavipes hydrochus flavipes anacena globulus enochrus fuscipennis and hydrobius fuscipes all belonging to the family hydrophilidae and limnebius furcatus ochthebius aeneus and o merinidicus all hydreanidae are new for the entire studied area of eastern morocco we found a clear dominance of the palearctic elements mainly mediterranean with a high proportion of iberoâ maghrebian endemisms this chorotype pattern is similar to those observed for other macroinvertebrates orders in the same study area,2018,0.49
"First record of Calliactis tricolor (Le Sueur, 1817) (Cnidaria, Actiniaria, Hormathiidae) in the Veracruz reef system, southwestern Gulf of Mexico",the sea anemone calliactis tricolor le sueur 1817 is an ecologically important member of the benthic community in coastal and coral reefs of the tropical atlantic particularly for their propensity to establish mutualistic symbiotic relationships with hermit crabs this species is presumably distributed throughout the gulf of mexico however it had never been recorded in the southwestern part of the gulf here we document the first record of c tricolor in 2 coral reef localities of the veracruz reef system mexico and update the number of species of sea anemones known for the region,2018,0.531
"Records and Notes for Two Uncommon Species of Coleoptera, Trichodesma klagesi (Fall) (Ptinidae) and Oxylaemus americanus LeConte (Teredidae), from North Carolina, USA",the north american members of trichodesma leconte include 10 widely distributed species philips 2002 distribution and life history information are scant for most trichodesma species regarding the western north american species trichodesma cristata casey appears to be the most common and widespread and is recorded from kern monterrey riverside san luis obispo santa barbara tulare and santa cruz counties in california santa barbara museum of natural history 2017 as well as oregon white 1982 and british columbia canada bousquet et al 2013 an additional specimen from clark county washington was photographed mccorney 2013 the remaining western north american species are recorded from california texas and mexico trichodesma fuliginosa white is known from cameron hidalgo and starr counties texas white 1981 trichodesma pratti fisher is reported only from kerr county texas white 1982 trichodesma pulchella schaeffer is recorded from cameron and hidalgo counties texas and tamaulipas mexico trichodesma pulchella has been beaten from fraxinus berlandieriana dc oleaceae and libidibia paraguariensis parodi lewis fabaceae and has emerged from partially dead diospyros texana scheele ebenaceae white 1982 gbif 2018 scan 2018 trichodesma sellata horn is reported from baja california mexico and san diego county california white 1976 1982 trichodesma setifera leconte is known only from san diego county california trichodesma sordida hom is recorded from brown cameron and hidalgo counties texas and tamaulipas mexico white 1982 gbif 2018 scan 2018 and has been beaten from l paraguariensis and ebenopsis ebano berland barneby and j w grimes fabaceae scan 2018 trichodesma texana schaeffer is reported from cameron and hidalgo counties texas white 1982 gbif 2018 and tamaulipas mexico and has been beaten from l paraguariensis scan 2018,2018,0.887
"Biodiversity and ecology of the parasitic infracommunities of Loricaria prolixa (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from the Tietê-Batalha Basin, SP, Brazil",the parasitic biodiversity of the loricaria prolixa an endemic fish from the paranã and prata basins was studied and analyzed the parasiticâ s communities dynamics and their ecological relations with this host samples were collected in the batalha river and 39 specimens were analyzed from 2014 to 2016 all fishes were parasitized the component community was composed by twelve species with 8694 metazoan found on the surface gills eyes brain intestine and blood of the hosts demidospermus spirophallus diplostomidae gen sp rhabdochona kidderi and oligobdella sp showed higher values for the parasitism s ecological descriptors and were centrals and dominants species the infracommunities were characterized by specific richness smaller in relation to diversity and both superior to equitability hâ 0 94 j 0 6 d 0 83 there was a significant positive correlation between the host standard length and the parasite abundance of d spirophallus diplostomidae gen sp and oligobdella sp while procamallanus spirocamallanus inopinatus presented a significant negative correlation this is the first contribution concerning the parasite biodiversity of l prolixa clinostomum detruncatum diplostomidae gen sp austrodiplostomum compactum r kidderi p s inopinatus p s rebecae cucullanus pinnai pinnai oligobdella sp and trypanosoma sp were first recorded in this host,2018,0.951
Investigating urban ant community (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in port cities and in major towns along the border in Côte d'Ivoire: a rapid assessment to detect potential …,objective this study aimed at examining ant communities of port and border cities in order to identify introduced and potential invasive ant species and microhabitats likely to contribute to the spread of these ant species therefore the sampling design are linear transects of 200 metres on which ants were collected using tuna baits at 15 30 45 and 60 minutes in the two port cities of abidjan and san pedro and seven cities that are man touba odienne ferkã ssedougou bouna bondoukou and abengourou located near the borders of cã te dâ ivoire the results showed 83 ant species including 9 potential introduced or invasive ant species these invasive ants contributed importantly to the ant assemblage in port cities 23 95â 2 7 of total richness and 37â 6 1 of total abundance and border cities 20 17â 4 7 30 6â 7 in addition two notorious invaders solenopsis geminata fabricius 1804 tropical fire ant and pheidole megacephala fabricius 1793 big headed ant were detected during this study the results also indicated that potential introduced or invasive ant species were mostly detected in microhabitats where human activities are uninterrupted such port zones markets domestic streets and residential conclusion in the end this study has shown that ant communities in port and border cities harbor invasive potential ant species particularly microhabitats characterized by high human activities such as port areas markets domestic streets and residential areas,2018,0.911
Evidence for Allopolyploid Speciation in Nymphoides (Menyanthaceae),the floating leaved aquatic plant genus nymphoides includes diploid and polyploid species that are distributed worldwide prior studies found widespread incongruence between nuclear and plastid phylogenies and this has prevented the construction of a unified phylogenetic hypothesis for the genus in order to examine whether phylogenetic incongruence resulted from ancestral polyploidization events we obtained dna sequence data from two nuclear loci phytoene desaturase pds and transmembrane nine tmn1 as well as the plastid trntâ trnf region multiple divergent copies of the nuclear genes were recovered from several species and species with the most divergent copies were inferred to have originated through allopolyploidization our data support a scenario in which three groups of species descended from allopolyploidization events a clade of north american species n aquatica and n cordata a clade of neotropical species n fallax n grayana and n humboldtiana and the australian species n montana trees constructed using novel nuclear gene data also were incongruent with previously generated nuclear and plastid data however we were able to combine data from four independently evolving regions pds tmn1 nuclear internal transcribed spacer and plastid to generate a single species tree that received strong support at several nodes sources of incongruence on the species tree involved a relatively small subset of species overall the increased data from nuclear loci have dramatically improved our understanding of the nymphoides phylogeny,2018,0.98
"Name-bearing type specimens in the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids &amp; Nematodes (CNC): Blattodea, Dermaptera, Notoptera, Mecoptera, Megaloptera, Myriapoda, Neuroptera, Odonata, Orthoptera, Phthiraptera, Pseudoscorpiones, Psocoptera,",a catalogue is provided for the name bearing types of most of the less diverse arthropod groups deposited in the canadian national collection of insects arachnids nematodes cnc there are 90 name bearing types of myriapoda chilopoda 3 types diplopoda 2 arachnida pseudoscorpiones 1 and insecta blattodea 1 dermaptera 1 notoptera 3 mecoptera 3 megaloptera 2 neuroptera 11 odonata 2 orthoptera 5 phthiraptera 2 psocoptera 10 raphidioptera 1 and siphonaptera 43 three myriapod syntypes are represented by an unknown number of specimens holotypes for plesiorobius canadensis klimaszewski kevan neuroptera and sphaeropsocoides canadensis grimaldi engel psocoptera are amber preserved fossils portions of the holotype of chaetospania assamensis sakai are considered lost as are an unknown number of syntype specimens for the centipede species ethopolys alaskanus chamberlin and e integer chamberlin collembola types were treated in stebaeva et al 2016 and araneae ephemeroptera plecoptera and trichoptera will be treated in future catalogues completing inventories for the orders without associated research staff in the cnc definitions of relevant type specimens are provided as is a preliminary summary of all 16 710 name bearing type specimens held by the cnc including those of the more diverse orders for which there are associated research staff nematoda acari coleoptera diptera hemiptera thysanoptera hymenoptera and lepidoptera,2018,0.705
Biological flora of Central Europe: Aldrovanda vesiculosa L,aldrovanda vesiculosa l droseraceae is a very rare and critically endangered submerged aquatic carnivorous plant with snapping traps which grows in shallow standing dystrophic waters such as lakes dam reservoirs peaty fishponds pools in peat bogs and fens backwater pools and oxbows in floodplains and basins of large rivers while it covers a vast territory of four continents in the old world across various climatic zones its recent natural fragmentary spread includes only around 50 sites worldwide following a marked population decline during the last 150 years the major extant world sites occur in ukraine poland romania and w russia the plant exhibits a marked physiological polarity along its linear shoot with rapid apical shoot growth flowering and especially seed set are rare and stimulated by high temperatures yet the plants propagate mainly vegetatively by branching seeds probably form a seed bank and colonise new sites by being transferred by water birds all temperate and some sub tropical populations form winter buds turions which sink to the bottom in autumn and actively rise to the water surface in spring the world population of aldrovanda is genetically rather uniform which may be caused by at least one recent bottleneck followed by long distance dispersal by water birds combined with the founder effect low mutation rates and dominant asexual reproduction aldrovanda is stenotopic and although it is relatively tolerant of many individual ecological factors it requires an optimal combination of many ecological habitat factors and even small changes in this combination can lead to its decline or extinction the most important ecological requirements are high co2 concentration in the water 0 1â mm shallow water of at least 0 1â m habitats free of dense stands of either submerged free floating or emergent plants or filamentous algae a thick layer of slowly decomposable plant litter on the bottom and abundant zooplankton as prey the main threats to its sites are water eutrophication and water level decline the introduction of aldrovanda to potentially suitable sites has become an efficient way to conserve its endangered world population in switzerland poland czech republic the netherlands australia and japan,2018,0.18
Saprophytic synnematous microfungi. New records and known species for Mexico,in this contribution 18 species of synnematous microfungi associated with plant debris are registered for the first time to the mexican mycobiota in addition an account of the current state of knowledge of the synnematous species registered to date is presented the taxonomic determination was carried out by morphological analysis of the specimens growing in natural substrate incubated in damp chambers arthrobotryum stilboideum blastocatena pulneyensis coremiella cubispora menisporopsis multisetula and phaeoisaria clavulata are new records for the neotropical region blastocatena pulneyensis menisporopsis anisospora and roigiella lignicola which have not been recorded since their original descriptions were also determined including the records of this study a total of 40 species belonging to 28 genera of synnematous microfungi have been registered for mexico no information was found for most of the states in the country for the 18 species recorded in the present study descriptions illustrations and information about their substrates and geographical distribution are provided reference material was deposited in the herbarium of the instituto de ecologã a a c xal in xalapa veracruz mexico,2018,0.76
Species distribution modelling tools and databases to assist managing forests under climate change,this paper examines progress made with species distribution modelling sdm for trees under climate change following brief background information the main focus is on developments in the last five years correlative sdms have become the most commonly used approach for analysing potential climate change impacts on areas suitable for particular species the use of sdms has been criticized but responses to these criticisms are provided and limitations may not be as great as has been suggested for many species sdms are the only potential source of data for learning about likely climate change impacts and suitable occurrence data for sdm analyses exist for about 50 000 tree species sdm papers have already been published presenting analyses for more than 1000 tree species under projected climate change most sdm climate change analyses adopt an â equilibrium assumptionâ that tree species natural distributions provide a reliable estimate of their climatic requirements however in addition to natural distribution data data from trials outside their natural distributions are desirable to determine their intrinsic climatic adaptability progress is described in relation to climatic data soil data species distribution data species and provenance trial data descriptions of species climatic requirements mapping of suitable areas and integration of species and environmental data desirable future objectives are identified for each of these topics,2018,0.948
"Revision of the taxonomic status of Rhodanthidium sticticum ordonezi (Dusmet, 1915), an anthidiine bee endemic to Morocco (Apoidea: Anthidiini) 2",rhodanthidium ordonezi dusmet 1815 is recognised here as a valid species endem ic to central and southern morocco it has previously been regarded as subspecies of r sticti cum fabricius the two taxa are in allopatry throughout most of their respective ranges but probably co occur in the middle atlas mountain they are clearly distinguished by their colour ation and some aspects of their colour pattern structural differences are minor but a multivari ate discriminant function analysis of eleven morphometric traits showed these are sufficient to assign 82 7 of all specimens correctly whereas r ordonezi has a restricted range in central and southern morocco extending over approximately 500 km r sticticum is widely distribut ed in the mediterranean basin with a range extending over approximately 2500 km from east to west the distribution areas of these two species are contiguous in the same ecozone of the middle atlas mountain range but sympatric occurrence or transition zone where intermediate specimens occur are not known,2018,0.508
Phylogenetic trends and environmental correlates of nuclear genome size variation in Helianthus sunflowers,flowering plants serve as a powerful model for studying the evolution of nuclear genome size gs given the tremendous gs variation that exists both within and across angiosperm lineages helianthus sunflowers consist of c 50 species native to north america that occupy diverse habitats and vary in ploidy level in the current study we generated a comprehensive gs database for 49 helianthus species using flow cytometric approaches we examined variability across the genus and present a comparative phylogenetic analysis of gs evolution in diploid helianthus species results demonstrated that different clades of diploid helianthus species showed evolutionary patterns of gs contraction expansion and relative stasis with annual diploid species evolving smaller gs with the highest rate of evolution phylogenetic comparative analyses of diploids revealed significant negative associations of gs with temperature seasonality and cell production rate indicating that the evolution of larger gs in helianthus diploids may be more permissible in habitats with longer growing seasons where selection for more rapid growth may be relaxed the helianthus gs database presented here and corresponding analyses of environmental and phenotypic correlates will facilitate ongoing and future research on the ultimate drivers of gs evolution in this wellâ studied north american plant genus,2018,0.766
Genomics Approaches to Mining Barley Germplasm Collections,barley has been diversified during the long process of evolution the genetic diversity that was lost during domestication and crop improvement can be introduced from various collections with extant wild relatives of barley being a particularly rich source thousands of diverse accessions of cultivated and wild barley have been collected preserved in ex situ collections phenotyped for various traits genotyped with molecular markers and catalogued in databases such attributes make these collections readily accessible for germplasm mining high throughput sequencing methods for assessing intraspecific diversity have become available recently through the implementation of exome sequencing and genotype by sequencing in barley these methods enable the systematic collection of molecular passport data of entire collections to inform genebank management decisions they can also guide the selection of core collections for further in depth studies linking phenotype and genotype finally the joint analysis of genetic data and information on collection sites of accession can give insights about the population structure dispersal and evolutionary history of the crop,2018,0.683
Of niches and distributions: range size increases with niche breadth both globally and regionally but regional estimates poorly relate to global estimates,the relationship between speciesâ niche breadth i e the range of environmental conditions under which a species can persist and range size i e the extent of its spatial distribution has mostly been tested within geographically restricted areas but rarely at the global extent here we not only tested the relationship between range size derived from speciesâ distribution data and niche breadth derived from speciesâ distribution and coâ occurrence data of 1 255 plant species at the regional extent of the european alps but also at the global extent and across both spatial scales for a subset of 180 species using correlation analyses linear models and variation partitioning we found that speciesâ realized niche breadth estimated at the regional level is a weak predictor of speciesâ global niche breadth and range size against our expectations distributionâ derived niche breadth was a better predictor for speciesâ range size than the coâ occurrenceâ based estimate which should theoretically account for more than the climatically determined niche dimensions our findings highlight that studies focusing on the niche breadth vs range size relationship must explicitly consider spatial mismatches that might have confounded and diminished previously reported relationships,2018,0.59
A Preliminary Assessment of Bumble Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Habitat Suitability Across Protected and Unprotected Areas in the Philippines,the philippines is a biodiversity hotspot and is home to thousands of endemic species including at least two understudied bumble bee species bombus flavescens smith 1952 and bombus irisanensis cockerell 1910 since the 1990s there have been virtually no studies published on the biology ecology and taxonomy of philippine bumble beesâ evidence of the dearth of basic entomological investigations on these important insects in this preliminary study our objective is to briefly summarize the geographic distribution of bumble bee habitat suitability hs in the philippines across protected and unprotected areas maximum entropy species distribution models sdms of b flavescens and b irisanensis were constructed using 19 unique occurrence records and 11 bioclimatic variables to estimate hs in the philippines our sdms estimated that minimum hs for b flavescens and b irisanensis covers 28 066 and 24 603 km2 of the 114 protected land parcels in the philippines respectively across unprotected areas our sdms estimated that minimum hs for b flavescens and b irisanensis covers 146 063 and 156 674 km2 respectively as predicted high elevation habitats have the highest hs relative to low elevation habitats r 0 61 p 0 003 while our sdms predicts an extensive distribution of both species across both protected and unprotected areas it is important to note that nearly 80 of the philippines is deforested our study identifies high elevation protected areas as places where bumble bees may still thrive and survey effort should be prioritized to these places to determine the status of philippine bumble bees,2018,0.811
Assessing the suitable habitat for reintroduction of brown trout ( Salmo trutta forma fario ) in a lowland river: A modeling approach,huge efforts have been made during the past decades to improve the water quality and to restore the physical habitat of rivers and streams in western europe this has led to an improvement in biological water quality and an increase in fish stocks in many countries however several rheophilic fish species such as brown trout are still categorized as vulnerable in lowland streams in flanders belgium in order to support costâ efficient restoration programs habitat suitability modeling can be used in this study we developed an ensemble of habitat suitability models using metaheuristic algorithms to explore the importance of a large number of environmental variables including chemical physical and hydromorphological characteristics to determine the suitable habitat for reintroduction of brown trout in the zwalm river basin flanders belgium which is included in the habitats directive mean stream velocity water temperature hiding opportunities and presence of pools or riffles were identified as the most important variables determining the habitat suitability brown trout mainly preferred streams with a relatively high mean reach stream velocity 0 2â 1 m s a low water temperature 7â 15â c and the presence of pools the ensemble of models indicated that most of the tributaries and headwaters were suitable for the species synthesis and applications our results indicate that this modeling approach can be used to support river management not only for brown trout but also for other species in similar geographical regions specifically for the zwalm river basin future restoration of the physical habitat removal of the remaining migration barriers and the development of suitable spawning grounds could promote the successful restoration of brown trout,2018,0.426
Refining an ecological niche model,refining an ecological niche model enm associated with a geospatial location includes developing a fluid dynamics model based on measurements generated by a device deployed into fluid flows of the geospatial location the measurements include temperature and velocity field depth and particle transport measurements the refining further includes refining and running the fluid dynamics model using measurements regenerated from the device being redeployed into the fluid flows to produce an output this output is descriptive of fluid dynamics at the geospatial location and input into the enm the enm is run to produce a baseline enm output descriptive of a probability of a species existing at the geospatial location in addition the enm is run with a limnologic modification to produce a predictive enm output descriptive of a predictive probabil ity of the species existing at the geospatial location that is comparable to the baseline enm output,2018,0.101
Widespread winners and narrow-ranged losers: Land use homogenizes biodiversity in local assemblages worldwide,human use of the land for agriculture and settlements has a substantial negative effect on biodiversity globally however not all species are adversely affected by land use and indeed some benefit from the creation of novel habitat geographically rare species may be more negatively affected by land use than widespread species but data limitations have so far prevented global multi clade assessments of land use effects on narrow ranged and widespread species we analyse a large global database to show consistent differences in assemblage composition compared with natural habitat assemblages in disturbed habitats have more widespread species on average especially in urban areas and the tropics all else being equal this result means that human land use is homogenizing assemblage composition across space disturbed habitats show both reduced abundances of narrow ranged species and increased abundances of widespread species our results are very important for biodiversity conservation because narrow ranged species are typically at higher risk of extinction than widespread species furthermore the shift to more widespread species may also affect ecosystem functioning by reducing both the contribution of rare species and the diversity of speciesâ responses to environmental changes among local assemblages,2018,0.984
A continent-wide search for Antarctic petrel breeding sites with satellite remote sensing,the antarctic petrel thalassoica antarctica has been identified as a key species for monitoring the status and health of the southern ocean and antarctic ecosystems breeding colonies of the antarctic petrel are often found on isolated nunataks far from inhabited stations some up to hundreds of kilometers from the shoreline it is difficult therefore to monitor and census known colonies and it is believed that undiscovered breeding locations remain to be found we developed an algorithm that can detect antarctic petrel colonies and used it to complete a continent wide survey using landsat 8 operational line imager oli imagery in antarctica up to the southernmost extent of landsat s orbital view at 82 68â s our survey successfully identified 8 known antarctic petrel colonies containing 86 of the known population of antarctic petrels the survey also identified what appears to be a significant population of breeding birds in areas not known to host breeding antarctic petrel colonies our survey suggests that the breeding population at mt biscoe 66â 13â s 51â 21â e currently reported to be in the 1000s may actually be on the order of 400 000 breeding pairs which would make it the largest known antarctic petrel breeding colony in the world the algorithm represents a first ever attempt to apply satellite remote sensing to assess the distribution and abundance of the antarctic petrel on a continent wide basis as such we note several algorithm shortcomings and identify research topics for algorithm improvement even with these caveats our algorithm for identifying antarctic petrel colonies with landsat imagery demonstrates the feasibility of monitoring their populations using satellite remote sensing and identifies breeding locations including mt biscoe that should be considered high priorities for validation with directed field surveys,2018,0.723
Assessing the vulnerability of freshwater crayfish to climate change,aim climate change is a major threat to the persistence of biodiversity global assessments highlight the most climate vulnerable species and geographic regions based on species traits and measures of exposure to climate change yet the majority of climate change vulnerability assessments have focused on terrestrial and marine vertebrates and largely ignored the less wellâ known freshwater species and invertebrates we present the first global analysis of 574 species of freshwater crayfish families astacidae parastacidae and cambaridae using iucn s traitâ based vulnerability assessment protocol location global methods we collected speciesâ specific information on sensitivity eight traits adaptive capacity four traits and exposure five traits to climate change and combined those dimensions to assess overall species vulnerability results our results predicted that 87 of freshwater crayfish species are highly sensitive to climate change primarily due to habitat specialization 35 have low adaptive capacity and 57 are highly exposed based on an ensemble mean of four general circulation models for a moderate intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc scenario rcp6 0 combining sensitivity low adaptive capacity and exposure we assessed 87 species 15 as vulnerable to climate change these species are distributed globally with high concentrations in the southâ eastern usa 36 species southâ eastern australia 21 species and mexico 10 species reflecting global patterns of crayfish species richness of the 91 species listed as threatened by climate change in the iucn red list we predicted 18 species to be climate change vulnerable main conclusions we identified hotspots of species vulnerable to climate change that require further conservation attention the iucn traitâ based protocol can help identify data gaps and key traits that should be investigated further and thus can help overcome knowledge shortfalls on the effects of climate change our study provides key insights for the application of climate change vulnerability assessment to dataâ poor invertebrates which remain underrepresented in global conservation priorities,2018,0.996
Ecology 0f Bedugul Basin Bali,mountain forest has become the last sanctuary for most of bali s biodiversity as well as the whole of java island this ecosystem is important given that most of the lowland forests in indonesia have been disturbed and degraded forest areas in the bedugul basin are among the remaining tropical mountain rainforests in bali and they play signiicant roles in maintaining the ecosystem preventing erosion preserving biodiversity and functioning as a water source and buffer zone for the surrounding areas including the lower areas of bali however mountain rainforests are becoming more and more threatened as its extent and vegetation cover have declined due to the increased human activities climate change and natural disasters this is also true for bedugul especially in forest areas near beratan and buyan lakes and also mt pohen which are increasingly exposed to tourism activities and other anthropogenic disturbances hence ecological research in these areas of bedugul basin is needed to assess and also anticipate any potential changes so that its natural resources could be protected and sustained in the era of changing climate this book is a compilation of relevant research works that were conducted in bedugul basin from 2005 up to 2017 most of these research works were conducted by the authors themselves and their colleagues as researchers at bali botanical garden the relatively new study of species distribution modelling sdm using biodiversity and climate change virtual laboratory bccvl for dacrycarpus imbricatus which is one of the characteristic species of the area is also introduced in this book another important and recent research output included in this book is the exploration of the autecology of an important endemic species pinanga arinasae which is only found on mt tapak bedugul our centre is glad to publish this book entitled â œecology of bedugul basin â i believe that it should ill some of the research gaps in the ecologicalethnobotanical aspects of the plant community of high elevation landscapes in indonesia in particular and in asia in general i believe that this would be a useful reference to the scientiic community in this ield i congratulate the authors of this book for their dedication to contribute to the body of knowledge on ecological ethnobotanical research,2018,0.394
Impacts of future climate and land cover changes on threatened mammals in the semi-arid Chinese Altai Mountains,dryland biodiversity plays important roles in the fight against desertification and poverty but is highly vulnerable to the impacts of environmental change however little research has been conducted on dual pressure from climate and land cover changes on biodiversity in arid and semi arid environments concequntly it is crutial to understand the potential impacts of future climate and land cover changes on dryland biodiversity here using the chinese altai mountains as a case study area we predicted the future spatial distributions and local assemblages of nine threatened mammal species under projected climate and land cover change scenarios for the period 2010â 2050 the results show that remarkable declines in mammal species richness as well as high rates of species turnover are seen to occur across large areas in the chinese altai mountains highlighting an urgent need for developing protection strategies for areas outside of current nature reserve network the selected mammals are predicted to lose more than 50 of their current ranges on average which is much higher than species range gains around 15 under future climate and land cover changes most of the species are predicted to contract their ranges while moving eastwards and to higher altitudes raising the need for establishing cross border migration pathways for species furthermore the inclusion of land cover changes had notable effects on projected range shifts of individual species under climate changes demonstrating that land cover changes should be incorporated into the assessment of future climate impacts to facilitate biodiversity conservation in arid and semi arid environments,2018,0.861
Species and river specific effects of river fragmentation on European anadromous fish species,fragmentation is one of the major threats to riverine ecosystems and this is most explicitly expressed by the decline in numbers of migratory fish species yet each species has different migration requirements and their natural distribution can include several catchments with multiple dams hence to prioritize candidate rivers for improving accessibility differences between species and between catchments have to be taken into account the aim of this study was therefore to analyse the species and river specific effects of river fragmentation on migratory fish on a european scale the effect of river damming on migratory fish was quantified for all 16 european longâ and midâ distance anadromous species and for 33 large european rivers the historical distribution was compared with the current upstream accessibility of the main river and the current distribution and population status of each species the observed effects of reduced connectivity were further quantified using the dendritic connectivity index for species and the fragmentation index for rivers our results showed that only very few rivers are still unaffected by dams in the main stem and that the few remaining viable migratory fish populations in europe occur in these accessible rivers barriers were prioritized for making passable based on the potential accessibility gain and the number of benefitting species showing that the main stems of the rivers shannon and nemunas are the best candidates it was concluded that evaluating species and river specific effects of fragmentation strongly aids in prioritizing rivers for improving upstream accessibility,2018,0.941
Should I Eat or Should I Go? Acridid Grasshoppers and Their Novel Host Plants: Potential for Biotic Resistance,novel non coevolved associations between introduced plants and native insect herbivores may lead to changes in trophic interactions in native communities as well as to substantial economic problems although some studies in invasion ecology demonstrated that native herbivores can preferentially feed on introduced plants and therefore contribute to the biotic resistance of native communities to plant invasions the role of acridid grasshoppers as native generalist insect herbivores is largely overlooked this systematic review aimed to identify patterns of grasshopper feeding preferences for native versus introduced plants and consequently a potential of grasshoppers to provide biotic resistance of native communities the analysis of 63 records of feeding preference trials for 28 north american grasshopper species retrieved from 2146 studies published during 1967â 2017 has demonstrated a preference of grasshoppers for introduced host plants and identified 12 preferred introduced plants with high or middle invasive ranks a significant effect of the life stage p 0 001 but not the experimental environment plant material and measurements on grasshopper preferences for introduced plants was also detected overall results suggest a potential of acridid grasshoppers to contribute to the biotic resistance of native communities the review also provides methodological recommendations for future experimental studies on grasshopper host plant interactions,2018,0.023
Divergent responses to warming of two common co-occurring Mediterranean bryozoans,climate change threatens the structure and function of marine ecosystems highlighting the importance of understanding the response of species to changing environmental conditions however thermal tolerance determining the vulnerability to warming of many abundant marine species is still poorly understood in this study we quantified in the field the effects of a temperature anomaly recorded in the mediterranean sea during the summer of 2015 on populations of two common sympatric bryozoans myriapora truncata and pentapora fascialis then we experimentally assessed their thermal tolerances in aquaria as well as different sublethal responses to warming differences between species were found in survival patterns in natural populations p fascialis showing significantly lower survival rates than m truncata the thermotolerance experiments supported field observations p fascialis started to show signs of necrosis when the temperature was raised to 25â 26â â c and completely died between 28â 29â â c coinciding with the temperature when we observed first signs of necrosis in m truncata the results from this study reflect different responses to warming between these two co occurring species highlighting the importance of combining multiple approaches to assess the vulnerability of benthic species in a changing climate world,2018,0.781
How to predict fine resolution occupancy from coarse occupancy data,1 the area of occupancy aoo is a widely used index in conservation assessments notably in criteria b2 of the international union for conservation of nature iucn redâ list however iucn guidelines require assessing aoo at finer resolution than is generally available for this reason extrapolation techniques have been proposed to predict finer aoo from coarser resolution data 2 here we apply 10 published downscaling models to the distributions of a large number of plant and bird speciesâ in contrasting landscapes we further compare the output of two ensemble models one relying on all 10 downscaling models and one a subset of 5 models that can be fit rapidly and robustly with minimal oversight required we further compare the accuracy of downscaled predictions with respect to species prevalence 3 across all landscapes and taxa the models predicted aoo consistently some such as the power law and hui models were nonlinear with respect to species prevalence some models consistently over or under predicted such as the nachman and poisson models furthermore some models proved to give more variable predictions than other models e g nachman and power law for these reasons none of these models are suitable for downscaling if used individually the thomas model was also rejected because it is too computationally intensive even though its predictions are relatively unbiased the most effective model when used by itself was the improved binomial model however the two ensemble models were able to provide accurate predictions of aoo with low variability compared to using any one single model there was no significant loss in performance using the simpler ensemble model and therefore this solution is the least computationally intensive and requires least user oversight 4 our results show that downscaling models could be potential tools to reliably estimate aoo for conservation assessments under circumstances where there is no a priori reason to prefer one model over another then an ensemble of these models may be the best solution for batch analysis of iucn status under criteria b2 moreover we foresee the use of downscaling for the production of other biodiversity indicators such as for invasive species monitoring,2018,0.294
Developing policy-relevant biodiversity indicators: lessons learnt from case studies in Africa,there is an increasing need for monitoring schemes that help understand the evolution of the global biodiversity crisis and propose solutions for the future indicators including temporal baselines are crucial to measure the change in biodiversity over time to evaluate progress towards its conservation and sustainable use and to set conservation priorities they help design and monitor national and regional policies on biodiversity they also feed into national reporting on international agreements such as the convention on biological diversity and the sustainable development goals we analyse the methodological approach of five small african projects resulting from a call to promote indicator development improve monitoring capacity and strengthen the science policy interface in the field of biodiversity we compared their approach to existing guidance provided by the international community specifically the biodiversity indicators partnership to this end we assess whether internationally recommended steps are effectively applied to national local biodiversity monitoring in selected developing countries we also present lessons learnt from workshop interactions between partners involved in these projects through our pilot projects we identified data availability and data accessibility together with the involvement of stakeholders as critical steps in indicator development moreover there is a need for a better awareness and a wider application of the indicator concept itself hence training of key actors both in the policy and science spheres is needed to operationalize indicators and ensure their continuity and sustainability we hope that these case studies and lessons learnt can stimulate and support countries in the global south to formulate policy relevant biodiversity indicators,2018,0.101
The bien r package: A tool to access the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database,there is an urgent need for large scale botanical data to improve our understanding of community assembly coexistence biogeography evolution and many other fundamental biological processes understanding these processes is critical for predicting and handling human biodiversity interactions and global change dynamics such as food and energy security ecosystem services climate change and species invasions the botanical information and ecology network bien database comprises an unprecedented wealth of cleaned and standardised botanical data containing roughly 81 million occurrence records from c 375 000 species c 915 000 trait observations across 28 traits from c 93 000 species and co occurrence records from 110 000 ecological plots globally as well as 100 000 range maps and 100 replicated phylogenies each containing 81 274 species for new world species here we describe an r package that provides easy access to these data the bien r package allows users to access the multiple types of data in the bien database functions in this package query the bien database by turning user inputs into optimised postgresql functions function names follow a convention designed to make it easy to understand what each function does we have also developed a protocol for providing customised citations and herbarium acknowledgements for data downloaded through the bien r package the development of the bien database represents a significant achievement in biological data integration cleaning and standardization likewise the bien r package represents an important tool for open science that makes the bien database freely and easily accessible to everyone,2018,0.378
Direct modelling of limited migration improves projected distributions of Himalayan amphibians under climate change,amphibians are one of the most vulnerable taxa at risk of rapid decline under climate change here we evaluated the impact of different migration constraints on projected future distributions of four high elevation frogs belonging to the genus scutiger in the eastern himalaya we explored differences between the output of conventional models assuming no or unlimited migration versus models considering plausible migration rates to ascertain future species distributions under climate change distributions of the four scutiger species namely s boulengeri s glandulatus s sikimmesis and s tuberculatus based on field data and other sources were modelled using maxent and projected for three future time periods 2021â 2040 2041â 2060 2061â 2080 under the relatively ambitious rcp4 5 and the more pessimistic rcp8 5 climate change scenarios using three global circulation models projected species distributions were compared at different spatial resolutions 1 km 5 km and 10 km and for five assumptions about species migration 1 no migration 2â 4 low medium and high migration abilities using the kissmig model and 5 unlimited migration without migration the projected future distribution of all four species showed a significant decrease of ∠15 to ∠64 by 2080 in contrast three out of the four study species were projected to expand their distribution under unlimited migration scenarios models with more realistic migration rates however demonstrated considerable deviance from both no migration and unlimited migration scenarios these results were consistent across models with different spatial resolutions our study shows that ignoring realistic migration constraints can lead to ineffective conservation measures by overestimating the future distribution of himalayan amphibians the proposed framework can be used to project more realistic ranges of future species distributions by considering the accessibility of future suitable areas a key factor for species persistence under climate change,2018,0.894
Health level of a mammal collection,the specimens deposited in a scientific collection are the physical evidence of living as well as extinct life forms the physical state and the accuracy of the data and of the specimens stored in a collection may be assessed by the health level of the collection which is represented by the collection profile and a health index this paper presents a practical method for assessing a mammal collection health level this method was designed and standardized following previous works and includes 8 levels the method was applied to the colecciã n nacional de mamã feros cnma housed at the instituto de biologã a universidad nacional autã noma de mã xico in 2011 and in 2015 the cataloged specimens were selected by a stratified random sampling in 2011 and a simple random sampling in 2015 specimens that had not been cataloged were also assessed and selected by a stratified sampling in both years a total of 336 specimens were evaluated in 2011 and 331 in 2015 the health index in the cnma was 0 70 in 2015,2018,0.031
Mexican priority bamboo species under scenarios of climate change,background worldwide only 45 bamboo species are considered economically important guadua inermis and otatea acuminata are two bamboo species that are economically important in different areas of mexico question how climate change is affecting the distribution of these species and where are the priority areas that should be considered for conservation refuges studied species data description we consider guadua inermis and otatea acuminata both endemic to mexico as potentially economic priority species both are used in rural communities for different purposes both inhabit tropical sub deciduous deciduous and dry oak forests and are extracted exclusively from wild populations study site and years of study mexico and central america data considered have different temporality depending on the source of collections and databases localities were recorded until 2015 methods the potential geographic distributions of guadua inermis and otatea acuminata were modeled to investigate the possible effects of climate change under different scenarios and to identify their potential future distributions and potential plantation management results our results showed a likely reduction of the current potential distributions when both species are projected into future scenarios of climate change g inermis will lose between 9 5 and 42 3 of its current distribution under rcp 4 5 and 8 5 respectively meanwhile o acuminata would lose between 14 2 and 22 3 of its current distribution under the same climate scenarios conclusions fortunately even with the potential loss of geographic distribution both species are likely to remain in some suitable areas where the species will grow and could be used with appropriate management,2018,0.957
Navigating the unfolding open data landscape in ecology and evolution,open access to data is revolutionizing the sciences to allow ecologists and evolutionary biologists to confidently find and use the existing data we provide an overview of the landscape of online data infrastructures and highlight the key points to consider when using open data we introduce an online collaborative platform to keep a community driven updated list of the best sources that enable search for data in one interface in doing so our aim is to lower the barrier to accessing open data and encourage its use by researchers hoping to increase the scope reliability and value of their findings,2018,0.286
Phylogenomic analyses reveal extensive gene flow within the magic flowers ( Achimenes ),premise of the study the neotropical gesneriaceae is a lineage known for its colorful and diverse flowers as well as an extensive history of intraâ and intergeneric hybridization particularly among achimenes the magic flowers and other members of subtribe gloxiniinae despite numerous studies seeking to elucidate the evolutionary relationships of these lineages relatively few have sought to infer specific patterns of gene flow despite evidence of widespread hybridization methods to explore the utility of phylogenomic data for reassessing phylogenetic relationships and inferring patterns of gene flow among species of achimenes we sequenced 12 transcriptomes we used a variety of methods to infer the species tree examine gene tree discordance and infer patterns of gene flow key results phylogenomic analyses resolve clade relationships at the crown of the lineage with strong support in contrast to previous analyses we recovered strong support for several new relationships despite a significant amount of gene tree discordance we present evidence for at least two introgression events between two species pairs that share pollinators and suggest that the species status of achimenes admirabilis be reexamined conclusions our study demonstrates the utility of transcriptome data for phylogenomic analyses and inferring patterns of gene flow despite gene tree discordance moreover these data provide another example of prevalent interspecific gene flow among neotropical plants that share pollinators,2018,0.544
Biotic homogeneity of putative biogeographic units in the Neotropics: A test with Sapotaceae,aim to evaluate morrone s 2001 biogeografia de america latina y el caribe zaragoza spain cyted orcytâ unesco sociedad entomolã gica aragonesa sea neotropical regionalization by testing the prediction that biotas are more homogeneous within than among biogeographic units location neotropics methods we conducted pairwise comparisons of beta diversity of sapotaceae species within and between biogeographic units in the hierarchical regionalization proposed by morrone 2001 biogeografia de america latina y el caribe zaragoza spain cyted orcytâ unesco sociedad entomolã gica aragonesa sea at a spatial resolution of 1â degree cells we used a null model to control differences in sampling effort across 1â degree cells and performed betaâ diversity comparisons conditional on geographic distance to control for distance decay of biotic similarity results none of the biogeographic units proposed by morrone 2001 biogeografia de america latina y el caribe zaragoza spain cyted orcytâ unesco sociedad entomolã gica aragonesa sea was biotically homogeneous with respect to all other units at the same hierarchical level this was the case even for units commonly reported to be isolated and to host distinctive taxa like â œchoco â however five of 45 biogeographic units were biotically homogenous relative to several other units these units were â œcuba â â œchaco â â œvarzea â â œcaucaâ and â œcosta pacã fica mexicana â also beta diversity within units was often lower than beta diversity between units at relatively short geographic distances main conclusions the distribution of sapotaceae species showed generally low biotic homogeneity within morrone s 2001 biogeografia de america latina y el caribe zaragoza spain cyted orcytâ unesco sociedad entomolã gica aragonesa sea biogeographic units and did not support his biogeographic regionalization this result suggests a strong role for dispersal and biotic interchange among biogeographic units and across barriers like the andes it also casts doubt on the usefulness of morrone s 2001 biogeografia de america latina y el caribe zaragoza spain cyted orcytâ unesco sociedad entomolã gica aragonesa sea biogeographic units as tools for the identification of priority areas for the conservation of biodiversity however relatively high biotic homogeneity within some biogeographic units suggests that they capture significant spatial patterns in particular noteworthy biotic homogeneity within â œcuba â â œcaucaâ and â œcosta pacifica mexicanaâ could be explained by isolation also in â œcosta pacifica mexicana â patterns of biotic homogeneity could reflect closer affinities to humid lowland montane forest in central america than to lowland rain forest in south america finally substantial biotic homogeneity within â œvarzeaâ could result from common adaptation to edaphic environments near the amazon river,2018,0.354
A framework for connecting two interoperability universes: OGC Web Feature Services and Linked Data,diverse studies have shown that about 80 of all available data are related to a spatial location most of these geospatial data are available as structured and semiâ structured datasets and often use distinct data models are encoded using adâ hoc vocabularies and sometimes are being published in nonâ standard formats hence these data are isolated within silos and cannot be shared and integrated across organizations and communities spatial data infrastructures sdis have emerged and contributed to significantly enhance data discovery and accessibility based on ogc open geospatial consortium web services however finding accessing and using data disseminated through sdis are still difficult for nonâ expert users overcoming the current geospatial data challenges involves adopting the best practices to expose share and integrate data on the web that is linked data in this article we have developed a framework for generating enriching and exploiting geospatial linked data from multiple and heterogeneous geospatial data sources this proposal allows connecting two interoperability universes sdis more specifically web feature services wfs and semantic web technologies which is evaluated through a study case in the geo biodiversity domain,2018,0.232
"Interannual and daily activity patterns of mid-sized mammals in Maracaibo Lake Basin, Venezuela",despite its biogeographic importance the mammals of maracaibo lake basin have been poorly studied the objectives of this study were to 1 provide a list of the mammal species detected by combining information from camera traps and other sources and 2 describe diurnal and annual activity patterns for some of the species detected camera trapping was carried out for one year in five localities within the burro negro protection zone spanish acronym zpbn records of terrestrial mammals excluding chiroptera were compiled from 1 direct and indirect opportunistic records during field visits 2 informal interviews with local inhabitants 3 three national natural history collections and 4 scientific literature the complementarity between sources similarity with other localities within the region and temporal changes in composition were evaluated with the sã rensen similarity index rs and annual differences in the number of detections per sampling effort were evaluated using a x2 test sampling effort was 1 799 camera days resulting in 569 events of mammal detection recorded and 20 species from 17 families in 9 orders identified four species dasypus novemcinctus dasyprocta leporina cerdocyon thous and leopardus pardalis were captured all year round camera traps detected half of the non flying mammal species in the area including five that had not been previously reported by other sources cuniculus paca coendou prehensilis sylvilagus floridanus procyon cancrivorus and puma yagouaroundi at least three species panthera onca odocoileus virginianus and hydrochoerus hydrochaeris had been reported as historically abundant but were not detected during the year of camera trapping which could be due to recent declines in their populations camera trapping provides reliable records on the presence of four species with data gaps in their distribution ranges myrmecophaga tetradactyla coendou prehensilis cerdocyon thous and procyon cancrivorus as well as baseline data for evaluating the distribution overlap between pairs of species such as tamandua mexicana and t tetradactyla and dasyprocta leporina and d punctata a higher species richness was observed between june and august in the rainy season,2018,0.995
Comprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plants: An operational indicator for biodiversity and sustainable development targets,plants are essential sources of food medicine shelter fuel feed and forage and provide a wide range of additional ecosystem and cultural services to humanity in recognition of the tremendous value of useful plants and of the increasing threats to their persistence international agreements including the convention on biological diversity the sustainable development goals and the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture have created ambitious conservation targets which must be measured through quantitative indicators so as to facilitate the development and implementation of strategies aimed at safeguarding their genetic diversity gaps in the current list of functioning indicators for these targets suggest that the development of effective measurements of the state of conservation of the genetic diversity within useful plants is a major challenge here we present a gap analysis indicator methodology that provides a pragmatic estimate of the comprehensiveness of conservation of the genetic diversity within useful wild plants both ex situ and in situ the methodology compares the geographic and ecological variation evident from analyses of the â site of collectionâ of samples of plant taxa that are safeguarded in genebanks and other living plant repositories as well as the variation evident in the proportion of speciesâ ranges inhabiting protected areas against the full range of geographic and ecological variation in their native distributions the methodology enables a prioritization of species for immediate conservation action and when measured periodically can quantify progress toward comprehensive conservation of these plants at global regional and national scales including determining when that goal has been reached assessing almost 7000 taxa with the â œcomprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plantsâ indicator we find that they are currently highly under conserved with less than three out of every 100 taxa assessed as sufficiently conserved or of low priority for further conservation action overall global indicator 2 78 indicator results at the national and regional scales as well as by species use type varied although virtually all countries regions and use categories were found to require further conservation action particularly with regard to ex situ conservation the results as well as input data and method code are available for indicator reporting and for conservation prioritization setting,2018,0.063
"Identifying drivers of historical genetic decline in an endemic Patagonian rodent, the colonial tuco-tuco, Ctenomys sociabilis (Rodentia: Ctenomyidae)",understanding the causes of pronounced losses of genetic diversity in natural populations may provide important insights into the evolutionary significance of these events however such analyses are typically based on post reduction levels and patterns of variability in modern populations which often lead to results that are biased towards more recent demographic events in this context population data recovered from the fossil record provide a powerful resource for studying historical processes of genetic decline using radiocarbon dating stratigraphic analyses and dna sequencing we compared genetic variation and relative abundances of fossil specimens from the mid holocene to today to evaluate potential explanations for the marked historical loss of genetic diversity in the colonial tuco tuco ctenomys sociabilis a subterranean rodent that is endemic to patagonia we conclude that a general pattern of climatic change during the mid holocene particularly changes in precipitation led to changes in abundance of suitable habitats for this species loss of suitable habitat combined with the unusual demographic structure of this species may have facilitated the decline of populations of c sociabilis by decreasing gene flow and increasing the potential for fixation of haplotypes due to genetic drift our analyses of temporal changes in abundance and genetic diversity in ctenomyids have implications for understanding more widespread patterns of holocene change in the mammalian fauna of patagonia,2018,0.699
SEASONAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS OF MARINE CLADOCERANS IN THE SURFACE WATERS OF GULLUK BAY,in this study seasonal abundances and distribution of cladocera species were investigated in gulluk bay mugla sampling operations were performed in four stations during april october 2017 zooplankton samples were taken horizontally by wp2 unesco plankton net with 200 micrometer mesh size five cladocera species which are p avirostris p tergestina e spinifera p polyphemoides p intermedius were determined in the study area other zooplankton groups in the samples were copepods appendicularians chaetognaths and meroplankton p polyphemoides was found in all sampling months except july maximum mean abundance of p polyphemoides was observed 317 ind mâ in april p avirostris showed maximum abundances in may and june but these values were not very high p intermedius was found in september and october in the samples p tergestina was dominant cladocera species in may june july august and september maximum abundance of e spinifera was determined in june mean 105 ind m3,2018,0.822
Relative importance of environmental variables for the distribution of the invasive marsh species Spartina alterniflora across different spatial scales,the relative importance of environmental variables for spartina alterniflora distribution was investigated across different spatial scales using maximum entropy modelling maxent a species distribution modelling technique the results showed that elevation was the most important predictor for species presence at each scale mean diurnal temperature range and isothermality were the second most important predictors at national and regional scales respectively soil drainage class ph and organic carbon were important on the northern chinese coast the importance of climatic variable type was highest at global and national scales and declined as the scale decreased the importance of soil variable type was lower at coarser scales but varied greatly at finer scales the relationships between environmental variables and species presence changed as the variablesâ ranges changed across different scales climatic and soil variables were substantially affected by interactions among variables which changed their relationships with species presence and relative importance the modelled suitable area on the chinese coast decreased from 54 16 to 12 64 limited by elevation from the global to national scale and decreased to 8 04 limited by soil drainage ph and organic carbon from the national to regional scale the findings of the present study emphasise the importance of spatial scale for understanding relationships between environmental variables and the presence of s alterniflora,2018,0.812
Effective monitoring of freshwater fish,freshwater ecosystems constitute only a small fraction of the planet s water resources yet support much of its diversity with freshwater fish accounting for more species than birds mammals amphibians or reptiles freshwaters are however particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts including habitat loss climate and land use change nutrient enrichment and biological invasions this environmental degradation combined with unprecedented rates of biodiversity change highlights the importance of robust and replicable programmes to monitor freshwater fish assemblages such monitoring programmes can have diverse aims including confirming the presence of a single species e g early detection of alien species tracking changes in the abundance of threatened species or documenting long term temporal changes in entire communities irrespective of its motivation monitoring programmes are only fit for purpose if they have clearly articulated aims and collect data that can meet those aims this review therefore highlights the importance of identifying the key aims in monitoring programmes and outlines the different methods of sampling freshwater fish that can be used to meet these aims we emphasise that investigators must address issues around sampling design statistical power speciesâ detectability taxonomy and ethics in their monitoring programmes additionally programmes must ensure that high quality monitoring data are properly curated and deposited in repositories that will endure through fostering improved practice in freshwater fish monitoring this review will help programmes improve understanding processes that shape the earth s freshwater ecosystems and help protect these systems in face of rapid environmental change,2018,0.266
Juniperus chinensis L. (Cupressaceae): A New Taxa Record for Himalaya and Extension of Geographic Distribution in South Asia,the present communication reports an extended distribution of juniperus chinensis l in the indian himalaya where it has been collected from gurez valley of jammu and kashmir state this record extends the known geographic distribution from central and southeast asia to south asia current finding strongly supports a relationship between northern himalayan range of india and southern hill ranges of china a detailed revised description photographs cone phenology associated species and threat status as per iucn have been provided for easy identification,2018,0.601
Life history characteristics may be as important as climate projections for defining range shifts: An example for common tree species in the intermountain western US,aim predictions of future suitable habitat for plant species with climate change are known to be affected by uncertainty associated with statistical approaches climate models and occurrence records however life history characteristics related to dispersal and establishment processes as well as sensitivity to barriers created by landâ use may also play important roles in shaping future distributions with climate change we compared the uncertainty in predicted distributions associated with climate projections to uncertainty associated with species interactions related to dispersal and establishment and landâ use barriers with four common animalâ dispersed tree species in pinyonâ juniper woodlands in the western united states a region experiencing increasing fragmentation due to landâ use location western usa methods we compared the effects of life history characteristics related to species interactions longâ distance dispersal and facilitation landâ use fragmentation and variation in climate projections on species distributions with climate change using a simulation model we evaluated the impacts of these factors on three characteristics of species distributions area occupied range size and distance between patches across four 30â year intervals centred on 2020 2040 2060 and 2080 results we found that uncertainty associated with climate projections and the potential effects of facilitation on establishment had the greatest impact in distribution characteristics the effects of all factors varied by species despite their overlapping initial distributions and relatively similar dispersal traits highlighting the impact of life history characteristics on model outcomes main conclusions these results suggest that assessments of species future range shifts and vulnerability to climate change should incorporate landâ use barriers and life history traits related to dispersal and establishment particularly for species with strong facilitative interactions,2018,0.93
Further records of a new diatom species in the English Channel and North Sea: the importance of image-referenced data,background in september 2015 an at the time undescribed autotrophic taxon was discovered in the western english channel station l4 and also in the eastern english channel and celtic sea during the polarstern cruise ps95 a month later subsequent investigations revealed further extensive records going back to 1992 at stations in the english channel and the southern north sea e g helgoland roads and sylt roads time series stations stations in the northern north sea have not recorded this distinct taxon with the available records and crucially the accompanying image metadata we are able to chart a clear distribution record with occurrences being restricted to the southern north sea and english channel methods the biological data shown are from lugol fixed utermã hl counts and investigations of live and formalin fixed net hauls 20 î m mesh size all image material shown is available in the online repository planktonnet http planktonnet awi de results we report the distribution based on geo referenced image records of an easily recognisable yet taxonomically uncertain autotrophic organism conclusions distribution patterns of the unidentified autotrophic taxon suggests entry of this taxon into out of the north sea via the english channel further investigations providing image documented information over several years is clearly necessary to clarify its dynamics and ecological characteristics,2018,0.436
Does current climate explain plant disjunctions? A test using the New Zealand alpine flora,aim more than 90 of plant species found in new zealand s alpine environment are endemic to new zealand two particularly speciesâ rich regions of high endemism are located at the northern and southern ends of the south island and several vascular alpine plant species show clear disjunct distributions between these two regions the aim of this study was to test the ability of a climatic hypothesis to explain these disjunct distributions and to identify if the central south island acts as a climatic barrier location alpine south island new zealand methods the south island was divided into three regions northern central southern following an established biogeographical delineation of centres of endemism published data were used to quantify current climatic conditions and to obtain occurrence records of all plant species occurring in the alpine areas we first calculated overall similarity in climate and in vegetation composition above and below the tree line between the three regions we then assessed climate niche overlap between regions for five congeneric pairs of disjunct and continuous plant species found both above and below the tree line results while there were broad scale similarities in climate between northern and southern centres of endemism particular above the tree line the central region does not appear sufficiently dissimilar to the climate of the endemism centres to conclude that it might act as a barrier between populations of the disjunct species investigated here instead we showed that in geographically separated areas disjunct species occupy less similar climates than species with a continuous range possibly indicating a niche shift of the disjunct populations in the separated areas main conclusions our study found no support for current climate constraining the distribution of disjunct species for all species examined overlap existed between the climate niche of at least one disjunct northern or southern population and the climatic conditions of the central region this overlap in climate space suggests that other abiotic and or biotic factors are preventing the spread of disjunct species into the central south island endemism gap,2018,0.975
First recording of gastropods and pelecypods molluscs from southern Iraq; evidence of Holocene sea level fluctuation,the current study focused on the diagnosis of species related to gastropoda and pelecypoda classes mostly in the planktonic larval stage to be used as evidence of marine transgression in mid holocene of these twenty of them have been recognized for the first time in iraq three bio facies were distinguished using these species as well as statistical grain size parameters they are the first bio facies b1 reflects the marine transgression that occurred in the middle of the holocene while the second bio facies b2 shows the marine regression the third bio facies b3 indicates the sea level fluctuation at the end of the holocene,2018,0.551
"The Endemism of the Vascular Flora of Mexico Present in Comarca Lagunera, an Agricultural Region in the Chihuahuan Desert",a study of the distribution of 321 taxa of endemic vascular plants of mexico distributed in comarca lagunera a region of northern central mexico within the chihuahuan desert was conducted the analysis consisted in detecting the areas of high richness and with this information propose areas for the conservation of plant biodiversity in this region the study includes an analysis of species richness at the level of political units municipalities vegetation types and grid cells of 10 ã 10 km additionally the corrected weighted endemism index was calculated using the grid cells the sites with the richest taxa are located in the mountain areas however these do not coincide with the sites with the highest index of endemism since a high percentage of taxa have a restricted distribution to one of the proposed units thirty six taxa are recognized with restricted distribution to the boundaries of comarca lagunera most of them considered as microendemics which have been described in recent years therefore it is necessary to establish biodiversity conservation programs in the region since much of comarca lagunera territory is dedicated to agricultural and industrial activities,2018,0.248
Evaluating Potential Distribution of High-Risk Aquatic Invasive Species in the Water Garden and Aquarium Trade at a Global Scale Based on Current Established Populations,aquatic nonâ native invasive species are commonly traded in the worldwide water garden and aquarium markets and some of these species pose major threats to the economy the environment and human health understanding the potential suitable habitat for these species at a global scale and at regional scales can inform risk assessments and predict future potential establishment typically global habitat suitability models are fit for freshwater species with only climate variables which provides little information about suitable terrestrial conditions for aquatic species remotely sensed data including topography and land cover data have the potential to improve our understanding of suitable habitat for aquatic species in this study we fit species distribution models using five different model algorithms for three nonâ native aquatic invasive species with bioclimatic topographic and remotely sensed covariates to evaluate potential suitable habitat beyond simple climate matches the species examined included a frog xenopus laevis toad bombina orientalis and snail pomacea spp using a unique modeling approach for each species including background point selection based on known established populations resulted in robust ensemble habitat suitability models all models for all species had test area under the receiver operating characteristic curve values greater than 0 70 and percent correctly classified values greater than 0 65 importantly we employed multivariate environmental similarity surface maps to evaluate potential extrapolation beyond observed conditions when applying models globally these global models provide necessary forecasts of where these aquatic invasive species have the potential for establishment outside their native range a key component in risk analyses,2018,0.961
A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios,to support the assessments of the intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services ipbes the ipbes expert group on scenarios and models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios bes sim the goals of bes sim are 1 to project the global impacts of land use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services i e natureâ s contributions to people over the coming decades compared to the 20th century using a set of common metrics at multiple scales and 2 to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models bes sim uses three scenarios combining specific shared socio economic pathways ssps and representative concentration pathways rcps â ssp1xrcp2 6 ssp3xrcp6 0 ssp5xrcp8 6 â to explore a wide range of land use change and climate change futures this paper describes the rationale for scenario selection the process of harmonizing input data for land use based on the second phase of the land use harmonization project luh2 and climate the biodiversity and ecosystem services models used the core simulations carried out the harmonization of the model output metrics and the treatment of uncertainty the results of this collaborative modeling project will support the ongoing global assessment of ipbes strengthen ties between ipbes and the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc scenarios and modeling processes advise the convention on biological diversity cbd on its development of a post 2020 strategic plans and conservation goals and inform the development of a new generation of nature centred scenarios,2018,0.023
Sociability between invasive guppies and native topminnows,the role of interspecific social interactions during species invasions may be more decisive than previously thought research has revealed that invasive fish improve their foraging success by shoaling with native mexican species and potentially increase the chances of invasion success however do native individuals tend to associate with invaders as well we tested the hypothesis that the twoline skiffia neotoca bilineata and the lerma livebearer poeciliopsis infans both native endemic mexican topminnows will associate with guppies a notorious invasive species present in mexico our investigation shows that guppies twoline skiffias and lerma livebearers have a mutual tendency to associate with each other although there is a marked tendency to shoal with heterospecifics in this system shoaling partners do not necessarily benefit equally from the association further research on invasive native social interactions is needed to promote our understanding of potential facilitation by natives,2018,0.479
Phylogeny and historical biogeography of the Neotropical palm tribe Euterpeae (Arecaceae),tribe euterpeae is a group of neotropical palms that comprises 33 species in 5 genera distributed from central america to southeastern brazil and bolivia including the caribbean islands some species are important elements of amazonian forests since they can be among the 10 most abundant trees some members of this tribe are economically important for their oil production and edible palm heart in this study i aimed to clarify the intergeneric and interspecific relationships within euterpeae and estimate the time and place of origin of its taxa i also tested for changes in inflorescence types in the tribe i reconstructed a phylogenetic tree with maximum likelihood and a dated bayesian phylogenetic tree using one plastid trnd trnt and four low copy nuclear dna regions cisp4 wrky6 rpb2 and phyb i used five fossil and two secondary calibration points to estimate divergence times i amplified sequences from 27 euterpeae species including 7 infra specific taxa and 41 outgroup taxa the tribe and each genus were monophyletic with high support hyospathe was sister to the rest of the genera euterpe was sister to neonicholsonia and prestoea was sister to oenocarpus the ancestral inflorescence type of euterpeae is likely one with rachillae all around the main axis from which the hippuriform horsetail shape inflorescence of oenocarpus originated some widely distributed species with infra specific taxa euterpe precatoria prestoea acuminata and hyospathe elegans were not monophyletic which invites a revision of these species circumscriptions the euterpeae diverged from its sister clade areceae at around 46 million years ago mya while the crown age of the euterpeae was estimated at around 40 mya although euterpeaeâ s origin occurred in the eocene most of the extant genera had crown ages after the middle miocene 17 mya with some species originating later during the pliocene to pleistocene this work represents the most complete molecular phylogeny of the group and inclusion of the few missing narrow endemic taxa will provide a more complete understanding of the interspecific relationships of the tribe,2018,0.864
Trait Patterns and Genetic Resources of Dill (Anethum graveolens L.),dill anethum graveolens l is used fresh or processed for food seasoning and preservation production is concentrated in temperate regionsbut can be grown as a cool season crop in india and thailand several secondary metabolites among them essential oils are present in the plant andwith claimed health benefits despite the many potential benefits dill is anunderutilized crop the current study survey global and european genetic resources hence accessions from the nordic germplasm collectionwere evaluated aiming at tracing trait patterns the survey showed both gaps and overlaps in availablegenebank holdings accessions from outside europe were highly under represented in the global collections as were wild material and crop wild relatives the evaluation showed that important agro botanical traits correlated such as plant height umbel size and other size characters furthermore essential oil composition wasclearly influenced by high temperature stress a discussion on access and use of genetic resources of minor crops such as dill was included,2018,0.549
"A monograph of Hydriastele (Areceae, Arecaceae) in New Guinea and Australia",a taxonomic revision of the genus hydriastele h wendl drude in new guinea australia and immediately adjacent islands is presented we recognise 25 species from this area including three new species of robust tree palms from new guinea hydriastele calcicola h lanata and h wosimiensis all species are described in full in the taxonomic treatment with accompanying botanical illustrations photographs distribution maps and preliminary iucn red list assessments in addition a key to the species in new guinea and australia is provided as well as a systematic conspectus placing all 39 accepted species of hydriastele in an informal infrageneric framework,2018,0.823
The potential invasiveness of an aquatic macrophyte reflects founder effects from native niche,biological invasions are important drivers of biodiversity loss hence predicting invasion risks considering the invasion history of a species might help drive meaningful conservation strategies we investigated the niche dynamics occurring during the invasion of hydrilla verticillata in north and south america because of founder effects we hypothesised that occupied invaded area niches across north and south american are a subset of the occupied niche in the native range moreover according to the invasion history we expected that the south american niche is more similar to the north american one than the native niche we built ecological niche models to predict the potential distribution of hydrilla from native and invaded occurrence records as well as analysing niche overlap equivalency and similarity between the native and two invaded areas although the models predicted spatially congruent suitable sites the ones based on native occurrence records predicted larger geographical ranges for hydrilla across south america than those based on the records of its north american invasions the environmental conditions the species occupied in both invaded areas are modestly overlapped with the native area schoenerâ s d 0 6 with native and south american niches showing the highest overlap and significant equivalency contrary to our prediction the invaded north and south american niches presented the smallest niche overlap our findings suggest that founder effects triggered deep shifts in hydrillaâ s occupation abilities across invaded areas but do not support successive invasion events hydrillaâ s grinnellian niche was maintained throughout the invaded areas and its potential invasion across south america is massive regardless of its origin,2018,0.316
Global mapping of potential natural vegetation: an assessment of Machine Learning algorithms for estimating land potential,potential natural vegetation pnv is the vegetation cover in equilibrium with climate that would exist at a given location non impacted by human activities pnv is useful for raising public awareness about land degradation and for estimating land potential this paper presents results of assessing machine learning algorithms mla for operational mapping of potential natural vegetation pnv the following mla were considered neural networks nnet package random forest ranger gradient boosting gmb k nearest neighborhood class and cubist three case studies were considered 1 global distribution of biomes based on the biome 6000 data set 8057 modern pollen based site reconstructions 2 distribution of forest tree taxa in europe based on detailed occurrence records 1 546 435 ground observations and 3 global monthly fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation fapar values 30 301 randomly sampled points a stack of 160 global maps representing biophysical conditions over land including atmospheric climatic relief and lithologic variables were used as explanatory variables the overall results show that random forest gives the overall best performance the highest accuracy for predicting biome 6000 classes 20 was estimated at 68 33 with spatial cross validation with the most important predictors being total annual precipitation monthly temperatures and bioclimatic layers predicting forest tree species 73 resulted in mapping accuracy of 25 with the most important predictors being monthly cloud fraction mean annual and monthly temperatures and elevation regression models for fapar monthly images gave an r square of 90 with most important predictors being total annual precipitation monthly cloud fraction chelsa bioclimatic layers and month of the year respectively further developments of pnv mapping could include using gbif records to map global distribution of plant species at different taxonomic levels this methodology could also be extended to dynamic modeling of pnv so that future climate scenarios can be incorporated global maps of biomes fapar and tree species at 1 km spatial resolution are available for download via http dx doi org 10 7910 dvn qqhcik,2018,0.26
Inducibility of chemical defences in young oak trees is stronger in species with high elevational ranges,elevational gradients have been highly useful for understanding the underlying forces driving variation in plant traits and plantâ insect herbivore interactions a widely held view from these studies has been that greater herbivory under warmer and less variable climatic conditions found at low elevations has resulted in stronger herbivore selection on plant defences however this prediction has been called into question by conflicting empirical evidence which could be explained by a number of causes such as an incomplete assessment of defensive strategies ignoring other axes of defence such as defence inducibility or unaccounted variation in abiotic factors along elevational clines we conducted a greenhouse experiment testing for inter specific variation in constitutive leaf chemical defences phenolic compounds and their inducibility in response to feeding by gypsy moth larvae lymantria dispar l lepidoptera using saplings of 18 oak quercus fagaceae species these species vary in their elevational distribution and together span 2400 m in elevation therefore allowing us to test for among species elevational clines in defences based on the elevational range of each species in addition we further tested for elevational gradients in the correlated expression of constitutive defences and their inducibility and for associations between defences and climatic factors potentially underlying elevational gradients in defences our results showed that oak species with high elevational ranges exhibited a greater inducibility of phenolic compounds hydrolysable tannins but this gradient was not accounted for by climatic predictors in contrast constitutive defences and the correlated expression of constitutive phenolics and their inducibility did not exhibit elevational clines overall this study builds towards a more robust and integrative understanding of how multivariate plant defensive phenotypes vary along ecological gradients and their underlying abiotic drivers,2018,0.826
"Aquatic and semiaquatic bugs (Insecta, Hemiptera, Heteroptera) from Toluviejo Municipality, Sucre Department, Caribbean region of Colombia",we present the results of a survey of the aquatic and semiaquatic bugs insecta hemiptera heteroptera from the small streams pechilã n bobo camarã n and macajã n located in toluviejo municipality sucre department caribbean region of colombia representatives of 8 families 20 genera and 32 species have been collected of which 11 species are recorded for the first time from sucre department 8 from the colombian caribbean region and 4 from colombia,2018,0.691
"Lichens and Bryophytes in the University of Mindanao Matina Campus, Davao City, Philippines",the present paper presents the baseline data of lichens and bryophytes within um matina campus or even in davao city philippines opportunistic sampling using standard collection protocol was employed between the months of september 2016 and june 2017 documenting 5 families under 7 genera with 30 species of lichens including a philippine endemic species graphis mindanaoensis and bryophytes represented by 2 families 4 genera and 5 species the mini forest hosts the most number of species it is recommended to make conservation efforts within the mini forest especially to the area where the endemic species is located,2018,0.804
Ecogeography of teosinte,adaptation of crops to climate change has motivated an increasing interest in the potential value of novel traits from wild species maize wild relatives the teosintes harbor traits that may be useful to maize breeding to study the ecogeographic distribution of teosinte we constructed a robust database of 2363 teosinte occurrences from published sources for the period 1842â 2016 a geographical information system integrating 216 environmental variables was created for mexico and central america and was used to characterize the environment of each teosinte occurrence site the natural geographic distribution of teosinte extends from the western sierra madre of the state of chihuahua mexico to the pacific coast of nicaragua and costa rica including practically the entire western part of mesoamerica the mexican annuals zea mays ssp parviglumis and zea mays ssp mexicana show a wide distribution in mexico while zea diploperennis zea luxurians zea perennis zea mays ssp huehuetenangensis zea vespertilio and zea nicaraguensis had more restricted and distinct ranges representing less than 20 of the total occurrences only 11 2 of teosinte populations are found in protected natural areas in mexico and central america ecogeographical analysis showed that teosinte can cope with extreme levels of precipitation and temperatures during growing season modelling teosinte geographic distribution demonstrated congruence between actual and potential distributions however some areas with no occurrences appear to be within the range of adaptation of teosintes field surveys should be prioritized to such regions to accelerate the discovery of unknown populations potential areas for teosintes zea mays ssp mexicana races chalco nobogame and durango zea mays ssp huehuetenangensis zea luxurians zea diploperennis and zea nicaraguensis are geographically separated however partial overlapping occurs between zea mays ssp parviglumis and zea perennis between zea mays ssp parviglumis and zea diploperennis and between zea mays ssp mexicana race chalco and zea mays ssp mexicana race central plateau assessing priority of collecting for conservation showed that permanent monitoring programs and in situ conservation projects with participation of local farmer communities are critically needed zea mays ssp mexicana races durango and nobogame zea luxurians zea diploperennis zea perennis and zea vespertilio should be considered as the highest priority taxa,2018,0.768
"Eutrema nanum (Brassicaceae), a new species from Chola Shan, Southwest China",eutremananum a new high elevation 4500â 4600 m species from chola shan sichuan southwest china is described and illustrated it is similar morphologically to e nepalense but is readily distinguished by having oblong to elliptic or obovate to spatulate vs suborbicular to broadly ovate leaves glabrous vs puberulent sepals and ovate to oblong fruit 4â 7 ã 2â 3 mm with flattened valves vs ovoid to subglobose fruit 2â 3 ã 1 8â 2 mm with rounded valves the genetic differences amongst e nanum e nepalense and other close relatives are further confirmed by phylogenetic analyses using its and cpdna sequence variations the new combination e sinense is proposed,2018,0.466
"The Holocene vegetation history of an isolated, high-arctic plant diversity hot spot",through high throughput sequencing of ancient environmental dna collected from lake sediment cores sedadna this study revealed postglacial vegetation change during the last 12 000 years in a high arctic plant diversity hot spot in svalbard geochemical proxy data for environmental variation in the catchment area obtained from high resolution x radiographic scans were combined with the sedadna record to detect local holocene climate variations the findings were in accordance with main climatic shifts on svalbard identified by previous studies and indicated an early warm and species rich postglacial period followed by fluctuating cool and warming events throughout the holocene record thermophilic species with their current distribution outside the catchment area of the studied lake had reoccurring presence throughout the holocene sedadna record suggesting postglacial periods when thermophilic arctic species had broader distribution ranges than today this supports the hypothesis of isolated relict populations in ringhorndalen the place in svalbard with the highest registered diversity of vascular plants and several remarkable and isolated plant populations located far north of their normal distribution range,2018,0.905
Using herbaria to study global environmental change,during the last centuries humans have transformed global ecosystems with their temporal dimension herbaria provide the otherwise scarce long term data crucial to track ecological and evolutionary changes over these centuries of global change the sheer size of herbaria together with their increasing digitization and the possibility of sequencing dna from the preserved plant material makes them invaluable resources to understand ecological and evolutionary species responses to global environmental change following the chronology of global change we highlight how herbaria can inform about long term effects on plants of at least four of the main drivers of global change pollution habitat change climate change and invasive species we summarize how herbarium specimens so far have been used in global change research discuss future opportunities and challenges posed by the nature of these data and advocate for an intensified use of these windows into the past for global change research and beyond,2018,0.261
NEW VICE-COUNTY RECORDS OF HEMIPTERA-HETEROPTERA FROM THE NBN ATLAS,with the imminent publication of the vice county distribution of the hemiptera heteroptera and having extracted all the vice county records from the entomological literature and recorderâ s spreadsheets presently available to me i thought it was time to look at internet sources of records the most important of these in britain is the nbn atlas http www nbnatlas org which includes among its data providers other recording websites,2018,0.351
The increasing disconnection of primary biodiversity data from specimens: How does it happen and how to handle it?,primary biodiversity data represent the fundamental elements of any study in systematics and evolution they are however no longer gathered as they used to be and the mass production of observation based occurrences is overthrowing the collection of specimen based occurrences although this change in practice is a major upheaval with significant consequences in the study of biodiversity it remains understudied and has not attracted yet the attention it deserves analyzing 536 million occurrences from the global biodiversity information facility gbif mediated data we show that this spectacular change affects the 24 eukaryote taxonomic classes we targeted from 1970 to 2016 the proportion of occurrences marked as traceable to tangible material i e specimen based occurrences fell from 68 to 18 moreover most of those specimen based occurrences cannot be readily traced back to a specimen because the necessary information is missing ethical practical or legal reasons responsible for this shift are known and this situation appears unlikely to be reversed still we urge scholars to acknowledge this dramatic change embrace it and actively deal with it specifically we emphasize why specimen based occurrences must be gathered as a warrant to allow both repeating evolutionary studies and conducting rich and diverse investigations when impossible to secure voucher specimens must be replaced with observation based occurrences combined with ancillary data e g pictures recordings samples dna sequences ancillary data are instrumental for the usefulness of biodiversity occurrences and we show that despite improving technologies to collate them they remain rarely shared the consequences of such a change are not yet clear but we advocate collecting material evidence or ancillary data to ensure that primary biodiversity data collected lately do not partly become obsolete when doubtful,2018,0.28
The History of the Usage of GIS Technologies in Ecological and Faunistic Research,the article provides a brief overview of the historical stages of the development of geographic information systems and describes the experience of their use in ecological and faunistic studies the examples of using gis for the ecological geographical and spatial analysis of different groups of animals are given in this work,2018,0.271
Spatial autocorrelation inflates niche breadth-range size relationships,aim species with broader environmental tolerances are expected to be more widely distributed than specialist species implying a positive correlation between niche breadth and geographic range size when this relationship is evaluated using data derived from broadâ scale geographic distributions of species spatial autocorrelation of species distribution data and environments may inflate niche breadthâ range size relationships bringing into question the causal relationship between environmental tolerance and range size using null models we quantify the contribution of spatial autocorrelation to the frequently reported relationship between speciesâ range size and niche breadth location south africa time period current major taxa studied eighty species in the genus pelargonium methods using phylogenetic least squares regression we examined the extent to which variation in range size of pelargonium species is related to temperature and precipitation niche breadths we developed null models that randomized the spatial distribution of the climatic variables but retained their broad spatial autocorrelation structure we tested whether observed niche breadthâ range size relationships were stronger than expected given spatial autocorrelation of climatic variables results we found the expected positive relationships between measures of niche breadth and range size but these were no stronger than expected based on our spatial null models including spatial structure in simulations reduced expected niche breadths compared to simulations based on fully randomized environmental variables resulting in steeper slopes for the simulated niche breadthâ range size relationships main conclusion our results indicate that spatial autocorrelation may positively bias niche breadthâ range size relationships this bias suggests that previously reported relationships between range size and niche breadth based on broadâ scale distributional data may be at least in part artefactual future studies need to explicitly account for spatial autocorrelation and inferences on the role of environmental tolerance in driving patterns of species range size variation should be derived in conjunction with laboratory and fieldâ based experiments,2018,0.908
Fit for purpose? Identifying and resolving quality issues with marine biodiversity datasets in R,millions of marine species occurrences and abundances can be accessed through the ocean biogeographic information system obis which are then often combined with data from additional sources such as gbif citizen science projects scientific literature and personal communications however the quality of the available data is variable and it thus needs to be scrutinized in order to get a dataset that is fit for purpose to help this process as well as increase the quality of the data before they are published in obis we developed the obistools r package it allows users to identify and resolve common data errors such as taxonomic spatial temporal and measurement issues the package combines and builds on existing services made available by the world register of marine species as well as some new obis home made services the interactive interface provides a series of strict and fuzzy quality checks ranging from longitude latitude checks to environmental outlier detection these checks in combination with pre defined constraints based on for instance the physiological knowledge of the species and the expected spatial extent can then be used to evaluate if specific records can be used in the analysis to obtain the final dataset for the analysis,2018,0.659
Middle and Lower Neches River Basin Bioassessment,sampling for this study took place at two texas parks and wildlife department wildlife management areas alabama creek and alazan bayou and 23 supplemental fish collection sites in the middle and lower neches river basin in angelina cherokee hardin nacogdoches polk trinity and tyler counties texas during the summers of 2015 and 2016 sites were selected in an effort to fill gaps in statewide fish and mussel data this data will be used to inform texas parks and wildlife department and university of texasâ s native fish conservation network www nativefishconservation org an initiative striving to conserve rivers and streams through a holistic watershed approach prioritizing research and conservation efforts based on the distribution of native fish species additionally this study was designed to support management needs of the wildlife management areas and recreational initiatives such as texas parks and wildlife departmentâ s texas paddling trails and river access and conservation areas programs comprehensive data collection on fish mussels benthic macroinvertebrates riparian area stream condition water quality and crayfish was conducted at the study site on the neches river at alabama creek wildlife management area wma additionally all tributaries in alabama creek and alazan bayou wmas were sampled for fish mussel and crayfish assemblage data lastly additional fish collection sites were selected throughout the middle and lower basin where previous collections were either outdated or non existent as determined by the university of texasâ fishes of texas project overall 66 species of fish 22 species of freshwater mussel 32 aquatic macroinvertebrate taxa eight species of crayfish nine species of riparian trees and 12 herbaceous and shrub riparian species were documented from the middle and lower neches river basin of that 47 species of fish 20 species of mussels and one species of crayfish were collected from alabama creek wma and 24 species of fish 13 species of mussels and two species of crayfish from alazan bayou wma this included collection of two state threatened fishes blue sucker and western creek chubsucker and three state threatened mussels texas pigtoe louisiana pigtoe and texas heelsplitter of all supplemental fish collection sites species richness ranged from 0 to 28 with the most species rich sites occurring on the neches river and rocky creek near the confluence with the neches river no non native fish species were collected mussels were collected from seven sites with the highest diversity and abundances attributed to the neches and angelina rivers the riparian area bordering the neches river at alabama creek wma was well functioning and diverse additionally this site received an excellent overall stream health rating using the svap2 protocols this study found high fish mussel crayfish benthic macroinvertebrate and riparian plant species richness for the neches river at alabama creek wma and the angelina river at alazan bayou wma although this data just represents a snapshot of conditions based on this assessment the middle and lower neches river basin aquatic ecosystems appear healthy and functioning,2018,1
Modeling potential distributions of the invasive species Giant Hogweed under present climate conditions and a future climate scenario,invasive species are considered to be one of the major environmental problems of today with many detrimental effects on humans plants and animals one of the most prominent and widespread members of this group is the highly invasive neophyte giant hogweed heracleum mantegazzianum sommier levier that has spread out through large parts of europe in the last decades the aim of this paper was to determine its potential distribution under present and future climate conditions based on the ecological niche modeling programme â œmaxentâ and the gis software â œdiva gisâ results indicate that a distinct northward shift of the distribution range can be expected under the premise of further increasing co2 greenhouse gas emissions till the end of the 21st century 710 ppm in 2100 therefore it is suggested to take a proactive approach in those regions that might experience invasions in the near future besides these practical implications the modeling runs have reconfirmed earlier findings that winter temperatures and precipitation are major bioclimatic factors for the distribution of giant hogweed,2018,0.195
"Invasion of aquarium origin soft corals on a tropical rocky reef in the southwest Atlantic, Brazil",non indigenous species nis can cause substantial change in ecosystems and as marine invasives they can become a major threat to coastal and subtidal habitats in september 2017 previously unknown and apparently nis soft corals were detected on a shallow subtidal tropical rocky reef at ilha grande bay southeast brazil the present study aims to identify the species quantify their distribution abundance and their interactions with native species the most abundant nis belonged to the recently described genus sansibia family xeniidae and the less common species was identified as clavularia cf viridis family clavulariidae they were found along 170 m of shoreline at all depths where hard substrate was available sansibia sp dominated deeper communities associated positively with some macroalgal and negatively with the zoantharian palythoa caribaeorum which probably provided greater biotic resistance to invasion both species are of indo pacific origin and typical of those ornamentals found in the aquarium trade,2018,0.92
Anthropogenic range contractions bias species climate change forecasts,forecasts of species range shifts under climate change most often rely on ecological niche models in which characterizations of climate suitability are highly contingent on the species range data used if ranges are far from equilibrium under current environmental conditions for instance owing to local extinctions in otherwise suitable areas modelled environmental suitability can be truncated leading to biased estimates of the effects of climate change here we examine the impact of such biases on estimated risks from climate change by comparing models of the distribution of north american mammals based on current ranges with ranges accounting for historical information on species ranges we find that estimated future diversity almost everywhere except in coastal alaska is drastically underestimated unless the full historical distribution of the species is included in the models consequently forecasts of climate change impacts on biodiversity for many clades are unlikely to be reliable without acknowledging anthropogenic influences on contemporary ranges,2018,0.533
Global Genomic Resources for Biodiversity Research,genomic science is revolutionizing and accelerating biodiversity research for collections based institutions to continue to lead and support biodiversity research they must adapt to this new reality simultaneously â œbig dataâ is accumulating so rapidly that we have unprecedented capacity to plan strategically to use genomics to advance basic and applied science on multiple fronts for example seven â œbig dataâ sources gbif 1b records bhl 3 6m records ncbi 220m records otol 1 9m records bold 6 3m records eol 99k records and ggbn 2m records collectively offer more than 1 2b records on biodiversity at the scale of species 2m described multiple millions undescribed these data are still too sparse to permit comprehensive conclusions at the scale of families i e deeper clades of life the situation is far more promising about 9 911 families are known and relatively few are discovered each year this suggests that at the family rank and above our knowledge of life on earth is reasonably complete approximately 160 000 genera are known but certainly many new genera await discovery and description although fewer than new species and more than new families genomics is the fastest way to â œbinâ species into more inclusive lineages such as genera and families and is certainly faster than traditional alpha taxonomy synergistically these â œbig dataâ answer four important questions at deeper clade levels what is it where is it what do we know about it what do we know about its genome the converse of what we know is what we do not know another meaning of â œdark taxa â we can use the distribution and density of big data at deeper clade levels families genera quantitatively to analyze â œdark taxa â and therefore to optimize strategically knowledge and preservation of biodiversity at a global scale technicalities of the quantitative prioritization scheme are debatable but some initial simple scoring systems can help to prioritize lineages for collection and genetic research so as to most efficiently â œilluminateâ regions in the tree of life that that are neither preserved imaged geolocated studied nor known genomically this analysis presents criteria and goals for collaborating to build a global genomic collection to maximize efficient acquisition of biodiversity genomic knowledge,2018,0.244
Testing for the presence of cryptic diversity in tail-dropper slugs (Prophysaon) using molecular data,the pacific northwest of north america contains two disjunct temperate rainforests one in the coastal and cascades ranges and another in the northern rocky mountains these rainforests harbour 200 disjunct and endemic taxa with coastal and inland populations separated by the columbia basin for several taxa molecular data have revealed cryptic diversity structured across the columbia basin here we use information from previously studied taxa and a machine learning framework to predict that tail dropper slugs in the genus prophysaon prophysaon andersoni prophysaon coeruleum prophysaon dubium and the prophysaon vanattae prophysaon humile complex should lack cryptic diversity this prediction is supported by results from species distribution models sdms which suggest that all taxa lacked suitable habitat in the inland rainforests during the last glacial maximum we collected coi data and tested these predictions using approximate bayesian computation and found that models of recent dispersal between inland and coastal populations received strong support finally we used posterior predictive simulations to show that the best model was a reasonable fit to the data for all taxa our study highlights the utility of predictive modelling in a comparative phylogeographical framework and illustrates how posterior assessments of model fit can improve confidence in model based phylogeographical analysis,2018,0.404
Identifying Abutilon parishii (Malvaceae) and similar species in Arizona and Sonora,we provide a visual aid for identifying abutilon parishii along with similar genera and species in the mallow family malvaceae that occur in arizona and sonora the primary species featured are abutilon mollicomum a palmeri a parishii a reventum and a wrightii with briefer coverage provided for a abutiloides a incanum a parvulum a theophrasti anoda abutiloides and herissantia crispa three of the species featured a parishii a reventum and anoda abutiloides are of conservation concern,2018,0.631
Phylogeny and biogeography of the pantropical genus Zanthoxylum and its closest relatives in the proto-Rutaceae group (Rutaceae),zanthoxylum l prickly ash is the only genus in the citrus l family rutaceae with a pantropical distribution we present the first detailed phylogenetic and biogeographic study of the genus and its close relatives in the proto rutaceae group our phylogenetic analyses based on two plastid and two nuclear markers show that the genus toddalia juss is nested within zanthoxylum that earlier generic and intrageneric classifications need revision and that the homochlamydeous flowers of the temperate species of zanthoxylum are the result of a reduction from heterochlamydeous flowers the biogeographic analyses reveal a eurasian origin of zanthoxylum in the paleocene or eocene with successive intercontinental or long range migrations zanthoxylum likely crossed the north atlantic land bridges to colonize the americas in the eocene and migrated back to the old world probably via the bering land bridge in the oligocene or miocene zanthoxylum also colonized several pacific islands and the hawaiian clade shows phylogenetic incongruence between the plastid and nuclear datasets suggesting hybridization the hawaiian species are one of the rare examples of endemic hawaiian lineages that are older than the current main islands,2018,0.566
Biodiversity synthesis across the green branches of the tree of life,advances in biodiversity science coupled with new technologies and big data platforms are expanding our ability to explore and understand the natural world for the first time biologists can link data from growing repositories and computational approaches to better integrate plant evolution and ecology at the broadest extents the emerging synthesis is reshaping our views of plant diversification and guiding new approaches to conservation,2018,0.213
Herbarium data: Global biodiversity and societal botanical needs for novel research,building on centuries of research based on herbarium specimens gathered through time and around the globe a new era of discovery synthesis and prediction using digitized collections data has begun this paper provides an overview of how aggregated open access botanical and associated biological environmental and ecological data sets from genes to the ecosystem can be used to document the impacts of global change on communities organisms and society predict future impacts and help to drive the remediation of change advocacy for botanical collections and their expansion is needed including ongoing digitization and online publishing the addition of non traditional digitized data fields user annotation capability and born digital field data collection enables the rapid access of rich digitally available data sets for research education informed decision making and other scholarly and creative activities researchers are receiving enormous benefits from data aggregators including the global biodiversity information facility gbif integrated digitized biocollections idigbio the atlas of living australia ala and the biodiversity heritage library bhl but effective collaboration around data infrastructures is needed when working with large and disparate data sets tools for data discovery visualization analysis and skills training are increasingly important for inspiring novel research that improves the intrinsic value of physical and digital botanical collections,2018,0.064
Identifying potential distributions of 10 invasive alien trees: implications for conservation management of protected areas,tree invasion has the potential to negatively affect biodiversity and ecosystems with invasive alien trees iats expanding widely in protected areas pas across different habitats thus the effectiveness of pas might be reduced investigation of the distributions of iat is urgently required to improve the effective conservation management of pas we projected the potential distributions of 10 iats which included acacia mearnsii ardisia elliptica cecropia peltata cinchona pubescens leucaena leucocephala melaleuca quinquenervia miconia calvescens morella faya prosopis glandulosa and spathodea campanulata that have a serious influence on global biodiversity and assessed the distribution possibilities of these iats in pas based on the pa categories of the international union for conservation of nature iucn the overall potential distributions of these 10 iats included latin america central and southern africa southeastern asia eastern australia and new zealand and western europe annual mean temperature temperature seasonality annual precipitation and soil bulk density were found to be important environmental variables for the potential distributions of these iats overall a mearnsii a elliptica c peltata l leucocephala m quinquenervia m calvescens and s campanulata were distributed mainly in the iucn pa categories of national parks and pas with sustainable use of natural resources we proposed the following for conservation management of pas 1 completion of species inventories for pas 2 better understanding of factors driving invasions in pas 3 assessment of the efficiency of management within particular pas and 4 evaluation of changes in trends regarding plant invasions in pas under climate change conditions,2018,0.185
Distributional ecology of Andes hantavirus: a macroecological approach,background hantavirus pulmonary syndrome hps is an infection endemic in chile and argentina caused by andes hantavirus andv the rodent oligoryzomys longicaudatus is suggested as the main reservoir although several other species of sigmodontinae are known hosts of andv here we explore potential andv transmission risk to humans in southern south america based on eco epidemiological associations among six rodent host species seropositive rodents and human hps cases methods we used ecological niche modeling and macroecological approaches to determine potential geographic distributions and assess environmental similarity among rodents and human hps cases results highest numbers of rodent species five were in chile between 35â and 41â s latitude background similarity tests showed niche similarity in 14 of the 56 possible comparisons similarity between human hps cases and the background of all species and seropositive rodents was supported except for abrothrix sanborni of interest among the results is the likely role of o longicaudatus loxodontomys micropus abrothrix olivaceus and abrothrix longipilis in hps transmission to humans conclusions our results support a role of rodent speciesâ distributions as a risk factor for human hps at coarse scales and suggest that the role of the main reservoir o longicaudatus may be supported by the broader rodent host community in some areas,2018,0.669
The first red list of Italian butterflies,the italian biodiversity is among the richest in europe in particular the italian butterfly fauna includes almost 300 native species and within the euro mediterranean area is second in species richness only to turkey italy however has suffered from the lack of suitable instruments to evaluate the extinction risk of individual butterfly species on the basis of internationally recognised standards we have been working to create the first italian red list for butterflies the achievement of this goal was divided into three actions i the institution of a network of experts on butterfly conservation ii the evaluation of the extinction risk for all italian butterfly species iii the integration of the baseline information provided by the italian red lists of other taxa crucial for future evaluations of biodiversity trends in italy assessments of extinction risks were based on the iucn red list categories and criteria following their most updated guidelines and were discussed during workshops involving experts from different italian regions all native italian butterflies were included in the evaluation the whole national population of each species was evaluated including those on large and small islands of 289 butterfly species assessed one has become regionally extinct recently threatened species are 18 in total corresponding to 6 3 of the species assessed the majority of italian butterfly populations are stable the main threats to italian butterflies are natural reforestation as a consequence of rural land abandonment agricultural intensification and climate change for species living at high altitude,2018,0.953
Database and WebGIS: tools for integration and access to biodiversity information of invertebrates of the marine reserve ‘El Pelado’ (REMAPE),the marine biodiversity program of cenaim espol focuses on sessile invertebrates from the â œâ el peladoâ marine reserveâ the present study aims at understanding the different hierarchical levels of biodiversity found at the â œel peladoâ and to guide biodiscovery initiatives generated biodiversity data were systematized in a database darwin core standard and integrated into a geographic information system that uses webgis as a search engine in this way the information becomes available to the academy and entities involved in the management of coastal resources,2018,0.33
Mine land rehabilitation: Modern ecological approaches for more sustainable mining,despite the urgent demand for sustainable mining the revegetation and rehabilitation of areas degraded by mining activities remain challenging uncertainties about species selection the management and control of alien invasive species and monitoring procedures require ongoing multidisciplinary research modern functional and phylogenetic approaches in community ecology represent powerful tools to enhance the entire rehabilitation process and to overcome these challenges but methodologies that incorporate up to date phylogenetic information or knowledge about intraspecific variation along rehabilitation trajectories must be developed functional and phylogenetic criteria may play an especially important role in guiding the definition of faster growing more resistant species mixtures that can be applied in mine land revegetation and rehabilitation limiting similarity approaches may help to reduce biological invasions enabling native vegetation to outcompete alien invasive species and aiding in the development of enduring mechanisms for controlling such species in rehabilitated mine land finally incorporating phylogenetic and functional aspects into monitoring of the success of mine land rehabilitation with additional tools such as remote sensing or metabarcoding can enrich scientific knowledge about ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling community assembly and resource availability while providing sound information about the success of revegetation activities in the middle to long term research activities on these topics can provide valuable technical recommendations for all aspects of the management of rehabilitated ecosystems thus contributing to more sustainable mining,2018,0.171
EICHSTÄTT: The Jura-Museum Eichstätt,the jura museum eichstã tt is caretaker of the natural history collections of the bishopâ s seminary in eichstã tt germany the historical teaching and research collection is constantly enriched by palaeontological excavations in the solnhofen limestone region of bavaria the collection is especially rich in excellently preserved fossil fishes some 6500 specimens the collection is available as a research tool for guest scientists and also caters for specialistsâ meetings the jura museum eichstã tt itself is the public window of the collection exhibitions address e g bird evolution pterosaurs ecology of the upper jurassic solnhofen archipelago and â œliving fossilsâ in its aquarium the education department provides guided tours and various other activities such as fieldtrips lectures and workshops,2018,0.243
Matching global and regional distribution models of the recluse spider Loxosceles rufescens : to what extent do these reflect niche conservatism?,the mediterranean recluse spider loxosceles rufescens dufour 1820 araneae sicariidae is a cosmopolitan spider that has been introduced in many parts of the world its bite can be dangerous to humans however the potential distribution of this alien species which is able to spread fairly quickly with human aid is completely unknown using a combination of global and regional niche models it is possible to analyse the spread of this species in relation to environmental conditions this analysis found that the successful spreading of this species varies according to the region invaded the majority of populations in asia are stable and show niche conservatism whereas in north america this spider is expected to be less successful in occupying niches that differ from those in its native region and that do not support its synanthropic way of living,2018,0.693
First record of Doleschallia tongana (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) for Guam Island,a single specimen of the butterfly doleshallia tongana hopkins 1927 was collected on guam island on october 23 2017 13 430478â n 144 800419â e this is a new species record for guam and micronesia indicating a geographical range expansion for d tongana,2018,0.608
Geographic range-scale assessment of species conservation status: A framework linking species and landscape features,the concept of habitat and spatial extent are key features in landscape ecology a non precise definition of habitat and the wrong choice of the scale can affect model outcomes and our understanding about population conservation status we proposed a framework and applied to five species representing different ecological profiles 1 to model species occurrences and 2 to evaluate habitat structure at nine different scale extents from local landscapes to entire species range then we 3 evaluated the scale sensitivity of each metric and 4 assessed if the scale sensitivity of each metric changed according to species our model was succesfull in predicting species occurrence for all species when we applied deductive suitability models the total area of remaining habitat varied from 83 to 12 of the original extension of occurrence on average the proportion of habitat amount fragmentation and carrying capacity decreased and functional increased as scale extent increased habitat amount and fragmentation assessed locally would show the same pattern across speciesâ range but carrying capacity and functional connectivity â which consider biological features â were affected by the choice of scale also the inclusion of species preferences on habitat modeling diminished commission errors arising from landscape scale underestimation of speciesâ occurrences local landscapes samples were not able to represent speciesâ entire range feature and the way that individuals reach the remaining habitat depends on speciesâ features species conservation status should be assessed preferably at the range scale and include species biological features as an additional factor determining species occupancy inside geographic ranges,2018,0.534
"Integrative taxonomy of the red-finned barb, Enteromius apleurogramma (Cyprininae: Smiliogastrini) from Kenya, supports recognition of E. amboseli as a valid species",research on freshwater ecosystems in east africa is providing a better understanding of the biodiversity in the region recent studies of the kenyan barbs cyprininae smiliogastrini revealed diversity within several nominal species from the region in this study we examine the molecular and morphological variation in the red finned barb enteromius apleurogramma the results of this study support the recognition of e amboseli as a valid species that is endemic to the middle athi river drainage in southern kenya enteromius amboseli is geographically isolated and distinguished from e apleurogramma in having longer posterior barbels a shorter dorsal fin and generally fewer scales in the longitudinal series genetic divergence between e apleurogramma populations in lake victoria and lake kanyaboli provide novel estimates for rates of molecular evolution in the group additionally the biogeography of these barbs and the conservation status of e amboseli are discussed,2018,0.596
Modeling Avian Distributions and Niches: Insights into Invasions and Speciation in Birds,avian evolutionary studies have recently benefited from a plethora of new techniques as well as conceptual progresses on the evolution of ecological niches the so called species distribution models sdms allow for niche quantifications in a way that permits comparisons among species and populations this review will introduce the theoretical background of niche concepts and niche conservatism followed by an outline of popular methods for modeling and analyzing environmental niches a comparison of ecological niches among native and non native populations of invasive species can reveal niche shifts they can point to evolutionary changes that evolved over comparatively short time scales of decades to a few centuries on the other hand ecological niches can also remain conserved over the invasion process in a similar way comparisons of ecological niches are also applicable among closely related taxa thereby it is possible to infer changes of ecological niches over longer time scales and reveal otherwise hidden patterns and processes in the evolutionary history of avian clades finally sdms offer the potential to contribute to integrative taxonomic studies,2018,0.701
A mega-cryptic species complex hidden among one of the most common annelids in the North East Atlantic,we investigate mitochondrial coi 16s rdna and nuclear its2 28s rdna genetic structure of north east atlantic lineages of terebellides a genus of sedentary annelids mainly inhabiting continental shelf and slope sediments we demonstrate the presence of more than 25 species of which only seven are formally described species boundaries are determined with molecular data using a broad range of analytical methods many of the new species are common and wide spread and the majority of the species are found in sympatry with several other species in the complex being one of the most regularly encountered annelid taxa in the north east atlantic it is more likely to find an undescribed species of terebellides than a described one,2018,0.924
Noteworthy records and ecological niche modeling of the rare and endangered Goldman’s diminutive woodrat Nelsonia goldmani (Rodentia: Cricetidae) endemic to central Mexican highlands,nelsonia goldmani is an uncommon rodent endemic to highland microhabitats in central mexico few individuals have been reported in scarce localities after being discovered in 1903 resulting in a lack of knowledge about its geographic distribution and actual presence in its habitat such situation makes this species of national interest priority for conservation therefore the aim of this study was to summarize collecting records confirm the presence of this species in the field and estimate its ecological niche we searched specimens in biological collections carried out an ecological niche modeling enm analysis and looked for individuals of n goldmani in the field over a 2 year period our results identified only 43 specimens in biological collections whose collecting localities had not been reported previously the enm analysis showed that the environmental suitability areas for this species are restricted and isolated with an apparent lack of environmental connectivity regarding fieldwork we collected only five individuals in two localities the possible environmental specificity and the lack of sampling focused on specific microhabitats could explain the low detection of the species thus far further research is needed to plan conservation actions to protect its populations,2018,0.937
Pseudo-parallel patterns of disjunctions in an Arctic-alpine plant lineage,disjunct distributions have intrigued biologists for centuries investigating these biogeographic patterns provides insight into speciation and biodiversity at multiple spatial and phylogenetic scales some disjunctions have been intensively studied yet others have been largely overlooked and remain poorly understood among the lesser known disjunction patterns is that between the mountain ranges of western north america flora and fauna endemic to the mountains of this region provide important systems for investigating causes and results of disjunctions given the relatively recent geological formation of this area and the intense climatic fluctuations that have occurred since its formation in micranthes saxifragaceae which has high rates of montane endemism two species m bryophora and m tolmiei show this biogeographical pattern by reconstructing a time calibrated phylogeny based on 518 low copy nuclear markers and including multiple populations of each species from the coast ranges cascades sierra nevada and rocky mountains this study provides a biogeographical and temporal framework for the evolution of micranthes in western north america strongly supported east west differentiated clades are recovered for m bryophora and m tolmiei in both maximum likelihood and coalescent based species tree reconstructions biogeographic analysis suggests different patterns of dispersal for both taxa and the dating analyses recovered contrasting ages for each clade due to both the different geographic patterns and the timing of the initial diversification of each taxon corresponding to different geologic and climatic events the disjunction patterns shown for these taxa are suggested to be an example of biogeographical pseudocongruence,2018,0.703
ERLANGEN: The Erlangen Paleobiology Collections,palaeontological collections at friedrich alexander university erlangen comprise more than 50 000 specimens mostly of jurassic marine invertebrates and pleistocene mammals ten percent of the collection material is digitized and available through the instituteâ s mysql database and the global biodiversity information facility invertebrate collections are mostly used for teaching whereas there is active research on the palaeoecology of vertebrates,2018,0.307
Molecular evidence for conspecificity of two desert Liolaemus lizards (Iguania: Liolaemidae),liolaemus audituvelatus nãºã ez yã ã ez 1983 and l manueli nãºã ez navarro garã n pincheira donoso meriggio 2003 are endemic species of the atacama desert of northern chile that belong to the montanus group both species are considered cryptic from each other and can only be distinguished by their distribution ranges and karyotypes originally there was a wide separation zone between their known distribution ranges but later collections reduced the gap from 430 km to only 150 km in this study we review the geographic information about both species and report new localities within the distribution gap where species identification becomes difficult we performed a molecular phylogenetic analysis and applied several species delimitation methods to reassess the taxonomic status of both nominal species and new intermediate populations our analyses support the placement of l manueli in the synonymy of l audituvelatus we discuss the biogeographic and conservation implications of this new synonymy,2018,0.895
Patterns of Trait and Range Size Variation in an Evolutionary Radiation: The Role of Environmental Gradients,functional traits in closely related lineages are expected to vary similarly along common environmental gradients due to shared evolutionary and biogeographic history or legacy effects and due to biophysical tradeoffs in construction i test these predictions in pelargonium a relatively recent evolutionary radiation bayesian phylogenetic mixed effects models assessed at the subclade level associations between plant height leaf area leaf nitrogen content and leaf mass per area lma and five environmental variables capturing temperature and rainfall gradients across the greater cape floristic region of south africa trait trait integration was assessed via pairwise correlations within subclades of 20 trait environment associations 17 differed among subclades signs of regression coefficients diverged for height leaf area and leaf nitrogen content but not for lma subclades also differed in trait trait relationships and these differences were modulated by rainfall seasonality leave one out cross validation revealed that whether trait variation was better predicted by environmental predictors or trait trait integration depended on the clade and trait in question legacy signals in trait environment and trait trait relationships were apparently lost during the earliest diversification of pelargonium but then retained during subsequent subclade evolution overall i demonstrate that global scale patterns are poor predictors of patterns of trait variation at finer geographic and taxonomic scales,2018,0.094
Cranial Responses to Captivity in Lemur catta and Propithecus verreauxi in Natural History Museum Collections,captive animals demonstrate a number of differences compared to their wild counterparts with the suite of some of the most common and arguably deleterious referred to collectively as domestication syndrome scholars have proposed a number of different variables and mechanisms for the changes with captive diet being one of the prominent explanations this thesis explores the effects of captivity on the skulls and mandibles of malagasy lemurs predominantly ring tailed lemurs lemur catta using relative linear measurements and selected ratios gathered from natural history museum collections i predicted that captive and wild individuals would show differences in cranial measurements related to mastication which would be driven by their different diets and the exploitation of the kily fruit tamarindus indica h1a i also predicted that wild individuals would show more overall variation due to consumption of broader less consistent diets h1b finally i predicted that a multivariate model would be able to properly predict captivity status in lemur catta using linear variables captive lemur catta showed significantly p 0 0126 shorter relative post palatal lengths than their wild counterparts supporting h1a and significantly p 0 0374 smaller variance in the inio orbital post facial region supporting h1b however captive individuals showed significantly p 0 0390 greater variance in anterior flexion of the angular process which refuted h1b a step wise discriminant function model was able to properly predict captivity status in a sample of n 18 lemur catta using four linear variables r 2 0 9336 descriptive statistics across sex and other lemur species revealed differences that should be noted by scholars specifically significantly p 0 0250 longer alveo orbital ao pre facial regions in male lemur catta the findings of this thesis including its critique of physical and intellectual conservation of data should be taken into account by museum professionals animal husbandry personnel and morphologists alike and all measurements and findings shall be published on open access servers,2018,0.52
MORPHOLOICAL AND TAXONOMICAL STUDIES ON SOME BARK BEETLES (COLEOPTERA: SCOLYTIDAE) WITH DIAGNOSTIC CHARACTERS BY SCANNING …,in the present work four bark beetles were collected from different hosts in egypt hypoborus ficus erichson from fig trees phloeosinus aubei perris from cupressus trees phloeotribus scarabaeoides bernard from olive trees and hypothenemus eruditus westwood from fig grape leucaena and arucaria trees the former three species belong to subfamily hylesininae representing three different tribes and genera while the last speciesbelongs to subfamily ipinae morphological characters were illustrated by line drawing photographs and for the first time in egypt were scanned using electron microscope sem data were presented for each species in the following format diagnostic characters distribution material examined hosts and remarks the present study was carried out to give detailed description of the four species and the family using precise morphological characters and also to explore the importance of sem in the morphological investigation of taxonomic characters,2018,0.826
On the identity of some endemic SW Asian Cruciferae. I. Thlaspi s. l.,identity of five poorly known sw asian mustard species is revised one aethionema bourgaei is proven not to be conspecific with noccaea oppositifolia and recognized as n bourgaei comb nova other four are newly found to be synonymous with what follows them in parentheses noccidium tuberculatum n hastulatum thlaspi inhumile and th maassoumii noccaea trinervia and th kochianum th huetii comments on the type material or typification of some of the discussed taxa are provided where appropriate,2018,0.487
Application of GIS to predict malaria hotspots based on Anopheles arabiensis habitat suitability in Southern Africa,malaria remains a major public health problem and a principal cause of morbidity and mortality in most developing countries although malaria still presents health problems significant successes have been recorded in reducing deaths resulting from the disease as malaria transmission continues to decline control interventions will increasingly depend on the ability to define high risk areas known as malaria hotspots therefore there is urgent need to use geospatial tools such as geographic information system to detect spatial patterns of malaria and delineate disease hot spots for better planning and management thus accurate mapping and prediction of seasonality of malaria hotspots is an important step towards developing strategies for effective malaria control in this study we modelled seasonal malaria hotspots as a function of habitat suitability of anopheles arabiensis a arabiensis as a first step towards predicting likely seasonal malaria hotspots that could provide guidance in targeted malaria control we used geographical information system gis and spatial statistic methods to identify seasonal hotspots of malaria cases at the country level in order to achieve this we first determined the spatial distribution of seasonal malaria hotspots using the getis ord gi statistic based on confirmed positive malaria cases recorded at health facilities in zimbabwe over four years 1996â 1999 we then used maxent technique to model habitat suitability of a arabiensis from presence data collected from 1990 to 2002 based on bioclimatic variables and altitude finally we used autologistic regression to test the extent to which malaria hotspots can be predicted using a arabiensis habitat suitability our results show that a arabiensis habitat suitability consistently and significantly p 0 05 predicts malaria hotspots from 1996 to 1999 overall our results show that malaria hotspots can be predicted using a arabiensis habitat suitability suggesting the possibility of developing models for malaria early warning based on vector habitat suitability,2018,0.07
Evolutionary history of the endemic water shrew Neomys anomalus : Recurrent phylogeographic patterns in semi-aquatic mammals of the Iberian Peninsula,the cabrera s water shrew neomys anomalus is a small semiâ aquatic mammal whose taxonomic status was recently elevated from subspecies to species as a consequence of this change this species is now endemic to the iberian peninsula in this study we looked at its evolutionary history by combining phylogeography the spatial distribution of genetic diversity and species distribution modeling to perform these analyses we used noninvasive samples collected across the species distribution range and sequenced partial mitochondrial cytochrome b and dâ loop genes maximumâ likelihood and bayesian phylogenetic trees derived from these sequences indicated that n anomalus is divided into two main phylogroups that correlate strongly with geography with two contact zones between the groups that showed limited spatial mixing between them river basins were responsible for only a small percentage of the structure of the genetic diversity of this species despite its riparian habitat the nucleotide diversity variation map showed the highest genetic diversity to be in the north of the iberian peninsula finally species distribution modeling allowed the inference of an optimal area during the last interglacial in the north of the iberian peninsula and multiple glacial refugia during the last glacial maximum the phylogeographic pattern of n anomalus is strikingly similar to that of another semiâ aquatic iberian mammal the pyrenean desman galemys pyrenaicus revealing how pleistocene glaciations could have had equivalent effects on species of similar ecology and distribution this phylogeographic structure is consistent with n anomalus having been isolated for long periods in multiple glacial refugia within the iberian peninsula in agreement with the â œrefugiaâ withinâ refugiaâ hypothesis and further supporting its status as a distinct species,2018,0.983
Assessing habitat loss and fragmentation and their effects on population viability of forest specialist birds: Linking biogeographical and population approaches,aim biogeographic approaches usually have been developed apart from population ecology resulting in predictive models without key parameters needed to account for reproductive and behavioural limitations on dispersal our aim was to incorporate fully spatially explicit population traits into a classic species distribution model sdm using geographic information systems gis aiming at conservation purposes location southern south america methods our analysis incorporates the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on population viability and therefore provides insights into how much spatially explicit population traits can improve the sdm prediction of habitable habitat we utilized a well studied focal endemic bird of south american temperate rainforests scelorchilus rubecula first at a large scale we assessed the historical extent habitat based on climate envelopes in an sdm second we used a land cover change analysis at a regional scale to account for recent habitat loss and fragmentation third we used empirically derived criteria to predict population responses to fragmented forest landscapes to identify actual losses of habitat and population then we selected three sites of high conservation value in southern chile and applied our population model finally we discuss the degree to which spatially explicit population traits can improve the sdm output without intervening in the modelling process itself results we found a historical habitat loss of 39 12 and an additional forest cover loss of 3 03 during 2000â 2014 the latter occurred with a high degree of fragmentation reducing the overall estimation of 1 carrying capacity by ∠82 4 ∠33 1 and ∠45 1 and 2 estimated number of pairs on viable populations by ∠84 1 ∠33 0 and ∠54 6 on the three selected sites main conclusion we conclude that our approach sharpened the sdm prediction on environmental suitability by 54 4 adjusting the habitable area by adding population parameters through gis and allowing to incorporate other phenomena as fragmentation and habitat loss,2018,0.196
Seed-priming of sorghum with antifungal extracts from Balanites aegyptiaca and Eclipta alba in different agro-ecological zones of Burkina Faso,seed priming of sorghum with an aqueous extract from the herbal plant eclipta alba has previously been found to increase crop yield of sorghum in burkina faso dependent on field location in the present study a 2 5 w v antifungal extract from the desert tree balanites aegyptiaca was similarly shown to increase the yield of sorghum by seed treatment the effect was compared to the effect of e alba extract on different types of seeds in different locations a participatory trial including forty six fields in three agro ecological zones was conducted using local farm saved seeds the overall effect on yield conferred by the b aegyptiaca extract was significantly higher than the effect conferred by the e alba extract 31 versus 21 p 0 03 however in one zone the opposite hierarchy was observed also when formally propagated seeds were used for testing the same south eastern zone was characterized by poor crop performance despite a relatively high rainfall antifungal activity was confirmed in both extracts in vitro and different levels of protection against the pathogen curvularia lunata were demonstrated in seedlings the findings are encouraging for a regionally differential use of botanicals in seed treatment and more research to understand local differences in the crop response is suggested,2018,0.196
"Perspectives from Montiaceae (Portulacineae) Evolution. II. Ecological Evolution, Phylogenetic Comparative Analysis, and the Principle of Evolutionary Idiosyncraticity",the present paper reviews evidence for ecological evolution of montiaceae montiaceae portulacineae comprise a family of ca 275 species and ca 25 subspecific taxa of flowering plants distributed mainly in extreme western america with additional endemism elsewhere including other continents and islands they have diversified repeatedly across steep ecological gradients based on narrative analysis i argue that phylogenetic transitions from annual to perennial life history have been more frequent than suggested by computational phylogenetic reconstructions i suggest that a reported phylogenetic correlation between the evolution of life history and temperature niche is coincidental and not causal i demonstrate how statistical phylogenetic comparative analysis phca missed evidence for marked moisture niche diversification among montiaceae i discount phca evidence for the relation between montiaceae genome duplication and ecological diversification based on the present analysis of montiaceae evolution i criticize the premise of the prevalent statistical approach to phca which tests darwinian deterministic hypotheses against stochastic evolutionary null models i discuss theoretical empirical evidence that evolution is neither stochastic nor darwinistically determined but idiosyncratic idiosyncraticity describes the outcome of a stochastically perturbed nonlinear chaos like process the principle of evolutionary idiosyncraticity pei is based on the evolutionary theory of natural drift which maintains that determinism in evolution is a property of the organism and not as maintained by the theory of natural selection its traits or its milieu this determinism is characteristic of chaotic functions which are absolutely determinate generate self similarity but remain absolutely unpredictable pei explains precisely observations that evolution proceeds not linearly but chaotically producing both quasi linear fractal like patterns and non linear jumps pei has ramifications for all areas of macroevolutionary research in particular it demonstrates both the fallacy and futility of the statistical phca approach that interprets evolutionary causes in terms of evolutionary correlations however statistical methods of phca can be applied heuristically and fruitfully to reveal idiosyncraticity and discover evolutionary novelty this in turn is demonstrated by the emergence of statistical anomalies in evolutionary analyses of montiaceae,2018,0.085
"The genus Leucozona Schiffner, 1860 on the Iberian Peninsula, including the first records of Leucozona laternaria (Müller, 1776)(Diptera: Syrphidae)",the occurrence of leucozona laternaria mã ller 1776 is reported on the iberian peninsula for the first time new records of the other species of leucozona schiner 1860 present in the area under study are also reported a key to the three iberian species of this genus follows,2018,0.571
How can climate change affect the potential distribution of common genet Genetta genetta (Linnaeus 1758) in Europe?,the common genet genetta genetta is a carnivore of african origin introduced in europe at least 13 centuries ago its distribution located in the southwest of the continent is chiefly constrained by climatic factors with this premise and taking into account the existing climate change projections our goal was to assess possible changes in climatic suitability for common genet in europe in the future the maximum entropy statistical method was used to evaluate the potential effects of two greenhouse gas scenarios low and high emissions of an average ensemble of six different global circulation models projections showed that a large increase in climatically suitable habitat for common genet in continental europe is likely in the next decades in this way the species range may expand within europe to the east and north the fact that the common genet may be favoured in a scenario of temperature increase is compatible with the origin of the species associated with hotter climates in africa however despite these results bioclimatic models do not represent the complete biotic and ecological niche of the species e g competition predation or dispersal ability and a full understanding of potential future expansions should include factors that also determine the presence of the species at finer local scales bearing this in mind we have to interpret our results as a first step towards the potential for species distribution change in the near future but further work should incorporate environmental variability beyond climate in future projection assessments,2018,0.775
THERMOREGULATION OR HABITAT SELECTION? ENVIRONMENTAL PREDICTORS OF THE BODY SHAPE VARIATION IN SHARKS (CHONDRICTHYES: SELACHIMORPHA),ecomorphology is the study of the relation between organisms shape and environmental factors it assumes that variations in the organisms shape lead to functional differences resulting in changes in resource and habitat use here we aimed to evaluate the effects of environmental variables representing hypotheses of thermoregulation and habitat selection over the sharks body shape on a global scale according to the thermoregulation hypothesis the more fusiform species should be more commonly found in colder waters and regarding the habitat selection hypothesis we expected that the flatter species would occur nearest to the shore and in the shallowest waters based on the body shape and occurrences of the shark species we estimated the mean and median body shape index body height length ratio of shark species on each cell in a 400 x 400 km grid and applied a model selection by aic approach to identify the relative importance of four environmental factors faced by the shark species minimum temperature of the coldest month tc maximum temperature of the warmest month tw bathymetry bathy and distance to shore distshr our results indicate a consistent trend of dorsoventral flattening towards coastal zones and shallow areas a second detected trend was the increase in the body shape index values towards the tropical regions all over the globe while flattened species were more common above 30⺠latitude in both hemispheres minimum temperature of the coldest month was included in all the best fitted models but it did not follow our initial predictions of negative relation to body shape index thus we did not find support for the thermoregulation hypothesis on the other hand bathy and distshr presented a positive relation to body shape index thus consistent with our initial predictions our results indicate that the sharks body shape is not a response to a selective pressure for heat conservation in cold environments but rather to where they live and how they obtain their food contrary to what has been reported to ecologically equivalent marine mammals suborder odontoceti,2018,0.603
Assessing the Risk of Establishment of Rhagoletis cerasi (Diptera: Tephritidae) in the United States and Globally,the european cherry fruit fly rhagoletis cerasi l diptera tephritidae is a highly destructive pest of cherries prunus spp rosaceae in europe and asia in 2016 r cerasi was detected in ontario canada and in 2017 in new york state usa the first records of this pest in north america the initial detections in canada caused concern for the major cherry growing states of michigan washington oregon and california in the united states establishment of r cerasi in the united states could restrict cherry exports to other markets and increase costs needed for fly control but it is unknown if r cerasi can establish in u s commercial cherry regions here we used the climex ecological niche model to determine the risk of establishment of r cerasi in the united states and globally within the united states under a no irrigation scenario r cerasi would establish in the east and west coasts however under an irrigation scenario its distribution would expand to the major cherry growing regions in the interior of central and eastern washington and in california results also showed that if introduced r cerasi would likely establish in eastern china japan the koreas australia new zealand south america south africa mexico and canada host plant prunus spp and lonicera spp caprifoliaceae presence although not included in models would affect fly establishment our results stress the importance of surveying for r cerasi to prevent its spread and establishment within the united states and other countries,2018,0.576
Growth delay by winter precipitation could hinder Juniperus sabina persistence under increasing summer drought,plants in mediterranean mountains are particularly vulnerable to climatic change in these environments low temperature is combined with water shortage during summer and as a result the positive effect of global warming theoretically expanding the growing season length may be counterbalanced by rising drought stress these circumstances may be exacerbated in the rear edge of species distribution where warmer conditions occur here we examined the climate growth relationships of juniperus sabina a major prostrate shrub above the treeline in mediterranean mountains to investigate climate sensitivity and long term signals stability in four rear edge populations from southern spain we demonstrate that over recent decades local climatic conditions have modulated the response of j sabina secondary growth to the ongoing climate change we observed a negative effect of winter spring moisture on secondary growth that suggests a limitation for earlier growth activity at higher elevation potentially hindering the ability of j sabina to compensate forthcoming increases in summer drought at the driest site we also detected a positive effect of october precipitation suggesting a second growth pulse by early autumn our results provide an example of how local climatic conditions may limit plastic responses of secondary growth to climatic variability the implications of growth limitation in j sabina exceed the species scale level since these prostrate shrubs play a critical role as nurse plants and local biodiversity foci in mediterranean mountains,2018,0.104
Predicting the potential impact of climate change on the declining agroforestry species Borassus aethiopum Mart. in Benin: a mixture of geostatistical and SDM approach,predicted effects of climate change cc on plant species distribution have raised concerns on their conservation and domestication appropriate stand density may enhance species ability to adapt to cc therefore combining species distribution modeling sdm and spatial pattern of density should provide insightful information for setting conservation actions we combined geostatistical and sdm techniques to assess 1 current tree density spatial pattern and its relationship with bioclimatic zone humid sub humid and semi arid land use type protected areas vs agrosystems and soil type eight types and 2 present day and future distributions of suitable habitats under low rcp4 5 and high rcp8 5 emissions scenarios for borassus aethiopum a declining agroforestry palm in benin data were obtained from 2880 one ha plots semivariogram and kriging were used to model spatial patterns of density while maximum entropy was used for sdm tree density followed an isotropic spatial model with a range of 2 15 km indicating extremely fragmented density pattern tree density was 8 times higher in protected areas pas 68 6 â 5 09 trees ha∠1 than in agrosystems 8 4 â 0 31 trees ha∠1 and greater on ferruginous soils though 80 of the country was currently highly suitable with similar trend for pas and agrosystems future predictions showed major habitat loss 20â 61 particularly under rcp8 5 while changes were similar between pas and agrosystems the decrease in habitat suitability was pronounced in the semi arid zone where the species is currently widely distributed with higher abundance very weak link was found between present day abundance and present day and future distribution it is concluded that b aethiopum has a fragmented density pattern and will be sensitive to cc in situ and circa situ conservations or orchards establishment were suggested depending on the projected changes and the bioclimatic zone the approach used here is exemplary for other agroforestry tree species,2018,0.464
Camera trap and questionnaire dataset on ecosystem services provided by small carnivores in agro-ecosystems in South Africa,this dataset includes data derived from camera trap surveys and questionnaire surveys relating to small carnivores in agro ecosystems in the vhembe biosphere reserve south africa the data were collected as part of the study â œpredation by small mammalian carnivores in rural agro ecosystems an undervalued ecosystem service â williams et al 2017a 1 camera trap locations were stratified by land use settlement crops and grazing areas the camera trap data provide an insight into the ecology of the nine species of small carnivores that were recorded striped polecat ictonyx striatus honey badger mellivora capensis large spotted genet genetta maculata african civet civettictis civetta slender mongoose galerella sanguinea meller s mongoose rhynchogale melleri selous mongoose paracynictis selousi white tailed mongoose ichneumia albicauda and dwarf mongoose helogale parvula we also recorded domesticated animals such as domestic cats felis catus domestic dogs canis lupus familiaris and cattle bos taurus on the camera traps the questionnaire data are comprised of responses of stakeholders to questions regarding the impacts of these species on rural farming communities in the accompanying data repository hosted on figshare doi 10 6084 m9 figshare 4750807 williams et al 2017b 2 we provide raw data along with processed data and r code used to analyse these data to determine the impact of land use and domestic animals on the species richness and occupancy of small carnivores in rural agro ecosystems williams et al 2017a 1,2018,0.94
Potential changes in the distribution of Carnegiea gigantea under future scenarios,over the last decades several studies have identified that the directional changes in climate induced by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the ecology of desert ecosystems in the southwest united states the impacts of climate change to plant abundance and distribution have already been reported including in the sonoran desert ecosystem home of the iconic saguaro carnegiea gigantea hence there is an urgent need to assess the potential impacts of climate change on the saguaro the goals of this study are to provide a map of actual habitat suitability 1 describe the relationships between abiotic predictors and the saguaro distribution at regional extents 2 and describe the potential effect of climate change on the spatial distribution of the saguaro 3 species distribution modeling sdm was used to investigate the relationships between abiotic variables and the saguaro distribution sdms were calibrated using presence records 2 000 randomly generated pseudo absences and ten abiotic variables of these annual precipitation and max temperature of the warmest month was found to have the greatest relative influence on saguaro distribution sdms indicated that 6 9 and 8 1 of the current suitable habitat is predicted to be lost by 2050 and 2070 respectively therefore predicted changes in climate may result in a substantial contraction of the suitable habitat for saguaro over the next century by identifying the drivers of saguaro distribution and assessing potential changes in habitat suitability due to climate change this study will help practitioners to design more comprehensive strategies to conserve the saguaro in the face of climate change,2018,0.361
Ecological correlates and phylogenetic signal of host use in North American unionid mussels,mussels in the order unionoida comprise ∠75 of the worldâ s freshwater bivalve species and are free living apart from a brief larval stage that parasitizes fish we investigated the relationships among species of north american unionid mussels and their known host fishes from a macroevolutionary perspective to test whether and how ecological and evolutionary factors correlate with patterns of host use a subset of 69 mussel species was chosen based on data availability regarding their fish host repertoires phylogenetic relationships and ecology despite the brevity of their parasitic life stages the mussels conformed to the right skewed distribution of host specificity typical of parasitic taxa in which most species are specialists and a few are generalists phylogenetic least squares regression models identified affinity for low gradient and riffle habitats and colonization of post glacial watersheds as the best predictors for the number of fish host species per mussel however the second best model identified citation number as a predictor of the number of hosts implying that many musselâ host interactions still remain to be identified a multiple regression mantel test was performed to identify factors associated with the proportion of hosts shared between pairs of mussel species range overlap citations genetic distance and similarity in host infection strategy were significantly correlated with the proportion of hosts shared yet total variation as explained by the best model was low r2 0 14 there was evidence of a topological association between mussels and their hosts p 0 001 and a significant phylogenetic signal of host specificity î 0 81 p 0 003 indicating closely related mussels that overlap in range are more likely to be competing for hosts our results provide an initial macroevolutionary framework for studying the evolution of host infection strategies in these mussels but also highlights gaps still remaining in our fundamental ecological knowledge of this endangered clade,2018,0.955
"Evidence for evolution of increased competitive ability for invasive Centaurea solstitialis, but not for naturalized C. calcitrapa",congeneric species with the same native and non native ranges but exhibiting different invasiveness provide opportunities to assess the relative importance of factors contributing to successful invasions for example comparing the competitive ability of such congeners against other species from the native and non native regions of invasive species can provide insight into the role of evolutionary experience with different competitors we selected two congeneric centaurea species with overlapping native and non native ranges but with strikingly different invasive success centaurea solstitialis and c calcitrapa and conducted experiments with populations from each region using a suite of different native grass species from each region when grown with spanish grass species competitive responses were 32 stronger for c calcitrapa and 30 stronger for c solstitialis than when in competition with grasses native to california centaurea solstitialis from california had 66 higher competitive effects on grasses all species considered together than spanish c solstitialis whereas the competitive effects of c calcitrapa on grasses were not significantly different between c calcitrapa ranges our results are consistent with the prediction that the evolution of increased competitive ability eica might contribute to the devastating success of c solstitialis in california and that its absence might contribute to the modest naturalization of the non invasive c calcitrapa escape from the strong competitive effects and responses of grasses from spain may also contribute to invasive success in california our results suggest that studies of eica should be based on competitive tests since biomass alone is not always a good predictor of competitive ability,2018,0.843
Towards global distribution maps of unicellular organisms such as calcareous dinophytes based on DNA sequence information,despite recent fruitful attempts to elucidate microbial biogeography in more detail knowledge of distribution still lags behind for dinophytes evolutionary phenomena such as cryptic speciation and modification due to the environment hamper reliable conclusions about the distribution of this important plankton group we combined newly collected samples from the black sea ten new strains from three localities with occurrence data which have been gathered extensively over the past decade in order to provide the first global distribution maps of four specific ribotypes assigned to the scrippsiella lineage thoracosphaeraceae peridiniales collected at a total of 39 sites they showed a wide partly overlapping distribution and shared the presence primarily at the coastal localities differences in abundance of specific ribotypes were observed but the ribotype corresponding to the globally most frequently encountered species scrippsiella acuminata has not yet been found in the black sea we discuss the significance of dna based records for distribution maps particularly of unicellular organisms such as dinophytes based on a collective approach as exemplified in our study we may start to understand in detail the ecological basis and the dynamics of the individual colonisation invasion events species establishment and consequent distribution in the microbiome all of which have been changing drastically due to the ongoing climate change,2018,0.698
"Exploring the demarcation requirements of fish breeding and nursery sites to balance the exploitation, management and conservation needs of Lake Victoria ecosystem",fisheries resources in vital freshwater ecosystems have been reported to be under immense threat resulting in conflicts between conservation management and exploitation this study established requirements for identifying and mapping fish breeding and nursery grounds in such ecosystems in the kenyan part of lake victoria the criteria were characterised by the use of indigenous knowledge field data literature on breeding sites macroinvertebrates distribution larval and relative fish abundances digitisation participatory mapping and periodic sampling data were collected from trawl and seine net surveys digitisation and mapping of the proposed conservation sites were carried out using quantum gis software participatory physical demarcation of sites was done using buoys and markers larval and juvenile fishes were diverse and abundant in all seven river mouths and six bays surveyed with little variance an important aspect of breeding areas additionally a preponderance of macroinvertebrates and high fish diversity compared with offshore sites in the lake strengthened the hypothesis that these are critical habitats for spawning and preferred habitats for nurseries for fish the approach can be adopted globally to guarantee the longâ term integrity of critical fish habitats for sustainable fisheries management and blue growth,2018,0.341
Modelling the Potential Distribution of Golden Eagle Based on Maximum Entropy: The Experimental Cases of Sweden and Norway,species extinction is a major concern that affect all countries and continents norway and sweden are not spared by these concerns therefore several studies have led to creating a better understanding about the factors which contribute to the expansion of specific species such as the golden eagle among others however climate data such as the temperature and rainfall precipitation have not yet been considered as significant parameters this study aims to experimentally investigate whether climate data can have an impact on the distribution of the threatened bird using maximum entropy modelling in order to investigate such impact climate data were acquired from a global climate data provider worldclim and the presence only occurences of the studied bird downloaded from species data providers www gbif org and www artdatabanken no the results showed that the annual mean temperature was a shared factor in both sweden and norway the maximum entropy modelling can be envisaged as an alternative or a complement to current techniques in gis applications,2018,0.585
"Waarnemingen. be–Non-native plant and animal occurrences in Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region, Belgium",citizen scientists make important contributions to the collection of occurrence data of non native species we present two datasets comprising more than 520 000 records of 1 771 non native species from flanders and the brussels capital region in belgium western europe collected through the website http www waarnemingen be hosted by stichting natuurinformatie and managed by the nature conservation ngo natuurpunt most records were collected by citizen scientists mainly since 2008 waarnemingen be aims at recording all species native and non native and it is shown here that this kind of biodiversity portals are also particularly well suited to collect large amounts of data on non native species both datasets presented here are also discoverable through the global biodiversity information facility gbif,2018,0.897
Predicting the potential global distribution of diosgenin-contained Dioscorea species,background diosgenin mainly extracted from wild diosgenin contained dioscorea species is a well known starting material of steroidal and contraceptive drugs however due to large market demand and increasingly ecological damage wild dioscorea species resources available have been gradually declining therefore identification of new potential ecological distribution of diosgenin contained dioscorea species is necessary for diosgenin production methods in this study a large occurrence dataset 1808 data points of diosgenin contained dioscorea species was obtained from eastern asia southern north america and southern africa along with the data for six critical environmental parameters and one soil factor geographic information system for global medicinal plant was applied to predict the potential suitable distribution of dioscorea species results the results showed that the potential distribution of these dioscorea species covered a wide field and that new ecological suitability areas were mainly distributed in the central region of south america the southern part of the european and coastal region of oceania jackknife test indicated that annual precipitation and annual mean radiation were the important climatic factors controlling the distribution of dioscorea species conclusions the suitable areas and critical climatic factors will serve as a useful guide for diosgenin contained dioscorea species conservation and cultivation in ecological suitable areas,2018,0.963
10 years of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS): where do we stand & where are we heading?,the world register of marine species aims to provide the most authoritative list of names of all marine species ever published through a freely available online portal in 2017 worms celebrated its 10th anniversary this was an excellent opportunity to both look backward and forward by analyzing how the system has grown how it is used and how it can be improved in the future although there are more than 240 000 accepted marine species available through worms an analysis of editor activity shows that there are still many species names missing from the system and that this does not only concern recently published species each year an average of 38 000 marine species names are added to worms â compared to the on average 2000 newly described marine species per year an actively collaborating editor community and data management team are indispensable in keeping a database like worms alive and mean that worms is now regarded as the standard marine species taxonomic backbone for numerous other initiative such as ncbi genbank bold col eol gbif and obis funding to keep worms going currently is provided through the lifewatch project worms constitutes a major contribution to the lifewatch taxonomic backbone,2018,0.902
"Impact of climate change on the distribution range and niche dynamics of Himalayan birch, a typical treeline species in Himalayas",globally treeline in mountain landscapes is reported to be sensitive to projected warming by climate change betula utilis himalayan birch a principal tree species defining the natural treeline in himalayas is a potential indicator species to track the signal of climate change the present study models the ensemble distribution of b utilis using biomod2 package for present and future rcpâ s 2 6â 8 5 covering 2050 and 2070 the final ensemble model obtained had auc 0 886 and tss 0 655 thus indicating robustness of the model we assessed change in the habitat suitability area expansion and contraction based on ensemble model using sdm toolbox the highly suitable area for b utilis is predicted to shift towards the eastern parts of himalayas in future with suitability declining towards the western part of himalayas the study to our best knowledge for the first time used ecospat package to assess niche dynamics i e overlap similarity and equivalency of b utilis which predicted the climatic niche of this treeline species is moderately shifting in future scenarios further the pca analysis indicated that significant variation 33 45 on pc1 and 24 63 on pc2 exists in the climatic conditions between current and future scenarios the similarity and equivalency test revealed that b utilis niche is similar but not identical between current and future climate change scenarios hopefully the results from the present study will contribute significantly in understanding the impacts of climate change in himalayas with wide implications for scientifically informed adaptation and mitigation strategies,2018,0.296
"On the genus Ulota (orthotrichaceae, bryophyta) in Russia",specimens of the genus ulota kept in the bryological herbaria of mw mha le nsk irk uuh vla and vbgi were revisited basing on the recent taxonomical treatments of the genus in europe asia and north america among ten species of the genus previously known from the territory of russia u phyllantha was recently transferred to the new genus plenogemma while ulota crispa which has been considered before in the broad sense was proved to include at least three separate species u crispa s str u intermedia and u crispula all three species occur in russia according to our results diversity of the genus within north east asian center cf garilleti et al 2015 was underestimated two new species from the of u japonica affinity u orientalis sp nov and u pacifica sp nov are described herein from north pacific region khabarovsk territory and south kurils correspondingly thus at least thirteen taxa of the genus are presently known in russia distribution data were significantly corrected for some of them key to identification of ulota species in russia and adjacent areas is provided their distribution is discussed and mapped,2018,0.876
"Airborne palynomorphs on Trindade Island, South Atlantic Ocean, Brazil",the dispersion of palynomorphs in the atmosphere by wind plays an important role in the distribution of plant species and in gene exchanges among populations established on oceanic islands in this study we evaluated uninterrupted palynomorph rain for 19 months on trindade island 20â 30â 27â sâ 29â 19â 48â w in the south atlantic ocean off the coast of brazil the objective of the study was to assess using tauber type samplers the atmospheric palynomorph population on the island and distinguish species of local origin from those transported long distances the expedition was transported to the island by the brazilian navy samples were subjected to acetolysis followed by analysis in light microscopy palynological and accumulation rate diagrams are presented a total palynomorphs of 11 pteridophytes 9 angiosperms 3 fungi and remains of various animals are described and illustrated after each description a brief comment on the frequency and possible origin of the palynomorph is presented the composition of palynomorph rain reflects the organisms extant on trindade island together with material transported over long distances by atmospheric circulation,2018,0.839
"Understanding Forest Health with Remote Sensing, Part III: Requirements for a Scalable Multi-Source Forest Health Monitoring Network Based on Data Science Approaches",forest ecosystems fulfill a whole host of ecosystem functions that are essential for life on our planet however an unprecedented level of anthropogenic influences is reducing the resilience and stability of our forest ecosystems as well as their ecosystem functions the relationships between drivers stress and ecosystem functions in forest ecosystems are complex multi faceted and often non linear and yet forest managers decision makers and politicians need to be able to make rapid decisions that are data driven and based on short and long term monitoring information complex modeling and analysis approaches a huge number of long standing and standardized forest health inventory approaches already exist and are increasingly integrating remote sensing based monitoring approaches unfortunately these approaches in monitoring data storage analysis prognosis and assessment still do not satisfy the future requirements of information and digital knowledge processing of the 21st century therefore this paper discusses and presents in detail five sets of requirements including their relevance necessity and the possible solutions that would be necessary for establishing a feasible multi source forest health monitoring network for the 21st century namely these requirements are 1 understanding the effects of multiple stressors on forest health 2 using remote sensing rs approaches to monitor forest health 3 coupling different monitoring approaches 4 using data science as a bridge between complex and multidimensional big forest health fh data and 5 a future multi source forest health monitoring network it became apparent that no existing monitoring approach technique model or platform is sufficient on its own to monitor model forecast or assess forest health and its resilience in order to advance the development of a multi source forest health monitoring network we argue that in order to gain a better understanding of forest health in our complex world it would be conducive to implement the concepts of data science with the components i digitalization ii standardization with metadata management after the fair findability accessibility interoperability and reusability principles iii semantic web iv proof trust and uncertainties v tools for data science analysis and vi easy tools for scientists data managers and stakeholders for decision making support,2018,0.048
Conservation of the endemic species of the Albertine Rift under future climate change,the albertine rift region of africa is one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet with more threatened and endemic vertebrates than elsewhere on the continent many of the endemic species are confined to montane forest or alpine areas we assessed impacts of loss of habitat to agriculture and predicted impacts from niche modelling of climate change to the endemic species of the albertine rift modelling species distributions for 162 endemic terrestrial vertebrates and plants we estimated the average percentage of habitat already lost to agriculture at 38 across all species however of the remaining suitable habitat the average percentage protected is currently 46 greatly increased by the recent establishment of itombwe kabobo and ngandja reserves in eastern democratic republic of congo from 30 species ranges in 2080 were estimated using climate models and predicted to lead to an average loss of an additional 75 of remaining suitable habitat across all species an estimated 34 endemic species were predicted to lose 90 of their current remaining suitable habitat the percentage of the total suitable habitat protected in parks or reserves increases under future climate change to 56 because as ranges contract more of the remaining area occurs within existing protected areas this indicates that the protected area coverage is reasonably well located for future climate change based on these data we estimate that 46 of the endemic species we assessed would qualify for threatened status on the global red list,2018,0.904
"Plant conservation-genetic variation, phylogeography and seed banking",global vegetation habitat as well as species abundances and distributions have consistently changed during the course of earthâ s history schroeder 1998 todayâ s natural plant distribution in central europe is the result of range shifts after the last glaciation and synchronous human impact lang 1994 taberlet et al 1998 poschlod 2017 however since the beginning of the modern age the rate and extent of environmental deterioration continuously increased due to human activities poschlod wallisdevries 2002 poschlod 2017 the distribution of plant species would without human interaction mostly depend on climate weather soil and interspecific competition woodward 1987 despite other factors such as constrained dispersal normand et al 2011 climate is the most influential natural broad scale parameter for speciesâ ranges willis whittaker 2002 pearson dawson 2003 without a suitable climate a plant canâ t germinate repopulate grow or reproduce in a habitat hence for the prediction of future or the reconstruction of past plant speciesâ ranges climate data can be used in species distribution models sdm elith leathwick 2009 while such models point out the potential distribution of habitats of species the analysis of genetic diversity and relatedness in phylogeographic studies can help to identify colonisation routes or glacial refugia taberlet et al 1998 hewitt 1999 2004 the human impact on ecosystems vegetation composition and species distribution is significant climate change by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases anthropogenic nitrogen deposition changing land use and altered disturbance regimes deforestation and habitat destruction vitousek et al 1997 scheffer et al 2001 tilman et al 2001 recent industrialisation accompanied with growth of human population have caused unprecedented severe loss of the three levels of plant biological diversity habitats and ecosystems species and communities as well as plant genetic diversity the european red list of habitats janssen et al 2016 considers 36 of the 233 habitats assessed 31 for eu28 as threatened 2 as critically endangered 11 as endangered and 24 as vulnerable on the species level the red list of endangered plant species in germany ludwig schnittler 1996 states that 40 of all native plants are at least very rare on population level a number of factors like fragmentation and size of populations genetic drift and bottlenecks strongly influence the genetic diversity and must therefore be considered when depicting the diversity of plants and the value and threats of single populations reisch poschlod 2003 reisch et al 2003 reisch et al 2005 reisch kellermeier 2007,2018,0.855
"An annotated checklist of fishes of Amamioshima Island, the Ryukyu Islands, Japan",a comprehensive list of fishes from amami oshima island the ryukyu islands japan is reported for the first time on the basis of collected specimens and literature surveys a total of 1615 species 618 genera 175 families and 35 orders are recorded with specimen registration numbers if present localities and literature references preliminary comparisons of fish faunas of the island with those of four island regions kashiwa jima island the ogasa wara islands okinawa jima island and yaku shima island in southern japan show that the fish fauna of amamioshima island is most similar to that of okinawa jima island,2018,0.599
Frequency Dependence and Ecological Drift Shape Coexistence of Species with Similar Niches,the coexistence of ecologically similar species might be counteracted by ecological drift and demographic stochasticity both of which erode local diversity with niche differentiation species can be maintained through performance trade offs between environments but trade offs are difficult to invoke for species with similar ecological niches such similar species might then go locally extinct due to stochastic ecological drift but there is little empirical evidence for such processes previous studies have relied on biogeographical surveys and inferred process from pattern while experimental field investigations of ecological drift are rare mechanisms preserving local species diversity such as frequency dependence e g rare species advantages can oppose local ecological drift but the combined effects of ecological drift and such counteracting forces have seldom been investigated here we investigate mechanisms between coexistence of ecologically similar but strongly sexually differentiated damselfly species calopteryx virgo and calopteryx splendens combining field surveys behavioral observations experimental manipulations of species frequencies and densities and simulation modeling we demonstrate that species coexistence is shaped by the opposing forces of ecological drift and negative frequency dependence rare species advantage generated by interference competition stochastic and deterministic processes therefore jointly shape coexistence the role of negative frequency dependence in delaying the loss of ecologically similar species such as those formed by sexual selection should therefore be considered in community assembly macroecology macroevolution and biogeography,2018,0.976
Book Reviews,this volume presents a selection of papers from the symposium held in copenhagen in 2015 to examine and discuss â tropical plant collectionsâ i e collections of plants from the tropics rather than collections of plants in the tropics driven by stark changes in the standing and funding of such collections in europe and the usa profs friis and balslev of the royal danish academy brought together an international group to outline the long history development scientific importance and future worth of such collections as well as links and connections between the more historic â northâ and the relatively newer â southâ there are 23 chapters best considered as review papers placed into six sections with most in the first three â herbaria in north and southâ providing a series of excellent overviews of european us and african herbaria as well as a paper on current indian botanical activities â north south collaboration flora projects and trainingâ highlighting the links nurtured through floras especially the utility of â sandwichâ programmes with students spending time in northern institutions to undertake phds etc as well as reciprocal visits spent in the tropics by northern botanists and the final large section is â tropical plant collections and big dataâ detailing the utility of collections in modelling trait analysis and biogeography amongst others,2018,0.109
Spatially explicit valuation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest’s Ecosystem Services,the brazilian amazon forest is tremendously important for its ecosystem services but attribution of economically measurable values remains scarce mapping these values is essential for designing conservation strategies that suitably combine regional forest protection with sustainable forest use we estimate spatially explicit economic values for a range of ecosystem services provided by the brazilian amazon forest including food production brazil nut raw material provision rubber and timber greenhouse gas mitigation co2 emissions and climate regulation rent losses to soybean beef and hydroelectricity production due to reduced rainfall our work also includes the mapping of biodiversity resources and of rent losses to timber production by fire induced degradation highest values range from us 56 72 â 10 ha∠1 yr∠1 to us 737 â 134 ha∠1 yr∠1 but are restricted to only 12 of the remaining forest our results presented on a web platform identify regions where high ecosystem services values cluster together as potential information to support decision making,2018,0.269
"Historical review, catalog of type specimens and online database of the ichthyology collection of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (ICN-MHN)",for the first time the catalog of type specimens of icn mhn is presented with high resolution photographs the catalog lists 87 species in 161 lots and includes 41 holotypes 3 neotypes and 117 lots of paratypes some doubts remain about type specimens of some species described by miles and dahl that were supposedly deposited at icn mhn the history of the collection is reconstructed and valuable specimens once considered lost or destroyed have been rediscovered the botanical and zoological collections of the icn can be consulted online http www biovirtual unal edu co,2018,0.576
"Flora of Singapore precursors, 1. Gynochthodes praetermissa (Rubiaceae: Morindeae), a new West Malesian species, with notes on related taxa",gynochthodes praetermissa is newly described for the flora of western malesia it most resembles gynochthodes coriacea with which it has been confused they can be distinguished on various leaf attributes and by the new species having corolla lobes at most twice as long as the corolla tube whereas gynochthodes coriacea has corolla lobes at least three times as long as the tube gynochthodes coriacea and g sublanceolata are found to be synonymous the former having priority,2018,0.498
Endemicity and climatic niche differentiation in three marine ciliated protists,the biogeographic pattern of singleâ celled eukaryotes protists including ciliates is poorly understood most marine species are believed to have a relatively high dispersal potential such that both globally distributed and geographically isolated taxa exist primary occurrence data for three large easily identified ciliate species parafavella gigantea schmidingerella serrata and zoothamnium pelagicum and environmental data drawn from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration s world ocean atlas were used to estimate each speciesâ spatial and environmental distributions using maxent v3 3 3k the predictive power of the models was tested with a series of spatial stratification studies which were evaluated using partial receiver operating characteristic roc statistics differences between niches occupied by each taxon were evaluated using background similarity tests all predictions showed significant ability to anticipate test points the null hypotheses of niche similarity were rejected in all background similarity tests comparing the niches among the three species this article provides the first quantitative assessment of environmental conditions associated with three species of ciliates and a first estimate of their spatial distributions in the north atlantic which can serve as a benchmark against which to document distributional shifts these species follow consistent predictable patterns related to climate and environmental biochemistry the importance of climatic conditions as regards protist distributions is noteworthy considering the effects of global climate change,2018,0.543
Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) best practices in electronic publishing in taxonomy,in order to consider the effects of online publishing on the career of researchers as well as to encourage both its recognition and its improved positioning within the field and beyond the cetaf membership organized two workshops during which specific questions about scientific publishing in taxonomy were addressed authorship citation and open access the present opinion paper is the result of those workshops held on 19 october 2016 in madrid and on 4 october 2017 in heraklion the discussions were aimed at reconciling the requirements of the relevant nomenclatural codes with recommendations for best practices that are adapted to the evolving landscape of e publishing by evaluating the different policies of a range of journals regarding authorship citation we were able to recognise the conflicting and incoherent practices related to the citation of taxon authorships an issue that is important to clarify for scientific explicit source practical findability of source and reputational citation index reasons a collective policy on authorship citation also fits into the wider challenge faced by researchers and institutions whereby interoperability and traceability become key priorities both for facilitating access to scientific resources and for generating metrics that accurately represent the activities and output of the community publications resulting from publicly funded research should be considered as an essential part of the research process and there has been a strong move towards open access which increases visibility citability innovation and impact diverse models of open access have appeared in scientific publishing but while they each promote free access to the end user they are not always equitable for the authors and funders of the original research herein we formulate recommendations for the relevant research communities and outline the advantages behind adopting a collective strategy towards the issues of authorship citation and open access,2018,0.053
Ecology and genomics of an important crop wild relative as a prelude to agricultural innovation,domesticated species are impacted in unintended ways during domestication and breeding changes in the nature and intensity of selection impart genetic drift reduce diversity and increase the frequency of deleterious alleles such outcomes constrain our ability to expand the cultivation of crops into environments that differ from those under which domestication occurred we address this need in chickpea an important pulse legume by harnessing the diversity of wild crop relatives we document an extreme domestication related genetic bottleneck and decipher the genetic history of wild populations we provide evidence of ancestral adaptations for seed coat color crypsis estimate the impact of environment on genetic structure and trait values and demonstrate variation between wild and cultivated accessions for agronomic properties a resource of genotyped association mapping progeny functionally links the wild and cultivated gene pools and is an essential resource chickpea for improvement while our methods inform collection of other wild crop progenitor species,2018,0.866
Influence of Land-Use Changes (1993 and 2013) in the Distribution of Wild Edible Fruits From Veracruz (Mexico),wild edible fruits are a complement to the diet generate income and contain cultural values for local populations in mexico their presence is threatened mainly by deforestation the purpose of this work was to evaluate the distribution of 106 wild edible fruits from veracruz state in several vegetation types and consider the effect of land use changes on species distribution between 1993 and 2013 seven species with the least number of herbarium specimens were chosen in order to estimate the current and potential distribution using maxent models the types of vegetation with the largest number of wild edible fruit species were the evergreen tropical rainforest with 64 deciduous tropical forest with 51 and the mountain cloud forest with 33 the largest loss between 1993 and 2013 was in secondary vegetation 0 19 and evergreen tropical rainforest 0 11 the main causes are the increment in human settlements and pasture and grazing land originally populated by tropical forests â both factors that could put at risk in the near future most of the species studied all of the species with restricted distribution in veracruz showed a tendency to shrink in area particularly the piã ã n pinus cembroides and nuez de castilla juglans pyriformis both of economic importance in the face of land use changes conservation strategies must be designed in accordance with rational use and public policies that promote a sustainable management of wild edible fruits and the forests in which they grow,2018,0.976
Alcohol extract of Bauhinia forficata link reduces lipid peroxidation in the testis and epididymis of adult Wistar rats,bauhinia forficata is a medicinal plant that has flavonoid components with hypoglycemic antioxidant hepatoprotective antibacterial antiviral and antiâ inflammatory action aim of this study is to evaluate the action of b forficata alcoholic extract in the male genital system of adult male wistar rats for that 20 adult male wistar rats were distributed into two experimental groups the b forficata group receiving b forficata alcoholic extract 0 1 ml 10 g body weight day on alternate days and the control group receiving just the vehicle for 30â days straight both via gavage on the 31st day the animals were euthanized and the testis and epididymis were collected for histopathological biochemical morphometric and sperm count analysis mass spectrometry identified new compounds in the extract transâ caffeic acid liquiritigenin gallocatechin and 2 4 6â trihydroxyphenanthrenâ 2â glycoside biochemical analysis showed higher total cholesterol levels in the testis and lower malondialdehyde levels in the testis and epididymis in the b forficata group the mast cell count showed a reduction in degranulated mast cells in the caput region of the epididymis in the b forficata group the luminal compartment of the caput and the epithelial of the epididymis cauda were reduced whereas the stromal region of the epididymis caput was increased in the b forficata group compared with the control group the testicular tissue was less impaired considering that all the histological analyses were similar to the control we believe that b forficata alcoholic extract in the male genital system showed antioxidant action especially in the epididymal tissue,2018,0.629
Potential impact of climate change on the distribution of six invasive alien plants in Nepal,the biological invasions have been increasing at multiple spatial scales and the management of invasive alien species is becoming more challenging due to confounding effects of climate change on the distribution of those species identification of climatically suitable areas for invasive alien species and their range under future climate change scenarios are essential for long term management planning of these species using occurrence data of six of the most problematic invasive alien plants iaps of nepal ageratum houstonianum mill chromolaena odorata l r m king h rob hyptis suaveolens l poit lantana camara l mikania micrantha kunth and parthenium hysterophorus l we have predicted their climatically suitable areas across the country under the current and two future climate change scenarios rcp 4 5 scenarios for 2050 and 2070 we have developed an ensemble of eight different species distribution modelling approaches to predict the location of climatically suitable areas under the current climatic condition p hysterophorus had the highest suitable area 18 of the total countryâ s area while it was the lowest for m micrantha 12 a predicted increase in the currently suitable areas ranges from 3 m micrantha to 70 a houstonianum with the mean value for all six species being 29 under the future climate change scenario for 2050 for four species a houstonianum c odorata h suaveolens and l camara additional areas at elevations higher than the current distribution will provide suitable habitat under the projected future climate in conclusion all six iaps assessed are likely to invade additional areas in future due to climate change and these scenarios need to be considered while planning for iaps management as well as climate change adaptation,2018,0.794
Historical biogeography and phylogeny of Cucurbita : Insights from ancestral area reconstruction and niche evolution,knowledge of the role of geographical and ecological events associated to the divergence process of wild progenitors is important to understand the process of domestication we analysed the temporal spatial and ecological patterns of the diversification of cucurbita an american genus of worldwide economic importance we conducted a phylogenetic analysis based on six chloroplast regions 5 907 bp to estimate diversification rates and dates of divergence between taxa this is the first phylogenetic study to include c radicans a wild species that is endemic to the trans mexican volcanic belt we performed analysis of ancestral area reconstruction and paleoreconstructions of species distribution models to understand shifts in wild species ranges we used principal component analysis pca and multivariate analysis of variance manova to evaluate the environmental differentiation among taxa within each clade the phylogenetic analyses showed good support for at least six independent domestication events in cucurbita the genus cucurbita showed a time of divergence of 11 24 ma 6 88 â 17 ma 95 hdp and the dates of divergence between taxa within each group ranged from 0 35 to 6 58 ma being the divergence between c lundelliana and c okeechobeensis subsp martinezii the most recent the diversification rate of the genus was constant through time the diversification of most wild taxa occurred during the pleistocene and its date of divergence is concordant with the dates of divergence reported for specialized bees of the genera xenoglossa and peponapis thus suggesting a process of coevolution between cucurbita and their main pollinators that should be further investigated tests of environmental differentiation together with ancestral area reconstruction and species distribution models past projections suggest that divergence was promoted by the onset of geographic barriers and secondary range contraction and by expansion related to glacial interglacial cycles,2018,0.915
"Predicting the Potential Distribution of an Invasive Species, Solenopsis invicta Buren (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), under Climate Change using Species Distribution Models",the red imported fire ant is considered one of the most notorious invasive species because of its adverse impact on both humans and ecosystems public concern regarding red imported fire ants has been increasing as they have been found seven times in south korea even if red imported fire ants are not yet colonized in south korea a proper quarantine plan is necessary to prevent their widespread distribution as a basis for quarantine planning we modeled the potential distribution of the red imported fire ant under current climate conditions using six different species distribution models sdms and then selected the random forest rf model for modeling the potential distribution under climate change we acquired occurrence data from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and bioclimatic data from worldclim we modeled at the global scale to project the potential distribution under the current climate and then applied models at the local scale to project the potential distribution of the red imported fire ant under climate change modeled results successfully represent the current distribution of red imported fire ants the potential distribution area for red imported fire ants increased to include major harbors and airports in south korea under the climate change scenario rcp 8 5 thus we are able to provide a potential distribution of red imported fire ant that is necessary to establish a proper quarantine plan for their management to minimize adverse impacts of climate change,2018,0.358
Range extension of Gymnocranius cf. grandoculis (Teleostei: Lethrinidae) to Oman in the Arabian Gulf,a specimen of gymnocranius cf grandoculis was collected from khasab city musandam region oman the fish represents the first record of the genus from the arabian gulf color patterns as well as meristic and morphometric characters match to those reported for gymnocranius grandoculis although new species have been described recently and the taxonomy of indian ocean populations has not been resolved,2018,0.652
A comparative modeling study on non-climatic and climatic risk assessment on Asian Tiger Mosquito ( Aedes albopictus ),aedes albopictus the asian tiger mosquito vector of chikungunya dengue fever and zika viruses has proven its hardy adaptability in expansion from its natural asian forest edge tree hole habitat on the back of international trade transportation re establishing in temperate urban surrounds in a range of water receptacles and semi enclosures of organic matter conventional aerial spray mosquito vector controls focus on wetland and stagnant water expanses proven to miss the protected hollows and crevices favoured by ae albopictus new control or eradication strategies are thus essential particular in light of potential expansions in the southeastern and eastern usa successful regional vector control strategies require risk level analysis should strategies prioritize regions with non climatic or climatic suitability parameters for ae albopictus our study used current ae albopictus distribution data to develop two independent models i regions with suitable non climatic factors and ii regions with suitable climate for ae albopictus in southeastern usa non climatic model processing used evidential belief function ebf together with six geographical conditioning factors raster data layers to establish the probability index validation of the analysis results was estimated with area under the curve auc using ae albopictus presence data climatic modeling was based on two general circulation models gcms miroc3 2 and csiro mk30 running the rcp 8 5 scenario in maxent software ebf non climatic model results achieved a 0 70 prediction rate and 0 73 success rate confirming suitability of the study site regions for ae albopictus establishment the climatic model results showed the best fit model comprised coldest quarter mean temp precipitation of wettest quarter and driest quarter precipitation factors with mean auc value of 0 86 both gcms showed that the whole study site is highly suitable and will remain suitable climatically according to the prediction for 2055 for ae albopictus expansion,2018,0.129
Completeness of national freshwater fish species inventories around the world,the aim was to discriminate the countries with relatively comprehensive inventories of freshwater fishes from those with insufficiently prospected inventories we used a data set of 16 734 freshwater fish species with a total of 1 373 449 occurrence records accumulation curves relating the increase in the number of species to the number of records and completeness values obtained after extrapolating these curves to estimate the total number of predicted species were calculated for each country using the rwizard application knowbr using the final slope values of the accumulation curves the obtained completeness values and the ratio between the number of records and the observed species maps and plots representing the location of good fair and poor quality inventories at country level were obtained inventory completeness ranged from 5 3 guinea bissau to 108 4 united kingdom with a pooled mean of 65 9 we observed that a completeness higher than 90 a slope lower than 0 02 and a ratio of records species observed greater than 15 were good thresholds for identifying countries with good quality inventories only 26 countries met these requirements mainly located in europe and north america however more than 71 of countries worldwide have inventories that can be categorised as of poor quality furthermore even those countries with relatively accurate national inventories possess a high variability in the completeness of their provincial or regional inventories,2018,0.72
"New Distributional Records of Four Indo-Pacific Species from Astypalaia Island, South Aegean Sea, Greece",during in situ investigation carried out in july and august 2016 and 2017 successively by the authors in astypalaia south aegean greece the following alien species were recorded 1 a colony of epibyssal pteriid isognomon australica reeve 1858 in shallow water under rocks 2 two specimens of isognomon legumen gmelin 1791 3 a live group of indo pacific triphorid viriola cf bayani jousseaume 1884 trawled at a depth of 35 50 m and 4 a freshly dead specimen of euthymella colzumensis jousseaume 1898 also trawled at a depth of 35 50 m a comparative study of collected material using type data resulted in their identification and recording as indo pacific newcomers to greek waters moreover it led to a first mediterranean record for i australica and e colzumensis these occurrences considerably far from the mouth of the suez canal support the assumption that a combination of conditions consisting an â œinvasion windowâ converge in astypalaia and favour the successful establishment of alien species not necessarily following the patterns of lessepsian migration,2018,0.609
"The complete mitochondrial genome of the bazaar fly, Musca sorbens Wiedemann (Diptera: Muscidae)",the bazaar fly musca sorbens diptera muscidae wiedemann 1830 is a world wide species with sanitary medical and veterinary importance the complete mitochondrial genome of m sorbens is sequenced to better understand the mitogenomic characteristics and phylogeny of this species the circular mitogenome is 16 120 bp in length contains 13 protein coding genes pcgs 22 trna genes trnas two rrna genes and an at rich control region the mitogenome comprises an a t content of 77 4 all pcgs start with â œatnâ codons except for coi which starts with tcg and terminate with the common stop codons tnn a phylogenetic tree including six muscidae species is reconstructed based on the whole mitogenome sequences the interspecific distances of mitogenomes between the six muscidae species range from 0 059 to 0 168,2018,0.723
"Recording of the Lissorchid Trematode Asymphylodora imitans (Mühling, 1898) in Iraq from Intestine of the Common Carp Cyprinus carpio",the lissorchid trematode asymphylodora imitans mã hling 1898 is recorded in the present study for the first time in iraq from intestine of the common carp cyprinus carpio which was collected from al ataifiya location on the tigris river at baghdad city during the period from july until november 2018 the description and measurements of this internal parasite as well as its illustrations are given with this record number of asymphylodora species in fishes of iraq reaches five species with two of them infecting c carpio hence the family lissorchiidae from fishes of iraq now includes two genera asymphylodora with five species in addition to some unidentified species of this genus and asymphylotrema with one species,2018,0.921
Niche divergence and limits to expansion in the high polyploid Dianthus broteri complex,niche evolution in plant polyploids remains controversial and evidence for alternative patterns has been reported using the autopolyploid dianthus broteri complex 2x 4x 6x and 12x as a model we aimed to integrate three scenarios competitive exclusion recurrent origins of cytotypes and niche filling into a single framework of polyploid niche evolution we hypothesized that high polyploids would tend to evolve towards extreme niches when low ploidy cytotypes have nearly filled the niche space we used several ecoinformatics and phylogenetic comparative analyses to quantify differences in the ecological niche of each cytotype and to evaluate alternative models of niche evolution each cytotype in this complex occupied a distinct ecological niche the distributions were mainly constrained by soil characteristics temperature and drought stress imposed by the mediterranean climate tetraploids had the highest niche breadth and overlap due to their multiple origins while the higher ploidy cytotypes were found in different restricted nonâ overlapping niches niche evolution analyses suggested a scenario with one niche optimum for each ploidy including the two independent tetraploid lineages our results suggest that the fate of nascent polyploids could not be predicted without accounting for phylogenetic relatedness recurrent origins or the niche occupied by ancestors,2018,0.247
"New records of Cleopomiarus distinctus Boheman, 1845 (Coleoptera, Curculionidae) and Stricticollis tobias Marseul, 1879 (Coleoptera, Anthicidae) from Norway",two new beetle species for norway were recorded from field surveys in power line clearings located in predominantly forested areas in southeastern norway cleopomiarus distinctus boheman 1845 curculionidae and stricticollis tobias marseul 1879 anthicidae a total of 81 specimens of the weevil c distinctus were found across four sites in buskerud over the course of three years 2013â 2015 c distinctus has never been recorded in scandinavia previously three specimens of the ant like flower beetle s tobias were found at two sites in hedmark in 2015 s tobias has a wide distribution in other nordic countries and has been recognized as a â œdoorstep speciesâ to norway from sweden the biology of the two species are presented and the potential distribution of the species are discussed,2018,0.721
GENETIC STRUCTURE AND GENE FLOW BARRIERS AMONG POPULATIONS OF AN ALPINE BUMBLE BEE (BOMBUS BALTEATUS) IN THE CENTRAL ROCKY …,the intermountain western us has experienced significant environmental impacts from climate change over the last 50 years creating novel challenges for species that occupy this area metapopulation theory predicts that extant populations with greater interconnection via dispersal and gene flow should be more likely to withstand such environmental challenges exhibiting greater likelihood of persistence this study investigated the relative extent of genetic connectance among populations of bombus balteatus an ecologically important native bumble bee species in alpine habitats of the central rocky mountains in colorado this species and one other b sylvicola historically comprised over 95 of samples captured in the region during the 1960s and 70s but has experienced declines in its relative abundance in recent years this decline has likely been facilitated by climate mediated decreases in floral resources coupled with increased competition from upwardly mobile lowland bombus species i examined population genetic structure using microsatellite markers and then used geospatial modeling to determine how the landscape influences this genetic structure i used maxent to develop environmental niche models and estimate habitat suitability using climate and landscape data and a v comprehensive set of occurrence records for b balteatus i used circuitscape to develop models of habitat connectivity represented as dispersal pathways between populations and areas of suitable habitat i also used circuitscape to estimate pairwise resistance distances between sampling localities in order to examine patterns of isolation by resistance among populations my data suggest that populations of b balteatus have low but significant pairwise genetic differentiation between populations with evidence of inbreeding likely due to a heterozygote deficiency which may be a result of evident population structuring structure analyses revealed six genetic clusters among the nine populations sampled with two clearly defined population groups populations did not show isolation by distance and the relationship to pairwise genetic differentiation did not improve by incorporating climate and landscape variables into models as pairwise resistance distances maxent analyses revealed elevation land use and mean temperature of the wettest quarter as having the strongest influence on the best fitting niche models high habitat suitability for b balteatus was predicted to occur at high elevations in areas with high perennial snow and ice circuitscape analyses revealed high habitat connectivity along high elevation ridgelines while dispersal appears to be limited by low elevation forested valleys and major highways results suggest that there may not be direct barriers to gene flow and that the current arrangement of suitable habitat at a broad scale may sufficiently explain the observed levels of population differentiation although the data suggest populations of b balteatus may be able to disperse across the landscape and exchange genes among populations conservation management strategies should be directed toward protecting areas of high elevation suitable habitat that connect populations via dispersal pathways,2018,0.988
An intercontinental comparison of niche conservatism along a temperature gradient,aims phylogenetic niche conservatism pnc predicts that closely related species will have similar distributions along major environmental gradients e g temperature we test this theory by comparing the central tendencies of temperature for selected woody genera and investigating whether these genera have a similar rank order sequence across continents and hemispheres a strong correlation may indicate niche conservatism as inherited temperature tolerance would best explain a positive correlation location peru andes and nepal himalaya methods elevation and temperature ranges for all species belonging to eight disjunct genera of woody plants were compiled central tendencies of congeneric species along the temperature gradient were established by means of reciprocal averaging and weighted average temperature we correlated the rank order of genera from the himalaya and andes and tested if the order in the himalaya could predict the order in the andes using permutation procedure results most genera exhibit a bell shaped or curvilinear pattern with the maximum number of congeneric species in the centre of the temperature range but some curvilinear responses and monotonic increases are found in andes the order of generic optima along the temperature gradient in each region is highly correlated ï 0 81 as well as the size of the temperature range and minimum temperature limit ï 0 90 conclusion the analyses verify the conjecture that the maximum number of congeneric species is found towards the centre of the temperature range of the genus this may be caused by newly evolving species not dispersing very far from their ancestors and inherent temperature tolerances inherent temperature tolerance and covariates such as primary production and soil conditions are the main factors that may explain consistency of the rank order of disjunct genera along temperature gradients between continents and hemispheres hence temperature tolerances within a clade are conserved over time and space,2018,0.838
Pest Risk Analysis for Cortaderia jubata,cortaderia jubata is a perennial grass species native to argentina chile bolivia ecuador peru and colombia testoni villamil 2014 c jubata is invasive in california hawaiâ i new zealand australia and south africa but appears to have had the largest impacts in new zealand and california in new zealand c jubata has substantial impacts on plantation forestry by competing with forestry trees and making access to plantations more difficult gadcil et al 1984,2018,0.545
Conservation implications of population genetic structure in a threatened orchid Cypripedium tibeticum,cypripedium tibeticum is a threatened orchid which efficient conservation requires knowledge of its extent and structure of genetic variation using two chloroplast dna fragments rps16 and trnl f we analyzed 157 individuals from 9 populations representing the species range in china seven haplotypes were identified c tibeticum had high total genetic diversity ht 0 80 with major contribution to this diversity made by among population component gst 0 64 î st 0 86 however despite high population differentiation there was no clear phylogeographic structure the populations cy and dc made the greatest contribution to the total gene diversity as well as allelic richness the possible mechanisms and implications of these findings for conservation of the species are discussed,2018,0.629
Allium Genetic Resources,an overview of the developments in allium genetic resources during the past 25 years is presented in this chapter a first important development has been the introduction and further development of web based genebanking information systems e g genesys plantsearch which facilitated the exchange of data to a large extent between allium collection holders worldwide these information systems made it possible to obtain an overview of the allium genetic resources managed worldwide and identify the gaps in collections which still need to be filled especially in the face of the ongoing genetic erosion a second important area of progress has been the development of new methods for the maintenance of allium germplasm especially cryopreservation this method has made it possible to maintain allium accessions in a cheap and effective way the method is especially important for the conservation of vegetatively maintained germplasm other developments in allium genebanking are the improvement of the health status of the germplasm kept in the collections and the continuing characterization and evaluation of germplasm which stimulates the utilization of the allium genetic resources held in genebanks significant changes could also be observed with respect to acquisition and exchange of plant genetic resources due to many and complex new regulations on the legal and organizational levels due to the adoption of the cbd and it pgrfa by many countries it makes the handling of the plant accessions safer and more consistent but also more circumstantial finally we need to underline that in an increasingly changing world with all the threats of genetic erosion and extinction due to disappearance of traditional cultivation methods devastation of our environment and climatic change the conservation of genetic resources is of prime importance for agriculture especially for breeders a highly diverse genepool of a crop plant is an invaluable treasure the importance to keep this treasure will no doubt become even more important in the future,2018,0.067
Testing multiple hypotheses for the high endemic plant diversity of the Tibetan Plateau,aim the tibetan plateau harbours the highest alpine and endemic plant diversity in the world attributed to rapid diversification during the plateau uplift and quaternary climate fluctuations however there is little understanding of which hypotheses associated with these geological and climatic processes garner strong support as explanations for the observed diversity patterns here we test support for hypotheses related to uplift and climate changes that could account for the high endemicity and phylogenetic diversity of the worldâ s highest plateau location tibetan plateau tp time period neogene quaternary and current period major taxa studied tibetan endemic seed plants methods we collated data on endemic seedâ plant distribution based on countyâ level mapping from published monographs and online databases we calculated species richness sr and phylogenetic diversity for endemic herbs shrubs trees and all plants for 0 5â degree ã 0 5â degree grid cells covering the tp we derived environmental and evolutionary predictors to evaluate eight biogeographical hypotheses associated with plateau uplift and climate fluctuations and used partial regression analysis and mixed conditional autoregressive car models to assess the relative contribution of each predictor to the extant diversity of the tp results we found plateau uplift independently explained more variance in diversity than climate fluctuations but there were also strong interaction effects the full car models including all predictors explained 37 â 75 of the total variation across diversity measures and life forms the predictor representing the montane museum hypothesis explained the most variation c 25 but each predictor explained at least 6 main conclusions these results demonstrate that both the plateau uplift and quaternary climate fluctuations had large impacts on current patterns of species diversity but the influence of plateau uplift was more pronounced than that of climate changes our study suggests that plateau uplift and climate changes are the original drivers of complex biogeographical processes accounting for the biodiversity of the tp,2018,0.169
Multiple stressors facilitate the spread of a non-indigenous bivalve in the Mediterranean Sea,aim the introduction of non indigenous species nis via man made corridors connecting previously disparate oceanic regions is increasing globally however the environmental and anthropogenic factors facilitating invasion dynamics and their interactions are still largely unknown this study compiles and inputs available data for the nis bivalve brachidontes pharaonis across the invaded biogeographic range in the mediterranean basin into a species distribution model to predict future spread under a range of marine scenarios location mediterranean sea methods a systematic review produced the largest presence database ever assembled to inform the selection of biological chemical and physical factors linked to the spread of b pharaonis through the suez canal we carried out a sensitivity analysis to simulate current and future trophic and salinity scenarios a species distribution model was run to determine key drivers of invasion quantify interactive impacts arising from a range of trophic states salinity conditions and climatic scenarios and forecast future trajectories for the spread of nis into new regions under multiple parameter scenarios based on the main factors identified from the systematic review results impacts on invasion trajectory arising from climate change and interactions with increasing salinity from the new opening of the canal were the primary drivers of expansion across the basin the effects of which were further enhanced by eutrophication predictions of the current distribution were most accurate when multiple stressors were used to drive the model a habitat suitability index developed at a subcontinental scale from model outputs identified novel favourable conditions for future colonization at specific locations under 2030 and 2050 climatic scenarios main conclusions future expansion of b pharaonis will be enhanced by climate facilitated increased sea temperature interacting with increasing pressures from salinity and eutrophication the spatially explicit risk output maps of invasions represent a powerful visual product for use in communication of the spread of nis and decision support tools for scientists and policymakers the suggested approach the observed distribution pattern and driving processes can be applied to other nis species and regions by providing novel forecasts of species occurrences under future multiple stressor scenarios and the location of suitable recipient habitats with respect to anthropogenic and environmental parameters,2018,0.195
"Acronicta rumicis (Linnaeus, 1758), Emerging Pest of Apple Plantation in Kashmir Valley",the larvae of the moth acronicta rumicis linnaeus commonly known as knot grass moth inflict considerable damage to new apple plantation in the kashmir region immature stages of the pest defoliate apical buds and result in stunted growth of the plant seasonal occurrence and severity of the pest from kashmir valley is detailed,2018,0.39
Geographic range expansion of Ephippion guttifer (Tetraodontidae) in the north-eastern Atlantic,the first record of the prickly puffer ephippion guttifer tetraodontidae from galician waters northâ west spain is reported based on a male specimen of 570 mm total length lt caught in the rã a de vigo morphometric meristic and dna barcode data confirmed the identification histological examination of reproductive tissue was carried out in this species for the first time showing a mature male in an actively spawning phase a historical revision invalidates a previous record and establishes this as the northernmost confirmed capture ever reported in the northâ eastern atlantic ocean,2018,0.408
Natural re-colonization and admixture of wolves (Canis lupus) in the US Pacific Northwest: challenges for the protection and management of rare and endangered taxa,admixture resulting from natural dispersal processes can potentially generate novel phenotypic variation that may facilitate persistence in changing environments or result in the loss of population specific adaptations yet under the us endangered species act policy is limited for management of individuals whose ancestry includes a protected taxon therefore they are generally not protected under the act this issue is exemplified by the recently re established grey wolves of the pacific northwest states of washington and oregon usa this population was likely founded by two phenotypically and genetically distinct wolf ecotypes northern rocky mountain nrm forest and coastal rainforest the latter is considered potentially threatened in southeast alaska and thus the source of migrants may affect plans for their protection to assess the genetic source of the re established population we sequenced a 300 bp portion of the mitochondrial control region and 5 mbp of the nuclear genome genetic analysis revealed that the washington wolves share ancestry with both wolf ecotypes whereas the oregon population shares ancestry with nrm forest wolves only using ecological niche modelling we found that the pacific northwest states contain environments suitable for each ecotype with wolf packs established in both environmental types continued migration from coastal rainforest and nrm forest source populations may increase the genetic diversity of the pacific northwest population however this admixed population challenges traditional management regimes given that admixture occurs between an adaptively distinct ecotype and a more abundant reintroduced interior form our results emphasize the need for a more precise us policy to address the general problem of admixture in the management of endangered species subspecies and distinct population segments,2018,0.821
Current and Future Potential Risk of Establishment of Grapholita molesta (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) in Washington State,the oriental fruit moth grapholita molesta busck lepidoptera tortricidae is a primary pest of stone fruits that cause significant economic damage larvae which enter the host plant through shoot tips damage shoots and ripe fruits native to asia this pest now occurs in many fruit growing countries including the united states and canada though the pest was previously reported from many states within the united states its current distribution and the environmental variables that influence its distribution are not properly identified the objectives of this study were to 1 identify the environmental factors associated with g molesta current distribution 2 predict the current distribution of g molesta in washington state wa using maxent and climex models 3 identify those areas within wa best suited for establishment of pest free zones areas of low pest prevalence and pest free production areas and 4 identify regions most at risk for further expansion of g molesta populations as a function of climate change the current models predicted a small portion of central wa is suitable to support g molesta which is consistent with observed distributions however climate change models predict that more areas will become suitable for the pest these results indicate that action should be taken to monitor and reduce current populations of g molesta to stem its potential expansion into the major commercial tree fruit production areas in the state,2018,0.449
"Large-scale digitization of herbarium specimens: Development and usage of an automated, high-throughput conveyor system",the billions of specimens housed in natural science collections provide a tremendous source of under utilized data that are useful for scientific research conservation commerce and education digitization and mobilization of specimen data and images promises to greatly accelerate their utilization while digitization of natural science collection specimens has been occurring for decades the vast majority of specimens remain un digitized if the digitization task is to be completed in the near future innovative high throughput approaches are needed to create a dataset for the study of global change in new england we designed and implemented an industrial scale conveyor based digitization workflow for herbarium specimen sheets the workflow is a variation of an object to image to data workflow that prioritizes imaging and the capture of storage container level data the workflow utilizes a novel conveyor system developed specifically for the task of imaging flattened herbarium specimens using our workflow we imaged and transcribed specimen level data for almost 350 000 specimens over a 131 week period an additional 56 weeks was required for storage container level data capture our project has demonstrated that it is possible to capture both an image of a specimen and a core database record in 35 seconds per herbarium sheet for intervals between images of 30 minutes or less plus some additional overhead for container level data capture this rate was in line with the pre project expectations for our approach our throughput rates are comparable with some other similar high throughput approaches focused on digitizing herbarium sheets and is as much as three times faster than rates achieved with more conventional non automated approaches used during the project we report on challenges encountered during development and use of our system and discuss ways in which our workflow could be improved the conveyor apparatus software database schema configuration files hardware list and conveyor schematics are available for download on github,2018,0.06
Spatial pattern of macrobenthic communities along a shelf-slope-basin transect across the Bering Sea,due to its unique geological location the bering sea is an ideal place to investigate the water exchange and ecosystem connectivity of the pacific oceanâ arctic ocean and subarcticâ arctic region based on a number of summer surveys july to september 2010 2012 and 2014 macrobenthic communities and their spatial temporal patterns are exhibited for the majority of the bering sea 53â 59â â 64â 36â n the results show that the macrobenthic communities were dominated by northern cold water species and immigrant eurythermic species and the communities assumed a dispersed and patchy distribution pattern polychaetes scoloplos armiger crustaceans ceradocus capensis and sea urchins echinarachnius parma were the main dominant groups in the shallow shelves the sea star ctenodiscus crispatus and the brittle star ophiura sarsii were the main dominant groups in the continental slope whereas small polychaetes prionospio malmgreni dominated the basin area sediment type water depth and currents were the major factors affecting the structure and spatial distribution of the macrobenthic communities compared with other seas the shallow areas of the bering sea showed an extremely high standing biomass in particular the northern shelf area north of st lawrence islands and west of 170â w which is primarily controlled by anadyr water is an undersea oasis in contrast a deficiency in the downward transport of particulate organic carbon has resulted in a desert like seabed in the basin area by comparing our results to previous studies we found that macrobenthic communities of the bering sea have undergone significant structural changes in recent decades resulting in a decrease in abundance and an increase in biomass in addition populations of amphipods and bivalves in the northern shelves have decreased significantly and have been gradually replaced by other species these changes might be associated with advanced seasonal ice melting changes in organic carbon input and global warming indicating that large scale ecosystem changes have been occurring in the bering sea,2018,0.618
Freshwater macroinvertebrate samples from a water quality monitoring network in the Iberian Peninsula,this dataset gathers information about the macroinvertatebrate samples and environmental variables collected on rivers of the ebro river basin ne iberian peninsula the second largest catchment in the iberian peninsula the collection is composed of 1 776 sampling events carried out between 2005 and 2015 at more than 400 sampling sites this dataset is part of a monitoring network set up by the ebro hydrographic confederation the official body entrusted with the care of the basin to fulfill the requirements of the european water framework directive biological indices based on the freshwater macroinvertebrate communities were used to evaluate the ecological status of the water bodies within the basin samples were qualitatively screened for all occurring taxa then all individuals from all taxa in a quantitative subsample of each sample were counted biological indices were calculated to estimate water quality at each sampling site all samples are kept at the museum of zoology of the university of navarra,2018,0.507
"New altitudinal distribution record and updated geographic distribution of the freshwater crab Trichodactylus fluviatilis Latreille, 1828 (Crustacea, Trichodactylidae)",the freshwater crab trichodactylus fluviatilis latreille 1828 is recorded here for the first time at an altitude above 1000 m a s l sampling was performed in the grota stream in campos das vertentes minas gerais state brazil this new record extends the known altitudinal distribution to 1115 m a s l which significantly contributes to understanding the conditioning limits and factors for this speciesâ distribution moreover the occurrence of an ectosymbiont platyhelminth of the genus temnocephala is also reported on the crabs collected,2018,0.535
Swifter than Swifts: Eurasian Hobby,for a few weeks each year i receive a flood of images from my friend ursula franke bryson it is with delightful expectation and a twinge of pending jealousy that i open her emails to see which incredible bird species ursula and her husband have managed to capture ring and release on their annual ringing trips in december 2013 she visited namibia on one of her expeditions and specifically the farm horebis 22â 32â s 15â 33â e located in the ephemeral swakop riverbed about 80 km south of karibib dangling in the mistnet was a very special little falconâ ursula kindly agreed to share her experience in this blog post she also illuminates some of the fascinating life history of hobbies and the important role that dragonflies play in their lives this is where our story begins fade inâ,2018,0.464
Differential genetic responses to the stress revealed the mutation-order adaptive divergence between two sympatric ginger species,background divergent genetic responses to the same environmental pressures may lead sympatric ecological speciation possible such speciation process possibly explains rapid sympatric speciation of island species two island endemic ginger species zingiber kawagoii and z shuanglongensis was suggested to be independently originated from inland ancestors but their island endemism and similar morphologies and habitats lead another hypothesis of in situ ecological speciation for understanding when and how these two species diverged intraspecific variation was estimated from three chloroplast dna fragments cpdna and interspecific genome wide snps and expression differences after saline treatment were examined by transcriptomic analyses results extremely low intraspecific genetic variation was estimated by cpdna sequences in both species nucleotide diversity ï 0 00002 in z kawagoii and no nucleotide substitution but only indels found in z shuanglongensis nonsignificant inter population genetic differentiation suggests homogenized genetic variation within species based on 53 683 snps from 13 842 polymorphic transcripts in which 10 693 snps are fixed between species z kawagoii and z shuanglongensis were estimated to be diverged since 218 238 thousand generations ago complete divergence since 41 5 43 5 thousand generations ago this time is more recent than the time of taiwan island formation in addition high proportion of differential expression genes degs is non polymorphic or non positively selected suggesting key roles of plastic genetic divergence in broaden the selectability in incipient speciation while some positive selected degs were mainly the biotic and abiotic stress resistance genes emphasizing the importance of adaptive divergence of stress related genes in sympatric ecological speciation furthermore the higher proportional expression of functional classes in z kawagoii than in z shuanglongensis explains the more widespread distribution of z kawagoii in taiwan conclusions our results contradict the previous hypothesis of independent origination of these two island endemic ginger species from se china and sw china adaptive divergent responses to the stress explain how these gingers maintain genetic differentiation in sympatry however the recent speciation and rapid expansion make extremely low intraspecific genetic variation in these two species this study arise a more probable speciation hypothesis of sympatric speciation within an island via the mutation order mechanism underlying the same environmental pressure,2018,0.875
"Significant Asia-Europe divergence in the middle spotted woodpecker (Aves, Picidae)",population divergence could be strongly affected by speciesâ ecology and might not be a direct response to climateâ driven environmental change we tested this in the middle spotted woodpecker dendrocoptes medius a nonâ migratory lowâ dispersal habitat specialist associated with old deciduous forests of the western palearctic we present the first phylogeographic study of this species integrating genetic data three mitochondrial loci one autosomal and one zâ linked intron with species distribution modelling based on this speciesâ ecology we predicted that the middle spotted woodpecker could have colonized its current range from multiple last glacial maximum lgm refugia and that strongly structured populations could be expected indeed we discovered a strong genetic divergence between asian and european populations with a split estimated at around one million of years ago this was surprising given only slight intraspecific variation in plumage and morphology although there was no significant phylogeographic structure within the asian and european groups we cannot exclude the possibility of multiple refugia within either group during the lgm this has to be further investigated with more extensive geographic sampling and larger number of variable independently evolving markers future studies should also investigate potential differences in vocalizations and ecology between the two groups lineages showing similar level of genetic differentiation including woodpeckers are often treated as speciesâ level taxa comparison of our results with the phylogeographic history of other woodpeckers suggests that sympatric species with similar lifeâ histories might have idiosyncratic phylogeographic patterns probably resulting from different ecological requirements or historic stochasticity,2018,0.695
"Species Distribution Modelling of Rhododendron arboreum Sm.–A Keystone Species, in India and Adjoining Region",rapid global climate change is threatening the species for their healthy survival the increase in mean surface temperature is particularly evident in mountain areas where there has been increase in winter temperature less snowfall and more rainfall in this study we have modeled the species distribution of rhododendron arboreum sm which is an ecological and economically important forest tree species in entire himalayan mountain range using three future climate scenarios of three global climate models we have used species location data of uttarakhand state to model species distribution in the himalayan region and adjoining areas where species has been reported new region philippines and taiwan where species has its potential habitat and thus could be introduced has been proposed most areas where species is found are biodiversity hotspot areas all future models suggest that the species would suffer from range contraction and population localization and ultimately extinction in low altitude 3000 m areas whereas species would be able to expand its range in areas of high altitudes 4000 m where there is possibility to move upwards the range expansion of species will be under check by environmental and anthropogenic factors the populations in different region will exhibit variation in survival behaviour based on local environmental conditions however species being a tree would survive in scattered refugia habitat leading to range disjunction and will be able to spread to other areas through forest corridors when favourable environment appears key environment variables which will affect future distribution of r arboreum are temperature and precipitation altitude and slope govern species distribution of mountain plants like r arboreum the species will struggle to survive or get extinct in low 1400 1700 m and lower middle 1800 2000 m altitude zones the factors responsible for r arboreum forest destruction and conservation measures have been suggested management actions should be taken quickly to ensure a healthy species distribution in future environment,2018,0.994
Identification of biodiversity hotspot in national level – Importance of unpublished data,high priority areas for conservation are typically identified based on ad hoc methods without supporting data due to a lack of scientific resources and staff the objective of this study was to show how unpublished data in combination with citizen science can be useful for identifying biodiversity hotspot areas using thailand as an example species records were aggregated from various sources both published records permanently archived or temporarily available on the internet and unpublished data derived from interviews data from 2001 to 2016 were used to identify hotspot areas in total 15 of the data were obtained from personal interviews most thai hotspot areas were already inside government protected areas amphibians and reptiles were the taxa that unpublished data had the greatest influence on hotspot identification while this influence was least for birds spatial coverage of species records showed a bias toward particular regions and areas probably based a number of factors including their international reputation and previous species records results from this project reveal the importance of unpublished records as a source for identifying hotspot locations especially for less studied species groups and indicates the continued need for encouraging scientists as well as amateur naturalists to report their observations to archived websites and or publish in peer reviewed journals,2018,0.708
"DataTri, a database of American triatomine species occurrence",trypanosoma cruzi the causative agent of chagas disease is transmitted to mammals including humans by insect vectors of the subfamily triatominae we present the results of a compilation of triatomine occurrence and complementary ecological data that represents the most complete integrated and updated database datatri available on triatomine species at a continental scale this database was assembled by collecting the records of triatomine species published from 1904 to 2017 spanning all american countries with triatomine presence a total of 21815 georeferenced records were obtained from published literature personal fieldwork and data provided by colleagues the data compiled includes 24 american countries 14 genera and 135 species from a taxonomic perspective 67 33 of the records correspond to the genus triatoma 20 81 to panstrongylus 9 01 to rhodnius and the remaining 2 85 are distributed among the other 11 triatomine genera we encourage using datatri information in various areas especially to improve knowledge of the geographical distribution of triatomine species and its variations in time,2018,0.725
"Bioclimatic modeling of Crossidium squamiferum (Viv.) Jur. (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta) distribution",the main purpose of the work was to test the applicability of bioclimatic modeling methods to mosses due to tiny size bryophyta are confined to micro habitats which can transmute the influence of climatic factors crossidium squamiferum was taken as test object potentially suitable climatic area of the species in the world was simulated using maximum entropy maxent modeling on base of four datasets different in volume from 24 to 267 points all the models are characterized by valid auc values from auc 0 72 to auc 0 96 according to the calculations the most important variables determining the distribution of c squamiferum are bio4 temperature seasonality and bio8 mean temperature of the wettest quarter habitats of the species in southern siberia mark the northern climatic boundary of the species area in eurasia,2018,0.657
"Moscow Digital Herbarium, an online open access contribution to the flora of Turkey, with a special reference to the type specimens",massive imaging of herbarium collections is performed only in a few countries leading to disproportions in geographical coverage of the world s flora across virtual herbaria the moscow university herbarium mw had digitised all asian collections in 2016â 2017 and published them online at https plant depo msu ru including 3 283 specimens from turkey these collections include important historical gatherings by p e boissier c haussknecht t kotschy and recent collections by the moscow university staff members currently mw holds 331 type specimens of 285 taxa described from anatoliaâ 19 holotypes 47 isotypes 48 isolectotypes and 203 syntypes,2018,0.235
"Lecidea toensbergii, the first described sorediate species in Lecidea sensu stricto",a molecular phylogenetic analysis based on the dna barcode marker nrits of 12 specimens of lecidea leucothallina revealed three monophyletic clades two apotheciate and one sorediate the sorediate clade is described as l toensbergii and the two apotheciate clades are regarded as representing two cryptic species within l leucothallina pannarin may be present or absent in the upper cortex in all three clades and should not be used as a diagnostic character for further separation of taxa in this group,2018,0.516
Areas of high conservation value at risk by plant invaders in Georgia under climate change,invasive alien plants iap are a threat to biodiversity worldwide understanding and anticipating invasions allow for more efficient management in this regard predicting potential invasion risks by iaps is essential to support conservation planning into areas of high conservation value ahcv such as sites exhibiting exceptional botanical richness assemblage of rare and threatened and or endemic plant species here we identified ahcv in georgia a country showing high plant richness and assessed the susceptibility of these areas to colonization by iaps under present and future climatic conditions we used actual protected areas and areas of high plant endemism identified using occurrences of 114 georgian endemic plant species as proxies for ahcv then we assessed present and future potential distribution of 27 iaps using species distribution models under four climate change scenarios and stacked singleâ species potential distribution into a consensus map representing iaps richness we evaluated present and future invasion risks in ahcv using iaps richness as a metric of susceptibility we show that the actual protected areas cover only 9 4 of the areas of high plant endemism in georgia iaps are presently located at lower elevations around the large urban centers and in western georgia we predict a shift of iaps toward eastern georgia and higher altitudes and an increased susceptibility of ahcv to iaps under future climate change our study provides a good baseline for decision makers and stakeholders on where and how resources should be invested in the most efficient way to protect georgia s high plant richness from iaps,2018,0.45
Assessing effects of non-native crayfish on mosquito survival,the introductions of nonâ native predators often reduce biodiversity and affect natural predatorâ prey relationships however nonâ native predators may increase the abundance of potential disease vectors e g mosquitoes indirectly through competition or predation cascades the santa monica mountains situated in a global biodiversity hotspot is an area of conservation concern due to climate change urbanization and the introduction of nonâ native species we examined the effect that nonâ native crayfish procambarus clarkii have on an existing native predator dragonfly nymphs aeshna sp and their mosquito larvae anopheles sp prey we used laboratory experiments to compare the predation efficiency of both predators separately and together and field data on counts of dragonfly nymphs and mosquito larvae sampled from 13 local streams we predicted a lower predation efficiency of crayfish compared to native dragonfly nymphs as well as a reduced efficiency of dragonfly nymphs in the presence of crayfish dragonfly nymphs were an order of magnitude more efficient mosquito predators compared to crayfish and dragonfly nymphs suffered reduced efficiency in the presence of crayfish analyses of field count data showed that populations of dragonfly nymphs and mosquito larvae were strongly correlated with crayfish presence in streams such that sites with crayfish tended to have fewer dragonfly nymphs and more mosquito larvae under natural conditions it is likely that crayfish reduce the abundance of dragonfly nymphs and their predation efficiency and thereby directly and indirectly lead to higher mosquito populations and a loss of ecosystem services related to disease vector control,2018,0.921
Mapping global risk levels of Bemisia tabaci in areas of suitability for open field tomato cultivation under current and future climates,the whitefly bemisia tabaci is a major threat to tomato solanum lycopersicum and ranks as one of the worldâ s 100 most invasive pests this is the first study of b tabaci biotype b and q global distribution focusing on risk levels of this invasive pest in areas projected to be suitable for open field s lycopersicum cultivation under climate change this study aims to identify levels of risk of invasive b tabaci for areas of suitability for open field s lycopersicum cultivation for the present 2050 and 2070 using maxent and the global climate model hadgem2 es under rcp45 our results show that 5 of areas optimal for open field s lycopersicum cultivation are currently at high risk of b tabaci among the optimal areas for s lycopersicum the projections for 2050 compared to the current time showed an extension of 180 in areas under high risk and a shortening of 67 and 27 in areas under medium and low risk of b tabaci respectively while projections for 2070 showed an extension of 164 and a shortening of 49 and 64 under high medium and low risk respectively the basis of these projections is that predicted temperature increases could affect the pest which has great adaptability to different climate conditions but could also impose limitations on the growth of s lycopersicum these results may be used in designing strategies to prevent the introduction and establishment of b tabaci for open field tomato crops and assist the implementation of pest management programs,2018,0.192
Negative biotic interactions drive predictions of distributions for species from a grassland community,understanding the factors that determine species geographical distributions is important for addressing a wide range of biological questions including where species will be able to maintain populations following environmental change new methods for modelling species distributions include the effects of biotic interactions alongside more commonly used abiotic variables such as temperature and precipitation however it is not clear which types of interspecific relationship contribute to shaping species distributions and should therefore be prioritized in models even if some interactions are known to be influential at local spatial scales there is no guarantee they will have similar impacts at macroecological scales here we apply a novel method based on information theory to determine which types of interspecific relationship drive species distributions our results show that negative biotic interactions such as competition have the greatest effect on model predictions for species from a california grassland community this knowledge will help focus data collection and improve model predictions for identifying at risk species furthermore our methodological approach is applicable to any kind of species distribution model that can be specified with and without interspecific relationships,2018,0.789
The terrestrial mammals of Mozambique: Integrating dispersed biodiversity data,background the most comprehensive synopsis of the mammal fauna of mozambique was published in 1976 listing 190 species of terrestrial mammals up to date knowledge of the countryâ s biodiversity is crucial to establish the baseline information needed for conservation and management actions objectives the aim of this article was to present a list of terrestrial mammal species reported from mozambique based on primary occurrence data method we integrated existing knowledge from dispersed sources of biodiversity data the global biodiversity information facility portal natural history collections survey reports and literature data were updated and manually curated however none of the specimens upon which occurrences are based was directly observed to partly overcome this impediment we developed a species selection process for specimen data this process produced the countryâ s species checklist and an additional list of species with questionable occurrence in the country results from the digital and non digital sources we compiled more than 17 000 records the data integrated resulted in a total of 217 mammal species representing 14 orders 39 families and 133 genera with supported occurrence in mozambique and 23 species with questionable reported occurrence in the country conclusion the diversity of species accounted for is considerable as more than 70 of species present in the southern african subregion are found in mozambique we consider that the current number of mammal species in mozambique is still underestimated the methodological approach for species selection for specimen data can be adapted to update species checklists of crucial importance to countries facing similar lack of knowledge regarding their biodiversity,2018,0.971
Testing for latitudinal gradients in defence at the macroevolutionary scale,plant defences against herbivores are predicted to evolve to be greater in warmer climates such as lower latitudes where herbivore pressure is also thought to be higher instead recent findings are often inconsistent with this expectation suggesting alternative hypotheses are needed we tested for latitudinal gradients in plant defence evolution at the macroevolutionary scale by characterizing plant chemical defences across 80 species of the evening primroses spanning both north and south america we quantified phenolics in leaves flowers and fruits using advanced analytical chemistry techniques dominant individual ellagitannin compounds total concentrations of ellagitannins flavonoids total phenolics and compound diversity were quantified variation in these compounds were predicted with latitude temperature precipitation and continent using phylogenetic generalized least squares multiple regression models latitude did not strongly explain patterns for the chemical defences instead fruit total ellagitannins oenothein a and total phenolics were greater in species inhabiting regions with colder climates using analytical chemistry and 80 species in two continents we show that contrary to classic predictions concentrations of secondary metabolites are not greater at lower latitudes or in warmer regions we propose higher herbivore pressure in colder climates and gradients in resource availability as potential drivers of the observed patterns,2018,0.652
Effect factors of terrestrial acidification in Brazil for use in Life Cycle Impact Assessment,purpose in life cycle impact assessment atmospheric fate factors soil exposure factors and effect factors are combined to characterize potential impacts of acidifying substances in terrestrial environments due to the low availability of global data sets effect factors efs have been reported as the major contributors to statistical uncertainties of characterization factors and they are the focus of this study we aim to develop spatially differentiated efs taking brazil as case and explore new methodological ways to derive them methods efs are calculated based on a comprehensive database reporting observations of approximately 30 000 plant species at biome and ecoregion levels species richness distributions as function of soil ph are developed and translated into potentially not occurring fraction pnof of species which can be equated to the more commonly used potentially disappeared fraction of species to assess effects of changes in soil hydrogen ion concentration on terrestrial plant species potentially extinct fraction pxf of species is proposed as a complementary metric for lcia models based on distributions of range restricted species species only occurring in one ecoregion of brazil different approaches for determining efs from the species richness distributions are evaluated area weighted efs are explored to determine potential effects when considering both acid and alkaline sides of species richness curves thus integrating potentially positive effects of acidification on biodiversity results and discussion spatially differentiated efs are provided for 6 biomes and 45 ecoregions composing brazil comparisons with previous efs demonstrate that data availability might significantly influence regression analyses and the use of more representative data can lead to more consistent efs moreover consideration of the entire species richness curves yields positive and negative efs adding acidifying substances onto specific soils in brazilian ecoregions may therefore be associated with increased species richness if the ph approaches the optimum ph from the alkaline side of the curve the meaningfulness of species richness as indicator of acidification stress is discussed based on this finding as is the inclusion of the metric pxf highlighting species whose loss could cause irreversible damages to the environment conclusions we recommend the calculation of area weighted efs to be integrated into characterization models for terrestrial acidification and we therefore advocate that similar work be done for other regions in the world than brazil to enhance the consistency of the efs and reduce their uncertainties we additionally recommend that lcia method developers further explore the application of pxf for other impact categories than acidification,2018,0.986
"Vagrant status of lucerne seed web moth, Etiella behrii (Zeller 1848) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in Tasmania",the lucerne seed web moth or etiella moth etiella behrii zeller lepidoptera pyralidae phycitinae phycitini has been recorded as adults and larvae across mainland australia on leguminous plants suitable host plants occur in tasmania but detections are restricted to adults mostly in one long term light trap a combination of methods is used to determine whether this pest is a non breeding vagrant a breeding migrant or resident in tasmania a degree day development model for e behrii showed that warmer source areas outside tasmania better explained flight seasonality observed by light trapping in tasmania than local source areas pest records of 119 lepidoptera associated with tasmanian medicago plants do not include etiella the absence of records of larvae the coincidence of adults with migratory insects and northerly airflows flight seasonality and a requirement for a six month non developmental period in the cool season indicate that e behrii migrates to tasmania where any breeding is below detection although two generations seem possible based on thermal requirements the results provide another example of a pest that fails to establish even ephemerally in tasmania despite repeated migration from mainland australia the precise impediments to seasonal establishment of e behrii remain unclear but this would most likely occur in north west or north east tasmania which receive most migratory moths e behrii is one of a suite of native australian pests that may extend its breeding range to tasmania with global warming climate matching models are prone to error if they assume e behrii is resident in tasmania,2018,0.146
Patterns and Drivers of Phylogenetic Diversity and Endemism in the Norwegian Vascular Flora,biodiversity is commonly measured as the local abundance of discrete species this approach fails to incorporate evolutionary relationships among species and gives an incomplete picture of the diversity in a given region recently developed methods for spatial phylogenetics combine species occurrence datasets with molecular phylogenetic data to recover information about the spatial distribution of phylogenetic diversity and endemism across a geographic region in this study we applied these methods on vascular plants across norway a region that was covered by the fennoscandian ice sheet until about 10 kyr bp our primary aim was to test whether patterns of phylogenetic diversity pd and phylogenetic endemism pe for 1238 native vascular plant species are non randomly distributed across norway and to seek causal mechanisms for the revealed patterns a multi locus concatenated alignment was produced using a combination of genbank data and newly produced sequence data from herbarium specimens and a corresponding phylogenetic hypothesis was inferred we combined this data with occurrence data from gbif and then calculated pd pe relative phylogenetic diversity rpd and relative phylogenetic endemism rpe to assess areas of statistical significance we performed a spatial randomisation of these indices to determine if pd outlier regions are associated with various environmental explanatory variables we performed pairwise linear correlation analyses we also performed range weighted turnover analyses and compared these maps with previous studies on vegetation zones in norway our results revealed significantly high pd and rpd phylogenetic overdispersion along the coast of southern norway and significantly low pd and rpd phylogenetic clustering in the mountainous areas the best fitted statistical models showed that the pd pattern could best be explained by temperature time since last glaciation cover and topographic heterogeneity for pe and rpe we found a concentration of short restricted branches neo endemics in northern norway and a mix of short and long restricted branches both neo endemics and paleo endemics on the coast of southern norway with temperature inferred as a likely driver for the revealed patterns the range weighted turnover analyses showed an evolutionary signal in the way the flora is distributed this study emphasizes the importance of incorporating evolutionary relationships between species to see patterns of diversity and endemism that would normally not be seen by examining species diversity alone moreover it shows that spatial phylogenetics can be meaningfully applied to a region of short evolutionary history as opposed to previous studies restricted to regions with long evolutionary history e g australia and california,2018,0.824
Taxonomic Studies In The Miconieae (melastomataceae). Xiv. Species Of Miconia Section Sagraea That Occur In The Greater Antilles And Additionally In The Lesser Antilles And/or Continental Regions,the systematics of three species of miconia sect sagraea from the greater antilles which also occur in the lesser antilles and or continental regions is investigated these taxa representing lineages of likely independent dispersal into the greater antilles are here taxonomically revised including for each a description nomenclatural information including a new name miconia sciaphila and two new combinations m berteroi and m septuplinervia specimen citations and an eco geographical characterization these species are compared with members of two species rich clades of sect sagraea of independent diversification in the greater antilles the clidemia oligantha c leucandra complex comprising seven species and the brevicyma clade 29 species a key to the three species distinguishing among them and separating them from the two species rich greater antillean clades is provided,2018,0.93
A methodology to derive global maps of leaf traits using remote sensing and climate data,this paper introduces a modular processing chain to derive global high resolution maps of leaf traits in particular we present global maps at 500 m resolution of specific leaf area leaf dry matter content leaf nitrogen and phosphorus content per dry mass and leaf nitrogen phosphorus ratio the processing chain exploits machine learning techniques along with optical remote sensing data modis landsat and climate data for gap filling and up scaling of in situ measured leaf traits the chain first uses random forests regression with surrogates to fill gaps in the database 45 of missing entries and maximizes the global representativeness of the trait dataset plant species are then aggregated to plant functional types pfts next the spatial abundance of pfts at modis resolution 500 m is calculated using landsat data 30 m based on these pft abundances representative trait values are calculated for modis pixels with nearby trait data finally different regression algorithms are applied to globally predict trait estimates from these modis pixels using remote sensing and climate data the methods were compared in terms of precision robustness and efficiency the best model random forests regression shows good precision normalized rmseâ 20 and goodness of fit averaged pearson s correlation r 0 78 in any considered trait along with the estimated global maps of leaf traits we provide associated uncertainty estimates derived from the regression models the process chain is modular and can easily accommodate new traits data streams traits databases and remote sensing data and methods the machine learning techniques applied allow attribution of information gain to data input and thus provide the opportunity to understand trait environment relationships at the plant and ecosystem scales the new data products â the gap filled trait matrix a global map of pft abundance per modis gridcells and the high resolution global leaf trait maps â are complementary to existing large scale observations of the land surface and we therefore anticipate substantial contributions to advances in quantifying understanding and prediction of the earth system,2018,0.034
The grass was greener: Repeated evolution of specialized morphologies and habitat shifts in ghost spiders following grassland expansion in South America,while grasslands one of earthâ s major biomes are known for their close evolutionary ties with ungulate grazers these habitats are also paramount to the origins and diversification of other animals within the primarily south american spider subfamily amaurobioidinae anyphaenidae several species are found living in the continentâ s grasslands with some displaying putative morphological adaptations to dwelling unnoticed in the grass blades here a dated molecular phylogeny provides the backbone for analyses revealing the ecological and morphological processes behind these spidersâ grassland adaptations the multiple switches from patagonian forests to open habitats coincide with the expansion of south americaâ s grasslands during the miocene while the specialized morphology of several grass dwelling spiders originated at least three independent times and is best described as the result of different selective regimes operating on macroevolutionary timescales although grass adapted lineages evolved towards different peaks in adaptive landscape they all share one characteristic an anterior narrowing of the prosoma allowing spiders to extend the first two pairs of legs thus maintaining a slender resting posture in the grass blade by combining phylogenetic morphological and biogeographic perspectives we disentangle multiple factors determining the evolution of a clade of terrestrial invertebrate predators alongside their biomes,2018,0.623
Geo-referencing bird-window collisions for targeted mitigation,bird collisions with windows are an important conservation concern efficient mitigation efforts should prioritize retrofitting sections of glass exhibiting the highest mortality of birds most collision studies however record location meta data at a spatial scale too coarse i e compass direction of facing faã ade to be useful for large buildings with complex geometries through spatial analysis of three seasons of survey data at a large building at a university campus we found that gps data were able to identify collision hotspots while compass directions could not to demonstrate the broad applicability and utility of this georeferencing approach we identified collision hotspots at two additional urban areas in north america the data for this latter exercise were collected via the citizen science database inaturalist which we review for its potential to generate the georeferenced data necessary for directing building retrofits and mitigating a major source of anthropogenic bird mortality,2018,0.313
"Notes on three species of Hololepta ( Leionota ) Marseul, 1853 (Coleoptera: Histeridae), predators of the agave weevil Scyphophorus acupunctatus Gyllenhal, 1838 (Coleoptera: Dryophthoridae) in Mexico",three hololepta leionota marseul 1853 coleoptera histeridae species associated as predators of the agave weevil scyphophorus acupunctatus gyllenhal 1838 coleoptera dryophthoridae were determined after field collections in agaves crops from guerrero jalisco and morelos mexico an illustrated taxonomic key is provided for easy recognition of hololepta polita marseul 1853 h vicina leconte 1851 and h yucateca marseul 1853 hololepta vicina is recorded for the first time from the mexican states of jalisco and guerrero,2018,0.463
"Advances and challenges in barcoding of microbes, parasites, and their vectors and reservoirs",dna barcoding is now a common tool in parasitology and epidemiology which require good methods for identification not only of parasites and pathogens but vectors and reservoirs this special issue presents some advances and challenges in barcoding of microbes parasites and their vectors and reservoirs dna barcoding found new applications in disease ecology conservation parasitology environmental parasitology and in paleoparasitology new technologies such as next generation sequencing and matrix assisted laser desorptionâ ionization time of flight have made it now possible to investigate large samples of specimens by allowing the investigation of parasites at the interface between environment biodiversity animal and human health barcoding and biobanking have important policy outcomes as well as ethics and legal implications the special issue â advances and challenges in the barcoding of parasites vectors and reservoirsâ illustrates some recent advances and proposes new avenues for research in barcoding in parasitology,2018,0.297
"Madicolous Chironomidae from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: a checklist with notes on altitudinal distributions (Diptera, Insecta)",thin layers of water running over rocky surfaces are characteristic of madicolous habitats which harbor a peculiar chironomidae community however information on the identity distribution and ecology of madicolous chironomids in the neotropical region are still sparse the main purpose of this research is to reveal and contribute to the ecology of madicolous chironomidae species especially regarding their altitudinal distribution in the atlantic forest sampling was performed using our own designed emergence traps deployed from 0 to 2700 m a s l in 70 sites in three mountains in southeastern brazil sixty taxa of chironomids were collected and identified of which only 22 are known to science most of the species showed a wider distribution than previously known both in terms of geographic and altitudinal ranges while others showed significant association with particular altitudinal bands as evidenced by the indicator species analysis atlantic forest mountainous regions are known to harbor one of the richest fauna in the world and have been suffering from several types of environmental impacts including climate change which will especially affect taxa living in specialized habitats the narrow range of tolerance to environmental conditions verified for mountain species and the fact that many of them are rare and endemic make the conservation efforts in these areas indispensable,2018,0.818
"Northernmost Occurrence of Zanclus cornutus (Zanclidae) in the Eastern Pacific (Northern Gulf of California, Mexico)",the moorish idol zanclus cornutus linnaeus 1758 is a tropical species that is distributed extensively in rocky and coral reefs in the pacific ocean within the gulf of california its presence has been reported only in its southern region in this work the presence of z cornutus in the central and northern gulf of california is confirmed specifically in the coronados islands 25 71534 â n ∠110 77567 â w and san pedro nolasco 27 9530 â n 111 3663 â w these records increase their distribution 200 km north of their known limit this finding seems to be another example of a trend recently observed in several species of tropical fish they have expanded their distribution towards the center and the north of the gulf of california in possible response to the warming of the gulf,2018,0.766
The roles of dispersal and mass extinction in shaping palm diversity across the Caribbean,aim the rich flora of the caribbean islands and surrounding mainland evolved in a context of isolation alternated with phases of terrestrial connectivity between landmasses climatic fluctuations and episodes of mass extinctions during the cenozoic we explored how these events affected the evolution of the sister palm tribes cryosophileae and sabaleae and how continentâ island exchanges endemic radiations and mass extinction shaped their extant diversity location the american continent including the caribbean region methods we reconstructed a timeâ calibrated phylogeny of the palm tribes cryosophileae and sabaleae using 84 of the known species we inferred ancestral distribution and tested the effect of island colonization and mass extinction on extant diversity results our results indicate that cryosophileae and sabaleae originated c 77 ma most probably in laurasia and their extant species started to diversify between 56â 35 ma and 19â 10 ma respectively biogeographical state reconstruction estimated that cryosophileae dispersed to south america between 56â 35 ma then dispersed to northâ central america between 39â 25 ma and the caribbean islands between 34â 21 ma we detected a possible signature of a mass extinction event at the end of the eocene affecting the diversification of cryosophileae and sabaleae and we did not detect a diversification rate shift related to the colonization of the caribbean islands main conclusions species of cryosophileae in the caribbean islands are probably derived from a single oligocene dispersal event that likely occurred overwater from northâ central america rather than through the hypothesized gaarlandia land bridge contrastingly three independent miocene dispersal events from northâ central america explain the occurrence of sabaleae in the caribbean islands contrary to our expectations island colonization did not trigger increased diversification instead we find that diversification patterns in this clade and its disappearance from northernmost latitudes could be the signature of a mass extinction triggered by the global temperature decline at the end of the eocene,2018,0.714
"A story of data won, data lost and data re-found: the realities of ecological data preservation",this paper discusses the process of retrieval and updating legacy data to allow on line discovery and delivery there are many pitfalls of institutional and non institutional ecological data conservation over the long term interruptions to custodianship old media lost knowledge and the continuous evolution of species names makes resurrection of old data challenging we caution against technological arrogance and emphasise the importance of international standards we use a case study of a compiled set of continent wide vegetation survey data for which although the analyses had been published the raw data had not in the original study publications containing plot data collected from the 1880s onwards had been collected interpreted digitised and integrated for the classification of vegetation and analysis of its conservation status across australia these compiled data are an extremely valuable national collection that demanded publishing in open readily accessible online repositories such as the terrestrial ecosystem research network http www tern org au and the atlas of living australia ala http www ala org au the australian node of the global biodiversity information facility gbif http www gbif org it is hoped that the lessons learnt from this project may trigger a sober review of the value of endangered data the cost of retrieval and the importance of suitable and timely archiving through the vicissitudes of technological change so the initial unique collection investment enables multiple re use in perpetuity,2018,0.271
Taxonomic remarks on Pseudosempervivum (Brassicaceae),the status of three names related to the genus pseudosempervivum is reconsidered as a result noccaea crassiuscula and pseudosempervivum amanum are reduced to synonymy of p sempervivum while p gurulkanii is found conspecific with n venusta problems in delimitation of p sempervivum and p aucheri are also briefly considered the name cochlearia sempervivum is lectotypified,2018,0.386
Advancing DNA Barcoding and Metabarcoding Applications for Plants Requires Systematic Analysis of Herbarium Collections—An Australian Perspective,building dna barcode databases for plants has historically been ad hoc and often with a relatively narrow taxonomic focus to realize the full potential of dna barcoding for plants and particularly its application to metabarcoding for mixed species environmental samples systematic sequencing of reference collections is required using an augmented set of dna barcode loci applied according to agreed data generation and analysis standards the largest and most complete reference collections of plants are held in herbaria australia has a globally significant flora that is well sampled and expertly curated by its herbaria coordinated through the council of heads of australasian herbaria there exists a tremendous opportunity to provide a comprehensive and taxonomically robust reference database for plant dna barcoding applications by undertaking coordinated and systematic sequencing of the entire flora of australia utilizing existing herbarium material in this paper we review the development of dna barcoding and metabarcoding and consider the requirements for a robust and comprehensive system we analyzed the current availability of dna barcode reference data for australian plants recommend priority taxa for database inclusion and highlight future applications of a comprehensive metabarcoding system we urge that large scale and coordinated analysis of herbarium collections be undertaken to realize the promise of dna barcoding and metabarcoding and propose that the generation and curation of reference data should become a national investment priority,2018,0.005
Soil properties and neighboring forest cover affect aboveground biomass and functional composition during tropical forest restoration,questions we studied the importance of soil properties and neighbouring forest cover in affecting plant community biomass and assembly during the tropical forest restoration process we also investigated how compositional responses depended on traits expected to influence individual success location forest restoration sites n 32 distributed across anthropogenic grasslands in six mixed use agricultural watersheds in eastern sã o paulo state brazil methods we identified and measured all woody individuals dbh â 5 cm in four 200 mâ plots per site then we translated these measurements into aboveground biomass agb and related agb variability to neighbouring forest cover soil texture and chemical fertility with mixed effect models we assessed the effect of these predictors on different species groups arranged according to variation in wood density tree height or habitat selectivity through multivariate abundance models results agb ranged between 0 and 104 7 ton ha median of 10 4 ton ha with high variation within as well as between watersheds sand percentage forest cover and the interaction between soil nutrient concentrations and sand percentage were good predictors of measured agb the most parsimonious model projected a seven growing seasons agb recovery of 70 90 ton ha when a site is on fertile soils with 10 sand and surrounded by forest cover of 50 in contrast only 5 24 ton ha is predicted on acidic poor soils with 67 sand and 0 forest cover increasing forest cover favoured smaller trees and habitat generalists while increasing sand percentage inhibited taller species and forest specialists sand percentage constrained softwoods in fertile soils conclusion our results confirm that the likelihood of restoration to pre disturbance conditions is constrained in contexts of higher degradation such as when agricultural use adversely affects soil properties and or motivates extreme deforestation lower agb found on sandy soils suggests that forest recovery is sensitive to local drought intensification given regional projections for extended dry seasons restoration approaches could consider targeting alternative reference states rather than historical undisturbed ones under highly altered environments while aiming to improve soil and microclimate conditions to allow moist tropical forest recovery where feasible,2018,0.068
Refining Species Traits in a Dynamic Vegetation Model to Project the Impacts of Climate Change on Tropical Trees in Central Africa,african tropical ecosystems and the services they provide to human society suffer from an increasing combined pressure of land use and climate change how individual tropical tree species respond to climate change remains relatively unknown in this study we refined the species characterization in the caraib carbon assimilation in the biosphere dynamic vegetation model by replacing plant functional type morpho physiological traits by species specific traits we focus on 12 tropical tree species selected for their importance in both the plant community and human society we used caraib to simulate the current species net primary productivity npp biomass and potential distribution and their changes in the future our results indicate that the use of species specific traits does not necessarily result in an increase of predicted current npps the model projections for the end of the century highlight the large uncertainties in the future of african tropical species projected changes in species distribution vary greatly with the general circulation model gcm and to a lesser extent with the concentration pathway the question about long term plant response to increasing co2 concentrations also leads to contrasting results in absence of fertilization effect species are exposed to climate change and might lose 25 of their current distribution under rcp8 5 12 5 under rcp4 5 considering all the species and climatic scenarios the vegetation model projects a mean biomass loss of ∠21 2 under rcp4 5 and ∠34 5 under rcp8 5 potential range expansions unpredictable due to migration limitations are too limited for offsetting range contraction by contrast if the long term species response to increasing co2 is positive the range reduction is limited to 5 however despite a mean biomass increase of 12 2 a positive co2 feedback might not prevent tree dieback our analysis confirms that species will respond differently to new climatic and atmospheric conditions which may induce new competition dynamics in the ecosystem and affect ecosystem services,2018,0.921
A modelled global distribution of the seagrass biome,seagrasses form one of the most ecologically important and productive three dimensional habitats in coastal seas knowing the global distribution of seagrass meadows is essential for conservation and blue carbon estimates here we modelled the global distribution of seagrass using 43 037 occurrence records and 13 environmental variables within the modelling software maxent at 30 arc sec resolution c 1 km at the equator we found that sea surface temperature and distance from land contributed most in predicting seagrass distribution globally comparison of summing models for individual species genera and families found that a model combining all species occurrence records best fitted the known geographic distribution in addition this model fills geographic gaps in previous maps we predicted the seagrass biome may occupy 1 646 788 km2 more than double previous global estimates applications for this dataset include blue carbon estimates spatial planning such as for designing marine protected areas environmental sensitivity mapping and monitoring of change in biome cover,2018,0.449
Quantifying suitable late summer brood habitats for willow ptarmigan in Norway,background habitat models provide information about which habitat management should target to avoid species extinctions or range contractions the willow ptarmigan inhabits alpine and arctic tundra habitats in the northern hemisphere and is listed as near threatened nt in the norwegian red list due to declining population size habitat alteration is one of several factors affecting willow ptarmigan populations but there is a lack of studies quantifying and describing habitat selection in willow ptarmigan we used data from an extensive line transect survey program from 2014 to 2017 to develop resource selection functions rsf for willow ptarmigan in norway the selection coefficients for the rsf were estimated using a mixed effects logistic regression model fitted with random intercepts for each area we predicted relative probability of selection across norway and quantile binned the predictions in 10 rsf bins ranging from low 1 to high 10 relative probability of selection results random cross validation suggest that our models were highly predictive but validation based spatial blocking revealed that the predictability was better in southern parts of norway compared to the northernmost region willow ptarmigan selected for herb rich meadows and avoided lichen rich heathlands there was generally stronger selection for vegetation types with dense field layer and for rich bogs and avoidance of vegetation types with sparse field layer cover and for lowland forest further willow ptarmigan selected for areas around the timberline and for intermediate slopes mapping of the rsf showed that 60 of norway is in the lowest ranked rsf bin and only 2 in the highest ranked rsf bin conclusions willow ptarmigan selected for vegetation types with dense field layer and bogs at intermediate slopes around the timberline selection coincides with previous habitat selection studies on willow ptarmigan this is the first attempt to assess and quantify habitat selection for willow ptarmigan at a large scale using data from line transect distance sampling surveys spatial variation in predictability suggests that habitat selection in late summer might vary from north to south the resource selection map can be a useful tool when planning harvest quotas and habitat interventions in alpine areas,2018,0.298
"Storing, Maintaining and Mobilizing Botswana National Museum’s Entomology Digital Collections: The GBIF/BID Approach",the botswana national museum is mandated to protect preserve and promote botswanaâ s cultural and natural heritage for sustainable utilization thereof by collecting researching conserving and exhibiting for public education and appreciation the entomology section of the museum is aiming towards becoming the national center for entomology collections as well as contributing to the monitoring and enhancement of natural heritage sites in botswana the botswana national museum entomology collection was assembled over more than three decades by a succession of collectors curators and technical officers specimens are carefully prepared and preserved labelled with field data sorted and safely stored the collection is preserved as wet ethanol preserved or as dry pinned specimens in drawers this collection is invaluable for reference research baseline data and educational purposes as a way of mobilizing insect biodiversity data and making it available online for conservation efforts and decision making processes in 2016 the botswana national museum collaborated with five other african states to implement the biodiversity information for development bid and global biodiversity information facility gbif funded african insect atlasâ project https www gbif org project 82632 african insect atlas this collaborative project was initiated to move biodiversity knowledge out of select insect collections into the hands of a new generation of global biodiversity researchers interested in direct outcomes to date the botswana national museum has been instrumental through the efforts of this project in storing maintaining and mobilizing insect digital collections and making the data available online through the gbif platform,2018,0.221
"A review of the assassin-fly genus Laphyctis Loew, 1858 with descriptions of two new species (Diptera, Asilidae, Laphriinae)",the asilid genus laphyctis loew 1858 is revised the genus is restricted to the afrotropical region where it has been confused with the more widely distributed laphystia loew 1847 which currently has no afrotropical representatives three previously described species are recognised laphyctisgigantella loew 1852 type of the genus laphyctisargenteofasciata engel 1929 reinstated from the synonymy of l gigantella and laphyctisorichalcea lindner 1973 two new species are described laphyctiseremia sp n from namibia and laphyctisiota sp n from south africa the genus has a wide distribution ranging from northern kenya to eastern south africa and to western namibia species are associated with dry sandy habitats,2018,0.847
"The easternmost discovery of the Mediterranean weevil Pachyrhinus lethierryi (Coleoptera, Curculionidae, Entiminae): Is a further invasion possible?",pachyrhinus lethierryi desbrochers des loges 1875 is a mediterranean weevil species that has become remarkably well known as a result of a series of recent introductions across western and central europe this species has recently reached asia minor and the crimean peninsula as confirmed by several new records the vectors of invasion in crimea and possible further expansion are suggested,2018,0.576
Biotic interactions in species distribution models enhance model performance and shed light on natural history of rare birds: a case study using the Straight-billed Reedhaunter ( Limnoctites rectirostris ),species distribution models sdms have become a workhorse to explain understand and predict distributions of birds however sdms at broad scales are typically built using climatic variables while ignoring the effects of biotic interactions although its role still remains controversial the inclusion of biotic interactions into sdms could confirm and or provide new ecological insights of poorlyâ known species we modeled the distribution of the rare south american straightâ billed reedhaunter limnoctites rectirostris furnariidae a specialist of marshy areas linked to the spiny herb eryngo eryngium spp apiaceae which provides the main food and nest resources to do this we first modeled the distribution of three eryngo species considered as the main biotic interactors e eburneum e horridum and e pandanifolium and included them into the straightâ billed reedhaunter sdm second we analyzed niche overlap between the straightâ billed reedhaunter and eryngos in terms of environmental variables using dynamic range boxes a novel approach to quantify size of nâ dimensional hypervolumes the inclusion of biotic interactions improved model performance relative to a model with climatic variables only climatic suitability of e eburneum and mean temperature of wettest quarter were the most important predictors by contrast e horridum and e pandanifolium resulted in poor predictors suggesting that the straightâ billed reedhaunter s relative dependence on each eryngo species is different the three eryngo environmental spaces largely covered the environmental space of the straightâ billed reedhaunter but the opposite was not true our findings suggest that biotic interactions play an important role in explaining and predicting the distribution of a rare bird at macroâ scales and that the assessment of niche overlap between interactors may confirm or improve the autoecological understanding of rare and cryptic birds we advocate the use of an integrative modeling approach including climate and biotic interactions into sdms to enhance ecological knowledge on poorlyâ known bird species,2018,0.398
The Arachnology Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature &amp; Science,the arachnology collection at the denver museum of nature science dmns was founded 20 years ago we describe its inception and early growth from 0 to over 62 000 lots dmns volunteers and the key role they play as citizen scientists in the colorado spider survey and collections work such as identification and databasing we now have more than 40 000 databased and geocoded specimen vials available through symbiota and gbif the collection s research focuses on the biodiversity of the region s spiders scorpions cave forms and solifuge camel spiders dmns is now one of the centers for research on solifuge,2018,0.25
malariaAtlas: an R interface to global malariometric data hosted by the Malaria Atlas Project,background the malaria atlas project map has worked to assemble and maintain a global open access database of spatial malariometric data for over a decade this data spans various formats and topics including geo located surveys of malaria parasite rate global administrative boundary shapefiles and global and regional rasters representing the distribution of malaria and associated illnesses blood disorders and intervention coverage map has recently released malariaatlas an r package providing a direct interface to mapâ s routinely updated malariometric databases and research outputs methods and results the current paper reviews the functionality available in malariaatlas and highlights its utility for spatial epidemiological analysis of malaria malariaatlas enables users to freely download visualise and analyse global malariometric data within r currently available data types include malaria parasite rate and vector occurrence point data subnational administrative boundary shapefiles and a large suite of rasters covering a diverse range of metrics related to malaria research malariaatlas is here used in two mock analyses to illustrate how this data may be incorporated into a standard r workflow for spatial analysis conclusions malariaatlas is the first open access r interface to malariometric data providing a new and reproducible means of accessing such data within a freely available and commonly used statistical software environment in this way the malariaatlas package aims to contribute to the environment of data sharing within the malaria research community,2018,0.195
Hydrocarbons mediate seed dispersal: a new mechanism of vespicochory,vespicochory seed dispersal by hornets is an uncommon seed dispersal pattern in angiosperms to date this phenomenon has been recorded in only four families because of its rarity the causes and consequences of vespicochory remain unclear hence this seed dispersal syndrome is often regarded as anecdotal through field investigations chemical analyses electrophysiological tests identification of chemosensory proteins from the antennae of hornets and behavioral assays we investigated whether olfactory and or visual cues of the diaspores of stemona tuberosa mediate the behavior of the social hornets and maintain their mutualism this study demonstrated that the elaiosome of s tuberosa emits hydrocarbons which are attractive to hornets however these compounds which induce responses in the antennae of naive hornets are ubiquitous substances on insect cuticle surfaces innate preference and experienced foraging behavior of hornets can increase their seed dispersal efficiency this is the first example in which hydrocarbons have been identified as a diaspore odour involved in the attraction of hornets given that the ubiquity of hornets and the communication function of hydrocarbons in insects we predict that this rare seed dispersal mechanism may be an overlooked mechanism of insectâ plant mutualism,2018,0.156
The influence of microclimate and local adaptation for a climate-sensitive species (Aplodontia rufa),climate change models and analyses predict a disproportionate impact on climatically sensitive species such as the mountain beaver aplodontia rufa mountain beavers have physiological constraints that limit their distribution to cool moist climates while mountain beavers have persisted through past periods of climate change increasing temperature since the last glacial maximum is believed to have had a strong influence in reducing their range this is particularly true for the point arena subspecies a r nigra â œpambâ found towards the southwestern edge of their range on the coast of california here i examined the climatic niche of mountain beavers at four scales range wide by clade pamb rangewide and pamb microclimates to test whether pamb exhibit different climatic requirements than other subspecies,2018,0.604
"""Look what they've done to our data!"" — How Aggregators Change Data Items in Collection Records",aggregators such as the atlas of living australia ala and the global biodiversity information facility gbif have recently been criticised for imposing backbone taxonomies on records provided by museums herbaria and other sources taxon names may be changed to suit the backbone with the result that the taxon rank of the record may change and the originally provided name may no longer be searchable online through the aggregator aggregators may also delete data items either by omitting entire fields or rejecting data items not conforming to aggregator specific data standards modifications are more common than deletions and are particularly worrying in geospatial date and recorder data fields it can be difficult to locate originally provided data on aggregator websites even for individual records and bulk downloads from aggregators typically mask the changes made in this presentation i document the loss and modification of biodiversity data items by aggregators and suggest strategies for museums and herbaria to counter data loss and modification,2018,0.338
Euryhalinity of Ponto-Caspian invaders in their native and introduced regions,in the past several decades ponto caspian species have established in freshwater and brackish habitats of the north and baltic sea and great lakes st lawrence river region in much higher numbers than expected based on introduction effort i e shipping frequency and environmental conditions between these regions several studies have suggested that ponto caspian taxa are euryhaline and might be able to adapt rapidly to changing salinity conditions and therefore may be more successful colonizers than species from other regions to determine the realized niche in the native and introduced habitats of ponto caspian invaders and to assess whether they have expanded their salinity tolerance during the invasion process we conducted a literature search to assess the salinity ranges of 55 ponto caspian species in their native and introduced ranges our results confirmed that the majority of those species occupied a wide range of salinity in their native and introduced habitats approximately 50 of species were reported from both freshwater and brackish habitats 0â 18 psu in their native region occupying a salinity range of at least 10 psu difference in general the number of species tended to decline as salinity increased in both native and introduced habitats more than 90 of ponto caspian invaders occupied freshwater 0â 0 5 psu habitats while 18 did not occur above 18 psu overall 46 of species were reported from a narrower salinity range in their introduced compared to their native region consequently our study revealed significantly broader salinity ranges in native compared to introduced habitats as our results suggest that the majority of ponto caspian invaders occupy freshwater and brackish habitats in their native region the recent numerous invasions of freshwater and brackish areas by these species should not be a surprise therefore managers and policy makers should take into account that the majority of ponto caspian invaders originate from fresh water or low salinities and develop new regulations to prevent future invasions from the ponto caspian region as well as from areas highly invaded by ponto caspian taxa such as northern europe,2018,0.904
Morphological and genetic divergence between two lineages of Magnolia salicifolia (Magnoliaceae) in Japan,uncovering how populations of a species differ genetically and ecologically is important for understanding evolutionary processes we investigated genetic structure using nuclear microsatellites and chloroplast dna sequences and geographical variation in leaf morphological traits among magnolia salicifolia populations across its entire range two distinct lineages northern and southern were detected genetically and both lineages had substructure among populations the width length ratio and area of leaves showed latitudinal gradients while the position of maximum leaf width exhibited a discontinuous change between the lineages approximate bayesian computation detected exponential population growth and stable population size from the past to the present in the northern and southern lineages respectively small migrations between the lineages were inferred divergence time between the lineages was estimated to be the early to middle pleistocene ecological niche modelling revealed a single large potential area of distribution on the sea of japan side and multiple intermittent areas on the pacific ocean side during the last glacial maximum we suggest that these distinct evolutionary histories of the northern and southern lineages after diversification have influenced not only neutral markers but also genes controlling leaf morphological traits,2018,0.807
Reproductive Diapause in North American Populations of the Introduced Lady Beetle Hippodamia variegata (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae),the palearctic lady beetle species hippodamia variegata coleoptera coccinellidae first collected in 1984 near montreal quebec canada is expanding its distribution into northeastern and north central portions of north america examination of responses to abiotic factors that influence the seasonal biology of h variegata may provide insights into its potential range expansion in north america the induction and duration of adult hibernal diapause in three north american populations of h variegata collected between 40â n and 44â n latitude was determined at four constant photoperiods l d 16 8 14 10 12 12 and 10 14 at 22â c thirteen to twenty one percent of females reared at l d 16 8 entered diapause whereas shorter photoperiods l d 12 12 and 10 14 induced diapause in 100 of females variation in the response to l d 14 10 was observed among the three populations 27â 100 of females exhibited reproductive diapause pupae and young adults were sensitive to changes in constant photoperiods l d 16 8 â 10 14 individuals reared at l d 10 14 that were moved to l d 16 8 on the day of pupation or the day of adult eclosion produced ovipositing females individuals reared at l d 16 8 and transferred to l d 10 14 on the day of pupation or the day of adult eclosion produced females that did not oviposit within 30 d of eclosion,2018,0.901
Spatial and temporal effects of land use change as potential drivers of odonate community composition but not species richness,land use changes and land cover change are drivers of diversity the effects of such drivers over the temporal trend in species richness and composition particularly on invertebrate diversity in megadiverse countries is controversial one key animal group to clarify this controversy is that of odonate insects dragonflies and damselflies given their combined close water land requirements we have investigated whether changes in land use impact species richness and composition of odonates from 1980 to 1993 period i to 1994â 2010 period ii in mexico the effect of land use changes and land cover changes on species richness was analyzed using multiple diversity measures and at different spatial scales in period ii an area reduction in original vegetation and increase in land use occurred responses to land use varied among spatial scales and measures of diversity but overall species richness in the transformed area was higher than in the original vegetation however species composition indicated a high species turnover inside hydrologic regions watersheds and across land uses classes particularly between original and secondary vegetation our interpretation is that despite high land use conversion in mexico adult odonates seem resilient to land use change in terms of species richness but not in species composition which is in partial agreement with the intermediate disturbance hypothesis finally we suggest that hydrologic region scale and use of entropy maximization hcdt entropy could provide a reliable biodiversity estimation of species loss associated with land use change,2018,0.956
Predicting ecological responses in a changing ocean: the effects of future climate uncertainty,predicting how species will respond to climate change is a growing field in marine ecology yet knowledge of how to incorporate the uncertainty from future climate data into these predictions remains a significant challenge to help overcome it this review separates climate uncertainty into its three components scenario uncertainty model uncertainty and internal model variability and identifies four criteria that constitute a thorough interpretation of an ecological response to climate change in relation to these parts awareness access incorporation communication through a literature review the extent to which the marine ecology community has addressed these criteria in their predictions was assessed despite a high awareness of climate uncertainty articles favoured the most severe emission scenario and only a subset of climate models were used as input into ecological analyses in the case of sea surface temperature these models can have projections unrepresentative against a larger ensemble mean moreover 91 of studies failed to incorporate the internal variability of a climate model into results we explored the influence that the choice of emission scenario climate model and model realisation can have when predicting the future distribution of the pelagic fish electrona antarctica future distributions were highly influenced by the choice of climate model and in some cases internal variability was important in determining the direction and severity of the distribution change increased clarity and availability of processed climate data would facilitate more comprehensive explorations of climate uncertainty and increase in the quality and standard of marine prediction studies,2018,0.044
The Aerophytic Diatom Assemblages Developed on Mosses Covering the Bark of Populus alba L.,the study was conducted in the old historical park in the northern part of stalowa wola city south eastern poland the aim of the study was to investigate the diversity of moss inhabiting diatoms of the white poplar populus alba l bark during the study a total of 47 diatom taxa were found of which three were considered as dominat three other species are mentioned in the red list of the algae in poland achnanthes coarctata brã bisson grunow luticola acidoclinata lange bertalot and stauroneis thermicola petersen lund for three species luticola sparsipunctata levkov metzeltin pavlov l vanheurckii van de vijver levkov and hantzschia subrupestris lange bertalot is the first report from poland,2018,0.57
The effect of range overlap on ecological niche divergence depends on spatial scale in monkeyflowers,patterns of niche divergence and geographical range overlap of closely related species provide insights into the evolutionary dynamics of ecological niches when ranges overlap shared selective pressures may preserve niche similarity along coarseâ scale macrohabitat axes e g bioclimates alternatively competitive interactions may drive greater divergence along localâ scale microhabitat axes e g microâ topographical features we tested these hypotheses in 16 species pairs of western north american monkeyflowers erythranthe and diplacus formerly mimulus with speciesâ niches geographic ranges and a robust phylogeny we found that macrohabitat niche divergence decreased with increasing range overlap consistent with convergent selection operating at a coarse scale no significant relationship was detected for microhabitat niches additionally niche divergence was greater for young pairs along all macrohabitat niche axes but greater for old pairs along one microhabitat axis related to vegetation cover for a subset of species pairs with partially overlapping ranges greater microhabitat divergence was detected in sympatry than in allopatry for at least one niche axis for three pairs consistent with character displacement in sympatry thus coarseâ and localâ scale niche divergence show dissimilar patterns in relation to range overlap and evolutionary time perhaps because the relative importance of convergent versus divergent selection depends on spatial scale,2018,0.685
Framework and Guidelines for Conducting Risk Analyses for Alien Species,this report presents a framework for analysing the risk of alien taxa under south africa s national environmental management biodiversity act of 2004 and the alien and invasive species regulations of 2014 while the report was initially designed to meet a specific south africa need the risk analysis processes developed can we believe be transferred to any specified geographic region in outlining a series of questions related to a taxonâ s likelihood of invasion and the consequences thereof i e the potential impacts the report provides a structure for collating data relevant to the process of listing taxa as well as a process for developing recommendations that is both mathematically sound transparent and that explicitly takes uncertainty into account the framework is based on collating information according to international standards in biological invasions specifically the iucn environmental impact classification of alien taxa scheme the cbd s scheme for classifying invasion pathways and the unified framework for biological invasions proposed by blackburn et al 2011 the risk analysis framework is currently being implemented in south africa in an effort to underpin national regulatory lists of invasive species,2018,0.54
Assessing threats of non-native species to native freshwater biodiversity: Conservation priorities for the United States,non native species pose one of the greatest threats to native biodiversity and can have severe negative impacts in freshwater ecosystems identifying regions of spatial overlap between high freshwater biodiversity and high invasion pressure may thus better inform the prioritization of freshwater conservation efforts we employ geospatial analysis of species distribution data to investigate the potential threat of non native species to aquatic animal taxa across the continental united states we mapped non native aquatic plant and animal species richness and cumulative invasion pressure to estimate overall negative impact associated with species introductions these distributions were compared to distributions of native aquatic animal taxa derived from the international union for the conservation of nature iucn database to identify hotspots of native biodiversity we mapped total species richness number of threatened and endangered species and a community index of species rarity calculated at the watershed scale an overall priority index allowed identification of watersheds experiencing high pressure from non native species and also exhibiting high native biodiversity conservation value while priority regions are roughly consistent with previously reported prioritization maps for the us we also recognize novel priority areas characterized by moderate to high native diversity but extremely high invasion pressure we further compared priority areas with existing conservation protections as well as projected future threats associated with land use change our findings suggest that many regions of elevated freshwater biodiversity value are compromised by high invasion pressure and are poorly safeguarded by existing conservation mechanisms and are likely to experience significant additional stresses in the future,2018,0.943
"Comparative Antidiabetic Potentials of Leaf Extracts of Salacia lehmbachii, Tetracarpidium conophorum, Artocarpus heterophyllus and Glibenclamide in Alloxan Induced Diabetic Rats",diabetes mellitus is a global public health disorder that threatens the economies of all nations particularly developing countries in this study the comparative effects of the antidiabetic potentials of glibenclamide and three well known plants used by our locals in the management and prevention of diabetes was elucidated dm was induced by intraperitoneal injection of alloxan at a dose of 100 mg kg bodyweight the rats were randomly divided into six groups n 5 group 1 is the normal control fed with normal saline orally daily for 3 weeks group 2 is diabetic control given normal saline orally for 3 weeks group 3 is diabetic rats treated with leaf extracts of t conophorum at concentrations of 50 mg kg body weight orally for 3 weeks group 4 is diabetic rats treated with leaf extracts of s lehmbachii at concentrations of 50 mg kg body weight orally for 3 weeks group 5 is diabetic rats treated with leaf extracts of a heterophyllus at concentrations of 50 mg kg body weight orally for 3 weeks and group 6 is diabetic rats treated with glibenclamide the results revealed that on day 21 the difference between the rats treated with the leaf extracts were highly significant p 0 05 in relation to reversal of hyperglycemia when compared with the positive control group although the reduction level of t conophorum was better when compared with s lehmbachii a heterophyllus and glibenclamide t c s l gl a h 88 1 mg dl 91 1 mg dl 91 3 mg dl 123 2 mg dl this may have occurred due to the regeneration of the damaged î pancreatic islets cells by the plant extracts which contain phytochemicals that constitutes a protective factor against cardiovascular diseases by helping to increase the viability of the beta cells and reduction of muscle wasting and loss of tissue proteins in these rats exposed to alloxan or other oxidative stress it is therefore highly encouraged to carry out more pharmacological and clinical studies on these plants which will help in production of a novel herbal drugs which will be affordable and readily available for the management of this ailment,2018,0.12
Invasive alien pests threaten the carbon stored in Europe’s forests,forests mitigate climate change by sequestering large amounts of carbon c however forest c storage is not permanent and large pulses of tree mortality can thwart climate mitigation efforts forest pests are increasingly redistributed around the globe yet the potential future impact of invasive alien pests on the forest c cycle remains uncertain here we show that large parts of europe could be invaded by five detrimental alien pests already under current climate climate change increases the potential range of alien pests particularly in northern and eastern europe we estimate the live c at risk from a potential future invasion as 1027 tg c 10 of the european total with a c recovery time of 34 years we show that the impact of introduced pests could be as severe as the current natural disturbance regime in europe calling for increased efforts to halt the introduction and spread of invasive alien species,2018,0.476
Geography Of Plants In The New World: Humboldt’s Relevance In The Age Of Big Data,plant geography seeks to describe the patterns of species distributions and understand the underlying mechanisms the foundation of the field is attributed to alexander von humboldt following the broad scale insights he gained on his explorations of the new world two centuries ago today in the age of â œbig data â advances in methods and data availability allow us to better assess the complex drivers of species distributions in this essay we give an overview of the relevant legacy of humboldt in the field of plant geography comparing the foremost insights and approaches of humboldtâ s time and of today we highlight areas in which major changes have taken place and areas in which humboldtâ s approach is still relevant we present advances in the description and understanding of plant geography which have changed our entire worldview to a much more dynamic one further we present some of the outstanding challenges of the field and how solving them requires going back to the â œhumboldtianâ approach to science i e combining precise quantitative empirical studies with a holistic approach finally we discuss how our recognition of the planetary impact of humans in the anthropocene means that much of our research is no longer exclusively driven by curiosity but also by the societal need to make predictions of ecosystem responses to environmental change there is thus a strong need for combining quantitative empiricism with a holistic perspective to address the complex challenges of the current epoch,2018,0.266
Ichthyological collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I,the collection of the museu oceanogrã fico d carlos i is a historical specimen instrument and document collection that has been housed at the aquã rio vasco da gama since 1935 the collection is largely the result of several scientific campaigns conducted by dom carlos de braganã a between 1896 and 1907 specifically the ichthyological collection consists of 675 surviving catalogue records of specimens caught acquired or offered to d carlos i between 1892 to 1907 and includes the type specimen for odontaspisnasutus braganã a 1904 junior synonym of mitsukurinaowstoni jordan 1898 along with several specimens of deep sea species all specimens were captured in coastal portuguese waters and were preserved in alcohol formalin or mounted,2018,0.442
Monitoring data of marine turtles on the Togolese coast during 2012–2013,this dataset contains information on the presence and distribution of sea turtles in togo observations were carried out through a network of ten ecoguards local guides facilitated by five fishermen and coordinated by a field technician all under the supervision of a scientific coordinator data on the occurrence or direct observation of sea turtles on the togolese coast from september 2012 to august 2013 is presented based on 740 occurrences,2018,0.39
Nature’s untold stories: an overview on the availability and type of on-line data on long-term biodiversity monitoring,long term field based monitoring is time and resource demanding consequently there are few robust biodiversity databases that contain both a baseline and repeat measurements on line repositories represent a potential goldmine of conservation relevant data and are increasingly incentivized by funding agencies however there remains scarce information on their distribution and availability limiting the possibility to exploit them to their full potential here we comprehensively searched and assessed open access datasets where biodiversity has been monitored in the same site for at least 4 years and where species and site locations were clearly reported we located data on 75 669 field sites 9436 of which are in biodiversity hotspots for a total of 28 723 226 records monitoring a total of 15 046 different taxa we found strong geographic and taxonomic biases monitoring sites were predominantly located in the palearctic and nearctic biogeographic realms and in the forest biome where fauna was monitored the focus was mostly on amphibians and birds supporting open access policies and developing strategies to fill the identified gaps will be crucial for improving our understanding of global biodiversity trends our results suggest however that we are on the right trajectory with a vast storehouse of readily available and often high quality yet largely under analysed biodiversity data now available online from a range of sources we argue that such data can provide the required biodiversity baselines for national or local scale studies,2018,0.24
Predicting population trends using citizen science data: do subsampling methods produce reliable estimates for mammals?,accurate assessment of population trends is invaluable in wildlife management particularly for identifying species which are of conservation concern and consequently reliable cost effective methods for their determination are highly desirable in a recent publication eur j wildl res 62 407â 413 2016 the authors apply a subsampling method used in several studies to quantify population trends from citizen science data for butterflies birds and plants to assess the status of west european hedgehogs erinaceus europaeus in england whilst the findings may be in agreement with expert opinion we argue that this type of approach does not adequately account for spatial bias common in mammal data and that without further evaluation it is unclear whether the result is reliable or simply coincidental to explore this concern we apply the method across a range of terrestrial mammal species and compare the resulting trends to other published studies our findings show that the method fails to reproduce the accepted qualitative trends for the majority of species furthermore comparison of trends based on data obtained from different sources produced conflicting predictions suggesting that the method is indeed vulnerable to survey bias we therefore conclude that at present without additional modification to address survey bias this is not a reliable method for predicting population trends for mammals however more generally this raises questions about the validity of subsampling methods based on citizen science data and we would urge future studies to exercise caution by performing analysis across a suite of species including those with known trends for validation,2018,0.283
Identifying bias in cold season temperature reconstructions by beetle mutual climatic range methods in the Pliocene Canadian High Arctic,well preserved beetle elytra from the fossil and subfossil record are used by palaeoclimatologists to estimate past temperatures beetle derived estimates of temperature across the pliocene arctic are consistently lower than those derived from other palaeoclimate proxies here we test if that pattern is attributable to either the modern dataset or specific mutual climatic range method mcrm we used a global dataset of observations global biodiversity information facility for modern beetles as opposed to a north american regional dataset and a consistent mcrm for comparison to vegetation derived estimates termed cracle climate reconstruction analysis using coexistence likelihood estimation rather than different mcrm methods for each analysis beetle derived estimates from one site beaver pond are consistently much lower than the vegetation derived estimates stable isotope results from flora and fauna and summer temperatures from bacterial tetraethers the reanalysis of beetle data produced a small reduction in proxy estimate mismatch overall we found good agreement among proxy estimates of maximum temperature of the warmest month for two of the three sites in the canadian arctic but increasingly poorer agreement for warmest quarter coldest quarter and minimum temperature of the coldest month this pattern may be due to beetles avoidance mechanisms and a climate space different from modern calibration sets during the pliocene arctic beetle derived temperature estimates especially cold season should be interpreted with caution when reconstructing palaeoclimates,2018,0.243
Constructing a Recipe Web from Historical Newspapers,historical newspapers provide a lens on customs and habits of the past for example recipes published in newspapers highlight what and how we ate and thought about food the challenge here is that newspaper data is often unstructured and highly varied digitised historical newspapers add an additional challenge namely that of fluctuations in ocr quality therefore it is difficult to locate and extract recipes from them we present our approach based on distant supervision and automatically extracted lexicons to identify recipes in digitised historical newspapers to generate recipe tags and to extract ingredient information we provide ocr quality indicators and their impact on the extraction process we enrich the recipes with links to information on the ingredients our research shows how natural language processing machine learning and semantic web can be combined to construct a rich dataset from heterogeneous newspapers for the historical analysis of food culture,2018,0.16
Diversity of aphyllophoroid fungi from taxonomical and biogeographical perspectives,comprehensive knowledge of biodiversity is a prerequisite for its long term conservation and sustainable use fungi play crucial roles in ecosystems and are among the species richest organism groups on earth however all aspects of their diversity remain underexplored in this study we aimed to fill the gaps in occurrence data and taxonomy as well as in understanding spatial diversity patterns of aphyllophoroid fungi non gilled macroscopic basidiomycota we digitized and made openly accessible 4 041 records of aphyllophoroid fungi from central and eastern europe and several tropical areas numerous specimen records were associated with newly generated nuclear ribosomal dna sequences 74 of its regions and 59 of 28s region and numerous observations also with photographs depicting diagnostic features of fungal fruitbodies we described 13 new species of aphyllophoroid fungi based on morphological examination combined with dna barcoding and phylogenetic bayesian and maximum likelihood analyses using its and 28s dna sequences two new species belong to the genus trechispora p karst and eleven to the genus subulicystidium parmasto in the latter species level variation in basidiospore size and shape was re evaluated based on systematic measurements of 2 840 spores from 67 sequenced specimens an updated identification key to all known species of subulicystidium was provided using dna based evidence in the studied lineage trechisporales k h larss we showed for the first time a possibility of a transoceanic distribution based on a dataset consisting of 14 030 fruitbody occurrences of 1 491 aphyllophoroid fungal species from 39 european areas we showed that importance of biogeographical regions in determining european aphyllophoroid fungal communities varies for different diversity components species richness and nestedness were best explained by european biogeographical regions whereas overall beta diversity and species turnover were driven mostly by variation in climate and nestedness mostly by tree species occupancy beta diversity patterns of aphyllophoroid fungi did not differ between southern and northern europe therefore at the continental scale aphyllophoroid fungi are less shaped by historical legacies than vascular plant and animal communities,2018,0.943
Typification and nomenclatural notes on Psidium cattleyanum (Myrtaceae),psidium cattleyanum is a species of myrtaceae native to the eastern coast of brazil widely naturalized in tropical and subtropical regions of the world due to its economic potential to be commercially exploited despite its importance the name has not previously been typified a lectotype is designated and the correct spelling of the epithet is shown to be â œcattleyanumâ not â œcattleianumâ as was originally published,2018,0.525
Comparative analysis of two mitochondrial genomes of flesh flies (Sarcophaga antilope and Sarcophaga dux) with phylogeny and evolutionary timescale for Sarcophagidae,the complete mitochondrial genomes mitogenomes of two flesh flies sarcophaga antilope bottcher and sarcophaga dux thomson are amplified sequenced annotated analyzed and compared with 13 other species of the family sarcophagidae the mitogenomes of s antilope and s dux are 15 196 bp and 15 731 bp long respectively and each contains the typical set of 37 genes 13 protein coding genes pcgs 22 transfer rna trna genes and two ribosomal rna rrna genes and a non coding control region with identical gene arrangement as typical arthropod mitogenome the phylogenetic trees inferred from bayesian inference bi and maximum likelihood ml analysis for 15 sarcophagid and five outgroup taxa are congruent both not supporting the monophyly of sarcophagidae but supporting the subfamily sarcophaginae as a monophyletic group and the tribal relationship â œboettcheriini raviniini parasacophagini sarcophagini â the molecular dating analyses indicate the sarcophagidae was first divided within the late eocene epoch 35 52 million years ago mya 95 high posterior density hpd interval 26 70â 45 01 mya and most sarcophagini species diverged during the miocene epoch 17 09 mya 95 hpd 10 76â 24 36 mya,2018,0.54
A comment on “Species are not most abundant in the centre of their geographic range or climatic niche”,a study published recently argued against a relationship between population density and position in geographic and environmental spaces we found a number of methodological problems underlying the analysis we discuss the main issues and conclude that these problems hinder a robust conclusion about the original question,2018,0.374
Vascular plant species richness and distribution in the Río de la Plata grasslands,effective scientific efforts and conservation actions transcend political boundaries encompassing entire ecological units we compiled a vascular plant species list for the rã o de la plata grassland ecoregion one of the largest continuous grassland ecosystems in the americas our list is based on existing regional plant lists online databases and published literature is taxonomically verified and is complemented by additional information on species distribution in the three countries argentina brazil and uruguay and on the origin of the species we compiled 4864 accepted species names belonging to 194 families about eight percent of the species are endemic naturalized non native species comprise slightly 10 of the dataset this dataset will be useful in supporting conservation planning in the region and scientific efforts in understanding species distribution patterns and processes,2018,0.914
"Updated checklist of estuarine caridean shrimps (Decapoda: Caridea) from the southern region of Laguna Madre, Tamaulipas, Mexico, with new records and a key for taxonomic identification",we provide an updated list of the caridean shrimp species from the southern region of the laguna madre tamaulipas mexico along with a key for taxonomic identification the survey was conducted in 3 sites during 3 temporal seasons a total of 2 989 specimens were collected belonging to 12 species 6 genera and to the following 4 families alpheidae hippolytidae palaemonidae and processidae hippolytidae was the most abundant family followed by palaemonidae alpheidae and processidae the hippolytid hippolyte obliquimanus dana 1852 the palaemonids palaemon floridanus chace 1942 and p northropi rankin 1898 and the alpheid alpheus cf packardii kingsley 1880 represent new records for the laguna madre and selected areas of the gulf of mexico,2018,0.653
Change in current and future geographic distributions of Ulmus lamellosa in China,prediction of potential geographic distributions is important for species protection and habitat restoration ulmus lamellosa is an endangered and endemic species in china for which conservation efforts are required the maximum entropy maxent model was used to predict the current and future geographic distribution from 2030 to 2070 of u lamellosa in china and discuss the reasons for changes in climatic suitability the maxent model provided a good fit to our data as confirmed by an auc value of 0 948 the suitable areas for u lamellosa were primarily projected in the northern part of china from 2030 to 2070 especially in liaoning province the variables â œtemperature seasonalityâ â œprecipitation of wettest monthâ and â œprecipitation of warmest quarterâ were the most influential climatic variables in limiting the distribution of u lamellosa our results clearly predict the future impacts of climate change on the geographic distribution of u lamellosa and this can help prioritize design of localized conservation strategies in china,2018,0.351
"A database of egg size and shape from more than 6,700 insect species:",offspring size is a fundamental trait in disparate biological fields of study this trait can be measured as the size of plant seeds animal eggs or live young and it influences ecological interactions organism fitness maternal investment and embryonic development although multiple evolutionary processes have been predicted to drive the evolution of offspring size the phylogenetic distribution of this trait remains poorly understood due to the difficulty of reliably collecting and comparing offspring size data from many species here we present a database of 10 449 morphological descriptions of insect eggs with records for 6 706 unique insect species and representatives from every extant hexapod order the dataset includes eggs whose volumes span more than eight orders of magnitude we created this database by partially automating the extraction of egg traits from the primary literature in the process we overcame challenges associated with large scale phenotyping by designing and employing custom bioinformatic solutions to common problems we matched the taxa in this database to the currently accepted scientific names in taxonomic and genetic databases which will facilitate the use of this data for testing pressing evolutionary hypotheses in offspring size evolution,2018,0.664
Wild boar in focus: Review of existing models on spatial distribution and density of wild boar and proposal for next steps,this report provides a review of existing models for predicting the spatial distribution and abundance of wild boar at various scales global continental national and regional in order to inform the development of a new model to produce estimates of wild boar abundance at european level the review identifies and discusses a range of models based on a wide variety of data types corresponding to those targeted by the data collection model set by enetwild such as occurrence data presenceâ only presenceâ background and presenceâ absence hunting bag data and density data the reviewed models are categorised in two main groups the first based on occurrence data to predict a distribution of wild boar and the second based on hunting bag census and or density data to directly model abundance owing to the diversity of methodologies an ensemble modelling approach is here proposed for combining the outputs from a range of complimentary models and generating density estimates of wild boar at european scale this would retain the flexibility necessary to utilise all available data whilst maintaining a robust output an initial model has been outlined which uses occurrence data to generate wild boar distribution across europe the resulting suitability scores are related to available density estimates to establish a relationship so the suitability map can be converted into a map of absolute density in order to further utilize other types of data in this framework the produced outputs of prediction of habitat suitability or presence absence are used to underpin models based on available abundance data hunting bag census or density,2018,0.129
"Taxonomic revision of the assassin-fly genus Microphontes Londt, 1994 (Insecta, Diptera, Asilidae)",the genus microphontes londt 1994 diptera asilidae brachyrhopalinae is revised currently three species are known from namibia and western south africa i e microphontes megoura londt 1994 from north western south africa microphontes safra londt 1994 from namibia and microphontes whittingtoni londt 1994 from western south africa four new species microphontes ericfisheri sp n from the little karoo of south africa microphontes gaiophanes sp n from the namib desert of namibia and microphontes jasonlondti sp n and microphontes kryphios sp n from western south africa are described distribution occurrence in biodiversity hotspots sensu conservation international and seasonal incidence are discussed descriptions redescriptions photographs and identification keys are provided and made openly accessible in data repositories to support future studies of the included taxa an unusual flight pattern of male microphontes gaiophanes sp n is discussed a unique morphological feature on tergite 8 of microphontes females termed postero paramedian t8 pores is described illustrated and discussed,2018,0.748
"Mapping the potential distributions of etiological agent, vectors, and reservoirs of Japanese Encephalitis in Asia and Australia",japanese encephalitis virus jev is a substantial cause of viral encephalitis morbidity and mortality in south east asia and the western pacific world health organization recognized japanese encephalitis je as a public health priority in demands to initiate active vaccination programs recently the geographic distribution of jev has apparently expanded into other areas in the pacific islands and northern australia however major gaps exist in knowledge in regard to its current distribution here we mapped the potential distribution of mosquito vectors of jev culex tritaeniorhynchus cx pseudovishnui cx vishnui cx fuscocephala cx gelidus and reservoirs egretta grazetta e intermedia nycticorax nycticorax based on ecological niche modeling approach ecological niche models predicted all species to occur across central south and south east asia however cx tritaeniorhynchus e garzetta e intermedia and n nycticorax had broader potential distributions extending west to parts of the arabian peninsula all predictions were robust and significantly better than random p 0 001 we also tested the jev prediction based on 4335 additional independent human case records collected by the chinese information system for disease control and prevention cisdcp 4 075 cases were successfully predicted by the model p 0 001 finally we tested the ecological niche similarity among jev vector and reservoir species and could not reject any of the null hypotheses of niche similarity in all combination pairs,2018,0.494
BIOLOGICAL INVASION BY ACACIA SPP. IN THE BRAZILIAN ATLANTIC FOREST,climate change habitat degradation and biological invasion are among the most factors threaten biodiversity these factors besides affect biodiversity and ecosystem directly can act synergistically and promote deeper environmental changes therefore in this thesis we proposed to study the causes and consequences of biological invasion by acacia genus in the first chapter we investigate the effects of biological invasion by acacia spp fire and eucalyptus disturbance and land use on a neglected sandy savanna ecosystem named mussununga in the second we tested the effects of landscape functioning and structure in the acacia invasion in mussununga ecosystem and finally assessed the potential distribution of acacia mangium and a auriculiformis in five climate scenarios and the potential effects in restoration programs we found in the first chapter that acacia promoted changes in the structure and phytophysiognomie of the woody layer but did not affect the herb shrub layer on the other hand anthropogenic factors affected both woody and herb shrub layer in the second chapter we found that in a fragmented landscape with the higher road network mussununga has a higher chance to be invaded by acacia shape index had a negative effect in acacia invasion while the length of roads mussununga size mussununga perimeter length of highways and landscape conductance had a positive effect finally in the third chapter we found a mangium has a large suitable area in all scenarios while a auriculiformis is confined to a relatively small region of 13 083 km2 â 3 39 sd in the low greenhouse gas emissions scenario rcp 2 6 the suitable area for a mangium expanded from the current scenario of 18 4 of the atlantic forest to 24 0 in the year 2050 while achieved around 44 3 of the atlantic forest area in the worse scenarios rcp 8 2 in 2070 still in the scenarios with higher climatic change the suitable area for a mangium overlapped around 39 3 of the potential area for restoration programs in atlantic forest,2018,0.213
Species distribution models for Peruvian Plantcutter improve with consideration of biotic interactions,biotic interactions have been controversial in distributional ecology mainly in regards to whether they have effects over broad extents with the negative view known as the eltonian noise hypothesis enh in this study we evaluated the enh for phytotoma raimondii a restricted range peruvian endemic bird species we developed models based on 1 only abiotic conditions 2 only host plant distributions and 3 both abiotic conditions and host plant distributions models were evaluated with partial receiver operating characteristic test and akaike information criteria metrics we rejected the enh for this case biotic interactions improved the model the frequency with which exceptions to the enh are detected has important implications for distributional ecology and methods for estimating distributions of species,2018,0.44
Icones Plantarum Malabaricarum : early 18 th century botanical drawings of medicinal plants from colonial Ceylon,ethnopharmacological relevance from 1640 to 1796 the dutch east india company voc occupied the island of ceylon now sri lanka several voc officers had a keen interest in the medicinal application of the local flora the leiden university library holds a two piece codex entitled icones plantarum malabaricarum adscriptis nominibus et viribus vol i ii illustrations of plants from the malabar assigned names and strength this manuscript contains 262 watercolour drawings of medicinal plants from sri lanka with handwritten descriptions of local names habitus medicinal properties and therapeutic applications this anonymous document had never been studied previously aim of the study to identify all depicted plant specimens decipher the text trace the author and analyse the scientific relevance of this manuscript as well as its importance for sri lankan ethnobotany materials and methods we digitised the entire manuscript transcribed and translated the handwritten dutch texts and identified the depicted species using historic and modern literature herbarium vouchers online databases on sri lankan herbal medicine and 41 botanical drawings by the same artist in the artis library amsterdam we traced the origin of the manuscript by means of watermark analysis and historical literature we compared the historic sinhalese and tamil names in the manuscript to recent plant names in ethnobotanical references from sri lanka and southern india we published the entire manuscript online with translations and identifications results the watermarks indicate that the paper was made between 1694 and 1718 the handwriting is of a voc scribe in total ca 252 taxa are depicted of which we could identify 221 to species level the drawings represent mainly native species including sri lankan endemics but also introduced medicinal and ornamental plants lamiaceae zingiberaceae and leguminosae were the best represented families frequently mentioned applications were to purify the blood and to treat gastro intestinal problems fever and snakebites many plants are characterised by their humoral properties of which â warmingâ is the most prevalent plant species were mostly used for their roots 28 bark 16 or leaves 11 more tamil names 260 were documented than sinhalese 208 more than half of the tamil names and 36 of the sinhalese names are still used today the author was probably a voc surgeon based in northern sri lanka who travelled around the island to document medicinal plant use less than half of the species were previously documented from ceylon by the famous voc doctor and botanist paul hermann in the 1670s further archival research is needed to identify the maker of this manuscript conclusions although the maker of this early 18th century manuscript remains unknown the detailed 300 year old information on medicinal plant use in the icones plantarum malabaricarum represents an important ethnobotanical treasure for sri lanka which offers ample opportunities to study changes and continuation of medicinal plant names and practices over time,2018,0.041
"Taxonomic implications of the morphological and genetic variation of cultivated and domesticated populations of the Agave angustifolia complex (Agavoideae, Asparagaceae) in Oaxaca, Mexico",the agave angustifolia complex distributed from mexico to costa rica comprises four species and five varieties including three species used for mescal production the complex is represented in the mexican state of oaxaca by two wild taxa a angustifolia var angustifolia and a angustifolia var rubescens the cultivated form a angustifolia â œespadã nâ and the partially cultivated species a rodacantha the aims of this study were to investigate the morphological and genetic variation of the a angustifolia complex in the state of oaxaca and to identify traits useful for taxonomic delimitation four wild and three cultivated populations of a angustifolia from oaxaca one population of a tequilana from guanajuato and one population of a angustifolia from sonora were sampled for morphological genetic and cytometric analyses we showed that cultivated populations of a angustifolia â œespadin â a rhodacantha and a tequilana could be clearly differentiated from wild populations furthermore the domesticated populations of a angustifolia known locally as â œespadin â had a higher ploidy level and lower genetic variation than their related wild populations the population of a angustifolia from sonora could be recognized as a different entity populations of a rhodacantha need to be studied throughout their entire distribution area to further evaluate their taxonomic delimitation,2018,0.986
Role of climate and herbivory on native and alien conifer seedling recruitment at and above the Fennoscandian treeline,questions we investigated the importance of climate and herbivory on native and alien conifer colonisation of the birchâ dominated fennoscandian treeline by addressing the following questions 1 are treeline and tundra habitats similarly suitable for conifer seedling recruitment 2 do ungulate and rodent herbivores differentially impact seedling recruitment 3 how does the role of habitat and herbivory on seedling recruitment vary across a marked climate gradient location treeline and tundra habitats in northern fennoscandia in sweden vassijaure and paddus and norway joatka and seiland methods we conducted an experiment to assess the emergence rate survival probability and height development of norway spruce picea abies scots pine pinus sylvestris and siberian larch larix sibirica seedlings three experimental plots i e open control reindeer exclosure and complete vertebrate exclosure were established in both treeline and tundra habitats at each of the four locations seeds of the three conifer species were sown in each plot in june 1999 during three consecutive years the surviving seedlings were counted in augustâ september 1999 2000 2001 2002 and 2007 the height of all seedlings was measured in 2007 results our study reveals that norway spruce scots pine and siberian larch can regenerate from seed at and above the current treeline in northern fennoscandia their performance was generally higher above treeline in tundra than at treeline but depended on species identity climate aridity and mammal herbivory particularly by rodents these results suggest that the species composition and latitudinal limit of the treeline in the future might depend not only on direct effects of the future climate on the current treeline species but also on the intensity of alien and native conifer introductions as well as changes in herbivore populations conclusion if sufficient seeds of norway spruce scots pine and siberian larch should reach the current treeline their performances will increase with a warmer and wetter climate and this effect will be markedly modulated by herbivores particularly rodents further work is required to extend these results to determine the ability of these conifers to become treeline forming species in the future,2018,0.778
Searching for a needle in a haystack: Where to survey for climatically-matched biological control agents for two grasses (Sporobolus spp.) invading Australia,climatic incompatibility between source and intended release sites of biological control agents is frequently cited as a limiting factor to their establishment and proliferation and ultimately the successful control of a target weed climate matching techniques have been used to overcome this limitation by prioritising regions in the target weedâ s native range to survey for climatically matched control agents however climate matching has been criticised for not considering that climatically compatible regions may not contain host plant populations which is especially important for weeds with an unknown or uncertain native distribution to overcome this limitation an ecological niche modelling approach maxent was used to identify â œsweet spotsâ to search for candidate biological control agents for two african grasses that are invasive in australia namely sporobolus pyramidalis p beauv and s natalensis steud dur schinz poaceae giant ratâ s tail grasses â œsweet spotsâ were identified by overlaying rasters indicative of climatic suitability for plant growth reproduction and survival i e models calibrated using native range occurrences and climatic compatibility with intended biological control agent release sites in australia i e models calibrated using invaded range occurrences this approach reduced the total geographic search area by 3 8â 7 5 million km2 57â 88 of the total search area with respect to traditional climatic matching techniques the models identified eastern south africa eastern madagascar ethiopia kenya and coastal west africa s pyramidalis only as high priority regions to search for potentially climatically matched biological control agents these findings are discussed in the context of guiding and optimising the native range component of this biological control programme and how this increases the likelihood of successfully managing weed infestations in australia,2018,0.318
Ecology and Evolution of Cuckoo Bumble Bees,most social insect lineages contain socially parasitic cheater species that rather than produce their own workers infiltrate the nests of closely related social species and force the hosts to rear their offspring these parasites have often lost social traits like the ability to rear and produce workers while retaining abilities for reproductive control and exhibiting novel parasitic innovations to capitalize on host resources given their close relationships with their hosts social parasites are particularly informative to understand antagonistic coevolution and the essential components of sociality bumble bee social parasites are well suited to inform such evolutionary questions as they exhibit a gradation from facultative to obligate parasitism in their three independent origins of social parasitism while also exhibiting a diverse obligately socially parasitic lineage the subgenus psithyrus lepeletier that varies across species in host use and invasion strategies despite the insights it can provide cuckoo bumble bees like most social parasites are rare to encounter and as such represent some of the most poorly understood bumble bee lineages in this review we bring together the state of our knowledge on the ecology and evolution of these rare cuckoo bees to set a framework for further study while also highlighting our current gaps in knowledge in particular we describe patterns of host breadth geographic range behavioral and morphological innovations and social invasion strategies utilized across these bees to varying success considering their rarity we highlight the pressing need to study these social parasites given conservation threats posed by host species declines,2018,0.697
"ASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCIENCE MUSEUMS TO LOCAL DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF MUSE, TRENTO (ITALY)",this study presents the results of a self assessment exercise focused on the strategies of the trento science museum muse to impact on local development and on the related supporting action of the local government the autonomous province of trento italy muse is not just one museum but a net of the seven scientific education centres in trentino apart from the science museum in trento which re opened in 2013 in an iconic building designed by archistar renzo piano and is by far the most important attractor the net comprises an aeronautics museum museo dellâ areonautica gianni carproni a botanical garden and an astronomic observatory giardino botanico alpino and terrazza delle stelle a geological museum museo geologico delle dolomiti a museum hosting pre historic remains of a piledwelling site museo delle palafitte del lago di ledro and a limnological research station stazione limnologica del lago di tovel the self assessment exercise took place in 2018 and covers the museumâ s actions in that year and in the years immediately preceding it a time in which muse has had an average budget of about â 16 000 000 and about 250 employees,2018,0.303
"Distribution models of the Spanish argus and its food plant, the storksbill, suggest resilience to climate change",climate change is an important risk factor for the survival of butterflies and other species in this study we developed predictive models that show the potentially favourable areas for a lepidopteran endemic to the iberian peninsula the spanish argus aricia morronensis and its larval food plants the storksbill genus erodium we used species distribution modelling software maxent to perform the models in the present and in the future in two climatic scenarios based on climatic and topographic variables the results show that climate change will not significantly affect a morronensis distribution and may even slightly favour its expansion some plants may undergo a small reduction in habitat favourability however it seems that the interaction between this butterfly and its food plants is unlikely to be significantly affected by climate change,2018,0.263
Gone with the trees: Phylogeography of Rhodiola sect. Trifida (Crassulaceae) reveals multiple refugia on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau,quaternary climatic oscillations have had tremendous effects on current distribution of species previous studies unraveled multiple microrefugia on the qinghai tibetan plateau qtp in two woody plants still we know little whether herbs growing in forests responded to climatic oscillations similarly we herein conducted a phylogeographic study on rhodiola sect trifida an herbaceous group endemic to the qtp which mainly growing on the forest floors using plastid and its sequences as well as ecological niche modeling the origin and divergence of major clades of sect trifida were in accordance with the last phase of the qtp uplifts mismatch distribution analysis indicated a range expansion dated to ca 135 thousand years ago a high frequency and an even distribution of private haplotypes in both plastid and its data sets throughout the distribution of sect trifida were detected the ecological niche modeling results showed that there were suitable habitats on the qtp platform during the lgm our results found that multiple microrefugia existed on the qtp platform supporting the hypothesis that species with similar geographic distribution and inhabiting the same community had similar responses to the quaternary climatic oscillations furthermore species delimitations in sect trifida need to be tested based on integrative evidence from morphological ecological and genetic data,2018,0.618
Habitat loss of a rainforest specialist pollinator fly as an indicator of conservation status of the South American Temperate Rainforests,we estimate habitat loss and fragmentation in a hoverfly aneriophora aureorufa used as a representative forest specialist species this species is a pollinator specialist of two native trees forming a triad endemic to the south american temperate rainforest satr we combine species distribution models with species specific requirements to estimate the habitat range of a aureorufa over two non overlapping time periods before human settlement to 2000 and from 2000 to 2014 we analyzed the predicted distribution range of a aureorufa in chile quantifying habitat loss in both periods and fragmentation in the latter in addition we evaluated the representativeness of the chilean protected areas system in relation to the current habitat of the species we found that the total habitat of a aureorufa decreased by 68 3 compared to historic pre settlement levels in the period 2000â 2014 the loss was 4 9 the northern zone was the most affected by habitat loss and fragmentation with an estimated total loss of 89 9 from the historic period to 2014 with the loss of 238 2 km2 per year between 2000 and 2014 eighteen percent of the habitat of a aureorufa occurs within protected areas we found an overrepresentation in the southern zone 24 79 and an underrepresentation in the northern zone 3 44 we propose that forest specialist species of the northern zone of the satr could be threatened due to the high pressure of habitat loss and the underrepresentation of the chilean protected areas systems,2018,0.876
"First Report of Dealfish, Trachipterus arcticus (lampriformes: Trachipteridae), from Canadian Waters",in november 2014 a recently dead specimen of the meso pelagic dealfish trachipterus arcticus was found on a fjord beach in northern newfoundland this represents the first record of the species in canadian waters,2018,0.52
Changes in parasite-chaetognath species assemblages in the Mexican Central Pacific before and during El Niño 1997-1998,we investigated the seasonal and interannual changes in diversity abundance and prevalence of chaetognaths and their parasites collected monthly during 1996∠1998 in the mexican central pacific we tested the hypothesis of a positive relationship between abundance and species richness of chaetognaths and their parasites and investigated the influence of the 1997∠1998 el niã o event on this host∠parasite interaction of the 9 chaetognath species collected in the present study only 7 were found to be parasitized of 78 154 chaetognath specimens collected 790 were parasitized 1 prevalence with at least 1 type of epibiont cysts perhaps protists and 6 types of endoparasites protists apicomplexans dinoflagellates and ciliates digeneans cestodes acanthocephalans nematodes and other unidentified endoparasites cysts digeneans and cestodes were the most abundant parasites mean intensity ranged from 1∠4 endoparasites and from 1∠21 epibionts host∠1 zonosagitta bedoti and flaccisagitta enflata were the most abundant chae tognath species and had the highest parasite diversity mesosagitta minima and para sagitta euneritica had the highest parasite prevalence 2 a 2 way cluster analysis defined sampling month groups as before during and after the 1997∠1998 el niã o the highest abundances of chaetognaths and parasites were associated with a high thermal stratification index salinity and mixed layer depth we conclude that there is a positive non linear correlation between the abundance of chaetognaths and their parasites although el niã o decreased the abundance and diversity of chaetognaths throughout the time series the abundance and diversity of their parasites were not significantly different among hydro climatic periods suggesting that host abundance must decrease orders of magnitude to influence host availability for parasites,2018,0.998
Securing a future for China’s plant biodiversity through an integrated conservation approach,the severely threatened chinese flora urgently needs a new well adapted to china and properly formulated conservation strategy the present review provides a detailed conservation methodology that complements previously described guidelines for preservation of plant species with extremely small populations psesp in china this review adds to the above concept in several aspects making it relevant to all threatened chinese plant species the proposed integral conservation strategy has the following crucial components adopting and implementing these strategies successfully and more fully in china requires that the country changes pa legislation and improves pa management the national science foundation of china nsfc re prioritizes the type of research that receives research funds and local scientists improve their approach toward information sharing,2018,0.258
Spatially-explicit analyses reveal the distribution of genetic diversity and plant conservation status in Cerrado biome,despite the huge biodiversity of the cerrado biome a synthesis on the distribution of genetic diversity across the biome is still wanting we describe patterns of plant genetic variation across the cerrado biome highlighting areas of high diversity and priority areas for conservation we also analyze the relative importance of environmental characteristics and human footprints on patterns of genetic variation raw genetic data comes primarily from central and southeastern brazil outside conservation units cus standardized estimated genetic richness gest decreases in a northâ south gradient populations with high genetic diversity he and allelic richness ar are widespread across the biome but both increase with distance from the center of cerrado environmental variables related to energy temperature and precipitation are associated with gest and ar but not he gest is higher in northern cerrado in regions with low human development index hdi conversely southern cerrado shows higher hdi and lower genetic richness most likely due to both high habitat fragmentation and loss cus in northern cerrado tend to have higher gest whereas those in southeast and central cerrado have higher he and ar the high genetic diversity and richness in the few populations studied in northern cerrado coupled with the low data availability reveal the importance of encouraging genetic studies in this region moreover very limited information about population genetic diversity is available from cus which may constrain the access of species conservation status and decision make on management of populations inside cus,2018,0.655
"Cyanobacterial effects in Lake LudoÅ¡, Serbia - Is preservation of a degraded aquatic ecosystem justified?",cyanobacteria are present in many aquatic ecosystems in serbia lake ludoå a wetland area of international significance and an important habitat for waterbirds has become the subject of intense research interest because of practically continuous blooming of cyanobacteria analyses of water samples indicated a deterioration of ecological condition and water quality and the presence of toxin producing cyanobacteria the most abundant limnothrix redekei pseudanabaena limnetica planktothrix agardhii and microcystis spp furthermore microcystins were detected in plants and animals from the lake in macrophyte rhizomes phragmites communis typha latifolia and nymphaea elegans and in the muscle intestines kidneys gonads and gills of fish carassius gibelio moreover histopathological deleterious effects liver kidney gills and intestines and dna damage liver and gills were observed in fish a potential treatment for the reduction of cyanobacterial populations employing hydrogen peroxide was tested during this study the treatment was not effective in laboratory tests although further in lake trials are needed to make final conclusions about the applicability of the method based on our observations of the cyanobacterial populations and cyanotoxins in the water as well as other aquatic organisms and a survey of historical data on lake ludoå it can be concluded that the lake is continuously in a poor ecological state conservation of the lake in order to protect the waterbirds without urgent control of eutrophication actually endangers them and the rest of the biota in this wetland habitat and possibly other ecosystems thus urgent measures for restoration are required so that the preservation of this ramsar site would be meaningful,2018,0.292
Reconquering the water: Evolution and systematics of South and Central American aquatic lizards (Gymnophthalmidae),the cercosaurini tribe stands out from other gymnophthalmidae lizards for including several species with morphological adaptations to aquatic lifestyle â œcrocodileâ like morphologyâ â clm recent molecular phylogenies of cercosaurini demonstrated the paraphyly of clm species implicitly suggesting that adaptations to the aquatic life evolved more than once however clm species have remained poorly sampled and a number of uncertainties persist such as the monophyly of neusticurus and the placement of potamites apodemus within the tribe based on a more extensive molecular and morphological data set we propose a phylogenetic hypothesis for neusticurus and investigate for the first time the phylogenetic position of p apodemus we recovered a monophyletic neusticurus clade however neusticurus rudis as currently understood was recovered as paraphyletic with two lineages that also show consistent morphological diagnosis as a result we resurrect and provide a taxonomic redescription of neusticurus surinamensis mã ller 1923 moreover because p apodemus was recovered as sister to all other echinosaura we propose a new combination for this species echinosaura apodema we also review the distribution of neusticurus species offering a comprehensive view of their biogeography lastly our ancestral character reconstruction and dating analyses indicate that the clm phenotype evolved four times independently during cercosauriniâ s evolutionary history we hypothesize that the clm phenotype and subsequent adaptation to aquatic life may be linked to the development of the pebas lake in western amazonia during the miocene,2018,0.829
"New records of a critically endangered shrew from Mexican cloud forests (Soricidae, Cryptotis nelsoni) and prospects for future field research",the nelsonâ s small eared shrew cryptotisnelsoni merriam 1895 is a critically endangered species endemic to cloud forests in los tuxtlas a mountain range along the gulf of mexico coast this species is only known from the type locality and its surroundings here we present new records that extend its distribution approximately 7 km southeast of the type locality and report more specimens near to the type locality we also identified climatically suitable areas for c nelsoni using ecological niche modelling and investigated the sampling bias to identify poorly sampled areas in los tuxtlas we suggest that the scarcity of records in other areas with suitable climatic conditions throughout los tuxtlas is a consequence of incomplete surveys we strongly highlight the importance of continuing surveying this critically endangered shrew using more efficient sampling techniques to better understand its current distribution and conservation status despite all known localities occurring inside los tuxtlas biosphere reserve deforestation and climate change still pose current and future threats to this species,2018,0.625
Current state of Lobaria pulmonaria in southernmost Sweden,sites of lobaria pulmonaria reported from the nemoral zone of the swedish provinces skã ne and blekinge since 1990 were revisited at each locality the habitat ecology and lichen viability were investigated a substantial decline was noted particularly in skã ne as l pulmonaria was found at only 24 sites 22 of which were forests and two were wooded meadows the commonest habitats for l pulmonaria were tilio acerion forests and species poor oligotrophic beech forests and the commonest substrates were trunks of acer platanoides and fagus sylvatica followed by quercus robur the inhabited trees grew often in the upper part of steep slopes or rock faces either on rocky or boulder rich meso to oligotrophic soils lobaria pulmonaria showed a preference for locally cool climates it had survived at sites offering a stable environment in terms of light moisture and temperature with minor influence of air pollution agriculture and forestry practices,2018,0.459
"Inherent variation of functional traits in winter and summer leaves of Mediterranean seasonal dimorphic species: evidence of a ""within leaf cohort"" spectrum",the covariation pattern among leaf functional traits involved in resource acquisition has been successfully provided by the leaf economic spectrum les nevertheless some aspects such as how the leaf trait variation sources affect les predictions are still little investigated accordingly the aim of this paper was to test whether leaf trait variations within different leaf cohorts could alter les improving this knowledge can extend the potential of trait based approaches in simulating future climate effects on ecosystems,2018,0.125
The Scientific and Patent Landscape for Marine Genetic Resources in Southeast Asia,this landscape report examines the scientific and patent landscapes for marine genetic resources in the south east asia asean region 1 the aim of the report is to advance knowledge and understanding of the importance of research and innovation involving the marine environment in the asean region it has recently been estimated that south east asia is home to around a third of the worldâ s population and that 70 percent of its residents live in coastal areas olewiler in olewiler francisco and ferrer 2016 while encompassing approximately 10 of the worldâ s land mass the asean region includes an estimated 30 of the worldâ s coral reefs and 33 of its mangrove forests olewiler francisco and ferrer 2016 fisheries are also central to the livelihoods of many people within the asean region with recent estimates suggesting that the region accounts for 21 million tonnes of fish production or a quarter of global production ferrer in olewiler francisco and ferrer 2016 as this suggests the marine environment and the ecosystem services that it provides are central to the economies livelihoods and welfare of people throughout the asean region recent years have witnessed growing research and awareness of the threats to the marine environment in the form of pollution over exploitation of marine resources and climate change olewiler francisco and ferrer 2016,2018,0.306
The lichen genus Coenogonium in Tasmania,the genus coenogonium ehrenb in tasmania comprises seven species new to science are c atherospermatis kantvilas rivas plata amp lã cking endemic to tasmania and characterized by pale yellowish beige apothecia and relatively small ascospores 6â 8â 5ã 2â 5â 3 âµm c urceolatum kantvilas rivas plata amp lã cking likewise endemic to tasmania and characterized by orange urceolate apothecia 0â 3â 0â 4 mm wide and uniseriate ascospores 8â 5â 11ã 2â 5â 3 âµm and c australiense kantvilas amp lã cking recorded from tasmania south australia and new south wales and characterized by orange apothecia 0â 5â 2 mm wide and relatively broad ascospores 10â 14ã 3â 4â 5 âµm also treated are c lutescens vä zda amp malcolm malcolm tasmania and new zealand and three widespread taxa namely c implexum nyl southern hemisphere c luteum dicks kalb amp lã cking and c pineti schrad ex ach lã cking amp lumbsch both subcosmopolitan all species are described in full from tasmanian collections and illustrated and their ecology variation and affinities to related species are discussed the tasmanian taxa are also discussed in the context of the australasian lichen biota,2018,0.689
The representativeness and spatial bias of volunteered geographic information: a review,many applications of volunteered geographic information vgi involve inferring the properties of the underlying population from a sample consisting of vgi observations i e vgi sample the representativeness of vgi sample is crucial for deciding the fitness for use of vgi in such applications due to the volunteersâ opportunistic observation efforts spatial distribution of vgi observations is often biased i e spatial bias this degrades the representativeness of vgi and impedes the quality of inference made from vgi extensive research has been conducted on assessing or assuring vgi quality from the perspective of the fundamental dimensions of spatial data quality yet this perspective alone provides limited insights on the representativeness of vgi assessing vgi representativeness and developing novel approaches to accounting for spatial bias in vgi is in need for broadening the spectrum of vgi applications this article offers a comprehensive survey of the scientific literature from various domains ecology statistics machine learning etc to summarize existing endeavors related to sample representativeness assessment and sample selection bias correction for enlightening the treatment of these issues in vgi applications,2018,0.046
Decreasing brown bear (Ursus arctos) habitat due to climate change in Central Asia and the Asian Highlands,around the world climate change has impacted many species in this study we used bioclimatic variables and biophysical layers of central asia and the asian highlands combined with presence data of brown bear ursus arctos to understand their current distribution and predict their future distribution under the current rate of climate change our bioclimatic model showed that the current suitable habitat of brown bear encompasses 3 430 493 km2 in the study area the majority of which 65 located in china our analyses demonstrated that suitable habitat will be reduced by 11 378 861 30 km2 across central asia and the asian highlands by 2 050 due to climate change predominantly 90 due to the changes in temperature and precipitation the spatially averaged mean annual temperature of brown bear habitat is currently ∠1 2â c and predicted to increase to 1 6â c by 2 050 mean annual precipitation in brown bear habitats is predicted to increase by 13 from 406 to 459 mm by 2 050 such changes in two critical climatic variables may significantly affect the brown bear distribution ethological repertoires and physiological processes which may increase their risk of extirpation in some areas approximately 32 1 124 330 km2 of the total suitable habitat falls within protected areas which was predicted to reduce to 1 103 912 km2 1 8 loss by 2 050 future loss of suitable habitats inside the protected areas may force brown bears to move outside the protected areas thereby increasing their risk of mortality therefore more protected areas should be established in the suitable brown bear habitats in future to sustain populations in this region furthermore development of corridors is needed to connect habitats between protected areas of different countries in central asia such practices will facilitate climate migration and connectivity among populations and movement between and within countries,2018,0.637
"The illusion of rarity in an epibenthic jellyfish: facts and artefacts in the distribution of Tesserogastria musculosa (Hydrozoa, Ptychogastriidae)",epibenthic and benthopelagic medusae are rarely collected by standard benthic or pelagic sampling methods and many species are considered uncommon and geographically restricted peer reviewed scientific literature contains only two records of medusae belonging to the monotypic genus tesserogastria beyer 1958 since their original description both from the vicinity of the type locality in oslofjord contributing to an illusion of extreme rarity and restricted distribution our analysis of fresh samples and a thorough evaluation of all previous records of this taxon from both peer reviewed scientific sources and â œgrayâ literature show that the species is both more common and widespread than suggested by the scant records in primary scientific literature and represents an example of an overlooked taxon in the epibenthos high numbers of medusae of tesserogastria musculosa beyer 1958 were collected at raunefjord in western norway new data together with validated observations from fjords in western and eastern norway as well as western sweden demonstrate that the species is much more common than is evident from published records data on the mitochondrial 16s ribosomal rna and cytochrome oxidase i molecular markers for the species are provided for the first time as well as new observations on the morphology of living animals tesserogastria musculosa constitutes an example of a hydrozoan species with a misleading reported distribution a situation likely to occur in all members of family ptychogastriidae and other delicate epibenthic invertebrates sampling techniques specifically targeting the epibenthos and careful processing of the samples are essential for correctly assessing the presence of the species suggesting that the lack of records for this and other epibenthic medusae may in part be an artefact of the commonly used sampling methods a comparison of molecular data for species and genus delimitation in ptychogastriidae presented here for the first time highlights the need for a thorough taxonomic revision of the family,2018,0.992
Disentangling Distance and Country Effects on the Value of Conservation across National Borders,we study trans national valuation of conservation outcomes in two neighbouring countries sweden and denmark the experimental design allow us to separate country and distance effects on values respondents prefer conservation in their own country over neighbouring countries value decreases with distance from respondents home location the results are important for the design of trans national conservation policies,2018,0.185
"Antimutagenic, antitumor and estrogen receptor binding activity of the rare plant Shortia galacifolia: An ethnobotanical and chemosystematic approach",objective shortia and other members of the diapensiaceae family have ethnomedicinal history in both eastern and western hemispheres based on ethnopharmacological and chemosystematic evidence pharmacological and toxicological bioassays were conducted on the rare plant oconee bell shortia galacifolia materials and methods extracts were examined in assays for antimutagenicity antitumor and estrogen receptor er binding activity antitumor activity was assessed by the tumor induction assay tia using agrobacterium tumefaciens based on its ability to transform plant tissue antimutagenicity was examined using the ames bacterial reverse mutation test recombinant human erî and erî proteins were utilized to screen extracts for receptor selectivity results all concentrations of extracts inhibited a tumefaciensinduced tumor formation on potato discs with the mature rhizome extracts having the most marked inhibition all three plant extracts significantly inhibited the formation of histidine independent revertant colonies after exposure to the mutagen 2 aminoanthracene 2 aa in the ames salmonella mutagenicity assay in the er binding assays erî but not erî displayed affinity for shortia extracts conclusion antitumor er binding and antimutagenic activities of s galacifolia extracts were identified using rapid bench top assays and warrant further investigations,2018,0.234
Forest corridors between the central Andes and the southern Atlantic Forest enabled dispersal and peripatric diversification without niche divergence in a passerine,the central andean rainforests and the atlantic forest are separated by the chaco and the cerrado domains despite this isolation diverse evidence suggests that these rainforests have been connected in the past however little is known about the timing and geographic positions of these connections as well as their effects on diversification of species in this study we used the black goggled tanager trichothraupis melanops thraupidae as a model to study whether the andean and the atlantic forests have acted as a refugia system and to evaluate biogeographic hypotheses of diversification and connection between these rainforests we compared alternative biogeographic scenarios by using approximate bayesian computation abc modeled range shifts across time and assessed niche divergence between regions the results indicated that the major phylogeographic gap within t melanops is located between these rainforests the abc analysis supported peripatric diversification with initial dispersal from the atlantic forest to the andes during the mid pleistocene also the results supported an andean atlantic forests connection through the current cerrado chaco transition linking the southern atlantic forest with the central andes our findings taken together with other studies support that the connection between these biomes has been recurrent and that has occurred mostly through the cerrado and or the cerrado chaco transition the data also support that the connection dynamic has played an important role in the biological diversification by promoting peripatric divergence in some forest taxa restricted to both biomes,2018,0.16
‘Sunglow’ American Witchhazel,the genus hamamelis l hamamelidaceae r br the witchhazel family is represented by about six species distributed across the temperate regions of north america and asia wen and shi 1999 leonard 2006 although as many as 15 species are reported wiesrma 2017 such as hamamelis macrophylla pursh and hamamelis mexicana standl morphological and phylogenetic analysis support a monophyletic clade of hamamelis with six species li et al 2000 hamamelis species are large shrubs or small trees bearing characteristically narrow strap like flower petals and capsulate fruit that co occur with flower buds and flowers north american species include hamamelis vernalis sarg vernal or ozark witchhazel which is found in the ozark mountains of oklahoma missouri and arkansas and in texas hamamelis virginiana l widely distributed in rich but dry woodlands from southern canada into the eastern and central united states and hamamelis ovalis s w leonard bigleaf witchhazel a new species represented by a few populations in mississippi and alabama leonard 2006 hamamelis vernalis is smaller than h virginiana and is grown as an ornamental plant in u s department of agriculture usda hardiness zones 3â 8 usda 2012 it flowers from december to march and has fragrant orange red flowers hamamelis virginiana is a medium to large shrub producing lemon yellow flowers from october to december hamamelis ovalis is a large leafed creeping shrub producing orange red flowers asian hamamelis species include hamamelis mollis oliv chinese witchhazel and hamamelis japonica sieb and zucc japanese witchhazel hamamelis mollis is a small rounded shrub native to central china whereas h japonica is a low spreading or vase shaped shrub distributed throughout japan a superior h mollis open pollinated seedling observed by the arnold arboretum proved to be a hybrid between h mollis and h japonica and in 1963 the clonal cultivar hamamelis ã intermedia rehder â arnold promiseâ was registered gapinski 2014 this hybrid combined the dense yellow blossoms of h mollis with the cold hardiness larger petals and less winter leaf retention of h japonica because of the variety of form and color and a longer flowering period most named hamamelis cultivars are hamamelis ã intermedia of â ˆ186 named cultivars 106 are hamamelis ã intermedia hamamelis ã intermedia â arnold promiseâ remains a garden standard dirr 2009 other notable hamamelis ã intermedia cultivars include â barmstedt goldâ â jelenaâ â primaveraâ and â westerstedeâ gapinski 2014 production and adoption of witchhazel is often hampered by production difficulties and a displeasing irregular open form of many cultivars in the landscape seedling rootstocks are used for bud grafting of desired cultivars and rootstock selection is limited by the tendency of witchhazel to produce sprouts from the root crown collar other limitations of witchhazel especially h virginiana include leggy spreading forms previous seasonâ s foliage retention during flowering and susceptibility to foliar diseases such as powdery mildew podosphaera biuncinata cooke and peck and leaf blight phyllostichta hamamelidis cooke ex g martin in nursery production in the eastern and southeastern united states considerable improvement is warranted for quality and abundance of flower and the absence of foliage during the flowering period dirr 2009 ease of propagation and tolerance to foliar diseases in production would facilitate the adoption of an improved north american witchhazel,2018,0.94
Practical use of aggregator data quality metrics in a collection scenario,the recent incorporation of standardized data quality metrics into the gbif idigbio and ala portal infrastructures enables data providers with useful information they can use to clean or augment darwin core data at the source based on these recommendations numerous taxonomic and geographic based metrics provide useful information on the quality of various darwin core fields in this realm while also providing input on darwin core compliance for others as a provider data manager for the biodiversity institute university of kansas and having spent some time evaluating their efficacy and reliability this presentation will highlight some of the positive and negative aspects of my experience with specific examples while highlighting concerns regarding the user experience and standardization of these metrics across the aggregator landscape these metrics have indicated both data and publishing issues that have increased the utility and cleanliness of our data while also highlighting batch processing challenges and issues with the process of inferring bad data the integration of these metrics into source database infrastructure will also be postulated with specify software as an example,2018,0.186
"Management, Archiving, and Sharing for Biologists and the Role of Research Institutions in the Technology-Oriented Age",data are one of the primary outputs of science although certain subdisciplines of biology have pioneered efforts to ensure their long term preservation and facilitate collaborations data continue to disappear owing mostly to technological regulatory and ideological hurdles in this article we describe the important steps toward proper data management and archiving and provide a critical discussion on the importance of long term data conservation we then illustrate the rise in data archiving through the joint data archiving policy and the dryad digital repository in particular we discuss data integration and how the limited availability of large scale data sets can hinder new discoveries finally we propose solutions to increase the rate of data preservation for example by generating mechanisms insuring proper data management and archiving by providing training in data management and by transforming the traditional role of research institutions and libraries as data generators toward managers and archivers,2018,0.095
How important is arbuscular mycorrhizal colonization in wetland and aquatic habitats?,plants that live in aquatic habitats are frequently subjected to oxygen limitation and many of them modify their anatomy and physiology to counteract hypoxia in these habitats the role of plant associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi amf which are widespread in terrestrial environments and frequently confer benefits to the associated plant is still debated starting from data taken from 34 selected papers this study focuses on the occurrence of amf in the roots of wetland and aquatic plants taking into account the hydrological conditions of the sites the plant wetland indicators and life forms plant taxonomy and colonization by dark septate endophytes the results have demonstrated the importance of hydrology in controlling the frequency and intensity of amf root colonization which tends to be low in obligate wetland plants moreover colonization is generally lower and possibly less functional in monocots than in dicots we suggest that the hydrological conditions by filtering species according to their water tolerance shape plant community composition and that although amf colonization is one of the traits that may increase plant fitness it is not the most important one in fact a range of nutritional and growth strategies which are more variegated than in terrestrial habitats exists in wetland aquatic habitats and these strategies may rely or not on amf colonization as a consequence of the habitat and species,2018,0.123
PACIFIC ORANGE LEAFWING BUTTERFLY,on october 23 2017 a butterfly was taken from the underside of a leaf of sour sop annona muricata by jake manuel a student assembling an insect collection as a requirement for the general entomology course at the university of guam the collection site was the university of guam campus in mangilao guam 13 43047â n 144 80041â e the specimen was pinned images were made fig 1 documented in inaturalist 1 and deposited in the university of guam insect collection accession code inat8515898 the specimen has been identified as doleschallia tongana this is an new island record for guam and micronesia and this discovery has been published in the scientific literature 2,2018,0.366
An uncommon habitat for a common salamander: Isthmura bellii in arid tropical scrub,salamanders are usually seen as typical inhabitants of temperate and humid habitats among plethodontids isthmura bellii has the broadest altitudinal range of any salamander in the world and it is considered a habitat generalist nonetheless even for this species dry environments are thought unsuitable we report the first records of i bellii in arid tropical scrub from two localities within central mexico we analyze the environmental differentiation of these new localities in relation to the known distribution range of the genus our study shows that among the new localities there is at least one site where i bellii appears to have established in arid tropical scrub an environmental model reveals that these new localities present different conditions than most of the records of isthmura spp,2018,0.345
Driving forces behind evolutionary radiations: Saxifraga section Ciliatae (Saxifragaceae) in the region of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau,the driving forces behind evolutionary radiations in mountain ecosystems are only poorly understood using the species rich alpine taxon saxifraga section ciliatae which occurs predominantly in the region of the qinghaiâ tibet plateau we explore the driving forces behind elevated diversification rates previously observed in one of three subclades of section ciliatae clade 3 we use species distribution models to test for an influence of topographical heterogeneity on the diversity of section ciliatae and investigate the characteristics of climatic niches in this section in addition we expand the dataset of known polyploids of section ciliatae in order to investigate the effect of polyploidy on diversification in this group and estimate rates of niche evolution both polyploidization and topographical heterogeneity were associated with overall species richness in section ciliatae but neither was a likely driver of the observed radiation in clade 3 of section ciliatae instead larger niche breadth and high rates of niche evolution of taxa in clade 3 probably drove rapid diversification via pronounced adaptability for the biologically limiting climatic conditions of the alpine life zone presenting an important advantage during past periods of rapid climate change our study thus elucidates several aspects of the diversification process in this large alpine taxon and underlines the importance of climatic niche evolution for radiations in mountain regions,2018,0.595
Assessing the aggregated risk of invasive crayfish and climate change to freshwater crabs: A Southeast Asian case study,primary freshwater crabs represent a culturally and ecologically significant component of freshwater habitats globally that has a high percentage of threatened species invasive species especially non indigenous crayfish and climate change are not only important standalone threats but are also expected to compound existing threats e g habitat loss modification pollution and challenge the long term survival of these decapod crustaceans this study illustrates the importance of considering these two emerging and growing threats in conservation or management strategies by quantifying via species distribution models the individual and aggregated risks of these threats in southeast asia a region with the highest diversity of primary freshwater crabs and a high proportion of imperiled species results predicted that most species of crabs 82 1 will co occur and hence interact with invasive crayfish to a moderate to high degree and most species 69 2 will also experience a reduction in suitable climate conditions in the future in terms of aggregated risk the results also predict an increased overlap between invasive crayfish and native crabs for three out of the seven species analyzed namely procambarus virginalis cherax destructor and orconectes rusticus findings from this study provide a quantitatively derived rationale for the development of adaptive regulations and conservation plans in the region to minimize the risk of invasive species in a cost effective way thereby enabling the protection of southeast asia s natural heritage and its vital ecosystem services,2018,0.882
Social equity shapes zone-selection: Balancing aquatic biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services delivery in the trans-national Danube River Basin,freshwater biodiversity is declining despite national and international efforts to manage and protect freshwater ecosystems ecosystem based management ebm has been proposed as an approach that could more efficiently and adaptively balance ecological and societal needs however this raises the question of how social and ecological objectives can be included in an integrated management plan here we present a generic model coupling framework tailored to address this question for freshwater ecosystems using three components biodiversity ecosystem services ess and a spatial prioritisation that aims to balance the spatial representation of biodiversity and ess supply and demand we illustrate this model coupling approach within the danube river basin using the spatially explicit potential distribution of i 85 fish species as a surrogate for biodiversity as modelled using hierarchical bayesian models and ii four estimated ess layers produced by the artificial intelligence for ecosystem services aries platform with ess supply defined as carbon storage and flood regulation and demand specified as recreation and water use these are then used for iii a joint spatial prioritisation of biodiversity and ess employing marxan with zones laying out the spatial representation of multiple management zones given the transboundary setting of the danube river basin we also run comparative analyses including the country level purchasing power parity ppp adjusted gross domestic product gdp and each countryâ s percent cover of the total basin area as potential cost factors illustrating a scheme for balancing the share of establishing specific zones among countries we demonstrate how emphasizing various biodiversity or ess targets in an ebm model coupling framework can be used to cost effectively test various spatially explicit management options across a multi national case study we further discuss possible limitations future developments and requirements for effectively managing a balance between biodiversity and ess supply and demand in freshwater ecosystems,2018,0.177
Explaining the ocean's richest biodiversity hotspot and global patterns of fish diversity,for most marine organisms species richness peaks in the central indo pacific region and declines longitudinally a striking pattern that remains poorly understood here we used phylogenetic approaches to address the causes of richness patterns among global marine regions comparing the relative importance of colonization time number of colonization events and diversification rates speciation minus extinction we estimated regional richness using distributional data for almost all percomorph fishes 17 435 species total including approximately 72 of all marine fishes and approximately 33 of all freshwater fishes the high diversity of the central indo pacific was explained by its colonization by many lineages 5 3â 34 million years ago these relatively old colonizations allowed more time for richness to build up through in situ diversification compared to other warm marine regions surprisingly diversification rates were decoupled from marine richness patterns with clades in low richness cold marine habitats having the highest rates unlike marine richness freshwater diversity was largely derived from a few ancient colonizations coupled with high diversification rates our results are congruent with the geological history of the marine tropics and thus may apply to many other organisms beyond marine biogeography we add to the growing number of cases where colonization and time for speciation explain large scale richness patterns instead of diversification rates,2018,0.545
Even well-studied groups of alien species might be poorly inventoried: Australian Acacia species in South Africa as a case study,understanding the status and extent of spread of alien plants is crucial for effective management we explore this issue using australian acacia species wattles in south africa a global hotspot for wattle introductions and tree invasions the last detailed inventory of wattles in south africa was based on data collated forty years ago this paper aimed to determine 1 how many australian acacia species have been introduced to south africa 2 which species are still present and 3 the status of naturalised taxa that might be viable targets for eradication all herbaria in south africa with specimens of introduced australian acacia species were visited and locality records were compared with records from literature sources various databases and expert knowledge for taxa not already known to be widespread invaders field surveys were conducted to determine whether plants are still present and detailed surveys were undertaken of all naturalised populations to confirm the putative identities of the naturalised taxa we also sequenced one nuclear and one chloroplast gene we found evidence that 141 australian acacia species have been introduced to south africa approximately double the estimate from previous work but we could only confirm the current presence of 33 species fifteen wattle species are invasive 13 are in category e and two in category d2 in the unified framework for biological invasions five have naturalised c3 and 13 are present but there was no evidence that they had produced reproductive offspring b2 or c1 dna barcoding provided strong support for only 23 taxa including two species not previously recorded from south africa the current name ascribed was not supported for three species and for a further three species there was no voucher specimen on genbank against which their identity could be checked given the omissions and errors found during this systematic re evaluation of historical records it is clear that analyses of the type conducted here are crucial if the status of even well studied groups of alien taxa is to be accurately determined,2018,0.932
Trema domingensis rises like a Phoenix from the Ashes of trema integerrima: A reassessment of the entire-leaved species of neotropical trema (Cannabaceae),we resolve three problems concerning the three entire leaved species of neotropical trema 1 phylogenetic and morphological results showed that t integerrima beurl standl t domingensis urb and t laxiflora lundell are a single species therefore we combine them under a single name 2 the date of publication gives priority to t integerrima as the basionym sponia integerrima beurl was published in 1856 however the type specimen billberg 308 s is not a species of trema but pouzolzia obliqua wedd wedd urticaceae therefore sponia integerrima beurl is a new synonym of p obliqua the next available name for the entire leaved species is t domingensis published in 1912 3 the type of t domingensis fuertes 312 is a mixed collection specimens of fuertes 312 held at b ny u and usd are t domingensis while those at p g us and z are celtis trinervia lam we provide a historical review to understand how these problems arose and persisted unnoticed for decades,2018,0.583
Patterns of Genetic Diversity and Implications for In Situ Conservation of Wild Celery (Apium graveolens L. ssp. graveolens),in germany the wild ancestor apium graveolens l ssp graveolens of celery and celeriac is threatened by genetic erosion seventy eight potentially suitable genetic reserve sites representing differing ecogeographic units were assessed with regard to the conservation status of the populations at 27 of the 78 sites 30 individual plants were sampled and genetically analyzed with 16 polymorphic microsatellite makers the discriminant analysis of principal components dapc was applied to identify clusters of genetically similar individuals in most cases 25 out of 27 occurrences individuals clustered into groups according to their sampling site next to three clearly separated occurrences agg aguw agfeh two large groups of inland and baltic sea coast occurrences respectively were recognized occurrences from the coastal part of the distribution area were interspersed into the group of inland occurrences and vice versa the genetic distribution pattern is therefore complex the complementary compositional genetic differentiation î j was calculated to identify the most appropriate wild populations mawp for the establishment of genetic reserves altogether 15 sites are recommended to form a genetic reserve network this organisational structure appears suitable for promoting the in situ conservation of intraspecific genetic diversity and the speciesâ adaptability as seed samples of each mawp will be stored in a genebank the network would likewise contribute to the long term ex situ conservation of genetic resources for plant breeding,2018,0.534
Estimation of cultivable areas for Irvingia gabonensis and I. wombolu (Irvingiaceae) in Dahomey-Gap (West Africa),cultivation of priority plant species ensures their sustainable management african bush mango trees irvingia gabonensis and i wombolu are the most exploited irvingiaceae species experts disagree on the status of these very similar taxa as taste remains the only character by which they can be distinguished in the field we combined occurrences and environment data in ecological niche models to assess suitable areas for the two species irvingia gabonensis presented a wider occurrence area due to cultivation across contrasting ecological areas irvingia wombolu does not appear to be cultivated and only occurred in southwestern togo these differences in range is likely determined by phenological limitations of i wombolu reinforced by differences in local management systems thus confirming the failure of market development to impact useful plant speciesâ conservation significantly highly suitable areas for i wombolu were in the volta forest where i gabonensis saw low suitability while out of this inverse situation was observed as regard environmental suitability these differences are significant implying different ecological adaptation however anthropogenic influences related to domestication history are also important therefore updated genetic investigations and field trials in contrasting ecological areas are required for understanding the origin of differences between these two forms,2018,0.672
Improving biodiversity surrogates for conservation assessment: A test of methods and the value of targeted biological surveys,aim conservation assessment and planning across extensive regions rely on the use of mapped or modelled surrogates because direct fieldâ based inventories of biodiversity rarely provide complete spatial coverage surrogates are assumed to represent spatial patterns in the distribution of biodiversity yet the validity of this assumption is rarely evaluated here we use data from new biological surveys targeting poorly known taxonomic groups across sparsely surveyed landscapes to test 1 the performance of established and novel surrogates and 2 the value of targeted survey data in further improving surrogate effectiveness location continental australia methods surrogates were derived from either mapped land classifications bioregions vegetation types or models of spatial turnover in biodiversity composition models were derived by linking bestâ available biological observations to highâ resolution mapped climate terrain and soil attributes using generalized dissimilarity modelling gdm the performance of surrogates was evaluated using survey data for eight biological groups collected as part of the bush blitz programme http bushblitz org for the gdmâ based surrogates withinâ and crossâ taxon performance was first evaluated for models fitted to biological data available prior to bush blitz and then for models enhanced through the addition of the bush blitz data results all of the tested surrogates performed significantly better than random across all eight biological groups gdmâ based surrogates performed over 10 better on average than the best performing combination of mapped land classifications the addition of bush blitz targeted data in gdmâ based surrogates led to further improvements in surrogate performance main conclusions our results support continued investment in targeted biological survey programmes to enhance the performance of surrogates and ensure that surrogates represent a wider breadth of biodiversity the strong performance of compositional turnover modelling relative to mapped land classifications suggests that this surrogate strategy deserves greater consideration in future conservation assessments and has potential for use in continentalâ scale monitoring of biodiversity,2018,0.129
"Vestured pits and scalariform perforation plate morphology modify the relationships between angiosperm vessel diameter, climate and maximum plant height",shared ancestry among species and correlation between vessel diameter and plant height can obscure the mechanisms linking vessel diameter to current climate distributions of angiosperms because wood is complex various traits may interact to influence vessel function specifically pit vesturing lignified cell wall protuberances associated with bordered pits and perforation plate morphology could alter vessel diameter versus climate versus plant height relationships using phylogenetically informed analyses we tested for associations between vessel diameter climate and maximum plant height across angiosperm species with different pit vesturing presence absence and perforation plate morphology simple scalariform and quantitative variation we show significantly larger changes in vessel diameter and maximum plant height across climates for species with vestures and simple perforation plates compared to nonâ vestured species and those with scalariform plates we also found a significantly greater increase in height for a given increase in vessel diameter with lower percent of scalariform plates our study provides novel insights on the evolution of angiosperm xylem by showing that vessel pit vesturing and perforation plate morphologies can modify relationships among xylem vessels climate and height our findings highlight the complexity of xylem adaptations to climate substantiating an integrative view of xylem function in the study of wood evolution,2018,0.464
THE INFLUENCE OF SALICYLIC ACID ON PEARL MILLET (PENNISETUM GLAUCUM: POACEAE) EPIGENOME DURING HEADMINER (HELIOCHEILUS …,millets are in the family of cereals grown globally with differential importance across african countries they are grown in arid and semi arid areas with a production area of 18 50 million ha by 28 countries covering 30 of the continent with nine species pearl millet remains the most important millet crop in term of production and harvested areas in africa pearl millet presents many advantages in responding to the needs and welfare of the poor including food security nutrition and health poverty alleviation potential markets and dry environment enhancement however the production faces many constraints in a context of soil degradation and acidity and increase of pest pressure causing yield losses these include aluminum toxicity and the millet headminer heliocheilus albipunctella,2018,0.415
A new Palaeocene crocodylian from southern Argentina sheds light on the early history of caimanines,caimanines are crocodylians currently restricted to south and central america and the oldest members are from lower palaeocene localities of the salamanca formation chubut province argentina we report here a new caimanine from this same unit represented by a skull roof and partial braincase its phylogenetic relationships were explored in a cladistic analysis using standard characters and a morphogeometric two dimensional configuration of the skull roof the phylogenetic results were used for an event based supermodel quantitative palaeobiogeographic analysis the new species is recovered as the most basal member of the south american caimanines and the cretaceous north american lineage â brachychampsa and related forms as the most basal caimaninae the biogeographic results estimated north central north america as the ancestral area of caimaninae showing that the cretaceous and palaeocene species of the group were more widespread than thought and became regionally extinct in north america around the cretaceousâ palaeocene boundary a dispersal event from north central north america during the middle late cretaceous explains the arrival of the group to south america the palaeogene assemblage of patagonian crocodylians is composed of three lineages of caimanines as a consequence of independent dispersal events that occurred between north and south america and within south america around the cretaceousâ palaeogene boundary,2018,0.645
How to assess species distribution model accuracy: using internal-aspatial or external-spatial methods?,species distribution models sdms have become an increasingly important tool in ecology biogeography evolution and more recently in conservation management landscape planning and climate change research the assessment of their predictive accuracy is one fundamental issue in the development and application of sdms accuracy assessments for models should have a close connection to the intended use of the model however we found that the common evaluation method we named internal aspatial usually ignored how the spatial prediction map actually looks like and achieves for the real world species distribution and for application therefore in this research we proposed a spatial method to evaluate model performance by assessing how the prediction maps look like we named external spatial we took hooded crane grus monacha as a case in this research to compare these two methods internal aspatial and external spatial performance both of the two methods were expressed with three commonly used sdm evaluation criteria auc kappa and tss in addition model accuracy was also assessed via evaluating the prediction maps with knowledge of the study species and alternative occurrence data assistance we used two popular data mining algorithms random forest and treenet and ran 8 experiments using 1 3 5 8 11 21 29 and 78 predictors allowing to develop overall 16 models for this assessment results indicated that auc had a significant linear relationshiâ â â p with kappa and tss both of interal aspatial and external spatial methods could get higher auc values and they were close this indicated that internal aspatial model assessments can serve as powerful assessment aspatiual metrics without the need of secondary data even however internal aspatial external spatial prediction map evaluation and alternative occurrence data could not distinguish well models with different sets of predictors this is the first time the concept of spatial assessment criteria is expressed and assessed overall we hope to see more study on meaningful spatial criteria and proposed more and better methods to evaluate sdms and distribution map in the future,2018,0.072
Bat diversity in Carajás National Forest (Eastern Amazon) and potential impacts on ecosystem services under climate change,anthropogenic climate change is one of the main current threats to biodiversity and it has been linked to species decline bats deserve attention because they occupy different trophic niches and perform different functions in nature acting as flower pollinators nectarivores seed dispersers frugivores and pest controllers insectivores the effects of climate change on the distribution of bat species occurring in the carajã s national forest eastern amazon southeastern parã state brazil was examined by modeling species distributions a total of 83 species of bats providing the above mentioned services were analyzed for the years 2050 and 2070 to answer the following two questions i which species are potentially more sensitive to climate changes and will not be able to find suitable areas in carajã s in the future and ii which are the priority areas that protect the greatest number of species from climate change of the total species analyzed 47 57 will potentially not find suitable areas in carajã s under the scenarios employed pollinators seed dispersers and more generalist omnivorous bats will potentially be the most affected suffering a 28â 36 decrease in suitable area under the 2070 scenario which may have implications for the plants with which those species interact according to the scenarios employed the carajã s national forest as well as other conservation units in parã will not protect most species in the future the most suitable areas are located mainly to the north and west of the state and under varying degrees of conservation from well preserved protected areas to areas degraded due to different anthropogenic impacts this study emphasizes that the possible effect of climate change and the location of species protection areas need to be analyzed together to ensure that the areas that will act as potential climate refuges for species in the future are indeed protected,2018,0.982
Exploring the Microwilderness of Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area: Terrestrial Invertebrate All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory,between 2005 and 2011 we conducted a terrestrial invertebrate all taxa biodiversity inventory atbi in boston harbor islands national recreation area in order to document as many arthropod and gastropod species as possible in the park and to understand how species were distributed across habitats and islands professional scientists students and citizen scientists collected ∠160 000 invertebrates on 19 islands and peninsulas in the park using a variety of trapping and collecting methods more than 76 000 of these specimens were curated identified and databased resulting in a total of 1732 distinct species and morphospecies of these 232 species 13 4 were species not native to north america the introduced species included several new us and north american records including 2 potential pests hishimonus sellatus mulberry leafhopper and the click beetle athous haemorrhoidalis among native species we documented several new state records which expanded known ranges considerably in a few cases statistical estimates of absolute species richness for several representative taxa indicated that less diverse groups e g millipedes were sampled almost completely by our methods but additional sampling is needed to thoroughly inventory more diverse taxa e g ground beetles the invertebrate atbi lays the groundwork for future monitoring of focal groups such as pollinators,2018,0.967
Contrasting patterns of diversification in a bird family (Aves: Gruiformes: Rallidae) are revealed by analysis of geospatial distribution of species and phylogenetic diversity,geospatial patterns in the distribution of regional biodiversity reflect the composite processes that underpin evolution speciation dispersal and extinction the spatial distribution and phylogeny of a globally widespread and species rich bird family rallidae were used to help assess the role of largeâ scale biogeographical processes in diversity and diversification here we examine how different geostatistical diversity metrics enhance our understanding of species distribution by linking occurrence records of rail species to corresponding species level phylogeny tropical regions and temperate zones contained a large proportion of rail species richness and phylogenetic diversity whilst small islands in australian oceanian and oriental regions held the highest weighted and phylogenetic endemism our results suggest that habitat connectivity and dispersal were important ecological features in rail evolution and distribution spatial isolation was a significant driver of diversification where islands in oceania were centres of neoâ endemism with recent multiple and independent speciation events and could be considered as nurseries of biodiversity palaeoâ endemism was mostly associated with older stable regions so despite extensive long distance range shifting these areas retain their own ancient and distinct character madagascar was the major area of palaeoâ endemism associated with the oldest rail lineages and could be considered a museum of rail diversity this implies a mixture of processes determine the current distribution and diversity of rail clades with some areas dominated by recent in situ speciation while others harbour old diversity with ecological traits that have stood the test of time,2018,0.813
The influence of environmental factors on the distribution and density of invasive Centaurea stoebe across Northeastern USA,centaurea stoebe is an emerging invader in northeast us and is a major invasive plant in the northern midwest and western usa although it has been present in new york state nys for over 100 years its apparent recent population increases and spread provide a rare opportunity to study a plant in the early stages of invasion using occurrence density and change in density in species distribution models we assessed the potential influence of environmental factors on the invasion of spotted knapweed in northeast us within different parts of c stoebeâ s range different factors explained its occurrence density and change in density over 2 years across northeast us climate and soil factors were the most influential predictors explaining c stoebeâ s distribution while within long island in southeastern nys and the adirondack mountains in northern nys precipitation and disturbance respectively were the most important using density and change in density we found that for both long island and the adirondacks tree cover precipitation and temperature were the most influential determinants the comparatively minor influence of disturbance on c stoebe density is likely because c stoebe in the northeastern us is almost exclusively found in open disturbed sites so this factor does not discriminate among densities our study is valuable for both basic ecological understanding and decision making as control efforts may depend on whether management goals are to decrease the risk of spread to other locations or decrease the density in locations in which invaders already occur,2018,0.262
Linking genome signatures of selection and adaptation in non-model plants: exploring potential and limitations in the angiosperm Amborella,selective sweeps may be caused by environmental conditions that select for a gene function or trait at one locus causing reduced variation at neighboring sites due to linkage with specific non selected variants being swept along with the selected variant for many species genomic and environmental data are available to test hypotheses that environmental conditions are correlated with selected regions most genomic studies relating selection to environment use model organisms or crop species typically these studies have genomic data from large numbers of individuals and extensive environmental data here we review studies associating selective sweeps with environment and consider the impediments to successful application of these methods to non model species we present an initial investigation into linking genomic regions of selection to environmental conditions in the narrowly distributed non model plant amborella trichopoda amborellaceae the sister species to all other living flowering plants and one of over 2500 plant species endemic to new caledonia,2018,0.243
Overview of LifeCLEF 2018: A Large-Scale Evaluation of Species Identification and Recommendation Algorithms in the Era of AI,building accurate knowledge of the identity the geographic distribution and the evolution of living species is essential for a sustainable development of humanity as well as for biodiversity conservation unfortunately such basic information is often only partially available for professional stakeholders teachers scientists and citizens and often incomplete for ecosystems that possess the highest diversity in this context an ultimate ambition is to set up innovative information systems relying on the automated identification and understanding of living organisms as a means to engage massive crowds of observers and boost the production of biodiversity and agro biodiversity data the lifeclef 2018 initiative proposes three data oriented challenges related to this vision in the continuity of the previous editions but with several consistent novelties intended to push the boundaries of the state of the art in several research directions this paper describes the methodology of the conducted evaluations as well as the synthesis of the main results and lessons learned,2018,0.133
Data for the calculation of an indicator of the comprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plants,the datasets and code presented in this article are related to the research article entitled â œcomprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plants an operational indicator for biodiversity and sustainable development targetsâ 1 the indicator methodology includes five main steps each requiring and producing data which are fully described and available here these data include species taxonomy uses and general geographic information dataset 1 species occurrence data dataset 2 global administrative areas data dataset 3 eco geographic predictors used in species distribution modeling dataset 4 a world map raster file dataset 5 species spatial distribution modeling outputs dataset 6 ecoregion spatial data used in conservation analyses dataset 7 protected area spatial data used in conservation analyses dataset 8 and countries sub regions and regions classifications data dataset 9 these data are available at http dx doi org 10 17632 2jxj4k32m2 1 in combination with the openly accessible methodology code https github com ciat dapa usefulplants indicator these data facilitate indicator assessments and serve as a baseline against which future calculations of the indicator can be measured the data can also contribute to other species distribution modeling ecological research and conservation analysis purposes,2018,0.528
PREDICTED DISTRIBUTIONS OF TWO POORLY KNOWN SMALL CARNIVORES IN COLOMBIA: THE GREATER GRISON AND STRIPED HOG-NOSED SKUNK,recent contributions have increased our knowledge of the distribution of small carnivores in colombia however geographic ranges of many species remain poorly understood species distribution modeling represents a useful tool for predicting the geographic distributions of poorly known species this paper focuses on updating and modeling the distribution of two small carnivores in colombia galictis vittata and conepatus semistriatus based on reliable historical and new locality records we used maxent to model the speciesâ potential distributions using presence localities along with climate variables and elevation our results provided strong support for the predictive power of the models suggesting a broad distribution for these species in colombia with 265 063 km2 and 224 238 km2 of suitable habitat for g vittata and c semistriatus respectively our models suggest that a greater proportion of the predicted distribution of these species is currently outside protected areas based on these results we highlight the need to increase studies in poorly surveyed regions where these species are predicted to occur and no confirmed records currently exist further studies are required to better understand the taxonomic limits geographic distribution threats and conservation status of these and other small carnivores in colombia,2018,0.696
"A taxonomic revision of the Neotropical genus Cremastosperma (Annonaceae), including five new species",we present a taxonomic revision of cremastosperma a genus of neotropical annonaceae occurring in lowland to premontane wet forest mostly in areas surrounding the andean mountain chain we recognise 34 species describing five as new here from east of the andes c brachypodum pirie chatrou sp nov and c dolichopodum pirie maas sp nov endemic to peru c confusum pirie sp nov from southern peru and adjacent bolivia and brazil and c alticola pirie chatrou sp nov at higher elevations in northern peru and ecuador and from west of the andes c osicola pirie chatrou sp nov endemic to costa rica the most northerly distributed species of the genus we provide an identification key document diagnostic characters and distributions and provide illustrations and extensive lists of specimens also presenting the latter in the form of mapping data with embedded links to images available online of the 34 species 22 are regional endemics on the basis of the extent of occurrence and area of occupancy of species estimated from the distribution data we designate iucn threat categries for all species fourteen species proved to be endangered en and a further one critically endangered cr reflecting their rarity and narrow known distributions,2018,0.946
"The Evolution, Physiology and Ecology of the Australian Arid-Zone Frog Fauna",the frog fauna of the australian arid zone is diverse most species are independent of free standing water except for breeding where all species have aquatic egg deposition and a conventional tadpole as the larval stage the fauna is derived from two sources taxa related to frog genera found across i tropical northern australia and ii genera from temperate southern and eastern australian those derivations are both recent â with some ongoing tenuous connections to tropical in north west coastal areas and ancient reflecting the long term drying trend in arid australia over the last 20 million years burrowing species can form waterproof cocoons but also survive in moist soils most can reduce metabolic rates and ingest high quality foods in sufficient quantities in very short time frames to allow survival underground for many years between major rain events and to allow them to be super abundant australian frogs do well in the arid zone,2018,0.709
"Predicting the effects of future climate change on the distribution of an endemic damselfly (Odonata, Coenagrionidae) in subtropical South American grasslands",climate change is predicted to affect the distribution of freshwater taxa and stronger impacts are expected on endemic species however the effects of future climates on freshwater insects from the neotropical region have been generally overlooked in this study the distribution of a damselfly cyanallagma bonariense odonata coenagrionidae endemic to the subtropical south american grasslands pampa was modelled in relation to future scenarios of high greenhouse gas emissions rcp 8 5 for 2050 and 2070 for this purpose ecological niche models were developed based on assumptions of limited dispersal and niche conservatism and the projected distribution of c bonariense was contrasted with the location of current protected areas pas in the pampa a broad potential distribution of c bonariense was indicated throughout the pampa and projections predicted a predominance of range contractions rather than range shifts in climatically suitable areas for c bonariense in 2050 and 2070 projections of suitable areas overlapped in central argentina and southernmost uruguay in these periods our results indicated a potential resilience of c bonariense to future climate change which is likely related to the low restrictions in habitat use of c bonariense in every projection however most pas were expected to lose effectiveness as by 2070 most pas fall outside the range of the predicted distribution of c bonariense thus the creation or enlargement of pas in these areas is recommended and these results represent an important information for the conservation of endemic freshwater insects under global warming scenarios in an overlooked neotropical landscape,2018,0.43
"Anatomy, Age and Ecology of High Mountain Plants in Ladakh, the Western Himalaya",this aesthetically unique book combines ecological morphological and anatomical as well as phylogenetic studies on plant material in a largely unexplored dry mountain region above the timberline it offers the first comparative analysis of hundreds of plants annuals perennial herbs and dwarf shrubs in an area of 87 000 km2 at altitudes from 2600 to 6150 m above sea level in the western himalaya characteristic landscape pictures of all major vegetation types and maps show at which locations and altitudes the individual species of vascular plants are distributed while macroscopic plant pictures and plant age are related to high quality micro sections and micro photographs the anatomical features of 345 dicotyledons were characterized using the published coding systems and those of 155 monocotyledones were characterized on the basis of a newly developed key the number of annual rings and anatomical features of the xylem and phloem of dicots are compared and related to different ecological conditions within this extremely dry and cold environment the ecological and anatomical characterization is used to create a phylogenetic tree based on nucleotide sequences and indicates which features are genetically stable and which ones are modified by environmental factors the book appeals to scientists in the fields of plant taxonomy morphology anatomy and ecology,2018,0.145
Species conservation profiles of a random sample of world spiders I: Agelenidae to Filistatidae,the iucn red list of threatened species is the most widely used information source on the extinction risk of species one of the uses of the red list is to evaluate and monitor the state of biodiversity and a possible approach for this purpose is the red list index rli for many taxa mainly hyperdiverse groups it is not possible within available resources to assess all known species in such cases a random sample of species might be selected for assessment and the results derived from it extrapolated for the entire group the sampled red list index srli with the current contribution and the three following papers we intend to create the first point in time of a future spider srli encompassing 200 species distributed across the world,2018,0.832
Will climate change cause spatial mismatch between plants and their pollinators? A test using Andean cactus species,climate change can disrupt mutualisms by causing temporal or spatial mismatch between interacting species however the effects of climate change forecasts on biotic interactions remain poorly studied in cactus species pollination constitutes a fundamental process in the production of fruits and seeds thus we aimed to analyse the impact of future climate change on the geographical distributions of 11 cactus species from the southern central andes and their spatial match with their pollinators we used species distribution modelling to forecast the geographic range shifts of these cactus species and their pollinators under two future scenarios rcp 4 5 and rcp 8 5 for the years 2050 and 2070 we predicted geographic range contractions under future scenarios that reached almost 80 for some cactus species our results indicate that the geographical distributions of cacti would be constrained by the presence of the pollinator species on which they depend in the present however climate change would not cause spatial mismatch between cacti and their animal pollinators in the future for most cactus species we predicted an increase in the spatial match with their mutualists under future scenarios this is the first study that estimates the geographic range of cacti using both abiotic and biotic factors given the importance that positive interactions have on the life cycle of many plant species our approach could be used to better understand the potential effects of climate change particularly on species that are of special interest for conservation actions,2018,0.951
"First documented record of Amazilia tzacatl (de la Llave, 1893) (Aves, Trochilidae) in the Colombian Orinoco region and comments of its distribution at the eastern Andes",land use change and anthropic colonization influence forest degradation and biodiversity turnover we present the first documented record of the rufous tailed hummingbird amazilia tzacatl for the eastern slope of the andes orinoco region of colombia this hummingbird is widely known as a â œnon forestâ species in lowlands in the west of the andes we discuss recent observations in the eastern andes these records could be associated with land use change and deforestation fronts through the andes,2018,0.463
The Cuito catchment of the Okavango system: a vascular plant checklist for the Angolan headwaters,this paper aims to provide a baseline for conservation planning by documenting patterns of plant diversity and vegetation in the upper catchment of the cuito river 417 species are recorded from this region nine of these are species potentially new to science ten species are newly recorded from angola with an additional species only recorded previously within angola from the northern enclave of cabinda the 108 new provincial records for moxico clearly indicate the lack of collections from angolaâ s largest province we note the existence of extensive peat deposits in the cuito river system for the first time and suggest that one of barbosaâ s vegetation types in the area needs to be reassessed,2018,0.571
"NA2RE is reliable but aims for improvement: an answer to Vamberger and Fritz (2018)",a recent paper has suggested that na2re the new atlas of amphibians and reptiles of europe does not provide a reliable basis for ecological niche modelling studies due to errors flagging introductions and missing data for the native range of the pond turtle genus emys we point out that the original na2re paper already acknowledged that it was not aimed for fine scale ecological distribution modelling and that it had the objective of stimulating research for improving the maps new works now complement the atlas in improving the coverage and providing new distribution maps for species within species complex moreover we stress that the na2re web platform at present hosts only the distribution data compiled in 2014 from different sources using the taxonomy adopted by the authors at the time as with any large database it is advisable that these data are carefully evaluated and quality filtered before their use in scientific studies we defend the reliability of the na2re web platform as the currently most comprehensive resource for the comparative chorological study of amphibians and reptiles in europe and encourage publication of updates and additions following the most recent taxonomic changes to continuously improve this database and the atlas,2018,0.127
Nitrogen fixation does not axiomatically lead to phosphorus limitation in aquatic ecosystems,a longâ standing debate in ecology deals with the role of nitrogen and phosphorus in management and restoration of aquatic ecosystems it has been argued that nutrient reduction strategies to combat blooms of phytoplankton or floating plants should solely focus on phosphorus p the underlying argument is that reducing nitrogen n inputs is ineffective because n2â fixing species will compensate for n deficits thus perpetuating p limitation of primary production a mechanistic understanding of this principle is however incomplete here we use resource competition theory a complex dynamic ecosystem model and a 32â year field data set on eutrophic floatingâ plant dominated ecosystems to show that the growth of nonâ n2â fixing species can become n limited under high p and low n inputs even in the presence of n2 fixing species n2â fixers typically require higher p concentrations than nonâ n2â fixers to persist hence the n2 fixers cannot deplete the p concentration enough for the nonâ n2â fixing community to become p limited because they would be outcompeted these findings provide a testable mechanistic basis for the need to consider the reduction of both n and p inputs to most effectively restore nutrient overâ enriched aquatic ecosystems,2018,0.349
"Pleistocene glacial cycles and physical barriers influence phylogeographic structure in black-capped chickadees, a widespread North American passerine",the non migratory black capped chickadee poecile atricapillus linnaeus 1766 has a continent wide distribution extending across large parts of north america to investigate the phylogeographic structure and verify possible refugia during the last glacial maximum we sequenced a 678 base pair region of the mitochondrial control region from 633 chickadees at 35 sites across north america and performed paleoecological distribution modeling two genetically distinct groups were found using multiple analyses one in newfoundland and a widespread continental group with additional substructure evident in western continental populations while gene flow is low throughout the range it is especially low in peripheral populations the newfoundland population has remained isolated from continental populations for at least 65 000 years and contains a number of fixed nucleotide differences within the continental populations chickadees are subdivided into pacific coast alaska southeast rockies and main northeast groups consistent with late pleistocene vicariance events evidence of secondary contact was identified between the pacific and main northeast populations in northwest british columbia and between the southeast rockies and main northeast group in montana paleoecological distribution modeling predicted suitable habitat in alaska off the coast of newfoundland and several locations across the southern united states during the last glacial maximum whereas suitable habitat during the last interglacial was more similar to the contemporary distribution,2018,0.788
Is the nature 2000 network effective to prevent the biological invasions?,protected areas are considered effective tools to protect biodiversity from global change however their success against invasive alien species ias is still quite unknown the european natura 2000 network n2000 appears vulnerable to invasions as human activities are not prohibited despite being the main drivers of biological invasions this study was carried out in the region of castilla la mancha spain which represents a 2 3 of the european n2000 being higher than the network surface in 52 of the european countries we specifically 1 compared the total ias between protected n2000 and unprotected sites 2 analyzed the effect of an additional protection as national park or nature reserve on the total ias and 3 assessed the contribution of human pressure to explain the occurrence of ias within the network this is the first time that the approach of gap analysis was used to assess the efficacy of n2000 against ias we compiled 3664 georeferenced records for 95 fauna and flora species mean total ias of fauna and flora were similar between protected and unprotected utm 10â ã â 10â km grid cells therefore as expected n2000 sites are vulnerable to ias despite protection furthermore a stricter management of human pressure under additional regulations did not seem to prevent ias occurrence in n2000 sites the accessibility to protected sites seems to be a relevant factor explaining the ias occurrence it is imperative to improve the monitoring quality and updating of ias data within the network and the surrounding areas to prevent new invasions and the worsening of current negative ias impacts,2018,0.273
Predicting the risk of aquatic plant invasions in Europe: How climatic factors and anthropogenic activity influence potential species distributions,predicting where species invasions will occur is one of the greatest challenges in conservation freshwater ecosystems are very vulnerable to the introduction of non native species for two reasons 1 there are many routes of introduction by which non natives can arrive in freshwater systems and 2 freshwater systems are heavily impacted by a wide variety of human activities non native aquatic plants can have harmful effects if they change habitat conditions alter ecosystem functioning and or become key primary producers in invaded ecosystems in this study we focused on the potential distribution of non native aquatic plants in europe the main objectives were to 1 identify environmentally suitable areas into which focal species could potentially spread 2 generate a combined risk map for all the focal species and for the ten most harmful species in europe and 3 identify the main physicochemical characteristics of the areas at greatest risk the results revealed that the potential distributions of non native species were best predicted by climatic factors notably by temperature related variables anthropogenic activity was also a major contributor to the distribution patterns of all the non native species examined areas experiencing high levels of eutrophication a phenomenon that is strongly associated with anthropogenic activity were among those at greatest risk of invasions the approach presented here was intended to be broadly applicable for example it could be used to look at other taxonomic groups regions and or systems the overarching aim is to provide an effective basis for developing and implementing management and control strategies that can mitigate the effects of current invasions and prevent future ones,2018,0.36
Temporary freshwater wetlands floristics in central Mexico highlands,background mexico has a high diversity of aquatic and subaquatic plants that occur between 1 000 and 2 500 m of elevation although a larger proportion of aquatic plants is concentrated at lower altitudes temporary wetlands harbor close to 73 of the aquatic species in mexico these systems are under a strong anthropogenic pressure and suffer constant degradation questions i how many species grow in highland temporary wetlands ii are they floristically similar iii is there a latitudinal pattern of species richness studied groups charophyta pteridophyta angiosperms study site and years of study central mexico 39 wetlands from 2015 to 2016 methods we collected in 39 temporary wetlands for two years we made a presence absence list of species per locality and calculated floristic similarities and correlations between wetlands we include data characterizing life form plant use and conservation status results we found 126 species belonging to 80 genera and 38 families the richest families were cyperaceae asteraceae and poaceae as to genera eleocharis cyperus and juncus had more species species with the widest distributions were persicaria mexicana marsilea mollis luziola fluitans heteranthera peduncularis and nymphoides fallax we found five different life forms â all herbaceous including 27 threatened species 24 species with economic use 48 endemic species and 19 cosmopolitan species in addition we found 20 species recorded for the first time in some states included in our study and two species of eleocharis that might represent undescribed species the richest wetland harbors 40 species the poorest has only five wetlands were comparable to each other in species composition and species richness increases towards the south conclusions temporary wetlands harbor a high floristic diversity and are similar to each other lower latitudes host higher numbers of species,2018,0.999
"Bombax costatum (Malvaceae): state of knowns, unknowns and prospects in West Africa",introduction the red kapok tree bombax costatum is a tree species native to west africa most of its organs or plant parts are of medicinal food and economic importance literature the species is widely used for food and medicinal purposes and as timber yet b costatum is poorly studied and declining across its distribution range so far little has been achieved on this speciesâ conservation status genetic diversity breeding and domestication with the aim of synthesizing current knowledge and gaps and suggesting future research articles were searched in google scholar and web of science databases with relevant keywords on b costatum all articles found were critically read and analyzed for inclusion in the present review conclusions the current state of knowledge on taxonomy distribution ecology botanical description structural characteristics uses nutritional and phytochemical properties socioeconomic importance propagation growth and development threats and conservation of b costatum have been reviewed knowledge gaps were identified and research and development avenues were suggested and discussed for conservation of this species,2018,0.282
Genetic and climatic approaches reveal effects of Pleistocene refugia and climatic stability in an old giant of the Neotropical Dry Forest,neotropical dry forests are important biodiversity hotspots characterized by intermediate to high levels of species richness and endemism a possible explanation for these characteristics is that such forests have been less affected by drastic glacial impacts than other biomes using two approaches geo statistical phylogeography based on two chloroplast markers and multi algorithm based niche modelling for the present and for the past we explored if during glacial periods the geographical range of bulnesia sarmientoi was stable or underwent expansions or retractions in space and time and if there is a relationship among past climatic refugia the current climatic optimum and genetic diversity we estimated that b sarmientoi would have diverged from other bulnesia at the beginning of the pliocene 5 mya with diversification of the current lineages occurring in the pleistocene 1 4â 1 1 mya our results suggest that dry forests underwent population expansion events during the glacial periods whereas they would have undergone population stasis during interglacial periods furthermore we identified a putative refugial area in the dry chaco that has been climatically stable through time consistent with the area of highest genetic diversity and with the spatial location of the climatic optimum of the focal species,2018,0.592
"Effects of habitat suitability for vectors, environmental factors and host characteristics on the spatial distribution of the diversity and prevalence of haemosporidians in waterbirds from three Brazilian wetlands",background wetlands are ecosystems in which vectors of avian haemosporidians live and reproduce and where waterbirds join to breed in colonies brazil has wetlands at different latitudes which enables testing the influence of the ecological factors on the prevalence and diversity of haemosporidians we identified avian haemosporidians in waterbird species in three wetlands and investigated the effects of vector habitat suitability landscape and host characteristics on the diversity and prevalence of these parasites methods we created a map with the probability of occurrence of avian haemosporidian vectors using maximum entropy modelling based on references addressing species known to be vectors of haemosporidians in birds in brazil we determined the prevalence and diversity index of haemosporidians in the great egret ardea alba n 129 and roseate spoonbill platalea ajaja n 180 and compared the findings to data for the wood stork mycteria americana n 199 results we report the first record of plasmodium in the family threskiornithidae four lineages in the roseate spoonbill which also presented one lineage of haemoproteus in the family ardeidae we found three plasmodium lineages in the great egret the similar habitat suitability for vectors found in three wetlands explains the pattern of haemosporidian diversity determined for great egret and wood stork populations comparisons of haemosporidian diversity within each waterbird species and between regions showed a higher level in the central western roseate spoonbill population than in the northern population p 0 021 removing the host effect we discussed the results obtained in terms of characteristics of the pantanal region comparisons of plasmodium spp prevalence among waterbird species within the same wetland showed higher level in roseate spoonbill 74 than those found in the great egret 21 and wood stork 11 excluding the environmental effect we interpreted result focusing host characteristics that favour infection time required for nestlings to be covered by feathers and migratory behaviour conclusions the map of habitat suitability showed that wetlands located in a 30â latitudinal range offer similar conditions for avian vectors species and diversity of haemosporidians the lineages described in waterbirds were previously identified in birds of prey as plasmodium paranucleophilum,2018,0.97
"Current and Projected Distribution of the Red-Eared Slider Turtle, Trachemys scripta elegans, in the Great Lakes Basin",exotic species introduced through the pet trade pose an ecological and economic threat to the great lakes region trachemys scripta elegans the red eared slider turtle is a globally invasive species already present in the great lakes basin whose distribution and potential for spread is poorly known we assembled a detailed dataset on t s elegans occurrence and establishment in the region and created a niche model to assess the potential for the spread of this species under current climate conditions and future scenarios we found t s elegans occurs throughout the great lakes basin and suitable area will likely increase from 26 to 39â 50 of the entire basin by 2050 with lake erie at greatest risk with ∠95 of its total area suitable for t s elegans by 2050 these findings highlight the need for further research to assess impacts of t s elegans on native species and proactive efforts to prevent its further spread,2018,0.672
"Potential distribution of an invasive pest, Euplatypus parallelus, in China as predicted by Maxent",background euplatypus parallelus is a highly polyphagous invasive pest native to central and south america in recent years it has invaded many countries in africa and asia and resulted in considerable economic loss in china it has been reported to have invaded taiwan and been also recorded in hainan province until now there has been no invasion into the mainland in order to better manage this invasive pest here we predicted the suitable area of e parallelus in china by maxent model results maxent model predicted the potential distribution of e parallelus with a test auc value of 0 962 and training auc value of 0 978 temperature seasonality bio 04 annual temperature range bio 07 annual precipitation bio 12 and mean temperature of the coldest quarter bio 11 were the strongest predictors of e parallelus distribution with 32 1 19 8 15 and 10 4 contributions respectively the potential suitable area for e parallelus was mainly distributed in the southeastern coast the southwestern border and taiwan and hainan provinces in china and the highly suitable areas were located in the northern coast of hainan province and the southwestern coast of taiwan province this pest prefers a stable warm and rainy climate which indicates that tropics and subtropics would be its ideal area conclusion euplatypus parallelus has invaded hainan and taiwan in china measures should be taken to prevent it from spreading on these two islands moreover strict quarantine biological study and control measures are necessary to block its spread invasion and damages especially in these climateâ suitable areas,2018,0.198
Boswellia serrata Adulteration,the goal of this bulletin is to provide timely infor mation and or updates on issues of adulteration of boswellia serrata burseraceae to the international herbal industry and extended natural products community in general it is intended to complement the previously published works with information on b serrata adulteration by presenting new data on the occurrence of adulteration the market situ ation and consequences for the consumer and the industry,2018,0.271
Environmental predictors of the distribution of Caspian Green Lizard,within its range the caspian green lizard lacerta strigata occurs in the elburz mountains northern iran at elevations from below sea level to approximately 2700 m to determine the environmental factors of the distribution of this lizard we used an ensemble approach to model the distribution of caspian green lizard lacerta strigata in iran using four algorithms generalized boosted model maximum entropy generalized linear model random forest results revealed that low altitude habitats between elburz mountain and caspian sea are the most suitable habitats for the species the normalized differences vegetation index ndvi annual precipitation both with positive relationships and altitude with negative relationship were the most important environmental variables influencing distribution of the species ndvi was the most important variables probably because it is an indicator of plant productivity which presumably influences the availability of food resources such as insects we also tested validity of an old distribution record for the species in southwestern iran near shiraz the results showed that southwestern iran is not ecologically suitable for the species as our results highlighted that ndvi strongly affect distribution of the species we suggest protection of vegetation cover in the habitat of the species for conservation of lacerta strigata,2018,0.75
IMPORTANT WEBSITES FOR CONDUCTING RESEARCH IN PLANT TAXONOMY,the free online dictionary defines â websiteâ as a group of interconnected world wide web www pages usually including a homepage general located on the same server and prepared and maintained as a collection of online information by an individual company educational institution government or organization on a particular subject a website has unique web address and can be accessed through a public internet protocol ip network such as the internet or a private local area network lan by using a uniform resource locator url that identifies the particular site there is a wide range of websites according to 2014 web server survey there were about 1 billion websites due to rapid development in internet industry the access to web resources and scientific materials has now become very quick and easy there are many academic and research websites that provide information on a range of topics in science one can get information on any topic pertaining to science through academic search engines however one should rightly recognise websites of good quality for authentic and reliable information this chapter provides information on some of the important websites in plant taxonomy for students researchers and experts in the field the primary goal of these taxonomic websites is to provide easy access to various relevant resources which are indispensable for taxonomic research the links of some of the taxonomic websites have been provided here in four different headings which would be helpful to students and researchers to carry out research in taxonomy efficiently the information provided here have been taken from various websites particularly http stories rbge org uk archives 1002,2018,0.153
DNA barcoding Alaskan willow rosette gall makers (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae: Rabdophaga),members of the rabdophaga rosaria group form conspicuous rosette galls on a variety of willow salix spp hosts collet 2002 amendt 2003 and have a holarctic distribution gall formation halts elongation of willow stems and alters the morphology and chemical makeup of host tissues gailite et al 2005 samsone et al 2011 ecologically these flies are a keystone species for a community of insects associated with rose galls including multiple parasitoid hyperparasitoid and commensal species van hezewijk and roland 2003 collet 2006 skuhravã and thurã czy 2007 the larvae serve as food for chickadees and tits which pick them out of galls in winter van hezewijk and roland 2003 nyman et al 2011 figure 1 the galls themselves are avoided by moose kenai national wildlife refuge staff 1981 ford et al 1995 rea 2012 and snowshoe hares ford et al 1995 the taxonomy of north american members of this group is problematic although gagnã 1989 provided a key and illustrations to some members of this group the only descriptions available are the original descriptions of osten sacken 1862 walsh 1864 osten sacken 1878 and packard 1869 which do not enable separation of the species except through willow host species and gall morphology also north american species have not been compared to palearctic species through a literature search for species that form rosette or rosette like galls on willows we found a total of nine named rabdophaga species rabdophaga clavifex kieffer 1891 rabdophaga jaapi rã bsaamen 1916 rabdophaga rosaria loew 1850 and rabdophaga rosariella kieffer 1897 from the palearctic and rabdophaga salicisbrassicoides packard 1869 rabdophaga saliciscoryloides osten sacken 1878 rabdophaga salicisgnaphaloides osten sacken 1878 rabdophaga salicisrhodoides osten sacken 1878 and rabdophaga strobiloides osten sacken 1862 from the nearctic we sought to determine whether one polyphagous species or multiple species of rabdophaga caused rosette galls on southcentral alaskan willow species using dna barcodes we also wanted to relate these entities to described rabdophaga species where possible,2018,0.996
Evolutionary and demographic correlates of Pleistocene coastline changes in the Sicilian wall lizard Podarcis wagleriana,aim emergence of coastal lowlands during pleistocene ice ages might have provided conditions for glacial expansions demographic and spatial rather than contraction of coastal populations of temperate species here we tested these predictions in the insular endemic sicilian wall lizard podarcis wagleriana location sicily and neighbouring islands methods we sampled 179 individuals from 45 localities across the whole range of p wagleriana we investigated demographic and spatial variations through time using bayesian coalescent models bayesian phylogeographic reconstruction extended bayesian skyline plots isolationâ withâ migration models based on multilocus dna sequence data we used species distribution modelling to reconstruct present and past habitat suitability results we found two main lineages distributed in the east and west portions of the current species range and a third lineage restricted to a small area in the north of sicily multiple lines of evidence from palaeogeographic shorelines palaeoclimatic species distribution models and multilocus genetic data demographic and spatial bayesian reconstructions indicate that these lineages originated in distinct refugia located in the northâ western and southâ eastern coastal lowlands during middle pleistocene interglacial phases and came into secondary contact following demographic and spatial expansions during the last glacial phase main conclusions this scenario of interglacial contraction and glacial expansion is in sharp contrast with patterns commonly observed in temperate species on the continent but parallels recent findings on other mediterranean island endemics such a reverse expansionâ contraction ec dynamic has been likely associated with glacial increases of climatically suitable coastal lowlands suggesting this might be a general pattern in mediterranean island species and also in other coastal regions strongly affected by glacial marine regressions during glacial episodes this study provides explicit predictions and some methodological recommendations for testing the reverse ec model in other region and taxa,2018,0.844
BRYOPHYTE AND LICHEN DISTRIBUTION IN URBAN FORESTS OF RIGA CITY LIMITS,forests are among the major contributors of biodiversity in riga city limits representing potential habitats and substrates for bryophytes and lichens bryophytes and lichens were studied in 82 forest stands from seven stand types dry pinus sylvestris forest wet pinus sylvestris forest wet deciduous forest dry deciduous forest nemoral forest dry mixed forest wet mixed forest of riga city limits the random walk procedure was applied and bryophyte and lichen data were analyzed in relation to forest stand age area type and heterogeneity in total 99 bryophyte and 60 lichen species were found from which 27 bryophyte and 28 lichen species were new to riga city limits bryophyte community structure was mostly explained by forest stand age and are lichen community structure was explained by forest stand age area and heterogeneity the results are important in long term nature conservation planning in urban forests,2018,0.577
Nunataks or massif de refuge? A phylogeographic study of Rhodiola crenulata (Crassulaceae) on the world’s highest sky islands,background quaternary climatic oscillations had tremendous effects on the current distribution of species here we aim to elucidate the glacial history of rhodiola crenulata a perennial herb almost exclusively restricted to rock crevices on mountain peaks and to test whether the nunatak or massif de refuge hypotheses could explain its distribution pattern results six haplotypes and six ribotypes were detected in the cpdna data set and the its data set respectively the divergence of r crenulata and its closest relatives was dated have occurred ca 0 65 mya during the naynayxungla glaciation on the qtp mismatch distribution analysis suggested that the species experienced a range expansion around 0 31 mya populations with high genetic and haplotype diversity were found on the qtp platform as well in the hengduan mountains the ecological niche modeling results showed that there were suitable habitats on both the qtp platform and in the hengduan mountains during the lgm conclusion our results support a scenario that both nunataks and the massif de refuge hypotheses could explain the distribution of r crenulata we also confirmed that quaternary climatic oscillations could promote plant speciation in some circumstances this study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the qtp plant lineages exhibited diverse reactions to the quaternary climatic oscillations,2018,0.434
Are Medicinal Plants Effective for Skin Cancer?,cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide with the number of cancer cases increasing drastically each year furthermore skin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in south africa australia and new zealand due to the high ultraviolet radiation natural therapies such as medicinal plants provide the possibility for the discovery of new cancer therapies in south africa ∠27 million individuals seek traditional medicine as their first choice of treatment and there are numerous examples of plants grown in south africa that are traditionally used for the treatment of skin cancer and its associated symptoms not only is there an increase in interest for the use of medicinal plants to treat cancer but also through the years the role that an individual s diet can play in the progression of the disease has gained popularity functional foods and nutraceuticals offer a wide variety of phytochemicals that could contribute toward cancer chemoprevention and cancer therapy overall plants as a source of medicine offer the hope of finding alternative treatments to cancer,2018,0.025
Mapping species distribution ranges by means heterogeneus data,the mapping of species ranges is one of the most relevant and widely used pieces of information in the study of biodiversity knowing the distribution range of species is a fundamental first step us to understand the factors that determine those distributions as well as the patterns in the richness and abundance of species in a biogeographical context all this being necessary information to establish conservation strategies the distribution range is a conceptual construction that describes the area where a taxon occurs the basic units of information for constructing these ranges are spatially and temporally referenced observations of species i e records direct field sampling on very large spatial scales is rarely feasible as it requires significant resources and time therefore large scale biodiversity analyses tend to be based on a variety of data reporting information on species observations or distributions ranging from point location data obtained from databases or wildlife atlases to species distribution maps based on expert knowledge in spite of been essential our knowledge on the distribution of species is far from complete even for the best studied taxa given the great relevance of species distribution maps it is surprising to note that very little attention has been paid to analyse how these maps are affected by the quality of the baseline data and the diversity of methods used to construct them this is the central axis of the thesis which structured in four main chapters in chapter i we conducted a bibliographic review in order to obtain information from scientific publications that use species distribution ranges in their studies we noted how distribution ranges have been generated and identified which are the most commonly used methods to generate distribution ranges from georeferenced data along with the advantages and disadvantages provided by each of them most often researchers do not provide information on how ranges have been constructed the lack of explicit information on the data and methods used in the construction of distribution ranges severely affect the interpretation of results finally the methods commonly used to delineate the areas have been insufficiently evaluated we urge researchers to be explicit both in what they consider the ranges of distribution of species and in the methods they use to generate them this will allow for more robust comparisons between the ranges of distribution of species generated by different methods in chapter ii we assessed the accuracy of five geographic algorithms commonly used to delineate species ranges with the aim of providing guidelines to minimize type i error and maximize sensitivity of the resulting species ranges to this aim we generated hypothetical range areas with the same total surface but varying in shape number of fragments heterogeneity in fragment size and simulated sets of species records varying in numbers spatial distribution and presence of errors and biases the recommended algorithms have been adaptive local convex hull a locoh and kernel density estimation kde kde algorithm has the highest sensitivity and a locoh algorithm has the lowest type i error rate both behaved similarly well when describing range fragmentation we provide recommendations to minimize the effects of data quantity and quality and provide guidance to choose an algorithm when defining species distribution ranges based on species observations chapter iii of this thesis explores options for a systematic and replicable generation of range maps that take into account the different sources of variability and the exponential increase in the availability of species records we offer a unified and repeatable methodology for building species range maps which we compare with the existing maps of the international union for conservation of nature iucn the combination of iucn distribution maps with georeferenced species data available from the global biodiversity information facility gbif is a promising route to providing information on where mapped distributions are reliable and where they are uncertain lack of information or availability of information in certain areas makes it difficult to implement systematic approaches to the construction of distribution maps so we also reveal priority sites for lack of information or sampling effort on a global scale chapter iv assesses the variability in the description of species distribution ranges based on non systematic data gathering e g using records from available databases or on systematic and specific surveys as a case study we used the southern water vole arvicola sapidus in peninsular spain using the results of a citizen science initiative specifically focussed on this species and comparing them with those of a previous atlas the resulting distribution maps had notable differences which were related to identification errors and heterogeneous sampling effort in the non systematic dataset as well as to actual changes in range due to predation by invasive american mink the likelihood of commission errors increases in areas where there are species that may be confused with the water vole and by mink predation the probability of omission errors increases in areas with low sampling effort and the existence of rodents easily confused with the study species we emphasize the need to be cautious in using available information sources to generate range maps particularly in areas with little data or signs of heterogeneous spatial coverage in conclusion this thesis explores the different dimensions of species distribution maps and offers a necessary perspective to deal with problems posed by sciences such as ecology or conservation biology we also try to understand the nature of the uncertainty involved in distribution maps to help interpret existing results and guide future research the information metrics developed throughout this thesis could be incorporated into online tools that allow researchers and funding agencies to identify priority species and areas to improve information sources along with their associated distribution maps,2018,0.999
British phenological records indicate high diversity and extinction rates among late-summer-flying pollinators,the long term decline of wild and managed insect pollinators is a threat to both agricultural output and biodiversity and has been linked to decreasing floral resources further insight into the temporal relationships of pollinators and their flowering partners is required to inform conservation efforts here we examined the phenology of british i pollinator activity ii insect pollinated plant flowering and iii extinct and endangered pollinator and plant species over 1 million records were collated from the historical databases of three british insect monitoring organisations a global biodiversity database and an authoritative text covering the national flora almost two thirds 62 of pollinator species have peak flight observations during late summer july and august this was the case across three of the groups studied aculeate wasps 71 of species bees 60 and butterflies 72 the exception being hoverflies 49 when species geographical range a proxy for abundance was accounted for a clear late summer peak was clear across all groups by contrast there is marked temporal partitioning in the flowering of the major plant groups insect pollinated tree species blossoming predominantly during may 74 shrubs in june 69 and herbs in july 83 there was a positive correlation between the number of pollinator species on the wing and the richness of both flowering insect pollinated herbs and trees shrubs species per calendar month in addition significantly greater extinctions occurred in late summer flying pollinator species than expected 83 of extinct species vs 62 of all species this trend was driven primarily by bee extinctions 80 vs 60 and was not apparent in other groups we contend that this is principally due to declines in late summer resource supplies which are almost entirely provisioned by herbs a consequence of historical land use change we hypothesize that the seasonality of interspecific competition and the blooming of trees and mass flowering crops may have partially buffered spring flying pollinators from the impacts of historical change,2018,0.991
Automated Integration of Trees and Traits: A Case Study Using Paired Fin Loss Across Teleost Fishes,data synthesis required for large scale macroevolutionary studies is challenging with the current tools available for integration using a classic question regarding the frequency of paired fin loss in teleost fishes as a case study we sought to create automated methods to facilitate the integration of broad scale trait data with a sizable species level phylogeny similar to the evolutionary pattern previously described for limbs pelvic and pectoral fin reduction and loss are thought to have occurred independently multiple times in the evolution of fishes we developed a bioinformatics pipeline to identify the presence and absence of pectoral and pelvic fins of 12 582 species to do this we integrated a synthetic morphological supermatrix of phenotypic data for the pectoral and pelvic fins for teleost fishes from the phenoscape knowledgebase two presence absence characters for 3 047 taxa with a species level tree for teleost fishes from the open tree of life project 38 419 species the integration method detailed herein harnessed a new combined approach by utilizing data based on ontological inference as well as phylogenetic propagation to reduce overall data loss using inference enabled by ontology based annotations missing data were reduced from 98 0 to 85 9 and further reduced to 34 8 by phylogenetic data propagation these methods allowed us to extend the data to an additional 11 293 species for a total of 12 582 species with trait data the pectoral fin appears to have been independently lost in a minimum of 19 lineages and the pelvic fin in 48 though interpretation is limited by lack of phylogenetic resolution at the species level it appears that following loss both pectoral and pelvic fins were regained several 3 to many 14 times respectively focused investigation into putative regains of the pectoral fin all within one clade anguilliformes showed that the pectoral fin was regained at least twice following loss overall this study points to specific teleost clades where strategic phylogenetic resolution and genetic investigation will be necessary to understand the pattern and frequency of pectoral fin reversals,2018,0.728
Coupling Modern Portfolio Theory and Marxan enhances the efficiency of Lesser White-fronted Goose’s (Anser erythropus) habitat conservation,climate change and human activities cause uncertain changes to species biodiversity by altering their habitat the uncertainty of climate change requires planners to balance the benefit and cost of making conservation plan here optimal protection approach for lesser white fronted goose lwfg by coupling modern portfolio theory mpt and marxan selection were proposed mpt was used to provide suggested weights of investment for protected area pa and reduce the influence of climatic uncertainty while marxan was utilized to choose a series of specific locations for pa we argued that through combining these two commonly used techniques with the conservation plan including assets allocation and pa chosing the efficiency of rare birdâ s protection would be enhanced in mpt analyses the uncertainty of conservation outcome can be reduced while conservation effort was allocated in hunan jiangxi and yangtze river delta in marxan model the optimal location for habitat restorations based on existing nature reserve was identified clear priorities for the location and allocation of assets could be provided based on this research and it could help decision makers to build conservation strategy for lwfg,2018,0.178
"Northernmost record of triaenodon obesus (Rüppell, 1837) in the Eastern tropical pacific",this is the northernmost record of a whitetip reef shark triaenodon obesus in the eastern tropical pacific the shark was observed in magdalena bay mexico at a depth of 4 m and had a total length of 1 2â 1 5 m the habitat where the record was made is consistent with the conditions for the distribution of species the presence of t obesus in the area could be related to the protection of near natural areas and the seasonal bans on shark and ray fishing implemented in mexico since 2012,2018,0.482
Inventory of the free-living marine nematode species from el bibane lagoon (Tunisia),a detailed inventory of the free living nematodes of tunisia has been made for the northern part of tunisia but the southern part of the country is unexplored el bibane is the second largest lagoon in tunisia it is thus of high importance for future conservation actions but little is known about its biodiversity in this study we identified 71 nematode species belonging to 68 genera and 22 families richness was lowest in the central area of the lagoon where the highest percentages of mud and organic matter were found the number of species detected in this study is high compared to other transitional environments in the mediterranean basin but lower than those reported for north europe most of the species are typical of transitional environments or sediments rich in the fine fraction and detritus the richest families were cyatholaimidae and chromadoridae but the most frequently found species were xyalidae linhomoeidae and cyatholaimidae six of the species collected are new to science seven are new records for tunisian waters and four are new for the mediterranean basin this study adds also important information to the biogeography of the phylum because some of the species detected here were previously known only for other geographical regions species that currently appear endemic to the mediterranean sea include chromadorina metulata synonchiella edax paralongicyatholaimus mastigodes trichotheristus setifer and metalinhomoeus numidicus,2018,0.988
"Contrasting spatial, temporal and environmental patterns in observation and specimen based species occurrence data",species occurrence data records the location and time of an encounter with a species and is valuable for many aspects of ecological and evolutionary analyses a key distinction within species occurrence data is between 1 collected and preserved specimens that can be taxonomically validated i e natural history collections and 2 observations which are more error prone but richer in terms of number and spread of observations in this study we analyse the distribution in temporal spatial taxonomic and environmental coverage of specimen and observation based species occurrence data for land plants in norway a region with strong climatic and human population density gradients of 4 8 million species occurrence records the majority 78 were observations however there was a greater species richness in the specimen record n 4691 than in the observation record n 3193 and most species were recorded more as specimens than observations specimen data was on average older and collected later during the year both record types were highly influenced by a small number of prolific contributors the species most highly represented in the observation data set were widespread or invasive while in the specimen records taxonomically challenging species were overrepresented species occurrence records were unevenly spatially distributed both specimen and observation records were concentrated in regions of norway with high human population density and with high temperatures and precipitation but in different regions within norway observation and specimen records thus differ in taxonomic temporal spatial and environmental coverage for a well sampled group and study region potentially influencing the ecological inferences made from studies utilizing species occurrence data the distribution of observation data dominates the dataset so inferences of species diversity and distributions do not correspond to the evolutionary or physiological knowledge of species which is based on specimen data we make recommendations for users of biodiversity data and collectors to better exploit the complementary strengths of these distinct biodiversity data types,2018,0.996
Trait-based approaches in rapidly changing ecosystems: A roadmap to the future polar oceans,polar marine regions are facing rapid changes induced by climate change with consequences for local faunal populations but also for overall ecosystem functioning goods and services yet given the complexity of polar marine ecosystems predicting the mode direction and extent of these consequences remains challenging trait based approaches are increasingly adopted as a tool by which to explore changes in functioning but trait information is largely absent for the high latitudes some understanding of traitâ function relationships can be gathered from studies at lower latitudes but given the uniqueness of polar ecosystems it is questionable whether these relationships can be directly transferred here we discuss the challenges of using trait based approaches in polar regions and present a roadmap of how to overcome them by following six interlinked steps 1 forming an active international research network 2 standardizing terminology and methodology 3 building and crosslinking trait databases 4 conducting coordinated trait function experiments 5 implementing traits into models and finally 6 providing advice to management and stakeholders the application of trait based approaches in addition to traditional species based methods will enable us to assess the effects of rapid ongoing changes on the functioning of marine polar ecosystems implementing our roadmap will make these approaches more easily accessible to a broad community of users and consequently aid understanding of the future polar oceans,2018,0.105
"Pleistocene glaciation explains the disjunct distribution of the Chestnut-vented Nuthatch (Aves, Sittidae)",pleistocene climatic oscillations have played an important role in shaping many speciesâ current distributions in recent years there has been increasing interest in studying the effects of glacial periods on east asian birds integrated approaches allow us to study past distribution range changes due to pleistocene glaciation and how these changes have affected current population genetic structure especially for species with unusual distribution patterns the wuyi disjunction is the disjunct distribution of birds between the wuyi mountains in southâ eastern china and southâ western china although several species exhibit the wuyi disjunction the process behind this unusual distribution pattern has remained relatively unstudied therefore we used the chestnutâ vented nuthatch sitta nagaensis as a model species to investigate the possible causes of the wuyi disjunction based on phylogenetic analyses with three mitochondrial and six nuclear regions the wuyi population of the chestnutâ vented nuthatch was closely related to populations in midâ sichuan from which it diverged approximately 0 1 million years ago despite the long geographical distance between them over 1 300 km in contrast geographically close populations in midâ and southern sichuan were genetically divergent from each other more than half a million years ecological niche modelling suggested that the chestnutâ vented nuthatch has experienced dramatic range expansions from last interglacial period to last glacial maximum with some range retraction following the last glacial period we propose that the wuyi disjunction of the chestnutâ vented nuthatch was most likely due to recent range expansion from southâ western china during the glacial period followed by postglacial range retraction,2018,0.749
Inferring the biogeography and demographic history of an endangered butterfly in Europe from multilocus markers,the genetic structure of a species is influenced by its history and by current gene flow using a population genomics approach we infer the demographic history of the false ringlet coenonympha oedippus in europe based on 1594 genome wide double digest restriction site associated dna sequencing loci from 96 individuals 32 localities sampled throughout the fragmented species range in contrast to the weak geographical structure in mitochondrial dna a clear nuclear differentiation was observed between the westernmost atlantic localities those from the western alps and all other sampled localities mountain ridges were the main factor explaining population divergence at the european scale while isolation by distance was found at a regional scale we applied approximate bayesian computation in a coalescent framework to infer past and contemporary demographic parameters the best scenario suggested a first divergence between french and all other european populations around 66000 years ago such that the species survived the last glacial maximum in at least two distinct areas separated by the alps this scenario fits species distribution modelling identifying variation of suitable areas with past climatic modifications the atlantic and western alps lineages separated about 6000 years ago strong population decline was inferred in these lineages during historical time in agreement with multiple records of recent decline of this species in europe,2018,0.879
Emerging opportunities and challenges for passive acoustics in ecological assessment and monitoring,1 highâ throughput environmental sensing technologies are increasingly central to global monitoring of the ecological impacts of human activities in particular the recent boom in passive acoustic sensors has provided efficient nonâ invasive and taxonomically broad means to study wildlife populations and communities and monitor their responses to environmental change however until recently technological costs and constraints have largely confined research in passive acoustic monitoring pam to a handful of taxonomic groups e g bats cetaceans birds often in relatively smallâ scale proofâ ofâ concept studies 2 the arrival of lowâ cost openâ source sensors is now rapidly expanding access to pam technologies making it vital to evaluate where these tools can contribute to broader efforts in ecology and biodiversity research here we synthesise and critically assess the current emerging opportunities and challenges for pam for ecological assessment and monitoring of both species populations and communities 3 we show that terrestrial and marine pam applications are advancing rapidly facilitated by emerging sensor hardware the application of machine learning innovations to automated wildlife call identification and work towards developing acoustic biodiversity indicators however the broader scope of pam research remains constrained by limited availability of reference sound libraries and openâ source audio processing tools especially for the tropics and lack of clarity around the accuracy transferability and limitations of many analytical methods 4 in order to improve possibilities for pam globally we emphasise the need for collaborative work to develop standardised survey and analysis protocols publiclyâ archived sound libraries multiâ year audio datasets and a more robust theoretical and analytical framework for monitoring vocalising animal communities,2018,0.28
"On the Iberian endemism Eurylophella iberica Keffermuller and Da Terra 1978 (Ephemeroptera, Ephemerellidae): current and future potential distributions, and assessment of the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network on its protection",eurylophella iberica keffermã ller and da terra 1978 is an endemic insect species of the iberian peninsula whose distribution has been poorly studied to date with rather old and scattered records here we compiled all existing distribution records and add new records from recent sampling activities we also used this updated distributional information and environmental data climate and geology to estimate both current and future potential distributions in different climate change scenarios we found that currently ca 50 of the total iberian region could present suitable environmental conditions for e iberica all the iberian peninsula save the most eastern and mediterranean areas however the potential distributions estimated when considering future climate change scenarios showed a marked reduction in the areas with suitable environmental conditions for the species especially in the south the northwest part of the iberian peninsula is a crucial zone for the future survival of this endemic species we also found that most populations that occur in areas with suitable both current and future environmental conditions fall outside the natura 2000 network of protected areas our results represent the first attempt to estimate the potential distribution of this endemic species providing important insights for its conservation,2018,0.753
Species distribution models and empirical test: Comparing predictions with well-understood geographical distribution of Bothrops alternatus in Argentina,species distribution models sdms estimate the geographical distribution of species although with several limitations due to sources of inaccuracy and biases empirical tests arose as the most important steps in scientific knowledge to assess the efficiency of model predictions which are poorly rigorous in sdms a good approach to the empirical distribution ed of a species can be obtained from comprehensive empirical knowledge that is wellâ understood distributions gathered from large amount of data generated with appropriate spatial and temporal samples coverage the aims of this study were to a compare different sdms predictions with an ed and b evaluate if fuzzy global matching fgm could be used as an index to compare sdms predictions and ed six algorithms with 5 and 20 variables were used to assess their accuracy in predicting the ed of the venomous snake bothrops alternatus viperidae its entire distribution is known thanks to thorough field surveys across argentina with 1 767 records ed was compared with sdms predictions using map comparison kit sdms predictions showed important biases in all methods used from 70 subâ estimation to 40 overâ estimation of ed bioclim predicted â ˆ31 of b alternatus ed domain predicted 99 of ed but overâ estimated 40 of the area glm with five variables calculated 75 of ed while genetic algorithm for ruleâ set prediction showed â ˆ60 of ed the last two presenting overpredictions in areas with favorable climatic conditions but not inhabited by the species maxent and rf were the only methods to detect isolated populations in the southern distribution of b alternatus although sdms proved useful in making predictions about species distribution predictions need validation with expert maps knowledge and ed moreover fgm showed a good performance as an index with values similar to true skill statistic so that it could be used to relate ed and sdms predictions,2018,0.807
"Effects of Land-Use Modifications in the Potential Distribution of Endemic Bird Species Associated With Tropical Dry Forest in Guerrero, Southern Mexico",land use changes are one of the main causes of biodiversity loss it would be expected that species with restricted habitats and distribution should experience the main negative effects of the modification of natural environments to exemplify the potential effect of land transformation on restricted species we focused on the potential habitat loss of six endemic and quasi endemic species to mexico ortalis poliocephala melanerpes chrysogenys trogon citreolus pheugopedius felix uropsila leucogastra and arremonops rufivirgatus whose distributions include the state of guerrero in southern mexico species distribution models were generated for each species and potential habitat loss was evaluated using three temporal vegetation and land use maps 1997 2003 and 2013 these analyses were then repeated only for tropical dry forest one of the most dominant ecosystem in the state of guerrero and with the most severe transformation rates the potential habitat of all species decreased considerably particularly for the last periods the habitats for m chrysogenys and t citreolus were reduced by 78 in 2013 the potential habitats of u leucogastra and p felix decreased to a lesser extent during the three periods the reduction tendencies were higher for dry forest than for the remaining habitats which were ranged from 88 to 93 for u leucogastra and m chrysogenys respectively these results suggest major negative potential effects of land transformation on the endemic speciesâ habitat,2018,0.859
Saving Freshwater Biodiversity Research Data,context data produced by publicly financed research projects are often lost and seldom curated or published in open access reporsitories objectives 1 to facilitate exchange of expertise in data mobilisation publishing management etc 2 to promote data exchange and re use of data building on existing standards and tools in order to create homogeneous data series 3 to ensure the visibility and correct attribution of data contributors by publishing data online along with an accompanying meta data paper and or synthetic scientific paper and 4 to develop a sustainable solution for future data management by implementing data policy and data management plans and by planning future activities in terms of data mobilisation recovery and digitisation results key outcomes include 1 publication of a wide range of meta datasets on freshwater biodiversity stemming from research in belgium e g b blooms bioman pondscape manscape etc 2 availability of tools and recommendations for future data management and publication and 3 manuscripts based on the integrated analysis of published databases as a showcase for the value of data mobilisation and integration conclusions safred formulates recommendations regarding data management and data publication that can have a wide application for the management of future projects on aquatic biodiversity especially belspo but also other funding agencies can apply these best practices in data management this will support the golden rule that reliable data resulting from publicly funded research projects should never become lost and should be made accessible in open access in standardised formats,2018,0.033
Inter-basin water transfers and the expansion of aquatic invasive species,inter basin water transfers ibwt are recognized as one of the major pathways of freshwater invasion they provide a direct link between previously isolated catchments and may modify the habitat conditions of the receiving waters such that they become more favourable for the establishment of invasive species combined ibwt and invasive species will intensify the stress upon native species and ecosystems using the severn and thames rivers two of the largest river systems in great britain as a case study here we assess the potential influence of ibwt on the expansion of invasive species and thus their impact on biodiversity conservation the thames valley is subject to extensive water abstraction and an increasing population means that supplemented flow from the river severn is being considered multi scale suitability models based on climate and water chemistry respectively provided novel evidence that there is serious risk for further spread of invasive species in the focus area particularly of the quagga mussel a recent invader of the thames river native freshwater mussels are particularly vulnerable to changing environmental conditions and may suffer the decrease in alkalinity and increase in sedimentation associated with an ibwt from the lower severn to the upper thames regional models suggest considerable overlap between the areas suitable for three vulnerable native freshwater mussels and the expansion of invasive species that negatively impact upon the native mussels this study illustrates the use of novel spatially explicit techniques to help managers make informed decisions about the risks associated with introducing aquatic invasive species under different engineering scenarios such information may be especially important under new legislation e g eu invasive species regulation no 1143 2014 which increases the responsibility of water managers to contain and not transfer invasive species into new locations,2018,0.888
Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota,islands harbour evolutionary and ecologically unique biota which are currently disproportionately threatened by a multitude of anthropogenic factors including habitat loss invasive species and climate change native forests on oceanic islands are important refugia for endemic species many of which are rare and highly threatened long term monitoring schemes for those biota and ecosystems are urgently needed i to provide quantitative baselines for detecting changes within island ecosystems ii to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation and management actions and iii to identify general ecological patterns and processes using multiple island systems as repeated â natural experimentsâ in this contribution we call for a global island monitoring scheme gims for monitoring the remaining native island forests using bryophytes vascular plants selected groups of arthropods and vertebrates as model taxa as a basis for the gims we also present new optimized monitoring protocols for bryophytes and arthropods that were developed based on former standardized inventory protocols effective inventorying and monitoring of native island forests will require i permanent plots covering diverse ecological gradients e g elevation age of terrain anthropogenic disturbance ii a multiple taxa approach that is based on standardized and replicable protocols iii a common set of indicator taxa and community properties that are indicative of native island forestsâ welfare building on and harmonized with existing sampling and monitoring efforts iv capacity building and training of local researchers collaboration and continuous dialogue with local stakeholders and v long term commitment by funding agencies to maintain a global network of native island forest monitoring plots,2018,0.094
De-icing salt contamination reduces urban tree performance in structural soil cells,salts used for de icing roads and sidewalks in northern climates can have a significant impact on water quality and vegetation sub surface engineering systems such as structural soil cells can regulate water runoff and pollutants and provide the necessary soil volume and irrigation to grow trees however the ability of such systems to manage de icing salt contamination and the impact of this contamination on the trees growing in them have not been evaluated we report on an field investigation of de icing salt contamination in structural cells in two street revitalization projects in toronto canada and the impact of this contamination on tree performance we analyzed soil chemistry and collected tree attributes these data were examined together to understand the effect of salinity on tree mortality rates and foliar condition data collected from continuous soil salinity loggers from april to june for one of the two sites were used to determine whether there was a long term accumulation of salts in the soils results for both sites indicate that both sites displayed high salinity and alkalinity with levels elevated beyond those suggested before those reported to cause negative tree effects for one site trees that were alive and trees that had a better foliar condition had significantly lower levels of soil salinity and alkalinity than other trees high salinity and alkalinity in the soil were also associated with lower nutrient levels for both sites although tests for salinity accumulation in the soils of one site were negative a longer monitoring of the soil conditions within the soil cells is warranted despite structural cells being increasingly utilized for their dual role in storm water management and tree establishment there may be a considerable trade off between storm water management and urban forest function in northern climates where de icing salt application continues to be commonplace,2018,0.063
Congruence across taxa and spatial scales: Are we asking too much of species data?,aim biodiversity monitoring and conservation are extremely complex and surrogate taxa may represent proxies to test methods and solutions however crossâ taxon correlations in species diversity i e crossâ taxon congruence may vary widely with spatial scale our goal is to assess how crossâ taxon congruence varies with spatial scale in european temperate forests we expect that congruence in species diversity increases when shifting from fine to coarse spatial scales with differences between species richness and composition and across pairs of taxonomic groups location european temperate forests time period present major taxa studied vascular plants bryophytes birds epiphytic lichens saproxylic beetles and woodâ inhabiting fungi methods we used field data 354 plots across 23 sites encompassing italy france and hungary with species information for six taxonomic groups we accounted separately for spatial grain the size of elementary sampling unit and extent the geographical area included in the survey and evaluated the relationships within all the possible pairs of taxa results although no pair of taxa had its species richness consistently correlated across scales we found no changes in the direction of correlations when analysing species composition however when increasing grain and extent we did find a general increase in the magnitude of correlations in species composition and partial changes in significance with plants having the highest number of significant correlations main conclusions species richness congruence among taxa is strongly scale dependent owing to differences in the relative contribution of largeâ and smallâ scale processes across taxa crossâ taxon congruence in species composition is scale dependent only for its magnitude because lifeâ history traits of individual species make responses to environmental factors similar across scales forest monitoring should consider multiâ taxon sampling and limit the use of surrogates at specific spatial scales especially for species richness sampling plant species composition in scattered plots across different sites may effectively summarize the whole community composition,2018,0.962
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current isolates and connects: Structured circumpolarity in the sea star Glabraster antarctica,aim the antarctic circumpolar current acc connects benthic populations by transporting larvae around the continent but also isolates faunas north and south of the antarctic convergence we test circumpolar panmixia and dispersal across the antarctic convergence barrier in the benthic sea star glabraster antarctica location the southern ocean and south atlantic ocean with comprehensive sampling including the magellanic region scotia arc antarctic peninsula ross sea and east antarctica methods the cytochrome c oxidase subunit i coi gene n 285 and the internal transcribed spacer region 2 its2 n 33 were sequenced we calculated haplotype networks for each genetic marker and estimated population connectivity and the geographic distribution of genetic structure using î st for coi data results glabraster antarctica is a single circumâ antarctic species with instances of gene flow between distant locations despite the homogenizing potential of the acc population structure is high î st 0 5236 and some subpopulations are genetically isolated genetic breaks in the magellanic region do not align with the antarctic convergence in contrast with prior studies connectivity patterns in east antarctic sites are not uniform with some regional isolation and some surprising affinities to the distant magellanic and scotia arc regions main conclusions despite gene flow over extraordinary distances there is strong phylogeographic structuring and genetic barriers evident between geographically proximate regions e g shag rocks and south georgia circumpolar panmixia is rejected although some subpopulations show a circumpolar distribution steppingâ stone dispersal occurs within the scotia arc but does not appear to facilitate connectivity across the antarctic convergence the patterns of genetic connectivity in antarctica are complex and should be considered in protected area planning for antarctica,2018,0.72
Historical and event-based bioclimatic suitability predict regional forest vulnerability to compound effects of severe drought and bark beetle infestation,vulnerability to climate change and particularly to climate extreme events is expected to vary across species ranges thus we need tools to standardize the variability of regional climatic legacy and extreme climate across populations and species extreme climate events e g droughts can erode populations close to the limits of speciesâ climatic tolerance populations in climatic core locations may also become vulnerable because they have developed a greater demand for resources i e water that cannot be enough satisfied during periods of scarcity these mechanisms can become exacerbated in tree populations when combined with antagonistic biotic interactions such as insect infestation we used climatic suitability indices derived from species distribution models sdms to standardize the climatic conditions experienced across pinus edulis populations in south western north america during a historical period 1972 2000 and during an extreme event 2001 2007 when the compound effect of hot drought and bark beetle infestation caused widespread die off and mortality pinus edulis climatic suitability diminished dramatically during the die off period with remarkable variation between years p edulis die off occurred mainly in sites that experienced lower climatic suitability during the drought but also where climatic suitability was higher during the historical period the combined effect of historically high climatic suitability and a marked decrease in the climatic suitability during the drought best explained the range wide mortality lagged effects of climatic suitability loss in previous years and co occurrence of juniperus monosperma also explained p edulis die off in particular years overall the study shows that past climatic legacy likely determining acclimation together with competitive interactions plays a major role in responses to extreme drought it also provides a new approach to standardize the magnitude of climatic variability across populations using sdms improving our capacity to predict population s or speciesâ vulnerability to climatic change,2018,0.787
The role of elevated atmospheric CO2 and increased fire in Arctic amplification of temperature during the Early to mid-Pliocene,abstract the mid pliocene is a valuable time interval for understanding the mechanisms that determine equilibrium climate at current co2 concentrations one intriguing but not fully understood feature of the early to mid pliocene climate is the amplified arctic temperature response current models underestimate the degree of warming in the pliocene arctic and validation of proposed feedbacks is limited by scarce terrestrial records of climate and environment as well as discrepancies in current co2 proxy reconstructions here we reconstruct the co2 and summer temperature from a re dated 3 9 1 5 minus 0 5ma sub fossil fen peat deposit on west central ellesmere island canada and investigate fire as a potential feedback to arctic amplification of warming during the mid pliocene average co2 was determined using isotope ratios of mosses to be 440 plusmn 50ppm the estimate for average mean summer temperature is 15 4â 0 8â c using specific bacterial membrane lipids i e branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers macro charcoal was present in all samples from this pliocene section with notably higher charcoal concentration in the upper part of the sequence this change in charcoal was synchronous with a change in vegetation that saw fire promoting taxa increase in abundance paleovegetation reconstructions are consistent with warm summer temperatures relatively low summer precipitation and an incidence of fire comparable to fire adapted boreal forests of north america or potentially central siberia to our knowledge this study represents the furthest northern evidence of fire during the pliocene and highlights the important role of forest fire in the ecology and climatic processes of the pliocene high arctic the results provide evidence that terrestrial fossil localities in the pliocene high arctic were probably formed during warm intervals that coincided with relatively high co2 concentrations that supported productive biotic communities this study indicates that interactions between paleovegetation and paleoclimate were mediated by fire in the high arctic during the pliocene even though co2 concentrations were only 30ppm higher than modern,2018,0.096
Riding invasion waves: Spatial and temporal patterns of the invasive Lemna minuta from its arrival to its spread across Europe,in europe the duckweed lemna minuta is an invasive alien that can cause severe abiotic biotic alterations of lentic aquatic ecosystems its invasion history across europe was spatio temporally reconstructed from its various introductions to its present distribution by analyzing georeferenced historical records obtained from different sources bibliography national international digital databases fuzzy clustering a form of classification in which an element belongs to different clusters according to a degree of belonging was used to identify the most important temporal invasion events pulsations geographical representation of these pulsations in invasion maps simplified the detection of the main dynamics of l minuta movements across europe based on the analyses of the historical data five main invasion pulsations were identified 1965 1982 1991 2000 2010 invasions in europe began along the atlantic coasts around the 1950sâ 1960s around the 1980s l minuta spread extensively across the united kingdom and central europe after this it started to invade southern and also eastern europe mainly stabilizing around the 2000s in the last decade l minuta consolidated its occurrence in western and central europe while it continues to colonize new mediterranean and eastern european regions this analysis type is effective in determining spatial temporal dynamics of invasive alien plants using georeferenced historical data and it also offers insight into the behavior of a biological invader by identifying the main invasion routes and areas most susceptible to future invasion this latter information can be useful for development of management strategies for preventing invasions and conserving aquatic ecosystems potentially under threat,2018,0.191
"Vitrea clingmani Dali in Pilsbry, 1900, a snail endemic to the summits of the Black Mountains and Great Craggy Mountains of North Carolina is now assigned to the …",collecting in wet leaf litter microhabitats in the great craggy mountains and black mountains of western north carolina uncovered juvenile shells and live adults of the rare snail vitrea clingmani dall in pilsbry 1900 this newly available material allows the description of the radula juvenile shell and reproductive system of this species providing characters for a phylogenetic analysis which suggests reassignment of the species from the genus glyphyalinia glyphyalus to pilsbryna this new placement is corroborated by coi sequence data surveys near the type locality expand the known range of pilsbryna clingmani and suggest this species is endemic to spruce fir and northern hardwood forests at elevations above 1500 m in the black mountains and contiguous great craggy mountains of western north carolina where it is further restricted to wet leaf litter microhabitats making it one of the most narrowly distributed snail species in eastern north america,2018,0.797
Is the prickly pear a ‘Tzabar’? Diversity and conservation of Israel’s migrant species,human assisted biotic migration is a hallmark of the anthropocene populations introduced outside their native ranges â migrant speciesâ have commonly been viewed as a threat to be addressed with lethal control programs israel has a long history of anthropogenic changes and conservation has typically focused on ameliorating direct human impacts rather than eradicating migrant species however this may be changing with the growing influence of invasion biology worldwide we conducted a review of the diversity conservation status and academic attitudes toward israelâ s migrant species ims we identified 199 plants and animals from 85 families that have immigrated into israel from across the globe and 122 species from 64 families considered native to israel that have emigrated to every bioregion and to two oceans although few species have become cosmopolitan the conservation status of most immigrant 84 9 and emigrant 55 7 species has not been assessed and even the native ranges of eleven immigrants 5 5 remains unknown of those assessed 27 of immigrants are threatened or decreasing in their native ranges and 62 of emigrants are globally decreasing or locally threatened and extinct after accounting for local extinctions immigration has increased israelâ s plant and vertebrate richness by 104 species israelâ s immigrants are increasingly being viewed from an invasion biology perspective with 76 of studies published in the past decade reaching over a quarter of local conservation publications incorporating principles of compassionate conservation could help foster a more socially acceptable and morally grounded approach to the immigrant wildlife of the middle east,2018,0.854
"New data on the southern Iberian serpentinophyte flora (Andalusia, Spain)",this work updates the existing list of obligate endemic serpentinophytes of the southern iberian peninsula serpentine ecosystems are developed on ultramafic outcrops which although rare have a worldwide distribution the highly evolved and specialized flora that manages to inhabit these harsh ecosystems includes a very specialized and highly evolved group of plants known as serpentinophytes serpentinophytes are linked exclusively or almost exclusively to serpentine ecosystems the existing list of obligate serpentinophytes obligate endemics which exist in the serpentine ecosystems of the southern iberian peninsula spain consists of 22 taxa new fieldwork has been done resulting in the description of new soil endemics and the discovery of new populations of this specialized flora consequently bibliographical sources databases such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif and existing herbarium sheets have been revised crepis bermejana and galatella malacitana have been added to the list and are proposed to be evaluated as threatened teucrium reverchonii has been excluded from the list euphorbia flavicoma subsp bermejense and armeria villosa subsp serpentinicola required changes in nomenclature these nomenclatural changes imply changes in population allocations the revised list is composed of 23 obligate serpentinophyte taxa future conservation measures may include a complete iberian including portugal serpentinophytes checklist and corresponding revisions of statesâ legislation and red lists,2018,0.385
Spatial global assessment of the pest Bagrada hilaris (Burmeister) (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae): current and future scenarios,background the insect bagrada hilaris burmeister is considered an important pest worldwide mainly due to the serious economic losses and the wide number of zones invaded however the current and future spatial distribution of this pest and the total cropland area potentially affected has not yet been estimated here we aim to 1 estimate the potential geographic distribution of b hilaris 2 quantify the total area of croplands potentially affected worldwide and in two recently colonized zones california and chile 3 estimate the future changes in distribution range considering climate change scenarios results we found that b hilaris has high environmental suitability in mediterranean and arid regions potentially affecting 1 108 184 1 km2 of cropland worldwide the most affected continents were asia and america with 309 659 8 and 294 638 6 km2 of cropland under risk more than 50 of cropland areas are at risk in seven countries california and central chile reveals a 43 7 and 50 of their susceptible crops under high level of risk respectively climate change scenarios project an increase in the potential distribution of b hilaris worldwide america being the most affected continent conclusions our results provide a spatially explicit baseline to focus the efforts of prevention management and control of this pest worldwide,2018,0.236
Biotic interactions affecting habitat use of myrmecophilous butterflies in Northern Europe,halting the fast decrease of global biodiversity has become the major challenge facing conservation biologists today populations of numerous species are suffering significant declines or have even gone to extinction mainly as a consequence of human induced habitat destruction and fragmentation e g diamond et al 1989 sala et al 2000 tscharntke et al 2002 fahrig 2003 van dyck et al 2009 butchart et al 2010 moreover unambiguous evidence on adverse effects of climate change is rapidly accumulating e g dillon et al 2010 doak morris 2010 pereira et al 2010 beaumont et al 2011 parmesan et al 2011 with most major groups of organisms being affected e g dirzo raven 2003 parmesan 2006 hunter et al 2010 bellard et al 2012 tseng et al 2018 protection of habitats alone is often insufficient to prevent ongoing declines and extinctions e g thomas et al 2009 hallmann et al 2017 long term survival of populations may require knowledgeable management in focal habitats e g bergman 2002 thomas et al 2009 rosin et al 2011 weiss et al 2013 bubova et al 2015 kelly et al 2015 ma et al 2017 nevertheless caution must be taken while planning and implementing conservation strategies as species and populations may respond differently to environmental changes profound understanding of speciesâ ecology evolution and life histories is therefore vital in developing successful conservation strategies indeed fundamental life history differences may exist among closely related species e g gutierrez et al 2001 wahlberg et al 2002 wang et al 2004 kå rã si et al 2012 and even among distinct populations of the same species schtickzelle et al 2006 sielezniew et al 2010a 2010b 2010c tartally et al 2014 ignoring such ecological variation could easily lead to erroneous understanding of species habitat requirements and hamper their successful conservation e g thomas 1980 new et al 1995 pullin 1996 accordingly not rare are the cases when population declines have resulted from inappropriate management of otherwise healthy habitats balmer erhardt 2000 waring 2001 konviä ka et al 2008 narrowly specialized species engaged in complex interactions with other species are expected to be particularly vulnerable to environmental changes e g warren et al 2001 filz schmitt 2015 habitat degradation may affect such species either by impacting their habitat requirements directly or disrupting their interspecific interactions munday 2004 stefanescu et al 2011 edwards et al 2013 moreover conservation of such species can be further complicated by often considerable geographic variation in their ecology and habitat use e g thomas et al 1999 sielezniew stankiewicz 2008 casacci et al 2011 accounting for region specific ecological requirements is therefore essential for successful conservation management but is also valuable for understanding speciesâ biogeography and evolutionary ecology e g settele et al 2005,2018,0.985
Ecological Informatics,data management and knowledge discovery,2018,0.351
A Vision for Global Biodiversity Monitoring With Citizen Science,global biodiversity monitoring is urgently needed across the world to assess the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity one way to increase monitoring is through citizen science â citizen scienceâ is a term that we use in this chapter to describe the diverse approaches that involve people in monitoring in a voluntary capacity thus including participatory monitoring in which people work collaboratively with scientists in developing monitoring there is great unrealised potential for citizen science especially in asia and africa however to fulfil this potential citizen science will need to meet local needs for participants communities and decision makers including people s own use of the data and their motivations to participate and support global needs for biodiversity monitoring including the united nationsâ sustainable development goals and the aichi biodiversity targets activities should be feasible for participants to provide scientifically rigorous data and useful for data users from local to global scales we use examples from across the world to demonstrate how monitoring can engage different types of participants through different technologies to record different variables according to different sampling approaches overall these examples show how citizen science has the potential to provide a step change in our ability to monitor biodiversityâ and hence respond to threats at all scales from local to global,2018,0.093
Closing the gap between camera trap software development and the user community,like many technological advances in the modern era camera traps present both an exciting opportunity and a host of unforeseen challenges one critical challenge is processing the large numbers of images videos from camera traps efficiently and accurately such that resultant data can be analysed stored and shared with others recognising this need several biologist teams have developed software to meet their own project requirements but no one package has been developed to meet the diverse array of requirements of the global research community we combined an online user survey n 67 and literature review to create a list of 42 desired features in five categories we tested six freely available specialist camera trap software and three nonspecialist image viewer software packages against these criteria users were most interested in data processing efficiency and automation features 37 of 84 requests seven userâ requested features were not available in any of the software we tested thirtyâ two unique requests indicated the importance of software flexibility contrasting with growing calls for standardization in the literature we suggest involving the global user community current software developers and computer scientists in an inclusive planned approach to addressing arguably the greatest challenge facing camera trapâ based research today,2018,0.185
Temperature seasonality in the North American continental interior during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum,abstract paleogene greenhouse climate equability has long been a paradox in paleoclimate research however recent developments in proxy and modeling methods have suggested that strong seasonality may be a feature of at least some greenhouse earth periods here we present the first multi proxy record of seasonal temperatures during the paleogene from paleofloras paleosol geochemistry and carbonate clumped isotope thermometry in the green river basin wyoming usa these combined temperature records allow for the reconstruction of past seasonality in the continental interior which shows that temperatures were warmer in all seasons during the peak early eocene climatic optimum and that the mean annual range of temperatures was high similar to the modern value ∠26â c proxy data and downscaled eocene regional climate model results suggest amplified seasonality during greenhouse events increased seasonality reconstructed for the early eocene is similar in scope to the higher seasonal range predicted by downscaled climate model ensembles for future high co2 emissions scenarios overall these data and model comparisons have substantial implications for understanding greenhouse climates in general and may be important for predicting future seasonal climate regimes and their impacts in continental regions,2018,0.101
Origins of East Asian Campanuloideae (Campanulaceae) diversity,the campanulaceae comprises approximately 2300 species that are distributed among five major lineages i e campanuloideae cyphioideae cyphocarpoideae lobelioideae and nemacladoideae of these the campanuloideae an old world clade centered in east asia is the largest in this study we reconstruct the phylogeny of east asian campanuloideae campanulaceae based on one nuclear gene i e ppr70 and five plastid markers i e atpb matk petd rbcl and trnl trnf we then use this phylogenetic framework to reconstruct the biogeographical history of the genus our molecular dataset includes 376 of the 1045 currently recognized species in the campanuloideae of the 376 sampled species 116 are from east asia representing ca 60 of the east asian campanuloideae our ppr dataset included sequences for 156 accessions representing 54 species while our plastid dataset included sequences for 305 accessions representing 354 species phylogenetic analyses recovered three large clades containing east asian taxa campanulinae platycodinae and wahlenberginae the historical assembly of campanuloideae diversity in east asia appears to have resulted from numerous independent movements from africa europe w asia and north america africa was inferred as the ancestral range for the campanuloideae movement of the largest east asian clade platycodinae occurred at approximately 53 1 ma 46 6 58 73 95 hpd from africa with much of the current diversity found in east asia having resulted from in situ diversification thirteen additional movements into east asia primarily from europe western asia occurred subsequently one dispersal event from western north america was also inferred in contrast only six movements out of east asia were found our results suggest that east asia has acted primarily as a sink for campanuloideae diversity with europe western asia and africa representing major source areas,2018,0.921
"Ensemble forecasting of the global potential distribution of the invasive Chinese mitten crab, Eriocheir sinensis",invasive alien species have posed substantial threats to freshwater ecosystems and are generally difficult and cost intensive to eradicate once established therefore it is of great importance to identify their potential distribution and take preventive actions species distribution modelling has been regarded as a powerful tool to identify areas that provide suitable environmental conditions for the establishment of invaders in this study an ensemble species distribution model was developed for the chinese mitten crab eriocheir sinensis by using 188 worldwide occurrence records and 11 environmental variables to predict its global potential distribution in freshwater habitats the ensemble model showed high predictive performance and indicated that annual mean temperature was the most important environmental variable that limits the distribution of this invasive crustacean the model successfully predicted the known distribution of chinese mitten crab in its native range and invasive ranges and suggested that this invader has not yet fully realized its potential distribution in europe and north america the model also predicted some additional suitable areas where this crab has not yet been observed japan part of south america australia and new zealand management strategies are proposed to control this invasive crab in light of these results,2018,0.311
"Northern Hemisphere disjunctions in Lactuca ( Cichorieae , Asteraceae ): independent Eurasia to North America migrations and allopolyploidization",the lactuca lineage is one of nine lineages in the lettuce subtribe cichorieae asteraceae distributed in europe africa asia and north america within the lactuca lineage two clades show disjunct eurasian north american distributions one disjunct clade consists of diploids x 8 and allotetraploids x 17 the former restricted to eurasia and the latter to north america and the azores in contrast members of the other eurasian north american disjunct clade are all diploid x 9 like the remainder of the lactuca lineage diploid x 8 or 9 the aims of the present study were to investigate the migration pathways that led to the disjunct distributions of these two eurasian north american clades and the potential progenitors of the allopolyploid taxa we conducted deep taxon sampling and multi locus phylogenetic analyses using nuclear ribosomal dna ets and its a low copy nuclear marker a44 and five non coding plastid markers divergence time estimations with beast and ancestral biogeographic estimations with biogeobears suggested that both lineages reached north america by the late miocene cloning of the a44 region revealed two sequence copies within allopolyploid individuals that were resolved in divergent clades and this helped to identify potential progenitors we provide competing hypotheses for the progenitor species and biogeographic pathways that gave rise to the allotetraploid lineage and we propose a north american origin for the azorean endemic taxonomic conclusions include l graminifolia var mexicana being raised to specific rank with the name l brachyrrhyncha and the alleged endemic l jamaicensis in fact represents the se asian l indica introduced to jamaica,2018,0.354
A global analysis of bats using automated comparative phylogeography uncovers a surprising impact of Pleistocene glaciation,aim our work seeks to understand the global demographical response of bat species to the climate change that occurred at the last glacial maximum lgm location all continents except antarctica methods mitochondrial dna sequences were sampled from bat species throughout the planet where we could associate a georeferenced sample with a given dna sequence our investigation estimates the historical demographical response using over 12 000 samples from 300 nominal species of bats custom python and r scripts were written to aggregate sequence data from genbank locality information from gbif and to associate these records to individual samples we conducted approximate bayesian computation to calculate the posterior probability of demographical bottleneck and expansion responses to the end of the pleistocene and then collected organismal trait data to identify traits that were associated with either demographical response we also used r to estimate current and endâ pleistocene species distribution models sdm for species where 10 georeferenced samples were available results analysis of the genetic data indicate that some temperate insectivores responded to the end of the pleistocene by undergoing a demographical expansion however the neotropical family phyllostomidae experienced the most dramatic response with many of its species undergoing demographical bottlenecks larger bats and those with shorter forewings were more likely to undergo a demographical bottleneck in contrast with the results of the genetic data analysis the automated sdms all predicted range expansion since the lgm main conclusions historical populations of neotropical bats that rely on angiosperms for resources i e pollen nectar fruit were negatively influenced by the climate change that occurred at the end of the pleistocene our work highlights the utility of incorporating exploratory traitâ based analyses in phylogeography it serves as an example of automated big data phylogeography and suggests that repurposed data can lead to new insights about global biodiversity,2018,0.951
Local adaptation vs. historical isolation as sources of melanin-based coloration in the White-throated Thrush ( Turdus assimilis ),local adaptation seems to be one of the causes of variation in melaninâ based colors in bird plumages related mainly to the heterogeneity of the environmental conditions along the distribution of a species based on comparisons of genetic mtdna sequences ecological niche models and quantitative colorimetric data we explored variation in plumage coloration of the whiteâ throated thrush turdus assimilis a mesoamerican species whose dorsal color varies from brown northern and central mexico to dark gray southern mexico and central america our results suggest the existence of two major patterns of coloration in this bird which are congruent with the genetic structure and comparisons of ecological niche models showed that population s niches were more similar than expected by chance suggesting that color variation in plumage of t assimilis is not consequence of local adaptation to different environmental conditions our results also showed that a greater geographic distance between populations is correlated with greater colorimetric differences suggesting that color variation in t assimilis may be consequence of historical isolation,2018,0.573
"Ethnopharmacology of Cuscuta epithymum: A comprehensive review on ethnobotany, phytochemistry, pharmacology and toxicity",ethnopharmacological relevance cuscuta epithymum l l c epithymum convolvulaceae is a parasitic plant that has long been used locally and traditionally in asia europe and other regions aim of the review the study intends to reflect the significance of the c epithymum in traditional medicine this review aims to grant insight into the speciesâ botany pharmacological activities and phytochemistry with distinctive emphasis on its ethnomedicinal and traditional applications in all over the world the review endeavors to rule out any inconsistency between the speciesâ traditional application and its pharmacological activity and presenting any coherence existing materials and methods the books on ethnomedicine and the main medieval persian medicine textbooks including makhzan al advieh the canon of medicine zakhireh kharazmshahi and etc were explored for c epithymum additionally information on the ethnobotany phytochemistry morphology taxonomy modern medicinal uses and pharmacological activities were collected in electronic databases including google scholar science direct scopus and pubmed using the keywords â œcuscuta epithymum â â œtraditional medicine â â œethnomedicine â â œphytochemistry â â œpharmacologyâ and â œactivity â then the available articles from 1975 to 2017 were employed for this study results c epithymum is a rootless plant widely distributed and available in every continent except antarctica it was used traditionally in formularies or by rural people and as geriatric drug detergent purgative disorders in the melancholic humor joint kidney urinary tract gastrointestinal system nervous system etc in modern medicine the extract of c epithymum showed anti microbial cytotoxic anticonvulsant anti urease immune stimulatory hepatoprotective effect and antioxidant activity the main phytochemical constituents are alkaloids saponins tannins triterpenoids steroids carbohydrates aromatic compounds flavonoids and the hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives conclusion the modern pharmacological studies have validated the traditional and ethnobotanical uses of c epithymum however many aspects of this herb have not been studied yet in addition information about the phytochemistry and toxicological profile is insufficient owing to the extensive traditional uses of c epithymum hence further studies on pharmacological activities phytochemistry and toxicity and adverse effects seem to be necessary to appraise the medicinal values of c epithymum,2018,0.021
"The bees of British Columbia (Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Apiformes)",british columbia is the most biologically diverse province in canada and its wide range of landscapes â particularly the dry valley bottoms and basins of the columbia kootenay okanagan kettle and similkameen river systems â make it ideal for many groups of hymenoptera including bees with the exceptions of some generic or family level treatments no comprehensive account of the bees of british columbia has been published although recent studies have indicated that more than half of canadaâ s bee species may be found in the province with many of these found nowhere else in the country here we summarize the provinceâ s bee fauna by providing a comprehensive annotated checklist of species for each species we indicate the ecozone s in which they are presentently known to occur and we provide summary statistics and analyses to compare ecozones we also summarize the growth in knowledge of the provinceâ s bee species over time and all species accounts for the province are accompanied by a list of supporting literature or data although we feel this list is comprehensive it is likely that we have overlooked some published accounts and additional undocumented species will show up in total we record 483 bee species from british columbia 37 of which are considered new to the province among these 20 species or subspecies are recorded as new to canada including andrena euandrena misella timberlake panurginus cressoniellus cockerell andrenidae lasioglossum dialictus obnubilum sandhouse l evylaeus argemonis cockerell l hemihalictus glabriventre crawford l hemihalictus kincaidii cockerell halictidae osmia melanosmia laeta sandhouse o melanosmia malina cockerell o melanosmia pulsatillae cockerell o melanosmia raritatis michener anthidium anthidium formosum cresson dianthidium dianthidium plenum plenum timberlake d dianthidium singulare cresson stelis stelis ashmeadiellae timberlake s stelis calliphorina cockerell dioxys pomonae pomonae cockerell megachile pugnata pomonae cockerell megachilidae nomada crotchii cresson melissodes eumelissodes saponellus cockerell and habropoda miserabilis cresson apidae,2018,0.926
Structure-aware Mashup service Clustering for cloud-based Internet of Things using genetic algorithm based clustering algorithm,an increasing number of physical objects connected to the internet makes it possible for smart things to access all kinds of cloud services mashup technology has been an effective way to the rapid iot internet of things application development however the number of mashup services iot applications being so large makes how to discover the desired iot applications accurately and efficiently become a problem service clustering technology can facilitate service discovery effectively and many different approaches have been proposed however many of them only use semantic similarities to guide clustering operations and need the configuration of the number of clusters structural similarities are orthogonal to semantic similarities but they have never been used in service clustering approaches in this paper we propose a novel mashup service clustering approach based on a structural similarity and a genetic algorithm based clustering algorithm first it applies a two mode graph to describe mashups web apis and their relations formally second it applies the simrank algorithm to quantify the structural similarity between every pair of mashup services finally it introduces a genetic algorithm based clustering algorithm to organize mashup services into clusters effectively and determines the number of clusters automatically empirical results on a real world mashup services data set collected from programmableweb demonstrate that our approach can cluster mashup services efficiently without any constraints on the number of clusters and its performance is better than other mashup service clustering approaches based on semantic metrics,2018,0.075
Gauging support for macroecological patterns in helminth parasites,aim to explore spatial patterns of helminth parasite diversity and to investigate three main macroecological patterns â a latitudeâ diversity relationships b positive scaling between parasite and host diversity and c speciesâ area relationships â using a largely underutilized global database of helminth parasite occurrence records location global methods we examined the london natural history museum s collection of helminth parasite occurrence records consisting of over 18 000 unique host species and 27 000 unique helminth parasite species distributed across over 350 distinct terrestrial and aquatic localities we examined the london natural history museum s collection of helminth parasite occurrence records consisting of over 18 000 unique host species and 27 000 unique helminth parasite species distributed across over 350 distinct terrestrial and aquatic localities results we find support for latitudinal gradients in parasite diversity and a strong relationship between host and parasite diversity at the global scale helminth species diversityâ area relationships were not detectable as a function of host body mass but larger geographic areas supported higher parasite richness potentially mediated through higher host richness main conclusions our findings indicate that helminth parasites may obey some of the macroecological relationships found in freeâ living species suggesting that parasites may offer further support for the generality of these patterns while offering interesting counterexamples for others we conclude with a discussion of future directions and potential challenges in the newly emerging macroecology of infectious disease,2018,0.997
Thirty-year invasion of the alien moss Campylopus introflexus (Hedw.) Brid. in Poland (East-Central Europe),campylopus introflexus is the only invasive moss listed among the 100 most prominent alien invaders in europe the present study shows dot distribution maps at 10 years intervals from its introduction in 1986 to the present and discusses the dynamics of its invasion altitudinal distribution and ecological preferences during the 30 years of its invasion c introflexus has spread widely throughout poland and is currently known in 248 locations a total of 93 1 of these are below 300 m a s l and the maximum altitude is 780 m with the passage of time since its first appearance this alien moss has occupied larger numbers of substrates and habitats currently c introflexus is a component of 34 plant communities belonging to 18 habitat types the most invaded habitats include young forest tree plantations and mature managed forest developed from old plantations pinus sylvestris woodland this moss is frequently found in acidophilous semi natural forests and inland dunes with corynephorus and agrostis grasslands boggy woodland dry heaths and ruderal habitats although 30 cryptogam species were found in tufts of the alien moss there is no characteristic species composition that constantly accompanies its presence,2018,0.688
Predicting plant conservation priorities on a global scale,the conservation status of most plant species is currently unknown despite the fundamental role of plants in ecosystem health to facilitate the costly process of conservation assessment we developed a predictive protocol using a machine learning approach to predict conservation status of over 150 000 land plant species our study uses open source geographic environmental and morphological trait data making this the largest assessment of conservation risk to date and the only global assessment for plants our results indicate that a large number of unassessed species are likely at risk and identify several geographic regions with the highest need of conservation efforts many of which are not currently recognized as regions of global concern by providing conservation relevant predictions at multiple spatial and taxonomic scales predictive frameworks such as the one developed here fill a pressing need for biodiversity science,2018,0.449
THE DISTRIBUTIONAL STATUS OF SEVEN NONINDIGENOUS SPECIES IN THE YADKIN-PEE DEE RIVER DRAINAGE IN NORTH CAROLINA,for more than 21 years i documented the occurrences and distributions of the indigenous and nonindigenous freshwater species throughout the state as project leader of the north carolina division of water resources dwr wadeable stream fish community assessment program most of my work was with the basinwide assessment program which evaluates a core group of long term monitoring sites on a five year rotating cycle the yadkin pee river drainage was the first basin i sampled in 1996 and i sampled it every five years through 2016 for a total of five cycles during this time i became interested in trying to figure out what was indigenous and what was nonindigenous through historical and forensic ichthyology not just in this drainage but throughout the state tracy et al 2013 at north carolina american fisheries society chapter meetings since 1997 and in numerous chapter newsletter articles e g tracy 2008 2009 tracy and schneider 2009 i presented much of what i had learned about our stateâ s ichthyofauna especially on species encountered in the yadkin pee dee river drainage,2018,0.576
Citzen Science,citizen science the active participation of the public in scientific research projects is a rapidly expanding field in open science and open innovation it provides an integrated model of public knowledge production and engagement with science as a growing worldwide phenomenon it is invigorated by evolving new technologies that connect people easily and effectively with the scientific community catalysed by citizensâ wishes to be actively involved in scientific processes as a result of recent societal trends it also offers contributions to the rise in tertiary education in addition citizen science provides a valuable tool for citizens to play a more active role in sustainable development,2018,0.252
"First Record of the Yellowfin Soldierfish, Myripristis chryseres , in the Easter Island Ecoregion",myripristis chryseres jordan evermann 1903 is recorded for the first time in the easter island ecoregion two specimens were observed swimming along a rock cliff and entering a cavern at ∠163 m depth near the peak of pukao seamount located ∠85 km 46 nm west of easter island this report expands the geographic range of m chryseres eastward by ∠3 800 km and is the first report of the species for the eastern pacific it is unclear whether this new record is indicative of a relatively recent range expansion or a lack of visual surveys in the region which are especially important for surveying fishes that are less likely to be caught by line and trawls because of their behavior and the complex rocky habitats in which they live,2018,0.434
"An Annotated List of the Marine and Brackish-Water Ichthyofauna of Aniva Bay (Sea of Okhotsk, Sakhalin Island): 1. Petromyzontidae−Agonidae Families",based on a critical analysis of literature data for the past 200 years and the results of our own multiyear studies an annotated list of marine brackish water and anadromous migratory fish found in aniva bay southern part of the sea of okhotsk southern part of sakhalin island is given 274 species against 164 previously mentioned in three classes 22 orders 67 families 161 genera for a number of species information is provided on collection specimens that confirm their presence within the studied water area for each species latin and english names taxonomic remarks information on conservation status ecology abundance and commercial importance are given the first part provides brief information about the history of the study and geographical and climatic oceanographic characteristics of the bay as well as the first 137 species of the annotated list represented by 83 genera 35 families and 19 orders,2018,0.824
"Temporal and spatial variation of waterbirds at Sayula Lagoon, Jalisco, Mexico: a five–year winter season study",wetlands in central mexico are important habitats for assemblages of migratory and resident birds to study variation in richness and abundance of waterbirds we conducted monthly observations in 30 permanent plots throughout the sayula lagoon jalisco mexico during the winter season from october to march from 2004 2007 and from 2009 2011 seventy three species were recorded 39 species were winter visitors and eight species are included in some risk category the best represented families were anatidae scolopacidae and ardeidae spatula clypeata and anser caerulescens were the most abundant species we found variation in richness between zones only two were similar but not between the seasons only ws4 was different or months only nov was different sayula lagoon is a highly dynamic ecosystem influenced by migration and the water inputs occurring during the rainy season,2018,0.77
Tree species with limited geographical ranges show extreme responses to ectomycorrhizas,aim at continental scales abiotic factors such as climate are typically used to explain differences in plant ranges although biotic interactions also underlie the biogeography of plants the importance of plantâ associated microbes is often overlooked when predicting ranges in particular symbiotic microbes may influence the distribution of plants that engage in strong interactions with them we tested whether seedling response to inoculation by ectomycorrhizal fungi explains range size of trees to examine mechanisms underlying the relationship between range size and response to inoculation we also examined to what extent sympatry between host and fungi influenced this relationship location global time period contemporary major taxa studied trees and fungi forming ectomycorrhizas methods using a dataset of 1 275 observations from 126 papers we calculated mean biomass response effect size of 59 tree species to fungal inoculation we extracted host range area from digitized maps of native distributions and determined whether hosts were naturally sympatric with fungal species used as inoculum by searching herbaria databases with geospatially referenced data results tree species with seedling effect sizes falling above or below the average response tended to have small ranges and those with average responses large ranges moreover hosts inoculated with fungi whose ranges were allopatric to their own had higher biomass compared to those that were inoculated by sympatric fungi suggesting that the extent of geographical overlap between trees and symbiotic fungi may attenuate the mutualism main conclusions we demonstrate that mycorrhizas may underlie host biogeographical patterns at the continental scale our study is novel in the scope of species and scale tested and points to a possible mechanism underlying this pattern related to the process of mutualism breakdown accruing over time at local geographical scales for ectomycorrhizal tree species performance may increase when exposed to fungal partners without a recent shared evolutionary history,2018,0.438
The future of cold-adapted plants in changing climates: Micranthes (Saxifragaceae) as a case study,research has shown species undergoing range contractions and or northward and higher elevational movements as a result of changing climates here we evaluate how the distribution of a group of coldâ adapted plant species with similar evolutionary histories changes in response to warming climates we selected 29 species of micranthes saxifragaceae representing the mountain and arctic biomes of the northern hemisphere for this analysis 24 755 data points were input into ecological niche models to assess both present fundamental niches and predicted future ranges under climate change scenarios comparisons were made across the northern hemisphere between all coldâ adapted micranthes including arctic species montane species and species defined as narrow endemics under future climate change models 72 of the species would occupy smaller geographical areas than at present this loss of habitat is most pronounced in arctic species in general but is also prevalent in species restricted to higher elevations in mountains additionally narrowly endemic species restricted to high elevations were more susceptible to habitat loss than those species found at lower elevations using a large dataset and modeling habitat suitability at a global scale our results empirically model the threats to coldâ adapted species as a result of warming climates although arctic and alpine biomes share many underlying climate similarities such as cold and short growing seasons our results confirm that species in these climates have varied responses to climate change and that key abiotic variables differ between these two habitats,2018,0.993
"Comprehensive assessment of the genetic diversity and population structure of cultured populations of golden pompano, Trachinotus ovatus (Linnaeus, 1758), by microsatellites",golden pompano trachinotus ovatus belongs to the family carangidae within one decade this species has rapidly become one of the most important cultured marine fish species in south china however the lack of a comprehensive genetic diversity assessment hinders the conservation of natural resources and management of cultured populations thus we sampled one wild population and six cultured populations of golden pompano which represented the whole cultured population to assess the genetic diversity and population structure the level of genetic diversity was low compared with those of other cultured fish as the values of allelic richness number of effective alleles and expected heterozygosity in the combined whole sample were 3 709 2 592 and 0 591 respectively these populations were little differentiated fst 0 02091 p value 0 00 and the whole sample did not show an explicit population structure at the individual level the effective population size in each cultured population was small and in the whole sample was acceptable for a closed selection system the pedigree reconstruction showed no evidence of artificial disturbance in mating this general survey of cultured golden pompano populations showed the common characteristics of domestication with wild inputs however the low level of and potential decrease in genetic diversity should receive close attention in future breeding programs in addition we recommend wide surveys of natural resources and the establishment of closed breeding systems to increase genetic gain,2018,0.663
Understanding the connections between species distribution models,models for accurately predicting species distributions have become essential tools for many ecological and conservation problems for many species presencebackground presence only data is the most commonly available type of spatial data a number of important methods have been proposed to model presencebackground pb data and there have been debates on the connection between these seemingly disparate methods the paper begins by studying the close relationship between the li lancaster imbens 1996 and lk lele keim 2006 royle et al 2012 models which were among the first developed methods for analysing pb data the second part of the paper identifies close connections between the lk and point process models as well as the equivalence between the scaled binomial sb expectation maximization em partial likelihood based lele 2009 and li methods many of which have not been noted in the literature we clarify that all these methods are the same in their ability to estimate the relative probability or intensity of presence from pb data and the absolute probability of presence when extra information of the speciesâ prevalence is known a new unified constrained lk clk method is also proposed as a generalisation of the better known existing approaches with less theory involved and greater ease of implementation,2018,0.326
The Impact of Digitization and Digital Data Mobilization on Biodiversity Research and Outreach,the first two decades of the 21 st century have seen a rapid rise in the creation mobilization research and educational use of digital museum data especially in the natural and biodiversity sciences this has thrust natural history museums and especially the biodiversity specimen collections they hold into the forefront of biodiversity research in systematics ecology and conservation underscoring their central role in the modern scientific enterprise the advent of such digitization and data mobilization initiatives as the united states national science foundationâ s advancing the digitization of biodiversity collections program adbc australiaâ s atlas of living australia ala mexicoâ s national commission for the knowledge and use of biodiversity conabio brazilâ s centro de referãªncia em informaã ã o cria europeâ s synthesys and chinaâ s national specimen information infrastructure nsii has led to a rapid rise in regional national and international digital data aggregators and has precipitated an exponential increase in the availability of digital data for scientific research,2018,0.189
An Indo-Pacific damselfish ( Neopomacentrus cyanomos ) in the Gulf of Mexico: origin and mode of introduction,the indo west pacific iwp coral reef damselfish neopomacentrus cyanomos is well established across the south west gulf of mexico swgomx comparisons of mtdna sequences of the swgomx population with those from conspecifics from 16 sites scattered across its native geographic range show that the swgomx population is derived from two of four native lineages one from the north west pacific ocean the other from the northern indian ocean three hypotheses address how this species was introduced to the swgomx 1 aquarium release 2 borne by cargo ship and 3 carried by offshore petroleum platform petro platform the first is unlikely because this species rarely features in the aquarium trade and â œ n cyanomos â traded to the usa from the sole iwp source we are aware of are a misidentified congener n taeniurus the second hypothesis is unlikely because shipping has not been associated with the introduction of alien damselfishes there is little international shipping between the iwp and the swgomx and voyages between those areas would be lengthy and along environmentally unfavorable routes various lines of evidence support the third hypothesis i bio fouled petro platforms represent artificial reefs that can sustain large and diverse populations of tropical reef fishes including n cyanomos in the swgomx ii relocation of such platforms has been implicated in trans oceanic introductions leading to establishment of non native populations of such fishes and iii genetic characteristics of the swgomx population indicate that it was established by a large and diverse group of founders drawn from the iwp regions where many petro platforms currently in the swgomx and other atlantic offshore oilfields originated,2018,0.715
"Prediction of the potential global distribution for Biomphalaria straminea, an intermediate host for Schistosoma mansoni",biomphalaria straminea is an intermediate host of schistosoma mansoni this snail has not only established in peripheral countries but also survived in different water habitats in hong kong and adjacent cities of mainland china ecological niche models were used to predict the potential global distribution of b straminea our results showed that there were niche shifts in the process of invasion for b straminea in the americas and china this snail has expanded its habitats to subtropical regions with lower annual mean temperature annual mean temperature isothermality temperature seasonality and human influence were identified as most important climatic features for the occurrence of b straminea under current climate conditions the distribution of this snail should be mostly confined to the tropic and subtropic regions including south america central america sub saharan africa and southeast asia with the rapid globalization and the continued burden of imported cases of s mansoni to non endemic countries predicting the potential distribution of the intermediate host and its drivers is increasing in importance for designing control strategies and optimizing use of limited public health resources prioritizing surveillance and control efforts to high traffic regions with high habitat suitability may be the most effective approach,2018,0.262
Genetic diversity and distribution of Senegalia senegal (L.) Britton under climate change scenarios in West Africa,climate change is predicted to impact speciesâ genetic diversity and distribution we used senegalia senegal l britton an economically important species distributed in the sudano sahelian savannah belt of west africa to investigate the impact of climate change on intraspecific genetic diversity and distribution we used ten nuclear and two plastid microsatellite markers to assess genetic variation population structure and differentiation across thirteen sites in west africa we projected suitable range and potential impact of climate change on genetic diversity using a maximum entropy approach under four different climate change scenarios we found higher genetic and haplotype diversity at both nuclear and plastid markers than previously reported genetic differentiation was strong for chloroplast and moderate for the nuclear genome both genomes indicated three spatially structured genetic groups the distribution of senegalia senegal is strongly correlated with extractable nitrogen coarse fragments soil organic carbon stock precipitation of warmest and coldest quarter and mean temperature of driest quarter we predicted 40 96 to 6 34 per cent of the current distribution to favourably support the speciesâ ecological requirements under future climate scenarios our results suggest that climate change is going to affect the population genetic structure of senegalia senegal and that patterns of genetic diversity are going to influence the speciesâ adaptive response to climate change our study contributes to the growing evidence predicting the loss of economically relevant plants in west africa in the next decades due to climate change,2018,0.368
Transposable Elements Activity is Positively Related to Rate of Speciation in Mammals,transposable elements tes play an essential role in shaping eukaryotic genomes and generating variability speciation and te activity bursts could be strongly related in mammals in which simple gradualistic models of differentiation do not account for the currently observed species variability in order to test this hypothesis we designed two parameters the density of insertion di and the relative rate of speciation rrs di is the ratio between the number of te insertions in a genome and its size whereas the rrs is a conditional parameter designed to identify potential speciation bursts thus by analyzing te insertions in mammals we defined the genomes as â œhotâ high di and â œcoldâ low di then comparing te activity among 29 taxonomical families of the whole mammalia class 16 intra order pairs of mammalian species and four superorders of eutheria we showed that taxa with high rates of speciation are associated with â œhotâ genomes whereas taxa with low ones are associated with â œcoldâ genomes these results suggest a remarkable correlation between te activity and speciation also being consistent with patterns describing variable rates of differentiation and accounting for the different time frames of the speciation bursts,2018,0.576
El Niño Range Extensions of Pacific Sand Crab ( Emerita analoga ) in the Northeastern Pacific,many marine species are shifting poleward with global climate change and many move on a shorter term basis with periodic climate variations such as the el niã o southern oscillation enso and pacific decadal oscillation pdo the pacific sand crab emerita analoga crustacea decapoda anomura hippidae is a dominant member of the wave exposed sandy beach macrofauna of california and oregon its occasional records from washington to alaska have been taken to correspond to enso events however there are surprisingly few scientific or citizen science records of its presence in this region we report the first published record in over 30 years of e analoga in british columbia and summarize historical published and unpublished records because this species is conspicuous and readily identifiable we suggest the general absence of its published institutional and citizen science records coincident with most historical enso events may be due to a lack of reporting in california e analoga accumulates harmful algal bloom toxins is consumed by crabs fish birds and marine and terrestrial mammals and serves as the intermediate host for a variety of parasites including the peritonitis inducing acanthocephalan implicated in sea otter mortalities as coastal waters warm we predict that e analoga will colonize sandy beaches north of its current range where it may serve as an abundant prey item and as a vector for the trophic transfer of toxins and parasites detecting changes in its abundance will require the continued observation and reporting of its records which we encourage in academic government and citizen science venues,2018,0.8
"Spatio-temporal dynamics of suitable habitats for Detarium microcarpum Guill. &amp; Perr. (Caesalpiniaceae), a priority food tree species in Benin (West Africa)",detarium microcarpum caesalpiniaceae is a priority multipurpose and indigenous food tree species in west africa however data related to its efficient conservation and sustainable use through changing ecological environments are still lacking thus species occurrence records were combined with climatic and soil data in maximum entropy maxent a species distribution modelling algorithm to evaluate the impacts of future environmental conditions under cnrm cm5 and hadgem2 es on the speciesâ potential distribution in benin results indicated that the speciesâ present potential distribution range was mainly found in the sudanian and sudano guinean ecological regions some extensions and retractions of the present day distribution lowly moderately and highly suitable habitats were noted under future climates based on the two scenarios introduction of d microcarpum in suitable habitats are required for its efficient conservation in west africa,2018,0.603
Marine Fish Parasitology of Iraq: A Review and Checklists,literature reviews of available reports concerning the parasitic fauna of marine fishes of iraq till the end of 2017 showed that a total of 253 parasite species are so far known from 86 fish species 13 elasmobranchians and 73 actinopterygians investigated for parasitic infections the parasitic fauna included one myzozoan three ciliophorans three myxozoans 50 trematodes 41 monogeneans 21 cestodes 47 nematodes 11 acanthocephalans one mollusc larva and 75 crustaceans among the inspected fishes the mugilid fish planiliza subviridis was infected with the highest number of parasite species 47 parasite species followed by the sparid fish acanthopagrus arabicus 28 species and the clupeid fish tenualosa ilisha 17 species while 23 fish species were infected with only one parasite species each the praniza larval stage of the isopode gnathia was the commonest parasite species as it was recorded on 18 fish species followed by the cestode callitetrarhynchus gracilis which was reported from seven fish host species while the majority of the remaining parasite species infected only one host species each,2018,1
Togo National Herbarium database,this article describes the herbarium database of the university of lomã the database provides a good representation of the current knowledge of the flora of togo the herbarium of university of lomã known also as herbarium togoense is the national herbarium and is registered in index herbariorum with the abbreviation togo it contains 15 000 specimens of vascular plants coming mostly from all togo s ecofloristic regions less than one percent of the specimens are from neighbouring countries such as ghana benin and burkina faso collecting site details are specified in more that 97 of the sheet labels but only about 50 contain geographic coordinates besides being a research resource the herbarium constitutes an educational collection the dataset described in this paper is registered with gbif and accessible at https www gbif org dataset b05dd467 aaf8 4c67 843c 27f049057b78 it was developed with the riha software rã seau informatique des herbiers d afrique the riha system chevillotte and florence 2006 radji et al 2009 allows the capture of label data and associated information such as synonyms vernacular names taxonomic hierarchy and references,2018,0.08
The niches of nuthatches affect their lineage evolution differently across latitude,ecological niche evolution can promote or hinder the differentiation of taxa and determine their distribution nicheâ mediated evolution may differ among climatic regimes and thus species that occur across a wide latitudinal range offer a chance to test these heterogeneous evolutionary processes in this study we examine 1 how many lineages have evolved across the continentâ wide range of the eurasian nuthatch sitta europaea 2 whether the lineagesâ niches are significantly divergent or conserved and 3 how their niche evolution explains their geographic distribution phylogenetic reconstruction and ecological niche models enms showed that the eurasian nuthatch contained six parapatric lineages that diverged within two million years and did not share identical climatic niches however the niche discrepancy between these distinct lineages was relatively conserved compared with the environmental differences between their ranges and thus was unlikely to drive lineage divergence the enms of southern lineages tended to crossâ predict with their neighboring lineages whereas those of northern lineages generally matched with their abutting ranges the coalescenceâ based analyses revealed more stable populations for the southern lineages than the northern ones during the last glaciation cycle in contrast to the overlapping enms the smaller parapatric distribution suggests that the southern lineages might have experienced competitive exclusion to prevent them from becoming sympatric on the other hand the northern lineages have expanded their ranges and their current abutting distribution might have resulted from lineages adapting to different climatic conditions in allopatry this study suggests that niche evolution may affect lineage distribution in different ways across latitude,2018,0.477
"Contribution to the knowledge of meiobenthic Copepoda (Crustacea) from the Sardinian coast, Italy",contribution to the knowledge of meiobenthic copepoda crustacea from the sardinian coast italy data available on the italian species of copepoda canuelloida khodami vaun macarthur blanco bercial and martã nez arbizu 2017 and harpacticoida sars 1903 report overall 210 species but their diversity and biogeography are still poorly investigated we carried out a faunistic survey along the eastern coast of sardinia ogliastra region in order to document these taxa in the area a total of 41 species in 36 genera and 18 families were found although many species were identified as putative the current italian checklist was updated with 12 new records of genera and 4 of species longipedia coronata claus 1862 canuelloida diosaccus tenuicornis claus 1863 asellopsis hispida brady and robertson 1873 wellsopsyllus intermediopsyllus intermedius scott and scott 1895 all harpacticoida are reported for the first time from sardinia coasts the copepod community was particularly rich at ogliastra island a small rocky island with natural reefs rocky shoals and posidonia oceanica meadows species found there were mainly related to coarse sands and macrophytal detritus,2018,0.918
Past and potential future population dynamics of three grouse species using ecological and whole genome coalescent modeling,studying demographic history of species provides insight into how the past has shaped the current levels of overall biodiversity and genetic composition of species but also how these species may react to future perturbations here we investigated the demographic history of the willow grouse lagopus lagopus rock ptarmigan lagopus muta and black grouse tetrao tetrix through the late pleistocene using two complementary methods and whole genome data species distribution modeling sdm allowed us to estimate the total range size during the last interglacial lig and last glacial maximum lgm as well as to indicate potential population subdivisions pairwise sequentially markovian coalescent psmc allowed us to assess fluctuations in effective population size across the same period additionally we used sdm to forecast the effect of future climate change on the three species over the next 50 years we found that sdm predicts the largest range size for the coldâ adapted willow grouse and rock ptarmigan during the lgm psmc captured intraspecific population dynamics within the last glacial period such that the willow grouse and rock ptarmigan showed multiple bottlenecks signifying recolonization events following the termination of the lgm we also see signals of population subdivision during the last glacial period in the black grouse but more data are needed to strengthen this hypothesis all three species are likely to experience range contractions under future warming with the strongest effect on willow grouse and rock ptarmigan due to their limited potential for northward expansion overall by combining these two modeling approaches we have provided a multifaceted examination of the biogeography of these species and how they have responded to climate change in the past these results help us understand how coldâ adapted species may respond to future climate changes,2018,0.949
"The genus Gyalideopsis (lichenized Ascomycota: Gomphillaceae) in Brazil: updated checklist, key to species, and two novel taxa with unique hyphophores",we provide a checklist and a key to the 26 species and one infraspecific taxon of the genus gyalideopsis gomphillaceae currently known from brazil including two species with unique hyphophores described as new to science herein g aptrootii xavier leite m cã ceres lã cking sp nov characterized by adnate crescent shaped hyphophores with moniliform diahyphae and broadly sessile dark grey brown apothecia with single muriform rather small ascospores and g marcellii xavier leite m cã ceres lã cking sp nov with mussel shaped hyphophores similar to those of g haliotidiformis but differing in the filiform diahyphae the other taxa known from brazil are g aequatoriana kalb vä zda g altamirensis lã cking umaã a g applanata herrera campos lã cking g argentea mont kalb vä zda g brevipilosa kalb vä zda lã cking sã rus vä zda g cochlearifera lã cking sã rus g confluens kalb vä zda g ellipsoidea a a menezes m cã ceres aptroot g epithallina lã cking g glauca p karst lã cking sã rus vä zda g haliotidiformis kalb vä zda g intermedia lã cking g kalbii vä zda g lambinonii vä zda g lecideina kalb vä zda g palmata kalb vä zda g robusta kalb vä zda g rostrata kalb vä zda g rubescens vä zda g rubrofusca kalb vä zda g vainioi kalb vä zda g verruculosa vä zda hafellner g vezdae kalb g vulgaris mã ll arg lã cking f vulgaris and g vulgaris f albopruinosa lã cking,2018,0.702
"Range Extensions of the Whitespotted Boxfish, Ostracion meleagris Shaw, 1796, in the East and West Coasts of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico",the whitespotted boxfish ostracion meleagris shaw 1796 is a reef resident distributed along the indo pacific but at the baja california peninsula mexico this fish has been reported only in the southern region with a northern limit at 24 2â n inside the gulf of california here we document the presence of o meleagris in 17 sites along the central gulf with an extreme record at tortuga island 27 445â n almost 400 km north of its accepted range and also in two locations of the western baja california peninsula alijos rocks and puerto san carlos at 24â n these findings represent more examples of a recently observed trend in which several species of tropical fish have expanded their distribution range towards the inner gulf of california and in the pacific side of the peninsula as a possible response to the reported warming that occurs in the region,2018,0.657
"12. Biodiversity and Climate Change: Perspectives, Research Needs, and Institutions",climate change is no longer a prediction or a speculation it is already taking place in many places around the world including southeast asia long term data on temperature and sea levels in an archipelagic country like the philippines and a partly continental country like thailand and vietnam as reported in the chapters on country perspectives indicate an increasing trend over the years,2018,0.351
Environmental niche unfilling but limited options for range expansion by active dispersion in an alien cavity-nesting wasp,background predicting the patterns of range expansion of alien species is central to develop effective strategies for managing potential biological invasions here we present a study on the potential distribution of the american cavity nesting orthoptera hunting and solitary wasp isodontia mexicana hymenoptera sphecidae which was first detected as alien species in france in 1960 and now is present in many european countries after having updated its current distribution we estimated the environmental space based on bioclimatic data and altitude occupied by the species and subsequently predicted its environmental potential distribution under both present and future climatic conditions at global scale results the wasp lives in low altitude areas of the northern hemisphere with moderate temperatures and precipitation the environmental space occupied in the invaded area is practically just a subset 42 of that occupied in the native area showing a process of environmental niche unfilling i e the species only partially fills its environmental niche in the invaded range besides i mexicana could also live in other temperate areas mainly in the southern hemisphere particularly close to the coasts however geographic oceans and or climatic tropical areas mountain chains barriers would prevent the species to reach these potential areas unless through human trade activity the species could thus only reach by active dispersion the remaining invadable areas of europe estimations for the future 2050 and 2070 predict an expansion through active dispersion towards north in the native range and towards north and east in the invaded range but future conditions would not break down the current climatic barriers in the southern hemisphere conclusions isodontia mexicana has not shifted its environmental niche in the invaded area it could still occupy some new areas by active dispersion but confined to europe the conspicuous niche unfilling shown by this wasp species could reflect the likely single introduction in europe just a few decades ago furthermore results stay in line with other studies that found niche unfilling rather than niche expansion in insects,2018,0.789
A comparison of patterns of genetic structure in two co-occurring Agave species (Asparagaceae) that differ in the patchiness of their geographical distributions and cultivation histories,spatial genetic structure in plants can be affected by continuity of geographical distribution cultivation history pollination and seed dispersal mechanisms here we examined the relative effects of these factors on the genetic structure of agave palmeri and a parryi which share similar pollination syndromes and seed dispersal mechanisms but differ in the continuity of their distributions and cultivation history agave parryi has a patchy distribution and was cultivated by native americans whereas a palmeri has a more continuous distribution and no documented history of cultivation we sampled populations of each species in their north american ranges genotyped individuals with microsatellite loci and analysed patterns of genetic structure no genetic structuring was detected in a palmeri but a parryi formed three distinct genetic clusters corresponding to geographical locations one genetic cluster of a parryi contained populations from lower elevations and had lower levels of genetic diversity probably indicating anthropogenic origins we conclude that continuity of distribution pollinators and cultivation history all may affect patterns of genetic connectivity,2018,0.433
No deaths in the desert: predicted responses of an arid-adapted bee and its two nesting trees suggest resilience in the face of warming climates,species distribution modelling sdm has been applied to multiple bee species to examine how they may respond to future climate change those studies indicate a variety of likely responses to a warming climate no sdm approaches however have been undertaken for aridâ adapted bees despite their enormous diversity in xeric habitats we applied sdm to an aridâ zone allodapine bee exoneurella tridentata houston 1976 apidae allodapini and the two tree species it depends on for nesting substrate alectryon oleifolius desf s t reynolds sapindaceae and acacia papyrocarpa benth fabaceae because of the complete dependency of this bee on these trees there is the possibility that its vulnerability to climate change may be greater than for bee species that have broader nesting niches such as ground or nonâ specific cavity nesting using a variety of future climate scenarios both optimistic and pessimistic and also the bee s nest plant species as predictor variables of its distribution in some modelling runs we find that both tree species and e tridentata are likely to be resilient to future climates our findings suggest that for australian aridâ zone bees at least vulnerability to future climate change may be very different than that for tropical or temperate taxa,2018,0.894
"Niche conservatism and phylogenetic clustering in a tribe of arid-adapted marsupial mice, the Sminthopsini",the progressive expansion of the australian arid zone during the last 20 ma appears to have spurred the diversification of several families of plants vertebrates and invertebrates yet such taxonomic groups appear to show limited niche radiation here we test whether speciation is associated with niche conservatism constraints on ecological divergence or niche divergence in a tribe of marsupials mice sminthopsini 23 taxa that includes the most speciose genus of living dasyurids the sminthopsins to that end we integrated phylogenetic data with ecological niche modelling to enable us to reconstruct the evolution of climatic suitability within sminthopsini niche overlap among species was lowâ moderate but generally higher than expected given environmental background similarity and the degree of phylogenetic clustering increased with aridity climatic niche reconstruction illustrates that there has been little apparent evolution of climatic tolerance within clades accordingly climatic disparity tends to be accumulated among clades suggesting considerable niche conservatism our results also indicate that evolution of climatic tolerances has been heterogeneous across different dimensions of climate temperature vs precipitation and across phylogenetic clusters s murina group vs other groups although some results point to the existence of shifts in climatic niches during the speciation of sminthopsins our study provides evidence for substantial phylogenetic niche conservatism in the group we conclude that niche diversification had a low impact on the speciation of this tribe of small but highly mobile marsupials,2018,0.34
Semi-automatic Extraction of Plants Morphological Characters from Taxonomic Descriptions Written in Spanish,taxonomic literature keeps records of the planet s biodiversity and gives access to the knowledge needed for its sustainable management unfortunately most of the taxonomic information is available in scientific publications in text format the amount of publications generated is very large therefore to process it in order to obtain high structured texts would be complex and very expensive approaches like citizen science may help the process by selecting whole fragments of texts dealing with morphological descriptions but a deeper analysis compatible with accepted ontologies will require specialised tools the biodiversity heritage library bhl estimates that there are more than 120 million pages published in over 5 4 million books since 1469 plus about 800 000 monographs and 40 000 journal titles 12 500 of these are current titles,2018,0.31
Threatened diurnal raptors species in Peru: are existing strictly protected areas enough for their conservation?,protected area systems are the corner stone for biodiversity conservation globally yet their spatial distribution is key to fulfil this in this study i evaluated the role of strictly protected areas in peru in protecting the potential distribution area pda of eight threatened diurnal raptor species pda of species ranged from 5 766 kmâ graybacked hawk â pseudastur occidentalis to 699 229 kmâ gray bellied hawk â accipiter poliogaster on average strictly protected areas covered 11 3 of species pda with higher percentages for the most rangerestricted species gray backed hawk 26 3 of pda this was not the case for the wide ranging and locally threatened andean condor â vultur gryphus 2 of pda or for small species restricted to montane forests semicollared hawk â accipiter collaris 3 5 of pda my results call for an integrated conservation approach for threatened raptor species that focus on habitat preservation beyond protected area limits this is particularly urgent for the andean condor and the black and chestnut eagle spizaetus isidori two species with diminishing populations globally for the latter habitat conservation through the protection of montane forests inside indigenous communities in the north and central andes could be a viable option to the creation of protected areas,2018,0.951
"How far can climate changes help to conserve and restore Garcinia kola Heckel, an extinct species in the wild in Benin (West Africa)",a study was conducted to assess how well climate changes can help to conserve and restore garcinia kola heckel in the protected area network pan and in urban areas in benin to achieve this occurrence data from gbif was used and the environmental data from africlim was used in order to model the speciesâ potential habitat under current and future climates the maximum entropy modeling approach of maxent was used with scenarios rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 for future predictions geographic information systems were used to establish the high confidence prediction areas hcpa for g kola gap analysis was performed throughout pan and municipalities with regard to the hcpa considering the climate envelop results revealed that climate change prooved to have only positive consequences on the distribution of the species moreover considering the hcpa the percentage of municipalities that were suitable for the species is far above the percentage of pan that was predicted as suitable 7 44 versus 0 93 rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 indicated respectively 3 00 and 6 27 of pan as positive climate change impact zones as for the municipalities it was respectively 13 60 and 17 60 of the total municipalities areas therefore it is not worth relying only on pan to conserve and restore the species rather urban forestry and reforestation in pan may be key actions to save this genetic resource further studies with regard to introduction of g kola in urban areas and its use for reforestation are compulsory,2018,0.514
A methodological approach to identify agro-biodiversity hotspots for priority in situ conservation of plant genetic resources,agro biodiversity is seriously threatened worldwide and strategies to preserve it are dramatically required we propose here a methodological approach aimed to identify areas with a high level of agro biodiversity in which to set or enhance in situ conservation of plant genetic resources these areas are identified using three criteria presence of landrace diversity presence of wild species and agro ecosystem ecological diversity a restrictive and an additive prioritization strategy has been applied on the entire italian territory and has resulted in establishing nationwide 53 and 197 agro biodiversity hotspots respectively at present the strategies can easily be applied at a european level and can be helpful to develop conservation strategies everywhere,2018,0.401
"On the distribution of the rare solitary bee Coelioxys lanceolata Nylander, 1852 (Hymenoptera, Megachilidae) in Norway",coelioxys lanceolata nylander 1852 is considered to be one of the rarest bee species in the nordic countries previously with only four unique observations registered for norway here nine new unique observations of c lanceolata for norway including three new county records are given and an updated map and discussion of its distribution in norway is provided the relative uncommonness of c lanceolata compared to other bee species may be due to sampling biases a sampling scheme that would allow assessing if such bias is influencing our knowledge of the status of norwegian bees is therefore suggested,2018,0.576
Current and future distributions of Espeletiinae (Asteraceae) in the Venezuelan Andes based on statistical downscaling of climatic variables and niche modelling,background pã ramos are the high elevation ecosystems of the humid tropical andes characterised by the presence of giant rosettes of the espeletiinae subtribe asteraceae forecasted climate change is likely to reduce the extent of the area climatically suitable occupied currently by espeletiinae and their elevation distribution patterns aims the aim of this study was to estimate the potential impacts of forecasted climate change on the geographic distribution extent of area and elevation distribution patterns of 28 species of espeletiinae that have been recorded in the cordillera de mã rida venezuela methods six bioclimatic variables downscaled to a 90 m ã 90 m cell size were used to construct species distribution models sdm for the 28 species to model their current and likely future distribution 2070 by using two general circulation models and four representative concentration pathways rcp results nine species were estimated to have potential distribution over less than 1000 km2 and five over less than 500 km2 in current climatic conditions fifteen and eight species had elevation spans narrower than 1000 m and 500 m respectively no significant differences in modelled areas or spans were detected between north central and south sections of the cordillera de mã rida mean â se future reduction in the extent of area climatically suitable were estimated between 51 3 â 6 3 rcp2 6 and 78 1 â 5 3 rcp8 5 coupled with upward range retreat of between 277 8 m â 27 4 m rcp2 6 and 762 5 m â 59 8 m rcp8 5 conclusions our study predicts large reductions in modelled area and important upward shifts in the distribution of venezuelan espeletiinae by 2070 compared to their current distribution,2018,0.693
Mapping the potential distribution of the schistosomiasis intermediate host Biomphalaria straminea in China,biomphalaria straminea is native to brazil but has established a population in guangdong province china its potential of expanding and transmitting schistosoma mansoni is of great concern we seek to map s mansoni transmission potential by predicting ecological dimensions and potential distributions of b straminea using state of the art ecological niche model approaches two environmental datasets were selected to fit individual and ensemble niche models together with the evaluation of niche conservatism during b straminea invasion in china a small area is still occupied by the introduced population compared to that in brazil a vast space with suitable climate remains unfilled and might be available to b straminea contrasting results of niche conservatism evaluation were attained based on the two environmental datasets the coastal areas in southern china together with south western yunnan and southern hainan and taiwan were consistent supported by multiple model approaches showing high climate suitability for b straminea attention should be paid to the possibility of s mansoni epidemic in these identified areas as high pressure due to propagation and future climate change may further complicate conditions our results call for rigorous monitoring and supervising along these areas in china,2018,0.359
The role of hybridization during ecological divergence of southwestern white pine ( Pinus strobiformis ) and limber pine ( P. flexilis ),interactions between extrinsic factors such as disruptive selection and intrinsic factors such as genetic incompatibilities among loci often contribute towards the maintenance of species boundaries the relative roles of these factors in the establishment of reproductive isolation can be examined using species pairs characterized by gene flow throughout their divergence history we investigated the process of speciation and the maintenance of species boundaries between pinus strobiformis and p flexilis utilizing ecological niche modeling demographic modeling and genomic cline analyses we illustrated a divergence history with continuous gene flow our results supported an abundance of advanced generation hybrids and a lack of loci exhibiting steep transition in allele frequency across the hybrid zone additionally we found evidence for climate associated variation in the hybrid index and niche divergence between parental species and the hybrid zone these results are consistent with extrinsic factors such as climate being an important isolating mechanism a buildup of intrinsic incompatibilities and of co adapted gene complexes is also apparent although these appear to be in the earliest stages of development this supports previous work in coniferous species demonstrating the importance of extrinsic factors in facilitating speciation overall our findings lend support to the hypothesis that varying strengths and directions of selection pressures across the long lifespans of conifers in combination with their life history strategies delay the evolution of strong intrinsic incompatibilities,2018,0.729
Taxonomic notes on the genus Ophrys L.(Orchidaceae) in the Crimea and the North Caucasus,the genus ophrys l is one of the most intricate orchid genera this genus is well known for its sexual deceptive pollination syndrome and it is widely accepted that diversification of the genus resulted from adaptations to different pollinators despite these strict adaptations the introgression within ophrys is quite usual the unusual pollination system and complex evolution of the genus may be the primary reason for the confused taxonomy and extensive debate over species richness within the genus modern estimation of the species richness varies from 9 macrospecies based on the results of molecular analysis to 354 microspecies based on minute morphological differences the present paper revises the genus ophrys within the territory of the crimea and the north caucasus five taxa are recognized o apifera huds o mammosa desf subsp mammosa o caucasica subsp cyclocheila aver syn nov o mammosa subsp caucasica woronow ex grossh soã o oestrifera m bieb o bremifera steven syn nov o oestrifera subsp abchasica kã mpel syn nov and o ã vallis costae kã mpel o apifera ã o oestrifera o ã skopelii nothosubsp markiana b baumann h baumann r lorenz et ruedi peter syn nov a key to the species and subspecies is provided ophrys ã vallis costae is reported for the crimea for the first time,2018,0.459
Shorter Note - An Ornamental Plant Found Spreading Aggressively: Potential Invasiveness of Dryopteris erythrosora (Dryopteridaceae) in North America,an ornamental plant found spreading aggressively potential invasiveness of dryopteris erythrosora dryopteridaceae in north america â dryopteris erythrosora d c eaton kunze dryopteridaceae is a fern native to japan korea and china hoshizaki and wilson american fern journal 89 1â 98 1999 it is valued for its striking coppery new growth its hardiness shade tolerance and its evergreen habit it has been widely planted in north america as an ornamental fern frequently in large commercial landscape plantings dryopteris erythrosora is widely sold at garden centers and is frequently recommended by gardeners and even botanical gardens as a maintenance free easy to grow fern in the summer of 2017 one of the authors noticed a dense population of d erythrosora in a disturbed suburban woodlot located in alpharetta georgia a population survey at the site documented a large number of fertile leaves and the recruitment of young plants,2018,0.318
Predicting the current and future cultivation regions of Carthamus tinctorius L. using MaxEnt model under climate change in China,change in future climate will either expand contract or shift the climatic niche of many species and this could lead to shifting of their geographical ranges prediction of suitable cultivation regions through modeling has evolved as a useful tool for the assessment of habitat suitability and resource conservation to protect medicinal plants we modelled current and future distribution of c tinctorius based on three representative concentration pathways rcp2 6 rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 for the year 2050s and 2070s using a maximum entropy model maxent and geographical information system gis in china for modeling procedure 99 occurrence records and 11 worldclim environmental factors was used in this paper the results show that the area under the receiver operating characteristic roc curve auc was used to evaluate model performance all of the aucs were greater than 0 970 thereby placing these models in the â œexcellentâ category the jackknife test also showed that maximum temperature in march tmax3 maximum temperature in february tmax2 maximum temperature in november tmax11 precipitation in july prec7 and precipitation in august prec8 were the main variables from the area of current distribution of the total 6276666 77 km2 65 36 area 27 28 area 2619895 88 km2 was highly suitable for safflower in china and the highly suitable area with suitability between 66 and 100 was mainly concentrated in sichuan 2 74 yunnan 2 09 shaanxi 1 82 hubei 1 76 guizhou 1 66 henan 1 66 and hunan 1 64 xinjiang was the largest suitable area which accounts for 9 70 it was worth noting realized niche was little planting in sichuan province due to market and economic price factors social factors and other factors compared to the current distribution the total area of the poorly suitable regions and moderately suitable regions for safflower under the three rcps rcp2 6 rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 would increase in 2050s and 2070s however the total area of the highly suitable regions under the three rcps rcp2 6 rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 in 2050s and two rcps rcp2 6 and rcp4 5 in 2070s would decrease this research would provide theoretical suggestions for the protection cultivation management and sustainable utilization of c tinctorius resources to face the challenge of global climate change,2018,0.056
Efficacy and safety of Vernonia cinerea (L.) Less. for smoking cessation: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials,background objective several randomized controlled trials have investigated vernonia cinerea l less for smoking cessation but there remains no critical summary of overall findings this study uses systematic review and meta analysis to summarize the efficacy and safety of v cinerea methods nine databases were searched through november 2017 randomized controlled trials that reported the smoking cessation effect of v cinerea were included data were extracted by two independent researchers study quality was assessed using the cochrane risk of bias and jadad score the estimates of pooled effects were calculated as relative risk rr with 95 ci using a random effects model results five trials with 347 smokers were included v cinerea treatment group was significantly associated with cessation rate higher than that in the control group with no evidence of heterogeneity for both continuous abstinence rate car at week 8 with risk ratio rr 1 69 95 ci 1 00 2 86 week 12 rr 2 18 95 ci 1 17 4 04 and 7 day point prevalence abstinence rate par week 8 rr 1 51 95 ci 1 01 2 27 week 12 rr 1 93 95 ci 1 24 2 99 at week 8 and 12 respectively there was no significant difference of all adverse events between the treatment and the control groups conclusion our study demonstrates that v cinerea has potential efficacy for smoking cessation further well design rcts of standardized v cinerea compared with standard treatment should be conducted to strengthen this evidence,2018,0.051
The first vertebrate fossil from Socotra Island (Yemen) is an early Holocene Egyptian fruit bat,data on the prehistoric biota of the socotra archipelago yemen are scarce we report on the first extinct vertebrate ever recorded from this western indian ocean island group an exceptionally preserved adult specimen of egyptian fruit bat rousettus aegyptiacus was found in a calcite flowstone in hoq cave on the ne coast of socotra island accelerator mass spectrometry ams radiocarbon dating on bone fragments estimates the fossil at ca 7600â 7400 cal a bp radiocarbon age 6669 â 70 14c a bp corresponding to an early holocene wet period in southern arabia and the horn of africa morphometric analysis of the skull compared to recent specimens from the neighbouring mainlands finds the fossil morphologically most similar to egyptian nile valley and libyan desert not to east african or middle eastern populations the species is currently absent from the horn of africa somalia and eastern ethiopia although potentially a stray individual we also discuss the palaeoenvironmental implications under the hypothetical scenario that the fruit bat is a remnant of an extinct resident population if so the extinction of an important pollinator and seed disperser may have impacted the socotran terrestrial ecosystems,2018,0.692
Location-based species recommendation using co-occurrences and environment-GeoLifeCLEF 2018 challenge,this paper presents several approaches for plant predictions given their location in the context of the geolifeclef 2018 challenge we have developed three kinds of prediction models one convolutional neural network on environmental data cnn one neural network on co occurrences data and two other models only based on the spatial occurrences of species a closest location classifier and a random forest fitted on the spatial coordinates we also evaluated the combination of these models through two different late fusion methods one based on predictive probabilities and the other one based on predictive ranks results show the effectiveness of the cnn which obtained the best prediction score of the whole geolifeclef challenge the fusion of this model with the spatial ones only provides slight improvements suggesting that the cnn already captured most of the spatial information in addition to the environmental preferences of the plants,2018,0.138
Global spread of helminth parasites at the human-domestic animal-wildlife interface,changes in species distributions open novel parasite transmission routes at the humanâ wildlife interface yet the strength of biotic and biogeographical factors that prevent or facilitate parasite host shifting are not well understood we investigated global patterns of helminth parasite nematoda cestoda trematoda sharing between mammalian wildlife species and domestic mammal hosts including humans using 24 000 unique country level records of hostâ parasite associations we used hierarchical modelling and species trait data to determine possible drivers of the level of parasite sharing between wildlife species and either humans or domestic animal hosts we found the diet of wildlife species to be a strong predictor of levels of helminth parasite sharing with humans and domestic animals followed by a moderate effect of zoogeographical region and minor effects of speciesâ habitat and climatic niches combining model predictions with the distribution and ecological profile data of wildlife species we projected global risk maps that uncovered strikingly similar patterns of wildlife parasite sharing across geographical areas for the different domestic host species including humans these similarities are largely explained by the fact that widespread parasites are commonly recorded infecting several domestic species if the dietary profile and position in the trophic chain of a wildlife species largely drives its level of helminth parasite sharing with humans domestic animals future range shifts of host species that result in novel trophic interactions may likely increase parasite host shifting and have important ramifications for human and animal health,2018,1
iNaturalist as a tool to expand the research value of museum specimens,premise of the study innovative approaches to specimen collection and curation are needed to maximize the utility of natural history collections in a new era of data use associated data such as digital images from the field are routinely collected with recent herbarium specimens however these data often remain inaccessible and are rarely curated alongside the associated physical specimens which limits future data use methods and results we leveraged the widely used citizen science platform inaturalist to permanently associate fieldâ collected data to herbarium specimens including information not well preserved in traditional specimens this protocol improves the efficiency and accuracy of all steps from the collecting event to specimen curation and enhances the potential uses of specimens conclusions inaturalist provides a standardized and costâ efficient enhancement to specimen collection and curation that can be easily adapted for specific research goals or other collection types beyond herbaria,2018,0.457
Estimating the potential geographical range of Sirex noctilio : comparison with an existing model and relationship with field severity,the sirex woodwasp sirex noctilio is a significant pest of exotic stands of pinus species in the southern hemisphere and an emerging threat in north eastern america the potential global distribution of s noctilio was assessed using the process oriented niche modelling software climex model parameters were inferred from s noctilioâ s known native distribution in eurasia and northern africa its exotic range in brazil new zealand and south africa and from ecophysiological laboratory observations of both s noctilio and its symbiotic wood decay fungus amylostereum areolatum model predictions were validated using independent distribution data from australia new zealand south africa and the americas damage significance and spatial distribution data of s noctilio infestations in new zealand were compared with growth and suitability outputs of the model to explore if the impact of s noctilio could be related to climate however no correlation between modelled climate suitability and field infestation severity were found the resulting model indicated that s noctilio is currently occupying a fraction of its potential climatic niche in the regions it has invaded taking into account areas where suitable hosts occur results suggest that s noctilio could further extend its range into additional plantations in southern queensland in australia and central brazil and into native and exotic stands of pinus throughout north east america stands of pinus that are isolated at present from current s noctilio infestations such as those in california central america and western australia may also be at risk if control measures are ineffective in preventing its spread differences in parameter selection and risk projections of our model and a previously published climex model of s noctilio are discussed,2018,0.28
Data-Intensive Ecological Research Is Catalyzed by Open Science and Team Science,many problems facing society and the environment need ecologists to use increasingly larger volumes and heterogeneous types of data and approaches designed to harness such dataâ that is data intensive science in the present article we argue that data intensive science will be most successful when used in combination with open science and team science however there are cultural barriers to adopting each of these types of science in ecology we describe the benefits and cultural barriers that exist for each type of science and the powerful synergies realized by practicing team science and open science in conjunction with data intensive science finally we suggest that each type of science is made up of myriad practices that can be aligned along gradients from low to high level of adoption and advocate for incremental adoption of each type of science to meet the needs of the project and researchers,2018,0.197
Overview of GeoLifeCLEF 2018: location-based species recommendation,the geolifeclef challenge provides a testbed for the systemoriented evaluation of a geographic species recommendation service the aim is to investigate location based recommendation approaches in the context of large scale spatialized environmental data this paper presents an overview of the resources and assessments of the geolifeclef task 2018 summarizes the approaches employed by the participating groups and provides an analysis of the main evaluation results,2018,0.257
Impacts of an invasive plant on primary production: testing a functional trait-based framework with a greenhouse experiment,questions predicting when invasive species will affect ecosystem functioning remains problematic with strong contingency upon both the invasive species and the recipient community s identities adopting a functional trait based approach might overcome this context dependence as an early exploration of this approach we used a greenhouse experiment to assess the potential invasion effects on community trait composition and biomass production location we introduced seeds of the invasive plant impatiens glandulifera from three distant european origins namely northern france 50 1 â n 2 0 â e southern sweden 55 9 â n 12 9 â e and central norway 63 5 â n 10 9 â e to transplanted vegetation turves from the trondheim area in central norway methods at the end of the greenhouse experiment we measured plant height specific leaf area sla leaf dry matter content ldmc and standing biomass of both the invasive plant and the turf communities with this data we evaluated invasion effects on community trait composition and standing biomass as a first test of ecosystem function effects including its dependence on invasive species origin and recipient community composition results invasion by i glandulifera introduced divergent trait values high plant height and sla low ldmc to the recipient community the trait set of both the invader and to a lesser extent the community were altered following invasion seemingly driven by increased light competition competitive and graminoid dominated communities showed stronger changes in ldmc following invasion functional traits of both the communities and the invasive species helped explain the increase in standing biomass southern invader plants more strongly affected the recipient community than their northern counterparts resulting in stronger biomass reduction of the recipient community conclusions this study shows how invasion induced increases in productivity are effectuated through both the introduction of different invader traits and shifts in the co occurring species trait set illustrating the potential of a functional trait based approach,2018,0.056
Developing an Integrated Remote Sensing Based Biodiversity Index for Predicting Animal Species Richness,many remote sensing metrics have been applied in large scale animal species monitoring and conservation however the capabilities of these metrics have not been well compared and assessed in this study we investigated the correlation of 21 remote sensing metrics in three categories with the global species richness of three different animal classes using several statistical methods as a result we developed a new index by integrating several highly correlated metrics of the 21 remote sensing metrics analyzed evapotranspiration et had the greatest impact on species richness on a global scale explained variance 52 the metrics with a high explained variance on the global scale were mainly in the energy productivity category the metrics in the texture category exhibited higher correlation with species richness at regional scales we found that radiance and temperature had a larger impact on the distribution of bird richness compared to their impacts on the distributions of both amphibians and mammals three machine learning models i e support vector machine random forests and neural networks were evaluated for metric integration and the random forest model showed the best performance our newly developed index exhibited a 0 7 explained variance for the three animal classesâ species richness on a global scale with an explained variance that was 20 higher than any of the univariate metrics,2018,0.567
Diversity among peripheral populations: genetic and evolutionary differentiation of Salamandra atra at the southern edge of the Alps,separate populations at the edge of a species range are receiving great attention and have been shown to be often different from populations in the core area however it has rarely been tested whether neighboring peripheral populations are genetically and evolutionarily similar to each other as expected for their geographical proximity and similar ecological conditions or differ due to historical contingency we investigated isolation and differentiation withinâ population genetic diversity and evolutionary relationships among multiple peripheral populations of a coldâ adapted terrestrial salamander salamandra atra at the southern edge of the species core range we carried out population genetic phylogeographic and phylogenetic analyses on various molecular markers 10 autosomal microsatellite loci three mitochondrial loci with total length 2 100 bp two proteinâ coding nuclear genes sampled from more than 100 individuals from 13 sites along the southern prealps we found at least seven isolated peripheral populations all highly differentiated from the remaining populations and differentiated from each other at various levels the withinâ population genetic diversity was variable in the peripheral populations but consistently lower than in the remaining populations all peripheral populations along the southern prealps belong to an ancient lineage that is also found in the dinarides but did not contribute to the postglacial recolonization of the inner and northern alps all fully melanistic populations from the orobian mountains to the southern dinarides represent a single clade to the exclusion of the two yellowâ patched populations inhabiting the pasubio massif and the sette comuni plateau which are distinguished as s atra pasubiensis and s atra aurorae respectively in conclusion multiple populations of s atra at the southern edge of the species core area have different levels of differentiation different amount of withinâ population genetic diversity and different evolutionary origin therefore they should be regarded as complementary conservation targets to preserve the overall genetic and evolutionary diversity of the species,2018,0.997
Distribution pattern of seven Polytrichum species in the East European Plain and Eastern Fennoscandia,distribution of seven species of the genus polytrichum p commune p hyperboreum p jensenii p juniperinum p piliferum p strictum and p swartzii on the territory of the east european plain and eastern fennoscandia eepef was studied for each species model maps of distribution ranges were constructed and the causes that determine the pattern of species are considered distribution of most species correlates to a high degree with spatial changes in the amount of precipitation relative humidity and monthly temperature averages during the vegetative season however p piliferum is an exception to this rule as its distribution is influenced not only by climate but also by location of fluvioglacial deposits on the territory of eepef distribution range of p hyperboreum and p jensenii is mainly limited by subarctic region tundra and forest tundra and this range looks diminishing,2018,0.724
Impact of Scyphozoan Venoms on Human Health and Current First Aid Options for Stings,cnidaria include the most venomous animals of the world among cnidaria scyphozoa true jellyfish are ubiquitous abundant and often come into accidental contact with humans and therefore represent a threat for public health and safety the venom of scyphozoa is a complex mixture of bioactive substancesâ including thermolabile enzymes such as phospholipases metalloproteinases and possibly pore forming proteinsâ and is only partially characterized scyphozoan stings may lead to local and systemic reactions via toxic and immunological mechanisms some of these reactions may represent a medical emergency however the adoption of safe and efficacious first aid measures for jellyfish stings is hampered by the diffusion of folk remedies anecdotal reports and lack of consensus in the scientific literature species specific differences may hinder the identification of treatments that work for all stings however rinsing the sting site with vinegar 5 acetic acid and the application of heat hot pack immersion in hot water or lidocaine appear to be substantiated by evidence controlled clinical trials or reliable models of envenomation are warranted to confirm the efficacy and safety of these approaches and identify possible species specific exceptions knowledge of the precise composition of scyphozoa venom may open the way to molecule oriented therapies in the future,2018,0.658
Morphometric characteristics of Alpine salamanders: a support for subspecies validation and conservation?,the subspecies concept is not only useful to assess the evolutionary history of species and therefore describe their evolutionary potential but it also has corollaries for defining conservation units and their management within alpine salamanders the subspecies status of salamandra atra prenjensis isolated in the dinarides from its nominal subspecies salamandra atra atra that occurs in the alps has been under debate to remediate this fuzzy taxonomy the present study investigates 14 morphological traits of alpine salamanders originating from austria and from bosnia and herzegovina b h multivariate analyses support a geographical structuring of morphological variation and the differentiation between the dinaric b h and alpine austrian populations within populations a different correlation pattern among traits is registered reflecting the distinct genetic architecture of multivariate phenotypes this morphometric study supports recent molecular evidences of a strong differentiation between the dinaric and alpine populations and pleads in favour of the separate subspecies status although a wider sampling of other populations and the inclusion of additional characters would be necessary to reinforce this conclusion the recognition of salamandra atra prenjensis as a distinct subspecies would highly contribute to the better conservation of this emblematic salamander,2018,0.731
Macroecological Predictions of Global Biodiversity from Remote Sensing Metrics,rapid biodiversity change at a global scale requires enhanced monitoring tools to predict how shifting environmental conditions might alter speciesâ extinction risk emerging remote sensing tools are essential to these efforts and provide the sole mechanism to detect environmental changes and their potential consequences for biodiversity rapidly here i assess the extent to which remote sensing measurements predict species richness globally and within regions facilitating the establishment of a single framework for monitoring diversity worldwide i assembled global remote sensing metrics and data on diversity gradients to construct and cross validate models predicting species richness of birds and mammals within and among the worldâ s biogeographic zones enhanced vegetation index evi land surface temperature lst the first principal component of habitat heterogeneity and an interaction between energy and habitat heterogeneity are important remotely sensed environmental measurements for predicting trends of species richness of birds and mammals at all scales although the intensity of the relationship differs between groups and grain sizes however a global model does not explain differences in species richness of birds between distinct zoogeographical realms indicating a possible threshold in biodiversity change prediction before onset of novel environmental conditions measuring potential nonlinear changes in species richness is a useful application of the essential biodiversity variables ebv framework for operational monitoring of global and regional biodiversity the continued production of reliable and consistent remote sensing will facilitate further exploration of current and upcoming drivers of biodiversity change and will help improve macroecological models,2018,0.376
"Range extension of Hyperoplus immaculatus (Corbin, 1950) (Pisces, Ammodytidae) in Portuguese continental waters",the occurrence of hyperoplus immaculatus corbin 1950 in portuguese continental waters is reported for the first time one specimen was collected in november 2017 and 32 specimens in may 2018 all with bottom trawl at depths between 25 and 80 m analyses of diagnostic morphological characters confirmed the specimen as h immaculatus further validation was obtained by sequencing a 652 bp region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase i gene the record here described constitutes a new finding for the distribution of h immaculatus in the southern northeast atlantic,2018,0.487
Two-dimensional gel and shotgun proteomics approaches to distinguish fresh and frozen-thawed curled octopus ( Eledone cirrhosa ),the substitution and sale of frozen thawed fish labeled as fresh is a widespread difficult to unmask commercial fraud and a potential risk for consumer health proteomics could help to identify markers for the rapid screening of food samples and the identification of frozen thawed seafood using two dimensional electrophoresis 2 de and high resolution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry lc ms ms we identified biomarkers that are able to discriminate between fresh and frozen thawed tissue samples of curled octopus eledone cirrhosa the 2 de analysis showed a significant reduction in two protein spots molecular weight of 45â 50 kda isoelectric point of 6 5â 7 identified as transgelin at shotgun analysis nine proteins resulted modulated and transgelin was confirmed as down regulated making it a potentially useful marker for differentiating between fresh and frozen thawed fish product samples,2018,0.443
"Phylogeny, historical biogeography and diversification rates in an economically important group of Neotropical palms: Tribe Euterpeae",tribe euterpeae is an economically and ecologically important group of neotropical palms arecaceae some species are hyperdominant in the neotropics and many constitute a good source of revenue to reconstruct the biogeographical history and diversification of the euterpeae we inferred a robust dated molecular phylogenetic hypothesis including 82 of the species sequenced for five dna regions trnd trnt cisp4 wrky6 rpb2 and phyb ancestral range was estimated using all models available in biogeobears and binary state speciation and extinction analysis was used to evaluate the association of biome and inflorescence type with diversification rates all intergeneric relationships were resolved providing insight on the taxonomic controversy of jessenia euterpe and prestoea three widely distributed neotropical species were non monophyletic inviting a revision of species circumscriptions the euterpeae started its diversification in the mid eocene 40â mya with most species level divergence events occurring in the last 10â million years four colonization events from central to south america were inferred different diversification rates were associated with biomes lowland rainforest was inferred as the ancestral biome of euterpeae attesting to the importance of lowland adapted lineages on the assembly of the montane flora the two fold higher speciation rate for montane taxa compared with lowland rainforest taxa was contemporaneous to the andean orogenic uplift the specialized beetle pollination of oenocarpus with its hippuriform horsetail shape inflorescence was not associated with diversification rates in euterpeae,2018,0.826
Ecology of Acacieae,in 2005 the acacia genus was proposed to be split into several genera triggering a heated discussion between the botanists of australia africa and america this re typification was ratified in 2006 at the viennaâ s nomenclature session of the 17th international botanical congress ibc and later in 2011 in the melbourneâ s nomenclature section of the 18th ibc the decisions taken in melbourne confirm the australian acacias retain the name while new names are needed for the african and american species of the acacieae tribe currently the tribe is formed by the genera acacia for australian species vachellia senegalia parasenegalia acaciella mariosousa and racosperma despite this division the species of the tribe along several ecosystems around the globe perform similar characteristics and behaviors most species seem to have co evolved with frequent forest fire events and developed the ability to resprout or activate germination after a fire event some acacia sensu lato s l species have also co evolved with wildlife and seem to adopt resistance to defoliation of seedling browsing it is well known that acacia s l species have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and coupled with important leaf litter inputs to the soil they may modify soil chemistry and physics by enabling microorganisms and soil fauna to alter the microhabitat beneath the tree such characteristics are significant in the recovery of ecosystems within ecological successions after disturbance but may also alter original ecosystems when acacias invade habitats of other native species these characteristics and others have been found in several species of the tribe acacieae worldwide the objective of the chapter is to describe and analyze common characteristics among acacia s l species and to trace some parallelisms of their performance throughout several ecosystems that hold such species,2018,0.98
Genetic Differentiation and Fragmentation in Response to Climate Change of the Narrow Endemic Psittacanthus auriculatus,the state of oaxaca is positioned in a rather unique biogeographical position with the highest diversity of vascular plants in mexico the isolation of xeric valleys surrounded by complex mountain ranges in oaxaca supplies an excellent opportunity to investigate the influence of the pleistocene events on xeric species to test for the alternative hypotheses of pleistocene glacial refugia we used sequences of two chloroplast markers to examine the phylogeographic patterns of the endemic mistletoe species psittacanthus auriculatus loranthaceae across its known range in oaxaca and conducted ecological niche modeling enm to explore changes of its distribution range through present future and palaeo periods our results revealed two groups corresponding to the distribution of individuals populations from the northern locations western valleys and those from southern localities at central valleys of oaxaca a significant genetic signal of differentiation demographic stability and contraction of suitable habitat during the last glacial maximum predicted by enms strongly supported a scenario of habitat fragmentation during the late pleistocene we conclude that the genetic differentiation of p auriculatus is consistent with a model of range contraction during glacial cycles and expansion during interglacials with no major range changes under future scenarios of climate change the findings verified the profound effects of pleistocene climatic fluctuations on this endemic mistletoe species and the low genetic diversity within populations highlights paradoxically the urgency of preserving vulnerable populations of endemic yet parasitic mistletoes,2018,0.773
Towards global data products of Essential Biodiversity Variables on species traits,essential biodiversity variables ebvs allow observation and reporting of global biodiversity change but a detailed framework for the empirical derivation of specific ebvs has yet to be developed here we re examine and refine the previous candidate set of species traits ebvs and show how traits related to phenology morphology reproduction physiology and movement can contribute to ebv operationalization the selected ebvs express intra specific trait variation and allow monitoring of how organisms respond to global change we evaluate the societal relevance of species traits ebvs for policy targets and demonstrate how open interoperable and machine readable trait data enable the building of ebv data products we outline collection methods meta data standardization reproducible workflows semantic tools and licence requirements for producing species traits ebvs an operationalization is critical for assessing progress towards biodiversity conservation and sustainable development goals and has wide implications for data intensive science in ecology biogeography conservation and earth observation,2018,0.622
Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change,climate change and human activity are dooming species at an unprecedented rate via a plethora of direct and indirect often synergic mechanisms among these primary extinctions driven by environmental change could be just the tip of an enormous extinction iceberg as our understanding of the importance of ecological interactions in shaping ecosystem identity advances it is becoming clearer how the disappearance of consumers following the depletion of their resources â a process known as â co extinctionâ â is more likely the major driver of biodiversity loss although the general relevance of co extinctions is supported by a sound and robust theoretical background the challenges in obtaining empirical information about ongoing and past co extinction events complicate the assessment of their relative contributions to the rapid decline of species diversity even in well known systems let alone at the global scale by subjecting a large set of virtual earths to different trajectories of extreme environmental change global heating and cooling and by tracking species loss up to the complete annihilation of all life either accounting or not for co extinction processes we show how ecological dependencies amplify the direct effects of environmental change on the collapse of planetary diversity by up to ten times,2018,0.296
Zanthoamides G-I: Three new alkamides from Zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides,three new alkamides zanthoamides g i 1 3 together with ten known compounds araliopsine skimmianine n methylplatydesminium cation isoplatydesmine myrtopsine atanine n methylatanine sesamin hesperetin and hesperidin were isolated from the fruits of zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic means all isolated compounds were assessed for their cytotoxicity against a549 mcf7 pc3 and pnt2 cell lines among the alkamides only zanthoamide g 1 showed low level of cytotoxicity against mcf7 cells,2018,0.358
Molecular genetic and biochemical evidence for adaptive evolution of leaf abaxial epicuticular wax crystals in the genus Lithocarpus (Fagaceae),background leaf epicuticular wax is an important functional trait for physiological regulation and pathogen defense this study tests how selective pressure may have forced the trait of leaf abaxial epicuticular wax crystals laewc and whether the presence absence of laewc is associated with other ecophysiological traits scanning electron microscopy was conducted to check for laewc in different lithocarpus species four wax biosynthesis related genes including two wax backbone genes eceriferum 1 cer1 and cer3 one regulatory gene cer7 and one transport gene cer5 were cloned and sequenced ecophysiological measurements of secondary metabolites photosynthesis water usage efficiency and nutrition indices were also determined evolutionary hypotheses of leaf wax character transition associated with the evolution of those ecophysiological traits as well as species evolution were tested by maximum likelihood results eight of 14 studied lithocarpus species have obvious laewc appearing with various types of trichomes measurements of ecophysiological traits show no direct correlations with the presence absence of laewc however the content of phenolic acids is significantly associated with the gene evolution of the wax biosynthetic backbone gene cer1 which was detected to be positively selected when laewc was gained during the late miocene to pliocene period conclusions changes of landmass and vegetation type accelerated the diversification of tropical and subtropical forest trees and certain herbivores during the late miocene as phenolic acids were long thought to be associated with defense against herbivories co occurrence of laewc and phenolic acids may suggest that laewc might be an adaptive defensive mechanism in lithocarpus,2018,0.493
Intraspecific ecological niche divergence and reproductive shifts foster cytotype displacement and provide ecological opportunity to polyploids,background and aims niche divergence between polyploids and their lower ploidy progenitors is one of the primary mechanisms fostering polyploid establishment and adaptive divergence however within species chromosomal and reproductive variability have usually been neglected in community ecology and biodiversity analyses even though they have been recognized to play a role in the adaptive diversification of lineages methods we used paspalum intermedium a grass species with diverging genetic systems diploidy vs autopolyploidy allogamy vs autogamy and sexuality vs apomixis to recognize the causality of biogeographic patterns adaptation and ecological flexibility of cytotypes chromosome counts and flow cytometry were used to characterize within species genetic systems diversity environmental niche modelling was used to evaluate intraspecific ecological attributes associated with environmental and climatic factors and to assess correlations among ploidy reproductive modes and ecological conditions ruling speciesâ population dynamics range expansion adaptation and evolutionary history key results two dominant cytotypes non randomly distributed along local and regional geographical scales displayed niche differentiation a directional shift in niche optima and signs of disruptive selection on ploidy related ecological aptitudes for the exploitation of environmental resources ecologically specialized allogamous sexual diploids were found in northern areas associated with higher temperature humidity and productivity while generalist autogamous apomictic tetraploids occurred in southern areas occupying colder and less productive environments four localities with a documented shift in ploidy and four mixed populations in a zone of ecological transition revealed an uneven replacement between cytotypes conclusions polyploidy and contrasting reproductive traits between cytotypes have promoted shifts in niche optima and increased ecological tolerance and niche divergence ecologically specialized diploids maintain cytotype stability in core areas by displacing tetraploids while broader ecological preferences and a shift from sexuality to apomixis favoured polyploid colonization in peripheral areas where diploids are displaced and fostered the ecological opportunity for autotetraploids supporting range expansion to open southern habitats,2018,0.438
Landscape limits gene flow and drives population structure in Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii),distance environmental heterogeneity and local adaptation can strongly influence population structure and connectivity understanding how these factors shape the genomic landscape of threatened species is a major goal in conservation genomics and wildlife management herein we use thousands 6 859 of single nucleotide polymorphism markers and spatial data from hundreds of individuals n 646 to re evaluate the population structure of agassizâ s desert tortoise gopherus agassizii analyses resolve from 4 to 8 spatially well defined clusters across the range western central and southern populations within the western mojave recovery unit are consistent throughout while analyses sometimes merge other recovery units depending on the level of clustering causal modeling consistently associates genetic connectivity with least cost distance based on multiple landscape features associated with tortoise habitat better than geographic distance some features include elevation soil depth rock volume precipitation and vegetation coverage suggesting that physical climatic and biotic landscape features have played a strong evolutionary role restricting gene flow between populations further 12 highly differentiated outlier loci have associated functions that may be involved with neurogenesis wound healing lipid metabolism and possibly vitellogenesis together these findings have important implications for recovery programs such as translocations population augmentation reproduction in captivity and the identification of ecologically important genes opening new venues for conservation genomics in desert tortoises,2018,0.602
Climate-driven substitution of habitat-forming species leads to reduced biodiversity within a temperate marine community,aim in marine ecosystems habitatâ forming species hfs such as reefâ building corals and canopyâ forming macroalgae alter local environmental conditions and can promote biodiversity by providing biogenic living space for a vast array of associated organisms we examined communityâ level impacts of observed climateâ driven shifts in the relative abundances of two superficially similar hfs the warmâ water kelp laminaria ochroleuca and the coolâ water kelp laminaria hyperborea location western english channel northâ east atlantic methods we compared algal and invertebrate assemblages associated with kelp stipes and holdfasts across multiple sites and sampling events significant differences were recorded in the structure of assemblages between the host kelp species at each site and event results assemblages associated with stipes of the coolâ water hfs were on average 12 times more diverse and supported 3600 times more biomass compared with the warmâ water hfs holdfast assemblages also differed significantly between species although to a lesser extent than those associated with stipes overall assemblages associated with the warmâ water hfs were markedly impoverished and comprised far fewer rare or unique taxa main conclusions while previous research has shown how climateâ driven loss of hfs can cause biodiversity loss our study demonstrates that climateâ driven substitutions of hfs can also lead to impoverished assemblages the indirect effects of climate change remain poorly resolved but shifts in the distributions and abundances of hfs may invoke widespread ecological change especially in marine ecosystems where facilitative interactions are particularly strong,2018,0.537
"Bursts of morphological and lineage diversification in modern dasyurids, a ‘classic’ adaptive radiation",the australasian marsupial family dasyuridae exhibits one of the most spectacular species level diversity of any marsupial group the existence of such exceptional species and phenotypic diversity is commonly attributed to ecological opportunity eo according to the eo hypothesis organisms freed from the burden of competition may undergo an initial burst in diversification and morphological evolution subsequently as accessible niches become occupied rates of diversification should slow through time we examined the dynamics of lineage and phenotypic diversification to test whether dasyuridae diversified in a classic adaptive radiation we found that patterns of both lineage diversification and phenotypic body mass disparity exhibited an early burst as predicted by the eo model three historical events may have spurred this radiation the extinction of thylacinids the emergence of the new guinean cordillera and the spread of arid habitats as evidenced by the existence of phylogenetic clustering in these regions in contrast to previous studies carried out on continent wide systems our results support a niche filling scenario with an early burst signal strong enough to be detected this study shows that the diversification of dasyuridae conforms fully to the postulates of the eo hypothesis and thus it constitutes a â classicâ adaptive radiation,2018,0.499
A new species of the remarkable brittle star genus Astrophiura (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from the western Atlantic Ocean,astrophiura caroleae new species is described from off curacao in the southern caribbean and from the western gulf of mexico in depths of 244 to 434 meters this new species the first in the genus astrophiura to be described from the atlantic ocean has a distinctive combination of characters including regularly arranged primary plates large radial shields whose radial edges are in contact for their entire visible length and prominent tubercles on central and radial plates the mottled reddish coloration of the dorsal surface of this species usually contrasts with the color of the substratum rendering it readily visible in situ despite its disc diameter of less than 10 mm like its congeners a caroleae is gonochoric the gonads of females containing conspicuous masses of bright orange eggs that are approximately 165 âµm in diameter dna barcoding data are provided for this new species these are the first for astrophiura,2018,0.807
Options to Apply the IGSN Model to Biodiversity Data,for more than a decade the biodiversity informatics community has recognised the importance of stable resolvable identifiers to enable unambiguous references to data objects and the associated concepts and entities including museum herbarium specimens and more broadly all records serving as evidence of species occurrence in time and space early efforts built on the darwin core institutioncode collectioncode and cataloguenumber terms treated as a triple and expected to uniquely to identify a specimen following review of current technologies for globally unique identifiers tdwg adopted life science identifiers lsids pereira et al 2009 unfortunately the key stakeholders in the lsid consortium soon withdrew support for the technology leaving tdwg committed to a moribund technology subsequently publishers of biodiversity data have adopted a range of technologies to provide unique identifiers including among others http universal resource identifiers uris universal unique identifiers uuids archival resource keys arks and handles each of these technologies has merit but they do not provide consistent guarantees of persistence or resolvability more importantly the heterogeneity of these solutions hampers delivery of services that can treat all of these data objects as part of a consistent linked open data domain,2018,0.187
"First records of ten species of Mesostigmata (Acari, Mesostigmata) added to the published Norwegian species list",the mesostigmata occurring in aboveground microhabitats in two norwegian woodlands were surveyed which revealed ten species new to norwayâ s fauna cilliba cassidea hermann 1804 zercon lindrothi lundqvist johnston 1986 holoparasitus inornatus berlese 1906 lysigamasus armatus halbert 1915 paragamasus alstoni bhattacharyya 1963 paragamasus integer bhattacharyya 1963 pergamasus longicornis berlese 1906 macrocheles dentatus evans browning 1956 macrocheles opacus koch 1839 and macrocheles submotus falconer 1924 this paper presents details of these new records and comments on the known distribution of the species,2018,0.483
A 3D Approach for the Visualization and Edition of Hierarchies: The Case of Biological Taxonomies,oftentimes we come across information that is organized as a tree structure visualization of large trees is challenging because of the limited space available on computer displays in this work we explore 3d space as an alternative that intends to maximize the available space on the screen we developed den3d an interactive web based multi user 3d environment that implements cone trees for the visualization and management of hierarchies in the domain of biological taxonomies in addition to its visualization capabilities a novel editing functionality was introduced for users to flexibly create and maintain their own taxonomies volume tests were performed to determine size limits for the deployment of hierarchies additionally a user study with high school science and biology teachers was conducted to assess the potential of den3d to support biodiversity education,2018,0.276
Pest Risk Analysis for Hakea sericea,hakea sericea was added to the eppo alert list in 2007 and transferred to the list of invasive alien plants in 2012 following a prioritization assessment brunel et al 2010a brunel et al 2010a also concluded that this species was a high priority for a full pest risk analysis pra in a separate exercise brunel et al 2010b considered that h sericea was a species that represented â œan emerging threatâ to the mediterranean basin with the same recommendation that the species be placed on the eppo list of invasive alien plants in 2016 the species was prioritized along with 36 additional species from the eppo list of invasive alien plants and a recent horizon scanning study2 for pra within the life funded project â œmitigating the threat of invasive alien plants to the eu through pest risk analysis to support the regulation 1143 2014â see www iap risk eu hakea sericea was one of 16 species identified as having a high priority for pra,2018,0.601
Range overlap between the sword-billed hummingbird and its guild of long-flowered species: An approach to the study of a coevolutionary mosaic,the coevolutionary process among free living mutualists with extremely long matching traits may favor the formation of mutualistic interaction networks through coevolutionary escalation complementarity and convergence these networks may be geographically structured the links among the species of a local network are shaped by the biotic composition of the community thus creating selection mosaics at broader geographical scales therefore to fully understand a coevolutionary process it is crucial to visualize the geographical structure of the interaction network across the landscape in this study we focused on the poorly known interaction system between ensifera ensifera and its guild of long flowered plant species we combined occurrence data and environmental variables to predict e ensifera distribution in addition to range polygons available for plant species in order to evaluate the geographical variation in bill length and plant species richness a positive relationship between bill length and plant species richness within the e ensifera range suggests a geographical structuring of the interaction networks at mid latitude locations of e ensifera range where hummingbirds attained the longest bills richness of long flowered plant species was higher than at low latitude locations these locations likely represent coevolutionary vortices where long lasting reciprocal selection probably drove the evolution of long traits consequently drawing new plant species into the coevolutionary network conversely areas where the sword billed hummingbird was absent or had shorter bills probably represent coevolutionary coldspots our results provide a first insight into this phenotypically specialized plant pollinator network across the landscape and show candidate areas to test the predictions of the coevolutionary hypothesis such as reciprocal selection,2018,0.851
A Deep Learning Approach to Species Distribution Modelling,species distribution models sdm are widely used for ecological research and conservation purposes given a set of species occurrence the aim is to infer its spatial distribution over a given territory because of the limited number of occurrences of specimens this is usually achieved through environmental niche modeling approaches i e by predicting the distribution in the geographic space on the basis of a mathematical representation of their known distribution in environmental space realized ecological niche the environment is in most cases represented by climate data such as temperature and precipitation but other variables such as soil type or land cover can also be used in this paper we propose a deep learning approach to the problem in order to improve the predictive effectiveness non linear prediction models have been of interest for sdm for more than a decade but our study is the first one bringing empirical evidence that deep convolutional and multilabel models might participate to resolve the limitations of sdm indeed the main challenge is that the realized ecological niche is often very different from the theoretical fundamental niche due to environment perturbation history species propagation constraints and biotic interactions thus the realized abundance in the environmental feature space can have a very irregular shape that can be difficult to capture with classical models deep neural networks on the other side have been shown to be able to learn complex non linear transformations in a wide variety of domains moreover spatial patterns in environmental variables often contains useful information for species distribution but are usually not considered in classical models our study shows empirically how convolutional neural networks efficiently use this information and improve prediction performance,2018,0.36
Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distance insect migrations,insects account for the main fraction of earth s biodiversity and are key players for ecosystems notably as pollinators while insect migration is suspected to represent a natural phenomenon of major importance remarkably little is known about it except for a few flagship species the reason for this situation is mainly due to technical limitations in the study of insect movement here we propose using metabarcoding of pollen carried by insects as a method for tracking their migrations we developed a flexible and simple protocol allowing high multiplexing and not requiring dna extraction one of the most time consuming part of metabarcoding protocols and apply this method to the study of the long distance migration of the butterfly vanessa cardui an emerging model for insect migration we collected 47 butterfly samples along the mediterranean coast of spain in spring and performed metabarcoding of pollen collected from their bodies to test for potential arrivals from the african continent in total we detected 157 plant species from 23 orders most of which 82 8 were insect pollinated african or african arabian endemic taxa contributed 21 0 of our dataset strongly supporting the hypothesis that migratory butterflies colonize southern europe from africa in spring moreover our data suggest that a northwards trans saharan migration in spring is plausible for early arrivals february into europe as shown by the presence of saharan floristic elements our results demonstrate the possibility of regular insect mediated transcontinental pollination with potential implications for ecosystem functioning agriculture and plant phylogeography despite current limitations mostly regarding the availability of plant reference sequences and distribution data the method proved to be useful and demonstrates great potential as plant genetic libraries and distribution datasets improve,2018,0.682
"Updated checklist and DNA barcode-based species delimitations reveal taxonomic uncertainties among freshwater fishes from the mid-north-eastern Caatinga ecoregion, north-eastern Brazil",the is a semiarid freshwater ecoregion in northâ eastern brazil that is dominated by temporary rivers and is currently classified as one of the least ichthyologicallyâ known ecoregions in the world the present study aimed to provide an updated checklist of midâ northâ eastern caatinga ecoregion mnce fish species and evaluate their taxonomic identity using morphology dna barcoding and multiple species delimitation approaches after reviewing published studies and ichthyological collections 119 species were identified among these were 94 putatively valid native and 14 nonâ native species five undescribed native species four new records for the mnce 11 potential cases of misidentification and 14 species listed as inquirenda additionally 252 individuals from 49 species were barcoded revealing three potential taxonomic synonyms the combined molecular approaches estimated a total of 91 native species although a finalized species list for the mnce awaits additional taxonomic revisions and field surveys this study provides the most upâ toâ date species checklist for the mnce and a molecular reference database for identifying mnce fishes with dna barcodes results highlight the need to integrate traditional taxonomy with molecular approaches to correctly identify species especially in taxonomically problematic ecoregions such as the mnce,2018,0.98
Projecting the current and future potential global distribution of Hyphantria cunea (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) using CLIMEX,background the international invasive and quarantined defoliating insect hyphantria cunea drury lepidoptera arctiidae causes huge ecological and economic losses in the world the future climate change may alter the distribution of h cunea and aggravate the damage in the present study we used climex to project the potential global distribution of h cunea according to both historical climate data 1950â 2000 and future climate warming estimates 2011â 2100 to define the impact of climate change results under the historical climate scenario we found that h cunea can survive on every continent and temperature is the main factor that limits its establishment with climate change the suitability will increase in middle and high latitude regions while decrease in the low latitude regions besides tropic regions will be most sensitive to the climate change impacts for the pest to survive the impacts of climate change will also increase over time whether the positive impacts or negative impacts conclusion the projected potential distributions provide a theoretical basis for quarantine and control strategies for the management of this pest in each country furthermore these results provide substantial guidance for studies of the effects of climate change on other major forest pests,2018,0.12
Mechanisms of speciation in Silene,a fundamental question in the field of evolutionary biology is how new species originate investigating speciation benefits from an integrated approach which requires a solid understanding of ecology reproductive biology geographical distribution underlying genetic architecture of reproductive isolation ri demographic history and genomic divergence in this thesis i studied the evolution of reproductive isolation in the sister species silene dioica l clairv and s latifolia poiret the aims of the thesis are to investigate 1 the individual and cumulative contributions of extrinsic and intrinsic reproductive barriers between s dioica and s latifolia 2 the genetic architecture of traits associated with reproductive barriers 3 the demographic history of lineage split between the two species 4 genomic patterns of divergence between the species i found that multiple extrinsic pre and postzygotic barriers resulting from ecological differentiation contributed most to total ri while intrinsic barriers had substantial individual strength but contributed weakly to total ri qtl mapping revealed evidence for genetic coupling of qtls controlling traits associated with ri although qtls were overall widely distributed qtls related to sexually dimorphic traits were located on or near the pseudoautosomal region of the sex chromosomes the best supported demographic model suggests heterogeneous population size and migration rates among genome wide loci and points to the presence of barrier loci genomic divergence measured using fst and dxy was commonly accentuated around the middle of linkage groups and near qtls for traits associated with reproductive barriers in summary the results in my thesis indicate that the speciation process is driven by multiple interacting and complex reproductive barriers the genomic divergence landscape is shaped by interplay of the magnitude of gene flow the strength and timing of selection and other confounding factors such as genomic features,2018,0.829
"Geography, Environment, and Organismal Traits in The Diversification of A Major Tropical Herbaceous Angiosperm Radiation",the generation of plant diversity involves complex interactions between geography environment and organismal traits many macroevolutionary processes and emergent patterns have been identified in different plant groups through the study of spatial data but rarely in the context of a large radiation of tropical herbaceous angiosperms a powerful system for testing interrelated biogeographical hypotheses is provided by the terrestrial bromeliads a neotropical group of extensive ecological diversity and importance in this investigation distributional data for 564 species of terrestrial bromeliads were used to estimate variation in the position and width of species level hydrological habitat occupancy and test six core hypotheses linking geography environment and organismal traits taxonomic groups and functional types differed in hydrological habitat occupancy modulated by convergent and divergent trait evolution and with contrasting interactions with precipitation abundance and seasonality plant traits in the bromeliaceae are intimately associated with bioclimatic differentiation which is in turn strongly associated with variation in geographical range size and species richness these results emphasise the ecological relevance of structural functional innovation in a major plant radiation,2018,0.159
The flathead catfish invasion of the Great Lakes,a detailed review of historical literature and museum data revealed that flathead catfish were not historically native in the great lakes basin with the possible exception of a relict population in lake erie the species has invaded lake erie lake st clair lake huron nearly all drainages in michigan and the fox wolf and milwaukee drainages in wisconsin they have not been collected from lake superior yet and the temperature suitability of that lake is questionable flathead catfish have been stocked sparingly in the great lakes and is not the mechanism responsible for their spread a stocking in 1968 in ohio may be one exception to this dispersal resulted from both natural range expansions and unauthorized introductions the invasion is ongoing with the species invading both from the east and the west to meet in northern lake michigan much of this invasion has likely taken place since the 1990s this species has been documented to have significant impacts on native fishes in other areas where it has been introduced therefore educating the public not to release them into new waters is important frequent monitoring of rivers and lakes for the presence of this species would detect new populations early so that management actions could be utilized on new populations if desired,2018,0.856
Flexible framework for ecological niche modeling,an aspect includes aggregating a plurality of disparate datasets into a document store with semi structured attributes with each document in the document store specifying a geospatial location and a value of an environmental parameter at the geospatial location the document store includes a plurality of documents specifying a plurality of different geo spatial locations and different environmental parameters and the environmental parameters include a climatological parameter niche model layers are generated for the different environmental parameters at the geospatial locations the niche models include a model layer for each of the different environmental parameters a future geospatial location of a species is predicted based on environmental attributes of the species and contents of the niche model layers the predicted future geospatial location of the species overlaid on a geographic map is output,2018,0.468
Benefits and challenges of maintaining national plant pest lists: an analysis of agricultural pests in Bhutan,developing and maintaining national plant pest lists helps fulfil international obligations for trading countries and also provides a foundation for national biosecurity systems however if done lists and analyses are rarely made publically available we compiled a national plant pest list for bhutan a relatively small but agriculturally diverse country for which plant protection is a recent discipline we treated this pest list as a case study to test the benefits and challenges of maintaining such lists six hundred and fortyâ five pest species were recorded across 64 different crops of those only 17 0 were listed for bhutan in the widely used cabi crop protection compendium most species 86 4 were first recorded during the initial discovery phase 1985â 88 of a longâ running european community funded aid programme regular taxonomic changes means keeping pest lists up to date requires both effort and expertise 27 0 of the 407 species identified by 1988 have since undergone name changes confidence in taxonomic identifications reduced drastically as access to international expertise decreased from about 69 1 of species being identified with high confidence prior to 1988 to 8 1 afterwards many recent records lacked reference material and voucher specimens for older material are mostly located internationally making any revision challenging of the best represented taxa greatest taxonomic uncertainty was for nematodes and viruses similar patterns were evident for the 112 damaging pest species defined as those that at least occasionally and locally cause significant losses or require management actions within bhutan of the damaging pests identified to species all but one was also recorded in india bhutan s most important trading partner and only 16 were restricted to asia new damaging pests continue to be recorded but only five species may represent new incursions since 1988 national pest lists are critical but to be of greatest value they need to capture taxonomic uncertainty and focus on pests of greatest significance for most countries the development maintenance and use of a national plant pest list will require ongoing regional and global cooperation to overcome taxonomic impediments and to maximise the benefits of such lists in terms of facilitating trade and guiding domestic biosecurity activities,2018,0.906
"Biological Control of Emerald Ash Borer in the Southern US: Seasonality, Phenological Synchrony, and Implications for Management",the emerald ash borer eab agrilus planipennis fairmare coleoptera buprestidae is an invasive wood boring beetle from asia believed to have been introduced on wooden packaging materials in the early 1990s it was first discovered in the united states in 2002 since this initial discovery it has spread to 32 states as well as two canadian provinces the primary host of eab is ash trees fraxinus spp in which eab can cause mortality in as little as four years to mitigate the spread and impact of this invasive pest management plans incorporating the use of conventional pesticides and biological control agents were developed of these biological control agents three larval parasitoids native to the same area as eab were chosen spathius agrili yang hymenoptera braconidae spathius galinae belokobylskij and strazanac hymenoptera braconidae and tetrastichus planipennisi yang hymenoptera eulophidae along with these introduced parasitoids several native parasitoids have been evaluated as potential biological control agents of eab in the united states a two year research project to enhance our knowledge of natural enemies of eab and to assess introduced parasitoids of eab in the southern united states was initiated the primary research goals of this project were to 1 assess establishment of introduced parasitoids and incidence of potential native parasitoids of eab 2 determine seasonality and phenological synchrony of eab and its introduced parasitoids in a southern climate and 3 assess native parasitoids of eab and their potential for rearing and release,2018,0.257
"POPULATION CHARACTERISTICS, HABITAT, AND DIET OF THE LARGE-CRESTED TOAD (INCILIUS CRISTATUS; ANURA: BUFONIDAE): A CRITICALLY …",understanding the status and distribution natural history and threats to amphibian species is urgent particularly for those that are threatened incilius cristatus the large crested toad is a highly threatened species that inhabits the cloud forests of eastern mexico and is rarely detected in the field in this study we evaluate the status and distribution of i cristatus in localities where it has been recently detected specifically we examine its relative abundance population structure spatial distribution habitat and diet in four forest fragments with a sampling effort of 1 000 person hours 250 h per locality between may and november 2013 we recorded a total of 172 toads we found differences in spatial distribution between juveniles and adults and females and males with respect to distance to rivers and edge of forest fragments we found 16 categories of prey which varied in importance between ages and sex the total number of toads we recorded in this study is greater than the largest number of post metamorphic toads reported to date our documentation of four populations of i cristatus three in veracruz and one in puebla and a population recently recorded in veracruz indicates that there are more populations than just the two indicated by the international union for conservation of nature iucn and that the species can persist in habitat fragments these findings represent an opportunity to conserve the species in each of the cloud forest fragments where it persists and highlights the need to explore other forest fragments that could harbor populations in need of protection,2018,0.949
"Phylogeography indicates incomplete genetic divergence among phenotypically differentiated montane forest populations of Atlapetes albinucha (Aves, Passerellidae)",the white naped brushfinch atlapetes albinucha comprises up to eight allopatric subspecies mainly identified by the color of the underparts gray vs yellow belly yellow and gray bellied forms were long considered two different species a albinucha and a gutturalis but they are presently considered as one polytypic species previous studies in the genus atlapetes have shown that the phylogeny based on molecular data is not congruent with characters such as coloration ecology or distributional patterns the phylogeography of a albinucha was analyzed using two mitochondrial dna regions from samples including 24 different localities throughout montane areas from eastern mexico to colombia phylogeographic analyses using bayesian inference maximum likelihood and haplotype network revealed incomplete geographic structure the genetic diversity pattern is congruent with a recent process of expansion which is also supported by ecological niche models enm constructed for the species and projected into three past scenarios overall the results revealed an incomplete genetic divergence among populations of a albinucha in spite of the speciesâ ample range which contrasts with previous results of phylogeographic patterns in other neotropical montane forest bird species suggesting idiosyncratic evolutionary histories for different taxa throughout the region,2018,0.806
The impact of endothermy on the climatic niche evolution and the distribution of vertebrate diversity,understanding the mechanisms by which the abiotic and biotic requirements of species or ecological niches change over time is a central issue in evolutionary biology niche evolution is poorly understood at both the macroecological and macroevolutionary scales as niches can shift over short periods of time but appear to change more slowly over longer timescales although reconstructing past niches has always been a major concern for palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists only a few recent studies have successfully determined the factors that affect niche evolution here we compare the evolution of climatic niches in four main groups of terrestrial vertebrates using a modelling approach integrating both palaeontological and neontological data and large scale datasets that contain information on the current distributions phylogenetic relationships and fossil records for a total of 11 465 species by reconstructing historical shifts in geographical ranges and climatic niches we show that niche shifts are significantly faster in endotherms birds and mammals than in ectotherms squamates and amphibians we further demonstrate that the diversity patterns of the four clades are directly affected by the rate of niche evolution with fewer latitudinal shifts in ectotherms,2018,0.365
Incomplete species lists derived from global and regional specimen-record databases affect macroecological analyses: A case study on the vascular plants of China,aim online species distribution data global or regional are increasingly used in biodiversity studies although data limitations have been reported we explore for the two major databanks in our research region how incomplete data are at a large taxonomic and geographic scale how it is affected by spatial grain and to what degree it affects inference from analyses of richness or turnover and the environment location china major taxa studied vascular plants methods we assembled species lists of all vascular plants from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the national specimen information infrastructure nsii at three spatial scales national provincial county we determined the completeness of each compilation by comparing the number of species with that from inventoryâ based species list for 28 provinces 14 counties and 146 nature reserves within counties we related richness from each of the data sources gbif nsii inventory to environmental variables temperature precipitation elevational range and compared regression models among the three data sources we quantified floristic similarity between regions based on the three data sources and related species turnover to geographic and environmental distances results data incompleteness was prevalent at all spatial grains but it increased with decreasing grain and it was higher for gbif than for nsii at the national scale gbif included 64 1 and nsii included 89 4 of true species richness in china at the county scale these figures dropped to an average of 12 7 for gbif and 60 0 for nsii this changed the order and significance of environmental determinants of richness in regression models the relationship between floristic similarity and geographic or environmental distance was shallower for gbif and nsii compared to inventory data when the gbif data were supplemented with the nsii data the data completeness of gbif increased from 64 1 to 90 8 at the national scale from 37 2 to 89 0 at the province scale and from 12 7 to 63 0 at the county scale main conclusions main specimenâ record databases are incomplete which has the potential to heavily affect ecological patterns and mechanisms inferred from these data biodiversity analyses based on raw species lists from such sources should be viewed with utmost caution,2018,0.346
Predicting the distribution of Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in Romania,as a top predator golden eagle aquila chrysaetos plays an important role in the ecosystem and area good indicators of biodiversity and habitat quality the objective of this paper was to model the spatial distribution of golden eagle in romania and to reveal its habitat preference based on the relationships between 12 environmental variables and species occurrence data in order to contribute to the development of future conservation strategies for this magnificent species to evaluate the distribution of golden eagle in romania and identify the suitability habitats we used maxent a presence only modelling approach our model showed high level of predictive performance based on the mean area under the curve auc for the training data 0 944 1sd 0 045 and test data 0 818 1sd 0 002 based on maxent model important habitat characteristics for golden eagles in romania include slope elevation aspect agriculture and temperature the specie selecting high elevation areas with steeper slopes specifically in the carpathian mountains croplands plus june july and december january temperatures have also an important role in predicting golden eagle occurrence in romania maxent model also reveals that the distribution of golden eagles in romania is influenced by presence of open habitats like mosaic vegetation and deciduous forests within their territories the latter being a widely spread in the carpathians mountains the spatial distribution model developed for golden eagle in the current study could support the future management strategies and conservation projects regarding protection of this species in romania,2018,0.158
Persistence of environmental DNA in marine systems,as environmental dna edna becomes an increasingly valuable resource for marine ecosystem monitoring understanding variation in its persistence across contrasting environments is critical here we quantify the breakdown of macrobial edna over a spatio temporal axis of locally extreme conditions varying from ocean influenced offshore to urban inshore and between winter and summer we report that edna degrades 1 6 times faster in the inshore environment than the offshore environment but contrary to expectation we find no difference over season analysis of environmental covariables show a spatial gradient of salinity and a temporal gradient of ph with salinityâ or the biotic correlates thereofâ most important based on our estimated inshore edna half life and naturally occurring edna concentrations we estimate that edna may be detected for around 48 h offering potential to collect ecological community data of high local fidelity we conclude by placing these results in the context of previously published edna decay rates,2018,0.321
First open access ensemble climate envelope predictions of Assamese macaque Macaca assamensis in Asia: a new role model and assessment of endangered species,species distribution models are a key component for understanding a speciesâ potential occurrence specifically in vastly undersampled landscapes the current species distribution data for the assamese macaque macaca assamensis are outdated but suggest a patchy distribution in moist broadleaved forests in south and southeast asia therefore in this study we used a species distribution model to explore the potential climatic niche of this species and assess its distribution and potential barriers in 12 south and southeast asian countries we combined primary and secondary species occurrence records from different countries we applied classification and regression tree cart treenet boosting randomforest bagging and maximum entropy maxent machine learning algorithms with elevation as well as 19 bioclimatic variables for the first ensemble predictions ever completed for this species our results suggested that the predicted distribution of the assamese macaque is strongly associated with precipitation of warmest quarter bio18 temperature annual range bio7 and temperature seasonality bio4 our prediction shows a continuous potential climatic niche of the species from east of the kaligandaki river in nepal to lao peopleâ s democratic republic there are also potential niche patches in bhutan southeast china thailand and cambodia while pakistan and afghanistan have no potential niche for the species we believe that our workflow presents a new conservationoriented open access research template to progress empirical primate conservation worldwide,2018,0.938
Improving Species Distribution Models with Bias Correction and Geographically Weighted Regression: Tests of Virtual Species and Past and Present Distributions in North American Deserts,this work investigates the effects of non random sampling on our understanding of species distributions and their niches in its most general form bias is systematic error that can obscure interpretation of analytical results by skewing samples away from the average condition of the system they represent here i use species distribution modelling sdm virtual species and multiscale geographically weighted regression mgwr to explore how sampling bias can alter our perception of broad patterns of biodiversity by distorting spatial predictions of habitat a key characteristic in biogeographic studies i use three separate case studies to explore 1 how methods to account for sampling bias in species distribution modeling may alter estimates of species distributions and species environment relationships 2 how accounting for sampling bias in fossil data may change our understanding of paleo distributions and interpretation of niche stability through time i e niche conservation and 3 how a novel use of mgwr can account for environmental sampling bias to reveal landscape patterns of local niche differences among proximal but non overlapping sister taxa broadly my work shows that sampling bias present in commonly used federated global biodiversity observations is more than enough to degrade model performance of spatial predictions and niche characteristics measures commonly used to account for this bias can negate much loss but only in certain conditions and did not improve the ability to correctly identify explanatory variables or recreate species environment relationships paleo distributions calibrated on biased fossil records were improved with the use of a novel method to directly estimate the biased sampling distribution which can be generalized to finer time slices for further paleontological studies finally i show how a novel coupling of sdm and mgwr can illuminate local differences in niche separation that more closely match landscape genotypic variability in the two north american desert tortoise species than does their current taxonomic delineation,2018,0.847
"Alien leaf beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) of European Russia and some general tendencies of leaf beetle invasions",invasions of leaf beetles can cause tremendous economic consequences because some of these insects become major pests in invaded territories we present the first inventory of alien chrysomelidae of european russia that appeared in the region in the 20th and 21st centuries 9 species with analysis of the history of their invasions and detailed maps of distribution this case study revealed some general tendencies of invasions of leaf beetles 1 recently a dramatic increase in the rate of chrysomelidae invasions is observed which reflects the increase in international trade of living plants 2 alien leaf beetles can spread quickly occupying almost all of europe within several decades 3 when the range of some leaf beetle species is quickly expanding or when the species has been recorded established somewhere outside the native range this species should be regarded as a potential invader worldwide and 4 alien leaf beetles usually occur on alien or cultivated plants but some become naturalized in native communities the specific information was the following two species native to the mediterranean region chrysolina americana feeds on rosmarinus and lavandula and leptomona erythrocephala feeds on lotus corniculatus were recorded in european russia for the first time a polyphagous pest of floriculture luperomorpha xanthodera native to china and korea and a pest of soybeans medythia nigrobilineata native to east asia have been in the region since 2016 a pest of tobacco epitrix hirtipennis native to north america has occurred since 2011 a pest of corn diabrotica virgifera was intercepted at the border of russia in 2011 but has not established three alien species have been in the region since the 20th century zygogramma suturalis introduced from north america for control of ambrosia phyllotreta reitteri native to afghanistan and tajikistan and feeding on lepidium latifolium and the colorado potato beetle leptinotarsa decemlineata,2018,0.738
An audit of some processing effects in aggregated occurrence records,a total of ca 800 000 occurrence records from the australian museum am museums victoria mv and the new zealand arthropod collection nzac were audited for changes in selected darwin core fields after processing by the atlas of living australia ala for am and mv records and the global biodiversity information facility gbif for am mv and nzac records formal taxon names in the genus and species groups were changed in 13â 21 of am and mv records depending on dataset and aggregator there was little agreement between the two aggregators on processed names with names changed in two to three times as many records by one aggregator alone compared to records with names changed by both aggregators the type status of specimen records did not change with name changes resulting in confusion as to the name with which a type was associated data losses of up to 100 were found after processing in some fields apparently due to programming errors the taxonomic usefulness of occurrence records could be improved if aggregators included both original and the processed taxonomic data items for each record it is recommended that end users check original and processed records for data loss and name replacements after processing by aggregators,2018,0.491
Estimating the effective number of breeders from single parr samples for conservation monitoring of wild populations of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar,this study assesses whether the effective number of breeders nb can be estimated using a time and cost effective protocol using genetic sibship reconstruction from a single sample of young of the year yoy for the purposes of atlantic salmon salmo salar population monitoring nb was estimated for 10 consecutive reproductive seasons for s salar in the river nivelle a small population located at the rear edge of the species distribution area in france chronically under its conservation limit and subjected to anthropogenic and environmental changes subsampling of real and simulated data showed that accurate estimates of nb can be obtained from yoy genotypes collected at moderate random sampling intensity achievable using routine juvenile electrofishing protocols spatial bias and time elapsed since spawning were found to affect estimates which must be accounted for in sampling designs nb estimated in autumn for s salar in the river nivelle was low and variable across years from 23 95 c i 14â 41 to 75 53â 101 and was not statistically correlated with the estimated number of returning adults but it was positively correlated with the estimated number of yoy at age 9 months nb was found to be lower for intermediate levels of redd aggregation suggesting that the strength of the competition between males to access females affects reproductive success variance depending on redd spatial configuration thus environmental factors such as habitat availability and quality for spawning and yoy development predominate over demographic ones number of returning adults in driving long term population viability for s salar in the river nivelle this study showcases nb as an integrated parameter encompassing demographic and ecological information about a reproductive event relevant to the assessment of both short term effects of management practices and long term population conservation status,2018,0.503
Updated checklist of the extant Chondrichthyes within the Exclusive Economic Zone of Mexico,the checklist presented in this study includes the latest taxonomic and systematic modifications and updates early 2018 for the chondrichthyes that inhabit the exclusive economic zone eez of mexico the list is based on a literature review of field specific books scientific publications and database information from collections and museums worldwide available online such as the ocean biogeographic information system obis global biodiversity information facility gbif encyclopedia of life eol ispecies fishbase and the national biodiversity information system snibâ conabio information was cross referenced with digital taxonomic systems such as the catalog of fishes of the california academy of sciences the world register of marine species worms and the integrated taxonomic information system itis there is a total of two subclasses two divisions 13 orders 44 families 84 genera and 217 species that represent approximately 18 of all living and described species of chondrichthyans worldwide for the mexican pacific and the gulf of california 92 species of chondrichthyans are listed compared to 94 species for the gulf of mexico and the caribbean sea additionally 31 species listed occur on both coasts of mexico the species richness of the mexican chondrichthyans will surely continue to increase due to the exploration of deep water fishing areas in the eez,2018,0.778
Distribution modelling and multi-scale landscape connectivity highlight important areas for the conservation of savannah elephants,habitat connectivity is the milestone towards species long term persistence especially considering impacts of climate change and human activities here we examined the potential implications of climate change and human pressure on connectivity among habitat patches aiming to identify priority areas and potential corridors for elephant conservation we used an ensemble modelling approach to evaluate the potential climatic distribution of the savannah elephants loxodonta africana through time we considered different climatic scenarios and used current potential climatic suitability and human pressure to evaluate habitat quality for the species in addition we used habitat quality and the centroids of elephant patches to evaluate habitat connectivity considering four progressive dispersal distances 100 km 200 km 300 km 400 km elephant response to climate change has been conservative through time with overall slight improvement in climatic suitability in southern and eastern africa and reduction in western africa and northern portions of central africa habitat quality followed the distribution of currently suitable areas for the species we found three major areas with high density of least cost paths in southern eastern and western africa identifying them as potential areas for increasing the connectivity of elephant populations,2018,0.764
Determining the wintering range of broad-winged hawk (buteo platypterus) in South America using citizen-science database,several species of raptors that breed in north america migrate to the southern hemisphere during the non breeding period the broad winged hawk buteo platypterus is one of them and its wintering distribution reaches the north and central part of south america although there are published records for the species in argentina and southern brazil we did an exhaustive search of records of the broadwinged hawk for south america using bibliography citizen science initiatives personal communications and own records we obtained 4025 georeferenced records for the 1879â 2017 period both the numbers of records per year and the geographical range of the species have apparently increased in recent years we also obtained the first record for misiones province in argentina and for espã rito santo state in brazil the wintering range of this species is estimated to cover 12 5 million km2 of the north central part of south america including southern brazil and northern argentina while it is possible that the range has expanded 700 km southwards recently with the data available it is not possible to disentangle this possibility from changes in the distribution of bird observers,2018,0.891
SHOULD HERBICIDE BE USED IN WETLANDS TO CONTROL CANADA'S WORST INVASIVE PLANT: INVASIVE PHRAGMITES?,identified as the nations â worstâ invasive plant species by agriculture and agri food canada phragmites australis subsp australis phragmites commonly known as european common reed thrives in marshlands and lakeshores overwhelming the local ecosystem with dense monospecific stands which seriously impact local habitats and biodiversity highways are rapidly becoming corridors due to disturbance and increase in soil salinity raising possibility of a problem for rural and urban forestry among several strategies to mitigate its spread the use of herbicide followed by cutting and burning is found to be the most effective for established stands critically endangered biospheres such as in long point are on the verge of collapse since spraying of herbicide is not authorized over aquatic habitats in canada an informal public opinion survey revealed that although there is significant awareness about invasive phragmites there is a great deal of concern and little support for aerial spraying of herbicides over wetlands could awareness programs to alleviate the concerns increase local support and influence policy to authorize herbicide spraying over wetlands,2018,0.349
Seed banking not an option for many threatened plants,the global strategy for plant conservation requires 75 of threatened plant species conserved ex situ by 2020 currently ex situ conservation focuses on conventional seed banking yet this method is unsuitable for many threatened species the 75 target is unattainable without urgent investment into alternative techniques,2018,0.503
A survey of digitized data from U.S. fish collections in the iDigBio data aggregator,recent changes in institutional cyberinfrastructure and collections data storage methods have dramatically improved accessibility of specimen based data through the use of digital databases and data aggregators this analysis of digitized fish collections in the u s demonstrates how information from data aggregators in this case idigbio can be extracted and analyzed data from u s institutional fish collections in idigbio were explored through a strictly programmatic approach using the ridigbio package and fishfindr web application idigbio facilitates the aggregation of collections data on a purely voluntary fashion that requires collection staff to consent to sharing of their data not all collections are sharing their data with idigbio but the data harvested from 38 of the 143 known fish collections in the u s that are in idigbio account for the majority of fish specimens housed in u s collections in the 22 years since publication of the last survey providing information on these 38 collections 1 219 168 specimen records lots 15 225 744 specimens 3 192 primary types and 32 868 records of secondary types have been added this is an increase of 65 1 in the number of cataloged records and an increase of 56 1 in the number of specimens in addition to providing specimen based data for research education and various outreach activities data that are accessible via data aggregators can be used to develop accurate up to date reports of information on institutional collections such reports present collections data in an organized and accessible fashion and can guide targeted efforts by collections personnel to meet discipline specific needs and make data more transparent to downstream users data from this survey will be updated and published regularly in a dynamic web application that will aid collections staff in communicating collections value while simultaneously giving stakeholders a way to explore collections holdings as they relate to the institutions in which they are housed it is through this resource that collections will be able to leverage their data against those of similar collections to aid in the procurement of financial and institutional support,2018,0.119
"Before it disappeared: ethnobotanical study of fleagrass (Adenosma buchneroides), a traditional aromatic plant used by the Akha people",background fleagrass adenosma buchneroides is an aromatic perennial herb that occupies an important position in the life of the akha people they regard it as a tribal symbol and a gift of love fleagrass also has many medicinal uses and there is considerable potential for its development as an insect repellent traditionally akha people plant it in swidden fields but there are few swidden fields in china now therefore the first question this study aims to answer is as follows how is fleagrass planted and utilized now at present fleagrass is only reported to be used by akha people in mengla we also try to understand the following questions is fleagrass used in nearby area if so how is fleagrass used in nearby area furthermore why is fleagrass used in that way methods from august 2016 to july 2018 field surveys were conducted six times the ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological uses of a buchneroides in 13 akha villages were investigated by means of semi structured interviews we assessed the responses of a total of 64 interviewees 32 men and 32 women mean age 58 6 from the xishuangbanna dai autonomous prefecture southwest china and from phongsaly province laos to explain the bases for the ethnobotanical uses of fleagrass we used google scholar web of science and china national knowledge infrastructure to review the bioactivities of the chemical constituents of a buchneroides results with the vanishing of swidden agriculture and the development of modern products fleagrass cultivation is disappearing in china however most akha people in xishuangbanna still remember and yearn for its traditional uses and akha people in a nearby area northern laos continue to plant and utilize it we documented ten uses of a buchneroides within five discrete categories the whole plant of fleagrass has a distinct strong aroma of which akha villagers are particularly fond akha villagers mostly use this aromatic property as a decoration perfume and insect repellent a buchneroides is also used as a condiment and for medicinal and ritual purposes including its use as a cure for insect bites headaches influenza and diarrhoea and as a part of pray ritual for a bumper harvest from our literature review we identified many major chemical compounds contained in the essential oil of a buchneroides including thymol carvacrol 3 carene and p cymene which have insecticidal or insect repellent antimicrobial and anti inflammatory properties conclusion fleagrass is an aromatic plant that is widely used by aka people its chemical composition also has a variety of biological activities with the vanishing of swidden agriculture and the development of modern products fleagrass utilization in china is disappearing and its cultural importance is reduced however its economic and medicinal value is assignable,2018,0.024
"First records of two remarkable Coleoptera species Cucujus cinnaberinus and Metoecus paradoxus (Coleoptera: Cucujidae, Rhipiphoridae) from the Republic of Karelia (Russia)",viable populations of two remarkable coleoptera species â cucujus cinnaberinus cucujidae and metoecus paradoxus rhipiphoridae are reported for the first time from the republic of karelia russia cucujus cinnaberinus is a threatened species in northern europe while metoecus paradoxus is a widespread palaearctic species actively dispersing northwards both species were found in the nature protected areas by the local staff this evidences the importance of such territories for preserving and monitoring the populations of rare and poorly known species,2018,0.918
"Communications, outreach and citizen science: spreading the word about invasive alien species",outreach is an important element of scientific communication and a prescribed element of many projects but few scientists have training in communications this paper describes the outreach element of a project on invasive alien species a communications plan was drawn up to streamline communications efforts allowing us to take advantage of unanticipated opportunities to engage with the public while still maintaining the desired focus using minimal resources here we use two simple metricsâ â œpassive reachâ and â œinteractionsâ â to measure the extent and the intensity of communications and we also look at the advantages and limitations provided by different media broadcast media and social media have the capacity to reach a wide audience but have a low percentage of interaction workshops and citizen science events tend to reach a much smaller audience but generate greater levels of engagement understanding these dynamics is important in designing an effective communications plan which uses the minimum number of resources to generate maximum impact building the credibility of the researcher or the project means that your research will reach a wider audience and your message is more likely to have an impact,2018,0.248
Afforestation and climatic niche dynamics of black locust ( Robinia pseudoacacia ),many tree species have been introduced outside their native ranges but there is little knowledge of their niche dynamics during afforestation in different regions here we test the climatic niche dynamics of a species black locust robinia pseudoacacia planted worldwide between its native range southeastern parts of united states and four introduced ranges north america europe east asia and australia a principal component analysis method with kernel smoothers was applied to speciesâ occurrence densities to investigate the climatic niche centroid breadth and unfilling expansion between native and introduced ranges of black locust the niche equivalency test the niche similarity test and the niche centroid breadth shift tests were used to evaluate the conservatism and dynamics of realized niche of black locust niche equivalency similarity tests show that only the european population has the same identical climatic niche as the native population and all introduced population in four areas are similar to native population than expected by chance with niche overlap between native and introduced areas ranging from 0 13 to 0 4 niche centroid breadth shift tests reveal that the niche centroid of black locust will significantly shift to warm or colder areas as well as drier areas and the niche breadth of black locust will significantly broaden both in water and heat gradients in the four introduced ranges separately niche partitioning shows that the proportion of niche unfilling occurred from 0 to 27 and that of niche expansion occurred in the 42â 83 range our results imply that the internal causes of realized niche dynamics of black locust are mainly due to the release of biotic constraints and change in dispersal capability but the relative importance of these factors is different among the four introduced ranges our study suggests that black locust conserves its climatic niche in the afforestation process allowing future studies to use ecological niche models to predict areas with suitable habitat for introduction and cultivation around the world and respond to climate change needs,2018,0.719
"Unique extrication structure in a new megaspilid, Dendrocerus scutellaris Trietsch &amp;amp; Mikó (Hymenoptera: Megaspilidae)",background a new species dendrocerus scutellaris trietsch mikã hymenoptera megaspilidae is described here from male and female specimens captured in costa rica this species is the only known ceraphronoid wasp with a straight mandibular surface and raised dorsal projections on the scutellum called the mesoscutellar comb it is hypothesised that the function of the mesoscutellar comb is to aid the emergence of the adult from the host especially since the mandibles lack a pointed surface to tear open the pupal case the authors also provide phenotypic data in a semantic form to facilitate data integration and accessibility across taxa and provide an updated phenotype bank of morphological characters for megaspilid taxonomic treatments in updating this phenotype bank the authors continue to make taxonomic data accessible to future systematic efforts focusing on ceraphronoidea new information a new species dendrocerus scutellaris hymenoptera megaspilidae trietsch mikã is described from both male and female specimens captured in costa rica,2018,0.421
"Checklist of the fishes of the newly discovered coral reef in Iraq, north-west Arabian Gulf, with 10 new records to the Arabian Gulf",an account of the fishes of a newly discovered coral reef area in iraq is presented during ichthyological surveys in the area in 2012 and 2013 a total of 93 species in 48 families were recorded from the region the most speciose families containing 8 species are haemulidae and sparidae there is one family with 6 species carangidae and there are 31 monospecific families a total of 33 and 10 new species are recorded from the newly discovered coral reef area for iraq and the arabian gulf area respectively in addition 8 species are confirmed for iraqi waters and 6 more are confirmed for the arabian gulf the reef area contains several species with estuarine habits as well as a number of typical coral reef associated species species with small bodies or cryptic behaviour seem to be missing from the record as a consequence of sampling methodology hence the present list is likely to be extended along with future sampling efforts anthropogenic impacts in the form of climate change and pollutants from the shatt al arab river as well as environmental factors such as strong tidal currents and high turbidity caused by sediments discharge by shatt al arab river are considered sources for threats to the newly discovered coral reef area,2018,0.954
Predicting the potential distributions of the invasive cycad scale Aulacaspis yasumatsui (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) under different climate change scenarios and the implications for management,cycads are an ancient group of gymnosperms that are popular as landscaping plants though nearly all of them are threatened or endangered in the wild the cycad aulacaspis scale cas aulacaspis yasumatsui takagi hemiptera diaspididae has become one of the most serious pests of cycads in recent years however the potential distribution range and the management approach for this pest are unclear a potential risk map of cycad aulacaspis scale was created based on occurrence data under different climatic conditions and topology factors in this study furthermore the future potential distributions of cas were projected for the periods 2050s and 2070s under three different climate change scenarios gfdl cm3 hadgem2 ao and miroc5 described in the special report on emissions scenarios of the ipcc intergovernmental panel on climate change the model suggested high environmental suitability for the continents of asia and north america where the species has already been recorded the potential distribution expansions or reductions were also predicted under different climate change conditions temperature of driest quarter bio9 was the most important factor explaining 48 1 of the distribution of the species the results also suggested that highly suitable habitat for cas would exist in the study area if the mean temperature of 15â 20 â c in the driest quarter and a mean temperature of 25â 28 â c the wettest quarter this research provides a theoretical reference framework for developing policy to manage and control this invasive pest,2018,0.249
Spatio-temporal patterns of orchids flowering in Cameroonian rainforests,we characterized the flowering patterns of 45 epiphytic orchid species occurring in cameroonian rainforests to explore the environmental and evolutionary forces driving their phenology we used a dataset of 3470 flowering events recorded over a period of 11 years in the yaoundã living collection 82 of the flowering events and from in situ observations 18 of the flowering events to i describe flowering frequency and timing and synchronization among taxa ii test flowering patterns for phylogenetic relatedness at the generic level and iii investigate the spatial patterns of phenology an annual flowering pattern prevailed among the species selected for this study the species rich african genera angraecum and polystachya are characterized by subannual and annual frequency patterns respectively however in terms of flowering time no phylogenetic signal was detected for the four most diverse genera ancistrorhynchus angraecum bulbophyllum and polystachya results suggest also an important role of photoperiod and precipitation as climatic triggers of flowering patterns moreover 16 of the taxa cultivated ex situ mostly polystachya showed significant differences in flowering time between individuals originating from distinct climatic regions pointing toward the existence of phenological ecotypes phenological plasticity suggested by the lack of synchronized flowering in spatially disjunct populations of polystachya could explain the widespread radiation of this genus throughout tropical africa our study highlights the need to take the spatial pattern of flowering time into account when interpreting phylogeographic patterns in central african rainforests,2018,0.751
Combining Landscape Genomics and Ecological Modelling to Investigate Local Adaptation of Indigenous Ugandan Cattle to East Coast Fever,east coast fever ecf is a fatal sickness affecting cattle populations of eastern central and southern africa the disease is transmitted by the tick rhipicephalus appendiculatus and caused by the protozoan theileria parva parva which invades host lymphocytes and promotes their clonal expansion importantly indigenous cattle show tolerance to infection in ecf endemically stable areas here the putative genetic bases underlying ecf tolerance were investigated using molecular data and epidemiological information from 823 indigenous cattle from uganda vector distribution and host infection risk were estimated over the study area and subsequently tested as triggers of local adaptation by means of landscape genomics analysis we identified 41 and seven candidate adaptive loci for tick resistance and infection tolerance respectively among the genes associated with the candidate adaptive loci are prkg1 and sla2 prkg1 was already described as associated with tick resistance in indigenous south african cattle due to its role into inflammatory response sla2 is part of the regulatory pathways involved into lymphocytes proliferation additionally local ancestry analysis suggested the zebuine origin of the genomic region candidate for tick resistance,2018,0.665
Quaternary climate instability is correlated with patterns of population genetic variability in Bombus huntii,climate oscillations have left a significant impact on the patterns of genetic diversity observed in numerous taxa in this study we examine the effect of quaternary climate instability on population genetic variability of a bumble bee pollinator species bombus huntii in western north america pleistocene and contemporary b huntii habitat suitability hs was estimated with an environmental niche model enm by associating 1 035 locality records with 10 bioclimatic variables to estimate genetic variability we genotyped 380 individuals from 33 localities at 13 microsatellite loci bayesian inference was used to examine population structure with and without a priori specification of geographic locality we compared isolation by distance ibd and isolation by resistance ibr models to examine population differentiation within and among the bayesian inferred genetic clusters furthermore we tested for the effect of environmental niche stability ens on population genetic diversity with linear regression as predicted highâ latitude b huntii habitats exhibit low ens when compared to lowâ latitude habitats two major genetic clusters of b huntii inhabit western north america a a north genetic cluster predominantly distributed north of 28â n and b a south genetic cluster distributed south of 28â n in the south genetic cluser both ibd and ibr models are significant however in the north genetic cluster ibd is significant but not ibr furthermore the ibr models suggest that lowâ latitude montane populations are surrounded by habitat with low hs possibly limiting dispersal and ultimately gene flow between populations finally we detected high genetic diversity across populations in regions that have been climatically unstable since the last glacial maximum lgm and low genetic diversity across populations in regions that have been climatically stable since the lgm understanding how species have responded to climate change has the potential to inform management and conservation decisions of both ecological and economic concerns,2018,0.876
Application of Thermal and Phenological Land Surface Parameters for Improving Ecological Niche Models of Betula utilis in the Himalayan Region,modelling ecological niches across vast distribution ranges in remote high mountain regions like the himalayas faces several data limitations in particular nonavailability of species occurrence data and fine scale environmental information of sufficiently high quality remotely sensed data provide key advantages such as frequent complete and long term observations of land surface parameters with full spatial coverage the objective of this study is to evaluate modelled climate data as well as remotely sensed data for modelling the ecological niche of betula utilis in the subalpine and alpine belts of the himalayan region covering the entire himalayan arc using generalized linear models glm we aim at testing factors controlling the species distribution under current climate conditions we evaluate the additional predictive capacity of remotely sensed variables namely remotely sensed topography and vegetation phenology data phenological traits as well as the capability to substitute bioclimatic variables from downscaled numerical models by remotely sensed annual land surface temperature parameters the best performing model utilized bioclimatic variables topography and phenological traits and explained over 69 of variance while models exclusively based on remotely sensed data reached 65 of explained variance in summary models based on bioclimatic variables and topography combined with phenological traits led to a refined prediction of the current niche of b utilis whereas models using solely climate data consistently resulted in overpredictions our results suggest that remotely sensed phenological traits can be applied beneficially as supplements to improve model accuracy and to refine the prediction of the species niche we conclude that the combination of remotely sensed land surface temperature parameters is promising in particular in regions where sufficient fine scale climate data are not available,2018,0.198
Plant evolution in alkaline magnesium-rich soils: A phylogenetic study of the Mediterranean genus Hormathophylla (Cruciferae: Alysseae) based on nuclear and plastid sequences,habitats with alkaline edaphic substrates are often associated with plant speciation and diversification the tribe alysseae in the family brassicaceae epitomizes this evolutionary trend in this lineage some genera like hormathophylla can serve as a good case for testing the evolutionary framework this genus is centered in the western mediterranean it grows on different substrates but mostly on alkaline soils it has been suggested that diversification in many lineages of the tribe alysseae and in the genus hormathophylla is linked to a tolerance for high levels of mg 2 in xeric environments in this study we investigated the controversial phylogenetic placement of hormathophylla in the tribe the generic limits and the evolutionary relationships between the species using ribosomal and plastid dna sequences we also examined the putative association between the evolution of different ploidy levels trichome morphology and the type of substrates our analyses demonstrated the monophyly of the genus hormathophylla including all previously described species nuclear sequences revealed two lineages that differ in basic chromosome numbers x 7 and x 8 or derived 11 15 and in their trichome morphology contrasting results with plastid genes indicates more complex relationships between these two lineages involving recent hybridization processes we also found an association between chloroplast haplotypes and substrate especially in populations growing on dolomites finally our dated phylogeny demonstrates that the origin of the genus took place in the mid miocene during the establishment of temporal land bridges between the tethys and paratethys seas with a later diversification during the upper pliocene,2018,0.801
Is molecular evolution faster in the tropics?,the evolutionary speed hypothesis esh suggests that molecular evolutionary rates are higher among species inhabiting warmer environments previously the esh has been investigated using small numbers of latitudinally separated sister lineages in animals these studies typically focused on subsets of chordata and yielded mixed support for the esh this study analyzed public dna barcode sequences from the cytochrome c oxidase subunit i coi gene for six of the largest animal phyla arthropoda chordata mollusca annelida echinodermata and cnidaria and paired latitudinally separated taxa together informatically of 8037 lineage pairs just over half 51 6 displayed a higher molecular rate in the lineage inhabiting latitudes closer to the equator while the remainder 48 4 displayed a higher rate in the higher latitude lineage to date this study represents the most comprehensive analysis of latitude related molecular rate differences across animals while a statistically significant pattern was detected from our large sample size our findings suggest that the ehs may not serve as a strong universal mechanism underlying the latitudinal diversity gradient and that coi molecular clocks may generally be applied across latitudes this study also highlights the merits of using automation to analyze large dna barcode datasets,2018,0.696
Digitization protocol for scoring reproductive phenology from herbarium specimens of seed plants,premise of the study herbarium specimens provide a robust record of historical plant phenology the timing of seasonal events such as flowering or fruiting however the difficulty of aggregating phenological data from specimens arises from a lack of standardized scoring methods and definitions for phenological states across the collections community methods and results to address this problem we report on a consensus reached by an idigbio working group of curators researchers and data standards experts regarding an efficient scoring protocol and a data sharing protocol for reproductive traits available from herbarium specimens of seed plants the phenological data sets generated can be shared via darwin core archives using the extended measurementorfact extension conclusions our hope is that curators and others interested in collecting phenological trait data from specimens will use the recommendations presented here in current and future scoring efforts new tools for scoring specimens are reviewed,2018,0.186
"New and interesting lichens and allied fungi from British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec, Canada",ongoing biogeographical and ecological studies of lichens and allied fungi in canada have resulted in range extensions throughout the country that are documented here four species are reported new to the territory of nunavut acarospora schleicheri buellia ocellata melanelixia subaurifera and rhizocarpon lecanorinum new records are reported for five provinces british columbia microcalicium conversum umbilicaria arctica nova scotia arthonia hypobela a vinosa micarea misella and sarea difformis ontario lecanora carpinea microcalicium conversum sphaerophorous fragilis and umbilicaria phaea var phaea prince edward island ropalospora viridis and quebec candelariella lutella microcalicium arenarium and sclerophora peronella new records representing major range extensions are reported for psora globifera s peronella and xanthomendoza weberi pilophorus fibula is also reinstated to the ontario lichen list,2018,0.449
Vulnerability to snakebite envenoming: a global mapping of hotspots,snakebite envenoming is a frequently overlooked cause of mortality and morbidity data for snake ecology and existing snakebite interventions are scarce limiting accurate burden estimation initiatives low global awareness stunts new interventions adequate health resources and available health care therefore we aimed to synthesise currently available data to identify the most vulnerable populations at risk of snakebite and where additional data to manage this global problem are needed,2018,0.316
Ethnomedicinal plant diversity in Thailand,ethnopharmacological relevance plants have provided medicine to humans for thousands of years and in most parts of the world people still use traditional plant derived medicine knowledge related to traditional use provides an important alternative to unavailable or expensive western medicine in many rural communities at the same time ethnomedicinal discoveries are valuable for the development of modern medicine unfortunately globalization and urbanization causes the disappearance of much traditional medicinal plant knowledge aim of the study to review available ethnobotanical knowledge about medicinal plants in thailand and to estimate its diversity methods information about ethnomedicinal uses of plants in thailand was extracted from 64 scientific reports books and theses produced between 1990 and 2014 plant identifications in the primary sources were updated to currently accepted names following the plant list website and the species were assigned to family following the angiosperm phylogeny website use values uv were calculated to estimate the importance of medicinal plant species uvs and families uvf medicinal use categories plant parts used preparations of the medicine and their applications were noted for each use report results we found 16 789 use reports for 2187 plant species in 206 families these data came from 19 ethnic groups living in 121 villages throughout thailand the health conditions most commonly treated with medicinal plants were in the categories digestive system disorders infections infestations nutritional disorders muscular skeletal system disorders and genitourinary system disorders plant families with very high use values were fabaceae asteraceae acanthaceae lamiaceae and zingiberaceae and species with very high use values were chromolaena odorata l r m king h rob blumea balsamifera l dc and cheilocostus speciosus j koenig c d specht stems and leaves were the most used plant parts but also other parts of the plants were used in medicinal recipes the most common way of using the medicinal plants was as a decoction in water conclusion we found 2187 plant species that were used in traditional medicine in thailand of these a few hundred had high use values suggesting that they may produce bioactive compounds with strong physiological effects,2018,0.039
Ascidian distribution provides new insights to help define the biogeographic provinces in the South American Region,the validity and size of the biogeographic magellan province of marine organisms have been the focus of discussion of many authors the distribution of fish and other organisms has revealed a lack of homogeneity in the area which has also been interpreted as comprising four different provinces southern chile sch tierra del fuego tdf southern argentina sar and the malvinas falkland islands mai for the first time we assess the ascidian fauna of this region to determine if the distribution of benthic sessile filter feeders corresponds to these biogeographic provinces ascidian species richness and percentages of endemism for these four areas were estimated using data from the literature and new sampling biogeographic affinities among sch tdf sar and mai were also calculated the species pyura pilosa molgula malvinensis and molgula manhattensis the latter frequently considered as invasive were found for the first time on the tdf shelf the highest ascidian species richness was found in tdf 70 species while the percentages of endemism greater than 10 the minimum to qualify an area as a province were found in tdf 15 7 and sch 11 1 sar and mai showed the lowest percentages of endemism and the strongest affinity based on percentages of endemism faunal affinities and differences among the four provinces we propose a separation of the south american region into three provinces sch tdf and sar mai continued sampling of ascidians is considered to be particularly important given the potential spread of invasive species throughout this region,2018,0.871
The History of Aplomado Falcon Falco femoralis (Temminck) Subspecies Diagnoses,in north america in the late 19th century acceptance of subspecies as valid taxonomic units lead to proliferation of numerous trinomial scientific names this process accelerated in the first half of the 20th century coues 1871 stejneger 1884 stresemann 1975 haffer 1992 barrow 1998 by 1945 the number of named avian subspecies had exceeded 28 500 with new trinomials being coined at a rate of about 200 per year mayr 1946 in part this trend reflected awareness that species were not fixed entities but demonstrated geographic variability indicative of various stages of ongoing speciation new subspecies resulted partly from demotion of closely related similar looking species but also from subdivision of single species into separate geographic forms stejneger 1884 haffer 1992 barrow 1998 the disruption of the linnaean binomial system the lumping together of many formerly separate species the trivial nature of diagnostic characters and the resulting instability of the nomenclature generated abundant criticism on both sides of the atlantic coues 1884 sharpe 1896 allen 1890 clark 1902 sclater 1904 ridgway 1923 in 1886 the american ornithologistsâ union at least proposed restricting subspecies designations to geographic forms interconnected by intergradation within contiguous geographic distributions aou 1886,2018,0.689
Strategies for mammal conservation under climate change in the Amazon,climate change is not only a major threat to biodiversity it is also a big challenge to the development of conservation strategies scientists and practitioners need to select or avoid areas at greatest risk for species protection i e acting in a proactive or a reactive manner this proactive reactive dichotomy takes a particular formulation under the likely changes in climate selecting for low risk areas usually referred to as climate refugia is supposed to protect more species with a greater guarantee of their long term persistence as a consequence populations at greatest risk are left unprotected and probably committed to extinction on the other hand managing species in high risk areas is more expensive than setting aside areas of climate refugia and encompasses a set of uncertainties which makes highly threatened species more costly and difficult to save here we combine ecological niche models and metrics of climate change to develop spatial conservation schemes for mammals in the brazilian amazon these schemes efficiently identify networks of high risk and refugia priority areas within species current and future distributions while complementing the protection already achieved by the amazonâ s network of protected areas pas we found that on average 25 of mammal distribution is already represented in the established network of pas also 26 of high risk and 17 of refugia priority areas overlap with indigenous lands in addition species distributions were found mostly in high risk compared to in refugia priority areas we highlight that the strategy to be employed does not necessarily should be binary and a mix of both strategies would guarantee the protection of a larger number of species,2018,0.925
Enforcing public data archiving policies in academic publishing: A study of ecology journals,to improve the quality and efficiency of research groups within the scientific community seek to exploit the value of data sharing funders institutions and specialist organizations are developing and implementing strategies to encourage or mandate data sharing within and across disciplines with varying degrees of success academic journals in ecology and evolution have adopted several types of public data archiving policies requiring authors to make data underlying scholarly manuscripts freely available yet anecdotes from the community and studies evaluating data availability suggest that these policies have not obtained the desired effects both in terms of quantity and quality of available datasets we conducted a qualitative interview based study with journal editorial staff and other stakeholders in the academic publishing process to examine how journals enforce data archiving policies we specifically sought to establish who editors and other stakeholders perceive as responsible for ensuring data completeness and quality in the peer review process our analysis revealed little consensus with regard to how data archiving policies should be enforced and who should hold authors accountable for dataset submissions themes in interviewee responses included hopefulness that reviewers would take the initiative to review datasets and trust in authors to ensure the completeness and quality of their datasets we highlight problematic aspects of these thematic responses and offer potential starting points for improvement of the public data archiving process,2018,0.051
Pelletization of invasive Reynoutria japonica with spruce sawdust for energy recovery,the article focuses on processing of reynoutria japonica an invasive alien species that is generally extirpated with major costs for its negative impact on biodiversity it is the biodegradable waste that could be effectively used in energy industry by examining first energy data ash content low melting temperature nitrogen content etc it was found that reynoutria japonica is not possible to be used separately for energy purposes therefore the alternative of pelletizing six mixtures containing reynoutria japonica and spruce sawdust in various content ratio was examined with the aim to produce alternative fuel pellets for automated boilers the pelletization conditions were determined and the pellets quality was evaluated durability density etc ash melting temperature was also evaluated it was found none of the prepared mixtures needed an additional binder for a pelletizing process it was assessed that the reynoutria japonica input sample did not need to be dried after collection since its moisture was sufficient for the pelletization all samples met the parameters of the calorific value which is greater than 10 mj,2018,0.206
"An invertebrate macrofauna from an early Holocene fjord-delta system, North Norway",during early holocene the breivikeidet valley of troms county was part of a fjord system prodelta and delta slope deposits were formed overlain by fluvial deposits and are presently exposed in river sections the depositional setting was influenced by sediment suspension and traction processes our geochemical analyses together with implications from macrofauna and sedimentology indicate an overall change from occasionally oxygen deficiency in marine waters to an overall fall in salinity these changes finally leading to brackish and freshwater conditions radiocarbon dates confirm an early holocene age preboreal boreal and atlantic of the deposits shells reworked from older deposits indicate allerod and younger dryas ages bivalves gastropods and barnacles are common and well preserved in the muddy prodelta deposits whereas they are uncommon and poorly preserved in the delta slope sands faunal composition of the delta slope sands is numerically characterised by suspension feeding endobenthos that have moderate to fast burrowing ability the fossil macrofauna of the muddy prodelta deposits on the other hand can be much more diverse including mobile to stationary endobenthos and epibenthos the prodelta muds were close to normal marine in their salinity the delta slope sands were probably somewhat brackish while the topsets were formed in fluvial freshwater faunal composition indicates water depth of the ancient habitat having been equivalent to nearshore shelf to fjord deltaic setting a fjord deltaic setting is evident by the sedimentology and adjacent steep topography we conclude that the fossil macrofauna is in composition comparable with modern marine communities of the high boreal province,2018,0.077
"FIRST RECORD OF HYLASTES OPACUS ERICHSON AND CRYPTURGUS HISPIDULUS THOMSON, CG (COLEOPTERA; CURCULIONIDAE; SCOLYTINAE) FOR …",scolytinae subfamily coleoptera curculionidae is represented by 135 species in turkey including 8 species of the genus hylastes ericson and 7 species of the genus crypturgus ericson a total of 79 adult individuals of hylastes opacus erichson and 6 adult individuals of crypturgus hispidulus thomson c g were obtained from log and pheromone traps in pine stands at twelve localities during 2014 h opacus and c hispidulus were recorded for the first time in turkey h opacus were obtained from trap logs of pinus brutia and pinus nigra and also pheromone traps in p brutia stands adult individuals of c hispidulus were observed in association with orthotomicus erosus and pityogenes pennidens on p brutia and p nigra log traps,2018,0.846
Guidelines for privately protected areas,these guidelines address planning and management of privately protected areas or ppas and the guidance is aimed principally at practitioners and policy makers who are or may be involved with ppas guidance is given on all aspects of ppa establishment management and reporting and information is provided on principles and best practices with examples drawn from many different parts of the world the aim of these guidelines is to shape the application of iucn policy and principles towards enhanced effectiveness and conservation outcomes focused on ppa managers and administrators not all the guidance will necessarily apply in all social political and economic contexts however learning from best practices around the world and considering how these can be incorporated at site or national level may improve the likelihood of success in private conservation and suggest how conditions might be improved to favour ppas and thus capitalise on the opportunities they present,2018,0.141
Catalogue of Life Plus: innovating the CoL systems as a foundation for a clearinghouse for names and taxonomy,in 2015 the global biodiversity information initiatives biodiversity heritage library bhl barcode of life data systems bold catalogue of life col encyclopedia of life eol and the global biodiversity information facility gbif took the first step to work on the idea for building a single shared authoritative nomenclature and taxonomic foundation that could be used as a backbone to order and connect biodiversity data across various domains at present the catalogue of life is being used by bhl bold eol and gbif but each extend the col with additional data to meet the specific backbone services required,2018,0.246
"Description and notes on natural history of a new species of Parosus Sharp, 1887 (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Oxytelinae) living in floral bracts of Columnea medicinalis L. (Gesneriaceae)",a new species of the recently revised genus parosus is described p amayae lã pez garcã a marã n gã mez sp nov from adult and larval specimens collected in bracts of columnea medicinalis in the natural reserve rã o ã ambã southwestern colombia observations on the interaction with the plant subsocial behavior and population density are presented and discussed adults and larvae apparently live together and feed on eggs and larvae of flies that develop inside the decomposing fruits of c medicinalis the new species is illustrated by color habitus photos as well as its l1 and l3 larvae male and female genitalia are depicted by line drawings,2018,0.901
Family-group names of fossil fishes,the family group names of animals superfamily family subfamily supertribe tribe and subtribe are regulated by the international code of zoological nomenclature particularly the family names are very important because they are among the most widely used of all technical animal names a uniform name and spelling are essential for the location of information to facilitate this a list of family group names for fossil fishes has been compiled i use the concept â fishesâ in the usual sense i e starting with the agnatha up to the â osteolepidiformes all the family group names proposed for fossil fishes found to date are listed together with their author s and year of publication the main goal of the list is to contribute to the usage of the correct family group names for fossil fishes with a uniform spelling and to list the author s and date of those names no valid family group name description could be located for the following family group names currently in usage â brindabellaspidae â diabolepididae â dorsetichthyidae â erichalcidae â holodipteridae â kentuckiidae â lepidaspididae â loganelliidae and â pituriaspididae,2018,0.534
Strategic approaches to restoring ecosystems can triple conservation gains and halve costs,international commitments for ecosystem restoration add up to one quarter of the worldâ s arable land fulfilling them would ease global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity decline but could displace food production and impose financial costs on farmers here we present a restoration prioritization approach capable of revealing these synergies and trade offs incorporating ecological and economic efficiencies of scale and modelling specific policy options using an actual large scale restoration target of the atlantic forest hotspot we show that our approach can deliver an eightfold increase in cost effectiveness for biodiversity conservation compared with a baseline of non systematic restoration a compromise solution avoids 26 of the biomeâ s current extinction debt of 2 864 plant and animal species an increase of 257 compared with the baseline moreover this solution sequesters 1â billion tonnes of co2 equivalent a 105 increase while reducing costs by us 28â billion a 57 decrease seizing similar opportunities elsewhere would offer substantial contributions to some of the greatest challenges for humankind,2018,0.267
Low genetic differentiation between two morphologically and ecologically distinct giant-leaved Mexican oaks,quercus magnoliifolia and q resinosa are two mexican white oak species that have been taxonomically reported to exhibit morphological similarities and possible hybridization the objective of this study was to compare the variation in q magnoliifolia and q resinosa throughout their distribution range to identify the degree of species differentiation using morphological ecological and genetic tools morphological analysis showed differentiation in leaf shape between the species corresponding to the taxonomical identification of q magnoliifolia and q resinosa in almost all cases but intermediate individuals were identified in the middle of the species ranges comparison of ecological niche models for q magnoliifolia and q resinosa showed non equivalent ecological niches high climatic niche differences and low to moderate spatial and environmental niche overlap mainly along the trans mexican volcanic belt where morphologically intermediate individuals between species were more frequently located suggesting recent hybridization by secondary contact in contrast we found low but significant genetic differentiation between q magnoliifolia and q resinosa and lower interspecific than intraspecific genetic differentiation and bayesian clustering analysis k 2 failed to assign each species to a unique genotype suggesting shared ancestral variation as the cause of genetic similarity between species due to recent divergence in conclusion although neutral molecular markers do not distinguish the species q magnoliifolia and q resinosa we found morphological and ecological differentiation between these oaks that provide preliminary evidence for divergent selection,2018,0.956
Recommending plant taxa for supporting on-site species identification,background predicting a list of plant taxa most likely to be observed at a given geographical location and time is useful for many scenarios in biodiversity informatics since efficient plant species identification is impeded mainly by the large number of possible candidate species providing a shortlist of likely candidates can help significantly expedite the task whereas species distribution models heavily rely on geo referenced occurrence data such information still remains largely unused for plant taxa identification tools results in this paper we conduct a study on the feasibility of computing a ranked shortlist of plant taxa likely to be encountered by an observer in the field we use the territory of germany as case study with a total of 7 62m records of freely available plant presence absence data and occurrence records for 2 7k plant taxa we systematically study achievable recommendation quality based on two types of source data binary presence absence data and individual occurrence records furthermore we study strategies for aggregating records into a taxa recommendation based on location and date of an observation conclusion we evaluate recommendations using 28k geo referenced and taxa labeled plant images hosted on the flickr website as an independent test dataset relying on location information from presence absence data alone results in an average recall of 82 however we find that occurrence records are complementary to presence absence data and using both in combination yields considerably higher recall of 96 along with improved ranking metrics ultimately by reducing the list of candidate taxa by an average of 62 a spatio temporal prior can substantially expedite the overall identification problem,2018,0.656
The road to evolutionary success: insights from the demographic history of an Amazonian palm,evolutionary success as demonstrated by high abundance and a wide geographical range is related to genetic variation and historical demography here we assess how climatic change during the quaternary influenced the demography and distribution of the neotropical swamp palm mauritia flexuosa using microsatellite loci and coalescent analyses we examined how demographical dynamics affected genetic diversity effective population size and connectivity through time and space mauritia flexuosa presents significant genetic differentiation between the amazonian and cerrado biomes and among different river basins amazonian lineages are ancient compared to lineages from the cerrado a pattern corroborated using the fossil pollen record where the species was absent from the cerrado during the cold and dry periods of the last glacial cycles then returned during the wet interglacial phases coalescent simulations show that the pattern of observed genetic diversity for m flexuosa is most likely due to a range retraction during the last glacial maximum leading to multiple refugia and resulting in high differentiation between amazonian and cerrado biomes isolation by distance and by environment also shaped the distribution and evolutionary success of m flexuosa our study provides new insights into the historical factors that affected geographical distribution and structure genetic diversity contributing to long term evolutionary success,2018,0.396
Pest Risk Analysis for Lygodium japonicum (Thunb.) Sw,although lygodium japonicum is currently absent from the natural environment in the eppo region a recent horizon scanning study identified the species as having a high risk of arrival establishment spread and threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services across the eu within the next ten years roy et al 2015 in 2016 the species was prioritized along with 36 additional species from the eppo list of invasive alien plants and a recent horizon scanning study2 for pra within the life funded project â œmitigating the threat of invasive alien plants to the eu through pest risk analysis to support the regulation 1143 2014â lygodium japonicum was one of 16 species identified as having a high priority for pra tanner et al 2017 climate modelling suggests that there are suitable areas for the establishment of l japonicum under both current and future climatic scenarios within the invaded range in particular the usa l japonicum has significant economic impacts to forests managed for a variety of products and services in particular pine plantations managed for pine straw production furthermore this vine can act as a ladder fuel resulting in a significant loss of forest structure and timber revenue if crown fires develop ecologically l japonicum can smother groundcover and shrubs resulting in the reduction of native plant species within a local ecosystem nauman 1993 the potential to spread is high due to its ability to spread by microscopic spores 65 microns that are easily spread by wind and water,2018,0.685
Addressing common pitfalls does not provide more support to geographical and ecological abundant-centre hypotheses,a longâ standing hypothesis in biogeography is that a species abundance is highest at the centre of its geographical or environmental space and decreases toward the edges several studies tested this hypothesis and provided mixed results and overall weak support to the theory most studies however are affected by several limitations related to the sample size the comparability among abundance measures the definition of species geographic range and corresponding environmental space and the proxy variables used to represent centrality marginality gradients here we test the abundantâ centre hypothesis on 108 bird and mammal species and embrace the plural nature of the hypothesis by considering 9 geographic and ecological centrality marginality measures we analyse the speciesâ specific effect sizes using a metaâ analytical approach and repeat the analyses on a restricted dataset that met more stringent criteria of data quality furthermore we test whether the support for the hypothesis is mediated by species dispersal abilities and the geographic and environmental coverage of the data the results for the 9 measures seem to provide a weak support to the hypotheses but the summary effect sizes are not significant in most cases and show a significant amount of residual heterogeneity when the analysis is performed on the restricted dataset the overall support decreases substantially variables such as dispersal distance geographic and environmental coverage of the data appear important in explaining the variation observed between different species but the results are inconsistent across centrality marginality measures and the datasets used we show that addressing common pitfalls in previous studies does not provide more support to the abundantâ centre hypothesis with support being very dependent on the centrality marginality measure tested the geographic extent considered for the test and geographic and environmental coverage of the data the abundantâ centre hypothesis so far remains an appealing speculation with little and variable empirical support,2018,0.336
"A novel approach to study the morphology and chemistry of pollen in a phylogenetic context, applied to the halophytic taxon Nitraria L.(Nitrariaceae)",nitraria is a halophytic taxon i e adapted to saline environments that belongs to the plant family nitrariaceae and is distributed from the mediterranean across asia into the south eastern tip of australia this taxon is thought to have originated in asia during the paleogene 66â 23 ma alongside the proto paratethys epicontinental sea the evolutionary history of nitraria might hold important clues on the links between climatic and biotic evolution but limited taxonomic documentation of this taxon has thus far hindered this line of research here we investigate if the pollen morphology and the chemical composition of the pollen wall are informative of the evolutionary history of nitraria and could explain if origination along the proto paratethys and dispersal to the tibetan plateau was simultaneous or a secondary process to answer these questions we applied a novel approach consisting of a combination of fourier transform infrared spectroscopy ftir to determine the chemical composition of the pollen wall and pollen morphological analyses using light microscopy lm and scanning electron microscopy sem we analysed our data using ordinations principal components analysis and non metric multidimensional scaling and directly mapped it on the nitrariaceae phylogeny to produce a phylomorphospace and a phylochemospace our lm sem and ftir analyses show clear morphological and chemical differences between the sister groups peganum and nitraria differences in the morphological and chemical characteristics of highland species nitraria schoberi n sphaerocarpa n sibirica and n tangutorum and lowland species nitraria billardierei and n retusa are very subtle with phylogenetic history appearing to be a more important control on nitraria pollen than local environmental conditions our approach shows a compelling consistency between the chemical and morphological characteristics of the eight studied nitrariaceae species and these traits are in agreement with the phylogenetic tree taken together this demonstrates how novel methods for studying fossil pollen can facilitate the evolutionary investigation of living and extinct taxa and the environments they represent,2018,0.424
"Effect of pollination strategy, phylogeny and distribution on pollination niches of Euro-Mediterranean orchids",1 pollination niches are important components of ecological niches and have played a major role in the diversification of angiosperms in this study we focused on euroâ mediterranean orchids which use diverse pollination strategies and interact with various functional groups of insects in these orchids we investigated the determinants of pollination niche breadth and overlap by analysing the orchidâ pollinator network and the factors that may have shaped it 2 we constructed a database reporting 1278 interactions between 243 orchid and 773 pollinator species based on a thorough literature review we then focused on 153 orchid species for which phylogenetic data were available we used bayesian phylogenetic mixed models to study the relationship between specialisation as estimated by the degree and degree in the projected network pollination strategy and breadths of orchidsâ spatial and temporal distributions while correcting for the effect of phylogenetic relationships among orchid species and sampling effort we then used a singular value decomposition of the orchidâ pollinator matrix combined to a redundancy and variation partitioning analyses to investigate the determinants of similarity in pollination niches between orchids 3 specialisation was higher in deceptive than in nectarâ producing orchids and decreased with the breadth of orchidsâ spatial distribution when interactions were considered at the insect family level similarity in pollination niches between orchids was solely explained by their pollination strategy and phylogeny by contrast when they were considered at the insect species level this similarity was primarily explained by their geographical range and flowering time although other factors had significant effects as well with orchids using the same pollination strategy being closely related and growing in the same habitats sharing more insect species than expected 4 synthesis specialisation in orchidâ pollinator interactions depends on orchidsâ pollination strategy and geographical range the pool of insect families with which orchids interact depend on their pollination strategy and phylogeny with consistent associations between some functional or phylogenetic groups of orchids and some families of pollinators by contrast the pool of insect species with which orchids interact depend on their spatioâ temporal distribution suggesting that at a finer scale orchidâ pollinator interactions are more opportunistic than previously thought,2018,0.409
Phenological responses of 215 moth species to interannual climate variation in the Pacific Northwest from 1895 through 2013,climate change has caused shifts in the phenology and distributions of many species but comparing responses across species is challenged by inconsistencies in the methodology and taxonomic and temporal scope of individual studies natural history collections offer a rich source of data for examining phenological shifts for a large number of species we paired specimen records from pacific northwest insect collections to climate data to analyze the responses of 215 moth species to interannual climate variation over a period of 119 years 1895â 2013 during which average annual temperatures have increased in the region we quantified the effects of late winter early spring temperatures averaged annually across the region on dates of occurrence of adults taking into account the effects of elevation latitude and longitude we assessed whether species specific phenological responses varied with adult flight season and larval diet breadth collection dates were significantly earlier in warmer years for 36 3 of moth species and later for 3 7 species exhibited an average phenological advance of 1 9 days â c but species specific shifts ranged from an advance of 10 3 days â c to a delay of 10 6 days â c more spring flying species shifted their phenology than summer or fall flying species these responses did not vary among groups defined by larval diet breadth the highly variable phenological responses to climate change in pacific northwest moths agree with other studies on lepidoptera and suggest that it will remain difficult to accurately forecast which species and ecological interactions are most likely to be affected by climate change our results also underscore the value of natural history collections as windows into long term ecological trends,2018,0.98
Climatic Niche Dynamics and Its Role in the Insular Endemism of Anolis Lizards,insular systems are usually characterized by have a high species diversity endemism and evolutionary uniqueness although ecological and evolutionary factors shaping insular diversity and endemism are relatively well established there is a little understanding about climatic niche dynamics for many insular adaptive radiations here we evaluate the tempo and mode of climatic niche evolution in an iconic insular radiation of lizards by using an extensive dataset of phylogenetic and coarse grain climatic niches we evaluated phylogenetic niche divergence and niche conservatism across temporal and spatial scales in the caribbean anolis lizard radiation we found several instances of niche shifts during the anole radiation across islands many of these niche shifts converged to similar climatic regimes between different islands furthermore we find evidence that single island endemic species are more limited by low suitability of climatic conditions outside its native islands than oceanic barriers due to the high climatic heterogeneity observed at least between greater antillean islands these results suggest that within lineage climatic niche conservatism has been prevalent in short time scales and likely played a role driving the exceptional insular endemism observed today,2018,0.492
"Population dynamics and geographical distribution of the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, in Japan",the gypsy moth lymantria dispar l lepidoptera lymantriidae is distributed throughout most of the northern hemisphere and known as one of the most significant insect pest both in its native and introduced regions the aim of this study was to examine whether there are differences in the outbreak pattern of l dispar and these differences can be explained by different subspecies or divided populations across japan for appropriate management of l dispar we reviewed the records of outbreaks of l dispar in japan using available literature and internet sources we also examined phylogenetic relationships between l dispar populations in japan and other global populations to clarify current debated classification of the japanese l dispar we then estimated the distribution of japanese l dispar with a species distribution model maxent phylogenetic mtdna analysis revealed that lymantria species consisted of four clusters the first cluster contained three l dispar subspecies from europe and continental asia classified into l dispar dispar the populations of honshu and western hokkaido l dispar asiatica and the central and eastern hokkaido populations of l dispar hokkaidoensis while the second and third clusters comprised l albescens and l postalba respectively according to historical records l dispar outbreaks occur in approximately 11 year cycles in hokkaido regardless of its classification at the subspecies level within northeastern japan l dispar outbreaks occurred simultaneously from 2014 to 2015 whereas there were few reports of outbreaks in southwestern japan the distribution ranges of l dispar were determined mainly by the maximum depth of snow cover 100â 250 cm forest patch area 0â 0 6 km2 and elevation 600â 1400 m clearly divided at the species level but not at the subspecies or divided population level on the other hand the forest types are likely to contribute to the population dynamics and geographical distribution of l dispar,2018,0.882
Herbal bathing: an analysis of variation in plant use among Saramaccan and Aucan Maroons in Suriname,background herbal baths play an important role in the traditional health care of maroons living in the interior of suriname however little is known on the differences in plant ingredients used among and within the maroon groups we compared plant use in herbal baths documented for saramaccan and aucan maroons to see whether similarity in species was related to bath type ethnic group or geographical location we hypothesized that because of their dissimilar cultural background they used different species for the same type of bath we assumed however that plants used in genital baths were more similar as certain plant ingredients e g essential oils are preferred in these baths methods we compiled a database from published and unpublished sources on herbal bath ingredients and constructed a presence absence matrix per bath type and study site to assess similarity in plant use among and within saramaccan and aucan communities we performed three detrended correspondence analyses on species level and the jaccard similarity index to quantify similarity in bath ingredients results we recorded 349 plants used in six commonly used bath types baby strength adult strength skin diseases respiratory ailments genital steam baths and spiritual issues our results showed a large variation in plant ingredients among the saramaccan and aucans and little similarity between saramaccans and aucans even for the same type of baths plant ingredients for baby baths and genital baths shared more species than the others even within the saramaccan community plant ingredients were stronger associated with location than with bath type conclusions plant use in bathing was strongly influenced by study site and then by ethnicity but less by bath type as maroons escaped from different plantations and developed their ethnomedicinal practices in isolation there has been little exchange in ethnobotanical knowledge after the seventeenth century between ethnic groups care should be taken in extrapolating plant use data collected from one location to a whole ethnic community maroon plant use deserves more scientific attention especially now as there are indications that traditional knowledge is disappearing,2018,0.482
A Review and Acute Oral Toxicity Study of Asystasia variabilis Trim- A Medicinal Plant used by Folklore Practitioners,ayurveda believes every plant is medicinal asystasia variabilis trim belonging to the family acanthaceae called as maithaalakaddi by folklore practitioners of udupi it is a semi scandent herb generously growing in rainy season throughout coastal region which is used effectively by the folklore practitioners to treat different pitta vikaras considering its therapeutic potentialities the drug is reviewed and to establish its safety profile the acute oral toxicity study is carried out methodology the literary review was carried out by collecting the relevant material from vedas samhitas and nighantus information about the drug in recent day is reviewed from relevant textbooks journals and relevant websites the whole matured plant of a variabilis was identified collected to prepare churna powder and aot study was carried out as per oecd 425 guidelines results although various therapeutic applications are mentioned in detail in various ethno medico botanical surveys which are published the drug is not considered as a source for any of the drug mentioned in samhita or nighantus the acute oral toxicity study shows ld50 is much more than 2000mg kg conclusion the plant is considered as new to ayurveda and it is proved it to be a safe drug,2018,0.296
Machine Learning for Ecology and Sustainable Natural Resource Management,ecologists and natural resource managers are charged with making complex management decisions in the face of a rapidly changing environment resulting from climate change energy development urban sprawl invasive species and globalization advances in geographic information system gis technology digitization online data availability historic legacy datasets remote sensors and the ability to collect data on animal movements via satellite and gps have given rise to large highly complex datasets these datasets could be utilized for making critical management decisions but are often â œmessyâ and difficult to interpret basic artificial intelligence algorithms i e machine learning are powerful tools that are shaping the world and must be taken advantage of in the life sciences in ecology machine learning algorithms are critical to helping resource managers synthesize information to better understand complex ecological systems machine learning has a wide variety of powerful applications with three general uses that are of particular interest to ecologists 1 data exploration to gain system knowledge and generate new hypotheses 2 predicting ecological patterns in space and time and 3 pattern recognition for ecological sampling machine learning can be used to make predictive assessments even when relationships between variables are poorly understood when traditional techniques fail to capture the relationship between variables effective use of machine learning can unearth and capture previously unattainable insights into an ecosystem s complexity currently many ecologists do not utilize machine learning as a part of the scientific process this volume highlights how machine learning techniques can complement the traditional methodologies currently applied in this field,2018,0.093
Liberating links between datasets using lightweight data publishing: an example using plant names and the taxonomic literature,constructing a biodiversity knowledge graph will require making millions of cross links between diversity entities in different datasets researchers trying to bootstrap the growth of the biodiversity knowledge graph by constructing databases of links between these entities lack obvious ways to publish these sets of links one appealing and lightweight approach is to create a datasette a database that is wrapped together with a simple web server that enables users to query the data datasettes can be packaged into docker containers and hosted online with minimal effort this approach is illustrated using a dataset of links between globally unique identifiers for plant taxonomic namesand identifiers for the taxonomic articles that published those names,2018,0.285
The Tanggula Mountains enhance population divergence in Carex moorcroftii: a dominant sedge on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau,high altitude mountains are often geographic barriers to gene fow and play important roles in shaping population divergence the central qinghai tibetan plateau qtp stands the location of the tanggula mountains tm we use the tm as a case using carex moorcroftii a dominant species on the qtp to test the efects of geographic barriers on plant population divergence we sampled 18c moorcroftii populations along a north south transect crossing the tm to investigate the correlations of genetic variation and morphological traits with climate variables the results showed this species holds high genetic diversity he 0 58 and the surveyed populations can be genetically clustered into two groups populations from the north face of tm and the other from the south gene fow between populations within groups is higher than those between groups the traits number and mass of seeds mass of root and infructescence signifcantly varied among populations mantel tests detected a weak but signifcantly positive correlation between genetic and geographic r2 0 107 p 0 032 and climatic distance r2 0 162 p 0 005 indicating both isolation by distance and isolation by environment these fndings together suggest high altitude mountains of tm interrupt habitat continuity result in distinct climatic conditions on both sides increasing population divergence of plant species,2018,0.943
"Forecasting the global extent of invasion of the cereal pest Spodoptera frugiperda, the fall armyworm",fall armyworm spodopterafrugiperda is a crop pest native to the americas which has invaded and spread throughout sub saharan africa within two years recent estimates of 20â 50 maize yield loss in africa suggest severe impact on livelihoods fall armyworm is still infilling its potential range in africa and could spread to other continents in order to understand fall armywormâ s year round global potential distribution we used evidence of the effects of temperature and precipitation on fall armyworm life history combined with data on native and african distributions to construct species distribution models sdms we also investigated the strength of trade and transportation pathways that could carry fall armyworm beyond africa up till now fall armyworm has only invaded areas that have a climate similar to the native distribution validating the use of climatic sdms the strongest climatic limits on fall armywormâ s year round distribution are the coldest annual temperature and the amount of rain in the wet season much of sub saharan africa can host year round fall armyworm populations but the likelihoods of colonising north africa and seasonal migrations into europe are hard to predict south and southeast asia and australia have climate conditions that would permit fall armyworm to invade current trade and transportation routes reveal australia china india indonesia malaysia philippines and thailand face high threat of fall armyworm invasions originating from africa,2018,0.429
"The invasion of Artocarpus heterophyllus, jackfruit, in protected areas under climate change and across scales: from Atlantic Forest to a natural heritage private reserve",protected areas pas are a cornerstone to biodiversity conservation reducing the negative effects of human occupation on the biodiversity persistence however the implementation of pas does not always mitigate the impacts of human occupation such as biological invasions and climatic changes we evaluated the effect of the invasion of artocarpus heterophyllus the jackfruit over atlantic forest pas under the influence of climate changes and across scales the environmental suitability of jackfruit for preindustrial future 2080 and delta future ∠preindustrial was used to establish the risk of invasiveness to validate the hypothesis that pas have higher jackfruit invasiveness than usual in preindustrial future and delta periods we used a null model we conducted a phytosociological study in guarir㺠natural heritage private reserve nhpr for evaluating the effect of jackfruit on species richness the atlantic forest pas have higher jackfruit environmental suitability than expected for both preindustrial future and delta periods in guarir㺠nhpr the presence of jackfruit was inversely proportional to the species richness the combined effect of jackfruit invasion and climatic changes showed that the atlantic forest pas are threatened by the effect of jackfruit competitive pressure over native species thus dominating ecosystems both by density and biomass in preindustrial and under climate changes guarir㺠nhpr is already losing its biodiversity through the presence of jackfruit needing management interventions we strongly recommend that to combat the occurrence of jackfruit in atlantic forest pas management interventions should be taken to control its persistence also delineating its role inside the community structure,2018,0.64
"Forecasting an invasive species’ distribution with global distribution data, local data, and physiological information",understanding invasive species distributions and potential invasions often requires broadâ scale information on the environmental tolerances of the species further resource managers are often faced with knowing these broadâ scale relationships as well as nuanced environmental factors related to their landscape that influence where an invasive species occurs and potentially could occur using invasive buffelgrass cenchrus ciliaris we developed global models and local models for saguaro national park arizona usa based on location records and literature on physiological tolerances to environmental factors to investigate whether environmental relationships of a species at a global scale are also important at local scales in addition to correlative models with five commonly used algorithms we also developed a model using a priori userâ defined relationships between occurrence and environmental characteristics based on a literature review all correlative models at both scales performed well based on statistical evaluations the userâ defined curves closely matched those produced by the correlative models indicating that the correlative models may be capturing mechanisms driving the distribution of buffelgrass given climate projections for the region both global and local models indicate that conditions at saguaro national park may become more suitable for buffelgrass combining global and local data with correlative models and physiological information provided a holistic approach to forecasting invasive species distributions,2018,0.742
Global establishment threat from a major forest pest via international shipping: Lymantria dispar,the global shipping network is widely recognised as a pathway for vectoring invasive species one species of particular concern is lymantria dispar gypsy moth two subspecies l d asiatica and l d japonica herein referred to as asian gypsy moth agm are of considerable concern as ships arriving to a number of countries have been found carrying agm egg masses however ships carrying agm eggs can only threaten a country at ports located in a climatically suitable region we present a climex model of climate suitability and combine this with international shipping to estimate the global threat from agm we find that for the usa more than half of international ships approximately 18 000 ships arrive to climatically suitable ports other countries with a large number of ships arriving to ports with suitable climates include canada and brazil this is the first global analysis of the invasion threat from agm and we recommend countries focus agm inspection programs towards ships arriving at ports found within climatically suitable regions,2018,0.767
"On the occurrence of Hemiphractus scutatus (Spix, 1824)(Anura: Hemiphractidae) in eastern Amazonia",hemiphractus wagler 1828 is part of hemiphractidae peters 1862 a family that harbors species of frogs characterized by the deposition of eggs on the femalesâ dorsum both the genus hemiphractus and the species hemiphractus scutatus spix 1824 are only known to the andean mountain range and western half of the upper amazon basin herein we provide the first records of h scutatus from the eastern amazonia middle tapajã s river region parã state brazil which extends its geographic range ca 1 000 km from nearest known occurrence record and are among the lowest known levels for the species elevational range comparisons of morphologic and molecular data with available voucher specimens and published information on the species revealed variation that we interpret as intraspecific polymorphism phylogenetic analysis of a fragment of the mitochondrial gene 16s recovered the newly discovered specimens as most closely related to samples from peru these results add new evidence in the known biogeographic patterns of the genus and species and ongoing plans to build hydroelectric plants in the middle tapajã s river region can negatively affect this unique population,2018,0.941
Mapping Disease Transmission Risk of Nipah Virus in South and Southeast Asia,since 1998 nipah virus niv genus henipavirus family paramyxoviridae an often fatal and highly virulent zoonotic pathogen has caused sporadic outbreak events fruit bats from the genus pteropus are the wildlife reservoirs and have a broad distribution throughout south and southeast asia and east africa understanding the disease biogeography of niv is critical to comprehending the potential geographic distribution of this dangerous zoonosis this study implemented the r packages enmeval and biomod2 as a means of modeling regional disease transmission risk and additionally measured niche similarity between the reservoir pteropus and the ecological characteristics of outbreak localities with the schoenerâ s d index and i statistic results indicate a relatively high degree of niche overlap between models in geographic and environmental space d statistic 0 64 and i statistic 0 89 and a potential geographic distribution encompassing 19 2 963 178 km2 of south and southeast asia this study should contribute to current and future efforts to understand the critical ecological contributors and geography of niv furthermore this study can be used as a geospatial guide to identify areas of high disease transmission risk and to inform national public health surveillance programs,2018,0.466
"Phylogenetic analysis of trophic niche evolution reveals a latitudinal herbivory gradient in Clupeoidei (herrings, anchovies, and allies)",biotic and abiotic forces govern the evolution of trophic niches which profoundly impact ecological and evolutionary processes and aspects of species biology herbivory is a particularly interesting trophic niche because there are theorized trade offs associated with diets comprised of low quality food that might prevent the evolution of herbivory in certain environments herbivory has also been identified as a potential evolutionary â œdead endâ that hinders subsequent trophic diversification for this study we investigated trophic niche evolution in clupeoidei anchovies sardines herrings and their relatives and tested the hypotheses that herbivory is negatively correlated with salinity and latitude using a novel time calibrated molecular phylogeny trophic guilds delimited using diet data and cluster analysis and standard and phylogenetically informed statistical methods we identified eight clupeoid trophic guilds molluscivore terrestrial invertivore phytoplanktivore macroalgivore detritivore piscivore crustacivore and zooplanktivore standard statistical methods found a significant negative correlation between latitude and the proportion of herbivorous clupeoids herbivorous clupeoid species total clupeoid species but no significant difference in the proportion of herbivorous clupeoids between freshwater and marine environments phylogenetic least squares regression did not identify significant negative correlations between latitude and herbivory or salinity and herbivory in clupeoids there were five evolutionary transitions from non herbivore to herbivore guilds and no transitions from herbivore to non herbivore guilds there were no transitions to zooplanktivore the most common guild but it gave rise to all trophic guilds except algivore at least once transitions to herbivory comprised a significantly greater proportion of diet transitions in tropical and subtropical 350 relative to temperate areas 350 our findings suggest cold temperatures may constrain the evolution of herbivory and that herbivory might act as an evolutionary â œdead endâ that hinders subsequent trophic diversification while zooplanktivory acts as an evolutionary â œcradleâ that facilitates trophic diversification,2018,0.715
Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: 10 questions to guide interpretation and avoid false conclusions,aim recent studies increasingly use statistical methods to infer biotic interactions from coâ occurrence information at a large spatial scale however disentangling biotic interactions from other factors that can affect coâ occurrence patterns at the macroscale is a major challenge approach we present a set of questions that analysts and reviewers should ask to avoid erroneously attributing species association patterns to biotic interactions our questions relate to the appropriateness of data and models the causality behind a correlative signal and the problems associated with static data from dynamic systems we summarize caveats reported by macroecological studies of biotic interactions and examine whether conclusions on the presence of biotic interactions are supported by the modelling approaches used findings irrespective of the method used studies that set out to test for biotic interactions find statistical associations in speciesâ coâ occurrences yet when compared with our list of questions few purported interpretations of such associations as biotic interactions hold up to scrutiny this does not dismiss the presence or importance of biotic interactions but it highlights the risk of too lenient interpretation of the data combining model results with information from experiments and functional traits that are relevant for the biotic interaction of interest might strengthen conclusions main conclusions moving from speciesâ to communityâ level models including biotic interactions among species is of great importance for processâ based understanding and forecasting ecological responses we hope that our questions will help to improve these models and facilitate the interpretation of their results in essence we conclude that ecologists have to recognize that a species association pattern in joint species distribution models will be driven not only by real biotic interactions but also by shared habitat preferences common migration history phylogenetic history and shared response to missing environmental drivers which specifically need to be discussed and if possible integrated into models,2018,0.108
Shedding light on the role of seasonal flowering in plant niche transitions,at the beginning of the 20th century garner and allard 1920 described photoperiodic responses in plants in detail for the first time whereas short day or more accurately long night plants only flowered when day length dropped below a critical threshold longday short night plants only flowered if day length exceeded such a threshold some years later garner 1933 put the significance of photoperiodic flowering into an ecological context to explain how environmental conditions favor different photoperiodic types in temperate regions the critical day length of a short day species would have passed before temperatures were favorable for flowering in the spring in contrast critical day lengths of temperate long day taxa coincide with increasingly favorable temperatures favoring the presence of these species at higher latitudes,2018,0.229
The Living Atlases community in action: the GBIF Benin data portal,atlas of living australia ala https www ala org au is the global biodiversity information facility gbif node of australia they developed an open and free platform for sharing and exploring biodiversity data all the modules are publicly available for reuse and customization on their github account https github com atlasoflivingaustralia gbif benin hosted at the university of abomey calavi has published more than 338 000 occurrence records from 87 datasets and 2 checklists through the gbif capacity enhancement support programme https www gbif org programme 82219 capacity enhancement support programme gbif benin with the help of gbif france is in the process of deploying the beninese data portal using the gbif france back end architecture gbif benin is the first african country to implement this module of the ala infrastructure,2018,0.257
Filter-dispersal assembly of lowland Neotropical rainforests across the Andes,numerous neotropical rainforest species are distributed in both amazonia and central america reflecting a rich history of biotic interchange between regions however some plant lineages are endemic to one region due in part to the dispersal barrier posed by the northern andean cordilleras and adjacent savannas to investigate the role of biogeographic filtering across the northern andes in regional community assembly we examined environmental tolerances functional traits and biogeographic distributions of 1000 woody plant species trees shrubs lianas locally coâ occurring in forest plots in lowland panama 542 species and amazonian ecuador 667 species high regional abundance was strongly predictive of the probability of being geographically widespread i e present on both sides of the andes however we also found that species with broad environmental tolerances those that are able to inhabit high elevations and areas of low mean annual precipitation were more likely to have a crossâ andean distribution even after accounting for regional abundance suggesting that biogeographic filtering for these traits has mediated crossâ andean dispersal regional abundance and environmental tolerances were additionally associated with a suite of lifeâ history traits related to high dispersalâ colonization ability but most traits reflecting dispersalâ colonization ability were not predictive of biogeographic distribution our results highlight how the process of biogeographic filtering based primarily on environmental tolerances has mediated regionalâ scale floristic assembly of neotropical rainforests the impacts of this process which we term filterâ dispersal assembly are likely to be especially important to forests in central america where biotic interchange with amazonia has heavily influenced regional community composition,2018,0.726
"STUDY OF SOME MACROMYCETES MUSHROOMS; IN THE ATLAS CEDAR FORESTS OF THE BELEZMA MASSIF (BATNA, ALGERIA)",the phanerogamic flora of cedar forests that belonging to belezma massif batna algeria was partially studied however its mycological richness remains largely unknown because it has never been inventoried thus this study aimed to the investigate of the fungic procession of the cedar forests of which the objective to obtain the most complete possible list of species of the considered area fully as possible within the framework of an initial inventory of fungi the identification of fungal flora was based on a number of criteria namely the macroscopic and microscopic morpphological characters organoleptic characteristics such as the color flavour odor touch were thus determined and at the end of the microscopic criteria using the microscopic cuts on the level of the anatomical structures our study allowed us to inventory 51 species 98 06 of these fungi belong to the division basidiomycetes and 1 94 to the ascomycetes of these 49 species have been met for the first time in the national park area the majority of the found species have important and diverse roles,2018,0.73
"Biological field stations and scientific knowledge: the case of mammals in forests of the Chiapas highlands, México",the san josã biological station sjbe is the first temperate station in the chiapas highlands dedicated to preserve the last wildlife refuges in the area comprehensive studies in biological stations are a top priority to generate scientific knowledge as well as to manage maintain and conserve both the species and the ecological systems to which they belong field sampling was carried out in 2007 2010 2015 and 2016 at sjbe rodents were captured with sherman traps shrews with pitfall traps and bats with mist nets medium sized and large mammals were recorded by direct observation the species recorded were listed by their common name in spanish and tzotzil in addition a bibliographic search was conducted and the databases of the global biodiversity information facility and the mammal collection at el colegio de la frontera sur were used the conservation status of each species was identified based on the red list of the international union for the conservation of nature iucn and the mexican official norm 059 nom 059 by semarnat the list of mammals recorded at sjbe includes 23 species in 8 orders and 13 families of the total number of species two are endemic to chiapas peromyscus zarhynchus and cryptotis griseoventris in the iucn cryptotis griseoventris is listed as endangered with few records for 62 years and peromyscus zarhynchus as vulnerable in nom 059 reithrodontomys microdon is listed as threatened and p zarhynchus as subject to special protection oak pine forests at sjbe are essential for the maintenance of biodiversity in the region offer resources and preserve the local native fauna the creation of spaces for research on the biota is a key tool to understand the impacts and threats that currently affect forests in the chiapas highlands,2018,0.716
"New observations and ontogenetic transformation of photogenic tissues in the tubeshoulder Sagamichthys schnakenbecki (Platytroctidae, Alepocephaliformes)",several species of the luminescent tubeshoulder fish family platytroctidae show extensive ontogenetic transformations in the development of bioluminescent structures from larvae to adults several types of luminescent tissues are present in platytroctids although these tissues are poorly known for most species because specimens are rarely observed the present study describes the ontogenetic transformation of photogenic structures in sagamichthys schnakenbecki a species that is found in meso and bathy pelagic depths of the atlantic ocean five newly described luminous structures are included in addition to a review of all known bioluminescent tissues described in the family the newly discovered photogenic tissues were observed at the pectoral fin base in early juveniles as a pair of large globule like tissues inside the caudal peduncle of early juveniles at the pelvic girdle of late juveniles and early adults and as photogenic tissue observed as pigment over the cleithral bone in adults a peculiar skin slit structure which was observed only in s schnakenbecki is described and discussed skin slits were associated with certain bioluminescent structures during the transformation into adulthood in addition coi sequence data from nine of 13 recognized platytroctid genera were used to construct the first molecular phylogenetic tree for the family finally the first photographic evidence of the rarely observed luminous discharge of a tubeshoulder shoulder organ is presented from observations off south east greenland,2018,0.654
In situ Orchid Seedling-Trap Experiment Shows Few Keystone and Many Randomly Associated Mycorrhizal Fungal Species During Early Plant Colonization,orchids are known for their vast diversity and dependency on mycorrhizal fungi under in situ conditions the biotic and abiotic factors determining the composition and distribution of orchid mycorrhizal fungi omf communities remain largely unexplored therefore in situ experiments are needed to better understand the interactions between orchids and fungi a seedling trap experiment was conducted in the reserva biolã gica san francisco a well known biodiversity hotspot located in the andes of southern ecuador the objective was to investigate the effect of orchid species site elevation or temporal variation on the assembly and structure of omf associated with cyrtochilum retusum and epidendrum macrum the omf community composition was determined using the illumina miseq sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 2 its2 region the results exhibited 83 omf operational taxonomic units belonging to tulasnellaceae ceratobasidiaceae serendipitaceae and atractiellales it was observed that the composition of the omf communities was different among orchid species and temporal variation but was not different among sites the results further support that orchids have a core of keystone omf that are ubiquitously distributed and stable across temporal change whereas the majority of these fungi are randomly associated with the plants,2018,0.323
Rare frost events reinforce tropical savanna-forest boundaries,1 the ability of vegetation to ameliorate or exacerbate environmental extremes can generate feedbacks that mediate the distribution of biomes it has been suggested that feedbacks between vegetation and frost damage may be important for maintaining savanna particularly at the edge of the tropics 2 we quantified frost damage and air temperature across a network of 30 permanent plots distributed across tropical savannaâ forest boundaries in brazil during an uncommonly hard frost 3 tree cover strongly buffered temperatures during frost events such that forest sites were up to 5â c warmer than nearby sites occupied by open shrub savanna consequently in forest woody plants were not damaged but in savanna there was extensive dieback of trees and shrubs within savanna frost had disproportionately large effects on small individuals likely due to colder temperatures near the ground and the lower thermal mass of thin stems across species frost tolerance was strongly correlated with latitudinal range limit revealing the importance of minimum temperature as a species filter at the regional scale counterintuitively savanna species which are adapted to open habitats where frost is more likely were more vulnerable to cold than were forest species and experienced more than twice the amount of leaf damage as coâ occurring forest species 4 synthesis frost reinforces the effects of fire on vegetation structure by preferentially damaging trees in open environments and generating high loads of dead flammable fuels however frost does not currently occur with sufficient frequency in the region to maintain open savanna by itself nevertheless it occurs with sufficient frequency and severity that it likely acts as an environmental filter and evolutionary selective factor for some of the most frostâ sensitive species,2018,0.732
The Living Atlases community in action: general introduction,atlas of living australia ala https www ala org au is the global biodiversity information facility gbif node of australia in 2010 they launched an open and free platform for sharing and exploring biodiversity data thanks to this new infrastructure they have been able to drastically increase the number of occurrences published through the gbif org in order to help other gbif nodes or institutions they made all of their modules publicly available for reuse and customization through github https github com atlasoflivingaustralia,2018,0.355
Combined Effects of Global Climate Suitability and Regional Environmental Variables on the Distribution of an Invasive Marsh Species Spartina alterniflora,combined effects of global climate suitability and regional environmental variables on the distribution of an invasive marsh species spartina alterniflora,2018,0.409
Spatial phylogenetics reveals evolutionary constraints on the assembly of a large regional flora,premise of the study we used spatial phylogenetics to analyze the assembly of the wisconsin flora linking processes of dispersal and niche evolution to spatial patterns of floristic and phylogenetic diversity and testing whether phylogenetic niche conservatism can account for these patterns methods we used digitized records and a new molecular phylogeny for 93 of vascular plants in wisconsin to estimate spatial variation in species richness and phylogenetic î and î diversity in a native flora shaped mainly by postglacial dispersal and response to environmental gradients we developed distribution models for all species and used these to infer fineâ scale variation in potential diversity phylogenetic distance and interspecific range overlaps we identified 11 bioregions based on floristic composition mapped areas of neoâ and paleoâ endemism to establish new conservation priorities and predict how communityâ assembly patterns should shift with climatic change key results spatial phylogenetic turnover most strongly reflects differences in temperature and spatial distance for all vascular plants assemblages shift from phylogenetically clustered to overdispersed northward contrary to most other studies this pattern is lost for angiosperms alone illustrating the importance of phylogenetic scale conclusions species ranges and assemblage composition appear driven primarily by phylogenetic niche conservatism closely related species are ecologically similar and occupy similar territories the average level and geographic structure of plant phylogenetic diversity within wisconsin are expected to greatly decline over the next half century while potential species richness will increase throughout the state our methods can be applied to allochthonous communities throughout the world,2018,0.556
BioNNA: the Biodiversity National Network of Albania,recently the albanian government started the process to join the european union this process also involves matching the eu parameters in protecting its biodiversity in order to support the albanian authorities the italian ministry of foreign affairs general directorate for development cooperation dgcs and the international union for conservation of nature iucn joined efforts in the project â œinstitutional support to the albanian ministry of environment forest and water administration for sustainable biodiversity conservation and use in protected areasâ this project aims at identifying priority needs in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation another project funded by the eu â â œstrengthening capacity in national nature protection â preparation for natura 2000 networkâ â started in 2015 with the aim to raise awareness for assisting local and national albanian institutions to better exploit the potential of protected areas one of the main issues encountered during these projects was the need for a national biodiversity data repository the biodiversity national network of albania bionna has been created to aggregate occurrence records of plants and animals and aims at becoming the most relevant source of information for biodiversity data as far as albania is concerned in this paper the authors detail structure and data of bionna including the process of data gathering and aggregation taxonomic coverage software details and webgis development bionna is a milestone on the path towards albaniaâ s inclusion in the eu and has also a relevant potential social relevance for improving peopleâ s awareness on the importance of biodiversity in the country,2018,0.126
The population and landscape genetics of the European badger ( Meles meles ) in Ireland,the population genetic structure of freeâ ranging species is expected to reflect landscapeâ level effects quantifying the role of these factors and their relative contribution often has important implications for wildlife management the population genetics of the european badger meles meles have received considerable attention not least because the species acts as a potential wildlife reservoir for bovine tuberculosis btb in britain and ireland herein we detail the most comprehensive population and landscape genetic study of the badger in ireland to dateâ comprised of 454 irish badger samples genotyped at 14 microsatellite loci bayesian and multivariate clustering methods demonstrated continuous clinal variation across the island with potentially distinct differentiation observed in northern ireland landscape genetic analyses identified geographic distance and elevation as the primary drivers of genetic differentiation in keeping with badgers exhibiting high levels of philopatry other factors hypothesized to affect gene flow including earth worm habitat suitability land cover type and the river shannon had little to no detectable effect by providing a more accurate picture of badger population structure and the factors effecting it these data can guide current efforts to manage the species in ireland and to better understand its role in btb,2018,0.826
Estimating the exposure of carnivorous plants to rapid climatic change,climatic change likely will exacerbate current threats to carnivorous plants however estimating the severity of climatic change is challenged by the unique ecology of carnivorous plants including habitat specialization dispersal limitation small ranges and small population sizes we discuss and apply methods for modeling species distributions to overcome these challenges and quantify the vulnerability of carnivorous plants to rapid climatic change results suggest that climatic change will reduce habitat suitability for most carnivorous plants models also project increases in habitat suitability for many species but the extent to which these increases may offset habitat losses will depend on whether individuals can disperse to and establish in newly suitable habitats outside of their current distribution reducing existing stressors and protecting habitats where numerous carnivorous plant species occur may ameliorate impacts of climatic change on this unique group of plants,2018,0.261
Anticosti Island: a hot spot for Neospondylis upiformis (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) in eastern Canada?,during an inventory of insect diversity on anticosti island in 1993 we caught unprecedented numbers of neospondylisupiformis mannerheim a longhorned beetle rarely observed in eastern north america all specimens were caught using 12 funnel lindgren traps baited with 95 ethanol and î pinene this longhorned beetle was captured again in 2007 on anticosti with the same traps other than that seven specimens of n upiformis were caught elsewhere in quebec between 1993 and 2015 only 14 specimens were found in the 45 most important insect collections of the province the most recent specimen dating back to 1964,2018,0.386
Shallow evolutionary divergence between two Andean hummingbirds: Speciation with gene flow?,ecological speciation can proceed despite genetic interchange when selection counteracts homogeneizing effects of migration we tested predictions of this divergence with gene flow model in coeligena helianthea and c bonapartei two parapatric andean hummigbirds with marked plumage divergence we sequenced neutral markers mtdna and nuclear ultra conserved elements to examine genetic structure and gene flow and a candidate gene mc1r to assess its role underlying divergence in coloration we also tested the prediction of glogers rule that darker forms occur in more humid environments and compared ecomorphological variables to assess adaptive mechanisms potentially promoting divergence genetic differentiation between species was very low and coalescent estimates of migration were consistent with divergence with gene flow mc1r variation was unrelated to phenotypic differences species did not differ in macroclimatic niches but were distinct in ecomorphology although we reject adaptation to variation in humidity as the cause of divergence we hypothesize that speciation likely occurred in the face of gene flow driven by other ecological pressures or by sexual selection marked phenotypic divergence with no neutral genetic differentiation is remarkable for neotropical birds and makes c helianthea and c bonapartei an appropriate system in which to search for the genetic basis of species differences employing genomics,2018,0.463
The Living Atlases Community in Action: Sharing Species Pages through the Atlas of Living Costa Rica,the atlas of living costa rica http www crbio cr is a biodiversity data portal based on the atlas of living australia ala which provides integrated free and open access to data and information about costa rican biodiversity in order to support science education and conservation it is managed by the biodiversity informatics research center crbio and the national biodiversity institute inbio,2018,0.255
Digital Accessible Knowledge of the birds of India: Characterizing gaps in time and space,this paper evaluates digital accessible knowledge on occurrence of indian bird species more than 2 million primary occurrence records from across india were obtained from the global biodiversity information facility and ebird these were processed into maps of inventory completeness across the country both prior to 1980 and after 2000 in an attempt to develop evaluations of faunal change resulting from global climate change we found good coverage of the country by wellinventoried areas after 2000 but almost no coverage prior to 1980 as such in before and after comparisons documenting effects of global change on indian birds the â afterâ is well documented but the â beforeâ is lacking this significant information gap points to the need for digital capture and open sharing of historical information regarding indian bird speciesâ occurrences this information will derive in large part from natural history museum specimens particularly in india and great britain and potentially from older observational data sources and the literature,2018,0.314
OpenBiodiv-O: ontology of the OpenBiodiv knowledge management system,background the biodiversity domain and in particular biological taxonomy is moving in the direction of semantization of its research outputs the present work introduces openbiodiv o the ontology that serves as the basis of the openbiodiv knowledge management system our intent is to provide an ontology that fills the gaps between ontologies for biodiversity resources such as darwincore based ontologies and semantic publishing ontologies such as the spar ontologies we bridge this gap by providing an ontology focusing on biological taxonomy results openbiodiv o introduces classes properties and axioms in the domains of scholarly biodiversity publishing and biological taxonomy and aligns them with several important domain ontologies fabio doco dwc darwin sw nomen envo by doing so it bridges the ontological gap across scholarly biodiversity publishing and biological taxonomy and allows for the creation of a linked open dataset lod of biodiversity information a biodiversity knowledge graph and enables the creation of the openbiodiv knowledge management system a key feature of the ontology is that it is an ontology of the scientific process of biological taxonomy and not of any particular state of knowledge this feature allows it to express a multiplicity of scientific opinions the resulting openbiodiv knowledge system may gain a high level of trust in the scientific community as it does not force a scientific opinion on its users e g practicing taxonomists library researchers etc but rather provides the tools for experts to encode different views as science progresses conclusions openbiodiv o provides a conceptual model of the structure of a biodiversity publication and the development of related taxonomic concepts it also serves as the basis for the openbiodiv knowledge management system,2018,0.026
Distinctive effects of allochthonous and autochthonous organic matter on CDOM spectra in a tropical lake,despite the increasing understanding about differences in carbon cycling between temperate and tropical freshwater systems our knowledge on the importance of organic matter om pools on light absorption properties in tropical lakes is very scarce we performed a factorial mesocosm experiment in a tropical lake minas gerais brazil to evaluate the effects of increased concentrations of allochthonous and autochthonous om on the light absorption characteristics of colored dissolved organic matter cdom in addition to differences in light availability we added inorganic nutrients to stimulate om autochthonous production by phytoplankton growth and allochthonous om and also introduced shading dissolved organic carbon doc chl a nutrients total suspended solid concentrations tsm and spectral cdom absorption were measured every three days to evaluate how they responded to these treatments cdom quality was characterized by spectral indices s250 ndash 450 s275 ndash 295 s350 ndash 450 sr and suva254 the effect of carbon sources on the spectral cdom absorption was investigated through principal component pca and redundancy rda analyses the two different om sources affected cdom quality differently spectral indices s250 ndash 450 and sr were mostly affected by allochthonous om addition the pca showed that enrichment by allochthonous carbon had a strong effect on the cdom spectra in the range between 300 and 400 thinsp nm while the increase of autochthonous carbon increased absorption at wavelengths below 350 thinsp nm our results show that small inputs of allochthonous om have much larger effects on the spectral characteristics on the lake cdom compared to large production of autochthonous om,2018,0.105
Potential effects of climate change on the distribution of the endangered Darwin's frog,herein we gathered 109 historic and current records of the endangered darwinâ s frog rhinoderma darwinii to be able to model its potential current and future distribution by means of expert opinion and species distribution model maxent results showed that r darwinii potential current distribution is much wider than the known one mainly due to anthropogenically modified areas which were concentrated in the chilean central valley we identified a major threat to darwinâ s frog existence namely isolation of the population between the coastal and andean mountain ranges on the other hand sdm projections onto future climate scenarios suggest that in 2080 the frogâ s climatically suitable areas will expand and slightly shift southward however due to current ongoing threats such as habitat destruction we encourage further monitoring and surveying of darwinâ s frog populations and increased protection of their habitat especially at the central valley,2018,0.462
Padrões de variação de tamanho corporal e de distribuição geográfica são métodos-dependente em serpentes viperídeas do Novo Mundo,traditionally ecologists and biogeographers have been interested in ecogeographical patterns with increasing demand over the last years bergmannâ s and rapoportâ s rules are two of the most debated ecogeographical patterns which propose increasing in species body size and range size respectively with latitudes however whether such rules widely apply to reptiles remains unclear moreover there might be uncertainty regarding the method used to obtain species geographical range that might change our perception of such patterns here we tested different hypotheses regarding bergmannâ ÿs and rapoportâ ÿs rules using the new world pit vipers viperidae crotalinae as biological model as well as analyzed the robustness of different methods to obtain species geographical range and evaluated both ecogeographical patterns using different approaches we gathered occurrence data for the 136 crotalinae species and generated geographical ranges by building polygons from alpha hull method and ecological niche modelling we assessed both rules using a â žcross speciesâ ÿ and an â žassemblageâ ÿ approach the former considers each species as an independent data whereas the latter consider each assemblage i e a grid cell to be an independent data we used phylogenetic least squares pgls and generalized least squares gls to evaluate the cross species and the assemblage pattern respectively the former considers the phylogenetic independence of the data as the latter the geographic autocorrelation and both provide unbiased coefficients and significance levels our results show that bergmannâ ÿs rule did not occur in the cross species level whereas it was statistically significant in the assemblage level regardless of the method used to obtain range size we found support for rapoportâ ÿs rule in the cross species level regardless of the method used to generate range size meanwhile the assemblage analysis was not robust methodologically revealing different ecogeographical patterns depending on the method used to generate species geographical range our findings point that there are inconsistences between the patterns observed in the cross species and the assemblage analysis which could indicate that different processes producing these patterns in the cross species and assemblage levels finally our results highlight that this sensibility is especially evident in rapoportâ ÿs rule assemblage analysis and that when evaluating this pattern in assemblage level the method that will be used to obtain species geographical range should be carefully chosen,2018,0.791
An overview of recent progress in the implementation of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation - a global perspective,abstract the global strategy for plant conservation gspc with its 16 outcome orientated targets aimed at achieving a series of measurable goals was adopted by the conference of the parties to the convention on biological diversity cbd at its sixth meeting cop 6 in 2002 in 2010 at cop 10 these targets were updated taking into account progress at the time to date a number of countries have developed national responses to contribute to the gspc including several mega diverse countries and other plant rich countries and regions additionally a number of global initiatives have been established to promote the implementation of the gspc this paper provides an overview of progress at the global level towards the gspc targets highlighting actions that have taken place at a supra national level as well as providing examples of good practice in national implementation the gspc has been widely adopted particularly by the botanic garden community and while unlikely to achieve its ultimate goal of halting the loss of plant diversity by 2020 has achieved many successes not least in allowing and facilitating many individuals and organisations from the botanical community to engage with the cbd and to contribute to the achievement of its objectives targets and priorities,2018,0.043
A journey through time: exploring temporal patterns amongst digitized plant specimens from Australia,online access to species occurrence records has opened new windows into investigating biodiversity patterns across multiple scales the value of these records for research depends on their spatial temporal and taxonomic quality we assessed temporal patterns in records from the australasian virtual herbarium asking 1 how temporally consistent has collecting been across australia 2 which areas of australia have the most reliable records in terms of temporal consistency and inventory completeness 3 are there temporal trends in the completeness of attribute information associated with records we undertook a multi step filtering procedure then estimated temporal consistency and inventory completeness for sampling units sus of 50 km ã 50 km we found temporal bias in collecting with 80 of records collected over the period 1970â 1999 south eastern australia the wet tropics in north east queensland and parts of western australia have received the most consistent sampling effort over time whereas much of central australia has had low temporal consistency of the sus 18 have relatively complete inventories with high temporal consistency in sampling we also determined that 25 of digitized records had missing attribute information by identifying areas with low reliability we can limit erroneous inferences about distribution patterns and identify priority areas for future sampling,2018,0.454
"Morphological and Molecular Perspectives on the Phylogeny, Evolution, and Classification of Weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea): Proceedings from the 2016 International Weevil Meeting",the 2016 international weevil meeting was held immediately after the international congress of entomology ice it built on the topics and content of the 2016 ice weevil symposium phylogeny and evolution of weevils coleoptera curculionoidea a symposium in honor of dr guillermo willyâ kuschel beyond catalyzing research and collaboration the meeting was intended to serve as a forum for identifying priorities and goals for those who study weevils the meeting consisted of 46 invited and contributed lectures discussion sessions and introductory remarks presented by 23 speakers along with eight contributed research posters these were organized into three convened sessions each lasting one day 1 weevil morphology 2 weevil fossils biogeography and host habitat associations and 3 molecular phylogenetics and classification of weevils some of the topics covered included the 1k weevils project major morphological character systems of adult and larval weevils weevil morphological terminology prospects for future morphological character discovery phylogenetic analysis of morphological character data the current status of weevil molecular phylogenetics and evolution resources available for phylogenetic and comparative genomic studies of weevils the weevil fossil record weevil biogeography and evolution weevil host plants evolutionary development of the weevil rostrum resources available for weevil identification and the current status of and challenges in weevil classification,2018,0.262
A first approach to evaluate the vulnerability of islands’ vertebrates to climate change in Mexico,mexican islands are one of the most diverse territories in the world and consequently their conservation should be a national and international priority three main threats to islandsâ diversity have been detected invasive species land use change and climate change most studies have been focused on invasive species and land use change actually as far as we know this work is the first approach to evaluate climate change impacts on the biodiversity of islands in mexico we had two main goals to list the vertebrate species that have been registered in mexican islands and to model the possible impacts of climate change in the distri bution of islandsâ vertebrates to evaluate climate change impacts we used the ecological niche modeling that relates geographic occurrences with environmental variables to create a bioclimatic profile that can be projected in other time and other geographic areas in our results we obtained a list of species registered in mexican islands that increased in more than twice the number of species acknowledged by the mexican government and the ecological niche modeling of 54 vertebrate species we found that the species list effort was very important because knowing which species exist is the first step to preserve them in terms of eco logical niche modeling we modeled mammals reptiles and amphibians from these three groups reptiles were the group with greatest losses and more species in the top ten vulnerable list if we considered a no dispersion scenario all evaluated species presented losses regarding their current potential distribution area if the full dispersion scenario was taken into account the net change value resulted positive for the majority of the species evaluated consequently if no barriers exist and the dispersion ability is good enough changes in climatic conditions might not be an important threat however this is not the case for most species eval uated areas with a higher number of species richest areas do show changes in the future with shifts to the east and north of the country finally we could find significant differences between times and scenarios in terms of suitable area losses greatest losses can be found in the long term rcp 8 5 wmâ 2 in comparison to the long term rcp 4 5 wmâ 2 meaning that the direction that humanity takes in terms of climate change will have consequences on island biodiversity in this work we did not take into account the sea level rise which is expected to have important impacts on islands species,2018,0.993
"Global priorities for conserving the evolutionary history of sharks, rays and chimaeras",in an era of accelerated biodiversity loss and limited conservation resources systematic prioritization of species and places is essential in terrestrial vertebrates evolutionary distinctness has been used to identify species and locations that embody the greatest share of evolutionary history we estimate evolutionary distinctness for a large marine vertebrate radiation on a dated taxon complete tree for all 1 192 chondrichthyan fishes sharks rays and chimaeras by augmenting a new 610 species molecular phylogeny using taxonomic constraints chondrichthyans are by far the most evolutionarily distinct of all major radiations of jawed vertebratesâ the average species embodies 26 million years of unique evolutionary history with this metric we identify 21 countries with the highest richness endemism and evolutionary distinctness of threatened species as targets for conservation prioritization on average threatened chondrichthyans are more evolutionarily distinctâ further motivating improved conservation fisheries management and trade regulation to avoid significant pruning of the chondrichthyan tree of life,2018,0.824
Functional reorganization of marine fish nurseries under climate warming,while climate change is rapidly impacting marine species and ecosystems worldwide the effects of climate warming on coastal fish nurseries have received little attention despite nurseriesâ fundamental roles in recruitment and population replenishment here we used a 26â year time series 1987 â 2012 of fish monitoring in the bay of somme a nursery in the eastern english channel to examine the impacts of environmental and human drivers on the spatial and temporal dynamics of fish functional structure during a warming phase of the atlantic multidecadal oscillation amo we found that the nursery was initially dominated by fishes with râ selected life history traits such as low trophic level low age and size at maturity and small offspring which are highly sensitive to warming the amo likely superimposed on climate change induced rapid warming in the late 1990s over 1â c from 1998 â 2003 leading to functional reorganization of fish communities with a roughly 80 decline in overall fish abundance and increased dominance by kâ selected fishes additionally historical overfishing likely rendered the bay more vulnerable to climatic changes due to increased dominance by fishingâ tolerant yet climaticallyâ sensitive species the drop in fish abundance not only altered fish functional structure within the bay of somme but the eastern english channel was likely impacted as the eastern channel has been unable to recover from a regime shift in the late 1990s potentially in part due to failed replenishment from the bay given the collapse of râ selected fishes we discuss how the combination of climate cycles and global warming could threaten marine fish nurseries worldwide as nurseries are often dominated by râ selected species,2018,0.191
Medicinal Plants as Alternative Treatments for Progressive Macular Hypomelanosis,progressive macular hypomelanosis pmh is a hypopigmentation disease mostly affecting humans who have dark skin this hypopigmentation disease differs from other hypopigmentation disorders such as leukoderma and vitiligo as it is caused by a bacterium known as propionibacterium acnes current treatments for pmh are antibiotics and ultraviolet radiation uvr unfortunately these antibiotics are not a long term solution as the white macules reappear in the affected regions once the treatment is discontinued uvr is also not a recommended method to increase melanin production as overexposure to uvr may have undesired consequences therefore alternative natural solutions are needed there are several plants that are traditionally used for hypopigmentation disorders but no known plants are specifically used for pmh,2018,0.145
"The inland water macro-invertebrate occurrences in Flanders, Belgium",the flanders environment agency vmm has been performing biological water quality assessments on inland waters in flanders belgium since 1989 and sediment quality assessments since 2000 the water quality monitoring network is a combined physico chemical and biological network the biological component focusing on macro invertebrates the sediment monitoring programme produces biological data to assess the sediment quality both monitoring programmes aim to provide index values applying a similar conceptual methodology based on the presence of macro invertebrates the biological data obtained from both monitoring networks are consolidated in the vmm macro invertebrates database and include identifications at family and genus level of the freshwater phyla coelenterata platyhelminthes annelida mollusca and arthropoda this paper discusses the content of this database and the dataset published thereof 282 309 records of 210 observed taxa from 4 140 monitoring sites located on 657 different water bodies collected during 22 663 events this paper provides some background information on the methodology temporal and spatial coverage and taxonomy and describes the content of the dataset the data are distributed as open data under the creative commons cc by license,2018,0.164
Mapping the Potential Global Codling Moth (Cydia pomonella L.) Distribution Based on a Machine Learning Method,the spread of invasive species may pose great threats to the economy and ecology of a region the codling moth cydia pomonella l is one of the 100 worst invasive alien species in the world and is the most destructive apple pest the economic losses caused by codling moths are immeasurable it is essential to understand the potential distribution of codling moths to reduce the risks of codling moth establishment in this study we adopted the maxent maximum entropy model a machine learning method to predict the potential global distribution of codling moths with global accessibility data apple yield data elevation data and 19 bioclimatic variables considering the ecological characteristics and the spread channels that cover the processes from growth and survival to the dispersion of the codling moth the results show that the areas that are suitable for codling moth are mainly distributed in europe asia and north america and these results strongly conformed with the currently known occurrence regions in addition global accessibility mean temperature of the coldest quarter precipitation of the driest month annual mean temperature and apple yield were the most important environmental predictors associated with the global distribution of codling moths,2018,0.321
"Investigation of novel methods to predict the distribution, abundance, and connectivity of rare species: a case study for the conservation of Baird's tapir",species distribution models sdms are statistical tools used to develop continuous predictions of species occurrence â integrated sdmsâ isdms are an elaboration of this approach with potential as useful tools that allow for the dual use of opportunistically collected presence only po data and site occupancy so data from planned surveys these models also account for survey bias and imperfect detection through the use of a hierarchical modeling framework that separately estimates the speciesenvironment response and the detection process this is particularly helpful for conservation applications and predictions for rare species where data are often limited and prediction errors may have significant management consequences despite this potential importance isdms remain largely untested under a variety of scenarios,2018,0.722
Considering biology when inferring range-limiting stress mechanisms for agricultural pests: a case study of the beet armyworm,reliable niche models are a cornerstone of pest risk analyses informing biosecurity policies and the management of biological invasions because species can invade and establish in areas with climates that are different from those that are found in their native range it is important to accurately capture the range limiting mechanisms in models that project climate suitability we examined a published niche model for the beet armyworm spodoptera exigua to assess its suitability for bioeconomic analyses of its pest threat and identified issues with the model that rendered it unreliable for this purpose consequently we refitted the climex model paying close attention to the biology underpinning the stress mechanisms this highlighted the necessity of carefully considering how the different stress mechanisms operate and to select mechanisms which align with knowledge on the speciesâ biology we also identified the important role of irrigation in modifying habitat suitability the refitted model accords with both distribution data and our understanding of the biology of this species including its seasonal range dynamics the new model identifies establishment risks to south america africa the middle east and asia and highlights that under current climate europe is only climatically suitable during warm seasons when crops are available the modelling exercise reinforced the importance of understanding the meaning of a location record e g persistent versus ephemeral populations and of carefully exploring the role of habitat modifying factors such as irrigation in allowing species to persist in otherwise inclement localities,2018,0.255
A revision of Allium subsect. Allium (Amaryllidaceae) for the Maltese Islands,a revision of species in allium subsect allium occurring on the maltese islands was done on field and herbarium data a ampeloprasum l the presumed endemic a melitense borg ciferri giacomini and a commutatum guss are the three species mentioned in the maltese floras within this group the results clearly encompassed four different taxonomic units corresponding to a polyanthum schult schult f which has never been recorded for the maltese islands two populations of a commutatum and two forms one sterile one fertile of their putative hybrid a commutatum ã a polyanthum growing on few coastal areas a ampeloprasum is excluded from the maltese islands while a melitense is synonymised with a polyanthum all past records of a commutatum apart from a giant form are referred to a polyanthum moreover a commutatum ã a polyanthum is reported from sicily for the first time,2018,0.673
Estimating the population size of lemurs based on their mutualistic food trees,aim speciesâ distributions and abundances are primarily determined by the suitability of environmental conditions including climate and interactions with sympatric species but also increasingly by human activities modelling tools can help in assessing the extinction risk of affected species by combining species distribution modelling of abiotic and biotic niches with population size modelling we estimated the abundance of 19 lemur taxa in three regions especially focusing on 10 species that are considered endangered or critically endangered location madagascar taxa lemurs primates and angiosperm trees methods we used climate data field samples and published occurrence data on trees to construct species distribution models sdm for lemur food tree species we then inferred the sdms for lemurs based on the probability of occurrence of their food trees as well as climate finally we used tree sdms topography distance to the forest edge and field estimates of lemur population density to predict lemur abundance in general linear models results the sdms of lemur food trees were stronger predictors of the occurrence of lemurs than climate the predicted probability of presence of food trees slope elevation and distance from the forest edge were significant correlates of lemur density we found that sixteen species had minimum estimated abundances greater than 10 000 individuals over 1 000km2 three lemur species are especially threatened with less than 2 500 individuals predicted for cheirogaleus sibreei and heavy hunting pressure for the relatively small populations of indri indri and hapalemur occidentalis main conclusions biotic interactors were important variables in sdms for lemurs allowing refined estimates of ranges and abundances this paper provides an analytical workflow that can be applied to other taxonomic groups to substantiate estimates of speciesâ vulnerability to extinction,2018,0.943
"Completing the Data Pipeline: Collections Data Use in Research, Education and Outreach",natural history collections around the world have been digitizing and making their data available online with the support of initiatives like gbif idigbio and ala collections digitization and mobilization efforts are far from complete but with hundreds of millions of specimen records now available online natural history collections can safely claim the distinction of being a source of â big dataâ the purpose of this symposium is to highlight the diverse uses of digital collections resources for research education and outreach including activities that are currently underway around the globe with special focus on using collections data for innovative research applications inspiring outreach initiatives intended for new audiences and educational resources and programs that are ensuring a new generation of competent collections data users we anticipate this to be a full day event with up to 20 speakers we will invite selected speakers to submit abstracts and depend on abstract submissions through the spnhc abstract submission process,2018,0.009
The Australasian Virtual Herbarium: Tracking data usage and benefits for biological collections,premise of the study globally natural history collections are focused on digitizing specimens and information and making these data accessible usage information on national herbarium of victoria data made available through the atlas of living australia and the australasian virtual herbarium avh is analyzed to understand how and by whom herbarium data are being used methods since 2010 avh data usage information has been gathered from users and supplied to data custodians as a spreadsheet that includes number of download events number of records downloaded and user reasons for downloading data in predefined categories results since 2010 in excess of 268 000 download events of 194 million records excluding testing events have been recorded for the national herbarium of victoria data set this means on average every record has been downloaded 220 times in the past nine years data use grew continuously from 2010 to 2015 but decreased in 2016 due to fewer ecological projects discussion data have primarily been used for ecological research but there is an emerging trend for use in education including citizen science projects information about data use demonstrates relevance to funding agencies and helps inform the development of collections and prioritization of resources when digitizing material,2018,0.203
"Sandy Everlasting (Helichrysum arenarium (L.) Moench): Botanical, Chemical and Biological Properties",sandy everlasting helichrysum arenarium l moench is herbaceous perennial plant belonging to asteraceae family and it is native to europe central asia and china it belongs to the section helichrysum asteraceae family genus helichrysum along with h plicatum dc prodr which very similar phenolic profile and h italicum roth which is widely used for essential oil extraction its flowers have a long tradition in european ethnomedicine as a cholagogue choleretic hepatoprotective and detoxifying herbal drug the flowers are rich in phenolic compounds including flavonoids chalcones phenolic acids coumarins and pyrones apart from polyphenols other compounds such as sterols lignans and glycosides of aromatic compounds have been also isolated from h arenarium the majority of authors confirm that the most important group of compounds responsible for biological activities is flavonoids moreover significant activities of naringenin one of the main flavonoids of h arenarium were reported on the other hand there are no clinical data about testing the extracts or preparations based on h arenarium although h arenarium is well known in phytotherapy for its potential in the treatment of gallbladder disease and are classified as endangered species in a number of european countries very few data about its cultivation are available in the literature,2018,0.354
"High Genetic Diversity and Connectivity Among Populations of Quercus candicans , Quercus crassifolia , and Quercus castanea in a Heterogeneous Landscape in Mexico",oaxaca state is one of the main hotspots of biodiversity in mexico containing almost 40 of the mexican vascular flora due to its high variability in habitat and climatic conditions coupled with high elevations in mountains and low elevations in valleys we studied the genetic diversity and population structure of quercus candicans quercus crassifolia and quercus castanea across their geographical distribution in oaxaca state to understand how the heterogeneous physiography had driven the genetic diversity and population differentiation in these three oak species we found high levels of genetic diversity but ca 40 of the populations had significant values of wrightâ s inbreeding coefficient the analysis of molecular variance indicated that most of the variation occurred within populations in the three oak species resistance analyses showed connectivity among almost all the populations but barrier analysis found genetic breaks that limited gene flow among some populations of the oak species even in a heterogeneous environment such as in oaxaca state the oak species still have high levels of genetic diversity and landscape connectivity however it is necessary to maintain the genetic connectivity through the preservation of natural corridors with forests in good condition which is necessary to maintain the cohesiveness of the species in the long term it is also important to protect the centers of species diversity in oaxaca state located in the subprovinces of western oaxacan mountains and valleys sierra madre de oaxaca and sierra madre del sur because they harbor most of the population genetic diversity and oak species richness as has been shown in previous studies,2018,0.977
Predicting Shifts in the Suitable Climatic Distribution of Walnut (Juglans regia L.) in China: Maximum Entropy Model Paves the Way to Forest Management,cultivation of woody oil plants in environmentally suitable habitats is a successful ecological solution for oil development and forest management in this study we predicted the influences of future climate change on the potentially suitable climatic distribution of an important woody oil plant species walnut juglans regia l in china based on given climate change scenarios and the maximum entropy maxent model the maxent model showed that the minimum temperature of the coldest month and annual precipitation were the most important determinant variables limiting the geographical distribution of j regia we have found that the current suitable environmental habitat of j regia is mainly distributed in central and southwestern china results of the maxent model showed that global warming in the coming half century may lead to an increase in the area size of environmentally suitable habitats for j regia in china indicating more lands available for artificial cultivation and oil production however those suitable habitat gains may be practically inaccessible due to over harvest and urban development and effective management strategies are urgently needed to establish those forests this research will provide theoretical suggestions for the protection cultivation management and sustainable utilization of j regia resources to face the challenge of global climate change,2018,0.083
Planning for Field Based Biological Sample Collection: Using the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase Project Interface,the genomic observatories metadatabase geome http www geome db org is an open access repository for geographic and ecological metadata associated with biosamples and genetic data it contributes to the informatics stack â biocode commons â of the genomic observatories network https gigascience biomedcentral com articles 10 1186 2047 217x 3 2 the geome project interface enables administrators to plan and execute field based sample collection efforts geome projects specify a core set of sample metadata fields based on community standard vocabularies and also includes plugins for associating samples with photos subsamples nextgen sequence metadata and permits users can upload their own expedition specific metadata which contributes to the overall project dataset while providing the user a convenient method for updating and refining their contributed data geome provides connection points to the global biodiversity information facility and archived genetic data stored in the national center for biotechnology information s ncbi s sequence read archive sra linking specimens and seqeuences via unique persistent identifiers,2018,0.238
"New Diatom Records for Turkish Freshwater Algal Flora from Lakes Ladik (Samsun, Turkey) and Hazar (Elazığ, Turkey)",the majority of phycological studies in turkey focus on seasonal changes of phytoplankton and phytobenthos in lentic and lotic systems while very few studies related to counting diatoms in sediment cores obtained as a result of paleolimnological work have been published in this paleolimlogical study seventeen 16 1 n e w diatom records for freshwater algal flora of turkey were determined on sediment core samples at five different locations collected in july 2006 from lakes ladik samsun and hazar elazä äÿ we recorded 17 diatoms taxa belonging to naviculales 8 cymbellales 2 eunotiales 2 bacillariales 2 fragilariales 1 tabellariales 1 and aulacoseirales 1 orders from lakes ladik samsun and hazar elazä äÿ all of the reported taxa are new records for freshwater algal flora of turkey general information on the morphology and taxonomy of the species are briefly described in this paper with their illustrations,2018,0.435
THE EFFECT OF SPATIAL THINNING ON THE POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION OF 10 AFRICAN INDIGENOUS VEGETABLES,species distribution modelling is important in conservation planning and many other fields of study it is however often fraught with bias in the location data used to develop the models spatial thinning is one of the bias correction methods it has been reported to be superior to the background correction method in modelling experiments however the effect of spatial thinning on predicted areas and model assessment characteristics are unreported we examined the effects of spatial thinning on the potential distribution of 10 african indigenous vegetables aiv the aims of our study were to investigate the effect of different spatial thinning distances on 1 the potential predicted areas present and future 2070 of 10 species of aiv and 2 model evaluation statistics we applied spatial thinning to the location data using the r package â spthinâ at distances of 0 10 20 40 60 80 and 100km for each species maxent was used to run 10 replicate models with cross validation and a threshold of 10 training presence there were between 54 and 564 location data points a species after cleaning of gbif data and 153 25 after thinning at a spatial resolution of 100km the area under the curve auc of the receiver operating characteristic boyce index and the true skill statistic tss decreased with increasing spatial thinning distance but sensitivity remained relatively constant there was consistency in the direction of prediction for eight of the 10 species while spatial thinning influenced the direction of prediction for two species future 2070 suitable climatic envelope may be larger than the present for six species remain the same as present for three species and become smaller for one species we concluded that while spatial thinning may be useful in correcting for under estimation caused by clustered data it might also lead to incompleteness in environmental space leading to unexpected results if not done with caution although the differences in the extent of suitable climatic envelope may imply reduction of overall biodiversity no species was under serious threat of complete loss of suitable environment in the future,2018,0.922
New records of Brazilian hypogeous sequestrate fungi,examination of specimens held in three brazilian herbariums ufrn urm icn for the genus rhizopogon revealed that one collection represented alpova cf austroalnicola a first record of the genus for brazil rhizopogon angustisepta from south brazil represents a new record for the western hemisphere r verii is a new record for southeast and northeast brazil r nigrescens is tentatively reconfirmed from south brazil based on a poorly preserved specimen and r marchii is identified from a specimen with confused label information that does not indicate the country of origin,2018,0.572
Expedited assessment of terrestrial arthropod diversity by coupling Malaise traps with DNA barcoding,monitoring changes in terrestrial arthropod communities over space and time requires a dramatic increase in the speed and accuracy of processing samples that cannot be achieved with morphological approaches the combination of dna barcoding and malaise traps allows expedited comprehensive inventories of species abundance whose cost will rapidly decline as high throughput sequencing technologies advance aside from detailing protocols from specimen sorting to data release this paper describes their use in a survey of arthropod diversity in a national park that examined 21â 194 specimens representing 2255 species these protocols can support arthropod monitoring programs at regional national and continental scales,2018,0.627
The Arctic Traits Database &amp;amp;ndash; A repository of arctic benthic invertebrate traits,abstract the recently increased interest in marine trait based studies highlights one general demand ndash the access to standardized reference based trait information this demand holds especially true for polar regions where the gathering of ecological information is still challenging the arctic traits database is a freely accessible online repository https doi org 10 25365 phaidra 49 http https www univie ac at arctictraits that fulfils these requests for one important component of polar marine life the arctic benthic macroinvertebrates it accounts for 1 obligate traceability of information every entry is linked to at least one source 2 exchangeability among trait platforms use of most common download formats 3 standardization use of most common terminology and coding scheme and 4 user friendliness granted by an intuitive web interface and rapid and easy download options the combination of these aspects makes the arctic traits database the currently most sophisticated online accessible trait platform in not only marine ecology and a role model for prospective databases of other marine compartments or other also non marine ecosystems at present the database covers 20 traits 85 trait categories and holds altogether 8107 trait entries for 1211 macro and megabenthic taxa thus the arctic traits database will foster and facilitate trait based approaches in polar regions in the future and increase our ecological understanding of this rapidly changing system,2018,0.064
Monanthes laxiflora (Crassulaceae) on El Hierro (Spain: Canary Islands),monanthes laxiflora crassulaceae often documented from only six of the canary islands la palma gomera tenerife gran canaria lanzarote and fuerteventura also occurs on el hierro specimen and photographic records are presented here,2018,0.354
Preliminary assessment of Aphthona nonstriata Goeze (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) as a candidate biocontrol agent against Iris pseudacorus L.(Iridaceae) in South …,iris pseudacorus l or yellow flag is considered a noxious weed in at least 9 countries worldwide displacing native vegetation and altering the hydrology of aquatic ecosystems in south africa this species was recently listed as a category 1a invader and a biological control program was initiated in order to tackle its invasion in this regard the present study consists of a preliminary survey of the native range of the plant through which three candidate biocontrol agents were identified among these the iris flea beetle aphthona nonstriata goeze was prioritized and observations were made on its biology life history and host preferences adult beetles were observed on i pseudacorus leaves from march to october with higher densities reached in april and august larvae were actively feeding on yellow flagâ s roots between may and july a short term adult feeding assessment carried on both cut and live leaves found beetles feeding significantly more on i pseudacorus compared with the other species tested furthermore adult feeding on cut leaves was significantly lower than on live leaves the information gathered here is a first step towards assembling and studying a set of biocontrol agents against the invasion of i pseudacorus in south africa,2018,0.85
"A less-known vegetable melon landrace “Arya” (Cucumis melo L.) from Rajasthan and Haryana, India: morphological, biochemical and taxonomic study",a less known landrace of vegetable melon locally called â œaryaâ cucumis melo l known for drought tolerant trait was collected from two districts of rajasthan and haryana india study was undertaken for preliminary morphological evaluation biochemical and organoleptic test a comparative study with snake melon was presented with field identification traits along with cultural practices and economic uses the work aims at facilitating germplasm collection detailed evaluation and systematic study on this valuable material with the prospects of crop diversification and value addition,2018,0.43
The future of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems,the tropics contain the overwhelming majority of earthâ s biodiversity their terrestrial freshwater and marine ecosystems hold more than three quarters of all species including almost all shallow water corals and over 90 of terrestrial birds however tropical ecosystems are also subject to pervasive and interacting stressors such as deforestation overfishing and climate change and they are set within a socio economic context that includes growing pressure from an increasingly globalized world larger and more affluent tropical populations and weak governance and response capacities concerted local national and international actions are urgently required to prevent a collapse of tropical biodiversity,2018,0.402
"Using Interactions among Species, Landscapes, and Climate to Inform Ecological Niche Models: A Case Study of American Marten (Martes americana) Distribution in Alaska",machine learning algorithms are powerful analytical tools whose high predictive accuracy stems in part from their ability to predict non linearly handle missing data and incorporate interactions among all predictors in a model deâ ath and fabricius 2000 breiman 2001a hastie et al 2001 cutler et al 2007 elith et al 2008 these flexibilities provide algorithms such as boosted decision trees and stochastic gradient boosting analyses e g treenet salford systems inc san diego ca www salford systems com with the ability to classify imperfect datasets and derive highly accurate predictions that can be applied across broad landscapes prasad et al 2006 cutler et al 2007 elith et al 2008 evans et al 2011 here i use treenet to analyze the effects of interaction terms and variable combinations on the predictive performance of spatial models of american marten martes americana distribution in alaska,2018,0.071
Species conservation profiles of a random sample of world spiders II: Gnaphosidae to Nemesiidae,the iucn red list of threatened species is the most widely used information source on the extinction risk of species one of the uses of the red list is to evaluate and monitor the state of biodiversity and a possible approach for this purpose is the red list index rli for many taxa mainly hyperdiverse groups it is not possible within available resources to assess all known species in such cases a random sample of species might be selected for assessment and the results derived from it extrapolated for the entire group the sampled red list index srli the current contribution is the second in four papers that will constitute the baseline of a future spider srli encompassing 200 species distributed across the world,2018,0.832
"Review of the occurrence of Halyomorpha halys (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) in Italy, with an update of its European and World distribution",the regions in which halyomorpha halys stã l 1855 occurs in italy are summarized and ordered chronologically according to the date of the first record details and verification about the first italian record from liguria often overlooked that dates back to 2007 the introduction of h halys in this country are also given first exact localities are listed for the italian regions of tuscany marche latium abruzzo campania and apulia in which only general occurrence was known so far we included also additional records from trentino alto adige where the presence of h halys has only recently been reported through a few data furthermore first records for sweden central macedonia greece and manitoba canada are reported as well as first intercepted specimens from iceland,2018,0.425
Length-Weight Relationships of Five Elasmobranch Species from the Pacific Coast of Mexico,length weight relationships lwr were estimated for five elasmobranch species found in the eastern pacific heterodontus francisci girard 1855 urobatis halleri copper 1863 urobatis maculatus garman 1913 diplobatis ommata jordan and gilbert 1890 and rhinobatos productus ayres 1854 species were selected because none had previously published data on lwr the specimens were sampled along the pacific west coast of mexico including the gulf of california between june 2009 and may 2013 using different fishing gear the values of the exponent â œbâ of the lwr ranged from 2 52 to 3 06 this study provides the first reference on the lwr for these elasmobranch species,2018,0.732
Bumblebee Honey in the Nordic Countries,research in historical ethnobiology can provide information about little known and seemingly insignificant practices in the past the utilization of insect products as a foodstuff is a rare custom in europe and data on this practice are scarce from nordic countries we have information about producing ant schnapps with the help of the red wood ant formica rufa l which has been used both as a remedy and as a drink honey and beeswax were once gathered in the forests from wild honey bee colonies but have been replaced with products from the domestic honey bee apis mellifera l another product once a well known and appreciated sweet especially among children was nectar gathered from bumblebee nests collecting the nectar from bumblebee nests is an activity that has been practiced within living memory in many parts of the nordic countries this seems to be an ancient practice dating back at least a millennium that has survived until recently it is an example of how methods and sources established within historical ethnobiology can be used to gain knowledge on the past as well as possible future uses of available biological resources,2018,0.387
"Situating Ecology as a Big-Data Science: Current Advances, Challenges, and Solutions",ecology has joined a world of big data two complementary frameworks define big data data that exceed the analytical capacities of individuals or disciplines or the â œfour vsâ axes of volume variety veracity and velocity variety predominates in ecoinformatics and limits the scalability of ecological science volume varies widely ecological velocity is low but growing as data throughput and societal needs increase ecological big data systems include in situ and remote sensors community data resources biodiversity databases citizen science and permanent stations technological solutions include the development of open code and data sharing platforms flexible statistical models that can handle heterogeneous data and sources of uncertainty and cloud computing delivery of high velocity computing to large volume analytics cultural solutions include training targeted to early and current scientific workforce and strengthening collaborations among ecologists and data scientists the broader goal is to maximize the power scalability and timeliness of ecological insights and forecasting,2018,0.243
Global distribution and status of introduced Siberian chipmunks Eutamias sibiricus,among invasive alien species squirrels are prominent because of their popularity as pets and their positive perception by the general public in europe populations of five alien squirrel species are reported the pet trade represents a high risk pathway for the introduction of rodents which are likely to become invasive because of their reproductive biology and wide native distribution ranges in the european union a trade ban has been imposed on some particularly impacting species such as the eastern grey squirrel sciurus carolinensis eradication and numerical control is needed for most introduced squirrels in europe including the siberian chipmunk according to european union regulation 1143 2014 on alien species we summarise the current distribution of the ground dwelling siberian chipmunk eutamias sibiricus one of the most common pet squirrels in europe and asia in its invasive range established populations of siberian chipmunk in most cases composed of small numbers of individuals currently occur in france switzerland italy germany belgium the netherlands denmark and russia the species was present in austria sweden and hong kong and unsuccessful introductions occurred in spain and the british isles the first records from greece are also reported most introductions took place during the 1990s when individuals were intentionally released 67 of extant populations result from such releases population size was correlated with the proximity to urban areas human risk of infection with the agent of lyme borreliosis seems to be the highest where populations of alien siberian chipmunk occur other impacts have never been reported competition with native rodents e g the red squirrel sciurus vulgaris and dormice gliridae has been speculated on as well as predation on nests of native warblers sylvidae impacts by alien siberian chipmunks have been overlooked for a long time despite this given that the species may affect native biodiversity and human health eradication of established populations is recommended,2018,0.983
Sympatric and allopatric niche shift of endemic Gypsophila (Caryophyllaceae) taxa in the Iberian Peninsula,several species of the gypsophila genus are endemic to the iberian peninsula including gypsophytes of particular ecological evolutionary and biochemical interest and taxa that have undergone both sympatric and allopatric genetic differentiation the niche shift among these taxa has been assessed using ecological niche modelling and ordination techniques adopting a niche overlap approach to compare the similarity and equivalency of the ecological niches we used the maximum entropy method to study the potential distribution of these taxa in different eras the last glacial maximum lgm the mid holocene and the current conditions we present evidence of niche shift during the speciation of g bermejoi with a strong niche overlap between the parental taxa g struthium subsp struthium and g tomentosa yet both overlap much more weakly with the hybrid species this phenomenon may be explained by genetic and epigenetic interactions and it has been described in other species we also studied the sister subspecies g struthium subsp struthium and g struthium subsp hispanica with mostly allopatric distributions and with the iberian system mountain range acting as a geographical barrier the iberian system and other mountain ranges may have favored differences in the climatic conditions on either side of the mountain range which is consistent with an incipient process of bioclimatic ecological speciation these results seem to indicate that niche shift can occur over very different timespans in the case of g bermejoi speciation may have produced significant niche shifting in one or two generations due to its alloploid nature by contrast g struthium subsp struthium and g struthium subsp hispanica seem to have undergone a more gradual process of allopatric genetic differentiation driven by bioclimatic factors both these processes are relatively recent and they will have been strongly influenced by the climate change at the end of lgm,2018,0.255
Forecasting the ongoing invasion of Lagocephalus sceleratus in the Mediterranean Sea,invasive species from the suez canal also named â œlessepsian speciesâ often have an ecological and financial impact on marine life fisheries human well being and health in the mediterranean sea among these the silver cheeked toad fish lagocephalus sceleratus gmelin 1789 has rapidly colonised the eastern mediterranean basin and is currently moving westwards this pufferfish has a highly opportunistic behaviour it attacks fish captured in nets and lines and seriously damages fishing gears and catch it is a highly toxic species with no immediate economic value for the mediterranean market although it currently represents 4 of the weight of the total artisanal catches consequently the possible effects on mediterranean fisheries and health require to enhance our understanding about the future geographical distribution of this pufferfish in the whole basin in this paper an overall habitat suitability map and an effective geographical spread map for l sceleratus at mediterranean scale are produced by using cloud computing based algorithms to merge seven machine learning approaches further the potential impact of the species is estimated for several mediterranean sea subdivisions the major fishing areas of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations the economic exclusive zones and the subdivisions of the general fisheries commission for the mediterranean sea our results suggest that without an intervention l sceleratus will continue its rapid spread and will likely have a high impact on fisheries the presented method is generic and can be applied to other invasive species it is based on an open science approach and all processes are freely available as web services,2018,0.338
First Record of Blattella vaga (Blattodea: Ectobiidae) from Southern Alabama,the field cockroach blattella vaga hebard blattodea ectobiidae is native to central asia including afghanistan india iran pakistan and sri lanka it was described first in 1935 however from specimens collected in arizona and california since then the distribution of b vaga has slowly increased along the southern united states and mexican border apparently following major interstate highways we report the first record of b vaga from mobile alabama and suggest that this species will spread to florida and possibly northward into georgia and south carolina the identification was confirmed using morphological chemical and molecular methods we suggest that when possible multiple independent methods should be used to confirm species identifications,2018,0.705
Parasites of Neotropical Primates: A Review,the study of parasites is of great relevance to primatology given their ecological significance and their effects on primate demography behavior and evolution moreover assessing the vulnerability of endangered species to parasitic infections is important in developing appropriate conservation strategies we conducted an intensive bibliographical search to synthesize the available information about the parasites of neotropical primates we analyzed the host and parasite taxonomic coverage of the available studies examined the advantages and disadvantages of the diagnostic techniques employed identified information gaps that need to be addressed and recommend future directions in the parasitological research of neotropical primates researchers have reported 276 parasite taxa including endo and ectoparasites in 21 of the 22 genera of neotropical primates of these 42 parasite species have also been reported in humans although this number may be inaccurate owing to misidentification the parasites of 50 of neotropical primate species are completely unknown and 32 of the parasites recorded in these hosts have not been identified to the species level information regarding ectoparasites is particularly limited we need to develop methods that enhance parasite diagnosis accuracy when using noninvasive samples and the incorporation of molecular techniques in routine procedures should be a priority in parasitological studies of neotropical primates an integrative approach in which veterinarians primatologists and parasitologists collaborate in the identification and treatment of parasites of neotropical primates is essential to achieve significant progress in this field,2018,0.983
"Neritoptyx hogansoni new species (Gastropoda, Mollusca) from the Upper Cretaceous Fox Hills Formation on the Dakota Isthmus, western United States",in midcontinent north america the fox hills formation upper cretaceous upper maastrichtian preserves the last marine faunas in the central western interior seaway wis neritoptyx hogansoni new species a small littoral snail exhibited allometric change from smooth to corded ornament and rounded to shouldered shape during growth specimens preserve a zig zag pigment pattern that changes to an axial pattern during growth neritoptyx hogansoni new species was preyed on by decapod crustaceans and spent shells were occupied by pagurid crabs dead mollusk shells particularly those of crassostrea subtrigonalis evans and shumard 1857 provided a hard substrate to which they adhered on the fox hills tidal flats this new neritimorph gastropod establishes a paleogeographic and chronostratigraphic proxy for intertidal conditions on the dakota isthmus during the late maastrichtian presence of a neritid extends the marine tropical temperate boundary in the wis northward to 44â late maastrichtian paleolatitude late maastrichtian closure of the isthmus subsequently altered marine heat transfer by interrupting northward flow of tropical currents from the gulf coast by as much as 1 to 1 5 million years before the cretaceous ended,2018,0.516
Out of place: climatic anomalies in the conifer fossil record,the botanical fossil record is an invaluable source of information about the past comparative study of the nearest living relatives of fossils allows us to estimate various aspects of the palaeoenvironment including past vegetation atmospheric and climatic conditions e g macphail 2007 in particular the bioclimatic envelopes inhabited by the nearest living relatives of fossils are routinely used to estimate palaeoclimates mosbrugger and utescher 1997 this is based on the assumption that the environmental ranges of the relevant fossil taxa were the same as those of their extant relatives i e they occupy the same bioclimatic envelope,2018,0.275
Pest Risk Analysis for Prosopis juliflora,prosopis juliflora currently has a very limited naturalised distribution in the eppo region it is currently reported as naturalised in low lying areas in israel the west bank and jordan dufourdror and shmida 2017 although records of p juliflora outside of the jordan valley are considered by the expert working group ewg to be possible mis identifications prosopis juliflora was first confirmed as present in jordan by harris et al 2003 the species is also present in almeria two planted trees only south eastern spain pasiecznik and peã alvo lã pez 2016 and reported as naturalised in a very limited area in gran canaria canary islands verloove 2013 2017 in 2016 the species was prioritized along with 36 additional species from the eppo list of invasive alien plants and a recent horizon scanning study2 for pra within the life funded project â œmitigating the threat of invasive alien plants to the eu through pest risk analysis to support the regulation 1143 2014â see www iap risk eu prosopis juliflora was one of 16 species identified as having a high priority for pra the species is certainly one of the most invasive woody weeds in the worldâ s tropical drylands and the genus as a whole was included in the widely cited â 100 of the worldâ s worst invasive alien speciesâ for example of all the introductions of prosopis species globally 79 led to naturalisation of which 38 have become invasive for review see shackleton et al 2014,2018,0.677
GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY–MASS SPECTROMETRY ANALYSIS OF METHANOL EXTRACT OF ZANTHOXYLUM RHETSA DC. FRUITS,objective the aim was to investigate important bioactive compounds biological activities and medicinal importance of zanthoxylum rhetsa fruits methods the present work was carried out by gas chromatographyâ mass spectrometry gc ms method for the identification of different compounds result the methanolic extract of fruits showed 32 chemical compounds which are identified through gc ms analysis among them some of the compound names and percentage values are as follows 2 propanone 1 3 dihydroxy 48 9 4h pyran 4 one 2 3 dihydro 3 5 dihydroxy 6 methyl 33 7 2 furancarboxaldehyde 5 hydroxymethyl 50 2 1 heptatriacontanol 34 4 9 12 octadecadienoic acid zz 48 6 cholestan 3 ol 2 methylene 3î 5î 75 0 4h pyran 4 one 2 3 dihydro 3 5 dihydroxy 6 methyl 90 8 2 furancarboxaldehyde 5 hydroxymethyl 92 0 hydroquinone 64 9 n hexadecanoic acid 37 5 octadecanoic acid 28 2 9 12 15 octadecatrienoic acid 2 trimethylsiyl oxy 1 trimethylsiyl oxy methyl ethyl ester zzz 22 6 9 hexadecanoic acid 10 3 digitoxin 18 8 8 11 14 eicosatrienoic acid methyl ester zzz 25 5 and oleic acid 16 5 most of the identified compounds in the crude methanolic extracts exhibit some bioactivities namely anticancer anti inflammatory antimicrobial hepatoprotective antioxidant hypocholesterolemic nematicide pesticide anti androgenic flavor hemolytic 5 alpha reductase inhibitor insectifuge antiarthritic anti coronary cardiovascular anti breast cancer aromatic and insectifuge on the basis of the above investigation the fruits can be recommended as a treasure of bioactive compounds and it plays a promising role in herbal medicine conclusion the present study reveals that fruits of z rhetsa contain various bioactive compounds digitoxin is recorded in the ripened fruit of z rhetsa and it shows the anticancerous and cardiac arrest properties hence in future this plant will play a promising role in curing cancer,2018,0.133
"Hidden state models improve state-dependent diversification approaches, including biogeographical models",the stateâ dependent speciation and extinction sse models have recently been criticized due to their high rates of â œfalse positiveâ results many researchers have advocated avoiding sse models in favor of other â œnonparametricâ or â œsemiparametricâ approaches the hidden markov modeling hmm approach provides a partial solution to the issues of model adequacy detected with sse models the inclusion of â œhidden statesâ can account for rate heterogeneity observed in empirical phylogenies and allows for reliable detection of stateâ dependent diversification or diversification shifts independent of the trait of interest however the adoption of hmm has been hampered by the interpretational challenges of what exactly a â œhidden stateâ represents which we clarify herein we show that hmms in combination with a modelâ averaging approach naturally account for hidden traits when examining the meaningful impact of a suspected â œdriverâ of diversification we also extend the hmm to the geographic stateâ dependent speciation and extinction geosse model we test the efficacy of our â œgeohisseâ extension with both simulations and an empirical dataset on the whole we show that hidden states are a general framework that can distinguish heterogeneous effects of diversification attributed to a focal character,2018,0.22
Spatial distribution of Yersinia pestis found in a sentinel species across the United States while accounting for sampling uncertainty,yersinia pestis is a gram negative bacterium primarily transmitted via flea bite that causes plague in various mammal species1 and is a concern for conservation and health globally,2018,0.354
"Integrating phylogenomics, phylogenetics, morphometrics, relative genome size and ecological niche modelling disentangles the diversification of Eurasian Euphorbia seguieriana s. l. (Euphorbiaceae)",next generation sequencing has revolutionised biology restriction associated dna sequencing radseq has primarily been used to study infraspecific relationships but has also been applied in multi species phylogenomic analyses in this study we used a combination of phylogenomic with radseq data and phylogenetic with sequences of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer its methods to explore relationships within the taxonomically intricate euphorbia seguieriana s l one of the most widespread euphorbia taxa inhabiting zonal and extrazonal steppes from iberia to central asia in the inferred phylogenies the southeastern balkan and anatolian populations were clearly separated supporting the distinction of e niciciana from e seguieriana at the species level within e seguieriana the populations from the caucasus iran and easternmost anatolia were sister to all other populations based on radseq making necessary the description of a new morphologically divergent subspecies e seguieriana subsp armeniaca conversely additional studies are needed to understand the status of the e seguieriana subsp hohenackeri which is sympatric with e seguieriana subsp armeniaca niche analyses indicated that differences in the climatic niche between e niciciana and e seguieriana are relatively small compared with the climatic differences between the regions over which they are distributed contrary to previous believes e niciciana and e seguieriana are allopatric and have likely diverged during the pleistocene in two different glacial refugia as suggested by distribution modelling euphorbia niciciana nowadays has a submediterranean distribution occupying habitats that are slightly warmer moister and less seasonal in temperature but more seasonal in precipitation than e seguieriana a characteristic species of continental steppes using flow cytometry we demonstrate that the relative genome sizes of e niciciana and e seguieriana differ significantly additionally multivariate morphometric analyses of 56 morphological characters indicated clear morphological divergence of the two species importantly we also provide a revised taxonomic treatment including formal nomenclatural changes an identification key and species descriptions our study demonstrates that an integrative approach combining modern phylogenomic methods with traditional phylogenetic cytogenetic environmental and morphological analyses can result in satisfactorily resolved relationships in intricate groups of closely related species finally phylogenetic inference using its sequences is still a useful tool for resolving relationships among the taxa at the species level but the phylogenomic approach based on radseq data certainly provides better resolution both among and within species,2018,0.929
On the use of Odonata as ecological indicators,the insect order odonata the dragonflies and damselflies is unique to use as an ecological indicator for water quality because of its close relationship with aquatic ecosystems and relative ease of observation and species level identification my goal was to explore ways in which odonates can respond to and therefore indicate sites with higher water quality determining where odonates breed as opposed to where they â œmerelyâ occur is key to an understanding of the importance of water quality it has been asserted that one should conclude that an odonate species breeds if and only if physical exuvia tenerals or behavioral tandem pairing oviposition evidence is obtained yet gathering such evidence requires specialized observational and technical skills in contrast reliable observations and counts of adults can be had readily creating a dilemma over which data to use for my first chapter i examined whether adult surveys and reproductive behaviors could predict breeding residency status represented by presence of tenerals newly emerged odonates using a large multi year dataset from across oklahoma using an occupancy model combined with piecewise regression i found thresholds and associated bayesian credible intervals for a suite of odonate taxa i found similar general thresholds across species but found specific indicator thresholds exist when examining groups on the family and genus level thresholds differed among taxonomic groups and decreased in models that included counts of females rather than just of counts of adults any or unknown sex my results can guide future survey protocol adult observations can remain the primary focus which broadens the scope of potential observer skill levels e g citizen scientists while indirectly ensuring breeding to identify sites for water quality surveys for my second chapter i examined odonate biodiversity at urbanized water features to determine factors that promote species diversity and abundance with a goal of using findings to make beneficial improvements to park management to increase water quality i conducted surveys aprilâ october 2016â 2017 at 14 urban sites in central oklahoma that varied in human use and habitat structure i compared diversity and species composition among sites and tested which features best predicted higher abundance and species totals several variables were good predictors but use of a site for fishing purposes was an overarching indicator of both high species richness and high odonate abundance despite higher human use presence of infrastructure and increased management of these sites which are typically negatively associated with biodiversity odonates and humans benefit from maintaining them and ensuring proper water quality persists i e if it is good for fish it is good for insects,2018,0.986
Pollination niche availability facilitates colonization of Guettarda speciosa with heteromorphic self-incompatibility on oceanic islands,obligate out breeding plants are considered relatively disadvantageous comparing with self breeding plants when colonizing oceanic islets following long distance dispersal owing to mate and pollinator limitation the rarity of heterostyly a typical out breeding system on oceanic islands seems a good proof however a heterostylous plant guettarda speciosa is widely distributed on most tropical oceanic islets our research demonstrates that its heteromorphic self incompatibility plus herkogamy and long flower tube make it rely on pollinator for sexual reproduction which is generally considered â œdisadvantageousâ for island colonization we hypothesize that available pollination niche will be a key factor for its colonization on islands our studies on remote coral islands show that g speciosa has built equilibrium population with a 1 1 morph ratio it could obtain pollination niche from the hawkmoth agrius convolvuli a pioneer island plant ipomoea pes caprae sustain the pollination niche by providing trophic resource for the larvae of the pollinator geographic pattern drawn by ecological niche modelling further indicates the interaction between g speciosa a convolvuli and i pes caprae can be bounded on those remote oceanic islands explaining the colonization of g speciosa distylous population these findings demonstrated obligate out breeding system could be maintained to acclimatize long distance dispersal if the pollination niche is available,2018,0.169
BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene,motivation the biotime database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time these data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics biotime is being developed as a communityâ led openâ source database of biodiversity time series our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the anthropocene main types of variables included the database contains 8 777 413 species abundance records from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years which need not necessarily be consecutive in addition the database contains metadata relating to sampling methodology and contextual information about each record spatial location and grain biotime is a global database of 547 161 unique sampling locations spanning the marine freshwater and terrestrial realms grain size varies across datasets from 0 0000000158 km2 158 cm2 to 100 km2 1 000 000 000 000 cm2 time period and grain biotime records span from 1874 to 2016 the minimal temporal grain across all datasets in biotime is a year major taxa and level of measurement biotime includes data from 44 440 species across the plant and animal kingdoms ranging from plants plankton and terrestrial invertebrates to small and large vertebrates software format csv and sql,2018,0.639
Climatic niche shift and possible future spread of the invasive South African Orchid Disa bracteata in Australia and adjacent areas,orchids are generally regarded as plants with an insignificant invasive potential and so far only one species has proved to be harmful for native flora however previous studies on epipactis helleborine and arundina graminifolia indicate that the ecological aspects of range extension in their non native geographical range are not the same for all species of orchids disa bracteata in its native range south africa is categorized as of little concern in terms of conservation whereas in australia it is naturalized and considered to be an environmental weed the aim of this research was to determine the ecological preferences enabling the spread of disa bracteata in western and south australia victoria and tasmania and to evaluate the effect of future climate change on its potential range the ecological niche modeling approach indicates that most of the accessible areas are already occupied by this species but future expansion will continue based on four climate change scenarios rcp26 rcp45 rcp60 rcp85 further expansion is predicted especially in eastern australia and eastern tasmania moreover there are some unpopulated but suitable habitats in new zealand which according to climate change scenarios will become even more suitable in the future the most striking result of this study is the significant difference between the environmental conditions recorded in the areas which d bracteata naturally inhabits and invasive sitesâ that indicates a possible niche shift in australia the studied species continues to populate a new niche or exploit habitats that are only moderately represented in south africa,2018,0.569
Being John Harper: Using evolutionary ideas to improve understanding of global patterns in plant traits,this review summarizes current understanding of five key plant traits seed mass plant height wood density leaf mass per unit area and leaf size emphasizing ways in which our understanding of large scale patterns in plant traits have improved over the last two decades notable advances include 1 large seeded species have greater seed dispersal distances than do small seeded species 2 leaf mass per unit area is not strongly or consistently related to plant traits outside the leaf economics spectrum or to broad gradients in environmental conditions and 3 fleshy fruit could not have first evolved for seed dispersal as the first fleshy fruit appeared millions of years before the first potential seed dispersers while quantifying large scale patterns in plant traits has yielded many important discoveries it is clear that the next major leap in understanding will not come from simply including ever more variables in our analyses i suggest that we build upon harper s â œdarwinian approach to plant ecologyâ and apply evolutionary ideas to large scale trait ecology for example quantifying trait impacts on lifetime fitness rather than on particular stages of plant regeneration can allow us to understand the coordination between seemingly disparate traits i use this approach to bring seed mass and plant height together as integrated parts of a speciesâ life history spectrum i then point out problems associated with the implicit assumption that selection acts on speciesâ mean trait values and show how considering the way selection acts can improve our understanding of the effects of climate on plant traits a goal for the future is to quantify the full suite of biotic and abiotic factors that shape plant strategy in complex real world situations synthesis enormous data availability and ever more powerful computational and statistical tools have given ecologists unprecedented power to quantify large scale patterns in plant ecology however there is a limit to how far big data alone can take us the time is ripe for a new generation of hypotheses and ecological theory built on strong evolutionary foundations let the creativity begin,2018,0.04
"Biota from the coastal wetlands of Praia da Vitória (Terceira, Azores, Portugal): Part 1 - Arthropods",during a life research project aiming at the implementation of the conservation of the habitats and restoration of coastal wetland areas of praia da vitã ria terceira azores portugal there was the opportunity undertake a systematic record of several groups of arthropods in three wetland areas paul da praia da vitã ria ppv paul do belo jardim pbj and paul da pedreira do cabo da praia ppcp the objective of the study was to perform a rapid biodiversity assessment comparing the three sites in two different years before and after the implementation of several conservation measures this project also contributed to improve the knowledge of azorean arthropod diversity at both local and regional scales including new taxa for terceira island and new records for azores taking into consideration those aims a set of standardised sampling methods were performed inspired by the cobra protocol originally developed for spiders,2018,0.208
A Challenge to Integrate Bioinformatics and Biodiversity Informatics Data as Museomics,museum preserved samples are attracting attention as a rich resource for dna studies museomics aims to link dna sequence data back to the museum collection molecular biologists are interested in morphological information including body size pattern and colors and sequence data have also become essential for biodiversity research as evidence for species identification and phylogenetic analysis,2018,0.545
Pest risk assessment for Prosopis juliflora,the results of the pra show that p juliflora poses a moderate risk to the endangered area the ewg consider this the case as notwithstanding the high score for impact indisputable in the current area and considered high for the pra area the risk of introduction and the potential area for establishment are both perceived as low leading the ewg to propose an overall phytosanitary risk score of moderate,2018,0.241
"The Global Invasion of the Suckermouth Armored Catfish Genus Pterygoplichthys (Siluriformes: Loricariidae): Annotated List of Species, Distributional Summary, and …",the suckermouth armored catfish genus pterygoplichthys siluriformes loricariidae includes popular aquarium fishes and constitutes one of the most successful freshwater invasive taxa having achieved global distribution to date however no comprehensive distributional record nor impact assessment exist for the spread of the genus precluding informed management strategies to provide these tools our study aims to 1 provide an annotated checklist of species for this taxonomically confusing genus 2 survey all available literature on the spread of the genus and summarize and map its invasive distribution and 3 assess the overall socioeconomic and environmental impact of the genus on a global scale using the generic impact scoring system giss first we provide an updated annotated species list we then summarize seventy one unique invasion records along with twenty one instances of demonstrated impacts species of the genus pterygoplichthys have now invaded five continents and twenty one countries and show an extended range in their native south america impact analysis yielded a giss score of 18 to 19 indicating low to moderate levels of socioeconomic and environmental threats however to bolster the confidence in this analysis in future iterations more research should aim to move beyond just â œfirst recordsâ and instead empirically evaluate speciesâ effects on native ecosystems,2018,0.337
Review of Sabina Leonelli's Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study,the word â œdataâ is everywhere in current discussions of science how we store and share things people label â œdataâ has become a central concern for the open science movement for example and the national science foundation and national institutes of health have invested billions of dollars in the creation of publicly accessible databases as a major new source of intellectual capital in science and industry what is new here has there been a shift in what â œdataâ means that is key to understanding the future of science,2018,0.325
African Biodiversity Challenge: Integrating Freshwater Biodiversity Information to Guide Informed Decision-Making in Rwanda,freshwater biodiversity is critically understudied in rwanda and to date there has not been an efficient mechanism to integrate freshwater biodiversity information or make it accessible to decision makers researchers private sector or communities where it is needed for planning management and the implementation of the national biodiversity strategy and action plan nbsap a framework to capture and distribute freshwater biodiversity data is crucial to understanding how economic transformation and environmental change is affecting freshwater biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services to optimize conservation efforts for freshwater ecosystems detailed information is needed regarding current and historical species distributions and abundances across the landscape from these data specific conservation concerns can be identified analyzed and prioritized,2018,0.367
The Potential Growing Areas for Argania spinose (L.) Skeels (Sapotaceae) in Argentinean Drylands.,the argan argania spinosa l tree is indigenous to southwestern morocco successful introduction of this species in argentina depends on the degree of climate similarity in the natural area compared to new areas with agro climatic suitability based on international bibliography the authors outlined an agro climatic zoning model for this tree in argentina to determine agro climatic suitability the average climatic data of all the meteorological stations 1981 2010 were analyzed climatological characteristics of its region of origin were considered to evaluate the requirements and bio meteorological conditions the maps were obtained using a series of previously interpolated bioclimatic variables the agro climatic indices which determine different classes of suitability were integrated in a geographic information system gis to create thermal and moisture regions the resulting maps were superimposed to determine the agro climatic zoning eight classes of agro climatic suitability under dry subhumid semiarid and arid climatic conditions were delineated there are no optimal zones for the argan tree in argentina this work can be updated by further incorporation of complementary information argan tree is a promising dryland crop for farmers in semiarid and arid climates of argentina this model may be applied in any part of the world using the agro climatic limits presented in this paper,2018,0.127
Medicinal plant diversity used for livelihood of public health in deserts and arid regions of Sindh-Pakistan,ethnopharmacological surveys require novel approaches to obtain successful hits in drug discovery the objectives of the present study were to document the traditional uses of medicinal plants from the deserts of sindh and to authenticate the documented traditional uses the traditional uses were documented from informants using semi structured questionnaires and open ended interviews the data were analyzed using relative frequency of citation rfc use value uv informant consensus factor icf fidelity level fl and relative importance ri and their uses were validated through metanalyses mas and systemic reviews srs overall 74 plant species were reported from 207 informants and their traditional uses were validated from 299 published ethnobotanical studies aloe vera and ricinus communis were more frequently cited in published literature blepharis ciliaris and echinops echinatus either due to lack of pharmacological or phytochemical studies the leaves were the most frequently used 36 reports and decoctions 27 reports followed by powder 26 were predominantly reported the uv varied from 0 49 cynodon dactylon to 0 2 tribulus terrestris the rfc from 0 38 calotropis procera to aerva javanica and the ri from 50 74 acacia nilotica to 5 61 salvia santolinifolia the maximum fl was found for 14 species and the icf varied from 0 61 digestive disorders to 0 16 nervous disorders the deserts sindh pakistan provides many important plant species with most authenticated traditional uses the plant species having most authenticated uses highest correlated ethnobotanical index values and lacking pharmacological or phytochemical studies may yield desired results in limited time with most cost effective resources,2018,0.39
Mountain roads and non-native species modify elevational patterns of plant diversity,aim we investigated patterns of species richness and community dissimilarity along elevation gradients using globally replicated standardized surveys of vascular plants we asked how these patterns of diversity are influenced by anthropogenic pressures road construction and nonâ native species location global time period 2008â 2015 major taxa studied vascular plants methods native and nonâ native vascular plant species were recorded in 943 plots along 25 elevation gradients in nine mountain regions on four continents sampling took place in plots along and away from roads we analysed the effects of elevation and distance from road on species richness patterns and community dissimilarity betaâ diversity and assessed how nonâ native species modified such elevational diversity patterns results globally native and total species richness showed a unimodal relationship with elevation that peaked at lowerâ mid elevations but these patterns were altered along roads and due to nonâ native species differences in elevational species richness patterns between regions disappeared along roadsides and nonâ native species changed the patternsâ character in all study regions community dissimilarity was reduced along roadsides and through nonâ native species we also found a significant elevational decay of betaâ diversity which however was not affected by roads or nonâ native species main conclusions idiosyncratic native species richness patterns in plots away from roads implicate regionâ specific mechanisms underlying these patterns however along roadsides a clearer elevational signal emerged and species richness mostly peaked at midâ elevations we conclude that both roads and nonâ native species lead to a homogenization of species richness patterns and plant communities in mountains,2018,0.986
The Biodiversity Heritage Library: Empowering Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge,the advancement of knowledge about life on the planetâ its origins preservation and loss of species and environmentsâ is dependent on access and reference to library collections the biodiversity heritage library bhl is a global digital library that serves the biodiversity research community as well as a widening circle of those interested in learning more about life through an international consortium of natural history and botanical libraries and in close collaboration with researchers bioinformaticians publishers and information technology professionals bhl has democratized access to biodiversity information and revolutionized research worldwide allowing everyone everywhere to study and explore life on earth,2018,0.38
The neglected otters in China: Distribution change in the past 400 years and current conservation status,freshwater biodiversity is currently facing critical threats worldwide as top predators otters are indicator species of ecosystem health and flagship species for conservation in freshwater ecosystems three otter species â lutra lutra aonyx cinereus and lutrogale perspicillata â exist in china they were once widely distributed but have experienced dramatic decline in the late 20th century being listed as class ii protected animals in china we searched in gazetteers publications online news museum specimens and camera trapping databases and conducted questionnaire surveys to obtain otter records to reconstruct the historical 1550â 1950 recent 1950â 2000 and current post 2000 distribution maps of otters in china unlike many other mammal species otters range did not contract during 1550â 1950 otters recent and current distributions were comparable or even surpassed their historical ranges however applying rigorous verification criteria only 57 sites in china were confirmed with otter occurrence since 2000 the potential distribution of l lutra was mainly on the tibetan plateau and in northeast china whereas only small and sparse patches remained in southeast china where otters were frequently recorded in historical gazetteers although being endangered otters have been neglected in china with few research projects and no project funded by national natural science foundation of china consequently even wildlife experts have poor knowledge of otters surveys and specific research are urgently needed for otters in china public education is also advocated to raise awareness of otter conservation without sound information generated from research and urgent conservation actions otter species will remain severely threatened in china,2018,0.849
Historical Northern Long-Eared Bat Occurrence in Minnesota Based on Acoustic Surveys,although long thought to exist throughout the forested region of minnesota occurrence records for northern long eared bats myotis septentrionalis were historically based on winter hibernacula records and sporadic summer observations the ability to record and identify bats by their echolocation calls allowed scientists to more systematically survey for bats in minnesota beginning in the 2000s however these data were not compiled in a central database with the arrival of whitenose syndrome in minnesota and the federal listing of the northern long eared bat in 2015 as threatened under the endangered species act the need for a more detailed and current distribution map for this species was evident in this report we summarize the occurrence records for northern long eared bats based on specimens collected existing acoustic survey data from various sources collected prior to 2015 and acoustic survey data collected from 2015 to 2017 northern long eared bats do appear to be distributed throughout the forested region of minnesota presence has been documented in the northern half of the state surrounding the twin cities metropolitan area and in the southeast corner of the state detection of the northern long eared bat in almost every attempt suggests that the species is also present in unsurveyed regions of the forested regions of the state although it is less common than the little brown bat m lucifugus especially after white nose syndrome has led to mortalities in minnesota,2018,0.856
"Revision of “Aemilia” pagana Species-Group (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae), with a Description of a New Endemic Species and Comments on the Conservation Status",a taxonomical rearrangement of â œaemiliaâ pagana species group is proposed leucanopsis pagana schaus in proc zool soc london 1894 225â 243 1894 comb nov and l ninae orfila in rev soc entomol argent 21 67â 70 1959 comb nov a new endemic species from pampa de achala cã rdoba argentina closer to both species is described leucanopsis navarroi sp nov these three species can be recognized because the color pattern is the darkest among species of leucanopsis characteristics of male genitalia suggest the nomenclatural rearrangement proposed leucanopsis pagana comb nov has a wide distribution from the center of brazil to northeastern argentina including southern paraguay the known distribution and geospatial analysis suggest that this species is not in danger leucanopsis ninae comb nov is restricted to only one known locality villa gesell buenos aires the restricted known distribution the different land use practices and geospatial analysis suggest that this species could be endangered leucanopsis navarroi sp nov is endemic to the high plateau present in the center of argentina called pampa de achala the known distribution and geospatial analysis suggest that this species could be endangered further studies are necessary to determine effectively the conservation status of these three species,2018,0.982
Mapping knowledge gaps in marine diversity reveals a latitudinal gradient of missing species richness,a reliable description of any spatial pattern in species richness requires accurate knowledge about species geographical distribution however sampling bias may generate artefactual absences within species range and compromise our capacity to describe biodiversity patterns here we analysed the spatial distribution of 35 000 marine species varying from copepods to sharks to identify missing occurrences gaps across their latitudinal range we find a latitudinal gradient of species absence peaking near the equator a pattern observed in both shallow and deep waters the tropical gap in species distribution seems a consequence of reduced sampling effort at low latitudes overall our results suggest that spatial gaps in species distribution are the main cause of the bimodal pattern of marine diversity therefore only increasing sampling effort at low latitudes will reveal if the absence of species in the tropics and the consequent dip in species richness are artefacts of sampling bias or a natural phenomenon,2018,0.971
Harmful algal blooms and climate change: exploring future distribution changes,harmful algae can cause death in fish shellfish marine mammals and humans via their toxins or from effects associated with their sheer quantity there are many species which cause a variety of problems around north west europe and the frequency and distribution of algal blooms have altered in the recent past species distribution modelling was used to understand how harmful algal species may respond in the future to climate change by considering environmental preferences and how these may shift most distribution studies to date use low resolution global model outputs in this study high resolution downscaled shelf seas climate projections for the north west european shelf were nested within lower resolution global projections to understand how the distribution of harmful algae may change by the mid to end of century projections suggest that the habitat of most species defined by temperature salinity depth and stratification will shift north this century with suitability increasing in the central and northern north sea an increase in occurrence here might lead to more frequent detrimental blooms if wind irradiance and nutrient levels are also suitable prioritizing monitoring of species in these susceptible areas could help in establishing early warning systems for aquaculture and health protection schemes,2018,0.495
A decision tree for assessing the risks and benefits of publishing biodiversity data,inadequate information on the geographical distribution of biodiversity hampers decision making for conservation major efforts are underway to fill knowledge gaps but there are increasing concerns that publishing the locations of species is dangerous particularly for species at risk of exploitation while we recognize that well informed control of location data for highly sensitive taxa is necessary to avoid risks such as poaching or habitat disturbance by recreational visitors we argue that ignoring the benefits of sharing biodiversity data could unnecessarily obstruct conservation efforts for species and locations with low risks of exploitation we provide a decision tree protocol for scientists that systematically considers both the risks of exploitation and potential benefits of increased conservation activities our protocol helps scientists assess the impacts of publishing biodiversity data and aims to enhance conservation opportunities promote community engagement and reduce duplication of survey efforts,2018,0.528
"The Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management (eco-) System: Tools and Services for Extraction, Mobilization, Handling and Re-use of Data from the Published …",the open biodiversity knowledge management system obkms is an end to end extensible markup language xml and linked open data lod based ecosystem of tools and services that encompasses the entire process of authoring submission review publication dissemination and archiving of biodiversity literature as well as the text mining of published biodiversity literature fig 1 these capabilities lead to the creation of interoperable computable and reusable biodiversity data with provenance linking facts to publications,2018,0.16
Human diets drive range expansion of megafauna-dispersed fruit species,neotropical fruit species once dispersed by pleistocene megafauna have regained relevance in diversifying human diets to address malnutrition little is known about the historic interactions between humans and these fruit species we quantified the human role in modifying geographic and environmental ranges of neotropical fruit species by comparing the distribution of megafauna dispersed fruit species that have been part of both human and megafauna diets with fruit species that were exclusively part of megafauna diets three quarters of the fruit species that were once dispersed by megafauna later became part of human diets our results suggest that because of extensive dispersal and management humans have expanded the geographic and environmental ranges of species that would otherwise have suffered range contraction after extinction of megafauna our results suggest that humans have been the principal dispersal agent for a large proportion of neotropical fruit species between central and south america our analyses help to identify range segments that may hold key genetic diversity resulting from historic interactions between humans and these fruit species these genetic resources are a fundamental source to improve and diversify contemporary food systems and to maintain critical ecosystem functions public private and societal initiatives that stimulate dietary diversity could expand the food usage of these megafauna dispersed fruit species to enhance human nutrition in combination with biodiversity conservation,2018,0.97
It's time to listen: there is much to be learned from the sounds of tropical ecosystems,knowledge that can be gained from acoustic data collection in tropical ecosystems is lowâ hanging fruit there is every reason to record and with every day there are fewer excuses not to do it in recent years the cost of acoustic recorders has decreased substantially some can be purchased for under us 50 e g hill et al 2018 and the technology needed to store and analyze acoustic data is continuously improving e g corrada bravo et al 2017 xie et al 2017 soundscape recordings provide a permanent record of a site at a given time and contain a wealth of invaluable and irreplaceable information although challenges remain failure to collect acoustic data now in tropical ecosystems would represent a failure to future generations of tropical researchers and the citizens that benefit from ecological research in this commentary we 1 argue for the need to increase acoustic monitoring in tropical systems 2 describe the types of research questions and conservation issues that can be addressed with passive acoustic monitoring pam using both shortâ and longâ term data in terrestrial and freshwater habitats and 3 present an initial plan for establishing a global repository of tropical recordings,2018,0.157
Habitat suitability models to make conservation decisions based on areas of high species richness and endemism,biodiversity positively relates with the provisioning of ecosystem services and preserving areas with elevated diversity of highly functional species could help to ensure human well being most studies addressed to make these decisions use maps relying on species occurrences where sites containing several species are proposed as priority conservation areas these maps however may underestimate species richness because of the incompleteness of occurrence data to improve this methodology we propose using habitat suitability models to estimate the potential distribution of species from occurrence data and later shaping richness maps by overlapping these predicted distribution ranges we tested this proposal with mexican oaks because they provide several ecosystem services and habitat suitability models of species were calibrated with maxent we used linear regressions to compare the outputs of these predictive maps with those of maps based on species occurrences only and for both mapping methods we assessed how much surface of sites with elevated richness and endemism of oaks is currently included within nature reserves both mapping methods indicated that oak species are concentrated in mountain regions of mexico but predictive maps based on habitat suitability models indicated higher oak richness and endemism that maps based on species occurrences only our results also indicated that nature reserves cover a small fraction of areas harboring elevated richness and endemism of oaks these results suggest that estimating richness across extensive geographic regions using habitat suitability models quickly provides accurate information to make conservation decisions for highly functional species groups,2018,0.807
Options to streamline and enrich biodiversity data aggregation,the success of darwin core and abcd schema as flexible standards for sharing specimen data and species occurrence records has enabled gbif to aggregate around one billion data records at the same time other thematic national or regional aggregators have developed a wide range of other data indexes and portals many of which enrich the data by interpreting and normalising elements not currently handled by gbif or by linking other data from geospatial layers trait databases etc unfortunately although each of these aggregators has specific strengths and supports particular audiences this diversification produces many weaknesses and deficiencies for data publishers and for data users including incomplete and inconsistent inclusion of relevant datasets proliferation of record identifiers inconsistent and bespoke workflows to interpret and standardise data absence of any shared basis for linked open data and annotations divergent data formats and apis lack of clarity around provenance and impact etc,2018,0.439
An Integrated Data Quality System for Species Observations,species level observational data comprise the largest and fastest growing part of the global biodiversity information facility gbif the largest single contributor of species observations is ebird which so far has contributed more than 361 million records to gbif ebird engages a vast network of human observers citizen scientists to report bird observations with the goal of estimating the range abundance habitat preferences and trends of bird species at high spatial and temporal resolutions across each speciesâ entire life cycle since its inception ebird has focused on improving the data quality of its observations primarily focused in two areas,2018,0.638
Hydrological features and the ecological niches of mammalian hosts delineate elevated risk for Ross River virus epidemics in anthropogenic landscapes in Australia,background the current understanding of the landscape epidemiology of ross river virus rrv australiaâ s most common arthropod borne pathogen is fragmented due to gaps in surveillance programs and the relatively narrow focus of the research conducted to date this leaves public health agencies with an incomplete understanding of the spectrum of infection risk across the diverse geography of the australian continent the current investigation sought to assess the risk of rrv epidemics based on abiotic and biotic landscape features in anthropogenic landscapes with a particular focus on the influence of water and wildlife hosts methods abiotic features including hydrology land cover and altitude and biotic features including the distribution of wild mammalian hosts were interrogated using a maxent model to discern the landscape suitability to rrv epidemics in anthropogenically impacted environments across australia results water soil balance proximity to controlled water reservoirs and the ecological niches of four species perameles nasuta wallabia bicolor pseudomys novaehollandiae and trichosurus vulpecula were important features identifying high risk landscapes suitable for the occurrence of rrv epidemics conclusions these results help to delineate human infection risk and thus provide an important perspective for geographically targeted vector wildlife and syndromic surveillance within and across the boundaries of local health authorities importantly our analysis highlights the importance of the hydrology and the potential role of mammalian host species in shaping rrv epidemic risk in peri urban space this study offers novel insight into wildlife hosts and rrv infection ecology and identifies those species that may be beneficial to future targeted field surveillance particularly in ecosystems undergoing rapid change,2018,0.831
Quantitative Late Quaternary Climate Reconstruction from Plant Macrofossil Communities in Western North America,the late quaternary packrat neotoma spp midden plant macrofossil record in western north america is an exceptional record of biotic change that provides strong evidence of past climate in this study we generate quantitative estimates of climate from plant community composition of more than 600 individual paleomiddens over the past 50 000 years here we present the first large scale application of cracle climate reconstruction analysis using coexistence likelihood estimation a quantitative climate inference method that uses plant community composition as a climate proxy under the individualistic concept of plant community assembly the results are spatiotemporally specific estimates of temperature precipitation available moisture and seasonal patterns that are consistent with well understood global climate patterns but provide previously unavailable detail and precision of the regional paleoclimate in western north america rapid warming is estimated at the pleistocene holocene transition at a conservative estimate of ca 1â c per millennium previously projected future temperature increases suggest a rate of increase of more than 2â c over the next century an astonishing 10ã the rate experienced at any point during the past 50 000 years in western north america these analyses form a baseline demonstration of how the growing paleoecological record of packrat midden plant macrofossils can provide quantitative estimates of paleoclimate that aid in understanding the complexities of and biotic responses to the regional climate system this work is the first synthetic application of any paleoclimate estimation method to packrat midden plant macrofossils,2018,0.1
"Nuclear DNA content variation of herbaceous angiosperm species on 10 global latitudinal transects ,",many studies have examined variation in nuclear dna content across environmental gradients however these studies have often produced conflicting results we speculated that the conflicting phenomenon resulted from insufficient sampling of the taxa and limitations in the geographical range to clarify whether the relationships between nuclear dna content and environmental gradients are universally nonlinear across a wide geographical range we chose 3 290 herbaceous angiosperm species which have both nuclear dna values in the angiosperm dna c values database and geographical distribution information in the global biodiversity information facility gbif database then we selected 10 global longitudinal transects each with a span of 15â and evenly divided each transect from 82 5â n to 82 5â s into 22 blocks we obtained geographical records presence or absence of these 3 290 species together with 14 bioclimatic factors within these blocks and calculated the average dna 1c values and genome sizes of the species in each block by using polynomial functions we analyzed the correlation of nuclear dna values with latitude by using the gaussian model we further analyzed the correlation of nuclear dna values with the 14 bioclimatic factors finally we also performed quantile regression analyses to elucidate the differences in geographical distribution pattern among groups with nuclear dna values of different sizes we found that species in equatorial areas had the smallest mean nuclear dna values the values increased with latitude for both the northern and southern hemispheres following nonlinear functions we found that nuclear dna contents decreased with increasing latitude in the arctic the change of nuclear dna content with latitude was weaker in the species groups with smaller nuclear dna content than those with a larger nuclear dna content nonlinear relationships following gaussian models also existed between nuclear dna values and the 14 bioclimatic factors such as annual precipitation and mean temperature therefore the relationships of nuclear dna content with either latitude or the 14 bioclimatic factors covarying with latitude are universally nonlinear across a global geographical gradient nuclear dna contents are of ecological significance for angiosperms there exist obvious differences in the geographical distribution patterns among species groups with nuclear dna values of different sizes with a selective advantage for species with small nuclear dna content in extreme environments,2018,0.902
"Dung beetle assemblages, dung removal and secondary seed dispersal: data from a large-scale, multi-site experiment in the Western Palaearctic",by manipulating faeces during feeding and breeding dung beetles coleoptera scarabaeidae fulfil important ecosystem functions in terrestrial ecosystems throughout the world in a pan european multi site experiment mse we estimated the ecosystem functions of dung removal and secondary seed dispersal by differing combinations of dung beetle functional groups therefore we classified dung beetles into five functional groups according to their body size and dung manipulation method dwellers large and small tunnelers and large and small rollers furthermore we set up a dung beetle sampling database containing all sampled dung beetles during the project by identifying dung beetle specimens to the species level we obtained a detailed insight into the dung beetle communities at each study location by establishing experimental plots allowing and inhibiting specific combinations of functional groups in the local dung beetle assemblage from removing dung and seeds we estimated the role of each group in dung removal and secondary seed dispersal during a 4 week period we performed all experiments in grazed semi natural grasslands and used different dung types cattle horse sheep goat or red deer to match the herbivore species grazing in close vicinity of each of the study areas simultaneously we sampled dung beetle assemblages by using pitfalls baited with the same dung types as used in the experiments this data paper documents two datasets collected in the framework of this mse project all the experiments took place between 2013 and 2016 at 17 study sites in 10 countries and 11 biogeographic zones the entire dung beetle sampling dataset was published as a sampling event dataset at gbif the dataset includes the sampling results of all 17 study sites which contain 1 050 sampling events and 4 362 occurrence records of 94 species the second dataset contains the results of the dung removal and secondary seed dispersal experiments in which we used 11 experimental treatments and the five dung types mentioned above this experimental results dataset holds all experimental results of the mse project 11 537 records and was published in the online data repository zenodo,2018,0.177
Liquidambar (Altingiaceae) and associated insect herbivory from the Miocene of southeastern China,the infructescences and associated leaves of liquidambar from the middle miocene fotan group southeastern china were assigned to a new species liquidambar fujianensis sp nov based on their long persistent styles fruit morphological and anatomical characters the comprehensive anatomical information on the infructescences including the seeds inner carpel wall cells and outer fruit tissue cells were discussed and compared in detail the infructescences and leaves are considered to belong the same plant and have a close relationship with the modern species liquidambar formosana insect mediated damage was investigated on the leaves of l fujianensis sp nov and five principal types of damage hole feeding margin feeding surface feeding skeletonization and galling were categorized the damage richness indicates that our fossils were distributed in a region with a warm and wet climate and we inferred that the possible phytophagous insect as herbivore culprits against l fujianensis sp nov of the middle miocene fotan flora belong to the insect orders coleoptera lepidoptera and hemiptera,2018,0.624
Fish data of the Belgian River Meuse from 1989 to 2012,during 23 years 3 institutions sampled fish in the belgian part of the river meuse with two distincts methodologies data were provided by the survey of fish passages in fish ladders at tailfer upstream namur and lixhe downstream liã ge over the 1989 2012 period matondo ovidio 2016 fish were collected daily in a trap placed in the upper pool of the ladder when the migration peaks occurred and twice a week outside the major migration period all the fish species were identified and species abundances were estimated without taking into account the juveniles and the youngs of the year annual fish abundances were expressed as monthly averages data from hastiã re andenne and visã were provided by electrofishing from a boat along the banks in 1994 2007 2008 2009 and 2010 abundances were expressed as number of individuals per 100mâ of river sampled environmental and invertebrate data of the river meuse are also available as separate datasets,2018,0.695
Georeferencing for Research Use (GRU): An integrated geospatial training paradigm for biocollections researchers and data providers,georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system training aids are commonly created around the georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas guide accurate georeferencing inform users about new tools and help users evaluate existing geospatial data the jats italic georeferencing for research use jats italic gru workshop was implemented as a training aid that focused on the creation and research use of geospatial coordinates and included both data researchers and data providers to facilitate communication between the groups the workshop included 23 participants with a wide background of expertise ranging from students undergraduate and graduate professors researchers and educators scientific data managers natural history collections personnel and spatial analyst specialists the conversations and survey results from this workshop demonstrate that it is important to provide opportunities for biocollections data providers to interact directly with the researchers using the data they produce and vice versa,2018,0.128
"The genus Ficus (Moracea) used in diet: Its plant diversity, distribution, traditional uses and ethnopharmacological importance",ethnopharmacological relevance a new field of enthnopharmacology has opened where pharmacological studies draw their attention from the conventional only medicine approach towards the dietary dimension the uses of ficus species in the human diet have been extensively documented by ethnobotanical field surveyors overlap commonly exist between the dietary and medicinal selection of ficus species but not for choices of the plant parts and development stages which leave a large space for ethnopharmacological study aims of the study 1 to review published works on the dietary uses of ficus species and their food medicine overlap based on traditional uses and 2 to spark interest in ethnopharmacological studies on the dietary uses of ficus species materials and methods data was collected and analyzed from many sources including published and unpublished ethnobotanical field surveys taxonomic and distribution information international journals books thesis floras reports and professional databases the possible biases arising from data sources are assessed to make sure that the dataset are global representative results a total of 132 ficus species are reported for dietary uses including one subspecies and four varieties those species are found across all of the six subgenera of the genus ficus for distribution 98 species from the indo australasian region 27 species from the african tropics with one species f palmata from both the two regions and 8 from the neotropics the parts most commonly used are the figs syconium or fruits 110 species and leaves 66 species in various growth stages of the species reported to have dietary use 78 are reported to have traditional medicinal uses for the parts used in the diet the figs are frequently cited in the treatment of diarrhea and oligogalactia the leaves in the treatment of diarrhea stomach complaintsas antidote and diabetes the latex in the treatment of intestinal worms and wounds and the barks in the treatment of diarrhea conclusions we demonstrate that throughout its area of distribution the genus ficus is commonly used as a dietary plant although uses of the individual species are uncommon furthermore we highlight the diet medicine overlap of the uses of this genus which should enable further understanding of the potential for broader health benefits rather than limiting studies in this genus to its only medicinal properties,2018,0.931
Data Quality Task Group 2: Tests and Assertions,task group 2 of the tdwg data quality interest group aims to provide a standard suite of tests and resulting assertions that can assist with filtering occurrence records for as many applications as possible currently â data aggregatorsâ such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif the atlas of living australia ala and idigbio run their own suite of tests over records received and report the results of these tests the assertions there is however no standard reporting mechanisms we reasoned that the availability of an internationally agreed set of tests would encourage implementations by the aggregators and at the data sources museums herbaria and others so that issues could be detected and corrected early in the process all the tests are limited to darwin core terms the 95 tests refined from over 250 in use around the world were classified into four output types validations notifications amendments and measures validations test one of more darwin core terms for example that dwc decimallatitude is in a valid range i e between 90 and 90 inclusive notifications report a status that a user of the record should know about for example if there is a user annotation associated with the record amendments are made to one or more darwin core terms when the information across the record can be improved for example if there is no value for dwc scientificname it can be filled in from a valid dwc taxonid measures report values that may be useful for assessing the overall quality of a record for example the number of validation tests passed,2018,0.107
HaloDom: a new database of halophiles across all life domains,background halophilic organisms may thrive in or tolerate high salt concentrations they have been studied for decades and a considerable number of papers reporting new halophilic species are being published every year however an extensive collection of these salt loving organisms does not exist nowadays halophilic life forms have representatives from all three life domains archaea bacteria and eukarya the purpose of this study was to search for all documented halophilic species in the scientific literature and accommodate this information in the form of an online database results we recorded more than 1000 halophilic species from the scientific literature from these 21 9 belong to archaea 50 1 to bacteria and 27 9 to eukaryotes our records contain basic information such as the salinity that a particular organism was found its taxonomy and genomic information via ncbi and other links the online database named â œhalodomâ can be accessed at http www halodom bio auth gr conclusions over the last few years data on halophiles are growing fast compared to previous efforts this new halophiles database expands its coverage to all life domains and offers a valuable reference system for studies in biotechnology early life evolution and comparative genomics,2018,0.553
Evaluating the impact of future actions in minimizing vegetation loss from land conversion in the Brazilian Cerrado under climate change,the global network of protected areas pas is systematically biased towards remote and unproductive places consequently the processes threatening biodiversity are not halted and conservation impactâ defined as the beneficial environmental outcomes arising from protection relative to the counterfactual of no interventionâ is smaller than previously thought yet many conservation plans still target speciesâ representation which can fail to lead to impact by not considering the threats they face such as land conversion and climate change here we aimed to identify spatial conservation priorities that minimize the risk of land conversion while retaining sites with high value for threatened plants at risk from climate change in the brazilian cerrado we compared a method of sequential implementation of conservation actions to a static strategy applied at one time step for both schedules of conservation actions we applied two methods for setting priorities i minimizing expected habitat conversion and prioritizing valuable sites for threatened plants therefore maximizing conservation impact and ii prioritizing sites based only on their value for threatened plants regardless of their vulnerability to land conversion therefore maximizing representation we found that scenarios aimed at maximizing conservation impact reduced total vegetation loss while still covering large proportions of speciesâ ranges inside pas and priority sites given that planning to avoid vegetation loss provided these benefits vegetation information could represent a reliable surrogate for overall biodiversity besides allowing for the achievement of two distinct goals representation and impact the impact strategies also present great potential for implementation especially under current conservation policies,2018,0.043
Two new species and two new records of Artabotrys (Annonaceae) from Thailand,two new species of artabotrys are described from thailand artabotrys tanaosriensis j chen chalermglin r m k saunders sp nov is similar to a oblanceolatus craib but differs in its symmetrical cuneate or decurrent leaf base externally distinct outer petal blades and claws deltoid and undulate outer petal blades rhomboid and undulate inner petal blades and shorter subsessile and slightly beaked monocarps artabotrys spathulatus j chen chalermglin r m k saunders sp nov is most similar to a tanaosriensis but differs in having flat outer petal blades broadly rhomboid outer petal claws broadly spathulate and strongly concave inner petal blades and strongly beaked monocarps two new records for the flora of thailand are furthermore reported here a punctulatus c y wu ex s h yuan and a byrsophyllus i m turner utteridge which were previously confused with a aeneus ast and a grandifolius king respectively a key to artabotrys species indigenous to thailand is provided here,2018,0.644
History of introduction and distribution of common ragweed ( Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.) in the European part of the Russian Federation and in the Ukraine,ambrosia artemisiifolia l common ragweed is an invasive alien plant iap in the european part of the russian federation and in the ukraine ragweed was introduced into the territory of western europe between 1860 and 1870 together with red clover seeds delivered from america and has since spread and become a nuisance weed in agricultural land and disturbed habitats this study presents a detailed overview of the history of introduction and distribution of this iap in the territory of russia and neighbouring countries a map has been created to show species distribution dynamics in the european part of russia and neighbouring countries from initial foci of introduction to date a detailed map of current distribution in russia and the ukraine has also been created the rate of expansion during the different time periods was calculated and compared with recent species distribution modelling allowing future spatial spread of ragweed to be forecast in the european part of russia and in the ukraine the species has almost reached the edge of its environmental limitations and further expansion to the northern regions is expected to slow down,2018,0.648
Comparison of species information TDWG standards from the point of view of the Plinian Core specification,species level information as an important component of the biodiversity information landscape is an area where some tdwg standards and activities coincide plinian core plinian core task group 2018 is a generalistic specification that covers aspects such species descriptions and nomenclature as well as many others legal conservation management etc while the plinian core non biological terms have no counterpart in the tdwg developments some of its biological ones have and that is the focus of this work first it must be noticed that plinian core relies on some tdwg standards for specific facets of species information,2018,0.549
Biodiversity conservation gaps in Brazil: A role for systematic conservation planning,a recent study aimed to estimate the biodiversity conservation gaps of the brazilian protected area network by analysing more than 880 thousand records of species presence from online databases although we agree with its general message that protected areas are poorly known unevenly distributed and not sufficient to safeguard the brazilian biodiversity we question its methodological approach and feel that its conclusions must not be received uncritically a major concern is that their analyses are based on an arbitrary set of widespread abundant and non threatened species and on a subset of the species widely recognized as conservation priorities such as the red listed species furthermore they question the efficiency of the brazilian protected area network based only on species data missing other facets of biodiversity such as habitat community diversity ecosystem processes and services we point out that the adequate way to estimate the brazilian conservation gaps and to properly indicate where they are in space is through systematic conservation planning official data indicate that spatial conservation gaps correspond to 16 5 of the brazilian territory being conservation priority areas not under protected areas this spatial gap however is much smaller in amazon in comparison to all other biomes for the caatinga drylands we estimated three facets of the conservation gap i e qualitative gap target gap and spatial gap we highlight that the brazilian protected area network has been very successful to safeguard many facets of the brazilian biodiversity and that future expansions based on systematic conservation planning can efficiently protect elected biodiversity traits,2018,0.61
Trends in nonindigenous aquatic species richness in the United States reveal shifting spatial and temporal patterns of species introductions,understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics underlying the introduction and spread of nonindigenous aquatic species nas can provide important insights into the historical drivers of biological invasions and aid in forecasting future patterns of nonindigenous species arrival and spread increasingly public databases of species observation records are being used to quantify changes in nas distributions across space and time and are becoming an important resource for researchers managers and policy makers here we use publicly available data to describe trends in nas introduction and spread across the conterminous united states over more than two centuries of observation records available data on first records of nas reveal significant shifts in dominance of particular introduction patterns over time both in terms of recipient regions and likely sources these spatiotemporal trends at the continental scale may be subject to biases associated with regional variation in sampling effort reporting and data curation we therefore also examined two additional metrics the number of individual records and the spatial coverage of those records which are likely to be more closely associated with sampling effort our results suggest that broad scale patterns may mask considerable variation across regions time periods and even entities contributing to nas sampling in some cases observed temporal shifts in species discovery may be influenced by dramatic fluctuations in the number and spatial extent of individual observations reflecting the possibility that shifts in sampling effort may obscure underlying rates of nas introduction,2018,0.768
Refining the environmental weed risk assessment for non-indigenous plants which may have agricultural potential,traditionally in the rangelands of western australia wa the pastoral industry has relied on grazing of native vegetation however in recent years there has been considerable interest in mosaic agriculture based on irrigated forages there is also a potential role for improved dryland pastures in medium to high rainfall areas of the kimberley under these conditions there is increased interest in the introduction of non indigenous species which may improve the productivity and sustainability of agricultural systems however there is also clear evidence that a number of introduced non indigenous plant species have become established in non target areas and some have become environmental weeds an environmental risk framework and weed risk assessment wra protocol to assess species with agricultural potential in southern australia was developed for the future farm industries co operative research centre ffi crc stone et al 2012 this protocol has been adapted for use in the rangelands of northern western australia the refined methodology introduces the concept of â inherent weed riskâ the potential distribution or land capability is considered as a separate but integral step in the process to provide a flexible system which can assess the risk at the regional scale and also take account of the operational context this environmental wra system is designed to improve the access transparency rigour and consistency of information available to policy makers and those considering the use of non indigenous species and their introduction to novel environments in the wa rangelands,2018,0.194
Fungarium specimens: a largely untapped source in global change biology and beyond,for several hundred years millions of fungal sporocarps have been collected and deposited in worldwide collections fungaria to support fungal taxonomy owing to large scale digitization programs metadata associated with the records are now becoming publicly available including information on taxonomy sampling location collection date and habitat substrate information this metadata as well as data extracted from the physical fungarium specimens themselves such as dna sequences and biochemical characteristics provide a rich source of information not only for taxonomy but also for other lines of biological inquiry here we highlight and discuss how this information can be used to investigate emerging topics in fungal global change biology and beyond fungarium data are a prime source of knowledge on fungal distributions and richness patterns and for assessing red listed and invasive species information on collection dates has been used to investigate shifts in fungal distributions as well as phenology of sporocarp emergence in response to climate change in addition to providing material for taxonomy and systematics dna sequences derived from the physical specimens provide information about fungal demography dispersal patterns and are emerging as a source of genomic data as dna analysis technologies develop further the importance of fungarium specimens as easily accessible sources of information will likely continue to grow,2018,0.425
Molecular and climate data reveal expansion and genetic differentiation of Mexican Violet-ear Colibri thalassinus thalassinus (Aves: Trochilidae) populations separated by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,the present day distribution and spatial genetic diversity of mesoamerican biota reflect a long history of responses to complex topography geological history and climate changes the hummingbird colibri thalassinus thalassinus is distributed in northern mesoamerica with geographically disjunct populations mainly separated by the isthmus of tehuantepec it based on sampling across the species range in mexico we use mitochondrial dna mtdna sequences and distributional projections derived from ecological niche modeling enm to test whether 1 populations are genetically differentiated according to the fragmented distribution of c thalassinus thalassinus in mexico and 2 historical demographic patterns of these hummingbird populations correspond to those of expanded populations during the last glacial maximum lgm analysis of genetic variation revealed two main mtdna lineages populations west of the it along the sierra madre oriental trans mexican volcanic belt and sierra madre del sur and populations east of the isthmus in chiapas and guatemala a significant signal of genetic differentiation demographic expansion near the lgm and contractions expansions of suitable environmental conditions during the lgm fit a model of lineage divergence west of the isthmus after the lgm and that the speciesâ suitable habitat was continuous connecting populations on either side of the isthmus we conclude that the genetic differentiation of c thalassinus thalassinus in mexico resulted from recent geographical isolation of populations separated by the it in addition this scenario is supported by the modeled paleodistribution that suggests that populations expanded during the lgm and that the spread of the species into the highlands caused habitat fragmentation and population isolation for c thalassinus thalassinus during the interglacial periods the findings corroborate the profound effects of pleistocene climatic fluctuations on the genetic differentiation of c thalassinus thalassinus in mexico but challenge the generality of glacial refugia,2018,0.933
Biogeographic and anthropogenic correlates of Aleutian Islands plant diversity: A machine-learning approach,this is the first comprehensive analysis of vascular plant diversity patterns in the aleutian islands to identify and quantify the impact of aleutian island distance dispersal barriers geographical ecological and anthropogenic factors data from public open access databases printed floristic accounts and from collections made by the primary author were used to develop an aleutian floristic database the most common plant distribution pattern was â œan eastern origin communityâ though it compared similarly to the â œwesternâ and â œwidespreadâ distribution pattern we established an ecological plant community composition class for each island based on clustering species assemblage dissimilarity measurements jaccard index and a measurement of phylogenetic dissimilarity unifrac we modelled these composition classes and species richness values in nonâ parametric algorithmic models and concepts data cloning using machine learning stochastic boostingâ treenet based on classic and aleutiansâ specific island biogeography hypotheses plant species richness is strongly associated with the equilibrium model variables of area and island isolation as well as distance to the alaska peninsula and island total stream length species composition is strongly associated with the landmass groups during the last glacial maximum maximum island elevation island isolation and island area phylogenetic composition is associated with island area distance from the islands to the chukotka peninsula maximum island elevation island geologic age and island isolation this study extends the equilibrium theory of island biogeography by including additional drivers of diversity during the anthropocene such as the landmass during the lgm as well as factors that may be related to anthropogenic extinction rate,2018,0.684
Symbolic species as a cultural ecosystem service in the European Alps: insights and open issues,purpose symbolic plants and animals are recognised as a cultural ecosystem service ces which is still underrepresented in ecosystem services assessments thus this study aims at identifying and mapping important symbolic species in the european alps which are of cultural significance to large parts of the alpine population methods symbolic species were identified by ten expert groups and their use was assessed in a qualitative way the spatial distribution of all species across the alpine space area was mapped at the municipality level through hotspots analysis we identified spatial patterns in the distribution of species spearman correlation was used to evaluate the relationship between symbolic species and selected environmental and social variables results ten species were identified edelweiss gentian alpenrose larch pine alpine ibex chamois marmot brown bear and golden eagle that are widely used for symbolic representations i e depiction on flags emblems logos and naming of hotels and brands hotspots of symbolic species were found in several locations in the european alps and could be related to high elevation steep slopes open land cover and naturalness conclusions this study proposes a methodology to map and assess symbolic species as a ces as the spatial distribution of symbolic species depends on environmental characteristics and human activities our results provide important insights for landscape planning and management however it remains unclear whether associated cultural values depend on the presence of the species and further research is needed to understand the relationships between the distribution of symbolic species and social benefits,2018,0.967
The seven lamps of planning for biodiversity in the city,cities tend to be built in areas of high biodiversity and the accelerating pace of urbanization threatens the persistence of many species and ecological communities globally however urban environments also offer unique prospects for biological conservation with multiple benefits for humans and other species we present seven ecological principles to conserve and increase the biodiversity of cities using metaphors to bridge the gap between the languages of built environment and conservation professionals we draw upon john ruskin s famous essay on the seven lamps of architecture but more generally on the thinking of built environment pioneers such as patrick geddes 1854â 1932 who proposed a synoptic view of the urban environment that included humans and non humans alike to explain each principle or â lampâ of urban biodiversity we use an understanding from the built environment disciplines as a base and demonstrate through metaphor that planning for the more than human does not require a conceptual leap we conclude our discussion with ten practical strategies for turning on these lamps in cities urban planners architects landscape architects engineers and other built environmental professionals have a key role to play in a paradigm shift to plan for the more than human because of their direct influence on the evolving urban environment this essay is intended to increase dialogue between ecologists and members of these professions and thus increase the biodiversity of cities around the world,2018,0.607
The adaptive value of heterospory: evidence from Selaginella,heterospory was a pivotal evolutionary innovation for land plants but it has never been clear why it evolved we used the geographic distributions of 114 species of the heterosporous lycophyte selaginella to explore the functional ecology of microspore and megaspore size traits that would be correlated with many aspects of a speciesâ regeneration niche we characterized habitats at a global scale using leaf area index lai a measure of foliage density and thus shading and net primary productivity npp a measure of growth potential microspore size tends to decrease as habitat lai and npp increase a trend that could be related to desiccation resistance or to filtration of windâ borne particles by leaf surfaces megaspore size tends to increase among species that inhabit regions of high lai but there is an important interaction with npp this geographical pattern suggests that larger megaspores provide an establishment advantage in shaded habitats although in open habitats where light is less limiting higher productivity of the environment seems to give an advantage to species with smaller megaspores these results support previous theoretical arguments that heterospory was originally an adaptation to the increasing height and density of devonian vegetative canopies that accompanied the diversification of vascular plants with leaves,2018,0.161
"A new western Canadian record of Epeoloides pilosulus (Cresson), with discussion of ecological associations, distribution and conservation status in Canada",background epeoloides pilosulus one of the rarest bees in north america is a cleptoparasite of macropis bees which themselves are uncommon oligoleges of oil producing lysimachia flowers only two specimens of the cleptoparasite have been reported from canada since the 1960s both from nova scotia new information a recently collected specimen of epeoloides pilosulus from alberta canada confirms this species from that province and greatly increases its known range in western north america this record and additional specimens from southern ontario one collected in 1978 have implications for the conservation status of this cosewic assessed species in canada which are discussed,2018,0.729
Interoperable framework for improving data quality using semantic approach: use case on biodiversity,today the internet growing exponentially and revolutionizing everything with increasing number of users everywhere in order to meet the superfluous demand has triggered an unprecedented wave of various kinds of digital data on the web among them much of the data is relevant and can be turned into actionable insights but difficulties to face are that handling such a hype of data on the web and due to its unstructured format can not meet the pre set requirements of professionals and end users in the context of biodiversity domain a conceptual approach of data science has been proposed in this paper to extract and structure data seamlessly which makes sense of all biodiversity rich data and multiple record documents by saving time and energy the major drawback in manual extraction and storage of biodiversity data is that it gives rise to several errors such as spelling errors skipping of some data fields etc which can be difficult to improve during the processing stage thereafter can not meet the research demands however such drawbacks can be dealt if data science approach is applied within the system and this automated approach will be fast flexible reliable and accurate nevertheless the only thing to be taken care in the extraction approach is regular monitoring and analysis of hypertext markup language html structure documents and links of target sources such a huge set of data contains many error and noisy characters to eliminate these errors data cleaning algorithm has been used to make data error free and ready for further systematic research due to the wide variety of data formats achieving interoperability is a daunting task since some of the datasets do not follow their own schema structure to cope with this demand semantic interoperability has proved to be helpful by exchanging data through web services between different independent loosely coupled systems this paper presents an overview of semantic interoperability and case studies on various projects that implemented it for biodiversity data sharing,2018,0.017
Ecological niche shift between diploid and tetraploid plants of Fragaria (Rosaceae) in China,ecological niche shifts between diploid and tetraploid plants remains a topic with potential for plant ecology and evolution here we identified populations of fragaria rosaceae from 169 sampling plots classifying populations into two species groups diploid and tetraploid across china using flow cytometry we then applied niche modeling to assess the ecological niche shift between diploid and tetraploid plants of fragaria in china based on fieldwork and herbarium data we explored the variables that best explained niche shifts between diploid and tetraploid plants compared to diploid plants tetraploid plants are more likely to inhabit areas of higher altitude lower temperature and lower precipitation indicating that different ploidy levels are mainly associated with niche changes of altitude temperature and precipitation diploid and tetraploid plants of fragaria exhibit significant niche shifts i e niche divergence between types ecological niche divergence between diploid and tetraploid plants is best explained by a shift in climate and altitude in biomes of conifer forests of southwestern china moreover heterogeneity of soil further contributed to the observed niche shift between diploid and tetraploid plants our study provides novel insights into the role of niche shifts on genome mergers and duplications of fragaria in china,2018,0.058
Insights into the life strategy of the common marine diatom Chaetoceros peruvianus Brightwell,chaetoceros peruvianus is a marine diatom species with circumglobal distribution while frequently observed it appears never to dominate the marine phytoplankton community hence it can be characterized as a rather opportunistic generalistic species here we present ecological interpretations from a long term data set on marine microphytoplankton in the northern adriatic sea where the abundancies and relative contributions of c peruvianus were observed along a set of steep ecological gradients limited supply of dissolved inorganic phosphate was identified as the driving ecological factor for this ecosystem in parallel c peruvianus was cultivated in monoclonal cultures and its morphological and physiological reaction to replete and phosphorus depleted medium was analysed c peruvianus reacted to phosphorus depletion by an increase in cell height and length as well as thickness and length of setae this morphological reaction included an increase in cellular volume and calculated carbon content additionally it represents the transition between two described morphological varieties c peruvianus and c peruvianus var robusta c peruvianus showed a significant induction of extracellular alkaline phosphatase activity if grown in phosphate depleted medium microscopical analysis demonstrated this activity to be located exclusively on the setae of the cells,2018,0.409
"Recorded mortality in the vulnerable Alpine salamander, Salamandra atra prenjensis (Amphibia: Caudata), is not associated with the presence of known amphibian …",batrachochytrium dendrobatidis bd is a chytrid fungus triggering the panzootic disease chytridiomycosis capable of infecting most of the worldâ s amphibian species i e more than 500 species across all three orders olson et al 2013 this disease causes devastating population declines and species extinctions fisher et al 2009 a second chytrid pathogen known to infect only salamanders and newts has been discovered batrachochytrium salamandrivorans bsal similarly to bd it causes lethal skin infections and is responsible for massive population declines in northwestern europe martel et al 2013 ranavirus rv causes amphibian die offs by provoking haemorrhages wheelwright 2014 clinical signs include lethargy weakness fluid accumulation under the skin and occasionally skin ulcerations daszak et al 1999 these three agents are suggested to represent the major pathogens driving worldwide amphibian population declines whittaker et al 2013,2018,0.752
The importance of taxonomy in species distribution models at a global scale: the case of an overlooked alien squirrel facing taxonomic revision,the siberian chipmunk is native to northâ eastern asia but alien populations of this squirrel introduced through the pet trade occur in many european countries this rodent has been listed as an invasive species of european concern being a potential vector of ticks spreading lyme disease we aimed to assess its current distribution range and to identify areas of potential invasion two sets of species distribution models were conducted one considering the locations of the species n 625 occurrences and the other with only the occurrences of the korean subspecies the invasive one in europe n 255 occurrences which might be a separate species from the siberian one we included 19 uncorrelated predictors two topographic nine land cover five bioclimatic and three anthropogenic variables which may represent the habitat characteristics of the target species most of the northern hemisphere supports the establishment of the siberian chipmunk particularly for the invasive korean subspecies especially in europe where it is already established mostly in urban areas anthropogenic food supply was found to be an important factor promoting the growth of alien populations of chipmunks whereas the presence of the native red squirrel at the time of introduction may limit it,2018,0.869
Historical connections among river basins and climatic changes explain the biogeographic history of a water rat,background the water rat nectomys squamipes cricetidae sigmodontinae is a semiaquatic rodent from eastern south america that shows shallow genetic structure across space according to some studies we tested the influence of hydrography and climatic changes on the genetic and phylogeographic structure of this semiaquatic small mammal methods dna sequences of two mitochondrial genetic markers cyt b and d loop and six microsatellite loci from water rats were collected at 50 localities in five river basins in the atlantic forest along the eastern coast of south america we evaluated the genetic structure within and among river basins and we estimated divergence dates species distribution models for the present and past were built to identify possible gene flow paths results mitochondrial data and species distribution models showed coherent results microsatellite loci showed a more complex pattern of genetic differentiation the diversification of n squamipes haplotypes occurred during the pleistocene and the river basin cannot explain most of the genetic structure we found evidence of population expansion during the last glacial maximum and gene flow paths indicate historical connections among rivers in the atlantic forest discussion historical connections among rivers in the atlantic forest may have allowed n squamipes to disperse farther across and within basins leading to shallow genetic structure population expansions and gene flow through the emerged continental shelf during glacial period support the atlantis forest hypothesis thus challenging the forest refuge hypothesis,2018,0.602
Does Data Sharing Influence Data Reuse in Biodiversity? A Citation Analysis,making research data openly accessible promotes reproducibility in science previous studies have suggested that articles that publicly share research data have higher citation rates in biological and social sciences however information about how and whether data is reused is not often openly accessible from research data repositories this study focuses on biodiversity datasets published on global biodiversity information facility gbif because there is frequent reuse of research data in this field gbif was used as a data source since it provides citation count for datasets not a commonly available feature for most repositories metadata from 38 878 datasets were collected through the gbif api the data shows that biodiversity datasets on gbif are frequently updated which is unusual for research data analysis of dataset types citation counts creation and update time of datasets suggests that citation rates vary for different types of datasets â occurrence datasets that have more granular information have higher citation rates than checklist and metadata only datasets correlation tests also suggest that more frequently updated datasets tend to receive more citations an analysis of the number of occurrence datasets published between 2007 2018 and the number of citations received indicate that similarly to articles it takes 2 3 years to accrue most citations for datasets furthermore an analysis of dataset title texts suggests that datasets about some regions including china brazil atlantic australia and india appear more frequently than others the results are suggestive that data reuse and data citation are common in biodiversity and that more enriched and regularly maintained datasets attract more citations therefore including citation counts for datasets in repositories can help to reveal how data citation practices differ in various fields and whether citation evidence can be used to promote the impact of research data,2018,0.291
Lichen Records from Northern Cyprus,eighty two taxa of lichenized fungi lichenes are reported from northern cyprus turkish republic of northern cyprus mostly from the beåÿparmak mountains of these thirty four taxa are new for the northern part of the island and 14 are new for the whole island the large number of widespread species among the new records suggests that many more widespread species may show up an unusual substrate calcareous rock is reported for buellia tesserata rhizocarpon macrosporum and xanthoparmelia attica pertusaria rhodiensis was found for the first time outside the aegean sea region,2018,0.61
Effects of contemporary environment and Quaternary climate change on drylands plant diversity differ between growth forms,previous studies on largeâ scale patterns in plant richness and underlying mechanisms have mostly focused on forests and mountains while drylands covering most of the world s grasslands and deserts are more poorly investigated for lack of data here we aim to 1 evaluate the plant richness patterns in inner asian drylands 2 compare the relative importance of contemporary environment historical climate vegetation changes and midâ domain effect mde and 3 explore whether the dominant drivers of species richness differ across growth forms woody vs herbaceous and range sizes common vs rare distribution data and growth forms of 13 248 seed plants were compiled from literature and species range sizes were estimated generalized linear models and hierarchical partitioning were used to evaluate the relative contribution of different factors we found that habitat heterogeneity strongly affected both woody and herbaceous species precipitation climate change since the midâ holocene and climatic seasonality dominated herbaceous richness patterns while climatic change since the last glacial maximum dominated woody richness patterns rare species richness was strongly correlated with precipitation habitat heterogeneity and historical climatic changes while common species richness was strongly correlated with mde woody or climate seasonality herbaceous temperature had little effects on the species richness patterns of all groups this study represents the first evaluation of the largeâ scale patterns of plant species richness in the inner asian drylands our results suggest that increasing water deficit due to anthropogenic activities combined with future global warming may increase the extinction risk of many grassland species rare species both herbaceous and woody may face severe challenges in the future due to increased habitat destruction caused by urbanization and resource exploitation overall our findings indicate that the hypotheses on species richness patterns based on woody plants alone can be insufficient to explain the richness patterns of herbaceous species,2018,0.901
Normalized Difference Vegetation Vigour Index: A New Remote Sensing Approach to Biodiversity Monitoring in Oil Polluted Regions,biodiversity loss remains a global challenge despite international commitment to the united nations convention on biodiversity biodiversity monitoring methods are often limited in their geographical coverage or thematic content furthermore remote sensing based integrated monitoring methods mostly attempt to determine species diversity from habitat heterogeneity somewhat reflected in the spectral diversity of the image used up to date there has been no standardized method for monitoring biodiversity against the backdrop of ecosystem or environmental pressures this study presents a new method for monitoring the impact of oil pollution an environmental pressure on biodiversity at regional scale and presents a case study in the niger delta region of nigeria it integrates satellite remote sensing and field data to develop a set of spectral metrics for biodiversity monitoring using vascular plants of various lifeforms observed on polluted and unpolluted control locations as surrogates for biodiversity the normalized difference vegetation vigour index ndvvi variants were estimated from hyperion wavelengths sensitive to petroleum hydrocarbons and evaluated for potential use in biodiversity monitoring schemes the ndvvi ranges from 0 to 1 and stems from the presupposition that increasing chlorophyll absorption in the green vegetation can be used as a predictor to model vascular plant species diversity the performances of ndvvi variants were compared to traditional narrowband vegetation indices nbvis the results show strong links between vascular plant species diversity and primary productivity of vegetation quantified by the chlorophyll content vegetation vigour and abundance an ndvvi based model gave much more accurate predictions of species diversity than traditional nbvis r squared and prediction square error pse respectively for shannonâ s diversity 0 54 and 0 69 for ndvvis and 0 14 and 0 9 for nbvis we conclude that ndvvi is a superior remote sensing index for monitoring biodiversity indicators in oil polluted areas than traditional nbvis,2018,0.187
Species distribution modeling based on the automated identification of citizen observations,premise of the study a species distribution model computed with automatically identified plant observations was developed and evaluated to contribute to future ecological studies methods we used deep learning techniques to automatically identify opportunistic plant observations made by citizens through a popular mobile application we compared species distribution modeling of invasive alien plants based on these data to inventories made by experts results the trained models have a reasonable predictive effectiveness for some species but they are biased by the massive presence of cultivated specimens discussion the method proposed here allows for fine grained and regular monitoring of some species of interest based on opportunistic observations more in depth investigation of the typology of the observations and the sampling bias should help improve the approach in the future,2018,0.448
Changes in epiphytic lichen diversity are associated with air particulate matter levels: The case study of urban areas in Chile,chileans living in urban areas are exposed to several air pollutants namely to a mean annual concentration of atmospheric pm2 5 40 âµg m∠3 year∠1 that exceeds two times the level established by legislation in both chile and the european union and four times higher than the recommended by the world health organization for good air quality the evaluation of air pollution namely particulate pollution in urban areas is performed by air quality monitoring stations these are not sufficiently distributed in space to cover all areas with high spatial resolution needed for a good assessment of the exact human exposure in this context lichen diversity studies could fill the gap of increasing air quality spatial resolution in areas not covered by monitoring stations we aim at using taxonomic species richness and abundance and trait based epiphytic lichen diversity growth form to evaluate the impact of air pollution levels in chilean urban environments for that lichen diversity was evaluated in three background areas seven centres of various chilean cities and their peri urban zones though trait based metrics responded negatively to air pollution lichen abundance was the best metrics index of lichen diversity being negatively associated r ∠0 89 p 0 001 with the number of days per year that particles exceeded the mean annual level established by legislation 20 âµg m∠3 year∠1 this suggested that the main source of changes in lichen diversity in urban areas of chile is particulate material or other associated pollutants these findings show that in high levels of pollution total lichen diversity can be used to track particulate material pollution above the recommended levels providing data for areas without monitoring stations this information can then be used to select new areas for monitoring stations or to evaluate the potential health effects of the population living in these areas,2018,0.167
Museum specimens provide novel insights into changing plant–herbivore interactions,mounting evidence shows that species interactions may mediate how individual species respond to climate change however long term anthropogenic effects on species interactions are poorly characterized owing to a lack of data insect herbivory is a major ecological process that represents the interaction between insect herbivores and their host plants but historical data on insect damage to plants is particularly sparse here we suggest that museum collections of insects and plants can fill key gaps in our knowledge on changing trophic interactions including proximate mechanisms and the net outcomes of multiple global change drivers across diverse insect herbivoreâ plant associations we outline theory on how global change may affect herbivores and their host plants and highlight the unique data that could be extracted from museum specimens to explore their shifting interactions we aim to provide a framework for using museum specimens to explore how some of the most diverse co evolved relationships are responding to climate and land use change,2018,0.136
"Altitudinal distribution of pollen, plants and biomes in the Cameroon highlands",pollenâ plantâ biome relationships have been studied from 48 new soil surface samples taken along an altitudinal gradient in the cameroon highlands in order to capture the major features of the tropical montane vegetation although our study is based on a relatively feeble number of samples due to difficulties to access natural landscapes in this area the main vegetation belts are accurately reconstructed comparison between pollen and plant distribution has been used to identify taxa characteristic of the mountain forest and to identify eventual bias due to pollen productivity and transport taking that into account we have shown that there is a potential for reliable biome reconstruction of the afromontane forest the upper and lower limits of which are correctly reconstructed our study fills the gap in reconstructing african biomes from pollen data thus providing elements to capture the vulnerability of afromontane ecosystems to climate changes,2018,0.369
Review on the use of Species Distribution Modeling as a tool for assessing climate change mediated extinction risk in Indian Squamate reptiles,global warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission is nowadays a well known fact it has been observed that reptiles like many other animals are adversely affected by climate change and some may went extinct towards end of 21st century this is also true for india which is very rich in herpetofauna especially squamate reptiles if these animals go extinct this will incur an irreversible damage to nature in order to identify species those are at higher risk from climate change species distribution modeling is one most practical and widely accepted method this can be used to predict distribution change in future and thus may help us to plan conservation strategies in advance here certain assumptions and methodological background is reviewed status of progress of research in india in this has also been reviewed which shows that there exists only one published study in india assessing climate change impact of reptiles and thus there remains ample research opportunity in the field,2018,0.626
Improving biodiversity monitoring using satellite remote sensing to provide solutions towards the 2020 conservation targets,the preservation of biodiversity has become a major challenge for sustainable development at national european natura 2000 and habitats directive and international levels convention on biological diversity 2011â 2020 to address the current conservation needs there is a need to operationalise methods to assess the distribution of natural resources while integrating information on habitat condition inform conservation planning and support the assessment of ecosystem services increased access to satellite imagery and new developments in data analyses can support progress towards biodiversity conservation targets by stepping up monitoring processes at various spatial and temporal scales satellite imagery is indeed increasingly being made accessible to all while analytical techniques to capitalise on the information contained in spatially explicit species data such as global biodiversity information facility gbif are constantly developing and offering a plurality of options for application free and open data policy is having a dramatic impact on our ability to understand how biodiversity is being affected by anthropogenic pressures leading to increased opportunities to predict the consequences of changes in drivers at different scales and plan for more efficient mitigation measures,2018,0.152
Zoological Collections of Germany,this book is devoted to the knowledge of up to 250 years of collecting organizing and preserving animals by generations of scientists zoological collections are a huge resource for modern animal research and should be available for national and international scientists and institutions as well as prospective public and private customers moreover these collections are an important part of the scientific enterprise supporting scientific research human health public education and the conservation of biodiversity much of what we are beginning to understand about our world we owe to the collection preservation and ongoing study of natural specimens properly preserved collections of marine or terrestrial animals are libraries of earth s history and vital to our ability to learn about our place in its future the approach employed by the editor involves not only an introduction to the topic but also an external view on german collections including an assessment of their value in the international and national context and information on the international and national collection networks particular attention is given to new approaches of sorting preserving and researching in zoological collections as well as their neglect and or threat in addition the book provides information on all big public research museums on important collections in regional country and local district museums and also on university collections this is a highly informative and carefully presented book providing scientific insight for readers with an interest in biodiversity taxonomy or evolution as well as natural history collections at large,2018,0.367
BacDive in 2019: bacterial phenotypic data for High-throughput biodiversity analysis,the bacterial metadatabase bacdive http bacdive dsmz de has become a comprehensive resource for structured data on the taxonomy morphology physiology cultivation isolation and molecular data of prokaryotes with its current release 7 2018 the database offers information for 63 669 bacterial and archaeal strains including 12 715 type strains during recent developments of bacdive the enrichment of information on existing strains was prioritized this has resulted in a 146 increase of database content over the past three years especially rich datasets were integrated from 4782 manual annotated species descriptions in the international journal of systematic and evolutionary microbiology which yielded standardized phenotypic data for 5468 type strains another important improvement of content was achieved through the mobilization of 8977 analytical profile index apiâ test results that constitute physiological data for the identification of 5237 strains bacdive offers a unique apiâ data collection with respect to size and diversity in addition data on fatty acid profiles and antibiotic susceptibility tests were integrated a revised graphical user interface and new search tools such as the apiâ test finder the taxplorer or the microbial isolation source search significantly improve the user experience,2018,0.415
Data Detectives - The Backlog Cataloguing Project at Auckland War Memorial Museum,the collection access and readiness programme carp is a unique well defined programme with committed funding at auckland war memorial museum awmm in the natural sciences department carp has funded the equivalent of five positions over five collecting areas for four years these are filled by six part time collection technicians and a senior full time manager as collection technicians our role across botany entomology geology marine and palaeontology is to digitise acquisitions prior to december 2012 we are processing the backlogs of our collections which are prioritised across all museum activities in distinct taxonomic projects the cataloguing method involves gathering and verifying all available information and entering data into vernon our collections management system https vernonsystems com products vernon cms with specifically designed record standards aligned to darwin core wieczorek et al 2012 carp has allowed us the freedom to explore backlog collections some of which have not been fully processed revealing mysteries that would otherwise have sat undiscovered and to resolve uncertainties across the collections for example in botany cataloguing the foreign ferns reveals previously unrealised type specimens in marine cataloguing all 9117 specimen lots of the new zealand bivalvia collection brought classification and locality data uncertainties to resolution there are multiple projects running concurrently in each collecting area continually enriching our collection data in turn this is opening up a far wider range of information to the public through our online collection portal awmm collections online http www aucklandmuseum com discover collections online currently 800 000 records open accessibility promotes careful consideration of how and what data we deliver as it is disseminated through global portals such as the global biodiversity information facility gbif and atlas of living australia ala collections that have often had no more attention than recording of their original labels have interesting stories beyond â œjustâ cataloguing them as cataloguers we have found that the uncertainties or sometimes apparent lack of detail increases our engagement with our collections rather than solely copying information into the database we become detectives resolving uncertainties and verifying the background of our objects collection sites and collectors this engagement and the global reach of our data mean that we are invested in the programme so that data entry continuity and accuracy are maximised our presentation will give an overview of the carp and our method and a look at our progress two years in highlighting some of our discoveries and how the uncertainty in our data allows us to engage more with our collections,2018,0.144
21st Century Biological Nomenclature—the Enduring Power of Names,nomenclature and taxonomy are complementary and distinct aspects of the study of biodiversity but the two are often confused even by biologists taxonomy is the part of the science of systematics that deals with identifying describing and categorizing organisms from species to higher taxa nomenclature is a system of giving names to organisms based on rules established for the process adoption of a system of binomial nomenclature by end of the 18th century helped standardize the process of naming the wealth of new organisms collected during the age of exploration but before the middle of the 19th century the turmoil resulting from differences in procedures and philosophies among practicing taxonomists necessitated the development of codes of nomenclature to regulate naming by the early 20th century codified sets of rules for the names of both plants and animals nowadays usually abbreviated as icbn botanical code and iczn zoological code were in place internationally these codes worked reasonably well through most of the 20th century under the aegis of various international bodies in part because procedures exist to bypass them when their provisions threaten nomenclatural stability they also inspired the development of other nomenclatural codes for specific groups of organisms like bacteria and alternatively the proposal of unified codes for all organisms the rapid development of electronic communications and various means of electronic publication at the end of the 20th century combined with what may be the advent of a new age of biological extinction resulted in pressure to revise the codes to allow at least some degree of electronic publication and speedier description of new taxa in the 21st century consistent and unambiguous names are the platforms on which biological research and conservation practices are built as we pursue the goals of documenting and conserving biodiversity for which a stable nomenclature is essential we must do so without restricting the freedom of the science of systematics,2018,0.14
Assessing the multi-scale predictive ability of ecosystem functional attributes for species distribution modelling,global environmental changes are rapidly affecting speciesâ distributions and habitat suitability worldwide requiring a continuous update of biodiversity status to support effective decisions on conservation policy and management in this regard satellite derived ecosystem functional attributes efas offer a more integrative and quicker evaluation of ecosystem responses to environmental drivers and changes than climate and structural or compositional landscape attributes thus efas may hold advantages as predictors in species distribution models sdms and for implementing multi scale species monitoring programs here we describe a modelling framework to assess the predictive ability of efas as essential biodiversity variables ebvs against traditional datasets climate land cover at several scales we test the framework with a multi scale assessment of habitat suitability for two plant species of conservation concern both protected under the eu habitats directive differing in terms of life history range and distribution pattern iris boissieri and taxus baccata we fitted four sets of sdms for the two test species calibrated with interpolated climate variables landscape variables efas and a combination of climate and landscape variables efa based models performed very well at the several scales aucmedian from 0 881â 0 072 to 0 983â 0 125 and similarly to traditional climate based models individually or in combination with land cover predictors aucmedian from 0 882â 0 059 to 0 995â 0 083 moreover efa based models identified additional suitable areas and provided valuable information on functional features of habitat suitability for both test species narrowly vs widely distributed for both coarse and fine scales our results suggest a relatively small scale dependence of the predictive ability of satellite derived efas supporting their use as meaningful ebvs in sdms from regional and broader scales to more local and finer scales since the evaluation of speciesâ conservation status and habitat quality should as far as possible be performed based on scalable indicators linking to meaningful processes our framework may guide conservation managers in decision making related to biodiversity monitoring and reporting schemes,2018,0.14
Invasion stages and potential distributions of seven exotic terrestrial isopods in Japan,evaluating potential distribution areas and limiting factors for the distribution of exotic species in invasive regions are essential to identify risks and protect the native ecosystem however less research has been conducted on the underground ecosystem than for above ground factors limiting the distributions of exotic terrestrial isopods have been identified and their invasive stages and potential distribution areas in japan evaluated a database of distribution data has been developed for 17 412 terrestrial isopod specimens in japan and two ecological niche models constructed using 19 bioclimatic variables the regional model was calculated using data from japan invasive region only whereas a combination of data from japan and north america invasive regions and europe native region was used to construct the global model the global model predicted that annual mean temperature and mean diurnal temperature range were the important limiting factors for most exotic isopods it was found that armadillidiumnasatum budde lund 1833 a vulgare latreille 1804 haplophthalmusdanicus budde lund 1880 porcelliolaevis latreille 1804 p scaber latreille 1804 and porcellionidespruinosus brandt 1833 were composed of stabilising and colonising populations which enabled prediction of the future spread of distribution areas for these species in japan porcelliodilatatus brandt 1833 was introduced in unstable environments and thus was found in fewer locations,2018,0.445
"Clinopodium serpyllifolium subsp. barbatum (Lamiaceae) and Datura ferox, (Solanaceae) new records for the flora of Egypt",clinopodium serpyllifolium subsp barbatum lamiaceae and i datura ferox solanaceae have been recorded for the first time from egypt both taxa were found in the mountainous region of saint katherine protected area south sinai morphological description and photos were given herbarium voucher was kept at related herbaria,2018,0.387
Risk analysis of alien grasses occurring in South Africa,alien grasses have caused major impacts in their introduced ranges including transforming natural ecosystems and reducing agricultural yields this is clearly of concern for south africa however alien grass impacts in south africa are largely unknown this makes prioritising them for management difficult in this thesis i investigated the negative environmental and socio economic impacts of 58 alien grasses occurring in south africa from 352 published literature sources the mechanisms through which they cause impacts and the magnitudes of those impacts across different habitats and regions through this assessment i ranked alien grasses based on their maximum recorded impact cortaderia sellonoana had the highest overall impact score followed by arundo donax avena fatua elymus repens and festuca arundinacea as with other plant groups alien grasses cause the most impacts through competition with native species 72 of species and agricultural crops 57 of species there was variation in impact magnitudes between regions and among habitat types however these differences were not statistically significant i also found no correlation between impacts recorded from elsewhere and those recorded in south africa i then looked at these impacts and risks in south africa using six alien paspalum species as a test case i used species distribution modelling to determine the extent of their potential distribution and a risk analysis framework to determine their overall risk in the country the species distribution models indicate that p dilatatum has higher relative occurrence rate in relation to other alien paspalum species in south africa and p nutans has the lowest relative occurrence rate the environmental variable which influenced the relative occurrence rate of most paspalum species was annual mean temperature and was the most contributing variable of three species p dilatatum p nutans and p urvillei temperature seasonality was the main environmental variable for p quadrifarium while the relative occurrence rate of p virgatum and p nutans was best predicted by annual precipitation the risk analyses show that p dilatatum p notatum and p quadrifarium have high risk with medium management feasibility and the other three p nutans p urvillei and p virgatum are low risk in south africa finally based on the results of the risk analysis and the distribution models i conducted a field assessment of the impacts of p quadrifarium on the local plant community i compared sites where p quadrifarium currently invades to those that had been invaded and subsequently cleared of the species and to those that had not been invaded i found that p quadrifarium altered the plant species composition and reduced their abundance i e it appears to impact plant communities through competition i also found no regrowth of p quadrifarium in the site where it was cleared mechanically by uprooting the whole plant however there was evidence of secondary invasions by other alien plants in the site highlighting the need for active restoration the results of this thesis are relevant for the management of alien grasses in south africa as they can be used to motivate for their prioritisation and regulation in the country,2018,0.985
Global spatial assessment of Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus: a scenario of Zika virus exposure,zika virus zikv is an arbovirus transmitted mainly by aedes aegypti mosquitoes recent scientific evidence on culex quinquefasciatus has suggested its potential as a vector for zikv which may change the current risk zones we aimed to quantify the world population potentially exposed to zikv in a spatially explicit way considering the primary vector a aegypti and the potential vector c quinquefasciatus our model combined species distribution modelling of mosquito species with spatially explicit human population data to estimate zikv exposure risk we estimated the potential global distribution of c quinquefasciatus and estimated its potential interaction zones with a aegypti then we evaluated the risk zones for zikv considering both vectors finally we quantified and compared the people under risk associated with each vector by risk level country and continent we found that c quinquefasciatus had a more temperate distribution until 42â in both hemispheres while the risk involving a aegypti is concentrated mainly in tropical latitudes until 35â in both hemispheres globally 4 2 billion people are under risk associated with zikv around 2 6 billon people are under very high risk associated with c quinquefasciatus and 1 billion people associated with a aegypti several countries could be exposed to zikv which emphasises the need to clarify the competence of c quinquefasciatus as a potential vector as soon as possible the models presented here represent a tool for risk management public health planning mosquito control and preventive actions especially to focus efforts on the most affected areas,2018,0.514
The Meruliaceae of Russia. II. Panus,the history of taxonomical study of the genus panus fr meruliaceae polyporales basidiomycota is considered a current revision of the genus in russia was carried out two species of the genus panus were recorded in various regions of russia panus conchatus bull fr and p lecomtei fr corner for p conchatus the lateral ecotype with conchiform pileus and rather dark wine red to lilac brown surface is more characteristic two main deviations from such a neutral type were described 1 the chromatic one characterized by light colored red or clay yellow usually conchiform pilei p conchatus var inconstans pers zmitr bondartseva perevedentseva myasnikov et kovalenko and 2 the growth one characterized by a central often bulbous stipe funnel shaped cap and strongly inrolled margin p conchatus var torulosus pers zmitr bondartseva perevedentseva myasnikov et kovalenko for p lecomtei the ecotype having small eccentric to lateral elegant stipe is considered however the stipe shape and size are variable the stipe can be either central â rather small with a bulbous base p lecomtei var semirudis singer zmitr bondartseva perevedentseva myasnikov et kovalenko or strongly elongated p lecomtei var stipitata malk zmitr bondartseva perevedentseva myasnikov et kovalenko four new combinations p conchatus var inconstans p conchatus var torulosus p lecomtei var semirudis and p lecomtei var stipitata were suggested it was concluded that panus represents rather well delimited genus belonging to merulioid phylogenetic radiation whose morphotype on essential features of its organization is trametoid but superficial habitual features make it closer to the lentinoid one its essential features are the abundance of fibrohyphae which form textura intricata slowly growing basidiocarps and strictly lamellate hymenophore apparently such an adaptive structure was generated at arid and warm climatic zones and only 2 species p conchatus and p lecomtei have been irradiated into temperate latitudes the substrate spectrum of these fungi is determined by their insensitivity to substrate moistening and best ability to colonize hardwood so the greatest number of their finds can be made on stumps and large remnants of stand formers of corresponding forest areas in russia a reliable association of panus species to betula spp and populus spp was revealed an ecotypic differentiation of the genus panus is related to the quality of substrate colonized the basidiocarps growing over top cuts of the stumps are characterized by strong central stipe p conchatus var torulosus p lecomtei var semirudis whereas basidiocarps with sublateral attachment are common on fallen logs certain chromatic adaptations p conchatus var inconstans are associated with an insolation regime of the habitat during last years the panus representatives have attracted an interest in biomedical research development their resource potential estimation should proceed from the fact that within russian territory such areas as middle belt of european russia north caucasus altai and other regions of southern siberia are promising for replenishing the strains of p conchatus and p lecomtei,2018,0.554
Utility and limitations of climate-matching approaches in detecting different types of spatial errors in biodiversity data,the increase of digitally available primary biodiversity data has been a positive result of sharing initiatives in the natural history museum community and among citizen scientists owing to the heterogeneity of sources however limitations related to data quality control emerge as incomplete and or erroneous information at different stages of input must be overcome to facilitate detection of spatial errors species distribution modelling sdm has been suggested but its efficiency in detection of different types of spatial errors has not been assessed we investigate the utility of sdm based assessments in detection of two types of spatial errors found in large biodiversity databases random errors versus errors of misidentification as congeneric taxa we used available distributional data for five closely related species of the tortoise beetle genus mesomphalia coleoptera chyrsomelidae cassidinae to test the suitability values associated with simulated erroneous points mimicking the two error types overall we observed that habitat suitability values associated with random outliers were lower than those for congeneric outliers fitting expectations based on the idea of niche conservatism also detecting outliers in small datasets is more challenging whereas in larger datasets the detection of random outliers should be more efficient our results indicate that sdm tools can be useful in detection of outliers more efficiently when erroneous points fall outside the ecological niche profile of the species as in the case of random typographical errors but not as effective with errors of misidentification this paper explores a potential tool to promote better assessment of the quality of biodiversity data,2018,0.425
Environmental Impact of Invasion by an African Grass (Echinochloa pyramidalis) on Tropical Wetlands: Using Functional Differences as a Control Strategy,tropical wetlands are commonly used for cattle ranching and have been modified either by draining them or introducing non native species that are palatable to cattle some of these introduced species have become wetland and dune invaders in mexico the introduction of antelope grass echinochloa pyramidalis and its effects are being documented this grass species is highly appreciated by cattle ranchers and is invading natural wetlands it has c4 photosynthesis high biomass production and high vegetative propagation is tolerant to grazing and able to grow in both flooded and dry conditions it is reducing plant biodiversity by increasing its own aerial coverage changing wetland hydrology reducing faunal habitat and causing soil physicochemical changes e g vertical accretion reducing its dominance and increasing the density of native wetland species is difficult expensive and time consuming we began a restoration project in a coastal wetland in central veracruz gulf of mexico which included using shade to control the invader this strategy reduced e pyramidalis cover and increased the cover of native species highlighting the importance of understanding the functional differences between native and invasive species when developing strategies for the control and eradication of problematic species,2018,0.837
Habitat suitability estimated by niche models is largely unrelated to species abundance,aim data on species occurrences are far more common than data on species abundances however a central goal of largeâ scale ecology is to understand the spatial distribution of abundance it has been proposed that species distribution models trained on species occurrence records may capture variation in species abundance here we gauge support for relationships between species abundance and predicted climatic suitability from species distribution models and relate the slope of this relationship to species traits evolutionary relationships and sampling completeness location usa time period 1658â 2017 major taxa studied mammal and tree species methods results to explore the generality of abundanceâ suitability relationships we trained species distribution models on species occurrence and species abundance data for 246 mammal species and 158 tree species and related modelâ predicted occurrence probabilities to population abundance predictions further we related the resulting abundanceâ suitability relationship coefficients to species traits geographic range sizes evolutionary relationships and the number of occurrence records to investigate a potential trait or sampling basis for abundanceâ suitability relationship detectability we found little evidence for consistent abundanceâ suitability relationships in mammal urn x wiley 1466822x media geb12820 geb12820 math 0001 045 or tree urn x wiley 1466822x media geb12820 geb12820 math 0002 ∠005 species finding nearly as many negative and positive relationships these relationships had little explanatory power and coefficients were unrelated to species traits range size or evolutionary relationships main conclusions our findings suggest that species climatic suitability based on occurrence data may not be reflected in species abundances suggesting a need to investigate nonclimatic sources of species abundance variation,2018,1
Creating individual accessible area hypotheses improves stacked species distribution model performance,aim stacked species distribution models sdms are an important step towards estimating species richness but frequently overpredict this metric and therefore erroneously predict which species comprise a given community we test the idea that developing hypotheses about accessible area a priori can greatly improve model performance by integrating dispersal ability via accessible area into sdm creation we address an often overlooked facet of ecological niche modelling innovation by limiting the training and transference areas to theoretically accessible areas we are creating more accurate sdms on the basis of a taxon s explorable environments this limitation of space and environment is a more accurate reflection of a taxon s true dispersal properties and more accurately reflects the geographical and environmental space to which a taxon is exposed here we compare the predictive performance of stacked sdms derived from spatially constrained and unconstrained training areas main conclusions restricting a speciesâ training and transference areas to a theoretically accessible area greatly improves model performance stacked sdms drawn from spatially restricted training areas predicted species richness and community composition more accurately than non restricted stacked sdms these accessible area based restrictions mimic true dispersal barriers to species and limit training areas to the suite of environments to those which a species is exposed to in nature furthermore these restrictions serve to â clipâ predictions in geographical space thus removing overpredictions in adjacent geographical regions where the species is known to be absent,2018,0.579
"Taxonomy of the ant genus Carebara Westwood (Formicidae, Myrmicinae) in the Malagasy Region",the genus carebara is revised for the malagasy region and based on the examination of over 10 000 specimens twenty three species are recognized twenty one of these are described as new c bara sp n c berivelo sp n c betsi sp n c creolei sp n c demeter sp n c dota sp n c hainteny sp n c hiragasy sp n c jajoby sp n c kabosy sp n c lova sp n c mahafaly sp n c malagasy sp n c omasi sp n c placida sp n c raberi sp n c salegi sp n c sampi sp n c tana sp n c tanana sp n c vazimba sp n and two are redescribed c grandidieri forel c voeltzkowi forel n syn and c nosindambo forel a lectotype is designated for c nosindambo c creolei sp n is known only from mauritius and seychelles c grandidieri forel is distributed in comoros madagascar and mayotte and the other twenty one species are endemic to madagascar most of the carebara species recorded in this work are endemic to a specific habitat ecoregion but some of them c bara sp n c grandidieri forel c jajoby sp n c kabosy sp n and c nosindambo forel are widespread within madagascar across all major habitats the worker caste of carebara can be differentiated from other genera in the myrmicinae subfamily by the presence of the following combination of characters antennae of eight to eleven segments with a two segmented club anterior clypeal margin without central isolated seta rarely present in some species or specimens and usually with four distinct setae mandibles with four to seven teeth except in one species from ghana c crigensis with three teeth and palp formula 2 2 or 1 2 we report that almost all carebara species found in the malagasy region have intermediates distinct forms in the major worker subcaste with the largest major workers showing remnants of queen flight sclerites and ocelli the widespread presence of intermediates in the major worker subcaste expands the morphological boundaries of carebara we present an overview of the natural history of carebara in the malagasy region an illustrated key for the identification of the known malagasy species of carebara as well as high resolution images and distribution maps unique identifiers are used for all specimens studied including type material and the raw data that forms the basis of this study are available on www antweb org open access,2018,0.999
A jungle tale: Molecular phylogeny and divergence time estimates of the Desmopsis - Stenanona clade (Annonaceae) in Mesoamerica,the predominantly asian tribe miliuseae annonaceae includes over 37 neotropical species that are mainly distributed across mesoamerica from southern mexico to northern colombia the tremendous ecological and morphological diversity of this clade including ramiflory cauliflory flagelliflory and clonality suggests adaptive radiation despite the spectacular phenotypic divergence of this clade little is known about its phylogenetic and evolutionary history in this study we used a nuclear dna marker and seven chloroplast markers and maximum parsimony maximum likelihood and bayesian inference methods to reconstruct a comprehensive time calibrated phylogeny of tribe miliuseae especially focusing on the desmopsis stenanona clade we also perform ancestral area reconstructions to infer the biogeographic history of this group finally we use ecological niche modeling lineage distribution models and niche overlap tests to assess whether geographic isolation and ecological specialization influenced the diversification of lineages within this clade we reconstructed a monophyletic miliuseae that is divided into two strongly supported clades i a sapranthus tridimeris clade and ii a desmopsis stenanona clade the colonization of the neotropics and subsequent diversification of neotropical miliuseae seems to have been associated with the expansion of the boreotropical forests during the late eocene and their subsequent fragmentation and southern displacement further speciation within neotropical miliuseae out of the maya block seems to have occurred during the last 15 million years lastly the geographic structuring of major lineages of the desmopsis stenanona clade seems to have followed a climatic gradient supporting the hypothesis that morphological differentiation between closely related species resulted from both long term isolation between geographic ranges and adaptation to environmental conditions,2018,0.688
Important areas for the conservation of the European Roller Coracias garrulus during the non-breeding season in southern Africa,the identification of threats to migratory species of conservation concern and the relevance of protected areas for them is often biased towards breeding areas the european roller coracias garrulus is a long distance migrant experiencing a pronounced decline throughout its breeding range which has been attributed to the degradation of open agricultural habitats however its conservation status in non breeding areas in africa remains unstudied land cover change is a major threat affecting migratory birds in their wintering grounds therefore identifying important areas for their protection at this stage is a priority here we used occurrence data during the wintering season and ecological niche models to identify key land cover and areas used by rollers in africa first we used 33 filtered locations from six satellite tracked birds breeding in spain to describe suitable wintering areas for the spanish population westernmost part of the eurasian breeding range we also used 1 167 occurrence data in southern africa from open access databases and bird atlases to characterise the overall wintering range of the species the spanish population occupied a relatively small area in the north western part of southern africa and a narrow range of land covers open grassland less steep areas and those with sparse tree cover are correlated with suitability in all 18 06 of suitable wintering areas for the spanish population overlapped with protected areas the overall population of rollers occupied a wider area and range of land cover tree cover was the most important variable affecting suitability with areas without tree cover being the least suitable we found that 9 58 of suitable wintering areas for the overall population overlapped with protected areas our results suggest that rollers from different origins breeding populations use separate but overlapping wintering areas and may have different habitat requirements and therefore population specific conservation strategies in these areas might be needed to fully protect the species,2018,0.848
Is local trait variation related to total range size of tropical trees?,the reasons why the range size of closely related species often varies significantly have intrigued scientists for many years among other hypotheses species with high trait variation were suggested to occupy more diverse environments have more continuity in their distributions and consequently have larger range sizes here using 34 tree species of lowlands tropical rainforest in southern costa rica we explored whether inherent trait variability expressed at the local scale in functional traits is related to the speciesâ total geographical range size we formed 17 congeneric pairs of one narrow endemic and one widespread species sampled 335 individuals and measured eight functional traits leaf area leaf thickness leaf dry matter content specific leaf area leaf nitrogen content leaf phosphorus content leaf nitrogen to phosphorus ratio and wood specific gravity we tested whether there are significant differences in the locally expressed variation of individual traits or in multidimensional trait variance between the species in congeneric pairs and whether speciesâ range size could hence be predicted from local trait variability however we could not find such differences between widely distributed and narrow range species we discuss the possible reasons for these findings including the fact that higher trait variability of widespread species may result from successive local adaptations during range expansion and may hence often be an effect rather than the cause of larger ranges,2018,0.858
"The stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) of the Talladega Mountain region, Alabama, USA: distribution, elevation, endemism, and rarity patterns",background the talladega mountain region of eastern alabama is the southernmost outlier of the ancient appalachian mountains including the highest peaks and ranges in the state collections of stoneflies plecoptera previously here have been sporadic yet has led to several new species descriptions in modern times james 1974 james 1976 stark and szczytko 1976 kondratieff and kirchner 1996 szczytko and kondratieff 2015 and expanded our understanding of southeastern us stoneflies during the period 2003â 2012 we conducted an intensive inventory of the stonefly fauna of the talladega mountain region we collected across all months from 192 unique localities covering a broad range of stream sizes and elevation gradients present in the region new information a total of 57 confirmed species across eight of the nine nearctic families were collected as adults table 4 including four species described as new during the study period table 2 leuctra crossi james 1974 was easily the most common species collected median elevations per species ranged from 174 m clioperla clio newman 1839 to 410 m leuctra triloba claassen 1923 fig 3 dot distribution maps were included for all 57 species plus one for undetermined nymphs of pteronarcys newman 1838 figs 4â 19 as many as seven species may be endemic to the region but sampling efforts northeastward into georgia plus additional focused sampling in alabama and a comprehensive examination of all available material held in museums and personal collections are needed for confirmation,2018,0.98
Increase in CO 2 concentration could alter the response of Hedera helix to climate change,increasing co2 concentration co2 is likely to affect future species distributions in interaction with other climate change drivers however current modeling approaches still seldom consider interactions between climatic factors and the importance of these interactions therefore remains mostly unexplored here we combined dendrochronological and modeling approaches to study the interactive effects of increasing co2 and temperature on the distribution of one of the main european liana species hedera helix we combined a classical continentâ wide species distribution modeling approach with a case study using h helix and quercus cerris tree rings where we explored the longâ term influence of a variety of climate drivers including increasing co2 and their interactions on secondary growth finally we explored how our findings could influence the model predictions climateâ only model predictions showed a small decrease in habitat suitability for h helix in europe however this was accompanied by a strong shift in the distribution toward the north and east our growth ring data suggested that h helix can benefit from high co2 under warm conditions more than its tree hosts which showed a weaker response to co2 coupled with higher cavitation risk under high temperature increasing co2 might therefore offset the negative effects of high temperatures on h helix and we illustrate how this might translate into maintenance of h helix in warmer areas our results highlight the need to consider carbon fertilization and interactions between climate variables in ecological modeling combining dendrochronological analyses with spatial distribution modeling may provide opportunities to refine predictions of how climate change will affect species distributions,2018,0.278
Putting your Finger upon the Simplest Data,over the past decades digitization endeavors across many institutions holding natural history collections nhcs have multiplied with three broad aims first to facilitate collection management by moving existing analog catalogues into digital form second to efficiently document and inventory specimens in collections including imaging them as taxonomical surrogates and third to enable discovery of and access to the resulting collection data nhcs contain a unique wealth of potential knowledge in the form of primary biodiversity data records pbr at its most basic level the â œwhat where and whenâ of occurrences of the specimens in the collections but as t s eliot famously said â œknowledge is invariably a matter of degreeâ for such data to be transformed into digitally accessible knowledge dak that is conducive to an understanding about how the natural world works release of digitized data the â œthis we knowâ is necessary at least two billion specimens are estimated to exist in nhcs already but only a small fraction can be considered properly dak most have either not been digitized yet or not released through a discovery facility digitizing is relatively costly as it often entails manually processing each specimen unit e g a herbarium sheet a pinned insect or a vial full of invertebrates how long could it take us to transform all nhcs into dak can we keep up with the natural growth in collections the global biodiversity information facility gbif has become the de facto main index of pbr both originated in nhcs or as field observations digitized nhc that are standards compliant and can be connected to or harvested by gbif effectively become dak i have examined gbif growth data looking for a pattern of dak generation i found that the rate of nhc based pbr accrual is remarkably constant the total dak shows a strongly linear growth as opposed to the exponential growth exhibited by cumulative observation data projecting the trend to the estimated holdings shoots the completion many decades ahead in addition digitized data appear to be taxonomically biased digitization efforts must therefore step up qualitatively in order to enable processing the backlog let alone newly acquired accessions within one generation among several possible solutions emerging industrial scale mass digitization techniques may help harnessing this otherwise daunting taskâ but thereâ s also a risk that dak becomes even more uneven across taxon groups because of the narrow application specificity of such techniques thus potentially biasing our knowledge of nature,2018,0.067
The importance of marginal population hotspots of cold-adapted species for research on climate change and conservation,areas hosting hotspots of low latitude marginal populations of cold adapted plant species could be key areas for understanding geographical attributes that result in refugia during climatic shifts as well as the conservation of genetic diversity in the face of climate change low latitude populations of cold adapted plants are important because they may harbour the combination of alleles that foster persistence in a warmer climate consequently identification of areas where arctic alpine circumpolar and circumboreal species reach the low latitude ends of their distribution will present a unique opportunity to uncover processes that shaped current biogeographical patterns as well as prepare for future scenarios here we identify 35 main marginal population hotspots 19 and 16 areas in north america and europe respectively of 183 plant taxa these hotspots represent areas where southern marginal populations of cold adapted species co occur the identification of hotspots was based on geographic overlap of southernmost locations of the target species in a 50 ã 50 km grid with a threshold of two species in a single grid cell or in two contiguous cells the analysis revealed that hotspots are in most cases located in the southern portion of major mountain chains however hotspots also occur in lowland areas at high latitudes fennoscandia alaska hudson bay which do not necessarily correspond to known cold or warm stage refugia e g alps rockies and sierra nevada both in california and spain apennines and the southern scandes maintain their hotspot status even with more stringent cut off thresholds 3 and 5 species per cell group from a conservation point of view our analysis reveals that only a small portion of the hotspots are currently included within protected areas we discuss the importance of marginal population hotspots to future research on climate change and finally outline how conservation strategies can capitalize on the knowledge gained from studying climate change effects on cold adapted plants,2018,0.886
Bur-chervil Anthriscus caucalis M. Bieb.(Apiaceae): potentially invasive species in forests,in poland anthriscus caucalis reaches the north eastern limit of its secondary geographical range in central europe and is declining archaeophyte in ruderal habitats however in recent years new localities of a caucalis were found in the north western and western poland in forest communities a high number of individuals of a caucalis in these localities suggests that it finds optimal growth conditions in these strongly eutrophic forests exhibiting an invasive potential in this habitat to compare the floristic composition and habitat conditions between ruderal and forest plant communities occupied by a caucalis in poland a total of 23 relevã s were collected for each vegetation plot median ellenbergâ s indicator values eiv were estimated in order to evaluate the environmental conditions the differences in eiv and floristic composition between the localities were analysed using the non metric multi dimensional scaling nmds in addition we examined the its1 5 8s its2 sequence variation for five individuals from four populations to analyse the association of particular genotype with ruderal or forest habitat the results showed that the specific configuration of environmental factors including moderate shade mild and stable thermal and moisture conditions as well as high concentration of nutrients in the soil is more important to a caucalis occurrence than the floristic composition of the plant communities therefore we hypothesize that the vanishing of a caucalis in the ruderal habitats is a response to the currently observed increase of the extreme weather events likely it finds more suitable and stable microclimate conditions in the forest areas the results of the molecular analyses revealed two ribotypes which occurred in both types of habitats the lack of correlation between genotype and habitat supports our conclusion from eiv analysis that the colonization of forests should be treated rather as a niche tracking than as an adaptive shift in habitat preference,2018,0.366
A global comparison of the climatic niches of urban and native tree populations,aim urban macroecology studies can provide important insights into the impacts of climate change and human intervention in ecosystems current theory predicts that urban trees are constrained by temperature in very cold climates but not in other climates here we predict the climatic niche variables of planted urban tree populations from the realized climatic niche of native populations and explore whether niches are constrained across all temperatures location global 182 cities across six continents time period urban tree data 1980â 2016 native tree data 1950â 2017 major taxa studied two hundred and three tree species methods we used urban tree inventory data and global biodiversity information facility occurrence data to compare the realized climatic niches of native and urban tree populations realized climatic niches are calculated by combining bioclimatic data with native tree and urban tree occurrence data regression is used to predict the climatic niche of urban tree populations from the climatic niche of native populations results the realized climatic niche of native tree populations was a good predictor of the realized climatic niche of urban tree populations although climatic niches are attenuated in urban populations urban tree niches were 38â 90 wider than native tree niches with the mean annual temperature niche breath of urban tree populations 3 3 â c 52 wider than native tree populations main conclusions urban trees are planted in climates that are outside the realized climatic niche of native populations temperature remains a strong filter on urban tree populations across the full temperature range temperature increases attributable to the combined effect of the urban heat island and global climate change are likely to have a substantial impact on urban tree populations around the globe this is particularly true for temperate cities where cold climate trees are planted near the upper limits of their realized temperature niches,2018,0.916
"Collecting citizen’s wildlife observations– experiences from two case studies in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany",a large variety of wildlife species are well adapted to urban life oliveira et al 2011 while some other species struggle with urbanization and are only occasionally found at the margins of a city rodewald and gehrt 2014 data on presence of wildlife in and around cities gives us important information about their ecological adaptation in relation to urbanization such data can serve as a baseline for management decisions for example â number of bird species in built up areaâ is included as an indicator to evaluate and monitor urban biodiversity conservation in the â city biodiversity indexâ a self assessment tool for cities chan et al 2014 however collecting data on wildlife species in urban areas is more challenging than in rural areas because of small property houses and restricted rights to enter those systematic sampling of wildlife species is often a lengthy and costly process here citizen science projects in association with citizen scientists can facilitate large quantities of data collection on urban wildlife across large areas in both cost effective and time effective way frigerio et al 2018 walter et al 2018,2018,0.85
The Ecological and Geographical Analysis and Modeling of Spatial Distribution of Zabrus Tenebrioides Goeze with the Help of Geoinformational Systems,the article with the help of the methods of geoinformation modeling determined the extent to which the conditions of different territories of the world are suitable for the habitat of zabrus tenebrioides according to climatic parameters the research is performed according to the data from 279 points obtained from our own collections the global biodiversity information facility database and literary sources with the usage of the maxent 3 4 1 program maps of the most probable areas of zabrus tenebrioides distribution were created and the contribution of each of the 19 bioclimatic parameters obtained from the open worldclim database was determined the factors that have the greatest influence on the spread of the zabrus tenebrioides are determined the analysis of the spatial distribution of the studied species was carried out on the basis of a raster of the sum of effective temperatures from the open geographic information system ogis database the main climatic factors affecting the distribution of zabrus tenebrioides are average annual air temperature average daily temperature amplitude for each month isothermality and standard deviation of temperatures maximum temperature of the warmest month and minimum temperature of the coldest month of the year according to the field research materials the life cycle of the zabrus tenebrioides in the conditions of the steppe zone of the chechen republic is described,2018,0.098
Dry stress decreases areas suitable for Neoleucinodes elegantalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) and affects its survival under climate predictions in South America,projections of climate change show some regions of the world getting warmer colder dryer or wetter consequently the effects of climate change on insect pests can alter the threat to agricultural systems as a result of changed climate areas can become more or less suitable for insect pests neoleucinodes elegantalis is one of the major pests of solanaceous crops in south america host plants for n elegantalis are widely present in south america however n elegantalis is absent from many regions in south america hence future climate effects on suitability for development and spread of n elegantalis in south america should be investigated due to these reasons we developed a model of the climate for n elegantalis using climex software for south america using a2 special report on emissions scenarios sres for 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 and using two models csiro mk3 0 and miroc h the results of both models indicate that areas in south america that are climatically suitable at the present time will become climatically unsuitable for n elegantalis by 2100 as a consequence of progressive increase of dry stress this was confirmed using developmental bioassays where survival was lowest at low relative humidity levels there are also altering areas that are currently unsuitable that become suitable in the future these results are helpful in developing future strategies to take advantage of new opportunities in solanaceous crops in regions that may be unsuitable for n elegantalis and provide important information for anticipated possible risks of infestation of n elegantalis,2018,0.086
"Molecular identification of coffee (Coffea arabica) pollinator insects in North Sumatra, Indonesia based on designed COI primers",coffee coffea arabica l is one of the most important economic commodities in the province of north sumatra indonesia insects associated with pollination of c arabica are one of the key factors for successful cultivation of c arabica but the research regarding of these was still limited the population of coffee plant is scattered across the highlands of indonesia and the pollination of c arabica is strongly believed linked to a diverse group of pollinating insects however lack of taxonomic identification of insects pollinating these plants has become one of constraints to succeed the cultivation of c arabica this study aimed to analyze types and variations of pollinating insects of c arabica in the province of north sumatra indonesia using dna barcoding dna barcoding is now considered an alternative method of molecular identification sixteen of c arabica flower visitors were captured in different planting location in north sumatra province using mtdna markers the cytochrome oxidase subunit sequence i coi about 12 pollinator insect species were identified based on the coi sequence i e amegilla cingulata apis dorsata apis cerana trigona chanchamayoensis idiella divisa dolichopodidae sp allactoneura sp stomorhina discolor phytomia erratica rhiniidae sp melipona bicolor and hymenoptera sp,2018,0.299
More than range exposure: Global otter vulnerability to climate change,climate change impact on species is commonly assessed by predicting species range change a measure of a species extrinsic exposure however this is only one dimension of species vulnerability to climate change spatial arrangement of suitable habitats e g fragmentation their degree of protection or human disturbance as well as species intrinsic sensitivity such as climatic tolerances are often neglected here we consider components of species intrinsic sensitivity to climate change climatic niche specialization and marginality together with components of extrinsic exposure changes in range extent fragmentation coverage of protected areas and human footprint to develop an integrated vulnerability index to climate change for world s freshwater otters as top freshwater predators otters are among the most vulnerable mammals with most species being threatened by habitat loss and degradation all dimensions of climate change exposure were based on present and future predictions of species distributions annual mean temperature mean diurnal temperature range mean temperature of the wettest quarter precipitation during the wettest quarter and precipitation seasonality prove the most important variables for otters all species are vulnerable to climate change with global vulnerability index ranging from ∠0 19 for lontra longicaudis to ∠36 9 for aonyx congicus however we found that for a given species climate change can have both positive and negative effects on different components of extrinsic exposure and that measures of species sensitivity are not necessarily congruent with measures of exposure for instance the range of all african species would be negatively affected by climate change but their different sensitivity offers a more hydrictis maculicollis aonyx capensis or less aonyx congicus pessimistic perspective on their ability to cope with climate change also highly sensitive species like the south american pteronura brasiliensis lontra provocax and lutra perspicillata might face no exposure to climate change for the asian lutra sumatrana climate change would instead lead to an increased less fragmented and more protected range extent but the range extent would also be shifted into areas with higher human disturbances our study represents a balanced example of how to develop an index aimed at comparatively evaluating vulnerability to climate change of different species by combining different aspects of sensitivity and exposure providing additional information on which to base more efficient conservation strategies,2018,0.994
2018 Environmental Performance Index Report,sustainable development has entered a new era of data driven environmental policymaking to meet the ambitious targets outlined in the united nations 2015 sustainable development goals sdgs and the paris climate agreement countries must integrate environmental performance metrics across a range of pollution control and natural resources targets a more empirical approach to environmental protection promises to make it easier to spot problems track trends highlight policy successes and failures identify best practices and optimize the gains from investments in environmental management the 2018 environmental performance index epi scores 180 countries on 24 performance indicators across ten issue categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality these metrics provide a gauge at a national scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals now in its tenth iteration policymakers scholars non governmental organizations and the media have relied upon the biennial release of the epi for policy insights and tracking of trends in sustainability the epi turns the latest advances in environmental science with worldwide datasets to form into a powerful summary of the state of sustainability around the world data must be organized and communicated to have a meaningful impact on the policy process debates about environmental challenges are often hampered by lack of problem definition uncertainty about the nature of these challenges and ill defined solutions gathering data into the epi helps to resolve these difficulties the epi serves as a communication tool for translating complex ideas into simpler more useful forms the single 0â 100 score for each country serves as a starting point for deeper discussions we invite government officials non governmental organizations and citizens all over the world to analyze the sub scores of the epi to discern which issues are holding back sustainability country scores on the epi are translated into rankings the epi rankings are intended to inspire countries to engage in healthy competition vying to rise to the top of their peer groups backcasting epi scores from historic data allows countries to track their progress over time in these ways the epi offers a number of insights that are useful for identifying best practices informing policy agendas and setting priorities in environmental governance,2018,0.11
"Modeling the predicted suitable habitat distribution of Javan hawk-eagle Nisaetus bartelsi in the Java Island, Indonesia",javan hawk eagle nisaetus bartelsi is an endemic raptor of java island the conservation status of javan hawk eagle jhe according to iucn is endangered en and included in cites appendix ii list and this species is also protected by the indonesian government law based on act no 5 year 1990 the position of javan hawk eagle as a top predator is now very threatened by habitat fragmentation wildlife trade and the declining quality of its habitat the primary purpose of this study was to give preliminary information about the distribution of predicted suitable habitat for jhe as a means of finding potential releasing sites as an evaluation for habitat protection and even as an option for the development of new jhe protected areas however mapping the spatial distribution of potential habitat for jhe using terrestrial survey is problematic because it requires enormous time fund and human resources the most possible approach is by using ecological niche modeling enm species distribution modeling sdm in this study modeling exercise was conducted by using a maximum entropy method as an adaptation from maxent software ver 3 4 1 with the utilization of jhe nest coordinate data and 16 environmental variables datasets as the main input the predicted suitable habitat distribution map has shown a good match with historical and present records of jhe and has fairly succeeded in capturing a wide range of habitat patches from tiny spots to quite large suitable habitat modeling results also showed that altitude annual mean temperature and two types of land cover closed shrub and forest area are considered to be most important variables affecting the distribution of potential habitat for jhe moreover about 17 77 23 209 km2 area of java island has been projected to be suitable for havan hawk eagle s habitat which mostly spread in mountainous areas while also appear in several lowland areas this study suggests the importance of topographic climatic and land cover as pivotal predictors in determining the suitability of habitat for jhe this study also shows that the modeling results have a good match with the historical records of jhe across the island which suggests the overall accuracy of the model,2018,0.384
Climate change increases ecogeographic isolation between closely related plants,1 ecogeographic isolation is a fundamental prezygotic barrier to reproduction and a step toward diversification in flowering plants however whether ecogeographic isolation acts as a reproductive barrier between species and thus as a mechanism for species divergence is unclear and is expected to change as species distributions shift under climate change 2 using a maxent framework we quantified the extent of ecogeographic isolation of nine closely related species of the european plant genus pulmonaria which lack preâ mating barriers and often form hybrids we investigated ecogeographic isolation under both current conditions and four climate change scenarios two unrelated future climate models each with two predictions of the potential trajectories of climate change 3 compared with current climates under these future climate scenarios there will be an increase in mean annual temperature but not in mean annual precipitation in the range of pulmonaria throughout europe this will result in a range contraction in three of the nine pulmonaria species a range expansion in two species and no clear effect of climate change on the ranges of four species 4 climate change will result in an overall increase in ecogeographic isolation between these species in future in particular species that have low ecogeographic isolation under current conditions are predicted to increase the most in their ecogeographic isolation under climate change 5 synthesis these results highlight that climate change can strongly impact on a major premating barrier of closely related species therefore potentially affect the evolutionary trajectory of plants in the future,2018,0.98
Mapping marine biomes of the world,there is no global map of marine biomes i e areas characterized by similar habitat forming plant life forms we defined five marine biomes seagrass kelp mangroves zooxanthellate corals and saltmarshes we mapped seagrass and kelp biomes using species distribution modeling maxent of species occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the united nations environment programme world conservation monitoring centre unep wcmc ocean data viewer environmental data layers were extracted from global marine environment datasets gmed and interpolated into 30 arc seconds resolution the resulting maxent model predicted a similar geographical distribution to the occurrence records in addition it mapped areas where previous maps lacked data and predicted seagrass occupies 1 646 788 km2 this map will be combined with maps of kelp coral and mangrove biomes to show the spatial extent of marine biomes for use in global carbon budgets and design marine protected area networks,2018,0.433
SEASONAL ACTIVITY AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF NECRODES LITTORALIS AND THANATOPHILUS RUGOSUS (COLEOPTERA: SILPHIDAE),carrion beetles are an important part of the decomposition processes in the ecosystems of the north hemisphere along with the flies they are the main consumers of dead animal tissues thus driving the nutrients from the carcass to other parts of the ecosystem these animals can also be used as bio indicators in forensic entomology where they help to identify the time of the death and post mortem body manipulation however for using the beetles in this manner it is essential to identify seasonal cycles in the life of these beetles and their spatial distribution this knowledge will allow the detection and explanation of anomalies in the composition of the fauna on a dead body or it can be used for testing dubious zoological records both our study subjects necrodes littoralis and thanatophilus rugosus are considered to be potentially useful indicators since they are frequent on carrions of large animals including humans however the information about their ecology is either limited or outright anecdotal and not backed up by real and unbiased data especially spatial distribution can be a subject to strong bias because collectors visit localities where the species has already been confirmed with higher probability than it would be expected at random furthermore the presence of roads human settlements or natural phenomena like rare or charismatic species can increase collectors activity and thus the probability of detecting the species to evaluate the seasonal activity and spatial distribution statistically we used data from several sources including museums and private collections to combine them into an extensive database only the data from the central european countries were used to avoid introducing local adaptation effects and clinal variability from the countries outside of our focal area maxent algorithm with environmental filtering was used to model the unbiased probabilistic occurrence of the two species the precision and accuracy of the model was tested on an independent dataset that was not used for modeling to reveal possible model overfit we believe that the results we present will allow for testing for anomalies in the occurrence of n littoralis and t rugosus thus enabling evaluation of dubious zoological records and be further used in forensic entomology,2018,0.878
Maxent modeling for predicting the potential geographical distribution of two peony species under climate change,paeonia paeoniaceae an economically important plant genus includes many popular ornamentals and medicinal plant species used in traditional chinese medicine little is known about the properties of the habitat distribution and the important eco environmental factors shaping the suitability based on high resolution environmental data for current and future climate scenarios we modeled the present and future suitable habitat for p delavayi and p rockii by maxent evaluated the importance of environmental factors in shaping their distribution and identified distribution shifts under climate change scenarios the results showed that the moderate and high suitable areas for p delavayi and p rockii encompassed ca 4 46 ã 105 km2 and 1 89 ã 105 km2 respectively temperature seasonality and isothermality were identified as the most critical factors shaping p delavayi distribution and uvb 4 and annual precipitation were identified as the most critical for shaping p rockii distribution under the scenario with a low concentration of greenhouse gas emissions rcp2 6 the range of both species increased as global warming intensified however under the scenario with higher concentrations of emissions rcp8 5 the suitable habitat range of p delavayi decreased while p rockii increased overall our prediction showed that a shift in distribution of suitable habitat to higher elevations would gradually become more significant the information gained from this study should provide a useful reference for implementing long term conservation and management strategies for these species,2018,0.439
"GET-IT, a software suite for easy, interoperable sharing of ecological data in the Long Term Ecological Research Network",the european network for long term ecological research lter europe http www lter europe net is a network of more than 400 ecological interest sites 1 on which researchers carry out decadal scale ecological investigations leading research institutions universities and governmental agencies manage the sites and produce long term ecological data which are planned with a long term view carefully considering data preservation along time storage of specimens locations of measurement sharing these data and related metadata can i improve the comparability of ecological data collected around the world ii foster their re use outside the research context iii augment existing data collections and verify research results 2,2018,0.084
Genomic data reject the hypothesis of sympatric ecological speciation in a clade of Desmognathus salamanders,closely related taxa with dissimilar morphologies are often considered to have diverged via natural selection favoring different phenotypes however some studies have found these scenarios to be paired with limited or no genetic differentiation desmognathus quadramaculatus and d marmoratus are sympatric salamander species thought to represent a case of ecological speciation based on distinct morphologies but the results of previous studies have not resolved corresponding patterns of lineage divergence here we use genomeâ wide data to test this hypothesis of ecological speciation population structure analyses partitioned individuals geographically but not morphologically into two adjacent regions of western north carolina pisgah and nantahala phylogenetic analyses confirmed the nominal species are nonmonophyletic and resolved deep divergence between the two geographic clusters modelâ testing overwhelmingly supported the hypothesis that lineage divergence followed geography finally ecological niche modeling showed that pisgah and nantahala individuals occupy different climatic niches and geographic boundaries for the two lineages correspond to differences in precipitation regimes across southern appalachia overall we reject the previous hypothesis of ecological speciation based on microhabitat partitioning instead our results suggest that there are two cryptic lineages each containing the same pair of morphotypes,2018,0.66
Using Open-Source Data in Correlative Species Distribution Modeling of Marine Species,open source data are information provided free online it is gaining popularity in science research especially for modeling species distribution maxent is an open source software that models using presence only data and environmental variables these variables can also be found online and are generally free using all of these open source data and tools makes species distribution modeling sdm more accessible with the rapid changes our planet is undergoing sdm helps understand future habitat suitability for species due to increasing interest in biogeographic research sdm has increased for marine species which were previously not commonly found in this modeling here we provide examples of where to obtain the data and how the modeling can be performed and taught,2018,0.735
Adapting the bioblitz to meet conservation needs,when conservation strategies require new field based information practitioners must find the best ways to rapidly deliver high quality survey data to address this challenge several rapid assessment approaches have been developed since the early 1990s these typically involve large areas take many months to complete and are not appropriate when conservation relevant survey data are quickly needed for a specific locale in contrast bioblitzes are designed to quickly collect site specific survey data while bioblitzes are commonly used to achieve educational or public engagement goals conservation practitioners are increasingly using a modified bioblitz approach to generate conservation relevant data while simultaneously enhancing research capacity and building working partnerships focused on conservation concerns we term these modified events â œexpert bioblitzesâ several expert bioblitzes have recently taken place on lands of conservation concern in southern california and have involved the collaborative efforts of government agencies non profit organizations botanic gardens museums and universities we document how expert bioblitz results directly informed on the ground conservation management and decision making increased capacity for rapid deployment of expert bioblitzes in the future and fostered collaboration and communication amongst taxonomically and institutionally diverse experts as research and conservation funding becomes increasingly scarce expert bioblitzes can play an increasingly important role in biodiversity conservation,2018,0.279
Distribution patterns of Sphagnum sect. Acutifolia species in the Eastern European Plain and Eastern Fennoscandia,distribution of 11 species of sphagnum from section acutifolia in the east european plain and eastern fennoscandia eepef is analysed area of each species was compiled using geostatistics methods within the range of each species the abundance zones determined on a six point scale are shown patterns of species distribution depending on changes in climatic factors were revealed with using the methods of multivariative analysis a map of species richness for the studied territory is drawn up and regularities of changes in the number of growing species are determined in connection with the change in climatic parameters eleven species of the section acutifolia are divided in two groups by their distribution pattern first group contains such species as s girgensohnii s russowii s capillifolium s warnstorfii s fuscum s rubellum and s fimbriatum widespread in eepef they grow in all vegetation zones except desert and semidesert zones and have maximal abundance in the west of the territory in boreal and hemiboreal zones second group includes s quinquefarium s subnitens s subfulvum and s molle the rarest species in eepef these species are distributed in boreal and hemiboreal zones only around the baltic sea and have low abundance elsewhere high moisture is nessesary for high species abundance for the group of widespread species values of precipitation amount must be not less than 600 mm per year and relative humidity â not less than 60 durining growing season through the zones of climatic optimum in the zones of climatic pessimum it might be various but not less than 450 mm and 50 respectively for the group of rare species annual precipitation must be not less then 600 mm and relative humidity during growing season â not less 70 through the whole range in addition to the climatic factors distribution of rare species is probably associated with areas of maximal distribution of peatlands and presence of glacial forms of relief within the zone of maximal spread of the last glaciation in these regions maximal species diversity is also observed,2018,0.999
Unlocking biodiversity data: Prioritization and filling the gaps in biodiversity observation data in Europe,large quantities of biodiversity data are required to assess the current status of species to identify drivers of population and distributional change and to predict changes to biodiversity under future scenarios nevertheless currently available data are often not well suited to these purposes to highlight existing gaps we assess the availability of species observation data in europe their geographic and temporal range and their quality we do so by reviewing the most relevant sources for european biodiversity observation data and identifying important barriers to filling gaps we suggest strategies tools and frameworks to continue to fill these gaps in addition to producing data suitable for generating essential biodiversity variables ebvs our review of data sources shows that only around a third of data providers provide unrestricted data access particularly large geographic gaps exist in eastern european countries and many datasets are not suitable for generating ebvs due to the absence of long term data we highlight examples built on recent experiences from large data integrators publishers and networks that help to efficiently improve data availability adopt open science principles and close existing data gaps future strategies must urgently consider the needs of relevant data stakeholders particularly science and policy related needs and provide incentives for data providers hence sustainable long term infrastructures and a european biodiversity network are needed to provide such efficient workflows incentives for data provision and tools,2018,0.204
A Case Study for Connecting Collections and Ecological Research,integration of ecological research and specimen collection has recently been a topic of focus in the literature i e morrison et al 2017 and within organizing groups such as integrated digitized biocollections idigbio pairing these two fields only stands to benefit biodiversity science as oneâ s weakness is the otherâ s strength for example ecological studies often lack the verifiable proof of the taxonomy of its subjects which is offered by voucher specimens conversely museum collections are often lacking detailed site descriptions or are completely disjointed from plot sampling datasets researchers at the denver botanic gardens are addressing this disconnect by conducting a case study that melds ecological plot sampling and floristic documentation we center our study design and methods around the objective of producing a deliverable data package in the form of a darwin core archive moreover our aim is to use the darwin core to its full potential ultimately publishing a package on the global biodiversity information facility gbif that includes extensive metadata voucher specimens genomic quality tissue samples plot sampling data in situ ex situ and habitat level images here i present an update on the ongoing field work our intentions any evaluation and the overall workflow of the process,2018,0.224
Variation in avian egg shape and nest structure is explained by climatic conditions,why are avian eggs ovoid while the eggs of most other vertebrates are symmetrical the interaction between an egg and its environment likely drives selection that will shape eggs across evolutionary time for example eggs incubated in hot arid regions face acute exposure to harsh climatic conditions relative to those in temperate zones and this exposure will differ across nest types with eggs in open nests being more exposed to direct solar radiation than those in enclosed nests we examined the idea that the geographical distribution of both egg shapes and nest types should reflect selective pressures of key environmental parameters such as ambient temperature and the drying capacity of air we took a comparative approach using 310 passerine species from australia many of which are found in some of the most extreme climates on earth we found that across the continent egg elongation decreases and the proportion of species with domed nests with roofs increases in hotter and drier areas with sparse plant canopies eggs are most spherical in open nests in the hottest environments and most elongate in domed nests in wetter shadier environments our findings suggest that climatic conditions played a key role in the evolution of passerine egg shape,2018,0.858
Revitalization of the University of Iowa's Bird Egg Collection after 100 Years of Dormancy,the university of iowa museum of natural history s egg collection spans many avian orders 6 continents and over 160 years however this collection of approximately 17 000 egg specimens has remained disorganized and underutilized for most of its history only in 2017 did the museum begin taking significant steps toward organizing the eggs cataloging them and making them and their data available for researchers like many museum egg collections ours is composed mostly of donated private collections originally collected purchased or traded between 1870 and 1910 and with variable amounts of data associated with individual specimens since the time the eggs were collected most of them have been separated from the cards on which collectors stored their data much of the current project revolves around reuniting eggs and data cards we have scanned over 2 000 egg cards crowdsourced transcriptions of the handwriting verified the accuracy of each transcription and added the scans and transcriptions to our database for easy access by museum staff and volunteers we are using the egg cards any data written on the eggs and many books and websites to match eggs with egg cards and integrate the data into our database the eggs are then placed in new cabinets and relabelled with newly generated database information each egg set will be photographed and georeferenced if possible using the geolocate web application at the end of this project these specimen records will be integrated into biodiversity repositories such as gbif global biodiversity information facility integrated digitized biocollections idigbio and vertnet so they can be downloaded and used by researchers globally as our bird mammal and insect collections already are most of the work is carried out by a team of volunteers and interns usually undergraduate students without whom this project would not be possible at its current pace,2018,0.815
Leapfrogging the Mexican highlands: influence of biogeographical and ecological factors on the diversification of highland species,in order to understand the processes that generate and maintain diversity it is important to disentangle the roles of ecology and geography in speciation we investigated the biogeographical and ecological factors that influenced the diversification of tree frogs genus sarcohyla in the mexican highlands a region with high levels of endemism using single nucleotide polymorphism data for 58 samples we found support for seven distinct genetic clusters within the sarcohyla bistincta species complex corresponding to sarcohyla calthula sarcohyla pentheter and five populations within s bistincta a species tree analysis using the multispecies coalescent model did not support the monophyly of the five s bistincta populations we used niche modelling to calculate the ecological overlap among lineages we found a degree of overlapping for most of the lineages suggesting that ecological differentiation did not play a key role in their genetic divergence speciation and population structure in the complex have been shaped primarily by geological events landscape modifications and climate changes during the pleistocene we discuss the relevance of genetic diversity for inferring the degree of species threats and recovery for conservation assessments,2018,0.725
"Genus Tetradium L.: a comprehensive review on traditional uses, phytochemistry, and pharmacological activities",ethnopharmacological relevance the dried fruit of tetradium ruticarpum is frequently utilized as a common traditional medicine in china japan and korea it has been widely used for the treatment of various diseases such as headache menorrhalgia dermatophytosis celialgia emesis and aphtha and so on aim of this review despite the wide biological activities of tetradium plants there is no current review summarizing medicinal properties of the genus of plants thus this review aims to systematically summarize studies on botanical characteristics traditional uses phytochemical ingredients quality control pharmacokinetics pharmacological activities and toxicity of tetradium species to demonstrate their therapeutic capacity materials and methods information and materials related to tetradium species were obtained from scientific databases such as google scholar wikipedia web of science pubmed sciencedirect acs publications scifinder information was also gathered from international plant names index global biodiversity information facility chinese pharmacopoeia and traditional chinese medicine classics etc all studies of this genus were included in this review until july 2018 results tetradium is widely assessed regarding its phytochemistry and biological activities approximately 131 chemical compounds including alkaloids saponins phenols and other compounds have been isolated from tetradium plants among these components alkaloid evodiamine is the most representative active ingredients of tetradium plants these compounds isolated from tetradium plants exhibit a wide range of biological activities in vitro and in vivo including antitumor antibacterial anti inflammatory insecticide cardioprotective and lipid lowering treating cns disorders digestive system regulation and endocrine system improving activities furthermore alkaloids could be used as markers for quality identification and evaluation of medicinal materials and their preparations information on evaluating the safety and pharmacokinetics of tetradium often focuses on the alkaloids thus further study and clinical data are required to enable the drug safety of the utilization of tetradium plants conclusions phytochemical and pharmacological studies of tetradium plants have proved tetradium plants are important medicinal herb resource however well designed randomized clinical trials are necessary to confirm the therapeutic benefits of this genus in clinical settings,2018,0
"Temporal shifts in a Xylaria assemblage (Ascomycota, Xylariaceae) resulting from management activities in a protected cloud forest",background and aims tropical montane cloud forest tmcf is one of the most threatened ecosystems worldwide natural protected areas npas have been established to prevent further loss of these forests in mexico to assess whether management activities temporally impact the biodiversity of npas the use of indicator groups such as some groups of macromycetes has been proposed the aim of this study was to assess the temporal shifts over the last 36 years in the alpha beta and gamma diversity of a xylaria assemblage in a npa of tmcf as a result of anthropogenic management activities methods collections were performed in a 31 ha npa of tmcf in xalapa veracruz mexico during three 10 year and one six year sampling periods 1980 2016 taking into account specimens deposited in the herbarium xal and collections performed by the authors mainly in the two latter periods species number and abundance compositional similarity species turnover and gamma diversity of assemblages were determined and compared among the sampling periods key results of 3480 individuals belonging to 30 xylaria species the most abundant species were x scruposa x anisopleura x berteroi x cubensis x feejeensis x albocinctoides and x arbuscula the inventory completeness was 99 9 species richness varied from six 1990 1999 to 28 species 2010 2016 jaccard index separated two assemblage clusters gamma diversity was more influenced by beta diversity than alpha diversity conclusions xylaria assemblages are a useful bioindicator group and monitoring them over time may provide information about the impacts of management on tmcf ecosystems temporal dynamics of these assemblages partly depend on the historically implemented management in the npa of tmcf effective conservation outcomes for tmcf will only be achieved if current management strategies are maintained and integrated into the long term management framework of npas containing tmcf,2018,0.651
Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program Strategic Plan: 2018-2021,the circumpolar biodiversity monitoring program cbmp is the biodiversity monitoring program of the conservation of arctic flora and fauna caff1 the biodiversity working group of the arctic council the cbmp coordinates collects and synthesizes existing monitoring data from the arctic states this strategic plan is intended to explain the overarching goals of the cbmp for the period 2018 2021 and to outline actions to deliver on those goals it will guide the management of the program and help ensure the programâ s continued relevance to the needs of the arctic states permanent participants scientific and arctic communities and other partners the cbmp plays a key role in supporting caffâ s mandate to address the conservation of arctic biodiversity communicate findings to the governments and residents of the arctic helping to promote practices that ensure the sustainability of the arcticâ s living resources the cbmp has been recognised by the arctic council and the un convention on biological diversity and is the official arctic biodiversity observation network of the group on earth observations biodiversity observation network geobon,2018,0.313
Bioclimatic assessment of abiotic factors affecting relative abundance and distribution of wheat stem sawfly (Hymenoptera: Cephidae) in western Canada,wheat stem sawfly cephus cinctus norton hymenoptera cephidae indigenous to north america quickly adapted from host native grasses to wheat crops triticum linnaeus poaceae with expansion of agriculture on the great plains of north america bioclimatic simulation tools such as climex predict the potential geographic distribution and establishment of insects in ecosystems based on climate the ecoclimatic index a measure of ecological suitability integrates potential population growth with stresses to produce estimates of relative abundance this simulation software was used to develop a bioclimate model for c cinctus in western canada results fostered a better understanding of how c cinctus responded to selected climate variables two general circulation models were then applied to assess the response of c cinctus populations to future climate relative to current climate predicted changes in c cinctus distribution and relative abundance were greatest for 2030 with a small further increase for 2070 across the prairies and boreal plains ecozones changes in ecoclimatic index were greater than in geographic distribution both general circulation models indicated most of this area would be categorised as very favourable this suggests that the potential for pest populations could expand into areas that do not currently experience economic losses associated with c cinctus,2018,0.284
Aggregated occurrence records of the federally endangered Poweshiek skipperling (Oarisma poweshiek),primary biodiversity data records that are open access and available in a standardised format are essential for conservation planning and research on policy relevant time scales we created a dataset to document all known occurrence data for the federally endangered poweshiek skipperling butterfly oarismapoweshiek parker 1870 lepidoptera hesperiidae the poweshiek skipperling was a historically common species in prairie systems across the upper midwest united states and manitoba canada rapid declines have reduced the number of verified extant sites to six aggregating and curating poweshiek skipperling occurrence records documents and preserves all known distributional data which can be used to address questions related to poweshiek skipperling conservation ecology and biogeography over 3500 occurrence records were aggregated over a temporal coverage from 1872 to present occurrence records were obtained from 37 data providers in the conservation and natural history collection community using both â œhumanobservationâ and â œpreservedspecimenâ as an acceptable basisofrecord data were obtained in different formats and with differing degrees of quality control during the data aggregation and cleaning process we transcribed specimen label data georeferenced occurrences adopted a controlled vocabulary removed duplicates and standardised formatting we examined the dataset for inconsistencies with known poweshiek skipperling biogeography and phenology and we verified or removed inconsistencies by working with the original data providers in total 12 occurrence records were removed because we identified them to be the western congener oarismagarita reakirt 1866 this resulting dataset enhances the permanency of poweshiek skipperling occurrence data in a standardised format,2018,0.397
Effects of Rufous-Backed Robin ( Turdus rufopalliatus ) on Brazilian Pepper-Tree ( Schinus terebinthifolius ) Seed Germination and Dispersal in a Subtropical Peri-Urban Environment,alien invasive species pose a major threat to socioecological systems worldwide native avian frugivores may enhance the dispersal and germination success of exotic plants introduced for ornamental motives in this study we investigated the role of the native rufous backed robin turdus rufopalliatus as a potential dispersal agent of the worldwide invasive brazilian pepper tree schinus terebinthifolius we evaluated gut transit time and mean retention time for birds feeding on this plant fruits and compared the germination rate and germination probability of intact fruits peeled seeds scarified seeds and seeds from bird fecal samples gut transit time varied from 1 26 to 13 65 min while mean retention time varied from 3 4 to 11 3 min germination rates differed between the intact seeds and the other three treatments however we found no differences among the germination rates of peeled scarified and defecated seeds we found no differences among the seed germination probabilities of all treatments using the survival analysis however intact seeds presented a lower germination probability few studies have evaluated the role of avian frugivoreâ s gut transit time mean retention time germination rate and germination probability on the seed germination of invasive plants this study indicates that a native fruit eating bird can play an important role dispersing the seeds of the brazilian pepper tree in an invasive range,2018,0.273
Data transparency regarding the implementation of European ‘no net loss’ biodiversity policies,â no net lossâ nnl conservation policies seek to address development impacts on biodiversity there have been no peer reviewed multinational assessments concerning the actual implementation of nnl policies to date such assessments would facilitate more informed debates on the validity of nnl for conservation but assessing implementation requires data here we explore data transparency concerning nnl implementation with four european countries providing a case study biodiversity offsets offsets are the most tangible outcome of nnl policy using an expert network to locate all offset datasets available within the public domain we collated information on offset projects implemented in france germany the netherlands and sweden implementation data for offsets were found to be non transparent but the degree of transparency varies widely by country we discuss barriers preventing data transparency â including a perceived lack of necessity lack of common protocols for collecting data and a lack of resources to do so for the data we collected we find that most offsets in europe are not within protected areas involve active restoration and compensate for infrastructure development the area occupied by european offsets is at least of the order 102 km2 transparent national nnl databases are essential for meeting good practice nnl principles but are not currently available in europe we discuss what such databases might require to support evaluation of nnl policy effectiveness by researchers the conservation community and policymakers,2018,0.331
Challenges For Implementing Collections Data Quality Feedback: synthesizing the community experience,much data quality dq feedback is now available to data providers from aggregators of collections specimen and related data similarly transcription centres and crowdsourcing platforms also provide data that must be assessed and often manipulated before uploading to a local database and subsequently published with aggregators in order to facilitate broader dq information use aggregators gbif ala idigbio vertnet and others through the tdwg bdq interest group are harmonizing the dq information provided transforming part of the dq feedback process but collections sharing data face challenges when trying to evaluate and integrate the information changes offered by aggregators for given records in local collection management systems and collection databases sharing dq integration experiences can help reveal risks and opportunities discovering others have the same conundrums helps develop a community of belonging and may assist in removing duplication of effort it is important to leverage the knowledge and experience of those who are currently validating data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the process documenting and classifying these challenges also facilitates motivation and community building by informing those who would tackle these challenges in this case talks from aggregators and data providers give all of us a chance to learn from their stories about implementing and integrating dq feedback following the symposium a special interest group sig at spnhc meeting offers everyone an opportunity to add their experiences with aggregator dq feedback see the sig meeting add your input to challenges for implementing collections data quality feedback synthesizing the community experience for details for tractable issues we plan to assemble and note the expected ways in which these barriers can be overcome where possible we can tap into existing community resources spnhc tdwg biology stackexchange com idigbio etc to help our data providers implement future data updates and track changes at the same time we plan to analyze the intractable issues documenting why they remain challenging and what if any potential solutions are available or likely to be available in the future this information provides future projects like dissco distributed system of scientific collections and bcon biodiversity collections network and others worldwide the information required to plan more effectively for cyber human infrastructure synthesizing this input helps visionaries better understand anticipate and support dq management and data mobilization efforts going forward by informing design of future proposals and global projects structured with these outcomes in mind at the end of the workshop we intend to publish our findings and merge them with the results of a global survey on the same topic,2018,0.024
Pollination in a new climate: Assessing the potential influence of flower temperature variation on insect pollinator behaviour,climate change has the potential to enhance or disrupt biological systems but currently little is known about how organism plasticity may facilitate adaptation to localised climate variation the bee flower relationship is an exemplar signal receiver system that may provide important insights into the complexity of ecological interactions in situations like this for example several studies on bee temperature preferences show that bees prefer to collect warm nectar from flowers at low ambient temperatures but switch their preferences to cooler flowers at ambient temperatures above about 30â c we used temperature sensor thermal probes to measure the temperature of outdoor flowers of 30 plant species in the southern regions of the australian mainland to understand how different species could modulate petal temperature in response to changes in ambient temperature and potentially influence the decision making of bees in the flowering plantâ s favour we found that flower petal temperatures respond in different ways to changing ambient temperature linearly increasing or decreasing relative to the ambient temperature dynamically changing in a non linear manner or varying their temperature along with the ambient conditions for example our investigation of the difference between ambient temperature and petal temperature î t and ambient temperature revealed a non linear relationship for erysimum linifolium and polygala grandiflora that seems suited to bee temperature preferences the temperature profiles of species like hibertia vestita and h obtusifolia appear to indicate that they do not have a cooling mechanism these species may therefore be less attractive to bee pollinators in changing climatic conditions with ambient temperatures increasingly above 30â c this may be to the speciesâ detriment when insect pollinator mediated selection is considered however we found no evidence that flower visual characteristics used by bees to identify flowers at close range such as colour or shape were straightforward modulators of floral temperature we could not identify any clear link to phylogenetic history and temperature modulation either mapping our test flower distribution on the australian continent however indicates a potential clustering that suggests different flower responses may constitute adaptations to local conditions our study proposes a framework for modelling the potential effects of climate change and floral temperature on flower pollination dynamics at local and global scales,2018,0.314
Flooding and soil composition determine beta diversity of lowland forests in Northern South America,beta diversity may be determined by dispersal limitation environment and phylogeographic history our objective was to advance the understanding of plant species turnover in rain forests in northern south america and determine which factors are affecting species beta diversity we evaluated the relative effect of environmental variables i e soil climate fragmentation and flooding frequency and dispersal limitation i e geographical distance and resistance distance due mountain barriers on tree beta diversity in 32 1 ha lowland forest plots we found that tree species turnover was better explained by environmental distance than by geographical distance although soil conditions and flooding regime were good predictors of tree species composition almost half of the variance remained unexplained in our study system the eastern andean ridge had no significant effect on plant beta diversity probably because of its young age in relation to the phylogeny our results provide support for the importance of environmental factors and suggest a more restricted role of dispersal limitation therefore we advise that conservation strategies of lowland trees should consider specific forest types e g seasonally flooded vs terra firme as well as piedmont vs central amazonian forests,2018,0.596
In Search of a Sustainable Model for Digital Heritage Repositories: A Case Study,a wide range of initiatives for developing research and data infrastructures have been funded in recent years there is a growing concern amongst the academic community to maintain the resources invested beyond the period of the original research funding if technical progress has been made to preserve the data themselves few thinking and operational solutions exist for the institutions that create disseminate curate and preserve the data how to ensure their existence over the medium or the long term this paper is a case study it addresses the sustainability issues faced by persã e a french platform dedicated to digitized documentary heritage that was launched in 2003 through this example the aim is to present in practical terms how an organization has to adapt and to change to sustain over time sustainability is a multi faceted concept with no agreement on its means for this paper we define sustainability as â œ a the continued operation of an organization that offers data collections and services b where operations relates to technology preservation users institutional relations business models and other facets c in the face of on going internal and external challenges which may or may not be resolved d where stakeholders recognize continuity in the mission data sources and value of the data repository e while keeping in mind that each of those elements might evolve over time in response to c â eschenfelder and shankar 2017,2018,0.095
"Developing forensic tools for an African timber: Regional origin is revealed by genetic characteristics, but not by isotopic signature",combatting illegal timber trade requires forensic tools that independently verify claimed geographic origin of timber chemical and genetic wood characteristics are potentially suitable tools but their performance at small spatial scales is unknown here we test whether stable isotopes and microsatellites can differentiate tali timber erythrophleum spp at the level of forest concessions we collected 394 wood samples from 134 individuals in five concessions in cameroon and congo republic the nearest neighbour concessions were 14 km apart and the furthest pair 836 km apart we constructed genetic profiles using eight nuclear microsatellite markers and measured concentrations of î 18o î 15n and î 13c we differentiated provenances using pca microsatellites anova and kernel discriminant analysis isotopes next we performed assignment tests using blind samples n 12 microsatellites and leave one out cross validation loocv isotopes isotopic composition varied strongly within concessions and only î 13c differed significantly between two concessions as a result loocv performed only marginally better than random genetic differentiation among provenances was also relatively low but private alleles were commonly found bayesian clustering analysis correctly assigned 92 of the blind samples including those of nearby concessions thus tali timber can be successfully assigned to the concession of origin using genetic markers but not using isotopic composition isotopic differentiation may be possible at larger spatial scales or with stronger climatic or topographic variation our study shows that genetic analyses can differentiate the geographic origin of tropical timber at the scale of forest concessions demonstrating their potential as forensic tools to enforce timber trade legislation,2018,0.549
"On the past and present status, and potential future value of the Rancho San Diego Golden Eagle nesting territory, located near the City of Jamul, San Diego County, California",as a resident of southern california and having studied golden eagles and other raptors in san diego county and adjacent counties extensively over the past 45 years i have observed the responses of raptor populations to various disruptive forces including encroaching development drought wildfire and human disturbance to name a few this letter presents my professional scientific opinion regarding the status of the rancho san diego golden eagle nesting territory located near jamul san diego county california the traditional nest site in this territory is located on san miguel mountain and was used regularly throughout the 20th century by nesting golden eagles with the resident pair successfully fledging young as recently as 2004 the territory was occupied by a pair of territorial adult eagles as recently as the 2007 breeding season in the fall of 2007 the area surrounding the main san miguel mountain nest site was burned in the harris fire and the supporting rock and nest collapsed in 2008 researchers also noted human disturbance on the hillside near the nest in the form of off road vehicles illegal immigrants and border patrol since the 2007 breeding season no territorial pair of eagles has been documented to occupy or breed in the territory though substantial recent usgs gsm transmitter documentation exists and adult and subadult eagles have been observed foraging in the adjacent proctor valley development has gradually encroached on this area over time with suburban homes now present less than one mile of the traditional nest site the stillundeveloped portion of proctor valley is present in the center of the rancho san diego territory and provides suitable foraging habitat for eagles though additional development such as otay ranch village 14 is proposed and threatens the viability of this territory as i endeavor to explain in this letter,2018,0.509
Slow and steady wins the race? Future climate and land use change leaves the imperiled Blanding's turtle ( Emydoidea blandingii ) behind,climate change is accompanied by shifts in species distributions as portions of current ranges become less suitable maintaining or improving landscape connectivity to facilitate species movements is a primary approach to mitigate the effects of climate change on biodiversity however it is not clear how ongoing changes in land use and climate may affect the existing connectivity of landscapes we evaluated shifts in habitat suitability and connectivity for the imperiled blanding s turtle emydoidea blandingii in wisconsin using species distribution modeling in combination with different future scenarios of both land use change and climate change for the 2050s we found that climate change had significant effects on both habitat suitability and connectivity however there was little difference in the magnitude of effects among different economic scenarios under both our low and high co2 emissions scenarios suitable habitat for the blanding s turtle shifted northward in the high emissions scenario almost no suitable habitat remained for blanding s turtle in wisconsin by the 2050s and there was up to a 100 000 fold increase in landscape resistance to turtle movement suggesting the landscape essentially becomes impassable habitat loss and landscape resistance were exponentially greater in southern versus northern wisconsin indicating a strong trailing edge effect thus populations at the southern edge of the range are likely to â œfall behindâ shifts in suitable habitat faster than northern populations given its limited dispersal capability loss of suitable habitat may occur at a rate far faster than the blanding s turtle can adjust to changing conditions via shifts in range,2018,0.635
"Biodiversity of the Sebangau tropical peat swamp forest, Indonesian Borneo",the importance of southeast asiaâ s tropical peat swamp forests for biodiversity is becoming increasingly recognised information on species presence within peatland areas is scant however limiting our ability to develop species conservation strategies and monitor responses to human activities we compile species presence records for the sebangau forest in indonesian borneo since 1993 and present the most complete bornean psf biodiversity inventory yet published including morpho species that are likely to represent true species this list comprises 215 tree 92 non tree flora 73 ant 66 butterfly 297 spider 41 dragon damselfly 55 fish 11 amphibian 46 reptile 172 bird and 65 mammal taxa of these 46 species are globally threatened and 59 are currently protected in indonesia 22 vertebrate species are borneo endemics because our sampling is both biased and incomplete the true number of species found at this site is likely to be much higher little is known about many of these taxa in sebangau and peat swamp forests elsewhere many of these species are considered forest dependent and the entire community is expected to be important for maintaining the resilience of the peat swamp forest ecosystem and the environmental services that it provides this highlights the need for urgent conservation of sebangau and its diverse biological community,2018,0.974
"Temperature exposure and possible thermoregulation strategies in the Titicaca water frog Telmatobius culeus, a fully aquatic frog of the High Andes",temperature has an important effect on amphibians influencing virtually all physiological systems thermoregulation is used to manage unfavourable thermal conditions but has been poorly studied in aquatic amphibians and no information is available for adult aquatic anurans we studied the temperatures to which the critically endangered and high andean fully aquatic titicaca water frog telmatobius culeus is exposed and investigated possible thermoregulation strategies of the species in the wild we measured water temperature in different seasons microhabitats and depths at which t culeus is most abundant we established transects to obtain population densities and activity patterns of the species during the day seasonal and daily temperature variations as well as temperature variations among depths and microhabitats were noted these variations were associated with densities of visible t culeus where adult densities were higher at depths with more stable temperatures t culeus behaviour associated with thermoregulation strategies in the aquatic habitat included depth selection and movement of individuals between different microhabitats selection of microhabitat depended on the temperature at a site and the hour of the day these results indicate possible behavioural thermoregulation strategies such as movement to different sites or basking used by a highly specialized amphibian and provide insights into how aquatic benthic organisms use strategies for thermoregulation in aquatic heterogeneous environments these strategies are probably also used by other aquatic organisms from the tropical andes knowledge of how these organisms respond to temperature could also help to understand the impact of global warming on their status,2018,0.614
"First record of eutonina Indicans (Romanes, 1876) from Kerala waters, India",the occurrence of eutonina indicans romanes 1876 a hydrozoan gelatinous zooplankton was recorded for the first time in the varapuzha backwaters of cochin kerala where it has been discovered inhabiting surface waters inventorying zooplanktonic diversity and distribution is significant as they form the basis of the pelagic food web based on monthly sampling in march 2017 two species of gelatinous zooplankton viz eutonina indicans and acromitus flagellatus were listed in the monitoring stations in the backwaters of cochin a brief description of the newly identified species along with ecological remarks is presented,2018,0.535
Chemical Composition of Essential Oil of Leaves from Lippia schaueriana Mart. Collected in the Caatinga Area,lippia schaueriana mart verbenaceae is an endemic species of caatinga with a restricted distribution to the states of bahia and pernambuco which presents itself as a potential source of raw material for extraction of essential oil and exploitation by the chemical and pharmaceutical industries considering that there are no reports in the literature of research carried out with this species this paper aimed to establishâ for the first timeâ the chemical composition of its essential oil the essential oil of the dry leaves at room temperature was obtained by hydrodistillation after 3 h of extraction and the phytochemical analyzes were done by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry gc ms the main compounds found in the oil of leaves were piperitone oxide 51 25 caryophyllene 17 76 limonene 8 06 spathulenol 6 63 and piperitone 2 90 the piperitone oxide is a compound described in the literature that shows antinociceptive cardiovascular analgesic and relaxing activities as well as fungicidal and insecticidal effect which gives it an interesting potential for the alternative control of agricultural pests,2018,0.305
Could enemy release explain invasion success of Sagittaria platyphylla in Australia and South Africa?,sagittaria platyphylla delta arrowhead is an emergent aquatic macrophyte native to southeastern united states of america that has been introduced into australia and south africa as an ornamental pond and aquarium plant compared to plants in the native range s platyphylla in the introduced range have greater reproductive capacity and form extensive infestations that dominate shallow waterbodies one explanation for the invasiveness success of s platyphylla in introduced countries is that plants are devoid of biotic pressures that would regulate population abundance in their native range the enemy release hypothesis we previously reported on field surveys that documented the number of pathogens and insect herbivores associated with s platyphylla in native and introduced ranges here we quantify the damage caused by these natural enemies to s platyphylla in the two ranges as predicted damage to plants caused by pathogens and insect herbivores was much greater in the native than the introduced range at both the plant and population level in introduced regions herbivory was low less than 10 in every plant part while in north america insect damage to fruiting heads was 46 of fruiting heads attacked damage to leaves was between 33 to 57 and internal herbivore damage to petioles and the inflorescence scapes was 56 and 43 respectively pathogen damage to leaves was between 39 to 57 of leaves per plant affected compared to 9 in australia and 8 in south africa this lack of biotic resistance from herbivores and disease may have facilitated s platyphylla invasion in australia and south africa,2018,0.183
Living on the edge: do central and marginal populations of plants differ in habitat suitability?,the performance of populations at the edge of specieâ s distribution range may differ substantially from central populations here we develop a modelling framework to estimate ecological niches i e climatic of four locally endangered plant species and measure the distance of marginal geographically populations to the speciesâ niche centroid in order to analyse whether marginal populations are outside of the optimal ecological niche of each species our results show that for three of the four studied species which have their populations located at the margins of their distribution ranges are also at the margins of their climate gradients these results would support the hypothesis that marginality within the set of habitable conditions i e ecological niche may represent an important determinant on performance of some plant populations as well as a plausible explanation to the degree of stagnancy or regression experienced by species in those regions where their populations are at the margin of their ecological niche and or they are restricted to microrefugia with ecological conditions very different from those around them finally this study aims to be a theoretical base from which to advance on including other types of factors e g biotic interactions topography human influence and population fluctuations through time which will allow for a better understanding of the complex network of factors that occur in marginal plant populations,2018,0.921
"Endemic birds of the Atlantic Forest: traits, conservation status, and patterns of biodiversity",the bird fauna of the brazilian atlantic forest is exceptionally diverse and threatened with high levels of endemism available lists of the endemic birds of the atlantic forest were generated before recent taxonomic revisions lumped or split species and before the recent increase in species occurrence records our objective therefore was to compile a new list of the endemic birds of the atlantic forest characterize these species in terms of conservation status and natural history traits and map remaining vegetation and protected areas we combined gis analysis with a literature search to compile a list of endemic species and based on the phylogeny and distribution of these species characterized areas in terms of species richness phylogenetic diversity and endemism we identified 223 species of birds endemic to the atlantic forest including 12 species not included in previous lists in addition 14 species included in previous lists were not considered endemic either because they occur outside the atlantic forest biome or because they are not considered valid species the typical atlantic forest endemic bird is a small forestâ dependent invertivore of the species on our list 31 are considered threatened or extinct only 34 of the spatial analysis units had 10 forest cover and protected area coverage was consistently low 1 in addition we found spatial incongruity among the different measures of biodiversity species richness relative phylogenetic diversity restrictedâ range species and irreplaceability each of these measures provides information concerning different aspects of biological diversity however regardless of which aspect s of biodiversity might be considered most important preservation of the remaining areas of remnant vegetation and further expansion of protected areas are essential if we are to conserve the many endemic species of birds in the atlantic forest,2018,0.998
Selecting for stable and productive families of Eucalyptus urophylla across a country-wide range of climates in Brazil,to identify stable and productive eucalyptus urophylla s t blake families across diverse climate zones in brazil we evaluated growth and survival of 322 open pollinated families derived from 13 genetically improved seed sources in 10 trials across the country survival and growth data were analyzed using linear mixed models and reml blup survival ranged from 51 to 92 and the mean annual increment varied from 19 to 46 m3â ha∠1â year∠1 although planted in suitable climatic zones some trials had low survival and or productivity conversely the highest productivity was recorded in a zone considered to be of low suitability these results show the importance of assessing the climatic requirements of eucalypts beyond those determined from analyses of their natural distribution especially when testing already improved seed sources a number of productive and stable families were identified based on analysis of the interaction between genotype and environment and from these 144 individuals were selected and had their genetic diversity estimated using 19 microsatellite dna markers the genetic diversity of these selected trees was equivalent to that observed in previous studies of natural populations of e urophylla indicating that breeding programs of e urophylla in brazil still retain high levels of diversity for sustainable genetic gains,2018,0.433
“An American near Rome” … and not only! Presence of the eastern cottontail in Central Italy and potential impacts on the endemic and vulnerable Apennine hare,the eastern cottontail sylvilagus floridanus has been introduced to italy for hunting purposes since the 1960s this species is currently present in northern italy with some small populations in central italy data for central italy are scanty but they deserve research attention because this lagomorph is responsible for the spread of disease to an endemic vulnerable species the apennine hare lepus corsicanus in this work we summarized the distribution of alien cottontails over 50 years after their first releases with special regard to areas where the endemic species is present eradication should be recommended where the alien species coexists with the endemic one,2018,0.827
"Wild native trees in tropical homegardens of Southeast Mexico: Fostered by fragmentation, mediated by management",tropical homegardens thgs are a model system for rural development that may reconcile food production with social resilience and biodiversity conservation particularly in rapidly changing landscapes this study quantified the sink function of thgs for wild native trees in relation to tree cover fragmentation garden management and household socio economics abundance richness and diversity of naturally established spared native trees were recorded for 59 rural thgs in southeast mexico along a gradient of tree cover fragmentation the majority of native species and individuals encountered in thgs had arrived naturally contrary to previous work both the abundance and diversity of spared native trees increased with tree cover fragmentation however this sink function was strongly mediated by the type of garden management lush multi layered gardens and gardens with few exotics and low labour input had more spared native trees of more species while simple structured gardens and gardens with high labour input and many exotic fruits had only few overall the results indicate that tree cover fragmentation determines which species come in and management determines how many of each stay our results clearly demonstrate that thgs are crucial sinks for wild native trees in deforested fragmented landscapes thgs are ubiquitous and could also be key sources for reforestation here we coin homegarden based natural regeneration as a new concept since garden management has a clear impact further research is needed as to how socio economic cultural and ecological functions of thgs can be optimised in different landscape contexts,2018,0.427
Assessing the potential impacts of a changing climate on the distribution of a rabies virus vector,common vampire bats desmodus rotundus occur throughout much of south america to northern mã xico vampire bats have not been documented in recent history in the united states but have been documented within about 50 km of the u s state of texas vampire bats feed regularly on the blood of mammals and can transmit rabies virus to native species and livestock causing impacts on the health of prey thus cattle producers wildlife management agencies and other stakeholders have expressed concerns about whether vampire bats might spread into the southern united states on the other hand concerns about vampire borne rabies can also result in wanton destruction at bat roosts in areas occupied by vampire bats but also in areas not known to be occupied by this species this can in turn negatively affect some bat roosts populations and species that are of conservation concern including vampire bats to better understand the current and possible future distribution of vampire bats in north america and help mitigate future cattle management problems we used 7 094 vampire bat occurrence records from north america and species distribution modeling sdm to map the potential distribution of vampire bats in north america under current and future climate change scenarios we analysed and mapped the potential distribution of this species using 5 approaches to species distribution modeling logistic regression multivariate adaptive regression splines boosted regression trees random forest and maximum entropy we then projected these models into 17 â œworst caseâ future climate scenarios for year 2070 to generate hypotheses about how the vampire bat distribution in north america might change in the future of the variables used in this analysis minimum temperature of the coldest month had the highest variable importance using all 5 sdm approaches these results suggest two potential near future routes of vampire bat dispersal into the u s one via southern texas and a second into southern florida some of our sdm models support the hypothesis that suitable habitat for vampire bats may currently exist in parts of the mã xicoâ u s borderlands including extreme southern portions of texas as well as in southern florida however this analysis also suggests that extensive expansion into the south eastern and south western u s over the coming 60 years appears unlikely,2018,0.939
Using insect natural history collections to study global change impacts: challenges and opportunities,over the past two decades natural history collections nhcs have played an increasingly prominent role in global change research but they have still greater potential especially for the most diverse group of animals on earth insects here we review the role of nhcs in advancing our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary responses of insects to recent global changes insect nhcs have helped document changes in insects geographical distributions phenology phenotypic and genotypic traits over time periods up to a century recent work demonstrates the enormous potential of nhcs data for examining insect responses at multiple temporal spatial and phylogenetic scales moving forward insect nhcs offer unique opportunities to examine the morphological chemical and genomic information in each specimen thus advancing our understanding of the processes underlying speciesâ ecological and evolutionary responses to rapid widespread global changes,2018,0.314
"Marine Biofouling Communities of Manila South Harbor, Philippines",an immersion experiment was conducted in the manila south harbor to document the development of sessile biofouling communities test panels were submerged below the sea surface in april 2012 for short one and three months and long term one year exposures in seawater then foauling types and occurrences were scored based on digital images of panel surfaces the short term immersed panels were found with significant cover of soft fouling undet slime and the invasive balanus amphibalanus amphitrite these also filled the long term immersed panels although some fell off due to mortality from crude oil smothering perna viridis native but also invasive successfully established and then dominated the fouling cover by the 12th month april 2013 oysters bryozoans watersipora sp colonial tunicates polychaetes hydroides sp and green algae contributed minor to fouling cover these fouling communities in the manila south harbor consisted of organisms that were cosmopolitan in port waters of se asia a similar study must be carried out in other major ports of the country and then compared,2018,0.322
Introduced bullfrog facilitates pathogen invasion in the western United States,batrachochytrium dendrobatidis bd a causal agent of the amphibian fungal skin disease chytridiomycosis has been implicated in the decline and extinction of over 200 species worldwide since the 1970s despite almost two decades of research the history of bd and its global spread is not well understood however the spread of the global panzootic lineage of bd bd gpl the lineage associated with amphibian die offs has been linked with the american bullfrog rana aqurana catesbeiana and global trade interestingly r catesbeiana is native to the eastern u s where no bd related declines have been observed despite bdâ s presence since the late 1800s in contrast bd has been found to have emerged in california and mexico in the 1960s and 1970s after which epizootics i e epidemics in wildlife ensued we hypothesize that bd gpl spread from the eastern u s with the introduction of r catesbeiana into the western us resulting in epizootics and declines of native host species using museum records we investigated the historical relationship between r catesbeiana and bd invasion in the western us and found that r catesbeiana arrived in the same year or prior to bd in most western watersheds that had data for both species suggesting that bd gpl may have originated in the eastern us and r catesbeiana may have facilitated bd invasion in the western us to predict areas with greatest suitability for bd we created a suitability model by integrating habitat suitability and host availability when we incorporated invasion history with high bd suitability we found that watersheds with non native r catesbeiana in the mountain ranges of the west coast have the highest disease risk these findings shed light on the invasion history and disease dynamics of bd in north america targeted historical surveys using archived specimens in natural history collections and present day field surveys along with more localized community level studies monitoring and surveillance are needed to further test this hypothesis and grow our understanding of the disease ecology and host pathogen dynamics of bd,2018,0.794
"Molecular phylogeny of Panicum s. str. (Poaceae, Panicoideae, Paniceae) and insights into its biogeography and evolution",panicum sensu stricto is a genus of grasses poaceae with nearly according to this study 163 species distributed worldwide this genus is included in the subtribe panicinae together with louisiella the latter with 2 species panicum and subtribe panicinae are characterized by including annual or perennial taxa with open and lax panicles and spikelets with the lower glume reduced all taxa also share a basic chromosome number of x 9 and a kranz leaf blade anatomy typical of the nad me subtype photosynthetic pathway nevertheless the phylogenetic placements of many panicum species and the circumscription of the genus remained untested therefore phylogenetic analyses were conducted using sequence data from the ndhf plastid region in an extensive worldwide sampling of panicum and related genera in order to infer evolutionary relationships and to provide a phylogenetic framework to review the classification of the genus diversification times historical biogeography and evolutionary patterns of the life history annual vs perennial in the subtribe and panicum were also studied results obtained provide strong support for a monophyletic panicum including 71 species and 7 sections of which sections arthragrostis and yakirra are new in the genus 7 new combinations are made here furthermore 32 species traditionally assigned to panicum were excluded from the genus and discussed in other subtribes of paniceae our study suggested that early diversification in subtribe panicinae and panicum occurred through the early mid miocene in the neotropics while the subsequent diversification of its sections mainly occurred in the late miocene pleistocene involving multiple dispersals to all continents our analyses also showed that transition rates and changes between annual and perennial life history in panicum were quite frequent suggesting considerable lability of this trait changes of the life history together with c4 photosynthesis and the multiple dispersal events since the mid miocene seem to have facilitated a widespread distribution of the genus all these findings contribute to a better understanding of the systematics and evolution of panicum,2018,0.675
"Distribution of Bufotes latastii (Boulenger, 1882), endemic to the Western Himalaya",the distribution of bufotes latastii a diploid green toad species is analyzed based on field observations and literature data 74 localities are known although 7 ones should be confirmed the range of b latastii is confined to northern pakistan kashmir valley and western ladakh in india all records of â œgreen toadsâ â œbufo viridisâ beyond this region belong to other species both to green toads of the genus bufotes or to toads of the genus duttaphrynus b latastii is endemic to the western himalaya its allopatric range lies between those of bisexual triploid green toads in the west and in the east b latastii was found at altitudes from 780 to 3200 m above sea level environmental niche modelling was applied to predict the potential distribution range of the species altitude was the variable with the highest percent contribution for the explanation of the species distribution 36,2018,0.754
Better late than never: a synthesis of strategic land retirement and restoration in California,strategic retirement and restoration of agricultural lands is a critical conservation opportunity globally the objective of this synthesis was to examine whether ecological habitat assessments endangered species historical occurrence data and restoration research can be used to develop evidenceâ based strategy for retiring and restoring agricultural lands the san joaquin desert sjd of california is a prominent example because it experienced an extensive conversion to agriculture now new groundwater regulations will lead to retirement on large areas of agricultural lands over the next 20 yr this presents an opportunity to not only restore some of these lands but also explore the challenges associated with balancing direct human needs with other ecosystemâ level functions california is thus an ideal case study for globally rethinking contextâ specific singleâ case study solutions we used a systematic review and synthesis to address the following three main questions for habitat recovery of endangered species in the sjd 1 what are the habitat requirements for key endangered animal species in the region 2 is there historical evidence to support an assessment of suitable habitats for these species 3 what restoration techniques apply to these species using the web of science and other resources we reviewed over 1000 independent studies on this topic refined the evidence and selected a total of 266 relevant publications habitat requirements for each species were described but there was a critical need to examine quantitative thresholds for these factors to better evaluate habitat suitability of retired lands there was sufficient evidence of historical vegetation to model suitable habitats and design the physical restoration of retired lands direct interventions associated with restoration strategies have been infrequently tested sparse and diverse evidence associated with direct experimental manipulations is not uncommon in applied ecology and synthesis is an excellent tool for highlighting these gaps for future research to examine this review suggests that retired agricultural land is a viable asset for threatened and endangered species but to effectively advance restoration research and management direct tests of restoration techniques and an assessment of relative costs for interventions are needed for a given region,2018,0.362
The use and misuse of herbarium specimens in evaluating plant extinction risks,herbarium specimens provide verifiable and citable evidence of the occurrence of particular plants at particular points in space and time and are vital resources for assessing extinction risk in the tropics where plant diversity and threats to plants are greatest we reviewed approaches to assessing extinction risk in response to the convention on biological diversity s global strategy for plant conservation target 2 an assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species by 2020 we tested five alternative approaches using herbarium derived data for trees shrubs and herbs in five different plant groups from temperate and tropical regions all species were previously fully assessed for the iucn red list we found significant variation in the accuracy with which different approaches classified species as threatened or not threatened accuracy was highest for the machine learning model 90 but the least data intensive approach also performed well 82 despite concerns about spatial temporal and taxonomic biases and uncertainties in herbarium data when specimens represent the best available evidence for particular species their use as a basis for extinction risk assessment is appropriate necessary and urgent resourcing herbaria to maintain increase and disseminate their specimen data is essential to guide and focus conservation action,2018,0.391
EAGLE VIEW ON THE HABITAT DISTRIBUTION OF SNOW LEOPARDS (PANTHERA UNCIA) SPECIES,snow leopards panthera uncia inhabit the high mountainous regions and listed as endangered species by the iucnâ s red list version 3 1 in 2001 found in the harsh cold climate of highlands of afghanistan india bhutan china kazakhstan kyrgyzstan mongolia nepal pakistan russia uzbekistan and tajikistan the total global population of this big cat species is estimated to be around 4080 6590 they spread across an area of 2 million square km with most of them being found in china followed by mongolia and india the animal favors a rugged terrain interspersed with steep slopes ridges gullies rocky outcrops mostly an elevation of of 3000 4500m m,2018,0.666
Climate change impacts on the distribution of venomous snakes and snakebite risk in Mozambique,this paper aims to understand the impacts of global climate change gcc on the distribution of dangerous venomous snakes and snakebite risk in mozambique as a contribution to the enhancement of public health policies and snake conservation we modelled current and future distribution of all 13 dangerous snakes occurring in mozambique using ecological niche models to assess the likely impacts of climate change estimated as the difference between lost and gained climatic suitable area per species in addition we developed a normalized index of snakebite risk based on species diversity and species specific traits for each time slice we then superimposed our index to data on human population density to identify areas most prone to this burden our findings suggest considerable future reduction in climatically suitable area for nine out of 13 species with species experiencing a north south range shift and high rates of species turnover in northern mozambique we also found that gcc might alter the spatial patterns of snakebite risk in the country with considerable increase in the future affecting most areas in central and southern regions this finding suggests that gcc will be harmful to venomous snakes in mozambique with potentially adverse effects on public health as gcc might induce the approximation of snake climatic suitable areas to highly populated areas efforts are needed to increase human knowledge of snakebite prevention measures and increase awareness of the relative safety and attacking behaviour associated with some of the snakes studied here ensuring reduction in snakebites and improving species conservation,2018,0.842
"Late Oligocene Fissistigma (Annonaceae) leaves from Guangxi, low-latitude China and its paleoecological implications",fissistigma nanningense sp nov annonaceae is described based on well preserved mummified leaves from the oligocene yongning formation of nanning guangxi southern china they are characterized by retuse apex a swollen petiole eucamptodromous to simple brochidodromous secondary veins percurrent tertiary veins an obvious sub vascular bundle and abundant oil cells the nearest living relative of f nanningense is considered to be fissistigma glaucescens based on both qualitative morphological comparisons and the principal component analysis the climbing habit of this genus indicates that a multilayered structure must have existed in the oligocene forest of guangxi moreover according to the variation of leaf morphology in f glaucescens under different environment analogically the present fossil leaves possessing small size and retuse apex indicate that they might grow in a sparse forest or and under the nutrient poor conditions,2018,0.283
"Sustainable Biodiversity Databasing: International, Collaborative, Dynamic, Centralised",the world register of marine species worms is a sustainable model of international collaboration around a centralised database that provides expert validated biodiversity data freely online this model could be replicated for the over 1 2 million terrestrial and freshwater species to improve quality control and data management in biology and ecology globally,2018,0.346
How the Central American Seaway and an Ancient Northern Passage Affected Flatfish Diversification,while the natural history of flatfish has been debated for decades the mode of diversification of this biologically and economically important group has never been elucidated to address this question we assembled the largest molecular data set to date covering 300 species out of ca 800 extant from 13 of the 14 known families over nine genes and employed relaxed molecular clocks to uncover their patterns of diversification as the fossil record of flatfish is contentious we used sister species distributed on both sides of the american continent to calibrate clock models based on the closure of the central american seaway cas and on their current species range we show that flatfish diversified in two bouts as species that are today distributed around the equator diverged during the closure of cas whereas those with a northern range diverged after this hereby suggesting the existence of a postcas closure dispersal for these northern species most likely along a trans arctic northern route a hypothesis fully compatible with paleogeographic reconstructions,2018,0.798
Hotspots of seabirds and marine mammals between New Zealand and the Ross Gyre: importance of hydrographic features,this article is part of our long term study on the quantitative at sea distribution of the marine â œupper trophic levelsâ â seabirds and marine mammalsâ in polar ecosystems aiming at quantifying the factors influencing their distribution as well as detecting possible spatial and temporal changes with special attention to hydrography and to global climate changes during an expedition of icebreaking rv polarstern in february 2010 along the northâ south transect between new zealand and the ross gyre off the ross sea 3200 seabirds belonging to 22 identified pelagic species were recorded during 338 half hour transect counts four major hotspots were identified these were in sub tropical water off new zealand up to 300 birds per count and at the main southern ocean fronts the sub antarctic front up to 240 per count the antarctic front up to 150 per count and the polar front up to 200 per count representing the vast majority of recorded seabirds the most numerous species in the three frontal zones were prionsâ mainly slender billed pachyptila belcheriâ and salvinâ s albatross thalassarche cauta salvini the eight more abundant species represented 2650 birds i e more than 80 of the total a random forest clustering method identified four groups of seabird species occupying similar oceanographic niches,2018,0.574
Potential Effects of Future Climate Changes on Brazilian Cool-Adapted Stoneflies (Insecta: Plecoptera),the continuous pursuit of welfare and economic development through the exploitation of natural resources by human societies consequently resulted in the ongoing process of climate change changes in the distribution of species towards the planetâ s poles and mountain tops are some of the expected to biological consequences of this process here we assessed the potential effects of future climate change on four cool adapted gripopterygidae insecta plecoptera species gripopteryx garbei navã s 1936 g cancellata pictet 1841 tupiperla gracilis burmeister 1839 and t tessellata brauer 1866 from southeastern brazilian atlantic forest as species adapted to cold conditions in the future scenarios of climate change we expected these organisms to shrink change their distributions ranges towards areas with suitable climatic conditions in southern brazilian regions when compared with their predicted distributions in present climatic conditions we used seven principal components derived from 19 environmental variables from worldclim database for the present scenario and also seven principal components obtained from 17 different atmosphere ocean global circulation models aogcms considering the most severe emission scenario for green house gases to predict the speciesâ distributions depending on the climatic scenario considered there were polewards distribution range changes of the species additionally we also observed an important decrease in the amount of protected modeled range for the species in the future scenarios considering that this brazilian region may become hotter in the future and have its precipitation regime changed as observed in the severe 2013â 2014 drought we believe these species adapted to high altitudes will be severely threatened in the future,2018,0.582
The large-scale impact of offshore wind farm structures on pelagic primary productivity in the southern North Sea,the increasing demand for renewable energy is projected to result in a 40 fold increase in offshore wind electricity in the european union by 2030 despite a great number of local impact studies for selected marine populations the regional ecosystem impacts of offshore wind farm owf structures are not yet well assessed nor understood our study investigates whether the accumulation of epifauna dominated by the filter feeder mytilus edulis blue mussel on turbine structures affects pelagic primary productivity and ecosystem functioning in the southern north sea we estimate the anthropogenically increased potential distribution based on the current projections of turbine locations and reported patterns of m edulis settlement this distribution is integrated through the modular coupling system for shelves and coasts to state of the art hydrodynamic and ecosystem models our simulations reveal non negligible potential changes in regional annual primary productivity of up to 8 within the owf area and induced maximal increases of the same magnitude in daily productivity also far from the wind farms our setup and modular coupling are effective tools for system scale studies of other environmental changes arising from large scale offshore wind farming such as ocean physics and distributions of pelagic top predators,2018,0.124
Using Open Source Geographic Data to Model Ancient Resource Distributions,the increasing availability of open access georeferenced datasets is creating exciting opportunities for researchers in a variety of fields here we discuss how several open access datasets have been combined in order to reconstruct the types of vegetation found in the environs of three key neolithic sites located in the konya plain turkey this region is a pivotal landscape in the neolithic of the near east and was selected as one of the seshat projectâ s initial world sample 30 the konya plain is predominantly known to archaeologists as the home of the world heritage site of ã atalhã yã k a vast settlement occupied for several thousand years and subject to intensive excavations by james mellaart in the 1960s and ian hodder from the 1990s to the present day however ã atalhã yã k is not the only significant early holocene site in the region indeed we can trace an apparently local transition from hunter gathering to crop management through the three sites of pinarbaåÿä boncuklu and ã atalhã yã k figure 1 at the epipalaeolithic site of pinarbaåÿä the archaeological evidence points to a hunter gatherer way of life for the inhabitants of the site subsisting on wild resources in contrast at the nearby site of boncuklu the occupantsâ diet seems to be comprised of largely wild resources supplemented with some wild crop progenitors and domesticated resources finally at ã atalhã yã k we see evidence for a developed system of crop management with extensive field systems and crop management practices,2018,0.573
Contrasting responses of stomatal conductance and photosynthetic capacity to warming and elevated CO2 in the tropical tree species Alchornea glandulosa under heatwave conditions,factorial experiments of combined warming and elevated co2 are rarely performed but essential for our understanding of plant physiological responses to climate change studies of tropical species are particularly lacking hence we grew juvenile trees of alchornea glandulosa under conditions of elevated temperature 1 5 â c et and elevated co2 400ppm ec in a factorial open top chamber experiment we addressed three questions i to what extent does stomatal conductance gs reduce with et and ec treatments ii is there an interactive effect of et and ec on gs iii does reduced gs as a result of et and or ec cause an increase in leaf temperature iv do the photosynthetic temperature optima topt and temperature response of photosynthetic capacities vcmax jmax shift with higher growth temperatures the experiment was performed during an anomalously hot period including a heatwave during the acclimation period our key findings are that 1 the et treatment reduced gs more than the ec treatment 2 reduced gs caused an increase in leaf temperatures and 3 net photosynthesis and photosynthetic capacities showed very high temperature tolerances with no evidence for acclimation to the et treatment our results suggest that a glandulosa may be able to cope with increases in air temperatures however reductions in gs may cause higher leaf temperatures beyond those induced by an air temperature rise over the coming century,2018,0.215
"Museums, paleontology, and a biodiversity science-based approach",museum collections provide a tremendous wealth of data bearing on biogeography the fi eld that focuses on the study of the distribution of organisms in space and time biogeography is a discipline that played a fundamental role in the development of ideas on evolution in the nineteenth century and it still is a vibrant research area today one way that biogeography has remained vibrant is through the burgeoning area of biodiversity science there are many aspects of biodiversity science relevant to paleontology running the gamut from conservation paleobiology to ecosystem observations etc our especial focus here is on biodiversity science approaches involving the analysis of museum specimen records using mapping and analytical approaches such as the geographic information system gis and ecological niche modeling enm to quantify how climate change has caused and will continue to cause species to move across the face of the globe through time initial efforts considered extant taxa but now analyses of extinct taxa are becoming more commonplace these analyses of fossil taxa offer extensive opportunities to gain increased insight into biogeography and also macroevolution this contribution focuses specifi cally on approaches using fossil taxa and their associated museum specimen data such approaches have shown how invasive species have contributed to ancient biodiversity crises how species niches largely remain stable over geological time scales how it is predominately abiotic factors as opposed to competition that infl uence species distributions and determine species survival in the long term and fi nally how extant species that have been present in marine ecosystems for millions of years are now in grave peril due to impending climate changes projected to occur in the near term each of these discoveries will be highlighted in order to help show the value that museum collections of fossils continue to have in the twenty fi rst century,2018,0.734
New North American Records for the Old World Psyllid Heterotrioza chenopodii (Reuter) (Hemiptera: Psylloidea: Triozidae) with Biological Observations,the palearctic psyllid heterotrioza chenopodii reuter hemiptera psylloidea triozidae belongs to a complex of psyllids having plants in the amaranthaceae including the former chenopodiaceae as hosts geographic records for this introduced species in north america date from 1988 and include a number of coastal regions in eastern canada the northeastern u s inland virginia coastal british columbia california and wetland habitats near lincoln nebraska we updated north american records for h chenopodii to include inland washington and oregon southwestern idaho northcentral california western colorado and southern and central alberta psyllids were collected from atriplex micrantha amaranthaceae and unidentified atriplex species and from yellow sticky cards that had been placed in potato fields to monitor arthropod pests of potatoes traits of the adult psyllid fifth instar nymph and egg used in identifying specimens are summarized we provide the first photographs of the egg fifthinstar nymph and terminalia of the adult male psyllid rearing trials showed that h chenopodii developed on a micrantha a hortensis chenopodium album c berlandieri and garden beet beta vulgaris but failed to develop on amaranthus tricolor development was most rapid on the two atriplex species heterotrioza chenopodii has been shown in europe to exhibit photoperiod controlled dimorphism in wing size producing a long winged form in spring and summer and a short winged form in autumn we confirmed in rearing trials and by field collections that populations of h chenopodii from central washington state also exhibit this dimorphism short winged forms began replacing long winged forms in field populations between late august and early october,2018,0.908
"DICRANOCEPHALUS AGILIS (SCOPOLI)(HEMIPTERA, HETEROPTERA) AT SLAPTON SANDS",dicranocephalus agilis is a monophagous insect found on vegetated shingle and sand dunes in association with sea spurge e paralias it is distributed almost exclusively across coastal regions of south west england and wales nbn atlas 2017a and was first recorded at slapton sands in devon in august 2013 however the storms of 2013 2014 caused severe damage to this coastline with much of the vegetation being scoured from the beach this short article reports on a 5 year study of the known site of d agilis at slapton sands,2018,0.271
Phylogeny Based Biodiversity Data Queries,there is a large amount of publicly available biodiversity data from many different data sources when doing research one ideally interacts with biodiversity data programmatically so their work is reproducible the entry point to biodiversity data records is largely through taxonomic names or common names in some cases e g birds however many researchers have a phylogeny focused project meaning taxonomic names are not the ideal interface to biodiversity data ideally it would be simple to programmatically go from a phylogeny to biodiversity records through a phylogeny based query,2018,0.284
Most species are not limited by an Amazonian river postulated to be a border between endemism areas,at broad scales in the amazon it is often hypothesized that species distributions are limited by geographical barriers such as large rivers river barrier hypothesis this hypothesis has been used to explain the spatial distribution limits of species and to indicate endemism areas for several phylogenetic lineages we tested the ability of the river barrier hypothesis to explain patterns of species diversity and spatial distribution limits for 1952 easily detected species in 14 taxonomic groups that occur around the madeira river and our results indicate that the hypothesis that the madeira river is the border between endemism areas and explains much of the diversity found in the region is inappropriate for 99 of species this indicates that alternative hypotheses should be proposed to explain the limits of distributions of species around the madeira river as well as a revision of the criteria that are used to determine species endemism areas,2018,0.943
Lay mistletoes on the Yucatán Peninsula: post-glacial expansion and genetic differentiation of Psittacanthus mayanus (Loranthaceae),we evaluate phylogeographical patterns of psittacanthus mayanus loranthaceae a widely distributed mistletoe species on the yucatã n peninsula and chiapas using nuclear and plastid markers an analysis of phylogeographic population structure and demography and bayesian inference methods were conducted on p mayanus from 16 localities across the range of the species to assess the historical processes and changes through the pleistocene climatic cycles that may have affected the distribution and demographic history of the species the current potential distribution of the species was modelled using ecological niche modelling enm and projected onto the mid holocene mh last glacial maximum lgm and last inter glacial lig psittacanthus mayanus exhibited higher haplotype and nucleotide diversity in the southern part of its distribution than in the northern part two divergent lineages were revealed in the phylogenetic and phylogeographical analyses of ribotypes and haplotypes populations from the northern portion of the yucatã n peninsula probably experienced a recent population growth whereas populations from the southern portion of the peninsula and chiapas are marked by historical demographic stability and isolation approximate bayesian computation abc analyses strongly supported a scenario of post glacial population growth enm results indicate that the distribution of p mayanus expanded and was connected into the southern portion of the yucatã n peninsula during lgm conditions and colonized the northern portion of the peninsula and fragmented during mh conditions according to the abc and enm results the genetic differentiation of p mayanus may be linked to the effects of the glacial interglacial cycles and environmental factors in which populations of p mayanus expanded during the lgm into the petã n province currently covered with semideciduous tropical rain forest followed by northward expansion southwards contractions and post glacial colonization of the northernmost portion of the yucatã n province a region currently covered with seasonally dry tropical deciduous forest our results highlight the influence of pleistocene events in shaping the geographical distribution of genetic variation in neotropical lowland forest the phylogeographic and environmental patterns in p mayanus provide an opportunity to investigate further the evolution of mexican lowland forest biodiversity,2018,0.816
The Mt Halimun-Salak Malaise Trap project - releasing the most species rich DNA Barcode library for Indonesia,the indonesian archipelago features an extraordinarily rich biota however the actual taxonomic inventory of the archipelago remains highly incomplete and there is hardly any significant taxonomic activity that utilises recent technological advances the indobiosys project was established as a biodiversity information system aiming at amongst other goals creating inventories of the indonesian entomofauna using dna barcoding here we release the first large scale assessment of the megadiverse insect groups that occur in the mount halimun salak national park one of the largest tropical rain forest ecosystem in west java with a focus on hymenoptera coleoptera diptera and lepidoptera collected with malaise traps from september 2015 until april 2016 34 malaise traps were placed in different localities in the south eastern part of the halimun salak national park a total of 4 531 specimens were processed for dna barcoding and in total 2 382 individuals produced barcode compliant records representing 1 195 exclusive bins or putative species in 98 insect families a total of 1 149 bins were new to bold of 1 195 bins detected 804 bins were singletons and more than 90 of the bins incorporated less than five specimens the astonishing heterogeneity of bins as high as 1 1 exclusive bin per specimen of diptera successfully processed shows that the cost benefit relationship of the discovery of new species in those areas is very low in four genera of chalcidoidea a superfamily of the hymenoptera the number of discovered species was higher than the number of species known from indonesia suggesting that our samples contain many species that are new to science those numbers shows how fast molecular pipelines contribute substantially to the objective inventorying of the fauna giving us a good picture of how potentially diverse tropical areas might be,2018,0.955
Modelling hot spot areas for the invasive alien plant Elodea nuttallii in the EU,elodea nuttallii is an invasive plant widely distributed in many european freshwater habitats the species has been recently added to the list of invasive alien species of union concern european union eu regulation 1143 2014 we aim to investigate the speciesâ potential distribution across the eu to provide a scientific basis for preventing further spread to this end we generated a model based habitat suitability map for e nuttallii in the eu showing areas where the plant is most likely to establish and persist over time the maxent algorithm was used for implementing the map taking into account environmental information and the most updated geographically referenced data on the speciesâ occurrence the r package enmeval and extraction of occurrence data at two spatial scales were used to compensate for sampling bias and model overfitting our results suggest that most of the eu suitable areas for the establishment of e nuttallii are already occupied by the species still there are many non infested areas across the eu and considering the rapid spread of e nuttallii and the highly connected waterbodies in europe it is likely that these areas will be invaded in the near future among these several areas fall within sites of the natura 2000 protected network we suggest that these areas should receive conservation priority and early warning and rapid response mechanisms should be locally developed against new introductions of the species,2018,0.505
The influence of environmental factors on breeding system allocation at large spatial scales,plant breeding systems can vary widely among populations yet few studies have investigated abiotic factors contributing to variation across a broad geographic range here we investigate variation in reproductive traits of triodanis perfoliata campanulaceae a species that exhibits dimorphic cleistogamy a condition in which individual plants have both closed selfing cleistogamous cl and open selfing or outcrossing chasmogamous ch flowers ch production is theorized to be more costly because ch flowers have a larger exposed surface area and thus are more likely to lose more water than cl flowers we examine relationships between abiotic conditions temperature precipitation and soil characteristics and variation in breeding systems across fourteen widespread populations using ordinary least square models we found that a large proportion of breeding system variation was described by climate and soil variables r2 0 65 â 0 92 these results support the hypothesis that variation in the environment drives variation in breeding system allocation our broad geographic analyses provide a framework for mechanistic studies of cleistogamy and employ a novel approach for examining reproductive traits and environmental variation at large scales given that two major components of our models were temperature and precipitation our study further emphasizes the potential for ongoing climate change to alter plant breeding systems,2018,0.085
Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple,background enset ensete ventricosum musaceae is an african crop that currently provides the staple food for approx 20 million ethiopians whilst wild enset grows over much of east and southern africa and the genus extends across asia to china it has only ever been domesticated in the ethiopian highlands here smallholder farmers cultivate hundreds of landraces across diverse climatic and agroecological systems scope enset has several important food security traits it grows over a relatively wide range of conditions is somewhat drought tolerant and can be harvested at any time of the year over several years it provides an important dietary starch source as well as fibres medicines animal fodder roofing and packaging it stabilizes soils and microclimates and has significant cultural importance in contrast to the other cultivated species in the family musaceae banana enset has received relatively little research attention here we review and critically evaluate existing research outline available genomic and germplasm resources aspects of pathology and explore avenues for crop development conclusion enset is an underexploited starch crop with significant potential in ethiopia and beyond research is lacking in several key areas empirical studies on the efficacy of current agronomic practices the genetic diversity of landraces approaches to systematic breeding characterization of existing and emerging diseases adaptability to new ranges and land use change the projected impact of climate change conservation of crop wild relatives by products or co products or non starch uses and the enset microbiome we also highlight the limited availability of enset germplasm in living collections and seedbanks and the lack of knowledge of reproductive and germination biology needed to underpin future breeding by reviewing the current state of the art in enset research and identifying gaps and opportunities we hope to catalyse the development and sustainable exploitation of this neglected starch crop,2018,0.258
The Specialist Capuchin? Using Ecological Niche Models to Compare Niche Breadth in Mesoamerican Primates,the high degree of dietary breadth and flexibility in capuchins cebus and sapajus coupled with their advanced cognitive abilities is well documented owing to these characteristics capuchins may be considered highly adaptable generalists capable of occupying a wide range of habitats the panamanian white throated capuchin cebus capucinus imitator coexists with several other primate genera in mesoamerica some taxa such as the mantled howler monkey alouatta palliata and geoffroyâ s spider monkey ateles geoffroyi have broader geographic ranges than c imitator this may be due to historical biogeography e g earlier colonization of the region by ateles and alouatta or alternatively because some habitats may be less suitable for capuchins we investigated the latter hypothesis using ecological niche models enms to predict range extent based on climate and elevation as well as niche breadth our results suggest a narrow climate niche relative to the more wide ranging ateles geoffroyi as well as alouatta spp precipitation in the coldest quarter and temperature seasonality were the two most important climate variables for determining c imitator habitat suitability these findings may have implications for capuchinsâ ability to persist through environmental changes climate change and forest degradation and loss and warrant consideration in assessing their extinction risk,2018,0.51
Anthropogenic dispersion of selected germplasm creates a geographic mosaic of contrasting maternal lineages in Crescentia cujete from Mesoamerica,the modification of the genetic phenotypic composition of plant populations through artificial selection occurs both through time and space we analyzed the role of human dispersal on the geographic distribution of maternal lineages of crescentia cujete in mesoamerica we sampled 28 homegarden 224 individuals and 12 wild populations 159 individuals semi structured interviews provided information on the origin of cultivated trees six chloroplast microsatellites allowed for the identification of 21 haplotypes four of them exclusively in 83 of homegarden trees wild haplotypes from local c cujete and crescentia alata were found at low frequencies 17 under cultivation cultivated and wild haplotypes constituted two different haplogroups accordingly barriers to seed dispersal were detected among neighboring cultivated and wild populations recorded events of human dispersal of cuttings and seeds attaining up to 200 km agreed with homegardensâ lower diversity neiâ s h 0 55 dropping to 0 32 when excluding wild haplotypes wild populations displayed high diversity h 0 71 and isolation by distance in agreement with physiographic provinces our results support the native status of wild c cujete and a pre columbian introduction of cultivated lineages that generated a novel genetic mosaic superimposed on native maternal lineages the results reveal the active role of farmers in maintaining the identity of cultivated lineages through time while chloroplast capture from local congeners has increased the diversity of maternal lineages under cultivation additional data are needed on the origins of cultivated lineages but our results contribute new insights into tree domestication in this center of crop diversity,2018,0.979
AmphiNom: an amphibian systematics tool,large scale comparative and systematic studies rely on the seamless merging of multiple datasets however taxonomic nomenclature is constantly being revised making it problematic to combine data from different resources or different years of publication which use different synonyms this is certainly true for amphibians which have experienced a spike in taxonomic revisions in part as the result of the widespread use of dna barcoding to resolve cryptic species delimitation issues and large scale collaborative efforts to revise the entire amphibian tree the â amphibian species of the world online referenceâ asw is one of the most widely used and most regularly updated databases for amphibian taxonomy but existing r tools for querying synonyms such as â taxizeâ do not include this resource â amphinomâ is a tool suite written in the r programming language designed to facilitate batch querying amphibian species names against the asw database this facilitates the merging of datasets that use different nomenclature and its functionality is easily integrated into customizable r workflows moreover it allows direct querying of the asw website using r and straightforward reporting of summary information on current amphibian systematics,2018,0.556
Distribution of Prunus serotina Ehrh. in North America and Its Invasion in Europe,black cherry prunus serotina ehrh is a native north american plant species it includes five subspecies and is currently invasive in europe since pre hispanic times black cherry has been known and used by american inhabitants and its botanical use was reported in the 19th century the present study describes the taxonomic richness and taxonomic diversity of the species based on data from 554 taxonomically confirmed collection sites additionally 19 climatic parameters were used to estimate the current and future potential distribution patterns of black cherry applying a climate change model to north america and europe regions of northeast mexico northwestern mexico the great american basin and the mississippi river great lakes region in the usa are shown as areas where taxa of p serotina are present the potential distribution model of black cherry in north america shows a continuous pattern starting in the center of mexico and following both main mexican mountain ranges sierra madre oriental and sierra madre occidental the pattern extends following two different paths throughout northern mexico toward the rocky mountains and the appalachians in the usa based on the noaa ccm3 climatic change model decreased rainfall in wetlands will result in changes in future patterns in america when applied to europe our model shows more extensive regions and more accurately than previous estimations thus the current potential distribution of the species includes important areas in the western part of the continent the potential effect of climate change on p serotina distribution suggests new and wider areas of possible invasion of this species throughout the continent mainly in france germany and italy we suggest take into account the whole american taxa included in this species in the end to study its potential invasion in europe and establishing suitable control strategies,2018,0.69
Spatial Distribution Models,this document provides an introduction to species distribution modeling with r species distribution modeling sdm is also known under other names including climate envelope modeling habitat modeling and environmental or ecological niche modeling the aim of sdm is to estimate the similarity of the conditions at any site to the conditions at the locations of known occurrence and perhaps of non occurrence of a phenomenon a common application of this method is to predict species ranges with climate data as predictors,2018,0.506
"Spatial segregation between Chalceus guaporensis and Chalceus epakros (Osteichthyes: Characiformes) in the Madeira River, Amazon Basin",chalceus guaporensis is an endemic fish to the upper madeira river whereas c epakros is widespread in many rivers of the central and lower portions of the amazon basin middle and upper orinoco river basin the essequibo river in guyana and in the nanay river in northern peru according to literature both species do not occur in syntopy we carried out ichthyological surveys along the madeira river basin and its rapids and data on abundance diet and habitat use were obtained for both species chalceus guaporensis and c epakros are morphologically similar occupying floodplain habitats and exploiting similar food resources the former predominated upstream from the jirau fall whereas the latter had most of its abundance bellow the last fall of the madeira river both species co occurred along part of the rapids stretch and in the machado river but with strongly uneven abundances this pattern may have developed in the past by speciation regarding the presence of the falls while co occurrence of the two species seems to be regulated by competitive interactions or maintained by slight differences in environmental requirements nowadays the recent disruption of the madeira river by two run of river dams built in cascade submerged a large portion of the rapids stretch and substituted it by semi lenthic habitats created by the dam reservoirs together with the construction of a fish passage these environmental changes may allow the invasion of the upper reaches of the madeira river by c epakros and disturb the population of endemic c guaporensis,2018,0.856
Higher ploidy is associated with reduced range breadth in the Potentilleae tribe,premise of the study polyploids are predicted to have greater niche breadth and larger ranges than diploids because of higher ecological tolerances selfâ compatibility and increased genetic variation however empirical support for this prediction is mixed and most studies compare diploids and polyploids rather than accounting for quantitative variation in ploidy we test the prediction that species of higher ploidy have greater range breadth and abiotic breadth than those of lower ploidy methods we estimate range breadth latitudinal range altitudinal range and range size and abiotic breadth range in temperature precipitation and ultravioletâ b irradiance for 109 species in the potentilleae tribe of rosaceae we assess the contribution of ploidy to variation in range breadth while accounting for shared evolutionary history and time of species divergence using phylogenetic comparative methods key results ploidy varied widely among species from 2ã to 12ã phylogenetic relatedness explained little of the variation in ploidy range breadth and abiotic breadth transitions to higher ploidy were associated with reduced latitudinal and altitudinal ranges smaller overall range size and reduced abiotic breadth for temperature and uvâ b conclusions in contrast to predictions this study shows that transitions to higher ploidy are associated with reduced range size and abiotic breadth it also highlights the importance of considering continuous variation in ploidy when evaluating ecological correlates with ploidy we discuss how genome duplication may contribute to the observed negative relationship between ploidy and range breadth,2018,0.676
New deep Cheilostomata (Bryozoa) species from the Southwestern Atlantic: shedding light in the dark,the present paper reports on 22 bryozoan species collected from 25 localities on the southwestern atlantic continental shelf and slope by the instituto espaã ol de oceanografã a vessel rv miguel oliver 2008â 2010 two new genera amynaskolia n gen and biconcavus n gen and twenty new cheilostome species are described amastigia zigzag n sp membranicellaria balanyai n sp figularia dimorpha n sp biconcavus batmani n sp smittina acicularis n sp smittoidea granulosa n sp amynaskolia foramina n sp mawatarius avilae n sp mucropetraliella reticulata n sp ipsibuffonella umbonata n sp microporella gappai n sp fenestrulina curviscutum n sp fenestrulina multiflorum n sp malakosaria cecilioi n sp osthimosia incisa n sp spigaleos simplex n sp reteporella kuklinskii n sp reteporella maryae n sp reteporella taylori n sp orthoporidra nova n sp new taxonomic remarks are also included for two little known species melicerita atlantica busk 1884 and arachnopusia tubula hayward thorpe 1988 membranicellaria balanyai n sp mawatarius avilae n sp and ipsibuffonella umbonata n sp represent the third described species of their genera whereas spigaleos simplex n sp malakosaria cecilioi n sp and orthoporidra nova n sp are the fourth fifth and sixth described species of their genera respectively spigaleos celleporidae and arachnopusia tubula arachnopusiidae previously reported only from antarctica ipsibuffonella buffonellodidae reported from tropical and subtropical regions and mucropetraliella petraliidae all represent first records for the patagonian region expanding their geographic distributions northwards and southwards respectively these results highlight the importance of sampling the slope and deep waters of south american and antarctic margins and basins filling significant gaps in the knowledge of the biodiversity and biogeographic ranges of certain taxa in these unique and varied ecosystems,2018,0.995
Scientific reuse of open biodiversity information from national Living Atlases infrastructures: Using ALA4R for reproducible research studies,during the last few years a large number of countries have deployed national customized versions of the atlas of living australia ala https www ala org au which is a collaboratively developed open infrastructure for collecting and presenting biodiversity data nationally and for sharing it globally through gbif https gbif org,2018,0.351
Use of globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) to link herbarium specimen records to physical specimens,with the advent of the u s national science foundation s advancing digitization of biodiversity collections program and related worldwide digitization initiatives the rate of herbarium specimen digitization in the united states has expanded exponentially as the number of electronic herbarium records proliferates the importance of linking these records to the physical specimens they represent as well as to related records from other sources will intensify although a rich and diverse literature has developed over the past decade that addresses the use of specimen identifiers for facilitating linking across the internet few implementable guidelines or recommended practices for herbaria have been advanced here we review this literature with the express purpose of distilling a specific set of recommendations especially tailored to herbarium specimen digitization curation and management we argue that associating globally unique identifiers guids with physical herbarium specimens and including these identifiers in all electronic records about those specimens is essential to effective digital data curation we also address practical applications for ensuring these associations,2018,0.148
Post-glacial East Asian origin of the alpine shrub Phyllodoce aleutica (Ericaceae) in Beringia,aim the iceâ free area around the bering land bridge beringia has been noted as an important refugium of organisms preferring cold environments such as arcticâ alpine plants throughout the pleistocene climate oscillations although numerous phylogeographical studies have supported this refugium recent studies have challenged the idea of a homogeneous refugium in beringia we aim to examine a novel scenario of the postâ glacial colonization history of an alpine plant phyllodoce aleutica in beringia location the japanese archipelago the kamchatka peninsula the aleutian islands alaska method the rangeâ wide genetic structure of p aleutica was elucidated by sequencing 13 nuclear loci the phylogeographical history was inferred using modelâ based approaches based on coalescent simulations together with the potential distributions predicted by ecological niche modelling results bayesian clustering and phylogenetic networks revealed that p aleutica was divided into three geographically structured groups the main island of the japanese archipelago the northern island of the archipelago hokkaido and beringia including eastern hokkaido the demographic history underlying the genetic structure and the potential distributions at present and during last glacial maximum suggest that their divergence likely predated the last glacial period except for genetic admixture with the sister species phyllodoce glanduliflora populations in alaska exhibited lower genetic diversity than those in east asia and exclusively shared two widespread genotypes approximate bayesian computation showed that a demographic model postulating postâ glacial expansion into alaska fit better than alternative models main conclusions our study suggests that p aleutica in eastern beringia originated through postâ glacial colonization from east asia providing novel insight into the biogeographical history of alpine flora in beringia,2018,0.211
Refining area of occupancy to address the modifiable areal unit problem in ecology and conservation,the â modifiable areal unit problemâ is prevalent across many aspects of spatial analysis within ecology and conservation the problem is particularly manifest when calculating metrics for extinction risk estimation for example area of occupancy aoo although embedded into the international union for the conservation of nature iucn red list criteria aoo is often not used or is poorly applied here we evaluate new and existing methods for calculating aoo from occurrence records and present a method for determining the minimum aoo using a uniform grid we evaluate the grid cell shape grid origin and grid rotation with both realâ world and simulated data reviewing the effects on aoo values and possible impacts for species already assessed on the iucn red list we show that aoo can vary by up to 80 and a ratio of cells to points of 1 1 21 gives the maximum variation in the number of occupied cells these findings potentially impact 3 of existing species on the iucn red list as well as species not yet assessed we show that a new method that combines both grid rotation and moving grid origin gives fast robust and reproducible results and in the majority of cases achieves the minimum aoo as well as reporting minimum aoo we outline a confidence interval which should be incorporated into existing tools that support species risk assessment we also make further recommendations for reporting aoo and other areal measurements within ecology leading to more robust methods for future species risk assessment,2018,0.292
Bayesian spatio‐temporal reconstruction reveals rapid diversification and Pleistocene range expansion in the widespread columnar cactus Pilosocereus,aim pilosocereus is one of the richest and most widespread genera of columnar cacti extending from southâ west usa to southern brazil most species occur in the seasonally dry tropical forest biome but can also be found in xeric microhabitats inside woody savannas cerrado and moist forests brazilian atlantic forest the genus exhibits a highly disjunct distribution across the neotropics using a 90 complete speciesâ level phylogeny we reconstructed the spatioâ temporal evolution of pilosocereus to explore the historical factors behind the species richness of neotropical dry formations location south america mesoamerica caribbean southâ western north america taxon genus pilosocereus cactaceae cactoideae cereeae methods used plastid and nuclear dna sequences and bayesian inference to estimate phylogenetic relationships and lineage divergence times ancestral ranges were inferred within the pilosocereus subgenus pilosocereus s s clade using the dispersalâ extinctionâ cladogenesis model in a bayesian framework to account for parameter estimation uncertainty and the effect of geographical distance on dispersal rates results pilosocereus was recovered as polyphyletic with representatives of other cereeae nested within the pilosocereus subgenus pilosocereus s s clade originated around the plioceneâ pleistocene transition 2 7 ma probably within the caatinga seasonally dry tropical forest sdtf formation species divergences were dated in the middle and upper pleistocene often constrained to the same geographic region but also associated to migration events to other xeric habitats in mesoamerica and northern south america dispersal rates were not dependent on distance main conclusions diversification dynamics in the pilosocereus subgenus pilosocereus s s clade agree with other infrageneric studies in cacti species divergence was rapid driven by in situ diversification and migration events between sdtf dry formations and xeric microhabitats within other biomes and probably linked to pleistocene climatic changes this dynamic history differs from that found in woody sdtf lineages which are older in age and characterized by lowâ dispersal rates and longâ term isolation,2018,0.871
Notes on gall midges from Southern Spain,we report noteworthy observations of gall midge species diptera cecidomyidae from southern spain some of the records represent species hitherto unknown from the area and thus enlarge the known distribution range of these species in question in general the geographic distribution of gall midges is poorly known so new records from areas well outside known ranges should be considered valuable two species dasineura gentianae and dasineura saxifragae are recorded for the first time in the iberian peninsula while rabdophaga rosaria is found as new to spain contarinia nasturtii is reported for the first time in southern spain while the remaining 6 species are found as new to various provinces within andalucã a in addition the specialist parasitoid platygaster dryomyiae hymenoptera platygastridae is recorded for the first time in southern spain,2018,0.892
Antifungal activity of Gallesia integrifolia fruit essential oil,gallesia integrifolia phytolaccaceae is native to brazil and has a strong alliaceous odor the objective of this study was to identify the chemical composition of g integrifolia fruit essential oil and evaluate fungicidal activity against the main food borne diseases and food spoilage fungi the essential oil was extracted by hydrodistillation and identified by gcâ ms from 35 identified compounds 68 belonged to the organosulfur class the major compounds were dimethyl trisulfide 15 49 2 8 dithianonane 52 63 and lenthionine 14 69 the utilized fungi were aspergillus fumigatus aspergillus niger aspergillus ochraceus aspergillus versicolor penicillium funiculosum penicillium ochrochloron penicillium verrucosum var cyclopium and trichoderma viride minimal fungicidal concentration for the essential oil varied from 0 02 to 0 18 mg ml and bifonazole and ketoconazole controls ranged from 0 20 to 3 50 mg ml the lower concentration of the essential oil was able to control p ochrochloron a fumigatus a versicolor a ochraceus and t viride this study shows a high fungicidal activity of g integrifolia fruit essential oil and can support future applications by reducing the use of synthetic fungicides,2018,0.261
"Toward the Annotated Checklist of Vascular Flora of Serbia–objectives, methodology and challenges–",the upcoming â œannotated checklist of vascular flora of serbia 1â includes all new contributions and recent nomenclatural taxonomic chorological phylogenetic and phylogeographic points of view on plant taxa distributed in the territory of the republic of serbia the main objectives working procedures and preliminary results are presented more than 4200 confirmed taxa were recorded including 3690 species,2018,0.478
Distributional patterns of Neotropical seasonally dry forest birds: a biogeographical regionalization,neotropical seasonally dry forests nsdfs are widely distributed and possess high levels of species richness and endemism however their biogeography remains only partially understood using species distribution modelling and parsimony analysis of endemicity we analysed the distributional patterns of the nsdf avifauna in order to identify their areas of endemism and provide a better understanding of the historical relationships among those areas the strict consensus trees revealed 17 areas of endemism for nsdfs which involve four large regions baja california caribbeanâ antilles islands mesoamerica and south america these wellâ resolved clades are circumscribed by geographical and ecological barriers associated with the gulf of california the leading edge of the caribbean plate the tehuantepec isthmus the polochicâ motagua fault the nicaragua depression the chocã forest the amazon basin and the andean cordillera relationships among groups of nsdfs found here suggest that evolution of their avifauna involved a mixture of vicariance and dispersal events our results support the idea of independent diversification patterns and biogeographical processes in each region including those previously associated with the pleistocene arc hypothesis for nsdfs of southâ eastern south america this study provides a biogeographical framework to open new lines of research related to the biotic diversification of nsdfs,2018,0.394
VIETHERB: A Database for Vietnamese Herbal Species,vietnam carries a highly diverse practice of traditional medicine in which various combinations of herbs have been widely used as remedies for many types of diseases poor hand written records and current text based databases however perplex the process of conventionalizing and evaluating canonical therapeutic effects in efforts to reorganize the valuable information we provide the vietherb database http vietherb com vn for herbs documented in vietnamese traditional medicines this database is constructed with confidence to provide users with information on herbs and other side information including metabolites diseases morphologies and geographical locations for each individual species our data in this release consist of 2 881 species 10 887 metabolites 458 geographical locations and 8 046 therapeutic effects the numbers of speciesâ metabolite speciesâ therapeutic effect speciesâ morphology and speciesâ distribution binary relationships are 17 602 2 718 11 943 and 16 089 respectively the information on vietnamese herbal species can be easily accessed or queried using their scientific names searching for species sharing side information can be simply done by clicking on the data the database primarily serves as an open source facilitating users in studies of modernizing traditional medicine computer aided drug design conservation of endangered plants and other relevant experimental sciences,2018,0.272
"Population genetics and speciation of yellow-bellied, red-naped, and red-breasted sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus varius, S. nuchalis, and S. ruber)",the root of understanding speciation lies in determining the forces which drive it in many closely related species including sphyrapicus varius s nuchalis and s ruber it is assumed that speciation occurred due to isolation in multiple pleistocene refugia we used genetic data from 457 samples at the control region coi and chd1z to examine rangewide population genetic structure and differentiation amongst these three species across each speciesâ breeding range in addition we modelled these speciesâ ecological niches for the holocene 6 000 ya last glacial maximum 22 000 ya and last interglacial 120 000â 140 000 ya to determine if pleistocene glaciations could have contributed to allopatric distributions therefore allowing these groups to differentiate population genetic data show a potential pleistocene refugium in haida gwaii an east west split among s varius and low genetic differentiation within each species our control region data show some polyphyly while coi and chd1z data show differentiation among species using composite genotypes ecological niche modelling shows a large amount of niche overlap at each time period suggesting that s varius s nuchalis and s ruber may not have been completely allopatric and these species likely had repeated intermittent contact our data support the growing body of research that suggests differentiation despite gene flow,2018,0.903
Out of Africa: demographic and colonization history of the Algerian mouse (Mus spretus Lataste),north africa is now recognized as a major area for the emergence and dispersal of anatomically modern humans from at least 315 kya the mediterranean basin is thus particularly suited to study the role of climate versus human mediated changes on the evolutionary history of species the algerian mouse mus spretus lataste is an endemic species from this basin with its distribution restricted to north africa from libya to morocco iberian peninsula and south of france a rich paleontological record of m spretus exists in north africa suggesting hypotheses concerning colonization pathways and the demographic and morphologic history of this species here we combined genetic 3 mitochondrial dna loci and 18 microsatellites and climatic niche modeling data to infer the evolutionary history of the algerian mouse we collected 646 new individuals in 51 localities our results are consistent with an anthropogenic translocation of the algerian mouse from north africa to the iberian peninsula via neolithic navigators probably from the tingitane peninsula once arrived in spain suitable climatic conditions would then have favored the dispersion of the algerian mice to france the morphological differentiation observed between spanish french and north african populations could be explained by a founder effect and possibly local adaptation this article helps to better understand the role of climate versus human mediated changes on the evolutionary history of mammal species in the mediterranean basin,2018,0.737
Mapping the spatial distribution of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus,mosquito borne infectious diseases such as rift valley fever dengue chikungunya and zika have caused mass human death with the transnational expansion fueled by economic globalization simulating the distribution of the disease vectors is of great importance in formulating public health planning and disease control strategies in the present study we simulated the global distribution of aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus at a 5 ã 5 km spatial resolution with high dimensional multidisciplinary datasets and machine learning methods three relatively popular and robust machine learning models including support vector machine svm gradient boosting machine gbm and random forest rf were used during the fine tuning process based on training datasets of a aegypti and a albopictus rf models achieved the highest performance with an area under the curve auc of 0 973 and 0 974 respectively followed by gbm auc of 0 971 and 0 972 respectively and svm auc of 0 963 and 0 964 respectively models the simulation difference between rf and gbm models was not statistically significant p 0 05 based on the validation datasets whereas statistically significant differences p 0 05 were observed for rf and gbm simulations compared with svm simulations from the simulated maps derived from rf models we observed that the distribution of a albopictus was wider than that of a aegypti along a latitudinal gradient the discriminatory power of each factor in simulating the global distribution of the two species was also analyzed our results provided fundamental information for further study on disease transmission simulation and risk assessment,2018,0.23
First records of the Red Sea alien mollusc Haminoea cyanomarginata (Gastropoda: Heterobranchia: Cephalaspidea) in the Western Mediterranean,the colonization of foreign species into the mediterranean sea has increased in number and geographic coverage over the past decades for instance the marine mollusc haminoea cyanomarginata has scattered across the central and eastern mediterranean since its description in the red sea by heller and thompson in 1983 in this study we add the first records of the species in the western mediterranean basin and review the progression of its colonization from the red sea the new records were obtained through the online database of the ngo called catalan opisthobranch research group spain thus highlighting how citizen science platforms can provide an early warning for marine scientists and managers in relation to exogenous species,2018,0.485
Combined multi-gene backbone tree for the genus Coniochaeta with two new species from Uzbekistan,the genus coniochaeta is an important ascomycete because its members live in diversified habitats and nutritional modes in this study two new species c acaciae and c coluteae are introduced from dead branches of acacia sp and colutea paulsenii freyn both fabaceae respectively from uzbekistan based on morphological and phylogenetic studies analyses of combined its and lsu sequence data with genealogical concordance phylogenetic species recognition gcpsr and comparison of similar taxa provide evidences for placement of these new species in coniochaeta as distinct lineages,2018,0.651
Distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic. Part 6,the sixth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the czech republic includes grid maps of 112 taxa in the genera athyrium carex centaurea chenopodium corispermum corrigiola crepis cystopteris glaucium hackelia hammarbya hippocrepis lappula lepidium liparis loranthus lycopus lythrum matteuccia osmunda plantago psephellus pteridium salvia scirpus and viola these maps were produced by taxonomic experts based on examined herbarium specimens literature and field records the native species include common and widespread plants such as athyrium filix femina carex acuta crepis biennis lycopus europaeus lythrum salicaria and plantago lanceolata as well as rare species such as carex buxbaumii osmunda regalis and viola alba almost 42 of the mapped taxa are on the national red list among the mapped taxa there are rare mountain species e g carex aterrima c atrata centaurea mollis c montana crepis mollis subsp mollis c sibirica and the endemic plantago atrata subsp sudetica wetland orchids hammarbya paludosa liparis loeselii and plants of dry grasslands e g crepis pannonica hippocrepis comosa lappula semicincta and salvia aethiopis rare ecological specialists include corrigiola litoralis from seasonally exposed sand and gravel bars in rivers plantago arenaria confined to dry open sandy habitats and chenopodium chenopodioides and plantago maritima subsp ciliata from saline habitats alien species mapped in this paper include both archaeophytes and neophytes most of them from the genera centaurea crepis and lepidium salvia hispanica is recorded as a new alien species for this countryâ s flora its spontaneous occurrence was first detected in 2013 and since then this species has been found at about a dozen sites plantago coronopus has recently spread along the roads treated with de icing salt a number of species are at the limits of their distributions in the czech republic the distribution maps of three interspecific hybrids are also included spatial distributions and often also temporal dynamics of individual taxa are shown in maps and documented by records included in the pladias database and available in electronic appendices the maps are accompanied by comments that include additional information on the distribution habitats taxonomy and biology of the taxa,2018,0.82
"Species richness and spatial distribution of benthic amphipods (Crustacea: Peracarida) in the Alacranes Reef National Park, Gulf of Mexico",the diversity and distribution of benthic amphipods has been explored in the alacranes reef which is the largest coral reef ecosystem in the gulf of mexico new insights into species richness spatial distribution and extension of geographical ranges are presented by using data from published records and field surveys a total of 117 species have been recorded 9 of which are potentially new to science 39 of which have new geographical records and 7 are non indigenous and previously reported in the literature as potentially invasive based on the use of a species richness indicator chao 2 the expected species number is 40 higher up to 200 spp when compared to the observed species richness the spatial distribution of amphipods varied significantly as a function of habitat type showing the highest richness values on coral patches and the major abundances on man made structures such as navigation buoys and fishing traps multivariate analyses suggested the distinction between three taxonomically diverse species assemblages that showed similar ecological affinities i e those on 1 soft bottom environments grouping bare substrata and seagrass beds habitats 2 hard bottom environments grouping coral patch and reef wall habitats and 3 artificial substrata the results highlight the importance of this reef ecosystem for a high amphipod diversity but it is susceptible to future modifications in the presence of non indigenous species potentially invasive on artificial substrata,2018,0.869
"A decade of the World Register of Marine Species – General insights and experiences from the Data Management Team: Where are we, what have we learned and how can we continue?",the world register of marine species worms celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017 worms is a unique database there is no comparable global database for marine species which is driven by a large global expert community is supported by a data management team and can rely on a permanent host institute dedicated to keeping worms online over the past ten years the content of worms has grown steadily and the system currently contains more than 242 000 accepted marine species worms has not yet reached completeness approximately 2 000 newly described species per year are added and editors also enter the remaining missing older namesâ both accepted and unacceptedâ an effort amounting to approximately 20 000 taxon name additions per year worms is used extensively through different channels indicating that it is recognized as a high quality database on marine species information it is updated on a daily basis by its editorial board which currently consists of 490 taxonomic and thematic experts located around the world owing to its unique qualities worms has become a partner in many large scale initiatives including obis lifewatch and the catalogue of life where it is recognized as a high quality and reliable source of information for marine taxonomy,2018,0.802
A Pan-Amazonian species delimitation: high species diversity within the genus Amazophrynella (Anura: Bufonidae),amphibians are probably the most vulnerable group to climate change and climate change associate diseases this ongoing biodiversity crisis makes it thus imperative to improve the taxonomy of anurans in biodiverse but understudied areas such as amazonia in this study we applied robust integrative taxonomic methods combining genetic mitochondrial 16s 12s and coi genes morphological and environmental data to delimit species of the genus amazophrynella anura bufonidae sampled from throughout their pan amazonian distribution our study confirms the hypothesis that the species diversity of the genus is grossly underestimated our analyses suggest the existence of eighteen linages of which seven are nominal species three deep conspecific lineages one unconfirmed candidate species three uncategorized lineages and four confirmed candidate species and described herein we also propose a phylogenetic hypothesis for the genus and discuss its implications for historical biogeography of this amazonian group,2018,0.775
Camelina – An Alternative Oil Crop,camelina sativa l is an ancient oilseed which was grown extensively in russia the middle east scandinavia and europe up to the 1950â s it produces an oil with potential as a low input biofuels feedstock and which is known to have high levels of fatty acids beneficial for humans the residual meal after oil extraction has various uses such as a protein source in food in fodder in aquaculture and as a fertilizer relatively tolerant of drought and frost it is resistant to many pests and diseases that plague other oilseed crops it usually costs less to grow than other oilseeds is considered to be a short season crop and is adaptable to different seasonal and edaphic conditions the production of biokerosene from camelina oil has been proven and its use in a blend for aviation has been assessed successfully in several test flights,2018,0.25
Energetic Macroevolution of Vertebrates,an analysis of our own data and published data on comparable standard metabolism in vertebrates has been carried out it was shown that within each family and most of the orders this parameter varies insignificantly and the mean values for the comparable standard metabolism are grouped around certain values presumably corresponding to the stationary states to which organisms aspire in the course of evolution there was a significant difference in the comparable standard metabolism in poikilothermic and homeothermic animals apparently related to the existence of a heat barrier which is overcome by the appearance of thermoregulation in total seven levels of stationary states were distinguished for vertebrates and 12 of them for all animals it was established that the ratio of the values of the comparable standard metabolism for neighboring levels varies insignificantly and is 2 2 it was noted that in the process of macroevolution of phyla and classes their constituent units occupy ever higher stationary levels a possible mechanism of transition from one stationary level to another is discussed,2018,0.45
Integrating climate change and human impacts into marine spatial planning: A case study of threatened starfish species in Brazil,network expansion of marine protected areas in a changing world is a difficult task for conservation planners brazil experiences a combination of low and uneven protection of marine environmets increasing anthropogenic pressures climate change and gaps in information regarding the geographical distribution of many species wallacean shortfall here we addressed these issues and present a strategy for identifying priority marine areas for conservation in brazil that would contribute to increasing species representation and achievement of conservation targets within this strategy we accounted for i species range shifts due to climate change and their influence on species distribution ii the lack of species geographical distribution data and iii anthropic pressures on oceans first we built ecological niche models enms for 12 threatened starfish species in both present and future 2100 times using maxent we also quantified and mapped species range shifts second we developed three conservation spatial solutions and compared the 10 top ranked areas the results showed that enms had a good performance in representing the distribution of species even those that had few occurrence records our models forecasted a significant range expansion for the majority of species 10 out 12 by 2100 we found that the priority sites covering the top ranked 10 in the study area identified in ours conservation spatial solutions would protect between 10 41 and 15 88 on average of suitable areas for the starfish species our results indicated priority sites for conservation less affected by anthropic pressures 2 when data on human impacts on oceans were incorporated into the spatial prioritization process we identified a network of priority marine sites for conservation that minimized human influence and considered the effects of climate change on species distribution we used threatened starfish species as a case study for illustrating our approach however such an approach could be applied to any taxonomic group which supports the development of more effective conservation actions that represent biodiversity under such threats,2018,0.988
"Review of the records of the smalltooth sand tiger shark, Odontaspis ferox (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes: Odontaspididae), in the Azores",in recent years azorean fishermen reported the presence of the smalltooth sand tiger shark odontaspis ferox risso 1810 a very rare demersal shark species associated with insular shelves and slopes with occasional incursions into shallow waters and of poorly known biology and ecology there are fourteen new records of this species between 1996 and 2014 captured by spearfishing harpoons hand lines or entangled in fishing gear in the azores these records were analysed and complemented with fishermen interviews providing new locations and new biological data for this species also specimens photographs were studied and post mortem analysis were carefully carried out in one individual this species is rare and captured only as bycatch in shallow waters more detailed information on this species is critically needed in order to assess its conservation status and implement management guidelines bycatch statistics are crucial in this respect,2018,0.87
Towards pathways bending the curve terrestrial biodiversity trends within the 21st century,unless actions are taken to reduce multiple anthropogenic pressures biodiversity is expected to continue declining at an alarming rate models and scenarios can be used to help design the pathways that sustain a thriving nature and its ability to contribute to people this approach has so far been hampered by the complexity associated with combining projections of pressures on and subsequent responses from biodiversity most previous assessments have projected continuous biodiversity declines and very few have identified pathways for reversing the loss of biodiversity without jeopardizing other objectives such as development or climate mitigation the bending the curve initiative set out to advance quantitative modelling techniques towards ambitious scenarios for biodiversity in this proof of concept analysis we developed a modelling approach that demonstrates how global land use and biodiversity models can be combined to can shed light on pathways able to bend the curve of biodiversity trends as affected by land use change the biggest current threat to biodiversity in order to address the uncertainties associated with such pathways we used a multimodel framework and relied on the shared socioeconomic pathway representative concentration pathway scenario framework this report describes the details of this modelling approach,2018,0.185
Genetic structure and environmental niche modeling confirm two evolutionary and conservation units within the western spadefoot (Spea hammondii),the western spadefoot spea hammondii is a species of special concern in california and is now under review by the u s fish and wildlife service for listing under the endangered species act we delineated potential conservation units within s hammondii by analyzing spatial genetic structure across the speciesâ range using five nuclear and one mitochondrial loci for both nuclear and mitochondrial markers we found that s hammondii consists of two genetically distinct allopatric clusters divided by the transverse ranges to corroborate the northern and southern genetic clusters as conservation units from an ecological perspective we applied a niche identity test to environmental niche models of the two groups we found that the niche models of the northern and southern clusters were significantly different suggesting they may be ecologically non exchangeable given our demonstration of significant genetic and ecological differentiation between allopatric clusters of s hammondii we recommend that ongoing conservation efforts consider each as a separate unit with potentially unique management needs,2018,0.617
Integrating a comprehensive DNA barcode reference library with a global map of yews ( Taxus L.) for forensic identification,rapid and accurate identification of endangered species is a critical component of bioâ surveillance and conservation management and potentially policing illegal trades however this is often not possible using traditional taxonomy especially where only small or preâ processed parts of plants are available reliable identification can be achieved via a comprehensive dna barcode reference library accompanied by precise distribution data however these require extensive sampling at spatial and taxonomic scales which has rarely been achieved for cosmopolitan taxa here we construct a comprehensive dna barcode reference library and generate distribution maps using species distribution modeling sdm for all 15 taxus species worldwide we find that trnlâ trnf is the ideal barcode for taxus it can distinguish all taxus species and in combination with its identify hybrids among five analysis methods tested nj was the most effective among 4151 individuals screened for trnlâ trnf 73 haplotypes were detected all speciesâ specific and some population private taxonomical geographical and genetic dimensions of sampling strategy were all found to affect the comprehensiveness of the resulting dna barcode library maps from sdm showed that most species had allopatric distributions except three in the sinoâ himalayan region using the barcode library and distribution map data two unknown forensic samples were identified to species and in one case population level and another was determined as a putative interspecific hybrid this integrated species identification system for taxus can be used for bioâ surveillance conservation management and to monitor and prosecute illegal trade similar identification systems are recommended for other iucnâ and â cites listed taxa,2018,0.859
Multiple shifts to open habitats in Melastomateae (Melastomataceae) congruent with the increase of African Neogene climatic aridity,aim african melastomateae melastomataceae comprise c 185 species occurring in closed or open habitats throughout subâ saharan africa we sought to reconstruct biogeographical and habitat history and shifts in diversification rates of african melastomateae using a wellâ sampled dated molecular phylogeny location americas subâ saharan africa madagascar se asia taxon angiosperms melastomataceae african melastomateae methods phylogenetic relationships were estimated based on an extensive sampling of new and old world melastomateae using two nuclear and three plastid markers divergence times were estimated in beast based on three calibration priors under bayesian uncorrelated lognormal relaxed clock and birthâ death speciation process the dated phylogeny was used to infer the biogeographical history under a dispersalâ extinctionâ cladogenesis model in â œbiogeobearsâ the ancestral habitat of african melastomateae was estimated using maximum likelihood and stochastic character mapping in â œphytoolsâ and â œapeâ respectively finally shifts in diversification rates were tested using bamm results melastomateae dispersed from south america to africa during the oligocene with subsequent dispersals to madagascar and se asia during the middle miocene ancestral african melastomateae were adapted to closed habitats with at least 12 shifts to open habitats occurring during the middle miocene or pliocene speciation rates steadily increased since the neogene and none of the habitat shifts led to a significant increase in diversification rates main conclusions longâ distance dispersal from south america during the early miocene explains the origin of african melastomateae the inferred adaptation to open habitats from an ancestrally closed habitat is congruent with the neogene increase of aridity across africa the adaptation to open habitats during the neogene is an important driver of african plant diversity but is not always followed by increased diversification rates,2018,0.339
Research infrastructure challenges in preparing essential biodiversity variables data products for alien invasive species,essential biodiversity variables ebv are information products for assessing biodiversity change species populations ebvs are one class of ebvs that can be used to monitor the spread of invasive species however systematic reliable repeatable procedures to process primary data into ebvs do not yet exist and environmental research infrastructures still must improve their capabilities to deliver ebv data products here we tested the ability of two mature biodiversity data infrastructures the global biodiversity information facility and the atlas of living australia to cooperatively produce ebv data products for three alien invasive species we detailed workflow steps to discover filter retrieve and prepare the primary data before evaluating species distributional changes the two data infrastructures were able to execute several workflow steps but external tools third party sources and expert judgement were required and a repeatable workflow was difficult to establish nevertheless the resulting data products revealed strong range expansions for the invasive species demonstrating the policy relevant information about global environmental change that can be provided by ebv data products our results show that more coordination between infrastructure providers is needed to efficiently produce ebv ready data products for invasion monitoring in a repeatable fashion addressing these issues will allow improved tracking of invasive species range dynamics and hence monitoring of ongoing global biodiversity change,2018,0.608
"Reproductive isolation between Salvia elegans and S. fulgens , two hummingbird pollinated sympatric sages",the integrity of species in sympatric contact sites is dependent on the existence of reproductive isolating mechanisms which restrict gene flow between them coâ flowering plants with divergent floral traits or syndromes may evolve in order to attract divergent functional groups of pollinators facilitating plant coexistence however we know little about the mechanisms that enable the coexistence of species with similar floral morphologies we evaluated several reproductive isolation barriers between salvia elegans and s fulgens two sympatric sages with a similar ornithophilous floral syndrome offering nectar as the main reward the evaluated barriers included broadâ scale geographic isolation floral phenologies and floral visitors as preâ pollination barriers and fruit set seed number and seed germination as postâ pollination barriers we found considerable geographic isolation and significant altitudinal differences between the two sages the flowering period of both salvia species always overlapped extensively during the three years of this study but hummingbirds were highly specific visiting one or the other salvia species and showing an aggressive territorial behavior interspecific experimental crosses revealed that hybrid seeds might be formed although strong asymmetric barriers were found depending on the species acting as the maternal donor despite the low level of flowering asynchrony reproductive isolation was remarkably high in the two sages geographic isolation and pollinator fidelity were the main factors responsible for maintaining species integrity despite an extensive review we found very few studies quantifying the efficiency of isolation barriers in neotropical plants or even the importance of hummingbirds as pollinators,2018,0.714
Impacts of onshore wind energy production on birds and bats: recommendations for future life cycle impact assessment developments,purpose models for quantifying impacts on biodiversity from renewable energy technologies are lacking within life cycle impact assessment lcia we aim to provide an overview of the effects of wind energy on birds and bats with a focus on quantitative methods furthermore we investigate and provide the necessary background for how these can be integrated into new developments of lcia models in future methods we reviewed available literature summarizing the effects of wind energy developments on birds and bats we provide an overview of available quantitative assessment methods that have been employed outside of the lcia framework to model the different impacts of wind energy developments on wildlife combining the acquired knowledge on impact pathways and associated quantitative methods we propose possibilities for future approaches for a wind energy impact assessment methodology for lcia results and discussion wind energy production has impacts on terrestrial biodiversity through three main pathways collision disturbance and habitat alterations birds and bats are consistently considered the most affected taxonomic groups with different responses to the before mentioned impact pathways outside of the lcia framework current quantitative impact assessment prediction models include collision risk models species distribution models individual based models and population modeling approaches developed indices allow scaling of species specific vulnerability to mortality disturbance and or habitat alterations conclusions although insight into the causes behind collision risk disturbance and habitat alterations for bats and birds is still limited the current knowledge base enables the development of a robust assessment tool modeling the impacts of habitat alterations disturbance and collisions within an lcia framework is most appropriate using species distribution models as those enable the estimation of speciesâ occurrences across a region although local scale developments may be more readily feasible further up scaling to global coverage is recommended to allow comparison across regions and technologies and to assess cumulative impacts,2018,0.182
Identifying Priority Species Within the South-western Australian Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna,this project aimed to 1 develop a protocol for assessing how many freshwater invertebrates from south western australia may be candidates for listing on the western australian priority fauna list and 2 provide an overview on a selection of those species for listing formal listing of species for protection is an important step in the process of prioritising conservation activities and must be undertaken as objectively as possible diverse groups such as invertebrates pose problems for listing because criteria of â rarityâ and â threatâ are often confounded for most part knowledge of the extent of the distribution habitat requirements population sizes lifecycles and population biology for aquatic invertebrates are not well known there is also often little historical or time series data as many records are from once off surveys or opportunistic sampling making determination of population trends and responses to threats unpredictable however it is known that wetland and river ecosystems in south western australia have been extensively altered as a result of human activity and a drying climate which is likely to have had a dramatic effect of on aquatic fauna including invertebrates in this region currently as of feb 2018 very few aquatic fauna are listed as threatened or priority species in western australia 16 of 215 priority species and 22 of 249 threatened species many of these are freshwater crayfish or stygofauna mainly occurring in the pilbara or south coast regions of the state here a rapid assessment approach has been developed to identify species which may be of conservation concern due to time and budgetary constraints invertebrate information used for this assessment was mainly limited to department of biodiversity conservation and attractions dbca aquatic invertebrate records and australian living atlas ala records with some consultation with relevant specialists the approach taken was to formulate a rapid assessment process using this data and apply some international union for conservation of nature iucn criteria to quickly assess and highlight species which are rare or likely to be short range endemics sre to south western australia this project focussed on identifying priority species rather than fully assessing threat status using iucn criteria as the latter would require more data and time than this project would allow but the process has identified some species requiring further assessment with a view to listing as threatened,2018,0.916
A global test of ecoregions,a foundational paradigm in biological and earth sciences is that our planet is divided into distinct ecoregions and biomes demarking unique assemblages of species this notion has profoundly influenced scientific research and environmental policy given recent advances in technology and data availability however we are now poised to ask whether ecoregions meaningfully delimit biological communities using over 200 million observations of plants animals and fungi we show compelling evidence that ecoregions delineate terrestrial biodiversity patterns we achieve this by testing two competing hypotheses the sharp transition hypothesis positing that ecoregion borders divide differentiated biotic communities and the gradual transition hypothesis proposing instead that species turnover is continuous and largely independent of ecoregion borders we find strong support for the sharp transition hypothesis across all taxa although adherence to ecoregion boundaries varies across taxa although plant and vertebrate species are tightly linked to sharp ecoregion boundaries arthropods and fungi show weaker affiliations to this set of ecoregion borders our results highlight the essential value of ecological data for setting conservation priorities and reinforce the importance of protecting habitats across as many ecoregions as possible specifically we conclude that ecoregion based conservation planning can guide investments that simultaneously protect species community and ecosystem level biodiversity key for securing earthâ s life support systems into the future,2018,0.445
Spatial variability in the diversity and structure of faunal assemblages associated with kelp holdfasts (Laminaria hyperborea) in the northeast Atlantic,kelp species are ecologically important habitat formers in coastal marine ecosystems where they alter environmental conditions and promote local biodiversity by providing complex biogenic habitat for an array of associated organisms while it is widely accepted that kelps harbour significant biodiversity our current understanding of spatiotemporal variability in kelp associated assemblages and the key environmental drivers of variability patterns remains limited here we examined the influence of ocean temperature and wave exposure on the structure of faunal assemblages associated with the holdfasts of laminaria hyperborea the dominant habitat forming kelp in the northeast atlantic we sampled holdfasts from 12 kelp dominated open coast sites nested within four regions across the uk spanning 9â in latitude and 2 7â c in mean sea surface temperature overall holdfast assemblages were highly diverse with 261 taxa representing 11 phyla recorded across the study we examined patterns of spatial variability for sessile and mobile taxa separately and documented high variability between regions between sites within regions and between replicate holdfasts for both assemblage types mobile assemblage structure was more strongly linked to temperature variability than sessile assemblage structure which was principally structured by site level variability in factors such as wave exposure patterns in the structure of both biogenic habitat and associated assemblages did not vary predictably along a latitudinal gradient in temperature indicating that other processes acting across multiple spatial and temporal scales are important drivers of assemblage structure overall kelp holdfasts in the uk supported high levels of diversity that were similar to other kelp dominated systems globally and comparable to those recorded for other vegetated marine habitats i e seagrass beds which are perhaps more widely recognised for their high biodiversity value,2018,0.429
Climatic niche and potential distribution of Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A. Gray in Africa,mexican sunflower tithonia diversifolia asteraceae is an invasive tropical plant species native to central america it has spread in more than 70 countries across asia africa and australia in africa this species is known to disturb native crops and plant communities but its negative impacts remain underestimated moreover its potential invasion risk has not been investigated so far a fundamental aspect in the identification and prediction of habitats susceptible to biological invasions lies in the ability of an organism to conserve or change its ecological niche as part of the invasion process here we compared the realised climatic niche of t diversifolia between its central american and african ranges in addition reciprocal distribution models were calibrated on its native and invaded ranges models were combined and projected to current and future climatic conditions in africa to estimate the potential distribution of this species niche overlap given by schoner s d index was low 0 23 equivalency and similarity tests suggested that the climatic niche of t diversifolia is not similar in both ranges however the low expansion u 0 09 and very high stability s 0 92 indices support climatic niche conservatism for this species in africa although it has not filled its entire niche so far our combined reciprocal models highlight highly suitable areas for this species in humid regions throughout east central and west africa then in some parts of south africa and madagascar future projections indicated that the distribution of climatically suitable habitats will likely remain stable,2018,0.756
Neopterygian phylogeny: the merger assay,the phylogenetic relationships of the recently described genus â ticinolepis from the middle triassic of the monte san giorgio are explored through cladistic analyses of the so far largest morphological dataset for fossil actinopterygians including representatives of the crown neopterygian clades halecomorphi ginglymodi and teleostei and merging the characters from previously published systematic studies together with newly proposed characters â ticinolepis is retrieved as the most basal ginglymodi and our results support the monophyly of teleostei and holostei as well as halecomorphi and ginglymodi within the latter clade the patterns of relationships within these clades mostly agree with those of previous studies although a few important differences require future research according to our results ionoscopiforms are not monophyletic caturids are not amiiforms and leptolepids and luisiellids form a monophyletic clade our phylogenetic hypothesis confirms the rapid radiation of the holostean clades halecomorphi and ginglymodi during the early and middle triassic and the radiation of pholidophoriform teleosts during the late triassic crown group halecomorphi have an enormous ghost lineage throughout half of the mesozoic but ginglymodians and teleosts show a second radiation during the early jurassic the crown groups of halecomorphi ginglymodi and teleostei originated within parallel events of radiation during the late jurassic,2018,0.28
"Investigating leaf beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) on the west coast islands of Sabah via checklist-taking and DNA barcoding",sabah is a province of malaysia located on the northern part of the island of borneo most of the leaf beetle fauna studies from this region conducted over the past 15 years have focussed on the mainland habitats while the leaf beetle fauna from island habitats ca 500 islands have largely been overlooked this study looks into the leaf beetle fauna of 13 small satellite islands off the west coast of sabah all specimens were first sorted into morpho species operational taxonomic unit otu before being identified to species rank where possible based on morphological characters and species names assigned when the specimens fitted the description of species in the literature we collected 75 otus from 35 genera and five subfamilies according to morphology 12 of which were identifiable to species level in addition the dna barcode for each otu was cross checked with records in genbank and barcoding of life data system bold to verify their identity the number of species recorded was reduced from 12 species and 63 otus total 75 otus to 12 species and 56 otus total 68 otus after removal of the colour polymorphic species based on dna barcode analyses pulau gaya has the highest species richness and pulau sulug has the lowest species richness a total of 64 barcode index numbers consisting of 101 dna barcodes were obtained from the 12 leaf beetle species and 48 otus based on the dna barcode analyses it was possible to confirm several polymorphic otus and cryptic species the mean intraspecific and interspecific genetic divergence were determined as 0 77 and 16 11 respectively dna barcodes of this study show a low similarity with records in genbank and bold highlighting the lack of representation and the urgency of studying leaf beetles from this region the study provides the first documentation of leaf beetle fauna from island habitats of sabah and the first dna barcoding data for leaf beetles from this part of the world with the next steps being larger scale sampling over a wider geographical scale for a better understanding of tropical arthropod diversity,2018,0.991
Rare migrants suffice to maintain high genetic diversity in an introduced island population of roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus ): Evidence from molecular data and simulations,as a popular game species roe deer capreolus capreolus have been subjected to a strong anthropogenic influence for centuries while there have been attempts to introduce roe deer to some german islands most of these initiatives were based on a small number of individuals and did not result in viable populations the island population on fehmarn became established however despite being founded by eight individuals with supposedly no subsequent restocking despite this strong founder effect previous work has shown the contemporary population not to be genetically impoverished the reasons for this were not entirely clear here we use 13 microsatellite loci and population genetic techniques to test whether the high diversity resulted from a continuous genetic exchange with the mainland whether a small number of immigrants maintained heterozygosity at a high level or whether the island was completely isolated and clandestine restocking by hunters another explanation for the observed high diversity we confirmed that the genetic diversity on fehmarn was high but also show that the island population was genetically differentiated from the adjoining mainland results from different assignment methods identified a small number of mainland immigrants simulations provided support for the feasibility of a scenario of a small number of founders and limited natural immigration maintaining high genetic diversity despite population differentiation our simulation results also suggested that there will only be a relatively slight decrease in expected heterozygosity he over the next seventy generations and that there will be no need for restocking in the future,2018,0.588
"The effects of climate warming and urbanised areas on the future distribution of Cortaderia selloana , pampas grass, in France",the spread of many invasive plants could be facilitated by their presence in urban areas that may act as dispersal centres and by climate warming cortaderia selloana pampas grass is native to south america and raises considerable concern worldwide as an introduction we used maxent niche modelling based on occurrence records and on a set of simulated occurrence points with high probability of presence in urbanised areas in france where the species was introduced and is still planted we calibrated the model with current climate data coupled with several habitat variables and used it to predict range shifts of c selloana under four climate change scenarios rcp for 2060 the results were consistent with the known ecology of the species and showed that the most important variables that explain the current distribution in the introduced area were mean annual minimum temperatures sandy habitats disturbed habitats and urbanised areas while the species already occupies large areas along the western and mediterranean coasts the models predicted an expansion northward and inland to the east under future climates the area of suitable habitats could increase by up to 69 under the rcp 8 5 climate scenario in 2060 and by 116 with the extra occurrences in urban suburban areas this latter scenario suggests that areas like public and private gardens or urban parks where the species is currently cultivated could contribute to increase the invasion risk under climate warming the results provide predictions of potential environments for the species which can be helpful for anticipating its spread,2018,0.72
"The advertisement call of Pristimantis boulengeri (Lynch, 1981) from a population in the Central Andes of Colombia (Anura: Craugastoridae)",one of the most frequent modalities of anuran communication is the use of acoustic signals gerhardt and huber 2002 in anurans acoustic signals have been classified according to the context in which they are emitted gerhardt and huber 2002 the advertisement calls emitted duringthebreedingseasontoattractfemales and to segregate calling males is the most conspicuous is and studied call wells 2007 however we still do not know the advertisement calls for many anurans wells 2007 guerra et al 2018 especially calls of the species that do not exhibit breeding aggregations around specific aquatic microhabitats i e ponds creeks individuals of these species are more dispersed over the habitat making it harder to record them that seems to be the case of the species of the family craugastoridae m in the andes of colombia vargas salinas et al in prep a highly diverse clade of anurans with terrestrial oviposition and direct development of offspring lynch et al 1997,2018,0.628
Simulating the potential distribution of Elaeagnus angustifolia L. based on climatic constraints in China,elaeagnus angustifolia l has considerable ecological value and plays an important role in windbreak and sand fixation soil and water conservation vegetation restoration and afforestation in asia understanding the potential distribution and the limiting climatic factors is the first step for sustainable use of this species at regional scale here we simulated the potential distribution of e angustifolia and evaluated its limiting climatic factors using a maximum entropy model maxent and geographical information system gis in china based on 190 occurrence grid cells and 13 climatic variables in china the results show that 1 annual range of temperature art annual mean temperature amt humidity index hi and coldness index ci are the dominant climatic factors limiting its potential distribution range 2 low temperature is an important climatic factor that limits both southern and northern distribution boundaries and high rainfall is another climatically limiting factor for the southern boundary and 3 the potential distribution areas are mainly located in the warm temperate and middle temperate zone with cold and dry winters and in the arid and semi arid regions of china between 30â n and 50â n the simulating results can improve our understanding of the geographical and ecological characteristics of e angustifolia and provide references for the introduction of this species for control and restoration of degraded land in china,2018,0.226
The Use of Tree Barks to Monitor Traffic Related Air Pollution: A Case Study in São Paulo–Brazil,the analysis of chemical elements in the barks of trees is an alternative procedure to access spatial heterogeneity of traffic related air pollution however the role of tree species in the characterization of the variability of airborne pollution is poorly known we present an observational study conducted in sã o paulo brazil based on the analysis of 498 trees from three common species tipuana tipu poincianella pluviosa and ligustrum sp we considered ancova models to compare the concentrations of al fe zn cu mn ba and s in the bark periderm of trees located close to streets with different levels of traffic intensity controlling for the extension of nearby green areas the expected trend of increasing elemental concentration in the bark of trees located near streets with greater traffic intensity or close to smaller green areas was only fully evidenced by t tipu for instance the concentrations of zn fe al and ba increase by 200 350 230 and 280 respectively for trees of this species located near arterial streets when compared to those observed near local streets on the other hand the concentrations of zn fe al and ba are reduced by 41 45 50 and 30 respectively for trees located near green areas for p pluviosa the capacity to suggest an association between the tree bark concentration of chemical elements with increasing levels of air pollution and presence of green areas was only fully observed for zn and cu for ligustrum sp weaker and sometimes non expected associations between bark concentrations of the chemical elements and either street classification or green area extension were observed our results indicate that the choice of species is a key element in the use of tree barks as a biomonitoring tool in urban landscapes species like t tipu with rough and highly porous bark are the most appropriate for such purpose,2018,0.907
The next generation of natural history collections,the last 50 years have witnessed rapid changes in the ways that natural history specimens are collected preserved analyzed and documented those changes have produced unprecedented access to specimens images and data as well as impressive research results in organismal biology the stage is now set for a new generation of collecting preserving analyzing and integrating biological samplesâ a generation devoted to interdisciplinary research into complex biological interactions and processes next generation collections may be essential for breakthrough research on the spread of infectious diseases feeding earth s growing population adapting to climate change and other grand research challenges a decade long investment in research collection infrastructure will be needed,2018,0.059
"New record of Hydrozoa Distichopora violacea (Pallas, 1766) (Anthoathecata: Stylasteridae) from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India",the class hydrozoa consists of mostly marine and few freshwater organisms classified into 7 orders amongst which the order anthoathecata consists of 48 families with approximately 1 140 valid species cartwright collins 2007 stylasteridae is one among the families that comprises the order anthoathecata and is characterized by a calcareous exoskeleton which is often brightly pigmented the members of the family are commonly called lace corals they are usually small in size and commonly found in crevices and caves in coral reef areas,2018,0.49
Data Attribution from Download to Publication,digitized natural history data are enabling a broad range of innovative studies of biodiversity large scale data aggregators such as global biodiversity information facility gbif and integrated digitized biocollections idigbio provide easy global access to millions of specimen records contributed by thousands of collections a developing community of eager users of specimen data â whether locality image trait etc â is perhaps unaware of the effort and resources required to curate specimens digitize information capture images mobilize records serve the data and maintain the infrastructure human and cyber to support all of these activities tracking of specimen information throughout the research process is needed to provide appropriate attribution to the institutions and staff that have supplied and served the records such tracking may also allow for annotation and comment on particular records or collections by the global community detailed data tracking is also required for open reproducible science despite growing recognition of the value and need for thorough data tracking both technical and sociological challenges continue to impede progress in this talk i will present a brief vision of how application of a doi to each iteration of a data set in a typical research project could provide attribution to the provider opportunity for comment and annotation of records and the foundation for reproducible science based on natural history specimen records sociological change â such as journal requirements for data deposition of all iterations of a data set â can be accomplished using community meetings and workshops along with editorial efforts as were applied to dna sequence data two decades ago,2018,0.046
Changes and drivers of freshwater mussel diversity and distribution in northern Borneo,human activities are threatening borneo s unique biodiversity but little is known on the status of freshwater invertebrates we assessed changes in diversity and distribution of freshwater mussels bivalvia unionida in northern borneo and identified drivers of present distribution and threats past distribution data were collected from literature and museum resources present distribution data were collected from 21 river basins and 47 water quality climatic landscape and human variables explored as potential predictors of species presence absence species delimitations were identified by morphology and coi barcoding and haplotype networks generated our data indicate that over the past 50 years four of originally five native species have become very rare or possibly locally extirpated since these four species are endemic to borneo other bornean river basins should urgently be surveyed to identify any remaining populations in the same time span the non native sinanodonta woodiana has become the most widespread freshwater mussel in northern borneo the fifth native species was identified as rectidens sumatrensis and found in four sarawakian river basins thus contradicting previous assumptions of an endemic bornean rectidens species although a number of stable r sumatrensis populations are retained across sarawak the species strong spatial contraction in mainland sundaland and apparent low tolerance to eutrophication suggest that it is vulnerable to further habitat alteration our results indicate that borneo s endemic freshwater invertebrate biodiversity is declining rapidly comprehensive surveys targeting an array of invertebrate and vertebrate taxa are needed to identify borneo s freshwater biodiversity hotspots where conservation efforts should be concentrated,2018,0.974
Integrated Landscape Assessment and Monitoring (ILAM): A cost-effective approach towards informed decision-making for natural resources management,as the world strives towards achieving sustainable development goals development planners both at national and local levels have now come to understand the importance of informed decision making natural resources management is one of the areas where careful planning is required to ensure sustainable use of and maximum benefit from the services we get from ecosystems,2018,0.247
Climatic Suitability Derived from Species Distribution Models Captures Community Responses to an Extreme Drought Episode,the differential responses of co occurring species in rich communities to climate changeâ particularly to drought episodesâ have been fairly unexplored species distribution models sdms are used to assess changes in species suitability under environmental shifts but whether they can portray population and community responses is largely undetermined especially in relation to extreme events here we studied a shrubland community in se spain because this region constitutes an ecotone between the mediterranean biome and subtropical arid areas and it has recently suffered its driest hydrological year on record we used four different modeling algorithms mahalanobis distance gam brt and maxent to estimate speciesâ climatic suitability before 1950â 2000 and during the extreme drought for each sdm we related speciesâ climatic suitability with their remaining green canopy as a proxy for species resistance to drought we consistently found a positive correlation between remaining green canopy and speciesâ climatic suitability before the event this relationship supports the hypothesis of a higher vulnerability of populations living closer to their speciesâ limits of aridity tolerance contrastingly climatic suitability during the drought did not correlate with remaining green canopy likely because the exceptional episode led to almost zero suitability values overall our approach highlights climatic niche modeling as a robust approach to standardizing and comparing the behavior of different co occurring species facing strong climatic fluctuations although many processes contribute to resistance to climatic extremes the results confirm the relevance of populationsâ position in the speciesâ climatic niche for explaining sensitivity to climate change,2018,0.883
DNA barcoding and a precise morphological comparison revealed a cryptic species in the Nippolachnus piri complex (Hemiptera: Aphididae: Lachninae),nippolachnus is a small palaearctic oriental genus of very characteristic aphids that live on the leaves of woody rosaceae one species n piri has hitherto been regarded to be widely distributed and relatively polyphagous members of this genus are considered to be easy to recognize due to the absence of the ocular tubercle and triommatidia on the head we conducted research on the morphology and generic characters of nippolachnus piri complex using scanning electron microscopy for the first time and dna barcoding we analyzed n piri populations on pyrus and other plants eriobotrya rhaphiolepis and sorbus in japan and the republic of korea specifically a high genetic divergence value was found between the n piri populations associated with different host plants sem investigation of the head capsule revealed that a triommatidium is present under the compound eye despite their lack of an ocular tubercle we propose nippolachnus micromeli shinji 1924 stat nov as a cryptic species in the n piri complex based on a morphological comparison dna barcoding and different host plant associations illustrations and descriptions of studied species are given morphological keys to the apterae and alatae of all known species of the genus nippolachnus are also provided,2018,0.736
Phylogeography and species distribution modelling reveal the effects of the Pleistocene ice ages on an intertidal limpet from the south-eastern Pacific,aim the distribution and genetic composition of marine populations is the result of climatic and oceanographic factors as well as life history strategies studying species with wide distributions and high dispersal potential in sites that were differentially affected during the pleistocene glaciations provides an opportunity to evaluate the genetic and distributional effect of glaciations on marine populations such as the limpet siphonaria lesonii the aim of the present study is to evaluate the differential effects of glaciations on areas covered and not covered by ice sheets during the pleistocene glaciations location intertidal zone of the southâ eastern pacific covering approximately 5 000 km of coastline of peru and chile methods we performed molecular analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear data jointly as well as environmental niche modelling enm of populations of the limpet siphonaria lessonii using enm we modelled the potential distributional range of the species in the present and its distribution during the last glacial maximum lgm results two lineages were found that were separated by a break at 41â s corresponding to the biogeographical discontinuity previously reported for this region both of these lineages experienced genetic and demographical fluctuations that match the pleistocene glaciations however the variability was more intense in the southern lineage phylogeography and enm yielded complementary results for the southern lineage which experienced loss of genetic diversity and habitat during the lgm whereas the northern lineage evidenced loss of genetic diversity without distributional changes main conclusions the phylogeographical and enm approaches suggest a historical scenario involving demographic and distributional contractions of s lessonii surviving in glacial refugia in the southern portion of the southâ eastern pacific this study is the first to include both phylogeographical and enm analyses of marine species from the southern hemisphere,2018,0.793
Evolution Across Multiple Scales in North American Viburnum,macroevolutionary patterns in trait evolution and species diversification are ultimately generated by intraspecific processes however variation within species can take many forms from phenotypic plasticity to fixed genetic differences between populations and although there are theories that predict how certain forms of variation might lead to specific macroevolutionary outcomes there are few empirical examples that link variation within species to broader patterns of evolution this dissertation comprised of three chapters explores variation at multiple scales in the plant clade viburnum with the aim of elucidating the intraspecific origins of large scale evolutionary trends,2018,0.713
Species’ thermal ranges predict changes in reef fish community structure during 8 years of extreme temperature variation,aim to assess whether observed thermal bounds in speciesâ latitudinal ranges i e realized thermal niches can be used to predict patterns of occurrence and abundance changes observed during a marine heatwave relative to other important life history and functional traits location rottnest island western australia methods a time series of standardized quantitative surveys of reef fishes spanning 8 years of pronounced ocean temperature change is used to test whether accurate predictions on shifts in species occupancy and abundance are possible using species traits results speciesâ level responses in occurrence and abundance were closely related to the midâ point of their realized thermal niche more so than body size range size or trophic level most of the species that disappeared from survey counts during the heatwave were characterized by geographic ranges that did not extend to latitudes with temperatures equivalent to the ocean temperature peak during the heatwave we thus find support for the hypothesis that current distribution limits are set directly or indirectly by temperature and are highly responsive to ocean temperature variability main conclusions our study shows that reef fish community structure can change very quickly when exposed to extreme thermal anomalies in directions predicted from the realized thermal niche of the species present such predictions can thus identify species that will be most responsive to changing ocean climate continued warming coupled with periodic extreme heat events may lead to the loss of ecosystem services and ecological functions as mobile species relocate to more hospitable climes while less mobile species may head towards extinction,2018,0.794
Gaps in biodiversity occurrence information may hamper the achievement of international biodiversity targets: insights from a cross-taxon analysis,species distribution data are critical information sources when it comes to implementing the multiple aichi targets set by the international convention on biological diversity although there have been international scale efforts to aggregate distribution data the magnitudes and locations of the gaps in biodiversity knowledge remain unclear in this study we use a large database including over 200 000 species occurrence records to identify knowledge gaps in biodiversity inventories for nine animal taxa in a mediterranean biodiversity hotspot spatial modelling methods were employed to relate the completeness of inventories to population road and protected area density the completeness of faunistic inventories was correlated with the amount of protected areas roads and population density despite more than 200 years of faunistic sampling knowledge of the distributions of most animal taxa is still limited especially for invertebrates as the window of opportunity for achieving aichi targets 11 and 19 begins to close means of filling such knowledge gaps are required we argue that a combination of quantitative tools and citizen science data collection programmes may help inform conservation decisions,2018,0.504
Information System design in support of Albanian biodiversity conservation.,the conservation of biodiversity is one of the challenges of ecologists the collection and monitoring of biodiversity knowledge is the first step in the conservation of biodiversity technological developments and their implementation in the field of biodiversity are thought to turn the www into a giant global information system on biodiversity biodiversity data in albania are distributed it would be very helpful for students and researchers to integrate these data as it would facilitate teaching and research the aim of this paper is to model and implement the database for albanian biodiversity knowledge in odonata species and to design and an information system that will facilitate access to biodiversity data the system is implemented for odonata species and their habitats in albania,2018,0.18
"A New Species of Spatuloricaria Schultz, 1944 (Siluriformes: Loricariidae), from the Orinoco River Basin, Colombia",a new species of spatuloricaria is described from the orinoco river basin colombia the new species can be distinguished from its congeners by the following characters a broad dark brown stripe on the first pre dorsal plate which occupies the entire plate reaching the preopercle and sometimes reaching the second pre dorsal plate the possession of a small group of plates posterior to the urogenital pore the abdominal surface with scattered very small plates leaving naked areas the possession of five transverse dark brown bands on the dorsal region and four to five premaxillary teeth the new species is the first valid species of spatuloricaria distributed in the orinoco river basin ecological notes of the species and comments regarding the taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships of the genus are offered,2018,0.835
Effectiveness of Sensitivity Analysis for Parameter Selection in CLIMEX Modeling of Metcalfa pruinosa Distribution,climex a species distribution modeling tool includes various types of parameters representing climatic conditions the estimation of these parameters directly determines the model accuracy in this study we investigated the sensitivity of parameters for the climatic suitability calculated by climex for metcalfa pruinosa in south korea methods we first changed 12 parameters and identified the three significant parameters that considerably affected the climex simulation response results the result indicated that the simulation was highly sensitive to changes in lower optimal temperatures lower soil moisture thresholds and cold stress accumulation rate based on the sensitivity index suggesting that these were the fundamental parameters to be used for fitting the simulation into the actual distribution conclusion sensitivity analysis is effective for estimating parameter values and selecting the most important parameters for improving model accuracy,2018,0.173
Candida catenulata Candidaemia and Possible Endocarditis in a Cirrhotic Patient Successfully De-escalated to Oral Fluconazole,what is known and objective candida catenulata is a fungus commonly found in australian cheeses c catenulata has been identified as the causative pathogen for one report of onychomycosis and one report of candidaemia case description a 37â yearâ old male underwent surgery for an incarcerated umbilical hernia repair and bowel obstruction and presented with severe abdominal pain and ascitic fluid draining from the surgical site c catenulata was isolated in blood cultures the patient was treated with antifungal therapy for approximately 6 weeks what is new and conclusion to our knowledge this is the first case describing successful treatment of possible fungal endocarditis caused by c catenulata,2018,0.429
Climatic niche shifts are common in introduced plants,our understanding of how climate influences species distributions and our ability to assess the risk of introduced species depend on the assumption that speciesâ climatic niches remain stable across space and time while niche shifts have been detected in individual invasive species one assessment of 50 plants in europe and north america concluded that niche shifts were rare while another concluded the opposite these contradictory findings limited in species number and geographic scope leave open a need to understand how often introduced species experience niche shifts and whether niche shifts can be predicted we found evidence of climatic niche shifts in 65â 100 of 815 terrestrial plant species introduced across five continents depending on how niche shifts were measured individual species responses were idiosyncratic but we generally saw that niche shifts reflected changes in climate availability at the continent scale and were largest in long lived and cultivated species smaller intercontinental niche shifts occurred within speciesâ native ranges overall the climatic niches of terrestrial plant species were not conserved as they crossed continents these results have major consequences for applying environmental niche models to assess the risk of invasive species and for predicting species responses to climate change our findings challenge the tenet that speciesâ niches are conserved aspects of their ecology,2018,0.979
Identifying priority conservation areas for birds associated to endangered Neotropical dry forests,neotropical dry forests ndf are widely distributed and possess important levels of species richness and endemism however they are considered a highly endangered ecosystem today the protected areas network pas located within ndf covers 10 of the total forests extent and it s still unknown if pas adequately represent its biodiversity thus we selected 695 bird species associated to ndf and used zonation software to assess the species distribution s representativeness within the pas network additionally we defined priority conservation areas to strategically expand the current pas considering the most important human pressures current pas cover only 8 4 of ndf and represent on average 10 of the total distribution of avifauna inhabiting these forests approximately 19 of ndf s birds possess 5 of their distribution represented in pas from which 13 have 1 of their ranges protected further 77 of the most priority species i e with restricted range and categorized as threatened possess 10 of their distribution protected however our results pointed out great possibilities to improve the picture by considering our prioritization the protection coverage would increase to 17 to match the aichi targets and would substantially increase the representativeness values covering on average 36 the ranges of all species and particularly 62 for the most priority species priority conservation areas identified are mainly distributed in peru 23 1 brazil 21 3 ecuador 18 8 and bolivia 11 4 our novel results represent an important step to guide future establishment of new and efficient conservation areas across the ndf,2018,0.875
Systematic Revision of the Giant Vinegaroons of the Mastigoproctus giganteus Complex (Thelyphonida: Thelyphonidae) of North America,the north american vinegaroon mastigoproctus giganteus lucas 1835 is demonstrated to comprise a complex of range restricted species rather than a single widespread polymorphic species seven species are recognized based on morphological characters of the adult males including the arrangement of spines on the prodorsal margin of the pedipalp trochanter the position of the epistoma on the carapace the presence of a stridulatory organ on opposing surfaces of the chelicerae and the pedipalp coxa the presence of a patch of setae on sternite v and the shape and macrosculpture of the retrolateral surface of the pedipalp femur the two currently recognized subspecies are elevated to species mastigoproctus mexicanus butler 1872 stat nov and mastigoproctus scabrosus pocock 1902 stat nov mastigoproctus floridanus lã nnberg 1897 is revalidated from synonymy with m giganteus redescriptions of m giganteus and the other three species based on both sexes are provided and three new species described mastigoproctus cinteotl sp nov from tamaulipas mexico mastigoproctus tohono sp nov from arizona and sonora mexico mastigoproctus vandevenderi sp nov from sonora mexico the present contribution raises the diversity of the order thelyphonida latreille 1804 in north america from one species to seven three species occur in the united states one each in arizona texas and florida six species occur in mexico and two species occur in both countries,2018,0.992
"First record of the Veronica’s Anolis Anolis festae Peracca, 1904 (Squamata, Dactyloidae) in Colombia",the genus anolis daudin 1892 is one of the most diverse groups of reptiles it comprises 424 currently recognized species uetz et al 2018 this group of lizards is distributed from south of united states to north of paraguay including minor and mayor antilles and even some pacific islands losos 2009 in colombia the genus has 76 species distributed from lowlands to high mountains moreno arias and calderã n espinosa 2015 poe et al 2017,2018,0.578
Predicting the Suitable Habitat of Treeline Species in the Nepalese Himalayas Under Climate Change,the response of treeline forming species to global climate change is uncertain while numerous treeline species have recently experienced range advance along their upper elevational boundary this has been species and region dependent making an accurate prediction of how taxa will respond is essential for conservation and land management as treeline advance is likely to result in a loss of alpine biodiversity through habitat change and fragmentation predicting any species response requires an understanding of the current physical and climatic determinants of its distribution we used the maxent species distribution modeling software to predict the likelihood of treeline advance in the nepalese himalayas by modeling the extent of suitable habitats for 3 dominant treeline speciesâ abies spectabilis betula utilis and pinus wallichianaâ under present and projected climate conditions temperature related climatic variables and elevation explained the greatest amount of variance in the distribution of the study species under projected climate conditions we found a regional increase in suitable habitat for all 3 treeline species predicting a potential for northward and upslope advance,2018,0.897
Information management relevant to invasive species early detection and rapid response programs,the national invasive species council management plan 2016â 2018 calls for an evaluation of current information systems relevant to early detection and rapid response programs information systems are important resources in invasive species programs for identification management modeling education and more these systems both facilitate and are reliant upon information sharing and aggregation which the federal government and many professional journals are requiring as part of funding and publication there are many challenges associated with aggregating validating storing querying analyzing and sharing information as the amount of data and information increases nearly as fast as the advancements in computer hardware and processing power in order to determine the types of data that are collected and shared where and how those data are shared which information systems are being accessed and what information is being used from the information systems a survey was sent out to representatives from federal agencies that are associated with invasive species programs the respondentsâ results and recommendations are summarized most agencies collected data that are relevant to their programs research and management needs and they share data either through their own portals or directly with those who request it the respondents all recommended that support needs to increase for invasive species programs so that data collection can spread to more areas of interest and towards prevention and proactive programs the authors have also proposed additional recommendations for information standardization data collection minimums metadata and provenance preservation and standardization and features necessary for functional information systems,2018,0.204
"Additions to the Vascular Plant Flora of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska: New Records, Rare Species, and Phytogeographic Patterns",st lawrence island in the northern bering sea is an important biogeographic link between the flora of northeastern asia and northwestern north america a vascular plant inventory was conducted on st lawrence island in the 1960s by steven young in which 250 taxa were documented since that time very few collections have been made on the island we conducted a vascular plant survey to improve our understanding of baseline floristics and identify populations of species of conservation concern of the 166 taxa we collected in late july 2012 a number of collections represent new or significant finds eritrichium villosum a siberian taxon not previously recognized from north america was collected on north central st lawrence island this taxon however had been collected under a different name by young in the late 1960s iris setosa subsp setosa is a new record for the island iris setosa although common along the eastern bering sea coast from kotzebue sound south through the aleutians appears to be very restricted on st lawrence island and has only been noted by residents in recent years erigeron humilis and moehringia lateriflora are also new records for the island new populations were located of the globally rare species cardamine blaisdellii claytonia arctica micranthes nudicaulis subsp nudicaulis papaver gorodkovii potentilla fragiformis ranunculus camissonis and r turneri subsp turneri we have included an annotated species list of 281 taxa illustrated under sampled regions of the island and described the biogeographic affinities of the flora to other high latitude regions the island s flora has strong biogeographic affinities to eastern beringia alaska and western yukon particularly to the seward peninsula and less strongly to the russian far east numerous circumpolar arctic and alpine species were also present with a minority of east asian species known from very few populations in extreme western alaska,2018,0.974
Response to climate change of montane herbaceous plants in the genus Rhodiola predicted by ecological niche modelling,climate change profoundly influences species distributions these effects are evident in poleward latitudinal range shifts for many taxa and upward altitudinal range shifts for alpine species that resulted from increased annual global temperatures since the last glacial maximum lgm ca 22 000 bp for the latter the ultimate consequence of upward shifts may be extinction as species in the highest alpine ecosystems can migrate no further a phenomenon often characterized as â œnowhere to goâ to predict responses to climate change of the alpine plants on the qinghai tibetan plateau qtp we used ecological niche modelling enm to estimate the range shifts of 14 rhodiola species beginning with the last interglacial ca 120 000â 140 000 bp through to 2050 distributions of rhodiola species appear to be shaped by temperature related variables the southeastern qtp and especially the hengduan mountains were the origin and center of distribution for rhodiola and also served as refugia during the lgm under future climate scenario in 2050 rhodiola species might have to migrate upward and northward but many species would expand their ranges contra the prediction of the â œnowhere to goâ hypothesis caused by the appearance of additional potential habitat concomitant with the reduction of permafrost with climate warming,2018,0.875
Biogeographic regions and events of isolation and diversification of the endemic biota of the tropical Andes,understanding the spatial and temporal evolution of biota in the tropical andes is a major challenge given the regionâ s topographic complexity and high beta diversity we used a network approach to find biogeographic regions bioregions based on high resolution species distribution models for 151 endemic bird taxa then we used dated molecular phylogenies of 14 genera to reconstruct the area history through a sequence of allopatric speciation processes we identified 15 biogeographical regions and found 26 events of isolation and diversification within their boundaries that are independently confirmed with disjunct distributions of sister taxa furthermore these events are spatially congruent with six geographical barriers related to warm and or dry river valleys discontinuities in elevation and high peaks separating fauna from different range slopes the most important barrier is the maraã on river valley which limits the boundaries of four bioregions and is congruent with eight phylogenetic distribution breaks separating the central and northern andes where the most bioregions are found we also show that many bioregions have diffuse and overlapping structures with contact and transition zones that challenge previous conceptions of biogeographical regions as spatially simple in structure this study found evidence that the drivers of our identified bioregions were processes of andean uplift and mountain dispersal facilitated by temperature oscillations of the pleistocene therefore andean bioregions were not formed from one simple biogeographical event in a certain time frame but from a combination of vicariance and dispersal events which occurred in different time periods,2018,0.586
The Living Atlases community in action: the NBN Atlas Spatial Portal and “Explore Your Region” module,atlas of living australia ala https www ala org au is the global biodiversity information facility gbif node of australia since 2010 they have developed and improved a platform for sharing and exploring biodiversity information all the modules are publicly available for reuse and customization on their github account https github com atlasoflivingaustralia,2018,0.354
Warming drives higher rates of prey consumption and increases rates of intraguild predation,warming due to climate change is expected to alter species interactions these interactions are shaped by components of individual behavior particularly foraging behaviors however few studies consider speciesâ behavioral responses to warming to predict how species interactions will be affected by warming we chose two complementary approaches to examine how climate warming may affect the behavior and interactions of aquatic intraguild predators first we measured behavioral responses to warming in six larval dragonfly species expecting that feeding rate and activity would increase with temperature secondly we conducted intraguild predation igp trials with three species to understand how temperature affects igp and if speciesâ behavioral responses to warming are indicative of the outcome of igp interactions warming increased feeding rates by 42 on average across species but had no effect on activity rate the magnitude of change in feeding rate was positively correlated with the maximum temperatures species experience across their ranges lastly warming increased rates of igp twofold however speciesâ behavioral responses alone were not predictive of their susceptibility to become ig prey of other larvae at warmer temperatures our results provide evidence that igp interactions may be greatly affected by future increases in temperature however activity responses to warming alone are weak predictors of the outcomes of these interactions future studies should consider other speciesâ traits when forecasting the effects of climate change on species interactions,2018,0.878
Inclusion of Cistus ladanifer in Ruminant Diets: An Approach to Improve the Nutritional Value of Edible Fats,cistus ladanifer is a shrub quite abundant in mediterranean countries that when fed to lambs has been associated with changes in rumen biohydrogenation bh increasing t11 18 1 concentration in abomasal digesta and meat the thesis main motivation was to further knowledge regarding c ladanifer plant and to explore its utilization in nutritional strategies to ruminal bh modulation in the first two experiments seasonal variation of c ladanifer aerial parts with two ages was characterized for chemical composition including proximate composition and total phenols and condensed tannins ct contents for in vitro digestibility antioxidant activity and fatty acid fa profile cistus ladanifer was considered a nutritionally unbalanced feed however it may be used in ruminant nutrition but only associated with other feeding resources to complement its nutritional imbalances in third experiment c ladanifer fractions effects were tested on in vitro ruminal bh condensed tannins fraction was the most active on ruminal bh modulation leading to a higher t11 18 1 accumulation and higher disappearance of substrate polyunsaturated fa therefore we intended to determine which ct amount can optimize t11 18 1 ruminal synthesis however all ct fraction levels led to a depression of microbial growth without effects on ruminal bh last experiment was designed to explore effect of two levels of c ladanifer ct 1 25 and 2 5 and two ways of ct supply c ladanifer aerial parts and c ladanifer ct extract on lamb growth performance carcass composition meat quality and fa composition of lamb fat the highest amount of c ladanifer aerial part 2 5 of ct had detrimental effects on growth performance whereas c ladanifer ct extract inclusion in diet 1 25 of ct led to the highest t11 18 1 increase in fat so we can conclude that c ladanifer ct extract may be a good approach to improve the nutritional value of the ruminant edible fats,2018,0.038
Niche modeling for the genus Pogona (Squamata: Agamidae) in Australia: predicting past (late Quaternary) and future (2070) areas of suitable habitat,background as the climate warms many species of reptiles are at risk of habitat loss and ultimately extinction locations of suitable habitat in the past present and future were modeled for several lizard species using maxent incorporating climatic variables related to temperature and precipitation in this study we predict where there is currently suitable habitat for the genus pogona and potential shifts in habitat suitability in the past and future methods georeferenced occurrence records were obtained from the global biodiversity information facility climate variables describing temperature and precipitation were obtained from worldclim and a vegetation index was obtained from avhrr satellite data matching climate variables were downloaded for three different past time periods mid holocene last glacial maximum and last interglacial and two different future projections representative concentration pathways rcps 2 6 and 8 5 maxent produced accuracy metrics response curves and probability surfaces for each species parameters were adjusted for the best possible output that was biologically informative results model results predicted that in the past there was little suitable habitat for p henrylawsoni and p microlepidota within the areas of their current range past areas of suitable habitat for p barbata were predicted to be similar to the current prediction pogona minor and p nullarbor were predicted to have had a more expansive range of suitable habitat in the past which has reduced over time p vitticeps was predicted to have less suitable habitat in the past when examining the region of their known occurrence however there was predicted growth in suitable habitat in western australia both 2070 models predict a similar distribution of habitat however the model produced using the 2070 rcp 8 5 climate change projection showed a larger change both in areas of suitable habitat gain and loss in the future p henrylawsoni and p microlepidota might gain suitable habitat while the other four species could possibly suffer habitat loss discussion based on the model results p henrylawsoni and p microlepidota had minimal areas of suitable habitat during the last glacial maximum possibly due to changes in tolerance or data model limitations especially since genetic analyses for these species suggest a much earlier emergence the predicted late quaternary habitat results for all species of pogona are conservative and should be compared to the fossil record which is not possible at the moment due to the current inability to identify fossil pogona to the species level p nullarbor and p vitticeps future models predict substantial habitat loss p nullarbor could potentially be considered vulnerable in the present since it already has a restricted range and a conservation plan may need to be considered,2018,0.674
Evolutionary history of Musaceae: ancient distribution and the rise of modern lineages,we conducted a biogeographic analysis of musaceae emphasizing the importance of the fossil record to understand the early evolutionary history of the family plastid and nuclear dna sequences were used to estimate divergence times with a bayesian uncorrelated lognormal relaxed clock approach ancestral areas were reconstructed using the statistical dispersal extinction cladogenesis method under two models one including and one excluding the fossil distribution molecular dating and integration of biogeographic reconstructions suggest a boreotropical origin for musaceae across the landmasses of north america europe asia with its diversification occurring through the cretaceous palaeogene k pg 45 9â 80 1 mya 95 hpd and subsequent diversification occurring in southern south east asia comparison of the two models showed that biogeographic analysis based only on living species does not provide a complete reconstruction of the evolutionary history we hypothesize that north america and europe may be considered the grave of the more ancient lineages of musaceae and tropical asia as the cradle of more recent lineages of the family the incorporation of fossil information in ancestral reconstructions improves the biogeographical history and expands hypotheses about the early evolution of musaceae,2018,0.313
"Polymorphic nuclear markers for coastal plant species with dynamic geographic distributions, the rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum) and the vulnerable dune pansy (Viola tricolor subsp. curtisii)",identifying spatial patterns of genetic differentiation across a species range is critical to set up conservation and restoration decision making this is especially timely since global change triggers shifts in speciesâ geographic distribution and in the geographical variation of mating system and patterns of genetic differentiation with varying consequences at the trailing and leading edges of a speciesâ distribution using 454 pyrosequencing we developed nuclear microsatellite loci for two plant species showing a strictly coastal geographical distribution and contrasting range dynamics the expanding rock samphire crithmum maritimum 21 loci and the highly endangered and receding dune pansy viola tricolor subsp curtisii 12 loci population genetic structure was then assessed by genotyping more than 100 individuals from four populations of each of the two target species rock samphire displayed high levels of genetic differentiation fst 0 38 and a genetic structure typical of a mostly selfing species fis ranging from 0 16 to 0 58 populations of dune pansy showed a less pronounced level of population structuring fst 0 25 and a genotypic structure more suggestive of a mixed mating system when excluding two loci with heterozygote excess these results demonstrate that the genetic markers developed here are useful to assess the mating system of populations of these two species they will be tools of choice to investigate phylogeographical patterns and variation in mating system over the geographical distribution ranges for two coastal plant species that are subject to dynamic evolution due to rapid contemporary global change,2018,0.791
Future-proofing the Cenozoic macroperforate planktonic foraminifera phylogeny of Aze &amp; others (2011),the unique macroevolutionary dataset of aze others has been transferred onto the timescale creator visualisation platform while as much as practicable preserving the original unrevised content of its morphospecies and lineage evolutionary trees this is a â œcorrected versionâ not a revision which can serve as an on going historical case example because it is now updatable with future time scales both macroevolutionary and biostratigraphic communities are now equipped with an enduring phylogenetic database of cenozoic macroperforate planktonic foraminiferal morphospecies and lineages for which both graphics and content can be visualised together key to maintaining the currency of the trees has been specification of time scales for sources of stratigraphic ranges these scales then locate the range dates within the calibration series some ranges or their sources have undergone mostly minor corrections or amendments links between lineage and morphospecies trees have been introduced to improve consistency and transparency in timing within the trees also aze othersâ dual employment of morphospecies and lineage concepts is further elaborated here given misunderstandings that have ensued features displayed on the trees include options for line styles for additional categories for range extensions or degrees of support for ancestorâ descendant proposals these have been applied to a small number of instances as an encouragement to capture more nuanced data in the future in addition to labeling of eco and morpho groups on both trees genus labels can be attached to the morphospecies tree to warn of polyphyletic morphogenera and the lineage codes have been decoded to ease their recognition however it is the mouse over pop ups that provide the greatest opportunity to embed supporting information in the trees they include details for stratigraphic ranges and their recalibration steps positions relative to the standard planktonic foraminiferal zonation and applications as datums as well as mutual listings between morphospecies and lineages which ease the tracing of their interrelated contents the elaboration of the original dataset has been captured in a relational database which can be considered a resource in itself and through queries and programming serves to generate the timescale creator datapacks,2018,0.148
"Short communication: Biological aspects of charybdis anisodon (de haan, 1850) in lasongko bay, central buton, southeast sulawesi, Indonesia",data on the biological aspects of charybdis anisodon de haan 1850 were still very limited this study was aimed to determine the distribution of size growth type sex ratio and spawning season of c anisodon in lasongko bay central buton southeast sulawesi crab collection was conducted from may 2013 to march 2014 using a crab gillnet the carapace width of males and females c anisodon ranged between 3 05 7 61 cm and 3 45 7 98 cm respectively mann whitney test showed that width and length of carapace of males and females were significantly different p 0 05 type of growth of carapace width body weight male and female were both allometric negative carapace length body weight relationships of the males was isometric but it was allometric negative for females spatially and temporally the sex ratio of c anisodon showed a variation and the total sex ratio was 1 0 38 the spawning season of c anisodon tend to occur throughout the year,2018,0.158
Modeling and mapping the current and future distribution of Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae under climate change in China,objective bacterial canker of kiwifruit caused by pseudomonas syringae pv actinidiae psa is a major threat to the kiwifruit industry throughout the world and accounts for substantial economic losses in china the aim of the present study was to test and explore the possibility of using maxent maximum entropy models to predict and analyze the future large scale distribution of psa in china method based on the current environmental factors three future climate scenarios which were suggested by the fifth ipcc report and the current distribution sites of psa maxent combined with arcgis was applied to predict the potential suitable areas and the changing trend of psa in china the jackknife test and correlation analysis were used to choose dominant climatic factors the receiver operating characteristic curve roc drawn by maxent was used to evaluate the accuracy of the simulation result the results showed that under current climatic conditions the area from latitude 25â to 36â n and from longitude 101â to 122â e is the primary potential suitable area of psa in china the highly suitable area with suitability between 66 and 100 was mainly concentrated in northeast sichuan south shaanxi most of chongqing west hubei and southwest gansu and occupied 4 94 of land in china under different future emission scenarios both the areas and the centers of the suitable areas all showed differences compared with the current situation four climatic variables i e maximum april temperature 19 mean temperature of the coldest quarter 14 precipitation in may 11 5 and minimum temperature in october 10 8 had the largest impact on the distribution of psa conclusion the maxent model is potentially useful for forecasting the future adaptive distribution of psa under climate change and it provides important guidance for comprehensive management,2018,0.138
Characterization of Laguncularia racemosa transcriptome and molecular response to oil pollution,mangroves are ecosystems of economic and ecological importance laguncularia racemosa combretaceae popularly known as white mangrove is a species that greatly contributes to the community structure of neotropical and west african mangrove forests despite the significance of these ecosystems they have been destroyed by oil spills that can cause yellowing of leaves increased sensitivity to other stresses and death of trees however the molecular response of plants to oil stress is poorly known in this work illumina reads were de novo assembled into 46 944 transcripts of l racemosa roots and leaves including putative isoform variants in addition to improving the genomic information available for mangroves the l racemosa assembled transcriptome allowed us to identify reference genes to normalize quantitative real time pcr qpcr expression data from oil stressed mangrove plants which were used in rnaseq validation the analysis of expression changes induced by the oil exposure revealed 310 and 286 responsive transcripts of leaves and roots respectively mainly up regulated enriched go categories related to chloroplasts and photosynthesis were found among both leaf and root oil responsive transcripts while â œresponse to heatâ and â œresponse to hypoxiaâ were exclusively enriched in leaves and roots respectively the comparison of l racemosa 12 h oil stressed leaf expression profile to previous arabidopsis heat stress studies and co expression evidence also pointed to similarities between the heat and oil responses in which the hsp coding genes seem to play a key role a subset of the l racemosa oil responsive root genes exhibited similar up regulation profiles to their arabidopsis homologs involved in hypoxia responses including the hra1 and lbd41 tf coding genes genes linked to the ethylene pathway such as those coding for erf tfs were also modulated during the l racemosa root response to oil stress taken together these results show that oil contamination affects photosynthesis protein metabolism hypoxia response and the ethylene pathway in l racemosa 12 h oil exposed leaves and roots,2018,0.228
Conservation genetics of the highly endangered Azorean endemics Euphrasia azorica and Euphrasia grandiflora using new SSR data,in the azores islands two euphrasia l orobanchaceae endemic species are recognized euphrasia azorica h c watson an annual herb in flores and corvo and euphrasia grandiflora hochst ex seub a semi shrub in pico sã o jorge and terceira both species are highly endangered and protected by the bern convention and habitats directive a population genetics study was conducted with new microsatellite primer pairs in 159 individuals of e azorica and e grandifolia sampled from populations in flores corvo pico and sã o jorge allele sizing suggested that e azorica is a diploid while e grandiflora is a tetraploid euphrasia grandiflora revealed higher genetic diversity then e azorica the e grandiflora population of morro pelado in sã o jorge displayed higher genetic diversity when compared with all others while the e azorica population of madeira seca in corvo showed the lowest private and less common bands were also overall higher in e grandiflora populations population genetic structure analysis confirmed a distinctiveness between the two azorean endemic euphrasia in addition to island specific genetic patterns in e azorica the genetic structure obtained for e grandiflora was complex with the populations of cabeã o do mistã rio in pico island and of pico da esperanã a in sã o jorge sharing the same genetic group while a putative spatial barrier to gene flow was still retrieved between both islands although some populations of both species might benefit from propagation actions studies are needed on plant host species and translocations between islands or between some populations of a same island should be avoided due to the occurrence of putative esus eradication of invasive species and control of grazing will be fundamental to promote in situ restauration,2018,0.975
"Benthic Macroinvertebrate Diversity in the Middle Doce River Basin, Brazil",this resource contains a checklist of the benthic macroinvertebrate community sampled biannually from 1999 to 2010 in eight natural lakes from the middle rio doce valley lake system and eight river segments in the piracicaba river basin sub basin of doce river minas gerais state brazil three of the lakes are located inside a protected state park and are surrounded by preserved vegetation atlantic forest the other five lakes are in private properties surrounded by eucalyptus plantations the seven stretches of rivers have a distinct degree of anthropogenic impacts samples were collected with a kick net and fixed with formaldehyde solution four phyla were represented mollusca annelida arthropoda and platyhelminthes for insecta 76 families were identified one family was identified for crustacea and nine families were identified for mollusca this subproject belongs to the international long term ecological research project ilterâ programa de pesquisas ecolã gicas de longa duraã ã oâ peld site 4,2018,0.303
"Solaropsis brasiliana, anatomy, range extension and its phylogenetic position within Pleurodontidae (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Stylommatophora)",a detailed anatomical revision on solaropsis brasiliana deshayes 1832 has been carried out new characters on shell anatomy of soft parts and a review of the genus distribution in south america as well as clarification on s brasiliana distributional area are provided in the present study solaropsis brasiliana is diagnosed by its globose solid and hirsute shell with periphery obsoletely angular bursa copulatrix with a thick long diverticulum a thick long flagellum and a penis retractor muscle forked with the vas deferens passing through it this compiled information was used to test the phylogenetic position of s brasiliana within south american pleurodontidae through a cladistics analysis in the phylogenetic hypothesis obtained s brasiliana is sister group of s gibboni pfeiffer 1846 and the monophyly of the genus solaropsis beck is also supported here we sustain that the distribution of s brasiliana is restricted to brazil inhabiting the states of rio de janeiro espã rito santo bahia and minas gerais,2018,0.289
"The distribution of the fathead sculpin species Cottunculus subspinosus Jensen, 1902",the range of the rarely caught fathead sculpin species cottunculus subspinosus has been considered restricted to the waters off east greenland and northeast iceland for the first time the species is recorded from the east side of the norwegian sea and also it is found further north in the greenland sea than previously known mapping all the corroborated specimens known indicates that the species seems confined to the continental slopes of the nordic seas where it is found in waters with a temperature below zero and a depth of more than 900 m depth distribution shows almost no overlap with the closely related sympatric cottunculus microps perhaps as a result of competitive exclusion,2018,0.795
Nurturing a sustainable Open Tree of Life,the open tree of life project is a collaborative effort to synthesize share and update a comprehensive tree of life fig 1 we have completed a draft synthesis of a tree summarizing digitally available taxonomic and phylogenetic knowledge for all 2 6 million named species available at tree opentreeoflife org hinchliff et al 2015 this tree provides ready access to phylogenetic information which can link together biodiversity data on the basis of what we know about relevant evolutionary history both the unified reference taxonomy rees and cranston 2017 and the published phylogenetic statements underlying the tree mctavish et al 2015 are available and accessible online taxa in the phylogenies are mapped to the the reference taxonomy which aligns open tree taxon identifiers to those from ncbi and gbif among several other taxonomy resources the synthesis tree is revised as new data become available and captures conflict and consensus across different published phylogenetic estimates this undertaking requires both development of novel infrastructure and analysis tools as well as community engagement with the open tree of life project i will discuss the challenges in and the progress towards achieving these goals,2018,0.313
"A Floristic Inventory of Private and Public Lands in Southwestern Gunnison County, Colorado; And a Software Tool to Assist in the Generation of Herbarium Specimen …",i conducted an inventory of vascular flora on public and private property in southwestern gunnison county colorado the study area consisted of 3 004 acres of private land and 1 850 acres of adjacent public land managed by the bureau of land management blm while a small part of the blm area was surveyed in the late 1990s the majority of the study area represented a gap in the existing floristic research to date in the rocky mountains fieldwork was conducted in the growing seasons of 2016 and 2017 six hundred five herbarium specimens were generated representing 315 species and infraspecific taxa combining my findings with reliable observations and existing collections from the area a checklist of 330 species and infraspecific taxa was compiled representing ten percent of the known colorado flora the variable landscape of the area includes submontane to subalpine forests wetlands grasslands sagebrush shrublands xeric mesa tops and rocky cliffs taken together these areas provide habitat for two species previously unknown in the county trifolium kingii pyrola picta two further species that are considered vulnerable or imperiled in colorado iliamna rivularis draba rectifructa and 30 vulnerable or imperiled plant community types the presence of species and communities of conservation concern not previously documented in the region emphasizes the need for continued floristic study of private lands and other undersampled areas,2018,0.812
"Palm species richness, latitudinal gradients, sampling effort, and deforestation in the Amazon region",palms are most diverse in warm and humid regions near the equator though palms remain relatively well conserved they are under increasing pressure from deforestation here we analyze patterns of palm species richness relative to latitudinal gradient sampling effort and deforestation in the amazon and compare patterns of richness and floristic similarity among amazonian sub regions we built a database of 17 310 records for 177 species the areas with the greatest richness were in the western central and northeastern amazon principally at latitudes 0 5âºs species richness and the number of records were highly correlated r2 0 76 p 0 005 the highest rates of deforestation 2000 km2 were found in the southern and eastern amazon of brazil which coincide with low richness and gaps in records similarity analyzes resulted in two groups of sub regions the first included the amazon s s the andes and the guiana while the second included the plateau and gurupi we conclude that the highest species richness is at low latitudes and observed richness is affected by sampling effort and is vulnerable to deforestation therefore areas with low species richness especially areas with data deficiency need to be further studied for a better understanding of their patterns of diversity and richness,2018,0.879
"Arizona's Amphibians & Reptiles, A Natural History and Field Guide, by Murphy with Jones and Clark, is an up to date and beautifully illustrated book that focuses on …",interest in arizonaâ s herpetofauna was first stimulated by the us armyâ s pacific railroad surveys 1853â 1855 that explored possible routes for a transcontinental railroad the expeditionâ s biologists were given instructions on how to collect and handle specimens and they were outfitted by spencer fullerton baird assistant secretary of the smithsonian baird and charles girard followed up on the specimens returned by the expeditions and they described about 30 of the 188 species and subspecies recognized in this book biological knowledge has exploded since the days of baird and girard species concepts have multiplied and mutated into dozens of slightly differing ideas sorting 35 mm slides from trips to arizona in the 1970s â 90s i realized not only had the photographic technology undergone radical evolution but many of the scientific names had also changed along with the ability to sequence genes and compare them has come the realization that biodiversity is substantially greater than previously thought species are constantly being split and only occasionally lumped in the 21st century this is in part the result of the polytypic species concept that lumped populations that were quite different into a single species molecular techniques combined with second looks at morphology are redefining old species and describing new ones this volume attempts to provide the reader with an overview of the arizona herpetofauna provide the information necessary to identify the stateâ s amphibians and reptiles and to summarize some of what is known about their natural history this is not as straightforward as one might expect variation within a species can be bewildering males and females are often distinctly different and juveniles can have coloration and patterns that make them look unlike their parents populations are often selected for the coloration of the background they live on so two populations may be close geographically but be living on rock and soil of different colors the known biodiversity of the state will increase as more studies are done the reader should expect changes to the fauna as new information becomes available my biggest regret in publishing this book is that it is not triple the size there is a substantial amount of research that has gone into the arizona herpetofauna this volume is but an incomplete snapshot of that information,2018,0.902
"Checklists of Parasites of Fishes of Salah Al-Din Province, Iraq",literature reviews of reports concerning the parasitic fauna of fishes of salah al din province iraq till the end of 2017 showed that a total of 115 parasite species are so far known from 25 valid fish species investigated for parasitic infections the parasitic fauna included two myzozoans one choanozoan seven ciliophorans 24 myxozoans eight trematodes 34 monogeneans 12 cestodes 11 nematodes five acanthocephalans two annelids and nine crustaceans the infection with some trematodes and nematodes occurred with larval stages while the remaining infections were either with trophozoites or adult parasites among the inspected fishes cyprinion macrostomum was infected with the highest number of parasite species 29 parasite species followed by carasobarbus luteus 26 species and arabibarbus grypus 22 species while six fish species alburnus caeruleus a sellal barbus lacerta cyprinion kais hemigrammocapoeta elegans and mastacembelus mastacembelus were infected with only one parasite species each the myxozoan myxobolus oviformis was the commonest parasite species as it was reported from 10 fish species followed by both the myxozoan m pfeifferi and the trematode ascocotyle coleostoma which were reported from eight fish host species each and then by both the cestode schyzocotyle acheilognathi and the nematode contracaecum sp which were reported from seven fish host species each,2018,1
An open-access platform for camera-trapping data,in southern mexico local communities have been playing important roles in the design and collection of wildlife data through camera trapping in community based monitoring of biodiversity projects however the methods used to store the data have limited their use in matters of decision making and research thus we present the platform for community based monitoring of biodiversity pcmb a repository which allows storage visualization and downloading of photographs captured by community based monitoring of biodiversity projects in protected areas of southern mexico the platform was developed using agile software development with extensive interaction between computer scientists and biologists system development included gathering data design built database and attributes creation and quality control the pcmb currently contains 28 180 images of 6478 animals 69 4 mammals and 30 3 birds of the 32 species of mammals recorded in 18 pa since 2012 approximately a quarter of all photographs were of white tailed deer odocoileus virginianus platforms permitting access to camera trapping data are a valuable step in opening access to data of biodiversity the pcmb is a practical new tool for wildlife management and research with data generated through local participation thus this work encourages research on the data generated through the community based monitoring of biodiversity projects in protected areas to provide an important information infrastructure for effective management and conservation of wildlife,2018,0.233
"The first country record of the Mexican Blind Snake, Anomalepis mexicanus Jan, 1860 (Serpentes, Anomalepididae), in Colombia",we report the first colombian record of the blind snake anomalepis mexicanus jan 1860 based on a single specimen from cantagallo municipality department of bolã var our new record fills a large gap and extends this speciesâ geographical distribution by approximately 630 km in a straight line east southeast from its nearest previously known panamanian locality and approximately 1295 km in a straight line north northeast from its nearest previously known peruvian locality,2018,0.286
"A critical evaluation of the exotic bird collection of the Å ariÅ¡ Museum in Bardejov, Slovakia",a collection of exotic birds deposited in the å ariå museum in bardejov smb slovakia has not been evaluated critically since their deposition we assessed the accuracy of identification of 465 bird specimens deposited in smb with native distributions outside of slovakia specimens belonged to 322 species of 82 families and 26 orders of the specimen represented 34 belonged to species considered as â near threatenedâ 7 3 16 as â vulnerableâ 3 4 and one as â endangeredâ 0 2 the smb collection holds 10 of 28 extant cuban endemic species and another 11 species endemic to the caribbean archipelago even among birds that are relatively easy to identify many specimens were identified incorrectly or species identification was missing of 465 specimens evaluated 95 20 4 were identified incorrectly or were missing species identification and another 79 17 were identified correctly but their names have changed over time due to taxonomic shift thus they required correction,2018,0.861
What are we DOIng about the Missing Links? Connecting Taxonomic Names to the Linked Network of Scholarly Research,the classification of living things depends upon the literature access to this literature is essential to taxonomic research and to our understanding of biodiversity there have been tremendous efforts to digitise the worldâ s biodiversity literature the biodiveristy heritage library bhl alone has uploaded over 54 million pages all of which is freely accessible online our scientific literature is far more accessible than it has ever been but that does not mean it is easily discoverable much of the taxonomic literature online remains outside the linked network of scholarly research but that is rapidly changing,2018,0.289
What are the best predictors for invasive potential of weeds? Transferability evaluations of model predictions based on diverse environmental data sets for Flaveria bidentis,ecological niche models are widely used in the study of weed invasions yet best approaches for selecting ecologically relevant environmental predictors for weeds remain unresolved here we evaluate niche model transferability based on diverse environmental data sets for an invasive herb flaveria bidentis this species is native to south america but has established populations in china that pose a threat to agriculture and animal husbandry relevant environmental data sets were selected via five statistical approaches permutation importance pi and jackknife test jk in maxent variable importance identified by boosting regression trees brt ecological niche factor analysis enfa and a newly released algorithm based on a fluctuation index fi climate spaces occupied by native south american and introduced chinese populations were compared based on these environmental data sets native niche model predictions in china were compared across environmental data sets and model settings i e default versus fine tuned maxent settings results suggest that native and introduced populations occupy two distinct climate spaces but that this divergence likely results from background effects niche models based on fine tuned maxent settings generally showed better discrimination ability than those based on default settings the best model discrimination in china was attained in the fi model using fine tuned settings followed by the brt model on default settings the best models suggest that highly suitable areas at risk of invasion in china are to the west and north east of present distributional areas results presented here provide predictions for f bidentis in particular but also shed light on procedures for selecting ecologically relevant predictors for invasive species distributional predictions more generally,2018,0.121
Estimating geographic patterns of ophidism risk in Ecuador,the species richness of venomous snakes in ecuador 39 species is among the highest in the world however until now no information exists regarding geographic patterns of ophidism in this study we present a detailed spatial snakebite risk map which was built by stacking weighted ecological niche models of the 19 snake species responsible for the majority of ecuadorâ s envenomation cases our weights were based on the proportion of cases reported for each species on local epidemiological studies based on our analyses we identify 184 densely populated rural communities with high snakebite risk that should be monitored by health organizations we also identified three densely populated rural locations palora metzera sangay and shell that may require special attention because they had much higher snakebite risk values than the rest,2018,0.713
Multiple data sources and freely available code is critical when investigating species distributions and diversity: a response to Knouft (2018),a recent comment from knouft 2018 has suggested that our original article dallas et al 2017 was an â inappropriate application of biodiversity dataâ here we affirm our results and address the more general point about biodiversity data use,2018,0.232
Genetic identity of two physonect siphonophores from Southern Ocean waters – the enigmatic taxon Mica micula and Pyrostephos vanhoeffeni,based on some coincident morphological characters and distribution it was believed for a long time that mica micula was the post larval stage of a species of bargmannia a genus having a very wide geographic distribution recent studies however have shown that it is much more likely to be the post larval form of the physonect pyrostephos vanhoeffeni which is very common in both antarctic and sub antarctic waters until now molecular evidence to support this theory has been lacking in the present study 34 nectophores of p vanhoeffeni and four colonies of m micula collected from three areas in the southern ocean were analysed for the 16s rrna gene five haplotypes were identified which formed two clearly distinct lineages three haplotypes were found exclusively in admiralty bay and were shared between individuals of both studied taxa confirming that m micula is indeed the post larval stage of p vanhoeffeni two additional haplotypes were found in one open ocean locality and in admiralty bay,2018,0.532
Current progress in the development of taxonomic and anatomical ontologies within the scope of BIOfid,the specialized information service biodiversity research biofid http biofid de has recently been launched to mobilize valuable biodiversity data hidden in german print sources of the past 250 years the partners involved in this project started digitisation of the literature corpus envisaged for the pilot stage and provided novel applications for natural language processing and visualization in order to foster development of new text mining tools the senckenberg biodiversity informatics team focuses on the design of ontologies for taxa and their anatomy we present our progress for the taxa prioritized by the target group for the pilot stage i e for vascular plants moths and butterflies as well as birds with regard to our text corpus a key aspect of our taxonomic ontologies is the inclusion of german vernacular names for this purpose we assembled a taxonomy ontology for vascular plants by synchronizing taxon lists from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and the integrated taxonomic information system itis with k p buttlerâ s florenliste von deutschland http www kp buttler de florenliste hierarchical classification of the taxonomic names and class relationships focus on rank and status validity vs synonymy all classes are additionally annotated with details on scientific name taxonomic authorship and source taxonomic names for birds are mainly compiled from itis and the international ornithological congress ioc world bird list for moths and butterflies mainly from gbif both lists being classified and annotated accordingly we intend to cross link our taxonomy ontologies with the environment ontology envo and anatomy ontologies such as the flora phenotype ontology flopo for moths and butterflies we started to design the lepidoptera anatomy ontology lepao on the basis of the already available hymenoptera anatomy ontology hao lepao is planned to be interoperable with other ontologies in the framework of the obo foundry a main modification of hao is the inclusion of german anatomical terms from published glossaries that we add as scientific and vernacular synonyms to make use of already available identifiers uris for corresponding english terms international collaboration with the founders of hao and teams focusing on other insect orders such as beetles colao aims at development of a unified insect anatomy ontology with a restriction on terms applicable on all insects the unified insect anatomy ontology is intended to establish a basis for accelerating the design of more specific anatomy ontologies for any particular insect order the advancement of such ontologies aligns with current needs to make knowledge accumulated in descriptive studies on the systematics of organisms accessible to other domains in the context of biofid our ontologies provide exemplars on how semantic queries of yet untapped data relevant for biodiversity studies can be achieved for literature in non english languages furthermore biofid will serve as an open access platform for professional international journals facilitating non commercial publishing of biodiversity and biodiversity related data,2018,0.013
The tragedy of the biodiversity data commons: a data impediment creeping nigher?,researchers are embracing the open access movement to facilitate unrestricted availability of scientific results one sign of this willingness is the steady increase in data freely shared online which has prompted a corresponding increase in the number of papers using such data publishing datasets is a time consuming process that is often seen as a courtesy rather than a necessary step in the research process making data accessible allows further research provides basic information for decision making and contributes to transparency in science nevertheless the ease of access to heaps of data carries a perception of â free lunch for allâ and the work of data publishers is largely going unnoticed acknowledging such a significant effort involving the creation management and publication of a dataset remains a flimsy not well established practice in the scientific community in a meta analysis of published literature we have observed various dataset citation practices but mostly 92 consisting of merely citing the data repository rather than the data publisher failing to recognize the work of data publishers might lead to a decrease in the number of quality datasets shared online compromising potential research that is dependent on the availability of such data we make an urgent appeal to raise awareness about this issue,2018,0.125
Peptide Extract from Olivancillaria hiatula Exhibits Broad-Spectrum Antibacterial Activity,increasing reports of infectious diseases worldwide have become a global concern in recent times depleted antibiotic pipelines rapid and complex cases of antimicrobial resistance and emergence and re emergence of infectious disease have necessitated an urgent need for the development of new antimicrobial therapeutics preferably with novel modes of action due to their distinct mode of action antimicrobial peptides offer an interesting alternative to conventional antibiotics to deal with the problems enumerated in this study the antimicrobial potential of the peptide extract from the marine mollusc olivancillaria hiatula was evaluated in vitro agar diffusion and broth dilution techniques were used to evaluate microbial susceptibility to the peptide extract microplate based assays were also used to investigate time dependent growth inhibition profiles of microbes in the presence of peptide and evaluate the peptideâ s ability to modulate the activities of standard antibiotics both gram positive and gram negative bacteria were inhibited by the peptide extract in the agar diffusion assay the minimum inhibitory concentration mic of peptide against test microorganisms was between 0 039 and 2 5 mg ml at the mic the peptide extract was bacteriostatic towards all tested microorganisms but bactericidal to staphylococcus aureus in the presence of the peptide extract a prolonged lag phase was observed for all microbes similar to standard ciprofloxacin when administered together peptide extracts enhanced the activities of ciprofloxacin and cefotaxime and were antagonistic towards erythromycin but indifferent towards metronidazole taken together these results show the broad spectrum antibacterial activity of peptide extract from olivancillaria hiatula and demonstrate that antimicrobial peptides can be employed in combination with some conventional antibiotics for improved effects,2018,0.21
Mapping the distribution of scale-rayed wrasse Acantholabrus palloni in Swedish Skagerrak using angling records,in this paper we map the distribution of scale rayed wrasse acantholabrus palloni in eastern skagerrak based on a combination of verified and personally communicated angling records long thought to be occasional vagrants outside its known range in the eastern atlantic ocean and mediterranean sea we ask if this rare and understudied labrid has expanded its range and become established in swedish waters a recent surge in verified angling records in the swedish anglers associationâ s specimen database storfiskregistret provides information to suggest that this species should no longer be considered an occasional guest but rather a species established in the swedish parts of skagerrak these records are supported by additional personal communications with anglers the species is currently well spread geographically along the swedish skagerrak coast with many locations providing repeated captures of adult fish over multiple years the typical swedish catch sites are rocky reefs located between the general 40 and 80 m depth curves likely influenced by currents bringing higher salinity water from the north sea the present study show that angling records can provide an important but underutilized resource for mapping the distribution of data deficient fish species,2018,0.646
Keys and bibliography for the identification of zoeal stages of brachyuran crabs from the Western Indian Ocean,approximately 430 brachyuran species have been identified as inhabiting the western indian ocean wio of which only 125 species have full or partial larval descriptions available these descriptions were analysed and zoeal characters compared in order to assess diagnostic characters for their identification an identification key is provided for family level and identification keys to species level are provided for most families these keys were constructed using external morphological characters whenever possible to decrease the need for dissection and make identification as easy as possible only the first zoeal stage was considered as many descriptions only consider this stage,2018,0.52
"Predicting the distribution of poorly-documented species, Northern black widow (Latrodectus variolus) and Black purse-web spider (Sphodros niger), using museum specimens and citizen science data",predicting species distributions requires substantial numbers of georeferenced occurrences and access to remotely sensed climate and land cover data reliable estimates of the distribution of most species are unavailable either because digitized georeferenced distributional data are rare or not digitized the emergence of online biodiversity information databases and citizen science platforms dramatically improves the amount of information available to establish current and historical distribution of lesser documented species we demonstrate how the combination of museum and online citizen science databases can be used to build reliable distribution maps for poorly documented species to do so we investigated the distribution and the potential range expansions of two north eastern north american spider species arachnida araneae the northern black widow latrodectus variolus and the black purse web spider sphodros niger our results provide the first predictions of distribution for these two species we also found that the northern black widow has expanded north of its previously known range providing valuable information for public health education for the black purse web spider we identify potential habitats outside of its currently known range thus providing a better understanding of the ecology of this poorly documented species we demonstrate that increasingly available online biodiversity databases are rapidly expanding biogeography research for conservation ecology and in specific cases epidemiology of lesser known taxa,2018,0.909
Morphological variation in black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) associated with environmental conditions in Mexico and the United States,black cherries are native to north america and make up a complex of five morphologically different subspecies growing in significantly different niches this study used 474 presence points 19 climate parameters and altitude to 1 describe climatic preference of subspecies 2 associate the most discriminant bioclimatic variables with variation of 17 quantitative morphological descriptors and 3 estimate the potential effect of climate change in the distribution areas of the complex altitude and seven climatic parameters played a considerable role in the differentiation of subspecies subsp climate variability indicated that subsp eximia hirsuta and serotina are distributed in more humid and cold environments while subsp virens prefers drier and warmer environments subspecies capuli exhibited the greatest environmental heterogeneity morphological differences included longer wider leaves and thicker fruit pedicel in subsp capuli and shorter smaller leaves in ssp virens even though morphological variation associated with climate was relatively low the study did show possible effects of climatic variability on morphology and distribution of the p serotina complex and provided reference information that may be useful for an integrated description of its genetic resources climate change could cause genetic erosion due to the loss of suitable habitats studies on population genetics can increase understanding of the p serotina complex and favor efficient strategic guidelines for use and conservation of these resources,2018,0.357
Phylogenetics of Camelina Crantz. (Brassicaceae) and insights on the origin of gold-of-pleasure ( Camelina sativa ),camelina sativa false flax or gold of pleasure is an old world oilseed crop that fell out of use in the mid 20th century but has recently gained renewed interest as a biofuel source the crop is hexaploid and its relationship to its diploid and polyploid congeners has remained unresolved using 54 accessions representing five species sampled across camelinaâ s center of diversity in turkey and the caucasus we performed phylogenetic and genetic diversity analyses using rad seq genotyping and its sequencing flow cytometry was performed to assess relationships between genome size and phylogenetic groupings accessions fell into distinct highly supported clades that accord with named species indicating that morphological characters can reliably distinguish members of the genus a phylogenetically distinct lineage from turkey may represent a currently unrecognized diploid species in most analyses c sativa accessions nest within those of c microcarpa suggesting that the crop is descended from this wild hexaploid species this inference is further supported by their similar genome size and by lower genetic diversity in c sativa which is consistent with a domestication bottleneck these analyses provide the first definitive phylogeny of c sativa and its wild relatives and they point to c microcarpa as the cropâ s wild ancestor,2018,0.894
PRELIMINARY PHYTOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS AND LARVICIDAL ACTIVITY OF EDIBLE FERN (Diplazium esculentum (Retz.) Sw.) EXTRACT AGAINST Culex,mosquito is one of insects spreading the vector of serious diseases to human being through its bite such as culex which spreads the vector of filariasis and brain inflammatory diseases some people have used plants as insecticides traditionally such as fern diplazium esculentum retz sw d esculentum retz sw popularly known as edible fern which almost all asian people especially indonesian consumed it as vegetable and some people also used it for medicinal purposes this study was performed to investigate the secondary metabolites from d esculentum leaves and its larvicidal activity against culex the phytochemical screening was undertaken on the leaves and methanol extract of d esculentum the results showed the presence of alkaloids steroids phenols and tannins on leaves while methanol extract exhibited existence of steroids saponins phenols and tannins investigation of larvicidal activity of methanol extract was carried out against culex larvaes for various concentrations which observed for 48 hours percentage of mortality was analyzed statistically using bill test method that showed active larvicidal activity with a lc50 value of 149 279 ppm this study indicates that fern plant have the potential as larvicidal against culex and need to perform the further research to develop the new natural insecticides,2018,0.212
Expansion risk of invasive plants in regions of high plant diversity: A global assessment using 36 species,invasive plant species ips have a high potential for expanding within biodiversity hotspots and threatening global plant diversity hence it is urgent to assess the expansion risk of ips in regions of high plant diversity and their potentially negative effects throughout the world we used the world s 36 worst ips as focal study species and applied species distribution modeling to project the suitable habitat distributions of these ips in centers of plant diversity at the global scale subsequently we assessed the expansion risk of ips based on habitat suitability across biomes and nature reserves we found that ips particularly chromolaena odorata eichhornia crassipes leucaena leucocephala and mimosa pigra have high expansion potential in tropical subtropical moist broadleaf forests tropical subtropical dry broadleaf forests and mangroves within global regions of high plant diversity furthermore ips such as imperata cylindrica and l leucocephala may expand dramatically into vulnerable and critical or endangered biome areas including nature reserves across tropical subtropical moist broadleaf forests and tropical subtropical coniferous forests we suggest that effective conservation management should be enhanced in order to reduce the expansion risk of ips in the vulnerable and critical or endangered biome areas that temperature changes should be carefully monitored and that conservation policies of nature reserves should be reviewed particularly regarding ips with high potential to naturally disperse into the nature reserves,2018,0.459
European ornamental garden flora as an invasion debt under climate change,1 most naturalized and invasive alien plant species were originally introduced to regions for horticultural purposes however many regions now face an invasion debt from ornamental alien species which have not yet naturalized in this regard climate change represents a threat as it may lower the barriers to naturalization for some ornamental alien species identifying those species is extremely important for anticipating impending invasions 2 to identify predictors of naturalization we modelled the effects of climate nursery availability and species characteristics on the current european naturalization success of 2 073 ornamental aliens commonly planted in european gardens we then used the resulting model together with climate projections for 2050 to forecast future naturalization risks for the 1 583 species not yet naturalized in europe 3 we found that nonâ european naturalized range size climatic suitability propagule pressure having a dioecious sexual system and plant height jointly explained current naturalization success in europe by 2050 naturalization probability projections increased by more than 0 1 for 41 species and only decreased by more than 0 1 for one species 4 policy implications using predictions based on our integrated model of alien ornamental naturalization success we identified species with high future naturalization risk and species with high projected increases in naturalization potential in europe under climate change this species list allows for prioritization of monitoring and regulation of ornamental plants to mitigate the invasion debt,2018,0.954
Articulating Loss: Quantifying Skeletal Incompleteness in Natural History Collections,the purpose of this instrumental case study was to characterize the degree to which element loss has occurred in natural history museum skeletal collections which elements were lost and what types of loss occurred through a combination of element by element inventory of the non human primate specimens within the university of washingtonâ s physical anthropology collection and document analysis of departmental and washington national primate research center records data was collected for quantitative analysis no statistically significant correlation was found between loss and specimen body size relative element size or specimen rarity there was some indication that loss occurred either at a low level in collections or during specimen preparation that loss might be related to element use and that loans of undefined length duration impact skeletal completeness collection loss might result in faulty anatomical inference or â œshifting backbone syndrome â a consequence introduced in this study the primary limitation of this study arose from the study designâ the results of a case study are not generalizable beyond the case however case study design removed potential bias that might have been introduced by sampling within collections and the results in conjunction with existing studies of loss further refined suggestions for future areas of research,2018,0.353
"Understanding resource choice at the transition from foraging to farming: An application of palaeodistribution modelling to the Neolithic of the Konya Plain, south-central Anatolia, Turkey",the role of the environment in shaping agricultural origins is still not fully understood despite a century of debate on this topic comparison of the expected prevalence of a resource in the landscape with actual archaeological presence of the same resource can provide a metric for assessing resource choice in prehistory however the palaeoenvironmental data that would allow resource choice to be evaluated in this way are rarely available species distribution modelling sdm techniques allow independent palaeoenvironmental datasets to be computed which when compared to actual speciesâ presence at sites as attested by archaeological datasets can provide data on resource choice following recent calls for sdm to be applied more widely in archaeological contexts we outline a simple method for predicting the presence of plant species in prehistory using modern analogues and palaeoclimatic datasets these modelled distributions provide an independent dataset for comparison with archaeological data thus providing a window into human resource choice in prehistory we outline the method with specific reference to the transition from foraging to farming in the neolithic of central anatolia but the method could be applied to any period or region we have used exclusively open source data and provided all code in our online supplementary materials so that our method can be utilized by researchers interested in human resource choice in any region of the world and any period,2018,0.285
"First record of the invasive Asian date mussel Arcuatula senhousia (Benson, 1842) (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Mytilidae) in West Africa",biological invasions can have serious consequences for native communities the asian date mussel arcuatula senhousia is an asian species that has been accidentally introduced into coastal areas of north america oceania and the mediterranean with significant impact on local benthic communities here we present the first record of this species in west africa after having found one live specimen in a mudflat off the island of bubaque in the bijagã s archipelago of guinea bissau given the importance of the benthic communities for wintering shorebirds and local fisheries at this key west african wetland and considering the invasive behaviour of asian date mussels we recommend further monitoring to confirm whether a self maintaining population has settled in the area,2018,0.659
Potential Geographic Distribution of Palmer Amaranth under Current and Future Climates,herbicide resistant weeds are increasingly becoming a major challenge for agricultural production worldwide palmer amaranth amaranthus palmeri s wats is an invasive annual forb that has recently emerged as one of the most widespread and severe agronomic weeds in the united states due in part to its facility for evolving herbicide resistance it has invaded several parts of the world including key agricultural production regions in south america climate change will likely exacerbate the challenges of managing this species to assess this we developed a process oriented bioclimatic niche model of palmer amaranth to examine its potential global distribution under current conditions and future climate scenarios the model agreed well with all credible current distribution data projected future increases in temperatures will expand potential palmer amaranth range northward into portions of canada and europe model projections under current and future climates highlight several agricultural production regions of increasing and emerging risk from this weed,2018,0.205
Can opportunistically-collected Citizen Science data fill a data gap for habitat suitability models of less common species?,1 opportunisticallyâ collected species observations contributed by volunteer reporters are increasingly available for species and regions for which systematically collected data are not available however it is unclear if they are suitable to produce reliable habitat suitability models hsms and hence if the speciesâ habitat relationships found and habitat suitability maps produced can be used with confidence to advice conservation management and address basic and applied research questions 2 we evaluated hsms with opportunisticallyâ collected observations against hsms with systematically collected observations we enhanced the opportunisticallyâ collected presenceâ only data by adding inferred species absences to obtain inferred absences we asked individual reporters about their identification skills and if they reported certain species consistently and combined this information with their observations we evaluated several hsm methods using a forest bird species siberian jay perisoreus infaustus in sweden logistic regression with inferred absences two versions of maxent a model combining presenceâ absence with presenceâ only observations and a bayesian siteâ occupancyâ detection model 3 all hsm methods produced nationwide habitat suitability maps of siberian jay that agreed well with systematically collected observations auc 086â 0 88 and were very similar to a habitat suitability map produced from the hsm with systematically collected observations spearman rho 0 94â 0 98 at finer geographical scales there were differences among methods 4 at finer scale the resulting habitat suitability maps from logistic regression with inferred absences agreed better with results from systematically collectedâ observations than other methods the speciesâ habitat relationships found with logistic regression also agreed well with those found from systematically collected data and with prior expectations based on the species ecology 5 synthesis and application for many regions and species systematically collected data are not available by using inferred absences from highâ quality opportunisticallyâ collected contributions of few very active reporters in logistic regression we obtained hsms that produced results similar to those from a systematic survey adding highâ quality inferred absences to opportunisticallyâ collected data is likely possible for many less common species across various organism groups well performing hsms are important to facilitate applications such as spatial conservation planning and prioritization monitoring of invasive species understanding species habitat requirements or climate change studies,2018,1
GULF OF MEXICO TUNA MIGRATIONS,a new publication about tuna distributions and important areas introducing a toolkit for fisheries managers and policy makers in the gulf of mexico,2018,0.354
"A Survey of e-Biodiversity: Concepts, Practices, and Challenges",the unprecedented size of the human population along with its associated economic activities have an ever increasing impact on global environments across the world countries are concerned about the growing resource consumption and the capacity of ecosystems to provide them to effectively conserve biodiversity it is essential to make indicators and knowledge openly available to decision makers in ways that they can effectively use them the development and deployment of mechanisms to produce these indicators depend on having access to trustworthy data from field surveys and automated sensors biological collections molecular data and historic academic literature the transformation of this raw data into synthesized information that is fit for use requires going through many refinement steps the methodologies and techniques used to manage and analyze this data comprise an area often called biodiversity informatics or e biodiversity biodiversity data follows a life cycle consisting of planning collection certification description preservation discovery integration and analysis researchers whether producers or consumers of biodiversity data will likely perform activities related to at least one of these steps this article explores each stage of the life cycle of biodiversity data discussing its methodologies tools and challenges,2018,0.062
Assessing the effect of environmental variables on microhabitat selection and distribution for seven amphibian species in Colombia using in-situ and MaxEnt …,colombia is recognized as one of the most biologically diverse places in the world with a high level of endemism in addition it is the country with the highest number of amphibian species but also the highest number of threatened species knowledge of amphibian biological and ecological requirements is therefore of high priority this study has shown that using in situ observations and bioinformatics can be useful for future conservation strategies here i evaluated the possible effect of environmental variables on amphibian distribution and microhabitat selection for seven focal amphibian species d labialis h bogotensis h subpunctatus p miyatai p uisae r palmatus and p lynchi in colombia in particular this study showed that temperature and vegetation cover were the two most important environmental variables affecting occurrence distribution and microhabitat selection in situ for the species pristimantis miyatai consistent with this the predictions of the maxent models showed that temperature seasonality was the most influential predictor that determined the distribution of the selected amphibian species in addition this information proved to be of vital value in reassessing conservation species status and defining priority conservation areas according to the area of occurrence aoo the extent of occurrence eoo and the maxent projected eoo this study proposed a new conservation status for four of the focal species and furthermore it highlighted some priority areas in colombia of high species richness for future conservation strategies in conclusion this work increases our knowledge on the effects of environmental variables on amphibian distribution and microhabitat selection in colombia,2018,0.925
"Species richness and phylogenetic diversity of seed plants across vegetation zones of Mount Kenya, East Africa",mount kenya is of ecological importance in tropical east africa due to the dramatic gradient in vegetation types that can be observed from low to high elevation zones however species richness and phylogenetic diversity of this mountain have not been well studied here we surveyed distribution patterns for a total of 1 335 seed plants of this mountain and calculated species richness and phylogenetic diversity across seven vegetation zones we also measured phylogenetic structure using the net relatedness index nri and the nearest species index nti our results show that lower montane wet forest has the highest level of species richness density and phylogenetic diversity of woody plants while lower montane dry forest has the highest level of species richness density and phylogenetic diversity in herbaceous plants in total plants nri and nti of four forest zones were smaller than three alpine zones in woody plants lower montane wet forest and upper montane forest have overdispersed phylogenetic structures in herbaceous plants nri of afroâ alpine zone and nival zone are smaller than those of bamboo zone upper montane forest and heath zone we suggest that compared to open dry forest humid forest has fewer herbaceous plants because of the closed canopy of woody plants woody plants may have climateâ dominated niches whereas herbaceous plants may have edaphic and microhabitatâ dominated niches we also proposed lower and upper montane forests with high species richness or overdispersed phylogenetic structures as the priority areas in conservation of mount kenya and other high mountains in the eastern afroâ montane biodiversity hotspot regions,2018,0.108
Integrating Data Quality Feedback: a Data Provider's Perspective,the herbarium of rancho santa ana botanic garden rsa pom is the third largest herbarium in california and consists of 1 2 million specimens of which 50 are digitized as a data provider rsa pom publishes its data with several aggregators including the consortium of california herbaria jstor symbiota which is subsequently pulled into idigbio and gbif as well as its own local webportal each submission of data needs to be prepared and formatted according to the aggregatorâ s specifications for publication feedback on data quality dq ranges from an individual user often only a few records at a time to large aggregators frequently in large batches while some dq items are easy fixes with little time and effort to correct others can be more challenging and often require expertise beyond the skillset of curatorial staff in other instances there are issues concerning an aggregatorâ s ability to provide updated data for repatriation this talk will discuss the efforts of the rsa pom herbarium to provide data to various aggregators as well as perspectives on the challenges limitations and constraints when integrating dq items from an aggregator back into the local database,2018,0.244
"Modeling the potential distribution of spalerosophis diadema (Schlegel, 1837)(Serpents: Colubridae) in Iran",the diadem snake spalerosophis diadema schlegel 1837 is found in most arid and semi arid regions of iran however little is known about ecology and lifestyle of this species in the area in the present study we used maxent software to predict suitable habitats and determine the factors influencing its distribution pattern four variables have the most importance in the distribution of s diadema 1 average temperature of the coldest quarter of the year bio11 2 precipitation of the warmest quarter of the year bio 18 3 precipitation of the wettest month bio 13 and 4 slope considering the distribution areas of s diadema and its closely relates species s microlepis and effective factors on their distribution in iran it can be concluded that geographical separation and the type of habitat have the most important roles in their speciation,2018,0.605
"First report of C4/CAM-cycling photosynthetic pathway in a succulent grass, Spinifex littoreus (Brum. f.) Merr., in coastal regions of Taiwan",leaf succulence is considered an adaptation to drought and salt stress and it is often correlated with cam photosynthesis although grasses often grow in arid and salty environments leaf succulence in the form of hydrenchyma has only previously been reported in one c3 grass leaf succulence is reported here for the first time in the southeast asian c4 grass spinifex littoreus according to anatomical water content saturated water content and mesophyll succulence indices because succulence and cam are highly correlated diel leaf acidity and photosynthetic parameters were measured to determine whether cam occurs in s littoreus in different coastal regions of taiwan in situ diel acidity fluctuations and nighttime stomatal closure indicate cam cycling in this grass this rare form of intermediacy c4 cam cycling has only previously been reported in portulaca the results of this study comprise the first report of any grass with cam photosynthesis of any kind spinifex littoreus may provide an important model in addition to portulaca for studying the regulation and evolutionary history of c4 and cam photosynthesis and the finding of cam biochemistry in a grass might also prove to be of special value for experimental breeding programs for improving drought and salt tolerance in cereal crops,2018,0.253
Lipomyces starkeyi : Its current status as a potential oil producer,culturing of oleaginous yeasts has been studied extensively utilizing various substrates as a nutrient such as industrial or agricultural residues despite many choices of oleaginous yeasts attention should be given to specific species so that real application can be implemented rather than on exploring new oleaginous yeasts with higher oil producing ability lipomyces starkeyi is an oleaginous yeast that can be cultured using a wide range of feedstocks it is worth noting that l starkeyi can produce a high amount of lipids with a good proportion for biodiesel purpose and its ability to re utilize small amount of its lipid makes it superior compared to other oleaginous yeasts this review offers a comprehensive summary of l starkeyi its characteristics and the type of nutrients it can assimilate brief reviews of common fermentation modes used and strategies for enhancing lipid accumulation will be discussed also common transesterification methods as well as possibility future prospect of oleaginous yeast utilization to produce single cell oil will also be discussed this review hopefully could help bridging the gap between theoretical and actual potentials of oleaginous yeasts in producing lipids as feedstock for biodiesel production,2018,0.096
"An updated checklist of the Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 of the Algodones Dunes of California, with comments on checklist data practices",generating regional checklists for insects is frequently based on combining data sources ranging from literature and expert assertions that merely imply the existence of an occurrence to aggregated standard compliant data of uniquely identified specimens the increasing diversity of data sources also means that checklist authors are faced with new responsibilities effectively acting as filterers to select and utilize an expert validated subset of all available data authors are also faced with the technical obstacle to bring more occurrences into darwin core based data aggregation even if the corresponding specimens belong to external institutions we illustrate these issues based on a partial update of the kimsey et al 2017 checklist of darkling beetles tenebrionidae sec bousquet et al 2018 inhabiting the algodones dunes of california our update entails 54 species level concepts for this group and region of which 31 concepts were found to be represented in three specimen data aggregator portals based on our interpretations of the aggregators data we reassess the distributions and biogeographic affinities of these species focusing on taxa that are precinctive highly geographically restricted to the lower colorado river valley in the context of recent dune formation from the colorado river throughout we apply taxonomic concept labels taxonomic name according to source to contextualize preferred name usages but also show that the identification data of aggregated occurrences are very rarely well contextualized or annotated doing so is a pre requisite for publishing open dynamic checklist versions that finely accredit incremental expert efforts spent to improve the quality of checklists and aggregated occurrence data,2018,0.37
Down-sizing of dung beetle assemblages over the last 53 000 years is consistent with a dominant effect of megafauna losses,the ongoing downâ sizing of the global mammal communities is assumed to have subsequent effects on mutualistic species communities dung beetles coâ evolved with largeâ sized animals since millennia and depend on the megafauna feces of an appropriate size mammal community downâ sizing as a result of past and ongoing megafauna losses is therefore likely to result in a downâ sizing of dung beetle communities however empirical evidence for this coâ downâ sizing is lacking especially on larger spatial scales and over extended periods of time here we show a significant downâ sizing of european dung beetle assemblages over the last 53 000 years by relating quaternary fossil records with trait information on body size of beetles this significant downâ sizing of dung beetle communities was thereby not linear but characterized by a weak decrease until the early holocene but a strong acceleration in the recent preâ history from 6â 7000 years bp onwards this acceleration of downâ sizing coincides with the completion of the quaternary megafauna extinction and the start of major shifts in human agricultural landâ use in contrast assemblage mean body size of nonâ coprophagous scarabids as well as ground beetles â two groups of beetles with no or weak relations to megafauna â was observed to increase towards the present with an acceleration of body size increase coinciding with the onset of lateâ glacial warming 14 200 years bp in summary the observed lateâ quaternary downâ sizing of european dung beetle communities is consistent with an effect of preâ historic megafauna losses and not with the coincident general warming ongoing downâ sizing of mammal communities is therefore likely to result in further downâ sizing of dung beetle assemblages with potential effects on their important role for nutrient cycling and secondary seed dispersal in natural and extensive agroâ ecosystems future nature management initiatives could halt or even reverse this functional diversity loss via effective protection or restoration of megafauna communities,2018,0.204
"Is Amazonia a ‘museum’ for Neotropical trees? The evolution of the Brownea clade (Detarioideae, Leguminosae)",the flora of the neotropics is unmatched in its diversity however the mechanisms by which diversity has accumulated are debated and largely unclear the brownea clade leguminosae is a characteristic component of the neotropical flora and the species within it are diverse in their floral morphology attracting a wide variety of pollinators this investigation aimed to estimate species divergence times and infer relationships within the group in order to test whether the brownea clade followed the â cradleâ or â museumâ model of diversification i e whether species evolved rapidly over a short time period or gradually over many millions of years we also aimed to trace the spatio temporal evolution of the clade by estimating ancestral biogeographical patterns in the group we used beast to build a dated phylogeny of 73 brownea clade species using three molecular markers its trnk and psba trnh resulting in well resolved phylogenetic relationships within the clade as well as robust divergence time estimates from which we inferred diversification rates and ancestral biogeography our analyses revealed an eocene origin for the group after which the majority of diversification happened in amazonia during the miocene most likely concurrent with climatic and geological changes caused by the rise of the andes we found no shifts in diversification rate over time suggesting a gradual accumulation of lineages with low extinction rates these results may help to understand why amazonia is host to the highest diversity of tree species on earth,2018,0.566
"Actinorhizal trees and shrubs from Africa: distribution, conservation and uses",actinorhizal plants are a group of perennial dicotyledonous angiosperms comprised of more than 200 species most of which can establish root nodule symbiosis with the nitrogen fixing actinobacteria of the genus frankia they are key providers of fundamental goods and services and can give a major contribution to mitigate the combined effects of climate changes human population growth and loss of biodiversity this aspect is particularly relevant for the developing economies of many african countries which are highly exposed to climate and anthropogenic disturbances in this work we have analyzed the distribution conservation and uses of actinorhizal species native to or introduced in africa a total of 42 taxa distributed over six botanical families betulaceae casuarinaceae myricaceae elaeagnaceae rhamnaceae and coriariaceae were identified the vast majority is able to thrive under a range of diverse environments and has multiple ecological and economic potential more than half of the identified species belong to the genus morella myricaceae most of them native to middle eastern and southern africa although the information about the conservation status and uses of morella spp is largely incomplete the available data is indicative of their potential in e g forestry and agroforestry food and medicine therefore efforts should be made to upgrade actinorhizal research in africa towards the sustainable use of biodiversity at the service of local bio economies,2018,0.5
"Foliar adaptations of Rhus asymmetrica sp. nov. from the Oligocene of Cervera (Catalonia, Spain). Palaeoclimatic implications",rhus asymmetrica sp nov from the lower oligocene of cervera catalonia spain is characterized by a trifoliate leaf with a symmetric sessile apical leaflet and asymmetric lateral leaflets the apical leaflet displays a serrate margin and decurrent base with pinnate primary venation craspedodromous secondary venation and an irregular reticulate tertiary framework the lateral leaflets show a rounded base with a secondary basal vein in the distal part of the lamina while the proximal part is straight or concave formerly these specimens were accommodated within rhus pyrrhae unger however detailed study of the r pyrrhae holotype has led us to emend its diagnosis to include its brochidodromous secondary venation pattern which differs clearly from the venation pattern of the new species additionally a number of leaf morphotypes from the cervera palaeobotanical site that were erroneously attributed to rhus by former authors have been segregated and related to acer and toxicodendron the extant species r aromatica displays the closest foliar structure to r asymmetrica sp nov however differences in the leaf morphology suggest that the new species grew under distinct palaeoclimatic conditions 1 r asymmetrica sp nov bears glands at the tips of the teeth of the lateral leaflets while r aromatica is devoid of these glands this character would help to prevent excessive evapotranspiration 2 lateral leaflets of r asymmetrica sp nov are asymmetric while in r aromatica they are symmetric suggesting that r asymmetrica sp nov grew under a greater environmental stress than r aromatica 3 r asymmetrica sp nov displays fewer teeth with a larger tooth area than r aromatica this would indicate growth under a warm climate with low seasonal contrast these features are compatible with an open woodland habitat under subtropical palaeoclimatic conditions,2018,0.741
"Modelling the current and future distribution of Kigelia africana under climate change in Benin, West Africa",kigelia africana bignoniaceae is an indigenous species widely recognised for its medicinal magic uses and therapeutic virtue used throughout africa and especially in benin republic distribution of the species coincides with that of the intermediate hosts as determined by environmental factors this study aimed to model the present day and future distribution of kigelia africana in benin maximum entropy maxent modelling technique was used to predict the distribution of suitable habitats of kigelia africana using presence data combined with two future forescats cnrm cm5and hadgem2 es results showed that annual temperature range precipitation seasonality soil temperature seasonality maximum temperature of the warmest month were most significant variables which mean that the excellent of the model likewise must of the distribution of the species will be find mostly stable the different model used identified different areas as highest conservation priority although the highest priority areas keeping most of kigelia africana species are located in the guineo congolian and sudano guinean region additional analyses could help to have more information about the distribution and population and cultivation of kigelia africana species which in future will help us to improve operative conservation strategies for this medicinal species maxent model is robust in kigelia africana species habitat modelling,2018,0.746
Bryophytes of Ghana,there is currently limited information on plant biodiversity from ghana most of the information openly available has been published by the ghana herbarium at the department of plant and environmental biology university of ghana the ghana herbarium has over 100 000 specimens from ghana and other west african countries of these approximately 85 of the specimen labels have been digitized the database contains information including species names taxonomic family barcode number name of collector s locality data date of collection description of species and uses of the plants data were captured using botanical research and herbarium management software brahms software and is openly available on global biodiversity information facility gbif http www gbif org country gh publishing less than 1 of the herbarium collection contains bryophyte information of ghana even though bryophytes are an often overlooked flora ghana has a high diversity of bryophytes indeed ghana has an enormous biomass of bryophytes particularly in the humid forest areas that is bound to contribute significantly to the water retentive capacity of the ghanaian forest absorbing water quickly and releasing it slowly it is clear that the bryophytes are an important part of the ecosystem generally helping to stabilize the hillsides and acting as a source of water as very little is known about ghana s bryophyte flora a short expedition was undertaken in the atewa forest in 2014 a total of 164 species were added to the herbarium collection including about 58 new to ghana and at least one new species cololejeunea sp yet to be described the ghana herbarium recognises the growing need for digitization across its collections data from bryophytes specimens in the ghana herbarium and other ghanaian herbaria as well as other data types on ghanaian bryophytes will need to be captured using appropriate workflows technologies and comply with darwin core standards there is also paucity of observational and bryophyte abundance data this presentation will review the current status of biodiversity information on bryophytes from ghana and biodiversity informatics activities at ghana herbarium it will also explore ways forward for digitization which incudes capturing the information on the already existing bryophyte specimens in the ghana herbarium and the newly added collections using brahms software,2018,0.539
Incorporating knowledge uncertainty into species distribution modelling,monitoring progress towards global goals and biodiversity targets require reliable descriptions of species distributions over time and space current gaps in accessible information on species distributions urges the need for integrating all available data and knowledge sources and intensifying cooperations to more effectively support global environmental governance for many areas and species groups experts can constitute a valuable source of information to fill the gaps by offering their knowledge on species environment interactions however expert knowledge is always subject to uncertainty and incorporating that into species distribution mapping poses a challenge we propose the use of the dempsterâ shafer theory of evidence dst as a novel approach in this field to extract expert knowledge to incorporate the associated uncertainty into the procedure and to produce reliable species distribution maps we applied dst to model the distribution of two species of eagle in spain we invited experts to fill in an online questionnaire and express their beliefs on the habitat of the species by assigning probability values for given environmental variables along with their confidence in expressing the beliefs we then calculated evidential functions and combined them using dempsterâ s rules of combination to map the species distribution based on the expertsâ knowledge we evaluated the performances of our proposed approach using the atlas of spanish breeding birds as an independent test dataset and further compared the results with the outcome of an ensemble of conventional sdms purely based on expert knowledge the dst approach yielded similar results as the data driven sdms ensemble our proposed approach offers a strong and practical alternative for species distribution modelling when species occurrence data are not accessible or reliable or both the particular strengths of the proposed approach are that it explicitly accounts for and aggregates knowledge uncertainty and it capitalizes on the range of data sources usually considered by an expert,2018,0.918
Adaptive management and planning for the conservation of four threatened large Asian mammals in a changing climate,mammals can serve as an indicator of global climate change impacts on speciesâ distributions due to the wide range of ecological niches they utilize tropical asia encompasses several biodiversity hotspots is the largest reservoir of mammalian diversity on earth and has already experienced the extinction of several mammal species either regionally or locally global climate change could become a significant driver of species extinction either directly or synergistically with other factors such as habitat loss agricultural expansion overexploitation and land use change despite the variability of climatic regimes across tropical asia the potential impacts of climate change on continental scale distributions of mammals have not been examined to address this issue we developed habitat suitability models for four threatened large mammals ursus thibetanus elephas maximus hoolock hoolock and panthera tigris tigris across their entire distributions in asia we used presence only distribution records and nine bioclimatic and environmental variables and built species specific habitat suitability models using a maximum entropy algorithm maxent we used a moderate and an extreme climate scenario rcp6 0 and rcp8 5 and three time steps current 2050 and 2070 our results suggest that changes in annual precipitation annual mean temperature precipitation and temperature seasonality could reduce suitable habitat for these mammals and therefore increase their extinction risks however several patches of stable habitat are projected to persist through the late twenty first century and these climate change refugia areas can be managed as an important strategy for conservation of the mammal species and the maintenance of biodiversity in the face of ongoing climate change in this context we recommend the following steps for the conservation of global mammal populations i define the spatial extent local regional or continental scale of the target mammals ii identify and prioritize climate change refugial areas following ecological niche models or other methods based on biological data and iii implement management actions by analyzing current management tools and the strategies required e g habitat restoration or assisted migration for prioritized species to achieve long term conservation goals,2018,0.87
Inventory of selected groups of invertebrates in sedge and reedbeds not associated with open waters in Bulgaria,inventory of selected groups of the invertebrate fauna in the eunis wetland habitat type d5 â œsedge and reedbeds normally without free standing waterâ in bulgaria was carried out it included 47 localities throughout the country the surveyed invertebrate groups included slugs and snails gastropoda dragonflies odonata grasshoppers orthoptera true bugs heteroptera ants formicidae butterflies lepidoptera and some coleopterans staphylinidae pselaphinae data on the visited localities identified species and their conservation status are presented in total 316 species of 209 genera and 68 families were recorded fifty species were identified as potential indicator species for this wetland habitat type the highest species richness with more than 50 species was observed in wetlands near marino pole plovdiv district and karaisen veliko tarnovo district,2018,0.9
"Estimating distribution area in six Argia damselflies (Insecta: Odonata: Coenagrionidae) including A. garrisoni, a threatened species",damselflies and dragonflies insecta odonata are currently facing a number of threats one tool to provide a straightforward assessment of risk is distribution area here we have used ecological niche modeling to estimate distribution range for 6 species of argia damselflies distributed in north america a cuprea a funcki a garrisoni a harknessi a munda and a rhoadsi these species are not included in the international union for the conservation of nature iucn red list except for a garrisoni which has been categorized as least concern our results indicated large distribution areas for all species except for a garrisoni 8 038 km2 after a refinement analysis looking for suitable habitat large distribution can be explained by similar niche properties shared by all study species this is not the case for a garrisoni whose situation seems worrying this species was found in the mexican state of san luis potosã in 1999 and there have been no further observations so it deserves further inspection to see whether populations are at risk in the meantime and according to the iucn criteria a garrisoni should be placed under a vulnerable category,2018,0.767
Predicting impacts of future climate change on the distribution of the widespread selaginellas (Selaginella ciliaris and S. plana) in Southeast Asia,the current global climate is moving towards dangerous and unprecedented conditions that have been seen as a potentially devastating threat to the environment and all living things selaginella is a fern allies that needs water as a medium for fertilization hence its distribution is presumed to be affected by climate change in southeast asia sea there are two widely distributed selaginellas namely selaginella ciliaris and s plana s ciliaris is a small herb up to 4 cm annual abundant during the rainy season and found in the middle high plains whereas s plana is a stout large herb up to 80 cm perennial and mainly found in the lowlands the purpose of this study was to determine the potential niche distribution of s ciliaris and s plana under current climatic conditions and to predict its future distribution under the impacts of climate change we used maxent software along with bioclimatic edaphic and uv radiation variables to model the potential niche distribution of those two selaginellas under current and future predictions climate conditions we generated future predictions under four detailed bioclimatic scenarios i e rcp 2 6 rcp 4 5 rcp 6 0 and rcp 8 5 over three times intervals 2030 2050 2080 the results showed that future climatic conditions in the sea had been predicted to significantly disrupt the distribution of suitable habitat of s ciliaris and s plana and alter their geographic distribution patterns although some areas were predicted to become suitable habitat in the early period of future climate change the overall projections show adverse effects of future climate conditions on the suitable habitat distribution of s ciliaris and s plana as estimated losses of suitable habitat will be higher than the gains,2018,0.114
Diversification of the widespread Neotropical frog Physalaemus cuvieri in response to Neogene-Quaternary geological events and climate dynamics,here we reconstructed the demographical history and the dispersal dynamics of physalemus cuvieri through the neogene quaternary periods by coupling dna regions with different mutation rates ecological niche modelling reconstruction of spatio temporal lineage dispersal and coalescent simulations still to test alternative diversification scenarios we used approximate bayesian computation molecular phylogenetic analysis recovered four deep and strongly supported clades which we interpret as population lineages the ancestral location reconstruction placed the root in southcentral amazonia and the dispersal events indicate that spatial displacement was widespread early in the diversification of this species the demographical scenario of â œmultiple refugiaâ with recent lineage admixture was the most likely hypothesis to predict the observed genetic parameters of p cuvieri our results revealed that neogene orogenic events might have played a prominent role in the early diversification of p cuvieri the species shows deep divergences with strong regional population structure despite its widespread distribution final uplift of the central brazilian plateau and formation of the river basins in central south america played an important role in the origin diversification and the maintenance of p cuvieri lineages,2018,0.755
Parasite Collections: Overlooked Resources for Integrative Research and Conservation,parasite natural history collections form vital scientific infrastructure that play a substantial role in increasing awareness of the importance of parasites to ecosystems conservation assessments science and society these collections support novel investigations that integrate across taxa time and space and should be cultivated to advance organismal based science promoting and supporting parasite collections will ensure their ongoing stability and accessibility,2018,0.561
Modeling and Implementation of a Ludic Application using Simple Reactive Agents - Hydrological Impact of High Andean Ecosystems,intense human activity is causing drastic changes in the colombian ecosystems therefore a ludic mobile app that uses simple reactive agents was implemented to teach children about some ecosystems that are part of the country and the role that they play for the balance of the environment a test to determinate the appâ s efficacy was implemented and the results obtained indicated that the group of children who used the app obtained a better learning curve in comparison to the group that was only taught in class,2018,0.338
"Complex patterns of temperature sensitivity, not ecological traits, dictate diverse species responses to climate change",despite widespread interest in describing and forecasting the impacts of climate change on species distributions poor understanding of the climate variables that shape distributions and conflicting perspectives on the role that species traits play in mediating shifts have limited our ability to interpret and project changes in species distributions using standardized survey data along the northeast u s continental shelf we assessed the historical exposure and sensitivity of 81 species of marine chordates arthropods and molluscs to 24 sea surface temperature sst variables in two seasons by comparing temperature trends in geographies available to species against temperature trends in geographies used by them we were able to identify which variables species track consistently through space and time logistic regression analyses were then used to assess whether species traits affected the likelihood of niche tracking while accounting for the season and temporal window in which temperatures were summarized and methodological constraints that might have limited our ability to detect tracking responses a slight majority of species 52 clearly shifted their distributions to track at least one temperature variable through space and time tracking rates were much lower on a per variable basis 5 1 of 3432 variables despite widespread exposure to changing temperatures 89 2 of 3432 variables none of the twelve ecological traits we investigated â including traits related to dispersal ability ecological specialization reproductive capacity and commercial harvest â accounted for differences in tracking responses across species even after accounting for differences in climate exposure our results suggest widespread behavioral or physiological flexibility among our study species or ongoing genetic adaptation to changing temperatures they also suggest that divergent selection on climate sensitivities of close relatives may limit the utility of ecological traits for predicting distributional responses to future climate change,2018,0.953
A polyphasic approach to the delimitation of diatom species: a case study for the genus Pinnularia (Bacillariophyta),diatoms are one of the most abundant and arguably the most speciesâ rich group of protists diatom species delimitation has been often based exclusively on the recognition of morphological discontinuities without investigation of other lines of evidence even though dna sequences and reproductive experiments have revealed several examples of pseudo cryptic diversity our understanding of diatom species boundaries and diversity remains limited the cosmopolitan pennate raphid diatom genus pinnularia represents one of the most taxonâ rich diatom genera in this study we focused on the delimitation of species in one of the major clades of the genus the pinnularia subgibba group based on 105 strains from a worldwide origin we compared genetic distances between the sequences of seven molecular markers and selected the most variable pair the mitochondrial cox1 and nuclear encoded lsu rdna to formulate a primary hypothesis on the species limits using three singleâ locus automated species delimitation methods we compared the dnaâ based primary hypotheses with morphology and with other available lines of evidence the results indicate that our dataset comprised 15 species of the p subgibba group the vast majority of these taxa have an uncertain taxonomic identity suggesting that several may be unknown to science and or members of pseudo cryptic species complexes within the p subgibba group,2018,0.915
Tolerance of subzero winter cold in kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata),the use of species distribution as a climate proxy for ecological forecasting is thought to be acceptable for invasive species kudzu pueraria montana var lobata is an important invasive whose northern distribution appears to be limited by winter survival however kudzuâ s cold tolerance thresholds are uncertain here we used biogeographic evidence to hypothesize that exposure to ∠20 â c is lethal for kudzu and thus determines its northern distribution limit we evaluated this hypothesis using survival tests and electrolyte leakage to determine relative conductivity a measure of cell damage on 14 populations from eastern north america relative conductivity above 36 was lethal temperatures causing this damage averaged ∠19 6 â c for northern and ∠14 4 â c for southern populations indicating kudzu acclimates to winter cold to assess this we measured relative conductivity of above and belowground stems and roots collected throughout the winter at a kudzu population in southern ontario canada consistent with acclimation the cold tolerance threshold of aboveground stems at the coldest time of year was ∠26 â c while stems insulated from cold extremes survived to ∠17 â câ colder than the survival limits indicated by kudzuâ s biogeographic distribution while these results do not rule out alternative cold limitations they indicate kudzu can survive winters north of its current distribution for kudzu biogeography is not a proxy for climatic tolerance and continued northward migration is possible efforts to limit its spread are therefore prudent these results demonstrate that physiological constraints inform predictions of climate related changes in species distribution and should be considered where possible,2018,0.89
Biogeography and conservation of Amazon palms,palms are abundant in tropical forests and are recognized as effective bio indicators of hot climates moreover play an important ecological and economic role for local populations though palms remain relatively well conserved they are under increasing pressure from deforestation therefore endemicity is important for the delimitation of conservation areas the purposes of the study is 1 to synthesize available information in the literature on species diversity ecological aspects use and conservation of amazon palms chapter 1 to analyse palms species richness patterns relative to the latitudinal gradient sample efforts and deforestation in the amazon region chapter 2 to compare richness and floristic similarities patterns among the amazonian sub regions chapter 2 to detect endemic areas for palms in the amazon region chapter 3 and to determine whether the species that define these endemic areas are protected within conservation units chapter 3 records of occurrences were extracted from the global biodiversity information facility gbif the final dataset consisted of 17 310 records for 177 species of amazonian palms the areas with the greatest richness were in the western central and northeastern amazon principally at latitudes 0â 5os most palms species grow in different habitats but the highest species richness are found in terra firme forest palms are widely used with different category of use according to the regions and species principally are used for human consumption elaboration of utensils and tools and construction of houses highest rates of deforestation 2000 km2 were found in the southern and eastern brazilian amazon which coincide with low species richness and gaps in records similarity analysis resulted in two groups of sub regions the first included the amazon s s andes and guiana and the other group included the plateau and gurupi sub region the combination of pae and ndm vndm analyses resulted in eight endemic palm areas in western amazon shared with andean sub region of the species that define the endemic areas five are threatened with extinction in one of three iucn categories en vu nt and they are not protected in any conservation units in conclusion the western amazon besides having high palm richness also has palm endemic areas especially near the andean sub region and the peruvian amazon and areas with low species richness especially those areas with data deficiency need to be further researched for a better knowledge of their diversity and richness patterns,2018,0.99
A review of the ecological affinities of marine organic microfossils from a Holocene record offshore of Adélie Land (East Antarctica),abstract integrated ocean drilling program iodp expedition 318 recovered a ∠170m long holocene organic rich sedimentary sequence at site u1357 located within the narrow but deep adã lie basin close to the antarctic margin the site accumulated sediments at exceptionally high sedimentation rates which resulted in extraordinary preservation of the organic sedimentary component here we present an overview of 74 different mainly marine microfossil taxa and or types found within the organic component of the sediment which include the remains of unicellular and higher organisms from three eukaryotic kingdoms chromista plantae and animalia these remains include phytoplanktonic phototrophic dinoflagellates and prasinophytes and very diverse zooplanktonic heterotrophic dinoflagellates tintinnids copepods organisms we illustrate each marine microfossil taxon or type identified by providing morphological details and photographic images which will help with their identification in future studies we also review their ecological preferences to aid future palaeo ecological and palaeo environmental studies the planktonic assemblage shows a high degree of endemism related to the strong influence of the sea ice system over site u1357 in addition we found the remains of various species of detritus feeders and bottom dwelling scavengers benthic foraminifers and annelid worms indicative of high export productivity at site u1357 this study shows the potential of organic microfossil remains for reconstructing past environmental conditions such as sea ice cover and export productivity,2018,0.158
The dimensionality of niche space allows bounded and unbounded processes to jointly influence diversification,there are two prominent and competing hypotheses that disagree about the effect of competition on diversification processes the first the bounded hypothesis suggests that species diversity is limited bounded by competition between species for finite ecological niche space the second the unbounded hypothesis proposes that innovations associated with evolution render competition unimportant over macroevolutionary timescales here we use phylogenetically structured niche modelling to show that processes consistent with both of these diversification models drive species accumulation in conifers in agreement with the bounded hypothesis niche competition constrained diversification and in line with the unbounded hypothesis niche evolution and partitioning promoted diversification we then analyse niche traits to show that these diversification enhancing and inhibiting processes can occur simultaneously on different niche dimensions together these results suggest a new hypothesis for lineage diversification based on the multi dimensional nature of ecological niches that can accommodate both bounded and unbounded evolutionary processes,2018,0.624
Gypsophila bermejoi G. López: A possible case of speciation repressed by bioclimatic factors,gypsophila bermejoi g lã pez is an allopolyploid species derived from the parental g struthium l subsp struthium and g tomentosa l all these plants are gypsophytes endemic to the iberian peninsula of particular ecological evolutionary and biochemical interest in this study we present evidence of a possible repression on the process of g bermejoi speciation by climatic factors we modelled the ecological niches of the three taxa considered here using a maximum entropy approach and employing a series of bioclimatic variables subsequently we projected these models onto the geographical space of the iberian peninsula in the present age and at two past ages the last glacial maximum and the mid holocene period furthermore we compared these niches using the statistical method devised by warren to calculate their degree of overlap we also evaluated the evolution of the bioclimatic habitat suitability at those sites were the soil favors the growth of these species both the maximum entropy model and the degree of overlap indicated that the ecological behavior of the hybrid differs notably from that of the parental species during the last glacial maximum the two parental species appear to take refuge in the western coastal strip of the peninsula a region in which there are virtually no sites where g bermejoi could potentially be found however in the mid holocene period the suitability of g bermejoi to sites with favorable soils shifts from almost null to a strong adaptation a clear change in this tendency these results suggest that the ecological niches of hybrid allopolyploids can be considerably different to those of their parental species which may have evolutionary and ecologically relevant consequences the data obtained indicate that certain bioclimatic variables may possibly repress the processes by which new species are formed the difference in the ecological niche of g bermejoi with respect to its parental species prevented it from prospering during the last glacial maximum however the climatic change in the mid holocene period released this block and as such it permitted the new species to establish itself accordingly we favor a recent origin of the current populations of g bermejoi,2018,0.886
Procurement and Preservation of Plants,plants have been used by humans for thousands of years for a great variety of purposes while many people collect plants as a hobby specimen collections also contribute to the broader scientific community to provide the greatest value the specimen must be collected and documented properly this chapter provides basic guidelines on how to collect plants in the field process the specimen through pressing and drying and properly mount the specimen for long term storage while the chapter focuses on techniques used for vascular plants special cases and alternative techniques are also summarized,2018,0.131
Diversity in wild relatives of wheat: an expedition collection from cold-arid Indian Himalayas,impact of climate change is of much concern across the globe in recent years and more specifically to the fragile ecosystems like cold arid himalayan region especially from a perspective on biodiversity and its conservation hence collection and conservation of the biodiversity ex situ is a much better option to safeguard species at risk especially for crop wild relatives with reference to agriculture we have explored in 2014 and 2015 the cold arid tracts of himachal pradesh and jammu kashmir states in india and collected 169 accessions of wheat wild relatives comprising 12 taxa viz elymus l 8 139 acc hordeum l 2 4 and leymus hochst 2 26 belonging to the tribe triticeae new geographic occurrence of six speciesâ elymus himalayanus nevski tzvelev e repens l gould e schrenkianus fisch et c a mey tzvelev hordeum brevisubulatum trin link subsp turkestanicum nevski tzvelev h bogdanii wilensky and leymus duthiei stapf ex hook f c yen j l yang et b r baum was reported broader variability at inter and intra specific level in elymus nutans griseb e dahuricus turcz and leymus secalinus across the ecological amplitude was observed e dahuricus population was heterogeneous for waxiness and pigmentation characters collected germplasm would serve as a potential resource for introgression of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance genes towards developing resilient wheat cultivars,2018,0.804
Pollen grain morphology of Nolana L. (Solanaceae: Nolanoideae: Nolaneae) and related genera of southern South American Solanaceae,nolana comprises 89 species almost entirely restricted to the atacama and peruvian deserts these species are adapted to the arid lomas environment of northern chile and southern peru where they depend on marine fog locally known as garãºa or camanchaca for their development recent molecular phylogenetic studies provide support for the placement of nolana in the solanaceae rather than nolanaceae additionally a sister relationship with the tribe lycieae has been suggested the pollen morphology of 111 species from 18 genera of southern south american solanaceae was investigated under light and scanning electron microscopes in order to establish the palynological affinities of nolana within the solanaceae and to investigate if pollen morphology is congruent with the phylogenetic relationships and former taxonomic classification of the species of nolana the following genera were studied nolana cestrum combera dunalia fabiana jaborosa latua lycium incl grabowskia phrodus nicandra nicotiana nierenbergia petunia physalis reyesia salpiglossis schizanthus solanum and vestia two pollen types that differ in exine structure were distinguished within nolana these pollen types are congruent with recent phylogenetic studies thus we propose to reinstate nolana sect sorema,2018,0.703
Global estimation of areas with suitable environmental conditions for mariculture species,aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last three decades expanding at an average annual growth rate of 5 8 2005â 2014 down from 8 8 achieved between 1980 and 2010 the sector now produces 44 of total food fish production increasing demand and consumption from a growing global population are driving further expansion of both inland and marine aquaculture i e mariculture including marine species farmed on land however the growth of mariculture is dependent on the availability of suitable farming areas for new facilities particularly for open farming practices that rely on the natural oceanic environmental parameters such as temperature oxygen chlorophyll etc in this study we estimated the marine areas within the exclusive economic zones of all countries that were suitable for potential open ocean mariculture activities to this end we quantify the environmental niche and inferred the global habitat suitability index hsi of the 102 most farmed marine species using four species distribution models the average weighted hsi across the four models suggests that 72 000 000 km2 of ocean are to be environmentally suitable to farm one or more species about 92 of the predicted area 66 000 000 km2 is environmentally suitable for farming finfish 43 31 000 000 km2 for molluscs and 54 39 000 000 km2 for crustaceans these predictions do not consider technological feasibility that can limit crustaceans farming in open waters suitable mariculture areas along the atlantic coast of south america and west africa appear to be most under utilized for farming our results suggest that factors other than environmental considerations such as the lack of socio economic and technological capacity as well as aqua feed supply are currently limiting the potential for mariculture expansion in many areas,2018,0.677
(2617) Proposal to reject the name Selaginella flagellifera ( Selaginellaceae ),the lycophyte name selaginella flagellifera w bull selaginellaceae was validly published by bull cat new beaut rare pl 225 9 1886 in the annual trade catalogue of william bull â œnew plant merchantâ and was said in the protologue to be introduced from fiji and to produce â œlong flagelliform rooting stems or runners and it is particularly adapted to rockwork or basket cultureâ this morphological feature and ecological preference are unique in the genus to s biformis a braun ex kuhn in engler forschungsr gazelle 4 6 farne 17 19 1889 thus we believe that s flagellifera must be a close relative of or conspecific with s biformis our examination of a large number of specimens of selagi,2018,0.262
A review of the palm genus Acrocomia: Neotropical green gold,the genus acrocomia popularly known as macaw palm or macaãºba occurs in savanna areas and open forests of tropical america with distribution from central to southern south america they are important oleaginous palm trees due to their role in ecosystems and local economies and their potential for biofuel production and vegetable oil although the taxonomy of the genus is not resolved because of observed phenotypic diversity in a aculeata jacq lodd ex mart there are several conflicting treatments some authors recognize three caulescent spp occurring in south america a aculeata a intumescens drude and a totai mart although a new one was described recentlyâ acrocomia corumbaensis because some latin american governments want to expand production of macaw palm in their territory as raw material for agro energy several groups have been encouraged to study this genus focusing on the production of biodiesel seed germination phenotypic aspects and genetic diversity the goal of this review is to compile key information available in the literature and herbarium data focusing on south american populations of the genus,2018,0.3
Productivity as the main factor correlating with migratory behaviour in the evolutionary history of warblers,the evolution of migration in birds and its causes are still subject of debate recent studies tracking current bird migration have identiï ed peaks in net primaryproductivity npp as a main driver of bird migratory behaviour however it isunclear which variables may have played a major role in the evolution of birdmigration at deeper phylogenetic levels here we used phylogenetic comparativemethods to assess whether the evolutionary patterns of migratory distances as aproxy for migratory behaviour are correlated with several biometric climatic andproductivity variables in a phylogenetic context using sylvia warblers as a casestudy our results recover npp in the breeding range and during the breeding sea son as the variable with stronger positive correlation with migratory distances being always included in the best models considering all potential variables sev eral climatic variables show a correlation with the evolution of migration but thoseare also tightly correlated with npp among morphological variables migratorylineages tend to have longer wings than sedentary ones although npp has beenidentiï ed as a driver of migratory behaviour in current species in a phylogeneticscale it is not possible to disentangle if it was a main driver in the evolution ofbird migratory behaviour or a consequence of it yet migration and npp seem tobe tightly related today and along the long evolutionary history of these passerines,2018,0.407
Range shifts in response to past and future climate change: Can climate velocities and species’ dispersal capabilities explain variation in mammalian range shifts?,aim range shift is a relatively wellâ understood response to climate change but our ability to predict shifts is limited two factors that may cause variation in range shifts across species are dispersal ability and varying rates of climate change through time and across space here we assess patterns of range shifts during the late quaternary and estimate how the velocity of climate change and the dispersal ability of a species affect the magnitude of species range shifts in response to climate change location north america methods we hindcast species distribution models for 122 north american mammals to five times over the past 17 000 years and forecast them to two future times given two emissions scenarios generalized additive models were constructed to quantify the importance of dispersal ability and the velocity of temperature and precipitation in determining the magnitude of range shift expected for individual species results hindcasted and forecasted ranges demonstrate the variety of responses to climate change in general species shifted their ranges in a northerly direction nw n ne regardless of the type of climate change i e warming vs cooling the highest rates of range shifts during the past occurred during periods of relatively rapid climate change last glacial maximum bã llingâ allerã d and bã llingâ allerã d younger dryas transitions rates of range shifts for the future are projected to be significantly higher than any of the past intervals the velocity of climate change is significantly associated with the magnitude of range shifts during climate transitions that occur over longer timeâ scales while maximum dispersal distance is important during periods of rapid climate change main conclusions our results suggest that both the dispersal ability and the velocity of climate change are significantly associated with speciesâ range shifts however the importance of these two factors is contextâ dependent and depends on the interaction of the rate of climate change and the length of time over which the change occurs,2018,0.739
Global terrestrial biomes at risk of cacti invasion identified for four species using consensual modelling,cacti invasion of natural ecosystems and grazing lands threaten native biodiversity and reduces economic output from infested grazing lands yet few studies exist about potential hotspots of cacti invasion on a global scale we used maximum entropy boosted regression model and generalised additive models calibrated using geo referenced data from both the native and introduced ranges to construct ecological niche models for four invasive alien cacti species opuntia ficus indica the sweet prickly pear opuntia stricta the sour prickly pear cylindropuntia imbricata the tree cholla and cylindropuntia fulgida the jumping cholla the models were combined using the average weighted method approach and projected onto the geographic space to predict terrestrial biomes as well as areas of special conservation concern at risk of cacti invasion the results indicate that the mediterranean tropical savanna and desert and xeric shrubland biomes are the most susceptible to cacti invasion eleven global biodiversity hotspots including the mediterranean basin cape floristic region and southwest australia were associated with high risk of cacti invasion the global maps of potential cacti distribution presented in this work have the potential to serve as an important contribution towards the implementation of a global policy to avoid the negative consequences of cacti invasion,2018,0.336
"Suitable areas of Phakopsora pachyrhizi, Spodoptera exigua, and their host plant Phaseolus vulgaris are projected to reduce and shift due to climate change",worldwide crop pests cps such as pathogens and insects affect agricultural production detrimentally species distribution models can be used for projecting current and future suitability of cps and host crop localities our study overlays the distribution of two cps asian soybean rust and beet armyworm and common bean a potential host of them in order to determine their current and future levels of coexistence this kind of modeling approach has rarely been performed previously in climate change studies the soybean rust and beet armyworm model projections herein show a reduction of the worldwide area with high and medium suitability of both cps and a movement of them away from the equator in 2100 more pronounced than in 2050 most likely heat and dry stress will be responsible for these changes heat and dry stress will greatly reduce and shift the future suitable cultivation area of common bean as well in a similar manner the most relevant findings of this study were the reduction of the suitable areas for the cps the reduction of the risk under future scenarios and the similarity of trends for the cps and host the current results highlight the relation between and the coevolution of host and pathogens,2018,0.439
"Distribution of Pinyon Jay Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus in Chihuahua, Mexico: new records and environmental characterisation",we report new records of pinyon jay gymnorhinus cyanocephalus in chihuahua northern mexico all were made at rancho canoas in the municipality of gã mez farã as chihuahua involving more than 50 individuals between october 2014 and october 2015 despite being considered a casual visitor to the alta babã cora basin the presence of g cyanocephalus may reflect the abundant pinus cembroides in this region as the species primarily inhabits forests of pine and juniperus we discuss the species current and historical status based on the published literature online databases and unpublished sightings from experienced birdwatchers we compared the environmental parameters of available records across the species geographic range with those in chihuahua and found no climatic differences between them,2018,0.744
Late Miocene occurrence of monogeneric family Oleandraceae from southwest China and its implications on evolution of eupolypods I,yunnan in sw china is a world renowned hotspot for diverse species of vascular plants such as ferns however fossil records of the cenozoic ferns there are insufficient to clarify their phylogeny and historical biogeography from a geological perspective among these derived ferns the monogeneric family oleandraceae with a pantropic distribution is natural and distinctive however its origin and evolution remains unknown because of the absence of fossil records in this study we identified a new fossil species belonging to the genus oleandra cav oleandraceae s s from the upper miocene of yunnan china based on a detailed comparison of morphologically similar genera and within this genus oleandra bangmaii sp n is characterised by a simple fertile frond with an entire cartilaginous margin moreover the venation system in this genus is unique and comprises a prominent midrib along with parallel closely spaced secondary free veins the sori are dorsally borne with round kidney shaped indusia it represents the first fossil occurrence of the genus oleandra oleandraceae within its extant distribution suggesting that its fossil history has persisted for at least 10 ma in asia our finding together with other existing evidence suggests that the crown of eupolypods i the node including families oleandraceae davalliaceae and polypodiaceae has diversified and that the climate and vegetation of yunnan have remained relatively stable since the late miocene,2018,0.519
Present and future ecological niche modeling of garter snake species from the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt,land use and climate change are affecting the abundance and distribution of species the trans mexican volcanic belt tmvb is a very diverse region due to geological history geographic position and climate it is also one of the most disturbed regions in mexico reptiles are particularly sensitive to environmental changes due to their low dispersal capacity and thermal ecology in this study we define the important environmental variables considering climate topography and land use and potential distribution present and future of the five thamnophis species present in tmvb to do so we used the maximum entropy modeling software maxent first we modeled to select the most important variables to explain the distribution of each species then we modeled again using only the most important variables and projected these models to the future considering a middle moderate climate change scenario rcp45 and land use and vegetation variables for the year 2050 generated according to land use changes that occurred between years 2002 and 2011 arid vegetation had an important negative effect on habitat suitability for all species and minimum temperature of the coldest month was important for four of the five species thamnophis cyrtopsis was the species with the lowest tolerance to minimum temperatures the maximum temperature of the warmest month was important for t scalaris and t cyrtopsis low percentages of agriculture were positive for t eques and t melanogaster but at higher values agriculture had a negative effect on habitat suitability for both species elevation was the most important variable to explain t eques and t melanogaster potential distribution while distance to abies forests was the most important variable for t scalaris and t scaliger all species had a high proportion of their potential distribution in the tmvb however according to our models all thamnophis species will experience reductions in their potential distribution in this region t scalaris will suffer the biggest reduction because this species is limited by high temperatures and will not be able to shift its distribution upward as it is already present in the highest elevations of the tmvb,2018,0.979
Mammal collections of the Western Hemisphere: a survey and directory of collections,as a periodic assessment of the mammal collection resource the systematic collections committee scc of the american society of mammalogists undertakes decadal surveys of the collections held in the western hemisphere the scc surveyed 429 collections and compiled a directory of 395 active collections containing 5 275 155 catalogued specimens over the past decade 43 collections have been lost or transferred and 38 new or unsurveyed collections were added growth in number of total specimens expansion of genomic resource collections and substantial gains in digitization and web accessibility were documented as well as slight shifts in proportional representation of taxonomic groups owing to increasingly balanced geographic representation of collections relative to previous surveys while we find the overall health of western hemisphere collections to be adequate in some areas gaps in spatial and temporal coverage and clear threats to long term growth and vitality of these resources have also been identified major expansion of the collective mammal collection resource along with a recommitment to appropriate levels of funding will be required to meet the challenges ahead for mammalogists and other users and to ensure samples are broad and varied enough that unanticipated future needs can be powerfully addressed,2018,0.279
Ecology and biogeography in 3D: The case of the Australian Proteaceae,the key biophysical pressures shaping the ecology and evolution of species can be broadly aggregated into three dimensions environmental conditions disturbance regimes and biotic interactions the relative importance of each dimension varies over time and space and in most cases multiple dimensions need to be addressed to adequately understand the habitat and functional traits of species at broad spatial and phylogenetic scales however it is currently common to consider only one or two selective pressures even when studying large clades we illustrate the importance of the all inclusive multidimensional approach with reference to the large and iconic plant family proteaceae we review life history traits related to these three dimensions for the 46 genera occurring in australia and show that this family can be considered the product of a long history of harsh environments recurrent fires and strong faunal interactions because most proteaceae species occur in fire prone ecosystems and possess fire adaptive traits that are both ancient and essential for their survival disturbance by fire is likely to explain much of this familyâ s ecology evolution and distribution approaches that only examine prevailing environmental variables may fail to identify the mechanisms that drive a taxonâ s biogeography they need to consider the likely mechanisms of adaptation and accept or reject plausible alternative hypotheses as the evidence allows as multidisciplinary teams that consider all aspects of a taxonâ s ecology are assembled and databases and numerical tools become increasingly available studies on the ecology biogeography and diversity of organisms at broader spatial and phylogenetic scales will arrive at more realistic conclusions,2018,0.176
Ecological typologies of large areas. An application in the Mediterranean Sea,one approach to identifying and mapping the state of marine biophysical conditions is the identification of large scale ecological units for which conditions are similar and the strategies of management may also be similar because biological processes are difficult to directly record over large areas abiotic characteristics are used as surrogate parameters in this work the mediterranean sea was classified into homogeneous spatial areas based on abiotic variables eight parameters were selected based on salinity sea surface temperature photosynthetically active radiation sea wave heights and depth variables the parameters were gathered in grid points of 0 5â spatial resolution in the open sea and 0 125â in coastal areas the typologies were obtained by data mining the eight parameters throughout the mediterranean and combining two clustering techniques self organizing maps and the k means algorithm the result is a division of the mediterranean sea into seven typologies for these typologies the classification recognizes differences in temperature salinity and radiation in addition it separates coastal from deep areas the influence of river discharges and the entrance of water from other seas are also reflected these results are consistent with the ecological requirements of the five studied seagrasses posidonia oceanica zostera marina zostera noltei cymodocea nodosa halophila stipulacea supporting the suitability of the resulting classification and the proposed methodology the approach thus provides a tool for the sustainable management of large marine areas and the ability to address not only present threats but also future conditions such as climate change,2018,0.117
Phylogeny-Based Measures of Biodiversity When Data Is Scarce: Examples with the Vascular Flora of Chile and California,the urgency for conserving biodiversity has elicited much research on how to determine its â œvalueâ for conservation the use of phylogenetic diversity pd has provided a quantitative framework to assess biodiversity at different taxonomic levels and spatial scales pd assessments at any spatial resolution need a reasonably well resolved phylogeny and distribution data for the target taxa because of the explosive growth of phylogenetic work it is becoming easier to get phylogenetic information for a given group however distribution data is much harder to obtain using examples from world flora this study explores the correlation between pd related studies and availability of distribution data we found that most pd studies in plants have been done in a handful of countries which correlate with the amount of available distribution information in order to address the question of whether pd studies should be done in places where information is scarce we took two recent studies in which pd was calculated â the flora of chile and california â as examples of poor and good sampling efforts of herbaria data respectively we randomly pruned the california database to see if and how spatial patterns of pd change with data depletion we show that if redundancy a measure of sampling is kept at reasonable levels meaning using larger grid sizes pd patterns could still be inferred even with 25 of the original data we argue that these studies are worth doing even with poor data sets since even coarse pd patterns can point at places where future studies and conservation efforts should be focused,2018,0.25
Spatial Distribution of Species Diversity of Clavarioid Mycobiota in West Siberia,the results of a 20 year study of the spatial distribution of clavarioid mycobiota in the west siberian plain wsp are discussed the species structure has been studied on two scales regional an area of 100000 km2 and local 100 km2 in the studied area 121 species of clavarioid fungi are found the patterns of spatial variability of species diversity on the plain are revealed on the regional scale the maximum species richness of fungi is observed in hemiboreal forests 104 species on the local scale it ranges from the middle boreal to hemiboreal 54 3â 54 5 species with the increasing pessimality of the hydrothermal regime the number of species decreases sharply on both scales in the direction of the tundra and steppes the study of the distribution of diversity among the localities reveals changes not only along the latitudinal gradient but also in the longitude sectors in the forest zone the richest localities are located on the western and eastern edges of the plain while in the extensive marshy areas in the center the number of species is lower p 0 05 a map of the spatial distribution of species diversity for the local scale is constructed the correspondence of the spatial distribution of the studied fungi group to a global latitudinal gradient is discussed the main abiotic factors forming a variety of the studied group of fungi in the region are revealed,2018,0.958
Datelife: leveraging databases and analytical tools to reveal the dated Tree of Life.,achieving a high quality reconstruction of a phylogenetic tree with branch lengths proportional to absolute time chronogram is a difficult and time consuming task but the increased availability of fossil and molecular data and time efficient analytical techniques has resulted in many recent publications of large chronograms for a large number and wide diversity of organisms knowledge of the evolutionary time frame of organisms is key for research in the natural sciences it also represent valuable information for education science communication and policy decisions when chronograms are shared in public and open databases this wealth of expertly curated and peer reviewed data on evolutionary timeframe is exposed in a programatic and reusable way as intensive and localized efforts have improved data sharing practices as well as incentivizited open science in biology here we present datelife a service implemented as an r package and an r shiny website application available at www datelife org that provides functionalities for efficient and easy finding summary reuse and reanalysis of expert peer reviewed public data on time frame of evolution the main datelife workflow constructs a chronogram for any given combination of taxon names by searching a local chronogram database constructed and curated from the open tree of life phylesystem phylogenetic database which incorporates phylogenetic data from the treebase database as well we implement and test methods for summarizing time data from multiple source chronograms using supertree and congruification algorithms and using age data extracted from source chronograms as secondary calibration points to add branch lengths proportional to absolute time to a tree topology datelife will be useful to increase awareness of the existing variation in alternative hypothesis of evolutionary time for the same organisms and can foster exploration of the effect of alternative evolutionary timing hypotheses on the results of downstream analyses providing a framework for a more informed interpretation of evolutionary results achieving a high quality reconstruction of a phylogenetic tree with branch lengths proportional to absolute time chronogram is a difficult and time consuming task but the increased availability of fossil and molecular data and time efficient analytical techniques has resulted in many recent publications of large chronograms for a large number and wide diversity of organisms knowledge of the evolutionary time frame of organisms is key for research in the natural sciences it also represent valuable information for education science communication and policy decisions when chronograms are shared in public and open databases this wealth of expertly curated and peer reviewed data on evolutionary timeframe is exposed in a programatic and reusable way as intensive and localized efforts have improved data sharing practices as well as incentivizited open science in biology here we present datelife a service implemented as an r package and an r shiny website application available at www datelife org that provides functionalities for efficient and easy finding summary reuse and reanalysis of expert peer reviewed public data on time frame of evolution the main datelife workflow constructs a chronogram for any given combination of taxon names by searching a local chronogram database constructed and curated from the open tree of life phylesystem phylogenetic database which incorporates phylogenetic data from the treebase database as well we implement and test methods for summarizing time data from multiple source chronograms using supertree and congruification algorithms and using age data extracted from source chronograms as secondary calibration points to add branch lengths proportional to absolute time to a tree topology datelife will be useful to increase awareness of the existing variation in alternative hypothesis of evolutionary time for the same organisms and can foster exploration of the effect of alternative evolutionary timing hypotheses on the results of downstream analyses providing a framework for a more informed interpretation of evolutionary results,2019,0.25
"Spatial dynamics of invasion and distribution of alien frogs in a
biodiversity hotspot archipelago",the endemic rich amphibian fauna of the philippine archipelago ca 350 000 km2 includes six alien frogs the american bullfrog lithobates catesbeianus asiatic painted toad kaloula pulchra cane toad rhinella marina chinese bullfrog hoplobatrachus rugulosus green paddy frog hylarana erythraea and greenhouse frog eleutherodactylus planirostris the chronological history of their invasion across the philippines was reconstructed based on historical and geographic data subsequently we estimated their current and potential distribution through species distribution modelling and gaussian kernel density smoothing species distribution data seven known and potential pathways of introduction into and spread throughout the philippines were identifi ed namely intentional introduction as a 1 biocontrol agent and 2 food source contamination of 3 agriculture trade 4 aquaculture trade and 5 ornamental plant trade 6 stowaway of cargo and 7 through the exotic pet trade spatio temporal patterns of distribution showed a stratifi ed diff usion process of spread wherein human mediated jum dispersal is the primary mode followed by diff usion dispersal the status of the american bullfrog in the philippines is unresolved whether it has successfully established meanwhile the other fi ve alien frogs have established populations in the wild typically the dominant species in both artifi cial and disturbed habitats and are continuously spreading throughout the philippines estimates of current and potential distribution indicate that none of the alien frogs has realised its full potential distribution and that the cane toad is the most widespread occurring in almost all major islands of the philippines ca 85 while the greenhouse frog is the least distributed being found so far in eight provinces and on seven islands in light of these fi ndings we provide policy and management recommendations for responding to current and future alien frog invasions,2019,0.757
Patent Landscape Report: Marine Genetic Resources,this landscape report examines the scientific and patent landscapes for marine genetic resources in the south east asia asean region,2019,0.355
Nordic Crop Wild Relative conservation,the report summarizes results from a cooperation among all the nordic countries during the period 2015 â 2019 two projects the work has focused on the conservation of crop wild relatives cwr i e wild plant species closely related to crops they are of special importance to humanity since traits of potential value for food security and climate change adaptation can be transferred from cwr into crops the projects represent the first joint action on the nordic level regarding in situ conservation of cwr substantial progress has been made regarding cwr conservation planning including development of a nordic cwr checklist and identification of suitable sites for cwr conservation a set of recommended future actions was developed with the most important one being initiation of active in situ conservation of cwr in all nordic countries,2019,0.598
Evaluating species distribution models with discrimination accuracy is uninformative for many applications,abstractaimspecies distribution models are used across evolution ecology conservation and epidemiology to make critical decisions and study biological phenomena often in cases where experimental approaches are intractable choices regarding optimal models methods and data are typically made based on discrimination accuracy a modelâ s ability to predict subsets of species occurrence data that were withheld during model construction however empirical applications of these models often involve making biological inferences based on continuous estimates of relative habitat suitability as a function of environmental predictor variables we term the reliability of these biological inferences â œfunctional accuracy â we explore the link between discrimination accuracy and functional accuracy methodsusing a simulation approach we investigate whether models that make good predictions of species distributions correctly infer the underlying relationship between environmental predictors and the suitability of habitat resultswe demonstrate that discrimination accuracy is only informative when models are simple and similar in structure to the true niche or when data partitioning is geographically structured however the utility of discrimination accuracy for selecting models with high functional accuracy was low in all cases main conclusionsthese results suggest that many empirical studies and decisions are based on criteria that are unrelated to modelsâ usefulness for their intended purpose we argue that empirical modeling studies need to place significantly more emphasis on biological insight into the plausibility of models and that the current approach of maximizing discrimination accuracy at the expense of other considerations is detrimental to both the empirical and methodological literature in this active field finally we argue that future development of the field must include an increased emphasis on simulation methodological studies based on ability to predict withheld occurrence data may be largely uninformative about best practices for applications where interpretation of models relies on estimating ecological processes and will unduly penalize more biologically informative modeling approaches,2019,0.04
Remote sensing of peanut cropping areas and modelling of their future geographic distribution and disease risks,peanut or groundnut arachis hypogaea l one of the most important oil seed crops faces several challenges due to climate change the unfavourable climate in australia as a result of high climate variability could easily affect peanut production for example the incidence of drought stress will increase the likelihood of one of the major problems in the peanut industry i e aflatoxin in addition if the climate changes as projected shifts in geographic distribution of peanut crops and the associated diseases are inevitable in view of these concerns this study set the following objectives 1 to assess the effectiveness of proba v imagery in mapping peanut crops 2 to study the effects of climate change on the future geographic distribution of peanut crops in australia and 3 to examine the effects of climate change on the future distribution of aflatoxin in peanut crops and to locate high risk areas of aflatoxin in the future areas of peanut crop production in this study the area of peanut crop mapping was the south burnett region in queensland while the area of future geographic distribution of peanut crops and aflatoxin covered the entire continent of australia to address the first objective the peanut crop areas were mapped using time series proba v ndvi by stacking time series imagery and generating the phenological parameter imagery three classification algorithms were used maximum likelihood classification mlc spectral angle mapper sam and minimum distance classification min the results reveal that the overall accuracy of mapping using time series imagery outweighed phenological parameter imagery although both datasets performed very well in mapping peanut crops mlc application in the time series imagery dataset produced the best result i e overall accuracy of 92 75 with producer and user accuracy of each class â 78 79 specifically for peanut crops all the algorithms tested produced satisfactory results â 75 95 of producer and user accuracy except for the producer accuracy of min algorithm overall proba v imagery can provide satisfactory results in mapping peanut crops in the study area for the second objective the effects of climate change in the potential future geographic distribution of peanut crops in australia for 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 were studied using the climex program a species distribution model under global climate models gcms of csiro mk3 0 and miroc h the results show an increase in unsuitable areas for peanut cultivation in australia throughout the projection years for the two gcms however the csiro mk3 projection of unsuitable areas for 2100 was higher 76 of australian land than miroc h projection 48 of australian land both gcms agreed that some current peanut cultivation areas will become unsuitable in the future while only limited areas will still remain suitable for peanut cultivation the present study confirms the effects of climate change on the suitability of peanut growing areas in the future in the third objective the impacts of climate change on future aflatoxin distribution in australia and the high risk areas of aflatoxin incidence in the projected future distribution of peanut crops were examined the projected future distribution of aflatoxin for 2030 2050 2070 and 2100 was also modelled using climex under csiro mk3 0 and miroc h gcms the results demonstrated that only a small portion of the australian continent will be optimal suitable for aflatoxin persistence due to the incidence of heat and dry stresses the map overlay results between the future projections of aflatoxin and peanut crops resulted in small areas of low aflatoxin risk in the future projected areas of peanut crops it is projected that most of the current peanut cultivation areas will have a high aflatoxin risk while others will no longer be favourable for peanut cultivation in the future this study has clearly demonstrated the ability of proba v satellite imagery in mapping peanut crops it has also demonstrated that climate change incidence will affect the suitability areas of future geographical distribution of peanut crops and the associated aflatoxin disease this study provides strategic information on current peanut growing areas future suitable areas for peanut crops in australia and future high risk areas of aflatoxin incidence this information will provide valuable contributions to the long term planning of peanut cultivation in the country,2020,0.098
DNA Barcoding and geographical scale effect: The problems of undersampling genetic diversity hotspots,dna barcoding identification needs a good characterization of intraspecific genetic divergence to establish the limits between species yet the number of barcodes per species is many times low and geographically restricted a poor coverage of the species distribution range may hamper identification especially when undersampled areas host genetically distinct lineages if so the genetic distance between some query sequences and reference barcodes may exceed the maximum intraspecific threshold for unequivocal species assignation taking a group of quercus herbivores moths in europe as model system we found that the number of dna barcodes from southern europe is proportionally very low in the barcoding of life data systems this geographical bias complicates the identification of southern query sequences due to their high intraspecific genetic distance with respect to barcodes from higher latitudes pairwise intraspecific genetic divergence increased along with spatial distance but was higher when at least one of the sampling sites was in southern europe accordingly gmyc general mixed yule coalescent singleâ threshold model retrieved clusters constituted exclusively by iberian haplotypes some of which could correspond to cryptic species the number of putative species retrieved was more reliable than that of multipleâ threshold gmyc but very similar to results from abgd and jmotu our results support gmyc as a key resource for species delimitation within poorly inventoried biogeographic regions in europe where historical factors e g glaciations have promoted genetic diversity and singularity future european dna barcoding initiatives should be preferentially performed along latitudinal gradients with special focus on southern peninsulas,2020,0.881
"SAFE Acoustics: An open‐source, real‐time eco‐acoustic monitoring network in the tropical rainforests of Borneo",automated monitoring approaches offer an avenue to unlocking largeâ scale insight into how ecosystems respond to human pressures however since data collection and data analyses are often treated independently there are currently no openâ source examples of endâ toâ end realâ time ecological monitoring networks here we present the complete implementation of an autonomous acoustic monitoring network deployed in the tropical rainforests of borneo realâ time audio is uploaded remotely from the field indexed by a central database and delivered via an api to a publicâ facing website we provide the openâ source code and design of our monitoring devices the central web2py database and the reactjs website furthermore we demonstrate an extension of this infrastructure to deliver realâ time analyses of the ecoâ acoustic data by detailing a fully functional open source and extensively tested design our work will accelerate the rate at which fully autonomous monitoring networks mature from technological curiosities and towards genuinely impactful tools in ecology,2020,0.112
C 4 grasses adapted to low precipitation habitats show traits related to greater mesophyll conductance and lower leaf hydraulic conductance,in habitats with low water availability a fundamental challenge for plants will be to maximize photosynthetic câ gain while minimizing transpirational waterâ loss this tradeâ off between câ gain and waterâ loss can in part be achieved through the coordination of leafâ level photosynthetic and hydraulic traits to test the relationship of photosynthetic câ gain and transpirational waterâ loss we grew under common growth conditions 18 c4 grasses adapted to habitats with different mean annual precipitation map and measured leafâ level structural and anatomical traits associated with mesophyll conductance gm and leaf hydraulic conductance kleaf the c4 grasses adapted to lower map showed greater mesophyll surface area exposed to intercellular air spaces smes and adaxial stomatal density sdada which supported greater gm these grasses also showed greater leaf thickness and veinâ toâ epidermis distance which may lead to lower kleaf additionally grasses with greater gm and lower kleaf also showed greater photosynthetic rates anet and leafâ level waterâ use efficiency wue in summary we identify a suite of leafâ level traits that appear important for adaptation of c4 grasses to habitats with low map and may be useful to identify c4 species showing greater anet and wue in drier conditions,2020,0.127
Conserving the world's scariest finger: analysing future spatial distribution and population status of the Aye-aye,madagascar is home to many unique species that can t be found anywhere else ganzhorn et al 2014 the aye aye is a nocturnal lemur species that is currently listed endangered louis et al 2020 it is estimated that only 1000 10 000 individuals remain as the population has decreased more than half over the last decades mittermeier et al 2010 louis et al 2020 the species is mainly threatened by habitat loss hunting poaching and killings from superstitions andriaholinirina et al 2014 in this study we make future projections on spatial and genetic population developments and propose conservation actions,2020,0.747
"Geographic potential of the world’s largest hornet,Vespa mandariniaSmith (Hymenoptera: Vespidae), worldwide and particularly in North America",abstractthe asian giant hornet agh vespa mandarinia is the worldâ s largest hornet occurring naturally in the indomalayan region where it is a voracious predator of pollinating insects including honey bees in september 2019 a nest of asian giant hornets was detected outside of vancouver british columbia and in may 2020 an individual was detected nearby in washington state indicating that the agh successfully overwintered in north america because hornets tend to spread rapidly and become pests reliable estimates of the potential invasive range ofv mandariniain north america are needed to assess likely human and economic impacts and to guide future eradication attempts here we assess climatic suitability for agh in north america and suggest that without control this species could establish populations across the pacific northwest and much of eastern north america predicted suitable areas for agh in north america overlap broadly with areas where honey production is highest as well as with species rich areas for native bumble bees and stingless bees of the genusmeliponain mexico highlighting the economic and environmental necessity of controlling this nascent invasion,2020,0.717
Early warning systems in biosecurity; translating risk into action in predictive systems for invasive alien species,invasive alien species ias are one of the most severe threats to biodiversity and are the subject of varying degrees of surveillance activity predictive early warning systems ews incorporating automated surveillance of relevant dataflows warning generation and dissemination to decision makers are a key target for developing effective management around ias alongside more conventional early detection and horizon scanning technologies sophisticated modelling frameworks including the definition of the â riskyâ species pool and pathway analysis at the macro and micro scale are increasingly available to support decision making and to help prioritise risks from different regions and or taxa the main challenges in constructing such frameworks to be applied to border inspections are i the lack of standardisation and integration of the associated complex digital data environments and ii effective integration into the decision making process ensuring that risk information is disseminated in an actionable way to frontline surveillance staff and other decision makers to truly achieve early warning in biosecurity requires close collaboration between developers and end users to ensure that generated warnings are duly considered by decision makers reflect best practice scientific understanding and the working environment facing frontline actors progress towards this goal will rely on openness and mutual understanding of the role of ews in ias risk management as much as on developments in the underlying technologies for surveillance and modelling procedures,2020,0.145
"Predicting amphibian intraspecific diversity with machine learning: Challenges and prospects for integrating traits, geography, and genetic data",the growing availability of genetic data sets in combination with machine learning frameworks offers great potential to answer longâ standing questions in ecology and evolution one such question has intrigued population geneticists biogeographers and conservation biologists what factors determine intraspecific genetic diversity this question is challenging to answer because many factors may influence genetic variation including life history traits historical influences and geography and the relative importance of these factors varies across taxonomic and geographic scales furthermore interpreting the influence of numerous potentially correlated variables is difficult with traditional statistical approaches to address these challenges we analysed repurposed data using machine learning and investigated predictors of genetic diversity focusing on nearctic amphibians as a case study we aggregated species traits range characteristics and 42 000 genetic sequences for 299 species using openâ access scripts and various databases after identifying important predictors of nucleotide diversity with random forest regression we conducted followâ up analyses to examine the roles of phylogenetic history geography and demographic processes on intraspecific diversity although life history traits were not important predictors for this data set we found significant phylogenetic signal in genetic diversity within amphibians we also found that salamander species at northern latitudes contained low genetic diversity data repurposing and machine learning provide valuable tools for detecting patterns with relevance for conservation but concerted efforts are needed to compile meaningful data sets with greater utility for understanding global biodiversity,2020,0.682
Modelling the climatic suitability of Chagas disease vectors on a global scale,the triatominae are vectors for trypanosoma cruzi the aetiological agent of the neglected tropical chagas disease their distribution stretches across latin america with some species occurring outside of the americas in particular the cosmopolitan vector triatoma rubrofasciata has already been detected in many asian and african countries we applied an ensemble forecasting niche modelling approach to project the climatic suitability of 11 triatomine species under current climate conditions on a global scale our results revealed potential hotspots of triatomine species diversity in tropical and subtropical regions between 21â n and 24â s latitude we also determined the climatic suitability of two temperate species t infestans t sordida in europe western australia and new zealand triatoma rubrofasciata has been projected to find climatically suitable conditions in large parts of coastal areas throughout latin america africa and southeast asia emphasising the importance of an international vector surveillance program in these regions,2020,0.72
ANTLER SIZE AND FORM IN RELATIONSHIP WITH CRANIAL ARCHITECTURE IN RED DEER (CERVUS ELAPHUS L.) A CASE STUDY IN THE CURVATURE …,the study has been conducted on 66 specimens of adult red deer cervus elaphus l the skulls belong to specimens harvested in the hunting season 2017 2018 but also originate from trophy collections with origin in the curvature carpathians eight trophy variables were selected for analysis among which 13 cranial variables belong to the four cranial areas 6 on the dorsal face 2 on the lateral face 2 on the ventral face and 3 on the occipital face the sample analyzed after determining the age has been divided into 3 classes 4 6 years 7 9 years and over 10 years for the investigations a method of descriptive and multivariate statistical analysis has been used to highlight the relationships the descriptive analysis of these variables highlighted the degree of variability of this sample a starting point in their comparison with other populations the analysis of correlations and regressions highlighted the links established between these variables generating through simple and multiple regression mathematical expressions that reveal these links the discriminant analysis performed between the three age groups highlighted the variables with discriminant value for both the cranial and trophy variables the correct classification of the discriminant score being 85 96 per total experiment in order to create a clearer picture of these aspects it is necessary to study more data especially for the category of young specimens,2020,0.568
Defining endemism levels for biodiversity conservation: Tree species in the Atlantic Forest hotspot,endemic species are important for biodiversity conservation yet quantifying endemism remains challenging because endemism concepts can be too strict i e pure endemism or too subjective i e near endemism we propose a data driven approach to objectively estimate the proportion of records inside a given the target area i e endemism level that optimizes the separation of near endemics from non endemic species we apply this approach to the atlantic forest tree flora using millions of herbarium records retrieved from multiple sources we first report an updated checklist of 5044 species for the atlantic forest tree flora and then we compare how species specific endemism levels obtained from herbarium data match species specific endemism accepted by taxonomists we show that an endemism level of 90 separates well pure and near endemic from non endemic species which in the atlantic forest revealed an overall endemism ratio of 45 for its tree flora we also found that the diversity of pure and near endemics and of endemics and overall species was congruent in space our results for the atlantic forest reinforce that pure and near endemic species can be combined to quantify regional endemism and therefore to set conservation priorities taking into account endemic species distribution we provided general guidelines on how the proposed approach can be used to assess endemism levels of regional biotas in other parts of the world,2020,0.965
It is high time that taxonomists follow the Code. &lt;br&gt;4. Amphibia of Indochina,a recent checklist of the amphibia of indochina contains several nomenclatural errors that should be corrected before they spread two species series and two genus series treated as valid in this work are invalid the authorships and dates of several family series and of all class series nomina mentioned are wrong the information provided about onomatophores nomen bearing specimens and nomina are incomplete and for some of them inaccurate besides the ergotaxonomy classification adopted is methodologically poorly justified supported mostly by â traditionâ and â stabilityâ and therefore arbitrary heterogeneous and unreliable,2021,0.463
Climate velocity in the ocean and its implications for conservation,species are rapidly shifting poleward as the climate warms presenting a key challenge in ocean conservation in the ocean impacts of climate change on speciesâ movement have mostly been studied near the surface which is relevant for species in the epipelagic zone 200 m but less so for species in the mesopelagic and bathypelagic zones 200 m predicting the distribution shift of the thousands of species that live in the ocean even at the surface is challenging however a simple yet powerful predictor of species distribution shifts is climate velocity which estimates the speed and direction of isotherm movement under a changing climate an understanding of how species ranges might change under climate change is critical when planning for the protection of marine biodiversity marine protected areas mpas are the most widely applied protection measure in marine environments the main objective of mpas is to manage or in some cases prevent current and future threats to biodiversity however mpas are usually fixed in space and are typically designed without much thought to the three dimensional nature of the ocean in addition effects of climate change have been ignored in most marine conservation plans it is challenging to incorporate climate change when planning for the conservation of biodiversity due to uncertainties inherent in climate models and the extensive knowledge needed about how individual species will respond to climate change however the generality of applying climate velocity across species and the feasibility of computing this measure for multiple future climate scenarios offer an opportunity to evaluate future species distribution shifts thereby better informing conservation actions associated with mpas given current impacts of climate change on marine biodiversity it is imperative that conservation approaches start to consider the inclusion of climate change metrics in mpa design to proactively plan for long term ocean protection in chapter 2 i address this gap by reviewing how climate velocity can inform conservation planning this review proposes approaches that enhance the use of climate velocity in conservation science and climate change which includes applying it across all ocean depth zones in chapter 3 i present a global analysis of the current and futures rates of climate velocity across different ocean depth layers and discover that climate velocity is projected to be more than 7 times faster in the mesopelagic than the epipelagic layer by 2100 even under an aggressive mitigation scenario i also show that isotherms for future climate envelopes for large open ocean iii mpas move at different speeds and contrasting directions across ocean depths this highlights that current methods in mpa design could be failing to protect biodiversity against the impacts of current and future climate change in the ocean building on results of chapter 3 chapters 4 and 5 focus on developing approaches for designing climate smart mpas although the design of climate smart mpas that will retain biodiversity into the future is a research priority in conservation there is no consensus on how best to achieve it in chapter 4 i design and test several climate smart mpa prioritisation approaches that use climate velocity to solve the minimum set conservation planning problem i discover that a spatial prioritisation approach that minimises climate velocity best selects slower moving areas but makes it difficult to also accommodate critical socio economic information for a climate smart mpa design i therefore recommend the use of climate velocity as a conservation feature or as a boundary length modifier in spatial conservation prioritisation approaches that aim to solve the minimum set conservation planning problem with the building momentum towards protecting 30 of the ocean by 2030 there is a huge science gap in designing climate smart open ocean mpas that protect and retain biodiversity at different ocean depths in the high seas areas beyond national jurisdiction in chapter 5 i develop and apply a practical three dimensional climate smart approach based on three ipcc shared socioeconomic pathways in the high seas 65 of the global ocean and compare it to a climate uniformed approach i identify areas of the open ocean that are priorities for protection regardless of socioeconomic pathway we show that 11 of the open ocean is in these no regret areas that are robust to different climate futures and are aligned vertically across ocean depths these results demonstrate that we do not have to continue to ignore climate change when expanding the global mpa network finally in chapter 6 i synthesize the findings of my thesis highlight implications for marine conservation policy and discuss future research in climate smart conservation science given that the â œblue accelerationâ â a race among diverse and competing interests for ocean food material and space â is threatening marine systems this thesis helps to advance climate smart conservation science,2021,0.446
From Robots to Primates : Tracing the Uncanny Valley Effect to its Evolutionary Origin,despite years of research and an abundance of theoretical approaches the underpinnings of the uncanny valley effect still remain a mystery recent research has argued that the negative appraisal of highly human like entities is the result of fast processing systems rather than of slow deliberate cognitive efforts to shine light on its origin we detach the uncanny valley effect from the field of robotics and investigate it from an evolutionary psychological perspective with use of biological stimuli in an online experiment participants viewed and rated a range of primate and robot faces on eeriness and likeability we introduced the concept of ancestral closeness as an objective measure for human likeness we were overall able to replicate the uncanny valley effect using primate faces and found it is highly likely to be experienced by every participant thereby we support the involvement of evolved fast processing systems in bringing about the uncanny valley effect and argue against theories of realism inconsistency and traditional category uncertainty surprisingly the stimuli falling into the uncanny valley had a visibly white sclera which we argue to be an evolved feature most distinctly displayed in homo sapiens we conclude that the uncanny valley effect is a mechanism evolved under the selection pressure that benefits intraspecies communication reproductive fitness and ultimately self preservation these findings allow us to detach the phenomenon from its original context and pave the way for future research to unravel its evolutionary advantages,2021,0.069
"Determination of Pest Insect Species at Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) Orchards in Adıyaman and Siirt Provinces, Turkey",this study was carried out in order to determine the insect pest species found at the orchards of adä yaman and siirt provinces the studies were carried out in the åžirvan district of siirt and adä yamanâ s the central kahta and samsat districts where pomegranate production is intensively carried out through the years of 2017 and 2018 samplings was carried out at the pomegranate orchards at least two weeks interval between april and october visual control knock and insect rearing methods were used to obtain the insect species according to the results from the study a total of 42 insect species were obtained from the orders of orthoptera 1 thysanoptera 9 hemiptera 18 coleoptera 8 lepidoptera 4 and diptera 2 among the identified pest species aphis punicae passerini hemiptera aphididae and apomyelois ceratoniae zeller lepidoptera pyralidae were determined as the main pest species dioryctria simplicella heinemann lepidoptera pyralidae arcyophora dentula lederer lepidoptera nolidae chrysobothris affinis f acmaeodera wethloi obenberger coleoptera buprestidae and zaprionus indianus gupta diptera drosophilidae were determined for the first time in turkey s pomegranate production areas,2021,0.854
"Quantitative evaluation of microplastics in colonies of Phragmatopoma caudata Krøyer in Mörch, 1863 (Polychaeta-Sabellariidae): Analysis in sandcastles and tissues and identification via Raman spectroscopy",the detection of microplastics in all world oceans including the most remote has become a major concern as this will substantially increase the possibility of interactions between these particles and the marine biota due to their small size microplastics can be ingested by many marine species including invertebrates causing physical damage this study was the first evaluation of the occurrence and abundance of microplastics in three sample types related to the species phragmatopoma caudata i e colony wash water tubes and digested tissue from specimens in total 2118 samples of microplastics were quantified with 1516 obtained from the wash water 447 from the fragmented tubes and 155 from the digested tissue three types of microplastics were chemically identified via raman spectroscopy as polyethylene polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalates overall this study demonstrated that microplastics are abundantly bioavailable in the studied area and are present as filament and fragment shapes,2021,0.578
Identifying uncertainties in scenarios and models of socio-ecological systems in support of decision-making,there are many sources of uncertainty in scenarios and models of socio ecological systems and understanding these uncertainties is critical in supporting informed decision making about the management of natural resources here we review uncertainty across the steps needed to create socio ecological scenarios from narrative storylines to the representation of human and biological processes in models and the estimation of scenario and model parameters we find that socio ecological scenarios and models would benefit from moving away from â â stylizedâ â approaches that do not consider a wide range of direct drivers and their dependency on indirect drivers indeed a greater focus on the social phenomena is fundamental in understanding the functioning of nature on a human dominated planet there is no panacea for dealing with uncertainty but several approaches to evaluating uncertainty are still not routinely applied in scenario modeling and this is becoming increasingly unacceptable however it is important to avoid uncertainties becoming an excuse for inaction in decision making when facing environmental challenges,2021,0.16
"The effect of climate change on habitat suitability and a distribution model of the Iranian fat-tailed gecko, Eublepharis angramainyu Anderson and Leviton, 1966 (Sauria: Eublepharidae) since the Last Interglacial to 2050",surveying the role of climate changes on the species distributions in the past present and future and correlating these with changes in distribution ranges have attracted considerable research interest the leopard geckos of the genus eublepharis gray 1827 family eublepharidae as a vicariate group comprises six valid species distributed from turkey through the iranian plateau to india of which e angramainyu e macularius and e turcmenicus occur in iran in this study we modelled the potential distribution areas for e angramainyu and determined the suitable habitats in the past the last interglacial lig and mid holocene mh present 1950â 2000 and also predicted four scenarios in the future 2050 by using the maximum entropy approach maxent the obtained models indicated very good values of the area under curve auc lig 0 996 â 0 003 mh 0 996 â 0 004 contemporary period 0 995 â 0 004 and the future 0 997 â 0 002 precipitation of the coldest quarter and precipitation of the warmest quarter were the most important factors shaping the distribution of e angramainyu as it seems climatic changes have been responsible for a southward shift in distribution and suitable habitats of e angramainyu from the lig 150 000â 120 000 years ago to the future the representative concentration pathway rcp 2 6 scenario model of the future predicted a much more restricted distribution and less suitable habitats due to radiation of the forcing level which reaches a value of around 3 1 w mâ by mid century and returns to 2 6 w mâ by 2100,2021,0.275
Field assessment of precocious maturation in salmon parr using ultrasound imaging,salmonids are characterized by a large diversity of life histories but their study is often limited by the imperfect observation of the true state of an individual in the wild challenged by the need to reduce uncertainty of empirical data recent development in medical imaging techniques offered new opportunities to assess precocious maturation in atlantic salmon parr traditional phenotypic external examination and ultrasound internal examination were compared and recommendations on fish handling and ultrasound image interpretation are provided by allowing to see the unseen portable ultrasound imaging offers great opportunities for ecological studies in the wild such as the assessment of individual sexual maturation,2021,0.521
Climate change impact on cultivated and wild cacao in Peru and the search of climate change‐tolerant genotypes,aim cacao theobroma cacao l is expected to be vulnerable to climate change the objectives of this study were to a assess the future impact of climate change on cacao in peru and b identify areas where climate change tolerant genotypes are potentially present location peru methods drawing on 19 700 and 1 200 presence points of cultivated and wild cacao respectively we modelled their suitability distributions using multiple ensemble models constructed based on both random and target group selection of pseudo absence points and different resolutions of spatial filtering to estimate the uncertainty of future predictions we generated future projections for all the ensemble models we investigated the potential emergence of novel climates determined expected changes in ecogeographical zones zones representative for particular sets of growth conditions and carried out an outlier analysis based on the environmental variables most relevant for climate change adaptation to identify areas where climate change tolerant genotypes are potentially present results we found that the best modelling approaches differed between cultivated and wild cacao and that the resolution of spatial filtering had a strong impact on future suitability predictions calling for careful evaluation of the effect of model selection on modelling results overall our models foresee a contraction of suitable area for cultivated cacao while predicting a more positive future for wild cacao in peru ecogeographical zones are expected to change in 8 â 16 of the distribution of cultivated and wild cacao we identified several areas where climate change tolerant genotypes may be present in peru main conclusions our results indicate that tolerant genotypes will be required to facilitate the adaptation of cacao cultivation under climate change the identified cacao populations will be target of collection missions,2021,0.651
Adaptation and Valorization of Entrepreneurship in Irrigated Agriculture (AVENIR) baseline study,the objective of the baseline study was to evaluate conditions in the sedhiou and tambacounda regions of senegal for the avenir project the study entailed observation of key trends a household survey and analysis of the biophysical characteristics of the project area and challenges for agriculture thereby the study identified key lessons learned and documented challenges for agriculture development,2021,0.283
Proposal for an EU pollinator monitoring scheme.,this report presents the proposal for an eu pollinator monitoring scheme eu poms based on the findings of an expert group of 21 people from 12 european countries the objectives are to i develop a cost effective core scheme which includes the most relevant taxa is able to detect changes in the status of pollinators has eu wide coverage and uses standardised sampling methods ii provide a set of additional modules for other taxa and measures beyond the core scheme iii propose a general eu indicator to assess status and trends of pollinators and a common agricultural policy specific indicator to evaluate the impacts of the cap and the measures implemented within on both pollinators and pollination and iv provide estimated costs for establishing and implementing the core scheme considering staff equipment travel taxonomic training data management and coordination costs,2021,0.148
Study on invasive alien species: development of risk assessments to tackle priority species and enhance prevention : final report (and annexes).,providing evidence based and scientifically robust risk assessments as foreseen under article 5 of the regulation eu 1143 2014 on the prevention and management of the introduction and spread of invasive alien species ias is one step in the process of developing the list of ias of union concern the aim of the current study is to develop such risk assessments alongside evidence on management measures and their implementation cost and cost effectiveness this study includes ten revised risk assessments from previous contracts concerning the following species ameiurus melas black bullhead ameiurus nebulosus brown bullhead boccardia proboscidea a spionid worm channa argus northern snakehead gambusia affinis western mosquitofish gambusia holbrooki eastern mosquitofish lagocephalus sceleratus silver cheeked toadfish phytolacca americana american pokeweed schizoporella japonica a bryozoan species and wasmannia auropunctata little fire ant this study also includes nine new risk assessments and associated management annexes for the following species acridotheres cristatellus crested myna asterias amurensis northern pacific seastar broussonetia papyrifera paper mulberry callinectes sapidus atlantic blue crab cortaderia selloana pampas grass faxonius immunis calico crayfish misgurnus anguillicaudatus oriental weatherfish platydemnus manokwari new guinea flatworm and vespa mandarinia asian giant hornet these peer reviewed assessments will help inform policies and prioritise actions,2021,0.421
Norwegian Arctic Tundra: a Panel-based Assessment of Ecosystem Condition - Miljødirektoratet,the system for assessment of ecological condition coordinated by the norwegian environment agency is intended to form the foundation for evidence based assessments of the ecological condition of norwegian terrestrial and marine ecosystems not covered by the eu water framework directive this report describes the first operational assessment of the ecological condition of norwegian arctic tundra ecosystems â high arctic tundra in svalbard and low arctic tundra in finnmark the assessment method employed is the panel based assessment of ecosystem condition paec jepsen et al 2020,2021,0.204
"Improving the Availability of Data and Information on Species, Habitats and Sites – Focus Area A: Science and Policy for a Sustainable World",in march 2021 two new handbooks on evidenceâ based improvements in the birds and habitats directives implementation e bind are being released they have been the achievements of a systematic review of the birds and habitats directives implementation the core objective of the e bind handbook s are to advise the commission member state authorities decision makers spatial planners conservationists and ngos in more effective implementation of the nature directives this handbook does focus on guidance for improving the availability of data and information on species habitats and sites focus area a focus area a availability of data and information on habitats and species and sites this handbook seeks to provide in the lack of data and access to data including remotely sensed information and monitoring data and consists of three sections i monitoring of species and habitats ii contribution of remote sensing techniques for monitoring natura 2000 sites and iii access to data and information with its hands on guidance for improving access to data and information while fostering scientific support and an easy utilization and navigation structure the handbook s will contribute to the mobilization of the scientific community in order to close knowledge gaps to offer solutions to strategic problems and to enhance the accessibility of scientific information to policymakers and all players involved in the implementation of eu birds and habitats directive ecologic institute s dr grit martinez and beã ta welk vargovã led the development of the handbooks,2021,0.337
"Are eastern and western monarch butterflies distinct populations? A review of evidence for ecological, phenotypic, and genetic differentiation and implications for conservation",monarch butterflies are a species of conservation priority due to declining overwintering populations in both eastern and western north america declines in western overwintering monarchsâ more than 99 9 since monitoring beganâ are especially acute however the degree to which western monarchs are a distinct biological entity is uncertain in this review we focus on phenotypic and genetic differentiation between eastern and western monarchs with the goal of informing researchers and policyâ makers who are interested in monarch conservation eastern and western monarchs occupy distinct environments and show some evidence for phenotypic differentiation particularly for migrationâ associated traits though population genetic and genomic studies suggest that they are indistinguishable from one another we suggest future studies that could improve our understanding of differences between eastern and western monarchs we also discuss the concept of adaptive capacity in eastern and western monarchs as well as nonâ migratory populations outside of the monarch s primary north american range finally we discuss the prospect of completely losing migratory monarchs from western north america and what this entails for monarch conservation,2021,0.42
Modelling approaches and data requirements for a spatiotemporal index-based assessment of longfin eels,the longfin eel anguilla dieffenbachii supports important commercial customary and recreational fisheries in new zealand and is a key species in freshwater ecosystems to effectively manage this resource and maintain its cultural and ecological roles requires knowledge of stock size and the pressures that affect it an international review in 2013 of information about longfin eel trends and status recommended the development of a comprehensive longfin eel population assessment to support eel management however eel population assessment models developed with conventional methods are problematic because the complex life history and stock structure of eels do not meet model assumptions perhaps the biggest barrier to freshwater eel stock assessments is the derivation of reliable indices of abundance for species that do not move between catchments and do not mix well within catchments a 2016 review of potential approaches recommended development of a spatially distributed modelling approach sdm that would integrate information from multiple sources and predict female spawning biomass across the country to produce a suitable index of abundance for longfin eels this project identified and co funded development of an sdm approach for stream networks vast is a modeling tool developed by the us national oceanic and atmospheric administration noaa to implement a spatial delta generalised linear mixed model delta glmm to standardise time series of spatial observations vast estimates spatial and temporal variation habitat associations and correlations among categories however standard approaches based on latitude and longitude euclidean space poorly represent systems where fish attributes follow the stream network through a related project funded by the ministry of business innovation and employment endeavour fund â cultural keystone speciesâ c01x1616 and in collaboration with noaa the vast developers added methods for modelling stream networks the eel model developed under the current project uses as a proxy for female spawning biomass the density of eels larger than 50 cm which are mostly female predicted across the spatial framework local predictions are based on relationships with environmental factors such as distance to coast upstream elevation and access as well as spatio temporal models of density with spatial correlations across the network details of model development and application of the model to encounter non encounter data from the waikato and waitaki catchments are described in the research report titled â œspatiotemporal models in stream networks with application to new zealand longfin eelsâ supplementary to this report in the body of the report a model was developed for the waikato catchment based on encounter non encounter and density data in two size categories sensitivity of the model to each of the parameters was explored and a simulation study was used to provide an overview of future sampling requirements for ongoing and improved estimates of these model parameters the new methods improve on previous approaches by 1 generating time series of predictions rather than static estimates 2 improving the statistical spatial modeling methods to provide more accurate predictions 3 including information relevant to size and sex composition so that the estimates more closely approximate female spawning biomass 4 modeling the influence of instream barriers and the time since their introduction and 5 estimating the sampling required to identify population trends at catchment scale the models in general performed well at estimating trends as expected the precision of the estimates was considerably greater with longer time series of sampling data an annual sample size of 30 was large enough to reliably detect a 2 5 density decline per year over 9 years whereas 15 was not a similar rate of decline over 20 years was reliably detected with either 15 or 30 samples per year further simulation work is recommended to explore additional issues which include a wider range of sample sizes trend scenarios time periods and size ranges the potential to increase precision with more or better covariate information the potential to share information among catchments to increase statistical power and comparison between the stream network model and standard vast with its euclidean assumptions about spatial correlations,2021,0.006
Meteorites that produce K-feldspar-rich ejecta blankets correspond to mass extinctions,meteorite impacts load the atmosphere with dust and cover the earth s surface with debris they have long been debated as a trigger of mass extinctions throughout earth history impact winters generally last lt 100 years whereas ejecta blankets persist for 103â 105 years we show that only meteorite impacts that emplaced ejecta blankets rich in k feldspar kfs correlate to earth system crises nâ â 11 pâ lt â 0 000005 kfs is a powerful ice nucleating aerosol yet is normally rare in atmospheric dust mineralogy ice nucleation plays an important part in cloud microphysics which modulates the global albedo a conceptual model is proposed whereby the anomalous presence of kfs post impact is posited to have two key effects on cloud dynamics 1 kfs reduces the average albedo of mixed phase clouds which leads to a hotter climate and 2 kfs weakens the cloud albedo feedback mechanism which increases climate sensitivity these mechanisms offer an explanation as to why this otherwise benign mineral is correlated so strongly with mass extinction events every kfs rich ejecta blanket corresponds to a severe extinction episode over the last 600â myr this model may also explain why many kill mechanisms only variably correlate with extinction events through geological time they coincide with these rare periods of climate destabilization by atmospheric kfs,2021,0.077
Nuclear–plastid discordance indicates past introgression in Epidendrum species (Laeliinae: Orchidaceae) with highly variable chromosome numbers,abstract here we study a challenging group of karyotypically highly variable epidendrum spp using phylogenetic methods to help understand how hybridization introgression contributes to karyotype evolution we hypothesize that species with great chromosome number variation are a result of past hybridization introgression conflicting topologies in trees constructed using separate plastid and nuclear datasets suggest past hybridization events that occurred most probably at least 3 7 mya a basic number x 14 and substantial karyotype change followed by species divergence are suggested descending dysploidy and polyploidy were the most frequent changes estimated across the phylogenetic tree of the group two species epidendrum secundum and e xanthinum have probably experienced unidirectional gene flow involving their ancestors the pollen recipients and ancestors of e puniceoluteum and e denticulatum e flammeum respectively the pollen donors however it is not possible to say whether hybridization participated in the origin of e secundum and e xanthinum or merely contributed to their genomic divergence and karyotype change through introgression as has been observed in modern hybrid zones in epidendrum this pattern of introgression causing karyotype disruption and divergence could help explain the enigma of some highly diverse genera such as epidendrum further studies using a wider sampling of the genus could test if gene flow and karyotype variability are associated with the increase of speciation rates,2021,0.354
Data-validation solutions for citizen science data on invasive alien species.,invasive alien species ias constitute one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss globally citizen science cs can play a role in influencing the way in which society values biodiversity and can contribute by collecting valuable data the involvement of the public in ias recording through cs initiatives using innovative smartphone applications apps already complement several existing official surveillance systems in eu member states however the quality of data may hinder the use of cs data for early warning management and control of ias the joint research centre has developed a smartphone app called â œinvasive alien species in europeâ jrc ias app allowing users to report the presence of ias of union concern eu regulation 1143 2014 in europe the jrc proof of concept project â œcs data supporting ias policy in europeâ aims at consolidating the framework for cs ias data in europe towards this objective it explores automated solutions for validation of ias records from the jrc ias app the current report includes the description of available tools for ias validation information on currently applied validation strategies and mechanisms was retrieved from existing cs portals the report describes aspects of data quality in european and global cs portals and how validation of ias records is carried out in addition a refined validation procedure for the jrc ias app is proposed taking into account specific taxa and the applicability of methods and tools that are used in similar portals and projects further development of a refined validation procedure is expected to increase the quality of the data for science policy and management to improve the feedback to and engagement of volunteer recorders to assist data validators in performing record checks and eventually to increase the use of the jrc ias app,2021,0.232
The Global Benefits of Large-Scale Seaweed Farming,agricultural expansion to meet humanityâ s growing needs for food and materials is a leading driver of land use change and threatens to exacerbate ongoing crises of climate change and biodiversity loss seaweed biomass farmed in the ocean as one facet of the rapidly growing â blue economyâ could help to mitigate these problems by providing a suitable even advantageous substitute for food animal feed and biofuels altogether which could significantly displace demand for terrestrially produced crops in addition recent research has demonstrated that the production of ruminant livestock can be drastically improved by supplementing their feed with the red seaweed asparagopsis spp here we develop a range of scenarios to explore how increasing seaweed utilization may affect land use change and carbon emissions and estimate where corresponding sea use change would occur for each scenario we i use iiasaâ s globiom global biosphere management model to provide a detailed estimation of the terrestrial benefits and ii map the geographic potential of 35 commercially important seaweed species and use a spatial optimization algorithm to identify where and how much each could be grown to meet the scenario our results show that ca 349 million hectares of global ocean could support seaweed farms and that cultivating asparagopsis spp for ruminant feed could mitigate up to 2 gt co2e and provides the highest marginal gains for land use we also find that substituting human diets at a rate of 10 globally would spare up to 100 mha of natural lands these findings suggest that several global challenges could be simultaneously addressed by expanding the production of seaweed however further work is needed to ensure that these farms will be environmentally technically and economically viable,2021,0.135
New Species of Macromycetes for Regions of the Russian Far East. 2,the paper continues a series of publications devoted to new finds of macrofungi ascomycetes basidiomycetes in regions of the russian far east a total of 121 species of macromycetes are reported for the first time from 7 administrative units of the russian far east amur oblast magadan oblast sakhalin oblast kamchatka krai khabarovsk krai primorskiy krai and chukotka autonomous okrug each annotated record provides details about specimen ecology and collection information locality habitat substrate specimen herbarium numbers collectors and determiners as well as notes on rarity and protection status of some species for some rare species notes are given about the main differences in morphology and ecology about the features of distribution the identification of sarcoscypha korfiana tuber himalayense and suillus aurihymenius species by morphological methods is confirmed by molecular genetic data the material was deposited in several herbaria vla mag sver le abgi and in the yu rebriev yur h j beker hjb and h kotiranta hk personal collections 23 species aleurodiscus aurantius clitocybe dryadicola cystostereum murrayi dendrocorticium violaceum dendrothele tetracornis dentocorticium sulphurellum fibriciellum silvae ryae geastrum berkeleyi hebeloma dunense hohenbuehelia grisea hypochniciellum ovoideum luellia recondita melzericium udicola merismodes bresadolae mycena silvae nigrae omphaliaster borealis peniophora polygonia pholiota henningsii radulodon erikssonii rhizochaete radicata sarcoleotia globosa tricholoma alboconicum trichophaeopsis paludosa are reported as the first records for the russian far east and 13 boudiera acanthospora ciboria polygoni vivipari graddonia coracina gymnopus loiseleurietorum hebeloma aurantioumbrinum h pubescens h spetsbergense juglanconis oblonga microstoma aggregatum rosellinia tassiana sarcoscypha korfiana trichophaea variornata tuber himalayense are a new species for russia,2021,0.842
Joint analysis of microsatellites and flanking sequences enlightens complex demographic history of interspecific gene flow and vicariance in rear-edge oak populations,abstractinference of recent population divergence requires fast evolving markers and necessitates to differentiate shared genetic variation caused by ancestral polymorphism and gene flow theoretical research shows that the use of compound marker systems integrating linked polymorphisms with different mutational dynamics such as a microsatellite and its flanking sequences can improve estimation of population structure and inference of demographic history especially in the case of complex population dynamics however empirical application in natural populations has so far been limited by lack of suitable methods for data collection a solution comes from the development of sequence based microsatellite genotyping which we used to study molecular variation at 36 sequenced nuclear microsatellites in seven quecus canariensis and four quercus faginea rear edge populations across algeria to decipher their taxonomic relationship past evolutionary history and recent demographic trajectory first we compare the estimation of population genetics parameters and simulation based inference of demographic history from microsatellite sequence alone flanking sequence alone or the combination of linked microsatellite and flanking sequence variation second we measure variable importance from random forest approximate bayesian computation to identify which of these sequence types is most informative whereas the analysis of microsatellite variation alone indicates recent interspecific gene flow additional information gained from combining with nucleotide variation in flanking sequences by reducing homoplasy suggests ancient interspecific gene flow followed by drift in isolation instead the weight of each polymorphism in the inference also demonstrates the value of linked variations with contrasted mutation dynamic to improve estimation of both demographic and mutational parameters,2021,0.285
Aquatic Plants,this is an overview of the aquatic plants of the pantanal wetland from our field observations and the leading publications we added an updated checklist of 533 species including their life form and habitats based on herbarium records with reliable identification mostly from our collections we compiled 509 species of angiosperms comprising 76 families and 182 genera nearly all native only eight naturalized and three cultivated macroalgae charophyta liverwort bryophyta and ferns and allies polypodiopsida add to 24 species the species richest families are cyperaceae 86 species poaceae 76 fabaceae 35 and plantaginaceae 24 together adding up to 44 of the total number of angiosperms the most numerous genera are ludwigia 25 cyperus 24 rhynchospora 19 utricularia 19 eleocharis 17 bacopa 14 scleria 12 and echinodorus 11 most species are amphibious and emergent plants whereas only a few are submerged we comment on species taxonomy flora curiosities ecology traits aquatic weeds habitats including floating meadows life forms biology dispersal vegetative propagation seed bank vegetation dynamics how to collect usefulness impacts resilience and conservation most exotic species are also amphibious the most invasive is urochloa arrecta only four species are endemic to the pantanal all of arachis of floodable habitats a hoehnei a linearifolia a valida and a vallsii the pantanal contains the tiniest wolffia and the biggest victoria hydrophyte,2021,0.895
"MOLECULAR PHYLOGENY OF LAND SNAIL SPECIES OF GREECE, FAMILIES HELICIDAE AND GEOMITRIDAE",in this research we achieved the construction of a phylogenetic tree with snail species of helicidae and geomitridae families from greece findings support that helicidae species form polyphyletic group with theba pisana helicidae to be phylogenetically closely to geomitridae species possible due to species ecology and behavior,2021,0.762
Composition and Distribution of Woody and Palm Vegetation in the Pantanal Wetland,plant species are valuable indicators of habitat conditions under seasonal and decadal climatic fluctuations here we compile data on the distribution of 492 tree shrub and palm species across the pantanal wetland describe the occurrence and distribution of vegetation types in biogeographic provinces or subregions and explore and discuss the floristic affinities of the pantanal with other biomes in brazil namely the pampas cerrado chaco caatinga amazon and atlantic forest we point out the influence of soil type and altitude height above sea level on the distribution of the woody vegetation in the pantanal wetland our analyses show differences in species composition between altitudinal categories indicating that the lower parts of the pantanal have a more specialized species group probably due to more prolonged floods we observed that spodosols support a species composition different from gleysols luvisols and vertisols the vertisol composition differs from that of luvisols and planosols while the planosol composition differs from gleysols the most frequent species occur in various habitats and thus are generalists with wide ecological amplitudes which points to the relatively young floristic evolution of large parts of the pantanal the pantanal woody and palm floras are strongly associated to those of the cerrado but also share many species with the semiarid caatinga biome in northeast brazil knowledge of the differences between the vegetation types and regions and the particularities of each one can support more specific and therefore more efficient conservation strategies in each region,2021,0.909
Leguminosae in the Pantanal,since studies on leguminosae in the pantanal are still at their early stage the estimated data on their species richness are inaccurate in this chapter we investigate the richness of leguminosae in the pantanal and calculate the taxonomic distinctness of the family and growth habits we recorded a significant number of legume taxa distributed in five of the six subfamilies currently recognized to leguminosae some genera occur in areas with low rainfall while others only grow in areas with high precipitation the results of the taxonomic distinctness reported for south american dry areas are higher than those obtained for the pantanal in given pantanal areas subject to flooding in part of the year water plays an important role in species selection and this may contribute to lower taxonomic distinctness phytogeographic domains such as the chaco the cerrado the atlantic forest and the amazon rainforest influence the floristic composition of the pantanal this is confirmed by the presence of legume species with different diversification histories,2021,0.698
"Découverte d’une nouvelle population de Rhithrogena delphinensis Sowa & Degrange, 1987, dans le massif des Arves, et compléments à la description de la larve (Ephemeroptera, Heptageniidae)",discovery of a new population of rhithrogena delphinensis sowa amp degrange 1987 in the arves massif and additions to the morphological description of the larva ephemeroptera heptageniidae rhithrogena delphinensis described originally on the basis of four larvae from the western alps south of the arves massif and from the northern flank of the ecrins massif had not been captured again since 1986 here we report the discovery of a new population from river arvan whose drainage basin is located between the grandes rousses massif and the northern flank of the arves massif this newly discovered population seems abundant in numbers and reveals the particular ecological requirements of the species as well as its dependence on glacier fed or nival streams the morphological characteristics of the larvae are described in detail and illustrated by photographs the variability of some of the proposed identification criteria is discussed and a key to the identification of the rhithrogena species from the alpestris group of the western alps to which r delphinensis belongs is provided finally a portion of 658 base pairs of the coi gene of r delphinensis is sequenced for the first time and compared to already existing data on the alpestris group in the western alps,2021,0.757
Evaluating the invasion risk of longhorn crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) in South Korea using spatial distribution model,the longhorn crazy ant paratrechina longicornis is a globally distributed ant species with a high invasion risk suggesting the need to use species distribution modeling to evaluate its potential distribution therefore this study aimed to predict the potential distribution of longhorn crazy ants in response to climate change by using climex and maxent and identifying the climatic factors that influence their habitat then the model outcomes were used to construct an ensemble map to evaluate invasion risk in south korea the results indicated that temperature related variables mainly affect the distribution of the longhorn crazy ant and the two models showed consensus regions in south america africa australia and southeast asia due to climate change it was expected that the northern limit would somewhat rise in south korea high risk areas were predicted to be located along the coasts but they would expand as a consequence of climate change since the invasion of longhorn crazy ants has occurred via commercial trades a relatively high risk in coastal areas demands a high level of attention we expect that this study will provide initial insight into selecting areas for longhorn crazy ant quarantine with ensemble species distribution modeling,2021,0.438
Weakly Supervised Segmentation Pretraining for Plant Cover Prediction,automated plant cover prediction can be a valuable tool for botanists as plant cover estimations are a laborious and recurring task in environmental research upon examination of the images usually encompassed in this task it becomes apparent that the task is ill posed and successful training on such images alone without external data is nearly impossible while a previous approach includes pretraining on a domain related dataset containing plants in natural settings we argue that regular classification training on such data is insufficient to solve this problem we propose a novel pretraining pipeline utilizing weakly supervised object localization on images with only class annotations to generate segmentation maps that can be exploited for a second pretraining step we utilize different pooling methods during classification pretraining and evaluate and compare their effects on the plant cover prediction for this evaluation we focus primarily on the visible parts of the plants to this end contrary to previous works we created a small dataset containing segmentations of plant cover images to be able to evaluate the benefit of our method numerically we find that our segmentation pretraining approach outperforms classification pretraining and especially aids in the recognition of less prevalent plants in the plant cover dataset,2021,0.064
"NEW SPECIES RECORDS OF MANTODEA, ORTHOPTERA, AND PHASMATODEA IN THE STATE OF TEXAS (USA)",abstract with its large size and range of habitats texas has one of the most diverse insect faunas of the united states with many endemic species despite more than a century of active study knowledge of the insect diversity in texas remains incomplete here we report 19 species and subspecies records of mantodea orthoptera and phasmatodea for the first time in texas usa based on museum specimens these records include several significant geographic range extensions from eastern southern and western species such as the phasmid diapheromera carolina scudder the band winged grasshopper arphia granulata saussure and the mantid stagmomantis montana saussure amp zehntner these records also include the first documentation of melanoplus torridus roberts and phaedrotettix gracilis bruner in the united states and the first records of the invasive cricket velarifictorus micado saussure in texas while some of these discoveries only extend known ranges somewhat others represent disjunct and ecologically different populations,2021,0.488
Forage Morphology and Productivity of Different Species of Tripsacum under Sub-Humid Tropical Conditions,morphology and forage productivity of 25 tripsacum spp materials were characterized under tropical conditions in nayarit mexico treatments included tripsacum latifolium t australe var australe tripsacum spp t dactyloides cv meridionale and hispidum t bravum t manisuroides t zopilotense t andersonii t lanceolatum t floridanum t laxum t cundinamarceae t intermedium t maizar and t peruvianum five in row equidistant plants 1 5 m and three rows replicates per species were evaluated and fertilized using 100 60 00 n p k units per hectare per year variables included plant mean height leading flowered stemâ s height plant crown circumference basal cover tillers per crown forage yield and growth rates data was analyzed through a completely randomized design including 25 treatments species varieties and or ecotypes and lsd tests for mean separation differences p 0 01 were observed among morphological productive variables and species outstanding material included t latifolium and t australe 8 3 and 5 6 kg dm per plant forage production ranged p 0 01 from 22 to 1405 in comparison with the local ecotype t dactyloides morphology and forage productivity within tripsacum is highly variable according to the genetic diversity available within this native to mexico genus suggesting that tripsacum agamic complex presents enormous forage production potential for its promotion under grazing for rain fed systems view full text,2021,0.172
Effects of Climatic Change on the Potential Distribution of Lycoriella Species (Diptera: Sciaridae) of Economic Importance,lycoriella species sciaridae are responsible for significant economic losses in greenhouse production e g mushrooms strawberries and nurseries the current distributions of species in the genus are restricted to cold climate countries three species of lycoriella are of particular economic concern in view of their ability to invade areas in countries across the northern hemisphere we used ecological niche models to determine the potential for range expansion under future climate change scenarios rcp 4 5 and rcp 8 5 in the distribution of these three species of lycoriella stable environmental suitability under climate change was a dominant theme in these species however potential range increases were noted in key countries e g usa brazil and china our results illustrate the potential for range expansion in these species in the southern hemisphere including some of the highest greenhouse production areas in the world,2021,0.93
Effects of climatic change on the potential distribution of Lycoriella species (Diptera: Sciaridae) of economic importance,abstractlycoriella species sciaridae are responsible for significant economic losses in greenhouse production e g mushrooms strawberry and nurseries current distributions of species in the genus are restricted to cold climate countries three species of lycoriella are of particular economic concern in view of their ability to invade across the northern hemisphere we used ecological niche models to determine the potential for range expansion under climate change future scenarios rcp 4 5 and rcp 8 5 in distributions of these species of lycoriella stable suitability under climate change was a dominant theme in these species however potential range increases were noted for key countries e g usa brazil and china our results illustrate the potential for range expansion in these species in the southern hemisphere including some of the highest greenhouse production areas in the world,2021,0.93
Translational Science Education Through Citizen Science,guided by the six elements of translational ecology te i e decision framing collaboration engagement commitment process and communication we showcase the first explicit example of a translational science education tse effort in the coastal redwood ecosystem of humboldt county ca using inaturalist a flexible and free citizen science crowdsourcing app we worked with students from grade school through college and their teachers and community to generate species lists for comparison among 19 school and non profit locations spanning a range of urbanization importantly this tse effort resulted in both learning and data generation highlighting the ability of a tse framework to connect and benefit both students and researchers our data showed that regardless of the age of the observers holding organized bioblitzes added substantially more species to local biodiversity lists than would have been generated without them in support of current ecological theory these data showed an urbanization gradient among sites with rural sites containing fewer non native species than urban ones on the education side qualitative assessments revealed students and educators remained engaged throughout the project future projects would also benefit by establishing quantifiable metrics for assessing student learning from project conception throughout the project the fundamentals of te were followed with repeated interactions and shared objectives developed over time within trusted community relationships such positive human interactions can lead new naturalists to think of themselves as champions of their local biodiversity i e as land stewards we anticipate that such newly empowered and locally expert naturalists will remain committed to land stewardship in perpetuity and that other scientists and educators are inspired to conduct similar work,2021,0.392
ILORA: A database of alien vascular flora of India,biological invasions pose an unprecedented threat to biodiversity and ecosystems at different spatial scales especially for a biodiversityâ rich developing nation like india while countryâ level checklists of alien taxa are important databases having their biological and ecological attributes are of paramount importance for facilitating research activities and developing policy interventions such a comprehensive database for alien flora is lacking in india we have curated data for 14 variables related to ecology biogeography introduction pathway socioâ economy and distribution of 1747 alien vascular plant species from 22 national and global sources to produce the indian alien flora information ilora version 1 0 database this paper describes the detailed methodology of curating these data along with the rationale behind selecting these variables the database the first of its kind for the indian alien flora will provide easy access to highâ quality data and offer a ready reference to comprehend the existing scenario of alien plant species in the country the database is dynamic and will be updated regularly it has a provision to incorporate userâ submitted data which will allow increasing the resolution of the database as well as the expansion of its capacity the database is envisaged to become a nationwide collaborative platform for a wide spectrum of stakeholders it is freely accessible via an online data repository as well as through a dedicated website https ilora2020 wixsite com ilora2020,2021,0.159
Monitoring Arthropods in Azorean Agroecosystems: the project AGRO-ECOSERVICES,the data we present are part of the agro ecoservices project assessing ecosystem services and disservices provided by arthropod species in azorean agroecosystems the project aims to evaluate the relative importance of native and non native organisms as ecosystem services es and disservices ed providers by combining novel direct and quantitative tools for monitoring agro biodiversity ecosystem services include evaluation of natural pest control by predation seed predation on weed plants pollination decomposition and ecosystem disservices herbivory and seed predation on crop plants active aerial searching aas only in maize fields and pitfall traps were used to sample the arthropod biodiversity predatory spiders true bugs and beetles and main insect pests on four agricultural habitats of terceira island namely citrus orchards low and high elevation maize fields and vineyards we provided an inventory of all arthropods recorded in four azorean agroecosystems citrus orchards low and high elevation maize fields and vineyards from terceira island a total of 50412 specimens were collected belonging to four classes 20 orders 81 families and 200 identified species of arthropods a total of 127 species are considered introduced n 22646 and 69 native non endemic n 24117 four endemic species were recorded with very few specimens n 14 and 3635 specimens belong to unidentified taxa recorded only at genus or family level five species are new records for terceira island with lagria hirta linnaeus 1758 coleoptera tenebrionidae being also a new record for the azores this publication contributes to a better knowledge of the arthropods communities present in agro ecosystems of terceira island and will serve as a baseline for future monitoring schemes targeting the long term change in arthropod diversity and abundance,2021,0.788
Global meta‐network of legume crops and floral visitors reveals abundance of exotic bees,legume crops family fabaceae order fabales constitute a relevant component of the human food supply in view of the global decline in crop production as a result of increasing threats such as habitat fragmentation and land use change to pollinators knowledge concerning legume floral visitors can contribute to world food security in this study a synthesis was performed of global data on interactions between legume crops and their floral visitors in order to improve understanding of the structure of cropâ floral visitor interactions and the roles of different species a literature review was conducted using three databases considering 15 legumes of economic importance enabling the construction of a metaâ network of plantâ floral visitor interactions soybean alfalfa and common bean received the highest numbers of floral visitor species a total of 208 floral visitor species were recorded distributed in eight orders the most diverse group was hymenoptera mainly bees followed by lepidoptera the european honeybee apis mellifera interacted with the highest number of plant species modularity analysis identified eight modules that included more than one order of floral visitors most species were classified as peripherals with few links restricted to their own module the three connector species were the bees bombus pascuorum b â terrestris and megachile rotundata the only network hub was a mellifera the predominance of bees seemed to be related to the predominant floral morphology among the crops the connector and hub species were typically generalists and all except one species b â pascuorum were used as managed pollinators the crops studied have an important role in global pollination resilience maintaining a diversified fauna of pollinators other than bees,2021,0.865
"Effect of land use, habitat suitability, and hurricanes on the population connectivity of an endemic insular bat",abstracturbanization and natural disasters can disrupt landscape connectivity effectively isolating populations and increasing the risk of local extirpation particularly in island systems to understand how fragmentation affects corridors among forested areas we used circuit theory to model the landscape connectivity of the endemic bat stenoderma rufum within puerto rico our models combined species occurrences land use habitat suitability and vegetation cover data that were used either as resistance land use or conductance layers habitat suitability and vegetation cover urbanization affected connectivity overall from east to west and underscored protected and rustic areas for the maintenance of forest corridors suitable habitat provided a reliable measure of connectivity among potential movement corridors that connected more isolated areas we found that intense hurricanes that disrupt forest integrity can affect connectivity of suitable habitat some of the largest protected areas in the east of puerto rico are at an increasing risk of becoming disconnected from more continuous forest patches given the increasing rate of urbanization this pattern could also apply to other vertebrates our findings show the importance of maintaining forest integrity emphasizing the considerable conservation value of rustic areas for the preservation of local biodiversity,2021,0.363
Forecasted Shifts in Thermal Habitat for Cod Species in the Northwest Atlantic and Eastern Canadian Arctic,climate change will alter ecosystems and impose hardships on marine resource users as fish assemblages redistribute to habitats that meet their physiological requirements marine gadids represent some of the most ecologically and socio economically important species in the north atlantic but face an uncertain future in the wake of rising ocean temperatures we applied cmip5 ocean temperature projections to egg survival and juvenile growth models of three northwest atlantic coastal species of gadids atlantic cod polar cod and greenland cod each with different thermal affinities and life histories we illustrate how physiologically based species distribution models sdms can be used to predict habitat distribution shifts and compare vulnerabilities of species and life stages with changing ocean conditions we also derived an integrated habitat suitability index from the combined surfaces of each metric to predict areas and periods where thermal conditions were suitable for both life stages suitable thermal habitat shifted poleward for the juvenile life stages of all three species but the area remaining differed across species and life stages through time arctic specialists like polar cod are predicted to experience reductions in suitable juvenile habitat based on metrics of egg survival and growth potential in contrast habitat loss in boreal and subarctic species like atlantic cod and greenland cod may be dampened due to increases in suitable egg survival habitats as suitable juvenile growth potential habitats decrease these results emphasize the need for mechanistic sdms that can account for the combined effects of changing seasonal thermal requirements under varying climate change scenarios,2021,0.718
PHYTO-THREATS: Addressing Threats to UK Forests and Woodlands from Phytophthora; Identifying Risks of Spread in Trade and Methods for Mitigation,the multidisciplinary â phyto threatsâ project was initiated in 2016 to address the increasing risks to uk forest and woodland ecosystems from trade disseminated phytophthora a major component of this project was to examine the risk of phytophthora spread through nursery and trade practices close to 4000 water and root samples were collected from plant nurseries located across the uk over a three year period approximately half of the samples tested positive for phytophthora dna using a metabarcoding approach with 63 phytophthora species identified across nurseries including quarantine regulated pathogens and species not previously reported in the uk phytophthora diversity within nurseries was linked to high risk management practices such as use of open rather than closed water sources analyses of global phytophthora risks identified biological traits and trade pathways that explained global spread and host range and which may be of value for horizon scanning phytophthoras having a higher oospore wall index and faster growth rates had wider host ranges whereas cold tolerant species had broader geographic and latitudinal ranges annual workshops revealed how stakeholder and sector â appetiteâ for nursery accreditation increased over three years although an exploratory cost benefit analysis indicated that the predicted benefits of introducing best practice expected by nurseries outweigh their costs only when a wider range of pests and diseases for example xylella is considered however scenario analyses demonstrated the significant potential carbon costs to society from the introduction and spread of a new tree infecting phytophthora thus the overall net benefit to society from nurseries adopting best practice could be substantial,2021,0.805
"Large-scale geography survey provides insights into the colonization history of a major aphid pest on its cultivated apple host in Europe, North America and North Africa",with frequent host shifts involving the colonization of new hosts across large geographical ranges crop pests are good models for examining the mechanisms of rapid colonization the microbial partners of pest insects may also be involved in or affected by colonization processes which has been little studied so far we investigated the demographic history of the rosy apple aphid dysaphis plantaginea a major pest of the cultivated apple malus domestica in europe north africa and north america as well as the diversity of its microbiota we genotyped a comprehensive sample of 714 colonies from europe morocco and the us using mitochondrial cytb and co1 bacterial 16s rrna and trnpb and 30 microsatellite markers we detected five populations spread across the us morocco western and eastern europe and spain populations showed weak genetic differentiation and high genetic diversity except the ones from morocco and north america that are likely the result of recent colonization events coalescent based inferences revealed high levels of gene flow among populations during the colonization but did not allow determining the sequence of colonization of europe north america and morroco by d plantaginea likely because of the weak genetic differentiation and the occurrence of gene flow among populations we found that d plantaginea rarely hosts other endosymbiotic bacteria than its obligate nutritional symbiont buchnera aphidicola this suggests that secondary endosymbionts did not play an important role in the rapid spread of the rosy apple aphid these findings have fundamental importance for understanding pest colonization processes and implications for sustainable pest control programs,2021,0.626
Nighttime migrations and behavioral patterns of Pempheris schwenkii,background although the biomass of the nocturnal fishes is almost same as that of diurnal fishes most of the ecological studies that examine feeding or reproductive behaviors are on diurnal fishes therefore there is limited ecological information regarding the nocturnal fishes this fact may be attributed to the difficulty in observing them during darkness members of the genus pempheris pempheridae are one of the most abundant nocturnal fishes on coral reefs methods the nighttime migrations of pempheris schwenkii were observed by attaching a chemical luminescent tag tagged fishes were followed by an observer without torch and scuba and their positions and estimated depths were plotted on an underwater topographic map aquarium tank observation was carried out to further describe their habits during the night results the new tagging method provided good data for observing the migration behavior in all five observations the target fishes started nighttime migration from the entrance of their cave within 1 h after sunset all of them immediately left the inner reef and spent most of the observation time near the surface 0â 5 m depth or shallow 5â 15 m depth water columns of the outer reef their migration pattern varied between days but they migrated long distance 379â 786 m h during each observation the behavior observed in the aquarium tank was categorized into five patterns schooling shaking migrating spawning and feeding shaking and spawning were observed during one of three observation days discussion the present study firstly clarified the small scale but dynamic nocturnal migration pattern of p schwenkii in nature by a new method using chemical luminescent tags in addition combined observations from nature and an aquarium could be used to estimate the behavior of this species pempheris schwenkii may reduce their predation risk of eggs and adults by spawning at outer reef in nighttime it was estimated that they can potentially migrate 4â 7 km night the rapid growth known for this species may have been supported by their feeding behavior where they can fill up their stomach every night with rich zooplankton in outer reefs furthermore the behavior of this species indicates the possibility that they make an important contribution to the flow of energy and materials in their coral reef ecosystem,2021,0.35
"Notulae to the Italian flora of algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens: 12",in this contribution new data concerning bryophytes fungi and lichens of the italian flora are presented it includes new records confirmations or exclusions for the bryophyte genera,2021,0.351
Climate drivers of adult insect activity are conditioned by life history traits,insect phenological lability is key for determining which species will adapt under environmental change however little is known about when adult insect activity terminates and overall activity duration we used communityâ science and museum specimen data to investigate the effects of climate and urbanisation on timing of adult insect activity for 101â species varying in life history traits we found detritivores and species with aquatic larval stages extend activity periods most rapidly in response to increasing regional temperature conversely species with subterranean larval stages have relatively constant durations regardless of regional temperature species extended their period of adult activity similarly in warmer conditions regardless of voltinism classification longer adult durations may represent a general response to warming but voltinism data in subtropical environments are likely underreported this effort provides a framework to address the drivers of adult insect phenology at continental scales and a basis for predicting species response to environmental change,2021,0.963
"Assessment of the Pine Forests Condition Using Forest Factors, Physiological Characteristics and Remote Detection Data",abstract this paper evaluates the pathological condition of belarusian forests with the use of monitoring of traditional forest factors and remote sensing data the aim of the research was to assess the condition of pine forests to monitor forest degradation based on biochemical analyzes of needle samples and aviation monitoring with the use of monitoring data and remote detection the remote shooting was carried out quasi synchronously with the ground sampling of needles using an unmanned aircraft complex of an aircraft type based on the results of biochemical analyzes of needle samples biochemical indicators that characterize the stability and physiological state of pine were determined the level of peroxidation of membrane lipids the release of water soluble substances from plant tissues which reflect the integrity of the cell walls the content of photosynthetic pigments in the needles,2021,0.069
"Distribution of Viviparous American Fish Species in Eastern Europe on the Example of Gambusia holbrooki Girarg, 1859 and Poecilia reticulata Peters, 1859 in the Context of Global Climate Change",the potential distribution of tropical fish species in eastern europeâ gambusia holbrooki girarg 1859 introduced for biological control and poecilia reticulata peters 1859 aquarium species found in wastewaters of big cities â tends to be of particular interest in terms of global climate change after gis modeling of our own data and findings listed in the gbif databases 2278 points for g holbrooki and 1410 points for p reticulata by using the maxent package and 18 uncorrelated variables of 35 bioclim climatic parameters from the climond dataset it was found that by 2090 guppies will appear in the south of ukraine danube river estuary as well as in several places in the caucasus and turkey with habitat suitability of 0 3â 0 5 g holbrooki will also slightly expand its range in europe limiting factors for g holbrooki distribution are as follows bio1 annual mean temperature optimum 12â 23 â c and bio19 precipitation of coldest quarter mm limiting factors for guppies are as follows bio1 optimum 14â 28 â c bio4 temperature seasonality and bio3 isothermality guppies unlike g holbrooki prefer warmer waters correlation 0 02 such thermophilic fish species do not compete with the native ichthyofauna but they can occupy niches in anthropogenically transformed habitats playing an important role as agents of biological control,2021,0.698
"Renewable Assignments, from Paper to Trees",allison cummings southern new hampshire university considers the topic of nondisposable assignments from the perspective of renewable human resources in renewable assignments from paper to trees mapping tools have inspired a range of innovative projects for building ecological literacy her survey of the field grounded in pedagogical scholarship around what makes assignments meaningful describes projects in the environmental humanities that foster an ethic of connection to community or planet her digital nature log assignment for example pins student contributions to google maps resulting in a public multimedia story of place similarly a video project gives students an opportunity to read landscape in a way that generates questions about land use but at the same time cummings is realistic in her view of what such public facing assignments actually do and she offers a moving defense of private writing that creators like her own great grandmother could have disposed of but chose not to,2021,0.262
Climate change threatens the conservation of one of the world’s most endangered transboundary tree species: Magnolia grandis,the sino vietnamese border region is known for having unique and high levels of biodiversity global climate change is expected to alter the regionâ s climate and related changes in habitats and ecosystems will result in shifts in speciesâ distributions and increase the likelihood of local and global extinctions ecological niche models enms are widely used to predict the magnitude of potential species distribution shifts in response to climate change and inform conservation planning here we present climate based enm projections of future climatically suitable habitat for the daguo mulian tree magnolia grandis a critically endangered species of high ecological and cultural value in the sino vietnamese border region projections of modeled climatically suitable habitat for m grandis both for the 2050s and 2070s suggest significant habitat loss within conservation areas and a defining shift in the location of suitable habitat future projections are conservative and do not account for dispersal limitations or species interactions or other factors and thus may overestimate potential shifts and underestimate losses our results suggest that current conservation management efforts for m grandis which include community forest conservation monitoring combined with nursery cultivation efforts can continue to have success if implemented in an adaptive management framework with long term research and monitoring to inform forward thinking decisions with future climatic suitability in mind the results also underline how endangered speciesâ distributions may shift across borders as they track suitable climates emphasizing that nations will need to cooperate to effectively manage threatened species and habitats and prevent extinctions,2021,0.707
"Citizen Science meets specimens in old formalin filled jars: a new species of Banded Rubber Frog, genus Phrynomantis (Anura: Phrynomeridae) from Angola",three species of phrynomantis peters 1867 have been historically recorded for angola p affinis p annectens and p bifasciatus as noted by all authors who have dealt with specimens of p bifasciatus from the country the angolan population is characterized by an odd coloration pattern for the species which led boulenger to consider it a different variety a revision of the extant specimens of angolan phrynomantis available in natural history collections specimens collected in recent field surveys as well as recent sightings and photographs allows the recognition of the angolan population of p cf bifasciatus as a new species endemic to the coastal lowlands of western angola the new taxon is described solely based on its coloration pattern and morphology and it is separated from nominotypic p bifasciatus by more than one thousand kilometers the revision of these historical specimens also allowed us to confirm a second record of p affinis in the country and to contribute to an overall better understanding of the distribution of the species of the genus on the continent,2021,0.87
Open access: a technical assessment for the debate on benefit-sharing and digital sequence information,the scientific community has a 40 year history of open access to sequence data this study examines how when and why open access arose and the working principles of open access publication and open data it further explores the international policy landscape on open access and concludes with an assessment of the bi directional policy implications between open access and the debate around digital sequence information,2021,0.339
Biodiversity and distribution of Isopoda and Polychaeta along the Northwestern Pacific and the Arctic Ocean,the eurasian wryneck jynx torquilla has been considered an irregular and scarce winter species in iberia which together with its low detectability outside the breeding season may have lead to inaccurate distribution patterns in the portuguese and spanish winter bird atlases citizen science programmes can offer large coverage data sets for improving the knowledge of understudied or elusive species to analyze such data sets species distribution modelling sdm is a very useful method that predicts species occurrences using environmental data in this paper i tested different algorithms for modelling the winter distribution of the wryneck in iberia using the records in the gbif database together with climate factors topography and land cover variables the best performance was obtained with the â œrandom forestâ model that was subsequently used to determine which variables had the most predictive power these variables were annual mean temperature mean temperature of the coldest quarter annual precipitation and altitude finally with that model i produced a map which predicts the main potential distribution areas for wryneck in iberia which are the southwestern quadrant the main river basins the coastal areas especially the mediterranean and the balearic islands these areas can be characterized as warmer locations presumably with higher food availability,2021,0.462
Estimation of Current and Future Suitable Areas for Tapirus pinchaque in Ecuador,at present climate change is a direct threat to biodiversity and its effects are evidenced by an increasingly accelerated loss of biodiversity this study identified the main threats presently facing the tapirus pinchaque species in ecuador generated predictive models regarding its distribution and analyzed the protected areas as a conservation tool the methodology was based on a literature review and the application of binary predictive models to achieve these objectives the main results indicate that the t pinchaque is seriously threatened mainly by changes in land use in addition three models were selected that show current and future suitable areas for the conservation of the species its current distribution amounts to 67 805 km2 33 22 872 km2 of which is located in 31 of the 61 protected areas finally it is important to take timely actions focused on biodiversity conservation considering the importance of balance in ecosystems to the humans dependent thereof and the results regarding the changes in the current and future distribution areas of the mountain tapir are a great contribution to be used as a management tool for its conservation,2021,0.398
Results of an entomological collecting trip to St. Eustatius (Coleoptera),in february and march 2020 the second author visited st eustatius to collect various insect groups the beetles collected during this trip were identified by the first author forty six species could be identified to genus or species level twenty one of these were new for the island and 15 even for the dutch antilles this research brings the number of beetle species currently known to occur on st eustatius to 117 which is about a quarter of the number of species expected to be present on the island there still remains a lot to be discovered,2021,0.807
Dispersal syndrome and landscape fragmentation in the salt-marsh specialist spider Erigone longipalpis,dispersal and its evolution play a key role for population persistence in fragmented landscapes where habitat loss and fragmentation increase the cost of between habitat movements in such contexts it is important to know how variation in dispersal and other traits is structured and whether responses to landscape fragmentation are aligned with underlying dispersal trait correlations or dispersal syndromes we therefore studied trait variation in erigone longipalpis a european spider species specialist of often patchy salt marshes we collected spiders in two salt marsh landscapes differing in habitat availability we then reared lab born spiders for two generations in controlled conditions and measured dispersal and its association with various key traits e longipalpis population densities were lower in the more fragmented landscape despite this we found no evidence of differences in dispersal or any other trait we studied between the two landscapes while a dispersal syndrome was present at the among individual level dispersers were more fecund and faster growing among others there was no indication it was genetically driven among family differences in dispersal were not correlated with differences in other traits instead we showed that the observed phenotypic covariations were mostly due to within family correlations we hypothesize that the dispersal syndrome is the result of asymmetric food access among siblings leading to variation in development rates and carrying over to adult traits our results show we need to better understand the sources of dispersal variation and syndromes especially when dispersal may evolve rapidly in response to environmental change,2021,0.431
THE CONTINUATION OF NATIVE NON-INVASIVE PLANT SPECIES RESEARCH OF ENGINEERED WETLANDS,wetlands are vital ecosystems for many reasons and can provide strategies to be implemented in wastewater treatment however their loss around the world as a result of urbanization has caused larger bodies of water to become heavily polluted by excess nutrients such as phosphorus although there is extensive research on implementing constructed wetlands as a solution there is a lack of information regarding the use of native non invasive macrophytes thus the first part of this study examined the use of select native non invasive plant species in laboratory based floating engineered wetland mesocosms to assess their potential for successful growth and use in nutrient removal strategies the blue flag iris cardinal flower and sneezeweed were chosen for the experiment as they developed best under the laboratory conditions additionally while their productivity biomass increased with phosphorus additions the phosphorus concentrations in the mesocosms remained high and were not reduced the results are preliminary and further research is necessary regarding engineered wetland development and their role in nutrient sequestration in the second part of this thesis the composition of native wetland species located in southern ontario was evaluated the palgrave forest and wildlife area was the chosen site tucci iv assessments included the identification and presence of species as well as the seasonality of the community a total of 15 plant species were identified in this wetland area and while five are considered to have serious invasive characteristics their inclusion in a biodiverse relatively unimpacted habitat appeared to keep these deleterious features in check as expected seasonality had an impact on wetland productivity biomass and species presence,2021,0.803
"FIRST REPORT OF YELLOW-FLOWERED TEASEL, DIPSACUS STRIGOSUS WILLD. EX ROEM. & SCHULT. (DIPSACACEAE) IN INDIANA, A NORTH AMERICAN RECORD",this paper reports the presence of dipsacus strigosus willd ex roem schult in indiana the species native to western asia is naturalized in several locations in europe this is the first documented occurrence in north america the new record was collected along a recently constructed bike path in a moist wooded area of the butler university campus in indianapolis indiana usa like the two other species of the genus known in the indiana d strigosus is likely to be invasive so efforts will be made to eradicate this population the plant should be monitored and looked for in other sites,2021,0.735
Climatic niche evolution of a widely distributed Neotropical freshwater fish clade,the role of climate in the speciation process has been documented widely in ectotherms but poorly in freshwater fishes which represent the richest clade among vertebrates in this study we have evaluated the occurrence of phylogenetic niche evolution as a promoter of diversification in the herichthyines cichliformes cichlidae clade we used distributional and bioclimatic data niche modelling algorithms and phylogenetic comparative methods to study patterns of climatic niche evolution in the herichthyines clade our results suggested that herichthyines display signals of phylogenetic niche conservatism but also signals of niche evolution in the last 14 myr associated with the availability of new habitats promoting ecological opportunity within the clade we also concluded that niche conservatism is equally strong in the fundamental and realized niches which indicates a need to evaluate the potential role of biotic interactions in the evolution of the niche in future studies,2021,0.326
ARCHITECTURE OF REFORESTATION: MYCELIUM AS A NEW BUILDING MATERIAL AND DESIGN OF THE FIBROUS WOVEN SCAFFOLDS,the research presented in this paper explores mycelium as a new building material and presents research investigating how fibrous woven scaffolds can be used to grow large scale mycelium structures this living material has potentials to be discov ered in many fields as well as in architecture however strict application technics currently used in the industry is a challenge for scaling up and geometry explorations also mycelium not always been investigated fully to discover the architectural potenti als during its growth because it is dried during the making process most of the early applications found in the literature produ ces mycelium by placing it inside mass produced rectangular moulds and because mycelium is dried afterwards the natural growth of mycelium in its environment is not investigated the sterilization protocols used during making is another concern which result as a scaling up problem the focus of this paper is on growing mycelium in custom handwoven moulds the weaved moulds are studied with different substrate recipes fungi species and thread types mycelium is kept alive in the later stages to be used on a reforestation c apacity to enrich the biodiversity by increasing the soil quality filter the water in lakes for healthier water ecosystem sustaining a healthier forest ecosystem by mycorrhizal relationship and communication of the plants in the forest the use of mycelium architecture will not only be better for reforestation results but also the use of mycelium architecture aims a healthier and stronger human nature relationship by involving people in the making process and educating them about biodiversity mushrooms and the role of mushroom in forest ecosystem through making series of activities taken part in the forests a nd change in time the morphology of mycelium architecture aims to create an outdoor comfort for the users whereas it also aims to create an environment for different mushrooms to fruit during the season each fungus is unique and has its special charact eristics where some like growing in cool environments and some warm some over the leaf and on the tree trunk thus the geometry of the structure is informed from both the mushrooms and humans making of the mycelium architecture starts with a site scan afterwards a geometry is designed while creating an outdoor comfort both for humans and different mushroom species radiation analyses are used after defining the final form weaving logic and structure to weave the patterns on are developed different patterns are tested patterns are designed and visualized by using computational design tools weaving density is controlled by layer numbers and node numbers thread type to weave the structure is chosen by referring to structural analyses on the surfaces where extra support is required threads which are stronger in tension are used afterwards the structure is digitally designed last of all change in material is speculated by referring to these speculations timeline for making is designed and life span of the architecture is predicted after digital design is completed the structure is fabricated in metal workshops the pieces are sent to the site for assembly they are woven and filled with mycelium substrate,2021,0.035
REQUIREMENTS FOR VEGETATIVE GROWTH OF HOHENBUEHELIA MYXOTRICHA AND ITS ANTIMYCOTIC ACTIVITY,biometric characteristics of the hyphae and micromorphological features of hohenbuehelia myxotricha mycelia such as clamps hyphal loops crystals were observed by light and electron microscopy the basic requirements for h myxotricha growth and acquisition of antimycotic activity have been investigated the highest mycelial growth 18 2 mm day of h myxotricha was observed on beer wort agar medium suitable conditions for maximal h myxotricha mycelia production were found after 14 days of liquid static cultivation at 25â c ph 4 5 30 g l of glucose and 2 g l of yeast extract the inhibitory effect of h myxotricha was evaluated against aspergillus niger issatchenkia orientalis and candida albicans strains the optimal period for a niger growth inhibition was 14 days while 21 days of h myxotricha cultivation was more appropriated for tested saccharomycetales growth inhibitions the most suitable for promotion of antimycotic metabolites against all tested pathogenic fungi were glucose and yeast extract,2022,0.201
Potential losses of animal-dispersed trees due to selective logging in Amazonian forest concessions,fruits and seeds are key food resources for most amazonian mammals and birds selective logging is an increasingly dominant land use in the region that can deplete these resources over large areas however this potential impact remains poorly studied here we assess potential losses of animal dispersed endozoochorous and synzoochorous trees resulting from reduced impact logging in amazonian forest concessions we use data from forestry surveys conducted by concession companies that include the location identity and fate logged or not of large â 40â cm diameter at breast height individual trees within concessions to quantify absolute and relative losses of animal dispersed trees in the landscape we found that most individual trees 66 within concessions belong to animal dispersed genera however despite their predominance these trees were significantly less targeted for logging than abiotically dispersed trees so that their losses were much lower than expected based on overall harvest intensities however at least ten percent of all large animal dispersed trees were lost from the entire landscape with site level 50 ha plots losses sometimes exceeding one third of all animal dispersed trees results suggest that the relatively low level of logging for animal dispersed trees can still deplete frugivore resources in selectively logged forests,2022,0.267
The Paleoecology of High-Elevation Bison in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Implications for Modern Bison Conservation,the national mammal of the united states the american bison bison bison was once nearly extinct populations have recovered to the degree that thousands roam the great plains today due to their large numbers and body size this species has an oversized impact on the ecological communities where it lives and is considered a keystone herbivore in modern north american grasslands this study explores the detailed seasonally resolved paleoecology of seven bison from the greater yellowstone ecosystem during the late holocene through stable isotope analyses and species niche modeling isotopic analyses of î 13c î 15n and î 18o reveal that bison within high elevations regularly foraged on c3 vegetation while traveling among the valleys and ridges of ecoregions similar to those of modern day species distribution models provide a bimodal niche with best suited temperatures of 4 8â c and 16 26â c and topographic ranges of 250 800m and 2 000 4000m,2022,0.768
Coastal sharks and rays in the Northeastern Atlantic: From an urgent call to collect more data to the declaration of a marine corridor,globally elasmobranchs have suffered severe population declines and are therefore under an urgent necessity of protection particularly along the northeastern atlantic realm however a lack of ecological e g abundance knowledge across this realm limits the implementation of adequate conservation and management actions here we collected 4873 fish visual census count data sightings at 403 sites from 37 published studies of sharks rays and skates from coastal areas 40â m depth throughout the northeastern atlantic covering a latitudinal extent of ca 60â and 9 ecoregions we recorded a total of 14 elasmobranch species from a total of 341 sightings and only 4â of the counts reported any sighting there is a severe lack of ecological data e g abundance from most ecoregions particularly those in the nearshore continental northern atlantic and tropical ecoregions nevertheless our results showed that species richness and total abundance of elasmobranchs was higher in the eastern atlantic oceanic archipelagos such as azores webbnesia madeira selvagens and the canary islands and cabo verde compared to the other ecoregions our study calls for prioritising conservation efforts in these areas a stronghold for these vulnerable taxa in addition to the establishment of systematic monitoring programs refining marine protected areas mpas including declaration of local sharks sanctuaries along a marine corridor encompassing these archipelagos seem pertinent in this sense this proposal is backed by the evident diversity and abundance patterns in nearshore waters strong social and economic support and political willingness to align science and marine policy under international eu governance schemes,2022,0.659
"Review of the freshwater snail Melanoides tuberculata (O. F. Müller, 1774) (Gastropoda, Thiaridae)",melanoides tuberculata o f mã ller 1774 a freshwater snail native to eastern mediterranean eastern africa southeast asia southern asia india and malaysia it is an effective invader and is now nearly globally distributed this snail has been studied with interest because of its rapidly distributed and because of being can serve as compatible intermediate host for many of trematodes in the world we have summarized information from many articles in order to highlight the most important aspects of this invader snail life,2022,0.317
"Overview of GeoLifeCLEF 2022: Predicting species presence from multi-modal remote sensing, bioclimatic and pedologic data",understanding the geographic distribution of species is a key concern in conservation by pairing species occurrences with environmental features researchers can model the relationship between an environment and the species which may be found there to advance research in this area a large scale machine learning competition called geolifeclef 2022 was organized it relied on a dataset of 1 6 million observations from 17k species of animals and plants these observations were paired with high resolution remote sensing imagery land cover data and altitude in addition to traditional lowresolution climate and soil variables the main goal of the challenge was to better understand how to leverage remote sensing data to predict the presence of species at a given location this paper presents an overview of the competition synthesizes the approaches used by the participating groups and analyzes the main results in particular we highlight the ability of remote sensing imagery and convolutional neural networks to improve predictive performance complementary to traditional approaches,2022,0.542
Classification of Plant Species Using AlexNet Architecture,plant classification is the process of identifying plant species using image processing techniques this system is helpful in identifying the different plant species which has useful applications in botanical studies and many plant based industries the previous works have built systems based on data sets containing limited number of classes however the plant classification systems can further be improved in order to cover more number of species the proposed system is capable of identifying 80000 classes of plant species and is built with a large dataset using alexnet deep learning architecture a combination of adagrad and kl divergence optimization and loss functions respectively is used to train the model that produced a mrr score of 0 00029,2022,0.305
Overview of PlantCLEF 2022: Image-based plant identification at global scale,it is estimated that there are more than 300 000 species of vascular plants in the world increasing our knowledge of these species is of paramount importance for the development of human civilization agriculture construction pharmacopoeia etc especially in the context of the biodiversity crisis however the burden of systematic plant identification by human experts strongly penalizes the aggregation of new data and knowledge since then automatic identification has made considerable progress in recent years as highlighted during all previous editions of plantclef deep learning techniques now seem mature enough to address the ultimate but realistic problem of global identification of plant biodiversity in spite of many problems that the data may present a huge number of classes very strongly unbalanced classes partially erroneous identifications duplications variable visual quality diversity of visual contents such as photos or herbarium sheets etc the plantclef2022 challenge edition proposes to take a step in this direction by tackling a multi image and metadata classification problem with a very large number of classes 80k plant species this paper presents the resources and evaluations of the challenge summarizes the approaches and systems employed by the participating research groups and provides an analysis of key findings,2022,0.302
Antimicrobial and Cytotoxic Cyathane-Xylosides from Cultures of the Basidiomycete Dentipellis fragilis,in our continued search for biologically active metabolites from cultures of rare basidiomycota species we found eight previously undescribed cyathane xylosides from submerged cultures of dentipellis fragilis which were named dentifragilins aâ h in addition the known cyathane derivatives striatal d and laxitextine a were isolated all compounds were characterized by high resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry hr esims as well as by 1d and 2d nuclear magnetic resonance nmr spectroscopy several of the compounds exhibited significant activities in standardized cell based assays for the determination of antimicrobial and cytotoxic effects the discovery of cyathanes in the genus dentipellis has chemotaxonomic implications as this class of diterpenoids has already been shown to be characteristic for mycelial cultures of the related genera hericium and laxitextum which are classified as dentipellis in the family hericiaceae,2022,0.427
Linking potential habitats of Odonata (Insecta) with changes in land use/land cover in Mexico,land use land cover change lulcc is a major threat that affects the viability of insect populations worldwide yet our estimates of such effects are usually poor we analysed how lulcc affected the distribution of 49 species of dragonflies and damselflies in the south central zone in mexico during the period 2006 2012 for this we mapped the potential species richness using ecological niche models in order to analyse predicted future changes and determined the effect of lulcc on the current and future habitats of odonata we also estimated current incidence of deforestation and projected its effect to 2050 using the dinamica ego program having predicted the level of deforestation in the year 2050 we then compared current vs expected species richness and the factors that determine it first roads and urban areas turned out to be the most important drivers of lulcc in our analysis second deterioration occurred at all sites but species richness remained high despite considerable habitat fragmentation third there is likely to be a high species turnover rate i e a high species richness but composed of different species even in areas where there are significant changes in the vegetation our work illustrates both a resilience of odonata to lulcc and provides a useful method for measuring the effects of lulcc on insects,2022,0.848
Smart Gardening: A Solution to Your Gardening Issues,the technology which could make our lives prosper within the four walls could also help to create our own corner of nature nourish in this paper we propose a smart gardening system that utilizes the concept of the internet of things iot 1 the major goal of this project is to reduce water consumption when gardening and to maintain the garden remotely important plant data like temperature relative humidity and soil moisture are continuously stored in a relational database in this gardening system artificial intelligence ai based planning 2 is used for watering the plants at regular intervals and providing appropriate illumination in the garden area for aesthetics and overall plant growth our proposed system reduces the effort due to manual intervention by around 59 3 the real time sensor status can be monitored which in turn allows the end users of the garden to control the surrounding conditions optimal for plant growth using the telegram application a plant recognition model has been introduced in this system where a convolutional neural network cnn 3 based deep learning algorithm classifies the plant categories with 95 accuracy moreover an 98 accurate deep learning based plant health identification model integrated with this gardening system also informs the end user about the health of the plant,2022,0.017
"Field characters, taxonomy and distribution of the 'buff-bellied'forms of the Grey Penduline Tit Anthoscopus caroli (Sharpe) in East Africa",we review the distribution and taxonomy of the buff bellied subspecies of the grey penduline tit anthoscopus caroli in east africa using photographs of specimen material as well as of birds in the field our study reveals three distinct taxa in the group including in addition to the currently recognized sylviella of eastern tanzania and sharpei of south central and western tanzania recognition and reinstatement of the form rothschildi from eastern kenya previously synonymized with sylviella we show that contrary to literature accounts sylviella has richer underparts and darker upperparts than sharpei and the range of sharpei extends southeast from tabora to the iringa area of tanzania and not northwards into southwestern kenya as had been previously thought meanwhile we extend the range of sylviella from eastern tanzania to areas west of the rift valley in the serengeti national park of tanzania as well as southwestern kenya both areas previously considered occupied by sharpei we further demonstrate that these two taxa intergrade where they meet in the southern reaches of the serengeti national park and that sylviella also intergrades with rothschildi across a small area to the east of the rift valley in kenya immediately south of nairobi further work may show birds in the chyulu hills kenya to be a distinct form while birds in the central kenya rift valley remain only tentatively assigned to sylviella,2022,0.441
Geographic isolation drives speciation in Nearctic aphids,across herbivorous insect clades species richness and host use diversity tend to positively covary this could be because host use divergence drives speciation or because it raises the ecological limits on species richness to evaluate these hypotheses we performed phylogenetic path model analyses of the species diversity of nearctic aphids here we show that variation in the species richness of aphid clades is caused mainly by host use divergence whereas variation in speciation rates is caused more by divergence in non host related niche variables aphid speciation is affected by both the evolution of host and non host related niche components but the former is largely caused by the latter thus our analyses suggest that host use divergence can both raise the ecological limits on species richness and drive speciation although in the latter case host use divergence tends to be a step along the causal path leading from non host related niche evolution to speciation using phylogenetic path modelling geographic isolation is revealed to be the main driver of nearctic aphid speciation with subsequent host use divergence raising the limits on clade species richness,2022,0.909
Plant species identification using probability tree approach of deep learning models,this paper presents the submissions made by our team svj ssn cse to plantclef 2022 5 the challengeâ s goal was to identify plant species based on the test set made from only plant images in the field given a training dataset consisting of 80k species and up to 100 images each we submitted 2 runs one run implemented a resnet50 which was fine tuned by adding a flattened layer and a 2 dense hidden layers along with an output layer the second run implemented a multi level classification model emulating taxonomic classification tree using probabilistic tree approach we achieved a mean reciprocal rank mrr of 0 00005 for the run 1 which was a single fine tuned resnet50 classification and comparably we achieved an mrr of 0 000158 for the second run which is a multi level probabilistic tree approach using fine tuned resnet50 nodes,2022,0.217
Where ecologically ‘tis better to go brown than green: enhanced seagrass macrobenthic biodiversity within the canals of a brownfield coastal marina,at the start of the 21st century a coastal residential estate marina was developed on a previously degraded and polluted brownfield island site within knysna estuarine bay garden route national park south africa including the creation of 25â ha of new flow through tidal canals canals near the larger entrance to this system now support permanently submerged beds of seagrass which in turn support abundant macrobenthic invertebrates in comparison with equivalent seagrass associated assemblages present in natural channels around the island those in the artificial marina canals were similarly structured and dominated by the same species but the marina assemblages were significantly more species rich 1 4 x on average and were more abundant indeed this area of marina supports the richest seagrass associated macrofaunal biodiversity yet recorded from south africa the canals created de novo therefore now form a valuable addition to the bayâ s marine habitat in marked contrast to the generality that marinas developed on greenfield sites represent a net reduction in intertidal and shallow marine area and associated seagrass associated benthos if located and constructed appropriately brownfield marina development and conservation of coastal marine biodiversity clearly need not be antithetical and brownfield sites may provide opportunity for the location and management of â artificial marine micro reservesâ or for the action of â other effective area based conservation measuresâ for soft sediment faunas,2022,0.306
Shedding light on the decline of Iberian freshwater fish species over the period 1980–2020,freshwater fish biodiversity is experiencing an alarming decline worldwide understanding the main factors behind its deterioration is a key step for ecosystem restoration in this work largeâ scale and longâ term data were used to identify the causes of the decline of native species richness in castillaâ la mancha this region in central spain covers part of six river basins belonging to four of the 11 biogeographical provinces for freshwater fish in the iberian peninsula firstly we built a dataset that associates the presence of several fish species and a wide range of environmental variables e g hydrological and hydromorphological indicators land use classes presence of alien fish species at selected river sites for two different time periods 1980â 2000 and 2001â 2020 secondly we conducted an exploratory data analysis to identify possible temporal trends in the dataset finally we applied the random forest algorithm to predict the response of different ecological guildâ based metrics of fish richness to the selected variables the exploratory data analysis revealed a decrease in native fish species richness in 74 of the area studied there was no sustained temporal trend for stressor variables except for the number of alien species which increased in most river sites 63 the models of the richness of native rheophilic native intolerant alien rheophilic and alien limnophilic species performed satisfactorily magnitude of maximum discharge presence of alien species land use in the catchment area and altitude were the most important predictors of richness of native intolerant and rheophilic species alien limnophilic species proved to be sensitive to variables related to flow regime alteration such as the presence of dams and the number of river flow reversals while a less degraded habitat was found to be favourable to alien rheophilic species the results suggest that the cumulative effect of persistent altered flow regimes and water pollution coupled with a strong increase in the number of alien species have led to the decline of native species in the area studied the restoration of nearâ natural magnitudes of high flows when implementing environmental flows emerged as a key measure to restore ecosystem integrity starting from a longâ term and largeâ scale dataset this study provides new quantitative insights into stressorâ ecosystem relationships in rivers and could inform future environmental policy initiatives because it has identified the main factors leading to native fish decline and alien fish proliferation our findings emphasise the importance of considering metrics based on fish assemblage composition and ecological functional groups in order to disentangle the effects of stressors on fish communities,2022,0.974
Spatiotemporal influences of climate and humans on muskox range dynamics over multiple millennia,processes leading to range contractions and population declines of arctic megafauna during the late pleistocene and earlyâ holocene are uncertain with intense debate on the roles of human hunting climatic change and their synergy obstacles to a resolution have included an over reliance on correlative rather than processâ explicit approaches for inferring drivers of distributional and demographic change here we disentangle the ecological mechanisms and threats that were integral in the decline and extinction of the muskox ovibos moschatus in eurasia and in its expansion in north america using processâ explicit macroecological models the approach integrates modern and fossil occurrence records ancient dna spatiotemporal reconstructions of past climatic change speciesâ specific population ecology and the growth and spread of anatomically modern humans we show that accurately reconstructing inferences of past demographic changes for muskox over the last 21 000 years requires high dispersal abilities large maximum densities and a small allee effect analyses of validated processâ explicit projections indicate that climatic change was the primary driver of muskox distribution shifts and demographic changes across its previously extensive circumpolar range with populations responding negatively to rapid warming events regional analyses show that the range collapse and extinction of the muskox in europe 13 thousand years ago was likely caused by humans operating in synergy with climatic warming in canada and greenland climatic change and human activities probably combined to drive recent population sizes the impact of past climatic change on the range and extinction dynamics of muskox during the pleistoceneâ holocene transition signals a vulnerability of this species to future increased warming by better establishing the ecological processes that shaped the distribution of the muskox through space and time we show that processâ explicit macroecological models have important applications for the future conservation and management of this iconic species in a warming arctic,2022,0.366
Drivers of Odonata flight timing revealed by natural history collection data,global change may cause widespread phenological shifts but knowledge of the extent and generality of these shifts is limited by the availability of phenological records with sufficiently large spatiotemporal extents using north american odonates damselflies and dragonflies as a model system we show how a combination of natural history museum and community science collections beginning in 1901 and extending through 2020 can be leveraged to better understand phenology we begin with an analysis of odonate functional traits principal coordinate analysis is used to place odonate genera within a threeâ dimensional trait ordination from this we identify seven distinct functional groups and select a single odonate genus to represent each group next we pair the odonate records with a list of environmental covariates including air temperature and degree days photoperiod precipitation latitude and elevation an iterative subsampling process is then used to mitigate spatiotemporal sampling bias within the odonate dataset finally we use path analysis to quantify the direct effects of degree days photoperiod and precipitation on odonate emergence timing while accounting for indirect effects of latitude elevation and year path models showed that degree days photoperiod and precipitation each have a significant influence on odonate emergence timing but degree days have the largest overall effect notably the effect that each covariate has on emergence timing varied among functional groups with positive relationships observed for some group representatives and negative relationships observed for others for instance calopteryx sp emerged earlier as degree days increased while sympetrum sp emerged later previous studies have linked odonate emergence timing to temperature photoperiod or precipitation by using natural history museum and community science data to simultaneously examine all three influences we show that systemsâ level understanding of odonate phenology may now be possible,2022,0.034
"An Annotated Checklist of Ichthyofaunal Diversity of the Potamon Zone of Thamirabarani River, South India",background thamirabarani is a major east flowing river originates from the pothigai hills of southern western ghats 8â 36 07 1 n 77â 15 50 9 e at an altitude of 2074 m with a catchment area of 5482 km2 and meanders through a distance of 120 km 24 km in hilly terrain and 96 km in plains in tirunelveli and tuticorin districts and drains into the bay of bengal present paper provides information on abundance distribution human utility trophic level lm and iucn status of the thamirabarani river methods the present study was conducted by monthly intervals on ichythyofaunal diversity of the potamon zone of thamirabarani river from november 2019 to october 2021 selecting seven sampling stations viz cherenmahadevi vannarpettai murappanadu karungulam srivaikuntam eral and authoor result in the present study a total of 57 species comprising 11 orders 19 families and 38 genera were documented from downstream stretch of thamirabarani river of which three fish species namely horadandia atukorali oreochromis mossambicus and wallago attu are under vulnerable category and three fish species namely are hypselobarbus dubius labeo fisheri and dawkinsia tambraparniei endangered listed in the international union for conservation of nature red list among the 11 orders reported the order cypriniformes 52 was observed to have the highest contribution to the ichthyofaunal diversity and the family cyprinidae 32 was recorded the highest contribution to the finfish diversity the trophic level community structure of recorded fish species revealed the dominance of mid level carnivores 48 the human utility of recorded finfishes was found to be the highest was observed as edible 72 and iucn status was the highest with least concern 72,2022,0.447
"PHYTOCHEMICAL STUDY OF SECONDARY METABOLITES OF PLANTS OF THE GENUS
ALLIUM, GROWING IN GEORGIA AND DETERMINATION OF THEIR BIOLOGICAL
ACTIVITY",the genus allium belongs to the former family alliaceae now included in amaryllidaceae this genus involves up to 1233 species 1 plants of the genus allium have a long history of traditional uses worldwide the story of allium cultivation starts over 4000 years ago in ancient egypt 2 allium species are widely used in georgian traditional medicine as antifungal antiseptic and antibacterial remedy 3 4 36 species of genus allium are described in georgia among them 5 species are endemic of georgia and 2 of caucasus region 5,2022,0.671
Epibiotic Fauna on Cetaceans Worldwide: A Systematic Review of Records and Indicator Potential,each individual cetacean is an ecosystem itself potentially harboring a great variety of animals that travel with it despite being often despised or overlooked many of these epizoites have been proven to be suitable bio indicators of their cetacean hosts informing on health status social interactions migration patterns population structure or phylogeography moreover epizoites are advantageous over internal parasites in that many of them can be detected by direct observation e g boat surveys thus no capture or dissection of cetaceans are necessary previous reviews of epizoites of cetaceans have focused on specific geographical areas cetacean species or epibiotic taxa but fall short to include the increasing number of records and scientific findings about these animals here we present an updated review of all records of associations between cetaceans and their epibiotic fauna i e commensals ecto or mesoparasites and mutualists we gathered nearly 500 publications and found a total of 58 facultative or obligate epibiotic taxa from 11 orders of arthropods vertebrates cnidarians and a nematode that are associated to the external surface of 66 cetacean species around the globe we also provide information on the use as an indicator species in the literature if any and about other relevant traits such as geographic range host specificity genetic data and life cycle we encourage researchers not only to provide quantitative data i e prevalence abundance on the epizoites they find on cetaceans but also to inform on their absence the inferences drawn from epizoites can greatly benefit conservation plans of both cetaceans and their epizoites,2022,0.901
"Ecological niche modeling, niche overlap, and good old Rabinowitz’s rarities applied to the conservation of gymnosperms in a global biodiversity hotspot",context biodiversity hotspots harbor 77 of endemic plant species patagonian temperate forest ptf is a part of a biodiversity hotspot but over the past centuries has been over exploited fragmented and replaced with exotic species plantations lately also threatened by climate change objectives our aim is to better understand patterns of habitat suitability and niche overlap of nine endemic gymnosperm species key elements of the ptf complementing traditional approaches of biodiversity conservation methods using r packages and 3016 occurrence data we deployed ecological niche models enm in maxent via kuenm and classified species according to rabinowitzâ s types of rarity we then overlapped their niches calculating schoener s d index and considered types of rarity in a spatial ecological context finally we overlay high speciesâ suitability and protected areas and detected conservation priorities using gapanalysis results we generated simplified enms for nine patagonian gymnosperms and found that most niches overlap and only one species displayed a unique niche surprisingly we found that three species have divergent suitability of habitats across the landscape and not related with previously published geographic structure of neutral genetic variation we showed that the rarer a species is the smaller niche volume tend to have that six out of nine studied species have high conservation priority and that there are conservation gaps in the ptf conclusion our approach showed that there are unprotected suitable areas for native key species at high risk in ptf suggesting that integrating habitat suitability models of multiple species types of rarity and niche overlap can be a handy tool to identify potential conservation areas in global biodiversity hotspots,2022,0.979
Yellow fever surveillance suggests zoonotic and anthroponotic emergent potential,yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes among human and non human primates in the last decades infections are occurring in areas that had been free from yellow fever for decades probably as a consequence of the rapid spread of mosquito vectors and of the virus evolutionary dynamic in which non human primates are involved this research is a pathogeographic assessment of where enzootic cycles based on primate assemblages could be amplifying the risk of yellow fever infections in the context of spatial changes shown by the disease since the late 20 th century in south america the most relevant spread of disease cases affects parts of the amazon basin and a wide area of southern brazil where forest fragmentation could be activating enzootic cycles next to urban areas in africa yellow fever transmission is apparently spreading from the west of the continent and primates could be contributing to this in savannas around rainforests our results are useful for identifying new areas that should be prioritised for vaccination and suggest the need of deep yellow fever surveillance in primates of south america and africa models based on primates and disease vectors indicate a risk of zoonotic and anthroponotic yellow fever expansion in south america and africa,2022,0.397
A strategy to assess spillover risk of bat SARS-related coronaviruses in Southeast Asia,emerging diseases caused by coronaviruses of likely bat origin e g sars mers sads covid 19 have disrupted global health and economies for two decades evidence suggests that some bat sars related coronaviruses sarsr covs could infect people directly and that their spillover is more frequent than previously recognized each zoonotic spillover of a novel virus represents an opportunity for evolutionary adaptation and further spread therefore quantifying the extent of this spillover may help target prevention programs we derive current range distributions for known bat sarsr cov hosts and quantify their overlap with human populations we then use probabilistic risk assessment and data on human bat contact human viral seroprevalence and antibody duration to estimate that a median of 66 280 people 95 ci 65 351â 67 131 are infected with sarsr covs annually in southeast asia these data on the geography and scale of spillover can be used to target surveillance and prevention programs for potential future bat cov emergence coronaviruses may spill over from bats to humans this study uses epidemiological data species distribution models and probabilistic risk assessment to map overlap among people and sarsr cov bat hosts and estimate how many people are infected with bat origin sarsr covs in southeast asia annually,2022,0.559
Aridec: an open database of litter mass loss from aridlands worldwide with recommendations on suitable model applications,abstract plant litter decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems involves the physical and chemical breakdown of organic matter development of databases is a promising tool for achieving a predictive understanding of organic matter degradation at regional and global scales in this paper we present aridec a comprehensive open database containing litter mass loss data from aridlands across the world we describe in detail the structure of the database and discuss general patterns in the data then we explore what are the most appropriate model structures to integrate with data on litter decomposition from the database by conducting a collinearity analysis the database includes 184 entries from aridlands across the world representing a wide range of climates for the majority of the data gathered in aridec it is possible to fit models of litter decomposition that consider initial organic matter as a homogenous reservoir one pool models as well as models with two distinct types of organic compounds that decompose at different speeds two pool models moreover these two carbon pools can either decompose without interaction parallel models or with matter transfer from a labile pool to a slowly decomposing pool after transformation series models although most entries in the database can be used to fit these models we suggest that potential users of this database test identifiability for each individual case as well as the number of degrees of freedom other model applications that are not discussed in this publication might also be suitable for use with this database lastly we give some recommendations for future decomposition studies to be potentially added to this database the extent of the information included in aridec in addition to its open science approach makes it a great platform for future collaborative efforts in the field of aridland biogeochemistry the aridec version 1 0 2 is archived and publicly available at https doi org 10 5281 zenodo 6600345 sarquis et al 2022 and the database is managed under a version controlled system and centrally stored in github https github com agustinsarquis aridec last access 31â mayâ 2022,2022,0.031
In vitro propagation and secondary metabolite production in Gloriosa superba L,abstract gloriosa superba l commonly known as â œgloriosa lily â â œglory lily â and â œtiger claw â is a perennial climber in the liliaceae family this plant is used in african and southeast asian cultures as an ayurvedic medicinal herb to treat various health conditions its main bioactive component is colchicine which is responsible for medicinal efficacies as well as poisonous properties of the plant a high market demand imprudent harvesting of g superba from natural habitat and low seed setting have led scientists to explore micropropagation techniques and in vitro optimization of its phytochemicals plant growth regulators have been used to induce callus root and shoot organogenesis and somatic embryogenesis in vitro this review is aimed at presenting information regarding the occurrence taxonomic description phytochemistry micropropagation in vitro secondary metabolite and synthetic seed production the data collected from the existing literature along with an analysis of individual study details outcomes and variations in the reports will contribute to the development of biotechnological strategies for conservation and mass propagation of g superba key points â latest literature on micropropagation of gloriosa superba â biotechnological production and optimization of colchicine â regeneration somatic embryogenesis and synthetic seed production,2022,0.022
"Phylogeny, Classification, and Character Evolution of Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae: Acalyphoideae)",acalypha euphorbiaceae acalyphoideae is a large monophyletic genus distributed worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions with a few species extending into temperate areas of southern africa asia and north and south america we reconstructed phylogenetic relationships within the genus using dna sequences from the plastid ndhf and trnl f regions and the nuclear ribosomal its region sampling 142 species to represent the geographic morphologic and taxonomic diversity with the genus resulting in a 162 158 in acalypha terminal and 3847 character combined dataset bayesian and maximum likelihood reconstructions based on the combined dataset yielded a tree with a generally well supported backbone and several strongly supported clades our results strongly supported the monophyly of acalypha subg acalypha as currently recognized but showed that a subg linostachys and almost all other infrageneric taxa recognized in the most recent comprehensive classification of the genus were not monophyletic we therefore propose a new subgeneric classification comprising a subg acalypha a subg androcephala a subg hypandrae and a subg linostachys s s our results also shed light on relationships within some species groups including in what has been treated as a broadly defined a amentacea in which we recognize a amentacea a palauensis comb nov and a wilkesiana as distinct species bayesian ancestral state estimations based on the phylogeny of acalypha demonstrated that inflorescence position and sexuality and habit show high homoplasy especially within a subg acalypha and that inflorescence position and habit exhibit correlated evolution,2022,0.765
The (non) accuracy of mitochondrial genomes for family‐level phylogenetics in Erebidae (Lepidoptera),the use of molecular data to study the evolutionary history of organisms has revolutionized the field of systematics now with the appearance of high throughput sequencing hts technologies more and more genetic sequence data are available one of the important sources of genetic data for phylogenetic analyses has been mitochondrial dna the limitations of mitochondrial dna for the study of phylogenetic relationships have been thoroughly explored in the age of single locus phylogenetic studies now with the appearance of genomic scale data increasing number of mitochondrial genomes are available leading to an increasing number of mitophylogenomic studies here we assemble 47 mitochondrial genomes using whole genome illumina short reads from representatives of the family erebidae lepidoptera in order to evaluate the accuracy of mitochondrial genome application in resolving deep phylogenetic relationships we find that mitogenomes are inadequate for resolving subfamilyâ level relationships in erebidae but given good taxon sampling we see its potential in resolving lower level phylogenetic relationships,2022,0.159
The risks and rewards of community science for threatened species monitoring,finding ways of efficiently monitoring threatened species can be critical to effective conservation the global proliferation of community science also called citizen science programs like inaturalist presents a potential alternative or complement to conventional threatened species monitoring using a case study of 700 000 observations of 10 000 iucn red list threatened species within inaturalist observations we illustrate the potential risks and rewards of using community science to monitor threatened species poor data quality and risks of sending untrained volunteers to sample species that are sensitive to disturbance or harvesting are key barriers to overcome yet community science can expand the breadth of monitoring at little extra cost while indirectly benefiting conservation through outreach and education we conclude with a list of actionable recommendations to further mitigate the risks and capitalize on the rewards of community science as a threatened species monitoring tool,2022,0.853
"Host association, environment, and geography underlie genomic differentiation in a major forest pest",diverse geographic environmental and ecological factors affect gene flow and adaptive genomic variation within species with recent advances in landscape ecological modelling and highâ throughput dna sequencing it is now possible to effectively quantify and partition their relative contributions here we use landscape genomics to identify determinants of genomic differentiation in the forest tent caterpillar malacosoma disstria a widespread and irruptive pest of numerous deciduous tree species in north america we collected larvae from multiple populations across eastern canada where the species experiences a diversity of environmental gradients and feeds on a number of different host tree species including trembling aspen populus tremuloides sugar maple acer saccharum red oak quercus rubra and white birch betula papyrifera using a combination of reciprocal causal modelling rcm and distanceâ based redundancy analyses dbrda we show that differentiation of thousands of genomeâ wide single nucleotide polymorphisms snps among individuals is best explained by a combination of isolation by distance isolation by environment differences in summer temperatures and length of the growing season and differences in host association configuration of suitable habitat inferred from ecological niche models was not significantly related to genomic differentiation suggesting that m disstria dispersal is agnostic with respect to habitat quality although population structure was not discretely related to host association our modelling framework provides the first molecular evidence of hostâ associated differentiation in m disstria congruent with previous documentation of reduced growth and survival of larvae moved between natal host species we conclude that ecologicallyâ mediated selection is contributing to variation within m disstria and that divergent adaptation related to both environmental conditions and host association should be considered in ongoing research and management of this important forest pest,2022,0.964
Estimation of the potential geographical distribution of a new potato pest (Schrankia costaestrigalis) in China under climate change,global food security is threatened by the impacts of the spread of crop pests and changes in the complex interactions between crops and pests under climate change schrankia costaestrigalis is a newly reported potato pest in southern china early warning monitoring of this insect pest could protect domestic agriculture as it has already caused regional yield reduction and or quality decline in potato production our research aimed to confirm the potential geographical distributions pgds of s costaestrigalis in china under different climate scenarios using an optimal maxent model and to provide baseline data for preventing agricultural damage by s costaestrigalis our findings indicated that the accuracy of the optimal maxent model was better than the default setting model and the minimum temperature of the coldest month precipitation of the driest month precipitation of the coldest quarter and the human influence index were the variables significantly affecting the pgds of s costaestrigalis the highly and moderately suitable habitats of s costaestrigalis were mainly located in eastern and southern china the pgds of s costaestrigalis in china will decrease under climate change the conversion of the highly to moderately suitable habitat will also be significant under climate change the centroid of the suitable habitat area of s costaestrigalis under the current climate showed a general tendency to move northeast and to the middle high latitudes in the 2030s the agricultural practice of plastic film mulching in potato fields will provide a favorable microclimate for s costaestrigalis in the suitable areas more attention should be paid to the early warning and monitoring of s costaestrigalis in order to prevent its further spread in the main areas of winter chinese potato planting,2022,0.06
Crown dieback and mortality of urban trees linked to heatwaves during extreme drought,cities have been described as â heat islandsâ and â dry islandsâ due to hotter drier air in urban areas relative to the surrounding landscape as climate change intensifies the health of urban trees will be increasingly impacted here we posed the question is it possible to predict urban tree species mortality using 1 species climate envelopes and 2 plant functional traits to answer these we tracked patterns of crown dieback and recovery for 23 common urban tree and shrub species in sydney australia during the record breaking austral 2019â 2020 summer we identified 10 heat tolerant species including five native and five exotic species which represent climate resilient options for urban plantings that are likely to continue to thrive for decades thirteen species were considered vulnerable to adverse conditions due to their mortality poor health leading to tree removal and or extensive crown dieback crown dieback increased with increasing precipitation of the driest month of species climate of origin suggesting that species from dry climates may be better suited for urban forests in future climates we effectively grouped species according to their drought strategy i e tolerance versus avoidance using a simple trait based framework that was directly linked with species mortality the seven most climate vulnerable species used a drought avoidance strategy having low wood density and high turgor loss points along with large thin leaves with low heat tolerance overall plant functional traits were better than species climate envelopes at explaining crown dieback recovery after stress required two mild wet years for most species resulting in prolonged loss of cooling benefits as well as economic losses due to replacement of dead damaged trees hotter longer and more frequent heatwaves will require selection of more climate resilient species in urban forests and our results suggest that future research should focus on plant thermal traits to improve prediction models and species selection,2022,0.978
Modeling impacts of climate change on the potential distribution of three endemic Aloe species critically endangered in East Africa,climate change has had a significant impact on natural ecosystems and endemic species around the world and substantial impacts are expected in the future as a result knowing how climate change affects endemic species can help in putting forward the necessary conservation efforts the use of niche modeling to predict changes in species distributions under different climate change scenarios is becoming a hot topic in biological conservation this study aimed to use the global circulation model cmip5 to model the current distribution of suitable habitat for three critically endangered aloe species endemic to kenya and tanzania in order to determine the impact of climate change on their suitable habitat in the years 2050 and 2070 we used two representative concentration pathways scenarios rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 to project the contraction of suitable habitats for aloe ballyi reynolds a classenii reynolds and a penduliflora baker precipitation temperature and environmental variables potential evapotranspiration land cover soil sedimentary and solar radiation have had a significant impact on the current distribution of all the three species although suitable habitat expansion and contraction are predicted for all the species loss of original suitable habitat is expected to be extensive climate change is expected to devastate 44 and 34 of the original habitats of a ballyi and a classenii respectively based on our findings we propose that areas predicted to contract due to climate change should be designated as key protection zones for aloe species conservation,2022,0.834
Clay and soil organic matter drive wood multi-elemental composition of a tropical tree species: Implications for timber tracing,forensic methods to independently trace timber origin are essential to combat illegal timber trade tracing product origin by analysing their multi element composition has been successfully applied in several commodities but its potential for timber is not yet known to evaluate this potential the drivers of wood multi elemental composition need to be studied here we report on the first study relating wood multi elemental composition of forest trees to soil chemical and physical properties we studied the reactive soil element pools and the multi elemental composition in sapwood and heartwood for 37 azobã lophira alata trees at two forest sites in cameroon a total of 46 elements were measured using icp ms we also measured three potential drivers of soil and wood elemental composition clay content soil organic matter and ph we tested associations between soil and wood using multiple regressions and multivariate analyses mantel test db rda finally we performed a random forest analysis of heartwood elemental composition to check site assignment accuracy we found elemental compositions of soil sapwood and heartwood to be significantly associated soil clay content and organic matter positively influenced individual element concentrations for 13 and 9 elements out of 46 respectively as well as the multi elemental composition in wood however associations between wood and topsoil elemental concentrations were only significant for one element we found close associations between element concentrations and composition in sapwood and heartwood lastly the random forest assignment success was 97 3â our findings indicate that wood elemental composition is associated with that in the topsoil and its variation is related to soil clay and organic matter content these associations suggests that the multi elemental composition of wood can yield chemical fingerprints obtained from sites that differ in soil properties this finding in addition to the high assignment accuracy shows potential of multi element analysis for tracing wood origin,2022,0.168
Paratenic hosts of Angiostrongylus cantonensis and their relation to human neuroangiostrongyliasis globally,the nematode parasite angiostrongylus cantonensis rat lungworm has a complex life cycle involving rats definitive hosts and gastropods intermediate hosts as well as various paratenic hosts humans become infected and develop rat lungworm disease neuroangiostrongyliasis when they consume intermediate or paratenic hosts containing the infective parasite larvae this study synthesizes knowledge of paratenic hosts of a cantonensis and investigates their role in causing human neuroangiostrongyliasis worldwide a literature review was conducted by searching pubmed jstor and scopus pooling additional information from sources accumulated over many years by rhc and snowball searching the review identified 138 relevant articles published between 1962 and 2022 freshwater prawns shrimp crayfish crabs flatworms fish sea snakes frogs toads newts lizards centipedes cattle pigs and snails were reported to act as paratenic hosts in various regions including south and southeast asia pacific islands the usa and the caribbean as well as experimentally human cases of neuroangiostrongyliasis have been reported from the 1960s onwards linked sometimes speculatively to consumption of freshwater prawns shrimp crabs flatworms fish frogs toads lizards and centipedes the potential of paratenic hosts to cause neuroangiostrongyliasis depends on whether they are eaten how frequently they are consumed the preparation method including whether eaten raw or undercooked and whether they are consumed intentionally or accidentally it also depends on infection prevalence in the host populations and probably on how high the parasite load is in the consumed hosts to prevent human infections it is crucial to interrupt the transmission of rat lungworm to humans from both intermediate hosts and frequently consumed paratenic hosts by adhering to safe food preparation protocols educating the general public and the medical community about this largely neglected tropical subtropical disease is key,2022,0.843
Assisted migration and the rare endemic plant species: the case of two endangered Mexican spruces,background in the projected climate change scenarios assisted migration might play an important role in the ex situ conservation of the threatened plant species by translocate them to similar suitable habitats outside their native distributions however it is unclear if such habitats will be available for the rare endemic plant species reps because of their very restricted habitats the aims of this study were to perform a population size assessment for the reps picea martinezii patterson and picea mexicana martã nez and to evaluate the potential species distributions and their possibilities for assisted migration inside mã xico and worldwide methods we performed demographic censuses field surveys in search for new stands and developed distribution models for last glacial maximum 22 000 years ago middle holocene 6 000 years ago current 1961â 1990 and future 2050 and 2070 periods for the whole mexican territory considering climatic soil geologic and topographic variables and for all global land areas based only on climate results our censuses showed populations of 89 266 and 39 059 individuals for p martinezii and p mexicana respectively including known populations and new stands projections for mã xico indicated somewhat larger suitable areas in the past now restricted to the known populations and new stands where they will disappear by 2050 in a pessimistic climatic scenario and scarce marginal areas p 0 5â 0 79 remaining only for p martinezii by 2070 worldwide projections based only on climate variables revealed few marginal areas in 2050 only in mã xico for p martinezii and several large areas p â 0 5 for p mexicana around the world all outside mã xico especially on the himalayas in india and the chungyang mountains in taiwan with highly suitable p â 0 8 climate habitats in current and future 2050 conditions however those suitable areas are currently inhabited by other endemic spruces picea smithiana wall boiss and picea morrisonicola hayata respectively conclusions assisted migration would only be an option for p martinezii on scarce marginal sites in mã xico and the possibilities for p mexicana would be continental and transcontinental translocations this rises two possible issues for future ex situ conservation programs the first is related to whether or not consider assisted migration to marginal sites which do not cover the main habitat requirements for the species the second is related to which species the local or the foreign should be prioritized for conservation when suitable habitat is found elsewhere but is inhabited by other endemic species this highlights the necessity to discuss new policies guidelines and mechanisms of international cooperation to deal with the expected high species extinction rates linked to projected climate change,2022,0.904
Woody invaders from contrasted climatic origins distribute differently across the urban-to-rural gradient in oceanic Europe - is it trait-related?,alien plant species invasion depends on biotic and abiotic conditions that can represent environmental barriers as compared to their native range conditions specifically little is known about how alien plant species distribute along the urban to rural gradients based on their native climatic conditions and how environmental conditions along these gradients could influence intraspecific trait variation we studied the distribution of eight woody alien species from contrasted native range climates along urban to rural gradients in european areas with a temperate climate hereafter termed oceanic europe during two consecutive summers and in the belgian part of oceanic europe we then measured their intraspecific trait variation using the nitrogen balance index nbi chlorophyll content flavonols index specific leaf area sla and internode space urban to rural gradients were characterized by a system of local climate zones lcz the percentage of artificially sealed surfaces urbanity and the sky view factor svf we found that the distribution of studied species in the lcz classes was highly dependent on the climate of their native range with species from warm climates occurring more in the most urban areas while the ones from cool climates preferred the more rural or natural areas however their intraspecific trait variation was not related to the lcz class in which they grew nor to their native climate instead we found a surprisingly consistent effect of shielded environments low svf along the entire urban to rural gradient on leaf and development traits such environments induced a lower leaf flavonols index and higher nbi and sla suggesting a shade response and possibly lower heat and drought stress our results show that although woody alien plant species from warmer or cooler native climates distributed differently along the urbanization gradient in oceanic europe they did not show contrasted intraspecific trait variation nevertheless our findings highlight that even if the woody alien plant species from cooler native ranges are currently more present in the most natural areas special attention should be paid to woody alien plant species from warmer native ranges that are yet restricted to the most urban areas and could potentially have severe impacts in the future when the barriers to their spread weaken with climate change,2022,0.87
Interplay between conservatism and divergence in climatic niche evolution of Brassicaceae tribe Eudemeae shaped their distribution across the different environments of the Andes,abstract the andean region is one of the most biodiverse areas displaying high levels of endemism and spatial turnover of species tribe eudemeae includes nine genera and 40 species distributed from the northern andes in colombia to the southernmost portion of the andes in argentina and chile here we generated a species level phylogenetic tree to study their climatic niche evolution we first analysed phylogenetic structure and evolutionary shifts among the main climatic spaces using model based estimates second we estimated climatic niches for each species and compared them in a phylogenetic context in eudemeae three main groups of climatic spaces were found mainly related to the northern and central andes the north central portion of the southern andes and the central southern portion of the southern andes results suggest that initial colonization of new climatic spaces in the evolution of the tribe appears to be promoted through shifts in adaptive regimes whereas subsequent diversification of genera occurred predominantly under the same climatic regimes this trade off between niche conservatism and divergence appears to have modulated their diversification across the andes and contributed to their current geographical distribution,2022,0.418
Invertebrate cave fauna in three protected areas in Catalonia: an excellent team-building exercise,although of great scientific interest studies of hypogean fauna are still not undertaken by many of the government bodies in charge of protected areas this deficiency is usually attributed to the lack of teams of speleologists that have at their disposal trained entomologists who can collect sort and identify specimens and or document and preserve collected specimens in addition adequate funding for conducting studies of cave dwelling fauna and for transferring acquired knowledge is required to help solve this problem we began collaborating with four entities whose combined efforts constitute a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts two public bodies the barcelona provincial council diba and the natural science museum of barcelona mcnb a naturalist association the catalan biospeleological association biosp and a sports federation the catalan speleological federation fce in 2016â 2020 we studied 18 caves in three protected areas in catalonia the most outstanding results include a new species of dicranophragma diptera limoniidae and new records for catalonia of troglobisium racovitzai ellingsen 1912 pseudoscorpiones bochicidae linderia armata schaufuss 1863 coleoptera staphylinidae dactylolabis sexmaculata macquart 1826 and elliptera hungarica madarassy 1881 diptera limoniidae,2022,0.561
Assessing Potential Habitat Suitability for Panthera tigris Using Multiple Grain Size and Different Ensemble Methods in Maximum Entropy Modeling,habitat suitability is a foremost task in conserving wildlife and ecosystem rapid decline in wildlife and threat to their habitat due to unprecedented anthropocentric development and fragmentation of animalâ s habitat has increased likelihood of human wildlife conflict rajaji tiger reserve rtr uttarakhand india has the great potential to sustain the young migratory tigers present study aims to find out the suitability of panthera tigris tiger at chilla gohri and motichur ranges of rtr using presence only species distribution modeling at multiple grain size an ensemble model was developed with high precision the influence of climatic variables for prediction of suitability of habitat for panthera tigris was evaluated at 900â m grain size using the three approaches such as maxent ecological niche factor analysis and bioclim results show that all the three models performed well with accuracy of more than 0 7 roc value factors such as distance from settlement distance from waterbody distance from railway track mean ndvi and elevation were the primary contributes for all the models bioclimatic variables did not contributed significantly to the habitat suitability of the species in the rtr the results signify that overreliance on the climatic variables and constraining model at coarse resolution is not required ensemble model was prepared using maxent and ecological niche factor analysis only maxent highlights the effect of different grain size i e 30â m grain size was having better accuracy in comparison to 900â m grain size whereas all other models were having more or less the same accuracy at different grain size ensemble model showed that out of the 335â km 2 area approximately 105â km 2 was suitable at 30â m grain size species distribution model sdm whereas 96â km 2 area was suitable at 900â m grain size model the analysis resulted that rtr has the potential to sustain panthera tigris population regulatory mechanism along with better implementation of rules and regulation is required to be implemented by the government and concerned department along with better awareness among the local residents for sustaining the wildlife and their habitat,2022,0.25
Responses of alpine summit vegetation under climate change in the transition zone between subtropical and tropical humid environment,climate change has caused severe impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity globally especially to vulnerable mountain ecosystems the summits bear the brunt of such effects therefore six summits in taiwan were monitored based on a standardized multi summit approach we used both statistical downscaling of climate data and vegetation cover data to calculate climate niches to assess the impacts of climate change two indicators thermophilic and moist philic were applied to evaluate the overall response of vegetation dynamics the results revealed that potential evapotranspiration increased significantly and led to a declining tendency in monthly water balance from 2014 to 2019 the general pattern of species richness was a decline the difference in plant cover among the three surveys showed an inconsistent pattern although some dominant species expanded such as the dwarf bamboo yushania niitakayamensis the thermophilic indicator showed that species composition had changed so that there were more thermophilic species at the three lowest summits the moist philization indicator showed a decline of humid preferred species in the latest monitoring period although total precipitation did not decrease our results suggest that the variability in precipitation with increased temperature and potential evapotranspiration altered alpine vegetation composition and could endanger vulnerable species in the future,2022,0.732
"sOilFauna - a global synthesis effort on the drivers of soil macrofauna communities and functioning,WORKSHOP REPORT",understanding global biodiversity change its drivers and the ecosystem consequences requires a better appreciation of both the factors that shape soil macrofauna communities and the ecosystem effects of these organisms the project â œsoilfaunaâ was funded by the synthesis center sdiv germany to address this major gap by forming a community of soil ecologists identifying the most pressing research questions and hypotheses as well as conducting a series of workshops to foster the global synthesis and hypothesis testing of soil macrofauna the overarching goal is to analyze the most comprehensive soil macrofauna database the macrofauna database which collates abundance data of 17 soil invertebrate groups assessed with a standardized method at 7180 sites around the world and seeks to foster the collection of future data in a recent kick off workshop in may 2022 the first research priorities and collaboration guidelines were determined here we summarize the main outcomes of this workshop and highlight the benefits of creating an open global community of soil ecologists providing standardized soil macrofauna data for future research evaluation of ecosystem health and nature protection,2022,0.063
Digital Extended Specimens: Enabling an Extensible Network of Biodiversity Data Records as Integrated Digital Objects on the Internet,abstract the early twenty first century has witnessed massive expansions in availability and accessibility of digital data in virtually all domains of the biodiversity sciences led by an array of asynchronous digitization activities spanning ecological environmental climatological and biological collections data these initiatives have resulted in a plethora of mostly disconnected and siloed data leaving to researchers the tedious and time consuming manual task of finding and connecting them in usable ways integrating them into coherent data sets and making them interoperable the focus to date has been on elevating analog and physical records to digital replicas in local databases prior to elevating them to ever growing aggregations of essentially disconnected discipline specific information in the present article we propose a new interconnected network of digital objects on the internetâ the digital extended specimen des networkâ that transcends existing aggregator technology augments the des with third party data through machine algorithms and provides a platform for more efficient research and robust interdisciplinary discovery,2022,0.045
Characterizing the Vector Data Ecosystem,a growing body of information on vector borne diseases has arisen as increasing research focus has been directed towards the need for anticipating risk optimizing surveillance and understanding the fundamental biology of vector borne diseases to direct efforts to control and mitigation the scope and scale of this information in the form of data comprising database efforts data storage and serving approaches mean that it is distributed across many formats and data types data ranges from collections records to molecular characterization geospatial data to interactions of vectors and traits infection experiments to field trials new initiatives arise often spanning the effort traditionally siloed in specific research disciplines and other efforts wane perhaps in response to funding declines different research directions or lack of sustained interest thusly the world of vector data the vector data ecosystem can become unclear in scope and the flows of data through these various efforts can become stymied by obsolescence or simply by gaps in access and interoperability as increasing attention is paid to creating fair findable accessible interoperable and reusable data simply characterizing what is â out thereâ and how these existing data aggregation and collection efforts interact or interoperate with each other is a useful exercise this study presents a snapshot of current vector data efforts reporting on level of accessibility and commenting on interoperability using an illustration to track a specimen through the data ecosystem to understand where it occurs for the database efforts anticipated to describe it or parts of its extended specimen data,2022,0.177
Issues with species occurrence data and their impact on extinction risk assessments,species extinction risk status is critical to support conservation actions however full assessments published on the red list are slow and resource intensive to tackle assessments for mega diverse groups gains can be made through preliminary assessments that can help prioritize efforts toward full assessments here we quantified how incomplete data collation and errors in the taxonomic spatial and temporal dimensions of species occurrence data translate into misclassifications of extinction risk using a dataset of 30 million records of terrestrial plants occurring in brazil compiled from nine databases we conducted preliminary risk assessments for 94â of the 6046 species assessed by the brazilian red list authority we found that no unique database contained data sufficient to perform extinction risk assessment of all species e g the risk of 78â of species can be assessed using data from gbif the overall accuracy 66â 75â and specificity 89â 98â correct prediction of non threatened species were less affected by incomplete data collation and issues in species occurrence records sensitivity rates correct prediction of threatened species were commonly low to moderate and strongly affected by incomplete data collation 13â 47â and spatial issues 38â our results demonstrate that species preliminary risk assessments have high accuracy in identifying non threatened species even when data collection is low and in the presence of issues in species occurrence data highlighting that such an approach can be used to efficiently prioritize species for full red list assessments in addition caution is needed before declaring a species as threatened without considering data collation intensity and quality,2022,0.983
A new population of the biocontrol agent Aphalara itadori performs best on the hybrid host Reynoutria x bohemica,aphalara itadori is a biological control agent of the invasive asian knotweeds reynoutria japonica reynoutria sachalinensis and their hybrid reynoutriaâ ã â bohemica which emerged across different areas of their introduced range including europe north america and oceania the performance of a itadori on these three target plants differs between geographically distant psyllid populations a petition to release a population of this psyllid freshly collected in murakami japan to control the three target species in the netherlands was approved in 2020 in order to optimize a biocontrol program using this a itadori population we assessed the effect of the three knotweed species on its performance impact on plant growth and oviposition preference the results of no choice experiments indicated that the murakami population performed best on r â ã â bohemica where juveniles developed the fastest and the number of emerged adults was twice as high as that recorded on the other two reynoutria hosts these differences in performance between hosts were associated with a lower acceptance of r sachalinensis for oviposition and a higher juvenile mortality on r japonica infestation with the murakami population had an overall negative impact on final stem length so that infested plants were around 8â shorter than control plants and it reduced final rhizome fresh biomass by circa 50â in r sachalinensis and 35â in r â ã â bohemica when subjected to two choice tests females of the murakami population did not show an oviposition preference for any of the reynoutria species these results suggest that in the netherlands r â ã â bohemica is the best host to optimize the rearing of the murakami population and field releases should target this host species to promote establishment in the field based on these results the murakami population is expected to have the largest impact in the field on r â ã â bohemica and r sachalinensis,2022,0.721
First records of Opuntia monacantha (Willd.) Haw. and Opuntia tomentosa Salm-Dyck (Cactaceae) from Algeria,we report here the first occurrences of two alien cacti species from algeria during field surveys from 2016 to 2022 in the skikda region north eastern algeria ten populations of opuntia monacantha willd haw were recorded this species is reported here as naturalized alien species for the first time for algeria and the second time for mainland north africa the same surveys also yielded three localities of opuntia tomentosa salm dyck reported here as casual species for the first time for algeria and mainland north africa both species colonize various habitats coastal dune maquis cliffs roofs gutters tree trunks and they propagate by stem fragments however o tomentosa also reproduces from seeds and birds seem to play a role in the dispersal of this species we discuss the potential of both species for further spread in algeria and argue that increased botanical surveys may lead to the recording of further alien cacti species,2022,0.968
Turtles from the Late Pleistocene of Hidalgo and Puebla and their paleobiogeographic and paleoclimatic significance,we describe and identify fossil material of turtles recovered from several pleistocene localities of hidalgo and puebla a comparative study with selected specimens of extant and extinct turtles revealed that the fossil sample evidences two families kinosternidae and testudinidae three genera kinosternon gopherus and aff hesperotestudo and two species k flavescens and g berlandieri this record supplements their occurrence in the country being common inhabitants of central mexico we performed a paleoclimatic reconstruction of the valsequillo basin using the mutual ecogeographic range mer method given that in this area the fossil material was identified to species level including k flavescens and g berlandieri the potential climatic conditions based on the distribution model and the current habitats of these turtles suggest that the climate was warmer with similar precipitation 21 99â â c mean annual temperature and 623â mm mean annual precipitation in comparison to the current ones 17â â c mean annual temperature and 622 2â mm mean annual precipitation by the same token the presence of xerophytic thickets and desert areas suitable for g berlandieri associated with bodies of water inhabited by k flavescens is proposed,2022,0.422
Contribution to flora of Pakistan: three new records for Amaranthaceae and Fabaceae including a new generic record,the current study is based on vegetation surveys conducted throughout pakistan from 2014 onwards and three plant species viz alternanthera philoxeroides mart griseb amaranthus albus l amaranthaceae and galactia striata jacq urb fabaceae were identified as new records for pakistan macro and micro morphological characteristics of these three species were studied and descriptions and illustrations are provided for easy identification,2022,0.545
"New distribution record of Habenaria gibsonii var. foetida Blatt. & McCann (Orchidaceae, Orchidoideae) from Panay Island, Philippines, with notes on allied taxa, ecology, and conservation",we report the occurrence of habenaria gibsonii var foetida blatt mccann on panay island in the philippines our new records represent the easternmost distribution of this species and also the first in the malesian region we present a full description photographs updated distribution map and notes on allied taxa ecology and conservation status of this taxon our report highlights the importance of panay island in floristic studies of the philippines,2022,0.463
Spittlebugs (Hemiptera: Cercopidae): Integrated Pest Management on Gramineous Crops in the Neotropical Ecozone,spittlebug hemiptera cercopidae species cause large economic losses on gramineous crops poaceae in tropical and subtropical america these insects are key pests of sugarcane and forages crops that experienced a quick expansion in extensive monocultures in brazil colombia and mexico mobilization toward sustainable crop and livestock systems to supply the growing demand of meat milk and sugar in latin america and the caribbean region implies developing sustainable and feasible strategies of integrated pest management to control spittlebugs this review combines information on cercopidae taxonomy geographical distribution insect biology and control strategies to contribute to the development of integrated pest management in grasses and sugarcane in the neotropics,2022,0.319
Alien insect dispersal mediated by the global movement of commodities,globalization and economic growth are recognized as key drivers of biological invasions alien species have become a feature of almost every biological community worldwide and rates of new introductions continue to rise as the movement of people and goods accelerates insects are among the most numerous and problematic alien organisms and are mainly introduced unintentionally with imported cargo or arriving passengers however the processes occurring prior to insect introductions remain poorly understood we used a unique dataset of 1 902 392 border interception records from inspections at air land and maritime ports in australia new zealand europe japan the united states of america and canada to identify key commodities associated with insect movement through trade and travel a total of 8 939 species were intercepted and commodity association data were available for 1 242 species recorded between 1960 and 2019 we used rarefaction and extrapolation methods to estimate the total species richness and diversity associated with different commodity types plant and wood products were the main commodities associated with insect movement across cargo passenger baggage and international mail furthermore certain species were mainly associated with specific commodities within these and other broad categories more closely related species tended to share similar commodity associations but this occurred largely at the genus level rather than within orders or families these similarities within genera can potentially inform pathway management of new alien species combining interception records across regions provides a unique window into the unintentional movement of insects and provides valuable information on establishment risks associated with different commodity types and pathways,2022,0.923
Understanding the summer roosting habitat selection of the greater mouse-tailed bat (Rhinopoma microphyllum) and the small mouse-tailed bat (Rhinopoma muscatellum) in Iran,roost for bats which are responsible for a wide range of vital ecological and economic services is crucial their availability affects both the geographic occurrence and the diversity of bat communities hence understanding how bats use roosts and variables that influence these patterns could contribute to the development of management plans to ensure their survival in this study species distribution modeling of two bat species the greater mouse tailed bat rhinopoma microphyllum and the small mouse tailed bat rhinopoma muscatellum were carried out using the sdm package in r to do so 16 environmental variables were used as the predictors to explore their relationships with the occurrence of the two species using 12 modeling algorithms the prediction models for each species were then combined into an ensemble model the random forest modeling algorithm showed better performance than the other individual models in this modeling moreover the prediction performance of the ensemble model was more substantial than all the individual models for both species for the greater mouse tailed bat elevation annual mean temperature temperature seasonality and distance to roads railways were identified as the essential variables for summer roosting habitat selection meanwhile distance to roads railways annual mean temperature elevation and distance to the ridge were significant for the small mouse tailed bat since this study facilitates the management of future and suitable habitats by identifying important environmental conditions it can be used in conservation plans,2022,0.645
Global invasibility potential of the shrub Baccharis drancunculifolia,the genusâ baccharis â asteraceae comprises over 440 species distributed along north and south america some species of this genus have remarkable invasiveness and one of these species is the south american shrubâ baccharis dracunculifolia dc most of the introductions of non indigenous species are held indirectly through trade so it is believed that this species could become invasive worldwide with a particular interest in the north american continent because of the increasing sale of products derived from honey to this continent the resin extracted fromâ b dracunculifolia â is the leading source for preparing the green propolis produced in southeastern brazil thus the main objective of this work is to apply an approach based on distribution modeling to investigate possible areas of high environmental suitability forâ b dracunculifolia â in the north american continent and the potential to the entire globe using current and two future scenaries our results show many areas of environmental suitability forâ b dracunculifolia this species can invade over 33 countries distributed intoâ five continents including north america some of the most critical parts of the southern usa and large areas in mexico since the best way of countering biological invasions is prevention we propose that the introductionâ ofâ thisâ species should be monitored,2022,0.916
"Ecology, not host phylogeny, shapes the oral microbiome in closely related species of gorillas",host associated microbiomes are essential for a multitude of biological processes placed at the contact zone between external and internal environments the little studied oral microbiome has important roles in host physiology and health here we investigate the contribution of host evolutionary relationships and ecology in shaping the oral microbiome in three closely related gorilla subspecies mountain grauers and western lowland gorillas using shotgun metagenomics of 46 museum preserved dental calculus samples we find that the oral microbiomes of mountain gorillas are functionally and taxonomically distinct from the other two subspecies despite close evolutionary relationships and geographic proximity with grauers gorillas grauers gorillas show intermediate bacterial taxonomic and functional and dietary profiles altitudinal differences in gorilla subspecies ranges appear to explain these patterns proposing a close connection between dental calculus microbiome and the environment which is further supported by the presence of gorilla subspecies specific phyllosphere rhizosphere taxa mountain gorillas show high abundance of nitrate reducing oral taxa which may contribute to high altitude adaptation by modulating blood pressure our results suggest that ecology rather than evolutionary relationships and geographic proximity primarily shape the oral microbiome in these closely related species host associated microbiomes are essential for a multitude of biological processes placed at the contact zone between external and internal environments the little studied oral microbiome has important roles in host physiology and health here we investigate the contribution of host evolutionary relationships and ecology in shaping the oral microbiome in three closely related gorilla subspecies mountain grauers and western lowland gorillas using shotgun metagenomics of 46 museum preserved dental calculus samples we find that the oral microbiomes of mountain gorillas are functionally and taxonomically distinct from the other two subspecies despite close evolutionary relationships and geographic proximity with grauers gorillas grauers gorillas show intermediate bacterial taxonomic and functional and dietary profiles altitudinal differences in gorilla subspecies ranges appear to explain these patterns proposing a close connection between dental calculus microbiome and the environment which is further supported by the presence of gorilla subspecies specific phyllosphere rhizosphere taxa mountain gorillas show high abundance of nitrate reducing oral taxa which may contribute to high altitude adaptation by modulating blood pressure our results suggest that ecology rather than evolutionary relationships and geographic proximity primarily shape the oral microbiome in these closely related species,2022,0.861
Analysis of the impact of climate change on the distribution and active compound content of the plateau medicinal plant Nardostachys jatamansi (D. Don) DC,the production and accumulation of secondary metabolites of medicinal plants are regulated by environmental factors analyzing the effects of climate change on the suitable habitats and active compound of nardostachys jatamansi d don dc is essential for their future conservation and cultivation this study predicted changes in the scale of distribution of n jatamansi under different shared socio economic pathway ssp scenario models over time in addition this study analyzed differences in active compound content by high performance liquid chromatography hplc methods and changes in gene expression by transcriptome sequencing across different habitats the results reveal that elevation mean temperature of coldest quarter and precipitation of warmest quarter cumulatively contributed 90 1 to the species distribution models sdms and were the critical environmental variables affecting the distribution of n jatamansi the sdms predicted that n jatamansi habitats will decrease in the future under the ssp5â 8 5 scenario highly suitable areas in china for n jatamansi growth will decrease to 7 734375â ã â 104 km2 by the 2061â 2080â s period this study also observed that the contents of active compounds increased with ecological suitability with the nardosinone content in n jatamansi reaching 0 67 in highly suitable areas analysis of differential gene expression in n jatamansi indicated that the expression levels of genes in the terpene synthesis pathway genes were significantly different across grades of suitable areas together the combined results of sdms analysis chemical analysis and transcriptome analysis in n jatamansi reveal that environmental changes affect the expression levels of genes related to terpene gene synthesis pathways thereby changing the contents of active compounds overall these findings provide a reference for the conservation of wild resources of n jatamansi and the improvement of the quality of cultivated n jatamansi,2022,0.077
Comparative phylogeography of small mammals across the Great Plains Suture Zone highlights repeated processes of speciation and community assembly …,accelerating anthropogenetic environmental change is globally impacting the distribution of species resulting in altered eco evolutionary trajectories with the potential to cause severe disruption to ecosystem stability and human health ameliorating impacts of biotic turnover requires management of species as well as their interactions therefore it is crucial to understand how past environmental change influenced the evolutionary history of species and regional assemblages the great plains presents a novel system for diagnosing both evolutionary histories and community assembly of north america mammals by encompassing the middle third of north america the great plains supports mammal faunas from both western and eastern communities which meet at the peripheries of their ranges providing insight towards the ecological history of multiple communities through evolutionary time with a lack of physical barriers and geographic complexity it is an unexplored but ideal region for understanding evolutionary and ecological histories driven almost solely by environmental change i couple comparative phylogeography with ecological niche models to investigate the evolutionary history of ten small mammal species that belong to eastern central and western assemblages co distributed across the great plains i assess 1 intraspecific diversification across the great plains 2 congruence of species histories considering regional origins and 3 the location of regional biodiversity hotspots for both historic and emerging eco evolutionary interactions bayesian phylogenies were estimated from mitochondrial dna and last glacial maximum lgm niche models were estimated using bioclimatic layers given the diverse number of biogeographic contact zones associated with the great plains suture zone i hypothesized species will possess a shared history across the great plains regardless of regional and ecological associations intra specific phylogeographic breaks based on current distributions showed broad scale clustering in the southern great plains for eastern central and western species lgm niche models showed that great plains small mammals with different regional origins occupied both southeast and southwest refugia but with a region of contact between assemblages maintained in the southern great plains the combined evidence strongly suggests the southern great plains is a hotspot for both diversification within species and long term interactions among distinct communities and points towards repeatable environmental processes across the great plains suture zone reciprocally driving diversification and assembly through time,2022,0.922
"Modeling the potential distribution of different types of Dendrocalamus sinicus, the strongest woody bamboo in the world, with MaxEnt model",climate change will significantly affect the distribution area of species through establishing distribution model we can simulate the current and future potential distribution range and provide reference for the introduction and cultivation planning of rare or economic plants dendrocalamus sinicus endemic to yunnan province of china is the strongest woody bamboo in the world in the present study the maxent model was performed to simulate the distribution of different types of d sinicus in china and neighboring countries or regions the results suggested that the suitable distribution range of â œstraight typeâ the main type for cultivation and utilization was 8â â 30â n and 73â â 122â e under the current climate conditions while the potential distribution range of â œbending typeâ was 6â â 31â n and 79â â 109â e the two most key climate variables associated with distribution of â œstraight typeâ were â œtemperature annual rangeâ with 36 6 contribution rate and â œtemperature seasonalityâ 32 4 while â œisothermalityâ 47 8 and â œprecipitation of driest monthâ 24 8 for â œbending typeâ under different climate change scenarios ssp1 2 6 ssp5 8 5 and periods 2050 2090 the potential distribution area of the â œstraight typeâ were apparently different indicating that the distribution area of d sinicus will be affected significantly by climate changes in the future our findings would be not only beneficial to understanding limiting factors for natural distribution of d sinicus but also helpful for further germplasm conservation introduction and cultivation planning of this rare woody bamboo,2022,0.193
The evolution and diversification of oakleaf butterflies,oakleaf butterflies in the genus kallima have a polymorphic wing phenotype enabling these insects to masquerade as dead leaves this iconic example of protective resemblance provides an interesting evolutionary paradigm that can be employed to study biodiversity we integrated multi omic data analyses and functional validation to infer the evolutionary history of kallima species and investigate the genetic basis of their variable leaf wing patterns we find that kallima butterflies diversified in the eastern himalayas and dispersed to east and southeast asia moreover we find that leaf wing polymorphism is controlled by the wing patterning gene cortex which has been maintained in kallima by long term balancing selection our results provide macroevolutionary and microevolutionary insights into a model species originating from a mountain ecosystem,2022,0.343
Revision of Salvinia pseudoformosa Type Specimen Ages,salvinia pseudoformosa has been established as a miocene species based mainly on specimens collected from the sasakizawa river numata hokkaido japan however both eocene and miocene sediments are distributed within this area in this study we conducted geological surveys along the sasakizawa river to identify the stratigraphic horizon bearing s pseudoformosa and found that s pseudoformosa occurs from the middle eocene itarakaomappu formation of the uryu group we also reexamined syntypes of this species and concluded that only those from the sasakizawa river can be identified as s pseudoformosa with certainty therefore we designated a syntype from the sasakizawa river as the lectotype although we could not specify the exact localities of the lectotype and remaining syntypes from the sasakizawa river lithological characters of the slabs containing these specimens indicate their occurrence from the uryu group salvinia pseudoformosa has been recorded from the middle miocene in japan and korea but the venation patterns of these specimens differ from those of s pseudoformosa,2022,0.686
"A review of host plants for the tortricid tribe Grapholitini, with a synopsis of host utilization by genus (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)",a database of larval host plants for the tortricid tribe grapholitini lepidoptera tortricidae oleâ threutinae is presented and larval hosts are summarized for each genus food plants have been reported for over 400 of the approximately 1 644 described species of grapholitini of the 81 genera currently asâ signed to the tribe at least one larval host has been reported for 51 ninety seven different plant families have been reported at least once for a species of grapholitini with the greatest number of grapholitines recorded from fabaceae 168 species followed by fagaceae 43 species pinaceae 43 sapindaceae 36 rosaceae 30 asteraceae 30 euphorbiaceae 15 rutaceae 12 annonaceae 12 salicaceae 11 and cupressaceae 11 thirty two genera appear to be restricted or nearly so to specific host families but many of these are either monotypic or are represented by exceedingly few records extraordinarily entomophagy is well documented in three genera andrioplecta coccothera and parapammene two new combinations are provisionally proposed based on hosts and male genitalia andrioplecta magnetica meyrick 1928 new combination and a theristis meyrick 1912 new combination both of which are currently assigned to â œgrapholitini unplaced species â,2022,0.757
Identification and misidentifications in the genus Inurous (Lepidoptera: Geometridae) with description of a new species,the article considers the history of descriptions and misidentifications in the genus inurois butler 1879 lepidoptera geometridae a catalogue of species of the genus with notes a key to species from i punctigera and i tenuis species group by the wing pattern and by the male genitalia are given based on morphological and genetic data a new species inurois pseudopunctigera sp n is described from the continental east asia,2022,0.655
"Natural history of Cassida sphaerula Boheman, 1854 (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Cassidinae: Cassidini) on Arctotheca prostrata (Salisb.) Britten (Asteraceae …",the tortoise beetle cassida sphaerula boheman 1854 coleoptera chrysomelidae cassidinae cassidini is endemic to south africa its endemic host arctotheca prostrata salisb britten asteraceae has been introduced in other countries where it is becoming invasive cassida sphaerula could provide a potential biocontrol of arctotheca weeds as it spends the entire life cycle on this host an intensive field study with rearing photography and short films of c sphaerula was conducted in its native habitat to document the life cycle a checklist of cassidinae genera in south africa along with 19 new host records for cassidini species in south africa are presented oothecae are simple with few laminate membranes enclosing fewer than five eggs there are five larval instars larvae and adults feed by making a series of cuts in the ventral cuticle forming an arc and they consume the mesophyll as the cuticle is rolled to one side this creates many ventral craters thickened on one margin with the rolled cuticle these ventral craters correspond to â windowsâ in the dorsal leaf surface where the dorsal cuticle is left intact this unusual feeding pattern is known in three casâ sida species all in south africa like many tortoise beetles instar i initiates a feces only shield on its paired caudal processes urogomophi this construction is retained along with exuviae by subsequent instars the shield construction was studied by film and dissections this revealed that the columnar or pyramidal shield in this species has an exterior of dry or moist feces that obscures the central nested stack of exuviae each exuviae compressed onto the caudal processes pupae may retain the entire larval shield of exuviae and feces or only the 5th instar exuviae this behavioral flexibility in pupal shield retention is novel for tortoise beetles behaviors of c sphaerula are discussed in the context of phylogenetic characters that can give evoluâ tionary insights into the genus tribe and subfamily,2022,0.789
"Two new magnoliid (Annonaceae, Lauraceae) tree species from Manabí, western Ecuador",western ecuador harbours high plant diversity and endemism the region of manabã has known intense deforestation over the last decades but lowland rain forests persist in a network of small forest fragment patches here we describe two new magnoliid tree species from a small privately owned forest fragment known as la esperanza reserve in the el carmen canton manabã aniba ecuadorica lauraceae and guatteria esperanzae annonaceae for both species a detailed morphological description a preliminary conservation status following iucn criteria distribution maps and high quality photographs are provided this represents the second species of aniba known to occur in western ecuador while there are 14 species of guatteria documented for ecuador west of the andes aniba ecuadorica is only known from two localities and has a preliminary iucn conservation status of critically endangered while guatteria esperanzae is known from six localities and is suggested to be endangered finally we provide a quick overview of guatteria species in western ecuador with a key to the species in the region the description of these two new tree species underlines the important need of prospection and conservation of the remnant forests in the manabã region of western ecuador we also stress the importance of privately owned forest fragments for biodiversity conservation,2022,0.914
Organic farming and moderate tillage change the dominance and spatial structure of soil Collembola communities but have little effects on bulk abundance and species richness,organic farming technologies are increasingly being used to reduce environmental pollution and grow environmentally friendly products an integrated approach to assessing the effectiveness of these technologies requires studying the reaction of various components of agroecosystems including soil fauna collembola springtails are among the most abundant soil arthropods that regulate nutrient cycling in crop fields however the effects of different management types on collembola communities are context dependent and spatial organization of these communities remains unexplored here we studied winter wheat fields in european russia using a large spatial sampling including 486 samples which were arranged in a nested fractal pattern and grouped into 18 meter plots across six agricultural fields we compared fields with organic farming no mineral fertilizer and pesticide applications moderate tillage with conventional farming ones to account for spatial configuration of the sampling design we applied generalized linear mixed effects models the organic farming with moderate tillage changed the structure of collembola communities by reducing the effect of species over domination however the total abundance and species richness of collembola was only little and often non significantly higher under organic than in under the conventional management type the applied multiscale approach revealed larger spatial aggregations in collembola communities in organic than in conventional management overall we showed that the effect of organic farming technologies changes taxonomic and spatial structures of collembola communities rather their bulk characteristics such as density and abundance functional consequences of these changes are yet to be discovered,2022,0.198
Predicting habitat suitability and niche dynamics of Dactylorhiza hatagirea and Rheum webbianum in the Himalaya under projected climate change,in the era of anthropocene global warming tends to alter the distribution range of the plant species highly fragile to such changes are the species that are endemic inhabit higher elevations and show narrow distribution ranges predicting and plotting the appropriate suitable habitats and keeping knowledge of how climate change will affect future distribution become imperative for designing effective conservation strategies in the current study we have used biomod ensemble forecasting to study the current and predict the future potential distribution of dactylorhiza hatagirea and rheum webbianum and describe their niche dynamics in himalayan biodiversity hotspots under climate change scenarios using ecospat r package results reveal sufficient internal evaluation metrics with area under curve auc and true skill statistic tss values greater than 0 8 i e 0 93 and 0 98 and 0 82 and 0 90 for d hatageria and r webbianum respectively which signifies robustness of the model among different bioclimatic variables bio 1 bio 3 bio 8 bio 14 and bio 15 were the most influential showing greater impact on the potential distribution of these plant species range change analysis showed that both the studied species will show significant contraction of their suitable habitats under future climatic scenarios representative concentration pathway rcp 8 5 for the year 2070 indicate that the suitable habitats could be reduced by about 51 41 and 70 57 for d hatagirea and r webbianum respectively the results of the niche comparisons between the current and future climatic scenarios showed moderate level of niche overlap for all the pairs with d hatageria showing 61 overlap for current vs rcp4 5 2050 and r webbianum reflects 68 overlap for current vs rcp4 5 2050 furthermore the pca analysis revealed that climatic conditions for both the species vary significantly between current and future scenarios the similarity and equivalence test showed that the niche between present and future climate change scenarios is comparable but not identical from the current study we concluded that the influence of climate change on the habitat distribution of these plant species in the himalayan biodiversity hotspots can be considered very severe drastic reduction in overall habitat suitability poses a high risk of species extinction and thereby threatens to alter the functions and services of these fragile ecosystems present results can be used by conservationists for mitigating the biodiversity decline and exploring undocumented populations on one hand and by policymakers in implementing the policy of conservation of species by launching species recovery programmes in future on the other the outcomes of this study can contribute substantially to understand the consequences of climate change in the himalayan biodiversity hotspots,2022,0.911
Clay and climatic variability explain the global potential distribution of Juniperus phoenicea toward restoration planning,juniperus phoenicea is a medicinal conifer tree species distributed mainly in the mediterranean region and it is iucn red listed species locally threatened due to arid conditions and seed over collection for medicinal purposes particularly in the east mediterranean region several studies have addressed the potential distribution of j phoenicea using bioclimatic and topographic variables at a local or global scale but little is known about the role of soil and human influences as potential drivers therefore our objectives were to determine the most influential predictor factors and their relative importance that might be limiting the regeneration of j phoenicea in addition identifying the most suitable areas which could be assumed as priority conservation areas we used ensemble models for species distribution modelling our findings revealed that aridity temperature seasonality and clay content are the most important factors limiting the potential distribution of j phoenicea potentially suitable areas of the output maps in which j phoenicea populations degraded could be assumed as decision support tool reforestation planning other suitable areas where there was no previous tree cover are a promising tool for afforestation and conservation planning finally conservation actions are needed for natural habitats particularly in the arid and semi arid regions which are highly threatened by global warming,2022,0.613
Sclerochronological records of environmental variability and bivalve growth in the Pacific Arctic,the pacific arctic region has experienced and is projected to continue experiencing rapid climate change large uncertainties exist in our understanding of the impact these physical changes have on the regionâ s ecology this is in part due to the lack of long term data here we investigate bivalve mollusc growth increment width chronologies sclerochronologies to develop a long term biological data series in an arctic species and address the hypothesis that benthic production in the pacific arctic region is in decline with implications for predators e g walrus whales seals and sea ducks growth increments formed in the shells of two bivalve mollusc species astarte borealis and liocyma fluctuosa were examined using conventional sclerochronological techniques the a borealis and l fluctuosa samples exhibited measured longevities of 148 and 18 years respectively in the coastal waters of alaskaâ s chukchi sea dendrochronology crossdating techniques facilitated the development of two robust expressed population signal 0 85 independent growth increment width chronologies these chronologies provide evidence of the growth conditions through time for each species 1985â 2015 for a borealis and 1997â 2014 for l fluctuosa linear regression analyses identified that both species grew more rapidly in years with warmer sea surface temperature and lower sea ice concentration the results provide evidence that benthic ecosystems are benefiting from the warmer conditions and reduced sea ice that have accompanied recent arctic climate trends this result is encouraging for benthic predators in the eastern chukchi sea as it alleviates the concern that their benthic prey has already become food limited by weakened pelagic benthic coupling more broadly this initial a borealis chronology is among the longest biological data series for any arctic species and highlights the feasibility of multicentennial biological data for the arctic,2022,0.642
A simple and extensible framework to identify key areas for the conservation of single vulnerable freshwater species,one of the main challenges in conservation biogeography of freshwater fishes is the improvement of conservation planning strategies nonetheless the implementation of such strategies has lagged in freshwater systems limiting their protection to the priorities of land organisms since the repercussions and relative importance for conservation across freshwater species can vary tremendously and the application of such strategies requires information on multiple species it is valuable to consider extensible and straightforward approaches that can be applied to single species here we use a freshwater fish species native to the colombian andes brycon henni as a model to implement a methodology for spatial conservation prioritization considering four criteria i representativeness protection of species distribution ii viability maximizing probability of success iii complementarity recognition of the currently protected area network and iv connectivity promoting connectivity amongst protected areas using the proposed methodology based on the potential distribution of b henni and hydrographic sub basins as planning units we recommend the protection of nine sub basins climatically suitable for the species and with strategic river corridors that would promote the connection amongst basins and the currently protected areas this methodological proposal can contribute to the current strategy design implemented by the national system of protected areas in colombia to conserve or recover ecosystems and fragmented natural habitats providing design options that meet ecological and socioeconomic objectives lastly we consider that the methodology proposed here could be used with a more significant number of species of interest and implemented on a regional and global scale,2022,0.714
"In Vitro Antioxidant, Cytotoxic, Thrombolytic Activities and Phytochemical Evaluation of Methanol Extract of the Ampelocissus Barbata (Wall.) Leaves",context oxidative stress and pertaining counterbalance mechanism are actively working in the living organisms the overproduction of reactive oxygen species ros in the ongoing equipoising process requires to be compensated by strong antioxidants plants as a rich source of antioxidants not only reduce oxidative stress but also possess cytotoxic thrombolytic and phytochemical potentials aims to find out the antioxidant cytotoxic thrombolytic and phytochemical capabilities of the methanolic extracts of ampelocissus barbata wall leaves methods and material assessment of the in vitro antioxidant activity of extract was carried out using dpph radical scavenging assay determination of reducing power capacity and total phenolic content the thrombolytic activity was assessed by disintegration of clot and prospective phytochemical activities were by standard qualitative analysis such as mayerâ s dragendroffâ s wagnerâ s and hagerâ s reagent test for alkaloids libermann burchared and salkowski reagent tests for steroid and terpenoids molish reagent benedictâ s reagent fehlingâ s solution a amp b reagent test for carbohydrates ferric chloride 5 solution potassium dichromate 10 solution tests for tannins shinoda test and alkaline reagent test for flavonoids froth tests amp haemolysis test for saponins statistical analysis used the statistical analysis was carried out using graphpad prism and microsoft excel results appreciable dpph radical scavenging activity of the extract was observed with the ic50 value of 107 47â 1 46 âµg ml a significant correlation was found between the standard ascorbic acid aa and the plant extracts at the pë 0 05 for the reducing power assay where the activity increased with the concentration of the extracts and the highest absorbance value was 3 025â 0 15 and 1 826â 0 006 for the aa and the extracts respectively the plant also accommodates a considerable amount of polyphenols reflected in the value of gallic acid equivalent 277 397â 0 419 mg ml finally the percentage of clot lysis for the thrombolytic activity was revealed to be 7 031â 0 697 35 297â 1 307 and 75 083â 0 599 for the water negative control extract and the standard streptokinase respectively the study revealed the presence of phytochemicals namely alkaloids flavonoids tannins and glycosides conclusions the study disclosed the promising in vitro activity of the plant which necessitates the further analysis for the isolation and evaluation of the active principles,2022,0.142
Mapping the Indian crested porcupine across Iraq: the benefits of species distribution modelling when species data are scarce,species distribution modelling sdm is a key technique used to explore the spatial distribution and habitat suitability of a population species or community sdm is particularly advantageous when species data are scarce and extrapolation into un surveyed potentially inaccessible areas is necessary iraq is one such place where due to the ongoing conflict and political situation species data are limited and there is neglect of or even sometimes active destruction of biodiversity and ecological knowledge the indian crested porcupine hystrix indica is a widely distributed mammal that despite its overall global conservation status of least concern is thought to be heavily threatened by overharvesting in the middle east including iraq nevertheless the lack of data and research in this geographical area limits the conservation of this potentially declining species we use occurrence records collected from previous literature and expert observations in the field to fit distribution models and map the current distribution of the indian crested porcupine with the aim of addressing the knowledge gap about this species in iraq we also examine the extrapolation potential of the models across iraq using multivariate environmental similarity surfaces mess the indian crested porcupine distribution is strongly influenced by soil type and slope with the most suitable areas towards the north east of iraq as well as a small vegetated area in the south east and along the banks of the euphrates and tigris rivers mess maps suggest that the extrapolation ability of the sdms appears high with high similarity and few novel environments across iraq providing extra confidence in our distribution predictions this study provides the most current overview and new baseline of the current indian crested porcupine distribution across iraq our study highlights the benefits of using sdm to address ecological research questions in areas such as iraq where species data and knowledge are sparse,2022,0.934
Global convergence of dominance and neglect in flying insect diversity,most of arthropod biodiversity is unknown to science for this reason it has been unclear whether insect communities around the world are dominated by the same or different taxa this question can be answered through standardized sampling of biodiversity followed by estimation of species diversity and community composition with dna sequences this approach is here applied to flying insects sampled by 39 malaise traps placed in five biogeographic regions eight countries and numerous habitats 220 000 specimens belonging to 25 000 species in 463 families unexpectedly we find that 20 insect families account for 50 of local species diversity regardless of continent climatic region and habitat type these consistent differences in family level dominance explain two thirds of variation in community composition despite massive levels of species turnover with most species 97 in the top 20 families encountered at a single site only alarmingly the same families that dominate global insect diversity also suffer from extreme taxonomic neglect with little signs of increasing activities in recent years tackling the biodiversity of these dark taxa thereby emerges as an urgent priority because the arthropod groups comprising most of the global flying insect diversity are particularly poorly known,2022,0.796
Numerical modeling of tsunami‐generated acoustic‐gravity waves in mesopause airglow,numerical simulations of mesopause airglow ma fluctuations induced by tsunamiâ generated acoustic and gravity waves tagws are performed simulated tsunamis over realistic bathymetry are used to excite atmospheric waves at the surface level of a threeâ dimensional nonlinear and compressible neutral atmospheric model the model incorporates the dynamics and chemistry of hydroxyl oh 3 1 ma under nighttime assumptions we report case study results of eight recent large tsunami events and demonstrate that tagwâ induced ma fluctuations are readily detectable with modern groundâ and spaceâ based imagers and may provide quantitative insight the amplitudes of ma fluctuations reflect the evolution of ocean surface displacements enhancing or decreasing accordingly and revealing the tsunamiâ s lobes and local wave focusing the results suggest that ma observations have potential to supplement earlyâ warning systems providing information on spatial and temporal evolution of tsunami waves of ∠10 centimeters and higher for the cases shown they may find applications in tsunami tracking over large open ocean areas as well as in the investigation or reconstruction of tsunami source characteristics,2022,0.079
"Berries as a case study for crop wild relative conservation, use, and public engagement in Canada",societal impact statement plant biodiversity is fundamental to the future of food security and agriculture berries are the most economically important fruit crops in canada within this article we explore the nutritional cultural and botanical importance of berries including crop wild relatives plant species that are closely related to domesticated crops and plants that are significant to indigenous peoples using berries as a case study we explore opportunities for the conservation use and public engagement of crop wild relatives our objective is to lay the groundwork for future collaborative efforts across these diverse plants summary conservation of plant biodiversity in particular crop wild relatives including those tended and cultivated by indigenous peoples is critical to food security and agriculture building on the 2019 road map for crop wild relatives we examine berries as a case study for crop wild relative conservation use and public engagement we focus on berries due not only to their economic cultural and nutritional importance but also because they are consumed fresh providing a unique opportunity for individuals and communities to connect with plants we outline health benefits geographic distribution and species at risk for canadian berries we describe practices strategies and approaches used by indigenous peoples to steward berries and emphasize the importance of traditional knowledge we highlight opportunities for in situ and ex situ berry conservation and use of berries in plant breeding and indigenous foodways our aim is to lay the groundwork for future collaborative efforts in these areas and to showcase berries as a useful case study for conservation of food plant biodiversity and public engagement,2022,0.68
Exploring spatial nonstationarity for four mammal species reveals regional variation in environmental relationships,broadâ scale ecological research on species distributions commonly presumes that the correlative relationships discovered are stationary over space this is an assumption of most species distribution models sdms that combine observations of species occurrence with environmental characteristics to understand current ecological correlates and to predict distributions based on those relationships however ecological relationships may vary spatially because of changes in the environment i e resource availability or the organism itself i e local adaptation discovering this withinâ species variation typically requires dense datasets over large geographic areas which are now being provided by the recent proliferation of openâ access biodiversity occurrence records using nearly 4000 sampling locations from an openâ access stateâ wide cameraâ trapping project we explore the spaceâ varying effects of covariates on the distribution of four mammal species at two scales regionâ specific and fine resolution with the latter estimated using spatially varying coefficients svc models to understand the scale of spatial variation in ecological relationships among the four species tested the ecological relationships for two were best explained with the regional models equivocal results for one species while the svc model had superior fit and predictive performance for the final species whiteâ tailed deer odocoileus virginianus spatial nonstationarity was more common in relationships with landscape composition characteristics such as housing density than in landscape configuration metrics such as patch richness density one of the most appealing results of an svc approach is not only the improved predictions across large landscapes but also understanding how animals are responding to the environment differently at the management unit level for example we found that deer s spatially varying relationship with forest cover was best explained by an interactive effect of deer management units i e differences in deer populations and predator pressure these findings lead to a new hypothesis about how deer may be differentially using forested environments across space and could be a promising area of future research given sufficient data accounting for nonstationarity in sdms can show largeâ scale ecological patterns while also detecting local level changes in animal ecology in areas small enough that management or protection can be readily implemented,2022,0.933
Most countries are vulnerable to novel pest invasions and under‐report the diversity of tree pests,aim tree pests have major impacts in both natural and agricultural systems despite their ecological and economic importance it is likely that pests go unreported in many regions using a global dataset of tree pests and multiple metrics of pest diversity standardized for host availability we describe the biogeography of under reporting and reveal potential for future pest invasions location global time period contemporary major taxa studied pathogens insect pests and native tree hosts methods we assembled the global distributions of 3 828 tree pests and 2 689 host tree species across 226 countries and calculated two metrics of pest diversity that account for host availability pest saturation i e the proportion of the known pests of native host trees present with countries and pest deficit the number of known pests of native trees that have not yet been reported in countries we used bayesian regression models to identify how sampling socio economic variables climate and ecological drivers affect estimates of pest saturation and deficit results we show that most countries are reported to have fewer than 50 of the pests for which native hosts are availableâ corresponding to hundreds of additional pest species per country pest saturation was lowest in africa and central asia while pest deficit was highest in eastern europe accounting for research output pest saturation was higher in warmer and wetter countries while pest deficit was highest in countries with greater host phylogenetic diversity low saturation and high deficit even in well documented countries suggest a considerable potential for pest range expansion if barriers to dispersal are lowered main conclusions our findings indicate that although all countries could potentially host additional pests countries with low research output and high host diversity should be prioritized for future pest discovery and surveillance to ensure timely detection and implementation of pest mitigation strategies,2022,0.417
Reptile richness and genetic divergence patterns were shaped by current and past climate in and around the Irano‐Anatolian global biodiversity hotspot: Implications for conservation,aim the irano anatolian biodiversity hotspot is among the least known biodiversity hotspots on earth in this study we aim to map the richness and genetic divergence of lizards in the biodiversity hotspot and its surrounding areas and identify the most important determinants of the richness and genetic divergence patterns location iran and turkey irano anatolian biodiversity hotspot methods here we mapped the distribution of 211 lizard species in iran and turkey using existing occurrence data and generated the first genetic divergence pattern map of the lizard species in the two countries to identify areas of high species diversity and genetic divergence in the irano anatolian biodiversity hotspot we also identified determinants of lizard richness and genetic divergence patterns results results showed that the zagros mountains central iranian plateau and the northern persian gulf have the highest lizard richness the zagros mountains central iranian plateau the northern persian gulf and the regions around the lut desert and jazmourian plain have the highest total genetic divergence in iran alborz and kopet dag mountains and south western parts of turkey have the highest average genetic divergence the annual temperature was the most important predictor of lizard richness and temperature change velocity was the most influential determinant of genetic divergence pattern much to our surprise species diversity and most areas with high genetic divergence are located outside of irano anatolian biodiversity hotspot main conclusions this study showed that lizard richness and genetic divergence patterns are associated with current and past climate in particular this study highlights the legacy of past climate changes on lizard genetic divergence distribution patterns we showed that most of the species rich and genetically diverse regions are located outside of the biodiversity hotspot so conservation efforts that are concentrated inside the biodiversity hotspot may not benefit lizard biodiversity conservation thus future studies and conservation programs on the biodiversity hotspot should also consider its surrounding areas,2022,0.798
The role of E. maritimum (L.) in the dune pollination network of the Balearic Islands,eryngium maritimum l apiaceae is a geophyte that inhabits in the dunes of the mediterranean and atlantic although it is a highly entomophilous species there is little literature on its pollinator assemblage the aim of this study is to analyze the role played by e maritimum in the dune pollination network of the balearic islands where there is an intense anthropogenic impact in its habitat for this purpose two populations located in the north and south of mallorca were chosen in which diurnal transects were carried out to observe and capture pollinators on 15 plant species during the anthesis period of e maritimum the flowering period of 10 plant species flowering at the same period than e maritimum was analyzed to identify periods of competition a total of 71 pollinator species were found belonging to 30 different families eryngium maritimum is a strongly generalist species with a total of 45 pollinator species two new species odice blandula and leucospis gigas were found for the first time in mallorca in terms of pollinators teucrium dunense and helichrysum stoechas are the most similar species to e maritimum however analysis of phenology suggests that these three species have been able to decouple their blooms to avoid competition the present study shows that e maritimum plays an important role in the dune pollination network being its anthesis located at the end of the dune flowering season when there are no functionally similar species in flower,2022,0.987
Influence of different data cleaning solutions of point‐occurrence records on downstream macroecological diversity models,digital pointâ occurrence records from the global biodiversity information facility gbif and other data providers enable a wide range of research in macroecology and biogeography however data errors may hamper immediate use manual data cleaning is timeâ consuming and often unfeasible given that the databases may contain thousands or millions of records automated data cleaning pipelines are therefore of high importance taking north american ephedra as a model we examined how different data cleaning pipelines using e g the gbif web application and four different r packages affect downstream species distribution models sdms we also assessed how data differed from expert data from 13 889 north american ephedra observations in gbif the pipelines removed 31 7 to 62 7 false positives invalid coordinates and duplicates leading to datasets between 9484 gbif application and 5196 records manualâ guided filtering the expert data consisted of 704 records comparable to data from field studies although differences in the absolute numbers of records were relatively large species richness models based on stacked sdms sâ sdm from pipeline and expert data were strongly correlated mean pearson s r across the pipelines 9986 vs the expert data 9173 our results suggest that all r packageâ based pipelines reliably identified invalid coordinates in contrast the gbifâ filtered data still contained both spatial and taxonomic errors major drawbacks emerge from the fact that no pipeline fully discovered misidentified specimens without the assistance of taxonomic expert knowledge we conclude that applicationâ filtered gbif data will still need additional review to achieve higher spatial data quality achieving highâ quality taxonomic data will require extra effort probably by thoroughly analyzing the data for misidentified taxa supported by experts,2022,0.163
Integrating Global Citizen Science Platforms to Enable Next-Generation Surveillance of Invasive and Vector Mosquitoes,mosquito borne diseases continue to ravage humankind with 700 million infections and nearly one million deaths every year yet only a small percentage of the 3500 mosquito species transmit diseases necessitating both extensive surveillance and precise identification unfortunately such efforts are costly time consuming and require entomological expertise as envisioned by the global mosquito alert consortium citizen science can provide a scalable solution however disparate data standards across existing platforms have thus far precluded truly global integration here utilizing open geospatial consortium standards we harmonized four data streams from three established mobile appsâ mosquito alert inaturalist and globe observerâ s mosquito habitat mapper and land coverâ to facilitate interoperability and utility for researchers mosquito control personnel and policymakers we also launched coordinated media campaigns that generated unprecedented numbers and types of observations including successfully capturing the first images of targeted invasive and vector species additionally we leveraged pooled image data to develop a toolset of artificial intelligence algorithms for future deployment in taxonomic and anatomical identification ultimately by harnessing the combined powers of citizen science and artificial intelligence we establish a next generation surveillance framework to serve as a united front to combat the ongoing threat of mosquito borne diseases worldwide,2022,0.368
Towards monitoring of a cricket production using instance segmentation,a growing world population requires sufficient food to sustain itself therefore increasingly more resources are required to produce the food insects are a viable food and feed alternative since their production requires only a fraction of the resources that conventional livestock needs for the efficient production of insects automation technology is needed an automatic monitoring of the insectsâ growth ensures stable production processes and a high product quality the use of a camera with image processing using neural networks makes it possible to detect insects measure their features such as shape and colour and enables to derive their age size and health in this paper instance segmentation using mask scoring regional convolutional neural network mask scoring r cnn shows good results in detecting house crickets acheta domesticus a dataset is created consisting of six images showing 1 022 insect instances of a real world cricket production facility to train and test the algorithm furthermore image augmentation by cropping flipping and rotating is applied to the set to solve the problem of limited data by combining the augmentations 288 different trainings are compared to find the best augmentation strategy the evaluation of the algorithm uses two variations of the f1 score one variation to estimate the capabilities of producing qualitative segmentation masks and another to estimate the detection capabilities for the estimation of the detection capabilities a rule termed â centre over ground truthâ is developed the results show that the presented method is suitable for monitoring a cricket production facility with a recall of 76 6 and a precision of 96 2,2022,0.095
"Endemic plants of Java Island, Indonesia: a dataset",abstractbackgroundjava is the most populous island in the world this high population and the extensive economic activities have significantly reduced the forest areas of the island and have greatly increased the pressure on its plant diversity compared to those with a wide distribution endemic plants with a narrow geographic range are more vulnerable to anthropogenic threats and environmental changes as species lists are essential for knowledge of species diversity in areas with strong anthropogenic pressure here we present a dataset of endemic plants of java island the initial species list was manually extracted from the plant of the world online powo each species on the list was then confirmed for its endemism by checking its current distribution using peer reviewed publications online plant databases and herbarium specimen images stored on the global biodiversity information facility gbif the dataset contains 652 species in 279 genera and 85 families the family with the highest number of endemic species is orchidaceae 142 species followed by rubiaceae 57 species acanthaceae 40 species apocynaceae 35 species and lauraceae 29 species the growth form of the species is mostly trees 22 6 followed by herbs 19 2 epiphytes 16 shrubs 12 4 vines 11 and geophytes 9 4 most of the species 89 7 have not yet been assessed for their conservation status according to the iucn red list categories and criteria there are only 55 species 8 3 that have been conserved within ex situ collections furthermore most of the species 79 8 are not listed on the cites appendices and there are only four species 0 6 protected by national law new informationour contribution provides the first online list of accepted scientific names of javan endemic plants species together with all their synonyms new to the dataset are i provision of local names of the species if available ii the classification of species under eleven growth forms tree shrub herb annual graminoid geophyte fern vines hydrophyte parasite and epiphyte iii assignation of the extinction risk of species according to the iucn red list iv ex situ collection status of species and information on the protection status of the species according to v cites and vi the national law of indonesia,2022,1
Global extinction risk reassessment of the threatened tree Vatica venulosa (Dipterocarpaceae),vatica venulosa is one of the dipterocarpaceae species that is threatened with extinction distributed in peninsular malaysia sumatra and borneo the tree is classified as critically endangered by iucn red list international union for conservation of nature based on an assessment conducted in 1998 this assessment however was only based on the populations in sumatra and peninsular malaysia therefore this study aims to update the global conservation status of v venulosa using all the occurrence records across the speciesâ natural distribution reduction analysis and geographic range of the species were calculated based on the occurrence data stored in the global biodiversity information facility and scientific publications following iucn red list categories and criteria the category vulnerable vu a4c was proposed as the new global conservation status of the species under this category v venulosa is facing a high risk of extinction in the wild therefore comprehensive conservation action is needed to prevent it from extinction,2022,0.704
More than half of data deficient species predicted to be threatened by extinction,the iucn red list of threatened species is essential for practical and theoretical efforts to protect biodiversity however species classified as â œdata deficientâ dd regularly mislead practitioners due to their uncertain extinction risk here we present machine learning derived probabilities of being threatened by extinction for 7699 dd species comprising 17 of the entire iucn spatial datasets our predictions suggest that dd species as a group may in fact be more threatened than data sufficient species we found that 85 of dd amphibians are likely to be threatened by extinction as well as more than half of dd species in many other taxonomic groups such as mammals and reptiles consequently our predictions indicate that amongst others the conservation relevance of biodiversity hotspots in south america may be boosted by up to 20 if dd species were acknowledged the predicted probabilities for dd species are highly variable across taxa and regions implying current red list derived indices and priorities may be biased data deficient species are more likely to be at extinction risk than previously thought across multiple taxonomic groups,2022,0.974
Insights into phylogenetic divergence of Dalbergia (Leguminosae: Dalbergiae) from Mexico and Central America,the pantropical genus dalbergia includes more than 250 species phylogenetic studies of the group are scarce and have only included two or three species distributed in mexico we obtained herbarium samples of mexican central american and south american species sourced from mexu in addition sequences of genbank accessions were used to complement the study using internal transcribed spacer its the matk and rbcl sequences from 384 accessions comprising species from america asia and africa were sampled to evaluate phylogenetic relationships of mexican species and infrageneric classifications based on morphological data phylogenetic analyses suggest that the genus dalbergia is monophyletic and originated in south america the species distributed in mexico are not a monophyletic clade but are divided into four clades with affinities to south american and asian species clades there is no correlation between geography and large scale phylogeny the estimated ages of the mexican and central american clades ranged from 11 32 ma dalbergia granadillo clade to 1 88 ma dalbergia ecastaphyllum clade multiple long distance dispersal events should be used to explain the current genus distribution,2022,0.947
"Diversity, distribution and conservation of land mammals in Mauritania, North-West Africa",detailed knowledge about biodiversity distribution is critical for monitoring the biological effects of global change processes biodiversity knowledge gaps hamper the monitoring of conservation trends and they are especially evident in the desert biome mauritania constitutes a remarkable example on how remoteness and regional insecurity affect current knowledge gaps mammals remain one of the least studied groups in this country without a concerted species checklist the mapping of regions concentrating mammal diversity or a national assessment of their conservation status this work assessed the diversity distribution and conservation of land mammals in mauritania a total of 6 718 published and original observations were assembled in a spatial database and used to update the occurrence status distribution area and conservation status the updated taxonomic list comprises 107 species including 93 extant 12 regionally extinct and 2 extinct in the wild mapping of species distributions allowed locating concentrations of extant mammal species richness in coastal areas along the senegal river valley and in mountain plateaus recent regional extinction of large sized artiodactyla and carnivora has been very high 11 extinct species from the extant mammals 11 are threatened including flagship species e g addax nasomaculatus and panthera pardus species richness is poorly represented by the current protected areas despite the strong advances made 23 of species categorise as data deficient persisting systematics and distribution uncertainties require further research field surveys in currently unexplored areas northern and south eastern regions are urgently needed to increase knowledge about threatened mammals the long term conservation of land mammals in mauritania is embedded in a complex web of socioeconomic and environmental factors that call for collaborative action and investment in sustainable human development the current work sets the baseline for the future development of detailed research studies and to address the general challenges faced by mammals and biodiversity in the country,2022,0.927
AquaDesign: A tool to assist aquaculture production design based on abiotic requirements of animal species,farming new species and promoting polyculture can enhance aquaculture sustainability this implies to define the rearing conditions that meet the ecological requirements of a target species and or to assess if different species can live in the same farming environment however there is a large number of rearing conditions and or taxon combinations that can be considered in order to minimise cumbersome and expensive empirical trials to explore all possibilities we introduce a tool aquadesign it is based on a r script and package which help to determine farming conditions that are most likely suitable for species through in silico assessment we estimate farming conditions potentially suitable for an aquatic organism by considering the species niche we define the species n dimensional niche hypervolume using a correlative approach in which the species niche is estimated by relating distribution data to environmental conditions required input datasets are mined from several public databases the assistant tool allows users to highlight i abiotic conditions that are most likely suitable for species and ii combinations of species potentially able to live in the same abiotic environment moreover it offers the possibility to assess if a particular set of abiotic conditions or a given farming location is potentially suitable for the monoculture or the polyculture of species of interest our tool provides useful pieces of information to develop freshwater aquacultures using the large amount of biogeographic and abiotic information available in public databases allows us to propose a pragmatic and operational tool even for species for which abiotic requirements are poorly or not available in literature such as currently non produced species overall we argue that the assistant tool can act as a stepping stone to promote new aquatic productions which are required to enhance aquaculture sustainability,2022,0.936
"Genotype, Phenotype, Phototype",concerns of contemporary environmentalism tie closely to the logic of biological reproduction on one side framed by an anxiety about the failure of some species to reproduce without human assistance and on the other being concerned about overpopulating the planet with other ones since the 19th century photography serves to store the indexical version of phenotypes that is a realisation of genetic capacity in observable visual appearances or more precisely photographs indexed phenotype or the visual appearance of the genotype since the 1960s computational algorithms have enhanced us to see beyond phenotype and computing many possibilities that stayed beyond the field of vision however only recently we are witnessing the appearance of the first photographs that although they seem to index biological phenotype actually do not record it this material rather than genes is computed from photographs this chapter introduces the concept of phototype along with genotype and phenotype defining the field of photogenetics to approach new lifelike forms,2022,0.458
"Genetic Diversity Analysis based on the Virulence, Physiology and Regional Variability in Different Isolates of Powdery Mildew in Pea",powdery mildew is an omnipresent disease that reduces the yield and quality of pea crops pisum sativum l to examine the powdery mildew pathogenâ s morphological molecular and genetic diversity we collected samples of powdery mildew affected pea crops from ten distinct locations in the nilgiris district of tamil nadu india the pathogen erysiphe pisi was identified morphologically based on anamorphic characters molecular identification of e pisi isolates was befitted by targeting the internal transcribed spacer its region of rdna and specific primers of powdery mildew fungi the genetic variation between ten different e pisi isolates collected from topographically distinct mountainous areas was studied using random amplified polymorphic rapd based on its morphological characteristics the powdery mildew fungus presented high similarities to e pisi molecular characterization of the its rdna of e pisi produced 650 bp nucleotides pmits powdery mildew internal transcribed region primers produced 700 bp nucleotides and an erysiphe specific its primer pair amplified and synthesized 560 bp nucleotides according to the findings the collected e pisi strains exhibited a low level of genetic diversity and only a slight differential in virulence on the host in the study e pisi isolates from anumapuram emerald valley indira nagar and thuneri showed a greater disease incidence in the natural field conditions and shared the same genetic lineage with other isolates in upgma hierarchical cluster analysis based on rapd markers there was no evidence of a link between the occurrence of the disease and these grouped populations,2022,0.888
(Inter)National Connections,for our contribution we provide a reflective personal essay based on interviews and physical and digital experiences that explore how non human organisms become registered data points for international biodiversity observation networks bons by employing a â œfollowingâ approach employed by geographers and sts scholars alike we aim to describe and detail the journey of a northern lapwing vanellus vanellus from the frozen shores of fysingens naturreservat in sweden to the swedish species observation system artportalen to the global biodiversity information facility gbif assessing this pathway and its context assists in characterising these systems facilities the many actors involved in their execution and the information pathways that connect the multi scalar operations at work in this monitoring effort moreover following this journey shows how this mediation of a â œnatural beingâ tests the limits of this data infrastructure produces sociological data simultaneously and raises issues related to intimacy â œdataveillance â and competition,2022,0.181
"Avian brood parasites, species assemblage, and bird diversity: A case study using a grid-based survey in South Korea",identifying proper surrogate species or groups is a challenging but critical step in the application of surrogate species approaches in biodiversity conservation because their effectiveness can vary according to biological communities recently the brood parasitic common cuckoo cuculus canorus has been suggested as a surrogate for describing biodiversity primarily based on its strong parasitic relationship with other host species however the efficiency of cuckoo surrogates has been challenged because of the potential limitations of the methodological approaches furthermore its generality rarely has been explicitly tested in other parasitic species with local biodiversity data collected through conventional schemes such as grid based sampling using bird survey data obtained from a grid based sampling scheme in south korea we evaluated the surrogate efficiency of five cuckoo species for bird diversity species richness and phylogenetic diversity and generated surrogate species groups we found that among the five parasitic cuckoo species breeding in south korea the common cuckoo and the indian cuckoo c micropterus were effective surrogate species among these only the common cuckoo belonged to the best surrogate species group together with its major host species the indian cuckoo showed less effective surrogate efficiency than the common cuckoo in conclusion our study shows that the common cuckoo as a single species and a member of a species assemblage is an effective indicator species for bird diversity in grid based survey data however the result that not all parasitic cuckoo species performed a surrogate role effectively implies that multiple functions may be associated with the surrogate efficiency of brood parasitic cuckoos along with the importance of host parasite relationships,2022,0.996
"OSMODERMA EREMITA (SCOPOLI, 1763) (COLEOPTERA SCARABAEIDAE CETONIINAE) IN CIRCEO STATE FOREST (CENTRAL ITALY)",lenzi a maurizi e mosconi f cecchetti m francescato s noal a stolfa g roversi p f campanaro a â osmoderma eremita scopoli 1763 coleoptera scarabaeidae cetoniinae in circeo state forest central italy osmoderma eremita scopoli 1763 was recorded for the first time in circeo state forest sac it6040014 by volunteers participating at the life esc360 project â œ360 volunteers for monitoring forest biodiversity in the italian natura 2000 networkâ this finding is the result of several surveys started in 2018 that have been carried out using different sampling methodologies including a conservation detection dog two male specimens of o eremita have been collected in summer 2021 by the use of black cross windows traps baited with the species pheromone this record provides new information on the scattered distribution of this species in the latium region and confirms the biodiversity value of circeo state forest furthermore this result corroborates the importance of cooperation between non experts and scientists i e citizen science this approach is essential to carry out monitoring programmes aimed at assessing the conservation status of protected species meanwhile it allows to involve educate and raise awareness among non experts resulting in the establishment of a general positive mindset and attitude towards forest biodiversity key words saproxylic beetles citizen science foresta demaniale del circeo natura 2000 osmoderma eremita life project,2022,0.695
"Predicting Distribution of the Asian Longhorned Beetle, Anoplophora glabripennis (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) and Its Natural Enemies in China",the asian longhorned beetle anoplophora glabripennis is a forestry pest found worldwide a glabripennis causes serious harm because of the lack of natural enemies in the invaded areas dastarcus helophoroides and dendrocopos major are important natural enemies of a glabripennis maxent was used to simulate the distribution of d helophoroides and d major in china and their suitable areas were superimposed to pinpoint which regions are potentially appropriate to release or establish natural enemy populations under current and future conditions the results showed that with climate change the suitable areas of d helophoroides and d major migrated northward the centroid shift of a glabripennis was greater than those of d helophoroides and d major from current conditions to 2090 the suitable area of a glabripennis d helophoroides and d major will increase by 1 44 ã 104 20 10 ã 104 and 31 64 ã 104 km2 respectively northern china e g xinjiang gansu and inner mongolia where a glabripennis causes more serious damage is also a potentially suitable area for d helophoroides and d major and this provides a potential strategy for the management of a glabripennis therefore we suggest that natural enemies should be included in the model used for predicting suitable areas for invasive pests,2022,0.158
"Using consensus mapping methods as an efficient way of depicting avian distributions in the Caatinga Dry Forest, a poorly known Neotropical biome",mapping species distributions has become central for biodiversity research different mapping methods however may result in dramatically different spatial patterns we used expert drawn maps edms minimum convex polygons mcps ecological niche models enms and consensus models to compare patterns of species ranges and species richness in 12 species of psittacidae in a poorly known neotropical ecosystem the caatinga dry forest we validated results by comparing the ability of each method to predict the number of psittacidae species in 17 localities with well studied avifaunas size ranges were highly correlated from 0 7 to 0 9 among mapping methods but presented critical spatial differences which resulted in very different patterns of species richness when confronted with real data mcps and the edm mcp consensus method both correctly predicted the presence ofâ â 90 of the species present in the studied areas however when taking commission errors into account mcps presented the lowest efficiency 56 among all methods all three consensus methods enm edm enm mcp and edm mcp performed better â 74 efficiency than any single method we conclude that single mapping methods are prone to both higher omission and commission errors and advocate for the use of consensus methods whenever species ranges will be used in macroecological studies,2022,0.881
Predicting negative Effects of Climate Change on Taiwan’s endemic Bumblebee Bombus formosellus 🇹🇼,introduction climate change is threatening biodiversity hotspots notably alpine bumblebees which are mostly associated with a cold ecological niche face a higher risk of extinction bombus formosellus is one of the alpine bumblebees endemic to taiwan aims methods in this study we use ensemble ecological niche modeling for the first time to predict spatial and temporal dynamics for habitats suitable to b formosellus under current and future climate scenarios representative concentration pathway rcp 2 6 4 5 and 8 5 in the 2070s results this model identified that the cool temperature with low variation a specific range of precipitation and presence of coniferous forest and grasslands were the key factors affecting the distribution of b formosellus using modeling to predict suitable habitats under various scenarios we discovered that compared with the current climatic conditions the predicted suitable habitat area in the future decreased regardless of which climate change scenario was applied in particular rcp 8 5 appeared to be the most significant with an area loss of nearly 87 and fragmentation of the landscape with poor connection discussion in summary our analyses indicate that cool environments are suitable for b formosellus however taiwanâ s warming is more significant in the high mountains than in the plains the climate change trajectory may become increasingly unfavorable to b formosellus consequently this species may face the risk of extinction in the future implications for insect conservation we predict that many suitable habitats of b formosellus will disappear or become fragmented in the future therefore the remaining patches have become important refuges and protection measures in these areas should be strengthened,2022,0.417
Anthropogenic habitat modification alters calling phenology of frogs,anthropogenic habitat modification significantly challenges biodiversity with its intensification understanding speciesâ capacity to adapt is critical for conservation planning however little is known about whether and how different species are responding particularly among frogs we used a continentalâ scale citizen science dataset of 226 000 audio recordings of 42 australian frog species to investigate how calling â a proxy for breeding â phenology varied along an anthropogenic modification gradient calling started earlier and breeding seasons lengthened with increasing modification intensity breeding seasons averaged 22 9 â 8 25 days standard error longer in the most modified compared to the least modified regions suggesting that frog breeding activity was sensitive to habitat modification we also examined whether calls varied along a modification gradient by analysing the temporal and spectral properties of advertisement calls from a subset of 441 audio recordings of three broadly distributed frog species there was no appreciable effect of anthropogenic habitat modification on any of the measured call variables although there was high variability with continued habitat modification species may shift towards earlier and longer breeding seasons with largely unknown ecological consequences in terms of proximate and ultimate fitness,2022,0.647
Regional variation in responses of a vulnerable bird species to land‐use and climate change,climate and landâ use changes are expected to negatively affect many species and ecological processes leading to biodiversity loss however some species can adapt to these changes wideâ ranging species are expected to be less impacted by such changes but they can occur in different domains with contrasting environmental conditions resulting in different conservation statuses along their range to understand whether a species will overall benefit or lose with global change we evaluated the responses of a wideâ ranging but a vulnerable bird crax fasciolata to separate and combined effects of climate and landâ use changes under different environmental policies in brazil using ecological niche modeling and a landâ use model within the brazilian political context we quantified climatic habitat and environmental suitability for crax fasciolata under historical 2000 and future 2050 scenarios our findings showed that environmental suitability can increase for crax fasciolata in brazil in future but these effects vary according to the domain and the specific future scenario considered climatically suitable areas will increase in all scenarios and those environmental scenarios that include better habitat conditions will provide more environmentally suitable areas for crax fasciolata however this increase comes from newly suitable areas in the atlantic forest and the amazon while the pantanal the caatinga and the cerrado will lose environmental suitability due to native vegetation loss despite the availability of these new areas reduced landscape permeability may hinder crax fasciolata from reaching them this reinforces the urgent call for public policies for native vegetation protection reforestation and effective deforestation control,2022,0.537
"Resistance, tolerance and competence for a root pathogen in six woody species",the outcome of hostâ pathogen interactions depends on host defence and pathogen infection strategies on the host side two strategies resistance and tolerance have long been identified they differ in their underlying mechanisms and their effects on pathogens however the dynamics of disease transmission also rely on host competence this trait defined as the ability of the host to allow pathogen transmission is rarely studied for pathogenâ supporting plants we assessed the competence for phytophthora cinnamomi of seedlings of five quercus and one castanea species and studied how this trait is correlated with resistance and tolerance p cinnamomi is responsible for the chestnut ink disease alongside with phytophthora ã cambivora which has a much less generalist behaviour each seedling was inoculated in minirhizotrons by rootâ mycelium contact and phenotyped for its resistance tolerance and competence the amount of necrosis lesion length the effect of infection on plant performance root growth and the sporangia number were measured moreover we developed a droplet digital dd pcr assay to quantify the pathogen within host tissues near the inoculation point this measure was used as a proxy of pathogen load we were thus able to relate individual host competence to the pathogen content measured in the same root fragment no significant correlation between the phenotyped traits was found at the individual level however at the species level the least competent species q robur q petraea proved to be the most resistant these results may have important implications for management of chestnut and oak ecosystems threatened by ink disease,2022,0.571
Pollinator Species at Risk from the Expansion of Avocado Monoculture in Central Mexico,the monoculture of avocado persea americana has triggered the loss of large forested areas in central mexico including the habitat of threatened species this study assessed the potential habitat loss of ten threatened pollinator species due to the expansion of avocado monoculture in mexico first we modeled the distribution of avocado and pollinators then we overlapped their suitable areas at a national level and within the trans mexican volcanic belt tmvb we also identified the areas with more affected pollinators and coinciding with protected areas as a result 78 of the suitable areas for avocado coincided with the distribution of at least one pollinator although only two pollinators lost more than one fifth of their distribution at a national level the habitat loss increased to 41 6 on average considering their distribution within the tmvb the most affected pollinators were bombus brachycephalus b diligens danaus plexippus and tilmatura dupontii losing more than 48 of their distribution within this ecoregion the areas with a greater number of affected species pollinators were found in the states of michoacã n mexico and morelos where most of the area is currently unprotected our results suggest that the expansion of the avocado monoculture will negatively affect the habitat of threatened pollinators in mexico,2022,0.542
Tamilnadia uliginosa (Retz) Tirveng and Sastre: Potential Application from Traditional Remedies to Modern Therapeutics,tamilnadia uliginosa retz tirveng and sastre rubiaceae is a small edible medicinal plant utilized in traditional remedies the review aims to report the current information of t uliginosa based on its botanical and taxonomic description traditional use active phytoconstituents pharmacological use and toxicity the information on t uliginosa concerning its journey from traditional application to scientific validation was gathered based on the online survey the results from the review signify that the different tribes of the communities use the plant to treat patients suffering from diarrhea dysentery diabetes mellitus fever and cough the scientific investigation reported that the plant has a significant pharmacological activity viz antidiarrheal antimicrobial anti inflammatory antidiabetic anticancer and antiepileptic activity moreover based on the phytochemical aspects 15 major polyphenolic phytoconstituents were identified and isolated from the fruits of t uliginosa in conclusion the outcome of this review will create a new therapeutic approach to the identification and isolation of new chemical entities in drug discovery which are safe and inexpensive furthermore it can help researchers explore further research in clinical studies as well as the isolation of new lead molecules graphical abstract,2022,0.027
Environmental niche and flight intensity are associated with molecular evolutionary rates in a large avian radiation,background metabolic activity and environmental energy are two of the most studied putative drivers of molecular evolutionary rates their extensive study however has resulted in mixed results and has rarely included the exploration of interactions among various factors impacting molecular evolutionary rates across large clades taking the diverse avian family furnariidae as a case study we examined the association between several estimates of molecular evolutionary rates with proxies of metabolic demands imposed by flight wing loading and wing shape and proxies of environmental energy across the geographic ranges of species temperature and uv radiation results we found weak evidence of a positive effect of environmental and morphological variables on mitochondrial substitution rates additionally we found that temperature and uv radiation interact to explain molecular rates at nucleotide sites affected by selection and population size non synonymous substitutions contrary to the expectation of their impact on sites associated with mutation rates synonymous substitutions we also found a negative interaction between wing shape as described by the hand wing index and body mass explaining mitochondrial molecular rates suggesting molecular signatures of positive selection or reduced population sizes in small bodied species with greater flight activity conclusions our results suggest that the demands of flight and environmental energy pose multiple evolutionary pressures on the genome either by driving mutation rates or via their association with natural selection or population size data from whole genomes and detailed physiology across taxa will bring a more complete picture of the impact of metabolism population size and the environment on avian genome evolution,2022,0.708
Biodiversity Research in Central America: A Regional Comparison in Scientific Production Using Bibliometrics and Democracy Indicators,central america science production on biodiversity topics is important in planning future adaptive and conservation policies in a climate related risk region that is considered a biodiversity hotspot but has the lowest human development index of latin america science production on biodiversity is related to geo referenced species occurrence records but the accessibility depends on political frameworks and science funding this paper aims at foregrounding how the democratic shifts throughout the years have had an impact on science production on biodiversity research and species records for this exploration we developed a novel systematic scientometric analysis of science production on biodiversity topics we used bio dem open source software of biodiversity records and socio political variables and briefly analyzed the historyâ from 1980 to 2020â of guatemala el salvador honduras nicaragua costa rica and panama with a data set of 16 304 documents our analysis shows the significant discrepancies between the low science production of central american northern countries guatemala el salvador honduras and nicaragua the prolific production from the southern costa rica and panama and how this relates to democratic stability scientific production tends to be more abundant when democratic conditions are guaranteed the state capture phenomenon and colonial rooted interactions worldwide have an effect on the conditions under which science is being produced in central america democracy science production funding and conservation are core elements that go hand in hand and that need to be nourished in a region that struggles with the protection of life and extractive activities in a climate change scenario,2022,0.199
Reference BioImaging to assess the phenotypic trait diversity of bryophytes within the family Scapaniaceae,macro and microscopic images of organisms are pivotal in biodiversity research despite that bioimages have manifold applications such as for assessing the diversity of form and function fair bioimaging data in the context of biodiversity are still very scarce especially for difficult taxonomic groups such as bryophytes here we present a high quality reference dataset containing macroscopic and bright field microscopic images documenting various phenotypic attributes of the species belonging to the family of scapaniaceae occurring in europe to encourage data reuse in biodiversity and adjacent research areas we annotated the imaging data with machine actionable meta data using community accepted semantics furthermore raw imaging data are retained and any contextual image processing like multi focus image fusion and stitching were documented to foster good scientific practices through source tracking and provenance the information contained in the raw images are also of particular interest for machine learning and image segmentation used in bioinformatics and computational ecology we expect that this richly annotated reference dataset will encourage future studies to follow our principles,2022,0.186
The conservation paradox of critically endangered fish species: Trading alien sturgeons versus native sturgeon reintroduction in the Rhine-Meuse river delta,sturgeons rank among the most endangered vertebrates in the world yet the dwindling of wild sturgeon populations stands in stark contrast to their thriving status in aquaculture moreover through the exotic pet trade sturgeons are introduced outside their natural ranges where they may compete and hybridize with native species and transmit parasites and diseases here we present an in depth inventory of alien sturgeons in the delta of the rivers rhine and meuse because several countries consider reintroduction of the native critically endangered european sturgeon acipenser sturio our study is based on a an inventory of the industry of sturgeon cultivation b reports on spread of alien sturgeons c an analysis of pathways for introduction and spread and d a risk assessment using the harmonia protocol in total 11 alien acipenseriformes sturgeons and paddlefishes were traded across an intricate network of 1000 distribution points in the netherlands belgium and germany circa 2500 alien sturgeons were reported from 53 angling ponds and 64 other lakes and ponds whereas circa 500 alien sturgeons were reported widespread across hydrologically connected waters species that posed the highest risk of introduction establishment and spread are siberian sturgeon a baerii russian sturgeon a gueldenstaedtii and sterlet a ruthenus we recommend to implement stringent trade regulations and practical solutions to prevent spread of alien sturgeons measures must preferably be taken at the spatial scale of river basins,2022,0.722
First evaluation of ballast water management systems on operational ships for minimizing introductions of nonindigenous zooplankton,ballast water is a leading pathway for the global introduction of aquatic nonindigenous species most international ships are expected to install ballast water management systems bwms by 2024 to treat ballast water before release this study examines if ballast water discharges managed by bwms are meeting standards for organisms â 50â î m in minimum dimension i e 10 organisms per m3 typically zooplankton representative samples of ballast water were collected from 29 ships using 14 different bwms arriving to canada during 2017â 2018 fourteen samples 48â had zooplankton concentrations clearly exceeding the standard ranging from 18 to 3822 organisms per m3 nonetheless compared to earlier management strategies bwms appear to reduce the frequency of high risk introduction events bwms filter mesh size was an important predictor of zooplankton concentration following treatment greater rates of compliance may be achieved as ship crews gain experience with operation and maintenance of bwms,2022,0.567
Predicting the habitat suitability for populations of Pacific cod under different climate change scenarios considering intraspecific genetic variation,several studies have demonstrated the importance of integrating intraspecific genetic variation in forecasting the habitat suitability of species under climate change scenarios the pacific cod gadus macrocephalus is an economically important fish species in the north pacific that can be classified into western and eastern populations based on molecular phylogeographic data herein we first quantified the realized niche of the two pacific cod populations using n dimensional hypervolumes and estimated the niche differentiation between the populations we then projected the habitat suitability based on the georeferenced occurrence records and environmental predictors using species distribution models sdms at the population and species levels the low niche overlap demonstrated the marked niche differentiation between the two populations the distinct responses of the populations to climate predictors implied that the population level sdm produced more reliable projections than the corresponding species level sdm the model indicated that the eastern population expanded its suitable area northward while maintaining most of its current habitat and exhibited resilience to climate impacts however the western population lost much of its current suitable area while colonizing a new habitat in a small section of the offshore waters of the japanese sea implying the vulnerability of this population to climate change this study highlights the necessity of incorporating intraspecific genetic variation into sdms to predict the habitat suitability of pacific cod on the global scale the spatiotemporal predictive maps of habitat suitability provide crucial information for designing climate adaptive conservation and management strategies based on more precise taxonomic units for the sustainability of pacific cod,2022,0.9
"Ethnomedicinal survey on folk dermatology in Transylvania, Romania",since beginning of recorded history up to the present day dermatological disorders have been treated with ethnomedicinal remedies the aim of this paper is to present ethnodermatological practices in transylvania romania ethnomedicinal surveys were conducted in 35 villages in transylvania 2007 2019 the 650 people interviewed were questioned about the treatment of dermatological disorders by drugs derived from plant animal human and other origin collected data have been compared to earlier records of the regions and other european countries completed with relevant pharmacological studies of some plants a total of 180 drugs were documented for 45 skin problems including 112 plants 1 fungus 19 animal 5 human and 43 other materials used in 11 preparation forms among these 144 drugs were mentioned in human 10 in veterinary medicines and 26 included in both therapies with both overlapping human animal e g petroselinum crispum and specific uses e g daphne mezereum scrophularia nodosa compared to data of other countries local use of 32 plants and various animals and minerals were described only in the study area the present study demonstrated that ethnomedicinal practices are a valuable source of knowledge for skin diseases highlighted the relevance of field work in the selected regions of transylvania,2022,0.15
DiSSCo Prepare report D6. 1 Harmonization and migration plan for the integration of CMSs into the coherent DiSSCo Research Infrastructure-MfN WP6/T6. 1,dissco prepare deliverable d6 1 describes the concepts for the integration of collection management systems cms into the dissco research infrastructure ri including recommendations for apis guidelines by identifying the challenges of this integration the basic requirements for the harmonization of cmss and subsequent interoperability with disscoâ s central digital specimen services can be identified and addressed one of the main challenges is the synchronization of specimen data in the dissco ri with data in local cmss of collection holding institutions as these represent a high diversity of data models software frameworks and api capabilities furthermore different workflows and use cases from multiple disciplines need to be accommodated while the technological diversity of cmss necessitates content wise abstraction in a sustainable implementation with the help of results from an event storming workshop with a mixed group of curators collection managers cms users and vendors the most important event types in cmss have been identified aggregated and classified to allow for a harmonized formal description of events so they can be used for standardized communication between the cms and the dissco ri the dissco ri will provide an abstraction layer through fair digital objects fdo see islam et al 2020 for the heterogeneous data the harmonization of events and the abstraction layer together provide a solid foundation for data aggregation and interoperability the digital objects are serialized as json and dissco promotes the use of open standards and open software therefore we suggest api guidelines derived from the existing specifications of json api openapi and cloudevents,2022,0.168
"The distribution of Kerivoula malpasi and Kerivoula picta (Chiroptera:
Vespertilionidae) in Sri Lanka",sri lanka is considered one of the worldâ s biodiversity hotspots although sri lanka has a rich diversity of bats kerivoula malpasi is the only bat that is endemic to sri lanka where it is represented by only five records the other known species of kerivoula in sri lanka kerivoula picta is more widely distributed this study maps the current and historical distributions of the two species field observations made from 2016 to 2020 are presented including 41 new locations for k picta which add the northernmost and easternmost records for the species in sri lanka details from museum specimens of both species are also presented in order to aid future investigations and promote the conservation of these species in the country,2022,0.886
"The geographic distribution of Atractus lehmanni (Boettger, 1898) (Serpentes, Colubridae, Dipsadinae) in Colombia, and clarification of its status and type locality in Ecuador",abstractatractus lehmanni boettger 1898 lehmannâ s ground snake serpentes colubridae dipsadinae was described by boettger 1898 from cuenca ecuador we examined records of snakes labeled as a lehmanni to determine if they fit the original description of this species the results of our record examinations in conjunction with long term field surveys and a review of friedrich carl lehmannâ s travel logs indicate that a lehmanni occurs in the cordilleras central and occidental of colombia conversely this species is apparently absent from ecuador where records of this species are in error or based on misidentifications,2022,0.631
Forest tree species distribution for Europe 2000–2020: mapping potential and realized distributions using spatiotemporal machine learning,this article describes a data driven framework based on spatiotemporal machine learning to produce distribution maps for 16 tree species abies alba mill castanea sativa mill corylus avellana l fagus sylvatica l olea europaea l picea abies l h karst pinus halepensis mill pinus nigra j f arnold pinus pinea l pinus sylvestris l prunus avium l quercus cerris l quercus ilex l quercus robur l quercus suber l and salix caprea l at high spatial resolution 30 m tree occurrence data for a total of three million of points was used to train different algorithms random forest gradient boosted trees generalized linear models k nearest neighbors cart and an artificial neural network a stack of 305 coarse and high resolution covariates representing spectral reflectance different biophysical conditions and biotic competition was used as predictors for realized distributions while potential distribution was modelled with environmental predictors only logloss and computing time were used to select the three best algorithms to tune and train an ensemble model based on stacking with a logistic regressor as a meta learner an ensemble model was trained for each species probability and model uncertainty maps of realized distribution were produced for each species using a time window of 4 years for a total of six distribution maps per species while for potential distributions only one map per species was produced results of spatial cross validation show that the ensemble model consistently outperformed or performed as good as the best individual model in both potential and realized distribution tasks with potential distribution models achieving higher predictive performances tss 0 898 r2logloss 0 857 than realized distribution ones on average tss 0 874 r2logloss 0 839 ensemble models for q suber achieved the best performances in both potential tss 0 968 r2logloss 0 952 and realized tss 0 959 r2logloss 0 949 distribution while p sylvestris tss 0 731 0 785 r2logloss 0 585 0 670 respectively for potential and realized distribution and p nigra tss 0 658 0 686 r2logloss 0 623 0 664 achieved the worst importance of predictor variables differed across species and models with the green band for summer and the normalized difference vegetation index ndvi for fall for realized distribution and the diffuse irradiation and precipitation of the driest quarter bio17 being the most frequent and important for potential distribution on average fine resolution models outperformed coarse resolution models 250 m for realized distribution tss 6 5 r2logloss 7 5 the framework shows how combining continuous and consistent earth observation time series data with state of the art machine learning can be used to derive dynamic distribution maps the produced predictions can be used to quantify temporal trends of potential forest degradation and species composition change,2022,0.271
"Comparing field-based management approaches for invasive Winter Heliotrope (Petasites pyrenaicus, Asteraceae)",ï abstractwinter heliotrope petasitespyrenaicus previously p fragrans is a persistent rhizome forming species found throughout the mediterranean region and north africa and is an invasive alien plant iap in the uk and ireland p pyrenaicus excludes native flora by forming a dense compact canopy that persists for much of the growing season and is often found growing in rough ground riparian areas and along communication routes incurring significant management costs at sites of conservation interest our study describes the first field based assessment of p pyrenaicus control treatments testing 12 physical and or chemical treatments in replicated 1 m2 plots over four years and one chemical treatment over three years treatments focused on understanding phenology and resource allocation to exploit rhizome source sink relationships in p pyrenaicus multiple stage glyphosate and picloram based treatments reduced leaf canopy cover to zero over time though no treatment completely eradicated p pyrenaicus when designing management strategies effective p pyrenaicus control may be achieved by a single annual soil and or foliar application of picloram at 1 34 kg ae ha 1 in spring or by a single annual foliar application of glyphosate in spring at 2 16 kg ae ha 1 control is not improved by the addition of other herbicides or physical treatment methods underlining the importance of these herbicides for perennial invasive plant management this work confirms the importance of considering plant phenology resource allocation and rhizome source sink relationships to increase treatment efficacy and reduce the environmental impacts associated with the management of p pyrenaicus and other invasive rhizome forming species,2022,0.373
"Cowboys, Cod, Climate, and Conflict",the deh can be seen as an academic response to three major interwoven changes and challenges the digital revolution global warming and sociopolitical agency related to environmental change in the 21st century we are challenged with a transformation in collective human intelligence the key features of this transformation involve the digital replacing the analogue design thinking and post secularism supplanting tradition and human agency emerging as the main driver of planetary change unlocking the keys to human perception mitigating behaviour and adaptive action may likely rank among the pre eminent challenges we face in an age witnessing unprecedented rates of global change the chapter showcases how the deh is being applied by three international funded research projects larry mcmurtry s literary geography norfish environmental history of the north atlantic fisheries 1500 1800 and the climates of conflict in babylonia project,2022,0.19
Ecological niche models for the assessment of site suitability of sea cucumbers and sea urchins in China,in the present study the maximum entropy model maxent based on the data of sea surface temperature sst and published information was used to assess the site suitability for the aquaculture expansion of the sea cucumber apostichopus japonicus and the sea urchin strongylocentrotus intermedius in china according to the current assessment the coastal areas of hebei province and tianjin have great prospects for a japonicus aquaculture while is currently being underutilized in the south more than 94 of the coastal areas in zhejiang fujian and guangdong provinces are suitable for the growth of a japonicus for six months especially the coastal areas of lianjiang changle fuqing and putian in fujian province the water temperatures in more than 94 of china s coastal areas are higher than 25â â c in july and august which probably results in the mortality of s intermedius in aquaculture this clearly indicates that high water temperature is the bottleneck of s intermedius aquaculture and well explains the limited expansion of this commercially important exotic species since the introduction in 1989 we suggest a new aquaculture model of s intermedius that extends the seed production to november to avoid the mass mortality in summer in the south 64 of coastal areas in zhejiang and fujian provinces are suitable for the transplantation of s intermedius to the south the present study suggests the ecological niche model maxent based on the data of sst and published information as a new tool for the assessment of the site suitability of sea cucumbers and sea urchins in china this provides new insights into the aquaculture expansion of native and exotic species,2022,0.309
Scope and Challenges of Incorporating Citizen Science into Indian Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study,abstract citizen science cs is gaining popularity among a section of the indian research community as a potential cost effective tool to generate and gather large scale temporospatial distributed research data with the help of non scientist citizens ready to volunteer their free time for science and societal issues however cs activities in india seem confined to a few selected research disciplines at selected geolocations this poses challenges and scope to incorporating cs into all indian higher education institutions heis as an experimental learning tool we conducted a panindia online survey and assessed the scope and challenges of cs in indian heis the survey recorded the perception of all stockholders irrespective of their academic and professional background for four months from january to may 2021 survey results revealed explicit geographical and research discipline wise biases in participants acquaintance and preference for cs agriculture biodiversity ecology environment science disciplines recorded around 67 of responses more than two thirds of respondents conveyed their interest in cs however they highlighted the lack of hand on experience and opportunity for formal training on cs at schools university levels the study emphasized the inclusion of the cs curriculum in the mainstream education system to train the next generation of researchers on several aspects of cs and tap its potential for large scale research studies in all higher education disciplines,2022,0.006
"Synanthropic triatomines in Hidalgo state, Mexico: Spatial-temporal distribution, domestic transmission cycle, and natural infection with Trypanosoma cruzi",triatomine vectors are responsible for the main route of transmission of the protozoan trypanosoma cruzi the etiological agent of chagas disease this illness is potentially life threatening and highly disabling and represents a major public health concern in the endemic countries in latin america the analysis of the spatial and temporal occurrence of triatomine insects is critical since control strategies strongly depend on the vector species found within each area such knowledge is non existent in hidalgo state an endemic region of chagas disease in mexico a geographic information system gis was used to analyze broad scale spatial and temporal patterns of synanthropic triatomines collected in hidalgo data was taken from the institute of epidemiological diagnosis and reference indre of mexico and the state program of vector control of the secretary of health covering the period of 1997 2019 our analyses demonstrate a differential distribution of triatoma dimidiata t mexicana t gerstaeckeri and t barberi which are the four predominant species and that climate temperature and precipitation are some of the drivers of their distribution pattern notably we report the presence of t nitida t pallidipennis and t phyllosoma for the first time in the state in addition we found seasonal variations of the populations of t mexicana and t gerstaeckeri but not for t dimidiata whose population remains constant throughout the year the insects were found mainly intradomicile 81 79 followed by peridomicile 17 56 and non domestic areas 0 65 with an average t cruzi infection of 16 4 based on this evidence priority sites for vector control intervention were identified our findings are very valuable for understanding the epidemiology of chagas disease the generation of future potential risk maps and for the development and implementation of effective and targeted vector control programs in hidalgo state,2022,0.668
"The Non-native Animals in China: Species Diversity, Spatial Distribution and Invasion Pattern",abstract the global patterns of non native species attract substantial concern especially due to the global changing environment the inventory of the non native species in a given region provides basic information for further exploration of biological invasions we first compiled a checklist of the non native animals in china and then analyzed their species diversity and invasion patterns in total 885 species of non native animals were recorded in china belonging to 8 phyla 87 orders and 612 genera asia and north america dominated most species of non native animals while 125 species originated in china the spatial distribution of non native animals showed a decrease from coastal areas to inland regions and inland borders had noteworthy regions guangxi and xinjiang with more records of non native species additionally the species number of non native animals has experienced an exponential increase since 1900 actinopterygii and insecta were the two major groups and coleoptera was the largest group of insecta most species of non native insects had polyphagous and multivoltinism traits which may be invasion indictors non native animals were most likely introduced into china by stowaway and contaminant the overview of the non native animals in china provides comprehensive horizon of the invasion pattern helping us to master the dynamics of non native animals and contributing to a balanced understanding of their global patterns,2022,0.999
"Vascular plant biodiversity of Katannilik Territorial Park and Kimmirut and vicinity, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada: an annotated checklist of an Arctic flora",abstractthe arctic ecozone is undergoing rapid and major change in response to climate change establishing a baseline of current arctic vascular plant diversity and distribution is necessary to be able to track changes in species composition over time due to climate change here we report the results of a floristic study of vascular plant diversity of katannilik territorial park and kimmirut and vicinity on southern baffin island in the canadian arctic archipelago nunavut canada the study area is located within circumpolar arctic bioclimate subzone d the study is based on a dataset comprising 1571 collections from the study area gathered over the last century including 838 collections we made during fieldwork in 2012 we present the results in an annotated checklist the vascular plant flora of the study area comprises 34 families 98 genera 210 species three nothospecies and seven infraspecific taxa we recorded 190 species five infraspecific taxa and two nothospecies from katannilik territorial park and 162 species five â infraspecific taxa and two nothospecies from kimmirut we newly record 46 species and one infraspecific taxon in 21 families from the study area including 11 taxa prefaced by an asterisk we reported in an earlier publication erigeronâ eriocephalus taraxacum holmenianum asteraceae draba arctica d fladnizensis d corymbosa d lacteaâ brassicaceae arenaria longipedunculata honckenya peploides subsp diffusa sabulinaâ rossii silene uralensis rupr bocquet subsp â uralensis viscaria alpina caryophyllaceae carex brunnescens subsp brunnescens c microglochin c krausei c subspathacea eriophorum scheuchzeri subsp arcticum cyperaceae andromeda polifolia orthilia secunda subsp obtusata ericaceae oxytropis podocarpa fabaceae triglochin palustris juncaginaceae utricularia ochroleuca lentibulariaceae luzula groenlandica new to the canadian arctic archipelago huperzia continentalis lycopodiaceae montiaâ fontanaâ montiaceae hippuris lanceolata h vulgaris plantago maritima plantaginaceae calamagrostis purpurascens c neglecta subsp groenlandica festuca prolifera var lasiolepis new to the canadian arctic archipelago f rubra subsp rubra f rubra subsp arctica hordeum jubatum subsp jubatum leymus mollis subsp mollis poaceae cryptogramma stelleri pteridaceae corallorhiza trifida platanthera obtusata subsp obtusata orchidaceae coptidium ã spitsbergense ranunculaceae potentilla crantzii p hyparctica subsp hyparctica rubus chamaemorus sibbaldia procumbens rosaceae salix fuscescens salicaceae micranthesâ foliolosa m nivalisâ saxifragaceae and woodsia alpina woodsiaceae all species in the study area are native except two grasses we recorded in kimmirut f rubra subsp rubra which was likely seeded and hordeum jubatum subsp jubatum of unknown origin we summarize the known distribution on baffin island for each taxon recorded from the study area including several previously unpublished records on southern baffin island,2022,0.837
Rates and drivers of aboveground carbon accumulation in global monoculture plantation forests,restoring forest cover is a key action for mitigating climate change although monoculture plantations dominate existing commitments to restore forest cover we lack a synthetic view of how carbon accumulates in these systems here we assemble a global database of 4756 field plot measurements from monoculture plantations across all forested continents with these data we model carbon accumulation in aboveground live tree biomass and examine the biological environmental and human drivers that influence this growth our results identify four fold variation in carbon accumulation rates across tree genera plant functional types and biomes as well as the key mediators e g genus of tree endemism of species prior land use of variation in these rates our nonlinear growth models advance our understanding of carbon accumulation in forests relative to mean annual rates particularly during the next few decades that are critical for mitigating climate change tree planting is a promising yet controversial natural climate solution here the authors perform a global analysis of aboveground c accumulation in tree monocultures identifying key predictors such as prior land use taxonomic identity and plant traits,2022,0.14
A new composite indicator to assess and monitor performance and drawbacks of the implementation of Aichi Biodiversity Targets,this paper proposes a new composite indicator for the assessment of the implementation of aichi targets atci following a benchmarking approach simultaneously considering performance and drawbacks atci is based on 37 indicators related to the 5 aichi strategic goals and its aggregated scores and ranks are calculated using three bod dea models to integrate performance and drawback scores for targets atci was applied to 21 european countries and its scores were mapped and classified into four groups according to their location in performance drawbacks space s1 caution s2 excellence s3 fragility and s4 catching up countries in s1 and s3 are recommended to mitigate drawbacks to facilitate the implementation of the aichi targets results showed that 52 of the countries italy hungary greece czechia belgium poland portugal spain latvia slovenia and slovakia should pay urgent attention to the aichi targets since they show the highest limitations based on limitations two country profiles were identified countries with high economic development high population density and corresponding impacts on biodiversity and countries of medium low economic development weak governance and few drawbacks related to human impacts on the environment these impacts however can be aggravated if their economic situation improves and institutional constraints are not addressed,2022,0.146
Open Access to the Digital Biodiversity Database: A Comprehensive Functional Model of the Natural History Collections,the natural history collections of adam mickiewicz university amunatcoll in poznaå contain over 2 2 million specimens until recently access to the collections was limited to specialists and was challenging because of the analogue data files therefore this paper presents a new approach to data sharing called the scientific educational public and practical use sepp model since the stakeholder group is broad the sepp model assumes the following key points full open access to the digitized collections the structure of metadata in accordance with certain standards and a versatile tool set for data mining or statistical and spatial analysis the sepp model was implemented in the amunatcoll it system which consists of a web portal equipped with a wide set of explorative functionalities tailored to different user groups scientists students officials and nature enthusiasts an integral part of the system is a mobile application designed for field surveys enabling users to conduct studies comparing their own field data and amunatcoll data the amunatcoll it database contains digital data on specimens biological samples bibliographic sources and multimedia nature documents the metadata structure was developed in accordance with abcd 2 06 and darwin core standards,2022,0.07
Biogeographic implication of temperature-induced plant cell wall lignification,more than 200 years after von humboldtâ s pioneering work on the treeline our understanding of the cold distribution limit of upright plant growth is still incomplete here we use wood anatomical techniques to estimate the degree of stemâ cell wall lignification in 1770 plant species from six continents contrary to the frequent belief that small plants are less lignified we show that cell wall lignification in â woodyâ herbs varies considerably although trees and shrubs always exhibit lignified cell walls in their upright stems small plants above the treeline may contain less lignin our findings suggest that extremely cold growing season temperatures can reduce the ability of plants to lignify their secondary cell walls corroborating experimental and observational evidence this study proposes to revisit existing theories about the thermal distribution limit of upright plant growth and to consider biochemical and biomechanical factors for explaining the global treeline position a global survey of lignin content in plant cell walls corroborates suggestions that cold temperature limits upright tree growth,2022,0.121
Neophytes in the flora of Bedekovčina (northwestern Croatia),in the flora of bedekovä ina 43 species of neophytes were recorded or 8 5 of the 507 wild plant species recorded in total among the neophytes 11 invasive species were identified representing 2 of the total flora the most common being solidago gigantea aiton erigeron annuus l desf echinocystis lobata michx torr a gray robinia pseudoacacia l and ambrosia artemisiifolia l most neophytes grow in anthropogenic habitats but to a lesser extent also in semi natural and natural vegetation the species that grow in the greatest number of habitats are solidago gigantea and erigeron annuus both species dominate abandoned agricultural lands erigeron annuus in the early stages and solidago gigantea in the later stages of succession the neophytes were analysed for various characteristics the results showed that the neophyte flora was dominated by species native to north america 63 accidentally introduced 86 belonging to therophytes 49 annual herbs 47 good competitors 42 which reproduce only by seeds 58 and disperse with autochory 53,2022,0.93
Global habitat suitability modeling reveals insufficient habitat protection for a mangrove crab,abstract mangrove crabs are important components of mangrove forests however their large scale habitat suitability and conservation received little attention the metopograpsus thukuhar cannicci species complex is a mangrove dwelling species occurs in the indo pacific mangrove forests since identifying the complex suitable habitat is critical for its conservation we modeled global suitable habitats of the complex within marine biogeographic realms and estimated representation of the complex suitable habitats within marine protected areas we found that the complexâ largest and smallest suitable ranges are located in central indo pacific and temperate southern africa realms respectively only 12 5 percent of the complex suitable habitat is protected the highest proportion of protected suitable habitats 22 9 are located in western indo pacific realm ecoregion while the lowest proportion of protected suitable habitats 1 38 were located in central indo pacific realm suitable unprotected habitats of the complex identified in this study have high priority for conservation and should be included in marine protected areas to ensure species conservation our results show that species distribution models are practical tools to study marine species distribution across large spatial scales and help marine conservation planning,2022,0.625
"Predation strategies of Harpactor angulosus (Lepeletier &amp; Serville, 1825) (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) on Cladomorphus phyllinus Gray, 1835 (Phasmatodea: Phasmatidae) in captivity",based on the observation of specimens kept in captivity for 69 days here we describe in detail for the first time the predatory behavior of an assassin bug harpactor angulosus lepeletier amp serville 1825 hemiptera heteroptera reduviidae harpactorinae on a stick insect cladomorphus phyllinus gray 1835 phasmatodea phasmatidae cladomorphinae the behavior of the generalist predator h angulosus as well as the evasive reactions of c phyllinus were detailedly described and illustrated because both species occur in the atlantic forest biome and were recorded in the same geographic coordinates in an urbanized green area in the city of petrã polis rio de janeiro state brazil the ecological relationship here described is also plausible of occurring in nature and opens new venues to be explored the unprecedented phytophagy of h angulosus was also recorded,2022,0.475
"Analysis of Microbial Community Structure, and Environmental Factors in the Rhizosphere of Malus sieversii (Ldb.) Roem. in Different Regions of Xinjiang",abstract malus sieversii ldb roem the original species of modern cultivated apples is a national essential protected plant in china due to soil nutrient loss grazing climate change and diseases and insect pest outbreaks the rhizosphere microecological imbalance of wild apple forests has aggravated the degradation and death of wild apples in recent years so far the structural diversity function and response to environmental drivers of the wild apple rhizosphere microbial community are not unclear 16s 18s rdna high throughput sequencing were used in this study to analyze the rhizosphere bacterial and eukaryotic communities of m sieversii ldb roem in eight regions of the ili river the results indicated that the bacterial operational taxonomic units otus shannon value and community composition were significantly lower in regions a e and f than in other regions however the composition of dominant eukaryotic communities in the eight regions was relatively similar and the difference was smaller than the relative abundance of bacterial communities through redundancy analysis it was found that acidobacteriota verrucomicrobiota planctomycetota chloroflexi and methylomirabilota microbial communities with a lower relative abundance in regions a b e and f was affected by soil ph alkaline hydrolyzable nitrogen an available phosphorus ap and potassium ak altitude and relative humidity rh the results showed that the relative abundance of microorganisms in regions a b e and f could be increased by rationally increasing soil nutrients,2022,0.352
"The Spread of the Invasive Locust Digitate Leafminer Parectopa robiniella Clemens, 1863 (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae) in Europe, with Special Reference to Ukraine",the spread and outbreaks of phytophagous pests are often associated with global warming in addition to economic interest these species may be of interest in terms of biological indication of climate changes in this context we considered the locust digitate leafminer parectopa robiniella clemens 1863 lepidoptera gracillariidae this phytophage was first discovered in europe in 1970 near milano in italy since then it has been spreading across the continent in ukraine it was recorded for the first time in 2003 in 2020â 2021 we found areas of massive leaf damage caused by the black locust robinia pseudoacacia in locations on trukhaniv island in kyiv and some places in the kyiv administrative region using 1041 georeferenced records of p robiniella across europe and a bayesian additive regression trees algorithm bart we modeled the distribution of the moth predictors of current climate worldclim v 2 climond v 1 2 and envirem and a black locust habitat suitability raster were employed sets of sdms built for p robiniella with and without the habitat suitability raster for the host tree performed equally well amongst the factors that determine the niche of the locust digitate leafminer most important are temperature related conditions assumed to facilitate the spread and naturalization of the pest in ukraine the appearance of the moth has coincided with increasing mean annual temperatures particularly favorable for the species are areas in the west and south west of the country and transcarpathia in the near future the moth could reach locations in nordic countries estonia the british isles black sea coastal areas in turkey further into russia etc,2022,0.501
Can pikas hold the umbrella? Understanding the current and future umbrella potential of keystone species Pika (Ochotona spp.).,the umbrella species concept is a frequently used concept in conservation since the conservation of an umbrella species may benefit other species keystone species are often suggested as potential umbrella species but the validity of this approach remains uncertain moreover climate change can have a multidirectional effect on the distribution of species in which the distribution of umbrella species can be affected differently than that of beneficiary species the validity of applying the umbrella species concept in conservation may thus be jeopardized by climate change this study assessed the potential of two keystone species the plateau pika ochotona curzoniae and the daurian pika ochotona dauurica to be umbrella species for 13 potentially beneficiary species under current and future environmental conditions of these 13 species five currently only co occur with the plateau pika five only with the daurian pika and three with both pika species current and future distributions of the pika species and potentially beneficiary species were predicted using bioclimatic and land use variables range overlaps pearson correlations niche similarity tests and relative suitability tests were performed to assess the umbrella potential of both pika species our results show that at present both pika species may be considered to be umbrella species benefitting several co occurring species however species that currently co occur with both pika species will not benefit from conservation of either of the pikas in the future years under climate change scenarios the plateau pika loses its potential to act as umbrella species for two of the four species which currently may benefit we can conclude that keystone species like pikas can act as umbrella species for carefully selected potentially beneficiary species under current conditions due to climate change related shifts in species distributions they may however lose their umbrella species status in the future which should be considered when selecting species conservation strategies,2022,1
Time for speciation and niche conservatism explain the latitudinal diversity gradient in clupeiform fishes,aim the latitudinal diversity gradient of increasing species richness from poles to equator is one of the most striking and pervasive spatial patterns of biodiversity climate appears to have been key to the formation of the latitudinal diversity gradient but the processes through which climate shaped species richness remain unclear we tested predictions of the time for speciation carrying capacity and diversification rate latitudinal diversity gradient hypotheses in a trans marine freshwater clade of fishes location global in marine and freshwater environments taxon clupeiformes anchovies herrings sardines and relatives methods we tested predictions of latitudinal diversity gradient hypotheses using a molecular phylogeny species distribution data and phylogenetic comparative approaches to test the time for speciation hypothesis we conducted ancestral state reconstructions to infer the ages of temperate subtropical and tropical lineages and frequency of evolutionary transitions between climates we tested the carry capacity hypothesis by characterizing changes in net diversification rates through time to test the diversification rate hypothesis we qualitatively compared the diversification rates of temperate subtropical and tropical lineages and conducted statistical tests for associations between latitude and diversification rates results we identified four transitions to temperate climates and two transitions out of temperate climates we found no differences in diversification rates among temperate and tropical clupeiforms net diversification rates remained positive in crown clupeiformes since their origin 150 ma in both tropical and temperate lineages climate niche characters exhibited strong phylogenetic signal all temperate clupeiform lineages arose 50 ma after the early eocene climatic optimum main conclusions our results support the time for speciation hypothesis which proposes that climate niche conservatism and fluctuations in the extent of temperate climates limited the time for species to accumulate in temperate climates resulting in the latitudinal diversity gradient we found no support for the carrying capacity or diversification rate hypotheses,2022,0.707
Phylogenetic climatic niche conservatism in sandflies (Diptera: Phlebotominae) and their relatives,phylogenetic niche conservatism is a pattern in which closely related species are more similar than distant relatives in their nicheâ related traits species in the family psychodidae show notable diversity in climatic niche and present an opportunity to test for phylogenetic niche conservatism which is as yet rarely studied in insects some species in the subfamily phlebotominae transmit leishmania parasites responsible for the disease leishmaniasis and their geographic range has been systematically characterized psychodid genus ranges can be solely tropical confined to the temperate zones or span both we obtained observation site data and associated climate data for 234 psychodid species to understand which aspects of climate most closely predict distribution temperature and seasonality are strong determinants of species occurrence within the clade next we built a phylogeny of psychodidae and found a positive relationship between pairwise genetic distance and climate niche differentiation which indicates strong niche conservatism this result is also supported by strong phylogenetic signals of metrics of climate differentiation finally we used ancestral trait reconstruction to infer the tropicality i e proportion of latitudinal range in the tropics minus the proportion of the latitudinal range in temperate areas of ancestral species and counted transitions to and from tropicality states we find that tropical and temperate species respectively produced almost entirely tropical and temperate descendant species taken together our results imply that climate niches in psychodids are strongly predicted by phylogeny and represent a formal test of a key prediction of phylogenetic niche conservatism in a clade with implications for human health,2022,0.979
"Positive selection and heat‐response transcriptomes reveal adaptive features of the Brassicaceae desert model, Anastatica hierochuntica",plant adaptation to a desert environment and its endemic heat stress is poorly understood at the molecular level the naturally heatâ tolerant brassicaceae species anastatica hierochuntica is an ideal extremophyte model to identify genetic adaptations that have evolved to allow plants to tolerate heat stress and thrive in deserts we generated an a hierochuntica reference transcriptome and identified extremophyte adaptations by comparing arabidopsis thaliana and a hierochuntica transcriptome responses to heat and detecting positively selected genes in a hierochuntica the two species exhibit similar transcriptome adjustment in response to heat and the a hierochuntica transcriptome does not exist in a constitutive heat â stressâ readyâ state furthermore the a hierochuntica global transcriptome as well as heatâ responsive orthologs display a lower basal and higher heatâ induced expression than in a thaliana genes positively selected in multiple extremophytes are associated with stomatal opening nutrient acquisition and uvâ b induced dna repair while those unique to a hierochuntica are consistent with its photoperiodâ insensitive earlyâ flowering phenotype we suggest that evolution of a flexible transcriptome confers the ability to quickly react to extreme diurnal temperature fluctuations characteristic of a desert environment while positive selection of genes involved in stress tolerance and early flowering could facilitate an opportunistic desert lifestyle,2022,0.382
"Past, present, and future predictions on the suitable habitat of the Slender racer ( Orientocoluber spinalis ) using species distribution models",species distribution models sdms across past present and future timelines provide insights into the current distribution of these species and their reaction to climate change specifically if a species is threatened or not wellâ known the information may be critical to understand that species in this study we computed sdms for orientocoluber spinalis a monotypic snake genus found in central and northeast asia across the past last interglacial last glacial maximum and midâ holocene present and future 2070s the goal of the study was to understand the shifts in distribution across time and the climatic factors primarily affecting the distribution of the species we found the suitable habitat of o spinalis to be persistently located in coldâ dry winter and hot summer climatic areas where annual mean temperature isothermality and annual mean precipitation were important for suitable habitat conditions since the last glacial maximum the suitable habitat of the species has consistently shifted northward despite the increase in suitable habitat the rapid alterations in weather regimes because of climate change in the near future are likely to greatly threaten the southern populations of o spinalis especially in south korea and china to cope with such potential future threats understanding the ecological requirements of the species and developing conservation plans are urgently needed,2022,0.896
"CESTUM VENERIS LESUEUR, 1813 (CTENOPHORA) – A RARE GUEST IN THE NORTHERN ADRIATIC SEA",we report the occurrence of the ctenophore cestum veneris lesueur 1813 in the gulf of trieste northern adriatic sea three individuals were found in march 2022 representing the first documented record in the scientific literature in more than 130 years they were observed and photographed in the sea and two specimens were brought to the piran aquarium where their behaviour was observed historical and recent literature on the occurrence of this species in the adriatic sea was reviewed the occurrence in the gulf of trieste is likely related to the transport of c veneris with the currents and therefore we present simulation results for the period januaryfebruary despite the relatively rare detections near the coast this species is probably widespread in the offshore waters of the central and southern adriatic,2022,0.623
"Eye Gnat (Liohippelates, Diptera: Chloropidae) Biology, Ecology, and Management: Past, Present, and future",abstract eye gnats mainly liohippelates pusio and liohippelates collusor are pest species that have been the subject of considerable research and extension activity in the united states since the 1930s they cause considerable discomfort and stressâ and may transmit pathogensâ to humans and animals we reviewed the abundant literature on biological ecological and management aspects of liohippelates eye gnats eye gnat biology and life cycles have been well studied in agricultural systems however their ecology roles in trophic cascades and functions in natural ecosystems particularly forests are not well documented additionally there remain opportunities to improve traps repellents deterrents and controls for eye gnats the substantial and substantive early work on these insects provides a strong foundation for future investigations and extension,2022,0.222
"Integration of Modern Molecular Tools with Geological Processes to Reveal Species Phylogeny, Biogeographical Niche Prediction, and Bio-Evolution",nature is integrated being simultaneously controlled by different natural aspects genetics bioinformatics biostatistics and geology are four diverse and broad scientific disciplines but we believe that these can offer important insights into species distribution and evolution if integrated this perspective is grounded on a case study of the family salvadoraceae where species distribution and phylogeny show high correlation with the geological records the results obtained from published and ongoing research indicate that we are pointing toward better visualizing the overlapping boundaries of these specific disciplines which will be able to more accurately answer key evolutionary questions we highlight 1 the combined application of bedrock soil geological data and bioinformatics to resolve evolutionary questions regarding species eco distribution niche prediction and bio evolution and 2 signifies the importance of relaxing boundaries between the disciplines to come to a better conclusion on species diversity and distribution driven controls overall we express and briefly explain our hypothesis to integrate modern analytical tools viz statistical correlation of geological dataâ via geo statistics geo and spatiotemporal biostatistics via geo informatics geo with gene based paleontological shreds of evidence and sequence based bioinformatics to devise a practical analysis tool namely â œgeo 2 gene bioinformaticsâ we invoke the development of algorithms through computational based programs that can provide useful correlations to understand evolutionary systematics and phylogeny species distribution and niche prediction,2022,0.646
Long-term Christmas Bird Counts describe Neotropical urban bird diversity,a significant gap in understanding the response of biodiversity to urban areas is the lack of long term studies most of the information on urban birds comes from studies carried out in the northern hemisphere and they include data that dont exceed three years although short term studies contribute to knowledge about bird community diversity and their spatial distribution in urban areas they could be biased towards more conspicuous and abundant species one of the few multi temporal datasets available for birds in urban areas is the christmas bird count cbc using annual cbc data available between 2001 and 2018 from 21 urban and peri urban sample sites assessed from the main cities of colombia we identified and analyzed long term trends on the cumulative diversity of bird communities as well as on their spatial distribution we estimated comparative trends in richness abundance similarity and complementarity of avifauna for each city and sample site based on their responses to urbanization and dietary guilds we identified almost a quarter of the species registered in colombia 464 of 1954 the representativeness of the community obtained during 18 years exceeds 84 showing richness that ranges between 214 and 278 species in the three cities bird species and individuals registered showed wide variation of the sample sites we found more dwellers insectivorous and granivorous species in urban areas with frugivores relegated to peri urban sites usually coinciding with avoider species natural peri urban areas and intra urban wetlands and urban parks were the most important refuges for birds and maintained the highest avoider and utilizer species richness long term inventories are fundamental for determining consolidated bird diversity and distributional patterns this information established a baseline for decision making and applying recommendations that allow reconciling the growing demand for urban areas with the need to preserve the native avifauna in megadiverse neotropical countries such as colombia,2022,0.9
Decomposing the spatial and temporal effects of climate on bird populations in northern European mountains,the relationships between species abundance or occurrence versus spatial variation in climate are commonly used in species distribution models sdms to forecast future distributions under â œspaceâ forâ timeâ substitutionâ the effects of climate variation on species are assumed to be equivalent in both space and time two unresolved issues of spaceâ forâ timeâ substitution are the time period for speciesâ responses and also the relative contributions of rapidâ versus slow reactions in shaping spatial and temporal responses to climate change to test the assumption of equivalence we used a new approach of climate decomposition to separate variation in temperature and precipitation in fennoscandia into spatial temporal and spatioâ temporal components over a 23â year period 1996â 2018 we compiled information on land cover topography and six components of climate for 1756 fixed route surveys and we modelled annual counts of 39 bird species breeding in the mountains of fennoscandia local abundance of breeding birds was associated with the spatial components of climate as expected but the temporal and spatioâ temporal climatic variation from the current and previous breeding seasons were also important the directions of the effects of the three climate components differed within and among species suggesting that species can respond both rapidly and slowly to climate variation and that the responses represent different ecological processes thus the assumption of equivalent speciesâ response to spatial and temporal variation in climate was seldom met in our study system consequently for the majority of our species spaceâ forâ time substitution may only be applicable once the slow speciesâ responses to a changing climate have occurred whereas forecasts for the near future need to accommodate the temporal components of climate variation however appropriate forecast horizons for spaceâ forâ time substitution are rarely considered and may be difficult to reliably identify accurately predicting change is challenging because multiple ecological processes affect species distributions at different temporal scales,2022,0.9
Will climate change cause the global peatland to expand or contract? Evidence from the habitat shift pattern of Sphagnum mosses,peatlands play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle sphagnum mosses peat mosses are considered to be the peatland ecosystem engineers and contribute to the carbon accumulation in the peatland ecosystems as coldâ adapted species the dominance of sphagnum mosses in peatlands will be threatened by climate warming the response of sphagnum mosses to climate change is closely related to the future trajectory of carbon fluxes in peatlands however the impact of climate change on the habitat suitability of sphagnum mosses on a global scale is poorly understood to predict the potential impact of climate change on the global distribution of sphagnum mosses we used the maxent model to predict the potential geographic distribution of six sphagnum species that dominate peatlands in the future 2050 and 2070 under two greenhouse gas emission scenarios ssp1â 2 6 and ssp5â 8 5 the results show that the mean temperature of the coldest quarter precipitation of the driest month and topsoil calcium carbonate are the main factors affecting the habitat availability of sphagnum mosses as the climate warms sphagnum mosses tend to migrate northward the suitable habitat and abundance of sphagnum mosses increase extensively in the highâ latitude boreal peatland north of 50â n and decrease on a large scale beyond the highâ latitude boreal peatland the southern edge of boreal peatlands would experience the greatest decline in the suitable habitat and richness of sphagnum mosses with the temperature rising and would be a risk area for the transition from carbon sink to carbon source the spatialâ temporal pattern changes of sphagnum mosses simulated in this study provide a reference for the development of management and conservation strategies for sphagnum bogs,2022,0.362
Climate Change Will Fragment Florida Stone Crab Communities,many marine species have been shown to be threatened by both ocean acidification and ocean warming which are reducing survival altering behavior and posing limits on physiology especially during earlier life stages the commercially important florida stone crab menippe mercenaria is one species that is affected by reduced seawater ph and elevated seawater temperatures in this study we determined the impacts of reduced ph and elevated temperature on the distribution of the stone crab larvae along the west florida shelf to understand the dispersion of the larvae we coupled the multi scale ocean model slim with a larval dispersal model we then conducted a connectivity study and evaluated the impacts of climate stressors by looking at four different scenarios which included models that represented the dispersion of stone crab larvae under 1 present day conditions as modelled by slim for the temperature and nemo pisces for the ph 2 ssp1 2 6 scenario 0 037 reduction in ph and 0 5â c compared to present day conditions 3 ssp2 4 5 scenario 0 15 reduction in ph and 1 5â c and 4 ssp5 8 5 scenario 0 375 reduction in ph and 3 5â c our results show a clear impact of these climate change stressors on larval dispersal and on the subsequent stone crab distribution our results indicate that future climate change could result in stone crabs moving north or into deeper waters we also observed an increase in the number of larvae settling in deeper waters defined as the non fishing zone in this study with depths exceeding 30â m that are not typically part of the commercial fishing zone the distance travelled by larvae however is likely to decrease resulting in an increase of self recruitment and decrease of the size of the sub populations a shift of the spawning period to earlier in the spring is also likely to occur our results suggest that habitats in the non fishing zone cannot serve as a significant source of larvae for the habitats in the fishing zone defined as water depth amp lt 30â m since there is very little exchange amp lt 5 of all exchanges between the two zones these results indicate that the stone crab populations in florida may be susceptible to community fragmentation and that the management of the fishery should consider the potential impacts of future climate change scenarios,2022,0.538
Guidelines for using A global standard for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas: version 1.2,key biodiversity areas kbas are sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity the purpose of the guidelines for using a global standard for the identification of key biodiversity areas hereafter the kba guidelines is to ensure that kba identification is based on consistent scientifically rigorous yet practical methods the kba guidelines provide an overview of the steps for identifying and delineating kbas together with explanation of how the kba criteria thresholds and delineation procedures should be applied in practice the kba guidelines should be used hand in hand with the kba standard,2022,0.268
"Additional Record of Oxyperas lentiginosum (Gould 1852) (Bivalvia, Mactridae) from East Coast of India and Notes on its Morpho-taxonomy",oxyperas lentiginosum gould in united states exploring expedition during the years 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 under the command of charles wilkes boston 12 1â 510â 1852 a rare mactrid clam is reported from the kakinada fishing harbour andhra pradesh east coast of india a single right valve specimen was collected from the fish landing centre bycatch of bottom trawl operated off the kakinada coast this species has previously been recorded from pirotan island gulf of kachchh gujarat and gulf of mannar tuticorin tamil nadu a brief morphological description with an outline of the hinge nomenclature of this species is presented in this article based on a single right valve this is additional report of this species from indian region,2022,0.634
GBIF information is not enough: national database improves the inventory completeness of Amazonian epiphytes,distribution data sharing in global databases e g gbif allowed the knowledge synthesis in several biodiversity areas however their wallacean shortfalls still reduce our capacity to understand distribution patterns including exclusive records from other databases such as national ones e g specieslink could mitigate these shortfall problems but it remains not evaluated therefore we assessed whether i the inventory completeness ii taxonomic contribution and iii spatial biases could be improved when integrating both global and national biodiversity databases using amazonian epiphytes as a model we compared the available taxonomic information spatially between gbif and specieslink databases using a species contribution index we obtained the inventory completeness from sources using species accumulation curves and assessed their spatial biases by constructing spatial autoregressive models we found that both databases have a high amount of exclusive records gbif 36 7 specieslink 21 7 and species 17 8 amazonia had a small epiphyte inventory completeness but it was improved when we analyzed both databases together individually both database records were biased to sites with higher altitude population and herbarium density together river density appeared as a new predictor probably due to the higher species contribution of specieslink along them our findings provide strong evidence that using both global and national databases increase the overall biodiversity knowledge and reduce inventory gaps but spatial biases may persist therefore we highlight the importance of aggregating more than one database to understand biodiversity patterns to address conservation decisions and direct shortfalls more efficiently in future studies,2022,0.364
Spatial and temporal distribution dataset of benthic macroalgae during the 2015-2016 tropical monsoonal cycle in Malaysia,abstractbackgroundthe effects of small scale disturbances such as monsoon are understudied in tropical regions the storms associated with monsoon events not only modify the local macroalgal community structure but also reveal the continuation of short term recolonisation thus this study aims to determine the variation in species assemblage and cover of macroalgae during the monsoonal cycle from 2015 to 2016 this paper presents data on the spatial and temporal distribution of benthic macroalgae along the coastline of johor malaysia the information is presented as raw and partially processed data which summarises the cover and frequency of macroalgae at the respective study sites this paper describes an important set of data that can be used further for in situ experiments on the effects of environmental disturbances towards pioneer and climax species in tropical areas new informationthis study provides a description of the east coast shore of peninsular malaysia specifically in johor coast in 2015 2016 the spatial and temporal distribution and abundance of a total of 41 taxa were assessed at four monsoon exposed locations these data provide a comprehensive baseline against disturbance and recolonisation of macroalgal community can be effectively and objectively evaluated,2022,0.102
"Taxonomic review of Gallardoneris nonatoi (Ramos, 1976) comb. nov. (Annelida, Lumbrineridae), and description of a new species of Lumbrineris from the Gulf of Mexico",ï abstractthe small lumbrineridaegallardonerisiberica martins carrera parra quintino rodrigues 2012 was first described as new to science based on specimens from portuguese waters then it was successively reported from several south european areas including spain italy greece and cyprus here evidence is presented that g iberica should be placed in synonymy with lumbrinerisnonatoi ramos 1976 originally described from nw mediterranean waters a species that fits with the diagnosis of gallardoneris based on specimens from the french coasts of the nw mediterranean this paper 1 redescribes the species using the new combination gallardonerisnonatoi ramos 1976 and 2 provides a morphometric analysis of its main morphological characters the lack of recent reports of g nonatoicomb nov in mediterranean waters is presumably due to the recent redescription of the species as l nonatoi based on specimens from the gulf of mexico however these specimens belong to lumbrineris as currently defined by assessing their morphological differences it is concluded that the specimens from the gulf of mexico represent a different and new species namely lumbrinerisjansp nov also discussed is the possible assignation of lumbrinerislongipodiata cantone 1990 a poorly known species seldom recorded since its original description from the gulf of catania mediterranean sea to gallardoneris as well as on whether it is a valid species or may be an additional junior synonym of g nonatoicomb nov,2022,0.785
A new species of Quintinia (Paracryphiaceae) and an overview of the genus for New Guinea,a new species of quintinia a dc is described q macrophylla hatus ex o k paul and the typifications of all other species occurring in new guinea are reviewed an identification key to all 13 species accepted for the area is provided as well as an appendix with a checklist of all species in the genus lectotypes are chosen for quintinia altigena schltr q epiphytica mattf q lanceolata reeder q ledermannii schltr q macgregorii f muell q nutantiflora schltr q pachyphylla schltr and q schlechteriana o c schmidt,2022,0.779
The Citizen Science Paradox,citizen science cs is now very popular in ecology the number of scientific publications referencing cs has increased steadily over the past 15 years with more than 1150 publications today however the multiplicity of research involved suggests that this number is highly underestimated based on this paradox a literature review on cs shows that while its formalization in 2009 facilitated its referencing about 70 of the publications are not referenced using cs as keyword to understand this under representation an analysis of 149 publications related to the famous christmas bird count program shows that this underestimation is not mainly related to the diversity of keywords used to describe cs but rather to the fact that cs is mainly considered as a method four publications out of five the results also show that taking into account the whole text of a publication would represent a substantial improvement for the analysis of scientific databases whatever the field of research,2022,0.121
FERN-ARTHROPOD INTERACTIONS FROM THE MODERN UPLAND SOUTHEAST ATLANTIC RAINFOREST REVEALS ARTHROPOD DAMAGE INSIGHTS TO FOSSIL PLANT-INSECT INTERACTIONS,abstract ferns were among the first broadleaved plants in the fossil record we assessed fern arthropod interactions in modern ferns monilophyta as a model for comparison with damage on ferns in the fossil record we found that the functional feeding groups of margin feeding hole feeding surface feeding piercing and sucking oviposition mining and galling was present on 13 species of ferns at elevations ranging from 750 to 900 meters along mountain slopes of the brazilian atlantic rainforest we recognized 17 damage types dts including one new dt and provide implications for interpreting damage on leaves in the fossil record nine fossil dts with modern analogues were found on ferns evaluation of damage on modern ferns demonstrate that the variation in the abundance and damage signatures of external feeding piercing and sucking galling and mining enhances understanding of damage patterns on fossil leaves the taphonomic implications to fossil plant insect interactions are provided based on the sampling of modern arthropod damage and the preservation biases on ferns arthropod remains that are poorly attached to ferns such as silk webs eggs and spider egg sacs as well as insect exuviae pupae and body parts might provide an important feature for arthropod preservation associated with fern leaves in the plant fossil record this integrative method demonstrates that dt signatures on modern ferns indicate that ferns are an important host plant for herbivorous arthropods consequently the same importance of ferns as host plants of arthropod herbivores likely was present in deep time,2022,0.047
How do distribution mapping methods perform in estimating beta diversity at macroecological scales? A case study with Neotropical anurans,species distribution mapping methods have their advantages and limitations concerning their use on theoretical and or applied macroecological approaches however it remains underexplored how the estimates of community ecology metrics vary across the distributions generated by different mapping methods here we mapped the distribution patterns of the anuran beta diversity in the atlantic forest and cerrado hotspots generated by three mapping methods point to grid ptg extent of occurrence eoo and ecological niche modelling enm maps so we were able to compare the congruence of the local contribution to beta diversity index lcbd among them as well as their turnover and nestedness components ptgs generated the most divergent lcbd values probably due to the more resolved spatial scale in which speciesâ presence are considered so eeo and enm generated similar beta diversity estimates for both hotspots high lcbd values in the cerrado were recorded in ecotone regions whereas in the atlantic forest the highest beta diversity values were found along the atlantic coast the structure of beta diversity of ptg showed way too high values of importance for the turnover component compared to the eeo and enm maps which also recorded higher importance for the turnover than for the nestedness component,2022,0.473
"Incipient speciation, high genetic diversity, and ecological divergence in the alligator bark juniper suggest complex demographic changes during the Pleistocene",the most recent glacial cycles of the pleistocene affected the distribution population sizes and levels of genetic structure of temperate forest species in the main mexican mountain systems our objective was to investigate the effects these cycles had on the genetic structure and distribution of a dominant species of the â œmexicalâ vegetation across north and central america we studied the genetic diversity of juniperus deppeana a conifer distributed from the southwestern united states to the highlands of central america we combined information of one plastid marker and two nuclear markers to infer phylogeographic structure genetic diversity and demographic changes we also characterized the climatic niche for each variety to infer the plausible area of suitability during past climatic conditions and to evaluate climatic niche discontinuities along with the species distribution we found a marked phylogeographic structure separating the populations north and south of the isthmus of tehuantepec with populations to the south of this barrier forming a distinct genetic cluster corresponding to juniperus deppeana var gamboana we also found signals of population expansion in the northern genetic cluster ecological niche modeling results confirmed climatic niche differences and discontinuities among j deppeana varieties and heterogeneous responses to climatic oscillations overall j deppeanaâ s genetic diversity has been marked by distribution shifts population growth and secondary contact the north and in situ permanence in the south since the last interglacial to the present high genetic variation suggests a wide and climatically diverse distribution during climatic oscillations we detected the existence of two main genetic clusters supporting previous proposals that juniperus deppeana and juniperus gamboana may be considered two separate species,2022,0.845
"Common invasion of non-native plant species and their co-occurrence in an urban area of Ondo State, Nigeria",urban development is a significant contributor to the loss of biodiversity biological invasion is a consequence of urban development where invasive species appear singly or in multiple following unprecedented disturbance the current study was carried out to assess the presence and impact of the prevailing invasive non native plant species co habiting in the federal university of technology akure nigeria thirty two 32 quadrants were systematically laid out to measure the species diversity and species composition of non native plants across the university landscape the species abundance of invasive non native plants found within the quadrants was measured using the diversity indices the shannonâ wiener index h value was low in all the sites except centre for research and development cerad which was relatively high with 0 31 values a one way anova duncan p 0 05 shows that the shannon wiener value and the relative density of the invasive non native species had no significant difference among the nine selected sites forest plantation fp wild park wp teaching and research farm t rf west african science service centre on climate change and adapted land use waska centre for research and development cerad university senate us new undergraduate hostel nuh new postgraduate hostel nph and new road nr it was observed from the result that ten different instances of invasive non native species colonized and dominated a particular study area following disturbance in summary it was observed that the infestation of these plant species is currently affecting the indigenous plant growth and survival at every season of the year however the study shows that biological control is easier done when a single species forms a colony in a site than when it is systemically spread across all areas,2022,0.93
"Expanded range of eight orchid bee species (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Euglossini) in Costa Rica",abstractbackgroundthe monteverde region of costa rica is a hotspot of endemism and biodiversity the region is however disturbed by human activities such as agriculture and urbanisation this study provides a list of orchid bees hymenoptera euglossini compiled from field surveys conducted during january october 2019 in the premontane wet forest of san luis monteverde costa rica we collected 36 species of euglossine bees across four genera we provide new geographic distribution and elevation data for eight species in two genera due to their critical role in the pollination of orchids and other plants the distribution and abundance of euglossine bees has relevance to plant biodiversity and conservation efforts this is especially important in a region with a high diversity of difficult to study epiphytic orchids such as in the monteverde region new informationa total of 2 742 euglossine male individuals across four genera eufriesea eulaema euglossa and exaerete were collected in this study updated geographic distributions and elevation ranges were established for eight species of euglossini in two genera eufrieseamussitans fabricius 1787 eufriesearufocauda kimsey 1977 euglossadodsoni moure 1965 euglossadressleri moure 1968 euglossahansoni moure 1965 euglossaignita smith 1874 euglossatridentata moure 1970 and euglossaturbinifex dressler 1978 these are the first recorded occurrences of these species in the monteverde region of costa rica according to the global biodiversity information facility gbif database https doi org 10 15468 9f9kgp this study also established expanded elevation ranges for euglossaallosticta euglossabursigera euglossamixta euglossaheterosticta and euglossamaculabris though these five species have been previously recorded in the monteverde region and thus are not described in detail here additionally our capture of 123 eufrieseaconcava individuals is significant as it indicates its abundance in this region prior to this study there was a single record of e concava in the monteverde region documented in 1993,2022,0.813
Climate matching and anthropogenic factors contribute to the colonization and extinction of local populations during avian invasions,aim concern about the impacts of biological invasions has generated a great deal of interest in understanding factors that determine invasion success most of our current knowledge comes from static approaches that use spatial patterns as a proxy of temporal processes these approaches assume that species are present in areas where environmental conditions are the most favourable however this assumption is problematic when applied to dynamic processes such as species expansions when equilibrium has not been reached location iberian peninsula taxon birds methods in our work we analyse the roles played by human activities climatic matching and spatial connectivity on the two main underlying processes shaping the spread of invasive species i e colonization and extinction using a dynamic modelling approach we use a large data set that has recorded the occurrence of two invasive bird speciesâ the ring necked psittacula krameri and the monk myiopsitta monachus parakeetsâ in the iberian peninsula from 1991 to 2016 results human activities and climate matching play a role on species range dynamics human influence and urbanization were the most relevant factors explaining colonization additionally an effect of climate matching was found persistence the inverse of extinction was mainly affected by human influence for the monk parakeet and by the extent of urban environments for the ring necked parakeet main conclusions human activities play a major role not only on colonization of new locations but also on persistence during range expansion additionally natural processesâ notably climate matchingâ also affect new colonizations these findings add to our understanding of the mechanisms that might allow alien species to expand their geographic range at new locations and might help to improve our capacity to assess invasion risks and impacts accurately,2022,0.295
Assessment of the spatiotemporal risk of avian influenza between waterfowl and poultry farms during the annual cycle: A spatial prediction study focused on seasonal distribution changes in resident waterfowl in South Korea,previous studies and efforts to prevent and to manage avian influenza ai outbreaks have mainly focused on the wintering season however outbreaks of ai have been reported in the summer including the breeding season of waterfowl additionally the spatial distribution of waterfowl can easily change during the annual cycle due to their lifeâ cycle traits and the presence of both migrants and residents in the population thus we assessed the spatiotemporal variation in ai exposure risk in poultry due to spatial distribution changes in three duck species included in both major residents and wintering migrants in south korea the mandarin mallard and spotâ billed duck during wintering octoberâ march breeding aprilâ june and whole annual seasons to estimate seasonal ecological niche variations among the three duck species we applied pairwise ecological niche analysis using the pianka index subsequently seasonal distribution models were projected by overlaying the monthly ranges estimated by the maximum entropy model finally we overlaid each seasonal distribution range onto a poultry distribution map of south korea we found that the mandarin had less niche overlap with the mallard and spotâ billed duck during the wintering season than during the breeding season whereas the mallard had less niche overlap with the mandarin and spotâ billed duck during the breeding season than during the wintering season breeding and annual distribution ranges of the mandarin and spotâ billed duck but not the mallard were similar or even wider than their wintering ranges similarly the mandarin and spotâ billed duck showed more extensive overlap proportions between poultry and their distributional ranges during both breeding and annual seasons than during wintering season these results suggest that potential ai exposure in poultry can occur more widely in the summer than in winter depending on sympatry with the host duck species future studies considering their population density and variable pathogenicity of avian influenza are required,2022,0.664
"Phytochemical analysis of Clinopodium candidissimum (Munby) Kuntze growing in Algeria by an integrated HS-SPME-GC-MS, NMR and HPLC-DAD-MSn approach: valorisation of an endemic natural source of bioactive compounds",clinopodium candidissimum munby kuntze lamiaceae is used in traditional medicine and as a food condiment in algeria where it is known as zaater cheleuh and nabta elbida here we report the comprehensive characterisation of non volatile polar constituents extracted from c candidissimum aerial parts a mixture of inflorescences stems and leaves and their aroma profile qualitative 1hâ nmr and quali quantitative hplc msn analyses of fractions obtained with solvents at different polarity revealed the presence of aglyconic and glycosylated flavonoids 3 1 phenylpropanoids 3 6 gallic acid derivatives 0 76 and triterpenoids 0 62 among the others on the other hand hsâ spme gc ms allowed to identify 38 volatile constituents among which the oxygenated monoterpenes pulegone 44 8 piperitenone 6 6 isopulegone 5 8 and neo menthol 3 8 and the sesquiterpene hydrocarbons germacrene d 16 2 and bicyclogermacrene 3 0 were the most abundant overall results indicate that c candidissimum represents an endemic natural source of antioxidants and bioactive compounds and they will be useful for further studies on this species,2022,0.502
"Turtles of Colombia: an annotated analysis of their diversity, distribution, and conservation status",with this analysis we update the state of knowledge on the species richness distribution and conservation status of the turtles of colombia both at the national level and regionally within colombia by hydrological drainages and geopolitical distribution units departments the richness patterns and conservation status are analyzed at taxonomic and geographic levels and the implications of the description of new species on our knowledge of their distribution and conservation status in the country are discussed finally annotations are given on the turtle species that have been introduced into colombia translocated within the country erroneously reported or deemed to be taxonomically invalid our conservative analysis in terms of richness based upon validated occurrence records confrms that there are 33 species and two subspecies of turtles in colombia of which fve are sea turtles and 28 are tortoises or freshwater turtle species colombia has 17 genera of chelonians in nine families so it is second behind brazil in terms of the number of extant species in south america the proportion of threatened species in colombia exceeds 43 and the threatened species are not evenly distributed among higher taxa or regions commonalities were found in the national conservation status assessments for most of the turtle species shared among the fve most species rich countries in south america including sea turtles and podocnemidids except for the podocnemidids in brazil,2022,0.982
"REVISION OF THE GENUS CHLAENIUS BONELLI, 1810 (COLEOPTERA, CARABIDAE), WITH A NEW RECORD SPECIES FROM IRAQ",in this paper the species of the genus of chlaenius bonelli 1810 coleoptera carabidae were reviewed and it was revealed that there are 21 confirmed species in iraq among them the species of chlaenius hamifer chaudoir 1856 was recorded for the first time in iraq,2022,0.574
"Asperula fidanii sp. nov. (Rubiaceae, Asperula L. sect. Oppositifoliae Schischk. ex Schönb.-Tem.): a new species from South Eastern Anatolia, Turkey",asperula fidanii sp nov rubiaceae is described as a new species in the beytã åÿåÿebap district åžä rnak province in the south east of turkey asperula fidanii sp nov is similar to a fragillima boiss hausskn a friabilis schã nb tem and a podlechii schã nb tem however it is easily distinguished from a fragillima with its tubular white hairy and shorter flowers it differs from a friabilis by the length of the corolla the corolla lobes shorter than its tube and the hairless ovary it differs from a podlechii in that it has setulose hairs corolla tubular and hairy morphology pollen and mericarp surface characteristics of a fidanii sp nov were determined morphological and palynological data and description of the species were provided the distribution area of a fidanii sp nov and other related asperula l species was also presented on the map,2022,0.78
Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation,reliably documenting plant diversity is necessary to protect and sustainably benefit from it at the heart of this documentation lie species concepts and the practical methods used to delimit taxa here we apply a total evidence iterative methodology to delimit and document species in the south american genus victoria nymphaeaceae the systematics of victoria has thus far been poorly characterized due to difficulty in attributing species identities to biological collections this research gap stems from an absence of type material and biological collections also the confused diagnosis of v cruziana with the goal of improving systematic knowledge of the genus we compiled information from historical records horticulture and geography and assembled a morphological dataset using citizen science and specimens from herbaria and living collections finally we generated genomic data from a subset of these specimens morphological and geographical observations suggest four putative species three of which are supported by nuclear population genomic and plastid phylogenomic inferences we propose these three confirmed entities as robust species where two correspond to the currently recognized v amazonica and v cruziana the third being new to science which we describe diagnose and name here as v boliviana magdalena and l t sm importantly we identify new morphological and molecular characters which serve to distinguish the species and underpin their delimitations our study demonstrates how combining different types of character data into a heuristic total evidence approach can enhance the reliability with which biological diversity of morphologically challenging groups can be identified documented and further studied,2022,0.875
"Neotype of Echinocactus fossulatus (Cactaceae) and the first register of Thelocactus hexaedrophorus, in Aguascalientes, Mexico",a neotype for the name echinocactus fossulatus is here designated and the first record of thelocactus hexaedrophorus an endemic species to mexico for aguascalientes is reported,2022,0.482
Predicting suitable habitats of Melia azedarach L. in China using data mining,melia azedarach l is an important economic tree widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of china and some other countries however it is unclear how the speciesâ suitable habitat will respond to future climate changes we aimed to select the most accurate one among seven data mining models to predict the current and future suitable habitats for m azedarach in china these models include maximum entropy maxent support vector machine svm generalized linear model glm random forest rf naive bayesian model nbm extreme gradient boosting xgboost and gradient boosting machine gbm a total of 906â m azedarach locations were identified and sixteen climate predictors were used for model building the modelsâ validity was assessed using three measures area under the curves auc kappa and overall accuracy oa we found that the rf provided the most outstanding performance in prediction power and generalization capacity the top climate factors affecting the speciesâ suitable habitats were mean coldest month temperature mcmt followed by the number of frost free days nffd degree days above 18â â c ddâ â 18 temperature difference between mwmt and mcmt or continentality td mean annual precipitation map and degree days below 18â â c ddâ â 18 we projected that future suitable habitat of this species would increase under both the rcp4 5 and rcp8 5 scenarios for the 2011â 2040 2020s 2041â 2070 2050s and 2071â 2100 2080s our findings are expected to assist in better understanding the impact of climate change on the species and provide scientific basis for its planting and conservation,2022,0.162
"Pediobius Rotundatus (Fonscolombe, 1832) (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Eulophidae) New to Britain with First Reports of Native Parasitoids Reared from Plagiotrochus Quercusilicis (Fabricius, 1798) (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) in England",pediobius rotundatus fonscolombe eulophidae is reported for the first time from britain reared from sexual generation galls of plagiotrochus quercusilicis fabricius cynipidae on quercus ilex l collected in the counties of suffolk and kent england additional first british host records of three species of pteromalidae and one of torymidae from galls of p quercusilicis are also presented,2022,0.453
"Some Comments on the Types of Series &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Cistanche&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; Hoffmanns. &amp;amp; Link, Distributed in Bukhara Region (Uzbekistan)",the article provides information on the distribution and importance of the cistanche family in the bukhara region four species of the genus cistanche mongolica beck cistanche flava c a mey korsh cistanche ambigua bunge beck cistanche salsa c a mey beck have been identified in this region the species has been identified as host plants in different ecological environments and parasitic among the cistanche species c salsa and c flava are common in the study area it has been noted in laboratory experiments that their medicinal properties are higher than those of other species,2022,0.436
"The Spread of the Invasive Locust Digitate Leafminer Parectopa robiniella Clemens, 1863 (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae): The Ukrainian Context",the spread of phytophagous pests are often associated with global warming these species may be of interest in terms of biological indications of climate change we considered the locust digitate leafminer p robiniella in ukraine it was first recorded in 2003 in 2020â 2021 we found areas of massive r pseudoacacia leaf damage caused by the pest on trukhaniv island kyiv and some places in the region using 592 georeferenced records of p robiniella across europe and a bayesian additive regression trees algorithm we modeled the distribution of the moth as predictors a current climate worldclim v 2 and a black locust habitat suitability map were employed western and south western regions of ukraine and transcarpathia are considered the most favorable for the pest amongst the factors determining its niche summer moisture and warm conditions are the most important for facilitating the spread and naturalization of the moth under progressing climate change the species is expected to move eastward,2022,0.52
"A review of the Phyllanthus genus plants: Their phytochemistry, traditional uses, and potential inhibition of xanthine oxidase",ï abstracthyperuricemia is a risk factor for gout and other cardiovascular diseases one of the therapies used is allopurinol unfortunately it has unwanted side effects these conditions made researchers continue to seek and develop alternative treatments from natural products one of which is from plants of the phyllanthus genus one of their contents was polyphenols especially flavonoids it is an alternative treatment for hyperuricemia because of its minimal side effects the flavonoids in this genus were reported to have xanthine oxidase inhibitory quercetin kaempferol rutin apigenin luteolin myricetin catechin epicatechin and epigallocatechin with ic50 values â â from 0 44 m to 100î m the presence of ï ï interactions between planar rings a and c on flavones with phe 1009 and phe 914 and the addition of hydroxyl groups on flavonoid compounds plays a crucial role in inhibiting xanthine oxidase,2022,0.139
Arthropods of Australia’s subtropical and tropical rainforests: rich and unique hotspots of biological diversity?,abstract the tropical and subtropical rainforests of eastern australia are a major component of the forests of east australia global hotspot australian rainforests are maintained orographically and are embedded within vast tracts of pyrogenic open forest and woodland australian tropical and subtropical forests stretch over 24â of latitude from cape york queensland to south of sydney new south wales since european colonization in 1788 these rainforests have been reduced in extent by about 30 the most abundant and functionally significant animal species within these forests are arthropods these have attracted the attention of western science since before formal colonization through the twentieth century this focus increased and comparative biogeographic studies began to emerge some taxa have received much more attention than others selected butterflies and beetles plus economically important species stand out in this respect from the late 1980s mass sampling approaches developed recent research foci have included tropical and subtropical elevational transects latitudinally diverse multi method one hectare surveys and use of canopy knockdown as a way of sampling the canopy important and distinct patterns reflecting latitude altitude and vertical position have emerged a focus on moths in remnant and elevational studies has led to the identification of indicator sets of species which may be most useful for tracking the impacts of environmental degradation and global warming arthropods are increasingly being nominated on lists of rare threatened and endangered species a range of species of insects particularly butterflies have been so identified in australia but few of these are rainforest species the vulnerable richmond birdwing butterfly a species of subtropical rainforests has become an icon of how recovery methods can be applied to invertebrate species regarding the entire rainforest communityâ microbiota plants vertebrates and invertebratesâ as the â objectâ to be conserved is an essential and much more realistic mindset for future conservation efforts most of australiaâ s tropical and subtropical rainforests are held in national parks and they are defining features of two of australiaâ s largest world heritage areas growing impacts of global warming means they cannot be regarded as â safeâ from a conservation point of view increasing frequency of wildfires impinging upon rainforest areas is having a devastating effect on some of these fire sensitive forests implications for insect conservation most of australiaâ s tropical and subtropical rainforests are held in national parks and they are defining features of two of australiaâ s largest world heritage areas nevertheless the growing impacts of global warming means they cannot be regarded as â safeâ from a conservation point of view increasing frequency of wildfires impinging upon rainforest areas is having a devastating effect on these fire sensitive forests regarding the entire rainforest communityâ microbiota plants vertebrates and invertebratesâ as the â objectâ to be conserved is an essential and much more realistic mindset for future conservation efforts,2022,0.564
Cold-tolerant traits that favour northwards movement and establishment of Mediterranean and Ponto-Caspian alien aquatic invertebrates,over recent decades many mediterranean and ponto caspian aquatic invertebrate species have dispersed northwards and established as non native species in colder regions we hypothesized that these species have cold tolerant traits which facilitate dispersal into colder climates thanks to these traits southern european aquatic species are able to cross biogeographic boundaries we downloaded the list of all alien invertebrate species that were fully aquatic i e lacking terrestrial adults from the griis database and picked out those mediterranean and ponto caspian species that have undergone northwards range expansion we identified traits that may facilitate dispersal to colder climates including the following small size capacity for behavioural thermoregulation feeding habit omnivorous filter feeders food generalists quiescence and dormancy or diapause freezing avoidance presence of cryoprotectants tolerance to low temperatures or eurythermicity active dispersal and enhanced reproduction we statistically tested the null hypotheses that mediterranean and ponto caspian alien aquatic invertebrate species that dispersed into the north have all of these traits we used contingency tables populated with raw frequency data with ï 2 â tests and assessed statistical significance at î of 0 05 we identified 95 mediterranean and ponto caspian alien aquatic invertebrate species that have shown northwards range extension 10 10 of which were of mediterranean origin and 85 90 of ponto caspian origin we found that this northwards dispersal from southern europe is mainly limited to a few following groups of aquatic invertebrates small crustaceans molluscs cnidarians and annelids ability to go to diapause hibernation or resting period temperature tolerance and small size were the traits most commonly shared by these organisms we conclude that mediterranean and ponto caspian aquatic invertebrate species showing northwards range expansion have cold tolerant strategies the traits analysed can favour the establishment of the species,2022,0.981
From the Balkan towards Western Europe: Range expansion of the golden jackal ( Canis aureus )—A climatic niche modeling approach,in recent decades a rapid range expansion of the golden jackal canis aureus towards northern and western europe has been observed the golden jackal is a mediumâ sized canid with a broad and flexible diet almost 200 different parasite species have been reported worldwide from c â aureus including many parasites that are shared with dogs and cats and parasite species of public health concern as parasites may follow the range shifts of their host the range expansion of the golden jackal could be accompanied by changes in the parasite fauna in the new ecosystems in the new distribution area the golden jackal could affect ecosystem equilibrium e g through changed competition situations or predation pressure in a niche modeling approach we project the future climatic habitat suitability of the golden jackal in europe in the context of whether climatic changes promote range expansion we use an ensemble forecast based on six presenceâ absence algorithms to estimate the climatic suitability of c â aureus for different time periods up to the year 2100 considering different ipcc scenarios on future development as predictor variables we used six bioclimatic variables provided by worldclim our results clearly indicate that areas with climatic conditions analogous to those of the current core distribution area of the golden jackal in europe will strongly expand towards the north and the west in future decades thus the observed range expansion may be favored by climate change the occurrence of stable populations can be expected in central europe with regard to biodiversity and public health concerns the population and range dynamics of the golden jackal should be surveyed correlative niche models provide a useful and frequently applied tool for this purpose the results can help to make monitoring more efficient by identifying areas with suitable habitat and thus a higher probability of occurrence,2022,0.822
"The new species and the third Chinese member of Colubrina (C. zhaoguangii, Rhamnaceae)",a novel species of rhamnaceae colubrina zhaoguangii is discovered in sichuan china during the biodiversity investigations of the second tibetan plateau scientific expedition and research detailed descriptions and illustrations of the new species are presented herein to date the new species is only found in dry warm river valleys of the jinsha river basin in hengduan mountains region hdm compared with the other two known chinese colubrina species c zhaoguangii features by the habit of twisted shrub and tiny leaves with emarginate apex in morphology the new species highly resembles c alluaudii endemic in madagascar and c viridis in northwestern mexico whereas it is distinguished from these two relatives by its minutely white scales on the leaf blades the discovery of c zhaoguangii reminds us again that the bottom region is also important for biodiversity conservation in hdm and should be a flora survey priority,2022,0.888
Mini-batching ecological data to improve ecosystem models with machine learning,ecosystems are involved in global biogeochemical cycles that regulate climate and provide essential services to human societies mechanistic models are required to describe ecosystem dynamics and anticipate their response to anthropogenic pressure but their adoption has been limited in practice because of issues with parameter identification and because of model inaccuracies while observations could be used to directly estimate parameters and improve models model nonlinearities as well as shallow incomplete and noisy datasets complicate this process here we propose a machine learning ml framework relying on a mini batch method combined with automatic differentiation and state of the art optimizers by splitting the data into mini batches with a short time horizon we show both analytically and numerically that the mini batch method regularizes the learning problem when combined with the proposed numerical implementation the resulting ml framework can efficiently learn the parameter of complex dynamical models and is a workhorse for model selection we evaluate the performance of the ml framework in recovering the dynamics of a simulated food web we show that it can efficiently learn from noisy incomplete and independent time series accurately estimating the model parameters and providing reliable short term forecasts we further show that the ml framework can provide statistical support for the true generating model among several candidates in summary the proposed ml framework can efficiently learn from data and elucidate mechanistic pathways to improve our understanding and predictions of ecosystem dynamics,2022,0.011
"Species distribution models applied to mosquitoes: Use, quality assessment, and recommendations for best practice",mosquito borne diseases mbd are a major global health concern to aid mbd management efforts the distribution of mosquito species is frequently investigated through species distribution models sdms however the quality these sdms for management use has not been examined we evaluated 127 publications of mosquito sdms published between 1998 and 2020 and assessed each against a set of recently developed best practice standards pertaining to quality of the response variable predictor variables model building and model evaluation aspects mosquito sdms were predominantly trained with presence background response variables 77 of studies bioclimatic predictor variables 39 63 maximum entropy algorithm 54 and evaluated by area under the receiver operating curve 36 or confusion matrix metrics 34 aedes were the best studied genus 70 studies pan african 20 and global 16 distribution studies dominated all published studies had one or more unacceptable standards within considered aspects but no aspect observed unacceptable standards in all publications the highest proportion of unacceptable standards were observed within predictor variables 60 followed by model building 53 model evaluation 34 and response variable 17 response variable and model building demonstrated 8 and 0 2 increases in quality over time but predictor variables and model evaluation exhibited 6 and 2 decreases in quality respectively quality of mosquito sdms has not changed since introduction of best practice standards quality of mosquito sdms can be improved by ensuring known species temperature and precipitation thresholds are represented within the response variable resolution of predictor variables must be justified from ecological knowledge or statistically approximated sdms of mosquitoes require improved evaluation against independent data or creation of geographically structured data we encourage future mosquito sdm applications to utilize the most recent sdm standards and recommendations to improve applicability,2022,0.117
Taxodium huegelii C. Lawson natural distribution in the state of Hidalgo,taxodium huegelii synonym taxodium mucronatum is a tree that inhabits gallery forests its common names are ahuehuete tule tree montezuma cypress or sabino the objective of this research was to generate current and potential distribution maps for the species in the state of hidalgo the 56 records obtained from field collections and a database search were used to prepare them records were pre analyzed to avoid provenance errors and repeated data the documented distribution map was generated with arcgisâ version 10 3 and the potential distribution map with maxent version 3 4 1 the biogeographic provinces zacatecan potosin southern highlands eastern sierra madre and the gulf of mexico were the only ones with records of presence located in 23 of the 84 municipalities of hidalgo however according to the results there is 46 suitability for the species to be distributed in 63 municipalities in the state the potential distribution model is satisfactory as it has a prediction of 92 the distribution of t huegelii is favored in areas where the minimum temperature of the coldest month is not less than 3 â c and in places with a precipitation range of 100 to 500 mm the actual and potential distribution maps generated constitute the basis for future research on this emblematic taxon of mexico,2022,0.525
"Morphometric, reproductive and germination characteristics of Swietenia humilis Zucc. germplasm from Guerrero State",swietenia humilis is a tropical hardwood species threatened by habitat fragmentation due to deforestation and changes in land use therefore it is essential to characterize the germplasm of natural populations to define conservation propagation and reforestation strategies the morphometric and reproductive characteristics of fruits as well as the viability and germination capacity of seeds of s humilis trees from natural stands from several sites in the state of guerrero mexico zacapalco buenavista santa fe tepetlapa cieneguillas tuxpan and arcelia were analyzed at each site fruit and seed size and weight number and proportion of developed and undeveloped seeds viability and germination capacity were characterized a kruskal wallis nonparametric analysis of variance and a comparison of means were performed at a significance level î 0 05 fruit and seed characteristics varied among the sites evaluated cieneguillas presented fruits of smaller size weight and number of seeds tuxpan had the highest number of seeds but a high proportion of undeveloped seeds santa fe presented the highest number of developed seeds although the heaviest most viable vigorous and with the highest germination capacity were those of zacapalco s humilis trees in the natural stands analyzed in the state of guerrero produce fruits and seeds that differ in their morphometric and reproductive characteristics as well as in their germination capacity,2022,0.37
Vicariance Between Cercis siliquastrum L. and Ceratonia siliqua L. Unveiled by the Physical–Chemical Properties of the Leaves’ Epicuticular Waxes,classically vicariant phenomena have been essentially identified on the basis of biogeographical and ecological data here we report unequivocal evidences that demonstrate that a physicalâ chemical characterization of the epicuticular waxes of the surface of plant leaves represents a very powerful strategy to get rich insight into vicariant events we found vicariant similarity between cercis siliquastrum l family fabaceae subfamily cercidoideae and ceratonia siliqua l family fabaceae subfamily caesalpinoideae both taxa converge in the mediterranean basin c siliquastrum on the north and c siliqua across the south in similar habitats sclerophyll communities of maquis and climatic profiles these species are the current representation of their subfamilies in the mediterranean basin where they overlap because of this biogeographic and ecological similarity the environmental pattern of both taxa was found to be very significant the physicalâ chemical analysis performed on the epicuticular waxes of c siliquastrum and c siliqua leaves provided relevant data that confirm the functional proximity between them a striking resemblance was found in the epicuticular waxes of the abaxial surfaces of c siliquastrum and c siliqua leaves in terms of the dominant chemical compounds 1 triacontanol c30 and 1 octacosanol c28 respectively morphology intricate network of randomly organized nanometer thick and micrometer long plates wettability superhydrophobic character with water contact angle values of 167 5â â â 0 5â and 162â â â 3â respectively and optical properties in both species the light reflectance absorptance of the abaxial surface is significantly higher lower than that of the adaxial surface but the overall trend in reflectance is qualitatively similar these results enable us to include for the first time c siliqua in the vicariant process exhibited by c canadensis l c griffithii l and c siliquastrum,2022,0.372
"Muscari baeticum (Scilloideae, Asparagaceae), a new addition to the native flora of Tunisia and third report to Mediterranean Africa",abstract muscari baeticum originating from western europe is here recorded as new from the central eastern part of tunisia so far it was known only from algeria and morocco within the southern part of the mediterranean basin description of the species as well as first data about its ecology in tunisia together with geographical distribution and diagnostic features of closely related species are given photographic illustrations of the new reported taxon and an updated key to the muscari species in north africa are also provided,2022,0.48
"Biodiversity, Abundance of Flies (Diptera: Brachycera) Attracted by Fresh Flesh and Identification of Medical or Forensic Important Species in Douala (Cameroon)",in tropical countries some non biting flies alone or in combination cause myiasis infections nowaday myiasis cases are increasing in urban and rural areas but nothing is known concerning the composition and structure of the responsible fliesâ assemblages our study aimed to establish a baseline of information on the distribution of non biting flies in the urban quarters of douala littoral cameroon as a first step in evaluating their status ecological surveys were conducted in 2020 during the rainy season july to november in four quarters of douala populous residential quarter bilonguã ndakat market ndogbong university campus and souboum health center flies were captured and stored in vials containing 70â alcohol identified and the community stucture was characterized a total of 7 379 flies belonged to four families five subfamilies seven genera and 14 species calliphoridae was the most represented family 86 2 followed by muscidae 13 0 and sarcophagidae 0 7 while fanniidae was rare 0 1 these flies were facultative myiasigenic species we identified three afrotropical species 21 4 nine exotic species 64 3 and two unknown origin species 14 3 flies of high abundances were the afrotropical origin fly chrysomyia putoria wiedemann 1830 calliphoridae chrysomyiinae 36 8 of the total collection the australasian origin fly ch rufifacies macquart 1842 calliphoridae chrysomyiinae 21 8 the unknown origin fly lucilia spp calliphoridae calliphorinae 18 2 the holarctic origin fly phormia regina meigen 1826 calliphoridae chrysomyiinae 8 2 the paleartic origin fly musca musca domestica linnaeus 1758 muscidae muscinae 7 6 the paleartic origin fly muscina pabulorum fallen 1817 muscina prolapsa harris 1780 muscidae muscinae 3 0 and the palearctic origin fly musca autumnalis de geer 1776 muscidae muscinae 1 8 seven rare species were represented each by less than 1 0 of the overall collection overall species exhibited a positive asociation schluterâ s ratio vr 1 913 statistic w 397 90 df 14 p 0 001 assemblages exhibited high evenness low species richness and diversity and moderate dominance by a few species suggesting a moderate interspecies competition influence and or disturbance by human activities gm model fitted sad from ndogbong bilonguã souboum and the global assemblage confirming these assemblages are dominated by a few species pioneer assemblages and operated according to niche partitioning strategy ln model fitted the sad from ndakat market suggesting a community where the majority of species showed moderate abundances close to the model of little disturbed environments the high occurence of myiasigenic flies necessitates the reaction of the public health control service to reduce myiasis occurrence in the city,2022,0.943
Integrating trait-based movement into mechanistic predictions of thermal performance,abstract despite the diversity and functional importance of invertebrates predicting their response to global warming remains challenging as it requires extensive measurements of physiological performance or rarely available high resolution distribution data mechanistic models can help overcome these limitations by generalizing fundamental physiological processes however their predictions typically omit the effects of species interactions movement is a key process of species interactions underpinning animal performance in the real world here we developed an empirically grounded mechanistic model that incorporates allometric and thermodynamic constraints on movement and predator prey interactions we illustrate how it can be used to quantify the thermal performance of invertebrates under current and future climatic conditions this trait based approach 1 contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying thermal fitness 2 allows generalized predictions of thermal performance across invertebrate species worldwide and 3 can be used to inform species distribution models and thereby help infer species range limits under climate change,2022,0.144
Historical Biogeography of the Melastomataceae,the melastomataceae include some 5858 species predominantly distributed over tropical biomes across the planet despite consensus on some particular aspects in the history of the group e g gondwanan fragmentation does not explain disjunctions other scenarios have not been fully evaluated e g the role of land bridges and the impact of molecular dating on the outcome of biogeographical scenarios has been usually overlooked in the melastomataceae literature therefore the main objective of this chapter is to shed light on the historical biogeography of the family with special attention to the estimation of divergence times the primary questions addressed here relate to the dispersal routes of major groups timing of dispersals and the main source and sink areas for the family despite strong overlap across the four calibration schemes analyzed our constraint comparisons demonstrate that the widely used set of fossils within the family is the most sensitive to its priors overall the mean ages across all schemes recovered here are younger than those found in more broadly sampled data sets this suggests that the fossil record of the melastomataceae is biased toward younger ages the analyses recovered the same order of dispersals for the three pantropical clades the melastomateae olisbeoideae and sonerileae from the neotropics to africa to the indo malay region and then to australasia more recently coinciding dispersal ages from the neotropics to afrotropics were recovered whereas dispersal ages from the afrotropics to indo malay are more diffuse ancestral range estimates recovered here along with known distributions of fossil and extant lineages suggest that the neotropical region played a major role in the early diversification of the family these results contradict early studies of the historical biogeography of the melastomataceae where the origin of the family was hypothesized to be in the tropical belt of northern tethys or in africa some trans oceanic dispersals not recovered in previous studies are discussed as well as future directions for improving historical biogeography scenarios for the family,2022,0.751
"Traditional Uses, Phytochemistry, and Pharmacological Properties of the Genus Blechnum—A Narrative Review",blechnum l is a genus belonging to the blechnaceae family with 236 accepted species that grow in intertropical subtropical and southern temperate regions several species of the genus have long been used in folk medicines to treat a broad spectrum of ailments including typhoid urinary infections influenza wounds pulmonary complaints blisters boils and antihelmintic related complications so far about 91 chemical compounds have been isolated from different parts of 20 blechnum species among these metabolites phenolic compounds sterols and fatty acids are the main constituents modern pharmacological investigations revealed several isolated compounds and extracts to exhibit exceptional biological properties including the antioxidant antimicrobial anti inflammatory anticancer insecticidal antitrematocidal and wound healing in various tests both quercetin 7â 3â 4â trimethoxy and phytol metabolites showed potential antioxidant and antitrematocidal properties while ponasterone exhibited insecticidal activity despite having a broad range of traditional medicinal benefits and biological properties understanding the scientific connotations based on the available data is still challenging this article presents a comprehensive review of the traditional uses phytochemical compounds and pharmacological aspects of the blechnum species,2022,0.289
Palaeoecological evidence of pollen morphological changes: A climate change adaptation strategy?,pollen records have been used to reconstruct changes in climate based on the presence of taxa as proxies for environmental conditions pollen grains have morphological features that allow for the identification of different species genera and families of flowering plants however ecologically distinct species share similar pollen types that may make biogeographic and climate reconstructions problematic also the responses of populations and species to climate changes adjusted through either plasticity or adaptation have been overlooked such adjustments are most probably the product of long lasting in situ persistence in local refugia under favourable microclimates despite hostile regional climate in southern south america three species of the dominant tree cover of the subgenus nothofagus are present two deciduous n antarctica and n pumilio and one evergreen n betuloides identified in the pollen group nothofagus dombeyi type here we present a pollen record from punta arenas 53â s that documents significant changes in pollen size that took place during the late glacial and early holocene the occurrence of smaller nothofagus dombeyi type pollen grains during the late glacial may indicate rapid local adaptation to colder and possibly wetter conditions our findings are supported by ecological niche modelling which suggests limited availability of nothofagus refugia during the last glacial maximum the local refugia may also have fostered interbreeding between congeneric species that led to unique morphological features that increased the fitness of the recipient pool we postulate that such modifications were due to the potential transient hybridization between species that later diverged by backcrossing with each deciduous and evergreen taxa,2022,0.848
Critical notes on Cruciferae,generic name mutarda is applied instead of the recently reinstated rhamphospermum the latter is lectotypified and synonymized with the prior and the combinations m allionii m arvensis m carinata along with ceratocnemum ã mirabile are validated calepina irregularis var pinnatifida neotypified erysimum minus and tetracme glochidiata are found conspecific with rorippa barbareifolia barbarea bracteosa and tetracme bucharica respectively lepidium culminicola is recognized as noccaea rubescens subsp culminicola comb et stat novi klukia andrz ex bess a synonym of sisymbrium l is shown to be validly published in 1822 thus threatening the homonymic name in use klukia racib fossil schizaeaceae,2022,0.386
Study protocol: International joint research project ‘climate change resilience of Indigenous socioecological systemsʼ (RISE),background anthropogenic changes in the environment are increasingly threatening the sustainability of socioecological systems on a global scale as stewards of the natural capital of over a quarter of the worldâ s surface area indigenous peoples ips are at the frontline of these changes indigenous socioecological systems ises are particularly exposed and sensitive to exogenous changes because of the intimate bounds of ips with nature traditional food systems tfs represent one of the most prominent components of ises providing not only diverse and nutritious food but also critical socioeconomic cultural and spiritual assets however a proper understanding of how future climate change may compromise tfs through alterations of related human nature interactions is still lacking climate change resilience of indigenous socioecological systems rise is a new joint international project that aims to fill this gap in knowledge methods and design rise will use a comparative case study approach coupling on site socioeconomic nutritional and ecological surveys of the target ises of sakha republic of sakha russian federation and karen kanchanaburi thailand people with statistical models projecting future changes in the distribution and composition of traditional food species under contrasting climate change scenarios the results presented as alternative narratives of future climate change impacts on tfs will be integrated into a risk assessment framework to explore potential vulnerabilities of ises operating through altered tfs and possible adaptation options through stakeholder consultation so that lessons learned can be applied in practice discussion by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic and nutritional contributions of tfs toward the sustainability of ises and projecting future changes under alternative climate change scenarios rise is strategically designed to deliver novel and robust science that will contribute towards the integration of indigenous issues within climate change and sustainable agendas while generating a forum for discussion among indigenous communities and relevant stakeholders its goal is to promote positive co management and regional development through sustainability and climate change adaptation,2022,0.057
Habitat Suitability Assessment of Black-Necked Crane (Grus nigricollis) in the Zoige Grassland Wetland Ecological Function Zone on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau,habitat suitability assessment is critical for wildlife population conservation and management planning the maxent model is widely used in species habitat suitability modeling in order to investigate the habitat status of the black necked crane in the zoige grassland wetland ecological function area this study evaluated the habitat suitability of the black necked crane using the maxent model with 152 occurrence records and 13 environmental variables based on the akaike information criterion corrected for the small sample size the best optimal parameter combination feature class lqpht regularization multiplier 3 0 was selected the results show that the maxent model had good accuracy with an area under the curve auc value of 0 895 distance to roads average summer precipitation distance to lakes and altitude are the dominant environmental variables affecting the potential distribution of black necked cranes with the contribution rates of 31 6 29 8 14 3 and 8 2 respectively the suitable habitat area of black necked cranes is mainly distributed in and around the zoige wetland national nature reserve accounting for 46 49 of the zoige grassland wetland national key ecological function zone the potential distribution area has a tendency to spread to hongyuan county in the south of the functional zone and the unsuitable habitat is mainly distributed in the high altitude area in the southwest of the functional zone this study recommends focusing on the distribution area of black necked cranes around zoige wetland national nature reserve and hongyuan county to improve conservation strategies and strengthen protection efforts,2022,0.025
"Two rare Peltigera species new to the Canadian Arctic, P. islandica and P. lyngei",peltigera islandica and p lyngei are rarely reported lichens previously p islandica was known from british columbia estonia and iceland and p lyngei from amchitka island alaska gough island south atlantic iceland siberia and svalbard both species are reported here for the first time from the canadian arctic and from the second localities in north america peltigera lyngei is also reported for the first time from canada the identities of these species are confirmed morphologically chemically and with molecular data phylogenetic relationships are inferred using the its region the widespread but scattered distribution of both species suggests that they may be underreported throughout their range,2022,0.699
Plastron color patterns allows for individual photo-identification in two different chelonian species,natural marks have increasingly been used as a tool for individual identification in capture mark recapture techniques photo identification is a non invasive alternative to traditional marking techniques allowing individual recognition of species through time and space we tested the aphis automatic photo identification software as a software capable of identifying individuals of testudo hermanni gmelin 1789 and emys orbicularis linneaus 1758 in different populations during capture release sessions in the field based on plastron color patterns since they can be used as natural marks for identification for this individual identification spm spot pattern matching and itm image template matching procedures were tested achieving 100 success of individuals recognized in both procedures and visually verified comparing the images however itm procedure was more efficient at recognizing recaptures than spm because itm allowed faster recaptures verification since most of the matches were directly placed on the first position on the candidates list previous studies have used photo identification on freshwater or sea turtles but never with terrestrial tortoise species consequently it can be corroborated that aphis is a competent and efficient software considering photo identification of t hermanni and e orbicularis and can be applied with close species with similar and unique individual color patterns in their plastron,2022,0.693
"Epidendrum luizae (Orchidaceae, Laeliinae), a new species from Brazilian Amazon of the Nocturnum group",in the present work a new epidendrum species belonging to the nocturnum group and native to the brazilian amazon more precisely of the state of amazonas is proposed a detailed morphological description is given as well as a composite photographic plate and comments on the habitat distribution and phenology of the species the new entity is also compared to its closest relatives e bahiense e dayseae e krukoffii and e longicolle,2022,0.576
"First report on the burden and distribution of Cu, Zn, Pb, and Cd in the Ocellated icefish (Chionodraco rastrospinosus) of northern Antarctic Peninsula",understanding the distribution of trace elements in ocellated icefish chionodraco rastrospinosus one of fish species with lacking hemoglobin from the family channichthyidae and distributes in a very limited area at the south scotia sea will help understand their physiological composition and conserve this vulnerable population however information on this topic is extremely limited this study examines trace elements two essential elements copper cu and zinc zn and two non essential elements cadmium cd and lead pb in c rastrospinosus and provides for the first time baseline data on elemental distribution in four tissues of c rastrospinosus in the northern antarctic peninsula nap the element concentrations showed the following trends znâ â cuâ â pbâ â cd in muscle and stomach and znâ â cuâ â cdâ â pb in intestine and liver among all tissues muscle had the lowest element concentrations the average zn level is 70 81â â â 28 91â î gâ g∠1 dry weight dw in c rastrospinosus muscle which is higher significantly than average levels of cu 0 56â â â 0 41â î gâ g∠1 dw pb 0 29â â â 0 33â î gâ g∠1 dw and cd 0 12â â â 0 05â î gâ g∠1 dw zn and cd concentrations in the stomach and intestines were significantly positively correlated c rastrospinosus could be a useful bioindicator for monitoring variability in trace elements dynamics in nap and the environmental variability in this region,2022,0.333
"Current State of Iris L., Subgenus Iris (Iridaceae) in Bulgaria.",the distribution of genus iris subgenus iris was presented and notes of its taxonomy were given in the paper based on the critical processing of the collections in the national herbaria som soa and so the literature sources and our field observation we have produced distribution maps new chorological data are reported for iris reichenbachii i suaveolens and i ã germanica iris mellita whose taxonomical status is under investigation was reviewed as a synonym of i suaveolens the distribution of i aphylla in bulgaria was not confirmed until now with the current collection for the bulgarian flora,2022,0.231
"A comparative wordlist for the languages of The Gran Chaco, South America",home to more than twenty indigenous languages belonging to six linguistic families the gran chaco has raised the interest of many linguists from different backgrounds while some have focused on finding deeper genetic relations between different language groups others have looked into similarities from the perspective of areal linguistics in order to contribute to further research of areal and genetic features among these languages we have compiled a comparative wordlist consisting of translational equivalents for 326 concepts â representing basic and ethnobiological vocabulary â for 26 language varieties since the data were standardized in various ways they can be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively in order to illustrate this in detail we have carried out an initial computer assisted analysis of parts of the data by searching for shared lexicosemantic patterns resulting from structural rather than direct borrowings,2022,0.251
Climate‐driven shifts in kelp forest composition reduce carbon sequestration potential,the potential contribution of kelp forests to blue carbon sinks is currently of great interest but interspecific variance has received no attention in the temperate northeast atlantic kelp forest composition is changing due to climateâ driven poleward range shifts of cold temperate laminaria digitata and laminaria hyperborea and warm temperate laminaria ochroleuca to understand how this might affect the carbon sequestration potential csp of this ecosystem we quantified interspecific differences in carbon export and decomposition alongside changes in detrital photosynthesis and biochemistry we found that while warm temperate kelp exports up to 71 more carbon per plant it decomposes up to 155 faster than its boreal congeners elemental stoichiometry and polyphenolic content cannot fully explain faster carbon turnover which may be attributable to contrasting tissue toughness or unknown biochemical and structural defenses faster decomposition causes the detrital photosynthetic apparatus of l ochroleuca to be overwhelmed 20 days after export and lose integrity after 36 days while detritus of cold temperate species maintains carbon assimilation depending on the photoenvironment detrital photosynthesis could further exacerbate interspecific differences in decomposition via a potential positive feedback loop through compositional change such as the predicted prevalence of l ochroleuca ocean warming may therefore reduce the csp of such temperate marine forests,2022,0.538
The potential of metabarcoding plant components of Malaise trap samples to enhance knowledge of plant-insect interactions,ï abstractthe worldwide rapid declines in insect and plant abundance and diversity that have occurred in the past decades have gained public attention and demand for political actions to counteract these declines are growing rapid large scale biomonitoring can aid in observing these changes and provide information for decisions for land management and species protection malaise traps have long been used for insect sampling and when insects are captured in these traps they carry traces of plants they have visited on the body surface or as digested food material in the gut contents metabarcoding offers a promising method for identifying these plant traces providing insight into the plants with which insects are directly interacting at a given time to test the efficacy of dna metabarcoding with these sample types 79 samples from 21 sites across germany were analysed with the its2 barcode this study to our knowledge is the first examination of metabarcoding plant dna traces from malaise trap samples here we report on the feasibility of sequencing these sample types analysis of the resulting taxa the usage of cultivated plants by insects near nature conservancy areas and the detection of rare and neophyte species due to the frequency of contamination and false positive reads isolation and pcr negative controls should be used in every reaction metabarcoding has advantages in efficiency and resolution over microscopic identification of pollen and is the only possible identification method for the other plant traces from malaise traps and could provide a broad utility for future studies of plant insect interactions,2022,0.195
"Pannaria crispella comb. nov. and P. campbelliana Hue, two overlooked lichens from New Zealand",psoroma sphinctrinum var crispellum has been considered a synonym of pannaria implexa but it is a distinct species recombined here as p crispella it forms a thin filmy thallus on tree trunks and consists of rounded confluent squamules surrounded by a distinct black prothallus the apothecia are initially simple with a well defined central thalline plug however the plug soon expands into a labyrinth like structure with undulate margins unlike those of any other pannariaceae the ascospores are long tailed as in p implexa but otherwise smooth and the species contains argopsin very rarely reported from the family except for the parmelielloid clade pannaria campbelliana previously also considered to be a synonym of p implexa is shown here to represent a second well founded species characterized by thick geotropically arranged squamules a distinct fibrous prothallus apothecia with a prominent simple thalline plug and short ellipsoid spores lacking apiculate extensions,2022,0.682
New records of the five alien species from the flora of United Arab Emirates,during floristic research in 2017â 2022 in the emirate of fujairah in the united arab emirates uae the authors discovered new alien species that complement the species composition of the flora of vascular plants in the emirate and the uae as a whole the article presents new records of five alien species previously unknown from the flora of uae and fujairah gomphrena serrata l amaranthaceae portulaca pilosa l p grandiflora hook p umbraticolakunth portulacaceae and peperomia pellucida l kunth piperaceae gomphrena serrata which is rare in the country was found only in one place in the mountainous region of fujarah and it is a novelty for the flora of the arabian peninsula as a whole while portulaca pilosa was observed in several different areas of fujairah emirate and is also known for saudi arabia yemen and oman peperomia pellucida was found only in a single locality in the â œalamarey plant nurseryâ in dibba town but in large number of individuals for every species synonyms overall distribution habitat preferences affinity and taxonomic remarks as well as the list of localities are given the herbarium materials were deposited in the herbarium of the komarov botanical institute le saint petersburg russia duplicates were sent to the herbarium of altai state university altb barnaul russia and the scientific herbarium of fujairah fsh wadi wuraya national park fujairah uae,2022,0.64
An Overview on Rumex dentatus L.: Its Functions as a Source of Nutrient and Health-Promoting Plant,rumex dentatus l polygonaceae also known as toothed dock or aegean dock is a medicinal plant with a high culinary value in addition to being used as an ethnomedicinal plant this review focuses on the botanical nutritional phytochemical and pharmacological activities of r dentatus as well as the future prospects for systematic investigations into these areas r dentatus has been subjected to scientific evaluation which has confirmed its traditional uses and demonstrated a wide range of biological and pharmacological potentials including antioxidant anticancer antifungal antibacterial anti inflammatory and other biological properties phytochemical analyses showed the presence of anthraquinones chromones flavonoids and essential oils as a result of this current review the medicinal significance of r dentatus has been confirmed and future research on its unexplored aspects such as the identification of pharmacologically active chemical constituents and related mechanisms and safety may be stimulated with the goal of developing it into a drug,2022,0.087
Historical Biogeography of the Neotropical Miconieae (Melastomataceae) Reveals a Pattern of Progressive Colonization Out of Lowland South America,the neotropics harbor over a third of all known seed plant species and their distribution is not homogenous understanding how this diversity arose and is maintained is a complex endeavor and likely dependent upon the area vegetation type or group of organisms studied the miconieae with ca 1900 species are the largest tribe of the plant family melastomataceae the clade is strictly neotropical and composed of mostly shrubs and small trees but also herbs epiphytes and lianas all berry fruited and important components of neotropical rain and cloud forests this makes the miconieae an ideal model system to study the establishment of modern day neotropical forests we investigated the biogeographic patterns of this diverse group using over 90 000 distribution records of herbarium specimens for over 1000 species the biogeographical history of the miconieae reveals a complex pattern involving relatively few migrations followed by in situ species radiations the pattern is mostly centrifugal as groups radiated repeatedly out of the amazonian basin into the andes eastern brazil and the lesser antilles and later from the andes to the greater antilles and central america while niche conservatism may have played an important role on a broad scale other local factors such as biotic interactions microclimate and soil characteristics are important for local diversification,2022,0.699
"Investigation on Pisolithus (Fungi, Sclerodermataceae) occurring in the Maltese Islands",the investigation of 20 populations of pisolithus spp collected from the maltese islands resulted in three different records pisolithus albus and p marmoratus are new to malta and were found associated with eucalyptus spp the third species p arhizus was confirmed from two new stations and both were associated with quercus ilex a brief morphological and ecological comparison of the three species is given and supplemented by images and a dichotomous identification key,2022,0.773
Systematics and Climatic Preferences of Bertolonieae and Trioleneae,bertolonieae s l has been characterized as herbaceous plants with angular capsules despite morphological similarities molecular data showed that the lineages within it were not homologous and the traditional diagnostic characters have several different origins in melastomataceae recently bertolonieae s l was recircumscribed to include only bertolonia and a new tribe trioleneae was described encompassing both monolena and triolena bertolonieae is endemic to eastern brazil with 36 taxa the two genera of trioleneae collectively occur in southern mexico central america the foothills of the andes and western amazonia with monolena and triolena consisting of 16 and 27 species respectively in this chapter we present information on the systematics of bertolonieae and trioleneae with a compilation of new information relevant to their taxonomy and biology moreover we compared the climatic niches of both in order to test if they developed similar morphological features by occupying similar habitats in different regions as pointed out by a previous study the climatic niche models with the envelopes for the genera within both tribes showed that their climatic preferences overlap the similar climatic envelopes are mostly related to precipitation and together with similar habitats in shaded and moist understory in rainforests from different regions in the neotropics could have led to the aforementioned convergent evolution of morphological features,2022,0.428
"Corystidae Samouelle, 1819 and Thiidae Dana, 1852",families corystidae and thiidae comprise 13 species of burrowing crabs and only 2 of them inhabits the ices area these species are corystes cassivelaunus belonging to the family corystidae and thia scutellata in the family thiidae both are warm water species and inhabit the sublittoral zone in sandy bottoms the larval series of the two species is known to include two phases zoea and megalopa the zoeal stages are the dispersal phase and the megalopa is the dispersive and specialised recruitment phase this leaflet provides the distinctive characteristics of the larval stages for c cassivelaunus and t scutellata and illustrated keys are included to improve the identification of zoeae and megalopa stages,2022,0.696
Environmental Drivers of Gulf Coast Tick (Acari: Ixodidae) Range Expansion in the United States,in the united states the gulf coast tick amblyomma maculatum koch is a species of growing medical and veterinary significance serving as the primary vector of the pathogenic bacterium rickettsia parkeri rickettsiales rickettsiaceae in humans and the apicomplexan parasite hepatozoon americanum in canines ongoing reports of a maculatum from locations outside its historically reported distribution in the southeastern united states suggest the possibility of current and continuing range expansion using an ecological niche modeling approach we combined new occurrence records with high resolution climate and land cover data to investigate environmental drivers of the current distribution of a maculatum in the united states we found that environmental suitability for a maculatum varied regionally and was primarily driven by climatic factors such as annual temperature variation and seasonality of precipitation we also found that presence of a maculatum was associated with open habitat with minimal canopy cover our model predicts large areas beyond the current distribution of a maculatum to be environmentally suitable suggesting the possibility of future northward and westward range expansion these predictions of environmental suitability may be used to identify areas at potential risk for establishment and to guide future surveillance of a maculatum in the united states,2022,0.588
Microwave-based soil moisture improves estimates of vegetation response to drought in China,the increased frequency and severity of drought has heightened concerns over the risk of hydraulic vegetative stress and premature mortality of ecosystems globally unfortunately most land surface models lsms continue to underestimate ecosystem resilience to drought â which degrades the credibility of model predicted ecohydrological responses to climate change this study investigates the response of vegetation gross productivity to water stress conditions using microwave based vegetation optical depth vod and soil moisture retrievals based on the estimated isohydric anisohydric spectrum we find that vegetation at isohydric state exhibits a larger decrease in gross primary productivity and higher water use efficiency than anisohydric vegetation due to their more rigorous stomatal control and higher tolerance of carbon starvation risk in addition the introduction of microwave soil moisture improves the accuracy of isohydricity anisohydricity estimates compared to those obtained using microwave vod alone i e increases their spearman rank correlation versus the benchmark of global biodiversity information facility dataset from 0 12 to 0 63 results of this study provide clear justification for the use of microwave based soil moisture retrievals to enhance stomatal conductance parameterization within lsms,2022,0.095
Data generated by camera trapping in 40 areas in Europe including East and South Europe: report of the field activities (May 2022),the newâ born european observatory of wildlife eow 2 is a part of the efsaâ funded enetwild project and has the aim of improving the european capacities for monitoring wildlife populations implementing international standards for data collection providing guidance on wildlife density estimation and finally to promote collaborative open data networks to develop wildlife monitoring as a next step the eow has engaged and enhanced the existing network of collaborators and a number of participants are currently preparing field operations to estimate wild mammal density focused on wild ungulates and other medium to big sized mammals in certain areas from their respective countries a field camera trap ct based protocol provided by the eow is going to be applied an online training course held in may 2022 provided specific training on camera trapping methods and protocols specifically the random encounter method rem and other methods which do not require individual recognition here we also present the new field protocol which is compatible with the subsequent application of artificial intelligence to process and analyze photo trappings using the online app agouti this strategy aims at promoting a network of professionals researchers capable of designing developing field work and analysing data contributing also to disseminate the experience and train other colleagues in their respective countries by now the overall number of countries participating in the eow is 25 some participants from 12 countries could already estimate mammal densities during the previous seasons 2019 2020 2021 which will also apply the same methodology in different populations during 2022 in their respective countries the number of density values finally obtained through this experience by the end of 2022 will exceed 40 different locations in a total of at least 30 countries since some countries are on the process to confirm their participation the eow website is presented this coordinated field trial activity over a range of european countries involving different experts and professionals follows the original plan,2022,0.442
Micro and macroclimatic constraints on the activity of a vulnerable tortoise: a mechanistic approach under a thermal niche view,1 thermal constraints imposed by the environment limit the activity time of ectotherms and have been a central issue in ecophysiology assessing these restrictions is key to determining the vulnerability of species to changing thermal niches and developing conservation strategies,2022,0.412
Life history patterns of coleopteran pollinators of Annona crassiflora Mart. in the Brazilian Cerrado,the large floral chambers of the neotropical annonaceae are pollinated by large beetles of the tribe cyclocephalini laporte melolonthidae previous research indicates that depending on the geographic area the assemblage of cyclocephalini pollinators may differ in this study pollinators of annona crassiflora mart were surveyed in the cerrado of chapada dos guimarã es mato grosso brazil for the first time the analysis of 74 flowers from 24 a crassiflora individuals revealed that the principal pollinator was cyclocephala octopunctata burmeister the secondary pollinator cyclocephala celata dechambre and c octopunctata exhibited behaviour that may promote cross pollination visiting both female and male phase flowers touching stigmas and anthers and becoming coated in pollen during anthesis this is the first record of c celata a species commonly found pollinating araceae in the atlantic forest as a pollinator of an annonaceae species in the cerrado additionally an interim phase between the female and male phases of a crassiflora is documented here for the first time,2022,0.627
Medicinal Plants Used Traditionally for Skin Related Problems in the South Balkan and East Mediterranean Region—A Review,a review research was conducted to provide an overview of the ethnobotanical knowledge of medicinal plants and traditional medical practices for the treatment of skin disorders in albania cyprus greece and turkey the geographical and ecological characteristics of the balkan peninsula and mediterranean sea along with the historical connection among those countries gave rise to the development of a distinct flora and to the uses of common medicinal plants against various skin ailments respectively the review focuses on the detailed study of 128 ethnobotanical surveys conducted in these areas and the species used for skin ailments were singled out the analysis showed that 967 taxa belonging to 418 different genera and 111 different families are used in the treatment of skin related problems the majority of the plants belong to the families of asteraceae 11 7 lamiaceae 7 4 rosaceae 6 7 plantaginaceae 5 4 and malvaceae 3 8 their usage is internal or external to treat ailments such as wounds and burns 22 1 hemorrhoids 14 7 boils abscesses and furuncles 8 2 beside specific skin disorders numerous species appeared to be used for their antifungal antimicrobial and antiseptic activity 9 1 literature evaluation highlighted that the most commonly used species are plantago major l albania turkey hypericum perforatum l greece turkey sambucus nigra l cyprus greece ficus carica l cyprus turkey matricaria chamomilla l cyprus greece and urtica dioica l albania turkey while many medicinal plants reported by interviewees were common in all four countries finally to relate this ethnopharmacological knowledge and trace its expansion and diversification through centuries a comparison of findings was made with the use of the species mentioned in dioscoridesâ â œde materia medicaâ for skin disorders this work constitutes the first comparative study performed with ethnobotanical data for skin ailments gathered in the south balkan and east mediterranean areas results confirm the primary hypothesis that people in albania cyprus greece and turkey are closely related in terms of traditionally using folk medicinal practices nevertheless more field studies conducted especially in remote places of these regions can help preserve the traditional medical knowledge aiming at the discovery of new phytotherapeutics against dermatological diseases,2022,0.104
"Omnicrobe, an open-access database of microbial habitats and phenotypes using a comprehensive text mining and data fusion approach",the dramatic increase in the amount of microbe descriptions in databases reports and papers presents a two fold challenge for accessing the information integration of heterogeneous data in a standard ontology based representation and normalization of the textual descriptions by semantic analysis recent text mining methods offer powerful ways to extract textual information and generate ontology based representation this paper describes the design of the omnicrobe application that gathers comprehensive information on habitats phenotypes and usages of microbes from scientific sources of high interest to the microbiology community the omnicrobe database contains around 1 million descriptions of microbe properties that are created by analyzing and combining six information sources of various kinds i e biological resource catalogues sequence database and scientific literature the microbe properties are indexed by the ontobiotope ontology and their taxa are indexed by an extended version of the taxonomy maintained by the national center for biotechnology information the omnicrobe application covers all domains of microbiology it provides an easy to use support in the resolution of scientific questions related to the habitats phenotypes and uses of microbes through simple and complex ontology based queries we illustrate the potential of omnicrobe with a use case from the food innovation domain,2022,0.038
Climate Ecology as a Driver of Global Breeding Periods in Anurans,climate can have profound effects on reproductive behavior and physiology especially in ectothermic animals in amphibians the evolution of breeding period due to climate has received little attention despite its direct connection to fitness and relevance to amphibian conservation we used phylogenetic comparative methods to analyze a global dataset of frog breeding periods climate body size and microhabitat for 497 species across 41 of 54 families we found support for the hypothesis that breeding periods are longer in the warmer wetter aseasonal tropics and shorter in the colder dryer seasonal temperate zone however this latitudinal reproduction gradient is more complex than expected as the effect of climate depends on body size additionally breeding periods were similar across microhabitats overall our model describes 20 of variation in breeding periods and these results are robust to phylogenetic uncertainty our results set within an eco physiology framework have broad implications for more targeted priorities in amphibian conservation,2022,0.448
South Bank Quay marine licence applications,the marine management organisation mmo received two marine licence applications mla 2020 00506 and mla 2020 00507 in november 2020 from south tees developments limited proposing to construct a new quay at south bank in the tees estuary referred to hereafter as the proposed scheme the proposed scheme is required to support south tees developments limitedâ s landside proposals for general industry and storage or distribution uses within part of the south industrial zone which has been subject to a separate planning application reference r 2020 0357 oom it is envisaged that the new quay would be used predominantly by the renewable energy industry as well as supporting more general industrial and storage distribution activities the proposed scheme comprises demolition capital dredging offshore disposal of dredged material placement of rock in the berth pocket and construction and operation of a new quay to be set back into the riverbank the development of the proposed scheme is to be undertaken in phases application mla 2020 00506 covers the works required for phase 1 of the proposed scheme only and mla 2020 00507 covers the works required for phase 2 of the proposed scheme,2022,0.129
"DISTRIBUTION SPECIES OF THE GENUS IRIS L. (IRIDACEAE) IN THE NORTHERN FOOTHILLS FERGANA
VALLEY (PART OF UZBEKISTAN).",this article defines the current status of the species of i rodionenkoi i orchioides i narynensis i austrotschatkalica i halophila i kolpakowskiana and i songarica distributed on the northern slopes of the fergana valley based on the conducted field studies collected herbarium specimens and scientific analysis conducted to date a brief synopsis and geographical distribution of species of the genus are reflected on geographical maps,2022,0.524
"Parasitism of Enallagma civile Hagen in Selys, 1853 (Zygoptera: Coenagrionidae) by Arrenurus water mites",we compared the prevalence and intensity of arrenurus sensu stricto water mite parasites on enallagma civile hagen in selys 1853 zygoptera coenagrionidae from 10 freshwater wetlands playas in two different land cover contexts in western texas from 2006 2007 vulnerability to parasitism may be a consequence of disturbance so we predicted that the more natural form of regional land cover grasslands surrounding playas should be associated with a lower water mite load than more disturbed land cover tilled croplands additionally we examined arrenurus occurrence and intensity of infection by host sex overall prevalence was 38 46 of 130 damselflies sampled having mites this varied by land cover type but with opposite trends between years overall average parasite load was 11 water mites per infected host range 1 40 mites intensity was significantly higher in hosts from cropland playas in 2006 but there was no difference by surrounding land cover in 2007 although there were consistent trends in both years of more males being parasitized than females the highly uneven distribution of parasites on hosts and differences in average mite load between years generated variability that obscured any statistically significant patterns thus land cover context surrounding playas but not host sex had an impact on parasite load in one of the two years of our study future work is needed to identify the mechanisms by which land cover may affect water mite odonate host parasite relationships as well as the role of the odonate assemblage as a whole in dispersal of parasites in a temporally dynamic wetland network,2022,0.907
"Distribution, ecology and conservation of Aeshna caerulea (Ström, 1793) and Aeshna subarctica elisabethae Djakonov, 1922 (Insecta: Odonata) at the southernmost limits of their range",we provide an overview of the distribution habitat preference phenology and conservation of aeshna caerulea strã m 1793 and aeshna subarctica elisabethae djakonov 1922 in italy both species are found exclusively in the central eastern alps by 2021 a caerulea has been reported for 31 sites whereas a s elisabethae for 15 the new southernmost global range limit for a caerulea was found in the adamello massif and the new southernmost western palearctic limit for a s elisabethae in the tesino plateau trentino alto adige aeshna caerulea reproduces at high altitude ponds or small lakes inundated fens or fen meadows and occasionally in the depressions within raised bogs aeshna s elisabethae is found at lower altitudes only at raised bogs and to a lesser extent in acidic transitional mires rich in sphagnum mosses forty six per cent of the reproduction sites of a caerulea and 93 of those of a s elisabethae are included within a national local protected area or the natura 2000 network,2022,0.511
Aristolochic acid-associated cancers: a public health risk in need of global action,aristolochic acids aas are a group of naturally occurring compounds present in many plant species of the aristolochiaceae family exposure to aa is a significant risk factor for severe nephropathy and urological and hepatobiliary cancers among others that are often recurrent and characterized by the prominent mutational fingerprint of aa however herbal medicinal products that contain aa continue to be manufactured and marketed worldwide with inadequate regulation and possible environmental exposure routes receive little attention as the trade of food and dietary supplements becomes increasingly globalized we propose that further inaction on curtailing aa exposure will have far reaching negative effects on the disease trends of aa associated cancers our review aims to systematically present the historical and current evidence for the mutagenicity and carcinogenicity of aa and the effect of removing sources of aa exposure on cancer incidence trends we discuss the persisting challenges of assessing the scale of aa related carcinogenicity and the obstacles that must be overcome in curbing aa exposure and preventing associated cancers overall this review aims to strengthen the case for the implementation of prevention measures against aaâ s multifaceted detrimental and potentially fully preventable effects on human cancer development environmental exposure to aristolochic acid containing plant material and its use in traditional medicines have been linked to a wide range of cancers in this review das et al describe the evidence for aristolochic acid as a potent carcinogen and explore the impact of public health measures on preventing aristolochic acid linked cancers and nephropathy with a call to action for the implementation of further preventative measures,2022,0.082
The Impacts of Climate Change on the Potential Distribution of Plodia interpunctella (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in China,the indian meal moth plodia interpunctella hã bner lepidoptera pyralidae is a notorious stored grain pest that can be found in most parts of china the corpses excretions and other secretions of p interpunctella larvae cause serious grain pollution seriously affecting the nutritional and economic value of stored grain in china to elucidate the potential distribution of p interpunctella in china we used the climex 4 0 model to project the potential distribution of the pest using historical climate data 1960â 1990 and estimated future climate data 2030 2050 and 2070 under the historical climate situation p interpunctella was distributed in most areas of china and its highly favorable habitats account for 48 14 of its total potential distribution because of temperature change in the future climate suitable habitats will increase in the eastern part of qinghai and will decrease in the mid eastern northeastern and southeastern parts of china under these scenarios the area of this pestâ s highly favorable habitat will be reduced by 1 24 million km2 and its proportion will decrease to about 28 48 these predicted outcomes will help to distinguish the impact of climate change on the potential distribution of p interpunctella thereby providing important information to design early forecasting and strategies to prevent pest harm to stored grain,2022,0.178
Climate change effects on marginal savannas from central-north Brazil,this study estimated the potential effects of climate change on peripheral plant diversity by predicting the distribution of species from cerrado of northern brazil ecological niche modeling was used to provide present and future projections of responses in terms of occurrence of ten woody species based on four algorithms and four future climate change scenarios for the year 2050 potential refuge areas for conservation actions were identified and evidence of the vulnerability of the flora was demonstrated based on the disparity between potential areas of climate stability amid current protected areas the results suggested a lack of pattern between the scenarios and an idiosyncratic response of the species indicating different impacts on plant communities and the existence of unequal stable alternative conditions which could bring consequences to the ecological relationships and functionality of the floras even in the most pessimistic scenarios most species presented an expansion of potential occurrence areas suppressing or cohabiting with species of adjacent biomes typically marginal plants were the most sensitive overlapping adequate habitats are concentrated in the nbc the analysis of habitats in relation to anthropized areas and pas demonstrate low future effectiveness in the protection of these savannas,2022,0.604
Principles for using evidence to improve biodiversity impact mitigation by business,there is an increasing expectation on the private sector to address biodiversity impacts and contribute towards global conservation goals appropriate evidence use can help businesses avoid biodiversity losses and realise gains reduce resources wasted on ineffective or suboptimal action whilst minimising biodiversity related risks and securing opportunities from engaging with biodiversity we review the status of evidence based action in the private sector where previous studies have identified concerning trends and explore the barriers that may currently be hindering evidence use to learn from this and improve evidence use we propose a set of principles for evidence based biodiversity impact mitigation we outline tools and resources that can help businesses move towards evidence based practice and achieve each of these principles meeting these principles would improve the biodiversity outcomes from businessâ biodiversity related actions however for business action to contribute more fully to global conservation goals broader political and socio economic issues also need addressing,2022,0.074
Toward global integration of biodiversity big data: a harmonized metabarcode data generation module for terrestrial arthropods,abstract metazoan metabarcoding is emerging as an essential strategy for inventorying biodiversity with diverse projects currently generating massive quantities of community level data the potential for integrating across such data sets offers new opportunities to better understand biodiversity and how it might respond to global change however large scale syntheses may be compromised if metabarcoding workflows differ from each other there are ongoing efforts to improve standardization for the reporting of inventory data however harmonization at the stage of generating metabarcode data has yet to be addressed a modular framework for harmonized data generation offers a pathway to navigate the complex structure of terrestrial metazoan biodiversity here through our collective expertise as practitioners method developers and researchers leading metabarcoding initiatives to inventory terrestrial biodiversity we seek to initiate a harmonized framework for metabarcode data generation with a terrestrial arthropod module we develop an initial set of submodules covering the 5 main steps of metabarcode data generation i sample acquisition ii sample processing iii dna extraction iv polymerase chain reaction amplification library preparation and sequencing and v dna sequence and metadata deposition providing a backbone for a terrestrial arthropod module to achieve this we i identified key points for harmonization ii reviewed the current state of the art and iii distilled existing knowledge within submodules thus promoting best practice by providing guidelines and recommendations to reduce the universe of methodological options we advocate the adoption and further development of the terrestrial arthropod module we further encourage the development of modules for other biodiversity fractions as an essential step toward large scale biodiversity synthesis through harmonization,2022,0.002
"New records of rove-beetles (Insecta, Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) for Azores Islands (Portugal)",abstractthe data we present consist of an updated checklist of the azorean staphylinidae insecta coleoptera by compiling new identified records of three recent published studies about azorean arthropods in general the records were obtained from different standardised sampling campaigns and from non standardised observations the presented records were collected between july 1999 and september 2020 in five islands of the azores archipelago flores graciosa terceira sã o miguel and santa maria the samples include records collected in several habitat types such as native mixed and exotic forests pasturelands and agricultural areas maize fields orchards citrus areas and vineyards this inventory represents the most updated checklist and knowledge about staphylinidae in azores and new information includes one new exotic rove beetle for the azores thecturotatenuissima casey 1893 and seven new islands records,2022,0.643
Replicated radiation of a plant clade along a cloud forest archipelago,replicated radiations in which sets of similar forms evolve repeatedly within different regions can provide powerful insights into parallel evolution and the assembly of functional diversity within communities several cases have been described in animals but in plants we lack well documented cases of replicated radiation that combine comprehensive phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses the delimitation of geographic areas within which a set of â ecomorphsâ evolved independently and the identification of potential underlying mechanisms here we document the repeated evolution of a set of leaf ecomorphs in a group of neotropical plants the oreinotinus lineage within the angiosperm clade viburnum spread from mexico to argentina through disjunct cloud forest environments in 9 of 11 areas of endemism species with similar sets of leaf forms evolved in parallel we reject gene flow mediated evolution of similar leaves and show instead that species with disparate leaf forms differ in their climatic niches supporting ecological adaptation as the driver of parallelism our identification of a case of replicated radiation in plants sets the stage for comparative analyses of such phenomena across the tree of life several cases of replicated radiations in which sets of similar forms evolve repeatedly within different regions have been described in animals here the authors provide a well documented example in plants specifically the oreinotinus lineage within the angiosperm clade viburnum in its spread from mexico to argentina through disjunct cloud forest environments,2022,0.167
Biodiversity and Foraging Preferences of Bee Communities at Pinnacles National Park Over Time,bees are considered to be the most important animal pollinator providing billions of dollars in pollination services each year despite their importance in both natural and agricultural settings the status of most native bees is unknown native bees are subject to a variety of threats including habitat loss pesticide use and climate change yet monitoring programs have been implemented in few natural areas pinnacles national park pnp in california is one of the only natural areas to have a large historical dataset on bees across decades with surveys conducted in 1996 1997 1998 1999 2002 2011 and 2012 these surveys have found pnp to house an exceptionally diverse community of bees to determine how the bee community at pnp has changed over time we returned to survey bees in 2020 and compare the current collection to historical collections we found that overall diversity levels remained at similar levels across years but community composition changed among years suggesting that the bee community experiences species turnover but has not experienced over diversity losses using our bee survey as a framework we discuss some issues with current bee monitoring practices and recommend creative solutions to provide better techniques for site selection or monitoring monolectic species habitat we used ceratina sequoiae michener abundance at pnp as a framework to model suitable habitat using citizen science records we selected six topographic factors to model in conjunction with the required floral and nesting resources of c sequoiae the suitability modeling indicated that considering elevation in addition to the required floral and nesting resources could better predict c sequoiae abundance throughout the duration of our bee survey at pnp we also observed a novel foraging behavior we discovered tens of bees feeding on aphid produced pine honeydew a seemingly rare behavior among native bees the culmination of our findings highlight the importance of long term pollinator monitoring studies not only to detect diversity shifts over time but also to determine the diversity of behaviors exhibited by bees,2022,0.506
The discovery of Scaphyglottis punctulata (Orchidaceae: Laeliinae) in the highlands of Brazilian Amazonia with a key to the species of the region,the genus scaphyglottis poepp amp endl presents 78 species and occurs from mexico to brazil scaphyglottis punctulata rchb f c schweinf is known from various high elevation locations from panama to bolivia here we report new records in two regions of the brazil portion of the guiana shield we provide a detailed description photographic plates updated distribution map ecological and taxonomic comments for s punctulata and an identification key for scaphyglottis species from the brazilian portion of the guiana shield,2022,0.639
"Noteworthy Records, Range Extensions, and Conservation Status of Skunk Species in Texas",voucher based specimen records as well as well substantiated photographic records help inform the distribution and conservation status of wildlife species for the five skunk species family mephitidae that occur in texas documenting occurrence records through all available sources is vital to understanding the status of the species in this survey of records we report on rabies negative skunk specimens submitted to the texas department of state health services and deposited in the angelo state natural history collections specimens collected in association with field studies specimens salvaged either as vehicle killed animals or from wildlife rehabilitation facilities and identifiable images from camera trap studies research grade observations from inaturalist also were included from counties previously lacking a record finally databases from systematic collections of mammals were searched for additional specimen records identification for most specimens was based on morphological features but for specimens at potentially sympatric locations for spilogale interrupta and spilogale leucoparia additional molecular analyses were used to confirm species reported herein are five county records and a range extension for conepatus leuconotus 39 county records for mephitis mephitis six county records and a range extension for s leucoparia and four county records for s interrupta nonvouchered photographic records are presented for c leuconotus 19 mephitis mephitis 41 s leucoparia 5 and s interrupta 13 also reported are five recent nonvouchered photographic records of mephitis macroura a species not confirmed in the state since 1999,2022,0.934